Big Problem but easy answer, Q1: Am i going to upgrade my system to Vista ? NO Q2: Am i going to ask from my management to invest money on vista upgrade ? NO when i was using win3.11 i saw windows 95 like magic it got really awesome thing it impressed me with start menu [...]

FAQ on purchasing Vista, buying guide and tips

Dims et al, have done a performance comparison on Axis2 with XFire and they have proved that Axis2 is 50%-70% faster than XFire. (Well I thought that was implied)

Anyway, this comparison was Axis2/ADB and XFire/JAXB. JAXB is a well known and proven data binding framework, whereas ADB is a data binding framework initiated within Axis2 community, with no experts in data binding field.

If we assume, for the time being, JAXB is better than ADB, If Axis2 is better even with ADB compared to XFire with JAXB, then I feel Axis2 is even better than the numbers mentioned in the paper.

We never did marketing for Axis2 telling bad things about other stacks [1]. We never put down anything. We worked towards the satisfaction of our community. Now it is proved, yet another time.

Just

• look at the features we have
• look at the successful interoperability sessions we have attended
• look at the user community we have
• look at the numerous research organizations/companies that uses Axis2

We never claimed any feature, until it is well tested especially in interop sessions, if possible.

Haven't we redefined Web services??

Well done all Axis2 devs and users !!

Indi and Raditha have their say on the current politics.

Indi's is a hilarious read.

Oh, btw if you want to know what douchebag means.

I've got a great many videos that I've captured in .wmv but haven't had the time to figure out resolutions, formats and burning them to DVDs, yet.

That's all changed now that Lifehacker has a a great post on Burning almost any video file to a playable DVD using DVD Flick.

I was fascinated by ffmpeg when I first read about it a couple of weeks ago. DVD Flick combines this along with other open source tool to create a nice, easy to use package.

We are trying to get some video conf hardware and it seems hard to figure out what to buy. WSO2 has our main office in Colombo, Sri Lanka but has satellite offices in Boston (Dims' home!), Auburn, CA (Jonathan's home!), Emsworth, UK (Paul's home!) and one yet unannounced location. What we want is to be able to "see" the other person when talking to them. Nothing too fancy; simple video of the head will do.

When I visited Google a few months back they had this cool device to talk to the team member who was in NY (both ends had those boxes). I'm thinking of buying a bunch of those and having one at every site, including in Colombo. Yes eventually we should buy a more pricey box for Colombo which can compose multiple streams of video etc. but for right now a simple point-to-point solution would suffice.

Yes I do know that a webcam can do most of the job. However, we want a bit more "physical" presence of the remote person/entity and hence the desire to have a separate unit.

Any advice appreciated .. email to me (my-first-name@wso2.com) or blog and I'll try to pick it up. Thanks in advance for any help from the blogsphere!

This would be a tragedy. Here's hoping for his fast return.

So for some time XFire now has claimed to be the fastest Web services stack around. Nahh, that's history.

Check out this performance comparison of Axis2 1.1.1 and XFire 1.2.4. Axis2 is consistently faster than XFire and is 50-70% faster as the data sizes get larger. Move over XFire, Axis2 is now the new hotrod.

Who said you can't be both great tasting and less filling?

I take a lot of screenshots and Vista posed a problem with it's window shadows. My workaround was to place the screen behind a Notepad background before taking the screenshot.

Enter Window Clippings from Kenny Kerr, includes taking the shadow background and supports a whole lot of formats including smaller file sizes with .png

The Snipping Tool in Vista just got retired.

I was first introduced to BlueJ when I started lecturing on OOP using Java at Keele (IIT) for their MSc program. Teaching first time programmers about objects and creating instances using the BlueJ IDE was a 'wow' moment.

A couple of years later I'm sitting at the regional MVP Summit in Singapore and watching a presentation by one of the Microsoft Program Managers (under NDA) about the new 'Object Test Bench' feature. The moment I saw it, I turned around to Prasanna and commented about its similarity to BlueJ. Other people too notice this and later even Microsoft admits that the idea was from BlueJ.

“*My* interpretation of the above statement is basically that our academic customers wanted this because of the success of this BlueJ feature.” (D Fernandez)

Fast forward to last weekend, Michael, one of the authors of BlueJ is alerted that Microsoft has patented BlueJ, Dan Fernandez (a Microsoft Product Manager) then works inside Microsoft to remove the patent. With a final update from Michael.

As a part-time educator who teaches both Java and .NET technologies what's funnier is that Microsoft copied the feature based on feedback from teachers and hilariously doesn't include it in the free versions of Visual Studio (Express Editions) which is chiefly intended for students and hobbyists.

Instead it is a high-end feature which is available only on the paid versions. I guess Architects can use that feature to teach new SE's about objects and instances (grin).

Hopefully D Fernandez who is the Lead Product Manager for Visual Studio Express will "fix" it in the next version.

With my impending visit to the MVP Global Summit 2007 in Seattle it was time to renew my passport which expired last year.

Dinesh pointed me to the well laid out Department of Immigration and Emigration site from where I was able to download the application form.

Since my passport was the old M series it was valid for only 5 years, I believe the new N series ones are valid for ten years. You can extend the validity of your passport for another five years, currently the renewal rate is Rs 100/- per year.

I had to visit the department twice. First to hand over the form and the payment and then they asked me to come two hours later to collect it. Three hours later when I went it was still not there, but I was able to get it after another 1/2 hour of waiting.

Even with all the computerization and what not, our ingenious public officials find clever ways to devise schemes to take bribes and expedite the renewal process for "bribe givers" while inconveniencing the guys who do it the right way.

Just after I parked the car at the nice car park opposite the department the ticket collector himself comes up and offers to get my passport renewed in 20 minutes. I turned him down.

The whole things shows up in an ugly way when you go to collect your passport. There are just two guys handing out the passports to the 150+ people who are waiting at any given time to collect it, and the passports trickle down in batches of about 15 every 10 minutes.

There are a another 15 plus officials (bribe takers) wearing the department tag who hang around waiting for their 'guys' (bribe giver) passport. They do this without an iota of shame in front of all 150+ people who are waiting to collect their passport.

The guys who get theirs legally have to sign the application to say that they collected it, but no such thing for the bribe givers.

Anyway given that we have one minister for anything that one can fart at, this sure is going to improve quite a lot.

I meant the bribery taking and giving.