The Attack on Our Freedom as Computer Users

“Meltdown and Spectre are errors. Grave errors, to be sure, but not evidently malicious. Everyone makes mistakes.
Intel has done far worse with its CPUs than make a mistake. It has built in an intentional back door called the Management Engine.
Important as these bugs are, don’t let Intel’s mistakes distract you from Intel’s deliberate attack!”

by Free Software Foundation president Richard Stallman

 

With security issues like the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities discovered in Intel chips in early 2018, it became more important than ever to talk about the necessity of software freedom in these deeply embedded technologies. Serious as though these bugs may be, we cannot let them distract us from the broader issues: Intel considers the Intel Management Engine a feature, while it’s nothing more than a threat to user freedom. Take a look to Denis GNUtoo Carikli article which provides a new basis for that conversation.

Lightweight Docker Swarm Environment

In the following short tutorial I want to show how to setup a lightweight and easy to manage docker-swarm environment. This environment is an alternative to the mostly heavyweight solutions like Rancher or Googles Kubernetes. For developers and companies that are not compelled to operate over 1000 machines on 4 different continents, this can be a clever alternative.

The docker-swarm environment, I am demonstrating here, uses Docker Engine CLI commands entered into a terminal. But as we’ll see, this environment also includes a very nice UI front end. You should be able to install Docker on networked machines and be comfortable with running commands in the shell of your choice.

Continue reading “Lightweight Docker Swarm Environment”

New Version of Open Source Workflow Engine

In these days I released the latest version 4.2.0 of the human-centric open source workflow engine Imixs-Workflow.

With version 4.2.0, the second minor release of Imixs-Workflow version 4 is now available. After the stability and performance improvements of version 4 were confirmed with the minor update 4.1, now the first feature update has been released. Imixs-Workflow 4.2 offers a number of additional features and technical improvements. You can join the project on GitHub.

Read more here.

Debian – user Bluetooth Speackerbox with Micro

Today I tried to connect a “August MS425” speaker box with my Linux Notebook running on Debian Jessie. To get the bluetooth connection running I installed the following additional packages:

sudo apt-get install pulseaudio-module-bluetooth, ofono, pavucontrol

After I established the bluetooth connection the speaker box was not working or displayed in the list of audio devices. To solve this issue I found this discussion.

The missing part was the the auto-connect a2dp option for the new device. So I had to edit the file “/etc/pulse/default.pa” and added the following line :

load-module module-switch-on-connect

After a reboot it works fine. You can use pavucontrol to setup audio settings.

JSF – RequestScoped CDI Beans and Imixs-Workflow

You can use Imixs-Workflow with a RequestScoped CDI Bean in JSF easily. The thing which is important is that you add two hidden fields into your form containing the $uniqueid and $version.

<!-- Workflow Events -->
 <ui:repeat var="event" value="#{workflowController.events}">
 <h:commandButton action="#{workflowController.process}"
 value="#{event.item['txtname']}">

 <f:setPropertyActionListener
 target="#{workflowController.workitem.item['$ActivityID']}"
 value="#{event.item['numactivityid']}" />

 </h:commandButton>
 </ui:repeat>
 <h:inputHidden value="#{workflowController.workitem.item['$uniqueid']}" />
 <h:inputHidden value="#{workflowController.workitem.item['$version']}" />

This mechanism ensures that the form can not be posted back to the server if the workitem was processed in the meantime. This situation can occur if the user opens the same workitem in multible browser tabs and tries to submit the same workitem form different tabs without refreshing the content. It also secures the situation when the user opens different worktiems in different tabs and tries to submit.

The Imixs-JSF project still uses ConversationScoped CDI Beans. The reason is an issue with the fileUploadController. But I think we will got back to RequestScoped also for the workflowController CID Bean in the future.

Why we Should not blindly Trust in Microservices

Today, a great deal is written every week about microservices on the Internet. I myself think, that Microservices offer many advantages. And so also I build such kind of services in my own open source workflow engine project. But today I read an article about Microservices which contained a funny picture. The picture should underpin the advantages of separating functions into a microservice architecture with an almost non-existent centralized management. The picture looks something like this:

I asked myself: Which of the two diagrams appears to me, as a software architect, as the clearer one…?

Have we not worked out for years an architecture, that allows us to reduce complexity? With Java EE, which seems to be an synonym for the evil monolithic architecture, we have now a concept which allows us to combine and connect different components (services) in an easy way. And with Java EE application servers we have a professional platform to control all these kinds of services.

Of course, it is painful to learn all the concepts about EJBs, Transactions, JNDI Resources and Pool-Management. And yes, as a beginner you are confronted with all these concepts if you try to succeed with the Java EE platform. But after that, you have a highly scalable, easy to manage platform running your piece of software.

When I am reading all the adulation for having separated databases, with services implemented in different languages, connected to each other without explicit contracts, I’m pretty sure, that in the next few years we have a lot of work, to bring back systems to the left side of the image.

Eclipse: Avoid Validation of Maven /target Folders

In eclipse maven project it’s annoying that Eclipse IDE always validates all files from the /target/ folders – which makes no sense in any case.

To avoid this validation you can disable the specific validator in the workspace preferences. Go to validators and edit the XML and JSF Validator and add a ‘Exclude Group – Rule’ for the folder

/target

You can also exclude specific files. In my case I exclude the file

glassfish-application.xml