Sunday, November 28, 2004

Python & Java: Side by Side Comparison

Python & Java: Side by Side Comparison: "Python & Java: a Side-by-Side Comparison
Updated: 2004-02-07
A programmer can be significantly more productive in Python than in Java. How much more productive? The most widely accepted estimate is 5-10 times."

Having read it briefly I'd have to say it appears to have more in common with PHP. An old comparison between Python and PHP can be found here: here

ONJava.com: Job Scheduling in Java

ONJava.com: Job Scheduling in Java: "

Job Scheduling in Java
by Dejan Bosanac
03/10/2004

On some projects, you find you need to execute certain jobs and tasks at an exactly specified time or at regular time intervals. In this article we will see how Java developers can implement such a requirement using the standard Java Timer API, and then we will focus on Quartz, an open source library for those who need some extra features in their scheduling system."

TheServerSide.com - Performance Tips for the Data Tier (JDBC) - Using Database MetaData methods appropriately

TheServerSide.com - Performance Tips for the Data Tier (JDBC) - Using Database MetaData methods appropriately: "Introduction

Developing performance-oriented JDBC applications is not easy. JDBC drivers do not throw exceptions to tell you when your code is running too slow.

by John Goodson April 2004"

Thursday, November 25, 2004

Title: RMI Internals

Title: RMI Internals: "Java RMI Internals

By Ahamed Aslam.K (aslam128@yahoo.com)

This article tries to answer the questions about RMI Internals such as

1. Who actually creates an object of stubs? Server, registry or client?
2. Which port the server is listening to?
3. Does the server listens to port 1099 (default port of RMI Registry)?
4. How will the client know to which port the server is listening?
5. Is a registry necessary for running the RMI system?
6. Can we use RMI without rmiregistry?"

Enable backwards navigation through Web applications

Enable backwards navigation through Web applications: "Enable backwards navigation through Web applications

Level: Intermediate

Maurizio Albari (maurizio_albari@it.ibm.com)
Application development IT architect, IBM Italy
16 Nov 2004"

Java theory and practice: More flexible, scalable locking in JDK 5.0

Java theory and practice: More flexible, scalable locking in JDK 5.0: "Java theory and practice: More flexible, scalable locking in JDK 5.0
New lock classes improve on synchronized -- but don't count synchronized out just yet

Level: Intermediate

Brian Goetz (brian@quiotix.com)
Principal Consultant, Quiotix
26 Oct 2004"

Java synchronization and the new Concurrent classes.

Eyetrack III - What You Most Need to Know

Eyetrack III - What You Most Need to Know: "The Best of Eyetrack III:
What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes
By Steve Outing and Laura Ruel
Eyetrack III project managers"

How people see when viewing web pages - a study tracking eyeball movements

Developers finger Google's text service | The Register

Developers finger Google's text service | The Register: "Developers finger Google's text service
By Andrew Orlowski
Published Tuesday 12th October 2004 23:33 GMT

Analysis When The New York Times leaked Google's intentions to create a branded mobile phone handset earlier this year, executives were furious, and heads rolled. Incredibly, the outrage wasn't synthetic. Only in a backwater like California - where the entrepreneurial, technological and social awareness of mobile phones lags slightly behind Cambodia and Albania - could such a caper be viewed as either original or posing some commercial merit.

(Nike is just one of several companies that had toyed with, and rejected, the idea of a branded phone. The reasons are obvious: in most of the world, users see phones as a fashion items, and change them frequently - often more than once a year. So this year's cool brand can quickly become next year's mullet.)" Article goes on to discuss Mobile Applications using Google.

ONJava.com: Compiling an AspectJ Project Using Eclipse

ONJava.com: Compiling an AspectJ Project Using Eclipse: "
Print. Print
Email. Email article link
Trackbacks. Trackbacks
Blog this. Blog this
O'Reilly Book Excerpts: AspectJ Cookbook
Compiling an AspectJ Project Using Eclipse
by Russell Miles, author of AspectJ Cookbook

Related Reading
AspectJ Cookbook

AspectJ Cookbook
By Russell Miles

Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a compelling new way to write code, but have your tools caught up? It's no longer enough to just look at a method's code when you may have advice that gets inserted before or after it."

ONJava.com: Session Replication in Tomcat 5 Clusters, Part 1

ONJava.com: Session Replication in Tomcat 5 Clusters, Part 1: "Session Replication in Tomcat 5 Clusters, Part 1
by Srini Penchikala
11/24/2004

The Tomcat 5 server provides built-in support for clustering and session replication. This first article in this series will provide an overview of session persistence and the inner works of session replication in Tomcat clusters. I will discuss how the session replication process works in Tomcat 5 and the replication mechanisms available for session persistence across the cluster nodes. In part two, I will discuss the details of a sample Tomcat cluster setup with session replication enabled, and compare different replication scenarios."

