Blogging the days...

java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class javax.crypto.SunJCE_b

2011-10-20T16:56:00.002+02:00

Check if the user actually has access rights to these JVM jars
-rw------- 1 root root 2465 Apr 28 17:28 US_export_policy.jar
-rw------- 1 root root 2481 Apr 28 17:28 local_policy.jar

Spring Integration Http Outbound Gateway and variable url

2011-09-21T21:57:00.000+02:00

I've recently had to deal with spring integration and in particular the http outbound gateway component. One possible use case for it would be to have to send the message out to an arbitrary url. In order to accomplish this, we can insert the final url in a custom header (here X-CUSTOM-HTTP-REQUEST-URL) and use the Spring expression language (SpEL) to extract the header value and pass that as a variable to the url property. Sweet!

 
<http:outbound-gateway id="httpOutboundGateway" request-channel="httpOutboundGatewayRequestChannel" url="{outboundGatewayUrl}" reply-channel="httpOutboundGatewayReplyChannel" expected-response-type="java.lang.String" charset="UTF-8">
	<http:uri-variable name="outboundGatewayUrl" expression="headers['X-CUSTOM-HTTP-REQUEST-URL']" />
</http:outbound-gateway>

PS. If Spring Integration seems to be eating your headers, there's a reason for it, you need to specifically map all non standard headers. If interested post a comment.

SoapUI XPath gotcha

2011-07-19T11:23:00.003+02:00

SoapUI has an interesting feature, it can actually wrap your JSON response and show it to you as an XML response rappresentation (by default). While your assertions will work in the editor tests will fail. Of course, there's no actual xml to validate on!

Chi altro dirà a questo paese quello che dobbiamo dire?

2010-03-31T16:41:00.004+02:00

La suddetta frase non è mia. Appartiene al movimento che ha cominciato il lungo cammino per far uscire la Serbia dalla dittatura (stroncato con l'attentato su Dzindzic). Essa mi ha spinto a scrivere questo testo. Dopo il silenzio elettorale (o meglio dire l'imbavaglimento) una riflessione sul risultato ottenuto e la direzione che sta prendendo questo paese è d'obbligo.
Ci troviamo oggi in un paese cinico e ferito. Chi è disagiato sente tutto il peso di un sistema non sostenibile sulle sue spalle. Di un sistema in crisi economica profonda che ha provocato un crampo che paralizza le nostri arti, le nostre menti e soprattuto i cuori.

Il fatto

"Cazzo" - Io, dopo aver aperto i risultati delle elezioni sulla stampa

Chi ha vinto le elezioni è stata la Lega. Gli altri "big" hanno perso.
Molti sono rimasti delusi e bisogna capire il perché è finita così.

Recente storia della strategia politica per ottenere il consenso popolare

"Eccoci di nuovo con la storia del straniero" - Io, ogni volta che sento le storie di cronaca di micro criminalità sui TG

Da anni il sistema propagandistico del cavaliere sta rodendo le orecchie di tutti; chi crea la criminalità sono gli stranieri; chi stupra sono gli stranieri; chi ammazza sono gli stranieri; chi ruba il lavoro sono gli stranieri. Chi da sempre ha alimentato le paure e si è offerto come un risolutore del "problema" è la Lega (anche se per loro quello è sempre la seconda cosa più importante). Essa fa le promesse di tenere il posto di lavoro sicuro dal straniero o i figli lontani dal straniero, tutto, basta che sia per NOI. Questo è un metodo losco e basso per ottenere il consenso popolare. L'attegiamento usato non è sconosciuto, è il pane quotidiano della politica mediterranea, dove la gente se non c'è un nemico da sconfiggere, non capisce per chi deve votare. E' l'attegamento di chi grida che devi avere paura del tizio caio africano, senno la tua vita come la conosci finirà. E' la favola che vi raccontavano da bambino, devi avere paura di xyz senno... Guarda caso, il loro partner principale controlla i principali media del paese. Loro esprimono quello che un partito mainstream non potrebbe mai dire (in un paese civile). Riccordiamolo sempre, un popolo mal-informato è un popolo che si riesce a governare.

Contesto odierno, crisi globale, la ragione della vittoria

"Un buon manager, sfrutta la crisi per farla un suo punto di forza" - Io, oggi. Probabilmente se l'ha detto anche il cavaliere.

Non c'è da sorprendersi che quando la gente ha cominciato a perdere il lavoro, fare fatica a pagare le rate e fare la spesa, l'istinto umano per incolpare qualcuno si è risvegliato e ha trovato un bersaglio facile. Visto che la Lega da anni corteggiava la politica xenofoba, il cavaliere oggi si è trovato con un potente alleato che ha portato il governo al successo elettorale.

La ragione per la perdita d'elettorato "classico"

"Bla, bla, bla" - Caci, Pierre, Bersani, Berlusconi...

La sinistra, nella sua frammentazione, non è in grado di far passare nessuna riforma sostanziale, dimostrazione - il governo Prodi, nonostante i suoi buoni propositi. La destra si è addormentata perché Berlusconi si fa i cavoli suoi invece che passare le riforme strutturali economiche veramente necessarie e l'elettorato di destra ha bisogno di risposte come tutti. Comunque, i due campi sono fermamente chiusi fuori dal mondo "di strada", c'è chi fa l'intelettuale, c'è chi fa il "ma va a lavorare", c'è chi fa il buonista cristiano, tutti che vivono isolati nel loro piccolo e che hanno paura che il loro mondo sta per crollargli adosso. Poi, sono dei politici per professione. Paura eh?

La ragione per la "vittoria" dei Grilli e DiPietristi

"La giustizia è relativa e si applica solo per gli altri." - Beppe Grillo

Se qualcuno ha aumentato il consenso sono stati gli "alternativi". Quelli che combattono ad oltranza. Il Davide contro Golia. Queli che non hanno peli sulla lingua e che a volte esagerano pure, ma a molti stufati dal stato d'impasso, loro sono gli unici che dicono qualcosa di diverso che forse potrebbe portare a cambiamenti.

Il problema del immigrazione e come viene gestito

Il fatto odierno è seguente, la destra vuole convincervi nella storiella che chi viene deve venire con un lavoro (ma è assurdo perché uno deve prima avere il lavoro) e che la Bossi-Fini funziona. Che funzioni o meno non sta a me a giudicare ma ascoltando le parole espresse sulle riunioni della associazione coordinamento migranti, ciò che emerge è che abbiamo una legge che rende il lavoratore migrante una persona ricattabile, obbligato ad accettare qualsiasi cosa dal datore di lavoro, abbassando così il prezzo del lavoro per tutti. In parole povere, un schiavo moderno! Abbiamo visto (chi ha voluto guardare) la brutta storia di Rosarno. E se parliamo del l'iter amministrativo per avere il permesso di soggiorno per motivi di lavoro diciamo che è un elogio alla Comma 22 (Catch 22). Tutto quel apparato è spreco di risorse (polizia e magistratura) usate per processare e tenere queste persone. Le scene a quali ho assistito ai CPT quando facevo le traduzioni sono veramente piccole tragedie umane di gente spesso illiterata e debole, incubi kafkiani che secondo me una società che evoca le "profondi radici cristiane" dovrebbe abolire, almeno per compassione. Tutto questo auto alimenta l'odio contro l'immigrato e dunque alimenta anche il consenso di chi sta oggi al potere.
Detta in soldoni, la legge così com'è forse anche regolarizza alcuni problemi, ma credo che sia per cattiva (forse di proposito) amministrazione, e invertimento della libertà di scelta, questa legge crea più problemi di quanti ne risolve. Quando dico inverte la libertà di scelta intendo che una persona vuole vivere la sua vita e non sentirsi un utensile il quale scopo e produrre, pagare le tasse e riprodursi. Non è un obbligo per un italiano, non dovrebbe essere un'obbligo per nessuno.

Chi sta al governo

"Obama ha tutto: è bello, giovane e abbronzato" - Berlusconi

Per quanto mi riguarda Berlusconi come politico non risponde a nessuna esigenza particolare che mi aspetto da un leader politico. Non mi appare morale, appare che la sua unica preoccupazione è combattere per se stesso e i suoi, rode le istituzioni e le garanzie che una democrazia deve mantenere salde se vogliamo avere un popolo che si fidi dello stato. Detto ciò è un stratega geniale che sopratutto legge molto bene i sondaggi e sa bene gestire gli alleati. Il suo commento che la sinistra vuole dare la cittadinanza agli immigrati per avere più voti secondo me coglie proprio nel segno e espone la sua più grande paura, visto che lui sulla paura ha scomesso tutto.

L'alternativa e la lotta contro l'intolleranza

"Ehi, voglio giocare anch'io!" - Io, quando ero bambino.

Visto che non mi sento di parlare del cosa va fatto per migliorare questo paese da un punto di vista delle riforme perché non sono competente, parlerò solo sull'argomento che mi riguarda, cioè la situazione del straniero e una sua eventuale integrazione.
L'integrazione come lo vorebbe la Lega con una "permesso a punti" è una farsa. Lo straniero non viene da nulla e non è tabula rasa su quale si possono impartire dei valori senza avere un confronto o consenso. L'unica integrazione possibile sarebbe aprire il sistema politico alla partecipazione e sopratutto aprirsi alla integrazione sociale e mentale. Come qualsiasi rapporto umano, è impossibile immaginare che il dialogo si svolge in una direzione sola. Si deve essere pronti ad insegnare ma anche ad imparare. Accettare l'altro, avere l'empatia per la sua posizione riconoscere il suo valore in base allo merito e stile di vita. E non è detto che funzionerà con tutti ma è l'unico modo, fra l'altro sicuro e giusto a lungo termine. Il rischio dell'alternativa è la creazione di ghetto e situazioni come la Francia di alta tensione sociale o più pericolosamente alimentare celle terroriste.
Se veramente si vuole interrogare qualcuno sulla costituzione allora quello dovrebbe avere anche la possibilità di partecipare al voto. Un dovere -> un diritto, no? Quando uno della Lega dice "a casa nostra devono accettare le nostre regole" io mi chiedo, io a "casa tua" non ti dico cosa devi fare, io vivo in una società che va ben oltre la casa tua, interagisco con tutti, accetto e rispetto le regole imposte ma ho il diritto di esprimere la mia. Fa parte della democrazia, è un diritto e dovere dire la sua. Oggi lo straniero non è un partecipante attivo, non è informato, è degradato, le varie etnie non sono compatte nella loro ricerca per maggiori diritti e il sistema è fatto in modo per far tutto ciò il più difficile possibile. Si devono creare meccanismi di integrazione ma non con sistemi da prima elementare. E' un argomento serio. Sono quasi compiacuto del sistema americano della Affirmative Action anche se va contro la meritocrazia (credo che a grandi numeri, i stranieri hanno persone in media ugualmente competenti/incompetenti come gli italiani).

