Slashdot Mirror

SadatChowdhury writes "Aside from templates as already reported in a past slashdot article , a little snooping around revealed the details of the following newly revealed features in the upcoming release of Java 1.5 (codenamed: Tiger) : Autoboxing , Enhanced-For-Loop, Enumerations and Static Imports . Must read for Java fans." In related news: jdkane writes "Sun Microsystems delays a much-anticipated Java specification by three months to comply with guidelines designed to keep Web services interoperable. Says Ralph Galantine, group marketing manager for Java Web services at Sun: "We thought that this change was important for the industry, so that there was no conflict between J2EE 1.4 and the WS-I, "We thought it was worth taking out to the summer." It's very refreshing to hear that a big software company is looking out for the industry, instead of just their own."

MoonRider writes "Today, Sun Microsystems announced the availability of the GNOME 2.0 Desktop for the Solaris Operating Environment.
You could already download beta versions of the Gnome 2.0 desktop but this is the "official" release that will replace CDE as the default desktop for the Solaris operating system. You can get it on the Sun website."

Sky Lemon writes "An interview with Jaron Lanier on Sun's Java site discusses 'phenotropic' development versus our existing set of software paradigms. According to Jaron, the 'real difference between the current idea of software, which is protocol adherence, and the idea [he is] discussing, pattern recognition, has to do with the kinds of errors we're creating' and if 'we don't find a different way of thinking about and creating software, we will not be writing programs bigger than about 10 million lines of code no matter how fast our processors become.'"

Sky Lemon writes "An interview with Jaron Lanier on Sun's Java site discusses 'phenotropic' development versus our existing set of software paradigms. According to Jaron, the 'real difference between the current idea of software, which is protocol adherence, and the idea [he is] discussing, pattern recognition, has to do with the kinds of errors we're creating' and if 'we don't find a different way of thinking about and creating software, we will not be writing programs bigger than about 10 million lines of code no matter how fast our processors become.'"

scubacuda points to this article at The Register, about "what is believed to be the industry's first identity server based on Liberty Alliance Project specifications for federated network identity (date sheet here). Other reports of Sun's release: eWeek, Information Week, Computer World, & Y!"

scubacuda points to this article at The Register, about "what is believed to be the industry's first identity server based on Liberty Alliance Project specifications for federated network identity (date sheet here). Other reports of Sun's release: eWeek, Information Week, Computer World, & Y!"

Yoda2 writes "A new snapshot of the Cryptix Java Cryptography Extensions (JCE) API was released on the Cryptix.org site yesterday. You can download the file here. Among other things, this finally allows for PGP encryption/decryption of files from the Java JDK 1.4 when used in conjunction with Cryptix OpenPGP."

Rich0 writes "Sun is announcing that their 'Security Hardening Package' for their Cobalt RaQ 4 Linux servers allows remote users to execute arbitrary code. Ironically, the solution is to remove the package, potentially removing protection from other compromises. There's a CERT advisory, as well as an article posted on Extremetech." Yikes, one would hope there's a forthcoming patch in the works.

lastberserker writes "Call them all you want - generics, parametrized types, thingamagic mumbojumbo - but (tada!) Java gets templates in 1.5 release. Nice landing after 5+ years of dancing around a bush. Competition is good, pardon my pun."

Jahf writes "This News.com article talks about how Sony is adopting Sun's Star Office suite over Microsoft office in some areas. It's nice to see it being adopted, maybe this is the beginning of a trend. While Star Office is still not as optimized as it could be (read: it eats memory and can be a little slow even compared to MS Office), it has all the features most people need and then some at a much better price." Specifically, as reader Yacoubean points out (pointing to coverage at InfoWorld),"The PCs will be sold in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, Austria and Switzerland."

Lumpish Scholar writes "Sun's Richard Gabriel (possibly the only person with both a Ph.D. in computer science and an MFA in poetry) talks about "the connections between creativity, software, and poetry": "People say, 'Well, how come we can't build software the way we build bridges?' The answer is that we've been building bridges for thousands of years, and while we can make incremental improvements to bridges, the fact is that every bridge is like some other bridge that's been built.... But in software ... we're rolling out -- if not the first -- at most the seventh or eighth version. We've only been building software for 50 years, and almost every time we're creating something new.""

An anonymous reader writes "CNet has an article up about OpenBSD trying to get documentation for Sun's UltraSparc-III processor. Basically Sun is giving them a bit of run around....There is some documentation available for the processor, but not enough to get things to boot."

An anonymous reader writes "CNet has an article up about OpenBSD trying to get documentation for Sun's UltraSparc-III processor. Basically Sun is giving them a bit of run around....There is some documentation available for the processor, but not enough to get things to boot."

tusixoh writes "In the case of Sun Microsystems anti-trust suit against Microsoft (who claims Sun just wants a free ride on their OS), U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz, who is hearing the case, has suggested that forcing them to include Sun's Java software in the Windows operating systems posed as an "attractive" solution. Microsoft had previously dropped Java when Windows XP was released, but reversed their decision and claimed they would start including Java in a Windows XP update until 2004. CNN has the article." Update: 12/04 04:57 GMT by T : Read below for a more complete summary of the Sun vs. Microsoft Java dispute.

torre writes "Well, there at it again. Sun has now begun its private litigation against Microsoft charging some pretty serious stuff. As we all know it has been widely reported that Sun looks to seek to force Microsoft bundle its java plug-in with their OS.

For a quick recap Sun sued Microsoft to stop shipping java since they had violated their licensing agreement. Sun won, got some money, and Microsoft got upto 7 years to continue shipping their outdated version. Microsoft recently decided that in XP they shouldn't ship their mangled version of java and Sun cried fowl demanding that they ship their plugin.

Now, what hasn't been reported in detail is the allegations that Sun has charged against Microsoft. In brief, they charge that
1) Microsoft has a monopoly in the OS, Web browser, and Office productivity markets
2) Is engaged in illegally tying

a. IE to windows
b. Their workgroup software to their OS
c. IIS to their workgroup server
d. .net to their OS's
e. Active directory to both OS and workgroup OS and to Exchange
f. Exchange server to Office

3) Entering into illegal exclusive deals
4) Unreasonably restrained trade
5) Infringement on copyright
6) Engaged in unfair competition

In their settlement they look for and I'll quote " Preliminary injunctions prior to trial requiring Microsoft to:

Distribute Sun's current, binary implementation of Java Plug-in as part of Windows XP and Internet Explorer.
Stop the unlicensed distribution of Microsoft's Virtual Machine Java through separate web downloads, instead of incorporating within Windows XP and Internet Explorer, in accordance with Jan. 23, 2001 settlement agreement.

The preliminary injunction hearing is scheduled for December 3 - 5, 2002 at the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in Baltimore, Maryland. Permanent injunction requiring Microsoft to:

Distribute Sun's current Java Plug-In
Stop unlicensed distribution of Sun's Java code
Disclose and license proprietary interfaces, protocols and formats.
Unbundle tied products like Internet Explorer, IIS, Active Directory, Exchange, Windows server and .NET framework"

All of this claiming that they've harmed java, the Java programming community and intimately Sun's shareholders. Now as the court battle begins its seems that sun has to prove that they are not looking unfair advantage. This seems to be a big issue as it would seem that they could achieve the same level of distribution by merely dropping four million with OEMs..."

tusixoh writes "In the case of Sun Microsystems anti-trust suit against Microsoft (who claims Sun just wants a free ride on their OS), U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz, who is hearing the case, has suggested that forcing them to include Sun's Java software in the Windows operating systems posed as an "attractive" solution. Microsoft had previously dropped Java when Windows XP was released, but reversed their decision and claimed they would start including Java in a Windows XP update until 2004. CNN has the article." Update: 12/04 04:57 GMT by T : Read below for a more complete summary of the Sun vs. Microsoft Java dispute.

torre writes "Well, there at it again. Sun has now begun its private litigation against Microsoft charging some pretty serious stuff. As we all know it has been widely reported that Sun looks to seek to force Microsoft bundle its java plug-in with their OS.

