BadMagicNumber

While downloading assorted windows patches today, I came across an interesting link:
Rights Management Add-on for Internet
Explorer. I'm a little surprised there hasn't been an something of an outcry over this one:

Document authors, Web site authors, and creators of Web-based applications can deliver protected information by
restricting permission. This provides protection, not only while the information is in transit, but also after the
recipient of the information has received it.

I understand that this is useful technology for traditional content providers - but in my view it really goes againt the
whole philosophy of the web. Can you imagine if the original Mosaic had this stuff?

From the software politics point of view, I think it is an interesting anti-PDF play from MS. If you can do DRM in HTML,
then it's means you don't need to use encypted PDF (or eBooks for that matter).

Apache Geronimo is (as you'd expect/hope) attempting to reuse as much code
as possible from assorted Jakarta project.

One benefit of this is that it could put some pressure on some of the
smaller Jakarta projects (especially Jakarta Commons) to actually do some
releases instead of requiring people to use DEV or CVS versions of the code.

Unfortunately, at the moment Geronimo is using Maven for builds which tends to
make it pretty easy to use non-release versions of various jars.

(I'll let Hani deal with anyone who thinks that using CVS versions of
software is a good idea, but here's a hint: Xerces, Batik and FOP jar hell.)

At work we've been stung (fortunately on an internal system only) by a JDK
bug which we weren't aware of. Did you know that under JDK1.4.1 once 2036
files are open any subsequent opens will delete the file that was supposed
to be opened? Obviously this is NOT WHAT WAS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN!! Note that
the file that gets deleted could be a class, a jar or something like web.xml
- it gets deleted! Tracking down THAT bug was NOT FUN. We found it in a
web-app. It was behaving weirdly, so I attempted to restart it, which meant
the web.xml was re-read, and deleted!

See
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/bugParade/bugs/4779905.html for the gory details and a test case.

Even if you are careful with making sure you close your files, you can never
be sure about 3rd party components.

Fortunately, experimentation has show that it seems to be fixed in JDK1.4.2 -
although the bug isn't marked as closed. Nice to see Sun keeps track of what
bugs they fix…

As mentioned previously, I'm currently
implementing JSR168. I've now got an implementation that does most of what we need at work (Portlets work, can switch modes,
can switch window states etc).

I'm pretty with the spec - it appears to be pretty well thought out. There are a couple of small issues (how
init parameters and portlet preferences relate, for instance, and I noticed one inconsistancy between the Javadoc and the
Spec which I can't remember right now), but mostly it has been an enjoyable experience.

I've noticed that Hani has done an
implementation, and
Rickard is doing one too.

I'm wondering what people are going to do when the reference
implementation becomes available? At the moment the jetspeed2 cvs is un-buildable because it required the Pluto jars from IBM,
which aren't released yet. The Pluto jars contain the reference
implementation for a JSR168 portlet container.When they become available will people switch to them? I probably intend
to, depending on how easily we can embed them into out infrastructure. I won't know for sure until I see the code, though,
and there's no real solid date on when that will happen. In the mean time, I'm working on a JSP/Taglib based Portlet aggregator,
with no way of knowing how it will need to tie into the reference container.

(BTW, is there a mailing list or something that other container implementors discuss aggregator design on? I'd love
to pick the brains of those who have been-there-done-that…)

Classifier4J version 0.4 is now available for your downloading
pleasure.

This release has an optional jar, which includes a JDMB (Thanks to Rickard for the
pointer - I was getting very frustrated with Jisp) datasource and a couple of simple demos.

Classifier4J now also includes the code for summary extraction used by the text summary web application.

Most people who know me think I'm fairly creative (or crazy, depending on how you look at it). Once I heard someone
say that only 10% of the ideas that most people have are any good. My theory has always been
that means there are two methods of maximising the number of good ideas I could possibly have, I'm going to make sure
I use both of them. Bear that in mind when you read the rest of this…..

I have always been aware that most of my ideas are very derivative - I just repackage something someone else invented.
Five minutes ago, though, I think I came up with an idea for a program that no one else has ever had, let alone implemented.

I call it the Fiki. Imagine a Wiki, except that instead of creating links LikeSo, the software analyzes each
phrase and automagically creates links to pages that talk about that phrase. How cool would that be?

I think that is the best idea I've ever had - even better than my idea for a swimming cap and goggles all-in-one which
I had before Speedo came out with it at the Atlanta Olympics. I can't understand why no-one used it - I guess it did
look kind of odd…. ;-)

Anyhow - what do people think? Is this a good idea, or do I need to return to reality and become a chef or something?