Kev’s Blog – Page 327 – Kev's Development Toolbox

November 9, 2006

8 days before PS3 ships in US – people lining up outside stores already

Since Sony has announced limited shipping volumes between when the PS3 goes on sale in the US on Nov 17 and the end of the year, there are some determined people who have already started camping outside stores to ensure they get their hands on one on day one.

Since stores also only had guarantee of a limited number machines for day one, preorders were also limited at a number of stores (10 per store), like EB Games and GameStop.

Looks like if you’re not already in line then there’s probaby no chance of getting one on day one at this point.

November 9, 2006

Windows Vista released to manufacturing

Yes, it finally happened. Vista has completion and is ready for shipping. Ready that is in the meaning that it is good to enough to sell to consumers, followed up by the constant download of patches via Windows Update.

News.com have a summary of the development history behind possibly Microsoft’s largest software development project yet, and certainly the most delayed.

November 9, 2006

Static code analysis tools for Java

As Java is a statically typed language (meaning that variables are strongly typed and do no change type at runtime, unlike dynamically typed languages like Perl, Python, Groovy etc), it is possible to build tools that can analyze your code and look for common problems.

There are a number of these tools already out there, including FindBugs and PMD. Greg Sporar gives a quick overview of each in his blog on java.net.

November 8, 2006

Is a GPL license the right move for Java?

crn.com has an article discussing the licensing model for open sourcing Java, and reports that the GPL license is likely to be chosen for Java SE and ME, and with CDDL to be used for EE.

Since the GPL license is arguably the most restrictive open source license and will without a doubt attract a lot of crtitisism for Sun, why is it likey that they will be chosing this license? The article points out that since derivitive works under the license also have to be licensed under the GPL, this prevents commercial forking from the code base, so will in fact allow Sun to retain some degree and control over where the code goes and what can be done with it.

Is this the right move for Java?