Slashdot Mirror

extra88 writes "Heise online is reporting that Sun has released their OpenDocument Format (ODF) plug-in for Microsoft Office 2000, XP and 2003. The plug-in allows Microsoft Office (for Windows) users to open ODF files and save their work in ODF formats used by OpenOffice, StarOffice, and other programs. According to the ReadMe, the plug-in adds "ODF Text Document (*.odt)" as a format to Word's Open and Save dialogs and adds Import and Export options to Excel and PowerPoint."

javipas writes "The controversial message published by Linus Torvalds (mirrored) in the Linux Kernel Mailing List was from the beginning to the end an open attack to Sun and its Open Source strategy. Linus criticized Sun's real position on GPL, and claimed that Linux could be dangerous to Sun. Upon his words, "they may be talking a lot more [about Open Source] than they are or ever will be doing." Jonathan Schwartz's blog has been updated today with a post that is a direct response to Linus claims, but in a much more elegant and coherent way. Sun's CEO notes that "Companies compete, communities simply fracture", and tries to explain why using GPL licenses is taking so long."

hoggoth writes "As a common everyman who needs big, fast, reliable storage without a big budget, I have been following a number of emerging technologies and I think they have finally become usable in combination. Specifically, it appears to me that I can put together the little brother of a $50,000 NAS/SAN solution for under $3,000. Storage experts: please tell me why this is or isn't feasible." Read on for the details of this cheap storage solution.

Get a CoolerMaster Stacker enclosure like this one (just the hardware not the software) that can hold up to 12 SATA drives. Install OpenSolaris and create ZFS pools with RAID-Z for redundancy. Export some pools with Samba for use as a NAS. Export some pools with iSCSI for use as a SAN. Run it over Gigabit Ethernet. Fast, secure, reliable, easy to administer, and cheap. Usable from Windows, Mac, and Linux. As a bonus ZFS let's me create daily or hourly snapshots at almost no cost in disk space or time.

Total cost: 1.4 Terabytes: $2,000. 7.7 Terabytes: $4,200 (Just the cost of the enclosure and the drives). That's an order of magnitude less expensive than other solutions.

Add redundant power supplies, NIC cards, SATA cards, etc as your needs require.

NZheretic writes "According to APCmag, the first cross-platform OpenOffice.org virus — 'SB/Badbunny-A' — was emailed directly to Sophos from the virus developers. The proof-of-concept virus affects Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux systems and uses different methods on each. It has not yet been seen in the wild. Despite Sun's OpenOffice.org developer Malte Timmermann's claims to the contrary, this kind of embedded scripting attack represents a real threat to OpenOffice.org users. Back in June 2000 when Sun first announced the open sourcing of OpenOffice.org, the twelfth email to the open discussion list put forward a two-part solution for providing OpenOffice users with Safe(r) Scripting using restricted-mode execution by default and access by signed digital certificates. In October 2000 the issue of treating security as an 'add-on' feature rather than as a 'system property' was again raised. Is it time to now introduce such measures to the OpenOffice.org Core to greatly reduce any future risk from scripted infections?"

Andy Updegrove writes "By now you've probably read more than you want to about Microsoft's announcement that it owns 235 patents underlying leading open source software, including many opinions about whether Microsoft's new assertions do, or don't, represent a real threat to Linux, OpenOffice, and other OSS. To get to the bottom of the issue, though, you have to take a deep dive into how patent cross licensing works these days. When you do, you realize that patents don't mean what they used to, and have far more defensive than offensive value in the marketplace today. It also becomes apparent that it really doesn't matter whether Microsoft has valid patents or not, because so many other companies do as well. Today, what companies worry about isn't asserting their patents against other companies, but maintaining their freedom of activity. In this case, the open source community can simply ride the coattails of the major vendors, because Microsoft doesn't hold enough cards to win the hand, much less the game." Relatedly The Register is reporting that the author of the main report being used by Microsoft to support their patent claims has come out against Microsoft's interpretation of his work and Jonathan Schwartz gives some free advice to the overly litigious.

widhalmt writes "In a blog post, a developer at Sun Microsystems announces that Sun will help with porting Open Office to Mac OS X. The open source office suite is well known on Linux and Windows, but does not have a native version on Mac OS. For a long time Sun did not want to join the development of that port but now they will actively push it."

andrew cooke writes "Java 6 was recently released, but many programmers are still exploring the features introduced in Java 5 — probably the most significant changes in the language's twelve year history. Amongst those changes (enumerations, auto-boxing, foreach, varargs) generics was the most far-reaching, introducing generic programming in a simpler, safer way than C++ templates and, unlike generics in C#, maintaining backwards (and forwards) compatibility with existing Java code." Read on for the rest of Andrew's review. Java Generics and Collections author Maurice Naftalin, Philip Wadler pages 273 publisher O'Reilly Media, Inc. rating 9/10 reviewer Andrew Cooke ISBN 978-0-596-52775-4 summary Guide to Java generics; also includes interesting discussion of collection classes.

Given the history of Generic Java, Naftalin and Wadler's Java Generics and Collections has a distinguished pedigree. In this review I'll argue that this is a new classic.

If you're a Java programmer you've probably heard of generics, an extension to the type system that was introduced in Java 5. They give you, as a programmer, a way to write code even when you don't know exactly what classes will be used.

The obvious example is collections — the author of a List class has no idea what type of objects will be stored when the code is used.

Before generics, if you wanted to write code that handled unknown classes you had to use make use of inheritance: write the code as if it would get Objects, and then let the caller cast the result as necessary. Since casts happen at runtime any mistakes may cause a runtime error (a ClassCastException).

