Why you should patch your Java Runtime Environment
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Security restrictions could be compromised in earlier versions of JDK and JRE 6, says vendor Sun.
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Fixes made for "critical" JavaScript vulnerability in the Firefox browser and the SeaMonkey application suite.
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Blog: Sun Microsystems issued Thursday a security update to patch vulnerabilities in its Java Web Start.
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Blog: Many of the patches address flaws within Quicktime for Java.
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In a new post on his blog, Lukas Smith warns developers working with autoload and byte code caches that things may not be as speedy as they might seem.   While it seems kind of nice one must be weary of the idea that they speed up your code. If you are running a byte code cache (which anyone who cares about performance of course does) you will get quite the opposite.   He includes a quote from an IRC log with Rasmus Lerdorf as to the reason why. Mainly, it has to do with the fact that autoload is runtime dependent as opposed to the byte codes which are handled and cached when working with apc.   So, what does this mean for performance? If you really want to squeeze those few extra bits of time out of the execution of your scripts, static includes are the way to go.
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Nice!  My patches to java-memcached  went in!    This provides significant savings for primitive datatypes.  Significant meaning the difference between a few gigs of memory vs a few hundred megs.  "11-01-2005 Released the client as 1.2 today. Added in socket timeout on initial connection option. Custom serialization added for primitive types by Kevin Burton. This gets a big space savings for primitives over default java serialization."
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After being blasted by security researchers, Sun is changing the way it patches Java.
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On the SitePoint PHP Blog today Troels Knak-Nielsen asks th3e question "what's so bad about the singleton?" For all of its advantages, is there a darker side of the design pattern when it pertains to global variables.   As I have often taken this stance myself, I found it reasonable that I should be able to argue for it, so I'll try to give an explanation. This is also in part a follow-up on my post from last week, in which I present a way to avoid global symbols, without spending much time on why.   He talks about what they are and how they're commonly used - sometimes with some unpleasant side effects because of their use of globals.
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I was reading LWN where there were reports of security holes in a dozen different packages based off Mozilla's Gecko. Someone complained about the lack of a universal library that they should all use so that users would only need to update the library and not each program separately. Apparently such a library exists as libxul, but its use is uncommon enough that the bugs were reported as being for the several separate programs and not for "libxul".
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The International PHP Magazine has posted results from their latest poll conducted over this past week asking which, of their given options, is the best helpful hint for creating a web application in PHP.   Two of the options ranked higher than the rest with one (Page/object caching) coming out on top of the other (Don't save performance testing for the end of the project). The remainder of the votes were divided pretty evenly between the last three options: "Use multi result set queries to your database", "gzip compression", and "Tune your web server".   While you're in the polling mood, you should check out this week's new poll that wonders which of their options might be the biggest hindrance to PHP5's adoption in the community.
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TechWeb - Sun's recent decision to open-source some elements of Java is pretty exciting -- but a few years overdue, says &lt;i&gt;InformationWeek&lt;/i&gt; columnist Eric A. Hall
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Having just emerged from a public beta process that began in the spring of 2005, and especially now that Java is an open-source project, developers will find little to be surprised about in Sun's newest Java SE 6, released yesterday. But one sign that even Java is adapting with the times is its new support for external scripting engines.
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Python Development Environment (Python IDE plugin for Eclipse). Features editor, code completion, refactoring, outline view, debugger, and other goodies - check http://pydev.sf.net).   Pydev Release: 1.3.9 --------------------  Major highlights: -----------------      * Fixed problem when configuring jython     * Patch from paulj: debbugger working with jython 2.2rc2     * Patch from Oskar Heck: debbugger can change globals     * Added action to delete all .pyc / $py.class files     * Added actions to add/remove the pydev configuration from a project (previously, the only way to add a nature was to open a python file within a project).     * Ctrl+Shift+O: When used with a selection will consider lines ending with \\ (without selection organizes imports)     * Auto-add "import" string will not be added when adding a space in the case: from xxximport (just after from xxx)     * Templates created with tabs (or spaces indent) are now converted to the indent being used in the editor     * Hide non-pydev projects filter working     * Don't show assignments/imports after if __name__ == '__main__': in outline     * Code-completion: after a completion is requested, pressing '.' will apply that completion (and if it has parameters, they'll not be added).     * Code-completion: when a code-completion is applied with Ctrl pressed (toggle mode), parameters are not added.     * Assign to local variable/attribute handles constants correctly.     * psyco changed for Null object for debug (so, no changes are required to the code if psyco is used while debugging).     * Code-folding annotations won't change places.     * Pydev package explorer will correctly show outline for files if the project root is set as a source folder.     * Pydev package explorer: folders under the pythonpath have a package icon.     * Unittest runner: handles multiple selection.
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InfoWorld - Sun&#160;is putting millions of Java users at risk by staggering the release of security patches for the software, security vendor eEye Digital Security said Monday.
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An introduction to using refactoring, unit testing and ZenTest on existing code.
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Java developers often load system properties to customize the runtime behavior of their applications.  For example a develoepr could define a 'max_connections' system property to define the maximum number of TCP connections that their application server can support.  While nice, this prevents all other applications from using this variable name.  The first reaction to this would be to namespace your variable names.  Instead of using max_connections you would now use 'my.application.Server.MAX_CONNECTIONS' as your property name.  This works of course but now you have to load this property on startup.  public static int MAX_CONNECTIONS = Integer.parseInt( System.getProperty( "my.application.Se ...
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A new concept - part of Microsoft's .NET Framework 3.5 - called the Dynamic Language Runtime is gaining popularity, not only among Web developers but also business program developers who see this as a possibility to build dynamic and flexible functionality that Java hasn't provided yet.  BetaNews spoke with one of the new technology's chief evangelists last week at TechEd.