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Java

Submission + - The future of Java opensource projects

Submitted by
Rogerio Acquadro
Rogerio Acquadro writes: "What will be the future of projects like Blackdown Java, Kaffee and GCJ once that Sun's Java is GPLd? Will these projects die soon? Will these projects be forgotten? Or will these projects continue to develop?"
Software

Submission + - The art of managing an SOA

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "As Service-Oriented Archticturess catch on, companies are finding testing isn't the only IT area that could require a makeover. Designing, deploying and managing services-based applications is a different animal from working with traditional multitier applications. To deal with the changes, management pros are augmenting their tool sets with software that gives a clearer view inside transaction-level details, for example, and network executives are considering appliances that can help tackle XML-processing loads. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/111406-manag ing-soa.html"
Software

Submission + - IOmega Backup software fails to recover files

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: If you back up your files using IOmega, you might think your data is safely secured. But if you happen to choose to compress the backup files (i.e. the default) option, your data will be saved into a format which can't be uncompressed without a configuration file that's stored on your primary HD (i.e. the one that just crashed). You can read about this on IOmega's customer support forum:

http://www.iomegasupportforums.com/phpbb2/viewtopi c.php?t=2453&highlight=recover

I've included the first exchange because I think they will probably remove this thread if it gets too much notice. First, the desperate customer:

"I have my entire hard drive backed up to an external hard drive using Iomega Automatic Backup Pro. Just a few days ago my hard drive crashed, had to get a new hard drive. When I go to recover my files it cant find the configuration files. I did some research and very very oddly....the files required to retrieve my backup were on the hard drive that was backed up and now crashed. Defeating the entire purpose of a backup software. What can I do now to recover my files since the configuration files were destride on the origional drive? Please help!"

Now, the not-so-helpful (nor literate) tech-support:

"If you backed up your files using IAB pro with the compress option. If you moved any of the files on the drive or off the drive then there isn't a way to recover the files. Next time you do a backup make sure you are not compressing the files.

Did you move any of the files on the drive where you backed up the files to?"
Space

Submission + - Can India's Red Rain be Extraterrestrial?

Submitted by
[TheBORG]
[TheBORG] writes: "In July 2001, a mysterious red rain started falling over a large area of southern India. Locals believed that it foretold the end of the world, though the official explanation was that it was desert dust that had blown over from Arabia. But one scientist in the area, Dr Godfrey Louis, was convinced there was something much more unusual going on. Not only did Dr Louis discover that there were tiny biological cells present, but because they did not appear to contain DNA, the essential component of all life on Earth, he reasoned they must be alien lifeforms."
Linux Business

Submission + - Open source directions: best practices

Submitted by
coondoggie
coondoggie writes: "IBM's Open Source guru Bob Sutor: For a long time we looked at licensing — if you want to use our stuff, then come pay us. That worked for a long time. We make about a billion [dollars] a year from our intellectual property. We realized several years ago that that wasn't going to be enough, that if we wanted to look at growth in the long term in markets we were interested in moving into, we had to loosen up and start building a foundation around open standards for connecting systems over the Internet and driving a service-oriented architecture. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/111306-qna-b ob-sutor-open-source-best-practices.html"
Sony

Submission + - Playstation 3 launch has bugs

Submitted by
tastynuggets
tastynuggets writes: "As reported on CNN.COM: From the article: "Sony said Tuesday its new video game console, the PlayStation 3, does not run about 200 PlayStation and PlayStation 2 software titles properly, the latest problem the electronics maker has run into in its cash-cow game business." They add, "Sony said audio features do not work on some software titles when played on the PS3, which is supposed to be compatible with games designed for its previous models, while some other titles do not work on the latest machine at all." link at http://money.cnn.com/2006/11/14/technology/ps3.reu t/index.htm?postversion=2006111407"
Enlightenment

