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Global warming is caused by humans.
Mars is experiencing global warming.
Therefore, humans live on Mars.

;-)

I’ll be attending the first South Florida Software Symposium, a No Fluff Just Stuff presentation. I won a pass at the March MJUG meeting. Local and free, that’s hard to top.

There are more than a few worthy topics. My top picks thus far are:

1. The Busy Java Developer’s Guide to ClassLoaders
2. The Busy Java Developer’s Guide to Debugging and Monitoring
3. The Busy Java Developer’s Guide to Java Platform Security
4. Annotation Hammer
5. OSGi: A Well Kept Secret
6. The Busy Java Developer’s Guide to Reflection
7. Acegi (Spring Security)
8. Java Memory, Performance and the Garbage Collector
9. Introduction to Hibernate. My Hibernatese is rusty.
10. Effective Hibernate or Practices of an Agile Developer. I saw a preview at the April MJUG meeting, which left me wanting to hear the entire talk.
11. Advanced Hibernate

It’s great to have a NFJS event just down the road from my office. I hope it’s a great success.

To paraphrase a U2 lyric, some words are bouncers; they won’t let you in. Jonah Goldberg at The Corner makes an excellent point, that so-called experts abuse jargon to gain a rhetorical advantage. As he points out, this happens in almost every human endeavor, but real jargon originates with real necessity, not just to pull the wool over someone’s eyes. This was never made more obvious to me than when I got my first job out of college, as a Municipal Bond Market analyst. During the interview process, one of the experts explained the business using words all known to me but assembled in such a way as to render the meaning impenetrable. I was left with the impression that this guy knew something. Later on I went on to learn that the buzzwords mostly indicated that prices go up and prices go down, or that a bond was too expensive or to cheap. The guy was a real expert, though, not the kind Goldberg describes. His buzzword-laden reasoning for a bond price packed a great deal of detail into a brief explanation, unfortunately unintelligible to the uninitiated. Such jargon arises to expedite precise communication amongst real subject matter experts, a necessity B.S. artists all too easily abuse. Caveat Emptor.

My parents told me about Mr. Common Sense early in my life and told me I would do well to call on him when making decisions. It seems he was always around in my early years but less and less as time passed until today I read his obituary.

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as knowing when to come in out of the rain, why the early bird gets the worm, life isn’t always fair, and maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don’t spend more than you earn) and reliable parenting strategies (adults, not children are in charge). His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place. Reports of a six-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job they themselves failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. It declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer Aspirin, sun lotion or a sticky plaster to a student; but could not inform the parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the Ten Commandments became contraband; churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims. Common Sense took a beating when you couldn’t defend yourself from a burglar in your own home and the burglar can sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realize that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap, and was promptly awarded a huge settlement. Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason.

He is survived by three stepbrothers; I know my Rights, Someone Else is to Blame, and I’m a Victim. Not many attended his funeral because so few realized he was gone. If you still remember him pass this on. If not, join the majority and do nothing.

H/T: Rolando

Hilarious yet instructive.

H/T: Carlos Sanchez

A recent report demonstrates a security vulnerability to which AJAX applications are susceptible, JavaScript Hijacking. The vulnerability has already been exploited, GMail being one of the first victims.

Google was serving the current GMail users’ contacts in unprotected JavaScript, so an attacker could steal the contact list using JavaScript Hijacking.

It also turns out that mashups are inherently susceptible to such attacks, as the very techniques that make mashups possible enable JavaScript Hijacking, which can be thought of as a malicious mashup.

An application can be mashup-friendly or it can be secure, but it cannot be both.

H/T: Ted Neward