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Sun Claims MS Steals Vision
Dan Reiland sent us linkage
to an interesting little ditty on Sun's web page that
mocks Microsoft for stealing their Vision. I'm actually amused by this
on 2 levels: First, its amusing that Microsoft (Already legendary in this industry for their innovation and originality) has actually been caught "borrowing" something.) but more amusing is the fact that Sun thinks people actually care about (or for that matter read) vision statements.
... application service providers.
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,25478,00.html
Yea... ... buhaha:)
To me Java is the second ugliest functional language in the world (just next to Visual Basic
I am not saying it cannot be used in a good way, the theory is beautiful.. multiplatform etc etc... but when i see a code writen in it... i have to puke... i mean it's the biggest bloat-of-OOP i've ever seen. It's simply ugly and repulsive to me (in difference to c++ & object pascal), but after all i am just another AC.
The term "Network Computer," or NC, seems to pop into my mind now... a computer that would have no hard drive and boot its OS from rom (or the network, even) and get all apps and stuff from the network. I didn't know they wanted everybody to pay for every byte though.
rooooar
I'm puzzled why a self-described methodologist would advocate this. Circle is not a subtype of Ellipse (Liskov-substitutability is violated - you shouldn't be able to give a Circle to someone expecting to use Ellipse methods on it), so making it a subclass is a cheap hack to reuse some code.
You don't mean...?
Believe me, crummy code is easy to write in any language. Implementing a good error recovery strategy requires design -- nifty exception handling is not going to magically solve it for you.
Liskov-substitutability is already violated when there are the classes of circle and ellipse in the design and ellipse has methods that can't be implemented for a circle while maintaining it's invariant. I know this is a bit backwards, since the design of the superclass has to take into account the subclasses.
It depends on whether you view subclassing as extension or superclassing as generalisation. In my point of view subclasses can also add new constraints so actually the methods of the would-be superclass may violate the invariants of the subclasses (this is a bitch for maintenance if the superclass isn't abstract enough). So the methods that would cause that violation would have to be removed and the superclass made more abstract by moving the methods down to those classes where they don't threaten to violate the invariants. In some cases you could just change the class of the object in question when such a method is used. The question is about mutability, the base classes that account for substitutability shouldn't be too mutable or you can run into problems, rather they should be abstract and take into account the future limitations that subclasses may require.
In the mathematical world the circle is a subclass of the ellipse. It is an ellipse with certain constraints, which allow some optimizations to take place in the implementation. Yes a circle is substitutable for an ellipse provided that the ellipse class has no methods that would violate the circle's invariant or the circle object would then change into an ellipse object, which is what it logically does, when you for example scale it in the X direction only. In this case there's the problem of someone else expecting it to remain a circle...
You have a point, and we don't run that many games that need direct control over the video hardware.
However, I'm so fed up with the cruddy Microsoft OSes that I'm ready to jump anywhere else, even if it means selecting something other than Quicken for finances. I run a mixture of WinNT 4.0 Server, WinNT 4.0 workstation, Solaris 2.7, and Linux 5.2 and 6.0 in my labs at work, and Windows gives us the most trouble by far. We have several products currently using WinNT that we are currently migrating to Solaris, simply because we have so many problems with the lack of reliability we experience with WinNT.
I'm currently trying to hire two WinNT Server Sysadmins to run my WinNT shop, and I'm having a hard time finding qualified, experienced personnel, because good ones are in so much demand because WinNT is so hard to keep running reliably.
There's nothing wrong with vision. Vision is great. Unfortunately, vision statements seldom have any noticable relationship to actual vision. They're usually the result of a bunch of marketroids with delusions of gender^Ograndeur sitting around a conference table with their ties choking off the flow of blood to their brains (if any) and stringing together a bunch of meaningless, polysyllabic words of the sort usually seen only on motivational posters and high-school graduation speeches.
"We will achieve greatness through enhancing the pulchritude of the dominant paradigm of customer-product interaction."
And cellular telephones don't even give you a dial tone, do they? Nor do they have dials. I still haven't figured out how you're supposed to dial a number with no dial and no dialtone.
"Telephones should have wires. Televisions shouldn't. Anything else is heresy."
"Stuff that matters".
How can anyone top that?
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
HAHAHAHAHA
I still think it is the best language for number crunching in physics and engineering. The only problem is that not enough money is invested in new Fortran compilers. Fortran has become a niche language.
C++ has all the modern bells and whistles for general purpose programming by professional programmers. I think it is too complicated for many people who don't need all of its features.
When I look at K&R's C book and compare its size to the latest edition of Stroustrup's C++ book, I wonder if the costs outweigh the benefits.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
This is sort of like Dr. Evil making off with Austin's "MOJO" isn't it? Maybe both would be better served if they realized you can't bottle "VISION"
Actually, I invented rent-an-app about 5 years ago. My idea was if you charge a few cents per hour of app usage over the net, you pay according to how useful you find it, and avoid installation hassles.
I don't think I actually told anyone about my brilliant idea. So not only did Sun steal it, but they must have mind readers! (Either that, or it is an obvious idea. Determining which explanation is more likely is left as an exercise for the student.)
Harold Thimbleby of Middlesex University has written a well thought out Critique of Java in which he concludes,
Not surprised with the similarity at all. They were both made with the Mission Statement generator
(we could argue about Mission vs Vision but that would be petty)
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
MS won the countersuit but it was only a token amount.
Is this a rhetorical question?
It's on the server side, dumbass. Java Servlets are a good thing -- JSP too.
Yeah, but was it really necessary for the author to force the image of the BillGatus in drag upon us? stiletto heels? I wasn't adequately prepared for this (think something should have been said in warning)
The available compilers and libraries are not compatible with each other or the ANSI standard.
