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I am very happy that Sun Microsystems open sourced its Java and OpenSolaris products. If I buy my own server hardware, I will certainly prefer Sun. Contrast this with Microsoft, which is known for its Embrace-Extend-and-Extinguish practices, its preference to its own shared source licences for the very few lines of code that they ever made public, their aggressive hiring of some open-source people (why? to silence them with dollars?), and shadowy agreements with GNU/Linux vendors. Sun initially tried to use CDDL, but now took a bold step by adopting GPL and releasing actual, useful, working code under it. This means that Sun has open-minded people in its management.

And people already started hacking it and combining it with all kinds of interesting existing free java projects to product MIDPath

Seems the GNU Classpath, Kaffe, GCJ, etc projects really want to Collaborate and work together with Sun according to their latest release notes. 2007 might be a pretty interesting year for Java and GNU/Linux (and mobile devices!)

What they did was remove the functionality from unsigned Java applets to embed such movies, because those applets could take the image produced by Quicktime and send it back to the server, which was a real problem.

Yeah, too bad Sun announced yesterday a flaw in all their runtime environments that allows untrusted applets to access data from trusted applets. I don't think Apple has squashed that one, so there is still some potential for mischief.

I never touched JavaScript myself (well, to open and close a window, which is only an example I grabbed from a website) yet have been annoyed at people who didn't even manage to seperate Java from JavaScript. When it comes to web programming I've only used Java thus far through jsp or full servlets. Still, JavaScript is absolutely an important issue. It allows for server-side scripting without the hassle of a full container (in my case java container; tomcat or glassfish).

Still, what company knows best about JavaScript than Sun themselves? Recently the latest version of Java (Java SE 6) has been released and guess what one of its keyfeatures is? An API to support scripting languages. Right now the so called scripting engine only supports JavaScript, read about it here. For those really interested, here is the API documentation (javadoc).

I know I'm biased but heck; if people still don't realize the possibilities of JavaScript I'm pretty convinced that the combination of Java and JavaScript will enhance some of it. Java SE6 is pretty extensive, and with the addition of JavaScript even more flexible.

I never touched JavaScript myself (well, to open and close a window, which is only an example I grabbed from a website) yet have been annoyed at people who didn't even manage to seperate Java from JavaScript. When it comes to web programming I've only used Java thus far through jsp or full servlets. Still, JavaScript is absolutely an important issue. It allows for server-side scripting without the hassle of a full container (in my case java container; tomcat or glassfish).

Still, what company knows best about JavaScript than Sun themselves? Recently the latest version of Java (Java SE 6) has been released and guess what one of its keyfeatures is? An API to support scripting languages. Right now the so called scripting engine only supports JavaScript, read about it here. For those really interested, here is the API documentation (javadoc).

I know I'm biased but heck; if people still don't realize the possibilities of JavaScript I'm pretty convinced that the combination of Java and JavaScript will enhance some of it. Java SE6 is pretty extensive, and with the addition of JavaScript even more flexible.

I never touched JavaScript myself (well, to open and close a window, which is only an example I grabbed from a website) yet have been annoyed at people who didn't even manage to seperate Java from JavaScript. When it comes to web programming I've only used Java thus far through jsp or full servlets. Still, JavaScript is absolutely an important issue. It allows for server-side scripting without the hassle of a full container (in my case java container; tomcat or glassfish).

Still, what company knows best about JavaScript than Sun themselves? Recently the latest version of Java (Java SE 6) has been released and guess what one of its keyfeatures is? An API to support scripting languages. Right now the so called scripting engine only supports JavaScript, read about it here. For those really interested, here is the API documentation (javadoc).

I know I'm biased but heck; if people still don't realize the possibilities of JavaScript I'm pretty convinced that the combination of Java and JavaScript will enhance some of it. Java SE6 is pretty extensive, and with the addition of JavaScript even more flexible.

I used to hang out on the , and questions about encrypting Java bytecode came up with surprising regularity. The number of people who simply didn't understand that what they wanted - to make it impossible to decompile the bytecode back to Java source - was impossible was quite staggering. All sorts of plausible-sounding solutions were mooted, but they are all ultimately worthless. As long as I control the hardware, there's nothing you can do to prevent me from seeing data processed by it, all you can do is try to make it difficult.

Wow, did I run over your dog or something?

