From my perspective, the biggest win of Java isn't the security,
though that's certainly important. It's that it's a reasonably powerful virtual machine that doesn't need to run on Microsoft operating systems, though it can (except Win3.1, of course.) That means that decent small application software can be written that doesn't have to be locked into the far less secure/reliable DOS/Windows/95 architectures, and can run on Macs and Linux and Unix, a bit slowly, but with a lot less baggage. (Maybe 16-bit code is gone from NT 4.0, but it's not going to run on 386s!?!) Yes, you may want to be careful with code that autoloads from web pages, but you don't have to be quite as paranoid with Java from ftp sites as you did with MS binaries, and you can be more comfortable with applets like word processors and data-crunchers knowing they won't be doing all the "helpful" things MSOffice likes to help you with. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, stewarts@ix.netcom.com, +1-415-442-2215