5/1     What's the difference between CS and Computer Engineering?
        http://holykaw.alltop.com/top-ten-paying-degrees-for-college-graduates
        \_ One is science and the other is engineering.
        \_ From http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Computer_science
           'A folkloric quotation ... states that "computer science is no more
           about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."  The design
           and deployment of computers and computer systems is generally
           considered the province of disciplines other than computer science.
           For example, the study of computer hardware is usually considered
           part of computer engineering'
           Here in Cal, though, I think an EECS major is free to take a whole
           bunch of CS16x and even CS17x theory courses (maybe that's why it's
           called EECS rather than CE) while a CS major can take EE courses.
           As if it's not confusing enough already, check this out:
           http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/education/degrees.shtml
           BTW, another set of seeming confusing majors in Cal:
           BA Chemistry, BS Chemistry, BS Chemical Engineering.
           --- L&S CS class of 1993

3/5     Three emergency Java updates in a month. Why do I have a feeling
        that the third one won't be the last one?
        \_ Bingo!

12/4    Holy cow, everyone around me in Silicon Valley is way beyond
        middle class according to Chinni's definition:
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class
        \_ Let's set our goals higher:
           http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_middle_class_in_the_United_States
           \_ How about this one?
              http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millionaire

10/29   Go Away Sandy.
        \_ Sorry, Coursera is performing preventive maintenance for this
           class site ahead of Hurricane Sandy. Please check back in 15 minutes.
           class site ahead of Hurricane Sandy. Please check back in 15
           minutes.
        \_ Bitch.
           \_ Once a bitch, always a bitch.

4/02    We use Perforce at work for revision control. It seems to work okay.
        Lately, a lot of the newer developers are saying that Perforce
        sucks and we should switch to Mercurial or Git. I have done some
        searching on the Internet and some others have this opinion. Added
        advantage is that Mercurial and Git are free. However, there would
        be some work to switch for the sysadmins and the developers.
        Is it worth it or do people just like what's shiny?
        \_ I *love* git but there are good reasons to use Perforce. Do they hold
           for you? http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=50
        \_ I *love* git but there are good reasons to use Perforce. Do they
           hold for you? http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=50
           \_ That post pretty much describes my experiences with git and p4.
              Unlike the author, I do use the distributed stuff in git (it's
              nice to have a local repository when you're working from home),
              but everything else is right on.
           \_ We're moving from Perforce to Git. Too many branches and pushing
              code around is painful. Idea is to properly componentize the platform
              and apps, and have 1 repo per jar, stored our GitHub-FI. Let maven
              download the dependencies and do the build locally. We'll see...
              code around is painful. Idea is to properly componentize the
              platform and apps, and have 1 repo per jar, stored our
              GitHub-FI. Let maven download the dependencies and do the build
              locally. We'll see...
        \_ These "new" developers want the latest and greatest. Hint. It's
           not about the language or the revision control system. It's how
           you use them. There are 10000s of ways to use Git. What is the
           convention you guys agreed on? That is more important that anything
           else. What happens if architect A wants to use convention A and
           another architect insists on using convention B and they're
           incompatible and you end up with a massively distributed unmergeable
           monster and end up bifurcating the code base? You're FUCKED!!!
           Another thing: having a code-review system is much more important
           than the revision control system. If you don't know what that is
           or understand why that is more important than language/system/platform
           then you should not be in a position to make this type of decision.
           What is your position in the company and are you in the position
           to make this type of decision?
           or understand why that is more important than language/system/
           platform then you should not be in a position to make this type of
           decision. What is your position in the company and are you in the
           position to make this type of decision?

1/18    I own a bunch of NFLX stocks bought at several different periods
        (from high $200 all the way down to $80). I dumped a few and
        still have a few. Why the hell is Reid Hastings still making
        $500,000/year? How do I join the pending NFLX Class Action
        Lawsuit?
        \_ Why would you buy stock in a company run by a narcissistic
           a-hole who mistreats his employees? Do you own Zynga stock
           as well? You automatically join class action suits unless
           you opt out of them.
        \_ http://tinyurl.com/72s4cn8
        \_ Did you hold on to enough of your stock to be in the black
           now?

12/8    Java code much worse IRL than pretty much everything else:
        http://preview.tinyurl.com/d5e46cq [ars technica]

4/13    "Best-Paying College Major: Engineering"
        http://www.csua.org/u/t07 (finance.yahoo.com)
        Avg. starting salary for Computer Science grads: $63017
        Avg. starting salary for Computer Engineering grads: $60112
        Why is there a difference?
        \_ It's Y!.  WTF do you think they're gonna say?
           Christ it's like asking Fox News for Fair and Balanced repts.
        \_ where's the "Avg # hours worked every week" part of that survey?
           65k/80hrs/week isn't so "Best Paying"
           \_ ssssh.  Don't tell the interns that.  Gotta keep up the worker
              supply!

2/24    Go Programming Language.  Anyone here use it?  It kind of
        reminds me of java-meets python, and well, that is fitting given it's
        a GOOG product.  What is so special about it?
        \_ as I understand it, it's a suitable OOP-y systems language with more
           structure than C, less complexity than C++, and less overhead than
           Java/Python.

8/29    ok i give up; why is this throwing an error?
        #define Lambda(args,ret_type,body) \
        class MakeName(__Lambda___) { \
        public: ret_type operator() args { body; } }
        usage:
        Lambda((int a, int b), int, return a+b) foo;
        >g++ -o foo foo.cpp
        foo.cpp: In function ‘int main(int, char**)’:
        foo.cpp:9: error: expected primary-expression before ‘class’
        foo.cpp:9: error: expected `;' before ‘class’
        foo.cpp:11: error: expected `}' at end of input
        ref: http://okmij.org/ftp/cpp-digest/Lambda-CPP-more.html#Ex1
        \_ works for me.  see /tmp/lambda.cpp
           \_ nod thanks,  i didnt have MakeName defined there. sorry.

12/4    what do people have their JAVA_HOME's set to on soda?
        \_ don't. are you trying to get sun java? It is installed, but not
           the default.  check dpkg -l and dpkg -L
           \_ I'm trying to run maven to get scala/lift.net working
              properly and it's complaining that JAVA_HOME is not set.
              \_ you probably want one of the directories in /usr/lib/jvm,
                 that stuff comes from java-gcj-compat-dev and sun-java6-jre

10/27   "40 Under 40 - Business's hottest rising stars"
        http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/40under40/2009
        I'm 39 and a code monkey making $120K/yr.  This article makes me very
        depressed.
        \_ Are any of these not born to millionaire parents?
           \_ where can I get stats on their parents' income? I can't seem
              to find that information on Wolfram Alpha
           \_ Was Tiger Woods' dad a millionaire? Also, Sergey Brin's bio
              said his parents were a professor and a scientist while Larry
              Page's parents are both CS professors.
              \_ rising stars usually get much more help from a nice family
                 than those that came from the slums. Do you think Bill Gates
                 was born in the slums? Hell no, his family was pretty well
                 off already and that gave him a lot of freedom to do what
                 he loved doing instead of trying to work at a stinky
                 $120k/year job that can barely support a family in
                 Silicon Valley.
                 \_ Bill Gates was a trust fund kiddie. So was Donald Trump.
                    I would argue that Larry&Sergey and Tiger (certainly)
                    were not. If you hate your job and your salary then
                    do something about it. Go to medical school or go get
                    an MBA and work for Goldman Sachs or get good at golf.
                    Things could be a lot worse than making $120K before
                    age 40. That's in the top 10% of incomes. $160K puts
                    you in the top 5%.
                    \_ Maybe not trust fund kiddies, but still started on
                       second base. You are telling me that a bunch of
                       kids who were raised in upper middle class families
                       and went to Stanfurd are underprivileged? You have
                       a very distorted view of the real world.
                       \_ Did I say underprivileged? More like middle
                          class, which is a far cry from being born to
                          millionaire parents.
                          \_ Two college profeesors are either millionaires
                             or really bad with their money. I am sure they
                             consider themselves "middle class" just like
                             most millionaires, but they are clearly quite
                             privileged. The best way to be succesful
                             in America is to be born to money.
                             \_ but most wealth disappears by the 3rd
                                generation! Why do you hate rich
                                people?                         -Republican
                                \_ I don't hate them, I just recognize that
                                   if I had been given that level of
                                   opportunity, I might be there, too. I don't
                                   beat myself up for not being in newsweek.
                                   Considering how I have done so far, I still
                                   might make it by the time I am 50 or
                                   something.
              \_ 2 X CS profs = what, $1/4M/yr in annual income? Maybe they
                 are "only" single digit millionaries. Evan Williams is
                 probably from modest means (though still solidly middle
                 class).

8/10    On the USPS web site, is there any way to use the self service
        site for FIRST CLASS mail? It keeps wanting me to use Priority
        Mail which costs a lot more than going to the USPS for first class.

8/6     In C one can do "typedef int my_index_t;".  What's the equivalent in
        C#?  Thanks.
        \_ C#? Are you serious? Is this what the class of 2009 learn?
           \_ No.  I have to learn .NET code at work.  I am Class of '93.
           \_ python is what 2009 learns, see the motd thread about recent
              cal courses and languages
        \_ using directive.  I think you would have written:
           using my_index_t = int;
           http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/sf0df423(VS.80).aspx
           Btw using is overloaded to do a few different things, so... enjoy
           the reserved word ambiguity created for your convenience. -mrauser
        \_ http://lmgtfy.com/?q=c%23+typedef
        \_ in C nobody can hear you scream
           \_ You're kidding me right? Java sucks donkeys, hands down.
              \_ HERESY.  You are dangerously close to THOUGHTCRIME, voter.
              \_ But Java haz eklipze!!! ZOMG!  HAT3R!!!!1!

8/3     Where is a good place to learn criticiism, discipline, poise, and
        confidence? You know, things that I never learned as an engineer
        but is utterly important in the real world if you wanta to be
        taken seriously, esp. when you're going the corporate route.
        \_ english classes.  ciceronian oration form, rhetoric classes.
           you probably also want some advertisement lectures, like the
           stuff in socio or psych about the way people buy.
           \- "...in classical times when Cicero had finished
              speaking, the people said, 'How well he spoke,'
              but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, the
              people said, 'Let us march.'". Of course, look
              what happened to both of them.
        \_ The military. Enlist today!
        \_ Drama classes. I took Drama 10 at Cal, the most useful class
           I took in four years there. You can take it at a CC too.
           \_ definitely.  Acting for film too.  Acting is all about self-
              control and precision in communication.   --brain
              \_ I'm a nerdy engineer with absolutely 0 social graces
                 and communications skills. Taking an acting class may
                 actually lower my GPA. Got advice?             -engineer
                 \_ http://tinyurl.com/m7gmcu
                    Sodini graduated in 1992 from the University of
                    Pittsburgh with a degree in computer science and had
                    worked as a systems analyst at a Pittsburgh law firm
                    since 1999.
                    \_ "You just feel like you're in a movie ... a horrible
                        movie where someone comes in and unleashes fire on
                        everyone. You just don't know what to do," Dooley said.
                        Looks like he missed a dumb one there.
                        \_ He's Caucasian. No need to be on headline news.
                 \_ Take it Pass/Not Pass then.
                 \_ kill yourself, nerd

7/20    For those who care btw, it looks like eclipse is now A Standard Tool
        at UCB ugrad cs, probably replaced emacs.  Furthermore, people get
        angry at seeing Makefiles, (since eclispe takes care of that).  I
        guess it's just a sign of the times.
        \_ The more people at my work use eclipse the less the code is
           managable in emacs.  I'm not sure which application's fault
           that is, but it still makes me sad.
        \_ 61c still uses Makefiles (at least as of a year and a half ago)
        \_ Do Cal ugrads mostly use Java now?  People in my company only use
           Eclipse for Java.
           \_ From my (1-2 year out of date) memory,
              61a- Scheme b- Java c- C/MIPS asm
              150- Verilog
              162- Java
              164- Python(Hilfinger)/Javascript(Bodik)
              184- Your choice (often C++/C#/Java)
              186- C
              188- Python
              So no, it's hardly "mostly" java.  I like the variety,
              personally.
              \_ PYTHON FOR 164?!?!  and 186? wow.  61 next like MIT
              \_ 162 in Java?  Are they learning in Java how to write context-
                 switching code?
                 \_ No :(  It's provided, and as best as I could tell
                    (without having looked much) the entire threading
                    model of Java Nachos is completely retarded
                    \_ As obscene as Nachos is.. I don't think the threading
                       model you implement is the damning feature.. its
                       actually the same way you'd want to do it, right?  The
                       problems come because its completely deterministic, so
                       logical race condition bugs will either always or never
                       appear.  Also, you rely on Java happy fun time and
                       don't have to implement dynamic memory management,
                       which I think is the biggest gap in the course. -mrauser
                       \_ You do have to implement it for userland, you just
                          don't have to deal with dynamic allocation in the
                          kernel. The class is supposed to teach you about
                          things like VM implementation, not how to write
                          code without memory leaks, so I don't know that
                          doing OS projects in a garbage-collected language
                          is such a terrible thing.
                          \_ You only implement virtual memory for each
                             process that has static memory requirements.  You
                             don't implement malloc() or free() (nor even
                             discuss how to do so in the class).  Java isn't a
                             problem because students have limited time to do
                             lots of work for the class anyway. -m
                             \_ malloc/free are part of the C standard
                                library, not the OS. At one point, it was
                                covered in 61B, since it's an interesting
                                data structures problem.
              \_ 170 - pencil/paper
                 \_ Or if you had the misfortune of taking it with Clancy,
                    pencil/paper/what was left of your sanity
                 172 - pencil/paper
                 174 - pencil/paper
                 All shall bow before cs theory in fear! -mrauser
              \_ I had 170 with Demmel.  3 projects. in C/C++ Yes this was
                 this century.

6/2     http://gmarceau.qc.ca/blog/2009/05/speed-size-and-dependability-of.html
        Ruby sucks.
        \_ Looks no different than python/perl/etc.  It's a scripting language
           that needs a virtual machine if it is ever going to be fast.  The
           scary thing is how much modern computing doesn't need stuff to
           be fast, especially when dealing with web applications.  There's
           also a big problem with that shootout; there's no concept of
           how your average coder will do in language x.  Some languages
           are amazingly powerful, and if you know what you are doing you
           can write good, terse, fast code, but if you put an average
           engineer down and teach them the language they will write
           unmaintainable garbage that noone can read (even after years
           of experiance).  That's what dependability really means.
        \_ As above, if Ruby sucks here then so do Python and Perl.

5/12    Anyone here use THE JIRA for issue tracking? How much does it suck?
        \_ Don't really use it.  Our team evaluated it and decided in
           favor of Bugzilla.  Bugzilla doesn't cost $2k--though cost
           is negligible.  The real deciding factor was that in my
           environment it can take 6 months to deply software not
           already on an 'approved' list, and Bugzilla was already
           on that list and JIRA was not.  At the time of evaluation,
           JIRA had no support for SVN interoperation, but that
           has since changed.  I realize this answer is mostly useless,
           but hey, at least someone cared.
        \_ I'm spearheading an effort to install it into our process.
           It has a lot more features than Bugzilla.  The SVN integration
           you buy with a different product, Fisheye.  The downside:
           JIRA is written in Java, and sometimes throws stack traces.
           We have yet to lose any data though.
        \_ I worked at a place that went from Bugzilla and wiki to JIRA
           and Confluence and while the transition was quite a bit of work,
           the end result justified it. Out of the box, it is as good and
           has a bunch of cool work flow stuff you can put in there to make
           you and your managers life a lot easier. Setting up the work flow
           is a big job though, so if you just want a ticket tracking system,
           I don't know why you would switch.
        \_ whats wrong w/ trac? ... esp if you want great svn integration.

5/7     http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html
        \_ 1964 - John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz create BASIC, an
                  unstructured programming language for
                  non-computer scientists.
           1965 - Kemeny and Kurtz go to 1964.
           This should not have made me giggle so much.
           \_ GODDAMNIT, now you've got me giggling.
        \_ 1996 - James Gosling invents Java. Java is a relatively verbose,
                  garbage collected, class based, statically typed, single
                  dispatch, object oriented language with single
                  implementation inheritance and multiple interface
                  inheritance. Sun loudly heralds Java's novelty.
           2001 - Anders Hejlsberg invents C#. C# is a relatively verbose,
                  garbage collected, class based, statically typed, single
                  dispatch, object oriented language with single
                  implementation inheritance and multiple interface
                  inheritance. Microsoft loudly heralds C#'s novelty.

