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Sun fixed the problem, and chances are you already have the update automatically installed on your computer.

It's probably Security Vulnerabilities in the Java Runtime Environment Image Parsing Code May Allow a Untrusted Applet to Elevate Privileges, which sounds like a flaw in native code that loads images.

Note that this kind of vulnerability can happen in anything using unsafe code. It is not an indictment against Java's security model, it's just a bug in the native code libraries used to make the implementation faster. Also .NET uses more native code than Java so one would expect similar kinds of bugs to affect it.

This kind of problem will not exist once all of our libraries and operating systems have been written in safe languages such as Java.

This CNET article has more information. There is a vulnerability report at Sun. It is fixed in JDK and JRE 5.0 Update 10 or later, SDK and JRE 1.4.2_13 or later and SDK and JRE 1.3.1_19 or later.

Yes. The Sun Streaming System can do 320 gigabits per second and up to 160,000 simultaneous streams (although those are 2Mbps streams -- HD requires 8Mbps, so that's only 40,000 concurrent HD streams).

infer from context/documentation that *some* signed values are actually unsigned values in disguise

for such values, use bit shift instead of arithmetic shift

for such values, manually translate them if they are printed incorrectly on the console or in a debugger

you will have to devise your own strange and complicated ways to detect overflow

you will not be able to assign literal values outside the signed range of the data type (short x = 65535 does not compile)

Types will be converted incorrectly, as demonstrated in the following program:

I've always been under the Impression that Java can't use hardware rendering, wouldn't that restrict usage for more intense applications?

The article seems to indicate that the cheat gets more throughput non-cheating threads on Solaris 10. However, it appears that it would be trivial to reveal such a cheat with the dtrace sched provider and one of the probes such as remain-cpu

http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-6223/6mlkidll 8?a=view

http://blogs.sun.com/tomdaly/

Triviality has nothing to do with it. It took time to make, hours according to you. So someone charging $20 is not outrageous IMO.

Yes, the price is "arbitrary", as are almost ALL prices. Set the price, watch the market react, adjust accordingly, repeat. How else can anyone possibly come up with a price?

If the author sells one copy, they have lost money (as per your experience). If they sell 5, then they've broken even IF they simply ship the s/w and walk away. However, if they then have to collect the funds (chase down bad orders, give up a cut of the order to auto-pay systems), support the software (id10t problems as well as s/w bugs), market (websites don't get built for free), sell (someone has to accept the orders, ship the goods), and on top of all this come up with a new version, then there is potentially a lot of time put into individual orders, whereas there may be next-to-none put into others.

So, what price should said software sell for? What criteria do you think should be used so as not to make the initial price arbitrary?

Don't confuse F/OSS with commercial software. Though there is a fair number of F/OSS packages that are created under the ESR "bazaar" model, most of the polished packages are actually created under the commercial model. There are the packages made with "enterprise acceptible versions" that they sell (OpenOffice.org vs. StarOffice), and there are those packages that are set up to sell support and/or hardware and/or services. These softwares may be "free", but they most definitely raise monies for their authors (or at least for their major corporate backers).

Why this emaciated post made it while mine didn't I'll never know...here's how I submitted this story:
 
The current version of PostgreSQL now has its first real benchmark, a SPECjAppServer2004 submission from Sun Microsystems. The results required substantial tuning of many performance-related PostgreSQL parameters, some of which are set to extremely low values in the default configuration — a known issue that contributes to why many untuned PostgreSQL installations appear sluggish compared to its rivals. The speed result is close but slightly faster than an earlier Sun submission using MySQL 5 (with enough hardware differences to make a direct comparison of those results unfair), and comes close to keeping up with Oracle on similarly priced hardware — but with a large software savings. Having a published result on the level playing field of an industry-standard benchmark like SPECjAppServer2004, with documentation on all the tuning required to reach that performance level, should make PostgreSQL an easier sell to corporate customers who are wary of adopting open-source applications for their critical databases.

At JavaOne 2007, SUN announced their new Java phone that includes JavaFX script mobile. Their demo showed a very interactive user experience that was very similar to the iPhone and a, potentially, easy to work with development story. After doing some digging, it turns out that their phone is essentially the old SavaJe platform running JavaFX mobile on top of Linux on an OpenMoko phone.

So, it does seem that a good, interactive, UI will be available, accessible to regular developers and have a good starting point based on work done by professionals at SUN.

