Slashdot Mirror

AArnott writes "Ximian has just released beta 1 of its open-source implementation of Microsoft .NET platform. Mono allows .NET applications to run on Linux, Mac OS X, Unix, Windows. Mono 1.0 is slated for release on June 30, 2004." sjanes71 adds "The first 'beta' always gets heaps of attention, and this is the first of three planned for the Mono project. Some of the new features touted for this release that updates Mono v0.31 include a faster interpreter, a global assembly cache, support for the StrongARM and HPPA platforms, generics support in the VM and C# compiler and an early alpha of System.Windows.Forms. C# and .NET is Microsoft's answer to Sun Microsystem's Java platform and Project Mono aims to create the Open Source, cross-platform version of Microsoft's new development environment."

Jahf writes "Sun is putting out Java Desktop System Release 2. Some overview information is in this article while more technical information about the new management solutions are in this one. Quickly: the desktop environment is essentially the same, though Sun has added support for GIMLET (allows one to change the current input language on a per-window basis), officially supported Japanese and Korean translations, and is including a Java-based online update client. The bigger changes are management items that are normally hidden from the end-user but valuable to the Admin. Configuration Manager allows admins to setup client preferences for remote desktops and 'protect' those settings to create policies. Sun Control Station (the last remaining Sun product from the Cobalt acquisition) can work as a network imaging server, can monitor remote desktops, and can work as a patch server (both by pushing patches out to many desktops and by serving as an online update server for clients who need to pull additional packages)."

Jahf writes "Sun is putting out Java Desktop System Release 2. Some overview information is in this article while more technical information about the new management solutions are in this one. Quickly: the desktop environment is essentially the same, though Sun has added support for GIMLET (allows one to change the current input language on a per-window basis), officially supported Japanese and Korean translations, and is including a Java-based online update client. The bigger changes are management items that are normally hidden from the end-user but valuable to the Admin. Configuration Manager allows admins to setup client preferences for remote desktops and 'protect' those settings to create policies. Sun Control Station (the last remaining Sun product from the Cobalt acquisition) can work as a network imaging server, can monitor remote desktops, and can work as a patch server (both by pushing patches out to many desktops and by serving as an online update server for clients who need to pull additional packages)."

Jahf writes "Sun is putting out Java Desktop System Release 2. Some overview information is in this article while more technical information about the new management solutions are in this one. Quickly: the desktop environment is essentially the same, though Sun has added support for GIMLET (allows one to change the current input language on a per-window basis), officially supported Japanese and Korean translations, and is including a Java-based online update client. The bigger changes are management items that are normally hidden from the end-user but valuable to the Admin. Configuration Manager allows admins to setup client preferences for remote desktops and 'protect' those settings to create policies. Sun Control Station (the last remaining Sun product from the Cobalt acquisition) can work as a network imaging server, can monitor remote desktops, and can work as a patch server (both by pushing patches out to many desktops and by serving as an online update server for clients who need to pull additional packages)."

An anonymous reader writes "It sounds like James Gosling's nudging Sun closer and closer toward open-sourcing Java, as requested variously by IBM, Eric S. Raymond, and Richard Stallman, though not by JBoss's Marc Fleury. 'Developers value Java's cross platform interoperability and reliability,' Gosling writes, adding 'If we do something to make Java even more open-source than it is already, having safeguards to protect the developer community will be something we pay a lot of attention to.' Surprisingly, 'the creator of the Java programming language,' as Sun usually calls him, seems to be at odds on this issue with his own CEO, Scott McNealy. So, who should have custody of the child, the father...or the boss?"

KE1LR writes "The Silicon Insider at ABCnews.com is taking the position that Sun Microsystems, creator of the SPARC architecutre and, oh yeah, Java, should just give up and close shop instead of continuing to wither. I agree that Sun would have to have to do something dramatic to avoid what is looking more and more like an inevitability at this point, but what could stop this slide toward the same fate as DEC? Might they have anything in the works that could save them? What could it be?"

houseofmore writes "The Toronto star suggests that things are looking good for the Linux desktop this year as more heavy weight commercial vendors get behind it, including HP, Novell, IBM, Sun and... Walmart. It also mentions Red Hat's plan to offer a new corporate desktop edition of their enterprise desktop sometime this year. The article states that more and more companies are considering (and) switching to Linux for their desktop due to expensive Windows licensing fees and high-profile security vulnerabilities."