Dove possono andare i campi politici

"Ieri è storia, domani è un mistero, ma oggi... è un dono. Per questo si chiama presente." Kung Fu Panda

Oggi è possibile avere due destre, una dove l'immigrato è accettato come qualsiasi cittadino (modello Fini) o quello di Bossi/Berlusconi che gioca sulla carte della non-tolleranza. In base a quello la destra deciderà se le conviene lasciarsi aperta al voto straniero o meno (e dunque anche al voto della Lega o meno). Come sono messe le cose, non vedo proprio che Fini abbia le forze per cambiare l'impostazione odierna.
Il concetto della sinistra, almeno per quanto mi riguarda, non le permetterebbe nemmeno a fare questa distinzione. Se giudico però l'operato del ultimo governo di sinistra, c'era un silenzio assenso per non modificare la Bossi-Fini anche perché esiste un bel cordone lobbistico che protegge il sistema in piedi e non si è fatto abbastanza. Si deve lavorare ancora per rompere i taboo, i pregiudizi e vedere il valore politico di questa scelta.
Gli States ci insegnano che un sistema perpetrato sulla ingiustizia non potrà mai andare al infinito, specialmente se basato su valori cristiani e secolari. Non sono un amante di come si comportano nel mondo ma di fatto, hanno abolito la schiavitù, e hanno alla fine dato i diritti dove i diritti andavano attribuiti. Hanno avuto la forza e coraggio e alla fine sono usciti più forti come paese. Chi si è sempre detto che è contro il comunismo, e che è un gran catollico, sembra che vede solo ciò che vuole vedere.
Lo dico esplicitamente, chi permetterà l'integrazione sarà premiato dal voto straniero, oggi e nel futuro.

Una nota seria ma con un pizzico di paternismo e ironia

Siamo bambini per metterci paura con delle bugie o storie di micro criminalità? Siamo bambini per non renderci conto che i problemi si risolvono non incolpando gli altri? I stranieri sono un motore acceso e rovente dell'economia. Ricordiamo che la guerra civile USA era per la forza lavoro? Vogliamo capire che chi vincerà la guerra economica oggi deve avere una forza di lavoro adeguata? Come combattiamo la Cina, l'America, l'India? Con tre gatti messi in un ufficio che si girano i pollici aspettando un cliente convinti che il loro know-how è imparegiabile, superlativo, genuino? Ci vogliono le braccia. Ci vogliono le riforme che nessun partito politico è andato abbastanza in fondo negli ultimi decenni per farli applicare. Ci vuole l'educazione. Ci vuole l'empatia. Ci vogliono gli investimenti e quando gli soldi mancano, allora bisogna rendersi conto che non è più possibile godersi la bella vita e che certe spese inutili/truffaldine vanno scovate e tagliate.
Vogliamo rimanere ricordati come la generazione che aveva paura, l'apatia di affrontare i problemi del secolo? L'immigrazione è un trend in crescita e che non fa segni di indebolimento. Se le previsioni climatiche si avvereranno e si alza il livello dei mari, nuove migrazioni potrebbero essere in arrivo e i numeri sarebbero drammatici. Se succede, l'Europa deve avere un piano pronto per affrontare tali situazioni.

I nostri nonni non erano così. Avevano un problema, c'è chi ha deciso di andare da un lato e chi da un'altro. E la storia si sa come è andata. Gli imperi basati su ingiustizia e menzogne prima o poi cadono. Il mondo muta. E' sta mutando da sempre. Siamo noi che abbiamo la memoria breve. Chi pensa che l'immigrazione è un fenomeno nuovo deve guardare il vicino di casa, perché anche se italiano, c'è una traccia di quel popolo o un'altro. Le proiezioni sono chiare, ci saranno sempre di più persone che cercheranno di venire in Europa. Dobbiamo essere un paese che non ha paura di affrontare il problema in modo umano e coerente con i nostri valori. Mandare gli immigrati in Libia dove ci sono voci di campi di concentramento, stupri e omicidi, anche con un minimo dubbio, è a dir poco, inumano.

E dunque rilancio e faccio una provocazione.
Nominiamo Fini presidente del PD! Scherzo, si rischia di vincere.
Sul serio, nominiamo Grillo! Scherzo, si rischia di andare in paradiso.
Sinceramene, sareì contento anche se Berlusconi va in pensione e gli si concede l'immunità per vita natural durante.
Cioè per le cose fatte prima della pensione, non esageriamo.

Io non credo che Italia sia un paese senza corraggio di cambiare.

Restless

2010-03-28T03:33:00.002+02:00

A car sweeps the evening streets. I hear this from my room. I feel the spring breeze entering the window. Restless for the day that's to come.

Einstuerzende Neubauten - Beauty

2010-03-25T11:59:00.000+01:00

Beauty
You see half the moon, its crescent, and one of the planets, maybe Saturn, maybe Jupiter, in the early night sky over Berlin, through the windows of a taxicab, near Potsdamer Platz.

You think: Beauty.

No, this is not beauty, maybe not, maybe, this is the rest of it, maybe not, maybe, the rest of beauty,
maybe not, maybe, what remains of beauty, maybe not, maybe, what is visible, certainly, uncertain.
Your arms would not be able to stretch as far as necessary to form an adequate gesture for beauty
(You know that, don't you?).
So, [ ] beauty remains in the impossibilities of the body.

Queen - Who Wants To Live Forever

2010-03-24T17:22:00.001+01:00

There's no time for us
There's no place for us
What is this thing that builds our dreams yet slips away
From us

Who wants to live forever
Who wants to live forever....?

There's no chance for us
Its all decided for us
This world has only one sweet moment set aside for us

Who wants to live forever
Who wants to live forever?

Who dares to love forever?
When love must die

But touch my tears with your lips
Touch my world with your fingertips
And we can have forever
And we can love forever
Forever is our today
Who wants to live forever
Who wants to live forever?
Forever is our today

Who waits forever anyway?

PS. Blog post 200 :)

Don't drink and phone

2010-03-17T10:36:00.004+01:00

I hereby put this idea in the public domain hoping that it will be implemented (and not patented) as soon as possible.
As probably many of you know (yes, you too) drinking more often than not, alters your state of mind and inhibitions. This results in some bad judgement calls, by example, calling people at 3AM or sending messages you really shouldn't (or should you?).
I propose that an additional sensor be added on phones that measures the alcohol in the users breath. The phone could then warn the user not to make that call or it could present the user with a password or math test question in order to discourage it's use.
What do you think?

Ma il cielo è sempre più blu, Rino Gaetano

2010-03-12T11:15:00.000+01:00

Chi vive in baracca, chi suda il salario
chi ama l’amore e i sogni di gloria
chi ruba pensioni, chi ha scarsa memoria
Chi mangia una volta, chi tira al bersaglio
chi vuole l’aumento, chi gioca a Sanremo
chi porta gli occhiali, chi va sotto un treno
Chi ama la zia, chi va a Porta Pia
chi trova scontato, chi come ha trovato
na na na na na na na na na
Ma il cielo è sempre più blu uh uh, uh uh,
ma il cielo è sempre più blu uh uh, uh uh, uh uh…
Chi sogna i milioni, chi gioca d’azzardo
chi gioca coi fili, chi ha fatto l’indiano
chi fa il contadino, chi spazza i cortili
chi ruba, chi lotta, chi ha fatto la spia
na na na na na na na na na
Ma il cielo è sempre più blu uh uh, uh uh,
ma il cielo è sempre più blu uh uh, uh uh, uh uh…
Chi è assunto alla Zecca, chi ha fatto cilecca
chi ha crisi interiori, chi scava nei cuori
chi legge la mano, chi regna sovrano
chi suda, chi lotta, chi mangia una volta
chi gli manca la casa, chi vive da solo
chi prende assai poco, chi gioca col fuoco
chi vive in Calabria, chi vive d’amore
chi ha fatto la guerra, chi prende il sessanta
chi arriva agli ottanta, chi muore al lavoro
na na na na na na na na na
Ma il cielo è sempre più blu uh uh, uh uh,
ma il cielo è sempre più blu uh uh, uh uh,
ma il cielo è sempre più blu
Chi è assicurato, chi è stato multato
chi possiede ed è avuto, chi va in farmacia
chi è morto di invidia o di gelosia
chi ha torto o ragione, chi è Napoleone
chi grida “al ladro!”, chi ha l’antifurto
chi ha fatto un bel quadro, chi scrive sui muri
chi reagisce d’istinto, chi ha perso, chi ha vinto
chi mangia una volta, chi vuole l’aumento
chi cambia la barca felice e contento
chi come ha trovato, chi tutto sommato
chi sogna i milioni, chi gioca d’azzardo
chi parte per Beirut e ha in tasca un miliardo
chi è stato multato, chi odia i terroni
chi canta Prévert, chi copia Baglioni
chi fa il contadino, chi ha fatto la spia
chi è morto d’invidia o di gelosia
chi legge la mano, chi vende amuleti
chi scrive poesie, chi tira le reti
chi mangia patate, chi beve un bicchiere
chi solo ogni tanto, chi tutte le sere
na na na na na na na na na
Ma il cielo è sempre più blu uh uh, uh uh,
ma il cielo è sempre più blu uh uh, uh uh, uh uh

Strepnja - Desanka Maksimovic

2010-02-26T23:27:00.000+01:00

Ne, nemoj mi prici! Hocu izdaleka
da volim i zelim oka tvoja dva.
Jer sreca je lepa samo dok se ceka,
dok od sebe samo nagovestaj da.

Ne, nemoj mi prici! Ima vise drazi
ova slatka strepnja, cekanje i stra'.
Sve je mnogo lepse donde dok se trazi,
o cemu se samo tek po slutnji zna.

Ne, nemoj mi prici! Nasto to, i cemu?
Izdaleka samo sve k'o zvezda sja;
izdaleka samo divimo se svemu.
Ne, nek' mi ne pridju oka tvoja dva.

PREVERT Paris at night

2010-02-26T03:04:00.000+01:00

Tre fiammiferi accesi uno per uno nella notte
Il primo per vederti tutto il viso
Il secondo per vederti gli occhi
L'ultimo per vedere la tua bocca
E tutto il buio per ricordarmi queste cose
Mentre ti stringo fra le braccia.

Pubblicato Course Manager

2010-02-06T19:06:00.003+01:00

Una delle responsabilità che mi sono preso ultimamente è di gestire la manutenzione di Course Manager, una applicazione per la gestione delle scuole di ballo. Passata una fase di collaudo in un paio di scuole, abbiamo deciso di sperimentare anche pubblicando una versione di demo su internet limitata e 10 utenti. Speriamo che tutte le scuole interessate potranno facilmente provare Course Manager e trovare il prodotto interessante e utile per svolgere le loro mansioni. Potete trovarla qui.

SQL Server 2008 Express Edition with tools bootstrapper and .Net Framework 3.5 SP1

2009-12-19T17:43:00.002+01:00

Since we shifted our focus on a desktop application, I've started maintaining a .Net desktop client that depends on a SQL Server Express 2008 installed. As we need to start giving away a trial of the product it was necessary to develop a installer. It was not so nice to discover that adding SQL Server Exress 2008 as a requirement wasn't so immediate in VS 2008. (Actually, installing SQL Server in itself wasn't so easy as I had Windows 7 64bit RC1). Thanks to a blog I've managed to add the requirement Bootstrapper for SQL Server 2008 Express Edition with Tools but it would seem that the package itself depends on .Net 3.5SP1 that is also not included with VS 2008. This bootstrapper can be added as well if you follow the instructions found here under the chapter 2.3.1.1 (Enable Samesite for the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 bootstrapper package). In the end of the day, installer is ready and the application can be given away with reasonable expectation that it'll just work.
A job well done. :)
Now if I can just make that autorun...

