This is offtopic, and I don't mind much if it is modded as such, or even flamebait (because it is prehaps needlessly political). That said -
As a geek I love Wikipedia and how the net has given me information at my fingertips. A few sites have censored themselves, but the Google cache usually reveals this. Very gratifying. But now that Google has become so dominant, and is helping China to censor stuff from their citizens, do they really deserve our trust? Can we really trust ANY online media? If we don't have hardcopies, how can we guarantee that information isn't altered or wiped out for ever? In 1984, there is a whole ministry that works with throwing stuff into "the Memory Hole" that the regime doesn't like. Now it might be possible to do it with a press of a button.
A pretty nasty example of this comes from Time magazine itself:
A composition instructor at the University of California at Irvine got a disturbing email from a friend who was searching Time magazine's digital archives looking for a certain article written by George Bush Senior and his Defense Secretary, Brent Scowcroft. In that article, the two men purportedly explained why they decided not to occupy Iraq in 1991. Their reason was that such an action would have exceeded the UN's mandate to remove Iraq from Kuwait , and would have destroyed the precedent of an international response to aggression. They went on to argue, in the March 2, 1998 article, had they chosen to occupy Iraq in 1991, the US would probably still be occupying a bitterly hostile land.
The article, in today's light, seems like a clear rebuff to junior's invasion. But the article is gone. It's no longer in Time's digital archives - as if it never existed. The Irvine instructor decided to charge her students with the task of verifying the existence or nonexistence of the article. As it turned out, the article was in fact real, and was still archived by a number of subscription-accessed library research databases - but it was no longer in the Time archives. Interestingly, none of her digital-age students thought to look for the paper copy of the magazine in the library. The instructor did, finding not only the missing article, but also finding that editors changed the titles on many of the articles remaining in the Time archives.
Time's post-facto editing is especially disturbing since it shakes the very foundation of library sciences. An archive is a collection of past works. By definition it must be left intact. Archive managers have no right to edit history. In this case, Time blew their chance to censor this story in 1998.
If someone who speaks three languages is called trilingual, and someone who speaks two languages bilingual, what do you call someone who only speaks one language? American!
Anybody got enough experience with NetBeans to say whether it is better or worse that Eclipse?
They are good at different things... With Eclipse you get something very barebones, and you have to search around for a lot of plugins. Netbeans have good integrated support for exiting XML files, JSP files, Javascript, etc. Netbeans has nice wizards for creating different kinds of Java projects (say, EJB, Swing, Struts...). Historically, Eclipse has been a lot lighter and faster since it used SWT rather than Swing, but if you use Java 1.5 or later Swing has a huge improvement in speed and size so now they feel just about equally responsive.
All this said, for some reason I prefer Eclipse. It somehow feels more natural to me and doesn't get in the way... Maybe its because I'm used to it though.
And is Netbeans open source?
Yep.
Re:Java's regexp support is yucky
on
Beyond Java
·
· Score: 1
"You had a problem, you thought you could solve it with regexp. Now you have two problems!"
Why don't you just add a unique character between the name and email fields, and use String tokenizer? No need to mess around with regexp. A lot of problems people have with Java is that they are trying to use their old favourite tricks to solve problems that wouldn't even exist if they used the strengths of the language to create a better design.
This would be true for all new languages though I guess.
She's certainly allowed to believe in something, as are we all, but her job is to report news, not to color it so as to "make a difference." People on talk shows can color the news any way they want, but when you tune in to hear the NEWS, you want the facts.
But why do you assume that "making a difference" means that the reporter slants the news? Why can't you make a difference by telling the truth? I think that is what she meant by making a difference.
>>But is your opinion based on what you got from the media or was it formed through scientific reasoning?
>I was watching CNN the other morning and they had a push for Christiane Amanpour, and at the end of the "ad" she says something along the lines of "I think a journalist's job is to make a difference."
>And that sums up what's wrong with the media.
How so? There might be a lot of things wrong with the media, but what was wrong about that sentence, or who said it?
I thought she was one of the few real journalists left on US television, and especially CNN. She has had her life threatened by dictators many times for reporting things they didn't like, and when she spoke out against the trend of "embedded" journalists who only dutifully reported military pre-approved news she was called a "spokeswoman for Al-Qaida" by neo-con attack-dogs.
Do you believe that only because a journalists believe in something strongly, that it is automatically propaganda? Some of them still do quite a lot of research you know.
