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James Gosling On .NET And The Anti-Trust Trial

gwernol writes: "There's a short but interesting interview with James Gosling over on ComputerWorld. He talks about the differences between J2EE and .NET and also about the Microsoft anti-trust trial. Some interesting perspectives from the founder of Java."

270 comments

  1. I liked this bit best... by Graspee_Leemoor · · Score: 1

    (from the article)

    "Q: What's the old saying, it's the sincerest form of flattery?

    A: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. "

    graspee

    1. Re:I liked this bit best... by wytcld · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

      Q: But isn't imitation also the sincerest form of mockery?
      ___

      --
      "with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
    2. Re:I liked this bit best... by 56ker · · Score: 2, Funny

      Well it's typical Microsoft tactics - if they see something they like they either :-
      a) buy the company
      or b) come up with something extremely similar.

    3. Re:I liked this bit best... by aminorex · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yes, and C# is certainly a mockery:))

      --
      -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
    4. Re:I liked this bit best... by sacrilicious · · Score: 1
      Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

      Imitation is the sincerest form of copyright infringement. ;)

      --
      - First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
    5. Re:I liked this bit best... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, good thing they didn't bring up C++...

    6. Re:I liked this bit best... by Zeinfeld · · Score: 2
      The article was pure FUD. Sun and Gosling may honestly believe that there is nothing of any value in .NET and that Java has all the answers. I don't think they do, I don't think anyone does.

      Java was not a particularly innovative language. Interpreted byte code has been arround since the p-system. There were many cleaned up object orented extensions to C, such as Objective C.

      Sun's Java vision is based arround a particular goal of processor independence that is practically irrelevant in mainstream computing, particularly with the SPARC chips lagging behind Intel in performance.

      --
      Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
      Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
  2. J2EE vs .NET by Hemos+(editor) · · Score: 5, Informative

    I read this comparison last November. The author, Dean Wampler, Ph.D., concludes the following:

    "The experimental flaws of the Microsoft tests render the performance comparisons unusable. All tests must be run on the same test bed and a more suitable application must be chosen. J2EE and .NET are most appropriate for large-scale, high availability applications. The documented tests say little about how well these frameworks support those applications.

    The .NET and Java Pet Stores support the same features, but they implement different "nonfunctional" requirements. The .NET version assumes a single hardware/OS/database combination and makes performance paramount. The Java version supports multiple hardware/OS/database combinations and ranks performance as less important. In fact, both frameworks can support either emphasis. Hence, comparing the two code bases is misleading.

    For developers who are comfortable with limited choices, .NET is a well-designed framework with good tools. J2EE provides greater freedom, but the J2EE community can't ignore the need for tools that create powerful and efficient applications in a timely manner."

    The Ultimate Linux Bookmark

    1. Re:J2EE vs .NET by nebby · · Score: 2

      On the money.

      --
      --
    2. Re:J2EE vs .NET by aminorex · · Score: 2, Redundant

      Good post! Most serious readers will find Wampler's
      comparison more illuminating than Gosling's
      off-the-cuff boosterism, referenced by this
      slashdot topic. Whether I agree or disagree with
      Gosling's opinions in the interview -- in fact,
      I mostly agree -- they remain just that, almost
      pure op ed, rather than substantive comment.
      That's not a criticism of Gosling's (presumed)
      honest expression of his opinions, just a comment
      on the practical usefulness of the article.

      --
      -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
    3. Re:J2EE vs .NET by skarlson · · Score: 1

      If you are refering to the Microsoft ordered benchmark test of .Net it is not comperable with the corresponding Petstore implementation. The Petstore is a reference implementation with a focus on describing the functionality and different parts of J2EE and no focus at all on performance. skarlson

    4. Re:J2EE vs .NET by GeorgieBoy · · Score: 2

      ". . .the J2EE community can't ignore the need for tools that create powerful and efficient applications in a timely manner."

      Indeed. Perhaps that tool could be (to Mr. Gosling's dissapointment) Eclipse or one of the IBM Websphere Studio products based on it, like WS Application Developer.

    5. Re:J2EE vs .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You hit the nail on the head. Having just completed a .NET project and am now working on a J2EE project, the development environment for our J2EE product is like working with stone tablets and chisels in comparison. There is greater flexibility with the J2EE environment but there is tons of redundant work that we must do that the .NET environment takes care of for you. I would estimate that it takes about 3X the effort to write/deploy our J2EE product as it would if we implemented it in .NET (that is how I estimate the work for our schedule and so far it has been very close to that).

      Simply getting several 'products' from different groups (JBoss, Catalina/Tomcat, etc.) to work together as well as dealing with a seperate edit/compile environment (JBuilder6 - no choice here), AND having to modify no fewer than 4 files (two Java source files and two XML files) by hand to simply add one field to an EJB (in ADDITION to the code you have to write to support it), AND having to deploy the .jar file into two different places (JBoss and Tomcat) is a logistical nightmare. Add to this the fact that depending on which container you use, you have to have different XML files specific to that container to tell it what to do with itself. Even the smallest change can require quite a bit of work.

      There are probably better ways to do it but we haven't found it yet.

    6. Re:J2EE vs .NET by DarkRabbit · · Score: 1

      Why in the hell are you using Catalina/Tomcat in your project? It's just a reference platform! I mean, it's a very well done reference platform and useful for development purposes but if you are putting this out in production you should think about using something else, like JRun or ServletExec.

    7. Re:J2EE vs .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I suggest you check out the latest versions of Forte for Java Enterprise Edition. It sounds like it's exactly what you're looking for.

    8. Re:J2EE vs .NET by mmacdona86 · · Score: 2

      First, you are comparing freely available tools with a several-thousand dollar product from Microsoft. The product will do more hand holding, which will be convenient until you need to do something outside of the paradigm of the product. A fairer comparison would be with the latest versions of WebSphere or BEA's app server.

      Second, does your application need to be a web service, or will some other IPC do? If it doesn't need to be a web service, you are going to a lot of extra trouble in the Java implementation.

    9. Re:J2EE vs .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Please point me to the MicroSoft equivalents of JBoss and Tomcat.

      You fucking moron, those are freely distributed products open source and all. As another poster mentioned, compare apples with apples. Spend thousands on an IBM or BEA product and then dis J2EE.

      .NET might be better, who the hell know, but not by your comparisons.

    10. Re:J2EE vs .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He's right though... Microsoft does understand one thing about software development. It may be expensive... it may crash a lot... it may prove to be really shitty later on when you realise all the stuff that it *can't* do... but if it's easy to install and get started, it'll get used and grab marketshare. You can always fix the other stuff later.

      If people want Java to beat the crap out of .Net, devote some time to making it absolutely fucking piss-easy to install and get started with. You know it makes sense.

    11. Re:J2EE vs .NET by kongslund · · Score: 1

      Take a look at the following tools

      Ant
      http://jakarta.apache.org/ant/

      EJBCreator
      http://opensource.itplus.dk/EJBCreat or/

      --
      Jonas
    12. Re:J2EE vs .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IIS and COM+
      Free with the operating systems and perform everything JBoss and Tomcat do on Win2K.

      Troll Alert

    13. Re:J2EE vs .NET by phnx90 · · Score: 1

      Dont Use JRun. You can use Resin for the just about the same price, its faster and you can evaluate for free ( no thirty day gimped development versions).

    14. Re:J2EE vs .NET by david_g · · Score: 1

      Here's another one for EJB and Web: XDoclet.

      It integrates nicely with ant.

    15. Re:J2EE vs .NET by md17 · · Score: 2, Informative

      This is just FUD!!! If you are a Java Developer this stuff is trivial...
      1) Use Forte / Eclipse / Netbeans to build your app.
      2) Download JBoss 2.4.4 with Tomcat.
      3) type something like tar -zxvf jboss.tar.gz
      4) type somthing like jboss/startup.sh
      5) copy your .ear to the jboss/deploy dir
      6) Browse to localhost/myapp

      It really isn't that hard. Come on people. Please quit bashing J2EE speading FUD about how difficult it is. It really isn't.

    16. Re:J2EE vs .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can I use IIS and COM+ on *NIX and Windows? Are they distributed free if I choose *NIX as my OS? Are they open source? C'mon.

    17. Re:J2EE vs .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      First, you are comparing freely available tools with a several-thousand dollar product from Microsoft.

      Be more specific with this statement. .NET runtime and command line compilers are free to download. Visual Studio .NET costs the big $$$

    18. Re:J2EE vs .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tomcat == .NET Remoting to an extent.. maybe not exactly but may point you in the direction to find out....

      .NET runtime and SDK freely distributed also.. to get the features of a lot of the 3rd products in java are included into the .net runtime..

    19. Re:J2EE vs .NET by Da+Big+Chet · · Score: 1

      you call this dude a "fucking moron" for not comparing "apples to apples" when he should be comparing MS to BEA? how much are BEA products when compared to MS? thats right.

      IIS and COM+ are included with windows 2000. VisualStudio.NET EE is only a couple thousand bucks. BEA alone is gonna set you back 10 grand. so thats not apples to apples either dumbass. the problem with you open source retards is you cant make any other distinction than "costs money" vs "free." regardless of how much money your spending, or how complicated your "free" development environment is.

    20. Re:J2EE vs .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So let's say that a substantial aspect of the gripe is that you have to mess with several files in order to alter something (even if trivial). If that's the case (and it is a pet peeve of mine in my C over C++ bigotry, which I try to get over but mostly fail), then there is _still_ the option of dismissing these so-called "fourth generation" languages altogether.

      Fifteen years ago someone could have said, "I just use QBASIC. Why mess with declaring variables? It's such a hassle to use C and Pascal." Fast forward a while. "I love Perl. It takes care of the mind numbing details, and it is still amazingly extensible." Nothing comes free. For all the ridding of hassle, invariably there will be a performance penalty and a disk real estate penalty, which the various derivatives of Moore's Law tend to clobber.

      At this divine altar of portability, something else must be paid or otherwise pledged. FWIW, I have almost the same visceral response to signing on a skillset to Java as to Visual C++. Java claims to be the be-all-end-all to portability, but there is that maddening fact that Java is native on no hardware that is not from Sun and sold according to terms dictated by Sun. In other words, the performance penalty is intractible.

      Frankly, that there is a Holy War of J2EE and .NET makes me sad. By wishing for the simple mass adaptation of a "screw VC++" attitude and by using a bunch of #ifdef statements and some effort, there is no flypaper.

      I hate dancing around all this flypaper. Call me a Luddite, but I like C and #ifdef, and to hell with all this high-maintenance "labor-saving technology". Assimilation to all these slippery trickster ubercultures is more of a headache/worry/nightmare than porting with a work ethic.

      WMTRMP. Write many times; run many places. At least it's yours (or your community's) after you suffer through it.

    21. Re:J2EE vs .NET by smagoun · · Score: 1

      Two words: code generation.

      Seriously, it works. On my last project it saved a 10-person team 5 man-years of development (conservative estimate). Adding that extra field took us 30 seconds, and we had updated EJBs, Java objects, XML messages, servlets, validators, etc. with the push of a button.

    22. Re:J2EE vs .NET by Claric · · Score: 1

      I'm currently working on a J2EE project for my degree. It took me a week to basically get up to speed on EJB's, configure JBoss/Catalina with a PostgreSQL backend. I'm being hardcore (stupid perhaps) and using vi to write everything - including deployment descriptors.

      It's a bit of work but I wouldn't say it's a logistical nightmare. I'm quite comfortable with it all now and it makes sense. A lot of it depends on the EJB container you are using. Having only used JBoss I couldn't comment on the others.

      Claric

      --
      There's no problem that cannot be solved with a suitable amount of high explosives
    23. Re:J2EE vs .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And if we say JBuilder 6 EE, which is a couple of thousand, and which provides everything the complaint discusses, would we be comparing apples and apples?

      I think the point is that there are many ways to approach development, in .NET and J2EE, and it is weak to start complaining based on what is obviously limited experience.

    24. Re:J2EE vs .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I haven't tried IBM's product, but JBoss is far better than Weblogic's EJB container. Basic things like updating and redeploying an EJB require restarting the weblogic instance!

    25. Re:J2EE vs .NET by Not+The+Real+Me · · Score: 1

      Are you on drugs?!

      I don't know anyone who develops for the Microsoft platform (Windows or .NET) who uses command line compilers for anything other than "Hello World".

      Anyone doing "real" development for the MS platform will get Visual Studio.

      The productivity gains offered by Visual Studio more than offset the price gouging by Microsoft.

      Now, if Sun or Borland could offer tools in the league of MS for the Java platform .NET would've been dead before inception. Forte and JBuilder are slower than molasses and are not particularily intuitive. Hence the ability of MS to come in and steal Sun's Java thunder with .NET.

    26. Re:J2EE vs .NET by Brad+Wilson · · Score: 1

      Actually, Visual C#.NET can be had for less than $100.

      The "several thousand dollar" version would be the Enterprise Architect version of the full Visual Studio (and at that price level, of course, you'd buy an MSDN subscription rather than buying VS.net directly, because you get so much more for roughly the same amount of money).

  3. Mac user? by petree · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Q: Some corporate users have expressed an interest in using .Net for the front end and Java on the back end. How does that strike you?

    A: It's certainly the case that Microsoft pretty much has an absolute monopoly on the client. Certified and convicted. And so in some sense that makes it sort of easier for them on the client end. I think these folks would be amazed to discover how easy it is to write client software on the PC in Java. That works very well. And from a personal point of view, I personally actually read the [Windows] XP license and decided I couldn't sign it. So I've been shifting over to Mac.
    Interesting, I never thought someone who could run sun hardware all he wanted would choose to go with a mac. Especially with them not running the most current JRE (they -just- came out with 1.3.1). That's somewhat amusing. That's like Bill Gates running Windows NT 4.0. Everybody I know now wants a mac, either for OSX (geeks) and for how awesomely designed they are (geeks and non-geeks).
    1. Re:Mac user? by aminorex · · Score: 2

      Gosling doesn't run *release* JDKs, silly goose.
      He runs alphas. There's always an alpha inside sun.

      --
      -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
    2. Re:Mac user? by blukens · · Score: 2, Informative

      If you're refering to this arcticle, it's worth noting (yet again) that 1.3.1 has been out for OS X for nearly six months now. That was just a bug fix update, and therefore it was hardly -just- released. Which isn't to say that Apple isn't at all behind the Java curve, but it's not as bad as some make out. It has also been stated that Apple will preview 1.4 in May at the WWDC, and that they hope to be in sync with Sun by the release of 1.5.

    3. Re:Mac user? by blank · · Score: 1
      welly he's dissing MS pretty hard. he may be just trying to jab MS some more with the Mac comment.

      although... i fully agree that there should be more macs out there. =)

      --

      bah. start over

    4. Re:Mac user? by roseanne · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Sun has a poor record in using its own products. Sure, McNealy uses a Sun Ray, but most of the Sun sales folk seem to be very attached to their Windows 2000 laptops, MS Office (though Sun internally supports only Star Office) and IE (which is a shame -- Mozilla's mature enough, I think).

      Who knows, maybe Apple could convince Sun to turn into a major customer now :-)

    5. Re:Mac user? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Note that the Mac JRE talks to Cocoa and uses native widgets for swing. That's significantly more platform-integration than the JRE gets on any other OS. Plus, Apple's doing it - not Sun.

      So it should be a shock that Apple is a few months behind Sun's release schedule. Still, I guess that Gosling is running a 1.4 beta anyway.

    6. Re:Mac user? by davesag · · Score: 1
      No Surprises that Sun staff use macs. Sun don't make a laptop product themselves, and if you are after a unix laptop it's hard to go past a TitaniumG4. They are sexy as hell, fast as the clappers and run the coolest flavour of unix around.

      I am about to retire (with extreme prejudice) the last windoze laptop we have here, making yet another linux server, but the damn thing weighs almost twice what my TitG4 weighs, has a terrible trackpad and two mouse buttons - who ever thought of such a stupid idea as more than one button on a mouse. It's got loads of ram tho and a 700mhz pentiumIII 'Inside' but it'll never be more than a server that sits up in the bookshelf because it's a) ugly, b) heavy, and c) fragile. Can't drop a dell like you can drop a mac. Certainly can't spill a full glass of vodka and ice thru the dell's keyboard without damaging it. whereas my mac was a-okay after a night on the heater.

      Another reason I'll never ever buy a Dell product again is since buying their stupid laptop, i have been unable to unsubscribe myself from the oceans of spam they send me.

      --
      I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
    7. Re:Mac user? by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      Well they could use the tadpole sparcbook series, Sparc and UltraSparc based laptops which run solaris.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    8. Re:Mac user? by davesag · · Score: 1
      well they could and a laptop friendly UltraSpark chip compares nicely to a laptop friendly G4 chip but they'd still be missing out on
      • decent battery life
      • wireless networking
      • integrated dvd player/cd burner
      • gig of ram (how much can you stuff in a tadpole?)
      • Firewire (and 10/100 ethernet and usb, and now Bluetooth)
      • cool peripherals like ipod that impress your friends with your ability to whip out a disco track on demand, and carry around the soundtrack of your life
      • impact resistant casing (i've dropped my t4 out of my backpack from a moving bicycle into a puddle of mud, and after a clean and rinse the damn thing works fine)
      • wide screen with business class dinner tray form factor.
      • Base Cost Of Ownership of around US$2k
      • A thing of beauty.
      --
      I used to have a better sig than this, but I got tired of it
    9. Re:Mac user? by njdj · · Score: 1

      Everybody I know now wants a mac,

      Can't imagine why such a crude puff for Mac got modded up.

      I know lots of people who want better Windows boxes and several people who want Linux boxes. I know exactly one person who wants a Mac.

    10. Re:Mac user? by autopr0n · · Score: 2

      who ever thought of such a stupid idea as more than one button on a mouse

      You can take my multibutton mouse when you pry it out of my cold, dead fingers.

      --
      autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
    11. Re:Mac user? by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      Well if you read http://hw.tadpole.com/html/products/mobile/ultrabo okiie/ you will find that the UltraBook-IIe can take 2gig of ram. Integrated DVD/CD, Integrated 10/100 ethernet and usb, plus standard PCMCIA ports for addon peripherals. That atleast answers some of your claims... However since i don`t own either machine i can`t coment on the impact resistance, battery life, etc...

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  4. Speaking of .NET... by Flarners · · Score: 5, Informative

    Microsoft released their shared-source CLI and C# implementation a couple days ago. I've been playing with it on my FreeBSD box, and while it's hardly the Java killer Microsoft's making it out to be, it's an interesting piece of work. If you've got a spare FreeBSD or Windows XP box lying around, download the source, compile it and play around with it some; it's always nice to know something about the platform before you start bashing it mercilessly :-)

    --
    "The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for 'entrepeneur'." -George W. Bush
    1. Re:Speaking of .NET... by Dak+RIT · · Score: 1
      I've heard OS 10.2 is supposed to come with J2SE 1.4 due out this summer... seeing as how 1.5 won't be out until 2003, they're not too far behind.

      Although, according to an InfoWorld article, Sun's actually considering using some optimizations Apple included in its JVM... "mapping [shared system libraries] into memory at run time" to "boost loading speed and reduce memory consumption."

