Java2 SDK v. 1.4 Released 362
pangloss writes: "Yay: XML, built-in Perl-ish regex, jdbc 3.0, asserts, IPv6, lots of other goodies. Release notes and incompatibilities. And I think this means I can use my wheel-mouse in NetBeans without that extra module ;) Download it here." WilsonSD adds: "There are many cool new features including a New I/O package, an Assert Facility and enhanced performance." Some other random Java notes: O'Reilly has an essay about why you won't see any open source J2EE implementations, and Kodak has filed a patent-infringement claim against Sun regarding Java.
It's a big step up, but there is still distance (Score:4, Interesting)
Java will always present a dilemma. With the push for portability, you often have to wait for the platform itself to support things like this (select) or kludge it in very non portable ways. But that portability leaves the system behind which hurts it in competition with other systems more tolerant of innovation and the fracturing it brings.
A good philosophy would be to rule that every time a system library or feature needs to do something that an ordinary user can't do, they don't just build it in, they make a way that an ordinary user could write it. That paves the way for more innovation.
Re:It's a big step up, but there is still distance (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's a big step up, but there is still distance (Score:2)
To lazy to write it yourself? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It's a big step up, but there is still distance (Score:4, Informative)
I've been using NBIO (Non-Blocking IO) [berkeley.edu] for quite some time, getting very good results. Been waiting for Java 1.4 to go final so I can start working with java.nio
Re:It's a big step up, but there is still distance (Score:4, Interesting)
It's worth noting that the Berkeley NBIO package was part of the research that led to the 1.4 java.nio package.
Also, using their package, and a very interesting partitioned, event-based coding style [berkeley.edu], they wrote, in Java, a web server [berkeley.edu] that out performs Apache (written in C).
Java Secure Socket Extension (Score:5, Informative)
???
Re:Java Secure Socket Extension (Score:3, Insightful)
There is an RFE I entered about this a while back http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/bugParade
hope swing is faster now / I prefer Ruby over Java (Score:2, Redundant)
a few days ago I played a little with Ruby (the coolest language available IMHO) and Gtk+. although the bindings are not yet finished they work very well under Linux and this is much faster than Java/Swing.
Maybe Ruby is the future. At least I hope so. If Ruby gets more stable modules Ruby can be the Number One OOP language. It is cleaner than Perl or Java, the Programms are shorter, the Language is more intuitive and.... and.... and. This is only my humble opinion. See for yourself if you like ruby. check out http://www.ruby-lang.org
Ruby vs. Java (Score:2, Insightful)
But I can't forsee Ruby supplanting Java for large projects. The typing is too dynamic, and this ends up being a big headache and source of problems in larger code bases. More concertely, the lack of compile-time type checking makes it hard for Ruby to scale to big projects. You don't find out until runtime if something is type correct, and even then maybe not until some rare execution sequence occurs. Or, worse, it might be type correct in the Ruby sense (i.e., an object can receive a certain message), but not be at all type correct from the programmer's point of view, which might manifest itself in difficult-to-find bugs.
This is a problem with dynamic casting in Java/C++, too, but in those languages the dynamic type checking is the exception rather than the rule (this will get a lot better when Java introduces parametric types in 1.5). More fundamentally, though, at least those languages offer compile-time type checking support, whereas Ruby does not and cannot (since code can be dynamically injected into objects).
Re:hope swing is faster now / I prefer Ruby over J (Score:2, Interesting)
Summary of new features (Score:4, Informative)
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/docs/relnotes/featur
Articles about the news APIs and how to use them available here:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/articles.html [sun.com]
Re:Summary of new features (Score:2)
And probablePrime() was there before, they just changed it from private to public.
-Kevin
Coincidence? (Score:5, Funny)
Asserts (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Asserts (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Asserts (Score:3, Interesting)
They are easy; they catch bugs that might not otherwise ever be noticed (or noticed only as some pervasive flakiness); they save you a lot of time that would otherwise be spent debuging; they are good documentation; they don't cost anything in non-debug builds; they save you from a lot of pain. Despite all this, I haven't yet successfully convinced a single person who is unfamiliar with them of their value. Christ I get dismayed sometimes.
This interview [kerneltrap.com] with FreeBSD kernel hacker Matt Dillon has some interesting things to say about assertions ("it greatly contributed to our famed stability in 4.0 and later releases [of the FreeBSD kernel]").
Java finally has them? Cool. What year is it again? 2002? Jeez
Re:Problem with Asserts (Score:2)
Unit testing (Score:3, Insightful)
A good unit testing framework for Java is JUnit [junit.org], they are available for other languages as well.
BTW, you can create your own assertions with Log4J [apache.org], so even JDK 1.1/1.2/1.3 users can use them:
if(logger.isDebugEnabled())
if (bla>10)
logger.warn("bla>10, bla=" + bla);
This uses almost no CPU-time if debugging is disabled. Log4J is a very good logging package, it surely beats System.out.println, check it out!
