Thanks for your comments and expansion of the topic.
> The Cocoa/Java ('Mocha') bindings were eventually deprecated because no one was using them.
Why would they? If you are going to use Java you use Swing or AWT or SWT. Using Apple-specific bindings makes zero sense if you are going to use Java (kinda defeats the purpose of "write once, run anywhere" which actually does work if you know what you are doing).
> Oh, and on devices with more than about 32MB of RAM, the hotspot JIT actually runs faster than the Jazelle VM, so using Jazelle on the iPhone would have been entirely pointless.
Two things: first, plenty of people still have devices with less than 32 MB of RAM and this was certainly the case when early devices are used. Secondly, Apple in its egocentricity decided to support neither. The idea of coding for a specific platform hasn't made sense for a long time (one of the reasons C was invented, and certainly why Java was invented) and is wasteful of developer time, yet the big corps are *still* trying to silo consumer cattle into their corral. This suits the big corps but not the customer. The corps then then bullshit about "the freedom to innovate" and "a superior experience on their platform" but that is not the strongest reason why they do it 'their way' (ego) and 'lock you to their platform and tools' (greed). Universal cross-platform was slowly becoming a reality but thanks to Apple (iOS) and Microsoft (XBox) they are trying to silo again. For *users* is a step backwards, not forwards. Too bad so many users are "ooooh, teh new shiny" that they are perfectly willing to get shafted again and again for basically the same functionality but re-packaged since the platform owner shifts the sands each version.
I'm from New Zealand, not Australia. I wouldn't suggesting using 'cunt' here at any time, and probably not in Oz either. Just about any other curse is funny though, in the right company.
Actually monogamy is imposed by men to prevent other men taking our women. Women can be polygamous because the men will go for it => polygamy actually works for women and the most powerful male. Monogamy is not the female mating strategy, it is the mating strategy of men who are not the most powerful male.
I have the modpoints but you are already at +5, so I can't give you any more - otherwise I would. Your chain of reasoning is one of the best logical framings of the situation that I've seen anywhere. Nice job.
Azureus (now called Vuze) is the very popular bitorrent client written in Java. Minecraft is a popular game written in Java. However, these don't run in a browser. I myself wrote a Java Webstart client for displaying pilot statistics for the Lockon Modern Air Combat game (with the Flaming Cliffs 2 expansion). When I run the client in a browser it is dog slow. If I run the same client from the desktop (Webstart is pretty nifty you can do this) it is a factor of 10 faster and I get the same benefits that the web offers (that is automatic updating of the client when needed - just like the web). So, while some folks do use and need Java, doing it in a browser is not really a good idea. Note: I actually wrote my client using Google Web Toolkit (GWT) first but found that even this did not give me the interactivity I wanted in my user interface - the web really sucks for user interaction (even though GWT is one of the most powerful AJAX web interfaces out there).
Funny thing is, these exploits are not 0-day. Oracle patched the Java they control. It was Apple (as you correctly pointed out) who dropped the ball (both the hole in the Mac OS user abilities *and* not patching Java).
It is a real shame Apple hate Java with a passion. It makes sense since Java can and does run well everywhere it is permitted to - but Steve Jobs wanted to silo Apple, so he could make more money (didn't extend his life though [too soon?]). As a developer that attitude really pissed me off, I can write software in Java that runs wonderfully in Windows and Linux, but I'm limited to older officially-supported versions of Java (eg 6 rather than 7) on my (otherwise wonderful) MacBook Pro and not at all on my iPhone.
Apple are wankers in this regard. Tidbit: IIRC the earlier iPhones had JVMs in hardware (part of the chipset the phones used - as did many Java enabled phones a few years ago). Apple had to spend development effort to block the Java capabilities on the phones. They cited Java as being insecure (same with Flash) when this example clearly shows that the security problem is Apple's (since Oracle could repair Java vulnerabilities very quickly for Windows and Linux).
