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"What's a runtime environment?" asked the user, "I want to download Java."

You wouldn't want to download the entire development kit, to answer your question. But if I go to the page the parent post mentions I'm confronted with several links, and the most obvious links are the two square buttons ("Java Download" and "Netbeans Download"). Java Download takes you to the page I linked at the end of my post.

How is the end user supposed to know they should go down and of the three links below click the download button under the "JRE" heading? What's JRE?
See where I'm going with this?

Can someone please explain why people say there's a toolbar in the Java installer? I have always gotten the JRE/JDK from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html and have never encountered such a thing. Am I the only one who knows these even exist?

Most people just get it from the home page, and that's a different installer.
Remember, a large number of people who get Java only do so because Pogo tells them to. For those people this is "surfing the internet". And they're going to click the first search result, which is that same installer. Yeah, your page is the third result, but they will ask "Is 'Java SE' the same as 'Java'?" and they'll skip it.

When the consumer version automatically notifies you of an update, the updater has the same type of installer (with the tag-along software), so you have to uncheck the option every time you update Java now.

Sometimes I wonder if people have making life more difficult for themselves just to give them something to rant about.

More difficult like digging through a tech-net website looking for a installation program, and coming to this page (which would intimidate any non-techy person)?

Can someone please explain why people say there's a toolbar in the Java installer? I have always gotten the JRE/JDK from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html and have never encountered such a thing. Am I the only one who knows these even exist?

Most people just get it from the home page, and that's a different installer.
Remember, a large number of people who get Java only do so because Pogo tells them to. For those people this is "surfing the internet". And they're going to click the first search result, which is that same installer. Yeah, your page is the third result, but they will ask "Is 'Java SE' the same as 'Java'?" and they'll skip it.

When the consumer version automatically notifies you of an update, the updater has the same type of installer (with the tag-along software), so you have to uncheck the option every time you update Java now.

Sometimes I wonder if people have making life more difficult for themselves just to give them something to rant about.

More difficult like digging through a tech-net website looking for a installation program, and coming to this page (which would intimidate any non-techy person)?

Can someone please explain why people say there's a toolbar in the Java installer? I have always gotten the JRE/JDK from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html and have never encountered such a thing. Am I the only one who knows these even exist?

Sometimes I wonder if people have making life more difficult for themselves just to give them something to rant about.

Hi. The .net product manager at Oracle recently responded to a request to have the Oracle .net provider put into a NuGet package by refusing over licensing reasons: https://forums.oracle.com/message/11149050#11149050

It's not the legal concerns around downloaders. It's the legal rights around how uploaded software is treated.

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https://www.nuget.org/policies/Terms
User Submissions.

Outercurve does not want to receive confidential or proprietary information from User through the Web site. Any material, information, or other communication User transmits or posts ("Communications") to the Web site will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary and Outercurve will be under no obligation of any kind with respect to such information. Outercurve will be free to reproduce, make derivative works from, use, disclose, and distribute the Communications to others without limitation. At our sole election, Outercurve may provide authorship attribution by listing User's name.

-----------------

As soon as I upload something to the Outercurve Foundation (via nuget.org), I've given them plenary rights to the software. That's a big problem for most commercial software distributions, including ODP.NET.

  If you're an open source vendor, then this policy is fine. If Outercurve wants to distribute commercial software, it cannot co-opt ownership rights. This is the biggest issue, but there are others. For example, how can Oracle ensure that no one else on the site represents themselves as Oracle? There's no way to authenticate the "author", especially if you're downloading directly within Visual Studio.

Fundamentally, all these business issues can be boiled down to characteristics of open source (i.e. bazaar, torrents) distribution. If Outercurve introduced closed source/commercial-friendly (i.e. cathedral, iTunes) distribution, it would eliminate pretty much all of Oracle's business/legal concerns. But Outercurve is devoted to working with corporate developers in open source environments. If the component is closed source, then it doesn't fit within Outercurve's mission. That makes me skeptical they would ever support commercial distribution.

Essentially, Oracle would need to open source ODP.NET just for nuget.org distribution. That is like putting the cart before the horse.

Now, if somebody created a commercial software NuGet distribution channel, people could purchase, rent, or try out commercial software from it. That would be something Oracle would consider. That's why I asked about an alternative popular NuGet feed.

