This fits in with Bush's disregard for the dangers of Nuclear Power (which are there, however big one thinks they are)
This fits with the man-on-the-street's poor understanding of nuclear dangers (of which they are overstated, no matter which way you try to twist it), and even demonstrates that the parent poster has been watching too many movies.
The truth of the matter is simple: Nuclear power is one of the safest options on the planet. Coal (of which America burns a LOT of) spews radioactive nuclear contamination all across our cities and country-side, yet everyone is worried about the tiny amounts of nuclear waste which are (all things considered) quite safe. The problem is that the media has played up the whole "Radiation == EVIL" to such a degree that the populace is scared stiff at the very idea. If they had it their way, nuclear materials wouldn't even be kept on this planet.
Yet these same materials happen to exist in your backyard, your body, your car, your house, and millions of other locations all around you! As long as the spent materials are kept in properly shielded containers, there is no danger. Even if you're standing right next to it.
But what of the waste that will last millions of years? All that's needed there is a bit of common sense. If the material is going to be radioactive for millions of years, then it can't be very radioactive to begin with, can it? If it WAS highly radioactive, then it would convert all its mass to radiation in a very short period of time.
So I personally think Bush is on the right track here. The previous non-proliferation attempts were poorly conceived and implemented. If Bush can change that around, then I salute his attempts.
Damn. You beat me to it. I was going to joke that it will weigh in at 10 pounds (it's an uber-convenient luggable!), take full size DVDs, have a 17" screen, and will be marketed by Microsoft as the next step in "Portable" (*cough*) entertainment. Millions of fan-boys will line up outside Best Buy for days for a fleeting chance to grab one. Instead, they'll be laughed at by the counter-person because there weren't enough units in stock to supply more than the first three people in line. Yet Microsoft will continue to hype it as more important than Windows 95, and the future of entertainment. Sound pretty close?:-P
Although faxing is kinda a thing of the past, it's still the only option for sending hardcopies of contracts/ getting them back signed, and similar.
If you want to send a hardcopy of a document, then you need a scanner. Not too many people carry around flat-beds, methinks.:)
Kinkos is still best if you need to send a fax. EFax can handle the recieving end much better. (Especially since you don't have to ensure that your laptop is hooked up to the phone line.)
I was talking about Public Domain, not Shareware. Anyway, they were both - with very few exceptions - utter shit. Crap games knocked out by idiots in a few weeks with terrible graphics and buggy, limited gameplay.
Nonsense. Apogee, Id, Epic Megagames, Parallax Software, Arcanum Computing, Softdisk, Moraff (that guy was a machine!), Bungie Studios, and tons of other "little guys" produced some really great software. Sure, some of it was crap. But the crap didn't sell floppy disks, so it quickly got lost to the sands of time. Sure, much of the Public Domain stuff was either crud or was just a tech demo that was later used to make a shareware game, but a LOT of the shareware stuff was good.
Also, they weren't produced by studios, but one or two people (per game).
Um, yes. That was pretty much the extent of their studios. But they were still referred to as studios then, and I see no reason to change the definition now.
[Shareware companies going full commercial] didn't happen, to the best of my knowledge - certainly not in the Amiga scene anyway.
Perhaps not on the Amiga scene. But the PC, Mac, Commodore 64, and Atari scenes all were bursting with the gaming studios of the future. Amigas weren't really known for their games, but they were known for their multimedia capabilities. Many of the best shareware programs for the Amiga were in the form of MOD Tracker, Video Production, and Graphics Editing software packages.
They need to produce games which don't look ridiculous and are actually fun to play!
That's kind of funny. I always have the exact opposite problem. i.e. I always manage to shear off whatever is hanging out of the PC Card port. At least with a USB device, the cable yanks cleanly out if it gets caught on something.:-)
Uh...games certainly have come a long way since the Public Domain scene of the Amiga, haven't they...look out EA!
