Or simply flushing out the <head> of a html document before the body is generated so the browser can start pre-fetching resources. That's the main use case that motivated Rails to implement streaming.
I've been using hogan.js to compile mustache templates to JavaScript functions on the server-side and write them to a js file that is then served to the browser:
Have a look at Mirah[1] a statically typed ruby-like language that runs on the JVM, by Charles Nutter, the main jRuby developer.
Here's an article [2] with short descriptions of Mirah and other Ruby-dialects or Ruby-inspired languages
Japanese computer systems are often not using Unicode but are based on other encodings like shift-jis.
Even if it wasn't for historical characters that aren't part of Unicode, this will probably stay that way because of the inefficiencies of encoding Asian text in e.g. UTF8.
That's part of the reason the ruby programming language didn't have proper Unicode support for a long time (and now supports arbitrary encodings for its strings, not just Unicode ones)
The user experience when viewing webpages is improved by actually showing a lower-resolution image while the crisp high-resolution image is being downloaded (however slowly), similar to progressive JPEGs.
Depending on the data contract, the user experience when viewing their mobile phone bills might be affected negatively though.