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Has it ever.
Sun SGI Compaq

You mean like this?

Or did you mean pared down VMs like this or maybe this? How about scaling up to this?

I ask you this about C and C++ (which are distinct languages and should not be associated closely with one another like "C/C++"): where are the cross-platform, universal database APIs? If you answer ODBC, you obviously haven't ever programmed to ODBC for more than one database. How about those universal threading libraries? GUI? XML APIs? Math libraries? RPC? Authentication and authorization? I18n? L10n? How about the fact that there's more to Unicode than a type like wchar_t? Accessibility? Audio? Cryptography? Image handling and manipulation? Printing?

C and C++ is a Swiss Army Knife? Only if you like the Swiss Army Knife model with two blades and a flathead screwdriver.

Is Java the end-all be-all language? Of course not. Nothing is. Does it have limitations? Sure. Everything does. Just don't presume to suggest that C and C++ are some overlooked white knights. Hell, even the creator of C++ thinks there should be a garbage collector in C++.

You mean like this?

Or did you mean pared down VMs like this or maybe this? How about scaling up to this?

I ask you this about C and C++ (which are distinct languages and should not be associated closely with one another like "C/C++"): where are the cross-platform, universal database APIs? If you answer ODBC, you obviously haven't ever programmed to ODBC for more than one database. How about those universal threading libraries? GUI? XML APIs? Math libraries? RPC? Authentication and authorization? I18n? L10n? How about the fact that there's more to Unicode than a type like wchar_t? Accessibility? Audio? Cryptography? Image handling and manipulation? Printing?

C and C++ is a Swiss Army Knife? Only if you like the Swiss Army Knife model with two blades and a flathead screwdriver.

Is Java the end-all be-all language? Of course not. Nothing is. Does it have limitations? Sure. Everything does. Just don't presume to suggest that C and C++ are some overlooked white knights. Hell, even the creator of C++ thinks there should be a garbage collector in C++.

You mean like this?

Or did you mean pared down VMs like this or maybe this? How about scaling up to this?

I ask you this about C and C++ (which are distinct languages and should not be associated closely with one another like "C/C++"): where are the cross-platform, universal database APIs? If you answer ODBC, you obviously haven't ever programmed to ODBC for more than one database. How about those universal threading libraries? GUI? XML APIs? Math libraries? RPC? Authentication and authorization? I18n? L10n? How about the fact that there's more to Unicode than a type like wchar_t? Accessibility? Audio? Cryptography? Image handling and manipulation? Printing?

C and C++ is a Swiss Army Knife? Only if you like the Swiss Army Knife model with two blades and a flathead screwdriver.

Is Java the end-all be-all language? Of course not. Nothing is. Does it have limitations? Sure. Everything does. Just don't presume to suggest that C and C++ are some overlooked white knights. Hell, even the creator of C++ thinks there should be a garbage collector in C++.

You mean like this?

Or did you mean pared down VMs like this or maybe this? How about scaling up to this?

I ask you this about C and C++ (which are distinct languages and should not be associated closely with one another like "C/C++"): where are the cross-platform, universal database APIs? If you answer ODBC, you obviously haven't ever programmed to ODBC for more than one database. How about those universal threading libraries? GUI? XML APIs? Math libraries? RPC? Authentication and authorization? I18n? L10n? How about the fact that there's more to Unicode than a type like wchar_t? Accessibility? Audio? Cryptography? Image handling and manipulation? Printing?

C and C++ is a Swiss Army Knife? Only if you like the Swiss Army Knife model with two blades and a flathead screwdriver.

Is Java the end-all be-all language? Of course not. Nothing is. Does it have limitations? Sure. Everything does. Just don't presume to suggest that C and C++ are some overlooked white knights. Hell, even the creator of C++ thinks there should be a garbage collector in C++.

You may want to download this setup guide from sun Page 27 of the StarOffice 6.0 Setup Guide (quoted without permission :-):

Jave Runtime(tm) Environment

The next dialog to appear lists the Java Runtime environment versions registered on your system.

