I seem to be missing something here. Somebody please remind me what Windows Malicious software remover and all those antivirus programs are supposed to be doing.
Yep, what garbage collection giveth, everything else takes away. For any resource other than RAM Java is more complex/verbose than, say, C++. eg. You want a file to close in a timely manner so the user can copy it to a USB stick without quitting the program first? Start typing another try/finally block. Same with network connections, database connections, etc., you can't rely on the garbage collector to close them for you.
Even garbage collection of RAM is very overrated, eg. I'm working on a 200,000 line C++ program right now and there's exactly 9 'delete' statements in it. All the rest is completely automated via. smart pointers and stack unwinding. The person who adds the tenth 'delete' has to buy lunch for everybody.
Then there's the performance. I don't mean microbenchmarks, I mean real-world performance with millions of memory allocations. Garbage collecting them will destroy any illusion of performance you might have had. Much worse is if you run out of RAM and start paging to disk. In that situation the last thing you want is something continually scanning the entire heap, but that's exactly what the garbage collector does...
Of course C++ can be very complex in other ways and there's an awful lot of traps for beginners, but IMHO Java wasn't the answer and even the famous garbage collection is a two-edged sword.
Because it was always a solution looking for a problem. The only "purpose" it ever had was to try to destroy Microsoft, which was always going to be a losing bet (remember that Microsoft released.Net the day after they lost the trial with Sun).
Yes, people managed to write some programs with it but it was never going to be good enough for the shrinkwrapped application market. It's been (mumble) years now but I'm still not using a single Java application for anything important (I think I've only ever installed one Java program on my machine), and neither is anybody else I know.
It didn't even get widely used for web applets - which was its original purpose.
If it's not easy to do in Windows then it's a problem with the design of Windows. Why can't windows detect a 'software installation' CD (or USB stick) and say "Do you want to install program XXX from the CD?".
Autorun was a dismal idea, the current system isn't any better (the annoying/confusing popup dialog which asks you what to do).
Antivirus programs are a band-aid at best. Try running a few of the viruses that appear in your inbox every day*, it usually takes about a week for the antivirus vendors to catch up and detect them, if ever.
That could have been solved with an OS prompt which said something like, eg. "Do you want to install program XXX from the CD you just inserted?"
Simply running whatever code is on the USB drive is braindead. There were viruses at least 15 years before Windows XP, anybody with half a brain should have been able to see what was coming.
Still, this is the company which gave us autorun emails... USB is a minor pecadillo compared to that.
It shouldn't matter...don't try to be a smart-ass, just use the OS library function for conversion between Unix time (for storage) and displayable time (for the users).
The 60s only appear at midnight on a day when everybody's drunk so who cares?
Slashdot Mirror
I seem to be missing something here. Somebody please remind me what Windows Malicious software remover and all those antivirus programs are supposed to be doing.
I don't know what they hope to achieve with this but maybe this lawsuit is connected with the purchase, ie. they planned it from the beginning.
Yep, what garbage collection giveth, everything else takes away. For any resource other than RAM Java is more complex/verbose than, say, C++. eg. You want a file to close in a timely manner so the user can copy it to a USB stick without quitting the program first? Start typing another try/finally block. Same with network connections, database connections, etc., you can't rely on the garbage collector to close them for you.
Even garbage collection of RAM is very overrated, eg. I'm working on a 200,000 line C++ program right now and there's exactly 9 'delete' statements in it. All the rest is completely automated via. smart pointers and stack unwinding. The person who adds the tenth 'delete' has to buy lunch for everybody.
Then there's the performance. I don't mean microbenchmarks, I mean real-world performance with millions of memory allocations. Garbage collecting them will destroy any illusion of performance you might have had. Much worse is if you run out of RAM and start paging to disk. In that situation the last thing you want is something continually scanning the entire heap, but that's exactly what the garbage collector does...
Of course C++ can be very complex in other ways and there's an awful lot of traps for beginners, but IMHO Java wasn't the answer and even the famous garbage collection is a two-edged sword.
They're just as likely to be using COBOL but most people regard that as 'dead'.
This is why sensible programmers moved to C++ and use range-checked, auto-growing container objects.
There's nothing inherently wrong with Java
So where are all the desktop applications...?
Because it was always a solution looking for a problem. The only "purpose" it ever had was to try to destroy Microsoft, which was always going to be a losing bet (remember that Microsoft released .Net the day after they lost the trial with Sun).
Yes, people managed to write some programs with it but it was never going to be good enough for the shrinkwrapped application market. It's been (mumble) years now but I'm still not using a single Java application for anything important (I think I've only ever installed one Java program on my machine), and neither is anybody else I know.
It didn't even get widely used for web applets - which was its original purpose.
The flying jeep will be more expensive than helicopters...
Why not just, ummm, use helicopters instead of humvees? Is there any reason they have to do all that driving? Where are they going to/from?
Menu at top and bottom of screen? Yeah, that's really just like windows.
PS: The "Menu at the top" thing is the reason I don't install Ubuntu for normal people.
Even satellites can't see asteroids on the other side of the sun. Or through the Earth. That doesn't leave a lot of directions to look in...
Did you work as a miner? Shuttle pilot? What??
A decent OS would have made it easy to do.
If it's not easy to do in Windows then it's a problem with the design of Windows. Why can't windows detect a 'software installation' CD (or USB stick) and say "Do you want to install program XXX from the CD?".
Autorun was a dismal idea, the current system isn't any better (the annoying/confusing popup dialog which asks you what to do).
Antivirus programs are a band-aid at best. Try running a few of the viruses that appear in your inbox every day*, it usually takes about a week for the antivirus vendors to catch up and detect them, if ever.
* Preferably in a virtual machine...
You don't even need to do that, just drop a few of them around the car park...
That could have been solved with an OS prompt which said something like, eg. "Do you want to install program XXX from the CD you just inserted?"
Simply running whatever code is on the USB drive is braindead. There were viruses at least 15 years before Windows XP, anybody with half a brain should have been able to see what was coming.
Still, this is the company which gave us autorun emails ... USB is a minor pecadillo compared to that.
You're implying that tech support for people who've been infected by a virus is easier...?
It's pretty much a given that viruses have admin privileges - how would they infect a machine if they didn't?
There's not been much point in doing it until now - it was too easy to infect machines without it.
I expect all new viruses from now on will include USB as standard (as well as all the other vectors).
It's only going to surprise people who thought nobody would be stupid enough to enable autorun by default in a consumer OS.
Why isn't the Microsoft malicious software removal thing wiping these botnets out in their millions?
A sense of when to let something go...?
It shouldn't matter...don't try to be a smart-ass, just use the OS library function for conversion between Unix time (for storage) and displayable time (for the users).
The 60s only appear at midnight on a day when everybody's drunk so who cares?
Every day is a slightly different length due to tides, etc. Even strong winds can shave off (or add) a microsecond or two.
The BBC did a documentary on it.
We have to make every clock in the world inaccurate because Oracle's software is crap...?