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Right. Which is why the OSS community is making such a big deal of them *now* - because the functionality has been around for ages ? Maybe that would also explain why, until quite recently, those fancy features were nowhere to be seen ?

I've been playing around with XGL for a couple of years. However, I couldn't remember when I first heard about it, so I looked it up. The earliest reference I found was an email from David Reveman dated Nov 4, 2004. The first I heard about AIGLX was in February 2006. nVidia presented a paper at XDevConf that talked about it. I don't have the history of development of Apple's Quartz Compositor handy. Maybe a Mac user can add that information? However, I believe it predates XGL. To be fair, Windows Aero Desktop Compositing Engine was first demoed in 2003.

I can just see that you're going to pull out some example from SGI

I was going to give Sun's Looking Glass as an example. However, the earliest material I can find on that is 2004. Maybe Microsoft was first on this one. However, to be fair, you couldn't use Aero until recently.

XGL/AIGLX has come a long way in a short time. It's biggest problem has historically been lack of interest and poor 3D support in Linux. I'm glad there is finally some interest being generated.

why would I want to leave the "L" (Linux) out of the Apache/MySql/Php stack?

In any case, it's probably best to disable telnetd with svcadm disable telnet Better yet, next time you install or upgrade use the "reduced networking profile" which has most services disabled (not ssh).

Considering the fact that Flickr is one of the first ones, see this particular use of the its APIs:

http://blogs.sun.com/MortazaviBlog/entry/persopoli s_the_takht_e_jamshid.

SunAlert 102802 is available describing the issue and workaround.

Temporary patches for SPARC and X86 to fix telnet are available You need a (free) login to access this.

SunAlert 102802 is available describing the issue and workaround.

Temporary patches for SPARC and X86 to fix telnet are available You need a (free) login to access this.

I've done the work getting interim security fixes available and starting the sun-alert. These thing should be available shortly.

For a commentary on getting this fixed, have a look at http://blogs.sun.com/tpenta/entry/the_in_telnetd_v ulnerability_exploit.

I'll update the blog entry with the links when it's up on sunsolve.

Tp.

Here is is a what a "emerge --search java" yields in gentoo:

* app-accessibility/java-access-bridge Latest version available: 1.6.0-r1 Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ] Size of files: 120 kB Homepage: http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/ Description: Gnome Java Accessibility Bridge License: LGPL-2 * app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-java [ Masked ] Latest version available: 1.6.0 Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ] Size of files: 61,248 kB Homepage: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.6.0/ Description: 32bit version Sun's J2SE Development Kit License: dlj-1.1 * dev-java/ant-javamail Latest version available: 1.7.0 Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ] Size of files: 6,682 kB Homepage: http://ant.apache.org/ Description: Apache Ant's optional tasks depending on sun-javamail License: Apache-2.0 * dev-java/apple-java-extensions-bin Latest version available: 1.2-r1 Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ] Size of files: 3 kB Homepage: http://developer.apple.com/samplecode/AppleJavaExt ensions/AppleJavaExtensions.html Description: A pluggable jar of stub classes representing the new Apple eAWT and eIO APIs for Java 1.4 on Mac OS X. License: Apple * dev-java/aterm-java Latest version available: 1.6 Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ] Size of files: 93 kB Homepage: http://www.cwi.nl/htbin/sen1/twiki/bin/view/SEN1/A TermLibrary Description: Java library for ATerm exchange License: LGPL-2.1 * dev-java/blackdown-java3d-bin Latest version available: 1.3.1-r1 Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ] Size of files: 9,881 kB Homepage: http://www.blackdown.org/ Description: Java 3D Software Development Kit License: sun-bcla-java-vm * dev-java/cairo-java Latest version available: 1.0.5-r1 Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ] Size of files: 353 kB Homepage: http://java-gnome.sourceforge.net/ Description: Java bindings for cairo License: LGPL-2.1 * dev-java/glib-java Latest version available: 0.2.6-r1 Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ] Size of files: 323 kB Homepage: http://java-gnome.sourceforge.net/ Description: Java bindings for glib License: LGPL-2.1 * dev-java/gnu-javamail Latest version available: 1.0-r1 Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ] Size of files: 690 kB Homepage: http://www.gnu.org/software/classpathx/javamail/ Description: GNU implementation of the Javamail API License: GPL-2 * dev-java/java-config Latest version available: 2.0.31-r3 Latest version installed: 2.0.30 Size of files: 16 kB Homepage: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/java/ Description: Java environment configuration tool License: GPL-2 * dev-java/java-config-wrapper Latest version available: 0.12-r1 Latest version installed: 0.12 Size of files: 7 kB Homepage: http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/java Description: Wrapper for java-config License: GPL-2 * dev-java/java-getopt Latest version available: 1.0.13 Latest

