Glad to see the .netters have the same problem. I think it’s time we started some big campaign to get the JRE modularised, before we all get too old to code any more.
Cas 
Yes, luckily Java has been working on this space for 5+ years now.
Unfortunately it just gets bigger and more bloated with every new release.
Can we set up some kind of lobby or petition to get this situation sorted?
Cas
[quote]Unfortunately it just gets bigger and more bloated with every new release.
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As do operating systems, applications, games, tools, pictures, videos, sounds, drivers, and even newer MAME games.
Broadband internet connections increase even faster.
My phone company just offered for my 768/128 kbps A-DSL connection an upgrade option to 1500/384 kbps for a few Euros more… I’m living on the country, not in a (big) city.
This is nice, but can’t compete with typical Japanese and Korean internet users who have even higher uploads than my download rate is. Also they’re Linux and Java friendly and don’t like the Xbox (hark hark)… Will this be the Java market of tomorrow?
Regardless of the numbers that get shouted about, broadband is definatly not the norm here in the Uk, and doesn’t look likely to be for at least a couple of years (and even then its going to be pretty narrow).
The setup, costs and hastle just arn’t worth it for the avarage person (whether true or not, thats the attitude). Getting Ntl or whoever to actually come round to a house to install the acess points is a long, tedious process. And typically they can only turn up during working hours. Compare that to setting up a modem account where you can just bung in a cd, answer a few questions and be done.
Amazingly enough, here in Brazil the broadband scenario really cought up!!
A few years ago there was a boom in the broadband industry, and now we have all kinds of technology and companies competing, from cable to ADSL. Of course, it is still a bit expensive…
On the JRE size, I couldn’t agree more. Even with broadband, I don’t like the idea of having users download dozens of MB where a couple would probablu sufice.
This was my two cents (or dois centavos, if you are local :))
hehe the jre is actually shrinking 
jre1.4.2_03 14 872 Kb
jre1.5 b1 14 107 Kb
!? Not the one I just installed!
Cas
Then you must have installed the bloatware special edition, I downloaded it again to be sure, same size. ;D
Doesn’t matter, it’s still too big.
The JRE I, ahem, embed in AF at the moment is only 3MB :S
Cas
[quote]The JRE I, ahem, embed in AF at the moment is only 3MB :S
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Out of my complete ignorance on the subject I ask: is this legal??
Short answer… no. I don’t have to embed it, I already paid £500 for JET, which is both faster and smaller. But I just wanted to prove that it can be done The tiny volumes of AF involved don’t, er, hurt Sun financially in any conceivable way, but they do make for quite a showcase of embedded VMs solving day-to-day developers’ problems.
Cas
[quote]http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/PleaseLinker.html
[/quote]
Even if you have a linker as described, the OS is still being updated underneath you on a regular basis, so what is the difference. Largely it is a matter of better quality control at the OS level (although Windows users may beg to differ ). I certainly use applications which although fully linked, display at least cosmetic defects after the system is upgraded to XP.
So an alternative is to just eliminate regressions in new versions of Java ! OK that is wishful thinking but we could at least hope that the number of deliberate changes (mostly in Swing behaviour) will reduce substantially as the software becomes more mature.
sun added too many packages ( like Swing ) to the base ( minimum ) java runtime.
v1.1.8 is only 2MB big !, it would be the perfect size for a minimum base java package, additional modules like Swing can be downloaded and added later by the user.
Maybe in v1.7 sun adds JMF to the java base packages and we have a 20MB download.
There are 2 solutions for this problem
A.) Buy Microsoft and add java to XP ( and rule the world ) ;D
B.) Sign a petition and pray ( PnP == Program and Pray )