Jul 19, 2006
Starting with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, Novell delivers Apache Geronimo as J2EE Application Server. JBoss got dropped from the distribution, but Novell committed themselves to continue support for JBoss.
Allegedly, license issues caused Novell to switch application servers, but I don’t get that argument since JBoss as well as its companion products are LGPL licensed. I can’t imagine a problem arising from that.
I think it’s more of a competition thing with Red Hat, but that’s okay. Competition is good for customers.
Update, 2006-07-20: According to Computer Business Review, it’s not about the application server’s licensing but about that of third party components. Novell’s director of marketing for Linux and open platform solutions, Justin Steinman, explained:
As part of the SUSE Linux Enterprise development process, we evaluate the licensing for each package that we ship in our distribution. While packages like JBoss are distributed under the LGPL license, there are many components which are proprietary technologies from third parties,” he stated.
“We found several components in JBoss4 that fit this profile. We checked with JBoss and the two areas in question, the SRP security extensions and the application client, ship under licenses that have questionable redistribution rights for Novell,” he added.
Jul 19, 2006
Everytime I discover that I just made quite a blunder, there comes that hot feeling rushing fast from my stomach up to my head. But I guess that's only a fraction of how that poor bloke at Plusnet must have felt when he realised that the storage system he just reconfigured (sending all data to nirvana in the process) wasn't the backup system but actually the productive one
That's a situation where I would consider taking that katana sword off the wall...
Jul 18, 2006
These days, everyone and his dog are getting their own Web 2.0 service online. And finally, there's hardware to base your Poopr or Sneezr or whatchamacallit on: "Thumper", the harddisk-munching and O'Reilly-approved Web 2.0 server from Sun!
Seriously, folks, what's so "Web 2.0" about this X4500, as its official name is? Sure, it's impressive, with its high performance storage capacity of up to 24TB in a single case. But "Web 2.0 server", that's cheesy unless it does social networking with other servers, tags my network cables automatically and offers an AJAX management web interface. :-)
But, since it has some interesting features, I'm trying to get my hands on one for some tests. And I'm sure that Ralf will publish a review afterwards.
Jul 16, 2006
I just replaced my ever growing blogroll list by a Grazr panel.
Grazr is a nifty Javascript applet that not only shows every blog I read ordered by category but also lets you browse every blog's entries right on my page. Reducing clutter while increasing functionality? That decision was a no-brainer.
Jul 14, 2006
It's been a busy week -- much to do at the company and CAJ meetings on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. That's why I had no time to do some blogging (among other things). But heeere comes the weekend!
Yesterday evening was occupied as well: I went to Stuttgart for a meeting of the local Java User Group. Its JBoss SIG(Special Interest Group) had organized a talk about JBoss Cache held by Bela Ban, project lead for JGroups and JBoss Cache
Bela gave an interesting overview of how to replicate data across a cluster of application server instances using JBoss Cache in its two incarnations, the Tree Cache and the POJO Cache. The Tree Cache divides cachable data into hierarchical nodes with attributes that can be replicated indivually, thus preventing the replication of huge data sets. The POJO Cache ensures that every change of an object gets replicated once the object has been registered in the distributed cache.
Cache instances can be connected to a distributed tree much like a HTTP cache hierarchy can be built with Squid. At what time the replication of changes actually gets done depends on if the changes are made in a transaction context. If not, replication happens immediately. Inside a transaction, replication occurs not until the transaction is commited.
Cache distribution can be extended by cache persistence where cache data is written to a filesystem or database. This provides the possibility of "swapping" data on a cache host or even between cache hosts.
Locking is crucial point in distributed data storage and JBoss offers two opposite strategies, optimistic and pessimistic locking.
When Bela showed a diagram depicting that JBoss HTTP Sessions are based on JBoss Cache as well, I first concluded that this facilitated using a simple load balancer distributing HTTP requests randomly between JBoss instances. JBoss Cache should make sure that every instance can handle every current HTTP session, after all. But Bela pointed out that HTTP session should be sticky to one host each because the cache data isn't evenly distributed but gravitates to where it's used the most.
It was an interesting talk supplemented by a small live demonstration. Bela certainly knows what he's talking about. It seems to me that JBoss Cache is a well thought-out solution to distributed data storage.
Since Bela held this talk already as a keynote at TheServerSide Java Symposium Europe, his slides (in PDF) are available for download on the conference website.
