rant

humour / rant — 2 Comments
26
Oct 09

1st of April Joke Gone Wild (updated)

1st of April is a great day, lots of cool hoaxes all day around. We at ZeroTurnaround have contributed with DNArebel – Improve Yourself Today and JavaRebel Goes AI. Usually everything ends once the day is over.

This year’s dow.ngra.de hoax, Microsoft acquires ZeroTurnaround for undisclosed amount has amused us even months later. Couple of weeks ago we spotted a Chinese article that listed all the acquisitions of Microsoft during the past year. And we made the list!

Today we found the news from a business systems news & analysis page, FSN.

FSN provides finance professionals around the globe with independent news, vital analysis and deep insight about key developments in the world of business and accounting systems. We debunk the technical jargon of the IT world and present leading-edge issues in a way that is accessible and relevant to business decision makers.

We’re in the article Shifting Sands (EDIT: link is dead now) with players like Salesforce, Digita, Google, Oracle, Microsoft and HP :)

A fact taken from a blog post on 1st of April, not confirmed from either parties and presented in an article with vital analysis and deep insight.

Of course there is an easy fix. Either Microsoft acquires the Java productivity tooling company ZeroTurnaround or FSN notices a referrer from this blog and makes changes. I’ll keep you posted on who wins the race.

Microsoft acquired ZeroTurnaround by FSN

rant — 9 Comments
31
Mar 09

Netbeans – running programs the easy way

I have not been so angry at an IDE for a while, arrrrrrrghhh, rant follows.

How hard can it be to add JVM arguments to the run configuration of an application when running it from an IDE? Lets say I want to add -Dsuperboost=true or just ~/myconf/.myconf to the Java application?

Eclipse has a green button and Run configurations under it, there you can specify Program arguments and VM arguments. Easy.

IntelliJ Idea has a green button and Edit Configurations under it, there you can specify Program parameters and VM parameters. Easy.

Netbeans has a green button. Thats it. Where are the options? When you check project Properties there is Build » Compiling & Packaging but no run. Googling for such a generic topic does not help me much, just aggrevates more.

Finally I realize, everything is ANT based, I’ll just modify the build.xml files used. The toplevel build.xml includes project/nbproject/build-impl.xml, this includes some NetBeans bundled build.xml. Okay, this is not the best place.

I find a file named project.properties with two options in it, javac.compilerargs and javac.source. Jackpot, I’ve found the hidden settings, I just need to figure out the magic names that I could add. Some more googling and trying out different flags from different NetBeans versions I’m still out of luck, I’m unable to guess the names.

Finally I went through NetBeans/harness/build.xml » common.xml » run.xml and the magic secret hidden flags follow:

  • run.jdkhome
  • run.args.common
  • run.args.prepared
  • run.args
  • run.args.extra

Weeehah! Now I need only to add “-noverify”. No, more like “-J-Xverify:none”, argghh.

rant — 4 Comments
18
Mar 09

When “Do no evil” becomes “Hear no evil”

After 4 cancellation requests, 2 forum requests, 1 billing support request and 2 months of waiting I’m posting this blog post to let out some steam and hopefully one day get my money back. A story of what happens when the same company offers the service and the payment but no support.

It all started out as a cool infrastructure task. Migrating email to Google Apps. Its easy, quick and on top of that there is a 30 day FREE trial. Wow!

I started with the task in the beginning of January. I created an account at Google Apps, paid for the number of users and was off. 10 minutes later I noticed that I should have used a shorter URL for the domain, so I thought I’ll ditch the mail prefix from the domain.

FAQ says I have to create a new account. Bummer. I created a new account, paid for the number of users again, twiddled with settings and email was working! Easy. I told you so! All I had to do now was cancel the premium service for the longer domain version and I would be all done.

From this point on things got hairy. Firstly as I had tons of tabs open in my browser, I managed to cancel the premium service for the shorter domain. Ok, happens. I’ll just upgrade later on again. Then I cancelled the long URL. Two premium accounts downgraded, one deleted and other running in free edition now.

Of course Google Checkout can’t follow this kind of stuff in real time and I had been charged for both of the services. I contacted the seller from Google Checkout and sent them a message to make my fiddling clear.

Nothing happened. A week later as the funds were still charged I contacted them again via Google Checkout. No luck.

Maybe I’ll have to wait the 30 day for it to be paid back because the free period was also 30 days? Sure thing. Waited couple of more weeks, nothing changed.

Things are getting scary. There is no support if you don’t have a premium account and I’ve just cancelled my two premiums. It seems that the only way to get them talking to me is pay them money, but they already owe me money!

I write to their support forum, twice! Not a single answer during the months. Okay, this is weird already.

I’m able to find a link, that says that one can ask for real support if the question is concerned with billing. Weeehaah, I’m sure I’m saved now! Nope. I made my case using their web form and you know what? No answer!

Usually I would take a step back and talk to the payment mediator, either PayPal or Moneybookers but you know what, Google is handling my payment also (via Google Checkout) and I can’t find a way to report to Google that Google stole my money.

Newer Entries →