For a quick recap Sun sued Microsoft to stop shipping java since they had violated their licensing agreement. Sun won, got some money, and Microsoft got upto 7 years to continue shipping their outdated version. Microsoft recently decided that in XP they shouldn't ship their mangled version of java and Sun cried fowl demanding that they ship their plugin.

Now, what hasn't been reported in detail is the allegations that Sun has charged against Microsoft. In brief, they charge that
1) Microsoft has a monopoly in the OS, Web browser, and Office productivity markets
2) Is engaged in illegally tying

a. IE to windows
b. Their workgroup software to their OS
c. IIS to their workgroup server
d. .net to their OS's
e. Active directory to both OS and workgroup OS and to Exchange
f. Exchange server to Office

3) Entering into illegal exclusive deals
4) Unreasonably restrained trade
5) Infringement on copyright
6) Engaged in unfair competition

In their settlement they look for and I'll quote " Preliminary injunctions prior to trial requiring Microsoft to:

Distribute Sun's current, binary implementation of Java Plug-in as part of Windows XP and Internet Explorer.
Stop the unlicensed distribution of Microsoft's Virtual Machine Java through separate web downloads, instead of incorporating within Windows XP and Internet Explorer, in accordance with Jan. 23, 2001 settlement agreement.

The preliminary injunction hearing is scheduled for December 3 - 5, 2002 at the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in Baltimore, Maryland. Permanent injunction requiring Microsoft to:

Distribute Sun's current Java Plug-In
Stop unlicensed distribution of Sun's Java code
Disclose and license proprietary interfaces, protocols and formats.
Unbundle tied products like Internet Explorer, IIS, Active Directory, Exchange, Windows server and .NET framework"

All of this claiming that they've harmed java, the Java programming community and intimately Sun's shareholders. Now as the court battle begins its seems that sun has to prove that they are not looking unfair advantage. This seems to be a big issue as it would seem that they could achieve the same level of distribution by merely dropping four million with OEMs..."

tusixoh writes "In the case of Sun Microsystems anti-trust suit against Microsoft (who claims Sun just wants a free ride on their OS), U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz, who is hearing the case, has suggested that forcing them to include Sun's Java software in the Windows operating systems posed as an "attractive" solution. Microsoft had previously dropped Java when Windows XP was released, but reversed their decision and claimed they would start including Java in a Windows XP update until 2004. CNN has the article." Update: 12/04 04:57 GMT by T : Read below for a more complete summary of the Sun vs. Microsoft Java dispute.

torre writes "Well, there at it again. Sun has now begun its private litigation against Microsoft charging some pretty serious stuff. As we all know it has been widely reported that Sun looks to seek to force Microsoft bundle its java plug-in with their OS.

For a quick recap Sun sued Microsoft to stop shipping java since they had violated their licensing agreement. Sun won, got some money, and Microsoft got upto 7 years to continue shipping their outdated version. Microsoft recently decided that in XP they shouldn't ship their mangled version of java and Sun cried fowl demanding that they ship their plugin.

Now, what hasn't been reported in detail is the allegations that Sun has charged against Microsoft. In brief, they charge that
1) Microsoft has a monopoly in the OS, Web browser, and Office productivity markets
2) Is engaged in illegally tying

a. IE to windows
b. Their workgroup software to their OS
c. IIS to their workgroup server
d. .net to their OS's
e. Active directory to both OS and workgroup OS and to Exchange
f. Exchange server to Office

3) Entering into illegal exclusive deals
4) Unreasonably restrained trade
5) Infringement on copyright
6) Engaged in unfair competition

In their settlement they look for and I'll quote " Preliminary injunctions prior to trial requiring Microsoft to:

Distribute Sun's current, binary implementation of Java Plug-in as part of Windows XP and Internet Explorer.
Stop the unlicensed distribution of Microsoft's Virtual Machine Java through separate web downloads, instead of incorporating within Windows XP and Internet Explorer, in accordance with Jan. 23, 2001 settlement agreement.

The preliminary injunction hearing is scheduled for December 3 - 5, 2002 at the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland in Baltimore, Maryland. Permanent injunction requiring Microsoft to:

Distribute Sun's current Java Plug-In
Stop unlicensed distribution of Sun's Java code
Disclose and license proprietary interfaces, protocols and formats.
Unbundle tied products like Internet Explorer, IIS, Active Directory, Exchange, Windows server and .NET framework"

All of this claiming that they've harmed java, the Java programming community and intimately Sun's shareholders. Now as the court battle begins its seems that sun has to prove that they are not looking unfair advantage. This seems to be a big issue as it would seem that they could achieve the same level of distribution by merely dropping four million with OEMs..."

Gentu writes "OSNews had a quick chat with John Fowler, Sun Software's CTO about Solaris 10, Java, the web services competition and more. In the interview, Fowler reveals the timing in which Gnome2 will become the default desktop environment: Solaris 10, which is expected to have its first beta later in 2003. This is a huge step for Gnome2 in the UNIX world, as it will be replacing CDE for good as the default desktop environment (betas of Gnome 2 for Solaris 8/9 already exist) and becoming a standard part of the large operating environment with millions of installations worldwide. Additionally, Sun is now pushing developers on coding on either GTK+ 2.x or Java (they have in fact revealed plans on creating GTK+ bindings for Java which will make all future Solaris apps look like alike)."

Rune Tønnesen writes "Sun has listent to their costomers, they have a released Sun Solaris 9 x86 for test and evaluation purposes, it can be downloaded ($20) as part of their OE Customer Early Access software.""

Rune Tønnesen writes "Sun has listent to their costomers, they have a released Sun Solaris 9 x86 for test and evaluation purposes, it can be downloaded ($20) as part of their OE Customer Early Access software.""

An anonymous submitter writes "OpenBSD wants to run on all hardware. They've asked Sun for documentation on the UltraSPARC III processors over and over, but been stonewalled. Theo recently asked users to talk to Sun about this issue. A fairly complete thread archive can be found here. The real kicker is that Sun has released this documentation through an NDA to Linux developers..."

Spencerian writes "UNIX guru and writer Dave Taylor's Teach Yourself Unix System Administration in 24 Hours is a strong "rosetta stone" reference and tutorial for beginning and intermediate Mac OS X, Linux and UNIX system administrators. The book covers fundamental and specialized UNIX sysadmin tasks for three UNIX flavors: Red Hat Linux 7.2, Solaris 8, and Mac OS X, version 10.1.2. Although Mac OS X and Red Hat have advanced in versions since this book was published, it doesn't appear to affect the book's usefulness since many of the tasks involve the venerable UNIX command line." The rest of Kevin's review is below -- read on to see if this book might help you. Teach Yourself Unix System Administration in 24 Hours author Dave Taylor pages 508 publisher Sams Publishing rating 8 reviewer Kevin Spencer ISBN 0672323982 summary Teach Yourself Unix System Administration in 24 Hours makes an excellent rosetta stone for beginning or intermediate UNIX sysadmins.

