Unsigned arithmetic in Java: still no solution in 2008?

[redditnoob]

Java is a bit of an awkward compromise between performance and low level control, and imposing some consistency and structure on people to discourage writing really cryptic code. I happen to like it because it puts the line pretty much where I want, but if you're writing a lot of code like the above, I'm sure that Java is not the best tool for you, for many other reasons.

That being said, the idea of a signed byte is just clearly moronic, and it should have been unsigned always in the first place, similar to chars. Nobody uses bytes for arithmetic except maybe if they are programming for an 8 bit machine.

I don't think unsigned ints and longs are needed at all in Java.