Today's Question:  What does your personal desk look like?        GIVE A SHOUT

SEARCH KEYWORD -- Obvious

  Check file readability in Java

File operation is quite platform dependent. Although Java is a cross platform programming language, the file operation in Java is also platform dependent. The obvious evidence is the file permission check. In Java, we can call canRead(), canWrite() and canExecutable() to check whether the program can read, write or execute the file specified. However, on Windows, when we call canRead() on a File object, we may get unexpected result. Actually, on Windows, when we call canRead() on a File object, ...

   Java,Files,Readable,Check     2013-12-05 06:10:15

  When Should Open Source Be Written Into Law?

As a systems administrator, I tend to think about source code and computing platform in large numbers. Computers however are getting smaller and more powerful, and the reality of computers that we put in or on our body as a normal daily routine is coming closer, and for many is already here. When our safety, our liberty, and our sense of humanity are tied to programmable devices, should we not only hope, but expect that we should have the right to examine how these devices function? Last ...

   Software,Open source,Time,Law     2012-01-28 07:23:09

  Not better, but different

The most important feature of Apple products is usability--Simple, aesthetic, easy to use.Their products may not necessarily the most powerful, but they usually are the easiest to use. Following picture show a Mac (left) and a PC(right), which one looks better?Many products are trying to mimic these features, but one problem comes out:It's hard to keep a product simple while providing so many new features.If you continuously add new features to your product,  your product will become more c...

   Market positioning,Product manager     2012-05-19 13:29:20

  SSH Security and You - /bin/false is *not* security

Backstory While at RIT around 2004 or 2005, I discovered that a few important machines at the datacenter allowed all students, faculty, and staff to authenticate against them via ssh. Everyone's shells appear to be set to /bin/false (or some derivative) on said machines, so the only thing you'll see after you authenticate is the login banner and your connection will close. I thought to myself, "Fine, no shell for me. I wonder if port forwarding works?" ...

   Linux,Security,/bin/false,SSH     2012-02-06 07:46:29

  Diving Deeper into HTML5 Offline Browsing

Recently, I published an article on one of the new features in HTML 5 called Offline Browsing  in HTML5 with ApplicationCache.The response to that article was good, and I was asked to expand on some further points including:how to decide on what files to cachethe implications of caching those filesdebugging the ApplicationCacheSo, that’s where this article will start: where the last one finished.  If you haven’t, you should probably read the previous article before this o...

   HTML5,Offline browsing,New breakthrough,Feature     2011-12-20 08:46:06

  The header element in HTML 5

Currently HTML5 is exciting and anyone who want to builds web pages is looking forward to implementing HTML5 new tags into their sites. Definitely HTML5 tags are very rich in functions that make life much easier for both webmasters and end users Within the HTML5 specfication we can see that there have been a significant number of new tags added, one of these the <header> element is what we’ll be covering here. We will talk about when to use it, when not to use it. As we ar...

   HTML5,Header     2012-05-03 09:12:58

  Inspiration vs. Imitation

Every now and then I get a really lovely email from an aspiring letterer that is about to publish a passion project of his or her own. They tell me my work was an inspiration and that they can’t wait to share their creation with the world. I feel all warm and fuzzy inside for a moment…until I click on their link and realize that much of what they intend to publish is nearly a direct tracing of my work. A lot of established illustrators and designers deal with the same ...

   Designer,Copy,Divisify,Classification,Judgement,History     2011-12-05 12:26:38

  Amazon is a good company but doesn't have the best business model

Public opinion about a company is usually based on its performance. If it performs well, people will praise it, otherwise people will blame it. In 1999, Apple was still a broken apple(Steve Jobs's talent and effort was paid off yet). Public opinion about Apple was the closed model caused Apple's failure. They built hardware themselves, developed software themselves and delivered service themselves, this is certainly not sustainable. But Steve Jobs let everyone see this new model. In order to con...

   Business model,Amazon,Apple, Microsoft     2013-07-02 11:34:45

  9 fields platform companies need to fight for

If you are person reading technology news much, you will find a large part of the tech news are about a few companies : Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, in which the first four are today's "Big Four (platform)" as said by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt. These giants have both competition and cooperation in many areas, and each has its own place in the world, with Schmidt's words, Google dominates search, Apple designs device, Amazon occupies e-commerce and Facebook leads social. Alth...

   Big four, Future,Software and hardware     2012-10-20 09:50:43

  Is Java the platform of the future?

I've mentioned before, but I think we are living in a period of time where a bigger explosion of programming languages is occurring than at any time in the past four decades. Having lived through a number of the classic languages such as BASIC, Simula, Pascal, Lisp, Prolog, C, C++ and Java, I can understand why people are fascinated with developing new ones: whether it's compiled versus interpreted, procedural versus functional, languages optimised for web development or embedded devices,...

   Java,Platform,Future     2012-04-03 12:59:52

RECENT