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the screenshot linked from the info page would indicate otherwise....

the screenshot linked from the info page would indicate otherwise....

I'm a bit out of it on the latest design requirements for CPUs - is the technology of these folks actually good enough to make a reasonably modern CPU?

No, they are not just a hardware company. They produce a platform, which includes software and hardware. Anyway, as someone else pointed out, it wasn't even Jobs who said that.

People who work in media related fields tend to consider Apple software to be among the best in it's class (Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, etc.). Check out the reviews sometimes. If they didn't care about their software, they wouldn't invest so much in software development. (Anybody remember the hack jobs IBM released for OS/2?)

Speaking of Steve Jobs quotes:
"My opinion is that the only two computer companies that are software-driven are Apple and NeXT, and I wonder about Apple."
-- Fortune, Aug. 26, 1991

Also, considering the fact the Apple doesn't make most of the components inside their computers and that the only significant distinguishing factor between a modern Macintosh and a PC is the software, I would say, at the very least, that makes them as much as a software company as a hardware one.

Constantin Gonzalez of Sun Micrososystems said it best: "It's about the system. No more, no less. There's no hardware without software, no software without hardware, and no solution without service. All has to fit together." Of course he was talking about Sun but I think that statement also fits Apple's perspective well.

And regarding Solaris and PostgreSQL, here's a blog post that I wrote a while back that points to some resource on that topic.

Wow all these posts and there are only a handfull of Sun/Solaris mentions. Sun are making great improvements to PostgreSQL, they're currently working on a Solaris optimized version which will be a big bonus.

Reference: See the coming soon section.

> It sounds to me like they see the value in Fedora
> and don't want to give up control of it,... ;-)

(Copying from a blog post I made about this)

At first I was surprised that Red Hat finds it necessary to reserve ultimate control (veto power) over the Fedora project

Veto power? The OpenSolaris Charter certainly does not grant Sun veto power. But then as I read the message more carefully and thought about it, something hit me like a bolt.

First, some background: It's important to understand what exactly OpenSolaris is (and isn't). Unlike Fedora, OpenSolaris is purely a co-development project built around a code base. In other words, we do not conflate the OpenSolaris project/code with any of the distros derived from it. By contrast, Fedora is all three conflated into one: a) the Fedora co-development process b.) the Fedora code-base and c.) the Fedora distro.

How does this relate to community self-governance?

With OpenSolaris, one set of policies and procedures (the recently ratified OpenSolaris Charter) applies specifically to the co-development project and, by association, the code-base. This charter is community-driven. A separate set of policies and procedures applies to Solaris Express -- Sun's bi-weekly OpenSolaris based distro. This distro is Sun-driven and of course nobody objects to Sun controlling it because anyone can create their own OpenSolaris-based distro. (And as everybody knows, SchilliX, BeleniX, and Nexenta, have done exactly that.)

Maybe RedHat should adopt this concept? It certainly stands to reason that the Fedora community developers would like it better...

Eric Boutilier
OpenSolaris
Sun Microsystems

Have you tried here?

Hmm, I haven't installed JDK on Linux for a couple of years (only Solaris and Windows) but last I did it I downloaded it, then ran the installer. If you find yourself jumping through fifty hoops maybe you are doing something non-optimally?

Why is it good for you that the java implementation on my linux box is two years out of date and is slow?

If you have an Internet connection you can download the latest JDK from http://java.sun.com/. Comes with a built-in dynamic compiler; performs quite nicely by the benchmarks I have tried.

Perhaps because Sun already has successful Open source and free projects and standards with huge followings.

Perhaps because Sun already has successful Open source and free projects and standards with huge followings.

Everyone knows that My Little Pony lives at Sun.

I'm really not sure what you're talking about. I've never experienced this. If you want to look at an example of how much effort Sun puts into making code backwards compatible, just look at the api for the Date class: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/util/ Date.html

Almost every method and constructor in there is deprecated. And why is it still around? Because removing it would break java code that was compiled in 1996 (when JDK1.0 was made public according to wikipedia).

Here's an interesting article of how .NET will not be backwards compatible in the future: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html

• Native widget support: C Check, Java Check (SWT)
• Portable GUI code between platforms or even Window managers on the same platform: C No, Java Check (SWT)
• Native code execution for maximum performance where needed: C Check, Java Check (JIT even allows for profile data guided native code translationon on the fly which no C runtime can do that I'm aware of)
• Deterministic cost of algorithms: C Check, Java No (The promised pluggable GC API still missing)
• Susceptible to buffer overflows: C Check, Java No.