    2. Re:Speaking of .NET... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      The CLI and C# implementation are nice, but they don't allow you to use them for any commercial activity. Thus, it is a nice amusement if you want to waste your time.

    3. Re:Speaking of .NET... by aminorex · · Score: 1, Troll

      > If you've got a spare FreeBSD or Windows XP ...

      It seems worth pointing out that it is "illegal"
      (in the sense that that Microsoft owns the law)
      to do this on Linux. Really. Not kidding. Read
      the license.

      --
      -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
    4. Re:Speaking of .NET... by cpeterso · · Score: 2


      given that, how soon do you suppose we'll see a rogue port of Microsoft's CLR to Linux? :)

    5. Re:Speaking of .NET... by aminorex · · Score: 2

      While there probably already are rogue ports,
      whether we see them or not depends on who we know
      and how hard we look.

      Mono is the legit path.
      http://www.go-mono.com

      --
      -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
    6. Re:Speaking of .NET... by blank · · Score: 1, Insightful

      wish i could look... what will happen if i start working on a GNU project and the code accidentally looks like something from microsoft? i don't want to find out. =)

      --

      bah. start over

    7. Re:Speaking of .NET... by rabtech · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, let's look at your statements:

      "It seems worth pointing out that it is "illegal"
      (in the sense that that Microsoft owns the law)
      to do this on Linux. Really. Not kidding. Read
      the license."

      Now, let's look at Microsoft's license. (original in italics, my comments normal.)


      MICROSOFT SHARED SOURCE CLI, C#, AND JSCRIPT LICENSE

      This License governs use of the accompanying Software, and your use of the Software constitutes acceptance of this license.

      You may use this Software for any non-commercial purpose, subject to the restrictions in this license. Some purposes which can be non-commercial are teaching, academic research, and personal experimentation. You may also distribute this Software with books or other teaching materials, or publish the Software on websites, that are intended to teach the use of the Software.

      You may not use or distribute this Software or any derivative works in any form for commercial purposes. Examples of commercial purposes would be running business operations, licensing, leasing, or selling the Software, or distributing the Software for use with commercial products.


      OK, so the license covers the software only, not works which take advantage of it. You can only use it for non-commercial purposes... well, the source code anyway.


      You may modify this Software and distribute the modified Software for non-commercial purposes, however, you may not grant rights to the Software or derivative works that are broader than those provided by this License. For example, you may not distribute modifications of the Software under terms that would permit commercial use, or under terms that purport to require the Software or derivative works to be sublicensed to others.


      OK, so I can make modifications to the software AND give them away, so long as I don't try and sublicense it or make the license terms broader than they already are. Fair enough?


      You may use any information in intangible form that you remember after accessing the Software. However, this right does not grant you a license to any of Microsoft's copyrights or patents for anything you might create using such information.


      Here is a very important point: Looking at this code does NOT in any way restrict your contribution to other Open Source projects or business use. The only thing is that it doesn't grant you use of their copyrights/patents, which you don't have in the first place. you cannot restrict yourself or generate any harm by looking at this source code. I know many of you are doing a double-take, but look at the license.


      In return, we simply require that you agree:

      Not to remove any copyright or other notices from the Software.

      That if you distribute the Software in source or object form, you will include a verbatim copy of this license.

      That if you distribute derivative works of the Software in source code form you do so only under a license that includes all of the provisions of this License, and if you distribute derivative works of the Software solely in object form you do so only under a license that complies with this License.

      That if you have modified the Software or created derivative works, and distribute such modifications or derivative works, you will cause the modified files to carry prominent notices so that recipients know that they are not receiving the original Software. Such notices must state: (i) that you have changed the Software; and (ii) the date of any changes.

      THAT THE SOFTWARE COMES "AS IS", WITH NO WARRANTIES. THIS MEANS NO EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY WARRANTY, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR ANY WARRANTY OF TITLE OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. ALSO, YOU MUST PASS THIS DISCLAIMER ON WHENEVER YOU DISTRIBUTE THE SOFTWARE OR DERIVATIVE WORKS.

      THAT MICROSOFT WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DAMAGES RELATED TO THE SOFTWARE OR THIS LICENSE, INCLUDING DIRECT, INDIRECT, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT THE LAW PERMITS, NO MATTER WHAT LEGAL THEORY IT IS BASED ON. ALSO, YOU MUST PASS THIS LIMITATION OF LIABILITY ON WHENEVER YOU DISTRIBUTE THE SOFTWARE OR DERIVATIVE WORKS.

      That if you sue anyone over patents that you think may apply to the Software or anyone's use of the Software, your license to the Software ends automatically.

      That your rights under the License end automatically if you breach it in any way.

      Microsoft reserves all rights not expressly granted to you in this license.


      OK, to sum up:

      You agree not to remove copyright notices. You also agree to distribute the license with any derivative products, etc. You agree not to distribute the software or modifications with a license that is broader or incompatible with this one. You must include a notice that your code is not Microsoft original code, and when it was modified.

      So far, that all sounds fairly reasonable to me.

      You also have to agree that Microsoft provides no warranties on the software, and that derivative works don't have any warranty (because that would make MS liable.) This is standard in the software industry, so no surprise there.

      An odd provision comes next: if you sue anyone over patents that you think apply to the software or anyone's use of it, you lose your license automatically. Basically, you can't sue anyone for using your patents related to this software or any modifications whatsoever. This doesn't really protect Microsoft, as you can still sue them, you just can't use their code. However, it does protect consumers of your modified code, in that you cannot come along a year later and sue them all saying your derivative includes software patents that you own and would now like to collect royalties on.

      Lastly, but not least, if you violate the license you lose it, and Microsoft reserves the right to kick you to the curb if they don't like you.

      Well, honestly... I don't know where the magic "you cannot use this sourcecode on linux or on/with any GPL stuff" phrase is, but perhaps I misread the license somehow.

      --
      Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
    8. Re:Speaking of .NET... by aminorex · · Score: 2

      In point of fact, I was wrong. I fumble-fingered the URL, and the license I saw was the old WinCE
      license that prohibited any use with virally
      licensed software, i.e. GPL.

      Oh my aching Karma:)) Sorry for the red herring.

      --
      -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
    9. Re:Speaking of .NET... by lsdino · · Score: 1

      So, the license is here. I'm just curious what portion of the license you seem to think doesn't allow running the "shared source cli" as it's called on Linux? The license is actually pretty short, and I see no part of it which mentions operating systems at all...

    10. Re:Speaking of .NET... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hahah! come on slasholes, you know he's right.

    11. Re:Speaking of .NET... by Chris+Johnson · · Score: 2
      Hang on- stop thinking like a geek and start thinking like a lawyer. MS lawyers will be! :D

      (1) anything can be a patent. You are not in any sense protecting yourself from being sued and shut down on the grounds of patent infringement or even copyright infringement. You've been tricked: this is a smokescreen. It says right up front: "You may use any ideas in intangible form. HOWEVER- not! ahahahaha!"

      How is it that 'you may use this copyrighted idea in intangible form, except it doesn't give you copyright or any right to use the idea' is safe? (2) since anything can be a patent, it is just as possible for YOU to look at this stuff, also file for patents on it, and the patent office may just take your money and give you a patent too. This would set up a conflicting patent lawsuit. Except- that 'odd provision' is nothing of the sort. It is a very neatly placed bomb to take you out should you manage to get patent protection for your own stuff in turn. Using this, Microsoft can not only sue you, but strip you of a second layer of defense you might have tried to get. This possibly could work well in the context of a patent challenge to get your patent overturned, on the grounds that it derives from Microsoft patents and copyrights, which, surprise, you stole! Stole since you no longer have a license to do anything with this stuff at all...

      I'm sorry: you're wrong. Even looking at this stuff is VERY BAD. This is as devious as music business contracts, and you're being fooled. If you have looked at this stuff, please do not so much as touch anyone else's open source code... you can still produce your own, mind you, as long as everyone involved is firmly aware that the entire project can be rendered illegal anytime Microsoft wants. Hell, even if you were doing a project and taking out PATENTS on it, you could still be stripped of it anytime Microsoft wants.

      Don't take the bait!

  5. Gosling says by Tablizer · · Score: 1, Troll

    "I love it! Microsoft did all the stuff that our Java team should have done. Stick everybody with one and only one language? What the hell was I thinking?! I worship their genius."

    1. Re:Gosling says by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      parent is not a quote...

    2. Re:Gosling says by Tablizer · · Score: 0, Troll

      (* parent is not a quote... *)

      I thot that the hyperbole was enough to give it away, but I guess I should have explicitly said so to be on the safe side.

      BTW, there was a topic on Java v. .Net in the Programming section of /. a few days ago.

  6. 7th post by llzackll · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    7th post'1

  7. Relieved by Dak+RIT · · Score: 1
    Anyone else feel this way about basically every "innovation" out of Microsoft? All the hype, and I start wondering if maybe, this time, they actually managed to get it right...

    I mean, first it's just frightening to think, not to mention the whole morale dilemma about actually using a superior product from a company you revile... and then of course there's the part where pork starts to fly and a huge order for sweaters for Hell comes in.

    OK, so I'm trolling... although I still find it amusing how worked up people get before a M$ announcement, then the sigh of relief you can hear geeks around the world breathing at the same time when we all realize it may take over the world, but at least it's still Microsoft.

    You are free to breath out now.

  8. "Hi kettle, my name's pot!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "They certainly could have been more creative about the language."

    This coming from someone who tries to pretend he was inspired by smalltalk (since its more OO pure) even though its plainly obvious to anyone who knows jack shit about languages that the Java object model is a strict subset of C++'s. I mean, in smalltalk, things like reflection and introspection fall out of the way the object model works. In Java, its a bag on the side, because Bjarne didn't design it into the C++ object model, which Gosling stole wholesale.

    Then lying about it and criticising others... This man is obviously incapable of feeling shame.

    The worst part of it is that there are millions of "developers" out there who only know Java (or more often: switched to Java from Visual Basic) who simply accept Sun's marketing as fact.

    1. Re:"Hi kettle, my name's pot!" by Groganz · · Score: 1

      I have also seen an article where he states he created emacs. I think he meant he created the first UNIX port or something but that's not how it comes across.

    2. Re:"Hi kettle, my name's pot!" by blank · · Score: 1
      exactly!

      he must have been in a bad mood when he gave the interview. i actually dislike more the comment before that:

      Q: Did you feel that way when you saw C#?

      A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, abused and ripped off was also in there just to some extent. Relieved actually was part of it.

      many pieces of java was 'ripped' off from other languages. how does that make C# any worst than java?

      anyway, i don't actually care about the java or VB developers. there's a shortage of coders. just as long as they don't think that they are the only real programmers. we all know real programmers use LISP. ;P

      --

      bah. start over

    3. Re:"Hi kettle, my name's pot!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He did create Emacs. RMS is the one who stole the code and incorporated it into GNU Emacs.

    4. Re:"Hi kettle, my name's pot!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      you are wrong man. Emacs was made at MIT. RMS contributed some to it. Gosling then made Emacs for Unix. RMS then took that code to build GNU Emacs, so RMS in some sense did steal from Gosling, but also did work on Emacs before Gosling.

    5. Re:"Hi kettle, my name's pot!" by jon_eaves · · Score: 2

      He did, the first modern implementation on Unix that became the base of what is known as Emacs in the modern era.

      Here's a timeline: (Jamie Zawinski) Timeline

      Enjoy !

    6. Re:"Hi kettle, my name's pot!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I thought Al Gore did that...

    7. Re:"Hi kettle, my name's pot!" by smallpaul · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This coming from someone who tries to pretend he was inspired by smalltalk (since its more OO pure) even though its plainly obvious to anyone who knows jack shit about languages that the Java object model is a strict subset of C++'s. I mean, in smalltalk, things like reflection and introspection fall out of the way the object model works. In Java, its a bag on the side, because Bjarne didn't design it into the C++ object model, which Gosling stole wholesale.

      The Java object model is a lot closer to the Simula object model which is much older and simpler than C++'s. I mean garbage collection is a pretty big part of the object model and Java has it and C++ doesn't. C++ has templates and Java doesn't.

    8. Re:"Hi kettle, my name's pot!" by alder · · Score: 1
      IIRC :)
      • Garbage collector is part of memory model
      • Templates are arguably a part of the object model being a weak (IMHO) implementation of parametric polymorphism
      • Simula like Java does not have multiple inheritance (if this could be qualified as simpler) but also as both (Java and C++) it does not have class members
      But, most importantly, the original poster, as far as I can tell, described the lack of metaobject protocol in Java, where reflection and introspection serve as "a poor man metaobject protocol"...
    9. Re:"Hi kettle, my name's pot!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're confusing syntax of a language with the design of the language. Syntax is actaully a shallow basis for analyzing a language. While the syntax of Java and C++ is very similar.

      The rest is not.

      Examples

      1. Multiple inheritence of classes (C++) vs. interfaces (Java).

      2. Garbage collection (Java).

      3. Ubiquitous use of explicit, naked, untyped pointers (C++ - yuck!) vs the reference model (Java).

      Just because the Java and C share curley brackets, "for" loop styles and ++/-- does not mean that they are all that similar. If you program in Java the way you program in C++, then you don't know Java. It's a very different OO model.

      Ramjet

    10. Re:"Hi kettle, my name's pot!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1) Which part of "strict subset" are you having trouble with?

      2) This is a memory model, not an object model problem. Do try to stay on topic here.

      3) Again, not an object model issue, and showing incredibly poor understanding too. Java references ARE pointers, and a java.lang.Object reference is almost a void* (which is very rarely used in C++; compare to the constant casting in any code that uses Java's collections). What you're trying to get at is probably that Java pointers disallow pointer arithmetic. Which has nothing to do with the object model.

      So you've not actually responded to my point, except to construct a strawman about syntax and then proceed to attack based on it. No one cares about syntax, we all know its stolen from C, but syntax is arbitrary, so we're glad that Gosling went with what people know.

    11. Re:"Hi kettle, my name's pot!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "anyway, i don't actually care about the java or VB developers."

      Heh. You've obviously never been in the position of needing to hire competent programmers to code in Java. You will be flooded with morons who are "J2EE architects" who don't know the relative performance of a linked-list and a deque. Hell, most of them don't even know what a deque is.

    12. Re:"Hi kettle, my name's pot!" by ttfkam · · Score: 2

      There are garbage collection implementations for C++ -- several actually. Or did you mean a standard garbage collection method?

      And Java does have templates. Check out JSR014 and the work done by the authors of Pizza

      --

      - I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
    13. Re:"Hi kettle, my name's pot!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Garbage collection has nothing to do with the object model; it was used in procedural, functional and object oriented langauges long before Java existed.

      Templates can be applied to objects (among other things), but that is incidental; they are completely orthogonal.

      As for Simula, you clearly don't know what you're talking about. The only way Simula influenced Java is by way of Simula influencing C++. Simula-67 (the latest version) doesn't support any kind of dynamic dispatch. To call a more specific type's version of a function, you had to explicitly downcast to that specific type. There was no real polymorphism as we know it today.

      Java on the other hand implements polymorphism exactly as C++ does: using an array of function pointers at a fixed offset from the start of the object. Note that this is in contrast to how Smalltalk implements dynamic dispatch using a hash table of method pointers.

      The VMT (Virtual Method Table) approach that Java cloned from C++ is more efficient, while the hash table based approach of Smalltalk and ObjectiveC (among others) is more flexible.

      Personally, ObjectiveC is my favorite, since you get the static error checking of a statically typed language (like C++ or Java), but if you need to get really general, you can use "id" to refer to and send messages to an object of any type (like smalltalk).

    14. Re:"Hi kettle, my name's pot!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In fact, in JDK 1.3.0 and higher, JavaC is implemented using templates. Download the source and see for yourself.

      Unfortunately, in released (binary) versions of the 1.3 javac, the ability to compile code using templates (-gj) has been disabled, presumably pending completion of JSR014.

    15. Re:"Hi kettle, my name's pot!" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know he did. His answer made out that he wrote EMACS itself,not just his own variation/port.

  9. some more diversity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As someone who daily does Java and C/Obj-C development, I see where Java is a more secure RE than CLI, inherently, and that .NET is more convenient for people to use with other languages. I guess what I'd really want is for Java to become easily integrated with all the other "protected memory" (I know that's not the normal term) programming and scripting languages out there. It would be more diverse but without the exploits that comes from memory handling in languages in C/C++.

  10. Java on OSX by BWJones · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From this comment in the article: And from a personal point of view, I personally actually read the [Windows] XP license and decided I couldn't sign it. So I've been shifting over to Mac.

    This is very interesting and parallels what we and others have been experiencing. There is this slow but dramatic sea-change taking place in the community of scientific computation and programming communities. Folks that never before would even look at a Mac are moving to the platform for a variety of reasons including its UNIX core and ease of use. Additionaly it seems that Apple is actually listening to their users these days. They include features requested and the open source Darwin allows for significant development from the community (assuming you are old enough to sign the agreement :-P) and there is even a movement to create a Trusted Darwin http://www.stosdarwin.org/ . This could be a real opportunity for university CS departments to adopt a platform that really does support Java instead of the Win boxes that so many universities seem to be purchasing for their CS programs.

    --
    Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
    1. Re:Java on OSX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is this slow but dramatic sea-change taking place in the community of scientific computation and programming communities...

      It's happening in my small organization. Just last year any partner in our company would have been told "no" when they asked for a Mac. Now we are actively supporting a "migration" from Windows to OSX. The biggest problem still tends to be file compatibility... but overall our two test "partners" are doing well and our tech support group is able to accomidate them. Something else which is funny is that a few of the techs are moving from Linux to FreeBSD. I guess this year BSD is in style, no?

    2. Re:Java on OSX by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 2
      What's happening to Slashdot!?! Just after seeming to recover from rabid Linux activism, it's been invaded by people who'll plug the Mac at any opportunity! You don't seem to mention that other platforms often support Java pretty well too.

      I'm beginning to find all this Mac activism annoying. I mean it was annoying with Linux, but at least I could understand that as it has an advertising budget of next to zero, so it relies purely on word of mouth to spread. But Apple spend so much on marketing that I can't walk down the street or turn on my TV without being told to think different.

      Please - feel free to promote the Mac, but at least in stories that have some relevance. I don't care what the java support on MacOS X is, if you use Sun's VM it's good on Windows, and ditto for Linux. So what?

    3. Re:Java on OSX by BWJones · · Score: 2

      What's happening to Slashdot!?! Just after seeming to recover from rabid Linux activism,

      Dude, deal with it. One of the reasons Slashdot is here in the first place is for Linux activism and promotion.

      it's been invaded by people who'll plug the Mac at any opportunity!

      Once you try OSX, you may never go back. It's a pretty sweet experience. :-)

      I'm beginning to find all this Mac activism annoying. I mean it was annoying with Linux,

      Then why are you here?

      Please - feel free to promote the Mac, but at least in stories that have some relevance. I don't care what the java support on MacOS X is, if you use Sun's VM it's good on Windows, and ditto for Linux. So what?

