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I'd like to see evidence of that 99% compatability rate, I think you pulled that number out of thin air. You will note at least 1% incompatability is enough to force developers to write different Javascript for different browsers and cause a failure in the beginning.

I think I got confused there I was talking about JSP and servlets on the server end, and Java applets on the client end, and somehow my words got jumbled.

Even PHP seems to be a better platform than ASP.NET is right now.

Disability should be built into Java now as far as I have heard. Go ahead and try it for yourself.

While ASP.NET 2.0 has improved over 1.0/1.1, it still does not do everything it promised and it still seems to render HTML with issues and still requires some client specific issues that cause some problems.

And this is why I like RBAC much better. Next to all your issues with security when it comes to the config file you also face the simple fact that you're dealing with a setuid program here which can form a potential problem on its own. And the chicken/egg principle (allowing someone to edit a certain config file might also give them access to editing /etc/passwd / /etc/shadow).

An alternative to this is the way Solaris does it... Namely by using RBAC which allows me to grant access to a specific part of the system without having to worry about other parts. Another decent overview here tells you some more, while Sun itself also has some good stories, to be found here while a good overview can be found here.

What Solaris might lack in userfriendly-ness (when looking at distributions like Ubuntu, SuSE and OS X) it sure makes up for robustness and simple quality. In my opinion the days of sudo are (or should) be numbered.

And this is why I like RBAC much better. Next to all your issues with security when it comes to the config file you also face the simple fact that you're dealing with a setuid program here which can form a potential problem on its own. And the chicken/egg principle (allowing someone to edit a certain config file might also give them access to editing /etc/passwd / /etc/shadow).

An alternative to this is the way Solaris does it... Namely by using RBAC which allows me to grant access to a specific part of the system without having to worry about other parts. Another decent overview here tells you some more, while Sun itself also has some good stories, to be found here while a good overview can be found here.

What Solaris might lack in userfriendly-ness (when looking at distributions like Ubuntu, SuSE and OS X) it sure makes up for robustness and simple quality. In my opinion the days of sudo are (or should) be numbered.

And this is why I like RBAC much better. Next to all your issues with security when it comes to the config file you also face the simple fact that you're dealing with a setuid program here which can form a potential problem on its own. And the chicken/egg principle (allowing someone to edit a certain config file might also give them access to editing /etc/passwd / /etc/shadow).

An alternative to this is the way Solaris does it... Namely by using RBAC which allows me to grant access to a specific part of the system without having to worry about other parts. Another decent overview here tells you some more, while Sun itself also has some good stories, to be found here while a good overview can be found here.

What Solaris might lack in userfriendly-ness (when looking at distributions like Ubuntu, SuSE and OS X) it sure makes up for robustness and simple quality. In my opinion the days of sudo are (or should) be numbered.

That's right.

What many linux affectionados do not realize is there are many much more advanced power user control systems then sudo. My favorite example is RBAC which has, unlike sudo, some corporate/security professional appeal. See there. It is mostly used on Solaris where the integration level is impressive. For example we can make a requirement that some operations can be only performed by two admins (a "two men rule" ).

Sure, sudo can also can be taken to a much higher level when properly configured, but still ;-)

That's right.

What many linux affectionados do not realize is there are many much more advanced power user control systems then sudo. My favorite example is RBAC which has, unlike sudo, some corporate/security professional appeal. See there. It is mostly used on Solaris where the integration level is impressive. For example we can make a requirement that some operations can be only performed by two admins (a "two men rule" ).

Sure, sudo can also can be taken to a much higher level when properly configured, but still ;-)

For my Java needs, I go to the Java Technology Forums http://forum.java.sun.com/index.jspa For any MS or SQL needs, I go to Tek-Tips http://www.tek-tips.com/ Both are free, and if you ask questions intelligibly, you'll get answers very quickly.

He discusses particularly the opposition raised in Mass. wrt the (in-)compatibility of OpenOffice on Windows with the current Windows accessibility technologies (interestingly, OOo is better accessibility-wise on Linux than Windows!) However, it outlines a lot of stuff and is definitely relevant to this discussion.

Fedora Directory Server http://directory.fedora.redhat.com/wiki/Main_Page and Sun Java Directory http://www.sun.com/software/products/directory_srv r/home_directory.xml are both derived from old Netscape LDAP solution and I can highly recommend it.
Time based ACI are supported with no problem and you are also free to provide directory services to MS products. To this end you can choose either the samba (which means extending the schema) or some fancy access manager http://www.sun.com/software/products/access_mgr/in dex.xml like solution.
It is often neglected in discussions on the subject how important it is to make sure you got binding permissions right. If you forbid access to some identity based on time of the day constraints make sure this identity will always try to bind to the directory as "self" - not some other (higher) identity.

