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Sun's Trading Symbol Going From SUNW To JAVA
Mortimer.CA writes "Straight from Jonathan Schwartz's weblog, Sun is changing their ticker symbol from SUNW to JAVA: 'JAVA is a technology whose value is near infinite to the internet, and a brand that's inseparably a part of Sun (and our profitability). [...] To be very clear, this isn't about changing the company name or focus — we are Sun, we are a systems company, and we will always be a derivative of the students that created us, Stanford University Network is here to stay. But we are no longer simply a workstation company, nor a company whose products can be limited by one category — and Java does a better job of capturing exactly that sentiment than any other four letter symbol.'"
Hmm... while many programmers are powered by java, all life on Earth is powered at least indirectly by the Sun.
So instead of naming themselves after one product category, they're naming themselves after another. Great! The name change makes some sense (who really wants the outdated "workstation" thing attached to their name?) but marketingspeak is just so silly sometimes.
Can't help but think they'll want to do this gain once Java is no longer their flagship product. If they're still around (and I hope they are!)
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
In related news, Steve Balmer was spotted replacing his previous 'ZUNE4ME' vanity plates with a fresh set which sports the slogan 'JAVAL0L'..
Seriously though, I don't think Java is a particularly big reason for people to like Sun, and tying your company's future to it seems ill-advised.
While I agree that this sounds silly, do remember that it's just the stock symbol. There are many companies with silly stock symbols (GLW, T, F). I guess they feel that more people will buy their stocks if the name sounds familiar.
Basically, nothing to see here.
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. - Mahatma Gandhi
on SUN with this because it's hard to predict how the market is going to react. I really don't think that it's going to make all that much difference since it's still the same company and all the same assets that they had before now. Still though with all the things coming out SUN what with all the GPL software and the deal with IBM I think that things are starting to look a little brighter. Also is it just me or does it seem like with the IBM deal that SUN is wanting to get deeper entrenched in the software business IBM wants to start to get out of it?
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
Like this reg article http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/23/sun_no_sun w_java/ is giving the example of VA Linux profiting from the Linux hype with their LNUX ticker, I guess Sun wants to confuse coffee drinkers and profit from that. People think with the global warming that they should stop investing in the sun anyway!
Who trades under "SUN"?
Ok, I did Google it, and I guess it's "Sunoco." I guess I could've seen that one coming.
(Totally off-subject, but I'm finding that Google should be responsible for a significant decrease in general ignorance: whenever someone wonders some basic question, the answer is usually a few keywords away. This hasn't happened yet for some reason.)
As all of the Solaris packages start with the companies ticker, will all future Sun packages now be called JAVAxxxxx? That's going to annoy the hell out of us sys admins =/ Haydn.
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
Look out for BSOD on a stock ticker near you. Unless you are running a real operating system, that is.
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
Of course Stanford University Network is here to stay, what would Stanford University do without it?
The quote was truncated. Here it is in its totality:
"But we are no longer simply a workstation company, nor a company whose products can be limited by one category -- and Java does a better job of capturing exactly that sentiment than any other four letter symbol.
Our first choice was the even more accurate DEAD, but that symbol was already taken by Emerson Burial Caskets."
Microsoft's symbol becomes EVIL
Other companies have used their chief product as thier ticker symbol. Anheuser-Busch, for example, has a ticker symbol of BUD.
But in reading TFA, I can't help but feel like I'm being beat over the head with a marketing stick.
I mean, come on now... "a technology whose value is near infinite to the internet"???
Give me a break... I work in a
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Now let the flame war begin.
What's to flame? When you're right, you're right.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Tomcat?
Resin?
etc?
This seems to be an undead horse for me.
I wrote Java programs in a few hours that ran on Windows, Linux and AIX, and were UTF-8 capable.
I used three different brands of JREs (not MS, though) and my programs ran on all of them.
I had less security problems with Java than with ActiveX, Flash or PHP.
Seriously, I think you really need to get some training in how to determine if a horse is dead or not. Or, maybe, you should get a degree in Sales and stop being a troll.
Elmar
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/
Wouldn't JAVA make more sense as Starbucks' stock symbol? I liked SUNW. I have fond memories about learning to program on SUN and HP workstations. HP has already mostly phased out their UNIX workstation line, and this seems to be (potentially) a first tentative step for SUN to become more like IBM and move away from hardware as their bread and butter.
I write this from a SUN Linux box, so I certainly hope this isn't the case.
Java is one of the most popular programming languages today. It is arguably the default language for modern business applications. You may not like it, but that does mean it is doomed.
That being said, this seems like a strange move for sun. Their influence over Java is already fading, and this only makes them look more like a one trick pony that has only really made one worthwhile contribution to the IT industry.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
What on Earth is this idiot talking about?
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
...because in my experience, Java increases the size of things by at least 25%.
But I assume they may reason Java's bean economy will never take a hit as long as they're in business anyway. What soothes the soul better when a new popup window finds its way around?
Glassfish, Tomcat and Resin are all indepedant 100% pure Java webservers, all massively scalable and capable of processing 1000's of concurrent connections with performance comparable to Apache.
