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No, the future is not in massive online games, it's in those crumby little puzzle games they put on cell phones.

See, the way I figure it is that human culture has come up with all sorts of games throughout it's many cultures and periods. The requirement for obscenely complex and expensive computer hardware is only a recent footnote in history. Ultimately people just want to play games and not subscribe to a Game Playing Lifestyle like Sony's marketers would like to sell us. When the technology becomes transparent and convenient enough like a deck of cards you can keep in your pocket is when you start to really make progress. Geeks like to think because they have obscenely complex GPUs and RPGS that they are authorities on gaming. That just simply is not a reason why or the reality.

Actually, I've always found it amusing that Sun has this in its binary code license for Solaris (and I've seen it in other places):

You acknowledge that Software is not designed, licensed or intended for use in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility.

(Solaris Binary Code License Agreement)

I have never been able to get hold of a copy, but it is based on SUSE which I like so it can't be all bad. I only picked Java desktop as the fact that Walmart has started selling it has not been covered in Slashdot nor has any screenshots of Looking_Glassso I wanted to add that info.

Note I did it again ;)

If a company stepped forward to support OO and guarantee compatibility, we will pay them the licensing fees.

Sun offers a version of OpenOffice called Star Office. They offer support.

OO/Star Office documents are definately compatable with MS Word, but I'm not sure that anyone can guarentee 100% compatability with MS Word, because Microsoft keeps the Office formats a secret.

Maybe this will catch on if and when stuff like 3D desktops and Project Looking Glass become more mature.

One of the inspirations for this kind of thing is the Self language. In a nutshell, instead of defining classes, you make up an example object instance by adding fields and methods to it, then you keep it around and clone it to make more. You can do "subclassing" by altering a prototype object then keeping it and cloning that one.

When I read up on Self, I thought it was kind of cool. However, IMO it suffers from the same issue as languages like Scheme: it's so stripped down, malleable and flexible that it ends up being too "slippery", and normal programmers can't really get a grip on it.

IIRC, the JavaScript language also essentially uses a prototype-based object system, so more people may be familiar with the concept than they realize.

Bottom line, someone wanted Python with prototypes. I'm not sure that prototyping -- creating objects from other existing objects by copying, essentially making inheritance a "first class" consideration -- is an analogy that's going to truly redefine the way I look at programming. Or let me put it this way, I'm not at all sure that the benefits of prototyping are going to make me want to restructure -- yet again -- everything I know about programming so far. I mean, after a certain point, programming is a job and I have to produce, not just theorize all the time about new approaches.

Also, judging from Sun's tutorial on Self, it doesn't seem ready for primetime, so I'd be a little edgy about "Prothon".

Prothon. God.

I dunno. This may seem curmudgeonly, but it is, after all, yet ANOTHER language ... Sigh.

Indeed. Here's the link: Sun OpenOffice.org Software Support.

Counter to what the competitive points claim, Sun provides fee based support for the top-tier platforms (Linux-x86, Solaris, Win32) for OpenOffice.org, not just for StarOffice. It's right in the "Commercial Support and Training" portion of the OOo support homepage next to the Sun logo. There are also some other firms and independent consultants listed. Gee, not only can you get paid support from Sun, but price around your support needs as well! You'd think that if MS is trying to sell Office with support as a major bullet point they could at least have given the webpage a look!

While I can't speak for other places, on trinity where I host and answer OOo OS X support forums there's usually a Mac OOo expert answering questions within one day of asking. There are non-programmers who volunteer their time to help new people with installation, deployment, how-tos, etc. It seems unfair to belittle one-on-one expert help just because it's done for free :)

ed

So what you're saying is that, because Microsoft is flexing the muscle it has, as a monopoly, to push .NET as a standard on Windows, you'll just roll over and accept it because you're unable to surf to The Java Website and download J2SE?

Tell me, have you ever loaded up Visual Studio.NET on a Windows 2000 box? It takes longer to do the Component Update and install the IDE than it does to download NetBeans or Eclipse and a J2SE implementation.

Of course, if you really knew what you were doing, I guess you wouldn't have reacted so personally to my comment, eh? :-)

Also Sun's "Java Desktop System" is built on top of SuSE. Sun is still using RedHat for Linux servers.

The real reason Sun isnt open sourcing java is because C# isnt open source and yet its still gaining ground.

You know why that is? The IDE - Visual Studio.NET. All the useless VB6 developers lap it up like kittens. What has Sun got? NetBeans?