It's also interesting to note that all of this stuff predates the iPhone despite the eerie similarities.

Ah but the joyous things like linking to an app or RMIing in or whatever in C/C++ is really easy in VB... it's a fine language.

All he's saying is that most types of functions have been written before, sorting of various types mathematical functions etc.

Once you know exactly what you want to do in words it's trivial to find an example that has already completed the math (I find it easier to do the math myself[I have a crappy memory, it's easier to figure it out again than remember it] but it's reinventing the wheel).

As far as VB being a fine language goes, I'd say it's really not... it leads to general solutions taking over your code, you never achieve precisely what you set out to accomplish, I just find in big projects I end up making too many sacrifices to it's interface driven style :(

It's like OO, but totally insane and shitty.

Alright then, lets compare the Java and .NET Documentations

First off trying to find the user interface namespaces, we have the two class overviews:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/
and
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/d11h6832( VS.71).aspx

If one have no prior knowledge of any of the two, one would probably probably start off searching for GUI on the page, no result on the .NET reference, and one result in Java: java.awt.dnd

So, let's go look closer at java.awt.dnd before ruling it out, even tho I can see this is just something drag'n'drop, it may refer to something more useful, who knows? I continue into DragSource, perhaps it can tell me exactly what kind of objects are used for this? From there I find something about a serialized form, being perhaps 30 pages of not so relevant text, and java awt.GraphicsEnvironment, which seems like some sort of rules for a canvas. So I would at this point give up and return to the overview.
(in fact I would really give up just seeing the description of java.awt.dnd but if i didn't go there in this experiment I'd be accused of not trying hard enough)

Okay so the next thing so search for on the overviews would be "Graphical User Interface"... alright, same results as with GUI... Then how about "User Interface"? Alright now something happens (and by knowing where I should be going I also know that I am now on the right way). The Java overview gives me java.awt, java.swing.plaf.basic, java.swing.plaf.metal and java.swing.plaf.multi , while the .NET gives me System.ComponentModel.Design, System.Drawing.Design, System.ServiceProcess, System.Web.UI and System.Windows.Forms

From the descriptions it's difficult to sort out any of the results from the Java reference, while in the .NET it's easy to rule out System.ServiceProcess and System.Web.UI

Looking a little closer on my findings I rule out whatever says "custom", because noone starts out with GUI by customizing widgets, and the java.swing.plaf.* seems not very useful for my purpose, looking at their content of Interfaces and Classes, however being on the right path it wouldn't take long from there to find the generic swing namespace.

So the first useful results from the two would be System.Windows.Forms on .NET and java.awk on Java. Keep in mind that a search with no possible matches takes shorter time than those with useless matches, that doesn't reveal that they're useless from the start. Seeing the java.awk as the first useful result, with Java, I would probably go for that one, even though it resembles writing windows applications in C++ using the default Windows API, with lots of work and slow progress. I'm not the impatient kind, but I'm rather sure my employer would like more action for his money.

So I'll keep my first statement, Java is tricky to learn if you're on your own, with nobody to point out where to look and what to use. It is my experience that the tutorials available for Java starts with "Hello World" in a terminal, then without explaining what happens in between, they jump to some template project where you are just to handle those objects the template has laid out for you. And those covering more advanced projects usually features only code examples of a few useful features, while the text refers to objects like you "of course" have done that before even starting to read. It appears to me as a gap in what's available, the documentation refers to inside understandings, that I can't get without attending courses. This is most likely because Java is what's most commonly used in education to explain OOP, I learned OOP through C++ (which can also be a b*tch to learn from reference) so I don't know all those inside jokes the documentation refers to, there's too much of-course-you-know's as a result of a very widespread use in education, and I don't have 3, 6 or 9 months to learn a language, as I did during my education. To me it just doesn't seem very accessible.

and Microsoft doesn't know when and if they will fix that "bug":
http://blogs.sun.com/malte/entry/sun_odf_plugin_1_ 0

You're perfectly correct about the technology. It's your terminology that's wrong. When I said that mainframes are just a kind of microcomputer, I was not saying that mainframes are a kind of PC. "Microcomputer" refers to the fundamental technology that the PC is based on. "Mainframe" originally referred to computers built out of discrete components (the "mainframe" being that chassis that holds those components). At first that was the only kind of computer there was. Then the low end of the market was taken over by "minicomputers" which used integrated components. These were slower but cheaper. As time went by, minis got faster, and mainframes retreated into a high-end market.

