rebelutionary
Mike Cannon-Brookes on Java, J2EE, OSX, Open Source, Australia, Atlassian, Bug Tracking, JIRA and more...

Wednesday, 24 July 2002

Brett blogged "To EJB, or not to EJB?" - reminds me of "Is EJB Always Necessary?" 6:04:24 PM  comment []      Niki sent me a link to a great article on Real networks open sourcing their server. Here's the choice quote: Indeed, a slew of smaller companies that had originally pursued open-source strategies have defected to the proprietary software world, finding that community response wasn't forthcoming or that they simply had trouble making money. "It's a good development model," Claybrook said. "It's not necessarily a good business model." 6:01:51 PM  comment []      Open source Java directory. Try the DMOZ Open Directory's Java category. DMOZ lists both open source and commercial products and lists the license of each (GNU, BSD-like, commercial, etc.). And Mike: last time I checked, Open Symphony projects were not listed there either. [Blogging Roller] Hrm - I still don't like it. I like freshmeat (it categorises software) - but the search and filtering functions suck.  DMOZ is a directory of websites with license details in the description. You can't search by license, date updated, requirements (Servlet 2.2 vs 2.3 etc etc). It's nifty but not really that useful to me, and besides - noone goes to DMOZ I'll keep lookin'! 4:17:03 PM  comment []      Apparently in order for my friends to tell me how not hot my blog is, I need to include this link. To me it's all just a scam to get self congratulating bloggers to drive a mass of traffic to their site virally. Looks like it's working. 11:46:15 AM  comment []      Who would have thought the Hot or Not guys would be diversifying? http://blog.hotornot.com/ and http://ascii.hotornot.com are both amusing. [found via Scripting News] 11:37:31 AM  comment []      blogs.salon.com seems to be live, as does the Salon Blogs page. It seems they are running a cobranded Radio Community server in concert with Userland. IMHO this is one of the smartest financial moves Salon has made in a long time. I'm not sure how the $39.95 a year is split between Userland and Salon - but even if they get half each I'd say Salon is going to make lot more out of a $20 blog 'subscription' than a $30 Salon content subscription. Good move. It can't hurt either that having their readers (presumably a lot of whom are educated, and can write well) writing blogs will draw them a lot more traffic. 11:35:45 AM  comment []      JPublish, 1 day on. I must say, I am mighty impressed with JPublish. [Brett Morgan's Insanity Weblog] 11:27:21 AM  comment []      I've been having some enlightening email discussions with both CollabNet and Jakarta people about my Gump post. The good news is there are people at both places who prefer JIRA to Scarab. The better news is that the decision to use Scarab over the aging Bugzilla was made by a one person and each Jakarta project can choose to use a different system if they want! So here's your invitation - if you run a Jakarta or Apache subproject and want to use the best issue tracker - just ask me. We'll even customise and host it for you if you want. We're nice people - really! Remember, as Gump said - "Life is like a box of chocolates". Well do you want to be eating the nice creamy toffee chocolate, or the coconut one that's always the last in the box? ";)" 10:15:22 AM  comment []      Bordello IPO arouses enthusiastic interest: One of Australia's best known brothels, The Daily Planet, on Monday announced plans to go public, saying it hopes to raise $12 million from private investors and eventually list on the Australian Stock Exchange. Why? "Because the old saying that sex sells is so true, because the adult industry is so massively popular and profitable, we believe the opportunities are unlimited," said Andrew Harris, one of the Daily Planet's three directors. "It's a novelty raising that may just perk the market up." For investors wondering how to value a bordello, Harris suggests they consider it as a very busy five-star hotel with revenue derived purely from room fees of $120 an hour from each guest... [GMSV] And you thought Clark Kent worked at the Daily Planet! Read the press release, it's very wittily (sp?) written. 10:00:40 AM  comment []      Bitter, party of one. Michael Thomas complains in Salon today that the big problem for IT companies isn't the accounting, it's the products, which often don't work. This certainly jibes with my experience. I've found that the more a software product costs, the less likely it is to work properly, and the harder it will be to implement. In the Java world, for example, I've used Tomcat, Resin (a cheap servlet engine from Caucho Software), and BEA WebLogic. Of the three, WebLogic was the hardest to get up and running, the hardest to deal with on a day to day basis, and was the most expensive by an almost unbelievable factor. I'd be willing to accept that BEA offers a lot of features that the others don't, but frankly I've never run into limitations in the other products that sent me looking for more. I'd have to say I agree. The fact that BEA can charge up to $60,000 per CPU (you read it right) is criminal. Their software is good, but it's not that good. Remind me if I'm ever running a BigCo to go through my software expenses with a fine toothcomb. Personally I'd buy Resin or Orion, a large support contract with the vendor, and then hire some very smart people with the change. [rc3.org] 9:51:39 AM  comment []      Microsoft yanks Entourage sync conduits. TidBITS notes that the Palm sync conduits for Entourage X that were released last week have since been uncerimoniously yanked offline by Microsoft, with no word as to the reason. Sure enough...in checking the Mactopia section of Microsoft's site, there is no longer any mention of the sync conduits for Entourage. Back to the drawing board... [ Surely this couldn't be because of Apple's iSync announcement? (Does anyone read that as nsync btw?) Microsoft probably don't like that you can now get data out of Entourage and into other applications / devices. Have you ever tried getting data out of Outlook? This is a huge pity because Entourage is really a kick ass product. Best mailer I've ever used - and I've used all of them. 9:43:21 AM  comment []      They just keep coming - two more Switch parodies. Ben Brown and Ani Moller (they're married). 8:52:14 AM  comment []      Oh by the way - you want to test JIRA's RSS? Just subscribe to this feed of the last 15 issues reported on jira.atlassian.com. When I got in this evening I checked my Radio aggregator and almost fell off my chair when I saw new JIRA issues appearing - I forgot I had subscribed to the feed this afternoon! There's a special feeling when your own software surprises you 1:02:22 AM  comment []      Jelly is really coming along! jellyBlog contains details of how to build Swing interfaces with it. I'd like to see a more complex example though - perhaps with some interaction? Also James has started the Xulux (pronounced zoolooks) project - an ASF licensed XUL framework for Java: The aim is to simplify the development of rich/thick clients using XUL to define more traditional, rich user interfaces. The XUL can then be transformed into HTML / DHTML / JavaScript for old HTML browsers such as IE while still supporting rich in XUL browsers such as Mozilla or Flash (thanks to ZULU). So the aim is to build a HTML, Swing and SWT clients for XUL as well as a server side framework for developing XUL applications. It all sounds very cool - I can't wait to play with it. 12:10:02 AM  comment []      drunkgamers.com switch parody hahahah - very amusing stuff. I think the Switch campaign has the mark of a great campaign. Why? The spoofs are coming hard and fast. Everyone knows about it. For Apple, that can only be good - however funny the spoofs are. [Daypop Top 40] [Brett Morgan's Insanity Weblog] 12:04:27 AM  comment []