Sun Opens Java.net

An anonymous reader writes "Sun just opened two new Java sites, java.com and java.net. java.com seems to be some marketing fluff. java.net, however, seems to be aimed at open source java programmers and is run by O'Reilly. It's got wikis, blogs, and hosts a lot of projects, including the new java gaming projects. Worth a look."

Comments

oxymoron

[L. VeGas]

java.net

Re:oxymoron

[Anonymous Coward]

Funniest thing I've ever read on Slashdot.

Re:oxymoron

[jpsst34]

When I read the headline, my first thought was that Sun was creating a Java version of .net. Hmmm, a knock-off of a knock-off of one's self.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, what would it be if someone imitated you imitating them? Mockery, I guess.

Way to go, Sun! Stick it to the knock-off!

Re:oxymoron

[wcbarksdale]

Sun stealing the .net name from Microsoft is worse than that time when the whole internet stole .com from MSDOS programs.

Re:oxymoron

[yerricde]

Or when Disney stole the name "Nemo" from a comic strip.

Lose Michael Eisner. Lose the greed.

Re:oxymoron

[jerdenn]

And of course, if C# is a knock-off of java, that would make java a knock off of c++, and c++ a knock off of c, etc...

Please - .NET isn't a java-knock off. I program in both, so I'm well aware of the similarities and differences.

-jerdenn

Bad Links???

[bay43270]

I've seen this posted on /. fifty times before. Every time the author leaves out the http:// in the anchor tag, everyone jumps on them. I never thought anything of it (since I had been using Mozilla, and IE before that). But I just got a Mac. I'm browsin in Safari, which chokes on the two links in the article above. So now for the totaly off topic question: are Mozilla and IE interpereting the url wrong, or is Safari?

Re:Bad Links???

[InsaneCreator]

my mozilla want to go to http://slashdot.org/java.com and http://slashdot.org/java.net

if it doesn't start with a protocol:// it's not considered to be a full URL by the browser.

Re:Bad Links???

[recursiv]

Mozilla is wrong. http://www.slashdot.org/java.net is a valid url. Why should the browser second guess the author? In order to browse to to that url from a link on http://www.slashdot.org/, it would have to be fully qualified.

*Wrong!*

Re:Bad Links???

[42forty-two42]

If there's no http://, it must be interpreted as a relative link. Mozilla 1.2.1 correctly does this, and apparently so does safari.

Re:Bad Links???

[mystran]

Seems to work from the article (with Mozilla) but from the frontpage it gave me 404 for http://slashdot.org/java.net

Can't http:// be forced in slashcode ?

Re:Bad Links???

[ceejayoz]

Mozilla, IE, and Safari all interpret the link correctly - as a relative link.

<a href="java.net"> is a relative link
<a href="http://java.net"> is an absolute link

Re:Bad Links???

[blix5]

As others have said before, the URL should have been interpreted as a relative URL, and yes, your browser should have choked on it.

Some browsers simply do a better job than others when it comes to sticking to W3C HTTP standards. ;)

Working links

[ArmorFiend]

I am such a filthy hoar:
java.com and java.net

Correct those links!

[fok]

Before Slashdot gets slashdotted....

Wonder what took them to epoch

[mnmn]

... to provide community sites for java? And java.net sounds like java.NET. I think there should be a seperate community site for J2EE systems with a code repository, forums and recommendations, or am I ignorant of such a site?

Re:Wonder what took them to epoch

[michaelggreer]

www.theserverside.com is pretty good.

The Java.net creator is on to something

[ArmorFiend]

If you read his introduction to the site, he has a lot to say about creating a creative virtual community. The only problem is its jav-o-centric. (/me makes puking noises).

To some extent sourceforge, freshmeat, and CPAN provide this for the Free Software movement. But java.net seems more comprehensive in a way. We should rip it off. :)

Re:The Java.net creator is on to something

[DeadSea]

Java could really benifit from something along the lines of what CPAN has done for Perl. There is a heck of a lot of Java software out there, but I know of no central repository from which you can download, compile, and test, in a standard way.

The CPAN commmunity makes all this happen. If you have never used it, it is quite slick. The process goes something like this:
# install somenew:package
downloading |----------------100%|
compiling |----------------100%|
testing |--------------OK|

The Giant Java Tree is a nice collection of Java software, but it doesn't have the automatic downloads or tests. It also isn't as comprehensive as CPAN, but that is mostly because of the mountains of Java software available.

Re:The Java.net creator is on to something

[goofrider]

>>> Java could really benifit from something along the lines of what CPAN has done for Perl

http://www.jpackage.org/

Not really the CJAN that we want, but it's a nice repository of Java software prepackaged in RPM.

It's not cross-platform, it's not a real standard for Java software/component distribution, but it's the best you got on Linux right now. :)

Re:The Java.net creator is on to something

[sharv]

And that would be awesome for those of us who don't have a CS degree or an employer who'll shell out for training, yet still want to learn Java. I've learned a lot of Perl by not just using what's on CPAN, but by looking at the source and understanding why things work. Admittedly, it is nice to have a zillion ready-to-use modules to plug into your code, but there's a very substantial benefit to having the ability to see what others are doing.

It's obvious that there are many, many Java classes available for people to use in their code, but having everything collected and categorized in one place would be a great help.

