2005 June Archive at Agylen

Archive for June, 2005

Why I don’t go to the movies anymore

Published by ugo on June 30, 2005 in personal. 1 Comment

Blockbuster logo I couldn’t agree more with Dave Winer:

It’s one thing if they let you in for free, then sure, show a few ads. But I paid to see the movie. Sorry, you don’t get to run ads if I pay. Maybe if they stop running ads, people will start going to the movies again.

Last Sunday night we couldn’t find anything better to do than go watching Star Wars Episode III. The evening was too damn hot to go for a walk or otherwise stay outside, so we opted for a movie: at least there would be air conditioning.

The problem is that it cost us 20€ (7.50€ each for me and the wife and 5€ for the kid) while we could have waited three or four months and got it from the Blockbuster store right across the street from home for less than 4€, keep it for three nights and not be forced to watch 15 minutes of ads before the film started!

The movie was just above mediocre, and don’t get me started about the cost of the popcorn!

We were also subjected to 15 minutes of trailers. Having seen the “War of the Worlds” trailer, I really want to see it, but for sure it’s going to be in DVD, even if special effects are not the same on the small screen.

Is EJB3 a Spring killer?

Published by ugo on June 30, 2005 in java. 4 Comments

Templth’s blog: “Is EJB3 a Spring killer?”: “This is one of the most asked question at this time. The EJB3 specification has incopored interesting concepts and ideas from leading open source projects to make easier to use, remove lines of code and improve the time of application development.”

Personally, I think EJB3 is still too little, too late. Even though EJB3 provides valuable simplifications with respect to previous versions, there’s very little that you can do with EJB that you cannot do — more simply — with Spring and, say, Hibernate. Besides, how far form release are EJB3 implementations? You can use Spring and Hibernate today, and they are very mature tools. When, and if, we have a comparably mature EJB3 implementation, they will probably have already outgrown the EJB3 spec in terms of functionality and ease of use.

Anyway, you can make up your mind by yourself by following the many pointers provided in Templth’s post quoted above.

Maps rule

Published by ugo on June 29, 2005 in devel and google. 1 Comment

With all the buzz around maps these days (Where 2.0 conference just started, Google releases Maps API and Google Earth, Yahoo! releases Maps API) I started thinking about cool new applications based on maps.

I have one idea in particular that I don’t think has been exploited by anyone already. It would take me a long string of 48-hour workdays in order to implement it, though, considering all the other things I’m into at this moment. I probably need to find a partner to do the coding.

On the other hand, this is probably a crazy idea that has no future, so I’d better stop daydreaming.

iTunes Store: Bad Database Design Choices?

Published by ugo on June 27, 2005 in apple and devel. 7 Comments

Tom Bradford details the problems he’s having with iTMS:

I purchased quite a bit of music in the past using my old email address. As many people do, I recently left the company that I had been working at, and moved over to a new machine and email address.

I moved my iTunes library over to my new computer, and I changed my account’s email address on the Apple web site. When I went to play music that I had purchased, I found that these files had been explicitly linked to my old email address rather than to some sort of primary key that would allow me to authorize no matter what my current email address is. As a result, I can no longer play any of my purchased music.

Having just changed my email address, I might have the same problem. Fortunately, I am still holding onto my old address, at least until someone decides to remove my account. Still, I cannot help agreeing with Tom:

These are things you learn in ‘Databases 101′, and so it’s more than a little bit shocking that developers at big companies make such poor design decisions.

Java Conference ‘05

Published by ugo on June 23, 2005 in java. 1 Comment

I’m blogging this from the exhibition floor of the Java Conference ‘05 in Milan, where we have a presence. You’d expect that technical conferences like this one have free WiFi connectivity, but yesterday the only access point that I could detect led to a gateway page for a for-pay service.

Today I discovered an open access point instead. I don’t know if it is open on purpose but it doesn’t seem to be provided by the organization. Anyway, HTTP works, ssh works and Skype works, but IMAP, POP and AIM do not go through. Strange.

I briefly stuck my head into the room where Craig McClanahan was extolling once more the virtues of JSF but after five minutes I decided I wasn’t interested. In the afternoon I plan to attend the session by my namesake Ugo Landini on patterns, which promises to be entertaining. I wonder whether there’s going to be WiFi in that room.

