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Java Thrown Back in Windows, For Now
darnellmc writes: "According to this News.com article, Microsoft has decided to include their JVM in the next Windows XP service pack. They are doing this in an attempt to avoid Sun's recent lawsuit against them for anti-trust violations. I wonder if the recent decision allowing the nine states' suit to continue had anything to do with this? Of course it did. MS plans not to have the JVM in future versions of Windows though."
This is an old 1.1 VM that won't run any modern Java code. Now people won't want to download Java VMs because they "already have Java", frustrating Java developers just as much.
Is it so far-fetched that Microsoft is actually trying to provide it's users with the features that they want?
Yes, it is, particularly since the java they're including is a horribly outdated version that won't run must of the java code on the net today.
It is a ploy designed to confuse the user, break as many existing java apps as possible, and spin the tale to place the blame on 'java' or Sun, rather than squarely on Microsoft where it belongs.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
"The best part about Microsoft's Java implementation is that the word 'java' is nowhere to be seen. It's the "Microsoft(TM) Virtual Machine." I think Microsoft were [sic] hoping that Java would go away if they simply don't ever speak the name."
... is permanently prohibited from using 'Java compatible' trademarks on its products." So it's not Microsoft that is doing this; it's Sun -- and for good reason. Sun doesn't want its name associated with the hunk o' junk that is the Microsoft virtual machine.
;)
I know this was modded as "funny", but I thought I should explain why Microsoft can't say "Java".
According to the settlement terms, "Microsoft
By the way, you've made a mistake I see all the time. I don't know where people got the impression that a company is plural, but it's not. A company is a single entity. Your sentence should be phrased, "I think Microsoft was hoping..."
Hope that clears some things up for you. Also, I agree that the "Java should not be used in life-or-death situations" disclaimer is pretty classic.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
Huh? It was my understanding the reason WinXP didn't ship with Java is cause Sun complained! Sun wanted people to go out and download their own JVM, that's why. Well, knowing Windows users, that never happened for 95% of the userbase, so now they're putting it back in and everyone is like "it's Microsoft't fault." Well, if it wasn't for Sun bitching, this never would have happened.
Aw, fuck it. Let's go bowling. - The Big Lebowski
don't buy it.
Why would cutting a deal with AOL cause Sun to lose money? If Sun paid AOL money to distribute Java with every AOL disk and update every AOL member's JVM, AOL could actually make a bit of money from that. I'm completely mystified as to why suggesting Sun should get off their ass and make a real effort to get Java into end user's hands should *not* be done because AOL/TW lose money.
creation science book
The JVM that Microsoft included in Windows was only "incompatible" in that it extended the Java standard. It wasn't incompatible in the sense that some Java stuff wouldn't work on it - it was incompatible in that you could write code that would run on it that wouldn't run on any other VM.
If Sun had let them keep shipping it, but stuck to its "Pure Java" type branding, then any "Pure Java" program would have run on Windows on the Microsoft VM.
This would have been good for everyone, I think - sure you could write something for Microsoft's JVM that wouldn't run on Sun's JVM.. but I can still do that today if I really want to (tie my code to a particular VM or a particular set of native code).
Instead we have the situation we have now, which is pretty bad for Java. Maybe Sun should supply Microsoft with a VM and give Microsoft a free license to ship it - that is if Sun really does want everyone to have access to Java on an "out of the box" Windows installation..
(Making Microsoft pay for the right to ship Sun's JVM would be silly since Microsoft spent the time and money developing their own JVM to ship with Windows.. and it was a pretty decent one too).
- Steve
Honestly, who cares?!?! Now that FreeBSD has Java, who needs Windows anymore? In my opinion, the operating systems of the future are the free UNIX ones. Linux is supported by a great many companies. The BSDs form a good group of friendly competition. There are a whole bunch of fringe operating systems out there. Sooner or later, already the laughing stock of the industry, Microsoft is just going to lose the market, regardless of whether the government does anything to screw them over. Microsoft has abused its customers time and again, promising change and delivering crap each time. Think a memo about reliability is going to change anything? It'll take Microsoft years to solve the problems in their software, because it contains so much code, and even more so because it's a moving target: Microsoft can't afford to simply stop development and concentrate on reliability. They have to implement new features and stay on top of the constantly changing market.
