Internet News Article | Reuters.com: "on Google" Google's billionaire co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who have organized their Web search company around the principle that "you can make money without doing evil," plan to establish a charitable foundation.
....The company's organizing principles, which are posted on a link to its main Web search site, include the idea that "You can be serious without a suit," and "You can make money without doing evil." ...

Modeling Web Application Architectures with UML Web applications are becoming increasingly complex and mission critical. To help manage this complexity they need to be modeled. UML is the standard language for modeling software intensive systems. When attempting to model web applications with UML it becomes apparent that some of its components don’t fit nicely into standard UML modeling elements. In order to stick with one modeling notation for the entire system (web components, and traditional middle tier components) UML must be extended. This paper presents an extension to the UML (using its formal extension mechanism). The extension is designed so that web specific components can be integrated with the rest of the system’s model, and to exhibit the proper level of abstraction and detail for suitable for designers, implementers and architects of web applications

"Let's Collaborate on Open-Sourcing Java": IBM Writes Open Letter to Sun (SYS-CON) IBM Software's VP of Emerging Technologies, Rod Smith, has just written an open letter to Rob Gingell, Sun's Chief Engineer. IBM, Smith says, "would like to work with Sun on an independent project to open source Java."

SYS-CON Media - SYS-CON Media, the world's number one i-technology magazine publisher, announced the results of its latest Readers' Choice Awards Program 2004, commonly referred to as the "Oscars of the Software Industry," recognizing excellence in the software, solutions, or services provided by the industry's top vendors.

Dev Articles - Migrating to Visual Basic.NET from Visual Basic 6 Those already familiar with Visual Basic shouldn't have to worry about migrating to Visual Basic.NET. In this article Vaijayantee shows us how to upgrade our existing applications to Visual Basic.NET, different .NET variable types, and her own personal programming recommendations. After reading this article you'll be able to migrate from VB6 to VB.NET in no time!Those already familiar with Visual Basic shouldn't have to worry about migrating to Visual Basic.NET. In this article Vaijayantee shows us how to upgrade our existing applications to Visual Basic.NET, different .NET variable types, and her own personal programming recommendations. After reading this article you'll be able to migrate from VB6 to VB.NET in no time!

searchVB.com | How do VB6 and VB.NET compare?: "What are the differences between VB6 and VB.NET? What are the advantages and disadvantages of VB.NET?

DATE ASKED: 30 September 2002
ANSWERED BY: Dave Ranck

The differences between VB6 and VB.NET transcend the languages. VB.NET is part of a brand new platform, based on the .NET Framework. All languages in .NET are based on this new platform, which allows many great new capabilities for a VB developer. Because the .NET Framework is fully object-oriented, .NET languages also must support OO features. The result is that VB.NET is fully object-oriented. This is a huge difference and is a powerful improvement over previous version of VB. It also introduces another level of complexity along with this new power.
In many ways, VB.NET can be seen as an entirely new language. Oh, much of the syntax is still there, and yes, much of it has changed. But the real differences in VB.NET are in the way we accomplish various tasks. Everything is done through the .NET Framework. All .NET languages use the same .NET classes - C#, VB, COBOL, J#, etc. In short, from a language perspective, much of the syntax will be familiar, but the way to accomplish things has changed dramatically.
From a platform perspective, there are many advantages to .NET over COM+. First and foremost in my mind is the end DLL hell. In .NET, assemblies (analogous to executables in COM), need not be registered with RegSvr32. .NET uses the concept of namespaces. This makes deployment a breeze! In most instances, simply copying files to a destination is all that is needed to complete a deployment. Various application settings can be stored in XML config files which also makes things a bit simpler.
There are many other advantages to .NET:
Full object-oriented cap
An incredible IDE
Cross-language inheritance
Real VB (or C#, etc) in ASP.NET, not VBScript
Web service tools
One way to do things, no matter what .NET language you are using"

4GuysFromRolla.com - Overview of Changes from VB6 to VB.NET The article discusses the important language changes from VB6/VBScript to VB.NET

Partai 'Bukan di Negeri Impian' ..."Kita harapkan orang yang dulunya apatis dan menganggap politik dan semua politisi itu kotor jadi berubah pikiran. Karena, insya Allah, figur-figur politisi yang tidak mencari uang dari jabatan masih ada di partai kita, dan mereka bukan cuma ada di negeri impian, tapi ada di depan kita," ujar Razikun....

'Passion' earns praise from Christians, spurs concerns among Jews The death of Jesus is not an easy thing to watch - not for Christians who have seen Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ."

And not for Jews worried that it may trigger old stereotypes about their role in the Crucifixion.

Koboi Mabuk Membakar Lumbung ...Saat ini keberadaan lembaga yang bergerak di bidang pendidikan dan pelayanan pesantren itu (Lembaga Pelayanan Pesantren dan Studi Islam (LP2SI) ) sedang diusik. Perkaranya berawal dari nota yang dilayangkan Kedutaan Besar Amerika Serikat ke Deplu. Isinya, Pemerintah Indonesia diminta membekukan seluruh aset serta reknening LP2S1. Amerika menuding lembaga di bawah payung Yayasan Al-Haramain ini tercemar aliran dana Al-Qaeda, yang konon biasa dipakai mengongkosi aksi teror.

IT Certification helps - isavvix : "Yes, IT certification helps!
An independent survey reveals that getting an IT certification can help professionals earn anywhere between US $1,198 and US $8,283 more every year, with an average gain of US $3,487 inspite of a tough job climate. The survey, conducted by the CertMag Certification magazine, interviewed thousands of IT professionals and compared the results."