Mate, the computing ecosystem is not only what the user sees through their desktop or web browser. Java is mostly used on servers (in fact, according to Tiobe's Programming Index metric it is *the* language of choice for development - mostly for enterprises where it is part of the secret sauce that makes the company money, which is why desktop-oriented folks never learn of it). Saying Java is going away is as daft as saying C++ is going away (and we all know how many security holes there are to be had in the implementations of that language). Java is no more a security risk than any other technology (Javascript,.NET, ActiveX, C++, PHP etc all have their own security vulnerabilities), so you advice to 'just not use' is kinda out of the 90's.
Nice explanation. At the moment I think the actual physical computing growth is fairly easily covered since it is a fixed cost and quite cheap for capital expenditure. What is very expensive and doesn't scale well is software licensing. I've been on plenty of projects where all resources were available apart from the money for expensive licensing (try getting LPARS off a third-party provider for a dev, integration and production environments, then get enough for Internet scale; or pay for Oracle or Enterprise SQL-Server licensing for thousands of machines, ouch). This is one area where Linux shines economically - licensing for Internet scale business (just add hardware, zero cost for the software, and only a few *good* admins needed).
Hmmm. While mostly I don't agree with Anonymous in some cases they are outlaw 'Robin Hoods' - in the fact they are outside the law opposing bad and corrupt governance. This law, and many of those recently proposed in the UK, are just *bad*. Hopefully the sensationalist nature of this (which is relatively harmless as far as protests go) will draw the attention of the citizenry to these bad laws.
Yeah. Just as well I did a fair chunk of thermodynamics during the undergraduate and honours year levels before my PhD in (astro)physics. I'm really amazed that people in the US still cling to their archaic system and rush to its defense when the rational thing to to interoperate with the *rest of the World* (and, as I pointed out, their own military who apparently is more progressive than you, lol). I fully understand the Fahrenheit units but I'm amazed people would try desire them for any other reason than they just like old traditions. Bizarre.
The SI unit for temperature is Kelvin. The Celsius and Kelvin scales are related, which means Celsius makes rational sense. The Fahrenheit is indeed archaic, its just that the general population of the US is too stubborn to change (the US government tried to change; and the US military made the transition since the units are more rational). So your defense of Fahrenheit scale is pretty dumb (or trollish?) - no wonder you wanted to post as an Anonymous Coward.
I think Anonymous mostly use scripts for finding and exploiting SQL injection vulnerabilities - you know, on websites that take user input without scrubbing it properly for SQL commands and escapes. Very basic stuff really. While Anonymous like to think they are l33t the real problem is that so many websites just have astonishingly terrible security. Now I'm sure some Anonymous members have more capabilities than this, but certainly not all of them.
The Chinese are well aware of the event. They just happen to know the Party line on it, rather than what really happened. The Party makes sure the real goings-on remain suppressed while promoting their own version of events and the motivations of the protestors. This is why rational Chinese people come to the conclusions that it was a good thing the protestors (they are taught they were separatists and terrorists) were ruthlessly (and fatally) suppressed. I have heard such things from otherwise reasonable Chinese people I worked with in Asia.
All governments and corporations try to control how events are perceived. However, the Chinese government does this in a very extensive way. Unfortunately the Chinese people are so oppressed in terms of thought crimes (although they would never think of it in those terms) they it is easier for them to keep their mouth shut about the bad things they see going on around them. The Chinese Government is nominally Communist with some free-market reforms. This wouldn't be so bad if there was the Rule of Law, progressive social programmes, and some regulation of entrepreneurial endeavours) but in actuality you get the repression of a paranoid government, pervasive corruption of state enterprises, capitalists unconstrained by law or labour considerations, and a desperate population having to put up with it. Things slowly seem to be getting better (recent anti-corruption drives) but it is certainly no People's Utopia at the moment.