      This does have relevance in that Microsoft has long since stopped supporting true Java in favor of a bastardized version that only works with Windows. The true beauty of the Java concept was that it is cross-platform. This means that we can use Java on Windows, Linux, Irix, Solaris and the Macintosh. If Microsoft has their way, Java in its true form will cease to exist and we will be stuck with C# that only works within the Windows paradigm thus handicapping many potential features and leaving innovation in the trash can.

      --
      Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
    4. Re:Java on OSX by sheldon · · Score: 2

      What made me curious about that statement was not the indictment against Windows XP. That's to be expected since this is a Sun FUD article...

      What's curious is that Gosling is rejecting Sun's workstations in favor of ones built by Apple.

  11. Interesting, how? by szcx · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Some interesting perspectives from the founder of Java
    Oh yes, very interesting. The founder of Java doesn't think competing technology is as good as his technology.

    This is Sun propaganda pure and simple. I can't wait for a headline on the front page telling us that Coca-Cola says new Pepsi is disappointing. When Microsoft have made less-than-favorable remarks about Java in the past it has instantly been flagged as FUD.

    I suggest folks take Sun PR and Gosling's remarks with a grain of salt. Evaluate the technologies for yourselves and decide accordingly.

    1. Re:Interesting, how? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      uh, gosling doesnt speak with a Sun PR guy looking over his shoulder. want proof? read the article, take note of what's on his desk these days (hint: last word of the next to last question)

    2. Re:Interesting, how? by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 3, Funny

      I think Gosling is the best source of information on C# and Java. After all, he invented both languages.

    3. Re:Interesting, how? by Chagrin · · Score: 2
      Or how about this?
      • They might have done something creative around ... integrating business logic into the language ...
      This is precisely the reason why C/C++ are so poor for programs used by businesses.
      --

      I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation

    4. Re:Interesting, how? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      By that logic, we should ask Bjarne.

    5. Re:Interesting, how? by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 2

      Oh please. If you only look at syntactic similarities (plus the fact that all three have OO), then you might have a point (although only C++ has pointer arithmetic). Java and .NET are much more similar to each other than either is to C++. .NET is based around Microsoft's old JVM implementation (they just renamed things like "java.lang" to "System"). Classes in both are handled by similar runtime mechamisms involving VMs, while in C++ they are primarily a compiler mechanism. There is a plainly visible one-to-one mapping between concepts in Java and .NET that doesn't work if you try comparing against C++.

  12. Let em' fight it out. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Perl and Python with a common runtime, Parrot will eventually win.

  13. Not Worth Reading by azookeeper · · Score: 1

    If you ask me, this interview isn't worth reading. Gosling disses .NET without giving us many examples. Plus, what do you really expect him to say. I know it's just an interview, but people will read it and start up arguments as if it is some kind of objective analysis.

  14. "relieved that it wasn't creative" by Dr.+Awktagon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't know what to make of this:

    Q: Did you feel that way when you saw C#?

    A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, abused and ripped off was also in there just to some extent. Relieved actually was part of it.

    Q: Relieved?

    A: That it wasn't particularly creative.

    Why would he be relieved that MS puts out mediocre stuff? I hate that the world is forced to use boring, insecure, ugly, embraced-and-extended software from MS. I want them to be creative.

    Personally, I think .NET is pretty good, technologically. I like C# + CLR a lot more than Java, and infinitely more than C++.

    But what troubles me is that it's got a Microsoft copyright on it, which is pretty much a guaranteed poison pill in my view, but that's another issue.

    On the whole, we should hope for Microsoft to be "creative", that's the whole point, the whole reason we don't like them. As Steve Jobs said, "they have no taste".

    Then again, I shouldn't expect unbaised answers from Gosling, eh?

    1. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by aminorex · · Score: 3, Funny

      > Why would he be relieved that MS puts out
      > mediocre stuff?

      Two words: "Stock options".

      Here's another, perhaps less mercenary, but also
      less rational, explanation:

      Many anarchists vote for the worst candidate, on
      the theory that when gov't becomes bad enough, it
      will be eliminated.

      --
      -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
    2. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by BWJones · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Why would he be relieved that MS puts out mediocre stuff?

      I think I understand why. It's because Microsoft in the .NET and C# arena are his competitors. For us, it would be like when a competing laboratory publishes a paper in an area we are investigating. If that paper is full of boneheaded conclusions and poorly designed experiments, it is somewhat of a relief that we are still on top of things and are producing the best work. However, I agree with you in that we all want the best products out there and the best science possible. The problem is that in the arena of operating systems and the internet, Microsoft has a monopoly and a LOT of money and resources available. The fact that they do have a monopoly means that there is very little impetus for innovation and truly creative thinking. The reality is however, that the superior Java solution is produced by the underdogs despite the overwhelming odds against them and should be refreshing to us all indicating that there is continued hope for the development of technology and computer science.

      --
      Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
    3. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by tshak · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yeah. Yeah. I mean, abused and ripped off was also in there just to some extent.

      I do find it obvious that there are some things in C# that are like Java. However, it seems to me that this is generally moot considering both languages where heavily inspired from C++. When you do your homework, you find that C# is actually quite different the Java:

      + C# is completely OO - even an Int32 is an Object. Java uses primitive types.
      + C# uses Delegates for Event Handling (think function pointers, but different).
      + C# supports the use of Properties instead of Getter and Setter methods.
      + C# supports Indexers which allow objects to be treated as Arrays.
      + C# forces explicit Method Overriding (via the virtual/override or new keywords).
      + C# supports namespaces. Unlike Java's packages, namespaces do not rely on a file/folder structure.
      + The C# Abstract or "Virtual Machine" (CLR) is not designed for C#, rather for language neutrality (to an extent). Java and the JVM, however, are closely tied.

      I could go on. Whethor or not you think that these differences are Good Things(tm), the point is, they are definitely different langauges. Although there may have been some inspiration from Java, I'd be hard pressed to call it a "Java Ripoff".

      --

      There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
    4. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by brunes69 · · Score: 2

      Where do you get the dea that Microsoft has a "copyright" on .Net? They do own soe patents on the way the technologies work, but that is nowhere near a copyright. .Net has been submitted to the ECMA, and if M$ has it copyrighted projects like Mono, which already has a working C# compiler, wouldn't be able to exist.

    5. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by countach · · Score: 1

      It's highly debatable whether the .NET VM is any more language neutral than the JVM. Both are built to support C++ish languages and fall far short in features for more innovative languages.

    6. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by tshak · · Score: 1

      Really? How much have you delved into each platform? Does the JVM have an equivilent to the Common Type System (CTS) or the Common Language Specification (CLS)? These two points alone make the CLR a lot more "language neutral" then the JVM. It is true that the CLR does not support MI, for example, so there is a limit as to how "language neutral" it can be. Nevertheless, a bit of reading will prove that the CLR really does have some very "language agnostic features", which makes it much more compelling to develop compilers for.

      --

      There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
    7. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by Tom+Rothamel · · Score: 1

      + C# is completely OO - even an Int32 is an Object. Java uses primitive types.

      I think that saying that C# is completely OO is a bit of an exaggeration. An Int32 is a struct, which cannot be inherited from or accessed through a reference. I think that having such a degenerate class of objects detracts from its OO-nature.

      It's still slightly more object-oriented than Java, however.

    8. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 2, Informative

      + C# is completely OO - even an Int32 is an Object. Java uses primitive types.

      That is flat out silly. Java provides object wrappers for it's primitive types.

      If you want to talk about non-OOP features, C# is full of them. Like structs for example. Who came up with that idea? And how about pointers? WTF? As far as Indexers go (and pretty much all the differences between Java and C#), they are just syntactic sugar that really just makes code confusing to read compared to Java.

      The C# Abstract or "Virtual Machine" (CLR) is not designed for C#, rather for language neutrality (to an extent). Java and the JVM, however, are closely tied.

      That's a hoot! The fact is that CLR doesn't support anything that can't be accessed from C#. That's why implementations of other languages have had to drop features like multiple inheritance before CLR implementations. All CLR does is provide a Procrustian cot for other languages to lie on. Head over the top? Lop it off!

      There are many programming languages available for the JavaVM, including Lisp, Scheme, JavaScript, JPython, Prolog, and Eiffel. The fact is that the JVN is very little, if at all more language centric than is the CLR.

      Although there may have been some inspiration from Java, I'd be hard pressed to call it a "Java Ripoff".

      If it isn't a Java ripoff, then why is everyone comparing it to Java?

      The fact is that Microsoft never innovated anything - and C# is just another Microsoft clone of somebody else's real innovation, plus marketing spin.

    9. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by tshak · · Score: 2, Informative

      Interesting point. However, a System.Int32 does inherit from System.ValueType, which inherits from System.Object. Whethor or not this is a "good" thing or not, I think it shows the differences between (the) C#/CLR and Java/JVM, which was my main point. Maybe it's more accurate to state, "C# is more OO then Java".

      --

      There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
    10. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by ChaosDiscord · · Score: 1, Redundant
      When you do your homework, you find that C# is actually quite different the Java:


      Even as someone who doesn't like Java, I can see that some of your "differences" are just superficial techniques and syntactic sugar. You have some real interesting differences between Java and C#, don't muddy them with these bad examples:

      + C# is completely OO - even an Int32 is an Object. Java uses primitive types.


      It would be more accurate to say that Java has primitive types. If you want a primitive integer value, declare an "int". If you want an object, declare an "Integer". Java gives you the option of (sometimes) a more simple representation. C# doesn't. It's a bit of a weak argument to claim that C# isn't strongly derivative of Java because it has fewer options.

      + C# supports the use of Properties instead of Getter and Setter methods.


      A property is syntactic sugar for Getters and Setters. It's a real nice feature, but strictly superficial. The existence of properties isn't going to change the fundamental design of any program.

      + C# supports namespaces. Unlike Java's packages, namespaces do not rely on a file/folder structure.


      Again, handy syntactic sugar, but not a really core change. It's nice to have the option, but no one is going to change their programming techniques because of it.

    11. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by tshak · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well, you obviously didn't get the point of my post. You are giving me your opinions about C#, which quite frankly I don't care about. My point is that they are different languages, not that one was better then the other.

      If it isn't a Java ripoff, then why is everyone comparing it to Java?

      Maybe because Java is it's competitor?

      The fact is that Microsoft never innovated anything

      The fact is that you are so passionate about this personal conviction, that you could care less about any facts. Try to remain objective about this stuff - it's just technology!


      I've included an excerpt from John Gough, someone who's written a Component Pascal compiler for BOTH the JVM and CLR, and has written a book on the CLR (ISBN:013062296-6).

      [The CLR] "... like the JVM, is based on an abstract stack machine. Apart from this superficial level of commonality, the design of the two virtual machines is quite different."

      Of course, he's not in the middle of any debate, he's just giving some introductory history (from the P-Machine to .NET).

      --

      There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
    12. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by tshak · · Score: 2

      You make some good points. I agree with your comments regarding Properties and Namespaces. Although these may (arguably) make things more convenient for the developer, they are bad examples for proving my point. I was just listing languages differences off the top of my head and I wasn't really considering this perspective.

      It would be more accurate to say that Java has primitive types. If you want a primitive integer value, declare an "int". If you want an object, declare an "Integer".

      This is a curios statement, however. I was under the (false?) impression that the Integer object is simply an object that works with the int primitive. It's not really a language feature, but part of the Class Library. With C#, an int is just a syntactic representation of System.Int32, which ultimately inherits from System.Object. So, an int->System.Object where as in Java an Integer->int. Seems like a fundamental difference, although I could be completely wrong.

      --

      There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
    13. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by lsdino · · Score: 1

      That's a hoot! The fact is that CLR doesn't support anything that can't be accessed from C#.


      One word: Tailcalls! Yeah! :)

    14. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by smallpaul · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That is flat out silly. Java provides object wrappers for it's primitive types.

      That doesn't negate his point. After all it would take a monkey fifteen minutes to create those wrapper classes. But you can't add two float wrappers to each other or do a "++" on an integer wrapper can you? So eventually you need to deal with wrapping and unwrapping. That's just plain silly and the only excuse for it is performance. If .NET gets similar performance without the primitive type hack then Java has no excuse.

      If you want to talk about non-OOP features, C# is full of them. Like structs for example. Who came up with that idea?

      There is nothing wrong with a language having features that are not OOP. OOP is not a religion. The problem with non-object primitive types is that you need to deal with wrapping and unwrapping them. Anyhow, there is nothing non-OOP about structs either. OOP *allows* encapsulation, it does not *demand* it all of the time.

      As far as Indexers go (and pretty much all the differences between Java and C#), they are just syntactic sugar that really just makes code confusing to read compared to Java.

      That's weak. Any extra syntax taht C# adds, no matter how simple or readable is "confusing." Look, I think C# and Java are tweedledee and tweeldedum. I hate them both. I have no reason to defend one over the other. But you are so blatantly partisan that you refuse to look at the few, tiny things that C# got right with fresh eyes. That sort of thinking will hurt Java in the long run because it will blind Java's developers and users to good ideas from elsewhere. You should use the things that C# got right to pressure Java's developers to fix their mistakes.

      In particular, Java could use a strong dose of syntactic sugar. C# is a little better, but just a little. For starters, I'd suggest you look at Python handles iterators, indexers, generators, and dictionary and list initializers. There is nothing I hate more than switching from Python to Java and realizing that I could write half as much code and it could be clearer. Even ignoring the static type checking system, Java seems to go out of its way be verbose. That iterator class crap is just unbelievably ugly.

    15. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by smallpaul · · Score: 2

      + The C# Abstract or "Virtual Machine" (CLR) is not designed for C#, rather for language neutrality (to an extent). Java and the JVM, however, are closely tied.

      It will be years before we know whether non-Java-like languages actually run better on the .NET runtime than on the C# one. Don't believe Microsoft's PR.

    16. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by Aapje · · Score: 2

      Where do you get the dea that Microsoft has a "copyright" on .Net? They do own some patents on the way the technologies work, but that is nowhere near a copyright. .Net has been submitted to the ECMA, and if M$ has it copyrighted projects like Mono, which already has a working C# compiler, wouldn't be able to exist.

      You can only copyright an implementation. The copyright is automatically granted by law on someone's work, so MS has the copyright on their implementation of .NET. All the .NET-api's have not been submitted to the ECMA, only the C#-stuff. So there is no open standard that you can use to implement .NET on various platforms. If Mono wants to support the apps that run on .NET it will have to reverse engineer like Wine. .NET is just as proprietary as COM or Java.

      --

      The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
    17. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by Corrado · · Score: 3, Insightful
      It will be years before we know whether non-Java-like languages actually run better on the .NET runtime than on the C# one. Don't believe Microsoft's PR.


      Hmmm...given that only "managed*" code will run in the CLR, I don't think that non-Java like languages will ever run in .NET.

      *NOTE: I use the term "managed" here to refer to the fact that Microsoft has invented skinable languages. All CLR code must conform to certain rules before it will compile. This includes the single parent & no pointers stuff that keeps C/C++ from being used. This is also the reason that VB.Net is totally new and only looks like traditional VB. Basically, VB.Net is a skinned version of C#.
      --
      KangarooBox - We make IT simple!
    18. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is a curios statement, however. I was under the (false?) impression that the Integer object is simply an object that works with the int primitive. It's not really a language feature, but part of the Class Library

      Actually I have been lead to believe that anything in the java.lang package is consider part of the Java Programming language. Isn't this whole integer arugment kind of pointless. Its kind of like argueing that a String is just an array of chars so its not an object.

    19. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah but Java messed up because they made a 100% guarantee that bytecode will never change. For microsoft, this is just Intermediate Language 1.0, they have cooler stuff out on the horizon in IL2, such as working on verifiable templates, etc.

      Java's biggest mistake was guaranteeing they wouldn't change bytecode. That's why security bugs have been a huge pain in the ass - they have to add weird hacks to virtual machines to get around flaws in the bytecode spec.

      And not all virtual machines have the weird hacks, so I'd be worried about security on a lot of JVMs.

    20. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 2

      The fact is that Microsoft never innovated anything

      The fact is that you are so passionate about this personal conviction, that you could care less about any facts. Try to remain objective about this stuff - it's just technology!


      Oh baloney. The FACT is that C# and Java are closer than any other two languages I have ever seen, in fact C# is closer to Java than versions of the SAME language in many cases (say FORTRAN 77 and FORTRAN 90 for example).

      The FACT is also that if you take a close, hard look at Microsoft products, you are going to have a HELL of a time finding any single product feature that wasn't done somewhere else first.

      [The CLR] "... like the JVM, is based on an abstract stack machine. Apart from this superficial level of commonality, the design of the two virtual machines is quite different."

      And the point of this is exactly what? The author of this statement is biased? How can you can possibly state the fact that underlying structure of both the JVM and CLR is an abstract state machine 'superficial'? This is in fact the most FUNDAMENTAL commonality that you could possibly have in such implementations. How can you not realize that?

    21. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by alext · · Score: 2

      A lot? A bit is closer to the mark. As has been pointed out frequently in recent /. discussions, the CLR is ideal for running lots of languages that are semantically close to C#, just as the JVM is good for languages like Java.

      Every now and then, a new 'language independent language' appears - an IDL, a VM, a higher-level 'scripting' system, X Schema - which then proves to be not so independent after all, in that it assumes and constrains too much.

      Gosling is relieved because there are lots of clever things that MS could have done given a blank sheet - support for logic/query programming, inbuilt databases, workflow systems, LISP-style programs-as-data etc. - but even with billions of R&D dollars at their disposal, they merely managed to clone Java. Unless you really believe that a DCE/CORBA-style common type system qualifies as innovation?

    22. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by gewalker · · Score: 2

      OK, since apparently Java is great and C# is not because it is not innovative. Tell me, oh wise one, what features are in Java that were not done "somewhere else first"? (Be sure to look very hard)

      Does this lack make Java bad (no)
      Does this lack make Java non-innovative (nope)
      Does this make C#/.net innovative (I don't know, I have not decided yet)

      In software, innovation comes from the combination of known things, not something completely new (software patents bad, copyright good). Java was innovative because it combined a lot of features into a well-conceived whole. Even though Java started off as C++, it was developed into something much more interesting.

      C# steals most heavily from Java, Delphi, C++, big deal. Java stole most heavily from C++, big deal. Everything OO steals from SmallTalk, Simula. All of these stole from Algol and FORTRAN.

      For Gosling, C# is crufty because it allows you to break the rules (pointers, defeat the default garbage collection). For me C# is good because GC is the default, and you have to declare your intention to break the normal rules. Great poets break the rules of good English, but they learned the rules first, and then decided to break them for effect.

      For me, I've broken the rules when standard techniques don't work well. If you are a good programmer (a reasonable assumption) then you have probably broken the rules too. Elegance is often sacrificed on the alter of necessity.

      Seems to me that I recall Java allowing you to make calls to native code (JNI), mostly for the same reasons (flexibility & legacy code). I believe Gosling was being just a touch biased. I believe we are both smart enough to see that. And I'm certain we are both smart enough to see bias when one of the MS minions says something.