However, I do take substantial issue with one thing that Schwartz said, which I think is pretty badly thought out: As for working professionals, I had dinner with a financial analyst a few months ago who said he saw the Java launch experience "a few times a day" when accessing intranet applications - as did tens of thousands of his fellow employees. He's basically saying: "We shove a splash screen in users faces every day". This is a Bad Thing! He's making users associate Java with applications that have poor performance - by definition if they're seeing this they're not getting to the application they want to work on as quickly as they should. The poor performance (web server performance) is out of their hands, but it's in their control to prevent the association with their brand!
I have high regards for Sun employees in general. Their management, however, I have my doubts about.
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
Why, everyone under the SUN, of course!
GE does a lot of things besides manufacture light bulbs and generators. In fact they do a lot of things besides manufacturing light bulbs, generators, medical equipment, jet engines, finance, plastics, and railroad locomotives. Yet they feel no need to change their trading symbol.
Does anyone think that it would help Apple to change its trading symbol from APPL to IPOD?
Does AT&T worry that people will think telegraphs are old-fashioned?
GE, Apple, and AT&T are just names. For better or worse, people know what these companies are, not because of the names, but because of the companies. And the trading symbol is one step further removed.
SUN is an acronym for Stanford University Network. It should be a proud part of the company's heritage.
Wanting to fiddle with the trading symbol is a sure sign of a company that has no idea of what its identity is or what it is or should be doing. It also indicates an unhealthy focus on the stock, rather than company's business itself.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The most popular programming language on the planet is doomed?
It failed on the "write-once, run anywhere" promiseYou mean, the Java programs I write that run on Linux, BSD, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Windows, and AS/400 aren't actually working? You should have told me sooner! Maybe you can tell me how, exactly, they're not working, because they seem to be working fine!
it failed on the security promiseBecause we hear about buffer overflow exploits in Java programs leaving your machine vulnerable all the time? Oh, wait. We almost never hear about those.
and it failed on the "finally, you'll be free of win32" promiseThat's funny, it freed me from the Win32 API, and dozens upon dozens upon dozens of other developers I know.
The ways that Sun screwed this pooch will be the subject of thousands of business-school term papers for years to come.Yeah, right. We'll look back and see how badly Java failed, because it only retained the #1 crown for a few decades (or more).
You need a reality check.
Personally I think Sun secretly never wanted Java to succeed, at least on the web/desktop. That is the only way I can explain what an incredible screw-up they made of it.
I remember what Java was at the height of its hype. Joe Public would come across a website that required Java, they'd click on the link to go to the site to download it, and be presented with a page where it was very difficult to tell what you should download - there would be a list of a dozen things with meaningless code names (Java 1.2 SDK, Java 1.2 XYZ APIs, etc, - meaningless to a non-programmer) and even once you had selected one there would be a complex install process, only to find out you'd chosen the wrong one.
Or perhaps they guy in charge of their "download Java" page was receiving brown envelopes from Microsoft? I just find it hard to believe that with the billion dollars worth of free hype Sun got with Java, they managed to screw up such a fundamental and simple aspect of it as making it easy for end users to install.
javascript has nothing to do with either sun or java, except for the first four letters of its name.
And indeed, while a lot of websites and maybe intranet applications are built in java, to call its value 'near infinite' is such an overstatement it's plain lying.
There are a lot of technologies and even some programming languages that would completely break the Internet as we know it should they be completely gone one of a sudden. Java is most certainly not one of them.
Absolutely agree about the popularity of Java - but I think that it's Java popularity with the Business side of the house as opposed to the Technical side which is the significant element.
My guess is that Business loves Java because you can throw developers at a problem and be seen to be dealing with it - because there isn't a problem that cannot be solved by piling on the bodies, right?
(Confession of bias: I like Java, don't love it - it's good enough).
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
...when's SCO changing to DEAD, CRAP or STLN...or...BTTM?!
software that depends on specific JREs
Bingo! Give the man a cigar.
Years ago, my first impression of Java was that it was absurd that end users had to know or care which Java a given app depended on.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Since Solaris packages are all marked by the originating company's stock ticker (VRTSvcs, SUNWlp), won't it cause a little confusion to start seeing things like JAVAapp, or JAVAexplorer?
It reminds me of when Microsoft started adding ".NET" to everything a few years back. Stupid and confusing and ultimately, a waste of time and money.
So they don't want to just be associated with workstations, so they change their symbol to the name of one particular software product they produce. I boggle at this.
Why not change the symbol to something like SunS (Sun Systems, oops taken), or SunT (...technologies) , or Sunn (...networking, but also taken...)
You get the idea. Keep the identity they have as Sun, because that does carry recognition. Far more than I think they think Java does. It would be like MS changing their ticker to WNDZ or the federal government getting the ticker symbol DCMA...
I'm a fiscal conservative, it's a pity we don't have a political party anymore
fanboys claim it's the best invention since FORTRAN.
Most of the Java fans I know (as opposed to those who merely tolerate it to pay the bills) have never written a line of FORTRAN.
The love of Java tends to come from people whose previous experience was mostly C++ or VB. What Java demonstrated was just how desperately the world needed a replacement for C++. Pity it ended up where it has.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
And in later news Microsoft is changing its ticker to BSOD.
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
If so, I have some suggestions:
TOAST
KAPUT
DEAD
MLTDN
NOCSE
PWNED <---- I hated to put that last one in there, but after the way the judge ruled against them and given their current situation, I think it applies nicely.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Why change your ticker symbol from your company name to one particular product? This is akin to Apple (AAPL) changing their symbol to IPOD. As an admin who still maintains a number of Sun servers, this now raises some question as to how committed Sun is to the hardware market in the future, or whether they will go to a software model. This is starting to sound more and more like a company without a strong vision of its future, and right now some exec found that Java is one of the last jewels of hope, so software development is the current trend to see if it sticks (Borland?).
This message is brought to you by "LNUX": A company that has nothing to do with "Linux" anymore, and has only made money by selling off pieces of itself. (Slashdot is owned by Sourceforge, which used to be VA Linux, etc.).
In other words, changing their ticker name to "JAVA" doesn't necessarily bode well.
I don't respond to AC's.
Well, his program may have been non-trivial, but to deploy it he still has to test it on each platform, debug it everywhere, etc. The failed promise was that if it ran on a JVM at all, it would run on all of them.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
see My little pony and More big changes at sun
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Yeah, Java back in the 90's left a lot to be desired. Luckily, a decade later, those problems are solved. The real problem to applets catching on is the long startup times for Java, and now that's being solved, too. A huge problem with Java on the desktop was the look and feel of the UI and the ability to embed heavyweight native frames into lightweight Swing frames... and now that's been fixed.
.NET on the desktop, but Java is becoming competitive in those areas again.
All in all, I'd expect a resurgence of Java soon. With Java so ubiquitous on cellphones, Blu-Ray players, middleware servers, etc., I think Sun has a good chance at a counter-attack on the desktop. Sure, Flash took away a lot of their thunder on the web and
E pluribus unum
I think Sun secretly never wanted Java to succeed
I don't agree with you on that. They botched it in all kinds of ways, of course, but I never had the impression that they didn't want it to win.
I just find it hard to believe that with the billion dollars worth of free hype Sun got with Java, they managed to screw up such a fundamental and simple aspect of it as making it easy for end users to install.
Heh.. That's a matter of corporate culture. Ask a Sun sysop about patch hell sometime.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
you are correct, what i meant was 'if every application written in that language was removed'.
Funny how if you replace all instances of Java with Microsoft, your comment wouldn't be so well received, and several people would be pointing out your bandwagon fallacy.
Just something to think about.
Just don't change the company logo to the little Java guy that waves at you. Now that would lower sales for sure! Kinda reminds me of Clippy.
-m
http://www.invisik.com
# cd /shared/pkg
J AVA5xmftc r ......
# pkgadd -d . SUNWzlib
pkgadd: ERROR: no package associated with <SUNWzlib>
# ls | grep SUNW
# ls | head
JAVA1251f
JAVA1394h
JAVA1394x
JAVA5ttf
JAVA5xplx
JAVAa2psr
JAVAa2psu
JAVAac
JAVAaccu
# echo Bastards
Bastards
# pkgadd -d . JAVAzlib
Processing package instance <JAVAzlib> from
C-x C-s C-x k
1) Just because a lot of people use Java to write apps, doesn't mean they actually get used by anyone. Show me a user who knows what java actually is, and you'll see them avoid it if possible.
.NET framework, with C#, its basically Java done right. The mono project is making it cross platform, it doesn't require you to use one bastardized language, you can pick from many.
2) If your app runs on all the OSes you claim it either A) took a whole lot of effort to make it work right on all those OSes which could be accomplished with less work in other languages, or B) it doesnt' actually do anything, probably hello world.
3) Meh, I won't argue security of the java vm since I don't watch it anymore, but if you think its 'safe' I'm sure we can find a few examples rather quickly of how its not much different than other languages in its catagory.
4) Most people don't use the Win32 api even on Windows if their doing cross platform stuff. A) there are posix-like alternatives built in for most crap, B) You're going to use some other toolkit thats cross platform so its probably got an abstraction layer of its own. So, you choose Java as your abstraction layer, I choose wxWidgets, java isn't a requirement to get you away from win32, and its limited ability to interact with win32 is touted as a feature, when its more of a weakness for anyone who has to do real work.
5) Java maintained what crown for a few decades or more? If its going to do anything for a few decades we should probably wait until is actually been around for a few decades before saying its been #1. The reality of it is, Sun did screw the pooch with java. The only people who like it are fanboys who think because they wrote some java app they are awesome internet developers. Nothing pains me more than to watch a good oranization (oracle for instance) move their utilities and apps to java as it usually means I have to find another solution to get away from the asstastic performance and bugginess of java apps. You should probably watch out for the whole
All of this is off topic of course, but please don't try to convience anyone that java rocks, stop smoking crack for a couple days, let your head clear and you'll see what the rest of us already know.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
In that sense, you are right - but could you sleep without testing your programs on the supported platforms with any other language/platform? I mean, can you show me anything that is better than Java on mentioned platforms and is less bug-free (while providing similar libraries)? Elmar
has decided to change the name of his immensely successful film company to JAWA.
OK, so the company isn't publicly traded, but still, has Sun not been able to get enough attention lately that it has to ride on the coat tails of Java?
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Just trying to PERK up the name recognition for the stock market no doubt.
There are only two steps in the gathering of ultimate knowledge. Open your eyes and, RTFM!
Um, user's don't need to know or care about that. If I write a Java application and target the 1.4 JVM, it will run on the 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6 JVM's. If I provide a launchable .jar file, the user just has to double-click it to run my application, just like they would a .exe file.
http://www.mhall119.com
The world didn't want/need a replacement for c/c++. The .com explosion needed a way to take people who had no right in the software development industry and allow them to make applications. Where they failed was in the fact that even though Java took a lot of manual labor out of the process, these people are not programmers and they still make stupid mistakes that break the application or cause it to perform like crap. This isn't much different than most VB programmers, with the exception that now it breaks on more platforms and for more reasons like silly JRE incompatibilities.
... is still written in C/C++. I know of one particular application that is a background service written in java, and its great, because it crashes constantly.
In case you haven't noticed, any application that has to do things fast, has to be reliable, or deal with large datasets
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
If you're a sysadmin pushing a Java install over your corporate network, why bother with a UI install at all? Just zip or tar the Java files, copy, unpack, and setup environment variables. What's so hard about that?
http://www.mhall119.com
Ah, but we'll all die one day; but who really lives? I don't want to be the jogger hit by a truck driver 'cause he was too busy looking for his lighter to notice me!
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
IBM seem to be the only company capable of actually selling java based product.
But then again they persuaded people to part with ready cash for Lotus Notes
so it doesnt really say much about Java.
I think SUN is desperate not to be seen a a hardware manufacturer becuase
of its associantion with commodity products and declining profitability.
However the only way to become a succesful software business is to SELL
software to customers, which, SUN does not do at all well.
Old COBOL programmers never die. They just code in C.
http://www.mhall119.com
#1 crown for a few decades (or more) ?
I assume a decade would be 10 years. A few decades would be 20 or more years.
Well, welcome to the 1997, in the world of:
Intel Pentium Pro 200MHz
IBM's PowerPC EM603e at up to 200MHz
UltraSPARC II at 300MHz
The operating systems used were Windows 95 and NT 4.0, MacOS 8, and Solaris 2.6 (next version is 7) and JavaOS 1.1 from Sun
Two decades?
1987: Windows 2.0, with Intel 386 processors. Typical RAM for 386 systems was in the 4-16 MB.
So, Java is a decade and a bit, not few decades
Quote: "I don't think Java is a particularly big reason for people to like Sun, and tying your company's future to it seems ill-advised."
Exactly. The name change is evidence that Sun has some very technically ignorant marketing people, apparently, or maybe just a very technically ignorant, but imperial, CEO.
My understanding is that Sun does not allow its own programmers to use Java for important programs because Java is bytecode interpreted, not compiled. That makes Java easy to de-compile. Sun apparently designed the language for other people to use. Microsoft did the same with C#; apparently none of the programs Microsoft sells are written in C#.
Examples of Java de-compilers:
Jad - the fast JAva Decompiler
DJ Java Decompiler
Jode
JReversePro
SourceTec Java Decompiler
From Wikipedia's Criticism of Java: "The look and feel of GUI applications written in Java using the Swing platform is often different from native applications." It seems to me that the average person's experience of Java is that programs written in it are slow and funky, not a good advertisement for a large company.
Eventually, Java will be completely open source. It is not now. Once it is open source, Sun loses control. Does Sun want to lose control of a symbol it is using for its company?
Java is an Indonesian island of 124 million, the most populous island in the world and one of the most densely populated regions on Earth. There have been political problems there in the past. If there are problems there in the future, the word Java will be in the news. More than 90 percent of Javanese are Muslims. Does Sun intend to involve the company with the uncertain future of a Muslim island?
I will now quote someone who considers himself an authority, the CEO of Sun: "Granted, lots of folks on Wall Street know SUNW, given its status as among the most highly traded stocks in the world (the SUNW symbol shows up daily in the listings of most highly traded securities)." -- From the August 23, 2007 badly formatted article linked by Slashdot, Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog: The Rise of JAVA - The Retirement of SUNW, written by Sun CEO Jonathan Swartz.
Mr. Swartz, are you an imperial CEO like Gerald Levin of AOL Time Warner? (Time Warner's merging itself into AOL is considered the worst business decision of all time. The company immediately lost $88 Billion.) Mr. Levin called himself an "imperial CEO", meaning that he made decisions without consulting other people.
Mr. Swartz, if you don't have enough technical knowledge even to format your own web page, are you technically knowledgeable enough to run Sun? From the biography on Sun's web site: "Schwartz received degrees in economics and mathematics from Wesleyan University."
I don't believe it will actually happen, but if it does, by changing away from the strong brand of SUNW, known for serious servers, to a brand largely outside its control, Sun will weaken its position in the marketplace, in my opinion.
I don't think it is wise for technically knowledgeable people to work for companies managed by people with little or no technical knowledge. When technically ignorant managers try to run technically-oriented companies, a lot of unpredictable, weird things happen. Why take the risk?
Give him a break - he's probably finishing up his c# class freshman year, along with his new sense of entitlement.
Website Hosting
Well then you are shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to established business solutions. I don't have a problem with the idea that Java isn't for everyone. But at the same time, I think nothing beats it when it comes to enterprise software. What are you going to use instead, PHP? Last time I checked, minor versions of PHP broke itself as well.
Guess you could always go with Microsoft.
An example? Maybe I just don't run crapware.
http://www.mhall119.com
I used to work at a company whose ticker was CUM, Cummins Engine Company.
FWIW, my experience says that's simply not true. When it comes to reliability, neither C nor C++ shine. Both languages make it very easy to shoot yourself in the foot. The reason C/C++ programs tend to be pretty good is because few bad programmers can wrap their minds around it (although you might be surprised what your find). One I've learnt is that C/C++ code tends to be more difficult to understand and thus it means more work to debug and test which means less debugging and testing. This is also somewhat true of Java too, but not as bad.
As far as speed, most of the time this is a non-issue. Java can be pretty fast, certainly fast enough, as long as your not writing a kernel or something. If you are, you can always pack the core parts in JNI or something. The same can be said about Python and many other languages.
As for JRE incompatibilities. Code using features in Vista and not XP won't be compatible with XP either. This has nothing to do with Java itself and is just the nature of any evolving platform. C/C++ has it to, although their APIs tend to develop slower. And seriously, crashing can happen in any language. It's much easier to do in C/C++ than Java. I'm sorry if you have crappy software, but don't blame it on the language.
Is it April 1st?
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
The irony is that the the company that invented the "most popular programming language" is not the one that is profiting from it. So, while Java is a huge success, from a business point of view I think Sun has failed and by naming their stock symbol JAVA that will remind me of their business failure every time I see it.
Java: Brand Once, Market Everywhere.
...profit everywhere!
The majority of bloatware writers these days seem to prefer Python...
Oracle, if I recall correctly, ships their own self-contained JRE with their own modifications. You should only upgrade Oracle's JRE with an updated JRE from Oracle, because their JRE isn't 'vanilla' Java. I know for a fact that you can ship your app with a self-contained JRE without screwing up any other JRE's on a box, and without those JRE's screwing up your app. If Oracle screwed up their own install, that's their problem. They could have just as easily screwed it up with DLL's as they did with JRE's.
http://www.mhall119.com
I humbly suggest 'RTFM' for any of the big Linux vendors. :)
He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
So does this mean Sun will still refuse to use JAVA on it's internal projects?
If that's the case, it's kind of incredible how much energy they spend getting everyone to try buying into a platform they know has flaws. If it were so great, they would use it themselves.
It powers Blue-Ray Disc menus/interactive content (BD-J), and is used in DVB and CableCard compliant set top boxes for interactive program guides, VoD ordering systems, etc.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Whether other languages succeed in this or not has no effect on the fact that Java promised it and didn't deliver.
:)
You are absolutely right, but relatively wrong. Maybe you really should get a degree in Sales
Elmar
Oh what bullshit. I've been doing enterprise software for decades, working across many projects. Without a single exception, every C/C++ project I've ever observed or worked on is plagued by memory leaks, crashes and delays. Every single one in every single company I've worked at. The Java stuff simple runs and at worst, you get a few stack traces that need to be dealt with. Crashes are almost non-existent. Very few major corporations are using C/C++ for new projects precisely because of this. No management with any business sense cares for fanboy obsessions with quaint old languages. They choose what's going to avoid them getting paged in the middle of the night. Every language and project has it's good programmers and bad ones, but you suffer far more when you have bad programmers on a C/C++ project then you ever have to worry about with Java. And before someone mentions their favorite device driver, I'm only talking enterprise software here.
Wheee! I wish BORL had traded as TPSCL.
Ridiculous.
This is a clear ploy to tie the stock to something that might drag it back to the 95-2000 glory days, where they'd hit USD 80, and split 2 or 3 ways - then immediately recover the price.
Oh, well. What do you expect when Schwartz believes that Star Office is one of the most recognised brands in the world? "It is to larf, mate!"
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Translation: "I wrote a 'hello world' program. It worked. It worked on anything I tried it on, yay java!
If you know what you're doing, even the most complex applications will work cross-platform. If fact you don't even have to know what you're doing for this. The only cross-platform issue I've ever seen is related to slashes and backslashes and only in odd situations. Almost every Java app I use or have downloaded, works on Linux (32 and 64 bit), Solaris and Windows for me and all I need to do is copy the directory from one box to another. And I'm talking your small utility gui apps and large J2EE based software. I'm sick of this FUD on Java from people who don't even use it.
By some company that produces coffee/coffee beans?
I thought that one of those companies would have taken JAVA a long time ago.
Not to get off-topic, but... After having to listen to the fans on our 4 new V445's, I can think of a few other four-letter symbols for them. Though I can't actually hear myself think anymore...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Show me a user who knows what java actually is, and you'll see them avoid it if possible.
Then why are you still using the internet? Surely you know what Java is and that it's behind a hefty percentage of your favorite websites. You ever order anything online? Oh I guess you're going to have to avoid that too from now on. Might want to toss that cell phone too while you're at it. Oh wait you don't actually know what Java is? Then perhaps you shouldn't be commenting on it.
The only real mistake Sun made with Java is applet technology. Since that's all half the people on this site think it's used for. You use Java indirectly a hundred times a day and don't even realize it.
Can ticker symbols handle extended-ascii or UNICODE? I want my ticket symbol to be ЈẤүẠ♥
if every application written in that language was removed
If this did happen, the world economy would completely collapse overnight. Unless you're in the industry, you really haven't a clue how ubiquitous this language is. The entire business world depends on it. As does the government. It's used everywhere in transactions that you've never seen, but depend on every day. Every phone call you make, almost every payment you make. I know this from first hand experience to be true.
Absolutely. I've started to get into Java (initially because then I could write J2ME apps for my phone, and not have to learn Symbian (blearg) ), and I like it now. I can't see the point of using jsp and servlets - it takes me about 4 times as long as it would take me to use vi, and knock it up in PHP. (Perhaps I'm just not at the level at which the benefits make themselves apparent.)
But even some of the technical people I work with don't know if they want the JDK, or the JRE - and the popup (on Windows) nagging you to upgrade is annoying too.
It seems quite a fast language now - but people that tried it 5 years ago generally won't touch it any more. They (Sun) almost shot their foot completely off.
As an aside, are there any JNI (Java+C) experts here? (Ignore the mention of Jpcap)
Get your own free personal location tracker
http://www.mhall119.com
Let me get this straight. There is a language called Java, a platform called Java, a program called java, and now the trading symbol for Sun is JAVA. Oh, and don't forget the island. So you can write some Java to work with Java and run it with java while drinking java on the island of Java all while logged on to E-Trade to buy and sell some JAVA. And I thought, "Only perl can understand Perl", was bad enough.
Oh really? Cause they actually don't work at all. Where is the netbsd/sparc jre? Where's the openbsd/arm jre? Portable doesn't mean "portable to wherever Sun has decided you can use it", it means "can be made to run anywhere". Python's VM and libraries are available on my openbsd/arm and netbsd/sparc machines, why isn't java's?
Probably because those platforms don't have commercial value. If there was a genuine commercial demand for support for those platforms, there would be a jre for them.
you may have heard about security exploits through Java there... I'm going to go with Dangerous Java Flaw Threatens 'Virtually Everything' - especially because the flaw it's describing turns out to be a buffer overflow.
It still makes a lot more sense to have a (small) sandbox that is checked once for security errors, than to have to check every single piece of software developed because it isn't sandboxed. An average Java app has a pretty decent security track record compared to an average native-compiled app.
No, it hasn't. It's chained you to the lowest common denominator of the systems I've already listed. If the Windows API doesn't offer something, you can't do it, even if the Linux and Solaris APIs do.
That has nothing to do with java, that has something to do with cross-platform development. You always have to program to the lowest common denominator in that case.
This is the platform company that spent the 1990s evangelizing a language that makes it easy to write platform independent code. Java may be nice, but it was a butt-stupid move for a company that made its money in OSes and hardware.
By the late 90s Sun knew that the OS and hardware market was no longer available, Linux and FreeBSD were destined to take it. Sun realized that many buyers of its workstations did not really need anything Sun specific, they just needed a general purpose Unix box. PC hardware running Linux or FreeBSD had begun to fulfill this need. Sun had to find a new market.
Funny you should mention that. I was just trying to figure out the other day if it was possible to get the built in windows zip fie handler to recognize
Does WinZip allow you to edit the files in a zip file without unzipping and rezipping it? Been a while since I used it.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
Wow, perhaps they should be selling Java as a safe, all-digital male enhancement pill....
120 characters isn't enough to explain it.
The only reason to drop the "Sun" brand is because the company's execs think its brand isn't any good.
The only reason to rebrand the stock symbol as "Java" is because people in the stock industry know about "Java", because that's the market where Java has actually had some good success.
Sun is rebranding in that narrow market only to impress the stockbrokers (and daytrader stockbroker wannabes). That kind of system gaming, rather than building the Sun brand with better products or services, shows that Sun is desperate to promote its business without the underlying good business to promote.
I expect Sun will go the way of SGI. First Sun will become a SW-only company, after ramping down their HW into first only shrinking niche markets and then just add-in cards. Then they'll license Java and Solaris to others, rather than continue to invest in the R&D that earns them their trademark ownership. Then they will give up even that business, as they lose the leverage over competition and investors and employees look to more interesting places to work.
I'll miss Sun. Ever since it dedicated itself to owning Java rather than, say, making Solaris run Linux apps, or making Java/Sparc chips for mobile devices, I've already missed it. I just hope its downward spiral is graceful.
--
make install -not war
"Actually, when someone tries to sell me a product by pointing out that its done in java, I have to politely see them to the door."
.NET is definitely less stable in my opinion, especially across different versions.
That's just stupid, Java has many features that are also interesting if you buy a product. It's just much easier to write a bug free product based on Java than, e.g. a C++ application. You could use C# but
"I already have several commercial Java products which require a specific JRE versions, and installing a newer JRE often breaks one of them (they'll check to see of other JRE versions are present, and decide not to run for compatibility reasons)."
Sometimes you see that these products have been tested specifically on a JRE or JDK version. This happens with qualified software. There are very few compatibility problems between versions of Java; many 1.1 applications still run fine on 1.6 or 1.7. But vendors are sometimes (over) careful. Then they just bundle the JRE that the application was compiled for. Not such a problem if you have a big standalone application, but it can be a nuisance. Then again, C++ vendors just bundle a load of DLL's. While this takes less disk space it is essentially the same thing. And who cares about disk space (for applications) anymore?
"I have to be able to run them to meet client SLA requirements."
I do not understand that sentence. What do you have to run to meet client SLA requirements? The specific Java version? What's against that?
"So, because java is not compatible with itself, the only response I can give to the "and its done in java" selling point is "sorry to hear that"."
Thats taking it way to far. Any set of libraries is (slightly) incompatible with itself, and Java is doing a great job. Sun and the JCP do a great job in protecting against compatibility problems. As said, the other Java features should also be taken in account as well.
"While there are workarounds to the java self-incompatibility problems, they're not worth it. The only other really satisfactory solution is to run a VM for each version of java needed. Also not worth the effort."
That's taking it *way* to far. I've run an endless list of Java applications, and yes, I've seen incompatibilities. Some XML digital signature problems, some SWT Swing incompatibilities, and a JVM that had broken threading and could kill Swing (the worst bug so far in my opinion, the author of it apologized publicly for that one).
Run a VM for each version of Java needed? What do you mean? Don't you always have a VM per process?
"Does Sun have some kind of solution to java?"
And, finally, that's called trolling.
That's because ignorance requires no effort; it's the easiest way out. The method you talk about requires effort, and leads down the path to intelligence, which is hard work.
There is an old saying in business schools that incompetent managers when at a loss as to how to fix a company, settle on changing the name or logo instead. I guess we can now add the ticker symbol to the list.
Java had promise, when almost everything was going to run it, from Javastations for thin clients to embedded Java and JINI.
.NET, where it will work without issue (unfortunately only on Windows machines) compared to the piss-poor state of "guess the JVM" with native Java. With JVMs the state they are now, I compile code on my Linux box, executables made there will throw random exceptions on Windows and vice versa, even with JVMs the same version.
.NET.
However, Java is highly fragmented. Your code may work perfectly under one JVM on one OS platform, but go from IBM's to Sun's, and random glitches happen. For example, you have no clue if your JCE crypto is full bits (128/256), 48 bits, or even zero bits during the time when France required no cryptography by law.
Sadly, in my experience, the best Java compiler for getting projects to work for classes was the now discontinued Microsoft's J#, and moving the Java code to
Of course, there is always the biggest problem with Java, and that's performance clientside (or the miserable lack of.) Even Microsoft got it right with
Sun needs to do something, or else even Adobe may be dropping a boot to their head with Flex when it gets out of beta and gets into mainstream.
Does anybody know why Oracle ships with 2 of it's own JREs?
http://www.mhall119.com
Sun and Solaris are great names that have connotations of celestial harmony, duration, and power.
What they should have done (and probably still should) is take the rest of their naming to the same general area. There are names of planets, stars, galaxies, pulsars, quasars, constellations, plenty to choose from and all really great things to name products after.
Okay maybe not pluto or uranus.
Actually, no even those would be better than java.
I think it's odd that they are changing their name to show that they are not just a workstation company anymore. So, they are trying to exude diversity. That's respectable. So, what do they do? They change their name from a general name to a specific technology. Rather than highlight their diversity, this decision strikes me as saying, "All that we do now is Java." Very odd choice. That said, it is a cool ticker symbol.
Wasn't the stock symbol SELL available?
--Shemnon
Java is as popular as Windows. But think who uses Windows in the first place.
I'll let the videos speak: http://plone.org/about/movies ("Better Web App Development")
When they go out of business and people ask "why", they can just refer you to the ticker symbol.
This not a dig at Java as a language or platform, but rather as a business strategy.
What backward compatibility issues have Java had? I have yet to encounter any personally, but that's not to say they don't exist.
http://www.mhall119.com
The problem with Oak and the set-top boxes was that Sun had no experience in embedded systems and I've never read anything to suggest that Gosling et al knew anything about them either. I suspect that the set-top boxes were far too expensive to be competitive.
Eventually most embedded systems could afford to include massive amounts of memory, so even bloated platforms (by traditional embedded standards) like Java ME or Windows CE could run on them.
".NET is a direct Java clone."
.NET is a direct clone of Java, it must be possible. How do you go about it?
Hey, great. I always wanted to use delegates in Java and since
javascript has nothing to do with either sun or java, except for the first four letters of its name.
...to call its value 'near infinite' is such an overstatement it's plain lying
Strangely enough, this is untrue. Sun actually owns the trademark on the word "JavaScript", and Netscape licensed it from Sun to use as the name of their new-fangled scripting language to run inside their browser.
Well, yeah... it's marketing-speak. They're all lies.
There are a lot of technologies and even some programming languages that would completely break the Internet as we know it should they be completely gone one of a sudden. Java is most certainly not one of them.
No offense, but that sounds like complete conjecture combined with lots of generalizations. Quick -- name 5 well-known websites that don't use Java anywhere in their infrastructure.
Does anyone really care?
Nothing is stopping a third party from writing their own JRE from scratch. Many corporations have done this already. If you have a favorite platform (OS, cpu architecture, whatever) that isn't supported by Sun, it isn't Sun's obligation to do the job of porting a JRE to that platform for free. If you want the JRE badly enough, pay for someone to write it from scratch or port the existing Sun code. The Java runtime/VM specification is published and can be implemented -- no, it's not trivial, but it can be done, and many companies have done it. The Java source code is open sourced, so if you want Sun's implementation, you just need to get your hands on the code and do it.
Quit your whining. A promise of portability doesn't mean a promise to port a runtime environment to every platform under the sun just because you happen to care about a platform that Sun does not. It means you are free to do the porting yourself, if you have the money and resources to do it.