J2EE openness (Score:2, Interesting)
Mono is at least opensource... can you say the same for J2EE? Will you ever be able to say the same?
there are plenty of OSS java implementations (Score:2)
Wording was bad (Score:5, Interesting)
Now if you think
At the moment J2EE has gone through a lot of refinement, and I think makes a pretty good platform for server side development. I think desktop code is still up for grabs by either Jvaa or
Re:J2EE openness (Score:5, Insightful)
btw, as it is a server, it does not run on the client.
Shouldn't be any harder (Score:2)
It shouldn't be any harder. You don't need an IDE to write in the Java language for the J2SE platform, but Sun still provides a free(beer) IDE that includes a form designer. Likewise, you don't need an IDE to write in the C# language for the .NET platform, but M$ still provides an expensive IDE that includes a form designer. Besides, the languages are so similar that it may even be possible to take simple business logic (not I/O) written in one language and simply recompile it in the other language.
Genericity? (Score:3, Insightful)
-Hein
Re:Genericity? (Score:2, Interesting)
Jon
Re:Genericity? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Genericity? (Score:2, Interesting)
Bracha pointed out that one problem with C++ templates is code bloat. For every List<T> of type T, C++ generates a separate class.
I'm glad someone posted this link. This is EXACTLY the problem with C++. It isn't in the class structures (they are almost exact to C's structs) but the fact that the templates have to generate seperate class structures to make sure that each one doesn't conflict.
This I have seen working with C++: A matter of a template has done almost a 25% - 80% reduction in my executable size. I'm not kidding -- from 1 MB to 200 kB! This was the case because I made two instances of the same class (cut 'n paste) because I really didn't need all the generics involved in the program. While typing all that stuff then doing a cut-n-paste was slow to do, the executable size was worth it.
Anyway, if you code in C++, the STL is decent FWIW. I wouldn't lean on it though if you're going to do major embedded coding... but get the String class; it's great.
Re:Genericity? (Score:3, Flamebait)
Java will support parametised types, not templates. C++'s solution is a hack, and most people know that. True language (and VM) support for parametised types will not involve any binary bloat. In a way you can think of it as having a "object type" attribute and doing an "instanceof" to check that the type is right.
Yeah, But... (Score:2)
Re:Genericity? (Score:3, Interesting)
The 1.5 Java generics are merely syntactic sugar. Since the casts still occur, there is no performance benefit, only cleaner source code. There is no way to parameterize primitive types like int.
I do not consider the proposed generics to be adequate. You are still better off, performance wise, generating your own custom collections for specific types. This is what GNU trove does.
-Kevin
Re:Genericity? (Score:2)
Yes, obviously, but I've never had much of an issue with it. Have you? That seems like more of a purist argument to me. You can always subclass your own collections for that. Sure it would be good and more convenient, and I'm not disagreeing that compile-time safety should be there, but an invalid Java cast will throw a ClassCastException. It's not like casting a C pointer where you will probably segfault.
My issue is just that generics only address part of the issue. Casting and using wrapper classes like Integer is slow. Once you have fixed the class types at compile time via generics, why must you take the cast hit at runtime? It's a hack. If you build your own collections for specific types, you have compile time type safety -and- performance.
-KevinRe:Genericity? (Score:3, Insightful)
puts an instance of class X in a vector that's
really meant to be holding class Y. No exception
is thrown until you access the bad data and try
to cast it to a Y, at which point there's no good
way to find out where the error occurred.
Now you have to dig through 100k lines of code
to find the mistake. With generics it's caught at
compile-time.
That said, generics should be implemented so as
to give you performance, too. If you know
everything in a collection is an X, there's no
reason to do any casting at all.
Re:Genericity? (Score:2)
And I was recently delivered C++ code that used a class with a private constructor and const static instances, instead of good old fashioned enums (goodbye switch, hello if/else/if/else/if/else...). I initially assumed that it was a paranoid developer who'd read Effective C++ and didn't want to be passing uninitialised enums around. Turns out that it was written by a Java programmer who didn't know what an enum was.
Java isn't just missing enums, it's beginning to remove them from the developer's toolkit, and that can't be a good thing.
64 bit - wow! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:64 bit - wow! (Score:2)
Compaq already shipped a 64-bit JVM for their Alpha systems [compaq.com] (running Tru64, OpenVMS, or something called Linux) a while back.
J2SDK on Win98 and Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
However I will note that, while the Java Web Start was installed on Windows, I didn't find any version of it for linux. And the downside to the Web Start I found is that it constantly wanted to download and install a new version of Java Runtime Environment 1.3.x everytime I lauched an application. And then after the download, and installed, I'm prompted to reboot the computer. After rebooting and trying to launch again, it again starts to download JRE 1.3.x and through the whole cycle all over again.
As well, with my windows install I found I was constantly having difficulties getting it to use the default classpath (ie, no environment variable set for CLASSPATH). I ended up having to resort to specifying the classpath at the command line. And no matter how much I tried, I could no manage to get Swing to work properly.
However on the other hand, the Linux install was rather straight forward, with a few simple steps: Change download to executable; Run it; move the extracted directory to a shared path (as su); add the java/bin directory to the search path; and finally add the java/man directory to the search paths for man.
The windows installer was straight forward, though the above problems still hampered me.