      AFAIK, there is something innovative in C#, feel free to correct me, I'm probably wrong. In that C# gives you the declaritive ability for unsafe coding techniques. Sounds wierd when I say it, but this seems innovative to me. I don't have to switch from Java to C (2nd language, somewhat clunky) in order to break the rules, yet I don't have a language (C/C++) where unsafe coding is in abundance.

      You might even note bias in what I have said. I prefer to think of myself as biased towards the truth -- an objective observer. You may perceive me to be a sycophant for MS.

      Really, it's OK by me. My self-perception does depend on your viewpoint. But, as we try to develop our own self-perception, it generally makes sense to listen to the viewpoints of others. Occasionally, someone else is right. Maybe even Microsoft -- even if so, good software does not imply righteous company.

    23. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by tshak · · Score: 1

      Just the nature of your posting still alludes to the fact that you are fighting me with a conviction, not facts.

      The author of this statement is biased?

      Okay, I'm sure you're a smart guy, so let's just try and think about this for half of a second. A) The Author was originally working on a Compent Pascal compiler for Java. He is not a MS fanboy.

      B) The Author is not speaking within the context of this discussion. He could care less if the technologies were the same or not. He's not arguing any points. Actually, in the entire introduction, this is the ONLY time he actually compares the two technologies. He's simply educating the reader about the history of abstract machines. Sorry, no conspiracy, move along...

      Your emotionally charged posts are void of fact, or of any attempt to discuss things on an intellectual level. You can have your opinions of MS. It is even logical to conclude that because of MS's business practices, no matter how good their technology, that you will not support it. However, when you have a conviction that burns inside you, any fact that is presented to you will be filtered out if it doesn't fit your anti-MS bias (kind of like an ignorant religious zealot).

      Quite frankly, I'm not interested in discussing this further, unless of course you have something constructive to post. For your own benefit, you should actually read up on both the JVM and the CLR (I'm talking books, not little web writeups) and at least be able to come up with your own educated conclusion.

      --

      There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
    24. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by tshak · · Score: 2

      Basically, VB.Net is a skinned version of C#.

      Well, if that's the case, then it's a pretty ugly skin!

      --

      There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
    25. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by smallpaul · · Score: 2

      Hmmm...given that only "managed*" code will run in the CLR, I don't think that non-Java like languages will ever run in .NET.

      The CLR can be used for both managed and unmanaged code. http://www.yasd.com/tutorials/c_sharp/chap17_1.htm . And anyhow, other languages could be "managed." There is already a prototype of Python running on the CLR and there is no reason to believe that it could not be finished one day to be equivalent to Jython. And C++ runs on the CLR: already.

    26. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by Vulture_ · · Score: 1
      C# forces explicit Method Overriding (via the virtual/override or new keywords).
      One of the worst flaws of C++'s OO system was adopted by C#. What a laugh. Java gets it right with this one -- all methods should be virtual.
      C# supports namespaces. Unlike Java's packages, namespaces do not rely on a file/folder structure.
      Java classes and packages do not rely on a file/folder structure either. That's just the way the bootstrap class loader in a typical JVM defines its packages and classes. A class loader (bootstrap or otherwise) is allowed to define packages and classes with whatever name it pleases. For instance, an embedded JVM might have its entire class library burned into ROM in a flat format, with no notion of files or directories at all.
      The C# Abstract or "Virtual Machine" (CLR) is not designed for C#, rather for language neutrality (to an extent). Java and the JVM, however, are closely tied.
      Wrong. Several languages other than Java have been implemented to run on the JVM, such as ML (and, I believe, Python).

      The JVM is not closely tied to Java. It is Java that is closely tied to the JVM. Big difference.

      --

      The only way the typical /.er can pick up a chick is with a forklift. -- AC

    27. Re:"relieved that it wasn't creative" by Vulture_ · · Score: 1
      That doesn't negate his point. After all it would take a monkey fifteen minutes to create those wrapper classes. But you can't add two float wrappers to each other or do a "++" on an integer wrapper can you? So eventually you need to deal with wrapping and unwrapping. That's just plain silly and the only excuse for it is performance. If .NET gets similar performance without the primitive type hack then Java has no excuse.
      It's called memory consumption. Object wrappers consume way more memory than primitive types. That's why Java has primitive types.

      As for adding two float wrappers to each other or such crap, you don't need to. Unwrap the wrappers, do your math, and (if necessary) re-wrap. Object wrappers are only used in Java for when one needs to pass a primitive type to a method that expects an object. (This allows the storage of primitive types in Java collections, for instance.) In most cases, a Java programmer will be using primitive types, and not object wrappers.

      Why is it so important that primitive types behave like objects, anyway?

      In particular, Java could use a strong dose of syntactic sugar. C# is a little better, but just a little. For starters, I'd suggest you look at Python handles iterators, indexers, generators, and dictionary and list initializers. There is nothing I hate more than switching from Python to Java and realizing that I could write half as much code and it could be clearer. Even ignoring the static type checking system, Java seems to go out of its way be verbose. That iterator class crap is just unbelievably ugly.
      Could you provide some Java and Python code, for comparison, to prove this point?
      --

      The only way the typical /.er can pick up a chick is with a forklift. -- AC

  15. interesting quotes.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "They might have done something creative around ... integrating business logic into the language ..."

    What the hell does this mean? Seriously, I want to know, what is business logic and what would it do in a programming language??

    "Q: Did you feel that way when you saw C#?

    A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, abused and ripped off was also in there just to some extent."

    What, like Bjarne Stroustrup did after Java? ;-)

    1. Re:interesting quotes.. by SirRichardPumpaloaf · · Score: 4, Funny

      if (boss_says_so)
      {
      assert(1>2);
      }
      exit(0);

      Using business logic this program will successfully complete?

    2. Re:interesting quotes.. by aminorex · · Score: 2

      suggestion: instead, remember winston in 1984:

      if (required) {
      assert (2 + 2 == 5);
      }

      --
      -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
  16. Right, right. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    And, I mean, the fact that the syntax [of C#] is so much -- is like exactly the same, or just about exactly the same [as that of Java].

    Kind of like how Java is just about exactly the same as, say, C++?

    In other news, Mandrake accused of ripping off RedHat, Mrs. Torvalds accused of ripping of Charles Schulz

    1. Re:Right, right. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful
      Kind of like how Java is just about exactly the same as, say, C++?

      You've got to be kidding!

      C++: Multiple inheritance is allowed, and there is no singly-rooted hierarchy.

      Java: Classes can inherit from only one base class but can implement an unlimited number of "interfaces". The language imposes a singly-rooted hierarchy. The root class is java.lang.Object, whose instance methods include equals, hashCode, and toString.

      C#: Classes can inherit from only one base class but can implement an unlimited number of "interfaces". The language imposes a singly-rooted hierarchy. The root class is System.Object, whose instance methods include Equals, GetHashCode, and ToString.

      Sure, Java and C++ have some syntactic similarities between them, but nowhere near as many as Java and C#.

  17. Freedom To Innovate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Speaking of Microsoft's "Freedom To Innovate Network" -- Why do you suppose that freedomtoinnovate.net now seems to point to the EFF?

  18. Disappoining by igrek · · Score: 5, Funny

    What a disappointing interview... Could you expect something as boring as this from, say, Larry Wall? Never. Or when Stroustrup criticizes Java, he has some valid (and interesting) arguments. But I have not found any insights in this Gosling interview. Microsoft sucks and J2EE rules. How interesting.

    The funny thing is that he says
    1) They copied everything from Java
    2) They could add clever things to their language, but they didn't

    Well, at least, he's honest about Java ;)

    1. Re:Disappoining by aminorex · · Score: 2

      Yeah, I think Gosling doesn't understand how to use
      the press. You don't talk *to* an interviewer, on
      their (how low can you go?) level. You talk
      *through* them, use them as a bully pulpit to reach
      your target audience.

      (Or perhaps he's a Kantian, and is obligated to
      treat all moral patients as ends rather than as
      means.)

      --
      -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
    2. Re:Disappoining by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Indeed. There is no doubt that Gosling is a very bright guy, and has a track record of interesting technologies. But all this interview proved is that even smart people can have blind spots and be stupid.

      I mean, he can't find ANYTHING positive to say about the technology? How about the multi-language support? And most of even the strident critics of Microsoft who are honest have to admit that there are some interesting ideas in C#.

      They might have done something creative around ... integrating business logic into the language ...

      Business logic in the language??? Hey Gosling -- that's the advantage of MULTI LANGUAGE SUPPORT. There's this language called COBOL. Maybe you've heard of it. It has PILES of business logic built into the language.

      And, I mean, the fact that the syntax [of C#] is so much -- is like exactly the same, or just about exactly the same [as that of Java].

      That's such bullshit. Yeah, and I could also say that "... the syntax [of Java] is [...] just about exactly the same as that of C++". Their both C++ derived languages. Of course they're going to look similar.

      The difference is that C# has fixed some of Java's brain damage, one of which is the lack of an unsigned data type which is just unforgivable.

      All that proved to me is that Sun is really, really frightened about the potential of .NET. Java is an interesting platform, and an interesting language. But there's a huge opportunity for someone to come in with better solutions, and Sun knows it.

      --
      Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
    3. Re:Disappoining by rbeattie · · Score: 2

      Disappointing is definitely the word.

      I saw James Gosling speak here in Madrid not too long ago and I can say that I was completely disappointed. His answers to questions were blunt, uninteresting and usually condescending - sometimes even just repeating the question as an answer or just blowing it off entirely.

      From what he himself said, he seems to have not paid much attention to what's going on with the Java language since helping create it... That is to say, he put all his eggs in the Jini basket, and when that tech failed to catch on, he was lost. J2EE, web services and J2ME? Nada. It was obvious from his speech and answers to questions that he doesn't have a clue.

      The worst part was that he didn't seem very technical any more. He's into management and evangelism and all that and avoided specifics whenever possible. Thus, from now on I feel I can safely discount anything I read in the press from him because I know he's just bullshitting (which is obvious from this article too...)

      -Russ

      --
      Me
    4. Re:Disappoining by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is it just me, or does Larry Wall always sound like he's high?

    5. Re:Disappoining by gidds · · Score: 1
      The difference is that C# has fixed some of Java's brain damage, one of which is the lack of an unsigned data type which is just unforgivable.
      For one thing, char is unsigned (range 0x0000–0xFFFF). And for another, who uses unsigned types anyway? I don't recall needing them once in C, and I've written a lot. Maybe they're important for a few low-level things, but they're hardly an `unforgivable' omission from Java IMO.
      --

      Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.

    6. Re:Disappoining by Reality+Master+101 · · Score: 2

      I don't recall needing them once in C, and I've written a lot.

      You've never compared two 32-bit epoch-formatted dates in Unix? If you used time_t, you used an unsigned type. If you didn't use an unsigned type, your code is broken.

      To be honest, if you've written "a lot" of C code, I doubt you've written anything very complex if you've never needed an unsigned type. Communication protocols, compression/decompression algorithms, ... hell, I can just remember off-hand that I used an unsigned type in a dynamic resizable hash table algorithm I wrote that used a 16 bit bucket size. If I had to stick with signed integers, it would have a range 32K rather than 64K, which is rather significant.

      Man, how about hashing algorithms??? Can you even implement CRC32 without an unsigned data type?

      Amusingly, I seem to recall a bug in Sun's 3D libraries where they had to kludge around the lack of an 8 bit unsigned data type, but forgot in a certain instance and the routines failed for high range values. Good thing that "saved" us from the evil, useless unsigned types!

      --
      Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
  19. SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Gosling and McNealy need to tone down the vitriol - Sun is in major trouble. Not just a bad quarter (although they've had many of those), but key aspects of Sun's market position and future directions.

    Linux is totally chewing up their low end. They don't want to admit it straight out - they have been playing nice with open source folks while quietly taking Cobalt off of the market and making it a bit player.

    Meanwhile IBM is taking it apart at the high end with a proposition that focuses as much on services as hardware and software..because IBM knows billable hours are where the real renewable revenue is.

    On the architecture side, Sun is pitting itself against an entire enconomy - Intel and Microsoft. Sun simply can't outresearch, outspend or outmarket either of these companies, let alone both of them and their attendent co-competitors (Dell, AMD, HP, etc). Once Microsoft gets Win2k up to par in every respect with Solaris (it will happen), they will start peeling high-price clients off of Sun with little contest (meanwhile linux will chew up Sun's low end more and more).

    On top of all of this, they're playing mindshare catch-up with the half-hearted JavaOne. Sorry James, MS beat you to the punch on webservices by a year.

    I just hope Java can't be opened up enough that it doesn't evaporate along with its owner.

    1. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by aminorex · · Score: 2

      Actually, Dave Winer beat them to the punch by two
      years.

      According to analyst reports, 40% of web services
      will be microsoft-owned over the next 5 years,
      40% will be Java-backed SOAP/XML-RPC, and 20% will
      be also-ran.

      As regards Sun's stock values, while there is a
      correlation with server market share, it's really
      surprisingly low. Sun can save it's butt one of
      two (and probably by a mix of both) ways:
      The burgeoning embedded Java business, and putting
      out really butt-kicking CPUs and interconnects for
      their large SMP and NUMA boxes. The volumes on
      the first of those are huge, and the margins on
      the second of those are similarly huge.

      Sun looks bad right now because they were a
      primary bubble stock. In fact, their P/E ratios
      and prospectus are quite sane and robust now.

      Vitriol gets press. Vitriol directed at microsoft
      is also a moral imperative. Why tone it down?
      But it doesn't deserve a slashdot story, that's
      for sure.

      --
      -I like my women like I like my tea: green-
    2. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Once Microsoft gets Win2k up to par in every respect with Solaris (it will happen)..."

      When is this supposed to happen. I remember
      people saying things like this about NT when it
      first came out. Why should we expect any better
      of a showing from Win2k?

    3. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by thomas.galvin · · Score: 1

      Once Microsoft gets Win2k up to par in every respect with Solaris (it will happen), they will start peeling high-price clients off of Sun with little contest (meanwhile linux will chew up Sun's low end more and more).

      Microsoft may get their technlogy up to par with Sun, though I doubt it, but they will never, emphasise never, beat Sun in the high end market as long as they pursue their "software as a service" strategy.

      Microsoft can talk about their "freedom to innovate" all they want, but they have come to a place where they have innovated or stolen just about everything worthwhile already. Their browser is one of, if not the, best on the market; so good, in fact, that I do most of my browsing on a Sun PCI card running on a solaris box. I refuse to touch Outlook, but many, many of the people I work with don't know any other way. Microsoft's office suite is the top of the line; it does basically everything you could want it to, and their .doc format is as close to a standard in the business world as you are likely to find; again, I have Word on the PCI card so I can read all of the .doc files people send me. XP is stable enough for personal/desktop uses, and now comes with the "ooh, shiney!" factor. Microsoft has accomplished what it set out to do; it has met the needs of 95% of the computing world.

      And that is killing them. Many users are getting to the point that they no longer need to upgrade.

      "Buy Office 200!" "Why?" "To get rid of the damn paperclip!" "Well, ok..."

      "Buy Office XP!" "Why?" "Well, uh, it has better, uh, marco support, and it's, um, more tightly integrated. Yeah, better integration!" "Well, I guess..."

      "Buy Office XP^2!" "Why?" "Well, uh...just buy it, dammit." "Um, no."

      So Microsoft is trying to rope people into a (relativly unnecssary) perpetual upgrade cycle. They have realized that their ability to add value does not meet with their desire for more revenue. IT guys know this. Suits are going to start realizing this. No one has been fired for going with Microsoft, but that doesn't mean that no one ever will be...

      So, let's say Microsoft pulls off some sort of miricle (or invokes some sort of dark god) and makes XP as good as UNIX. Businesses have a choice; a free *NIX flavor, reliable, but kind of "roll your own," a proprietary *NIX, realiable, better support, and a proven track record as the platofrm for mission critical servers, or Windows, with a proven track record for (poor) security, astronomical tech support costs, and a license that will bleed money out of you just sitting there.

      I belive that A) is going to grow, and that most of the companies that provide B) are going to have to move towards distributing and supporting an open *NIX built for and running on their hardware. As for c); Apple was one the computer company. Now it is a computer company. They sat on their haunches, made some bad business decisions, and got replaced. IBM was once the computer company. Now, it is a computer company. Big? Yes. Powerful? Yes. Rich? Yes. But the computer company? No. Now, that title belongs to Microsoft. But for how long? They have almost no hope of breaching the server market, and on the desktop, Apple is looking a lot more attractive to a lot of people, myself included.

      Microsoft has reached saturation, and is trying to use its monopoly to support itself by forcing users into questionable licenses. This is not going to work. They are also trying to diversify into higher-end markets, but since their products offer no compelling reason to make the switch, and a number of reasons not to, this will not work.

      I am not going to tell you that this is the end of Microsoft. I will, though, tell you that this is the beginning of the end of Microsoft as we know it.

      And as for Java...Java needs to look at C# et al. and continue to make sure that they stay ahead of the game, but if www.wehavethewayout.com is being served by apache from a BSD box, and they are using JSP for their web community...it would be a mistake to declare Microsoft defeated, but this gave me a very warm feeling. I almost smiled... ;-)

    4. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 2
      Microsoft may get their technlogy up to par with Sun, though I doubt it, but they will never, emphasise never, beat Sun in the high end market as long as they pursue their "software as a service" strategy.

      Huh? McNealy is pushing this model as strong as Gates is.

      Microsoft can talk about their "freedom to innovate" all they want, but they have come to a place where they have innovated or stolen just about everything worthwhile already.

      90% of the people in the city morgue had the right of way. So what? What matters is who is left standing.

      Linux will be left standing because it doesn't need to make money to be succesful. Microsoft, Intel and IBM will be left standing be left standing because they will own the respective markets for software, CPUs and services. Moral legitimacy means zilch.

    5. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by thomas.galvin · · Score: 1

      90% of the people in the city morgue had the right of way. So what? What matters is who is left standing.
      Linux will be left standing because it doesn't need to make money to be succesful. Microsoft, Intel and IBM will be left standing be left standing because they will own the respective markets for software, CPUs and services. Moral legitimacy means zilch.


      So read the rest of my post. Microsoft needs to make money to survive, as you pointed out, and they are running out of ways to do so. FreeNix will grow because it is free. UNIX vendors will migrate towards it because 1) it is UNIX, and 2), they will want whatever OS you use on their hardware. Microsoft will be left standing, but they do not have a once-and-for-all claim to king of the hill.

    6. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by elmegil · · Score: 3, Insightful
      They don't want to admit it straight out - they have been playing nice with open source folks while quietly taking Cobalt off of the market and making it a bit player.

      I guess you missed the part where Sun announced that they'll be shipping Linux and supporting Linux sometime midyear. I'd say that amounts to "admitting it straight out".

      Once Microsoft gets Win2k up to par in every respect with Solaris (it will happen)

      By the time Win2k reaches Solaris 8/9 levels, Solaris will have moved on. They haven't caught Solaris yet; the only chance they have is if Sun just goes out of business.

      --
      7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
    7. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 2
      Microsoft needs to make money to survive, as you pointed out, and they are running out of ways to do so.

