4.8.08

10 things that make blokes cry

Real men don't cry? Interesting article from BBC news .. The question is what makes men weep in public?....

here it goes
  • Making parents proud
  • Birth of first child - or grandchild
  • Tribulations of loved one
  • Letting a loved one down
  • Saying sorry
  • Letting yourself down
  • Being dumped
  • Beaten in a hard-fought game
  • Winning a hard-fought game
  • These aren't tears. It's just bits of dust.
here we go for in detail

3.8.08

Hungaroring - Heikki won , kimi in podium

Awful finish by Massa , Bad luck by Hamilton , handed over the Podium positions to Heikki, Glock and Kimi. Kimi had a bad start , stayed behind alonso , till halfway of the race , back to the game after second pitstop , after a few fastest laps of the race .

Great job kimi ..come on ...show ur talent at Valencia after sunmer break !!!!

Net Neutrality

Recently i read the below stated message here

The Internet as we know it is facing a serious threat. There's a debate heating up in Washington, DC on something called "net neutrality" – and it's a debate that's so important Google is asking you to get involved. We're asking you to take action to protect Internet freedom.

In the next few days, the House of Representatives is going to vote on a bill that would fundamentally alter the Internet. That bill, and one that may come up for a key vote in the Senate in the next few weeks, would give the big phone and cable companies the power to pick and choose what you will be able to see and do on the Internet.

Today the Internet is an information highway where anybody – no matter how large or small, how traditional or unconventional – has equal access. But the phone and cable monopolies, who control almost all Internet access, want the power to choose who gets access to high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest. They want to build a two-tiered system and block the on-ramps for those who can't pay.

Creativity, innovation and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight. Please call your representative (202-224-3121) and let your voice be heard.

Thanks for your time, your concern and your support.

Eric Schmidt

I didnt fully understand the implications of the proposed bill or how it affects a net user like me . i hope i can digg more information on the same ..hopefully

400GB Blu-ray disc :)

Pioneer unveils 400GB Blu-ray disc that is capable of holding 400 GB of information .This disc uses 16 layers to hold all the information at 25GB per stack.more here

2.8.08

Who is the winner ..Nice comparison


nice comparison here from here

1.8.08

Fake news from Scuderia Stables

Fake news from Scuderia Stables , resemblance to authentic news is obviously unintentional ... more here http://fakeferrarinews.wordpress.com/

finally it comes true !!

huh ..finally i done it ..i had two bets with my best friends ..i agreed those ..when i was drunk ....the first one was to beat the best bowling score in our friends league ( We used to go out for bowling ) , second go out with a girl for a Date !!! ( huh ..very very challenging one )

finally i managed to win the former bet , i scored 222 against the very best till before the best score, 209 , against my best friend ..huh ..its a great achievement .... i was sure like i can beat the record ( 209 ) but i was not expecting that this soon..

bowling is a game which is really sporty and fun..getting strikes and spares are fun ..you need strikes and spares to be in a better scoring position throughout the frames ...today i scored spares or strikes in each frame ....finally managed to get 222 ...simply great at least for me ...i won finally :)

lets talk about the second ...its not a great bet for most , but its very difficult and challenging one for me ..i need to find a girl , so i can go out for a coffee or a pub or a sports bar .i haven't found anybody , but i am not sure i can find somebody or not ..i have 10 more days to go ..is there any body around who can share a coffee with me ( only gals :) ) .....who knows !!!

29.7.08

SWT - Detecting Ctrl +C key combination

One of my colleague had a requirement to detect the Ctrl +C key combination in a Eclipse View .