This SIG meeting was an evening well spent and I was even given a JBoss backpack for taking part in suggesting presentation topics for future meetings. Meetings some of which I'll attend, I'm sure.
Jul 12, 2006
Mobility is something that's just expected from workers in this information age. Well, I'll volunteer if I can have this mobile office in a van!
Jul 10, 2006
As a manager, it's important to have clear leadership principles. Hallmark put some on an online greeting card
I dedicate this blog entry to my current and future staff. :-D
Jul 6, 2006
Manik Surtani, Lead of the JBoss Cache team, advises against just wrapping a cluster environment around an application. According to his reasoning in the JBoss Labs Blog&ctrl:window=default.blog.PrjBlogPortletWindowDefaultBlog&project=all&from=1&link=The_Myth_of_Transparent_Clustering#The_Myth_of_Transparent_Clustering, performing in a cluster is something that has to be considered already when building the application.
As much as people would like to think that with modern techniques like AOP, bytecode injection, annotations, along with a healthy dose of ignorance of reality, wishing upon a star and belief in the tooth fairy, clustering can be a truly decoupled aspect that can be applied to anything, they are wrong.
Jul 6, 2006
Who needs actors or even native speakers if you have a CEO that's able to explain the advantages of his company's products?
Daimler-Chrysler thought so and let Dr. Dieter Zetsche alias Dr. Z" do the "new Chrysler US commercials, highlighting how Chrysler and Dodge cars benefit from German technology.
Additionally, there's a special website Ask Dr. Z where an animated version of the D.-C. CEO answers consumer questions.
Do Germans have a sense of humour after all?
Jul 3, 2006
Last week, I gave a talk about examples and principles of Web 2.0 technology. If someone is interested, the slides (in German) are online
Jul 3, 2006
Among the things I change regularly, there's also my mobile phone. Last time I got a new one, I spent about an hour transferring all my contacts and other information from the old one by bluetooth, one contact by another. Especially when the two phones aren't from the same manufacturer, this seemed to be the only way. But there's another!
Thanks to the SyncML standard, you can synchronize many mobile phones with a central repository, forth and back. In the current issue of c't, there's a tutorial how to install your own SyncML server.
But it's even more effortless if you use ZYB, the mobile phone synchronization service on the web. They provide a central SyncML server for free, letting you backup and transfer your mobile phone data. If you have more than one mobile, you can even keep their data synchronized. Furthermore, you can access all your contact and calendar data over a nice AJAXish user interface.
It took me about a minute to get all my contacts onto ZYB. And when my Nokia E61 gets delivered this week, I'll just download the contacts and it'll be ready to go. The mobile life actually can be easy!
Jul 2, 2006
"Some genius took Bush's speeches and made them into the greatest version of U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday I've ever heard." Well, that's right!
You have to see George W. Bush doing U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday
Jul 2, 2006
In Theres no such thing as the one-hour meeting, Jason Fried points out that a meeting of one hour with 5 people is a five hour meeting. I’ve had my share of frustrating time-wasting meetings, but there also are colleagues I’ll meet with gladly because I know that we’ll be productive.
In the MLP magazine FORUM, I found some basic hints how to make meetings successful. I wish everyone inviting me to meetings would have read them.
Preparation: Make clear the goal of the meeting. Define date and participants. Invite timely in writing. Prepare the room and visualization tools (e.g., flipchart).
Goal: Express goal and agenda clearly. Prioritize agenda items.
Time frame: Start punctual presenting the agenda. If the participants don’t know each other, include an introduction round.
Participants: Define who has to participate necessarily and for whom a copy of the minutes suffices. Inform the participants in writing.
Moderation: The meeting leader takes on the moderation: he/she guides verbal contributions, attends to the time and structures the meeting.
Visualization: Use a flipchart to visualize the most important issues. That way, the course of the meeting can be followed.
Pauses: Long meetings need periodic pauses (at the latest after 90 or 120 minutes).
Disturbances: Switch off mobile phones. The meeting leader has to firmly moderate distinguishing behaviour. Trouble makers should be addressed directly without marginalizing them.
Summary: The meeting leader should summarize the results regularly, thus preventing misunderstandings.
Minutes: As soon as possible, participants should get copies of the meeting minutes including an exact action plan: Who is supposed to do what until when?
