I don't know of any of them that would consider depriving musicians of their income as ethically acceptable behaviour.
Right you are! I'm glad to see you are also against the RIAA who locks musicians into obscene slavery-like contracts before their savvy enough to know what happend and then syphon off whatever revenue they can to "pay back the loan" forwarded to struggling artists.
If you read the second part of my post, about Folder Shortcuts (not the same thing as a shortcut to a Folder), you'll see that they do not have the same limitation and can in fact span volumes and even network drives.
Since Windows NT 4 at least, I have been able to make hard links. Granted, the OS didn't come with a tool to do it, but it did support it. Several third party tools are available.
Also, I know in Windows 2000 and Windows XP (and I heard also Windows ME), Folder Shortcuts (these are NOT shortcuts to folders) are also supported. These graft folders into the namespace that actually exist elsewhere. I've tested this across physical drives, and I believe it would also work with network-mapped drives. Note that on Windows XP, you have to temporarily switch to the classic start menu to create a Folder Shortcut.
I also read a paper once explaining how 3 was the optimal number base when you consider the number of different symbols needed and the width of a string of those symbols needed to represent numbers. I even solved the equations myself coming to this conclusion. You actually find "e" (2.718281828...) as your answer, but the closest whole number is 3, not 2.
Unfortunately, I don't have a link and Google has failed me:-(
There was an article in the most recent Pop Sci or Discover (I can't remember which) abotu two companies that have successfully made large-karat diamonds synthetically. One company in Florida, Gemology I think, hastered the hydraulic press and can produce a 3-karat diamond, with few flaws, for $100. Another company out of Boston, I believe, uses a plasma deposition method that produces better-than-nature flawless diamonds... 3k for $15. And this latter process promises to be able to deposit not just chunks (i.e. jewelry), but wafers (i.e. semiconductors!)
Of course, the preseident of the latter of the two companies was at a diamond conference and was told by a DeBeers fellow that what he was doign was a good way to get a bullet in the head!
discarded [fluorescent] bulbs release approximately 2-4 tons of mercury per year in the United States
Thank goodness! Mercury is not a renewable resource, people. Once we put it all in flourescent bulbs, its gone. So as long as we continue depositiing tons of this stuff into the environment each year, there will be enough for future generations to retrieve for their flourescent bulbs.
There is a 100-year-old lightbulb still burning in a firehouse, I believe it is somehwere in California. It was made by a lighting company in Ohio that no longer exists. I wonder why. Sure, it's been off one or two times for power change-overs, but I know of no bulb today that could manage that.
One of my favorite points about energy is to consider the "cycle" the energy takes.
For example, coal/oil/etc. starts as solar energy being consumed by plants which are then eaten by animals which die (or the plants die themselves), then buried for millions of years with possibly geothermal and graviational energy cooking it a bit more, then pumped up, refined, and burned. Eventually the spent elemnts may work themselves back into another plant or animal.
Now consider the home-brewed hydrogen the parent mentioned. Soloar power turned into electricity used to split water into Hydrogen (captured) and Oxygen (released). Then, recombine them to form water which may rain down again to be used again for this same cycle.
Instead of millions of years, we're talking days or weeks worth of energy storage and a much simpler process of capturing and releasing that energy.
Now, does it cost more? Yes, right now. But imagine how much it will cost when we have to build our own artificial hydrocarbon-energy system after we deplete the millions of years of work that nature did for us in only a few hundred years.
There are better ways to handle this. I Recently read in a Discover or Popular Science about Energy Innovation's producuts, such as the Sun Flower 250. They are basically thermal-solar-powered Sterling engines used to generate electricity. Their newest and most economical model costs $1/watt to purchase the actual unit, and that's it.
You could just stick one of these babies under a plastic (or whatever) shell to physically protect it from the elements while allowing the energy in to do the work.
So, let's not stop at photovoltaics when it comes to solar power.
As the name implies and the article explains, the phone uses SIP, or Session Initiation Protocol. I did some research on SIP last year and found it to be somewhat intruiging.
SIP is basically used for setting up the endpoints of a human communication channel over an IP-based network. It negotiates what kinds of communcations are supported on each end, and what protocols to use. So if a video-SIP-phone calls a regular analog phone via a SIP-PSTN proxy, the proxy would only support audio certain codecs. The calling video-SIP-phone and the proxy would negotiate to use only audio using a matching protocol and the cal would go through.