Nexus One

2009-12-18T12:23:00.003+01:00

I just saw on engadget the exclusive photos of the Nexus One and I must say it seems rather sweet. The interface seems very clean and the screen also. What are the internal specs however, CPU, GPU, who knows? We'll just have to wait to find out.
Hmm.... I know what I want for New Year's :)))

Search and Replace in ODT using AODL

2009-09-28T14:42:00.006+02:00

Recently I needed to create a way to search and replace a word in a OpenOffice OpenDocument ODT. It would seem the project itself already has a library AODL (take care, at least two other project pages but with older code) that exposes the format model but I didn't find any utility methods like search and replace functionality. I've created two versions of the method, one a old-style, imperative approach, and the other, a LINQ version. As I'm still new to LINQ it would seem that the classical approach produces a more efficient code. Anyone care to chip in and make a faster algorithm? In this particular version I'm just going for simple string equality, I didn't want to go with other StringComparison methods (just look at the Equals overload method).


 public static void SearchAndReplaceString(TextDocument document, string searchText, string replaceText)
        {
            var content = document.Content;
            
            foreach (var item in content)
            {
                if (item is Paragraph)
                {
                    foreach (var textContent in ((Paragraph)item).TextContent)
                    {
                        if (textContent.Text == searchText)
                        {
                            textContent.Text = replaceText;
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }


 public static void SearchAndReplaceStringLINQ(TextDocument document, string searchText, string replaceText)
        {
            var content = document.Content;

            IEnumerable<Paragraph> paragraphs =
                from item in content
                where item is Paragraph
                select (Paragraph)item;


            foreach (var paragraph in paragraphs)
            {
                var paragraphText = paragraph.TextContent.Where<IText>(t => t.Text == searchText);
                foreach (var textItem in paragraphText)
                {
                    textItem.Text = replaceText;
                }
            }
        }

I should point out this method matches only single words.

Fix 1. Replace text if under table structure, doesn't work if the Cell is in the header.


public static void SearchAndReplaceString(TextDocument document, string searchText, string replaceText)
        {
            var content = document.Content;
            ReplaceInContent(searchText, replaceText, content);
        }

        private static void ReplaceInContent(string searchText, string replaceText, ContentCollection content)
        {
            foreach (var item in content)
            {
                if (item is Paragraph)
                {
                    foreach (var textContent in ((Paragraph)item).TextContent)
                    {
                        if (textContent.Text == searchText)
                        {
                            textContent.Text = replaceText;
                        }
                    }
                }
                else if (item is Table)
                {
                    foreach (var row in ((Table)item).Rows)
                    {
                        foreach (var cell in row.Cells)
                        {
                            var cellContent = cell.Content;
                            ReplaceInContent(searchText, replaceText, cellContent);
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }

Relaxing SSL validation for JaxWS

2009-06-17T18:11:00.005+02:00

I've recently had the need to access a web service developed in .Net and signed with a self signed certificate. I've decided to use the JaxWS and the Metro stack to develop the client and run it on Java6. As a plus, the service was protected with username and password. The service was exposed on an IP address and I repetedly had problems in establishing a connection. In the end, thanks to this article, it was obvious that the certificate was not created with the alternative name attribute but it was not an option to change the certificate as the web service was already used by other consumers (.net clients don't suffer by this issue).
So, on my quest to relax the validation, I've found out this article and code snippet, which did not compile at first (I guess package names were changed in JDK6) so I've did some trivial refactoring and now, after invoking the static methods in the client code, the SSL connection gets validated with no problems. Hope it helps and thanks to the original authors.


/*
* To change this template, choose Tools | Templates
* and open the template in the editor.
*/
package adhocclient2;

/**
*
* @author schrepfler
*/
import java.security.GeneralSecurityException;
import java.security.SecureRandom;
import java.security.cert.CertificateException;
import java.security.cert.X509Certificate;
import javax.net.ssl.HostnameVerifier;
import javax.net.ssl.HttpsURLConnection;
import javax.net.ssl.SSLContext;
import javax.net.ssl.SSLSession;
import javax.net.ssl.TrustManager;
import javax.net.ssl.X509TrustManager;

/**
* This class provide various static methods that relax X509 certificate and
* hostname verification while using the SSL over the HTTP protocol.
*
* @author    Francis Labrie
*/
public final class SSLUtilities {

   /**
    * Hostname verifier for the Sun's deprecated API.
    *
    * @deprecated see {@link #_hostnameVerifier}.
    */
   private static HostnameVerifier __hostnameVerifier;
   /**
    * Thrust managers for the Sun's deprecated API.
    *
    * @deprecated see {@link #_trustManagers}.
    */
   private static TrustManager[] __trustManagers;
   /**
    * Hostname verifier.
    */
   private static HostnameVerifier _hostnameVerifier;
   /**
    * Thrust managers.
    */
   private static TrustManager[] _trustManagers;

   /**
    * Set the default Hostname Verifier to an instance of a fake class that
    * trust all hostnames. This method uses the old deprecated API from the
    * com.sun.ssl package.
    *
    * @deprecated see {@link #_trustAllHostnames()}.
    */
   private static void __trustAllHostnames() {
       // Create a trust manager that does not validate certificate chains
       if (__hostnameVerifier == null) {
           __hostnameVerifier = new _FakeHostnameVerifier();
       } // if
       // Install the all-trusting host name verifier
       HttpsURLConnection.setDefaultHostnameVerifier(__hostnameVerifier);
   } // __trustAllHttpsCertificates

   /**
    * Set the default X509 Trust Manager to an instance of a fake class that
    * trust all certificates, even the self-signed ones. This method uses the
    * old deprecated API from the com.sun.ssl package.
    *
    * @deprecated see {@link #_trustAllHttpsCertificates()}.
    */
   private static void __trustAllHttpsCertificates() {
       SSLContext context;

       // Create a trust manager that does not validate certificate chains
       if (__trustManagers == null) {
           __trustManagers = new TrustManager[]{new _FakeX509TrustManager()};
       } // if
       // Install the all-trusting trust manager
       try {
           context = SSLContext.getInstance("SSL");
           context.init(null, __trustManagers, new SecureRandom());
       } catch (GeneralSecurityException gse) {
           throw new IllegalStateException(gse.getMessage());
       } // catch
       HttpsURLConnection.setDefaultSSLSocketFactory(context.getSocketFactory());
   } // __trustAllHttpsCertificates

   /**
    * Return true if the protocol handler property java.
    * protocol.handler.pkgs is set to the Sun's com.sun.net.ssl.
    * internal.www.protocol deprecated one, false
    * otherwise.
    *
    * @return                true if the protocol handler
    * property is set to the Sun's deprecated one, false
    * otherwise.
    */
   private static boolean isDeprecatedSSLProtocol() {
       return ("com.sun.net.ssl.internal.www.protocol".equals(System.getProperty("java.protocol.handler.pkgs")));
   } // isDeprecatedSSLProtocol

   /**
    * Set the default Hostname Verifier to an instance of a fake class that
    * trust all hostnames.
    */
   private static void _trustAllHostnames() {
       // Create a trust manager that does not validate certificate chains
       if (_hostnameVerifier == null) {
           _hostnameVerifier = new FakeHostnameVerifier();
       } // if
       // Install the all-trusting host name verifier:
       HttpsURLConnection.setDefaultHostnameVerifier(_hostnameVerifier);
   } // _trustAllHttpsCertificates

   /**
    * Set the default X509 Trust Manager to an instance of a fake class that
    * trust all certificates, even the self-signed ones.
    */
   private static void _trustAllHttpsCertificates() {
       SSLContext context;

       // Create a trust manager that does not validate certificate chains
       if (_trustManagers == null) {
           _trustManagers = new TrustManager[]{new FakeX509TrustManager()};
       } // if
       // Install the all-trusting trust manager:
       try {
           context = SSLContext.getInstance("SSL");
           context.init(null, _trustManagers, new SecureRandom());
       } catch (GeneralSecurityException gse) {
           throw new IllegalStateException(gse.getMessage());
       } // catch
       HttpsURLConnection.setDefaultSSLSocketFactory(context.getSocketFactory());
   } // _trustAllHttpsCertificates

   /**
    * Set the default Hostname Verifier to an instance of a fake class that
    * trust all hostnames.
    */
   public static void trustAllHostnames() {
       // Is the deprecated protocol setted?
       if (isDeprecatedSSLProtocol()) {
           __trustAllHostnames();
       } else {
           _trustAllHostnames();
       } // else
   } // trustAllHostnames

   /**
    * Set the default X509 Trust Manager to an instance of a fake class that
    * trust all certificates, even the self-signed ones.
    */
   public static void trustAllHttpsCertificates() {
       // Is the deprecated protocol setted?
       if (isDeprecatedSSLProtocol()) {
           __trustAllHttpsCertificates();
       } else {
           _trustAllHttpsCertificates();
       } // else
   } // trustAllHttpsCertificates

   /**
    * This class implements a fake hostname verificator, trusting any host
    * name. This class uses the old deprecated API from the com.sun.
    * ssl package.
    *
    * @author    Francis Labrie
    *
    * @deprecated see {@link SSLUtilities.FakeHostnameVerifier}.
    */
   public static class _FakeHostnameVerifier
           implements HostnameVerifier {

       /**
        * Always return true, indicating that the host name is an
        * acceptable match with the server's authentication scheme.
        *
        * @param hostname        the host name.
        * @param session         the SSL session used on the connection to
        * host.
        * @return                the true boolean value
        * indicating the host name is trusted.
        */
       public boolean verify(String hostname, SSLSession session) {
           return (true);
       }
   } // _FakeHostnameVerifier

   /**
    * This class allow any X509 certificates to be used to authenticate the
    * remote side of a secure socket, including self-signed certificates. This
    * class uses the old deprecated API from the com.sun.ssl
    * package.
    *
    * @author    Francis Labrie
    *
    * @deprecated see {@link SSLUtilities.FakeX509TrustManager}.
    */
   public static class _FakeX509TrustManager
           implements X509TrustManager {

       /**
        * Empty array of certificate authority certificates.
        */
       private static final X509Certificate[] _AcceptedIssuers =
               new X509Certificate[]{};

       /**
        * Always return true, trusting for client SSL
        * chain peer certificate chain.
        *
        * @param chain           the peer certificate chain.
        * @return                the true boolean value
        * indicating the chain is trusted.
        */
       public boolean isClientTrusted(X509Certificate[] chain) {
           return (true);
       } // checkClientTrusted

       /**
        * Always return true, trusting for server SSL
        * chain peer certificate chain.
        *
        * @param chain           the peer certificate chain.
        * @return                the true boolean value
        * indicating the chain is trusted.
        */
       public boolean isServerTrusted(X509Certificate[] chain) {
           return (true);
       } // checkServerTrusted

       /**
        * Return an empty array of certificate authority certificates which
        * are trusted for authenticating peers.
        *
        * @return                a empty array of issuer certificates.
        */
       public X509Certificate[] getAcceptedIssuers() {
           return (_AcceptedIssuers);
       } // getAcceptedIssuers

       public void checkClientTrusted(X509Certificate[] arg0, String arg1) throws CertificateException {
           throw new UnsupportedOperationException("Not supported yet.");
       }

       public void checkServerTrusted(X509Certificate[] arg0, String arg1) throws CertificateException {
           throw new UnsupportedOperationException("Not supported yet.");
       }
   } // _FakeX509TrustManager

   /**
    * This class implements a fake hostname verificator, trusting any host
    * name.
    *
    * @author    Francis Labrie
    */
   public static class FakeHostnameVerifier implements HostnameVerifier {

