Chris Johnston

Ever buy something cause it looked cool and then couldn’t figure out what to do with it? I have and now I have a shiny new Pocket PC that I really don’t know how it fits into my life.

Pros:

• It is really, really cool and has wi-fi built in
• it fits perfectly into the palm of my hand
• it has the ability to put my life in the palm of my hand in terms of organization
• it has wi-fi so I can connect to the internet where ever there is an open hotspot
• there are a ton of really cool apps that run on the Pocket PC
• backpack just released a mobile version that works amazingly well on the pocket pc

Cons:

• It uses Outlook 2002 as its desktop software
• There are no connectors for anything else but Outlook
• You have to pay for all the really cool apps available for the Pocket PC — i.e., there are very few open source apps
• I really have no life to organize
• I would really like to use backpack, basecamp, and php-collab to organize my life because they allow for group organization and are accessible from the web
• ministumblier does not work with the wi-fi card
• Far too much dependence on MS products to make the thing work
• To use it at school, I would have to pay for two wireless connections

So far the Cons outweigh the Pros, however, this is not a complete list; it simply represents my thoughts at the moment. I still have time to decide if I am going to keep it or not.

I may be expecting it to completely fill the spot of a notebook (what I really wanted to buy) and I have to figure out where it fits in its own right.

This one is pretty obvious and only really took me a few minutes to figure out, but if you are wondering how to run different Ant targets in NetBeans here is how. Expand the Ant file in either the Files or the Project jab, right click on the target you want to run and select run. That is all there is to it.

Even better and simpler: all you need to do is to right click on the build.xml file itself and select Run Target and netbeans will give you a list of targets to run. Pretty simple, eh?

Okay, I agree, that tip is pretty weak, but I am just starting to play with Ant as it works netbeans. As I get more and better tips I will make sure to post them.

I decided against buying a new notebook for several reasons, the main one being a slight lack of money. If I had bought a new notebook my last year of school would have been a little tight. So I decided to buy an HP iPAQ hx2410 pocket pc instead. Now I just have to figure out what to do with it. Put Visual Studio.NET back on my computer, hmmm?

One thing I found out while shopping for a new notebook is there seems to be a divide that exists. On one side you have power and performance and on the other side you have weight and battery life. The Compaq Presario R4000 series notebook, while being an incredibly powerful computer, sucks battery life and can only last maybe 2 hours. One the other side, the iBook, while being a lot less powerful, has a battery that can last almost 6 hours. I realized that there are two kinds of notebooks available today: desktop replacements and mobile computers.

The desktop replacements are for people who travel but still need the full power of a desktop computer. The Compaq falls into this category. These computers are for consultants who are in a different office several times a week. The get a desk and are able to plug the computer in. These computers give them all the power they are used wherever they may be working.

The mobile computers are for those people who are really on the move. These are designed for people who need battery life and can sacrifice some performance to get it. Students could fit into this category.

From the research that I did, the best computer on the market seems to be the Dell 6000d. It is a Centrino computer so it has battery life over power, but it is still a pretty good computer. It has, minimum, a ATI Radeon X300 video card with 64 megs of RAM and an Intell Pentium M 730 processor with 512megs of RAM. And it can get between 3.5 to 5 hours of battery life depending on which battery you pick. And the price is right too. In Canada, you can pick it up for 1499 (right now).

I would love to get a new notebook. Currently I have the Dell Inspiron 1100 which isn’t a bad notebook, but it is underpowered and only has a measely little Celeron processor. In addition it only has integrated video and so it only good for surfing the web or programming. It also only has about 2 hours of battery life.

The question though is what to buy. Currently I have a Dell and I have been very happy with Dell. However, I would love to get a Mac. My biggest problem with Apple though is the price of their computers. The bottom of the line iBook is $1249CAD and that only gets you:

• 1.2GHz PowerPC G4
• 512K L2 cache @1.2GHz
• 12-inch TFT Displays
• 1024×768 resolution
• 256MB DDR266 SDRAM
• 30GB Ultra ATA drive
• Combo Drive
• ATI Mobility Radeon 9200 with 32MB DDR video memory
• AirPort Extreme built-in

Whereas for a little bit more I can get a Compaq Presario R4000 series notebook for about $1499 with the following:

• 2.0GHz AMD Athlon™64 Processor 3200+ with Cool’n'Quiet™ Technology, 512KB L2 cache, up to 2000MHz system bus
• 1024MB DDR SDRAM (2 x 512MB) at 333MHz; expandable to 2048MB DDR SDRAM (2 x 1024MB)
• ATI RADEON® XPRESS 200M IGP video graphics with 128MB DDR (dedicated) video memory
• 80GB 4200RPM Hard Drive
• DVD±R/RW and CD-RW Combo Drive with Double Layer Support
• 15.4” WXGA High-Definition BrightView Widescreen (1280 x 800) Display
• 54g™ 802.11b/g Wireless LAN with 125HSM/SpeedBooster™ support
• Integrated 10/100BASE-T Ethernet LAN (RJ-45 connector)

So my question is: which purchase makes the most sense. With Apple you get a poorer quality notebook and an amazing operating system whereas with the Compaq machine you get an amazing notebook with a passable OS. I would love for someone to tell me that the 1.2GHz PowerPC processor is going to perform as well as the 2GHz, 64bit AMD processor. There is also the RAM to consider. The iBook only comes with 256megs where as the Compaq has 1024megs. A computer these days just does not function properly with less then a gig of RAM in it (at least in my opinion).

I would really like the iBook. However, the Compaq is a very tempting computer with some amazing hardware in it. I tried looking for some reviews but could not find any, so I will be eagerly waiting to read what others think of this shiny new notebook. In the meantime, I am going to have to settle this little argument with myself.

Johanna Rothman has written a series of articles outlining some of the different scheduling games that development teams, project managers, and senior managers can play. These articles are an excellent read for anyone working on software development. They are definitely not just for project managers, although they are the ones who may benefit the most from these articles.

• Schedule Game #1: Schedule Chicken
• Schedule Game #2: 90% Done
• Schedule Game #3: Bring Me a Rock
• Schedule Game #4: Hope is Our Most Important Strategy
• Schedule Game #5: Queen of Denial
• Schedule Game #6: Sweep Under the Rug
• Schedule Game #7: Schedule Dream Time or Happy Date
• Schedule Game #8: Pants on Fire
• Schedule Game #9: Schedule == Commitment
• Schedule Game #10: We’ll Know Where We Are When We Get There
• Schedule Game #11: The Schedule Tool is Always Right

One thing I really liked about this series of posts is the constant recommendation for iterative development. Over and over again Johanna states that one of the solutions to these kinds of problems is iterative development where, at the end of each iteration, you release a full distributable build of the software. That way, each month you have something to show for the work you just finished and you have something to release. This is something that we are trying to implement where I work.

I noticed yesterday that netbeans 4.1 RC2 has been released. Hopefully this means that the final version is only about a week away.

I have two quick comments about this new release (I am sure I will have others as I work with it more):

• I installed RC2 along side RC1 and when I opened RC2 all of my projects and editor configurations where instantly there in RC2. I did not have to recreate all of my projects and redo my IDE configuration settings.
• JUnit works. I tried out one of my JUnit tests and it worked. There was no playing around with property files or ant build scripts, it just worked.

So if you haven’t downloaded netbeans 4.1 what are you waiting for?

I am working on a project that involves Hibernate and the Sun Java System Application Server 8.1 (SJSAS). The problem was getting Hibernate to work inside of the app server. Apparently, on a default install of SJSAS, Hibernate does not have enough security permissions to run properly. My only solution was to open the server up and allow AllPermission. I did this by changing the server.policy file located in $SERVER_HOME/domains/domain1/config. I changed the following block and added the last line:


// Basic set of required permissions granted to all remaining code
grant {
permission java.lang.RuntimePermission "loadLibrary.*";
permission java.lang.RuntimePermission "queuePrintJob";
permission java.net.SocketPermission "*", "connect";
permission java.io.FilePermission "< >”, “read,write”;
// work-around for pointbase bug 4864405
permission java.io.FilePermission “${com.sun.aas.instanceRoot}${/}lib${/}databases${/}-”, “delete”;
permission java.io.FilePermission “${java.io.tmpdir}${/}-”, “delete”;
permission java.util.PropertyPermission “*”, “read”;
permission java.lang.RuntimePermission “modifyThreadGroup”;
permission java.security.AllPermission;
};


This is not the safest way of running a server, but until I can find a better solution, it will have to do.