Since August 1989 I've worked as a programmer for a group of meteorologists and climatologists. Not a one of them talks about global warming. [...] We have some of the best and most extensive data anyone has,
That is very interesting. It would be even more interesting if you could give a name of this group so the data would be up for verification, mr AC.
Why is there one pseudo-science article after another claiming global cooling does not exist and some that even claims the opposite. Whether the cooling trend is going to continue or now is still an item open for debate.
Are you perhaps confusing global dimming with global cooling? For a while scientists had problems reconciling global dimming and global warming, but these days it is pretty much accepted that polution caused the former (the dimming), and the former masked the latter (the warming).
The largest reduction of acid rain, at least in northern Europe, was caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the wiping out of their inefficient heavy industry.
Perhaps that is what is needed to solve global warming... a complete wiping out of the global economy.:-(
If greenhouse gas and ONLY greenhouse gas causes India to go brrrrr, what caused the cold snap 70 years ago? If something ELSE caused the cold back then, then how do you KNOW that the same mechanism (which has yet to be identified other than 'sometimes weather does stuff') isn't doing it again today?
This is a bit of a strawman. Scientists are NOT saying that only greenhouse gasses affect climate. Climate interactions are complex, but that doesn't mean climate researchers haven't found some of these mechanisms and are beginning to recognize which ones are more important than others.
For instance - the Gulf stream which makes northern Europe much more livable than other areas on the same latitude such as Siberia or northern Canada. There you have one fairly constant feedback mechanism, and one we KNOW have changed over history. It could slow down or even change course as ice melts and more water is added, and that could cause an ice age over the northern hemisphere.
Another is sun spots, periods with high sun spot activity usually means warmer climate on earth.
A third is clouds... warmer weather means more evaporation, more clouds gives earth a higher albedo, and the reflected sun rays means less.
Another - el Nino, but we don't know where that is in the chain of cause or effect.
Computer models of climate do take these things into efffect you know, and they are getting more refined all the time.
Why don't we ever see a book review on here that says, "This book is a total joke, a scam to make money on a buzzword?"
Ok, I have one. "Bluetooth for Java", which I bought when I was going to write a J2ME demo game. The technical specs part of the book is ok, but I'm guessing is just copy and paste from the official specs from Sun and the BT concertium. The code. though.. when you get to the coding, the examples he gives are buggy and incomplete. Check out the code available at http://www.javabluetooth.com/. Most of the stuff won't run, it won't even compile! Important lines are just commented away, it looks like a half-finished beginner project. I counted three bugs on one line, which takes some skill to do.
1) A class variable he declares as an array and then tries to referense as a non-array - compile time bug. 2) The variable is not initialized, so it would be a null pointer exception at runtime. 3) The value he tries to set to the variable comes from a method that he calls with the incorrect parameters - compile time bug.
The book even goes on to say "and now that you have seen a working example of how to scan available Bluetooth devices..."
While I do applaud initiatives to limit oil use, both for environmental and economical reasons, this timetable is just too optimistic. Attempts to do this politically is really not feasible, though it might happen anyway (and on a global level) if the predictions about peak oil is true.
Few analysts in Sweden believed that this was anything else than political hot air when this was announced a couple of months ago. Anyway, if you want to get the announcement from the source, it is here. The minister's own homepage is here.
Mona Sahlin was very popular a couple of years ago and was predicted to be the successor to Göran Persson and become the first female prime minister in Sweden, but she fell from grace when it turned out that she had bought some private articles such as diapers and a chocolate bar with a government credit card. At least, that is the way I remember it, perhaps some more politically astute Swede can fill in the details.:-) One hopes that this is a sign that we hold our politicians to higher standards and that they are less corrupt than most countries, but it wouldn't surprise the slightest if some pretty nasty scandals have been covered up quietly.
All these games are (WoW, DaOC, STG, ect..) are big statistical simulations where the players do nothing but tweak numbers (player stats).
Agreed, the levelling up is usually just as exciting as filling in numbers in a spreadsheet, but there are some MMORPGs that try to do something new. You are even stuck on thinking that it has to be about combat and killing stuff. These people try to do something even more innovative, which might be why they haven't become as popular:
Puzzle Pirates, the first mmoarrrrrpg. You simulate combat by solving puzzles. Different players that crew the ship perform different puzzles, the better they do the more tokens the captain gets (movement, cannon shots, ship health..) to use when the sea battle commences.
