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After the Sun (Microsystems) Sets, the Real Stories Come Out
Tekla Perry (3034735) writes "Former Sun executives and employees gathered in Mountain View, Calif., in May, and out came the 'real' stories. Andy Bechtolsheim reports that Steve Jobs wasn't the only one who set out to copy the Xerox Parc Alto; John Gage wonders why so many smart engineers couldn't figure out that it would have been better to buy tables instead of kneepads for the folks doing computer assembly; Vinod Khosla recalls the plan to 'rip-off Sun technology,' and more."
See subject.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I thought the sun had already set on Sun long ago, when Oracle bought. Doesn't it still exist, though, to a degree, in the divisions and products that continue inside Oracle.
In its last days, the contributions of OpenOffice seem to have been most beneficial for providing real user control and freedom, hence not being locked into proprietary, centralized software development where users of software could not see or control any of the code that controls their computer.
Facebook intentionally left a few Sun signs up when it took over the former Sun campus in Menlo Park to remind people of what can happen to a company
Let's hope Facebook's successor doesn't bother doing them the courtesy. After all, at least Sun left a legacy of something tangible behind.
Better known as 318230.
So the Sun workstation being inspired by the Alto is "the real story coming out"? I'd rather call it "slow news".
Ezekiel 23:20
Unsurpassed.
I still use it, hooked up to a self made PS2 adapter, to my Intel box running Linux.
Why?
It has keybeep!
I know it's a security issue.
But what the heck.
I need the audible feedback.
'' Alan Butler, employee number 530, who at age 18 was once Sunâ(TM)s youngest employee, mused somewhat wistfully: âoeWe should have charged $1 a seat for every Java licenseâ and that would have generated billions in cash annually, perhaps saving the company. âoe ''
Fool. You'd have made about $300. With all of Java's other early problems, a price tag would have ended it before it could gain any momentum.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Roger Gregory tells a good story of making the first private (non-government entity) order from Sun as COO of Project Xanadu (XOC).
In Palo Alto, Roger hears of the Sun 1 via word-of-mouth and trade journals, raises the cash, fills out the form and sends in his order. And invoice comes back, with instructions to pay via bank (wire) transfer and an estimated delivery date.
About a month after the date, Roger and others are eagerly awaiting the machine, which has not arrived.
Roger gets on the phone and calls the number for Sun in Berkeley. Bill Joy answers the phone and, after some back-and-forth, says he will need to transfer Roger to the “accounting department.”
Bill sets down the phone and it becomes clear to Roger, who can hear the background noise, that Sun likely only has *one* phone line at this point. Shortly, Vinod Khosla picks up the phone with a "Hey, Roger!"
After about three minutes of chat, Vinod explains “Oh! We were wondering where that $40,000 in our account came from!” and promises to get the machine to XOC ASAP.
The Sun 1 shows up at XOC’s offices about two weeks later, as I remember. The machine is still in Roger’s basement last I knew.
We attached it to the Internet and ran a simple webserver for a short period in mid-’99 or so. Around that time, Bill stopped by for breakfast and offered a six-figure sum to buy the machine back, which Roger declined.
We were well on the way to computerizing the planet and miniaturization was already begun before NASA was told to put a man on the Moon.
Deal with it.
Alan Butler, employee number 530, who at age 18 was once Sun’s youngest employee, mused somewhat wistfully: “We should have charged $1 a seat for every Java license” and that would have generated billions in cash annually, perhaps saving the company. “There's a fine line between doing good for the community and doing too good.”
I'm not sure how that would have worked.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Agreed.
And don't post with Beta. It mangles all the non-ASCII characters.
Alan Butler, employee number 530, who at age 18 was once Sun’s youngest employee, mused somewhat wistfully: “We should have charged $1 a seat for every Java license” and that would have generated billions in cash annually, perhaps saving the company.
Fool. You'd have made about $300. With all of Java's other early problems, a price tag would have ended it before it could gain any momentum.
Pretty much the same thought I had -- I was wondering what technology would occupy java's current space if they had done that.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
Some additional nostalgia from 1997...
Escape from MicroSun (aka "Friday Afternoon") is a text adventure (written by a Sun Microsystems employee) where you play the part of a programmer for "MicroSun" and have to escape the office by 6pm for a date.