Generics fix this. They let you write code in which the classes are named (parameters) and the compiler can then check that the use of these class parameters is consistent in your program. So if you have a List of Foo instances you write List<Foo> and the compiler knows that when you read that list you will receive a Foo, not an Object.

I'll get to the book in a moment, but first a little history. If you know any type theory — particularly as used in functional languages like ML and Haskell — then you'll recognize my quick description above as parametric polymorphism. You'll also know that it is incredibly useful, and wonder how Java programmers could ever have managed without it.

Which explains why Philip Wadler, one of the people responsible for Haskell, was part of a team that wrote GJ (Generic Java), one of the experimental Java mutations (others included PolyJ and Pizza) that, back in the day (late 90s) helped explore how parametric polymorphism could be added to Java, and which formed the basis for the generics introduced in Java 5.

So if you want to understand generics, Wadler is your man. Which, in turn, explains why I jumped at the chance to review O'Reilly's Java Generics and Collections, by Maurice Naftalin and Philip Wadler.

This is a moderately slim book (just under 300 pages). It looks like any other O'Reilly work — the animal is an Alligator this time. It's well organized, easy to read, and has a decent index.

There's an odd discrepancy, though: Wadler is the generics Guru; this is going to be `the generics reference'; generics are sexy (in relative terms — we're talking Java here) and collections are not; the title has "Java Generics" in great big letters with "and Collections" in little tiny ones down in a corner. Yet very nearly half this book is dedicated to collections.

Generics is a great, practical read. It starts simply, introducing a range of new features in Java 5, and then builds rapidly.

If you are completely new to generics, you'll want to read slowly. Everything is here, and it's very clear and friendly, but there are not the chapters of simple, repeated examples you might find in a fatter book. Within just 30 pages you meet pretty much all of generics, including wildcards and constraints.

If that makes your head spin, don't worry. Read on. The next hundred or so pages don't introduce any new syntax, but instead discuss a wide range of related issues. The chapters on Comparisons and Bounds and Declarations contain more examples that will help clarify what generics do. And the following chapters on Evolution, Reification, and Reflection will explain exactly why.

So the first seven chapters introduce generics and then justify the implementation — any programmer that takes the time to understand this will have a very solid base in generics.

There are even some interesting ideas on how Java could have evolved differently — section 6.9 Arrays as a Deprecated Type presents a strong case for removing arrays from the language. It's a tribute to the clarity and depth of this book that the reader is able to follow detailed arguments about language design. Fascinating stuff.

The next two chapters, however, were my favorites. Effective Generics and Design Patterns give sensible, practical advice on using generics in your work, including the best explanation of <X extends Foo<X>> I've seen yet (so if you don't know what I am talking about here, read the book).

(A practical word of advice — if at all possible, use Java 6 with generics. Java 5 has a sneaky bug).

The Collections part of the book was more along O'Reilly's `Nutshell' lines: the different chapters explore different collection types in detail. I must admit that at first I skipped this — it looked like API docs re-hashed to extend the size of the book.

Then I felt bad, because I was supposed to be reviewing this book (full disclosure: if you review a book for Slashdot you get to keep it). And you know what? It turned out to be pretty interesting. I've programmed in Java for (too many) years, and I guess I've not been quite as dedicated to tracking how the library has changed as I should have been — I learned a lot.

Again, a wide range of readers are welcome. This is more than a summary of the Javadocs, ranging from thumbnail sketches of trees and hashtables to a discussion of containers intended for multi-threaded programming.

The way I see it now, this part is a bonus: the first half, on generics, makes this book one of the standards; the second half is an extra treat I'm glad I stumbled across (I guess if you're some kind of weird collection-fetishist maybe it's even worth buying the book for).

I've used generics since the first beta release of Java 5 and had experience with parametric polymorphism in functional languages before that (in other words, I can tell my co- from my contra-variance). So I guess I'm heading towards the more expert end of the spectrum and I was worried I'd find the book boring. It wasn't. After claiming to be expert I don't want to spoil things with evidence that I'm actually stupid, but reading this book cleared up a few `misunderstandings' I'd had. I wish I had read it earlier.

If you're new to generics, and you don't mind thinking, I recommend this book. If you're a Java programmer who's a bit confused by <? super Foo> then this is the book for you.

The only people who shouldn't read this are people new to Java. You need to go elsewhere first. This is not a book for complete beginners. This is a great book in the classic — practical, concise and intelligent — O'Reilly mould.

You can purchase Java Generics and Collections from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

andrew cooke writes "Java 6 was recently released, but many programmers are still exploring the features introduced in Java 5 — probably the most significant changes in the language's twelve year history. Amongst those changes (enumerations, auto-boxing, foreach, varargs) generics was the most far-reaching, introducing generic programming in a simpler, safer way than C++ templates and, unlike generics in C#, maintaining backwards (and forwards) compatibility with existing Java code." Read on for the rest of Andrew's review. Java Generics and Collections author Maurice Naftalin, Philip Wadler pages 273 publisher O'Reilly Media, Inc. rating 9/10 reviewer Andrew Cooke ISBN 978-0-596-52775-4 summary Guide to Java generics; also includes interesting discussion of collection classes.

Given the history of Generic Java, Naftalin and Wadler's Java Generics and Collections has a distinguished pedigree. In this review I'll argue that this is a new classic.

If you're a Java programmer you've probably heard of generics, an extension to the type system that was introduced in Java 5. They give you, as a programmer, a way to write code even when you don't know exactly what classes will be used.

The obvious example is collections — the author of a List class has no idea what type of objects will be stored when the code is used.

Before generics, if you wanted to write code that handled unknown classes you had to use make use of inheritance: write the code as if it would get Objects, and then let the caller cast the result as necessary. Since casts happen at runtime any mistakes may cause a runtime error (a ClassCastException).