I wrote this sample snippet which works

import org.eclipse.swt.*;
import org.eclipse.swt.events.KeyAdapter;
import org.eclipse.swt.events.KeyEvent;
import org.eclipse.swt.widgets.*;

public class CtrlCTest{

public static void main(String[] args) {
Display display = new Display();
Shell shell = new Shell(display);
shell.addKeyListener(new KeyAdapter() {
@Override
public void keyPressed(KeyEvent e) {
if (e.stateMask == SWT.CTRL && e.keyCode == 99) {
System.out.println("CTRL +C");
}
}
});
shell.setSize(200, 200);
shell.open();
while (!shell.isDisposed()) {
if (!display.readAndDispatch())
display.sleep();
}
display.dispose();
}
}

28.7.08

An inside (personal) view of the Symbian deal

There is quite a lot of buzz around Nokia's buyout of symbian and unify s60,UIQ ,MOAB , and the new Open source mobile platform . What this deal meant to the mobile space ? Does it mean that open source model is getting accepted in mobile space ? i guess yes .

Nokia involved in a few open source projects ( most importantly Maemo ) , but this is a strategic and important move from nokia. It looks they open sourcing massive amount of symbian and s60 code , its a good news atleast for the licencess .

Recently i read an article in Nokia conversations where they talking with Janne Jalkanen about the Symbian deal . Its a good read . More here . He not only has experience with the inner workings of S60 in Nokia, but he was the creator of JSPwiki, a popular open source Java-based wiki sofware.

Few excerpts from article here

"I doubt that open sourcing Symbian is going to help in the community building though. There are two kinds of OSS developers: the guys who do things for fun, and the guys who do OSS because they are paid to do so. In order for an open source project to really flourish and take over the world, you need both.

"The problem with Symbian is that very, very few people touch it for fun. So I believe that while we can open source it, it is going to be very difficult to get people participate out of their own free will, unless we are prepared to make very serious refactorings to the entire system.

"Still, it is going to keep Symbian in the game a little longer. While many people dislike it (just go to any Finnish IT newspaper discussion board to verify this), the fact is that it does carry a significant amount of gold home every day. So we must be doing something right, and my bank account would very much like to us keep doing that."

keep reading here .


PS : If you dont know what maemo is , Excerpts from wikipedia here . The Maemo platform is the software stack for Nokia Internet Tablets, which includes Internet Tablet OS and the Maemo SDK. The Maemo platform is developed by the Maemo Software department within Nokia.The Maemo platform includes the Internet Tablet OS, which is based on Debian GNU/Linux and draws much of its GUI, frameworks, and libraries from the GNOME project. It uses the Matchbox window manager, and like Ubuntu Mobile, it uses the GTK-based Hildon as its GUI and application framework.The Maemo SDK is based around the Debian-oriented Scratchbox Cross Compilation Toolkit, which provides a sandbox environment in which development may take place. Scratchbox uses Qemu to emulate an ARMEL processor or sbrsh to remotely execute instructions. Scratchbox-compatible rootstraps are available for both x86 and ARMEL, so the majority of development and debugging takes place on x86, with final packaging being for ARMEL.

27.7.08

High performance collections for Java

If you are on look out fpr a high performance collection libray , then here is one for you GNU Trove .The Trove library provides high speed regular and primitive collections for Java

Few excerpts from Trove website here

The GNU Trove library has two objectives:

  • Provide "free" (as in "free speech" and "free beer"), fast, lightweight implementations of the java.util Collections API. These implementations are designed to be pluggable replacements for their JDK equivalents.
  • Provide primitive collections with similar APIs to the above. This gap in the JDK is often addressed by using the "wrapper" classes (java.lang.Integer, java.lang.Float, etc.) with Object-based collections. For most applications, however, collections which store primitives directly will require less space and yield significant performance gains

Some Info:) : It looks Trove's TLongIntHashMap uses only 27 bytes per entry , where as original java impl uses around 100 bytes per entry ,stated here

Minimal Perfect Hashing

Have u heard of 'Minimal Perfect Hashing' , if not , Perfect hashing guarantees that you get no collisions at all. It is possible when you know exactly what set of keys you are going to be hashing when you design your hash function. It's popular for hashing keywords for compilers. (They ought to be popular for optimizing switch statements.) Minimal perfect hashing guarantees that n keys will map to 0..n-1 with no collisions at all

More info here .

SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards

SourceForge.net announced the finalists of the 2008 SourceForge.net Community Choice Awards.

There are different categories like Best Project , Best Project for the Enterprise ,Educators,
Gamers,multimedia ' and many more

More info and details of the project can be found here

26.7.08

Versatile Mobile Wonder

mobilephonesheaven recently wrote a review on the latest mobile gadget N96 , newest smartphone addition to N series . More here

Notable features including large 2.8 inches TFT screen capable of displaying up to 16 million colours with a screen resolution of 240 X 320 pixels, integrated DVB-H receiver receiver offers TV at its best ,16 GB memory extendible upto 32 GB , 5 mega pixel camera ( featuring Carl Zeiss Optics Tessar lens, auto focus, LED flash ) ,FM radio ,Bluetooth and USB

In short 'Truly Nokia N96 deserves to be termed as a “Versatile Mobile Wonder” given the fact it has some amazing functionalities to offer'

Converting IPath into its Canonical form

// path refers to IPath
final String pathString = path.toOSString();
final String canonicalPath = new java.io.File(pathString).getCanonicalPath();
//only create a new path if necessary
// No need to create new path if (canonicalPath.equals(pathString))
// Else Create new Path(canonicalPath);

Constructor Exceptions in C++, C#, and Java

Herb Sutter wrote an interesting article on Constructor Exceptions in C++, C#, and Java . Its an interesting read link to entry here

A few excerpts from the article here
  1. A constructor conceptually turns a suitably sized chunk of raw memory into an object that obeys its invariants. An object’s lifetime doesn’t begin until its constructor completes successfully. If a constructor ends by throwing an exception, that means it never finished creating the object and setting up its invariants — and at the point the exceptional constructor exits, the object not only doesn’t exist, but never existed.
  2. A destructor/disposer conceptually turns an object back into raw memory. Therefore, just like all other nonprivate methods, destructors/disposers assume as a precondition that “this” object is actually a valid object and that its invariants hold. Hence, destructors/disposers only run on successfully constructed objects.
PS : If you dont know who is Herb Sutter , read more here

24.7.08

Torrent rocks !!

Recently one of my friend wanted a software which is very expensive to buy , we were talking about the same , i got an idea and i promised her to get the sw other day !!!

i was thinking about torrents and am sure u will get torrents for free . i just searched for the same in a site , i got it :)

if you want to know more abt torrents read here

10 Things You Should Know About Symbian

Dan Jones, editor of unstrung wrote an interesting article about symbian where he talking about 1o things you should know about symbian ...link here

In short
1. Symbian is big
2. Symbian is old
3. Symbian luvs Nokia
4. Symbian has roots
5. Symbian craves security
6. Symbian lives off royalty
7. Symbian is hard to value
8. Symbian has applications
9. Google runs on Symbian
10. Symbian is sexy

Good list :)

Sorting TableViewer , use ViewerComparator in tables to allow sorting

Tom Schindl wrote a snippet to show usage of Sorting for
Viewers.He used ViewerComparator to do the same , handy code
snippet very useful in many scenarios

dowload the code from eclipse repository here

SWT leaks : Hacking !!

Recently i heard about a tool Sleak , it is a simple tool that monitors the creation and disposing of SWT graphics resources . It is written by people in swt team and is available for download here

It may not work correctly if you follow the instructions step by step in the tool , but everything will be allright if u create a plugin out of the downloaded org.eclipse.swt.sleak_1.0.0.200803140904.jar file and put in the plugin folder of your eclipse , rest follow the instructions there.

The beauty of the this tool is , it helps u to figure out the SWT resource handle leaking where as the other profiling tools profile in a generic memory point of view , i tried it and its great .

