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Sun and Microsoft Settle Litigation
spurious cowherd writes "According to The Register Sun Microsystems & Microsoft have reached a settlement in their several lawsuits aainst each other. Sun gets $2B and both parties agree to share intellectual property." There's a press release to read as well.
1) MS is *not* pledging to keep Java up-to-date on the Windows platform, which basically means that applets like mine (see sig) have to use Java 1.1 and nothing higher. Sure, people can download the Java plugin, and lots do, but more don't. On a casual visit to a website, no-one will go through the rigmarole of downloading and installing the latest Java, just to see your applet...
2) I'm a bit concerned about the "As a result of this agreement, Sun and Microsoft engineers will cooperate to allow identity information to be easily shared between Microsoft Active Directory and the Sun Java System Identity Server" part. The single-signon used to be limited to MS-only platforms, now it has the capability to reach into linux-server land
If I were being really cynical, I might conclude that MS had spent $2B of it's ample reserves to purchase an extension of single-sign-on into unix (linux and solaris) territory at a time when Sun needed cash.
It might just slap the EU back into line a bit as well, considering that MS will *spend* $2B to *possibly get* an advantage. What was that fine again ? (Yes, I know about the other measures, but you can only respond with what you have, and MS has loads of cash)
Simon the cynic.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Ha ha, very funny. April Fools...no wait, it's the second! Wow, imagine that!
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Seriously, not to be a troll. I really think that MS did damage Sun. I wonder if this $2B will give them a profit this quarter. They sure could use one...
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
I'm betting the stock will be up on the news.
Doubling your available cash assests (Yahoo Finance) will help, but the company is still bleeding money. (Dropping 3,000+ jobs will also help.) Really what this appears to mean is that Microsoft has put Sun on life support so they don't become the only vendor in the virtual machine driven software development market. Imagine the potential antitrust suit if Java wasn't there to compete against dot Net. Frankly, I think this shows that Microsoft thinks it is winning this battle, otherwise they wouldn't have thrown the bone to them.
Sig under construction since 1998.
So does this mean that Windows will start shipping with Java again? Or will Sun kick their own nut sack again and counter sue to stop Microsoft from shipping any version of Java (again)?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Seriously ... what's the point of having a place with Windows if there's no Sun out there to light things up? By the way ... Is it still April 1st in some timezone I'm not aware of?
"According to The Register Sun Microsystems & Microsoft have reached a settlement in their 10 year old lawsuit. Sun gets $2B and both parties agree to share intellectual property."
Whoa......Apple got ripped off with the $150 Million settlement with their suit against Microsoft. But of course, Microsoft agreed to continue Office development for the Mac which would be hard to quantify in terms of investment potential. Additionally, there was the matter of Microsoft attempting to get Apple to kill Quicktime development......
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I've never heard Mcnelly speak without bashing microsoft. ... Is it even possible?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
"...get their products to work better together..." Isn't this in general what computing/WWW is all about anyway working better together - sheesh! Now 2,000,000,000 is a nice round number for Sun me thinks.
SCO and IBM settled their long standing dispute with IBM agreeing to pay SCO 3 billions and SCO accepting that Linux source code does not belong to them :-)
And Bill Gates and RMS met over a dinner and shared jokes about their college days.
"In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."
Forced to buy less tissues this week. Allergic Microsoft employees suffer with only two boxes per desk.
Almost as much as Sun damaged itself. It looks like Scott has put his ego on the backburner and is focusing on saving his business. That new attitude (if it lasts) is probably as significant as the $1.95 billion.
why some people call Microsoft M$.
The disparity of timelines between activities in technology and those in court is staggering. If you look even just at this case and the anti-trust case against Microsoft, they're still arguing about issues in court that have pretty much been steamrolled by technology. As a result, the settlements and results are less than satisfying for anyone other than the lawyers. I mean, Sun and Microsoft have been fighting about this for several years. By now, anyone needing to use a JDK on Windows has set up methods for making sure it's there, and Microsoft has done their entire .NET strategy.
This is almost like divorce arguments where people fight over furniture even though both sides have long since replaced the disputed furniture. When it's over, all that happens is that someone now has a couch they don't have room for.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Shortly after agreeing to settle, Microsoft realized $2 Bil was a lot of money, and immediately approached the DOJ to have the settlement blocked.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Microsoft dammaged Sun with MSJava, Sun sued to stop it. Sun won and Microsoft started shipping Sun Java. Sun sued to stop that as well. Microsoft shipped no Java, this hurt Sun more then MSJava and was Suns own fault. Sun didn't know when to stop, there was a point where all was well and Microsoft was shipping the right product. Ah well.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Any general knows that fighting a two front war is a bad thing, and Sun has effectively limited one of the fronts they are fighting on. But, the other front could kill them. IBM has a special mission to kill Sun dead, and they are a formidable foe. With their sweet computers (all of which run Linux) and their low prices, Sun can barely compete.
Sun needed this cash and the break with the fight with Microsoft. But I doubt that in the long run it will be enough. Their Opteron strategy just has to pay off for them if they want to last another 10 years.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
$2 Billion is the most that Microsoft has EVER payed out to any company. To reach a settlement like this, they may have future plans to do a lot more with Java. Technology sharing...
-- Len
B is for billion, right, not just bucks? wow!
It certainly didn't hurt Sun's stock. Up ~20% today
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.
Microsoft has continuously tried to defeat Linux by forcing features on users that are incompatible with Linux, while Linux produces a workaround or a compatability layer. Well, this would be one less thing to try and workaround.
I don't think this is an advantage for Microsoft as now .NET developers can choose to use hybrid Java/.NET solutions that both do authentication depending on which language is the better choice for that task.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
So, what's the catch?
After all the rancor over the last few years the wording of the press release is so mechical...I wonder if you can see Scott McNealy's new borg implant blinking in the video coverage.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
I notice a number of people commenting on the balance of Microsoft's cash on hand. I believe that we will witness erosion of the giant rather than the instant destruction. A billion here five hundred million there, a few lost customers, a few governmental restrictions, pressure to give deep discounts they all add up and over time the surplus will erode away. How are they going to fight when they can't throw money at their problems, when they can't afford to take a loss in furtherance of their strangle hold?
Ok today is the second this is getting a little old.
Look at the amount of money Sun is loosing at the moment, look at the amount of money M$ is paying them now and then think about what you would have done being in Sun's position.
This is not about Sun being a good open source bussiness or not.
i believe the most interesting line is:
Sun is also satisfied that the agreements announced today satisfy the objectives it was pursuing in the EU actions pending against Microsoft.
As Sun was the major complaining competitor in the EU case, this gives M$ a lot of fire support when trying to challenge the record fine. Another indication is the timing: shortly after the EU announced the fine.
Regards, Martin
It's April 2nd, fools. This should have been posted yesterday. Besides, who would want to share *anything* with m$, given their history of dealing with "partners"? m$ could be a character in "The Sopranos"...
