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So please, if you want to make intelligent comments about an operating system, be sure to separate it from the hardware upon which it runs, or at least be aware of all platforms on which it runs.

There have been some rumors that AMD/Opteron is a possible position for Sun, but the practical difficulty in a 8-way and up machines with the Opteron is probably a significant limiting factor in that path.

Possible postion?

Difficult 8-way?

N1 Grid Containers is a breakthrough approach to virtualization with multiple software partitions per single instance of the OS. N1 Grid Containers make consolidation simple, safe and secure.

* Superior Resource Utilization. N1 Grid Containers dynamically adjust resources to business goals within and across the container. With little management overhead (less than 1%), it offers over 4,000 containers per system.
* Increased Uptime. With N1 Grid Containers, applications are isolated from each other and from system faults. Using Instant Restart, each Container can be restarted in just seconds. Boot time in large systems can be reduced by as much as 70%.
* Reduced Costs. N1 Grid Containers simplifies and accelerates consolidation. It also significantly reduces system, admin and maintenance overhead.

Not anymore I guess.

DTrace definitely seems to be worth checking out. As the article indicates, more info is available here.
As the article does not indicate -- but it seems to be worth mentioning -- DTrace was introduced in a comp.unix.solaris post here. Seems pretty damn cool...

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

Linux isn't killing Solaris, if anything its helping it. I don't know what the actual numbers are, but I doubt Sun makes its money from Solaris either. Solaris exists for the same reason the other vendor's Unix offerings exist, to compliment the hardware, not because they can make piles of money off of it.

But hey, way to go with your sly anti-businessman attack. Because as everyone knows, MBAs are all simpletons and schoolyard bullies.

Phipps is actually not an MBA -- he's an electrical engineer.

Frankly, I wish that both Phipps and ESR would stop acting like reactinary idiots. It does absolutely nothing but hurt open source. ESR blasted off a ridiculously inaccurate and amaturish letter to Sun, and decided to make it an "open" letter to piss off the maximal number of people. He managed to trade in some Open Source credibility to advance his whim-of-the-day. Phipps, instead of doing the right thing and either ignoring ESR or sending him a form letter, actually responded. Had he just ignored ESR, the whole thing would have died. Now it's alive *again*. Christ. This whole argument is so incredibily stupid.

For example, I can embed a Python interpretter in any GPLed application I choose (or any commercial application for that matter). But if I want to write an application that is extensible in Java, well I have to write the whole thing in Java.

Nope, that's not true. You can embed a JVM inside of your application to make it extensible in Java, just like Python. This is becoming fairly common in databases to support user functions written in Java (Oracle supports this, for example). I've even seen commercial games that use an embedded JVM for decision-control and scripting.

The relevant part of Java is called JNI.

Don't remember if it has the VM internals or not

It's got the lot

Cheers,

Will.

Mind you, I would love to be able to see Sun's sources as much as the next guy

Congratulations, you can

Cheers,

Will.

Mind you, I would love to be able to see Sun's sources as much as the next guy

Congratulations, you can

Cheers,

Will.

That applies to Swing in particular: no major changes here the last few years.

Please cast your eyes upon the list of new swing features in Java 1.5

Will.

They opened it up, and about 4 months later, closed it. Kinda like 'zero cost' Solaris. It was once a zero cost download, now its media kit can be had for around $100.

Really? I was able to find this in about four clicks from sun.com's index page. Note the word 'FREE', in red, even, in relation to the word 'Download' and behind the words 'Solaris 9 12/03 Operating System.' Both SPARC and x86.

And they also funded SCO after it was clear what such funding would go towards.

Sun didn't "fund" SCO, they bought IP that they needed and put to use. Your conspiracy theory is nonsense. It was business. Period.

Sun has at best a mixed record of support for free software.

Sun has done far more to support open source than you, or pretty much any other corporation.

I don't know enough about the Java situation to comment, but I do know that Sun continues to invest heavily in Solaris and (as they see it) free software is a direct threat to that investment.

