Stardate 20010718.1307 (On Screen): Many people are
waxing lyrical about Microsoft's decision to not include their Java virtual machine (not officially called that) in the release version of WinXP, but there's really less to this story than meets the eye. Java will become the same as Flash or PDF: the first time you encounter it, you'll be asked if you want to download a plugin, you'll say "yes", it will be installed, and then you'll never have a problem again. In any case, I don't recall the last site I saw which actually used Java for anything important. Java never found a home as a means of running substantive apps on client machines; its home now is on the server and that won't be affected by this in any important way. It's true that this is a brilliant move by Microsoft, for they have caused an enormous whirl-wind of anti-Java fear by changing their JVM from being available to being available.
(discuss)Update: Just to clarify, they've changed it from being available on the install CD to being available by download from Microsoft's update server.
