Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Java

Submission + - Oracle and the Java Ecosystem (infoq.com)

Submitted by twofishy
twofishy writes: After an undeniably rocky start, which saw high profile resignations from the JCP, including Doug Lea (who remains active in the OpenJDK), and the Apache Software Foundation, Oracle is making significant efforts to re-engage with the wider Java ecosystem, a theme which it talked up at the most recent JavaOne conference. The company is working hard to engage with the Java User Group leaders and Java Champions, membership of the OpenJDK project is growing, and the company is making efforts to reform the Java Community Process to improve transparency. The firm has also published a clear, well-defined Java roadmap toward Java 8 and Java 9. Problems still exist however.
Java

Submission + - Spring 3.1 is GA Today (infoq.com)

Submitted by twofishy
twofishy writes: SpringSource have announced the general availability of Popular Java framework Spring 3.1 today. Adds Java 7 Support, Environment Abstraction and Cache
Java

Submission + - Yammer Moving from Scala to Java (infoq.com)

Submitted by
twofishy
twofishy writes: "Yammer is moving from Scala to Java, after finding in a year-long experiment that the benefits provided by writing in a terser language don't outweigh the benefits of the complexities in having to train new employees and debugging performance problems. The email also suggests a number of performance improvements that can be made by avoiding certain patterns."
Open Source

Submission + - Ubuntu Unbundles Mono (i-programmer.info)

Submitted by mikejuk
mikejuk writes: The next release of the Ubuntu is unlikely to include Mono, which will come as a blow to Mono supporters who saw its inclusion on this Linux distribution as an important validation.
The reason being given for this reversal is that the Mono-dependent Banshee music player is being dropped as it does not work on the ARM platform used by most the mobile phones and tablets.
Of course, Mono and the missing apps, are not being excluded from Ubuntu — they will remain installable from the Ubuntu Software Centre but you can't but help think that this is another negative event for Mono and the wider .NET world.
Java

Submission + - Azul's Pauseless Java Garbage Collector Goes Nativ (infoq.com)

Submitted by twofishy
twofishy writes: Azul Systems have released Zing 5.0, eliminating their previous requirement for a hypervisor, and therefore bringing their pauseless garbage collector, C4, to unmodified 64-bit Linux for the first time.

The C4 algorithm was first deployed on Azul’s Vega systems, and has evolved and matured since it was first commercially introduced in 2005. It is now available on both Vega and x86-64 architectures. On Vega’s custom processors, GPGC made use of a special loaded value barrier (LVB) instruction to perform the barrier checks. Recent improvements in Intel and AMD processors have allowed Azul to bring the same capabilities to Intel and AMD based servers. While a single-cycle LVB instruction does not currently exist on x86-64 architectures, Azul uses its JIT compiler to generate a semantically equivalent set of x86 instructions and efficiently interleave it with the normal instruction stream. Specifically for Intel, Azul exploits the EPT (Extended Page Table) feature (which first appeared in Intel's Xeon 55xx, and later in Xeon 56xx, 65xx and 75xx chips), and for AMD the NPT (otherwise know as AMD-V Nested Paging) feature. This works in conjunction with the x86 virtual memory subsystem to remap and protect GC-compacted pages and thereby achieve the same loaded value barrier effect, and maintain the same algorithmic invariants needed for the Pauseless GC algorithms to work. The loaded value barrier set of instructions is emitted by the JIT compilers and efficiently interleaved into the regular instruction stream.

To simulate the “fast traps” on x86 Azul inject a sequence of x86 instructions that perform a semantically equivalent set of tests and a conditional call at the loaded value barrier site, all using a single conditional branch in the hot case. Tene described this as analogous to an "LVB" instruction using x86 instructions as "micro-code".
Apple

Submission + - Apple moves to lock up top talent (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by bdking
bdking writes: Remember when Apple was being criticized for not having a succession plan in place should Steve Jobs step down? In addition to locking in new CEO Tim Cook for the next decade with restricted shares worth hundreds of millions of dollars, Apple now has given Cook's top lieutenants millions of reasons to stick around for the next five years.
Apple

Submission + - Apple's App Store shame (zdnet.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Why are there so many free games listed in the top 10 grossing games over in Apple's App Store? Because some feature exorbitant in-app purchase fees for virtual items.

