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> but would what happen if two objects referenced each other but nothing else referenced them. Would gc know to follow the links between the two and see that nothing in the main app is using them?

The main app is all the object traceable from the root set. Read this for a quick view. Essentially the rootset is part of a graph of objects and the rest can be free'd .

Relationship Change

User SUN.COM has made you their foe.

Please, please, please, please make the amd64 JVM work on Intel EM64T boxes in Linux!

SUN claim support on AMD64 in Linux as noted on their website.

The Windows AMD64 JDK 1.5.0 works fine on Intel EM64T.

The Windows AMD64 JDK 1.5.0 works fine on Intel EM64T.

Sun did take their time with JDK 5 official but looks like they didn't ge some things done yet... including the Java Language Spec linked from the JDK 5 Doc page hasn't been upgraded to reflect changes made in 5.

A better compatibility explination is here

Basically, it goes like this.
The 1 denotes FORWARD compatibility (Binary Compatibilty). If you made sources on a Java2 1.x (where x is less than 5) it will run on Java2 1.5

The 5 denotes BACKWARD compatibility. (Source Compatibility) Since 5!=4, sources written for 5 will not compile and/or run on Java2 1.y where y5.

Anything after those numbers (1.5.a.b where a and b are additional numbers) are platform specific, as the parent's link explains.

Just as the parent explained, it's still Java2, it's just a newer version of Java2.. the 5th version of Java2.

JDK 5 generics are definitely not the generic-programming cornucopia that C++ templates are.

They do provide other nice functionality, though. Suppose we want to feed a list of any pets, but only pets?

Being familiar with generics, we know List is not a subclass of List. In C++ there is no neat way to allow this: our function must accept a list of pets (List), and anyone using List is must convert it.

However, in JDK 5 generics:

class Cat extends Pet { .. }
class Dog extends Pet { .. }
List<Cat> cats = ..;
List<Dog> dogs = ..;
List<Pet> menagerie = ..;
List<Alien> aliens = ..;

void feed(List<? extends Pet> pets) { .. }

// these work
feed(cats); feed(dogs); feed(menagerie);

// this will not compile
feed(aliens);

Links:

• http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5/pdf/generics-tutorial .pdf
• http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library /j-djc02113.html

That will produce an unhandled exception error. And, doesn't even work if var is not type byte[].

byte[] x=new byte[20];
try{
System.in.read(x);
}catch(IOException e) {
System.out.println(e);
}

And you need to import IOException. icky.

i.e., Sun Downloads

Netbeans 4.0 Beta 2.

J2SE 5.0 bundled with Netbeans.

Hmm... Haven't noticed a big difference so far, but I've only tried it briefly. IntelliJ IDEA seems as fast/slow as before. Some more system properties that refer to Java2D are available from Sun; the page also explains how to set the opengl flag globally, ie for all programs: using the environment variable _JAVA_OPTIONS, as in export _JAVA_OPTIONS='-Dsun.java2d.opengl=true'. Works for me, I think.

I was surprised to find that the ObjectOutputStream has a static HandleTable inside it that creates an entry for each HashMap that I put through, and it keeps a reference to each HashMap. I searched around, and this is a common problem that is not mentioned at all in the javadocs. You're supposed to reset the ObjectOutputStream periodically to free up the HandleTable. I had assumed that reset was like InputStream's reset and never would have guessed that it had to do with Object caching in the stream.

I was surprised to find that the ObjectOutputStream has a static HandleTable inside it that creates an entry for each HashMap that I put through, and it keeps a reference to each HashMap. I searched around, and this is a common problem that is not mentioned at all in the javadocs. You're supposed to reset the ObjectOutputStream periodically to free up the HandleTable. I had assumed that reset was like InputStream's reset and never would have guessed that it had to do with Object caching in the stream.

I was surprised to find that the ObjectOutputStream has a static HandleTable inside it that creates an entry for each HashMap that I put through, and it keeps a reference to each HashMap. I searched around, and this is a common problem that is not mentioned at all in the javadocs. You're supposed to reset the ObjectOutputStream periodically to free up the HandleTable. I had assumed that reset was like InputStream's reset and never would have guessed that it had to do with Object caching in the stream.

