Microsoft enlists developers in security push

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Got it a little wrong.

First of all, you seem to think that the concept of the virtual machine came along with Java. Not quite. VM's have been around a while, and actually Java borrowed a lot from Smalltalk which predates Java by about 15 years. So, yes Microsoft borrowed from Java, which borrowed from Smalltalk. The VM is a very fundamental concept in computing, so to see Microsoft implement the idea isn't stealing in any way.

In fact, the one thing that Microsoft did add to their Framework or VM, is language independence along with OS independance. Yes, the Framework can run on Linux (Mono project), but Microsoft unfortunately is only intrested in Windows implementations at the moment.

All VMs hook into there base OS, otherwise, how would they run on the OS! And .Net DOES provide a "sandbox" similar to Java. Native code will NOT run unless is explicity made to run on a given .NET assembly.

To sum it up though, whatever you want to call it, a Virtual Machine, or a Framework, its just an abstraction that programmers have used for years. There's not way that Microsoft could get sued by Sun for calling a VM if they wanted, but I'm sure they didn't want the Java comparison.

The bottom line is however, that VM's do provide a layer of abstraction for software that has many benefits, and yes, Sun starting doing it before Microsoft. However, neither Sun or Microsoft invented the idea.

P.S. You really don't understand .Net at all if you think it has ANYTHING to so with ActiveX/COM technology. It doesn't. In fact, in order to even interoperate with ActiveX/COM technology requires a wrapping layer in a .Net application, similar to wrapping that you have to do with JNI.

Posted by: Heatlesssun   Posted on: 02/29/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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