Generics fix this. They let you write code in which the classes are named (parameters) and the compiler can then check that the use of these class parameters is consistent in your program. So if you have a List of Foo instances you write List<Foo> and the compiler knows that when you read that list you will receive a Foo, not an Object.

I'll get to the book in a moment, but first a little history. If you know any type theory — particularly as used in functional languages like ML and Haskell — then you'll recognize my quick description above as parametric polymorphism. You'll also know that it is incredibly useful, and wonder how Java programmers could ever have managed without it.

Which explains why Philip Wadler, one of the people responsible for Haskell, was part of a team that wrote GJ (Generic Java), one of the experimental Java mutations (others included PolyJ and Pizza) that, back in the day (late 90s) helped explore how parametric polymorphism could be added to Java, and which formed the basis for the generics introduced in Java 5.

So if you want to understand generics, Wadler is your man. Which, in turn, explains why I jumped at the chance to review O'Reilly's Java Generics and Collections, by Maurice Naftalin and Philip Wadler.

This is a moderately slim book (just under 300 pages). It looks like any other O'Reilly work — the animal is an Alligator this time. It's well organized, easy to read, and has a decent index.

There's an odd discrepancy, though: Wadler is the generics Guru; this is going to be `the generics reference'; generics are sexy (in relative terms — we're talking Java here) and collections are not; the title has "Java Generics" in great big letters with "and Collections" in little tiny ones down in a corner. Yet very nearly half this book is dedicated to collections.

Generics is a great, practical read. It starts simply, introducing a range of new features in Java 5, and then builds rapidly.

If you are completely new to generics, you'll want to read slowly. Everything is here, and it's very clear and friendly, but there are not the chapters of simple, repeated examples you might find in a fatter book. Within just 30 pages you meet pretty much all of generics, including wildcards and constraints.

If that makes your head spin, don't worry. Read on. The next hundred or so pages don't introduce any new syntax, but instead discuss a wide range of related issues. The chapters on Comparisons and Bounds and Declarations contain more examples that will help clarify what generics do. And the following chapters on Evolution, Reification, and Reflection will explain exactly why.

So the first seven chapters introduce generics and then justify the implementation — any programmer that takes the time to understand this will have a very solid base in generics.

There are even some interesting ideas on how Java could have evolved differently — section 6.9 Arrays as a Deprecated Type presents a strong case for removing arrays from the language. It's a tribute to the clarity and depth of this book that the reader is able to follow detailed arguments about language design. Fascinating stuff.

The next two chapters, however, were my favorites. Effective Generics and Design Patterns give sensible, practical advice on using generics in your work, including the best explanation of <X extends Foo<X>> I've seen yet (so if you don't know what I am talking about here, read the book).

(A practical word of advice — if at all possible, use Java 6 with generics. Java 5 has a sneaky bug).

The Collections part of the book was more along O'Reilly's `Nutshell' lines: the different chapters explore different collection types in detail. I must admit that at first I skipped this — it looked like API docs re-hashed to extend the size of the book.

Then I felt bad, because I was supposed to be reviewing this book (full disclosure: if you review a book for Slashdot you get to keep it). And you know what? It turned out to be pretty interesting. I've programmed in Java for (too many) years, and I guess I've not been quite as dedicated to tracking how the library has changed as I should have been — I learned a lot.

Again, a wide range of readers are welcome. This is more than a summary of the Javadocs, ranging from thumbnail sketches of trees and hashtables to a discussion of containers intended for multi-threaded programming.

The way I see it now, this part is a bonus: the first half, on generics, makes this book one of the standards; the second half is an extra treat I'm glad I stumbled across (I guess if you're some kind of weird collection-fetishist maybe it's even worth buying the book for).

I've used generics since the first beta release of Java 5 and had experience with parametric polymorphism in functional languages before that (in other words, I can tell my co- from my contra-variance). So I guess I'm heading towards the more expert end of the spectrum and I was worried I'd find the book boring. It wasn't. After claiming to be expert I don't want to spoil things with evidence that I'm actually stupid, but reading this book cleared up a few `misunderstandings' I'd had. I wish I had read it earlier.

If you're new to generics, and you don't mind thinking, I recommend this book. If you're a Java programmer who's a bit confused by <? super Foo> then this is the book for you.

The only people who shouldn't read this are people new to Java. You need to go elsewhere first. This is not a book for complete beginners. This is a great book in the classic — practical, concise and intelligent — O'Reilly mould.

You can purchase Java Generics and Collections from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Verunks writes "Microsoft Word users now can easily import and export to the OpenDocument Format. The StarOffice 8 Conversion Technology Preview, a plug-in for Microsoft Word 2003 that allows users of Microsoft Word 2003 to read, edit and save to the OpenDocument Format (ODF) is now available"

tbray writes "This is your friendly local Sun corporate drone reporting that we're going to be building and optimizing and DTrace-ing and shipping and supporting the AMP part of LAMP (details here). I think that basically the whole tech industry, excepting Microsoft, is now at least partly in the AMP camp."

sproketboy writes "Sun Microsystems has released an alpha version of a new programming language called Fortress to eventually replace Fortran for high performance scientific computing tasks. Fortress was designed specifically for multi-core processors and is published under the BSD license."

bvc writes "We Launched the Java Open Review Project today. We're reviewing open source Java code all the way from Tomcat down to PetStore looking for bugs and security vulnerabilities. We're using two static analysis tools to do the heavy lifting: the open source tool FindBugs, and the commercial tool Fortify SCA. We can use plenty of human eyes to help sort through the results. We're also soliciting ideas for which projects we should be reviewing next. Please help!"