Not really. Back in the Shareware days, games were of exceptionally high quality for such small studios. Plus you got a full game that was so good you wanted to buy more. Now all those Shareware companies have gone full commercial, and the Indies have replaced them. The Indies don't usually offer much more than a demo, and you often find that the full game isn't that much more interesting.
Indies need to find their groove in the same way that the Shareware studios did. Until then, they'll always be bottom rung.
Really though, I'd like to have a laptop where even the cdrom is option; so there would not be a cdrom slot on the system, you'd have to install via a external USB/firewire cdrom, and then not have to worry about the xtra weight that *I* never use.
The CDRom adds only a few ounces. Given how many programs, movies, games, and music albums still come on CD/DVD, I have a hard time believing that it's something you'd "never use". (I use mine all the time.) More likely, if you got your wish you'd find yourself without the drive in a situation when you needed it most.
If it answers your question, the iBooks don't have a PCMCIA slot. I haven't missed it a bit. In fact, I'm amazingly happy at not having to worry about damaging whatever dongle is always hanging out of the stupid ports. (I lost an ungodly number of Xircom cards to bent pins. Of course, they weren't very well designed to begin with, but...) If it's important enough, it can connect via USB.
The loss of the modem jack may be a sign of things to come. I was told that Apple had found that 90% of PowerBook owners used the 802.11g Airport wireless card, Gigabit Ethernet or a Bluetooth connection to a cell modem to get network access. So for cost and package size reasons, the modem was left out.
The loss of the modem isn't such a big deal. I've only ever used mine once (when I was moving) and it wasn't a pleasant experience. If I'd had a Wifi card, I probably would have gone to a local hotspot instead of bothering with the modem.
The nice part about the modem being left out, however, is that the Wifi card is included in the base system rather than as an add-on card. IMHO, that's a fair trade. If you really want a modem, Apple has a USB modem as an available option when you order your unit. So I'd say it's a win/win for all involved.
Unfortunately, I can't speak to the Firewire as I've never used it. Of course, that may be saying more than enough...
Correction: They have data that shows a definite warming trend. They do NOT have sufficient data to prove that it is not a natural cycle. In fact, a lot of data suggests that global warming will soon precipitate global cooling, the exact opposite of what was the concern.
Other data suggests that the Earth was about to enter another ice age right around the time that humans arrived. Thus we've been keeping the climate comfortable for ourselves by merely existing. Still more data shows that the heat and greenhouse gasses dumped into our atmosphere can be as simple as having a city full of people existing, much less polluting. Finally, there's absolutely no data (other than wild fantasies) to suggest that the pollution on Earth will ever precipitate into a Venus-like situation.
The end result? The climate will change, and man will adapt. All hail the church of Global Warming.:-/
Gas is not expensive. It has dropped in price versus inflation, leading me to believe we're not running out.
They're currently being held artificially low by the government oil reserves. The price per barrel of sweet crude oil hasn't budged much from its ~$60 position. Ethanol is extremely competitve at that price, and has been blended in many areas to help keep gasoline prices down.
Ethanol is much more expensive in the long run -- compare mileage for the same amount.
The bad news? Ethanol is less energy dense than gasoline. The good news? We don't burn our gasoline worth a crap. Ethanol can burn much more efficiently, helping cover a great deal of the energy gap. Especially if we move to a more efficient engine than the Otto cycle.
Oil isn't leaving us any time soon. Oil created the best quality of life increases in all of history. Be thankful we have it.
That laptop you use? Oil-based plastics. Those contact lenses? The sneakers? The UV-reflecting coatings on glass? Part of the insulation in many homes?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not an environmentalist out after the death of Petrolium. Petrolium has a lot of uses. Unfortunately, there are a lot of problems with using it to fuel transportation. Ethanol frees us from relying on foreign markets, stablizes the price of fuel, and creates a source that isn't anywhere near as hard to access. As alternative fuels go, it's the best option we've got. And less reliance on Oil for transportation can only help drive down prices for use in other industries.
