Giving an application a window icon in a sensible way

[Bent C Dalager]

What is it then -- network install? (Run installer. Pick features. It
then downloads only what you need, as opposed to you downloading 50MB
of self-extracter and only installing 10MB worth of the contents.)

It is a network installation framework. There isn't much feature
selection built in. Instead the application can choose which archives
it needs and which it doesn't.

The repeated insinuation that I'm hallucinating (or whatever) is not
going to get any less false for your repeating it enough times, you
know.

I am not particularly concerned with its global truth value, but am
rather interested in finding out whether or not it will finally sink
in

That's a joke, right?

If I'm running a server that gives direct access to the code, then it's
damn easy for someone to mess with it. Otherwise, they have to find
something else I'm running that functions as a server and compromise
it, or trick me into installing a back door Trojan, or something
similar. It's the difference between keeping jewelry in a back room
safe (which might of course be found and cracked) and in a front window
display case (much more visible and accessible).

Admittedly, this depends a lot on what operating system you use and
what you've done with it but the general case is that the back room
safe in this case is made from fragile glass and it is left outside in
the back alley.

It looks like maybe you define "semi-serious" as "multi-programmer", or
perhaps as "aspiring to some sort of commercial use or to working
professionally in the field" (yeah, right, when there's a glut of
experts already, and lots of the others have industry contacts and
industry experience that I lack).

"Semi-serious" basically means "not a throw-away one-use program that
I just need to this thing right here right now".

As for "few hours", that sounds wildly optimistic to me, considering
the evident complexity. There's the question of how it might interact
with my existing development tools, too, of course (including *whether*
it would, or I'd have to transport data manually between the two,
though I think I saw something somewhere about eclipse being
configurable as a client for version control servers).

It would surprise me if Eclipse did not support seamless version
control.

In my experience, getting started with Subversion consists of
dowloading the software, installing it (easy enough), reading the
manual (thereby learning that there is pretty much nothing you need to
configure) and getting on with things. Of course, as always, YMMV, so
you could certainly stumble into problems I did not.

Cheers
Bent D

 

[nebulous99]

Installing a local version control system does not run any kind of
server process, of any kind, anywhere...

Well, this is interesting. First someone suggests I setup a server (and
the exact word "server" was definitely in their post), and I mention
that one of the added complexities of following their recommendation is
a new security consideration in that event. Amazingly, this comment
actually sparks a dispute in a newsgroup whose posters are all supposed
to be somewhat technical.

Now you appear to be implying that either that poster was wrong about
setting up a server -- which makes them wrong, not me -- or that there
are serverless setups (presumably only when no remote usage is planned
for) *and* server-based setups -- in which case I still wasn't wrong
because nobody had bothered to tell *me* that until now, and therefore
my statement was purely in regard to the server-based setups, for which
it remains true.

Either way, you don't actually even seem to be disputing what I said.
Yet you do seem to *feel* that you are disputing me, and even that you
are doing so with some success. I find this remarkable.

I simply cannot make it any clearer than that, if you still do
not understand then there is no hope.

We are clearly talking about two different things. As things stand now,
it appears that some other poster referred to one type of setup (which
has potential security risks, if misconfigured), and I was talking
about that; now you mention a completely different sort of setup and
behave as if I've made incorrect statements about *that* when in fact
I'd made no statements about it at all.

It's rather as if someone suggested apples, I said disposing of the
cores added complexity, you then objected that apples have no cores,
and it later emerged that you really meant oranges. And then you made
out that this was somehow *my* error. And because they are all in the
more general category of "fruit" ...

Perhaps you incorrectly broadened my statement about applies and
interpreted it to be a claim that all (rather than some) fruit had
cores, and trotted out oranges as some sort of clever counterexample,
then thought you had me? (Substitute "version control servers" for
apples, "local version control software" for oranges, "version control"
for fruit, and "security considerations" for "disposing of the cores".)

Damned peculiar. You could probably be a case study for some
influential psychiatrist, you know.

If you eventually decide to use a remote server setup, then subversion
is accessible via an extension to the HTTP protocol called DAV. Your
subversion server is generally an apache server, which is widely used
and well maintained. In this configuration, you would have security
considerations, but nowhere near the magnitute you are suggesting.