Jul 1, 2006
The Germans obviously are good in organizing and participating in the football Worldcup. But they suck in designing for it. At least, that’s the opinion of Erik Spiekermann, one of Germany’s most respected designers.
In an interview with Deutsche Welle,2144,2049898,00.html, he stated that both the mascot and the logo are a poor result typical for “too many cooks in the kitchen”.
It’s a shame because when people come in from the outside world they think this is how German designers are and for me, it’s personally embarrassing. I want to go away and hide and pretend I’m a brain surgeon or something.
Jul 1, 2006
Every second website wants to know who you are. And we all know why. So what can you do to protect your identity from spreading around the web and your mailbox from getting flooded with even more spam?
Easy: invent fake data.
Even easier: the Fake Name Generator does it for you!
This web service not only invents a new name for you, it also provides you with residential data (US-based) with plausible zip code and phone number, and it creates a public mailinator mailbox where you can receive confirmation emails.
I just feel like being someone else today...
Jul 1, 2006
(If you haven't noticed yet, I'm cleaning up my "blog this" todo list.)
After purchasing the iPod nano, I had to get a few other accessories: the Ipodome protective overlays, the Sennheiser OMX 70, and the XtremeMac SportWrap. All are just great, so I thought of letting you know.
If the iPod Nano has one weakness, then it's that it's so prone to scratches. It's almost like even watching the thing gets it scratched! I researched all the options for protection and decided to get a Ipodome&products_id=495 foil. After all, what's the use of buying an Apple product and then hiding it in some silicone or leather case? ;-) The Ipodome foil wraps all around the Nano, so not only the display, but every surface (except the small ones with the hold switch and the connectors) is protected. I actually managed to apply the overlay correctly, so it's almost invisible and I can now show off my player in all its shine without worrying about the latter getting lost.
The original Apple earbuds may help in signalling Hey, I can afford an Apple player!", but if you care about wearing comfort and sound, there are better alternatives. Because I wanted to use the iPod while running, I chose the "Sennheiser OMX 70 sport headphones recommended by iLounge Since you wear them over your ears instead of inside your ears, they feel very comfortable even after having them on for hours. The cable is long enough to put the iPod wherever you want without risking of yanking it out by moving your head or torso. And the sound is just as you can expect from a Sennheiser product.
Since pants pockets are not the best place to put the iPod while running, I also bought the XtremeMac SportWrap It comes with two straps of different length, so you can strap your player either onto your biceps or onto your wrist. Since it's made of neoprene, skin irritation and sweat shouldn't be a problem.
Having written this, I realize that being part of the big iPod community really has its price, granted, but on the other hand also the big advantage of having a huge supply of experiences and recommendations helping you spend your money well. I hope my article adds to that.
Jul 1, 2006
Best Practical, the company behind the widely used trouble ticket system "Request Tracker", "RT" for short, added another productivity enhancer to their portfolio: Chia-liang Kao, developer of SVK, joined Best Practical as a partner.
SVK is a versioning system based on Subversion that allows distributed repositories. For example, you can pull a copy of the main repository onto your laptop, use that local repository while you're moving all over the world, and wherever you have internet access, you can synchronize your local repository with the main one.
Since SVK, like RT, is written in Perl, Best Practical enforces with that move its position as a small but successful business specialising in Perl-based productivity tools.
Jul 1, 2006
It really can get a vicious circle not having enough staff for the challenges rising. You get buried with work, planned and unplanned. So you don't have the time reading applications. So you don't invite applicants. So your team doesn't grow. So you'll keep drowning.
I'm glad that this week, I could break that circle. I got some really interesting applications, and I also met some people that might fit the job.
At WEB.DE IT, we're looking for sysadmins&page=jobs&action=displayJobs&cat=1#job297 that have "Linux" written all over them. We're running hundreds of Linux servers in a high availability environment, so there's much to do and much to learn, too.
If you're inclined to and feel fit to do system administration in a real enterprise setting or if you know someone who does, then I'd be happy to get your application! (Contact provided in the job ad linked above.)
Jun 30, 2006
Years ago, I made the effort of regularly blogging news about the allegations brought forward by SCO of Linux containing thousands of lines of stolen code. But after some time, I got tired of all those continuously repeated but at any time unsupported claims and their all the more plausible refutation by the open source community. It got just plain boring and ridiculous, and I stopped wasting my time writing about it.
