Sony and Sun Form Net Appliance Pact

grayhame writes "It seems that Sony and Sun have decided to team up to co-develop digital consumer electronic appliances with access to the internet. " Sun seems to be moving towards consumer space. Sun and Specialized are doing a co-branding thing where Specialized uses Sun workstations to design their bikes, and in return, there will be Sun-purple co-branded bikes.

Comments

Great Collaboration

[mochaone]

Sun's incentive in this collaboration is to get the ball rollin on it's JINI technology. What better place to go than the King of appliances? Sony is probably ticked at MS' overtures into the gaming market that Sony all but owns and sees this as a way to smack MS down a bit. Once again, MS steps on the toes of potential corporate partners in its all-consuming quest to be everything to everyone.

Can't wait..

[Ice_Hole]

OK, lets start small. How about we have this wireless access from all Laptops, then move to having access from EVERYTHING. Personally I can't wait for the day when I can set up a HUGE file server at my house, full of Mp3s, and be playing them from my car, or better yet from a RIO sized Mp3 player. I could go running with a .5oz device (Most of the weight being buttons) and still have access to my entire 73 day music collection! I hope this is how it ends up working out. I could be be truely wired and connected 24/7, this is a doog thing :) Imagine a DJ showing up to your house to have a party/dance (I know you guys are slashdot geeks, but you can imagine can't you? J/K) he shows up with nothing but speakers and his little Rio sized mp3 decoder, or maybe he brings a laptop so he can play games or read Slashdot while at the party :) Now a days, DJ's bring 500 lbs of CD's. This would be made much easier if music was all kept on a central server to be accessed remotely (Presonally, if I was a DJ I would have a nice computer with 40+ gigs of HD space, I would then bring my computer and stero equipment to the party. Thus no need for all the other work of bringing CD's. I have yet to see this. But this would change what the DJ had to do imensely. Imagine, what song you want? Typing it in and playing it, vs trying to find it in a stack of 500 CD's.) ((Boy, I sure got side tracked))

Of couse their aer other uses for being able to be connected to the internet with other "appliences". Bikes for instance. You could have a GPS built into your childs bike. Then, if he was to go out riding and it was getting dark, or he got lost, you could just bring up your computer and get the GPS cordinates, bring up a map, and know exactly where they are at. This would also work in case the bike was stolen, it would be kind of like a security system.

Overall, I love this idea. I can't wait till the day this happens. What are your predictions on when it is wide spread? I would say not for quite a while, in fact, it may be a long way off. But then, a while ago I would have told you that 200 mhz computers were a long way off to!!

Other Co-Branding Opportunities

[Jonathunder]

How about these marketing strategies: Co-branding with Starbucks for Sun Java drinks. with the Weather Channel-- partly Sunny(TM), Sunny(TM), etc. with Lucky Charms-- adding purple Suns to the mix, for the really young geeks.

Re:No

[jilles]

Lets get rid of a few misconceptions here:

Java is not slow because it executes slower than natively compiled code. In fact natively compiling Java code doesn't help you much since the execution speed is not the main cause for its slowness. Benchmarks actually show hotspot and IBMs VM faster then native compilers for Java.

The real reason that Java is slower has to do with how Java manages objects and memory. Unlike languages like C/C++, Java uses a more dynamic form of memory management. This makes allocations slower and also the deallocation process (by the garbage collector) is slower. Then there are several other issues that also slow down java.

But none of them has to do with the fact that Java is interpreted (or rather JIT compiled). Theoreticially, if it weren't for these issues, Java would be faster than C/C++ since dynamic compilers like hotspot can do something that static compilers like the ones used for C and C++ cannot do: using runtime information to steer the optimizations.

I do agree with the poster that eventually most of the current problems with Java will either be solved or won't be so much of a problem because of cheaper, faster hardware. Eventually Moore's law will solve this issue.

Also I saw somebody whine about the performance of 3d graphics in Java. Apparently this person is not aware of the fact that Java only provides an API for the 3d rendering. The actual rendering happens natively. The advantage of this is that you can write renderer and OS independent 3d graphics applications.

If you still have doubts about the use of interpreted languages in 3D applications, both quake 3 and unreal use an intrepreted scripting language. I think John Carmack even played with the idea to include a Java vm in quake.

Ps. Why is it that everytime the word Java is dropped on this site, the anti MS FUD people start spreading fud and other ill informed arguments about it Java. I mean, this is a site about technical subjects, most people posting here are obviously techies too and yet they manage to poor out all this bullshit about a subject that gets plenty of media attention. Most of the arguments broad forward in this post have been used before in postings on other stories. And despite this if Java is in the news again tomorrow or so, the whining will start all over again. It is a bit depressing that some people are stuck on their current, rather mediocre, knowledge level. I have learned a great deal since I started reading slashdot nearly a year ago.