For a security-knowledgeable HTTP server novice, the considerations
must be assumed to have the highest conceivable magnitude without
further familiarization.

I run a linux server with my subversion server, it is not difficult to
install, configure or secure, all processes are well documented.

You are therefore familiar with the whole process. It is safe to assume
that what you now find easy and natural a novice will find to be
awkward, new, and fraught with danger. Projecting your own attitudes,
born of extensive experience with a particular product, onto others,
and then assuming that they can't possibly have any problems since you
don't, is a fool's errand.

There
is a theorectical risk of compromise with any remotely accessible
server, but an apache compromise would be huge huge news and a patch
would be available in minutes (it would, after all, affect the majority
of all webservers). Not running these standard tools due to attack
paranoia is akin to not leaving your house for fear of being hit by a
bus.

Running a server without a major reason is more akin to having a guest
room with an entry to the hall, an exit to the street, a lock between
it and the hall, and a relatively widely distributed key unlocking the
outside door. Although there's still a lock with only a
narrowly-distributed key between the guests and the valuables, there's
a much greater likelihood that somebody will set fire to the place or
something of the sort. And you run an increased risk of mixups
involving the various keys. Unless you're going into the business of
running a hotel or something, it's probably not worth it. If nobody
will actually be using the guest room except you, it definitely isn't.

Of course, you didn't know that subversion generally uses apache as
it's server, but you probably didn't even bother to try to find out for
yourself either.

Without having any reason to consider actually deploying subversion at
this time, no, in fact, I did not.

I am an asshole, a
counter-productive manager, and the potential destroyer of civilization
as we know it.

Now maybe we're getting somewhere. As I'm sure you are well aware, the
first step is admitting you have a problem. Today, Wesley H has taken a
significant step forward. We wish him well.

 

[nebulous99]

http://groups.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=15331&topic=250

This isn't helpful, since presumably the limit is set too high to be
hit by a prolific human poster in normal usage (as opposed to the bots
its meant to keep out). Something must have made it seem like I'd
posted more than I really had, then, which supports the theory that
someone rigged their post headers here today to make one of my posts
turn into a whole bunch of copies, only one of them actually appearing
in this group (as otherwise I'd detect the tampering immediately; most
likely, it took several such occurrences to reach that limit, whatever
it is, and after just one I'd have avoided it happening again if the
effects had been visible right away).
It certainly doesn't suggest any way of fingering the culprit
(regardless of which, I will find out who did whatever they did to make
Google think I'd posted however much more than I'd actually posted they
think I posted).

 

[Ian Wilson]

Twisted wrote:

<1147 lines of somewhat rambling argument>

For me, that's too long to be worth reading. If you are still interested
in anyone's help, and if there was any Java question buried in that,
maybe you could post a few (<10?) lines stating *one* issue you'd like
help with.

 

[Thomas Kellerer]

I find that difficult to believe, unless the loophole is the obvious
and you already knew a great deal about how to use a *remote* CVS
repository, which is probably more complex.

Well I *am* experienced with using CVS in general. And of course I had
the CVS client stuff already installed (and I assume that everybody
nowadays that is doing non-trivial software development does have a
client for version control installed)

The big advantage with a local CVS repository is, that you actually
don't need to install any server process (which is not the case for
Subversion, one of the reason I am still using CVS for my one-man projects)

What it took to create the local repository was:

1) Open the CVS manual
2) Find a chapter that says something like "create repository"
3) read the commands described there
4) run the commands described in the manual
(cvs -d c:\data\cvsrepos init)
5) setup my cvs client with the correct protocol to access the local
repository

Does that really sound like more then 10 minutes?

(Actually I had to redo the steps to write this because that was about 2
years ago, and I couldn't really remember, and again it took less then
10 minutes)

I flatly disbelieve your ten-minute figure, unless you found a magical
CVS growing on a tree somewhere that you just unzip in a clearly
explained place on your hard drive and then some IDE you already knew
how to use (say, Eclipse) starts transparently and automatically using
it as a backend without further ado.

