Chad's IT Thoughts

I Got a Feeling Somebody’s Watching Me

itchad — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 22:39:04 +0000

I saw a story this morning that mirrors something I think I’ve actually seen before. According to the story, HR departments at large corporations are actually starting to quantitatively analyze their employees and assigning some sort of score to them. The basis of this score is probably based on a multitude of factors however the end result is a mathematical score that represents you.

What’s scary about this is that the modern corporation has a lot of information about you. Besides the normal information such as age, gender and education they also have information that you wouldn’t think of using such as what websites you visit, whom you communicate with electronically whether via e-mail or through the phone (yep, they keep phone records of where you call) and what your professional relationships are (these can be inferred from your communications). All these things can be used to create a digital fingerprint of who you are and can be used to score you against your fellow employees.

If more corporations start to do this (I’m sure they will) it changes the balance of what things are important in your career. We would all have to be cognizant of what things are being tracked electronically and try to turn those things into an advantage. For some folks this could be advantageous because some of the work that they do that may not be noticed because they are the quiet sort may finally be taken into account. For others this could be a problem because unless you work for ESPN, visiting espn.com probably won’t get you real far.

I guess this is just the age that we live in. The vast communications superhighway offers so many advantages but what we give up in exchange for this communication and knowledge may be letting people peer a inside us a little bit more than we may be comfortable with.

Setting up a Javaserver Faces Development Environment on Fedora 10: 2 of 3

itchad — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 21:33:12 +0000

Before we can set up a Javaserver Faces development environment we actually need to make sure that Javaserver Pages (JSP) works as Faces layers on top of Pages…or something like that.

So far we’ve installed the infrastructure necessary: Apache httpd, Tomcat 6.0 and Eclipse Java EE. Now it’s time to actually create the Eclipse project.

First fire up Eclipse and make sure that you are in the Java EE perspective. Then go to File > New > Dynamic Web Project. A dialog box that looks like this should come up:

In the firstdialog box that comes up enter tryjsp as the “Project Name” and then click the “Next” button. In the next dialog box that follows simply accept the defaults and click “Finish”.

Now in your new project select the “Web Content” folder, right click and select JSP.

In the dialog that comes up enter tryme.jsp in the “File Name” text box and the click the “Next” button. From the JSP templates select New JSP File (HTML) and then clicked the “Finish” button.

Make the code in the new JSP file look this this:

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>




Insert title here


<%="Hello World"%>

Now here is the slightly annoying part of using Fedora: the Eclipse Java EE IDE doesn’t correctly recognize the Fedora Tomcat 6.0 installation so you’ll have to copy the files manually. For the sake of example, my Eclipse workspace directory on disk is actually /home/chad/workspace. This means that my project is physically in /home/chad/workspace/tryjsp/. So go to that directory and then copy the “WebContents” folder to the tomcat webapps directory:

cp -r WebContent/ /usr/share/tomcat6/webapps/tryjsp

The final piece of this is to actually see it in a web browser so fire up Firefox and go to the web address http://localhost:8080/tryjsp/tryme.jsp. If all works out correctly you should see the following:

Next time the final piece of the puzzle: we get to make a Javaserver Faces page!

Setting up a Javaserver Faces Development Environment on Fedora 10: 1 of 3

itchad — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:52:48 +0000

So if you’re reading this post you obviously have some interest in creating a javaserver faces web application on Fedora 10 otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this post. However, if you need a little more motivation you can read the first post on this topic.

So now to business. Obviously the first step is to install Fedora 10 on your system. For the purposes of this article I’m going to assume that the Live CD is used to install the OS. Basically this involves:

Booting the system from the CD.
Installing the Live CD image to your hard drive using the Fedora install program.
Rebooting the system into the new hard driver image.

This should take anywheres from a half hour to an hour depending on your machine.

The Live CD install has some advantages and some disadvantages. The advantage is that you can see if Fedora 10 will work with your hardware and the installation will take much less time. The disadvantage is that not as much software is installed. That’s where things start to get interesting.

