Some years ago, on a technology publishers mailing list, I questioned whether Google's "Don't be evil" slogan had any real meaning. I was immediately rebuked once it was discovered that I hadn't even tried out some of the Google services that were under discussion. But, among the reasons I hadn't tried all the services was that I was wary of the massive agglomeration of information of all types that was accruing within Google's databases and servers. This V'GER-like gathering of all the information in the world that can possibly be gathered into one place, to me, seemed to at minimum lay the groundwork for the possibility of misuse in the future. Not that that's happened (to my knowledge). But still, to me, there's always seemed to be a bit of the "bully" in Google's swagger and its approach to extending its tentacles into new markets. And why do you have to explicitly say "Don't be evil?" Isn't that a given?
In more recent years, quite a few other people have come to find some of the behemoth's actions disconcerting. For example, there was the lawsuit over Google's decision to just start scanning in books and presenting their content online. Some thought that was a bit of overreach, possibly a violation of copyright laws.
More recently, people are wondering about Google with regard to the network neutrality debate. Network neutrality as Google would like it to be enforced turns out to be quite beneficial for the Google business model -- while that same "neutrality" ensures that the transport extremely heavy (in byte size) internet content will be paid for in part by people whose use of the web is quite lightweight.
Next, there's Google Android. Is it Java? What about the Java Community Process? As Simon Morris noted, Android "caused a minor stir" when it was initially launched. It seems to me that the stir has only increased over time.
Terrence Barr points out that "Google's Android philosophy may not be exactly what the developer community and open source advocates was hoping it to be" in his recent post Google Andriod: "Cease and Desist". Terrence points to some news that is apparently surprising many people, namely the cease-and-desist order Google has aimed at Cyanogen. "This is a weird one," says Dan Nosowitz in the Gizmodo post he wrote upon seeing the news. The comments people are leaving are quite interesting too.
Maybe the Cyanogen issue is a bit more serious than Microsoft's attack and subsequent gifting of Mike Rowe over his incredibly threatening MikeRoweSoft.com web site, or the McDonald's fury over one little Malaysian restaurant named "McCurry" (even if the owners were a bit disingenuous in saying the name really stands for "Malaysian Chicken Curry" -- shouldn't it be "MCCurry" in that case?).
Still, for a company that seems to like to barge right into territories that already have established players and rules, and do things the new way, the Google way, making up its own rules as it goes along -- one wonders why they would take such offense when someone wants to use their stuff as a basis for creating something new and unique that Google didn't think of?
The browser OS was the original concept of the Netscape browser back in the 90's, hence there nothing new about the concept. Google breathing life back into the concept with Chrome can almost be expected. Palm Pre is based on a similar technology footing, the concept of easy entry for developers because it's based on HTML, rather than some propriety type technology of like the iPhone. However the road ahead of Chromes if fraught with perils. As evidenced in the following examples of other's plights to the rode to greatness...
The 2009 Java Community Process (JCP) program Executive Committee (EC) Elections are here. Nominate yourself today! Nominations run until 14 October. One open seat remains on the Standard/Enterprise Edition Executive Committee and one open seat on the Micro Edition Executive Committee.
I just learned how to make Flash screencasts on my Linux system and deliver them (with GlassFish) on a server that the computer science department received as a donation (thanks Sun!!!). Why am I doing this? My publisher wants me to develop screencasts for my books, and I thought it could be useful for my students if I record my lectures. I use a smart board for the lectures, and a screencast that records the "smart" pen and voice works tolerably well.
Number 2 in the Top 10 most critical web application security vulnerabilities identified by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is Injection Flaws. Injection happens whenever an attacker's data is able to modify a query or command sent to a database, LDAP server, operating system or other Interpreter. Types of injections are SQL, LDAP, XPath, XSLT, HTML, XML, OS command... SQL injection and Cross-Site Scripting account for more than 80% of the vulnerabilities being discovered against Web applications (SANS Top Cyber Security Risks).
The new version of Java DTV specification, 1.2.1, was released at http://www.forumsbtvd.org.br/materias.asp?id=200. Java DTV was created in order to prevent some royalty issues from some MHP APIs, like DAVIC e HAVI, in the Ginga-J subsystem of the Brazilian DTV middleware specification, which is also called Ginga. For more information around this soap opera, check this old blog entry...
prince2 finds the Access Managrer Node NOT appearing on NetBeans 6.5.1 under GlassFishv2 node: "Hello Everyone, I have working on a webservice project for sometimes now and i have problem with implementing the security due to the fact that the Access Manager node does not appear on the server tab. I have installed and configure the..."
And tom01278 has questions about Setting up Voice Bridge with Asterisk: "I've set up an Asterisk server (and connected with X-Lite, to make sure it works), and now I'm trying to get Wonderland to connect to it. I've had a look at the phone setup tutorials here, but can't make it work. I need to know what special..."
Our current Spotlight is the JavaFX Survey. Danny Coward, reporting on the survey, said: "Don't bottle up any unexpressedopinions about JavaFX, take the survey. Mixed in with the usual snoozeville multichoice questions about the
kind of project you work on, you get to rate the current feature set
and rank the importance of new features the team's working on: tooling,
more controls, performance...."
Our Feature Articles include Jeff Lowery's A Finite State Machine Supporting Concurrent States, which demonstrates how Java enums and EnumSets can be used as a basis to define and validate application states and state transitions. We're also featuring Jeff Friesen's article Introducing Custom Paints to JavaFX, which shows how you can leverage undocumented JavaFX capabilities to support custom paints in JavaFX Version 1.2.
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