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The Swing Connection ought to be careful in the future not to infringe on the author's sideways look and feel concept.

I think Sun Microsystems had a pretty good idea in writing a Sun Blueprint that basically takes a look at how to do a task under Windows NT and then shows the corresponding task under Solaris. It is published by Sun and is called "Solaris Guide for Windows NT Administrators". You can find further information on it at the Sun Blueprints Publications website:

http://www.sun.com/solutions/blueprints/pubs.html

bbh

For easily installable Java applications take a look at Java Web Start. I guess installation/execution of Java apps cannot get much easier than it gets with Java Web Start. Just install the Web Start software which comes equipped with a JRE and click the link to the software you want to launch. Web Start takes care of getting the newest version, caches the latest version and then executes it using Java's extensive security mechanisms. You want to get access to otherwise restricted areas of the user's computer? Go ahead and digitally sign your application - the user can now grant the application the rights it needs. For an example application, look at the Web Start version of TopCoder or the UML modelling software Argo UML.

Java came a long way, baby - and there will be a lot of way ahead. With the next releases of Java focussing more and more on speed improvements, your speed problems should go away as well. And, BTW, there currently are Java apps which run very fast - take a look Borland JBuilder - a Java IDE written in Java. And it runs smooooth!

.bbr fear women playing with delete functions - next time it could be you.

Maybe you should take a peek into the corporate world. Want to add SNMP functionality to your Java product? J. Random Hacker doesn't, but Q. Big Corporation often will, and the only way to do this is to fork out the moolah for Sun's JDMK. The cost? $10000 for one (1) developer seat and 50 runtime licenses.

But Sun's basic strategy is to popularize Java (at a loss) and then sell Sun hardware for it (at a profit). The company I work for is almost entirely a Java shop. We make carrier-grade applications, and whenever possible we ask our customers to use Sun hardware, because that's what Java works best on. This is not a coincidence.

Cheers,
-j.

Maybe you should take a peek into the corporate world. Want to add SNMP functionality to your Java product? J. Random Hacker doesn't, but Q. Big Corporation often will, and the only way to do this is to fork out the moolah for Sun's JDMK. The cost? $10000 for one (1) developer seat and 50 runtime licenses.

But Sun's basic strategy is to popularize Java (at a loss) and then sell Sun hardware for it (at a profit). The company I work for is almost entirely a Java shop. We make carrier-grade applications, and whenever possible we ask our customers to use Sun hardware, because that's what Java works best on. This is not a coincidence.

Cheers,
-j.

Of course, NOW I see the other comment about this. :)

Here's a reference though:

Only about 50% or so of the total smart card market .. don't know if you call that embedded or not ..

Java is not an open standard

Then what do you call this?

It's been awhile, but I thought they had the alpha JDK available at the end of 94.

Nope, it was '95. Sun's Java press releases only go back to '95 and a read through the ones that are there point to a Spring 1995 release date. I also remember using the second Alpha JDK around the end of Spring 1995.

"We have a beautiful language here in Java; it has achieved industry-wide support and is pushing forward with great velocity. What can we do to support it?"

Well, another song product, Open Firmware, has a song (though it's not a programming language... but it does use Forth!)

Take a look here, it's new in JDK 1.4

Doug Engelbart invented the mouse at SRI, and developed a graphical user interface to NLS, which was his early hypertext system (and no, he didn't get the idea from Ted Nelson). Ivan Sutherland's work on Sketchpad at MIT was extremely influential.

And Smalltalk wasn't the only GUI that PARC developed. There was the Alto, Interlisp-D, Mesa/Cedar, XDE (Xerox Development Environment) , Star/Viewpoint, and others.

Actually there is a good solution to this.
Sun Type 6 USB keyboard with such layout.

I don't know how clicky they are, but they are beyond "no-windows". They are SUN.

Can you say geek points?

Until I can get my hand on one of them, I've got my (windows) keyboard mapped to Sun Type5 style. But I've heard of "Unix" style Type6 usb.

Ones I've linked to have Sum Type5c layout (aka PC style with the bastardation of ctrl and esc)

If you mod me offtopic, I will buy you the original reddish iMac.

Actually there is a good solution to this.
Sun Type 6 USB keyboard with such layout.

I don't know how clicky they are, but they are beyond "no-windows". They are SUN.