twofish writes "Sun has announced the availability of Java Standard Edition 6 final release. JSE6 now has dynamic language support. It comes pre-delivered with Netscape's Rhino, a Javascript engine, and the scripting project's home page documents many other available scripting languages, including awk, Jelly, Pnuts, Python, Ruby, and Scheme. In addition a lot of work has been done on the libraries and run-time compiler. The JIT has been improved, with better runtime analysis of program characteristics, giving notable performance improvements. Other improvements include better desktop support, improvements in Swing look and feel, Windows Vista support, and better diagnostic support (For example, profilers and debuggers can now attach to a running JVM without specifically using a debugging-capable configuration. For example, if a problem is found at run-time for a production server, a debugger can attach to it without restarting the server). Sun is also offering sixty days of free developer support for JSE 6 through their Developer Services program."

twofish writes "Sun has announced the availability of Java Standard Edition 6 final release. JSE6 now has dynamic language support. It comes pre-delivered with Netscape's Rhino, a Javascript engine, and the scripting project's home page documents many other available scripting languages, including awk, Jelly, Pnuts, Python, Ruby, and Scheme. In addition a lot of work has been done on the libraries and run-time compiler. The JIT has been improved, with better runtime analysis of program characteristics, giving notable performance improvements. Other improvements include better desktop support, improvements in Swing look and feel, Windows Vista support, and better diagnostic support (For example, profilers and debuggers can now attach to a running JVM without specifically using a debugging-capable configuration. For example, if a problem is found at run-time for a production server, a debugger can attach to it without restarting the server). Sun is also offering sixty days of free developer support for JSE 6 through their Developer Services program."

twofish writes "Sun has announced the availability of Java Standard Edition 6 final release. JSE6 now has dynamic language support. It comes pre-delivered with Netscape's Rhino, a Javascript engine, and the scripting project's home page documents many other available scripting languages, including awk, Jelly, Pnuts, Python, Ruby, and Scheme. In addition a lot of work has been done on the libraries and run-time compiler. The JIT has been improved, with better runtime analysis of program characteristics, giving notable performance improvements. Other improvements include better desktop support, improvements in Swing look and feel, Windows Vista support, and better diagnostic support (For example, profilers and debuggers can now attach to a running JVM without specifically using a debugging-capable configuration. For example, if a problem is found at run-time for a production server, a debugger can attach to it without restarting the server). Sun is also offering sixty days of free developer support for JSE 6 through their Developer Services program."

Romerican writes "C|Net is running an interview with Greg Papadopoulos, CTO of Sun Microsystems, about the Very Near Future where he essential sees the Internet as no longer competitive. He has blogged his belief that the end game is here and nothing is likely to unseat the new world order." From the C|Net article: "It's called software as a service. It really is the running of what we think of as IT through the network. You don't buy software, you buy the consequence of the software. That starts with the small and medium enterprises. eBay, in my mind, is the leading example of small businesses being absorbed by services. Anybody who clicks their store on eBay is in fact consuming a service. They are contributing to a larger-scale eBay rather than them buying some server and sticking it on their desk."

narramissic writes, "At an event today to formally open-source Java, Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's president and CEO, and Rich Green, the company's senior VP of software had an exchange in which Schwartz put Green on the spot about using GPL for OpenSolaris: 'Are you averse to changing the license, Rich Green?' Schwartz asked. 'Certainly not,' Green responded, prompting the Sun CEO to fire back in a half-joking manner: 'Will you GPL Solaris, Mr. Green?' 'We will take a close look at it,' Green said, adding that it was possible that the familiarity and comfort level many developers have with the GPL may result in Sun adopting it for OpenSolaris." Another note about Sun's decision to use the GPL for Java comes from reader squiggleslash, who writes: "According to Jonathan Schwartz, the decision of Novell and Microsoft to '(suggest) that free and open source software wasn't safe unless a royalty was being paid' is what prompted Sun to finally come down on using the GPL for Java. So I guess every cloud has a silver lining."

this great guy writes "A year ago, Google's secret plans for a portable data center in a shipping container were being revealed by Robert X. Cringely. Sun Microsystems is about to officially unveil its 'data center in a box' concept. Project Blackbox will involve the full-scale production of data centers in 20-foot-long cargo shipping containers." From the article: "The idea eliminates several major hurdles facing data center customers: finding an appropriate site, arranging the servers and cooling mechanisms in the most efficient manner, and waiting for construction to be complete. The company is touting energy efficiency as a crucial benefit of the confined space, as its patented cooling features can more accurately target hot spots than in giant warehouses. The box can hold hundreds of servers and save thousands of dollars per year in energy costs, the company said."

BDPrime writes, "A U.S. congressional caucus has met twice to discuss proposing national legislation that would make hardware manufacturers responsible for taking back their own stuff, similar to what Europe implemented with WEEE (PDF). The story quotes David Douglas, one of Sun's eco-evangelists, reflecting on the alternative: 'If we were having to deal with local regulations and local disposition facilities in every state, to deal with every state's nuanced costs, that would clearly involve cost to our basic equipment.'" It's early days for this movement; the buzzword to watch here is "E-waste."

SimHacker writes "Sun and Laszlo Systems have announced project "Orbit": OpenLaszlo for J2ME. OpenLaszlo is an open source platform for creating zero-install 'AJAX' web applications with the user interface capabilities of desktop client software. The OpenLaszlo 'Legals' project supports multiple deployment runtimes, including Flash and DHTML, and soon J2ME! The FAQ says a proof-of-concept demo will be available later this year."

m0smithslash writes "The blogging CEO asserts that that datacenters are doomed. Computers are showing up in everything from drill bits, to cargo ships to tracking devices in stuffed animals at Disneyland. With computers becoming so small and easy to distribute over a wireless network, do we really need data centers to house computers or are the computers going to be placed where they are really needed?"

m0smithslash writes "The blogging CEO asserts that that datacenters are doomed. Computers are showing up in everything from drill bits, to cargo ships to tracking devices in stuffed animals at Disneyland. With computers becoming so small and easy to distribute over a wireless network, do we really need data centers to house computers or are the computers going to be placed where they are really needed?"