In this dialog, select the Java Runtime Environment you want to use. You require version 1.3.1 or higher. If you have already installed a newer version than 1.3.1, you do not have to install the version provided as long as StarOffice identifies your version as verified.

This also applies to version 7, and to openoffice, etc. (same codebase).

Any C/C++ program interfacing w. java-based code is going to suffer from the don-deterministic nature of the gc (garbage collector) in the jvm. If the feature you are using at the moment is running in the jvm, you're stuck. Same if the jvm decides its' time to do a mark and sweep. Get over it.

Look out for JSP2 which is going to add a lot of the nice, friendly features already seen in other templating engines like Velocity and FreeMarker. The big one is the new JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library (JSTL) and it's included expression language which gives you easy access to objects using the familiar ${object} syntax. See chapter 16 here

Nobody will notice - since the NYT persists in crediting Joy with every innovation Sun ever made, including being "developer of the Java programming language."

Does the actual inventor of Java get no respect because his name makes people think of little fuzzy birds instead of nerdish ecstasy?

JDO

There's a pair of books that make interesting reading together. One is Paul Graham's On Lisp. Whatever you may think of his statements against other languages, he knows Lisp and he does an excellent job of explaining how to use it well. I didn't understand how to use Lisp macros effectively until I read it, or why to use them.

Shortly after reading it, I read Modern C++ Design by Andrei Alexandrescu. Reading that, I started to understand some of the power of generic programming. If you understand when these two books are explaining two very different implementations of the same things, then you have grasped the essence of some very powerful techniques.

Frankly, generic programming is one place where Java is still definitely lagging. Fortunately, there is currently an effort to fix that.

Lisp's greatest strength is also its greatest weakness. The language eschews nearly all syntax. All structure within a program that would be expressed syntactically in other languages consists of levels of parentheses and order of arguments to various functions, macros and special forms. There is great power in this. It means that what you add to the language fits in seemlessly. That is the point of Graham's title for his book. Read the first chapter for his explanation.

Unfortunately, this very scarcity of imposed syntax puts a burden on the programmer to format for clarity and to learn to read in a language where some of the familiar signposts simply are not present. That task is certainly possible, but it puts many people off.

JSP is a servlet, it gets generated and compiled into a servlet. SO to say that JSP is better than servlets is a bit stupid, to say the least.

SUN recommends to use JSP directly only for simple and small apps, and to use servlets for control and JSP just for rendering for more complex things.

See sun's recommendation for more info and for JSP model 1 versus model 2.

JSP is fantastically simpler than "J2EE", which is the recommended-by-Sun way of building applications

JSP is a component of J2EE. Here's a tip: When you have an "epiphany" about the nature of something, it ususally helps to have at least a basic understanding of whatever the hell it is you're talking about.

But Java HAS been around since 1985: http://java.sun.com/features/1998/05/birthday.html

As for the web... well, hypertext at least has been around since the 1960s... *shrug*
http://www.w3.org/History.html

This guy's article is utter crap. Phillip Greenspun is either a moron or nothing more than a common troll.

JSP is fantastically simpler than "J2EE"

J2EE is a collection of java techonologies which includes JSP, not a single development paradigm. JSP can be used in a model-view-controller as a view or used to write simple stand-alone applications.

After researching how to do bind variables in Java (see the very end of http://philip.greenspun.com/internet-application-w orkbook/software-structure), which turns out to be much harder and more error-prone than in 20-year-old C interfaces to relational databases

Riiiight... Because there is only one way to do this in Java.
First off this is not an inherent problem to Java, but a problem of developer implementation.
Prepared statements are only one way to communicate with databases. You can create your SQL any way you'd like and even bind parameters yourself an then execute a regular Statement.

This is all moot anyways if you plan on teaching students what the real power of using an Object-Oriented language. Most people that have to do this sort of thing for a living would have a bstracted the database layer into objects that thier view is using. The actual method of database connectiving is not irrevelant, but certainly not a hindrance to productivity.

