Disney Buys Pixar for US$7 Billion

Disney Buys Pixar for US$7 Billion and Steve Jobs becomes the biggest shareholder.

Jobs is on a rock n’ roll for sure. Check out more information on the deal

File.deleteOnExit() is evil

Javadoc for File.deleteOnExit() says : 

“Requests that the file or directory denoted by this abstract 

pathname be deleted when the virtual machine terminates.”

Every time we use “ImageIO.write(img, “png”, outStream)” a temporary file is created, and the “deleteOnExit()” function is called on that temporary file. Every “deleteOnExit()” allocates a “struct dlEntry” in the shared “io_util.c” native source file. This “struct dlEntry” is about 1K in size, and will never be freed until the system exits, so every time we do an ImageIO.write(), we take up another 1K of memory! No package should use “deleteOnExit()” dynamically - it guarantees a memory leak.

One workaround is to disallow the use of cache files by passing false to the static ImageIO.setUseCache() method. This avoids the deleteOnExit() problems and should have little adverse effect on performance, especially in the case of server-side applications working with relatively small images. This memory leak is a major reliability issue for developers using ImageIO in their server side applications.

The worst part: the data structure is kept in native memory.If it only was in Java heap, you might be able to diagnose the problem much quicker. Since it is in native memory rather than Java heap, profiler tools will not be able to find this memory leak.

There has been a bug filed on Sun.

Coming to the most important part, we did not use deleteOnExit() directly. Rather, ImageIO.jar we used in our application uses it. Looking into javax.imageio.ImageIO class yields some very interesting results :-

It uses a cached file in memory which it marks as deleteOnExit(). deleteOnExit() means that VM will clean it up when VM shuts down cleanly. However, it also does a file.delete() later. This should clear up the deleteOnExit status for this file. But it does not. This means there is a memory leak in deleteOnExit + delete combination that it does delete the physical file but does not clear the data-structures associated with it in native memory. Since, these are not on heap memory but on native memory, this leak will not show up on OptimizeIt profiling.

Finally, this has resolved the OOME which we had been trying hard to resolve

GMail Drive

GMail Drive is a Shell Namespace Extension that creates a virtual filesystem around your Google GMail account, allowing you to use GMail as a storage medium.

GMail Drive creates a virtual filesystem on top of your Google GMail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer.

GMail Drive literally adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag’n'drop files to. GMail Drive shell extension is a tool that creates a virtual filesystem. More details on download and usage here

Want to know HOW TO BE RICH???

I found this interesting blog by Ramit Sethi, a Stanford Alumnus and an Entrpreneur. I found his blogs very interesting. I will start using his tips and let me see if i can save some significant amount ;). I want this thing to work as I desperately need to cut my spending and make some saving :). I wish I could attend his classes in person. Alas I can’t, as I am in Bangalore

challenging mathematical/computer programming problems

If you happen to like maths, and assuming you enjoy programming since you’re wandering through these whereabouts, here’s a very interesting challenge for you: Project Euler

VeriSign acquires CallVision

Internet and telecommunications infrastructure services firm VeriSign said Wednesday it’s paying $30 million to buy privately held CallVision, a company that does consolidated e-billing and payment and customer relationship management for telco companies. The deal will help VeriSign offer more services to its communications clients like mobile operators, broadband companies, and telco carriers. The acquisition is expected to help VeriSign clients simplify their billing process, reduce their operational costs, and mitigate customer churn, VeriSign said.

Business 2.0 is Free

All the Business 2.0 editions are now available for free @ this site

Riya gets $15m in venture funding

Riya has got a fresh round of funding to the tune of $15m from Bay Partners. This company is going great guns for sure. I think this will dowse all the sparks that flew in the recent past about the touted acquisition rumours. Armoured with some of the best/largest number of Phd guys, hope they will be successful in realizing their founding vision of recognizing every digital photo in the world.

Yahoo! Acquires WebJay

Another week, another Yahoo acquisition. Yahoo! acquired WebJay, a site that allows for categorization, editing, listening, and sharing of playlists online (In a way, it can easily be compared to del.icio.us for multimedia.)

Yahoo!’s Acquisitions

After a wonderful research into the acquisitions done by Google, this time Bill Slawsky has done it again with Yahoo!. Check what all he found out on Yahoo!’s acquistions. Over to Bill Slawsky for more