Browsers usage share

Remind me, what did they said about the most used browser? My Google Analytics is sure that the most popular browser is Firefox with almost 55%, than Chrome with 23.7%, and only then IE. And I am happy at last Konqueror got into list, with 0.67% share.

NetBeans and Safari

On my Windows box I am using Safari to read javadocs. Because of fonts antialiasing of course. And just noticed strange effect - NetBeans starts to lag when Safari is opened. Sources parsing is slower, autocomplete waits visibly longer before suggest something... Do you know where is the problem?

Problems of small opensource projects

Being Java developer and fan of OpenSource I am writing lots of stuff. Mostly for myself, tools that I am missing or to get some experience with something. But of course there are projects that I think others will like and use if they will know more about it. Few examples:

• Once I wrote small tool for Swing apps to choose LookAndFeel in runtime. It was JLAFChooser and I hoped it will become popular very soon. But days passed and downloads count was small. I thought that mostly it's downloaded by different search engines, nobody cares about it. And I just forgot about it, didn't planned to make it better. Download rate is about 1.001 per day. No bugs, no feature requests, no thanx or private mails. Nothing. Maybe this project had it's future, but now it's as good as dead. And even java.net registration did nothing to improve the situation.
• Then came p4nb. I did it for myself anyway, I am still using it at work because it's the best available Perforce plugin for NetBeans IDE. It's just enough for me. And nobody cares. Looks like nobody using NetBeans and Perforce at once. I can implement vast amount of features, including changes browsing, changelist management and many other. But I have more interesting projects for myself, and nobody else asks for it. Why should I do it?

You will ask what's the point of that moaning? But the point is, once one guy mailed me with words like "hey, I added few features to your p4nb plugin, maybe you need it?". That day I understood that I am not the only user of that plugin, there are at least another man using it. It was the new beginning for p4nb, it got completely rewritten with new and better feature set and better usability. And then it was forgotten again, because all users were glad with what they had, no bugs and no change requests fired.
Today I got a mail from one guy who is using JLAFChooser, he asked about launching it from Java WebStart. Of course I answered him, but why so late? I have no interest in that peace of software now, and I will not get back to it's development. It's dead for me, because no one really needed it when it was interesting for me.

1. How many projects died like this? What kind of project they were, maybe we lost something really interesting?
2. What should I do to prevent it in future? Post to slashdot? Buy Google Ads? Tell me what I did wrong to fix it in future.

Thanx for your attention, and I hope this post will not be just ignored in the same sad manner.

Problem Silverlight: Micro$oft owns your computer

Intro
I am using official version of M$ Windows XP at work, and all the day yesterday I fought with it's updates. Yes, I am talking about Silverlight. I do not care about other possible updates as long as they have no impact on my work. But this one... "Why not?" you will ask... Well, I have few reasons.

1. This computer is MINE!
It installed without my approve. Just downloaded and made ready to install. And more, when I am checking box "Don't notify me about this updates again" it waits about 5 minutes, than downloads it again and installs it again. I can't cancel or forbid installation of this package. Just can't. I have no control over own operation system! I can put TABOO on any package on my SUSE Linux box, but I can't make Windows ignore this peace of "optional" crap.


2. User-agent of browsers
When silverlight is installed - it changes user-agent string of web browser to include itself. M$ already changed user-agent of my Firefox to this one:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; uk; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008052906 Firefox/3.0 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

What for? Someone is using those dirty techniques to determine silverlight or .NET installed on my machine? And why M$ hacks my browsers without my permission to do it? I can't agree with such politics.

3. Politics
Development of Silverlight looks like politics solution from my point of view. If you can remember history of Netscape - you will see that M$ always releases own products of same kind after they're losing market. Market is totally occupied by Adobe with it's products and experience with graphical applications. M$ will easily take market back with such "optional" features as Silverlight.

4. Religion
I am Java developer. And being Java developer I can see that no one believes in desktop java apps because of JRE on client's computer. Do you really think that JRE is harder to install than Flash Player? No it's not. But "everyone has a flash player, but no one has JRE installed" is already mature religion in most countries. So that will be my own religion - if something is written in silverlight - I don't need it with it's crappy silverlights.

Security circus

In big outsourcing offices there are lots of security policies, and most of them are stupid enough. Don't you think so?

On my current job there is policy to change passwords every 3 weeks. What for? My first password was something like "R00mpel$htit$hen", while all the next password are "Anykey1", "Anykey2", ..., "AnykeyN". Same for all guys in my team. So, is office security much stronger now?

Do you like April 1?

Day of no-news. Every site see their duty to publish some "jokes". What for? Most of them are not funny nor interesting. Titles are the same as everyday yellow press. The only really interesting joke i noticed is this one.

Less than Hello World

Once I started to learn Assembler. I had a book of one russian hacker. First chapter of this book started like this:

Every book starts with "Hello, World" program. But reader can see programs, that can do more, than just pring "Hello, World". So he might think, that there is programs, that can do less, than "Hello, World".

For now, Assembler is dead, and we are using Java, as perfect technology.
So, less than "Hello, World!":

package helloworld;

public class LessThanHello {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
    }

}