5/4     The Scalia gets pwned:
        http://www.abajournal.com/weekly/fordham_law_class_collects_scalia_info_justice_is_steamed

4/6     has anyone here uploaded themself completely to internet yet?
        http://www.earthclassmail.com/online-postal-mail
        http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/20/earth-class-mail-technology-ecotech09-mail.html
        \_ looks interesting.  What happens if EarthClassMail dies?  That article
           says they have never turned a profit, and don't know when they expect to.
           I can't remeber the last time I got a piece of email that wasn't from
           a utility, bill, voting pamphlet, or angry girlfriend.
        \_ looks interesting.  What happens if EarthClassMail dies?  That
           article says they have never turned a profit, and don't know when
           they expect to. I can't remeber the last time I got a piece of
           email that wasn't from a utility, bill, voting pamphlet, or angry
           girlfriend.
           \_ You get really strange email.
        \_ This will turn all of my junk mails to... junk emails! Brilliant!
        \_ Los Angeles is prestigious?
           \_ More so than Wichita or Peoria or whatever. A lot of people
              in the Midwest and South still think of California (anywhere
              in California) as prestigious and a place-to-be.
              \_ That is very sad. On the other hand, people in LA have
                 something to be proud of. They can always compare themselves
                 to Midwest and feel good about themselves, similar to how
                 and why N Cal compares itself to LA.
                 \_ Inferiority complex?

2/10    So, what's the best nethack class/race combo?  I can't seem to make it
        past level 6.  I beat Rouge and uMoria already....
        \_ Easiest is Valkyrie, at least to get through the mines. You will
        \_ Easiest is Dwarven Valkyrie, at least to get to the mines. You will
           never win unless you read the spoilers and even then it will take
           hundreds of hours of play. The most fun class is mage, but it is
           too hard for a novice. -has beaten nethack many times
        \_ I just started playing Stone Soup (crawl) recently. I'm
           impressed with it.  Check out http://crawl.akrasiac.org

1/21    If I have a linked list of structs and many of those structs have
        members that are structs then what is the best way to free() the
        memory when I am done with them? I thought I would walk the list
        and do a free() on each member of each struct, but that generates
        errors like free(): invalid pointer, presumably because I don't
        always allocate memory in each struct. No, I never took a class in
        memory management (obviously). In a Java World I don't worry
        about all this! ;)
        \_ Why don't you just check the pointer before calling free? i.e.
           if (p) { free(p); }
           \_ This was my first inclination and it doesn't change anything.
           \_ This should have no effect in this case.  The if only checks if
              p is null, and if p is null, most versions of free will ignore
              p is NULL, and if p is NULL, most versions of free will ignore
              it anyway.
                   \_ All versions.  It's a requirement in the standard.
                      \_ Hah, you assume all libc implementations are
                         compliant. Well, okay, things are better these days.
              That said, if you aren't allocating the memory for the pointer,
              you NEED to set the pointer to NULL.  Preferably at the point
              that the enclosing struct is allocated.  Otherwise that pointer
              may just be nonsense, which the if won't catch.
        \_ Well, do the structs contain other structs, or pointers to other
           structs?  If struct A contains struct B, struct B is allocated
           and free'd as part of struct A.
           If struct A contains a pointer to struct B, you need to make sure
           you're allowed to free the pointer before you do, perhaps there
           are multiple pointers to B, and B shouldn't be free'd until all
           the pointers are done.
           If you are supposed to free pointer to B, but you think you might
           be accidentally freeing it twice, you're going to have to be more
           careful and figure out where exactly you should free it.  There's
           no easy way out of that.
        \_ You need to define the difference between and owning an object and
           referring to one.  It's a logical difference -- the owners are
           responsible for lifetime, referring pointers just are assigned.
        \_ You're not doing something like the following, right???
                while (p != NULL) {
                    free(p);
                    p = p->next;
                }

1/20    I've been using tcsh as shell program tool (i know, bad shell to
        do scripting).  One thing I've noticed when I extract xml file
        is that the variable type automatically change from
        integer/string to... almost an array-like data structure when
        the output of the xml key/value is more than one (it's more
        like a string separated by space, but I was very impressed as
        it is).  1. since *WHEN* did this happened?  or shell variable
        always behave this way?  2. I've notice that the first element
        of this "array" started with index of [1] instead of [0].
        This is rather different from c/java type of syntax.  is [0]
        reserved for something? or it's just a different convention?
        \_ I don't understand question 1. Tcsh is not strongly typed.
           It does have integers and strings, but that's about it.
           Are you talking about $FOO = "this is my string" versus
           $FOO = (this is my string)? For question 2, the convention is
           different, yes.

1/15    http://cwe.mitre.org/top25
        2009 CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors
        \_ "Avoid inconsistent messaging that might accidentally tip off
           an attacker about internal state, such as whether a username
           is valid or not."  Really?  Fuck you buddy.  I don't always
           remember what my goddamn username was on your stupid fucking
           site.  Just tell me if I got it wrong thank you very much.
           (Just like if my password doesn't conform to the rules for
           what a valid password is FUCKING TELL ME WHAT THE RULES ARE.
           Any attacker knows that information and giving it to me may
           remind me what password I used so please, make our lives
           easier.)
           \_ at that level of frustration i would just choose another
              website for that service, or go see the store in person.
              \_ http://Buy.com offers no helpful hints, but their prices are
                 good. Does make me want to strangle people, though. -!pp
                 \_ I wish there was a counter/way to determine how with
                    online stores i can be assured of creating jobs/ buying
                    american.  I am wondering how much we are screwing
                    ourselves into a longer recession by sending a job
                    overseas by saving five dollars.  I think i'd rather
                    pay the extra $20.
                    \_ My last three http://Buy.com purchases all shipped from
                       American companies.

1/8     I have several old CS books that I want to get rid of, just in time for
        the new semester. If someone from the CSUA wants to pick them up for
        the CSUA library or for themselves, contact me. I don't have a list
        handy but they include the dinosaur book, dragon book, some crappy
        EECS122 networking book, an intro to Java book that was used in 61B,
        and a few others. I'm keeping my Programming Perl book but might get
        rid of K&R ANSI C as well. --abe
        \_ More books for our library! You're in Cupertino, right? I wonder if
           Steven might be close enough to pick them up. He may already be back
           in Berkeley, though. --t
           \_ work in Cupertino, live in SF (Haight/Ashbury). Here's what I
                could find (I have another box of maybes somewhere, includes
                an^H^Hthe ANSI C book and Design Patterns):
                computer networks 1558603689
                java language specification 0201634511
                java how to program 0132634015
                operating system concepts "dinosaur" 0201591138
                DBMS 0070507759
                \_ If you'd like me to pick stuff up, I can come to
                Cupertino.  Email vp@csua if so inclined.

11/28   python really is going hafter the java market aren't they:
        PEP 3119: Abstract Base Classes (ABCs); @abstractmethod and
        @abstractproperty decorators; collection ABCs.
        this is after guido saying "we do not need abstract base
        classes/interfaces" for how many years?

11/13   http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/11/14/financial/f051352S72.DTL
        http://preview.tinyurl.com/6nngpm
        Sun Microsystems Inc. plans to cut up to 6,000 jobs, or 18 percent of
        its global work force, as sales of its high-end computer servers have
        collapsed.  The drastic move announced Friday highlights Sun's
        desperation to cut costs and survive as an independent company. Sun's
        shares have fallen so steeply they've crossed an ominous threshold,
        driving the company's market value below its cash on hand.
        That means investors believe the company itself is essentially
        worthless.
        lulz is this because of open source and linuz?
        \_ If Sun goes down, what happens to Mysql?
           \_ Who cares?
              \_ I care a little.  You may mock Mysql, but it is used by
                 freakin' everyone these days.
        \_ Someone will buy Sun.  heck if they're worthless, maybe I can
           buy Sun.  I've been refraining from double lattes.
           \_ Sun has become DEC.  It was a sad day when Compaq bought
              DEC. It will be a sad day when Dell or its equivalent buys
              Sun. -ex-Sun
        \_ Is this because they opensources Solaris?  How do opensource
           companies make money again?
           \_ it has nothing to do with Solaris being open.
        \_ I am a Sun guy.  I guess I am on the software-side of the house,
           so things are not as bad as the headline says.
        \_ IBM could buy Sun right now outright, lay everyone off, keep the
           contracts, and pay for the acquisition with the cash inside of Sun.
           "lulz"
           \_ shut up paolo
        \_ Bush is responsible for state of current economy! Free Tibet
           \_ shut up emarkp
           \_ You forgot to add "Iraq War" and "lolz", troll.
        \_ I am a Sun guy.  I guess I am on the software-side of the house,
           so things are not as bad as the headline says.
        \_ As a ex-Sun employee I am not surprised. Sun has been mismanaged
           for 10+ years, and is full of deadwood and useless middle managers.
           Even this job cut won't be enough for the company to survive. Pony
           tail boy needs to reduce the work force down to about 10K and put
           an end to the java religion w/in the company is to survive in the
           long run.
        \_ As a ex-Sun employee, I think there are many reasons for Sun's
           problems.  Linux is one reason, at least in the workstation /
           low-end server market.  Intel is another reason. Sparc is just
           not all that important anymore.
           But the two biggest reasons I think are: (1) extremely poor
           management; and (2) java.  Management at the upper levels was
           always unwilling to see reality and did not make the cuts that
           were needed in the early part of this decade.  If Sun had cut
           its staff to 10K-15K in 2002-2003, they would be reasonably well
           positioned today.
           Also, Sun has way too many middle managers and upper level
           technical deadwood (architects, sr. staff eng., &c.).  This was
           a problem that management was also unwilling to correct.  These
           people are the ones that foster the java-religion w/in the
           company.  It doesn't matter how lousy a java project is, it will
           always be selected for funding over a non-java project.  In fact,
           I saw profitable non-java projects cancelled in favor of
           incomplete and unreleasable java projects.  The only reason for
           these cancellations was that the profitable projects weren't using
           java.
           \_ Religion? You mean cult.                  -I hate Java
           \_ http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=JAVA
              Cash on hand is 2B, market cap is 3B, so your first premise
              is incorrect. Also, what you should really be looking at is
              real tangable assets minus liabilities and that is even less,
              more like $1B. But JAVA really is cheap.
              \_ I disagree. Take a look at:
                 http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=JAVA
                 http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=JAVA&annual
                 Maybe I am not reading this right, but it looks like Sun
                 has lost about $1.3 billion to date this year, and lost
                 $864 million in 2006.  This trend is not new and reflects
                 the unwillingness of Sun management to face the reality
                 that fewer and fewer customers need sparc, java, zfs, &c.
                 and that too many people are employed in developing things
                 that no one wants to buy.
                 - ex-Sun
                 that no one wants to buy. -ex-Sun
                 \_ Look at the cash flow chart:
                    http://finance.yahoo.com/q/cf?s=JAVA&annual
                    They had positive cash flow in both 2006 and 2007,
                    and while 2008 cash flow is negative (through
                    June), cash flow from operations was positive; the
                    negative hit is on sale purchase of stock, which
                    probably means they spent some cash to do a share
                    buyback.  (Which was probably a mistake, looking at
                    the overall situation).  In general, they're not
                    bleeding money; they're just becoming less and less
                    relevant.  -tom
                    \_ They are burning through $250M per quarter, which
                       means they have a year left if things don't turn
                       around quickly.
                       \_ Actually, it looks they just need to stop buying
                          their own stock.
                          \_ Ponytail can do no wrong.  Really does anyone
                             take seriously a man in a ponytail?
                             \_ My Little Pony

10/17   Just saw Harry Potter for the very first time. The Dobby character
        is so messed up. It looks like Smeagol and talks like Jar Jar Binks.
        What's up with that? Totally annoying.

10/14   Biggs, Wedge, let's close it up.  We're going in.  We're going in full
        throttle.
        \_ You think you're funny or clever, but you're not.
           \_ yep, I was very reluctant to quote Luke, but ... also, I do not
              think I am funny or clever in this post.  There is nothing funny
              at all about the U.S. financial system and its looming effects on
              the average American.
              \_ Then why all the Star Wars trolls?
                 \_ I do not think THIS post is funny/clever.  It's Luke.
                    And I'm not looking forward to more Luke quotes.  I'll
                    stop for the time being.  -op
                 \_ You're right.  I'll stop. -op
                    \_ Too bad, it was funnier when only a few people could
                       figure out what you were talking about.
                       \_ but Luke is so dang annoying -op
        \_ I think you are funny, please keep it up. I can't wait to find out
           who plays the ghost of Obi-Wan.
           \_ Obi-Wan == Volcker
              Luke == Mass of not very well run hedge funds/SWFs
              Yoda == Nouriel Roubini
              \- er, ok:
                 http://gawker.com/5063337/the-secret-pleasures-of-dr-doom
                 i think PVOLKER is probably more the yoda. or maybe
                 FROHATYN
              Palpatine == Greenspan
              Leia == Sheila Bair
              Galactic Senate == Congress
              \_ Who's Jar-Jar Binks?
                 \_ ob Jar-Jar == Dubya
                 \_ Paulson looks more like Jar Jar.
                    \_ take off Vader's helmut - it's Hank!
           \_ You are all too nerdy to live.
              \_ You == Storm Trooper #2

9/7     I want to learn Design Patterns without having to buy the famous
        book. Is there a place online where I can learn and study it?
        \_ http://c2.com/cgi/wiki/wiki?DesignPatterns
        \_ I'll sell you my copy in near mint condition for $25. -abe

7/28    Python question:  I have a Python helper script/class that I want
        to use interactively.  The class needs a few path variables defined
        so that it runs on the correct files.  I may want to use different
        files, so I certainly don't want to hard code them.  There are also
        enough files that I don't want to pass them in as arguments.  I thought
        I might be able to have a file that defines them and import it.
        so, file test_config.py defines "foo_path = 'blah'"
        >>> import test_config as foo_config
        >>> print foo_config.foo_path
        blah
        >>> foo_run()
        in the script file I have: print foo_config.foo_path
        I get: 'NameError: global name 'foo_config' is not defined'
        Why does my script file not get the 'global name' foo_config?
        \_ Is foo_run in a different module? Did you do something like
           'import foo_run from foo_run_module'? I'm guessing it would
           work if you imported foo_config from within foo_run_module.
           \_ Yes, that works, but I would prefer to be able to interactively
              load different modules as foo_config.
              load

6/25    Olbermann, class act
        http://preview.tinyurl.com/6j5ut3 (NY Post)

6/4     jobs jobs jobs.  Wavemarket in emeryville is hiring java guys.
        see /csua/pub/jobs/wavemarket for description and contact email.
        I'm also putting together a req. for a SysAdmin (debian mostly) or
        half-SysAdmin,half-Operations person.  You can contact me directly
        if you, or someone you know, is interested in that. -crebbs
        \_ What's the difference between SA and Operations Person?
         \_ SA: Machines run.  Operations: our software is still running
            on those machines.  More or less.
         \_ The above is pretty good.  In this case the primary difference
            is that SA is working for me and the Operations job is working
            for the Director of Operations.  The operations part requires
            more job requests from the few non-technical people we have.
            Maybe running/automating reports, and that kind of thing.
            (In the language of the above poster: "How is our software
            running on those machines"? ) Though, there is a cross-over,
            which is why it may be one person doing both jobs.  -crebbs

5/2     I'm out of school. What's the best link to self learn stuff like
        k-means, clustering with gaussian mixtures, gaussian bayes,
        EXPECTATION MAXIMALIZATION, EM convergence, inference engine,
        classifier, desnity estimator, regressor, etc?
        \_ Start with wikipedia, follow links.
           \_ Uh, no. This is not the kind of stuff you can learn
              from wikipedia.
              \_ Take the first item.  K-means.  It described the basics
                 and had pretty informative links to outside sites.  Some
                 of those links have references to books to read/other places
                 to look.  Wikipedia is not a place to learn, but it's a
                 damn good place to start, esepecially for computer stuff.
                 The real answer is "find a highly recommended textbook,
                 buy it and read it." but you were clear about wanting
                 an online resource.
        \_ Go back to school and take a course or two. If you are going
           to put in the work you may as well get credit for it. Also,
           the structure and ability to ask for help are plusses.
           \_ What good is a course credit or two to someone who already has
              a long and successful career?  He wants to learn a few specific
              topics.  He should buy a book or find an online tutorial and
              read the parts that matter to him.  He may (or may not) stumble
              into other interesting things that would've been covered in a
              class and without the hassle of class.
              \_ Many Master's programs are only about 8 classes so 2
                 classes and you are already 25% of the way there. I know
                 lots of people with PhDs even who went back for an MS or
                 even more than one MS. Like I said, if you're going to
                 put in the work you may as well get the credit. Put
                 another way: Why *not* take classes? What's the advantage
                 to avoiding class other than cost, which may not be an
                 issue if work pays for it?
                 \_ Because learning a few specifics from a book/article is
                    a hell of a lot less effort than taking a class, doing
                    homework, being there at specific hours several days a
                    week, kissing some instructor's ass for the "A", paying
                    fees (poss. covered by work as you noted), having your
                    learning slowed down by the inevitable time wasting
                    morons in class, etc, etc.  If he wants to learn entirely
                    new branches of knowledge then sure take a class, but that
                    isn't what OP appears to be looking for.  I wouldn't
                    suggest someone take all of Math 1B if they only wanted
                    to learn Taylor's Series which can be learned in a few
                    hours at worst.  Some people are addicted to school, that's
                    fine, gather up all the dgrees on the planet if that's
                    your thing, other people just want to get work done.
           \_ I've learnt a hell of a lot post school without going back.
              Having a degree means you should know how to learn.  (Unless
              your problem is a lack of discipline.)
              \_ I didn't say you couldn't learn that way. I just don't
                 think it's the best way. Who do you ask for help when you
                 get stuck? Without exams how do you know that you really
                 "get it" or just think you do? Who helps you separate the
                 wheat from the chaff? I think every engineer or
                 programmer does a lot of self-learning. That's almost a
                 requirement. However, "knowing how to learn" isn't really
                 the issue here.

