Flat Tax

As it stands now, taxes are not paid fairly...in more ways than one. Why do you pay more taxes because you make more? Everyone should pay the same tax rate. Period. There should be no deductions, no rebates, no refunds, no nothing. You pay taxes and that is it. Period.

Think of how much the government would save by not having to process all those tax returns. In addition, think how much more money the government would take in due to rich people actually paying taxes, not to mention not having refunds. Such a simple solution to our tax problems.

Social Security Wage Base

Why is there a cap on the amount of Social Security taxes the government takes out? This is a blatant tax break for the wealthy.

Hibernate sucks

I am so frustrated using Hibernate. Spring JDBC is so much easier and it actually WORKS! In Hibernate, a simple OneToMany relationship does not work. I have a simple parent child relationship. Say a box which can contain other boxes. If i try to load all the boxes which do not contain other boxes, i get a List of Box Objects which duplicate entries because it is returning a row for each contained box.

To work around this bug, which no one on the Hibernate forums even will respond to my request for help, i have to set the children to load lazily then manually iterate over the parent boxes to load the children. How stupid.

The next bit of fun was moving a object out of a Collection on one Object to another. What is a simple SQL statement turned into a two day Google and hacking to make work right.

This is in addition to having to work around with all the proprietary mappings and HQL nonsense. Why use this stuff when SQL exists, is very simple to use, and extremely robust? In the end, you write your "complex" queries yourself via the mentioned proprietary HQL or even gasp...SQL from Hibernate.

If i did not need Hibernate Search on this project i would ditch Hibernate in a second in favor of Spring JDBC.

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

Debt

I just read this story on CNN's website and i can not help but scratch my head. Isn't our current crisis rooted in the inability of people to pay their financial obligations? In other words...living beyond their means?

So how exactly is making loans easier to get going to solve this problem? Loans need to be harder to get. That is how it used to be.

Comcast and ABC

So i sit down to watch the biggest rivalry game in NCAA Football, Michigan and Ohio State, and it is not on. What is on? A fucking high school football game. No, i am not kidding....a HIGH SCHOOL football game. HIGH SCHOOL.

The brain power at work here at Comcast and ABC is mind boggling. What kind of dipshit would make such a decision? Someone needs to be fired for this. Enjoy the ad revenue....i am sure all those 100 viewers of the High School football game will serve your advertisers well.

Nintendo Wii Online

Let's face it....Nintendo has a free pass this generation on online play. The Wii has primitive online capabilities compared to Microsoft and Sony. And this has not hurt them as of yet. Sure all the trade rags and fansites bash them over it, but the masses speak and online play is not a big thing to them.

However, i can not help but wonder what Nintendo is waiting for. Online multiplayer games are only going to get bigger and more prevalent. Nintendo is raking in the cash today. Today, with a dominant position, they could (a big step there) be extending their presence online and tying all those players into their online services.

The video game industry rarely rewards complacency. Look what happened when Nintendo insisted no one wanted CD's and cartridges were they way...Sony cleaned their clock. The N64 never contended for that generation #1 position. And it pushed Nintendo into the underdog position with the Game Cube from which it stayed in last place.

IMO, the next generation is not going to be so kind to Nintendo with its lack of online play. I hope they have something coming soon, otherwise their fall from #1 to the bottom will be just as hard as it was when the N64 came out against the PlayStation.

Bush : The Worst President Ever

Here is a really good article on exactly how bad Bush has been to the United States of America.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/137146?from=rss

Grand Theft Auto PS3

Just bought a PS3 with Grand Theft Auto 4 last night. Finally had a chance to play it today and....it keeps locking up! WTF is up with that?

I have been reading on various sites there are problems with both the PS3 and M$ 360 versions. I guess they forgot to test it before it came out?

***UPDATE: Read in a few places that disabling the Internet solves the problem. I tried it last night and was driving around fine for a good hour or so. I will have more time today to play and will have to see if it truly works.

***UPDATE #2: I have been playing for a while now with no lock-ups. I am hoping this is the short term fix. I would guess Rockstar will have a fix out shortly.

Personal Finance Software

I have been looking into ways to get off my desktop bound personal finance management software for the past few weeks. Ideally, i want to access my information from any computer or any OS i am on.

Of course, i value the privacy of my information and when I start talking about money, even more so. If a "bad" person got a hold of my financial accounts things would be bad to say the least....a hassle i would prefer to avoid.

I found a couple of online sites: http://www.mint.com/ and http://www.buxfer.com/ that on the surface look really cool. However, both have left me wanting. Perhaps i am just stuck in the old way of doing things.

To me, i want to take a receipt from a credit card purchase enter it into a form and then balance it when i get my monthly statement. This allows me to see exactly what I am being charged and by whom. If something is on my statement but i did not enter it, i can deal with it.

Mint basically tells you when a charge has been made on your account. Basically the reverse of how I do things today. At first I did not like the idea at all, but as I have thought more about it, I am rethinking it. Still not too sure.

Buxfer is confusing to me. It aspires to function how M$ Money or Quicken work, however the interface is not intuitive at all. How do i enter a loan? Just put a negative number? How does it deal with interest payments? how do i know how much principal i have paid? The only conclusion i have come up with is it is in need of a lot of work.

So....i have been thinking of rolling my own Personal Financial software, open source of course. If i did that, i could do exactly what i want. However, that means i would have to host it somewhere and figure out how to calculate loan interest, etc... I think i know how i could host it for free, however how private would my data really be?

I need to think this through...

Versus HD on Comcast

Was really looking forward to watching Philadelphia play Montreal tonight on Versus HD, but it is unwatchable. For starters, the picture quality is horrible. The picture has a yellowish tint which no other channel has. It also is slightly pixelated...guess they are doing the extra compression to squeeze more down their limited infrastructure. But the biggie is the picture keeps stuttering. THis is going to give me a headache.

As far as sound quality...this sounds like it is being transmitted over a AM radio. WTF is going on?

It really should tell you something when I am seriously thinking of switching to FiOS as soon as they run the line from the street to my house even though i work for Comcast and get their service for free.

Verizon FiOS

Verizon ran FiOS down the street this week! They only ran the lines on the telephone poles and not to houses yet. I would assume they will be hitting the houses in the next week or two. That 20/20 package sounds very good.

Attached Storage

I have been hunting around for some sort of attached storage device. Sure I can backup my music, movies, and photos on DVDs, but that is a pain. It would be great to have something i can access from all of my computers. And we run Ubuntu, Windows XP and OSX. Oh...and i want RAID support so i do not have to worry about losing everything.

I refuse to give M$ any more money so that rules out M$ Home Server, which does not support OSX or Ubuntu anyways.

I looked at http://www.drobo.com. That is a pretty cool device, however, look at the price.... $499 for the base unit, and $199 for the Ethernet add-on! BTW- that is without any hard drives! So $700 just to get started. Plus it does not really support Linux anyhow. Perhaps if the $499 included the Ethernet add-on i would just get it and hack the Linux support via the info on their forums.

I also saw http://www.freenas.org/ which looks like it may be the thing. However, a bit intimidating at first glance.

I guess i am really looking for a simple appliance i can just plug into my network and go. And i do not want to have to spend $1000 for it either. Perhaps i should just wait a bit and hopefully with more competition prices will drop.