If you're having issues with the lack of pointers in Java, it means you're not yet fully acclimated to the Java style of development. A common mistake of new Java programmers is to look to the Reflection APIs to allow them to replicate some of the functionality they had with pointers. Here's the advice that every one of those programmers gets:
DON'T DO IT!
Reflection can easily make a mess of your program if it's abused. If you have a problem with your coding style, take it up on JavaRanch, JavaLobby, JavaGaming, or JavaDesktop. They're all there to help, and can point you in the right direction. You may find that you actually need to be using constructs like interfaces. But since they're not intuitive for a C/C++ programmer, they don't stand out as the answer.
Java Reflection is extremely powerful. But with great power comes great responsibility. Use it wisely.:-)
It runs up to 85% Ethanol. Which sucks. And blending the fuel types on your own can result in unexpected timing problems. Using a Stirling, OTOH, allows you to burn any mixture of fuel without concern for timing issues. In fact, such an engine could burn just about any fuel, including hydrogen.
Ethanol would be a lot cheaper than trying to deploy hydrogen. With the hydrogen route, we have to redeploy our entire fuel infrastructure. Which isn't going to happen as long as most people drive gasoline cars. Ethanol, OTOH, can work in a standard gasoline engine with a few modifications, and can be supplied from the existing fueling stations.
With gas prices being so high, all that's standing in the way of Ethanol is this constant argument over whether or not it's energy positive or not. Of course, this completely ignores the issue that hydrogen isn't energy positive either. You need powerplants upstream to crack hydrogen, just as you'll need upstream energy to supply farming equipment. Even in Ethanol isn't energy positive (which I don't believe for a minute), it's still a better option than hydrogen.
What we really need for Ethanol to take off is a proper hybrid vehicle capable of burning both gasoline, ethanol, and various blends.
And I care, because? It's a fraking court filing, not a finding! I can file a document that says, "It is illegal to drive on the right side of the road," and a judge would no more accept it than he'll accept this nonsense. If a judge does accept it, THEN make a news story out of it. In the meantime, this amounts to nothing more than, "RIAA is acting like the RIAA! News at 11!"
Somedays I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Agreed. I mean, just look at the instant SlashThink(TM) reaction around here. From the venhemence, you'd think the judge had actually accepted the argument.
...the sky is blue, dogs still bark, cats meow, and down is still down.
I mean, really. What did you expect them to argue? "Oh, yes, we can't prove that they ever actually distributed a copy, so let's let all the nasty pirates go and we'll stop our campaign of lawsuits. Cherrio!"
Number 1, why is "production" version of PDFBox releasing beta code?
Only the rendering system is in beta. The parser (which is what most of us are interested in) is reasonably stable at this point.
Any why was the PDFToImage disclaimer on the website but not in the actual JavaDoc API, which is what Java programmers use to understand 3rd party libraries?
That's a good question. I suggest you mention it to the PDFBox developers. The fact that the rendering subsystem is in beta should be made as clear as possible. It just isn't ready for this sort of usage yet.
PDFBox is cute but is NOT ready for PDFImaging in a prime-time way, which is why I moved to ImageMagick and other toolkits.
PDFBox is ready. The new tools you want to use, aren't. If you need to merge PDFs, populate PDF forms, and do other parsing-type duties, PDFBox is an excellent option. And this comes from someone who used to directly manipulate the PDF objects before PDFBox even included tools for most of this stuff.:-)
PDFBox is also a memory hog trying to scale images. I know this cause' I built a massive image processing server and get SLAMMED from using PDFBox during high load.
Are we talking about the same thing? PDFBox is a low-level parser for the PDF format. AFAIK, it doesn't scale anything. Maybe you're referring to the new PDFtoImage functionality? You know, the tool that has the following disclaimer on it?
