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I want my super computer back!

Relax. Calm down. Apple's entire G4 and G5 lineup is still intact, so you can still buy one and have all of that PowerPC and AltiVec goodness while it's still available.

When that is over with, you can do what other x86 haters (like myself) would do if they won the lottery and treat yourself to a Sun notebook, or Sun Blade 2500, which I'm pretty sure will get your soul back. Unless you're not a x86 hater and just don't like poor people with Macs, that is....

I want my super computer back!

Relax. Calm down. Apple's entire G4 and G5 lineup is still intact, so you can still buy one and have all of that PowerPC and AltiVec goodness while it's still available.

When that is over with, you can do what other x86 haters (like myself) would do if they won the lottery and treat yourself to a Sun notebook, or Sun Blade 2500, which I'm pretty sure will get your soul back. Unless you're not a x86 hater and just don't like poor people with Macs, that is....

I wouldn't have left the Java inventor's offerings out of that list.

In particular, this list summarizes the offerings quite well, to include their Portal Server.

I wouldn't have left the Java inventor's offerings out of that list.

In particular, this list summarizes the offerings quite well, to include their Portal Server.

I wouldn't have left the Java inventor's offerings out of that list.

In particular, this list summarizes the offerings quite well, to include their Portal Server.

Google makes extensive use of the Java platform. Large parts of popular Google products are written in Java. We also use Java in many internal systems and products under development.

http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2 SE/google/limoore.html

So this proves that Java is important for Google. I don't know exactly *where* it is used, but it certainly *is* used.

Is there a way to get a list of windows printers without using native calls?

Look up javax.print.PrintServiceLookup. More Info.

Is there a way to print "straight through" to local or network connected printers in Java?

I haven't tried it, but supposedly you can change the DocFlavor to do what you want. In absence of a forced flavor, the system will auto-select the best method.

Is there a way for a java app to trap keypresses when the java app is out of focus, without using a native interface?

No. This is a huge security issue, and is unlikely to ever be included in Java. However, the java.awt.Robot class lets you do stuff like capture a screenshot, send events, etc.

ZFS offers a more secure storage medium than RAID, no matter if you use SATA or SCSI. Here's an article on RAID-Z and the advantages of this system.

SAS hardware is currently a little harder to find than SCSI or SATA stuff, but I'm sure there's a good selection out there if you take the time to look.

I was checking out the Sun Fire 4100 a while ago, and it takes SAS drives, however the form factor is 2.5", and I haven't yet seen any 2.5" SATA drives (I wanted that compatibility). Also, I've heard SATA drives don't work with the Sun Fire 4100's SAS controller anyway. Not sure about that, since the SAS spec says they should work, but just something to keep in mind when you're looking for a server or mobo or controller that supports SAS.

Why bother with 9.0 when 9.1 is already available, and a preview version of 9.2 just came out.

Actualy SUN has been using that term for some time.

Maybe MS is just folowing it's new pal?

"Someone should write a book on how Sun blew it with client-side Java. They gave the product away and spent tens of millions marketing it. In a marketing sense, they succeeded; everybody has a Java interpreter on their desktop. Yet almost nobody uses them any more. Why?"

What rock have you been living under? A large majority of new features in the upcoming Java 1.6 are solely desktop related:

http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2 SE/Desktop/mustang/index.html

On a side note, OpenGL -and- DirectX planned in the future. Hello Java gaming!!!

Using BitTorrent doesn't imply stealing. There are a great many very legitimate uses of BitTorrent. For example, you can officially download Sun Microsystems' OpenSolaris through BitTorrent. Mandriva Linux is distributed to its club members also via BitTorrent. There are official distributions of movies like Star Wreck done through BitTorrent. Very legitimate games like Blizzard Entertainment's hugely successful World of Warcraft use the BitTorrent protocol to distribute their patches.