Thanks for the SWT team for made this tool available to eclipse programmers ....

21.7.08

My predictions got wrong !!!

I was expecting a ferrari finish at German GP , unfortunately it didnt happen. Pole sitter , lewis had a great start , he was leading the race till 36 th lap where timo clock crashed to the pitwall due to a suspension failure , which flagged yellow . Most of the cars in the circuit lined to the pitlane where are mclaren gambled there strategy , by keeping lewis on track , it was a risky move .

Everybody thought yellow flag situation was good to ferrari , but it was just not good enough for the iceman, he waited at the pitlane for few seconds which costed him few championship points , may be a podium position ...

surprisingly once the yellow flag is take away , effectively Nelson Piquet was leading the race , because he was in a one stop strategy , where as everybody in his front need to take there routine pitstops . after lewis pits Nelson leads the race for a while , till lewis back into action . He was riding the faster car , +1 s advantage every lap , he easily passed massa ( wtf he doing !!!) , later nelson too. Nelson did an excellent drive keep massa away ..great drive !!

its great to see nelsingho was running 1 .16 where as his team mate double world champion was running 1.17 ..wow ..cool

Kimi after the pitstop , there is nothing much to do , he did best his overtook trulli and kubica and be positioned in a point scoring position ...

now Lewis leading the championship with massa and kimi behind ...

i hope hungaroring race is going to be a turning point for the drivers standing .....Its great that 4 drivers are fighting for the wdc title ..cool ..great news for the racing fans ..it looks its going to be breath taking race for all ....

Btw its great to see Karun Chandok wins the german GP2 ...cool dude ..keep the spirit up !!!

20.7.08

'The Doctor' stops Stoner ,clinches victory

Championship leader rossi puts an end to stoner's dominating successive victory hunt at Laguna seca on sunday .This is the first time rossi winning in this circuit.

A speedy start helped him to keep fight on with stoner , deciding moment of the race come on 24th lap where rossi and stoner prepared to enter the home straight , there stoner ran wide into the gravel , but he picked the ducati back to the race , but italian was flying :) .

Though bit disappointment for stoner , he now second in the standing , ahead of dani pedrosa and 25 points lacks to Rossi .

lets wait for the live action again in 17 August , check republic after the summer holidays ....

Stonesr smashing records starting on pole along with rossi

Stoner starts US GP in poll position , his fifth top spot in succession . Rossi finished second in the chart with .5 s more than stoners record time ...

It is going to be an interesting and important run for both because both are in a title competing position , though rossi has a little advatange in the points as of now ..

Rossi had an interesting comment during the press ,when questioned in the immediate live international press feed as to whether he had a plan for victory over Stoner, the five-time MotoGP World Champion quickly replied:`Yes. Start 30 seconds earlier than him.´

more here and here

19.7.08

Develop iPhone Web applications with Eclipse

Adam Houghton of SAS wrote an article on Create iPhone Web applications using Aptana's iPhone Development plug-in and the iUi framework in Eclipse

If you know java and own an iphone , you start developing applications urself ..link to the article here

I dont own an iphone ,i hope i will get one soon !!!

18.7.08

Team work

I found this image some where in in internet!!!

Formula1 live feeds

UK is the only country where you can watch formula1 race online , currently ITV is providing the free online feeds which can be viewed only in UK . Nobody else in the world can watch racing online , but there are some smart guys out there who provides defered feed for the same ( less than 20 seconds delay i believe )

Find some links here

http://www.soccer-live.pl/ITVF1/f1player.php

http://bilmosk.org/simulcastPlayer.swf

I think these feeds are illegal , and it using ITV stuff , but it is handly when u not at home or travelling , so we dont miss the action!!!!

Also keep an eye here for update information

Stoner dominates the opening day at US GP

Stonner is in excellent form and in the opening day of US gp he set a new circuit record !!!
I hope rossi will be back to form on laguna seca , and will lead the drivers standing...