I'm reporting what actually happened. Go build yourself a time machine, travel to IBM Building 500 in RTP circa spring 2001, and talk to the people in the WebSphere Applications group in room 240. My teammates at that time will be able to outline the various bugs encountered in the JVMs. Here is the OutOfMemoryError we saw: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4390238 . We didn't report the bug, we just found it after having encountered it independently.

Also, check the Top 25 Bugs at bugs.sun.com. Of those, here are the platform-specific bugs that are currently OPEN:

http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4957990 (Solaris)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4171239 (Windows)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4787931 (Windows)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4673298 (Linux)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4049083 (Windows/Solaris)

For anyone writing non-trivial applications, it is NOT HARD to encounter a situation where the JVM either behaves differently on platforms or has an outright bug. bugs.sun.com is filled with them.

Wow, did I run over your dog or something?

I'm reporting what actually happened. Go build yourself a time machine, travel to IBM Building 500 in RTP circa spring 2001, and talk to the people in the WebSphere Applications group in room 240. My teammates at that time will be able to outline the various bugs encountered in the JVMs. Here is the OutOfMemoryError we saw: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4390238 . We didn't report the bug, we just found it after having encountered it independently.

Also, check the Top 25 Bugs at bugs.sun.com. Of those, here are the platform-specific bugs that are currently OPEN:

http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4957990 (Solaris)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4171239 (Windows)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4787931 (Windows)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4673298 (Linux)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4049083 (Windows/Solaris)

For anyone writing non-trivial applications, it is NOT HARD to encounter a situation where the JVM either behaves differently on platforms or has an outright bug. bugs.sun.com is filled with them.

Wow, did I run over your dog or something?

I'm reporting what actually happened. Go build yourself a time machine, travel to IBM Building 500 in RTP circa spring 2001, and talk to the people in the WebSphere Applications group in room 240. My teammates at that time will be able to outline the various bugs encountered in the JVMs. Here is the OutOfMemoryError we saw: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4390238 . We didn't report the bug, we just found it after having encountered it independently.

Also, check the Top 25 Bugs at bugs.sun.com. Of those, here are the platform-specific bugs that are currently OPEN:

http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4957990 (Solaris)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4171239 (Windows)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4787931 (Windows)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4673298 (Linux)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4049083 (Windows/Solaris)

For anyone writing non-trivial applications, it is NOT HARD to encounter a situation where the JVM either behaves differently on platforms or has an outright bug. bugs.sun.com is filled with them.

Wow, did I run over your dog or something?

I'm reporting what actually happened. Go build yourself a time machine, travel to IBM Building 500 in RTP circa spring 2001, and talk to the people in the WebSphere Applications group in room 240. My teammates at that time will be able to outline the various bugs encountered in the JVMs. Here is the OutOfMemoryError we saw: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4390238 . We didn't report the bug, we just found it after having encountered it independently.

Also, check the Top 25 Bugs at bugs.sun.com. Of those, here are the platform-specific bugs that are currently OPEN:

http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4957990 (Solaris)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4171239 (Windows)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4787931 (Windows)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4673298 (Linux)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4049083 (Windows/Solaris)

For anyone writing non-trivial applications, it is NOT HARD to encounter a situation where the JVM either behaves differently on platforms or has an outright bug. bugs.sun.com is filled with them.

Wow, did I run over your dog or something?

I'm reporting what actually happened. Go build yourself a time machine, travel to IBM Building 500 in RTP circa spring 2001, and talk to the people in the WebSphere Applications group in room 240. My teammates at that time will be able to outline the various bugs encountered in the JVMs. Here is the OutOfMemoryError we saw: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4390238 . We didn't report the bug, we just found it after having encountered it independently.

Also, check the Top 25 Bugs at bugs.sun.com. Of those, here are the platform-specific bugs that are currently OPEN:

http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4957990 (Solaris)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4171239 (Windows)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4787931 (Windows)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4673298 (Linux)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4049083 (Windows/Solaris)

For anyone writing non-trivial applications, it is NOT HARD to encounter a situation where the JVM either behaves differently on platforms or has an outright bug. bugs.sun.com is filled with them.

Wow, did I run over your dog or something?

I'm reporting what actually happened. Go build yourself a time machine, travel to IBM Building 500 in RTP circa spring 2001, and talk to the people in the WebSphere Applications group in room 240. My teammates at that time will be able to outline the various bugs encountered in the JVMs. Here is the OutOfMemoryError we saw: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4390238 . We didn't report the bug, we just found it after having encountered it independently.