Warning This is new code and should be treated as beta quality!
Is there a way to get a list of windows printers without using native calls?
Look up javax.print.PrintServiceLookup. More Info.
Is there a way to print "straight through" to local or network connected printers in Java?
I haven't tried it, but supposedly you can change the DocFlavor to do what you want. In absence of a forced flavor, the system will auto-select the best method.
Is there a way for a java app to trap keypresses when the java app is out of focus, without using a native interface?
No. This is a huge security issue, and is unlikely to ever be included in Java. However, the java.awt.Robot class lets you do stuff like capture a screenshot, send events, etc.
PDFBox - A library that gives you complete parsing control over PDFs. You can create documents from scratch, extract text, merge pages, change text/images/fields, populate forms, etc. With the use of PDFs in corporate environments on the rise, you just can't go wrong with PDFBox in your toolbox.
POI - Does your company use Office documents in any way, shape, or form? Then you need POI. Create spreadsheets and word documents from scratch, modify existing documents, create spreadsheet computers and reports on the fly. The possibiliies are endless, and your boss with thank you for not having to deaL with ANOTHER CSV file.
The problem, however, is that Neutrinos don't interact with the Earth as they pass through. If they interact, then they are being shielded against. As TheRaven64 pointed out, methods do exist for shielding against neutrinos, even if such methods are only partly successful.
If it was not possible to shield against gravitons, then how do they interact with bodies such as the Earth? If they do interact with objects, and it is possible to shield against them, then why doesn't placing one object in front of another reduce the influence of the body that the second object is shielding against? Yet if you stack a wall of bricks to the moon, you would still see the same influence from the Earth on the top brick as you would if the top brick were suspended with no objects blocking its path.
Or at least, that's what we believe at the moment. If someone can show an actual gravitational difference between the two situations (even if it's minute, but reproducable), then the hypothesis of gravitons would begin to gain serious leverage in becoming a theory.
Slashdot Mirror
This fits in with Bush's disregard for the dangers of Nuclear Power (which are there, however big one thinks they are)
This fits with the man-on-the-street's poor understanding of nuclear dangers (of which they are overstated, no matter which way you try to twist it), and even demonstrates that the parent poster has been watching too many movies.
The truth of the matter is simple: Nuclear power is one of the safest options on the planet. Coal (of which America burns a LOT of) spews radioactive nuclear contamination all across our cities and country-side, yet everyone is worried about the tiny amounts of nuclear waste which are (all things considered) quite safe. The problem is that the media has played up the whole "Radiation == EVIL" to such a degree that the populace is scared stiff at the very idea. If they had it their way, nuclear materials wouldn't even be kept on this planet.
Yet these same materials happen to exist in your backyard, your body, your car, your house, and millions of other locations all around you! As long as the spent materials are kept in properly shielded containers, there is no danger. Even if you're standing right next to it.
But what of the waste that will last millions of years? All that's needed there is a bit of common sense. If the material is going to be radioactive for millions of years, then it can't be very radioactive to begin with, can it? If it WAS highly radioactive, then it would convert all its mass to radiation in a very short period of time.
So I personally think Bush is on the right track here. The previous non-proliferation attempts were poorly conceived and implemented. If Bush can change that around, then I salute his attempts.
Damn. You beat me to it. I was going to joke that it will weigh in at 10 pounds (it's an uber-convenient luggable!), take full size DVDs, have a 17" screen, and will be marketed by Microsoft as the next step in "Portable" (*cough*) entertainment. Millions of fan-boys will line up outside Best Buy for days for a fleeting chance to grab one. Instead, they'll be laughed at by the counter-person because there weren't enough units in stock to supply more than the first three people in line. Yet Microsoft will continue to hype it as more important than Windows 95, and the future of entertainment. Sound pretty close? :-P
Does it actually allow direct access to the PDF objects, or is it just a collection of PDF tools?
