You just can't make this stuff up        

Just noticed on Planetlotus.org that IBM has a new Redbook out on WebSphere Transaction Cluster Facility.

WebSphere TCF must have been so-named by someone leaving for a new job at Microsoft that week.

 Lotusphere 2012 OGS        

Special guest: Michael J. Fox

Frankly, I think that sums it up. No point in staying...

 RAAWWWWRRRR!!!        

There's some tuning left to do, but I wanted to get this out to the world before Lotusphere.

I've created an XPages SDK for Eclipse RCP, so you can install the latest version of Eclipse and easily set up Notes or Domino as your target platform for your Java code. I assigned myself the task of documenting this internally for GBS in January, and I realized that I could spend a day documenting it, or spend two days writing a program that would do it automatically.

It was really no contest.

I'll add some documentation to the project soon (unless someone else wants to do it,) but the really short version is that once you install the plugin, you go to your Eclipse preferences and point to your Notes and/or Domino installations, and it automatically configures your JREs. It also provides Plugin Target Platform templates, so you can create target platforms for either Notes (and Designer) or Domino. The whole process takes about 30 seconds.

There's still some tuning to do on the platform settings for Domino installs. That's why it's not version 1.0 yet.

I can easily use this baseline to create a Domino Designer SDK as well. In fact, I'll definitely do that internally -- but I've yet to see anyone outside GBS asking for this. Is there demand?

Eventually, I'd like to add project wizard support so that creating your own XPages library (like the Extension Library) is as simple as New - XPages - Library. I haven't explored the wizard templates for this yet, so I don't yet know how big a task it is. But if I can make it work, I might link it to the XPages Starter Kit project so that you could select what base XPages concepts you'd like to implement, and it would automatically set up the context for you.

If you're unfamiliar with all this stuff -- well, I would simply encourage you to go to OpenNTF, grab the projects, and dive in.  If you have been historically resistant to using Java as your language of choice as a Domino developer, I strongly suggest that you re-evaluate that position.

I'm 90% sure that you could use this SDK natively on a Mac. It should be the case that if you copy an installation of Designer or Domino on to your Mac environment, then if you install the Mac version of Eclipse 3.7, you can point it to the proper installation folder. If that doesn't "just work" it's probably because I messed up the directory separators. At any rate, those with Apple platforms should try it out and see!

Thanks so much for your time. Happy coding!

 A thought experiment        

In this time of vibrant political debate in the US, I am frequently confronted by the notion of the social contract.  I find this idea very challenging; both to accept or to refute. So I created a thought experiment that sums up the issue for me...

Let us hypothesize for a moment that you are a slave. In your captivity, you are permitted to procreate. Your owner proposes the following:

"I will buy your unborn child in exchange for an extra meal for you and your spouse each day."

There are two questions: 1) what is the moral quality of accepting or rejecting such an offer?; and 2) is your child bound by your agreement if you accept?

Discuss.

 Do not settle        

Forget what you know about Apple products. Learn from Apple's founder. "You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

You will be missed, Steve.

 Welcoming our newest colleagues        

If you read this blog, you've probably heard by now that Synaptris is part of GBS. I'm very pleased to welcome our new colleagues.

As it happens, my team has been working closely with Synaptris engineers for several months now. We tapped them to work on our Dojo Grid control for surfacing Domino views presented in Transformer apps. They have done a spectacular job. We're looking forward to deepening the integration even further to leverage their expertise in content searching and email integration into the Transformer. Imagine having the power, flexibility and speed of FewClix in EVERY ONE of your XPages applications! You won't have to just imagine for long.

 The ultimate Domino Designer performance improvement for XPages developers        

If you're an experienced XPages developer, chances are you live in the Source tab of the XPages editor. But even if you live in that editor, you'll notice that various things seem to slow down Designer with mysterious causes.

If you're willing to give up some of the bells & whistles, like drag/drop from the Controls Palette, custom editors for Properties, or icon cues on the Outline, you can switch from the XSP editor to the native XML editor using the following preference setting. Just go to the File Associations list and select the XML Editor, and click "Default.."

A picture named M2

Read on for more...

 True then, true now        

Economic reality hasn't changed.

We'll miss you, Mary Beth. But the world needs a serious UX effort put into 3D modelling software. When you leave it to code slingers, you get this. Please end the suffering.