Also, check the Top 25 Bugs at bugs.sun.com. Of those, here are the platform-specific bugs that are currently OPEN:

http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4957990 (Solaris)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4171239 (Windows)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4787931 (Windows)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4673298 (Linux)
http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4049083 (Windows/Solaris)

For anyone writing non-trivial applications, it is NOT HARD to encounter a situation where the JVM either behaves differently on platforms or has an outright bug. bugs.sun.com is filled with them.

OutofMemory is an user error.

No it's not. Here is the actual bug report: http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id =4390238 . Note that WE did not report the bug, we discovered the writeup only after having encountered it independently.

If you can't do real programming, maybe it's best you stay away from professional's tools and stick with what you can do.

Ah of course, I must not be a "real programmer" because the 25-person team I was working with in the IBM WebSphere Applications group (*cough*) managed to discover some bugs in the JVMs. And all those people reporting JVM bugs at bugs.sun.com must be idiots too.

Over past months, I've read a lot of people commenting on ZFS who have no idea what it is. What it is, is the next generation of filesystems, not a "tweak" of current fs technology. It just happens to "look like" an ordinary POSIX fs, from a distance (if you ignore the administration/pool stuff...) But inside, it's something new under the Sun, folks.

RAID experts don't grok it, because it does things RAID can't do (end-to-end).

Devotees of ext2fs, reiserfs (yay!), NTFS (LOL!), or HFS+ don't grok it, because none of those filesystems do what ZFS does.

Read about it before you write it off as old wine in a new bottle. To ask the question, "Does OS X need a new filesystem?" is a perfect example of missing the point. Once you've looked at what ZFS really brings to the table, you'll see why it's an inevitable future, sooner or later, and you'll stop looking foolish.

Some links I posted this week:

- http://www.osnews.com/story.php/16739/Screenshot-Z FS-in-Leopard - http://mac4ever.com/news/27485/zettabyte_sur_leopa rd/ (older rumour http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=14473)

For OS X people wondering why the fuss about ZFS - summaries include: - http://www.sun.com/2004-0914/feature/ - http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/articles/zfs_ part1.scalable.html

"Why ZFS for home": - http://uadmin.blogspot.com/2006/05/why-zfs-for-hom e.html

"Here are ten reasons why you'll want to reformat all of your systems and use ZFS.": http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/1446/zfs_ten_reason s_to_reformat_your_...

And some more technical explanations from Chief Engineer: - http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/entry/zfs_end_to_end_ data - http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/entry/smokin_mirrors

Over past months, I've read a lot of people commenting on ZFS who have no idea what it is. What it is, is the next generation of filesystems, not a "tweak" of current fs technology. It just happens to "look like" an ordinary POSIX fs, from a distance (if you ignore the administration/pool stuff...) But inside, it's something new under the Sun, folks.

RAID experts don't grok it, because it does things RAID can't do (end-to-end).

Devotees of ext2fs, reiserfs (yay!), NTFS (LOL!), or HFS+ don't grok it, because none of those filesystems do what ZFS does.

Read about it before you write it off as old wine in a new bottle. To ask the question, "Does OS X need a new filesystem?" is a perfect example of missing the point. Once you've looked at what ZFS really brings to the table, you'll see why it's an inevitable future, sooner or later, and you'll stop looking foolish.

Some links I posted this week:

- http://www.osnews.com/story.php/16739/Screenshot-Z FS-in-Leopard - http://mac4ever.com/news/27485/zettabyte_sur_leopa rd/ (older rumour http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=14473)

For OS X people wondering why the fuss about ZFS - summaries include: - http://www.sun.com/2004-0914/feature/ - http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/articles/zfs_ part1.scalable.html

"Why ZFS for home": - http://uadmin.blogspot.com/2006/05/why-zfs-for-hom e.html

"Here are ten reasons why you'll want to reformat all of your systems and use ZFS.": http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/1446/zfs_ten_reason s_to_reformat_your_...

And some more technical explanations from Chief Engineer: - http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/entry/zfs_end_to_end_ data - http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/entry/smokin_mirrors

Over past months, I've read a lot of people commenting on ZFS who have no idea what it is. What it is, is the next generation of filesystems, not a "tweak" of current fs technology. It just happens to "look like" an ordinary POSIX fs, from a distance (if you ignore the administration/pool stuff...) But inside, it's something new under the Sun, folks.

RAID experts don't grok it, because it does things RAID can't do (end-to-end).