Well I am *not* surprised that you don't believe that, as you disbelieve
*anything* that was said on this thread (I admit I might have missed the
responses where you actually said: "Oh, thanks for the answer, I will
try that out")

And yes, I already knew how to access a CVS repository with my IDE
(NetBeans, which has a very good CVS client built in). Back when I
created the repository I actually had to tell NetBeans what the location
of the repository was local:/data/cvsrepos).
The new versions of NetBeans do find that automagically.

Thomas

 

[Bent C Dalager]

You continue to assert this, without bothering to furnish anything
resembling proof. That could be construed as libel, and I could pursue
legal action.

I suppose you could, if you had the guts to put your lawyer where your
mouth is. I won't be holding my breath

Either prove it or shut up.

I don't need to. I feel that it is self-evident that everyone does
something wrong occassionally. I am trying to determine whether you
consider yourself to be flawless and so far, it appears you do. I find
this information instructive and, indeed, useful.

You seem to have a very strong desire to make people think that I was
wrong.

Not that you "were wrong", so much that at some point or other in your
past, you have made mistakes. Everyone does this, and people in
general don't feel too bad about admitting it. For someone to
vehemently deny that they ever make mistakes is sufficiently deviant
behaviour that I find it of some academic interest.

(And I'm actually not clear what specific thing you are trying
to prove me wrong *about*, curiously enough.)

Nothing in particular. I am trying to determine if you are a
self-proclaimed flawless being.

Cheers
Bent D

 

[nebulous99]

Ok, lets recap....

Must we?

* You asked about including an image with an application (remember
that?).

Nothing wrong here.

* You received the suggestion that you should put the image in a jar
file and use getResource

That does seem to have occurred, yes.

* You stated that your way was better because building a jar file was a
problem/hard/time consuming

Nope. What I actually said was that I didn't have a jar, because I
wasn't at the stage of bundling for distribution yet. You need to
reread the entire thread again from the beginning and reread it some
more until you've gotten at least the basic facts straight.

* I suggested that you might want to use ant as this would make the
process very easy

Aren't you supposed to be rereading the thread from scratch right about
now, instead of continuing to talk?

Oh, OK -- yes, various people suggested ant; their notion that it would
"make the process very easy" appears to have presupposed my having a
significant chunk of knowledge I didn't actually have, notably
including familiarity with ant.

* You asked why would I want to use ant when I can use eclipse

True enough, and interestingly, the first answers to that question
actually arrived less than an hour ago. Somebody indicated that it
exhibits advantages when:
* Multiple people are working on the project;
* One person is changing IDEs;
* The project source is being widely distributed, presumably because
the project is open-source and mature enough.
All of these circumstances do indeed appear to be ones where ant is
advantageous over the internal build tools of eclipse (or any other
IDE).

* I gave you a list of many things you could do with ant that were
difficult or impossible with eclipse, some where relevant to your
current project, some weren't but the point was, lots of extra things
were possible

When exactly was this? If you were referring to the posting from within
the last hour, that was a) a long time in coming and b) not actually
especially relevant to my current project in its current stage of
development.

* You picked one item on the list that didn't seem (to you) to be
relevant to your project and attempted to use it to claim that I didn't
understand the problem.
Cite?

* I pointed out that it was infact relevant, you had just
misinterpreted the name. I did this very politely dispite being a
little annoyed that you would rather just blindly claim I didn't
comprehend your problem rather than do a very small amount of legwork
to be sure I didn't.

I shouldn't have to do *any* legwork for you to have communicated your
meaning clearly. If something you said doesn't make sense without
outside references or google searching (beyond the common knowledge of
usenet, e.g. what LOL means, and a basic education and fluency in
English; here also some familiarity with the basics of Java) then there
is a problem (and I'm not the one who made a mistake).