The Big Picture As you might get from the title, Sams Publishing's "24 Hours" book series attempts to teach specific tasks or steps within 1 chapter per hour. UNIX can get pretty complex, so it would seem that this format would limit the effectiveness of this book. Not so.

Topics from the book include:

• Unix Installation
• Documentation
• File Ownership
• Disk Usage
• Account Management
• Package Management (including the Fink system for Darwin)
• Process and System Controls
• Network configuration
• Web Server Management and shell scripting

Almost every chapter views how a particular task is handled with Linux as its normal focus, where many commands are shared between Solaris and Mac OS X. When functionality differs, Taylor downshifts to show how matters are handled in each respective operating system. As someone very experienced with Mac OS X, I found Dave Taylor's discussions on Mac OS X idiosyncrasies in contrast to Red Hat and Solaris very useful, particularly where Darwin overrides the traditional dotfile preference configuration, substituting the convoluted NetInfo services.

What to Expect Dave provides a Q & A section after each chapter. In an early chapter, Dave answers a typical geek question, "What Unix distributions do you run on your own systems?" Dave provides a very geeky answer--his Apple PowerBook G4 is running Mac OS X (with Darwin as its core, of course), along with a PC running Windows 2000, Linux Mandrake 8.1, and a web server running Red Hat Linux 7.2--a varied assortment that shows Dave puts the author in authority. In a later chapter, Dave touches on emulators such as WINE and Virtual PC as options for additional operating system support.

What makes the book work is that Dave provides a very conversational tone throughout the book, almost as if you're sitting with him in front of a system, talking while you do your thing. Humorous moments are scattered in appropriate moments to make things less dry (this is UNIX, after all).

Questions that weren't answered for me as a beginning UNIX sysadmin in another book by Dave Taylor, Learning UNIX for Mac OS X , were available in droves in this book. Topics such as scripting with perl or from the shell, disk quotas, crontabs, rlogin, managing system logs, and the like--all answered. Ever wondered how Mac OS X handles system init states? You'll discover that its a tad different from other UNIX systems, but not too much.

The Bad and the Upshot I ran into several layout problems in the book that were somewhat annoying, such as where tables or notes were sliced between pages, making them difficult to read. It wasn't a showstopper at all, but I hope that a later reprint will pass muster.

If you're still getting your feet wet with a few basics, or have a really mixed environment of UNIX flavors, this book may be very useful to you. I'd recommend this book to any Mac OS X technician who wants to take advantage of its UNIX underpinnings. Beginning Linux users should also find this a strong general reference. The book's cost ($25) is very reasonable, even a bargain for a book of this depth. Overall, Teach Yourself Unix System Administration in 24 Hours makes for a very well rounded reference, as well as a tutorial book. Perhaps the title should be shorter--it's quite a tongue twister.

You can purchase Teach Yourself UNIX System Administration in 24 Hours from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

choka writes "According to this ZDNet UK article, Solaris 9 will return to x86 platform for $99 instead of being free. There will also be a $20 early access version for testing. Support and update will cost $75 per month. However there is no mention on the Solaris web site yet." There's more than just not being free -- originally, rumor had it that Sun was not going to be supporting, in a major way, Solaris 9 on x86 at all -- that decision has now been reversed. See our past article for information about the original decision.

LightForce3 asks: "I'm a beginning CS student, and in my studies I've come across examples of programmer error causing very large problems, such as the Ariane 5 failure and the Therac-25 accidents, often as tales of caution to beginner programmers such as myself. My (morbid?) curiosity has been piqued, and I'm looking for other examples of programmer error leading to serious problems. After all, it is better to learn from the mistakes of others than from your own, right? ;) What programming-related accidents, incidents, and failures, both well-known and obscure, do Slashdot readers know about, and are there any good resources for researching these?"

David Kennedy writes: "This is a review of Brett McLaughlin's new O'Reilly title, Building Java Enterprise Applications. Volume 1: Architecture, subtitled Designing with EJBs, Databases, and Directory Servers." Read David's in-depth review, below. Building Java Enterprise Applications, Volume I: Architecture author Brett McLaughlin pages 300 publisher O'Reilly rating 9 reviewer David Kennedy ISBN 0596001231 summary Practical guide, with examples, for building a J2EE application from scratch.

Summary: Building Java Enterprise Applications is an excellent book, and ought to be on the bookshelf of every J2EE programmer working on the mid- and back-tier. If you are like me, then you then have a series of books on various parts of the J2EE alphabet soup -- a few on EJB/JNDIs, one on JMS, one on RMI, one on JDBC, a database/SQL primer, a J2EE patterns book (I recommend Depur et al. by the way), maybe even some hyped-up case studies from Sun's press etc -- but nothing on how to design an entire J2EE application from scratch. There is nothing scarier than a blank piece of paper at the beginning of a project -- this book provides a combination of a tutorial and worked example, along with an insight into the thought processes of the designer.

There are not enough books of this type for the J2EE platform; the emphasis on tying together disparate technologies to build a coherent system is exactly what I need at this stage of my career, and I found the author's constant revisions and tweaking of his design fascinating and reassuring. I'm going to pre-order Vols. II and III.

Check your sources.

You might recognise the author's name -- Brett McLaughlin is the author of another O'Reilly title, Java & XML*, and writes for flashline.com, IBM Developer Works, JavaWorld and others. You can either Google for these or visit the web-site newInstance. In my opinion he knows his onions, is aware of what other root vegetables are out there, and, most important, he can communicate well.

What's the book about? I'll give you a bit of the blurb first, as it's a fair description of the material:

"Java has many enterprise APIs: JNDI, EJB, JMS, JAXP, and the other XML APIs, JDBC and more. But how do you as a developer put the pieces together and build something that works? How do these components integrate with back-end servers (databases and directories) and with front-end platforms (web servers and web services)?"

"[This] is Volume I of that series; it covers the business logic and back-end of an enterprise system, including entity EJBs, JDBC, JNDI (...), and JMS. Volume II will discuss architectures for web applications; Volume III will venture into the still-uncharted territory of web services."

That's quite an ambitious series; and something of a departure in style for O'Reilly, who have built their enviable reputation by providing definitive titles on one technology at a time. This more a book on when to use a tool, and which tool to use, rather than how to use a tool. I think it's good to see O'Reilly branching out in this way, but it brings them into the preserve of other publishers. It might be interesting to see how this new type of title does.

So what is covered in detail? Let's have a detailed look at the contents:

1. Introduction
2. Blueprints
   This chapter outlines the case study that the author uses for the remainder of the book. This takes the form of a simple, but not trivial, financial-services tool. The blueprints are high-level sketches of the business need, the Data Layer, the Business Layer, and the Presentation Layer.
3. Foundation
   This covers designing the data stores, databases and directory servers.
4. Entity Basics
   Basic design patterns, coding and deploying beans.
5. Advanced Entities
   IDs and CMP, data modeling and the nasty details.
6. Managers
   Managers, in the facade sense, for entity beans and the LDAP directory.
7. Completing the data layer
   Nasty details, populating the data store.
8. Business Logic
   The facade pattern and stateful/stateless design.
9. Messaging and packaging
   JMS on the client and server. Packaging.
10. Beyond flexibility
    The wrap-up chapter, covers the major design points, discusses adapting the material to your own projects, and hints and what presentation layers may be added as a teaser for Vols. II and III.