It's because people like you confuse tools and acts that the French government feels it can follow the recommendations of artist organisations and push for implementations of controls in P2P tools such as BitTorrent, in the context of it's new DADVSI law projects.

I would like, here, to remind everybody who hasn't yet figured it out, that a hammer, while it can be used to kill someone by hitting them on the head hard enough, isn't considered a criminal's tool... and as such doesn't implement all kinds of ridiculous controls. Some of the users may be criminals... but there are very legitimate uses for a hammer... just as there are for BitTorrent clients.

You really need to use the latest Java (click "Download JRE 5.0 Update 6") for Azureus to work properly. With 1.4.x I had lots of problems with crashes, slowdowns and disconnects when it had been running for a while. With 1.5 it runs fairly smoothly.

Yes, there is a whole family, and I think they sold like 2 units last year. I kid, I kid. However:

For 2004: Intel misses Itanium sales mark by $26.6bn

And this is biased, but more current: Reality Check: Itanium - A Sound Bet for the Future?

From that article's sidebar:

At a Glance: Is the Intel Itanium Processor a Sound Bet for the Future?

• Consumes more power, generates more heat, costs twice as much as x64 processors
• Dual-core version delayed until mid-2006
• First dual-core version to ship with drastically reduced specifications
• Major server vendors, including IBM and Dell, have abandoned development
• Competitive pressure on the Intel Xeon Processor could force Intel to abandon the Itanium processor
• Rapidly increasing x64 performance eliminating need for the Itanium processor

The Intel Itanium Processor's Troubled Year

• December 2004: HP hands off development and ownership of the Intel Itanium Processor to Intel
• January 2005: Microsoft announces it will not support Windows XP on the Itanium chip
• February 2005: IBM announces it will not support the Itanium platform in its latest chipset. "It is a function of the market acceptance of Itanium," said IBM CTO Tom Bradicich
• September 2005: Dell announces it will not offer any Itanium processor-based servers
• October 2005: Intel says the release of a dual-core Itanium processor has slipped to mid-2006, and that the common chipset with the Intel Xeon Processor, designed to reduce the Itanium processor's cost, has moved out to 2009

Granted, Sun is pretty well biased, but itanic looks like it's long since sunk to me.

If you want high-performance numerical code Java isn't that suitable either, you want C or fortran at a minimum and probably hand-coded assembler.

Again, myth, java works fine for this, and if you look through Decafs posting history you will see that this is exactly what he works with.

But I've seen plenty of serious image processing done in python, remember the recent jigsaw solving story?

Yes, it was a cheat that required special data glyphs on each jigsaw (so there was no image recognition, just path finding), and proprietary closed source as well. Compare this with the fact that NASA used Java for rendering Mars images, and released it as the Maestro application. Your point?

The Register article has it wrong. As is very clearly documented Sun, together with Red Hat and others, lobbied against software patents in Europe, as I just documented in my blog. I know, because I was the person acting on Sun's behalf.

...number one probably being what is your code division between SQL and ASP, e.g. how much of your code is SQL and how much is ASP? Number two would then be whether you use any SQL-Server specific features or other SQL that isn't supported (or doesn't work the same) on MySQL. So the first thing for you to do is to test your application on MySQL and see if it works, (highly unlikely off the bat) or if it doesn't, work out how much fixing is required, and how much will this cost (time/money). This is not specific to a move to MySQL, it would be the same going between any two DBMSes.

If you are moving from a shared environment, I presume you aren't massively high volume but you should bear in mind that using ASP with MySQL you will have to go through ODBC which will have a performance penalty. With SQL Server you can use a native driver as I believe you can if you use MySQL with certain application servers other than ASP.

Also remember you can move entirely to Linux while still using ASP if you want.

You should also look at what you are storing in your database - is it highly transactional, updated continually with absolutely essential information (I am thinking orders/financial transactions) or is it mainly SELECTs on data that is updated infrequently. With the former, data integrity should be top of your shopping list while with the latter you just need to make sure that you back up regularly and you shouldn't lose anything important even in case of a disaster. MySQL 5 is meant to be much better on this matter and many other issues that were problematic for MySQL in the past but bear in mind that v5 is only out a few months.