       /**
        * Always return true, indicating that the host name is
        * an acceptable match with the server's authentication scheme.
        *
        * @param hostname        the host name.
        * @param session         the SSL session used on the connection to
        * host.
        * @return                the true boolean value
        * indicating the host name is trusted.
        */
       public boolean verify(String hostname,
               SSLSession session) {
           return (true);
       } // verify
   } // FakeHostnameVerifier

   /**
    * This class allow any X509 certificates to be used to authenticate the
    * remote side of a secure socket, including self-signed certificates.
    *
    * @author    Francis Labrie
    */
   public static class FakeX509TrustManager implements X509TrustManager {

       /**
        * Empty array of certificate authority certificates.
        */
       private static final X509Certificate[] _AcceptedIssuers =
               new X509Certificate[]{};

       /**
        * Always trust for client SSL chain peer certificate
        * chain with any authType authentication types.
        *
        * @param chain           the peer certificate chain.
        * @param authType        the authentication type based on the client
        * certificate.
        */
       public void checkClientTrusted(X509Certificate[] chain,
               String authType) {
       } // checkClientTrusted

       /**
        * Always trust for server SSL chain peer certificate
        * chain with any authType exchange algorithm types.
        *
        * @param chain           the peer certificate chain.
        * @param authType        the key exchange algorithm used.
        */
       public void checkServerTrusted(X509Certificate[] chain,
               String authType) {
       } // checkServerTrusted

       /**
        * Return an empty array of certificate authority certificates which
        * are trusted for authenticating peers.
        *
        * @return                a empty array of issuer certificates.
        */
       public X509Certificate[] getAcceptedIssuers() {
           return (_AcceptedIssuers);
       } // getAcceptedIssuers
   } // FakeX509TrustManager
} // SSLUtilities

GWT SuggestBoxReloaded

2009-04-06T00:37:00.018+02:00

This article will present how to implement a GWT 1.6 (RC2) SuggestBox with backing hidden fields, RPC calls and not query the server on every character event.
While integrating GWT on work, I needed to implement a SuggestBox with a backend RPC service but I had some requirements that the default SuggestBox didn't fulfill. Namely, I needed that the suggestion sets hidden fields (ex. displaying a human readable name for the user and setting a hidden id field). The solution presented in GWT SuggestBox backed by DTO Model and the Using the GWT SuggestBox with RPC were very helpful in creating this example project. I advise you to read/implement them before reading further in order to understand the issues.
The first article hit the sweet point on how to pass hidden values using the DTO pattern, you can either wrap your hidden fields (Hidden.wrap) or as in this example we'll instantiate them using GWT and add them to the panel. The next issues were following, 1. You need to be able to clear the value either by a button or by deleting the text in the TextBox, 2. The Lombardi solution presented an issue as it sent out every query string, 3. Enable some sort of reusability of the generated javascript client.
First of all I created three basic Suggestion classes, IdEnabledSuggestion, TextEnabledSuggestion and SimpleSuggestion. These three probably cover 90% of the cases (actually, the TextEnabledSuggestion can replace IdEnabledSuggestion just as well), otherwise you can add a DTO with the data you need, just remember that you must put the DTO class in the /client package, in my first trials I had it outside which led to problems.

 
public class IdEnabledSuggestion implements IsSerializable, Suggestion {
 
 private String displayString, replacementString;
 private Long id;
 
 public IdEnabledSuggestion(){
  
 }
 
 public IdEnabledSuggestion(String displayString, String replacementString, Long id){
  this.displayString = displayString;
  this.replacementString = replacementString;
  this.id = id;
 }

 public String getDisplayString() {
  return displayString;
 }

 public String getReplacementString() {
  return replacementString;
 }
 
 public Long getId() {
  return id;
 }
}

Then you extend the RemoteService interface and also the Async version. In order to achieve reusability, I've added an enum that acts as a switch, that way I can group all suggestion methods under the same servlet. A even more flexible solution would be to add a text parameter to the javascript client that would switch the endpoint ending on separate url's, probably using ServiceDefTarget.setServiceEntryPoint(String), but as I don't really like declaring a servlet for each endpoint I would recommend that solution with some kind of rest/mvc framework, I would love to see someone extending this example with struts2 and spring mvc endpoints :)

 
@RemoteServiceRelativePath("oracle")
public interface OracleService extends RemoteService {
 
 public SuggestOracle.Response getSuggestions(SuggestOracle.Request search, Oracles oracle);

 public static class Util {
  public static OracleServiceAsync getInstance() {
   OracleServiceAsync instance = (OracleServiceAsync) GWT.create(OracleService.class);
   return instance;
  }
 }
}

In order to solve the second issue, and avoid sending queries on every key event, I have extracted a SuggestOracle.Request and SuggestOracle.Callback on a instance level. When a user inserts a query, I temporarily set the variables and schedule the timer, this way, even if new events come, they overwrite the instance variables effectively caching them for later so when the time passes the service gets invoked once and only once with the last query.
It's a simple trick that produces the expected actions and I hope I'm not missing some threading, timer or leakage issue?
I've added also setters so that you can set your delay and minimum number of characters needed to send the query.
I then wrap the Hidden, the SuggestBox and a widget that implements HasClickHandlers in a object that adds the various handlers to manage form state and you are good to go. :)

 
public class HiddenSuggestBox {
 
 private SuggestBox suggestBox;
 private Hidden hidden;
 private HasClickHandlers clearWidget;
 
 public HiddenSuggestBox(SuggestBox suggestBox, Hidden hidden, HasClickHandlers clearWidget) {
  super();
  this.suggestBox = suggestBox;
  this.hidden = hidden;
  this.clearWidget = clearWidget;
  this.suggestBox.addSelectionHandler(new MySelectionHandler());
  this.suggestBox.getTextBox().addValueChangeHandler(new ClearTextBox());
  this.clearWidget.addClickHandler(new ClearValueHandler());
 }
 
 private class MySelectionHandler implements SelectionHandler<suggestion> {
  public void onSelection(SelectionEvent<suggestion> event) {
   if(event.getSelectedItem() instanceof TextEnabledSuggestion){
    TextEnabledSuggestion suggestion = (TextEnabledSuggestion)event.getSelectedItem();
    hidden.setValue(suggestion.getText());
   } else if(event.getSelectedItem() instanceof IdEnabledSuggestion){
    IdEnabledSuggestion suggestion = (IdEnabledSuggestion)event.getSelectedItem();
    hidden.setValue(suggestion.getId()+"");
   } else {
    hidden.setValue(event.getSelectedItem().getReplacementString());
   }
   
  }
 }

 private class ClearTextBox implements ValueChangeHandler<string> {
  public void onValueChange(ValueChangeEvent<string> event) {
   if(event.getValue().trim().equals("")){
    suggestBox.getTextBox().setValue("");
    hidden.setValue("");
   }
  }
 }
 private class ClearValueHandler implements ClickHandler {
  public void onClick(ClickEvent event) {
   hidden.setValue("");
   suggestBox.setValue("");
  }
 }
}

eclipse project archive
You might need to set JVM in launcher and ant script.

No row with the given identifier exists

2008-10-10T02:20:00.005+02:00

I've recently gotten this infamous Exception while doing a HQL query.

org.hibernate.ObjectNotFoundException: No row with the given identifier exists: [it.linksystem.csai.model.Operator#3]

This was rather strange as the system worked quite well and it successfully retrieved selects on that entity using the Criteria API.
Looking on the net, most suggestions and FAQ's point to a different direction. My issue was rather simple mapping error. The entity on which I was doing selects, was referencing an Operator. In my (java) model, Admin inherits from Operator, and both inherit from User. In fact persisting the entities was no problem no matter if the entity persisted was referencing an Admin or Operator. If however there was an instance that referenced an Admin hibernate would launch the Exception if one executed a HQL query (I guess Criteria queries follow a different path to create the select and are immune to this issue).
My mistake was that I didn't know you can nest a subclass tag in another subclass tag in the hbm file so I've put all subclasses directly under User. Once I've moved Admin under Operator the HQL works fine.
I hope this will help somebody.

Turning off Asus M50S light sensor

2008-08-12T19:55:00.005+02:00

As I've recently gotten this nice laptop, I've found that the light sensor really makes more problems then it solves so I'm shutting it down in both Windows (Fn+A) and in Linux.
Under linux all you need to do is:

echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/asus-laptop/ls_switch

This fix is valid only for the current session, to persist the settings just install sysfsutils and then in /etc/sysfs.conf put

devices/platform/asus-laptop/ls_switch=0

JBuilder 2008 and Windows Vista problems

2008-08-07T03:46:00.002+02:00

So let's say you try to install JBuilder 2008 under Windows Vista (32bit). Did all went smoothly? A friend of mine got a nice JVM terminated Exit code=-1 error. It would seem that if you modify the JBuilder.ini -Xmx parameter (initially over 800M) to 700M or 600M and if you run reset_JBuilder.bat it might finish the installation. An alternative is to modify JBuilder.ini the moment it gets created so you don't have to wait twice.
Also it would seem sometimes class diagrams won't show classes. My friend deleted all com.ibm.icu* packages and jars under JBuilder and put com.ibm.icu_3.8.1.v20080530.jar from eclipse 3.4 to the jbuilder 2088 plugins directory.
For the moment things seem to function.

On HC

2007-12-28T10:40:00.000+01:00

As often things go, you sometimes don't notice things that are integral part of your life. Yesterday I was in company with my cousin and his girlfriend and we noticed this weird thing we decided to call HC which stands for hardcore. Basically, its stands for compulsive-obsessive attention to "details" like water drops after washing the dishes, having things clean at all times, not allowing other people to slip up and often venting on them if they make a mistake. Of course like any good HC person I don't consider this things minor details :)
The point is, is it a virtue, or is it a problem? Should we vent on other people when they make a mistake, how should we do it? Is it only a symptoms of something much deeper or a better capacity to adapt to harsher conditions of life?
Anyhow, on this bright note, if I don't manage to concoct one more blog post for the holidays, I wish you all the best for the New Year 2008 and may all your wishes come true!
PS. It won't happen if you leave all your clothes around all the time ;)

27 and counting

2007-10-19T12:20:00.000+02:00

One more year has passed. My life had some drammatic ups and downs than this year. I can't say I'm full out in the clear, but I've closed some things from the past and can look with hope to the future. I can't be happier for having so many good friends and I know things are going to get better.
As it's wishing time, I'd like for java to have verbatim literals, that means you could omit the backslash in front of special characters (like the backslash itself) ex:

"Backslash: \\" <==> @"Backslash: \"

I think this would allow us to much easier copy/paste regex code from existing regex expressions.

Tose Proeski 1981-2007

2007-10-16T11:22:00.000+02:00

In a tragic accident between his VW Tuareg and a truck on the Zagreb - Lipovac highway (Croatia), the best Macedonian pop artist Tose Proevski was killed in an instant.
He followed my generation with his beautiful voice and gave us truly splendid memories that we will share forever. A truly wonderful person, humanitarian and ambassador of goodwill that will be missed by all.

