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Sun's signing into Microsoft's Communications Protocol Program locks Sun and Sun customers into interoperating with any Microsoft system on Microsoft's strict terms, conditions and royalty rates. It also denies the possibility that the code using those Microsoft protocols will ever be open sourced.

This raises serous questions. For example, how much longer will Sun be free to distribute and integrate SAMBA with the Java Desktop? Will Sun's signing of the MCPP have a network affect on vendors who have access to Sun's source code -- will they also be forced to sign up to the MCPP?

I understand Sun's attempt to spin "Peace in our time" into "This Was Their Finest Hour"however, if you look where the quote originated from...

What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, on June 18, 1940, at the House of Commons

Agreed. Its improving though. I think Java's gaming future on desktops probably lie in that area where you need the ease of deployment of Macromedia Flash, but with the sophistication of a fully developed programming langauge. Its still early, but there are a few java games out there that exploit these strengths, such as Wurm Online (a mmorpg that is multiplatform, uses opengl via jogl and doesn't require an install, just click and play!)

Well, we can stop working on GNOME and KDE and Aqua because you are "moving away from physical cases towards a hierarchical, multi-layered view of my mp3s with iTunes."

Has it occurred to you that, perhaps, the vast majority of ordinary, mostly-computer-illiterate people do want to handle real objects on thier computer screen? Do you look up from your IDE or commandline long enough to notice that most people don't use or want to use the computer the same way you do?

Try reading this article about programming. It's a bit silly in places, but it makes some good point about programming in general and programming the UI in particular - make it a pleasure for a user to use, make it easy for the user to do work, not the programmer.

I have seen this "desktop" demonstrated and it's quite cool. Not because I would nescesarily want to use it (although some of the stuff looks interesting) but because I can see my mother or my wife or my brother the mechanic or my cousin the biochemist finding using a computer 1000 times easier to use with this kind of metaphor - they concentrate on doing their job instead of mine. I think part of my job in creating software for humans to interact with is to make it easy to use, seamless and invisible in their environment - like answering a phone, doing up a zipper or reading a watch...you don't think about it, you just do it.

Anyway, that's how I see it and that's why I think Looking Glass is actually a step away from the "desktop" metaphor to something different. Perhaps a baby step at first, but a far greater step than XP or Aqua...

And of course we all have choice. If you don't want to use it - don't.

One Java developer recently quoted in JDJ remarked: "I use a Mac, it's like Linux with class and QA." (or something close to)

Heh, "one Java developer" - that would be James Gosling you're thinking of: "I tend to think of OSX [as] Linux with QA and Taste."

There are some pretty good open-source Java-OpenGL systems that are starting to be used for some very interesting gaming related stuff- take a look over on games.dev.java.net and the forums there for more information on what is being done now.

Once you have 3d graphics being handled natively through the hardware, you don't have nearly the same problems with speed either- it is a plenty fast language when it's not doing too much screenwork.

Well, if it's Turing-complete, all I need is a highly efficient optimizing compiler. ;-) In fact, that's all I'm after.

But then neither can Java.

Why do you say this? Did you ever hear of or see the Grand Canyon demo? Also check out this setup for realtime Java computing with J2SE. Looks pretty good to me. There are also now official OpenGL bindings for Java.

Also, Jython is considerably slower than native Python owing to the overhead of turning Python code into Java forms. The only real advantage of Jython is that it lets you easily call Java routines from an almost Python environment. Sometimes this is enough of an advantage to make it worthwhile, but not if speed is what you are after.

I don't think this is right - the Jython page claims there's a compiler to compile Python to Java bytecode - that should be as fast as native Java, assuming the compiler does a decent job.

Last I read is that Sun doesn't have a problem with open source implementations of Java, is just that Sun isn't doing one.

Here's what I've gotten so far from doing a "view source" while the page is loading. Not sure if it's the whole article, but it's something:

Sun has offered a frank response to the open letter from Eric S, Raymond, President, Open Source Initiative, in which he called on Sun to make its Java platform Open Source and described the company's Open Source strategy as 'spotty' and 'confused'.

