Blue Sky On Mars

In response to the criticism that BugMeNot.com has received from publications that they provide access to, the good folks there have created a Registration form to show exactly what they think of mandatory registration, all in the name of a “better online experience”. Very clever stuff.

I just discovered that Karsten has released his data binding framework for Swing apps. I’ve got some reading to do

Found via Erik’s link blog: Tweakfactor.com: Firefox Tweak Guide - Page 1 - Get your tweak on!. I’m not using Firefox yet, but these tweaks will be good when I do make the switch from Moz.

Catching up on earlier Javablogs posts, I come across Top Ten Truly Obscure But Useful Java Projects. John Munsch also posted his list, but I’m more familiar with the items on his list than the ones from Carlos’ list.

While looking around at Mozdev, I found MacroTracker Project’s toolkit, which includes a number of Swing components and other classes that provide some useful utility functionality. They start off with the somewhat boring “MBoldLabel”, but there are more interesting sounding things farther on down the list.

Curiously, this toolkit is being used to create an IDE for Mozilla application development. What’s odd about this, is that there are two IDE frameworks already in Java (NetBeans and Eclipse) and even an IDE written on top of Mozilla (Komodo). But, hey, more power to them if they turn out a nice project!

Lessig will doubtless be happy about this. Kerry Picks Edwards to Be Running Mate. Edwards is pretty savvy, so this is a good move.

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about PHP vs. Java in terms of scalability. This discussion happened as a result of Friendster’s move from Jav to PHP. Here’s one summary (PHP leaning), by Chris Shiflett, of the discussions: PHP Scales.

My takeaway from both this and the recent talk of eBay’s use of Java is to keep in mind how the web works. It is inherently stateless. The more you really on maintaining state, the harder it is to scale your application. Some applications inherently require more state than others, but it’s just a consideration to remember.

I think that PHP is a quicker language to develop in (for the same reasons that Perl, Python and Groovy are). Maybe that speed of development and experimentation (make mistakes faster!) avoids premature optimization and helps people spend time tuning where it really counts.

Via /.: They Might Be Giants now has an online store that they run themselves. This shows how artists (not labels) would likely do things if they were informed and had their way. They sell individual MP3s (that’s right, high-quality MP3, no DRM) and full albums at iTMS-like prices. This seems like a reasonable way to do things. Online music stores might help you find new music, but artists may as well sell songs on their own individual site. Look up the artist on Google, go to their site, buy their music.

Enabling that would seem like a good business. (Of course, you still have to get the labels to agree, or work with unsigned artists.)

Here’s a good Motley Fool commentary by Whitney Tilson that shares how I feel about the current state of investing: Fool.com: The Joy of Cash. One interesting thing to get from this: mutual funds are not always the best place to have your money. A Vanguard index fund is good because it’s cheap, but if the stock market goes sideways for the next few years, you’ll basically get no return.

Recognizing that high stock prices, rising interest rates and other factors mean that there aren’t many good investment choices, cash is not a bad place to have a chunk of your portfolio right now. Tilson says that he’s got 35% in cash. Berkshire Hathaway has $70 billion in cash and bonds. Do you want to second guess Warren Buffett?

Need a webapp that allows the user to enter HTML formatted text? Take a look at FCKeditor - The text editor for Internet. Very spiffy indeed.