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Take a look at the Java Media Framework. http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/desktop/media/jmf/

http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=4802695

Really? It looks like Sun has been sitting on this bug for several years, and is finally doing something, but doesn't expect it until JRE 6u12.

The only 64-bit Java plugin that I can get to run is Iced Tea.

http://www.iced-tea.org/wiki/Main_Page

Unfortunately, that doesn't work with the one site that I've found that still uses Java (the horrid ADP timesheet site that my company just outsourced to).

Or you could use a newer JVM. With the exception of a few well-documented issues, Java code written for any previous platform version is fully upward-compatible, both binary (byte-code) and source, to any newer release. That sounds like about as close to WORA as you can get.

Or were you thinking of running new code on an old JVM? If so... why?

RAID-Z (as well as it's other flavors, e.g., RAID-Z2) is not just a way to arrange disks to be more reliable and/or provide better throughput, but is an advanced file system. This means that RAID-Z offers features like compression, privileges, quotas, etc. that are above and beyond the RAID-5 specification. This is a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your requirements (probably a good thing, 'though).

One of the advantages of having a ZFS-based RAID in this type of configuration is the ZFS file system is transaction-based and so performs better in a network configuration, where local caching of data can corrupt file systems without like features (see http://blogs.sun.com/roch/entry/nfs_and_zfs_a_fine).

RAID-Z will require more write I/O and CPU than a hardware-based RAID solution, but it is possible that Sun has create such hardware in their (quite expensive) solution. At the same time, if you are creating a dedicated network storage device rather than sharing the hardware with other activities, you'll never notice the extra overhead. And if you don't want to buy Sun's hardware, they have given the RAID software away, so you can build your own at no (additional) cost.

An additional 48GB of RAM and 18GB of SSD are not worth $50k. Seriously... Registered ECC DDR2 RAM is about $50/GB and SSD about $20/GB (gross overestimation): they are really worth 48*50 + 18*20 = $2760... Sun is charging 18x more !

Also the 7210 with 48x250GB is strictly equivalent to the X4540 with 48x250GB (same amount of RAM, no SSD), but is $13k more expensive... for the same box ! That is outrageous.

The X4540 is even better to prove your point as it is cheaper than the X4500:
12TB (48x250GB) - $21,995.00
and is virtually identical to the new 7210 box (config with 48x250GB) that sells for $34,995.00. Therefore proving that the same hardware is sold at a 60% markup ! Someone mod the parent up, he laid out the perfect counter-argument to the GP.

Last I checked Netapp was still charging $10,000 per TB! Do you really think there is no reason for this?

Absolutely. The storage industry has always been a particularly profitable market precisely because buyers think these prices are justified. IMHO it's caused by a lack of competition in the high-end market (competiton is much more fierce in the entry-level and mid-range market). As someone pointed out, Google built a highly reliable platform and is certaintly not paying $10k/TB. Read about Google FS.

A friend of mine who works for a storage vendor that should remain nameless fully admits that they can sell some systems at 4-5x their OEM prices only because their customers, like you, think that "it must be worth it".

Look at the diff between config #2 ($35k, 32GB RAM) and #3 ($42k, 64GB RAM) of the Sun Thumper x4540 (48 drives in 4U): http://shop.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/Sun_NorthAmerica-Sun_Store_US-Site/en_US/-/USD/ViewStandardCatalog-Browse?CategoryName=SF_X4540&CategoryDomainName=Sun_NorthAmerica-Sun_Store_US-SunCatalog Sun charges $7000 for an additional 32 GB of DDR2 registered ECC RAM, when in reality an increase from 32 GB to 64 GB should only costs 64 GB * $46/GB (price for 4GB modules) - 32 * $20/GB (price for 2GB modules) = $2304. So Sun is charging 3x the OEM price for a RAM upgrade. (Before you ask, I know the prices off the top of my head because I recently built a box with 32GB RAM).