Can you say geek points?

Until I can get my hand on one of them, I've got my (windows) keyboard mapped to Sun Type5 style. But I've heard of "Unix" style Type6 usb.

Ones I've linked to have Sum Type5c layout (aka PC style with the bastardation of ctrl and esc)

If you mod me offtopic, I will buy you the original reddish iMac.

Six months ago, sun announced starcat which can take 576GB of main memory. Sun also claims 172.8GByte/sec bandwidth across the interconnect.

It offers some pretty cool tiling caching strategies for displaying large images. We've written an app that opens up images that are in the order of several hundred MB, and it handles them pretty well.

Looks like Windows is getting off pretty lightly for a change - only one poster so far pointing out that ActiveX is fundamentally insecure.

It boils down to whether you'd rather have a run-time environment you can control (like the Java VM) or an unbounded set of parties you have to trust .

I think we're seeing something fundamental going on here, where legitimate application providers, e.g. for B2B commerce, will gravitate towards Java Web Start (or possibly very "managed" Dotnet) as that will be the only kind of assurance worth having.

Yes, I have VPC/2 and I am running OS/2 @ home. I only need Win32 if I get an application (like tax application in Germany or a library application) I can not use with ODIN.

This happens only five times a year and for all other my wife and myself use OS/2!

Some examples:

• Communication with ADSL or/and ISDN, to FidoNet and the Internet.
• Answering machine
• Programming with jEDIT on a native Java aplication.
• Exchanging Sounds and songs with AudioGalaxy/2 or LimeWire in the GNUtella network
• Word processing, Using Spreadsheet or Layout application with Papyrus or StarOffice 5.1a.
• Web Browser like Mozilla or Opera
• ...and many, many more

My source is www.os2.org and as long as I can work with OS/2 I will do it because it is fast, rock solid and it has a nice GUI the *nix community could learn from!

I'm beginning to see the light. 'til now, I'd only seen a very few (or recognized as such) real Java desktop apps. Poking around at Swing Sightings, I was surprised to find quite a few Java/GUI apps that look like fairly heavy hitters. I still have some reservations about the throughput of a busy Swing desktop application, but now I'm going to shut up until I've tried out a few more (IDEA looks good).

The thing your looking for is called NIS...

NIS is simple to set up, but any user on one of your systems can run ypcat passwd (or ypcat shadow, depending on how you've set things up) and see everyone's encrypted passwords.

Another problem with NIS is that is distributes the complete maps every time a change is made. If you're looking for an enterprise solution, you'll have a passwd map with thousands of entries, and you don't need to be pushing that whole thing around the network every time a user changes his password.

NIS+ solves both of these problems, but is more complicated. But more importantly, Sun plans to remove NIS+ from Solaris after Solaris 9. They're encouraging everyone to switch to LDAP.

TIFF has a tile format as well. Is there something better about the JPEG2000 or PhotoCD formats over the TIFF one? Especially given that TIFF tool support is quite broad.

But really, the format elegance doesn't matter if an intelligent viewer doesn't exist that knows not to try and read the whole file into memory. Are there viewers like this for JPEG2000 or PhotoCD?

From what I read a few months ago, adding CMYK support to the GIMP, while desirable for the whole graphic arts industry, would be heroic amounts of work. Has the situation improved? Is anyone working on it? How would that compare to the work needed, say, to use the Java Advanced Imaging library (here) to write a viewer?

adéu,
Mateu

Some corrections to HenryWirz's post:

The developer model (SL5000D) was selling for $399 from Sharp.

At the JavaOne conference, they sold them for $299, which included a wireless card. You could also get it without the card for $199.

The 5000D has 32MB of RAM (typically split down the middle between program space and storage, though you can change this).

The 5500 has 64MB of RAM (also split down the middle.)

-bill!

From the acticle... Software developers who want to dispense with Section 5's limitations can turn to schema-based serialization. This method works by publishing the interfaces of the SOAP service along with the schema(s) for the request/response messages. Web Services Definition Language (WSDL) is the current de facto standard for this purpose. Apache SOAP is not WSDL aware, but Axis (see Resources), Apache SOAP's successor toolkit, is.