3 Excellent satirical shows

2007-09-19T01:35:00.000+02:00

For about a year or so, I've been listening to the Bill Maher Real Time podcast which is a recording of the HBO show of the same name. It's amazing as in this day and age comedians are the ONLY people that can speak freely against the actions of their own governments (and when they were censored we can freely say they were REGIMES) even if the countries are actually democracies. Look at Italy where the best political comments came out of comedians like Sabina Guzzanti, Daniele Lutazzi or more recently Beppe Grillo with his V-Day campaign which is gathering some momentum that surprised the established politicians. Anyhow, this is not a post about Italian politics, I wanted to add two more great shows, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report both on The Comedy Channel. These two are not available as a feed (a shame) but their sites offers quite a bit of excellent content.
I heard about The Colbert Report when I saw a shootout between him and Bill O'Reilly (a right wing political opinionist on Fox, a centered and balanced news network - NOT) floating on youtube and it was cute even though I didn't actually see the similarity, however after seeing the videos of the real show it really was grasping and reminded of the approach that Borat uses to expose hypocrisy by pretending to be racist or bigot.
I wonder what would happen if we'd elect comedians as politicians, that would be SOME comedy show.
On a side note, I find very interesting when these people talk about the net, I guess we finally entered their demographics, or vice versa, they entered ours... Naah, they probably use it only to download their porn... like everybody else :)
Which would be a great segway to my next blog post: "Where do porn stars download their porn from"... or not.

Luciano Pavarotti (1935-2007)

2007-09-10T15:55:00.000+02:00

As Pavarotti left us this week, I think I'll always remember him singing "Nessun dorma" by Puccini. His voice and talent were indeed unique and the world will honour him forever. Thank you maestro.

Nessun dorma

Nessun dorma,
nessun dorma ...
Tu pure, o Principessa,
Nella tua fredda stanza,
Guardi le stelle
Che tremano d'amore
E di speranza.

Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me,
Il nome mio nessun saprà, no, no,
Sulla tua bocca,
io lo dirò
Quando la luce
splenderà.

Ed il mio bacio scioglierà il silenzio
Che ti fa mia.

Il nome suo nessun saprà
E noi dovrem, ahimè, morir, morir...

Dilegua, notte!
Tramontate, stelle!
Tramontate, stelle!
All'alba vincerò!
Vincerò!
Vincerò!

Giacomo Puccini
(1858-1924)

I'm a cool nerd king!

2007-09-09T01:58:00.000+02:00

How Propaganda Works link

2007-08-25T00:08:00.000+02:00

I recently read this article on How Propaganda Works and it's staggering how you can draw parallels on its (ab)use through history but also the present.

JQuery Interface resizable div

2007-06-26T02:07:00.000+02:00

A couple of months ago I've discovered JQuery's Interface widgets and I must say it's a very nice set of extensions even though it does have issues with certain browsers (the homepage crashes IE7 for example). That said, I've quickly tried to do stuff I needed for my project. For instance, I had a div on one page that I dynamically refill with some data periodically. As it needed to be in a limited space what I did at the time is something like this:

<div style="overflow:auto;height:200px;">
This of course had the disadvantage to be completely fixed in height, but still provided the possibility to scroll around the data in the layer. So, I decided to use Interface in order to give the div the ability to resize. As the main Interface page offered only two examples of a resizable textbox and a selection over an image I've decided to publish this example where I show how to do the same thing but with a div (layer).

You'll notice the expander widget on the bottom looks very much like the YUI-ext handle, that's because it is the same image and background pattern behind. Also there are two html's, one that uses a fixed width of the div and the other is 90% width. The problem with the % one is that under IE7 the layer collapses in width and gets around 50px in width (as by the min width param in the javascript). I'll appreciate if anyone that can figure out a workaround so that this doesn't happen and it'll get noted here.

This example uses Interface 1.2 and jQuery 1.1.2. I can't wait for Interface 2.

Code archive

Bug in Solitare

2007-06-16T01:21:00.000+02:00

I've been doing a casual game of Solitaire (if you can call doing Vegas in 79 seconds and an average solve in about 100-150 sec. casual) when all of a sudden something started to look odd. Can you spot the problem?

Karolina gets to the Eurovision 2007 finals

2007-05-11T12:02:00.000+02:00

Congratulations to Karolina for entering the finals of the Eurovision Song contest 2007! If you like our song please vote for it!
On a side note I also liked the Bulgarian song (sounds a bit Macedonian too :). The Serbian song was interesting but I think the choreography sucked a little bit (I can motivate this but I'd have to censor myself) and the Turkey's song could have been better, the refrain was really ruining it. I haven't seen all the songs yet but all participants and a rerun of the semifinal can be seen on www.eurovision.tv. Keep your fingers crossed for Karolinche and if you like it send your SMS!
Here's the youtube version or you can get the better quality movie here.

Million dollar ideas

2007-04-19T04:11:00.000+02:00

Have you ever had an idea that you thought it could make you a 'zillion dollars just to find out someone already thought about that before you? I remember that happened once when I thought about having a movie shown in front of an exercise bicycle. The bad slap came when I saw Mel Brook's Life Stinks that featured that same idea. All I can say is this: Don't stop dreaming, your best ideas are yet to come!
Cheers!

My new car

2006-12-26T16:23:00.000+01:00

I don't know how to drive yet but I'm getting a new car. I've posted some pics that I took the day me and my dad gave it a cleanup and took it for a spin. Very "Need For Speed"-like. :)

My new car

EasyBeans on Jetty

2006-11-29T23:08:00.000+01:00

Very soon (it should come out with the next pre-release of jetty 6.1.0) Jetty will come out with the EasyBeans EJB3 container that (hopefully) means just as you were able to quicken your web application development cycle with Jetty standalone, you might accelerate as well you EJB development cycle.
EasyBeans is an open source implementation by ObjectWeb of the EJB3 container specification.
Now we have to wait and see just how capable of a container EasyBeans is but ObjectWeb is getting a very good reputation in the enterprise java space and just the fact that EasyBeans builds on the OSGi infrastucture promises some nifty stuff. I bet Jetty and EasyBeans are to become even more popular now. The question burning inside right now is: would Pitchfork work as well?

Sigmalab jumps over to Wordpress

2006-11-29T18:28:00.000+01:00

We at Sigmalab decided to update our blog engine to Wordpress. We think "iz all good!" and we'd like google to re index it soon :)

Blogger beta

2006-11-28T03:40:00.000+01:00

I must admit I'm a compulsive beta user and early adopter. I somehow resisted this with my blog and I didn't pass over right at once but that time is over and I must say, blogger had me at hello! I just love the new archives box and I must admit that I've written to help support how much I've been frustrated with it's clumsiness. The new one, kicks ass Web 2.0 style. I need to do some work to pass over stuff I've had in my old template but that's enough for today. I do miss the blogger toolbar on top. Was hoping to see new templates but I guess it's too early.

Maven 2 and the spring framework (or how to get your quick fix)

2006-09-23T03:35:00.000+02:00

Although the maven repository often gets updated quite promptly sometimes us maven (ab)users get left out on a dry run and we have to wait for a uncertain period of time until our favorite lib gets uploaded to the repo. One of the more complex projects out there is the spring framework that even gets some special care by Carlos so that it gets in the repo as quickly as possible. What I wanted to point out to anyone that is waiting for the official inclusion to the repo is that now spring ships with an ant task that will copy the jar's in your repo, sweet!

ant mvn.install.jars

Submodules don't ship with a pom and declared dependencies (a shame but we'll get there one day, I hope) and also the required libs don't get copied to the repo as well. This is a bummer for some situations. I wanted to use the latest hibernate with JPA and for instance ibiblio doesn't have the latest hibernate entity manager that in turn has it's own nice set of dependencies that I would need to manually add to my repository. Why don't we all use maven and be happy? I understand how larger projects might be more fragile to build because of maven but, infrastructure libs should be obliged to ship with maven support by law (just kidding)! People bitch about maven2 these days, it is a pain in the ass sometimes but it has a mighty fine ROI for me and actually makes my use of your libraries easier, and you can always mix ant with maven if you need such a fine grained control like the contender suggest. As far as the reliability of the build process, a tool like Proximity might help, I'm waiting if the maven team will ship something of their own.
Anyhow I found this spring tip on the spring-osgi group on google groups so if you care about spring or osgi you might want to join it, it seems promising.

Kaspersky Anti Virus 6 and Subversion problems

2006-06-17T01:54:00.000+02:00

I've spent a good part of my day today in trying to understand why I can't checkout our subversion repository. I was getting this:

svn: REPORT of '/svn/repos/!svn/vcc/default': 400 Bad Request

google searches would make you think it's a proxy issue but I don't use or need one so after a lot of trial and errors I've found out that if you use Kaspersky Anti-Virus 6 it seems that if you use the Web Anti-Virus options with the recommended settings and you have the "Scan HTTP traffic" option on you end up with the problem above. It seems Kaspersky doesn't like the HTTP packets subversion uses so they get blocked. I really like Kaspersky and I recommend it to all but I hope they will address this issue as soon as possible as subversion is becoming the main open source VCS system. Any tips on this issue are welcome.

Solution for the Wei-Hwa Puzzle, June 9th, 2006

2006-06-10T18:16:00.000+02:00

Hard work gets rewarded :)

Getting to work the Sapphire Radeon X1600 on OSX x86

2006-05-29T20:37:00.000+02:00

After my previous posts on how to get some hardware to work on the OSX x86 (10.4.5) this forum thread resolves all problems connected with mouse tearing. Big thanks go to borisbadanov for making this possible. Now if only the boot process could go a bit more quickly.

2006-05-19T01:41:00.000+02:00

"People and interactions over processes and tools" - agile manifesto

Chinese pearls of wisdom

2006-05-16T21:03:00.000+02:00

Chinese pearls of wisdom. Your girlfriend will love you.

Installing the 3COM 3C940 Gigabit Ethernet under OSX

2006-04-27T22:49:00.000+02:00

Finally! Our friend managed to activate the 3COM 3C940 Gigabit Ethernet under OSX thanks to a port of the linux skge driver. The port was done by m.musashi and you can get it here. Just extract the archive and use the instructions to copy the kext to the Extensions folder. Add your device/vendor id under the IOPCIPrimaryMatch tag (for him it was 0x170010B7). If that's not your vendor/device id then you need to look them up. Easiest way is to use the Linux utility lspci and lspci -n should show you the device and vendor id. Be careful as it shows you first the vendor then the device id and you need to input first the device and then vendor id.
Good luck!

IconBuffet icon pack exchange

2006-04-15T22:39:00.000+02:00

IconBuffet is a sweet site where you get a monthly delivery of free icons and where you can buy some as well. Also a sweet thing about it is that you can exchange icons among friends so if you have a IconBuffet account and you want to exchange some icon packs I have these and can pass them to you: Mallow Buzz 1, Modena Simbolo, Modena Alfanumerico Cold, Manhattan Finance, Dresden Tournament, Tower Grove Melee, Tower Grove Promenade and Taipei Night Market.
Just leave a name and email on the IconBuffet service and I'll send them to you. If you have others that I don't have I'd accept new packs gladly :)
Leave emails obfuscated so spam bots don't get your email and I'll delete the comments as soon as we get in contact.

ANCH'IO SONO UN COGLIONE!

2006-04-05T20:58:00.000+02:00

Current prime minister Silvio Berlusconi made a gaffe the other day calling the left wing voter a "coglione" (I'd translate it an arshole, but it's not direct translation). I and a lot of people in Italy are asking ourselves whether such a language is supposed to come from the mouth of a prime minister? In the meantime, the elections are getting near and so I've created a logo "Anch'io sono un coglione" (I too am a arsehole) and I've started selling this through my web store. It'll turn some heads for sure. You can find all various designs here!

My blog just exploded

2006-04-04T19:23:00.000+02:00

Last month (around the 13-th), I've written a piece on MacOSX. That made my blog visits skyrocket. In total I've received 897 visits and 1607 page views which is almost half of all time since I've started monitoring so I was very pleasantly surprised. I hope anyhow that you people found something interesting :)
Feel free to leave comments if you need more information. Thanks to everyone!

