I've upgraded this server to Red Hat 8.0.

At first it simply refused to upgrade, complaining about a missing /SWAP partition. I had to comment it out in /etc/fstab and let the installer re-create it.

It took close to two hours to preform the upgrade, which gave me a chance to catch up on some shows I had taped last week.

I should have manually selected the packages. The darn thing decided to upgrade Apache 1.3.x to 2.0.x. I had to redo /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf pretty much from scratch. There're still a few things I could not get working quite right, nothing major though.

I also had to recompile mod_webapp. They say you're supposed to put module configuration files in /etc/httpd/conf.d/, which doesn't seem to work with mod_webapp. It kept on complaining about an Invalid Virtual Hostname. I should have left everything in httpd.conf. Serves me right for trying to do things the documented way.

It also downgraded my SpamAssassin installation. Weird.

As usual /etc/mail/sendmail.cf need to be rebuild. Apparently hash is now specified with -T<TMPF> instead of -o.

I also noticed that the rpm command no longer includes build options. There's a new command called rpmbuild. Not a bad thing. It makes the man pages somewhat less confusing.

I spend quite some time making sure all vital services where still functioning, and so far, everything looks good.

Knock on wood.

More than 30,000 Java Developer's Journal readers cast their votes and here are the winners. No big surprises, just the usual suspects.

Pounder is a utility for automating Java GUI tests. Recordable scripts, nifty!

The Apache Software Foundation has released Axis 1.0 RC2. Still on my to-do list.

Apple pulls iPod in France. L'article en Français.

bl0g is a Hebrew PHP/MySQL system designed to run blogs. Cool!

Cape Clear has released a free stand-alone version of its WSDL Editor. Looks promising.

Java Developers Prefer Tomcat & JBuilder. I really wonder if 1,425 individuals make for an accurate representation.

Henri has released GenJavaCore 1.0, his personal code library. Lots of interesting stuff, 201 classes.

Music Companies to Pay $67.4 Million in Price-Fixing. Why worry about inflated prices when you can blame p2p music trading instead?

The latest stable build of Eclipse is now available for Mac OS X.

I really don't know If I want to give it a try or not. I've been doing most of our Java development on Windows boxes for the past 3 years, and I like it. I have yet to find strong compelling reasons which would warrant spending the time required to setup a new programming environment under OS X.

Class Diagrams for JDK 1.4. Very nice.

Slashdot turned 5 today. Happy B-day!

Bob is tired of Masturbatory Blogging. Look ma! No hands!

The JBoss Project has released JBoss 3.0.3.

Nightcrawler in X2 finally revealed!

20% of Net surfers are now using Windows XP. Looking at the stats for my blog, Windows 98 leads the pack with 26.4%. 19.3% for Win2K and 19.2% for XP. Mac OS is at a puny 4.9%.

XML acronyms for Java developers. Lightweight.

Jackie Chan bashes Rush Hour, The Tuxedo, Owen Wilson and Chris Tucker. I agree with him. I've been a fan for 20 years. The Americanized stuff is just not up to par.

An SCJP 1.4 certification primer. Updated for J2SE 1.4.

I wanna be like Dave, and spend my whole day trying to improve my ranking on Google. Not!

Survey: How many RSS feeds to you read on a daily basis?

Steve Anglin: Has Java passed its prime?

.NET is a force to be reckon with. Once the M$ stream-roller marketing machine is in motion, there's no stopping it.

The marketing message never changes. It is just repeated over and over and over. The theory being that if you repeat it often enough, people will simply believe it. Guess what? It works. The press/media will bark at first, but ultimately fall by the sideline.

In the IT world, decisions are made by people that truly want to believe the hype. In the end it is never about technologies that are available today, but about what Microsoft claims they can provide tomorrow. Whether they can actually deliver becomes a moot point.

The whole J2EE vs. .NET debate has nothing to with bias toward or against Microsoft or Sun. Microsoft, like Apple and countless others, has a horrible track record when it comes to delivering new technologies in a timely fashion. Decision makers should realize that basing the future of a company on forthcoming technology implementations is foolish.

I don't blame Microsoft. I applaud them.

We watched the season premiere of Alias last nite. We had to tape it since we were invited to Vicki's brother for dinner.

Unfortunately, we missed the last 5 minutes. The preceding football game ran overtime. Another reason why I can't stand football.

I was a little disappointed with the whole show. I was expecting it to start with a bang, and it didn't.

Anthony: Perl v. Java My Ass.

I've always said that a smart programmer should use the language that is the best suited for the task at hand. There is no one language that does it all. Java's pretty close though.

IBM releases WebSphere Studio 5.0.

Red Hat rolls out Linux 8.0.

Gert Van Ham's released version 0.4 of his JCE taglib.

Sun announces new J2ME APIs and J2EE improvements.

Survey: How many RSS feeds to you read on a daily basis?

We went to see Sweet Home Alabama yesterday afternoon.

We had dinner at the new AppleBee's in Bellevue. Yesterday was a training day. They won't officially be open until the 30th. We didn't know that. We just saw the lights were on.

All the food and beverage were complimentary. They were also collecting funds for the Boys and Girls Club of Bellevue, and had agreed to match whatever was donated on Saturday night. Nice.

SQLViewer 1.0.4 plugin for IntelliJ IDEA.

Henri has updated his JUG list.

Generate dynamic content with Tomcat and MySQL. A tutorial (intermediate-level) on creating Servlet-based rotating banner advertisements from developerWorks.

Public beta of SuperCard 4 available. SuperCard, wow. Brings back memories.

Jikes 1.17 has been released. See my installation instructions for OS X.

I installed more VRAM in Vicki's iMac. It did not solve the geometry problem. I'm out of options. We'll have to wait for Apple to release a fix.

Survey: How many RSS feeds to you read on a daily basis?

I've implemented a Surveys generator for my blog. I just created the first one: How many RSS feeds do you read on a daily basis?. Please give it a try.

Let me know what you think of it.

Ovidiu likes NetNewsWire. So do I. Unfortunately it can't keep up with the 111 feeds I regularly monitor. I find myself using NewzCrawler more and more.

There are few things that I would love to see NNW support.

1. As mentioned b4, direct support of .url shortcut files. I'd also want to be able to drag & drop a shortcut from IE to NNW.

2. The ability to export/import subscriptions in OCS format.

3. Autodiscovery of OPML subscriptions lists. A nifty feature which was recently added to NewzCrawler.

4. Automatic handling of the ' XML entity.

5. The ability to trigger channel updates via AppleScript. It would also be nice to be able to add new channels that way.

6. Improved threads and groups management. I've pretty much given up trying to group anything. With so many subscriptions, moving channels around takes forever and a day.

But I'm probably the only person interested in most of that stuff.

Ultimately I think I'd much rather have Brent spend time working on features that are widely requested. He's got a good product and needs to focus on pleasing the masses.

Mike's got the blog-blues. Breaking up is hard to do. Come to think of it, marriage is no piece of cake either.

We're in the process of migrating one of our Resin/MySQL server from 2K to Red Hat. Fun, fun, fun. I'm such a unix geek.

Adam Curry: “I dunno, somehow Britney asking kids not to download is like telling 15 year old boys not to jerk off to her videos.”

We watched the season premiere of ER last night. It was so-so. Vicki figured out that Anspaugh was going to be back. I was betting on Benton showing up.

PMD is yet another Java source code analyzer. I haven't had a chance to try it, but will soon.

IBM and Sun endorse jCert/CIW Unified Certification path.

J2EE 1.4 previewed at JavaOne Japan.