Wednesday April 09, 2003

Roller is ready to Hibernate

Some time ago I laid the foundation for Roller to have a pluggable persistence layer. Dave has followed up by implementing a Hibernate layer. Perhaps this will inspire me to finish the Prevayler work I had started (mostly as an opportunity to play with the technology). But then, as Dave says, "it is no fun maintaining two implementations of the very same thing"; do I want to make it three?!
( Apr 09 2003, 08:36:28 AM ) Roller Permalink Comments [1]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/roller_is_ready_to_hibernate

Monday April 07, 2003

What SuperHero Are You?

Everybody else posts these What The Hell Are You? quizes, so here's one a pal sent me: What SuperHero are You?
( Apr 07 2003, 03:39:30 PM ) Entertainment Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/what_superhero_are_you

For further reading on today's posts:

Erik's Weblog : zAIM : [@128] Jupiter Free Webinar: “ Usability: Optimizing Web Site ROI ” on April 10, 2003. Scott — Feedster: A "7th Wonder" — How About That? TiVo Desktop 1.0 streams photos, music to your Mac. Screenable Menu Bar 1.0 , a set of Java classes to make menu bars conform to the Mac OS requirements and other platforms. Blueprints and Adventure Builder Java Live Chat . Inderjeet Singh, Sean Brydon, and Vijay Ramachandran will be live on April 8, at 11am...

Saturday April 05, 2003

Cease and Desist

I received a letter today from Network Associates, instructing me to stop using the term "Sniffer" on Brainopolis. NA on their site claims their Sniffer is a set of "network monitoring and analysis products".

As you likely don't know, "Sniffer" is the name I gave my Java browser detector library. There are actually many registrations for products named "Sniffer", you can do your own search at MyCorporation, look for Serial Number 73803458. As I cannot afford a lawyer I guess I'll have to go looking for a new name for my little project. How about BrowBoy (BrowserBoy)? Or given some of the name variations I saw can I use jSniff?

The funny thing is that when I started this project a couple years ago I did a websearch to see if anyone else was using the term Sniffer, and I didn't find anything but pages about packet sniffing. Robert Graham makes this comment on his page about packet sniffing:

The word "sniffer" is a registered trademark by Network Associates referring to the "Sniffer(r) Network Analyzer". However, the term "snif" is used in many other products (some of which are listed in this document) and the term "sniffer" is more popular in everyday usage than alternatives like "protocol analyzer" or "network analyzer" (as far as my search on AltaVista reveals). I'm not sure what this means in trademark law, where brandnames like "aspirin", "escalator", and "cellophane" lose their distinctiveness over time.

( Apr 05 2003, 12:15:38 PM ) Technology Permalink Comments [4] [Link]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/cease_and_desist

Wednesday April 02, 2003

"You've been quiet lately"

I'm not the kind to speak up on every little thing, it has to really catch my attention and fire my imagination. I haven't seen anything like that lately, at least not that hasn't been adequately discussed elsewhere...
( Apr 02 2003, 02:02:57 PM ) Personal Permalink
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/you_ve_been_quiet_lately

Wednesday March 26, 2003

Perl 6 I must be behind the times, but I read an article in the April 2003 issue of Linux Magazine (on newstands now) about Perl 6. Cool! I haven't looked at Perl for about 5 years, but I really like what they've got planned.

I particularly like how given-when behaves, and the fact that "given" and "when" can be used independantly of each other: they're really seperate tools that fit together to produce a switch-case model. A lot of the other stuff planned should really minimize the inherant obfuscatability of Perl (the new Object definitions make *much* more sense!). Finally, I'd love for Java to have the new junctions coming in Perl 6 (nice shortcut expressions).

The only downside is that Perl 6 is years away (cannot find the exact statement now). :-(
( Mar 26 2003, 09:26:23 AM ) Technology Permalink Comments [2]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/perl_6

Friday March 21, 2003

Using Custom Taskdefs Buried in the Ant Manual:

Adding your task to the system is rather simple too:

   1. Make sure the class that implements your task is in the classpath 
      when starting Ant.
   2. Add a <taskdef> element to your project. This actually adds 
      your task to the system.
   3. Use your task in the rest of the buildfile.

Example

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<project name="OwnTaskExample" default="main" basedir=".">
  <taskdef name="mytask" classname="com.mydomain.MyVeryOwnTask"/>

  <target name="main">
    <mytask message="Hello World! MyVeryOwnTask works!"/>
  </target>
</project>

Example 2
To use a task directly from the buildfile which created it, place the 
<taskdef> declaration inside a target after the compilation. Use the 
classpath attribute of <taskdef> to point to where the code has just 
been compiled.

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<project name="OwnTaskExample2" default="main" basedir=".">

  <target name="build" >
    <mkdir dir="build"/>
    <javac srcdir="source" destdir="build"/>
  </target>

  <target name="declare" depends="build">
    <taskdef name="mytask"
        classname="com.mydomain.MyVeryOwnTask"
        classpath="build"/>
  </target>

  <target name="main" depends="declare">
    <mytask message="Hello World! MyVeryOwnTask works!"/>
  </target>
</project>

Thursday March 20, 2003

Why Am I Getting All This Spam?

A great research piece from the Center for Democracy & Technology.

It should come as no surprise to most e-mail users that many of the addresses CDT created for this study attracted spam (nearly 9,000 spam messages in all), but it is interesting to see the different ways that the addresses attracted spam depending on where the e-mail addresses were placed.

This leads me to believe it would be worth the effort to put even a simple email obfuscator on Roller's Comments feature.
( Mar 20 2003, 09:19:45 AM ) Technology Permalink Comments [3]
Trackback: http://www.brainopolis.com/roller/trackback/lance/Weblog/why_am_i_getting_all

Friday March 07, 2003

Page-by-Page Iterators Considered Nuclear Waste

Okay, so I exaggerate, but Crazy Bob has been having trouble. Fortunately he solved his dilemma:

Actually, it turns out that Castor has poorly documented support for limiting queries in Postgres and MySQL. After a little poking around, I found that extending the Oracle query SQL generator to parse the limit clause and add wrap the query in rownum modifiers is a trivial task.

I'm just hoping he contributes the Oracle LIMITS code back to Castor. Thanks Bob!
( Mar 07 2003, 12:53:46 PM ) Technology Permalink
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