According to one of the MIT professors that I talked to when I went there, MIT, as one of the founding members of the internet, retains Tier 1 status - so they actually have more independence and power than most ISPs;)
Ugh, there are other big problems with Leopard though. For example, you know Time Machine? THE reason to buy Leopard? Doesn't work on SMB shares. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it worked in the betas. In fact, even if you use a linux AFP share, it won't run - Time Machine only works on wired external drives or other Leopard computers. Personally, I'm not going to buy a stupid wired external hard drive when I've got a perfectly good 2 TB SMB share on a Linux server. The fact that Apple just screwed everyone over like that shows exactly why I'm really disappointed in them this time around. Leopard broke so many things and put in so few good things, now I'm thinking it might have been a mistake to upgrade so soon (I really miss Afloat and Connect360).
And if there are only two neuros in the hospital and the second doesn't have a cell or pager on him? Doctors are not in unlimited supply and most specialties may only have 3 doctors with expertise in an area, including general fields like pathology (there are even more restrictive subspecialties within that, e.g. molecular). I think the ability for emergency personnel or needed communication to pass out of the building outweighs the convenience you might get from gratuitous phone calls. I'd prefer to have a little noise every once and then if it means its easier for important or emergency situations involving phone calls to be resolved. The key is for people to have a general sense of decency so we no longer have a problem. It seems the alternative solution is a tad selfish - just because your phone call isn't important doesnt mean others arent.
Yup, true. The problem is, for certain medical specialties, that's simply not the case. Sometimes you will only have one molecular pathologist (or 0), or only one experienced neurosurgeon - there's nothing you can do about that. Ostensibly, multiple people should be on on call duty at the same time in case something happens, but the truth is that that costs money that either doesnt exist or won't be given by hospitals. There are times when doctors I know who were not on call were called at home because they couldnt reach the doctor on call. What would have happened if they couldn't reach the off doctor? Who knows, but restricting cell service all over the place surely won't help.
For #2 - absolutely, courtesy is the important point here. I don't expect doctors to have their phones on full ringer and start taking the call during the movie, but I know that every doctor i know simply puts it on vibrate, and if they receive a call or page, they quietly excuse themselves from the theater and take it outside. I guess I personally believe that I can put up with the annoying people to allow those quiet and polite people who need cell access to watch a movie too.
This actually touches on #1 as well, as sometimes doctors are on call for months at a time and I don't think we can ask doctors to simply give up elements of their life like that.
Alright, you do have me on one point, I apologize for being harsh, it wasn't necessary, however it seems like you criticize the way the medical industry works without any history in it at all, am I wrong? Also, I am a different poster than the previous - I am not a doctor, however I come from a family of doctors, including both of my parents, who are still practicing physicians. After consulting them, it seems that you are advocating the disruption of possible life saving cell service simply to save you interruption while watching a movie. You say that we (meaning me and the previous poster) think that we are better, but the honest truth is that I think you are trying to apply a standard to every person. However, I don't think that standard (no one needs cell use) is truly applicable in this case. The way the medical system is set up now, it is the sad truth that doctors do, for the most part, rely on communication methods like cell phones and pagers to do their jobs. If you say that they should abandon their lives (not go to movie theaters/dinner/any place that would restrict cell use), how does that create a positive social situation? We can pay the doctors more for on-call to compensate, except that no hospital is willing to just give more money to doctors, trust me. In summation, the system that you advocate is simply not realistic, and I think that at least most services will recognize this and continue to allow cell service in those areas (they may not be legally obligated, but they should probably see the benefit outweighs the loss).
P.S. When I refuted your quotes point by point, I did exactly what you did to the guy before me. I thought I might as well keep in pattern, but obviously wasn't aware there was a rule on quotations.
Seriously, you don't know how the medical profession works at all. It sounds like you work in IT, not medicine.
No, what I see is that there would be more than one person who could take the calls in rotation, and that those who were going to literally be on call 168 hours per week would be paid for it. Not true. Calls are taken weeks, sometimes months in rotation. I know that my mother has been on call every week since August and for some its even worse than that. Oh, and the pay for on-call hours sucks - enough that many specialists don't work on-call hours, if there's an emergency, hope that it can wait until work hours the next day or, yes, the kid is dead (or not in ideal condition). This is obviously an exaggeration, as they can usually find a doctor in a specialty (like neuro) willing to work on-call, but there are many who don't, and there's no reason to make it worse.