Can I get a hell-yeah!?

mod parent UP UP UP.

http://sunsolve.sun.com/tpatches

read the log of the patch author here:

http://blogs.sun.com/tpenta/entry/the_in_telnetd_v ulnerability_exploit

Can I get a hell-yeah!?

mod parent UP UP UP.

http://sunsolve.sun.com/tpatches

read the log of the patch author here:

http://blogs.sun.com/tpenta/entry/the_in_telnetd_v ulnerability_exploit

Temporary patches to fix telnet are available in zip files at: http://sunsolve.sun.com/pub-cgi/tpatch.pl (one for SPARC, one for X86 Solaris).

You need a (free) login to access these (my login was free)--security patches are free.

The ping of death made a brief comeback in Solaris 10. I find both vulnerabilities funny. Don't ask why.

Actually, I see the potential differently. Consider ---

For years the GNU folks have tried to point out that Linux is just a kernel and the system should be referred to as GNU/Linux. They've been largely unsuccessful because there is no alternative (GNU/Hurd isn't really there).

Now along comes Sun offering the Solaris kernel which would allow for GNU/Solaris.

Add to this that the SCO lawsuit was based on IBM contributing code to the Linux kernel (though they probably tried to include samples from GNU tools), Microsoft working with Novell to patent protect users of the the Linux kernel (haven't heard MS say anything about the GNU tools), and we have business concerned again about Linux legalities.

Sun, however, will claim original or approved authorship of all of Solaris (as early Unix licensees), thus making GNU/Solaris potentially less risky in the eyes of the business community. I would think Sun would prefer the separation of Solaris (on Sun hardware) from Solaris (on Intel hardware) and probably wouldn't have an issue with it being referred to as GNU/Solaris, IMHO.

And, if Sun does it right and continues improvements in Project Looking Glass, then GNU/Solaris with a 3D desktop built on GPL3-Java could have an impact not only on Windows but also potentially OSX. I wonder how many video card manufacturers would be willing to work with Sun for drivers for GNU/Solaris?

All in all, this could push Linux (GNU/Linux) off the front burner. Could be interesting.

"4) Customers have to contend with lack of VBA and lack of automation compatibility.
You'd be surprised how many applications and corporations are wedded to Office because of this.
Try exporting from Crystal Reports into a spreadsheet, many corporate DBs, etc."

You can read about some interesting developments in terms of OpenOffice.org VBA support at

http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/sun_and_novell _work_together

Thanks for the link to that scripting.dev page.

There are also F3 (form follows function) and Scala that are JVM based.

In fact, we're slowly building message queues as that's whats needed to satisfy the spec. We need FIFO processing of values and java's primitives fail the FIFO test.

Add language support of thread synchronisation, and the inclusion of many synchronisation primitives in the java.util.concurrent package, and you have server software scalable for years to come.

Multi-core processors are the future, and the folks at Sun understood this.

An appendix to this specification motivates and defines a policy for the removal of existing features from the platform.

Per that policy, this specification proposes the removal of the javax.sound.midi package in a future release of the platform. This package is not often used and typical implementations of it require a large data file, about half a megabyte in size, which is a significant component of minimal Java Runtime Environment (JRE) download bundles.