Much of the compiler and library documentation is terrible.
You can't look at a page of C++ code and get a good idea of its time/space requirements. Operator overloading is not a feature.
I know a number of scientists and programmers who do research on the physics of the ionosphere. They write all their software in FORTRAN-77. It lets them do their work without having to learn the language and operating system of the day.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Good gosh, she was his best partner. Certainly he was the bigger star, but his movies after Ginger became incerasingly silly, pairing him with some young spring chicken. Whereas her movies after Fred showed class. No one was as good as Fred Astaire, and no one was as good as Ginger Rogers. To compare her to Microsoft shows no respect.
--
Infuriate left and right
Oh, man. Can't you just *imagine* the kinds of criticisms we'd get from the FUD-mongers about that? We're complaining about the "fragmentation of Linux" accusations as it is! Can you imagine what it'd be like if people started using names other than "Linux"?
This gets moderated up? huh?
/.er, but this is just really stupid and inane.
keep in mind:
1. Linux has nothing to do with this article.
2. Solaris ain't too bad (esp. when it comes to uptime).
3. "win"?
War mentality sucks. Sorry to post basically flaming verbiage against another
--Andrew Grossman
grossdog@dartmouth.edu
Sun is alot closer to global domination than Microsoft. What kind of machines do you think that China is using to perform ballistic tests? My only hope is that they shipped them with the JavaOS installed. Also, how secure are their systems if Mitnick can break into them? And if he did so much financial damage buy stealing so much software, why weren't the stockholders notified? Just a few things to ponder.
Its funny you mention that. I always thought the NC vision was one of the most retarded concepts ever created :!. NC was like an unglorified Xterm! The most expensive thing to me is my bandwidth, why would I want to get rid of something as ridiculously cheap as my hard drive?
I know bandwidth is getting cheaper (gigabit ether and all that) and there are administration costs that make not having a harddrive cheaper.. but as far as admincrap is concerned wouldn't it be simpler just to use rsync and a few perl scripts etc?
A lot of it is the libraries unfortunately.. much of the fortran libraries are handoptimized since fortran is column ordered. This isn't really that big of a deal since you can just do a transpose but vaguely annoying. I do numerical crap and I use (shock,shock,horror,horror) C++. The fact is if you write decent code and are smart about it your code should pretty much be the same speed in any language.. (Fortran people dont tend to believe that but its simple enough to test, take a simple project and implement it in two languages.) Anything that really needs to be optimized can link to blas routines, so the language itself doesn't really matter) The real problem w/ c++ is that it is *really* easy to write really horrendous code, because you can hide huge routines in things like +,= etc .. but of course if you going about doing that you should be aware of what you are doing right?
Of course it is even funnier that sun posted something like this on the site, I mean how weird is that? It seems Sun might be spending a wee bit too much time thinking about ol' billg. (Note that this is very different from thinking about or complulsivly reloading /. , which I would of course never do)
Chris DiBona
VA Linux Systems.
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
I think another reason some like Fortran is a large body of publically available, well-tested, and highly optimised fortran code to perform common algorithms like FFTs. They can all be done with C++ just as efficiently I'm sure, but then you often have to write them, test them, and optimize them, which takes time.
Wasn't Sun the company that came up with the rent-an-app model a few years ago, the one that Ballmer said MS was looking in to earlier this week? If so, just another case of MS trying to seem like innovators when they've really just stolen somebody else's idea.
See also: Windows (regardless of whether you think they stole it from Apple or Xerox).
rooooar
Most of Java is Smalltalk with a veneer of C++ syntax. Beans have much more in common with OpenDoc than VB's stupid and inflexible call-a-container-method event model. MTS is crippled by being ludicrously complex and lacking any long-lived cross-transaction objects, both of which EJB gets right. I've never heard of ADSI, but really, how many different ways are there to express lookup() and getAttributes() for LDAP? And I always assumed they called it "JFC" because Netscape called its predecessor "Internet Foundation Classes"....
I'm in no way defending Microsoft, but if companies have similar goals (actually, I didn't know Sun was going for global domination too, but that's besides the point), then they'll probably have similar 'mission' or 'vision' statements. There aren't many ways someone can say that they want their software to run anywhere, anytime, and on any computer.
The essential notion behind the NC is that you don't install stuff on that one machine that persists forever until you change it. NCs can and should cache aggresively as long as it's kept transparent (luckily the HTTP/1.1 folks have put a lot of thought into making that possible).
Ever since Sun got a coherent vision statement ("the network is the computer" may have been interesting, but did any PHBs really get it?), they and Microsoft and everyone else in this industry have all been racing towards the same set of targets; at least now some of them are admitting it.
Nothing worth doing is worth doing today.
DataOutputStream methods say they're big-endian, so I don't see your problem.
Unrestricted net access requires that the user trust your applet - JDK 1.2 has an excellent security framework for expressing this, but Netscape is too befuddled and Microsoft too stubborn to bother to support JDK 1.2 (it's only been around for a year or so). The plugin gives you both of them and Opera too, if you're on a platform Sun has managed to provide it for.
Actually, Java has a race condition. I'm sure the details are in comp.lang.java.advocacy, but from what I remember if a synchronized method calls another, the lock must be released (briefly) and that may give another thread a chance to butt in to a process that's supposed to be atomic. The fix, of course, is doing real work in private methods and only making your public entry points synchronized. If I recall correctly.
Your invariants need to be part of the contract with your callers, and reflected in your static type. A model in which an Ellipse may or may not be a Circle from moment to moment, or in which some instances add secret invariants, is only appropriate for a language with classes but no types, where clients have to be ready for anything because they have no guarantees about how an object will behave. You may blame the static languages for not givnig you this flexibility, but I blame the model for being too unpredictable to easily reason about.
