Posts by EddieC

Microsoft on Tuesday is set to release six security updates, three of which it has deemed critical and apply only to versions of Windows other than Windows 7. Microsoft released advance notice of its Security Bulletin for November, on Nov. 5. The bulletin itself will be released on Tuesday along with remedies, as per its normal patch cycle. Other alerts are labeled "important," one of which involves a denial of service vulnerability for Windows; the other two affect Excel. Redmond will reportedly release updates for Windows XP, 2003 and 2007 and Office 2004 and 2008 for Mac OS X.

Save the one warning of DoS attacks, all the vulnerabilities involve remote code execution, as did the 13 patches released by Microsoft on October 13, fixing nearly three dozen flaws, all of them critical. A critical warning is one "whose exploitation could allow the propagation of an Internet worm without user action," according to the company, while one that is one step down at important, is said to be one that "could result in compromise of the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of users data, or of the integrity or availability of processing resources."

Microsoft on Monday also released an update to MS09-054, the part of its October patch-fest that applied to Internet Explorer. This one, which went somewhat under the radar, as explained on the company's technet Website, addresses the way pages are rendered.

GUIdancer 3.2, the latest version of flagship automated GUI testing tool from Bredex, now "officially" supports Windows 7 and Vista, and includes additional enhancements to its library of pre-built test actions. It began shipping on Nov. 3. Before you decide that US$5785 is too much to pay for an automated keyword testing tool (more if you're subject to Germany's voracious appropriation tax), take a look at these demos of the software in action. You can also try the software for two weeks for free. There are versions for Linux and Windows; a Mac OX S version is in beta.

According to the company, new actions in GUIdancer 3.2 improve support for testing GUI-embedded tables, context menus--such as those that pop up when something is right-clicked--and the tabbed panes common in Web applications. Also, UI elements can now be collected using mouse clicks whenever GUIdancer enters Object Mapping Mode, during which the tool detects and indicates objects that can be mapped (and automatically tested). It is also now possible to switch between databases while GUIdancer is running; the tool previously required a restart. Support for testing dynamic web-application components also has been added.

GUIdancer 3.2 now includes more than one hundred pre-defined test actions for testing Java or HTML applications simply by drag-and-drop. The approach requires no code and no knowledge of the coding or the inner workings of an application, the company says. "A variety of checks and synchronization actions are available alongside other flexible actions …

Firefox can finally orient itself, at least in terms of iPhones and MacBooks. Mozilla's latest browser, Firefox 3.6 beta 1, can now talk to accelerometers such as those in many Apple devices, thanks to orientation event objects introduced in the new Gecko 1.9.2 presentation engine at the browser's core. Also among DOM enhancements are drag-and-drop for file transfer and the ability for Web workers to self-terminate.

And that's just the beginning. The download of Firefox 3.6 beta 1 for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows contains thousands of bug fixes, including numerous repairs to CSS image rendering and text alignment.

There also were significant updates to XUL, and separate pages were created to advise extension and plug-in developers of how to update your work. For plug-in developers, you'll need to know that main () is no longer supported as an entry point. There are also some user interface changes and Mac OS X-specific mods, and with Gecko 1.9.2, the old Code Fragment Manager will be officially phased out. For extension developers, the add-on package has been modified, and there are UI and HTML 5 compliance improvements to deal with.

Firefox 3.6 also reportedly supports some aspects of Windows 7, including Aero Peek and taskbar thumbnails (does anyone like these?), but will not support Jump Lists when released later this year.

If you're yearning to break free from Apple-sanctioned iPhone carrier AT&T (and you don't mind trading your warranty for the privilege), then reach out and touch George Hotz. The iPhone hacker yesterday posted a video showing an iPhone call on T-Mobile, and Wednesday is expected to post the code that made it possible.

Hotz, who goes by the hacker alias GeoHot, drew attention earlier this year when he posted "purplera1n," a so-called "jailbreak" for iPhone 3GS (OS 3.0) that lets the phone run code other than that expressly authorized by Apple or purchased at the AppStore. The hack was quickly made ineffective by Apple when it released OS 3.0.1.

While undeterred, Hotz skipped OS 3.0.1 when he went to work on blackra1n, which targets iPhones running OS 3.1.2 (including the third-generation iPhone Touch, but that one needs to be tethered). According to an Oct. 11 blog post announcing the release, Hotz claims that blackra1n can jailbreak an iPhone about 30 seconds.

His latest work, blacksn0w, will allow such jailbroken devices (running baseband 05.11.07) to be used on any GSM network. The 17-year-old told CNN in an interview that getting his iPhone to work with T-Mobile was what got him started on this project in the first place.

Are you a certified function point specialist or play one on TV? Then the Counting Practices Manual version 4.3 might be for you. Unveiled today by the International Function Point Users Group (better known as IFPUG), the $100 CD contains the latest "body of knowledge used by function point analysts to measure the functional size of applications and projects for benchmarking and estimating world-wide for many domains and business areas," announced the group.

The "must-have" publication documents the Counting Practices Manual (CPM), which has been approved as an international standard under ISO/IEC 14143-1 Information Technology-Software Measurement. This revision, which officially replaces CPM 4.2 on Jan. 1, 2010, "further clarifies the rules and enhances the definitions and examples, thereby enabling a more consistent interpretation and application of rules." Major changes to the document involve Part 1, which copies the ISO-standard Functional Size Measurement Method (FSM) describing the process, definitions and rules. FSM methods are designed to allow measurement of the size of a software project by quantifying the functional requirements, often for the purpose of developing project estimates and evaluating risk.

