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Does He Love You?

Posted by editor on October 4, 2007 at 11:02 AM EDT

Slashdot founder reveals why he hates Java

Oh sure, it's cool to hate Slashdot, but I read it every day, and so do many people in our field. I indulged one of their tenth anniversary stories the other day, largely interested in how the site's story tracks back to founder Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda's days at Hope College, my wife's alma mater.

In A Brief History of Slashdot Part 1, Chips & Dips, CmdrTaco relates the story of how he came into possession of a DEC Alpha (his first non x86 computer since middle school) as part of an arrangement involving reworking graphics for a "Space Invaders" clone written with a friend's Java sprite library. In the end, he got a computer to install Linux on... and a nastygram from Sun Legal:

Later Sun sent me legal threats forcing me to take the game offline since it was called Java Invaders, and clearly this was an evil crime against the universe. My hatred for Java has never died since that moment.

Two possible reactions here. Presumably most will opt for the first, that ten years is a pointlessly long time to hold a grudge, especially over such a small matter, and given how much Java has done to keep Linux viable for enthusiasts like CmdrTaco. Surely it's time to let bygones be bygones. But I think you can also see a sort of Golden Rule karmic payback kind of thing: whatever IP value Sun Legal managed to defend that day, it has been destroyed a hundred million times over by the anti-Java emnity marshaled by Slashdot and groups like it.

Treat others the way you'd have them treat you... especially when they later get popular and influential.

In Java Today, Jean-Francois Arcand has announced that Grizzly 1.6.1 has been released and is available for download. The new version adds Grizzlet, port unification and SSL for HTTP support, adds well-known MIME types to its HTTP web server, and fixes several issues.

In a new screencast from NetBeans.tv, Roman Strobl demonstrates the NetBeans Ruby Debugger features such as adding breakpoints, running tests, analyzing local variables, exploring call stacks, and viewing watches.

The OSS/J 3GPP Extension for Fault Management project is an extension of the Fault Management API (JSR 263). Its 3GPP Alarm IRP Specification is available for download, as is the reference implementation, which uses Java SE 5 and GlassFish. The project notes that "in accordance with the OSS through Java Design Guidelines, this extension supports the JVT, XML/JMS and Web Service implementation profiles and passes the OSS/J FM API TCK." The project's TCK is available as source or binary.

In today's Weblogs, Rama Pulavarthi points out improvements in JAX-WS 2.1 in Java SE 6 Update N. "Along with new features and enhancements, Java SE 6 Update N (formerly known as the "Consumer JRE") has high performance Web Services support with JAX-WS 2.1."

Arun Gupta is back with more jMaki tips, in TOTD #10: Consuming JSON and XML representations generated by a Jersey endpoint in a jMaki Table widget. "A jMaki widget expects data in JSON format as defined by the standard data models. There are three possible ways to generate the JSON data from a Jersey endpoint that can be consumed by a jMaki widget."

Finally, Harold Carr checks in with a Mid-West Java Tech Days Trip Report I presented the Metro web services stack at Mid-West Java Tech Days in Columbus, Ohio and Indianapolis, Indiana last week. This blog entry shows questions asked and answers given. —  http://weblogs.java.net/blog/haroldcarr/archive/2007/10/midwest_java_te....

In today's Forums, dropy2000 wants to know How to make a Connection Pool with Metro: "Hello, I've reading for a long time and I am still confused. Is it possible to establish multiple http connections with the same web service(same server) from the same application? I know that http protocol was not designed for this, but it is mandatory for me to make a connection pool (like database pools) for efficiency (ssl handshake is costly). When I instantiate a client several times, it seems that the same httpurlconnection is reused in all instances, because I can only see one connection with the server using netstat. I think that httpurlconnection manages internally a pool of connections... but I need more control. Currently, I need simply to get instances of a ws-client, each of them with its own connection to the server so I can select one avaliable. — 

6.0uN users radvani7 wonders about the status of Quickstart for Vista. "The testing guidelines for Quickstarter explain that this service will not be available for Windows Vista. I'm curious as to why that is -- does Vista already demonstrate enhanced prefetching techniques that make Quickstarter unnecessary? Or is Quickstarter being omitted because because of limited engineering resources? Just want to know if we can expect a Quickstarter in Vista in the future."

Ken Warner discusses Java memory settings for end-users in the thread Re: [JAVA2D] Please try the new Direct3D 9-based Java2D pipeline in 6uN EA. "I'm really excited to hear about this. The boost in performance will be a real advantage for Java in the Java vs. Flash war that is going on now. But I am running into a related problem. In the process of beta testing my panorama viewer, I'm encountered a lot of problems with MemoryErrors on client machines. The problem is easily remedied by setting the VM arguments. But at the same time, those same people exhibit a reluctance to simply open the Java Control Panel and set the VM arguments. I even have a whole system set up where by my viewer pops up an HTML page that explains that there has been a memory error and a link to an HTML page that explains how to easily fix it. Yet people still complain and point out that Flash doesn't have these problems."

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Slashdot founder reveals why he hates Java
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