Thanks for a nice, objective weblog post. Java is my language of choice for now (though I'm not a fan of EJB) but I try not to get "religious" about it--I definitely recognize the merits of C#/.NET. I do have to disagree with one important statement, though.

]] Everybody, step back for a second and realize that at the end of the day, IT DOESN'T MATTER. This benchmark only proves that .NET turned out to be faster for this application in this environment for this particular test. [[

Smart engineers already realize these kinds of benchmarks don't matter. Non-technical managers and less-smart or less-careful engineers think they do matter. Plenty of good technology has failed in the marketplace because of FUD and marketing.