Keep your head down, work for the Man and tell yourself how free you are, that's the way to go.
It's already far, far too late for me:)
I started using the 'net the year after Mosaic got released at the age of 12. All my oldest friends are people I've met online so if anyone were to go digging I'm sure they could find out a lot about me and how I grew up. Thankfully the worst of it is in email list archives that aren't online anymore, I don't think...
My only hope is to carry on as I am and hope, in the event of unemployment (v. unlikely for me atm thankfully) prospective employers can see that all that stuff just makes me a normal person who's had their share of life.
As soon as I realised Santa Claus wasn't real (I was one of the last in my year, actually. WTF would my parents make a load of shit up about a guy who has flying reindeer, comes down a chimney and gives me stuff for free? It makes no sense! God+Jesus was clearly BS though, I couldn't see any evidence) I started budgeting for Christmas. If getting a Live points card instead of a box meant I could get more games then that's what I'd go for. Ditto about whining whilst out shopping (guilty, yer'honour). I'd quite happily have stayed silent whilst shopping with the promise of a £20 (in today's money!) download when I got home, especially if it meant I could get two £10 downloads instead of one £20 box.
Not that you don't have a point though, most kids are complete morons.
Oh, and:
By controlling manufacture, the console-builders guarantee that they get their cut.
DD means a bigger cut for both the console maker and the game publisher because they've removed the physical store. There's no way MS or Sony would open their consoles to third-party digital stores.
I'm on a shitty, unstable 4 - 6Mb (BT need to replace my drop wire but the various engineer visits I've had over the past couple of years have sapped my will to live. At least now there's an audible crackle so if I can be bothered to report it again it should be easy peasy) and even a 9GB only takes a few hours. I suppose it's not as fun for people on 0.5Mb connections though.
I've got more games to complete now than I have time to play so I don't mind waiting for a download!
Did you miss the Steam holiday sale? They had 25 - 75% discounts on everything! I spent about £70 and got loads of games. They also have sales every weekend; a few weeks back they halved the price of L4D and saw a 3000% (yes, three thousand) increase in sales. They sold more than at launch!
Valve have been pushing DD for longer than anyone else. They've consistently put their own balls on the line when it comes to experiments in distribution and pricing and their gambles have paid off. I suppose it helps that they make great games too!
And yes,/.'s character support is terrible. They can't even render £ (GBP) properly! Apparently it's because full unicode support can be used to to do lame stuff like page widening exploits and re-writing comment by-lines. They should still expand the list of allowed characters though.
Read the GP again - DD is only expensive because physical stores would punish publishers who undercut them. This is playing out just like the MP3 / CD transition - buying MP3s used to be far more expensive than buying CDs for the same reason.
Publishers are only matching RRP and street date with retail for DD platforms because if they didn't the physical stores would stop carrying all their products. One day a publisher will decide there are enough people downloading and so will release their latest AAA title digitally on the day it goes gold for less than the below-RRP prices game stores sell at (shops here in the UK will knock at least a fiver off new release RRPs).
On that day video-game stores will go the way of record stores: still around but in a limited fashion.
We do have a promise from Valve (if you care to believe them) that they'd release an unlocker for Steam if they ever looked like going bust
I've never been able to actually find that quote, which is generally attributed to Gabe. I find it hard to believe that they would actually do that however as firms go bust when they become unable to meet their financial obligations. In just about every jurisdiction ever destroying your most valuable assets before defaulting on all your debts is considered criminal and I don't think the directors of Valve would be prepared to do jail time for us.
Having said that, Steam is making Valve huge sums of money so they're not likely to go bust. Even if they do, Steam is only worth so much because it's running as a going concern, shutting it down would destroy its value.
We don't own games on Steam, we purchase subscriptions. Read the subscriber agreement. A new owner might decide to charge a pound for downloading the games more than five times, for example. Under UK (and I think EU) law if you make unfavourable changes to a contract you have to let the other party opt out. I'd take that to mean a full refund for everything I've purchased but we all know if Steam ended up with a new owner with that mindset they'd make a refund process very difficult.
So yea, short of DRM free services like GOG, Steam is one of the best solutions out there. The phone-home DRM it uses isn't even much of a pain because you need an internet connection to get the most out of Steam anyway.
The poster below pointed out Steam's gift option so I'll point out that Xbox Live uses a stored-currency points system that's perfect for gifts and you can also get PSN gift cards. This actually makes it far better if you want to give someone a video-game gift because you don't have to spend ages stressing about what sort of games the recipient enjoys.
