java

Nokia and free software. Or why Android was not the "preferred bidder" (because that's like peeing in your pants for warmth)

This year seems to been continuing where last year left off: Oracle/Sun, OpenOffice/LibreOffice, Ubuntu and Wayland/Xorg. Now, it's the turn of Nokia and Microsoft. When I heard the news that Nokia was switching from the Symbian OS to Windows 7 for their smartphones my first reaction was: "another Microsoft patents land grab" but this article is not about the proverbial beast of Redmond but about why Nokia chose it over Android and more importantly, given the increasing convergence of laptops, smartphones and tablets, answering the question: just how free is Android and what is the relationship with GNU/Linux?--and I suspect that I'll be needing my asbestos delicates.

Getting Stanford's "Karel the Robot" to Run in Debian's Eclipse

I'm taking Stanford's Open Courseware "Programming Methodology" this semester, but I got stumped early on by the problem of setting up the special Stanford class libraries in my Debian-standard Eclipse installation. The instructions and files available from the website are only available for Windows and Macintosh platforms. The process is not that hard, but if you're new to Java and Eclipse (and especially if you are new to programming, as the class assumes), you'll likely be thrown by this. I couldn't find any documentation on how to do this after extensive searching, so here it is.

In a Desert, TV-Browser is an EPG Oasis

It is not often that you fail to find half a dozen free software programs to fill a particular niche -browsers, e-mail clients or file managers to name a few; so it was with both surprise and disappointment that I nearly drew a blank in my search for an Electronic Programme Guide (EPG) for GNU/Linux. Yes, Freevo and MythTV have this feature built in, but installing and configuring them just to get your mitts on an EPG looks like overkill. I wanted a simple, stand-alone EPG programme. I got TV-Browser and I got a hell of a lot more than I bargained for.

Video Conversion System Implementation

Many systems support video upload and viewing functionality. Of course, all video files uploaded by users shall be converted to some common format (flv format as usual) to make playback easier, probably scaled to common resolution, or watermarks are required on the site, etc. Therefore, developers have to solve the problem of video conversion very often and use various approaches.

Why did Javascript/AJAX mop the floor with Java, Flash and Silverlight? Or, why open standards eventually win

It's not always true that the neatest, most advanced technology ends up winning most of the market share. There are other reasons which get in the way. Sometimes, the less advanced solutions end up winning -- and evolve in order to become more solid and established. An example of this is Javascript/AJAX, which has conquered most of the web-based client programming -- despite the fact that there were competing technologies which could (and maybe should) have easily won, purely based on technical merits. How did that happen?

Does anybody still develop Windows applications? Or, the programming world has gone online

Steve Ballmer has recently sent a memo to every Microsoft employee. Ballmer's memo leaked really quickly (I wonder if he expected it). After swallowing the corporate-madness part (but that's allowed: he's a "mad" corporate leader after all), one particular passage really grabbed my attention. Taking about Internet applications being popular, he wrote: "But we also need to make sure developers have the .NET skills to write unique Windows applications using Windows Presentation Foundation". Which begs the question: does anybody still develop Microsoft Windows applications? Really?

Book Review: Java EE 5 Development using GlassFish Application Server by David R. Heffelfinger

The application server GlassFish supports all the most modern and juicy features of Java Enterprise Edition (EE), formally known as J2EE. Made by Sun, the server has a dual purpose as both the official application server reference for Java EE and as a viable and scalable piece of software that performs well under most conditions. David R. Heffelfinger's book "Java EE 5 Development using Glassfish", published by PACKT, follows both purposes by exploring the frameworks and the server deployment; thus the books details resonate vigorously with the spirit behind the tool.

NetBeans 6.0 is out: why should developers use it?

The free software age is all about giving the freedom to choose: flexibility to choose the best out of a variety of almost-the-best software is one of the hallmarks of this era. On the flip side, a newbie to this world often faces a choice overload. Should she go for Fedora or Ubuntu or Debian, GNOME or KDE, NetBeans or Eclipse, Open MPI or Open MP or PVM? We have loyalists on every side swearing by their product--and they are not wrong. It is tough to make a choice. However, with time, based on usage preferences, a choice is made and she finds her favourite distro, development tools and the like.

At the moment, two IDEs are dominant in the free software world: Eclipse and NetBeans. Being a NetBeans fan (and part of the NetBeans community), I will explain why in my opinion it's NetBeans is a fantastic choice.

Create a simple application with Hecl

These days, almost everyone has a cell phone; cell phones keep getting faster, smarter, and more capable, yet relatively few applications exist for them. The Hecl programming language makes it easy to script applications for your cell phone—with just a few lines of code, you can create applications that you can carry with you, everywhere.

Easy cell phone applications with Hecl

IcedTea Java, unrelated patent deals, and FSDaily

The IcedTea project has been launched by GNU Classpath. It's goal is to make Sun's recently freed Java implementation, called OpenJDK, work in free software environments. This involves replacing some binary blobs with code from GNU Classpath, and making or adapting a free software build system for OpenJDK.