Not really. As I understand it, MS refused to ship Sun's Java VM and Sun lost the bid to make MS ship it with MSWindows*. MS just told Sun to F off after it got it's own little thingy (.Njet)
Karma? What's that again?
Think about it; think about how little $2B is to MS, compared to 10 years with no harassment from Sun.
William Henry Gates III is the greatest capitalist tactician since John D. Rockefeller. I do not see that as necessarily positive. But, damn, he can sure play the game.
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
$2,000,000,000 changes a person.
Sun settles with Microsoft, cuts 3,300 jobs
.Net Web services technology "dot-Not." He often used the world "hairball" in describing Microsoft's proprietary software.
http://www.yahoo.com/_ylh=X3oDMTB1c2ZmZzF2BF9TAz I3 MTYxNDkEdGVzdAMwBHRtcGwDbnMtYmV0YQ--/s/171067
Sun Settles With Microsoft, Cuts Jobs
17 minutes ago
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By MAY WONG, AP Technology Writer
SAN JOSE, Calif. - Struggling server maker Sun Microsystems Inc. reached a sweeping, $1.6 billion settlement with Microsoft Corp. and said it plans to cooperate with its longtime nemesis, a company it had branded an unrepentant monopolist.
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The surprise agreement was accompanied by an announcement Friday by Sun that it is cutting 3,300 jobs and that its net loss for the fiscal third quarter will be wider than expected. The cuts represent 9 percent of its total work force of more than 35,000.
The "broad cooperating agreement" with Microsoft ends Sun's $1 billion private antitrust suit against the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant. Sun's complaints also helped spark the investigation that led to the European Union (news - web sites)'s recent record fine against Microsoft.
"It puts peace on the table in a big way," said Scott McNealy, Sun's chief executive, during a conference call Friday.
As part of the deal, Microsoft will pay Sun $700 million to resolve the antitrust case, which was scheduled to go to trial in January 2006, and $900 million to resolve patent issues. Sun and Microsoft also will pay royalties for each others' technologies.
"Our companies will continue to compete hard, but this agreement creates a new basis for cooperation that will benefit the customers of both companies," said Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive officer.
Sun's biggest claim -- and the main charge in its antitrust against Microsoft -- involved the Java programming environment Sun created to allow software to run on all computers regardless of the operating system.
Sun said Microsoft violated its license agreement by creating its own version of Java, thus making it less universal. Though a settlement of that case was reached, both sides ended up in court again after Microsoft said it planned to stop supporting Java.
Under Friday's agreement, Microsoft "may continue to provide product support" for its version of the software, called Microsoft Java Virtual Machine.
The deal also creates cooperation between the companies in the technical area of Web-based applications and user identity management between Sun and Microsoft servers. Sun also agreed to sign a license that will allow its software to better communicate with Windows-based desktop computers.
The agreement settles Sun's complaint over Microsoft's server communications that led to the EU's decision against Microsoft last month. That ruling also was based on Microsoft's bundling of its media player with its ubiquitous Windows operating system, though Sun did not play a role in that complaint.
"Sun is also satisfied that the agreements announced today satisfy the objectives it was pursuing in the EU actions pending against Microsoft," Sun said in a statement Friday.
The agreement is an unprecedented change in the relationship between the two companies.
Sun's McNealy often railed against Microsoft, repeatedly calling Microsoft a monopoly and its
But the anti-Microsoft rants quieted in recent months, as Sun struggled to post a profit and the companies worked at resolving the issues between them. On Friday, Sun executives s
Shit. Sun sold their soul. See the press-release: "Microsoft Support for Java: The companies have agreed that Microsoft may continue to provide product support for the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine that customers have deployed in Microsoft's products".
Dear Scott, now that you've sold your soul, have dealt with the devil: what's next? DOT-NET compatibility layers for Java? Cooperation with Unisys to provider 32-CPU servers for Windows Datacenter edition? IMHO you've just destroyed your lifework, no wonder all your buddies left your company in the last years...
This is just sad.
Two billion is a lot of cash but, as they say, the devil is in the details. The Register has mory details than usual for a story like this, but things are still sketchy. For example:
Future Collaboration for Java and .NET Sun and Microsoft have agreed that they will work together to improve technical collaboration between their Java and .NET technologies.
What exactly does this mean? Could part of the $2*10^9 be a bribe to weaken Java's competitive position vs. .NET?
You write your nine symphonies, then you die.
There is a difference. While not much between 2.0 and 1.6, but when it's to the 8th power, it's a big number. Hey, the difference is nearly the entire EU settlement.
Quote things properly please.
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
From the press release:
"Patents and Intellectual Property: The parties have agreed to a broad covenant not to sue with respect to all past patent infringement claims they may have against each other. The agreement also provides for potential future extensions of this type of covenant. The two companies have also agreed to embark on negotiations for a patent cross-license agreement between them. "
I expect Solaris10-patent/Linux lawsuits to follow. With the MSFT involvement, I think Sun's the next SCO.
From the article:
Legal Settlements: The two companies are settling and terminating their lawsuit in the United States. Sun is also satisfied that the agreements announced today satisfy the objectives it was pursuing in the EU actions pending against Microsoft.
[ emphasis was added by me ]
I thought Sun was the primary driver behind the whole thing in the first place. What's going to happen now?
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
1) $2B to one company vs 600M to all of Europe.
.Net and Java - Here it is people, the reason why there will be no open source Java. MS already got their hands in it.
2) Collaboration on
3) Incedentally, MS will use this to kill off Java.
McNealy is a moron. He screwes up time and time again and still maintains a company. This man is truly a ledgend. I think McBride idolizes him, but McBride won't survive. He's just not that good.
And what is it with Irish dumbasses (Mc*) running tech-biz?
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Uhh, that's 2 TRILLION... you must work Enron or maybe Worldcom's accounting department.
Microsoft's and Sun's customers win the gain the most out of this...this will lead to better product compatibility and quality.It's good when 2 Huge company's work togheter and share technology.Big win for all =]
I read the press release and this is what I get out of it:
.NET and user authentication problems in Windows
MS gives Sun some cash
Sun helps MS fix
Sun sells Windows on Sun Xeon and Opteron boxes
Sun hands over any good ideas they have left
Sun never sues MS ever again for their illegal business practices.
I can only hope that this news will run SUNW up high enough so I can finally get out.
burnin
This deal reminds me of the Apple/Microsoft deal. If you can't beat 'em, give them a whole lot of money to become "technical partners."
I wonder how StarOffice for Windows fits into this? I doubt that it's going to be around to much longer.
This would also explain why Sun doesn't want to open source Java.
I would hope not; but this seems like an interesting fear. Seems Sun is the last Unix vendor left whose strategy is based on a very large R&D investment in a proprietary Unix; and it is in both their interest and Microsoft's for Sun to protect this investment.
