oy, oil

2003.01.27
Possible Irony of the Moment
US buys up Iraqi oil to stave off crisis. Laugh? Cry? I dunno.

Cry, come to think of it...do you know how closely rises in the price of oil map to downturns in our economy?

Man, I hate the whole rally 'round the flag benefit Bush will be getting. I can only hope that he mistimes it and gets his butt handed to him on a platter come election time.


Snarky Software Gripe of the Moment
Using formal 'Extreme Programming' methodologies, you're supposed to 'Measure Project Velocity' Thanks to a combination of heavyweight tools like Rational Clear Case, BEA Weblogic, and JBuilder 8 and less than state of the art PCs and a dodgey netowrk, it's more like we're out to 'Measure Project Viscosity'. Why Weblogic is the market leader and de facto standard is beyond me...J2EE's EJBs let you cluster, using several physical servers act as one, and Weblogic's performance pretty much makes sure you'll need to.

Fellow Java Software Developers, can I get an Amen?

UPDATE: John Sawers (who has his own good weblog) sent me this O'Reilly editorial rightfully slamming EJBs. I think the author is dead on: everything you want to do with EJBs can be done on its own, and generally with a lot less overhead (overhead in both the "server" and "learning" sense.) He points to EJB as the one bad apple in the J2EE barrel. I just hope that that bad apple, which has gotten a TON of attention and publicity, doesn't make people ignore the whole barrel. It might be just the in Microsoft needs to let its .NET scheme rule the world.


Doublespeak of the Moment
One day, one way, sooner or later, Saddam Hussein will either disarm so peace can be preserved or a coalition will be sent in to do the job and protect the peace.
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer from this CNN article.
"a coalition will be sent in to [...] protect the peace"..."PROTECT THE PEACE"??? He keeps using that phrase. I do not think it means what he thinks it means. Hint: Inspectors might be protecting the peace. Diplomats might be protecting the peace. Sending in bombers and tanks is not protecting the peace.

(Sorry for the lack of fun links today...though yesterday's iSketch link almost makes up for it...)