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CowboyNeal has, after a long and careful review, sent us a review of Peter van der Linden's Just Java and Beyond. This is a great book for people learning Java-so click below if you are just learning, or are curious. Just Java and Beyond author Peter van der Linden pages publisher Sun Microsystems rating 9 reviewer CowboyNeal ISBN 0-13-784174-4 summary ow! I wish I had this book when I first learned Java. Well-organized and easy-to-read for beginners, this book is perfect for anyone who wants get his/her feet wet in Java. What's Good? Everything. Seriously, the examples are in-depth and well explained, while each chapter has a brief section at the end entitled "Light Relief" which shows how that chapter is relevant to the big picture and/or gives a small anecdote from the author's past. The sections on the Java event-handling model (one of more difficult parts of Java) are well done and even take the time to compare and contrast the Java 1.0 event model and the Java 1.1 event model. I also found the section of Java threads to be particularly outstanding. Not having much background in parallelism myself, I was able to understand the entire concept better, as well as how Java implements it. What's Bad? Almost nothing. When I first read this book, I had a difficult time doing so because many of my friends and coworkers would hoarde it for their own use. The one downside I found is that there are no place where I can find a list of classes, function calls, etc. Although this is not a reference/nutshell book, that is a feature I always like to see. Those looking for a quick reference may be disappointed by Just Java and Beyond. Who should buy this book? If you have no previous experience with Java and want to start learning it, this book is one of the best. I've read countless Java books and this one is both enjoyable and informative. If you are looking for a Java reference, this book may fit the bill, but it's still geared for first-time learners.

Buy this book here.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Using the Just Java CD-ROM

Acknowledgements

1. What Is Java?
2. The Story of O: Object-Oriented Programming
3. The Java Programming Language
4. Java Building Blocks
5. More Sophisticated Techniques
6. Practical Examples Explained
7. All About Applets
8. Utilities And Libraries
9. The Abstract Window Toolkit
10. Graphics Programming
11. Java Foundation Classes (JFC) Preview (Swingset)
12. File I/O
13. Networking in Java
14. Future Developments

Appendix A: The Obsolete JDK 1.0 Event Model

Appendix B: Powers of 2 and ISO 8859

Index

Rumors are starting to surface about WebMate, the new portable that Apple is supposed to be bringing out. The machine, although the article states "early 99" will probably be mid 99. However, other rumors have a common thread: wireless. Mmm...no more CAT5. Radio stuff that Apple patented ten years ago-anyone know anything more about this? One of my fellow co-workers has provided me with a good write-up about the wireless support.

Following up on all the fun I had with my new scanner yesterday is a challange, but I'm up for it. This time I scanned in a half a roll of pictures of me and my roommates. As with yesterdays post, this probably won't interest you in the slightest, but what the hell. It amuses me to death to do this. Hopefully this weekend I'll scan in some of my photography projects too. Don't bother clicking on unless you want to see a bunch of jpegs of geeks. Dave
This is Dave. Dave is crazy. Dave hides in the basement. Normally the only time I hear from him is when he makes strange noises while playing Quake. These pictures are a fairly accurate representation of a dave in his natural habitat. I rarely expect to see dave in any other habitat. I think thats for the best. If he goes outside, I'm afraid he'll start smacking around any wildlife he encounters, and burning down anything that he can't smack. Kurt
Kurt is unquesionably the cutest member of the geek house. Look at him all cute there. Doesn't he just make ya wanna do that thing that grandma's do on TV where they squeeze the cheeks of the kid? Of all the residents of GH2.0, I'd vote kurt most likely to wind up on top of a clock tower with a sniper rifle. I don't plan to live anywhere near him as soon as I graduate. Ladies, this fine specimen of manliness is single:send your measurements and naked pictures to this address. Jeff
Uh oh, here comes Jeff to kill Kurt! Run Kurt, Run! Jeff is bad and will hurt you with the various pointy objects that somehow have found their way into his hands!

We try to keep those things away from him, but we're not very good at it. Jeff is probably the loudest member of the geekhouse (I'm the only one even close in the running)

Here we see Jeff and I in our usual state:LOCKED IN MORTAL COMBAT!. Its the constant tension between us that makes our house such a swell place to live. Yes folks, Hemos is my right hand man on Slashdot, and its pretty obvious to see why. With those manly pectoral muscles, its fairly obvious that if I don't keep him occupied, he'd probably be working as a chippendale's dancer. I can't let that happen. Jeff ought to remain fully clothed at all time for the sake of the future of humanity. Rob
so these are pictures of me in my usual spot: On the couch. I pretty much sat there from July until ALS (excluding classes and bathroom breaks). What else can I say about these pictures except that I'm terribly sorry that these are on the net. And I really don't look anything like wesley crusher. Nate
Finally we have nate. There's not really much to say about nate except that he's swell. We love him. And he's paying me to be nice to him here. So I won't say anything negative about him. I swear. Really.