What books are available that cover the new features in Java 5? I've been looking for the fourth edition of The Java Programming Language or the third edition of The Java Language Specification but haven't been able to find any reference to them yet.

What books are available that cover the new features in Java 5? I've been looking for the fourth edition of The Java Programming Language or the third edition of The Java Language Specification but haven't been able to find any reference to them yet.

Java already have plenty of operators.

There's +, -, ++, =, == and whatnot. Full listing here. ;)

Actually, SUN doesn't even know.

Check out their download page url.
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp.

Check out the of the page too.

J 2SE 5.0
Download Java 2 Platform Standard Edition 5.0

In my mind, If Sun themselves don't use the phrase "Java 5", then why should we? Shouldn't this release have the acronym J5SE?

Nope.

1. Go to the Java web site for developers/technical people: http://java.sun.com
2. Go to the consumer-branded website: http://java.com

-Dsun.java2d.opengl=true

This does indeed work too, I have played around with it and graphically intensive Swing applications really fly with OpenGL activated (given that your graphics card and drivers are sufficiently bug-free and modern). Read about it here

And yes, it does work under Linux, and Windows and Solaris (and most likely will under OS X, though that is up to Apple to implement).

Even without OpenGL acceleration the Swing responsiveness improvements are very impressive, coupled with the much better both default theme and theme mimicking in 1.5 I'd say it is time to retire the Swing troll.

Please make your Windows (XP) Java run time environment download available on the FRONT PAGE or at the most 1 click away. Your latest website is very tricky to navigate and very annoying and what's the point of taking a Java class (which I'm currently doing) when the majority of Windows XP users don't even have the fucking run time installed by default (damn Microsoft!). I mean look at this mess. It's 5 clicks to the .exe file! Who is Joe Schmoe going to know what the hell a "run time environment" is when they're NOT EVEN interested in Java, except in the software they want to install! (i.e. Azureus bittorrent client). Please add a image button (so people see it, make it big and pink or red if you will) that says something like "Windows XP users DOWNLOAD to run your favourite Java applications!" Thank you. Yours Truly, Typical-Family's-Free-College-Long-distance-Tech-S upport.

Actually, under certain circumstances the JVM will reclaim non-null references eventually. But you will still experience memory leak type symptoms until either you run out of available memory or the non-null references are cleaned up...

Java supports various types of references, check here: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/lang/ ref/Reference.html

Are you sure? J2EE is 1.4 already.

If any one is interested in reading the release notes, they can be found at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/relnotes/featu res.html

To address your questions:
- Is Solaris supported on Intel86 architecture or not?
Yes, very much so. Some of Sun's highest selling servers are x86 (but based on AMD): link. It's also rumored (yes, I know, rumor, but wait a few months 'till it's out) that Solaris 10 is currently the fastest OS on x86.

- Does Sun sell Cobalt appliances or not?
Not anymore, those have been EOL'd, and rightly so, that was a bad purchase. link.

- Does Sun resell Linux or not? Today, is it RedHat or Suse?
Yes, they resell Linux, and they sell SuSE, Red Hat, the Sun Java Desktop System, and the Java Enterprise System (based on SuSE). link.

- Is Java a programming language or is it a more General Product? What does "Sun Java Desktop" have to do with Java?
Well, it would seem that the Java Programming language is a language. But it would also seem that Sun wants to leverage the familiarty of the name Java towards other products (Java Desktop, Java Enterprise System) . Not the best marketing move but thats not what Sun spends most of it's money on.

- Can I redistrute the JDK with my own applications or not? Wait, just javac?
I dont' know.

- Is Java called 'Java', 'Java Two', 'Java one-point-two-and-above' or 'Java Five-point-oh'?
If you're going to bitch about naming conventions, Java would be a great candidate, but I'm sure there are many other deserving software packages.

- Where is Java installed today? /usr/j2se ? /usr/jre1.4.1_05b1? /usr/java? /usr/java1.3? C:\jdk1.4.1_03? C:\Program Files\jdk1.4.1_03??? C:\Program Files\Java\j2re1.4.2_04 ?
Doesn't it ask you where it should install? I think this is your fault as the administrator of your own computer.