Glenn Holmer writes "The long-awaited beta of Sun Java Studio Creator (the IDE formerly known as Project Rave) has been released. This is the product that is supposed to make Java development easy (especially for web apps) by using drag and drop technology. It is based on NetBeans and uses JavaServer Faces technology."

Sara Chan writes "The Economist has a story analyzing the recent Sun-Microsoft deal. What's especially interesting is the ending. Sun recently promoted Jonathan Schwartz to President and Chief Operating Officer, recognizing the need for radical change if the company is to survive. According to the story, Schwartz's dream is 'to sell deep-discount desktop computers at Wal-Mart, carrying Sun's office applications on top of a Linux operating system'!"

spurious cowherd writes "According to The Register Sun Microsystems & Microsoft have reached a settlement in their several lawsuits aainst each other. Sun gets $2B and both parties agree to share intellectual property." There's a press release to read as well.

prostoalex writes "CNET News says Corel will introduce a native Linux version of its WordPerfect Office product on April 15th . This will be a pilot project, as Corel executives want to find out whether it's worth competing with the other products (namely StarOffice and OpenOffice)." The piece mentions: "Corel previously produced a Linux-native version of WordPerfect 8, released in 1998, and offered a Linux-translated version of WordPerfect 9 in 2000, when Linux was still a cornerstone of the company's broader strategy."

Sim9 writes "Sun (among others) is sponsoring a $50,000 Java games competition, with the competition page explaining: 'With Java technology, developers are enabled to simplify their development process and create richer games reaching across a multitude of devices and platforms.' In my humble opinion, Java still has a ways to go in the gaming industry, but the competition could greatly help if skilled people enter."

gruenz writes "Linux Planet writes in this article about a project inside Sun developing "an experimental 3D successor to Java Desktop that they believe will change the way we interact with computers." A demo is available from Sun. 'In the demonstration, Jonathan Schwartz, vice president of Sun's software group, increases the transparency of a window so that you can see through it, turns a window on its side so that it sits at the edge of a screen like a book on a book shelf, turns a window completely around and leaves a note on the back, and takes a database of CDs presented as physical CDs, that you flip through, reading the labels, just as you would with real CDs, until you locate the one you want.'" It's called Looking Glass, in case you've heard that name before.

gruenz writes "Linux Planet writes in this article about a project inside Sun developing "an experimental 3D successor to Java Desktop that they believe will change the way we interact with computers." A demo is available from Sun. 'In the demonstration, Jonathan Schwartz, vice president of Sun's software group, increases the transparency of a window so that you can see through it, turns a window on its side so that it sits at the edge of a screen like a book on a book shelf, turns a window completely around and leaves a note on the back, and takes a database of CDs presented as physical CDs, that you flip through, reading the labels, just as you would with real CDs, until you locate the one you want.'" It's called Looking Glass, in case you've heard that name before.

snoofy writes "Zones, as people from SUN Microsystems have talked about for some time are now available in solaris express (the pre-release of Solaris 10). This will let you virtualize Solaris so that processes run in isolation from other activity on the system... A system can then be configured to run several zones which will make it look like different systems on the network Some info from a posting to comp.unix.solaris. The cool stuff is that it works on both SPARC and x86."

Eric Boutilier writes "Amy Rich has written an excellent Solaris Express (Solaris 10) how-to and general overview. It covers how the program works, using the community web site, and what's new in Solaris Express." Among many new features, the TCP/IP stack has been redesigned, IPv6 support improved, and both NFSv4 and USB 2.0 support added.

