
Those same developers figured out how to make complex, interactive Web pages without using Java or any other plug-in software. Java's promise of cross-platform compatibility - "write once, run anywhere," as Sun's pitch went - didn't pan out either, leading to Web developers joking about "write once, debug everywhere" and shying away from the software.

Back then, the idea was to make the Web more than a way to display words and pictures you could instead embed a small Java program in a page, and anybody with Sun's Java virtual-machine software installed could run that "applet."īut three funny things happened along the way to that future. This is not what people, myself included, hoped when Sun Microsystems released the first versions of Java in the mid-1990s.

Six days after the discovery of a severe vulnerability led Oracle to rush out a patch, on Wednesday security writer Brian Krebs reported a different such "zero-day exploit" that could be used to attack this widely-deployed program.

Question: If Java is so vulnerable, why is it on our browsers as an option, and what does it do anyway? If it is "disabled," what can my computer not do?Īnswer: Once again, Oracle's Java software is in the news as a hazard to your Mac or PC.
