It looks like the Supreme Court is finally waking up after a two and half year nap and noticing that, hey the government can't just toss anybody in jail they don't like for any reason they can cook up. In three decisions that split several ways with a variety of concurring and dissenting opinions, the court ruled that Yaser Esam Hamdi must be allowed to appear before a court to challenge his designation as an enemy combatant. It ruled 6-3 that prisoners held at Guantanmo Bay can petition the Fedral Courts for writs of habeas corpus. (The Bush administration had choisen Guantanmo bay specifically to avoid this.) By a 5-4 decision it ruled on a technical matter that the petition for Jose Padilla had not been filed in the proper jurisdiction. However, that case will now be refiled, having been considerably strengthened by the decision in the Hamdi case. Maybe there's hope yet.
You can't track the numbers without a score card. Sun now appears to have decided to call the next release of the JDK, Java 2 Standard Edition 5.0 Software Development Kit. Unfortunately this pretty much precludes ever going to the backwards incompatible Java 3 I've advocated in the past, though I suppose they could always follow Apple and call that Java X, or imitate Microsoft and call it Java 3000.
Apple has posted the third developer preview of Java 1.4.2 Update 1 on the Apple Developer Connection (registration and Mac OS X 10.3 required). No word yet on what's been fixed in this release.
Sun has posted an early access version of Java Studio Creator for Mac OS X.The early access version expires September 30. It should eventually cost $99. It will also be available with new 15- or 17-inch PowerBooks. Mac OS X 10.3.3, a 1 GHz G4, 1GB RAM and 310MB hard drive space are required.