Ivan Tarasov writes "Ever wanted to hack the JDK sources to get rid of some nasty bug which bothered you for so long, but was embarrassed by the complexity of the JDK build process? Now you have a good tutorial on how to do it on Debian GNU/Linux: last night I posted a blog entry on how to build the JDK 6 (sources of which are available at the Peabody site). This entry describes in detail which packages you need installed, how do you tweak the sources to make them buildable and how to proceed with the build. The build process for other Linux distributions must be very similar, so don't turn away if you don't use Debian. There is also a nice blog entry by Cay Horstmann "Honey, I built the JDK! (on Ubuntu)"."

Ivan Tarasov writes "Ever wanted to hack the JDK sources to get rid of some nasty bug which bothered you for so long, but was embarrassed by the complexity of the JDK build process? Now you have a good tutorial on how to do it on Debian GNU/Linux: last night I posted a blog entry on how to build the JDK 6 (sources of which are available at the Peabody site). This entry describes in detail which packages you need installed, how do you tweak the sources to make them buildable and how to proceed with the build. The build process for other Linux distributions must be very similar, so don't turn away if you don't use Debian. There is also a nice blog entry by Cay Horstmann "Honey, I built the JDK! (on Ubuntu)"."

Yesterday's post about a concerted effort on Microsoft's part to beautify computers by means of a comprehensive set of design guidelines drew more than 500 comments. Read on for today's Slashback summary which highlights a few of the most interesting reader insights on the project. blamanj summed up many others' comments with this snarky contribution:

Well, they finally realized that nobody's going to buy it because of the operating system.

(Whether that's true or not is up for debate; certainly a lot of people may prefer Vista to Windows XP.)

Stavr0 writes

Microsoft wants 'PCs to be objects of pure desire.'

I desire my PC to be pure of spyware, security flaws and instability.

Reader melted was one of the first to dismiss the PC-prettification project as a lost cause:

Those OEMs couldn't "beautify" anything if their life depended on it. If they could, they'd already do so. The best they can do is steal Apple's 3-year-old designs.

Others, too, described Microsoft's aesthetic guidelines as a clear response to the widely hailed industrial design from Apple; reader Dan East offers a compact formulation of that idea:

MS is just trying to grab a few sales away from Apple at the expense of the OEMs. Why not? MS doesn't have anything to lose on this one — the OEMs are the ones taking the risk.

"The Mac isn't a good comparison," though, says reader dada21, who writes

I'm not sure I agree with the "Be like a Mac!" comparison. For most PC manufacturers, having their own "look and feel" has been part of what has given them a strong brand name. Sure, Microsoft wants to grab some of that brand recognition beyond just the bootup splash screen (and the desktop look and feel), but I also think this will create more than just brand recognition for Microsoft — I believe it will also produce an interesting "playing field" for companies beyond the Big Four (Dell, Gateway, HP/Compaq, Toshiba). Consider the smaller OEMs and white box companies — by providing a standardized look and feel, this will open the door of opportunity for many more companies. Sure, the big guys probably don't WANT this (they want to keep their look and feel in order to keep their branding strong), but it could create a new competitive atmosphere by giving smaller companies a foot in the door to compete on the look and feel front.

I've always loved third-party cases and keyboards and monitors moreso than the Big Four for the same reason that I've always liked clones — they've pushed the envelope before the big guys did. The downside is that the clones never seemed to sell well in the corporate environment nor in the newb home environment; the clones were just powerhouse sellers for us geeks. By having Microsoft "dictate" what they want to see, we may actually see more third parties offering competition to the Big Four, which in turn could see prices drop a bit more, which could push more legal Microsoft products into the fray.

All around, there are some Mac-branding similarities, but I don't really think that is Microsoft's desired goal to miMac (mimic the Mac, in my vernacular). I think it is just a good idea that will help the little(r) guys, and still give the big guys a chance to offer different products that the market can choose from.

According to reader linguae, a bit more mimicking might be a good idea:

Macs are worth the price . When I showed my parents and siblings my Mac and fooled around with it for a few days, they fell in love with it. They were sold on buying a Mac, and they are now saving up for a iMac. The problem is that cheaper PCs are good enough for 90% of the market. Windows XP "just works" now (as long as you keep an eye on security), and Vista will be far better than XP (insert "it's a copy of OS X here"; say what you want, but Vista is still better than XP). Perhaps they haven't had exposure to OS X; my parents were sold on the Mac within a few days. Perhaps they still must have a Windows PC for their jobs (and they don't know that Intel Macs can run Windows natively). Or, perhaps that money is an issue for most people.

Reader MojoRilla phrased his response in the form of a "Dear John" letter, writing

Dear Microsoft,

It seems that you are doing a lot of things lately to tell me what I want out of your products. Vista's new UI, and now these fancy industrial design specs.

Guess what? I couldn't care less what the shape of my PC is. It is under the desk with my UPS, sub woofer and trash can. And I have no need for a fancy new desktop UI, especially one that takes resources away from what I actually want to do with my computer, like photo and video editing.

What I want is excellent software, compatible with open standards, for a reasonable price. You used to deliver this. When you delivered virtual memory and preemptive multitasking, you were ahead of Apple. Now you seem way behind. And also, I want you to support open standards so that I can use other products with others that haven't paid you a licensing fee, such as open source. I'm not a sheep to lock in. Hello Linux and OSX.