WindowsDevCenter.com: Defragmenting Your Pagefile

WindowsDevCenter.com: Defragmenting Your Pagefile: "Defragmenting Your Pagefile
by Mitch Tulloch, author of Windows Server Hacks
11/23/2004

Defragmenting your hard drive regularly is an important part of general system maintenance for Windows XP machines, and the Disk Defragmenter tool in Computer Management lets you do this easily."

ONJava.com: Juggle Your Java with JDistro

ONJava.com: Juggle Your Java with JDistro: "Juggle Your Java with JDistro
by Howard Wen
11/24/2004

Appropriately enough, running multiple Java applications at once can be akin to drinking too much coffee in one sitting: You get erratic results and ultimately crash hard. But having more than one Java program running can be helpful for development."

Friday, November 19, 2004

ONLamp.com: Open Source Licenses Are Not All the Same

ONLamp.com: Open Source Licenses Are Not All the Same: "Open Source Licenses Are Not All the Same
by Stephen Fishman
11/18/2004"

I REALLY should make the effort to understand the differences between the different licences.

Free Tools To Get You Started in UML Design

Free Tools To Get You Started in UML Design: "Free Tools To Get You Started in UML Design
A quick guide to some great freeware on the Web that gets you rolling with UML, MDA, and other program-design technologiesespecially important as your Web services projects grow more ambitious. "

UML for Software Developers Part 1: Building Classes

UML for Software Developers Part 1: Building Classes

"UML for Software Developers Part 1: Building Classes
Whatever language you code in, however you feel about documentation, and whichever process you ascribe to—you will need to model. Whether those models are in a formal charter, reference document, part of a diagram, or on the back of a napkin, you as a software developer will end up using models or modeling yourself.

by Mark Goetsch, November 18, 2004"

Thursday, November 18, 2004

SecurityFocus HOME Infocus: Detection of SQL Injection and Cross-site Scripti

SecurityFocus HOME Infocus: Detection of SQL Injection and Cross-site Scripti: "
Detection of SQL Injection and Cross-site Scripting Attacks
by K. K. Mookhey and Nilesh Burghate
last updated March 17, 2004 "

I think that I should read this article at least once a month, until it becomes second nature.

Google Scholar

Google Scholar: "About Google Scholar

Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.

Just as with Google Web Search, Google Scholar orders your search results by how relevant they are to your query, so the most useful references should appear at the top of the page. This relevance ranking takes into account the full text of each article as well as the article's author, the publication in which the article appeared and how often it has been cited in scholarly literature. Google Scholar also automatically analyzes and extracts citations and presents them as separate results, even if the documents they refer to are not online. This means your search results may include citations of older works and seminal articles that appear only in books or other offline publications.

Please let us know if you have suggestions, questions or comments about Google Scholar. We recognize the debt we owe to all those in academia whose work has made Google itself a reality and we hope to make Google Scholar as useful to this community as possible. We believe everyone should have a chance to stand on the shoulders of giants."

Dell Ships UltraSharp 2005FPW LCD Monitor - Digital Imaging News - Designtechnica News

Dell Ships UltraSharp 2005FPW LCD Monitor - Digital Imaging News - Designtechnica News: "Dell Ships UltraSharp 2005FPW LCD Monitor
Tuesday, November 02 @ 08:44:15 PST

Dell is shipping their new UltraSharp 2005FPW wide-screen LCD monitor, priced at $799.
"

A big widescreen monitor - it pivots too!

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Sphinx-4 - A speech recognizer written entirely in the Java(TM) programming language

Sphinx-4 - A speech recognizer written entirely in the Java(TM) programming language: "Sphinx-4
A speech recognizer written entirely in the JavaTM programming language"


First seen here: http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Interviews/ritter_qa.html

No-cost System Lockdown, Part 2: Open Source IDS in Use

No-cost System Lockdown, Part 2: Open Source IDS in Use: "No-cost System Lockdown, Part 2: Open Source IDS in Use
Part 1 gave you a rundown of the most popular open source IDS solutions. Now learn how to protect your servers by employing common, practical uses for these solutions.

by Alexander Prohorenko, November 15, 2004"

Open Source Intrusion Detection: No-cost System Lockdown

Open Source Intrusion Detection: No-cost System Lockdown

"Open Source Intrusion Detection: No-cost System Lockdown
Have you found commercial intrusion detection systems (IDS) to be overkill or just too expensive? Open source IDS projects offer a use-only-what-you-need alternative—and of course, they're free. Get a rundown of the most popular non-commercial IDS solutions.

by Alexander Prohorenko, November 9, 2004"

Time-wasters

Time-wasters:

Network Computing | Operation Codename Generator: "Operation Codename generator:

You've heard all those great military code names for various missions, names like Enduring Freedom, Operation Desert Storm, Golden Pheasant. Well now you can use our interactive Codename Generator for your own IT operations. Don't settle for boring names like 'Verity Upgrade.' Try 'Infinite Justice' on for size and impress your coworkers with a name more fitting to your herculean task."


Other time-wasters:

Which File Extension are You? - Description of me (Apparently): You are .inf You are informative. When you are gone you make life very difficult for others.

