Lets come forward

I don't know but it really gives me eternal happiness to help people around and i feel that's the way to live.
we should always be concerned about others around. in recent times i have come across quite some statements , calls , adds , interview which attracts me to come forward for such good cause.

I came across -
CHILDLINE (1098) -- Country's first toll-free tele-helpline for street children in distress. just dail 1098.
WorldVision -- Here you can sponsor a child across the world , you can donate money and much more.

I am trying to spread the word here and would like to get involved with them. i think your contribution is important no matter big or small.
I also feel that these organizations need to come forward and bring greater transparency to common people. there is help available but most of the time people dont know about it.
I request you all to share your experiences and association if any with any such organizations/NGOs.

The brand Sapient

Its been more than a year now at Sapient , i still remember few people used to tell me don't change company ,its not a good time(at end of 2008) , few told that you cant even survive 6 months at sapient due to slogging etc.. but i feel i made a right move and joined the right company.
I can say its my kind of place. some of the things I really enjoy here is the open culture and unlimited freedom.
Sapient is very unique in its own way. we follow different kind of processes here to make things work better.

Some of the terms i learned/heard being at sapient (call it sapient lingo)--
Retrofit
Caveats
Sync-up
Gated
Head-on
Triage

I wanna thank Rupinder for providing me an opportunity to join Sapient in the worst of economic conditions way back in Oct,2008.
i am lucky indeed :-)

Why just 3 Idiots? Why not the entire nation?

I truly enjoyed the latest flick of Aamir, the preacher. It’s interesting to see Bollywood coming up with good messages and this time for better education system. Its second tryst by Aamir, the first one was taare zamine per, where he tried to show the challenges around a student’s life and now again in 3 idiots he has brought some good points about the process we follow in colleges.
Although this movie is loosely based on Chetan bhagat’s 5 point someone but it has got its own charm and an entertaining way to put across the strong message. I believe it’s a good eye opener for all Indians including students, parents, teachers and honorable education minister. It a must watch for one and all. If you think you will go and get tickets at show time then you are wrong. Go with an advance booking. By the way I managed to get ticket in black :-)

Signed Applet and how to make a signed jar

A signed Applet is a trusted Applet (applet will reside inside a jar). In order to get access to the file system all jar files in an application must be signed. By default for security reasons, Java applets are contained within a sandbox.

This means that the applets can’t do anything, which might be threatening to the user’s machine (e.g. reading, writing or deleting local files, putting up message windows, or querying various system parameters).

Early browsers had no provisions for Java applets to reach outside of the sandbox. Recent browsers, however have provisions to give “trusted” applets the ability to work outside the sandbox. For this power to be granted to one of your applets, the applet’s code must be digitally signed with your unforgettable digital ID, and then the user must state that he trusts applets signed with your ID. The mistrusted applet can request to have privileges outside the sand box but will have to request the user for privileges every time it executes. But with the trusted applet the user can choose to remember their answer to the request, which means they won’t be asked again.

Let’s see what it takes to create your own signed applets. There are few tools given by Sun to create your own signed applets. It mainly comprise of three main steps.

(1) First step is generating a keypair with the keytool.

D:/j2sdk1.5/bin/keytool -genkey -alias green -keypass greenpass

green is the alias for the keypair, and greenpass is the password to access that alias(or keypair). The keypair
will be stored in the file .keystore in your homedirectory unless you specify otherwise.
You'll be asked a lot of questions, you may lie or just hit enter!

(2) Create a self-signed certificate.

D:/j2sdk1.5/bin/keytool -selfcert -alias green

(3) After the keypair has been generated the jar file can be signed with jarsigner.

jarsigner YourJarFileName alias

d:/j2sdk1.5/bin/jarsigner Test.jar green
It will ask for both passwords specified while generating the keys.

The jar file has now been signed. Now you can distribute this jar file to anyone or it can run on any system with the privilege to access your file system.

Note: this signature is only valid for 6 months. After that it will expire so you probably need to sign it again after 6 months.

New features in Java 6.0 (Mustang)

In this Java release SUN has not done much changes at language level rather major enhancement is done in core, XML and desktop sections.