The lack of WSDL support in the apahce toolkit is a huge limitation of this toolkit if you wish to utilize remote web services. However the axis project at apache does look like it will provide a solution to this problem. Although the axis project is still in beta stages, it looks like it will be a killer implemetation once it matures. If you are planning on working with Java and SOAP in the future, then you really should take a look at axis. Beta, but worth it ;)

Yes indeed, there are absolutely no NAS solutions out there that don't lock you into a Microsoft-centric solution.

How'd this get +4?

- A.P.

• Compaq
• HP
• IBM
• Silicon Graphics
• Sun

People who don't need an unsigned data type.

Actually, Java's primitive type char is an unsigned 16 bit integer type. It can store integers between 0 and 65535.

Check this out. What makes it really funny is that I think they are being serious about this. This is from the company that, only a year ago, "put the dot in dot com".

Oh the times, they are a'changing. :)

I mean, who uses java anyway?

Nobody, apparently.

In other news, Sun Microsystems shifts focus to .net instead. Get the full article here.

"We know a better system when we see it", says Ed Zander, President and Chief Operating Officer, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
"To be honest, we don't quite see a future without a proper .net strategy. The development tools alone with all their templates and wizards just make it too good for us to ignore. It also allows us to collect more data from the applications developed everywhere on the net. Thanks to the agreement you agree to when installing the package, we can collect pretty much any piece of information from every system."

But is that not too intrusive?
"No I don't think so, think about it. With that kind of feedback the installed base of .net applications becomes in reality a huge testing facility where we can ship, near ready, products too. The data collected enables us to weed out the bugs and security issues quickly and we can release patches on a cheap subscription basis"

And it continues..
Well I for one, is surpriced to say the least. What will be next, dumping Solaris?

We should not ask whether UNIX is or is not more or less secure than Windows NT, we should ask whether a specific derivate of UNIX can be made more secure than Windows NT can be made.

You are all mainly talking about application level security.

How many exploits are there on Windows NT - for IIS, for LANServer, for other NT services, for hacking the registry?
How many exploits are there for Linux - for Sendmail, for BIND, for telnet and even for SSH?
You mentioned OpenBSD, so let's take some look at OpenBSD. Its DEFAULT install is secure.
What about adding third-party software? What happens, when you've got Sendmail installed, and someone manages to hack uid 0 by exploiting some vulnerability in the Sendmail daemon?

All of these exploits are application level vulnerabilities.
The real problem with operating systems is, that they highly depend on application level security. Even OpenBSD is NOT really a secure Operating System - it's just a really secure software distribution.
OSes themselves may not be vulnerable - but their highly privileged application make them vulnerable.

However, for some derivates of Unix and specific setups of Unices, this is no longer true, while for Windows NT/2000/XP it is still true - and that is, why some Unices actually are more secure than NT, because their OS Kernels offer really strong security below the application level (user space).

Did you ever take a look at Trusted Solaris, at AIX/CMW, or at Argus' Pitbull for Solaris or AIX?

Sure, if some application is vulnerable to being exploited, it will still be vulnerable when running on one of these OSes - but it doesn't matter that much, because these Operating Systems are locked up from inside the OS kernel.
On 'normal' Unices, you simply attack some process, which has root privileges, and all system security is gone because of root's omnipotent superuser privileges.
On the OSes mentioned above, you do not run any process with root-like privileges, because you simply don't need to - instead, you've got a large set of privileges to allow some very specific privileged operations (like using a restricted port or changing the root directory), so what do you want to attack in order to get access to the Operating system itself?

On an Argus-enhanced Solaris box, for example, Sendmail would be running in its own compartment and with the PV_ASN_PORT privilege in it's effective privilege set.
If someone would successfully attack Sendmail, he/she would...
a) ...be locked down into sendmail's compartment
b) ...probably lose all of sendmails privileges when exec()'ing another binary, because the other binary does not have these privileges in its proxy privilege set
c) ...not be able to access configuration files, because they are probably protected by an integrity label
d) ...not be able to read secret information, because MAC's sensivity label would not allow it
e) ...not be able to gain any further privileges, even if he/she could exploit highly privileges binaries, because these privileges are not in the session's limiting privilege set

Provided that these Trusted Operating Systems are correctly configured, the only way to hack into one of them is to attack the OS kernel itself.

So, how many exploits can you find for the Pitbull-enhanced AIX kernel?