Starlover writes "In the latest java.sun.com feature at Sun's Java site, Victoria Livschitz takes on some ideas of Jaron Lanier on how to make software less buggy. She makes a couple of interesting points. First, making software more 'intuitive' for developers will reduce bugs. Second, software should more closely simulate the real world, so we should be expanding the pure object-oriented paradigm to allow for a richer set of basic abstractions -- like processes and conditions. The simple division of structures into hierarchies and collections in software too simple for our needs according to Livschitz. She offers a set of ideas explaining how to get 'there' from here. Comments?"

kingkola writes "Finally, after about two years of development, the Beta for Java SDK 1.5, aka Tiger, has been released. Features added in this edition include generics support, autoboxing of primitives, syntactic sugar for loops, enumerated types, variable arguments, sharing of memory between multiple VMs and a bunch of other bugfixes, enchancements, etc."

kingkola writes "Finally, after about two years of development, the Beta for Java SDK 1.5, aka Tiger, has been released. Features added in this edition include generics support, autoboxing of primitives, syntactic sugar for loops, enumerated types, variable arguments, sharing of memory between multiple VMs and a bunch of other bugfixes, enchancements, etc."

Saqib Ali writes "Registration for Linux Desktop Summit is now open. Here is the press release and the list of sponsors Highlights will include RedHat's direction for Linux on Desktop, and Sun Java Desktop. Today Sun did a presentation on Sun Java Desktop, the presentation will be available @ Java Desktop System in Action: Secure, affordable and compatible. Revolutionary (View on Demand), or in PDF format."

Saqib Ali writes "Registration for Linux Desktop Summit is now open. Here is the press release and the list of sponsors Highlights will include RedHat's direction for Linux on Desktop, and Sun Java Desktop. Today Sun did a presentation on Sun Java Desktop, the presentation will be available @ Java Desktop System in Action: Secure, affordable and compatible. Revolutionary (View on Demand), or in PDF format."

An anonymous reader inputs: "Mad Penguin has posted a comprehensive review of Sun's JDS 2003 Linux distribution, and it is one of the most honest I have seen: "The developers behind this effort need to focus on what makes a desktop OS great: ease of use, multimedia support, and simple/accessible networking features." Without that, the author says that the distro cannot survive. there was also mention of Project Looking Glass, a 3D java desktop environment for Linux that is still under heavy development." Compare this review with the first one that was posted, back in December.

An anonymous reader inputs: "Mad Penguin has posted a comprehensive review of Sun's JDS 2003 Linux distribution, and it is one of the most honest I have seen: "The developers behind this effort need to focus on what makes a desktop OS great: ease of use, multimedia support, and simple/accessible networking features." Without that, the author says that the distro cannot survive. there was also mention of Project Looking Glass, a 3D java desktop environment for Linux that is still under heavy development." Compare this review with the first one that was posted, back in December.

An anonymous reader inputs: "Mad Penguin has posted a comprehensive review of Sun's JDS 2003 Linux distribution, and it is one of the most honest I have seen: "The developers behind this effort need to focus on what makes a desktop OS great: ease of use, multimedia support, and simple/accessible networking features." Without that, the author says that the distro cannot survive. there was also mention of Project Looking Glass, a 3D java desktop environment for Linux that is still under heavy development." Compare this review with the first one that was posted, back in December.

Gnea writes submits this article "about the current state of IPv6, the Next Generation of Internet Protocol version 6, mostly according to Cisco. It's also an interesting roadmap about where and how IPv6 will proliferate around the world.. Apparently China has a grasp already with Korea and Japan, who leads the "Five key Chinese carriers, including China Telecom, China Unicom, China Netcom/CSTNET, China Mobile, China RailCom and CERNET (China Education and Research Network), are slated to join CNGI, building their own national IPv6 backbone independently, while interconnecting with at least two IPv6 IX." while Verio appears to have already tuned into some turnkey solutions recently that are publicly available." And SgtChaireBourne writes "ZDNet is reporting that the EU and South Korea will collaborate to develop IPv6 applications and services. The agreement was finalized at the Global IPv6 Service Launch Event in Belgium last week. There are good reasons to move to IPv6, including security, multicasting, simplified header structures, and better routing to name a few."