Aha! But what is the premier development environment for the Web? Google Web Toolkit! and what language and tools do you develop that in? Java, of course. Microsoft saw GWT and coveted it, creating Project Volta, but that is stillborn. Plus, anyone doing raw Javascript is bonkers - GWT handles all of that for you and let's you get on with the really important stuff (writing bug-free code in the presence of a multiplicity of business requirements). So, you can keep your C# thank you very much. For desktop stuff I can use Java. For the Web I can use Java. For embedded systems I have used Java. For Internet-scale infrastructure (tens of thousands of servers) I have used Java. I have used a lot of programming languages and environments (including C#.NET, and all the old Microsoft technologies back to the early Windows versions and DOS days) over two decades but there is only one development environment that pretty much does everything I need most of the time. And that happens to be Java. I like it because it is simple, powerful and ubiquitous.
ps. this is a specialised case, but in my spare time I'm implementing a modern jet air combat simulator in Java (for my purposes JoGL/OpenGL actually has better performance than DirectX, but that is a different subject). Even with WebGL the web is no use for this (neither is C#.NET nor Mono, since this is a cross-platform product to work just as well on my Mac Book Pro as well as my Windows machines, and cheap Linux game servers too). Specialized for sure, and somewhat niche, but something that neither.NET nor the Web can do. Please keep doing your.NET stuff though, someone has to do all the boring form and web page-view applications out there. Meanwhile, I'll keep hoover-up all the high-value Java contracts doing interesting things during the day (programming road-sign and radar detector hardware, medical projects, data visualisation and analysis, geospatial systems) and night (my high-performance combat flight-sim).
I'm from NZ and the small projects are.NET. Most of the bigger projects (for banks, government etc) are Java (this is where the money is - and has been a total goldmine for me personally). In fact, there limiting factor in Java projects in my part of the country is the scarcity of Java developers. There is a lot of pent-up demand that the statistics don't show (but my contract rate does:) ).
If you want games that were built with Java, then you can also add the original IL-2: Sturmovik (flight simulator) and Bohemia Interactive's Take On Helicopters and Armed Assault 3 (Armed Assault 2 is the currently the best first-person shooting *simulator* - unfortunately not many people know about it) will have Java APIs for modding - which makes me think a fair chunk may be written in Java.
I myself have made plenty of mods for LockOn: Modern Air Combat in Java (moving maps, pilot statistics system, track replay tool etc). At the moment I have stopped modding LockOn/DCS and are working on the far more ambitious objective of developing a complete modern jet combat *simulator* (not game) in Java. What I have now already works on Linux, Mac OS X (where I do most development) and Windows. I couldn't be this productive with any other language/environment (eg.NET wouldn't meet my objectives) and still get my cross-platform goodness (also leveraging things like JInput,, JoGL, JOAL to handle much of the cross-platform stuff already etc). Java is great for games, if you know what you are doing. It is a shame that many developers cut their teeth on Java and write crappy code (since they are starting out) - and people think that crap products are due to Java (rather than the fact that Java allows people without much skill to make [barely] working software).
Java will never go away. Especially now that the GPL-ed OpenJDK is driving things (not Oracle, as many people think).
Problem with WPF is that it pretty much only works on Windows (Mono does not and never will implement WPF). That is a fail. Swing might be crufty but the parent was right - if you know what you are doing you can do *anything*, and have it work whenever you are. These days I'm on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows depending on which client I'm with at the time. Sadly, WPF can't do that - which is why the Java guys still look down on it (it's easy to get something to look nice on one OS).
Lol. You are *very* out of date. No need to use JNI when JNA provides excellent access to native code. Pus, ever since Java 1.6u10 it *screams* (for example, all graphics are implemented as OpenGL or DirectX shaders, depending on the platform). In fact, INRIA found that Java beat C++ for their uses and was approaching FORTRAN for speed, and that was 4 years ago (and Java is faster still now with things like the G1 collector): https://blogs.oracle.com/jag/entry/current_state_of_java_for
I hope that helps get you up to date on why developers and enterprises who know what they are doing continue to use Java (more than any other language, according to the Tiobe index).
