Yet another loss for client-side Sun

I've been doing a lot of reading about Android and all the hoopla. The first thing that confused me was the fact that the sample Android code looks exactly like Java, yet they don't call it Java. Here's why.

Let's examine how much Android completely effs Sun. Android uses the Java language, but not the Java VM. So technically it's not Java. In the mad rush to profit from the impending mobile Internet platform, Sun has placed it's bets on JavaFX to strengthen Java ME and Java SE on mobile gadgets. Unfortunately for them, the problem wasn't the difficulty of the programming language, but the fragmentation and incompatibilities between VM's which has hurt mobile Java. Android is designed from the ground up to create compatibility first, and that's a major factor in the success that it will enjoy. And since it all runs on the Dalvik virtual machine instead of the official Java VM, Sun gets a solid zero dollars out of it.

Today, Google released their Android SDK amidst massive hoopla. I was pretty excited about this too, but after reading some tutorials, it just looks like a slightly beefed-up Java ME. I guess the intent is to create better compatibility among different phones, but frankly, I don't see what all the hoopla is about, other than the fact that Google is behind it. What am I missing?

Update:
After more reading I've changed my mind. It seems to me that the iPhone is still way "cooler" than any gPhone (it better be for how much it costs), but I can see how much value the top-to-bottom stack of software that Android offers can really help compatibility between different phones.

A Tale of Default Behavior

I built a new computer a couple months ago and, naturally enough, installed Windows XP (for games). Since XP comes with Internet Explorer 7 and I have only used Firefox for years, I figured I'd try IE7 just to see what it was like. The things I immediately noticed were that if IE7 is closed with multiple tabs open, when it is reopened, it will reopen all these tabs. I had never seen this feature before in Firefox and I really liked it. The second thing I noticed was IE7's a lack of "Undo Close Tab" like in Firefox, which I really miss. To make a long story short, IE7 started crashing fairly frequently, while Firefox never crashed - ever - so I switched back. But I missed the reopening of tabs when starting Firefox that I made the effort to see if it could be done (the effort turned out to be about 5 seconds of Googling it). Turns out there is an option to reopen tabs from the previous session under Tools->Options->When Firefox starts. Ahhhh, that's the ticket. I guess that just goes to show how important the default behavior for an application is, even it can be configured to behave differently.

Anyhoo, here is an in-depth analysis of the Excel floating point rendering bug.

Mainstream Consumer Linux?

Many have been claiming that "desktop Linux" is going to break into the mainstream this year (for the past decade). Until now, I would have say that has proved to be bunk. But in light of this and this, and other developments, it seems as if Linux is finally breaking through in the consumer market. At last!

I just can't miss an opportunity to promote Ron Paul:

Java Serialization Debugging

Today I had a fight with Java as I was inadvertently trying to serialize something that was not serializable. The object being serialized had a crapload of fields, which in turn, all had craploads of other fields so I pretty much had no idea what was causing the incredibly uninformative "Exception in thread "main" java.io.NotSerializableException." So after spending an hour trying to write a function to reflectively traverse the object tree in search of non-serializable fields, I found this helpful piece. The DebuggingObjectOutputStream is nice, but the comments have something even more simple and helpful: set the vm parameter sun.io.serialization.extendedDebugInfo=true, and voila, helpful stack traces to find what object is actually causing the serialization errors!

I apologize to all my die-hard readers out there yearning for my every word, as I was on vacation last week and was unable to post. To summarize: Washington DC is cool. You should go. In the meantime, I still have nothing meaningful to say, so a link to someone who does will do.

This is really only going to make any sense if you have done any programming, but if you have, it's hilarious.

Is it just me or does programming inspire foul language? The words I use to describe my computer have generally come to be laden with profanities. Anyone else experience this phenomenon?

