Sun President and CEO Jonathan Schwartz is set to announce the open sourcing of the core Java platform within 30 to 60 days. After months of discussion, it looks like the fears of open-sourcing core Java is finally overcome.
The past discussion about the issues of opening up core Java had always been it opens the doors for competitors to grab and change Java, resulting in the kernel forking and compatibility problems. The biggest benefit it may bring is to keep Java alive with community efforts given that Sun is not adequately promoting Java anymore.
One of the major hurdles of open sourcing Java is the approval of open source license. Sun may not have the rights to open source all the code given that there are codes licensed from third party. As a comparison, it took Sun five years in the case of OpenSolaris project to replace these codes with open source or rewritten codes. The initial components of Open Source Java will likely be the Java compiler and Hotspot.
The new Oracle 11g database has 482 new features, cutting across such areas such as manageability, high availability, scalability, content management, infrastructure and business intelligence. The key theme of 11g is to provide “change assurance”. The following is a glimpse of a subset of all the new features:
- Compression technology that can reduce the amount of storage required for data sets by up to two thirds
- Speed boost allowing Oracle to finally beat file systems on reading data
- Data Guard - the ability to create a standby snapshot for the purpose of regression testing and to keep it in sync with your production database
- Replay Workload - the ability to capture all (or just SQL) database activities and then moving it to a testing environment without using a midtier tool
- Online Application Upgrades - hot patching, the ability to install upgrades or patches online with no downtime
- Quick Fault Resolution - the ability to capture of all diagnostics related to a fault automatically
- Database Repair Advisor - a wizard/expert system that guides DBAs through the fault diagnosis and resolution process
- Partition by logical object and automated partition creation to help manage Very Large Databases (VLDBs)
- New high-performance Large Objects (LOB) infrastructure
- Native Java & PL/SQL compilers
- Re-engineered driver for PHP
via OTN TechBlog
irrepressible.info: A Fight Against Internet Censorship
0 Comments Published October 28th, 2006 in Technology.Amnesty International has set up a campaign to fight against Internet censorship. It is working with the OpenNet Initiative (ONI) to help raise awareness of internet censorship around the world.
The aim of the ONI is to document empirically patterns of Internet content filtering and surveillance worldwide behind national firewalls over an extended period of time. The ONI’s flash map of global filtering is the first result of such attempt.
The map shows that China, Iran, Myanmar, Tunisia, Uzbekistan, Syria and Vietnam have the most pervasive Internet censorship in place. These countries implement commercial, enterprise-level filtering technology deployed at an Internet Service Provider (ISP) or near international gateway connections so that the filtering affects an entire country.
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e-Passports or RFID passports are passports embedded with RFID tags. The first issuing country was Malaysia in 1998. The Malaysian passport records the travel history (time, date, and place) of entries and exits from the country.
On October 25, 2005, the U.S. government announced that all U.S. passports would be implanted with RFID tags starting in October 2006.
How can you tell if your passport contains a RFID tag? Look for the Electronic Passport logo on the front cover (shown on the left). The tag is capable of transmitting your name, nationality, sex, date of birth, place of birth and digitized photograph. Additional digitized data such as “fingerprints or iris scans” may also be included.
Update: Microsoft has launched Express Vista Upgrade voucher scheme in an attempt to minimize the impacts of Vista delay. Major PC vendors including Dell, HP and Lenovo are offering various deals related to the scheme. However, if you do not want the hassle of dealing with OS upgrade yourself, stay tune and wait.
A new PC that carries the Windows Vista Capable PC logo can run Windows Vista. To get the best Vista experience you will need a Windows Vista Premium Ready PC. Such a PC includes at least:
- 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor.
- 1 GB of system memory.
- Support for DirectX 9 graphics with a WDDM driver, 128 MB of graphics memory (minimum), Pixel Shader 2.0 and 32 bits per pixel.
- 40 GB of hard drive capacity with 15 GB free space.
