A Java fix

Thieved in-toto from Nobody's Listening.

Sun Microsystems Can Kiss My Big Ol’ White Butt

Java. What the fuck is it for? Does anyone know - or care - any more? I remember it was the absolute pinnacle of the tech zeitgeist around 10 years back, when it promised to be a utopia of write-once-run-anywhere programming and cubicles were packed with dickheads pulling down £8999k p.a. because they understood those big diagrams that people used to draw to explain what Java did… but now?

Now it sits there on my hard drive glowering resentfully because no-one uses it any more - the ginger-haired stepchild of programming languages (or whatever the fuck it is).

I can handle that - I don’t use HongKong RAMfucker or PornLocator any more; but at least they have the decency to sit there quietly in the background until the day that I need to fuck my RAM or locate some porn.

What I can’t handle is Java’s constant crying out for my attention… update me… please! Every single bastard day that little system tray bubble comes up, winking at me cheerily to remind me there’s another Java update. So for days I dutifully close it and yet, the very next day, there it is again.. taunting me. Look: I didn’t update you yesterday. Or the day before. Or the day before that. Please take the fucking hint - no-one likes you any more. Imagine if your girlfriend behaved like that!

And then, eventually, I concede defeat and download it just to get that fucking message out of the way. Only its not an ‘update’ in the sense of “here’s a couple of megsworth of patches and files” but a full 23323327Gb download of the entire fucking thing that slows everything down to a crawl and puts a big fat install dialogue up in my grill for what seems to be a week, reminding me of all the pointless crap Java ‘enables’ me to do.

And then, when you’ve done all that and your heartrate has returned to normal levels, you find some gimcrack, cobbled-together piece of toss on the internets that does actually use Java to do something - usually something completely fucking gay like add an animated reflection to a picture of the Taj Mahal - and the fucking thing still isn’t right. Sometimes you get a message saying that the version you’ve got is too fucking new!

And to add insult to fucking injury every one of these damn Java applets in the world has to tell me that it’s using Java before it loads. Imagine popping a CD into the tray and having Brian Blessed announce that you are using CD Technology. Actually - that would be pretty fucking awesome. So imagine instead opening your sandwich box to be greeted with a cheery “you’re eating Kingsmill bread!” The world would grind to a halt as people flung sandwiches out of the window in pulsating, red-faced rage, making pavements impassable and putting Dairylea out of business. That’s what “this is a Java application” messages do to the internets.

Java is a big bunch of balls, and Sun Microsystems are a big bunch of ball washers. Fact.

HT to Obnoxio.