JavaScript, was originally named Mocha, later it was renamed to LiveScript, and then to JavaScript.
The LiveScript to JavaScript name change came because Netscape and Sun did a license agreement.
The language was then submitted for standarization to the ECMA International Organization. By that time, Netscape didn’t allow the use of the “JavaScript” name, so the standarized language is named ECMAScript.
JavaScript isn’t actually an open name. Now it’s a trademark of Sun (now Oracle).
There still a lot of confusion, some people still think that JavaScript, JScript, and ECMAScript are three different languages.
ECMAScript is the “standards” name for the language.
JavaScript is technically a “dialect” of ECMAScript, the Mozilla Foundation can use “JavaScript” as the name of their implementations (currently present on the Rhino and SpiderMonkey engines).
In the early days, Microsoft decided also to do what Netscape was doing on their own browser, and they developed JScript, which is also an ECMAScript dialect, but was named in this way to avoid trademark issues.
Yep, I can see this problem as well. I believe the problem (bug) has indeed always existed. What happens is that someone (in this case NetBeans Installer) has put an 8-byte value into a Registry field that should only contain a 4-byte value. DWORDs are 4-byte. If you use Registry Editor you can clearly see the problem if you look at something NBI has installed. You must look under either HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall (64-bit installers) or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall (32-bit installers). For some reason I don't see the problem for those NBI applications installed with a 32-bit installer, meaning the stuff in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall. This can probably be explained when you read the next bit. NBI actually sets a number of Registry key values but all of them are strings, with the exception of NoModify value. As far as I know this value already defaults to true (=1) if not present so the fact that Windows cannot interpret what NBI has put into the Registry does not have much effect .... until all other kinds of tools will start to explain as you've encountered. So, what's the problem? As far as I can see this is really just a very simple bug. In the NBI project (NetBeans Platform source) you have a file called jni_WindowsRegistry.c which defines various JNI methods that can then be used from within Java. One of these is called 'set32BitValue0(....)'. It looks like this: JNIEXPORT void JNICALL Java_org_netbeans_installer_utils_system_windows_WindowsRegistry_set32BitValue0(JNIEnv *jEnv, jobject jObject, jint jMode, jint jSection, jstring jKey, jstring jName, jint jValue) { unsigned short* key = getWideChars(jEnv, jKey); unsigned short* name = getWideChars(jEnv, jName); DWORD dword = (DWORD) jValue; LPBYTE byteValue = (LPBYTE) &dword; if (!setValue(getMode(jMode),getHKEY(jSection), key, name, REG_DWORD, byteValue, sizeof(name), 0)) { throwException(jEnv, "Cannot set value"); } FREE(key); FREE(name); } One of the parameters passed to the setValue() function is the size (bytes) of the value. Unfortunately whoever made this has made a blunder by using 'sizeof(name)' for that parameter. It should have been the size of the value, not the size of the name, meaning sizeof(dword) or just a hard-coded value of 4. Just imagine what sizeof(name) will give you if name happens to be 'NoModify'. Yep, that's right: It will be 8. As I said, I believe this blunder has been in the code from the very beginning. It just hasn't had much effect until now.