Anonymous Coward writes "According to this Press Release, Microsoft has signed an aggreement with Active State to add missing functionality to the Windows version of Perl. But the FAQ states that they also want Perl to "take advantage of platform features on Windows". "

jbc writes "Linux Journal's cover story for May was an interview with Larry Wall, which is now online. Some good stuff on the future of Perl, whether or not Open Source is a passing fad, and why Activestate is not necessarily evil. "

Mihg writes "The judge in the Sun/Microsoft case over Java has issued preliminary rulings on 3 of the 10 issues in the trial. (Siding with Microsoft twice.) Basically, the rulings indicate that Microsoft has the right to author their own clean-room versions of Java without Sun's input, but none of their current products qualify as "clean-room." Read more at NEWS.COM "

Andrew Gardner has reviewed a book that I'm sure sits on many shelves: Perl in a Nutshell. Designed to be your desktop reference, Ellen Siever, Stephen Spainhour, and Nathan Patwardhan have produced a multi-use tool. Click below for the review.

Trepidity wrote in to tellus about GeekCruises.com which is apparently selling cruises for the sort of folks interested in going on a cruise entitled "Perl Whirl 2000". It leaves on May 29 (CT:2000) and the speakers include Larry Wall, Randal Schwartz, Tim Bray, Tom Christiansen and Joseph Hall. I don't really know what to think about it. I mean, do they offer net access?

Josh Baugher wrote a line to point us over to this Wired article. Sun has backed off the original plan to have Java submitted as an open standard to the Internation Standards Organization. Sun and the ISO have been arguing over things, because the ISO is a bit less then happy with having one company retain control of the technology.

ChrisRijk writes "See the HotSpot main-page for starters. HotSpot is basically a fast JVM, initially aimed at server-side Java - beta testers say it's 2x or more faster in real world applications - see this good article (not by Sun). See also the press release, FAQ, and white paper. Freely downloadable binaries available later this week. Linux port? Well, Sun are liscencing the code (for a fee), and claim to have designed it to be easily portable. Sun also announced their i-Planet software today - see this news.com article. "

Linuk writes "Here's an interesting article, CORBA 3.0 POSTMORTEM, about the OMG's adoption of EJB as its eagerly awaited component spec. It argues that OMG has now given up on its vendor neutral and language independent pretentions. "

NavySpy writes "Borland (you know, the guys that changed their name to Inprise and now have changed it back) have recently released JBuilder 3. They are releasing the Windows version first, and then are going to do an all-Java version for Solaris, with a follow on version early next year for Linux. You can read more here on borland.com. They also have a free version of Interbase for Linux, so you can put up a full featured DBMS for free. Nice to see a tools developer targeting Linux. "

willhelm asks: "I have a friend--and his boss, in a stroke of wisdom, has asked for any kind of "hard numbers" comparing Java to VB. Java being an interpreted language, is probably much slower than VB. However, theory and high-faluttin' rhertoric mean nothing to him. So I looked around and didn't find much, probably because there aren't a whole lot of applications that were written in Java and some other language. Are there any studies on performance of Java applications vs. other common application programming languages like C, C++, Delphi, VB and others like them?" Let's try and answer this one without rabid advocacy, please!

CowboyNeal has taken some time out of his busy schedule to review Java Servlet Programming, a new ORA book out, written by Jason Hunter with William Crawford. Full of tips to extend the usage of the servlets, click below for more informatiion.

Drew writes "Anybody who thinks java is slow should check this out. The company soon to be formerly known as Cygnus released libgcj today. "libgcj" is the runtime library for gcj, the java front end to egcs. Find out more at sourceware.cygnus.com "

maw writes "It has come to my attention that Larry Wall is also Weird Al! Go figure...:) " That explains a lot of things.

jbc writes "Here's an opinion piece from O'Reilly's web site titled The Chameleon and the Virus: More Thoughts on Java's Community License. Gist: The viral, coercive GPL has retarded acceptance of open source software. Java's more flexible license can help bring more people into the movement. "

HP is contributing Java technology to Mauve, an alternative to Sun's Java Compatability Kit. This is good news for alternative Java implementations such as Kaffe, since the JCK is only available for a fee.

EmilEifrem writes "Just in case you guys felt like posting something about Java, Infoworld says that Java2 is due to be released Thursday. Is it Thursday over there yet? " It supposedly will be online after it propogates to the mirrors.

Manuka writes "An Inforworld article tells us that Sun, in an effort to make Java more accessible, has made the Java 2 source available under a new license. " The new license makes it possible for "developers to use and modify the source code for commercial products free of charge; allows them to change the code without having to return their changes to Sun; and lets developers modify and share source code without involving Sun." A step in the right direction.

This Anonymous Coward wishes to know about the following: "I would like to know if anyone can provide a good loaction for information concering creating, retrieving, and generally working with cookies in Java."

CowboyNeal has, after a long and careful review, sent us a review of Peter van der Linden's Just Java and Beyond. This is a great book for people learning Java-so click below if you are just learning, or are curious.

Sometimes as an ex-demo coder, one sees something these days that knocks one off one's feet. So 4-bit scrolling Overscan and 16Khz Soundtracker on the 8Mhz Atari ST was cool, but it's hard to be impressed in the same way these days, given the 300Mhz monsters that run C++ faster than hand-crafted 68000.... until... Who in their right mind would code a Spectrum Emulator in Java that actually runs old games??? Not only that, but source code is provided which compiles with jikes. Interestingly the resulting class files are slower than those on the website -- some optimization cases must be being missed (hint David ;-)). Apparently, this is the beginning of a trend with an ATARI ST emulator also being written. Anyone know how to get Kaffe to run an applet? (under Netscape it runs at 10% of a real Spectrum's speed)