A Tale in the Desert, a game that has NO combat. You "win" over other players by performing artworks, building pyramids, getting people to vote for you or performing cermonies and rituals, like for instance "Have 20 charactars stand still and quietly observe the sunrise. If one speaks or moves away the ritual is destroyed." or "Bury a large bag of money in the desert. Tell 10 other players where it is. If the bag remains for a week undisturbed you have passed the test of friendship. The other players get nothing for participating in the test. Unless they cheat, in which case they get the money."
You can get laws voted through that changes the whole game, and so on.
Both games are characterised by having more mature and social players than the hack and slash games, and a much larger percentage of female players.
I haven't played them myself though more than the demos. I stay away from most games and especially online games after shaking off a one year Everquest addiction 5 years ago.
Try them! Both have demos available, ATITD have a Linux client, PP both Linux and Mac (runs on all platforms that have Java actually).
this reminds me of a TV show I saw a while back about government advertising to old age pensioners to stay warm at winter. The basis of the campaign was "Keep the heat in". It was a complete failure because the old dears didn't understand basic physics. They changed the campaign to "Keep the cold out" and it was a big success.
I have a friend who is actually an engineer, and yet he keeps talking about "cold radiating from steel walls" on ships and such. I keep saying "There is no such thing as cold radiation!", and he says "Yeah yeah, I know, it just convenient to speak of it that way."
And remember, if you buy something at half price you will have made a 50% profit!;-)
Hey, why the hostility? Have I done anything to offend you?
You seem to have missed my point completely. What I'm trying to say is - Why spend 3000 dollars a year heating/chilling your house, when you can buy insulation and weather stripping for a 1000 dollar one time sum and fix up your house? Then you will have an energy bill that is a fraction of what it was. Doesn't have anything to do with cultural superiority, it is just economic common sense. Makes the house more comfortable, saves you money and saves needless energy waste, no matter if you live in a hot or cold place.
I think not doing it is wasteful and therefore stupid. Sorry if you take that personally.
For us that live in coldish countries, and I'd place Scotland in this group, as long as you have regulated heating, heat from PSUs is just as good as any other heat.
No, not quite as easy unfortunately. I'm renovating a summer house, and though hardly an expert, I've learned that where you place the heat sources matter a lot. You want your radiators below the windows for instance, because that is where the cold "fall" in to the room. If you put the heating somewhere else (a PSU in the computer of your desk for instance), you risk getting cold air currents along the floor and walls, and the nice heating going up to the ceiling and being wasted. Humans react to temperature changes, many will feel chilled if they get these cold draughts along the floor and walls.
Offtopic - What amazes me as a Swede is that all Anglo-saxon countries I've been to build so incredibly flimsy and energy-inefficient houses. England, Australia, and from what I've heard, the US as well. I mean, you are rich countries, why build like third world?
When I lived in Australia, my host had an aircon constantly blasting heat in winter and cold in summer. Since there were big gaps under the doors and around the windows, and very little insulation in the ceiling this desired temperature quickly escaped. In winter he closed much of the house except one room where the air con was, and we had to stay there wrapped in blankets. When I suggested he insulate the house to save money and energy, he said "No no, it is much to hot in summer here!" I tried to explain that insulating a house is like a thermos. It can keep your chocolate warm in winter, or your chilled drinks cold in summer. He remained sceptical.
Yes, it was a cheat that required special data glyphs on each jigsaw (so there was no image recognition, just path finding),
It was still necessary to recognise the piece, a non-trivial task to do automatically.
You are right. point taken.
My point is that python is just as suitable for image processing as Java, and usually more productive.
That standpoint I can accept, even if I haven't seen enough evidence to support it uncritically. Each to his own though, if you like Python, that's fine by me, I'd learn it if I had more time. Sorry if I came on strong, long workday...
If you want high-performance numerical code Java isn't that suitable either, you want C or fortran at a minimum and probably hand-coded assembler.
Again, myth, java works fine for this, and if you look through Decafs posting history you will see that this is exactly what he works with.
But I've seen plenty of serious image processing done in python, remember the recent jigsaw solving story?
Yes, it was a cheat that required special data glyphs on each jigsaw (so there was no image recognition, just path finding), and proprietary closed source as well. Compare this with the fact that NASA used Java for rendering Mars images, and released it as the Maestro application. Your point?
I didn't say Java was the fastest language in the world. I pointed out that a JVM startup time of 0.3 seconds isn't that bad, and hardly the 15 minutes my parent poster talked about. Writing a Hello World program isn't a very good metric of a modern language either, these days security and maintainability are more important. Considering all the stuff I get for my extra 0.2 seconds compared with Perl, you can keep it.
