An SCJP 1.4 certification primer

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The Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP) examination has recently been updated for J2SE 1.4, which means you’ll have to jump through some new hoops to get a passing score. In this primer to SCJP certification, Pradeep Chopra, cofounder of WHIZlabs Software, outlines some of the most important changes to the SCJP 1.4 exam, suggests several ways to prepare for it, and offers some sample questions to get you started.

Read the rest at developerWorks.

I want to update my certification just to keep up-to-date.

Radio killed the radio star

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Consolidation has resulted in 10,000 layoffs, the demise of a beloved trade magazine, and a decline in programming quality. But industry execs are fat and happy.

Read the rest over at Salon.

Dry Cell had a recording contract with Warner Brothers Records, which had spent $325,000, by its account, on the group. One of its hottest executives, Jeff Blue, who had discovered the hugely popular rock-rap group Linkin Park, was placed in charge of Dry Cell’s future.

The group’s first single, “Body Crumbles,” was playing on radio stations across the country, and its debut album, “Disconnected,” was slated to hit stores in August.

But as the evening went on, the father of one of the members got into a heated argument with Mr. Blue over the size of the label’s promotion budget for the band, the culmination of months of behind-the-scenes angst and frayed trust. Within 48 hours he took his complaints to the label itself.

And like that, the euphoria disappeared.

Read the rest in the NYTimes article Young Band, Derailed Dream.

Absent the penalty of perjury, Major Label lawyers testified to a panel of senators in Los Angles that most artists are happy with their recording contracts. The panel, this past Tuesday, was assembled to entertain arguments as to wether legislation might be necessary to keep major record labels honest when reporting to their artists the amount of money earned on their exclusive record contracts. If enacted, this would be the beginning of government regulation of the music business; a concept that, ironically, artists are initiating.

Read the rest in the MusicDish post First Blood is Spilled at Record Industry Hearings – The War is On!!!. via Scripting.com.

Last but not least, Mark is asking what Clear Channel is up to. This sounds like big news others have missed.

For a more positive music related post local weblogger ChrisPuzak, reviews Iron Maiden’s Rock in Rio at Blogcritics.

“to dream big in Philadelphia is still an uphill battle”

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Every city, every region, has its defining moments. You read about them in the history books, when hindsight’s long lens trains on choices made or squandered. Sometimes you can feel such moments at hand, as the wind shifts and catches an opportunity before it blows away.

…Philadelphia is experiencing one of those moments, with the news last week that the Barnes Foundation was seeking to move its exquisite art collection from Lower Merion to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. This move could seal the region’s place as a mecca for the arts and a cultural destination to rival New York and Paris.

Or it could be one of those moments we’ll remember with a wince, like a touchdown pass slipping through the fingers, a downtown stadium never built, a city park renovated on the cheap.

Read the rest of Jane Eisner’s piece in the Inquirer: Barnes move would test city’s character.

Inquirer reviews and interviews controversial Steve Earle

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Steve Earle is ready to explain himself. Not that he’s about to apologize for “John Walker’s Blues,” the grimy ballad in which he crawls inside the head of John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban” serving 20 years for fighting with al-Qaeda’s favorite former Afghan regime.

…”This is the most pro-American record I’ve ever made,” argues the 47-year-old singer, who first threw cold water on the Nashville establishment in 1986, with the release of Guitar Town, his bracing country-rock debut.

For this ardent opponent of the death penalty, patriotism is best expressed through dissent. “I grew up during the Vietnam War, and whenever I see a flag decal,” he writes in Jerusalem’s liner notes, “I subconsciously superimpose ‘America – Love It or Leave It’ across the bottom stripe.”

Read the rest in this Dan DeLuca piece.

Teen dies, starved and alone

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Abused and starving, Chester Lee Miller, 18, was forced sometime this month to make a desperate 1,000-mile bus journey from the home of his mother and stepfather in Hazleton, Pa., to the Florida Panhandle, a place from which his natural father had earlier sent him packing.

Aboard the bus, in terminal after terminal, town after town, Miller said, he cried and begged strangers for help.

No one listened.

…Severely malnourished and succumbing to extensive organ failure, the youth died alone yesterday in a Florida hospital room.

His mother and stepfather, Lyda Miller, 37, and Paul Hoffman Sr., 38, who were charged earlier this week with aggravated assault and reckless endangerment, face additional charges, police said last night: homicide.

And in Milton, population 7,400, the stranger who took in the dying boy nobody wanted said her family is trying to raise money for a funeral.

“We’re trying to at least let him have a decent burial,” Goodman said. “It’s the least we can do.” A relative of her family has donated a burial plot.

Though still hazy, the picture emerging of Chester Lee Miller’s life is one of suffering and torture.

Before he died, Miller was able to tell authorities that his father, Robert Lee Miller, dispatched him to Pennsylvania last year to live with his mother and stepfather in Hazleton, about 120 miles north of Philadelphia. He told of being kept mostly in one room, often forced to stand for hours in a corner, being beaten every day, fed only scraps of food, and not allowed out of the house to go to school or see friends.

What a horrific story. Reminds me of reading Dave Pelzer’s A Child Called “It”. Chester had nobody.

Not related, but strangely timed, comes the story of an 11 year old pleading with police to save him from his parents.

And also not related, but immediately recalled, except for a wonderful Grandmother, Erica Pratt, the 7 year old who made headlines for escaping her kidnappers, has no family to rely on. “This is no environment for a child to grow up. Poverty. Drugs. Despair. And most importantly, an absence of male role models.” Yep.