* You started moaning about the name of the project and "why would you
think to go there etc"

Actually, I was pointing out what I just said (again!) above -- there
has to be more reason to follow a link someone posts than simply
because someone on Usenet posted it and you happened to read that post.
In particular, if it doesn't look like it's more than tangentially
connected with the current topic of discussion, it's a fair bet it'll
be ignored. Later, I found I had to even point out that people don't
magically know what's really at the other end of a link, and when
deciding whether or not to follow it, they have to go by just the
link's name. If that name is not an accurate representation of what's
actually at the other end, then it is likely people might not follow
the link when it would have been useful to them and that other people
will follow it when it won't be useful to them. In your particular
posting and in the context of the current discussion, it appears that
the first of the two may actually have happened. This is no-one's
fault, except maybe whoever named the Web page in the first place, and
from what I can gather I'm guessing that it got grandfathered in
(similarly with Netbeans), so it is in fact no-one's fault. Yet you
insist on not only trying to apportion blame, but in pointing the
finger at me. Why?

No reason why you should go there unless your saw the mention of it in
my original post and had a sudden urge to look it up (and any decent
developer I have ever met WOULD, just because of curiosity),

Even at 3 am their time with other things pressing, most notably sleep?

I'd *love* to know what drugs "any decent developer" apparently uses
regularly, particularly if there's something else involved besides
particularly large doses of caffeine.

but there is also no reason for you to start claiming that it was not relevant to
your project just based on the name alone.

True; which is why I didn't. I said that it didn't *seem* relevant, and
asked why you thought someone would follow it anyway under
circumstances in which it wouldn't seem relevant. (The theory that
nobody wouldn't follow it anyway has, I am assured, been soundly
disproven now. It appears that a counterexample was recently
exhibited...)

Infact, I am certain the only reason that you are trying to blame...

I appear to be one of only two people here (besides those not posting
to this thread at all) that are *not* trying to place blame; the other
is Oliver Wong. (Besides, blame for what? Nothing serious has actually
gone wrong! Except this thread itself, that is. And it's fairly clear
who's responsible for *that*. The first clue is to note that two people
appear to be fairly calm and logical, and their main activities seem to
involve asking questions of various sorts, while various other people
are showing assorted degrees of emotionalism and irrationality; there
are some additional, largely innocuous participants.)

 

[Patricia Shanahan]

And you probably wouldn't if the following weren't true:
a) You were already familiar with this sort of thing, as a result of
larger projects;

I might well have learned about it from other people's experience. I
found out about a lot of the tools and techniques I use by listening to
other programmers, reading newsgroup articles, etc.

b) All of this stuff, including the hosting, you were not paying extra
for;

I did revision control locally for my home programming projects even
when I did not have access to a server I could use for non-work
purposes. I did other things, such as keeping backup tapes in my car or
a safe deposit box, to get off-site backup.

c) You're familiar enough with setting up things like ssh tunnels and
security precautions to trust yourself to do this stuff without
screwing it up and letting every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a rootkit
and subscription to 2600 get in by mistake.

I learned ssh tunneling for my current project. That is not particularly
significant because some project was first for every single tool,
technique, programming language, API etc. that I have ever used.

I never said I was "eliminating the idea", only questioning its being
anything but overkill and added work for little gain in the context of
this specific project.

I must have misinterpreted your comment "For a one-person project?
You're joking.". I read it as meaning you thought that revision
control is a joke for one-person projects, and wanted to make sure you
realize that it definitely isn't.

Patricia

 

[nebulous99]

You actually don't have a web browser?

I have a web browser, but it's the bog-standard variety that
understands .jpg, .gif, .png, .txt, .html, .shtml, .php, and
directories, and a few others (notably .svg). I've never actually even
*seen* a .jnlp file before today. (And I still haven't -- only two
links to such files, up from a grand previous total of zero.)

Why, what kind did you think I had?

(I am assuming you have a JRE since you're apparantly doing Java
development.)

I suppose this is some subtle suggestion that JREs come with a tool
that recognizes the .jnlp format. If so, it's not a tool I've had
occasion to use (or even investigate), obviously. (I would expect that,
given a JRE plug-in, my browser does add .class and .jar to its
repertoire. Which suggests that .jnlp could be some type of active
content similar to an applet. If so, I'd definitely want to know
whether it runs in the same type of sandbox before touching either URL
with a ten-foot pole.)

 

[nebulous99]

No, I didn't say *that*, *two* *days* *ago* I posted this:

What didn't occur two days ago was anyone (to my knowledge) mentioning
what they did on the file/project management (rather than code/API)
side, only that the latter was just the one line of code.

 

[wesley.hall]

Must we?

