Darwin's Theories - Internet category

Islands in the Stream

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:00:00 GMT

Some will say that Apple's iPad is the be-all and the end-all of portable computing. I say nay.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Apple. But look at the history. Datapads are not a new idea - Alan Kay's DynaBook and Mark Weiser's ideas of Ubiquitous Computing - both from the 1980's, with Weiser explicitly using the term Pad - predate the iPad by almost three decades. As much as I generally dislike Microsoft, their push for the "Tablet PC" probably led to some advances in hardware. Amazon's Kindle and Sony's reader both pushed hardware makers to build better screens and raised the bar on users' expectations.

And one important thing that Weiser advocated in the 1980's is still missing (full disclosure: I admit to being in the field long enough to have read his papers when they were originally published). In Weiser's world you could just slide a task you were working on from a handheld pad to a wall-sized whiteboard or to a wristwatch-sized device for storage, and things like active TCP/IP connections would automatically move onto the new computing platform. While you may be able to drag a project from a Mac OS application to a USB stick for storage, this is a far cry from having running applications movable from one computing device to another. People are indeed working on this problem, but a general solution is not yet at hand, as far as I know. It's not something you can buy today from Redmond or from Cupertino, at any rate.

Until this happens, our computers will remain isolated islands in the stream. Even if they are iPads.

JavaFX: Late to the gate, but sweet

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 16:49:28 GMT

JavaFX is Sun's new Rich Client strategy for Java. If you haven't seen it yet, check out the demos on the JavaFX home page. Unlike Adobe Flash and unlike M$ Silverlight, this technology actually works on "minority" OSes - my OpenBSD laptop with Java 1.6.0 is officially way behind the requirements, but the demos mostly work in FireFox 3 (except you can't tear off the tear-off applet, that requires Update 10). Despite significant glitches on the web site - Sun should know better - on the day of the announcement (December 4, 2008), I'm impressed.

So much so that I've already added this JavaFX section to my Java Resources page.

Protecting Your Castle

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 16:35:00 GMT

SANS.org has a nice white paper showing how to protect your home network using OpenBSD and other free software. According to the abstract:

"It is possible to clean up the back yard with Free Open Source Software and a little design. Using off the shelf components and Open Source software the family geek can deploy a more multilayered security stance that will provide far more visibility and control over the network. This is not to say that large swaths of the Internet can be cleaned up just by plugging in a box, but to say that if anything should be a safe haven on the internet, it should be the family network, the backyard. It makes sense to clean up the backyard before taking on the world’s trash."

Presumably the same techniques would apply to the average small business. Check it out at http://www.sans.org/reading_room/whitepapers/firewalls/32933.php [PDF].

P.S. According to Bartleby, the quotation in my subtitle, while commonly attributed to William Pitt, comes to us in its present wording from a précis done by Lord Henry Peter Brougham some sixty years later.

Rage Against the Bailout

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 00:03:00 GMT

"The Bailout" came and went, the market dipped sharply the same day, and went back up the next day as "the market" did what it always does: balances out the interests of the many, impartially. Something governments will never be able to do; they shouldn't even try. All the bailout would do is postpone the agony, and, enrich the few at the expense of the many, an example of government doing what it usually does. Greenwald has a link showing that Speaker Pelosi, claiming to be acting on behalf of the people, is actually acting to save the ten million USD that she has invested in stocks of such well-managed companies as AIG and AT&T...

But the rejection of the bailout is better than a rejection of screwing the many to benefit the few; it's a rejection of the typical big-government back-room deals that are presented to the people as fait accompli. It's wonderful that so many people took the time to write, phone, fax, and email their representatives to voice their displeasure with the bailout (and, one assumes, threaten to vote against the said congress-critters in the upcoming election if they should reject vox populi). This, folks, is democracy in action, 21st Century style.

Seam Leaves Home (on good terms)

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:58:00 GMT

In addition to cranking out a new stable release (2.0.1.GA) and a new early access release (2.1.0.A1), The JBoss Seam framework has been renamed to "The Seam Framework" and has a new website, http://www.seamframework.org/. This represents a "growing up" of sorts, similar to e.g., Jakarta Tomcat becoming Apache Tomcat, and differentiates Seam from the many smaller projects that are also part of JBoss - see the new diagram at http://labs.jboss.org/projects/, and note that Seam is right there at the top of the web tier. While still funded by RedHat/JBoss, with this new domain Seam is obviously being positioned to compete head-on with similarly-named project The Spring Framework.

As part of "moving out", Seam has been given a new logo, see http://www.seamframework.org/Community/GetASeamIcon. This is used in their new web site, which is of course running on Seam and available as part of the downloads (http://www.seamframework.org/Download). Speaking of downloads, if you're using a version older than 2.0.1.GA, now would be a good time to download and upgrade.

Also, there is a new book about Seam, Seam In Action (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1933988401), which you can now buy in Early Access (http://www.manning.com/dallen/) - you get EA PDF's now and the final version when it's released, and optionally a paper copy then too.

Finally, JBoss Tools - the all-encompassing Eclipse tools for developing Seam and Hibernate projects - has been upgraded to 2.0.1.GA. You might want to download this as well.