4/8     What defines upper class, middle class, and lower class? Income?
        Post tax income? Post tax deduction income? How about asset and
        liabilities? I mean, don't most homeowners with mortgages have
        LIABILITIES since they OWE money? If we count mortgage and
        credit card debts, wouldn't most Americans be lower class?
        \- YMWTR: PFUSSEL: Class. I personally think that is a crappy
           book, but YMMV. You cannot use income alone because of the
           "well known" "graduate student problem" ... i.e. the wealthy
           harvard/bennington classic major with no income but a lot
           of wealth. I think the Robert Nozick "life chances" approach
           is not a bad one, but ultimately these kinds of definitions
           depend on what kinds of questions you are trying to answer.
        \_ Hey dumbass, it's 4/9 not 4/8
        \_ Assets - liabilities, dumb ass. I owe hundreds of thousands of
           dollars, but my property is worth more than I owe by a long shot.
           \_ Your property is worth more than you owe the moment you sell
              it and make profit. Until then, you're just a theoretical
              paper millionaire.
              \_ Spoken by someone who doesn't have the first clue about
                 investing. Do you think that the wealthy keep their
                 assets in their savings accounts?
                 \_ Have you been keeping track of this housing bubble
                    thing?
                    \_ All investing involves risk, that is why you get
                       a premium for it.
                       \_ Homes are not investments.  They are shelters.
                          \_ "My property" is a multi-unit investment. How much
                             investment property do you own?
        \_ Upper Class - People whose daddy paid for them to go to an Ivy
                         league school and get a non-technical education
                         and/or people whose daddy was a "Lord," a "Sir,"
                         a "Duke," blue-blood from Massachusetts, &c.
           Middle Class - People who went to public school and got a
                          technical education and in all likelihood ended
                          up working for someone whose daddy paid for them
                          to go an Ivy league school for a non-technical
                          education
           Lower Class - People who went to state school for a non-technical
                         education which qualified them to make overpriced
                         coffee
           Under Class - Everyone else.
           \_ Interesting that you define it by education level.  What about
              someone who worked through a good college?
              \_ Upper Middle Class - Worked his/her way to a technical degree
                                      at a good school or a professional
                                      degree (jd, md, cpa) at a decent (above
                                      3d tier) school
                 Note: This does not include those who worked at daddy's law
                       firm, daddy's IB, daddy's congressional staff
                 \_ Those who funnel a constant supply of fresh interns for
                    daddy's consumption.
           \_ What is "public school" vs. "state school"?  Are you using UK
              terminology here?
              \_ I am using ther terms interchangably. My perspective is that
                 someone who went a public (state run/funded) school for a
                 technical education is most likely middle class, i.e. your
                 average engineer, scientist, &c. If you went to a top public
                 school (e.g. Cal), you are probably upper middle class, as
                 below.
                 I think that someone who worked their way through a technical
                 degree at a good school (public or private, i.e. Cal, MIT,
                 CMU, &c.) or worked their way through a professional degree
                 at any decent school is likely upper middle class. Basically,
                 if you are upper class, why would you have to work your way
                 through school? And if you worked your way through school, it
                 probably means you need to keep working to keep your life,
                 family, &c. going. If you are upper class, you don't need to
                 work to keep things going.  Well, unless you are one of the
                 impoverished aristocracy. But, I've already covered that.
                 \_ What if you work your way through school, get a job at
                    Google pre-ipo and are suddenly worth $40M and retire
                    at 30? Are you upper class or middle class or what?
                    \_ I think such people fall into the "lucky bastard"
                       class. But if they let the money go to their head,
                       I think they end up in the "pompous ass" class,
                       which has some essential similarities with the upper
                       class.
        \_ Family background, education, wealth, manners.
           http://www.csua.org/u/l93 (NYT)
           \- i think the appropriateness of this "quintile" model depends
              on what question you are trying to answer or what phenomena
              you are interested in. for example i suspect there isnt
              a lot of competition or rank consciousness between the students
              ranked 80-90th in a graduating class and the students ranked
              60-70th out of 300 ... compared to the people in #1-5. the
              wealth axis is the interesting of there w.r.t. to sloda people.
              \_ It should actually be the manners axis that sodans should
                 be concerning themselves with.
                 be concerning themselves with. But some people wouldn't have
                 any class, even if they made millions.
              \_ Most amusing is that in order of prestige, they have doctor,
                 lawyer, DBA, system administrator as 1, 2, 3 and 4 (out of
                 hundreds). I never knew that system administration was so
                 well respected.
                 \_ Oh, it is very well respected to people who are not
                    in tech. They think that sys adms have "root" and thus
                    are the almighty ones who rule the tech world.
                     \_ Are we not?  I'm surprised that DBA was ranked
                        higher.  DBA is even more blue collar than Sys Admin
                        in my experience.
                        \_ Wall Street DBAs are very very well respected.
                           \_ No, not really. They are well compensated, but
                              pretty far down the totem pole in Wall Street
                              firms.

3/24    http://plone.org/about/movies
        Java is the COBOL of 21st century, as exaggerated by the author.
        Scroll to the bottom and click that video.
        \_ Wow, what a weak argument.  It boils down to "properties are good!"
           No balance about drawbacks of Python, and a tremendously weak
           analysis of Ruby.
           \_ Java is the crapness.  Admit it.
              \_ Oh, I happily admit it. -pp
        \_ C.  High enough level to get work done, low enough level to do
           anything you need.
           \_ Any language without garbage collection is a lose.  Development/
              debug time is tons higher.  (There are places where C is good,
              but most of them are native calls inside tight loops.)
              \_ Garbage collection is just a crutch for sloppy programming.
                 \_ Wrong.  Garbage collection lets you build code that doesn't
                    have to worry about lifespan issues.  That's a huge win.
                    Yes, 99% of all memory allocation issues are easy, but
                    that 1% will kill you.
        \_ I've used C, Java and Ruby and this is one of the most content-free
           arguments I've seen on the topic of language choice.

3/10    Wow! There's this class that will teach me to become qualified
        to become president of the United States in only 8 months!
        Where can I take this class?

3/1     So what's the best way to deploy WARs (java servlets)?
        Ant?  Maven?  Is there something else out there that is
        incredibly cool and will solve all of my problems?

2/16    A friend is interested in graphing relationships in a large group,
        including finding n-way relationships. I suggested a mass-springs
        approach, and I seem to recall a ton of those online in the early Java
        Applet days.  Anyone know of something like that online now?
        \- a while ago i used graphviz, although i am not sure that is
           what i would do today. do you need directionality? see e.g.
           http://home.lbl.gov:8080/~psb/LBL/mh1-ip-traffic.gif
           http://home.lbl.gov:8080/~psb/LBL/mh1-ip-traffic.gif [large image]
           \_ Directionality could be a plus. That looks perfect.
              \- who are you?
        \_ You might also want to look into sel-organizing maps and
           multidimensional scaling. - ciyer

1/29    http://jobview.monster.com/GetJob.aspx?JobID=67938283
        NFL is hiring Java programmers! Must like football! Ha!

12/13   What is the difference between A share and B share (priority?) in a
        stock?  I am seeing a 10x price differential in BRK.A and BRK.B but
        with the same earning power.
        \_ It is different in every company. With BRK, the A is actually
           worth 33 B shares. They don't have the same earning power. With
           companies like GOOG, it has to do with how many votes each
           is worth.
           \_ In the case of GOOG most shares are worth no votes, which is
              yet another reason not to own that POS. The Class B shares
              are the powerful ones, but good luck buying any.
           \_ Wrong. http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/compab.html
              \_ Thanks for the straight skinny. I guess the A is actually
                 worth 30 B shares.

12/14   http://youtube.com/watch?v=-1BCV0eqaeA
        Girls Gone W.O.W. !!! Nice virtual butts.

9/17    There is a big disconnect between Target's classy commercials
        and the shitty things they sell. Anyone noticed this big disconnect?
        \_ Target's commercials don't really exude class.  Maybe they exude an
           air of "Target, we're hipper than Walmart", but that's not saying
           much.  To Target's small credit, the crap they sell, while still
           crap on an absolute scale, is appreciably less crappy than the crap
           Walmart sells. -dans
        \_ There's more to class than a Beetles remix.  Those ads reek of
           \_ Agreed.  What category of goods is OP trying to buy anyway?
        \_ There's more to class than a Beatles remix.  Those ads reek of
           Stepford.  On an unrelated note I hate the word 'classy.'  A less
           classy word there isn't. -- ilyas
           \_ they were called "The Beatles" by the way  --brain
              \_ You want me to say 'a The Beetles' remix? -- ilyas
              \_ Right you are.
           \- i was at target just the other day to buy some storage totes
              and some kitchen tongs. target had a better collection of tongs
              than sur la table and i'm not sure what a classy storage tote
              would look like. i dont buy clothes there and i might not buy
              copper cookware or a mont blanc pen there, but it has its place.
              \_ The clothes for kids are actually quite good.  It's one of the
                 few places you can buy an outfit for a little girl that
                 doesn't make her look like a prostitute.
                 \_ Yeah, the whole slutty 4-year-olds thing really throws me.
           \_ klassy ?

8/26    Java and assfucking
        http://www.bileblog.org/?p=334
        ok not ass fucking.  im too lazy to describe it properly.
        funny though

8/22    What is a controller?  What is a model?  What is a view?
        \_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model-view-controller

6/28    People say good things about servlets-- shared connection pool,
        shared resources, not having to fork new proc, not having to
        interpret, etc. However, the chart below says otherwise. Is
        this consistent with what you guys have experienced? It appears
        that Servlet is the big loser here:
      http://www.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/pubs/conf/2002-SANE-DynCont/html/dyncont.html
        \_ Well, "servlets" is a pretty big category.  Tomcat is pretty sucky
           yes (it's 100% java, what do you expect?) but there are other
           servlet engines out there.  Also from looking that their
           methedology, it doesn't look like they increased the number of
           concurrent worker threads for tomcat.  My memory is tomcat is
           set to use some piddling number of threads in the default
           configuration, which would totally make those results make sense.
           \_ Yeah, tomcat is the reference implementation and is not
              taken seriously by businesses that have clue.
              \_ What do businesses that have a clue use? Jetty seems even
                 worse than tomcat. Resin has worked well for me in the
                 past. How about you?
                 \_ Resin works well and is inexpensive.
        \_ This paper is from 2002.  I would hesitate to apply its
           conclusions today.

6/17    Finally something truly funny with Jar Jar Binks in it:
        http://tinyurl.com/38n35x
    \_ I hope it's a sandwich.

6/13    Free black culture from hip-hop
        http://www.sacbee.com/110/story/198314.html
        \_ Free?  People have choice.
        \_ with purchase of black culture of equal or lesser value
        \_ with purchase of culture of equal or greater value

4/18    In C#, what's the opposite function for class constructors or static
        constructors?  I can't find how to write a class destructor or static
        destructor.  Does such a thing exist?  If not, how does my class clean
        up after itself?  Thanks.
        \_ Um, the process exits?  And it's garbage collected?
           \_ I'm not trying to free memory.  I'm trying to close some
              connection to a remote machine.
              \_ Unfortunately there isn't a good way in C# last I checked to
                 manage lifetime.  It's one of its deficiencies.

4/4     In Windows, if my Java code calls Runtime.exec() to start a native GUI
        app, the process starts but no UI appears on screen.  Is there a way to
        start the native app and make the UI appear?  Thanks.

3/29    http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000781.html
        Coding Horror, Programming and human factors by Jeff Atwood.
        \_ An interesting link from that page, a test to seperate out people
           who can never learn to program.  With serious scientific paper.
           http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000635.html
           \_ I love this:
              "To write a computer program you have to ... accept that
               whatever you might want the program to mean, the machine
               will blindly follow its meaningless rules and come to
               some meaningless conclusion."

2/10    http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns

2/9     Looking for a Javascript slider bar example. The first example
        on Google is horrible-- initialization code all over the place,
        global variables, method conventions suck, etc. Thanks!
        \_ I don't have an answer for you, but what do you think of this
           article?  http://ajaxworldmagazine.com/read/333329_p.htm
           \_ From the article:
              "Although it's gotten significantly better with ECMAScript
               standardization, I would still rather program with Java than
               JavaScript, the main reason being inconsistency. Maybe in
               eight years the current version of ECMAScript will be standard
               across almost all browsers. But the current version of
               JavaScript, despite the random implementations, is already
               available, and there are zero installation issues. I think
               that's a fairly good proof that the reason Java hasn't taken
               over as the RIA language of choice is the installation
               problem."
              This doesn't lend much credence to the author's argumentation or
              critical reading skills.  That said, I think it's an
              interesting read, particularly some of the resources it links
              to. -dans
              \_ Whoa, didn't realize the author was Bruce Eckel.  I'll chalk
                 the bad quote up to a goof as opposed to overarching
                 incompetence. -dans
                 \_ Christ dans, you're an asshole.
                    \_ Yeah, but I stand behind my words. :) Though, it does
                       beg the question, why does pointing out a flaw in
                       someone's argument make me an asshole?  Or is it
                       because I believe flawed arguments are a sign of
                       incompetence?  Or is it because I excuse Bruce Eckel
                       the occasional goof in light of a long history of
                       insightful commentary? -dans
              \_ I think he's saying that Java is a better language but
                 Javascript is easy to install.  Since Javascript is where so
                 much RIA action is, that suggests the installation difficulty
                 as being very important.
                 \_ Yes, I get what he's saying.  He's just saying it badly.
                    Also, having read the entire article, I think it would be
                    more accurate to say he's saying that the available
                    implementation(s) of the Java language are better than the
                    available implementations of Javascript.  Having written a
                    fair amount of both, I feel that Javascript is a *far*
                    better language. -dans
                    \_ Really?  I'd be curious to know why. (not disagreeing,
                       genuinely curious) -emarkp
                       \_ The short version: JavaScript is Lisp with Algol
                          (for the non-language nerds reading this, C) syntax.
                          A bit of elaboration on the short version: Lisp
                          (and functional languages in general) have a lot of
                          powerful tools (e.g. lambda/anonymous functions,
                          closures) built in that many procedural languages
                          lack out of the box.
                          On top of that, Javascript is a *really small*
                          language.  There's something counterintuitive there,
                          which is that, in my opinion, JavaScript, which is a
                          much smaller language than Java (I mean the core
                          language, not the libraries) somehow has line for
                          line/operator for operator more expressive power.
                          Note that I'm not bagging on Java because it's
                          procedural; I love C.  In general, I've come to the
                          opinion that a small (but complete) language is a
                          sign of good language design.
                          -dans
                          sign of good language design. -dans

1/6     What is the technical definition for a middle-class, lower-class, and
        upper-class? Is it based on income AND debt (mortgage)?
        \_ Probably closest thing I can think of is income quintiles:
           Poor, Lower MC, Middle Class, Upper MC, Rich
           \_ you forgot Uber-Rich (hedge funders, et al.)
        \_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class
           But the definition of the classes probably depends on your agenda.
        \_ If I borrow lots of money and live lavishly, will I move up from
           a lower class to a middle class?
        \_ It is based on income and not net worth.