... but I had no idea it was cold enough for hell to freeze over! I have to believe this is a belated April fools day joke... these companies hate each other almost as much as the Oracle vs Microsoft feud. I mean... this went beyond an industry spat it was downright personal.
Funny thing is, this sounds alot like when Microsoft bailed out Corel... look how it turned out for them! Sun isnt exactly as strong as it once was... this is a bad sign of things to come.
Actually, 2 billion = 2,000,000,000,000
Try reading a dictionary sometime.
2 billion = 2 x 10^9 (that's a two with 9 zeroes after it)
Maybe you should try reading a math book sometime instead of a dictionary.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
Billiun Dollars (holding up crooked pinky) muahahahahah (Sorry, couldn't resist myself)
Neither of these are off topic. The issue is how does the $2,000,000,000 ($2 billion) effect MS Stock. If Sun took a 15% jump as listed above, the issue is a fair point. Sun has been listing in March a bit and this could be a nice shot in the arm. In the same period, MS has dropped as well. No big change yet today. Should see response by 12:00 on the east coast.
Potential this could be a win-win for both sides form a stock perspective!
Sun gets $2B and both parties agree to share intellectual property
Compare this $2B with the $600M fine levied by the European Union. The difference between the two values is revealing, and can be intepreted in two ways. Either the EU judgement was yet another fudge, and Microsoft have once more got off lightly after being convicted of monopoly abuse.
Or, a large part of the intellectual property sharing is a Java payoff. In particular, Sun may have agreed to waive any complaints regarding the fact that C# is lifted from Java, in return for the large pile of cash.
Personally, I think both explainations are equally probable, and the reality is an admixture of the two.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
He'd get the same result, no doubt. The problem is, what in some cultures is called 2 billion is in others called 2 thousand million, and in the latter 2 billion means what in the former 2 trillion means.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
- Applets are one of the worst technologies ever wrought on the Web. ActiveX is about as bad, and Push was bad but at least we didn't have to ever use it. If Applets will now be outdated too, maybe there will be less of them. This is good for Microsoft (less Java) and for Sun (less embarassing Java).
- JVMs change constantly. The JVM I write my app for is probably not the one you wrote yours for. Rarely do people deploy Java assuming it ought to run - they specify a JVM it's intended for, and often demand you install that JVM and point to it for their software. JVMs coexist very peacefully. The point is, there's no sense in Windows shipping with a JVM - you're just going to go around it with each Java product you install anyway.
Now, is this deal is actually good for both companies? Microsoft tends to make a very poor bed partner - they give you sweaty sheets for a few months and then throw everything you own out the window. Just look at how they've turned their backs on nVidia after the Xbox partnership - and Microsoft bashers can provide many more historical examples. Sun will need a very strong strategy that leverages the benefits of the combined technology beyond Microsoft's reach if they intend to gain from this - like the way nVidia used Microsoft's money to launch into the motherboard market.This is good for Sun and good for the open source community in general....
1. Sun can finally stop fighting a losing battle, and they actually get $2B - which is not an insignificant sum, no matter who is paying it. MS would not just fork over 2 BILLION dollars if they thought they could avoid it. I think Sun should get some credit for squeezing significant cash from that stone.
2. The details, which are still not clear, regarding the agreement to allow for better interop between Active Directory and the Identity server that Sun sells (which runs on Linux and Solaris) are pretty interesting. If MS is agreeing to make some of their proprietary interfaces and protocols available to Unix/Linux vendors then this gives Unix & Linux vendors a
way to use non-MS software and to Interoperate better with MS. Believe it or not, Slashdot karma whores, interoperating with MS and active directory is actually an important feature that large enterprises consider very carefully when evaluating servers and desktop solutions. Don't say "but, we have SAMBA!". SAMBA is a collossal hairball of ugly, unsupportable, indecipherable hacks on top of hacks and doesn't even come close to addressing many of the more useful features that AD offers.
Being an open source player would be the final nail in their coffin.
This reminds me a bit of outsourcing: A short-term shot of money for the stockholders with no thoughts of the long-term consequences. :-(
"This agreement recognizes that cutting edge R&D and intellectual property protection are the foundation for the growth and success of our industry."
We will hunt FOSS wiht our patents untill they drop dead. Now maybe we se staroffice woth ms office support but never in the free oo version.
Damn Sott, why???
Several things stand out.
1. 900 Million of the award was to resolve patent issues. That's a pretty huge number (in fact it's the highest patent violation settlement I have ever seen.
2."Sun and Microsoft have agreed to pay royalties for use of each other's technology, with Microsoft making an up-front payment of $350 million and Sun making payments when this technology is incorporated into its server products." So MS and Sun have a cross licensing aggreement and SUN will pay them when the technology is incorporated.
The total award is actually 1.6 Billion. The 350 Million mentioned in the article is the first upfront payment. The cross licensing of patents is the important feature of the settlement. The collaboration is less newsworthy as it was mandated by the settlement with the DOJ.
Thalasar
Basically, if you need the client to do some processing then you are relegatedt to Java (WebStart or otherwise) or JavaScript, .NET, or (gasp) an ActiveX (flash qualifies as an ActiveX product).
None of these methods are exactly clean, but from many user's perspective the ancient - built in to most I.E. Java 1.1 - is the most convenient.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
SUNW's market capital is $16.01B at 50% of that is $8.005B. Minus the $1.2B, MSFT could buy majority control of SUNW for $6.805B + $1. Hmm it seems that MSFT has something up its sleeve.
This show us, once again, that Microsoft can and will buy whatever it wants. Sun now lives on the Redmond food chain. They toe the line or, in the end, they die.
There is only one way to survive against an entity that controls a bottomless pile of cash. That is to NOT be for sale. Any for-profit enterprise, like Sun, is for sale and the Gates machine can buy whatever it wants.
But Gates and his horde can't buy Linux; they can't buy Open Source, they can't buy Free Software. This scares them and, in that, lies our only hope.
I'm no conspiracy theorist but it's just a little odd that Sun decided not to go open source with Java and now Microsoft seems to be settling so easily ($2,000,000,000 seems like a payoff)... What really bothers me is the part that says "both parties agree to share intellectual property."
;)
All I'm waiting for now is to see how difficult open source implementation of scripting for Java will become.
Moderators: When in doubt, mod Interesting
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
True, but considering the deal was between two U.S. companies it's likely they would use the value generally accepted in North America.
To avoid this confusion maybe we should use the SI prefixes and call it 2 Gigadollars.
Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
- In the U.S. "billion" is 10^9. (10^12 is called "trillion".)
- In the U.K. "billion" is 10^12. (10^9 is called "thousand million".)
- I dunno about the rest of the world.