As you can see there are no surprises in the contents. Once the high-level problem and solution is laid out, there's just a sensible progression through the layers. I particularly liked the practice of stopping and reviewing at regular checkpoints -- it helped tie the material together and emphasize the layering in the design.

There are some detailed appendices giving vendor specific instructions for databases, containers etc. This section also contains all the non-unique code for each layer, e.g., all the entity beans that weren't discussed in detail.

• SQL Scripts
  Cloudscape, InstantDB, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL.
• SQL Deployment
  Ditto.
• Directory server setup
  iPlanet, OpenLDAP.
• Application server setup
  BEA Weblogic only.
• Supplemental code listings
  All code also available in completed final form on the associated web-site.

Sounds wordy... It's not. This is a short book, only about 300 pages including appendices and index. (Compare that to something like Roman's classic EJB book ...) Chapter content is only 200 pages. Fully a third of the content of the book is code; this is definitely one for the programmer, those of you who delight in detailed breakdowns of requirements, user stories, schedules, etc will find little or nothing of interest here.

Equally, there is little in the way of explicit (non-coding) high-level design discussion -- all the code is evolved directly from the well-written text. This is not a bad thing at all -- the design seems sensible and straightforward, always a good sign, and mostly presents an admirable example to any young programmers watching.

All this doesn't mean you are reading a listing though. As on any project involving EJBs, there is a lot of more-of-the-same code between beans -- most of this code is concentrated in the appendices, and only the material under discussion is presented. New code is always presented in full, from package declaration to closing brace. This is refreshing and permits you to actually get something working as you read through the text, although you'll need to be prepared to set up app servers, databases etc to get maximum benefit.

Target audience? Experienced Java programmers who have started using the J2EE platform and are fairly comfortable with all the bean types, JMS, JNDI etc. This book states several times that it is not a primer on any one technology, and provides ample references to more detailed texts when appropriate.

This is very much a book for a wannabe J2EE developer who can't quite figure out how to fit the pieces together, or, like me, just has a gap in his/her skillset when it comes, to, say, LDAP.

What's good? Lots of it. Mainly, the best thing is the clear presentation of a LOT of code via a well partitioned example application (which will also be re-used in Vols II and III). The code is of good quality too, and presents several idioms that while obvious now, were unknown to me when I started EJB work... with the usual reworking-over-a-weekend later on. In particular, there are some commonsense pieces of code -- like a nested exception class for those of us still using pre-1.4 (and remember, you're tied to what your app server supports), some simple session and entity bean Adapter classes, simple Value Object classes etc. As I said, nothing earth-shatteringly novel, but it's nice to see a lot of these idioms used together to simplify the code.

Another admirable thing about the book is the handling of the detail. I've read several books which follow the practice of putting in Gotcha! box-outs, and to be honest, few of them are that useful unless you are a novice. I'm been programming for a few years now, and was amazed at the silly difficulties I've had with my first EJB project -- as a result I'm pleased to say that the box-outs indicating problem areas sound like the voice of bitter experience. For example, there is discussion on following the correct style for accessors/mutators under CMP (getId works, getID cheerfully fails), advice on the very fixed order in the deployment descriptor XML, problems with case-sensitive searches in JNDI, etc. Those of you who've worked with, particularly, EJB1.0/1.1, will undoubtedly have groaned as you realised the problem de jour was something simple-but-outside-your-code like those examples.

Admittedly it's not my area really, but I also found the whole treatment of directory servers very clear and useful. For the first time I understood (a) how they work (b) when they complement databases (c) how to use them easily from my code. Again, I admire the level of detail achieved without being confusing -- I don't see many introductory books include things like the default port number for directory servers using SSL (636 - well, I didn't know that!).

What's bad?

Not much. By nature of the book it doesn't go into huge detail on all technologies used -- there were a few areas where I wanted more. In particular I would have liked to have seen more on testing; now that XP is pretty much mainstream, no one can deny that unit testing is vital on production projects. (When I started using EJBs I had to kludge together a nasty version of JUnit which fitted into the sub-optimal build and client-server framework we were using. I've since found that there are better ways to test EJB layers, but I can still only think of one book, by Richard Hightower, which walks you through examples.) Although the build files in the example use Ant, which makes JUnit and other tools very easy to integrate, there is no mention of unit testing. This is a pity.

The only other things that caught my eye were minor -- coding style in particular. The coding style in the book is very straightforward and Sun-standard, but I have to admit that I'd have liked more JavaDoc'ed code. The code on the website is much more fully commented. I understand that printing this means more paper, and thus a thicker and more expensive book, but on some of the custom methods it would have clarified things for me.

In particular, and I'm being picky here, I didn't find that the authors practice on handling nulls and errors fitted with my own -- admittedly I don't so much practice "defensive coding" as "paranoid coding." Most methods were not null safe, and that can be a nightmare to debug in an n-tier system. Also, he took the line of returning null to indicate failure or error. I understand it's a valid design decision -- my experience says to go with more explicit errors in a larger project, and I would have liked a page or two on the choices here.

Another area where I feel there is room for improvement in the presented style is in the use of hard-coded Strings for lookups - for example, in the AccountManager object there are several lookups of the AccountHome, e.g.:

    AccountHome accountHome = (AccountHome)context.lookup(

        "java:conp/env/ejb/AccountHome";  // Whoops, finding this can be tough!

From experience code reviewing EJB based projects, it's going to save a lot of pain looking for typos if this repeated hard-coded String is (a) extracted as a constant so it can only be mistyped in one place and (b) refactored into a lookup method. It's a fairly minor point, but useful to do right from the start on an EJB project and worth pointing out to someone starting their first one. (Mis-typed meta-data like this is a bit of a weakness in the J2EE framework in my opinion - I always feel that I'd save a lot of time if the compiler or some J2EE aware verifier could check over those Strings to see if they match anything else in the build... I've used vendor tools which claimed to do so, but as they didn't even check that methods/lookup names were in the bean source I wasn't sure what was being verified!)

One last thing: I know it's minor, but why the insistence on importing explicitly? I feel it makes maintenance more difficult -- change one LinkedList to an ArrayList and you're off fiddly with minor imports again. I also didn't find this:

import javax.jms.JMSException;
import javax.jms.Message;
import javax.jms.MessageListener;
import javax.jms.ObjectMessage;
import javax.jms.Session;
import javax.jms.TextMessage;
import javax.jms.Topic;
import javax.jms.TopicConnection;
import javax.jms.TopicConnectionFactory;
import javax.jms.TopicSession;
import javax.jms.TopicSubscriber;

as appropriate for a printed book as this:

import javax.jms.*;

It would have been nice to trade those 10 lines wasted for some custom JavaDoc. However, all told there is remarkably little to grumble about in this book -- I couldn't even spot the obligatory editorial mistake. (That really annoyed me.)

Alternate titles?

Can't think of a good one. (Either a sign that this book is one you might want to look at or else so completely specialised as to be of use to only one person in the world, and that person is probably the author. Luckily, I think it's the former in this case.)

It is however worth a trip to the bookstore for companion, as opposed to alternate, titles before reading this - it assumes detailed knowledge of several J2EE areas, but provides suggested (O'Reilly) titles for reference.

Sounds good -- but what do you know anyway?

Time for the disclaimers. Some material in the book I found useful because I lack experience -- in particular, some database and LDAP stuff.