And Sun knows it too. Java Studio Creator is their next gambit, not opening the java source under the GPL.

Sun has already written java on java

Visit Swing Sightings for Swing desktop apps.

Proof in the pudding that Sun is company that only changes when its dragged along kicking and screaming, instead of being at the forefront of new ideas (e.g. IBM). This will eventually be the companies downfall. Did you know Sun don't have a free JRE for Pocket PC? Did you also know that they have a finished version for the OS "Captain America" and won't release it? (Allowing Microsoft to get another foothold in another OS/dev market). Open source would have helped this, and there's been petitions for this JRE to be released but they still refuse. See this for more details Open letter to Sun for a Pocket PC JRE

If by product you mean your OS that you built no. If you mean a java application yes.

Sun grants you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited license without fees to reproduce and distribute the Software, provided that (i) you distribute the Software complete and unmodified (unless otherwise specified in the applicable README file) and only bundled as part of, and for the sole purpose of running, your Programs, (ii) the Programs add significant and primary functionality to the Software, (iii) you do not distribute additional software intended to replace any component(s) of the Software (unless otherwise specified in the applicable README file),

In addition you can omit some files that are marked optional to decrease the size of the jre part of your distribution. You can also include certain parts of the JSDK including the server VM and the java compiler (javac) The latter is good if you'd like to distribute your application in open source form and provide a tool for users to compile it if they've made changes.

You can see the full JRE license here

There is a new compression feature in 1.5 that will be able to compress the JRE into a really small file. Though the 1.5 JRE looks like it's going to be a lot bigger than 1.4.2. I don't do much client side development so I've never had to worry about it.

Linux on the desktop is still nowhere, so you can't seriously be suggesting that is important to Sun.

Sun cares enough about Linux on the desktop to push the Java Desktop System. (Of course, some people think that this is a push to make Java a new de facto application programming language....)

that most of the complaints about a non oss version of java come from linux users complaining that its liscense is what is hindering the growth of java. Of course this makes sense that linux users would want something open sourced.
But..MY GOD THIS IS RIDICULOUS.
To suggest that Java not being open source is its biggest hinderence to widespread acceptance is just plain stupid.
#1. Java being open source or not has no affect on its license. you could change the distribution license and solve the problem. #2. The thought that being automatically distributed on linux would promote widespread use is just plain dumb. I mean come on. First of all linux is nowhere near the #1 operating system on the desktop, and it really isn't even the #1 platform on the enterprise. But even if it was I can't imagine that having to go to java.sun.com to get a copy of java as part of your installation is not that big of a deal. I mean there are much more difficult problems when installing linux, Like getting the thing to work with my DAMN VIDEO CARD. If I need java I will download it just like if I need eclipse or struts. Seriously! This is just silly.

Maybe I'm way out of the loop, but is Java part of *any* standard distributions?

Why, yes, Sun's Java Desktop, of course!

Hmm, I didn't get very far into this thread before I just *couldn't* stand to see one more person say "it's the distro's fault!".

Here, click on the first download link. Read (the fucking) license. I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure why most distros CAN'T distribute it.

If there are any non-DRM BIOSes out there it's just because they haven't been updated yet. Don't buy them now, or you'll have no choice but to buy them for your next computer. AMI is gone, Phoenix is gone and Award no longer exists except as a sub-brand of Phoenix. Yes, this is a scary phenomenon. Vote with dollars. Apple's OpenFirmware doesn't contain any DRM (who knows for how long), Sun also uses OpenFirmware I believe?

If you absolutely insist on sticking to PC/Windows, consider supporting the OpenBIOS project, but it's not available as a hardware BIOS, nor in any motherboards that I know of, it's an after-the-purchase flash update (plus god only knows if it works properly). And since you're trying to flash away the DRM in the BIOS, you never know, it may not be allowed in the future. After all, we have to keep "viruses" from flashing our BIOSes now don't we? So lets make sure those flashes are cryptographically signed by Award/Phoenix/AMI...

Sounds familiar.

wbs.

I find it very odd that the demo for this product, which the FAQ claims will run on Linux or Solaris, is only available in Real Media or QuickTime formats --- and Real Media and QuickTime players are only available for MS-Windows or Mac OS.

I used a vector based graphics storage tube at the Michigan Dept. of Highways back in the '60s. It was used like a pen plotter, but had a light pen for interacting with it. Light pens and track pads were common for years before the mouse was invented.

"Microsoft was kind of pushing Passport for a problem that didn't exist..."