Content formerly in Part 1 has been moved to Part 2 - The Bridge. Parts 2, 3, 4 and the Appendices have been updated and enhanced with additional examples and guidance, IFPUG said. To purchase CPM 4.3, visit the IFPUG order page. It is also available to current IFPUG members as a free for download on the member side of the IFPUG website. Members …

once you go mac, you won't wanna go back. trust your feelings. you know it to be true.

While the competition is hard at work on a 100-core processor, Intel this week reported advances in phase-change memory (PCM), a type of non-volatile memory that is seen as a possible next-generation replacement for flash.

In a joint announcement yesterday with Swiss memory maker Numonyx, the companies said they had demonstrated for the first time the ability to "stack multiple layers of PCM arrays within a single die," significantly increasing the space savings and reducing power consumption related to the technology.

Memory cells consist of a storage element and a selector. Several stacked memory cells make a memory array. By stacking PCM-cell arrays, the companies have demonstrated what they call a phase change memory and switch (PCMS), a vertically integrated memory cell. "The ability to layer or stack arrays of PCMS[es] provides the scalability to higher memory densities while maintaining the performance characteristics of PCM, a challenge that is becoming increasingly more difficult to maintain with traditional memory technologies," according to the statement.

At the center of the advance is the Ovonic Threshold Switch (OTS), which in essence is a thin layer of glass that changes its resistive state depending on the level of current being applied to it. Researchers deployed the thin film in a new way, with the "two-terminal OTS as the selector, matching the physical and electrical properties for PCM scaling." With the compatibility of thin-film PCMS, multiple layers of cross point memory arrays are now …

More info just in, the following new Rational versions are integrated with the latest versions of the corresponding Tivoli product:
Rational ClearQuest - 7.1.1
Rational Test Lab Manager – 2.0
Rational PerformanceTester – 8.1
Rational Asset Manager – 7.2

Companies using IBM's Rational and Tivoli product will breathe easier today, thanks to new, integrated versions of nine tools that the company says will facilitate communication and closer collaboration between software development and support teams in the enterprise. What's more, prices will remain where they are, and the updates are free for current subscribers.

According to the company, the integrations are intended to address individual frustration points that it sees being experienced by teams, particularly those of the geographically dispersed variety, and improve efficiency for organizations using both through automation.

One of the four couplings involves Rational ClearQuest, which development teams use to track bugs and changes, and Tivoli Service Request Manager, used by support teams for logging help requests. The integration synchronizes trouble tickets in Service Request Manager with the ClearQuest's bug-fix tracker, reducing human error and adding traceability to service requests. Work orders are automatically kept in sync with ClearQuest, and can even be assigned to individual developers based on the suspect code, if known.

Also paired are Rational Asset Manager and Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database, helping organizations deal with pre- and post-deployment issues. While Asset Manager keeps track of all the elements that go into development, such as servers, Web services and other components, it also now keeps people on the Tivoli side informed about the latest versions of everything.

Rational Test Lab Manager is now integrated with Tivoli's Provisioning Manager and Application Dependency and Discovery Manager apps, which keeps the …

At the risk of coming off like TV's "Mad Men," Amazon Web Services really are New and Improved. The company today announced the addition of Amazon Relational Database Service, giving users of Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) access to a virtual instance of MySQL. That's the New part. Improvements include a family of high-memory instances and a price reduction of Linux-based EC2 compute time to 8.5 cents per hour from 10 cents. The 15 percent price drop takes effect Nov. 1.

"Many customers have told us that their applications require a relational database," said Adam Selipsky, vice president of Amazon Web Services, in a statement. "That’s why we built Amazon RDS, which combines a familiar relational database with automated management and the instant scalability of the AWS cloud." Existing MySQL applications can be "work seamlessly with Amazon RDS," according to claims, while the cloud automates common administrative tasks such as setup and provisioning, patch management and data backups, which are stored for a user-definable period. Database scaling--such as adding add more storage or changing to a larger or smaller DB Instance class-- can be executed with a single API call, the company said. Developers retain control of schema, indices and controls for performance tuning.

For less complex database needs, Amazon also offers SimpleDB, with which applications can store and retrieve data using simple Web services requests. As with Amazon RDS, provisioning and maintenance are automatic, as …

Thought you were bleeding edge with your quad-core PC? Think again. A company called Tilera today announced that it's working on a chip containing 100 processor cores, which it says could be seen by 2011. It's part of its new TILE-Gx line of 64-bit multi-core processors, the first of which--a 36-core chip--will be sampling by the end of 2010, the company said today in a statement. With its top-end TILE-Gx100, Tilera claims to outstrip Intel's next-generation Westmere processor in performance-per-watt by a factor of 10. Other models will contain 16 and 64 cores, and will sample in early 2011.

But all those cores won't do much good without applications to exercise them, right? So Tilera also offers Multicore Development Environment, a simplified multi-core Eclipse-based IDE that can target SMP Linux 2.6, Zero Overhead Linux, Bare Metal Environment and hybrid systems. The package includes an ANSI C/C++ compiler, system simulator, GNU command line tools and graphical multi-core application debugging and profiling.

The breakthroughs in multi-core technology are the result of an architecture under development since 1990. TILE-Gx chips share local cache across all cores, and a proprietary two-dimensional interconnect eliminates the need for an on-chip bus.

“We believe this next generation of high-core count, ultra high-performance chips will open completely new computing possibilities,” said Tilera CEO Omid Tahernia, a 21-year veteran of Motorola who joined Tilera in 2007 after running the DSP division of Xilinx. “Customers will be able to replace an entire board …

With all the coverage of last week's Windows 7 launch, it was easy to overlook news of the forthcoming release of SharePoint Server 2010, the next edition of Redmond's collaboration platform. A public beta is expected next month, which according a speech given by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer last week will demonstrate significant new functionality. What Ballmer didn't directly confirm in his speech was recent speculation that that by June of 2010, the platform will no longer ride along with Windows Server products, but instead be offered stand-alone.

