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Java is not interpreted, nor has it been for a VERY long time.

That's news to me. It's news to Sun as well.

Java code runs slow enough to make it impractical for desktop apps.

Utter nonsense. Do you use Azureus? Perhaps you've played WURM Online? Do you need to clean up your hard drive?

The Java is slow myth is a load of hogwash that opponents of the technology use to justify their stance against it. It's simply not true, and hasn't been true for a very long time. And if you don't believe me, talk to NASA.

Presentations were given, and occasionally polls were taken by the speaker. Like "Are we on target with this new product?" and a PowerPoint slide of a target flashes on the screen. Aim for the bullseye if you think we're on target. Or "Tell us what you are hearing from your customers".... and 5 choices appeared on the screen, like "Our products aren't price competitive" or "We're hard to do business with" (if I recall correctly).

This concept actually worked VERY well. The funniest moment came when they showed a picture of Scott McNealy, and the whole audience quickly reached for their lasers. Poor Scott's face turned bright red!

Doxygen is a good tool for many languages. It works best for C++, but it also has some limited support for PHP, which is in your list of requirements. There is also a fork of Doxygen called DoxyS. It generates prettier output for C++ but may not support the other languages as well as Doxygen. Another tool inspired by Javadoc is PHPDoc for PHP code. However, it does not seem to be actively developed anymore.

For plain C code, I prefer gtk-doc, which generates better output than Doxygen (IMHO, and for C only). You can see an example of the gtk-doc output by browsing the GTK+ API documentation.

Since you also mention Visual Basic, you could have a look at VBDOX. I haven't tried it myself so I don't know if it works well. There are some screenshots on their site, so maybe you should have a look and decide if you like the results.

Other than that, there's the Commentator...

That would be the license on the JRE that was mentioned, I believe.

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/jdk-1_5_0_05-licens e.txt

It's already there for everyone to use... http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2 SE/Desktop/lookingglass/

Oh wait, you wanted a 3d XML based interface. Try this one, it's highly customizable, and has been stress-tested by millions already. Solid db hooks, and every object you "interact" with on your "desktop" can be manipulated with thousands of pre-written scripts.

There might be some hope on the horizon with low-rights IE7. It might be that it really does manage to remove the impact of the bugs, which is really the best case scenario as things stand.

You can do this in linux. Natively. Just make yourself a different user with no rights to do certain things. Try that in Windows and see if it works for you. As to the, "Microsoft will solve everything in the end" mentality, well, I can't really argue with that.

I'm not sure why people keep going back and forth on this issue. It's not hard to run either Firefox or IE as a restricted user. But that does nothing to alleviate the pain caused by malware. If a program ran as this "restricted" user and deleted everything it could, then what would you say? Oh, but it didn't delete sol.exe so I'm safe!

Both IE and Firefox are balking at the one change that could eliminate all of these security issues. Simply don't allow a web page to run code unless the code is signed by a trusted authority. If you don't like/trust the current list of trusted authorities then make a new damn list! Or else remove the ability to execute ActiveX/Java entirely.

That BS was added in under the assumption that code signing would help prevent malware. Somewhere along the line people decided they didn't like the hassle of code signing but left the ability to execute code there.

Firefox gives you a pop-up when a page tries to run invalidly signed Java code. Yes - run this unsigned code with full system access, or No - don't run this code at all. Where's the option for running code like the spec says it should run (with no system access)? IE has the same problem with ActiveX. These browser security models need to grow some balls and quit catering to stupid/lazy web designers.

Oh and buffer overflows are another big problem in these poorly written apps. Two words, "guard bytes". Do your own due diligence.

Much has already been said on the topic.

See these forums (front page of first link even):
Solaris Support & Training Forum for x86
Sun Solaris Developer Forums

Much has already been said on the topic.