Re:The Java.net creator is on to something

[Erbo]

Well, all I can say is, if Venice weren't already well established on SourceForge, I'd probably put it on Java.net. And it's comforting to know I now have a backup option if VA suddenly goes belly-up and SF disappears. (Not that I think that's gonna happen or anything, but sometimes you never know which way the frog's gonna jump.)

Re:The Java.net creator is on to something

[ArmorFiend]

I wonder a lot about sf.net. Unfortunately I get most of my news from slashdot. The last thing they said, about a year ago, was something to the effect of:

(paraphrase)
VA Software is hemmoraging money like nobody's business, laying off everyone, and switching to closed source throughout.

Usually this is closely followed by corporate death. But slashdot is still here. Hm.

Re:The Java.net creator is on to something

[Erbo]

Yeah, I'm not sure what's going on there either. Seems to me, most investors would be looking at VA by now like Toad looking at Storm and saying, "Don't you people ever die?" (Yes, I watched X-Men again when it was on cable tonight...)

They're still losing money, but not as fast as they used to. And their stock price has taken an uptick recently, on that leaked M$ memo where Ballmer described Linux as their greatest challenge. Their business right now is basically SourceForge, so SF.net is probably fairly secure for the moment, as a technology demo if nothing else. All in all, they're surviving, which is more than I can say for a bunch of companies. (To find all ths out, I glanced over the Yahoo! Finance news.)

Part of me wants to keep from looking a gift horse in the mouth, I suppose. But it's a situation that bears at least keeping an eye on. For that matter, so is the situation with Sun...Java.net will be at least as vulnerable to financial troubles at Sun as SF is to troubles at VA.

Re:wikis?

[jperegrino]

There's a bazillion wiki implementations out there - written is Java, Perl, whatnot, talking to flat files and different databases. Surely one of them scales.

It's not like we're talking about a single application that was ported to different platforms. Many of these were written from the ground up.

Yeah, the name does sound silly. But I sound just as silling saying 'blog' as I do 'wiki'.

Christina

[bryonC]

Does anyone else find it strage that Christina Aguilera is a spokesperson for java? http://java.com/en/explore/mobile/christina.jsp

Re:Christina

[AJWM]

Not a spokesperson, just another (vaguely Java related) product.

Man, anyone who subscribes to this service really needs to get a life. One of their own, not Christina's.

Re:Christina

[primus_sucks]

Yea they should have had James Gosling sitting at a keyboard with his belly showing.

Re:Christina

[Anonymous Coward]

From java.com:

Christina A. will tell you what she's up to, what she's wearing...

Ummm... yeah, ok.... right.

Re:wikis?

[AJWM]

But I sound just as silling saying 'blog' as I do 'wiki'.

Yeah, so do I. Which is why I don't say either, and why I chose a less silly word ('cosy') for my ancient text based equivalent.

Blogs, eh?

[jolshefsky]

... if she really likes me at all for being able to explain why all the functions should be arranged alphabetically. thankfully my antidepressants have kept me from killing myself.

June 12

aagh! i'm in bag hell. why won't my ui look like i want? bags in grids in flows ... i sound like dr. sues. roflmao. lol.

i was feeling good so i stopped taking my anti-depressants today.

June 13

i tried to touch my mouse but i think it hates me. i've been listening to the same depeche mode song over and over today.

i hate swing. i decided to just make one big flow and let all the buttons go where they want. it'll make a sh!tty calculator but who cares. does anyone care?

June 14

i woke up this morning finally manic. i got a grid layout for the number buttons and flowed the function buttons. it looks awesome!!!!!!! the support code is rock solid and i got junit installed and made 175 test cases. woo hoo!

my mom called and i talked to her while i called. she said i shouldn't have stopped taking my antidepressants. i told her i was on the cordless so i could be outside to finish my painting and i brought the laptop to the porch so i could code more test cases while i was on the phone.

...

Java Project Hosting Minus JSP...

[rimu guy]

By all accounts Java.net is more a (Tim) O'Rielly creation (than a Sun creation). A bunch of O'Rielly editors ganging up and creating a community site. More power to them.

Anyone know why the java.net project hosting doesn't include JSP and EJB services? Surely any decent OpenSource Java project would want to use those technologies to create their web presence...

Re:Java Project Hosting Minus JSP...

[Anonymous Coward]

It probably does use .jsp stuff to display pages,
or maybe some other templating stuff/presentation
kit.

Just cause you don't see a .jsp doesn't mean
anything -- the servlet(s) that handle all this
will forward the requests to the relevant JSP
(or whatever) stuff.

And while I'm a big fan of the architecture, let
me add a troll -- debugging JSPs sucks...I try
and arrange things so that I do absolutely as
little as possible in the JSP. Perhaps some
think this is just good design, but sometimes
it's a pain in the butt.

plus, an eye test for free!

[dankelley]

Java.net has another cool feature: it's an eye test! I had to hit control+ several times in mozilla-1.4/redhat-9 to get a font I could read.

Or maybe looking at the Java.com pictures of Christina Aguilera (a well-known java coder) has wrecked my eyes.

Java.net a step in the right direction

[sciwhiz007]

At the risk of sounding a bit trollish, java.net is certainly a step in the right direction for Java as a whole. My first impression of it is pretty good, and the concept of a meeting and sharing place for people interested in and/or developing in Java is a great idea. I can't wait to see how java.net turns out in the future. Hopefully this is a sign that Sun is turning Java into a more and more open standard as time progresses.

Cool

[CompiledMonkey]

I'm happy they created those sites. Java could use some marketing IMO.