Reuters | Yahoo Begins Rolling Out Its Own Search Technology

Spaceflight Now | Destination Mars | Road trip to Bonneville Crater continues for Spirit Spirit drove 21.6 meters (70.9 feet) to the north-northeast on Monday night (U.S. time), pushing its odometer to 108 meters (354 feet). The tiny Sojourner rover racked up 102 meters during its mission in 1997.
Proving to be a real Mars hotrod, the Spirit rover has become the most traveled vehicle on the Red Planet, surpassing the distance accumulated by the Pathfinder rover nearly seven years ago.

Mark Rittman's Oracle Weblog: Notes On Oracle 8i Partitioning Good resource on Oracle 8i partitioning feature

TheServerSide.com - EclipseCon 2004 Report In the Disneyland Hotel, 634 members of the Eclipse community from 23 countries representing 220 companies have gathered in the form of the Eclipse Foundation’s first annual conference, EclipseCon. The organizers expected half that number and were pleasantly surprised to sell out. The ratio of Eclipse committers to plug in developers was good, and attendees were excited to sit down to lunch next to the likes of Erich Gamma and ask him about the core platform. Eclipse isn’t a Mickey Mouse IDE anymore, it’s growing up.

Trust fades as war cry rings too hollow President Bush's appearance on "Meet the Press" on Sunday was the last straw.
While President Bush reiterated that he "expected there to be stockpiles of weapons," he also tweaked his language about the threat, and ended up looking more like a man covering his behind than the leader of a superpower...."If I might remind you, that in my language I called it 'a grave and gathering threat,'" Bush told Tim Russert...

Vancouver: world's most liveable city Our city scores as the best place to live in Economist survey, along with Melbourne and Vienna. Read more...

Sun ships J2SE 1.5, explains Eclipse stand- ADTmag.com Mark Bauhaus, VP of Sun's Java Web Services Group, characterized J2SE 1.5 as a "tremendous achievement for the Java development community," and called the new version a "key milestone in the Java technology roadmap.

As for Sun's position on Eclipse support, ...Sun so far has declined to join the Eclipse Foundation...

"...Any entry criteria requiring that Sun abandon the NetBeans open source platform directly conflicts with the concept of choice and diversity, the very bases that gave Eclipse its beginning. If this condition were to change, we would be happy to reconsider...."

Sun Chief Technology Evangelist Simon Phipps put the situation more bluntly during his keynote at EclipseCon. "Sun won't use Eclipse because we've already spent so much investing in NetBeans," he said. "Sun doesn't intend to produce an Eclipse product any more than IBM intends to produce a product on NetBeans."

Internet Week > Speech Recognition > W3C Publishes Voice Spec For The Web > February 3, 2004 The World Wide Web Consortium on Tuesday said it had published its latest standard proposal for building applications that support voice communications on the Web.

VoiceXML 2.0 lets web application developers create audio dialogs that feature synthesized speech, digitized audio, speech recognition, recording of spoken input and telephony. The proposed standard also enables recognition of audio signals generated when buttons are pushed on a touch-tone phone.

Internet Week > Java Application Development > Sun Offers Up JSE 1.5 Beta For Desktop Development > February 5, 2004 Sun Microsystems released Thursday a beta of its Java 2 Standard Edition 1.

Programs: Stripping Adware/spyware from PC Can Be Tricky Provide some information on options for removing adware or spyware.

SMTP+SPF: What SPF Is And Is Not Standard SMTP email is anonymous and forgeable.
SPF closes this loophole. SFP is primarily an anti-forgery effort. Any benefits in the area of reduced spam, worms, viruses, etc are pleasant side-effects. That said, if SPF causes spammers to send mail from their own domains, we'll be better able to identify and block those domains.

Republika Online : Momentum Arafah Dalam hadis sahih dinyatakan, ''Al-Hajju 'Arafah'' (haji adalah Arafah). Menurut para ahli fikih, hadis ini berarti wukuf di Arafah merupakan rukun haji yang paling utama (Mu'zhamu arkan al-hajj al-wuquf bi Arafah). Sebagai rukun utama, maka wukuf pada 8 Dzulhijjah di Padang Arafah menentukan keabsahan ibadah haji. Ini berarti, tiada ibadah haji tanpa wukuf di Arafah...

Republika Online: Pahala Berkurban ...Kurban, seperti yang diperintahkan oleh Allah dalam ayat di atas, hendaknya tidak hanya sebatas ritual simbolis, tetapi memiliki makna yang lebih luas, yaitu jiwa berkorban, kesalehan sosial, serta menajamkan mata hati kita untuk jeli melihat saudara-saudara kita yang di bawah kita....

Republika Online: Bank Syariah vs bank Convensional

FOXSports.com | PHOTOS: Halftime 'show'
Up close and personal with Janet Jackson during the Superbowl 38.

For Bush, a Tactical Retreat on Iraq (washingtonpost.com) In deciding to back an independent review of the intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, President Bush is implicitly conceding what he cannot publicly say: that something appears to be seriously wrong with the allegations he used to take the nation to war in Iraq...

Stampede Kills 244 Muslim Pilgrims (washingtonpost.com)

For NASA, images are everything
...Hundreds of images can be stored in the rovers' 256-megabyte computer memories, using software that compresses data at ratios of up to 24:1 without sacrificing key details,...