Today is International Women's Day. This festival, commemorated at the United Nations, represents almost a century of struggle for equality, justice, peace and development. Unlike other festivals, the story of International Women's Day has not been the past. Someone suggests that the French Revolution sparked off the movement of Women's Rights. Parisian women calling for "Liberty, Equality and Fraternity" marched on Versailles to demand women's suffrage. And the first Women's Day was observed in US on 28 February 1909. It seems that democracy can bring the Rights of Women. In the ancient Greek, citizens who could vote for the democratic government and public affairs did not include women as well as children, slaves and prisoners. Women were considered as naive, incredible, sensational, dependent and slaved. After two thousand years, some people still think of women in such way today. The movement of Women's Rights can be considered as two directions. O...
Before the Internet is popular, we used to making friends around the world via some PenPal programs. When we were children, we paid a PenPal organization for its administration fee and then started our exchange of letters in our unrecognized English with counterparts in the other side of the world. Behind pieces of letter sheet, there were friendship, curiosity and fun. We can no longer find such feeling via emails or instant messengers that are supposed to replace letters. The speed of the interaction is rapid and they can carry images, audios and videos. However, the key of PenPal is not information exchange but soul exchange. Can we retrieve such feeling in the world of Web 2.0? Yes, we can do it through Bookcrossing. Bookcrossing is an activity of leaving a book in a public area to be picked up and read by others who will do so then. With the power of Web 2.0, such personal and free activities can be traced and coordinated by an online database and a website. Bookcrossing.com (URL:...
I had the opportunity to attend JManc again this year—and once more, it was fabulous. The sessions were organic, deeply technical, and full of insights shared by developers across different domains. Here's my wrap-up from the day, highlighting a few memorable sessions and conversations. 1 Tony Wilson, Manchester 30 Years of Java — Jim Gough’s Retrospective Jim Gough delivered a fantastic keynote on the evolution of Java over three decades. As a Java Champion, his perspective mixed historical insight with a touch of humor and lived experience. Here are some of the milestones he covered: Applets & Early UI: Java’s original fame came from applets—tiny applications that ran inside web browsers. AWT & Swing: Early GUI development in Java involved the AWT toolkit, later replaced by the more versatile Swing. JavaFX: The modern Java UI framework that succeeded Swing. It was eventually removed from the JDK and spun out as an open-source project. While less commonly used in modern ...
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