You Gotta Be Kiddin

... must ... resist ...

Oh, I so suck at resisting ...;-> Gimme that chocolate cake ...

I mean ... "Source Fource [sic]"???

Okay, I admit it has all the usual ingredients for a successful M$ product: Funny, cute, lots of color, no brains, based on technology which every competitor threw out a decade ago (so they could buy it cheaply last Thuesday) and nothing a sane person would want to use unless being paid for. We're in for a huge success, for sure.

"Windows Server Crusader"? Whow! Sounds like fun, slaughter, middle ages ... remember? Middle ages? At school? Torture, diseases, boiling oil, blunt weapons and brute force to solve important problems like starvation, civil rights and who's gotta own Jerusalem next week? Yay! Does it come with UT2007, Quake III or DOOM3 preinstalled? Can I finally kill processes with a shotgun and a lot of splatter?

"Mobile Gal" ... travels faster than light! Whow! Faster than light! I mean, she is so far ahead, there is no way that anything she says could ever get back to us ... faster than light, get it? It's physics. No matter. If physics were any concern to customers of M$, they wouldn't be customers of M$ in the first place ...

"SQL Server Gal" ... perfect memory ... and she "loves checking out leather-clad biker boys" ... I wonder how that adds up ... I mean, they say she's so smart and hangs around guys who can't get a decently paid job, who love to get drunk and who aren't widely accepted as role models for treating a woman like she deserves ... 'nuff said.

"Visual Studio Guy" ... "[m]orphs and transforms everyday objects into masterpieces." ... oookay ... so ... like Picasso? Nice to look at (even though you can't quite grasp it), very expensive, totally useless no matter what problem you have to solve? Way to go! Finally, I can waste more paid hours on a stupid product to solve problems which we wouldn't have without it.

"ISV Super Gal" ... can't even figure out what she's supposed to be.

"Windows Vista Sensei" ... "[m]artial arts master trained in the ancient art of combat, security, and connectivity." Translation: There is a lot of pain and suffering in your future. Even simple tasks (like fetching a bucket of water) will become an exercise in humiliation. Remember all those martial arts movies where the pupil meets the master to learn the ropes? Great fun to watch but imagine just for a moment who will be the pupil, now ... you or Vista?

"Office Master" ... waitaminute ... doesn't that read like "Windows Vista Sensei" with Cut'n'Paste? I guess the money M$ poured into the ads for these great now products didn't reach to this guy. Shame.

So all in all, we're in for a lot of fun and enjoyment in the future! Not our fun and enjoyment, sure, but a lot of it nonetheless! M$ will again make a lot of money, funnel it into a cheap ad campaign to foo^B^B^Beducate the foo^B^B^Bcustomers out there because who in their right mind would waste all that good money on developing great software that sells just because it's ... great?

Nobody!

Disclaimer: This post was neither endorsed nor encouraged (even if you could argue about that one) by any companies that brought you edlin, DOS, IE or word processing software that eats your documents faster than you can save them but who are insanely rich despite all that which only proves that there is no intelligent live down here ... at least not in positions where decisions are made.

The World's Most Expensive Popup Blocker

What interest does a company that makes most of its money with advertising might have in the moon?

I dunno ... but I remember this old joke about the Russians painting the moon red. The crew of Skylab watches them and when the paint job is done, they are ordered to use white paint to write "Coca Cola" over it.

Maybe we're all gonna need a really expensive pop-up blocker in a few years ...

The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives

If you ever wondered whether you can do what do everyday on Windows with Open Source Software (OSS), here is a list of 50 common, proprietary applications and their OSS alternatives:

The Top 50 Proprietary Programs that Drive You Crazy — and Their Open Source Alternatives

Wrapping Reflection with FEST-Reflect

Tired of handling all those pesky exceptions in Java Reflection? I've patched commons-beanutils to convert them into RuntimeExceptions but the patch was rejected because it's a breaking change. Now, you can try FEST Reflection.

FEST Reflection has a nice and small API with an emphasis on making it easy to produce readable code.

Links: Found on DZone Javalobby

Safer Java: Think Positive

If you've ever developed software for X11, you probably stumbled over "unmap". For everyone else: If you wanted to make something in a X11 user interface visible, you'd set "unmap" to "false". A great way to interrupt work because we're not used to negative thinking. If I want to make something visible, I think "I set some attribute to true" not the other way round.

In Java, we have learned but some API still smells. Collection.isEmpty(), for example. With positive thinking, I think of collections with elements as "better" than one without, so I'd prefer Collection.hasElements() even though it's longer and boolean properties should use "is" instead of "has". Oh well. But it's simple to fall for the negative trap in your daily work as well.

If you find yourself stumble mentally when using a boolean API, refactor and turn it positive. Modern IDEs make this simple and you'll write more error-free code in less time. commons-lang offers isBlank() and isNotBlank for Strings which is a good example because you don't have to put a "!" negator in your if's no matter if blank is good or bad in your specific case and the JIT will inline the code anyway, so there isn't even a speed penalty (only a LOC penalty).

Are You OSS? Why?

If you ever wondered why you're using Linux while everyone in the office uses Windows at home, fret no more and read here.