      Other than (among others) invading the game console market, eroding Oracle's share in databases, smoking past lycos and yahoo on the mediametrix charts with MSN, spinning off expedia, or gunning up their licensing fees? People have been saying "Microsoft is over" for at least five years now, but they keep moving into new markets.

    8. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 2
      I guess you missed the part where Sun announced that they'll be shipping Linux and supporting Linux sometime midyear.

      Then they just committed suicide. There is absolutely no compelling reason to use Sun hardware for linux. At the low end you can get better price performance. At the high end you can pop linux on an IBM mainframe and get not only the top end of hardware but a superior services force.

      Thats the crux of the issue for Sun - they're damned if they don't support linux, but doubly damned if they do - they're more or less endorsing commodity solutions, which will ultimately lead to commodity hardware.

    9. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's even worse than that. You forgot all about Oracle. Why would I mention Oracle? Because Oracle is moving their big DB off of Sun hardware and onto Linux on x86 hardware. Sun makes its key money on premium hardware and service agreements. Oracle (their most important partner) moving to x86 Linux is a huge blow to Sun, much more than this Web Services stuff.

      These businesses are declining as people are adopting the Java platform and running it on x86. So you want web services. Well, if 40% is J2EE, and that 40% runs on IBM and x86 JVMs, then Sun has written itself out of the picture by developing Java.

      But what do I know? I work for the software company near Seattle.

    10. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by s390 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Microsoft needs to make money to survive... and they are running out of ways to do so.

      That's perceptive, but Microsoft (M$)is not a business (like IBM, say) that makes money and pays dividends to stockholders. M$ pays zero dividends but pays a substantial portion of employee compensation in the form of stock options (which it _doesn't_ expense against revenue but _does_ write off for tax purposes). M$'s employees exercise their stock options and take profits because the stock price is higher than the options' strike prices. This works because the market perceives that M$ will continue to expand and grow, thus its stock price remains high. Mutual funds and ordinary investors buy M$ stock from M$ insiders based upon an unrealistic belief in Microsoft's perpetual growth.

      M$ is a very sophisticated pyramid scheme, but it is _just_ a pyramid scheme. They hide revenue and income in good quarters in order to prop up the numbers in poor quarters, thus creating the illusion of financial stability (and the SEC is investigating this). In prior years, M$ made nearly 10% of total revenues from selling Puts on its own stock (knowing that it could manage its numbers to keep the stock price high enough to make those Puts expire worthless or at least worth less than they were paid for them). In fact, M$ would have _lost_ money in all of the past several years if they'd had to expense their stock option grants to employees! That's why M$ is a pyramid scheme. Still with me?

      M$ doesn't just need to make money to survive - they need to _grow_ to survive. Once their growth flattens for a few quarters, the big mutual funds will notice the lack of dividends and start selling their stock. Financial reform laws relative to employee stock option grants moving through the US Congress and likely to pass, post-Enron, will further depress M$ financial results. One of these quarters, M$ will have to pay off on all those Puts they sold, also cutting net income. The fall of Microsoft will be truly spectacular, although in slow motion like Enron, but much larger. Mutual funds, 401k plans, and individual investors who don't get out early will lose billions of dollars. Microsoft's current market capitalization - the total value of all stock outstanding - is over $325 billion; in contrast, IBM's market cap is only about $17.9 billion, but IBM annual revenues and profits are about 10 times Microsoft's. Begin to see the problem? This explains a lot about Microsoft's savage actions.

    11. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by pnuema · · Score: 0, Troll

      Somebody mod this up, please. Finally a geek that understands financials.

    12. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by javaXP · · Score: 1

      "On the architecture side, Sun is pitting itself against an entire enconomy - Intel and Microsoft. Sun simply can't outresearch, outspend or outmarket either of these companies,"

      Java, as a matter of fact, isn't a product of a company, but of the entire industry, with the especial exception of microsoft :)

      Microsoft can't spend more money in .NET and C# than the community spends in Java.

    13. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by blank · · Score: 1

      well what about the middle end? isn't there a good enough market for that? surely there's a need for servers that aren't close to the mainframe in peformance or price but are way more powerful than a IA-64 commodity box. sun's hardware isn't limited to the PC architecture, so even though linux is a commodity solution couldn't linux still be made to perform better on sun hardware than the intel alternative?

      --

      bah. start over

    14. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by Derkec · · Score: 3, Interesting
      They are totally admitting that Linux is chewing up their low end. That's why they've decided to get serious about Sun Linux which is a fairly standard linux distro with Sun interop built seriously. They take their big Sun wide initives, for instance N1 and port them into a linux distro. Then they push Sun Linux boxen (probably x86) to cover the datacenter fringe. They can sell these at a bit of a premium because they will work so nicely with the big Sun hardware deep in the datacenter. Sun protects is lower flank with it's own Linux distro while continueing to attack IBM with Solaris and Sparc at the high end.


      Furthermore, I think your assumption that MS will bring Win2K up to Solaris quality at the very high end is probably optimistic. Sun has breathed big server OSes for years, MS has failed miserably with datacenter approaches. They might pull it off, but this is an issue Sun has a long time to deal with. The other question is what box are you going to put MS on in the datacenter? Itanium? That's flopped so far, but it will be interesting to see if it improves.


      While Sun may be outmarketted by MS, they have an odd ally. IBM is also a Java fan and does have the budget to go head to head with Wintel. While their R&D budget might be relatively small, they can focus on building a scaleable kick butt architecture while Intel has to try and build big servers and compete with AMD in the $600 computer market. With the Alpha engineers Sun swiped from a disarrayed HP-paq, they should be able to make it interesting.


      I don't think they are really playing too much of catch up on the mindshare front either. I would imagine if you counted the number of Java developers and the number or .Net developers, java would be ahead by leaps and bounds. Meanwhile, MS has recognized that it is hated by recent graduates who are flocking in droves to Java. Server-side Java and J2EE has an install base which makes .Net look like a weak late comer. The MS marketting machine kicks ass, so Sun has a run for it's money, but again it's got allies like IBM, BEA and Oracle. Many of these companies compete with eachother fiercely (IBM has got to be in Sun's top 3 competitors) but can align to try and create a bigger non-Wintel pie. Then they'll fight tooth and nail for pieces of that pie.


      Yeah, Sun is in a tough spot, but historically that's when it has done its best work. I've become a big sun fan of late, and am really interested to see where they will go. The company needs to reinvent itself somewhat (mostly to kick butt in software and storage) but it has done that often enough before. It should be fun. Sun's an aggressive enough company that it won't go down without a fight, so again, it'll be fun to watch.

    15. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by Dave_bsr · · Score: 1

      "Buy Office 200!" "Why?" "To get rid of the damn paperclip!" "Well, ok..."
      "Buy Office XP!" "Why?" "Well, uh, it has better, uh, marco support, and it's, um, more tightly integrated. Yeah, better integration!" "Well, I guess..."
      "Buy Office XP^2!" "Why?" "Well, uh...just buy it, dammit." "Um, no."


      LOL. that is good stuff.

      but if www.wehavethewayout.com is being served by apache from a BSD box, and they are using JSP for their web community...it would be a mistake to declare Microsoft defeated, but this gave me a very warm feeling.

      again. good stuff. it gives me a warm feeling. and a "ha-ha, they suck!" feeling too. thanks for a good laugh, and a well-written post.

      --


      Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
    16. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by mmusn · · Score: 2
      Java, as a matter of fact, isn't a product of a company, but of the entire industry, with the especial exception of microsoft :)

      If only that were true. Unfortunately, it isn't. Java, like Microsoft Windows, is really the product of only one company, Sun, although a number of other companies (IBM, Apple) are reselling it with some modifications.

      Microsoft can't spend more money in .NET and C# than the community spends in Java.

      What makes you think Microsoft is going it alone? The usual suspects are investing in C# and .NET. And C#/.NET isn't even going for the same people as Java--it will find acceptance quickly among Microsoft's current VC++ and VB programmers, because it's a whole lot better than what they have right now.

    17. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by dgroskind · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The fall of Microsoft will be truly spectacular...

      First, people have been making this statement for years for all the reason you gave and more. In all those years, people who continued to invest in Microsoft made money on the stock. In the stock market there's no skill in simply predicting a stock will fall. The trick is predicting when. There's no reason why Microsoft won't continue to defy the fundamentals for years.

      Second, you seem to be equating the value of the stock with the stability of the company. Microsoft is a profitable company with a solid customer base. It in no way resembles Enron.

      In fact, M$ would have _lost_ money in all of the past several years if they'd had to expense their stock option grants to employees!

      So what? If the accounting rules had been different, presumably Microsoft wouldn't have used this loophole as a way to compensate its employees. Using tax laws and regulations effectively is a sign of good management, not bad management.

    18. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by andynyc · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Finally a geek that understands financials.

      He doesn't understand them that well. Bigger is not always better. Anyway, IBM's revenue and profit are NOT 10x that of MS.

      Focus on the top-line numbers. IBM's annual revenue in 2001 was 85.9b, Microsoft's was 25.3 (Note: MS's financial year ends June 30), about 3.5x. Since IBM sells a lot of hardware that is expensive to build, though, their cost of sales was 54.1b, vs. just 3.5b over at MS, leaving gross profit at 31.8b at IBM, 21.8b at MS.

      Now why is MS stock so much higher? Stock price is all about growth. MS's gross profit is 116% higher than it was 4 years ago. IBM's has grown just 3% in that same time period. And the fact that MS has $40b in short-term assets, just $11 in short-term debt, and NO long-tem debt, makes portfolio managers sleep soundly at night.

      I'm not knocking IBM... it's a great company, but that's the benchmark you chose to compare to Microsoft.

      And IBM reported net income at $7.7b in 2001, vs. $7.3 at MS. So please explain where the 10x figure you stated comes from.

    19. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by elmegil · · Score: 2
      At the high end you can pop linux on an IBM mainframe and get not only the top end of hardware but a superior services force.

      Right. You work for IBM and I work for Sun. Either that, or you've been doing some really heavy koolaid drinking.

      I do work for Sun. I have supported customers who went to Sun for database servers after IBM failed repeatedly to provide the "high end" solution they needed. I have had these same (very demanding) customers tell me that the reason they like Sun is that the field support organization blows the doors off of IBM's capabilities.

      I've also supported customers whose primary admin workforce were IBM Global Services people. With a few exceptions where IBMGS hired on staff that already worked at the site, IBMGS was difficult to work with, and frequently not very organized. I've seen cases where the customer specifically asked for something to be fixed and IBMGS stood directly in the way, insisting that it wouldn't work (it did in the end) or that since it violated some policy the fix just wasn't acceptable (let's see...fix a critical problem, or adhere to the letter of some bureaucratic policy created without this situation in mind?)

      Then there's this "linux on a mainframe" concept, which really doesn't make much sense. You've got Linus saying he doesn't care to make the kernel scale past 4 procs. Which isn't to say it never will, or that no one is working on it, but it sure doesn't speak well for the priority of making Linux well on big iron, no matter who the hardware vendor is. A dozen tiny little 1 - 4 CPU instances just aren't the right answer for a lot of classes of problems.

      --
      7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
    20. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by thomas.galvin · · Score: 1

      The trick is predicting when. There's no reason why Microsoft won't continue to defy the fundamentals for years. Second, you seem to be equating the value of the stock with the stability of the company. Microsoft is a profitable company with a solid customer base. It in no way resembles Enron.

      I know you weren't writing to me, but...Microsoft resembles IBM, not Enron. They are going to be around for a long time. They are going to be profitable for a long time. But I do not believe that they are going to be number one for more than a few more years.

    21. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by thomas.galvin · · Score: 1

      Glad you liked it. :-)

    22. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by thomas.galvin · · Score: 1

      would imagine if you counted the number of Java developers and the number or .Net developers, java would be ahead by leaps and bounds.

      I haven't looked at the numbers, but I think you might be mistaken...simply because everyone who uses Visual Studio is, or is about to become, a .NET user. Not because the .NET architecture is inherantly better, but because "oh, it's time to upgrade VisualStudio." (Pops in CD.) All of these people are going to be counted by Microsoft as .NET users, which may be accurate, but it also doesn't meant that they are eating away at Java.

    23. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by dgroskind · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Microsoft resembles IBM, not Enron.

      Microsoft resembles the IBM of old in size and market dominance but not in weaknesses. IBM's fall came about because its core business was undermined by microprocessors. Despite open source, Microsoft faces no such threat. It is continuing to enhance and expand its product line and adapt to new trends as they arise.

      But I do not believe that they are going to be number one for more than a few more years

      And who will replace them? There's no single company that can duplicate Microsoft's complete product line, certainly not in a few years. One can imagine a number of vendors replacing individual products but could any of them, or instance, exterminate Word the way Word exterminated WordPerfect?

      The history of business is one of industrial giants falling and even disappearing altogether. Presumably Microsoft's turn will come as well. However, consider General Electric. It was one of the original Dow Jones Industrials over a hundred years ago and it is still there today. Like Microsoft, it glommed onto a fundamental industry (electricity) and rode out the ups and downs of the business cycles, diversified, and marketed itself well.

      When you look at Microsoft's strengths (astute management, large cash reserves, overwhelming market dominance, diverse product line, brandname recognition) and the fact its market is still growing, it's hard to imagine it losing its number one spot in our lifetime. The most likely scenario is that it will use its huge cash reserve to diversity like GE and become even bigger, although perhaps not as a software vendor.

    24. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by peterarm · · Score: 1

      And you noticed how the poster shifted the decimal point on IBM's market cap too, right? Methinks we're being trolled...

    25. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by Chris+Johnson · · Score: 2
      Microsoft's market capitalisation being almost twenty times IBM's on a tenth of the revenues and profits means that somebody is being a fscking idiot. Using tax laws and revenues to sustain this does not change the underlying situation in any way.

      200 times the valuation relative to earnings means a bubble- a SPECULATIVE bubble. The worth of the actual company has nothing to do with it- we are talking about investment behavior, and there really is no way out of this other than a run on the stock when it crashes. It can't go forever- even if everyone on the PLANET eventually became an amway distributor oops I mean a MS stockholder (they almost are already, what with pension plans and all), it would hit a point where no further growth was possible- at say 2000 times the valuation relative to earnings- and boom. Actually, I'm surprised it's got this far... I'd bet money they can't reach 500 times IBM's value/earnings ratio. It's astonishing they even got to 200 times the value of IBM without the bubble bursting. Are people completely crazy to swallow that one?

      All those who still believe in dot-com stocks even now, carry on. Everyone else- get the hell out of Microsoft stock and anything you do that is predicated on Microsoft stock! That includes pension plans and such things- that or give up on them, as they are going to be bankrupt.

      Speculative bubbles ARE NOT FOREVER. Okay?

    26. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "whole lot better than what they have right now."

      Because it is whole lot better than anything out there, including Java.

    27. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 2
      I have supported customers who went to Sun for database servers after IBM failed repeatedly to provide the "high end" solution they needed.

      I've also supported customers whose primary admin workforce were IBM Global Services people.

      Blah. I can find ten anecdotes that contradict every one of yours...and you can then contradict every one of mine. Its pointless. Lets look at stock charts instead and let the market sort it out. This comparison does not bode well for your company...and your defensiveness belies that you have heard the same points I am making come out of the mouths of other Sun employees.

    28. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 2

      No, I'm sorry, you are wrong, cheaper always wins. No one will use Sun hardware for linux. I am not going to offer up any more support than the fact that cheaper always wins in the end and there is not one fact in the history of computing products to contradict this. Sun is committing suicide.

    29. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by dgroskind · · Score: 1

      200 times the valuation relative to earnings means a bubble...

      Microsoft's earnings per share is about 1.4 and IBM's is about 4.4. However, Microsoft's growth rate is higher and insofar as the stock price reflects anything, it is anticipated growth. Probably at some point Microsoft's stock price will more closely reflect its EPS but that would be sometime in the future, when its earnings stabilize. Given that it's revenue has more than doubled since 1997 and growth has held up well during the recent downturn, it looks premature to talk about earnings stabilizing. Even then, Microsoft would be an extremely profitable company. Microsoft has about the same profit as IBM on about 30% of the revenue.

      Predicting stock prices is tricky to say the least, but as a company Microsoft's future seems good. It could be a long time before your prediction comes true.

    30. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by elmegil · · Score: 1
      Sorry, but no Sun employee I know says that IBM has better service people than we do. That's the big button you hit, because it's a ridiculous and wrong assertion on your part.

      As for stock charts, perhaps that's the problem. Companies do well when they're run by the vision of their founders. They do pretty badly when they're run by the vision of a high stock price.

      That of course has nothing to do with Linux kicking anyone's butt, BTW.

      --
      7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
    31. Re:SUNW against the wall, this time for keeps by Derkec · · Score: 2
      Cheaper does always win, if you're getting the same goods. Sure, my pc is cheaper than an IBM mainframe but if I need mainframe oomph, I go to IBM. So, if the extras are worth the money the box can be a bit more expensive.


      Also, Sun is talking about selling x86 boxen for linux. So the hardware is not going to cost Sun particularly more than it would cost someone else.

  20. .NET by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The multiple languages engine of the .NET does not sound very delightful since it will only work well in MS environment. I don't know if there will be a port, but it won't be as good as the MS one anyway. On the front end side, the people who use .NET will be those VB, VC++, ASP developers. Of course, many programs will be migrated to web-based also. Other than the cross platform ability, I don't think many of us will consider the features of Java VM as critical. This should be the same for .NET.

    For the back end side, there are things like SOAP, UDDI. Everybody can work on these. I think the open source community will be happy with these, since we finally have something which can compete with the MS DCOM/COM+ stuff(cobra is not popular in the business apps area). The people worry about it are the Java guys/gals. However, even the J2EE or EJB stuff does not domainate the market, Java, as a computer language, still have its way to go.

    I see the .NET hype as a chance for the open software community. The web services/components standard does give us a chance to enter this area.

  21. I don't understand all you closed-minded idots... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1



    First off, bigotry applies to everything, not just race. I do not consider myself a bigot or someone who passes judgement and applies whatever judgement I've made by hate/praise statements. Like every other company, Microsoft is a company. They may happen to have a large market share in the OS world that they've bullied into using their software, they may have copied ideas from other projects/ideas and they may not produce the best code...but name one company that does 100% of the time.

    Have any of you even looked at C# as a language? How about looking at the .NET framework itself? To attack .NET is to attack Object Pascal and Delphi. Why is this? Because C# looks like Java and C/C++, acts like Object Pascal and runs like Smalltalk. Let's admit one things first: nothing in Java is "innovative". Did you read that? NOTHING. From VM's, to garbage collection, to sandbox security...each of these is based on other ideas and projects.

    And so is .NET. So why are most of you so simpleton-minded as to think that nothing that comes out of Redmond can be of any good? I use a PocketPC and write apps using C++ and VB from the Embedded Visual Tools. I write Linux applications with Kylix and GCC, Windows apps in Delphi and .NET.

    Gosling is a joke if he thinks he's anyting special. He got his "fellow" status because of Java, but only once it took off. Other than that, he'd be pretty obscure. Is there anything innovative anymore? Everything is a culmination of ideas. It's like evolution, new species don't just appear, they're based on previous ideas.

