Ubuntu 8.04 HardyHeron Coming Soon

Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) was announced October 2007 and will be supported till 2009. After four alpha releases, Ubuntu 8.04 Beta is released and available for download. The stable release of Ubuntu 8.04 (HardyHeron) is scheduled for April 2008. I am waiting for the stable relase to upgrage my ubuntu desktop edition.
The new Ubuntu will come with

• Gnome 2.22
  
• Firefox 3.0
  
• Linux kernel 2.6.24
  
• Xorg 7.3 - "New Screen Resolution utility that allows users to dynamically configure the resolution, refresh rate, and rotation of a second monitor. This will be particularly handy for laptop users that connect to a projector or external monitor." - This is my favorite
  
• and more

Monetary Calculations In Java

float and double types are not suitable for monetary calculations in Java. If this is the first time you hear this you are in trouble.

Floating point arithmetic which is used to represent float/double variables is inappropriate for exact results calculations. For example it is impossible to represent 0.1 (or any other negative power of ten) as a float or double exactly. Here is an example:

float s1 = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
s1 += 0.10;
System.out.println(s1);
}

This code prints:

0.1
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.70000005
0.8000001
0.9000001
1.0000001

Here's another example: (0.1+0.1+0.1) == 0.3 What is the value of this statement true or false? since the sum (0.1+0.1+0.1) is not equal to 0.3 according to JVM, rounding up the sum would result in 4 which is not expected either. I think you got the point. We can not trust float or double variables if we want exact results. Applications that makes money/credit calculations needs exact results. To represent monetary values in Java you should use the BigDecimal class.

BigDecimal bd = new BigDecimal("0");
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
bd = bd.add(new BigDecimal("0.10"));
System.out.println(bd);
}

This java example prints (as expected):

0.10
0.20
0.30
0.40
0.50
0.60
0.70
0.80
0.90
1.00