Since Outercurve is specifically mentioned here, do you have any comment on this? Is there plans to fix the situation for freely available (but commercial) tools like the Oracle provider?

Thanks.

So Red Hat officially refuses to support RHEL guests on any other vendor's OpenStack host; they only allow Red Hat OpenStack to be used.

So much for their claims of supporting cross-vendor cloud

There's always CentOS and companies willing to support that. I hate to burst your bubble but they're not the only ones. Oracle also has stipulations on what Cloud vendors they'll play with too: Up until recently, they only supported their software in their cloud solution and with AWS, now they support Microsoft, Hyper V and Azure. I think it has more to do in some cases of the underlying technology. And OpenStack != OpenStack just yet, there are differences so maybe it's just a matter of time before they have support in place or that market forces drive them to adopt a more open stance.

But neither Oracle nor Sun used the name UNIX, either then

Well, actually, Sun's OS originally announced itself in the boot message as "Sun UNIX 4.2BSD Version {version number}", or something such as that, until AT&T got cranky; "SunOS" first appeared in the boot message in, as I remember, 4.0 (at which point it was also more "4.3BSD" than "4.2BSD").

nor now.

Define "used"/"uses". They don't use it in the OS's brand name, but they sure use it on, for example, the Solaris 11 overview page ("Brings the reliability, security and scalability of the #1 UNIX OS to the enterprise cloud"). Apple doesn't use "UNIX" in the name of their OS, either, but they used it in various advertising materials, e.g. "sends all other Unix boxes to /dev/null", and The Open Group told them they had to certify (Mac) OS X in order to use the trademark.

Back in the day when that trademark cost money

It still costs money:

Annual fees apply, which are referenced by the Trademark License Agreement:

• License fee for the TMLA to remain in place
• Product registration fees
• Program fees (royalties)

Separate fees apply for the test suites.

every vendor called it something other than UNIX - SunOS, Solaris, Iris, AIX, HP/UX, SCO OSE, Dynix, CLIX, et al. The only company I can recall calling it UNIX was Novell's UnixWare, but then Novell got USL from AT&T.

There was also Digital UNIX, which was the new name for DEC OSF/1 after it passed the test suite for SUS conformance. (It was later renamed Tru64 UNIX when there was no longer a "Digital Equipment Corporation".)

So it would cost Oracle nothing.

...as long as they stop calling Solaris "the #1 UNIX OS" (or anything else with "UNIX" in it).

No. The Java documentation is by Oracle/Sun: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/security/SecureRandom.html

It would however have been a good idea to make sure self-seeding is secure, even if not required by the spec. (It says absolutely nothing about the quality of self-seeding.) That is the only possible fault with Google I can see: They did not protect the unwary and the incompetent. True, the traps set up by the atrociously bad Oracle API documentation are obvious enough to experts that any sane implementation should make sure just copying the example _is_ secure. So if you will, this mess was created by Oracle/Sun in collaboration with Google and people implementing crypto without understanding it and which parts need special attention.

Sorry, what? It says plain as day not to seed it yourself.
http://developer.android.com/reference/java/security/SecureRandom.html

No. The Java documentation is by Oracle/Sun: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/security/SecureRandom.html

It would however have been a good idea to make sure self-seeding is secure, even if not required by the spec. (It says absolutely nothing about the quality of self-seeding.) That is the only possible fault with Google I can see: They did not protect the unwary and the incompetent. True, the traps set up by the atrociously bad Oracle API documentation are obvious enough to experts that any sane implementation should make sure just copying the example _is_ secure. So if you will, this mess was created by Oracle/Sun in collaboration with Google and people implementing crypto without understanding it and which parts need special attention.

Java only does array range checking when it needs to, at the beginning/end of a loop or at any point where the array ends.
See: https://wikis.oracle.com/display/HotSpotInternals/RangeCheckElimination

Use a deterministic garbage collector.

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html "What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic", by David Goldberg, published in the March, 1991 issue of Computing Surveys

I don't know why anyone thought this was surprising (it would have been surprising if they didn't get different results, given that some use GPUs, some don't, etc.). What does tend to get "amusing" is that even with the same processor folks get different results (sometimes due to software issues, chip rev issues, or actual hardware bugs that go undetected ... but are minor enough to remain so unless someone gets really careful and whips out the old logic analyzer).