A project done in Java will cost 5 times as much

Good thing he provided research to back that up... Oh wait a minute, he was just trolling again.
5 times more expensive? Hmmm.. apache/tomcat is free. Eclipse is free. You can pull down an SDK from Sun for free.
Well maybe he meant that it will take 5 times a long and of course time=money. Nope. He said that it will "take twice as long ". Confusing logic to say the least.

None of the extra power of Java is useful when the source of persistence is a relational database management system such as Oracle or SQL Server.

Sure buddy, tell that to Oracle. Oracle happens to use Java for its business applications.
Applications based on Relational databases is where Java excels. The java language isn't the reason, its what is being done with Java in the real world that matters.
There are plenty of tools some free some not, that take databases with referential integrity constraints to build objects (JavaBeans, EJBs, JDO, Torque, whatever) with child-parent releation ships and automatic persistence.


Its really a shame that this guy is allowed to teach at MIT.
Here's an idea: how about teaching students to use the right tool for the job? He should leave the zealotry at home unless he could back it up something more than an uninformed tirade or a ridiculous apples-to-oranges comparison with an even more idiotic analogy.

What I find most troublesome is that Microsoft seems to be taking the lead in providing a means of control that goes beyond the ACL approach that has been traditional until now. It's an astute move for M$. If the rest of the world doesn't come up with an alternative, it will become all that much harder to dislodge Windows from the corporate desktop.

It tends to be complex to implement due to a lot of flexibility, and definitly has different goals (securing your systems, as opposed to securing profit of others), but it isn't as Microsoft would be the only one to improve their security model.

Oh look, he's posting the same, tired old links he's posted in the past. Search back and you'll find comments.

Although his comment alliudes to "market share" it's actually revenue. Check out what the major media didn't tell you Sun's Marketshare Grows in Q2 2003. Indeed, revenue is down, but number of servers sold keeps going up.

What does this tell us? IBM is selling a large number of servers at a fat profit, yet nobody seems to notice. Everyone complains about how expensive Sun is when IBM is making record server revenues. Why is that?

> How is Microsoft coercive? No-one's forcing you to buy and use their software.

Oh, really? Have you been living under a rock?

From the Microsoft strategy paper known as the Halloween Document:

> OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market.

Microsoft memos from the DOJ case Findings of Fact:

> "We will bind the shell to the Internet Explorer, so that running any other browser is a jolting experience."

> Gates wrote, "Apple let us down on the browser by making Netscape the standard install." Gates then reported that he had already called Apple's CEO (who at the time was Gil Amelio) to ask "how we should announce the cancellation of Mac Office . . . ."

> In Waldman's [Microsoft executive in charge of Mac Office] words:
> "Sounds like we give them the HTML control for nothing except making IE the "standard browser for Apple?" I think they should be doing this anyway. Though the language of the agreement uses the word "encourage," I think that the spirit is that Apple should be using it everywhere and if they don't do it, then we can use Office as a club."

Microsoft memos from evidence in the Java case:

> "Strategic Objective [to] kill cross-platform Java by grow[ing] the polluted Java market"

> As reported to Bill Gates in April 1997 by the manager responsible for execution of Microsoft's strategy:
"When I met with you last, you had a lot of pretty pointed questions about Java, so I want to make sure I understand your issues/concerns...
> 1. What is our business model for Java?
> 2. How do we wrest control of Java away from Sun?
> 3. How do we turn Java into just the latest, best way to write Windows applications?"

> "At this point its [sic] not good to create MORE noise around our win32 java classes. Instead we should just quietly grow j++ share and assume that people will take advantage of our classes without ever realizing they are building win32-only java apps."

Microsoft has tried to sabotage every major competitor on the PC, from WordPerfect to Netscape, in order to make it impossible for anyone to use PC hardware without also using Microsoft software.

I think the word "coercive" doesn't go far enough.