However, even though the Register is apparently a U.K. entity, I don't think anyone believes that M$ is going to pay Sun 2*10^12 dollars. $2*10^9 is already a huge amount of money. $2*10^12 is an ungodly amount of money.You write your nine symphonies, then you die.
Microsoft doesn't just settle for $2bn if there isn't something big in it for them. That's not a matter of money for Microsoft, it's a matter of pride.
What this really amounts to is that Sun is going downhill fast and Microsoft is effectively buying the assets. Sun gets a $2bn infusion of cash and lays of 3300 people. In return, Microsoft gets cross-licenses to Sun's patents. Why would Microsoft be interested in this? Because Sun has lots of patents on Java and VM related technologies that Sun could use to create problems for Microsoft's C#/.NET effort.
If it wasn't already clear to you that Sun was an unreliable partner for OSS work, this "settlement" should bring it into focus.
Does this mean that Microsoft will be able to look at the source for OpenOffice?
Or does it mean that Sun will be able to include Outlook Express code in their java desktop?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Two points, catered to delivering Java-powered client applications to John Q. Public effortlessly (let's face it; that's what applets did):
Up until now, you could release a Java 1.1.x compatible *application* (no security sandbox) without worrying about Granny Smith even having been able to spell jre when she was downloading. That's a good thing. 1.1.x is plenty to check and see if there's a Java 2 JRE laying around, and helping Granny get it if you absolutely need it.
Which brings me to point 2... Do you really *need* Java 2, or do you just want it? Admittedly Swing is a little buggy on 1.1.4 [if you include swingall.jar], which is as far as MS's VM got before the mess started, but Oracle still ships a version of 1.1.8 to power its management tools. There's very little you can't do with 1.1.x, especially once you've got the Collections API in the mix.
I've seen emails go across the Apple Java Development mailing list saying things like, "Our boss says we *have* to have generics, so Macs and their 1.4.x JVM are right out for development." Look, these are things you've been happily *not* using for all of Java's existence, that older code still works in 1.5, yet you're moving the whole of your development over b/c you think a new, just out of beta feature is cool? "As if source code rusted."
This settlement is great news for Java on the desktop. The longer you can keep more of your code 1.1 friendly, the longer you can deploy effortlessly on Windows. That window had almost closed, and now it's back, wide open.
And from the press release, though I'm not so optimistic to believe it'll necessarily be the case, there's nothing ruling out MS's installation of a newer version of Sun's jre by default in the future. Heck, it ain't jre's or clr's that boost an OS, it's, "Developers, developers, developers, developers." Maybe MS sees the more the merrier, and would prefer things like Sun's Mad Hatter not gain any special traction. Reminds me a little of AOL dropping Mozilla (which it based the OS X AOL client on as proof of concept in the Great Game of 0110 Chicken 2003) the second after MS relicensed them the IE engine.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Farewell Sun.
you were not saints, but you will be missed.
what you did give back will not be forgotten.
As usual, this comment is almost correct, but not quite. Please try not to oversimplify if you don't know what you are talking about. The reason Sun had MS stop distributing the JRE was because the only JRE MS could legally distribute when they had to include it in the OS was JRE 1.1.8. If you at all know about the Java industry, JRE 1.1.8 came out pre-1998 and Java is about to release 1.5 after 1.2.x, 1.3.x, and 1.4.x. So, if you were a company that wants developers to use the latest and greatest in what Java has to offer in their applets, then you definitely don't want JRE 1.1.8 being distributed. This is crippling the devolpment of at most applet development in the whole scheme of things that Java is used for. As a developer, you would have to consider this if you want to include as many people as possible into your web audience, which in effect forces development to pre-1999 levels of Java for applet development. That sucks.
/.er's, don't be so gullible to reward stupid rhetoric. For all we know, this person is an MS fanboy and purposefully not mentioning details that would otherwise make things a little clearer to form an opinion on. Either it's that, or this person is lazy and stupid and doesn't do his homework before opening his big mouth. So, do your due dilligence before repeating corporate bullshit, you mimic.
Not sure who considers your comment insightful as it is very vaque. Come on
"How about everyone stop writing in Java period and just use perl or php?"
i use perl for string handling on the fly, great for web page 'Text' pages. my clients pay me if my solutions are in graphics/vrml, is there a way to generate graphics/vrml models in perl, or php? and is this solution as fast?
if so, i'm there; please point me the way.
Looks like Sun might have gone from "Teetering on irrelevancy" to "Embraced, Extended and Extinguished." At least they got some cash to cushion the golden parachutes.
> 1. Applets are one of the worst technologies ever wrought on the Web.
Sorry, but you definitely don't know what you are talking about.
Applets, when run using newer VMs, do things the flash/javascript gurus are still dreaming of.
Ever seen a decent full-featured e-mail editor inside a thin client solution which is NOT using Java?
I bet not. At least not the beast we are developing. Full HTML support, spell-checking-while-typing etc. in a small applet.
The applet is cached on the client side, so the initial download hit (around 5 secs) goes down to below 1 second after the first usage.
I can tell what the worst thing was ever brought to the web:
Misusing HTML as an exact layout language and trying to create decent applications with it.
"You my bitch now."
Germany: 10^6=million, 10^9=milliarde,10^12=billion and so forth. A lot of people have trouble with this when translating business news from the US :)
(I know I'm risking being a troll, but whatever)
First, the devil's advocate voice:
Microsoft produced their products with the strategy, speed, and skill of McDonalds. They built a product (let's start with DOS) that was accessible, simple, and usable by any idiot. They struck intelligible deals with massive companies to get their product out there, and out there it went! They built a business using typical strong and fierce business tactics.
Okay Microsoft, you win.
Thus, like a spoiled child, Microsoft decided to use its leverage to wield God-like powers in the computing world, the corporate business world, and every buzzword-labeled stage (e-business?) in between. For example, the price alone of their core OS jumped in multiples when going from DOS to Windows. The Windows concept isn't even Microsoft - Xerox came out with the first GUI interface!
By creating and patenting a standard, the toe-hold is impossible to break. This will make things practically impossible for other companies to have any sort of success.
Why? Because they can!
Is it a good thing that anti-trust suits are being filed? I'm curious if that's the only option for the rest of the computing world. It's like watching an election. Microsoft is a lot like the Republican party. All the Republicans boost and support their one icon-puppet into office, because they know that no matter who's in office, it's a Republican in office, and they all look and talk the same. That unity, no matter how evil and horrible, gets success. Meanwhile, the Democrats (and all the remaining 3rd parties) are scrambling about in free will, trying to agree on someone who is able to represent the common voice of the common people... unfortunately, the common voice is so diverse and spread apart, the concept of a "common voice" is obsolete.
Hopefully, one of these days, the dust will settle and we can all join hands and sing folk songs around a campfire.
"Would you rather be right, or happy?"
Are you listening, Stacey's? Clear the window displays. Beat Amazon and Bookpool to the punch! Time to clear out all that old WROX trash you've been storing in the basement for just such an occasion.