Bottom line is - if you have a relatively low-traffic website with relatively simple code, moving shouldn't be too much of a problem. If you have a high-traffic website with complex SQL, moving will likely cost more than a SQL Server license. BTW, SQL Server is a decent database, I wouldn't move off it just for the heck of it.

If it is, it's a good thing to have, though all that "commercial firm pitching a free version of their product into baseline kernel" thing sounds a bit dodgy.

well this will probably run multiple kernels, but probably means multiple times the work and the administration headaches, with Solaris Zones you share the kernel, but you only need to administer one core install of the OS.
 
A base install of Solaris in a zone, uses just 100MB of harddisk space. And on modern hardware takes less than 15 minutes per zone to install. Of course if you use the latest and greatest Solaris Express releases, you can use ZFS+Zones to cut the size of each zone down to 50MB of disk space, and zone creation time down to create a zone in 1 minute or less. You could also download and install brandz(Solaris patches that allows user to run Linux binaries in a Solaris Zone), and have even more choice. If you wish to debug your apps, you can use a stable dtrace and debug userland of both Solaris and Linux. And the Solaris kernel.

• Some portability. I reckon AJAX is little more portable than Java (if at all) because no two Web browsers are ever quite the same; you're just dealing with differences between browsers rather than differences between OSes.
• No installation step. Users can launch your application just by following a hyperlink.

• All the accessibility mechanisms that OS GUI frameworks have. Everyone loves GMail, but navigating around it without a mouse is a real pain. No hotkeys, and an unpredictable tab order.
• Proper control of the layout of your UI.
• A whole lot of performance.

I don't understand why I would do this rather than just use JAAS (which has been part of the jdk since 1.4).

http://java.sun.com/products/jaas/

This already handles authentication against unix logins, or windows logins, or pretty much anything else!

The article finishes with:

A pure Java implementation of MD5 crypt can provide a simple interface that can be used by Web applications to authenticate against the local UNIX registry.

I have two things to say:

1. If your app server doesn't support authentication against local OS users (and this is what you want) get a new one.
2. It is big and clever to write your own authentication system for web apps in 2006.

The article talks about accessing a particular OS function (local operating system user registry) which requires MD5s. Is that really so interesting that it needs to be posted here? Seems like a lot of people would assume the title suggests all security in Java is based on MD5.

It's not.

For example, if you're interested in using AES in Java, here's an article from 2003:
http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Se curity/AES/AES_v1.html

Faster? Yes. Better? Yes. Only for Mac/Linux? NO!!

I'll skip the whole you forgot about the inventors of nfs whining and just point out that better is highly subjective. First of all you can do password authentication with samba. With NFS its by uid only. While thats convient if your exporting home directories where all the machines can trust each other and are running UNIX, if you want users to be able to mount or browse shares themselves then samba is the way to go. Also samba allows you to share printers and do domain based authentication. Perhaps NFSv4 can do that and you can prove me wrong, but you should have specified that as I'm sure the average NFS user is as unaware of the features of NFS4 as I am.

While this judge's message may seem absurd, remember to pay royalties when you code a progress bar in your application.

That's right, a whole lot of people owe William S. Andreas and Jeffery P. Foster of IBM a whole lot of money.

Oh, and this was filed in the U.S. but approved by a European patent office so I don't think it's fair for this judge to bash only us Yanks.

My church had a fundraiser once and I believe they used a progress bar on a website to track their earnings ... I should e-mail Mr. Andreas and Mr. Foster--the Catholic Church has got deep pockets!

Say, have any of you Java swing programmers ever typed

JProgressBar myJPB = new JProgressBar();

? Because I was thinking of starting a patent lawyer career, I just need you to reply with your name, contact information and the application you used it on and distributed.

