User: tbfmicke

Re:2020 eh?

On: SETI Predicts We'll Find ETs by 2020

No, its the third you should send there.
The first is a bit too aggressive :-)

I hope to see this scenario

On: Paranoia RPG Returns in New Edition

I would love a scenario where the troubleshooters go to the SCO section to find IP that has mysterioulsy vanished from the computer. The prime suspect would of course be the high programmer Linus-U-NIX.

Re:About polymorphidm snd subtyping

On: Java SDK 1.5 'Tiger' Beta Finally Released

The principle is the same as it has been for arrays since the beginning. The differnce is that the check for array handling is in runtime and not when compiling.

For example the code:

private static void func1(Object[] objs)
{
Object o1 = objs[0];
objs[1] = new Date();
}

private static void func2(String[] strings)
{
func1(strings);
}

will compile, but gives an exception when run.

I think I remember that the generics as it stands now (apart from array generics :-) is only done during compilation, so the compiler cannot depend on the runtime to do the same checkings as it does for arrays. So they are left with the choice to disallow the construct at compile time.

Re:an annoying quirk

On: Java SDK 1.5 'Tiger' Beta Finally Released

This sounds like a reasonable behaviour, if you have typed a list to only have Strings (say) it makes sense that you cannot send it to a function that don't know about that typing.

The function could add a Date or anything to the list without knowing its mistake and suddenly you have a list whose type lies for you :-)

Some parts of MS likes GNU

On: SCO Lobbying Congress Against Open Code

So while MS might not like GPL'd software (they like OSS; there's a lot of BSD in every MS operating system), they're not likely to lobby for something that they know is impractical and moreover would not be good for them in the long run.

It seems that at least some parts of MS likes (ar at least accepts) GNU software. Their Unix Services , contains a lot of GPL'ed code, including GCC and emacs.