Finally, and with typical slashdot fanfare, Subversion 1.0 has been released. This is not your typical 1.0, because Subversion has been in development for a long time before being branded 1.0. There are already graphical clients and an Eclipse plugin. Let’s hope those mature quickly to be as seamless as their CVS counterparts, but with the great characteristics that Subversion brings (directory versioning, constant time tagging/branching, WebDAV, etc).
Software Development
Yesterday, Britain’s Sunday Express reported that US forces had Osama bin Laden surrounded. Today, U.S., Pakistan Deny They’re Closing in on Osama.
Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts remain a mystery to U.S. and Pakistani forces as they crank up efforts to flush out al Qaeda and Taliban rebels hiding near Afghanistan’s eastern frontier, officials said on Monday.
I don’t remember where I first read this idea, but someone out there suspected that the US will hold off on capturing or announcing the capture of bin Laden until closer to the election. Personally, I think that would be going a bit far as political stunts go, and I think that unlikely. But, if bin Laden is captured close to the election, I just hope that people will keep things in perspective. Capturing bin Laden is not going to stop a decentralized group like al Qaeda.
Politics
In an unfortunate turn, a federal judge has ruled that DVD-copying software is illegal. As I understand it, the notion of Fair Use (which is what allows us to legally make copies of things for our own personal use) is based in legal tradition and not codified directly in law. I guess that means that the DMCA, which outlaws software that circumvents copy protection, trumps Fair Use. The article contains this odd statement:
Hollywood critics have long said CSS simply controls access to DVDs and that it’s not a direct copy protection mechanism.
I don’t understand this argument. Copy protection is all about controlling access. DVDs are encrypted, and there’s really no reason to encrypt if you’re not looking to keep unauthorized uses at bay.
In all honesty, DVD X Copy has significant, non-infringing uses. It’s perfectly reasonable to be able to back up a DVD, particularly as fragile as they are (compared to video tapes). There’s still DVD Shrink available, but I do hope that 321 Studios wins on appeal. I also hope that somewhere along the way, Congress will figure out what a bad law the DMCA is.
Politics
Keith on the Joustlog has a nice tip for joustlog: How to make the Swing HTML renderer split long words when wrapping. Not something I need at the moment, but certainly a good thing to keep in mind. (In case the link rots, the basic idea was to subclass HTMLEditorKit, creating a new ParagraphView that gets returned by a new ViewFactory.)
Software Development
I have this site configured to allow comments even on the older posts. I’ve had a little bit of comment spam, but I’ve also noticed that a couple of posts in particular have continued to get comments.
India’s President Talks Up Open Source appeared in May of last year. Since then, new comments have appeared in August, November, December, January and again today. And the comments are weird. They’re kinda spam-like, but kinda not. Since they aren’t linking to spammy sorts of sites, I’ve left them there for your enjoyment.
Another one is my post about Super Volcanoes that came along in August 2001, when this site was still We Write Online. Up until recently, this article was in the first page of matches for “super volcanoes” on Google. So, starting in July 2003, people started coming along and asking me, apparently the authority on super volcanoes, questions about them. The last comment was in September 2003, but I think I’ve also had a couple of other, somewhat childish ones that I’ve had to delete.
The randomness of people that come to my blog is certainly one of the more enjoyable parts of blogging.
Random
This is a pretty remarkable story. William Hung had the spotlight on him nearly a month ago for his interesting rendition of Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs” during the American Idol auditions. It’s obvious that the Idol judges send through the best and the worst, hoping to provide some entertainment value at the expense of the less talented among the hopefuls. Hung was undoubtedly sent through for entertainment value. But, I think he has provided more entertainment than anyone anticipated:
Betting that Hung, this season’s biggest American Idol loser, has a few more media cycles in him, Juris’ Fuse network joined with Koch Entertainment this week to offer the 20-year-old college student a $25,000 recording-slash-music video contract.
If you check out williamhung.net, you’ll find that the phenom is no joke… people are really entertained by Hung. Enough so that there’s even another article running today. I betcha “She Bangs” is going to move up the charts at the karaoke bars, complete with William Hung moves.
I say, more power to ya! Hung looked like a pretty jovial and happy person on Idol, and I hope he enjoys this bit of fame. This craze reminds me a bit of Mahir.
Music
Sixty scientists, including twenty Nobel laureates, believe that Bush distorts science:
The Union of Concerned Scientists, an independent organization, also issued a 37-page report, “Scientific Integrity in Policymaking,” detailing the accusations. The statement and the report both accuse the Bush administration of distorting and suppressing findings that contradict administration policies, stacking panels with like-minded and underqualified scientists with ties to industry, and eliminating some advisory committees altogether.
Politics
I was surprised to see the editor screenshot for Genady’s Java 1.5 Eclipse plugin. I thought the plugin only allowed you to compile the code, but didn’t really give you nice integration. From that editor screenshot, it looks like it does give pretty good integration. My group is currently working on internal tools that are due to be released mid-summer, so we could reasonably consider moving to 1.5. I wonder what the 1.5 release schedule is…
Software Development
Over the past few days, I’ve been doing some work with CGLIB - the Code Generation Library. It’s a great package for times when you want to implement AOP-like features in an efficient manner without classloader monkeying. The package is definitely actively maintained and developed (2.0 final was just released), and Chris Nokleberg and Juozas Baliuka were a big help in resolving some issues I had.
Thanks for the great project and support!
Software Development
I’m in the habit of using Google to look up Java class APIs. Usually, the first couple of links point to a couple of different versions of the javadoc at Sun’s site. If you don’t care about exactly which version of the javadoc you’re looking at, this generally works fine. But, check out this Google Search for JCheckBox. The first link points to the 1.4.1 javadoc which, as of today, points to a page saying that 1.4.1 has been End of Lifed, so no javadoc for you, bucko. This wouldn’t be so bad if Google had the 1.4.2 link as well, but they don’t. It also wouldn’t be so bad if Sun provided a link to the current version of the javadoc, but they don’t. I guess it’s time for me to actually have a local copy of the javadoc around.
Software Development