11/30   I remember people complaining about http://dreamhost.com on the motd in
        recent months.  What were the complaints?
        \_ You can't run ANY script for over 20-30 seconds or else ALL of
           your processes will get killed, rendering cron and cgi
           useless. Mysql quota may be unlimited but is overloaded so
           takes SECONDS for each simple query. It has been hacked into
           over and over and over again this year, with down time of over
           10 days this year. The servers are way over subscribed (100X
           worse than soda) so keyboard response time lags by seconds.
           You like constant reboots? Every two days if you're lucky.
           Low price, low quality hosting. I'm surprised there hasn't been
           a class action lawsuit yet.
                http://csua.com/?entry=43853
                http://csua.com/?entry=43934
                http://csua.com/?entry=43865
                http://csua.com/?entry=43868
                http://csua.com/?entry=42931
        \_ search on google and you'll see (dreamhostsucks site)

11/17   Someone set up us the Blond^H^H^H^H^HBond!
        Casino Royale was a good movie; on par w/ Golden Eye. Maybe a bit too
        much Bourne Identity/Supremacy to make it into the Sean class, but
        easily as good as Pierce class and/or Roger class.
        Good Points: Eva Green - Great Vesper Lynd
                     \_ Agreed, she's classy AND hot. You rarely get that
                        combo these days.
                     DB5 - Worked in well, but they should have put Vesper in
                           the DB5, she deserves the most beautiful car evAr!
                     Judi Dench - Great as M, purists be damned.
                     \_ Aside from being a woman, I think she's very faithful
                        to Fleming's M from the books.
        Bad Points: '007' was not worked in a la Goldfinger.
                    B[l]ond has Force Speed, Force Jump, Force Heal level 99;
                    even Kyle Katarn and Luke Skywalker don't have B[l]ond's
                    Force powers. B[l]ond must have left his light saber in
                    his other suit.
                    \_ Crystal meth gives you wonder powers.
        MIA: Q/R, Moneypenny. Okay I can live w/o Q/R but no Moneypenny is
             just wrong. I love Ms. Moneypenny.
        Suggestions for Improvements: Next Bond Girl should be Jadzia or 7.
        -stmg
        \_ It's missing a Rolex. And a BMW Z sportser with weapons. And I
           think it's hilarious that after all that fighting he finally
           lands at this place, gets on the road and you see him go
           ZROOOOOOM across the screen and you see that he's just
           driving a... FORD FOCUS.
           \_ Re Rolex - I think the Omega Seamaster was better.
              Re BMW - No need to clutter the movie w/ cheap German crap,
                       stick to beautiful Astons.
              Re Focus - Agreed. leem
              -stmg

11/02   Why is "no modifier" in Java also referred to as package-private?
        That is just confusing terminology.
        \_ I think it used to be referred to as "friendly".
        \_ "no modifier" is the same as default visibility.  Default visibility
           is package-level.  The terminology is fine.  You could debate the
           choice of defaults.

10/31   @Override in Java, why/why not?
        \_ Handy warning when your base class changes on you.  Not a perfect
           guard against sloppy refactoring.
        \_ Why not?  If you change your base class you probably want to know
           if your overrides aren't going to work the way you want them to.
           \_ Isn't it true that if you use @Override (or other annotations)
              that you can't compile to a a bytecode which will be garanteed
              to run on pre-1.5 implementations of the JRE?

10/31   Mainframes are back!
        http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/biztech/10/30/reviving.mainframes.ap
        \_ Mainframes never left.
           \_ There are big differences between 1) X is here, 2) X is coming
              back, and 3) X left. Fucking dumb shit, how did you even
              get into Cal?
              \_ I didn't get into Cal.  I dropped out of college so I could
                 spend more time on the motd and wall hanging out with smart
                 people like you hoping one day I can learn to comprehend
                 English as well as you.  No, wait, you are a babbling fool
                 who wrote something completely off topic and non-responsive
                 because you can't understand basic English.
                 \_ Bwaaahhhhhhh!!1!  You are teh suck!!!!1!!!!!!!!1!!
        \_ "The university saved money upfront by selecting a mainframe that
           runs at less than top capacity. Then on days when computing loads
           are heavier, the school can buy a short-term boost of extra
           processing power. Network managers call IBM, which remotely tunes
           the mainframe to deliver better performance."  Interesting.
           \_ *laugh*.  This is how the IBM mainframe division has always
              worked except in the 'old days' they sent a tech out at some
              outrageous hourly rate who opened the back, hit a button to turn
              on the extra cpus+planes+memory/etc that was already in the box.
              So now they just remotely login and tweak some software variable
              limit like "max speed = max speed + 50", logout and send a bill.
              This is almost as good a scam as MS making their money on CALs.

10/23   Teenager questioned for creating a My Space web site that
        says K|77 BV$H:
        http://www.cnn.com (click Secret Service finds girl behind ...)
        \_ Let's impound the MySpace servers!
           \_ We should but not because of this.
        \_ It is their job.  If they knew it was there and didn't at least
           talk to her and she later turned out to be psychotic and shot
           him then everyone would say they knew she was a threat and did
           nothing.  She wasn't kidnapped from her home at 3am by men base
           jumping from black helicopters, drugged, beaten, and tossed in
           a Turkish prison.  The idiot child got taken out of class and
           questioned at school.  Why was she taken out of class?  Because
           remarkably those are the same hours the SS guys are working.
           \_ I agree that nothing particular was done wrong, but why is she
              an idiot child?  I remember being (mildly) surprised to discover
              that it was a federal crime to say "i'm going to kill the potus"
              when I was a teenager.  It's not one of those things they teach
              in school.
              \_ It should be part of civics class.  I guess they don't bother
                 teaching anything so useless as how our government was formed,
                 how it works, or the philosophical underpinnings of our
                 nation's political system anymore.  I was quite aware of it
                 as a young teen, but Reagan was shot at the time so maybe
                 that's how I knew.  In any event, it is stupid to put your
                 name on anything, especially something easily searched like
                 your myspace page advocated *anyone's* death.  For that alone
                 she gets basic idiot credit.  For saying it about a high
                 official she get bonus idiot credit.  Next time it's black
                 helicopters, beatings, and turkish prison for her.
        \_ I can't watch the video, but I think it's funny that this sort
           of thing is still news when it's been standard procedure for
           decades.  I knew a kid who got pulled for questioning during
           the Clinton administration for sending a threatening email.

10/9    I remember one winter semester during an El Nino year when, starting
        in January, some rain fell almost every single day. Attendance at
        lectures was pretty minimal.

        I remember occasionally thinking about buying an umbrella, but I was
        sure that as soon as I did the rain would stop. That didn't actually
        happen until May.
        \_ your memory is incorrect.
        \_ I never bought an umbrella.  There was always one sitting around
           somewhere someone else lost.  Well, ok, my first year I bought one
           and lost it.  It's just umbrella karma.
        \_ Was it 1992 or 1993?  I remember in a March of either of this year,
           it rained every single day.  -- Class of '93
           \_ it felt like it rained every other day from 92-94. housing
              sucked. profs didn't seem like they're genuinely interested in
              teaching and certainly didn't have time to talk to you. smelly
              eecs TAs seriously needed to retake esl. the counselors at cal
              really sucked and treated their jobs like temps cuz they were.
              a super hot b-school-wannabe freshman that i had a serious
              crush on used me to do her cs9x projects and other assignments.
              after i finished her b-school pre-reqs she ditched me and
              started dating my former buddy. FUCKING BITCH I HATE YOU!!!
              AND FUCK YOU ALL GREEDY BUSINESS MAJORS!!! anyways around that
              time i also started taking a lot of anti-depressants and light
              recreational drugs. i carefully crafted my suicide note during
              the most depressing, cold and wet winter semester I ever
              experienced at cal. i planned my suicide carefully for the
              coming spring to minimize pain for my family members but when
              spring actually came, i just couldn't do it. maybe it was the
              improving weather, i don't know. summer came and i ended
              up taking a leave of absence. if i had stayed any longer
              i'd surely committed suicide. afterall, i already spent many
              hours of hard labor on the suicide note, oh well.
              in short, i really really really really really hate berkeley.
              \_ So you met this chick on day 3 of class, did her home work,
                 got nothing for it and got dumped?  Where in there did you
                 think you had a gf?
                 \_ Well she cooked for me and lived at my place for a few
                    days when I had to do her projects. No we didn't have
                    sex, but she was so sweet to me when she needed my help
                    it was pretty much my first girl friend experience. BITCH
                    \_ OMG, you didn't even get laid?  So she came by and
                       said, "do my class for me".  You did all the work over
                       3-4 days just before the deadline, ignored your own
                       work, class, sleep and health and all you got was a
                       few meals and a room mate.  Sorry mate but that wasn't
                       your first gf experience.  That was in no way shape or
                       form a girl friend.  If you'd asked any of your friends,
                       family or even the motd at the time they'd all have told
                       you what was going to happen.
           \_ In 2006 we broke the record for days of rain in March, at 25.
              And there's a whole month between March and May.  -tom
              \_ I have bad memory then.  -- Class of '93
           \_ I was thinking of 94-95. Days of rain: Jan 26, Feb 3, Mar 17,
              Apr 14. Almost every day is an admitedly an exaggeration,
              but it was a pretty damp winter/spring.
                  http://ggweather.com/sf/daily.html#b  - op
              \_ Are you sure it wasn't 97-98?  We had like 3 months straight
                 rain in Berkeley then.
                 \_ 14 days in March, 10 days in April.
                  \_ but 18, 10, 22, 20 for Nov->Feb.  That's pretty bad
                     especially considering Nov and Dec aren't normally
                     that wet in CA.  In fact at 47+inches of rain that year
                     it beats the second wettest year in that data set (from
                     1960-now) by over 12 inches, or 33% more!
                     \_ The wettest being last year?
                        \_ Last year was the second wettest.  97-98 was the
                           wettest.
                           \_ 2004-05 was the wettest in SoCal since 1883
                              in terms of inches of rain. 2005-06 was
                              the wettest in terms of days of rain. Where
                              does one find the Bay Area totals?
                              \_ There's a link about 15 lines up.
                 \_ No, that year I was living in SF. I have memories of that
                    one too. Maybe I'll post another "I remember" entry about
                    it in the future. :) - op

10/4    Is there any way to build a web page which allows the user to select
        a group of files to the server?  Conventional html input file select
        only supports a single file.  I'd rather not have to create a ton of
        those.  I'm looking for a something that can take an array of files.
        \_ Nope.  You either have to build a Java app, allow .zip file uploads,
           or use a little DHTML to let users create new upload fields as they
           need them (or save the previous selection and reuse the single
           upload field).  --dbushong
        \_ No, file upload is still kind of a pain.  Some of the photo sites
           allow multi-file upload by using browser plugins, activex, etc.
           Search google for keywords: multiple file upload
           and you'll find various tricks using activex, java applets,
           javascript/dom.  Some solutions are free and some cost.  --peterl
        \_ It doesn't work for all applications, but WebDAV could theoretically
           be useful.  -tom

8/27    Is there any object ID built into java?  In Ruby and Python
        there's a method on every object, getObjectID() that returns a
        unique ID for any object.  Is there anything like that iN java?
        \_ Object.hashCode() in general will return a unique value, although
           that is not contractually guaranteed.  You could get two different
           objects wiht the same hashcode, but Object.equals() should return
           false in this case.  There is no perfect ironclad method that I
           know of.  If you tell me what you're trying to do maybe I can
           suggest an alternative.
           \_ What I'm doing is a bit complex to explain on the motd, but
              basically, I need a simple (int, long, float, or string)
              unique identifier for each object.  I ended up writing a
              static class with an incrementing long.
              \_ You *did* make it thread-safe, I hope.
                 \_ No threads, although I guess it might be a good idea
                    anyway.  Although it's certainly not the only thing in
                    this code that's hideously un-thread-safe.

8/27    The Schools of Information and Law are offering a seminar on Open
        Source this semester:
        http://harbinger.sims.berkeley.edu/osdddi/f06/Syllabus
        \_ Are they charging for the information or just support?
           \- FYI: steve weber, whose book on open source seems to be
                   at the core of the syllabus, is a prof in the
                   political science dept here ... his area, curiously
                   enough, is international relations. very sharp guy.
                   although he never returned a paper i loaned him.
        \_ "School of Information" and "iSchool" are both stupid names.  -tom

8/23    I've been primarily developing Java in Eclipse, but I need to do a
        project with embedded C++, and I'd like a better IDE than Emacs.  MS
        Visual Studio is way too windows-centric.  All I really need is
        something that can do context-assists and autocompletes and flagging of
        illegal syntax.  Suggestions?
        \_ Have you tried this: http://www.eclipse.org/cdt --oj
           \_ That looks pretty good, but another project is having a minor
              crisis so I'll have to investigate later.  Thanks.

8/23    In Ant, is <target ...> a task?  I can't find any description for it in
        the 1.6.5 manual.  Thanks.
        \_ http://ant.apache.org/manual/index.html
           look under the "Using Ant" link
           \_ Got it!  Thanks.
        \_ I'm sorry, but any build system that requires this much work to
           understand sucks.
           \_ you are sorry.  How much documentation did it take you to
              learn Make?  More, I'd wager.  Or you had someone teach it
              to you.
           \_ E_TOOSHORT
              \_ Eh?
        \_ I find Ant documentation to be severely lacking.  But otherwise
           it isn't that hard to do simple things.
           \_ But it can be a serious pain in the ass to do complicated things
              if you don't want to write custom java code.  Unix shells are
              amazingly powerful, that's why make is nice.  Oh and when you
              have a bug in your make scripts ant is painful to debug.
              \_ Along the same lines, a system like rake is just a DSL
                 in ruby.  Need to do something that "the make system" doesn't
                 do?  Easy... you're already in a real programming language,
                 not in some let's-reinvent-the-wheel XML atrocity.

8/14    In XML scripts in Ant, I can use the value of a variable by doing
        "${foo}".  How do I use the value of an environment variable?  Thx.
        \_ http://ant.apache.org/manual/CoreTasks/property.html
           under Examples, search for environment
        \_ <property environment="ENV" />
           <includepath path="${ENV.JAVA_HOME}/include/" />
           \_ Thanks!!!  I'm new to Ant and I have to guess my way through some
              existing script.  --- OP

7/25    Found this on digg today, pretty cool collection of computer and
        programming cheatsheets:
        http://mypage.bluewin.ch/yuppi/links/cheatsheets.html  -John

7/25    When can we file a class action lawsuit?
        http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060725/ap_on_go_co/signing_statements

7/10    apologies if this has been asked before ... anyone know any good
        java profiling tools? (prefer free as in speech, would accept
        free as in beer) ... I was using JProbe which seemed great but
        my license expried and work wants me to evaluate some cheaper
        options before we buy ... I'm skeptical there is anything else
        out there that is as good. thansk.  - rory
        \_ I compared JProbe and JProfiler and liked JProfiler better, but they
           are both about the same price.  You could probably grab a 30-day
           trial of JPprofiler though.  I've also used JRat which was free, but
           far less full-featured than the commercial tools.
        \_ I haven't been doing much Java in the last couple of years, but
           I used to just use the hprof option in the JVM itself to generate
           profiling information and then use a program like HPs HPjmeter to
           view the data. That was adaquate for me, but the SOTA may have
           since changed...

7/10    Any Eclipse experts here?  I was using 3.1 but had to reinstall and
        ended up with 3.2.  Formerly, if I would type something like
        "File foo;" a little error marker would offer to import java.io.File
        for me.  If I used a function illegally it would offer to change it to
        a legal set of arguments.  This install of Eclipse doesn't do these
        nice things.  Any ideas how to get that behavior back?
        \_ I liked it.  You are stupid.  Keira Knightley is still flat.
        \_ Nevermind, fixed it myself:  When I installed Eclipse it picked a
           JRE to use, but because it picked a plain-old JRE, not the JDK, it
           couldn't look up the source of anything, so it couldn't make
           suggestions involving any system classes.  Telling it to use the JDK
           fixed it.

6/13    I need a way to convert uLaw WAV to PCM WAV in Java.  The tritonus
        library does not offer this.  Anyone know a library that does?  I'd
        rather not reinvent the wheel.
        \_ IIRC JavaSound can handle conversion of mu-law to PCM. Is there
           a reason to do this in Java? If you just need to convert, can you
           just exec sox to do the conversion? - ciyer
        \_ OK, It now seems that while the Tritonus Javadoc says it can't do it
           the code tells a different story.  The problem is that when I
           request a uLaw to PCM converter, the aLaw converter claims it is
           capable, so gets picked, then fails.  When I force it to use the
           uLaw converter, Tritonus works.  Execing sox would have been a
           clunky but usable workaround.  Thanks -OP.