Well, $1 from every Android phone would have been a lot. But Google probably would have just used something else instead.
I can't say I ever really wanted Java for anything, once I got a feel for what it was - just plain terrible.
Facebook intentionally left a few Sun signs up when it took over the former Sun campus in Menlo Park to remind people of what can happen to a company) the people inside will still be working on cool technology.
Oh god! Comparing those two companies is like comparing McDonald's with a five star French restaurant.
SUN created cutting edge hardware. Invented new technologies. Actually added value to society, the economy and science.
Facebook is a dipshit consumer data pimping and advertising site that not only adds nothing to society but has actually hurting society by making its users even more isolated and keeping them in front of the modern Boob Toob. People are using Facebook as a substitute for real human interaction.
I'd be proud to have worked for SUN and I'd be ashamed to work for Facebook.
I hope every programmer, developer or JavaScript "engineer" that walks past that sign looks at it and asks themselves, "Why the fuck am I wasting my life at this worthless place contributing nothing of value to the World?"
One cluster fuck, added or subtracted from this industry, wouldn't have changed a damn thing. Java the religion was a problem, but those people have been silenced by reality. We'd still be dealing with MySQL, Ruby, ROR, PHP, python etc etc. It's like people don't bother learning what's there before setting out/making up their minds about everything.
Still better then a digital mono-culture. Which would be even worse, we'd still be stuck writing JCL.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That was my thought too. Though 300 might be generous.
Flash on steroids most likely as it displaced Java in a lot of areas anyway.
Fool. You'd have made about $300. With all of Java's other early problems, a price tag would have ended it before it could gain any momentum.
It's quite likely exactly this thinking that played a big part in killing Sun. They always made massive contributions and then screwed up saying something stupid against open source. Even with some of the most major FOSS packages coming from Sun they often achieved an image as a big corporate ant-freedom group. Microsoft, which is actively working to destroy open source all the time often comes across better. Look at the way they carefully licensed ZFS so it didn't go into Linux. Look at how they completely failed to get OpenSolaris to take off. A real shame.
Java: Why explain everything you need to know about what went wrong in a one line error message when a three page stack trace can leave you totally confused instead?
Most of that was Scott McNealy's poor direction and his ego.
Standing on stage and comparing his dog to Gates - adding absolutely nothing to the presentation - doesn't exactly instill confidence or give one a sense of professionalism.
Another great keyboard. When someone pissed me off or says or does something stupid, I just smack them with the Sun 4 keyboard, then hit the caps lock key to fix it. A great keyboard.
When Java started, it was competing against VisualBasic and a lousy version of Visual C++. And Microsoft looked like they were going to own both the server and the desktop, with UNIX and Linux effectively limited to plain C. Furthermore, most people who advocated Java at the time (including me) were fully aware of its numerous technical shortcomings. But Sun had promised to go through with ANSI/ISO standardization, and we had hoped we could fix many of its problems during that process, just like people had done for ANSI C. Since Sun had generally been decent about open source and community involvement, its withdrawal from the standards processes and subsequent proprietary stance on Java came as a complete surprise.
It's a shame that Java didn't turn out to be better. But Java has its uses, even if it is just keeping people who shouldn't be programming from interfering with people who do real work.
Shortly after the user authentication problem I got stuck behind a group of their engineers walking to the cafeteria, having a loud discussion about the poor quality of the Linux kernel code. Having just seen some of the coding going in in Sun, it was pretty hard not to tell them scornfully that I'd seen Sun code and they didn't have any room to be talking about anyone else's. Admittedly our project was after Sun was hacking up blood. They sold a few months after I left.
It was interesting to see the difference between IBM and Sun. IBM had process, but they didn't let it get in the way of their work. At IBM you always felt like someone actually knew the big picture and every product was made to be sold to customers. Sun had more of a underwear gnome business plan of making cool stuff and somehow money would magically appear.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I see you've never had a parse a compilation error when using boost (C++)
Just $1? They should have asked $100 per license and they would have earned hundreds of billions in cash anually!
Heck, why not ask $1mln per license; they'd have more money than exists in the world.
Reminds me of something that happened while I was waiting in line at a DIY store. Some guy had two coupons for 20%-off, two for 15%-off and he was demanding 70% off in total. Why didn't he just wait until he had two more 15%-off coupons? I swear to this actually happened; I didn't even spice it up.
