tzb

Using comcast business class's SMTP server as a smarthost for Exim4 in Debian

I recently moved which triggered a recreation of my comcast business class account (for whatever reason, I had to cancel the account at the old location and create a fresh one at the new location rather than just transferring the account).

I used to be able to use smtp.comcast.net as my SMTP server (by setting dc_smarthost='smtp.comcast.net' in /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf and running sudo update-exim4.conf), but this is no longer possible. I now have to use the SMTP server specified in for my account in the comcast business site (followed by ::587) along with authentication and TLS encryption (by adding my comcast credentials to /etc/exim4/passwd.client and MAIN_TLS_ENABLE = true
to /etc/exim4/exim4.conf.localmacros). All this is well and good, and I consider it in an upgrade, but for some reason, Exim4+GnuTLS simply could not get along with comcast's TLS implementation.

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tzb

Wallach's "Rebooting the CS Publication Process"

I just finished reading Dan S. Wallach's Rebooting the CS Publication Process, which proposes an arXiv-like publication system for Computer Science publications. It's a good read, even if it's a little more heavily focused on the issues of university academics than industrial researchers that also use the publication system (most of the current problems described and potential benefits that would arise translate well, though).

I certainly agree that a paper's influence metric should value more than just a simple citation count, and the CSpub system is designed around facilitating a change in that direction. I'm not sure about the query-based citation ideas, certainly if there's any kind of "auto-update" mechanism that changes referring papers references to "upgraded" papers.

Nevertheless, it's a good read. Something needs to change in the system. Reviewers must be overloaded these days (in my most charitable judgement), because many of the reviews I see are entirely too weak (e.g., a weak reject with no explanation or suggestion for improvement).

EDIT (2010-08-17): researchr.org seems to implement some of these ideas (publication interlinking and a "credit" metric of some kind.
tzb

Recompile-on-save in Emacs

From time to time, I find myself trying to remember how to get Emacs to automatically recompile (or re-run pdflatex or whatever) each time I save a file. This isn't something to put in a .emacs file because most of the time this isn't desirable, but when writing or coding, it's nice not to have to think about re-running the build.


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tzb

Getting the java.util.logging facilities to log messages of ALL levels...

I spent some time today trying to figure out how to get my FINE, FINER, and FINEST log messages to print to the console without having to programmatically configure the Logger objects and without having to tweak the command line. Essentially, I wanted to configure the levels using a call to LogManager.readConfiguration(...) at the start of my program's execution.

( Collapse ) Update (2010-12-10): Be a little more careful about loading the Logging.properties file. Throwing an exception from a static initializer will lead to a class load failure.
tzb

Installing WAS 6.0 on RHEL 5u4

Recently, I found myself installing Websphere Application Server 6.0 on a current Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5u4 for x64. I was running
$ sudo ./install
from the WAS directory on the installation media, but I kept running into problems during the installation. ( Collapse )