And what will you say if I, as a customer, come to you and say "I will not buy a system from you because you have not provided a full set of software on your PC for web browsing. Therefore, I will buy from another OEM."
Or, what will your tech support say when they start getting calls from customers that a number of web sites that used to work no longer work with the new computer that they bought from you. If you get a number of these calls, won't the cost of tech support cut into your margins?
Regarding putting the technology of a competitor on your PC's. The JRE would be included mostly so that applets still work, i.e. a client-side technology. Do you really see Sun as competitors on the client-side? I would think that Sun is only viewed as a competitor in servers, where the installation of a JRE is probably not a big issue, since the administrators of that system are sophistocated users and can install whatever they need by themselves.
What I'm getting at is that I see putting the JRE on your PCs as a customer need that does not help out your competition (Sun) in a market that matters. Are there legal issues that keep you from putting the JRE on your systems? If Sun does not see the importance of clearing any legal hurdles so that there will be a JRE on every platform shipped, then they are too stupid to succeed!
"Java right now is still a moving target with a new verison coming out every half a year or so, and I don't think that bundling a JVM with an OS would have been beneficial to the language's development, as it would force developers to only use the XP version for fear of losing audience. "
If you mean that the version that MS would have installed would have been Java 1.1, rather than the current 1.3 (or might it be 1.4 when XP is released) I agree with you.
However, I doubt that MS's motivation has any relation to that situation. They see Java as a competitor, and will not give Java any help by including it with the OS installation. I also think that there is a customer need for Java, and there needs to be an effort to get Java installed on all the new PC's that are sold running WinXP. One way for this to happen would be for the PC OEMs to install it before the PC leaves their factory, but this sort of action was not allowed by MS contracts in the past. This is a real test case for MS's anti-trust behavior: if the PC OEM's customers want something, but MS contracts prevent the OEM's from providing it, then customer needs cannot be met due to MS's exclusionary contracts. DOJ, are you watching?
In the Twin Cities area (Minneapolis/St. Paul) Simon Delivers ( http://www.simondelivers.com ) still appears to be going strong.
I suspect that for a business of this type, there are any number of ways to fail. The fact that this business failed does not necessarily mean that this particular type of service is unworkable.
You and I have vastly different views of the common user. The common user gets most or all of his information about the computer industry from advertising and mainstream media. If they read Newsweek, they will only see articles fawning over Bill Gates and Microsoft, and will never see a good analysis of the merits of the DOJ case. Unfortunately I don't have a supporting link, but about six months ago I saw the results of a poll of the general public, and the majority viewed MS favorably, were not concerned about the MS monopoly, and were sceptical of the merits of the DOJ case.
"Why is it that when they agree to support XML and SOAP, and at least do lip-service to the "open standards" idea, we continue to bash them and whine about how Sun did this 10 years ago?"
Because MS always seems to find a way to add proprietary extensions so that you still have to use MS. For example, Kerboros.
The whole issue is about control (isn't it always). What sort of smart links do you suppose will be generated with the word browser is encountered (Mozilla? think again), or when the phrase 'operating system' is encountered (hint: not BEOS). Suppose an anti-abortion website has the word 'abortion', and the so-called smart tag links to a pro-abortion website. This is obviously not what the authors had intended, and it brings up the question of who should be allowed to change the look (and content) of a website. I know that you can put some stuff into your website to disable smart tags being used on it, but this puts the burden on the author, not to mention that it is a requirement for only Microsoft browsers. This should be an opt-in type thing, where you can add stuff to your web pages if you want smart tags to work with it. Of course, then the use of the feature would depend on web site authors actually wanting it, which might be unacceptable to the company pushing it.