Why post anonymously? I don't think anybody considers it karma whoring unless you post to your own posts (or copy the entire text of an article off of an [immune to slashdot effect] website). Following up on replies to your own comments (even if it's a first "rated" post) seem to me to just be good form.
Thanks for listening,
Allen Zadr (or someone pretending to be Allen Zadr)
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
...get all this active crap off the web and keep it off. Period. This whole business about shifting processing load to the client is what doomed client-server technology to failure. Make the server do all the work. That's what it's there for.... to serve the client... not service it. ("service" in the sex act sense). The web browser client should as "thin" as possible and simply render the markup language sent to it, not execute a bunch of code in addition to rendering the *ML. Keep the client thin as possible, keep the bandwidth demand as thin as possible and users will stay much happier.
There is hope, there is optimism, then there is fucking NUTS.
In the U.K. "billion" is 10^12. (10^9 is called "thousand million".)
Historically, yes, but the US billion is now widespread. I'm not even convinced that the old UK billion (10^12) is a UK standard anymore:
Britain and Australia traditionally employed the international usage of 10^12, but have recently largely switched to the U.S. version of 10^9.
(from everyone's favourite encyclopaedia: wikipedia)
This is where the serious fun begins.
If this was announced yesterday, I wouldn't have believed it.
For example,
JavaScript dropdown menus as the only way to navigate - yes, a common requirement. Any Browser compliance goes right out the window.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
In addition to getting a bunch of money, Sun's giving the axe to 3300 people worldwide. Yeah, Sun.
Do you suffer from dillusionment?
Does anyone have a running total of fines/judgements against Microsoft? $2B here, $0.5B there, sooner or later share holders might notice and ask that MS stop engaging in practices that throw away the shareholders money. Every billion paid out is less for future dividends.
Peace be with you,
-jimbo
XML Tools for Mac OS X
And this just to shows how little the EU anti-monopoly fine (and even less, the US antitrust) will affect MS. At $600mil, the fun for massive abuse of power is less than trademark/etc litigation.
I think that userfriendly got this one right.
I wonder though, what is MS's estimated assets. 2 billion seems a rather hefty amount even for them, and not something they'd just toss away without some advantage from it over alternatives (how long can you tie something up in court for $2B?)
Sun has plenty of money already. They are not cash-starved, and in fact have been in a very strong position on their balance sheet for a while. It just might be that the reason M$ paid them is because the case was going poorly for them...how's that for an idea?
Sun is also still doing ok, considering the global recession. They're hanging in, still advancing and doing lots of R&D, and once things pick up again in a year or such they'll be ready.
How many of you chicken littles know anything about Solaris10, the new sparcs, chip2chip, or any of the other things that really have little to do with java? Java is NOT Sun's only product. When someone buys a sun server, they're not thinking about java. Sun originally got market share with a rep for cheap prices and awesome customer service. Their service is still great, but they weren't able to keep processor prices down in comparison with buying them from intel. However, they still have the most solid systems, as far as I'm concerned (they're very expensive now, but less so than the same quality elsewhere). And you can get a 4-way server from Sun cheaper than you can from even Dell...and Dell's rep is crap (would you *expect* a dell box to be running without a reboot after 5 years?). They are picking up some of the ideas that got them big in the beginning, and effectively implimenting them.
Just because Sun got 2B from M$, doesn't mean they're dead...yeeesh...it means they got 2B from M$.
so last i heard MS is worth $40 billion. EU is going to take away $6 billion, sun takes another $2 billion. that's 20% of what they got, if i'm not mistaken.
another 5 or 6 of these and we'll get the key/save the princess/.
Minor note:
The GUI was developed at SRI (Formerly, Stanford Research Institute) not by Xerox. Neither Xerox, nor Apple, nor Microsoft invented the GUI. Though Xerox greatly improved it, and Apple also added some features.
Perhaps Sun will be less keen to promote its Java Desktop now it is getting closer to MS...? This seems to have been a key part of several recent announcements about organisations planning to move to Linux desktops...
What do you know about coffins and nails aside from the ones you put in the ground? Do you think a company with billions of dollars is going to drop dead? Are you some kind of authority that has devoted his time to understanding the complexities of MS and Sun?
For one, Java is a dominant player in Enterprise software and the independent Java vendors realized the need for single sign on in this marker space. MS wants to be a major player in Enterprise software too and also realizes the importance of single sign on. Vendors in the Java space are not likely to pay or implement a MS spec they have no say so on. In effect, this orphans MS enterprise apps that should be offering single sign on just like all the other software in the space. So, you cave in and do what you can do to interoperate with other vendors. This prevents single sign on compatibility and interoperability issues from being a sticking point with IT professionals that are being hounded to implement single sign on in their corporate environments. If you were MS, are you going to tell CTOs that they can't implement single sign on if they want to mix non-MS enterprise technologies and MS technologies?
If you were an IT professional that had to make purchasing decisions, do you go with vendor lock in that won't work with other apps like SAP and Siebel, or do you stay neutral with an independent standard realizing that your corporate environment is going to most likely be a heterogenous mix of vendor applications?
As far as I know, Sun is the only implementation fo the Libraty Alliance standard and maybe that is why they got the 2 billion. I wonder why we don't see MS making deals with BEA and IBM.
Here is a Bloomberg news link
"In October, Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst Steven Milunovich suggested Sun put Schwartz in a position to talk to the public more and called him ``brilliant.''
McNealy has resisted slashing more jobs. Merrill's Milunovich had called the company a ``bloated, underachieving, unfocused'' business and said it needs to eliminate 7,000 workers.
Sun has had their market share eroded on both sides - Microsoft and Open source *nixes. Even a $1.6 Billion US is not going to be enough to prop them up. And who knows if SCO has their eyes on that money!
Have you Meta Moderated t
about 2 weeks ago we were talking about the chance of java being opensourced???
...
We have to lern not to trust them
I mean, "I Wanted OpenSource Java, you insensitive patented clod!"
This is bad for SUNW and the shareholders, no doubt. Yes, McNeally and friends do get a lifeline of cash, but I'm sure MSFT is aware that they're merely postponing the inevitable.
What this means IMO is that SUNW is a more viable takeover target than they were 24 hours ago.
Granted, they could buy back shares with the new cash (and may want to, for many reasons), but the underlying business plan is very vulnerable. Linux is eating Solaris' lunch, and a custom hardware solution isn't cutting it today in the marketplace. (I know, Sun servers are fun to work with, quite reliable, blah blah blah. But I know a few organizations that are abandoning Solaris for Linux, if only for the price advantage.)
I'd be looking for suitors right about now, if I were part of SUNW's mgmt. team. (Or I'd flip off everyone in Mountain View and unfurl the golden parachute, depending on what kind of bastard I felt like that day.)