This proposal does not mean that the javax.sound.midi package will be removed in Java SE 6. This proposal is merely the first step in the feature-removal process defined below. This proposal serves as a warning that this package may be removed in a future release of the platform, but whether it is actually removed, and in which release, is a decision for future expert groups.

Interesting. Actually, they can't be forgiven if that's true. Web Start allows a tiny bit of XML in the descriptor that's supposed to limit the versions of the JVM, and automatically upgrade if the user is behind.

In any case, Java 6 has been officially released. Here you go:

http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp :)

"Lets make a Octa-core processor!"

Oh, here's one. Though it's been out since before Intel had quad-core chips.

Would you prefer I do nothing, or something? Something is slower. I can do nothing really fast. Look, I'm done already.

> if everybody is just working on the same
> ideas, then Microsoft didn't actually innovate?

Innovation isn't just about what you do, it's about how you do it.

> Linux doesn't contain any code from Unix,
> it had to start from point zero.

That's a technicality. The Linux kernel started from point zero, but it relied on the GNU project to provide working utilities. They started from point zero, too, but on UNIX. Is the GNU project UNIX code? Technically, no; it's not code that was part of any UNIX vendor's offerings. But it certainly wasn't written for Linux - it was written for UNIX, which might conceivably be said to make it UNIX code.

And since it's rather subjective which point you make with it, most people make whichever point suits their purposes at the time, then switch to the other point whenever it seems to be advantageous.

They started from point zero, too, but on UNIX.

But it [GNU] certainly wasn't written for Linux - it was written for UNIX, which might conceivably be said to make it UNIX code.

And since it's rather subjective which point you make with it, most people make whichever point suits their purposes at the time, then switch to the other point whenever it seems to be advantageous.

It's the sandboxing. A program run by a given user doesn't automatically get the user's full permissions -- it only gets a small subset. For example, it can't open files from the user's home directory other than by calling a trusted system File Open dialog, which allows the user to select the file and returns an open file handle to the application (or in OLPC's case hardlinks the file into the chroot jail).

In terms of research projects, see the secure scripting language E and the proof of concept CapDesk.

Interestingly, in the commercial world it only seems to turn up in safe bytecode runtimes -- there's very little out there for native code. For an example of something similar in concept look at JNLP or ClickOnce deployers.

Let's think of all the things we can that have gotten cheaper over the same period, yet perform the same or better than in the 1980s.
- Your PC - by performance numbers alone, it should cost $50M each.
- Hard disks - i have a 10M Seagate that cost me almost $500, today you get a 1GB USB drive for $20.
- Gasoline - Everyone thinks gas is higher, it isn't if you do the math.
- VHS movies were $79, they are now $5 in the bargain bin. DVDs too.
- High quality audio equipment - you had to spend $10,000 back then to reach the sound quality of a $200 system today
- FM Radio is still free, but FM radios are given away as company schwag - Thanks Business Objects http://www.businessobjects.com/ and Sun http://www.sun.com/!
- DVD players were $500 (I have a Toshiba) and now they are $30 http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_ id=5270015
- T-shirts are still $9-15
- Items that have been outsourced for production are 30%-90% cheaper.
- I'm sorry that you want a raise, RIAA, I'd like a raise too, but haven't had one since 2001.

Ok, so this means that CDs should now cost $1 since manufacturing has been completely outsourced and costs have dropped at least 16x over this same period. Get over it RIAA and wake up to competition. You are confused as to which business you are in. You think you are in the art business, when you are in the magazine business.

http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/ultra20/

"... dual-core workstation that provides blazing x64 performance ... Starts at a list price of U.S. $895 (single-core) or $995 (dual-core)" -- that's the standard deal, apparently. They know how to compete, at some level.

Have you actually looked at what Sun is doing these days?

Yes :) And Sun is refinding themselves (if that makes any sense).

Sun used to only have a few products that were relatively expensive, but very good.

