<plugin>
  <artifactId>maven-assembly-plugin</artifactId>
  <configuration>
    <archive>
      <manifest>
        <mainClass>fully.qualified.MainClass</mainClass>
      </manifest>
    </archive>
    <descriptorRefs>
      <descriptorRef>jar-with-dependencies</descriptorRef>
    </descriptorRefs>
  </configuration>
</plugin>

Running the mvn assembly:assembly command created the desired JAR file containing the MANIFEST file that runs the right Class on double clicking the JAR.

Unfortunately since the update I am not able to use the Mylyn connector inside my Springsource Tool Suite with JIRA. When I try to update an issues I get an error message and every time I open an issue Mylyn thinks it has incoming changes. It seems like this has something to do with the date format because the created and updated date are not displayed anymore. I experimented a bit with the date pattern settings of the connector as described in the Atlassian Connector FAQ but that did not solve the problems.

I then tried to install the Atlassian Connector for Eclipse but its  dependencies were not satisfied by the STS installation – I hope they release version 2.3.3 soon because this issue should be fixed then.

First I encourage every Java developer to read chapter 3 of Effective Java from Joshua Bloch – which is available online here (the whole book is great but chapter 3 deals with methods common to all objects). Basically chapter 3  says you have to obey the contracts when overriding equals (item 7) and to always override hashCode when overriding equals (item 8). These contracts are also documented in the Java API doc.

When using Hibernate for persistence you have to decide if and how to implement hashCode and equals with that background and with the knowledge of your domain model. There is a wiki document discussing this topic which you should read. The most important headline here is “Separating object id and business key”.

In my applications this means that for example the important parts of a User class looks like:

@Entity
public class User {

	@Id
	@GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.IDENTITY)
	private Long id;

	@Column(unique = true)
	private String login;

}

In this case the id property is the object id used by Hibernate to identify the object and the login property is the business key. The hashCode and equals method of this User class look like:

@Override
public int hashCode() {
	final int prime = 31;
	int result = 1;
	result = prime * result + ((getLogin() == null) ? 0 : getLogin().hashCode());
	return result;
}

@Override
public boolean equals(final Object obj) {
	if (this == obj) {
		return true;
	}
	if (obj == null) {
		return false;
	}
	if (Hibernate.getClass(this) != Hibernate.getClass(obj)) {
		return false;
	}
	final User other = (User) obj;
	if (getLogin() == null) {
		if (other.getLogin() != null) {
			return false;
		}
	} else if (!getLogin().equals(other.getLogin())) {
		return false;
	}
	return true;
}

It is important to notice that only the business key (the login property) is used for calculating the hashCode and to check if two objects are equal otherwise you will get strange behavior in HashSet and HashMaps containing objects of this type.

Configuring ÜberTwitter with our StatusNet installation was very simple, I just had to select MDS as connection type and enter the URL of the installation with /api added to it.

Getting StatusNet working with twhirl was a bit more difficult because there was no way to configure the URL of the server in the UI. So I added an identi.ca account and searched for the location where the configuration is stored. I found it in

C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\de.makesoft.twhirl\Local Store\accounts.xml


I just had to change the value of laconicaSrv to the location of our server and everything worked as desired.

I found this bug entry for the Sun Java VM with some interesting suggestions. In my case the problem was a wrong configuration of the /etc/hosts file. The command hostname -i always resolved to the loopback device 127.0.0.1 – after adapting the /etc/hosts file so that hostname -i resolved the real IP address I was able to connect my jconsole.

This KB article describes how to add the policy to older servers so that it is possible to allow access in the IT policy again. The same procedure works for the BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express, which was released last week. This version has only about 45 IT policy rules and the rule “Disable Organizer Data Access for Social Networking Applications” is missing too.

My problem was that the installer always complained about not being able to start the converter service with the following message:

VMware vCenter Converter Standalone — Error 1920
Service VMware vCenter Converter Server (vmware-converter-server) failed to start. Verify that you have sufficient privileges to start system services.

After doing some web research with finding a lot of useless tips I found this blog post showing up a very easy solution: I had to add a group called “Domain Admins” because it did not exist on the German version of our Small Business Server. This is why I always try to install the original English version of operating systems when available and our new Small Business Server 2008 will be in English.

The second thing was that the keyboard layout was totally messed up when connecting to my tightvnc server. Luckily I found this forum post with the solution. I just had to run the following command:

gconftool --set /desktop/gnome/peripherals/keyboard/kbd/layouts --type List --list-type String [aa]

I have to admit that I do not fully understand what that command really does, but it fixed my problem.

I am using this really nice gadget now since three days and these are the things that I like the most:

• Better camera – now 3 Megapixel
• the Trackpad works very well and will never get stuck like the Trackball did sometimes
• the battery life is much better

So far I am very happy with the Bold 9700. I think it is a legitimate successor to my Bold 9000 which I used to call “the best BlackBerry I ever had” – until I got the Bold 9700

Another problem my grandma had with it was that the Windows Media player always stopped directly after starting the video in the browser. Opening the URL in the standalone Windows Media Player application showed the error that the protocol was not supported. Doing a quick google search for that error brought up this Microsoft knowledge base article. After opening a command line running under the Administrator account issuing the following command resolved the problem:

regsvr32 wmnetmgr.dll