And your prices are far from reasonable. The fact that I can't transfer a OEM Windows license from one PC to another is rubbish. The fact that you want $399 for the standard edition of office, which I have paid you for several times over the years is robbery. I was happy with the functionality of office five years ago. Why should I need to buy it again? Hello, Open Office.

I'm not a sheep, Microsoft. You used to be innovative. Now you are all about marketing. Its been fun, but we're breaking up!

A bit more positively, reader meburke points out that "real design considerations" go beyond the shape of the box, and provides links to a few sites which should be of interest to anyone who designs anything at all for others' use:

As a starting point, I'd like to suggest designers read, "A Whole New Mind" by Daniel Pink, and check out some articles at danpink.com. Furthermore, I suggest visiting IDEO. Pay special attention to their "method card" deck. Lastly (for purposes of this discussion) I suggest visiting mcdonough.com. The common thread in all this is design. William McDonough says that the need for regulation indicates a failure in design.

The design of the product goes way beyond just cosmetics. There is only so much you can do with an enclosure for a PC board, but there is LOTS you can do with the system as a whole. Case modding is just a place to start. Functional design improvements are being made in everything from the input devices to really innovative interfaces.

The IDEO method cards are different from the "Creative Whack Pack" or "Thinkertoys" cards, in that they redefine the product design domain. The jobs of the future are going to be design jobs requiring both high creativity and high technical ability. If someone in India or China can do your job as well and cheaper than you, or if a computer can do your job better and faster, your job is obsolete.

Many thanks to the readers (especially those quoted above) whose comments informed this discussion.

twofish writes "Simon Phipps, the chief open-source officer at Sun Microsystems, has reaffirmed Sun's commitment to Open Source in an interview with computerworld. The focus of the interview is Simon's efforts to fully open source Java. He points out that many problems need to be resolved before Java can be open sourced — ownership, legal, access, encumbrances and relationships with Java licensees. It took Sun a full five years to solve these issues with Solaris. However Simon predicts that it won't take anything near this amount of time to complete the task with Java. Of course, one of the other concerns for OS Java is the resulting incompatible versions and breaking of the Java WORA model (Gosling himself has always been particularly concerned about incompatible forks resulting in the introduction of an open source version of Java) and this opens up additional problems for the open source Java model."

zdzichu writes "At today's press conference, Sun Microsystems is showing off a few new systems. One of them is the Sun Fire x4500, known previously under the 'Thumper' codename. It's a compact dual Opteron rack server, 4U high, packed with 48 SATA-II drives. Yes, when standard for 4U server is four to eight hard disks, Thumper delivers forty-eight HDDs with 24 TB of raw storage. And it will double within the year, when 1TB drives will be sold. More information is also available at Jonathan Schwartz's blog."

zdzichu writes "At today's press conference, Sun Microsystems is showing off a few new systems. One of them is the Sun Fire x4500, known previously under the 'Thumper' codename. It's a compact dual Opteron rack server, 4U high, packed with 48 SATA-II drives. Yes, when standard for 4U server is four to eight hard disks, Thumper delivers forty-eight HDDs with 24 TB of raw storage. And it will double within the year, when 1TB drives will be sold. More information is also available at Jonathan Schwartz's blog."

zdzichu writes "At today's press conference, Sun Microsystems is showing off a few new systems. One of them is the Sun Fire x4500, known previously under the 'Thumper' codename. It's a compact dual Opteron rack server, 4U high, packed with 48 SATA-II drives. Yes, when standard for 4U server is four to eight hard disks, Thumper delivers forty-eight HDDs with 24 TB of raw storage. And it will double within the year, when 1TB drives will be sold. More information is also available at Jonathan Schwartz's blog."

peterkorn writes "The U.S. Access Board — 'an independent Federal agency devoted to accessibility for people with disabilities' — sets the technical rules for accessibility by people with disabilities of IT sales to the U.S. government, and in U.S. telecommunications equiptment. They have named the composition of the new committee to update the Section 508 accessibility standards and the Section 255 accessibility guidelines. This advisory committee will help the Access Board with an overhaul of the Telecommunication Act Accessibility Guidelines and the set of Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards of Section 508. There were reportedly 4 applicants for each of the 40 slots on the committee."

C-Shalom writes "EWeek reports that Sun announced a contest where developers can compete for $100k in prizes for developing applications that utilize the Grid. This is in addition to 100 free CPU hours on the Grid. From the article: 'Sun is hosting a competition where developers can compete for $50,000 in prize money. The winners of the Sun Grid Compute Utility Cool Apps Prize for Innovation contest will be determined based on the software they develop on the grid, MacRunnels said. Sun is planning additional contests for later in the year, which will bring the total potential winnings to $100,000.' The press release contains more info not included in the article."

Nicros asks: "I work for a company that is working toward an FDA approved software development process. We have always used C++ in a Windows environment, and we have more than 6 years of code, applications and libraries developed. Because of our long and convoluted software development history, our existing architecture is difficult to manage for a group of our relatively small size (5 FTEs), and development times are rather slow. Our IT director has made the decision that, to speed up development times, we need to re-architect all of our existing code, from C++ to Java." What would be the best way to go about handling such a migration? In a general sense, how would you go about moving a development team from one language to another? "Our IT director has hired a 3rd party (offshore) company assist us with this migration, and they have recommended that we change from C++ to Java, Spring and Hibernate. We are all professional programmers here, so learning Java is not a problem for those of us who don't know it. The real question is: what do we gain from moving to Java? Or conversely: what do we lose by moving away from C++? Additionally, will one language or another really help us to get FDA approval?