N.B. The run up to Christmas is always funny in that regard; how the staff in my local independent video game shop (Eclipse FTW!) manage to patiently explain over and over and over again that there's no such thing as a "good" game and that it all depends on the taste of the gamer is beyond me. If I didn't go mental on the first punter it'd be the second. Most likely the first though.
I think if it got to that stage though then the state would step in. If large numbers of outspoken people with unorthodox views ended up congregating in soup kitchens then plots may be set afoot. The government would have to do something to prevent an eventual revolution, be it compelling firms to employ a certain percentage of freaks or sending us all to gitmo!
So, someday, after you have posted a picture of yourself butt-naked sharing a twelve-pack with your buddies outside the local convent, and you remain unemployed, you will be able to sue. All you will have to show is that X percent of the population does such things, and if a particular employer has significantly less than X percent of such people among their employees, they are therefore guilty of discrimination.
GGP wasn't talking about discrimination, it was suggesting outlawing the use of information gained from social media in hiring decisions (with certain constraints one assumes).
Short of disgruntled HR employees, it'd be impossible to get a prosecution. Thinking about it though, such a law might actually be a good idea. Laws like that change policy in large organisations and at the very least it'd turn trawling social media into an activity that should be kept quiet. As long as managers making hiring decisions think it's more trouble than it's worth, they won't do it.
Really, unless you are a public figure then why do you have to put your real name out there along with whatever it is that you say?
Because nobody should ever be ashamed of who they are or feel they need to hide themselves in order to conform to some "professional" ideal.
I'm just as outspoken IRL as I am online, even at work. I actually get quite a lot of respect for it in fact, so yea, employers acting like in the TFA are probably crap places to work anyway.
In any case, if you are going to be so stubborn about infringing on our privacy, we are just going to have to pass legislation criminalising your behaviour, aren't we?
But how will you know if a firm passed you over because of something you said online? It'd be impossible to enforce.
It's just best not to worry about it. Firms who discriminate against people who aren't ashamed of their life and like to talk openly about it will wind up full of drones leaving all the creative people to assemble elsewhere. I hope.
I realise arguing against the faceless mods of/. (a duty we've all shouldered from time to time) makes me look like an idiot, but really WTF? Someone posts opposing all barriers to medical research and gets +5, I point out restrictions were put in place due to Nazi atrocities and get called a troll (maybe it's because I used a naughty word?).
Yea I know this is stupid, but I've had a few so what the hey.
The 3D doesn't work yet because of the proprietary, yup, nVidia card.
Nvidia has binary Linux drivers. Sony is the one prohibiting 3D (and also Blu-ray movie support due to piracy concerns) under Linux. This is because if you could play games under Linux developers would just release games as Linux live-CDs/DVDs/Blu-rays-only-if-the-games-are-bigger-than-8.6GB-not-mandated-like-if-you-go-the-official-route.
Noveau will never work on PS3 Linux because the hypervisor prohibits access to the 3D hardware. If they manage to get it to work Sony will lock it down in a system update. This is all on the record btw if you can be bothered to Google.
Believe me when I say that the Xbox360 support will just drop like a stone when the next Xbox comes out, just like the Xbox1 when the 360 came out, while the PS3 will just like the PS2 be supported for many years.
The Xbox died for a number of reasons. I remember reading that the final nail was Nvidia trying to increase the licensing costs for the GPU part in the Xbox! MS figured it'd just be best to try to get 360 out the door ASAP to get a head-start over Sony for this generation. That strategy failed for Sega with the DC but MS knows how to build a platform for developers so it worked out for them.
The 360 will be supported past the release of the next Xbox in the same way the PS2 is now. MS have already apologised about how the Xbox died, that's why they made sure they own all the IP related to the 360 so it won't be an issue for them this time around.
Unfortunately Sony decided to take everything that developers hated about the PS2 (having to handle the VU in the GS and the other VU in the EE with a weird NUMA without any official guidance) and run with it even further this generation. The only reason developers stuck it out with the PS2 was because it was number one. This generation the number one and two consoles (Wii and 36) are dead easy to develop for.
I'm not hating on the PS3, I actually like it more than my 360 because it has a better controller and doesn't sound like an airfield. It's just shit as a development platform (where are the libraries, the example code, the evangelising the PS3 as a cohesive platform? All that stuff MS has learnt to do with Windows) which means less game{s\,,rs} and less sales.