The problem of single sign on (SSO) does exist, particularly in the corporate world. Vendors implimenting Web Portals (MS SharePoint, Sun Java System Portal Server, BEA WebLogic Portal, Vignette Portal, etc...) have a particular interest in SSO and identity management via Identity Services to present a single interface to various systems in an enterprise.

My main problem with MS Passport is that it's Microsoft's version of a standard rather than a community standard. Applications can connect via MS's SDK rather than publishing the standard. Using Open LDAP, Sun's Identity Server, etc... will generally follow open standards and have better compatibiltiy to other open source/standard applications.

"Microsoft was kind of pushing Passport for a problem that didn't exist..."

The problem of single sign on (SSO) does exist, particularly in the corporate world. Vendors implimenting Web Portals (MS SharePoint, Sun Java System Portal Server, BEA WebLogic Portal, Vignette Portal, etc...) have a particular interest in SSO and identity management via Identity Services to present a single interface to various systems in an enterprise.

My main problem with MS Passport is that it's Microsoft's version of a standard rather than a community standard. Applications can connect via MS's SDK rather than publishing the standard. Using Open LDAP, Sun's Identity Server, etc... will generally follow open standards and have better compatibiltiy to other open source/standard applications.

http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/xtreme/

I think it's a standard US design.

US Keyboard layout

UK Keyboard Layout

I think it's a standard US design.

US Keyboard layout

UK Keyboard Layout

Actually it has been going on both ways - people moving from the industry to the academia and from the academia to the industry.

Just as an example, think of Jerry Yang and David Filo, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Leonard Bosack and Sandra Lerner, Scott McNealy and Bill Joy - just to mention a few - all these people could have remained in the academia but chose to go to the industry instead.

I'm not sure if this will produce the kind of innovative stuff that came out of Bell labs, but at least fundamental research is alive!


That is the problem - the kind of monolithic no-holds-barred and no-questions-asked environment that Bell Labs provided is gone - that is what the article sought to mention towards the end. Sure, you can do something at the Universities, but not at the scale that it happened at Bell Labs.

So, it really brings us back to the question - Is fundamental research really happening, or is all research now being funded solely based on what Wall Street wants?.

It looks more and more like the days of research for the sake of in and itself are slowly coming to an end.

As do Solaris and HP-UX.

Yes, it would be good if large companies like:
IBM, Hewlett Packard, Sun, etc would become interested in open source wouldnt it?

I can't be the only one who has noticed that major product version numbers are a) inflated, and b) the same (+- 1) as the competetors. For example, this is Suse 9.1, Mandrake has some 9.x stuff and even a 10.0, RedHat had a version 9. RedHat even stripped the .X like Solaris, which is at version 9 and a 10 is coming. Slackware is hovering around 9.1 as well. Of course more pure distros like Debian does not participate. Nor do the current owners of all things UNIX. Hell, even Apple's OS is in the 9/10 range.

This happened when there was competition with word processors (Word vs. WordPerfect), also this happened when there was competition with Web Browsers (Netscape vs IE). etc. Microsoft has surpassed the whole version number thing by appending 2 random letters at the end of their products, so I guess that is next for everyone else to do.

Just an observation.

i will have to bite. and to make a case for Java / desktop.

to get that out of the way: yes, java memory use is ridiculous, and Sun needs to do something about it. 16M overhead for _any_ app is not going to cut it. memory use is on top of the list for requests for enhancement, so i expect significant movement there soon.

I'll say _you_, then, haven't spent days debugging a Java memory leak.

i have. yes, the garbage collector does not free you of all worries. and especially with the listener model you will run into gc issues quick. unless you use WeakReference and simply _never_ have that problem (WeakReferences are references that do not prevent garbage collection - it's a way to make Java behave like C, exept that you don't have to dealloc - the garbage collector takes care of that for you)
using WeakReference where appropriate, you can have the cake and eat it, too.
Sun should really emphasize this more in the docs. But i wonder what the alternative is? No garbage collector? Surely, that's worse.

4. It also has horrible startup time - i think that has to do with RAM usage. it takes a while to fill 25M... so if the RAM problem goes away, this one will go away, too.

5 Swing is slow... Not true. Swing (caveat: on windows!) is hardware accelerated. E.g. it takes advantage of the graphics card, just like native apps do. That it hand-paints everything is java mythology. It was true a long time ago. [caveat: i think it might still be true on non-windows platforms]

6. It also requires quite a bit of clue to use well....
Point taken.
Swing is a relatively weak framework, some call it over-engineered, i just think it was done by people with little experience in designing GUI frameworks. On the upside, it does have a lot of things built-in.

