Sinister goings on at the zoo

Posted & filed under The Rantorium.

When one puts wild animals in a zoo and provides them with everything they need, you would expect that the “wild” would be bred out of the animal over the generations. This seems to have happened at the Highland Wildlife Park. A pack of wolves have been deemed to be not wild any more and have been destroyed. Well, the words used are far more sinister:

“…experts said the six animals had to be euthanised because they were not portraying their natural behaviour…”

I find that both staggering and frightening. Presumably they no longer fit with the business needs of a “wildlife” park. What’s the problem? Did they not frighten the guests any more? It’s called evolution stupid. What next? Are they going to “euthanase” all furry animals due to global warming making fur unnecessary?

“…The welfare of the animal is always paramount in our minds and no decision is made until a full investigation has been carried out…”

yes, the investigation has found them surplus to business requirements. They’re no longer displaying “wild” tendancies. Don’t let the genes and appearance fool you. These are no longer “wild” animals according to Highland Wildlife Park.

The wolves have been there since 1972, not enjoying the freedom of their natural habitat but making Highland Wildlife Park money. Now they’ve passed their best and have been “euthanased”. They have, however, been replaced by a new pack. Well, until the visitors don’t find them frightening enough either and they’ll be “euthanased” too.

It’s a sad sorry world that can put wild animals in enclosed parks and just destroy them when they no longer fit into the grand scheme of things.

No-one batted an eyelid when the family of wolves were destroyed to due an “expert’s” interpretation of their behaviour and yet on the other hand, Lloyds TSB put up a 100, yes ONE HUNDRED pound reward for the return of a PLASTIC COO.

Yes, kill as many creatures as you like but don’t touch that plastic coo.

Disappearing POST parameters

Posted & filed under Guanxi.

There was an issue with the Guanxi Guard where it was losing POST parameters, i.e.if you submitted a form who’s action was protected by a Guard, the form fields would never reach the protected application.

The reason was that the Pod was storing a reference to the original Map containing the request parameters. According to the servlet spec, the servlet container is free to do what it wants when the request is finished, so those references aren’t guaranteed to point to anything useful once the request has completed.

Simply storing the reference in the Pod wasn’t enough. When the GuardRequest was created after the SAML workflow was finished, the original parameters in the Pod were gone.

The solution was to force a copy and not reference in the Pod. Storing the parameters as a completely new HashMap using HashMap.putAll(Map) to copy the params into the Pod.

HashMap requestParameters = new HashMap();
requestParameters.putAll(request.getParameterMap);

That was ok but then it left me needing to implement the parameter methods of HttpServletRequestWrapper, one of which returns an Enumeration. What a drag. In the end it was easy enough using an iterator over the key Set of the HashMap.

public Enumeration getParameterNames() {
return new Enumeration() {
Iterator names = requestPod.getRequestParameters().keySet().iterator();
public boolean hasMoreElements() {
return names.hasNext();
}
public Object nextElement() {
return names.next();
}
};
}

An interesting side effect of implementing HttpServletRequestWrapper.getParameter() was discovering that the servlet container stores each parameter as a String[], even if it only has one value. So, doing this:

requestPod.getRequestParameters().get(name);

to get the value of a parameter from the original set, returns a String[].

So that’s that wee problem sorted. Must get on and finish the Guard registration module as it’s experimental at the moment.

Another one bites the snow

Posted & filed under The Rantorium.

Peacefully minding it’s own business until Mr. Big Game-Hunter turns up and blows it away. Why I wonder? Who knows. Anyway, the twats who are discussing it are avidly seeking a name for this new creature that’s never been seen in the wild. “Grolar bears” or “pizzlies” they say. What about “dead”, coz it is, innit?

Another gun toting twat reduces the wildlife population

Guanxi codename “bigyin” release

Posted & filed under Guanxi.

IdP

SAMUEL

SP

Core

Common

gx_lib

Guanxi codename “bigyin” released

Posted & filed under Guanxi.

Guanxi codename “bigyin” is now released on sourceforge and ready for downloading.

More details:

Download Guanxi

The Guanxi Wiki