Java SecureRandom weirdness

Ok, now I really lied two posts ago since I'm going to go off topic again. I clearly have no ability to focus. I would have posted something within focus this weekend, but Half Life 2: Episode 2 came out and I really had no choice except to play it all weekend.
So anyways, for my own and perhaps others' benefit, I'm going to document my experience with debugging some Java weirdness because it was one of the more interesting problems I've had to deal with. So I'll dive in:

We have a server-side process that runs on a Linux server and processes a lot of oracle database data and converts it into an H2 database (details are unimportant). On one particular machine, this process would hang forever. There were no errors, no exceptions, nothing; it just hung. Last Friday I was tasked with figuring out why, and it being Friday I wasted a couple hours trying to debug what turned out to be a completely unrelated process (my brain was obviously fried). So fresh this morning I had another go at it. I had telnet access to the server, so I made use of jstack, a nifty little utility. Here's the important output:

- java.io.FileInputStream.readBytes(byte[], int, int) @bci=0 (Compiled frame; information may be imprecise)- java.io.FileInputStream.read(byte[], int, int) @bci=4, line=199 (Compiled frame)- java.io.BufferedInputStream.fill () @bci=175, line=218 (Interpreted frame)- java.io.BufferedInputStream.read1(byte[], int, int) @bci=44, line=258 (Interpreted frame)- java.io.BufferedInputStream.read(byte[], int, int) @bci=49, line=317 (Interpreted frame) - sun.security.provider.SeedGenerator$URLSeedGenerator.getSeedByte() @bci=12, line=453 (Interpreted frame)- sun.security.provider.SeedGenerator.getSeedBytes(byte[]) @bci=11, line=123 (Interpreted frame)- sun.security.provider.SeedGenerator.generateSeed (byte[]) @bci=4, line=118 (Interpreted frame)- sun.security.provider.SecureRandom.engineGenerateSeed(int) @bci=5, line=114 (Interpreted frame)- sun.security.provider.SecureRandom.engineNextBytes(byte[]) @bci=40, line=171 (Interpreted frame) - java.security.SecureRandom.nextBytes(byte[]) @bci=5, line=433 (Interpreted frame)- java.security.SecureRandom.next(int) @bci=17, line=455 (Interpreted frame)- java.util.Random.nextLong() @bci=3, line=284 (Interpreted frame)

The thread was stuck trying to read a file as a randomness source. After some digging, here's what I found. Basically class SecureRandom is reading a file that generates random bits so it can create a pseudo-random number. As the forum folks found, this file is specified in $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/security/java.security under securerandom.source, and the default is /dev/random. Unfortunately reading /dev/random will block until the OS has entropy data (from typing on the keyboard or other somewhat random happenings in the computer). Here's some more detail.

So if you don't need really random randomness you can use /dev/urandom which will not block. That sounds easy enough, but when I checked this in java.security, it was already pointing at /dev/urandom. So what the heck was going on?

Apparently the H2 driver that we are using calls SecureRandom.getInstance("SHA1PRNG") to create the SecureRandom class. Inexplicably, this will end up using /dev/random no matter what the java.security file says. This bug report claims this is as designed. I'm sure there is a reason for this strangeness, but there is no explanation.

Here's a test program that shows the difference (pardon the lack of formatting):

import java.security.SecureRandom;

public class SeedTest {
public static void main(String args[]) {
try{
System.setProperty("java.security.debug","all");
System.out.println("I will try to instantiate SecureRandom now");
SecureRandom rand = SecureRandom.getInstance("SHA1PRNG");
//SecureRandom rand = new SecureRandom(); this makes all the difference
int dummy = rand.nextInt();
System.out.println (dummy);
System.out.println("FINISHED");
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}

Running this on the particular problematic machine hung with getInstance, but worked fine with new SecureRandom(). Yowza. After all this I'm not sure whose problem this is. Obviously the machine with /dev/random not working is at fault, but why is SecureRandom using /dev/random when I specifically tell it to use /dev/urandom? No idea.