Any feature or enhancement in Java is encapsulated in the form of a JSR (Java Specification Request) which details the need for a specific functionality to be available in the Java Platform that can be used by Applications. These JSR's will be reviewed and released by Java Expert Groups (JEG).

Following the major list of features (JSRs') that comes with the Java 6.0.

Java Compiler API (JSR 199)
JDBC 4.0 (JSR 221)
Scripting in the Java Platform (JSR 223)
Pluggable Annotation Processing API (JSR 269)
Common Annotations (JSR 250)
Java API for XML Based Web Services - 2.0 (JSR 224)
JAXB 2.0 (JSR 222)
Web Services Metadata (JSR 181)
Streaming API for XML (JSR 173)
XML Digital Signature (JSR 105)
Java Class File Specification Update (JSR 202)

I will try to explore and explain each of these JSR's in my future articles.
The latest java 6.0 can be downloaded from here. I am really excited about scripting framework, scripting API and new JDBC 4.0 API in this release.


List of top 10 features in Java SE 6.0 adapted from SUN's site

Web Services
You get first-class support for writing XML web service client applications (death of Apache Axis?). No more messing with the plumbing (unless you really want to). You can also expose your APIs as .NET interoperable web services with a simple annotation.
For developers who want to handle XML directly Mustang adds new parsing and XML to Java object-mapping APIs, previously only available in Java EE platform implementations or the Java Web Services Pack.

Scripting
You can now mix in JavaScript technology with your Java technology source code, useful for prototyping. Also useful when you have teams with a variety of skill sets.

Database
The final Mustang development kit will co-bundle the all-Java JDBC database, Java DB based on Apache Derby. This should enable developers (new to Java) to get a jumpstart on java development.
Developers will get the updated JDBC 4.0, which focuses on ease of use. It contains many feature additions like support for XML as an SQL datatype and better integration of Binary Large OBjects (BLOBs) and Character Large OBjects (CLOBs) into the APIs. Additional features that improve ease of use include removal of some JDBC boilerplate and some of the new annotations that make SQL strings embed better into your JDBC application - like decorating your getAllUsers() method with an @Query(sql="select * from user") annotation, and that being all you need. More annotation love for you.

More Desktop APIs
GUI developers get a large number of new tricks to play like the ever popular yet newly incorporated SwingWorker utility to help you with threading in GUI apps, JTable sorting and filtering, and a new facility for quick splash screens to quiet impatient users.

Monitoring and Management
The really big deal here is that you don't need do anything special to the startup to be able to attach on demand with any of the monitoring and management tools in the Java SE platform. Mustang adds yet more diagnostic information, and we co-bundled the infamous memory-heap analysis tool Jhat for forensic explorations of those core dumps.

Compiler Access
Really aimed at people who create tools for Java development and for frameworks like JavaServer Pages (JSP) or Personal Home Page construction kit (PHP) engines that need to generate a bunch of classes on demand, the compiler API opens up programmatic access to javac for in-process compilation of dynamically generated Java code. Finally you don't have to save your code as a Java files and invoke javac to generate a classfile, a clumsy procedure at best.

Pluggable Annotations
Java tool and framework vendors (and you) can define annotations and have core API support for plugging in and executing the processors that do the heavy lifting. It seamlessly integrates your custom annotations .

Desktop Deployment
Better platform look-and-feel in Swing technology, LCD text rendering (more clarity on LCD monitors like Vista), and snappier GUI performance overall. Java applications can integrate better with the native platform with things like new access to the platform's System Tray and Start menu. At long last, Mustang unifies the Java Plug-in technology and Java WebStart engines, which just makes sense. Installation of the Java WebStart application got a much needed makeover.

Security
Mustang simplified the job of security administrators by providing various new ways to access platform-native security services, such as native Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and cryptographic services on Microsoft Windows for secure authentication and communication, Java Generic Security Services (Java GSS) and Kerberos services for authentication, and access to LDAP servers for authenticating users.

Quality, Compatibility, Stability
Sun has around 80,000 test cases and several million lines of code testing conformance. People have been downloading (and testing) snapshots of Mustang for the last 15 months and filing bugs. So even before beta several quality and regression issues were fixed. Performance is claimed to be better than J2SE 5.