I wish I could run MC4J
Recently I’ve had the misfortune to need to use JMX remoting. JMX remoting involves using JMX over an RMIlike transport. The nice thing about doing this is that it enables you to have a pretty little swing gui to talk to your JMX crap, without having to resort to yet another spastic JMX web console.
Conveniently, MC4J just released version 1.2beta4, which brags of support for JSR 160 (JMX remoting). What a stroke of luck! I could use this to test the JMX beans!
Ahh, I was so naive back in those days. I should have known something suspicious is going on based on their ‘improvement’ of ‘built on the NetBeans 2.6 platform’. I was brave and foolish, and even had that rush of giddiness when I saw that they were considerate enough to provide an OSX specific download.
Alright, first sign of trouble. The OSX installer is in fact an InstallAnywhere pile of shit. I don’t understand why vendors feel that using this monstrosity is a good idea. It’s such a windowsy experience that is very much reminiscent of the feeling of losing bowel control and soiling ones pants in the middle of a hot date; unpleasant and highly inappropriate. Why the hell can’t they do it the OSX way, and just provide a double clickable .app? There’s nothing TO install here, it’s just a bunch of jar files! So pleased are the MC4J with their InstallAnywhere license, that they decide to forgo the ‘generic java’ download option too. Double clickable jars are considered too cutting edge and risky, I suppose.
Still, all that was a red herring, it turns out. The app…simply…does…not…run. I double click, I get a pretty splash screen bragging of all the stuff it’s initialising, then splat, nothing. Now I know open source is all about releasing early and releasing often. I understand that there’s no such thing as QA, and that unit tests are the best you could possibly hope for. I understand that these projects are very often one man jobs, and that that one man is often a feeble minded simpleton who knows as much about usability and QA testing as I do about exactly what it is that makes Andy Oliver so socially inept, but STILL! How hard would it have been to actually LAUNCH the app on OSX, just to see if it, you know, RUNS? If you’ll bother making an installer, the very least you could do is run through it!
No matter, it’s open source, surely I can just grab cvs, build it, and run that way. A few rounds of angry fist shaking at sourceforge and I’m ready to give it a shot. I see a build.xml, things will get better.
So, what to do first? I know, ant -projecthelp. Yep, nice help. Excellent. Let’s try ant run. Hmm, nope, no luck. How about just plain ant? Nope. Time to read some instructions. Hmm, looks like I have to go and manually download some netbeans shite, and create a dir and modify a local build setting. Alright, a bit awkward and retarded, but one can’t expect too much these days (apparently). The instructions suggest I create a new directory called ‘application’ and put the netbeans crap in there. Hm, that’s odd, since there already is a directory with that name, with plenty of crap in it already! Ohdear, this just gets worse and worse.
After some more wrestling and contortions, I sort of get it to compile, except there’s some compilation error. I give up, and try again the next day. What kind of a world do these people live in, where it’s OK to check in broken code?
At the end of the (next) day, I didn’t manage to get it running. The build process is awkward and clearly tailored to windows users (eg, the default ant run target uses a shmem debug protocol). At some point I managed to trick it into farting out some executables, but invoking those just brought up a rather generic and ugly netbeans IDE. The mind boggles.
People often complain that client-side Java isn’t really cross platform. MC4J is a perfect example of how the problem isn’t with Java, it’s with idiots who go out of their way to bypass the cross-platform aspect of Java and assume that everything works and looks exactly like Windows. For those of you too incompetent to know better, do the world a favour and stick to java UI paradigms, instead of your incompetent bungling attempts at windowising Java (yes SWT fuckwits, I’m talking to you too). Linux users might aspire to be on a par to Windows, but some of us have higher standards.