    Does anyone remember how much Java 1.0 sucked compared to the Java of today? I sure do, because I was one of them! Does ANYONE get version 1.0 perfect? So why do we expect this from Microsoft? Yes, they're bugs are more public because more people use Windows than there are Christians on this planet, but everyone else's 1.0 products are the same! Security? Please! UNIX had 30 years to improve security. My dad tells me horror stories of all the security bugs in the original systems he'd worked on at Bell Labs!

    So come one, everyone. Open your mind and be a geek and not just a moron.

    Note that I'm not baiting anyone here, so don't come back with dumbass answers like how I am in bed with M$ or something. Give me intelligent responses and arguments and I'll respect that. Anything other than that and let's say that you're a nigger (as in ignorant, not an African or African-American).

    Thank you and have a nice day.

  22. Microsoft trying to lure people away from Java. by TheFlu · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here is an interesting article, describing how Microsoft is trying to get Java developers to write J# (java) code for the .NET platform. Unfortunately .NET only runs on the Windows platform, which has Sun a bit upset.

    1. Re:Microsoft trying to lure people away from Java. by brunes69 · · Score: 2

      Fortunatley, you are wrong. .Net code runs on FreeBSD, using M$'s own implimentation. And come soon, it will run on virtually any platform, using Mono.

    2. Re:Microsoft trying to lure people away from Java. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ahh, but I wouldn't expect an J# compiler for FreeBSD.

      ".NET" is actually a Microsoft trademarked marketing term applied to a wide variety of products. You are talking specifically about CLR implementations and C# compilers.

  23. NO, thank RMS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    RMS create Emacs.

    1. Re:NO, thank RMS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Emacs is responsible for rooting so many boxes in the past.

      See Cuckoo's Egg

  24. Semi-OT: Vengeance and Revolution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Why would he be relieved that MS puts out mediocre stuff? I hate that the world is forced to use boring, insecure, ugly, embraced-and-extended software from MS. I want them to be creative.

    It just comes down to this: which would you rather have happen?

    1. the Bad Guy sees the error of his ways, and turns to Good.
    2. the Bad Guy suffers his deserved damnable fate, and his victims are avenged.
    The second one makes the best pop fiction and is the most emotionally satisfying. The first one is good in a morality play and is the most attractive to a cold objective intellect who just wants to make the world better.

    But before you choose the first option, consider this: the real world is complicated, and there are shades of gray. The Bad Guy will never fully convert; he'll just do enough to get off the hook.

    It's not realistic that a Creative Microsoft would create good software and make computers stop sucking. It's a lot more plausible that they would come up with something that most people consider "good enough", and there is little that can damage progress more than that. The secretary in my office has trouble with MS Explorer (the desktop .. well .. actually the web browser too, but not as much) and the boss has trouble formatting stuff in MS Word -- but they never give up and decide to try something else. Maybe if MS products were 1% worse, everyone would be using something 300% better.

    I'm glad MS products are so unusually poor instead of merely being average in the face of great alternatives, and I sometimes just can't help snicker with satisfaction when people struggle with that crap. Sure, some of it is due childish pettiness and bitterness on my part, but it's also due to the hope in my heart that the user's pain will be so great that he will finally wake up from the nightmare. Nothing would thrill me more than to hear someone suddenly scream, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" So keep sucking, MS, because the more you suck, the sooner, louder, and more glorious the chorus of screams will be.

  25. I read the article.. by evilpaul13 · · Score: 3

    And it basically just sounded a lot like a very smart guy bashing Microsoft.

    I personally doubt .Net could completely lack any real redeeming qualities or there wouldn't be projects like Mono attempting to provide a *NIX platform compatible Common Runtime.

    In the same way that if Java was horrible no one would have made third-party JVMs, like Kaffee (sp?).

    But, that's just me I could be wrong (and wouldn't that be tragic?)

    1. Re:I read the article.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Disclaimer:
      Relax while you read this,
      No I do not compare Bill Gates to Hitler.
      hmm, I better write as AC anyhow, just in case perspectives through my other postings should draw relations to my work.

      Call me Otto but you wrote:
      "I personally doubt .Net could completely lack any real redeeming qualities or there wouldn't be projects like Mono attempting to provide a *NIX platform compatible Common Runtime. "

      And I say:
      Ohh yeah, that big guy over there is beating that other guy over there in the corner, and there is a a bunch of smaller guys helping the big guy. Wow, although I know nothing I better go help them beat up that other guy with the rest of them. Because that other guy is alone and they are more, they must be right.

      Micrsoft has market dominance and power that smaller fish knowing no better, with no stamina tends to suck up to and befriend for. In the hope their participation in Hitlerjugend will protect themselves from the Hitlerjugend discrimination.

      My skin will now forever be stained.
      Marked for life.

      EOD. A Hitler comparison was made.

    2. Re:I read the article.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No I do not compare Bill Gates to Hitler.

      Correct, Hitler didn't hurt nearly as many people as that other guy. Little Nicky in hell told me Hitler is all nice and all after the big black bird has shoved the daily pinapple up his ass.

      Humm, Wonder what that other guy will get up his ass.. pies the size of a truck?

      And a truck or a Boing 767

    3. Re:I read the article.. by thomas.galvin · · Score: 1

      Micrsoft has market dominance and power that smaller fish knowing no better, with no stamina tends to suck up to and befriend for.

      Mono is not a Microsoft-freindly move. Microsoft's people have been quoted as saying that .NET is designed to make great programs easy to write for Windows machines. Mono does nothing to help this. Microsoft wants all the benifits of being a standard and cross-platform, so they submit the CLR to standards review, and get it running on other platforms. Yippee. The libraries that make it useful (roughly analagous to the java.* pakcages) are not a standard, and are not implemented on any other platforms, helping them maintain their monopoly. If Mono works, .NET programs will run on any computer, and this is not what Microsoft wants.

  26. Talking out of one's posterior by Flarners · · Score: 2, Informative
    I have read the license, and it permits any and all modified versions to be released under the exact same license, as long as the modified versions are clearly labelled as such:
    In return, we simply require that you agree:

    [snip]

    3. That if you distribute derivative works of the Software in source code form you do so only under a license that includes all of the provisions of this License, and if you distribute derivative works of the Software solely in object form you do so only under a license that complies with this License.
    4, That if you have modified the Software or created derivative works, and distribute such modifications or derivative works, you will cause the modified files to carry prominent notices so that recipients know that they are not receiving the original Software. Such notices must state: (i) that you have changed the Software; and (ii) the date of any changes.

    IANAL, but I see NOTHING in there that would prevent the creation and distribution of a Linux port. While it's certainly not the GPL, the license is more than adequate for its intended purpose: a reference implementation and educational tool. Please don't spread FUD like that.
    --
    "The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for 'entrepeneur'." -George W. Bush
    1. Re:Talking out of one's posterior by Chris+Johnson · · Score: 2
      You may use any information in intangible form that you remember after accessing the Software. However, this right does not grant you a license to any of Microsoft's copyrights or patents for anything you might create using such information.

      That is the clause that would permit Microsoft to harass pretty much anyone working in open source code who's seen their 'shared source' to barratrous lawsuits.

      You are correct that nothing in there prohibits a Linux port of what they do. That is because they've come up with a provision that is the anti-GPL: in agreeing to their license you specifically acknowledge that you are using remembered ideas from their Shared Source, and further acknowledge that you do not have any rights to such ideas.

      That is a legal slamdunk: given such an admission, a simple lawsuit could shut down any open or free project taking place legally and openly. That includes the Linux kernel itself.

      Microsoft have come up with their own viral approach, but in this case rather than virally spreading a license provision that mandates the ability to sublicense, they are virally spreading a license provision that mandates an admission of vulnerability to legal attack.

      It is hard to properly express how dangerous this could be in the hands of a corporate entity that can afford more legal armament than the United States Government...

  27. ... because it's not a huge company talking. by RealityThreek · · Score: 1

    You're right, but it seems so much more convincing when it is a single person. He just seems to come off as a lone hacker, who dislikes the way Microsoft is doing things. This appeals to me. I also completely agree with him about shifting to Macs.. I'm hoping that Apple really does stuff with OS X, and maybe ports it to Intel hardware? ;)

    --
    :wq
  28. -1 no sense of humour by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Please smoke appropriate crack.

    1. Re:-1 no sense of humour by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the $3 kind?

  29. Re:I don't understand all you closed-minded idots. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here's an intelligent reply - I'm gonna stick my big, fat, pulsating dick into your ripe anus! I wanna fuck you like you've never been fucked before!

    HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

  30. Go to hell Gosling. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What a complete jackass. Java sucks my big fat cock!

  31. "imitation" flows in both directions by Jan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"

    While I have great respect for Mr. Gosling's prolific contributions, clearly this imitation goes both ways. For example:

    Microsoft Transaction Server 1.0, shipped 12/96
    * automatic transactions for objects, including Java objects
    * ObjectContexts for automatic services on behalf of objects
    * declarative transaction requirements e.g. Transaction Requires New
    * declarative, automatic role-based security, and IObjectContext::IsCallerInRole()
    * etc.

    Enterprise Java Beans, 1.0 final spec shipped 1Q98(?)
    * automatic transactions for Java objects
    * SessionContexts for automatic services on behalf of objects
    * declarative transaction requirements e.g. TX_REQUIRES_NEW
    * declarative, automatic role-based security, and EJBContext.isCallerInRole()
    * etc.

    The provenance of the ideas behind EJB/J2EE, arguably Sun's most commercially important Java technology, would seem to be revealed in its choice of identifier names.

    -- an ex-Microsoft software developer

    1. Re:"imitation" flows in both directions by elmegil · · Score: 2
      The provenance of the ideas behind EJB/J2EE, arguably Sun's most commercially important Java technology, would seem to be revealed in its choice of identifier names.

      And just like the folks pointing out that similarities between the languages are likely due to their common heritage (C++), it's probably worth pointing out that the similarities here have to do with the attempt to solve the same problems. Yee haw. Ain't this fun?

      --
      7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
    2. Re:"imitation" flows in both directions by mmacdona86 · · Score: 2

      Unfortunately, MTS was based on COM, which was a fundamentally broken technology for the creation of business objects--the biggest flaws being that it was single platform, stored the object metadata in that registry abomination, and was unable to propagate exceptions across object boundaries. COM pretty much only worked as a native interface layer for VB.

      After five years, Java's inroads in business application development finally persuaded Microsoft to abandon COM. They didn't want to become just another Java vendor, so they cloned Java and gave their version some marketing spin to try to lure people back to a single vendor solution.

    3. Re:"imitation" flows in both directions by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Of course, once again, MTS was not a "Microsoft innovation", but the expertise bought from Tandem. Jim Gray, the father of Transaction processing (you can get his big book of TP: "Transaction Processing : Concepts and Techniques" ISBN: 1558601902


      And then again, so was Wolfpack (Microsoft Cluster Services), another technology bought from Tandem.

    4. Re:"imitation" flows in both directions by alext · · Score: 2

      Maybe, but a lot of similar stuff was in the CORBA Transaction and CORBA Security specs, particularly the JTA and JAAS-level interfaces and the on-the-wire representation of transaction and security contexts.

      JDBC vs. ODBC would probably be a better example of J2EE borrowing vs. 'research' (i.e. borrowing from more than one source).

      Despite the resemblances, I still don't think that MS deserves much credit as an innovator. To take a current example, MS is borrowing from object/relational mapping products to create a Dotnet addition called ObjectSpaces - an extraordinarily conservative approach when you consider that MS owns both the database it is mapping to and the development language and environment it is mapping from. It's almost as though Redmond wants to be the EPCOT Center version of the larger software world outside, obliged to reproduce in detail all its variety and arbitrariness internally.

      However, I will give them some credit if they manage to get 'Longhorn' out - the OS with SQL Server as the file system - but last I heard, things weren't looking that positive.

    5. Re:"imitation" flows in both directions by crudeboy · · Score: 1

      As far as I recall it was Digital, not Tandem, who developed the original Wolfpack under the name Digital Cluster for Windows NT and later gave the technology to MS.

  32. This article by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    While I am certainly biased against anything Microsoft tries to cram down my throat, I don't think this article is any better than the crap we usually see from Microsoft flacks.

    Slashdot should really try to find some better quality articles if they want to have a content rich site.

    1. Re:This article by gwernol · · Score: 2

      As the submitter of the story, let me defend it a little. I think one of the major reasons it is intersting are the reasons you think it is weak. The fact that Gosling and Sun are beng so defensive about J2EE/NET tells us how much they fear it. They clearly see .NET as a serious competitor to J2EE. As a long-time Java programmer and enthusiast, I think it is useful to know this and somewhat worrying.

      There are many reasons why an article can be "news for nerds" and/or "stuff that matters". It can be as much for what isn't said as for what is.

      --
      Sailing over the event horizon
  33. Re:Mac user? Not that uncommon. by Bobartig · · Score: 1

    We get quite a few Sun employee's at our (mac) store, some of whom work on apple hardware (laptops mostly). That, and lots of Sun developers buy scads of HW and seem to have like 5 of the latest macs in their "collection". So there are two conclusions: 1) Sun people seem to like macs. 2) Sun people got mad bankroll.

    --
    This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
  34. No point to Parrot: turds in the ice cream by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Given choice between a nice language, and a language halfway between a nice language and a sucky language, I'll take the nice language please. Perl turds may taste better when mixed with Python ice cream, but why not just eat Python ice cream without the Perl turds?

  35. Did James Gosling ever consider that SUN is evil? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    To me Microsoft empowers average people to express themselves. To elitest and academics this can be a scary thing.
    They don't an interest in letting others have any say or power.

    Sun makes stuff only academics and big corporations can afford to use.

    Microsoft supports programming languages like VB. No academic is going to go nuts over VB but you can do about 99% of anything you would need to do with it.

    Sun makes machines that take years to learn to do anything. If you can afford them.

    Java is just huge to learn well. And there aren't any powerful and affordable development tools available.

    Anything Microsoft makes for programming will be light years ahead of anything Sun can make as far as price and productivity are concerned.

    And just try to rapidly deploy something in BEA! Forget it. Its a piece of crap.

  36. So to summarize.... by telstar · · Score: 1

    1) They cloned our language
    2) Their language sucks
    3) They should've added some business logic

    Business Logic Example:
    .NET == J2EE
    .NET == suck
    therefore
    J2EE == suck

    Maybe this guy aughta check his reasoning on his Mac

  37. Relieved? Not Hardly. by ackthpt · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I had to already head off some gee-whizziness at work. We've got interdev, the vb and vc toolkits and someone was plowing through some books and started thinking, "Gee why don't we just upgrade to .NET and start developing everything from that framework, rather than in VB 6 and then have to convert later."

    The answer was too obvious, but too often ignored and the question, if not met with an informed response soon enough would have painted us into a corner. We have to support users on a variety of platfroms, hence Java, or simple HTML forms with asp or servlets on a server will accomplish our goals. Writing client apps in .net means we can only support that portion of our customers who use a current enough OS to support .net Yeah, looks pretty until you start looking at the fact there's a few million legacy computers and macs in the world you won't be able to do squat with. No thanks. .net is dead and buried for now and I mean to keep it that way.

    Microsoft's damnable marketing buzz is dangerous, because too many people hear it and just leap at it, because it sounds like a great solution. Too few stop to think things through, often those who know too little about their whole market and end users.

    Now this isn't necessarily a Java good, .net bad, thing, it's more of a 'don't jump on the latest bandwagon' thing. For my 2, though I'd be happy with J2EE because it's established, which .net is far from and risky because of it.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    1. Re:Relieved? Not Hardly. by gewalker · · Score: 2

      Would like your opinion.

      Based on what you said, why would asp.net, using one a Java based .net product be a problem in your environment? Especially considering that your actual alternative is to crank out more VB code.

      You stated ".net is dead ... and I mean to keep it that way", ok so why? You're stated reason is to paraphrase: too new / too risky. If that is case, why not .net in the long run. Don't trust MS. Don't trust the code. Cross/platform issues. Too expensive. Current investment/strategic plan in J2EE. Something else?

      I'm agnostic about such issues (made money, slept well at night, and helped customers programming for Apple, MS-DOS, Windows16/32, various Unix platforms). But assuming you have a good reason, what is it?

      Short term, stated reasons are obviously valid (compared to VB6), but for the future, why not (again, compared to VB6 which apparently has little future)?

  38. Where did you learn OO? by Carnage4Life · · Score: 5, Informative
    That is flat out silly. Java provides object wrappers for it's primitive types.

    Object wrappers for primitives is not the same as the primitives themselves being treated as objects. Anyone whose used a true OO language like Smalltalk cringes and the inconsistency in Java between primitives and objects. Even C++ tries to make them as interchangeable as possible especially with templates.

    For instance in Java there's no way to pass just a primitive like "5" or 2.6 to a method that takes an object while in C# and Smalltalk you can.

    If you want to talk about non-OOP features, C# is full of them. Like structs for example. Who came up with that idea? And how about pointers? WTF?

    The above comments how that you've somehow confused object oriented with Java which unfortunately are not the same thing. An object oriented system has 3 main qualities i) encapsulation or information hiding ii) inheritance and iii) polymporhism. All three of which can be done with C# structs (or value types). Secondl, I am immensely confused what the existence of an explicit pointer type has to do with whether a language is OO or not.

    As far as Indexers go (and pretty much all the differences between Java and C#), they are just syntactic sugar that really just makes code confusing to read compared to Java.

    Really? So
    Math.Add(myList.getObjectAtIndex(0), myList.getObjectAtIndex(1));
    is easier to read than
    Math.Add(myList[0], myList[1])
    On what planet?

    That's a hoot! The fact is that CLR doesn't support anything that can't be accessed from C#. That's why implementations of other languages have had to drop features like multiple inheritance before CLR implementations. All CLR does is provide a Procrustian cot for other languages to lie on. Head over the top? Lop it off!

    The Java VM was designed to run Java while the CLR was designed to be language agnostic. The fact that C++ can run on the CLR is a testament to this fact.
    1. Re:Where did you learn OO? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      Really? So
      Math.Add(myList.getObjectAtIndex(0), myList.getObjectAtIndex(1)); is easier to read than
      Math.Add(myList[0], myList[1])


      Its just my prefences but Im not a big fan of overloeader operators and find the top much easier to read. Besides you exagerate. If would look more like Math.add(myList.elementAt(1), myList.elementAt(2)).

      OOP doenst mean that you use overloaded operators. Im so glad that I don't have to deal with them in Java.

    2. Re:Where did you learn OO? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Math.Add(myList.getObjectAtIndex(0), myList.getObjectAtIndex(1));

      You are not a Java Programmer !
      It's :

      Math.add(myList.get(0), myList.get(1));

    3. Re:Where did you learn OO? by |DeN|niS · · Score: 1
      The Java VM was designed to run Java while the CLR was designed to be language agnostic. The fact that C++ can run on the CLR is a testament to this fact.

      Not the C++ you know and love. Nowhere near, for example no multiple inheritance. A stripped down and modified version. Think C# but using C++ syntax.