Michael Moore? Whatever. Fact is, doctors are highly paid, and don't work for free. Their salaries are sufficient compensation to be able to avoid areas where their cell phones might not work or might not be permitted when on call. If that's such a quality of life issue, I'm sure there are hospitals or practices that have more than one surgeon available within a specialty, or, failing that, less demanding professions available to someone with the intelligence to be a surgeon. Counting in the huge malpractice and lack of medical benefits and a lot of the stuff that you take for granted, most doctors' salaries are not fantastically high. In fact, many specialties have such high costs, they can't even make enough money to support themselves anymore (e.g. OB/GYNs). If you want to wake up to the real world of medicine and take your head out of your ass, you'll note that they don't actually get paid enough to simply never go outside, and if you argue that they should, talk to the hospitals, I'm sure they'll be willing to just pay everyone more money because you think they should.
That's not how it works. Doctor's are allowed to go home, but have scheduled "on-call" times in case there's an emergency. For example, the smaller staff at a hospital (especially a smaller private care one) will probably not be large enough to handle a train derailment 5 miles away, or some emergency that's not covered by ER docs, internists, residents, or nurses. Also, in departments such as pathology, there may be only 3 or 4 senior pathologists in the entire hospital. If someone is standing in the OR and needs a consult right f'in now and the other not on-call pathologists are unreachable, you better hope the on-call pathologist picks up. Blocking cell phones and possible injury is not a valid response to people bitching that phones might "ruin their moviegoing experience." Seriously, come on. In fact, an even bigger problem is that in certain specialties, such as neurosurgery, on-call time is payed so poorly that sometimes the physicians won't even do it - ie, if you really want to start saying that physicians cant do stuff when they're on call, fine, but don't complain when you no longer have any physicians.
If being a doctor required you to give up your entire life, I'd guarantee you wouldn't have many competent doctors practicing. Also, it's only A-OK until there's a lawsuit when someone gets injured because a theater cut off all cell signals without warning. Doubt it will come to that though, I don't foresee theatres investing in massive Faraday cages anytime soon.
Nuclear power is actually the way to go, especially since 99% of nuclear waste can be reprocessed (most of that is actually trivial things like clothes that are just radioactive enough to be termed "nuclear waste.") But thats a long story... Also, uranium isnt as rare as one would think, considering we have thousands of needless nuclear warheads full of the stuff;) Of course, I'm also a strong supporter of fusion research - in fact, the benefit of actually succeeding is so great that I would direct all of our alternative electric power generation funding to it.
My guess would actually be cash -the DoD spends so much money on gas, it can actually be graphed along with other countries in fuel use. It seems that relying on already existing technologies (nuclear power in certain warships) would be cheaper for them than buying all this fuel - especially as the price keeps going up. But hey, IMHO obviously.
Actually, I don't see why killing 2 million people is any worse than killing 1 person. Death is death is death. If you want to approach scope from a mathematical, utilitarian standpoint, yes, a ratio of the whole is more accurate. If you're trying to approach it from a moral standpoint, 1 million deaths is just as tragic as one - I'm not sure how you rationalize it differently.
When I gave figures for total population I was trying to cite scope. What many don't seem to understand is that there weren't 200,000,000 people in europe in the 1600s - comparing direct numbers is a false comparison. Instead, it would be more accurate to compare percentages of population. Seven million out of 200 million is close to 3.5 percent. 100,000 out of 420,000 is approaching 25% (overestimation in my opinion, but you get the point). Also, if we say that Stalin did this with all the horrid devices of the twentieth century over the course of a year, while this was just old fashioned 17th century slaughter over a week, you come up with about 0.01% of the population lost per day in Russia, with 3.6% of the population lost per day in France. Scope is important, but it can't be approached in a vacuum. For example, one must remember something about the times before the twentieth century - there was no such thing as genocide. It's not because people didn't hate or want to kill each other as much, but because it was an impossibility. There was simply no way to fathom exterminating a population until the 20th century. I wouldn't doubt the casualities in the middle ages would have been higher if they had biotoxins and nuclear weapons to unleash on their supposed enemies.
