Apple’s latest version of Mac OS X ‘Leopard’ will go on sale on October 26, for $129.
Further details on the 300+ changes to their OS are on Apple’s website.
Will Oracle buy out BEA?
Oracle reportedly made a $6.7bn bid to buy out BEA on Friday but was turned down by BEA because they considered it too low. If Oracle is successful in acquiring BEA, this would really put Oracle ahead on a level with IBM in the Java App Server market place. Oracle has long played with App Servers but has never got the market share compared with the likes of IBM, BEA and JBoss, but this buy out would give them the solid product with an existing customer base that they need.
Jnode – a Java operating system?
I remember seeing one of Sun’s Java-based Network Computers several years back, which never caught on and disappeared (where they ahead of their time?). I noticed this website for Jnode where they are building a new Java-based operating system – very interesting – have to keep an eye on this one.
I wonder how long it will be before low cost internet access terminals will be available – since the only thing most people use a computer for at home is to access the internet, it makes more sense now than ever to start offering basic, dumbed down internet appliances that do nothing more than run a web browser. I know several companies have tried selling devices like this over the past few years, but is the time now right? Or is family internet access going to find it’s way into the center of your entertainment center in your family room, like on your Wii or PS3 (which have integrated web browsers)?
Java app – large file finder
Once in a while I write an app out of necessity because I need a utility to do something very specific. I’ve been getting low drive space warnings on my c: drive and since I install all my apps and keep my files on other partitions other than c: where XP is, I was wondering what was taking up all the space.
I wrote this app (see top in the list) in about 30mins to recursively search through all files beneath a given starting directory, and build a sorted list of the largest files, largest first. If you run it from the command line specifying a starting directory it will run from the command line, but if you leave off the starting directory it will bring up a Swing UI (built in Matisse) so you can pick the starting directory from a File Dialog.