Devotees of ext2fs, reiserfs (yay!), NTFS (LOL!), or HFS+ don't grok it, because none of those filesystems do what ZFS does.

Read about it before you write it off as old wine in a new bottle. To ask the question, "Does OS X need a new filesystem?" is a perfect example of missing the point. Once you've looked at what ZFS really brings to the table, you'll see why it's an inevitable future, sooner or later, and you'll stop looking foolish.

Some links I posted this week:

- http://www.osnews.com/story.php/16739/Screenshot-Z FS-in-Leopard - http://mac4ever.com/news/27485/zettabyte_sur_leopa rd/ (older rumour http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=14473)

For OS X people wondering why the fuss about ZFS - summaries include: - http://www.sun.com/2004-0914/feature/ - http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/articles/zfs_ part1.scalable.html

"Why ZFS for home": - http://uadmin.blogspot.com/2006/05/why-zfs-for-hom e.html

"Here are ten reasons why you'll want to reformat all of your systems and use ZFS.": http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/1446/zfs_ten_reason s_to_reformat_your_...

And some more technical explanations from Chief Engineer: - http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/entry/zfs_end_to_end_ data - http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/entry/smokin_mirrors

Over past months, I've read a lot of people commenting on ZFS who have no idea what it is. What it is, is the next generation of filesystems, not a "tweak" of current fs technology. It just happens to "look like" an ordinary POSIX fs, from a distance (if you ignore the administration/pool stuff...) But inside, it's something new under the Sun, folks.

RAID experts don't grok it, because it does things RAID can't do (end-to-end).

Devotees of ext2fs, reiserfs (yay!), NTFS (LOL!), or HFS+ don't grok it, because none of those filesystems do what ZFS does.

Read about it before you write it off as old wine in a new bottle. To ask the question, "Does OS X need a new filesystem?" is a perfect example of missing the point. Once you've looked at what ZFS really brings to the table, you'll see why it's an inevitable future, sooner or later, and you'll stop looking foolish.

Some links I posted this week:

- http://www.osnews.com/story.php/16739/Screenshot-Z FS-in-Leopard - http://mac4ever.com/news/27485/zettabyte_sur_leopa rd/ (older rumour http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=14473)

For OS X people wondering why the fuss about ZFS - summaries include: - http://www.sun.com/2004-0914/feature/ - http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/articles/zfs_ part1.scalable.html

"Why ZFS for home": - http://uadmin.blogspot.com/2006/05/why-zfs-for-hom e.html

"Here are ten reasons why you'll want to reformat all of your systems and use ZFS.": http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/1446/zfs_ten_reason s_to_reformat_your_...

And some more technical explanations from Chief Engineer: - http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/entry/zfs_end_to_end_ data - http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/entry/smokin_mirrors

Hard drives silently losing data is a problem solved by RAID.

That is profoundly wrong. Vanilla RAID will not discover and cannot automatically correct silent data loss. The reason is that RAID has no way of knowing which data is correct. For example, if two mirrored copies disagree on the contents of a block, the data is unrecoverable without manual intervention or external knowledge. Furthermore, in normal operation your RAID subsystem will simply read data from whichever drive is idle at the time the read request comes in; it does not ordinarily compare the two mirrors. The data will remain corrupted until the user notices a problem, at which point they have no practical recourse. Essentially the same problem occurs with parity RAID.

There is no dedicated hardware in your system that provides the end to end data integrity that ZFS does. I honestly suggest you learn more about it before airing your opinions. Here is a start:

http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/entry/zfs_end_to_end_ data

I've never found plain-Jane posix permissions to be all that useful on anything other than the most basic of server environments. ...
What I'd really like to see is both that kind of functionality along with NTFS's really excellent ACL permission system implemented.

I wish you could read more about ZFS before suggesting how you could improve it by adding ACLs. It already supports them!

http://blogs.sun.com/marks/entry/zfs_acls

Maybe not bootable in the wild, but about a little over a year ago ZFS was successfully booted on Solaris on X86 according to this blog:

http://blogs.sun.com/tabriz/entry/zfs_boot

The tech behind ZFS at least sounds very impressive, but I have to wonder how useful it is for workstation drives.

I've never found plain-Jane posix permissions to be all that useful on anything other than the most basic of server environments.

HFS has going for it all the fun stuff we've come to love apple for, such as transparent file customization like icons, labels, meta data, and whatnot through resource forks. I assume that these can be made to work with ZFS by making hidden files.

