Interesting article at c|net with James Gosling father of Java about Java
versus "C#". What can I tell I work Java for three or four years now
and it's a wanderfull language, I would not change it for anything
else (well maybe Python but not sure yet 
. Writing server side apps with it is great, using Java
based CLI applications is OK, but when it comes to GUI it sucks big
time. Sorry that's my experience. I don't say that you can not use
Swing applications because it wouldn't be true, you can use them, but
it's a constant pain.
It's not that it looks weird (like no other window around it), the font's are just rude under Linux,
you can fix that. Skins can be used and that way it has a more native
look (not true with the feel do), all components can be made to display
antialiased fonts (quite shitty under Win, but quite an improvement
under Linux and probably Solaris) it's that is so damn slow and huge
memory consumer.
Gosling says that not only server side development increased and I
believe him since I see all those XML related editors and tools come as
Java Swing (commercial) applications but I don't know how other are about this but I rather use Vim or XEmacs than a sloppy sluggish UFO like application. And yes I (who just said that) am full time Java programmer.
Still there is little hope for Java GUI and it's called Eclipse the Open Source project started by IBM.
We wrote a couple of small applications using SWT and JFace and the
result is just great. Java code with natively looking, feeling and
running results. That's the way to go, not sure about the license how
open is but I guess it's OK.
January 17th, 2002
Well, managed to get an old Power Mac G3. First time Mac user and I
must tell you I'm in love (don't know what I'm going to do if I will
have Mac OS X, maybe quit my job and find one where I can stay all day
long with it , just kidding) It's a bit underpowered or Mac OS (8.6)
knows about multitasking only from stories, but I Love IT. The
interface is cute, integration is really nice, plenty of applications
for it.
I really can't imagine back in 90's why people would buy Windows? The
difference is just so BIG.
January 17th, 2002
Radio Userland Test.
Indeed this works (Hey, could you please put a speller in it, Ah and please make it work under Linux).
Now wait a minute. Crossed my mind to check for the rss.xml file and guess what it was there. What is nice is that it is automatically updated from the posts I made using Radio. What is intriguing is that it has a nice(?) way of doing it. Each item in the outliner gets an item in the RSS (which normally is bad) but something Radio?) is looking for the first link in the item and if it finds one it will become the default link in the RSS
item having as title the linked text. I'm not sure if it is the right
solution but sure it worked quite well this time . Well done.
I don't know why people are so surprised about the spam invasion.
Listen to me it will get worse. Those marketing guys are convinced that
spam is good ( I actually read an article on an marketing oriented site
which I can not find anymore about how spam is good for business, I
hardly believe that but who knows, maybe they are right) look at some
other articles: Meme Crafting or The Five Most Important Words on your Web Site (I will spoil you pleasure and I will tell them: free, sign-up, buy, now, thank you, finally).
Not only our technology evolves, their to. I actually know a company
who designed an application target towards mail and personal
information web crawling that using some scripting language allows customized spam.
In fact you don't need any fancy technologies, any scripting language
will do it. One little example, get all the registers from whois, and
send email with their first name to any email address crawled from the
registered domain, is that difficult? No!
Something has to be changed around the way we email each other. Maybe
requesting that any message be signed and the signature published on
some key server. Would that be enough? Don't know, probably not, but at
least will increase the level of difficulty for the spammers. If we
look at the real life every mail we got is signed. If you would receive
an mail with no signature on it would you open it? Probably yes. What
if you would receive every day more than 10 mails without any signature
on them containing crap, would you open them ? Probably no!
January 15th, 2002
A Happy New Year ! I managed to
safely return home from the Romanian mountains, not an easy job.
Funny usually people go up in the mountains during winter especially
because of the snow. Well, we almost spend the new year eve at home
because of it
Even
if last year we promised to go somewhere else we found ourselves
without many other options this year so we choose again Valea Vinului
/ Rodna,
small preparations and in 30 Dec up in the cars and went we where.
The whether was definitely not our ally, all the 260 Km it rained,
rain on snow is never pleasant at driving and things get worse as the
altitude grew and the melted snow started to freeze, road maintenance
barely started cleaning the roads.
With only one flat tier (for two cars)
we managed to get to Rodna.
We saw serious snow but that was not unusual, the surprise came when
we found that it is fresh snow (almost 1 meter thick) from the last
night. Rodna
is a small village from where a 8 Km road up on the mountain Valea
Vinului is situated. At the base of the up going road there where
lot's of cars waiting, that was not a good sign. Apparently there
where three avalanches and the road was completely blocked, but work
on cleaning it already begun. The only problem was that nobody knew
when it will be ready and if it will be we will be able to climb it
with regular cars. Happily we managed to find a very nice family who
took al 8 of us in their house till next day, so we was not forged to
go home.
Next morning, nobody was sure exactly
if the road was clear or not but everybody had it's own unverifiable
opinion and you could not find two people to agree on it. Sick of
waiting and not knowing exactly what is going on two boys and two
girls with some baggage went with one car to see what is the
situation, if the road is clear they will go up and then the driver
will come down with the car to get the rest of us up. We decided that
one care will remain in Rodna
in case things get bad in the mountain and there is no way to get
down with a car. After a couple of ours rumors started circulating in
the village that one car remained stuck on the road and a couple of
guys have a hell of a time trying to free the car.
Not
having any better idea myself and a friends wife decided to climb on
the mountain. If the rumor is true at least we will be able to give
them some help, if not we will reach Valea Vinului in about two hours
and will be two person less to get up. We managed to get at our
destination, there where lot's of cars stuck on the road but not
ours, however we found that our fellows had indeed a hell of a time
to get up but the real problem was that they where not able to get
down again after the remaining people. Because of the avalanches
there was no electricity and the phone lines where also down.
Lucky us we managed to find a peak
where some mobile signal got reflected from somewhere and we managed
to inform the rest of the team about the situation. Even luckier the
remaining persons where able to find a tractor ( which doesn't have a
climbing problem ) and get up else we would have been forced to go
down again and climb again with the remaining lugages.
About the new years eve I can not tell
many things, it wasn't really a success, but it really didn't
mattered, we where up in the mountains, the nature was splendid the
air fresh and strong and I actually had some 8 Km walk up on a snowy
mountain which I'm sure managed to get some plus oxygen to my brain,
which doesn't really happen in my normal life as I am a convinced
sedentary.
In 2 Jan we where supposed to return
back, the problem was again that all the night snowed which was
beautiful except that a small car has a couple of problems going
through 30 cm of fresh snow. At the end a couple of us had to made
the road down again by foot, which I didn't minded at all (you know
the oxygen and brain thing) but it wasn't a pleasure walk that was
for sure. Happily the cars managed to get down, we also managed to
get down safely and what's more important we managed to get home
safely as in a strange way, it snowed in the whole country and many
roads where blocked not no mention that we had to get through another
mountain which given the fact that we started the trip early only
begun to get cleaned. There where portions of the road where we catch
some snow storm that we could not see at 10 meters in front of the
car.
If I would sum up, it was worth it, the
nature was beautiful despite it was not easy on us.
Uau, while searching for pictures with Romanian mountains during winter I actually found one western guy who likes Romania, this is so rare.
January 3rd, 2002