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Fool! You can fix such errors only by trying to reduce the complexity of the template invocation at fault. That way lies C code, and therefore it must not be done. To achieve enlightenment, you must accept that C++ templates are only those who can write a complete program from scratch, in one sitting, in one translation unit, and for precisely the compilers you are using right now. And then end up using them in your application over a very restricted set of types which means you didn't need them in the first place.
New for 800.00 From a TRW screw up.
It was awesome to be me for awhile.
Their contributions to modern society can never fully be comprehended.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There were a lot of Sun people who celebrated the demise of Digital Equipment Corporation.
Well, what goes around comes around eventually. Sun got theirs, let them rot in pieces. They never made the impact that Digital did.
(and no, I'm not bitter about Sun. I'm waiting for HP's turn. It's coming...)
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
I see you've never had a parse a compilation error when using boost (C++)
That's why sensible people don't use that $#!+.
If you're confused by a stack trace, then you should go back and repeat your undergrad.
I'd take a "three page stack trace" over a "one line error message" any day. At least then I know where the bug was and what type of exception was thrown.
BTW... you can attach messages to exceptions, so your dichotomy is false.
Actually, I have not. But compilation errors are not my problem anyway. Runtime errors are and I am not a Java developer.
:D -ober
Do you think statistical physics, astronomy or quantum thermodynamics would most help?
When the one line error message tells you that your SQL connection has failed because the login or password was incorrect (typically nicely also telling you the username used and the host it attempted to connect to and usually the driver used also) and the stack trace simply tells you the there was an "SQL Exception" followed by irrelevancy after irrelevancy, I'll take the message and check the password used.
But perhaps I'm being unfair. It may just be JBoss or the developer who coded it but many other languages give you useful info by default.
It's the no good deed goes unpunished file. Sun does a bunch more for open source than any other major public for profit company at the time. Geeks shit all over them for not doing everything up to a Communist-sympathizing FSF thinks is necessary.
Meanwhile, Microsoft and Oracle act like asses and thrive on aggressively proprietary and expensive software.
Given the choice between Java, PHP, and Python; I'll stick with Java.
They were in two minds about open source. On the one hand it kept Microsoft at bay, on the other hand, open source projects had cut into their revenue in the past. In the days of "UNIX prices", companies could charge for printed copies of system manuals, development kits, compilers, user and CPU core licenses
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Agreed that a stack trace is much more helpful, assuming you have access to the source code.
Meanwhile, Microsoft and Oracle act like asses and thrive on aggressively proprietary and expensive software.
There are hundreds, even thousands of other companies which are taking the proprietary additude and not getting far. Most of them simply fail. The Microsoft, Oracle and SAP spaces are taken. Sun could never have beaten Microsoft in the "be evil" category.
SUN had a real chance to take RedHat's space from a much stronger base with Oracle's hardware business and Microsoft's government business. They could even have taken part of Google's space. This needed active and open cooperation.
Came into Sun through the MySQL acquisition. Working out of a country Sun was not legally present into. They decided to make me a contractor !! Because they couldn't just assign me to one of the other EU countries offices ! And as a "contractor" I was managing employees ! Not to mention that I had to beg for my salary each month because of my status ! What a royal mess! :) I almost got lynched in one of the Sun UK offices because of this.
And this setup was invented by people flying to all mysql offices in a private jet!
Not to mention how other "classic" Sun people hated us because their beloved management spent a cool $1b on us instead of giving it to them
So glad Oracle stepped in and disposed of our little pony and co !
These guys were capable of getting a perfectly working business and screwing it up in a very short time!
RIP Sun ! You WILL NOT be missed !
And it's a good thing fb keeps few Sun signs as a warning of believing you're something you're not!
Because "Segfault: 0xFCDA83B40" is *soooo* much better.
Help I am stuck in a signature factory!
But compilation errors are not my problem anyway. Runtime errors are
The difference being...?
My point is with a suffiiently powerful language, you have a programmable compiler and can run almost arbitrary code at compile time. This means that compile-time errors are effectively run-time errors of a language run at compile time.
