JPz’log

Apple has just released a first beta version of the Safari browser for Windows!

For sure this will generate quite a lot of buzz in the next few weeks… as always when it comes to Apple products

In my quick experiments, the Windows port for sure has some potential, but it is still plagued by rendering problems, hence users should really keep in mind that this is beta software.

On the IzPack Java installer generator pages, the Google ads have problems:

You can also see many stuff not properly rendered on the Autosport.com website:

Congratulations to the JRuby team for the release of JRuby 1.0!

I love programming in Java and I also love programming in Ruby, so this project is of particular interest for me as I can write stuff in Ruby and yet leverage / mix it with the amazing amount of Java frameworks and libraries. I see a strong future for the Java platform with new languages establishing themselves as first class citizen. This obviously includes JavaScript, JRuby, but Groovy should not be forgotten. In fact, there are some stuff I would write in Groovy rather than in Ruby via JRuby, especially when it comes to using a library that leverages Java annotations (think the excellent Berkeley DB JPA for example).

I am however more sceptic regarding the vision of picking any Ruby application and running it on JRuby. The project has generated a lot of buzz by making it possible to run Ruby On Rails applications on top of JRuby, and by going as far as to generate what is needed to generate a WAR that you can drop into a Servlets container.

I do understand that this shows how strong JRuby has gotten recently, but I am not personally interested in running a Rails application on top of Java, and I don’t see it becoming the main reason to use it. Instead, I believe that “pure Ruby” applications should keep on being designed for Ruby, and running them using JRuby should just be an option. One should also remind that some libraries / ruby gems require native libraries linking, which is not possible to do with JRuby. By contrast, programmers that would like to write part of their programs in Ruby while leveraging the Java platform, the myriad of libraries and frameworks around here should find in JRuby the enabler that they need.

As a conclusion, I believe that people should not expect more of JRuby than it should be capable of. Specifically, JRuby should not become the “universal Ruby” platform, but rather a Ruby-compliant, efficient, and with seamless Java-integration of the Ruby language and standard library.

Je n’ai aucune idée si ce problème est connu sur les Freebox version 5, mais toujours est-il que ce soir je n’avais plus de signal wifi. Rien, que dalle, que nenni, DTC. Ma Freebox avait été coupée pendant 24 heures pour cause d’absence et ce problème s’est manifesté à la remise sous tension.

J’ai bien essayé des reboots et hard-reboots mais rien n’y a fait. La solution fut de passer par la connection ethernet puis d’aller sur l’interface de gestion de la Freebox :

1. désactivation wifi
2. reboot (un peu pénible de devoir débrancher l’appareil)
3. activation wifi
4. reboot
5. ça marche

Vous aurez ainsi la solution si d’aventure vous êtes confronté au problème Quelqu’un aurait-il une explication rationnelle ?

• Icon search engine
  An free icon search engine, very useful for your applications, websites and even presentations.
  (tags: icons search)
• Does REST Need a Description Language?
  A very interesting discussion regarding the need for a REST service description language, like SOAP and WS-* have WSDL.
  (tags: webservices rest soap)
• A comparison between SOAP and the Postal Office
  An opinion blog post regarding SOAP. Yes, it is bashing SOAP.
  (tags: soap webservices opinion)

Life in academia is very focused on the need for publishing scientific papers in workshops, conferences and journals. Surprisingly (or not that much if you happen to be a reader of the excellent PhD Comics), academia is very conservative. The adoption of modern solutions (think blogs, wikis, web, …) is extremely slow. A lot of habits are still rooted in the past.

I recommend the reading of Publish and perish: why the current publication and review model is killing research and wasting your money which is full of very interesting thoughts on this matter. It provides a very interesting discussion on the current publication and review model and provides improvement directions.