Brett and his partner hired me to add SOAP and UDDI support to a commercial app server.
He is extremely knowledgeable, and was great to work with.
I have not read the book in question, but I did
find another poster's comment amusing about basing the book on Weblogic instead of open source - grin.
Almost all of my Java
consulting involves small or medium scale
deployments, so open source solutions like
Tomcat/JSP or Tomcat/JBoss/JSP (if transactions required) is all I really
need.
re: posts on why use Java at all:
There is also great support for doing web services in
Smalltalk, Python, etc. (i.e., support for light weight HTTP service, SOAP, etc.). That said, Java
with great tools (like Tomcat, JSP, etc.) is a great platform. Really, language is not so critical, but good design is.
Roughly, this reminds me of David Gelernter's
Linda tuple space (and also its progeny, JavaSpaces).
Other posters have made interesting comparisons with Freenet, etc., but this research initiative seems
(from the limited information in the linked project funding announcement) to be about persistent and replicated global data sharing. (Well, I guess that
Freenet does that grin:-)
For programmers: spend an evening or two playing with either JavaSpaces or IBM's distributed tuple space stuff - fun and educational if you havn't already checked it out.
I assume that Google is doing well financially (based on a few news stories) - probably because, in the case of their new news page they get revenue from
news sites for directing readers to those sites.
Since sites like Google and Yahoo (for biz news mostly) are central to my browsing experience, I
always wonder why they do not charge a small yearly
fee for some kind of 'premium' access. They could
certainly get away with it for most users.
I use both systems to collect donations and
payments - both work very well for me, but
I am sure that the technology between the two
differs.
Hopefully, the patent is for some technical detail
and not the whole P2P payment concept.
I totally agree with previous posters who call for
a review of software patents - Copyright seems
like the right way to secure rights, both for GPL/Open source and commercial software.
BTW, the latest Linux Journal has a great
article on why even "free" software needs a
license agreement.
I am trying to use my down time (i.e., time not
spent working for paying customers) to increase
my overall skill level.
I going to re-join
the ACM because they have several online classes
that I want to take.
re: proving what you know: Most work comes
from old business contacts and personal references,
so knowing your stuff will pay off, even without a degree or certification.
Anyway, I can't wait until September 30 to see
what the first round of coures will look like.
-Mark
Smalltalk version of Patterns book, my own project
on
Applied Java Patterns
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Even though I usually use Java (augmented with
Common LISP, Scheme, Python, C++), I bought the Smalltalk version of the Patterns book - it is
excellent.
I have no problems applying the Smalltalk version to Java, etc.
Really, I think that it is best to be language
agnostic: happily use any language someone
pays you to use.
my own project:I like to write (a lot!)
and I am just starting a new Free Web Book project
that I not-so-humbly call "The Software Design Book" that uses what I call "light weight" UML (i.e., only use case, class, and sequence diagrams) and lots of my own philosophy. Anyway, an
early version will join my other two free web books on my site in a week or two.
As a consultant, I added SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI support to a commercial Java app server product.
However, for most purposes, there are some very easy to use tools for publishing (if that is the correct word) web services:
for Java: Tomcat, Jakarta Axis (for SOAP and WSDL), and the jUDDI open source project (for UDDI)
for Python: SOAP.py for client and server SOAP support
With the cost of dedicated managed servers going down, I think that there are lots of good opportunities for developers to sell web services for applications that require up-to-date data, etc. For, example, a word processor, obviously, using a remote server based application is stupid, but for applications like web search (e.g., Google SOAP support), stock quotes, specialized data processing, etc., it does make good sense to implement as web services.
The system that I have been thinking about is peer-to-peer and aimed at very small working groups so each client could maintain a socket connection with all other clients in the group.
Since many people have temporary IP addresses (e.g., dialup access), there has to be a way to "sync-up", that is, let other people online know your temporary IP address.
On Windows, I have played with groupware products like Groove, but I was thinking of something tailored to very small work groups.
I looked through the Jabber.org FAQ and found a list of public servers.
I have some ideas for an experimental groupware system that I would like to play with. One problem that I was anticipating was to sync-up system users when they are online.
I had thought of requiring people to set up a separate email account (finally, a use for those "get 5 POP accounts" ISPs) that would be used to distribute temporary dial-up IP numbers, etc.