To make things a little entertining, the C++ compiler effectively gives you a stack trace with the entire contents of the stack and parameters to called "functions". In an odd syntax.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Java itself was alright, the problem was the lack of discipline as they worked on the Java API. Up to version 1.2 it was still pretty good. After that it just got bloated with redundant crap.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
I don't know how different Java is to .NET in terms of exceptions, but with .NET you get an SQLException thrown, but the Message property would just contain something succinct like "Incorrect username or password". There are also a properties giving you access to the actual error codes from the SQL Server. You can also still look at the StackTrace property to get the full stack trace if you want.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
Reminds me of something that happened while I was waiting in line at a DIY store. Some guy had two coupons for 20%-off, two for 15%-off and he was demanding 70% off in total. Why didn't he just wait until he had two more 15%-off coupons? I swear to this actually happened; I didn't even spice it up.
The inability of a large part of the population to understand junior high maths and that ratios (like percentages) are multiplied instead of added is one of the reasons why so many coupons state "may not be combined with any other offer or coupon". It's not that they want to limit your savings, but because quite frankly, too many people should never have graduated from the primary school system, and are likely to throw a fit at the register, just like your guy did.
Another reason for the same common restriction is that even among those who do understand that percentages are multiplied there are a lot of people who didn't even learn the commutative laws in school.
I was in line behind a lady who complained that the clerk took the 10% off coupon off before the 40% off coupon, and demanded that they revert it and ring the purchase up again with the 40% first. The idiot behind the counter complied and then when the amount came to the same blamed the register and store policies.
I so wanted to put both of them out of my misery.
I'm going to have a go at explaining to readers how it 'felt' to use a workstation. I have a friend who experienced the same thing working on Apollo workstations too.
There was this feeling - I can best describe as being like what many people report they had as kids with home micros. You woke up and here was this awesome machine that just begged to be played with, have hardware added to etc. It's an awesome feeling of discovery and exploration and possibilities. It's like the feeling you can have if you grab a nice big piece of blank paper and a pen. You can write whatever you want on it, draw on it, calculate something on it...
For me - and other folks who had access to workstations it was just like that feeling. Suddenly you had this machine that was fast, had a great display, a great operating system - SunOS 4.1.3 . the machine was there and all that compute + display + disk was there for YOU. It wasn't locked up in some server some other place and you weren't competing with everyone else.
Later on Sun came out with some really cool things too. Anyone else remember NeWS? That was pretty cool....NFS for as many problems as it has is still actively used all over the place.
Why did Sun die? They died because they stopped doing what they started doing. The actual model for Sun in the early days was they would take a standard Unix and build a workstation (or server) wrapped around it. They actually used to say that they weren't going to lock people into their system - they would make their system open - and compete based on having the best product. Think about that for a minute. They were saying 'We wil build the best damn workstation, and you will buy it because it's the best damn workstation'. Now you can argue if the SPARCStation 1+ was better than an Apollo or a MIPS but as a business strategy it's hard as a consumer to complain about it. It was a massive departure from what DEC did.
The inability of a large part of the population to understand junior high maths and that ratios (like percentages) are multiplied instead of added is one of the reasons why so many coupons state "may not be combined with any other offer or coupon".
Mathematically you're correct, but most coupons are ambiguous about how cumulative discounts should be applied. Since the first coupon is applied on the base amount, it's not unreasonable to expect the second coupon also to apply on the base amount.
It's not that they want to limit your savings, but because quite frankly, too many people should never have graduated from the primary school system, and are likely to throw a fit at the register, just like your guy did.
Actually, the coupons are there to entice you to spend money on things you might otherwise not have bought. They don't want you to arrive at the register with a whole stack of combinable coupons, and spend no money at all.
With all of Java's other early problems, a price tag would have ended it before it could gain any momentum.
Pretty much the same thought I had -- I was wondering what technology would occupy java's current space if they had done that.
Flash on steroids most likely as it displaced Java in a lot of areas anyway.
I always thought that ultimately, Flash all but filled the role that Java Applets were supposed to meet on the browser, but didn't.
FWIW, I'm not sure I'd blame Flash for the failure of Applets, as by the time it started to become more than a simple animation player, the latter had already had plenty of time to take off, but never had.
I suspect that this was because Java Applets were too heavyweight and slow to start at the time, whereas Flash was more in sync with what computers were capable of back then.
