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So Sun is now playing the up the version number to impress people game.

Sun announced today the Beta 2 release of the J2SE 5.0 software development kit (JDK), which includes tools such as compilers and debuggers necessary for developing applets and applications and the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). I

Not that this is new; ParcPlace jumped from VW 3.1 to VW 5i - and that was two pieces of marketing led silliness:

• The "5" was there because IBM was at version 5 of VAST - and they didn't want to look "behind" with a version 4
• The "i" was for "internet" - which was amusing all by itself, since at the time we didn't support any of the common net protocols (although we did have a browser plugin)

Lots of companies do this, and it makes me wonder - who do they they think they are fooling? Does Sun think that people will forget that it's really 1.5? Like ParcPlace thought that the "i" was enough to convince people? Like many other software firms seem to think? This kind of thing is just silly.