AUTOEXEC.BAT (Score:3, Informative)
Re:J2SDK on Win98 and Linux (Score:4, Interesting)
Jon
I've been using this for a while (Score:3, Interesting)
Definetly cool that the stable version is out, I'll have to upgrade at some point, when I have time.
Hopefully they'll implement this at Topcoder.com too, so I don't have to keep using the old docs in the compos
Re:I've been using this for a while (Score:3, Funny)
It must be hell on productivity working on Autopr0n, what with the spank sessions every thirty minutes or so.
Re:I've been using this for a while (Score:2)
At least Sun is brutally honest. (Score:3, Interesting)
Deeper, though, I think, is the need to rein in Java a bit....It has achieved ubiquitousness, and I think Sun knows it. Watch. If
My take on JDK 1.4 (Score:4, Interesting)
I have mixed feelings with JDK 1.4.
The JPDA (debugging) support in 1.4 is vastly improved. You can now redefine [sun.com] classes in a running virtual machine. This is really cool and I have written an Ant 'Redefine task to take advantage of this.
The assert facility is OK.... i don't like the fact that they added an Assert keyword but I don't get to make the decisions.
There is also some controversy.
The JSPA agreement that one has to sign to participate in the JCP [jcp.org] is WAY too restrictive for Open Source developers. The Apache Software Foundation has a good document where they drawn the line in the sand [apache.org] on their participation.
The Log4J people are upset because there is now a 'stanard' Java package for logging. IMO the 'standard' package is inferior to Log4J in many situations.
The regexp package is not all it is cracked up to be either. I would recommend Jakarta ORO or Jakarta Regexp.
As far as that... it runs GREAT on Linux. Probably the most SOLID VM I have ever run.
They did break some stuff with legacy code. If you ever named a class 'URI' your code will now fail to compile because they put this class in the java.net package which everyone imports anyway.
As far as C# vs
Also.. check out my Reptile project. [openprivacy.org] It is Java based, only requires JDK 1.2 and incorporates some really cool Java/XML stuff.
Re:My take on JDK 1.4 (Score:2)
The JSPA agreement that one has to sign to participate in the JCP [jcp.org] is WAY too restrictive for Open Source developers. The Apache Software Foundation has a good document where they drawn the line in the sand [apache.org] on their participation.
[...]
As far as C# vs
Now that Microsoft is kept busy plagiarising...oops, I mean creating a competing C#, perhaps Sun wont have to fear embrace and extend tactics against Java itself, and dares to open up a bit more to open source and open standards. Maybe they will even be forced to do it to survive.
Re:My take on JDK 1.4 (Score:4, Informative)
Not really a 'breakage'. If you imported only what you needed (java.net.URL, java.net.Socket etc.) your code will continue to work. Only if you used the statement "import java.net.*" will it now fail, and that's down to the individual coder, not the JDK.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:My take on JDK 1.4 (Score:2)
Yes, '*' is the lazy programmer's haven.
Java is great, but wildcard imports just invite namespace clashes and poor documenation of dependencies in the software.
Just using one import per class provides instant automatic source-code-level documentation of all the dependencies in a software project.
Re:My take on JDK 1.4 (Score:3, Insightful)
I agreed with your whole post except for this statement. It is just FUD (perhaps unintentional). The fact is that CLR/CLI isn't going to kill off Java in the next 16 months, which is when I expect to see JDK 1.5 delivered. Also, there is nothing stopping open-source clean-room implementations of anything in J2SE, AFAICT. You just can't call your product "Java" and you won't be able to get your runtime certified by Sun. Similarly, I doubt that Microsoft will let somewhat create a clean-room CLR/CLI and call it "The
Re:My take on JDK 1.4 (Score:2)
Re:My take on JDK 1.4 (Score:2)
Re:My take on JDK 1.4 (Score:5, Informative)
They did break some stuff with legacy code. If you ever named a class 'URI' your code will now fail to compile because they put this class in the java.net package which everyone imports anyway.
If you have a foo.bar.URI class, and the core has a java.net.URI class, you can still use yours.
You can:
import java.net.*;
import foo.bar.URI;
Existing code does not need to be recompiled, since bytecode always explicitly names classes always, but existing code does potentially need to be fixed if recompiled, as the default results of the imports will change. This is a pretty small and common occurrence with a new API set.
Re:My take on JDK 1.4 (Score:5, Insightful)
Please take a close look at both the openess of
You mention (must have seen this somewhere before on Slashdot
Many people complained when Sun would release a JDK for Windows and Solaris that it didn't have one of Linux. Then they complained when a Linux JDK was created that it didn't come out at the same time. Now with Sun releasing all 3 JDK simeltaneously (and the likes of Apple and IBM not usually far behind), consider this:
How likely do you think this situation would be if the JCP (or something like it) was not in place? Do you really think you would be saying "As far as that... it runs GREAT on Linux. Probably the most SOLID VM I have ever run." if Java was Open Source?
Maybe it would be:
"Well the Linux version is pretty good - can't use the xyz library because that's Windows only and it will probably be out of beta only 6 months after the Windows version but hey - it's Open Source! That make me FEEL GOOD!"