I would use words like extortionary, fraudulent, and criminal.

obviously you've either never installed solaris, or you are just a troll.
Beyond other compilers available post-initial-build, there is a CD that comes with the system called the "solaris software companion." On it is the gnu c compiler suites versions 2.95 and 3.2. Since you don't have any solaris administration experience obviously, I'll throw out a web site that anyone who has done a week of solaris administration would know. Then a few years from now, you'll know it when you need it.
the main solaris freeware site
Oh, I could toss out a few others, but really - that software companion CD comes with the solaris OS set anyway.
A little pkgadd, and bam - you're there. No worries - you can gui the install too.

Solaris on Intel is, for all intents FREE

How do you figure? Is $20 free? Is $95 free? Having paid $20, which is strictly the cost of the media (huh? downloading software is cost of media what??) can I give my copy of Solaris to a friend?

My last version of RedHat cost me $0.12 in media thanks to a 200 pack of CD-Rs I got with a fat mail-in rebate came out to 4 cents a piece (I'm willing to pay 4 cents a CD to get copies of Knoppix into the hands of windows users). Oh, 12 cents plus whatever the electricity cost was (probably another 12 cents).

From where I sit, a "free" version of Solaris is two orders of magnitude more expensive than the "free" versions of RedHat, Mandrake, Debian, Gentoo or several others I'm sure I could find.

Yeah, but at least it comes with a C compiler so when I download that stuff I can actually build it...

hi

Sun keeps trying to invent a Windows alternative. OpenWindows, CDE, JavaStation, SunRay, and various x86 emulators and coprocessors. And now this. Which will of course do much better than its predecessors. Oh well, maybe Sun's investors will finally realize that McNealy's obsessions impact the bottom line!

Sun keeps trying to invent a Windows alternative. OpenWindows, CDE, JavaStation, SunRay, and various x86 emulators and coprocessors. And now this. Which will of course do much better than its predecessors. Oh well, maybe Sun's investors will finally realize that McNealy's obsessions impact the bottom line!

Some screen shots from Sun's site.

They are charging That much for it too.. That's rediculous.. The only "commercial" products in it are Java which they give away for free, and the sun one connector... Pricing FAQ

here is the, correct link . It does show Ooo, Evolution, Gaim etc. no big deal..

Screenshot

If that's an enlarged screenshot ... fear the original size.

The most interesting thing to me is this passage that I found here:

The Java Desktop System is shipped with Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition, 1.4.2 (with support for GNOME Look & Feel).

I suppose that means that Sun has written a Swing Look & Feel for GNOME, but I can't find anything about it. Does anyone have more information?

The most interesting thing to me is this passage that I found here:

The Java Desktop System is shipped with Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition, 1.4.2 (with support for GNOME Look & Feel).

I suppose that means that Sun has written a Swing Look & Feel for GNOME, but I can't find anything about it. Does anyone have more information?

The MS Office pricing you were looking for is here. It's interesting to do a quick comparison (prices are per 1 copy):

• MS Office Professional ($499 new / $329 upgrade) gives you Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, Publisher, Access.
• MS Office Small Business ($449 new / $279 upgrade) gives you Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, Publisher.
• MS Office Standard ($399 new / $239 upgrade) gives you Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook.
• MS Office Student/Teacher ($149) also gives you Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook. But you have to be Edu to get it.

And for comparison:

• StarOffice ($80 new/upgr ; $0+media Edu) gives you Word processing (MS Word), Spreadsheet (MS Excel), Presentation (MS Powerpoint), Graphics, Database.

I haven't used AdabasD, so I don't know if it is MS Access compatible.

Basically, StarOffice gives you functionality equivalent to MS Office Standard at 20% the cost. Also equivalent to MS Office Student/Teacher at 0% the cost. Considering that you can run StarOffice on Windows or Linux (or Solaris), you can have a very capable office suite on your favorite PC platform for very little cash.

What about Outlook? If you purchase MS Office, you get a bundled copy of Outlook, but StarOffice doesn't provide an equivalent to Outlook. But, do you really need it? Windows (or is it IE?) gives you Outlook Express, which is good for doing email using POP servers .. not sure if it talks to MS Exchange servers. On Linux, the closest equivalent is Ximian Evolution. The free version of Evolution looks and acts a lot like Outlook. If you need to talk to MS Exchange servers, you can purchase the Ximian Exchange Connector .. we are using this at work, and it works great!!