Look at there offerings today. They have _many_ products in all shapes and sizes, and there prices have really come down in price. I've been critical of Sun for years, and they really seem to be adapting to the market by offering everything from an E15k to inexpensive x86 boxes at about commodity prices with better engineering than your COTS junk.

Things like the x4500 are really turning heads (even here on slashdot).

Today's market requires more disposable and inexpensive computers. Why pay $10k for a server today that will last for years, when in 2-3 years it is way outperformed by a $1-2k server? Answering this question took Sun a few years, but now they seem to have answered that question.

nor did it provide a none-blocking method of asking it if it had content

No, ZFS http://www.sun.com/2004-0914/feature/ FTW!! Soon on Linux *drool*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapReduce provides a nice model of parallel computation to be exploited: in a multicore chip, you can treat each core as a node with a very reliable network and fast I/O.

Don't like MapReduce and want something more... heterogenous... you could use PVM: http://www.csm.ornl.gov/pvm/ ; which later became MPI: http://www.hlrs.de/organization/par/services/model s/mpi/ or a nice collection of learning materials at: http://www.hlrs.de/organization/par/par_prog_ws/ .

Want something from Sun? OpenMP: http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/articles/openm p/openmp_content.html

I think that we have the software to do it, already, yes.

Sun use sunrays throughout their network. They are stateless terminals with smartcard readers in them. You put your id badge into them and you desktop pops up. This works globally, so if you are normally based in the US and travel to Europe, you just stick your card into a sunray and (after a short pause...) your desktop appears, just as you left it back home. All works perfectly smoothly and mostly hassle free.

http://www.sun.com/sunray/sunray2/faq.xml

Last year, I worked for an organization that was looking into a thin-client solution.

This organization (unemployment agency) has a large number of offices around the country, connected to the central servers by ISDN lines (or ADSL at best).

Their current workstations are running Windows XP. Each time a user logs in, the machine checks for updates with the central servers. Any significant update makes the machine unusable for a long time while it downloads the new software over a slow link.

The servers are Solaris. If they decide to roll out a thin-client solution, they will probably use Sun Rays.

Actually, it isn't. If you're doing this right, then you've set up some form of clustering and failover with redundant machines, the same way you run RAID arrays rather than single huge disks, or don't base large commercial web-sites on one standalone machine. If you add in that now the end-user can't access the server, even indirectly (no cd-rom, ports, etc), and the devices lack moving parts like harddrives, then cost of management goes way down. In the end, this is actually ideal for large companies. Having supported stand-alone desktops in a small environment (60 desktop systems), I would say that unless you're harnessing the compute power of those desktops when they're not being used (Folding@Pfizer, for instance) then the cross-over point of easier is around 2-4 machines for Windows, maybe 8 for Unix.

I saw U. of Chicago do this with SunRays years ago for public spaces in the library, and it works beautifully for anything other than intensive 3-d rendering. Unfortunately, too many IT departments are dominated by people who only look at the up-front cost (I can buy a PC for what that thin-client costs), and not the entire life-cycle.

Why do we talk about producing more, we don't we use less. OK we cannot stop individual developing countries from polutting the shared planet. However, when they cannot see the Sun anymore, have respiratory deseases, can't drink the water etc, as happens in some Sino-Asian towns then they will switch quickly. I used to live in London, history of the town is such that when the city got too bad 100yrs ago, people moved outward e.g Hampstead. When things got better people moved back downtown. History will repeat itself. Some countries are going through the wests industrial revolution.

This is what is possible: http://blogs.sun.com/ValdisFilks/entry/my_domestic _environmental_projects

Personally, computers are a big electricity waste. I design computer systems, I like my company, as we were the first to have low power coomputers (T2000 with niagara Chip) and also can store data in a sustainable fashion. Think about sustainable processing and storage: http://blogs.sun.com/ValdisFilks/entry/cool_data_s ustainable_storage

Less is more.