February 22nd, 2004 at 6:36 pm
While there are probably a lot of people out there who would be quite content never to read another letter about Marc Fleury, thanks to Fleury, the epidemic of Marxism is spreading rapidly. Before I launch into my rant, permit me the prelude caveat that the reason Fleury wants to use psychological tools to trick us into doing whatever arrogant blood-stained criminals require of us is that he’s completely disgraceful. If you believe you have another explanation for his puerile behavior, then please write and tell me about it. In case you have any doubts, he is an inspiration to amoral jerks everywhere. They panegyrize Fleury’s crusade to turn our country into a mingy cesspool overrun with scum, disease, and crime and, more importantly, they don’t realize that Fleury is planning to declare a national emergency, round up everyone who disagrees with him, and put them in concentration camps. This does not bode well for the future, because one could truthfully say that backwards serpents in general, and Fleury in particular, intend to force people to act in ways far removed from the natural patterns of human behavior. But saying that would miss the real point, which is that I sometimes ask myself whether the struggle to express my views is worth all of the potential consequences. And I consistently answer by saying that he believes that black is white and night is day. The real damage that this belief causes actually has nothing to do with the belief itself, but with psychology, human nature, and the skillful psychological manipulation of that nature by Fleury and his lascivious, appalling drones. What is happening between Fleury’s intimates and us is not a debate. It is not a friendly disagreement between enlightened people. It is a gin-swilling attack on our most cherished institutions.
Fleury’s true goal is to play on people’s conscious and unconscious belief structures. All the statements that his janissaries make to justify or downplay that goal are only apologetics; they do nothing to plant markers that define the limits of what is uncompromising and what is not. Please don’t ask me to turn peaceful gatherings into embarrassing scandals. I simply can’t do that. Astute observers have known for years that I doubtlessly don’t believe that merit is adequately measured by Fleury’s methods and qualifications. So when he says that that’s what I believe, I see how little he understands my position.
I can assure you that there is a format Fleury should follow for his next literary endeavor. It involves a topic sentence and supporting facts. If you want a better opportunity to get a job, raise a family in a safe neighborhood, have a better chance at a good education, and lower the taxes on the money you earn, then I ask that you help me exemplify the principles of honor, duty, loyalty, and courage. It’s precisely because he flaunts his personal accusations and attitudes in front of everyone else that you shouldn’t let him intimidate you. You shouldn’t let him push you around. We’re the ones who are right, not Fleury. He argues that newspapers should report only on items he agrees with. I wish I could suggest some incontrovertible chain of apodictic reasoning that would overcome this argument, but the best I can do is the following: If we don’t search for solutions that are more creative and constructive than the typically ruthless ones championed by incompetent, loquacious enemies of the people right now, then Fleury’s prophecies will soon start to metastasize until they force us to do things or take stands against our will. It’s Fleury’s belief that my letters demonstrate a desire to demonstrate an outright hostility to law enforcement. I can’t understand how anyone could go from anything I ever wrote to such an ornery idea. In fact, my letters generally make the diametrically opposite claim, that Fleury’s compeers believe that Fleury’s blessing is the equivalent of a papal imprimatur. Although it is perhaps impossible to change the perspective of those who have such beliefs, I wish nevertheless to fight for our freedom of speech.
One does not have to divert us from proclaiming what in our innermost conviction is absolutely necessary in order to help others to see through the empty and meaningless statements uttered by Fleury and his vicegerents. It is a hostile person who believes otherwise. When we tease apart the associations necessary to his conceited, flippant notions, we see that he doesn’t want us to know about his plans to devastate vast acres of precious farmland. Otherwise, we might do something about that. If Fleury is going to make an emotional appeal, then he should also include a rational argument. Only inhumane racketeers ever claim that his conclusions are “grandly compelling”, “articulate and persuasive”, or “a vital contribution”, yet his outbursts are the direct result of a policy of abandonment and neglect. This sort of vertiginous paradox is well known to most unpleasant insurrectionists.
So who’s crazy? I, or all the harebrained, foul knuckle-draggers who feel that courtesy and manners don’t count for anything? Before you answer, let me point out that he has two imperatives. The first is to force onto us the degradation and ignominy that he is known to revel in. The second imperative is to feed information from sources inside the government to organizations with particularly asinine agendas.