My home on Google Maps

Published by ugo on June 21, 2005 in google and personal. 5 Comments

If you live in the US or the UK, this will not strike you as something new, but until a couple of minutes ago I wasn’t aware that Google Maps satellite images now covered most of Europe at the maximum resolution.

Now, I can finally see how my house looks like when seen from space. Neat!

Unfortunately, maps are still missing. Only satellite images are provided, but I guess they will be there soon.

Furniture

Published by ugo on June 21, 2005 in personal. 1 Comment

After the chair, today I’ve also probably found a cupboard and a table for my new home office. I’m pretty much sold on the Polka Dots cupboard from Horm, but I’m still relatively undecided on the table. The Bello! is nice but maybe a little small.

Together they make up a very nice combination (click on the image to enlarge it) and the price is much less than what I had anticipated, given the price at what designer furniture is typically sold. Assuming I can make up my mind on the table, I am going to place an order for them by the end of this week.

New Technorati goes live…

Published by ugo on June 21, 2005 in miscellaneous and web. 2 Comments

… a bit too early, probably. At the moment:

Search is not working:

While trying to retrieve the URL: http://technorati.com/search/agylen.com

The following error was encountered:

    * Zero Sized Reply 

Squid did not receive any data for this request.

Resetting your password does not work.
The Technorati bot is still not spidering my weblog, even though I ping it regularly, and my account page shows “0 links from 0 sources”. Yeah, right.

I guess the new Technorati website would have benefited from a longer beta testing period.

No shopping on Amazon

Published by ugo on June 21, 2005 in web. 0 Comments

Micah: “Right now, on Amazon, when you click the little shopping cart icon at the top of every page, the resulting page is utterly lacking any ‘proceed to checkout’ button. Anyone else seeing this? -m”

Weird, but true. I wonder what’s going on.

Cocoon going to Amsterdam

Published by ugo on June 17, 2005 in cocoon and opensource. 0 Comments

I always wanted to visit Amsterdam. Looks like this will be a valid pretext:

Arjé and I are spilling the news on the new location of the yearly Cocoon GetTogether: we’re dropping the anchor in Amsterdam this year!

The EuroOSCON is going to be in Amsterdam too, just a couple of weeks later. It would be great to be able to be there as well, but it all depends on what the boss and the wife think.

Career move

Published by ugo on June 16, 2005 in personal. 7 Comments

These are the last days at my current job. Considering that summer has come and the attitude here is not much different from the one Russell describes when talking about Spain, it’s getting very hard to get any work done.

Starting officially on July 1st, I’ll be joining the ranks of Pro-netics, where I’ll be doing more or less what I’m doing here, i.e. designing and developing web applications using a score of Open Source libraries and frameworks.

The main difference is that I’ll be mainly working from home — that’s why I’m searching new furniture and a new desktop computer — with frequent travels to Rome.

I’ve never worked from home for long periods of time, so I really don’t know how it’s going to work out. I am determined to make it right and don’t slip into bad habits like getting up every ten minutes to open the fridge, but I’m afraid I’ll miss things like water-cooler talks and office humor. We’ll see, I guess.

Another major difference is that my work will be much more focused on promoting Open Source Software, actively participating in OSS projects and exploring the possible business models of OSS, as opposed to just being an end user, albeit an advanced one.

I am particularly excited at the prospect of being part of a European consortium of OSS-oriented companies like Orixo. It’s great to be working together with friends like Gianugo, Sylvain, Andrew, David, Jeremy, Steven, Marc, Matthew and Carsten (to mention just those who have a blog and can therefore be linked; hope I didn’t miss anyone). Can you name any other company featuring so many respected bloggers, OSS developers and advocates as this one? I guess not and with such a concentration of great minds thinking alike, I’m sure we can really be the reference company for Open Source in Europe. The future is bright.

Gmail Delete Button

Published by ugo on June 15, 2005 in google. 3 Comments

Everybody’s biggest gripe with Gmail is the lack of a delete button, there’s no question about that. Well, no more, if you’re using Firefox, thanks once more to a cute little Greasemonkey script:

Arantius.com - Greasemonkey User Scripts - Gmail Delete Button: “I’m having fun writing greasemonkey user scripts! For the uninitiated, greasemonkey is a Firefox extension that lets one modify a web page with javascript in powerful ways. Here’s another one based off of the request wiki. It puts a delete button next to the archive button, and performs a ‘Move to trash’ action when clicked.”