Fedora Directory Server http://directory.fedora.redhat.com/wiki/Main_Page and Sun Java Directory http://www.sun.com/software/products/directory_srv r/home_directory.xml are both derived from old Netscape LDAP solution and I can highly recommend it.
Time based ACI are supported with no problem and you are also free to provide directory services to MS products. To this end you can choose either the samba (which means extending the schema) or some fancy access manager http://www.sun.com/software/products/access_mgr/in dex.xml like solution.
It is often neglected in discussions on the subject how important it is to make sure you got binding permissions right. If you forbid access to some identity based on time of the day constraints make sure this identity will always try to bind to the directory as "self" - not some other (higher) identity.

While I am also a Firefox fan and use it despite Konqueror's being very nice and passing the Acid2 test, it should be pointed out that Firefox does NOT pass the Acid2 test. At least, Firefox/1.5.0.1 does not. The dev tree might, but who counts that? One may as well claim that Looking Glass is the best operating environment ever - but since it's vaporware/unreleased it would be a false statement.

Sure, Firefox breaks less than IE does when loading the Acid2 test, however by a strict measurement, only one (two) browsers to date pass Acid2:

KHTML (Safari/Konqueror)

If you want to count dev trees/beta releases, then you've got:

Opera
Firefox

Also, I think it's great that the Opera folks are almost mocking Microsoft, and challenging them to pass Acid2. Aside from KHTML which is there, and MSIE which TOTALLY pukes on it, Every other browser is almost rendering Acid2 to be recognizable as a smiley face. At least everyone else is attempting to handle proper CSS and bad CSS correctly, e.g, render compliant CSS, and downgrade gracefully on broken CSS.

What MSIE renders could just as well be accomplished by splashing paint on a sheet of canvas. With the way Microsoft is handling things, I wonder why they don't just ignore CSS altogether and turn their browser into a random pixel renderer?

Get with the program, Microsoft. You have the greatest market share so it is in your best interest for maintaining your share to act responsibly. I hope the mass reaction to MSIE 7.0 is for major sites to either block the browser, or to use CSS which causes MSIE to totally break, and for those sites to recommend all browsers which are not MSIE as alternatives.

Microsoft has held the web back long enough with their refusal to implement proper PNG rendering - their holding back the web has to stop now.

http://www.sun.com/

static int zero_fd = -1;
void * addr;
if(zero_fd == -1)
{
/* thread safety is not easy */
zero_fd = open("/dev/zero", O_RDWR, 0);
}
addr = mmap(NULL, size, PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE | PROT_EXEC,
MAP_SHARED | MAP_ANON, zero_fd, 0);
return addr;

Of course, you could read about why I wrote this particular bit instead of malloc in the first place - on my blog (when macros aren't enough).

Also you never truly appreciate C & Unix, till you've dissected malloc(), free(), fprintf() and fork(). The memory management, I/O buffering (different if you pipe to a file vs tty) and how the same pointer value can point to different memory (pages) in forked parent and child.

Java and Hotspots optimize on the fly. C coders optimize better through runtime analysis and knowing meta-information about the code that a compiler can never hope to know.

What do you think hotspot does??? It does runtime analysis. You can even set the compile threshhold...i.e. execute 1000 times before compilation, or wait longer for a better compile.

See this:

".... Also, profile data is collected by the interpreter for guiding the optimizations."

here:

http://java.sun.com/developer/community/chat/JavaL ive/2005/jl0315.html

So it DOES do runtime analysis optimization. C code can only be optimized for certain scenarios, whereas hotspot adapts and will de-compile and re-compile as the state of the program changes.

http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/postgres.jsp

Ahh...your typical uninformed slashdot poster...

You do realize that array bounds checking is eliminated by modern VM's? i.e. HotSpot. Suggest you read:

http://java.sun.com/products/hotspot/docs/whitepap er/Java_Hotspot_v1.4.1/Java_HSpot_WP_v1.4.1_1002_4 .html

The Java version of Quake performs faster than the C version:

http://www.bytonic.de/html/benchmarks.html

Here are some other benchmarks:

http://www.idiom.com/~zilla/Computer/javaCbenchmar k.html
http://kano.net/javabench/

Java VM's such as HotSpot have the ability to de-optimize and re-optimize on the fly. C/C++ can not do that.