Although faxing is kinda a thing of the past, it's still the only option for sending hardcopies of contracts/ getting them back signed, and similar.
:)
If you want to send a hardcopy of a document, then you need a scanner. Not too many people carry around flat-beds, methinks.
Kinkos is still best if you need to send a fax. EFax can handle the recieving end much better. (Especially since you don't have to ensure that your laptop is hooked up to the phone line.)
I was talking about Public Domain, not Shareware. Anyway, they were both - with very few exceptions - utter shit. Crap games knocked out by idiots in a few weeks with terrible graphics and buggy, limited gameplay.
:)
Nonsense. Apogee, Id, Epic Megagames, Parallax Software, Arcanum Computing, Softdisk, Moraff (that guy was a machine!), Bungie Studios, and tons of other "little guys" produced some really great software. Sure, some of it was crap. But the crap didn't sell floppy disks, so it quickly got lost to the sands of time. Sure, much of the Public Domain stuff was either crud or was just a tech demo that was later used to make a shareware game, but a LOT of the shareware stuff was good.
Also, they weren't produced by studios, but one or two people (per game).
Um, yes. That was pretty much the extent of their studios. But they were still referred to as studios then, and I see no reason to change the definition now.
[Shareware companies going full commercial] didn't happen, to the best of my knowledge - certainly not in the Amiga scene anyway.
Perhaps not on the Amiga scene. But the PC, Mac, Commodore 64, and Atari scenes all were bursting with the gaming studios of the future. Amigas weren't really known for their games, but they were known for their multimedia capabilities. Many of the best shareware programs for the Amiga were in the form of MOD Tracker, Video Production, and Graphics Editing software packages.
They need to produce games which don't look ridiculous and are actually fun to play!
In a nutshell? Yes.
That's kind of funny. I always have the exact opposite problem. i.e. I always manage to shear off whatever is hanging out of the PC Card port. At least with a USB device, the cable yanks cleanly out if it gets caught on something. :-)
Uh...games certainly have come a long way since the Public Domain scene of the Amiga, haven't they...look out EA!
Not really. Back in the Shareware days, games were of exceptionally high quality for such small studios. Plus you got a full game that was so good you wanted to buy more. Now all those Shareware companies have gone full commercial, and the Indies have replaced them. The Indies don't usually offer much more than a demo, and you often find that the full game isn't that much more interesting.
Indies need to find their groove in the same way that the Shareware studios did. Until then, they'll always be bottom rung.
Really though, I'd like to have a laptop where even the cdrom is option; so there would not be a cdrom slot on the system, you'd have to install via a external USB/firewire cdrom, and then not have to worry about the xtra weight that *I* never use.
The CDRom adds only a few ounces. Given how many programs, movies, games, and music albums still come on CD/DVD, I have a hard time believing that it's something you'd "never use". (I use mine all the time.) More likely, if you got your wish you'd find yourself without the drive in a situation when you needed it most.
What's wrong with hooking up a reader via USB?
If it answers your question, the iBooks don't have a PCMCIA slot. I haven't missed it a bit. In fact, I'm amazingly happy at not having to worry about damaging whatever dongle is always hanging out of the stupid ports. (I lost an ungodly number of Xircom cards to bent pins. Of course, they weren't very well designed to begin with, but...) If it's important enough, it can connect via USB.
The loss of the modem jack may be a sign of things to come. I was told that Apple had found that 90% of PowerBook owners used the 802.11g Airport wireless card, Gigabit Ethernet or a Bluetooth connection to a cell modem to get network access. So for cost and package size reasons, the modem was left out.
The loss of the modem isn't such a big deal. I've only ever used mine once (when I was moving) and it wasn't a pleasant experience. If I'd had a Wifi card, I probably would have gone to a local hotspot instead of bothering with the modem.
The nice part about the modem being left out, however, is that the Wifi card is included in the base system rather than as an add-on card. IMHO, that's a fair trade. If you really want a modem, Apple has a USB modem as an available option when you order your unit. So I'd say it's a win/win for all involved.