Current standing here




Massa the reason I retired

taken from here

Nearly two years after announcing his retirement as a Formula One driver, Michael Schumacher has cited his former team-mate Felipe Massa as a primary reason for hanging up his racing helmet."I stopped because I didn't want my friend Felipe Massa to be unemployed," the Swiss newspaper Blick quotes the seven time world champion as saying."I would have had no problem going up against Kimi Raikkonen," Schumacher adds, refuting the common claim that he objected to having the Finn as his 2007 team-mate.

I believe kimi is one of the naturally quickest formula one drivers active in racing , may be schumi was expecting a number one position in ferrari as usual and he might not get it if kimi joined the team !!!!

Is massa a good driver , i dont think so , he is just a normal racing driver , who always wins on his favorite circuits most cases the the blunders made by his teams strategy at the expense of his team mate . Wtf he did in silverstone last race , he was lapping and spinning every corner in the circuit ...hehe

German GP predictions

Fans all over the world are looking forward to this sunday , we will get to know who will lead the drivers standing in Formula1 ...I hope its going to be fun !!!

If one of the four drivers in the drivers standing win the German GP , they will lead the drivers championship , so it is an important race for all . It looks mclaren had a good practice session on friday , but everybody expect ferrari will be back to track on saturday with charm .

As everybody aware we had unpredictable races in the last few weekends , i hope the german GP is going to be a normal race , though weather forecasts predict little shower on race day .

My bet goes to Determined Iceman ,(after a damn strategy blunder by ferrari at silverstone , terrific exhaust broke at france , and stupidity by lewis at Montreal ) he is going to win this race.

At eod , it is racing and anything can happen , there are many other factors which decides the winning , its just not the drivers skills or cars .

Geman GP is home race for many drivers including nick , nico , vettel, sutil and its a chance for them to be in a point scoring position on sunday in front of their fans . Nick had a great race last weekend , and looks he is the driver who finished all the races this year (?) . There is a great chance for him to be in podium if there is a chance for rain . In normal day bmw cant beat neither ferrari nor mclaren, but still we can count him in podium contender in his home race.

I am not counting lewis in podium contenders , i am sure he will push hard to the limit and may run wide or retire soon fighting in the top . He had many good races so far , he lead the friday practice , but still he is not in my list of podium finishers .

So my predictions ...Kimi , Massa , Nick ..lookng forward to the race on sunday !!!


if u wish to read further ..have a look at Keith's predictions here or you like to read more about the history of German GP , journeyer wrote an excellent article in f1fanatic great work journeyer and thanks keith for running such a informative blog !!!!

Architecture-Oriented or Feature-Oriented

John Ferguson in his blog explaining the key differences between Architecture oriented and Feature oriented design.

He is stating .....Architecture-Oriented teams are organised according to the system architecture of the application. For example, in a typical e-commerce application, you might have a web-tiers layer, a services layer and a database access layer. Using an Architecture-Oriented approach, you would have a team (or team-member, for very small projects) dedicated to each layer.

Feature-Oriented teams are organised by feature, or use case, or user story, or some other tangible and deliverable unit of functionality. For this iteration, Team A will take care of the Shopping Cart Checkout feature, whereas Team B will implement the full-text catalog search. Each team implements their feature from A to Z, so they usually have to touch all the layers of the application architecture.

very good article ..keep reading

Defenition of Rich Internet Applications

According to David herron RIA's are

Rich :refers to a GUI application with lots of bling and sizzle
Internet :refers to the network infrastructure on which the Web lives
Application :is a $2000 word for 'software' or 'program'

more here

Better than java Strings ???

Ahmadsoft has released ropes for Java

A rope is a high performance replacement for Strings. The datastructure, described in detail in "Ropes: an Alternative to Strings", provides asymptotically better performance than both String and StringBuffer for common string modifications like prepend, append, delete, and insert. Like Strings, ropes are immutable and therefore well-suited for use in multi-threaded programming.

