Kev’s Blog – Page 207 – Kev's Development Toolbox

August 29, 2012

Shields Up! Disable your browser’s Java plugin until Oracle releases security patches

It pains me as a Java developer to recommend to anyone to disable their Java support in their browsers, but given the recently discovered Java vulnerability that can be exploited by a Java applet running in a browser to do ‘bad things’ to your machine, until this gets patched, it’s worth to disable your Java plugins until it gets patched.

According to some sources, Oracle has known about these vulnerabilities since April, but still has not patched them. Since sites have started showing up that have applets exploiting this vulnerability, it’s worth to play it safe and batten down the hatches, and disabled Java support in your browsers.

Oracle releases security patches for Java every 4 months, the next one is due in October. Until this gets patched, best to play it safe.

To disable the Java plugin on Chrome on Mac OS X:

Go to Chrome / Preferences, click on Show Advanced Settings
In the Privacy section, click the Content Settings button
Scroll down to Plugins, click ‘Disable individual plugins’
Scroll down to find the Java plugin, click disable

To disable the Java plugin in Safari on Mac OS X:

Go to Safari / Preferences, click the Security icon
In the web content section, uncheck ‘Enable Java’

To disable the Java plugin in Firefox on Mac OS X:

Go to Firefox / Preferences, click the General icon
Click the Manage Add-ons button
In the Addons Manager window, click Plugins on the left
Scroll down to find Java Applet plugin, click the Disable button

August 24, 2012

Sad day for manufacturers and consumers of ‘rectangular devices with round corners’

Samsung have said the final court ruling in the patent case with Apple is ‘a loss for the American consumer’, and I can’t help but agree.

In a statement after the ruling, Samsung continue:

“It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners, or technology that is being improved every day by Samsung and other companies”

That one statement for me sums up the ridiculous nature of his patent lawsuit. So what next, is Apple going to continue to sue every other phone manufacturer who manufacturers a device that is essentially a rectangle with rounded corners? To avoid infringing on Apple’s patents on rectangles, all other phones must be square, or circular, or any other shape but not a rectangle? This is the ridiculous part of this case. Imagine if someone was able to patent the shape of a car? A house? A table? A TV?

July 25, 2012

No MiFi personal hotspots at the London Olympics

In the ‘how on earth are you going to enforce that?’ category, apparently the London Olympics wil not permit the use of personal hotspots while at the games venues. For what reason, who knows.

July 22, 2012

Java 8 will ship without Project Jigsaw, modular dependencies for the Java platform

Around this time two years ago, Oracle gave the Java community two options for the upcoming Java 7 release, Plan A and Plan B, which looked something like this:

Plan A: JDK 7 (as currently defined) Mid 2012
Plan B: JDK 7 (minus Lambda, Jigsaw, and part of Coin) Mid 2011
        JDK 8 (Lambda, Jigsaw, the rest of Coin, ++) Late 2012

Oracle went with Plan B based on community feedback, and we got Java 7 earlier, just with a reduced list of changes.

Now we’re on the verge of seeing the release of Java 8, Oracle has some rather upsetting news that the major changes, namely Project Jigsaw (to introduce modular dependencies into the Java platform), will not be included in Java 8 after all.

I don’t want to see any product released before it’s ready, there’s no point shipping something if its half-baked. But with the Plan A/Plan B approach it seems somehow that we’ve been short-changed. We agreed to delay significant changes to a future release just to keep the new releases coming, and now we’re at the point where we should have received the most significant platform changes that were originally planned for Java 7, to be included in Java 8, and Oracle is telling us ‘sorry, they’re not ready’. At this point one has to wonder where Oracle’s priorities are with Java, because it’s certainly not looking very promising right now.