Francis Robichaud

Apple did release complete Macbook Pro and Macbook revisions based on the Peryn architecture. Unfortunately, beside this expected update, LED for the 17″, larger drives, and the multi-touch trackpad, Apple decided to limit the quality of it’s product line to these minimal updates.

Apple used to have high-end laptops but the Peryn architecture was released months ago by competitors. It was quite normal to expect something more that caused this delay.

The iPhone firmware 1.1.4 was also released today without any clear informations on what it contains, we could expect this version to contain some traces of the upcoming SDK…

In conclusion, no Blu-ray, no SSD, no case redesign. It leaves me wondering why did I give any attention to this laptop. Conclusion: my Dell won’t be sold on eBay.

iPhone SDK was announced for the month of Febuary and Apple has the historical background of launching new products on Tuesday. Tomorrow, Feb 26th being the last Tuesday for the potential iPhone SDK release, I would bet that Apple will surprise a few by releasing more than this simple SDK.

The Macbook Pro systems were “due” for an update at the Macworld event in January but these didn’t show up and Apple’s stock price suffered hard from such miss. Also, Apple lowered their Q1 guidance probably related to the time-to-market delay of these Macbook Pros.

The release combination of these two items could be an effort to encourage developers to create native iPhone applications (or simply an excuse for delaying the MBP). Tomorrow should confirm my guess

What I expect from the new Macbook Pro :

- Integration of the Intel Peryn architecture
- SSD option or drives up to 320 GB
- Blu-ray drive
- New larger trackpad similar to the Macbook Air’s
- 1680×1200 resolution on the 15″ model
- LED display for the 17″ model

I am still unsure if Apple will alter the Macbook Pro design.
They might make it less than 1 inch.

Le 22 février 2008, j’ai enfin reçu un chèque de Vidéotron pour remboursement de mon compte. Cette lettre met donc fin à mes démarches entreprises depuis la fin du mois de mai 2007 pour annuler mon compte. En résumé, 9 mois se sont écoulés avant que mon cas ne soit réglé. J’ai eu la “chance” de discuter passionnément avec bon nombre de préposés du service à la clientèle Vidéotron. Mon acharnement à recouvrir mon argent m’a finalement valu la merveilleuse somme de 290.32 $. Mon temps consacré à cette histoire vaut probablement beaucoup plus que ce montant, mais la satisfaction d’avoir réussi à gagner contre cette bureaucratie malintentionnée en vaut vraiment la peine.

Une nouvelle ère technologique étant tout prêt d’être amorcée, les marchés exploités par Vidéotron, soit la téléphonie, la télévision et le service internet, devraient connaître beaucoup plus de compétiteurs dans les prochaines années. Google est probablement la compagnie au coeur de ce que j’appelle la prochaine révolution informatique puisqu’ils visent à offrir des services gratuits et de concentrer leurs profits sur la publicité. Les avancements technologiques actuels permettent de couvrir les zones urbaines d’un signal internet sans-fil permettant d’être connecté en permanence sur internet. Le WiMAX et la présente mise aux enchères de la bande de fréquence 700 MHz aux États-Unis devrait permettre de contribuer à développer les réseaux sans-fil. Le débit de ces connexions est présentement limité mais il est évident que les prochaines générations de routeurs pourront supporter davantage de clients à un débit plus élevé.

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The Java community is loaded with tons of applications and tools to cover every aspect of a large computer software development cycle. Our latest project, soon to be covered in a later post, uses the tools listed below. The quantity of available options requires a deep analysis of a project’s needs to find the suitable combination of tools that will positively help development.

Tools

Maven : build management and configuration – http://maven.apache.org
Hibernate : database object-relational mapping http://www.hibernate.org
Struts : web applications development – http://struts.apache.org
CruiseControl : build automation – http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net
Subversion : version control system – http://subversion.tigris.org
Trac : issue tracking system – http://trac.edgewall.org
JUnit : java unit test framework – http://www.junit.org
Hadoop : load-balance operations – http://hadoop.apache.org/core

Eclipse plugins

SQL Explorer : database management – http://eclipsesql.sourceforge.net
Subclipse : team source synchronisation – http://subclipse.tigris.org
Maven : http://maven.apache.org/eclipse-plugin.html
Hibernate-Tools : http://www.hibernate.org/255.html

Documentation

Project structure :

http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2006/03/29/maven-2-0.html

http://java.sun.com/blueprints/code/projectconventions.html

SVN management (tags and branches) :

http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch04.html

Installing Oracle on Solaris :

http://www.dbspecialists.com/presentations/oracle920solaris.html

By default, Hibernate seems to map CHAR(%n) database fields to java.lang.String. It causes no problem when querying a database without comparing this field, but unfortunately, the query may fail if the String does not containt %n chars. To avoid any problem, I suggest using VARCHAR(%n) fields where %n is the max size that can have your string. If you prefer to keep CHAR(%n) fields, probably for performance matters, refer to the hibernate documentation to specify a type such as “type=CharArray’” in your mapping.

The consequence of automatically mapping a database chararray field to a String object in java causes the impossibility of using this field in WHERE clauses.