Just because other people commit atrocities doesn't mean we should excuse religion. I think the "shining example" of an incident that would almost certainly not have happened if not for religion is actually an incident where Christians slaughtered each other - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Bartholomew's_Day_Massacre. I think many people don't understand exactly how horrific this was. First, in the 1600s, urbanization was rather popular, and probably the majority of France's citizens lived in Paris or one of the handful of other large cities (none close to Paris's side). Paris's population was approximately 420,000 in the 1600s. Now, the exact number of fatalities is not known, but I have read a couple thesis that point to an absolute minimum of 10,000 dead in Paris on the first day. Some historians even believe that the number approached 100,000 total dead. This entire incident took about a week, and could have been responsible for the slaughter of 10% or more of France's population, for no reason but France was Catholic and it couldn't have a Protestant ruler. Stalin and Hitler were bad, but they still would have happened without religion. This wouldn't.
I'm pretty sure that's how every political organization would like to work. The difference is that MoveOn.org won this time. Seriously, you're a business and someones running a critical ad that is hurting you and that you have the option to take down, do you take it down? Obviously the answer is yes - if you answer no you are either so ludicriously idealistic this conversation is null and void, or you're lying to yourself. Whatever, my point is that every organization would do this if they could.
I would have hoped that a Slashdotter would be more astute in protecting his rights. Google is a private company. You have no rights. They can do whatever they want.
If you're working in Java or J2EE (like I am) it's not the same. Building the file in VS will recompile everything, while Eclipse uses the JVM and JIT to build incrementally, thus speading the process up and only recompiling what it needs to recompile. Pretty cool feature if i may say so myself.
My god, if I had any mod points...
By the way, here's the refutation of his Constitution argument.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
The Congress shall have power... To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
This is actually a brilliant idea, and it's not new either - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Auth ority . This is the kind of thing the government should do and this was FDR's groundbreaking liberal policy, which unfortunately has been bastardized to such a state that it is completely unrecognizable. The government is there to serve the people, and creating jobs, building infrastructure, and developing an area, including the economics, is what the social society is all about.
Sorry to go off on a tangent, this is just coming from someone who think the Republicans and Democrats have just pissed all over themselves and totally lost all the good things. The Bush administration has decided they like the fiscally irresponsible part of the liberal policy, but not the freedom, and the Democrats are so disorganized and are so busy pandering to the idiots that they come up with horrible compromises and corruption and ultimately end up doing nothing. I think the only reason everyone is pushing so hard for "free market and unrestrained capitalism!" is that the government has failed so completely in what it should be doing. If we shape up we can still fix it, but everyones got to take notice first;)
Well, not to be all alarmist and anti-corporation, but I'd like to share a story. I live in the area of the Baltimore/Washington Metropolitan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_County,_Maryla nd and it is commonly referred to as the Internet battleground - Comcast and Verizon are constantly competing for access here. As soon as Verizon rolled out with its new FiOS service in Texas and here (which I have btw, and it is AWESOME; constant speeds, no downtime, 15/2 Mbps), it took a week before Comcast announced that its previously highest speed, 8 Mbps, was now its second highest, with a new top speed of 12 Mbps. I will note that there was ZERO infrastructure modification between these announcements. Therefore, the only logical conclusion was that they were capable of these speeds the whole time - they just wanted you to pay the most for as little as possible. As soon as competition comes in, then they show their hand. It was really pretty sleazy, and that plus TechTV speaks to why I don't have Comcast anymore.
Dude, emacs?? But you're right, NetBeans can add most of that functionality with plugins, but eclipse has little things that just make you smile - like holding control to follow a link to a function or SWT vs Swing. Also, I find that Eclipse has better integration with WebSphere. Granted, I haven't used NetBeans in forever, but I found that Eclipse provided a better platform for rich client applications - if I ever need to write a python script, all I need to do in Eclipse is create a new Python project. Also, I've heard that Aspect Java fell through with NetBeans, is that true? Anyway, the points I was making weren't to disparage NetBeans, but to point out that the tools in Eclipse are actually used by people and aren't just fluff. Both are certainly better than vi, javac, and a web browser.:)
For serious Java and J2EE developers (I gather you're only using the C/C++ or Java Standard edition), it is the only reasonably tool. NetBeans is ok, but for real enterprise development Eclipse is unparalleled. GUI building utilities are decent, but they're irrelevant in J2EE applications and usually a waste when designing large applications. Instead, Eclipse provides things like Ant, JUnit, JSP, multiple server integration, EclEmma, Subclipse, and literally dozens of other utilities. I know it sounds like overkill if you're just designing a small app, but for large projects each and every tool is vital to productivity.
