In case you were wondering, this guy in his blog has indentified a list of CDs that Sony has bundled with their notorious rootkit protection.
Chuck Cavaness gives overview of Struts
If you’ve never come across Struts, the de facto Java web framework, and were wondering what it is about, then Chuck Caveness (author of O’Reilly book ‘Programming Jakarta Struts’) gives an excellent overview of the features and benefits in this article on the OnJava.com site.
This article doesn’t mention the future of Struts and the fact that Java Server Faces is to become the standard web framework bundled with the rest of the specifications for Java EE 5, or that Craig McClanahan, one of the main developers of Struts, is involved in the JSR spec for JSF as one of the spec leads. This will undoubedly take some focus from Struts. Struts Shale is where the future of Struts is likely to be (Struts 2.x), which is Struts ontop of JSF, using JSF as the core, and adding to it lessons learnt from Struts.
Sun offers IDE development tools for free
Sun is now offering it’s Java Studio Creator and Java Studio Enterprise IDE tools for free download (both were previously paid products). Check here for more details.
Microsoft to update Windows to remove Sony’s CD protection ‘rootkit’
Microsoft have annouced that they will be updating their Malicious Software Removal Tool to detect and remove Sony’s CD protection ‘rootkit’.
A rootkit is a collection of software usually with malicious intent and installed on a computer usually without the owners knowledge to give someone else unrestricted access to a computer. Sony recently took this rather dubious route to protecting their music CDs by installing software on a users machine to detect the habits of the owner of a given music CD, and ‘phone home’ to Sony if the user was determined to be copying the CD illegally, presumably so Sony had evidence in order to prosecute that user.
Obviously this software has got a lot of attention from people upset with Sony’s covert tactic, and in a surprising response, Microsoft will be updating their security tools for users so the rootkit can be removed.