To address your questions:
- Is Solaris supported on Intel86 architecture or not?
Yes, very much so. Some of Sun's highest selling servers are x86 (but based on AMD): link. It's also rumored (yes, I know, rumor, but wait a few months 'till it's out) that Solaris 10 is currently the fastest OS on x86.

- Does Sun sell Cobalt appliances or not?
Not anymore, those have been EOL'd, and rightly so, that was a bad purchase. link.

- Does Sun resell Linux or not? Today, is it RedHat or Suse?
Yes, they resell Linux, and they sell SuSE, Red Hat, the Sun Java Desktop System, and the Java Enterprise System (based on SuSE). link.

- Is Java a programming language or is it a more General Product? What does "Sun Java Desktop" have to do with Java?
Well, it would seem that the Java Programming language is a language. But it would also seem that Sun wants to leverage the familiarty of the name Java towards other products (Java Desktop, Java Enterprise System) . Not the best marketing move but thats not what Sun spends most of it's money on.

- Can I redistrute the JDK with my own applications or not? Wait, just javac?
I dont' know.

- Is Java called 'Java', 'Java Two', 'Java one-point-two-and-above' or 'Java Five-point-oh'?
If you're going to bitch about naming conventions, Java would be a great candidate, but I'm sure there are many other deserving software packages.

- Where is Java installed today? /usr/j2se ? /usr/jre1.4.1_05b1? /usr/java? /usr/java1.3? C:\jdk1.4.1_03? C:\Program Files\jdk1.4.1_03??? C:\Program Files\Java\j2re1.4.2_04 ?
Doesn't it ask you where it should install? I think this is your fault as the administrator of your own computer.

To address your questions:
- Is Solaris supported on Intel86 architecture or not?
Yes, very much so. Some of Sun's highest selling servers are x86 (but based on AMD): link. It's also rumored (yes, I know, rumor, but wait a few months 'till it's out) that Solaris 10 is currently the fastest OS on x86.

- Does Sun sell Cobalt appliances or not?
Not anymore, those have been EOL'd, and rightly so, that was a bad purchase. link.

- Does Sun resell Linux or not? Today, is it RedHat or Suse?
Yes, they resell Linux, and they sell SuSE, Red Hat, the Sun Java Desktop System, and the Java Enterprise System (based on SuSE). link.

- Is Java a programming language or is it a more General Product? What does "Sun Java Desktop" have to do with Java?
Well, it would seem that the Java Programming language is a language. But it would also seem that Sun wants to leverage the familiarty of the name Java towards other products (Java Desktop, Java Enterprise System) . Not the best marketing move but thats not what Sun spends most of it's money on.

- Can I redistrute the JDK with my own applications or not? Wait, just javac?
I dont' know.

- Is Java called 'Java', 'Java Two', 'Java one-point-two-and-above' or 'Java Five-point-oh'?
If you're going to bitch about naming conventions, Java would be a great candidate, but I'm sure there are many other deserving software packages.

- Where is Java installed today? /usr/j2se ? /usr/jre1.4.1_05b1? /usr/java? /usr/java1.3? C:\jdk1.4.1_03? C:\Program Files\jdk1.4.1_03??? C:\Program Files\Java\j2re1.4.2_04 ?
Doesn't it ask you where it should install? I think this is your fault as the administrator of your own computer.

You do know that OpenOffice is to Sun Microsystems what Mozilla is (/was) to AOL? Or are you saying Sun is bunch of mom'm pop amateurs with no Enterprise Grade expertise?

Further, OOo was started by open sourcing of the original StarOffice code base (just like Mozilla's beginnings were from Netscape 5 codebase... except Mozilla dropped the code, OOo didn't); SO having been written by a reasonably big german proprietary software vendor, over multiple years (about a decade). So it's anything but a simple tool hacked together by hobbyists.

Maybe you were thinking of some of the other Open Source word processors? Or maybe you just have never used OOo (or SO) and just argue based on prejudices?

There exists a technical committee at OASIS to make the OpenOffice format a standard (OASIS OpenOffice).

The OASIS format is not simply the OpenOffice format. It contains a number of changes to make sure it works well for other office suits as well.