Not to belabor the point, but if, five years ago, I had described a person like Fleury to you and told you that in five years, he’d encourage a deadly acceptance of intolerance, you’d have thought me incomprehensible. You’d have laughed at me and told me it couldn’t happen. So it is useful now to note that, first, it has happened and, second, to try to understand how it happened and how his reasoning is circular and therefore invalid. In other words, he always begins an argument with his conclusion (e.g., that he can ignore rules, laws, and protocol without repercussion) and therefore — not surprisingly — he always arrives at that very conclusion. Even if his facts were reliable, they were gathered selectively and then manipulated towards favored conclusions. Who else but Fleury would have the brass to commit confrontational, in-your-face acts of violence, intimidation, and incivility? No one. And where does that brass come from? It comes from a sure knowledge that he can retreat into his “victim” status if anyone calls him to account.
He should learn to appreciate what he has instead of feeling so oppressed because he can’t do everything he wants, every time he wants to. Once we have absorbed and understood his overbearing, libidinous recommendations, it is our inescapable responsibility to do whatever is necessary to disabuse him of the notion that he should condemn innocent people to death because “it’s the right thing to do”. I’m sorry if I’ve gotten a little off track here, but Fleury’s stories about fogyism are particularly ridden with errors and distortions, even leaving aside the concept’s initial implausibility. Fleury is totally mistaken if he believes that obscurity, evasiveness, incomprehensibility, indirectness, and ambiguity are marks of depth and brilliance. While others have also published information about unprofessional, snooty prophets of diabolism, he is the picture of the insane person on the street, babbling to a tree, a wall, or a cloud, which cannot and does not respond to his effusions.
There’s a little-known truth that isn’t readily acknowledged by immature pip-squeaks: Implying that Fleury’s vices are the only true virtues is no different from implying that the only way to expand one’s mind is with drugs — or maybe even chocolate. Both statements are ludicrous. Fleury’s eccentricity is surpassed only by his vanity. And his vanity is surpassed only by his empty theorizing. (Remember his theory that he never engages in disorganized, doctrinaire, or birdbrained politics?)
Personally, I don’t expect Fleury to give up his crusade to treat people like humorless finks. But we’ll see. He acts as if he were King of the World. This hauteur is astonishing, staggering, and mind-boggling.
He can’t help it; he just loves to besmirch the memory of some genuine historic figures. Was Fleury just trying to be cute when he said that cannibalism is a be-all, end-all system that should be forcefully imposed upon us? I sure hope so, because we should not concern ourselves with his putative virtue or vice. Rather, we should concern ourselves with our own welfare and the fact that if anything, by refusing to act, by refusing to take a proactive, rather than a reactive, stance, we are giving Fleury the power to clear-cut ancient forest lands. To say otherwise would be snotty. I will not say what is right and what is wrong when it comes to Fleury’s reports. But I will say one thing: Fleury’s put-downs all stem from one, simple, faulty premise — that he has been robbed of all he does not possess. We must make an impartial and well-informed evaluation of the advantages and disadvantages of Marc Fleury’s ethics. We must evaluate the tactics Fleury has used against me. And we must insist on a policy of zero tolerance toward corporatism. Please join me in incorporating these words into our living credo.
February 22nd, 2004 at 6:41 pm
WTF?
February 22nd, 2004 at 6:56 pm
So you’re basically saying they should’ve used Maven?
February 22nd, 2004 at 8:02 pm
dude you might wanna try extremeJ – of course it’s built on top of eclipse/swt, so I wouldn’t doubt if it is a little windows-slanted, too.
February 22nd, 2004 at 8:02 pm
Who the fuck is stupid enough to use OSX??! If there ever was a moron bait, MacOS is it!
February 22nd, 2004 at 9:28 pm
OS X – combines the usability of Windows without the crappy OS :).Anonymous retard use it for a week before passing judgement.
February 22nd, 2004 at 9:51 pm
Retarded OSX users abound everywhere, you deserve all the grief you can get with not getting shit to run correctly. Next time buy a real computer.
February 22nd, 2004 at 10:48 pm
Chiara, your rants are just the dog’s bollox – the more you write the more impressed I am. You should get your own weblog, that way your thoughts can go on the front page. Wouldn’t that be cool?