And here is another tool:
http://extend.silverstream.com/workbench/app/jsp /j brokerweb.jsp
It has an RMI-like programming environment:
- If starting with Java RMI, the rmi2soap compiler generates SOAP stubs and skeletons, and the rmi2wsdl compiler generates WSDL
- If starting from WSDL, the wsdl2java compiler generates the Java RMI interface and SOAP stubs and skeletons
- The stubs are looked up by the client using standard Java JNDI APIs
- The Java XML type mapping allows users to do custom serialization, as well as exchanging raw XML documents if required by the application
A good tool for doing this, as well as UDDI and WSDL, easily is GLUE from http://www.themindelectric.com.
Usually when I see someone demonstrating how SOAP works, they always show how the XML messages are composed and parsed. ITS JUST A PROTOCOL, just like JRMP (RMI) and CORBA. I shouldn't have to manually compose the message to send over the wire, just like I don't do this in RMI or CORBA. I should be able to call something like RMIC to build the stubs and skeletons, and make simple method calls. GLUE provides tools to do that.
I am not affiliated with the company, I just think that this is a necessary tool, and I'm glad to see it.
There is an interesting article at http://www.procompetition.org/headlines/WhitePaper 5_15.pdf that tries to paint a broader picture of Microsoft's strategy with regards to WindowsXP, Passport, MSN, HotMail,.Net, etc. Now, the organization that produced the paper is decidedly anti-MS, so you have to take it with a grain of salt. Its best to note what is supported by other material (quotes, press releases, documentation,etc), and view opinions presented with a critical eye. However, it is an very eye-opening article, and should be a must read for all those that think that MS is somehow neutered compared to 4 years ago.
No, as I recall, the license fees for Jini only kicked in when you started selling devices with Jini on them, and then it was only to the tune of $0.10 per device, or a one-time fee of $100,000 or $200,000 for those who would be selling millions of devices. These fees have recently been removed completely.
I don't know about an open source version of Jini, but I do know that there is a vendor that has built an independant version of Jini (http://www.prosyst.com), and another company that built an independant Jini Look-up server. Sun didn't squash those efforts.
I agree with Bill Venners, who was quoted in the article. Sun marketed Jini as an infrastructure that would tie together all sorts of devices. The trouble was, it is still the case that you need a lot of RAM and ROM on a node to host Jini, unless you use some sort of surrogate architecture. With arrival of the Connected Device Configuration (CDC) and the expected arrival of the RMI profile, you soon will be able to host Jini on smaller devices but it still will take 2-3 meg. of memory.
I also think that it is premature to dismiss Jini as a failure. I am seeing more and more products in the pipeline that are using Jini, and it is also seeing more use in enterprise-type applications. Did it take over the world? No. Is it being abandoned by early adopters? Again I think, no.
I think that the above post is yet another reason to not rely on a Slashdot posting for your information. There may be some gems, but the above posting has a pretty low accuracy level.
A key question here is "How much of.Net". Are they talking about just the CLR (Common Language Runtime, i.e. a Java virtual machine look-alike), or are they talking about the CLR and a subset of any.Net API's, or are they talking about CLR and the full API. Any less than the last option and all other platforms will be second class citizens in.Net.
I will be interested to see how this plays out as bad PR for AltaVista. Someone (in this case, the author of Archie) does some fundamental work that is widely deployed, then some other company tries to take credit for this work in the form of patents. We are not amused.
Actually I thought Sun did submit Java to ISO and then to ECMA, but in each case they withdrew them when they could not agree on trademark issues. I don't have a reference in front of me, so I may be wrong on whether they actually submitted, or stated an intention to submit. I do know that trademark was the major stopping point.
Also I believe that they submitted more than the language spec, which is what MS submitted with C#. I'm very skeptical whether standardizing the language will provide a usable cross-platform solution. If the API on windows is different than the API on Linux/Solaris/Mac, you need to do a port to have applications run on multiple platforms.
