A year ago Novell seemed to have lost its way with its SuSE initative. The executive who had directed the open source strategy had departed, and much of the rest of the company just didn't get it.
Then they decided to release OpenSuse. OpenSuse is now more popular than Fedora Core. That won back the devs like me who had not been listening. And OpenSuse is polished.
This announcement of itself is not that huge. But when taken with the other things they have been doing I can see that Novell can gain mindshare amongst developers and their traditional corporate base. That bodes well for them.
C# includes the "unsafe" keyword to allow a block of code to run outside the verifier.
The study authors say "Since a security policy cannot be enforced on unmanaged code, we only consider managed code." Given that most C# applications use unmanaged code, they are potentially vulnerable to buffer overflow attacks and the like.
C# has been criticised repeatdely in the security community for this feature. Java always runs in safe or managed mode and is therefore more secure than C#.
That the authors of the paper make conclusions about C# security, while deliberatley excluding a gaping hole, and the papers appearance on an MS site leads me to the belief that the paper was probably sponsored by MS and they directed the study authors to exclude unmanaged code from the scope.
Bill Caelli, one of the world's leading security experts, humiliated a Microsoft representative over unsafe code and stated that "Microsoft had missed an historic opporunity to improve security in their products".
I support Mac OS X on my open source projects ehcache, ehcache-constructs and jpam. I also have a commercial app, simonsayssoftware.com.au that runs on Mac. I am not overly concerned about the lack of Cocoa bindings. You typically use Java where you want to cross platform. Using proprietary OS features is a committment to maintaining multiple code bases, something I have managed to avoid in my Mac Java coding.
Apple has long struggled to deliver a first class Java implementation. There Java version is always 6-12 months behind the release from Sun. They do not have a -server option which is what most application servers use.
JBuilder 8 and 9 were not available for Mac because the Java was too broken.
Java 5 is not available in auto update but is a separate download. It does not some with the src.jar or the javadoc. At the moment you need to copy those missing files from the Linux version.
Java was missing from the 200 new features in Tiger, although they could have included Java 5.
So, this announcement is more of the limited support for Java that Apple has been giving us for a long time.
I clicked on the download for Mac OS X on the beta page and got sent to the mac page and the lame 1.1 version.
I think they need to be truly cross platform. There are a lot of desktop Linux users who also use Mac OS X. OO needs to support both to properly support those users.
In the beginning was the command line
on
Ask Neal Stephenson
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
In this famous essay you say "The ideal OS for me would be one that had a well-designed GUI that was easy to set up and use, but that included terminal windows where I could revert to the command line interface, and run GNU software, when it made sense. A few years ago, Be Inc. invented exactly that OS. It is called the BeOS."
It seems that if you wrote the Command Line Essay now you would find Mac OS X to be you ideal OS. Is that true?
Q: The first paragraph of a Cryptonomicon sequel
on
Ask Neal Stephenson
·
· Score: 1
I rate Cryptonomicon as the best book I have ever read. I have reread it more than any other book. I lent it out a few years back and it got handed around Australia's Defence Signals Directorate in Canberra where the spooks loved it.
I would love to see the thread of Randy and Amy picked up in a post.com world. I can imagine Randy, Avi, Tom and the gang riding high in Singapore with the Bio dollars being thrown around there.
My question is this: Though you may never write a sequel to Cryptonomicon, what would the first paragraph be?
A month ago I did some performance testing of a J2EE application which is currently running on dual Xeons.
The dual Opteron running Fedora Core 2 64 bit for AMD and Java JDK 5.0 RC1 was 2 to three times faster on our test suite. Interestingly, the tests which mainly did things involving CPU-Memory I/O were more than three times faster.
See here for more details.
Build times for Java are a combination of source code generation, compiling, jar execution and ant scripts.
I have an app I just built on the following machines:
Apple Power Mac G4 867 with JDK.1.4.2 - 18 seconds Toshiba 1.8Ghz PIV with JDK1.4.2 - 16 seconds
I find both machines fine for running IDEs like IntelliJ 4 and JBuilder X. Your 1.3 G4 should be fine for the next 2-3 years. Java is also actually getting faster as it goes, so even my older hardware feels great 2 years on.
So, I would say that speed should not be the differentiator.
One thing to consider is that new versions of Java are out for Intel - Linux and Windows before Mac. This is an effect of Apple doing their own JDK under licence from Sun. For example JDK1.5 beta is out on Intel, but will probably be 6 months away on Apple. Apple just released JDK1.4.2, once again about 7-8 months behind Sun. You get the same situation on HP-UX and Compaq Alpha.
On the other hand no other OS vendor is as committed to Java as Apple. It is a first class language for Mac development.
James Gosling, Martin Fowler and a lot of people from the company I work for, run their Java on Mac.
Finally, Java, with the Quartz look and feel looks just beautiful on Mac.
We made a major deployment of Linux three months ago . The CIO printed all the stuff out and thought about it and did not see any merit in it. He actually thought Microsoft was somehow behind the FUDing of Linux. I think we will find out in court what the motivation was.
You can lobby the premier directly through this web-based email form
I met with Richard Alston, the Federal Australian Minister for Technology a few years ago at an awards ceremony and spent a half hour with him explaining open source and the famous role some Australians play in it (e.g. Andrew Morton - kernel, Paul 'Rusty' Russell iptables, Andrew 'tridg' Tridgell - Samba, rsync...) and found he was genuinely interested. He asked for some submissions which I sent to him. You are never sure of a result, however the Federal Government recently issued a pro open source policy, so at least I think I did no harm.