    4. Re:Where did you learn OO? by rfsayre · · Score: 2

      The Java VM was designed to run Java while the CLR was designed to be language agnostic. The fact that C++ can run on the CLR is a testament to this fact.

      The CLR is *syntax* agnostic. Not really the same thing.

    5. Re:Where did you learn OO? by Vulture_ · · Score: 1
      The above comments how that you've somehow confused object oriented with Java which unfortunately are not the same thing. An object oriented system has 3 main qualities i) encapsulation or information hiding ii) inheritance and iii) polymporhism. All three of which can be done with C# structs (or value types).
      Because the purpose of structs is, by definition, not object-oriented. Structs are not supposed to have inheritance or information hiding; they're just supposed to be a collection of data.

      If C#'s structs do allow inheritance and other such OO features, they are essentially the same thing as classes, and therefore have no purpose of their own. In this case, the fact that they are there is testament to why C# is a language designed by idiots.

      Secondl, I am immensely confused what the existence of an explicit pointer type has to do with whether a language is OO or not.
      I know it's not an OO issue, but the use of explicit pointers in a high-level language is idiotic beyond belief. The purpose of a high-level language is supposed to be to rid oneself of pointers and other such low-level notions. Also, this means that C# will never be secure like Java, since, with pointers, the program can access any location on the heap. Finally, pointers are not portable since their size is dependent on the local machine's CPU. Therefore, C# code is not "write once, run anywhere", either. Given that, why not just write your code in C++?
      Really? So
      Math.Add(myList.getObjectAtIndex(0), myList.getObjectAtIndex(1));
      is easier to read than
      Math.Add(myList[0], myList[1])
      On what planet?
      In Java, it's
      Math.Add(myList.get(0), myList.get(1));
      Is it really that much harder?
      The Java VM was designed to run Java while the CLR was designed to be language agnostic. The fact that C++ can run on the CLR is a testament to this fact.
      C++ without multiple inheritance is not C++. Nice testament.

      Also, did you happen to read parent's list of languages other than Java that run on the Java Virtual Machine? Or are you just talking out of your ass as I suspect?

      --

      The only way the typical /.er can pick up a chick is with a forklift. -- AC

  39. similarities by Entropy_ah · · Score: 4, Funny

    One of my friends and I were at a microsoft user group (i'm not a member, i was just there for my free copy of windows xp :) meeting a few months ago, and he is a java fanatic, and there were showing some C# source code. My friend is a really smart guy, and he looks at it for a second, and says, "that would probably compile under java." and a few seconds later he said, "Hey, wait a second, that actually would compile under java." Needless to say, i laughed for a while about that one.

    --
    my other penis is a vagina
    1. Re:similarities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your friend must be a complete dumbass because no C# code will compile under Java. (for instance, "using" v. "import", "throws" clause. etc.).

    2. Re:similarities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here's some code that will compile under both C# and Java:

      public class Foo {
      public static double factorial(int n) {
      double f = 1.0;
      for (int i = 2; i <= n; ++i) {
      f *= n;
      }
      return f;
      }
      }

      It's true that complete Java programs and nontrivial classes will not compile under C# (main versus Main, etc.), but afaict this can often be fixed by a few seconds of search-and-replace.

    3. Re:similarities by rabtech · · Score: 2

      This code will compile under both because it is trivial C++ code (essentially.)

      Both langauges have a common heritage, which results in some similarities.

      But take a program that's a million lines and you'll spend more time rewriting then starting from scratch, no matter which direction you go. (of course you can compile java the language to the CLR, so why rewrite?)

      --
      Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
  40. Balogna! by glrotate · · Score: 2, Troll

    All you need to look at are these pages:

    http://biz.yahoo.com/fin/l/m/msft_qb.html Balance Sheet

    http://biz.yahoo.com/fin/l/m/msft_qc.html Cash Flow

    Note:

    2.1 Billion incoming cash. 5.2 Billion Cash on Hand.

    I think MSFT is solid.

    I mean use a little intuition. Every beige box sold means $40 in revenue from windows. What's the Marginal Cost of another copy of windows $2? Now add in Office or Works. Then add all the copies of NT server that are sold, all the CAL's. All the Exchange servers, all the Exchaneg CALS. All the SQL servers, all the SQL CALs. Thats a honkin lot of revenue, and very little marginal cost. MS in making money hand over fist. That's what monopolies do, maximise the difference between marginal revenue and marginal cost. MS can keep cranking out licences and were stuck buying them.

    MS growth may slow, (although one could argue that vast international markets lay untapped), but they aren't about to colapse Enron style.

    1. Re:Balogna! by s390 · · Score: 2
      Thats a honkin lot of revenue, and very little marginal cost. MS in making money hand over fist. That's what monopolies do, maximise the difference between marginal revenue and marginal cost. MS can keep cranking out licences and were [sic] stuck buying them.

      The extent to which Microsoft escapes its current antitrust case with a slap-on-the-wrist penalty will likely be inversely proportional to the number of major corporate customers' defections from their new annual "software rental" product licensing schemes. I stand by my analysis.

      We're _not_ stuck buying Microsoft's inferior OS and applications software - there are alternatives springing up all around us - and smart CIOs, CTOs, and even business PHBs _will_ migrate to them for competitive advantages. Microsoft's days are numbered, but we just don't know that number yet.

      If you'd like to read the best independent analysis of Microsoft's financial fraud, go here.

      Meanwhile, sell your Microsoft stock because its about as high as it's going to go on the way down.

    2. Re:Balogna! by Veteran · · Score: 2

      Bill Gates and Paul Allen have both been dumping Microsoft stock as fast as they can; i.e. without facing a legal requirement to disclose what they are doing. I believe that I read that Allen has already completely divested his interest in Microsoft. Gates has been dumping about a million shares a month for more than two years.

      Question: - which anyone except a self deluded clueless business major could answer correctly - "Why would they be doing that if the stock were as solid as you imply?"

      Of course there are PHB style answers to that question: "They want to increase there own personal liquidity" etc. But those type of answers are exactly the "self deluded clueless business major" sort of answer I meant.

      Gates himself has warned many times that someone could come up with a technological innovation that could make Microsoft obsolete overnight - Microsoft investors don't seem to think that is possible but he does, and I suspect that he has a much better grasp of that than all of the clueless investors do. Why do you think that Gates has a trust fund set up to pay the taxes on his house? Answer: He knows it could all go away as quickly as it came.

      Any company which really doesn't produce anything tangible is a bubble waiting to burst; and ones and zeroes are not tangible. Other than their cash reserves Microsoft has very few tangible assets. If their source code goes obsolete they are gone.

      I intend to double check and make sure that my managed 401K hasn't got one dime invested in Microsoft stock.

      The original poster in this thread is correct; Microsoft's collapse will be Enron style and spectacular.

    3. Re:Balogna! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Horseshit. You need to stick to coding, not financial analysis.

    4. Re:Balogna! by andynyc · · Score: 1

      Gates has been dumping about a million shares a month for more than two years.

      Question: - which anyone except a self deluded clueless business major could answer correctly - "Why would they be doing that if the stock were as solid as you imply?"


      Well, according to its annual report, in 2000 the Gates Foundation paid (not pledged, actually paid out) over $1 billion in grants. The guy's got to get the money from somewhere. (is that a clueless busines major's answer?)

      Before you rebut with "but it's all in computers and software that doesn't cost anything", even if you exclude the "education", "special projects", "libraries", and "Pacific Northwest" categories, the foundation paid out over $500 million to global health causes, including vaccines and disease prevention, reproductive and child health, and poverty-related disease.

      Again, the guy has to get the money somewhere, so he sells some stock. He owns something like 700 million shares, so selling a million a month isn't really significant. In fact, at that rate, it would take nearly 60 years to be completely divested. So I'd hardly say he's "dumping".

      As far as Paul Allen, he is no longer on MSFT's board, but Forbes (in their 2002 list of world's richest people) describes him as "still believed to hold large stake in company." So maybe you want to re-check your facts.

    5. Re:Balogna! by andynyc · · Score: 1

      I intend to double check and make sure that my managed 401K hasn't got one dime invested in Microsoft stock.

      And what are you going to do about it, tough guy, if some of your 401(k) is in fact invested in MSFT? Will you forfeit the tax advantage, and the company matching, just to promote your anti-Microsoft zealotry?

      Considering MSFT is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Standard & Poor's 500, and the NASDAQ Composite index, not to mention one of the United States's largest (in terms of market capitalization) companies, I'd say there's a pretty good chance some of your retirement account is invested in Microsoft.

  41. Re:I don't understand all you closed-minded idots. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now how the hell did you get here?

    Get out while you still can. Tell the others to never come near this horrible, horrible place.

    Don't worry about me, only save yourself!

    *is pulled back into the mob of drooling Linux zealots*

  42. Gosling's and Sun's markting fluff by mmusn · · Score: 4, Interesting
    They could have been more careful about things like the memory model.

    There is nothing wrong with the C#/CLR "memory model". By default, it is safe, just as in Java. If you write an unsafe model, the memory model is unsafe, just like it is in Java. Oh, you say, Java doesn't have unsafe modules. But it does. They are called "JNI". The only difference to C#'s unsafe modules is that JNI is less efficient and harder to program. (Both Java's and C#'s security models label unsafe code as such.)

    I guess one of my pet areas is scientific computation. They might have done something creative to make that easier.

    This is adding insult to injury. C# has value classes, operators, multidimensional arrays, and easy and efficient interfaces to native code. Sun and Gosling have been promising some of those features for years and failed to deliver on even the simplest of them. The best we are getting is a cumbersome proposal from IBM for multidimensional arrays that most implementations will probably not even bother to optimize.

    And, I mean, the fact that the syntax [of C#] is so much -- is like exactly the same, or just about exactly the same [as that of Java].

    Well, gee, what a coincidence. Microsoft thought Java was a great idea, but they wanted to have their own libraries. Sun sues them. So, they did the next best thing: they cloned Java as much as they could, fixed a bunch of small things Sun has been promising to fix for years, and called it C#. What does Gosling expect Microsoft to do? Just roll over and die? And Sun really has a double standard there: when Apple exposes all their native platform APIs to Java, that's fine. It's just not fine when Microsoft does it. Who's going to get sued next? What can open source developers do with Java before Sun is going to try and sue them?

    I am no friend of Microsoft, and I won't use a Microsoft-only platform. But I am really getting tired of the marketing fluff coming out of Sun. When Java originally came out, Sun was promising a well-defined, open, standardized, and efficient platform. Today, it's a huge system with incompletely specified APIs, lousy support for high-performance computations, and no independent third party implementations (all compliant Java2 implementations depend to a large degree on Sun's source code). Sun has dropped out of every standardization process around, and they have been threatening others with lawsuits left and right.

    I don't want to be tied to either a litigious Sun Java monopoly nor to a bundling Microsoft .NET monopoly. If Sun doesn't clean up its act quickly, after seven years of lobbying for Java and using it for lots of software, I'm dropping it. And I suspect others are getting similarly annoyed with Sun.

    1. Re:Gosling's and Sun's markting fluff by SashaM · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And Sun really has a double standard there: when Apple exposes all their native platform APIs to Java, that's fine. It's just not fine when Microsoft does it.

      Uff, how many times must this be explained - it's ok to expose any API to Java code - it's not ok to put that API in the java.* libraries fooling developers into thinking their code is pure Java when it isn't.

      Imagine someone adding their own functions to the C standard library and advertising them as standard, portable C. How would you feel then?

    2. Re:Gosling's and Sun's markting fluff by Refrag · · Score: 2

      "And Sun really has a double standard there: when Apple exposes all their native platform APIs to Java, that's fine. It's just not fine when Microsoft does it. Who's going to get sued next? What can open source developers do with Java before Sun is going to try and sue them?"

      Apple doesn't have a monopoly, Microsoft does. Apple allowing you to code native applications for the Mac in Java doesn't hurt Java in the same way that Microsoft was trying to change Java.

      --
      I have a website. It's about Macs.
    3. Re:Gosling's and Sun's markting fluff by Stu+Charlton · · Score: 3, Informative

      C# has value classes, operators, multidimensional arrays, and easy and efficient interfaces to native code.

      JDK 1.5 is going to include autoboxing of primitives. Operators aren't going to happen, by design. Multi-dim arrays, not really important to those outside of high-performance computation. Easy trap-doors to native code is a plus for C#, yes.

      And Sun really has a double standard there: when Apple exposes all their native platform APIs to Java, that's fine. It's just not fine when Microsoft does it

      You're ignoring some proven facts here, such as smoking gun memo's from Microsoft executives ordering the "pollution of Java". Adding keywords & extensions were not violations of the contract -- breaking RMI and JNI, and not supporting JFC/Swing were violations. Apple didn't break compatibility; Microsoft did.

      What can open source developers do with Java before Sun is going to try and sue them?

      What can Slashdot readers do when someone who's on a rant starts spouting FUD? Drop the drama, please.

      Today, it's a huge system with incompletely specified APIs, lousy support for high-performance computations, and no independent third party implementations (all compliant Java2 implementations depend to a large degree on Sun's source code).

      How are the API's incompletely specified?
      How is high performance computation support "lousy" when most studies to this effect show that it's getting better every JDK release?
      And IBM's JDK is *not* dependent on any Sun code.

      If Sun doesn't clean up its act quickly, after seven years of lobbying for Java and using it for lots of software, I'm dropping it.

      It's one thing to be objectively critical of Sun's complex behavior. It's another to be venting frustration unobjectively. Guess which of the two you're doing.

      --
      -Stu
    4. Re:Gosling's and Sun's markting fluff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They could have been more careful about things like the memory model.

      There is nothing wrong with the C#/CLR "memory model". By default, it is safe, just as in Java. If you write an unsafe model, the memory model is unsafe, just like it is in Java. Oh, you say, Java doesn't have unsafe modules. But it does. They are called "JNI". The only difference to C#'s unsafe modules is that JNI is less efficient and harder to program. (Both Java's and C#'s security models label unsafe code as such.)


      That isn't what he means by memory model. It has nothing to do with safe vs unsafe code. It has to do with how multithreaded programs are supposed to behave when running under different VMs on different platforms.

      The model for .NET is awful by comparison to proposed changes in the Java specification, but the current Java spec is equally awful. Gosling was afraid .NET would have a decent specification.

      Check out this for a discussion of JSR 133, which discusses proposed changes to Java's memory model.

  43. MS Stuff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A few things here:

    #1: To the person talking about financials and MS being a "pyramid scheme." In a way this is true, but this is common practice today. If you look at a company like Cisco, if you count stock options they lose huge amounts of money, but if you don't count them they make money. Stock options are very easy to abuse from a financial reporting standpoint. The key is, when people cash in those options the company has to either buy them back at the market price, or must simply have the options on hand, when they could have sold the shares for much more. Paying someone in options is like paying Hershey's employees in candy bars - in the end it's still money spent.

    #2: What Gosling was saying about C# being a rip-off is true. Java may not have done anything new but it at least combined some syntax and pieces in a new way. C# is a straight port of Java for the most part. Java is NOT a copy of C++, it is a copy of a hodgepodge of things. Whereas C# really is just a copy of Java.

    #3: Safe vs. unsafe code. People are being very naive about this. How many web pages do you go to that give you the warning "this page blah blah unsafe..." Yet you still enter that credit card number. Marking code as "safe" or "unsafe" is irrelevant. This is what will happen: people will write unsafe code, and it will be common enough so that end users will have to use it. The same thing happens with ActiveX controls. How many people honesty won't run an unsafe ActiveX control? Or a program that uses unsafe Word macros? The other day I had to change my security level in word so I could use a documentation tool - and I went right ahead and did it, and so will everyone else!

    The fact is, if it's easy to write unsafe code, people will write it, and then users will have to run it if they want to use that product or service. Marking it safe or unsafe makes no difference at all, the typical user will run unsafe code.

    #4: Sun really does need to get it's act together. Good god there are so many Sun products, so many APIs and old APIs and new APIs and different "initiatives" it's impossible to tell what's what. For example JavaOne, how many people can figure out what actually is in there and what it does?

    #5: .NET in general is just another in the cycle of forced upgrades. Before you used VB, now you use VB.net. In another 4 years you'll use something else. Of course, all the good ol MS apps will still be written in C++ all along. The primary reason to use MS products is always the same: "everyone else will." Which of course is self-fullfilling prophecy.Everyone believes that so everyone jumps on board.

    #6: MS has been found guilty of anti-trust violations multiple times. And they still get worse even as the trials go on! If I were a judge I would say "stop mocking these proceedings or I'll throw your ass in jail!" Most people who are for another weak settlement are people who just make vague arguments against the entire notion of anti-trust, something like "they're just trying to do what every company wants to do and be the leader. Stop whining!" Well, we *have* antitrust laws! And we have them for a reason. And if they apply to ANYONE, they apply to MS. MS protests that a harsh penalty could destroy the company? Well, when you get arrested for murder and put in jail for life that pretty much destroys whatever you had going at the time. It's called "punishment." That's the point! If you can't stand the punishment, don't commit the crime, not once, but twice even! That logic is akin to saying "I can't go to jail because jail is a nasty place." MS was found guilty, they didn't stop, in fact they got worse. A breakup to me is the only logical thing to do, they've shown they can't play by the rules. Yeah, that's "harsh." But, there is a simple way to avoid penalty: don't break the law! Yes Virginia, it really is that easy!

    1. Re:MS Stuff by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 2

      How many web pages do you go to that give you the warning "this page blah blah unsafe..." Yet you still enter that credit card number. Marking code as "safe" or "unsafe" is irrelevant.

      Sure, you are not going to see this issue listed on a web page. But it is a big issue when people choose how they are going to implement a project. Some of the corporations I deal with are rejecting C# right now because, and this is a direct quote, "C# is just Java except it's not portable and it's not secure".

      : people will write unsafe code, and it will be common enough so that end users will have to use it. The same thing happens with ActiveX controls. How many people honesty won't run an unsafe ActiveX control?

      A lot of the corporations I deal with won't let Active X controls through their firewalls.

      Or a program that uses unsafe Word macros? The other day I had to change my security level in word so I could use a documentation tool - and I went right ahead and did it, and so will everyone else!

      Two months ago I installed a mail filter for one of my clients that bounces any email with an attached Word macro.

      The fact is this is a real issue, and it is going to become more important over time.

    2. Re:MS Stuff by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 2
      #3: Safe vs. unsafe code. People are being very naive about this. How many web pages do you go to that give you the warning "this page blah blah unsafe..." Yet you still enter that credit card number. Marking code as "safe" or "unsafe" is irrelevant. This is what will happen: people will write unsafe code, and it will be common enough so that end users will have to use it. The same thing happens with ActiveX controls. How many people honesty won't run an unsafe ActiveX control? Or a program that uses unsafe Word macros? The other day I had to change my security level in word so I could use a documentation tool - and I went right ahead and did it, and so will everyone else!

      I'm afraid you're mixing some stuff up. In this context, safe vs unsafe is referring to memory management, not security.

      Safe means that the code cannot access memory directly, instead it must do it via references that are automatically updated by the memory management system/garbage collector. Unsafe means you get direct pointers, that are not tied to the memory manager.