And since SIP is a protocol just like SMTP or HTTP, it is very controllable. There are dozens of SIP products popping up from SIP servers to SIP proxies... and now SIP phones. For example, you can have a SIP proxy/server be concious of where a user is logged in and re-route SIP calls to their present location. As a Java programmer, I'm looking forward to the day when I find a reason to write a SIP Servlet.
Furthermore, the latest version of Messenger in Windows XP supports SIP. I would think that this means a SIPPhone could call someone using Microsoft's Messenger on Windows XP. However, I was not able to confirm this with a breif perusal of the SIPPhone site, and they also state this only works with other SIPPhones. That may be an over-generalization to keep people from thinking it works with regular phones, or maybe they did something crazy with it.
I'm crossing my fingers that it is a generic SIP endpoint that can contact any SIP-enabled device.
I have to disagree. I think the majority of Americans think a copyright is a little "c" inside a circle. They know nothing of the Sonny Bony Copyright Extension Act. They know nothing of the DMCA.
Now, they will believe that politicians can be untruthful. They will believe the rich are powerful They will believe, especially after the big exposure of scandals like Enron, that big busniess will be corrupt. And certainly they will tie all fo this together.
But most people DO NOT have a solid understanding of copyright and how it will affect their life. And the truth is, if it doesn't raise their taxes and put them in danger, they won't care.
The media has done a poor job of explaining to the public the problems with our current copyright laws. The price fixing the RIAA members were using in record stores passed under the radar of the common American. The ever extending copyright terms do too. The fact that the blank CDs American's buy to burn their music and files to cost more because the RIAA gets a piece of that pie (although, more and more, people ARE using them to record pirated music, so that fee is less uncalled for).
If the media could start to explain these things with their clever abilities to squash everything into catchy soundbites, then Americans would understand that those little "c"s inside circles are another way somebody is trying to screw them out of what's fair, then your statement owuld begin to hold true.
Reminded me of sodaconstructor
on
Mutating Animations
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
When I read this article, my mind immediately conjured up sodaconstructor. With this applet, you create a bunch of "tendons" and/or "muscles" (line segments) connected together. You then adjust the function that controls the cycle of tension on each segment. The result is that you can make "creatures" that walk.
The thing that triggered this memory was the talk of "700 independent parameters". I pictured each muscle in this virtual walking body to be much like the line segments in sodaconstructor. The difference is that instead of a human thinking about how to adjust each one, random mutation adjusted them and evolution selected them.
Re:Just wait for the game with this feature...
on
Mutating Animations
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
But the point of the article was not that the characters learned to walk on the fly. It was that no one had to program these guys how to walk.
So, game makers no longer have to record a real person's movements, or formulate the movements themselves. They just let generations of these things learn in a "lab" setting. Once they've got the result they want, they can then save the settigns and use it in the production game without the need to "learn on the fly". You don't have to have a fast CPU to use it in a game. This is a development tool that saves time on making a walking algortihm that will look artificial. Instead, you make a computer come up with that walking algorithm for you.
The best part is, you could apply this strategy to models that are entirely dreamed up. Maybe a 5 legged serpent? No one knows how one of those might walk, but this technique learn how one walks.
And once users clue into this, they'll see how the wool was pulled over their eyes. "Damn Microsoft for making my user experience faster! When I clicked on a link and it came up in 0.2 seconds, I thought it only took 0.2 seconds when it really took 12 seconds!"
People, this is not time travel. We're talking user experience. It's a time-space trade off. XP does it all over the place, pre-caching DLLs, etc. to make frequently-used programs load faster. Just like SETI@home can use unused CPU cycles, so can other things. Only this time, they're using your fast computer and tons of RAM to provide a better user experience to you.
WHO CARES if IE is pre-loaded?! My computer still starts faster in XP than it did in 95 or 2000, and IE runs faster.
Sometimes slashdotters are too geeky for their own good.
I would hope your backup program allows you to backup one folder as eaisly as it allows you to backup one file. I just point to my "Favorites" folder and the backup programs backs it up just fine.
What's more, I can re-arrange my favorites in the file system without having to open an HTML file in a text editor.
And because its in the file system, you can open it in any file system explorer (DIR command on DOS, ls command on *nix, Explorer on Windows, directory-listing on a web server, etc.).
