This is my new home.

[Maximilian Xavier Stocker]

Between the forum bugs that allowed you to see people's private emails and the ability to post JavaScript I was kind of getting fedup with the JDC anyway.

Then last week an unpleasant discussion with a Sun employee where it turns out that JDBC compliancy actually means that the vendor paid Sun for the compliancy. Ouch.

Today's debacle was my final straw. If there's a dumber company than Sun ever I know not what it would be.

Anyway no real point to this post I guess. Which means it's well suited for this forum. Other than I suppose I am here to stay now rather than just keeping it as "the cottage" for weekends.

PS the code got me against the ropes for a few rounds but I'm a strong finisher so we'll see how that turns out.

[Maximilian Xavier Stocker]

Also hello to Ken who wondered who I was on here when I announced my JDC retirement. This is me.

[paul wheaton]

Good!

Have some pie!

[Maximilian Xavier Stocker]

Originally posted by Paul Wheaton:
Good!

Have some pie!

What's IN the pie? :lookingaroundnervously:

[Jim Yingst]

Well... sorry to hear about the JDC incidents. But welcome back, and we're glad to see more of you here.

Just be careful to not actually come between Paul and the pie, and everything should work out just fine.

[Jim Yingst]

[MXS]: What's IN the pie?

Well... have you seen Sweeney Todd?

[Grant Gainey]

Originally posted by Jim Yingst:
[MXS]: What's IN the pie?

Well... have you seen Sweeney Todd?

Mmmmm...priest.

Grant

[Ulf Dittmer]

Come on Max, don't leave us hanging: what was yesterdays debacle you mention? Spill the beans... Or have I missed some Sun news?

[Grant Gainey]

Originally posted by Ulf Dittmer:
Come on Max, don't leave us hanging: what was yesterdays debacle you mention? Spill the beans... Or have I missed some Sun news?

After seeing Max's note, I just went back to JDC and poked around for a while. Looks like there was a period of people discovering and playing with various JavaScript bugs allowed by the software interpreting JS in messages, followed by an "upgrade" to the Forum L&F that makes the forum harder to read and navigate, but with prettier/splashier graphics. (And which may or may not have fixed the various bugs being reported)

Which is to say, it appears to be identical to the situation that finally caused me to drop the JDC fora like a hot rock almost a year ago.

Plus ca change, plus c�est la meme chose, I guess. Sigh.

Grant

[Mark Spritzler]

Wow, I didn't know that the "The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee" was such a problem. But I heard that the Journal of Design Communication can be a pain. And don't make me go into the [B] The Japan Documentation Center[B].

Disclaimer: None of this is meant to say anything bad about other organizations with the same initials as the JDC pointed out earlier, which after a Google search determined that Mr Stoker probably meant the Java Developer Connection.

Good to have you here full-time, we'll make up the 115,678th spare bunk up in the barn for you.

Mark

[Mark Spritzler]

Which is to say, it appears to be identical to the situation that finally caused me to drop the JDC fora like a hot rock almost a year ago.

Plus ca change, plus c�est la meme chose, I guess. Sigh.

Yeah, and the more that things change, the more they stay the same. Tricked by Circumstances.

Mark

[Grant Gainey]

Originally posted by Mark Spritzler:


Yeah, and the more that things change, the more they stay the same. Tricked by Circumstances.

Mark

Heh. OK, so the French was perhaps a bit...pretentious. Esp. since I had to look it up to make sure I had the correct spelling.

I blame teh intarwebs...

Grant

[Jeroen T Wenting]

If you're so disgusted with Sun, what are you still doing in any community centered around one of their products?

I'd have done my darnedest to find some other job, say Cobol or Fortran.

[paul wheaton]

Originally posted by Jeroen T Wenting:
If you're so disgusted with Sun, what are you still doing in any community centered around one of their products?

I'd have done my darnedest to find some other job, say Cobol or Fortran.

Have you never heard of a "love/hate relationship" ?

I think there are many people that "hate" microsoft, but still use windows.

As with many things in life, how one feels about an entity could be a lot more sophisticated than can really fit into one word.

[Jeroen T Wenting]

I ask those Windows"hater"s the same question, they never have a satisfactory answer either

[paul wheaton]

Hate needs reason?

[Maximilian Xavier Stocker]

Originally posted by Jeroen T Wenting:
If you're so disgusted with Sun, what are you still doing in any community centered around one of their products?

I'd have done my darnedest to find some other job, say Cobol or Fortran.

For the long term I think I am going to be getting out of Java.

[Maximilian Xavier Stocker]

Originally posted by Ulf Dittmer:
Come on Max, don't leave us hanging: what was yesterdays debacle you mention? Spill the beans... Or have I missed some Sun news?