For example, using JUnit, you can separate your tests, but at the same time keep them synced with each and every class and method in your program. In addition, on failure JUnit provides extensive exception/debugging handling utilities and stack traces. By consolidating all your cases together, it makes regression testing as easy as pressing a button. Along with the JBoss and other enterprise development plugins, Eclipse becomes your entire programming platform, including your web browser.
Maybe it's different for you guys, but - my time means something, certainly, but it costs nothing. Anyway, it's not like your time will go to nothing: because of Linux I've gotten jobs in basic computer science and internships that usually only take people with full CS degrees before graduating college. I'd call that pretty useful.
Slashdot Mirror
According to one of the MIT professors that I talked to when I went there, MIT, as one of the founding members of the internet, retains Tier 1 status - so they actually have more independence and power than most ISPs ;)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_carrier
Ugh, there are other big problems with Leopard though. For example, you know Time Machine? THE reason to buy Leopard? Doesn't work on SMB shares. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it worked in the betas. In fact, even if you use a linux AFP share, it won't run - Time Machine only works on wired external drives or other Leopard computers. Personally, I'm not going to buy a stupid wired external hard drive when I've got a perfectly good 2 TB SMB share on a Linux server. The fact that Apple just screwed everyone over like that shows exactly why I'm really disappointed in them this time around. Leopard broke so many things and put in so few good things, now I'm thinking it might have been a mistake to upgrade so soon (I really miss Afloat and Connect360).
And if there are only two neuros in the hospital and the second doesn't have a cell or pager on him? Doctors are not in unlimited supply and most specialties may only have 3 doctors with expertise in an area, including general fields like pathology (there are even more restrictive subspecialties within that, e.g. molecular). I think the ability for emergency personnel or needed communication to pass out of the building outweighs the convenience you might get from gratuitous phone calls. I'd prefer to have a little noise every once and then if it means its easier for important or emergency situations involving phone calls to be resolved. The key is for people to have a general sense of decency so we no longer have a problem. It seems the alternative solution is a tad selfish - just because your phone call isn't important doesnt mean others arent.
Yup, true. The problem is, for certain medical specialties, that's simply not the case. Sometimes you will only have one molecular pathologist (or 0), or only one experienced neurosurgeon - there's nothing you can do about that. Ostensibly, multiple people should be on on call duty at the same time in case something happens, but the truth is that that costs money that either doesnt exist or won't be given by hospitals. There are times when doctors I know who were not on call were called at home because they couldnt reach the doctor on call. What would have happened if they couldn't reach the off doctor? Who knows, but restricting cell service all over the place surely won't help.
For #2 - absolutely, courtesy is the important point here. I don't expect doctors to have their phones on full ringer and start taking the call during the movie, but I know that every doctor i know simply puts it on vibrate, and if they receive a call or page, they quietly excuse themselves from the theater and take it outside. I guess I personally believe that I can put up with the annoying people to allow those quiet and polite people who need cell access to watch a movie too.
This actually touches on #1 as well, as sometimes doctors are on call for months at a time and I don't think we can ask doctors to simply give up elements of their life like that.
Alright, you do have me on one point, I apologize for being harsh, it wasn't necessary, however it seems like you criticize the way the medical industry works without any history in it at all, am I wrong? Also, I am a different poster than the previous - I am not a doctor, however I come from a family of doctors, including both of my parents, who are still practicing physicians. After consulting them, it seems that you are advocating the disruption of possible life saving cell service simply to save you interruption while watching a movie. You say that we (meaning me and the previous poster) think that we are better, but the honest truth is that I think you are trying to apply a standard to every person. However, I don't think that standard (no one needs cell use) is truly applicable in this case. The way the medical system is set up now, it is the sad truth that doctors do, for the most part, rely on communication methods like cell phones and pagers to do their jobs. If you say that they should abandon their lives (not go to movie theaters/dinner/any place that would restrict cell use), how does that create a positive social situation? We can pay the doctors more for on-call to compensate, except that no hospital is willing to just give more money to doctors, trust me. In summation, the system that you advocate is simply not realistic, and I think that at least most services will recognize this and continue to allow cell service in those areas (they may not be legally obligated, but they should probably see the benefit outweighs the loss).