So, you can probably help by offering your support, particularly any South Australians out there.
Slashdot Mirror
A year ago Novell seemed to have lost its way with its SuSE initative. The executive who had directed the open source strategy had departed, and much of the rest of the company just didn't get it.
Then they decided to release OpenSuse. OpenSuse is now more popular than Fedora Core. That won back the devs like me who had not been listening. And OpenSuse is polished.
This announcement of itself is not that huge. But when taken with the other things they have been doing I can see that Novell can gain mindshare amongst developers and their traditional corporate base. That bodes well for them.
The study authors say "Since a security policy cannot be enforced on unmanaged code, we only consider managed code." Given that most C# applications use unmanaged code, they are potentially vulnerable to buffer overflow attacks and the like.
C# has been criticised repeatdely in the security community for this feature. Java always runs in safe or managed mode and is therefore more secure than C#.
For more on what unsafe code means see http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url= /library/en-us/dncscol/html/Csharp10182001.asp
That the authors of the paper make conclusions about C# security, while deliberatley excluding a gaping hole, and the papers appearance on an MS site leads me to the belief that the paper was probably sponsored by MS and they directed the study authors to exclude unmanaged code from the scope.
Bill Caelli, one of the world's leading security experts, humiliated a Microsoft representative over unsafe code and stated that "Microsoft had missed an historic opporunity to improve security in their products".
Apple has long struggled to deliver a first class Java implementation. There Java version is always 6-12 months behind the release from Sun. They do not have a -server option which is what most application servers use.
JBuilder 8 and 9 were not available for Mac because the Java was too broken.
Java 5 is not available in auto update but is a separate download. It does not some with the src.jar or the javadoc. At the moment you need to copy those missing files from the Linux version.
Java was missing from the 200 new features in Tiger, although they could have included Java 5.
So, this announcement is more of the limited support for Java that Apple has been giving us for a long time.
I clicked on the download for Mac OS X on the beta page and got sent to the mac page and the lame 1.1 version. I think they need to be truly cross platform. There are a lot of desktop Linux users who also use Mac OS X. OO needs to support both to properly support those users.
In this famous essay you say "The ideal OS for me would be one that had a well-designed GUI that was easy to set up and use, but that included terminal windows where I could revert to the command line interface, and run GNU software, when it made sense. A few years ago, Be Inc. invented exactly that OS. It is called the BeOS." It seems that if you wrote the Command Line Essay now you would find Mac OS X to be you ideal OS. Is that true?
I rate Cryptonomicon as the best book I have ever read. I have reread it more than any other book. I lent it out a few years back and it got handed around Australia's Defence Signals Directorate in Canberra where the spooks loved it. I would love to see the thread of Randy and Amy picked up in a post .com world. I can imagine Randy, Avi, Tom and the gang riding high in Singapore with the Bio dollars being thrown around there.
My question is this: Though you may never write a sequel to Cryptonomicon, what would the first paragraph be?
A month ago I did some performance testing of a J2EE application which is currently running on dual Xeons. The dual Opteron running Fedora Core 2 64 bit for AMD and Java JDK 5.0 RC1 was 2 to three times faster on our test suite. Interestingly, the tests which mainly did things involving CPU-Memory I/O were more than three times faster. See here for more details.
Last week I benchmarked the 2.2Ghz Opteron on 64 bit Linux 2.6 and Java. I got almost three times the performance of a 3Ghz Xeon. For details see http://gregluck.com/blog/space/start/2004-07-29/1# AMD64,_JDK1.5.0_and_Linux_2.6_rock!/
Build times for Java are a combination of source code generation, compiling, jar execution and ant scripts.
I have an app I just built on the following machines:
Apple Power Mac G4 867 with JDK.1.4.2 - 18 seconds
Toshiba 1.8Ghz PIV with JDK1.4.2 - 16 seconds
I find both machines fine for running IDEs like IntelliJ 4 and JBuilder X. Your 1.3 G4 should be fine for the next 2-3 years. Java is also actually getting faster as it goes, so even my older hardware feels great 2 years on.
So, I would say that speed should not be the differentiator.
One thing to consider is that new versions of Java are out for Intel - Linux and Windows before Mac. This is an effect of Apple doing their own JDK under licence from Sun. For example JDK1.5 beta is out on Intel, but will probably be 6 months away on Apple. Apple just released JDK1.4.2, once again about 7-8 months behind Sun. You get the same situation on HP-UX and Compaq Alpha.
On the other hand no other OS vendor is as committed to Java as Apple. It is a first class language for Mac development.
James Gosling, Martin Fowler and a lot of people from the company I work for, run their Java on Mac.
Finally, Java, with the Quartz look and feel looks just beautiful on Mac.
We made a major deployment of Linux three months ago . The CIO printed all the stuff out and thought about it and did not see any merit in it. He actually thought Microsoft was somehow behind the FUDing of Linux. I think we will find out in court what the motivation was.
You can lobby the premier directly through this web-based email form I met with Richard Alston, the Federal Australian Minister for Technology a few years ago at an awards ceremony and spent a half hour with him explaining open source and the famous role some Australians play in it (e.g. Andrew Morton - kernel, Paul 'Rusty' Russell iptables, Andrew 'tridg' Tridgell - Samba, rsync ...) and found he was genuinely interested. He asked for some submissions which I sent to him. You are never sure of a result, however the Federal Government recently issued a pro open source policy, so at least I think I did no harm.
So, you can probably help by offering your support, particularly any South Australians out there.