The dangers of Java

[Mike ODELL]

the exploit may well be real. I would hardly bet against it.

the comments about the obsolescence of Java, however, are utterly absurd.
it is quite likely more lines of non-OS application production code 
are written in Java than any other programming language ever invented.
the vast majority of it is "server-side" code.

Note that JavaScript (unrelated to Java except for marketing purposes)
is very likely just as bad, and since HTLM5 is Turing-complete,
I can promise you we have not even begun to see what "ugly"
looks like.

when all this was conceived many years ago, the thought of 
downloading code from the net and blindly executing it as a matter of course
scared the wholly whizz out of anyone with a clue. a lot of conversations 
at the time started with "I can't believe they really are that incredibly stupid!"
unfortunately there is no "Internet minimum required clue density"
requirement which could prevent the popularization of catastrophically 
stooooopeeeeeed ideas. so people fell in love with it and the rest is just
the radioactive chickens coming home to roost.

note that the designer of Java, James Gosling, is one of the finest minds
to ever flip a bit, and if James had this much trouble getting it really solid,
there is no hope for mere mortals. the algorithmic safety checker in the JVM
comes disconcertingly close to require solving "The Halting Problem"
and since that induces an irreconcilable logical contradiction, it isn't hard
to imagine that there is some mighty thin ice just waiting to give way.

the big question in my mind is how bad The Internet will have to break before
people concede it's well past "time to throw one away" and get the architecture
right so the implementation might have a prayer of a chance of working.
and if it breaks that badly, will the global economy survive the blast with enough
resources available to actually do it?

     - mo





Sent from my iPad so please excuse the jammy fingers.

On Oct 8, 2012, at 10:56 AM, Andre Kesteloot <andre.kesteloot at verizon.net> wrote:

> http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2012/09/26/1-billion-computers-at-risk-from-java-exploit/?intcmp=trending 
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