Posts

I have to say, the ultimate form of laziness is posing musings to your weblog that are really questions in disguise. For example, I’m about to type up some “comments” on SharpReader that are, in fact, desperate pleas for help, either from the author (who can add features that will placate me), or users of SharpReader, who can tell me how to do the things that I’m trying to accomplish. This is also a form of arrogance, since it’s assumed that the author of SharpReader will somehow see these comments and respond. Of course, SharpReader has been out for less than a week, so I’m not expecting miracles. In any case, I could have started this entry with the next paragraph, but I didn’t, in the interests of brutal honesty and full disclosure. I started using SharpReader yesterday, since my man Yole has said he’s throwing in the towel on Syndirella. There are a few issues that I’m struggling with: ...

Slate’s Timothy Noah collected some PR tips for Iraqi Minister of Information Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf.

I saw a link to this story on the Agonist controversy at Dangerousmeta, and lo and behold, there’s a quote from me at the end! It’s cribbed from this site – the actual writer of the story never contacted me, and misspelled my name to boot. Criticize The Agonist, get free media exposure. Who knew? In any case, I stand by what I said. I really found the whole episode to be a great disappointment. By the way, the item that the quote was taken from is here, if you’re interested in context. Update: there’s one thing from the article that I do want to comment on. The writer of the article says that Sean-Paul falsely attributed items cut and pasted from Stratfor to unnamed sources in order to encourage other potential sources to send items to him. That disappoints me more than anything else I’ve read so far. I can understand how one might fall into the trap of trying to manufacture insider status and turn that into a larger audience of readers, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s just unfathomably dishonest. I was very shocked and disappointed to read that. ...

Yole says he’s going to dump Syndirella because there’s another RSS reader that does things he was planning on doing. I’m going to download it and try it out myself. The larger point, though, is that .NET must really, really rock as a development environment. Just in the area of RSS newsreaders, we’ve seen several implemented in .NET that are very impressive, have a relatively small footprint, and seem to have been written very rapidly. I’m not one to heap praise upon Microsoft, but the proof is in the pudding. People are writing really nice software using .NET as a platform with seemingly little effort, and I’m taking notice. ...

Awhile back, I read on somebody’s weblog that there are basically three ways to write modern business applications, and by that I mean applications written for internal usage in a company. The three are Microsoft .NET, enterprise Java, and open source Java. Those may not be the names he used, I can’t remember any more. To clarify, enterprise Java is Java development with expensive, unwieldy EJB containers like Weblogic and IBM WebSphere. Open source Java relies on things like Tomcat and the other Jakarta code. I’d personally throw JBoss into the enterprise category, even though it’s open source. When I look at job listings for developers, it seems to me that the skills people ask for specifically beyond just Java, servlets, and EJB, are things like Weblogic, WebSphere, MQSeries, and other things in the enterprise family. The only open source Java things I see listed specifically are occasionally Tomcat and Struts. By nothing more than dumb luck, my development experience is fully centered on the open source Java world. Both the places where I’ve done Java development have eschewed the enterprise route in favor of going with servlet based applications. Unfortunately, I feel like to be as competitive as possible in the job market, I need to broaden my skill set. I’ve decided that I’m going to focus on improving my Java skills and learning more enterprise Java, so I’ve begun reading Mastering EJB II, which is pretty well regarded and is available for free on the Web for sampling. I’d like to pick up some .NET knowledge, too, but first things first. The two big things I’m looking to learn right now are EJB, and UML. I’d like to know enough about both of them so that I can discuss them intelligently in interviews, and understand when they’re appropriate to use. I actually know some UML, mainly class diagrams, but I need to know more. And I’d like to know enough EJB to be able to look at projects and make a fact-based determination about whether using EJB makes sense. My impression right now is that EJB is the most misapplied technology in the Java world, but surely there has to be a category of project where EJB is most appropriate. Working on learning new skills for the sake of a job search is never fun, but focusing exclusively on only one of the three platforms for business applications is a luxury I feel I can no longer afford. ...

This bizarre tale of love and loss provides proof once again that life is stranger than I can imagine. Just read it.

Looks like US companies are freezing out al-Jazeera.

Did you know that the US government is spending millions of dollars to launch a pro-American satellite television network? Robert Satloff argues that this is a bad idea. I just find it ironic that the same people who oppose spending money to provide intelligent news and entertainment to Americans via PBS and NPR now want to do so for people who speak Arabic.

Here’s a nice story about a soccer match between some British marines and a local soccer team in Iraq that arose spontaneously. In the meantime, I hear that Congress is already working on plans to make baseball Iraq’s official sport once we win the war …

The poetry of D. H. Rumsfeld