And I doubt that it will open in any browser regardless of the filesystem its stored on. HOw does the browser read it from the file system? I would expect in a file-system dependent way (or, over the web -- to which I again say directory-listing on a per-directory basis if you need it that bad).
(a) I've never noticed any rendering problems in IE (not to say there aren't any, but I've not noticed them because they haven't prevented me form what I need to do). I have heard countless rumors that Mozilla has rendering problems. I know Opera 5 did when I used that.
(b) The concepts of file-based shortcuts mean I can provide file system links or folder shortcuts to various sub-sectionsof my favorites in otehr places. Often, I have a project folder for each project I work on. Links I need for that project are stored both in that folder, and shared in my favorites folder. Thus, I can access the same subset of favorites (as a set of Internet Shortcuts in a folder) by linking the folder in multiple locations. I can now access those from multiple contexts -- whichever I happen to be in at the time.
(c) I have a action toolbar, address bar, links bar and google bar. I generally merge those into 2 rows so I have more vertical space available. Its only a small advantaghe. But once you see the Netscape-style of toolbar arrangement at 1600x200 and see this vast gray watseland of unused space, you feel dirty.
...raising the possibility that powered data cables could become a universal back-up power supply
Great! So, now, when my power goes out, my computer can instead draw power from the network cable. That cable will in turn receive its power from the hub, which is plugged into... umm... the wall... with no power. Hmmm...
No, no, the hub will get its power from the network cable from my DSL router! And the DSL router will get power from the phoneline providing the DSL. Hmmm... no, wait, not enough power.
Oooh oooh! I know. The DSL router will obtain power from its network connection to the hub, which will get its power from the network connection to my computer, which gets it from...
I've just learned that another headline killing has been linked to video game violence. Douglass Williams, it turns out, was an avid Warcraft III player on Battle.net. So much so that he fell under the delusion that he was a human rifleman infiltrating an orc encampment (the factory) and taking out their peons (his co-workers).
In related news, George W. Bush has been known to enjoy a quality game of Risk...
Just tell me this. Have they yet moved to the point where (a) the favorites are stores as files in folders and (b) the toolbars can be very freely re-arranged to the users liking. Those are two of the worst things that pissed me off about Netscape, and when I first starting trying the early versions of Mozilla, I wasn't pleased.
If the answer is yes, then maybe I'll take a second look (although I have absolutely NO complaints about IE6).
If the answer is no, then, well, it will be doomed to stay in a niche.
If you don't like dealing with the classpath, you can revert to the same mess that Windows uses. Just stick every.jar you'll ever need under lib/ext under the JVM, and it will be found. Its just that then you can never sort out what belongs to what, easily mix versions, etc.
The CLASSPATH is an optional "pain" that makes your life easier. It just so happens the majority thinks its a better idea and prefers to use it.
My message... (I'm not eloquent, but maybe it will inspire others to write their own and send 'em)
I am in disbeleif at your comments supporting the notion of allowing private industry to trespass on invidual's private property for the sole purpose of destruction as some sort of twisted vengeance for a *suspected* crime. In America, I thought we were innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, usually by a jury of our peers. To throw away presumed innocence and allow a group with blatantly biased motives to sentence your fellow citizens is utterly un-American and uncivilized.
My understanding is that it does not, it uses the normal AIM channel (or direct channel if you happen to be connected directly). It just sends the encrypted data and handshaking as though it were the message itself. In fact, I believe it works not just with AIM, but with any of AIM's supported mediums (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, soon to be Jabber, etc.)
Re:Interested in learning more about these generic
on
Preview of Java 1.5
·
· Score: 1
"...Java has finally caught up with where C++ was better than a decade ago."
Being interested in the generics from my C++ days, I've been readsing discussion forums covering this topic in detail. One of the prevalent themes is that Java 1.5 generics ARE NOT C++ templates. Can someone confirm the differences?
Even when I did C++, I rarely had to use templates. In fact, when I did use them it was just for fun (implementing simple collections that were already available in STL). Still, I don't remember syntax for handlign covariance, contravariance, invariance, etc. Was it there and I didn't see it, or are Java 1.5's generics truly different form C++ templates.
While reading some Java discussion forums, I came across a thread with someone reporting a new comment on the shared VM bug in bug parade. The comment indicated that Sun wasn ot going to plan on having shared-VM in the 1.5 release of Java.
This immediately sparked a campaign of, well... complaining. But it seems to have worked. In a matter of hours, the comment had disappeared.