Although Microsoft does have a shitload of money, I believe they made a fundamental mistake, and their high rate of success is only going to make them fall much harder when the time comes. That mistake was simply trying to accomplish too much. Regardless of their size and resources, they simply can't manufacture the rigorous quality that's becoming ever more important in our world. Their software is defective to the core, and it shows.
What Microsoft tried to do was become the empire. Like Rome or something. Rome took over about a quarter of the world, probably in hopes of gaining complete control over everything. Furthermore, the rich people donated a lot of money to the empire for various things. Everyone who donated wanted their name to go down in history, so they donated money to build extravagant things like colosseums and whatnot. Nobody wanted to support the maintainence of roads or other boring stuff. As a result of this negligence and many "management" mistakes, the empire declined until it fell apart completely. Microsoft tried the same thing: They either bought out or put out of business just about every profitable software company out there, in hopes of gaining complete control over the software industry. Furthermore, instead of concentrating on reliability, they concentrated on extravagant things like features nobody uses and talking paperclips. This practice has resulted in millions upon millions of lines of code, and probably 3000% duplication of effort, of which probably a good one fourth is defective, and this is hidden by hasty workarounds and kludges in order to meet shipping schedules.
I believe Microsoft would have been much better off if they didn't produce any software at all! Instead, they would be a software publisher, a packaging and marketing company of sorts. Microsoft would form alliances with companies in the markets they wished to enter. To begin with, they would offer a shitload of money to these companies, up-front, as an investment. The companies would produce the software, which must meet Microsoft's would-be rigorous software testing and auditing requirements. No known bugs would be released, and Microsoft would throw whatever was required into ironing out all but the most obscure and unknown bugs. For the release, Microsoft would print fancy documentation, put the software in fancy boxes, and spend a shitload on marketing. (The software would be sold as, for example, Microsoft C++, Presented by Borland International, or something like that, in much the same way as some science fiction books are sold as Isaac Asimov Presents whatever by whomever.) Then, Microsoft and the software producer would equally split the profits and share a few truckloads of Negra Modelo while they're at it. Everyone wins.
As time passed, and the Microsoft name was found on more and more products, companies would run to Microsoft, desperately trying to get Microsoft's name on their products. Instead of Microsoft blackmailing companies to give in, "Sell out to us or we'll crush you," everyone would run to Microsoft, in an effort to make Microsoft ditch one product for another. (Of course, the vast superiority of a product would have to be demonstrated in order for Microsoft to make such a move.) To make a long story short, there would be no anti-trust trial and software would be extremely reliable.
But then reality sets in, and all the free software out there has a giant advantage over Microsoft. That advantage is simply time. Linux, for example, had about 7 or 8 good years to simply develop without market pressure or competition. That allowed a good, solid foundation to be built and a lot of experience to be gained. Regardless of their resources, Microsoft did not have that kind of time to research and develop Windows, because the reality of the market forced them to continually make releases and add features. So I go back to what I said at the beginning of this unnecessarily long post, and that is that free software is going to replace commercial software, at least in the operating systems market.
WebStart was designed so that shared libraries wouldn't need to be redownloaded, programs automatically install, and programs are up to date. If you want a program an your computer that will run when you double click it, take a look at the executable jar format. It's been around for years, and .jar's are associated with javaw -jar (I search down the registry entries to add -client to make my programs start almost instantly). Linux has had this functionality for a long time, and there are a bazillion how-to's.
.Net with Windows and that will be another plus for companies debating which to use. It's the same case as Netscape vs Microsoft, and they'll win if MS doesn't include Java. They only included their own insecure and buggy v1.1.4. I wished they would remove it and force people to get a real jvm.