Wrong. Sun sells systems loaded with Linux. Sun may become the largest linux vendor in the world this year due to Sun's Java Desktop system. Linux is a long ways from challenging Solaris in maturity, features, or commercial software base. What would happen if Sun stopped investing in improving Solaris isn't that Linux would suddenly be better, but that IBM's AIX and HP's HP/UX could potentially open up a technological lead and endanger Sun's hardware sales in the critical high end systems business. It is sort of funny, really, that I keep reading complaints from people on Slashdot about Sun working to improve Solaris but almost never about HP/UX or AIX. Is it just ignorance... or dark conspiracy? More at 11:00.

And they also funded SCO after it was clear what such funding would go towards.

Sun didn't "fund" SCO, they bought IP that they needed and put to use. Your conspiracy theory is nonsense. It was business. Period.

Sun has at best a mixed record of support for free software.

Sun has done far more to support open source than you, or pretty much any other corporation.

I don't know enough about the Java situation to comment, but I do know that Sun continues to invest heavily in Solaris and (as they see it) free software is a direct threat to that investment.

Wrong. Sun sells systems loaded with Linux. Sun may become the largest linux vendor in the world this year due to Sun's Java Desktop system. Linux is a long ways from challenging Solaris in maturity, features, or commercial software base. What would happen if Sun stopped investing in improving Solaris isn't that Linux would suddenly be better, but that IBM's AIX and HP's HP/UX could potentially open up a technological lead and endanger Sun's hardware sales in the critical high end systems business. It is sort of funny, really, that I keep reading complaints from people on Slashdot about Sun working to improve Solaris but almost never about HP/UX or AIX. Is it just ignorance... or dark conspiracy? More at 11:00.

Then perhaps someone will explain being why Sun paid SCO $8M for a worthless SCO licence (along with Microsoft, themselves no friend of OS).

Sun didn't buy a worthless license. SCO has an implementation of driver technology that Sun needed in their bid to revitalize Solaris on X86 processors. In fact, they picked up hundreds of drivers. Now, if you have any suggestions as to other System V Unixes on X86 with a large base of relatively recent drivers and driver technology that Sun could have used instead, I'm sure that Sun would love to hear about it. Until then, Sun has a real business to run, and buying IP from SCO no doubt saved them an enormous amount of time, and maybe even money.

Bottom line: this has nothing to do with SCO attacking Linux. Sun was just taking care of business.

(By the way, you do know that Sun has deals to sell something on the order of 500,000 - 1,000,000 of the Linux based Java Desktop systems a year, don't you? You do know that Sun sells servers with Linux, don't you?)

Then perhaps someone will explain being why Sun paid SCO $8M for a worthless SCO licence (along with Microsoft, themselves no friend of OS).

Sun didn't buy a worthless license. SCO has an implementation of driver technology that Sun needed in their bid to revitalize Solaris on X86 processors. In fact, they picked up hundreds of drivers. Now, if you have any suggestions as to other System V Unixes on X86 with a large base of relatively recent drivers and driver technology that Sun could have used instead, I'm sure that Sun would love to hear about it. Until then, Sun has a real business to run, and buying IP from SCO no doubt saved them an enormous amount of time, and maybe even money.

Bottom line: this has nothing to do with SCO attacking Linux. Sun was just taking care of business.

(By the way, you do know that Sun has deals to sell something on the order of 500,000 - 1,000,000 of the Linux based Java Desktop systems a year, don't you? You do know that Sun sells servers with Linux, don't you?)

Then perhaps someone will explain being why Sun paid SCO $8M for a worthless SCO licence (along with Microsoft, themselves no friend of OS).

