DaveNet: Monday, June 23, 1997; by Dave Winer.

Cornelius Willis On Java

Cornelius Willis, cwillis@microsoft.com, is Microsoft's Director of Platform Marketing. He says, in response to 800 Words on Java from earlier today:

Before signing the check, every VC who is considering making a placement in a Java company should be required to:

• Run Corel Office for Java on Windows 3.1 for 15 minutes;

• Explain how to do [array arithmetic, bitmap operations, multimedia or any other large-scale data operations] efficiently without the use of pointers;

• Explain what Sun's business model for Java is (other than to distract the media from realizing that the minicomputer is roadkill);

• Make *any* substantial Java app run on a Linux box;

• Explain why Sun broke compatibility between JDK 1.2 and 1.1;

• Explain which JDK to support: the 1.02 that Netscape supports in Communicator, the 1.1 that Microsoft supports in IE 4.0, or the 1.2 that Sun will ship later this year?