:) Compare that to 20M .Net upgrade.
:/ (but you have to register... click tools and products on the left side and go to IBM Developer Kit)
:)
Correctly written programs in java are almost impossible to distinguish from their counterparts. Take a look at eclipse or open/star office.
Java is prospering in cellphones, pda's, desktop apps, as well as the server. Cellphones and pda's because no two use the same hardware, but it costs more money to rewrite the apps than to just run them. No one knows about the desktop apps they have that were written with java (Limewire gnutella client for one). The main reason java hasn't taken off before is because it had that stigma of being slow. It is less slower than C than C is slower than assembler. That's little to pay for not having to port apps and not having to rewrite code over and over vs reuse of code that is given in the API and your own object oriented code.
I think it's pretty obvious why SUN really wants this lawsuit. MS is going to bundle
Just don't go bitching about SUN when the real problem seems to be the programs written in java that you've got. If anyone wants, I'll email them a 10K jar file that will run when you double click it. If you want to create your own, create a text file with Main-Class: a.class(be sure you press enter after the line). type jar -cfm my.jar file_with_main_class_in_it a.class. That's all it takes. Hell, you can include all your libraries in that one file and all will be fine. In fact, I can give you one jar file that you can copy into the deploy directory of jboss, and it will deploy both the website and the ejbs. Then you can take that same file and double click it to run the client side app. Java supports it just fine, but all the apps you've seen are appearantly written by a crackpot that thinks he knows java after compiling his hello world program.
BTW, it's only a 9.3 meg file that you can get from java.sun.com just click the j2se button on the right and get the jre 1.4.0_01
If you want a faster VM, try these free VM's
http://jrockit.com (email verification, but free)
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/java
There are already talks about java running multiple programs in one VM. There are a few programs out there that do it for you, but they aren't there yet. Once this is in place java programs will start instantly after the first one. The reason why java appears to be slow to people is that it takes longer to start than other programs because of the git and vm load. The -client setting skips jit on startup and there is a JSR proposal on it's way for keeping the VM live. Java has come a long way and has had years of testing. It's not going to leave the servers any time soon! Especially now that we have JBoss 3.0 stable with EJB 2.0 support.
Want to see a java app done right? Try limewire.com
Karma Clown
You don't get it.
Sun's original lawsuit was not about the non-inclusion of the JRE in Windows. It was about Microsoft's "extension" of Java in their VM. Microsoft made their VM with Windows/Microsoft-specific "enhancements", and when programmers use these routines, they become broken on other platforms.
Sun had every right to say "Hey, you're breaking our language. Stop that crap right now, and do it the way we tell you."
When Microsoft first wanted to ship their VM, they told Sun "Sure sure, whatever you say." when Sun told them not to "extend" Java with their own bullshit. Remember Microsoft's track record with "Embrace and Extend"? Sun wanted to avoid that.
So Microsoft went ahead and created their modifications anyway, and Sun said "Okay. Stop. No more. We TOLD you not to pull that shit, and you did it anyway." Hence, the original lawsuit. Sun wins, and Microsoft says "Fuck you then.", and totally removes the VM.
THIS time, Sun is saying "Hey! Monopoly Abuse!", so Microsoft throws in this old, broken, shitty, outdated VM in a service pack so they can say "There, happy?"
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
As others may have pointed out, this is your favourite monopolist up to its old tricks again.
But Sun never said that. They said that Microsoft could not ship, as 'Java', something which didn't comply with the Java specification. In other words, Microsoft couldn't embrace and extend Java and still call it 'Java'. What's unfair about that? Microsoft are still shipping the embraced and extended Java, of course, but now they call it 'C#'.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Which is exactly what the monopolist was seeking to achieve. By preventing a consistent, modern Java VM from being distributed to Joe Average Consumer, they've created a situation where we can only deploy obsolete Java apps to the client, thus preventing any real competition with the monopolists own rip-off clone of Java, 'C#' and '.net'.
You think this is reasonable?
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.