IBM developed their own graphical toolkit SWT which simply wraps native widgets since they were of the same opinion as people in general at that time, that Sun utterly dropped the ball on both their GUI initiatives (Swing and AWT). SWT enables GUIs to act and look like native platform GUIs since ... it relies on the actual underlying widgets of the platform the OS the app is running on. That is Gnome for Linux/Gnome, Microsoft widgets through Win32 API on Windows and whatever Apple is using on OSX.

Currently there is to my knowledge only one area where any sane person would use C, C++ or Assembly over more modern (read higher level) languages namely realtime programs. The reason why Java is no option in this case has to do with the absence of the pluggable GC interface (was hoping it would arrive with 1.5 but I guess we'll have to wait some yet). Another category where Java isn't suitable is for you typical "one-liner" programs (or general small command line programs designed to fit into the typical "unix" pipe chaining design) due to the slow startup time of the JVM (Unpacking of 35 MB zip file and loading of hundreds of classes needed or not during the JVM initialization).

Now unless you are creating a realtime program (such as a game for example), great performance can be obtained by mixing C and Java. Using C or assembler together with Java (or another higher-level language) when you want to optimize the bottleneck algorithm to use every ounce of your latest and greatest "Itanium processor". Minimizing the use of lower level languages decreases the maintenance cost if you're targetting multiple environments (zOS, AS/400, AIX, Solaris, Windows, OSX ..) since you only have to maintain platform specifics for the minimal amount of C/Asm code used instead of hundreds of thousands to millions of lines of code for your typical non-trivial application.

I'd argue that the vast majority of business software are not realtime systems and as such I doubt you'd notice a difference if the program was coded in C, Assembler, C# running on DotNet or Java since they all would appear the same from an interface standpoint and responsiveness which you would observe.

IBM's replacement of Notes code named Hannover is essentially a stripped down eclipse platform (really the Rich Client Platform offering) with a bunch of plugins added to the work bench for whatever features Notes currently implements.

As a current victim working at a company which is a Notes/Domino shop I really look forward to the Hannover release since it will be based on a fully documented and open platform. Being based on Eclipse I really look forward to the massive amount of inhouse plugins which will written shortly after the release. Really can't think of a more integrated base as a platform for my company's (or any company's for that matter) need of inhouse tooling

The "Java isn't open source" whining is really starting to piss me off. I can download the Java sources easily, I can even use my gained knowledge to serve my own need, its only a matter of licencing and people who probably didn't even bother to read it feel bad because it isn't "Open Source".

So what is open source? Isn't that the same as "making the source code available" ? And well; that is exactly what Sun is doing, I can't explain else how I happen to have obtained the Java source code myself. Or is this suddenly different because in this case "Open Source" doesn't mean "Free" ? That would mean that some Open Source evangalists are now keeping a double agenda. "Yes, open source is a great business model because you can make money from it, just look at companies like RedHat" vs. "I'm not allowed to use the Java source the way I want to, its not free so its not open source!". Its not free... And how exactly are we going to make money from Open Source?

This is IMO a continous tyrade by people who don't wish to think further than the "open source, free software!" hype.

For the record, in response to the BLOG, Netbeans was written in Java too. In fact, you can even extend its functionality with Java code and it has features which have yet to make it in Eclipse. Gee, its another Sun product and because Sun doesn't Open Source Java it has to stink too!. It would be nice if some Open Source evangalists would keep an open mind and focus on what Open Source actually implies. OPEN source. Not FREE SOFTWARE.

The "Java isn't open source" whining is really starting to piss me off. I can download the Java sources easily, I can even use my gained knowledge to serve my own need, its only a matter of licencing and people who probably didn't even bother to read it feel bad because it isn't "Open Source".

So what is open source? Isn't that the same as "making the source code available" ? And well; that is exactly what Sun is doing, I can't explain else how I happen to have obtained the Java source code myself. Or is this suddenly different because in this case "Open Source" doesn't mean "Free" ? That would mean that some Open Source evangalists are now keeping a double agenda. "Yes, open source is a great business model because you can make money from it, just look at companies like RedHat" vs. "I'm not allowed to use the Java source the way I want to, its not free so its not open source!". Its not free... And how exactly are we going to make money from Open Source?

