[@145]

JDK 1.4.1 Developer Preview 5 for Mac OS X.

[@057]

FormProc 1.1, an open source Java library designed to make handling and validating forms easy.

JNIWrapper 1.1, a bridge between Java and native code.

ByteML 0.1, an open source Bytecode Markup Language.

Gates To Lay Out Future of C++, C#.

[@826]

I pretty much concur with Jeff's opinion on the Tablet PCs, and I spent most of yesterday actually playing with them.

What we're talking about is PIII-M at 800Mhz performance, which is apparently the best low voltage processor Intel currently produces. HP is actually using a Transmeta Crusoe TM5800 which roughly yields similar performances.

All of the Tablet PCs I've tried were quite slow, noticeably so.

The OS is a superset of Windows XP Professional, theoretically able to run all of your current applications. But most apps will not support direct pen input, at least not for while.

Contrary to what you may think, a special stylus is required. No touch-screens, like Palms or Pocket PCs. The digital pen (as they call it) is electromagnetic and does not need to be in contact with the screen to control the pointer, which is extremely awkward when actually writing on the tablet. The minute you lift your hand, the cursor goes flying. I've seen it happen to everybody, even the experts on stage.

I can see how being able to use digital ink improves productivity over paper, but whatever gain is made is lost the minute you try to navigate around the OS with a pen. Simple tasks such as launching an application or saving a document become laborious.

My grade: D+

Book Excerpts: Getting Started with JXTA.

Guidelines for using the Java 2 reference classes.

The ByteBuffer class in Java.

Processing stack trace data in Java.

Processing Speech with Java.

J2EE 1.4 SDK beta released.

Dark Side Switch Campaign.

James — Axis Plugin for Eclipse.

Matt — “RSS Validator doesn't accept relative links?!” I totally agree, that's exactly why I proposed the addition of a base tag in RSS.

Fred — SavaJe Guide to Wireless Developer Programs.

Jacksum 1.1.1, a checksum utility entirely written in Java.

CGI.pm 2.88, an essential Perl CGI library.

Dominic — sunBow (Cocoon plugin for Eclipse)

SOAP 1.2 Passage Snagged By IP Issues.

Recent report on J2EE vs .NET Relies on “Highly Flawed Methodology” says BEA.

Benchmark Bust-Up: The Middleware Company Responds.

[@701]

I'm on my way to a Microsoft sponsored event titled: “Introducing the Tablet PC! Come Experience the Evolution of the Notebook PC.” Should be fun.

A New File Upload Library Release. There's a new update to the com.oreilly.servlet library available.

Matt —Our Little Girl has Arrived! Congratulations Mom & Dad!

Sharp to unveil latest Linux PDAs.

Smokescreen 3.11, a commercial Java Class Obfuscator.

Julian — .NEXT or .NEVER? The journey as a java professional evaluating .NET.

Neil — Web Services Poll

Russ — Sendo Drops M$ Licenses Symbian. “How can you get SOOOO close to launch a piece of HARDWARE and then decide to scrap it entirely?”

StrutsTestCase, an extension of the JUnit TestCase class that allows testing of individual Action objects with or without a running servlet engine.

Book: Processing XML with Java.

[@989]

DrJava, an open source IDE which supports interactive evaluation of expressions.

Copy protection on CDs is ‘worthless’. “if discs cost only a few dollars each, buying them might be preferable to spending the time and effort to make copies…” Hell, yeah!

[@918]

The Jakarta Commons CLI team is proud to announce the version 1.0 release of their simple API for working with command line arguments and options.

javai18n — IntelliJ EAP #673 is out.

[@904]

Jeff — New version of JSR 14 Generics for Java…

Dominic — Web app security and hacking books.

Sean — “I installed the new version of SharpDevelop this morning. It's an open source IDE for C# and VB.NET.”

Greg — “Thinlet Beta5 is Out.”

Microsoft Office X 10.1.2 posted.

USB Key-Sized MP3 Player With LCD Display.

[@438]

My friend Frank, who lives in Palmer, sent me some pictures of the damages from last weekend's earthquake in Alaska.

NewzCrawler v1.3.1 has been released.

Top Ten New Things You Can Do with NIO.

Using Castor JDO for SQL Mapping.

Posting Blogs To iDisk.

JSP navigation tag, a freeware menu tag.

Gel Java IDE, a freeware Java and JSP IDE that runs natively under Windows.

AbleFtp, a shareware automated ftp client.

JOpenChart 0.94, an open source Java Toolkit and library for embedding charts into applications.

SafeJDBC 1.1, an open source Java library that simplifies the use of JDBC.

MS Releases .NET Source, Sort Of.

Diagnosing Java code: Decoupling package dependencies.

Java execs eye this week's J2EE 1.4 beta release.

Dominic — “Books, books, books…”

Russ — “Why are you reading this blog?” To sum up: Russ is an insane Republican who only raves about .NET.

[@854]

Web Services Performance Kit compares BEA, IBM, SunONE.