What I would LOVE is to see Java open sources while ensuring that it remains cross-platform. While some would claim that open source would guantee that, it is not provable. Sun believes that there is too much risk. While you may not, agree with that you have Java that is:
a) free (as in beer)
b) you can read the source code the the whole API
c) you can change (but not distribute) the source
d) works on all major plaforms (including FreeBSD now BTW)
For me, and many other Java developers, these still place it far ahead of anything Microsoft is doing - and while Mono iterests me, its going to be a LONG time before it can match Java's (or even
Re:My take on JDK 1.4 (Score:2)
Then why on earth would they be upset? I never understood this line of thinking... if their product is better, people will use it. I for one am happy that there is finally a standardized approach to logging. If it seems it doesn't do enough to fit my requirements then I'll use some 3rd party logging package.
So they didn't clone the log4j API, big boo hoo.
Re:My take on JDK 1.4 (Score:3, Informative)
Stuff like logging APIs have enormous added value if everyone uses the same logging mechanism. Applications using multiple libraries that use disparate logging mechanisms are a mess. The result is people create kludges to integrate all of the various logging techniques so that they output to a single place. Sun's rejection of log4j will result in this happening.
Log4j is really better than Sun's. Oh well.
And nobody is upset that Sun didn't clone log4j. Everyone is upset because Sun didn't *take* log4j lock-stock-and-barrell. Apache/IBM offered it for the taking. The result is Not Good.
assert keyword was the right decision (Score:3, Informative)
Dude, read up. There is an excellent discussion [sun.com] of the reasoning behind their design decisions. They give a very good justification for adding a keyword; in fact, it's one of the FAQ questions:
Unlike a lot of other languages (C++ and C# spring to mind), the Java designers have been very tight about letting multitudes of constructs into the language. Java's minimality and internal consistency is one of the reasons it's been so successful, and its designers know this. They are very intelligent people who are making decisions very carefully -- and they're not going to add something to the language unless they have a very good reason.
In this case, they have a very good reason.
Re:My take on JDK 1.4 (Score:3, Informative)
Sorry to hear that, I hope I can persuade you a bit back towards the good side of the force... ;-)
I have mixed feelings with JDK 1.4.
I'm mostly ecstatic about it. =)
The assert facility is OK.... i don't like the fact that they added an Assert keyword but I don't get to make the decisions.
I wish they had done a better job of support DBC, but it should still be useful. I'm not too sure what it bought over just using existing "assert" hacks, which can also be compiled completely out.
There is also some controversy.
Perhaps in the minds of some...
The Log4J people are upset because there is now a 'stanard' Java package for logging. IMO the 'standard' package is inferior to Log4J in many situations.
I'm not sure what the complaint is here. If Log4J is superior (I've not looked at the logging API yet), it should still attract lots of users. Regardless, there is no way for Sun to extend the core JDK without potentially stepping on the toes of some developers. I don't see an easy way around that problem.
The regexp package is not all it is cracked up to be either. I would recommend Jakarta ORO or Jakarta Regexp.
Again, I can't comment on the technical merits of one versus the other. However, again I'm not sure what your problem is. There are alternative packages, which are better. Great, then use them! The core packages are essentially developed by committee, and are only one approach to the given problem domain. There are many tradeoffs in library design...
As far as that... it runs GREAT on Linux. Probably the most SOLID VM I have ever run.
That sounds great! I'm just about to install it.
They did break some stuff with legacy code. If you ever named a class 'URI' your code will now fail to compile because they put this class in the java.net package which everyone imports anyway.
That is not "breaking something". That is the reason Java has namespaces. Not a big deal at all.
As far as C# vs .Java. I am really impressed with the CLR/CLI stuff.
I'm not sure why...care to clarify? Have you read the comments about CLR based languages all being different skins of C#?
I'm also not sure why people seem to feel it's impossible to interface Java to legacy languages. People do it all the time using JNI.
Right now, as it stands, Java is a proprietary language. Unless we see SUN Open Source Java (or push it through a standards committee), we *may* see a JDK 1.5... but no one will use it.
Sun has made noises about open sourcing Java at some point. If it'd just release the compatibility tests as open source, that would go a long way. (It is currently perfectly fine to 'clean room' Java, as gcj is doing. You just can't call it "Java" without essentially licensing Java and getting the compatibility tests.)
Regardless of Sun's timing in releasing Java as open source, you're completely out of your mind if you think interest in Java is going to significantly lessen because of the introduction of C#/CLR. C# and the CLR are both fledgling technologies, where Java is quite proven and robust. I just read about the first CLR security exploit, and I expect many, many more. Heard of any with JVMs lately?
C# and the CLR only run on small computers and operating systems compared with the high availability big iron that runs Java. Also, Java has penetrated small devices very effectively, with over 100 million Java enabled cell phones to ship this year, very significant embedded penetration, and instruction set support for Java bytecode in all the new generation of ARM chips such as Xscale. Microsoft is caught in the middle (granted the middle covers a lot of ground;).
Despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, I advise you to expect big things from Java on the desktop as well. Sun is quietly staying the course, and is making big improvements to client side Java with every release. Since Java supports Windows, MacOS and Linux, it is a very attractive way to deploy applications (we'll see when C# achieves this milestone;). Earlier releases coupled with slower computers were painful, but things have improved to the point where Java is perfectly usable for lots of applications. Linux + Java is a potential Microsoft killer, make no mistake about it and Microsoft knows it.
My final point for today regarding the "open" nature of C# and the CLR is that quite a lot of the C# class libraries available under MS Visual Studio are not included in the standard. This includes the GUI libraries, so as things stand you can use Java today to write completely cross-platform GUI based programs. It will most likely be a cold day in hell before Winforms are available anywhere but Windows. I'm betting Microsoft's legal team will make sure of it. We'll see if Mono gets far enough to be a test case.
Sigh, now the long wait begins for JDK 1.5. ;-)
(Reptile looks cool, I'll check it out later.)
299,792,458 m/s...not just a good idea, its the law!
Good articles (Score:2, Interesting)
thx
matt
Re:Good articles (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Good articles (Score:2)
Kodak invented OLE? (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure looks like Kodak claims it invented OLE.
Which, hey, they may have, and Microsoft either licensed or stole it.
What's the real story?
--Blair
Re:Kodak invented OLE? (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, a few people on JavaLobby are of the opinion that Kodac just patented three fundemental object-oriented programming techniques. If that is the case, these patents would never hold up in court as almost any SmallTalk program written before 1990 would be prior art.
My pet peeve. (Score:5, Insightful)
What I find especially bothersome is the the fact that Koday (supposedly) had these patents. They did nothing with them. Sun produced a product, hyped it, sold it, improved it and put in millions of dollars and man hours into it.
Kodak then comes in and demands money after the fact when they made no attempt to actually do anything.
I think that's crazy. Why punish the people who got off their asses and did something especially if the punisher was too lazy or stupid to actually make use of their idea.
This isn't just about sun and kodak either. Who was suing palm recently? Same thing.
Sit on your ass doing nothing, wait for somebody else to do all the work. Then sue them and retire in the bahamas. It's the american way I guess. Sure beats working.
Re:My pet peeve. (Score:2, Informative)
"We've attempted to resolve this with Sun for about three years, but the discussions with Sun have not led to a suitable licensing agreement," Kodak spokesman Anthony Sanzio said.
It looks more like Kodak is suing them because they couldn't work it out in another way.
Whether the patents are valid or not is a different issue...
Re:My pet peeve. (Score:2)
1) You have no idea whether Kodak actually use this - the first patent, for example, would seem to cover introspection and/or the java activation framework. It seems likely that a kodak image browser might well use these ideas - just not as publicly as sun.
2) Supposed you were a lone inventor, and patented your idea for eg everlasting bubble gum. Now some big company, say, Slugworth Chocolates, comes along, starts producing your stuff without your permission, promotes it more than you can possibly afford, and thus you never make any money out of your invention.
This is precisely why we have patents. There are many reasons to criticise the patent process, but complaining that a big company is doing more with an idea than its inventor, and thus should be exempt from the law, is not among them.
Re:My pet peeve. (Score:2)
Patents should be restricted so that they are used only to recuperate money spent on R&D of the idea/concept/technology. This way researchers could, in theory, fund their own research, once they got the ball rolling. Under these restricted patents, your patent last for a very small amount of time, maybe a few years, and it can be cut short if you make enough money off of the patent so as to recover your R&D costs.
Re:My pet peeve. (Score:3, Interesting)
You probably don't want to strengthen patents any more than they already are, because we're already seeing all kinds of problems with software patents being used to lock open source solutions out of various areas. Many industries also have the problem that start-ups are impossible because the established players already own the necessary patents, and have no interest in licensing them to a new competitor.
Personally, I suspect that the answer is probably a compulsory license [cptech.org] regime for patents. In this case, a sensible solution might be to set default payments which are somewhat high, but that scale with number of units sold and price charged. Thus, large corporations still have an incentive to negotiate with patent holders for lower license fees, but start-ups needn't pay anything until they start shipping units, and would be free to use the patents at that rate whether or not their competitors want to let them into the market. Finally, free software would be protected, since in this scheme the developers would be implicitly accepting the default terms, which wouldn't require payment for copies not being charged for (but RH et al would have to fork out for distros that they sell).
Unsurprisingly, a number of powerful lobbies have ensured that this cannot happen without major changes to our IP system; for one thing, it would require breaking the WIPO treaty, which the megacorps paid really good money for.
Re:Oil Company (Score:2)
Re:My pet peeve. (Score:2)
Security export rules (Score:4, Informative)
Due to import control restrictions, the JCE jurisdiction policy files shipped with the Java 2 SDK, v 1.4 allow "strong" but limited cryptography to be used. An "unlimited" version of these files indicating no restrictions on cryptographic strengths is available.
The JSSE implementation provided in this release includes strong cipher suites. However, due to U.S. export control restrictions, this release does not allow alternate "pluggable" SSL/TLS implementations to be used
What seems even stranger now is that you cannot used "pluggable" implementations (in JSSE). Maybe the "nasty" europeans/asians/africans/martians would provide some unlimited strong cryptography pluggin otherwise???