This is IMO a continous tyrade by people who don't wish to think further than the "open source, free software!" hype.

For the record, in response to the BLOG, Netbeans was written in Java too. In fact, you can even extend its functionality with Java code and it has features which have yet to make it in Eclipse. Gee, its another Sun product and because Sun doesn't Open Source Java it has to stink too!. It would be nice if some Open Source evangalists would keep an open mind and focus on what Open Source actually implies. OPEN source. Not FREE SOFTWARE.

I don't think I've ever seen an article summary with so many links!

Zimbra? Come on people, you want me to trust my user's email to a web2.0 company? what the hell?

Horde? For a user-base of this size? That's crazy! Where are you going to find enterprise-class support for a mediocre php web app framework?

The decent alternatives are Open Xchange, or Hula Server

But none of these compare to Sun's Messenging Server. Calendaring, IM, mail, all standards-compliant (even to the backend ldap server), all open-source. It integrates with outlook. It's backed up by a global corporation and is certified to run on Solaris, Red Hat, HP-UX and Windows. *

I don't understand why people even look at some of these other mail/calendar systems, let alone ignore this offering from Sun. Seriously, will someone answer that? (Sure it's not GPL'd, but Zimbra?)

*I do not work for sun.

Pretty much everything around the UltraSPARC processors is out and in the open.

http://blogs.sun.com/roller/resources/roumen/micro soft_old_small.jpg

How did Microsoft become so successful, then? ;)

You know a thing is superhyped when v1.1 is mentioned on slashdot.
Mind you RoR is cool compared to j2EE. Then again, it's allmost as if C is cool when compared to J2EE. J2EE sucks big time for server side web - even the Java Gurus agree on that. End of discussion, no news here.
But RoR isn't the end all of ssi frameworks. Django is at least as good (I'd say better and cleaner than RoR) and Zope has been around since the ninties and still is years ahead of the rest. People with an overview over the technologies generally agree on that. I had a story submission (rejected) on that the other week. Check out the linked webcast, it's a very interessting analysis of a set of technologies and solutions:

|||||
Nasa/JPL Web Framework Shootout

In an educative and entertaining webcast, Sean Kelly, a Nasa/JPL software engineer, goes into the details of a project based comparsion between a set of web application frameworks and servers. Including the much hyped Ruby on Rails and Django. Various Java technologies, Ruby on Rails, Django, TurboGears and Zope are covered. Details and traits of each are mentioned. For people involved with web developement there are not to many suprises though, yet the presentation and Kellys commenting are fun to watch.
In a nutshell: EJB, Hibernate and various other Java flavours fail spectacularly, Zope scores a clear victory with Django, RoR and TurboGears relatively close behind. Development speed, error-gotchas, the need for hand-tweaking and the requirement of handwritten SQL and available documentation go into the measuring. As does an overall tongue-in-check "fun-factor". The details are interessting though. TurboGears 'error-driven' developement gets a positive review, RoRs automated controller generation aswell and Zope gets a complete rundown on it's astounding set of features. In the end long-time Java developer Kelly convinces us that - no matter what we do - we really, positively, don't want to use EJB or Hibernate for this kind of stuff. Very entertaining and informative indeed.
|||||

You know a thing is superhyped when v1.1 is mentioned on slashdot.
Mind you RoR is cool compared to j2EE. Then again, it's allmost as if C is cool when compared to J2EE. J2EE sucks big time for server side web - even the Java Gurus agree on that. End of discussion, no news here.
But RoR isn't the end all of ssi frameworks. Django is at least as good (I'd say better and cleaner than RoR) and Zope has been around since the ninties and still is years ahead of the rest. People with an overview over the technologies generally agree on that. I had a story submission (rejected) on that the other week. Check out the linked webcast, it's a very interessting analysis of a set of technologies and solutions:

|||||
Nasa/JPL Web Framework Shootout

In an educative and entertaining webcast, Sean Kelly, a Nasa/JPL software engineer, goes into the details of a project based comparsion between a set of web application frameworks and servers. Including the much hyped Ruby on Rails and Django. Various Java technologies, Ruby on Rails, Django, TurboGears and Zope are covered. Details and traits of each are mentioned. For people involved with web developement there are not to many suprises though, yet the presentation and Kellys commenting are fun to watch.
In a nutshell: EJB, Hibernate and various other Java flavours fail spectacularly, Zope scores a clear victory with Django, RoR and TurboGears relatively close behind. Development speed, error-gotchas, the need for hand-tweaking and the requirement of handwritten SQL and available documentation go into the measuring. As does an overall tongue-in-check "fun-factor". The details are interessting though. TurboGears 'error-driven' developement gets a positive review, RoRs automated controller generation aswell and Zope gets a complete rundown on it's astounding set of features. In the end long-time Java developer Kelly convinces us that - no matter what we do - we really, positively, don't want to use EJB or Hibernate for this kind of stuff. Very entertaining and informative indeed.
|||||

Errr... okkkk... you must be a debian user (which uses exim) - as an example the following use sendmail as their default MTA:

Solaris
HP-UX
RedHat
Suse
Slackware

I also noticed the same thing as posted here before in some screenshots that I have previously seen. That looked like a good machine to me and it notched up only a measly 3.0. As far as the 3D flipper thing goes, its nothing new or innovative by MS. As far as I know, Sun has that functionality in their looking glass project and has had that for about 2 years now. It does not look great or serve any purpose, maybe that's why its experimental. And Looking glass has all that other stuff too. Movies playing in the task bar and more. Here are some links: Homepage: http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/ Real player demo: http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/demo.xml Screenshots: http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/details. xml As far as I can see, MS once again stole something and passed it off as their own.

I also noticed the same thing as posted here before in some screenshots that I have previously seen. That looked like a good machine to me and it notched up only a measly 3.0. As far as the 3D flipper thing goes, its nothing new or innovative by MS. As far as I know, Sun has that functionality in their looking glass project and has had that for about 2 years now. It does not look great or serve any purpose, maybe that's why its experimental. And Looking glass has all that other stuff too. Movies playing in the task bar and more. Here are some links: Homepage: http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/ Real player demo: http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/demo.xml Screenshots: http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/details. xml As far as I can see, MS once again stole something and passed it off as their own.

I also noticed the same thing as posted here before in some screenshots that I have previously seen. That looked like a good machine to me and it notched up only a measly 3.0. As far as the 3D flipper thing goes, its nothing new or innovative by MS. As far as I know, Sun has that functionality in their looking glass project and has had that for about 2 years now. It does not look great or serve any purpose, maybe that's why its experimental. And Looking glass has all that other stuff too. Movies playing in the task bar and more. Here are some links: Homepage: http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/ Real player demo: http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/demo.xml Screenshots: http://www.sun.com/software/looking_glass/details. xml As far as I can see, MS once again stole something and passed it off as their own.

But what I'm saying is that the basic design of this is more secure than not only previously version of IE, but all browsers for all operating systems

How is this more secure than a java browser running in the java sandbox?

The HotJava browser came 12 years ago.

According to the Sun security advisory related to this (thanks SANS Internet Storm Center), Solaris 8 isn't vulnerable, although it comes with Sendmail 8.11.x or 8.12.x (depending on your patch frequency)--versions in the vulnerable range.

I've been a Solaris admin for a long time and I find this to be a rather bizarre inconsistency. Why would Sun claim non-vulnerability when mere cursory examination of installed release shows vulnerability?

Any /.ers with more insight into Sun's reasoning out here? If so, can you share it?

mplayer is available for download at Blastwave and you could try asking for mencode.
Check SunFreeware for precompiled packages as well.

If you want to build things yourself, Solaris 10 and the Sun compilers are free for download and use. gcc is also included with the OS but is slower.

You can find OS source code at OpenSolaris.

mplayer is available for download at Blastwave and you could try asking for mencode.
Check SunFreeware for precompiled packages as well.

If you want to build things yourself, Solaris 10 and the Sun compilers are free for download and use. gcc is also included with the OS but is slower.

You can find OS source code at OpenSolaris.

mplayer is available for download at Blastwave and you could try asking for mencode.
Check SunFreeware for precompiled packages as well.

If you want to build things yourself, Solaris 10 and the Sun compilers are free for download and use. gcc is also included with the OS but is slower.

You can find OS source code at OpenSolaris.

They do dabble in software, too.

