Aspects and Attributes are both Big News in java blog land currently. I’ll say
this about MS: one positive thing .net has done is kicked us all in our
complacency, and inspired a whole raft of really excellent projects. Its great
to see the number of committed java people who are out there learning from .net
and adding the good bits to java.

Just released 3.0.

Whoof, we got it finally!

[Begblog]

Groovy new monitor, and groovy new IDEA to play with on it!

Australian government backs open source. According to this articlethe Australian government is backing the use of open source software for it’s e-government platform. The Federal… [<big>kev’s</big> catalogue of this and that.]

Yet another government threatens to slip out from under the fist of Microsoft. Don’t they know that’s not allowed?

Hope rises every time I read another story like this. The ‘TCPA plan’ (aka. all your [apps/music/data/anything else we think of] are belong to us) will only gain ground if there is sufficient passive acceptance. If enough major governments and large institutions start using open source, TCPA / Palladium might actually be killed before it ever gets going.

My computer is mine. For better or worse. Nobody gets to choose what I run except me. Why is this such a hard concept for organisations like MS and the RIAA to grasp? How would consumers react if their cars only allowed them to drive on approved roads? Or only accepted fuel at filling stations operated by ‘trusted’ oil companies?

We just got a shipment of gorgeous 18″ LCD screens at work. They are fantastic, and much, much easier on the eyes than CRT screens. I was amazed. I have a dual-head graphics card so I stuck my new screen next to my old one, and the difference is huge. Although before I saw the new screen, I would have said the old one was excellent.

If you can swing it, get one, your eyes will thank you.

OpenSymphony Wiki online. OpenSymphony has a new Wiki online, powered by SnipSnap. It should be useful for on-the-fly documentation writing and tip sharing. Already the WebWork Cookbook has moved there and got some extra contributions! [rebelutionary]

Looks great, but for as long as its on any port other than 80, I won’t be able to see it from work. 😦 Trying to get ports opened in our corporate firewall tends to generate a reaction similar to saying “Hi, mind if hack the network, install packet sniffers on all the servers, set fire to the office and sell all our data to the competition?”.

Don’t get me wrong, I love XP and Agile, and Test-First is a better object designer than I am. Unit tests have also saved my bacon on more than one occasion. Its just that sometimes, its strangely liberating to throw caution to the wind and code like crazy without a safety net. Some of the most fun (and technically cool) things I’ve done have been hacked together in an afternoon, with no regard to anything other than the single idea that I’m trying to express. My JMock-alike fake servlet framework (have to discuss getting that open-sourced with the PTB’s) is one example. I’ve tweaked bits and pieces since, but the core took shape in a single afternoon of manic coding.

Odd.

PS. The ‘just do it’ technique only works (for me) when coding something truly engaging. Most production code isn’t on the cutting edge of cool, and thats when test-first helps me to stay focussed and catches my silly mistakes.

Internet 2. Interesting, although merely a continuation of the internet of today. Still waiting for the (next) new paradigm…

People don’t choose secure passwords, and they don’t generally use different
passwords for secure (online banking) vs insecure (mailing lists)
authentication. Public-private key cryptography is even more of a hassle for
the average person. However, now that ‘plug-n-work’ connection technologies
like USB and FireWire are fairly pervasive, and products like this USB Drive are available, it
should be fairly simple to build something that works as a ‘data key’ much like
a car or door key does. A device small enough to fit on a keyring would be
unobtrusive enough to take everywhere, and people understand physical keys, so
the learning curve would be minimal. Just plug it into your PC to ‘unlock’ your
data. It could work for encrypting your personal data on disk as well as for
sending secure messages. Even (by today’s standards) moderate storage capacity
(say 64 Mb) could store hundreds of contact details, including public keys, so
sending encrypted email could become much more transparent.

Just some thoughts that occurred while I was reading ‘Java Cryptography’.

Every day that I use Eclipse I am more a believer in it. I’ve never used an IDE as much as I’ve used Eclipse – it just works so great. With more and more plugins coming every day, cool stuff on the way in 2.1, and companies like IBM and Borland steering the project it’s going to dominate for sure. I’m totally with you on this one. Sorry all you IDEA guys… enjoy your favorite while it lasts.

-Russ [Russell Beattie Notebook]

Have to disagree with you here, Russ. It would be a real shame if Eclipse killed IDEA. IDEA is one of those things that just continually brings a smile to your face as you discover new things it can do, and new keyboard shortcuts. I can spend hours in IDEA without ever having to touch the mouse. And you haven’t lived (IDE-wise) until you’ve done some major refactorings that would have taken orders of magnitude more time in any other product (Eclipse included). Eclipse is good, but IDEA is like an extension of my hands.

This

thread at javalobby has to rate as one of the most surreal examples of

name-calling and hair-pulling ever seen in a technical forum.

I fear for the software industry.

Updated: Radio mangled the link originally. I fixed it.