While this judge's message may seem absurd, remember to pay royalties when you code a progress bar in your application.

That's right, a whole lot of people owe William S. Andreas and Jeffery P. Foster of IBM a whole lot of money.

Oh, and this was filed in the U.S. but approved by a European patent office so I don't think it's fair for this judge to bash only us Yanks.

My church had a fundraiser once and I believe they used a progress bar on a website to track their earnings ... I should e-mail Mr. Andreas and Mr. Foster--the Catholic Church has got deep pockets!

Say, have any of you Java swing programmers ever typed

JProgressBar myJPB = new JProgressBar();

? Because I was thinking of starting a patent lawyer career, I just need you to reply with your name, contact information and the application you used it on and distributed.

Yeah, .NET alternative, whatever. Wake me up when I can actually run the current Oracle database release on the current hardware from Sun! We just bought a bunch of Sun's new dual-core AMD boxes and we have to install Linux on them to run Oracle 10g in 64-bit mode -- Solaris AMD64 support is supposed to come "in the first half of 2006." Kind of sad considering the way Sun and Oracle sing each other's praises all the time. Scott McNealy even spoke at an Oracle conference over a year ago about how Solaris 10 was the Oracle platform of choice! Um, yeah, right, if it actually worked it might be.

That's part of the problem. Consistency between applications in a windowing system is a great boon to the casual user... and to users who don't like

Swing is pluggable, yet I can't choose to use my own OSes widgets. Why is that? Instead, I have to use

UIManager.setLookAndFeel( UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName() );

Just FUD.

Here, I'll even help spread some FUD. I was looking at using the Java Media Framework (JMF) recently to play some video files. However, I was using Swing to write the GUI. Here's what Sun has to say about Swing and JMF:

JFC/Swing components are light weight components and JMF by default uses heavy weight components. Heavy weight components are used to JMF's advantage as they permit using native rendering methods for higher frame rate video.

Got that? Sun doesn't use Swing components because they don't perform as well as native components. If Sun doesn't use them, why should anyone else?

That's part of the problem. Consistency between applications in a windowing system is a great boon to the casual user... and to users who don't like

Swing is pluggable, yet I can't choose to use my own OSes widgets. Why is that? Instead, I have to use

UIManager.setLookAndFeel( UIManager.getSystemLookAndFeelClassName() );

Just FUD.

Here, I'll even help spread some FUD. I was looking at using the Java Media Framework (JMF) recently to play some video files. However, I was using Swing to write the GUI. Here's what Sun has to say about Swing and JMF:

JFC/Swing components are light weight components and JMF by default uses heavy weight components. Heavy weight components are used to JMF's advantage as they permit using native rendering methods for higher frame rate video.

Got that? Sun doesn't use Swing components because they don't perform as well as native components. If Sun doesn't use them, why should anyone else?

Here are some features of c# 3

        Implicitly typed local variables, which permit the type of local variables to be inferred from the expressions used to initialize them.
        Extension methods, which make it possible to extend existing types and constructed types with additional methods.
        Lambda expressions, an evolution of anonymous methods that provides improved type inference and conversions to both delegate types and expression trees.
        Object initializers, which ease construction and initialization of objects.
        Anonymous types, which are tuple types automatically inferred and created from object initializers.
        Implicitly typed arrays, a form of array creation and initialization that infers the element type of the array from an array initializer.
        Query expressions, which provide a language integrated syntax for queries that is similar to relational and hierarchical query languages such as SQL and XQuery.
        Expression trees, which permit lambda expressions to be represented as data (expression trees) instead of as code (delegates).

Meanwhile sun is just getting around adding features like being able to turn off echo on the Console - While continue to ignore their own naming conventions. Java will still lack properties and indexers before c# 3.0 features are in full effect!