Re:Security export rules (Score:5, Informative)
There is already a clean room, open source (BSD License) implementation of the JCE. It's called Cryptix [cryptix.org], and simply put is one of the best libraries ever written for Java.
I don't trust black box cryptography... especially when Sun goes the extra mile to obfuscate their default implementation of the JCE crypto modules.
Patent titles (Score:5, Informative)
the supposedly infringed patents. Here's their
titles:
US05206951
Integration of data between typed objects by mutual, direct invocation between object managers corresponding to object types
US05421012
Multitasking computer system for integrating the operation of different application programs which manipulate data objects of different types
US05226161
Integration of data between typed data structures by mutual direct invocation between data managers corresponding to data types
Re:Patent titles (Score:2)
US05421012
Multitasking computer system for integrating the operation of different application programs which manipulate data objects of different types
Hmm... I guess that since I Create C++ Programs that run on a Linux and Windows OS, I am in violation of this copyright.
On a side note, if Kodak wins this, they will probably go after MS next due to the OOP syntax and the CLR of
Re:Patent titles (Score:3, Funny)
new in 1.4: public Exception(Throwable cause) (Score:4, Informative)
public void methodA throws MyException {
try { Driver d = Class.forName(driverClass).newInstance(); }
catch (Exception ex) { throw new RuntimeException("problem loading driver"); }
}
can now be this:
public void methodA throws MyException {
try { Driver d = Class.forName(driverClass).newInstance(); }
catch (Exception ex) { throw new RuntimeException("problem loading driver", ex); }
}
Notice the RuntimeException constructor now has the original exception passed to it. It can be retreived higher up the stack, and I believe is printed during a ex.printStackTrace(...). It lets you pass the root cause exception up the stack trace, while preserving the entire state, without having to declare it everywhere.
Anyone here read the license? (Score:3, Informative)
6. Notice of Automatic Downloads. You acknowledge that, by your use of the Software and/or by requesting services that require use of the Software, the Software may automatically download, install, and execute software applications from sources other than Sun ("Other Software"). Sun makes no representations of a relationship of any kind to licensors of Other Software. TO THE EXTENT NOT PROHIBITED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT WILL SUN OR ITS LICENSORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY LOST REVENUE, PROFIT OR DATA, OR FOR SPECIAL, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, INCIDENTAL OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, HOWEVER CAUSED REGARDLESS OF THE THEORY OF LIABILITY, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE USE OF OR INABILITY TO USE OTHER SOFTWARE, EVEN IF SUN HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
Re:Anyone here read the license? (Score:2)
This is a feature of Java WebStart - application developers can specify a minimum JRE to use and WebStart will automatically download it when it is not already present. Note that while Web Start has just become standard with JRE1.4, it will run even on JRE 1.1 and I would imagine this clause is in the separate Java Web Start download as well.
You agree to all future licence agreements. (Score:2, Interesting)
This means that they are claiming that if you agree to this licence, you are also agreeing to the licence of any application which installs itself (and you have agreed to let it install itself).
I'm sure that that is not legal, and could invalidate the whole agreement. On the other hand, I don't see how a licence agreement that you haven't signed is worth the pixels its printed on.
To say that Sun's online license agreements are binding would be to say that you are not allowed to click on a button with two words on it which is displayed on the web without agreeing to this contract.
As someone pointed out in response to another article, not agreeing to the licence agreement preserves your right to click on the "I Agree" button without agreeing to the licence agreement. It is in the agreement that it says that you agree that clicking the button means that you agree.
Is that convoluted enough?
My pet hates with Java (Score:2, Informative)
Oh yes, and I nearly forgot a trivial-but-annoying one:
Re:My pet hates with Java (Score:5, Informative)
You've used this serveral times as an example. You're right, assigning a string to null is not safer than leaving it uninitialized. However, that just gets around the 'uninitialized variable' error from the compiler. You should initialize it with something meaningful, or at least "". That would be more safe, and would be what the compiler wants you to do. This error has saved my butt more times than I care to remember, so don't knock it.
If you want to use variable arguments, pass in a vector or a list. There are ways to make java do what you want to do, they might not be like those in C or C++.
Headless at last - bye bye XVfb (Score:5, Informative)
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4/docs/guide/awt/AWT
You have to set a property to true:
-Djava.awt.headless=true
as a switch when running the VM for example. Then you can generate server-side graphics on Unix without having to run XVfb. This has been an annoyance for some time, as you had to have different deployment rules depending on your target OS, as NT always has a graphical environment taking up resources whether you want it or not, so it wasn't an issue there.
The upshot is that you can now use java.awt.Image.BufferedImage as an image source in servlets that generate dynamic images, instead of java.awt.Frame, which always seemed wrong. It uses less resources too, as it doesn't have to do a context-switch to your X server to create images!
Hey, there are lots of great new features in this new release, but that is the first one that made life easier for me.
