| | Lara and I decided to join the baby bandwagon and are expecting our first child sometime next July. We've done the math and there is at least a 50% chance that it's mine, so I'm pretty jazzed about it. Lara would be bouncing off the walls if she wasn't so nauseous. It might be a little early, but we've got names picked out: "Ian Scott" or "Clarissa Lorraine". Hopefully those aren't taken yet, since virtually everyone we know is pregnant or not trying real hard not to be. | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment   |
| | Security: | | | Subject: | At last | | Time: | 09:07 pm |
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| The electricity finally came back on sometime this morning. A recap of the past several days:
Friday
Dennis loomed in the Caribbean. We were unsure of what we were going to do. The options on the table where going to Houston, Jacksonville, or Crestview, or simply riding out the storm here in the apartment. Lara's family was leaning toward Houston; we wanted to stay at home. The plan was for us to drive down the Gulf Breeze after work, have a quick discussion, and then leave that night or early the next morning. I came home from work early and packed everything up. After a dozen phone calls no decisions were made an no actions were taken, so I made sweet and sour pork and we went to bed. Started reading Needful Things by Steven King.
Saturday
Dennis was taking on Cuba and the computer models were starting to trend westward toward Mississippi, so Crestview or Jacksonville was really starting to appeal to me. Lara's mom called around 6 AM and said that we were all going to Huntsville, which wasn't a bad proposition. I was really concerned about finding a hotel that allowed pets this late in the game, but Lara's mom was pretty optimistic. They met us at the apartment around 9 AM and we took off. The trip was very uneventful until we got to Montgomery. We had stopped off earlier to eat and it was decided that we would start looking for hotels in or around Montgomery so that the drive back would not be that long. We pulled off onto the first exit after Montgomery (Milbrook/Prattville) and hit the Holiday Inn. Lara's mom must not have gotten a good response, because we didn't even try any other hotels on that street; we got back on 65 and drove to the next exit. It started to rain really hard as soon as we got off of 65, and there weren't any hotels in sight, so we pulled into a CVS to look at the phone book. In the process Lara's mom ran into some other refugees who had found some rooms at the Key West Inn. Lara's mom made the call and reserved two of the six rooms left, and we followed the people to the hotel (which, incidentally, was less than a half mile from the Holiday Inn we tried). We got the cats situated, ordered pizza, and dozed while watching the weather channel. Dennis had finished with Cuba and emerged as a category 1 storm.
Sunday
Around 5AM I woke up and saw that Dennis was a 145 MPH cat 4 headed right for the state line. I couldn't sleep much after that. We took a trip to the Wetumpka, AL Walmart to get some non-perishables in case the power went out at the hotel (and something healthier than leftover pizza). We didn't really have a shopping list or an agenda, so we ended up running late and way over budget--we all started "needing" things that we happened to see in the aisles. By the time we got back Dennis was making landfall as a weak cat 3 west of Pensacola, which could not have been better for us. It was moving at about 20 MPH with a really small eye, so it blew through with little ado in about 2 hours. My parents in Crestview never lost power, even though they were on the bad side of the storm.
Monday through Wednesday
We left first thing in the morning and drove straight through. All of the traffic lights were out from 113 through Pensacola. We didn't see any downed trees or powerlines between Ensley and Ferry Pass, but the power was out at our place. Finished Needful Things and started on 1984, which I had not read before. The remainder of the week consisted of reading, could canned soup, and cold showers. I was back at work on Tuesday; we had power but no air conditioning so we were moved to another building (we're still there).
Thursday
Power came on, but I finished 1984 before unpacking the computer. Paid bills, answered E-mail, and here I am.
Needful Things
Novel, and definitely a page-turner, but not exactly profound. The obvious point is that human greed corrupts and that people are ultimately responsible for their own actions, but in this case the people are supernaturally influenced, so the antagonist I think is mostly to blame.
