Firebug 1.0 is a godsend for web developers. It's insanely good. It's still in beta but I've been using it for weeks and found it to be stable enough. Heck, even if it crashed the browser every five minutes (it doesn't), I would still use it. It's that good. Don't use the orange install button to install. Release Notes link just below it leads to the latest version. You'll have to use the orange install button now. My apology to Firebug guys for encouraging use of the other download link.
PS: I don't know why but installing firebug1.0-b7.xpi gives you 1.0b6 on Mac and 1.0b4 on Windows. scratch Restarting Firefox fixed this. My bad.
PPS: At least one person reported that Firefox 2.0.0.1 update is incompatible with Firebug. I haven't had any problem with the 2.0.0.1 update. If you encounter a problem, try switching back to the original Firefox theme.

Ryan Breen explains how to improve Ajax webapp performance by using CNAME aliases to get around the two-connections-per-host browser limit. Suggested implementation spreads load persistently (for caching)across cnames like this:

http://cname.myservername.com/path/to/resource.name

where {cname} = some prefix plus truncated hash of {resource.name}.

I've been meaning to respond to Christopher Allen's Using 5-Star Rating Systems post but haven't had time until now. Like him, I see problems in the 5-point rating scale but my solution is somewhat different. Unless I misunderstood his solution, his approach aims to improve how distinctive meaning of each rating score is conveyed to the scorer. In doing so, he assumes the scorer will make a fair intelligent judgement given proper understanding of the scoring system.

My solution tries to focus more on primordial aspects of the scorer, emotions and group behavior, to address the problems of 5-star rating system. The key idea is to use peer pressure to normalize individual rating scores. Peer pressure is applied by displaying a miniature score distribution chart directly above (pressure, get it?) the 5-star scoring UI. In the example shown above, peer group's scores were mostly average and so was the scorer's.

    

Above are examples of a mostly negative rating and a mostly positive rating. In both, peer pressure is strong so the scorer must have strong emotions to break out.

Here we have an interesting example, a split in the peer group which weakens the peer pressure effect.
There are many subtle factors as well as hints in this solution but I'll leave that for another post later or as discussion fodder for others. ;-p
Disclaimer: this solution has not yet been proven in the field.

I recently registered my face at MyBlogLog because Fred Wilson's ongoing fangelism about the service finally got to me. In short, experience exceeded expectation.
I knew MyBlogLog was being used by many of the blogs I frequent but I didn't really notice them because my eyes would just slip around the faces like I would around ads. Until I my face showed up in the box, that is. Holy Cow! My own face is an irresistible personalized eyeball magnet! If my face showed up in ads I come across, I'll have a difficult time gliding past them like before. This can't be MyBlogLog's business model, can it?
After joining MyBlogLog (only as a reader for now), I started noticing the MyBlogLog box at blogs I visited and noting familiar faces there alongside mine. Ha. Loic found time to read this blog while fighting the Le Web shitstorm! Hmm. Who is this MyBlogLog stalker? Overall, MyBlogLog significantly enhanced my blogging experience.
But I have some privacy concerns. As far as I can see, I have no control over where my face appears. If I visited a porn blog and the blog used MyBlogLog, my face would be seen by other visitors. Yikes! I know that such situations are not likely because it's not in the porn blog's interest to embarrass visitors, but not having control over where one's face appears is a big concern IMHO.
I am pretty sure that Eric and others at MyBlogLog must have thought about this problem already. The question is what they are doing to address the problem.

I agree with my fellow We Knower Susan Wu that Amy Jo Kim's ETech 2006 presentation Putting the Fun in Functional is a must-read. It sure suffled my brain. ;-p

Zhang Liangui, professor of international strategic research at Central Party School in Beijing, said:

Despite signing treaties on non-proliferation, "North Korea never stopped its nuclear program" from the 1960s, and instead kept buying time. "The balance of comprehensive national strength began to tip in the early 1970s, and widened dramatically with the South's economic power growing 30 times greater than the North," he says.

"North Korean leaders see mastering nuclear weapons as the only possible measure to dispel the fear of failure in this competition, and even possibly to take the initiative in unifying the Korean peninsula though force."

– The Australian News

I think his reading of the situation is right on the money. Unfortunately, a complete embargo will force North Korea to explode southward like an over-squeezed tube of toothpaste. Ally or not, expect South Korea to stay neutral in the coming embargo. But then it might be years from now if Kim Jong-Il continues to be successful in buying time.

JSR 106 (XML Digital Encryption API) has been stuck in Public Review for a year now, 11 months past its finish date. Since JCP process is as transparent as one-sided mirror, your guess is as good as mine. Its companion, JSR 105 (XML Digital Signature API), is bundled with Java 1.6 and JWSDP 2.0 but Sun has been pointing to Apache XML Security project for XML encryption. FYI, Sun's JSR 105 implementation is a repackaged version of Apache XML Security library.
On the Apache XML Security front, looks like version 1.4 is ready to be released except it hasn't because the release guy doesn't have time to update the web page. Funny. If you want to build one for yourself, beware that some elbow grease will be needed. I expected such a key open source project to be in a better state than it appeared to be.

Jürgen Schmidt describes the trick Skype uses to punch through firewalls and establish direct UDP connection between Skype clients. Very cute. It's useful enough to make me want to do the same but not if there are open source library that does this already

Tags: tech, security, voip

I don't know how I missed it but I came across Jared Diamond's 1998 Discover article, Japanese Roots, today. Jared's findings are pretty much in line with my understanding of the role Korea played in Japan's history which is that several  mass exodus of Koreans, each wave caused by demise of a Korean kingdom (Buyeo, Gaya, Baekje, Goguryeo, Balhae), migrated to Japan and eventually conquered it. I doubt it was much of a conquering though. Most likely it was just a long population expansion, drowning the natives (Jomons) by sheer numbers, followed by a long fight amongst themselves until everyone got tired enough to choose a king. And Japanese language is probably a cocktail of exiles' languages and dialects, not that of just one like Goguryeo as the author suggested.
This doesn't mean that I think Japanese are Koreans though. That kind of reasoning would make me an African. Their ancestors were Koreans but now they are Japanese. What puzzles me is why Japanese average height is noticeably shorter than that of Korean? Curse of the Ainu?

A plate of bacon, lettuce, and tomato is not a BLT sandwich until you stack the parts together. Unfortunately, too many engineers stop short of building the complete sandwich.
For example, Java XML Digital Signature API can't be used unless appropriate security service provider is registered. Otherwise, one gets a NoSuchMechanismException. To register the provider, you have to have the provider's full class name. For default JSR 105 provider, its:

org.jcp.xml.dsig.internal.dom.XMLDSigRI

but, to find that out, you'll have to google or search the jar classes or Sun source code looking for an implementation of java.security.Provider. Duh.
Anyway, to register the provider for all of your java apps, add the following line to $JAVA_HOME/lib/security/java.security file:

security.provider.8=org.jcp.xml.dsig.internal.dom.XMLDSigRI

To register just for selected apps, add following line of code:

XMLSignatureFactory.getInstance("DOM", (Provider) Class.forName(System.getProperty("jsr105Provider", "org.jcp.xml.dsig.internal.dom.XMLDSigRI")).newInstance());

For Java 6 (aka JDK 1.6), this is done automatically since the API package is bundled.