All mine for only $7,744.00 CAD with the following specs:
* Two 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
* 4GB (4 x 1GB)
* 250GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
* 2 x NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT 256MB
* Apple Cinema HD Display (23″ flat panel)
* Apple Cinema HD Display (23″ flat panel)
* 2 x SuperDrives
* Both Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and AirPort Extreme
* Apple Wireless Keyboard and Apple wireless Mighty Mouse – U.S. English
* Mac OS X – U.S. English
For fun, I went through the configuration and basically pick whatever was at the bottom of every list and the computer came to about $20,000 CAD. I could by a car for that much 
. Is there such a things as spending too much on a computer?
To try out “Google’s new code hosting”:http://code.google.com/hosting/, I uploaded all the “TeamDocs source code”:http://code.google.com/p/teamdocs/. Using SVN on the command line and the import statement, it took about 2 hours. And I lost all of my history. I still have all the code checked into my “JavaForge account”:http://www.javaforge.com/proj/summary.do?proj_id=331 and I may continue with it for no other reason that I can retain all the history. However, for new accounts, Google’s solution should work fine.
Last week I saw two very cool new things related to computers. The first is “Microsoft Live Lab’s Photosynth”:http://labs.live.com/photosynth/ and the second is “Jeff Han’s interface-free, touch-driven computer screen”:http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/tedtalksplayer.cfm?key=j_han&flashEnabled=1. In some way, both of these things change the way that we will interact with computers.
The first is a new app/experiment from a new division at Microsoft–Live Labs–that takes photographs, lots of photographs, from a particular location and stiches them together creating a 3D environment. The computer automatically figures out how to put the photos together by lining up similar feature.
Photosynth takes a large collection of photos of a place or object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed 3-Dimensional space.
With Photosynth you can:
* Walk or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle.
* Seamlessly zoom in or out of a photograph whether it’s megapixels or gigapixels in size.
* See where pictures were taken in relation to one another.
* Find similar photos to the one you’re currently viewing.
* Explore a custom tour.
* Send a collection to a friend.
The second thing is a completely new way of interacting with a computer. Instead of using a keyboard or mouse, you simply move your fingers across the screen. The key here is fingers, plural. The interface allows you to use more then one finger to do things like zooming or sizing photos. Also, it allows more then one person to work on the computer/screen/table at the same time. So in the lightbox app, two or more people could be moving and examining photos at the same time. This has the potential to radically change the way we use computers and is the closest to the interface in Minority Report yet developed.
Both of the sites listed above have video that showcase their respective innovations and are definitely worth viewing. In fact, until you have seen the video and the power of these creations, you will never fully understand why they are so cool.
One thing that I have taken away from the SOA course is a fuller understanding of the power of “XML”:http://www.xml.com/, XSLT and XPath. These technologies are incredible. I have done a little bit with XML and DTDs, but I have never really worked with schemas before and had no idea the extent to which you can specify and qualify things. As a result of this introduction I have moved the learning of XML up a lot higher on my list of things to learn.
O’Reilly’s ONJava website has an article on Ten Common Misconceptions About Spring that is worth checking out. It does a good job of answering some myths about Spring and clearing out the FUD.
bq. For those new to the Spring Framework, we feel as though it is necessary to address some of the concerns you may have when approaching Spring for the first time. In fact, we have compiled this list based on our collective experience in training new Spring users and observing discussions and forums throughout the Java development community. It is our goal to shed some light on these issues so that you will be better equipped to make well-informed decisions regarding the adoption of Spring on your next project.
Today and the rest of the week I am taking a course on SOA (Service Oriented Architecture). So far it’s interesting. I am not sure it will work at work, but it definitely has a place in any business. So far, my biggest problem with it is all the marshalling/unmarshalling that take place between applications and XML. This cannot be a process to process data quickly. The tools are cool though, especially the BPEL part. The ability to lay out an entire process via drag-and-drop is intriguing, but like anything, it will be interesting to see how things play out in the real world. Still, it is new things to learn which is very cool 
One new web 2.0 app that I have been using almost everyday is “Joe’s Goals”:http://www.joesgoals.com/. It is a small little app that allows you to track a series of goals. Goals can be either positive or negative and they can carry different weights. In addition, the app is under heavy development with new features being added every month. The newest is the a running total per goal and the data when you last checked that goal.
Definitely check it out if you have goals that you would like to meet everyday and are having trouble tracking them.