Submission + - 5 Steps to SOA Success

Submitted by Glinda
Glinda writes: CIO Insight's article "SOA Success: Five Actions CIOs Say You Should Take" offers some straightforward advice from on how to prepare for service-oriented architecture from CIOs who have been there — including how to train employees, benchmarking for success, and setting up a separate governance structure to manage the undertaking. Companies mentioned in the article include the Bank of New York, Motorola, MedicAlert and Thompson Learning.
From the article: "Alan Goldstein, managing-director of the Bank of New York's technology risk management and architecture division, says service-oriented architecture has let the bank trim 15 percent to 20 percent of the cost of new development and testing. He also reports a 10 percent shrinkage in development cycle time. "The core of what our management and business owners really care about is delivering innovative functionality to customers as quickly as possible, at a high quality and in a reasonably cost-effective manner," says Goldstein."
AMD

Submission + - AMD Launches World's First Stream Processor Unit

Submitted by Max Fomitchev
Max Fomitchev writes: AMD has launched world's first Stream Processor Unit (SPU), which is based on ATI's successful Radeon X1900 GPU. Produced in the form of PCI expansion board and outfitted with 512 or 1GB DDR RAM the unit features fully programmable "close to metal" — CMT — interface that when used properly can vastly speed up routine computations on multiple concurrent (up to 48) streams of data. Potential applications include seismic data processing, life sciences and scientific computing. The drawback is that virtually no mainstream software support is currently available and that you would have to write all the code yourself if you want to leverage the power of this SPU.

Acrobat-killer Submitted to Standards Body 326

Posted by CowboyNeal from the going-legit dept.
Flying Wallenda writes "Did Adobe make a tactical blunder when it complained to the European Union about Microsoft including support for its XML Paper Specification (XPS) in Windows Vista and Office 2007? Now that Microsoft has decided to submit its 'PDF killer' to a standards-setting organization, Adobe may be regretting its decision. 'Microsoft is looking again at its license in order to make it compatible with open source licenses, which means that the "covenant not to sue" will likely be extended to cover any intellectual property dispute stemming from the simple use or incorporation of XPS. The end result is that using XPS may be considerably more attractive for developers now that the EU has apparently expressed concerns over the license.'"

Apple Goes After the Term 'Podcast' 419

Posted by Zonk from the lots-of-frustrated-casters-out-there dept.
Udo Schmitz writes "Earlier this year, Apple went up against companies using the word 'pod' in their product names. Now, Apple is going after the term 'podcasting'. Wired has the complete text of Apple's cease-and-desist letter to Podcast Ready." From the article: "Robert Scoble -- whose own company, PodTech, may be at risk in this witch hunt -- has weighed in on the issue by suggesting that the tech community as a whole adopt other terms like "audiocast" and 'videocast' (or alternately, 'audcast' and 'vidcast') to describe this type of content, while other folks feel that fighting Apple and generating a ton of negative press for Cupertino is the best solution. Our take? Apple should be happy that its golden goose is getting so much free publicity, and if it isn't, we know of several companies that probably wouldn't mind if zencast, zunecast, or sansacast became the preferred terminology."

Browser Vulnerability Study Unkind to Firefox 253

Posted by timothy from the still-beats-IE-on-my-linux-boxes dept.
Browser Buddy writes "A new Symantec study on browser vulnerabilities covering the first half of 2006 has some surprising conclusions. It turns out that Firefox leads the pack with 47 vulnerabilities, compared to 38 for Internet Explorer. From Ars Technica's coverage: 'In addition to leading the pack in sheer number of vulnerabilities, Firefox also showed the greatest increase in number, as the popular open-source browser had only logged 17 during the previous reporting period. IE saw an increase of just over 50 percent, from 25; Safari doubled its previous six; and Opera was the only one of the four browsers monitored that actually saw a decrease in vulnerabilities, from nine to seven.' Firefox still leads the pack when it comes to patching though, with only a one-day window of vulnerability."

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