However, 5 years of getting paid to play^H^H^H^Hcode, and a personal reference library of some 120+ books has made it easier to spot the rare decent title! Most of my J2EE books are from my experience of EJBs for the last year or two, so I know what mistakes are easy to make, as I've made 'em. [I'm actually catching up on my reading, and hence reviewing, due to the Great Telecomms Downturn finally affecting me - anyone want a J2EE developer? :-) ] Finally, I paid for this book (which isn't the case for some of my other reviews).

You can purchase Building Java Enterprise Applications, Volume I from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

(* Bonus mini-review: a useful book, but not easy reading, I found it hard to slog through, but managed my first XLST work in about 10 minutes using it.)

ruisantos writes "After submiting the technical specifications for the project , Sun has finally launched an open source tool for its upcoming Sun ONE Identity Server version 6.0, the news can be found on CNET news."

bp33 writes "Wireless Newsfactor is running a story about how the wireless vendors are climbing over themselves to get Voice-Over-IP cell phones. You might ask "why bother? We already have wireless voice now." But with an open platform for wireless (Symbian, JavaPhone etc), your "voice" (er .. audio) just becomes bits that your programs can manipulate before sending."

An anonymous reader writes "The computer system that launches the Space Shuttle is an old, but important, computer system. It is built from mid 70's technology and features SSI chips like 7400's...which are getting hard to find. It has 64k of memory and no room to repair any software bugs. NASA started the CLCS project in 1996 which uses state of the art computer languages, OO methodologies, and hardware. Everything that you could actually hire people off the street for. However, NASA is in a budget crunch with the Space Station cost overruns. It is looking to trim costs to keep the Space Station going. There are stories about CLCS getting cancelled here and these guys say its already cancelled."

realinvalidname writes "Sun had stopped downloads of its Java Media Framework about a week ago due to an undisclosed 'licensing issue.' Now we know what it is, as they've removed MP3 encoding and decoding from the JMF that's downloadable now. Of course, this isn't surprising given recent news about new MP3 licensing terms."

Neill_Smith writes "Following on from Microsoft forcing automatic updates on their users if they want to stay secure, Sun seems to be trying to be trying something similar. They have given themselves permission to 'automatically download, install, and execute applets, applications, software extensions, and updated versions' in the license agreement (hit download) for the JDK on linux (and possibly other platforms)."

Neill_Smith writes "Following on from Microsoft forcing automatic updates on their users if they want to stay secure, Sun seems to be trying to be trying something similar. They have given themselves permission to 'automatically download, install, and execute applets, applications, software extensions, and updated versions' in the license agreement (hit download) for the JDK on linux (and possibly other platforms)."

Pivot writes: "Carl Worth and Keith Packard have started building a PostScript-like API for drawing using the X Render extension. There are two modules, called 'Xr' (the "rendering part") and 'Xc' (the "compositing part", which is a layer on top of Render which will eventually grow to a client-side Render emulator). The API supports only cubic Bezier splines, leaving other splines out of the library, similar to PostScript. Check out the initial announcement on the Render mailing list, and some example shots. Shurely this will remind some of NeWS, cowritten by another well known character."

JCallery writes "The Money section of Monday's USA Today carried a feature article entitled "Linux waddles from obscurity to the big time Momentum builds as upstart operating system proves it can compute". It carries a discussion of time and monetary savings in business, basic Sun and Microsoft arguments against Linux, growing popularity with Wall Street, Hollywood, and government organizations, and the credibility of Linux due to alliances with other industry companies."

WrinkledShirt writes: "There's a whole lot of posturing going on in the world on Internet programming right now, and with all of Microsoft's slick marketing for .NET there's never been a better time to remind the industry which platform got it right first. Enter XML and Java, Developing Web Applications (2nd Ed.) , a book that promises to show just how much of a heavy-hitter Java still is in the enterprise world. Because of the variety of technologies available for Java, Addison Wesley took the approach of bringing in a bunch of experts in the field to cover the different ways that Java and XML can work together. Considering the effort that went into coordinating this collaborative work, it couldn't possibly miss, right?" Read on to see how true that is, in Wrinkled's estimation. XML and Java, Developing Web Applications (2nd Ed.) author Hiroshi Maruyama, Kent Tamura, Naohiko Uramoto, Makoto Murata, Andy Clark, Yuichi Nakamura, Ryo Neyama, Kazuya Kosaka, Satoshi Hada pages 661 publisher Addison Wesley rating 6.5 reviewer WrinkledShirt ISBN 0-201-77004-0 summary An ambitious book, covers a fair amount of material, but lacks continuity.

Unfortunately, they might have put a little more thought into the bigger picture with this approach, because what they have ended up with is a book that reads like a play with two completely different acts: the second showing a wide variety of applications of XML for the Java platform, which works well enough, and the first, which attempts to teach the basics of working with XML and Java, which isn't quite so strong.

The Good

One look at the table of contents should convince you that the book rates pretty highly on buzzword compliance (XML, DOM, SAX, SOAP, XLST, WSDL, UDDI, JSP, EJB, etc.). When it comes to content that should impress your manager, you could do worse. The accompanying CD-ROM also comes with some neat stuff, like Tomcat, Jakarta and Xerces, and trial versions of WebSphere and DB2. As an added bonus, the code within has been tested on both Windows and Linux.

For the most part, the progression through the topics is well-directed, with in-depth discussion about the different means of XML parsing and generation using both DOM and SAX early on, and after going through the early chapters the reader should already have a decent idea about what techniques might fit their own personal projects. Tamura's chapters on DOM and SAX in particular stand out, not just for the coverage he gives the two, but also for his comparisons of one versus the other. They serve as a decent enough primer to prepare for the latter chapters, although the reader might be better equipped if they gained some extra foundation from other sources (more on this in a bit).

Despite the breadth of topics, they don't throw in the kitchen sink. Readers are expected to get their introductions to XML and Java elsewhere, and while one can probably get away with a surface understanding of XML and still get what they need out of the book, the same cannot be said for the needed Java knowledge. However, for someone who has a good understanding of Java and the various surrounding technologies (JavaBeans, Java Server Pages, and so on), there's some pretty good coverage of the different ways that XML can be incorporated. They've even taken care to provide appropriate supporting material, talking about where the various standards may be headed, some coverage on the theory behind Schema design, and there's even an appendix that explains JDBC, to serve as a counterpart to the chapter on XML and databases.

This book is in many ways an example of the way second editions should be. This book has double the chapters of the original, and efforts have been made to cover as much additional (but still relevant) material as possible, including XML Schemas, namespaces, messaging, web services with SOAP, and security. Some of these topics were in the first edition, but bunched together into a single chapter. In this book, they get individualized treatment.

The Not-So-Good

It's a hopeful endeavor to bring together nine authors and expect that there can still be stylistic continuity, and this book is a good example of what happens when the editor doesn't lay a heavy enough hand. There are inconsistencies from one chapter to the next in the way code snippets, method lists and diagrams are incorporated (in particular, the use of line numbering by Uramoto and others is unintelligible to the point of inspiring wrath). Furthermore, because each author handles their subject matter just a little bit differently, it's hard to get into any sort of a learning rhythm. In this case, the whole is probably weaker than the sum of its parts. A good section, like the one contributed by Tamura for instance, loses some of its luster if the chapters preceding it or following it aren't up to snuff, as is sometimes the case throughout the book.