Slashdot Mirror
As a geek I love Wikipedia and how the net has given me information at my fingertips. A few sites have censored themselves, but the Google cache usually reveals this. Very gratifying. But now that Google has become so dominant, and is helping China to censor stuff from their citizens, do they really deserve our trust? Can we really trust ANY online media? If we don't have hardcopies, how can we guarantee that information isn't altered or wiped out for ever? In 1984, there is a whole ministry that works with throwing stuff into "the Memory Hole" that the regime doesn't like. Now it might be possible to do it with a press of a button.
A pretty nasty example of this comes from Time magazine itself:
The whole article I quoted from is here.
If someone who speaks three languages is called trilingual, and someone who speaks two languages bilingual, what do you call someone who only speaks one language? American!
for exiting XML
Oops... I meant editing of course.
Anybody got enough experience with NetBeans to say whether it is better or worse that Eclipse?
They are good at different things... With Eclipse you get something very barebones, and you have to search around for a lot of plugins. Netbeans have good integrated support for exiting XML files, JSP files, Javascript, etc. Netbeans has nice wizards for creating different kinds of Java projects (say, EJB, Swing, Struts...). Historically, Eclipse has been a lot lighter and faster since it used SWT rather than Swing, but if you use Java 1.5 or later Swing has a huge improvement in speed and size so now they feel just about equally responsive.
All this said, for some reason I prefer Eclipse. It somehow feels more natural to me and doesn't get in the way... Maybe its because I'm used to it though.
And is Netbeans open source?
Yep.
"You had a problem, you thought you could solve it with regexp. Now you have two problems!"
Why don't you just add a unique character between the name and email fields, and use String tokenizer? No need to mess around with regexp. A lot of problems people have with Java is that they are trying to use their old favourite tricks to solve problems that wouldn't even exist if they used the strengths of the language to create a better design.
This would be true for all new languages though I guess.
While bow hunting you often have to track an animal the next morning because a bow wont kill it right away.
In Sweden, bow hunting is illegal as it constitutes animal cruelty and doing it could land you in jail.
She's certainly allowed to believe in something, as are we all, but her job is to report news, not to color it so as to "make a difference." People on talk shows can color the news any way they want, but when you tune in to hear the NEWS, you want the facts.
But why do you assume that "making a difference" means that the reporter slants the news? Why can't you make a difference by telling the truth? I think that is what she meant by making a difference.
>>But is your opinion based on what you got from the media or was it formed through scientific reasoning?
>I was watching CNN the other morning and they had a push for Christiane Amanpour, and at the end of the "ad" she says something along the lines of "I think a journalist's job is to make a difference."
>And that sums up what's wrong with the media.
How so? There might be a lot of things wrong with the media, but what was wrong about that sentence, or who said it?
I thought she was one of the few real journalists left on US television, and especially CNN. She has had her life threatened by dictators many times for reporting things they didn't like, and when she spoke out against the trend of "embedded" journalists who only dutifully reported military pre-approved news she was called a "spokeswoman for Al-Qaida" by neo-con attack-dogs.
Do you believe that only because a journalists believe in something strongly, that it is automatically propaganda? Some of them still do quite a lot of research you know.
In future, use the AC option. It is cowardly, but it is survival.
You would have to have a pretty fragile ego if you equate getting negative mod points with death...
Since August 1989 I've worked as a programmer for a group of meteorologists and climatologists. Not a one of them talks about global warming. [...]
We have some of the best and most extensive data anyone has,
That is very interesting. It would be even more interesting if you could give a name of this group so the data would be up for verification, mr AC.
Why is there one pseudo-science article after another claiming global cooling does not exist and some that even claims the opposite. Whether the cooling trend is going to continue or now is still an item open for debate.
Are you perhaps confusing global dimming with global cooling? For a while scientists had problems reconciling global dimming and global warming, but these days it is pretty much accepted that polution caused the former (the dimming), and the former masked the latter (the warming).
The largest reduction of acid rain, at least in northern Europe, was caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the wiping out of their inefficient heavy industry.
:-(
Perhaps that is what is needed to solve global warming... a complete wiping out of the global economy.
If greenhouse gas and ONLY greenhouse gas causes India to go brrrrr, what caused the cold snap 70 years ago? If something ELSE caused the cold back then, then how do you KNOW that the same mechanism (which has yet to be identified other than 'sometimes weather does stuff') isn't doing it again today?
This is a bit of a strawman. Scientists are NOT saying that only greenhouse gasses affect climate. Climate interactions are complex, but that doesn't mean climate researchers haven't found some of these mechanisms and are beginning to recognize which ones are more important than others.
For instance - the Gulf stream which makes northern Europe much more livable than other areas on the same latitude such as Siberia or northern Canada. There you have one fairly constant feedback mechanism, and one we KNOW have changed over history. It could slow down or even change course as ice melts and more water is added, and that could cause an ice age over the northern hemisphere.
Another is sun spots, periods with high sun spot activity usually means warmer climate on earth.
A third is clouds... warmer weather means more evaporation, more clouds gives earth a higher albedo, and the reflected sun rays means less.
Another - el Nino, but we don't know where that is in the chain of cause or effect.
Computer models of climate do take these things into efffect you know, and they are getting more refined all the time.
Why don't we ever see a book review on here that says, "This book is a total joke, a scam to make money on a buzzword?"
Ok, I have one. "Bluetooth for Java", which I bought when I was going to write a J2ME demo game. The technical specs part of the book is ok, but I'm guessing is just copy and paste from the official specs from Sun and the BT concertium. The code. though.. when you get to the coding, the examples he gives are buggy and incomplete. Check out the code available at http://www.javabluetooth.com/. Most of the stuff won't run, it won't even compile! Important lines are just commented away, it looks like a half-finished beginner project. I counted three bugs on one line, which takes some skill to do.
1) A class variable he declares as an array and then tries to referense as a non-array - compile time bug.
2) The variable is not initialized, so it would be a null pointer exception at runtime.
3) The value he tries to set to the variable comes from a method that he calls with the incorrect parameters - compile time bug.
The book even goes on to say "and now that you have seen a working example of how to scan available Bluetooth devices..."
While I do applaud initiatives to limit oil use, both for environmental and economical reasons, this timetable is just too optimistic. Attempts to do this politically is really not feasible, though it might happen anyway (and on a global level) if the predictions about peak oil is true.
:-)
Few analysts in Sweden believed that this was anything else than political hot air when this was announced a couple of months ago. Anyway, if you want to get the announcement from the source, it is here. The minister's own homepage is here.
Mona Sahlin was very popular a couple of years ago and was predicted to be the successor to Göran Persson and become the first female prime minister in Sweden, but she fell from grace when it turned out that she had bought some private articles such as diapers and a chocolate bar with a government credit card. At least, that is the way I remember it, perhaps some more politically astute Swede can fill in the details.
One hopes that this is a sign that we hold our politicians to higher standards and that they are less corrupt than most countries, but it wouldn't surprise the slightest if some pretty nasty scandals have been covered up quietly.
All these games are (WoW, DaOC, STG, ect..) are big statistical simulations where the players do nothing but tweak numbers (player stats).
Agreed, the levelling up is usually just as exciting as filling in numbers in a spreadsheet, but there are some MMORPGs that try to do something new. You are even stuck on thinking that it has to be about combat and killing stuff. These people try to do something even more innovative, which might be why they haven't become as popular:
Puzzle Pirates, the first mmoarrrrrpg. You simulate combat by solving puzzles. Different players that crew the ship perform different puzzles, the better they do the more tokens the captain gets (movement, cannon shots, ship health..) to use when the sea battle commences.
A Tale in the Desert, a game that has NO combat. You "win" over other players by performing artworks, building pyramids, getting people to vote for you or performing cermonies and rituals, like for instance
"Have 20 charactars stand still and quietly observe the sunrise. If one speaks or moves away the ritual is destroyed."
or "Bury a large bag of money in the desert. Tell 10 other players where it is. If the bag remains for a week undisturbed you have passed the test of friendship. The other players get nothing for participating in the test. Unless they cheat, in which case they get the money."
You can get laws voted through that changes the whole game, and so on.
Both games are characterised by having more mature and social players than the hack and slash games, and a much larger percentage of female players.
I haven't played them myself though more than the demos. I stay away from most games and especially online games after shaking off a one year Everquest addiction 5 years ago.
Try them! Both have demos available, ATITD have a Linux client, PP both Linux and Mac (runs on all platforms that have Java actually).
There is this site called Slashdot that reported this just 10 days ago...
this reminds me of a TV show I saw a while back about government advertising to old age pensioners to stay warm at winter. The basis of the campaign was "Keep the heat in". It was a complete failure because the old dears didn't understand basic physics. They changed the campaign to "Keep the cold out" and it was a big success.
;-)
I have a friend who is actually an engineer, and yet he keeps talking about "cold radiating from steel walls" on ships and such. I keep saying "There is no such thing as cold radiation!", and he says "Yeah yeah, I know, it just convenient to speak of it that way."
And remember, if you buy something at half price you will have made a 50% profit!
Hey, why the hostility? Have I done anything to offend you?
You seem to have missed my point completely. What I'm trying to say is - Why spend 3000 dollars a year heating/chilling your house, when you can buy insulation and weather stripping for a 1000 dollar one time sum and fix up your house? Then you will have an energy bill that is a fraction of what it was. Doesn't have anything to do with cultural superiority, it is just economic common sense. Makes the house more comfortable, saves you money and saves needless energy waste, no matter if you live in a hot or cold place.
I think not doing it is wasteful and therefore stupid. Sorry if you take that personally.
Where was that?
Adelaide. It was 42 degrees C when I came there.
In Victoria certainly almost all houses are insulated.
Good! Great to hear it.
Don't generalise from one idiot.
Heh, Steve wasn't a bad bloke, really nice and typically easygoing Aussie. He just wasn't much of a builder or techie, he was a gardener by trade.
As a Swede, you probably think that anyone who doesn't own a parka is an idiot in winter.
Er, no, only those who live in cold climates and don't dress warmly, those are the idiots. Sort of the same thing with the houses.
You've got cultural blinders on, and you don't even realize it.
Don't we all?
For us that live in coldish countries, and I'd place Scotland in this group, as long as you have regulated heating, heat from PSUs is just as good as any other heat.
No, not quite as easy unfortunately. I'm renovating a summer house, and though hardly an expert, I've learned that where you place the heat sources matter a lot. You want your radiators below the windows for instance, because that is where the cold "fall" in to the room. If you put the heating somewhere else (a PSU in the computer of your desk for instance), you risk getting cold air currents along the floor and walls, and the nice heating going up to the ceiling and being wasted. Humans react to temperature changes, many will feel chilled if they get these cold draughts along the floor and walls.
Offtopic - What amazes me as a Swede is that all Anglo-saxon countries I've been to build so incredibly flimsy and energy-inefficient houses. England, Australia, and from what I've heard, the US as well. I mean, you are rich countries, why build like third world?
When I lived in Australia, my host had an aircon constantly blasting heat in winter and cold in summer. Since there were big gaps under the doors and around the windows, and very little insulation in the ceiling this desired temperature quickly escaped. In winter he closed much of the house except one room where the air con was, and we had to stay there wrapped in blankets. When I suggested he insulate the house to save money and energy, he said "No no, it is much to hot in summer here!" I tried to explain that insulating a house is like a thermos. It can keep your chocolate warm in winter, or your chilled drinks cold in summer. He remained sceptical.
> Sorry if I came on strong, long workday... :)
Yeah, Java will do that to you... (Kidding, kidding!)
I'd laugh, but unfortunately it's true... I'm still not convinced that there are any better alternatives though.
Yes, it was a cheat that required special data glyphs on each jigsaw (so there was no image recognition, just path finding),
It was still necessary to recognise the piece, a non-trivial task to do automatically.
You are right. point taken.
My point is that python is just as suitable for image processing as Java, and usually more productive.
That standpoint I can accept, even if I haven't seen enough evidence to support it uncritically. Each to his own though, if you like Python, that's fine by me, I'd learn it if I had more time. Sorry if I came on strong, long workday...
If you want high-performance numerical code Java isn't that suitable either, you want C or fortran at a minimum and probably hand-coded assembler.
Again, myth, java works fine for this, and if you look through Decafs posting history you will see that this is exactly what he works with.
But I've seen plenty of serious image processing done in python, remember the recent jigsaw solving story?
Yes, it was a cheat that required special data glyphs on each jigsaw (so there was no image recognition, just path finding), and proprietary closed source as well. Compare this with the fact that NASA used Java for rendering Mars images, and released it as the Maestro application. Your point?
I didn't say Java was the fastest language in the world. I pointed out that a JVM startup time of 0.3 seconds isn't that bad, and hardly the 15 minutes my parent poster talked about. Writing a Hello World program isn't a very good metric of a modern language either, these days security and maintainability are more important. Considering all the stuff I get for my extra 0.2 seconds compared with Perl, you can keep it.