Today is India’s 60th Independence Day celebration. I would like to salute my nation for giving me the kind of global opportunities that the youth of some other countries could only dream of.
Vande Mataram
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JBoss and mySQL
While JBoss is an enterprise strength application server, it probably has the worst documentation I have ever seen for an open source project. I have spent more hours debugging and troubleshooting simple issues than actually getting my idea to work before the launch. The online forums haven’t been worth talking about, either.
For instance, I just discovered that the truncation errors I was getting on the server launchtime were actually due to JBoss not fully supporting mySQL5. The workaround is actually as follows:
MySQL 5 can run in strict mode, which causes errors to be thrown instead of warnings when data truncation occurs (see mysql bug 14048
).
Errors may look similar to this:
11:16:36,520 ERROR JDBCExceptionReporter? Data truncation: Data too long for column 'jbp_viewrealemail' at row 1
While MySQL 5 is not yet supported, there is a way to prevent the error from being thrown during the installation of the portal:
- If you have MySQL 5 installed already and running in strict mode, edit the my.ini (or my.cfg) file of MySQL and remove the “STRICT_TRANS_TABLES” part from the line: sql-mode=STRICT_TRANS_TABLES,NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER,
NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION- Add “jdbcCompliantTruncation=false” in your datasource descriptor file (*-ds.xml) under the deploy directory. Your connection URL should look like: <connection-url>jdbc:mysql://your-host-name:3306/jbossportal?
useServerPrepStmts=false&jdbcCompliantTruncation=false</connection-url>This should prevent any further data truncation related errors during the portal installation.
Now that that is resolved, I need to figure out why the source tree of the JBoss Portal server doesn’t include the directory structure exactly as described in the “documentation”.
I love Enterprise Java too much to switch to .NET right now, but I hope I am able to get things running!
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Windows Live Writer
Just installed the beta version of Windows Live Writer, the Blog tool from Microsoft. I have one word to use – “Phenomenal”. The software learned the layout of my blog on its own, and I can create posts in a truly WYSIWYG manner. It even displays the same fonts and text colors that I see on my blog!
The best part is the capability to work with images while making a post, rather than resizing and uploading them before making the actual post. The API is also available for free to add custom functionality.
Once again, good going, Microsoft!
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The Source of all comment spam
I hate spam. Everyone does. As if email wasn’t good enough, spammers have also been trying to exploit my blog ever since I started blogging. Luckily, I have a very good Bayesian spam filter called Akismet in place, that filters out all comment spam from my blog. The best part is that I don’t have to use annoying “CAPTCHA” tests like images to distinguish valid comments from spam.
Anyway, since I was taking a break, I decided to analyze where all the spam was coming from. I looked up the IP address ranges of spammers (a day’s worth), and found them to be allocated by the RIPE NCC, that handles the Regional Internet Registry for ISPs and companies located in Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Central Asia.
As the June 16th edition of the Wall Street Journal so succintly put it, “Genes, not experience, explain why the lives of some take a bad turn”. We are what our genes define us as. There is no going against our genetic code. Genetically engineered customized medications are going to revolutionize the coming decades just as the Internet of the present day.
What we miss while showing appreciation for the Internet is that it is more a victory of data mining than pure computer networking. It’s the actual applications that make the Internet so important in our lives. The power of the Internet comes from software that enables personalization and targetted addressal of the user’s demands.
Since the DNA plays such an important role in determining the course our life would take in the future, it is getting all the more desirable to try to decipher it as soon as possible. Technology, with its incarnations like sequencing, data-mining, and storage has actually made it possible to figure out our future scientifically!
Research has shown that a lot of cancers are genetic in nature, and can be effectively treated if diagnosed by their genetic precursors before the actual onset. Getting DNA diagnosed isn’t hard, atleast for known genes, but there are issues of privacy. Most people are not comfortable making their genetic identity known to others, even if for pure research purposes. Without adequate laws in place, there is nothing stopping this information to be made available to strangers. Like someone has said, you can change your credit card numbers, but it’s impossible to change your DNA.
In order to alleviate these concerns, a lot of companies have sprung up that sell kits for genetic testing over the Internet. Anyone with a credit card can now check themselves for susceptibility towards certain cancers in the privacy of their own homes by ordering an easy to use kit. These kits test for the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation, or any of hundreds of other mutations in the DNA, all without getting a physician or a health plan involved. These two commonly tested mutations indicate a predisposition to hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. Once the genetic risk is identified, there are strategies that could be put in place to mitigate the possible onset of these cancers.