You might want to take a look at this: J2SE 1.4.2 Optimized for Red Hat 9

I was interested in checking it out, but at $50/seat/year it's a little to much for me to suggest setting up on all the machines

Actually, the $50/employee/year pricing is only if you have the Java Enterprise System also. Otherwise, it is $100/Desktop/Year. If you take a look at the Sun Network Computing 03-Q3 web cast, Jonathan Schwartz justified their pricing mainly on following points:

1. A company looking for a Microsoft upgrade will find it has to pay $179 for Windows XP and $279 for Office. So, they are primarily targetting companies that are looking for an upgrade.[I am not too sure about the prices, but Sun's offering is way cheaper).

2. The cost also includes the cost for migration and support. They will assist and even indemnify against SCO-like lawsuits.

3. A phone system for an employee costs $300 to buy + $300 per year for maintenance. Sun demonstrated software that uses VoIP and existing networks to integrate the telephone with this desktop. Lucent is providing the technology for this.

4. Even the $100 is chosen so that CIOs can calculate the amount spent on IT in their head. 1000 desktops, the spending is $100,000. That's it.

If anyone's interested, the presentation also shows Looking Glass 3D desktop and compatibility demonstrations using Office documents from Microsoft's website.

The Java Desktop system is as compatible with C/C++ applications as any other desktop. "Java Desktop" is a marketing name. It says nothing about technology. The desktop is not even written in Java. It is Gnome.

"Sun Java Desktop System is an affordable, comprehensive, simple to use, and secure enterprise-grade desktop solution. The software consists of a fully integrated client environment based on open source components and industry standards, including a GNOME desktop environment, StarOffice Office Productivity Suite, Mozilla browser, Evolution mail and calendar, Java 2 Standard Edition and a Linux operating system. Key features include a well-defined, integrated look and feel, familiar desktop themes, as well as file, folder, and print interoperability with Microsoft Windows and Linux/UNIX environments."

http://wwws.sun.com/software/learnabout/desktopsys tem/

Enlarged? I'd probably think it was enlarged if I was browsing using my phone. Just how small does something have to be for it to enlarge to that size?

Oh, wait.. we're geeks. Small is good... remember the mantra, small is good... it's how you use it that counts.. ;-)

The enlarged screenshot is actually here, for anyone interested.

Q. Why can I not import password protected MS Office files?

A. Microsoft does not encrypt their protected files. In the past, we simply imported those documents as unprotected files. Naturally, this represents a security violation and which many enterprises were unhappy about. As a result, we blocked the import capability for password-protected files and they can no longer be imported at all.

Is Ability open source? (OOo is, SO is not.)

OpenOffice.org is well known, has third party books available, and third party training. If you want a commercial counterpart, there is StarOffice. Seems to me like the best of both worlds.

There is one major feature of OpenOffice.org and StarOffice that don't seem to get as much play as they should in a forum like Slashdot. It is programmable in Basic, Java, Python. If you install the scripting framework then is is programmable in BeanShell (i.e. interactive Java), JavaScript, and others in the future.

The OOo document format is well documented . XML in a Zip file. The DTD is available. KDE has announced that KOffice will be standardizing on the OpenOffice.org document format. So in theory, a Windows user running SO or OOo could exchange documents with a Linux user running KOffice. (Not that both OOo and SO don't also run on Linux.)

Developer documentation is readily available, and also a large downloadable SDK. Third parties can develop new components that run within and seemlessly integrate into OOo or SO.

There are lots of resources for OOo.
Won
Too
Free
Fore
Phive
Sicks
Sevin
Ate
Nighn
Tin
Eleven
Twelve
Firteen
Foreteen
Fifteen
This is by no means an exhaustive list.

I have personally taken an interest in OOo and written a Java program (and other tools ) The java program draws Mazes on a running copy of OOo, but the java program can be run on a different computer, over the net. (Win -> Linux, Linux -> Win, etc.)

