From its earliest beginnings, Java was supposed to be the language that Sun would use to become an integral part of the Internet. And it did end up working that way — though in the end, Java turned out to be the language that did much of the grunt work behind Web-based applications. This is quite different from the original vision, in which Java would enable desktop-quality applications over the network in the form of applets that either executed inside browsers or on their own. But applets flopped, and Java Web Start never really took off, and now this vision is being filled by various combinations of Flash and Ajaxy widgets. But the Advertising Standards Authority, the legal body in the UK that determines whether advertisements are truthful in their claims, still believes that the Internet just isn’t the Internet without Java. That’s why they ruled that Apple has to stop billing the iPhone as bringing “all the parts of the Internet” to its users. ASA spokesperson Olivia Campbell said: Because the iPhone doesn’t support Flash or Java, you couldn’t really see the Internet in its full glory. They made a very general claim that you can see the Internet in its entirety, and actually that’s not quite true. The idea that Java is such an intrinsic part of “the Internet” that any non-Java-enabled browser isn’t really an all-Internet browser seems like something of a reach, at least to me. Sure, Java evangelists have been jockeying for months to get Java on the iPhone — but their efforts are aimed at putting a virtual machine on the phone that can run standalone programs; the browser hasn’t even been mentioned in this discussion. Still, it’s nice to know that someone, somewhere, took Sun’s mid-1990s advertising to heart. Technology Industry