Now, I still have no positive evidence that Sun WILL put shared-VM into 1.5, but at least subtle, but solid evidence that they definitely would NOT has been retacted.
Slashdot Mirror
Right you are! I'm glad to see you are also against the RIAA who locks musicians into obscene slavery-like contracts before their savvy enough to know what happend and then syphon off whatever revenue they can to "pay back the loan" forwarded to struggling artists.
If you read the second part of my post, about Folder Shortcuts (not the same thing as a shortcut to a Folder), you'll see that they do not have the same limitation and can in fact span volumes and even network drives.
Since Windows NT 4 at least, I have been able to make hard links. Granted, the OS didn't come with a tool to do it, but it did support it. Several third party tools are available.
Also, I know in Windows 2000 and Windows XP (and I heard also Windows ME), Folder Shortcuts (these are NOT shortcuts to folders) are also supported. These graft folders into the namespace that actually exist elsewhere. I've tested this across physical drives, and I believe it would also work with network-mapped drives. Note that on Windows XP, you have to temporarily switch to the classic start menu to create a Folder Shortcut.
Haven't we covered this before?
:-(
I also read a paper once explaining how 3 was the optimal number base when you consider the number of different symbols needed and the width of a string of those symbols needed to represent numbers. I even solved the equations myself coming to this conclusion. You actually find "e" (2.718281828...) as your answer, but the closest whole number is 3, not 2.
Unfortunately, I don't have a link and Google has failed me
There was an article in the most recent Pop Sci or Discover (I can't remember which) abotu two companies that have successfully made large-karat diamonds synthetically. One company in Florida, Gemology I think, hastered the hydraulic press and can produce a 3-karat diamond, with few flaws, for $100. Another company out of Boston, I believe, uses a plasma deposition method that produces better-than-nature flawless diamonds... 3k for $15. And this latter process promises to be able to deposit not just chunks (i.e. jewelry), but wafers (i.e. semiconductors!)
Of course, the preseident of the latter of the two companies was at a diamond conference and was told by a DeBeers fellow that what he was doign was a good way to get a bullet in the head!
discarded [fluorescent] bulbs release approximately 2-4 tons of mercury per year in the United States
Thank goodness! Mercury is not a renewable resource, people. Once we put it all in flourescent bulbs, its gone. So as long as we continue depositiing tons of this stuff into the environment each year, there will be enough for future generations to retrieve for their flourescent bulbs.
But woudln't you just have to expend the energy to make the panels once? And, don't forget, there are other ways of capturing solar energy that copst as little as $1/Watt.
There is a 100-year-old lightbulb still burning in a firehouse, I believe it is somehwere in California. It was made by a lighting company in Ohio that no longer exists. I wonder why. Sure, it's been off one or two times for power change-overs, but I know of no bulb today that could manage that.
One of my favorite points about energy is to consider the "cycle" the energy takes.
For example, coal/oil/etc. starts as solar energy being consumed by plants which are then eaten by animals which die (or the plants die themselves), then buried for millions of years with possibly geothermal and graviational energy cooking it a bit more, then pumped up, refined, and burned. Eventually the spent elemnts may work themselves back into another plant or animal.
Now consider the home-brewed hydrogen the parent mentioned. Soloar power turned into electricity used to split water into Hydrogen (captured) and Oxygen (released). Then, recombine them to form water which may rain down again to be used again for this same cycle.
Instead of millions of years, we're talking days or weeks worth of energy storage and a much simpler process of capturing and releasing that energy.
Now, does it cost more? Yes, right now. But imagine how much it will cost when we have to build our own artificial hydrocarbon-energy system after we deplete the millions of years of work that nature did for us in only a few hundred years.
There are better ways to handle this. I Recently read in a Discover or Popular Science about Energy Innovation's producuts, such as the Sun Flower 250. They are basically thermal-solar-powered Sterling engines used to generate electricity. Their newest and most economical model costs $1/watt to purchase the actual unit, and that's it.
You could just stick one of these babies under a plastic (or whatever) shell to physically protect it from the elements while allowing the energy in to do the work.
So, let's not stop at photovoltaics when it comes to solar power.
As the name implies and the article explains, the phone uses SIP, or Session Initiation Protocol. I did some research on SIP last year and found it to be somewhat intruiging.