* For martial arts / sword fighting games, the PS/3's controller beat a standard PC, hands down. On the other hand, the two games in this categories that I tried for the PS/3 (Virtua Fighter (5?) and Heavenly Sword) reminded me of the worst part of these games: needing to waste too much of my short life memorizing countless, intricate sequences of controller commands in order go employ certain moves.
You can use the PS3 controller via USB. It's broken on amd64 Windows (libusbfilter can cause bluescreens) but works straight away in Linux.
Oh, and that's just modern 3D fighting games for you. Get SSF2THDR:)
I was surprised by the poor design in some of the games I did buy for the PS/3: Armored Core (4?), and Virtua Fighter (5?). The menu systems (especially VF5's) were nothing less than Sadistic. I realize you can get bad games on any system, but these made up 50% of the games I'd played on the PS/3. Disliking half of the games is the worst ratio I've encountered for any system I've owned, and this probably speaks to Sony's inability to get many good game makers to target the PS/3.
It's because Sony has a more liberal attitude towards developers. They haven't figured out what MS has learnt from years developing Windows: What matters most is the end user experience.
MS has concentrated on developing the 360 as a platform in the same way they develop Windows as a platform and that's why they're winning. I love my PS3 for its exclusive titles but I generally get multi-platform games on my 360 if they don't come out on PC. It's the little things like knowing I'll always be able to play my own music without having to copy it to my consoles HD that make the difference.
Of course, there's also the point that the XBox 360's Xenon processor is based on elements of Cell anyway.
Specifically, the Power Processing Elements of Cell. They took the easy bit of the Cell that everyone already knew how to use, used three of them and left Sony trying to convince everyone that the SPUs were a good idea.
MS is clearly going to have Blu-ray in next Xbox, they may even release a BD drive for the 360 to cement its place as a media-centre. They only took a half-hearted punt in the HD-DVD/BD format war and that's lack of confidence is the only thing that's saved Sony this generation. If 360 had used HD-DVD as its media then PS3 would've been DOA and I say that as a games-as-art wanker who loves stuff like Noby Noby Boy / Flower / Eternal Silence.
You're missing the point though. If you were to engineer yourself in that fashion you'd alienate yourself, you'd take the weird, random, unique and individual biological mess you are now (n.b. I'm not taking the "natural is best" view here) and turn it into something mass produced.
It's something you see in drug culture, people take drugs in order to behave and feel in certain ways and in doing so lose part of themselves. In some cases it's a good thing, I think the way MDMA has changed me is a massive improvement - after taking it for the first time I carried on using it because it turned me into a more social, less anxious person and that change has stuck. Overall I've gained. Sometimes though, people lose part of themselves and even end up feeling they can't enjoy a rave without MDMA. You have to be aware of these things.
I know from my use of psychedelics that even quite minor changes in perception can have all sorts of weird mental effects and I'd expect direct brain / personality modification would be like that times a billion. If it were available I'd go for it but I'd be very careful about it.
Moralists are the reason medical science is stuck in the stone age
So, you're opposed to all ethics in medical science. That means you oppose the Nuremberg Code.
Sorry to get all Godwin on you but that means you're either a proto-Nazi, a troll or a clueless fuckwit. Medical ethics are important to stop crimes against humanity and it's quite proper that there should be a debate about what's OK and what isn't.
Was just thinking about this post and realised it might not be clear:
I am aware that Java uses large amounts of RAM and I'm sure anyone reading can point to lots of examples of Java performing worse than some other language for a particular application; my point was those issues aren't due to Java operating in a VM.
while x86 in browser is not that good security-wise, using virtual machines, like Java, is slow. Just compare Azureus and uTorrent. And a ASM app would be even faster that uTorrent.
I was going to go off on a rant about how you clearly have no clue what you're talking about but then realised the fact you're clueless would prevent you from really understanding. It comes down to this though:
Az against uTorrent isn't a fair comparison, uTorrent has far less features than Az.
Java is as fast as native once compiled. To prove this try writing some basic sorting algorithms in C then Java and compare execution time. The overhead comes from the JIT compilation when you start the app.
Everything runs on the CPU as byte-code and whatever Java/C/C#/favourite spastic language of the month compiler you use is probably better at generating optimised assembler than you are.
Slashdot Mirror
Keep your head down, work for the Man and tell yourself how free you are, that's the way to go.
It's already far, far too late for me :)
I started using the 'net the year after Mosaic got released at the age of 12. All my oldest friends are people I've met online so if anyone were to go digging I'm sure they could find out a lot about me and how I grew up. Thankfully the worst of it is in email list archives that aren't online anymore, I don't think...