Scott Millen (my coworker, and sparring partner in the OS war :) sent me a link to Mac OS Rumors, which is posting a Press Release from Al Guerra Enterprises, Inc, which apparently is stepping up to the plate to support MkLinux. They sell a service plan for $99 and up. This is a really interesting idea: the new Mac hardware is impressive, and a lot of MacOS users may be interested in giving Linux a shot. Apps like The Gimp certainly are a good incentive to try out a new OS.

Ok, two things today. First is that I've actually finally almost finished designing the Slashdot T-Shirts. They are basically the logo you see next to this story, and will available soon. If you are definately going to be buying a shirt, I'd like you to email BEP so we can figure out how many of these buggers to print. We're open to suggestions (mugs, hats, stickers etc) so feel free to express interest in these sorts of items as well.

The second note is a bit trickier- it pertains to credit on articles on Slashdot. A lot of egos have been bruised, and I just want to explain things so nobody else gets angry. Hit the link below to read more.

Ok, here's the deal. At least once a day, usually more, I get a message from an unhappy reader who saw a story that they submitted, but it was posted with someone else's name on it. Let me list reasons that this might have happened:

• Often a dozen people submit an article within minutes of each other. I usually don't give credit when this happens just because it seems like splitting hairs. This is often the case on things like new Linux Kernel releases, or when something major floats accross a mailing list and half the list forwards it to me. I designate these by saying 'lots of people sent this' or something similiar.
• You sent it in, but didn't put a good subject on the submission. If you subject is 'Damn it...' I may not read it for several hours. Make those subjects clear, because if I see a submission 'Hey Cool!' and another one that says 'Gimp 1.0 released', guess which one I'm going to read first. I get hundreds of these things each day, make my life a litle easier. I have 50 submissions right now waiting to be read as soon as I finish writing this little blurb. If I only posted stories when I was caught up, I'd post much fewer stories!
• It is very possible that somebody else sent it in before you, and even though an article got posted 24 hours after you sent it in, somebody else may have submitted it before you.
• The most common scenario involves one of the other authors (typically Hemos, Sengan or Justin) who find an article and post it on their own, despite the fact that someone has already submitted it to me. Those guys don't see the big list of submissions- really I only do, so if they find it and post it, they won't credit you. This happens at least every couple days, and I'm sorry that you don't get to see your name on Slashdot, but there is nothing I can do. If more than one person maintained the big list of submissions, it would be very very tricky, so for now this system allows me to post most of the news, but when I'm unavailable, the other guys can post cool stuff to. This means that you get stories faster, and hopefully more regularly, but sometimes you may not see your name. I guess all I can say is maybe next time.

Anyway, in summary, I post maybe 3% of the total number of submissions we get, so it's not even close to a guarantee- I apologize to the people who occasionally email and complain, but please remember that I'm doing my best, and doing I hope I'm doing a good job. I figure if I have 300 submissions, and I post 10, that means I have 290 people who didn't get their name posted on Slashdot. If only 1 person complains, that's a pretty good success rate *grin*. All I can do is my best, and I'll keep doing that.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Kwon Soon Son wrote in to tell us that Peter Norton (of Utilities fame. Who amongst us hasn't logged many hours with them?) has written a book about Linux. And speaking of books (fun to plug the rewrite :) Slashdot will be doing nerd book reviews in the next few days, with links to Amazon.com, that you can buy books and we get some cash. Several cool books in the first batch too... if anyone has ideas of books worth reviewing that Linux users would dig, they should email Hemos with them.

Well Slashdot has moved from Ariel (An Alpha/166) to Triton (A Dual P133). You probably should notice a speed gain, but there probably are some bugs that occured in shipping. The first server lasted through our first million hits, let's hope this one handles the next 10 million. Oh, and big thanks to My Roommate, Dave DeMaagd for letting us use this machine for free until we get some cash. Everyone send him a thank you note at demaagd@imagegroup.com right this second 'cuz without him, Slashdot probably wouldn't have lasted much longer...

Well Slashdot has moved from Ariel (An Alpha/166) to Triton (A Dual P133). You probably should notice a speed gain, but there probably are some bugs that occured in shipping. The first server lasted through our first million hits, let's hope this one handles the next 10 million. Oh, and big thanks to My Roommate, Dave DeMaagd for letting us use this machine for free until we get some cash. Everyone send him a thank you note at demaagd@imagegroup.com right this second 'cuz without him, Slashdot probably wouldn't have lasted much longer...

Thanks to Dave DeMaagd for sending me this story where we read that Microsoft is going wacky over biases in their current case. Next we have Kurt DeMaagd (Dave's brother, and another of my roomates) who sent in this story at microsoft.com discussing the Microsoft viewpoint.

Thanks to Dave DeMaagd for sending me this story where we read that Microsoft is going wacky over biases in their current case. Next we have Kurt DeMaagd (Dave's brother, and another of my roomates) who sent in this story at microsoft.com discussing the Microsoft viewpoint.