This often happens when the simulation results are influenced by variations in the accuracy of the built-in functions. Every floating point unit (FPU) returns an approximation of the correct result to an arbitrary level of accuracy, and the accuracy level of these results varies considerably when built-in functions like sqrt(), sin(), cos(), ln(), and exp() are considered. Normally, the accuracy of these results is pretty high. However, the initial 8087 FPU hardware from Intel was pretty old, and it necessarily made approximations.

Floating point arithmetic is in itself a bunch of approximations. It's the least precise computation you can do, and if you're not careful, errors accumulate rather rapidly.

In fact, most people using floating point probably don't realize that they order in which they do computations matter, nor despite having a standard, most hardware floating point units are NOT fully compliant.

This is probably a lot harder on the sciences (whether it's computer, weather, climate, whatever) who assume their computation hardware is "perfect" because understanding the low level is more an implementation concern.

A must-read article is What every computer scientist should know about floating point arithmetic (paywalled). A nice edited reprint is available as HTML (and PDF if you Google it - but Oracle seems to have it in HTML). This is one of those leaky abstractions - the hardware doing floating point is not precise at all and if you're not careful, you can lose significant figures very easily (you may think you're keeping 4 sigfigs throughout, but one error and you can be reduced to 1 due to approximations even when you really should have 4).

A lot of medical devices are built using Java.
First Google result: http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/embedded/embedded-java-for-healthcare-433550.pdf

It's been used in medical devices since the late 90's, shortly after it was invented.

For those applications, Java is purpose built.

This PDF is Oracle's "Markitecture" -- it's how they want things to work. They have not certified and indemnified their embedded JVM for use in life support systems. Don't expect them to. Don't expect a device manufacturer to bear the costs of certifying both the JVM and their application specific code, as a combination, for that use. IT's not going to happen.

Yes, my Java ring is in a box in my workroom... I do not wear it every day and do Green Lantern-ish stuff with it, like Sun was predicting would happen when they gave them away at Java One.

A lot of medical devices are built using Java.
First Google result: http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/embedded/embedded-java-for-healthcare-433550.pdf

It's been used in medical devices since the late 90's, shortly after it was invented.

For those applications, Java is purpose built.

My RAID backup strategy was fully supported and recommended by the manufacturer of the storage array, and was a big selling point. It wasn't a hack. Even tape backups can suffer problems from overwriting the wrong tape if someone does something stupid. "Oh hey, the backup system says this tape isn't expired yet, I'm sure I loaded the right tape, so I'll just do a hard-erase so I can write to it"

Here's a Sun/Oracle doc that explains the procedure:

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19683-01/817-2530/6mi6gg886/index.html

How to Use a RAID 1 Volume to Make an Online Backup
You can use this procedure on any file system except root (/). Be aware that this type of backup creates a “snapshot” of an active file system. Depending on how the file system is being used when it is write-locked, some files and file content on the backup might not correspond to the actual files on disk.

The following limitations apply to this procedure:

* If you use this procedure on a two-way mirror, be aware that data redundancy is lost while one submirror is offline for backup. A multi-way mirror does not have this problem.

* There is some overhead on the system when the reattached submirror is resynchronized after the backup is complete.

two pools, internalPool, externalPool

use ZFS send and receive to migrate your data from internal to external, you and do whole fs or incremental if you keep a couple of snaps local on your internal disk, this can get excessive if you have a lot of delta or you want a long time.

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E18752_01/html/819-5461/gbchx.html

of course you will need a system that can use ZFS, there are more options for that than time machine, its block level and its fast, and it doesn't depend on just one device, you can have multiple devices (I like to keep some of my data at work, why? my backup solution is in the same house that would burn, if it burned...)

Nothing "Happened". *No* operating system is 100% secure, especially when humans are involved. At the place where I work, people send around user names and passwords in e-mail. Twice I've sent out notes to the entire company admonishing them to not do that and why, but the practice continues.