1984
Absolutely chilling. The setting is contrived and presumptuous, but the ideology is solid and very frightening. The ending was perfect. It was not at all what I had hoped for, but it is exactly what I expected. It was horrible, depressing, and alarming--the ultimate defeat and the ultimate warning. Any other ending would not have done the book justice.
Other News
I am spending next week in Macon, GA on a business trip. I leave Sunday and get back Friday evening. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Security: | | | Subject: | JavaONE | | Time: | 05:32 pm |
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| For those of you that didn't know, I spent last week in San Francisco attending the 2005 JavaONE conference held by Sun Microsystems. It was not only my first JavaONE, but it was also my first technical convention, so my disillusionment may be somewhat disproportional. I will try to keep that in mind and frame my observations in a relevant context.
The most pervasive themes were philanthropic, not technical. According to Jonathan Shwartz, the Information Age is giving way to the Participation Age; connected individuals are no longer consumers, but producers of information. Examples cited included open source software, weblogs, wiki, message boards, and other user-driven digital communities. Disconnected individuals are at a double disadvantage: not only is data beyond their reach as consumers, but they are also denied input into the process. This has serious social, political, and economic implications for developing nations.
Sun entreated developers to help eliminate this "digital divide" by helping to make technology more accessible, mostly by making technology more affordable to developing nations. This is accomplished primarily through making software, particularly operating systems and development frameworks, freely available. Shwartz was quick to point out that "free" is more important than "open source," as affordability typically trumps ideology. To this end, Sun is open sourcing much of its Java technologies including Java SE 6 ("Mustang"); an EJB 3.0 and SOA compliant application server ("Glassfish"); and Java Studio Creator 2 (based on Netbeans 4.1).
Equally important to accessibility is the range of devices upon which a product can run. Cellular telephones are typically more affordable than desktops and come with their own built-in network infrastructure. Further, cellular technologies are becoming ubiquitous, and serve other meaningful functions. It is more cost effective (and often more convenient) to execute small applications from portable devices that people in developing countries may already own.
In the spirit of participation, Scott McNealy called on developers to use technology to provide free and open software to help make education and healthcare more accessible through increases in efficiency and subsequent reducation in cost. As additional motivation, he showcased some software developed by Brazil to help automate scheduling and record keeping functions for their national healthcare system, which had reduced consultation wait times from months to days.
As for technology, the biggest buzz was surrounding Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). I gather that the idea is to develop some kind of middleware that can handle the cross-cutting concerns of many disparate web services, such as messaging, management, logging, data sources, business rule management, transactions, and so on. So, for example, two web services could interact transactionally using a shared set of business rules on a single application server, without the web service developer(s) needing to provide any of the plumbing.
On top of that, there were several demonstrations for service discovery and download from portable devices. Using a combination of APIs and descriptors, small applications (web services) could be graphically created by defining interfaces and screens. The deployment process generates the needed plumbing (for a variety of devices). Mobile devices could then connect to the application server to browse and download applications, which I think amounted to front ends for web services running on the application server. One thing that jumped out at me was the obscene amount of configuration needed for deployment. A lot of it was automatically generated, but corner cases look ugly. I imagine that this will go through several revisions and emerge much simpler in 5 years, like EJB.
More subtle, but equally pervasive, was the concept of performance. Sun debuted a Solaris utility named DTrace with the ability to read not only operating system calls but also the Java calls that produced them. Sun claims that performance boosts of 300% are not atypical using the information provided by DTrace. On the pavilion floor, there were at a half-dozen vendors demonstrating profilers or optimized virtual machines. And there were dozens of technical sessions devoted to performance related issues such as thread synchronization, finalization, and I/O.
