File this article: Why Do Java Developers Like to Make Things So Hard? in the “lost on me” category. Yeah, there are some bad API designs out there in the Java world, but I’ve gotten to a point with Java where doing things in PHP or Perl is like pulling teeth. Right now I’m porting some PHP stuff to Java, and looking at the crufty, linear PHP code just makes me blanch. Most of this Web site is written using PHP and Perl, and I like them for one offs. The subscriptions page I created the other day that pulls the list of feeds out of the aggregator and publishes it as part of the site took me no time at all to do. But if I’m creating a system, I want the structured approach that Java demands. It just makes life easier down the road.

Update: Russell Beattie concurs with the article. For what it’s worth, I’m definitely not a computer scientist. (I have a wimpy MIS degree.) I came from the Perl/PHP/ColdFusion world. The only way I’m going back is kicking and screaming.

Google is a bit different today. As a Firefox user, I rarely hit the Google home page (control-K to get to the search box built into the browser is much quicker) and I was surprised at the new results page. Froogle takes the place of the old Google implementation of DMOZ in the list of possible searches, which makes sense.

I don’t know if you, like me, are following all the grisly details of the vicious battle between the Bush administration and its supporters and Richard Clarke, but on Friday things hit a low when Senate majority leader Bill Frist accused Clarke of perjuring himself either in his public testimony last week or in his earlier classified testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, saying that there were inconsistencies between them that would certainly support such allegations. I assumed that no perjury charges would ever materialize and that indeed the testimony would never be declassified, rather that rather this was just a particularly vicious attempt to discredit him. I already knew that Clarke’s enemies had underestimated him, what I didn’t realize is that I had underestimated him as well. Yesterday on TV he said that he supported declassifying not only his testimony before Congress, but also all of the emails he sent to Condoleeze Rice while he worked for the White House.

In the meantime, Condoleeza Rice told 60 Minutes that while nothing would please her more than testifying before the 9/11 commission, no sitting National Security Advisor had ever testified before Congress. She ignores the fact that her immediate predecessor, Sandy Berger, did testify before Congress while serving in that role. I’m not sure why the big media rarely points this out.

Oh, and as for Clarke’s treasonous claim that the Bush administration felt that taking down al-Qaeda was important, but not urgent, prior to 9/11, let’s see what President Bush himself had to say about it, “”I was not on point, I have no hesitancy about going after him. But I didn’t feel that sense of urgency, and my blood was not nearly as boiling.” (That’s Bush being quoted in Bob Woodward’s fawning Bush at War.)

Tim Bray’s trip report from his visit to StarOffice in Hamburg is pretty interesting. I didn’t know that OpenOffice stored its documents in a way that’s pleasing to XML purists, that’s pretty cool from an interoperability perspective. I’ve been using OpenOffice as my desktop suite (and I forced it on my wife) when I reinstalled Windows and then found out that I lost my Office 97 CD. She complained at first, but now she’s used to it and likes it well enough. That’s a pretty good endorsement. A few months ago I found the Office 97 CD, but we still haven’t gone back.

Eclipse 3.0 M8 is out. Seems like this release includes a number of spiffy new features.

The one question all of us trying to figure out what’s going on have to ask every say is, “How bad is it?” The title of Nir Rosen’s Reason article, It’s All Bad News, should give you some clue. Rosen is a freelancer living in Iraq, and paints a picture of constant violent crime, growing hatred for the American occupiers, and nonsensical repression of the Iraqis by US troops. I know there’s good stuff going on as well, but it doesn’t seem like the security situation is improving. My gut feeling is that the reason we’re seeing deaths of US soldiers go down is that the Iraqi insurgents have figured out that they’re the hardest people to kill, and they figure that slaughtering Iraqi civilians who collaborate with the Americans serves their ends just as well. (Via Juan Cole.)

If you, like me, detest David Brooks, you’ll revel in this piece that skewers the assertions that made him famous with aplomb.

Everybody seems to have not only noted a throwaway bit in a New York Times article that mentioned that Condoleeza Rice is leaving her job at the end of the year, but also to have taken it as proof that they’re out of the loop. See Wonkette, Josh Marshall, and Slate’s Today’s Papers.

Cory Doctorow explains why DRM really does suck. In this case, it’s Apple’s DRM that’s the issue, but all DRM schemes present similar quandries.

Ed Foster notes that purchasers of the dreaded SCO license are not granted the right to modify or even recompile applications covered under that license (which, according to SCO, is all of Linux). In other words, you’re not even allowed to build a custom kernel for your servers once you’ve submitted to SCO’s extortion. The CEO of EV1.net says he wouldn’t buy the license if he had it to do over again. Maybe now SCO can sue him for defamation.