Look at, as pointed out by another poster, the diff between a Thumper x4540 with 48 x 250GB SATA drives at $22k and a Sun Storage 7210 with 48 x 250GB SATA drives at $35k. This is a $13k price difference for virtually the same box. Beside even the x4540 is overpriced (another friend of mine bought one with the smallest drives and replaced them with 1TB from Dell to end up saving $20k to his employer).

So, no this practice of overpricing in the storage industry is not justified ! I have been saving tens of thousand of dollars by buying and building my own servers from newegg and literally "throwing a few drives in 2U chassis" (and throwing ZFS on top of it) and guess what ? It works pretty well ! Obviously not everybody can do it (don't build your servers if you don't know the diff between 1.8V and 2.0V RAM, or the effect of a 75W vs. 120W processor in a 1U chassis, etc), but if you can do it, you will save non-negligible amounts of money to your employer. This is important both for small startups who have to run as efficiently as possible, as well as Fortune500 like Google who have to scale efficiently. But sure, if you have the money and don't mind getting ripped off by storage vendors, go ahead, it's your money :) I don't deny they sell high-quality hardware, it's just unnecessarily expensive.

Last I checked Netapp was still charging $10,000 per TB! Do you really think there is no reason for this?

Absolutely. The storage industry has always been a particularly profitable market precisely because buyers think these prices are justified. IMHO it's caused by a lack of competition in the high-end market (competiton is much more fierce in the entry-level and mid-range market). As someone pointed out, Google built a highly reliable platform and is certaintly not paying $10k/TB. Read about Google FS.

A friend of mine who works for a storage vendor that should remain nameless fully admits that they can sell some systems at 4-5x their OEM prices only because their customers, like you, think that "it must be worth it".

Look at the diff between config #2 ($35k, 32GB RAM) and #3 ($42k, 64GB RAM) of the Sun Thumper x4540 (48 drives in 4U): http://shop.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/Sun_NorthAmerica-Sun_Store_US-Site/en_US/-/USD/ViewStandardCatalog-Browse?CategoryName=SF_X4540&CategoryDomainName=Sun_NorthAmerica-Sun_Store_US-SunCatalog Sun charges $7000 for an additional 32 GB of DDR2 registered ECC RAM, when in reality an increase from 32 GB to 64 GB should only costs 64 GB * $46/GB (price for 4GB modules) - 32 * $20/GB (price for 2GB modules) = $2304. So Sun is charging 3x the OEM price for a RAM upgrade. (Before you ask, I know the prices off the top of my head because I recently built a box with 32GB RAM).

Look at, as pointed out by another poster, the diff between a Thumper x4540 with 48 x 250GB SATA drives at $22k and a Sun Storage 7210 with 48 x 250GB SATA drives at $35k. This is a $13k price difference for virtually the same box. Beside even the x4540 is overpriced (another friend of mine bought one with the smallest drives and replaced them with 1TB from Dell to end up saving $20k to his employer).

So, no this practice of overpricing in the storage industry is not justified ! I have been saving tens of thousand of dollars by buying and building my own servers from newegg and literally "throwing a few drives in 2U chassis" (and throwing ZFS on top of it) and guess what ? It works pretty well ! Obviously not everybody can do it (don't build your servers if you don't know the diff between 1.8V and 2.0V RAM, or the effect of a 75W vs. 120W processor in a 1U chassis, etc), but if you can do it, you will save non-negligible amounts of money to your employer. This is important both for small startups who have to run as efficiently as possible, as well as Fortune500 like Google who have to scale efficiently. But sure, if you have the money and don't mind getting ripped off by storage vendors, go ahead, it's your money :) I don't deny they sell high-quality hardware, it's just unnecessarily expensive.

Last I checked Netapp was still charging $10,000 per TB! Do you really think there is no reason for this?

Absolutely. The storage industry has always been a particularly profitable market precisely because buyers think these prices are justified. IMHO it's caused by a lack of competition in the high-end market (competiton is much more fierce in the entry-level and mid-range market). As someone pointed out, Google built a highly reliable platform and is certaintly not paying $10k/TB. Read about Google FS.

