Ask a lawyer for a 100 percent assurance of trademark protection and he'll give you plain advice: pay me to send a nasty letter to everyone who utters your name without due care and specificity, or I can't guarantee you that your mark won't slip out of your fingers and into the public domain. He won't be lying: 100 percent certainty is the kind of unrealistic objective that requires extraordinary, self-defeating measures to achieve.

Ask a security consultant to eliminate 100 percent of the shoplifting in your store, and he'll tell you to cavity-search all customers on the way out. Sure, it's effective, but if you want to stay in business, you'll need to consider trading off smugly complete certainty for a cheaper and more friendly 95 percent (or even 75 percent!) solution: say, magnetic door-monitors and a couple of plainclothes rent-a-cops in the aisles. Your legal counsel works for you: he's capable of giving you the same kind of 95 percent solution that your security outfit is -- and if he isn't, maybe it's time to seek better counsel.

Sound familiar when it comes to a technology(TM) that we all know and love(TM)? Applied to Java, it's way past time for Sun to loosen up a little bit with Java and the trademarks. Everyone knows who Java belongs to. It would serve Java and Sun to not pursue the trademark and copyright issues around Java so much and push a bit more on ways to make it ubiquitous.

So Ken's hack was a Jini based mood ring. The goal was to have as many people as possible use the application and register their mood. The display would average out everyone's mood and give a group reading. And it was coming together nicely until today when the network issues here got in the way. And then there was an issue with firewalls. And then... And then it worked! Happy happy. Time to package things up and get them out and get ready to demo it for the crowd.

Except, well... The distribution method we picked (Daniel and I were helping Ken here and there with things) was Java Web Start. We packaged things up, put them on a server, and tried to run. And tried. And tried. And tried. After debugging several issues, we got things to work—sorta. But the app was crashy. It would freeze after just a few uses. Not good. We were is despair. We almost gave up. We then packaged it up as a double-clickable Mac OS X .app bundle. And it worked just fine. For some reason the same code worked better when packaged up in an application format than when it was distributed through the supposedly easy to use Java Web Start infrastructure. Who knows why... Maybe there was just too much caffeine in everyone's system. Maybe Java Web Start and Jini don't get along. Those are questions for another day. The hack must go on!

With the working application, we got on stage (at 3AM in the morning by the way) and demoed it. And then we had everyone download and run the application on their machines over the wireless network and join in the fun. Luckily, Ken's server stayed up and the demo survived the onslaught. Whoo!

As I write this, it's a bit after 4AM in Detroit and the hacks are still going on. It's just that kind of conference. Unmistakable. Incredible. So many conferences could learn a few things from this one. I'll be back. But first, I'm going to sleep.

The problem with Ant is that it violates something we learned with Unix. Tasks aren't composable.

And you know, he's right. Ant uses the file system to store state between tasks. There's no inherit way to pass the results of one task to another. Sure, you can set variables and what not, but... Ah well. The way Ant is today is pretty much where it's going to be for a while. Lots of people are using it and inertia is powerful indeed. Look at make for an example of what inertia will do. (Disclaimer: I'm not working directly on Ant anymore. That's the domain of the Apache Ant Project)

The cool thing about having your ideas out there in public source code is that everybody can help improve it. The odd thing is that everybody can critique design decisions that you made a long long long time ago. But that's actually cool in my book. How often do you get an uber-hacker like Ken critiquing something that you did? In a friendly, thoughtful, and well argued way? In any case, I think Ken is trying to rekindle my interest in building tools again. You never know...

While here in Cleveland, Maciej Zawadzki (of UrbanCode) and Dan Steinberg (Editor-in-Chief of Java.net) asked me to speak at the Cleveland Java User Group tonight. I'll be revisiting some history and talking about the creation of Tomcat and Ant as well as some of the other interesting (at least to me) parts of my so-called career. Along the way, I hope to suck the audience into a Q&A free for all. If you're in the Cleveland area, come and check it out.

So, you probably didn't care to know about the way that Java.net is structured, but this downtime today brings up the fact that for the most up to date information on the site, you should just bookmark today.java.net instead of using www.java.net. You'll get fresher content and, at least today while the machine that hosts the front page is down, you'll actually be able to access the site.

The nicest shift will be the easy availability of wireless access in the conference. It was nice that there were pockets of internet access at JavaOne, but a conference of this scale which has made wireless technologies a focus should have working 802.11 access throughout the conference space.