Beyond simply the operating system, you've got vulnerabilities in things like .net and java.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms13-040
http://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-26/product_id-3091/Microsoft-Asp.net.html
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/alerts-086861.html

If you really believe that Windows is just as secure as Linux, then go ahead believing that. You're going to anyway.

Competent programmers are a dime a dozen.

Programming is the easiest damn thing in the world. It's so easy that children can and do easily teach themselves!

Sure, some problems are hard. Luckily, you can sometimes avoid them altogether. Go read some of Chuck Moore's work.

Anyhow, how do you judge the quality of a programmer? There's only one way that I know: by the quality of their output. But that can't be right, can it? Some of the most incompetent code I've ever seen has been written by programmers generally considered to be brilliant.

Take a chunk of code known to work correctly. It won't take you long to find one developer to say that it's brilliant, and another to say that it's total garbage. Why? The first developer either doesn't understand it or sees some clever or interesting tricks. The second developer sees it as unnecessarily complicated, the same problem being solvable with a much smaller, faster, and simpler solution.

If you'd rather: Perhaps the code is fine and solves the problem well, but the second developer would have approached the problem differently. Maybe they disliked the use of a specific language feature or technique, choice of brace style, or selected language.

Programmers usually aren't well versed in the humanities and tend to think in absurd black-and-white terms. They constantly mistake completely subjective judgments for objective conclusions. They're also prone to believe absurd myths (mistaking common wisdom for objective fact) and tend to buy in to the latest industry fads. You'll frequently find them defending statements that they obviously don't understand. They've simply never questioned their favorite meme. How could it be anything other than pure fact? Programming is like math, right?

Code quality is highly subjective, obviously. I understand that there are objective metrics like size, speed, and memory use. However, we can only use those to compare two solutions to the same problem! Even then, subjective measures (like readability) will quickly come in to play, which some people will consider to trump this or that objective measure -- particularly when two solutions are close on objective terms.

That absurd black-and-white / right-wrong thinking makes each person think that their subjective opinion is objectively correct, and thus irrefutable. What else can they assume but that they're surrounded by incompetent morons?

Do you know who writes bad code? Everyone. The best developer you know wrote crap code last week. You wrote crap code last week. I wrote crap code last week. Not you, you say? You used the latest set of buzzwords? Remember this: Yesterdays best-practices are today's obvious mistakes. Sometimes they oscillate between bad and good. Pick damn near any topic and dig through both current and old articles and blogs to get a sense of how the common wisdom changed over time. (Nonsense "design patterns" are an easy mark. You'll find lots of back and forth on many of those.)

There are other reasons, of course. A big problem seems to be developers over-complicating problems. Sometimes going so far as to write an interesting problem that solves the problem they've been tasked with as a side-benefit. I replaced an 81k (1700 line) component with an 8k (300 line) component a couple weeks ago. Was the developer of the old component incompetent? Not at all. He just made the problem significantly harder than it was. I'd guess that it was to keep the otherwise dull project interesting -- or because he found the problem space interesting and wanted to explore it.

When I see stuff like this I can't tell if it's arrogance or just insecurity.

For those who don't have an Oracle support login here is the official announcement through a blog post.

From experience, TOAD isn't great for managing RAC stuff (I use TOAD, but not for that!) I'd use the database management interface that comes with the database installation, or take a step up from that and use Oracle's OMS, especially given that its license is now essentially free if you avoid trying to use certain largely irrelevant frills like cloud management. OMS will help you do your impdp and if you know how, compare / make changes to multiple databases simultaneously if you dare. You can even download and install a limited license Oracle database for free - http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/products/express-edition/overview/index.html - it comes with a browser based GUI and all, if resource limited - but comes in setup.exe and RPM form.

Manual management of tablespaces??? Create your datafiles for your tablespaces on an ASM diskgroup, set them to autoextend, set up an email alert for when the tablespace gets to 90% full or whatever suits so you can add more files if you underprovisioned, and set up another alert to tell you when your ASM diskgroup is getting full. Manual management is very much dark ages stuff (although some currently supported software insists that is how you configure things... or asserts its configuration on you which then you have to bend to your will... grrrr).

Datafile size limitations - default sizes these days with default block / ASM extent sizes amount to 32G per datafile in 11g. If you know the data will be huge, increase the extent sizes. Doubling one will double the other, and so on... or create a HUGEFILE tablespace, which is 1 essentially unlimited size file.

