Posts by jwenting

Sun doesn't release JVMs for Mac, Apple does.
And they typically require you to buy an operating system upgrade to get them.

yes, I can remember that. And I'm still constantly learning after programming (first as a student and now professionally) for almost 20 years now.

I was, and still am, constantly with my head down in books and websites/docsets (and previously magazines, before they all devolved into nothing more than paid advertising).

That's why I told you to look in the documentation. The answer is there, and in a rather obvious place too.

Think like a thinking person and look around in the API docs.
You can do it with a single method call.

Go through the errors one at a time and try to fix them.

EE experts mostly don't get paid, except insofar that I think you can get a free membership (extension) for providing enough answers people like.

Used to use them a lot before they went commercial, now I hardly ever go there at all.

Or any of a lot of others. This is a very common example of the networking capabilities of Java used in many programming courses either as an assignment or as a case study.

The fun is figuring it out yourself rather than taking some ready made solution and trying to make it look like something you made yourself ;)

You didn't set up your classpath correctly inside the build xml.

I think I got 8, but it may only be 7 (the 8th might be an optical illusion).

"There are 299,968,595 people in the United States of America"

Did over 30 thousand people die since that 300 millionth was born last week?

got 6 right on the first try. Maybe because I was a teenager for most of the '80s so lived the period :)

one word: fdisk

My parents wouldn't want my financial support, they're too proud of that.
And they don't need it either, my dad's pension is several times higher than my and my sister's combined incomes :)

Moral support, of course. I feel terrible I can't visit them more often than once a week now that my mom's in hospital due to my own medical problems.
Last time that happened I was there for them every other day at least despite it being an hour's driving either way for me.

same kid posted the much the same thing a few days ago. He doesn't want to cooperate in solving his problem.

TA can be played over the internet or a LAN. One player hosts a game (and sets the map and stuff), the others join.

You're missing a class "TextIO" and the import statement for it.

My father, around the time he retired, got called by some kid trying to sell him overpriced pension plans (you know the kind).
After talking for something like 15 minutes (to prevent the kid from bothering others) he told her he'd been working and saving up for 40 years and was now going to spend it all.
She was silent...

Indeed.

Why do people get so worked up about which browser/OS/platform people use?

Heck, does it really matter if someone prefers Windows to Linux or vice versa, or IE to Firefox for that matter?

The only people who get worked up about it are people who think it's cool to be "against" Microsoft...
Microsoft couldn't care less if you use another browser, the main reason for them to build one by now is because it provides both a technology demonstrator, a service to customers, and the core for several other products.

and all are owned by a single guy. he has even put that for sale. maybe he is doing so that MS would pay him for such domain.

Likely. It's called domain squatting and is not looked on lightly by most people on the net and courts have frequently ordered such people to hand over the domains.
Spreading false information isn't either...

Of course Microsoft has more at stake here, and the negative press they would get (despite being in the right) when going after these idiots will likely be worse than the annoyance they're causing.

Yes, so there IS a problem.
If you don't give the information we need to help you, you won't get any help.

Remember that ant does NOT use javac.exe...

They probably do, but most are extreme nitwits who won't even notice it.
There's 2 groups of people (generally) taking such jobs: those who can't hold any other job because they're too stupid and students trying to make a bit of money on the side.
Most students hate them just as much as we do though and won't touch such jobs, preferring to work in callcenters.

So nice to have mobile numbers delisted here by default :)
But yah, at times I get several teleterrorists per day.
I usually put the phone down without hanging up, letting them talk and talk and talk, and listen every few minutes if they're still there.
Longest I've held one occupied like that was something like 10 minutes :)

Longest I've prevented one from terrorising someone else was over half an hour. Was some girl trying to sell me "green" electricity (all about the environment you know?). In the end I'd convinced her to switch to nuclear instead (which is after all better for the environment than most other things).

There's a built in method to do just that... Not going to tell you what it is as that would be too simple, just look in the API docs for the logical classes you'd expect to have such methods.

what exactly did you set in your environment?
It is wrong, or ANT would work (or else you failed to install the JDK, installing the JRE instead).

Read carefully, that's not a capital I but a lowercase l.

no, we're not going to make you pass your exam so you can pass yourself off as a programmer.