See these forums (front page of first link even):
Solaris Support & Training Forum for x86
Sun Solaris Developer Forums

When i went to Sun Microsystem's JavaOne conference in SF, all of the Linux JDS systems we're all running the 2.4 kernel, Gnome 2.2, Open Office 1.0, Mozilla 1.4 (no Firefox).... very old. According to DistroWatch, Sun hasn't done an update on JDS since 5-4-2004. How serious are they about JDS?

Excuse me, but didn't Sun drop JDS as a standalone product? As of release 3, they integrated JDS into Solaris. I didn't think JDS was available anymore just on its own.

From http://www.sun.com/software/javadesktopsystem/:

Release 3 of Sun Java Desktop System is shipping now as part of the Solaris 10 Operating System. Release 2 for Linux OS, which includes an integrated Linux operating system, is also available.

Okay, so release 2 is still available on its own. But Sun's site seems to imply the standalone version is a dead-end, not developed anymore as a Linux distro / platform, that JDS has been wrapped into Solaris. I wonder why Indonesia went with a dead-end product?

Q:
How much does Java Desktop System sell for?
A:

        * Java Desktop System is a major component of Solaris 10 Operating System, and Solaris is a free download.
        * Release 2 for Linux OS is available for only $100 per desktop.

IGOS weblog

INDONESIA GOES REMOTE SENSING OPEN SOURCE (IGORSOS). Not in english.

A quick google search also pointed to SUN Microsystem's press release regarding this effort.

they must have really dug the 3D windows.

http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/details. xml ;-)

Here's an overview of the Sun Java Desktop System from sun.com.

http://www.sun.com/desktop/workstation/sunblade250 0/

OH! You have to pay for one?
I'm sorry, this might be more to your tastes then:

http://cgi.ebay.com/SUN-SPARCSTATION-2-MODEL-NUMBE R-147B-TOP-CONDITION_W0QQitemZ5807333533QQcategory Z51239QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

-GenTimJS

But then I'm sure Sun will fly a plane over their headquarters with a banner saying, "Hey Microsoft: WE SHOT JFK. FUCK YOU"

and totally trash the X-Box by comparing it to their high-send servers. "X-Box? Yea, that's what yo' momma does! Try the Sun Fire E20K, it's smaller, cooler and cheaper than that suck-ass X-Box 3-shitty, yo."

And then Scott McNealy's head will explode from the insanity!

They may also want to avoid burning bridges, in case Intel processors become more compelling in the future.

When they are having Get Off the "Itanic" adds on their site, they *are* burning bridges with Intel, no matter how they call their processor architecture.

When and if I will bother to look at Java 5 I will look at JUnit, but this interesting Annotation feature of Java 5 sounds a lot like a precompiler ;)

> because Bill Gates is a lying sack of shit, we
> need to know what he's saying so that we can
> counter his lies when they are brought up in
> conversation.

You should really be deciding for yourself, rather than going by what people say in /. when OS wars come up. Eventually you will know the reasons for using each based on their prime functions, which never change, such as scripting vs gui interface vs open source vs closed source etc.

In relation to the article, I saw nothing that would change suchs views, it's just marketing pitch.

FWIW, there are some interesting adverts here: http://www.sun.com/emrkt/rejected/

Speaking of unix I found this blog by a SUN engineer working on Solaris.

FOr uptime on critical I.T., unix is the only OS that has garanteed uptime and advanced application profiling.

I dont know why Solaris here gets such a bad rap? Its clearly years ahead of Linux.

You need one of these http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/uiswing/ev ents/keylistener.html

What should we think of this page (URL)? http://www.sun.com/emrkt/rejected/approved.html
I'm sure they never read this. That is not really good naming. Anyway...

Hey, look... a Burning bridge!

http://www.sun.com/emrkt/rejected/smile_newspaper_ print_LOres.PDF

(This is actually an approved ad, though they URL may imply otherwise)

• Now that's what we call an ass-whoopin [sic]!
• 100% more bitchin' than Dell.
• Rhymes with Hell.
• Benchmark studies prove that Dell sucks.