Sun didn't buy a worthless license. SCO has an implementation of driver technology that Sun needed in their bid to revitalize Solaris on X86 processors. In fact, they picked up hundreds of drivers. Now, if you have any suggestions as to other System V Unixes on X86 with a large base of relatively recent drivers and driver technology that Sun could have used instead, I'm sure that Sun would love to hear about it. Until then, Sun has a real business to run, and buying IP from SCO no doubt saved them an enormous amount of time, and maybe even money.

Bottom line: this has nothing to do with SCO attacking Linux. Sun was just taking care of business.

(By the way, you do know that Sun has deals to sell something on the order of 500,000 - 1,000,000 of the Linux based Java Desktop systems a year, don't you? You do know that Sun sells servers with Linux, don't you?)

You can. In fact, I've peeked into the source quite a few times to make sure I knew how certain things were working. It's called the Sun Community Source Licensing (SCSL) (site appears down as of posting this).

Don't remember if it has the VM internals or not, but I have looked at the c++ code for primitives as well as fundamental Java objects. So, it's there and good to download.

Mind you, I would love to be able to see Sun's sources as much as the next guy, but I really fail to see how their choice to keep their code proprietary in any way lessens the value of the language itself.

Since when is Sun a friend of open source?

Sun pays for NFS v4 port to Linux.
Sun supports Xemacs.
Sun donates internationalization code to X.org.
Sun buys StarOffice and donates the code to OpenOffice.

Sun support development and porting of TCL.
Sun donates elliptic curve technology to openssl.org.

Etc., etc., etc.

Sun established open standards, such as: NIS, NFS, etc., etc.,...

Sun is a much bigger friend to "open source" and *nix than just about any other corporation.

So, are you trolling, or uninformed? Maybe just abusing a friend to open source?

Since Sun said they would support Solaris on the AMD 64-bit platform, if Intel's instruction set is the same or a super set, does that mean we'll get 64-bit Solaris on Intel?

Still, Sun and Apple should merge, port Solaris to the PowerPC, layer Darwin on top of Solaris and start shipping low TCO multi-user systems (e.g. E5k) that use the Sun-Ray stations to deliver the Mac OS Interface & apps to hundreds of users, finally breaking the MS monopoly on the desktop!

Pixar originally developed most of the software it used in-house, mostly running on Solaris (which is why Pixar had, and possibly still has, a Sun Room).

Care to explain this bit, please? I am not arguing the number since I don't know Solaris too well but 'thousands' makes me really curious.

You can access Sun's solutions index here. It might take a little digging to find what you are looking for.

Ok. How about Sun Volume Manager as bundled with Solaris 9 ?

Monoculture or Diversity?

The AP ran a story this weekend, captured by Yahoo, talking about Dan Geer and his thoeries of how the Microsoft Monoculture endangers computer security. I have concerns.

Although I know this won't fend off the zealots who just need to speak their mind, else their puny little heads explode off of their shoulders, atrophied from lack of lifting their hands any higher than a keyboard, I offer this caveat: What I'm about to present is merely philosophical rambling, curious wonder, nothing more than an innocent what if. It is, in no way, intended to offer an argument, solution, opposition, or anything else that would offend (other than those puny headed, shoulderless freaks).

Just the facts, Mam

I found it intriguing that, as the AP article mentioned:

"Steven Cooper, the Homeland Security Department's chief information officer... acknowledged [monoculture] was a concern and said the department would likely expand its use of Linux and Unix as a precaution."

Why hasn't Mr. Cooper, the media, and suposed security experts who promote U/Linux as a safe alternative, acknowledge that U/Linux also have their share of security advisories? Take a look at Secunia and their product listing. Doesn't anyone care that Solaris 9 had more advisories (42) in 2003 than Windows 2000 Server (36)? Doesn't it scare anyone that, while Windows XP Home edition had 32 advisories, Red Hat 9 had more than twice as many with 72? Debian 3 had 186!

Doesn't Open Source claim to have a better development model by throwing more eyeballs at the source code, thereby eliminating - or minimizing - security flaws earlier?

