Archive for the ‘RUE’ category

Daily Rumblings

March 23rd, 2001

Even if it is hard to believe, I’m still alive :) . So, time for excuses: I’ve been so busy. Of course nobody will buy that. The truth is that I’ve been busy building something, which I like to think, needed a lot of creative work and the time frame was kind of relaxed, you can’t rush creativity. It required such an effort ;) that I missed my schedule with around three months. I know that 10 minutes is not so much time to spend for this page, but my big ego would disagree with you.

So, events! Well, in November or December last year I gave an interview for the Application Development Trends magazine, and then in the same time we had a TV crew from NHK public television for some Internet related documentary. What really impressed me about the TV shooting, among the fact that they filmed around 2 day/10 hours per day for around 5 minutes of broadcast, was the kind of focus they where having. Starting every morning at 9 AM till 10 PM, no coffee breaks, no lunch break. No wander Japan is where it is (or was ?). I never got the tape with the show, so I have no clue what was that they actually broadcasted :) . And after that came the relaxation time, spending the New Year’s eve up in a very remote area of the Romanian mountains. Hope I will have the time to scan some pictures, because
the peisaje was really impressive.

I’m the kind of guy who likes gadgets. So, now I have an Compaq Armada M700, an Psion Series V and an Nokia 6210 mobile phone. In this idea now I’m mobile (TM) and perfectly interconnected, you know my notebook talks with my phone, my phone talks to my Psion, in one word everything talks with everything. But of couse one is theory and other is reality. The Nokia Data Suite is a crap piece of software, which really doesn’t matter since I don’t use Windows anymore (I don’t have to much against Microsoft, so that’s not the reason), but under Linux there is little software available and what exist is not for my devices. Bad luck. I would write them, but no time. Anyway the morale of the story: there is no such as smart devices if you don’t have the smart software.

The Open Source and Linux in Business game is over. This hurts, because I believed that this model really offers (if it’s done properly) a plus to the client. It’s true it’s hard to find a revenue model in the movement, I’m not even sure if there is one. I agree that Open Source might not be appropriated to every type of software but for some the benefices offered to both the companies and to clients is huge. What is most annoying is that I feel that not necessarily was a model which didn’t found a place in the business sphere because it lacked real value and therefore died. I have the feeling that it died because of bad conjuncture (the dot-com phenomena, and the problems with the American economy) and because of an aggressive marketing with no real value behind.

The truth is that now maybe the whole software industry might get a bit calmer. I always had the feeling that what happened lately was not OK. We are not a special industry, and the software engineers are not a separate species, who deserves special thratement. We are workers like peoples in any other field. We have to produce tools, which other people will happily use. Customers don’t care if it is JNDI, J2E, Java, C# or Net based. They are still using Cobol and 10 years old applications because of the simple fact that they work and does the job which is supposed to do. Wake up people.

And of course one game ends another one begins. The name of the new game is: Hailstorm, .Net, SOAP, and Web Services. A new madness begins. Aldo not sure about the benefits of the Hailstorm for the average user (except that if he would use real cash, his wallet would be a lot lighter :) , the new game will change a bit the Internet, which might be good. Just like the Open-Source/Linux game revitalized the movement (lot’s of new software, lot’s of new quality peoples) maybe the Internet will be a bit more after the new game.

Related to RUE, without any update since October, people begin to be more and more interested in it. Great daily activity and downloads, that’s good, the 2 year prediction seems to be true.

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Posted in Linux, Noise, Open Source, RUE

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RUE 0.52

November 1st, 2000

Well, the bug fix release of RUE is out.

As usual lot’s of downloads no feedback. However now I’m not that confused about that, since I found a thread on Slashdot on this subject.

Only a few peoples who makes the download actually install the software, and even fewer whom install it give feedback or contribute. The idea is that one project needs around one to two years (I’m not sure this is true also for Java) to have contributors and peoples interested in the project.

The big problem with RUE is that I really don’t know what should it be, considering that the new standard in monitoring (and management)JMX and the way it can use SNMP and TMN as protocols, there are plenty tools to do that even open source and Java ones. The way it works now is obsolete. This would not be an issue, but the amount of time I have to spend on it is definitely small compared to other projects, so features will come in quite slow.

Anyway, I won’t give up, people have to have options where to choose from, just started to have a few ideas how to make RUE useful and unique, even if the development will go a bit slower. But first specifications, because I don’t want to start the development of the new release until I don’t make a clear set of specifications, that’s why feedback would be so important.

What else ? Tyrex, playing around, and this for multiple reasons. First to have the Tyrex sensor I promised, second doesn’t hurt to know a bit about transactions. There aren’t to many documents out there about this, but I managed to find a few I liked. In case you are interested, here are the links to the documents:

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Posted in Open Source, RUE

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RUE, next version

October 11th, 2000

I plan that till Mon, 16 2000 I will have the 0.52 version of RUE out. It does not contain any improved functionality it is only a bug fix release. Well maybe one thing in plus that the sensors are not anymore integrated in RUE but separate modules. Also I hope that I will have the Tyrex sensors by then.

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Posted in RUE

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Applet Problems

October 9th, 2000

Spent my weekend with some RUE bug fixes, the patch version 0.52 it’s on it’s way.

Spent my week trying to solve the “certificate” problem for signing RUE (being able to run as applet in Netscape). I just start to hate more and more those Netscape guys, I don’t know why are standards for if nobody respects them. Neither Microsoft does but at least in IE I can completely deactivate the security and run RUE. I just had to insert all over RUE special code just for Netscape-applet mode, when rue is mainly intended as an application, I really hate doing that. But the problems does not stop here. Now Netscape does not trust the Sun packages like jndi.jar and rmiregistry.jar, because are not signed. The ugly part is that I either force the user to consider all the classes signed (case in which I don’t need a signed version of RUE, off course that if it finds one signed jar will not work, don’t you love Netscape). The second solution would be to sign jndi & rmiregistry jar’s which I don’t know if I’m allowed to do.

About Netscape and test certificates after a very frustrating week I finally managed to hack a method to produce X509 test certificates for Netscape valid for as long as I want. And I’m sure I will write it down in the next day’s just to make the life easier for others who might have the same problem.

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Posted in Java, RUE

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RUE

July 19th, 2000

Well it’s been some time from my last entry. What happened during the last months. Well a lot. Why a lot, because I’ve got my open source project. If your interested go check http://rue.nolimits.ro, yes it’s hot and strong, maybe not exactly now, but for sure it’s going to be. Am I satisfied ? No, i mean i was for about a day, when the last version was released, but after that things got normal.

There is also a lot of disappointment in this project. I’m not going to build it for me (do i will also use it), since I’m going to spend my nights on it, all i wanted is some kind of feedback, what people would like to have. I wanted to know that I’m working for something people will appreciate. After the announcement, i had almost 1000 visitors, ask me how many letters I’ve got. Answer 1. Tell me how many user subscribed to any of the mailing lists. NONE. Now maybe you will understand. Then i think-ed a bit about this, I’m sure if now there is no interest in this project one day will , I’m sure about this. Finally maybe a good optic would be to build it for me. I enjoy writing code i, like Java, and It’s not something obsolete to say that I’m loosing my time on it, so i will do it for me if anybody will afterwards be interested in the project will be welcome, until then it’s only my satisfaction.

On personal domain, i didn’t really had time for life, nor that here would be anything to desire attention (except my wife and friends, but they are all here with me), oh yes and now I’m one year older.

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Posted in Noise, RUE

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