C does have some disadvantages. Aliasing is a big one - if your arguments (or any other pointed-to objects, really) might be sharing storage, you can't safely keep their values in registers. Guarantees about sequence points probably interfere with vectorizing and maybe even some unrolling.
Their vision is typical of 99.9% of every computer based/internet based company out there. Why does Sun think they were the first to come up with the idea of the 'anytime, anywhere' vision? It's been around since the dawn of boats n all that kinda stuff.
not that i like ms but they generally win. i mean, if you look at it they're not competing against sun, or linux, or java, or oracle, or ____ - they're competing against the COMPUTER INDUSTRY. any software company with revenues is a threat to them. its truly staggering - what are they worth now, half a trillion??? i'm more scared of them now that ballmer is running the show because he'll do _anything_ - he has no attachment to win, or anything else. he would open-source win api tomorrow if it was the correct decision (not that it is). its easy to bait them now while nt crashes etc. but they are going to compete,, and unfortunately they dont lose too often.
-- your knees hurt, don't they?
Real OO should use dynamic languages, like Smalltalk or CLOS. Java still requires too much code to be written for simple dynamic tasks: like run-time (ie. without stopping the program) system updating and maintenance, plugins, changing the class of an object, etc. To avoid that code bloat people contort their designs. Adding a new class is expensive in terms of the amount of code needed. The only reason it's so popular is that it has some features (reflection, GC, strong typing) that are better than C++ and the SYNTAX is about the same. Forcing OOP isn't the problem; forcing static OOP is. No MI is a real problem; you may have to duplicate code all over the place and keeping it in sync is a problem.
CLOS is one of the best I've seen. How many OO languages have the ability to change an objects class at run-time (polymorphism) ? Self-modifying programs rule !
AC
"I like the optical mouse idea, though. Don't know who actually thought up that."
I don't know either, but our lab full of XTs in grade 12 computer science had optical mice. Back in 1987. They needed metal 'mouse pads' with tiny green lines in one direction, and tiny red lines in the other. The neat thing was that up and down, left and right were always the same, even if you twisted the mouse.
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
Delphi has some good ideas, but proprietary languages tied to crummy platforms aren't even worth considering unless you're wasting time writing the kind of toys for the masses that VB is almost capable of delivering.
Java is a half-baked little language, but the Java Virtual Machine is a huge step forward (and languages other than Java target it). I can safely run bytecode I don't trust on new hardware the author never heard of, and IMHO the mobile agent is the most interesting idea to come along in years. JVM languages are C without the undefined behavior, C++ without dangling references (and with a standard library big enough to be useful), and Smalltalk without vendor lock-in. Bytecode is getting closer to efficient all the time - with adaptive recompilation (C could do this but AFAIK nobody has), background generational scavenging, and far less aliasing (an advantage shared with Fortran code generators), it could even outperform C and I think it will.
I normally never make "moderated" comments, however the above moderated up? I am a Diehard
Linux supporter, but if this title, and tone
were directed toward Linux it would be a -1 Flamebait.
Come on guys.
Awesome!
IMHO MS' "innovative" reputation is largely a consumer marketing benefit. A lot of their value is on paper and illiquid, but they aren't exactly hurting for capital either.
The abstraction doesn't comme from OOP usually.
What are you manipulating? 'objects' They are either abstract or real, but they are still familiar things. And inheritance is a very common process, that's a bit the way we organise our Thinking. (analogy, inheritance links between facts and concepts)
If you really want an abstraction ride, rather try a functionnal language. And with most ones you can still do OOP. (clisp, haskell,...)
. . . . . . .
may u!sh 2 sm!le at dz!z bad nn.!m!tat!ion
Neither Java nor Visual Basic are functional. Look at LISP or Haskell or something for functional languages. They rock!
Cause no one would call Object Pascal anything but ugly and repulsive.
I didn't see the smiley, though!
Is Microsoft the first company to bring an innovative technology to market, or the first to popularize the technology so that the majority *are* first introduced to it as coming from Microsoft and thus perpetuate the myth that Microsoft actually inventes and innovates technology?
I wouldn't exactly try to take credit for the term "WebTone". In an industry full of buzzwords, that one is nearly the worst I've heard...(away from the attempted conversion of PCMCIA to PcCard).
I mean really, if a dial tone refers to a tone prompting you to dial....then a web tone must be a tone prompting you to....wait a minute, that doesn't make sense.
Andrew (really hating PHB buzzwords)
As far as I recollect it was first coined as the "Internet Dial Tone" by the former head of the Open Group, Joseph De Feo.
In a previous existence he was a champion of open systems at Barclays Bank in the UK
On my system Java is not too bad. I wrote some code which does some matrix operations in both C++ and Java. The Java was 30% slower than the C++, which is really pretty good. This was running on IBM's OS/2 Java 1.1.8 (which is *much* faster than MS Java). With the performance improvements I've seen with Java I suspect that Java will come close to C++ in performance within the next year or so. Running Hot Java 3.0 on OS/2 loads faster and feels faster than Netscape 4.61 for OS/2. Java's only 4 years old. Remember how C++ was at 4 years old?
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
One of Amazon's just consisted of something like "Oh."
>They needed metal 'mouse pads'
These don't, thats the innovative thing. Still it must be the only truly innovative thing they have done.
One of the truly amazing things to come out of the DOJ case is MSloths claim that they can only innovate if there is a monopoly, and to think I thought it was competition that promotes true innovation.
Exactly!