Helping to fuel the speculation about platform status of SharePoint 2010 was talk of a set of new cloud-based APIs; support for business connectivity services, permitting developers to connect application or Web-service data with SharePoint or Office client apps; REST, LINQ and ATOM support; an improved SharePoint designer; social tagging and "backstage" life-cycle management links with Office; and integration with Visual Studio 2010. Also new will be hosted and on-premise versions.

Speaking at Microsoft's SharePoint conference in Las Vegas on Oct. 19, Ballmer himself referred to the tool as a platform, implying that it had evolved hast its previous status as merely a server application. "SharePoint 2010 will transform efficiency by connecting workers across a single collaboration platform for business.” The update is scheduled for general availability "in the first half of 2010," which typically means June.

The new tools also reportedly will simplify Website creation with native support for video, audio and Silverlight, as well as content …

Craigslist hosts classified ads of all kinds, including lengthy lists of developer's jobs in New York and the San Francisco Bay area. But another type of job listing was in the spotlight today, and it's nice to know there's at least one person out there who's thinking clearly.

A judge in Illinois yesterday threw out a case brought against Craigslist for facilitating prostitution, simply because people listed what were alleged to be such services on the company's no-frills Websites. That would be like blaming gun makers every time someone is shot to death, or suing makers of aluminum bats for the risk they pose to amateur pitchers. Oh wait, those are both happening.

But a cooler head prevailed in the Craigslist case, which was brought by Cook County Sheriff's office. John F. Grady, the U.S. District Court Judge for the Northern District of Illinois, ruled in a 20-page judgement (pdf) that Craigslist can't be blamed. "Intermediaries are not culpable for 'aiding and abetting' their customers who misuse their services to commit unlawful acts," the judge wrote in his dismissal of the case. Citing the Communications Decency Act, an early Congressional attempt to regulate online porn, shields companies from liability because of the way people use their services.

Craigslist already had banned advertising of illegal services prior to the case. The service drew attention in April when Phillip Markoff, a Boston man dubbed the "

Keeping pace with Microsoft's latest releases, Xenocode this week unveiled Virtual Application Studio 2010, an update to its virtualization engine that supports Windows 7, simplifies app-publishing to the Web, and permits deployment to multiple platforms using a single executable, the company said. Microsoft this week began shipping Windows 7, and put out a final beta of Visual Studio 2010, which is set for general availability in March.

Virtual Application Studio turns an application into a self-contained executable, which can be e-mailed or transported on a USB drive and executed on any modern Windows PC without regard for what else might be installed. With just a few clicks, developers can virtualize their Windows-based applications for instant deployment to internal servers or the Web. The cost is US$40 per developer seat; there are no royalties.

Introduced in 2008, Virtual Application Studio 2010 now reportedly can execute vitualized apps on any version of Windows 7, can virtualize apps designed for it, and now permits applications to be launched directly from within a Web browser (via Spoon), reducing the time required by the traditional download-and-install process, the company said. A new platform merge function allows virtual apps to be customized based on the target operating system, allowing deployment to multiple platforms using a single executable. The new version includes application templates for Firefox, Internet Explorer, Office, OpenOffice and other popular software, which simplify the virtualization of applications. You can also now set expiration values for your apps, with …

With the price of Windows 7 topping out at US$320, Microsoft will be handing shoppers less cash at the end of its "I'm a PC" commercials. Price advantages of Windows-laptops over those from Apple evaporated further today as Microsoft's latest operating system hit store shelves and OEM factories.

In typical Microsoft fashion, there are six versions of Windows 7, something for everyone at every price point. All but the Starter Edition support 32- and 64-bit architectures. At $320 are the feature-identical Ultimate and Enterprise Editions. Both are available at retail and pre-installed through OEMs; volume pricing is available for Enterprise. Here's a question for Microsoft: If they're identical in every way, why offer two? The company says it's targeting one at corporations and the other at hobbyists. And?

Even more puzzling is the way Microsoft divided features of its Home Premium ($200) and Professional Editions, (both also available at retail or pre-installed). Home Premium limits system to RAM 16GB, while Pro permits up to 192GB (as do Ultimate and Enterprise). Home Premium also is limited to a single CPU (others max out at two), can't back up to a network drive or encrypt files, and lacks an XP Mode, which runs a virtual instance of Windows XP for apps not yet ready for Windows 7. Today's "home" users are a pretty sophisticated bunch; I don't think Microsoft gives them enough credit.

Windows 7 is still cheaper than Vista, which maxed out at $399. And if …

Trust not Microsoft, ye who yearn to be free (of defects).

One way to become the "ultimate" of something is to simply declare it. JetBrains, maker of the IntelliJ IDEA Java IDE, on Thursday began previewing IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate Edition, the latest version of its commercial integrated development environment for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. The "ultimate" designation is presumably to differentiate it from the Community Edition, which is now available as open source.

The company had previously offered a free version if IntelliJ IDEA for non-commercial use, but source code was not made available until now. Both are based on the forthcoming version 9 of the IDE, formerly code-named Maia. No release date was given.

