From: Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Apr 1996 07:28:02 -0700 (PDT)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re:  NYT on MS Java, Net Radio
Message-ID: <199604251426.HAA05778@jobe.shell.portal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


From: John Young <jya@pipeline.com>
> "Edge for Sun as Microsoft Embraces Java."
> 
> By John Markoff
> 
>      http://www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/0425license.html

>From the article:

> SAN FRANCISCO -- Sun Microsystems Inc., already a stock-market favorite
> on the strength of its Internet products, has secured a significant
> endorsement from Microsoft Corp., which plans to announce next week
> that it will incorporate Sun's Java software programming language into
> the Microsoft Windows 95 personal computer operating system.

> The companies would not comment, but industry executives said
> Microsoft, whose Windows operating system is used on some 80 percent of
> the world's PCs, will join IBM and Novell, among other companies, in
> announcing plans to embed Java into their software operating systems.

> Those moves, and the possibility of a similar endorsement by Apple
> Computer Inc., should go a long way toward making Java an industry
> software standard in the rapidly expanding Internet market.

In other Java news, the report from the Princeton scientists who have
found many security weaknesses in Java is now available at <URL:
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/sip/pub/secure96.html >.  It is very critical
of the language design and implementation.  I don't fully agree with the
thrust of their criticisms, because I don't think provability is a
practical matter with programs complex enough to be useful.  But they
have certainly identified an alarming number of problems.  I will post
later today a list of the issues they have identified.

Hal