TheServerSide.com: Apache has started a project to create an open source, Apache-licenses implementation of J2EE. One of the core commitments is for the implementation to be fully J2EE compliant. The Apache Foundation has access to the J2EE TCKs, which make the certification possible. The core developers who have “signed up” include members from OpenEJB, Apache, Core Developers Network, Exolab, and more!
This is interesting. JBoss has been fighting with Sun for the past year or so over licensing issues and now Apache is in the game of Open Source J2EE servers. It seems a bit late to me. Why has it taken Sun this long to allow this to happen? At least Microsoft hasn't caught on either.
Without weldinghelmets.reviews, The Colonel Sanders Conspiracy Weblog will be no more. As a sign of our gratefulness, we'd like to encourage our readers to visit this, especially if you're into DIY (specifically welding stuff). Thanks!
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I just noticed that
Urchin has a new version of their web log analysis tool. I think we might try it for our sites. I'm not too thrilled with the product we're using now,
DeepMatrix's LiveStats. LiveStats has a cumbersome interface and lacks the most commonly requested reports users here have.
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Slashdot has an interesting post that points to Rip Rowan's look at CD's being recorded louder and louder over the years. It's an interesting read.
Speaking of CD's, I just got two CD's the other day and have listened to half of one and am very happy with my purchase. Vigilantes of Love Live at the 40 Watt is straight ahead rock n' roll with the intelligence only Bill Mallonee seems to be able to bring to rock's table. Highly recommended.
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I'm not happy with our hosting provider today. First our main consumer site has a reported outage. Then I can't get to the stats server (very slow and I don't have a login for one of the sites). Last, one of our sites seems to have database issues of some sort and it's been going on for at least a few hours now. Stuff breaks, things happen. I know this, but I can't help but get frustrated when it happens to a vendor I'm recommending to those inside and outside my company. Arrrggghhh...
My wife and I placed an outrageously low bid on a rather bad house in a very good neighborhood. I'm expecting the seller to come back with their asking price or close to it. Then it's likely game over because that will be a sign that they're offended by the low offer and are going to play hardball. I'll be happy either way. The house needs tons of work, so it's no loss to me to not have to put the time into that. I don't find much fun in fixing houses up, that's just me. If we get it, then we got a solid deal and a decent investment. Either way I see it as a win-win. We should find out tomorrow what happens next.
I woke up this morning and for some reason started thinking about small businesses and their need for inexpensive collaboration software ala Exchange/Outlook, Oracle Collaboration Suite, Novell GroupWise, Lotus Notes, etc. I know there is Exchange hosting that is decent on price but it lacks the more current features like web conferencing and file sharing. There's also the potential to do fax and maybe even voicemail. I'm thinking a Salesforce.com or CrownPeak ASP of the collaboration software market for small businesses. The one million dollar question is whether small businesses would buy into this or not. Do they really need it? I think they do. I sat in a small real estate business last night and couldn't help but notice how much they could benefit from an easy to use, powerful collaboration service. Hook it up to other hosted services like salesforce.com, CrownPeak, etc. and you could have an affordable and killer small biz business solution.
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Snellspace:
Who can reasonably expect competing companies to actively cooperate with one another when there is so much bad blood between them? If left strictly to technology vendors, Web services will end up like every other over-hyped technology that came before — fractured, incomplete and ultimately inadequate.
Once upon a time I thought web services would actually crack the wall of proprietary lock-in and open up the opportunity to use technologies across many diverse platforms. I've watched companies like IBM, Microsoft, Sun and others play politics with the numerous web services standards. I've seen very little in return from any of the big boys. It's the same old, same old.
James is right. Why do we expect competing vendors who despise each other to come together to create standards they can all agree upon? I think it has a lot to do with the fact that as soon as a large corporation gets their fingers in the mix things tend to get a whole lot more complex and political. Companies like Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Apple, etc. seem to do their best work when fighting each other outside of the ring of standards committees. At least there they provide technology that users can touch and see, even if it tends to be rather proprietary.
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The Fury of The Cow!: Oldy times You ever wonder what you would have been doing had you been born in like the 1800's? Would you be out on the frontier? Working as a sailor on a ship headed to Europe? I'd probably have been an accountant. That makes the daydreaming about it pretty dull.
Classic.
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My wife and I are on both ends of the real estate business. We have a house in Ohio that we've been trying to sell for over nine months now and we're also looking at buying a house in Wisconsin, in the Madison area. Here are some of my observations in no particular order:
- The market is hot for both buyers and sellers, but it can still bite both in unexpected ways. We're selling a house in Canton, Ohio that has been dropped to $99,900. It's a nice 3 bedroom, nothing special. It's about 5 minutes from the Pro Football HOF — a good area. You pay lower city taxes and get the better suburban schools. It's not selling. Why? There are brand new houses selling in the $150,000 range offering 4% financing for 45 years. Yes, 45 years! These new house deals are killing that market right now. That's how the seller is getting burnt. On the other hand, buyers are paying more for houses on a whole. In the Madison suburbs, a house that was $120,000 two years ago is now selling for $150,000. Has that house's value really risen about 25% in two years? Probably not, but lower interest rates are sending out more buyers and the sellers know that. If a seller can get away with raising the price by 10-30% because the low rates make the monthly payment still within most buyers' budgets, then they're doing it. That's how the buyer can get burnt in this real estate market right now.
- Realtor.com is a very powerful site with all the houses in the MLS. You can search houses based on a variety of criteria. Unfortunately, the details on the houses on the site are often sparse. Worse yet, they're often incorrect. I suggest real estate agents bone up on digital photography a bit more and take five more minutes to type in more (correct) details on the house. Also, don't put up a picture of a house where there are objects obstructing the view. A car parked in front of the house blocking part of the view is not helping that house sell. Just a thought there.