Nope, actually lets not. I said it before and I will say it again (and
stick to it this time). I am done. You clearly know better.

Good luck in the future.

 

[Simon Brooke]

Of course I didn't. A three letter query with a different, mainstream
dictionary meaning is far too likely to fail to be worth considering.


There are a number of notes regarding the above:
1. An hour or two? I'll need some proof it can easily do something
amazing you can't easily do with Eclipse on its own before that looks
like a worthwhile investment of time.

That's easy. The advantage of an ant script is that it works identically
whether or not Eclipse is present. Eclipse is a wonderful tool but you
wouldn't use the Starship Enterprise to nip down the road to the chemists.

2. Webstart? This is a standalone app, rather than an applet, servlet,
or some kind of specialized client/server thing. Are you sure this
recommendation isn't based on a misapprehension of the nature of what
I'm doing? It's quite possible that your suggestion is well suited for
developing some kind of web app and rather less so in the case of a
standalone one...

Webstart is, as I understand it, intended specifically for standalone
desktop apps. I have to confess I've never used it... but that's because I
don't write standalone desktop apps.

3. False dichotomy. You presuppose I have a choice to *either* use this
tool *or* argue here. In fact, the choice is to argue here, or to use
the tool *and* argue here. My choice not to argue here vanished the
moment the first insult was slung. Now it is necessary to defend myself
and my choices in front of the same audience you're trying to convince
of my guilt/stupidity/whatever it is that you think.


For a one-person project? You're joking. It would take me weeks to
learn to use such a complex tool, and then I have to operate some kind
of a server, then some kind of equally unfamiliar client ... that even
has *security* implications, since I have to make sure that the server
isn't visible to the outside world if I start running a server of some
sort.

Anyone with any degree of professionalism uses a version control tool of
some kind; it's basic. The client is built into practically every IDE
(like, for example, Eclipse), or you can (of course) script it with Ant.
You don't need to learn anything.

If you can't be bothered to run your own CVS or Subversion server,
SourceForge will be happy to run one for you.

Yes, if you're working on a one man project, you don't have to use the
team-working features of your version control tool, but when your customer
reports a bug in the build you delivered to him on 5th May, it's nice to
be able to check out the source of exactly that version to do your
debugging with. Saves shedloads of time and aggravation.

And I thought some other people here were suggesting swatting flies
with bazookas. This is closer to disinfecting a dirty toilet with a
thermonuclear bomb.

No, it's more like cleaning the toilet bowl with a brush rather than doing
it with your fingers.


--
(e-mail address removed) (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
,/| _.--''^``-...___.._.,;
/, \'. _-' ,--,,,--'''
{ \ `_-'' ' /
`;;' ; ; ;
._..--'' ._,,, _..' .;.'
(,_....----''' (,..--''

 

[Simon Brooke]

Daniel Dyer wrote:
[snip some opinions on what "should have been obvious" and the like]

This should do the job. Save the following as build.xml in the root of
your project. Edit the properties at the top to match the paths in your
project, and then run "ant" or "ant all" from the command line (from the
root directory of your project). I don't remember how you set Eclipse
up to use this, but it's trivial in IDEA and NetBeans, so I can't
imagine
that it's very difficult. If you need to extend this script, for
example to add a manifest, I'm sure you can work out how from the
examples in the manual (http://ant.apache.org/manual/index.html).

Given that Eclipse already rebuilds things automatically when they have
changed, what advantage does this provide? (That's an honest question,
not a rejection, disparagement, or anything else you may be tempted to
misinterpret it as, by the way.)

It makes your project portable outside the Eclipse environment.

People can check out one of my projects from Sourceforge, cd to the
directory, type 'ant installer' and it's all done, regardless of what IDE
they use or don't use. Of course, they have to have ant; but compared to a
full IDE it's a small tool. Also, of course, as other people have said, it
makes scripted and automated builds easier.

 

[Oliver Wong]

Your post was much too long for me, so I skimmed over parts of it. If I
missed a direct question, I apologize. If you want me to address a missed
direct question, repeat it to let me know.

That's because they're not newbies. It's only when someone at the
*bottom* of the pecking order asserts himself that the ones at the top
pick fights. (And when someone in the middle asserts himself around
someone that's higher up...)