Recompiling invalid objects? From the database server, login as SYSDBA and: @?/rdbms/admin/utlrp ... done! Incidentally, utlirp followed by utlrp allows you to upgrade your database objects from say 32 bit to 64 bit. Oracle's upgrade methodology for the most part allows you to choose one of a few methods depending on source and target platform, and if you follow the documented procedure it will usually just work.

Oracle databases are more complex because the software can do more for you. If you don't need the complexity, install Postgres - I'd choose Postgres in a heartbeat if all I needed was a solid RDBMS with a useful interface. And I'm sure you can still do funky things with Postgres anyway if you want to practice black magic! Horses for courses though. If it doesn't make sense to use Oracle, and you're not forced to use it, then don't!

Not in our environment. I am working as developer for a large company, using oracle 10 and 11. There is no way our oracle servers can distinguish between NULL and an empty string (varchar2):

http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:0::::P11_QUESTION_ID:5984520277372

Cheers
-S

Oracle database version 12c does limit, offset and these things: http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E16655_01/server.121/e17209/statements_10002.htm#SQLRF55636

There are features Oracle provides that have no PostgreSQL equivalent.

• Price -- it costs a lot of money. For many governmental entities, this is a huge advantage -- as they are given a budget, and they need to spend it, otherwise their budget will get reduced -- if its an excuse to spend money, based on claims of productivity, they will often deny requests to use OSS, and mandate the use of Oracle, based on its productivity-improving and more-reliable qualities that some slick salesman persuaded them of, after taking them out for steak at a 5-star restaurant somewhere, or whatever. Also; I hear plenty of government workers saying Management has a no open source software policy; for security reasons, the more money spent on the product the better, as closed source code is deemed to be more secure... For me, and business i'm involved with, this is a huge negative for Oracle, and a reason I almost always pick Postgresql; yes, Oracle delivers more, BUT in many cases you pay Oracle for every extra cent of additional incremental value Oracle delivers over Postgres, and maybe 300% more.
• RAS features -- such as clustering Oracle RAC
• Development productivity tools such as - Pro*C
• SQL Language features where Oracle's implementation is superior -- such as BLOBs. Postgres manages these poorly, for example, you cannot reliably pg_dump blobs - if your application is BLOB happy (e.g. Sharepoint-like), then Postgres is not very suitable.
• SQL Language features that have no PostgreSQL analog -- such as CONNECT BY clauses, Java class based schema and table mappings; module languages; XML types; default value funciton parameters; organize stored procedure objects using packages; .

In 1996, you collaborated with Henry McGilton to write The Java Language Environment, which describes your rationale for the design decisions you've made in creating Java. In this document, you expouse a number of ideas which are (or at least at the time were) controversial, like the "constant-in-class pattern" in favoring enumerations (which later became supported in Java 1.5), the lack of need for structure or union types, the lack of need for unsigned integral types (well, except for char), and the lack of need for operator overloading. Now that 17 years have passed since that document was published, have you changed your stance on any of these decisions?

No need to forgive much longer: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/javaOO/lambdaexpressions.html

Indeed. GOTO is not inherently evil. You'll find it used appropriately in some surprising places -- including the Linux Kernel.

When describing a process, the oft-maligned GOTO certainly comes in handy. The over 30 crowd might remember seeing GOTO's in any number of guide books from auto repair to taxes. (The word wasn't always used, sometimes "skip to ..." or "continue with ..." etc.)

That's right: GOTO can actually make things easier to read and understand.

Even in software today, I'm willing to bet even the most ardent anti-GOT zealot has used a GOTO -- and recently at that -- cleverly disguised as a break or return statement.

The use of the BerkeleyDB do not put any restrictions on your software, as long as you do not statically link it.

The Sleepycat license doesn't trigger based on linking; it's triggered by compiling against it. See The Sneaky Sleepycat License and comments from Oracle's forums. The existing license was already very "viral" in terms of how aggressively it required either open source distribution or a commercial license.

Funnily enough you never hear the same complaints about Java. Fun fact, excluding libraries and the JVM, the latest java language spec is now slightly longer than the latest C++ spec.

