My personal daily WTF

I know that the XML APIs in Java are a bit Kafka'esque and perhaps even a bit buggy, but still...

   /**
   * As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself
   * transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard,
   * as it were armour plated, back, and if he lifted his head a little he
   * could see his big, brown belly divided into stiff, arched segments, on
   * top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about
   * to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin
   * compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.
   * "What has happened to me?", he thought. It was no dream....
   */
  protected static String DEFAULT_TRANSLET_NAME = "GregorSamsa";

From TransformerFactoryImpl in the 1.5 JDK. Probably originally from Xalan/J so don't flame Sun.

And, I'm far from the first to notice this. How'd you like to be this guy

I'm not really sure what to make of this new JSR. The examples seem like they could be extremely useful for clarifying usage semantics. Or it could degenerate into the macro-hell of complex C programs. Time will tell.

JUnit extension for RASP testing

JUnitPerf is a collection of JUnit test decorators used to measure the performance and scalability of functionality contained within existing JUnit tests.

Found this on the new O'Reilly site, CodeZoo

Recovering redacted DOD documents

Say that ten times fast ;D

I know that Word is a horrible medium for distributing sensitive data but I didn't realize all the issues with PDF. Apparently, someone in the US military didn't either :(

Google Desktop search and "security via obscurity"

I've been using the Google desktop search tool for a bit and have been very happy with it. Searching through your browser cache acts as a "short term memory" until I decide to make it "long term memory" over at del.icio.us. Another great tool from Google.

A coworker pointed out an AP story in the local rag pointing to it as a security hole. Bruce Schnier's recent article correctly points out that it's not Google's tool that is insecure. It is the other tools that leave unsecure data lying around for other programs to look at.

Google's tool just makes the other holes more visible. Who's problem is that?

Blogbox.com lazlets?

Blogbox.com: "Blogboxes provide exciting, instantly deployed functionality for your blog or Web site. They are free for non-commercial use. Enjoy them and spread the good word!"

These are prebuilt Flash applets built using LPS. Using these is pretty trivial -- two JS snippets. Took me longer to learn about Blogger templates than anything else. But there's now a spiffy clock on the bottom right.

I'm going to move my explorations of LPS to a separate blog over here

Laszlo Rich Internet client platform

At JavaOne '03 one of the most interesting pieces of technology I came across was the software from Laszlo Systems. They demo'ed some impressive pieces of eye-candy. I got a few minutes with one of their technologists to get a handle on what it was. I quickly got what they were going after. It leverages Flash as the client UI engine rather than a JVM or the browser. Having been down these various alternatives I could see the advantages and opportunities. They also designed an XML based declarative language for the UI with hooks for external sources of data. As they were designing the language from the ground up for their needs this could also lend to a lot of synergy but I didn't get down to this level of detail. Technologically, it looked like it would be a very useful tool in the right environments.

At the time the fact that it was a commercial product (and a variety of other issues) didn't make it especially useful for my needs at an ISV. So it sat in my giant pile of interesting things. However, times and circumstances change. For one thing, it's now open source.

Folks are always looking for a silver-bullet for their UI needs. For the last two years I've been involved in the development of a large JNLP delivered Swing app for DSS use. For some apps, this is an appropriate UI. For others, lightweight HTML is fine. As everybody knows, good webapps are hard to find and even harder to do. As a related example, the GMail team is taking a similar approach except that they're rolling their own UI engine in JS. I think that this tool might handle those medium-complex UIs. At least enough that I'm going do do some serious tire-kicking with it as time allows.

[humor] Wired News: Patron Saint of the Nerds

tee hee hee

Wired News: Patron Saint of the Nerds: "NEW ORLEANS -- Here in the oldest church building in New Orleans, tucked into a dark corner by the door as far away from the main altar as possible, stands the statue of St. Expedite -- the unofficial patron saint of hackers."

Time to join the blogosphere

Time to stake out some space in the noosphere.

more to follow...