Calvin Austin

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 event to network at, even though attendance is off the highs of the dot.com days. Now you may think that being a Sun employee automatically gets you a free pass to the JavaOne show. Well it doesn't. In the early days there were a small number of passes for JavaSoft engineers, but the only way we could attend was to prepare a session or an evening birds of a feather discussion. At the peak Sun engineers were even banned from buying a JavaOne pass to free up places for Sun customers and Java d... (more)

What PHP Needs to Learn From Java

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, its still possible to leave a door unlocked. However if your house has few locks, open windows and is it a bad neighborhood, shouldn't you do something about it? The house I am referring to is PHP, great for prototyping and building applic... (more)

Java & Linux

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 of the frequent questions that have surfaced since then and provide some insight into some of the more ... (more)

A Tail Of Two Tigers

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 a unique configuration, a one off, never to be repeated again. Given this cosmological randomness I'm at... (more)

J2SE 5.0 Ready for Business

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 applications. Other OS support and tools will follow from our partners, so please let them know that you ... (more)