P.S. When I refuted your quotes point by point, I did exactly what you did to the guy before me. I thought I might as well keep in pattern, but obviously wasn't aware there was a rule on quotations.
That's not how it works. Doctor's are allowed to go home, but have scheduled "on-call" times in case there's an emergency. For example, the smaller staff at a hospital (especially a smaller private care one) will probably not be large enough to handle a train derailment 5 miles away, or some emergency that's not covered by ER docs, internists, residents, or nurses. Also, in departments such as pathology, there may be only 3 or 4 senior pathologists in the entire hospital. If someone is standing in the OR and needs a consult right f'in now and the other not on-call pathologists are unreachable, you better hope the on-call pathologist picks up. Blocking cell phones and possible injury is not a valid response to people bitching that phones might "ruin their moviegoing experience." Seriously, come on. In fact, an even bigger problem is that in certain specialties, such as neurosurgery, on-call time is payed so poorly that sometimes the physicians won't even do it - ie, if you really want to start saying that physicians cant do stuff when they're on call, fine, but don't complain when you no longer have any physicians.
If being a doctor required you to give up your entire life, I'd guarantee you wouldn't have many competent doctors practicing. Also, it's only A-OK until there's a lawsuit when someone gets injured because a theater cut off all cell signals without warning. Doubt it will come to that though, I don't foresee theatres investing in massive Faraday cages anytime soon.
Nuclear power is actually the way to go, especially since 99% of nuclear waste can be reprocessed (most of that is actually trivial things like clothes that are just radioactive enough to be termed "nuclear waste.") But thats a long story... Also, uranium isnt as rare as one would think, considering we have thousands of needless nuclear warheads full of the stuff ;) Of course, I'm also a strong supporter of fusion research - in fact, the benefit of actually succeeding is so great that I would direct all of our alternative electric power generation funding to it.
My guess would actually be cash -the DoD spends so much money on gas, it can actually be graphed along with other countries in fuel use. It seems that relying on already existing technologies (nuclear power in certain warships) would be cheaper for them than buying all this fuel - especially as the price keeps going up. But hey, IMHO obviously.
Actually, I don't see why killing 2 million people is any worse than killing 1 person. Death is death is death. If you want to approach scope from a mathematical, utilitarian standpoint, yes, a ratio of the whole is more accurate. If you're trying to approach it from a moral standpoint, 1 million deaths is just as tragic as one - I'm not sure how you rationalize it differently.
When I gave figures for total population I was trying to cite scope. What many don't seem to understand is that there weren't 200,000,000 people in europe in the 1600s - comparing direct numbers is a false comparison. Instead, it would be more accurate to compare percentages of population. Seven million out of 200 million is close to 3.5 percent. 100,000 out of 420,000 is approaching 25% (overestimation in my opinion, but you get the point). Also, if we say that Stalin did this with all the horrid devices of the twentieth century over the course of a year, while this was just old fashioned 17th century slaughter over a week, you come up with about 0.01% of the population lost per day in Russia, with 3.6% of the population lost per day in France. Scope is important, but it can't be approached in a vacuum. For example, one must remember something about the times before the twentieth century - there was no such thing as genocide. It's not because people didn't hate or want to kill each other as much, but because it was an impossibility. There was simply no way to fathom exterminating a population until the 20th century. I wouldn't doubt the casualities in the middle ages would have been higher if they had biotoxins and nuclear weapons to unleash on their supposed enemies.
Just because other people commit atrocities doesn't mean we should excuse religion. I think the "shining example" of an incident that would almost certainly not have happened if not for religion is actually an incident where Christians slaughtered each other - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Bartholomew's_Day_Massacre. I think many people don't understand exactly how horrific this was. First, in the 1600s, urbanization was rather popular, and probably the majority of France's citizens lived in Paris or one of the handful of other large cities (none close to Paris's side). Paris's population was approximately 420,000 in the 1600s. Now, the exact number of fatalities is not known, but I have read a couple thesis that point to an absolute minimum of 10,000 dead in Paris on the first day. Some historians even believe that the number approached 100,000 total dead. This entire incident took about a week, and could have been responsible for the slaughter of 10% or more of France's population, for no reason but France was Catholic and it couldn't have a Protestant ruler. Stalin and Hitler were bad, but they still would have happened without religion. This wouldn't.
