After years of development, delays and ownership changes, Java is ready for its next major release.
The first release candidate for Java 7 was released this week, with general availability expected by the end of the month. In order to help celebrate the launch of Java 7, Oracle hosted a global event on Thursday highlighting the key features of the new language release. It's a release that brings Oracle together with rivals IBM and HP to evolve what has become the most influential programming language for enterprise application deployments.
"Probably the most significant thing is the fact that we're finally shipping it," Mark Reinhold, chief architect of the Java platform group at Oracle said. "It has been almost five years now and for various political and business reasons this release has taken some time."
Reinhold noted that after the transition from Sun, Oracle has brought new focus and energy to the release. Oracle acquired Sun in 2010 for $7.4 billion.
In terms of new features, Reinhold noted that Java 7 is an evolutionary release rather than a revolutionary release, as has been the case with some past Java releases.
"There are significant improvements, but nothing really Earth-shattering," Reinhold said.
That said, Reinhold noted that JSR-203 defines new I/O APIs and is particularly interesting to him.
"We finally have a real filesystem API that lets you do things like manipulate symbolic links and access filesystem specific operations when you need to do that," Reinhold said.
Reinhold also highlighted the fork/join framework as being a key new feature for Java 7. He described fork/join as being the first step toward really enabling Java for multicore applications. According to Reinhold, fork/join is one of many ways to deal with expressing parallel computations in a way that will scale well to an arbitrary number of processor cores.
Aside from the code improvements, Reinhold also noted that there has been improvement in the Java development process as well.
"This is the first release where most of the development was done in the open with OpenJDK," Reinhold said. "It's true the development process has not been as transparent as we would have liked, but we're improving that."
One of the other key areas of improvement is in the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), which is now moving in its own direction to support more than just Java.
"For the first time in Java 7, we're starting to see the Java Virtual Machine really chart its own course," Oracle Java engineer Alex Buckley said. "Features are being added to the JVM that are beyond the capabilities of the core Java programming language."
Buckley noted that those 'other' features are there to help implementers of other languages that want to run on top of the JVM.
The other notable fact about Java 7 is that it is a collaborative effort that involves vendors that otherwise are fierce competitors. Oracle has no love lost for IBM or HP and competes aggressively with both vendors in multiple markets, yet on Java they all collaborate.
"Yes we're absolutely fierce competitors," Trent Gray-Donald, IBM Java 7 technical lead said. "But it turns out that we can collaborate."
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Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
IBM's Monshaw: Growth in Small- and Mid-market Outpaces Overall Company Rates
IBM Corp. general manager, global small and medium-sized businesses, said in an IT ChannelPlanet interview that the vendor's growth among mid-sized organizations is outpacing the company overall and even besting performances in other business units.
That sounds good, he said, but it's not enough so far to push IBM's share of the estimated $260 billion spent annually by mid-sized business worldwide above what it currently owns--about 10 percent of the hardware, 5 percent of the software and "well under 1 percent slice" of the available services revenue in the segment.
IBM reasons that the combination of its growth in the mid-market and its relatively low market share equates to a need to improve its reach, not just to clients but also to channel partners, Monshaw said.
"We see it as a go-to-market opportunity," he said. "We had to change our marketing to better reach the IT decision-makers in this space and find more ways to touch our Business Partners."
Click here to read about how IBM is moving MSPs and ISVs to center stage and reallocating millions of marketing dollars to online social business sites to reach IT decision-makers in mid-sized organizations.
That sounds good, he said, but it's not enough so far to push IBM's share of the estimated $260 billion spent annually by mid-sized business worldwide above what it currently owns--about 10 percent of the hardware, 5 percent of the software and "well under 1 percent slice" of the available services revenue in the segment.
IBM reasons that the combination of its growth in the mid-market and its relatively low market share equates to a need to improve its reach, not just to clients but also to channel partners, Monshaw said.
"We see it as a go-to-market opportunity," he said. "We had to change our marketing to better reach the IT decision-makers in this space and find more ways to touch our Business Partners."
Click here to read about how IBM is moving MSPs and ISVs to center stage and reallocating millions of marketing dollars to online social business sites to reach IT decision-makers in mid-sized organizations.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Hackers falsely claim Obama dead on Fox Twitter feed
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hackers took control of a FoxNews.com Twitter account on Monday and sent six false tweets saying that U.S. President Barack Obama had been shot dead, prompting an investigation by the Secret Service.