Looking at Jabber, using a few public Japper servers looks like a good alternative for syncing-up users when they come online.
The question: has anyone else used public Jabber servers for something similar? (i.e., use the protocol and free servers for new uses)
I have just skimmed his paper (interesting stuff to me started on page 31), so this is tentative: I
have been thinking of GPLing my software technology
for semantic extraction and natural language processing.
My problem is that I have invested a little under 2 years of work on my NLP tools, and although I only make about $5K a year selling them, that money does help pay the bills and I believe the long term market for my software is excellent.
I have received many great bug fixes and code improvements for my Open Source projects and even more great help with material for my free web books, but these projects have not cost me nearly two years of work.
I guess that the real question is if companies (and perhaps individuals) who use GPLed software to make money in their own closed commercial products are honest about paying a fair license fee to get a non-GPL license to use my work. I do receive many generous donations for my free web books, so I do trust in many people's generousity and fairness.
An alternative to using the GPL is to license software for free non-commercial use and then hope that commercial use users act fairly.
I think that many developers would very much like to have their work freely used by people who make no money off of their work and at the same time collect reasonable payments from anyone making money on one's work. Tough problem - please share any good ideas:-)
In any case, it is tough for me to make a decision here.
OK, first, although I live in the mountains in Northern Arizona, excellent wireless broadband is available.
I use Earthlink dialup for several good reasons:
I don't need broadband to serve my customers: email and file sharing via my web sites works OK. When I do have to fetch something huge, wget -c works well enough if there is a network failure.
I travel a lot for pleasure - it is great to always have a local free dialup number so that I can work on the road
I am fairly much addicted to the Spaminator service that Earthlink provides - this allows me to post freely to the AI, Java, and C++ newsgroups without worrying too much about attracting SPAM
There is not much content on the web that sucks using dialup, at least not the information-rich stuff that I am interested in
I don't have to spend any time at all with overhead for running a small consulting business: I find that an iBook laptop and a dialup connection is enough to run a sucessful remote consulting business. I spend all my time either writing (which I love doing) and working on problems for customers (which is fun, usually), with basically no hassles.
The Internet is all about one-to-one connections and participation in (usually) small groups. I can do this just fine using dialup.
-Mark
Re:Doesn't seem to discuss the legalities
on
Perl & LWP
·
· Score: 1
Right on.
I needed several good sources of news stories for a live product demo and I did not have too much trouble getting permission from site owners to automatically summarize and link to their material.
I worked for a company that got in mild trouble for not getting permission a few years ago, so it is important to read the terms of services for web sites and respect the rights of others.
That said, it is probably OK to scrape data for your own use if you do not permanently archive it. I am not a lawyer, but that sounds like fair use to me.
A little off topic: the web, at its best, is non-commercial - a place (organized by content rather than location) for sharing information and forming groups interested in the same stuff. However, I would like to see more support for very low cost web services and high quality web content. A good example is Salon: for
a low yearly fee, I find the writing excellent. I also really like the SOAP APIs on Google and Amazon - I hope that more companies make web services available - the Google model is especially good: you get 1000 uses a day for free, and hopefully they will also sell uses for a reasonable fee.
I have used SOAP and UDDI a fair amount and they are good technologies for building loosely coupled systems with existing services, but in today's economy, I question how widely used they will be.
Some companies are experimenting with SOAP based services; Google is a great example of this (as a developer, you can get a free use license for a 1000 queries a day for search, spelling correction, etc.)
I have been playing around with the idea of providing NLP web services now that I have a dedicated server to use, but I am more than a little sceptical that individuals or companies would pay, for example, 1 cent per transaction.
I am fairly sure that I wrote the first commercial Go playing program, Honninbo Warrior for the Apple II.
It really did not play a very good game, but it was fairly well reviewed in the Apple II magazines because at least it could play (and perhaps because of the money I spent on advertising in those magazines!)
Anyway, I agree that Go is a great platform for AI research (probably only real time robot soccer is better in my opinion).
-Mark
Wolfram's new book and my thoughts on reality
on
Wolframania
·
· Score: 1
His new book is a fun read (although I am only 100 pages into it).
One thing that I get from the book is more support for the idea that information processing may be more important to the Universe than physical matter.
