Web Forefront

Passwords are sacrosanct on the web. Some sites force you to change it every so often, others force you to use a minimum length, others force you to use certain symbols to make a password stronger. All this is OK I believe. But why do passwords always appear in the form '******' when you introduce them on a web page? As if everyone is peeping over your screen at that very second? Jakob Nielsen, one of the most notable usability experts says 'Stop Password Masking', his comments reminded me of the only time I've seen non-masked passwords: Hollywood movies. Perhaps Hollywood on this occasion has a better depiction of what works, especially now that Nielsen said something on the topic.

The era of multi-core processors, dual-core two processors in one, quad-core four processors in one, is now in full-swing. If you think to yourself 'my software will be blazing on a machine running a hexa-core processor which is six processors in one!'. It just might, but before it can do that, your software might as well run on a single-core processor if it isn't designed to take advantage of this fact. This post is a high-level view on multi-core processors, concurrency and the programming languages that have caught recent headlines as concurrency champions and how they fit this multi-core paradigm.

In an earlier post I described OSGi versioning and Java's run-time and how the former is often discussed with the latter, since Java lacks run-time versioning. In this post I will describe another OSGi feature, one that although not as fresh a concept as Java versioning, is still central to OSGi: The OSGi service model.

For those using .NET the title is probably not news, since this has been available since .NET 1.0. This is simply a follow-up to the last post ' OSGi: Versioning and Java's run-time '. Yes .NET got this functionality in its first version, Java is 7 versions in and its still not clear when support for this will materilize. The mechanism is strikingly similar though, this post will illustrate how.

When the topic of OSGi comes up it often comes hand-in-hand with the term versioning. In short: 'Java has no support for versioning and OSGi does, so OSGi fills this void'. But how does this versioning mechanism work and what implications does it have for a Java application? This post will attempt to summarize how OSGi, versioning and Java's run-time fit together.

I've always liked the capability to use Windows and Linux on the same piece of hardware. Linux for any type of development, and Windows for doing documentation and media - some companies will never use Open Office or Linux compatible media lets face it. However, installing the two on the same laptop or workstation isn't straightforward: You either need to partition your disk, erase what is more likely the Windows boot loader and lets not even talk about wrecking a perfectly good Windows installation if you go wrong in any step. The other option is using virtualization software, in which one operating system is hosted and run simultaneously by the other, a resource hog and even unusable system if you don't have the adequate hardware. Another way and probably the simplest I've seen is using Wubi .

Until a few weeks ago, I'd never had a big issue with Linux. Having installed and worked on over 4 workstations with different distros over the years, they had all been stable, meaning no lost data, no sudden re-boots, frozen screens or application crashes. Well, there is such a thing as 'segmentation fault hell' or even the prospect of losing data on a Linux workstation/server as I realized all to well just recently. So if you're a Linux user, this post contains some preventive measures on avoiding a panic situation or if you're already in this situation, some steps to recover your data from what are apparently irrecoverable hardware errors.

Since I try to post on as many programming languages / platforms as possible on this blog, not to mention some of my clients have also asked me, 'What programming language / platform should I use on 'X' project ?' Here are my opinions on the subject, its a long answer, since its got as much to do with the target business, the people you can bring into a team and the abstraction provided by a programming language / platform.