Book review: Wicked Cool Java by Brian D. Eubanks

The range of Java related libraries and frameworks are immense. It is a challenge for motivated Java practitioners to keep in contact with this constantly varying and exponentially increasing landscape. Challenging oneself with the new freshens one’s own ideas and helps the everyday programmer or hobbyist to adopt the right pose and attitude to constant learning. Wicked Cool Java, code bits, open-source libraries, and project ideas authored by Brian D.

Book review: Agile Java Development with Spring, Hibernate and Eclipse by Anil Hemrajani

The book Agile Java Development with Spring, Hibernate and Eclipse by Anil Hemrajani is a book for developers which effectively weaves an understandable lesson based on a realistic, but imaginary timesheet project. This book describes the combination of agile project mentality and Java programming and is a welcome addition to my personal library and the Java biased development audience as a whole.

Book review: The Definitive Guide to GCC, Second Edition by William von Hagen

Without the GNU Compiler collection GCC it would be difficult to imagine that free software would have had such a rapid penetration into the market place. Historically speaking, having a free high quality set of compilers acted as a bootstrap for the highly active GNU project and beyond and was thus an important, the important, winning factor. If you want to use GCC (including version 4) to its utmost, The Definitive Guide to GCC, Second Edition, written by William von Hagen and published by Apress, is almost certainly for you.

The book’s coverThe book’s cover

Sun's right move: GPL Java

Today marks the rebirth of Java. Sun has announced their intent to release thesource code for Java under the GPL. If this isn't some of the bestnews in a long time, I don't know what is.

The freeing of Java

Sun isn't releasing all of the code. It seems there are partsof Java Sun doesn't own, and for which Sun hasn't been able tonegotiate releasing under the GPL. But, it appears this is a tiny bitof the code.

Java becoming free software: are we nearly there? (UPDATE: we are!)

Days ago I read this announcement about Sun moving Java's license to free software, and in particular that some parts of it will be released under the GPL

www.sun.com early this morning (GMT+1)www.sun.com early this morning (GMT+1)

Today on www.sun.com they are announcing a webcast today at 9.30 Pacific Time

Are we nearly there?

UPDATE:

we are:

Book review: Java 6 Platform Revealed by John Zukowski

Java SE 6 otherwise known as Mustang is coming and probably much sooner than many 1.4 programmers think. As a programmer or an Architect, do you really know the details of the differences between 1.5 and 1.6? Java 6 Platform Revealed by John Zukowski is the first book I have read on this subject area. The book is short, clear and to the point.

The book’s cover The book’s cover

Most forwarded

Interview with Dave Mohyla, of DTIDATA

Dave Mohyla is the president and founder of dtidata.com, a hard drive recovery facility based in Tampa, Florida.

TM: Where are you based? What does your company do?
DTI Data recovery is based in South Pasadena, Florida which is a suburb of Tampa. We have been here for over 10 years. We operate a bio-metrically secured class 100 clean room where we perform hard drive recovery on all types of hard disks, from laptop hard drives to multi drive RAID systems.

Anybody up to writing good directory software?

Since the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).

Interview with Mark Shuttleworth

Mark Shuttleworth is the founder of Thawte, the first Certification Authority to sell public SSL certificates. After selling Thawte to Verisign, Mark moved on to training as an astronaut in Russia and visiting space. Once he got back he founded Ubuntu, the leading GNU/Linux distribution. He agreed on releasing a quick interview to Free Software Magazine.

Is better education the key to finding better software?

I read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.

Most emailed

Free Open Document label templates

If you’ve ever spent hours at work doing mailings, cursed your printer for printing outside the lines on your labels, or moaned “There has got to be a better way to do this,” here’s the solution you’ve been looking for. Working smarter, not harder! Worldlabel.com, a manufacture of labels offers Open Office / Libre Office labels templates for downloading in ODF format which will save you time, effort, and (if you want) make really cool-looking labels

Creating a user-centric site in Drupal

A little while ago, while talking in the #drupal mailing list, I showed my latest creation to one of the core developers there. His reaction was "Wow, I am always surprised what people use Drupal for". His surprise is somehow justified: I did create a site for a bunch of entertainers in Perth, a company set to use Drupal to take over the world with Entertainers.Biz.

Update: since writing this article, I have updated the system so that the whole booking process happens online. I will update the article accordingly!

So, why, why do people and companies develop free software?

More and more people are discovering free software. Many people only do so after weeks, or even months, of using it. I wonder, for example, how many Firefox users actually know how free Firefox really is—many of them realise that you can get it for free, but find it hard to believe that anybody can modify it and even redistribute it legally.

When the discovery is made, the first instinct is to ask: why do they do it? Programming is hard work. Even though most (if not all) programmers are driven by their higher-than-normal IQs and their amazing passion for solving problems, it’s still hard to understand why so many of them would donate so much of their time to creating something that they can’t really show off to anybody but their colleagues or geek friends.

Sure, anybody can buy laptops, and just program. No need to get a full-on lab or spend thousands of dollars in equipment. But... is that the full story?

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