• Dell can go fuck themselves.
• Everyone who works at Dell is a communist.
• Michael Dell is a child molester.
• Dell is secretly owned by SCO.

• Now that's what we call an ass-whoopin [sic]!
• 100% more bitchin' than Dell.
• Rhymes with Hell.
• Benchmark studies prove that Dell sucks.

• Dell can go fuck themselves.
• Everyone who works at Dell is a communist.
• Michael Dell is a child molester.
• Dell is secretly owned by SCO.

http://www.sun.com/emrkt/x64tradeup/index.html

Trade in any qualified Dell server and get a 20% trade-up allowance off the list price on eligible new Sun Fire X4100 and X4200 servers with 3-year support services. That's a potential savings of up to $1,900 on new entry level Sun servers that have 1.5 times the performance of Xeon-based Dell servers.* Sun Fire X4100 and X4200 servers also offer up to 56% savings in power and cooling costs per year over comparable Dell servers.

and ever think you'd see this?
http://www.sun.com/service/support/windows/

http://www.sun.com/emrkt/rejected/rhymes_magazine_ page_LEres.PDF

What possible value do I get from a comparison between 1U and 4U machines? I don't buy 4U machines just to crunch numbers... there's room to expand... more slots, more bays...

I'm confused.

yeppers .. check out:
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x2100/benchmarks. jsp

and ever think you'd see this?
http://www.sun.com/service/support/windows/

yeppers .. check out:
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x2100/benchmarks. jsp

and ever think you'd see this?
http://www.sun.com/service/support/windows/

I know that Sun antagonizes the linux world to some extent but even so, I respect the company. It has given me OpenOffice -- a suite I use almost daily (I don't work on weekends). Several years ago I bought a copy of StarOffice to show my appreciation -- but I've been using OpenOffice and all the upgrades since for a sum total of the 60-70 bucks I voluntarily spent on Star Office (can't recall the exact price anymore). In all honesty, I owe Sun a good amount of appreciation, and I hope they do kick some Dell butt.

Plus, they have some really nice looking hardware. I'm seriously considering replacing my home built, "sides taken off because it gets too hot and crashes during gzipping of backups" monstrosity I have sitting here.

See Inside Jack now.

You have to like Jack's T-shirt - "No, I will not fix your computer"!

Where can I get one of those?

But the main issue is, how homogenous is it for third party developers?

I'm pretty sure it ships with Mono, so (theoretically) third party app development will be binary compatible across distributions, including windows. I think the idea is that critial mass you speak of is a function of the .net/mono framework, not of the operating system.

Of course, I remember hearing this same argument about 9 years ago, and we all know that didn't pan out

see mono, it's .NET for Linux. There is always java too.

• Now that's what we call an ass-whoopin'.
• 100% more bitchin' than Dell.
• Rhymes with hell.
• Benchmark studies prove that Dell Sucks

As this thread was about Sun's new x64 servers, the comments all relate to the products intended use - in professional server installations.

It totally depends on your use, but I'd suggest you skip the rack for at-home use unless you are going to use six or more physical servers there. Instead, consider the inexpensive Sun Ultra 20, a W1100z, or the dual-Opteron W2100z. Besides, these all have USB 2.0 for your external LaCie HDD.

I should confess that my home personal workstation is one of the W2100z units and its some serious hardware and exceptionally well engineered and built; I'd highly recommend one. As for server use, my W2100z is employed as a file and web server and it works like a champ! If you go with one with a SCSI disk solution, like the W2100z, the disks are built well enough that I would feel totally safe with an external USB backup and skip the real-time redundancy for home use.

As this thread was about Sun's new x64 servers, the comments all relate to the products intended use - in professional server installations.

It totally depends on your use, but I'd suggest you skip the rack for at-home use unless you are going to use six or more physical servers there. Instead, consider the inexpensive Sun Ultra 20, a W1100z, or the dual-Opteron W2100z. Besides, these all have USB 2.0 for your external LaCie HDD.

