Sun kills Java tools, tests Solaris 8

The hastening decline of the Java threat was never seen more clearly than this week when Sun Microsystems announced that it was pulling the plug on its Java Workshop and Java Studio development tools. You know it's a bad sign when the creator of a programming language kills its own programming environments for that language, but Sun is putting a positive spin on it: The company says it plans to purchase a competing Java toolkit from an as-yet unnamed source.

In a semi-related note, Sun has begun beta testing the next version of its UNIX operating system, Solaris 8. Designed for both the Intel x86 and Sun SPARC platforms, Solaris 8 will include simpler administration tools and other new features