Re:Headless at last - bye bye XVfb (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm kind of interested in java.awt.image.VolitileImage. It makes an image using the video card's memory, with the trade off that the image may be destroyed at any moment. I've done some tests and on my machine it didn't improve performance at all, but on a system with a good video card, it may be an awesome class.
Why I Don't Want to Touch This (Score:5, Funny)
Still didn't fix it... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yah, will this be stable on Linux? (Score:4, Funny)
kernel: VFS: Disk change detected on device fd(2,0)
kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 02:00 (floppy), sector 0
kernel: VFS: Disk change detected on device fd(2,0)
kernel: end_request: I/O error, dev 02:00 (floppy), sector 0
kernel: Incorrect segment count at 0xc01781d6nr_segments is 15
kernel: counted segments is 17
kernel: Flags 0 0
kernel: Segment 0xc37ace40, blocks 4, addr 0x4bd1fff
kernel: Segment 0xc37acea0, blocks 4, addr 0x4bd27ff
kernel: Segment 0xc37ac780, blocks 4, addr 0x38abfff
kernel: Segment 0xc37acde0, blocks 4, addr 0x38ac7ff
kernel: Segment 0xc3809120, blocks 4, addr 0x1e77fff
kernel: Segment 0xc0e0fda0, blocks 4, addr 0x199c7ff
kernel: Segment 0xc3871ec0, blocks 4, addr 0x6fe2fff
kernel: Segment 0xc3871f20, blocks 4, addr 0x6fe37ff
kernel: Segment 0xc3871e00, blocks 4, addr 0x498afff
kernel: Segment 0xc0e0fec0, blocks 4, addr 0x18aefff
kernel: Segment 0xc3871c80, blocks 4, addr 0x41b6fff
kernel: Segment 0xc3871ce0, blocks 4, addr 0x41b77ff
kernel: Segment 0xc3871b60, blocks 4, addr 0x1d06fff
kernel: Segment 0xc0e0fe60, blocks 4, addr 0x18af7ff
kernel: Segment 0xc38719e0, blocks 4, addr 0x4c3ffff
kernel: Segment 0xc3871aa0, blocks 4, addr 0x4c407ff
kernel: Segment 0xc0e0ff20, blocks 4, addr 0x18ae7ff
kernel: Segment 0xc3871800, blocks 4, addr 0x4cb0fff
kernel: Segment 0xc3871860, blocks 4, addr 0x4cb17ff
kernel: Segment 0xc3871140, blocks 4, addr 0x4b8ffff
kernel: Segment 0xc38717a0, blocks 4, addr 0x4b907ff
kernel: Segment 0xc0e150c0, blocks 4, addr 0x196d7ff
kernel: Kernel panic: Ththththaats all folks. Too dangerous to continue.
kernel:
kernel: rq->cmd=1, rq->sector=73208, rq->nr_sectors=8
kernel: kernel BUG at pktcdvd.c:1046!
kernel: invalid operand: 0000
kernel: CPU: 0
kernel: EIP: 0010:[serial:__insmod_serial_S.bss_L3392+238989/3
kernel: EFLAGS: 00010086
kernel: eax: 0000001e ebx: c1273840 ecx: c4676000 edx: c020f384
kernel: esi: c208f09c edi: c208f074 ebp: c7f9d760 esp: c6fc3f88
kernel: ds: 0018 es: 0018 ss: 0018
kernel: Process pktcdvd0 (pid: 1303, stackpage=c6fc3000)
kernel: Stack: c8861c10 c8861d2f 00000416 c6fc2000 c208f09c c208f074 c208f000 c7f9d86c
kernel: c8860076 c208f074 00000f00 c762df1c c208f000 00000b00 c6fc3fe0 c208f008
kernel: c208f10c c7f9d778 00000000 c6fc2000 00000000 00000000 00000000 c6fc2000
kernel: Call Trace: [serial:__insmod_serial_S.bss_L3392+245712/371483
kernel:
kernel: Code: 0f 0b 83 c4 0c b8 06 00 00 00 0f ab 45 48 19 c0 85 c0 75 24
Re:Yah, will this be stable on Linux? (Score:2)
Re:Yah, will this be stable on Linux? (Score:2)
Re:Java2 ? (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps,but remember that the change from 1.1 to 1.2 contained some major rehaul of APIs.
In this 1.4 release Sun kept a carefully budgeted set of new features and emphasized quality and performance, like they said they would. You can expect more changes in 1.5 (codename Tiger) which is planned to come some time around the middle of 2003. If that will be Java3, who knows, they have just started working on it.
Re:Java2 ? (Score:4, Funny)
- was the first version of Solaris
- declared itself to be SunOS 5.0
- was an implementation of System V Release 4.0
Obviously being able to count is not a prerequisite for getting a job in Sun's marketing department.
Re:Not meaning to troll but.... (Score:2)
Yes java is the most overrated language next to esperanto only.
Re:Not meaning to troll but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
The platform is not the language.
Java is good partly because of its pragmatic syntax (C++ish with some sugar added, some sugar taken away), but mostly it's good because of its excellent class library.