Permit a tangent here: a few years ago (July 1999), I went to a Quantum Approaches to Consciousness meeting at NAU. One current popular theory is that matter in the universe is an uncollapsed wave equation with infinite extent until some form of consciousness observes the matter in question - it is the act of observation that collapses the quantum wave equation.
Anyway, interesting ideas that are supported by many in the physics community (my Dad is a physicist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a few of his aquaintances presented papers at the quantum consciousness meeting) and worthy, I think, to at least not be tossed in/dev/null.
Back to the topic: I suspect that Wolfram's book will not drastically change the world of science, but it is fun to read.
-Mark
comments on Semantic Web
on
Return of the WaSP
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I thought that the second half of the post (on Semantic Web) was interesting.
As someone who has spent lots of time in the last 5 years trying to automate extraction of information from the web, I welcome wider use of RDF (I have used it for years on my site) and separation of content and layout.
While the web as we know it is all about supporting human readers, the Semantic Web is all about supporting software agents.
Hey, don't get me wrong: I do appreciate Sun and what they have done for Java (especially for sending me the free 'Java' leather jacket a few years ago!)
That said, Sun is in the hardware business, and to a much smaller degree the services business. I think that the Java brand is worth something to Sun, but as a Sun stockholder (I also hold IBM), I don't see the Java brand as crucial to their bottom line.
I would like to the the following things change:
Sun release Java to a sandards body
the onslought of new Java APIs should stop!
One of the things that I like so well about Common LISP is that it is standardized and basically does not change. Java, at least on the server side, is an awesome tool, to be sure. However, I would like to see Java frozen, except for bug fixes. I find it interesting that the same guy, Guy Steele, has been so important to two languages - Java and Common Lisp. (Actually, he also wrote one of the first Scheme compilers).
Anyway, I think that Sun and IBM should not merge in any way, and that Java should be standardized and frozen.
I have been working (mostly) in AI since the 1980s, but by far, the most fun
I have had was working on AI at Angel Studios for Nintendo and Disney-Quest.
Not much "AI" though really. I started out with complicated multi-agent stuff - and that did not have a happy ending. For realtime games and VR, simple stuff worked (e.g., in a VR environment, have animals snap their head around and stare briefly at you when you come into their environment).
A few years ago, I wrote up a short paper on games and AI that is avaliable at www.markwatson.com under "Short Papers".
A little off topic: every programmer should work in the game industry, at least for a while:-)
Angel Studio was definitely the most fun job I every had!
Our product (plug: www.knowledgebooks.com) does much the same thing, except it finds short relevant phrases with some postpocessing performed (e.g., pronoun resolution).
Our product works by first categorizing text articles, then identifying which phrases most effectly support the categorization of the article.
subject of copyright infringement: several
people have pointed out that the linked site may go beyond fair use of text on the original news sites.
I bet that the university obtained permission like I did. I sent about 10 news web sites copious documentation on what my system does, and three gave me permission to use their sites. As is usual in life, it helps to ask politely!
I enjoy developing with Java, but for the last year or two I have increasing felt that the time is appropriate to freeze the platform except for bug fixes.
A similar situation existed a few decades ago in the Lisp world: there were many great dialects of Lisp and a large committee effort stirred everything together as ANSI Common LISP. Is Common LISP perfect? Of course not, but it is a very stable platform supported by both free Open SOurce implementations and several very good commercial products.
I would like to see Sun slow down the marketing-driven new releases.
I think that the Java community would now be best served by a stable frozen platform.
I spent a pleasant afternoon at David Brin's house last fall, and in addition generally enjoying our talk, I came away with a feeling that he believes that intellectuals have a responsibility to think about the hard problems in the world.
His stance on surveilance might be a little idealistic (I tend to the more paranoid fears of big-gorvernments of now inefficient nation states increasingly getting rough with their own citizens).
He admits readily to being a very optimistic person.
In addition to issues of uniform access to surveilance information, he also talked about his ideas for "EON" Eye of the Needle Foundation, discussing the lack of morality of some high stakes investing, the possibility of the new-rich to donate their money for "positive sum games", charities that do the most good, and at the same time give the givers positive notoriety.
Anyway, disagree with David Brin if you want, but he seems right-on in his personal convictions.