So here's an idea to debate: another Unix vendor is desperately trying to break into the server and enterprise computing market. Assuming that said vendor has the cash and the will to use it (big assumptions there, I know), would this be a worthwhile strategy to pursue?
--- The American Way of Life is not a birthright. Hell, it's not even sustainable.
Well, in Europe a billion is a million million, but in the USA a billion is a thousand million. At least, that's what I heard.
How did their last, legal, "agreement" go? How about almost every company Microsoft signs "agreements" with and isn't a full fledged MSFT follower?
.Nyet
.....
Sun should have taken the money and walked away. Now, Sun is supposed to get the EU to back off, raise it's hand when the DOJ asks how signed up for MSFT's IP licensing and to a few other dances....All the while, Sun is supposed to be pushing Linux( Java Desktop ) and Solaris?????
This looks like more bad business on Sun's part. They'll be back in court or out of business and either way, Microsoft will wins because:
1) They'll have had Sun to help reduce pressure from the EU and US/DOJ
2) Distracted Sun by thinking it will get it's software to interoperate with Microsofts and Sun will lose more customers while gaining few->none.
3) Microsoft might get access to some of Sun's Java code too and that might help with some migrations from J2EE to
4)
IMHO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
- [...] CEO Scott McNealy [...] quote [...]
In other words: he's been had."This agreement will be of significant benefit to [...] customers who want to combine server products from multiple vendors and achieve seamless computing in a heterogeneous computing environment. We look forward [... yadda yadda]"
yes, we have no bananas
Hey, Xfree did it. Why shouldn't Sun?
Corel killed their Linux distro within a few months of taking the M$ bailout.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
The reason Sun had MS stop distributing the JRE was because the only JRE MS could legally distribute when they had to include it in the OS was JRE 1.1.8. If you at all know about the Java industry, JRE 1.1.8 came out pre-1998 and Java is about to release 1.5 after 1.2.x, 1.3.x, and 1.4.x. So, if you were a company that wants developers to use the latest and greatest in what Java has to offer in their applets, then you definitely don't want JRE 1.1.8 being distributed. This is crippling the devolpment of at most applet development in the whole scheme of things that Java is used for. As a developer, you would have to consider this if you want to include as many people as possible into your web audience, which in effect forces development to pre-1999 levels of Java for applet development. That sucks
Oh, Mr. Sun Fanboy.... who made it so that the only JRE that MS could legally distribute was JRE 1.1.8?
That's right - Sun did.
That's why the original poster claimed that it was Sun's fault.
Coming soon - pyrogyra
I wonder if Sun computers are now going to be able to file and printer share directly with Windows boxes without the help of Samba.
"The threat from Linux wasn't people switching NT -> Linux, but rather people switching proprietary unix to Linux in stead of unix to NT."
As I've always said, most Linux advocates don't realize the best way to fight Microsoft is through fighting propietary UNIX. But that war is almost over and Microsoft knows it.
SUN Who else thinks stock market doesn't make any sense....
MS bails out Sun
Sun sells soul to the devil.
Bill said Java sucks.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
losing losing losing
losing losing losing
losing losing losing
Say it with me
I can see the headlines now...
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
and see if SMI's internal Linux camp weren't among the 3000 shown the door. Note that the settlement included Imperial certification for SMI's x86 machinery. See if we ever hear anything more from Sun about Linux. This deal was all about sharing _proprietary_ technologies, all will be under NDA and NONE will ever filter out into FOSS.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
Wow, that's fucked up.
And I thought SAE sucked compared to metric before this, and now I learn that the rest of the world has it's number naming conventions fucked up.
Thousand million? What fucking idiot came up with that? It defies the logical next step. Ten, Hundred, Thousand, Hundred Thousand, Million, blimey! Nobody's ever going to need a number bigger than a thousand millions, crikey! A thousand millions is the biggest number, then, gub'ner, by golley!!
Noone else made the "Sopranos" connection!? The gall of some people...
Sorry, that's just not true. You have it ass-backwards.
Sun told Microsoft they had to ship either the current standard version of Sun Java, with no Microsoft extensions; or no Java. Microsoft picked "no Java", because they wanted to keep shipping the old, crappy 1.1.8 Java with their broken extensions to the Java language.
Then Sun tried to sue Microsoft to force them to ship Sun Java, and lost.
As a result, Microsoft ended up with no license to ship any kind of Java. However, they were allowed to distribute their 1.1.8 "extended" JRE for an interim period. That's how we ended up with Microsoft only being able to ship their 1.1.8 JRE--if Sun had agreed to Microsoft's terms, they'd have shipped the 1.1.8 "extended" JRE *indefinitely*.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
of Microsoft, Sun, and SCO. This agreement is great for all three companies, and will further work to lock out Linux and other OSS alternatives. M$ and $un both license SCO "IP," so it follows that products from both companies will probably result in income for $CO. Micro$oft and $un will probably work to further "privatize" java and lock out the OSS market. They will also probably develop closed networking and server standards that will see wide adoption. I don't see how this is a good settlement at all... Instead of the two giants fighting each other, they are fighting together against the little folks. Not good... not good at all...
Cringely says that M$ earns $600M per month in interest on their cash hoard. They can easily afford to make this payment and continue to torture Sun outside of court unencumbered.
an ill wind that blows no good
Q: What do you get when you cross a Sun with a Microsoft?
A: Microsoft.
Perhaps Java is now more critical to IBM's future than it is to Sun's.
I feel that this is a break they need to get back into the market. They have been marginalized over the past years and even looked like they were dying. SUN needed this break to survive. Ideas of *NIX puritans aside, being in business should be the first goal of any company.
in Sun's DtMail.
As it stands now, when someone makes an appointment for a meeting and schedules it in Outrage Calendar(tm), the message _I_ get from the Exchange "server" (in NetScrape on my Sun workstation) says "ERROR: Cannot find NLS Data Directory".
This deal means that I will (eventually) be able to see these meeting appointments with SMI's (proprietary) mail tools.
If it comes around within about a year, this could save me my job.
I'm presently under considerable pressure, because of this issue, to use Outrage(tm) to handle my email, which I of course refuse to do.
So Scott selling his soul to BillGatus of Borg may save _me_ from having to follow my employer in doing so. Or at least buy me some time.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
... in ten years, it will probably be Solaris. And deservedly so. IBM, and HP will probably cool to further UNIX development but Sun can't. It's still their core and they'll win the battle of attrition. It won't be much of a win, but it will be a bigger win to Sun than a loss to IBM or HP.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
The interesting bit here is whether or not Microsoft just fell on their own sword. They've just set a precedent with a $2bn settlement over anti-trust and intellectual property!
If indeed this was a tactic to evade censure by the EU, they may have just openened themselves up to much bigger problems by providing a rock-solid precedent to other competitors.
Microsoft gets a lot of business with MSOffice.