Two office suits are currently implementing to support OASIS as their native files format: OpenOffice/StarOffice and KOffice. I hope others will join in as well.

Indeed

Code that doesn't do any UI stuff is portable between them, but user interfaces have to be implemented extra for each of those models.

So Java MIDP doesn't have any standardised UI? The specs(PDF) have the following text...

A mobile User Interface

MIDP features a high level user interface API that shields developers from the complexity of building portable applications. This high level API enables developers to build easy to use, highly graphical and portable applications optimized for mobile information devices, and reduces development effort.

MIDP user interface functionality includes predefined screens for displaying and selecting lists, editing text, popping up alert dialogs, and adding scrolling tickers. Forms are screens that can include any number of predefined items -- images, read-only text fields, editable text fields, editable date and time fields, charts, and choice groups -- as well as any custom items added by developers to provide unique functionality and graphics. All screens and items are device-aware, with built-in support for the native display size, input and navigation capabilities. This enables developers to define a highly portable, flexible user interface that changes its layout and navigation to fully leverage each device.

It sounds like it's supposed to have a standard UI, but then again Java was supposed to be a "write once, run anywhere" programming language for computers. Have they managed to get it right for mobiles, or does the actual implementation differ from the advertised functionality the way it did for computers?

Code that doesn't do any UI stuff is portable between them, but user interfaces have to be implemented extra for each of those models.

So Java MIDP doesn't have any standardised UI? The specs(PDF) have the following text...

A mobile User Interface

MIDP features a high level user interface API that shields developers from the complexity of building portable applications. This high level API enables developers to build easy to use, highly graphical and portable applications optimized for mobile information devices, and reduces development effort.

MIDP user interface functionality includes predefined screens for displaying and selecting lists, editing text, popping up alert dialogs, and adding scrolling tickers. Forms are screens that can include any number of predefined items -- images, read-only text fields, editable text fields, editable date and time fields, charts, and choice groups -- as well as any custom items added by developers to provide unique functionality and graphics. All screens and items are device-aware, with built-in support for the native display size, input and navigation capabilities. This enables developers to define a highly portable, flexible user interface that changes its layout and navigation to fully leverage each device.

It sounds like it's supposed to have a standard UI, but then again Java was supposed to be a "write once, run anywhere" programming language for computers. Have they managed to get it right for mobiles, or does the actual implementation differ from the advertised functionality the way it did for computers?

You can cry "correlation doesn't imply causation" all you want but you have to measure something or you are preaching theocracy -- not economic theory.

So what else might we measure? How about the "success" of companies that most heavily lobbied for and used guest workers like Sun Corporation?

Again, how many coincidences like that do you need before your cries of "racism", "xenophobia", "protectionism", "loser", just sound like so much religious cant?

I hope I am wrong, I like Sun and I want to see them continue to survive, but I don't see that happening. I don't know first hand, about Sun's HW or Solaris, but from what I read, it seems that they had excellent engineering and great products. But now, they seem to be throwing their fists at everyone. How can such a company, that was so highly thought of, act like such a cornered rat?

Within the last 1-1/2 years or so, it's been hard to tell where Sun stands. Bill Joy no longer works for Sun. With the cancellation of UltraSPARC V and joint venture of between Sun and Fujitsu (here) and from this AMD news link, can anyone say "HP and Itanium". Sun's talent pool has gotten considerably smaller and now management is scared, so they play the FUD card. Anyone really surprised? Management has watered down the talent, taken the Darl Mcbride school of business 101 class and is hanging on to Uncle Bill's pants hoping to catch a crumb or 2, by bashing GNU/Linux - oops- I mean Red Hat and taking on IBM.

To all you anti-IBMers, if you've read the "fists" link above, you'll catch that Sun is porting Solaris to the POWER architecture (guess it ain't that bad after all).

I hope I am wrong, I like Sun and I want to see them continue to survive, but I don't see that happening. I don't know first hand, about Sun's HW or Solaris, but from what I read, it seems that they had excellent engineering and great products. But now, they seem to be throwing their fists at everyone. How can such a company, that was so highly thought of, act like such a cornered rat?