I have developed and released Java desktop applications. People usually like the 'Nimbus' theme (which is cross-platform). In fact, Nimbus generally looks better than native Windows controls (especially all those hideous CTRL3D.dll apps out there). I have never had anyone refuse to use my products because it didn't look exactly like a Windows application. So, I consider your statement a fallacy.
Plus, I don't think you have used a Java desktop application for a long time (there are a lot of them out there, eg. Azureus etc, but most people don't even know they are Java since they bundle their JVM and 'just work' without making a fuss - if the developer knows what they are doing). Your, "15 year old version of Solaris" statement sounds like you have been living in a cocoon. Most applications these days have their own look-and-feel anyway (even the Windows-only ones), and users are used to using them without whinging (the same can't be said of the so-called 'Windows power users', who cling to their environment and 'The Microsoft Way' development model as if it was still the 90s).
The feature that C# doesn't have is 'cross-platform'. This is not a language flaw, it is a library and design flaw - targeting Windows. Mono does not implement the same libraries as the Microsoft.NET stack, and it turn out it never will. Unless you are a Windows only shop (which only households and smaller companies are) then the.NET stack has a lot of wonderful features but will always be technically inferior to Java because of the lack of true cross-platform capabilities. The fact that C# has some nice syntactic sugar is great, but still misses the point that you want your language *everywhere* you need to be. Java adopts features slowly not because the maintainers don't know about closures etc, it is because the language maintainers are trying to avoid Java turning into C++, which is harmful for enterprise adoption (with some lesser skilled programmers). This is one reason Java gets about 3 times the adoption world-wide as C#, despite the C# language niceties (see Tiobe for numbers). I can't see that changing for a long time no matter how many funky features C# gets first.
> Microsoft has always been one of the best innovators about new technology.
Not really. Microsoft are early adopters, but they are not really innovators who discover new stuff (with a few exceptions). Ask yourself who invented: TCP/IP? virtualization? 3D graphics? MP3s? the web browser? DOS? vector display graphics and printing? the spreadsheet? the word-processor? the smart phone? Javascript? VM based applications (nb:.NET is a Windows-oriented re-implementation of the JVM that has been extended in useful ways)? blah blah. Unfortunately it seems you don't you your computing history at all (easy for those who pre-date it to remember what went on). The rest of your post is true though - but don't believe the mythos that Microsoft created the computing environment we have today - they are genius' at moneytizing it, but they didn't invent it.
Actually, people who try Linux usually quite like it (my retired mother does). What makes the difference (why she can successfully use Linux better than Windows) is that I can support her when things go wrong. That makes all the difference in the world. When someone uses Linux, and even if they like it, they are generally stuck at the first hurdle they encounter since they don't know anyone who can help them out. It turns out that the same is true in the Windows world too. Most ordinary people simply can't maintain their computers no matter what operating system is running. Luckily for them there are enough semi-clued Windows users that can usually help out. Without these kind people helping each other then Windows usage would also be dead in the water too (people would dabble with Windows and then eventually find something that worked pretty much trouble-free - like Macs).
That's the reality, most people don't know how to maintain their computers if anything remotely challenging arises. It is a problem of the network effect not yet kicking in for Linux, and possibly never will. Of course, I'm only considering desktop Linux usage here - on servers and handheld devices (for Android is just a customized Java on Linux) Linux is a raging success (even thrashing Windows in the handheld department). The Linux users may be arrogant, but that is not the reason why ordinary users don't stick with Linux (if they have even heard about it - that's that marketing thing again).
If another middle-eastern war is not what you want then don't let the Iranians get nukes. Once the Iranians get nukes the Egpytians, Saudis, Iraqis and others will also want them. Then the next war in the region won't only be with conventional arms (the leaders there really are crazy enough to pull the nuke trigger). Better to head it off before it gets to that rather than having fingers crossed and hoping it all turns out ok. As they say, "A stitch in time, saves nine". That is very apt for what is going on right now - the problems won't go away by themselves and will only get messier with time.
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Thanks for your comments and expansion of the topic.