Yep, your own place to say this stuff is a good idea, you should do it. Really. Please.
February 22nd, 2004 at 11:11 pm
Check out Ja.Net from Intrinsyc – it’s a non-IIOP approach to remoting interop.
February 23rd, 2004 at 3:00 am
XtremeJ does support JMX remoting:
http://www.xtremej.com/docs/2.0.0/ug/ch02s10.html.
I’ll have to point out that XtremeJ has not been tested on OSX so it is possible that OSX users might run into problems as well. I don’t think you can blame it on open source (XtremeJ uses commercial license but the Standard Edition is free beer). Consider the following points and you know why OSX users are out of luck:
1) More than 80% of our downloads came from Windows users, while OSX accounts to less than 2%;
2) As we support multiple JMX clients (WebLogic, WebSphere, JBoss, JMX RI, MX4J, Tomcat, JOnAS, JDMK, TMX4J) and ship three editions (Standard, Professional, and Enterprise), weve got a large number of configurations to test with. Adding an operating system is very costly.
Of course with a commercial product, you are not completely out of luck — if you are a large customer. You can pretty much name your OS and we will test it for you :).
February 23rd, 2004 at 11:08 am
Chiara is a male….according to Gender Genie (http://www.bookblog.net/gender/genie.html)
February 23rd, 2004 at 2:05 pm
Chiara hurts me
Her essays wear my soul
Like a skin flautist.
February 23rd, 2004 at 2:07 pm
Moron! Moron, more
On moron, moron, moron.
Moron, moron, duh.
February 23rd, 2004 at 2:20 pm
Hanyu:
there’s this thing called the Java platform.. write once, run anywhere! *ducks*
February 23rd, 2004 at 2:25 pm
I was excited about MC4J when it first came out (I have even contributed patches to it). But a while ago, I gave up on it in favor of EJTools
EJTools
Gorgeous, easy to use, and brought to us by Frenchies. (Sorry, dude, I haven’t QA’ed it on OSX)
February 23rd, 2004 at 3:18 pm
“It’s such a windowsy experience that is very much reminiscent of the feeling of losing bowel control and soiling ones pants in the middle of a hot date; ”
That is totally lost on 98% of the “Java Community”; they’ve never had a date with an actual other person.
“MC4J is a perfect example of how the problem isn’t with Java”
Write a GUI in Java? Bwahaha, Bwahaha, you made me soil my armor!
February 23rd, 2004 at 4:22 pm
Well, thanks for ranting, but not providing one bit of useful information to the developer of this FREE software to help fix the problem.
I am the sole developer and maintainer of MC4J. There has been only a single person who ever contributed a patch (Thanks Corby). You’re not likely to see commercial quality software come from an open source project like this. I built this software for my own use, and when I saw that it provided a useful tool in a space with few other choices, I released to open source. At the time there was only one other commercial choice, though there are a couple now.
Now, using the NetBeans platform may make it more complicated, but there isn’t a bit of native code in there. The reason I use an installer, is that I had received feedback that people wanted something they could easily double-click. Well, that is just hard to do right when you need to give people the ability to choose the right JVM to run as well as set the proper system properties for execution on each platform. The installer is really just giving me access to the Install Anywhere execution engine, which has worked well for most people and made MC4J easier to use and much easier to build for release.
Now, if you’d like to contribute a MacOS X bundle for the app, that’d be great. Its just not something I’ve gotten around to yet. Otherwise, send a mail to the project mailing list detailing the problem and I’ll look into it.
February 23rd, 2004 at 4:30 pm
I never understood why instructions tell the user to set up a certain dir structure, when ant is perfectly capable of creating its own dirs. Put all the logic in the ant script!
February 23rd, 2004 at 5:43 pm
Greg: ” The reason I use an installer, is that I had received feedback that people wanted something they could easily double-click.”
So what??!?! If your pathetic users can’t copy a couple of jars, they are too incompetent to use the product anyway.
February 23rd, 2004 at 7:30 pm
Anonymous Bastard — “if your pathetic users can’t copy a couple of jars, they are too incompetent to use the product anyway.”
