It's called Java Card and is used in smart cards (pocket-sized card with embedded integrated circuits) in Europe, Africa, etc.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ja

It's called Java Card and is used in smart cards (pocket-sized card with embedded integrated circuits) in Europe, Africa, etc.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Card http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Card and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_card http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_card "Java Card bytecode run by the Java Card Virtual Machine is a functional subset of Java 2 bytecode run by a standard Java Virtual Machine but with a different encoding to optimize for size" It's a proprietary binary blob like the GSM-modem in your smartphone or the HTML5-DRM-module in your web browser. It probably falls under the category security by obscurity.