... with Java, and it always works
Anyone who claims Java is just a toy language is unqualified to comment on it, because it just isn't true. I've been doing sizeable commercial apps with Java for a long time (longer than most, anyway), and it kicks serious butt over anything else in the following critical areas:
1) Portability (duh!)
2) Error handling (too easy with Java!)
3) Debugging (if you have a good tool and good technique. Command-line development is pathetically inefficient. I use Visual Age Enterprise, and long ago got my money back in increased productivity.)
4) Memory handling (the great flaws in C/C++ are lost memory and bad pointers)
5) It plays nicely with others. I've done programs linking C, assembly, C++, SQL,
6) Threading for free (threads really suck in almost anything else!)
7) Excellent protection of variables (prevention of race conditions). Crucial for threaded programs, since it's almost impossible to catch in testing. Such occurences are probably the cause of many Windows crashes
8) Less customer support needed, since it's less likely to have uncaught bugs
9) Easier to reuse and replace modules. Reused code and free code are almost synonymous
10) Easy to have it upgrade itself
11) Most important of all: fast and easy to finish stable code. Sure, maybe its runtime is 10+% slower, but so what?! I typically cut coding time at least in half by using Java due to all of the above. It's impossible for a C version to be faster when it's several months from actually getting finished (unlike the Java version, which would already be done!). The old adage that time is money is so true! Spend a couple hundred dollars apiece on faster machines to make up the difference in speed, from the far more significant hundreds of thousands you saved in development costs and maintenance. Duh! Is doubling the cost really worth that (theoretical) improvement in performance? Outside of something like gaming, I don't think so! (and I'm still convinced that somebody's going to pull off writing hit games in Java, with assembly subroutines for some graphics handling)
Oh, yeah, we were talking about Sun. Cool machines, but their pres. is a weasel, and is no better than Gates. But since they turn out some cool _original_ technology (my favorite of which is, obviously, Java), I forgive them their sins (once they repent by handing everything over to Linux!).
(The links are expired, and interestingly Amazon doesn't have these releases at their website)
Amazon.com Said:
(http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/981106/wa_amazon__1.h tml)
Company Press Release
SOURCE: Amazon.com, Inc.
Amazon.com Issues Statement Regarding Barnes & Noble's Acquisition Of Ingram Book Group
SEATTLE, Nov. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Amazon.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN - news) today released the following statement in response to the announcement that Barnes & Noble Inc. has agreed to acquire Ingram Book Group:
Amazon.com currently purchases books from a variety of sources, including Ingram. Our long-term strategy has been to diversify our supplier base and to increase our direct purchasing from publishers. We anticipate that this trend will continue for some time to come.
That said, Ingram is the largest book distributor in the United States, and many independent book stores rely on it as their sole source of supply. The combination of the country's biggest book retailer with its biggest distributor, and, given the recently announced Bertelsmann transaction, its biggest publisher group, undoubtedly will raise industry-wide concerns. Like other independent booksellers, we hope that Ingram resolves those concerns with a strong commitment to treating all bookstores fairly.
``To our customers: Worry not,'' said Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. ``Those who make choices that are genuinely good for customers, authors, and publishers will prevail. Goliath is always in range of a good slingshot.''
Barnes And Noble Responded with:
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/981106/barnesandn_1.html
barnesandnoble.com Issues Statement Regarding Amazon's Statement About Barnes & Noble, Inc.
With regard to the acquisition of the Ingram Book Group, Barnes & Noble, Inc. is amused to read Jeff Bezos' quote, where he describes himself as an independent bookseller: ``Goliath is always in range of a good slingshot.''
Well, Mr. Bezos, what with a market capitalization of some $6 billion and more than four million customers, we suppose you know a Goliath when you see one. Your company is now worth more than Barnes & Noble, Borders, and all of the independent booksellers combined. Might we suggest that slingshots and pot shots should not be part of your arsenal.
To which Amazon Replied:
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/981106/wa_amazon__2.ht ml
Company Press Release
SOURCE: Amazon.com, Inc.
Amazon.com Issues Statement Regarding BarnesandNoble.com's Statement Regarding Amazon.com's Statement About Barnes & Noble, Inc.
SEATTLE, Nov. 6 /PRNewswire/ -- "Oh."
Microsoft is legendary in this industry for their innovation and originality? Give me a break.
One thing that I have seen with the rise of the Internet is this concept of ownership of ideas.
Remember the saying "ideas, dime a dozen"....
Well folks it still applies. An idea is just that an idea. Make it reality and then we will start talking....
The IT DialTone[tm] Architecture IT DialTone is the name given to the viable, global information infrastructure for the deployment of business applications that is the focus of The Open Group strategy.
This "dialtone to the internet" appeals to non-techies. It's been The Open Group's strategy for several years now (pre Sun's statement). Of course, most of us engineers never figured out what it meant when we worked there.
Do we care? Make it truly open!
uh - java?
there are two kinds of people in this world - those who divide people into two groups and those who don't
The fact that Solaris SELLS the hardware because it is reliable, efficient and scalable is why it will continue to be enhanced and supported. Solaris is virtually given away these days, the profits come from the hardware sales As for Java, pick any large mainframe site (and I mean a REAL mainframe site running MVS/OS390) and just about all of them are migrating in some form to Java/Open Systems for new development...NT may blow hard around the edges, but where the real apps (or perhaps that should be services ) are being written, it is Java/EJB/CORBA that is in the majority.
Anyone who claims Java is just a toy language is unqualified to comment on it, because it just isn't true
I implore you, please don't make silly statements like this. Think about the logic there.
Sun missed the obvious slam -- the one so graciously provided by Microsoftie VinodV:
There you have it, straight from the source! Microsoft isn't plagiarizing, they're simply chasing Sun's tail lights! :^)
Plagiarize,
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize -
Only be sure always to call it please 'research'.
-- Tom Lehrer, Lobachevsky
Is it just me or is Sun moaning too much about Microsoft. McNeely is just upset that he is not Bill Gates, that his company is not making what Microsoft is, that he is not as rich as Bill Gates is. Poor Sun. God, if they perhaps concentrated on making Slowaris better, open standards or maybe something OTHER than writing little ditties about Microsoft, mayhap Java would work the way Sun claims it would, or mayhap they would be supporting Linux, but it seems they would rather bemoan the fact that they are not as big nor as "good" as Microsoft.
The big problem I have always had with Java from a coding standpoint is due to my C/C++ background. GC makes me feel dirty. I want to free that memory when I'm done with it damnit. After coding something in Java, I'm always sort of nervous that the Garbage Collection thing is all just a trick. :/
The optical mouse idea was Xerox, 'way back ... their mice used to be completely optical and had two buttons that actually could be taken for mouse ears in a bad light :-) And of course Sun have had optical mice for years and are just now beginning to abandon them in favour of mechanical ones :-(
I'm glad that it has been acknowledged. I was wandering if I was in a vacuum, thinking this all to myself. I saw these news stories about Balmer touting this like it is the next best greatest thing, and I starting wondering, does this guy own shares in Sun or what?
Nope. Works perfectly for me down here in Texas. It's pretty freakin' difficult to /. a load-balanced pool of big honkin' UltraSPARC servers that are fed by multiple DS3 multihomed Internet feeds. A/C natch.
Apply a little logic: If a server was brought to its knees by slashdotting, wouldn't the name resolution to it have to work first?
Your DNS is messed. Or more likely netscape glitched and blamed DNS like it always does. Hit shift-reload a few times.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
What need, I think, are more Alan Cox types, etc. Linus' great luck was in the people who made/make it really happen, right?
Yes. I'd generally rather implement the destructors and deallocators, and be *sure* that I can deallocate memory in a timely manner without waiting for a GC, and also that if an app leaks, it's the fault of the code itself (something that can be examined) versus the JVM.
If you've ever seen a particular vendor's JVM die with a bus error, you'll recognize the twin irritations that a) some implementations bite, and you have to work around them in your allegedly platform-indy code, and b) you won't be able to examine the JVM code to figure out what's triggering the crash, but instead can do just black-box testing and workarounds.
The documentation is sometimes iffy -- neither "Java in a Nutshell" nor Sun's online tutorials seem to bother noting byte-ordering (which is an issue for any app[let] that communicates, either via sockets or files...), leaving it to the user to experiment and determine that it's big-endian.
Or, if you need unrestricted network access, but the browsers you target don't natively support javakey, then you either have to force a plugin or have further hacks 'round that.
Errrrrrrrrrrg.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
I find it amusing that Sun is mocking Microsoft when Scott McNealy "borrowed" his whole Webtone focus and wording from John Roth, CEO of Nortel Networks. Solar flare must have fried their memories.
Not that I like Microsoft. I dream of a Microsoft free day. My wife (a computer novice) almost weekly begs me to dump Win98 on our home machine and install Linux. She is extremely frustrated by the fact that Win98 croaks constantly and yearns for the stability I experience at work with our linux boxes.
Hmm, that would keep the kids off our machine and on theirs...
Most of Java technologies are based on VB.
JDBC is a rip off of ODBC
Beans are a copy of ActiveX Controls
JSP is a copy of ASP
EJB came out soon after MTS
JNDI copies ADSI
Even the names are copied - JDK (MS=SDK)- Java Foundation classes (MFC).
And Sun complains about MS copying!!!!! Sun is not innovative at all. What have they done in the last 5 years?
Get new glasses damnit and stop being so whiney.. not like they can't afford it ;> .
-sporty
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Is Sun currently slashdoted ?
nslookup www.sun.com reports Non-existent host/domain.
Gotta luv it.
Obviously both Sun and MS are using the Dogbert Vision Statement Generator. You have to expect that sometimes the results will be similar. Not to worry, just click again and generate a new vision statement.
Where's AOL/Netscape and who is it that M$ partners with...? Oh yeah, the Republican party, and the UTCIA states... I prefer to use GPL/BSD licensed software anyway.
What do you mean Linux has nothing to do with this article? That's sinful! Linux is the meaning of everything and thus anything has everything to do with Linux! Linux is why we read Slashdot. It's why we wake up in the morning. It's what we live for, and, why, Linux is what we breed for! Well ok maybe we don't have time to breed but still...
You get used to it :) Then you start forgetting to do any maintanence and concentrate more on your higher level programming tasks.
I take it that anything else means any language from the group {C, C++, VB, Delphi}.
Try Haskell, Ocaml, Dylan, Smalltalk, Scheme, Common Lisp and prepare Java to have it's butt kicked.
Anyone claiming that his language kicks butt over anything else clearly isn't probably qualified to say anything about languages. There is no single best language and I bet your experience in different languages in serious use is quite limited.
AC
Sun's got Scott as its spokesman, but they real drive behind Sun's technology and vision is Bill Joy, everything from BSD to csh to Solaris to SPARC to JINI. Ideas which includes a rethinking of how to do it better, along implementing original ideas instead of just copying off other people left and right.
*pssthh* Aren't they paid by M$ to say nice things about them? I know one of thier reporters is, or at least gives that impression.
First off....who cares??? And 2nd....who else cares? It's a friggin vision statement...Sun is obviously a little too bored and needs something else to do. Get over it legalfreaks, go back to suing for no good reason.
Please Sun, Quit Whining. Everyone's "vision" is some vague statement telling everyone that they are leading (or want to lead) the industry in whatever they do. Computer Industry and Dancing? Huh? And um, Sun, You may want to start looking at Linux if you want to be visionary.
I haven't been over to Sun's site yet, but I suspect I understand why they posted this: is M$ *so* obsessed with spying on other companies, so that they don't get ahead of the self-proclaimed industry leader, that they'll steal something *so* petty as a mission statement?
I mean, after all, most bloody companies out here have a missions statement that includes, usually last, chief place, "...to provide value for stockholders..."; that is, to make money for the CEO and the others with serious stockholdings. What's the *point* of a mission statement, other than to try to show that human resources, or whatever they call themselves, have some purpose (other than to not hire people, not promote people, not transfer people, but just talk to 'em and shuffle papers)?
mark
Microsoft likes to bray about the "Freedom to Innovate", but when you scratch the surface and take a hard look at what they've "invented", you can quickly come to the conclusion that their so-called "Freedom to Innovate" is their double-speak for "Freedom to Plagarize". What's even sadder is that when there are standards out there (meaning those that are formally published), MS either implements them badly or comes out with their own competing standard and claims that theirs is the Industry Standard. And usually, it's a lot worse than what the internationally agreed-upon standard is. I'm still chuckling over the Korn Shell Announcement debacle, which I think clearly illustrates my point and demonstrates MS' arrogance.
who is going to win? I am, ultra boy/girl
Obviously Linus has time to breed. I think you just don't have someone to breed with. Thus the need to fill your life with Linux and only Linux. I think that's sinful.
LOL!
I have to agree with you.. Sun is just a bunch of whiners. Regardless of whether the accusations are true or not, this is typical Sun behavior. Whenever something isn't going their way they complain about it and point fingers.. kinda of like a 2 year old.. :)
Now.. I don't want to shoot Sun down totally. It seems like a lot of this behavior comes right from Scott himself... the king of big-mouth whiners..
I see Java programming ability as a very REAL requirement for many programming and web development positions available. I dont know the first thing about programming in Java, but if employers are asking for it, I would certainly not call it 'dead-in-the-water' !!!
While I agree this is a little petty, the rest of your statements are poor, and not supported.
People tend to forget that Sun is a Hardware Vendor, Solaris accounts for less than %10 of Sun profits, couple that with the support they must provide, Sun wants to drop it like a rock in the future. If Linux or any OS for that matter, were able to take full advantage of Sun's hardware they would jump ship in a minute. I personally believe they will jump within the next year.
Take a look at SGI, SGI just dropped IRIX, why? It's just not paying for itself. SGI was in trouble and just said "Hey, let's concentrate on what can pay the bills, highend Hardware".
Java dead. Where do you work? Here in the telecommunications sector most all client side apps are now written in Java. Maybe that's just here but I know we make quite alot of money selling this "stuff":)
Rob
Awesome!
What did Bill ever do to hurt Scott, one wonders. Did Bill bite his leg off and force Scott to wear a prosthetic?
No... All Bill has done to hurt Scott is be successful. Every time Bill is mentioned in the news Scott just get's all upset and throws a temper tantrum, like this fine example.
Perhaps Captain Ahab should do well to stop chasing the great white whale and instead focus on delivering solutions that customers want to buy.
Otherwise poor Scott will look out the window some day and realize his mighty ship named Solaris is floating all alone in a sea of Linux.
Does MS actually market it as WinTone? If so I think its a little too close to being just a coincidence. Though the comparison Sun gave was sorta loose. Doesn't sound as if Sun and MS are really talking about the same thing, or if so it sounds as if Sun has a clearer idea of what it is. The MS WinTone piece sounds like typical marketing blather. Not that Sun was that far from it, but at least it makes sense from Suns part.
Set cron for 2 weeks for Sun to publically flame MS again.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
Sure, they've got a few problems too, but overall, wouldn't you agree that we're better off with Sun in our industry that without? I sure do!
Guys with big portfolios read vision statements.
That doesn't count because DoubleSpace and it's bastard son DriveSpace sucked ass :)
If microsoft were smart (which it's not..) they would have MSN Messanger use the TOC servers instead of the oscar servers. That way, AOL couldn't get mad at Microsoft without hunting down other aim clients like gaim and faim that make use of the TOC servers.
Intercarve Networks, LLC
If you can match brackets that easily you dont NEED emacs :)
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
I wonder which vision was stolen first.. Sun's vision of this "anything anywhere" crap, or Microsoft's "we want to rule the world" that Sun is striving for.
This, of course, comes from the people who gave us "Java Server Pages". I wonder where they got the idea for that. Funny how Java Beans gives you the same functionality as ActiveX (except that it only really works with one language).
Don't forget, Sun was always "open standard, open standard! Let the best implementation win!" Now that have a successful product like Java, they don't want it to be open. They just want to pretend that it's open.
Don't just blindly follow Sun because they pick on Microsoft. They have warts, too.
Would that include Microsoft copying java?
I seem to remember a little lawsuit that resulted in my prepackaged PCs coming with Windows and a little mostly unmarked (and totally unsupported) disk that said "update to Java VM".
Get back to work, Bill might be watching.
+&x
Create a REAL product, so it better than anyone else, then open source it...Hmmmm, that wouldn't work would it?
BortBox
I though people had their troll detectors running while reading this site. Silly me ;-).
-- ultra1
I agree fully. There are going to be similarities in vision statements and their ilk amoing companies with similar goals. But this goes a little to far. I mean micro$oft has a tendency to come up with sexy little marketing slogans so instead od connect anwher, anytime with any device or whatever it was how about "What do you want to connect Today?" I mean if you ran a company making intimate lubricant... how many ways could you say "We Make It Glide"???
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
The MS ones aren't the same as the Xerox ones, which required a grid.
On a side note, most mice today are opto-mechanical...there's a little wheel with holes which interupts a LED-sensor pair. It's actually closer to an optical mouse conceptually then you might think at first. The grid is just inside the mouse, controled by a ball.
The Sun article does one very important thing correctly. It sets aside our day-to-day presumption that "It's What We Know That Counts" by use of a sleeping little metaphor. The question behind the question is, Who are the actors that we imagine we see in this dance, and who are the real players calling the tunes?
Sun's reality check proposes that Bill is "Ginger," dancing backwards in high heels. Beautiful. That damn shoe fits. Your post is the only one that picks up that there are other players in this metaphor, the investors, lawyers and politicians. In aggregate, they are one who set the stage, pay the band and call the tune, while our attention is focused on "Fred" and "Ginger."
This metaphor leaves us with the latent, but more provoking question: Who then, is Fred?
Notwithstanding the fact that "our" Ginger has been overtaken by "her" greed, and like a naughty gurl may have taken the lead and stepped on the toes of her dance partner one too many times, the metaphor leads straight into my current preoccupation - With whom was "Ginger" dancing when she issued her first distro? The answer is IBM and Intel, and the real unterwort of this Sun metaphor is that, The old crows at IBM and Intel can make very difficult dance partners.
Sun's next suggestion is perhaps a warning, that even Bob Young should be very careful as he chooses his next dance partner. I'll stop there, but this little metaphor by Sun seems to have lots of angles to it that sure do seem to fit.
Instead, I think it is more appropriate to give you the Eastwood "Legend in his own mind" award. If you really want to understand what is legendary at Microsoft, send out a good survey asking whether they are known for innovation or arrogance!
Regards, Ralph.
Actually, I'm kinda miffed that they dissed Ginger Rogers. Ginger was a babe! Legs for Days! And she could act! She was in plenty of movies where she didn't dance.
Nowadays, mission statements and vision statements are intended to fit on plaques in the offices with nice carpet. They are what management use to "inspire" one another with the latest and greatest buzzwords--they get printed on tee shirts and given out as prizes for whoever regurgitates the right motivational mantras the fastest during the next Team Building Retreat. As a rule of thumb, mission and vision statements are so vague as to be meaningless; if the plaque contains the words "quality", "enable", or "enhance", feel free to rip it off the wall, flip it over, and use the back as a fish scaling board. That's probably the most useful it could ever be.
--
This is not my sandwich.
1) First of all, why do you brainlessly pro-Linux trolls act as if you invented UNIX? You didn't and neither did Mr. Torvalds. 2) Bill Joy cofounded Sun. Remember him? Do you know what BSD is? Oh yeah, Linux blows that away too. doesn't it? 3) SGI and IBM embraced Linux largely because they offer Intel hardware in addition to their RISC systems. SGI will further embrace Linux as it is cheaper to work with a widely available Unix clone than it is to maintain their niche Unix derivative, IRIX. IBM, meanwhile, continues to push _many_ OSes, including AIX, OS/2, NT (yes, NT), MVS, OS/400 and Linux. Focus? Where? 4) If stupidity and brainless Linux plugging are going to be the result of greater Linux popularity, we've done something wrong. Idiots are taking the fun out of it. Now go back to school and learn to behave. -M "mdvkng" here from remote
Java... hmm.... trying to think of a Java app that I regularly use.....
Hmmm...... still thinking..... Volano Chat???
My $0.02: Java is both slow AND ugly. Great for a writing a router config tool, but not all that feasible for anything mainstream unless you want to make it platform-specific (printers? serial ports?? USB ports??? what???!?).
I used to hear that as a contractor at Lucent all the time in 1996 well before Sun's "vision"... I don't know who used it first though. But it seems more likely the phrase would come from the AT&T / Bell Labs arena and that leads me to believe that Sun "adopted" the phrase as well...
Java is dead? Not really. Java has been around for 4 years. It took C roughly 10 years to become accepted over FORTRAN in the percentage that Java is over the rest of all languages. FORTRAN is still taught to engineers! Java isn't dead. Just compare the growth of java to C++. Many people still refuse to touch C++ even though its 12 years old, supercedes C and makes things like serialization trivial from an applications programmer point of view. Java does the same but it also makes memory management and porting trivial. The reason that I think its not accepted as much as it could be is that it forces OOP on you. Not that OOP is a bad thing, but not all programmers can program OOP (its true!). It has something to do with the ability to abstract I believe, and many programmers like to think of things as one thing after another and what they will actually do, not where they came from. The languages I most commonly use are Java, C++, and Perl. If I want it to be secure, portable, and not spend alot of time thinking about it I use Java. If I want it to be fast I use C++. Really fast, assembly. For hacks and testing software I use Perl.
I figure Java is just as dead as Perl or C++.
Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
Sun routinely jumps on a pedestal and spouts off philosophical ramblings in the "Reality Check" area, and Billgatus/M$ are frequent targets. I wouldn't take it too seriously.
If anyone at M$ actually used the term "Wintone", Sun has a lot to bitch about, since "Webtone" has been a big vision of Sun's for quite a while.
"Wintone" sounds like a pimp.
Of course, any time a major software/hardware vendor starts yapping about babes in stilletto heels, they've got my attention.
Hope Sun follows SGI's lead and starts shoveling the best parts of Solaris into Linux, sooner rather than later. Linaris? Solinux? Maybe SGI should name theirs "Lirix" or "Inux".
...Scott McNealy would give sell his grandmother to be the next Bill Gates. Linux is a means to a (questionable) end for him. What we need more of, is people who want to be Linus. $0.02
What does "mainstream" mean? If you think most software is sold in shrink-wrap at CompUSA and Egghead, check again.