More here

Forget about cameras or lights !!!

Taken from here

Radiohead just released a new video for its song "House of Cards" from the album "In Rainbows".No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.
Watch the making-of video to learn about how the video was made and the various technologies that were used to capture and render 3D data.

cool stuff !!

17.7.08

Unreferenced interface in RMI

Java doc says ' A remote object implementation should implement the Unreferenced interface to receive notification when there are no more clients that reference that remote object."

LoseThos

LoseThos: A free, open source, public domain, 64-bit IBM PC operating system.

link here

java performance

Java programmers often write the code to test the performance of the certain classes , normally we wrote code like this

long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
test1();
long end = System.currentTimeMillis();
long duration1 = end - start;

But there is a better way to do this . you can use ThreadMXBean.getCurrentThreadCpuTime()
function in jdk.

you can use

ThreadMXBean mx = ManagementFactory.getThreadMXBean();
long start = mx.getCurrentThreadCpuTime();
test1();
long end = mx.getCurrentThreadCpuTime();
long duration1 = end - start;

java documentation here




Java JVM non standard options

if you want to know the non standard options supported by your installed JVM , try the below command

java -X

output :
[kimster@bhdhcp076142 ~]$ java -X
-Xmixed mixed mode execution (default)
-Xint interpreted mode execution only
-Xbootclasspath:
set search path for bootstrap classes and resources
-Xbootclasspath/a:
append to end of bootstrap class path
-Xbootclasspath/p:
prepend in front of bootstrap class path
-Xnoclassgc disable class garbage collection
-Xincgc enable incremental garbage collection
-Xloggc: log GC status to a file with time stamps
-Xbatch disable background compilation
-Xms set initial Java heap size
-Xmx set maximum Java heap size
-Xss set java thread stack size
-Xprof output cpu profiling data
-Xfuture enable strictest checks, anticipating future default
-Xrs reduce use of OS signals by Java/VM (see documentation)
-Xcheck:jni perform additional checks for JNI functions
-Xshare:off do not attempt to use shared class data
-Xshare:auto use shared class data if possible (default)
-Xshare:on require using shared class data, otherwise fail.

The -X options are non-standard and subject to change without notice.

Why women aren't good programmers

"They freak out every time they miss a period. "

(seen on here )

16.7.08

Attack code for intel chips :)

Recently i read an article which states 'Kris Kaspersky plans to demonstrate how an attacker can target flaws in Intel's microprocessors to remotely attack a computer using JavaScript or TCP/IP packets, regardless of what operating system the computer is running.' see here

What does this mean ...these processors are buggy as hell..huh .yes it is . Theo de Raadt from open bsd mentioned in his post to openbsd dev group '
These processors are buggy as hell, and some of these bugs don't justcause development/debugging problems, but will *ASSUREDLY* beexploitable from userland code. "

If interested have a look at the Core Duo processor errata here ,
http://download.intel.com/design/processor/specupdt/31327914.pdf

simplified version here http://www.geek.com/images/geeknews/2006Jan/core_duo_errata__2006_01_21__full.gif


15.7.08

Eclipse : Adapters

Recently Wayne Beaton wrote an interesting article regarding usage of Adapters in Eclipse framework .

Summary of the article says "The adapter pattern is used extensively in Eclipse. The use of this pattern allows plug-ins to be loosely coupled, yet still be tightly integrated in the extremely dynamic Eclipse runtime environment. In this article, we show you how to use the adapter framework to make your own objects adaptable, and adapt other objects."

I read this and it is worth reading . Most of the eclipse programmers are familiar with adapter usage ( if not what they working on there:) ) , but still it is an interesting read .

Link to the article here ,,,

14.7.08

live like ......!!!