On the sidelines, Rod Johnson and Juergen Hoeller from Spring had some impressive technical sessions, and the Hibernate 3.0 session lead by Gavin King was one of the top ten (warranting a repeat session). They are both facing diminishing market share as EJB 3.0 comes to fruition, as Struts did when JSF was release. However, I do not see any compelling reason to move to EJB 3.0 if you are already using Spring and/or Hibernate. First, EJB 3.0 offers only of a subset of the functionality of each. Secondly, EJB 3.0 requires an EJB 3.0 application server, whereas Spring and Hibernate can operate in just about any environment. Thirdly, the power of Spring and Hibernate lies in Inversion of Control (IOC) and Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) backed by XML configuration. They you can take the same code and deploy it in different environments with different configurations for testing, training, production, etc. Annotations are very tempting because they are much simpler, but because they are in the code they cannot be easily changed to suit different environments. EJB 3.0 allows descriptors rather than annotations, but that greatly reduces the appeal of EJB 3.0. Lastly, there will likely be significant changes to the EJB specification as SOA becomes a reality. That being said, there are other compelling aspects to J2EE that may necessitate the use of EJBs (JMX, JMS, etc.). I must admit, however, that I am pretty ignorant about J2EE development given my current limitations.
Most of the sessions were appropriately titled and had solid, relevant information, but that wasn't always the case. Many sessions had deceptively generic titles ("Speculative Locking: Breaking the Scale Barrier") and dealt exclusively with a vendor's product, containing such enlightening gems as "speculative locking can only be done in hardware" (Azul Systems has a hardware platform and custom JVM that performs speculative locking).
The booths in the pavilion were often as disappointing as the sessions. The award for the most useless and over-hyped product goes to xfy by Justsystems. The presentation consisted of about 10 seconds of screenshots and 4 minutes and 50 seconds of really bad jokes. It was upbeat and energetic but totally devoid of content. What I gathered is that xfy is some kind of XML editor with an XSLT client-side browser that is somehow revolutionary. It can--get this--combine multiple XML documents. The screenshots were pretty, but if I have to deploy a client side browser then count me out. And what exactly does this have to do with Java?
There were a lot of really good products, though. Veritas had a really nice end-to-end profiler that runs on all tiers and correlates data across multiple machines. Icesoft had a JSF renderkit that rendered the view as a server-side DOM tree with a 1-to-1 correspondence to the client side DOM and used HTTPXmlRequest to update only the pieces of the view that changed. It was lightweight enough to poll the server for changes every few hundred milliseconds, effectively allowing data to be "pushed" to the client. Very cool.
What amazed me the most, however, was not the technology in the conference, it was the logistics. There were something like 15000 attendees, and they managed to hold a session every 75 minutes (60 minute session with 15 minute walk time). The lines for each session often started 30 minutes before the session and had hundreds of people. I don't know if the people in the halls worked for Sun or Moscone, but they did an amazing job of herding us around in spite of our impatience and tempers. I want to thank them for putting up with us for 4 crazy days.
That's all for now. I'm going to collect some more thoughts about the convention and San Francisco in general and post later. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| I'm a little cheesed by the recent Supreme Court ruling. There is now a precedent for eminent domain that permits a government to give an individual's private property to another private individual when the property can be used for "greater public benefit." In other words, houses can be torn down to build hotels; small storefronts can condemned to make room for sprawling downtown shopping centers. Ostensibly, this is to promote economic development through increased tax revenues and an increased number of jobs. In reality, it is a convenient and inexpensive way for powerful corporate interests to acquire prime real estate.
Could you imagine having a family owned business for several generations in a prime location, and then being forced to sell so that a multinational bank could open another branch? Would the compensation be enough to purchase another storefront, move your inventory, reprint all of your marketing material, repurchase advertisements, and contact your entire customer base? What if your customer base consisted entirely of passers-by? Could your business survive?
Is the compensation enough for a family that has lived in their home for almost a century to purchase a home in a similar neighborhood? Is the cost of replacement for an old home enough to purchase a new one?