"Open source has become the mainstream, and we continue to embrace it as an exciting challenge," said JetBrains CEO Sergey Dmitriev of the move. "In brief, we're not changing direction — we're moving forward." The company positions the Community Edition, which will be available under the Apache 2.0 license, as a good choice for developers of pure Java/Groovy applications or for doing Swing development. "It has all the crown jewels ofIntelliJ IDEA, including various refactorings and code inspections, coding assistance, debugging, TestNG and JUnit testing; CVS, Subversion and Git support, as well as Ant and Maven build integration." It differs from Ultimate in too many ways to list, but if you're working with PHP, Python, Ruby or SQL, the free version won't cut it. Also, it works with CVS, Git and Subversion, but if you're using a commercial CMS, you'll …

One might have titled this story "Beware of government bearing gifts." We should be exceedingly wary whenever law makers begin dabbling with something that's been working exceedingly well for decades. Today that thing is the Internet, perhaps the least-regulated industry in the U.S. today.

This week the U.S. Federal Communications Commission is considering a set of new (and as yet unpublished) rules that would impose regulations on how broadband service providers are allowed to maintain their networks. Shrouded in the innocuous veil of "Network Neutrality," the potential restrictions are anything but neutral, and could tie the hands of service providers and send investors running for the exits. And with investors go innovations and expansion.

You probably disagree. I did too, at first. Neutrality and openness are good things. Everyone should be allowed to operate on an even playing field. On the surface, the issue seems fair to all parties. But once you really think about what's being proposed--that cable and phone companies would not be free to manage their networks the way they wish--what's to keep them in the game? After all, they're the ones who took the risks of investing in and maintaining the infrastructure. Shouldn't they be free to regulate their own systems, provided they're not giving unfair advantage to one player over another?

It took a bit of digging before I found enough information in favor of leaving things alone before I could finally wrap my head around this. Most of what's out there is in favor …

With all the libraries available that have emerged, Java and Ajax applications practically build themselves these days. This week Java tool maker Instantiations added support for Ext GWT to GWT Designer 7.2, the latest version of its Eclipse-based drag-and-drop GUI-building environment that can be had for as little as $5 a month.

Also known as GXT, Ext GWT builds on the Google Web Toolkit, adding a slew of customizable UI widgets and CSS-based themes, plus full documentation and backward compatibility. It's made by Ext LLC. And if you're currently building Web apps and you haven't hard of them, a look at their JS Desktop for an idea. For a couple hundred bucks, their libraries might help you avoid reinventing the foundation.

Now back to the news. With the addition of GXT 2.0.1 support, GWT Designer 7.2 adds multiple GXT-specific palette categories for Panels, Layouts, Widgets, Forms, Menus and Toolbars. It also provides WYSIWYG editing for all GXT components, properties and layouts, and adds several Ext-specific wizards for creating GXT Windows, Dialogs and Composites.

GWT Designer v7.2 also adds a multi-page CSS Style Editor as well as other CSS enhancements and continued support for GWT through 1.7.1, and stays in sync with GWT 1.7, which adds better support for Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4. The company also claims to have improved the tool's overall performance and specifically its parsing speed.

Current subscribers can upgrade …

With the release of Ingres Database 9.3 today, the company says it's now easier for developers to migrate their application to the open source system from MySQL, Oracle,SQL Server and Sybase. It does so, the company said, through "improved accessibility of table procedures from within the query" and support for positional parameter notations, making database procedure invocation more flexible.

“As the fate of MySQL is currently in the hands of the European Commission, open source community developers and our global business customers and partners are seeking a more stable, reliable open source database,” said Deb Woods, vice president of product management of Ingres, in a statement. She was referring, of course, to the Sept. 3 investigation launched by the EC into possible conflicts between Oracle and MySQL due to Oracle's pending acquisition of Sun Microsystems, which owns MySQL. Source code for both databases is available under open source licensing.

Also reportedly new in version 9.3 is a pluggable authentication modules (PAM) structure that allows the database to support more authentication mechanisms than before, and simplifies integration with programs that support multiple security services. Authorization programs can run either with no special privileges or with shadow group privileges, providing less security exposure, the company said. It's also compatible with Liferay, the open source portal and social collaboration platform. This is intended to simplify customization for large organizational structures, such as developing individual security permissions for separate business units.

Enhancements to ODBC, …

Can't decide whether to develop for Android, BlackBerry, iPhone, or Symbian? You may not have to, if the latest "write once, run anywhere" claim from Recursion Software bears fruit. The company today unveiled Voyager 7.2 Pervasive Software Platform, and says that developers can use the tool to target those platforms as well as Windows Mobile and LiMo and Maemo Linux-based devices with a single code base.

Apps built with the platform can execute on smartphones, netbooks and PCs and share contacts and other personal information, location data and media files," the company said, opening the door to simpler collaboration, data collection and fleet and asset management and other mobile application development. According to 2Q 2009 stats from market researcher Canalys, the top three mobile platform makers (Symbian, RIM and Apple) account for 85 percent of the market. Add in Microsoft and Google and you're at better than 96 percent.

Helping to do its magic is a location-aware messaging system that Recursive says enables peer-to-peer collaboration without the need for a host PC, server or cloud. The system can communicate and form decentralized groups over "any Telco or WiFi network," it reported. The messaging is part of an abstraction layer that also encompasses C/C++, Java, .NET and numerous other platforms. News of the updated platform came from the 2009 CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment conference, running now through Friday at the San Diego Convention Center.

The cost? Well, you can

Microsoft and Palm today separately advanced web sites designed for developers to post and sell (or give away) applications for their respective mobile platforms, playing catch-up with Apple, whose App Store celebrated its one-year anniversary in July. Redmond also unveiled a series of new phones this week based on Windows Mobile 6.5, its latest version.

