I agree with you that Sun's VM will provide little value to Windows users.
However, this is not about MS's failure to live up to a contract. The original contract issue about MS making extentions to Java was settled out of court. As part of that settlement, MS was allowed to distribute it's version of Java for a number of years.
It didn't occur to Sun that MS might drop support for Java altogether, so they didn't include language in the agreement to require MS to include it. When MS announced they weren't going to include Java in Windows, Sun, unable to play the contract card, opted instead to file a private anti-trust lawsuit against MS (they might have done this anyway).
They're using this lawsuit both to obtain more money from MS and to compel MS to distribute Java. Judge Motz has been rather sympathetic toward Sun, but as we saw today, higher courts are going to take a hard look at this very unusal remedy.
Too bad your long comment is based on incorrect information. MS has not been found guilty of any crimes by any court. The anti-trust case was a civil one. If you can't even get this small detail correct, what's the point in reading the rest of your comment?
"And because of their fixed costs, they may well be losing money on every box shipped."
Wasn't your point supposed to be that due to fixed costs, they may lose money on boxes they haven't yet produced. Otherwise, the parent's point hasn't been countered.
In any case, it's highly likely that the fixed costs are less than the overall cost. Unless we know what both the fixed and variable costs are, we can't come to any conclusion.
Re:XML is NOT just text!
on
XML and Perl
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· Score: 1
I'm not sure that "human-readible" is a primary argument for XML, but I don't think it matters much. ASCII codes aren't "human-readible" either, text editors convert them to characters we can read.
You can't efficiently use a text editor to edit pictures, sounds or movies but this doesn't limit our ability to edit them using more appropriate tools.
If I were going to edit or process XML, I would use the best tool for the job and if that's not a text editor, so what?
The purpose of grades is to provide feedback to students on their level of performance. Instead, it has become coopted for purposes such as starting salaries. Remove the inappropriate economic component, and grade inflation won't be a problem. Otherwise, we should not be surprised that grades are subject to market pressures.
I suspect the purchase of NeXT by Apple was more about covering up the fact that NeXT was a total business failure rather than about technology transfer.
It's naive to believe that any traditional company is going to sacrifice profits because they believe in the open source philosophy. Not IBM, not Sun, not Apple, not O'Reilly. They may pay lip service to open source, but only when it's in their interest to do so.
Of course, I was talking about the level of Java performance at the time MS created J++. Today's performance is hardly relevant to Java's initial aceptence as a development language on Windows. Even today, Java code that takes advantage of Windows-specific extentions in J++ probably outperforms 2003 100% pure Java running on Windows. But nobody wants to use J++ because Sun made it a dead end, so we'll just use C++, C#, VB or one of the other.net compatible languages.
Had they done what Sun wanted, Java would have been DOA on the Windows platform. Since MS optimized it for Windows there was some real interest in using it, but then Sun killed that. So I guess it's too bad MS didn't do it Sun's way from the beginning. It would have saved Windows developers from wasting their time taking a look at it.
Sun's current lawsuit against MS is a private antitrust lawsuit. The judge ordered MS to carry Java based on abusing their monopoly. It has nothing to do with the latest agreement MS and Sun have made on Java that allows MS to distribute Java.
"So getting a 5MB JVM deployed isn't such an issue anymore."
So what's the point of making Sun bundle it with Windows?
I believe MS signed a contract that ALLOWED them to distriubte Java, not one that REQUIRED them to do so. It was Sun who got outfoxed. Rather than admitting that they lost that round, they took it to court to try to force MS to carry Java on antitrust grounds. Judge Motz bought Sun's argument but I'm betting it will not stand up to appeal.
Re:Languages for the Java VM...
on
The Future of Java?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I suspect they concluded that there was no market for it. That's the real reason they were so upset with MS. By allowing more direct access to Windows then what "pure" Java allows, MS made hardware acceleration unnecessary on the dominant desktop platform.
Thus their strategy: Sell Java's WORA capabilities Get everyone hooked on Java Release proprietary hardware accelerator for completive performance Profit!
Sorry, but you're wrong. Sun and MS have already come to an agreement about their Java contracts that allowed MS to continue to distribute Java for another 10 years. The new agreement did not require that MS distribute Java, only that they were allowed to.
So when MS decided not to distribute Java at all, Sun initiated a private antitrust case against MS. I don't think much of the merits of Sun's case, but it has everything to do with MS being found to be monopoly. As absurd as Motz's court order is, there's no way he would have done it if this were merely a contract dispute.
If I owned Sun, I'd push for the maximum dollar amount for damages and drop this silly Java distribution remedy that isn't going to have any effect on Sun's bottom line. But this isn't about business, it's a pissing contest between Bill and Scott.