A friend of mine who works for a storage vendor that should remain nameless fully admits that they can sell some systems at 4-5x their OEM prices only because their customers, like you, think that "it must be worth it".

Look at the diff between config #2 ($35k, 32GB RAM) and #3 ($42k, 64GB RAM) of the Sun Thumper x4540 (48 drives in 4U): http://shop.sun.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/Sun_NorthAmerica-Sun_Store_US-Site/en_US/-/USD/ViewStandardCatalog-Browse?CategoryName=SF_X4540&CategoryDomainName=Sun_NorthAmerica-Sun_Store_US-SunCatalog Sun charges $7000 for an additional 32 GB of DDR2 registered ECC RAM, when in reality an increase from 32 GB to 64 GB should only costs 64 GB * $46/GB (price for 4GB modules) - 32 * $20/GB (price for 2GB modules) = $2304. So Sun is charging 3x the OEM price for a RAM upgrade. (Before you ask, I know the prices off the top of my head because I recently built a box with 32GB RAM).

Look at, as pointed out by another poster, the diff between a Thumper x4540 with 48 x 250GB SATA drives at $22k and a Sun Storage 7210 with 48 x 250GB SATA drives at $35k. This is a $13k price difference for virtually the same box. Beside even the x4540 is overpriced (another friend of mine bought one with the smallest drives and replaced them with 1TB from Dell to end up saving $20k to his employer).

So, no this practice of overpricing in the storage industry is not justified ! I have been saving tens of thousand of dollars by buying and building my own servers from newegg and literally "throwing a few drives in 2U chassis" (and throwing ZFS on top of it) and guess what ? It works pretty well ! Obviously not everybody can do it (don't build your servers if you don't know the diff between 1.8V and 2.0V RAM, or the effect of a 75W vs. 120W processor in a 1U chassis, etc), but if you can do it, you will save non-negligible amounts of money to your employer. This is important both for small startups who have to run as efficiently as possible, as well as Fortune500 like Google who have to scale efficiently. But sure, if you have the money and don't mind getting ripped off by storage vendors, go ahead, it's your money :) I don't deny they sell high-quality hardware, it's just unnecessarily expensive.

Also, the capacity of these storage servers are much more from the simple storage that you can build:
Sun Storage 7110: 2TB
Sun Storage 7210: 44TB
Sun Storage 7410: 576TB
See this video
Are you going to build your own 576TB disk now?!

This is meant to be 100x faster than the storage you're talking about:
First: This uses Hybrid Storage Pool:
The Hybrid Storage Pool combines DRAM, SSDs, and HDDs in the same system, dramatically reducing bottlenecks and providing breakthrough speed.
Second: The system's hybrid architecture gives you the speed and performance you need to shatter the I/O bottlenecks with no administrator intervention. In fact, Hybrid Storage Pools with SSDs can improve I/O performance by 100x compared to mechanical disk drives.

This is meant to be 100x faster than the storage you're talking about:
First: This uses Hybrid Storage Pool:
The Hybrid Storage Pool combines DRAM, SSDs, and HDDs in the same system, dramatically reducing bottlenecks and providing breakthrough speed.
Second: The system's hybrid architecture gives you the speed and performance you need to shatter the I/O bottlenecks with no administrator intervention. In fact, Hybrid Storage Pools with SSDs can improve I/O performance by 100x compared to mechanical disk drives.

Guh. Sorry. I'm tired, and re-reading my comment the english is well-formed but the concepts are jumbled nonsense. Let me try again, by your leave...

Yes, it's unavoidable to rebuild when you lose a disk, and there will be a performance hit unless you go for full on 100% redundancy, and not many companies can afford to do that with a lot of data.