Missing the forest for the trees

Take a look at this, also from the AP article:

"Mike Reiter of Carnegie-Mellon University and Stephanie Forrest, a University of New Mexico biologist who has been gleaning lessons for computer security from living organisms for years, recently received a $750,000 National Science Foundation (news - web sites) grant to study methods to automatically diversify software code.

Daniel DuVarney and R. Sekar of the State University of New York-Stony Brook are exploring "benign mutations" that would diversify software, preserving the functional portions of code but shaking up the nonfunctional portions that are often targeted by viruses."

Are these people frickin bonkers? We're barely capable of securing the simplest SMTP and FTP services. Software is already beyond our comprehension. What makes us so arrogant as to assume we can write software that makes other software more secure - without breaking it, without opening unforseen security breaches? We are decades away from being that intelligent.

Of course, on the plus side of this approach, as software gets more complicated, it will be too obfuscated for the Puny Heads to understand and, therefore, will be a great deterrent for attacks! (Yeah, sarcasm)

Miopic Intelligence

Dan Geer likes to compare the information world to that of biology, equating computer viruses with biological viruses. I have one problem with this way of thinking. Biological viruses simply exist, have always existed and will always exist. They don't have an agenda. They don't have malicious intent. They aren't scheduled or targeted. They are nature. It's the way the system works. The global ecosystem is s

You can even download the beta.

They don't.

Not when compared to this beast. Each of those 72 UltraSPARC IV CPU chips is actually two 64-bit CPUs on die.

144 CPUs, 1/2 a terabyte of RAM, near linear scalability.

In fact, the Intel architecture pretty much can't scale well beyond 4-6 CPUs because of problems like cache coherency - i.e., when CPU a modifies a memory value any CPU that has the memory value in cache needs to know that cached value is now invalid.

Actually, Solaris 10 is available to everybody through the Solaris Express program. And it's free (for non-commercial use).

DTrace sends the probes through a server looking for hardware errors and anything that might be slowing application performance.

DTrace is a sweet tool for anyone who's had the chance to run Solaris Express, but a much better description can be found at the source.

Sun wrote an open letter to IBM. I guess they think there is a point ;)

Open source is hardly a zero-revenue model; ask Red Hat, which had a share price over triple Sun's when I just checked.

What apps? Please name a significant one.

Tricky. I use JEdit, jDiskReport, and Tile Molester a lot (the last is a graphics editor for tile-based console systems), but I imagine you'd counter that none of those are "significant" applications. And you've already ruled out Eclipse, presumably on the grounds that it's incestuous.

How about this lot? Is there nothing significant among that lot?

If not, then please define significant.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the demo CD for Sun's Java Desktop System that I got at LinuxWorld this year is based on Morphix.

Sun's Java Desktop, which is based on Linux kernel and Suse Linux, will only help to increase the share of the Linux Desktop.
Sun Java Desktop System is full featured desktop OS that includes StarOffice + Support from Sun Microsystems, and is available for only $100.
Here are some more presentations on Sun Java Desktop

So you want to know more about Jaron in order to know whether you want to know more about Jaron even though you've already made up your mind that you don't want to know more about Jaron?

Well, apparently Jaron coined the term "virtual reality," and has done some work in, you guessed it, virtual reality. You can read his interview here, in which he talks about coding. However, even if you do, you haven't RTFA because today's article is about an interview with Victoria Livschitz. HTH.

Sun trys to seem all buddy-buddy when around the Linux community but in a lot of their press releases and documentation they bash Linux.

These would be the press releases and documentation about their own Linux distro, would they? My God - look, they're describing Linux as "the first viable Microsoft Windows alternative"! Man, I hate those Sun people, always bashing Linux!

Seeing as Java was originally designed for video recorders and washing machine firmware, and still shows that...

Birthday

... I will just say...

... say away from Java. It is really pants. I still can't get over the CPU resource it needs, and also the non-forgiving attitude of it's lameness.