Yeah, just because Xerox spent millions developing the ideas that are incorporated into many of the products we use today, doesn't mean they should profit from them. The profits should go to the companies that knocked-off (oops, I mean applied) the technology, like Apple, MS and Palm.
Re:Linux people are usually Do-It-Yourselfers...
on
Linux Is Cheaper
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· Score: 2
Well, a lot of applications are very flexible and can be customized without software changes. On the other hand, if you really want a custom solution you're often better off writing your own from scratch rather than trying to modify someone else's program to do something it wasn't designed to do. Companies often make that mistake with their own code.
There is a middle ground where you want to make a small tweak to an application. In that case having the source is essential. I still believe there is rarely a compelling business case for that scenario, but it's clear you think it's more common.
Re:Linux people are usually Do-It-Yourselfers...
on
Linux Is Cheaper
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· Score: 2
"But a less skilled admin wouldnt try to do things beyond his capability, atleast not on important servers..."
There's no evidence that a Linux Admin would be less likely to try something he shouldn't than a windows Admin. There are good and bad Admins. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I would conclude that the quality of an Admin is not correlated with the OS they administer.
As far as messing things up without source, yes, you can do that with both Windows and Linux so that proves nothing.
You are correct when you say that Linux can be enhanced by modifying the source which is an option you don't have with windows, but as I said you should very rarely wish to do this (as part of a business, at least) and with that power comes increased danger.
Re:Linux people are usually Do-It-Yourselfers...
on
Linux Is Cheaper
·
· Score: 2
And a less skilled linux administrator can really f*** things up in ways that an equally skilled windows admin can't because he doesn't have source code.
Actually, I think most business needs can be taken care of by writing applications to run on the OS. Modifying the OS ought to be a rare event indeed.
There were technical reasons why the graphics were so bad. If you want to have a game like Pac Man look good on the 2600, you have to insure that only one ghost appears in the same horizontal scan lines as the Pac Man. That's because there are only 2 "high resolution" players (objects) available in a single scan line.
In order to preserve the Pac Man gameplay, Atari didn't follow that rule and had to multiplex the players. Thus the anoying blinking.
One of the reasons that games from Activision had much better graphics, was because their games were designed around the limitations of the 2600.
Really? Then you can write VB code and C++ code and Java code can inherit from them. No.I guess something is going on in CLR that is not going on in the JVM.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you that Sun's VM will provide little value to Windows users.
However, this is not about MS's failure to live up to a contract. The original contract issue about MS making extentions to Java was settled out of court. As part of that settlement, MS was allowed to distribute it's version of Java for a number of years.
It didn't occur to Sun that MS might drop support for Java altogether, so they didn't include language in the agreement to require MS to include it. When MS announced they weren't going to include Java in Windows, Sun, unable to play the contract card, opted instead to file a private anti-trust lawsuit against MS (they might have done this anyway).
They're using this lawsuit both to obtain more money from MS and to compel MS to distribute Java. Judge Motz has been rather sympathetic toward Sun, but as we saw today, higher courts are going to take a hard look at this very unusal remedy.
Too bad your long comment is based on incorrect information. MS has not been found guilty of any crimes by any court. The anti-trust case was a civil one. If you can't even get this small detail correct, what's the point in reading the rest of your comment?
"And because of their fixed costs, they may well be losing money on every box shipped."
Wasn't your point supposed to be that due to fixed costs, they may lose money on boxes they haven't yet produced. Otherwise, the parent's point hasn't been countered.
In any case, it's highly likely that the fixed costs are less than the overall cost. Unless we know what both the fixed and variable costs are, we can't come to any conclusion.
I'm not sure that "human-readible" is a primary argument for XML, but I don't think it matters much. ASCII codes aren't "human-readible" either, text editors convert them to characters we can read.
You can't efficiently use a text editor to edit pictures, sounds or movies but this doesn't limit our ability to edit them using more appropriate tools.
If I were going to edit or process XML, I would use the best tool for the job and if that's not a text editor, so what?
The purpose of grades is to provide feedback to students on their level of performance. Instead, it has become coopted for purposes such as starting salaries. Remove the inappropriate economic component, and grade inflation won't be a problem. Otherwise, we should not be surprised that grades are subject to market pressures.
I suspect the purchase of NeXT by Apple was more about covering up the fact that NeXT was a total business failure rather than about technology transfer.
It's naive to believe that any traditional company is going to sacrifice profits because they believe in the open source philosophy. Not IBM, not Sun, not Apple, not O'Reilly. They may pay lip service to open source, but only when it's in their interest to do so.
That should have been:
So what's the point of making MS bundle it with Windows?