I used to live in JBuilder since I do a lot of Java coding.
After downloading JBuilder 5 (free version), I read the license during installation, and flipped. I bailed on the install, and started using NetBeans (www.netbeans.org). I used to own the enterprise edition for version 2 and the professional version for version 3, but the upgrade costs were a little steep for me (I am a Java consultant - no company to buy me stuff:-( ).
While JBuilder runs a little faster, adding some memory makes NetBeans very nice to use. I now use NetBeans at least 4 or 5 hours a day and really like it a lot for lots of reasons: ant based (cool Java Make tools), good editing features, embedded Tomcat3.2 web server for eveloping servlets and JSPs, fairly good XML editor, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
I have not read the book in question, but I did find another poster's comment amusing about basing the book on Weblogic instead of open source - grin .
Almost all of my Java consulting involves small or medium scale deployments, so open source solutions like Tomcat/JSP or Tomcat/JBoss/JSP (if transactions required) is all I really need.
re: posts on why use Java at all:
There is also great support for doing web services in Smalltalk, Python, etc. (i.e., support for light weight HTTP service, SOAP, etc.). That said, Java with great tools (like Tomcat, JSP, etc.) is a great platform. Really, language is not so critical, but good design is.
-Mark
Other posters have made interesting comparisons with Freenet, etc., but this research initiative seems (from the limited information in the linked project funding announcement) to be about persistent and replicated global data sharing. (Well, I guess that Freenet does that grin :-)
For programmers: spend an evening or two playing with either JavaSpaces or IBM's distributed tuple space stuff - fun and educational if you havn't already checked it out.
-Mark
Since sites like Google and Yahoo (for biz news mostly) are central to my browsing experience, I always wonder why they do not charge a small yearly fee for some kind of 'premium' access. They could certainly get away with it for most users.
-Mark
Hopefully, the patent is for some technical detail and not the whole P2P payment concept.
I totally agree with previous posters who call for a review of software patents - Copyright seems like the right way to secure rights, both for GPL/Open source and commercial software.
BTW, the latest Linux Journal has a great article on why even "free" software needs a license agreement.
-Mark
First, loved your TV show :-)
re: terminal, ssh, etc.:
Did you set up termcap correctly? Email me privately if you need some help with this.
-Mark
I am trying to use my down time (i.e., time not spent working for paying customers) to increase my overall skill level.
I going to re-join the ACM because they have several online classes that I want to take.
re: proving what you know: Most work comes from old business contacts and personal references, so knowing your stuff will pay off, even without a degree or certification.
Anyway, I can't wait until September 30 to see what the first round of coures will look like.
-Mark
I have no problems applying the Smalltalk version to Java, etc.
Really, I think that it is best to be language agnostic: happily use any language someone pays you to use.
my own project:I like to write (a lot!) and I am just starting a new Free Web Book project that I not-so-humbly call "The Software Design Book" that uses what I call "light weight" UML (i.e., only use case, class, and sequence diagrams) and lots of my own philosophy. Anyway, an early version will join my other two free web books on my site in a week or two.
-Mark
As a consultant, I added SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI support to a commercial Java app server product.
However, for most purposes, there are some very easy to use tools for publishing (if that is the correct word) web services:
- for Java: Tomcat, Jakarta Axis (for SOAP and WSDL), and the jUDDI open source project (for UDDI)
- for Python: SOAP.py for client and server SOAP support
With the cost of dedicated managed servers going down, I think that there are lots of good opportunities for developers to sell web services for applications that require up-to-date data, etc. For, example, a word processor, obviously, using a remote server based application is stupid, but for applications like web search (e.g., Google SOAP support), stock quotes, specialized data processing, etc., it does make good sense to implement as web services.-Mark
I just re-read my own post and it was unclear.
The system that I have been thinking about is peer-to-peer and aimed at very small working groups so each client could maintain a socket connection with all other clients in the group.
Since many people have temporary IP addresses (e.g., dialup access), there has to be a way to "sync-up", that is, let other people online know your temporary IP address.
On Windows, I have played with groupware products like Groove, but I was thinking of something tailored to very small work groups.
-Mark
I have some ideas for an experimental groupware system that I would like to play with. One problem that I was anticipating was to sync-up system users when they are online.