Yeah right, and if all these lazy-ass programmers are too feeble to write a little machine language, they are too incompetent to program Java. Haven’t you figured it out yet, half of being a good programmer is learning how to be lazy.
February 23rd, 2004 at 9:04 pm
Where the feck is clown puncher?
February 24th, 2004 at 12:13 am
Clown puncher is busy punching my clown.
February 24th, 2004 at 12:20 am
Hey, that GenderGenie is a fuckwit moron. I typed-in “suck my dick”, and it couldn’t guess my gender.
February 24th, 2004 at 1:31 am
Greg. Good post. Ranting about open source software is what Hani does … does he do anything else ?. He’s not quite got his head around the idea of do something constructively, or the fact that people are giving their work for free.
Master Pater, the only thing being punched by my mate the Puncher will be your head. You’ve got something against clowns … well i’m a clown, and i’m rampant.
February 24th, 2004 at 4:52 am
I’m trying to figure this out.
Is the BileBlog an attempt at humor, or a real attempt to evaluate aspects of technology?
If so, apart from constant bitches about how things don’t work on OSX, there’s little here of any use.
It’s open source mate. If it doesn’t work for you you are suppose to fix it your f**king self, so step up and contribute.
Full agreement to Greg Hinkle
February 24th, 2004 at 5:05 am
It’s certainly not a real attempt to evaluate technology. You wouldn’t trust anyone as stupid as Hani to do that.
February 24th, 2004 at 5:58 am
Steven: give a man a fish and he will be full for a day, teach a man to fish and he will never go hungry again
Your idiotic “give him a fish” argument is shortsighted and just plain ignorant. The bileblog is a way to tell people to LEARN TO FUCKING FISH! If people actually took the time to learn this there would be no need for the bileblog to exist and there would be no need for millions and millions of competent people to spend their every waking second writing patches to fix totally broken open source crap. Learn to fucking code idiot.
February 24th, 2004 at 6:42 am
boxed: I’ve started writing about 10 responses to this comment, but I just can’t understand your point of view enough to make a effective counter argument. I’d rather be earning money developing software (so I can buy fish :).
February 24th, 2004 at 8:26 am
Steven: that you fail to understand the basic premise of all teaching it obvious.
February 24th, 2004 at 11:54 am
“It’s open source mate. If it doesn’t work for you you are suppose to fix it your f**king self, so step up and contribute.”
Reaaaaly!
A hypothetical example: say you work for some company, and they FORCE you to work with retarded Open Source stuff (Struts, for example), because (a) it’s cheaper, (b) it’s company policy.
Then Open Source is NOT FREE. It’s not a CHOICE. You don’t want to fuckin’ “fix it yourself”. You want to shove flaming death to the retards who wrote it.
February 24th, 2004 at 1:34 pm
“fix it yourself” is an asshat excuse to ship cheap software. Where’s the dignity? There is a difference between lacking features, and what features do exist being broken! Craftsmanship and pride, guys. Your attitude should be “add new features”, not “patch my lame bugs”. You’re not helping anyone by posting shite to sourceforge or java.net, because then we have to take the trouble to sift through even more junk.
February 24th, 2004 at 3:18 pm
Relax, I am still here. (Pater, I only punch my own clown).
And that anonymous jack ass bagging on OS X is such a dick licker, I bet he’s licking Bill Gates dick right now.
OS X kicks ass.
So, go back to your eMachines, and quit telling people to buy “real” computers.
Such a fucking moron…..how’s this for a real computer you fucking retard:
http://don.cc.vt.edu/g5sinracks/slides/IMG_2353.JPG
February 24th, 2004 at 4:24 pm
boxed: I’ve read your poetry man, I don’t want to learn what you’ve got to teach. Are you really screwed up, or do you just pretend to be incoherent to meet chicks?
February 24th, 2004 at 4:33 pm
Steven: I haven’t read your poetry man, since you’re too chickenshit to show any info except your first name. Are you really stupid or do you just drool all over yourself so that girls will get all mothery and take care of you?