      Java does not allow unsafe code (unless you go via the JNI) but .NET/C# allow both types to be mixed freely with a few caveats. The pros/cons of this decision are something I won't go into here, but there is are a couple of interesting articles on MSDN about safe vs unsafe.

    3. Re:MS Stuff by andcal · · Score: 1

      Stop whining!" Well, we *have* antitrust laws! And we have them for a reason. And if they apply to ANYONE, they apply to MS.


      We do have anti-trust laws, you are right. However, the reason for them is to protect the CONSUMER, not to protect competitors. It is very arguable that Microsoft has done nothing besides help the consumer, even if it has not done any favors for its competitors.

      --
      --something witty
  44. Re:Gosling's and Sun's markting fluff (gets worse! by MisterBlister · · Score: 2
    I guess one of my pet areas is scientific computation. They might have done something creative to make that easier.

    Gosling is fat. Also, Java has serious issues itself when it comes to scientific computing.

    Please see this paper for further information.

    Funny he should mention that as one of .Net's shortcomings.... Also he feels "ripped off"? Sure, C# is an awful lot like Java, but then Java was an awful lot like C++. Borrowing good features from past languages isn't robbery, its just smart.

    In short, shut up fatty!

  45. Re:Balogna! MR = MC by Skjellifetti · · Score: 1

    That's what monopolies do, maximise the difference between marginal revenue and marginal cost.

    Er, not quite. All companies seek to hit the spot where MR = MC. Why? If I sell one more unit, the extra revenue (MR) is more than the extra cost (MC). That's called profit. Its true for a monopolist as well as for a company in a competetive market. So how does a monopolist differ from a company in a competetive situation? For the individual company in a competetive market, MR (dR/dQ where Q is the Quantity sold) is constant since they face a linear demand curve for their individual share of the total demand supplied by all companies in the market. The monopolist, on the other hand, faces a negatively-sloped market demand curve. So dR/dQ is negative. Each extra unit sold brings in less revenue than the previous unit. I'll leave it as an exercise for the student to show that the Q sold by a monopolist is less than the quantity sold by the sum of the companies in a competetive market. By MR = MC for both.

  46. essentially sort of, pretty much absolutely. by sparkane · · Score: 1

    there you have it.

  47. .FIRST .POST fuxk no worky KLREEERRRCK!~! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    onmouse over=" kasd jrm-rfm iloversmsrmrsmsrmrsmrsmsrmsrmsrmrsmsrmsrmsrmrsmsrm srmrsmrsmrsmrsmrssmr .me .got .asfdfsdafdas .asdfs dafsda .fasdsfdafdas .sfdafdassfdafdas .sdafsfdafd assfda .sdafdassfdafdas .sadsfdafdas .FIRST .POST . FIRST .POST .FIRST .POST .FIRST .POST .FIRST .POST . FIRST .POST .FIRST .POST .FIRST .POST .FIRST .POST . FIRST .POST .FIRST .POST .FIRST .POST .FIRST .POST . FIRST .POST .FIRST .POST .FIRST .POST .FIRST .POST . FIRST .POST .FIRST .POST .FIRST .POST .FIRST .POST . FIRST .POST .FIRST .POST .FIRST .POST .FIRST .POST sssssd sfdlfdas dasfl dasf asdfds Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. Try to reply to other people comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) Problems regarding accounts or comment posting should be sent to CowboyNeal Please try to keep posts on topic. Try to reply to other people comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated

  48. Okay, I'll bite. by Stu+Charlton · · Score: 5, Informative

    - You're using J2EE. That implies you probably should be using JBuilder 6 Enterprise which has numerous J2EE features for automating configuration of EJB's. If you're not using the enterprise edition, then your comparison is lacking in credibility, as Visual Studio .NET enterprise edition is approximately the same price.
    - You have to edit four files to add a field to an EJB? Let me assume for a minute that you're using container managed persistence, which is the only scenario that would require such changes. Most tools will allow you to define the new field in your local interface, and will then propagate that field to your implementation class and your ejb-jar XML file. The second XML file, I will assume, is a custom deployment descriptor. Again, I would hope you're using a vendor's tool to manage this thing. But even if not, I find your indignaton towards all of this "work" somewhat amusing.

    To put this tremendous amount of work in context, how much work does it take to add a field to a regular database table wtih a SQL call in JDBC, or for that matter, ADO.NET? That would require:
    - doing a DML statement on the table to add the column at easiest. In some environments this may require several DML statements to create the new table, re-populate it with old data, populate it with the new column's data, then drop the old table and rename the new one.
    - changing 1-2 method call signatures to take in extra parameters for inserts and updates.
    - changing the JDBC code for reading, updating, and inserting to take the new field into account
    - possibly adding the field to a data object that holds the data in memory.

    Phew! I'm glad there's alternatives to EJB, it's so much easier without it.

    Now, on to the next cow:
    Deploying a JAR to two different places (jBoss and Tomcat). Firstly, I question what the problem is. You would deploy an EJB JAR to a jBoss instance and a WAR to tomcat, or you could just put it into one big EAR file and fo'gettaboutit. If you have two servers, then the ant optional tasks package could very easily do this work for you with approximately 3 lines of XML configuration.

    The best part about your post is that "there probably are better ways". Yes, there are. Hire a consultant for 3 or 4 hours to help you out, it will probably be worth the $1000+. If you're missing GUI tools for jBoss, that would be because it doesn't really have any. Use a commercial server if you're not willing to hand-craft your config & deployment.

    --
    -Stu
    1. Re:Okay, I'll bite. by styrotech · · Score: 1

      Deploying a JAR to two different places (jBoss and Tomcat). Firstly, I question what the problem is.
      I didn't get that bit either - these days Tomcat is embedded in JBoss (unless you use the Jetty version of course) - you just deploy to JBoss. There is no separate Tomcat configuration to do.

  49. What a bunch of corporate fluff... by Master_Ruthless · · Score: 1

    Some of you Linux fanboys will line up to praise anything as long as it slams Microsoft apparently. This guys argument boils down to "Microsoft stole our syntax! They're an icky company!" - You can probably count the factually verifiable assertions he makes on the fingers of one hand, the rest is just that old familiar FUD, aimed paradoxically at the people who are most famous for the tactic. I guess that's poetic justice in a way, but shame on you otherwise intelligent people for not calling this interview the pile of corporate shill horsecrap that it is.

  50. Re:I don't understand all you closed-minded idots. by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 2
    Have any of you even looked at C# as a language? How about looking at the .NET framework itself? To attack .NET is to attack Object Pascal and Delphi. Why is this? Because C# looks like Java and C/C++, acts like Object Pascal and runs like Smalltalk. Let's admit one things first: nothing in Java is "innovative".

    Well I love Delphi and use it all the time, but comparing the two is inaccurate. They -are- pretty different.

    Does anyone remember how much Java 1.0 sucked compared to the Java of today? I sure do, because I was one of them! Does ANYONE get version 1.0 perfect? So why do we expect this from Microsoft? Yes, they're bugs are more public because more people use Windows than there are Christians on this planet, but everyone else's 1.0 products are the same! Security? Please! UNIX had 30 years to improve security. My dad tells me horror stories of all the security bugs in the original systems he'd worked on at Bell Labs!

    True to some extent but consider Apache. It has a higher market share than IIS but where is the Apache version of Code Red? I seem to recall IIS in on version 6, or is it 7? I can't remember. But Apache is just about to reach v2.

    Gosling is a joke if he thinks he's anyting special. He got his "fellow" status because of Java, but only once it took off. Other than that, he'd be pretty obscure. Is there anything innovative anymore? Everything is a culmination of ideas. It's like evolution, new species don't just appear, they're based on previous ideas.

    So why did Java take off in such a big way and Smalltalk didn't? Don't believe it was just marketing, because it wasn't. The fact is, that Java was the right product at the right time. There are languages out there that are so "innovative" they are barely usable for real world projects. So it didn't include hundreds of good ideas - but it did combine those ideas in a way that had mass appeal. I consider that innovative in a way.

  51. J2EE != EJB by Stu+Charlton · · Score: 2

    J2EE is not EJB, and the ideas behind J2EE model really have nothing to do with MTS.

    On the EJB hand, you're quite right, they borrowed heavily from MTS. But I would claim that MTS was beta-quality software until at least 2.0, and didn't support object pooling until COM+'s release. EJB 1.0 servers were doing that around the same time, and while many were crappy, there were production quality ones out by late 1998 (WL 4.5, Gemstone, Persistence, etc).

    In the story of MTS vs. EJB, it really was a story of execution. MTS and COM+ were slow to mature, and didn't take off at all. Which is one of the driving factors behind .NET.

    --
    -Stu
    1. Re:J2EE != EJB by Jan · · Score: 1

      "J2EE is not EJB, and the ideas behind J2EE model really have nothing to do with MTS."

      Thank you for that correction.

  52. Re:Mac user? Not that uncommon. by deepfoo · · Score: 1

    Well, the "mad bankroll" has to be a little slimmer than it was when the stock was at $64. Unless they all were smart and cashed out then.

    There are huge benefits though to being on a Mac with OS X. Not the least of which is a mature set of apps in classic mode, cool stuff in X, and access to all your favorite Unix goodies. For them that has to be as close as it gets to heaven.

    And I agree with the comments posted above Re: the message this sends to Microsoft. Satan loses another user, others will follow.

  53. Where did you learn Java or English? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Really? So
    Math.Add(myList.getObjectAtIndex(0), myList.getObjectAtIndex(1));
    is easier to read than
    Math.Add(myList[0], myList[1])
    On what planet?

    -------
    For the record, Java has never had any method
    named getObjectAtIndex(). There are a few methods
    named getObject() in the sql package, but to perform
    the operation you're suggesting, you could do either:

    Math.add(myList.get(0), myList.get(1))

    That is assuming (incorrectly) that Java has a
    static method in Math called add();
    it does not. If you want to perform addition,
    you'd simply say:

    int val = myList.get(0) + myList.get(1);

    or if you're using arrays instead of a Collection,
    you could say:

    int val = myArray[0] + myArray[1];

    While I'm at it, on "what planet" is

    myList[0], myList[1]

    "easier to *read*" than myList.getObjectAtIndex(0)?
    My first language is English, not C syntax, so
    words written in a human language tend to come
    off as "easier to *read*".

    I'd rather read and write something like:

    myArray at: myIndex

    which is the truly "easier to *read*" syntax
    of Smalltalk which isnt based on C syntax like
    practically every major language in use today.

    (apologies if I come off as too bitter but
    it sucks that Smalltalk doesnt have the market-
    or mind-share that all these beloved C syntax
    langs do)
    -
    Max Korn

  54. Gosling is the killer of TCL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Sun and Gosling have killed TCL b/c TCL is OSS and Sun want's propretary way to make money on licenses, not on support.

    Technically TCL was in much better shape that time. It was extensible, very flexible, very compact, fast, with two or three OO extensions (itcl and OOtcl I can remember at least).

    Why is TCL dead if it's so good? Sun's marketing + Sun's interna policy to screw up all research of John Ousterhout.

    I hope IBM with their support revenue will spend more effort on OSS langs (perl, python, tcl), besides they already do with Linux.

    1. Re:Gosling is the killer of TCL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Tcl is dead because it is a pile of shit. Case closed.

    2. Re:Gosling is the killer of TCL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Tcl is dead because it is a pile of shit. Case closed.

      Case is not closed. Until we forget how to learn from the history.

      TCL as a programming language has some weakness for sure. but at that time it was easy to fix it due to extreme flexibility and extensibility of Tcl.

      Instead, today Sun decides that their logging is much better than Apache's one. Sun decides that JBoss is not J2EE. And Sun can decide any day to drop whole Linux JDK support in flavour of Solaris as they did with green threads.

  55. Re:Gosling's and Sun's markting fluff (gets worse! by alext · · Score: 2

    My interpretation is that Gosling mentioned scientific computing because he saw that Java hadn't covered that area well, just like it doesn't cover logic/query programming, transparent persistence, workflow, continuations, program-as-data and dozens of other useful ideas from the last 40 years.

    However, this is much more of an indictment of C# than Java - Java's innovation was in the VM, not the syntax, which was deliberately conservative. Despite a huge R&D program, MS has not managed even to synthesise ideas from even two significantly different languages/VMs, let alone attempt to bring together best practice from industry and academia. Gosling's 'rip-off' charge looks pretty solid to me.

  56. Re:Did James Gosling ever consider that SUN is evi by thomas.galvin · · Score: 1

    To me Microsoft empowers average people to express themselves. To elitest and academics this can be a scary thing. They don't an interest in letting others have any say or power.

    That's fine and dandy, but do you want average people expressing themselves in your mission-critical software?

    Microsoft supports programming languages like VB. No academic is going to go nuts over VB but you can do about 99% of anything you would need to do with it.

    You would be amazed at the number of people I know who are about to graduate with skills in Drinking and VB.

    Sun makes machines that take years to learn to do anything. If you can afford them.

    Expensive? Yes. Steep learning curve? Unless you are already a UNIX guru, yes. Better than Microsoft? Yes.

    Java is just huge to learn well. And there aren't any powerful and affordable development tools available.

    I learned Java by reading a few of books and modifying C++ code until it would compile. I develope Java at home with javac, jEdit, and the JavaDocs I downloaded from sun, and store it all in CVS under CygWin (until I get the cash for my Mac). Heck, I don't know of any serious programmers who use much more than a command line compiler, emacs or something simmilar, and a version control system, all of which are available for free. If that's not enough, go grab Forte for Java or JBuilder. It's been a while since I've looked, but I believe that both of those are available for free, at least for personal use.

    No one who knows what they are talking about would say that the Java API is small, but it is relativly easy to pick up on if you know what to look for, and the JavaDocs are the best documentation I have seen in ages. Not a tutorial, but if you need to find something fast, they are hard to beat.

    Sure, you can spend hundreds (or thousands) of dollars to express yourself with Microsoft products, or you can spend a few hours downloading and express yourself with Java for free. You may need to invest some time in learning it, but is there really anything of value for which that isn't true?

  57. No! IBM's Mkt Cap is 178.6B not 17.9B! by peterarm · · Score: 1

    So this means that IBM's market cap is a little over half of MSFT's (which is 328.3B). And IBM's P/E is 23.91 whereas MSFT's is 55.33. So basically MSFT has a little less than twice IBM's market cap, and about 2.5 times the P/E.

    The moderators who made you +5 insightful need to learn how to count...

  58. There's one BIG problem with your argument... by telstar · · Score: 1
    "Once their growth flattens for a few quarters, the big mutual funds will notice the lack of dividends and start selling their stock."

    • Microsoft doesn't PAY dividends.

    reference
  59. JBoss: Sun is not a different from MS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Until Sun confirms J2EE license of OSS JBoss - Sun is not a different from Microsoft. It does the same unfair practice.

    We should thank God that Microsoft exist. Without MS we would live under Sun's Java dictate.

    1. Re:JBoss: Sun is not a different from MS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good thing I don't have to use that Java/OOP shit! I'm sticking with C! The only way to program is with functions...

  60. We want MS "lite" Wondows! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Recently CNN/TECH published the article telling that "the nine states still ... want Microsoft to offer a stripped-down version of the dominant operating system, so computer manufacturers could more easily replace Microsoft browsers, media players, instant messaging and other "middleware" products with those from competitors".

    I think it is very important that the browser should be not the only component to experience a fair competition. Ideal "light" MS OS should be all component based. Imagine MS Windows GUI with Linux kernel and/or X11 behind.

    Technically it means to change a lot in MS OS, but it's doable. Practically - that's where Microsoft should spend part of their unfair profit.

    If MS Windows is the only choice I have from a manufacturer then I want to buy PC with either a "stripped-down" OS or some sort of "OS Installer" when I can complete OS configuration online from home by choosing OS components either from Microsoft or from Linux.

    At this time Linux and Microsoft don't work well together. But that shoud be a problem of Microsoft executive - they have created a monopoly and they should think how to change API in order to survive. Or else...

  61. Heh by autopr0n · · Score: 2

    And he also wrote vi.

    But no matter, it's all about pico.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
    1. Re:Heh by mvw · · Score: 2
      And he also wrote vi.


      vi was written by Bill Joy, another prominent Sun employee (is he a vice president like Gosling too?)

  62. Huh? by autopr0n · · Score: 2

    I'm not sure if that was supposed to be a ironic one-liner or not, but unless you work at a games company almost all your code is going to be VB or Java (or COBOL!)

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  63. Hrm, a bit disapointing C4L by autopr0n · · Score: 2

    For instance in Java there's no way to pass just a primitive like "5" or 2.6 to a method that takes an object while in C# and Smalltalk you can.

    No, but you can do myList.add(new Integer(5)); or myList.add(new Double(2.6)); if you want to. Yeh, the semantics are a bit diffrent, but the effect is exactly the same. Also


    Really? So

    Math.Add(myList.getObjectAtIndex(0), myList.getObjectAtIndex(1));

    is easier to read than

    Math.Add(myList[0], myList[1])

    On what planet?


    Um, on earth? "getObjectAtIndex()" actualy tells you what's going on. Of course, those of us who have been programming for a while see "[]" as meaning the same thing. And anyway, it's not "getObjectAtIndex()" but rather just "get()". Not exactly that much harder to type or whatever (especialy since you don't have to leave the 'qwerty' part of the keyboard.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  64. Re:I don't understand all you closed-minded idots. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Well I love Delphi and use it all the time, but comparing the two is inaccurate. They -are- pretty different.

    Yes, they are different, but consider who wrote C# and who worked on Delphi. Same person. (If on one knows who this is, obviously you don't know anything about C# and that's my point...prejudging).

    True to some extent but consider Apache. It has a higher market share than IIS but where is the Apache version of Code Red? I seem to recall IIS in on version 6, or is it 7? I can't remember. But Apache is just about to reach v2.

    Each company has its own methods for version control, so version numbers should have nothing to do with a comparison. For instance, Look at how many x.x.xxx Apache versions there have been and compare that to Microsoft (IIS 5.1 and that's all). Apache obviously uses versioning smartly as opposed to Microsoft, whose versioning is based on Market Influence. As a matter of fact, you stated yourself that IIS has a larger market share. Part of that is through marketing hype, by saying "look how mature we are at version 10,000 while our competitiors are still at v2". With that argument to uninformed, typical business users, who wouldn't fall for that line?

    So why did Java take off in such a big way and Smalltalk didn't? Don't believe it was just marketing, because it wasn't. The fact is, that Java was the right product at the right time. There are languages out there that are so "innovative" they are barely usable for real world projects. So it didn't include hundreds of good ideas - but it did combine those ideas in a way that had mass appeal. I consider that innovative in a way.

    Whole-heartedly, 100% agree with you that Java was just in the right spot, at the right time, unlike Smalltalk. But, if that is your argument, that combining technologies is also innovative in a way (albeit small), then why is the DOJ asking Microsoft to unbundle then?? Isn't that hypocritical (not saying that you said this, but it's a fair comparison)?

  65. Re:I don't understand all you closed-minded idots. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't normally reply to posts from stomach acid, but thank you for making my case about how moronic a lot of /. posts really are.