One interesting site i used to visit to learn things about things i dont know how to do ..its a place ..where lot of geeks open their mouth to talk about there knowledge ..if u are in a hacky mood to experiment things or you wanna learn more about the fundamentals ( ?) ..there is a place http://neworder.box.sk/ happy browsing !!!!

Debugging JNI crashes using Xcheck:jni

Recently i had a chance to debug a JNI crashing problem in windows .I was looking for some kinda utilities which help me to debug the issue . Then i found a utility
-Xcheck:jni supplied along with Java .

Java 5 trouble shooting guid says 'The -Xcheck:jni option is useful option when trying to
diagnose problems with applications that use the JavaNative Interface (JNI). This option can be be useful whenan application employs third-party libraries'

To use the -Xcheck:jni option just add it to the command line when
starting the application, for example:java -Xcheck:jni MyApplication

If you are using eclipse as IDE , you can try setting this in Debug / Run Dialog arguments section .I found this utility very useful , but it is a tedious job to analyse the crash logs this utiity generates

PS : Linux is great , whenever a crash occurs , it gives detailed logs like which method it crashed ..it rocks !!!!

Lapping in Formula1

Recently i read an article in F1 Pitlane ( i think keith from f1fanatic wrote the same ) about Antony Davidson and Massa. Davidson made an interesting comment about massa during the commentating of f1 race live at silverstone ..



davidson said ""He's always the first to stand up in a drivers' meeting and complain about what people like me are doing when we get lapped. That's what you get, mate. There's a bit of blue flag action for you. You're rubbish. You are useless at it."



hehe ..nice shot ..i belive massa deserve it .....



link to f1 pitlane article find here

13.7.08

Stoner wins Sachsenring GP

Stoner wins Sachsenring GP beating rossi in the action packed wet race , front runner Dani Pedrossa retired in an early accident , he was dominating the race with 8+ second advantage .A run of three victories in a row from pole position was continued by Casey Stoner in Sachsenring

Podium finishers are Stoner --Rossi -- Chris Vemulanen ,Now Rossi leading the championship. I want to see 'The Doctor' winning the world championship this year , we can expect great races in coming days ..it looks it is going to be a three way battle for the 2008 championship !!!!

In the early 250 cc class simoncelli wins the race , now he is in the leader board . In 125 cc , french man Mike Di meglio extends championship lead with victory in German GP.

It was great watching the race today , Lets wait for the US GP scheduled 20 Jul...

Getting the File URL for Installed Eclipse Bundle

Some times there is a requirement to get the folder or File URL for the installed bundles .

The below snippet can use for this purpose

public static URL getBundleFileURL(Bundle bundle) {
URL u = FileLocator.find(bundle, new Path("/"), null);
try {
return FileLocator.toFileURL(u);
} catch (IOException e) {
// Log error
}
return null;
}

Hope it helps!!!

Windows Registry editing in Java

Java don't have public API's for manipulating registry , but java provides some internal classes using that you can manipulate registry.

This is purely a hack ( use at your own risk and many cases not recommended :) ) and you need to use reflection . There is a class named WindowsPreferences in java.util.prefs package , you can use for this purpose .

This class is not documented ( why ? first of all class is package protected , and there is no public methods ) , use the source to know more abt the functions available

What is a Plugin ?

The Eclipse online help defines a plug-in as follows:
"Plug-ins are structured bundles of code and/or data that contribute function to the system. Function can be contributed in the form of code libraries (Java classes with public [application program interfaces] APIs), platform extensions, or even documentation. Plug-ins can define extension points, well-defined places where other plug-ins can add functionality."

What is OSGI ?