So, what does the future look like when it comes to genetic prognosis of diseases? In my opinion, it looks phenomenal! And, the credit goes to research in computer science as much as that to biological sciences.
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I am an uncle!
Yes, I am a mama now! My sister gave birth to a baby girl today!
And this is my 100th entry!
Just how many times have you looked above your seat in an aircraft and wondered why they have those “No Smoking” signs at every row? I know I have! I think the last time I was on a flight that allowed smoking was in 1988. The aircraft had designated sections for smokers in every class, and the sign would go off a few moments after the plane took off.
Well, now days, almost every country has banned smoking in flight, making those signs pretty pointless, and constantly lit. In retrospect, what we really need are signs that tell us when it’s safe to use our portable electronic devices. I am glad this is going to happen as early as next year!
After this, all I need is a “No talking loudly” sign!
I am a big fan of developing web services using open source tools and open standards. One of the technologies I have extensively used in the last 5-6 years is J2EE. Backed by Sun Microsystems, it is a great platform to deploy phenomenal server based applications. Of course, there are other up and coming frameworks for developing all sorts of web services, but, holistically speaking, only Java and .NET are mature and active enough to be a universal web development technology.
I wuld have probably dropped out. Yes, that’s right! I would have probably dropped out. I was in college during the peak time of the dot-com boom, and there’s no way I would have stayed in college and forgone the great opportunities in the economy back then.
Even in India, I was able to experience the rise of the dot-com era in a very spectacular way, and I am pretty sure that things would have been a lot different for me if I were in the US. Who knows, I could have been a millionaire by now, or a broke ex-CEO!
Sometimes, it feels good thinking about things that never were…
I have spent more time in school than the average person. You can say that I have spent more time in grad school than I did in college! College education in India is fairly linear in that once you get in, you know exactly when you’re going to graduate, and what you’re going to end up doing. In my case, I was destined to goto North Carolina State University to get a Master’s in Computer Engineering. Again, I took a prescribed path and graduated in 3 semesters with significant research experience that pulled me towards doing more research. This is where I took the off-beat path, and ended up getting another master’s degree from NCSU.
If there’s one skill I truly honed in graduate school, it is the skill to be “meticulously adaptive”. I have now developed the capability to work on almost any kind of project, any kind of technology, and basically bring it to completion. To me, graduate school is more about developing the right attitude than getting some knowledge. Of course, knowledge comes with attitude, especially if you set out to get a doctoral degree, which is essentially a seal certifying “total” knowledge of a subject matter.
Now that I am out of school (at least for quite some while), I realize that the real world is not very hard to adapt to for someone who has the same kind of experiences as myself (I will write about what exactly I did in my graduate school years at some other time). In the real world, it is a whole lot easier to exceed expectations, for one. Then there’s the whole work to get paid deal. You don’t have to consistently slog hard and exceed expectations AS A RULE to make a living. I enjoy working on more than one thing at once because it gives me the flexibility to refresh my brain during certain phases of one project, and I am glad to be able to continue this tradition.
I believe that success comes naturally to everyone. There’s no force strong enough to stop someone from getting what they truly desire. As such, everyone is successful in their own way. When I was in grad school, I used to dream about working for Microsoft. Maybe my desire wasn’t strong enough, and hence I am definitely not working at Microsoft, but I am working on things that make me happy. Now, I could have been happier working at Microsoft, but I just did not want that to happen strongly enough. Of course, there’s a certain philosophy to this, and I would write about why it’s always better to let circumstances mould our life than to try to engineer it, at some other time. Now, I just want to make it clear that by saying circumstances, I am not implying the benefits of lack of goals in life, rather, a careful analysis of one’s current state vis-a-vis their ideal state.
Do I think I made a bad move by not trying to find a job with my favorite company? Certainly not. I am on the right track, and am definitely getting as much in benefits as a regular Microsoft employee sans many negatives, and of course, with many cons. But, on the outset, I think I am handling the transition fairly well, and am actually trying to make some difference in the world I live in.
I think my graduate school experiences have moulded me into a person who has the capability to take on any sort of challenge in life, often times getting pulled towards them.