Do your own homework. You've had months to either learn how to do it yourself or change your specialisation.
If you haven't that's your own fault, and you should suffer the consequences.
Let it be a lesson to you to be more careful and less lazy (because with a bit of study instead of watching tele or chatting over MSN with your girlfriend you would have been able to do this) next year.

First and foremost, you need to describe your problems. If you don't know what you're supposed to be making, you'll never make it.
Next turn that document into a more detailed functional design, stating what the user should be able to do and what the expected result will be at each stage.
Only then can you start thinking about ways to implement that, but in the abstract as algorithms and design patterns.

After that can come a period of selecting 3rd party components and libraries that can be of use.

Only after that should you start programming.

Diablo, Diablo II, Total Annihillation, DungeonSiege.

nope, loathe it with a vengeance. Being forced to watch 20 hours or so of it per week as a kid does that, and of course the complete brainwashing by the media presenting anyone having anything to do with it as a divine being.

No problem. Just remember that Eclipse doesn't even make use of the JDK you've installed (except to run itself). It has its own built-in compiler (which is decent but not quite identical in what it does to the official one from Sun).

..which again amount to the same repetitive process of flying different planes under different conditions :D

does it? At least the scenery changes. And the permutations are far larger. Weather, time, scenery, etc. etc. all modelled in quite good detail.
I'd rather fly for real, but the cost is prohibitive.

hmm, I tried several MMPORGs and always get tired of them very quickly.
All of them come down to slashing through the same mobs time and time again to get enough experience to use more powerful equipment and take on more powerful mobs, and then do the same some more to actually afford that equipment.
After that the cycle repeats with different mobs.

Done some Anarchy Online lately, was fun for a week or two.

Now I'm back to MS FlightSim, but not yet online as the servers we use for it need an upgrade and that's not done yet.

An interviewer will (if he's good) not automatically reject you if you don't answer everything correctly, but decide based on how you arrived at your answers.
Of course many interviewers are not that good, because many technical interviews are performed by non-technical people who just use a list of ready made questions and answers and tick off how many the candidate answers correctly like it were some highschool exam.

Depending on the level of the job and the claimed knowledge of the applicant he will of course be required to know certain things by heart even so, and the above question could well be such a one for someone applying for a job on a team creating Swing applications with database backends.

Cant we all just get along?

Sadly, no.

Indeed, what good is a gun that's not loaded? It's no more than a rather cumbersome, overexpensive, club.
A sturdy cane or other stick will be much more effective as all you could do with it is try to hit people over the head with it.

But to leave it in such a condition that a child that's not been trained in firearms safety can get at it is criminal (literally, it's a criminal offense to give people who are not legally allowed access to firearms such access).

Check your compiler compliance settings. Most likely your project is configured for 1.4 language compliance.

your first and so far only post here is a blatant attack on someone about something you seem to not properly understand, reopening a topic that was discussed to completion over a year ago.
Very nice entrance that is...

unsurprising. Most repair shops (certainly the ones that aren't also dealerships) will try to rip you off.
"Finding" all kinds of stuff wrong with the car that urgently needs fixing (at of course inflated prices) when you come in for something cheap but time consuming is but the beginning of their modus operandi.
If there's mandatory checkups on cars like we have here, they can literally hold you hostage and demand you give them money for repairs which often aren't needed.
Shops have been known to take out perfectly good parts and replace them with broken ones, then call the owner saying that this and that is broken and needs replacement.
The original part is then put back in and the owner charged for a new one...
If you don't pay your car is marked as failing the check which means that by law it MUST be scrapped (which the shop of course will also do for you, at a price).

It may already be starting with city planners in Japan and elsewhere planning massive buildings with not just housing but shops, offices, and everything else for tens of thousands of occupants.
Not yet completely self contained, these are the first step towards cities in a building where the occupants never have to leave the building they're born in if they don't want to (in Asimov's vision/nightmare they were legally banned from doing so without special permission as well as mentally incapable).

I don't think it has (overall).
While there is a tendency in some (sub)cultures to use technology to a questionable degree, and in other (sub)cultures to shun technology to a questionable degree, I feel that overall there's a decent balance.

It does however warrant constant vigil. I've for example heard that schools are planning to abandon writing lessons for kids "because they never need to write anyway now that everyone has computers".
That's an extremely dangerous trend if true.
Or (as I've experienced in the past) people using instant messenging software in favour of speaking to people sitting next to them (but that was a technology company, a place where people are bound to be slightly nutty like that).

