MagSafe is good …when you have a battery

The battery in my MacBook Pro died on Friday. “No batteries available” says the battery meter. I found out that Apple are replacing some batteries in MacBook Pro 15″. I checked mine and I am eligible for a new one. They say it should take 3-5 days, but I guess that’s a bit to optimistic considering I live in Colombo.

I use hibernation instead of just normal suspend now. It works fine, even if it takes some extra time to get started again. The biggest problem is the MagSafe Connector. It is designed to let go easily. That’s OK when the battery kicks in, but without it the MacBook just reboots if I accidently move the computer to far or in the wrong direction. It’s impossible to work in bed or in a sofa. I want my battery.

Open Source Java - what about JTA?

I’m all for Open Sourcing Java. Mostly because I think people exaggerate the dangers of forking. The best thing with a free Java is that it will be included in all Linux distributions. I still have to build my own RPM with spec files from JPackage when I install a new server.

But right now I’m dealing with an even more irritating thing. I’m installing Tomcat 5.5 from JPackage. It depends on JTA and JPackage are not allowed to redistribute that little (8.5 Kb) marvelous set of interfaces. So I have to go through the hassle of downloading a src.rpm, then go to sun.com to find JTA, accept license agreement, download and put it in the right directory and execute rpmbuild -bb SPEC/jta.spec. All this to guard the vast amount of intellectual property embedded into the JTA spec?

I noticed that a lot of formerly protected API:s have been (thanks to Glassfish it seems) uploaded to the Maven2 repository at ibilio, but not JTA and JTS.

Please, fix this.

Why do all hosting providers suck?

I have been hosting stuff for myself and different companies for years. The first was a hosting provider in Sweden. They where hosting spammers so my email was often blocked by other mail servers. The price was high and customer support non existent.

It was normal web hosting on a shared server. When I wanted to host Java stuff I needed something bigger. I found JCentric and it looked perfect. I got a Virtual Private Server with excellent Java support for a good price. I was happy. Then I needed to add some more memory, but the email to support bounced. I tried to call them but there was no answer. The owners just disappeared from the face of the earth. I stopped my payments and moved. They didn’t even notice that the money stopped coming.

The next time I was going to do more research before I put anything on a server. I found jvds.com. I read all I could find about them. Searched forums and mailing lists. They seemed really solid. Good support by IM and IRC, rapid answers to all my questions, happy users in the support forum. The owner, Rus, was really good. I was very satisfied. I recommended JVDS to friends and companies I worked for.

Then Rus sold JVDS to a bigger company. Fortress Integrated Technologies I think they are called. Things started to fall apart. The IM and IRC support closed down. No Rus anymore. The support forum began to be filled with the dreaded “Where are you?” and “I’ve waited three weeks!”. The support staff was really, really bad. They didn’t know Unix at all.

Then my credit card got copied somewhere and used by someone partying in Cannes and Nice. I had to block it in the middle of my vacation, without Internet access. My Paypal subscription to JVDS failed. Without any warning, my VPS was shut down.

Now I’ve spent hour mailing JVDS/Fortress Integrated Technologies to get it back online. I’ve payed the outstanding amount through Paypal and mailed all references to billing and support again and again. They promise to get back to me, but that never happens. For all I know they might have recycled the disk already.

I’m moving away from them for sure (my server and several others that I have some influence over), but I want my latest data that I don’t have a fresh backup of.

Now I’m on my own server (no VPS) at LayeredTech. So far they have been good. Not exceptional, but good. But who knows what will happen next. People say good things about Contegix and KGB Internet. But for all I know all that can be temporary…

The lesson for me is to have fresh offsite backups and an environment that easily can be installed somewhere else in a matter of hours. Never let your hosting provider manage your DNS records. You don’t want to be locked in.

Because, by default, all hosting providers suck.

Update: I will try to get my latest monthly payment back, since I haven’t been able to access my server for a month. The way seems to be to open a Paypal dispute. We’ll see what happens.