'I'd say this is 100 per cent rant,' Sun's Chief Technology Evangelist, Simon Phipps told us. 'His simplistic accusations don't hold water... If this is the way that Open Source treats its friends, I'd hate to see how it treats its enemies.'

Raymond's first line of attack was to dispute whether CEO Scott McNealy's claim that 'the open-source model is our friend,' has any substance when at the same time Sun is filling the coffers of Linux litigator SCO through licensing deals and still keeps Java under 'tight control'.

'It's pretty difficult to respond to this. He's so out of touch,' said Phipps. 'To even begin one must first address the error in his world view: He has taken quotes given by Scott McNealy to analysts and attacked them as if they were spoken to the Open Source community.

(I was a bit leary of running this story initially, but have been able to confirm that it is legitimate through sources at Java.net - Ed.)

Here's one good article on java.net about a software development team's quest for better software development

What I Want To Know About Your Process

i am glad we follow all this :)

Really? Not even a little bit? How exactly would someone run a little bit of Java, anyway? ;-)

Well, someone should tell James Gosling. He's responsible for the propaganda more than anyone.

I transfer music to my Karma through the Java client running under Linux syscall emulation on NetBSD. So, yes.

I haven't used it myself (I rip everything with EAC, so I tend to use my Windows box for storing my FLACs/Oggs), but it gets glowing reviews by Linux users in the Riovolution forums.

Ok, so now that Java is on the retreat they try to enter a new area?

It's probably because there's no Java user community or usefull implementations out there. And it has virtually no practical application on the desktop for that matter. Maybe because it doesn't do 3D or sound. Or is not so usefull as far as scalable RDBMS abstraction or a real application server for the enterprise. Maybe they need to move into the mobile market. What's really needed is a good Java IDE to get developers on board. Changes should be driven by the software community and making the source open would help as well. Sun should also be making improvments in Java's next(?) version.

You're right, I guess "we" should just cut our losses.

...is in John Mitchell's blog.

As he says, 'Did you notice how little actual Java there is in the "Java Desktop System"?'

You have to use their software, either RMM (win) or RMML (java). The karma has a built in DHCP client or you can hard code an IP. Once it has an IP, you can hit it with a web browser and actually dl the java client from the karma (however, newer versions are available online, so this is only useful in a pinch). The java client mirrors the functionality of the win client, it performs decently on my box, I have a AthlonXP 2000+ running Gentoo, kernel 2.6, JRE 1.4, and XFCE.

The karma organizes music according to it's metadata (album, artist, year, etc...). This frustrates me a little, since I like to keep some things segregated. But I can just make playlist or script some metadata changes on my files.

I highly recommend checking out the forums on riovolution.com, there's some chaff to wade through, but there is lots of great info.

Pyroman is correct. The Rio music manager software is in java and is platform neutral.

-- Gary F.

I wouldn't be surprised if System.Windows.Forms was deprecated entirely with recommendations to use the new Avalon APIs. At the very least, the common controls will all be replaced/rewritten.

For limited info, see http://weblogs.java.net/pub/wlg/525.

I had the honor of listening to James Gosling's Keynote at Borcon 2001. He gave a stimulating talk about running Java on a gas pump, which didn't actually work.

Then he took Q/A from the audience. He fielded the usual comments about how the Java API was so bloated. His reply to that was just not to use the bloated parts. He, for instance, doesn't use JDBC for anything, but he doesn't advocate removing it.

The previous day, the inventor of Pascal, who now works at Microsoft, did his entire keynote from Notepad because he was forbidden from running Visual Studio at Borcon (too much competition with Borland's IDEs).

Still, for a smart guy, he is easily provoked.

Graham's article is a load of crap. Not having any factual information to say, his arguments against it are:

1) It's bad because it's energetically hyped. Unlike Lisp, where no one uses it because everyone is too busy posting on comp.lang.lisp about how wondeful a language it is?

2) It's aimed low. Gosling has already called bullshit on this argument.

3) It has ulterior motives. So what?

4) No one loves it? Well, those of us who used to use C++ appreciate it a hell of a lot.

5) People are forced to use it. Wrong. Countless companies choose it because it is an appropriate technology.

6) It has too many cooks. I find this a huge advantage to Java. It means their API's very well thought out. It's why Java is nicely internationalizable, for one.