I personally am a bit suspicious of this solution. I find it more likely that the problems we have would persist across languages or architectures (lack of time and resources leading to buggy code, lack of direction from marketing, and so on). However, having not gone through this process before, I would be interested to hear any thoughts, stories of similar experiences, or pros and cons."

cahiha writes "In his blog, Jonathan Schwartz argues that Scott McNealy is single-handedly responsible for making network computing a reality. His timeline is something like that in 1992, the industry was focused on 'Chicago' (Windows 95), while McNealy bravely went his own way-- 'the network is the computer.' He goes on to claim that 'There is no single individual who has created more jobs around the world than [Scott McNealy]. [...] I'm not talking hundreds or thousands of jobs, I'm talking millions.' I have trouble following his argument: client/server computing and distributed computing were already widely available and widely used in the early 1990s. The defining applications of the emerging Internet were, not Java, but Apache, Netscape, and Perl. Sun's biggest response to Chicago was to attempt to establish Java as the predominant desktop application delivery platform, something they have not succeeded at so far. So, what do you think: is Schwartz right in giving credit to McNealy for creating 'millions' of jobs? Or has Sun been a company on the decline since the mid-1990s, only temporarily buoyed by the Internet bubble?"

aphaenogaster writes "Suns Global Desktop version 4.2 has been released and appears to be quite effective. Applications load very quickly, and is not limited to Sparc or Solaris. Applications piped to a desktop across a slow DSL line appear to work very well. Sun has also set up a test server for users to play with."

aphaenogaster writes "Suns Global Desktop version 4.2 has been released and appears to be quite effective. Applications load very quickly, and is not limited to Sparc or Solaris. Applications piped to a desktop across a slow DSL line appear to work very well. Sun has also set up a test server for users to play with."

jbltgz writes "The Register is reporting that the long awaited Sun Grid Compute Utility has been opened to the public. Now you can run your CPU intensive jobs on a grid of AMD Opteron-based Sun Hardware for $1 per CPU per hour for a fraction of cost, in a fraction of the time."

abdulzis writes "Sun Micro's Jonathan Schwartz says that Sun is giving away free servers to bloggers who do a good job reviewing their servers. From the blog article: 'if you write a blog that fairly assesses the machine's performance (positively or negatively), send us a pointer, we're likely to let you keep the machine'" Mr. Schwartz, if you're reading this, feel free to send us one with "Attn: CowboyNeal" on the label.

loganb asks: "I'm currently holding in my hand a brand new Samsung A900 cell phone with a brand new EVDO data plan. I was initially excited about the OSS/free application development possibilities, as the J2ME stack on this phone supports the new Media, Location, and Messaging APIs. Much to my dismay, however, Sprint (my carrier) locks all the interesting APIs up tighter than a drum, and makes it nearly impossible to get an app to market. You need a $400/yr Verisign certificate just to download an app to a developer-enabled phone and you need a contract with Sprint to receive the certificate necessary to distribute the app (solely through Sprint's online store) to regular users. Of course that is not really an option for free/OSS programs, 'vertical' applications, or anything that doesn't neatly fit into Sprint's business plan. Thus, do any of the other national domestic cell providers allow unfettered access to the Java APIs on their phones? Is there any sort of hackery (such as buying an unlocked phone from Europe and using it on a domestic GSM network) that has an equivalent result?"

loganb asks: "I'm currently holding in my hand a brand new Samsung A900 cell phone with a brand new EVDO data plan. I was initially excited about the OSS/free application development possibilities, as the J2ME stack on this phone supports the new Media, Location, and Messaging APIs. Much to my dismay, however, Sprint (my carrier) locks all the interesting APIs up tighter than a drum, and makes it nearly impossible to get an app to market. You need a $400/yr Verisign certificate just to download an app to a developer-enabled phone and you need a contract with Sprint to receive the certificate necessary to distribute the app (solely through Sprint's online store) to regular users. Of course that is not really an option for free/OSS programs, 'vertical' applications, or anything that doesn't neatly fit into Sprint's business plan. Thus, do any of the other national domestic cell providers allow unfettered access to the Java APIs on their phones? Is there any sort of hackery (such as buying an unlocked phone from Europe and using it on a domestic GSM network) that has an equivalent result?"

pgsqlDAO writes "NetBeans 5.0 has been released. The new version of the cross platform, extensible, award winning Integrated Development Environment (IDE) comes out with some impressive features that make developing GUI and Web applications easier as well as new modules for creating extensions to NetBeans. The new Matisse GUI Builder makes it easier to layout professional looking windows and dialog boxes. On the web front you can register JBoss and Weblogic servers to deploy and test your applications intuitively from within the IDE. Better integration with popular web frameworks such as JavaServer Faces and Struts has been added including templates for the creation of JSF Managed Beans, Struts Actions, and Struts Form Beans. Other features included better tools for Web Services, Version Control, Debugging, Code Completion, Refactoring and more. Sun has also set up a free beta program to provide technical support to developers."

foorilious writes "In his blog, Sun Microsystem's President and COO Jonathan Schwartz discusses the possibility of dual-licensing Solaris (and perhaps the rest of their software suite) under GPLv3, in addition to the CDDL, which is the OSI-approved license under which these products are already available, but generally considered to be incompatible with the GPL at some level. Though this could mean an opening of the floodgates to a lot of sharing between Linux and Solaris (among other things), it's worth mentioning that Schwartz has speculated on exciting things in the past (such as porting Solaris to IBM's Power) that we subsequently never heard another thing about."

foorilious writes "In his blog, Sun Microsystem's President and COO Jonathan Schwartz discusses the possibility of dual-licensing Solaris (and perhaps the rest of their software suite) under GPLv3, in addition to the CDDL, which is the OSI-approved license under which these products are already available, but generally considered to be incompatible with the GPL at some level. Though this could mean an opening of the floodgates to a lot of sharing between Linux and Solaris (among other things), it's worth mentioning that Schwartz has speculated on exciting things in the past (such as porting Solaris to IBM's Power) that we subsequently never heard another thing about."