Now, judge Brooke Wells issued an order confirming IBM's reproach about the lack of specificity in SCO's claims. GrokLaw has the full text It contains a quite evident analogy for SCO's way of reasoning:
Certainly if an individual was stopped and accused of shoplifting after walking out of Neiman Marcus they would expect to be eventually told what they allegedly stole. It would be absurd for an officer to tell the accused that "you know what you stole Im not telling." Or, to simply hand the accused individual a catalog of Neiman Marcus entire inventory and say "its in there somewhere, you figure it out."
As an open source aficionado, I gleefully enjoy to see SCO's butt kicked in court, but I cringe thinking about the amounts of money and time this useless court actions are burning.
Jun 29, 2006
The Skype client for Linux is unfortunately way behind its Windows counterpart. So far, only chat and phone functions are available for the free operating system; if you want video conferencing or "Skypecasts", the Windows client is your only choice. But it's even worse: until this week, Skype for Linux didn't even support the ALSA sound system that has been the common way of dealing with sound hardware on Linux for years.
Finally, Skype now released a beta version of Skype 1.3 for Linux with ALSA support. Additional to this desperately awaited feature, the Changelog contains a long list of bug fixes and functions letting Skype for Linux catch up at least a bit to its Windows sibling.
Jun 29, 2006
Maybe I should rethink my plans of moving to Ireland. At least Dublin is among the 20 most expensive cities in the world to live in. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Dublin holds place no. 18, following Paris and Singapore.
Curiously, not one German city is among the top 50!?
Jun 27, 2006
In no. 8 of Bernie Goldbach's 10 Questions on Sunday, he states that according to the Irish Tourist Industry Confederation almost half of the Germans visiting Ireland during their vacations are dissatisfied.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find a detailed substantiation why Germans are so dissatisfied with Ireland as a holiday country. I'd be very interested in details, because I don't understand that dissatisfaction at all.
I like both the rural and city Ireland -- I even think about moving there. The people are much more relaxed than here, the cities are bursting of culture and the landscapes are marvellous. Granted, the prices aren't low, but you can find both accomodation and food to decent prices if you care to shop a little.
BTW, being both enthusiastic about Ireland and interested in education technology is the reason why I subscribed to Bernie's blog.
Jun 21, 2006
Today, my walk from the train station home was quite a bit longer than usual. Because it was the train station of another town.
Thats's what happened: Soon after boarding the train in Karlsruhe, due to the temperature inside I got rather weary and I dozed off several times. Unfortunately, one time too many: when the train stopped once again, I realized that I had missed the station where I had had to change trains. I was already in Wiesental, a neighboring town of Philippsburg, and on my way to Mannheim. At least, there was enough time to leave the train here.
Calling my folks to pick me up was not an option -- they were watching Germany winning against Ecuador just now. Well, I had intended to go jogging this evening anyway, so I decided to just walk the few kilometres home. Weather was great, and I had put some new podcasts[1] on my iPod.
That's what I like about podcasts: they give you an opportunity to have fun or even learn something while you can't do anything else (or don't want to). In those 25 minutes it took me to get home, I listened to an interview with Tom Limoncelli, author of Time Management for System Administrators, and learned about SVK If there's nothing else you can do, you can always listen and learn. Try it out, it's easy!
On another note, I'm quite pleased that I now can sustain a fast-paced walk over 25 minutes without problems. Not more than a few weeks ago, even rushing to my local train station was giving me cramps!
fn1. For those who don't know: a podcast is an audio file of people talking about stuff, like in a radio show. There are podcasts on all topics you can imagine on the internet.
Jun 20, 2006
James Blunt actually whined a 5-year-old girl out of a coma it fell into after falling from a balcony. She awoke after 10 days of unconsciousness when the clinic radio was playing "You're beautiful".
On the other hand, for people like me, the singer lists among the top reasons for jumping from a balcony in the first place.
Jun 20, 2006
There are a lot of optical illusions published on the net. Everybody knows the "which line is longer?" and the "are those lines parallel?" pictures. Yawn.
But the Spanish Castle is one I find really amazing. It's a picture of a castle in false colours with a black dot in the middle. Stare at the dot for about 30 seconds, then move your mouse over the picture. You'll see the castle in real colours -- but only as long as you don't move your eyes!
This reminds me of the "Magic Eye" pictures popular a few (gosh, I'm getting old) years ago. When I got the first Magic Eye book, I spent hours staring at the patterns trying to make the 3D shape appear...