Bullshit. Java 7 language spec, 642 pages. C++ latest working draft, 1320 pages. Not even close.

I have worked in Oracle, been involved in documentation efforts and publishing it to customers, and it is unthinkable to ever take back features that are promised in documentation. Didn't happen in my tenure, but it was understood that if it happened it would be an enormous blunder on the part of involved employees as well as Oracle as a whole. Oracle would arguably be taken to courts, by much more capable litigants than Sony's idiot customers, and be in a heap of trouble.

Like this? Of special interest is the line "They are supported in this release for backward compatibility. ". "In this release". Not "forever". Store that in the empty can you call a head.

And Sony advised people how to back up their stuff as well before OtherOS would be removed.

What is there to avoid about it? Of course it is advertisement. When I told you your post amounts to advertisement being an act of making something generally known, it is to be understood that Oracle documentation is much much more generally known so much more of an advertisement. You are just too thick to get that.

Pathetic. You are pathetic.

Using infantile logic to to justify your hatred. Claiming, in effect, that every single word posted on the Internet is an advertisement, be it documentation, manual, or anything else. Try communicating your idea that that piece of documentation is an advertisement and you will be laughed at (except, of course, if you preach to a likewise choir of Sony-haters - in which case you will probably meet with thunderous applause) by normal people.

BTW, that false claim you made about a judge agreeing that OtherOS was advertised - I called your bluff. That's right - the judge never quoted that OtherOS was advertised. So, really that bit of "of course it is advertisement" is true only in bingoUV-world. Where reality and rationality probably fear to tread. Obviously, Normality, Rationality and Sanity from you is asking too much of you. My apologies for expecting you to be rational.

Bye. Have fun talking to the /. walls, idiot.

Traditionally, Javascript has been used only as a client language, running in your browser

Yes, that was the "tradition" before Netscape's Server-side Javascript support.

install [...] a SQLServer strength.

Microsoft has accomplished easy installation on a single platform. 12 c is fully supported on many versions of 5 major operating systems. The installation GUI (yes, the whining is about a system with a GUI/wizard installer you can blast through banging on 'next'...) is pretty consistent across platforms.

It's not hipster software. Oracle has the conceit to expect sufficient experience to follow some basic instructions. Nevertheless developers get it done every day without drama.

A processor license for Oracle Enterprise database is $47,500.

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/pricing/technology-price-list-070617.pdf

Currently, this lets you run on a dual-core x86, or a single core RISC/Itanium. The SPARC Niagra line had some real discount wierdness, since they present 64 cores to the OS.

I didn't read that from TFA - just that object level restores have been improved, as has some compression features.

Just so everybody is aware Oracle has always had kick-ass restore and recovery features, way ahead of other database - such things as Flashback, it has been shipping transaction logs since Noah was a boy, and the good ol' "ALERT TABLESPACE BEGIN BACKUP" to allow you to copy files online. It can perform change block tracking on database datafiles to allow increment backups "ALTER DATABASE ENABLE BLOCK CHANGE TRACKING USING FILE ;". All of this is platform independent too.

Recovery is also awesome. "ALTER DATABASE RECOVER UNTIL [timestamp]", "ALTER DATABASE RECOVERY UNTIL CANCEL", "ALTER DATABASE UNTIL CHANGE [transaction number]" and so on. If you accidentally loose you control files (somewhat like your MS-SQL master database being trashed) you can recreate them using SQL.

The big problem is that you have to be doing a lot of it to be good at it, many very think books have been written on Oracle backup and restore. So tools like Oracle's RMAN have been created to manage the process for DBAs...

Running a public server about all the products of a company, putting information about a product there IS making it generally known. How is it not?

You would have to go pretty far to find somebody who would consider the contents of an online manual as an advertisement. I guess I've now traveled far enough.

You know they didn't. Anyway, I didn't and I still found the information, so your assertion that it is necessary to buy the product to see this information is clearly false however much you try to deny it.

My assertion, implied, is that an advertisement is something that you don't need to dig deep for to find out. And the contents of an online manual are something that you would need to look for to read it.