What I'd really like to see is both that kind of functionality along with NTFS's really excellent ACL permission system implemented. ACL permissions are a godsend for people responsible for running a file store that's used by humans as opposed to automated processes. NTFS also has a great deal of capacity for meta-data, although not to the same level as HFS.

NTFS is one of the few worthwhile things that's ever come out of Redmond. I wish more people would spend a bit learning from it without throwing it away simply because it's MS bloat.

Read RMS' Java Trap essay. He made some extreme claims about licensing and using java libraries/packages.

I consider using java.* packages to be no different than linking to libc. However, (according to RMS), due to the nature of the JAVA VM engine, it's as if you copy/pasted all the libc code into your application. Result: you cannot write GPL java software that uses the Sun classpath (since it is not GPL licensed).

If the Sun classpath is placed under a GPL license, then all software which uses it must be placed under the GPL as well.


That's simply not true. You're describing what happens when you use #include in C/C++. In Java the rough equivalent is the import keyword, which doesn't work in the same way at all.

import just defines a fully qualified package name so you can refer to classes in that package using their simple names. That's all it does.

I went to 64 bits in 2000 on Sun hardware. Whether your OS is Solaris or Linux, you run a 64 bit kernel and can compile and run programs in either 32 or 64 bit mode. For a while this meant using different compilers for building kernels (remember egcs?), but that has long since been sorted. Other than the usual playing around, it's just now that I have an application that is crowding 4 GB of address space and could actually use 64 bits. Either that or rewrite its database interface so it doesn't mmap() a great big file to save stuff in. :-)

Don't do 64 bits because it's cool and trendy, or because you are looking for some sort of panacea. Do 64 bits because it solve problems and creates new opportunities. While it's (naturally) Sun- and Solaris-centric, Sun's 64 bit migration guide is a good place to start.

...laura

(Sun) is actually still supporting users of version 2.6. ... the operating system is fully supported through 2007

That said, 2.6 is a pretty old release and we're overdue doing an upgrade on it, but it's inaccurate to say Sun still support it. Added to that, there are a number of Sun Alerts which come out and say that older versions aren't being evaluated for certain bugs.

I have always had an interest in free software and alternative operating systems. Back in the 1990s, I heard about an interesting innovative operating system called BeOS. BeOS expressed a desire to peacefully coexist with Microsoft. Microsoft applied pressure to computer companies to not sell any computers with BeOS pre-installed, so BeOS went out of Business.

A few years earlier, in the 1990s, a company come out with their own DOS clone. From what I have heard, the Microsoft programmers designed some of the Microsoft products to give error messages when running under the DOS clone even when there really was not a problem.

Once Microsoft gained dominance they tried to squeeze out alternatives my fighting against open standards. They prefer to use proprietary standards instead. On various occasions they have also tried to take open standard and add proprietary extensions to them. That strategy is called extend, embrace and extinguish. Microsoft almost missed the Internet while promoting it's own proprietary alternatives. It almost missed the boat on that and Bill Gates quickly changed course. The Internet was created with open standards such as TCP/IP and HTML. Netscape was the dominate browser back then and the browser, to a large extent, controls what standards are used. If I remember correctly, I once read that Netscape even dared to publicly make some statements about the browser making the choice of operating system less significant. So somehow Microsoft had to destroy Netscape, perhaps, so that they could better influence what standards are used.

According to a website, "Lacking any decent technology of their own, Microsoft licensed the Mosaic web browser from Spyglass which they turned into Internet Explorer." That website then gos on to say "Microsoft royally screwed over Spyglass by licensing their code and then turning around and giving it away for free." By including it for free, pre-installed with Windows they destroyed Netscape and Spyglass. Since then Internet Explorer has become the dominant browser and is the only browser that in not standards compliant.

Sun Microsystems, developed Java a programming language what would allow programmer to create programs that are operating system dependent. Micrsoft bought a license for Java, from Sun, and then tried to add their own proprietary extensions to Java. Sun successfully sued them for violating the terms of the license.

The political fight against the effort to use open-standards such as ODF in Mass is another example. Microsoft prefers to keep their Open Office users locked-in with proprietary standards such as Office 12 XML instead.

