A tech's day

Is there anybody out there ?

2006-04-21T06:56:00.000-07:00

I've been playing lately with JasperReports and one of its GUI frontend iReport (the other one being JasperAssistant, which is not free). Although they are great tools, I question their relevance in a Java/J2EE oriented project. It appeared that it's just easier and more efficient to create JSP pages with JFreeChart than elaborate real dirty SQL expressions or play with groups and bands to aggregate results. The latter I found, say, cumbersome.

Now you can ask : how do I convert from HTML to PDF ? Well there are tons of commercialware that do it right, and some freeware that do it, hmm, hmm, that do it if you're not took picky.

So I think that tools like Birt, JasperReports and alike are more for people that cannot, for whatever reason, get into a web dev project. But is there any left ?

They had a dream

2006-04-12T12:03:00.000-07:00

I've just seen today a job posting for 4 J2EE architects. The post specifies that begineers are accepted, but one year of experience in Java is welcome. Knowledge of the business (bank in that case) is a plus, of course.

In a couple of month they gonna recruit a new HR head. I may then apply...

You should be dancing

2006-04-11T01:17:00.000-07:00

Stephane worries a bit about it. Le Monde Informatique shares the same concern, but François think it's a good news -- maybe trying to convince himself ?.

What am i talking about ? Today's big news : what Marc calls a merge. No doubt he's still expert in confusing people...

What I'd say

2006-04-10T02:03:00.000-07:00

My first post. Impressive :)

This thought keep buzzing for quite a long time me so I have to let people know. The whole idea is that what we write today may or will be kept for a undefined period of time. Because storage is just so cheap nowadays. Let me detail my findings:

Let's suppose that an occasionnal writer produces 10 mails a day. Each mail weights no more than 1 kB of (valuable) data. Which gives a total of 4 MB/year.

How may people are we on the Internet ? Roughly, 1 billion or so (huu ! I realize there's a lot to read each day!). Well, that makes up 4,000 TB/year. 400, 000 TB for a century.

Think it's a lot? Guess why... given a GB is only worth 0,5 $ or €, storing all the mails for all the people in the world for a century only costs m$ 200. Such amount of money may not be left on your account, nor in you pocket, but for sure this is affordable for fortune 500 companies. Not talking about govs...

Now care about you say, and see you then.