"Hackers sent out several malicious and false tweets that President Obama had been assassinated," Foxnews.com said in a statement about the latest in a wave of high-profile cyber security breaches around the world.
"Those reports are incorrect, of course, and the president is spending the July 4 holiday with his family."
The media outlet, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, said the incident was being checked.
"The hacking is being investigated, and FoxNews.com regrets any distress the false tweets may have created," it said.
Obama is celebrating the July 4 Independence holiday with his family at the White House and was due to host military families to watch Fourth of July fireworks in the evening.
The White House declined to comment. The Secret Service, which is charged with protecting the president, said it was looking into the incident.
"The Secret Service is investigating the matter and will conduct the appropriate follow-up," spokesman George Ogilvie said.
The first hacked tweet appeared around 2 a.m. and said: "@BarackObama has just passed. The President is dead. A sad 4th of July, indeed. President Barack Obama is dead."
The next one, "@BarackObama has just passed. Nearly 45 minutes ago, he was shot twice in the lower pelvic area and in the neck; shooter unknown. Bled out."
The false tweets were removed around noon today, a Fox News spokeswoman said, after Twitter suspended the account.
Fox News Digital Vice President and General Manager Jeff Misenti said FoxNews.com was working with Twitter to address the situation as quickly as possible.
"We will be requesting a detailed investigation from Twitter about how this occurred, and measures to prevent future unauthorized access into FoxNews.com accounts," Misenti said.
In an email statement to Reuters, a spokesman for Twitter said, "while Twitter does monitor accounts for brute-force log-in attempts and similar methods of attack, we're unable to anticipate compromises that take place due to off-site behavior."
The Twitter spokesman also said that Fox News indicated its account had been compromised.
CYBER BREACHES
A group calling itself The ScriptKiddies claimed responsibility for sending the tweets -- including "#ObamaDead, it's a sad 4th of July" -- from the "FoxNewspolitics" news feed before Twitter suspended its access.
In all some six false tweets were issued, saying Obama had been shot at a restaurant in Iowa while campaigning.
Obama was not in Iowa this weekend. He returned on Sunday to the White House from a brief trip to Camp David in neighboring Maryland.
The Foxnews.com account hacking followed a wave of highly publicized cyber security breaches, including attacks on the bank Citigroup, Sony Corp., Apple and the U.S. Senate and Brazilian presidential websites.
The FoxNews.com hacking came two days before Obama's first "Twitter town hall" where he will field tweeted questions about the economy and jobs.
Twitter's co-founder and executive chairman, Jack Dorsey, is due to moderate that Wednesday session at the White House.
Fox.com, another Fox Entertainment Group website, was the target of an attack by hacker group Lulz Security in May.
LulzSec has also made assaults on Sony, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other targets. The attacks have mostly resulted in temporary disruptions to websites and the release of user credentials.
"Hackers sent out several malicious and false tweets that President Obama had been assassinated," Foxnews.com said in a statement about the latest in a wave of high-profile cyber security breaches around the world.
"Those reports are incorrect, of course, and the president is spending the July 4 holiday with his family."
The media outlet, owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, said the incident was being checked.
"The hacking is being investigated, and FoxNews.com regrets any distress the false tweets may have created," it said.
Obama is celebrating the July 4 Independence holiday with his family at the White House and was due to host military families to watch Fourth of July fireworks in the evening.
The White House declined to comment. The Secret Service, which is charged with protecting the president, said it was looking into the incident.
"The Secret Service is investigating the matter and will conduct the appropriate follow-up," spokesman George Ogilvie said.
The first hacked tweet appeared around 2 a.m. and said: "@BarackObama has just passed. The President is dead. A sad 4th of July, indeed. President Barack Obama is dead."
The next one, "@BarackObama has just passed. Nearly 45 minutes ago, he was shot twice in the lower pelvic area and in the neck; shooter unknown. Bled out."
The false tweets were removed around noon today, a Fox News spokeswoman said, after Twitter suspended the account.
Fox News Digital Vice President and General Manager Jeff Misenti said FoxNews.com was working with Twitter to address the situation as quickly as possible.
"We will be requesting a detailed investigation from Twitter about how this occurred, and measures to prevent future unauthorized access into FoxNews.com accounts," Misenti said.
In an email statement to Reuters, a spokesman for Twitter said, "while Twitter does monitor accounts for brute-force log-in attempts and similar methods of attack, we're unable to anticipate compromises that take place due to off-site behavior."
The Twitter spokesman also said that Fox News indicated its account had been compromised.