To be fair, things do improve in the latter chapters when the authors are focusing on more specialized cases, and such expectations of continuity become somewhat moot. However, even then, the authors obviously have different opinions on how steep the learning curve needs to be. The chapter on JSP, for instance, eases you in and begins with simple examples, despite the fact that embedding programming code within HTML is pretty intuitive, comparatively speaking. The chapter on WSDL, on the other hand, makes no such assumptions of a beginner's audience, and it's trial by fire, with long stretches of code and in some cases nary a comment in sight. It's understandable that talking about distributed programming necessitates long code listings, but a newbie is going to experience some serious hymen-breaking here.

If there is any consistency, it's a pretty clear editorial bias towards Xerces over JAXP early in the book, including a special chapter on parser tricks specifically for Xerces. No real surprise there, as several of the others have been key contributors to IBM's open source project. Still, it's poor form to be using the pages of a learning guide to talk smack about one over the other, if for no other reason than the fact that it becomes a distraction to somebody who's trying to learn with an open mind towards all the possibilities. If a comparison is absolutely necessary, it deserves its own chapter away from the rest of the learning material. This brings up another problem, in that by mixing JAXP and Xerces techniques together early on, you run the risk of overwhelming a neophite who'd be glad to figure out just one way of doing things. There's already a marked difference between DOM and SAX parsing, and doubling this with the duality of JAXP vs. Xerces makes for an introduction that's a little too busy.

Also, what was mentioned in the previous section as one of this book's strengths is also a bit of an audience-limiter. If you try coming to this book without a solid founding in Java, there's a decent chance you'll find it difficult to get into this book. People who are already soured on Java will likely find their distaste further entrenched, and it's doubtful that anything beyond the most conceptual of the subject matter will be portable.

Conclusion

There's something to be said for bringing in the biggest authorities in the field to present a subject -- however, it's one thing to know a subject and another thing completely to know how to teach that subject well. John Madden once said that the best teachers are the ones who got C in school because they're the ones who best understand the intellectual bumps and bruises that can come from learning a new subject, and can help prepare and guide a student through them. There are no C students in this bunch -- readers are left to their own devices to keep up with the authors and fight through the numerous obstacles to get at the core knowledge within, which is admittedly impressive enough. Far be it for a lowly Slashdot contributor to tell the folks at Addison Wesley how to do their job, but on a third edition they might want to put the material through a stronger editorial filter to make things a little easier on the reader. This is definitely a book to preview in the bookstore very carefully before considering a purchase.

Table of Contents Preface.
1. Web Application, XML, and Java.
2. Parsing XML Documents.
3. Generating XML Documents.
4. Working with DOM.
5. Working with SAX.
6. Parser Tricks.
7. XPath and XSLT.
8. Bridging Application Data Structure and XML.
9. Working with Schemas: Datatypes and Namespaces.
10. XML Application Server.
11. XML and Database.
12. XML Messaging.
13. Web Services.
14. Security.
15. Data Binding.
16. Principles of Schema Languages.
Appendix A. About the CD-ROM.
Appendix B. Useful Links and Books.
Appendix C. XML-Related Standardized Activities.
Appendix D. JDBC Primer. Related Links Addison-Welsey website
W3C's XML page
Sun's Java page

You can purchase XML and Java, Developing Web Applications from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to submit yours, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Torulf would like to start an ongoing discussion on books that anyone in the IT field would benefit in having in their library: "Here's a topic that might generate some interesting discussions. I'm a student trying to get general knowledge of the IT business. The question here is about what is regarded 'basic knowledge' and where to find it. As we all know (I hope), a lot of knowledge can really only be learned through experience. In many cases, however, a read through the theory will save you a lot of time. As books are also easier to look up than experience, below is a suggestion of a reading list that might give a decent general knowledge in the field. Please fill out the gaps with what you think is required knowledge for anyone working in the industry. Mostly this is about a general overview of the different areas of the IT industry, but if you have suggestions of good material for becoming an expert in some particular field, by all means, share your knowledge." Torulf has compiled a fairly long list of books, below, however your own suggestions are always welcome.

"To start off the discussion, here are a few suggestions as to likely candidates. The books are linked to Amazon since they can provide a fairly quick and complete description of the books online.

Programming:
Learning a few languages certainly won't hurt. Here are some suggestions:

• The C programming language
• The C++ programming language
• Programming Perl
• Programming Python
• A Book about Java
• A Book on SQL
• A Book about Functional languages (LISP, ML, etc.)

Design:
For any non-trivial task, it is suggested that you design before you code.

• Design Patterns
• UML Distilled

User Interfaces:
A lot of programmers are more than clueless in this area. These at least won't hurt:

• Designing Visual Interfaces
• Usability Engineering
• POET

Graphics:
Some general knowledge about graphics.

• Real-Time Rendering
• Computer Graphics

Business/Management:
Here's something about management and financing. I don't really know about a good reference for marketing applied to the IT industry. This is the area where the average geek is even more ignorant than concerning UI.

• High Tech Start Up
• The Mythical Man Month
• Code Complete

Security:
Alright, this list should be a lot longer.

• Security Engineering

Misc.
And last some stuff that didn't fit in any of the categories above.

• Modern Operating Systems
• Computer Networks
• A few operating systems
• A book about markup languages, ie HTML, XML, DHTML, etc
• A book about Algorithms and Data Structures in general
• At least some basic knowledge about Hardware
• Wireless systems seem to be growing. It might pay off to learn something about Symbian, J2ME etc."

Now that's a start to a comprehensive IT Library if I've ever seen one. How do you all feel about this list (if not the specific selections, then at least the material being covered)? If you were to make changes or additions, what would they be?

Torulf would like to start an ongoing discussion on books that anyone in the IT field would benefit in having in their library: "Here's a topic that might generate some interesting discussions. I'm a student trying to get general knowledge of the IT business. The question here is about what is regarded 'basic knowledge' and where to find it. As we all know (I hope), a lot of knowledge can really only be learned through experience. In many cases, however, a read through the theory will save you a lot of time. As books are also easier to look up than experience, below is a suggestion of a reading list that might give a decent general knowledge in the field. Please fill out the gaps with what you think is required knowledge for anyone working in the industry. Mostly this is about a general overview of the different areas of the IT industry, but if you have suggestions of good material for becoming an expert in some particular field, by all means, share your knowledge." Torulf has compiled a fairly long list of books, below, however your own suggestions are always welcome.

"To start off the discussion, here are a few suggestions as to likely candidates. The books are linked to Amazon since they can provide a fairly quick and complete description of the books online.

Programming:
Learning a few languages certainly won't hurt. Here are some suggestions:

• The C programming language
• The C++ programming language
• Programming Perl
• Programming Python
• A Book about Java
• A Book on SQL
• A Book about Functional languages (LISP, ML, etc.)

Design:
For any non-trivial task, it is suggested that you design before you code.

• Design Patterns
• UML Distilled

User Interfaces:
A lot of programmers are more than clueless in this area. These at least won't hurt:

• Designing Visual Interfaces
• Usability Engineering
• POET

Graphics:
Some general knowledge about graphics.

• Real-Time Rendering
• Computer Graphics

Business/Management:
Here's something about management and financing. I don't really know about a good reference for marketing applied to the IT industry. This is the area where the average geek is even more ignorant than concerning UI.

• High Tech Start Up
• The Mythical Man Month
• Code Complete

Security:
Alright, this list should be a lot longer.

• Security Engineering

Misc.
And last some stuff that didn't fit in any of the categories above.

