BangBits

While web applications in browsers are continuing to improve, they still can't quite compete with desktop applications. One of the examples of this is the Novell Groupwise client. Running 64bit Ubuntu poses a bit of a challenge, since Novell only offer prepackaged rpm bundles for 32bit Red Hat and Suse systems. Note, some of this stuff is inspired by Scott's blog entry earlier this year, however I could never get his howto to work for me. Start by downloading the Groupwise client RPM onto a 32bit version of Ubuntu (I use a 32bit image in VirtualBox). I'm not sure from where I found mine, but it's out there if you search a little. You should end up having a file called something like novell-groupwise-gwclient-7.0.3-20080310.i386.rpm To convert this into a debian package, you are going to need alien. Get this by typing: sudo apt-get install alien With alien, you can convert the RPM into DEB by typing: sudo alien -c novell-groupwise-gwclient-7.0.3-20080310.i386.rpm Now yo...

The official Ubuntu 8.04 repositories comes with a slightly outdated version of Java, namely 1.6.0 update 6. If you issue a java -version you can assert this is the case: Unfortunately, if you are running Compiz, you are likely to then suffer the notorious gray rectangle syndrome as described in 6429775 , 6434227 and 6632124 among others. The good news, the problem appears to be fixed in update 10. Installing the latest JDK Start by downloading the JDK for your architecture from SUN. Take the .bin file, extract it by running it as a shell script: sh jdk-6u10-rc2-bin-b32-linux-amd64-12_sep_2008.bin This will create a new folder called /jdk1.6.0_10. Rename this to java-6-sun-1.6.0.10 (just to remain consistent with how Debian/Ubuntu refers to JDK's) and move this folder to /usr/lib/jvm: sudo mv jdk1.6.0_10 java-6-sun-1.6.0.10 sudo mv jdk1.6.0_10/ /usr/lib/jvm Officially you are suppose to use the update-java-alternatives command when using a Debian distro, but frankly I find it ea...

Why it was made Although NetBeans is capable of suggesting and auto-inserting @SuppressWarnings, it doesn't actually provide code completion or documentation for these values. Indeed, as I've blogged about before , it is tricky to track down the exact enumeration and semantics of these magic values. This is due to the fact that they are entirely dependent on the compiler and IDE. This plugin adds support for the values currently supported by NetBeans 6.1, namely "cast", "deprecation", "divzero", "empty-statement", "empty", "fallthrough", "finally", "serial" and "unchecked". It also tries to explain how and when to use them. How it was made Creating plugins for NetBeans is relatively easy if you start by grabbing existing code and have invested in the RCP book. Especially blogs like Geertjan' s and Sandip's are virtual goldmines. So for this one, I used the Geertjan's blog entr...