Giovanni Organtini of Italy's National Institute of Nuclear Physics (well, Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) has agreed to answer questions about the recent observations of a particle consistent with the Higgs Boson. Dr. Organtini is part of the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. He is careful to note that while the researchers "[believe] that this new particle, with a mass 125 times that of a proton, is the famous Higgs boson," they "need to study that new particle more deeply in the next months to be conclusive on that. Organtini likes free software (he's written Linux device drivers, too) and has his own physics-heavy YouTube channel, mostly in Italian. Please confine questions to one per post, but feel free to ask as many as you'd like. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Payphones have been famously disappearing from public life; cell phones and other means of communication have made them ever less important in many contexts (and for most people). Some places, it's hard to find not only payphones, but usable wireless signal as well. Still, there are a lot of payphones left in the wild (though the enclosed kind seem to be disappearing faster than on-premises ones), and now there's a plan in New York City to extend payphones' useful life by outfitting them as public Wi-Fi hotspots, beginning with a 10-phone trial already underway. It's not the first such project; we mentioned a similar multi-city wi-phone deployment in Canada 10 years ago. And in Austin, I've spotted at least one payphone fitted out as a solar-powered charging station for cellphones; probably not enough to get much charge, but at least it lets users place an emergency call with a flagging or dead battery. Covering Manhattan and the other boroughs with overlapping free Wi-Fi nodes, though, is a different beast entirely. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

benfrog writes "Microsoft has taken the unusual step of killing the Windows Gadgets feature completely via a security update. According to an advisory issued Tuesday, an attacker could take over a user's system if they are logged in as admin and they install a vulnerable gadget. Microsoft has pulled the plug on its official Gadgets Gallery and is offering a Fix-it that completely disables the Windows Sidebar and Gadgets. Researchers Mickey Shkatov and Toby Kohlenberg are scheduled to give a presentation on the vulnerability at the upcoming Black Hat conference called We Have You By the Gadgets." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "One of my personal software projects grows bigger than I thought and the bugs becomes too many to just remember. I looked around for an open source bugs tracking system but found no ideal solutions. Ideally I wanted a simple system that does not need server setup and extra database setup, and can run under Mac OS X. Another option is a cloud service if it's affordable enough. Any suggestions from Slashdot?" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New submitter mordur writes "An Icelandic District Court has ordered the payment processing company Valitor to immediately reopen the merchant account (Icelandic original) of DataCell and start processing credit card payments for the Wikileaks organization. Noncompliance on behalf of Valitor will result in daily fines of ISK 800.000 (approx. USD 60.000). Under pressure from the USA based international credit card companies, Valitor stopped all service to DataCell, and thus to Wikileaks, just hours after having started processing payment in July 2011. The court found that Valitor had failed to prove that the processing of payments for Wikileaks was contrary to the business policies of the international credit card companies, nor had the company proved that DataCell was in breach of the service agreement between the companies by serving Wikileaks." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

sciencehabit writes "Filling a small swimming pool with cornstarch and water has long been a physicist's party trick. Step onto it slowly and you'll sink, but run across quickly and the oozy mixture will support your weight — almost as though it has turned from liquid to solid. Several reasons have been offered for the phenomenon, but now researchers believe they have the real answer. The key to figuring things out: plunging a 370-gram aluminum rod from a slingshot at around 1 meter per second into a cornstarch suspension." One meter per second doesn't seem very fast for anything launched by a slingshot, but any speed is good as long as it advances important knowledge like this. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Reader Thom Stark (thomst) writes with a pointed review of this year's Americanized version of (awesome) Japanese TV show "Sasuke." "I've been a fan of the program the G4 channel calls "Ninja Warrior" since I first encountered it in mid-2005. For those who are unfamiliar with the show, it's a re-edited-for-American-TV version of a Japanese show called "Sasuke," with often-snarky English commentary and graphics overlaid on the Japanese original. "Ninja Warrior" is a fast-paced, wildly-entertaining program in which 100 contestants of varying skill levels pit themselves against a 4-stage obstacle course that grows ever more fiendishly difficult with each passing season. There've been 27 such seasons to date, and the most current incarnation has become so incredibly taxing that Batman himself would have trouble completing it. Now G4 has teamed up with its corporate parent, NBCUniversal, to bring the world's toughest obstacle course to America, and the resulting show, "American Ninja Warrior" turns out to be distinctly inferior to its Japanese progenitor. The final broadcast in a series that has run for six previous weekly installments appeared on July 9, with segments on both G4 and NBC, and I thought it was fitting that I mark the occasion with a critique of what I believe to be "American Ninja Warrior"'s fatal philosophical and production missteps, and contrast them with the original pitch-perfect product." (Read on below.) Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Apple's hacker nemesis Charlie Miller, who the company banned from its app store developer program, apparently hasn't been waiting around for his suspension to be lifted. His latest pet project is hacking near-field communications (NFC), and at Black Hat USA in Vegas this month, he will demonstrate the dangers of using your smartphone to pay your cab fare. (But when his Apple 'sentence' is up, look out)." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