I had thought of requiring people to set up a separate email account (finally, a use for those "get 5 POP accounts" ISPs) that would be used to distribute temporary dial-up IP numbers, etc.
Looking at Jabber, using a few public Japper servers looks like a good alternative for syncing-up users when they come online.
The question: has anyone else used public Jabber servers for something similar? (i.e., use the protocol and free servers for new uses)
-Mark
My problem is that I have invested a little under 2 years of work on my NLP tools, and although I only make about $5K a year selling them, that money does help pay the bills and I believe the long term market for my software is excellent.
I have received many great bug fixes and code improvements for my Open Source projects and even more great help with material for my free web books, but these projects have not cost me nearly two years of work.
I guess that the real question is if companies (and perhaps individuals) who use GPLed software to make money in their own closed commercial products are honest about paying a fair license fee to get a non-GPL license to use my work. I do receive many generous donations for my free web books, so I do trust in many people's generousity and fairness.
An alternative to using the GPL is to license software for free non-commercial use and then hope that commercial use users act fairly.
I think that many developers would very much like to have their work freely used by people who make no money off of their work and at the same time collect reasonable payments from anyone making money on one's work. Tough problem - please share any good ideas :-)
In any case, it is tough for me to make a decision here.
-Mark
I use Earthlink dialup for several good reasons:
- I don't need broadband to serve my customers: email and file sharing via my web sites works OK. When I do have to fetch something huge, wget -c works well enough if there is a network failure.
- I travel a lot for pleasure - it is great to always have a local free dialup number so that I can work on the road
- I am fairly much addicted to the Spaminator service that Earthlink provides - this allows me to post freely to the AI, Java, and C++ newsgroups without worrying too much about attracting SPAM
- There is not much content on the web that sucks using dialup, at least not the information-rich stuff that I am interested in
- I don't have to spend any time at all with overhead for running a small consulting business: I find that an iBook laptop and a dialup connection is enough to run a sucessful remote consulting business. I spend all my time either writing (which I love doing) and working on problems for customers (which is fun, usually), with basically no hassles.
The Internet is all about one-to-one connections and participation in (usually) small groups. I can do this just fine using dialup.-Mark
I needed several good sources of news stories for a live product demo and I did not have too much trouble getting permission from site owners to automatically summarize and link to their material.
I worked for a company that got in mild trouble for not getting permission a few years ago, so it is important to read the terms of services for web sites and respect the rights of others.
That said, it is probably OK to scrape data for your own use if you do not permanently archive it. I am not a lawyer, but that sounds like fair use to me.
A little off topic: the web, at its best, is non-commercial - a place (organized by content rather than location) for sharing information and forming groups interested in the same stuff. However, I would like to see more support for very low cost web services and high quality web content. A good example is Salon: for a low yearly fee, I find the writing excellent. I also really like the SOAP APIs on Google and Amazon - I hope that more companies make web services available - the Google model is especially good: you get 1000 uses a day for free, and hopefully they will also sell uses for a reasonable fee.
-Mark
Sorry for the troll!
-Mark
I have used SOAP and UDDI a fair amount and they are good technologies for building loosely coupled systems with existing services, but in today's economy, I question how widely used they will be.
Some companies are experimenting with SOAP based services; Google is a great example of this (as a developer, you can get a free use license for a 1000 queries a day for search, spelling correction, etc.)
I have been playing around with the idea of providing NLP web services now that I have a dedicated server to use, but I am more than a little sceptical that individuals or companies would pay, for example, 1 cent per transaction.
-Mark
It really did not play a very good game, but it was fairly well reviewed in the Apple II magazines because at least it could play (and perhaps because of the money I spent on advertising in those magazines!)
Anyway, I agree that Go is a great platform for AI research (probably only real time robot soccer is better in my opinion).
-Mark
One thing that I get from the book is more support for the idea that information processing may be more important to the Universe than physical matter.
Permit a tangent here: a few years ago (July 1999), I went to a Quantum Approaches to Consciousness meeting at NAU. One current popular theory is that matter in the universe is an uncollapsed wave equation with infinite extent until some form of consciousness observes the matter in question - it is the act of observation that collapses the quantum wave equation.