Bottom line is, Swing is a memory hog, and the architecture (or at least the tutorials) could be better, but it is fast, and it works very well.

Both memory usage and startup time are not inherent to Java/Swing, and i am convinced that both can be improved and will be improved in the near future (1.5).

Not to mention it's cross-platform :)
The latter means that all apps i write for my company will also run on Linux. Even though that is not a requirement for any of them (and i certainly would not get any resources allocated to do a port).

i will have to bite. and to make a case for Java / desktop.

to get that out of the way: yes, java memory use is ridiculous, and Sun needs to do something about it. 16M overhead for _any_ app is not going to cut it. memory use is on top of the list for requests for enhancement, so i expect significant movement there soon.

I'll say _you_, then, haven't spent days debugging a Java memory leak.

i have. yes, the garbage collector does not free you of all worries. and especially with the listener model you will run into gc issues quick. unless you use WeakReference and simply _never_ have that problem (WeakReferences are references that do not prevent garbage collection - it's a way to make Java behave like C, exept that you don't have to dealloc - the garbage collector takes care of that for you)
using WeakReference where appropriate, you can have the cake and eat it, too.
Sun should really emphasize this more in the docs. But i wonder what the alternative is? No garbage collector? Surely, that's worse.

4. It also has horrible startup time - i think that has to do with RAM usage. it takes a while to fill 25M... so if the RAM problem goes away, this one will go away, too.

5 Swing is slow... Not true. Swing (caveat: on windows!) is hardware accelerated. E.g. it takes advantage of the graphics card, just like native apps do. That it hand-paints everything is java mythology. It was true a long time ago. [caveat: i think it might still be true on non-windows platforms]

6. It also requires quite a bit of clue to use well....
Point taken.
Swing is a relatively weak framework, some call it over-engineered, i just think it was done by people with little experience in designing GUI frameworks. On the upside, it does have a lot of things built-in.

Bottom line is, Swing is a memory hog, and the architecture (or at least the tutorials) could be better, but it is fast, and it works very well.

Both memory usage and startup time are not inherent to Java/Swing, and i am convinced that both can be improved and will be improved in the near future (1.5).

Not to mention it's cross-platform :)
The latter means that all apps i write for my company will also run on Linux. Even though that is not a requirement for any of them (and i certainly would not get any resources allocated to do a port).

Someone posted a much longer list a few months ago, but off the top of my head:
AOL Instant Messenger
Yahoo Messenger
VMware Workstation
various Solaris tools

>>I mean, we all like java, but have you ever seen a normal user application (with a GUI) written in java that is even a bit fast?

yes, i have even written several myself...

how fast? hmm.... fast enough to not annoy me. and i regularly shoot down programs that stall for even a few seconds.
let's put it this way: they are faster than windows Explorer.exe, which i have to kill about once every day. Explorer may not be a brilliant piece of work, but it's certainly as native as they come...

i can bet you a dollar that you can't distinguish them from native c apps, except for startup time and memory use (which are related of course: it takes some time to fill up 25M of memory). but Sun is working on it - memory use is one of the top 25 RFEs.

in terms of speed, Java has come a long way. the slow apps you see today are
1) applets - those are abysmal, and i have Java turned off in all browsers. there is something seriously wrong with them.
2) badly programmed. it is very easy to create functioning apps with Java, so people who have absolutely no clue what they are doing are producing apps. in C++, those would not even run. but in Java, they run, and are slow, and look bad. simple example is the garbage collector: you can leak and leak memory and the java app will just get slower, whereas c++ would crash and burn.

there are several studies that convincingly show that Java with a hotspot compiler is just as efficient as c++ - give and take, but it's faster in some cases, slower in others.

Java has also come a very long way and i would call the GUI performant only since 1.4.x and later. it used to be awfully slow, and ppl still have this perception.

i just wish Sun would give in and make Java open source, fair and square. the potential is enormous.

I thought about coming up with a syllabus for myself of C, Haskell, LISP and Perl (which just evades me....)

I'd like to strongly recommend some books. The first is Modern C++ Design by Andrei Alexandrescu. The second is On Lisp by Paul Graham. In conjunction with that, you will need an introductory text on Lisp if you don't already know it and a good book on C++ templates. While I don't know what the best Lisp text currently in print is, I'd be willing to give Graham's ANSI Common Lisp a try on the strength of his other book. And C++ Templates: A Complete Guide by Vandevoorde and Josuttis illuminates a lot of dark corners in templates and explains some new features.