Dominic — OReilly blog on the .NET vs J2EE PetStore fiasco.

javai18n — Java Enterprise Best Practices.

Carlos — “I Thought Java Was Fast, But Not This Fast!”

Zaval JRC Editor 1.3.1, a visual Java Recource Editor.

AOL loses Net privacy ruling.

Dell's First PDA to Debut Nov. 18.

JStateMachine 1.0, an open souce Java State Machine which produces MVC-like View and Controller classes.

UML2EJB, an open source J2EE code generator.

[@510]

Blog the Vote! Indecision 2002. As usual, voting experts predict 40% or less of registered voters will cast ballots today. Very sad.

Jeff — Ant books..

Java Parser/Parser Generator 1.03, a Java-based parser and parser generator package/utility.

WebMacro 1.1b1, an open-source Servlet framework.

Using HashSet, LinkedHashSet, and TreeSet.

Chimera Web browser updated to version 0.6.

EditWorksPro 2.0, a commercial browser-based WYSIWYG editor.

Java Tips: Prepare cross-server database access methods with JDBC and Overpower the PreparedStatement.

Java 101: Tools of the trade, Part 1. Xinox Software's JCreator.

FTC: Where Spam Goes Off to Die.

The Register: “A drive-by shooting at a pet store last week was planned by Microsoft…”

[@909]

Borland reworks Java tools. JBuilder 8.

Benchmarking: Trove Collection Performance.

Jeff — Eclipse 2.1 Features List…

Dominic — Java XML API Performance and Usage articles

Brent — Give a man a fish…

Fred — RSS Coming to a Cell Phone in Your Hand.

CodeGuide 5.0 build 505, a Java IDE.

Recipe of the Day: Recompiling the RE.

AOL Launches Enterprise IM.

[@573]

Cedric — Benchmark from a .Net perspective. Interesting read.

Online music sales plummet. It's just a bunch of BS. It is all about quality. It makes me so mad that I'm going to have to download some mood music from Kazaa.

[@509]

I spent most of the weekend refactoring jTalk's various Utility-type classes, which was long overdue. In the process I got to seriously play with Eclipse and IDEA.

I've used both before, for smaller projects; never with anything really sizable. As I was telling Russ last week, I'm an old school kinda guy. You give me vi and I'm happy as can be. It is hard to break old habits… Nevertheless, I was not looking forward to hours of endless regexp substitutions.

When it was all said and done, I have to admin I would give IDEA the higher mark.

Both are excellent, feature-rich IDEs. I was easily able to do anything I wanted to in IDEA, but I did have to refer to Eclipse's help and FAQ quite a few times.

CVS support is stellar either way. Although I find IDEA's color labeling more intuitive. Ant is also well integrated in both products.

Eclipse (out of the box, sans-extra plugins) lacks extended support for numerous file formats (xml, dtds, tlds, etc.) On the other hand IDEA was able to handle just about anything.

Performance wise, Eclipse is a little snappier, but nothing extremely noticeable. Visually, Eclipse is more appealing, but not more functional. The IDEA sidebars are extremely useful.

In the end what annoys me the most about Eclipse is that I keep on having to look for menu items, settings, etc. In IDEA, everything is where I would except it to be. Maybe it's just me, the way my left brain works.

[Update]

I don't agree with Russ' rebuttal on the CVS issue. Eclipse seems to keep track of entries internally, which forces you to re-synch with the repository whenever files are modified outside of the workbench. That's just plain wrong. Maybe there's a way to turn it off, but I've yet to figure it out.

If you're like me and are using Phoenix, but not as your default browser, and would like to launch URLs from the Run or command line windows. Here's a simple trick:

Add the path of the directory containing phoenix.exe to your environment PATH variable. To open an URL in Phoenix, type the following command:

    phoenix http://erik.thauvin.net/

Too bad quick searches cannot be executed that way

Neil — Open Source: Start Here.

Joda 0.8, an open source Java Properties Framework.

ieSpell 1.1.0, my favorite spell checker.

1 page guide to IP addressing and obscuring.

Abbot 0.8.1 an open source Java GUI Testing Framework.

Alternatives and additions to the Java Collections Framework.

Thread Pooling in Java Applications.

Bob — New SCM Patterns Book.

Kev — “JBoss 3.0.4 is available to download from source forge.”

JIRA Add-Ons. JMS Service and CVS Messenger.

Enabling Ogg Vorbis Support in QuickTime, iTunes.

JCSC, an open source Java Coding Standard Checker.

RAD Tool 1.0 is an open source IDE for J2EE developers.

BEA Systems rolls out Liquid Data software.

From: "Cedric Beust"
To: Erik
Subject: Weblog
Date: Saturday, November 02, 2002 9:32 PM

Hey Erik,

I find it particularly ironic that you would quote my entry about the
EJBGen mailing-list breaking the 450 subscribers while you happen to be
the 450th subscriber yourself :-)

Thanks for the link, looking forward to reading you.

--
Cedric

Coolbeans.