Alan Williamson

 Alan Wiliamson's Blog As the popular Belinda Carlisle song, Heaven is a place on earth, goes, while we talk about all this virtualised computing power and clouds, somewhere there is a real physical CPU doing real work somewhere on earth. In some data center your cloud application is taking up physical space, using real power, creating an impact somewhere, and flashing an LED in some network panel. We often get ahead of ourselves and talk about the unlimited cloud computing available to us, but in reality everything has limits, and cloud computing is no different. If there were no limits, then why does Amazon insist in only giving the majority of people only 20 EC2 images out of the gate without first asking permission from the Amazon head teacher, "please sir can we have some more"? Rory Cellan-Jones, a BBC journalist, has had the good fortune of seeing one of the... (more)

What's in a Specification?

This past month gave me a newfound respect for specification writers. I remember when James Davidson marshaled the early Servlet API and the lively discussions that ensued on the mailing lists, basically coordinating the entire operation (no JCP in those days, eh?!). The point is, at least there were discussions and, more important, a formalized document was produced at the end of the process. This past month I found myself dabbling in a number of technologies that sat outside the comfort of Javaland. For a project I'm involved with (Blog-City), I was tasked with building the XM... (more)

'Is the End Nigh?'

Welcome to your monthly dose of controversy - the part of the magazine where I ask you to push back the keyboard, stop debugging that Java class that has been bugging you for the past couple of hours and get your shot of caffeine as I invite you to take a look at this crazy Java universe through the eyes of a British company. It's been an interesting month for us here in Scotland, so I have a lot to tell you. As usual, we'll contrast our findings to a personality trait. This month I think we'll look at gullibility. That's one that all of us at some point in our lives have been su... (more)

Java Is for Life... Not Just for Christmas

Well, here we are again, decking the halls with boughs of holly, fa-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la, and all that sort of nonsense... The time of year when the opportunity to steal a kiss from the secretary isn't an actionable offense (assuming, of course, that you catch her - or him - under the mistletoe and not just as you're waiting for the printer to finish. So be careful). It's been an exciting year, but I'm going to leave my reflection article to the next one, when it'll be the millennium and - with any luck - we should all be here in one piece. As we run up to the end of the cent... (more)

To Our CFML Friends: We Welcome You

Fly me to the moon...let me walk among the stars" or at least America. I am at present sitting in a Continental plane flying over the beautiful Scottish islands, sun beaming in through the window, contemplating the week ahead of me. My destination is Toronto where I will be attending the CFML conference, CFNORTH. It has been very interesting to watch how the CFML community is reacting to the Java releases. Their responses serve to illustrate the point I have been banging on about for the last few months: outside of the Java community, we still have a long way to go in the educat... (more)