My only hope is to carry on as I am and hope, in the event of unemployment (v. unlikely for me atm thankfully) prospective employers can see that all that stuff just makes me a normal person who's had their share of life.
As soon as I realised Santa Claus wasn't real (I was one of the last in my year, actually. WTF would my parents make a load of shit up about a guy who has flying reindeer, comes down a chimney and gives me stuff for free? It makes no sense! God+Jesus was clearly BS though, I couldn't see any evidence) I started budgeting for Christmas. If getting a Live points card instead of a box meant I could get more games then that's what I'd go for. Ditto about whining whilst out shopping (guilty, yer'honour). I'd quite happily have stayed silent whilst shopping with the promise of a £20 (in today's money!) download when I got home, especially if it meant I could get two £10 downloads instead of one £20 box.
Not that you don't have a point though, most kids are complete morons.
Oh, and:
By controlling manufacture, the console-builders guarantee that they get their cut.
DD means a bigger cut for both the console maker and the game publisher because they've removed the physical store. There's no way MS or Sony would open their consoles to third-party digital stores.
I'm on a shitty, unstable 4 - 6Mb (BT need to replace my drop wire but the various engineer visits I've had over the past couple of years have sapped my will to live. At least now there's an audible crackle so if I can be bothered to report it again it should be easy peasy) and even a 9GB only takes a few hours. I suppose it's not as fun for people on 0.5Mb connections though.
I've got more games to complete now than I have time to play so I don't mind waiting for a download!
Did you miss the Steam holiday sale? They had 25 - 75% discounts on everything! I spent about £70 and got loads of games. They also have sales every weekend; a few weeks back they halved the price of L4D and saw a 3000% (yes, three thousand) increase in sales. They sold more than at launch!
Valve have been pushing DD for longer than anyone else. They've consistently put their own balls on the line when it comes to experiments in distribution and pricing and their gambles have paid off. I suppose it helps that they make great games too!
And yes, /.'s character support is terrible. They can't even render £ (GBP) properly! Apparently it's because full unicode support can be used to to do lame stuff like page widening exploits and re-writing comment by-lines. They should still expand the list of allowed characters though.
Read the GP again - DD is only expensive because physical stores would punish publishers who undercut them. This is playing out just like the MP3 / CD transition - buying MP3s used to be far more expensive than buying CDs for the same reason.
Publishers are only matching RRP and street date with retail for DD platforms because if they didn't the physical stores would stop carrying all their products. One day a publisher will decide there are enough people downloading and so will release their latest AAA title digitally on the day it goes gold for less than the below-RRP prices game stores sell at (shops here in the UK will knock at least a fiver off new release RRPs).
On that day video-game stores will go the way of record stores: still around but in a limited fashion.
We do have a promise from Valve (if you care to believe them) that they'd release an unlocker for Steam if they ever looked like going bust
I've never been able to actually find that quote, which is generally attributed to Gabe. I find it hard to believe that they would actually do that however as firms go bust when they become unable to meet their financial obligations. In just about every jurisdiction ever destroying your most valuable assets before defaulting on all your debts is considered criminal and I don't think the directors of Valve would be prepared to do jail time for us.
Having said that, Steam is making Valve huge sums of money so they're not likely to go bust. Even if they do, Steam is only worth so much because it's running as a going concern, shutting it down would destroy its value.
We don't own games on Steam, we purchase subscriptions. Read the subscriber agreement. A new owner might decide to charge a pound for downloading the games more than five times, for example. Under UK (and I think EU) law if you make unfavourable changes to a contract you have to let the other party opt out. I'd take that to mean a full refund for everything I've purchased but we all know if Steam ended up with a new owner with that mindset they'd make a refund process very difficult.
So yea, short of DRM free services like GOG, Steam is one of the best solutions out there. The phone-home DRM it uses isn't even much of a pain because you need an internet connection to get the most out of Steam anyway.
The poster below pointed out Steam's gift option so I'll point out that Xbox Live uses a stored-currency points system that's perfect for gifts and you can also get PSN gift cards. This actually makes it far better if you want to give someone a video-game gift because you don't have to spend ages stressing about what sort of games the recipient enjoys.
N.B. The run up to Christmas is always funny in that regard; how the staff in my local independent video game shop (Eclipse FTW!) manage to patiently explain over and over and over again that there's no such thing as a "good" game and that it all depends on the taste of the gamer is beyond me. If I didn't go mental on the first punter it'd be the second. Most likely the first though.