I lied

Ok, I lied in the last post. I'll continue on track next time. In the meantime, we've all seen plenty of these, but here's some more. They're funny.

I'm going back to 1995

This will be my first in series of posts on one subject. Yes, that's correct. I will attempt to maintain some focus and stay on one topic instead of posting about whatever happens to be going on in my brain at the moment.

I have entered into the world of 1995 with the Win32 api and visual c++ for no reason other than to waste my extremely valuable time. This has been the site of my realization-that-everyone-else-realized-about-fifteen-years-ago. It dawned on me that despite the quirks and the crap throughout Windows, programming in it takes a lot of the guesswork out of things. For instance, if I were to make an application for Linux, there are many differences among the different distributions (filesystem layout comes to mind first) that I would have to account for manually within my application. Another example: say I want to capture the video from a webcam in my application. With Windows there is one function I can call, check for error, and go from there. With Linux, I have to make sure that libraries to handle low-level access to the webcam are installed properly and I have to know where they are for many distributions. Most likely I want to just support one api so I have to make sure it is installed. If I am writing an application with a wide variety of customers, it is easy to see why Windows is the easy choice here (ignoring the fact that it is already installed on 99% of personal computers to begin with). I guess I've seen the value of the Microsoft "platform," despite its many faults (and steep monetary cost).

"Clinton said such an account program would help Americans get back to the tradition of savings that she remembers as a child, and has become harder to accomplish in the face of rising college and housing costs."

Yes, the good old America tradition of not saving your own money, but the government's money (which is, in essence, every taxpayer's money minus 50% because of government waste). What a brilliant idea. Now I wonder, maybe people should perhaps, this will sound crazy I know, save their OWN money? Clinton's response: "She argued that wealthy people get to have all kinds of tax incentives to save, but most people can't afford to do that.'" Well, this is going to even more crazy, but I wonder if the reason people can't afford to save is that they are blowing all their money on things that can't afford? Now I'm just going to jump off the deep end, so bear with me, but what if people lived within their means, didn't buy twice as much house as they can afford, didn't buy the latest and greatest car, and shudder, saved some money for the future? Whoaaaaa, that's just crazy talk.

Read it.

There's a reason why I chose the science/engineering/technology route for my life. In technology progress in inevitable; there may be periods when advancement is slower than it could be, but there is always a guarantee that it moves forward. I can guarantee you that in five years computers will be faster, phones will be smaller, materials will be lighter and stronger, and batteries will last longer. It feels good to know that we will always be moving forward.

As opposed to governments, which remain eternally stupid, and are guaranteed to make the same mistakes over, and over, and over, and over again. I'm not going to go into specifics because there are too many to mention. I'm sure you can think of a few.

In the meantime, one of my favorite quotes these days is from Benjamin Franklin:
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

In the recent tradition of posting links instead of actually writing something myself, check it out.

If you want to see the greatest blog post ever (you do), then you should definitely head over here.

Yes, that's right, that "Letterbox" feature is my amazing desk. And the "arms race" is happening in my aisle. Let the awe sink in.

Sophisticated humor is always the best.

Wow

Ron Paul is the first politician in a looooong time that I can actually get behind enthusiastically. Fighting corruption, cutting the gigantic chunk of bureaucracy out of government, not going to war to solve every problem, and actually adhering to the Constitution? Right on.

This is what makes life worth living

Nuff said.

Definitely check out Mr. Silent Killer Gas Passer, it's one of my personal favorites.

How not to apologize

Here is the one of the more pathetic apologies I have seen in a while. Let's examine a few snippets:

"How can you overreact when it's your children?” - Very easily, she demonstrated that overreaction pretty well.

"'I'm very sorry, but I'd do anything to protect my kids,' she said. 'If people want to put me down, that's their right.'" - For the idiot lady's future reference, "I'm sorry BUT..." is not an apology. News flash, most of the world isn't made up of reputable looking white people.