Microsoft's new site, dubbed Windows Marketing for Mobile, includes a bare-bones landing page from which you can view your application purchase history or visit the user forum or developer community. At launch, Microsoft claimed to offer 246 mobile applications, and 753 independent software developers and vendors building more. Popular mobile applications available now include Facebook, MySpace, Netflix, Twikini, WunderRadio and ZAGAT, the company said.

But don't bother going there now to shop. You can only buy stuff from a device running Windows Mobile 6.5, which was first available on a phone just yesterday. DOH! Not only does Microsoft shut out 99.9 percent of current its user base, but also fails to address an obvious usage pattern--buying something through a PC browser (where it's faster and easier than through a handheld device) and then deploying it to the device. Fortunately, if you're a user of Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 and want to buy apps online, there's an app for that.

As limited as Microsoft's site is, at least it's a site. That's more than Palm can claim. The company's on-again, off-again App …

Urbancode today unveiled AnthillPro 3.7, the latest version of its build and deployment automation tool that piles seven popular source code analysis tools onto its list of third-party integrations. There's also support for the GIT repository and DB2 and PostgreSQL databases, the company said today in a statement. Anthill Pro 3.7 began shipping on Sept. 15, but had not been widely announced.

Among the most significant features in 3.7 is its plug-in API, which permits organizations to build integrations with third-party or proprietary tools of their choosing, the company said. "With plug-ins, users can create, customize and rapidly update integrations," and most subsequent integrations will be implemented as plug-ins, said the company.

AnthillPro 3.7 now integrates with Checkstyle, CodeSonar, Coverity Prevent, FindBugs, Fortify 360, Klocwork Insight and PMD. The integrations allow users to detect defects earlier, enforce their code quality standards, and build quality from the beginning, the company said. Integration steps vary from product to product, so Urbancode has compiled this list of product-specific steps to get each of the source-code analyzers working. Pretty slick.

Also new is the ability to access AnthillPro from the command line, and to impersonate user agents for greater security and control of permissions given to agent scripts, according to the reports. This is a major update, as you'll see from the extensive release notes.

With the release of any new OS release, the question facing developers is whether or not to port existing applications. Often the answer hinges on two major factors: Will the operating system be widely adopted and what's downside of doing nothing?

In the enterprise the decision is often made for you, when policy dictates whether the company will upgrade its desktops to something new. According to a survey of 450 developers conducted by Visual Studio Magazine published this month, almost two out of every five (38.9%) are currently developing for Windows 7 or plan to do so within the next three months. That, despite the fact that not all of Win7's promised capabilities will be present in .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack, which is included with the release. The Multi-Touch UI, ribbon toolbars and other major functionality will have to wait until next year when .NET 4.0 comes out.

While UI whistles and bells are a major focal point of Windows 7, most of the developers surveyed were more interested in better performance. When asked about their "level of excitement about specific Windows 7 features," the top two responses were improved security and optimized I/O handling. Tied for third place were a "power-efficient infrastructure" and an "updated graphics stack and high DPI support."

Will Windows 7 be the must-have OS that XP was, or will it fall flat in the enterprise as Vista did? I'll admit I'm rooting for Microsoft. After all, Apple's OS fortunes certainly turned …

Research released this week by Evans Data showed that 73 percent of the market currently use or plan to adopt the Spring application framework for Java within the next two years. More remarkable is that 83 percent of companies with 500 or more developers use Spring, according to the study[/url]. So I thought it would be a good time to speak with Rod Johnson, CEO and founder of SpringSource, and author of the open source framework that some in the Java community view as a superior alternative to EJB.

EddieC: Why do you think Spring adoption has become so widespread?

Rod Johnson: The Evans report [shows] the percentage of people motivated by productivity. Growth in use of Spring has been steady over time. It was first launched as open-source in Feb., 2003, and has now surpassed 5 million downloads. You always wonder...sure, people are downloading it but are people using it in production? That usage is also extremely high.

How can you be so sure that it's being used in production? What is that claim based on?

Requirements for Spring skills are surpassing those for EJB skills, verified by checking search engines and job sites. We also use Indeed.com, which has a job-trends tracker across online job search engines and covers large sample space. Trends have been extremely clear that Spring job requirements are growing very rapidly. And large numbers of people looking for this skill set means they are …

Ubuntu and CentOS are now in the rPath. The company yesterday began shipping a version of its rBuilder build and release management system for Linux that adds those distros; the tool previously worked only with Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise and its own rPath Linux.

rBuilder packages a Linux application with essential parts of its underlying operating system into a single, virtualized image. That image can then be delivered via network, disc or other means, or installed on dedicated hardware and deployed as a stand-alone appliance. According to the company, this approach provides IT departments with a scalable platform for software deployment and maintenance and eliminates the need for manual hardware infrastructure configuration.

rPath explains how apps made with rBuilder can be used in virtualized and cloud-based environments, in which the operating system is split in two. "Hardware-based services are handled by the hypervisor, and application-based services are attached to the application image, which becomes a self-contained and fully functioning set of virtual machines," explained the company in a statement. This approach is typically based on just enough operating system—or JeOS—a practice that assembles only the pieces of the operating system and tooling needed for the application's run-time requirements. "This makes the application simple to deploy, portable across run-time environments and far more cost-effective to maintain over time."

The company was founded in 2006 by former Red Hat VPs Billy Marshall (sales) and Erik Troan (engineering).

Sorry it took me so long, but I just visited www.happygeek.com for the first time. You have it linking back to DanWeb, you cheeky devil!!!!

Isn't anything safe from hackers? Now they've apparently found a way to hack into systems through a media stream, threatening users with denial of service attacks that can bring down servers and desktops alike. The vulnerability was reported yesterday by VoIPshield Laboratories, a security tools maker in Canada.