About 6 or 7 years ago I stated using Linux which is a free open-source Unix clone operating system. There weren't many big advantages over Windows other than that Linux users didn't get computer viruses or infected by email mail attachments. It somehow more like I was more in control of what was installed on my computer and how it was configured. Furthermore, the GPL license allowed me to freely copy Linux and most of my free Linux programs from one computer to another. I no longer felt big brother Bill looking over my shoulder.

Since then, I Linux has improved to where Ubuntu Linux feels very polished complete and easy to use and install. Whenever I want some new program, I just use Synaptic to choose from the list of thousands of free programs and quickly download whatever free GPL licensed program that I want. I am totally happy with Ubuntu Linux.

Back about 5 or 6 years ago, I was still using Windows ME and Office 2000 on one of my computers. That computer had what I later realized was a slightly bad power supply

You may also want to try GlassFish. Updated version of the Java EE 5 SDK was released toady. It is free. Sun's Application Server (9.0 Update 1 Patch 1) based on Project Glassfish is included in the SDK. It contains a performance bugfix that enables record-breaking price/performance on the application tier with SPECjAppServer result of 521.42 JOPS@Standard - see Scott's latest blog for all the details.

You may also want to try GlassFish. Updated version of the Java EE 5 SDK was released toady. It is free. Sun's Application Server (9.0 Update 1 Patch 1) based on Project Glassfish is included in the SDK. It contains a performance bugfix that enables record-breaking price/performance on the application tier with SPECjAppServer result of 521.42 JOPS@Standard - see Scott's latest blog for all the details.

BTW: Referring back to the String example, there's another problem. The interfaces don't come anywhere close to covering the members of String. It's not hard to solve this problem... just create the new interface(s) and declare that String implements it/them. By not creating standard covering interfaces you're not only encouraging, you're more or less demanding a lot of concrete instances of String, when what you really mean is something String-like in some way.

You mean like CharSequence?

While the basic concepts between C# and Java might be similiar (I haven't gotten around to C# myself yet), java has some pretty strange things entrenched in they way that it is employeed. For webapps, EJB and J2EE will leave you in a straight jacket. Granted there are alternatives to EJB (Spring, Hibernate, etc), but EJB is still "the standard" way to do java on webapps, if you are going for anything more than a servlet. I have poured over several J2EE books and I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around EJB and the umpteen levels of abtraction and interfaces required to use it properly. Somebody one said that "Java programers have a morbid fascination with complexity"; that is absoutlely true of the twisted minds who thought up EJB. My gosh, the J2EE Tutorial from Sun is *several hundred* pages long.

PHP has its problems, but I find it much more satifying because it is more straight forward. It's easy to write bad code in PHP, but its also easy to write good code in PHP. PHP is definately a less versitile and less powerful tool than Java, but its still a good tool for its intended job.

A big problem with regards to PHP vs. Java is that its awfully harder to get Java going in a server-side fashion on your box. Where you only need a simple Apache module for Java you'd need a product like the Tomcat server to get the best out of Java. Which, for a common user, means more trouble and overhead. Now you got 2 software products to configure which can make your life a lot harder.

When looking at the Java Enterprise Edition (EE5) you'll notice that it comes with its own application server called Glassfish, its even fully open sourced. However, even though its a lot easier to setup and tune Glassfish when compared to Tomcat (a nice spiffy web interface in which you can do everything vs. a limited administration interface and lots of manual editing of config files) its still making things too complex for common use. You still need at least 2 ports opened up (one for webserver, one for application server) or figure out a way how to start forwarding requests.

No more. A very good alternative for all this complexity is the Sun Java Webserver 7. Its not offcially released yet, this is the 3rd release candidate, but despite that its very useable. This is basicly a combination of both an extensive webserver which can easily compete with the likes of Apache and a java container (or "application server") fully embedded into the system. So you only need to worry about a single software product to setup both your web and application -server needs.

There is a little thing to keep in mind: when it comes to Java technology (EE5) then you'll notice that the Java webserver 7 is a little behind in some regards. The support for JSP, servlets, etc. doesn't keep up with the latest versions but supports standards (jsp, serlvets, jsf) which are one release or such behind. But that doesn't mean its functionality is any less than Tomcat or the Sun application server.

If you're now considering Java but looking up to maintaining 2 software products I'd definatly check this out. It runs on Windows, Linux and even Solaris (duh, as if that wasn't to be expected from Sun ;-)).

A big problem with regards to PHP vs. Java is that its awfully harder to get Java going in a server-side fashion on your box. Where you only need a simple Apache module for Java you'd need a product like the Tomcat server to get the best out of Java. Which, for a common user, means more trouble and overhead. Now you got 2 software products to configure which can make your life a lot harder.