More information:
Trusted Solaris
Argus Systems

kind regards from Austria,
octogen

you joke...

but there already is a JSAPI

Have you read the MS-DRM-OS patent? [uspto.gov] If you haven't, it's probably more evil than you realize. It cripples itself in all sorts of wonderful ways. It's nothing but a list of things it wont do, or blocks the user from doing.

Making a programming langauge depedant on the ability to handle strings is a reasonable thing to do.

All the classes Sun considered fundamental to the langauge is in the java.lang.*.* packages. Notice how small the fundamental classes are in java relative to the total number of classes in the API. This is how a good system is designed. There is a small core functionality on top of which other things are built.

Being able to read and display webpages with a graphical interface should not be fundamental to an OS. For example, if Java lost it's java.net package, surely, a significant number of Java programs would fail to work. However, the large majority of packages (not net related) would still work fine. IE shouldn't be anymore needed for the core of the OS than should office.

- the ADABAS database, which may or may not be more or less functional than (say) MySQL, but I can't tell for sure, since it's closed-source

StarOffice 6 is supposed to allow connections to other data sources. (otherwise, sales of SO6 would suffer more)

Here is the Sun page containing that information

Sorry hate to call BS on this one but I don't think Solaris on Sparc is headed towards the SGI grave. SGI stopped innovating for a while and hence lost market share. Sun has always continued to innovate and last time I checked they had the bulk of the high-end market and where growing.

http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2002-02/sunf lash.20020225.2.html

I doubt Sun will go the way of SGI/DEC/DataGeneral as long as they continue innovating. Unlike Microsoft who really hasn't done any true innovation, they have simply plagerized ideas from a miriad of other companies and people and then simply leveraged their market share to make sure the orginators can't profit and dissapear.

Seriously. They packed the inside of the E150 cases with foam to direct the air flow inside the case - and they were a HUGE pain to try and put the pieces back together again. Don't believe it? Check it out. Look it up and search for 'foam'.

Is there any chance of seeing a Mozilla compiled with Sun's own C compiler on SPARC or x86? At high levels of optimization (e.g. feedback based optimization, -xO3, cross file optimization) we've seen 10-25% performance differences on CPU intensive, complicated code between the Sun compilers and gcc.

The Sun compilers can be downloaded for free and used with 1-month trial licenses.

Is there any chance of seeing a Mozilla compiled with Sun's own C compiler on SPARC or x86? At high levels of optimization (e.g. feedback based optimization, -xO3, cross file optimization) we've seen 10-25% performance differences on CPU intensive, complicated code between the Sun compilers and gcc.

The Sun compilers can be downloaded for free and used with 1-month trial licenses.

It looks like the article is more of a "i came, I saw, I wrote" stuff than a properly well researched article. The major (only?) things the article keeps pointing out is the "Lack of applications" and "No company pushing it"

Linux for the desktop is another matter. Its wide-scale adoption is still treated with skepticism by experts, who say that for consumer-level users, simply configuring Linux to dial into an ISP (Internet service provider) is a challenge.
What about KDE and GNOME diallers? Both work great.

But what hampers Linux the most, according to analysts, is a lack of applications that can run on the open source operating system.
I think what they mean is a lack of Microsoft Office Compatible applications. However, what about OpenOffice and StarOffice 6 (though there is a very brief mention)

"All the system vendors are pushing Linux on the server side, [but] there's really no large company that is ... pushing Linux on the desktop," Claybrook said.
Looks like Mandrake , RedHat et al. have been forgotten?

OpenOffice is the open-source equivalent to StarOffice (I'd say 'version' but I suspect that they will start to follow divergent paths from now on).

Sun is attempting to make StarOffice into an attractive alternative to people who would not otherwise even consider it ("It's free? Then it must be junk!!"). Sun can also include proprietary additions that cannot, for legal reasons, be made available as part of OpenOffice.

Saying that this was long-planned is probably true, but that doesn't change the fact that Sun only announced it recently. Mandrake, at least through the ZDNet story, claims that the decision to release StarOffice as proprietary was unexpected, which could be true (unlikely, but certainly possible). They also state that there are other factors to be considered that are why StarOffice is only available to Silver level or better members. Details are available on MandrakeClub. It's interesting that the ZDNet story and the MandrakeClub explanation don't jibe on several important points, so take that as you will.