Which OS are You? - Ah well - can't win 'em all - my OS description is: You are Apple Dos. Simple and primitive with a good understanding of the common man. You're still a work in progress, but a good start.

There endeth the time wasters.

Watching the Web Apps | No More Finger Pointing | November 18, 2004 | Network Computing

Watching the Web Apps | No More Finger Pointing | November 18, 2004 | Network Computing: "Watching the Web Apps
No More Finger Pointing

It's critical to identify points of failure in your Web applications. Smart monitoring across multiple tiers can help pin down problems and abolish the blame game. Learn what to expect from these expensive suites and how to calculate your real costs.

Nov 18, 2004 | By Bruce Boardman
"

Web Application Performance Monitors | Getting Smarter | November 18, 2004 | Network Computing

Web Application Performance Monitors | Getting Smarter | November 18, 2004 | Network Computing: "Web Application Performance Monitors
Getting Smarter

We tested six Web application performance monitors to see how well they gather data about Web-facing applications and devices in a large network as well as how clearly they present that information. Find out which product won our Editor's Choice, primarily on the strength of its intuitive interface.

Nov 18, 2004 | By Bruce Boardman"

ONJava.com: Got Project Automation?

ONJava.com: Got Project Automation?: "Got Project Automation?
by Mike Clark
11/10/2004

Editor's Note: In his new book, Pragmatic Project Automation, Mike Clark gives you soup-to-nuts recipes for automating your software project: creating one-step builds with Ant, scheduling continuous builds with CruiseControl, generating software releases at the push of a button, installing and deploying applications with ease, and monitoring builds and running programs via email, RSS, your cell phone, and, yes, even lava lamps. The recipes include working examples that make it easy for beginners to follow along, while more advanced topics teach the old hands something new. In this article, he presents an overview of the benefits that automating your project can bring.

You're on the hook to deliver a software release for a critical demo tomorrow morning. The suits in sales are frothing at the mouth to show off your company's new whiz-bang application to some very important people with deep pockets. Just as you're finding your rhythm behind the keyboard, your boss stops by to remind you that this demo could make or break the project. No pressure!
One-Step Build and Test

It's almost noon before you type in the last line of code for those 'must-have' demo features. Your favorite IDE says that your code compiles and passes its unit tests. But will your code work as expected when it's integrated with the rest of the system? To find out, you update your local workspace to get in sync with the files currently in the version control system. Then you run the project's one-step build process:"

ONJava.com: Memory Contention in J2EE Applications for Multiprocessor Platforms

ONJava.com: Memory Contention in J2EE Applications for Multiprocessor Platforms: "Memory Contention in J2EE Applications for Multiprocessor Platforms
by Ramchandar Krishnamurthy, Deepak Goel
11/10/2004

With the need for highly scalable J2EE applications in the enterprise environment, parallel processing of threads is required on multi-processor platforms. The memory requirements in the JVM heap for the processing of these threads and concurrent processing have caused to create performance and scalability bottlenecks in the deployment of these J2EE applications. This article explores the issue of synchronization of threads while accessing the memory within the JVM heap on a multi-processor platform for a J2EE application."


Something I REALLY need to read.

ONJava.com: Extending Struts

ONJava.com: Extending Struts: "Extending Struts
by Sunil Patil
11/10/2004
Introduction

I have seen lot of projects where the developers implemented a proprietary MVC framework, not because they wanted to do something fundamentally different from Struts, but because they were not aware of how to extend Struts. You can get total control by developing your own MVC framework, but it also means you have to commit a lot of resources to it, something that may not be possible in projects with tight schedules."

Excellent Discussion on Extending Struts - before you throw it away and decide to use the Spring MVC :)

Home of the Underdogs - Welcome

Home of the Underdogs - Welcome: "
Games on this page are those that we believe are the creme de la creme, the Top Dogs of Top Dogs, games that truly transcend the normal boundaries of their genres, and turn non-believers into helpless addicts. In short, your gaming experience won't be complete if you have never tried these games."

Some may not actually be any good - but at least there is some information about a lot of old games at this site.

Uncollapsing Margins (Complex Spiral Consulting)

Uncollapsing Margins (Complex Spiral Consulting): "Uncollapsing Margins

Like many basic concepts, margin collapsing can lead to unexpected and sometimes counterintuitive results. Before we explore those results and how to work around them, however, let's take a look at the most basic form of margin collapsing."

Nice to see a new article at complexspiral

S5: A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System

S5: A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System: "S5: A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System"

Awesome - who needs powerpoint - an XHTML slideshow.

Mr CSS himself "Da-Man" Meyer - Gone Done it again. Gotta-luv-it.



Sunday, November 07, 2004

Neowin.net - Where unprofessional journalism looks better - Mozilla Releases Firefox 1.0 RC2

Neowin.net - Where unprofessional journalism looks better - Mozilla Releases Firefox 1.0 RC2: "You can make it display pages instead:

in address bar, type:

about:config

find the setting called 'browser.xul.error_pages.enabled' and set it to true."


Good little tip about dthe display of error pages in Firefox.