> The Cocoa/Java ('Mocha') bindings were eventually deprecated because no one was using them.
Why would they? If you are going to use Java you use Swing or AWT or SWT. Using Apple-specific bindings makes zero sense if you are going to use Java (kinda defeats the purpose of "write once, run anywhere" which actually does work if you know what you are doing).
> Oh, and on devices with more than about 32MB of RAM, the hotspot JIT actually runs faster than the Jazelle VM, so using Jazelle on the iPhone would have been entirely pointless.
Two things: first, plenty of people still have devices with less than 32 MB of RAM and this was certainly the case when early devices are used. Secondly, Apple in its egocentricity decided to support neither. The idea of coding for a specific platform hasn't made sense for a long time (one of the reasons C was invented, and certainly why Java was invented) and is wasteful of developer time, yet the big corps are *still* trying to silo consumer cattle into their corral. This suits the big corps but not the customer. The corps then then bullshit about "the freedom to innovate" and "a superior experience on their platform" but that is not the strongest reason why they do it 'their way' (ego) and 'lock you to their platform and tools' (greed). Universal cross-platform was slowly becoming a reality but thanks to Apple (iOS) and Microsoft (XBox) they are trying to silo again. For *users* is a step backwards, not forwards. Too bad so many users are "ooooh, teh new shiny" that they are perfectly willing to get shafted again and again for basically the same functionality but re-packaged since the platform owner shifts the sands each version.
I'm from New Zealand, not Australia. I wouldn't suggesting using 'cunt' here at any time, and probably not in Oz either. Just about any other curse is funny though, in the right company.
Actually monogamy is imposed by men to prevent other men taking our women. Women can be polygamous because the men will go for it => polygamy actually works for women and the most powerful male. Monogamy is not the female mating strategy, it is the mating strategy of men who are not the most powerful male.
I have the modpoints but you are already at +5, so I can't give you any more - otherwise I would. Your chain of reasoning is one of the best logical framings of the situation that I've seen anywhere. Nice job.
Azureus (now called Vuze) is the very popular bitorrent client written in Java. Minecraft is a popular game written in Java. However, these don't run in a browser. I myself wrote a Java Webstart client for displaying pilot statistics for the Lockon Modern Air Combat game (with the Flaming Cliffs 2 expansion). When I run the client in a browser it is dog slow. If I run the same client from the desktop (Webstart is pretty nifty you can do this) it is a factor of 10 faster and I get the same benefits that the web offers (that is automatic updating of the client when needed - just like the web). So, while some folks do use and need Java, doing it in a browser is not really a good idea. Note: I actually wrote my client using Google Web Toolkit (GWT) first but found that even this did not give me the interactivity I wanted in my user interface - the web really sucks for user interaction (even though GWT is one of the most powerful AJAX web interfaces out there).
Funny thing is, these exploits are not 0-day. Oracle patched the Java they control. It was Apple (as you correctly pointed out) who dropped the ball (both the hole in the Mac OS user abilities *and* not patching Java).
It is a real shame Apple hate Java with a passion. It makes sense since Java can and does run well everywhere it is permitted to - but Steve Jobs wanted to silo Apple, so he could make more money (didn't extend his life though [too soon?]). As a developer that attitude really pissed me off, I can write software in Java that runs wonderfully in Windows and Linux, but I'm limited to older officially-supported versions of Java (eg 6 rather than 7) on my (otherwise wonderful) MacBook Pro and not at all on my iPhone.
Apple are wankers in this regard. Tidbit: IIRC the earlier iPhones had JVMs in hardware (part of the chipset the phones used - as did many Java enabled phones a few years ago). Apple had to spend development effort to block the Java capabilities on the phones. They cited Java as being insecure (same with Flash) when this example clearly shows that the security problem is Apple's (since Oracle could repair Java vulnerabilities very quickly for Windows and Linux).