Of course, it's possible that in the absence of Flash, Applets might have become more popular as computers grew more powerful, but essentially I'd say they weren't so much displaced as never having succeeded on their own merits. Yes, there was (and still is, to a limited extent) some use of browser-based Java, but it never dominated like it was meant to. Flash may be in decline now, but it's enjoyed a decade- if not 15 years- as a major success.
Not that I'm saying that Java was a failure, just that- ironically- the aspect that gained *by far* the most hype at its mid-90s launch was the one it ultimately failed in.
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Bullshit. Sun started by making BSD proprietary. Then they tried to kill X11 and replace it with their proprietary crap. Then they promised to make Java a free and open standard, which turned out to be a lie. And when Java was failing, they tried to pull another fast one with the GPL/JCP crap.
Sun was arrogant and evil from beginning to end. Microsoft and Oracle at least didn't pretend to be anything other than what they were: companies making proprietary software.
A stack trace *can* be much more helpful. But when there is a simple error, it is usually simply unnecessary. It's true that mostly it's likely an implementation issue than a fault of Java though.
Yes. Java was way too heavyweight. Which is not really a problem with Java but more with the way people were using it. Which is not really their fault either since there was a gap. Which Flash filled.
I guess it should also be remembered that alongside flash was Shockwave which was also fairly heavyweight and bloomed for a while and then fell from grace. I worked with that with some non-web stuff and it was fairly nice and easy to extend with the xtra API. I never really worked with Flash but my understanding of it is that early versions were not particularly powerful but it ultimately ended up adding more features as time went on until it edged Shockwave out.
As if any version of SD ever didn't mangle anything that wasn't 7-bit ASCII?
No. "Other languages" do not give you something different. Blame the developer who added ex.printStackTrace() to the catch{}, not the language. For fuck's sake, if you're not a programmer, who the fuck are you to even attempt to claim that the problem is the language rather than the program itself?
Opensource GNU/Linux software emulated much of the fabulous SunOS. Sun could not compete in hardware price.
My current company has always used the UNIX platform sinc eits start in thel late 80s First we used IBM PowerPC, then that plus Sun, then Sun plus Linex, and finallung Linux64 alone.
It isn't just the heavyweight issue, it was the lack of experence we had with it combined with in ablity to really interegrate with the DOM and Javascript. Had Java applets focused on working with the browser instead of as their own little world a bit more, Flash wouldn't have needed to exist. Flash still is a pain next to HTML5 though, so everyone needs to evole or die, nothing new in that. My one experence with applets was to use them as a PC/Mac counter part to a VB3 specialized calculator app(Clay Bricks). It worked, but the dev time was insane next to what it would take to do the same thing in just plain JS.
I used to love those stack traces, until I worked with something (to me) really big like Alfresco.
Yeah, I wish they had done that. Java would have died early before J2EE ever happened, or Hibernate, or any of the other frameworks. IBM took over Java and ruined it with over-complex engineering for frameworks and interfaces. Maybe IBM would be dead, too, if they couldn't have done that. Wow, I just had a vision of a world without Java. What a wonderful place.
Reminds me of something that happened while I was waiting in line at a DIY store. Some guy had two coupons for 20%-off, two for 15%-off and he was demanding 70% off in total. Why didn't he just wait until he had two more 15%-off coupons? I swear to this actually happened; I didn't even spice it up.
1*.8*.8*.85*.85 = .4624, so even if they could stack, he'd be entitled to 53.76% off
So yeah, even if they stacked, do the math. Common error with combined discounts.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
Borland might still exist and sell a cross-platform variant of Delphi/Pascal, because developers had not been led into the shitpile of "free development tools".
Actually, Java was an excellent sales tool for all hardware makers from Micron to IBM. Java wastes voracious amounts of memory. In many ways it is a regression relative to C++ and Pascal. The omission of destructors alone is a massive regression. The inability to allocate on the stack (except for primitive variables) is also a massive, idiotic waste.
Finally, the SPARC processor was shit relative to x86, at least performance-wise. Good riddance, SUN.
FORTRAN is in many ways better than Java. Welcome to the world of I.T. where we have cyclic regressions. On a conceptual level, of course.
Ahh, that Java Crap Pile. It still limps along.
Open source did destroy Sun. But not with criticism. Sun failed to recognize the threat from Linux until well after Linux's performance and reliability had achieved parity with Solaris.
That Java ran very poorly on Solaris also did not help.