Finally, OpenOffice is freely available in the standard Mandrake 8.2 release (it's on CD3 of the download edition, as somebody has already pointed out), and there's no requirement whatsoever that a user needs to acquire StarOffice 6.0, unless they specifically require the caapbilities offered in the proprietary release that are not available in OpenOffice. And really, how many home users need the database functionality? Some of the additonal file filters would be nice, but I'd hardly say essential. Now for a business ...

Personally, I feel that this is actually a fairly minor thing that has been blown out of proportion by an over-enthusiastic media. But that's just my opinion ...

Funny, Sun's site says April/May/June 2002. Which means June of course.

Why not use the higher level API that Sun is developing for you, Java3D? We're using it for Magicosm, and FullSail uses it for a 3d racing game and a MortalCombat style game. All work very smoothly and quickly; you would never know it was Java unless told.

There's a lot of new stuff in 1.4 that is specifically designed to allow for hardware acceleration of image/component rendering and whatnot. Look at java.awt.image.VolatileImage and go from there. It's beginning to have some DirectX-like capabilities.

-If

yeah, you're right. Java doesnt explicitly require templates because of that Object base. But I'm actually in favor of generics because it can clean up code readibility. take a peek at gilad bracha's presentation[pdf] on the topic from last year's JavaOne. Note how the code reads (and when errors happen) in slides 9 and 10.

You find me an Intel machine with those specs.

And what if you couldn't take the BMW on most of the roads in the world?

That analogy is rather unclear, but I assume you're talking about software support here.
Nowdays, poor software support on MacOS is a myth.

OSX can run software for OSX, OS<X, *nix, and, with VirtualPC, Windows.
I'd say that macs have the best software support out there, certainly better than Windows or freenix.

The engineering that Apple seems to do seems to be in how to make their computers weird shapes [...]

At least Apple hardware doesn't have all the obselete crap that PC's are just now starting to phase out.
Hell, the PC boot firmware hasn't been reworked (or, better, standardized) in something like 15 or 20 years.
Yet, unbelieveably, it's *still* not smart enough to ignore a non-bootable floppy in the drive.

That's good engineering?

C-X C-S

All the comments so far have mentioned that Java for games will never take off because Java is slow. Yes Java is slow because it is interpreted by a JVM that runs on top of the native platform. But what if Sun could convince console makers to embed a MAJC-like chip in their boxes? Sun already has the technology -- check out the specifications of the MAJC architecture embedded into their latest framebuffers (XVR-100).

All the comments so far have mentioned that Java for games will never take off because Java is slow. Yes Java is slow because it is interpreted by a JVM that runs on top of the native platform. But what if Sun could convince console makers to embed a MAJC-like chip in their boxes? Sun already has the technology -- check out the specifications of the MAJC architecture embedded into their latest framebuffers (XVR-100).

I doubt that it will be enough for WINE developers to catch up with Win95. No one uses the out-of-the-box version of Win95 anymore, do they? There's all sorts of updates you need to get your software running and, yes, those updates include additions/changes to the API.

Yes and no. There are a lot more people than ever before using that MS-VMS^^^^^NT^^XP brand of OS than before, but a great many people still use win 9x^^CE^^ME. And the vast majority of programs still run just fine on 95OSR2. The key framework of the API is there in 95OSR2. 98 adds some bugfixes (which you can download anyway, and actually aren't all that common - the real F-ups seem to come from the application division) and "Active Desktop" aka "Active Pain in the Rear" which gets chopped on a lot of machines anyway. ME adds little of note beyond the removal of the "DOS" Mode boot option. If you don't run one of these MS programs you may not be able to run other MS products, but your ability to run world class applications that don't try to take over your computer like Pegasus Mail, Opera, StarOffice, etc. should be just fine. If they can keep DirectX less than a year or two behind I won't even need to reboot for games anymore.

A good solid WINE/Win95 compatibility would allow a lot of people to switch to a Free OS (gratuitous link) and quit paying the microsoft tax with minimal impact.

Actually, Java has never followed the same naming and version number conventions that GNU projects use. ie. JDK 1.1.? is almost a completly different codebase than J2SE 1.2. You can read about the overhaul they did on 1.4 here