When I first chose XML as the configuration format for Ant, I figured it was a great way to replace the simple properties files that I was using before with a structure that could define hierarchical data. However, as time goes on the XML format becomes more and more burdensome to actually getting something done. Other people in other fields have noticed this XML burden as well and have come up with innovative solutions. One excellent example is the Textile human web text generator which turns a simple text format into HTML markup.

For a long time, I've thought that the way to alleviate the burden for Ant would be to use some sort of scripting language to front end the Ant task object model under the covers. After all, Ant build files have been picking up more and more logic control primitives and it's become a scripting language—even though many people including myself have cried out against it. In fact, as noted by Ken Arnold in a conversation yesterday, it was probably inevitable that the language has become as procedural as it has.

In that conversation with Ken, he forwarded his idea that the thing to do would be to figure out how to use the current Ant object model from some sort of scripting layer and that if he had a few months to spare, he'd go play with it. The funny thing is that I've been getting email from Jonathan Simon over the last couple of weeks about doing exactly this. Turns out that Jonathan is one of the contributors here on Java.net and wrote a piece about scripting with Jython instead of XML. I ran into him here at JavaOne and after my apologizing for my not keeping up with his mail (I'm so in need of a mail-only day), we talked a bit more about his ideas and where he's at. I think he's onto something. And based on the conversations I've had with Ken and several other people, I'm really enthusiastic to see what happens.

Jonathan has taken these thoughts to the next level in an email to the ant-dev mailing list. While I'm no longer involved in the day-to-day development of Ant, I wish Jonathan well in his efforts to look at different and potentially better ways to use Ant. And I think he's onto something great here. Hopefully his ideas will be well received by the Ant developer and user communities and will grow into a great implementation.

"A shared CVS repository, wiki's and a bunch of weblogs do not a community make. Sun might be able to get bunches of communities around individual projects, but growing a community across projects takes time and effort. It doesn't happen by magic. Jakarta (with all its faults) is the only example I'm aware of that actually has a flourishing community across some subsection of its many subprojects."

I agree. Jakarta does set the bar It will be interesting if there truly will be a coding community here or if it will be the JavaForge of a thousand dead uninteresting projects. Anthony Eden goes further and posts:

"I am having mixed feelings about java.net. I feel like it may be too early to judge the importance of this "community" web site, but I can't help it. First off it seems like too little too late. There are already a substantial number of communities for Java development consisting of a mix of developers with a wide variety of skills and interests. What does java.net offer that wasn't already provided by these other sites? So far not much other than the fact that it is "blessed" by Sun. Of course this has worked for them in the past, so why change now."

I agree with Anthony that something like Java.net is a bit late. Danese and Richard have been trying to do something like this for a very long time inside of Sun.

The real question is not timing though. The timing is what it is. The real question is: Will it be too little?

This is a tough one. And the answer won't be in for a while. Part of the answer will be in what Sun's reaction to this community is. And part of it will be found in the people who show up to build that community. So then that leads to another question: Why should you participate?

That's a question I don't have an answer to give to anybody else. For myself the answer is: I'm participating on the blogging side of things because I want Java to become more open. When I worked at Sun I fought many battles for that to happen. Some succeeded. Some didn't. But even though I'm no longer inside of Sun (two years of freedom this month!), I still want Java to succeed. And for that to happen, it has to become more open. So I blog on Java.net in an attempt to help.

Left hand. Right hand. Come on Sun web team. Let's not let the fact that java.sun.com and Java.net are run by two different organizations within Sun lead to silly omissions such as this. Not having a link in from java.sun.com is almost as embarrassing as not having the new java.com site up so that the demo during the keynote would work.

Is the content moderated?

Nope. At least not under normal circumstances. If one of us said something libelous, then moderation would probably kick in. But until we hit that point, we should be free from moderation. Daniel Steinberg, the Editor-in-Chief of the site, wants to take a very hands off approach and is actually quite proud that they aren't editing content. There's not even the customary Sun trademark police after us to make sure that we say "Java technology" the right way.

One of the measures of whether or not Java.net will be a success will be if this no-moderation policy remains in place.

Can these bloggers speak their true feelings (can they cuss) - or will Sun remove their posting?

Hell, I hope we can say what we want to. Because if we can't, the shit will hit the fan.