Though I haven't written anything serious for a year or so due to a job switch, I used to write large-scale multithreaded network servers, where somthing like three to four hundred threads could be running at any given moment inside the server. Java's class library made this really quite easy, and it's syntax is pleasant enough to work with.
Cheers,
Ian
Ironic/NBIO (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ironic/NBIO (Score:2)
Read the post again. Didn't say I used threads to handle network IO.
By the nature of the app, we had a single thread handling all network IO - it was a single feed of financial data. This data was built up into an internal queue to get it off the network as quickly as possible. Following that, a subscription thread would post notifiers to all objects that had subscribed to this data that information was available, and it would take it off the queue and hand it to the object. Each object was its own thread, and what operations it did were up to it (usually calculations followed by writing to a database).
Non-blocking IO would be a non-issue here - the network is not the bottleneck, and it isn't there that the hundreds of threads operated.
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Ironic/NBIO (Score:2)
Re:Open Source Java VM & class libraries (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why is this not under the developers section? (Score:2)
Re:skeptical for the desktop (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, I can't take this any more - Java is not slow or buggy and can produce applications that are indistinguishable from C/C++ applications. The proof of this is simple - rewind the clock back a year to MacWorld where WorldBook Encyclopedia [apple.com] was demoed as part of the keynote with everyone watching and they were all impressed. Months later I was informed by the "head Java dude" at Apple on his Australian tour that WorldBook is completely written in Java - but noone knew.
Most people think that Java is slow, buggy and doesn't look platform native because they assume that anything that is fast, stable and looks and feels platform native wasn't written in Java. It's even cooler though, because the "write once, run everywhere" of Java actually works if you write good code). Sure there are some things that Java can't do that you need native code modules to handle but that facility is available.
The worst thing is that young programmers are led to think that Sun's code is actually *good* which spreads their poor, inefficient form to the next generations.
Java's not perfect, but I seriously don't think that it's Java that corrupts young programmers. You can write good code in almost any language - I see an awful lot of really bad Java code written by C programmers but I'm not about to claim that C is corrupting old programmers.
Re:skeptical for the desktop (Score:3, Interesting)
I find the example set by WorldBook 2002/MacOSX to be a stunning demonstration of Java's potential if Sun would just wake up and smell the coffee (pun intended).
I like Java a lot - both as a language, and as a bytecode platform. I use it daily at work, and at home for my own projects (after many years of flipping between C, C++, and a dozen other niche languages)
My only major bugbear with the JDK is not with Java itself, but with Swing: It's godawful slow (The Hello world app should not take 30 seconds to display on a P400), it's API is occasionally appalling (JTree anyone?), and it has a habit of being occasionally buggy.
Above all, it reinvents the wheel with widgets. The Look and Feel implementation very occasionally looks and feels like a platform native application (Win2k LnF anyone?). However, it usually looks and feels like someone has tried to reimplement a system native toolkit using only a blunt light blue crayon.
For many a year I have whined to all that would listen "Why the *@*)(!&*@ doesn't the Java widgeting toolkit defer to system native widgets for window display? Surely this would look better and run faster than pixel blitting a widget look-a-like!"
MacOSX provides just such an API. Although Objective-C is the `preferred' language of Cocoa, there are Java bindings. Note - this API is NOT Swing - it is a MacOSX extension API. Consequently, a MacOSX application built in Java should be almost indistinguishable from a native compiled app in terms of look and feel. And according to your comments, performance is also indistinguishable.
I have played with Java bindings for Gnome; they provide blindingly fast gui performance, using the same java runtime as is used by Swing. However, there are several java binding projects for Gnome (all partially complete), and none of them really address the general problem of widgeting across platforms.
I have also played with Eclipse, the IBM Java . Their widget toolkit is cross platform in API but system native in widget; however, I have found the performance of the Eclipse widget set to be almost as bad as Swing. However, it is beta code - we may have to wait and see if anything improves with age.
Java/Gnome demonstrates that it can be done under X. Eclipse demonstrates that it can be done cross platform. MacOSX demonstrates that it can be done well enough as to be indistinguishable from system native widgets.
So can anyone tell me: WHY hasn't it been done? (And don't say its because they don't want to break backward compatibility - Look at 1.4's NIO framework and VolatileImage).
Russ Magee %-)
Re:skeptical for the desktop (Score:2)
Yes and no. The Cocoa APIs are an extension that is not cross-platform, however if you use the Swing libraries on OS X, by default they use native widgets. So you can write a 100% pure Java application that uses native widgets on OS X. I would expect that this kind of thing will flow back into Sun's JVM around 1.5 or so.
Re:skeptical for the desktop (Score:2)
Ok - this was not my understanding. I thought the OS X Swing libraries were an Aqua-esque LnF, but not Aqua widgets themselves. However, I'm not a Mac junkie, so I don't speak from experience on this point. If they are native widgets, it certainly bodes well IMHO.
I would expect that this kind of thing will flow back into Sun's JVM around 1.5 or so.
I certainly hope so...
Russ Magee %-)
Re:skeptical for the desktop (Score:2)
Go and look at WorldBook on OS X and you will also be impressed. More importantly though, noone realised it was a Java application. It looked and acted just like a C/C++ application.