i seriously think that bayanihan linux should shift its efforts on making a filipino centric version of Ubuntu... slap a java sdk on this thing and you have one really complete windows replacement that can cover a wide range of users...

IMHO... KDE sucks...

after a crazy attempt to do semi-fine grained layering of persistence, business logic, front-end friendly wrappers with spring i was puzzled on how to proceed creating unit tests that would work on all layers... each layer has its own applicationcontext.xml file aptly named applicationcontext-orm.xml, applicationcontext-manager.xml and applicationcontext-wrapper.xml... my utility class for loading the application context file could only accept a single string... calling it twice would result in spring only remembering the last applicationcontext invoked...

RTFM as always... and true enough (obviously) there is support for loading those context files contained in a string array... my crappy spring application context utility class ended looking like this:

/*
 * Created on Aug 1, 2004
 *
 * Author Rogelio M. Nocom Jr.
 *
 */
package com.mobileindie.spring;


import org.apache.commons.logging.Log;
import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory;
import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.context.support.ClassPathXmlApplicationContext;



/**
 * @author nox
 * 
 * based on Richard Hightowers article "orm without the container" 
 *  
 */
public class ApplicationContextFactory {

    // logger
    private static Log log = LogFactory.getLog(ApplicationContextFactory.class);
    
    // path and filename of application context
    private static Object contextObject = null;
    
    // make sure we are not loading twice...
    private static int count = 0;

    public static void init(String _contextObject) {
        if (count >0) {
            log.error("Can't initialize the application context twice: THIS SHOULD ONLY HAPPEN DURING TESTING");
        }
        contextObject = _contextObject;
        count++;
    }
    
    public static void init(String[] _contextObject) {
        if (count >0) {
            log.error("Can't initialize the application context twice: THIS SHOULD ONLY HAPPEN DURING TESTING");
        }
        contextObject = _contextObject;
        count++;
    }
    
    public static ApplicationContext getApplicationContext() {
        if (contextObject == null) {
            throw new IllegalStateException("Application context not initialized");
        }
        else if (contextObject instanceof String) {
            String contextPath = (String) contextObject;
            return new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(contextPath);
        }
        else if (contextObject instanceof String[]) {
            String[] contextPath = (String[]) contextObject;
            return new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(contextPath);
        }
        else {
            throw new IllegalStateException("Context must be initialized via String or String[]");
        }
    }
}

in another ubuntu related news...

maybe if the philippine government would be wise enough to promote the use of open source on all government owned schools there *might* be a pretty good chance that we could have something similar to these:



here's the link to the original blog entry...

probably dont need to say this... but ubuntu just rocks! hoary is rather slick!

a few tips on upgrading...

make sure you update warty to the latest first before changing all the warty to hoary definitions on your sources.list... this is my current sources.list:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
## The following lines pertain to supported packages:
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary main restricted

## The following lines pertain to security updates:
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-security main restricted
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-security main restricted

## Uncomment after release to continue getting updates:
# deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary-updates main restricted

## IMPORTANT:
## Software from the following repositories are ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by
## the Ubuntu team, and may not be under a free licence. This means that
## software in these repositories WILL NOT receive any review or updates
## from the Ubuntu security team either. These packages are provided as a
## service to our users and nothing more.

## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'universe' and
## 'multiverse' repositories:
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary universe multiverse
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hoary universe multiverse

## Uncomment the following line to add Java software:
deb http://jrfonseca.dyndns.org/debian/ ./

## deb http://ubuntu.tower.net.de/ubuntu/ hoary java
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

works quite well with the degatto, although i havent tested the internal modem yet... to use the ndiswrapper i have to apt-get the latest 2.6.10 kernel as the stock 2.6.8 kernel doesnt have the module with it... after that added ndiswrapper-utils and do the usual ndiswrapper -i to load the binary drivers of my el cheapo CB54G MSI wireless lan card...

obligatory screenshot below: