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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.
I agree with most of what you said. However people not downloading a "new" JVM is becoming far less of an issue. As more and more people get higher speed access to the net and the download/install of the jvm gets better this will become a non-issue. The current JVM is around 5MB and installs without much of a problem on Windows. This is little different than flash. A new version comes out and if I want to view that site, I have to download it and install it.
Now for the more serious matter. You better stop developing applets. They are almost dead. Look at the webstart stuff. That appears to be the direction Sun has been going for a while now. Also, I don't see how you are in any worse of a position now than before this agreement between Sun and Microsoft took place, in regards to Applets. Microsoft was NEVER EVER going to ship a Sun 1.2 or 1.3 or 1.4 or 1.5 compatable JVM. Most developers knew this for a while. The last thing Microsoft wants is for their OS to not be needed.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
1. Camino is (unfortuntaely) very poor at figuring out that JNLP files are actually executable and safe. Safari does a much better job with them.
2. It's a complete application to access databases. You can see it here: http://www.datadino.com. It requests unrestricted access from you so that it can talk over the network and stash drivers on the hard disk. If you go to Up2Go, you'll find plenty of applications that don't request extra permissions.
3. Do you know of any other technologies that actually *warn* you when launching a potentially unsafe application? Microsoft thought it was A-OK to allow embedded web controls full access to your machine. Now ActiveX controls are responsible for auto-installing web-toolbars and spyware.
Sorry I forgot about the security warning. If it really bothers you, go try an application on Up2Go that's marked 100% safe.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
The current JVM is around 5MB and installs without much of a problem on Windows.
Actually, it's 15MB
Now for the more serious matter. You better stop developing applets. They are almost dead. Look at the webstart stuff.
While WebStart is sweet, Java 1.1 (what Windows ships with) compatible applets are still the only practical way to deliver moderately complex applications via the browser to about 95% of the users. And before you say Flash - it is suitable for pretty graphics and animations, not serious things.
you are comparing chalk and cheese mate. JAVA applets cannot be replaced by perl or php.
.NET's aspx code behind) to writing well structured MVC (and similar patterns) applications. i'm not saying that perl or php do not have their place, i'm a big fan of both languages, but i don't believe that one should discount the advantages of JAVA when the architecture and environment is appropriate.
and why you make the statement that it sucks is beyond me (actually, its not - this is slashdot after all!). there are very good reasons and applications for JAVA, especially in the enterprise environment where you can leverage a very rich set of specifications (J2EE) to handle complex tasks such as transaction control (2/3-phase commit!) and messaging integration to name but a few. additionally scripting languages such as perl and php generally encourage a blend of application and UI logical, whereas the JSP/Servlet/Bean relationship does lend itself nicely (perhaps not as nicely as
this JAVA sucks blanket statement is generally flaunted because a) its not open source and b) the misconception that JAVA is very slow. 1.1 was pretty darn slow sure, but performance has continued to increase to a point where 1.4 is pretty snappy - even at UI-based work with SWING.
I'd just like to point out that you can still target pre-1.5 JVMs (i.e. 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4) while still developing using the new 1.5 Java language.
You can use my free, open-source, tool, Retroweaver (which has "blessings" from Sun's compiler team), or you can pay money for CodeGuide.