Eve online screenshots

2006-03-25T16:58:00.000+01:00

I saw that eve online got another release so I decided to re-try it. It's still great plus I have the (human) experience from my last trial (no experience points and I also noted one can't have access to some goodies while on trial) so I'm not so lost. It's really eye-catching and fun. Screenshots following. Also, all screenshots I'll make during my trial period I'll post them here.

Eve online screenshot
Originally uploaded by schrepfler.

2006-03-23T21:53:00.000+01:00

I'm getting on the del.icio.us bandwagon slowly. I still don't use it's community features but as I have a favorites list that goes way, way back (>7 years) I decided to start converting it slowly, that way updating my bookmarks might be easier and safer.
I don't know how long will it take but slowly it might just happen.
If you are interested it's here.

2006-03-16T13:48:00.000+01:00

I've been asked what's the way to edit the configuration files. Basically it comes down to two issues. First you need to have the rights to edit the file. This is done by using the sudo command from the terminal utility.

sudo bash

That will start the bash command shell as a super user (su).
Now you need to use a editor to change the file, I've used pico (if you use Gentoo, it's very similar to nano, they are forks).

pico /System/ Library/ Extensions / ATIRadeonX1000.kext / contents/ info.plist (I'm not sure about caps)

After that modify the file as instructed in previous post.

2006-03-15T17:05:00.000+01:00

It seems that you can edit the files and delete the cached drivers even under vesa so there's no need to go to single user mode in order to enable drivers for OSX.

2006-03-08T20:14:00.000+01:00

My friend thinks that if Apple would sell MacOS X for Intel as a retail OS with the same price of Windows he'd buy one.

2006-03-01T19:06:00.000+01:00

The networking issue is this, neither the integrated 3com 3C940 Gigabit Ethernet network adapter works nor the ADMtec AN983 out of the box. However after reading these items, the downloaded tulip driver works with ADMtec AN 983 and 985 and also:

Linksys LNE100
Netgear FA511
Accton EN1217
Abocom FE2500
3Com OfficeConnect 10/100B 3CSOHO100B
Microsoft cards
and probably some others as well...
check this driver if your card isn't supported.

As far as I know, no one has been lucky with the Marvell chip. There are some posts here and there so research is already on it's way.
It's a shame, in linux, I used the sk98lin and now the skge driver with excellent results. I tried the new sky2 driver but without success, can someone report if sky2 is intended to be used with the 3C940 under linux?

2006-03-01T17:54:00.000+01:00

After the successful install, it was obvious that both network adapters didn't work and neither did the graphic card. As my friend didn't know anything about MacOS these are some steps that might work and they might not.
In order to make the ATIRadeonX1000.kext driver work (the kext is a directory containing driver stuff), you must modify the Info.Plist file and add your deviceid to the values beneath IOPCIMatch. To find out your card deviceid you need to open the system profiler and look at your graphic card. It'll show you values for deviceid, vendorid, revisionid, and eventually it will say it's kext have been loaded. What you need to do is to concatenate the deviceid and vendorid so if your deviceid is 0x71C2 you need to append the vendorid (ATI is 0x1002 as I can see) resulting in the end string 0x71C21002.
Here the things get tricky, various things were tried and in the end I'd recommend the following procedure:
Boot the kernel in single mode by passing -s when booting (-v is verbose, if you open Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist , you can add save boot parameters here). Delete Extensions.mkext and Extensions.kextcache,

sudo rm /System/Library/Extensions.mkext
sudo rm /System/Library/Extensions.kextcache

edit the Info.Plist and prepend you card deviceid (that means put it in front of all other device id's). It might work also appended but stars weren't aligned when he did it appended so it might be the combination of these things. Reboot and you should get accelerated drivers with QE and CI support. The resolution can't be changed so you need to pass a higher one as a boot parameter adding:

"Graphics Mode"="1280x1024x32"

That fixed the drivers for Sapphire Radeon X1600 Pro AGP 256MB.

Next, I'll discuss the network drivers.

2006-03-01T16:27:00.001+01:00

HOWTO: MacOS x86 and the Asus P4P800 Deluxe, P4c, Sapphire X1600 Pro AGP 256MB and ADMtec AD983

A friend of mine that likes to tinker with alternative OS'es and has the same hardware as mine recently downloaded the demonoid patched iso of MacOS 10.4.4 for the x86 architecture. For the moment all of the hardware mentioned above works quite well except the motherboard integrated gigabit LAN based on the 3COM Marvell 940-MV00 chip (under linux you'd use the sk98lin driver, that was deprecated for skge, and now it seems there's sky2 but I can't make sky2 work with my network card under linux, am I wrong to understand that skge is deprecated for sky2?).

After you had liberated some free space for MacOS, you need to drop in some linux fdisk, add a new primary partition and set it's type to af (it doesn't matter if fdisk doesn't support HFS+, it just reserves the space, you'll format later).
As the demonoid dvd is already patched there was no fuss really, all you need to do is to drop the dvd in and boot. On step 3 you'll need to select the partition on which to install Tiger, as you didn't format it yet, you need to activate the disk utility and use Erase (you can read that as Format) on the partition. Wait to install.
As my friend had WindowsXP and added Gentoo on the same drive after the OSX install (hd0,0 Windows, hd0,3 partition /, hd0,3 partition swap and hd0,1 partition HFS+; note: IDE has a 4 active partitions limit, so /boot has to go) and uses the GRUB loader, he added MacOS to grub.config like so:

title=MacOS
root (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader --force +1

Once MacOS loaded he noted the graphic resolution was fixed to 1024x768 and the drivers weren't using QE and CI so he started to look around and see if they can be made to work.

To Be Continued...

2006-02-21T18:22:00.000+01:00

My first impact with the MVC concept was through the book by Hans Bergsten JavaServer Pages. Without realizing it I had a working MVC framework that did it's part in getting me a excellent grade on my Web Application exam, and that makes you think and note even subtle differences between what's out there. Then an opportunity came out to build a real-world money-making J2EE app and I hopped aboard. The choice was made to lean on the Struts framework 1.2.x which was fine by me because I always wanted to go deeper in it's architecture to better understand it and to improve my own framework (no pretensions here, I did it for fun, not because I thought it was better).

FFD to this day. Today you can see many new things coming into place; Beehive builds ontop of Struts and brings in the concept of Page Flow and Components and uses annotations, however there's some clunky code gen that needs to be done as well. Spring MVC does some incredible things in keeping stuff framework-agnostic and allows various ways to generate content (one nasty thing about Struts is that it always needs a mapping as an endpoint, that means you can't map to null and use the response object to spit out stuff like pdf's, which might be a bad idea anyway as that should be the View's responsibility but if you're in the view you can't take use of Strut's mappings to go to an error endpoint) and also plans introducing the Spring WebFlow package. A strong feature about it is that they started from the beginning on focusing on the interfaces so they aren't locked in on extending an Action like Struts and they support the use of the domain model instead of the form beans that you'd use with Struts.
In the mean time another MVC framework has also gain attention and it's called WebWork. Infact, it features many of the strong sides of Spring MVC and adds some more (latest cool stuff is with including ajax stuff thanks to dojo) which is why the Stuts people have sit down with the WebWork people and decided that the next generation of request based Struts (they have a component JSF-based offer as well called Shale) will be based on WebWork.
In the mean time, classic Stuts is still being developed and it's going in it's 1.3 incarnation that's about to land on us. They've included the commons-chain library that gave them a better way to re-implement the RequestProcessor thanks to the Chain of Responsibility design pattern. Other very important thing is that you don't have to extend org.apache.struts.action.Action anymore but you can focus on implementing the Command interface and a added bonus you can map a chain in your struts xml configuration file. I really missed the idea of a chain in Struts 1.2.x so this is a very compelling reason to switch.
The article features also a way of grouping more actions in one (like CRUD stuff in a DispatchAction).
All in all I found this article at infonoia very interesting and I can't wait to see what interesting subject they'll include soon.

2006-02-03T17:45:00.000+01:00

I've read this article in which Linus gives his point of view on GPL v3. I must say that I'm with Torvalds on this issue, not that I am pro-DRM oriented but because you shouldn't really impose restrictions on other people that you wish your software/hardware would need to work with. On one hand GPL does give you some rights but it also locks you to GPL-compatible alternatives as well and I really don't think it's the best developer licence there is.
The tragicomic thing about this is that we see GPL fighting GPL and I don't see it leading to anything positive.
That said, if one can afford the time and thinks that he can strike a adopter/abandoner balance the GPL v3 might be a valid alternative. I just don't think it's in Linux's interest and the current user and developer base to pass over to GPL v3.

2006-01-17T16:40:00.000+01:00

If you want to learn what are hard drives that write data perpendicularly check this out. It's funny and funky. Flash needed.

2006-01-13T02:01:00.000+01:00

As you guys know, it seems Internet Explorer and Firefox will feature the same xml feed icon. I like it very much, so I'll try to put it here and then use the image for my own feed.

2006-01-03T16:21:00.000+01:00

Note to myself how to do a chroot in emergency using gentoo, that way I don't have to look for it every time :)

mkdir /mnt/gentoo
mount /dev/*daN /mnt/gentoo
mount -t proc none /mnt/gentoo/proc
chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash
source /etc/profile

2006-01-01T02:45:00.000+01:00

Happy New Year everybody!!!

2005-12-23T20:02:00.000+01:00

This tip from the Ubuntu forum helped me set up my alps touchpad. Good work. This almost completes my Linux experience with the Toshiba M40X Satellite Pro.

2005-12-22T14:49:00.000+01:00

I've noticed this cute project called AndroMDA. It's a plugin for maven1 that focuses around Model Driven development. They've put this quote from Machiavelli on the front page:

"And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions..."

-- Niccolo Machiavelli

We've had the need to modify our project's model quite a bit during the development of our application and it basically happened in the last two months. I am convinced that if we'd gone out sooner to get in touch with our end users we'd have jumped the need of modifying the model in the end phase of development when the only thing we were supposed to do now was bug fixing. This I guess is a common problem, management having fears that someone might steal the idea, or that the potential buyer would be discouraged by bugs. However, going beta early gets valuable user feedback, and helps shape the product to what the user needs and in the end this is the objective that every good software project has to nail.
I quoted this thing as every time we have to change the model we get goosebumps of what might go wrong, will it introduce instability, bugs, or will it simply be incompatible with the old model. I guess some things don't change, even after 500 years.

2005-12-18T16:47:00.000+01:00

During the architecting of Share.Net (the good old days when I programmed in C#) I remember that I found a great library for .Net that extracted file icons via SHGetFileInfo that also did some smart caching. Once fooling the ListBox or ComboBox that you provided a ImageList via helper methods you could use it to extract file icons and associate them immediately with you control. I looked a bit but it doesn't seems that there is an alternative managed API for doing this yet so I guess this is still the best way around this issue.
One problem with it I think is that you renounce the use of custom icons but I might be mistaken.
PS. The last revision of the article was 2003-Mar-04. This guy did some great stuff but his site is not very active any more. Who knows why...

2005-12-17T06:16:00.000+01:00

This is so cool! Using a map to visualize news and it's size to put emphasis on it. Seems it's doing some coldfusion and black flash magic behind the curtains. Other cool thing that's gotten on the net is the cnet's news.com ontology flash where they connect related news. This stuff that used to be someone's research thesis now sits in front of you promising to give you more data that you need. Question is, do you want it, and shouldn't you get up and take a walk?