 April 24, 2002        

Name that speaker....

The congress and the president will shift radically towards expanding the size and scope of the federal government. This will satisfy both the liberals and the conservatives.

Military and police powers will grow satisfying the conservatives.

The weflare state, both domestic and international, will expand, satisfying the liberals.

Both sides will endorse military adventurism overseas. This is the most important of my predictions.

Policy changes could prevent all of the previous predicitions from occuring. Unfortunately, that will not occur. In due course, the Constitution will continue to be steadily undermined, and the American republic further weakened. During the next decade, the American people will become poorer and less free, while they become more dependent on the government for economic security.

The war will prove to be divisive, with emotions and hatred growing between the various factions and special interests that drive our policies in the Middle East. Agitations for more class warfare will succeed in dividing us domestically. And believe it or not, I expect lobbyists will thrive more than ever during the dangerous period of chaos.

I have no timetable for these predictions. but just in case, keep them around and look at them in 5 to 10 years. Let's hope and pray that I'm wrong on all accounts. If so, I will be very pleased.

 When 14 trillion ain't enough        

In general, I try to avoid blogging about political topics, mostly because I already alienate enough people through this site. But today, I was watching some news coverage on the US national debt ceiling while feeding my newborn son. For those not in the know, the two controlling political parties in the US, the Democrats and the Republicans, are battling "to the brink." Currently, US law limits the federal government to a maximum debt of $14.2 trillion dollars. Apparently, the current federal budget cannot be met without taking on even more debt, which would push the US treasury past the borrowing limit.

As I sat there and watched the talking heads blather on about the political grandstanding and the recent history of borrowing by various administrations, I started thinking about how one gets OUT of $14 trillion in debt. If you have a budget deficit and have to borrow to pay your expenses, then the only way to reduce the debt later is to have a budget surplus later, right? So when have we had a budget surplus in the last, say, 30 years. Well, the federal government did run surpluses in 1998, 1999 and 2000. Over the course of these 3 years, $360 billion in US debt was paid down. (Pundits debate whether this was actually done, but for the sake of argument, let's assume it was.)

So in a record economy, the US was able to pay down an average of $120 billion a year.  Hrmmm... our current debt is $14.2 trillion. Or, put more obviously, it's $14,200 billion. Let's be completely outrageous and just cancel out the billion on those numbers: we have a debt of $14,200 that we can only pay down at a rate of $120/year. That's about %0.085 of the debt per year. Even if we pretend that all this money was borrowed at 0% interest (I think the interest on the debt is booked as an expense in the budget anyway, so by definition a surplus would mean the interest was already paid,) it will still take 118 YEARS to pay down that debt.

Put another way, pretty much no person participating in this discussion will be alive when the debt is finally paid.

This occurred to me as I looked down at my 7 week old son. Then I glanced across the room at my 29-month old daughter. And had the sad realization that they will work THEIR ENTIRE LIVES to pay down this debt. As I thought about it, my sadness boiled into furious anger. US politicians, in their constant furor to get reelected, have found the perfect formula: they can spend more and tax less by borrowing. With this magic formula, they can defer the taxes required to pay for global wars, corporate bailouts, entitlement programs, cultural protectionism, pet subsidies and universal health care to the ultimate disenfranchised special interest: the unborn.

The unborn can't form a lobby. They can't hold a protest. They can't run for office or call into a radio show or write a book or start a blog. In fact, they can't do anything at all.

It's such a perfect plan: if you want to pass an onerous tax plan through a democracy, just tax the parties not represented in the democracy. The government can't do it by property ownership, skin color, poll taxes or gender anymore. So they'll just discriminate by chronology. If the people you're taxing don't even exist yet, how can they vote to stop you?

It's taxation without representation. And it's every bit as immoral as it would be if it were based on race, religion, gender or sexual preference.

I really wish I hadn't thought about this today. It's made me sick to my stomach. Every time I look at my kids, I keep imagining the President and the Speaker of the House sitting at a table arguing over just how many generations will have to suffer through their gluttony. Does it really matter whether one says 5 and the other says 6? They're both sitting in Washington planning how many generations of Americans they're going to send out to pick cotton for the next century. The children of slaves are owned by their masters.

I hope I can keep from throwing up before bed.

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