judgecorp writes "The parts for a Google Nexus 7 tablet cost only $18 more than the materials for an Amazon Kindle Fire, according to a teardown by IHS. This means while Amazon initially took a loss on each tablet sold, Google will break even on its 8Gb tablet, and make a small profit on the 16Gb model." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

awjourn writes "As the SEC hashes out the final rules for crowdfunding equity investments in startups, one NYC entrepreneur is jumping into an industry that popular crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter won't go anywhere near: health. His company, MedStartr, launched July 11 with six companies seeking to raise money from the crowd for their health products and services. Among them, EndoGoddess, an app diabetics can use to track their blood sugar. Even MedStartr wants to raise funding on MedStartr. But will crowdfunding fly in healthcare, and more importantly, will regulators at the FDA and SEC be on board with it?" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Some 450,000 email addresses and associated unencrypted passwords have been dumped online by the hacking collective 'D33Ds Company' following the compromise of a Yahoo subdomain. The attackers said that they managed to access the subdomain by leveraging a union-based SQL injection attack, which made the site return more information that it should have. According to Ars Technica, the dump also includes over 2,700 database table or column names and 298 MySQL variables retrieved during the attack." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

bs0d3 writes "Aereo, a company that offers live broadcast TV via the internet to New York City residents, has won a preliminary injunction hearing. A federal judge has rejected a bid by major U.S. broadcasters to stop Aereo from rebroadcasting some of their programming over the Internet. District Judge Alison Nathan said that while the broadcasters have shown that they faced irreparable financial damage if the venture were allowed to continue, Aereo also showed it would face severe harm if the requested preliminary injunction were granted. The full injunction denial ruling can be found here." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

freddienumber13 writes "Following similar acts passed by foreign governments, the Australian government is now seeking feedback on its plans to bring into law the requirement for ISPs to retain user data for up to 2 years. They're also seeking changes to the law that would allow undercover ASIO agents and its sources to commit crimes which would include, for example, hacking into your computer." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

theodp writes "Melinda Gates has pledged $560 million as part of a campaign to expand access to contraception for women. From the article: 'The funding commitment was unveiled on Wednesday at the London Summit on Family Planning alongside pledges totaling $4.3 billion from the British government and leaders from African nations wrestling with the health and social problems brought on by high rates of unplanned pregnancy.'" Read more of this story at Slashdot.

itwbennett writes "Slashdot readers will remember the hullaballoo that arose yesterday over a leaked version of CETA containing key clauses that were 'nearly identical to ones found in ACTA.' Now the European Commission is saying you shouldn't believe every leak you see and that the 'language being negotiated on CETA regarding Internet is now totally different from ACTA.' Well, maybe with the exception of language that appears in both CETA and ACTA but didn't 'originate' in ACTA and therefore doesn't count." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The shift of focus will have a profound and enduring effect on the way we write programs. Ward Cunningham and Ralph Johnson JSR 339 : VIDEO PRESENTATION MORE ABOUT

• Early Draft Review 3
• JAX-RS 2.0 Early Draft Explained - Java EE 7 Making Progress
• Jersey 2 in GlassFish 4 - First Java EE 7 Implementation Now Integrated