2005-12-16T23:43:00.000+01:00

Wow...
Struts merges Beehive (NetUI page flow goodness with attributes, tied with Struts). Struts merges WebWork. WebWork merges Spring . Spring merges Struts, SpringMVS, WebWork, Hibernate, WebFlow (controller agnostic) ...
What I want to know, WTF! What should I do now, I want to develop a framework and they all start doing cool stuff making me wonder which should I choose as a platform. And what about SiteMesh? Do you have an opinion which would the best way be? Thanks!
PS. And check out Maven2, it's getting better all the time. Hmm... Sounds catchy :)

2005-12-13T06:01:00.000+01:00

I don't know if you've noticed but lately you can see the google analytics javascript being loaded by a bunch of sites. The thing that ticks me off is that the site has gotten terribly slow and guess what, slashdot uses it and sourceforge uses it (and on a mirror download page, please!). I mean come on! These sites are some of the world's most hammered sites, and they have revenue as well. If you are going to use analytics don't ruin the experience for the rest of us. Buy the service and have dedicated servers, this way you are ruining it for the rest of us.
I don't know, maybe I'm just ranting without a reason. They have greater chance to increase revenue than me, thus generating also more revenue for google but I do feel like I'm not getting the attention the service should provide.

2005-12-13T00:54:00.000+01:00

On of the nicer things I've realized this year in programming that you can basically take various approaches to understanding issues. One that really shook my concept of things is that you can be a reductionist trying to grasp the concept of the whole or you can take the holistic approach where you actually invert the whole situation and start looking at how things interact and in what context are they doing that. One can say that it's a very Zen-kind-of-thing, like: "nothing exists by itself, we are all interconnected" sort of mantra.
The project that's on everyone's lips these days is Spring and it reflects this holistic approach, letting you write code in a "light-weight" container that gives you bunch of services wiring them together layer after layer in a clean IoC pattern.
I just can't wait to see what's coming next with Spring 2.0 .

2005-12-09T21:34:00.000+01:00

Google introduced something new to the Gmail experience. They are called Gmail Clips and they allow you to see news from RSS enabled sites, plus you can scroll the items without having to reload the page. Nice.
Here's a screenshot

Strange news Reuters deals with these days :)

2005-12-09T03:07:00.000+01:00

Hi there my faithful reader from Russia. :)
Since I've been using google's analytics service for the last couple of weeks I've been getting some really sweet data back in. It's really nice to know that there my main readers are from the US and there's someone that's reading this blog from a place called Nizhegorod (Lowercity?) the Avtozavodskiy Rayon (Car manufacturing region?) Russia, or the UK, or Taipei-Taiwan, Malaysia, Korea, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, Hungary, France, Slovakia, Philippines, Canada, Italy and India. I mean, how cool is that?

2005-12-08T02:18:00.000+01:00

Baby needs a new pair of shoes... What I mean by that is that I've jumped on the bandwagon of promoting Firefox as the browser of choice. First of all, I'm using if full time. It's a great browser, it's tabbed browsing is a great feature along pop-up blocking, free extensions, rss bookmarks and the newly released 1.5 version is even better. One great extension that you can get is the Google Toolbar for Firefox. It's latest version now gets most searched keywords on the fly so it has gotten even better. If you are convinced please use the button on the right.
Take back the web!

2005-12-07T15:48:00.000+01:00

The presentation went really nice, there were some 50 people and the arguments that we dealt with were well received. I was very nervous but comments that I got were all positive so I guess my first presentation to a larger audience went rather well. I talked about the framework 2.0, what's new in it and VisualStudio 2005. When we publish the thing on our site I'll paste the link to it here as well (it in Italian).
If you know how to speak macedonian check this forum post. It's posted by a guy that went from Macedonia to Russia spoken in the capitol's slang but it makes the post even better. You'll see his interesting voyage and his view on Ukraine and Russia. If you scroll the comments the guy posted also part two. Sweet

2005-12-05T01:44:00.000+01:00

I'm a member of the MS Faculty Club and today I'm about to give a presentation of the .Net framework 2.0 and VisualStudio 2005. I'm nervous more than a bit as I've had a very small amount of time to prepare it and I don't feel I've completely digested all the things I'm about to present and people might actually have questions. Plus it's my first presentation in front of an audience ever, I've been working with Java for the past 6 months and my friends are going to be in the audience (let's hope there will be no professors).
Anyhow, back to putting things up, preparing the arguments, timing it and writing it down.
Hold me luck!

2005-11-24T02:07:00.000+01:00

We'll it's been an interesting day today. I've been following the Software Engineering II lessons this semester and today we've hit an interesting subject. Loosely coupling elements using the Mediator design pattern but with a twist. Namely putting some artificial intelligence in it using Prolog (with the help of a library developed at my University and the one in Cesena called tuProlog) and using it's knowledge base to wire things. I haven't really thought about this thing but it does look like it offers very interesting opportunities especially in the field of Software Agents.
The other interesting thing is that I've stumbled over the Windows Workflow Foundation video on Channel9 and my immediate thought was BPEL! We had this conference done by IBM and it showed it's SOA vision that had BPEL as one of its founding blocks so I wondered did MS copied IBM or what? Then it comes out that BPEL is the brainchild of both MS and IBM, how weird is that? Anyhow we'll see what will come out of it very soon it seems.

2005-11-21T13:35:00.000+01:00

I've spotted this list of top 20 geek novels that currently shows these novels:

1. The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- Douglas Adams 85% (102)
2. Nineteen Eighty-Four -- George Orwell 79% (92)
3. Brave New World -- Aldous Huxley 69% (77)
4. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? -- Philip Dick 64% (67)
5. Neuromancer -- William Gibson 59% (66)
6. Dune -- Frank Herbert 53% (54)
7. I, Robot -- Isaac Asimov 52% (54)
8. Foundation -- Isaac Asimov 47% (47)
9. The Colour of Magic -- Terry Pratchett 46% (46)
10. Microserfs -- Douglas Coupland 43% (44)
11. Snow Crash -- Neal Stephenson 37% (37)
12. Watchmen -- Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons 38% (37)
13. Cryptonomicon -- Neal Stephenson 36% (36)
14. Consider Phlebas -- Iain M Banks 34% (35)
15. Stranger in a Strange Land -- Robert Heinlein 33% (33)
16. The Man in the High Castle -- Philip K Dick 34% (32)
17. American Gods -- Neil Gaiman 31% (29)
18. The Diamond Age -- Neal Stephenson 27% (27)
19. The Illuminatus! Trilogy -- Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson 23% (21)
20. Trouble with Lichen - John Wyndham 21% (19)

I've read THGTTG, Dune, Snowcrash and plan to re-read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Neuromancer and the Foundation as I've read the first two in italian before I was really good at it and Foundation as I didn't read it chronologically and was too young and forgot a part of the story (although I remember the Mule).
On the to-read list are 1984, Criptonomicon and I Robot but the nice thing is that after some research I'm interested in reading also The colour of magic, Brave New World, Microserfs, Watchmen, Consider Phlebas, Stranger in a Strange Land, American Gods, The Diamond Age, The Illuminatus! Trilogy and Trouble with Lichen.
So... all in all I'm a geek, no doubt about it.

2005-11-19T22:02:00.000+01:00

I've been testing maven 2 lately and it's my intention to have my jspArt project built completely with maven 2. Unfortunately I have to report that it's still not very well documented, plugins are non-existent or filled with bugs and all in all a bit immature environment (perhaps I'm a bit too harsh). None the less it's a great application and it's totally worth the time invested in it.

2005-11-18T22:12:00.000+01:00

Here's a nice news. Sun has announced that'll ship and support PostgreSql with Solaris. This is probably a good thing, and I hope that means we'll see quality JDBC 4.0 drivers ahead of other db's. As both Java and .Net have generics now, I can't wait to see how they'll try to take advantage in their database middleware and these new language constructs.
I think that Pg will gain some better diagnostics thanks to DTrace but since I'm mostly a windows user, what I'd like to see is the addition of performance counters to the windows port (it's a really sweet feature of SQLServer).

2005-10-31T13:30:00.000+01:00

My girlfriend was in Paris recently so here's a foto.

2005-10-20T22:53:00.000+02:00

Don't you think it's time there's more investment in researching new materials that can enable humanity to build things like the space elevator? I don't think of it as a hype thing (I'm even a bit frightened, what would happen if one of those things fell, prospects like those in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy are not that bright...) but imagine things that could be build with this kind of stuff... Like those trains appended on a single "rope" above Manhattan, or even objects that were never imagined before. Things that will improve traveling, lifestyle, bring better energy efficiency etc. Perhaps it's something worth investigating.

2005-10-17T13:59:00.000+02:00

Even though writing itself is a catharsis process, if it wasn't for YOU and your visits who knows if I'd still be writing this blog. Every now and then I look at my stats and wonder, are you just a statistical noise, a search spider or a real breathing omnivore.
Anyways here are the stats for this blog that I've gathered with time.

2005-10-10T14:00:00.000+02:00

I've found this ajax tag library framework. It's very simple in philosophy. You select a zone on your jsp, you send a get or post using the ajax javascript, it goes to the server passing through a filter, your servlets recreate the page, the filter filters returning only the zones that were invalidated. It's very easy and I recommend it even though it's visible there are some quirks to be resolved.
It doesn't try to introduce new tags like ajaxtags but that I think is it's simplicity and flexibility. Another prominent library is the DWR but I found it a bit more intrusive although I haven't tried it yet.

2005-09-27T19:59:00.000+02:00

I became an avid fan of the TV show "Lost" last year after my friends gave me a run of all the first season. It was something rather amasing as it sucks you right in just to know more and more and the bastards that are writing the show are always putting in more and more mistery so it's very very freaky by now.
I could swear that the computer used in "Man of Science, Man of Faith" was an Apple II but I'm not really sure so if you can confirm please comment. AppleII had floppies so why would it use tape reels right? :).
My conspiracy theory tells me that the Island is a secret goverment run fascility that hides either nuclear or biological stuff or something else all together but I'll be wrong anyways.

2005-09-19T12:12:00.000+02:00

I think that it's fair to mention also Ascendancy as one of the games that are similar to Eve.

2005-09-19T02:33:00.000+02:00

I wanted to post a screenshot of Eve. I found out that the best part of it is actually the people that you bump into. The first day was really something. I started with a drone, I passed the tutorial missions, made some 2,4 mil and then zap, I get wasted. So I make some rash mistakes like spending money on equipment I couldn't even use or buying ships that aren't good for what I wanted. So... I being down on budget accept a job to currier putting some 1,2 mil for collateral and I discover that it's 16 jumps away, I go there and find out that the cargo is like 8200 m^3 and my cargo holds 300! And you know what happens? A guy helps me by towing the cargo for me, plus later I get to know even more people on the channels. It sure helps break down my prejudice of MMOG's.

