Hex floating point operations in Tiger

Apparently, tiger allows literals to be directly mapped to corresponding bit positions of a float or a double.It can get rather ugly.Read david flanagan's article on this...

Hex Floating Point: 0Xf.aP1 == 31.25

The tiger is roaming the jungle; the lord and master of all he surveys...

Have this inexplicable festive mood today, as if a child was born in the family. The reason? J2SE 5.0, the biggest, most significant modification/addition since Java 2, is out!! Tiger's Chief Architect, Graham Hamilton, speaks..
Tiger Roars: The Release of Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE) 5.0

Another superb section from the jls: [ just thought these goodies should make it to the blog, now that i've started one :-) ]
Conversions and Promotions

Going back to the c-test days of campus interviews.
Expressions: "In an array creation expression , there may be one or more dimension expressions, each within brackets. Each dimension expression is fully evaluated before any part of a"

Generics seemed such a maze that i almost forgot this from the jls :D
Arrays: "If an array variable v has type A[], where A is a reference type, then v can hold a reference to an instance of any array type B[], provided B can be assigned to A."

The JGuru, huh? :p

Some craven anti-sun people seem to have successfully started a rumour about openoffice being "more vulnerable" to M$ after the settlement with Sun. Nothiing could be farther from the truth. As a matter of fact, the settlement changed nothing as far as the protection of OSS projects from M$ is concerned. Any company has the right to sue owners of an OSS project if it has a legitimate claim in terms of IP infringement. So, let's shut down the rumour mills once and for all as far as the settlement & open office are concerned. More on the settlement's implications on openoffice:
Danese Cooper of Sun on Openoffice: "I believe we would have loved to protect OpenOffice.org from future lawsuits by Microsoft in our settlement with them but F/OSS software is by definition a shared resource and we have no explicit control over all the elements of that community. The language of the settlement takes OpenOffice.org as an example and makes it clear that Microsoft reserves the right to bring suit against any F/OSS project against which it has a claim (whether or not the project is stewarded by Sun). This isn't really news, is it? Nothing has really changed, except that in our settlement with Microsoft we managed to get some protection for our brands."

Vintage Jonathan Schwartz!!!
In this blog titled "The difference between humans and white mice." , Jonathan is simply unstoppable. Probably his best entry to date.Brilliant. A must read. Screw ball IBM & HP are faa..ar behind now, what with Solaris 10 completely overshadowing inferior technologies from others and the niagara waiting to take wings. Stand by, world, here comes the Sun, with Jonathan leading the way!!!

Jonathan schwartz rocks!!!!If there's anyone who will get sun roaring back to the top, it this genius.And nothing gives me greater pleasure than to see Sun spanking technologically inferior,zero innovation companies like HP. So much for "HP Invent". They'll now have to invent new ways of explaining their declining revenues. Hail Sun!!
Here're some articles that're indeed heartening to read..
1)Sun's successful "HP away" program
2)Sparc sets the pace
And here's schwartz himself with his brilliant write up on HP's screwed up startegies and even more screwed up operating system.It's a must read.HP can continue with it's "Solaris to linux migration kit" and see where it takes it. It might also help them if they rewrite parts of that kit to help people migrate from HP-UX. They might make up some revenues that way atleast.
Meanwhile, Sun posts profits for the first time in several quarters and is well on it's way to regaining it's position as the market leader, rightly so.
And then there was light, with the sun shining bright...

This article's real fun to read. For all you java/jini novices, here goes...

"How to Talk About Jini, J2EE, and Web Services at a Cocktail Party by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates -- Heard about distributed technologies for Java, but not sure what they are or why they're important? Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates, authors of Head First Java, present this cocktail-party overview. Hold your own in conversation with Java geeks now!"

Pollution in Bangalore?The day autos get eliminated from b'lore, we'll be able to live much more easily. The smoke & noise they give out is horrifying. I wonder what would happen a few years hence if we go on this way.
I'm also tired of seeing people use bangalore like toilet paper. Every outsider who comes here uses the facilities,lives here, eats here, drinks here, enjoys the beautiful climate, the sights and the sounds, makes money here, and still curses my city and praises the hell-hole from where he/she's originated. I wouldn't have felt bad if those parasites actually felt for my city and made a genuine contribution to the society. Talking about contributions, how many people born & brought up in bangalore feel for the city and do something for it?
Worth sparing a thought for...