ZFS offers a number of benefits, though, in the event of drive failure-triggered rebuild, in that it basically knows where the data is and only bothers with that. A hardware controller has no idea what's data and what is blank space and so just redoes everything. In theory, assuming the MB/s of rebuild is the same, a ZFS rebuild of a half-full array should take half the time of a traditional controller.

It is also much more intelligent about *what* it rebuilds, starting at the top and then descending down the FS tree, marking it as known good along the way. This means that if a second drive fails halfway through the resync, instead of a catastrophic failure you still have the data up to the point of failure.

I can't remember where I read that; maybe here: http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/entry/smokin_mirrors

But I didn't even want to talk about drive-failure rebuilding, what I actually wanted to say that ZFS is, in theory, less likely to get itself into an inconsistent state in the case of power fluctuations, controller RAM failures, drive failures w/ pending writes, that kind of thing. That's the kind of rebuild I meant - after some kind of catastrophic failure. I should probably have said "integrity checking" though.

By design, ZFS never holds critical data in memory only and so at least in theory should always be consistent on-disk. Basically it shouldn't need to fsck. That is a giant advantage to me, if it turns out to be as good in reality as it sounds on paper. Of course, that also has a lot to do with the capabilities of the FS proper, but removing the evil, evil HW controllers from the picture can only be a plus.

I don't know why, but RAID controllers are the most unreliable pieces of hardware I have ever known, besides the drives themselves (but at least they are consistent and expected to fail). Get a few of them together and something WILL go wrong, more often than not in a horrible and unexpected way. When some RAM goes bad in a HW RAID controller you are in for a whole lot of subtle, silent-error-prone fun. Anything that gets the HW controllers out of the picture is a win for me.

And don't even mention the batteries in HW raid controllers. They are the wrong solution to the power failure problem, especially since it's always after a failure that a disk will decide it's had enough of spinning and would just like to sit still for a while, thank you very much. Drive failure with pending writes! Exactly the words every administrator wants to hear. Almost as good as power failure with pending writes. Combine the two (highly likely!) for maximum LULZ. Ok, this is turning into a rant, I better stop.

Anyway, thanks for the corrections. My original comment (and probably this one) came across as a confused mess upon re-reading .. sorry .. will sleep now : )

How does 2TB of Solid State Memory compare to 2TB (14 x 146GB) of spinning disks? Apples to oranges, my friend. Apples to oranges.

(FWIW, you need to spend about $71 grand (!) to get a mere 18GB of SSD. Almost like a cracker-jack prize or something. :-P)

How does 2TB of Solid State Memory compare to 2TB (14 x 146GB) of spinning disks? Apples to oranges, my friend. Apples to oranges.

(FWIW, you need to spend about $71 grand (!) to get a mere 18GB of SSD. Almost like a cracker-jack prize or something. :-P)

Mr AC, did you bother to read the entire story plus the information that Sun publishes?

These machines are filled with spinning disks. The base models have no SSD at all, while the higher-end models contain varying amounts of SSD to use as a high-speed cache.

The minimum price for a mere 18GB of SSD? $71,995.00.

(You can fall off your chair now.)

Go back and rethink your arguments once you do the math.

This is BS. Clearly.
You have certainly never done this yourself.
First of all, the P800 is a PoS for anything but the included RAID5 or 6 (we haven't even tested RAID6, IIRC).
It has a maximum number of logical disks it can create and you will most likely have to reboot the server and go into Array Manager to setup another "array" (single disk). You can't use the RAID on the card, because ZFS wants to control the disks themself, without a RAID-controller in between (and ideally no Cache-RAM).
My co-worker's been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
So, you've got to buy one of these: http://www.sun.com/storagetek/storage_networking/hba/sas/specs.xml and connect a good external JBOD chassis to it (MSA70 e.g.). For SATA, we use Promise VtrakJ610s (which are not good, but cheap...).
Then it works.
But you will miss some features, like the red or yellow light when a disk is dead (so you'll have to count...).
And of course, you also don't get all the integration-work SUN has done with their new filers, all the statistics, all the health-checks, the GUIs.
In the end, you end-up a bit cheaper, but with a lot more labour and no support and no warrantee from anybody (best-effort only support from HP and SUN for Solaris on the DLxxx,)

from a sun blog so take it with a grain of salt, but here are benchmarks http://blogs.sun.com/hotnets/entry/analyzing_the_sun_storage_7000

Read this.
Sun rocks.
Real engineering here.