I appreciated the classic Adequacy style, at least. Brought back memories!
Hence "I Hope" at the end :)
I think if it got to that stage though then the state would step in. If large numbers of outspoken people with unorthodox views ended up congregating in soup kitchens then plots may be set afoot. The government would have to do something to prevent an eventual revolution, be it compelling firms to employ a certain percentage of freaks or sending us all to gitmo!
So, someday, after you have posted a picture of yourself butt-naked sharing a twelve-pack with your buddies outside the local convent, and you remain unemployed, you will be able to sue. All you will have to show is that X percent of the population does such things, and if a particular employer has significantly less than X percent of such people among their employees, they are therefore guilty of discrimination.
GGP wasn't talking about discrimination, it was suggesting outlawing the use of information gained from social media in hiring decisions (with certain constraints one assumes).
Short of disgruntled HR employees, it'd be impossible to get a prosecution. Thinking about it though, such a law might actually be a good idea. Laws like that change policy in large organisations and at the very least it'd turn trawling social media into an activity that should be kept quiet. As long as managers making hiring decisions think it's more trouble than it's worth, they won't do it.
Really, unless you are a public figure then why do you have to put your real name out there along with whatever it is that you say?
Because nobody should ever be ashamed of who they are or feel they need to hide themselves in order to conform to some "professional" ideal.
I'm just as outspoken IRL as I am online, even at work. I actually get quite a lot of respect for it in fact, so yea, employers acting like in the TFA are probably crap places to work anyway.
In any case, if you are going to be so stubborn about infringing on our privacy, we are just going to have to pass legislation criminalising your behaviour, aren't we?
But how will you know if a firm passed you over because of something you said online? It'd be impossible to enforce.
It's just best not to worry about it. Firms who discriminate against people who aren't ashamed of their life and like to talk openly about it will wind up full of drones leaving all the creative people to assemble elsewhere. I hope.
I realise arguing against the faceless mods of /. (a duty we've all shouldered from time to time) makes me look like an idiot, but really WTF? Someone posts opposing all barriers to medical research and gets +5, I point out restrictions were put in place due to Nazi atrocities and get called a troll (maybe it's because I used a naughty word?).
Yea I know this is stupid, but I've had a few so what the hey.
The 3D doesn't work yet because of the proprietary, yup, nVidia card.
Nvidia has binary Linux drivers. Sony is the one prohibiting 3D (and also Blu-ray movie support due to piracy concerns) under Linux. This is because if you could play games under Linux developers would just release games as Linux live-CDs/DVDs/Blu-rays-only-if-the-games-are-bigger-than-8.6GB-not-mandated-like-if-you-go-the-official-route.
Noveau will never work on PS3 Linux because the hypervisor prohibits access to the 3D hardware. If they manage to get it to work Sony will lock it down in a system update. This is all on the record btw if you can be bothered to Google.
Believe me when I say that the Xbox360 support will just drop like a stone when the next Xbox comes out, just like the Xbox1 when the 360 came out, while the PS3 will just like the PS2 be supported for many years.
The Xbox died for a number of reasons. I remember reading that the final nail was Nvidia trying to increase the licensing costs for the GPU part in the Xbox! MS figured it'd just be best to try to get 360 out the door ASAP to get a head-start over Sony for this generation. That strategy failed for Sega with the DC but MS knows how to build a platform for developers so it worked out for them.
The 360 will be supported past the release of the next Xbox in the same way the PS2 is now. MS have already apologised about how the Xbox died, that's why they made sure they own all the IP related to the 360 so it won't be an issue for them this time around.
Unfortunately Sony decided to take everything that developers hated about the PS2 (having to handle the VU in the GS and the other VU in the EE with a weird NUMA without any official guidance) and run with it even further this generation. The only reason developers stuck it out with the PS2 was because it was number one. This generation the number one and two consoles (Wii and 36) are dead easy to develop for.
I'm not hating on the PS3, I actually like it more than my 360 because it has a better controller and doesn't sound like an airfield. It's just shit as a development platform (where are the libraries, the example code, the evangelising the PS3 as a cohesive platform? All that stuff MS has learnt to do with Windows) which means less game{s\,,rs} and less sales.
* For martial arts / sword fighting games, the PS/3's controller beat a standard PC, hands down. On the other hand, the two games in this categories that I tried for the PS/3 (Virtua Fighter (5?) and Heavenly Sword) reminded me of the worst part of these games: needing to waste too much of my short life memorizing countless, intricate sequences of controller commands in order go employ certain moves.