When looking at the Java Enterprise Edition (EE5) you'll notice that it comes with its own application server called Glassfish, its even fully open sourced. However, even though its a lot easier to setup and tune Glassfish when compared to Tomcat (a nice spiffy web interface in which you can do everything vs. a limited administration interface and lots of manual editing of config files) its still making things too complex for common use. You still need at least 2 ports opened up (one for webserver, one for application server) or figure out a way how to start forwarding requests.

No more. A very good alternative for all this complexity is the Sun Java Webserver 7. Its not offcially released yet, this is the 3rd release candidate, but despite that its very useable. This is basicly a combination of both an extensive webserver which can easily compete with the likes of Apache and a java container (or "application server") fully embedded into the system. So you only need to worry about a single software product to setup both your web and application -server needs.

There is a little thing to keep in mind: when it comes to Java technology (EE5) then you'll notice that the Java webserver 7 is a little behind in some regards. The support for JSP, servlets, etc. doesn't keep up with the latest versions but supports standards (jsp, serlvets, jsf) which are one release or such behind. But that doesn't mean its functionality is any less than Tomcat or the Sun application server.

If you're now considering Java but looking up to maintaining 2 software products I'd definatly check this out. It runs on Windows, Linux and even Solaris (duh, as if that wasn't to be expected from Sun ;-)).

Well I moved from C# to Java a couple of years ago when a client wanted to be able to deploy to AIX. I found the transition dead easy. If you fancy taking a look at Java and want a good starter IDE you could do worse than look at Sun's Java Studio Creator which has a lot of the same look and feel as Visual Studio and is free and open source. If you want something that rocks and don't mind paying for it IDEA is easily the best IDE I've ever used for anything. Ruby on Rails is where all the hype is at the mo, of course, but I'm not much of a fan myself mainly because Ruby is so damn slow.

You don't know as much as you think you know, especially about Strings. To begin with, I suggest you do some Google searches for the phrase "Premature optimization is the root of all evil." Now then...

Don't concatenate, use StringBuffer-s.

You don't seem to be aware that the following two lines are either identical, or so close to identical in their execution that you will never be able to discern the difference with any debugger or benchmark:

System.out.println("The product of " + a + " and " + b + " is " + (a * b));
System.out.println(new StringBuffer("The product of ").append(a).append(" and ").append(b).append(" is ").append(a * b));

Details are here.

It is true that in Java 1.0, StringBuffer was always the better way to concatenate. But that was over ten years ago. Modern Java programmers know you don't use StringBuffer unless you're doing frequent concatenations (such as inside a loop). And professional programmers know that readability and maintainability are way more important than saving a few cycles in some logging statement.

Don't use buffer.append("a" + "b") - kinda defeats the purpose :) .

Wrong. Concatenation of constants results in a single constant at compile time. In other words, the following lines will compile into byte-for-byte identical bytecode:

System.out.println("Today" + ' ' + "is" + " December " + 13);
System.out.println("Today is December 13");

Feel free to try it for yourself if you don't believe me.

My current favorite Java programming book is Java Concurrency in Practice by Broan Goetz and others. It's not for beginners, but if you really want to understand how to write multi-threaded code in Java you need to read this book. Several times, probably, because it's a tricky subject.

Other books I like for Java are Effective Java (though he needs to update it for Java 1.5) and Java Puzzlers.

I don't know of any books that are good descriptions of the Java 1.5 features for experienced programmers. Some people like Thinking in Java, but it seems pretty wordy to me. I originally learned Java from Java in a Nutshell but it's been something like 8 years, so I don't know if the newer editions are any good.

Disclaimer: some of the authors of these books are my co-workers, though I don't know them very well.

...is Bruce Eckel's Thinking in Java which has already invented the idea displayed here. Thats why you'll see that this book (tij) doesn't fully go into the bare Jave code but mostly reflects on the things which really matter. Knowing what things like Objects are, why objects differ from primitives, etc. Being a Java enthousiast myself it still amazes me how many people "program in Java" yet never learned how to interpret the JDK documentation, especially the so called API documentation.

Anyway, the Thinking in Java book is both available for free download (see URL above) and if you wish a hardcopy (or the latest release) then you can also purchase it. In my opinion this is a much better book which is also presented in a more fair way.