The flaws were found in Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Office Communicator and Windows Live Messenger, which Microsoft said could impact as many as 250 million people. The flaws also affect many other applications and systems that use the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP), including those from Avaya, Cisco and Nortel, according to the report.

"Securing the media stream is particularly challenging because once the messaging session is established, the flow of packets is not always monitored and managed by the call server," according to a statement from VoIPshield Labs, the research division of VoIPshield Systems. Microsoft is investigating the flaws, it said, but so far has not issued any security advisories or updates.

But denial of service are not the only threats to worry about. Andriy Markov, director of VoIPshield Labs, told TMCnet.com that "many other media stream attacks exist that have more severe implications than service availability. We’re presently validating new research that shows an attacker can gain unauthorized access to an unsuspecting user’s laptop by manipulating the packets of a VoIP phone call. We believe that these attacks can even be made to traverse a PSTN gateway.”

Two weeks ago I was asked a question to which, given my occupation, I should have known the answer. The question was: “How many software testers are there?” Being editor of a magazine about software testing, that's a number I should have know cold. At the time, I offered an estimate of about 250,000. A wild guess, really; I had no idea.

As it turns out, it wasn’t all that wild. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2007, the latest year for which data is available, there were 349,140 people in the United States doing that job. The government says these people: “Research, design, develop, and test operating systems-level software, compilers, and network distribution software for medical, industrial, military, communications, aerospace, business, scientific, and general computing applications. Set operational specifications and formulate and analyze software requirements. Apply principles and techniques of computer science, engineering, and mathematical analysis.”

To all you software testers out there, does that sound anything like what you do? My guess is that it probably does. There are other similar jobs listed under the broad heading of “Computer and Mathematical Occupations,” but none included “software testing” in their description except “computer software engineers, systems software,” the job described above.

Of course, “computer programmers” (of which there were 394,710), and “computer software engineers, applications” (with 495,810 people counted) probably do lots of software testing too. And as agile and test-driven development become more widespread, …

Android's Java front-end gives Google's mobile platform an instant community of app developers and Java-specific tools. But beginning today, there's also a static code scanner that's aware of Android's APIs. Klocwork, which makes automated source code analysis solutions, today began shipping a version of its Insight defect checker that's aware of Android's unique application programming interfaces, and can perform inter-procedural analysis of source code intended for Android.

Klocwork Insight is a static source code analysis tool for C, C++, C# and Java. According to Klockwork CTO Gwyn Fisher, the US$2750 tool's new capabilities are intended to aid enterprise developers looking to deploy to Android-based devices. "They may be writing for RIM BlackBerry and [other] Java devices. Or they might be building front-ends for their enterprise apps or small apps for sale," Fisher said yesterday in a phone interview. He said the tool also does what other Java static code scanners do. "Anyone who analyzes Java can be some help, but doing things specifically for Android APIs is the thing here. It understands resources that are specific to Android [and has] checkers for object managers specific to the APIs themselves. We haven't seen any other tools doing this for Android."

Those Android-aware defect checkers, he said, allow developers to identify NULL pointer exceptions, resource leaks, usages of freed resources and other bugs that can cause runtime failure or otherwise threaten the reliability of their mobile devices. "The fact that Google chose to put a Java …

I agree. I'd be happy if MS just kept investing in making XP better.

I think we can safely say that Windows Vista was a flop. The only one that doesn't seem to know it is Microsoft. Or does it? This week at WinHEC, the company introduced a series of capabilities in Windows 7 that it says will "make it easier for hardware partners to create new experiences for Windows PC customers." The move is intended to "rally hardware engineers to begin development and testing" for its nascent operating system. According to a recent report on downloadsquad.com, Windows 7 could be available as soon as soon as the middle of next year, but Microsoft's original promise in 2007 included that of a three-year timetable that "will ultimately be determined by meeting the quality bar."

From all appearances, development of Windows 7 is pretty well along. Everyone in attendance at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) was given a pre-beta of Windows 7 (as well as one of Windows Server 2008 R2). In a Nov. 5 statement, Microsoft referred to Windows 7 as API-complete, including touch-sensitivity and simplified WiFi configuration. “We’ve done a great deal of work in Windows 7 to enable new scenarios with our hardware partners, and we are excited by the partner innovation we have shown today,” said Jon DeVaan, senior vice president of the Windows Core Operating System Division at Microsoft. “Windows 7 presents tremendous opportunities for hardware developers. This innovation will enable our hardware partners to provide customers with …

Support for RESTful Web services, JBoss Seam and Java refactorings and code inspections are among the new features in IntelliJ IDEA 8, JetBrains' Java IDE for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows that began shipping today. If you're not familiar, JetBrains' raison d'être is to make an integrated development environment that keeps developers productive and integrates tightly with other open source development tools such as Ant, JUnit and Subversion.

Among the new productivity features in IntelliJ IDEA 8 according to a list of what's new is an ability to jump from a class to its test case; see which Subversion changes have already been integrated into a certain branch; trace where a parameter value comes from through a chain of method calls; change a field parameter from an array to a list and update usages automatically; and extract a code fragment with multiple output values into a method object.

That's just a partial list of major new features not present in version 7. The company also promises faster startup and overall performance thanks to a "reworked engine,", and the ability to revert committed changes, see which tests cover a particular line of code, and specify different encoding for files in different directories.

