Steven Yong's Weblog

Another question: Why WEB-INF directory can't be renamed?
Both questions have the same answer: Because this is a rule.

The other day I answered my colleague's question with that short answer and he didn't seem to satisfy, and here is the longer one:

A special directory exists within the application hierarchy named “WEB-INF”. This directory contains all things related to the application that aren’t in the document root of the application. The WEB-INF node is not part of the public document tree of the application. No file contained in the WEB-INF directory may be served directly to a client by the container.

-Servlet Specification

However, the contents of the WEB-INF directory are visible to servlet code. Although I couldn't find any reason for giving such rule, I think it's okay. Who knows why must XML tag start with '<' but not '['? Why is C++ source file extension .cpp but not .c++?

Back to the questions, it is purely just a rule, a rule which the server implementor and application developer must follow in order to make the application more extensible and portable.

Sometimes, it's good to have some standards, conventions and rules.

This morning one of the quality engineers upgraded his Internet Explorer to version 7 and Woo-Hoo! All Javascript menus don't work! At first I nearly wanted to question him why didn't he use the version that our app is targeting, but very quickly I calmed myself down and seriously tried to figure out the problem.

Although our app is not backward-compatible, it must be forward-compatible!

Furthermore, with the fact that IE7 will soon to be distributed to our PCs whether we like it or not, I came to the conclusion that this issue has become the severity-1 high priority bug.

Fortunately, the bug is obvious, I found this (anyone knows how to submit article to Daily WTF?):

if (version.indexOf('MSIE 6') > 0) { // do something ... }

Someone must be mistakenly given the news that version 6 will be the final version of IE. For those who would like to know the effective way to detect browser version, here you are.

Martina, the office administration manager in my current company has created a blog of her own, and I wish I could make myself happy as easily as she does.

I don't blame her, after all she isn't a software guy although she is my colleague.

After reading my previous post about purchasing genuine CD, she came to argueexplain that original CD is just too expensive for her. And the conclusion she gave me was: "only idiot buys original music CD".

In a way, she is right, I find original CD expensive too. As Hong Kong star Wong Zi Wah said: "There is only one way people would stop buying pirated CDs, it's when original gets cheaper than pirated one". But, due to the nature of my job, I understand the difficulties of producing any kind of intelligent property and I understand how one would feel if his or her works are being cloned without any compensation.

Just bought an original music CD box from Speedy, consists of 3 CDs and 1 DVD, costs about RM 72. That's the collection I love very much and I've been struggling for pretty long time whether or not to buy the original one. Finally I made the decision.
In fact I wonder is there still people who can easily download music anytime from Internet would spend money on original CD and previously I was too naive to believe that as long as you're purchasing the original music CD, you're literally supporting the music industry.
But it turns out that I was in a way wrong, not long after I brought the CD back to my desk, someone approached me and asked if I can duplicate another copy for her.
For those who deeply know me well probably can guess whether I would futfill her request. All I can offer her is I lend her the CDs, and she doesn't tell me what is she going to do with them.

The other day I made a visit to my colleage (TARC) to take a walk and see if there is any interesting change, luckily the trip did not disappoint me.
First of all, all the buildings in the campus remain exactly the same, at least I couldn't feel any difference. The students' dressing and hair style captured a lot of my attention, I was like watching a real fashion show (are they really going for studies?). That's a huge difference from my time, where almost everyone go to class with their T-shirt and jeans on. After all, I've had the similar academic feel on that day.
However, the biggest change I find is in the Internet room. Not sure where all the CRT monitors have gone, now every desktop sitting with a cool black LCD flat monitor. Besides, network cable has become less important over there, the wireless area covers from the administration office to the IT room. Some students who are supposed to be poor (since they are in TARC) were carrying a notebook computer which is probably thinner than my handphone on their lap, and they all looked like busy.

Everything look so fabulous.

And now I couldn't imagine how would my college look like ten years after.

Among the whole stack of JAX-WS APIs, the new asynchronous client API attracts me the most. We know that web service relies on network and we know the network is unreliable, therefore by having an asynchronous approach to do things like web service will definitely be a good option. With that client API, we don't have to create and manage our own threads for invoking web service method and getting result, instead, the API do all ground works for us. There are two usage models we can choose: 1) polling model, you make a call. When you're ready, you request the results and 2) callback model, you register a handler. As soon as the response arrives, you are notified. Sounds interesting huh?

Interested in playing games? Considering for picking up a game console? No doubt PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo will be the choices. Some of them may not be available in Malaysia market soon, it is good to take a quick glance at the technical comparison though.