- The power buyers have today with the Internet is unbelievable. You can get pre-approved for a mortgage within minutes. You can shop for the best loan by spending a few hours filling out some applications and letting banks bid on your business. Searching for a house is great through the variety of sites out there. The Internet is drastically changing the real estate market.
- The power sellers have today with the Internet is unbelievable. You can sell your house yourself, save thousands of dollars and still have much of the same marketing resources as real estate agents have. For sale by owner is becoming even more popular these days and the Internet plays a big part in that.
- The need to have a buyer's agent is insane. It's just another sign that our society is plagued by litigation bug. The realtors have scared the common seller and buyer into believing that the real estate waters are much too choppy for mere mortals to sail alone in.
- A house may be a horrible investment. Don't believe the common wisdom that is always better to buy than to rent. We bought our home in Ohio and then moved four months later in 1999. We've been playing the landlord role for about 3 years and now we're trying to sell the house. We may very well lose money on the whole deal. Also, remember that in the early years of your mortgage you're paying very little on the principal, most goes to interest. Carefully examine whether you should rent or buy. There can be substantial expenses associated with being a homeowner that just aren't there when you're renting. Stuff breaks and some stuff on houses can be very expensive to fix if it breaks, especially if you're like me and don't get into the whole DIY thing.
- Buying a house is exciting, but don't think it's going to make you happy. That's just a reminder there for me.
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Driving With Dawn has a post about how one of her friends works at a place where a number of female co-workers play dumb and are extremely flirtatious in order to get to the top of the corporate ladder. This proves two things to me: Men in general are even more naive than I thought and women in general can be even more cunning than I ever imagined.
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Fox News:
Oracle Corp. said on Thursday its hostile bid to buy PeopleSoft Inc. would cost about $1 billion more because its target is issuing new shares to acquire J.D. Edwards & Co.
I'll give Larry Ellison credit for one thing, persistence. The man doesn't know when to say “I give up.”
I think Ellison is way off base in thinking the purchase of PeopleSoft will be a good move for Oracle. A fair number of PeopleSoft customers would bail if Oracle takes over, while most customers would probably just wait things out until they're forced to make a decision. If Ellison's claim that they're not interested in forcing PeopleSoft customers to switch to Oracle are true, then how much money can one make off of maintenance contracts alone? And how many of those customers will continue to pay for their maintenance contracts since there won't be much in the way of upgrades to PeopleSoft apps? PeopleSoft customers chose PeopleSoft over Oracle and other ERP vendors' packages, just as Oracle customers chose Oracle 11i over PeopleSoft applications. So, why force customers to choose a software package they didn't feel compelled to go with in the first place? People normally don't like the feeling of being forced into a decision. That is why I predict a mass exodus from Oracle by former PeopleSoft customers if Oracle takes things over. SAP has to have quite a large grin on its face right about now. Oracle's plan could back fire and actually help SAP become an even bigger gorilla in the ERP space. Amazing.
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ZDNet:
The industry has been beating the TCO drum for the last 15 years, and it was interesting to hear one of your peers yesterday talking up all these points that you have pooh-poohed. For the technology market to expand, you must add new value. Total cost of ownership is not the way to jump-start IT spending. - John Chen, CEO
Sybase
Add new value. TCO cannot drive IT. Depending on TCO to drive IT is like a company continually dropping its prices on products and services in order to increase sales. At some point that company is going to reach a rock bottom price and then what? The same question should be asked by those focused mainly on TCO when it comes to IT.
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BBC:
Microsoft has issued a warning about a critical security flaw that affects most versions of its Windows software. The flaw involves DirectX, an extensive collection of programming add-ons for Windows used by computer games. ...Embarrassingly for Microsoft one of the products affected is Windows Server 2003.
Riddle me this Batman... Why is DirectX on a server operating system like Windows Server 2003?! Please tell me DirectX is not installed by default on Win2003.
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I used to despise those guys and gals who would hand me a list full of “bugs” concerning a new section or web app I was working on. Worse, those “bugs” were often cosmetic. “Move this image a little more to the left.” “This text shouldn't wrap here.” “Put back the line that's in the spec.” “Blah, blah, blah...” Well guess what I've been doing for the last month on one of my projects? Yep, I'm the guy that people despise. I'm pointing out all the little things that need to be tidied up before we demo the new app. And, yes, I'm getting the groans of frustration that I know all too well what they mean. At least I provide pretty good specs and screens to go off of. All my requests have been to have the screens look exactly like the screens show. Oh the joy of being the nitpicky pest!
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ZDNet:
Oracle-PeopleSoft: a hostile situation
You think?
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ComputerWorld:
Orbitz LLC, the airline-owned travel Web site, suffered an outage yesterday related to an Oracle database on which Orbitz operates the site, according to a spokeswoman for the Chicago-based company.
Who knows what happened with Orbitz, but I always thought it was an unwise move on Oracle's part to tout their database as “unbreakable.” Bugs happen, things break.
While I'm on Oracle, I thought I would mention that their
Collaboration Suite looks compelling at $60 a user for all the features they claim to offer. Of course, you're going to have to lay down some serious cash for the “unbreakable” part of the equation — 9i Database and App Server software.
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Mark Murphy has a great response to
James DeLong's News.com opinion piece on Open Source software and some government agencies around the world making it mandatory to at least consider Open Source solutions along with their commercial counterparts. Mark is exactly right about the risks associated with both Open Source
and commercial software. Both are risky and both have costs associated with the risk, sometimes much higher than you would every guess. His example of Oracle taking over PeopleSoft is a great example of why commerical software can be even more risky than Open Source. You invest millions on a software package to run your business on only to find out that your investment in that software can go right down the drain as its on-going development and support is suddenly ripped away.
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