Is Ability open source? (OOo is, SO is not.)

OpenOffice.org is well known, has third party books available, and third party training. If you want a commercial counterpart, there is StarOffice. Seems to me like the best of both worlds.

There is one major feature of OpenOffice.org and StarOffice that don't seem to get as much play as they should in a forum like Slashdot. It is programmable in Basic, Java, Python. If you install the scripting framework then is is programmable in BeanShell (i.e. interactive Java), JavaScript, and others in the future.

The OOo document format is well documented . XML in a Zip file. The DTD is available. KDE has announced that KOffice will be standardizing on the OpenOffice.org document format. So in theory, a Windows user running SO or OOo could exchange documents with a Linux user running KOffice. (Not that both OOo and SO don't also run on Linux.)

Developer documentation is readily available, and also a large downloadable SDK. Third parties can develop new components that run within and seemlessly integrate into OOo or SO.

There are lots of resources for OOo.
Won
Too
Free
Fore
Phive
Sicks
Sevin
Ate
Nighn
Tin
Eleven
Twelve
Firteen
Foreteen
Fifteen
This is by no means an exhaustive list.

I have personally taken an interest in OOo and written a Java program (and other tools ) The java program draws Mazes on a running copy of OOo, but the java program can be run on a different computer, over the net. (Win -> Linux, Linux -> Win, etc.)

There is a scripting language available in Star Office.

Sun even has a document on it.

Okay, I guess the latter is a prefix, not a word, unless you're Sun, who, laughably, has a whole series of "Ultra" things. I guess things over there just keep getting ultra-er.

How Microsoft embraces standards in general:

> OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized, simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new protocols, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market.

How Microsoft supports Office on the Mac:

> Gates wrote, "Apple let us down on the browser by making Netscape the standard install." Gates then reported that he had already called Apple's CEO (who at the time was Gil Amelio) to ask "how we should announce the cancellation of Mac Office . . . ."

> In Waldman's [Microsoft executive in charge of Mac Office] words:
> "Sounds like we give them the HTML control for nothing except making IE the "standard browser for Apple?" I think they should be doing this anyway. Though the language of the agreement uses the word "encourage," I think that the spirit is that Apple should be using it everywhere and if they don't do it, then we can use Office as a club."

How Microsoft supports multimedia standards:

> Eric Engstrom, a Microsoft executive with responsibility for multimedia development, wrote to his superiors that one of Microsoft's goals was getting "Intel to stop helping Sun create Java Multimedia APIs, especially ones that run well (ie native implementations) on Windows." Engstrom proposed achieving this goal by offering Intel the following deal: Microsoft would incorporate into the Windows API set any multimedia interfaces that Intel agreed to not help Sun incorporate into the Java class libraries.

How Microsoft embraced Java:

> Microsoft's Executive Vice President, Paul Maritz, outlined Microsoft's strategy to win the browser war with Netscape and simultaneously "neutralize Java" by "tying" the "user interface" and "APIs" "back to Windows," by "get[ting] control of JAVA with JAVA support/tools", and by "get[ting] control of then leverag[ing] the programming model."

> As reported to Bill Gates in April 1997 by the manager responsible for execution of Microsoft's strategy:
"When I met with you last, you had a lot of pretty pointed questions about Java, so I want to make sure I understand your issues/concerns...
> 1. What is our business model for Java?
> 2. How do we wrest control of Java away from Sun?
> 3. How do we turn Java into just the latest, best way to write Windows applications?"

> "at this point its [sic] not good to create MORE noise around our win32 java classes. Instead we should just quietly grow j++ share and assume that people will take advantage of our classes without ever realizing they are building win32-only java apps."

I could continue with quotes from the Caldera case, the Bristol Wind/U case, and so on.

Time and again, Microsoft has claimed to support a technology or standard, and it turned out that they were lying, and it was just another fraud intended to trap developers and users.

Microsoft has never been punished for their crimes of sabotage and fraud.

It's the same people running the company.

There is no reason to believe that this time will be different.