Unfortunately, I can't speak to the Firewire as I've never used it. Of course, that may be saying more than enough...
Correction: They have data that shows a definite warming trend. They do NOT have sufficient data to prove that it is not a natural cycle. In fact, a lot of data suggests that global warming will soon precipitate global cooling, the exact opposite of what was the concern.
:-/
Other data suggests that the Earth was about to enter another ice age right around the time that humans arrived. Thus we've been keeping the climate comfortable for ourselves by merely existing. Still more data shows that the heat and greenhouse gasses dumped into our atmosphere can be as simple as having a city full of people existing, much less polluting. Finally, there's absolutely no data (other than wild fantasies) to suggest that the pollution on Earth will ever precipitate into a Venus-like situation.
The end result? The climate will change, and man will adapt. All hail the church of Global Warming.
Gas is not expensive. It has dropped in price versus inflation, leading me to believe we're not running out.
They're currently being held artificially low by the government oil reserves. The price per barrel of sweet crude oil hasn't budged much from its ~$60 position. Ethanol is extremely competitve at that price, and has been blended in many areas to help keep gasoline prices down.
Ethanol is much more expensive in the long run -- compare mileage for the same amount.
The bad news? Ethanol is less energy dense than gasoline. The good news? We don't burn our gasoline worth a crap. Ethanol can burn much more efficiently, helping cover a great deal of the energy gap. Especially if we move to a more efficient engine than the Otto cycle.
Oil isn't leaving us any time soon. Oil created the best quality of life increases in all of history. Be thankful we have it.
That laptop you use? Oil-based plastics. Those contact lenses? The sneakers? The UV-reflecting coatings on glass? Part of the insulation in many homes?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not an environmentalist out after the death of Petrolium. Petrolium has a lot of uses. Unfortunately, there are a lot of problems with using it to fuel transportation. Ethanol frees us from relying on foreign markets, stablizes the price of fuel, and creates a source that isn't anywhere near as hard to access. As alternative fuels go, it's the best option we've got. And less reliance on Oil for transportation can only help drive down prices for use in other industries.
If you're having issues with the lack of pointers in Java, it means you're not yet fully acclimated to the Java style of development. A common mistake of new Java programmers is to look to the Reflection APIs to allow them to replicate some of the functionality they had with pointers. Here's the advice that every one of those programmers gets:
:-)
DON'T DO IT!
Reflection can easily make a mess of your program if it's abused. If you have a problem with your coding style, take it up on JavaRanch, JavaLobby, JavaGaming, or JavaDesktop. They're all there to help, and can point you in the right direction. You may find that you actually need to be using constructs like interfaces. But since they're not intuitive for a C/C++ programmer, they don't stand out as the answer.
Java Reflection is extremely powerful. But with great power comes great responsibility. Use it wisely.
It runs up to 85% Ethanol. Which sucks. And blending the fuel types on your own can result in unexpected timing problems. Using a Stirling, OTOH, allows you to burn any mixture of fuel without concern for timing issues. In fact, such an engine could burn just about any fuel, including hydrogen.
Ethanol would be a lot cheaper than trying to deploy hydrogen. With the hydrogen route, we have to redeploy our entire fuel infrastructure. Which isn't going to happen as long as most people drive gasoline cars. Ethanol, OTOH, can work in a standard gasoline engine with a few modifications, and can be supplied from the existing fueling stations.
With gas prices being so high, all that's standing in the way of Ethanol is this constant argument over whether or not it's energy positive or not. Of course, this completely ignores the issue that hydrogen isn't energy positive either. You need powerplants upstream to crack hydrogen, just as you'll need upstream energy to supply farming equipment. Even in Ethanol isn't energy positive (which I don't believe for a minute), it's still a better option than hydrogen.