Stop repeating the lie that Java is slower than C/C++.

Although I wouldn't use Ubuntu for server usage myself (this includes giving people remote access for me) I also don't think its fair to criticize Ubuntu in the way some people do. Lets face it, this kind of stuff can happen to the best. Granted; this Solaris issue doesn't involve the root password, but the basic issue is exactly the same.

It would just seem to make sense to me that the world of computing would come up with a standard for using DC, and then companies would build big power supplies that would offer redundancy, power backup, and current conditioning. It would save money, power and space.

ZFS from Sun is 128-bit. According to this guy
thats a whole load of data:

"Although we'd all like Moore's Law to continue forever, quantum mechanics imposes some fundamental limits on the computation rate and information capacity of any physical device. In particular, it has been shown that 1 kilogram of matter confined to 1 liter of space can perform at most 1051 operations per second on at most 1031 bits of information [see Seth Lloyd, "Ultimate physical limits to computation." Nature 406, 1047-1054 (2000)]. A fully-populated 128-bit storage pool would contain 2^128 blocks = 2^137 bytes = 2^140 bits; therefore the minimum mass required to hold the bits would be (2^140 bits) / (10^31 bits/kg) = 136 billion kg.

That's a lot of gear."

I'm getting a 404 on that blog. ;)

Oh, I got this email this morning. :D

-----

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the Sun Microsystems Try-and-Buy program for Sun Fire T2000 CoolThreads servers, the world's first eco-responsible server. This revolutionary server offers incredible performance on multi-threaded applications, while dramatically reducing power and space requirements.

  Here is what some of our other customers and ISV's have said about the product:

        http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/testimonial s/
        http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/testimonial s/isv.jsp

Your CoolThreads server will be arriving within the next 2 weeks depending on your location in the world. For contact information on your order, go to http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/tnb/status. jsp

I'm getting a 404 on that blog. ;)

Oh, I got this email this morning. :D

-----

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the Sun Microsystems Try-and-Buy program for Sun Fire T2000 CoolThreads servers, the world's first eco-responsible server. This revolutionary server offers incredible performance on multi-threaded applications, while dramatically reducing power and space requirements.

  Here is what some of our other customers and ISV's have said about the product:

        http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/testimonial s/
        http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/testimonial s/isv.jsp

Your CoolThreads server will be arriving within the next 2 weeks depending on your location in the world. For contact information on your order, go to http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/tnb/status. jsp

I'm getting a 404 on that blog. ;)

Oh, I got this email this morning. :D

-----

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into the Sun Microsystems Try-and-Buy program for Sun Fire T2000 CoolThreads servers, the world's first eco-responsible server. This revolutionary server offers incredible performance on multi-threaded applications, while dramatically reducing power and space requirements.

  Here is what some of our other customers and ISV's have said about the product:

        http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/testimonial s/
        http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/testimonial s/isv.jsp

Your CoolThreads server will be arriving within the next 2 weeks depending on your location in the world. For contact information on your order, go to http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/tnb/status. jsp

Yes, it means they don't really understand what they are talking about. It is a fundamental error to believe that one can pass something by reference in C or Java. Just because passing a pointer or object reference by value resembles pass-by-reference semantics, it does not mean that they are the same thing. See http://java.sun.com/developer/JDCTechTips/2001/tt1 009.html

As for whether I understand the difference, it should have been clear that I do from the bracketed portion of my first reply to you.

It's clear that you understand how Java passes parameters. It's not clear to me that you understand how this differs from passing parameters by reference.

Um, OpenOffice has a very long history as being a commercial, closed source program (Star Office). It has changed since its Open Source release, yes, but not that much so that you wouldn't feel at home. And I bet people wouldn't bash its GUI, if it still were a commercial program.

Oh wait, it is still commercial! I think OOo 2.0 and also Star Office have a nice GUI, which is highly customizable and allows for a lot of efficient keyboard shortcuts. I also think that the changes from 1.x to 2.0 increased usability a lot. This all sounds a bit too much like the usual OpenSource == bad GUI bashing. Yeah, the charting tool is not the best. So what? It is getting better, and for the time being, for more complex tasks you can use Gnuplot, R, or whatever. For example: When doing mathematical graphs, Maple sucks totally, I always do that with other tools, too. Although I produce the data with Maple.

Java though, treats people who want to use UTF-32 as second-class citizens.

Java has support for Unicode 4 since Java 5, released september 2004.