6/9     Is there any way in Java to get the equivalent of a function pointer
        besides reflection?
        \_ Anonymous inner classes
        \_ Or Interfaces, depending on what you are trying to do. - ciyer

6/6     Does anyone know anyway to actually get Java to perform complete
        garabge collection?  System.gc() is just considered a suggestion,
        it usually doesn't completely clean up.  Even a option that would
        just totally cleanup atexit would be good enough.
        \_ If you're trying to force your finalize methods to execute, then
           no, there's no way to force it. System.runFinalization() comes
           close. You could also try Runtime.runFinalizersOnExit() if you
           know what you're doing. You may also want to look at addShutdownHook
           in java.lang.Runtime. -gm
        \_ What gm just said.  The 'contract' of the garbage collector is that
           System.gc() *may* GC unreferenced objects, but due to freedom of
           implementation you have no guarantee of when the GC may actually
           happen.  If you need to force some finalization code to be called
           at a particular time, you should write your own free() method.
           If you do so, remember that you may still have other references to
           object to be freed, so be sure multiple calls to free() will not
           cause a problem.

5/22    Dear Motd,

        Time is running out to earn the $100,000 GOLD Challenge Match...

        Berkeley Engineering is counting on you to make a gift of $25 before
        June 15. If 1,000 grads ('96 - '05) make gifts, the College will earn
        $100,000. That's 100 grads from each class. We still need 44 grads
        from the class of 1996 (your class) to reach the goal!

        You can learn more about why making a gift is so important at
        http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/giving While you are there you can also give
        online and help your class beat the challenge.

        Visit http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/giving/GOLD to see if your class is
              \_ 404
        leading the way.

        Thank you and Go Bears!
        \_ http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/giving/gold
           Looks like the dot-com grads are also the stingiest.
        \_ our of curiosity, if I did my BS, MS, and PhD at UCB, which class
           should I consider myself part of? (95, 98, or 04?) Or all 3?
           \_ Doing anything interesting with all those years of education?
             \_ switched to a different (but still technology-related) field
                (patent law) after finishing - it's been quite entertaining so
                far.  Will see where it all goes...
                \_ Are you one of those people afraid to work and so you
                   will be 50, living at home, and working on your
                   4th PhD?
                   \_ No thanks, I'm done with school, no more PhDs for me!
                      One was more than enough.  And I'm working now,
                      not going to school! (thank goodness)
        \_ Where does the extra $100K come from?  And the requirement is
           that 100 distinct grads from each class make a >= $25
           donation (i.e., one grad from each class making a $2500
           donation is insufficient)?

5/8     Want to be ranked as a good professor?  Be 'hot,' or teach an easy
        class.
        http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/05/08/rateprof
        \_ bullshit. read freakanomics. causation vs. correlation.
        \_ bullshit. read freakanomics. correlation's not causation.
           very well could be (and in fact, i would argue it is) the case
           that students who really like a professor come to see them
           as "hot" ... also same could be said for "easy": if you like
           a prof, its probably because his/her explanations make sense
           to you and allow you to perform well on the subject. - rory
           \_ When a prof gives little work and covers little material
              (or puts out with no resistance) and gives high marks,
              you could call that 'easy'.
        \_ The best professors are hot and easy.
           \_ ^professors^girls

4/23    Is there anyway to get the stacktrace from a Java Exception
        into a string?  There isn't any direct call to do it.

4/5     http://www.zefhemel.com/archives/2004/08/16/why-java-sucks
        Just wondering if java-philes might agree with some of the
        sentiments listed (being a c++ person myself)
        \_ Java sucks for many reasons.  C++ sucks for many more.
           \_ I think C++ will be around and useful long after Java has
              gone to the grave. I'm not saying C++ is great, by the way.
        \_ The author is right on some issues but given how very wrong
           he is on others I suspect he is right more on accident than
           he is on others I suspect he is right more by accident than
           anything else.  Yes there is a large domain that encompasses
           J2EE development, and a senior engineer needs to know them.
           That's what being a senior engineer is all about.  You think
           people get these kinds of salaries cause they look sexy in
           suspenders and grease stained tshirts?  Yes there are lots
           of Java libaraies out there, the horror!

4/4     Apparently this adult education teacher flunked his own class
        http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/04/04/paperweight.explosion.ap/index.html
        \_ He flunked basic common sense, but the class was not "handling
           ordinance"

3/3     In Java, I know how to put a JAR in my classpath, and I know if I
        include a native library in my current working directory, it can be
        loaded through JNI.  I have a JAR which contains some native libraries
        and I'm wondering if there's any way I can jet the JVM load
        foolib-native.jar so that it can find the native libraries inside
        without needing to expand the JAR on installation.

3/3     If you didn't take CS or EE, what would have been your 2nd choice
        in major?
        \_ probably business administration. Lots of hot chicks. More party.
           More fun. More interactions. More opportunities to learn
           social skills necessary later in life, in the real world.
           \_ If you failed to learn social skills in CS, I don't see how the
              BizAdd environment would be more amenable to learning them.
              -dans
              \_ The CS env was definitely more amenable to learning UNIX
                 and C/Java coding than BizAdd, but I'm not sure if the reverse
                 is true. If you learned all the social graces and had a blast
                 in EE/CS, more power to you. -pp
                 \_ Yeah, this was kind of my point.  BizAdd isn't going to
                    teach you social skills.  You learn social skills by
                    putting yourself into social situations, and BizAdd isn't
                    necessarily going to give you more of those. -dans
                    \_ I think bus admin majors do learn more social skills.
                       There is more interaction and discussion in class
                       with people who have those skills. CS majors
                       socialize in the Labs, but it is the blind leading
                       the blind. Also, CS/engineering/science is so
                       demanding that there's little time to socialize
                       outside of class. The bus admin folks tend to party
                       more because they have the time to do so.
                       \_ I'm doubtful that, if one is a poorly socialized
                          geek when one enters university, one is likely to
                          learn better social skills from class discussions in
                          any discipline.  You probably had to take at least
                          one English class with a discussion component.  Do
                          you feel that your social skills improved as a
                          result?  I agree that CS/engineering/science are
                          demanding, but I had a rich social life while
                          pursuing a CS major.  I think it's more a question
                          of priorities.  Having a life was important to me so
                          I made it a priority.  I guess I'm just doubtful of
                          your assertion that BizAd classes teach social
                          skills, or that BizAd majors are somehow more
                          socially gifted than CS majors, and, even if that is
                          the case, that this would rub off on a typical geek.
                          Also, I should note that almost all the people I
                          know who are throwing parties (i.e. raves, club
                          nights, etc.) post-college are geeks. -dans
                          \_ Geeks throw parties, too, of course. That's
                             beside the point. Who is learning more about
                             social interactions? An EE at home with his
                             breadboard at night and a class full of nerdy
                             guys during the day or a Spanish or Theater
                             major? My roommate majored in Spanish and
                             French and knew a lot of people from the
                             in-class interaction. It's not quite the same
                             as being in a Chem Lab with someone. As to
                             whether it would 'rub off' on a geek, I think
                             it does to some extent. Imagine being shy and
                             being surrounded by introverts. Now imagine being
                             surrounded by friendly, outgoing people. Which
                             one is going to do more to help you get out of
                             your shell?
                             \_ True to an extent, but I dispute that:
                                a) The majority of engineers are introverts
                                b) Even if I grant that the majority of BizAd
                                   majors are extroverts, I doubt they are
                                   necessarily friendly-- the business
                                   disciplines tend to be highly cutthroat.
                                c) I know many introverts who completely close
                                   off in a room full of extroverts.
                                -dans
        \_ English.  More time to hack. -dans
           \_ No doubt. Just remember, 2 papers, midterm, and final per class.
              25+ pages not uncommon. Still, left me with plenty of time to
              muck about down in the WEB. --erikred
        \_ Physics, but it was harder. -emarkp
           \_ 2ded, if I was better at math I would have been a Physics major.
           \_ I did physics, learned a ton, and incorporated programming into
              my projects where possible/sane. -!pp
        \_ History. Pretty much like English, but you learn more, er, history,
           which is kind of fun to know. Ok either that or premed.
           Math or Physics is the logical replacement for CS or EE, but... hm.
        \_ psychology.

2/21    Silly poll: What is your favorite design pattern?  Gang-of-Four or not.
        \_ Template method: .
        \_ Houndstooth: .
           \_ Is that structural or creational?
        \_ POLKA DOT: .
        \_ I've never seen a really good reason to use design patterns other
           than the fact that some of their concepts are built into the
           language (i.e. Java Swing, etc.). I suppose it makes sense on
           a language level (better designed, more OO languages, etc.), but
           I've never seen a very well designed piece of code using
           the concepts as described by the GOF. In fact, I've seen over
           designed projects, especially when someone decides to drag in
           Rational Rose and they go UML crazy. I suppose it works on
           Really Large Projects (TM), but it certainly holds no place
           in mid or low level projects, at least not in my experience.
           I think there's a major disconnect with academia's concept of
           software engineering and what really goes on in the nitty gritty
           real world (big surprise). The whole concept keeps on
           reminding me of the chapter "no magic bullet" from The
           Mythical Man Month.

2/21    What is the best way to get the current method name in Java?  So far
        I have seen 3 approaches:
        1. Create new Exception, grab the first frame off its stack trace.
           Inelegant, requires creating a stack trace (expensive).
           \_ Yeah it sucks.  Yeah it does much more work than you need.
              Yeah it is really fragile and may break when you switch java
              implementations because some moron changed how stack traces
              are printed.  Still, the few times I've seen libraries
              that generate method names this is how they did it.
        2. Generate new stack trace, grab the first frame.  Same problems as
           above but slightly better.
        3. For each method, define a static final String containing its name.
           Very fast, but makes the code 'brittle' in terms of refactoring and
           makes classes needlessly cluttered.
        Anyone know a better way?
        \_ A little more information about what you are trying to do would
           be helpful. The obvious answer is you wrote the method, you
           should know what name you gave it, but I assume this is not
           tenable in your context. Have you looked at com.sun.jdi?
           \_ Trying to provide debug-level printouts of what the current
              function is, as in:
              public void fooFunc() {
                System.out.println("Entered fooFunc()");
                ...
              }
              \_ I think AspectJ is the solution for you, then.
                 See: http://csua.org/u/f19  - pp
                 \_ That is neat.  I don't suppose there's any good system
                    for debugging AspectJ code?  That's the main thing that is
                    keeping me away.
                    \_ AspectJ generates vanilla java bytecodes. Any
                       debugger should be able to debug it.
                           http://csua.org/u/f1a
                       I think Eclipse might have some dev support. - pp
                       \_ Just because a debugger can debug it doesn't
                          mean it is debugable.  Just try say, breaking
                          at a line number and having ANY chance at being
                          right.
                \_ My my, the motd is buzzword compliant today.
                   \_ Why?  The use of 'solution' to describe a solution?
                      \_ AspectJ is buzzword-ware.  It's amazing how many
                         inelegant solutions like AspectJ exist to get around
                         Java's stupid limitations.
                         \_ Well what language has good support for
                            'crosscutting concerns'?
                             \_ CLOS. The CLOS Meta-Object Protocol is where
                                many of the AspectJ ideas come from.
                                \_ Lisp?!  Nooooooo!
                            \_ I recommend "Beyond Java" for a good overview of
                               why Java is a pain in the ass, and why
                               "frameworks" and "design patterns" are often
                               inelegent attempts to get around inherent
                               defects in the language.
                               \_ Gee, the man behind on of the most inelegent
                                  java frameworks ever wants to tell me how
                                  to write an elegant language?

2/8     Syntax aside, is there any difference in Java between the instanceof
        operator and Class.isInstance(Object) ?
        \_ Not sure if this is syntax, but instanceof doesn't work w/
           Class.forName(). You have to have a static class name for
           instanceof. [ at least this was the case when I last did
           java work ]

1/23    I'm trying to make somebody else's code thread-safe and it seems like
        my synchronization blocks are not being respected.  Does anyone know
        a problem with this code?
        class FooPoller {
          protected static Boolean lock = new Boolean(true);
          private static void poll() {
            // do some stuff
            synchronized(lock) {
              // modify some static member objects
            }
          }
          Public void addToList(Vector addable) {
            // do some stuff
            synchronized(lock) {
             // modift some static member objects
            }
          }
        }
        I then have one thread calling FooPoller.poll() in a loop, while some
        other thread is calling addToList() on an instance of a subclass of
        FooPoller.  Do the instance method and the static method see a
        different lock?  Do the base class and the subclass see a different
        lock?  This is really stumping me. -dgies
        \ What Java version? Perhaps something weird is happening
          with Boolean autoboxing if >=1.5. Try an Object instance
          as the lock. - gojomo
        \_ did you revolve this?

1/17    Java compiler help please.  I have some code like this:
        import com.foocorp.foolibrary;
        class myClass {
          private static final boolean useFooLib=false;
          {
            if(useFooLib)
              foolibrary.FooClass.doStuff();
          }
        }
        And the problem is that if I turn off useFooLib and try to compile
        with out foolibrary.jar the compile fails.  Is there any way I can make
        this work without distributing foolibrary.jar with every build?
        \_ I haven't had to think about this for a while, but maybe you
           can use a custom class loader?  What about reflection?
           \_ Yeah, I went with that, starting with Class.forName() as
              suggested below.  Between reflection and commenting out multiple
              blocks it seemed like the lesser of two evils. Thanks.  -OP
              \_ Interesting I was not aware that javac allows you to delay
                 type checking, to see whether method doStuff() exists or not.
                 Thanks for pointing this out. Motd is great!
                 \_ Um, that's not what I said.  I used Class.forName() to
                    dynamically load the class, then I used reflection to
                    get the methods I want, then invoke those methods on
                    the class object (thet are static methods).
              \_ I think the cleaner way to do this is to create an
                 interface -- FooClassInterface. Include that in your
                 normal code path, but you don't need to provide an
                 implementation. Make FooClass implement that interface
                 then you can do:
                   if (useFooLib)
                        FooClassInterface foo =
                          (FooClassInterface) Class.forName(...).newInstance();
                        foo.doStuff();
                 I think that's preferable. - guy who made below suggestion.
                 \_ Won't work.  FooClass is a partially-obfuscated JAR
                    licensed from another company.
        \_ Java is not C. If this were C, the statement "if ..." would be seen
           as dead code due to constant propagation. However javac does flow
           analysis before optimizations so requires method/var resolution
           first and you can't possibly compile with safety without foolibrary.
           If you must include such a dead code, manually comment out the dead
           code or just include the foolibrary.class|java with the distro.
           Go compilers!!!
        \_ Don't import foolibrary. Do this:
                if (useFooLib)
                  Class.forName("com.foocorp.foolibrary.FooClass").doStuff();