Most of the eclipse programmers must be familiar with OSGI ( if not are they eclipse programmers ?????) . OSGI stands for Open Services Gateway Initiative it promotes open specifications for the delivery of managed services to networked environments

These specifications define the OSGi Service Platform, which is a java based platform , that can be remotely managed.The core part of the specifications is a framework that defines an application life cycle management model, a service registry, an Execution environment and Modules. Based on this framework, a large number of OSGi Layers, APIs, and Services have been defined

Interestingly Eclipse uses OSGi as the basis for its plug-in system. Why eclipse using osgi instead of custom plugin system ???

developerworks saying "Early versions of Eclipse were also designed as a collection of plug-ins, and Eclipse included its own propriety plug-in system to manage the interaction. However, as the requirements of the Eclipse IDE grew, it became apparent that a more robust solution was required. Basic requirements of this new system included the ability to dynamically handle the addition of new plug-ins and stopping existing plug-ins."

The below mentioned article gives an overview OSGI ...worth reading!!!!!
http://gravity.sourceforge.net/servicebinder/osginutshell.html

Open source LDAP server released

An open-source LDAP directory server written in the Java language released recently in java.net . Its an open source project initiated by Sun and it looks interesting .URL is http://www.opends.org/

I worked with few proprietary LDAP servers and Open LDAP before , but this looks interesting to me as a java programmer , looks it is fully written in java , where as other LDAP servers heavily depend heavily on native code

I am going to try this out soon ....

World of linked lists !!!!

It looks most of the computer science students have a tough time figuring out how linked lists works and not aware of the various coding techniques for implementing linked lists . Linked lists are always a hot topic during the job interviews , still too . Recently i found an article which reviews basic linked list code techniques and then works through 18 linked list problems covering a wide range of difficulty . Its written by Nick Parlante . Here is the one location where u can download the pdf tutorial http://arantxa.ii.uam.es/~edi2/docs/LinkedListProblems.pdf if any problems downloading the same , drop me a comment , i can help getting it . its worth reading !!!!

Will 'The Doctor ' be back to game ??

It was not a great weekend for Valentino Rossi , till the qualifying of Sachsenring motogp race . Rossi will start from 3rd row today , after a 'misunderstanding' between Lorenzo in the last corner in qualifying .

Will Rossi beat dominating stoner , i believe Rossi can . I hope the error he had last race is his final mistake of the year !!! i want to see 'king of mugello' winning the german GP

Eclipse 3.4 ( Ganymede ) released

Eclipse folks made a new release for the tooling platform , code named 'Ganymede' . Chris recently wrote an interesting article on the same in developer works (http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-eclipse-ganymede/ ) . Worth reading !!!

Eclipse : Views and Editors ??

Eclipse has the concept of views and editors , most of the eclipse programmers think both are similar in many aspects , but it is interesting to see the differences . Eclipse FAQ has an interesting entry on the same , am reiterating the same here..

Here are the main ones.
  • There is generally only one instance of a given view per workbench page, but there can be several instances of the same type of editor.
  • Editors can appear in only one region of the page, whereas views can be moved to any part of the page and minimized as fast views.
  • Editors can be in a dirty state, meaning that their contents are unsaved and will be lost if the editor is closed without saving.
  • Views have a local toolbar, whereas editors contribute buttons to the global toolbar.
  • Editors can be associated with a file name or an extension, and this association can be changed by users
Hope it helps !!!

Should i say 'blogger.com' is bug free ??

I guess no ...there are bugs ..major bugs !!!

I created a blog of mine a while back , recently i noticed some thing . In the blog archive section , when you click on the links to blog posts , it is not going to the correct page , instead it is displaying a blank page ..what the heck!!!

Anyways i am try creating a new blog and moving all the posts to here. I hope it will work , else i guess i need to move to some other blogger site ..!!!

I did a lot of tweaking to customize the templates ....does it mean ..did i do some thing stupid which caused this ..who knows !!!!

anyways testing ..testing ..hope it works !!!  



PS : I tested in the new blog it is working , but i have some problem exporting the blog contents to new blog using the new blog export / import functionality provided by http://draft.blogger.com/  but looks no luck to me ( giving me some funny errors :) ) , any ways the number posts are less , so i can copy paste the same to new blog ..damn !!!