JavaOne - The Take Away Messages
If you weren’t following the various Java announcements at JavaOne 2008 last week, the following discussion between Jonathan Schwartz and Rich Green gives not only a really great overview, bit also gives some visibility about the ambition that Sun’s senior management have for the “new Java”. Enjoy…
Neil Bartlett wrote:
Wow, that was painful.
Posted 13 May 2008 at 8:42 pm ¶
simon wrote:
Painful? I thought it was kinda fun… but I guess one man’s meat is another man’s poison!
Posted 13 May 2008 at 9:38 pm ¶
Mr X wrote:
Rich Green isn’t anywhere near as charismatic as Johnathan - it guess it did of the core point across - perhaps much better than the keynote but as Neil says the obviously fake interviews are a bit cringe worthy.
One of the interesting aspects of this is the realization that if you replaced one of them with a typical journalist the interview would have probably been pretty much the same - as they often discuss all the questions and answers before-hand rather than having a Paxman like battle - it’s often a requirement of getting the interview in the first place.
When Update 10 is out and widely available, when the new plugin is shipping as default, and when JavaFX ships then we will know what they have really achieved.
Sun has some really good engineering talent working on Java, JavaFX, Netbeans, Glassfish etc, including some very good recent recruits.
Despite the talk about being late in the game -
it’s actually a really good time to be writing a new graphics engine/api framework - widespread availability of programmable shaders etc is a massive change that current api’s are not easily able to take advantage of - if they are smart - and I believe they have some very smart people - they will be able to write something that’s extremely fast, feature full and yet have a much simplier basis that the current implementations of graphics libraries.
Search for Neoptica white paper for examples of this type of view.
Anyway we will see shortly…
Posted 15 May 2008 at 4:52 pm ¶
simon wrote:
Good point about timing. On the timing topic, we’re just at the start of an era when it’s realistic to have the same code run “all the screens of your life” (not crazy about that phrase but it gets the point across). And, as you say, graphics hardware on the desktop (and mobile graphics chips too, come to think of it) has gotten almost unbelievably powerful in recent years.
I know what you mean about the “in-house” interview thing, but I thought they gave a nod to knowing that it was an odd situation by making it light-hearted (e.g. when will JavaFX be on iPhone?!). I can see how some people would be turned off by that though.
I thought Jonathan Schwartz made a good interviewer; although clearly, there weren’t any tough questions. For example, I’d like to see someone press Jonathan and Rich a bit on this “Java runs on 2 billion phones” thing… and explain how JavaFX is going to eliminate the fragmentation problem. If it does, it’s going to be a truly revolutionary change…
BTW I suspect the reason that tech journalists often don’t ask tough questions, is because they don’t what the tough questions are. That’s not their fault. It’s just that given the spectrum of what they have to cover, and the small amount of time they are able to spend on any particular topic, it’s just impossible for them to do a whole lot of in-depth research.
If you listen to Podcasts like the Gillmor gang, it’s clear that the guys who are really “doing it” know the most, simply cos they’re totally emersed in their subject. So, for example, when Jason Calacanis (Mahalo CEO) is being serious (which isn’t that often - he likes to take the piss a lot!!), he demonstrates better understanding of particular topics than others on there, both from his own work and also, I guess, from networking with high-quality colleagues at Sequoia Capital.
Anyway, as you say, we will get some idea shortly… clearly, the team still have lots of work to do to get JavaFX out of the door. I think Sun has shown they have the ability to ship good-quality software, so I think that now they’re focussed on the consumer side, they will figure out how to do a great job over the coming months…
Posted 15 May 2008 at 7:12 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
The idea of being able to tear a Java application from browser to desktop was a little worrying without knowing details about what engineering principles are being used to stop it being exploited for deployment of potential malicious code. One of the advantages of the Apple iPhone App Store will be the fact that any code will get checked by Apple, security is a big concern for Apple.
Are there any new mechanisms being developed to make sure this new out-of-browser Java technology doesn’t open up new frontiers for system and OS weakness?
Posted 15 May 2008 at 9:25 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Wouldn’t want JavaFX to be the source of virus/worms/botnets/spyware for all your screens.