Then around 1971, microprocessors appeared, people used them to make microcomputers, and history repeated itself. As microcomputers got faster and cheaper, they gradually took over the market. Completely. Now "mainframe" and "mini" describes market positioning, not fundamental technology.

Perhaps you're saying, "You're just playing with words. Mainframes are faster." But if so you're confusing "mainframe" with "high performance computer".

As it happens, I'm the documentation lead for an HPC system from Sun, the x4600. Up to 8 AMD CPUs. When Barcelona comes out, you'll be able to 32 processor cores in a single 4U system. Now, this thing has a fancy high-speed bus and other optimizations, but aside fro that, it's not that different from a PC. You can even run Windows on it. (Alas, most of our customers do, though Linux and Solaris are also popular.) You could even run an IBM emulator on it and then run all the software that was originally written for mainframes. Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!

Java 6 and Java 7 are relatively minor changes.

What!? Java 6 I'll give you was not as big a change as Java 5, but Java 6 was mainly a stability, manageability and performance oriented release, but even that came with some pretty big changes - support for scripting languages with the Rhino JavaScript engine included for instance. Also, the Consumer JRE changes will be backported to it, with the Kernel JVM, the Quickstarter and Direct3D/DirectX pipeline improvements in Windows to catch up with the OpenGL pipeline.

Java 7 might be one of the biggest changes to the Java language and platform ever, take a look at this list for instance. Note that not all of these might be included in Java 7, or indeed ever. Danny Coward who I believe is in charge of the Java 7 release together with Mark Reinhold talks a bit about the difficult balance between giving people the new features they want and keeping it simple.

Java 6 and Java 7 are relatively minor changes.

What!? Java 6 I'll give you was not as big a change as Java 5, but Java 6 was mainly a stability, manageability and performance oriented release, but even that came with some pretty big changes - support for scripting languages with the Rhino JavaScript engine included for instance. Also, the Consumer JRE changes will be backported to it, with the Kernel JVM, the Quickstarter and Direct3D/DirectX pipeline improvements in Windows to catch up with the OpenGL pipeline.

Java 7 might be one of the biggest changes to the Java language and platform ever, take a look at this list for instance. Note that not all of these might be included in Java 7, or indeed ever. Danny Coward who I believe is in charge of the Java 7 release together with Mark Reinhold talks a bit about the difficult balance between giving people the new features they want and keeping it simple.

I've heard Swing is the word for GUI, but I have no clue how to get it into my Eclipse

Still if you fancy looking at something new Scala looks quite interesting.

Still if you fancy looking at something new Scala looks quite interesting.

There are already several of these available for Java using everything from XML to custom declarative languages like F3.

> Java 6 and Java 7 are relatively minor changes.

Language-wise Java 1.6 doesn't include any changes; check out the docs for the -source option for javac.

A little detail: "Java" is both a platform and a language. C# is just a language, one of several that runs on the .NET platform. (Microsoft doesn't like the word "platform", but it's the only one that fits.) So when you're analyzing market share, you need to compare Java with .NET, not with C#.

The figures you quote show .NET doing pretty good, though still lagging way behind Java. One little improvement in the Java language is not going to spell the "death nell" for the .NET platform. That would be true even if .NET didn't have the backing of the biggest software company on the planet.

What is bad news for .NET is the fact that Sun seems to be capturing a lot of developer mind share with its Java Community Process, which is where this proposal comes from, along with a lot of other good stuff, including JSR 166, which originated outside Sun, and has successfully added a major improvement in concurrency to the Java platform.

The JCP won't spell the "death knell" to C# or .NET either, not as long as they have MS's backing — and are essential tools on Windows. But it will certainly help Java hold onto its lead.

This looks rather similar to the units and dimensions handling and checking available in Fortress, Sun's effort to build a new numerical/scientific computing language. In general it seems like a sensible idea -- having the option of adding extra annotation that allows for more exacting static checking and greater assurance is generally always a good thing. The only downside is that, at least in the java implementation, it is a little cumbersome and clumsy (though maybe that's just par for the course for new java versions). Now if only java could get statically checkable optional contracts as in Spec# we might actually be getting somewhere. At the very least it would be nice if they had runtime checkable contracts, properties and tests as in Fortress. Or perhaps I should just wait for Fortress to finally mature; it seems that will happen faster than java getting the features I'm after.