This sort of thing may not matter to technical folks, but it does matter to investors, lawyers, and politicians. As long as those people consider Microsoft an innovative company and Gates a technical wizard, Microsoft will outcompete other companies for investments, and lawyers and politicians will take a hands-off approach to Microsoft.
Ever looked at alphaworks? IBM is doing far more Java work than Linux work.
1) First of all, why do you brainlessly pro-Linux trolls act as if you invented UNIX? You didn't and neither did Mr. Torvalds.
2) Bill Joy cofounded Sun. Remember him? Do you know what BSD is? Oh yeah, Linux blows that away too. doesn't it?
3) SGI and IBM embraced Linux largely because they offer Intel hardware in addition to their RISC systems. SGI will further embrace Linux as it is cheaper to work with a widely available Unix clone than it is to maintain their niche Unix derivative, IRIX. IBM, meanwhile, continues to push _many_ OSes, including AIX, OS/2, NT (yes, NT), MVS, OS/400 and Linux. Focus? Where?
4) If stupidity and brainless Linux plugging are going to be the result of greater Linux popularity, we've done something wrong. Idiots are taking the fun out of it.
Now go back to school and learn to behave.
-M "mdvkng" here from remote
A simple solution which gives you Unix-quality stability and Windows-compatibility apps.
Correct me if I misunderstood you Rob, but, I didn't really like that snipe at vision.
I'm frankly very disappointed that you're mocking "vision". People do care about vision. Sun's "The network is the computer" is a great vision and very inspiring if you think about its implications. So what if it comes from a corporation? It's still an attempt at moving towards a goal other than making shareholders rich.
Sure, vision is a misused concept, but it is one of the key factors that differentiate people that make a difference vs. people who just complain. The reason most vision statements SUCK is because most managers don't have an ounce of vision or leadership in their bones.
On the other hand, companies like Sun *do* have leaders like Bill Joy that have had widespread technological influence. Other visionaries are people like Alan Kay, Don Norman, Doug Englebart, and Steve Wozniak.
Who would you rather listen to, a visionary with a cool idea, or a cynic who just complains about stuff? Or do you just not want to listen to people with decent ideas just because they're part of an "Evil (tm) Corporation"?
Leaders with vision try to "do the right thing", and are continually learning what the right thing is. People without vision often do the wrong thing well.
-Stu
Yes, Sun is first and foremost a hardware vendor. And they're making the same mistakes as Apple. They sell over-priced hardware to people who must have Solaris.
Sun won't jump to Linux, it would make them just another box builder competing on margins. Remember your history -- It was Sun that decided to go exclusionary Unix and fragment the market. They droped the BSD-based SunOS for AT&T and Solaris in an attempt to shut out HP/Digital/IBM. If they'd cooperated instead, Unix would have had a chance at the desktop. Instead the fragmentation led to Windows everywhere. Dumb move, pure ego. Sun's no hero.
you know, dilbert web site has really cool
'vision statement' generator. well, actually
this is a 'mission statement' generator, but
what's the difference anyway?
---
The customer can count on us to assertively leverage other's quality materials to allow us to enthusiastically create unique intellectual capital because that is what the customer expects
Grunt. Oink, oink.
Lest you think that Sun has a Microsoft fixation, the reality check column on Sun's home page has applied the same microscope to SGI, HP, EMC and others in the past. There is an archive of past columns at :
. html
http://www.sun.com/dot-com/realitycheck/archive
As you can see, Microsoft is the target only slightly more frequently than SGI or HP.
-- "Most people prefer a popular myth to an unpopular truth"
I know MS is first to have many technologies to market, but I do not think that they actually innovate many technologies. The obvious example is the Win GUI that both upgrades and degrades concepts of the Mac GUI. I think other companies do the innovation and come up with the ideas, but MS has the size and market strength to bring those ideas to market first, and, if not, they buy the innovator. I like the optical mouse idea, though. Don't know who actually thought up that. adam
How do you shoot the devil in the back? What if you miss?
Why should we be shocked should MS steal something? They have been caught at this sort of game before...
Anyone else remember when they lost the lawsuit over doublespace?
+++ ATH0 +++
Well, here's _my_ new vision statement:
"I'm going to make applications which run only at the north pole next tuesday at 11am on a 386."
Duh.
Vision indeed...
-- Listen to music
sun seems really unprofessionally bitter on this press release (or whatever it is). the future of computing is very obviously going to have a lot of wireless, "instant internet" appliances. there's no reason sun should have a monopoly to that "vision", even if they were the first company to concentrate their efforts on this.
of course, they're involved with the doj case, complaining about microsoft and has been angry with them for hijacking java. but simply attacking microsoft at every turn is not a good way to act. so, microsoft wants to compete in the market for the future internet appliances. that's a good thing. we don't have to have a sun monopoly, do we? i would think that if this came from any other company but microsoft, they wouldn't have said anything publically. and, in fact, i'm sure other companies have said things like this. this "vision" is almost a fact. this should've been left as an in-office joke memo.
yes, microsoft is bad and evil and do everything wrong, but sun's constant "official" whining about their monopoly makes me respect them less. is there anything like this on red hat's website? i would be surprised if there is. "we did it first!" is not a good argument to get customers. "we did it better!" is. sun should've simply taken the imitation as a compliment and continued their effort to create products that are better than microsoft's, not just think up buzz words.
Damn that 'note' was funny.. I never believed something like that would ever be posted on a corporate site. Hats off to Sun ppl for having the balls to post it.. every other company would NEVER post anything like that coz they're scared of M$.
mtor