Why do we talk about producing more, we don't we use less. OK we cannot stop individual developing countries from polutting the shared planet. However, when they cannot see the Sun anymore, have respiratory deseases, can't drink the water etc, as happens in some Sino-Asian towns then they will switch quickly. I used to live in London, history of the town is such that when the city got too bad 100yrs ago, people moved outward e.g Hampstead. When things got better people moved back downtown. History will repeat itself. Some countries are going through the wests industrial revolution.

This is what is possible: http://blogs.sun.com/ValdisFilks/entry/my_domestic _environmental_projects

Personally, computers are a big electricity waste. I design computer systems, I like my company, as we were the first to have low power coomputers (T2000 with niagara Chip) and also can store data in a sustainable fashion. Think about sustainable processing and storage: http://blogs.sun.com/ValdisFilks/entry/cool_data_s ustainable_storage

Less is more.

I'm sorry, I know this is /, and Java isn't one of the chosen ones, but this kind of nonsense FUDing really gets me irritated.

Sun hasn't has control over Java since they started the JCP process in 1998. (OK strictly they do have a power of veto in that process but I don't believe they have ever used it). The spec for Java, the language, has been available since Java came into being, as has the spec for the JVM. The source code for Java has been available to download for years. More recently Sun has adopted GPL for Java and is gradually releasing it under GPL (process to complete this year).

The only competitor that wanted to take Java down was Microsoft, and that is because they feared for their Windows franchise if a platform independent language took off and for no other reason. In fact if you look at the vendors organizations who do support Java, among them Apache Software Foundation, Oracle, SAS, Siemens, Sybase, BEA, Borland, Google, Nokia, TIBCO, IBM, Red Hat, Novell) you'll find that almost all of Sun's competitors in fact do use and contribute to Java. The fact that Java continues to be so successful is testament to Microsoft's failure.

I'm sorry, I know this is /, and Java isn't one of the chosen ones, but this kind of nonsense FUDing really gets me irritated.

Sun hasn't has control over Java since they started the JCP process in 1998. (OK strictly they do have a power of veto in that process but I don't believe they have ever used it). The spec for Java, the language, has been available since Java came into being, as has the spec for the JVM. The source code for Java has been available to download for years. More recently Sun has adopted GPL for Java and is gradually releasing it under GPL (process to complete this year).

The only competitor that wanted to take Java down was Microsoft, and that is because they feared for their Windows franchise if a platform independent language took off and for no other reason. In fact if you look at the vendors organizations who do support Java, among them Apache Software Foundation, Oracle, SAS, Siemens, Sybase, BEA, Borland, Google, Nokia, TIBCO, IBM, Red Hat, Novell) you'll find that almost all of Sun's competitors in fact do use and contribute to Java. The fact that Java continues to be so successful is testament to Microsoft's failure.

In the meanwhile, we've still got customers stuck on 1.3, because our "write once, run anywhere" code doesn't run on 1.4, and it's too much effort to puzzle out why because Sun's runtime is just such a mess.

There could be several reasons why Java 1.3 code won't run on 1.4. One is if you use sun.* or com.sun.* packages directly, which is funcamentally against portability guidelines. Another could be real incompatibilities. There are very few incompatibilities between 1.3 and 1.4. They are listed here:
http://java.sun.com/javase/compatibility_j2se1.4.h tml

If you keeping customers from using Java 5.0 or Java 6.0 because you can't sort this out, you are keeping them from major performance and functional improvements.

GPL V2. http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/java/faq.js p#a1

I forgot to include my sources for that:
Behind the scenes -- from Mark Reinholds Blog.

So it looks to me like AMD will continue to be ahead of Intel as far as top-end server solutions go.

In short, I find this particular move puzzling. Sun has traditionally backed the best performance design, and I see Intel still lagging here overall.

Nowhere in these articles does it say that Sun is replacing all of their AMD servers with Intel servers. Also, like Apple, maybe Sun likes what they see in Intel's top-secret roadmaps/propaganda: 4-bus chipsets, rapid shrinks to 45nm and beyond, new interconnect technologies, etc.

