I don’t know what it is about xml configuration files that simply turn me off learning a particular library or framework. For example, here is a Hibernate XML monstrosity.
I realize it all makes sense, but there is something terribly off-putting about xml. To me it’s a sign that the host language is not sufficiently dynamic [...]

I was looking around for projects that a MicroISV can build on top of Microsoft Sharepoint, and thought I’d share a few resources I’ve come across.

Michael Sampson has written up a gap analysis for Sharepoint. A table of contents is available for download on his site. He was actually nice enough to call, all the [...]

Jim Donovan points out the top to bottom $117m IT reengineering of the NZ Immigration department equates to $234k per person. With a budget and a timeline like that, it will only take another stroke of legislation to render it all obsolete.
If there is any IT function that needs to be agile rather than waterfall, [...]

Provisioning

Eucalyptus – is an open-source software infrastructure for implementing “cloud computing” on clusters. The current interface to Eucalyptus is compatible with Amazon’s EC2, S3, and EBS interfaces
SystemImager – automates Linux installs, software distribution, and production deployment
Cobber – is a Linux installation server that allows for rapid setup of network installation environment
LinMin – Unattended, Remote, [...]

Bots spewing spam from ADSL connections used to be the de riguer a few years ago. Increasingly, these are getting defeated because these IP addresses have been identified as being “spammy”, and spammers have moved back to using bots to sign up for free email accounts en masse. 
In this case, the attack is via transfer [...]

The screenshots of $20/month Software-As-a-Service Manual Test tool shows how disruptive the web can be for existing business. In this case, these guys are competing with featureful competitors like Mercury Test Director.
Other possibilities can be achieved by stitching together solutions involving
1) Mechanical Turk
2) Puppet
3) Virtualization
Bugs might be solved a similar way, using a [...]

A common pattern found in database applications is the “Select or Add” pattern.
The pattern allows a user to either

select an existing item (usually a foreign key), or
to add a new item to the foreign key table, then refresh the combo box, and setting the item to the newly added one

Example
The following is a screenshot [...]

How much of your software code base is at risk if one of your developers leaves the project, gets sick, or joins another company?
In large team projects, although the entire project may not be at risk, how do we identify which modules / components are at risk? Usually, a team can exercise some gut-feel [...]

Transcript of presentation plus my comments in blue.
Computing models have to evolve with new pressures:

many tiny devices – low powered, cheaper, but not faster
many little flakey data centers (put on a truck and drive away) … we are not seeing this. The reasons is clear: the technology proposed in this talk is not easy to [...]

What would you automate into your boilerplate code after having 10 years of writing database applications? Here are some links to promising projects/essays:

Andromeda
Django Admin
Dataphor
Promises: User interface “hints” integrated with the data model

Naked Objects
MS Access and Query By Form
I like how CodeIgniter makes it possible to compose declarative data validations e.g. “valid_email|matches[email_confirm]|min_length[6]“
We need standard ValueConverters [...]

James Governor has talked about open source industry analysis, I attended a talk organised by the ACS Toowoomba chapter, from an open source consultant. No he doesn’t implement Linux servers. Pat Wagner does his consulting openly, and blogs publicly about how his consulting engagement is going over at the 339 middle school in New York.
Pat [...]

There’s always been a problem for PCs in my home network to access files on my laptop. I could access shared folders on the others, but never the other way round.
My laptop is connected to a wireless access point, while the rest of the PCs are on a wired LAN. I had even turned [...]

Bob Warfield writes on software innovation:
Startups need to be 180 degrees out of phase with what big companies are doing. When big companies are innovating, startups should be commoditizing. When big companies are commoditizing, small companies should be innovating
Andy Kessler would probably disagree.
In his essay “How We Got There”, wrote on how the [...]

I had written up a VMWare Server review for the beta release earlier. Given that VMWare Server 2.0 Beta is already available, here’s a rundown on the differences between VMWare Server 2.0 and VMWare Server 1.x.

Web based management – this beats having to Remote Desktop to the host operating system to manage virtual machines.

Virtual [...]

Aptly put.

I don’t know what got into the head of the designers of XML, that CDATA escape sections have their own escaping syntax. Lshift has a low down on the details: Escaping XML and CDATA. Good to know that xml.dom.minidom gets this right.

It’s so easy to get throwaway email addresses and throwaway domains combatting forum spam can be very difficult.
Here are some options:
1) use mod_access to ban open proxies
Similar to the approach used by denyhosts, this would blackhole proxies that are often used by bots.
2) publish ip addresses and signup dates to a central server
If there [...]

Update 27 July 2007: Looks like there’s resurgent interest in serious Javascript use on the server-side.
In response to Han’s Nowak’s question of what new language to use, and since Python had to be excluded, may I suggest JScript.NET?
(I’ve moved most of the technical aspects of the discussion over to the Python, Zope and dotNET [...]

Readers are probably aware how fond I am of spreadsheets as a tool for rapidly prototyping applications. Here’s another implementation of spreadsheets based around IronPython, but addresses issues like shared updates.

Just make sure your VMWare virtual hard disk is at least 2.5 Gb.
Ubuntu will not install properly from LiveCD (which is the default download) when the virtual hard disk is 2.0 Gb. Grub