Nick

With the 1.4.2 release we provided two new look and feels for Swing: XP and GTK. Rather than taking a break, in 1.5 we're providing two more look and feels: Synth, a skinnable look and feel, and Ocean, a new theme for Metal.

...every user interface I've ever seen done with Java stinks. Maybe I've been seeing bad examples...

And maybe you've never run a Java application on Mac OS X (or ever noticed you were using one). You can give a native look and feel to your applications fairly easily, as shown here

<Open-Source Software is more secure because there are more people reviewing it.

Pretty bad argument for business. "So our security, and my job, relies on what people do in their spare time?"

No... your security, and your job, relies on what people do on their jobs. People who work for:

IBM

Sun

HP

RedHat

Mandrake

SuSE

Sendmail, Inc.

...and many more companies that support OSS. There was a point in time where OSS was largely written and maintained by people in their spare time; these days, there are people who have jobs that revolve around developing, maintaining and improving OSS.

There's still crud out there, of course. Remember Sturgeon's law: 90% of everything is crud. This goes for both commercial and open source software. You should evaluate OSS the same way you evaluate commercial software: who wrote it, what's their reputation, does it have the features we need, how stable is it, etc.

You wouldn't judge Microsoft's capabilities based on the kind of software that Sun produced, would you? Then why would derive your opinion of Apache, Sendmail, Bind, Linux, XFree86, BSD, KDevelop, Gnome and the like based on the fact that some other, completely seperate OSS project isn't worth dreck?

...Second of all, every user interface I've ever seen done with Java stinks. Maybe I've been seeing bad examples, ...

Most Java apps are not client side apps. Java is (at least at the moment) still heavily server-side. So looking at GUI apps as a mark of quality of Java as a development language is highly misleading, although understandable.

However, take a look at Swing Sightings for some examples of truly outstanding Java GUI apps...

Check out Sun Microsystem's N1 Grid.
I hear Sun offering suport for Linux as well, these days

Check out Sun Java Desktop System. It is a OS based on a Linux kernel and Suse Linux.
Though you won't be able click and install applications, like one would do on a Window box, but Java Desktop System is a very close to it.
I think Sun Java desktop introduced a happy medium. Making it too easy to install software, increase chances of getting infected by a virus, worm etc.

Here are some more presentations on Sun Java Desktop

Hey, I was just wondering if Sun is going to get upset (read as: call the lawyers we wanna sue!) because of the use of the name Cobalt.
There used to be a Linux appliance company called Cobalt that was bought out by Sun a while back now.
I couldn't find a link on Sun's site to the Cobalt products but I did find one to their support site
Hmmm....

Hey, I was just wondering if Sun is going to get upset (read as: call the lawyers we wanna sue!) because of the use of the name Cobalt.
There used to be a Linux appliance company called Cobalt that was bought out by Sun a while back now.
I couldn't find a link on Sun's site to the Cobalt products but I did find one to their support site
Hmmm....

Although I can't tell you anything about getting a career in 'computer forensics', I have found some info that might help you.

Sun's BigAdmin security FAQs page has articles like "Basic Steps in the Forensic Analysis of Unix systems" and "Responding to Customer's Security Incidents". Some of them are from Sun, some from outside sources.

You might also want to try the Linux documentation project to find some good help files.

Why not use an existing and available metadata standard, such as the jpeg2000 metadata standard, or the EXIF standard that embeds the metadata into the image file?

These standards are already available, are already being used in cameras and imaging software,
and are documented well enough that support can be implemented into your open-source imagebrowser or other app. There is no reason to add (now redundant) metadata layer to the filesystem or image database when the required metadata is already included in the image file itself in a easy to extract manner.

There are some interesting and informative articles pertaining to image metadata located at the TASI website and an article about accessing jpeg metadata using java (not really java specific) over at Sun's Java site.

Perhaps Microsoft is working within the existing standards while selling it as their own creation. If they are, it would not be the first time, and that would still be much more desirable than if they were rolling their own non-compatible, propietary standard.