People's sense of entitlement astounds me sometimes.
In case you haven't noticed, any application that has to do things fast, has to be reliable, or deal with large datasets ... is still written in C/C++.
... EBay, who transitioned from C++ to Java five years ago?
Like
Eh, Java's a bit of a crappy language. I think Sun has Java'd the shark here.
they are only trying to catch a buzz
I suppose I would fail, if I had made even a passing reference to Javascript.
SCO needs a new symbol!
Some candidates follow:
ISUE
SHRT
SELL
TP
DOWN
I have unsuccessfully posted this question in the Ask Slashdot section before, but figured this would be a good venue -- I still cannot understand how Sun makes money from Java? It doesn't seem to be a side project, rather quite a large effort on their part...so what's in it for them?
Dude, just keep it straight - Apple is not APPL, but AAPL. My broker screwed me over with that mistake... :( Unfortunately that was last July, when I was attempting to buy the stock at 53. grrr
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
By business applications, we actually do mean applications that run on servers. That is where Java is king. Very few real business apps are actual desktop apps. Thus real large business don't have to worry about pushing out updates to their users, they just upgrade their servers.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
Unless that ancient JRE is Microsoft's, then I would question why your Java app can't run on a newer JRE.
http://www.mhall119.com
That's just stupid, Java has many features that are also interesting if you buy a product.
No its necessary. I may not have pointed out clearly enough that my workstation already has a couple of commercial java products purchased and installed, and they quite working of the wrong JRE is present - period. It has nothing at all to do with java's many interesting features, and everything to do with its version incompatibility. These have to run under windows, incidentally, and will absolutely not run under anything else. And, yes, it would be great if Sun can out with a JRE you could install what would run older versions of Java.
I do not understand that sentence. What do you have to run to meet client SLA requirements? The specific Java version? What's against that?
Some of them have to do with security monitoring agreements with clients. If I install another JRE that breaks a java product, the SLA is in breech.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Well then you are shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to established business solutions.
No, its because of established business solutions. I may not have pointed out that I already have business-critical commercial business applications that only run under certain JREs. That means if someone's java product needs a newer JRE, it means purchasing more workstations for everyone who would use that product also needs to use the existing applications. And, that more often than not means no due to business requirements.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
"and they quite working of the wrong JRE is present - period"
.exe and you're all set.
It's "quit working". I now see why I get confused with your sentences. Please read them before posting. I'm very interesting in the applications you are running, they don't seem normal Java apps to me. Of course, if you install an *older* Java VM than a product is written for, it won't work.
"These have to run under windows, incidentally, and will absolutely not run under anything else."
Very *very* special Java apps.
"And, yes, it would be great if Sun can out with a JRE you could install what would run older versions of Java."
What the heck are you talking about, a JRE that can run older versions of Java? Jeez, they have class compatibility up to the first versions of 1.1. Only in 1.6 they decided to really deprecate a few of the first "deprecated versions". Besides, the JRE *is* Java. How can you run an older version of Java in Java? Well, I'm sure I don't know.
"Some of them have to do with security monitoring agreements with clients. If I install another JRE that breaks a java product, the SLA is in breech."
Then your suppliers are completely brain-dead. As said, if they *really really* want to run a specific JVM, install them in a separate folder, or make sure that the correct VM is called from an
It seems you are more suffering from exceptionally stupid suppliers and bad products instead of Java. Stupidity cannot be avoided by using Java. It might be used to hide it, but that's another matter.
That's more than likely. I just always see this kind of thing with java products. Verizon business, for example, has a circuit ticket reporting java tool, but if you have an older JRE it won't work, and if the a newer JRE is installed to satisfy them, fluke software's java breaks. The domino of dependencies seem to multiply with each new java product. Its like gambling.
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
Java still has legs on the desktop. For one thing, the Army's Future Combat System allows Java (but not .NET) development, and the Army is no small customer. That and other vertical solutions will hold the business over until Sun works out the kinks, and then an embedded-to-enterprise cross-platform solution could bring people back over from .NET. Especially once they realize that Mono is not going to cut it for a "cross platform" solution.
E pluribus unum
No, it's you who really doesn't understand. Java is used on the back-ends to create the dynamic HTML you're looking at (Java, PHP or MS alternative). No Java runs on your box, so it doesn't matter what your browser is. Really, you shouldn't be posting on slashdot if you don't understand that most HTML is dynamically generated by some other language. Ever see a webpage that ends in .jsp, cause that's guaranteed to be Java, but so are many other pages that wouldn't offer you any indication. This just proves my belief that people only ever slam Java in total ignorance of what it's really used for.
Nothing is stopping a third party from writing their own JRE from scratch. Many corporations have done this already.
I am not aware of anyone that has sucessfully written a full J2SE JRE from scratch. IBMs java versions are licensed dirivitives of suns and the attempts by apache and gnu are far from complete. Some public classes in java have virtually no documentation at all (look at javax.swing.plaf.* for an example) so you would have needed to have a seperate reverse engineering and reimplementation team or risk cross contamination.
of course if you only care about one of the limited java subsets like J2ME then things are much easier.
The sun code is mostly released under a free software license (GPL with linking exception) now though, just a few holes left to be plugged and build issues to be sorted out and java will finally be FOSS after all theese years. Hopefully it will then see wide porting.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register