Mate, the computing ecosystem is not only what the user sees through their desktop or web browser. Java is mostly used on servers (in fact, according to Tiobe's Programming Index metric it is *the* language of choice for development - mostly for enterprises where it is part of the secret sauce that makes the company money, which is why desktop-oriented folks never learn of it). Saying Java is going away is as daft as saying C++ is going away (and we all know how many security holes there are to be had in the implementations of that language). Java is no more a security risk than any other technology (Javascript, .NET, ActiveX, C++, PHP etc all have their own security vulnerabilities), so you advice to 'just not use' is kinda out of the 90's.
Nice explanation. At the moment I think the actual physical computing growth is fairly easily covered since it is a fixed cost and quite cheap for capital expenditure. What is very expensive and doesn't scale well is software licensing. I've been on plenty of projects where all resources were available apart from the money for expensive licensing (try getting LPARS off a third-party provider for a dev, integration and production environments, then get enough for Internet scale; or pay for Oracle or Enterprise SQL-Server licensing for thousands of machines, ouch). This is one area where Linux shines economically - licensing for Internet scale business (just add hardware, zero cost for the software, and only a few *good* admins needed).
Hmmm. While mostly I don't agree with Anonymous in some cases they are outlaw 'Robin Hoods' - in the fact they are outside the law opposing bad and corrupt governance. This law, and many of those recently proposed in the UK, are just *bad*. Hopefully the sensationalist nature of this (which is relatively harmless as far as protests go) will draw the attention of the citizenry to these bad laws.
He was doing BASIC-esque pseudocode, and that certainly has BREAK, you insensitive clod!
Yeah. Just as well I did a fair chunk of thermodynamics during the undergraduate and honours year levels before my PhD in (astro)physics. I'm really amazed that people in the US still cling to their archaic system and rush to its defense when the rational thing to to interoperate with the *rest of the World* (and, as I pointed out, their own military who apparently is more progressive than you, lol). I fully understand the Fahrenheit units but I'm amazed people would try desire them for any other reason than they just like old traditions. Bizarre.
The SI unit for temperature is Kelvin. The Celsius and Kelvin scales are related, which means Celsius makes rational sense. The Fahrenheit is indeed archaic, its just that the general population of the US is too stubborn to change (the US government tried to change; and the US military made the transition since the units are more rational). So your defense of Fahrenheit scale is pretty dumb (or trollish?) - no wonder you wanted to post as an Anonymous Coward.
I think Anonymous mostly use scripts for finding and exploiting SQL injection vulnerabilities - you know, on websites that take user input without scrubbing it properly for SQL commands and escapes. Very basic stuff really. While Anonymous like to think they are l33t the real problem is that so many websites just have astonishingly terrible security. Now I'm sure some Anonymous members have more capabilities than this, but certainly not all of them.
The Chinese are well aware of the event. They just happen to know the Party line on it, rather than what really happened. The Party makes sure the real goings-on remain suppressed while promoting their own version of events and the motivations of the protestors. This is why rational Chinese people come to the conclusions that it was a good thing the protestors (they are taught they were separatists and terrorists) were ruthlessly (and fatally) suppressed. I have heard such things from otherwise reasonable Chinese people I worked with in Asia.
All governments and corporations try to control how events are perceived. However, the Chinese government does this in a very extensive way. Unfortunately the Chinese people are so oppressed in terms of thought crimes (although they would never think of it in those terms) they it is easier for them to keep their mouth shut about the bad things they see going on around them. The Chinese Government is nominally Communist with some free-market reforms. This wouldn't be so bad if there was the Rule of Law, progressive social programmes, and some regulation of entrepreneurial endeavours) but in actuality you get the repression of a paranoid government, pervasive corruption of state enterprises, capitalists unconstrained by law or labour considerations, and a desperate population having to put up with it. Things slowly seem to be getting better (recent anti-corruption drives) but it is certainly no People's Utopia at the moment.