Can I post one of the FUD emails? No. (Besides, it was full of HTML.) But I can point you at this Computerworld story on Sun's attempt to "drop the FUD bomb" as George Clinton might put it.

A quote from the Wall Street Journal ad, as noted in a Linuxworld story: "Unfortunately, our friends in Blue have a problem with licensing contracts that could make things very expensive for anyone running AIX."

Ah! Found the original ad on Sun's own web site! (PDF format)

Our university sales rep stated it a little differently. She said that she was conserned that the university was "cheating itself" with Linux. But to show that Sun is serious about the "Open-Source thingy" that she would put our University on the fast track to getting the source code to Sun GridWare under a "popular OSS license" which she wasn't at liberty to disclose yet (summer of 2000). But the details of the license would be wrapped-up by Sun management by December 2000.

Sun has proceeded to demostrate how it is NOT serious about the OSS thingy by never following through on that promise. The university still has not seen line one of source code from the vapor-OSS project known as Sun GridWare under popular OSS license. Maybe by this December (2003), the vapor annoucement from Sun was stop being a joke? Ha! I kid... I kid... of course it will still be a joke. Most promises from Sun sales are.

I thought it was going to be something cooler like the Java port of OpenOffice.

Manufacturing companies perhaps. The key appears to lie in the "unlimited right to use for all Intranet and Internet deployments." See http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2003-09/sunf lash.20030916.2.html

Let's say you're a bank implementing extranet account access, with 1700 employees but maybe 5 million customer accounts. Admittedly, paying $170K per year or whatever for internal portals and that sort of stuff seems like a lot.

But imagine that after signing up to buy a bunch of hardware the cost under the old licensing model was $0.10 account for directory entries, the portal software, etc. Maybe this is something on the order of 90% discount over list price (hoping that's a conservative estimate, but I don't have a lot of experience as a customer for order of that size). So for the 5 million customer accounts, you were agreeing to pay $500K, plus whatever all the hardware to run the software cost.

If you expect the service to grow, then this sort of pricing starts to look interesting... unless you find can do it all with GNU Enterprise and cheap PC hardware.

Now, in response to the above thread, the type system in Java was a deliberate choice, not "a bug." Sure, it's ugly. Sure, it's inconsistent. Howevever, it's been extremely successful--it was more in appearance like C++, so that businesses were more quick to adopt it. Smalltalk and Lisp have been around for decades, but how many businesses out there use them?

Anonymous Brave Guy is correct, generics are NOT templates, or even close to their "power." A lot of people are really into power. One can stockpile their home with bigger and bigger armaments; personally, I'd rather not live with a few live grenades under my pillow.

You see, I have also been in the receiving end of having to debug C++ templates. You can only lose so many brain cells doing this intricate exercise before realizing that what efficiency and elegance was gained during development was lost many times over during maintenance. It's very sad but true.

I've seen C macros used and abused to redefine the language until it wasn't even C anymore, and I've seen C++ templates overload the syntax of operators until a pointer wasn't a pointer anymore and you have no idea what you are looking at or even what

&A->foo

1.5 will be out in beta by the end of the year. If you want to mess with Generics, they've been available for more than a year. You can get the implementation here

This is one of the specific things you can't really do with JNI and Java anymore. Java graphics is now really complicated. There's no way you'll be able to use low level OS rendering methods and have them integrate with Java2D and Swing.

Fortunately, the API is being steadily improved so the need for native methods is diminishing significantly with each version of Java. Have a look at these improvements in 1.4 over previous versions (it includes benchmarks you can run to see for yourself).

The key point here is that if you write your graphics code in pure Java, it will get faster with each new release, in many cases, without you having to lift a finger - and in 1.4, it can already take advantage of things like native hardware acceleration.

A concurrent GC option is available and can decrease pause times significantly. The option is -XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC Parallel GC is also available as an option.

It's not vaporware. There is already an implementation.

Talk to us when it is production ready and all the third party tools support it.

Oh, and C++ support for templates was instantly available.

Third party tools already support it. I have no issues running ant and my ide with the new implementation.