In the end, the goal is to understand how many times Graham and Alexandrescu are talking about the same things using very different languages. C++ templates are in many important ways a compile-time, functional macro language on top of C++ that implement many of the features of Lisp macros. For what it's worth, Bruce Eckel has mentioned this generic programming link in the context of discussing Java generics.

Environmental Variables. Java used to have them. But because of the Mac (oS 9 and before, mind younot OSX) it was removed from the language. Instead, we have -D parameters on the command line. Oh Joy. So to run a program with a different config directory than expected I get:

Actually, as of JDK 1.5, System.getenv() is undeprecated (is that even a word? :). I'm sure that was a first in the java libraries though :)

Of course especially in an office environment you could always replace your noisy computers with thin clients like SunRays. It's amazing what a difference a quiet office makes.

I can only think of one company that makes Unix workstations that isn't pushing a Linux workstation.

So, if you want to know why "more" aren't, maybe you should ask them.

Hmm ... I don't think it will encourage bad code any more than Java's exceptions and try/catch statements. It's a good thing because encourages you as a script writer to consider the possibility of your statements failing.

I think part of our disagreement is over the meaning of "piggy-back". To me, the term implies exploiting the existence of a product to build on it, saving yourself some effort - like, say the languages which are compiled by source-to-source translation into C followed by C compilation. Thus Jython piggy-backs on the JVM. But the JVM wouldn't exist without Java.

You point out that VB.NET and VC++.NET have been modified to fit the .NET model. Why don't you say the same about C#.NET, and thus establish your case that they piggy-back on it to the same extent? I submit that it's because you can't, because C#.NET and the .NET framework were developed together to work together, and thus effectively the other .NET languages are piggy-backing on C#'s platform.

As the advert says, find out at Sun.com/mars

Uhhh... not so fast there. Take a look at the implementations of Java on mobile devices. See anything missing? Hint: they only added floating point support in v1.1. Every vendor has a different implementation of the standard, and different interfaces/extensions for their own hardware.

I suppose every time you use windows, icons, your mouse, or pointers, it just pisses you off that a bunch of Smalltalkers at Parc years ago foisted that on us! And damn that MVC concept too. And the whole messaging thing, and first class objects, and, well all that other OO stuff, bunch of stuff Smalltalkers foisted on us. I guess they foisted garbage collection onto Java too, huh?

Okay, now off-topic but all Smalltalk did was put these things together into one package:

Mouse/Pointer: Doug Englebart
Menus, drag and drop, word processor, etc: Ivan Sitherland.
OO: Simula
Garbage Collection: LISP (and others)

All these things came well before Smalltalk. Smalltalk isn't even the same OO as the successful object-oriented languages: Java, C#, C++, SIMULA. SWT is good because it came from good people at IBM and uses native widgets, not because it came from Smalltalk. For example, it has manual allocation/free of resources -- not very smalltalk-like, is it?

Surprise, Microsoft releases .Net for Unix, and the entire effort is null and void. Your pride and joy is now a footnote, and a deprecated one at that.

I'm a big fan of both Sun and Java, but it dismays me that they continue to push web services and try to make better tools and APIs for web services without making their sites accessible to web services. Why oh, why, can't they at least provide a nice web service for Bug Parade.

In all the Microsoft bashing, we might want to realize that this could be a bad thing. Especially if it's more broadly applied. It could be applied against ANY "for review" software provided for free. For example, any of us who attends trade shows will get review software. If this is applied here, we could be forbidden from taking this software. Or downloading "for review" software from "Oracle Technical Network", Sun, Java (remember it's offered on CD by subscription for $), or even Open Source Software that's offered Commercially like RedHat Linux. For us developers, it could make it very hard for us to evaluate new software. At least without having to spend large amounts of money (often our own) to purchase the software.

In all the Microsoft bashing, we might want to realize that this could be a bad thing. Especially if it's more broadly applied. It could be applied against ANY "for review" software provided for free. For example, any of us who attends trade shows will get review software. If this is applied here, we could be forbidden from taking this software. Or downloading "for review" software from "Oracle Technical Network", Sun, Java (remember it's offered on CD by subscription for $), or even Open Source Software that's offered Commercially like RedHat Linux. For us developers, it could make it very hard for us to evaluate new software. At least without having to spend large amounts of money (often our own) to purchase the software.