Available now, IntelliJ IDEA 8 versions range from free for free non-commercial use to personal (US$249) and commercial ($599). Upgrade prices and a 30-day free trial version also are available at the JetBrains download page. There's a new version …

that's why you're the daddy, daddy-o. Nice work Davey! -EddieC

Attention marketing professionals: Sending cute toys along with press releases is a good way to get me to notice them. I received a package today from Actuate, which makes RIA and business intelligence tools. In addition to news about BIRT-based Actuate 10, which I’ll get to in a minute, the package contained a small Lego robotic space-man kit. I love Legos, and so does my 11-year-old son. He and I have spent countless hours constructing vehicles and small buildings with the small plastic geometric building blocks.

A half-dozen fully-constructed space ships and terrestrial vehicles currently adorn Nick’s bedroom, embarking frequently on voyages to the surrounding universe of our home. And since the kit has a nominal dollar value, I'm not required to return it by the rules of my employer. So tonight I’ll have the pleasure of giving Nick a space-man to assemble. The space-man will likely command an X-Wing Fighter, or perhaps the Mars rover-looking thing.

Actuate 10, the latest version of the company's flagship reporting tool is based on the Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools, an early and now mature Eclipse project that was founded in 2004 by Actuate and the Eclipse Foundation. BIRT consists of an Eclipse-based report designer, charting engine and runtime, and is intended to allow developers to easily add reporting to Web applications. It's open source and works particularly well with Java.

I don't know too much ahead of the official announcement on Monday (Nov. 10), but I can …

Results after the first 12 hours of bug hunting:
IE: 42 bugs found, 148 testers participating
Firefox: 86 bugs, 222 testers
Chrome: 120 bugs, 192 testers

CORRECTION: The contest opens Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2009 at midnight Eastern US time (which makes it more like Tuesday night). It ends the following Wednesday, Nov. 12 at 11:59 PM ET. Good luck bug hunters!

Who couldn't use some extra cash these days? Thousands of dollars in prize money is up for grabs as testers face off in Battle of the Browsers, a seven-day contest that starts today. Applications in the contest's arena are Google's Chrome, Firefox 3.1 alpha 2 and IE 8. To qualify, bugs must be previously undiscovered and unreported.

Testers can submit defects for any or all of the browsers. Two prizes of US$200 each will be awarded for each of the browsers; six browser-specific prizes in all. Prizes will be awarded for the "Top Bug" for each browser in terms of defect severity, accuracy of reporting and creativity; and "Best Feedback," which is described as "the feedback provided during the usability survey" in terms of feature, analysis, etc.

Contestants also will be vying for two overall prizes. A $1000 "Top Tester" prize goes to the person who reports the most valuable bugs and feedback, and to the "Top Novice," a beginner who shows the most promise as a software tester. Judging will be conducted by the uTest team as well as a few outsiders. "Entries will be judged blindly – with no knowledge of name or background (with the exception of experience for the Novice award)," according to the contest Web site. The emphasis is on "actionable learning" for each of the browsers, as opposed to feature comparisons between browsers.

The bug hunt is being organized by testing community organizer uTest, which …

CORRECTION: The cost is US$65 per user per MONTH (not per year, as I had written). Also, the RIA technology in use for the UI is Adobe Flex. I had understood from Samir that it was built with Flash. -EC

Zephyr today launched version 2.0 of its namesake software test management tool, which is now available as a SaaS in Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud. Zephyr gives development teams a Flash-based system for communication, collaboration, resource, document and project management, test-case creation automation and archiving, defect tracking and reporting. The system was previously available only as a self-hosted system.

"The advantage of a SaaS is that you need no hardware," said Zephyr CEO Samir Shah. "It’s a predeveloped back-end up and running immediately with 24/7 availability, backup, restore, and high bandwidth access from from anywhere." The cost for either system is US$65 per user per year. If you deploy in-house, you also get 3 free users for the first year.

Also new in Zephyr 2.0 is Zbots, which Shah said are automation agents for integrating Zephyr with other test tools. "These are little software agents that run on the remote machines on which you run Selenium, [HP QuickTestPro] or [Borland] SilkTest." They let you run all your automated tests from within Zephyr, and bring the results back into Zephyr for analysis, reporting and communication to the team. "You build your automation scripts in those tools," he explained, "then within Zephyr, you get comprehensive views of all test cases so you can look at the coverage you have across manual and automated tests."

The system also lets you schedule test to run. "When it comes time to run automated scripts, we can kick off automation scripts on …

A majority of California voters disagree with Apple's position on gay marriage.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-gaymarriage6-2008nov06,0,2331815.story

I rest my case.

I'm not sure we'll ever agree on this, but another thought occurred to me that might help you understand my position.

You mentioned Carly Fiorina, an advisor to McCain. While in my mind it's appropriate for her to stump for McCain on the campaign trail, it would be political suicide for her to do so in the HP board room. Time and place. Of course companies support politicians whose positions they agree with or that might help them prosper. Such companies (and PACs) are required by law to disclose those contributions truthfully. HOWEVER, those companies are NOT required to PROMOTE such contributions. They are free do do so, of course, but that puts them at risk of alienating some people.

That was my only point.

You've misunderstood me completely, Ron. What I am saying is that there's a time and a place for everything. And the time to share your political views is not when people are there to hear your music, see you accept an Oscar or call a baseball game.

When I want to hear political views, I seek a political forum. When someone wants to share their political views, I believe they should do the same.

Coldplay was the musical guest last night on Saturday Night Live. At the end of their third song, lead singer Chris Martin revealed what I believe would be his preference in the U.S. presidential race, saying "Barack Obama." Maybe he should go on tour with the Dixie Chicks and Madonna.

I don't care who Joe Buck supports for President. I just don't want to know. Thankfully, he's never shared his preference while describing plays of the World Series for Fox Sports, at least as far as I've ever heard. Likewise, I don't want to know the views of Robert Deniro on climate change, Susan Sarandon on economic policy or Sean Penn on immigration or national security. These people are skilled at entertaining, and I don't look to them to inform my views on anything else.

