Software Developers are a tough audience. Why, I'd be willing to bet that even the likes of Jerry Seinfeld would tuck tail and take off from a roomful of programmers.
Take Java, for example. For years, Sun has been kicked around for not open sourcing Java (see www.catb.org/~esr/writings/let-java-go.html). So when Sun's Rich Green made a public commitment to open source Java, you'd think the griping would pause for a second or two. And it did—for a second or two. At issue was that Green didn't hand over the Java source code Johnny-on-the-spot, instead promising to do so in the future. "It is not a question of 'whether,'" he said, "but it is a question of 'how.'" So the announcement was really an announcement of an upcoming announcement.
I can live with that, but I'm more patient than, say, Richard Stallman, who saw Sun's contribution to the free software/open-source community as "absolutely nothing" (www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=06/05/24/1154233). Well, Sun has open sourced Solaris, its Java Studio Creator and NetBeans Enterprise Pack tools, Java System Portal Server, BPEL Engine (from Java CAPS), a JMS-based message queue, and its Web Services Interoperability Technology (WSIT). Open Source Java will come, and Green and CEO Jonathan Schwartz will figure out how to make that happen.
Lucky for me, DDJ readers are generally more forgiving. A number of readers—John Verel and Barr Bauer, among others—complimented us on the recent redesign of DDJ, but took me to task about the small size of the type. You're right, and it has increased in size with this issue.
Then Gregory Murphy and Dennis Himes pointed out that we had a gender problem with our "Alius Vox" column. According to Gregory:
The Latin noun "vox" is feminine, and in Latin, adjectives like "alius" must agree in gender and in number with the nouns that they qualify. The phrase is more correctly written "alia vox." This translates as something like "a different voice." You might also consider "alii vox," or "vox alii," in which "alius" is treated as a noun and put in the genitive, which translates as "someone else's voice." I like "vox alii," because it makes one think of "vox populi."
I'll take your word for it, Gregory. When it comes to Latin, it's Greek to me. In any event, we made that change in the July issue.
Then there's J.D. Hildebrand. While he probably needs no introduction, J.D. was the editor at one time or another of UNIX Review, Embedded Systems Programming, Computer Language, and other publications. Subsequent to my acknowledging his contribution to Software Development magazine in its farewell edition, he let me know that he's still paying the price of my last commendation. It turns out that in an editorial entitled "A Living Legend" (www.ddj.com/184405257), I glibly lumped together J.D., Bill Gates, and Linus Torvalds. Says J.D.:
The DDJ editorial in which you mentioned me in the same sentence as Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds played a prominent role in a difficult divorce trial I was going through. I was unable to convince the judge—nor even, come to think of it, my own lawyer!—that your intention was ironic. I think that was the day I knew I wasn't getting anything but debts out of the judgment.
Sorry about that J.D. In the future, I'll keep quiet about all that Google stock, too.
Then there was my blog entitled "Storage Gets Bigger and Smaller at the Same Time" (www.ddj.com/blog/portal/archives/2006/05/storage_gets_bi .html), which described how IBM's Almaden Lab packed data onto magnetic tape at a world-record density of 6.67 billion bits per square inch. Dorothy Jean kindly reminded me that Fujifilm's coating technology made the achievement possible.
Finally, Scott Kassan is wondering why Ed Nisley has written two columns about not renewing his PE license, yet "PE" still appears in his bio. My bad, Scott, not Ed's. He keeps changing it, and I keep using "last month's" bio. It's fixed now though, and we're on track.
Whew! That wasn't so bad. No tails tucked, no tomatoes tossed. So tell me, have you heard the one about the traveling salesman problem and the farmer's daughter...
Jonathan Erickson
Editor-in-Chief