Four easy steps to dead-cheap SAN/NAS storage:

1. Buy HP DL180 or DL185 servers, with a Smart Array P800 RAID card
2. Buy 12 to 14 1TB or even 1.5TB hard disks from Seagate and trays in eBay (I've bought in the past from SCSITray and there are other sellers)
3. Install Solaris 10 or Nexenta OS, set up ZFS
4. Sun goes bankrupt

Second level ARC is standard in recent ZFS; you could just plonk some X25-M's in your X4240, attach a disk shelf to it, configure ZFS to use the SSD's as secondary ARC for it, and pretty much have something like what Sun are selling.

You know, just with less vendor support, and more effort involved in building, configuring, tuning and testing. If you come out of it with change from $10k, you probably earned it with the effort you put in.

With the same level of assurance that the solution will operate, first time - every time?

Sure.

With the same level of confidence that Some Vendor will bend over backwards to fix it if it doesn't work?

Heck, I'll even throw in the same vendor!

Will your solution be as well tested and engineered?

Even better. It will have had the same testing and engineering, PLUS a pre-existing history of operating in the marketplace.

I give you, the Sun Fire X4500 Server:

12TB (48x250GB) - $23,995.00
24TB (48 x 500GB) - $34,995.00
48TB (48 x 1TB) - $61,995.00

Let us compare with Sun's new line, shall we?

11.5 TB (46 x 250GB) - $34,995.00
22.5 TB (45 x 500GB) - $71,995.00
44.0 TB (44 x 1TB) - $117,995.00

So... twice the price for the same storage? To steal a line from a very famous "programmer":

Brillant

1] The filesystem is called ZFS not Zettabyte

2] They appear to be twice as expensive as storage solutions that sun already sells.

Compare:
  Sun Storage 7210, Option 3, $117,995, 44Tb

with
  Sun Fire X4500 Server, Config 4, $61,995, 48Tb
 

1] The filesystem is called ZFS not Zettabyte

2] They appear to be twice as expensive as storage solutions that sun already sells.

Compare:
  Sun Storage 7210, Option 3, $117,995, 44Tb

with
  Sun Fire X4500 Server, Config 4, $61,995, 48Tb
 

ZFS doesn't stand for zettabyte anything. "The name originally stood for "Zettabyte File System", but is now an orphan acronym." from wikipedia, sourced from http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/entry/you_say_zeta_i_say .

and of course "RAID Array" is lovelily redundant phrasing.

Pricing:
Sun Storage 7110: $10,995 for 2TB;
Sun Storage 7210 starts at $34,995 for 11.5TB;
Sun Storage 7410: Single node version starts at $57,490 for 12TB;
cluster version (with two server nodes) starts at $89,490 for 12TB.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't charging enterprise prices for simplified hardware that relies on commodity software solutions, kind of defeat the point?

Unless I'm misunderstanding this hardware, the entire idea is to move data safety away from hardware redundancy toward software-driven duplication. In that way, the data is safe from failure in the same way that GoogleFS protects against individual machine failures. The only difference is that Google probably doesn't pay $11,000 for 2TB of storage. :-/

One of these days, I really will understand why Sun regularly shoots themselves in the foot. Until then, I suppose I must trust them to somehow find a customer who's willing to pay exorbitant prices for an otherwise good idea. (i.e. I'd really love to see Sun bring Google-style reliability from unreliability to the market.)