Gnea writes submits this article "about the current state of IPv6, the Next Generation of Internet Protocol version 6, mostly according to Cisco. It's also an interesting roadmap about where and how IPv6 will proliferate around the world.. Apparently China has a grasp already with Korea and Japan, who leads the "Five key Chinese carriers, including China Telecom, China Unicom, China Netcom/CSTNET, China Mobile, China RailCom and CERNET (China Education and Research Network), are slated to join CNGI, building their own national IPv6 backbone independently, while interconnecting with at least two IPv6 IX." while Verio appears to have already tuned into some turnkey solutions recently that are publicly available." And SgtChaireBourne writes "ZDNet is reporting that the EU and South Korea will collaborate to develop IPv6 applications and services. The agreement was finalized at the Global IPv6 Service Launch Event in Belgium last week. There are good reasons to move to IPv6, including security, multicasting, simplified header structures, and better routing to name a few."

Roman Hauptmann writes "Here's a review of Sun's newest single-CPU workstation based on the UltraSPARC IIIi processor. According to the review, the system barely performs on the level of a P4 1.8ghz machine yet it sells for several times the price. Despite that, the Blade series still brings value to those who do visualization and imaging."

An anonymous reader writes "NASA Watch is reporting that NASA has cancelled Servicing Mission 4 for the Hubble Space Telescope. The reason given is not for budgets, but for safety." ender81b writes "With all the excitement generated by the Mars Exploration Rovers now is a good time to look at future space exploration missions. One of the most exciting is the Kepler spacecraft which will search for terrestrial planets around nearby stars. Other interesting upcoming missions include the New Horizons mission to explore Pluto and the Kuiper belt, Deep Impact which will fire a small impactor into a comet to study the insides, Messenger which will fully photograph Mercury for the first time, and the ESA's Herschel infrared space telescope and Rosetta spacecraft which will land on a comet for the first time. Whew, good time to be invovled in space exploration!" StarWreck writes "Cnet.com is reporting that the Mars Rover uses Java. The same piece of software that lets people around the world play video games on their cell phones is now letting scientists drive the ultimate remote-controlled car across the surface of Mars."

We had to do a little sleuthing today. Many readers wrote in with problems that turned out to be related. A certificate which Verisign used for signing SSL certificates has expired. When applications which depend on that certificate try to make an SSL connection, they fail and try to access crl.verisign.com, the certificate revocation list server. This has effectively DOS'ed that site, and Verisign has now updated the DNS record for that address to include several non-routable addresses, reducing the load on their servers. Some applications affected include older Internet Explorer browsers, Java, and Norton Antivirus (which may manifest itself as Microsoft Word being very slow to start). Hope this helps a few people, and if you have other apps with problems, please post about them below.

Jim Hall writes " A recent Sun-hosted article looks at installing and running KDE 3.x on Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) -based workstations. Author Corey Liu tries to shy away from the debate over GNOME vs. KDE, and focuses on how KDE is installed on Sun workstations and the Solaris OS. Both GNOME and KDE are available at freeware Web sites for users of the Solaris OS. While Sun recently began to favor GNOME as the default desktop environment on the Solaris OS, some people still enjoy using KDE."

jschauma writes "While it's no Indigo Espresso or a VAX Bar (though, of course, there is NetBSD/sgimips and NetBSD/vax), at least you can log in on a Mr. Coffee. And while the JavaStation has been running NetBSD for a while, full support is now completely in-tree: NetBSD's Martin Husemann announced today that he has fixed all outstanding issues with JavaStation support. This means, that you can now run your JavaStation with a stock distribution of NetBSD/sparc. The JavaStation-NC is a network computer class machine built on the microSPARC-IIep processor. More information about the JavaStation can be found in the JavaStation HOWTO, Martin's email to the port-sparc mailing list and Valeriy E. Ushakov's paper 'Porting NetBSD to JavaStation-NC.'"

