Chung-chieh Shan (kens) on Wed, 7 Aug 96 02:52
PDT wrote:
>>"Java is very safe, ActiveX is not."
>Ha. I thought the Princeton people have taught us
better.
Java security may not be perfect but at least it attempts to protect the system. ActiveX has no security features whatsoever. None. Nada. Zip. Feel like taking random bits of executable code from questionable sources off of the net and running them on your machine without any restrictions? Go for ActiveX.
Meanwhile every sysadmin I know is avoiding ActiveX like the plague but implementing Java as fast as possible. Despite Java's security problems, none of the problems has been conceptual per se, and bug fixes should resolve known problems. No security system is perfect... at least Java makes it difficult at best to do anything harmful. ActiveX will quite happily erase your hard disk or steal your data if it's told to, and that I'm just not willing to risk. One wonders how ActiveX is supposed to catch on when sysadmins won't allow it on their systems.
Furthermore, if I want to develop for ActiveX, I have to buy all sorts of Microsoft sofware (and somehow the MS stuff I've had never works right) and develop separate binaries for every platform. For Java, the development kit is free and one compilation takes care of all platforms. Why would I want to use anything else?
I'm not at all happy with Netscape's quality control but at least I don't have to live in fear that looking at a page with their browser will erase my hard disk, and at least their major technologies are something approximating standard.
![]() | ![]() |
![]() |