Calvin Austin

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 - simply to fill in your details on a Web page, press a button, and start posting - is proving an interesting challenge. One item that has created some debate is what happens to the useful information after it gets posted and how can we prevent it from being lost forever. It's only human to discard most of a day's events, what we read and what we heard. How do we remember what is important and then how can we apply that to something like a sea of RSS-distributed content? With that thought in place, and with the JavaOne conference now becoming a distant memory for me, I wanted to spend a... (more)

SOA & Web Services: Why Can't We Just Talk?

From SOA World Conference & Expo 2005 East (April 17, 2005) - This month's Web Services Edge Conference -SOA World Conference & Expo- marks four years since the first detailed W3C note on the Web Services Definition Language (WSDL) and nearly five years since the first public specification of SOAP. 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... (more)

Java: What's in a Name

Java: What's in a NamePosted by calvinaustin on April 28, 2006 at 10:38 AM | Comments (0) I read another blog entry complaining about the Java naming scheme. If that is the biggest issue with Java 5 today then I'm very happy. The complaint is that there are 3 names, Java 5, Java 1.5 and Tiger. 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 (tiger, must... (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 are waiting for a particular port. I was fortunate to be able to fly to New York for the J2SE 5.0 launch and give a short presentation, called "5 reasons to move to 5," to the New York SIG. I che... (more)

Java Inside

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 the card to find out the exact chipset to get my Linux box up and running. It's fine now, but I found it ironic that probably the most important part of the card that would ensure compatibility was completely hidden, both on the box and in all of the documentation. Things are a little different in... (more)