Java Management Extensions

Colophon

Our look is the result of reader comments, our own experimentation, and feedback from distribution channels. Distinctive covers complement our distinctive approach to technical topics, breathing personality and life into potentially dry subjects.

The animal on the cover of Java Management Extensions is an octopus, an eight-armed cephalopod mollusk of the order Octopoda. Octopi are found worldwide in tropical and warm temperate waters. There are many species of octopus, ranging from the massive Giant Pacific octopus, which scientists believe can reach up to 30 feet in length, to the miniscule Californian octopus, which grows to be only one inch long. The common octopus is about 2-3 feet long. The octopus’s brain is the most complex of the invertebrates', with long- and short-term memories, providing it with the ability to solve problems by trial-and-error methods -- a trick that comes in handy when evading or robbing fishermen’s traps. Octopi are completely deaf but they have complex eyes, with vision approximately as acute as a human’s. The hundreds of suckers that line each of their tentacles are very sensitive and allow octopi to hold onto almost anything. If an octopus loses a tentacle, it soon grows another in its place.

Octopi feed primarily on crustaceans and mollusks, often luring their prey by wiggling the tip of a tentacle like a worm. Once it catches its victim, the octopus bites it, injecting it with a poisonous venom and digestive enzyme. It then sucks out the ...