We are not talking about national parks or wildlife sanctuaries. This is not a public school or a public healthcare clinic. This is private industry abusing government power to make money. Some investor is going to build an office building and pay $1 per month for 99 years to some development commission while charging his tenants thousands of dollars per month.
Eminent domain is useful only for legitimate, non-profit, government-sponsored projects like national parks, reservations, schools, roads, etc. Private, for-profit interests should have to deal with market forces like the rest of us. If they want the land, then they can pay for it. If a "recalcitrant" property owner doesn't want to sell, then fine. There are some things you can't put a price tag on. If the city wants to lure industry, provide grants or other incentives to help cover the costs. But don't take people's homes. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=152187&cid=12770441
Not really pleased with Apple's decision. I understand that it was probably the only real option they had, but I'm a big fan of RISC processors. Intel has done really well with the mess they've made for themselves, but I think that the future is not the x86, and I was hoping that Apple would drive chipmakers to innovate. I realize that Intel was going that way with the Itanium, but a more consumer-friendly (read: cheap) processor is needed to get people to make the move.
I don't imagine that the quality of Apple's products will suffer as a result of this, but I can't shake the nightmare of some off-the-shelf biege box running OS X (poorly). After using a Mac for over 3 years I feel very uneasy when I'm at a generic Wintel box... like I expect the thing to blow up any minute.
Apple's gone cheap... let's just hope they don't go lazy, too. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| There have been several reports about controversial a blog entry by Professor Timothy Shortell. The gist is that religion has a corrupting influence on humanity, and that it is at least partially responsible for many of the regrettable aspects of human nature. Here is an excerpt:
On a personal level, religiosity is merely annoying—like bad taste. This immaturity represents a significant social problem, however, because religious adherents fail to recognize their limitations. So, in the name of their faith, these moral retards are running around pointing fingers and doing real harm to others. One only has to read the newspaper to see the results of their handiwork. They discriminate, exclude and belittle. They make a virtue of closed-mindedness and virulent ignorance. They are an ugly, violent lot.
A casual glance at a newspaper would seem to indicate that he is right. The news is crawling with stories about Islamic militants, anti-abortion and anti-gay demonstrators, and other hate-inspired crimes. (As an aside, I deplore the term "hate" crime. A crime is a crime, regardless of the motivation, and should be treated as such, lest we perpetuate social divisions and stereotypes).
I am sure that Professor Shortell would agree with the assertion that not all crimes are inspired by religious ideals. In fact, I doubt seriously that he would claim that the majority of crimes have any religious element at all. Anyone can commit an injustice for any reason, or for no reason at all. Sadly, the latter occurs much too frequently.
We see what we want to see. Based on his use of strong, emotive words, I get the impression that Professor Shortell has an agenda. I believe that for whatever reason, he is dissatisfied with the objectives and/or practices of some religious group (which is understandable given the current political climate with respect to judicial appointments, stem cell research, and the war in Iraq). However, I think that it is unfair to hold 5 billion people accountable for the postures of several newsworthy individuals.
What is even worse is that many of the objectionable actions taken by religious individuals are not sanctioned by the religion that those individuals champion. Blowing up an abortion clinic does not glorify God. Nor does beating a gay man or disenfranchising a woman. A predilection toward violence is not a gift; it does not serve a purpose.
A person who is inclined to perform antisocial activity can and will justify their behavior somehow. Religion is an easy target because it lends itself to interpretation and it typically has a means for redemption. Lacking religion, the next scapegoat is upbringing, and finally genetics, which is as much misunderstood and abused as religion.
Bad people do bad things. Humans are inherently selfish and self-serving. Religion acknowledges this and accepts responsibiliity for it. Religion codifies acceptable behavior, tolerates mistakes, and encourages forgiveness. It does not teach people to kill, maim, or otherwise harm other individuals for some higher cause. Those are the human characteristics that religious people are tought to suppress.
Adherents are not universally narrow-minded or ignorant, although there are certainly some who should use better judgement. They are a mixed bag of individuals seeking fellowship and understanding. They are human and as such are prone to mistakes apart from their conviction.