Actually, Java and C# have nearly identical syntax. I would suggest learning Object-Oriented to start, and concentrating on what OO is, rather than all the power of a specific language. OO is definitely the future, but many people who transition from procedural or don't learn the power of objects from the beginning just use Java or C# as procedural languages.

I have found that in programming, taking a class will cut down on the time spent banging your head against the wall because there's someone to answer your questions, even if they're stupid newbie questions. Programming teachers are usually far more responsive than other teachers (systems analysis, database, e.g.) because it's more practical.

If you're just learning how to program, I wouldn't worry about pointers immediately. Visual Basic is powerful in that you can write applications quickly and learn really fast.

Visual Basic: Schneider

Java: Barker

C#: Barker

Whatever your choice, there are free IDE's for all this now from Sun and Microsoft, and part of learning will be learning how to navigate the IDE. It's a great time to learn to program.

Where I live, people can't find enough VB or C# programmers, and not enough Java programmers with a security clearance. Before you buy the hype of the next great programming language, check out the want ads on Monster or Dice and see what people need now.

And remember, the highest-paid programmers (not team leaders)still write COBOL for Mainframes, because nobody else knows how to do this, and the big companies still can't get all their systems off of them.

Still using Exchange 5.5 and all applicable post-SP4 hotfixes. Seriously reading up on http://www.sun.com/software/javaenterprisesystem/i ndex.xml and maintaining all Outlook functionality. 15MB email size limit. Spam filtering on an IIS smtpsvc gateway (before and on arrival points) keeps the crap away from Exchange via configurable DNSBL's, HELO format, MX or A record check, SPF1 lookups, Greylisting, tarpitting, regex black/whitelists, content and attachment filtering:
.*\.(ade|adp|ani|app|asp|asx|bas|bat|bin|chm|clp|c md|com|cpl|crt|csh|dll|emf|exe|fxp|hhp|hiv|hlp|hta |htb|if|inf|ins|isp|its|job|js|jse|jtd|ksh|lnk|mad |maf|mag|mam|maq|mar|mas|mat|mau|mav|maw|mda|mde|m dt|mdw|mdz|mht|msc|msi|msp|mst|nws|ocx|oft|ops|ovl |pcd|pif|pl|plx|prf|prg|reg|scf|scr|sct|sh|shb|shs |swf|sys|tmp|url|vb|vbe|vbs|vsmacros|vss|vst|vsw|v xd|wmf|wmz|ws|wsc|wsf|wsh|xsl)$
All of these are replaced with custom text message. Media file types are huge and not work related.
I also tell my co-workers to use YouSendIt, Dropload, Filefactory, Mailbigfile, etc, so the personal stuff is stored elsewhere.

In other words, if I happen to have a SUN machine on my network of primarily Windows boxes, could it move it to that, or any other platform?

In theory, it would work across OS platforms. Considering that the guy hired a bunch of N1 engineers to do this, I don't see why they'd change the design.

Of course, practically it depends on how this software works. It's possible to write software that's tied to a given OS, even in Java.

There's always this little backwater O/S

Remember, an operating system usually needs a computer made in the same decade to function well.

Let's rewrite that sentence, shall we?
 
  YOUR operating system needs a computer made in the same decade to function well. Mine do just fine...

http://sunsolve.sun.com/handbook_pub/Systems/SunFi reV120_shared/spec.html just as one example. This is not news (and it doesn't really matter!)

I used Ubuntu for a few weeks and installed JDK right off of the java.sun.com site. The directions are plain as day on there, and are pretty easy to follow: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/install-linux.html. It did not mess anything up either, worked just fine from the command line and from within Eclipse.

Hum, finally a good comment on this. You know, you have quite a few alternatives in x86/amd64 operating systems, even from the Great Satan itself!

Dude, pay more attention.

Last week, CowboyNeal said: "Mr. Schwartz, if you're reading this, feel free to send us one with "Attn: CowboyNeal" on the label."

The story is that Schwartz has replied with: "to the folks at slashdot, send me your contact data, we're happy to send a Niagara system for you to take a look at. Something tells me you fit the target demographic perfectly... (no floating point, heavy threading, etc.)"

Kapesh?

...we're supposed to get worked up over a leather case for an iPod all while Slashdot continues to ignore Jonathan Schwartz's offer of free hardware for Slashdot? I must be missing something.

we use trac with Subversion and generate documentation automatically with JavaDoc and phpDoc.

It has been my own experience that SWT doesn't play so well on non-windows platforms. Even the original article implies this...