• Modern Operating Systems
• Computer Networks
• A few operating systems
• A book about markup languages, ie HTML, XML, DHTML, etc
• A book about Algorithms and Data Structures in general
• At least some basic knowledge about Hardware
• Wireless systems seem to be growing. It might pay off to learn something about Symbian, J2ME etc."

Now that's a start to a comprehensive IT Library if I've ever seen one. How do you all feel about this list (if not the specific selections, then at least the material being covered)? If you were to make changes or additions, what would they be?

eugene ts wong writes: "A while ago Sun announced that it was giving unlimited donation of StarOffice to China's Ministry of Education. Well, it turns out that they announced that they are giving unlimited no-cost licenses for all education and research institutions." Many college students now get drastic discounts on Microsoft Office - but this covers a much broader range, from kindergarten up.

eugene ts wong writes: "A while ago Sun announced that it was giving unlimited donation of StarOffice to China's Ministry of Education. Well, it turns out that they announced that they are giving unlimited no-cost licenses for all education and research institutions." Many college students now get drastic discounts on Microsoft Office - but this covers a much broader range, from kindergarten up.

sysadmn writes "With the release of Solaris 9 , Sun has bundled many goodies, including an LDAP directory server and a J2EE application server. At the same time, while a single CPU license is still free, they've begun charging for multiprocessor systems. As a kicker, purchasers of used systems may find that they have to pay Sun an OS licensing fee. (Curiously, the 2 CPU server version seems to be $249, while the 4 CPU desktop is $199. In some cases it's the same motherboard, power supply and memory!). At the upper end, that million dollar machine from Ebay may require a $400,000 fee :-) I like Solaris for many reasons, but I have to wonder: will this pay off? " Solaris is certainly a capable os, but sheeze that seems like an awful lot of money.

sysadmn writes "With the release of Solaris 9 , Sun has bundled many goodies, including an LDAP directory server and a J2EE application server. At the same time, while a single CPU license is still free, they've begun charging for multiprocessor systems. As a kicker, purchasers of used systems may find that they have to pay Sun an OS licensing fee. (Curiously, the 2 CPU server version seems to be $249, while the 4 CPU desktop is $199. In some cases it's the same motherboard, power supply and memory!). At the upper end, that million dollar machine from Ebay may require a $400,000 fee :-) I like Solaris for many reasons, but I have to wonder: will this pay off? " Solaris is certainly a capable os, but sheeze that seems like an awful lot of money.

Slashback with a load of updates for you tonight on modchips for Xbox, Nigerian spam-scams, missing Mozilla hackers, Guillaume Laurent on Murray on Guillaume Laurent, and more. Read on for the details.

Sun giveth and taketh away. axehind writes: "This ZDNet article tells us StarOffice will no longer be free. The decision completes the transition of the StarOffice suite back to being a paid product, as it was when Sun bought the software along with its maker, Germany's Star Division, in 1999. Sun says it will stop free downloads of StarOffice 5.2 at midnight on Wednesday night."

On the other hand, The Pi-Guy writes: "It has been confirmed by Sun that Solaris 9 will be on Intel platforms - you can get it for free on DVD here. Quite surprising considering that a few months ago they were saying 'No S9 at all on x86!'"

Update: 05/29 03:03 GMT by T : As several readers have noticed, the page no longer indicates Solaris 9 once you've chosen x86 as your platform of choice -- looks like a case of mistaken identity.

Strong opinions tend to draw answers. Guillaume Laurent writes "Given that Murray mentions me in his interview, and that I disagree with most of what he says, I felt the need to reply. Enjoy."

Six seems a tad low. supafly613 writes: "Six people were arrested in South Africa over the weekend on suspicion of being involved in the infamous 'Nigerian' e-mail and letter fraud. Four of those detained were Nigerian, one was Cameroonian and the sixth was South African. Police in South Africa believe that the six are part of an international fraud and drug-dealing cartel, sending out thousands of e-mail and letters in an attempt to defraud."

Lost in cyberspace ... Mindphunk writes "Six hackers remain to be found so that Mozilla can be relicensed under the LGPL and GPL as well as the MPL original license. This is really important if Mozilla is going to interoperate readily with all kinds of free software. Perhaps the power of Slashdot can find them in time for the 1.0 release?? The missing hackers are:

• David Nebinger
• 'Uncle George'
• Sanjay Gupta
• Makoto Kato
• Thierry LeBouiland
• Jiwei Wang"

This is a followup to our earlier mention of the missing hackers.

Still waiting for NetBSD :) llordsmiff writes: "According to this, the world's first Xtender Xbox modchip preorders were shipped today (24 May). There are installation pictures also. "It plays back all import and backups on all worldwide sold Xbox machines." It's also supposed to play any DVD, regardless of region."

Wonder if this will be 'content protected.' neema writes: "Just a bit of an update to an older post, but Revolution OS will apparently be released on DVD (region free) in September for 20 dollars. Trailer and first 8 minutes can be found here. I, for one, welcome the chance to see it."

Slashback with a load of updates for you tonight on modchips for Xbox, Nigerian spam-scams, missing Mozilla hackers, Guillaume Laurent on Murray on Guillaume Laurent, and more. Read on for the details.

Sun giveth and taketh away. axehind writes: "This ZDNet article tells us StarOffice will no longer be free. The decision completes the transition of the StarOffice suite back to being a paid product, as it was when Sun bought the software along with its maker, Germany's Star Division, in 1999. Sun says it will stop free downloads of StarOffice 5.2 at midnight on Wednesday night."

On the other hand, The Pi-Guy writes: "It has been confirmed by Sun that Solaris 9 will be on Intel platforms - you can get it for free on DVD here. Quite surprising considering that a few months ago they were saying 'No S9 at all on x86!'"

Update: 05/29 03:03 GMT by T : As several readers have noticed, the page no longer indicates Solaris 9 once you've chosen x86 as your platform of choice -- looks like a case of mistaken identity.

Strong opinions tend to draw answers. Guillaume Laurent writes "Given that Murray mentions me in his interview, and that I disagree with most of what he says, I felt the need to reply. Enjoy."

Six seems a tad low. supafly613 writes: "Six people were arrested in South Africa over the weekend on suspicion of being involved in the infamous 'Nigerian' e-mail and letter fraud. Four of those detained were Nigerian, one was Cameroonian and the sixth was South African. Police in South Africa believe that the six are part of an international fraud and drug-dealing cartel, sending out thousands of e-mail and letters in an attempt to defraud."

Lost in cyberspace ... Mindphunk writes "Six hackers remain to be found so that Mozilla can be relicensed under the LGPL and GPL as well as the MPL original license. This is really important if Mozilla is going to interoperate readily with all kinds of free software. Perhaps the power of Slashdot can find them in time for the 1.0 release?? The missing hackers are:

• David Nebinger
• 'Uncle George'
• Sanjay Gupta
• Makoto Kato
• Thierry LeBouiland
• Jiwei Wang"

This is a followup to our earlier mention of the missing hackers.

Still waiting for NetBSD :) llordsmiff writes: "According to this, the world's first Xtender Xbox modchip preorders were shipped today (24 May). There are installation pictures also. "It plays back all import and backups on all worldwide sold Xbox machines." It's also supposed to play any DVD, regardless of region."

