Great email from Dr Heinz Kabutz on his mail list today. Which is faster:
i++
i–
i+=1
i-=-1
Now, while the answer might not be a huge shock to the cynical Java people out there, Heinz’s way of ‘benchmarking’ the answer is a great lesson in lateral thinking. Wonderful email.
My review on the OReilly JMX book has been published on Builder.com.
It’s a bit odd. The edited review has the word ‘disappointing’ in three times, when my actual review didn’t include the word once. I guess that when I read through my review again [was written back in November or so, there’s been a queue] I wasn’t stunned, but it’s a surprise to see words that are stronger than my intent appearing 
Probably cultural.
Thought I’d just announce that I’ve released simple-jndi version 0.3.
It adds the ability to use a classpath based filesystem for the .properties files and the ability to specify your own jndi-name delimiter. It ought to be backwards compatible with version 0.2.
It’s a fun project that I’m enjoying working upon.
This looks like an interesting book on the expert system JESS.
Slashdot have linked to an article on the new Zaurus. What’s the big deal?
1.5Gig of drive! Usable Keyboard! 32 Megs of memory [wtf??]
It’s no different from my 2 or 3 year old netBook. Especially with the rumours that Psion are waking up and there will be a Java 2 implementation for the netBook soon [already?]. Plus they released the update to the OS, giving it the best wireless connectivity I’ve found yet [Powerbook, Dell laptop, Zaurus being the competition].
Not really a new story. Went through the pain of trying to hook apache and tomcat together and allow BASIC or FORM authentication to work through the apache. Both fail under mod_webapp.
A pain as the main customer for the code [my wife] is firewalled.
After spending a while reviewing the states of all the projects, looks like I’ll wait for Tomcat 5 to be released, install Apache 2 and hook them via mod_jk2. Of course, I’ll need a Tomcat 5 dev server sooner than that, so maybe I should prepare the Apache 2 migration a bit ahead of time.
That title will probably confuse my colleagues at work, as we’re in the early stages of a large blob of workload.
I’m referring to outside of work. I’ve spent the last 3 weeks or so reading draft reviews for 3 different books [6 months of waiting and then they all come along at once]. 2 reviews are submitted and the other one is mostly done I think and has gone quiet.
Reviewing drafts is much like being in an open source community [now that I’ve calmed down from being a wanker at people yesterday]. There’s this overall picture that everyone is trying to see, and you find a few points that you want to scratch and try to convince the community [in this case the author and editor] that your itch is worth scratching. You know however that at least 50% of your itches will not get scratched upon publication, due mainly to it being a personal itch. So you’re playing the percentages game, hoping that you can get away with a high enough set of percentages to be happy that your name is hidden somewhere on a page in the book.
Anyway, now that that is over with, I can start to focus on fresh new starts, making things happen in small ways and creating. Tasks coming up to be involved in:
* Release Lang 2.0
* Release String Taglib 1.1 [or 2.0]
* Move DbUtils over to db.apache.org and help it grow. It’s got a niche I think.
* Release IO 1.0 [yeah right.. sloth-like project, but fine code]
* Work more on Simple-JNDI. I’ve a lot of ideas and it seems fun.
* Work more on XmlWriter. The ideas are there, I just feel imprisoned by SourceForge.
* Continue on some simple projects I’m dawdling on with Steve.
* Maybe work on my latest idea, the Unstandard Tag Library, USTL. Basically a place to collate all the things that people would like to have in the JSTL/Jakarta-Standard.
Andy Oliver has tried to define Community.
He fails utterly. The answer is in the thing I assume everyone’s mothers used to tell them repeatedly [or was it only mine??]
* Community is treating others as you’d expect to be treated.
I believe this. It sometimes surprises me when I talk to an online friend of the last few years and discover something about them I didn’t know due to my habit of assuming the people I talk to are the same as I, but it is the heart to how to be a good member of a community.
I wish the Andys, Jasons, Nicolas and others of this world could see this. Andy seems to think that Community is some kind of peace-agreement between enemies. He thinks that Community selects you, which is utterly wrong. Community accepts you, but you have to seek it first. Community never sucks an individual into it without that individual being prepared to make the first steps.
It’s taken a while, but I now understand what the httpd and other ASF people find so horrifying about Jakarta. It is not a community, it is a bazaar with traders hawking their wares in competition and spitting in each others faces.
—
In the past Andy has stated excuses for why he is such an antagonising sod online. He claims that ‘irl’ [in real] people who meet him do not think he is, and it’s only online that he comes accross that way. He’s wrong. As an individual Andy is a fine character, and someone I enjoy talking with via email. The problem is that as a community member Andy doesn’t get it. I suspect the same would happen to any ‘irl’ communities he is a member of.
He is not alone. I suspect many other members of Jakarta fit the same description. Good individuals, useless community members. I’m even being turned that way, 20 months and the useless and vociferous community members are frustrating me enough to openly insult people.
But that’s the Jakarta-Way.
A while back the Apache [ie Httpd] people pushed hard for Jakarta people to stop being so divided and a) join together, and b) join the Apache community.
What a mistake.
I seriously think that some of these people would strangle each other if left in the same room. That’s not a community, it’s a prison in which the cell-doors are jammed open.
Nothing constructive seems to come out of the community@apache list, and not enough of construct comes out of the general@jakarta list. All you see is the same people bitching back and forth, fighting their continual little wars and all protecting their own little fiefdoms.
So I’m off to my tiny fiefdom where I can sit and argue with a handful of reasonable users [and Glenn and David ], and I’m off to one of the few projects [I think] at Jakarta which in my view has been community developed. Probably because it is in fact, technically very easy, but couldn’t go anywhere if it didn’t get agreement.
Someone has finally given an official wording on whether Apache projects can go near LGPL code.
It’s the very sane decision that until a clear decision is made, LGPL code is not to be served from the Apache repositories, which basically means no Apache project can import a piece of LGPL code.
I cheer the decision whole-heartedly. LGPL for Java is no different than GPL at the moment. Comments from Stallman seem to suggest that the FSF are not entirely chuffed with the LGPL, so I doubt we’ll see modifications to the LGPL to make it usable with Java.
So I for one will be considering any LGPL’d Java project to actually be a GPL’d project.
In other news, my 6-a-side football team won our game 4-3, including 4 goals being scored in the last 4 minutes.
