JCE 1.2.1 expired on July 27, 2005

This is real bummer! Most of the programs using the JCE suddenly stop working throwing weird exceptions. It seems that the culprit was the digital certificate for JCE 1.2.1 had expired! The solution is either to upgrade to JCE 1.2.2 or JDK 1.4.

Upgrading to JDK 1.4 is not an option for us, that leaves JCE 1.2.2. Guess what? Looking at the JCE 1.2.2 documentation at Sun's website, a glaring pink message informs us that JDK 1.3.1 has entered EOL process and that JCE 1.2.2 as an optional package for JDK 1.3.1 will EOL March 30, 2006!!

What does that mean? Does it mean that the JCE 1.2.2 will also stop working after March 30, 2006? So does it mean that our only option is to upgrade to JDk 1.4!?

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Yahoo! bought Konfabulator

Yahoo! has acquired Konfabulator and made it available for free. I first heard of Konfabulator from the controversy that Apple's Dashboard was copied from Konfabulator when Apple announced their MacOs X Tiger. Seeing how cool Apple's Dashboard is, I wanted to see Konfabulator for myself on Windows. No doubt about it, it was just as cool. After a while, when the cool factor wear off, I find that it just an eye candy. Not much of a use and not worth paying for. Now that Yahoo! has acquired Konfabulator and will be making their massive contents available on it, it will become more useful. What's more you can't beat the price.

Nohohon

Just to test out the new image feature. This is a picture of the nohohon.

A Google of Malaysia?

Have you ever wonder will there be a local IT company as big or famous as Google in Malaysia? Let's face it, this will never happen! There will never be a Yahoo! or a BEA. Why? Companies like Google and Yahoo! was not started because they can make money. Larry Page and Sergey Brin didn't say "Hey, lets start a search engine company and make tons of money". They were doing research on search engine. The company was a product of their research. Not the other way round.

This is not the case with Malaysian IT companies, in fact all Asian IT companies. The owners are all money driven. Lets do a case study. The company I am working for is a good one. Its actually an MNC originated from a country with the Merlion as a national symbol. It has a framework which the management wants to sell as a product. The problem is this product is a total mess thanks to some Dumbass. The management doesn't want to pour money into fixing the blunders cause by Dumbass but wants to milk the product. In fact, I think the management fails to see a problem with the product.

If little money is spend on R&D to improve the product, how can it be sold? You maybe able to cheat one or two customers but you can't cheat everyone. People will find out that you are selling them rubbish. If this is the kind of attitude exhibit by local IT companies, then how can there be a homegrown Yahoo!

So if you want to create a giant like Google, you must be willing to do the work for free with no expectation of getting any money out of it. You must be not driven by Money. Money is not in the picture!

Never let just anybody be in charge

Never simply let anybody be in charge of your critical projects or products. Its a disaster ready to happen. If the person happens to be an X-Men, be prepared for bankruptcy! A fine example would be a J2EE product that the company I work for is trying sell.

The product started out as individual solutions to specific customers need. The management then realized that these individual solutions can be reused in myriads of projects, and so the product was born. They put this person (let's call him Dumbass) in charge of this new product's direction and implementation. FYI, Dumbass is not an X-Men but is no better. Dumbass has zero hands on experience in J2EE or even Java, just general knowledge. Worst of all Dumbass is a proud close minded stubborn SOB!

Since the product is actually a bundling of the various solutions developed over the years, the technology employed varies from BMP to CMP. The codes are also polluted by the X-Men. Instead of doing various refactoring to the code base to standardize the various techniques used and to better integrate the various solutions, Dumbass chose to concentrate on esoteric stuff.

Dumbass also came out with the idea of simplifying the API, which to be fair is a good idea, but the implementation is a joke. Instead of simplifying the existing API, another layer of remote Session Facade with the new API was bolted on, delegating calls to the existing API. Now, we all know how evil is a remote method call and a chatty application making lots of remote call is a big no no.

Dumbass was in charge of this product for a year and it is fubar. The product is slow, buggy and hard to maintain. Does your company have a Dumbass in charge of its critical products?