Anyways once you get Fedora 10 installed and booted you’ll want to install the add-on software you’ll need. To do this you’ll want to get well acquainted with the Add/Remove Software applet that comes with Fedora 10. To access it you’ll want to go to the System menu and then go to Administration > Add/Remove Software. The Add/Remove Software screen should look like this:

As a general rule, the easiest way to find a piece of software that you want to install is to type keywords into the search text box which is a tex box at the upper left hand side of the screen with the binoculars in it.

We now want to install the following pieces of software:

Apache web server

To install the apache web server, type “httpd” into the search window. You will want to install two packages:

Apache HTTP Server
Tools for Use with Apache HTTP Server

You’ll want to check the checkboxes next to the software and then click apply. If the software is installed correctly you should have a result like this:

Tomcat Application Server

To find the Tomcat software type “tomcat” in the search box. Once the search results come up you’ll want to install the following packages:

jakarta-commons-*
tomcat5-jasper-*
tomcat5-jsp-2.0-api
tomcat5-jsp-24-api
tomcat5-servlet-2.4-api
tomcat6-*

Again, here’s the results of the tomcat search:

Eclipse Development Environment

In the original version of this post I had recommended installing the Fedora version of Eclipse. Looking back on it now I would actually recommend installing the Java EE version of Eclipse from their website.

Once you download it, su to root (i.e. use the command “su root” and then enter the root password) and then do the following to install it:

Copy the .tar.gz file you downloaded to the /opt directory
Change directory to the /opt directory

Extract eclipse using the following command:

# tar zxvf eclipse-jee-ganymede-SR1-linux-gtk.tar.gz

Change directory to the eclipse directory that you just downloaded
Execute the following command to start eclipse:
```
# ./eclipse
```

Now that we’ve installed the software, we want to make sure it starts now and at boot time. To configure and start the Apache web server execute the following commands:

# sudo chkconfig httpd on
# sudo service httpd start

To configure and start Tomcat perform the following commands:

# sudo chkconfig tomcat6 on
# sudo service tomcat6 start

Next time we’ll configure the Eclipse environment and create our first JSP pages!

Facebook Fine Print

itchad — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 13:13:57 +0000

I saw this yesterday from Businessweek and figured that I would pass it along. Apparently Facebook attempted to change their terms of service so that they basically owned anything you uploaded to Facebook even if you deleted your account. They went back on this after user backlash but as always we need to be careful what we put up on web 2.0 sites as they can do whatever they want with it.

Businessweek:Link

Setting up a Javaserver Faces Development Environment on Fedora 10: 0 of 3

itchad — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 20:17:55 +0000

As topics go this is pretty obscure: Setting up a javaserver faces development environment on Fedora 10.

Q: Why would anyone want to do this?
A: Because all the elements of doing are absolutely free!

In these lean economic times reducing material costs can allow you to focus limited resources on other things. But beyond the fiduciary benefits, using Java as opposed to say the classic LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP) stack does have some advantages. First, Java is a statically typed, pure object-oriented language. For geek hardliners this is ideal because you get to have all your object-orientedness and data structures that you grew to love from your first year of undergrad. Also, the development environment for Java is much more advanced than that of PHP because there are more Java programmers out there (any C.S. major worth his or her salt probably had Java as their first programming language in college) and it’s just plain older. Java is kind of like your older uncle. It’s not grandpa but it’s not that annoying teenager, Ruby on Rails. Btw, the old man on the farm is probably Fortran.

Besides Java, here are the other software components and the reason I’ve chosen them:

Fedora 10: Linux is pretty much the defacto free operating system out there. This is just a personal preference but I like Fedora as it’s more server and developer focused than Ubuntu and works better than OpenSuse.

Apache: Is there another web server you would run on Linux. Plus it comes as part of the Live CD so no install!

Tomcat: There are other application servers out there but Tomcat is free and can be loaded right from Fedora’s Add/Remove Software applet.

Javaserver Faces: This was probably the hardest choice to make. There are over 1,000,000 (okay I exaggerated a little) Java web frameworks out there. However, Javaserver Faces is the one that’s part of the Java standard so it’s guaranteed to be maintained over time.