If it shares IP with Sun, what happens to MSOffice's competitor, OO.org (which is copyright Sun Microsystems, Inc)?
Repeat after me: Java. Java. Jaaaavaaaa.
It's not an acronym. Don't capitalize it. Sun writes it "Java", and so should you.
I noticed the EU fine timing also.
My supposition is this. Sun had just proved that it could hound/"assist" the global legal system into fining Microsoft 600 million.
The $2 billion valuation figure for leaving Microsoft alone wasn't arrived at until it was clear what financial penalties Sun could (indirectly) cause to Microsoft if they persisted in pursuing them legally.
By agreeing to shell out $2 billion, Microsoft is pragmatically admitting that it would be subject to at least that many fines going forward if Sun kept pursuing the matter over the next decade.
(Microsoft *did* eviscerate the Java platform by tying IE to windows and trying to change the behavior of Java base clases rather than just adding easily recognized com.ms.* classes as its original contract clearly encouraged. All in all, a $2 billion settlement to kill off the biggest platform competitor to threaten them in a decade isn't *that* bad for someone of MS's size.)
--LP
Breakfast served all day!
Jump into bed with Microsoft and you get the shaft. Happens every time.
Sun had a good run I guess.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Oh, wait a minute, that was yesterday...
Good call. As a MS shareholder, it worries me immensely about all of these judgements, but I'm not really worried about the future dividends (hint: there won't be an increase in dividends, even though some of the shareholders are demanding it (see last years proxy votes).
Hell, for all I care they can take their $40B - 3.1B and start selling lawnmowers.
So spend it like you stole it Bill! Your buddy bush does!
Steven V.
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
.. with the other Sun news this week. Sun desktop at wallyworld, 200 mil desktops to china, etc. My guess is, sun is basing their plan on a couple of realities. They are FORCED to deal with microsoft in some manner at this time. And they are gambling that linux and their java platform will slowly start to gain serious inroads against microsoft, and that will FORCE microsoft to play ball with more-even rules, which is what everyone except microsoft wants anyway. They are also getting paid serious cash right now to take the only options they had available. Reality would have forced them into (probably) the same exact decisions and eventualities, now they just get some cash, too. It's not a perfect solution for them, but it's a *viable* solution with some gravy they didn't have before.
Molotov? Ribbentrop?
I would draw your attention to the awk programming language.
While awk is clear, expressive, and easy to learn, it does not allow direct access to many kernel system calls or other similar primitives. This makes awk rather portable - VMS and DOS versions of awk are easy to come by.
perl does allow this type of access, making perl programs less portable than awk programs between platforms. perl also supports a C API for extending the language, which is not implemented in awk.
Most enterprise J2EE applications are deployed on UNIX, but these same applications cannot directly access a number of important system calls (i.e. stat(), creat(), mkfifo(), signal(), ipc, etc.). In this way, Java is crippled on UNIX.
There is a time and a place for both approaches for access to system calls, but Java (mostly) chose the awk model for political/portability concerns. Whether this choice is ultimately a benefit or a hinderance remains to be seen, but I wish that a more creative solution had emerged.
It's just a matter of time for MS CLR to fully emulate the Java virtual machine environment.
Can Sun, IBM and others that announced 6 months ago that they were working on a next generation virtual machine agree to work with MS this time?
Somebody tell them April Fools was yesterday...
This whole thing reminded me of the MS's settlement with AOL-TW, that involved AOL killing Mozilla development, I wonder how long will Sun keep supporting OpenOffice.org after this... fortunately for anyone that uses OO.o(not me), OO.o is Open Source so in a way the cat is out of the bag, still, IIRC sun provided most of the development resources, while Mozilla the dev team was under 50 people IIRC(more like 20 in reality), I think I heard sun has 300 people working on OO.o...
... (I'm sure there have been a few more) What you do when you have an (practically) infinite pile of cash?
;)
Does anyone here see a pattern? Apple, Corel, AOL, Sun,
pay your competition to kill any product that might threatens your monopoly.
As for Java, IBM better start to think what they are going to replace it with...
I'm glad I dumped Java completely and now I work mostly with Python, not only it's a much nicer language, I also don't have to worry about Sun politics anymore.
If you use java you are still in time to switch to something better, more portable, truly open, and that "sucks less", something like Python... or like Inferno/Limbo
[Inferno is now really Free, you can download it from Vitanuova, and as an extra you will get the greatest C compilers ever created, Ken God Thompson C Plan 9 compilers! don't worry about the "details" form, you can just click the "proceed to download" button]
Best wishes
uriel
"When in doubt, use brute force." Ken Thompson
The total payout from MS to Sun was 1.95 billion. It is not a huge stretch to round that to 2 buillion.
this is the opening salvo in the next battle against Linux. Sun is going to get screwed in this deal (because MS would not spend that much money unless they were assured they would make 10x more), probably like SCO, get shut down. SCO is essentially dead, I am sure MS has pulled any funding they had and Daryl is going to end up getting dry humped like he deserves. Now is but to wait for Sun to start filing lawsuits against IBM.
does this mean we can now expect a MS Office on Solaris edition, or an Solar Outlook, MSSIE, you name it - not (no.Never!) Linux but close by. Just in case they might want to covertly prepare ports?
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
This is just a Microsoft April Fools joke. Like all Microsoft releases, this one too is late.
$2*10^12 is an ungodly amount of money
Yeah! You could pay off almost 30% of the US national debt with that.
I think we need another tax cut for the wealthiest 1% so that we can run it up a bit faster. Oops, did I say tax cut? I meant tax relief.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
A few billion here, a few billion there... pretty soon it starts to add up to real money.
A few dozen more lawsuits and anti-trust cases like that and Microsoft might actually have to start selling something to pay it off.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I just hope they (MS) dosen't port Windows XP to the Sparc platform, wouldn't that suck!
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
As part of the deal, Sun has also agreed to cripple Java by making Java applications really ugly and slow, and...
Oh, wait, never mind.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Actually, this was an agreement between Sun and MS to settle Sun's lawsuit. If Sun didn't want MS to ship 1.1.8 Java, they could have continued the lawsuit. Instead they took the settlement money and then turned around and tried to force MS to distribute Sun's Java on anti-trust grounds.
Sun didn't really lose the effort to force MS to ship Sun's Java, they just didn't get to do it without the suit running its course. Apparently Sun decided that this newest settlement was a better deal for them then continuing the lawsuit.
last month when they had talks with IBM...
Now, where have I heard that before???"
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Ok I realize I may not have read every thread here but I cannot believe you M$ bashers aren't whining about how Scott is such a sell out. It's probably because you know half the stuff an M$ basher (like Scott) usually whines about is a bunch of crap.
All of Scott's anti-M$ arguments are now effectively in the toilet. By taking the money and bending over to M$ Scott has confirmed he was only in it for the money and that his arguments against M$ were only hype in order to spin up a large settlement.