Anyway, interesting ideas that are supported by many in the physics community (my Dad is a physicist and member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a few of his aquaintances presented papers at the quantum consciousness meeting) and worthy, I think, to at least not be tossed in /dev/null.
Back to the topic: I suspect that Wolfram's book will not drastically change the world of science, but it is fun to read.
-Mark
As someone who has spent lots of time in the last 5 years trying to automate extraction of information from the web, I welcome wider use of RDF (I have used it for years on my site) and separation of content and layout.
While the web as we know it is all about supporting human readers, the Semantic Web is all about supporting software agents.
-Mark
That said, Sun is in the hardware business, and to a much smaller degree the services business. I think that the Java brand is worth something to Sun, but as a Sun stockholder (I also hold IBM), I don't see the Java brand as crucial to their bottom line.
I would like to the the following things change:
- Sun release Java to a sandards body
- the onslought of new Java APIs should stop!
One of the things that I like so well about Common LISP is that it is standardized and basically does not change. Java, at least on the server side, is an awesome tool, to be sure. However, I would like to see Java frozen, except for bug fixes. I find it interesting that the same guy, Guy Steele, has been so important to two languages - Java and Common Lisp. (Actually, he also wrote one of the first Scheme compilers).Anyway, I think that Sun and IBM should not merge in any way, and that Java should be standardized and frozen.
-Mark
I have been working (mostly) in AI since the 1980s, but by far, the most fun I have had was working on AI at Angel Studios for Nintendo and Disney-Quest.
Not much "AI" though really. I started out with complicated multi-agent stuff - and that did not have a happy ending. For realtime games and VR, simple stuff worked (e.g., in a VR environment, have animals snap their head around and stare briefly at you when you come into their environment).
A few years ago, I wrote up a short paper on games and AI that is avaliable at www.markwatson.com under "Short Papers".
A little off topic: every programmer should work in the game industry, at least for a while :-)
Angel Studio was definitely the most fun job I every had!
-Mark
Our product works by first categorizing text articles, then identifying which phrases most effectly support the categorization of the article.
subject of copyright infringement: several people have pointed out that the linked site may go beyond fair use of text on the original news sites.
I bet that the university obtained permission like I did. I sent about 10 news web sites copious documentation on what my system does, and three gave me permission to use their sites. As is usual in life, it helps to ask politely!
-Mark Watson www.markwatson.com
I enjoy developing with Java, but for the last year or two I have increasing felt that the time is appropriate to freeze the platform except for bug fixes.
A similar situation existed a few decades ago in the Lisp world: there were many great dialects of Lisp and a large committee effort stirred everything together as ANSI Common LISP. Is Common LISP perfect? Of course not, but it is a very stable platform supported by both free Open SOurce implementations and several very good commercial products.
I would like to see Sun slow down the marketing-driven new releases.
I think that the Java community would now be best served by a stable frozen platform.
Anyway, just my opinion :-)
-Mark
I understand that sometime in the not too distant future, a MinGW distribution for Windows will be available.
I use Java for most of my development using IBM's (sometimes Sun's) JDKs, but I hope in the future to use the GNU tool chain for many projects.
-Mark
His stance on surveilance might be a little idealistic (I tend to the more paranoid fears of big-gorvernments of now inefficient nation states increasingly getting rough with their own citizens).
He admits readily to being a very optimistic person.
In addition to issues of uniform access to surveilance information, he also talked about his ideas for "EON" Eye of the Needle Foundation, discussing the lack of morality of some high stakes investing, the possibility of the new-rich to donate their money for "positive sum games", charities that do the most good, and at the same time give the givers positive notoriety.
Anyway, disagree with David Brin if you want, but he seems right-on in his personal convictions.
-Mark
After downloading JBuilder 5 (free version), I read the license during installation, and flipped. I bailed on the install, and started using NetBeans (www.netbeans.org). I used to own the enterprise edition for version 2 and the professional version for version 3, but the upgrade costs were a little steep for me (I am a Java consultant - no company to buy me stuff :-( ).
While JBuilder runs a little faster, adding some memory makes NetBeans very nice to use. I now use NetBeans at least 4 or 5 hours a day and really like it a lot for lots of reasons: ant based (cool Java Make tools), good editing features, embedded Tomcat3.2 web server for eveloping servlets and JSPs, fairly good XML editor, etc.
-Mark