Java One Day One: Blu-Ray

So what happens is, Sun saves up all its good news for months & months, and crams most of it into an opening two-hour barrage at Java One. It’s pretty impressive, and so are the audio-visuals, with opening high-intensity cyberelectromoodjazz from a band whose name I can’t find but featuring Paul Horn. Anyhow, news: BigIBMDeal, GlassFish, ReallyFastWorkstation, NewJavaNames, and there’s more. The one that I hadn’t known about and was a real surprise was the news that Blu-Ray players are going to come Java-enabled. This is surprising, but obvious when you think about it; along with your HD movie you can put a few classfiles on the disk to do menus and updates and special-effects and, well, just about anything. For those who don’t know, there’s this ferocious multi-year battle that’s been going on for years between two rival camps who want to produce the next-gen DVD: Blu-ray and HD-DVD. It has nothing much to do with technology, it has to do with collecting per-disk patent royalties like the ones Phillips gets for every CD. The Java move might be significant in this big complicated chess game.