February 24th, 2004 at 5:54 pm
All he is saying is – Don’t put shit out there if its not going to work – and most of all if its going to waste someone’s time. By putting in an installer for OSX a reasonable person would believe this shit works on my OSX – and that said person (in this case) wasted a whole load of time trying to get it to work.
That said, if something doesn’t work off the installer as advertised then obviously the product is worthless and any intelligent person knows not to waste his or her time pulling shit down and compiling shit – cause all you get is more shit.
February 24th, 2004 at 6:13 pm
And we all know…
YOU CAN”T POLISH A TURD
February 25th, 2004 at 11:18 am
The man in the mirror is not me.
He should be.
When I look deeper to see myself,
all I see is emptiness,
all I see is the Void.
I turn my eyes inward to see myself.
The man in me is not me.
He should be.
When I look deeper to find myself,
all I find is emptiness,
all I find is the Void.
I am not me.
I am boxed.
And I am a fucking retard.
Wanking in the mirror again.
February 25th, 2004 at 5:37 pm
Fleury: hah! I made you look!
February 25th, 2004 at 5:38 pm
fleury: oh, before I forget: you have just made yourself guilty of a federal and international copyright infringement, but I guess you’re used to that kind of thing from writing JBoss?
February 25th, 2004 at 6:22 pm
Ten million dollars can buy a whole lot of lawyer, asshole. Suck my dick!
February 25th, 2004 at 9:23 pm
You have a dick?!?
OMG, all this time, I thought you were a gelding.
Just when you thought Marc’s ego could get no bigger……nothing like 10 million to make him explode in his pants.
February 26th, 2004 at 4:55 am
Marc: I live in Sweden, we don’t have your fucked up legal system, go read a book or something.
February 26th, 2004 at 8:32 am
I don’t think that’s really Marc posting. For example, he said “suck my dick.” That’s a dead give-away that it’s not Marc.
Peace ..
February 26th, 2004 at 12:15 pm
Did you run a google search on that, Cameron?
February 26th, 2004 at 1:55 pm
You mean here?
February 27th, 2004 at 1:13 pm
boxed: “I live in Sweden, we don’t have your fucked up legal system, go read a book or something.”
That would be the legal system that doesn’t have a jury system, right?
February 28th, 2004 at 12:12 am
Don’t get me wrong, I love my country.
But, have you ever been on a jury? Not exactly the group of people I would want making decisions. Of course, same can be said for the people that I work with. Go figure.
February 28th, 2004 at 11:26 am
Sweden has a system with a jury which contains one part laymen and one part judicially qualified people, thus the verdicts are based in law, not some random hysteria of 12 random people who were too stupid to get off jury duty, as americans often put it.
March 1st, 2004 at 11:08 am
At least, with the American jury system, if one juror finds that I’m innocent, I walk, unlike Sweden, where a simple majority will send my ass in jail. Real comforting.
March 3rd, 2004 at 3:18 pm
Member(s) of the government on a jury? That’s a recipe for tyranny.
March 4th, 2004 at 8:03 am
varda: Eh, the court is supposed to be a branch of the government, that’s the entire point. Don’t forget that in the US the the judge can just ignore the jury. Also I might point out that in sweden the judiciary is not considered a “power” like in the US, it just follows the law blindly. If the law is wrong the judgement will reflect this and thus make the parliament aware of how broken the law is. Separation of power in Sweden is between the “regering” (don’t know the english word, there certainly is no equivalent in the US) and the “riksdag” (roughly congress), and also between the state and the “kommun”, a local entity like a county that has far reaching self-government.
March 8th, 2004 at 9:14 am
boxed:
“Don’t forget that in the US the the judge can just ignore the jury”
No they can’t. The jury has the last word.
In fact, the jury can choose to acquit for any reason they want. This was put in place as a safeguard against an overbearing government.
May 30th, 2006 at 9:23 pm
vardman: no idiot, go look up your precedents. A federal judge can overturn any grand jury verdict without giving a reason. This is a safeguard put in place to prevent bribed/intimidated juries.
Most state/district judges can do so as well.
I love america but the jury system is significantly flawed. sweden has a much more sensible judicial system. even if it is full of fucktards