1/16    Okay, I have a technical question here. I administer a cluster
        of java webservers running jetty (not resin, sorry). They are behind
        a load balancer. They used to start up fine under "load" i.e. in
        the load balancer configuration. The latest code release
        broke this somehow and now they crash upon startup unless
        I remove them from the load balancer first. The programmers
        promised to fix this, but of course they did not and now
        they claim this is "industry standard." It is burdensome
        to me to have to remove them and then re-insert them every
        time I need to do a restart. Does anyone else run a java
        webserver cluster? Do you have to remove them from your
        load balancer everytime to start them up or restart them?
        I already STFW and could not find anything on the topic. -ausman
        \_ What I would do (I've been in similar situations):
           1) Escalate to CTO so he knows #2 is coming:
           2) "No, I can't bless this release because your P1 bug isn't
               fixed.  You'll have to explain to the CTO why this bug hasn't
               been foxed."  This will trigger a meeting where you can say:
           3) "This is an industry standard?  The code wasn't broken until
               release X.Y.Z on date MMDDYY which you said was going to be
               fixed.  Find me the IEEE, IETF or other industry standards
               body doc that says this is standard."
           If you don't push back hard on this you're only setting yourself
           up for even worse hassle down the road.  I've 'worked' with code
           monkeys like that before.  They're classic bullies.  Hit back hard
           immediately and be rude about it unless you want to be their ops
           bitch forever who has to kludge around their crap code.
           \_ Unfortunately, there is a tradition of kludging around bad
              code here that I am trying to change. Fortunately, we have
              a new CTO who supports my general philosophy on this.
        \_ Yes, and no. Since you didn't supply more information on how
           you're accomplishing load balancing, I have no idea how to
           fix your "problem".
           \_ Netscaler.
              \_ I assume it's something like a 9000 series. What's the
                 error you're getting when starting up resin? Can you get
                 a debug trace out of it?
                 \_ Yeah, 9000. All kinds of errors, untimately leading
                    to a server crash and restart which then crashes and
                    then tries to restart...
                    then tries to restart... I am trying to dig up the
                    exact error for you now. Actually, email me for details,
                    I don't want to post it on the motd.
        \_ That proves it isn't "industry standard".  Escalate and get the
           programmers whipped into shape.
        \_ They promised to fix it?  Do you have that in writing or in a bug
           tracking database?
           \_ No, but they promised in the code release meeting, where I
              have to sign off on code releases. I only agreed to let this
              code go live on the condition that they would fix it later.
              The CTO, who is in charge of both my group and programming,
              was there. So I definitely can push back if I want to, but
              I need evidence to make my case. It is probably true that it
              is less overall time to do the laborous restart than it is
              to fix the bug, at least in the short term.
              \_ Unless it's an architectural problem that will compound as
                 they continue to build on the existing architecture.
        \_ Sounds like an excellent opportunity to set up a script to handle
           updates.  Take node out of load balancing, restart it, test that it
           started cleanly, and then put back into balancing.   Been there,
           done that.
           \_ nonononononono!!!  do *not* *ever* kludge up something on the ops
              side because your coding team sucks.  Make them fix their code.
              If you want to tweak around with LB'd node status to maintain
              a 100% consistent site, for exmaple taking out half, updating
              them, putting them in a new pool, switching the VIP to that
              pool, then doing the remainder.  Ok, I guess.  You can be clever
              for stuff like that if there's some need.  But in this case, he's
              dealing with lazy code monkeys who are trying to force an ops
              policy change because they introduced a bug.  They need to be
              clubbed into submission.  This will not be the end of ops policy
              kludges to cover bad coding.  He'll regret covering for them.
              \_ bad coding happens.  you can deal with it and catch the
                 problem before you have your entire production cluster
                 spewing garbage, or you can let the bad code mess
                 everything up and get into a finger pointing pissing match.
                 OPS job is to keep stuff working.
              \_ bad coding happens.  you can deal with it and catch the problem
                 before you have your entire production cluster spewing garbage,
                 or you can let the bad code mess everythign up and get into a
                 finger pointing pissing match.  OPS job is to keep stuff
                 working.
                 \_ OPS job is to protect the site.  That includes making sure
                    crap code doesn't get pushed and pushing back hard on the
                    developers if it does.  His situation isn't finger
                    pointing.  The devs screwed the pooch and need to unscrew.
                    Slapping a condom on afterwards isn't going to fix
                    anything.
                    \_ What's wrong with doing both?  I assume he doesn't
                       have to TELL anyone he wrote the script. -!pp
                       \_ The short version: doing it right is better.
                          Don't lie about IT stuff.  Get busted once and your
                          already shakey credibility (you're in IT, right?)
                          is shot forever.
                          \_ I dunno, the exact details of how IT does its
                             job is not really usually that interesting to
                             engineering. I don't think you need to tell anyone
                             about all your little operations scripts, but
                             don't lie if asked either.
                             \_ what would you say if someone asked you how
                                long it would take to write a kludge script?
                                it's a very likely question.  also, in some
                                places OPS will be working with engineering
                                and be more aware of how long the different
                                steps are taking even if they don't know the
                                details.  i don't know if that's jim's case
                                but anyway, i wouldn't go out of my way to
                                be too helpful in a situation like this.  the
                                new CTO was likely brought in *because* the
                                board or CEO or whoever understands the code
                                base is broken.  C*O changes aren't common.
                                if so, then OPS can help the guy do his job
                                which will make OPS future much happier or
                                continue down the same path to piling more and
                                more madness on top.  my philsophy is this:
                                don't do anything you'd say was garbage if
                                someone else did it and you were the new guy
                                taking over that job.
        \_ What load balancer?  HTTP keep-alives work decently well for us.
           If it's not answering to the load balancer, it won't be in the
           pool.

1/16    Does anyone know how to query the maximum (or at least current) JVM
        heap size at runtime?  I'd like to be able to set the max JVM heap size
        (-Xmx512M) in a script and have my app sense that and use the number
        in sizing its caches.  Is there any good way to do this?
        \_ Runtime.{free,total,max}Memory() will give you the numbers you want.
           If this is for caches, you might also want to look into the
           SoftReference and WeakReference classes in java.lang.ref. -gm
           \_ Yeah, I've thought of WeakReferences for the next refactoring,
              but I'm worried about data I want to cache for a future similar
              query getting GC'd out from under me. -OP
              \_ Oh, yeah, thanks. -OP

1/9     I'm using Java's
        BufferedImage.getRGB(int, int, int, int, int[], int, int);
        to read in a whole image for manipulation.  According to my profiler
        it looks like this method is allocating a ridiculous number of objects
        ... on the order of 7000 per call for standard-size jpegs and pngs.
        I am reading back the whole image anyway.  Does anyone know a way to
        load standard-format images in Java without creating a bajillion
        objects?

1/6     "Starfleet-class mass-storage"
        http://www.cnet.com/4831-11405_1-6411595.html?tag=nl.e501

12/20   I'm trying to use Java reflection to find all fields in the current
        or inherited classes which have public setter methods.  getField
        inspects inherited classes but gives only public fields.
        getDeclaredField gives all scope fields, but only not in inherited
        fields.  Anyone know a good way to inspect inherited protected fields?
        \_ Use getDeclaredFields and walk up the class hierarchy yourself
           to get all the fields.
           \_ That's what I was afraid of. -op
              \_ On second thought, there's a good reason why it's like this,
                 you might have multiple levels of inheritance declaring
                 different fields with the same name. -op

12/16   Ever wonder how much junk mail Americans are getting?
        "Fiscal 2005 was also the first time advertising mail has topped
        first-class mail in volume. The post office handled more than 100
        billion pieces of what it calls standard mail, compared to 98 billion
        first class letters."
        Damn.
        http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051206/ap_on_go_ot/postal_finances

12/10   Java is the SUV of programming languages:
        http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2003/09/20#a1762
        \_ A great title and a horrid horrid blog entry.  The title alone
           I could so get behind, but the authors reasons for his arguement
           are beyond bad and often flat out wrong.
        \_ Kind of sad that MIT students are having trouble with Java.
           \_ I was hacking a little java together earlier today, but
              then I couldn't find javac.  Is it installed here?  -mel
              \_ don't tell me you installed JRE and expect to find javac.
                 \_ No, I was trying to use a common installation instead
                    of making my own and didn't find one.  I worked on
                    the reference implementation for java 0.9 and am
                    quite familiar with the difference between the JRE
                    and the JDK. -mel
        \_ Isn't the writer the ArsDigita guy?
           \_ Yes, its philg of http://photo.net and arsdigita fame.

12/9    Anyone know why Java requires super() to be the first thing in the
        constructor?
        \_ Probably because if it's not, you're risking that operations are
           being done using a partially constructed object.

12/1    I am trying to make some tests using G-UNIT and Ant.  The tests all
        consist of running MyClass.process(input, output) and then comparing
        the output to an expected value.  I know I could make a suite in
        TestMyClass which just has a bunch of the same test on different
        input/output pairs.  I know I could also make a bunch of seperate test
        functions or classes which just call MyClass.process() with a seperate
        hard-coded parameter.  What I'd *like* is the ability to list a bunch
        of input/output pairs in the Ant script and have it pass these params
        to a single TestMyClass class.  Is there any way to do this or am I
        barking up the wrong tree?
        \_ I was hoping to do something similar with cppunit, though, calling
           it with command line arguments. Instead, I just put a file in a
           well known location that matches up with the test in question and
           put all the input values there. The environment is also a good
           way to pass in some stuff (e.g. a top-level directory).
           \_ That's more or less what I decided on too, but I wish there was
              a less kludgy way... -op

10/28   Has anyone interfaced Java and MySQL? Is is difficult? Where
        should I start?
        \_ JDBC?
           \_ JDBC.
        \_ JDBC, and it is really easy.

10/11   For future job security - Java or C++?
        Java:
        C++ : .
        \_ English : .
           \_ For Great Justice!
        \_ Chinese : ..
        \_ I would say either all the way to the J2EE field, or get back
           to plain old C.  From my perspective, next 5 year's action is going
           to be in the embedded space.  C is more important than Java in that
           space.
           \_ As an embedded guy who knows neither C++ nor Java, I'm glad to
              hear that!  -- !OP
              \_ COTS or in-house?
        \_ I am going to guess more Java jobs, but also more Java
           programmers. You will not lose with C++ in the near future. You
           can do so many more things with it and there are fewer great
           C++ programmers. If you know C++ then 'plain old C' comes
           easily as well, especially if you only knew Java before.
           C++ programmers. If you know C++ then 'plain old C' comes easily
           as well, especially compared to people who know only Java.
           \_ "seee plus plus is yeezee!" - indian programmer
           \_ "see plus plus is yeezee!" - indian programmer

10/3    Even in jest, you probably shouldn't threaten to burn your prof at
        the stake.
        http://90percenttrue.com/index.php?p=41
        \_ Cody Cobb : humor :: Condi : Iraq WMDs

9/6     RIP Gilligan:
        http://tinyurl.com/7nqoa
        \_ Goodbye, little buddy...
        \_ Good, I hated him with a passion.  I don't know about him as a
           person, but his character was the most annoying in the history
           of television and cinema.  I definitely would have killed him
           had I been on the island with him.  They could've have got off
           that stupid island so many times!!!
                \_ Um, Jar Jar Binks -- no charge for the correction

8/24    My company is looking for a Sr. Java GUI developer, and also an
        Embedded Developer with PPC expertise: http://www.arxan.com
        Our CL ad for java position:
        http://www.craigslist.org/sfc/sof/91503771.html
        We are located in downtown SF. If you need more info, email me. -jose

8/16    I'm looking to write a Java app which initiates and maintains hundreds
        of simultaneous, low-bandwidth HTTP connections.  The prevailing
        answer for simultaneous HTTP connections seems to be use the
        HttpURLConnection class and one thread per connection.  I'm wondering
        if there's a better way, like maybe some way to have buffered reads
        and writes from low-level sockets using only a pair or I/O threads.
        Is this possible in Java or do I have to use something like a thread
        pool?
        \_ Since Java 1.4, you are supposed to be able to use something
           equivalent to select(), as you would with BSD sockets. It's
           all in the java.nio package:
                http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/guide/nio
           \_ Thanks! -op

8/9     So I'm developing this java app which will produce a bunch of data we
        need to analyze with statistics and graphs.  I'd like a way to take
        data from variables in a java program, write some semi-standard file,
        and be able to generate stats and graphs automatically.  One solution
        it to write it to a CSV file and import it into Excel and then apply
        Excel formulas and make graphs, but that will require a lot of manual
        work because the size of the data sets will vary.  Is there a better
        way?  We're not wedded to Excel or windows.
        An example is in java having int[][] foo and float[][] bar and wanting
        to make foo.size() charts of foo[i] vs. bar[i]
        \_ Yes, this problem has been solved before. It's called gnuplot.
           \_ I hate you.
           \_ MATLAB, IDL, etc etc etc
          \_ I prefer R, but it's got a bit of a learning curve. --darin

7/28    I am looking for a java launcher on Windows that does the following:
        1) Display a splash screen before my app launches
        2) Packages a java jar into an EXE and launches that
        3) Can include a JRE so it will run on systems without Java installed
        4) Be able to set java parameters like -Xmx
        exe4j meets all of these requirements except #3, is there anything
        (free or commercial) that does all these, I haven't found it yet ...
        \_ J++ used to do this. I think there's a new version called J#
           included in dotnet that does this. Since you only care about
           MS it doesn't matter if you lose cross platform capabilities, right?
           I don't know about the java params though. Alternatively you could
           just port the whole thing to C#...
           \_ Umm, it's a java app, porting it to C# is not an option.  And I
              have to be able to package my own JRE.  Looks like launch4j
              might do the trick.
              \_ Well, you didn't specify what exactly your development
                 situation is. Porting java to J# is pretty trivial as long
                 as your code base isn't using anything too fancy. Since
                 it's an app one assumes that cross compatibility is no
                 longer an issue. Re-building the app from source on top of
                 .NET will most likely give you a tighter binary and will
                 open up native win32 API calls to you, making things like
                 the splash screen trivial. You also don't need the source
                 if you have bytecode only. There are tools to do a bytecode
                 conversion.
                 \_ Sigh, I use java not J# for a reason, I just need a
                    launcher on Windows.  This is a multi-platform piece
                    of software, but the assumption is that users on
                    non-Windows are capable enough to download/install a JRE.
                    And I will quit any job that makes me develop in .NET. or
                    any other massive convoluted API-of-the-year M$ comes out
                    with.  The Win32 API programming I've had to do is bad
                    enough.
        \_ ZeroG?

7/19    My boss has a bunch of money for techinical books he needs to get
        spend.  Any suggestions on what I should get?
        \_ Duh, what field is your dept in?
           \_ Actually, it should be something OUTSIDE my field.  (That's
              how the money is budgeted)  Some Topics:
              Linux Kernel Hacking
              MPI programming
              Advanced Threaded Programming
              Software engineering
              \_ Design Patterns
                 \_ Driving J2EE and SOAP CORBA for B2B and B2C success in
                    XML RSS!!!
        \_ The Art Of Computer Programming

7/15    Is it possible through JNI to write a function which takes a float[]
        array and through the magic of c casts it to an int array and then
        returns the int array to Java, not modifying the actual data?
        If not, is there a good Java way to do the C equivalent of:
        int* i = (int*) f; ?
        Don't ask whether I really need to be doing this because there is a
        good (performance) reason.
        \_ You can modify your implementation of VMFloat, or create a new
           class similar to it, to provide an additional method that works
           on arrays of ints and floats, rather than just on individual 32
           bit values.  This will entail creating a new shared library, etc.
           This is probably the cleanest and most efficient way, but obviously
           will not be portable.  I am assuming you know how to write the
           C necessary to convert the array type while leaving the bit
           representation unchanged. -- ilyas
           will not be portable.  -- ilyas
           \_ Do you know of any in-Java way to convert float[] to int[]
              without using JNI or touching the underlying data? -op
              \_ If you thought about it, you should be shocked if there were.
              \_ I do not know of such a way.  I think when you are starting to
                 care about performance to the extent where you don't want to
                 just call floatToIntBits on each element of the array, you
                 should either forget platform independence, or use a better
                 language.  By the way, the previous poster is wrong, there
                 is no reason Java shouldn't provide this functionality in
                 VMFloat (it provides a function for individual 32 bit values).
                 It just doesn't because it sucks. -- ilyas
              \_ Sure:
         for(int i = 0; i < float_array.length; i++){
                int_array[i] = java.lang.Float.floatToIntBits(float_array[i]);
         }
                If you want to avoid the overhead of a loop, or aren't
                willing to write your own shared library + class wrapper to
                do what this loop does in one swipe, or aren't willing to
                abandon Java, then you lose. -- ilyas
                \_ I'm already doing the above, but want to avoid an additional
                   O(n) step, and am too lazy to write another JNI wrapper.
                   I guess I do lose.  I also saw ByteBuffer has methods for
                   providing IntBuffer and FloatBuffer views, but I can't find
                   a low overhead way to go FloatBuffer->ByteBuffer or
                   IntBuffer->ByteBuffer.
                   \_ For reference, consider how a well-implemented strongly
                      typed language (ocaml) handles this:
                      let float_array = [| 1.0; 2.0; 3.0 |] in
                      let int_array : Int32.t = Obj.magic float_array in
                      ...
                      Obj.magic is an unconditional type cast without promotion.
                        -- ilyas

6/30    http://csua.com/?entry=33887
        \_ I applied for the PayPal settlement and today I got my
           paycheck. $13.59. It's about time big corporations pay
           for their incompetent and inconvenience to us little
           guy. It is my pleasure to cash in $13.59. Fuck you Paypal.

