I left Sun in 2004 after 8 fun years at Javasoft. Open Source Java was a annual discussion at Sun and in many conversations with open source advocates and companies. Many of the engineers I knew were for open sourcing Java as long as the motivation wasn't just to simply reduce headcoun...

I've been busy working on our Web 2.0 release so didn't have time to update my laptop until now. I was generally happy with my Ubuntu breezy 64bit install, I had the JDK on there, Java worked in firefox 32bit, I could remotely display my screen to a projector and my broadcom wireless c...

You may be wondering, why hasn't the uptake of Web services matched the bold predictions made when it was first launched? There are certainly more developers thinking about Web services with the advent of service-oriented architectures (SOA). However, the number of successful public We...

We all know that there isn't a single language or platform that is totally secure, much in the same way that no matter how well you secure your house, it's still possible to leave a door unlocked. However if your house has few locks, open windows and is it a bad neighborhood, shouldn't...

Five years later what do we see? The .NET platform has been under constant development, often too fast for many corporate users to adopt. There has been a 1.0, 1.1, and 2.0, each which could be counted as a significant version in their own right. Following the churn of the .NET SDK, th...

Next came one of the conference sponsors, Ed Zander with Motorola who picked up a duke choice for a Motorola phone. Then the JDK java distro license change was introduced by Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu fame. Jonathan hinted about Ubuntu on 'servers', which of course ubuntu already runs...

Well first let me tackle the Tiger bit. The Java codenames are all listed here. Tiger or 'Project Tiger' was the name used on a day to day basis, its a convenience instead of saying one point five point zero. The names are chosen as big animals (birds, mammals) for major releases (tige...

Geronimo 1.0 was released last week. Apache Geronimo is a new, open source, J2EE 1.4 certified application server. It is built from many established open source projects, like OpenEJB, Tomcat and the Derby database so it already has some pedigree. The more I think about it, Java develo...

Many years ago I saved up for a 16K RAM pack for my tiny Sinclair ZX81 computer. I thought, rather naively, that this was going to be the answer to all my memory issues. I would be able to use increasingly complex programs, okay games, and I could program without the restriction of lit...

This month I wanted to review some of the latest happenings in the JDK 6.0 (Mustang) release. Although we have to wait to see the initial JSR draft, you can download the binaries the engineers are actually working on. Some of the newest features to be added include JSR 223 scripting su...

This year will be the first time in 10 JavaOnes that I haven't been a Sun employee. As I am now fairly local to the show I should be able to attend again this year. I've met many developers from around the world who make the annual trip to San Francisco. Many still see it as the Java e...

There has been talk recently that Sun is planning to end the use of the J2 platform name and branding scheme. The proposal is that the terms Java Enterprise Edition and Java Standard Edition will replace J2EE and J2SE. If you had the opportunity to read the March edition of JDJ, you wi...

Last month I took a trip down memory lane, revisiting the history of J2SE. Apart from trying to remember key events, squeezing 10 years of history into one page was a challenge. I had to relegate many significant technologies to a sentence or two and some I didn't cover at all. However...

This year will mark the tenth anniversary of the official launch of Java technology. It seems like only yesterday. No doubt there will be celebrations similar to the five-year anniversary, so I thought I would take this opportunity to step back in time and track Java's course.

I recently upgraded my home network to use 802.11g. The prices for routers and PC cards have fallen throughout the year, but unfortunately the support has only marginally improved in that time and, after many re-installs, my network wasn't working. I eventually had to resort to probing...

I recently had the opportunity to talk with many Java users about the current release and their general experiences with the platform. One of those developers told me that he didn't use J2SE but his J2EE VM sometimes caused problems.

I am pleased to announce that the J2SE 5.0 release has gone final and is ready for you to download! The first set of downloads for Windows, Solaris, and Linux are available from the http://java.sun.com/j2se/5.0 Web site. This even includes a 64-bit AMD64 port on Linux for server-side a...

Some of you may remember a time when the world of multithreaded programming was limited to a small set of C or C++ applications. Often the threads were used sparingly and restricted to a specific task or computation or even operating system.

You may have heard the news that Sun has opened the doors for its employees to start blogging, including the most famous employee, the COO. Blogging obviously isn't new, and many companies have already gran-ted individual users the opportunity to go ahead. However, the open floodgate -...

I recently enjoyed reading A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. In his book, Bill goes back to basics and delves into the history of many things we take as facts. One memorable observation is a reminder that we are all just collections of trillions of atoms assembled in...

It's been over two years since I wrote my last article about using the Java runtime on Linux ('Java Technology on the Linux Platform' [JDJ, Vol. 5, issue 12]). The Java platform and Linux distributions have not stood still during that time, so I'm taking this opportunity to answer some...

The Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE technology) v1.3 for Linux means that Linux users and developers can take advantage of thousands of Java technology-based applications, from enterprise e-commerce infrastructure to client-side applications. It also opens up a huge emerging ma...