Eclipse: The de facto Java development environment. Plus the folks at Fedora do a really good job of packaging it up.

Anywho, over the next couple of weeks I’ll put together some posts covering the following topics:

How to set up the prerequisite server side software.
How to create your first JSP page.
How to create your first JSF page.

Once you get through step three you should be dangerous enough to start creating Javaserver Faces applications for yourself.

P.S. Just to show I put my money where my mouth is this post was done on Fedora 10!

Software Architectures and the Common Developer

itchad — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:31:26 +0000

Have you ever wondered how some of the large sites on the internet look like behind the scenes? For geeks, this doesn’t mean a factory tour but rather it means what technologies do they use to create a site that handle thousands of simultaneous users and millions of unique users every month.

The Register recently posted an interview with some of the folks behind social networking sites MySpace, Facebook, Digg and Ning. You can read the article for more detail but the summary was this:

MySpace – Uses Windows Server using IIS as the webserver.

Facebook – Uses a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) with a middleware caching layer called memcache.

Digg – Uses MySQL as their data store (no OS or webserver is given).

Ning – Uses PHP as the front end language and Java for the backend stuff with Ruby, Python, Solaris and Windows thrown in for good measure.

I suppose none of these technologies are entirely shocking. Most of us have probably heard of most if not all of these technologies before. What did strike me is that none of these companies used off the shelf software as is. While they are all using off the shelf parts, the parts are just part of a larger architecture. The parts are often put together through some custom piece of middleware.

Why would these companies write a custom piece of middleware? Well, none of the components by themselves completely fill their needs. For example, MySpace needed to collect vast and specific data when something went wrong. None of the tools that were provided with the software fit the bill so they just wrote there own tools.

How is this significant to the normal everyday developer? With the rise of open source and off the shelf software many systems are not written from scratch anymore. What happens is that when something needs to be done, companies will first look to buy software that fills their needs. This would seem to spell the end of a lot of programming jobs however as opposed to killing developer jobs it is probably creating a lot more as non-technology companies will employ programmers on staff to develop software to fill the holes.

So the days of a company writing their entire systems from scratch are long over. However for those who want to embrace a new paradigm, there are still many opportunities for employment and to make money.

The Big OS Comparison

itchad — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 15:36:21 +0000

Every once and awhile one of the big tech news outlets will run some sort of operating system comparison. This time it comes from Yahoo News. For the most part they were pretty spot on. The basics of it were:

Windows – Its dominant because of its installed base and its huge advantage in third party applications. However some wonder how long it will be dominant with the rise of network based applications.

itchad – This is pretty much right. Windows won the OS war against the Mac long ago because it was an open system and could support many combinations of hardware and software. Ironically this has been Windows’ downfall as Windows has had its share of hardware incompatibility and security issues. However due to the vast software library available for Windows (remember kids, people buy computers for the applications not the OS!) I don’t believe that Windows will be displaced as the dominant desktop OS anytime soon.

The big threat to Windows (and Microsoft realized this) is web based software known by many names including Software as a Server (SaaS) and Cloud computing. As more software becomes browser based, the type of operating system that is used doesn’t matter as much. This means that hardware vendors such as Dell and HP could bypass the Windows license and run a stripped down OS such as Linux or BSD that more or less runs the web broswer such as Firefox or Google Chrome.

The server world is a different story where there is pretty much a 50/50 percent split between Windows and Unix (which includes Linux). This is the domain of the nerdy and geeky so this split won’t change anytime soon.

OS X – It has gained an amazing amount of marketshare in the last couple of years getting up to 9% market share according to Market Share. This has been driven by increased consumer demand however the uptake of OS X into the enterprise will be slow to nil because OS X does not integrate into enterprise applications.

itchad – There’s not much to comment on here. Macs will always have the advantage in terms of design and stability because it is a closed system; Apple controls all the hardware and software components. This will lead to a devoted following but the lack of application support will doom OS X to be a minority player.