g8orade writes "In his bestselling book, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman lists workflow management software in the top 5 Flatteners. During my work for a shipping startup, I have analyzed our software's many UI weaknesses, particularly related to workflow management, and am currently searching for the best online examples of various UI application patterns / widgets that address managing transaction flows. What are the best examples you know of that are commonly viewable on the web?" "Our software UI is Oracle (9i) Forms compiled to run with Java, through the web. We're using RT for our internal ticket tracking and it has many of the features listed. Also, we're evaluating several commercial document management systems as bolt-ons or companions to our in-house application. Here are some patterns we'd like to improve:

• Queue with count beside it. Example: 'Unshipped orders (5)'
• Screen for UI building of a search and ability to save the search as a queue
• List of queues showing all transaction counts and their various states
• Transaction list / table screen (should have an many possible features as a standard spreadsheet: pick your columns, column order, sort order, clickable column headings, export to various formats, print view, etc.)
• Detail view screen (one transaction, may include too many fields to display at once, requiring tabs, scrolling up and down, left to right, etc., should have a good printable view)
• Contact database built-in or connection to one from another system
• Auto messaging of various statuses to contacts and lists of contacts, above
• Full web accessibility and security model to allow our suppliers and clients access to their own queues for 'pull queries', in addition to what we email them.
• Ability to create a list of values for a field, then incorporate that into the query for a queue.
• Journal of a transaction
• Screen showing progression of a transaction
• Screen showing Parent / child parts of a transaction"

AKAImBatman writes "While everyone was busy with the holiday season, Sun Microsystems quietly announced the start of the OpenSPARC project. Unlike previous CPUs that were based on the "Open" SPARC specifications (such as LEON), Sun is releasing the complete Verilog source code to their latest and greatest microprocessor. Their current time frame for releasing the source code to the public is in March of 2006. Given their success with the OpenSolaris project, it seems that this is likely to be more than just vaporware. So get out your Virtex FPGAs and your Verilog compilers, and let's get ready to hack some hardware!"

Kadin2048 writes "In an interview with BusinessWeek online, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy sheds some light on the company's new business model and future direction. In particular, he said that Sun's recent open source moves were part of a new strategy, where 'The software is the razor. The razor blades are the servers.' The move was called a huge risk by BusinessWeek, and it would put Sun at odds with the more traditional Microsoft-esque model with high per-seat or per-server software licensing costs and use commodity PCs and servers, which may not go over well with investors. But after having seen its stock slide and users flee for Linux and Windows, they arguably have little to lose. Perhaps the most interesting development to Slashdot readers is that in an effort to draw new developers to the platform, Sun is offering a deal that seems torn from a cell-phone company playbook: offering a "free" Ultra 20 Opteron workstation if you sign up for a $29.95/mo, 3-year service contract."

liteswap writes "Linux geeks love Linux and Windows mavens won't quit Microsoft -- but will we really care that much whether a machine is running Linux or Windows in future? As Sun announces Solaris support for Red Hat Linux applications, the need to specify the OS for a particular application will fade away, and the application and the x86 platform become the critical things -- at least that's what this Techworld feature argues..." Maybe a long time from now this will happen - but I don't see it happening RSN.

tbray writes "The strongest push-back against Massachusetts' effort to institute open, non-proprietary document formats has come from the accessibility community, who claim that Open-Source desktop software lags behind Windows; and thus that a transition to Open Document will amount to discrimination against the blind and those with other disabilities. This is serious stuff. Peter Korn, who's an Accessibility Architect at Sun, has written a massive piece that provides a general introduction to the subject, a discussion of how Open Source is doing on the the accessibility front (things could be worse, but they could be a lot better), and finally, a detailed look at the (interesting) history and (uncertain) future of these issues in Massachusetts. Anyone in Open Source who thinks they can ignore accessibility issues is probably wrong. Getting any younger? Eyes as good as they used to be? This is everybody's issue."

pdoubleya writes "As part of the development of Mustang (Java 1.6), Sun is developing a new, smaller and faster classfile verifier which they want your help in trying to break. As Sun VP Graham Hamilton puts it in his blog entry, "As part of Mustang we will be delivering a whole new classfile verifier implementation based on an entirely new verification approach. The classfile verifier is the very heart of the whole Java sandbox model, so replacing both the implementation and the basic verification model is a Really Big Deal.... The new verifier is faster and smaller than the classic verifier, but at the same time it doesn't have the ten years of reassuring shakedown history that we have with the classic verifier." You can read about the new verifier on Gilad Bracha's blog, and join the new Crack the Verifier initiative to if you can break it. Read all about the Crack the Verifier - Challenge."

Next Generation has a piece up examining Sun's claim that they develop the worlds largest Massive game: the stock market. They also go into some detail about Sun's actual MMOG middleware, Sun Gaming Server. From the article: "I argue that we've been the principle architect of the largest massively multiplayer online game in the world. It's Wall Street. If you took a look at all of the mechanics that go in to building an online trading system, they're almost one-for-one, the same functions needed to build an MMOG. Except we've done it with more redundancy, reliability and scalability than pretty much anyone else."

astrab writes "According to this post at Dirson's blog, Google and Sun Microsystems are to announce a new and kick-ass webtool: an Office Suite based on Sun's OpenOffice and accesible with your browser. Today at 10:30h (Pacific Time) two companies are holding a conference with more details, but Jonathan Schwartz (President of Sun Microsystems) claimed on Saturday on this post of his blog that "the world is about to change this week", predicting new ways to access software."