I am possibly very biased about this. My opinion is that Silverlight is strictly superior to Java as a CLIENT-SIDE technology in terms of speed (runtime and sta

I am possibly very biased about this. My opinion is that Silverlight is strictly superior to Java as a CLIENT-SIDE technology in terms of speed (runtime and startup time), memory, penetration (see http://riastats.com http://riastats.com), supporting and tooling, language support, feature set (GPU, out-of-browser, etc), and deployment. If SL and Flash cannot survive, client-side Java browser plugin has no chance.