Wonder if this will be 'content protected.' neema writes: "Just a bit of an update to an older post, but Revolution OS will apparently be released on DVD (region free) in September for 20 dollars. Trailer and first 8 minutes can be found here. I, for one, welcome the chance to see it."

joeyslopp writes: "Finding documentation on an open source project such as FreeBSD is usually quite easy. In fact, the project relies heavily upon user support. However, tracking down a good article that illustrates how to setup a .jsp (java server pages) environment using Tomcat has been difficult. Devshed came close with their article Slapping Together A JSP Development Environment , but lacked specifics on JDK for FreeBSD -- their article was more specific to Linux. The studs in #freebsd on undernet enlightened me a bit more, but still I lacked concrete documenation. Where can one find descriptive help in setting up Tomcat for FreeBSD? Dun dun dun dun *cheesy superhero theme* Enter Victoria Chan's article seemingly tailor-made for my Tomcat woes. The article, also located here, actually appears on www.freebsd.org as well...imagine that :) Hopefully other newbies to FreeBSD will read this and shorten their search time for a good article on the setup of Tomcat."

stereoroid writes "

It appears as if the Sun Java 2 Runtime Environment, version 1.3.1_02 and later, is reporting usage statistics to a company called RedSheriff, presumably on behalf of Sun. This was the Win32 version, but other versions probably have the same "feature". If you load up the Java Console, you see multiple messages like this:

----------- RedSheriff Measurement -----------
Privacy: http://www.redsheriff.com/privacy.htm
Record Sent

I noticed this while setting up the latest version of Compaq Insight Manager 7, which includes JRE 1.3.1_02 (but works with 1.4.0 too). I started examining what was happening using a network sniffer, and could see several http requests to a server under http://imrworldwide.com/, a domain name owned by RedSheriff. The data in the packets included details of the system environment, and I even saw a URL that I had accessed in a previous unrelated browser session. This was a partial capture only, it doesnt happen every time, but Ill keep watching to see what else goes through. If I use the JRE, must Sun know my IP address and what OS Im running, and more? This has also been quietly commented on in Sun's Java Forums too. I'm currently digging for a way around this - any ideas, besides a firewall?"

stereoroid writes "

It appears as if the Sun Java 2 Runtime Environment, version 1.3.1_02 and later, is reporting usage statistics to a company called RedSheriff, presumably on behalf of Sun. This was the Win32 version, but other versions probably have the same "feature". If you load up the Java Console, you see multiple messages like this:

----------- RedSheriff Measurement -----------
Privacy: http://www.redsheriff.com/privacy.htm
Record Sent

I noticed this while setting up the latest version of Compaq Insight Manager 7, which includes JRE 1.3.1_02 (but works with 1.4.0 too). I started examining what was happening using a network sniffer, and could see several http requests to a server under http://imrworldwide.com/, a domain name owned by RedSheriff. The data in the packets included details of the system environment, and I even saw a URL that I had accessed in a previous unrelated browser session. This was a partial capture only, it doesnt happen every time, but Ill keep watching to see what else goes through. If I use the JRE, must Sun know my IP address and what OS Im running, and more? This has also been quietly commented on in Sun's Java Forums too. I'm currently digging for a way around this - any ideas, besides a firewall?"

stereoroid writes "

It appears as if the Sun Java 2 Runtime Environment, version 1.3.1_02 and later, is reporting usage statistics to a company called RedSheriff, presumably on behalf of Sun. This was the Win32 version, but other versions probably have the same "feature". If you load up the Java Console, you see multiple messages like this:

----------- RedSheriff Measurement -----------
Privacy: http://www.redsheriff.com/privacy.htm
Record Sent

I noticed this while setting up the latest version of Compaq Insight Manager 7, which includes JRE 1.3.1_02 (but works with 1.4.0 too). I started examining what was happening using a network sniffer, and could see several http requests to a server under http://imrworldwide.com/, a domain name owned by RedSheriff. The data in the packets included details of the system environment, and I even saw a URL that I had accessed in a previous unrelated browser session. This was a partial capture only, it doesnt happen every time, but Ill keep watching to see what else goes through. If I use the JRE, must Sun know my IP address and what OS Im running, and more? This has also been quietly commented on in Sun's Java Forums too. I'm currently digging for a way around this - any ideas, besides a firewall?"

Lawrence Teo writes "News.com, Infoworld.com, and eWeek are all reporting that Sun's StarOffice 6.0, which will be released on May 21, will cost a measly $75.95. That's less than a quarter the cost of Microsoft Office. Details are also available at Sun's own StarOffice 6.0 website." Sun's press release mentions the new features, although if you're familiar with openoffice.org, you've got a pretty good idea of what StarOffice has to offer. An anonymous reader also points out that Sun has effectively one-upped Microsoft's various schemes to get its software into schools by making an unlimited donation of StarOffice to China's Ministry of Education.

Lawrence Teo writes "News.com, Infoworld.com, and eWeek are all reporting that Sun's StarOffice 6.0, which will be released on May 21, will cost a measly $75.95. That's less than a quarter the cost of Microsoft Office. Details are also available at Sun's own StarOffice 6.0 website." Sun's press release mentions the new features, although if you're familiar with openoffice.org, you've got a pretty good idea of what StarOffice has to offer. An anonymous reader also points out that Sun has effectively one-upped Microsoft's various schemes to get its software into schools by making an unlimited donation of StarOffice to China's Ministry of Education.

Lawrence Teo writes "News.com, Infoworld.com, and eWeek are all reporting that Sun's StarOffice 6.0, which will be released on May 21, will cost a measly $75.95. That's less than a quarter the cost of Microsoft Office. Details are also available at Sun's own StarOffice 6.0 website." Sun's press release mentions the new features, although if you're familiar with openoffice.org, you've got a pretty good idea of what StarOffice has to offer. An anonymous reader also points out that Sun has effectively one-upped Microsoft's various schemes to get its software into schools by making an unlimited donation of StarOffice to China's Ministry of Education.

MHQ13 asks: "We recently arranged with Sun for them to loan us one of their larger systems. The system is a Sun Fire 4800. Not a cheap machine. The system is mounted within its own 72" tall cabinet. It is shipped in a wood crate which is approximately 3' wide by 4' deep by 8' fall. Gross weight is about 900 pounds. Since their warehouse is just across the San Francisco Bay from us they contracted with a local carrier to ship it to us. The machine was picked up from their warehouse, placed into the truck and arrived at our receiving department a few hours later." And thus, the story begins. Read on for the conclusion of MHQ's Big Iron Shipping story and if you would, please share any anecdotes about mishaps that occured to expensive hardware that you or your company may have purchased.

"When the driver and our receiving personnel opened the trailer door the crate was lying on its side, it was upright when it left the warehouse. The drive stated that he had hear a loud bang after making a turn and had thought he may have blown a tire.

On the crate there were several shock sensors and tilt sensors only one of which had tripped (the one which was face up when it was on its side). There were also instructions telling us what to do if these sensors had been tripped.

The instructions told us to accept shipment but to inspect for damage and call the carrier if we found any. We did accept shipment but did not open the crate to inspect for damage. We made a note of the situation on the bill of lading with the driver present then contacted our respresentative at Sun for advice.

Our representative is having a replacement shipped to us and the unit which is here now will be picked up and sent back.

I was quite surprised that the crate was not strapped in and tied down tight given how narrow, tall, and heavy this crate was, not to mention the value of its contents.

My question of the Slashdot Community is: What other Big Iron shipping nightmare stories have you got?"

Def Mango Raygun writes "There is an interview with James Gosling of Sun. He talks about some language features and why they happened. It's short, but informative"