7) It's bureaucratic. Their API's are no more verbose than many languages. Any "bureacracy" that exists is to promote flexibilty.

8) It's pseudo-hip. Like quoting Paul Graham.

9) It's designed for large organizations. True, because large organizations have to do somethign more complicated then the typical perl script can handle. His arguments here are debunked by Gosling in my previous link.

10) The wrong people like it. That is, Paul Graham's friends don't like it, people Paul Graham doesn't know like it! What an argument!

11) Its daddy is in a pinch. I fail to see how this is relevant.

12) The DoD likes it. The DoD also likes the internet, they were one of the first government agencies to really take to it. Does that say something bad about the internet now?

Comparing Java to Lisp or (ugh) Perl is a joke. Well, I think perl is very ugly and counter-intuitive, so let's take Python as an example. If I were to make a simple website, i'd use Python instead of Java. If I were to do a hacker type of activity, something that may not be around 3 years from now, I'd use Python. Or even Lisp if it was something just for me. They'd be wise choices. However, for an enterprise app? Java is an excellent choice.

Here's the link to JOGL.

I recently posted a series of entries on the relative strengths of Java vs. .NET and make some suggestions on how Java might avoid being crushed by .NET.

If windows is so bad why do we keep trying to copy it?

Actually many Sun employees uses Mac OS X at their work.

Including James Gosling, the man behind Java language, who has recently switched to Mac OS X. Here's a quote from his weblog: "One of the nice things about developing in Java on the MAC is that you get to develop on a lovely machine". Interesting words from a man who is VP and Fellow at Sun. But he's the man who can tell what is the best platform to develop Java.

There's even a story about Gosling's switch at Apple.com.

From your comments it's apparent you're not a Java programmer then, because you merely repeat old complaints that are no longer valid. Ok, sure, the JRE takes up a bit of space but compared to the size of hard drives today the amount is trivial. Having the JRE on disk is like installing the MS or Borland libraries (or Linux counterparts) that some applications use - once it's there other applications don't have to include the code as part of the executable.

Swing suffers from obesity - what does that mean?

I've been developing Java applications for years (including a stint as project lead on a weather satellite imagery analysis program) and I know firsthand how much Java has improved. Spend some time writing applications in Java, using Swing (I use Netbeans for my IDE)...you'll see how sporty applications can be. Also check out Sun's Java Games community for some links to games that really exhibit excellent performance.

The two URLS you provide are very small when considered aside CPAN. CPAN is no less than 100 time larger in subject area and code than the combined content of the repositories you named.

Right, but those are hardly the only available sources of freely available java code.

I'd guess that the amount of available Java code is within an order of magnitude of the amount of available Perl code, if one knows where to look.

The biggest thing the Java community lacks in that regard, is one centralized location to grab stuff from, akin to CPAN. But who knows, maybe java.net will grow to encompass such a position in the Java world...

Don't forget, there are two very popular bindings currently out and very usable: lwjgl which does away with AWT/Swing and JOGL which keeps AWT/Swing support. I currently use LWJGL for some hobby stuff I'm doing. Bindings are begining to become VERY good, especially using the new nio package.

One of its key features is that the Java bindings are automatically generated from the C OpenGL bindings, so it's pretty trivial to keep it up to date with the very latest changes Compare this to gl4Java which has really started falling out of date.

While attending the JavaOne conference this week in San Francisco, one of the key points made is that Sun is trying to simplify this process. They talked in specifics like removing the java icon in the tray which, when clicked, brings up a java console...obviously not a consumer feature. They have launched two new sites also: java.com for consumers and java.net for techies. Looks like they'll be working on the user experience of getting Java onto the consumer machine.

The other item of interest at the conference was the announcement of a deal with both hp and dell to ship the jre on new systems from each respective company. Interesting from the recent ms decisions to not bundle it with windows...

If you read his introduction to the site, he has a lot to say about creating a creative virtual community. The only problem is its jav-o-centric. (/me makes puking noises).

To some extent sourceforge, freshmeat, and CPAN provide this for the Free Software movement. But java.net seems more comprehensive in a way. We should rip it off. :)

I am such a filthy hoar:
java.com and java.net