I am baffled over why people are so willing to believe that MS will provide a cross-platform solution. Over the years, they've always been nastiest when protecting the Windows platform and the Windows API, which ties people to that platform. When Java came out and promised WORA, MS licensed Java and then came out with a 'polluted' version (their words, not mine) of Java that targeted the Windows platform, hoping to disrupt the cross-platform capabilities of Java. And its not that they provided some hook to the underlying platform API's that is so bad, they did it in a way that violated the JVM specification. Other vendors have provided tools that allow "pure" java code to access Windows libraries and COM objects.
In addition, when Java came out, and the network computer was being touted as the wave of the future, MS was very derisive in their criticism of these technologies. Now they are touting very similar technologies as though they invented them!!!
I don't understand why anyone would take MS at face value when their past has given us so much reason not to.
Standardizing the CLR without standardizing the libraries and API's above it is meaningless from a cross-platform standpoint. If you will not find the same API's on Windows and on the MAC or Linux, then your applications are tied to that one platform, or you must provide a portability layer for each platform. The result: applications end up existing mostly on windows, and the windows platform is strengthened by this.
Yes, it would be counter-intuitive for MS to build a cross-platform system. They have never done anything but protect windows in the past. You use the MS JVM as an example of why MS may be confidant in being able to write a fast JVM. Well, at the same time, MS tried to 'pollute' (internal MS e-mail term) java to destroy the cross-platform capabilites, by producing byte-code that not only would only run on Windows, but also only on MS's JVM. Why would you trust MS now. Warning bells should be going off!!!
In order for a JVM to be good, it must not only be fast but adhere to the JVM specification. MS' JVM did not do that. Code that was compiled with MS' extensions would only work with MS' JVM. Not only was this not cross-platform, it was not even cross-JVM. It's not like MS couldn't have lived by the rules (the specification and the contract) and provided COM integration; there are a handful of companies that produce tools to do just that. I think its clear (supported by e-mails brought up in the DOJ suit) that they were trying to produce a 'polluted' java.
As far as RMI being a mess, are you kidding? RMI makes it far easier to build distributed systems than any of the other technologies I have used (DCOM, CORBA), and its dynamic code capabilities give it a lot of flexibility and power.
You're assuming that all locations in the US do elections the same. In my area (Minneapolis, Minnesota), we also use paper ballots, mark them with a pen, and then feed it to an optical scanner which immediately determines if the ballot is valid or not. If it is not, a volunteer will request that you correct the ballot, or will ask you to fill out a new one correctly.
A comparison of the number of discarded ballots using this system and the previous system in my area are pretty dramatic; there are now an order of magnitude less errors on completed ballots.
The only blame the US system deserves here is that it leaves the selection of voting method up to local government. If the method used tends to have a high number of invalid or uncounted ballots, the blame lies with the local government.
"The state judiciary has no right to dictate the terms of a state election, especially when not asked to do so."
No, but they must come to some sort of a decision when laws are contradictory, or when a law passed by the legislator violates the state constitution. This is their job.
Lets assume that you are correct in saying that the Earth has already corrected itself in the past, in response to past 'disturbances'. Does this then imply that it will always do so in the future, no matter what the nature and magnitude of the disturbance? No it does not. Does the fact that a sports team has won every game this season mean that it will continue to win? Again, no it does not. In both examples, the inputs that determine the result are very complex, and we can in no way definitively say that we can predict behavior based on past results. Earth has never been hit by a meteor big enough to destroy it, but if astronomers observe a meteor is on a path to hit us, should we conclude that it will not because none have in the past? Of course not.
I don't believe that an environmental scientist can definitively prove their point one way or another. I'm just saying that we have to look at more than past resilience of the earth.
Even if the Earth does correct itself, the way in which it does this could be that the environment becomes so inhospitable to human life that everyone dies off and stops producing harmful gases, resulting in a return to normalcy.
Slashdot Mirror
And what will you say if I, as a customer, come to you and say "I will not buy a system from you because you have not provided a full set of software on your PC for web browsing. Therefore, I will buy from another OEM."
Or, what will your tech support say when they start getting calls from customers that a number of web sites that used to work no longer work with the new computer that they bought from you. If you get a number of these calls, won't the cost of tech support cut into your margins?