It's just like anywhere else in the world; the poor want what the rich have. That's why:
- The world hates the US
- The Palestinians hate the Israelis
- M$ competitors hate M$
- Skinheads hate everyone but themselves
- People living in poor areas of the US are the first to say: their votes aren't counted, police abuse them, schools don't get the same funding, etc.
I realize that these are some very broad, unqualified generalizations but if you boil it all down it's about the haves and the have-nots. The have-nots are always blaming someone else for their situation rather then stepping up and fixing the problem. Lately people have learned to tap into this and sell hate to control these have-nots and get them to do stupid things like kill innocent people because it's the 'right' or 'only' way to fix the problem. I'm sure in my lifetime we'll see some version of a Linux terrorist group sending suicide bombers over to Redmond.
Wouldn't it be great if people could bring real issues to the table instead of spin based on hate because of what they don't have?
Doesn't this amount to collusion of some sort? Microsoft, being legally determined to be a monopoly in a court of law, may be taking illegal actions by organizing with a competitor to try to squeeze the Linux market. But, I may be getting ahead of myself.
If you want to see the settlement clearly, think of Bill Gates bending over with his pants down.
Sun got just about everything it wanted, including $1.6 Billion in what amount to fines plus another $350 million in advance royalties on IP to be used by MS. That's $1,950 million - real money even for MS and just about one third of Sun's cash and short term securities before these payments are counted.
The cash, however, is less important than three pieces in the agreement: one giving Sun the right to license and access MS protocols at preset prices, one committing MS to inter-operability on identification and authentication, and the other preventing mutual lawsuits for ten years.
The importance of the licensing issue is in the access to information side of it. What this means is that open source products like SAMBA can continue to succeed regardless of MS's wishes in the matter.
The importance of the inter-operability issue lies in the fact that Sun is the driving force behind a range of open identity technologies - including the use of the SAML as a message carrier instead of an RPC vehicle. MS, of course, wants to do its own, very controlled and proprietary, thing with identity and authentication and this agreement will let them do it, but force them to maintain compatibility with the open standard right alongside their proprietary one -leaving the choice to customers and developers; all of whom can see exploding growth opportunities on the open side and little beyond the RIAA on the MS side.
The third key piece, the no mutual lawsuits clause, probably won't stand long but represents an initial layer of legal protection against use of the courts to legitimize cheating by either side - and, of course, we need to interpret this in terms of a history in whuch MS has just agreed to pay Sun 1.6 Billion to compensate for past cheating.
I'd been a huge Sun fan for quite some time, but let's face it, they have a hand in their own troubles.
When Solaris came out they removed the C compiler and they were never really commited to the x86 product, like they could have should have been. Then the bought Cobalt and drove that right into the ground.
I remeber being told during the dot bomb years by one of the NYC reps that Sun will never be in the Linux general purpose market, Cobalts are only appliances.
They may not be dead, but neither was Novell. There will be the hard case hangers on.
They also remind me of IBM's loss of the PC field. Arguably NOT a M$ issue, just management short sightedness.
Now I just find Suns to be an inconvenience, suitable for some of the larger apps only. But then - why not go w/ HP?
True friends are hard to come by... I need more money. - Calvin
This is an odd event. I guess I expected it. It's almost like Sun refueled at the watering hole.
So, after being asked publicly to Open Source Java by IBM, Sun says no, and gets $2 billion from Microsoft.
Why in the world would Microsoft settle? They never admit wrong-doing.
Now consider the recent revelations regarding Microsoft's secret financing of SCO.
This is a high-stakes chess match between IBM and Microsoft with some major players being used as pawns...
I wonder what IBM's next move will be.
This all goes back to my previous response ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=102417&cid=873 2209 ) Gates is just mad he lost a couple bucks to Suns linux distro. being sold at Wal*mart... Boy hes greedy
At least Java has sandboxing. ActiveX had full, unrestricted control over your machine. It can execute without your knowledge or permission. It could easily transmit information about you or steal your information. And ANYBODY with enough knowledge could write it, including big time companies. Windows Update has been questioned despite the claim that no personal information is sent to MS.
Just remember that you dug your own grave on this one... ;^)
.exe for Windows and forget about the Java headaches.
First, no, 1.1.x is not slow. It's actually quite responsive now that Moore's Law has brought computers up to where they needed to be in '98 to run 1.1.x apps smoothly. Don't use 1998 benchmarks for 2004.
Swing, drag & drop, and the mouse wheel issues of yours are all GUI issues. You need to rethread your view of app as interface. Modularize, reuse, refactor! Build an engine in 1.1.x and wrap an AWT -- and then an updated Swing or SWT (for Java 2 users) -- GUI atop that.
There's not a lot, when it comes to pushing bits around (JDBC, file i/o, networking), that you can't write in 1.1 and use through 1.5. You'll miss out on some new fangled stuff (like generics) and, more importantly, the libraries that use it. But other than losing a few libs (and you'll be surprised what's still 1.1 friendly out there), the fact that every example you cited was a GUI issue suggests to me that you're not really using much from Java 2 behind the GUI that's not in 1.1.x either!
What's more -- AWT does mouse wheels! You're using native GUI widgets with AWT. The only issue is that there are so *few* AWT widgets. You're often stuck rolling your own off of a Canvas, and it's tough to get things looking just right. In any event, you should take another look.
You've also gotten the audience of my original post skewed horribly. I started by saying if you want to release a Java client app to John Q. Public (which applets were initially targetting). If you want a business application where you have the IT staff (and user savvy) to get a 1.5. jre installed, super. Absolutely go for 1.5. But if you're pitching to someone who wants to a quick download, a double-click, and have their app a-runnin', having a 1.1.x JVM installed means...
1.) If you *can* present your interface with AWT and are a good enough coder to make your engine with 1.1.x, you're likely done! Create an
2.) As in the last post -- If you find you have to have Java 2 for anything, you can use your same (Java) toolbox to create a 1.1.x app that'll check for a Java 2 JRE and help Granny download it.
3.) If you've created your code in a modular fashion where the engine isn't tied up in GUI code, you can simply rewrite your Swing GUI in AWT (or, better yet, your AWT GUI in Swing) and have two levels of app. Windows and Mac Classic users (the first being horribly more important than the latter) can access all of your app without having installed a JVM themselves. If they have Java 2 installed, your application can be smart enough to provide the enriched GUI.
So 1.1.x is both a great *inroad* and, if you're lucky, *the road* for releasing client-applications to the public, cross-platform and painlessly. It really is a good time to think about writing Java client apps -- renewed MS JVM support and a few vendors pre-installing an up to date jre on their consumer boxes means you'll be up and running in no time flat.
The virtual machine might finally be coming into its own.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
now I learn that the rest of the world has it's number naming conventions fucked up
Yup, when we do things differently from everyone else in the world they must be the ones who have it fucked up.