ValourX writes "Here is a review of Solaris 9 x86, 08/03 edition. Now that the single-CPU edition is free to download for non-commercial use, people will be compelled to write a Solaris CD and try it out. Read this first -- there are a lot of things you should know before you begin. You might want to check out the documentation or explore other resources like the hardware compatibility list as well."

ValourX writes "Here is a review of Solaris 9 x86, 08/03 edition. Now that the single-CPU edition is free to download for non-commercial use, people will be compelled to write a Solaris CD and try it out. Read this first -- there are a lot of things you should know before you begin. You might want to check out the documentation or explore other resources like the hardware compatibility list as well."

REBloomfield writes "The Register is reporting that after nearly two years, Solaris x86 8 & 9 is once again Free (as in beer) to download for x86 users." You can download it if you desire. Gives me college flashbacks.

CitizenC writes "Simon Phipps, chief technology evangelist for Sun Microsystems, describes his experiences using Project Looking Glass, Sun's prototype three-dimensional computer desktop, in this post on his weblog. He mentions a couple of demo videos too."

CitizenC writes "Simon Phipps, chief technology evangelist for Sun Microsystems, describes his experiences using Project Looking Glass, Sun's prototype three-dimensional computer desktop, in this post on his weblog. He mentions a couple of demo videos too."

CitizenC writes "Simon Phipps, chief technology evangelist for Sun Microsystems, describes his experiences using Project Looking Glass, Sun's prototype three-dimensional computer desktop, in this post on his weblog. He mentions a couple of demo videos too."

Transfan76 writes "Today Sun Microsystems has officially announced an alliance with AMD. They "have formed an alliance to deliver a broad range of AMD Opteron[tm] processor-based systems, Sun also announced it plans to offer its Java Enterprise System on the AMD Opteron processor and is significantly extending the reach of its Solaris Operating System (OS) and leadership in the 64-bit space." You can read the official press release from Sun here. And the AMD release here." We previously reported rumored plans to this effect a few days back.

Transfan76 writes "Today Sun Microsystems has officially announced an alliance with AMD. They "have formed an alliance to deliver a broad range of AMD Opteron[tm] processor-based systems, Sun also announced it plans to offer its Java Enterprise System on the AMD Opteron processor and is significantly extending the reach of its Solaris Operating System (OS) and leadership in the 64-bit space." You can read the official press release from Sun here. And the AMD release here." We previously reported rumored plans to this effect a few days back.

geoff313 writes " For all of you who might be worried about what financial consequences Linus Torvalds might have to endure as a result of being subpoenaed by SCO, fear not: the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL) will pay for its law firm to represent him. the OSDL, who are Torvalds' employer, will announce on Friday that the "OSDL has agreed to fund legal representation for Torvalds and any other employees of the lab who may become involved in the litigation." Just in case you didn't you didn't know, the OSDL is funded by a variety of corporations including (but not limitied to) IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat, Cisco, Computer Associates, Fujitsu, Hitachi, and Nokia. "

A not-so-Anonymous Coward writes: "During a Sun developer 'chalk talk' Thursday, Joe Keller, Sun vice president of Java Web services, said the company will release a preview of the tool, known as Project Rave, that the Santa Clara, Calif., company introduced at its JavaOne conference in June. Sun has touted Project Rave as a rapid application development tool akin to Microsoft Corp.'s Visual Basic. In fact, Sun had its developers study Visual Basic to a great extent while building the tool, Sun sources said. Sounds like .NET is going to get a run for it's money."

jdkane writes "CNet reports that a small British software maker, Ability, plans to challenge one of Microsoft's most profitable markets by selling its low-cost package of productivity applications in North America. Ability Office faces competition from Corel's Word Perfect, Sun Microsystems' StarOffice package and OpenOffice, it's free, open-source sibling. None of these products have captured a significant share of the market from Microsoft's Office. Does anybody have any hands-on experience with the Ability Office suite, or are there any general speculations as to why this move will make a difference in the office software market (if not just for the bottom line of the software company)?"