6/16    Do any of you essentially not read books any more?  I find it
        interesting there are people who are bright and by any measure
        successful who read maybe .5 - 1 book a year, e.g. my housemate
        has an MBA from MIT/Sloane and is essentially retired at 48.
        I'm not sure he has read 2 books in the 2yrs I've lived here.
        He does watch various news and informational TV programs so he's
        not clueless about the world. This does not include "HowTo" books.
        \_ I generally don't make time for reading, though several times
           a year I go crazy and read all the books I buy in my off periods.
           In general, though, the books I do try to read when I'm not devoting
           most of my time to it are difficult reads that I go through them
           very slowly.
        \_ I am neither bright nor successful, but I don't really read
           very much.  -- ilyas
        \_ I read a lot when commuting on BART.  Since I had to start driving,
           I've pretty much stopped.
           \- I'm not talking about very much. I mean zero. And I'm not
              talking about do you knock off a Shakespeare now and them ...
              I mean people who dont even read The Da Vinci Code or Michael
              Crichton or other "airplane pilp".
              Crichton or other "airplane pulp".
              \_ When I read, I tend to read classics or books of an
                 informational nature. Most newer fiction is not for me.
                 The last book I read was 'Dune' (again) about a year ago.
                 I am not sure that reading books (especially fiction)
                 indicates much of anything at our age. I used to read a
                 lot more when I was younger and had the time. FWIW, I
                 don't watch TV or go to the movies either. I do read the
                 newspapers and magazines like 'The Economist' religiously.
                 BTW, how come your housemate is a 'housemate' when he has a
                 good degree from a good school? Is he lazy?
                 \- I'm not suggesting anything about "our age" ... this was
                    asked on the soda MOTD and I'd think the soda motd has
                    a marginally higher literacy rate than "our age". Of course
                    people here are more likely to have the web suck up their
                    time. And I am not talking about reading but reading
                    books. A lot of these smart-but-non-readers read the
                    newspaper and other practical books like the Idiot's
                    Guide to DVD burning etc.
                    I dont understand the "why is your housemate a housemate"
                    part of the question.
                    \_ What I mean by 'our age' is that a kid who reads a
                       lot is probably bright (not sure about which is the
                       cause and which is the effect). I do not think this
                       is true once you reach adulthood. If someone reads
                       10 bodice rippers a week does that imply anything about
                       his or her intellect or lack thereof? 'Number of
                       books read' by itself is meaningless at this stage of
                       intellectual development. Someone who reads the NYT
                       and Wall Street Journal every day is quite likely
                       doing more for themselves than the bodice ripper
                       person. As for your housemate, I am wondering why
                       he doesn't have his own place when he has a graduate
                       degree from MIT. That sounds rather odd. I'd worry
                       about that more than about how many books he reads.
                       \- I was not the one equating "reads" with
                          intelligence. If anything I was saying that I
                          found it odd a fair number of pretty intelligent
                          people *dont* read ... or if you go to their homes
                          you will not see 10 books. I agree a lot of people
                          who read pulp somehow think that is supirior to
                          wantching TV, when they are essentially the same
                          thing ... and then there are people who watch a
                          HISTORY CHANNEL show on Rome and think that is
                          50% of the way to reading R. SYME: THE ROMAN
                          REVOLUTION when it is closer to like 3%. Re: house-
                          mate: he owns multiple millions of dollars in
                          real estate. I can only assume he lets me live here
                          because of my wit and charm, since he clearly doesnt
                          need my meagre rent.
        \_ I haven't read a book 'for fun' since I graduated several years ago.
           Reading is on my 'todo' list but never rises to the top.  I have
           other things I'd rather be doing or need to be doing.
           \_ Interesting.  I didn't have time to read at college, but now
              that I work I read voraciously.
        \_ Before to law school I was reading about 1 book every 2 weeks
           or so (mostly non-fiction - science/history/&c.). Now I pretty
           much only read my casebooks or related material which amounts
           to around 300 pages a week (or more).
        \_ I had pretty much stopped reading for pleasure by my junior year as
           an undergrad.  Then I married a librarian.  I read like crazy now
           (and keep having to get more bookshelves).  -emarkp
                \_ Why does being related to a librarian always make people
                   read more? Is it because they bring home books, or that
                   they get good recommendations at work, or that they read
                   a lot themselves and pass the book on, or what? I've known
                   several sons/daughters of librarians, and they're all
                   avid readers.
                   \_ If you didn't love books, you wouldn't become a librarian
                   \_ Speaking as the son of a librarian, I think the
                      factors are mostly envionmental.  My mother read to
                      me a lot as a child.  There are always books around
                      the house.  We went to the library (as a family)
                      weekly.  We got books as presents.  Mom was always
                      reading books. etc. -jrleek
                   \_ In my case, she had a lot of great books that I'd never
                      read.  Now we recommend books to each other. -emarkp
        \_ No, we're too busy reading motd. =) But seriously, I read newspaper
           and website for things that used to be available on printed media.
        \_ Sometimes books have a hard time competing for my attention with
           all the other stuff there is to do... I don't read as much as I
           would have liked. I occasionally get into a mode of reading a number
           of books. If I get "stalled" in a book it tends to kill my reading
           habit for a while and I'll go play videogames instead or whatever.
           I stalled out of a few books lately when I tried reading more
           classic literature... I made it halfway through Karamazov before
           giving up. Master and Margarita didn't capture me after a partial
           attempt. For Whom the Bell Tolls I picked up after really enjoying
           The Sun Also Rises, but I kind of trailed off halfway through that
           also. I'm 3/4 through The Iliad translated by Robert Fagles, which
           doesn't seem as poetic as whatever unknown translation I read
           a little bit of in college. And the storyline gets a little bogged
           down with the endless battling and slaughter.
           I hope to just get those two done and then stick with lighter
           stuff for a while. I had fun reading short stories since they
           can be done in one sitting. Hard Boiled detective stories and Fritz
           Leiber's Lankhmar tales were the latest I read.
           Lately I've just been listening to audiobooks while I fall asleep or
           over breakfast... at least I get through stuff that way.
           \- imho, the iliad is not something you can read without "guidance".
              best is to read it in a class with a good teacher, but even
              reading a good introduction may be enough. i say this for two
              reasons: 1. it is a very "alien" work so you are likely to
              arrive at some incorrect interpreations unless you are waved
              off [like say with the metrical rather than descrptive function
              of the ephithets] 2. it is an amazingly complicated work and
              there are some structures/methods that you'll need some
              examples pointed out ... after you know what to look for,
              there are some structures/methods that you'll need some to be
              pointed out ... after you know what to look for,
              then you can look for these on your own [like some details of
              "ring composition", or the way HELEN is described in the
              famous "Teikoskopia"].
              \_ You're probably right... this book does have a relatively
                 long introductory/preface section and appendices etc. and
                 I did have part of the Iliad as class material at Cal (but
                 I really bailed on that class and I think the focus was
                 not on the literature but the mythological ideas). It does
                 describe at least some of what you're talking about. I have
                 describe at least some of what you're talking about. I
                 have to be in the proper mood for it... I also have the
                 Odyssey from the same guy. I did not compare translations
                 beforehand so I kind of wonder if I'm missing out on something
                 But it's hard to say what the "real" approach should be. The
                 guy of course argues his way best captures the feel. Oh well.
                 \_ psb is right.  It's not just a matter of being in the
                    'mood,' you need a lot of background on their society, the
                    way they thought, their entire moral and metaphysical
                    framework was completely different from ours.
                    \_ I meant in the mood to enjoy reading it. This motd
                       stuff got me into it again for now...
                    \- "moral and metaphysical framework" nicely captures
                       what is at issue in my first point about the "alieness"
                       of the "world of odysseus". but the structural elements
                       unique to oral composition [the parry-lord-parry stuff]
                       in general or homeric epic in particular [like the
                       telescoping of the 10 years of the conflict into the
                       short period covered by the iliad] is a different set
                       of issues. in fact there is one more, which is the
                       philological ... like greek language has "aspect"...
                       but that stuff is beyond me. and i think that has
                       \_ I wish schoen@@csua would login and post.  He would
                          know more about this I bet. -- ilyas
                          \- are you a russian? doesnt the russian language
                             have notoriously difficult aspect in addition to
                             tense? then this may be easier for you to follow.
                             the closest i've read to a philology heavy book
                             is G. Nagy: The Best of the Achaeans. very good.
                             \_ I think aspect distinctions exist in English,
                                too.  English just lacks a general mechanism.
                                I don't know how sophisticated greek aspect is
                                compared to russian aspect. -- ilyas
              I didn't know what aspect was, so I found this elucidating: _/
    http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/G/Gr/Grammatical_aspect.htm
              http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_aspect
                        \-yes that was sort of my point. some of this stuff
                          is not like "oh yes the clever boy in the english
                          class got more out of reading Ozymandias than i
                          did" ... there is no hope you will get some of this
                          stuff because it just doesnt exist in your brain,
                          it's not a matter of insight and figuruing it out.
                       diminishing returns for a "normal person". i note that
                       even 5th cent BC athens is much less "alien" and
                       easier to understand. with some exceptions like the
                       Oresteia.
                       \-BTW, I like the Lattimore trans the most probably
                         but I think Fitzgerald and Fagles are reasonable.
                       \-BTW, I like the Lattimore trans the most, but
                         I think Fitzgerald and Fagles are reasonable.
                         Perhaps the 100s of pages of Fagles cant compare
                         to the "highlights" you remember from college.
                         if you want to really go for the poetic one, look
                         at the pope translation. not user-friendly, tho.
                         FACTOID: T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) did a prose
                         trans. of the Iliad and Odyssey.
                        \_ That may have been it; I will look into it next time
                           I'm in a book place. There are a couple of passages
                           I will know it by. I found Pope online and this too:
                       http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Hom.+Il.+1.1
                           That last version has some ridiculous (IMO)
                           Shakespeare dialogue like "wherefore art thou" that
                           seems out of place. The Fagles stuff is certainly
                           very readable; I guess it seems too casual at times.
                           \- Butler->ass
                           \- Butler -> ass

6/10    <fixed my own java properties file bug>

6/10    I'm trying to write my own Java properties file reader so that I
        can get something similar to C's #include macro, but I'm having
        problems getting the properties back from System.getProperty().
        For example, I'll call System.getProperty("foo") and get null
        back, but printing out all properties (via
        System.getProperties().list(System.out) ) clearly shows "foo=bar"
        in the output.  I've tried loading the file using different
        charset names (ascii, utf8, several other usual suspects) but that
        hasn't helped.  Has anyone seen something like this before?  TIA.

5/25    Any Eclipse users out there?  Is there a plugin or anything to get
        pop-up tips for Java keywords the same way it does for properly
        JavaDoc-supported variables/methods/classes?

5/20    Senior Java Developer position open in Pleasanton:
        /csua/pub/jobs/RHI-IT - jthoms

5/16    I have a multithreaded Java application which calls some native
        libraries through JNI.  I'm looking for a good way to do profiling of
        it to see where the various Java and native threads are holding each
        other up.  What tool(s) would you reccomend?

5/2     Could someone offer a tip on how to write thread-safe (Java) code?
        I have a class which performs some work, and I want to allow only one
        thread to be in the do_work function, but allow many threads to enqueue
        work.  How would I do this?
        class Worker {
          private void dowork(Work w) {...}
          public void enqueuework(Work w) { ...}
          private Queue workqueue; // A FIFO queue of Work objects.
          ...
        }
        \_ Look into the synchronized keyword. If nowhere else, the Java
           language spec has an acceptable description.
        \_ The above answer isn't quite enough. Here's how you do it
           in general, gross terms, you'll have to do some tweaking and
           look up the Java-specifics yourself:
        \_ The above answer isn't quite enough. This isn't 100% correct,
           but it should point you in the right direction:
                -- The do work thread should start running in a loop
                   which locks a synch variable, process anything
                   in the queue, and then waits on condition variable
                -- The enqueue method should lock the synch variable
                   put stuff into the queue, and signal the condition
                   variable
           See also: http://csua.org/u/bxq (java.sun.com)
           - ciyer
           \_ Shouldn't it be sufficient to use the synchronized keyword on
              the doWork method?  The enqueuework method doesn't need to
              be synchronized, right?
              \_ It does if you're writing unsynchronized data structures
                 in the enqueueing operation.

4/27    Dear Java gurus, say I have the following code, where Visitor()
        has a method called "visit(Node n)...". I see the following code.
        Does it mean I'm temporarily over-writing the visit method?
         root.accept(new Visitor() {
            public void visit(Node n) {
               //Do stuff with n
            }
         });
         \_ for a lot more on the above code, see Erich Gamma's book
             "Design Patterns" (introduction and visitor pattern)
        \_ It's an anonymous class and yup you've got it.  Even more
           useful is the fact that as long as you have final variables
           in the code that calls visit, you can use those variables
           in the redefinition of visit.
           final Long x;
           root.accept(new Visitor() {
              public void visit(Node n, Long y) {
                 super.visit(n, x+y);
              }
           });
           Is valid.  (I may have a few details wrong, but that's the basic
           idea.  See documentation for anonymous classes if you want to
           know more.)
           \_ To slightly correct the above, it's an anonymous *inner*
              class, which is the Java version of a closure-like-thing
              (lamdas if you know LISP, Blocks if you do Smalltalk).
              If you aren't familiar with them, you should write a few little
              programs to explore them -- they can be quite useful.
           \_ Did you actually try compiling the above code or the code
              below it? It doesn't seem to work.
              \_ No, no I didn't.  I just gave the concept.  Note where
                 I said I may have a few details wrong.  Here, because you
                 are obviously unable to fill in the blanks yourself...

     public class Foo {
         public Foo() {
         }

         public void a(Long a) {
             System.out.println("a("+a+")");
         }

         public void doA(Long a) {
             final Long b = new Long(11);
             new Foo() {
                 public void a(Long a) {
                     super.a(new Long(b.longValue()+a.longValue()));
                 }
             }.a(a);
         }

         public static void main(String[] args) {
             new Foo().doA(new Long(5));
         }
     }

4/21    I've been using Sun's JVM. I see that Red Hat ships BEA and IBM's
        JVMs. Which one is best to use and why?
        \_ As far as I know, IBM's JVM has better performance but more GUI
           bugs.

4/15    Can I use a Java java.util.SortedSet to have a sorted set of an
        arbitrary object, assuming I provide a comparison function?
        \_ That should work from what I can tell.  Try it.

4/5     Does anyone know of open tech writing positions?  I have a friend that
        is pretty good, and he was just let go by a failing company. --jwm
        \_ Poor guy.  You're a victim of the Great Terri Schiavo script war.
           \_ You assume it's a script war.
              \_ True, very true.
           \_ Well, I don't let it bother me.
              \_ Good man.
        \_ http://www.vmware.com/jobs/openings/it.html#tws
           \_ Thank you. --jwm

4/5     What defines lower class, middle class, and higher class? Income?
        Income relative to spending? Tax bracket? A combination of all? What
        does middle class mean? Someone who has X deviation from the median
        or average income?
        \_ I believe there are many ways.  Income quintiles, for one.
        \_ Whim.
        \_ The political bias of the person defining the classes defines
           the classes.
        \_ They really need a new category: Dynasty Class, families
           who have a lot of influence on government policies.
        \_ I define it.
        \_ I define it. And you are definitely lower class.
        \- I dont think it is a great book, but you could look at
           Paul Fussel's book "Class". --psb
           http://csua.org/u/bl5

3/26    FBI to scratch their Virtual Case File after squandering millions of
        dollars. So here is my question. How is it implemented? Is it using
        Java/J2EE/Sybase or C or something else?
        http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,151421,00.html
        \_ They probably followed these guidelines:
           http://mindprod.com/unmain.html
        \_ according to infoworld, it was done in java, and is more or less
           a standard enterprise-ish kind of app. it seems like it's lack of
           good and stable requirements that killed them.

3/19    I'm writing a simple GUI interface for an existing text-only Java
        product. The GUI would expose a small portion of the functionality
        to entice new clients. Should I write the GUI in Java AWT/Swing which
        I'm more familiar with (advantage:all in Java solution, disadvantage:IE
        users needs to install VM) or should I write it in Flash
        (advantage:more lightweight than VM, more readily available on
        browsers, disadvantage:I'll need to learn Flash, which shouldn't be
        harder than AWT/Swing I hope). What do you guys think?
        \_ Can you just do a mockup?  The problem with Swing is that you can't
           (please correct me if I'm wrong) make it look entirely like
           Windows which has an annoying tendency to turn off idiot managers
           to what you're trying to do.  -John
        \_ If you decide to go with flash, go out and get a copy of
           flash mx 2004 for server geeks.  If you end up doing it in
           java you'll probably need to stick to using non-swing awt,
           as some of the older vm's that come with browsers don't have
           swing set up.  I recommend doing it with html/cgi. --darin
        \_ I was distinctly unimpressed the last time I used Swing which was
           supposed to be an improvement over AWT.  Of course, that was years
           ago so it might suck less now, but I doubt it.  Perhaps a third
           avenue you could pursue which would be useable pretty much anywhere
           just like darin's suggested html/cgi, but have interactivity closer
           to Flash would be something writting in client-side javascript that
           utilizes the XMLHttpRequest object. -dans
           utilizes the XMLHttpRequest object. -dan

3/18    What's the difference between J2EE and EJB?
        \_ One merely sucks, while the other blows.
        \_ EJBs are a subset of the J2EE specification (which also
           includes RMI, JSPs, etc.)