Will we need new options and buttons in web browsers to allow/disallow JavaFX out of the browser? Then the security settings and options to turn on/off JavaFX would need to be available and built into the OS rather then just the web browser - moving Java out of a controlled browser environment opens up a new Pandora’s box - How many years would it take for Sun to work with supported OS vendors, like MS, Linux, Mac OS X, to implement the required new security features? I don’t think Schwartz has any focus on this…
Posted 15 May 2008 at 9:38 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Think of all the problems ActiveX had, which was purely because of bad basic engineering. That problem was avoided in Java by sandboxing, but how is this going to evolve for all your screens?
Trying to go for all screens is a big mistake and will be a huge security problem..
Posted 15 May 2008 at 9:44 pm ¶
Mr X wrote:
Asam: don’t worry java application security is one of the best in the business - in fact it’s one of the roadblocks to adoption - too many warning dialogs asking you if you want to accept a certificate to let program X do action y.
I’d be surprised that the applications drag out the browser didn’t become a java webstart application - if your interested in security of those - google is your friend - I believe it’s not bad - Sun do take security very seriously - it’s one of the key strengths of the java platform.
I don’t think JavaFX and Apple are really competing at this point. If JavaFX is successful as Sun hope, then lack of support on the iPhone will damage sales in the enterprise where there is often a long tail of custom applications specific to the enterprise that are simply too numerous to clone, but in each individual case is killer for that business.
If that ever becomes an issue for apple it would be an easy step for them to support JavaFX - it’s suppose to open source after all.
Sun’s strategy isn’t to own the market it’s to make sure that no-one else does and locks everyone else out. I’m sure you don’t want to see a Windows like monopoly in the phone space.
If Apple can keep innovating in the hardware space - ie if some of those cool patents every make it to product - then their position in the phone market is assured and will continue to grow apace.
Posted 15 May 2008 at 10:24 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
You’re right, JavaFX is in no shape or form any threat to iPhone as it is, that would need JavaFX on LiMo to tackle all the fragmentation problems. Since Apple maintains Java development for Mac OS X, it’s very easy for Apple to add Java support to iPhone anytime it wanted to, there is just no need at the moment. If however JavaFX gains dominance in the mobile RIA space, in some years, it can be added.
In the broader RIA space, JavaFX would be at a distinct advantage over Silverlight and Flash if it is both the most open, and also the most secure. Microsoft and Adobe have an existing image problem worldwide and Sun would be in a good position to manipulate this to it’s advantage….
Posted 16 May 2008 at 12:39 am ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
“We will also be discussing the attack surface exposed by the large media codec stacks contained in each of these platforms. Our targeted platforms include Adobe AIR, Microsoft Silverlight, Google Gears, JavaFX, and Mozilla Prism. At this talk, we will be releasing tools for testing the codec security of these platforms as well as sample malicious code demonstrating the danger of RIA applications.”
http://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-usa-08/bh-usa-08-speakers.html#Muniz
Posted 16 May 2008 at 9:56 pm ¶
simon wrote:
Clearly, some platforms are going to be more or less secure than others. However, no matter what the security problems turn out to be, I don’t think RIAs are going to go away. They’re going to be a massive part of the future of the Web. To quote the first line of the abstract you linked to - “Rich Internet Applications (RIA) represent the next generation of the Web.”
The questions are: which RIA platforms are going to be the key players; and which devices will be able to access the next gen web.
Posted 16 May 2008 at 11:06 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Simon, sure, security will not be an issue for consumers unless you start getting the kind of problems Microsoft has been having with Windows for the last decade. This has been a significant reason for the adoption of Mac OS X for many ’switchers’.
Privacy will be a huge issue with consumers, as the Phorm episode has shown, in which case Sun needs to be very careful with it’s plans for Insight and Hydrazine.
Posted 17 May 2008 at 3:33 pm ¶
simon wrote:
You’re right that privacy is going to be a big issue. The people that were running the Phorm project were monumentally stupid; but it just shows that stupid people get put in charge of these kind of projects at large corporations.
I’d expect the instrumentation Sun is planning for the FX runtime to properly anonymise the information flow from device to the cloud in Project Insight. However, as you suggest, making sure consumers are properly and elegantly informed of what’s going on is going to be the big challenge.
As Mr X alluded to, Sun have a habbit of popping up really ugly dialogue boxes showing cryptic, jargon-ridden messages that consumers have no hope of understanding; and therefore no way of making a good decision on whether to click “Yes” or “No.” I think they need to be really careful not to mess this up.
Posted 17 May 2008 at 4:07 pm ¶