The summary:

- About half a year ago now it turned out there was a bug that showed people's email addresses. This was discovered because google was cacheing these buggy pages (the bug had something to do with creating versions of pages that were search engine friendly). After numerous feedback reports submitted over a three month period nothing was done. Finally after some unpleasantness the bug was fixed.

I mention this because it's important to understand the context of the futility of filing feedback (as Sun demands) because even when multiple user file reports over a three month period about a serious privacy violating bug nothing was done. Yet when the right person finally was provoked into fixing it, it was fixed quickly.

- There are numerous bugs and version control problems. Filters and other general settings were configured differently from forum to forum. Another bug that has come back numerous times involves the watches for some users. Sometimes long time users have had watches turned on for every thread they have every posted into. The result of which is that they are often unable to login and if they do login the site becomes unresponsive and sometimes even crashes.

- There was poll conducted by Sun regarding changes to the L&F of the site. The winner of the poll was "don't make any changes" and by some margin and as was submitted in feedback by numerous users the reason for this vote was to ask that the versioning and other issues by addressed before a new site that would reintroduce bugs be rolled out.

- Recently it was discovered that some forums allowed raw HTML to be posted including JavaScript tags. Further it was discovered that url tags could have JavaScript inserted into them. This was all discovered over the past few weeks and again numerous feedback submissions were made by numerous users to no affect whatsoever.

On Thursday after my last round of feedback went unanswered I posted a post that looked like normal text but was in fact a link and redirected users to google on mouseover. Which as I stated in the post was done to demonstrate that I could use the bugs to steal people's Sun cookies and they would be none the wiser.

The thread was axed and the problem went unfixed.

- Then Friday they rolled out a new site, ignoring the results of their own poll. And of course many of the old bugs are back and most of the new ones don't seem to have been addressed.

*****

I am just rather tired of it. Especially when privacy related bugs are taken seriously by everyone but Sun apparently.

And as far as the suggestion to drop Java. Yep that's what I am planning to do just not overnight. But this decision is not based on my problems on the forum but more on the following thread http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=667955&tstart=30

It's a bit dry especially if you are not a JDBC person but worth reading I think. The user lancea is a Sun employee who is the Sun rep/head of the JDBC spec JSR. The upshot is that JDBC specification means that the driver vendor paid money to Sun.

That's not good. And to me when an supposedly open community process is run like that it's time to think about bailing. It hurts both Java and Sun's credibility.

Anyway enough on that. I am not giving up Java overnight and as it happens only about a third of my time is spent programming in Java anyway so it's not the end of the world for me.

Sorry for the length of this post.

[Ulf Dittmer]

Thanks for taking the time to post that, Max. All of that does sound rather negative. Keeping their own forums running smoothly would seem to be important for a vendor who is, after all, pitching their own wares. Very strange.

[Mark Spritzler]

Max, I just finished reading the JDBC Driver thread. At least half of it. And I agree with Sun. The Specification, and many specs that are out there are a minimum set of requirements. What DD did, was go beyond that and include a special feature. Now if the user doesn't want that feature, then use a different driver. So DD did meet the minimum requirements for certification.

This might be a pain, but you should see how J2ME Specs are fulfilled by the phone manufacturers.

But the forum stuff is bad.

Mark

[Maximilian Xavier Stocker]

Originally posted by Mark Spritzler:
Max, I just finished reading the JDBC Driver thread. At least half of it. And I agree with Sun. The Specification, and many specs that are out there are a minimum set of requirements. What DD did, was go beyond that and include a special feature. Now if the user doesn't want that feature, then use a different driver. So DD did meet the minimum requirements for certification.

No they didn't. There are two important things in that thread and I admit it is hard to follow because of the heavy amounts of double speak and contracdictory statements but the two things of note are.

1) The compliance certification process is as follows. Vendors pay money for Sun. Sun gives vendor compliancy tests. Vendor runs test. Vendor reports success or failure on basis of tests and pronounces driver compliant (or not). Note that both the testing and the compliancy label are administered and applied by the vendor. Not Sun.

2) Extensions to a specification are fine BUT if you change a core component of how the driver works that is another issue. The bottom line is that DD altered the code for getting a usable connection for their driver.

This means one of the following:

- The driver is not compliant
- The vendor altered the tests to have the driver pass
- You are allowed to render many changes to driver codebases between passing the compliancy suite and shipping. (Even changes that would make the driver no longer pass the tests)

If it was as simple as an extension I wouldn't be complaining. But the driver cannot possibly pass the compliancy tests in it's current configuration because you need extra code to "unlock" the connection.

[Ulf Dittmer]

I suppose it's possible that there is code in the compliance test kit that allows this kind of thing to be done, or that the terms state that certain modifications are allowable.

But I agree that a vendor pronouncing themselves compliant is bad form.