Within the last 1-1/2 years or so, it's been hard to tell where Sun stands. Bill Joy no longer works for Sun. With the cancellation of UltraSPARC V and joint venture of between Sun and Fujitsu (here) and from this AMD news link, can anyone say "HP and Itanium". Sun's talent pool has gotten considerably smaller and now management is scared, so they play the FUD card. Anyone really surprised? Management has watered down the talent, taken the Darl Mcbride school of business 101 class and is hanging on to Uncle Bill's pants hoping to catch a crumb or 2, by bashing GNU/Linux - oops- I mean Red Hat and taking on IBM.

To all you anti-IBMers, if you've read the "fists" link above, you'll catch that Sun is porting Solaris to the POWER architecture (guess it ain't that bad after all).

Broken link... Use this... http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/eschrock/20040921 #analysts_on_opensolaris

Dropping Itanium is a huge blow to HP's pride and I wouldn't be suprised if it completely demoralized their processor design team, which was screwed a few items trying to tango with Intel. Digital (DEC) was screwed by Intel when they showed their designs. HP let their own successful design of the PA-RISC slide, so did SGI MIPS. One can draw parallels how Windows NT would crush all the unixes (unices), instead it was the BSDs and Linux offerings that ended up hurting the unix vendors. I kind of feel bad for SGI for investing much of their time and effort to make the Itanium a key piece of their Linux solution in their Altix line of servers. Time for them to start looking into making AMD 64 boxes. I was at a computer lab the other day and saw a Sun workstation W1100z running Windows XP. Upon closer inspection some of the users where running Solaris and the CPU was a AMD Opteron.

And notice it's only "desktop" there is no "Java Server".

Sun Java Enterprise System

From their datasheet:

"Operating Systems and Platforms

* Solaris 9 Operating System (SPARC Platform Edition)
* Solaris 9 Operating System (x86 Platform Edition)
* Solaris 8 Operating System (SPARC Platform Edition)
* Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 2.1"

Nonsense!

Johnathon Swartz Quote:

"To my friends in the media, you are confusing a social movement with a single company - that social movement is all about choice, innovation and freedom. Not dominance or dependence. In that light, no innovation Sun delivers, in comp models or bits, can be anti-linux."

For ./ers who actually RTFA: This guy looks like he's got his wires crossed.

Per Schwartz: "...Red Hat is not linux, despite what they say, and despite what the media (and IBM's ads) seem to conflate."

I think if Sun was trying to equate Linux with Redhat statements like this would be counter-productive.

On to attacking Redhat:

The *truth* is, from a sysadmin that's used both for actual enterprise applications, is that Redhat AS does suck. Its cludgy, and disordered, like /proc as compared with kstat.

Just because Redhat sucks, tho, doesn't mean that Linux sucks (which on the whole it doesn't). Its just immature-- probably at the same level of maturity as Solaris 2.51 or maybe 2.6. That's not bad, considering the amount of time that its had to grow.

Redhat's enterprise OS (remember ./ers only the kernel is Linux) doesn't stack up to Solaris, and isn't really cost effective anymore. I can get a Sun operteron-based system with Solaris for cheaper than a Dell, if you include the Redhat AS license! Sun is offering a superior product for cheaper.

For most office workers all they usually need is word processing, spread sheets, 'toy' databases (such as Microsoft® Access®). And all of that can be run from a thin terminal.. (or for the real cheapskates, an old green-on-black monitor). Most people think the good old days of thin terminals are over, I say their still to come!

Consider the average cost of your workers hardware, £500-£700 per head. Wouldn't that be better invested in one server per-department, because most thin terminals out-live the average desktop machine (3 year upgrade cycle, or 5-6 year upgrade cycle for a http://wwws.sun.com/thin terminal). In managers terms that could lead to thousands in savings on the IT budgetl

I'm in no way condoning going back to TSS-8 (or similar legacy systems), but a powerful BSD server running on commodity hardware would do the trick just fine!

I read this, on Johnathan Scwhartz's weblog posted on July 21, 2004. He explicitly talks about Linux == Red Hat.

I then posted on my own weblog about it on July 26th.

Scan through it for a while and you get a bit of an idea of the direction he thinks in, publicly at least.

