Whether there is a trail or not depends on atmospheric conditions - if relative humidity is high, there is likely to be a trail no matter what, but if humidity is low, there might be no trails if it is not a smoky engine.

Either Slashdot is full of trolls, or there is an extraordinary dearth of knowledge about Java on Slashdot. So much FUD....every... time.

If you are super worried about the performance of one particular algorithm you need to implement, by all means implement in C. If you have an application that actually does lots of stuff, use Java - it's likely to perform better than what you could create in C or C++ in the same time. And it will be much easier to support.

Generally, to write performant code in Java, don't try to write C++ and bitch about the fact that Java isn't C++; write good Java, let the JIT compiler do it's thing and go to the pub on a friday night instead.

I think gp was referring to the dystopic aspect of the book - I'm not sure that totalitarianism combined with the ubiquitous use of technology been seen in any countries yet, although East Germany certainly came close, for a while.

Although many aspects of the book can be found in different places and different times around the globe, it is the sum of the parts that makes it so dystopic, and hopefully still futuristic.

Somehow I get the feeling that somebody failed their English Literature exam, and is just a little bit bitter about it? :o)

I use NemId to login to my bank accounts - Nordea et al., as well as the tax authorities and any government website you choose to log in to.

They all use Java, and I am fine with that.

Can you try to summarize in a paragraph what QED tells us about the world?

For those that are having trouble remembering....
http://content9.flixster.com/question/66/71/32/6671327_std.jpg

Please, please, purr...lease... For God's sake keep the double polaroids to yourself.

This point of view smacks of "if we just worked a bit harder/longer we'll be able to build a perfectly secure system".

It aint gonna happen. Not for a system as sprawling as the internet, not for a system with as complex requirements as an operating system.

The more you know about security, the easier it seems to do what is required to improve security - but you have to have very tight control of platforms to be able to follow through on implementing that security. And tight control prevents innovation. Often, security reduces the usefulness of a product.

Convincing everyone in the IT world that they need to spend $ on educating developers and implementing security features is an insurmountable task - and even if you manage it, you still won't be done, because the security issues we understand now and have fixes for are only a subset of all security issues. New types of holes will be found continuously.

Of course, end user training might still be a waste of money - I can't deny that.

But at the same time, they're monetizing the installer with crapware. Oracle must be a hornets nest of pointy-haired bosses. It seems clear that they have had it too easy for too long with their database cash-cow.

I would strongly disagree with your assessment that Java desktop apps are slow. I have been involved with writing three SWT apps that were very fast (admittedly, they weren't doing supercomputer work, but that's not the issue here).

I also coded on them with Intellij Idea, which is written in Java and lightning fast for what it achieves.

I can only conclude that the Java apps you have seen must be inferior, or just Eclipse.

He's on first.

Sorry to burst your bubble of gas, but German scientists have already proved that you can supply a power grid with _only_ renewable energy - wind, solar and biogas.

(O.k. - so I just swapped your bubble with a biogas bubble.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR8gEMpzos4

I don't know what horse-faeces you've been fed, but the Danes have made it pay pretty darn well - in fact we have pretty much saturated our home market for wind turbines. This causes issues with "too much success" - when the wind really blows and energy requirements are low, they have to sell the energy abroad at knock-down prices. But most of the time, wind power provides 20% of Denmark's electricity.

So quote your sources or go away.....

And of course the global environmental factor is of no importance?

Java is new in the Real Time space, it is true. Real-time, low memory footprint behaviour has never been a goal for core Java. So your comment makes you seem foolish. ("The iPhone is crap because it still won't brew my coffee, unlike this coffee machine over here!!")

If you want to spend your life reinventing the garbage collection wheel, you are welcome. I have been informed that any sizeable c++ app needs some sort of garbage collection algorithm.... I don't have enough c++ experience to factcheck that. If it is true, then I would certainly trust the guys at Sun, Ibm etc to do it better than anyone in any given enterprise.

Java is for people who want to get work done and still have a life at the end of the day. Java is focussed at business applications, but Java can do a lot of things very well nowadays - most of the mud thrown at Java was true a decade ago, but is no longer true at all.

Real time java is on the way, though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_time_Java

I'm amazed that americans aren't up in arms - isn't USA built on the principles of the free market - supply and demand - beating the competition by producing better products and/or delivering them to the market more effectively?

This sounds like corruption, nothing else. Paying customers to stay away from the competition? Are you kidding me? This is why I try to boycott Microsoft every time I can.