I'm sorry but that link didn't work. This one should.

What's with the FUD? Sun is not dying. Their stock has been going up over the past two years. Their latest CPU, the UltraSPARC T1 has 32 execution units (eight cores), massive cache and register files, and the highest throughput in the industry. It's not great for floating point tasks so it won't make a good toy system for playing games, but for a real work in a server, it's the most energy efficient, powerful architecture available.

Of all the links posted in the summary, there's no link to the webcast on Sun's site about the story (01/22/07 @ 10:00 PST, Realplayer 10 required). :P

I was at JavaUk06 last year, and in his keynote speech (one of) the Marketing VPs spent quite a lot of time extolling the virtues of their new line of SunFire servers, paying particular attention to their power:performance ratio compared to similar Xeon-based servers. Listening to him then, you'd have thought that Opterons were the best thing since sliced bread. Yes, I realise that his job is to push their current and up-coming products and solutions, but the main thrust of his talk was "Opteron-powered SunFire servers use far less power than those crappy, power-hungry Xeon servers".

I estimate that a 42U rack can fit 240 drives. By the end of this year, that means that a company will fit 240TB in 4.75 cu ft.

With the Sun Fire X4500, a 4U server that holds 24 drives, your estimate is exactly right. However, even with 1TB drives, you have to account for redundancy and other overhead (such as database indexes), so the total usable space is probably less than half that. Fitting a 100TB data warehouse into one rack seems feasible in the near future.

Storage services such as Amazon's S3 makes this very cheap and easy.

Sun has been investing in Elliptic Curve Cryptography for many years. Now that SHA1 has been broken, ECC appears to be urgently needed as a strong encryption replacement for common internet usage. According to the Sun Labs page, ECC is also a high-performance technology.

Sun has been investing in Elliptic Curve Cryptography for many years. Now that SHA1 has been broken, ECC appears to be urgently needed as a strong encryption replacement for common internet usage. According to the Sun Labs page, ECC is also a high-performance technology.

I am at a loss to understand why folks continue to take this man seriously. Two years running he's modified predictions so that he can say that he got them right, specifically as it looks like he has an axe to grind against the company he made the predictions against. See http://blogs.sun.com/tpenta/entry/modifying_your_p redictions_does_not for more.

Tp.

A non-anonymous source inside Sun, who just happens to be Sun's VP of Software, has refuted eWeek's rumor spreading.

No, Solaris 10 does not come with the source, although it is licensed under a Free/Open Source license that is approved by the FSF, but not GPL compatible.

This is wrong. Solaris 10 is not licensed under an open source license. The two relevant links are:

Licensing Information
Software License Agreement

It's confusing as all hell, and Sun is not very explicit on their webpages about the distinction between Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris. It seems like much of the commercial Solaris code has been transferred to the OpenSolaris project, but not all: "There remains some system code that is not open sourced, and is available only as binary files.". There is no free source you can build from that will give you an official Solaris 10 build. As an example, somebody in this thread posted that Sun was charging for patches (and of course some jerk modded him down for mentioning it).

I think the answer is if you want open source, stick with OpenSolaris, unless you want paid support.

No, Solaris 10 does not come with the source, although it is licensed under a Free/Open Source license that is approved by the FSF, but not GPL compatible.

This is wrong. Solaris 10 is not licensed under an open source license. The two relevant links are:

Licensing Information
Software License Agreement

It's confusing as all hell, and Sun is not very explicit on their webpages about the distinction between Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris. It seems like much of the commercial Solaris code has been transferred to the OpenSolaris project, but not all: "There remains some system code that is not open sourced, and is available only as binary files.". There is no free source you can build from that will give you an official Solaris 10 build. As an example, somebody in this thread posted that Sun was charging for patches (and of course some jerk modded him down for mentioning it).

I think the answer is if you want open source, stick with OpenSolaris, unless you want paid support.