3/2     Java experts please help:  I have a class FooCanvas which extends
        java.awt.Canvas.  If I draw into FooCanvas is there any way to read
        the framebuffer of FooCanvas?  FooCanvas implements no pixel-reading
        methods of its own.
        \_ You could do your own double buffering: override
           update(Graphics g) to not paint directly into g, rather
           use the graphics context of a java.awt.Image internal to
           your object as the param to the paint call and call drawImage on
           the Graphics in update to actually get your canvas painted.
           You can then externally access what you have drawn through the
           image. -ciyer

2/16    I just downloaded IntelliJ IDEA and they don't have a friggin
        tutorial on their web site and I can't find any decent non-J2EE
        tutorial on Google. Need pointer, thanks.                   -dumb
        \_ i use idea but not for j2ee crap. here's my quick guide:
                cmd-N: open class
                cntrl-space: autocomplete name
                cntrl-J: javadoc
                cmd-B: jump to defn
                cmd-U: goto super
                opt-F7: all uses of method
                cmd-opt-[left|right]: go forward and back in navigation
                also, google for "idea  keyboard shortcuts reference" returns:
                http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/docs/help/appendices
           \_ in emacs I can press TAB and it'll auto indent, how do I do that
              in IDEA? Also how do I beautify an entire section of code? THX!!
              \_ I had a helpful response, but someone clobbered it. Email me
                 if you want a real answer. -gm
              \_ I use the some customizations on the emacs keymap (which is
                 almost, but not quite, completely unlike emacs bindings), so
                 I indent regions by selecting them and hitting tab. You can
                 check your bindings by opening Settings->Keymap and checking
                 the Indent Selection setting under Editor Actions. Lines are
                 automatically indented when I hit enter; not sure what you're
                 asking in the first part of your question.
                 IDEA converted me from emacs/vi for Java (not J2EE) dev. -gm
              \_ I have my TAB mapped to Main menu->Code->Auto-indent Lines
                 --paulwang
                 \_ THANK YOU!!! I just compiled my first +3000 line Java code
                    for fun and it's pretty neat, I love how you can have a
                    quick JavaDoc (CTRL-Q) and how it knows your method names
                    and everything for smart auto-completion. The coloring is
                    amazing too, it KNOWS the scopes and everything. Thank
                    you guys for your support! I may just buy this software -op
                    \_ You know, Eclipse does all of the above and it's
                       free...
        \_ idea vs. eclipse:
                http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/os-ecidea
        \_ Just use "help" from the IDE. More than enough info there.

1/31    Is Java reflection the same as receiving RMI objects and then loading
        them dynamically? Is it a difficult mechanism to use? Can someone
        point out tutorials and comment on using reflection? Thanks.
        \_ No.  Java reflection is just a way of calling a function/creating
           a class/whatever when all you have is the name and signature.
           If you've used objective C it is a lot like how you can find
           a selector by name.  It really isn't a complicated api or
           concept.  Look at the javadocs for Class and the java.lang.reflect
           package.

1/21   Thought this was an interesting read:
       http://paulgraham.com/noop.html
       I tend to agree with him, as I've seen relatively little gain
       from such languages as C++ and Java in terms of creating better
       software.
        \_ I thought it was pretty sophomoric, really.  OOP is a tool that is
           often used poorly.  If used well, his comments are all wrong.  But
           that's the same of any technique.
           \_ Actually, I think you missed the point. If a tool is often used
              poorly, then why do we have the tool in teh first place? i.e.
              if a hammer is poorly designed so that people use it the wrong
              way, get rid of the hammer and find a better one. OO is often
              used poorly because it's been designed poorly. I.e. people
              think it's "cool" to use C++ or Java to program in because
              it's got wonky crap features in it like templates and
              object overloading and container classes. There are so many
              tacked on features in Java nad C++ now that you need tomes
              and tomes of printed material to just document the stuff.
              So programming becomes basically a websearch project, which
              it shouldn't really be. We don't need six layers of abstraction
              to get to pushing bits over TCP/IP. We also don't need
              six layers of abstraction to calculate the cost of a pair of
              shoes being bought online.
              \_ Ok, I'm not pp, and have absolutely *no* opinion on the
                 relative merits of C or C++ or Java or whatever, but I have
                 to say something about your tool comment.  In my observation,
                 the *vast* majority of people do not know how to use a toilet
                 plunger correctly.  Does that mean we don't need toilet
                 plungers?  Can you suggest a superior tool for the job?
                 One other solution is to have a basket full of pointy sticks
                 next to the toilet which users can use to break up their turds
                 with a stabbing motion.  This is certainly a more
                 self-expanatory tool, but it is also inferior.  First of all,
                 it doesn't help you if the offending turd has already passed
                 the U-bend, and second of all, it leaves you with a shit
                 covered stick that you have to dispose of.
              \_ Hehe.  Wonky features like container classes.  I think the
                 fault of C++ is not the amount of features it has (most
                 of them are there for a reason) but the way they fail to
                 come together as a coherent, organic whole.  Stroustrup is
                 a smart guy, but an artist he is not.  It's telling that
                 you think Java is featureful, Java is one of the most
                 featureless languages I know of. -- ilyas
                 \_ Well Strou built it on C so it can't really help being
                    ugly. It feels like it wants to be another language but
                    it lives in C land for practicality. Kind of how Windows
                    lived in MS-DOS for so long.
              \_ In the US of A, we have the FREEDOM to use C++ poorly
              \_ No, I didn't miss the point.  The point is crappy OOP gives
                 crappy results.  OOP used well has huge benefits.  That's the
                 difference between a beginner and an experienced SE.

1/20    I need to demonstrate a special case of polymophism.  Say I have
        a "class A" and a "class B"  B inherits from A.  A defines foo
        and bar. B redefines bar.  A.foo() calls this.bar(), so if we
        call b.foo() we expect foo() to call the correct bar (B's).
        Can anyone think of a simple real world case where this happens?
        It's for a short talk I need to give, and I need a good example.

1/18    In C network programming, say I have a variable frame_var of
        type ethernet frame struct. Ignoring what uint is actually, let's
        say the frame struct is "struct frame {uint preamble, uint dest,
        uint source, char data[1500], uint crc};".  Then in order to
        put stuff into data, I'd do casting as follows:
            tcp_data = (tcp_struct *)&frame_var->data
        From this point, I can put fields into tcp_data->source,
        tcp_data->etc. How would I achieve the same thing is Java
        since I can't do crazy dereferencing/crazy casting? And is it
        actually possible to do such low level (data link layer)
        programming in Java?
        \_ If I'm understanding what you're wanting to do, you may want to
           look at the serializable interface, and the corresponding
           writeObject, readObject methods.             -mice
        \_ StringWriter maybe?  Or just write to the socket directly.
        \_ You might be able to do some of this using reflection.
           I don't think that you can manually set the tcp src/dest
           addr on a pkt in java though.
        \_ I'd create a class TCPData with instance vars matching the
           tcp_struct, and then add a method TCPData::writeOnBuffer(char[])
           to shove the data into the char*. If you want to be a bit more
           efficient with memory, you could do it differently -- have
           the TCPData constructor accept a char[] and have the getter/setter
           methods do the offset arithmetic to put and retrieve values
           from the char[] correctly, but I'd only do that if absolutely
           necessary.

1/18    I want to do a personal project involving OpenGL.  I also require
        basic GUI widgets of some sort in a cross-platform way.  What would
        you reccomend?  Java-OpenGL doesn't seem standardized.  Should I try to
        use GLUT?  Should I use some cross-platform scripting language?
        I'm looking for cross-platform, full OpenGL support, and lightweight.
        \_ Take a look at GLUI.  http://www.cs.unc.edu/~rademach/glui

12/20   Has anyone used the parser generator JavaCC?  Is it just me, or is
        it completely awful?
        \_ what do you need it for? If you need to use the visitor and
           traverse the syntax tree, I recommend JTB, available here
           http://compilers.cs.ucla.edu/jtb  It is built on top of
           javacc and generates visitors that you can extend functionalities
           on. There are tutorials you can use, here:
           http://compilers.cs.ucla.edu/jtb/jtb-2003           -kchang
           \_ I'm using it at work, I don't really have a choice about it.
              A parser was written in it long ago by a guy who didn't know
              anything about parsers, and now I have to update it.
              \_ well, what's awful about it? What does it not have that
                 yacc and bison have?

12/8    For person who wanted to know how to overload new[], the general
        syntax is void * operator new[](size_t) { //do whatever you need to
        do with size_t and return an array pointer } -williamc
        \_ And if you're going to do this madness, be sure to overload delete[]
           as well.
        \_ Cool, thanks.  Now I remember why Java was invented...
           \_ The original poster's C++ program was too slow, so he's using
              obscure C++ features to make it run faster.  How would Java be
              better here?
           \_ In order to remove an optional feature?
              \_ Yup, that's why languages like C++ and Perl suck. I've
                 used both for years, and the things you can do with C++
                 are just fun fun fun. Next time you feel bored, insert
                 delete(this) in your code and see what happens.
                 \_ Don't knock what you don't know how to use.  I've been
                    in many situations where `delete this` came in quite
                    handy for memory management issues.  Instead of sitting
                    here complaining about how bad a language is because it
                    lets you do something you don't understand, take half a
                    second to realize that there's people in the world who
                    actually know how to program.
                 \_ Doctor, it hurts when I delete(this)...
                    \_ Son, you need to realloc(penis, 6 * INCHES);

11/24   Is Java RMI simply serializing objects and then sending/receiving
        the byte-streams on TCP/IP? Is that all RMI does, or is it
        something more than that?
        \_ No, it's more than that. You're dealing with invoking and calling
           remote objects, not simply serializing them over TCP/IP. It isn't
           as simple as what you propose.
           \_ so let me ask differently. Can RMI be implemented in Java using
              non-JNI stuff, using simple Serialization, book keeping data
              structures, etc? What is it so magical about RMI?
              \_ Technically yes, RMI can definitely be implemented not using
                 JNI. After all, RMI is a published spec, and you could write
                 it in pure Java. The reason JNI is used is because for low
                 level serialization through TCP/IP native method calls to
                 C functions is much faster. After all, OO request brokering
                 is rather CPU intensive (If you didn't know that I would
                 suggest you take an advanced course in OO and do some
                 research on CORBA). We did our own object serialization back
                 in 1.1 when Java was a much smaller language and didn't
                 have things like RMI (and of course not stuff like J2EE).
                 Object serialization isn't hard to do, although tedious
                 if you are doing it yourself. The JVM was a definite
                 bottleneck.

11/17   I am a Java GUI programming newbie.  I have been asked to save a
        JTextField object as a BMP object.  I was reading about Java Image
        I/O API in JDK 1.5.  Looks great.  Except I can only save an
        Image object...how would I go about coverting my JTextField to an
        image?  Thx - clueless

10/1    If you haven't done so already, file your class action lawsuit:
        http://www.paypal.com/settlement
        \_ jeesh, everything is in pdf. Why is paypal paying everyone?

9/29    Does bittorrent work with Linux? I've been trying to download it but
        it's in a damn RPM and I don't have root access.
        \_ Umm, most bittorrent clients aren't RPM's.. in fact, the first
           one was written entirely in python
        \_ Get the Azureus client off sourceforge.  Nicest one I've seen and
           runs in Java.
                \_ alright I downloaded the jar, how do I friggin use it
                   when they don't have HOwTOs and documentations?
                   \_ "How do I run a Java program?" STFW.
                \_ java -jar Azureus2.1.0.4.jar
        Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/eclipse/swt/widgets/Display
        So what is this eclipse shit? Man the documentation sucks.
        \_ It sounds like you might have an old version of the JRE.
        \_ You want to do torrent downloads on a machine and you don't have
           root?  Have you checked your user agreement?
        \_ I'm on DSL so I tried using this to limit the transfer
           rate as to not piss off my apartmentmates:
                http://ei.kefro.st/projects/btclient
           However, it's still pretty lame as DSL is slow, so I've
           been thinking that I should use Linux at work with a much
           bigger bandwidth. However, I don't have root to install
           the RPMs.                                    -op
           \_ Azureus also does upstream bandwidth limiting, and running a P2P
              app at work is a good way to get your ass fired.

9/23    Do you find a lack of respect for s/w developers and/or sysadmins
        in your workplace? I am in management (former sysadmin) and
        hearing management's opinions firsthand is now shocking and
        depressing. Time to switch careers or are there places that treat
        IT with respect? BTW, my team has members from Caltech, Harvey
        Mudd, USC, Berkeley... so it's not like we're a bunch of idiots
        at a help desk.
        \_ My experience is that people hate IT because they are highly
           dependant on them, they usually get paid manager scale salary
           or higher as staff and most sw dev and/or SA are incompetent
           assholes.  There really truly are enough real fucking losers out
           there that it makes all of us look like shit forever.  When you
           meet these people kindly ask them to find a new field and when
           they don't, it is ok to knee cap them with a bat.
           \_ In my experience, incompetent assholes are much more prevalent
              among management than among software people or sysadmins.
              The higher the position, the more likely the guy is an
              incompetent asshole. -- ilyas
              \_ ilyas, have you ever read Alan Cooper's book "The Inmates
                 Are Running The Asylum?"  I highly recommend it to anyone
                 that thinks software people _aren't_ the problem.
                 \_ I haven't read it.  But isn't that book about problems with
                    software development?  I thought this thread was more
                    about problems in computer industry corporations?  Actually,
                    I think the problem is wider than the computer industry.
                    In my more marxist days, I can't help but think there is
                    a middle management parasite class. -- ilyas
                    \_ You mean you really are a dictionary-definition "neocon"?
                        -- ulysses
                        \_ I don't know what that word means. -- ilyas
                           \_ Do you have a tough time with reading
                              comprehension? Or do you just disagree with
                              the Christian Science Monitor defintion of it?
                        http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/neocon/neocon101.html
                              \_ If Cheney and I are both neocons, then that
                                 label is meaningless.  I disagree (or at
                                 least disagreed in 2000) with Cheney on
                                 almost everything. -- ilyas
           \_ I just heard a line from a guy I work with that you might
              appreciate.  "Sure, I'm a minority.  I'm in the minority of
              people who know what the fuck they're doing."
           \_ Well, yeah THAT's true.  You should see some of the crap IT
              people there are out there.  Clueless and unwilling to
              learn.  The worst combo in IT.
        \_ If you fail to understand the hatred of sysadmins/IT types
           by almost all workers of all types(including even blue collar
           workers now) you are probably part of the problem.  As my old
           boss from when I worked in the fishing industry put it "it's
           getting to where you can't take a shit without dealing with one
           of these pointy headed computer fuckers."  Computers are
           loathesome for most people to use, and their major human contact
           with this issue is through IT people.
        \_ my manager said there's no respect because engineering is just
           a disposable resource. I left that company 5 years ago.
           \_ Is that company floundering?  emarkp's company had an
              additude like that and it died fairly quickly.
           \_ hint: *everyone* is a disposable resource.  if you think you're
              not disposable doing whatever it is that you do then you're
              either a truly unique contributor or you're truly naive.
              *everyone* can be replaced at most companies.
        \_ Here at the lab, we get lots of respect.  Work at LLNL! -jrleek
           \_ That's what they have when you are not in listening range.
              \_ Exactly. I thought the same thing until I got promoted.
                 CS types are supposedly trained monkeys that make too
                 much money "but it's what the market will bear".
                 \_ Ummm.. have you worked at the lab, or are you talking
                    about a different place?  My management is almost
                    entriely CS guys, up until you get the the very top,
                    where it becomes Physics PhDs.  Admittedly, the
                    Physics guys don't think much of CS, but they don't
                    think much of ANYONE who isn't a Physics PhD. -jrleek
                    \_ Until they need someone to fix their Blackberry.  :-)
                       \_ Ah, but the Physics guy could fix it in theory!
                          All this implementation stuff is just
                          engineering.
                    \_ You are confirming what I said. The CS guys think
                       highly of CS, but not anyone else (physics in this
                       case). I have worked several places in academia as
                       well as industry and for the government.