Word: java
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...name was a problem: it couldn't be protected by trademark because hundreds of companies had already used it. In the end, Sun decided that the best thing it could do for Oak was to give it a new name and give it away. So Sun called it Java--a slang term for coffee that dates back to the days when the best brews came from Indonesia, not Seattle--and made it available, free of charge, on the Internet...
Seven months later, to everybody's surprise--including Sun's--Java is the hottest thing in cyberspace. More than 100,000 copies have been downloaded by software developers eager to try out the new language, which promises to make sending programs across a computer network as easy as sending E-mail or pictures. Hundreds of little Java applications (dubbed "applets") have started to pop up on the World Wide Web, the multimedia portion of the Internet. One site lists more than 700 working Java applets--each only a mouse click away--that generate everything from small dancing cartoon figures...
...Java is more than a way to spice up the pages of the World Wide Web. The news tickers and dancing cartoons are just the most visible signs of a deeper, more profound change. Although today Java matters only to programmers, it could in the next few years shift the balance of power in the entire computer industry, changing not only the cost and shape of the machines on our desktops but also our very concept of what a computer should...
...With Java, data and programs--the twin staples of computing--don't have to be stored on your computer anymore. They can reside anywhere on the Internet, called up by whoever needs them, whenever they need them. It's a development that could finally make true Sun's original and hitherto cryptic slogan: The Network Is the Computer. "There's a paradigm shift every 10 or 15 years," says Marc Andreessen, a Web pioneer and co-founder of Netscape Communications. "And we're in one right...
...Java is the way it will run with equal ease on a variety of computer operating systems: Microsoft's Windows 95, Apple's Macintosh and various flavors of Unix. Java carves out what Sun calls a "virtual Java machine" within the software of each of these computer systems, thus getting around an irksome problem that has bedeviled programmers and users since the dawn of the computer age: incompatibility. Incompatibility is the reason that a program written for, say, a Windows machine won't run on a Mac, and vice versa. "Java really levels the playing field," says Scott McNealy, chairman...