Regarding putting the technology of a competitor on your PC's. The JRE would be included mostly so that applets still work, i.e. a client-side technology. Do you really see Sun as competitors on the client-side? I would think that Sun is only viewed as a competitor in servers, where the installation of a JRE is probably not a big issue, since the administrators of that system are sophistocated users and can install whatever they need by themselves.
What I'm getting at is that I see putting the JRE on your PCs as a customer need that does not help out your competition (Sun) in a market that matters. Are there legal issues that keep you from putting the JRE on your systems? If Sun does not see the importance of clearing any legal hurdles so that there will be a JRE on every platform shipped, then they are too stupid to succeed!
Actually, the JRE is only about 6 Meg.
"Java right now is still a moving target with a new verison coming out every half a year or so, and I don't think that bundling a JVM with an OS would have been beneficial to the language's development, as it would force developers to only use the XP version for fear of losing audience. "
If you mean that the version that MS would have installed would have been Java 1.1, rather than the current 1.3 (or might it be 1.4 when XP is released) I agree with you.
However, I doubt that MS's motivation has any relation to that situation. They see Java as a competitor, and will not give Java any help by including it with the OS installation. I also think that there is a customer need for Java, and there needs to be an effort to get Java installed on all the new PC's that are sold running WinXP. One way for this to happen would be for the PC OEMs to install it before the PC leaves their factory, but this sort of action was not allowed by MS contracts in the past. This is a real test case for MS's anti-trust behavior: if the PC OEM's customers want something, but MS contracts prevent the OEM's from providing it, then customer needs cannot be met due to MS's exclusionary contracts. DOJ, are you watching?
Don't forget that Redhat turned a small profit last quarter.
In the Twin Cities area (Minneapolis/St. Paul) Simon Delivers ( http://www.simondelivers.com ) still appears to be going strong.
I suspect that for a business of this type, there are any number of ways to fail. The fact that this business failed does not necessarily mean that this particular type of service is unworkable.
You and I have vastly different views of the common user. The common user gets most or all of his information about the computer industry from advertising and mainstream media. If they read Newsweek, they will only see articles fawning over Bill Gates and Microsoft, and will never see a good analysis of the merits of the DOJ case. Unfortunately I don't have a supporting link, but about six months ago I saw the results of a poll of the general public, and the majority viewed MS favorably, were not concerned about the MS monopoly, and were sceptical of the merits of the DOJ case.
"Why is it that when they agree to support XML and SOAP, and at least do lip-service to the "open standards" idea, we continue to bash them and whine about how Sun did this 10 years ago?"
Because MS always seems to find a way to add proprietary extensions so that you still have to use MS. For example, Kerboros.
The whole issue is about control (isn't it always). What sort of smart links do you suppose will be generated with the word browser is encountered (Mozilla? think again), or when the phrase 'operating system' is encountered (hint: not BEOS). Suppose an anti-abortion website has the word 'abortion', and the so-called smart tag links to a pro-abortion website. This is obviously not what the authors had intended, and it brings up the question of who should be allowed to change the look (and content) of a website. I know that you can put some stuff into your website to disable smart tags being used on it, but this puts the burden on the author, not to mention that it is a requirement for only Microsoft browsers. This should be an opt-in type thing, where you can add stuff to your web pages if you want smart tags to work with it. Of course, then the use of the feature would depend on web site authors actually wanting it, which might be unacceptable to the company pushing it.
And here is another tool:p /j brokerweb.jsp
http://extend.silverstream.com/workbench/app/js
It has an RMI-like programming environment:
- If starting with Java RMI, the rmi2soap compiler generates SOAP stubs and skeletons, and the rmi2wsdl compiler generates WSDL
- If starting from WSDL, the wsdl2java compiler generates the Java RMI interface and SOAP stubs and skeletons
- The stubs are looked up by the client using standard Java JNDI APIs
- The Java XML type mapping allows users to do custom serialization, as well as exchanging raw XML documents if required by the application
"As for SOAP, java can support that as well."