SIP is basically used for setting up the endpoints of a human communication channel over an IP-based network. It negotiates what kinds of communcations are supported on each end, and what protocols to use. So if a video-SIP-phone calls a regular analog phone via a SIP-PSTN proxy, the proxy would only support audio certain codecs. The calling video-SIP-phone and the proxy would negotiate to use only audio using a matching protocol and the cal would go through.
And since SIP is a protocol just like SMTP or HTTP, it is very controllable. There are dozens of SIP products popping up from SIP servers to SIP proxies... and now SIP phones. For example, you can have a SIP proxy/server be concious of where a user is logged in and re-route SIP calls to their present location. As a Java programmer, I'm looking forward to the day when I find a reason to write a SIP Servlet.
Furthermore, the latest version of Messenger in Windows XP supports SIP. I would think that this means a SIPPhone could call someone using Microsoft's Messenger on Windows XP. However, I was not able to confirm this with a breif perusal of the SIPPhone site, and they also state this only works with other SIPPhones. That may be an over-generalization to keep people from thinking it works with regular phones, or maybe they did something crazy with it.
I'm crossing my fingers that it is a generic SIP endpoint that can contact any SIP-enabled device.
the majority of Americans
I have to disagree. I think the majority of Americans think a copyright is a little "c" inside a circle. They know nothing of the Sonny Bony Copyright Extension Act. They know nothing of the DMCA.
Now, they will believe that politicians can be untruthful. They will believe the rich are powerful They will believe, especially after the big exposure of scandals like Enron, that big busniess will be corrupt. And certainly they will tie all fo this together.
But most people DO NOT have a solid understanding of copyright and how it will affect their life. And the truth is, if it doesn't raise their taxes and put them in danger, they won't care.
The media has done a poor job of explaining to the public the problems with our current copyright laws. The price fixing the RIAA members were using in record stores passed under the radar of the common American. The ever extending copyright terms do too. The fact that the blank CDs American's buy to burn their music and files to cost more because the RIAA gets a piece of that pie (although, more and more, people ARE using them to record pirated music, so that fee is less uncalled for).
If the media could start to explain these things with their clever abilities to squash everything into catchy soundbites, then Americans would understand that those little "c"s inside circles are another way somebody is trying to screw them out of what's fair, then your statement owuld begin to hold true.
When I read this article, my mind immediately conjured up sodaconstructor. With this applet, you create a bunch of "tendons" and/or "muscles" (line segments) connected together. You then adjust the function that controls the cycle of tension on each segment. The result is that you can make "creatures" that walk.
The thing that triggered this memory was the talk of "700 independent parameters". I pictured each muscle in this virtual walking body to be much like the line segments in sodaconstructor. The difference is that instead of a human thinking about how to adjust each one, random mutation adjusted them and evolution selected them.
So, game makers no longer have to record a real person's movements, or formulate the movements themselves. They just let generations of these things learn in a "lab" setting. Once they've got the result they want, they can then save the settigns and use it in the production game without the need to "learn on the fly". You don't have to have a fast CPU to use it in a game. This is a development tool that saves time on making a walking algortihm that will look artificial. Instead, you make a computer come up with that walking algorithm for you.
The best part is, you could apply this strategy to models that are entirely dreamed up. Maybe a 5 legged serpent? No one knows how one of those might walk, but this technique learn how one walks.
Riiiiight...
And once users clue into this, they'll see how the wool was pulled over their eyes. "Damn Microsoft for making my user experience faster! When I clicked on a link and it came up in 0.2 seconds, I thought it only took 0.2 seconds when it really took 12 seconds!"
People, this is not time travel. We're talking user experience. It's a time-space trade off. XP does it all over the place, pre-caching DLLs, etc. to make frequently-used programs load faster. Just like SETI@home can use unused CPU cycles, so can other things. Only this time, they're using your fast computer and tons of RAM to provide a better user experience to you.
WHO CARES if IE is pre-loaded?! My computer still starts faster in XP than it did in 95 or 2000, and IE runs faster.
Sometimes slashdotters are too geeky for their own good.
I would hope your backup program allows you to backup one folder as eaisly as it allows you to backup one file. I just point to my "Favorites" folder and the backup programs backs it up just fine.
What's more, I can re-arrange my favorites in the file system without having to open an HTML file in a text editor.
And because its in the file system, you can open it in any file system explorer (DIR command on DOS, ls command on *nix, Explorer on Windows, directory-listing on a web server, etc.).