If your doing java development netbeans is an option. Eclipse has forced it to become much better. Although it doesn't use SWT. I prefer eclipse, but have friends who swear by net beans. Unlike most people in this situation we still talk to one antoher (java ide's seems to cause religous battes, like vi vs emacs.. etc..). This kind of battles are silly.

http://www.netbeans.org/
http://community.java.net/netbeans/

than there is sun's java studio...what is this?? I don't know , but its free now and seems to be yet another ide.

http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/devtools/free/i ndex.html?cid=16052

You most likely know this already but here it goes.

Java's web presentation framework is JSF, Java Server Faces. It runs on top of standard JSP pages. It is quite similar to WebForms on ASP.NET and they even give you a "rather good" free IDE with a visual form designer. http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscre ator/index.jsp

To facilitate your database access try to use Object Relational Mapping. Ruby on rails guys get Active Record by default. You can try one of these: http://java-source.net/open-source/persistence

About MySQL. The best way to argue against using MySQL is by explaining to your "superiors" how the GPL works. A lot of them probably think that MySQL's open source licence does not require them to leave the code open. Even the JDBC connectors are GPL so no, you cannot cheat. Be caregull with MySQL null dates and always enforce your constraints at the database level and you should do fine.

Good luck and happy coding
Adolfo

GNU/Java still sucks donkey dick at this time. And if you're right about having more than 95% done then I think its going to be a major dissapointment.

Don't believe me? Then try to follow the Sun Java tutorial and try to compile one of their easier Java examples (no, "HelloWorld" doesn't count). You'll notice that in many cases it compiles cleanly, but when you try to execute it it'll barf with a lot of exception errors.

Being a Java newbie myself and running Debian this had me baffled for an hour, also because I made some manual modifications here and there. After trying to compile an exact example and seeing it crap out on me too I finally installed the Sun JDK for Linux and used that. Guess what? No problems what so ever.

So if you claim they got it done for over 95% now (I really wouldn't know the exact numbers) then I think the whole project totally stinks.

So now Sun is taking on .NET and they're teaming up with Oracle for it ? What a load of nonsense. According to Sun themselves the whole partnership is almost entirely based on Oracle choosing Solaris 10 as their preferred platform. You can read more about that here.

IMO some "reporters" only read what they want to read. Sun already has Java and it has got quite a big foothold to last. Solaris 10 is also kicking some serious ass. Why on earth would they want to directly confront a company like MS when they can easily expand their own market and slowly strengthen their position ? IMVHO the big competitor for Sun is Linux at this time. Something clearly displayed when looking at Novell which almost immediatly started "OpenSuSE" after the release of OpenSolaris. Coincedence? I wonder...

This step has IMO nothing to do with .NET, and if you take the effort to skim the Sun news articles I'm sure you'd conclude the same. What about this: Linux with either MySQL or Postgres vs. Solaris 10 with Oracle, or MySQL/Postgres if you so prefer. And all based on almost the same price / options.

Utopia? Then why is Oracle also jumping on the "opening up some products" bandwagon ?

No, I don't think MS has much to worry, Sun is targeting another audience here.

So now Sun is taking on .NET and they're teaming up with Oracle for it ? What a load of nonsense. According to Sun themselves the whole partnership is almost entirely based on Oracle choosing Solaris 10 as their preferred platform. You can read more about that here.

IMO some "reporters" only read what they want to read. Sun already has Java and it has got quite a big foothold to last. Solaris 10 is also kicking some serious ass. Why on earth would they want to directly confront a company like MS when they can easily expand their own market and slowly strengthen their position ? IMVHO the big competitor for Sun is Linux at this time. Something clearly displayed when looking at Novell which almost immediatly started "OpenSuSE" after the release of OpenSolaris. Coincedence? I wonder...

This step has IMO nothing to do with .NET, and if you take the effort to skim the Sun news articles I'm sure you'd conclude the same. What about this: Linux with either MySQL or Postgres vs. Solaris 10 with Oracle, or MySQL/Postgres if you so prefer. And all based on almost the same price / options.