A good tool for doing this, as well as UDDI and WSDL, easily is GLUE from http://www.themindelectric.com.
Usually when I see someone demonstrating how SOAP works, they always show how the XML messages are composed and parsed. ITS JUST A PROTOCOL, just like JRMP (RMI) and CORBA. I shouldn't have to manually compose the message to send over the wire, just like I don't do this in RMI or CORBA. I should be able to call something like RMIC to build the stubs and skeletons, and make simple method calls. GLUE provides tools to do that.
I am not affiliated with the company, I just think that this is a necessary tool, and I'm glad to see it.
I just tried to click on the link and it didn't work. It will work if you go to http://www.procompetition.org and follow the link to the top story.
There is an interesting article at http://www.procompetition.org/headlines/WhitePaper 5_15.pdf that tries to paint a broader picture of Microsoft's strategy with regards to WindowsXP, Passport, MSN, HotMail, .Net, etc. Now, the organization that produced the paper is decidedly anti-MS, so you have to take it with a grain of salt. Its best to note what is supported by other material (quotes, press releases, documentation,etc), and view opinions presented with a critical eye. However, it is an very eye-opening article, and should be a must read for all those that think that MS is somehow neutered compared to 4 years ago.
And some say we never see thoughtful, erudite rhetoric on Slashdot!
No, as I recall, the license fees for Jini only kicked in when you started selling devices with Jini on them, and then it was only to the tune of $0.10 per device, or a one-time fee of $100,000 or $200,000 for those who would be selling millions of devices. These fees have recently been removed completely.
I don't know about an open source version of Jini, but I do know that there is a vendor that has built an independant version of Jini (http://www.prosyst.com), and another company that built an independant Jini Look-up server. Sun didn't squash those efforts.
I agree with Bill Venners, who was quoted in the article. Sun marketed Jini as an infrastructure that would tie together all sorts of devices. The trouble was, it is still the case that you need a lot of RAM and ROM on a node to host Jini, unless you use some sort of surrogate architecture. With arrival of the Connected Device Configuration (CDC) and the expected arrival of the RMI profile, you soon will be able to host Jini on smaller devices but it still will take 2-3 meg. of memory.
I also think that it is premature to dismiss Jini as a failure. I am seeing more and more products in the pipeline that are using Jini, and it is also seeing more use in enterprise-type applications. Did it take over the world? No. Is it being abandoned by early adopters? Again I think, no.
I think that the above post is yet another reason to not rely on a Slashdot posting for your information. There may be some gems, but the above posting has a pretty low accuracy level.
Excuse me, but this isn't the parents of the shooters that are suing, it is family members of one of the victims.
A key question here is "How much of .Net". Are they talking about just the CLR (Common Language Runtime, i.e. a Java virtual machine look-alike), or are they talking about the CLR and a subset of any .Net API's, or are they talking about CLR and the full API. Any less than the last option and all other platforms will be second class citizens in .Net.
I will be interested to see how this plays out as bad PR for AltaVista. Someone (in this case, the author of Archie) does some fundamental work that is widely deployed, then some other company tries to take credit for this work in the form of patents. We are not amused.
Actually I thought Sun did submit Java to ISO and then to ECMA, but in each case they withdrew them when they could not agree on trademark issues. I don't have a reference in front of me, so I may be wrong on whether they actually submitted, or stated an intention to submit. I do know that trademark was the major stopping point.
Also I believe that they submitted more than the language spec, which is what MS submitted with C#. I'm very skeptical whether standardizing the language will provide a usable cross-platform solution. If the API on windows is different than the API on Linux/Solaris/Mac, you need to do a port to have applications run on multiple platforms.