BTW, here's the link to Sun's marketing on this:
http://www.sun.com/storage/disk_systems/unified_storage/index.jsp

It's actually pretty cool tech. Sun could own the market if they just understood how the market views pricing and features.

a back reference. More at

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/util/regex/Pattern.html

I use java for programming, know nothing of Perl. In java it works fine both in regexes and replacement expressions. (I think you could try to to escape your last backslash?) Here is a regex I use to find words repeated within 30 chars.

String DOUBLE_WORD_DISTANCED_REGEX =
"(?ix) # Turn case insensitive and comments on\n" +
"\\b # Start with a boundary\n" +
"([^\\s\\p{Punct}]++) # Read somthing that is not whitespace or punctuation\n"+
"(?:\\s++) # Read - don't capture - something that is whitespace\n" +
"(?:[^.,!?:;]{1,30}) # Read - don't capture - something that is not punctuation \n" +
"(?:\\s+) # Read - don't capture - something that is whitespace\n" +
"(\\1) # Repeat the word\n" +
"\\b # End with a word boundary\n";

To add to that, if you are a 'student or work in Education' you can also download it from free here: http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/edu/solutions/staroffice.html#StarOffice

Frequency scaling is in the latest releases for most modernish Intel CPUs and AMD K10's.

Frequency scaling is in the latest releases for most modernish Intel CPUs and AMD K10's.

I'm sure if you put Solaris on your sun servers it would support the framebuffers just fine.

Also Windows and Linux. These are the OSs that Sun supports on x64 servers.

On the other hand, they are servers, why the hell would you want to use a framebuffer on them? Serial is the only way to manage a server since then you don't need to set foot inside the datacenter.

Actually, most current Sun servers support remote graphic console via ILOM.

The server at http://www.genunix.org/, where this OpenSolaris 2008.11 ISO is hosted, is responding rather slowly right now (indirect Slashdotting?). So I want to point out that if you'd like to download this build and try it for yourself, you can get it as a torrent here.

Comparing ODF to Word is like comparing HTML to IE. A data format is not the same thing as a program! Sheesh!

If you want ODF and Word, try here (works for me) or maybe here (haven't tried that one).

You want gear with integrated lights-out-management. Any gear that supports SSH and SNMP should be perfectly usable over a shitty connection.

Most (all?) of the Sun servers come with an embedded ILOM that supports remote KVM through a web browser with Java as well as SSH. The SSH access gives you full out-of-band power control over the server, and can be used to look at system part numbers, power supply voltages, fan speeds, etc. Additionally you can configure SNMP monitoring/traps through the ILOM no matter what OS is running on the box.

We've used the x2200 M2, x4200 M2, and x4540 servers and the ILOM in each of them means I never have to go down to our data center to physically touch a box.

Ironically, some of the HP DL series have integrated out-of-band management called iLO, but they charge an additional few hundred dollars to gain features such as KVM or authentication. I don't like paying extra for features that should just be available out of the box.

The other thing you want is remotely managed online battery power. You want your power to be clean, going through a dual transformer conversion so no matter what kind of crappy power you have at the site, your gear is getting a nice clean voltage. Get something that has a good network-management interface on it. I've used MinuteMan Endeavor, Liebert GXT2, and one from APC that was online, but I can't seem to find it now. Each of these supports SNMP and web-based management.

You want gear with integrated lights-out-management. Any gear that supports SSH and SNMP should be perfectly usable over a shitty connection.

Most (all?) of the Sun servers come with an embedded ILOM that supports remote KVM through a web browser with Java as well as SSH. The SSH access gives you full out-of-band power control over the server, and can be used to look at system part numbers, power supply voltages, fan speeds, etc. Additionally you can configure SNMP monitoring/traps through the ILOM no matter what OS is running on the box.

We've used the x2200 M2, x4200 M2, and x4540 servers and the ILOM in each of them means I never have to go down to our data center to physically touch a box.

Ironically, some of the HP DL series have integrated out-of-band management called iLO, but they charge an additional few hundred dollars to gain features such as KVM or authentication. I don't like paying extra for features that should just be available out of the box.

