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Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java

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131–140 of 157 posts

Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hear, hear. Oracle has the right to bundle whatever crap-ware they want. If that sullies their reputation or draws out alternatives, that's a good thing.

Can we just wait until real alternatives exist before letting client-side Java completely self-destruct? My problem is that as of now, they don't.

You mean besides Python, .Net and a host of other runtime environments that are cross platform and run with minimal effort without being distributed with shovel-ware? As for .Net, I've found Mono to be pretty easy to target for as a cross-platform runtime. The browser plugin has itself now surpassed Flash and Acrobat as a consistent exploit point and security weakness... On that front, quite a number of browsers can accomplish most of what Java is and has been used for in the browser with JS.

Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java

#132
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because you decry someone for living in a bubble but then proceed to inflate your own. Yeah, the JVM is great, but not everything that fails to live up to its incredible success is "unproven".

That may be the case but Mono still isn't proven as much as the JVM is.

If you want "proven" you should probably be using NodeJS then... not for GUI apps, but for headless apps and services... since it's core engine is V8, which runs on nearly a third of the desktops out there with far more regular use than Java. And the language JS, with more developers using it than just about every other language combined.

This is kind of tongue in cheek, but seriously... NodeJS is relatively new (since 2009) and it's gained a LOT of traction... it isn't the perfect solution, but then again nothing is. I like Mono and have used it, they've worked through a lot of the earlier issues, and it's pretty decent at this point... IIRC it's the core of the Unity tools, as well as having Xamarin tools available to support the majority of mobile platforms.

Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java

#133

This petition is complaining about the neighbor on your left letting his dog crap in your yard, when the neighbor on the right is running a meth lab. We are carrying around phones filled with spyware to track what we listen to, watch and read an where we do it. How hard is it to discern even our sleep habits? We put them on the charger beside the bed at night and tune in to Pandora. If our phones can't tell if we're…

>We are carrying around phones filled with spyware to track what we listen to, watch and read an where we do it. That's some great FUD. In fact I think I've heard it somewhere before.. Isn't this the reason that RMS refuses to carry a phone?

Are you seriously believing nobody (be it a random app or your phone seller) has ever tracked your GPS history, looked at your media player library (which includes play counts), looked at who you have in your addressbook, etc ? Yet there are (or were) APIs to do all these..

You can care about it or not, but saying it's false is kinda bold.

Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java

#134
post #62
post #16

Go to http://www.ninite.com and get the Java installer from there. It's malware-free and streamlined.

But does it solve the annoying java updater problem?

If you're talking about those pop-ups users get on new versions our Pro version can turn those off: http://ninite.com/help/features/disableautoupdate.html

Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java

#135
post #16

Go to http://www.ninite.com and get the Java installer from there. It's malware-free and streamlined.

Only if you implicitly trust ninite.

We're good guys, it's OK. :)

Seriously though, we'd lose all our Ninite Pro customers if we pulled any crap with our installations. Since the free version is our marketing department we'd be idiots to mess that up too.

Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard good things about .net from Windows-only developers, but I haven't heard much from developers on other platforms. Seems to me developers who aren't on Windows end up as second class citizens. Is there anyone here with experience developing for Mono on Linux and Mac? What's it like in reality?

It's not as good as it is on Windows, simply because of Visual Studio (let alone Visual Studio plus ReSharper). I must admit, it's enough of a productivity improver that even on my Mac I prefer to do most my hacking in VS running under VMWare. But that's not really anything against MonoDevelop, it's just that lately Visual Studio's gotten so good that it's really hard to resist using it if you already own a copy. Com…

I definitely agree about VS. Microsoft got a bunch of heat for VS2012, but it's been their best release yet. Their IntelliSense support for C# is unmatched by any other language-IDE pairing I've used.

That said, I've used MonoDevelop in Windows and OS X and it works pretty damn well. The Mono project has done a great job mirroring the .NET API and runtime.

Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine. Ordinary people never really realized how irritating Adobe was being about Flash, either, but that wasn't really a big deal because it was ultimately Flash's poor reputation among techies that brought it down. Similarly, I think Java's worst nightmare scenario wouldn't be end users deciding they don't like it. (Heck, like with Flash most of them don't even know when they're using it.) It would be some ma…

>it was ultimately Flash's poor reputation among techies that brought it down. Sorry, but techie's opinions are overrated. iOS and mobile video brought Flash down a few notches, not us.

I've heard that Steve Jobs hated Flash (or Adobe). Whatever his reasons were, a techie's opinion maybe did help bring Flash down a few notches.

Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java

#138
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here we go again, another Java hater for no reason. What should we replace it with? someCrap.js? someOtherCrap.py? You really have no idea what you're talking about. Killing Java would be a ridiculous thing to do. You live in such a bubble.

I'd vote for replacing it with Mono. Modern VM design, vastly superior flagship language, pretty solid on the side languages* too, better platform support (Thanks Xamarin!), and best yet it's Free. Like really Free, not Oracle-style "Here's the source code so you can maybe hack on our implementation a bit but if you try doing anything we don't like we'll sue your ass" 'free'. * Not really a great Lisp for the platfor…

Isn't Mono way slower than the JVM or has every benchmark I've ever seen been lying to me?

(And also, doesn't Mono just replace the hypothetical threat of a lawsuit from Oracle with the hypothetical threat of a lawsuit from Microsoft?)

Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java

#139
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here we go again, another Java hater for no reason. What should we replace it with? someCrap.js? someOtherCrap.py? You really have no idea what you're talking about. Killing Java would be a ridiculous thing to do. You live in such a bubble.

No reason? I'd say their ham-handed approach to security and their contentment to sit with their thumbs up their arses, while vulnerabilities whose magnitude compare favorably with the US national debt are being exploited widely is more than enough reason to hate Java. At least Microsoft has the good sense to issue OOB patches when something serious enough comes up! The current state of Java means that running the br…

Nobody's talking about the browser plugin. That just adds noise to the conversation.

Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Oracle is (or was planning on) making heaps of money out of Java for business. Client-side Java seems like less than a portion of their plan to start with (anyone who mentions JavaFX here gets banned from the internet) - I mean, start with hiring a designer for the download page. This disrespect to users is exactly why they're treating it that way. If it's not that important to them, might as well import…

Agreed, I'm a big fan of Java and have written client software with it but the annoyances are rapidly beginning to outweigh the benefits. Bad press, awful UI support on OS X, Web Start's seeming disappearing/reappearing act... What's the point anymore?

What do you like instead? AFAIK there really isn't any good cross-platform client software development environment, particularly if you care about the Mac. My impression is that Java is no more or less crap than everything else.
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