What we really need for Ethanol to take off is a proper hybrid vehicle capable of burning both gasoline, ethanol, and various blends.
And I care, because? It's a fraking court filing, not a finding! I can file a document that says, "It is illegal to drive on the right side of the road," and a judge would no more accept it than he'll accept this nonsense. If a judge does accept it, THEN make a news story out of it. In the meantime, this amounts to nothing more than, "RIAA is acting like the RIAA! News at 11!"
Somedays I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Agreed. I mean, just look at the instant SlashThink(TM) reaction around here. From the venhemence, you'd think the judge had actually accepted the argument.
...the sky is blue, dogs still bark, cats meow, and down is still down.
I mean, really. What did you expect them to argue? "Oh, yes, we can't prove that they ever actually distributed a copy, so let's let all the nasty pirates go and we'll stop our campaign of lawsuits. Cherrio!"
Let's be serious here.
np
Number 1, why is "production" version of PDFBox releasing beta code?
:-)
Only the rendering system is in beta. The parser (which is what most of us are interested in) is reasonably stable at this point.
Any why was the PDFToImage disclaimer on the website but not in the actual JavaDoc API, which is what Java programmers use to understand 3rd party libraries?
That's a good question. I suggest you mention it to the PDFBox developers. The fact that the rendering subsystem is in beta should be made as clear as possible. It just isn't ready for this sort of usage yet.
PDFBox is cute but is NOT ready for PDFImaging in a prime-time way, which is why I moved to ImageMagick and other toolkits.
PDFBox is ready. The new tools you want to use, aren't. If you need to merge PDFs, populate PDF forms, and do other parsing-type duties, PDFBox is an excellent option. And this comes from someone who used to directly manipulate the PDF objects before PDFBox even included tools for most of this stuff.
Are we talking about the same thing? PDFBox is a low-level parser for the PDF format. AFAIK, it doesn't scale anything. Maybe you're referring to the new PDFtoImage functionality? You know, the tool that has the following disclaimer on it?
Is there a way to get a list of windows printers without using native calls?
Look up javax.print.PrintServiceLookup. More Info.
Is there a way to print "straight through" to local or network connected printers in Java?
I haven't tried it, but supposedly you can change the DocFlavor to do what you want. In absence of a forced flavor, the system will auto-select the best method.
Is there a way for a java app to trap keypresses when the java app is out of focus, without using a native interface?
No. This is a huge security issue, and is unlikely to ever be included in Java. However, the java.awt.Robot class lets you do stuff like capture a screenshot, send events, etc.
Looking at the APIs used by the book, I think he forgot two very important ones:
PDFBox - A library that gives you complete parsing control over PDFs. You can create documents from scratch, extract text, merge pages, change text/images/fields, populate forms, etc. With the use of PDFs in corporate environments on the rise, you just can't go wrong with PDFBox in your toolbox.
POI - Does your company use Office documents in any way, shape, or form? Then you need POI. Create spreadsheets and word documents from scratch, modify existing documents, create spreadsheet computers and reports on the fly. The possibiliies are endless, and your boss with thank you for not having to deaL with ANOTHER CSV file.
The problem, however, is that Neutrinos don't interact with the Earth as they pass through. If they interact, then they are being shielded against. As TheRaven64 pointed out, methods do exist for shielding against neutrinos, even if such methods are only partly successful.
If it was not possible to shield against gravitons, then how do they interact with bodies such as the Earth? If they do interact with objects, and it is possible to shield against them, then why doesn't placing one object in front of another reduce the influence of the body that the second object is shielding against? Yet if you stack a wall of bricks to the moon, you would still see the same influence from the Earth on the top brick as you would if the top brick were suspended with no objects blocking its path.
Or at least, that's what we believe at the moment. If someone can show an actual gravitational difference between the two situations (even if it's minute, but reproducable), then the hypothesis of gravitons would begin to gain serious leverage in becoming a theory.