The other thing you want is remotely managed online battery power. You want your power to be clean, going through a dual transformer conversion so no matter what kind of crappy power you have at the site, your gear is getting a nice clean voltage. Get something that has a good network-management interface on it. I've used MinuteMan Endeavor, Liebert GXT2, and one from APC that was online, but I can't seem to find it now. Each of these supports SNMP and web-based management.

You want gear with integrated lights-out-management. Any gear that supports SSH and SNMP should be perfectly usable over a shitty connection.

Most (all?) of the Sun servers come with an embedded ILOM that supports remote KVM through a web browser with Java as well as SSH. The SSH access gives you full out-of-band power control over the server, and can be used to look at system part numbers, power supply voltages, fan speeds, etc. Additionally you can configure SNMP monitoring/traps through the ILOM no matter what OS is running on the box.

We've used the x2200 M2, x4200 M2, and x4540 servers and the ILOM in each of them means I never have to go down to our data center to physically touch a box.

Ironically, some of the HP DL series have integrated out-of-band management called iLO, but they charge an additional few hundred dollars to gain features such as KVM or authentication. I don't like paying extra for features that should just be available out of the box.

The other thing you want is remotely managed online battery power. You want your power to be clean, going through a dual transformer conversion so no matter what kind of crappy power you have at the site, your gear is getting a nice clean voltage. Get something that has a good network-management interface on it. I've used MinuteMan Endeavor, Liebert GXT2, and one from APC that was online, but I can't seem to find it now. Each of these supports SNMP and web-based management.

Does the calculation happen on the card itself or in the reader?

Calcuation occurs on the reader (which has a full numpad) using some unique values that are stored on the smartcard of the card you receive (can't be just generated from knowing the card number).

This is, IMO, particularly important if you want to use your card anywhere but your home and the bank's branch offices.

It's a handheld device. Offical information on the card, what it looks like.

Available to today already:
http://blogs.sun.com/sistare/entry/solaris_for_the_t5440

But I don't see a port of Windows7 to SPARC on the horizon, so there's hardly something to compare here...

Bill Joy would not qualify, only the "Green" team (including Gosling, the main Java advocate) would have had long enough "carreers" with Oak/Java.

http://java.sun.com/features/1998/05/birthday.html

Which can also be used for Linux apps.

To be fair, that's not a way to use the same toolchain on Linux... There's SystemTap for something similar, though.

I don't know enough about either tool -- that was jut a minute or so of Googling -- but I would guess that SystemTap is far from "archaic". It would be closer to "bleeding edge" -- but it's also been a few years, so maybe not.

Here's a jabber server with ssl ready to go.

http://wikis.sun.com/display/CommSuite/Sun+Java+Communications+Suite+Information

The Problem: In every region of Germany, between 45% and 86.3% of the electricity that flows from the outlets is from nuclear power. Everyone has to use this electricity, regardless of whether he wants to or not. Even nature activists have no choice. Plus the energy lobby keep telling us that electricity is electricity.

The Solution: NucleoSTOP, a compact device, is the answer. Through an innovative process, electricity from nuclear power is recognized and, before it can flow through your appliances, is sent back to the source.

The device can be easily attached to any power outlet -- ideally at the house's main circuit -- and you can immediately use electricity with a clean conscience. And the nuclear lobby doesn't profit from it.

Technical Info: Nuclear fission is the source of electricity from nuclear power. Along with the well known energy discharge from fission, a second discharge occurs, called the tachyon impulse, which, unlike the rest of the released energy, cannot be altered. This tachyon impulse gives all of the energy produced from fission a special signature, which is immutable due to the law of conservation of engergy. Consequently, all electricity from nuclear power is marked with this signature.

Phoronix stated in the second paragraph: "For our testing we had used the final Intel 32-bit releases of the four most recent Ubuntu releases except for Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex" where we used the Intrepid release candidate."