They got the domain name network.com with the acquisition of StorageTek. more details on Jonathan's blog on http://java.sun.com/developers/blogs

www.network.com cost Sun $3bn, but they got a company called StorageTek thrown into the deal for free ;-) See Jon Schwartz' blog for details...

You can run unmodified Linux binaries on Solaris 10 thanks to Janus.

You can run Linux applications unchanged on Solaris 10 thanks to Janus.

how about this?. You can even "add to cart" amusingly enough.

It is a bunch of v20z and x2100 style hardware running the Sun Grid Engine which is an open source grid engine that Sun wrote.
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/v20z/specs.jsp
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x2100/specificati ons.jsp
http://www.sun.com/software/gridware/
http://gridengine.sunsource.net/

All your code needs to do is run on Solaris 10 on x86 hardware. It can either be 32 bit or 64 bit.

This isn't a "platform" like a beowulf cluster, it's just a bunch of loosely coupled machines that have a job scheduler in front of them to dispatch jobs. Any of the jobs you submit will only run on a single machine at a time, and it may take 1 or all of the processors available in that machine.

Sun isn't doing anything magical here, by the end of the summer I plan to have a grid with Solaris SPARCv9, RHEL 4 x64, Windows 2004 x64, and MacOS PPC64 clients, and it will have a web based front end gui scheduler (just like Sun's), and it will be easy to use (just like Sun's), and it will be able to do accounting back to users at the 1 hour interval (just like Sun's) because I will be using _Sun's_ grid engine software to do it.

I would also point out that you can use the Sun N1 Grid Engine software for free, and that you only need to pay Sun money when you want support.

It is a bunch of v20z and x2100 style hardware running the Sun Grid Engine which is an open source grid engine that Sun wrote.
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/v20z/specs.jsp
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x2100/specificati ons.jsp
http://www.sun.com/software/gridware/
http://gridengine.sunsource.net/

All your code needs to do is run on Solaris 10 on x86 hardware. It can either be 32 bit or 64 bit.

This isn't a "platform" like a beowulf cluster, it's just a bunch of loosely coupled machines that have a job scheduler in front of them to dispatch jobs. Any of the jobs you submit will only run on a single machine at a time, and it may take 1 or all of the processors available in that machine.

Sun isn't doing anything magical here, by the end of the summer I plan to have a grid with Solaris SPARCv9, RHEL 4 x64, Windows 2004 x64, and MacOS PPC64 clients, and it will have a web based front end gui scheduler (just like Sun's), and it will be easy to use (just like Sun's), and it will be able to do accounting back to users at the 1 hour interval (just like Sun's) because I will be using _Sun's_ grid engine software to do it.

I would also point out that you can use the Sun N1 Grid Engine software for free, and that you only need to pay Sun money when you want support.

It is a bunch of v20z and x2100 style hardware running the Sun Grid Engine which is an open source grid engine that Sun wrote.
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/v20z/specs.jsp
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x2100/specificati ons.jsp
http://www.sun.com/software/gridware/
http://gridengine.sunsource.net/

All your code needs to do is run on Solaris 10 on x86 hardware. It can either be 32 bit or 64 bit.

This isn't a "platform" like a beowulf cluster, it's just a bunch of loosely coupled machines that have a job scheduler in front of them to dispatch jobs. Any of the jobs you submit will only run on a single machine at a time, and it may take 1 or all of the processors available in that machine.

Sun isn't doing anything magical here, by the end of the summer I plan to have a grid with Solaris SPARCv9, RHEL 4 x64, Windows 2004 x64, and MacOS PPC64 clients, and it will have a web based front end gui scheduler (just like Sun's), and it will be easy to use (just like Sun's), and it will be able to do accounting back to users at the 1 hour interval (just like Sun's) because I will be using _Sun's_ grid engine software to do it.

I would also point out that you can use the Sun N1 Grid Engine software for free, and that you only need to pay Sun money when you want support.

From the FAQ:

 
18. Q:
What are the basic minimum technical requirements to run an application on the Sun Grid Compute Utility?
A:
The following requirements must be met:
Application must run on Solaris 10 (x64).
User must own the application or have proper legal licenses to run applications on the Sun Grid Compute Utility.
Applications must be scripted to work with N1 Grid Engine software.
Application must be self-contained, with no dependencies on external libraries or data sets
Application and data sets total size must be under 10GB.
The user must upload application and data to the Sun Grid over the Internet via portal the Internet Portal at http://www.network.com/

From their FAQ:

Q: What parallel environments (pvm, mpi, etc.) are available for use on the Sun Grid Utility Services?