ZDNet reports:

'Developing ‘free’ games aimed specifically at children, and then bundling ridiculously priced in-app purchases inside those ‘free’ games feels scammy to me. Sure, it’s not illegal, and it’s not against Apple’s developer terms and conditions, but Apple is a company that prides itself in protecting users from harm. Most of the game developers do make an attempt to warn users that the game ‘changes real money for additional in-app content’ but it’s a lame attempt. It’s easily missed, and kids aren’t going to read it anyway.'

Submission + - Samsung Galaxy S3, Announcement of phones to come, (android-releases.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: A slide from a private Samsung presentation was leaked and sent to the team over at Phandroid that shows what the future specs of the Samsung Galaxy S3 might be holding and a release year. The specs of the phone are a 12MP rear facing camera along with 1.8Ghz Dual Core(Exynos 4212), 2GB RAM memory,
Apple

Submission + - Apple Should Get Into A&R, says Pete Townshend (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by twofishy
twofishy writes: The Who guitarist Pete Townshend attacked Apple's iTunes for bleeding artists 'like a digital vampire' during a speech in honour of the late BBC DJ John Peel. The rocker called on Apple to do more to help the artists they are profiting from at the inaugural event in memory of the radio legend in Salford yesterday.

Amongst his suggestions:
"Employ 20 A&R people from the dying record business. Have them respond to tracks sent in from new artists. If they feel the artists are bad, or aren't ready, say so. But have them tell the truth, kindly and constructively. Guide them to other helpful resources, don't just send them to the wolves of Blogland where it seems to me a lot of the vilest bile comes from people who could be drunk, or just nuts. A fledging musician at the start of a career is a delicate thing – even a rapper. (You'll just have to take my word for that.) (Apple do already have back-room people assessing what's hot, but they don't have this kind of power. I'll bet they'd love it. 20 John Peels inside Apple – imagine it)."

He also tackles areas such as Financial support, Creative Nurturing, Manufacturing, Publishing, Marketing, Distribution and Payment.
Android

Submission + - iOS market share balloons in Oct, Android climbs t (bgr.com)

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: Propelled by the popularity of its iPad tablet and the successful launch of the latest iPhone, Apple’s share of the mobile operating system market jumped significantly in October. Apple’s iOS saw just 1.6% growth between August and September of this year according to Net Applications, as iPhone sales slowed in anticipation of a new model in October. That new model, the iPhone 4S, sold more than 4 million units during its opening weekend alone, causing Apple’s cell phone and tablet operating system share to balloon to 61.64% of the global market in October, up 7% from 54.65% in September...
Java

Submission + - Guardian.co.uk Switching from Java to Scala (infoq.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Scala, a functional style programming language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine,
is becoming more mainstream. Twitter uses Scala to develop much of the back-end
code since they found that Ruby
lacked some things that were needed to write reliable, high performance code.
More recently, the team behind guardian.co.uk which, according to its editor,
has the second highest readership of any on-line news site after the New York
Times, is gradually switching
from Java to Scala, starting with the Content API, which provides a mechanism
for selecting and collecting Guardian content.
Java

Submission + - Java EE 6, Glassfish 3 and NetBeans 6.8 Released

Submitted by twofishy
twofishy writes: Following the final approval vote for Java EE 6 last week Sun has today Java EE 6 SDK, GlassFish version 3, and Netbeans 6.8. Java EE 6 itself is a significant update, introducing a number of new APIs including support for RESTful web services though JAX-RS, and a new dependency injection standard and API, and standard data validation library that works across the different application tiers. APIs have also seen important updates with Servlets gaining asynchronous support, JSF 2.0 getting a new templating language based on Facelets and many other enhancements, and JPA getting a new criteria DSL conceptually similar to .NET's LINQ. Sun has also introduced the concept of Profiles, first used in JavaME, to provide a lower cost entry point for new vendors wanting to implement a subset of the full Java EE spec. The first JavaEE profile is aimed at Web Development. EE 6 Spec Lead Roberto Chinnici describes this as an initiative that will bring significant benefits to developers but others are not so sure. Jürgen Höller, co-founder of the Spring framework, for example states "Implementing this profile is not very attractive. I am yet to see a vendor
who is aiming to implement this profile but not the full profile."

Slashdot Top Deals

Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?

Close