Will [bloggers] maintain this as their primary blog, or will personal ones continue to be updated?

I can't speak for anybody else blogging on the Java.net site, but my primary blog will remain at http;//x180.net/Blog. I can't wait until the tech is in place where I can post to my personal blog with a category and have the content show up on Java.net (as well as another one for general O'Reilly Network blog posts). Till then, I'll be mirroring content as appropriate. Almost all of my writing will always show up on my personal blog while the Java.net blog will be more focused content.

Are we enterering the world of your work blog and your home blog?

Lots of people are already maintaining multiple blogs. The real trick is for the tools to better support the concept so that we can post once and publish to multiple places.

Matt then goes on to make the comment:

Truth is, I probably won't even read them unless they get an RSS feed for all new postings like java.blogs has.

Many people wanted this and, voila, here it is.

The other item that made an impression was the worst part of the keynote: The unveiling of the new logo. There was a drumroll. There were flashing lights. And then, the old logo was pulled down and the new, simplified one was shown. And guess what? It's the same one that is on the outside of the Moscone center. The same one that has already shown up on the web over the weekend. Come on, if you're going to try to show something off and make a big production, at least make sure that the thing behind the curtain hasn't been seen by anybody in the audience. Isn't that the first rule of marketing?

Luckily, instead of getting up early and standing in line to make the keynote, Jason (my roomie for the week) and I have discovered another much more developer-friendly way to soak up the information first thing in the morning. Instead of waking up an hour and a half before the keynote, walking two blocks over to Moscone and standing in line, we woke up two minutes before start time, fired up a laptop, connected up to the net using broadband, and tuned into the RealVideo stream. Then we made breakfast while watching the haps at Moscone.

Neither of us are ready to see the world, but yet we're watching the keynote live. Ain't technology grand?

Fun can even be found the night before JavaOne. For example, a few friends decided Monday night to do dinner. Those friends invited other friends and before you could say "Boo" there was barely a table big enough at Jillians (in the Metreon) to hold us all. Even though it started as just a group of friends, we ended up with a table full of people meeting each other for the first time. And great conversation ensued—despite the poor service of the overworked restaurant staff. (I recommend the Salmon. Yummy.)

After dinner, we headed over to XYZ ( the bar at the W Hotel) to hang out with the J2EE team. Drinks all around and lots of good conversation. The J2EE team was happy to have shipped J2EE 1.4 Beta 2 and were celebrating. I heard words like "exciting", "fast", and "groundbreaking" used to describe it. Mind you, I haven't used it yet, so I can't personally certify those comments, but I can say that the Kamikazes at the XYZ are quite stellar. And it was really fun to hang out with my old teammates.

So be sure to either get some rest in the morning, or take a nap in the afternoon. Sure the talks are good to go to, but you should really get out and about to truly enjoy JavaOne.

The second JavaOne was where the promise of Java really started to appear. People had started figuring out what Java was for—and where it needed more work. I had already built several web applications using Java, and I was convinced that it was going to be a hit on the server side. Other people inside and outside of Sun were also starting to sing the praises of server side Java and—thanks to following the sage advice of John Gage to talk with lots of people—I got to meet most of them. The sharpest memory I have of that conference is sitting in the chairs wondering what it would be like to be one of the people working at JavaSoft—one of the people that got to shape the technology.

I soon got to find out what it would be like. By the third JavaOne, I had moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and was working for Sun on the Java Web Server. Somehow I had managed to get a job with a group that eventually became part of the J2EE team. I had an office just down the hall from James Gosling, and things were happening fast. After that JavaOne, I started working on the Servlet API and got to start a little project known as Tomcat to rework the Servlet reference implementation.

Times have changed since then. Tomcat was released to the Apache Software Foundation. Dozens of APIs came into the platform. The internet bubble came and went. Wars have been fought. And yet, here we are. In San Francisco to do it once again. Java is a lot different now than it was in 1996. The world is different. And each of us attending this one that attended that first JavaOne are different as well.

As for me, I no longer work for Sun, but even so JavaOne has become a metronome in my life. I can pinpoint events around each year's conference. At most importantly, the first JavaOne—going to the talks by engineers describing the internals of the VM and inspired by John Gage to become a better engineer myself—was a springboard to everything that came after in my career. And this year, the metronome ticks once more.