Utopia? Then why is Oracle also jumping on the "opening up some products" bandwagon ?

No, I don't think MS has much to worry, Sun is targeting another audience here.

Good point. Looking at Sun's website they are eventually phasing out UNIX System V support by the middle of this year. I can't imagine what a PITA it must be to support software that old while supporting newer/different software concurrently. How about the VAX I used to admin back in the early 90's or my old Timex Sinclair with the membrane keyboard :-)

.
Java has some new ide's for free that seem to produce web pages (I'm not exactly sure what java flavor). They look really slick, and have me thinking about switching to java from php.

http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscre ator/index.jsp [sun.com]

http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscre ator/reference/quicktour/2/flash/index.html

.
Java has some new ide's for free that seem to produce web pages (I'm not exactly sure what java flavor). They look really slick, and have me thinking about switching to java from php.

http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscre ator/index.jsp [sun.com]

http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscre ator/reference/quicktour/2/flash/index.html

Then you may not have been paying attention for the last few years.
JavaServer Faces at Sun java/J2EE. It's been around a while.

But not using JSF will not make your web apps crap. There's bound to be a better explanation for your web apps being crap.

Both have a reputation for being slow, insecure,

Maybe on Slashdot... Java has an excellent track record for security. Compare with the PHP worm that swept the net, or PHP based framworks like NukePHP that are hacked so regularly that sites are unusable. .Net I haven't kept up with, so I don't know how they do security in real life.

Server side java is REALLY fast. On artifical benchmarks, java can be as fast as C++, and these people wrote a high performance Linux cluster monitoring tool in Java.

If you need more proof, Java is now the preferred language for Boeing when doing mission critical and real time software. NASA used it during the Mars mission...

and proprietary.

You can join the Java Community Process for free as an individual and vote for how future versions of Java will look like, Sun has handed over control over just about everything but the Java trademark to this JCP. There are also plenty of open source implementations of compilers and JVMs. Sun keeps donating stuff to the open source community. DTrace, Solaris, 1600 patents, cryptography tech....

Sun laptop? Sun Ultra 3:
http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/ultra3/inde x.xml

Yes, we all know about how later versions of NEXTSTEP (then OpenStep) ran on SPARC, but how many people remember Apple's "Macintosh Application Environment"?

This was a complete Mac emulation environment that ran on Solaris/SPARC and HP-UX in the mid '90s. It only ever emulated a 68LC040, so by the time it was discontinued in 1998, nobody cared. It is an interesting nexus, though, between Apple and Sun (and HP, where Woz first met Jobs).

http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/1995-03/sunf lash.950314.13593.html
http://sunsite.uakom.sk/sunworldonline/swol-12-199 6/swol-12-mae.html

-Isaac

Since the article didn't mention it, Java was used for much of the ground-based command/collaborative software. http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/features/mars.ht ml

If you want to learn to program, I think it's probably not the ideal starting point for the very reasons that some other people are pointing out as benefits; it's (too) easy and does (too) much of the work behind the scenes where you can't really learn from it. I think you'd be better off learning Java, which requires more understanding of the fundamentals involved. If you're really concerned about your ability to learn (and you certainly don't need to be the smartest person on the planet to learn programming), take a look at one of the free tutorials, like; http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/index.html . If you can understand that, you've got nothing to worry about. And, while I like O'Reilly's "Nutshell" series, I'm not a huge fan of some of their other books, either.

Then they slap a pretty label on the CD, package it in a bright colorful box extolling the virtues of the program and how it can do everything Microsoft Office can do including open Microsoft documents, include a quickstart manual with links to the website for more information, toss it onto the software shelf next to all the other Office Productivity software, and charge $5 for it.

Maybe you should be discussing your ideas with these guys;
http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/index. jsp

No... Java is going to change the world! Write once run slowly everywhere!