Do you share your blog’s server stats publicly?

Published by ugo on June 14, 2005 in miscellaneous. 0 Comments

Scoble: “A friend of mine wonders if there’s a place he can compare server stats with other bloggers on — you know, hit rates, browser types, etc. That sounds like an interesting wiki project. I know Tim Bray puts some of his blog stats out in public. Anyone else?”

Here are mine.

A world without folders is not a world without structure

Published by ugo on June 14, 2005 in opensource and web. 2 Comments

Following up on yesterday’s post on taxonomies vs. folksonomies, I spotted an interesting conversation going on between John Hiler, Dan Brown and Gene Smith.

Herewith some interesting quotes:

Google’s War on Hierarchy, and the Death of Hierarchical Folders, John Hiler: “But Folders rarely solve the core problem that they address - and often create new ones, like forcing you to create new folders just to manage new information. Solutions like Search, Archives, Stars and Labels get more directly at the core problem… and promise that the future of information management will look very different from its past.”

A world without folders is not a world without structure, Dan Brown: “Hierarchies are not dead. We may use them as we did when personal computers first came out, to organize a small amount of information. By limiting the scope of information, a user-defined hierarchy becomes useful. We may use them as temporary containers, like a collection of search results. We may use them to organize the elements of an information system (like email). We may find new ways to add meta data to information to allow us to create as-needed hierarchies. The human mind loves part-whole organization, even if its abstract and complex. While interfaces may do away with simple implementations (like folders) we will never see them disappear completely.”

The Death of Hierarchy? Gene Smith: “Indeed, structure is useful. And instead of one structural option–the folder–we now have derived structure (like search engine indexes and the derived polyhierarchies in iTunes) and user-applied structure (tags, labels, links, playlists). This is not the death of hierarchy; it’s the augmentation of hierarchy.”

What I’m taking away from this discussion is a reinforcement of my decision of keeping some amount of hierarchy (albeit a very shallow one), augmented with search, tags and links.

OS X for Intel spotted in the wild, with video

Published by ugo on June 14, 2005 in apple. 3 Comments

Looks like OS X Tiger for Intel has already leaked onto the Internet, and apparently someone succeeded in installing it on a Dell laptop.

To me, this looks suspicious. Might as well be PearPC.

Taxonomies and folksonomies

Published by ugo on June 13, 2005 in opensource. 1 Comment

I just found out that the “smart” tagging interface I implemented last friday is not so smart after all. It’s actually a bit broken in that it only extracts single words from descriptions before matching them with existing tags. The problem is than tags can be made up of multiple words and no matches with multi-word tags are thus ever found.

Alright, this can be fixed and I will probably work on it tonight, but this made me think about the reasons why del.icio.us tags do not contain any spaces. I still think it’s inconvenient, from a user’s perspective, not to be able to use spaces to separate words within tags and to be forced to use hyphens, underscores or other similarly awkward punctuation marks. But I can understand how easier it is to deal with it form a programmer’s perspective.

Another problem is that it will be impossible to connect OSZone tags to del.icio.us tags without arbitrarily changing blanks into underscores or something like that, before linking.

Anyway, users always come first, so I’ll stick to spaces for now. Changing along the road, if it is necessary, is just a search & replace operation.

I also started thinking about the taxonomy of projects. Until now, we have relied on a simple system of categories that is intended to classify projects according to their main mode of use: libraries that you link in with your code as opposed to frameworks that somehow force your code to adapt and be controlled from the outside, or development tools that you use during development but don’t become part of your program.

I reasoned that tags, the search and the “similar projects” feature would be much more useful than putting projects into a fixed set of non-communicating vases. So I went for the minimum amount of taxonomy that would not get in the way too much. I still think this is a good idea, but I’d like to explore adding another dimension to the classification.

