How easy would it be for someone else to make an OpenJDK build with Windows installer and auto-updater, but no crapware?
Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java
141–150 of 157 posts
Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
I didn't say it was false, I said it was FUD. FUD isn't necessarily untrue, merely overblown and overhyped.
I'm certain that the apps that have "tracked my GPS history" have done so with my consent and knowledge.
I use Google Play for my music, so there's no doubt that my playlist and playcounts are on someone else's server somewhere. I also know that at least one Google engineer has seen my playlists because I had to ask for help with an issue with the service before surrounding tag edits.
"Looked at who I have in my address book" - sure. I use an Android device so all of my contacts are backed up on a Google server. I somehow doubt that anybody is rifling through that information.
My response to all of the above is "So what"?
There are APIs to pull that information, but they require my consent to do so (the permissions before apps are downloaded, and those can be restricted anyways with the aid of something like LBE Privacy Guard).
Malware and apps that surreptitiously access this data are rare.
Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Nobody's talking about the browser plugin.
If you're talking about Java, you're talking about the browser plugin. It all executes on the same VM.
You can't simply declare it off limits given the massive and repeated security issues surrounding it, combined with its ubiquity (especially for countries not ending in "America" - Clientside java is very popular in European banks.)
Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Then stop running it in the browser. Do you have any idea how ubiquitous java is in the enterprise? Everywhere uses java. Have you ever worked on anything that needs to be scalable, extensible and maintainable?
Everywhere used Flash, and look at where that's going. Ubiquity is not a valid response to "this sucks, we should start thinking of better ideas".
Scalability, maintainability, and extensibility are not unique to Java.
Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody's talking about the browser plugin. That just adds noise to the conversation.
> Nobody's talking about the browser plugin. If you're talking about Java, you're talking about the browser plugin. It all executes on the same VM. You can't simply declare it off limits given the massive and repeated security issues surrounding it, combined with its ubiquity (especially for countries not ending in "America" - Clientside java is very popular in European banks.)
> If you're talking about Java, you're talking about the browser plugin. It all executes on the same VM.
I can't see how this makes any more sense than "If you're talking about Visual Studio, you're talking about Mac OS X. It all executes on the same processor." Yes, they both share the same underlying technology, but they are hardly indistiguishable — you can certainly talk about one without addressing the other. You could delete the browser plugin from every computer on the planet and it wouldn't make normal Java apps work any better or worse. The plugin depends on the Java platform, but the Java platform is not in any way dependent on the plugin.
> You can't simply declare it off limits given the massive and repeated security issues surrounding it
I'm not declaring it "off-limits" — I'm suggesting that it is irrelevant to the discussion here. Yes, there are security issues with it, but since nobody here is saying "I think the Java browser plugin is a boss idea," you're either arguing with nobody or trying to denigrate the JVM as a client and server technology based on the fact that it isn't suitable for embedding in a browser. I can't see any way that the Java plugin is really relevant. Similarly, if I went and wrote a terrible plugin to allow Ruby "applets," bringing up that plugin as a criticism of Ruby in other contexts would not be productive.
Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Cross-platform development is in a better place now than it was when Java first tried to tackle that challenge.
I'm not a huge fan of maintaining installed software, though -- if you have a silent auto-updater, that's not bad, but otherwise you're going to be either annoying people with frequent updates, or supporting (often accidentally) scores of old versions all the time.
What else is there besides Java that can run in the browser and do audio recording, MIDI input, realtime audio DSP, etc.? Obviously not everyone wants fancy audio capabilities in the browser, but I imagine there are plenty of other "niche" capabilities that other people need that are impossible in the browser w/o Java.
I do get a sense now that we're going to see the Java security hole largely closed (thanks to browser limitations and Oracle fixes), but the damage has certainly been done.
Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the time Sun just used it to advertise OpenOffice which was their own product. Does anyone remember if Sun at any time bundled adware or other forms of crapware, esp. using deceptive tactics?
Sun Java included either the Google or Yahoo browser toolbar, and IIRC it prompted you about an antivirus program for a while.
Thanks. I was obviously looking at Sun through rose colored shades
Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java
#148Earlier 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…
Clojure runs on .NET AFAIK.
Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's supposed to sell Windows licenses.
I don't think it's fair to say that .net is very effective in selling windows licences when mono can run CLR programs on more platforms than java can.
Despite the existence of mono, the vast majority of .net code runs on Windows machines.
Re: Petition: Stop bundling crapware with Java
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that the OpenJDK has problems with graphical toolkits, specifically Swing. Intellij (Java IDE with a lot of Swing) runs a lot worse under the OpenJDK than under the Sun's JVM. I might be wrong, but I don't think this has changed recently.
For a while, using OpenJDK was the only way to get proper font smoothing on Linux in IntelliJ. It doesn't display any warnings anymore and works fine with OpenJDK now.
"proper"? Teach me your magic, my Java IDEs still stand out like sore thumbs compared to ST2/gedit/vim/etc.