The match between Sun and Oracle still strikes me as bizarre. Oracle software favoring Sun workstations can only hurt Oracle. And the only synergy between the two is that a lot of Oracle software can run on Sun equipment.
IBM would have been a much better match. Owning Sun's IP would have allowed IBM to incorporate the best remaining pieces of Solaris into Linux, cementing IBM as THE vendor for large-scale Linux equipment. And Java would have put IBM back on the general computing map without the risk inherent to the PC hardware business they sold off.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
That feeling you describe about using a workstation? That was the feeling I got from using a PC. Workstations were far out of reach for me at that time.
He was stacking them by adding the percentages. By his logic, two more 15%-off coupons would have given him 100% off.
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It isn't just the heavyweight issue, it was the lack of experence we had with it combined with in ablity to really interegrate with the DOM and Javascript. My one experence with applets was to use them as a PC/Mac counter part to a VB3 specialized calculator app(Clay Bricks). It worked, but the dev time was insane next to what it would take to do the same thing in just plain JS.
Hmm, "one experence [sic]"? It appears that your total lack of knowledge of Java may have skewed your view. Java was never meant to integrate with the DOM, for instance, nor with JS, so attempting to do that is like hammering a wet noodle into a circuit board. You are correct on one point, Flash needed to die around the time of VB3. It would have saved everyone lots of pain. (I'm aware you didn't exactly say that;)
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I don't know how different Java is to .NET in terms of exceptions, but with .NET you get an SQLException thrown, but the Message property would just contain something succinct like "Incorrect username or password". There are also a properties giving you access to the actual error codes from the SQL Server. You can also still look at the StackTrace property to get the full stack trace if you want.
Considering .NET (C#) copied 95% of Java, is it so surprising that this is exactly how things are in the Java world? The gp doesn't have a clue. I sometimes would like to send the red stapler of shame (with several slams) to whomever decided not to print a stacktrace for an unusual error, sometimes even omitting the message. (This is called swallowing exceptions). Yeah, so stacktraces are long. Yes, in JBoss especially, they can run 3 pages. That's not the fault of Java, but of JBoss and it's endless layering of filters. I've written programs of large size (100s of K LOCs) where the longest stacktrace in the logs is less than 20 lines. In fact, 1100+ line stacktraces are a major sign of bad design, IMNSHO.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
That was the point dick head. Never meant to was the problem.
I was at Sun from 1997 to 2004 and there were good and bad times. I saw my first Sun 3 in 1988 thereaboouts and did some development work. C and shell, and then system admin of small LANs for a couple of start-ups and research operations and a couple of tech support roles. It was tech support I did at Sun mostly supporting Solaris and later legacy compilers. I left Sun because the emphasis had moved away from Solaris and on to Java and related tools. I felt that the APIs were poorly designed, too big, and complex. For me, as a visually impaired person the coding conventions in Java were hard to deal with and the language hard to use from a support role. I had been supporting the OS and legacy compilers and found Java to be an annoyance. I also felt that Sun was playing catch-up to other IDEs at the time and not doing too well. Later, Netbeans would look competitive to me, but not back in 2004. I think that the shift after 2003 and the emphasis on Java was what killed Sun. I think that Sun could have made more revenue from the FORTRAN compiler and legacy tools than it ever did from Java and that it mstepped and paid the price. I never liked Oracle and Larry Ellison and wonder how the HW guys are faring in that scam. Sun might have prospered if it pushed Solaris more on X86 and it failed because it let technology beat performance of its SPARC platform. I am not sure that Oracle can do better.
My suspicion was Java would be more or less identical, but I don't work in Java so I wasn't 100% sure.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
About fifteen years ago I bought the four-volume edition of "Java in a Nutshell".
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
What's ambiguous about "you can't"?
I've never ever ever seen one that didn't say that.
Netscape did have liveconnect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
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Moderated Usenet
That was the point dick head. Never meant to was the problem.
No, the problem was you then, and you now. You were using a hammer as a drill. Everything else you said is irrelevant criticism. But go ahead and continue your rant, nothing to see here.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I was mostly trying to point out the compounded error on the angry dude's part. All too common for people to think 30% stacking with 20% is 50% off when it's actually 44% off. Not a big deal at those values, but you would start to get very diminishing returns.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
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