Your assertion seems to be that just because the manual was posted on a PlayStation website, it constitutes an advertisement. Going by your logic, EVERYTHING ON THE NET CONSTITUTES AN ADVERTISEMENT. In that case, even something like this - Online help (or let's call it online Manual) for an Oracle built-in package's specific built-in procedure posted on oracle.com - would constitute an advertisement for that functionality, just because I was able to locate that information. Try that logic out on rational, honest, people and see how far they agree with you.

Posting "I see crap ads from the 80s there" is making it generally known that an AC thinks that crap ads from the 80s have been posted on YouTube. I can't find on YouTube that an AC is making generally known that he/she thinks that crap ads from the 80s have been posted on YouTube. Try again.

Do you have a point or are you using words as a tool for obfuscation?

Any honest debater would have to agree that archive.org is a place on the web. Not you, though.

Any sane, rational, honest PERSON, would understand that a manual (i.e. help or support document) posted on the Internet that you have to LOOK FOR, is not something that can be considered an advertisement.

Not you, though.

Java does have them:
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/concurrent/ExecutorService.html
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/concurrent/Future.html

But your comment over the wieldiness of one over the other baffles me. Fundamentally, Java's futures should operate in the exact same way as C#'s version with the same caveats. Do you know any real world example to help clear up this dissonance?

Once again, its part of the standard library without needing to change the language's syntax. The C# variant does require less typing, but IMHO the Java equivalent makes things a lot more clear in terms of what's going on and how, though thats possibly out of familiarity.

Java does have them:
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/concurrent/ExecutorService.html
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/concurrent/Future.html

But your comment over the wieldiness of one over the other baffles me. Fundamentally, Java's futures should operate in the exact same way as C#'s version with the same caveats. Do you know any real world example to help clear up this dissonance?

Once again, its part of the standard library without needing to change the language's syntax. The C# variant does require less typing, but IMHO the Java equivalent makes things a lot more clear in terms of what's going on and how, though thats possibly out of familiarity.

Except Oracle itself has voluminous amounts of relatively well-written and detailed documentation available for free.

I don't believe either of those companies provide an 'Express' version of the ERP software...

Tharr shur is. The entire Oracle stack is available in Developer and Trial forms; they only require 3x 6.8GB downloads but it's all there (see http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/indexes/downloads/index.html). The Microsoft Dynamics are available as part of TechNet and MSDN subscriptions -- if professional enough -- for trial purposes.

The use-restricted versions (i.e. Express-equivalent) are very limited, however... but as an ISV or consultant, there's enough developer access to learn their wares if you gave it a solid 6+ months.

Red Hat and Oracle provide indemnification clauses for their software: http://www.redhat.com/promo/believe/ http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/linux/ubl-indemnify-066152.pdf I'm sure other vendors do as well.

The main thing Oracle Linux does is run a newer kernel version than the RHEL kernel. RHEL6 for example is based on 2.6.32, while Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel R.2 (pdf) was running 3.0.16 when they last updated things.

Grabbing the newer kernel lets Oracle win direct performance shootouts against RedHat. They can get away with it because the only applications they're testing on it is Oracle, so if the upstream kernel breaks other things they don't care. RedHat cares about all of their supported software, so they have a lot more QA issues to deal with. Note that this little trick is also how Oracle has gotten around caring that RedHat made it harder to see what individual patches they apply to the upstream kernel in their release. They aren't using that version of kernel at all, so whatever RedHat is doing to customer their 2.6.32 branch they're ignoring.

Of course, if you're willing to do this, you can easily grab a newer Linux kernel from kernel.org yourself on regular RHEL, too. The game Oracle is playing with "Unbreakable Linux" is all marketing hype.

sadly, I agree.

The original post about it referred to a page regarding Java6 (which I understand if Oracle wants to EoL it to force most to go with Java7).

Also, from the looks, that original link in that post no longer refers to TZUpdater for Java6 being discontinued but rather says that it is for Java7:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/tzupdater-download-513681.html
Oh English...better to say what it is for than to say what it is not for, especially after it gets slashdotted.

FYI -- As per Henrik's blog [1], the TZUpdater tool will be made available, likely by EOB pacific today (June 10). Much thanks to all who provided constructive feedback and apologies for any inconvenience. - Don [1] - https://blogs.oracle.com/henrik/entry/tzupdater_for_jdk_7_available Disclaimer - I work for Oracle, and am on the Java SE PM team.