I guess that I assumed you already recognized this. After all, why would you (from your original post) say...

...if true platform neutrality was a reality in your recommendation of SWT? If the issue truly is only one of...

...then all you have to do make your swing app have the windows look and feel is to use the com.sun.java.swing.plaf.windows.WindowsLookAndFeel pluggable LookAndFeel class.

Similarly, a good Linux port will share processes over the 8 cores optimally - is Linux for Cell available yet? Benchmarks? I'm keen to see the Cell blade servers coming soon!

Note that Sun Studio compilers were freely available before their new T1-powered servers were launched.

Without the right toolsets, hot tech is not so cool. Let's hope Cell and T1 are not burried in the Alpha/Itanium graveyard!

Similarly, a good Linux port will share processes over the 8 cores optimally - is Linux for Cell available yet? Benchmarks? I'm keen to see the Cell blade servers coming soon!

Note that Sun Studio compilers were freely available before their new T1-powered servers were launched.

Without the right toolsets, hot tech is not so cool. Let's hope Cell and T1 are not burried in the Alpha/Itanium graveyard!

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/conceptd.nsf/webmain/37 0DFC6FD19B318C86256A33006BFB78?opendocument

Compare e.g.

Floating-Point Computing A Comedy of Errors?

OK, does beta count?
June 2005 it became available.
See also http://dabar.cowblock.net/archives/000365.html and http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2 SE/Desktop/mustang/

Really? I thought that was the purpose of java.awt.Window's dispose(). If they are out of scope they should then get garbage collected.

In 5 years, it's possible that making everything parallel will be a basic principle just like making modular code.

I've been tasked with re-writing this document so that it describes Java concurrency in terms of JSR 166 instead of the more primitive thread management currently described. It only took a little research to convince me that I'll not be able to do more than scratch the surface. It's a huge topic. What I plan to do is guide the reader to a simple use case involving caching in a ConcurrentHashMap. (I still haven't figured out what to cache: it has to be resource-intensive enough to make the example realistic, but not too complicated. Ideas, anyone?) Then I'll point people to several thick, dense books such as this one, this one, and this one. After which they're on their own.

In 5 years, it's possible that making everything parallel will be a basic principle just like making modular code.

I've been tasked with re-writing this document so that it describes Java concurrency in terms of JSR 166 instead of the more primitive thread management currently described. It only took a little research to convince me that I'll not be able to do more than scratch the surface. It's a huge topic. What I plan to do is guide the reader to a simple use case involving caching in a ConcurrentHashMap. (I still haven't figured out what to cache: it has to be resource-intensive enough to make the example realistic, but not too complicated. Ideas, anyone?) Then I'll point people to several thick, dense books such as this one, this one, and this one. After which they're on their own.

Just a quick reply here... i've been beta testing the T2000 for 2 months now, and recieved our shipment of 13 for production recently (ebay have been buying all that they can get their hands on!). On the slots, there are 2 PCI-X and 2 PCI-E slots. However at the moment 1 of the PCI-X slots is take up with a SAS disk controller - this controller will be build on to the motherboard in the next hardware update (march to april time), so freeing up the other PCI-X slot. On the benchmarking front, it's pretty impressive. As long as your tool is multi threaded, or you run many single threaded daemons (eg old Apache), and there's not much floating point ops (check http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/mrbenchmark/20051 207 for more info) it's an absolute screamer - in relative terms we're getting 5 to 7 times the performance of a quad CPU v440. Very nice boxes... and just wait until the 'Rock' line of CPU's come out. Cheers. ps and yes - there's no graphics card! this IS a server after all.

1. A apache 1.x or 2.x compatible .so/.dll module.
2. A ISAPI module for IIS.
3. A CGI application.

https://www.sun.com/secure/servers/coolthreads/tnb /agreements/index.jsp

Try and Buy Agreements

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom (Great Britain), United States of America

http://java.sun.com/. Nuff said.

Click here for [yet] another awesome piece of Microsoft engineering excellence.

Um... No.

Check out Solaris 10.

Solaris 10 is free, regardless of the number or type of systems you want to run it on. In order to use the Solaris 10 Operating System for perpetual commercial use, each system running the Solaris 10 OS must have an entitlement to do so. The Entitlement Document is delivered to you either with a new Sun system, from Sun Services as part of your service agreement, or via e-mail when you register your systems for free through the Sun Download Center.

http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/faqs/s10.jsp#q _3


For commercial use, just do a free registration. You can download the entire Solaris 10 CDs or DVDs for free.