Of course, I was talking about the level of Java performance at the time MS created J++. Today's performance is hardly relevant to Java's initial aceptence as a development language on Windows. Even today, Java code that takes advantage of Windows-specific extentions in J++ probably outperforms 2003 100% pure Java running on Windows. But nobody wants to use J++ because Sun made it a dead end, so we'll just use C++, C#, VB or one of the other .net compatible languages.
Had they done what Sun wanted, Java would have been DOA on the Windows platform. Since MS optimized it for Windows there was some real interest in using it, but then Sun killed that. So I guess it's too bad MS didn't do it Sun's way from the beginning. It would have saved Windows developers from wasting their time taking a look at it.
Sun's current lawsuit against MS is a private antitrust lawsuit. The judge ordered MS to carry Java based on abusing their monopoly. It has nothing to do with the latest agreement MS and Sun have made on Java that allows MS to distribute Java.
"So getting a 5MB JVM deployed isn't such an issue anymore."
So what's the point of making Sun bundle it with Windows?
I believe MS signed a contract that ALLOWED them to distriubte Java, not one that REQUIRED them to do so. It was Sun who got outfoxed. Rather than admitting that they lost that round, they took it to court to try to force MS to carry Java on antitrust grounds. Judge Motz bought Sun's argument but I'm betting it will not stand up to appeal.
I suspect they concluded that there was no market for it. That's the real reason they were so upset with MS. By allowing more direct access to Windows then what "pure" Java allows, MS made hardware acceleration unnecessary on the dominant desktop platform.
Thus their strategy:
Sell Java's WORA capabilities
Get everyone hooked on Java
Release proprietary hardware accelerator for completive performance
Profit!
has failed.
Sorry, but you're wrong. Sun and MS have already come to an agreement about their Java contracts that allowed MS to continue to distribute Java for another 10 years. The new agreement did not require that MS distribute Java, only that they were allowed to.
So when MS decided not to distribute Java at all, Sun initiated a private antitrust case against MS. I don't think much of the merits of Sun's case, but it has everything to do with MS being found to be monopoly. As absurd as Motz's court order is, there's no way he would have done it if this were merely a contract dispute.
If I owned Sun, I'd push for the maximum dollar amount for damages and drop this silly Java distribution remedy that isn't going to have any effect on Sun's bottom line. But this isn't about business, it's a pissing contest between Bill and Scott.
A higher court will block the court order before the 120 days are up.
Well, patenting your technology and suing those who use it without permission IS exploiting your technology.
Well, if competence is measured merely by profit, than they aren't incompetent if they get people to pay money for a license, right?
On the other hand if you think creating ideas that are widely adopted has value then they are one of the most competent companies of the 20th century.
Yeah, just because Xerox spent millions developing the ideas that are incorporated into many of the products we use today, doesn't mean they should profit from them. The profits should go to the companies that knocked-off (oops, I mean applied) the technology, like Apple, MS and Palm.
Well, a lot of applications are very flexible and can be customized without software changes. On the other hand, if you really want a custom solution you're often better off writing your own from scratch rather than trying to modify someone else's program to do something it wasn't designed to do. Companies often make that mistake with their own code.
There is a middle ground where you want to make a small tweak to an application. In that case having the source is essential. I still believe there is rarely a compelling business case for that scenario, but it's clear you think it's more common.
"But a less skilled admin wouldnt try to do things beyond his capability, atleast not on important servers..."
There's no evidence that a Linux Admin would be less likely to try something he shouldn't than a windows Admin. There are good and bad Admins. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I would conclude that the quality of an Admin is not correlated with the OS they administer.
As far as messing things up without source, yes, you can do that with both Windows and Linux so that proves nothing.
You are correct when you say that Linux can be enhanced by modifying the source which is an option you don't have with windows, but as I said you should very rarely wish to do this (as part of a business, at least) and with that power comes increased danger.
And a less skilled linux administrator can really f*** things up in ways that an equally skilled windows admin can't because he doesn't have source code.
Actually, I think most business needs can be taken care of by writing applications to run on the OS. Modifying the OS ought to be a rare event indeed.
Sorry, you'll have to explain to me what's funny - I don't get it.
None. Except perhaps for adults that act like children.
There were technical reasons why the graphics were so bad. If you want to have a game like Pac Man look good on the 2600, you have to insure that only one ghost appears in the same horizontal scan lines as the Pac Man. That's because there are only 2 "high resolution" players (objects) available in a single scan line.
In order to preserve the Pac Man gameplay, Atari didn't follow that rule and had to multiplex the players. Thus the anoying blinking.
One of the reasons that games from Activision had much better graphics, was because their games were designed around the limitations of the 2600.
Really? Then you can write VB code and C++ code and Java code can inherit from them. No.I guess something is going on in CLR that is not going on in the JVM.