This benchmark would be more valuable if it compared how the ubuntu repository fared when compiled with the different available compilers:
-Intel compiler
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/howto-install-intel-c-compiler-10-on-ubuntu-feisty-fawn.html
-GNU compiler
-SunStudio compiler
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/index.jsp
-Portland group has unifying binary for both intel 64-bit and amd 64-bit
http://www.pgroup.com/about/why_pgi.htm
-Pathscale compiler
http://www.pathscale.com/node/189

It would also be nice to discuss benchmarks for:
-AMD 32-bit Kernel
-AMD 64-bit Kernel
-Intel 64-bit Kernel

I like Sun's SWaP metric because its value is based on a business operation that you can define.

And as the article mentions, datacentres in a shipping container are like, sooo 2006 .

I like Sun's SWaP metric because its value is based on a business operation that you can define.

And as the article mentions, datacentres in a shipping container are like, sooo 2006 .

I'll admit to being biased, but...

People go on and on about how Android is Linux based and Open Source, but it's not.

And your proof of this assertion is...what, exactly?

As counter, I offer links to the Git repository and the kernel and other GPL/LGPL bits. That's already more than any other major platform has done, and they aren't through yet.

The Linux backend is all but invisible

What? You want it to pop up with a bash prompt?

and likely just as locked down as the Linux installs on other embedded devices

And your proof of this assertion is...what, exactly?

The decision on whether a device is firmware-flashable is made by the device manufacturer. The T-Mobile G1, the first Android device, is being made by HTC, which has a history of making firmware-flashable devices.

You are not going to be able to easily replace it, assuming you can even get close enough to the system to have a hope of doing so. Tivo, all over again.

And your proof of this assertion is...what, exactly?

Google is doing everything in the Java environment precisely to put you in a sandbox they (and the cell networks) can control.

Popularity of Java in mobile device development, of course, would have nothing to do with it, since that wouldn't fit your conspiracy theory. Neither would security (no direct memory access), for that matter.

Sure the developer agreement is not quite as onerous as the one Apple uses, but it's certainly just as controlling when necessary.

And your proof of this assertion is...what, exactly?

I mean, seriously. If you have problems with their developer agreement, cite passages and specific issues.

And, sadly, so long as the cell carriers are seen as the customers of these phones

Carriers will, undoubtedly, be the "customers" of many Android devices. At the same time, I've received emails from manufacturers whose devices will not be sold through carriers. If your carrier allows standards-compliant devices (e.g., GSM), you should have your choice, albeit not on day one, as Android devices make it through various manufacturing and development processes.

Maybe this would help?

Why not clean up the fucking dotnet framework reference dlls?

You can download them here.

Well, there is this.

Although, as far as introductory material, I personally learned it all from java.sun.com. Although I can't vouch for whether this is an applied approach or not, I would suggest the concurrency tutorial and a good book on Java Patterns or even a design pattern wiki.

I can vouch that this is definitely an effective applied approach. I learned much the same way, developing a solid understanding of the Java threading and memory model, and this has allowed me to pick up other particular thread implementations (pthreads, Linux concurrency primitives, other OS concurrency models, etc.) very easily on the job. Thankfully Java does a great job of formally specifying the threading and memory model, so you have a solid foundation upon which to build.

Plus, there's nothing more fun than being able to do a "kill -3" on your Java process to get a thread-by-thread stackdump of where everything is at. That makes diagnosing some forms of deadlock absolutely trivial. I've done that on the job, too.

Most important rule of thumb of multi-threaded programming is to avoid it if possible. Maybe hardware (multi-core) will change that, maybe you feel the scheduler can't do its job as well as you can and maybe you feel it's more intuitive. But, often is the case, that you're just adding more complexity to your code resulting in more difficult bugs and harder maintenance for others. Keep it simple.

I agree with avoiding threading if you don't need it, but I implore all programmers to not think of multi-threading as a mysterious force only suited to experts. You can develop a mastery of the subject, and it will help you in many areas.