I believe with Schwartz he meant Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's CEO.

My first guess was Randall Schwartz who's on *my* list of "big" names. But in context, Sun's CEO seems to fit the bunch more.

Javadoc is your friend

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/

Netbeans has a free gui designer just like vs.net where it will autogenerate your java code.

Java is a very strict language and you need strong object oriented knowledge of inheritence to get anything done like write a hello world program.

As far as getting swing to work, its just a simple matter of putting "import javax.swing.*;" at the beginning of your class.

Also, you can configure a central directory for your 3rd party classes by setting up the CLASSPATH variable in your OS.

And, as far as simplicity goes, I've found that the complexity of Java and .Net to be similar. Its just that you may be more familiar looking around MSDN rather than Sun's own Javadoc. Frankly, both Java and .Net are large, complex, enterprise grade programming platforms, and are usually overkill for smaller, one-off projects.

1 TB Hard Drive

I'm sitting next to two computers right now, both running Ubuntu. One was purchased in 1996, the other's hard drives were purchased three years ago. The one from 1996 has a 16 GB hard drive, which, as I recall, was the biggest Gateway offered at the time. The other has four 320 GB drives on a RAID 5 (960 GB/894 GiB), which, as I recall, was the second largest behind the 500 GB drives at the time. 30 times larger in about 8 years.

Perhaps you've heard of perpindicular recording, which started early last year. Pretty soon it's going to be impossible to get a hard drive that doesn't have this new technology. You can easily argue that the technology can't go anywhere after this, but it does offer a 10x storage density increase, and you know somebody will be cramming more data blocks on a platter soon enough.

You see, the great thing about hard drives is that they're not critical to the operation of your computer. My Myth frontend has a 40 GB hard drive. The backend, located in a different room and accessed through the network, has 8 500 GB drives on a RAID 5. With the ever-increasing speed of networks, putting things somewhere else is getting easier every day. Sun has taken this idea to the next level with Project Blackbox. Another great thing is that if you need more space, it's fairly easy to just add another drive to your contraption - something you really can't do with processor speed or memory (to a certain point - 4 GB per stick is the highest I've seen).

I see your point - we don't want a datacenter in the basement of every home, but we don't NEED a better system of information storage NOW. There are a lot of ideas out there; most will fall through, but we'll get one, eventually, and that one will make all the difference in the world.

You may be interested in the commentary I have written explaining Sun's position on GPLv3. Despite having been involved in the discussion process from the beginning, we still only saw the final text at the end of this week. Whereas some people (who ought to know better) think we can just change the licenses over-night, in fact we have to take into account:

• The meaning of the final text and what its implications are. The team has started the discussion but with July 4 week next week many of them will be taking vacation so I don't expect a firm statement for several weeks.
• The fact (which I explain at length in my blog) that Sun is only the steward of the copyrights and the decision to change licenses takes more agreement than just Sun's.
• The fact that we've 6+ million lines of code in each of OpenSolaris (which is under CDDL) and OpenJDK (which is under GPLv2) and it will be heavy lifting to make a change.

So please do let Jonathan know how you feel, but be aware he's not the only guy who has to decide.

You may be interested in the commentary I have written explaining Sun's position on GPLv3. Despite having been involved in the discussion process from the beginning, we still only saw the final text at the end of this week. Whereas some people (who ought to know better) think we can just change the licenses over-night, in fact we have to take into account:

• The meaning of the final text and what its implications are. The team has started the discussion but with July 4 week next week many of them will be taking vacation so I don't expect a firm statement for several weeks.
• The fact (which I explain at length in my blog) that Sun is only the steward of the copyrights and the decision to change licenses takes more agreement than just Sun's.
• The fact that we've 6+ million lines of code in each of OpenSolaris (which is under CDDL) and OpenJDK (which is under GPLv2) and it will be heavy lifting to make a change.

So please do let Jonathan know how you feel, but be aware he's not the only guy who has to decide.

http://www.sun.com/emrkt/innercircle/newsletter/04 07feature.html

8 hyperthreading cores running 8 threads each, with each core having 2 ALUs and 1 FPU.