And I doubt that it will open in any browser regardless of the filesystem its stored on. HOw does the browser read it from the file system? I would expect in a file-system dependent way (or, over the web -- to which I again say directory-listing on a per-directory basis if you need it that bad).
(a) I've never noticed any rendering problems in IE (not to say there aren't any, but I've not noticed them because they haven't prevented me form what I need to do). I have heard countless rumors that Mozilla has rendering problems. I know Opera 5 did when I used that.
(b) The concepts of file-based shortcuts mean I can provide file system links or folder shortcuts to various sub-sectionsof my favorites in otehr places. Often, I have a project folder for each project I work on. Links I need for that project are stored both in that folder, and shared in my favorites folder. Thus, I can access the same subset of favorites (as a set of Internet Shortcuts in a folder) by linking the folder in multiple locations. I can now access those from multiple contexts -- whichever I happen to be in at the time.
(c) I have a action toolbar, address bar, links bar and google bar. I generally merge those into 2 rows so I have more vertical space available. Its only a small advantaghe. But once you see the Netscape-style of toolbar arrangement at 1600x200 and see this vast gray watseland of unused space, you feel dirty.
Great! So, now, when my power goes out, my computer can instead draw power from the network cable. That cable will in turn receive its power from the hub, which is plugged into... umm... the wall... with no power. Hmmm...
No, no, the hub will get its power from the network cable from my DSL router! And the DSL router will get power from the phoneline providing the DSL. Hmmm... no, wait, not enough power.
Oooh oooh! I know. The DSL router will obtain power from its network connection to the hub, which will get its power from the network connection to my computer, which gets it from...
I've just learned that another headline killing has been linked to video game violence. Douglass Williams, it turns out, was an avid Warcraft III player on Battle.net. So much so that he fell under the delusion that he was a human rifleman infiltrating an orc encampment (the factory) and taking out their peons (his co-workers).
In related news, George W. Bush has been known to enjoy a quality game of Risk...
Just tell me this. Have they yet moved to the point where (a) the favorites are stores as files in folders and (b) the toolbars can be very freely re-arranged to the users liking. Those are two of the worst things that pissed me off about Netscape, and when I first starting trying the early versions of Mozilla, I wasn't pleased.
If the answer is yes, then maybe I'll take a second look (although I have absolutely NO complaints about IE6).
If the answer is no, then, well, it will be doomed to stay in a niche.
If you don't like dealing with the classpath, you can revert to the same mess that Windows uses. Just stick every .jar you'll ever need under lib/ext under the JVM, and it will be found. Its just that then you can never sort out what belongs to what, easily mix versions, etc.
The CLASSPATH is an optional "pain" that makes your life easier. It just so happens the majority thinks its a better idea and prefers to use it.
My message... (I'm not eloquent, but maybe it will inspire others to write their own and send 'em)
I am in disbeleif at your comments supporting the notion of allowing private industry to trespass on invidual's private property for the sole purpose of destruction as some sort of twisted vengeance for a *suspected* crime. In America, I thought we were innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, usually by a jury of our peers. To throw away presumed innocence and allow a group with blatantly biased motives to sentence your fellow citizens is utterly un-American and uncivilized.
My understanding is that it does not, it uses the normal AIM channel (or direct channel if you happen to be connected directly). It just sends the encrypted data and handshaking as though it were the message itself. In fact, I believe it works not just with AIM, but with any of AIM's supported mediums (AIM, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, soon to be Jabber, etc.)
Being interested in the generics from my C++ days, I've been readsing discussion forums covering this topic in detail. One of the prevalent themes is that Java 1.5 generics ARE NOT C++ templates. Can someone confirm the differences?
Even when I did C++, I rarely had to use templates. In fact, when I did use them it was just for fun (implementing simple collections that were already available in STL). Still, I don't remember syntax for handlign covariance, contravariance, invariance, etc. Was it there and I didn't see it, or are Java 1.5's generics truly different form C++ templates.
While reading some Java discussion forums, I came across a thread with someone reporting a new comment on the shared VM bug in bug parade. The comment indicated that Sun wasn ot going to plan on having shared-VM in the 1.5 release of Java.
This immediately sparked a campaign of, well... complaining. But it seems to have worked. In a matter of hours, the comment had disappeared.
Now, I still have no positive evidence that Sun WILL put shared-VM into 1.5, but at least subtle, but solid evidence that they definitely would NOT has been retacted.