lplatypus writes "ZDNet Australia reports that Sun Microsystems has "has cleared a place for its Java Enterprise System on the NSW government's software shelf, continuing its campaign to weaken Microsoft's monopoly over the desktop." The Age clarifies that Sun's offering includes open source components such as Linux, Gnome, Mozilla and Evolution. Another article is at Australian IT, or see Sun's press release."

securitas writes "Jupiter Research has issued a report that says businesses that choose to stay with Microsoft products may end up paying anywhere from 10%-40% more than if they chose another solution. Software Assurance clients will see the lowest costs and SA-have-nots will see the highest costs. The rationale is that Microsoft's strategy of integrating server and client software, as it has done with the new Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Office 2003 suite, will force costly upgrades and licenses. Ultimately the goal is to transform Office into a platform instead of a collection of applications. Analyst Joe Wilcox says, "Microsoft argues that increased integration will cut down ongoing costs, maintenance and what not, but whether that will be the case has yet to be seen. The increased acquisition costs, though, are pretty clear." This leaves the door open for other office suites like Corel WordPerfect, Sun StarOffice and OpenOffice. More on costs and integration at Jupiter/Wilcox's Microsoft Monitor Blog."

Chromodromic writes "Sun Microsystems posted an increasing loss at a time when many tech firms are beginning to report stable or increasing earnings and stocks are looking up. According to the Wall Street Journal, it looks like Sun, the formidable peddlers of Solaris, Java, and UltraSPARC Fire servers are facing competition from measly ol' Dell and Intel. Even Scott McNealy has been reported to concede in a May 2002 meeting with top execs that Sun has to change, including building up trust with customers that have been put off by McNealy's sometimes controversial personality and Sun's reputed internal disarray which according to Merrill Lynch is indicating that Sun requires a makeover. The Merrill Lynch report was, in fact, particularly scathing and has raised a few Wall Street eyebrows."

bwhaley asks: "The University I work for has asked me to research software solutions for server monitoring. More specifically, a piece of software that will monitor server variables such as load, swap usage, POP/IMAP processes, total processes, and all the other interesting data about a server's health. Watching these variables can give administrators advance warning about potential problems with the server. We are currently using an in-house solution written in Perl but its age is showing. I have found plenty of proprietary solutions such as HP OpenView and Sun Management Center, but these cost thousands of dollars. What solutions do Slashdot readers use? Are there any powerful open source solutions that I'm missing? Is anyone else running homegrown software that they are happy with? We are running an entirely Solaris environment but I am interested in any UNIX solution."

brentlaminack asks: "Almost a year ago Tim Bray of XML fame said 'when the huge universe of MS Office documents becomes available for processing by any programmer with a Perl script and a bit of intelligence, all sorts of wonderful new things can be invented that you and I can't imagine.' Now that MS has dropped the ball on the XML Office front, and StarOffice has fulfilled its XML promise, where are all those 'wonderful new things?' Is anybody out there writing Perl/Java/whatever programs to take advantage of StarOffice XML? Could this be an opportunity for Free/Open/Libre software to leapfrog MS Office in real productivity as XML proponents have promised all along?" What kinds of new and wonderful things can you come up with?

Transfan76 writes "The 10.2.8 Update delivers enhanced functionality and improved reliability for the following applications, services and technologies: Audio, Bluetooth, Classic compatibility, Finder, Graphics, LDAP, Power Management, Safari, and FireWire and USB device compatibility. The update also provides updated security services and includes the latest Security Updates." Does this have the update to ssh?

protohiro1 writes "In this glowing review Chris Gulker calls Sun's Java Desktop System 'the most polished and real-world user-ready Linux desktop in existence.' Well, I'm sold. Will this finally sell the PHBs on a linux corporate desktop?" Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.

ValourX writes "Here's the Internet's first comprehensive review of Sun's new StarOffice 7 suite. With the ability to export to PDF and SWF and greatly improved conversion filters, Sun's $80 office suite is more than a match for the upcoming ultra-expensive Microsoft Office System 2003."