Darwin's Theories - Internet category

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.

Now Digg This

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 04:31:00 GMT

Digg is, of course, a social networking site for rating blogs and other web resources. I just found a site that not only shows how to add a Digg button to one's blog, but applies to the particular blogging software I use, Pebble. Thanks to Patrick Melo for that blog hint!

OpenStreetMap - Toronto Mapping Weekend, Dec 1-2, 2007

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 03:08:00 GMT

OpenStreetMap is a project to build a free (unencumbered) map of the world, similar in scope to the various commercial web-based maps that you might have used. They're making good progress in some areas and, in fact, the outlines of Toronto are now pretty well fleshed out. Some of the local open source people are having a Toronto mapping weekend centered on the LinuxCaffe and, of course, I'm giving one of the presentations (Saturday at 11). If you're free for even part of the weekend, why not join us?

A Bigger, Better Tomcat Guide

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 01:40:46 GMT

My colleague in communications, Jason Brittain, has finished revising Tomcat: The Definitive Guide. The Second Edition was just released (October/November, 2007) and covers Tomcat 6.0. Coverage has been expanded in almost all areas; the first edition's 295 pages are dwarfed by the second's 462 pages. If you're using Tomcat, this is the book you should have to help you along!

IPv6 or Bust, and, Farewell IPv6 Samurai

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 16:33:00 GMT

In case you've been off-net for the last ten years, you should know that the Internet is running out of IP addresses - the telephone numbers of the Internet - at an alarming rate, and will reach the failure point within three or four years. IP is the Internet Protocol, the software that figures out how to get your Web, Email, VOIP or other data from computer A to computer B through a changing mesh of other computers, routers, and links. The designers of the current version of IP - IPv4 - were good designers but never anticipated the commercial success of the internet technology, nor did they envision internet-connected televisions, heating/cooling controls, and home networks in every home. The result is the impending doom of "Sorry, you can't have Internet service, we're all out of addresses."

The stop-gap solution of Network Address Translation (NAT, which some Linux people rebrand as "IP Masquerading"), only goes so far. Many of the protocols involved do not work over NAT. This is not the answer.

The long-term solution is IPv6 (longer article on IPv6). Don't ask what happened to IPv5; for that matter, don't ask what happened to IPv3. But I digress. IPv6 allows 128 bits of addressing, compared to IPv4's 32 bits. IPv4 thus allows just over four billion connections, and the Internet has estimated three billion already, growing about 170 million per year. IPV6, however, allows trillions of trillions of addresses. Write the number one (1). Now write seventy seven zeroes after it. That's how many connections IPV6 allows, more or less. While there are already more people on the planet than IPv4 addresses, there will never, ever be 1.15 * 10^77 people on this planet. Should our insane population growth bring us to 10 billion people, the survivors will be able to allocate 1.15 * 10^67 IPv6 addresses each. If they still have electricity to run their computers, that is.

So, how do we get from IPv4 to IPv6? That has a lot to do with politics, economics, and technology. First, we know that the herd mentality leads humanity to keep running in the wrong direction even when the cliff is pointed out to us, trying to veer away only at the abyss. Just look at how we are continuing to mis-manage the environment, the oceans, the future of the planet. Second, end users don't know or care about the problem, so they will not push their ISPs to support it. And some ISPs will say it's not their problem until users start asking for it, though some of the more sensible ones already have it up and running.

Sadly, the reality is there may not be a push to adopt IPV6 until the year 2011, when people can't get service. Then, of course, it will be done hurriedly, and poorly, and with no thought for security. But there are some pushing for its adoption; in fact IPv6 has been available for almost a decade (as soon as the Internet started becoming popular, some of its stewards realized that the address pool was too small). My own experience is with OpenBSD, the leadingly secure UNIX O/S, which has supported IPV6 for years. A man called Itojun - officially Jun-ichiro Itoh Hagino - worked tirelessly within a project called KAME to prepare a V6 implementation that would work in the BSD family of operating systems. The Kame IPv6 is now in OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and even Mac OS. Similar code is in Linux. And there is support in modern Microsoft systems. If you want to geekishly try it out before your ISP has it available, there are several "tunnel brokers"; the one I'm using is SIXXS.

As recently as a few months ago, Itojun pointed out that the current IPv6 standards committee had re-introduced a stupidity from IPv4 known as "source routing". Imagine the long-distance abuses possible if you were able to dictate to the phone company that "I want this phone call from New York to Boston to go via London, Istanbul, Beijing, Hawaii, but bill me only for the New York to Boston trip", and the phone system obeyed you without asking for administrative confirmation. Source Routing basically allows you to do this with Internet data. Itojun constructed a (carefully controlled!) test that was able to bring part of the internet to a standstill for a few seconds by routing traffic around and around and around...

So why do I mention Itojun, when the IPv6 story is much bigger? I found out yesterday that he passed away in Japan at the age of 37. Others are better able to eulogize him ( bugtraq, undeadly, sixxs) than I, who only met Itojun once or twice at OpenBSD gatherings. But he will be missed, and an important voice in the move towards saving the Internet from itself has been forever silenced.