...is Bruce Eckel's Thinking in Java which has already invented the idea displayed here. Thats why you'll see that this book (tij) doesn't fully go into the bare Jave code but mostly reflects on the things which really matter. Knowing what things like Objects are, why objects differ from primitives, etc. Being a Java enthousiast myself it still amazes me how many people "program in Java" yet never learned how to interpret the JDK documentation, especially the so called API documentation.

Anyway, the Thinking in Java book is both available for free download (see URL above) and if you wish a hardcopy (or the latest release) then you can also purchase it. In my opinion this is a much better book which is also presented in a more fair way.

I'm not that knowledgeable about Java but do the bells+whistles in this new release overlap with what GWT does?
http://java.sun.com/javase/6/

First there was KVM switches and then there was the Java KVM (kilobyte VM).

Now there's the linux KVM which has nothing to do with either those or the Kernel VM rewrites of the linux past.

Leave that acronym alone !

um, http://www.java.com/ is the place to go if you're an end-user just seeking a JRE, not http://java.sun.com/.

On Sun's web page announcing this exciting new release, there's a link to the list of "new features and enhancements". When I clicked on it, it said "404: not found". I think that sums up Java quite nicely.

Here are lists of some new features in Java 6.

Core features: http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2 SE/Desktop/JavaSE6_build39.html
Desktop features: http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2 SE/Desktop/javase6/

Here are lists of some new features in Java 6.

Core features: http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2 SE/Desktop/JavaSE6_build39.html
Desktop features: http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2 SE/Desktop/javase6/

But if you go to the J2SE Download page: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp/ There is a link to Java 6.

I took a couple of programming classes when it was still Java 1.3/1.4 a few years ago and totally missed the jump to Java 5/6.

You were using the JDK 1.3/1.4, which implements Java 3/4. The language versions are numbered N, but Sun's JDK's are numbered 1.N.

Java 5 has added:

• auto boxing/unboxing, so if the compiler expects an int when you provide an Integer (or vice-versa, for any native type), it will automatically convert by either taking (for example) Integer.intValue or creating a new Integer object.
• generics, so you don't have to cast objects when taking them out of a collection. Here (warning: PDF!) is a good tutorial on generics, so I don't have to explain them. Essentially you can do List<String> l= new LinkedList<String>(); l.add("foo"); System.out.println(l.first()); without the usual cast.
• annotations, so you can mark up your code with annotations like bug reports or deprecation. Reflection encompasses annotations, so your code can see what you've said about it. This is a half-hearted description--you can do really cool stuff with it; I just haven't done anything with it yet.
• foreach loop: for (Type thing : Collection things) { /* do stuff */ } pretty much explains it. It handles the iteration for you, and (I think) the right hand of the for loop (after the colon) can be anything that implements Iterable.

Java 6, I'm not as knowledgeable about. But Java 5 is certainly an improvement--it makes things less wordy, although most of the changes are skin-deep; the compiler implements generics as implicit casts (which are added to the class files), and the foreach loop with an implicit iterator. And of course boxing/unboxing slows things down too. But it's prettier, and besides, if you're using Java you probably already have a handle on where the performance is good and where it suffers.

What's the best way to get back into using Java? I took a couple of programming classes when it was still Java 1.3/1.4 a few years ago and totally missed the jump to Java 5/6.

I actually enjoyed the Head First Java book from O'Reilly, though I'll probably get mocked for it here.... I admit, it can feel a bit "kiddie" to have a lot of pictures, do puzzles and so on, but involving the right half of your brain makes stuff stick better, and for me, makes it fun and fast to learn. Second edition has some Java5 stuff in it.

If that style of learning is not for you, or if you are too advanced for that level, the Java Tutorial was pretty recently updated with new trails for Java 5 and Java 6, so you should find an appropriate level for you quickly. Also Java 5 Developer's Notebook is a neat guide.

Some help on getting you back in the saddle with the new features:

1.5 features in a nutshell

See also here

"Q:
When will you finish open sourcing the JDK? What is the timeline?
A:
We expect to release a fully buildable JDK based almost completely on open-sourced code in the first half of 2007"

Java SE 6 is the current major release of the Java SE platform, with full support from NetBeans IDE 5.5. Sun endeavors to foster the highest level of transparency and collaboration on the platform with the Java community through Project JDK 6, resulting in the following key features. Sun's Java Multi-Platform Support, Training, and Certification can provide you the peace of mind to develop and deploy Java solutions with confidence.

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