CYBER BREACHES
A group calling itself The ScriptKiddies claimed responsibility for sending the tweets -- including "#ObamaDead, it's a sad 4th of July" -- from the "FoxNewspolitics" news feed before Twitter suspended its access.
In all some six false tweets were issued, saying Obama had been shot at a restaurant in Iowa while campaigning.
Obama was not in Iowa this weekend. He returned on Sunday to the White House from a brief trip to Camp David in neighboring Maryland.
The Foxnews.com account hacking followed a wave of highly publicized cyber security breaches, including attacks on the bank Citigroup, Sony Corp., Apple and the U.S. Senate and Brazilian presidential websites.
The FoxNews.com hacking came two days before Obama's first "Twitter town hall" where he will field tweeted questions about the economy and jobs.
Twitter's co-founder and executive chairman, Jack Dorsey, is due to moderate that Wednesday session at the White House.
Fox.com, another Fox Entertainment Group website, was the target of an attack by hacker group Lulz Security in May.
LulzSec has also made assaults on Sony, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and other targets. The attacks have mostly resulted in temporary disruptions to websites and the release of user credentials.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Anonymous hacker group hits Apple, publishes data
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The Internet vigilante hacker group Anonymous claimed to have broken into an Apple Inc server and published a small number of usernames and passwords for one of the U.S. technology company's websites.
Anonymous said on Sunday via its account on microblogging site Twitter that Apple could be a target for hackers and released the data as part of its Anti Security, or "AntiSec," campaign.
"Not being so serious, but well ... Apple could be target, too. But don't worry, we are busy elsewhere," Anonymous said on its Twitter feed, where it shared a link to the data posted on text-sharing website Pastebin.
Anonymous said the data included 27 usernames and passwords for the www.abs.apple.com website.
The website, used by Apple for online surveys, on Monday displayed an error message that said the server was temporarily offline.
A spokesman for Apple declined to comment.
Anonymous teamed up with the Lulz Security group of hackers late in June. LulzSec, which gained wide recognition for breaching the websites of Sony Corp<6758.T>, the Central Intelligence Agency and a British police unit among other targets, said it had accomplished its mission to disrupt corporate and government bodies for entertainment.
Security experts who have researched LulzSec's origins say it emerged from Anonymous, which became famous for attacking companies and institutions that the group considered opponents of WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange.
Anonymous earlier this month released scores of private e-mails and other data from an Arizona police website. LulzSec first released dozens of internal documents from the same Arizona police website in June.
Friday, July 1, 2011
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Qualys Launches BrowserCheck Business Edition
Keeping browsers up-to-date isn't always as easy as it should be. In addition to the core browsers which are routinely updated, browser plug-ins such as Flash, Java and QuickTime also need to be updated regularly.
Last year, security vendor Qualys launched a single user service called BrowserCheck to help users identify and remediate out of date browser issues. Today, Qualys is expanding that effort with the BrowserCheck Business Edition that offers a dashboard interface that enables an administrator to understand the browser status of multiple users.
"It allows an IT administrator to create an account on BrowserCheck so they can understand the browser status of their group," Wolfgang Kandek, CTO of Qualys told InternetNews.com. "The dashboard shows what operating system and what browser the users are running as well as identifying vulnerabilities."
The way the system works is that the admin first signs up on the Business Edition website to create an account. Users are then sent a unique URL to go and check their browsers with the online Qualys service. The standalone BrowserCheck service in contrast is accessabel via a public website. With the Business edition the detailed information for all users within a group is available only to the IT administrator and is secured by a username/password combination.
The system also includes a browser add-on that users can install which provides additional system visibility to the BrowserCheck system. As is the case with the single user version, the Business Edition of BrowserCheck will be a free service.
"Right now we think there is more value if we make it available to everyone for free," Kandek said. "We believe that that are many companies that will benefit from the service that would not be able to pay for it."
That said, Kandek noted that an enterprise grade offering could be available in the future that would be a paid service. The enterprise service would be something that provides additional features determined by demand and requirements.
The need to keep browsers and plug-in updated was highlighted in a study released by Qualys earlier this year at the RSA conference. The study looked at trends derived from over 200,000 browser visits to the Qualys BrowserCheck service between July of 2010 and January of 2011.
According to Qualys' February data, 42 percent of users were running vulnerable out of date Java plug-ins. Adobe's Reader was in second at 32 percent, followed by Apple QuickTime at 25 percent. Adobe Flash came in fourth at 24 percent.[web Warehouse, Design My Website]
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