I would urge those who preach against racism, sexism, homophobia, and other socially divisive thought patterns to be careful when attributing responsibility for social ills to a particular demographic. That's just not how it is. There are bad apples in every bunch, and it takes a truly open-minded person to see that. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I am very pleased to discover that I did not lose all of my previous entries, as I suspected. What happened is that the entry "Pillow Talk" somehow got replicated about 30 times. My previous layout only showed one entry per page, so it wasn't immediately obvious that I was actually looking at different copies of the same entry (I thought I hit the beginning, and some glitch made the "previous" button keep showing up). Switching layouts revealed the problem, and I deleted the offending entries, so we're back in action.
And speaking of which...I would really like to bite Dave's style and use the Component layout, which very much rocks, but it doesn't appear in my drop-down list. Anyone know the secret? | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I have recently had several major breakthroughs in the area of home computing that have inspired me to update my LiveJournal:
- The increase of DSL speed to 1.54 Mbps
- The arrival of my new iMac
- Max OS X 10.4 (Tiger)
DSL Ultra
My mild-mannered DSL lite service has been endowed with super powers and can now reach the improbable speed of 1.54 Mbps. And if that weren't enough, the menacing moniker "DSL Ultra" is sure to strike fear into the hearts of lesser broadband services. I am now able to load several dozen web comics, in tabs, all at once, with no timeouts.
iMac G5
Oh. My. Goodness. I'm going to have to sub-categorize this one:
- Hardware. Absolutely gorgeous. It weights about 25 pounds, but it is very agile. There is no resistence at all when you tilt or turn it, but it stays where you put it. The mouse and keyboard are kind of cheapy, though. They look good, but there's just not much to them, and it looks like they are going to get very dirty very quickly.
- Display. Just like the iBook except a lot bigger. I'm a little disappointed, though, because I have two "stuck" pixels. One is right in the middle of the screen and is stuck on dark red; the other is in the upper right and is stuck on bright cyan. They aren't noticeable unless you look for them, but it's a major downer knowing that they're there anyway.
- Speed. This computer is at least one quadrillion times faster than the G3 iBook I had. I can now, for example, run a Java Swing application. I haven't tried to watch a DIVX movie on it yet, but I am optimistic that a large percentage of the frames will be rendered in an acceptable amount of time.
Mac OS X
Whoosh. Okay, more sub-categories:
- Dashboard. This was the first thing I fooled with because I am forever in need of a calculator. Invariably I spend more time looking for the calculator than I do using it, and when I saw that Dashboard comes with a Calculator widget I about peed myself with joy. Dashboard is awesome. The most awesome part of it are the visual effects: when you drag a new widget onto the Dashboard it drops in and there is a pretty little ripple effect. Very cool. Also, most widgets have a little button labeled i that opens up a configuration screen. Clicking on the i makes the widget flip so that you can see the "back" of it, where all the options are. When done, it flips back around. Very nice touch. In addition to the calculator there are widgets for the calendar, the weather, iTunes, and the Address Book, all of which I expect to use frequently.
- Spotlight. I haven't spent much time with Spotlight because frankly, there is nothing on this computer right now worth searching for. I did a few test searches and it is very fast, as advertised.
- Mail. The Mail application is much prettier, but nothing really jumped out at me.
- Safari. I just got around to really messing with Safari this morning and I'm pretty impressed. It's faster than before, which is probably mostly due to the new hardware, but I would like to think that they optimized the rendering engine with the new CoreImage stuff. The coolest thing is the RSS feed functionality. I've been looking for a way to pare down certain websites (like Fark) to remove all the crap on the sidebars. I now browse Fark and Slashdot in RSS mode, which gives me just the articles and none of the other crap.
- Java 5. I downloaded it, but I haven't played with it yet. Very much looking forward to generics.
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