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As we began to learn about Java technologies at Amway Corp, we were introduced to UML (Unified Modeling Language). We became interested in the modeling aspect of UML to assist in the analysis and design phases of our Java project. So we decided to try our hand at modeling with UML. It began with 2 week-long training classes. 1) Object-Oriented Analysis with UML 2) Object-Oriented Design with UML These classes taught us about application requirements gathering, analysis and design with UML. The classes were taught without the use of any software modeling tools. The work was all done via paper and whiteboards. Really! In the classes, we learned of the many, many UML diagrams that were at our disposal. We also saw how each UML diagram can be used in a variety of ways. After the training, we set out to define a project standard for the use of UML diagrams in the analysis and design phases of our project. Data Model diagrams and Application Architecture diagrams were not part of the standard. For requirements gathering and analysis (which defined the "what", not the "how"), we specified "Business View" use-case diagrams. These were diagrams from the Actors point of view. We found these diagrams especially useful for the GUI portions of the application. We also specified "System View" use-case diagrams. These were diagrams from the System behavior point of view. We found these diagrams especially useful for the Batch Processing portions of the application. We specified a use-case document as well. This document contained the use-case Description, Actors, Scenarios, Pre and Post Conditions, and Data Requirements. For application design, we specified class diagrams. This resulted in some debate about how granular the class diagrams should be. Our UML training class recommended using high-level class diagrams and then more detailed class diagrams. Our software modeling tools vendor advised using class diagrams to generate Java code directly. We did neither. We used class diagrams to design only the "critical" processes and functions of our application. No Java code was generated from a class diagram. Our class diagrams included a class' name, attributes, and operations. These diagrams worked well for illustrating the "static" view of the application. If "dynamic" views of the application were needed, we specified sequence diagrams (for GUI) and activity diagrams (for Batch Processing). These last two diagram types were optional for application design. 10 years later... We created a large set of UML diagrams; mostly use-case and class diagrams. The use-cases became very visible. We reviewed them with our business analysts\users often. We even created a type of use-case called a "mis-use" case. That is, a requirement of "what NOT to do"! You might see a class diagram on someone's office wall today. As usual, there is no ONE right way to do things. This certainly applies to UML. Whatever "works" for you is the right way. The actual diagram you create is not as important as the thinking process that led to it. Application software modeling, with UML, is not for everyone. It remains a "specialized" skill that we use when we need it. AttachmentSize image001.gif15.81 KB

Our recently completed poll about the Adopt OpenJDK project suggests that the project is gaining some visibility among Java developers, but there's a large group that isn't all that familiar with the project. A total of 428 votes were cast. The exact question and results were: What's your view of the Adopt OpenJDK project?

• 17% (74 votes) - It's a great idea - I plan to participate
• 7% (29 votes) - It's a great idea, but I probably won't participate
• 2% (7 votes) - It's probably a good thing
• 1% (3 votes) - I don't think it will gain much
• 18% (77 votes) - What's the Adopt OpenJDK project?
• 3% (13 votes) - I don't know
• 53% (225 votes) - Other

The Adopt OpenJDK project is so new that the high number of people who selected the non-specific options perhaps should not surprise us. The results (which, of course, are not scientific) imply that the news about AdoptOpenJDK's existence has not yet expanded such that the general developer is aware of it. Among the voters who expressed knowledge about what the Adopt OpenJDK project is, a significant majority consider the project a great idea, including a large group of developers who applaud the project even though they doubt they'll personally be participating in it. Projects like Adopt OpenJDK and Adopt-a-JSR, along with the JCP.next effort, are the cutting edge of an attempt to transform the way Java evolves from a fairly closed system where a few people make all the decisions (what it's been in the past) into an open, community-driven process, where anyone can participate, all the key discussions are public, anyone can submit comments, etc. How can this be a bad thing? Well, yes, 10 Million Java developers all speaking out simultaneously would be a problem. But, that's unlikely to happen. The fact is: the world has changed. In today's world, people like to be able to customize their own systems. Allowing developers to participate in the future evolution of Java and the JVM brings Java into the modern context of customer-driven product enhancement. That's a very good thing for Java's future, in my view. In fact, without these changes, I think Java would likely stagnate. New poll: how long before JavaFX dominates? Our new Java.net poll asks How long will it take for JavaFX to become the most widely used development platform for Java client/desktop apps?. Voting will be open until Friday, July 20. Java.net Weblogs Since my last blog post, two people have posted new java.net blogs:

• Larry Fernandez, In Search of Batch - The End of the Road; and
• Sanjay Dasgupta, Clojure Example for VisualLangLab API.

Spotlights Our latest Java.net Spotlight is Guillaume Laforge's report, Groovy 2.0 Released: The Groovy development team and SpringSource are happy to echo the announcement of the release of Groovy 2.0, the highly popular dynamic language for the Java platform. The key highlights of this important milestone are... Previously, we featured Zoran Pavlović's Zoran Pavlović: Top 5 JavaFX Tutorials for June 2012: This month was pretty busy for me, I wrote a lot of JavaFX tutorials and few other articles. I had a lot of visits this month on this blog. So, I decide to share top 5 JavaFX 2 tutorials for this month... Articles Our latest Java.net article is Ken Rimple's Spring Roo and WebFlow. The article is the first in a series that will explore how Spring Roo integrates (and doesn't) with various technologies. This first article discusses Roo and Spring Web Flow. Subscriptions and Archives: You can subscribe to this blog using the java.net Editor's Blog Feed. You can also subscribe to the Java Today RSS feed and the java.net blogs feed. You can find historical archives of what has appeared the front page of Java.net in the java.net home page archive. -- Kevin Farnham Twitter: @kevin_farnham