2005-09-17T23:29:00.000+02:00

EVE online is a MMOG game. I don't play MMOG games as they are usually subscriber based and I still don't think I have the time or money that I can dedicate to a on line world (like the real life world isn't complicated enough). Hovever I was listening to a PC Gamer podcast and there was this mention of EVE that got me curious so I dig up a 14 day trial and I must say I really like this game.
When I was a kid there was this awesome game called Elite, it was spectacular, it gave you the possibility to roam the galaxies and choose different paths to wealth and fame. People were amazed what the guy that programmed it managed to squeeze into the hardware of the age. Eve is everything Elite was and more! So if you can afford it and you like that sort of a game, join the club!
Only thing I miss is the possibility for a single player but that would probably take out a lot of the fun. Too bad MMOG aren't free :(

2005-09-15T23:21:00.000+02:00

More photos...
They don't build them this way any more. So if you like it why not contact Vito? vito.pascali AT lnksystem dot com

2005-09-15T23:10:00.000+02:00

A friend of mine is selling a property that he inherited recently. It's close to Locorotondo and Fasano (I think that's in Puglia, Italy). If you're interested mail him: vito.pascali AT lnksystem dot com
I'm attaching some photos.

2005-09-09T02:23:00.000+02:00

If you are interested you might check this interview with Bill Gates about the present and future of computers.

2005-08-30T01:01:00.000+02:00

I don't know if anyone else is having this strange feeling lately that Linux is getting, you know, good! I mean, I use Linux since RedHat 5.0 and at that time you had to, you know, suffer! Sure we had the enthusiasm but things were not easy and people were just happy to be able to say "there's this thing called rpm that helps install programs" or "this apt thing", or just some good ol' cli goodness that made your hart warm and cozy (Yes that is what happens to youth that doesn't mingle a lot with the peers).
These days it's "Ubuntu cool, Debian stable, Mepis like Debian but more cool, Fedora getting better, Knoppix it'll boot your lighter, Slack is with The Man behind it". Even I have my mantra that starts with emerge -my world and ends with Gentoo. (was that a lame joke or what :)
Anyhow, distro rivalry existed since the dawn of the ages but this is different, it's like people are starting to, you know, love the Penguin :)

2005-08-30T00:42:00.000+02:00

There's a talk in town that WinFS might be backported to Windows XP. I think this is great and also a business-wise idea. First of all, there's a ton of old hardware that'll probably never be powerful enough to run Windows Vista, but that could run Windows XP for a while to come. But wait, take 2 and 2 together and let's just consider leaving all these machines to the competition namely MacOS and Linux. You can't just stop offering all the goodies! It'd just leave a lot of users angry for not having the latest and greatest eye candy and might just decide to "switch". Tiger already has some interesting indexing features and Linux has it's own ideas on the subject. Of course, WinFS will definitely just rock. So don't slack and bring it on.
Having written that I just realized how much of a ~~software engineer~~ ~~programmer~~ geek I really am and I'm sinking deep into the grounds. :)
Big hugs to Bibi as she's having a vacation at home with her folks.

2005-08-26T17:23:00.000+02:00

Talking about movie rumors... Even thought a project about the Silver Surfer is something I remember reading on the net during the 90'ies it seems that this time around with all Marvel's heroes coming to the big screen it just might be his lucky chance. I read just a few comics with the Silver Surfer but I loved every single one. I guess that these years have been hard on man kind and I wonder how people will react with the views that the Silver Surfer has. Of course I don't know how will his pacifistic views convince the studios as it might prove hard to push it out the doors these days as I'm getting the impression that the US is getting more and more conservative, more and more paranoid and maybe just a bit too fanatic with religion.
I've grown with US movies and my views of the world are very influenced by that and seeing how the whole country changes it's mentality is just plain scary.
Anyhow the news is from 2003 but said that it comes after the Fantastic Four feature so... we might be getting there :)

2005-08-26T02:57:00.000+02:00

I'm a SciFi books fan and one of my favorite books is Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. I heard a podcast today having a interview with OSC and it gave me a pleasant surprise. It seems that Warner Brothers are preparing to make a movie version. If it's as half as good as the book, it'll be one hell-of-a movie.
Update: I found OSC's official site.

2005-08-26T02:24:00.000+02:00

Check it out, you can log in to google so it learns what you search for and should become even better with time. Wow, and I thought Google reads my mind already :)
It's pretty interesting how the search business is getting all warmed up (warm? hot!), yahoo now has it's own minimalist search page and so does MS. So... basically what will happen is that in the end search engines will have to deal not only with html (google already does pdf, doc and probably other formats too) but with mp3's, podcasts, images and probably in a ideal future it'll even be expandable with new formats as they come along. Such a unification to search would be especially be cool with indexing features and future storage file systems and is hopefully going to bring back the control into user's hand. My question would however be, even if you can gather and index all this metadata, who will have the time to compile it? I mean it's nice that you can say that a picture was shot in San Francisco during this or that convention and has all these persons on in but heck, the camera won't compile that data for you!!!
I almost fear that it's not a technology problem but a human problem and those shure don't go away easily.

2005-08-25T01:10:00.000+02:00

I don't know any hard statistics but I suppose planes rarely drop, probably less often then let's say 1 in 37 flights. I mean you don't get 0 that often when you play roulette even though you do get it now and then. Yet still, just in the last few days every time I watch the news there's a plane crash. Now what are the odds that can happen?
Anyhow I remember this joke about a paranoid person that feared going on a plane because he thought there might be a bomb on board. He had to go somewhere so he called a traveling agency. The agent had a passion about statistics and told the man what were the odds that he might get on a plane with a bomb that were very small but still it wasn't very appealing to the man. So he asks what would the odds be that two bombs might be on the plane, the agent calculates the odds and finally the man satisfied by the small chance gets the ticket. The only problem is that he gets arrested on boarding as they find a bomb on him.
What does this have to do with anything? Nothing, but God sure seems to be a bastard croupier sometimes.

2005-08-24T23:21:00.000+02:00

I tried Google Talk (I think I'll be calling it Talker) yesterday. It's really cute, slim and responsive. The voice part was a little bit deluding. The quality was ok but the first time I noticed some glitches now and then. For now Skype sounds better.

2005-08-22T13:42:00.000+02:00

If you're in Bologna and have a desire to eat something Indian consider the Taj Mahal. It's in via San Felice 92/D, I've eaten there a couple of days ago and I must say I'm sorry I haven't tried it sooner. For 38€ me and my girlfriend had some exquisite chicken with curry, rice and a sauce that was a joy for the palate. Also we took a thin bread with something yogurtish like in the middle that was great too. At first you get served three sauces and some ultra thin and crispy breads, very tasty. Warning, the third sauce is ultra spicy. In the end we took a nice icecream and some Kheer, that's a sweet based on rice and milk with some pistachio. In Macedonia we have almost the same thing except we leave the grain as a whole and here it was fractured to smaller grains. It's easy to do, you just need some milk, sugar and rice. In the end they offer you something to drink. Really nice service, highly recommended and I hope to try some other delicacy soon. Plus I found out they have a web site and you can order home too. I'm a bit picky about chicken curry as I don't like the curry aftertaste (I think it happens if you put too much of it or if you cook it in a wrong way) but I didn't have that problem now.

2005-08-22T13:16:00.000+02:00

I like a lot the google toolbar. It's the first toolbar I had and frankly I don't know if I'd like to have more than one activated as the screen relestate is a precious commodity these days. And guess what, Yahoo, MS, Netcraft and who knows who is preparing the next one. And each one has some cute features. Instead of going on an all out war, duplicating development effort and just looking plain dumb, why not standardize a open project and work on it together? Netcraft with it's anti phishing tips, MS with it's desktop search, A9 for Amazon shopping, eBay for auctions, google with it mind reading search, word highlighting and word search buttons, email checker for yahoo-hotmail-gmail, and why stop there? Plus there is the issue that it has to have versions for both explorer and firefox.
The relestate is limited guys, learn to deal with it. Of course the other alternative would be OSX-like widgets or Konfabulator (but hey, that's yahoo now... hmmm... wicked!)

2005-08-18T14:14:00.000+02:00

When I posted on Tablet PC while back I've had a response so I'll bash this thing too. The project we're developing is going to use some PocketPC's. One of the requirements is to be able to take signatures. As we think you can't put a signature directly on a web form we're considering the user putting the data over the web form and then generating runtime a rtf so that the user could load it in Pocket Word and add the signature. Later in the office the report (in pocket word format) would be synchronized using the cradle. As we're still evaluating the devices on the market (here I haven't seen any Mobile 5.0 devices) I had installed the Mobile 5.0 SDK and the scenario works fine with a 2003 SE emulator device. However the Mobile 5.0 Word doesn't have the drawing capability. Are we stuck with the 2003 editions, do I have to enable the drawing capability in a certain way or is the emulator that doesn't have it (I can't even paste if from the Notes app)?

2005-08-16T23:57:00.000+02:00

Me and my girlfriend were out tonight to see a spectacle that takes the visitors to the underground passages of the water stream of Aposa. What was once one of the two streams that brought water to the city and allowed a barricade from the enemies. Starting from the Hebraic ghetto, Dante and his bolognian muse took us underneath, explaining some of it history, how it got closed to form the sewage system, the WWII bombardments, it's reconstruction. All in all a really nice trip, it goes by the name of Tra-ghetto and it's a part of Bologna's cultural summer. You can find more information here.

2005-08-14T17:34:00.000+02:00

I'd like to say some things. First of all I like C# more than Java and I believe C# 2.0 is better than Java5. For this last year or so, my life has been immersed with developing J2EE Web Apps so I'd like to share this with all whom it may concern even though I haven't programmed one single line of Asp.net despite I wanted to do so. My first objection was the Web Server issue. Sun did some really neat politics, it makes a set of specifications and lets third party developers implement them. This alone gave me the possibility to choose from a variety of different Servlet and Application Servers. On the MS front? IIS 5.0, 6.0 (runs only on Win2k3 Server) or Cassini. As I wanted to run IIS 6.0 and I didn't like to install Win2k3 it'll be a while until I'll be developing on the Asp.net platform.
Asp.net looks great I must admit, simple yet straightforward API, unified thanks to the fact there is just one innovator, just one implementer. Componentized developing that has been Asp.net's pillar works today and J2EE is lagging behind with it's revised JSF specification (and I'm still a bit skeptic about it). Java tooling is a strange story as well. A vibrant society with many fractions, some schism's, and a lot of gurus. Frameworks have been conceived this past decade that will make you split your brain in a gazillion fractions and make you wander if you're ever going to learn them all. This is understandable, with so many years on the market this group of people beated to death the OO paradigm and are going even beyond (ex. AOP). What will the future bring? I don't know.
I wish there was more innovation in the .Net world, I'd like to see a new generation of Web servers, preferably from the Apache group, I'd like to see even emulations of the J2EE platform as I kind of like it. Will it happen? Of course, but it'll take time and critical mass, after all it took Java more than a decade. What .Net has is the fact that it's a clean slate implementation that started from scratch and can borrow most paradigms that were implemented in Java in a breeze.

2005-07-24T02:15:00.000+02:00

Even though my first experience with a DB was with DB2 at the university what I ended up using at home, at first, was MS SqlServer 2000. As my project needed some sort of hierarchical category system I wanted to create a table that is self referencing itself and can do ON DELETE and ON UPDATE CASCADE triggers. Unfortunately MSSQL2K did not support this feature (I don't understand how you can do any reasonable graph data structure without it) so I had to make some scamontage tricks (google for CELKO tables and nested set) that I didn't like. I eventually tried the same thing with DB2 and it seems to work but it's out of the question as it's not free. It seems that mySql for the moment has a limit on the recursion depth of the triggers. What surprised me is that it seems PostgreSql supports such tables so at the moment it looks it'll become my favorite DB.

2005-07-21T16:04:00.000+02:00

Scotty got beamed up. He's back with the stars again.