Server-side Javascript and empty window interfaces

At BarCampRDU Bill Higgins and John Ryding gave a presentation on server-side Javascript experiments they had done with the Jazz platform. Two observations that struck me during the presentation:

1. V8 was 10 times faster for them than Rhino, and that includes the dreaded JNI latency.
2. The idea that server-side JS may be a way to build AJAX applications and address the "empty window" problem.