I was talking about newbies. For example, see this thread:
http://groups.google.ca/group/comp...._frm/thread/9fb39f03f5cc066e/f320a2cea44397b6

AFAIK, the OP has only posted twice in comp.lang.java.programmer, and
only once was the post a question. That question got answered.


[...]

Surely a refusal to accept someone else's advice
without question (while being willing to accept it conditional on
further information, evidence, or what-have-you) can't be a crime, can
it?

(1) It was not clear to me that you would accept the advice pending more
information or evidence.
(2) I don't see any indication that someone considers refusal to accept
someone else's advice as being a crime.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems with that.
1. If I change my response to always be submissive

That's not what I'm recommending you to do. I've posted some
recommendations already: Ask direct questions. Don't mention anything which
is not directly related (like problems with your browser). I'm not even
telling you to say "please" or "thank you", or anything like that. I don't
know how you inferred a recommendation for submissiveness from my
recommendations.

[...]

Stop doing what?

Stop believing that when someone asks you a question, they are not
trying to help you.

Ignoring questions whose sole purpose is some kind of
entrapment, or which are at best irrelevant?

No. Stop believing that you are capable at differentiating between
questions which are intended to get the information nescessary to help you
versus questions whose sole purpose is some kind of entrapment, or which are
at best irrelevant.

I don't recall the group
charter being that a condition of help (or acceptance or whatever) is
that n00bs have to answer every question put to them.

I've never even read the group charter. But I can tell you, empirically
and statistically, those who answer every question put to them have had a
greater chance of getting the answers they wanted.

What if one of
them asks me for my credit card number -- I suppose I should trust them
with that, too?

No, you should not. On the other hand, I've never seen anyone on this
group ever ask anyone for their credit card number, so this has never been a
problem so far.

[...]

One thing I notice that no-one has addressed was a point I raised
yesterday about the woeful inadequacy of the search engines themselves.

Perhaps because it's off topic and no one really cares.

Or are you claiming that the mere *fact* of saying anything like "yes,
but" or "won't that add xyz complexity/work/overhead?" constitutes
something with an "emotional impact"?

No. I was referring to your "I may have found a bug" post.

I'm not. Do
you want to know why? Then listen to my advise. Don't dismiss it out of
hand, because of some perception that I'm with "them" and therefore
"against" you. You don't have to agree with my advise, just listen to it.
Really think about it.

[Error on first token of next line: > found where constructive
suggestion expected. Construct incomplete. Parse terminated.]

Oops. Looks like you have only half of a control structure there. You
forgot to include the next couple of lines where you explain how you
would have asked the original question differently, and once some
arsehole popped up and told you what an idiot you were for googling the
subject some more and then going ahead and doing it yourself instead of
waiting sixteen hours for them to get around to climbing up onto their
high horse and telling you the correct way to do it, what you would
have said back to them.

"Thanks. I'll keep your solution in mind for next time."

[...]

OK, let me ask you a fairly direct question.

Suppose you were in the exact situation I was. Suppose the following
had happened:
1. You'd had a particular question arise regarding how to.

This has happened before, so it's easy for me to put myself into this
scenario.

2. You'd googled it and found nothing that appeared to be relevant.

Ditto.

3. You asked here.

Ditto.

4. After some hours went by without a single response (in a group that
usually generates dozens of posts an hour), you googled some more and
tried some more exotic queries and found something that appeared to
describe what you wanted to accomplish.

I usually expect a 2-3 day wait before getting a reply, but that doesn't
mean I'll stop my google search, so this is starting to stretch it, but
fine.

5. With some adjustments, you made the solution fit, and it actually
worked as planned.

Not too hard ot imagine.

6. You returned here to report "nevermind, I found this and it seems to
work adequately for this case".

Probably what I would do, yes.

7. The immediate response (in much less than one hour) is clearly and
strongly disapproving of the method you used, and by extension of you.
It mentions an alternative method that you know relatively little
about, with the implicit assertion that you should know all about it
too and if you don't already then you're probably a moron. Implied is
that you should immediately rewrite your code to use their suggested
method, even though the code currently works, with the vague impression
that the so-and-so telling you this believes that if you don't change
it right that instant your computer might catch fire or something.