Son of a gun, Todd, you're right.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/tzdata-versions-138805.html

Timezone Tzdata Version
Introduced in JRE Update Release
TZUpdater Version
Main Changes in this Timezone Data Release

tzdata2013c
1.3.56
Palestine observed DST starting March 29, 2013.
Changes in Paraguay's DST rules.

tzdata2013b
1.3.55
Haiti uses US daylight-saving rules this year, and presumably future years.
Paraguay will end DST on March 24 this year.
Morocco does not observe DST during Ramadan;try to predict Ramadan in Morocco as best we can.

tzdata2013a
1.3.54
Chile's 2013 rules, and we guess rules for 2014 and later, will be the same as 2012, namely Apr Sun>=23 03:00 UTC to Sep Sun>=2 04:00 UTC.
New Zones Asia/Khandyga, Asia/Ust-Nera, Europe/Busingen.

tzdata2012j
1.3.53
Libya moved to CET on Nov 10th weekend, but with DST planned next year.

tzdata2012i
  6u38
  7u10
1.3.52
DST changes in Cuba to first Sun of Nov.

Head, say hello to sand.

The security exploits are in the Java plugin. I don't care much about those because I disabled the plugin in my browsers years ago. Don't folks understand that 99.99% of Java users are unaffected by the plugin exploits???

Don't folks realise all the security flaws are in the JRE

Scroll down, look at all the JRE flaws. Then look at how many of them are listed with "Access Vector" of Network.

Don't try to claim java is secure because you disabled the plugin. Being a fanboi in these cases is stupid. There are security flaws in everything, but suggesting Java is immune to them is moronic.

key link in that page is dead.

here's the situation: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/timezones-137583.html

bottom line, you need paid support from Oracle to get correct timezone info

That your gripe is with differential equations suggests that your department is just using the Math courses as a screening process (eliminate the chaff). Statistics (parametric and non-parametric), linear algebra, number theory, numerical methods ... these all have direct application to real world problems folks face in applying computers to business or engineering problems.

Number theory is the basis for cryptosystems. You probably won't be developing your own, but understanding a bit of why they work (or don't) is an example of how advanced mathematics impacts our day to day life in CS applications.

Even if you don't become a "data scientist" understanding statistics (correct and incorrect usage) are key to performance analysis, system tuning, etc.

Numerical methods help one appreciate entire classes of errors which computers make by design; not critical for an OS developer (no fp in kernels) but someday, somehow you may find yourself dealing with floating point computations ... learning about the fine points (see, for example, the Goldberg paper "What Every Computer Scientist Should Know about Floating Point Arithmetic" http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19957-01/806-3568/ncg_goldberg.html).

The list goes on. But differential equations really shouldn't be part of it. Pity that few CS departments work closely with Math departments to craft courses where the subject matter not only matters, but the linkage is made explicit.

A couple of easy ways are if you are running your storage via OCFS2 or BTRFS.

https://blogs.oracle.com/OTNGarage/entry/save_disk_space_on_linux

I would think the appropriate usage areas for MySQL and Oracle DBs overlap marginally

I am a DBA, and FYI there are multiple editions of Oracle. I'm not sure what use cases you were thinking of, but if you're looking for a free edition there's always Oracle Express Edition. Free to download, use and distribute, and allows databases up to 11GB. I've worked at companies that run bigger MySQL installations, but I would venture that they are less than 1% of the MySQL user base. The majority of MySQL installations are small ones to back websites, such as Wordpress installations. You could easily replace them with Oracle Express. For other use cases, there's Oracle's NoSQL database, or Oracle's In Memory database (called TimesTen for some obscure reason), and they used to market Oracle Database Lite for mobile apps.

So in summary, Oracle has a bunch of products that would compete with MySQL, and we can't understand why they don't just give MySQL away to Apache or some other foundation. Maybe they have support contracts that actually bring in some money.

I see how there could be confusion with the trailing 0 in the thousandths place. I have to presume they really did measure that distance down to the millimeter. Since NASA released the figures, make sure to localize the radix point and thousands separator to "US" when reading. Here's a lengthy but incomplete list of localized separators.