I should confess that my home personal workstation is one of the W2100z units and its some serious hardware and exceptionally well engineered and built; I'd highly recommend one. As for server use, my W2100z is employed as a file and web server and it works like a champ! If you go with one with a SCSI disk solution, like the W2100z, the disks are built well enough that I would feel totally safe with an external USB backup and skip the real-time redundancy for home use.

As this thread was about Sun's new x64 servers, the comments all relate to the products intended use - in professional server installations.

It totally depends on your use, but I'd suggest you skip the rack for at-home use unless you are going to use six or more physical servers there. Instead, consider the inexpensive Sun Ultra 20, a W1100z, or the dual-Opteron W2100z. Besides, these all have USB 2.0 for your external LaCie HDD.

I should confess that my home personal workstation is one of the W2100z units and its some serious hardware and exceptionally well engineered and built; I'd highly recommend one. As for server use, my W2100z is employed as a file and web server and it works like a champ! If you go with one with a SCSI disk solution, like the W2100z, the disks are built well enough that I would feel totally safe with an external USB backup and skip the real-time redundancy for home use.

Tim Bray is also an employee of Sun, the company who started OO.o. I agree with what he says & am quite sympathetic to the cause, but this is like Scoble saying MA should standardize on MS word format.

I have a photo on my blog (photo is not from Sun) of a plane buzzing Dell HQ that says: "Sun's got a x64 server. Watch out Dell!"

Check this out. Opteron workstation for $1K. They were running a promo where you could get one for something like $29.95/mo for three years, not sure if that's still on.

is this what you meant?

sparcs have been 64bit for years, yes. A decade, to be precise. As for the x86 bit though...they've had Opteron-based systems for a while now too. I believe the quad-processor opteron-based V40z systems have been available for almost 2 years now? If not 2 years, then close.

I, personally, am not really sure what the "news" here is...other than a couple new product lines.

Your post is absolutely wrong. Sun x64 boxes run Windows, Linux, and Solaris. We run all three of those OS's on our V20zs.

Sun's x86 servers are certified to run Windows, Redhat Enterprise Linux, Suse, and Solaris.

http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x4100/support.jsp

Sun also offers full technical support for Microsoft Windows on their hardware. See this for more info.

Do you really need to create your own datastructure?

No, he doesn't. He specifically said he wants the "knowledge to see quickly if the standard Java libraries have this structure already built".

And it's important to have the knowledge of the underlying data structures before choosing them. For example, for a List, should he use an ArrayList, a LinkedList, or a Vector? (Or maybe a LinkedHashMap works better for the problem at hand?)

If you haven't taken a data structures class, or studied the issues in your spare time, you likely couldn't come to a proper decision. Proper decisions involve efficiency (therefore you should understand Big-O notation), and oftentimes threadsafety. If you don't know Big-O notation, the sentence "The add operation runs in amortized constant time, that is, adding n elements requires O(n) time." from the ArrayList JavaDoc would be gibberish. And you wouldn't know that by switching to LinkedList, you would get O(1) time for insertions because the LinkedList JavaDoc doesn't explicitly state that. (It ASSUMES you know the underlying data structure -- and unless you've taken a data structures class, you probably don't.)

Therefore knowing the Java Collections Framework exists and knowing how to use it properly are two completely different things. If you're writing Java apps as a hobby, using ArrayList all the time will work well enough in most situations. But once efficiency and threadsafety enter the picture, understanding data structures at a low level gives you a major leg up.

I find myself trying to create a data structure/tree like a family tree or a directory structure

Do you really need to create your own datastructure? The Java Collections framework has a number of good classes and interfaces that are useful. Anytime I've thought I needed to do this from scratch, I was wrong...

Like this one:

http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/v20z/index.jsp

Just pointing out a possibility. Though, agreed, 'UNIX hardware' in a Windows context doesn't make much sense.