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Windows Vista Beta 2 Screenshot (Click to enlarge):

Pros:
Huge progress in user-interface design compared to Windows XP. More user friendly - I could not help a chuckle to find C:\Users folder, but it's still good. Much richer functionality.

Cons:
I installed 64 bit version Vista (from my MSND subscription) on my AMD64 dual-core HP m7334n. Vista was unable to detect my wi-fi ethernet card, or audio or TV Tuner. I indicated the "Recovery" folder where all the drivers should reside - still no luck. After I went through the pain of hooking the pc up be a network cable, it was able to install TV-Tuner but still no luck with the audio or wi-fi. THAT REALLY PISSED ME OFF.

Apparently, Microsoft was watching Mac closely and trying to lern stuff. They definitely have made some progress in stealing ideas and Vista looks way better than XP (and way more like OS X) but it's still MS and it's still shit.

Operating system unable to find all drivers for a new, brand HP desktop? Idiots.

Webby awards is considered "the Oscars of the Web". Now, not that I have much (or any) respect for Oscars but it still makes me sad to look at the latest Webby Awards: http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php?season=10

I mean - come on, guys. The whole world just can't stop talking about Web 2.0 aesthetics of simplicity and most of the winners of Webby are Flash-based sites? Are we in 1995?

Funny.

Anyways, the 5-word speech thing is still kinda cool :)

This has been going on for a long time, now, and is becoming really worrying. There is a whole bunch of people, in the IT industry, whose sole goal is to be "recognized" as a "thought-leader".

When I think about a thought-leader, the first face that comes to my mind is Einstein, even if with that famous tongue of his out :) That was a thought-leader. Hell, probably the greatest one. Do you really think, he ever cared how high his recognition rate was? All he cared about was his own curiosity and the desire to figure things out. That's what real thinkers do, not - watch number of hits on his/her blog.

The problem with this "wanna be a thought-leader" craziness is greater than we may realize. Soon enough we will hardly have anybody who bothers to think. We will only have three groups: people who try to make buzz off of trivial stuff; people who were too late to get on that train and hence try to retaliate by criticizing; and finally the largest and most disgusting group of penguins who are too lazy to think for themselves and just blindly join one or the other group. That way, they won't have to justify their poor decisions to the management - just mention some buzz words, some "legendary" names and - you are off the hook, if your manager is stupid nough, which of course, they usually are.

If you think this is an exaggeration, look around more tentatively and put some effort to notice all the heat around Spring, SOA, Agile practices - whatever else the buzzword of the day happens to be.

PEOPLE, it does not freaking matter whether you do agile or whatever, as far as you do your job well. And if you dont - you could as well get lost in a very agile way.

How hard is that to get?

*sigh* and cheers to all people who still have some common sense left.

Following are detailed instructions for installing Weblogic 9.1 on OS X Panther.

Download AIX version of Weblogic 9.1 (AIX as that's the generic version of WebLogic, in fact). You can download it from: http://commerce.bea.com/showproduct.jsp?family=WLS&major=9.1&minor=0

Run the installation with the following command:
java -Dos.name=unix -jar server910_generic.jar

it's crucial to indicate os.name parameter. Otherwise, installer will complain about insufficient disk space.

At the end of installation you will be asked whether to run QuickStart. I recommend not to, as it hung on me.

In any case, you need to create a new weblogic domain, first by running:
~/bea/weblogic91/common/bin/config.sh

Domain creator will ask about JDK. It actually manages to find Apple's one but in case that fails, indicate the following path:
/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/CurrentJDK/Home

To run the server, go to the following directory from Terminal:
~/bea/user_projects/domains/<domain_name>
e.g. if your domain name is "base_domain" then go to:
~/bea/user_projects/domains/base_domain

and then run:
./startWebLogic.sh

Server will try to run on port 7001.

Note: when I first started the server it complained about 7001 being unavailable and ketp shutting down. Later I found a runaway java process listening on 7001. I suspect it was a leftover from the frozen Quickstart crap. I killed all java processes, then tryed started Weblogic and it worked like charm.

When the server starts up, you can access admin console from: http://localhost:7001/console/

enjoy

Sometimes we do not know the size of the data or information that will be displayed on a page, or worse - we know it will be too large. Examples of such cases are: large data tables or code listing. Having page strech is not the best thing to happen obviously. Using IFrames is even worse.

This is where <div> tag and css style overflow come in handy.

Put your troublesome area in a div like:

<div style="width:420px; height:200px; overflow:auto">
    DATA OF ANY SIZE
</div>

and you can rest assured that this area will have exactly 420x200 size, with nice vertical and/or horizontal scrollbars appearing if needed.

enjoy