A: MPICH v1.2.6, an open implementation of the "Message Passing Interface" is the only parallel environment currently supported on the Sun Grid. MPICH is configured to leverage IP-based networking in our configuration, and is available on Sun Grid as an included resource for you to use without additional charge.

If you're familiar with MPI, this should keep you pretty portable. They recommend you test with Solaris 10/x86_64 and gcc3 or Studio 10.

Any code that can be compiled and tested on Solaris 10 can be run on the grid. However, to get the benefit of parallel execution (meaning running parts of a job on multiple processors at the same time), which is really the main benefit of running on a grid like this, you must either write multi-threaded code, or you must use the MPI library, which is pretty much the standard these days for scientific and parallel computing.

Why is this false accusation modded up?

Read the FAQ.
  - The $1/CPU-hour is the only charge.
  - 10GB of disk storage is available per account.
  - 4GB of RAM is installed per AMD64 CPU.
  - No print services are for sale.

Also,
  - No upload/download fees.
  - MPI is used for distributed jobs. Compile with gcc or the now free Sun compilers.
  - Grants to schools are available.
  - Developers can get 100 free hours.

In the FAQ
http://www.sun.com/service/sungrid/faq.xml#q24

They mention that (for a limited time) you get a max of 10GB of storage (for 180 days!) and that each box has 4GB per CPU.

So... maybe in the future, you'll pay extra for disk storage, but RAM will always be 4GB per CPU

OK, answered my own question after random clicking. According to this your app needs to be able to run on solaris 10. Then just upload it and it runs.

Do you (the customer) supply the software to run on these distributed boxen?

Yes. See the Sun FAQ.

Cause if that's the case, I can see a business model that involves lophtcrack or John the Ripper.

Considering that Sun has your Credit Card number and your contact information, I highly doubt you'll be getting away with much DDOSing or Spamming. Even if you use a stolen card #, Sun would be likely to kick you off the servers after they notice excessive network and/or mail server usage.

From their FAQ:

Q:
What are the components of the Sun Grid Compute Utility?
A:
The Sun Grid Compute Utility service consists of the following parts:

        * Sun Fire dual processor Opteron-based servers with 4GB/RAM per CPU
        * Solaris 10 (x64)
        * Solaris 10 OS;
        * Sun N1 Grid Engine 6 software;
        * Grid Network Infrastructure of 1Gb switched Data Network and 100 Mb dedicated management network;
        * Web-based access portal; and
        * Internet-only access to upload data and applications (no physical access to location);
        * Storage allocation of up to 10 GB per user account.

http://www.sun.com/service/sungrid/faq.xml

However the article fails to mention exactly how powerful these Sun CPUs are. How much bang do you get for your buck?

Sun claims that they are "dual-core Sun Fire, Opertron servers". That means that they are likely to be something like the V20z which range from 2.0 GHz to 2.2 GHz. It would be nice if they were a bit more specific (e.g. how do you know they'll upgrade the grid in the future?), but their FAQ makes it sound like they're relying on Solaris CPU stats to charge you. OS stats like that are usually based on time slices rather than actual computational power, thus making a "standardized" CPU/hour difficult to create.

Microsoft tells people that ASP.NET will solve all their problems and work with any browser. I feel that the people I worked with knew how to code HTML for different browsers. That was not the issue. The issue was having Javascript work the same way with several different browsers without having to write several different versions of it.

Java has improved much since 1998 when you quit using it. Around 2001 it had improved and became a lot better. In fact Java 2.0 was released to address those issues you talked about way before 2001. In fact, J2EE was released in 2001 with a lot of improvements.

Everyone is entitled to their opinions, yet others can freely say their opinions without recourse, but if I say mine I get attacked. Trust me, I've had more than my own share of knives I had to pull out of my back from 1998 to 2000 even when I did agree with using Microsoft technologies and I backed up everything management decided with. All because I had gotten pay raises for doing a better job than most of my coworkers. I even offered to help coworkers who struggled and I did actually help a few of them. I even lead a team to develop integrated Intranet programs. I've been stabbed in the back countless times, and it is one of my reasons for trying to form my own business. What they did to me makes my posts here look like nothing.