Not everywhere: "You acknowledge that Licensed Software is not designed or intended for use in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility." Good thing, too, or it might indeed "change the world"! ;-)

I think that they're moving in the wrong direction. Yes, solid state is cool (despite its price). Yes, it uses less power (but is noticeably slower). What I want to see as the future of portables is a thin client. Companies try to roll out thin client desktops every few years, but they never seem to think about thin client portables. Imagine a very small portable that is nothing but a thin client with wireless. It wouldn't take much power, could run resource hungry apps via an ssh tunnel to a real box and be and be relatively cheap to produce. Something like what I saw on one of the blogs at Sun a few days ago represents the future. Don't try to take the whole computer with you, just take a small phone to call your computer.

Sun's java studio creator is now free. I'm not sure which "framework" if any it uses but it seems a quick and
well though out way to created database backed web pages. I wonder if tapestry works with this or eclipse.

Sun is definetly feeling some heat from eclipse and starting to make it development tools significantly better.

If I wasn't using php I would definetely look into thses.

http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscre ator/index.jsp
http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscre ator/reference/quicktour/2/flash/index.html

Sun's java studio creator is now free. I'm not sure which "framework" if any it uses but it seems a quick and
well though out way to created database backed web pages. I wonder if tapestry works with this or eclipse.

Sun is definetly feeling some heat from eclipse and starting to make it development tools significantly better.

If I wasn't using php I would definetely look into thses.

http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscre ator/index.jsp
http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscre ator/reference/quicktour/2/flash/index.html

For example, the number 4.56106531 would be rounded to 4 in the "nearest even" case or to 5 in the "round up" case But clearly, the "nearest even" result is less accurate, and introduces a significant bias. 4.56106531 is closer to 5 than to 4, and should be rounded up. Always.

This is the wrong rule. The number 4.56106531 would be rounded to 5 with both techniques. The "nearest even" technique for rounding to the nearest integer only applies to 4.50000000. In this case, you would round the number to 4. You might say what's the point, since this is a very unlikely case. However, if you only have two digits to work with it becomes much more significant.

At this point, you may object that you aren't planning on truncating before you apply the rule (or, equivalently, you only do the even odd dance on "exact" halves). But how did you get an "exact" half? Unless you have infinite precision floating point hardware, less significant bits fell off the bottom of your number; unless they were all zero your "exact half" is the result of truncation and the above logic still applies.

The "exact half", for all you know might be below .5 or might be above .5. You seem to be assuming it is the result of truncating a single number. The rounding occurs during arithmetic operations and, for all you know, the real extra is just as likely to be below .5 as it is above .5. That's the essence of rounding and why we don't use truncation.

But just for fun, lets take the case where you are inputing the number into the computer. If the number has a number of significant digits more than the machine then for most problems the number is just as likely to be a little below the given number as it is above, therefore you should use "nearest even" to remove bias. If the number has a number of significant digits less than or equal to the machine, you just enter the number.

As an rough argument why "nearest even" works, every time you do an arithmetic operation with rounded numbers the new number is just as likely to be a little too big as it is to be a little too small. (This is why we represent rounded number as x*(1 + or - epsilon).) Therefore rounding 1.0 to 1 is ideal since the number is just a likely to be a little smaller as it is to being a little bigger. Rounding 1.1 to 1 starts introducing bias since you are shrinking the number. However, the bias for 1.1 balances out the bias for 1.9, and the bias for 1.2 balances out the bias for 1.8. However, if you continue, the bias for 1.5 is not balanced out and the sum of numbers tends to grow. One way around this is to flip a coin for 1.5 and round up half the time and down the other half. This is expensive, so a cheap alternative is to just use the next digit as the random coin; round up if it's odd and round down if it's even..

Last, as an appeal to experts, Reiser and Knuth [1975] disagree with you. In fact, Knuth has a write up in one of his Art of Programming books on the issue. A short but online explanation can be found here in the section Exactly Rounded Operations.