Microsoft funded News Sites

It is rather sad when you post comments on a news site and get suspended for "trolling" yet you are simply reposting another comment and simply swapping out the word Apple for Microsoft. Then when you point that out to the forum admin, you get your suspension doubled!

Neowin.net is the site i am talking about. Take a look and you will see the comments astroturfed with comments praising everything Microsoft and bashing everything Apple, Google, Linux, Palm, RIM, etc...

The post i made, (which got deleted) simply changed one posters "Apple Tax" to "Microsoft Tax. Here is the thread: http://www.neowin.net/news/main/09/10/01/is-apple-taking-on-google-in-the-mapping-arena

SOAP Header in a RESTful Service

I have a new project I am working on and need to integrate with several other systems. I have been in the SOAP camp up until a recent project made me pull my hair out with all the complexity of SOAP + WSDL + WS-* and all the different versions of each.

So, for my new system, I decided to bite the bullet and try my hand at a RESTful architecture...i thought, just make a schema for my types and send it. No WSDL hell, no WS-* hell. WOW. I can not believe how easy it was to get something up and running with Apache CXF. I mean....WOW.

So, my next thoughts were around how to pass things like a messageId or sourceSystemId...things i would have normally used the SOAP header for. Well, HTTP has this thing called the HTTP Header. A quick search put me on Wikipedia for a "List of HTTP Headers".

Wow, there are some "standard" ones I can use and I can also make my own! The naming convention is to prefix with a "x-". This is all too easy. Why did I ever use SOAP + WSDL + WS-* before!>!?!??!!?!?!?!??!

Weblogic 10.3 Web Services and SOAP 1.2

Weblogic 10.3 Web Services was failing to recognize my endpoint as SOAP 1.2. I was using the wsdlc and jwsc Ant tasks provided by Oracle to generate my Java code from WSDL. After working with Oracle Support, there is a bug in their code generator. To get around the problem, I had to modify my Service Annotation like this:

//@BindingType("http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/soap/http")

@BindingType(value = "http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/jaxws/2003/05/soap/bindings/HTTP/")

Wireless Connectivity Problems

just figured out a problem i have had for months with my Wireless Network. I am using a: Linksys Wireless-N Home Router WRT150N and sometimes my work computer would not be able to connect to my wireless. It was completely random...somedays I would bring my laptop home and connect, other days it would never connect. Very frustrating when you have a ton of work to do.

Each time i looked at the settings, both computer and wireless router. Nothing ever seemed out of whack, sometimes it worked, other times it did not, eventhough nothing appeared to change, at least settings wise. This morning i fired up my work computer as i have to do some more work and it can not connect. So i am troubleshooting it again.... two home computers, Wii and two iPhones all connect fine. Why doesn't my work computer connect?

I decide to look at the router settings again. What could i be missing? I navigate every fucking screen and menu and sub screen and sub menu. BINGO! I notice an interesting item under the Setup: Maximum Number of Users.

This had a default setting of: 5! Five seems like a very low default to me.

The Wii + 2 iphones + 2 home laptops = all five connections. When it worked, one of us had either the iphone not on or maybe one of our laptops was off. What a pain in the ass!

Remove Microsoft .net Add-On Firefox

I just opened my Add-ons in Firefox and to my surprise there was a Microsoft .net plug-in installed which could not be uninstalled. WTF? I certainly never installed this plug-in. And i definitely do not want the insecure Microsoft .net environment to be anywhere near my Firefox browser. If i want Java, i will use the real thing, not Microsofts garbage clone of Java.

You have to jump through several hoops to get rid of the crap Microsoft .net plug-in

1) Open your Start Menu and choose Run.

2) Type in regedit and press enter

3) Lookup the key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla\Firefox\extensions and delete the key there (Windows Vista 64-bit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Mozilla\Firefox\Extensions).

4) Go into Firefox and type in about:config in the address bar

5) remove: general.useragent.extra.microsoftdotnet

6) remove: microsoft.CLR.clickonce.autolaunch

Sharepoint Sucks

Microsoft SharePoint straight up sucks. There...I feel better. I just changed jobs at my company and the new group I am in recently "converted" to SharePoint. So what did that buy them that a mapped network drive did not already provide? Good question. Nothing.

Ever been told..."The documents are up on SharePoint, take a look". LOL. I love that one. Has anyone ever found a document on SharePoint? Using SharePoint is like closing your eyes and spinning in a circle 20 times. When you open your eyes you are all disoriented and typically fall to the ground unable to deal with your surroundings. That is how i feel when i use SharePoint. Where am I? How did i get here? And how do i get back here tomorrow morning?

Hey, just bookmark it or send someone the link...you know the nice SharePoint links...http://rgweuhguw.ergergr.com/%20dfkjnsdf%20/rfgeferf%20fjrehf%20/ejfhwlkfhw%20eff%20/dfsdfsdf%20/efwefwef%20/ewfefwfwef%20dfds/fe%20dfsfe%20 (that is the new requirements document by the way)

I have been using a Personal License for the Confluence Wiki. Wow. This is so nice and easy to use. No bloated Word or Excel documents, just use your web browser. Collaboration could not be easier. Hyperlinks are used to link together documents and directly to the web. Ever try using Hyperlinks to link together Word Documents? ROFL! Have fun with that. If you really need Office documents, you can link to them from the Wiki with one of those nice Sharepoint links.

Netbeans 6.5

So i am using Netbeans 6.5 for a small Swing based tool. The Swing GUI editor is really nice...the best i have ever seen. Very simple to use and the code it generates is not the usual nasty spaghetti code GUI designers usually spit out. However i hit a major problem.

I create a JFrame and drag and drop some components and begin to frame out the way i want things to look. Rather than have all my code in one monolithic Class, i decide to separate out one of my JPanels into a separate Class. Okay, i now have my first Component only to find there is no way to add it to the Component palette. Huh?

After some research i find out i need to make it into a separate Jar file to have it show up on my palette. Huh? How am i supposed to get it onto my JFrame? The only way to add my Class which extends JPanel to the JFrame is to manually code it. What the hell is the point of a GUI designer if I have to manually add my GUI components?

I have no idea how this is not part of the product? Are Java Swing programmers really that bad and want all their application code in a single Class? What a let down. I thought Netbeans was going to simplify my life. Back to Eclipse and manually hacking Swing code i go....

Ask.com takes over Firefox

I forget what i installed which tried to put the Ask.com toolbar in my browsers, but, i did tell the installer to NOT install it.  however, if i type in a random string in the URL box i get redirected to an Ask.com search which sucks!   Normally, i would get Google search results which are the best still to this day.   Man, i hate when companies just do what they want with your computer without permission.

If i want to use a crappy search engine, i will choose a crappy one.  Ask.com is crap search engine and a shitty company which takes over your computer without permission.  If ask.com trojanizes your browser search engine, you  have to use the Firefox configuration editor to get it back.

In the URL box type:  about:config       There will be a ton of name/value pairs which specify all sorts of configuration items.  Look for:   keyword.url and change it back to: http://www.google.com/search?q=

Now when you type in something to search in the URL box, you will get the awesome search results of Google and not the crappy Ask.com results that you never asked for.  Pun intended.  Fuck you Ask.com