This would be the dimension of “field of application” and its axis would be labeled “web publishing”, “data management”, “XML”, “graphics”, “text manipulation”, … (I’m just picking categories at random here, out of the top of my head). I would never want a hierarchical taxonomy, but probably a set of orthogonal dimensions along which to classify projects would be nice to have. User could choose to navigate along the dimension that they care the most about. Let’s call that faceted navigation (hat tip: the Daisy folks). What do you think?

Scoble, Microsoft and China

Published by ugo on June 13, 2005 in miscellaneous. 0 Comments

Yesterday, Scoble served us one of the lamest excuses ever heard for the all too common behavior of a big company kowtowing to a dictatorship’s demands in the name of business (emphasis mine):

Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger | My stance on the Chinese free speech question: “I’ve been to China (as an employee of Winnov about seven years ago). I met with Government officials there. I met with students. I met with professors. They explained their anti-free-speech stance to me and I understand it. I don’t agree with it, and I will be happy to explain to anyone the benefits of giving your citizens the right to speak freely, but it’s not my place to make their laws. It certainly is not my right to force their hand with business power.”

“Their” anti-free-speech stance? Come on, Robert, are you really saying that you believed all that bullshit? Or are do you think that we would believe it?

You remind me of all those people who went visiting the USSR and came back telling everybody how happy the people were and how much more they valued their socialist values compared to so-called “bourgeois” freedoms. Never mind that when you were allowed to interview people, it was always within ear of the KGB!

So, when you talk about “their anti-free-speech stance”, I don’t know if you’re gullible or are just trying to rationalize an untenable position. Another bad rationalization is here:

When doing business in various countries and, even, various states here in the US, we must comply with the local laws if we want to do business there.

The fact is, there are no laws in China forbidding the use of words like “democracy” or “freedom of the press”, as far as I know. What Microsoft is bowing to is not the law, it’s the ukase of some party brass and Microsoft could have displayed a little more spine, instead of bending over backwards, even if this could have costed them some business. Or are we trying to imply that everything goes, as long as the shareholders are happy? Like in Bhopal?

But, and this is a big but…I’m not Chinese. I’m American. So I have ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS forcing the Chinese into a position they don’t believe in.

Right, and you have no business forcing the Iraqis into a position they don’t believe in, either.

Mozilla Rhino to be included in J2SE 6.0

Published by ugo on June 12, 2005 in cocoon and java. 3 Comments

Looks like the next release of Java will have support for Javascript built-in:

Another language-related JSR planned for Mustang is JSR 223. This defines a framework to allow scripting language programs to access information developed in the Java platform. We currently plan to integrate this into Mustang for b40. Aside from the framework, we will also include a JavaScript engine based on the Mozilla Rhino implementation. Later, we hope to include a scripting shell that is script language independent. This will be a very cool way to create a prototype, do some exploratory coding, and learn new APIs.

This is incredibly important for Cocoon, whose Flowscript is currently based on Mozilla’s Rhino Javascript interpreter. Actually, the Flowscript is somewhat language agnostic, but the only working implementation right now is in Javascript.

In the past there have been doubts concerning the viability of Rhino and its licensing terms, but when it’s become an integral part of the J2SE platforms, there will be no more doubts.

Now the question is: How long will it take to add continuations support to Groovy, so that developers will be able to choose between two great scripting languages for their flowscripts?

(Via Dion.)

Let’s stick it to the pope

Published by ugo on June 12, 2005 in skeptic. 0 Comments

A lot has been said and written in the last days about the reasons pro and con the referendums that are being held right now in Italy. Unfortunately, voter turnout seems to be a record low, so it’s improbable that we will reach the necessary 50% plus one quorum.

That is, unless everybody who cares about the issue gets their asses up and go vote. Or would you prefer that choices about your freedom and your health be taken by a congregation of males who obey no one else but a foreigner head of a foreign state?

Come on, let’s stick it to the pope!

ApacheCon Speaker logo

Published by ugo on June 11, 2005 in apache. 2 Comments

I just got this nice ApacheCon Europe 2005 Speaker logo along with an invitation to use it to promote out ApacheCon talks. So, here it is.

I’ll be talking about Developing Enterprise Web Applications with Cocoon and Spring, on Thursday July 21st, 10:00AM.

Registration is open, and you get a nice discount by registering before June 17th, so hurry up!.

Agylen