That's 64 concurrent threads, 16 ALUs, and 8 FPUs. And probably only needs a 150- or 200-watt power supply. There's a reason why Sun is getting something like $20K per UltraSPARC T1000 or T2000 rack-mount systems and can't keep up with demand...

The answer is here:

http://blogs.sun.com/webmink/date/20070629

It isn't Sun's decision to make (alone).

is in fact running Linux, not Solaris .... Sun will support both.

Will we see the Java Desktop System for Linux OS be recontinued and enter a return to life (Release 3 for Linux)?

It uses AMD Barcelona chips...

It uses AMD Barcelona chips...

It uses AMD Barcelona chips...

Yes, but is it "portable"? As the lovely black boxes. If it is... I'll buy a truck ;)

"Now what I would like to see advertised - but won't - is slower but highly reliable motherboards, processors and memory at commercial prices."

Then you should be reading this...
http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/t2000/index .xml

It is _very_ conservatively designed I would expect
many years of "up time". It's an 8-core machine. The
cores are slow compared to a
Intel C2D but overall it is a very powerfull little box

A Sparc portable machine/tablet with some extra-extra security chips, devices (non military/spy grade) pre installed along with latest Solaris can really sell. People would buy it for reliability and security. Especially companies and even home users who are really tired of unreliable laptops. It MUST be end user friendly.

What they try to do now is trying to sell a very bare minimum DESKTOP, nothing included machine just happens to have a SPARC chip more expensive than anything Intel based.
http://www.sun.com/desktop/index.jsp?tab=0&stab=2

I am planning to buy a Nokia N800 just because it is not Intel based, runs a flavor of Linux and potentially hassle free. I am just waiting to see if they really care about end user needs and give up stupid things like requiring x86 Linux to get firmware updates since I run OS X under G4/G5.

I'm not sure about the GPS, but does have Sun Spots, which have accelerometers on them, which can detect motion in all three dimensions. This is probably the pager you heard about. I know because I have one of these!

Looks good except for one of their scenarios. They indicate it can be used in a relief mission? WTF? Wouldn't water/food/shelter be more important there? Do you need to do any calculations you can't do on a laptop? (or piece of paper for that matter).

Lot of scenarios are OK. But the refuge one really makes no sense.

https://photos.sun.com/asset/7553

Sun can :
https://photos.sun.com/asset/7557?returnPage=/page /1183

I was a bit surprised that all the pictures only show off the outside and none of the links follow to info on what these things look like on the inside or how they work.

Here is Sun's page that shows off considerably more info: Sun's Project Black Box page

Basically the outside of the box has hookups for power, cooling water, and network. Everything on the inside is pre-wired. Servers aren't included, but they are designed to serve as the transport container for the servers -- not just a place to put servers once the box arrives (the racks have a shock-absorbing suspension system so that servers can be transported in the container without the need to unrack them or pack them for shipping.). When it arrives it just needs to be "plugged in" and it's literally ready to go. Since it really is a standard shipping container, all rules about shipping containers apply -- e.g. there's no shortage of trucks, trains, or boats designed specifically to hold them. They are structurally sturdy and can be stacked tall just like containers on a cargo ship.

16 EiB (2^64 bytes) - Maximum size of a file system
16 EiB - Maximum size of a single file
16 EiB - Maximum size of any attribute
256 ZiB (2^78 bytes) - Maximum size of any zpool

16 EiB (2^64 bytes) - Maximum size of a file system
16 EiB - Maximum size of a single file
16 EiB - Maximum size of any attribute
256 ZiB (2^78 bytes) - Maximum size of any zpool

This is an interesting development in light of recent comments made by Linus about Sun and ZFS in particular, to which Jonathan Schwartz wrote a personal response.

(massively decaying) UNIX ecosystem

I guess I shouldn't be surprised about a Linux zealot spreading misinformation about other OSes.

http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2007-05/sunflash.20 070523.1.xml

Now about that headline, yes I really did say that ZFS code is already available under the GPLv2. I will be completely honest though and make it clear that it isn't all of the ZFS source. It is, sufficient amount to be able to boot an OpenSolaris based system from GRUB, that means that support for mirroring and the checksum and compression support is there but radiz isn't nor are the userland commands. It is possible that this might be enough to get someone started. Still don't believe me check out the updated GRUB source on opensolaris.org, specifically all the files with zfs in their name - every single one of them under the GPLv2 or later.