Sun giving big hardware prizes for finding JRE 1.6 bugs

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Mickey Segal - 08 Feb 2006 22:04 GMT

Sun is offering some impressive prizes for those who submit JRE 1.6 bugs
from Jan 31 through March 31, 2006:
https://mustang.dev.java.net/regchal/

One more reason to stamp out bugs.

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Rhino - 09 Feb 2006 14:19 GMT

> Sun is offering some impressive prizes for those who submit JRE 1.6 bugs
> from Jan 31 through March 31, 2006:
> https://mustang.dev.java.net/regchal/
>
> One more reason to stamp out bugs.

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade but I think most of us already have
plenty of T-shirts.

The workstations they are giving away are, of course, much more impressive
but they are only giving away 5 of those and they are apparently going to
have a committee choose who will get them. I don't know how many regression
bugs they will get - hundreds? thousands? - but I'm guessing it will be a
lot more than five. And if I were setting the criteria for this committee, I
would probably have them select the bug that would have cost Sun or its
customers the most money if undiscovered. So, even if you find a bug - or
several bugs - what are the odds of finding one of the most expensive bugs?
workstation?

While the odds are probably a lot better to win this than your local
government lottery, you're probably also going to have to do a lot more work
to earn a ticket. It sounds a lot like a way to get us to do work for them
at far less cost than they would incur if they paid people to do it for
them.

Let's just say I'm underwhelmed by this "opportunity".

--
Rhino

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Roedy Green - 09 Feb 2006 14:40 GMT

On Thu, 9 Feb 2006 09:19:49 -0500, "Rhino"
<no.offline.contact.please@nospam.com> wrote, quoted or indirectly
quoted someone who said :

>While the odds are probably a lot better to win this than your local
>government lottery, you're probably also going to have to do a lot more work
>to earn a ticket. It sounds a lot like a way to get us to do work for them
>at far less cost than they would incur if they paid people to do it for
>them.

I'm going at least to try. I would love 2 gigs of ram and a 64 bit
Opteron.

It probably has enough disk space to let have Solaris, Linux and XP on
there. The chip might even support virtualisation so you can run all
three at once. see http://mindprod.com/bgloss/pacifica.html

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Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
http://mindprod.com Java custom programming, consulting and coaching.

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Thomas Hawtin - 09 Feb 2006 16:01 GMT

>> Sun is offering some impressive prizes for those who submit JRE 1.6 bugs
>> from Jan 31 through March 31, 2006:
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> I don't want to rain on anyone's parade but I think most of us already have
> plenty of T-shirts.

I don't. But one more is on its way...

> The workstations they are giving away are, of course, much more impressive
> but they are only giving away 5 of those and they are apparently going to
> have a committee choose who will get them. I don't know how many regression
> bugs they will get - hundreds? thousands? - but I'm guessing it will be a
> lot more than five.

The status page only has three bugs showing at the moment. One of those
is a test and another a duplicate. I hope mustang isn't so buggy
thousands of regressions are reported.

http://download.java.net/jdk/Mustang-Regressions.html

> And if I were setting the criteria for this committee, I
> would probably have them select the bug that would have cost Sun or its
> customers the most money if undiscovered. So, even if you find a bug - or
> several bugs - what are the odds of finding one of the most expensive bugs?
> workstation?

Wouldn't you consider this an appropriate time just to give your code a
quick smoke test and run your automated tests? If instead you later find
you have to workaround a regression, then that's your own fault.

Tom Hawtin

Signature

Unemployed English Java programmer
http://jroller.com/page/tackline/

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Larry Barowski - 09 Feb 2006 18:39 GMT

> The status page only has three bugs showing at the moment. One of those is
> a test and another a duplicate. I hope mustang isn't so buggy thousands of
> regressions are reported.

Java 1.6 ea has been out for a long time, so I'm sure most
of the regression bugs have already been reported. If you
find one now, you've got a pretty good shot. Your best
chance is probably for a bug caused by the fix to a bug
that was previously reported.

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Chris Smith - 09 Feb 2006 16:30 GMT

> While the odds are probably a lot better to win this than your local
> government lottery, you're probably also going to have to do a lot more work
> to earn a ticket. It sounds a lot like a way to get us to do work for them
> at far less cost than they would incur if they paid people to do it for
> them.

I have no doubt that it's exactly that. On the other hand, I have never
paid Sun a dime for the right to use the results of their effort. Far
be it from me to hold a grudge for their trying to establish incentives
for users to help them out. I think it's wonderful. If only I had
time...

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www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

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Sun giving big hardware prizes for finding JRE 1.6 bugs

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