Aha! But what is the premier development environment for the Web? Google Web Toolkit! and what language and tools do you develop that in? Java, of course. Microsoft saw GWT and coveted it, creating Project Volta, but that is stillborn. Plus, anyone doing raw Javascript is bonkers - GWT handles all of that for you and let's you get on with the really important stuff (writing bug-free code in the presence of a multiplicity of business requirements). So, you can keep your C# thank you very much. For desktop stuff I can use Java. For the Web I can use Java. For embedded systems I have used Java. For Internet-scale infrastructure (tens of thousands of servers) I have used Java. I have used a lot of programming languages and environments (including C#.NET, and all the old Microsoft technologies back to the early Windows versions and DOS days) over two decades but there is only one development environment that pretty much does everything I need most of the time. And that happens to be Java. I like it because it is simple, powerful and ubiquitous.
ps. this is a specialised case, but in my spare time I'm implementing a modern jet air combat simulator in Java (for my purposes JoGL/OpenGL actually has better performance than DirectX, but that is a different subject). Even with WebGL the web is no use for this (neither is C#.NET nor Mono, since this is a cross-platform product to work just as well on my Mac Book Pro as well as my Windows machines, and cheap Linux game servers too). Specialized for sure, and somewhat niche, but something that neither .NET nor the Web can do. Please keep doing your .NET stuff though, someone has to do all the boring form and web page-view applications out there. Meanwhile, I'll keep hoover-up all the high-value Java contracts doing interesting things during the day (programming road-sign and radar detector hardware, medical projects, data visualisation and analysis, geospatial systems) and night (my high-performance combat flight-sim).
I'm from NZ and the small projects are .NET. Most of the bigger projects (for banks, government etc) are Java (this is where the money is - and has been a total goldmine for me personally). In fact, there limiting factor in Java projects in my part of the country is the scarcity of Java developers. There is a lot of pent-up demand that the statistics don't show (but my contract rate does :) ).
If you want games that were built with Java, then you can also add the original IL-2: Sturmovik (flight simulator) and Bohemia Interactive's Take On Helicopters and Armed Assault 3 (Armed Assault 2 is the currently the best first-person shooting *simulator* - unfortunately not many people know about it) will have Java APIs for modding - which makes me think a fair chunk may be written in Java.
I myself have made plenty of mods for LockOn: Modern Air Combat in Java (moving maps, pilot statistics system, track replay tool etc). At the moment I have stopped modding LockOn/DCS and are working on the far more ambitious objective of developing a complete modern jet combat *simulator* (not game) in Java. What I have now already works on Linux, Mac OS X (where I do most development) and Windows. I couldn't be this productive with any other language/environment (eg .NET wouldn't meet my objectives) and still get my cross-platform goodness (also leveraging things like JInput,, JoGL, JOAL to handle much of the cross-platform stuff already etc). Java is great for games, if you know what you are doing. It is a shame that many developers cut their teeth on Java and write crappy code (since they are starting out) - and people think that crap products are due to Java (rather than the fact that Java allows people without much skill to make [barely] working software).
Java will never go away. Especially now that the GPL-ed OpenJDK is driving things (not Oracle, as many people think).
Problem with WPF is that it pretty much only works on Windows (Mono does not and never will implement WPF). That is a fail. Swing might be crufty but the parent was right - if you know what you are doing you can do *anything*, and have it work whenever you are. These days I'm on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows depending on which client I'm with at the time. Sadly, WPF can't do that - which is why the Java guys still look down on it (it's easy to get something to look nice on one OS).
Lol. You are *very* out of date. No need to use JNI when JNA provides excellent access to native code. Pus, ever since Java 1.6u10 it *screams* (for example, all graphics are implemented as OpenGL or DirectX shaders, depending on the platform). In fact, INRIA found that Java beat C++ for their uses and was approaching FORTRAN for speed, and that was 4 years ago (and Java is faster still now with things like the G1 collector): https://blogs.oracle.com/jag/entry/current_state_of_java_for
I hope that helps get you up to date on why developers and enterprises who know what they are doing continue to use Java (more than any other language, according to the Tiobe index).