You can use the PS3 controller via USB. It's broken on amd64 Windows (libusbfilter can cause bluescreens) but works straight away in Linux.
Oh, and that's just modern 3D fighting games for you. Get SSF2THDR :)
I was surprised by the poor design in some of the games I did buy for the PS/3: Armored Core (4?), and Virtua Fighter (5?). The menu systems (especially VF5's) were nothing less than Sadistic. I realize you can get bad games on any system, but these made up 50% of the games I'd played on the PS/3. Disliking half of the games is the worst ratio I've encountered for any system I've owned, and this probably speaks to Sony's inability to get many good game makers to target the PS/3.
It's because Sony has a more liberal attitude towards developers. They haven't figured out what MS has learnt from years developing Windows: What matters most is the end user experience.
MS has concentrated on developing the 360 as a platform in the same way they develop Windows as a platform and that's why they're winning. I love my PS3 for its exclusive titles but I generally get multi-platform games on my 360 if they don't come out on PC. It's the little things like knowing I'll always be able to play my own music without having to copy it to my consoles HD that make the difference.
Of course, there's also the point that the XBox 360's Xenon processor is based on elements of Cell anyway.
Specifically, the Power Processing Elements of Cell. They took the easy bit of the Cell that everyone already knew how to use, used three of them and left Sony trying to convince everyone that the SPUs were a good idea.
MS is clearly going to have Blu-ray in next Xbox, they may even release a BD drive for the 360 to cement its place as a media-centre. They only took a half-hearted punt in the HD-DVD/BD format war and that's lack of confidence is the only thing that's saved Sony this generation. If 360 had used HD-DVD as its media then PS3 would've been DOA and I say that as a games-as-art wanker who loves stuff like Noby Noby Boy / Flower / Eternal Silence.
You're missing the point though. If you were to engineer yourself in that fashion you'd alienate yourself, you'd take the weird, random, unique and individual biological mess you are now (n.b. I'm not taking the "natural is best" view here) and turn it into something mass produced.
It's something you see in drug culture, people take drugs in order to behave and feel in certain ways and in doing so lose part of themselves. In some cases it's a good thing, I think the way MDMA has changed me is a massive improvement - after taking it for the first time I carried on using it because it turned me into a more social, less anxious person and that change has stuck. Overall I've gained. Sometimes though, people lose part of themselves and even end up feeling they can't enjoy a rave without MDMA. You have to be aware of these things.
I know from my use of psychedelics that even quite minor changes in perception can have all sorts of weird mental effects and I'd expect direct brain / personality modification would be like that times a billion. If it were available I'd go for it but I'd be very careful about it.
Moralists are the reason medical science is stuck in the stone age
So, you're opposed to all ethics in medical science. That means you oppose the Nuremberg Code.
Sorry to get all Godwin on you but that means you're either a proto-Nazi, a troll or a clueless fuckwit. Medical ethics are important to stop crimes against humanity and it's quite proper that there should be a debate about what's OK and what isn't.
Read the GP again:
faced with a professional legal opponent these type of people will invariably back down.
Insurance companies love taking money as much as they hate paying it out; they know better than to feed litigious trolls.
Was just thinking about this post and realised it might not be clear:
I am aware that Java uses large amounts of RAM and I'm sure anyone reading can point to lots of examples of Java performing worse than some other language for a particular application; my point was those issues aren't due to Java operating in a VM.
It could be worse, Knuth only offers 80 hex dollars for bugs in TeX. The actual check is worth far more in bragging rights alone!
short of any bugs in the sandbox itself
Which are exactly the sort of bugs the GP was talking about.
while x86 in browser is not that good security-wise, using virtual machines, like Java, is slow. Just compare Azureus and uTorrent. And a ASM app would be even faster that uTorrent.
I was going to go off on a rant about how you clearly have no clue what you're talking about but then realised the fact you're clueless would prevent you from really understanding. It comes down to this though:
Az against uTorrent isn't a fair comparison, uTorrent has far less features than Az.
Java is as fast as native once compiled. To prove this try writing some basic sorting algorithms in C then Java and compare execution time. The overhead comes from the JIT compilation when you start the app.
Everything runs on the CPU as byte-code and whatever Java/C/C#/favourite spastic language of the month compiler you use is probably better at generating optimised assembler than you are.
Or did I just bite a dumb troll? Meh.