Linux – Linux has not made any real inroads into the desktop market according to Market Share is less than 1%. This is mainly due to a non-intuitive user interface and the aforementioned lack of applications.

itchad – The article is unfortunately right. Until my mom can run Linux without any help from IT Chad Linux will never take off on the desktop. Having said that I think that if Linux is set up for someone it can be a reasonable cheap personal system. It has a mail client such as Evolution, an office sweet like Open Office and it has Firefox as a web broswer. It will however never run all the specialty applications for Windows such as graphics programs, games and CAD applications so it will never become dominant.

On the server side, Linux is already entrenched and it can actually be a more stable platform for simple things such as web and file serving.

University Education…For Free!

itchad — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 21:56:16 +0000

One of the things that a software engineer needs to do to make sure that their career doesn’t become like the titanic is to make sure that they are constantly reeducating themselves. This means that we (I’m a software engineer) need to constantly educate ourselves in new languages, methods and technologies.

The question always is where is the best place reeducate yourself? The problem here is not that there aren’t any places to get the information but rather which place of the many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many different places do you choose?

One of things that I’ve started to notice over the last few years if that universities are starting to put more and more of their courses online for free. This can range from just a syllabus to actual video of the classe. Most of the courses minimally contain the lecture notes and assignments for that class. This is usually enough to teach yourself something if you are willing to inves the time.

The most famous one so far is probably MIT’s Open Courseware.. Again what is provided for each course varies but MIT, one of the foremost engineering schools in the world, is putting all their courses online. This means that you can see the same material that some of the best minds in the world get to see. For example, I’ve been slowly trudging through this introductory Java course.

Certainly colleges and universities are not the only source of learning however they are most definitely worth checking out.

Cheap Virtualization

itchad — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 17:00:22 +0000

If you have a fairly powerful PC or laptop, one with at least two processors and at least 2GB of memory, then you are a prime candidate to start fooling around with virtualization.

What is virtualization? The real basic definition is a piece of software that imitates a PC environment so that you can run a self contained operating system such as Windows or Linux on top of an existing operating system.

For a geek like me this is really sweet because I can run multiple operating systems on the same machine. I currently have a HP dv2600 with 3 GB RAM and two 2.0 GHz AMD Turion processors and this is more than enough to run my regular operating system plus two virtual machines.

The last question is which virtualization software to run? Well for PCs there are really two free choices:

I’ve tried both and I have to say that I like VMWare Server much better than Virtual PC. I’ve gotten really good performance from my virtual machines with VMWare Server 1.x especially for Linux. I haven’t tried version 2.0 yet but some initial reviews I’ve read about it don’t shed a positive light on it. Virtual PC probably runs Windows fine but Linux runs worse than dog sled lead by hampsters.

So there you go, just before Christmas, if you want to play with virtualization here’s a gift that won’t dig a larger crater in your credit card and will allow you to avoid the mall!

Resumes, resumes, resumes…

itchad — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 22:20:36 +0000

Ironically, my first post in the new blog is not a hardcore technology post. I believe IT has weathered the current recession better than some other industries such as construction and financial services. However, IT layoffs will be some of the last to occur because it depends on the big players in other industries to buy its products. And some IT layoffs have already been announced.

This of course means that we’re going to see a million articles about what one should do when looking for a job. Once such article was recently published by ComputerWorld.

The article gives similar advice to some other articles that I’ve read:

Keep things short and sweet
Make sure your resume contains valid “search terms” that some data mining software might be looking for
Highlight the right extra curricular activities such as education and certifications
Show that you understand the IT business as opposed to just technology

All of these things are good advice. Ultimately, you wants to show how you can solve problems in your resume as that’s what someone will pay you for: to solve problems. Think about when you want to hire someone to do work for you. If you know how to do the work yourself, will you hire someone to do it? Most likely not because let’s face it; we all want to save a few bucks. However if you have a problem that you can’t solve yourself that is when you become willing to pay someone to take care of it.

Even large businesses are no different…ultimately they are willing to pay people to solve problems, make money and make their lives easier.