- DVD-ROM Drive.
- Audio output capability.
- Internet access capability.
However, Dell CEO Kevin Rollins suggested otherwise on Thursday, 26 Oct at a speech at Shanghai’s Jiaotong University. “I think they tell you maybe 1 gig of memory is OK. No, two gigs of memory would be great.”
Wi-Fi networking is inherently insecure. Wi-Fi and its latest security and encryption updates (WEP/WPA/WPA2) try to protect network access but not necessarily the information that flows over that network. Using public Wi-Fi network should be considered as open to the public as if you had published your accounts, passwords, and correspondence in a newspaper.
There are three primary threats from bedevil Wi-Fi users - sniffers, rogue access points and worms/probes.
Sniffers
Wi-Fi uses radio waves to send data thus making it ripe for monitoring from vicinity. Unless a building is surrounded with a wire cage, signals leak and you must treat your access to the network as completely available to anyone within line-of-sight range. A used $200 laptop with a $10 Wi-Fi card and free software is quite effective and often used for these purposes of sniffing. The sniffer can decode any data passing by into its original form.
64% of U.S. Internet Users Watch Videos Online
1 Comment Published October 25th, 2006 in Technology.
comScore Media Metrix, a leader in digital media measurement, has released its August rankings of the top U.S. streaming video properties last Thursday.
The report shows the U.S streaming audience has steadily increased each month to reach 110.3 million. About 64 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience is streaming audience (or streamer) now.
In August, 6.98 billion video streams were initiated by U.S. Internet users. The average U.S. streamer consumed 63.3 streams during August, or approximately 2 streams per day. Streamers at Fox Interactive showed the highest levels of video consumption per person at 35.5 streams per streamer, followed by Yahoo! Sites (20.6 streams per streamer) and YouTube (19.4 streams per streamer).
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Sun Certified Business Component Developer (SCBCD) is for Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) technology business component developers who are responsible for designing, developing, testing, deploying and integrating EJB applications. To achieve certifications, candidates must be a Sun Certified Java Programmer, SCJP (any edition) and successfully complete one exam.
The current certification exam covers only Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition 1.3 topics. The new certification exam upgrades the existing topics to include Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5.0. Prior to the announcement of the actual exam, free beta exam is open to the early birds to try out.
Unlike other Sun Microsystems certification exams, the beta exam does NOT require a voucher i.e. FREE. The normal exam fee is $200. To register for the beta exam, you may register by phone, by calling your regional Prometric registration office.
The beta exam is open for registration starting November 24, 2006. You can select any day in between December 8, 2006 – January 2, 2007 to sit for the exam.
With the release of Firefox 2.0 (which should be official on the afternoon of Tuesday, 24th October 2006), the web browser war is once again heat up. The rush of RC3 to final after just a week of release again signifies the worries of Firefox community about IE7’s challenge.
Apart from the user interface differences, lest we forget the differences at the core, which is called the layout engine or rendering engine. It takes web content (such as HTML, XML, image files, etc.) and formatting information (such as CSS, XSL, etc.) and displays the formatted content on the screen. It “paints” on the content area of a window, which is displayed on a monitor or a printer.
The layout engine exists not only in web browsers but also email clients, media players with mini-browser and any applications that can display web contents.
There are 4 major rendering engines on the market.
Can’t wait for Nov 17 to grab the PS3? With 15,000 kiosks across the United States by the end of November, you can’t escape but to see PS3 at least once a day. Just get yourself ready and stay calm.
Is it worth the price?
For $599 Sony wants you to know, not everything cost you an arm and a leg. Gamers can connect to Sony’s network free for online games. The rest is the same old story of PS2. The machine can play not only Blu-ray movies but also DVD and CD. You can also surf the net with PS3 using the prepackaged browser. This is Sony standard practice of satisfying the hard-core gamer’s quest while still preserving the value-for-money attribute.