I am baffled over why people are so willing to believe that MS will provide a cross-platform solution. Over the years, they've always been nastiest when protecting the Windows platform and the Windows API, which ties people to that platform. When Java came out and promised WORA, MS licensed Java and then came out with a 'polluted' version (their words, not mine) of Java that targeted the Windows platform, hoping to disrupt the cross-platform capabilities of Java. And its not that they provided some hook to the underlying platform API's that is so bad, they did it in a way that violated the JVM specification. Other vendors have provided tools that allow "pure" java code to access Windows libraries and COM objects.
In addition, when Java came out, and the network computer was being touted as the wave of the future, MS was very derisive in their criticism of these technologies. Now they are touting very similar technologies as though they invented them!!!
I don't understand why anyone would take MS at face value when their past has given us so much reason not to.
"Wrong. It's a fully open standardised spec."
No, you are wrong. It has been submitted to a standards body. It has not been approved as a standard.
Why don't you check your facts before posting.
Standardizing the CLR without standardizing the libraries and API's above it is meaningless from a cross-platform standpoint. If you will not find the same API's on Windows and on the MAC or Linux, then your applications are tied to that one platform, or you must provide a portability layer for each platform. The result: applications end up existing mostly on windows, and the windows platform is strengthened by this.
Yes, it would be counter-intuitive for MS to build a cross-platform system. They have never done anything but protect windows in the past. You use the MS JVM as an example of why MS may be confidant in being able to write a fast JVM. Well, at the same time, MS tried to 'pollute' (internal MS e-mail term) java to destroy the cross-platform capabilites, by producing byte-code that not only would only run on Windows, but also only on MS's JVM. Why would you trust MS now. Warning bells should be going off!!!
In order for a JVM to be good, it must not only be fast but adhere to the JVM specification. MS' JVM did not do that. Code that was compiled with MS' extensions would only work with MS' JVM. Not only was this not cross-platform, it was not even cross-JVM. It's not like MS couldn't have lived by the rules (the specification and the contract) and provided COM integration; there are a handful of companies that produce tools to do just that. I think its clear (supported by e-mails brought up in the DOJ suit) that they were trying to produce a 'polluted' java.
As far as RMI being a mess, are you kidding? RMI makes it far easier to build distributed systems than any of the other technologies I have used (DCOM, CORBA), and its dynamic code capabilities give it a lot of flexibility and power.
You're assuming that all locations in the US do elections the same. In my area (Minneapolis, Minnesota), we also use paper ballots, mark them with a pen, and then feed it to an optical scanner which immediately determines if the ballot is valid or not. If it is not, a volunteer will request that you correct the ballot, or will ask you to fill out a new one correctly.
A comparison of the number of discarded ballots using this system and the previous system in my area are pretty dramatic; there are now an order of magnitude less errors on completed ballots.
The only blame the US system deserves here is that it leaves the selection of voting method up to local government. If the method used tends to have a high number of invalid or uncounted ballots, the blame lies with the local government.
"The state judiciary has no right to dictate the terms of a state election, especially when not asked to do so."
No, but they must come to some sort of a decision when laws are contradictory, or when a law passed by the legislator violates the state constitution. This is their job.
Lets assume that you are correct in saying that the Earth has already corrected itself in the past, in response to past 'disturbances'. Does this then imply that it will always do so in the future, no matter what the nature and magnitude of the disturbance? No it does not. Does the fact that a sports team has won every game this season mean that it will continue to win? Again, no it does not. In both examples, the inputs that determine the result are very complex, and we can in no way definitively say that we can predict behavior based on past results. Earth has never been hit by a meteor big enough to destroy it, but if astronomers observe a meteor is on a path to hit us, should we conclude that it will not because none have in the past? Of course not.
I don't believe that an environmental scientist can definitively prove their point one way or another. I'm just saying that we have to look at more than past resilience of the earth.
Even if the Earth does correct itself, the way in which it does this could be that the environment becomes so inhospitable to human life that everyone dies off and stops producing harmful gases, resulting in a return to normalcy.