I have developed and released Java desktop applications. People usually like the 'Nimbus' theme (which is cross-platform). In fact, Nimbus generally looks better than native Windows controls (especially all those hideous CTRL3D.dll apps out there). I have never had anyone refuse to use my products because it didn't look exactly like a Windows application. So, I consider your statement a fallacy.
Plus, I don't think you have used a Java desktop application for a long time (there are a lot of them out there, eg. Azureus etc, but most people don't even know they are Java since they bundle their JVM and 'just work' without making a fuss - if the developer knows what they are doing). Your, "15 year old version of Solaris" statement sounds like you have been living in a cocoon. Most applications these days have their own look-and-feel anyway (even the Windows-only ones), and users are used to using them without whinging (the same can't be said of the so-called 'Windows power users', who cling to their environment and 'The Microsoft Way' development model as if it was still the 90s).
The feature that C# doesn't have is 'cross-platform'. This is not a language flaw, it is a library and design flaw - targeting Windows. Mono does not implement the same libraries as the Microsoft .NET stack, and it turn out it never will. Unless you are a Windows only shop (which only households and smaller companies are) then the .NET stack has a lot of wonderful features but will always be technically inferior to Java because of the lack of true cross-platform capabilities. The fact that C# has some nice syntactic sugar is great, but still misses the point that you want your language *everywhere* you need to be. Java adopts features slowly not because the maintainers don't know about closures etc, it is because the language maintainers are trying to avoid Java turning into C++, which is harmful for enterprise adoption (with some lesser skilled programmers). This is one reason Java gets about 3 times the adoption world-wide as C#, despite the C# language niceties (see Tiobe for numbers). I can't see that changing for a long time no matter how many funky features C# gets first.
> Microsoft has always been one of the best innovators about new technology. Not really. Microsoft are early adopters, but they are not really innovators who discover new stuff (with a few exceptions). Ask yourself who invented: TCP/IP? virtualization? 3D graphics? MP3s? the web browser? DOS? vector display graphics and printing? the spreadsheet? the word-processor? the smart phone? Javascript? VM based applications (nb: .NET is a Windows-oriented re-implementation of the JVM that has been extended in useful ways)? blah blah. Unfortunately it seems you don't you your computing history at all (easy for those who pre-date it to remember what went on). The rest of your post is true though - but don't believe the mythos that Microsoft created the computing environment we have today - they are genius' at moneytizing it, but they didn't invent it.
Slashdot posters often slam China (often for good reason). At least we have some positive news here.
Actually, people who try Linux usually quite like it (my retired mother does). What makes the difference (why she can successfully use Linux better than Windows) is that I can support her when things go wrong. That makes all the difference in the world. When someone uses Linux, and even if they like it, they are generally stuck at the first hurdle they encounter since they don't know anyone who can help them out. It turns out that the same is true in the Windows world too. Most ordinary people simply can't maintain their computers no matter what operating system is running. Luckily for them there are enough semi-clued Windows users that can usually help out. Without these kind people helping each other then Windows usage would also be dead in the water too (people would dabble with Windows and then eventually find something that worked pretty much trouble-free - like Macs).
That's the reality, most people don't know how to maintain their computers if anything remotely challenging arises. It is a problem of the network effect not yet kicking in for Linux, and possibly never will. Of course, I'm only considering desktop Linux usage here - on servers and handheld devices (for Android is just a customized Java on Linux) Linux is a raging success (even thrashing Windows in the handheld department). The Linux users may be arrogant, but that is not the reason why ordinary users don't stick with Linux (if they have even heard about it - that's that marketing thing again).
If another middle-eastern war is not what you want then don't let the Iranians get nukes. Once the Iranians get nukes the Egpytians, Saudis, Iraqis and others will also want them. Then the next war in the region won't only be with conventional arms (the leaders there really are crazy enough to pull the nuke trigger). Better to head it off before it gets to that rather than having fingers crossed and hoping it all turns out ok. As they say, "A stitch in time, saves nine". That is very apt for what is going on right now - the problems won't go away by themselves and will only get messier with time.