The same goes for Apple and its position on same-sex marriage. Yet the company has made it its position clear on Proposition 8, an initiative in Apple's home state of California seeking to bar same-sex couples from marrying.

On Oct. 24, 2009, the following statement appeared on the front page of Apple's Web site:

Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.

Companies should exercise great caution when publicly disclosing positions on social issues; the risk is great of alienating potential …

Wouldn't it be nice if you could track Gmail messages about specific features and bugs from within your defect tracking system? You can if you're using the open-source SugarCRM, thanks to a team of Italian developers that today launched DolceGmail. The new plug-in for Firefox links Google's browser-based e-mail system with the versatile SugarCRM, allowing users to add contacts, e-mail messages and attachments from Gmail directly to their SugarCRM system.

"SugarCRM is a business application framework with a CRM app on top," said Clint Oram, vice president and co-founder of SugarCRM in a phone interview yesterday. "We have tools for building new modules on top, and you might not even use the CRM aspect," he said of the system, which boasts 4,000 users and 80,000 contributors. "Customers can build new objects specific to their business."

He said the system is most commonly used for keeping track of bugs and feature requests, but can be used in lots of other ways. "Let's say they need to do asset management...you have hardware you keep track of in Excel and have trouble tickets for those assets." Such a system could be built on Sugar in about a day, he claimed. "You would import that spreadsheet you've been using to manage assets and track changes. Then you would know who changed what asset and you could put security around it."

DolceGmail was built by developers at OpenLiven, a small IT services and development company in Italy that …

Research In Motion yesterday released new versions of its BlackBerry development tools, including the BlackBerry Java Development Environment (JDE) Plug-In for Eclipse Beta 2 that's better integrated with the open-source IDE, can perform pre-processing for builds and receives updates through the Eclipse Update Manager. There are also new versions of the BlackBerry Plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio and BlackBerry MDS Studio, which can stand alone or work through Eclipse.

The BlackBerry Plug-in for Visual Studio allows users of Microsoft's IDE to visually construct applications for BlackBerry devices and RIM's Mobile Data System and application framework. I have seen RIM's drag-and-drop application builder in action, and it is sweet. Version 1.1 now lets your apps integrate with those included with the BlackBerry, and the plug-in works with Visual Studio 2008 and Windows Vista.

If you're using the Plazmic Content Developer's Kit to design BlackBerry themes, custom UIs, icons and wallpaper, you'll be happy to know that version 4.6 is out, with support for the latest BlackBerry Bold and Pearl flip phones. RIM reports that the Plazmic 4.6 CDK also now permits designers to integrate Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) with their customized themes, Web portals, games and other applications.

Earlier in October RIM began publicly beta testing BlackBerry JDE 4.7, its tools for the BlackBerry Storm. The version includes a Storm simulator, touch screen and accelerometer support, screen orientation and rotation capabilities and new APIs for a virtual keyboard and DRM …

Which hypervisor performs better, Xen or VMware's ESX? That apparently depends on which organization you ask. But for a team that's tasked with choosing a virtualization platform, some impartial data would sure be helpful.

"That's where we come in," said Michael Salsburg, director of the Computer Measurement Group, a non-profit that acts as a repository for the performance data gathered by hundreds of member companies around the world. We spoke recently on the phone after a colleague told me about CMG.

In “Xen vs. VMware – The Battle of Brands,” an article coincidentally written by Salsburg, we learn that a report published by VMware in January, 2007, showing its product greatly outperforming Xen did not tell the whole story. A subsequent report released by the Xen project in April of that year (six months prior to its acquisition by Citrix) showed benchmarks on par with ESX.

This is but one example of the thousands of performance and best practices papers collected since CMG's founding in 1975 as a place for IBM mainframe users to store performance analysis data. It quickly expanded to include Linux, Unix, Windows, networking and storage. "Members of CMG have a reputation as experts at making sure that levels of service end-to-end are what the business wants,” said Salsburg. And it's all free for the taking. "We see ourselves as a go-to community where you can see what’s out there and how products are …

Thanks for the comments. When a software maker (such as Apple) gives up control of the hardware, it also gives up the ability to control the user experience. It is precisely this control (along with lots of people who really "get" the intuitive UI thing) that makes Apple products so user friendly. Microsoft lacks both control of the hardware and IMHO an understanding of what makes an interface easy to use. Apple's just better at it, and part of that "betterness" is a direct result of their control of the hardware.

Steve Ballmer should limit his worries to Microsoft and his advice to his employees. Last week the Microsoft CEO reportedly had the audacity to suggest that Apple "become more like Microsoft," and loosen the bonds between Apple hardware and software. Is he really that clueless? Surely he's aware that it's the marriage between hardware and Mac OS X that allows Apple build the best, most intuitive computers and smartphones in the world.

According to an article on CNet News the comments came during an interview conducted by a Ziff Davis reporter at the Churchill Club, a Silicon Valley non-profit for CEOs and other mucky-mucks.

Ballmer prognosticated that Apple, Nokia and Blackberry-maker Research in Motion all will lose share as the market expands over the next five years "because they design their own proprietary hardware and tie it closely to their software."Never mind that it's those ties that permit the devices to deliver features that people want and need.

If anything, Microsoft's Monkey Boy could learn a thing or two from Apple about how to build reliable software with features people really want, rather than to bloating their systems with useless capabilities that no one asked for and will probably never use. Windows Mobile is about as easy to use as a graphing calculator.

If you can stomach it, here's a video of Ballmer speaking at the Churchill Club mostly about search. It's worth watching just to see him …