For example:

IBM is in a real pickle. Red Hat's dominance leaves IBM almost entirely dependent upon SuSe/Novell. Whoever owns Novell controls the OS on which IBM's future depends. Now that's an interesting thought, isn't it? But if IBM preemptively acquires Novell/SuSe, the world changes: linux enters the product portfolio of a patent litigator not known for being a social-movement company. But where else will IBM go? With it's current market cap, Red Hat seems unacquirable - but absent action, IBM's core customers will be eroded by Red Hat's leverage. And Sun's ability to leverage our open Solaris platform (on industry standard AMD, Intel or SPARC), or Java Enterprise System, even on IBM's hardware, gives us a significant - and sustainable - competitive advantage. With the demise of AIX, IBM is once again vulnerable. Me, I'd keep a close eye on the Novell/SuSe conversation. If IBM acquires them, the community outrage and customer disaffection is going to be epic... but where else does IBM go?

Or:

And proving our commitment to building Solaris as the cross platform standard, we're now compensating Sun's hardware salesforce for selling Solaris on non-Sun hardware. So if a sales rep sells Solaris on Dell or IBM, or even HP (Xeon or Nocona), we pay them as if they sold the hardware. This is a huge culture change, obviously. It also focuses everyone on keeping customers happy - and driving hardware choice. (And Fedora upgrades.) I'm not sure we could make the point more clearly that we're committed to making Solaris the volume leader on all systems - and building the most price performant systems a customer can find. How confident are we Solaris customers will choose our new SPARC and Opteron systems? We're comp'ing our reps the same, no matter which systems the customer buys. We're putting money where our mouths are. Want proof? Got a farm of legacy Xeon systems, supplied by someone other than Sun? Talk to your rep to license Solaris - and let me know how it goes.

Sun definitely seems to think they have a strong competitor to Linux with Solaris 10, especially with adding support for running Linux applications. Their pricing for Solaris x86 is ballpark with suse or red hat enterprise.

Sun realizes that Linux is making certain layers of the stack a commodity, and is fighting strongly both on the front of bringing Solaris into the market while providing some added value (what a change from when they were killing Solaris x86 just a short while ago...) and moving up the stack (java desktop, application servers, etc.) while at the same time trying to expand their offerings of commodity servers that can run any platform... and using that as an entry point to get Solaris in the door.

I mean, "duh" Sun competes with Red Hat, and makes a big deal about being able to be a vendor that has a full hardware and software stack of their own. I don't, however, see any signs that Sun is betting the farm on Solaris.

And a good rebuttal from a linux kernel hacker.

These products are down-revision products that may have various bugs, Y2000, and possibly security issues associated with them. Sun in no way recommends these products be used in a live, production environment. Any use of product on this page is at the sole discretion of the developer and Sun assumes no responsiblity for any resulting problems.

I don't see this as anything but GOOD news for the alt browser market.

yes , and we should also thanks slashdot for reminding us all of hotjava !!

I even forgot that thing existed ! Last time i tried it must have been like 3-4 years ago ...
... and it sucked bad time !!! ahh ... memories ... thank you slashdot !

They aren't more than $10k, but you can pay about $25k for one of their AMD Opteron machines.

The point is, usually there's a discount for buying all the components already put together. You're buying more than just the parts when you buy a Sun machine--there's the software licenses, the support for a year, and so on.

But when you buy a TV, you just get a TV. It's a monitor and a tuner in one box. There's less cabling, only one power supply, and so on. Only one thing needs FCC and ULC approval. Only one manual needs to be printed, one shipping carton, and so on.

So paying more to have the two devices integrated is truly ridiculous.

They aren't more than $10k, but you can pay about $25k for one of their AMD Opteron machines.

The point is, usually there's a discount for buying all the components already put together. You're buying more than just the parts when you buy a Sun machine--there's the software licenses, the support for a year, and so on.

But when you buy a TV, you just get a TV. It's a monitor and a tuner in one box. There's less cabling, only one power supply, and so on. Only one thing needs FCC and ULC approval. Only one manual needs to be printed, one shipping carton, and so on.

So paying more to have the two devices integrated is truly ridiculous.