I'm pretty sure that's how every political organization would like to work. The difference is that MoveOn.org won this time. Seriously, you're a business and someones running a critical ad that is hurting you and that you have the option to take down, do you take it down? Obviously the answer is yes - if you answer no you are either so ludicriously idealistic this conversation is null and void, or you're lying to yourself. Whatever, my point is that every organization would do this if they could.
If you're working in Java or J2EE (like I am) it's not the same. Building the file in VS will recompile everything, while Eclipse uses the JVM and JIT to build incrementally, thus speading the process up and only recompiling what it needs to recompile. Pretty cool feature if i may say so myself.
He may like the Constitution, but other people read it. http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitut
This is actually a brilliant idea, and it's not new either - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Valley_Auth ority . This is the kind of thing the government should do and this was FDR's groundbreaking liberal policy, which unfortunately has been bastardized to such a state that it is completely unrecognizable. The government is there to serve the people, and creating jobs, building infrastructure, and developing an area, including the economics, is what the social society is all about.
Sorry to go off on a tangent, this is just coming from someone who think the Republicans and Democrats have just pissed all over themselves and totally lost all the good things. The Bush administration has decided they like the fiscally irresponsible part of the liberal policy, but not the freedom, and the Democrats are so disorganized and are so busy pandering to the idiots that they come up with horrible compromises and corruption and ultimately end up doing nothing. I think the only reason everyone is pushing so hard for "free market and unrestrained capitalism!" is that the government has failed so completely in what it should be doing. If we shape up we can still fix it, but everyones got to take notice first ;)
Well, not to be all alarmist and anti-corporation, but I'd like to share a story. I live in the area of the Baltimore/Washington Metropolitan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_County,_Maryla nd and it is commonly referred to as the Internet battleground - Comcast and Verizon are constantly competing for access here. As soon as Verizon rolled out with its new FiOS service in Texas and here (which I have btw, and it is AWESOME; constant speeds, no downtime, 15/2 Mbps), it took a week before Comcast announced that its previously highest speed, 8 Mbps, was now its second highest, with a new top speed of 12 Mbps. I will note that there was ZERO infrastructure modification between these announcements. Therefore, the only logical conclusion was that they were capable of these speeds the whole time - they just wanted you to pay the most for as little as possible. As soon as competition comes in, then they show their hand. It was really pretty sleazy, and that plus TechTV speaks to why I don't have Comcast anymore.
Maybe this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl has something to do with it?
Dude, emacs?? But you're right, NetBeans can add most of that functionality with plugins, but eclipse has little things that just make you smile - like holding control to follow a link to a function or SWT vs Swing. Also, I find that Eclipse has better integration with WebSphere. Granted, I haven't used NetBeans in forever, but I found that Eclipse provided a better platform for rich client applications - if I ever need to write a python script, all I need to do in Eclipse is create a new Python project. Also, I've heard that Aspect Java fell through with NetBeans, is that true? Anyway, the points I was making weren't to disparage NetBeans, but to point out that the tools in Eclipse are actually used by people and aren't just fluff. Both are certainly better than vi, javac, and a web browser. :)
For serious Java and J2EE developers (I gather you're only using the C/C++ or Java Standard edition), it is the only reasonably tool. NetBeans is ok, but for real enterprise development Eclipse is unparalleled. GUI building utilities are decent, but they're irrelevant in J2EE applications and usually a waste when designing large applications. Instead, Eclipse provides things like Ant, JUnit, JSP, multiple server integration, EclEmma, Subclipse, and literally dozens of other utilities. I know it sounds like overkill if you're just designing a small app, but for large projects each and every tool is vital to productivity. For example, using JUnit, you can separate your tests, but at the same time keep them synced with each and every class and method in your program. In addition, on failure JUnit provides extensive exception/debugging handling utilities and stack traces. By consolidating all your cases together, it makes regression testing as easy as pressing a button. Along with the JBoss and other enterprise development plugins, Eclipse becomes your entire programming platform, including your web browser.
Maybe it's different for you guys, but - my time means something, certainly, but it costs nothing. Anyway, it's not like your time will go to nothing: because of Linux I've gotten jobs in basic computer science and internships that usually only take people with full CS degrees before graduating college. I'd call that pretty useful.
I think a very old quote sums up the response to this quite well: Security through obscurity is NOT security.