So the signs are there, but it's not (yet) come to the breaking point where the only options open to people are to completely abandon themselves to technology (a.k.a. the Matrix) or drop out of the system completely and withdraw to a life completely without it.

And it's not an isolated case either. I've heard before of people committing minor crimes just so they can get arrested and spend a few days in prison where it's warm, they have a shower, and get 3 meals a day rather than having to spend their days out on the street where it's cold and you never know if you will have food.

Interesting discussion on Volokh.com about this: http://volokh.com/posts/1160717822.shtml

Where technology makes the wielder more efficient at his task, it can be as complex as need be but it is beneficial.
When technology hampers the wielder rather than benefits him, it can be as primitive and simple as you want but it's better abandoned.

Thus technology, however complex, has its place as long as it's not employed for the sake of employing it.

For example without computers a stock trader would not be able to handle even a percent of the volume he handles with them, there computers are vital to the working of the market with a workable amount of people.
OTOH the computer on the counter in a small retail store is most likely overkill. A simple mechanical teller, or even an old fashioned orderbook and cash register would do the job just as well and probably faster.
If that computer doubles as a catalogue and for placing backorders there might be something to be said for it, but even then it would almost certainly be cheaper to use other means without loosing efficiency.

Well, as long as the population of this dirtball keeps going up it will only go up as well.
Living space will get ever more expensive, made even worse by an ever larger area needed for agriculture and transport.

I fear Asimov's vision of his Caves of Steel may come true, massive underground cities where people live in tiny apartments without any amenities (everything from kitchens to toilets to bathrooms being communal), and the food supply being made up almost exclusively of industrially produced yeast and moulds flavoured to make it taste somewhat like vegetables, fruit, and meat.

After chess you can try to tackle Go.

Take some good classes and read some good books.
Sun's SL-275 course is excellent and not too expensive (about $2000 for a week, quite reasonable for what you get).
For books, Head First Java is a good way to get started. After that get the certification book by the same authors.
Don't think you can master this thing in a few weeks, it takes a lot longer than that (though some people can cram for the exam in a few weeks without any knowledge of Java, they still won't know anything after the exam as it's all shortterm knowlegde which disappears immediately).

And yes, you might get some input in a constructor. But more usually you'd get the input elsewhere and pass it as arguments into the constructor.

A blank vote is the traditional way to oppose all candidates.
Your vote is registered that way but goes to noone. If enough people do it every candidate will feel it in their percentages, showing them they're unpopular.

But the only way to maybe influence who's on the lists of candidates is to join a party and take part in the party congress where the candidates are selected.

Yes, there are elections coming up here as well. And I'm inclined to vote for someone I don't like one bit.
Not because there's noone I would rather vote for but to prevent someone I like even less from getting the majority.
Would that happen we'd face a communist government here, which is worse than the alternative.

the reason there's so much attention to every single scrape and hurt soldiers in Iraq get has nothing to do with this. It's composed of 3 reasons: 1) instant comms make it easier to report than ever (seconds to get your report to the editor rather than days or weeks), 2) there's hardly any control over the media (in WW1 and 2 they were strictly controlled, essentially could only publish official press releases), and most importantly 3) the media are on a deliberate campaign (like they were in Vietnam) to get the people to believe the battle is being lost and the president is deliberately sending these people out there to be killed.

That has little to do with the people having lost their guts for action even if there's risk (though had the spirit that drove Apollo been there still it would be less effective against them).

instead of the URI for the result JSP, place the URI for the servlet (as mapped in the web.xml deployment descriptor) in the link tag.
Then in the servlet place the result of its operation in the request or session (if it should be persistent between requests) and forward the request to the result jsp with request.getRequestDispatcher().forward() (or something like that).

and it's greatly outdated.
Maybe you should go back to DOS. WP 4.3 worked better there than it does under Windows XP...

that's incorrect. The toString() method for an object can print anything, depending on what the person implementing the method decided on.
In the case of Object (and thus by default) it prints the class name followed by the hashCode of the object instance, not its memory address.

heck, I've seen people paying thousands of dollars for information on where to buy a new digital camera.
Had they just gone to the nearest dealership and asked they'd have had that same information for free.

As a sidenote it must be mentioned though that those auctions were fraudulent, people were led to believe they were bidding on the camera itself unless they read the entire description (deliberately made extremely long and convoluted) very closely.