Here's my problem as sent to Sun Microsystems Java Support...

Even though the Java Control Panel, and verifying installation through this site show that I have the latest version, and some earlier ones enabled, as follows, java -version shows

java version "1.3.1_02"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.3.1_02-b02)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.3.1_02-b02, mixed mode)

Control Panel shows:

1.4 1.4.2_06 http://java.sun.com/products/autodl/j2se C:\Program Files\Java\j2re1.4.2_06\bin\javaw.exe true
1.4 1.4.2_04 http://java.sun.com/products/autodl/j2se C:\Program Files\Java\j2re1.4.2_04\bin\javaw.exe true
1.4 1.4.2_05 http://java.sun.com/products/autodl/j2se C:\Program Files\Java\j2re1.4.2_05\bin\javaw.exe true
1.5 1.5.0_04 http://java.sun.com/products/autodl/j2se C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_04\bin\javaw.exe true
1.5 1.5.0_02 http://java.sun.com/products/autodl/j2se C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_02\bin\javaw.exe true

Some java apps aren't running, and the vendor says my version is too low. What's up? What can I do to correct this problem?

Here's Sun's Answer...

Thank you very much for your interest in Java(TM) technology. We highly encourage you to spend some time reading the solutions published on the Java.com Help and FAQ pages.

You have JRE 5.0 (1.5.0_04) which is the current version of the JRE. Please contact the vendor and ask for the specific version of the JRE that you need. You can download archived JRE from this site.
http://java.sun.com/products/archive/index.html

Also, you can check to see if Java is correctly installed on your system. Are you able to run this test applet on our help site?
http://www.java.com/en/download/help/testvm.xml

Thank you very much for contacting Sun Microsystems. Java.com – The Source for Java Technology.

Regards,
Consumer Java Support
Sun Microsystems, Inc.

At least they're polite, though it did take five days to get this non-answer to me.

Of course, as with any multi-vendor problem, it's rather like when you get eggs not to your liking at a restaurant. Do you blame the cook or the hen?

Of course, the test that they ask me to do is the test on their site that I told them I did.

'Tis most odd. Why does my laptop run a 1.3 version of JVM/JRE from command line, but 1.5 if run through the GUI. Why does the Java Control Panel show various versions of 1.4 and the latest 1.5, but not any 1.3 versions though that is what the command line shows.

Actually, I found the answer on my own. Let's blame Oracle. An installation of Oracle9i seems to be the have changed some path information.

I've found the Konfabulator widgets to be very cool. The RSS widgets remind me of Pointcast in many ways - updated and current web content streamed to your desktop on your schedule.

I think that Yahoo!'s purchase of Konfabulator will make for a very interesting opening of Yahoo!'s API.

I also find the idea of widgets for TiVo very interesting, truly reflecting the convergence of entertainment, communications and computing. Especially as TiVo has opened their API to encourage outside extensions of the TiVo platform.

Now, using widgets for web services and SOA may finally help that technology take off the way feed syndication has.

via SiliconBeat

Update: one problem with posting after midnight - you sometimes forget what blog you're in. Sorry Clarise, I didn't mean to post this in Yackity, but in my Cynosural Blog.

I recently posted about Categories for news feeds and blogging, in relation to suggesting additional categories for Bayosphere Citizen Journalists' articles and for organizing the RSS, RDF or Atom feeds to which one might subscribe in a feed reader. You can read the original post in either the TeleInterActive Lifestyle or Bayosphere. Steven Livingstone-Perez responded, via trackback, in taghop: Managing Categories

Joseph A. di Paolantonio recently blogged how he re-organized his categories to use technorati tags and is hoping to move toward a better fine-tuned folksonomy.

While i belive this is useful, I still see a few factors that I hope taghop.ORG can address when looking to perform such an activity.

-- StevenR2 in taghop: Managing Categories

So, I've spent some time since I saw Steven's response reading about Taghop, both in the COM and ORG domains. I created a Taghop account and added some URLs, for blogs from the TeleInterActive Press and Bayosphere, and used some of the "public" URLs for various news organizations. Taghop allows one to relate the tags/categories to others' tags or categories, and allows one to do so regardless of where one uses those tags, such as de.licio.us. So, Taghop was the impetus that I needed to create a del.icio.us account.

I'm still getting the feel for things at Taghop, and Taghop is in beta. Perhaps Steven can answer some questions for me, and please don't read anything below as a criticism.

• I found a "developer's page" - Is Taghop Open Source?
• What license is being used?
• Scaling: the presentation of how blogs are related seems a bit cumbersome, but the "example" showing graphical relationships is cool - perhaps a "map" of relationships might be better than a list. Or I may not understand how the relationship presentation works
• Is there anyway to add a tag/category to multiple URL's at once? It took me quite a bit of time to add the few URL's and tags that I've done so far.
• I see that there is a toolbar for IE, when is one coming for Firefox, Mosilla, Opera, Safari, etc? I don't use IE, except to test new CSS; so I'm not sure if the toolbar answers my above question.
• Is the best use of Taghop to have accounts at del.icio.us, flikr, Bayosphere, your own blogs, and the like, and to use Taghop to relate among one's own various accounts, web use and online social networks? That is, I get the feeling that one shouldn't try to import all of their bookmarks or blogmarks to Taghop, but only general or personalized pages at other online services that use a tagging system.
• How could Taghop help me achieve my goals of creating some "starting point" categories for our upcoming syndication aggregator/feed reader/blogging service and some more general categories for Bayosphere Citizen Journalists?
• What are the different purposes of taghop.COM and taghop.ORG? How should we use each to best help taghop?

Steven, Taghop looks like an interesting project/product/service. Perhaps you could help us understand Taghop better, and answer my questions, via a post on your blog, with a tracback here. I look forward to conversing with you.