Except this hasn't happened, neither to you, nor to me. So it's quite a
stretch of the imagination now. What would have likely happened to me (and
what has actually happened to you) is that someone saw your post, thought
their solution was better, and posted it. No implication of being moron, or
anything like that.

8. You consider the alternative method, and a moderate number of
questions occur to you, particularly regarding the ways that its
implementation might complicate your project relative to how it is
currently set up. In particular, the method seems likely to complicate
the build process, although that may be a complication your build tools
can automate for you. Nonetheless, at minimum it requires learning
additional features of your existing build tools, possibly even some
whole new build tools, and not just a bit of API here or there; it may
also involve complicating the startup of your app with additional error
recovery and other nuisances. As such, for your particular current
circumstances, you're rather dubious that it's worth it, and for the
longer run, you'd like to know more before accepting (or rejecting) the
suggestion to use for similar purposes in the future.

Okay, this step isn't unreasonable.

9. So, it comes time to respond to the surprising and hostile message
you received...

What do you do?

Post my questions.

How, exactly, would you have responded, and what differences from how I
responded would you consider significant?

I'd probably make my question explicit. E.g. instead of "Nobody is
telling me what Ant is!", "What is Ant?" Instead of "Obviously, a google
query for 'ant' would not turn up anything useful", "Where can I download
Ant?", etc. I probably also wouldn't mention the inadequacies of search
engines. I'd probably keep my post under 5000 words. I'd probably answer the
questions asked of me.

[...]

Ever?

No, the link I quoted gave an example of when it's okay to claim you've
found a bug.

Not even when the behavior is observed to have appeared with a
new version? Even when that new version is a beta? Even if I only claim
that I "might" have found one?

None of these situations qualify, IMHO, and in the opiniong of the FAQ
author.

You are asking me to be dishonest, and that I won't do without a far
better reason than because someone professes "I don't like it when you
do that".

Saying "I'm having problems with listeners. Here's my source code.
Here's what behaviour I'm expecting. Here's what behaviour I'm experiencing.
How come they differ?" is not dishonest.

[...]

It was that last occurrence, which was earlier today, that disqualified
you from an "apparently neutral" designation. You appear to be playing
your own game here, although it's admittedly a subtle one, and
apparently more so than those of most of the others that are playing
any sort of game here at all. Unless that really was just a momentary
lapse of judgment. Still, if so, it was a remarkable lapse indeed. In
case you forget:


This was what you suggested. Basically, "Assume that everybody else in
the world is right and you are wrong whenever you don't agree with
someone else".

Nowhere in my advice does it ask you to assume everyone else in the
world is right and you are wrong.

If everyone took the same advice, we'd still be living
in the stone age; progress would be impossible. The reductio ad
absurdum of this "advice" is to trot out the usual suspects: Galileo,
Copernicus, Einstein ...

You don't think any of these people, when challenged, ever said shrugged
their shoulders and said "Ok" (in whatever language they speak), and went on
with their lives? Take Einstein, for example. Don't you think, at one point
in his life, someone told him relativity is the dumbest thing they'd ever
heard of, to which Einstein might have shrugged and said the equivalent of
"Ok.", and then went on with his life, giving presentations and lectures on
relativity to other scientists? Or do you think he got bogged down,
delaying, or even cancelling those lectures, to argue with that one
particular person, who stubbornly refused to believe?

[...]

Now this is not to suggest I'm some Galileo, and the people
recommending getResource are flat-earthers. Clearly they are nothing of
the sort, and I don't doubt that getResource has its uses, and plenty
of them to boot. What I do doubt is that anyone should honestly
recommend that people never question others or express doubt in what
they said, or even just that they shouldn't doubt those who claim
authority.

But then, that isn't what you said, is it?

No, you misread.

[...]

Why
is that -- am I somehow ineligible to do what I've heard is actually
the duty of everyone in a democracy?

Not to my knowledge.

If so, you can't claim to be "neutral" while holding an
obviously hostile opinion of me, now can you?

In my opinion, my opinion of you is not hostile. I usually forget about
you as soon as I exit this thread. To me, this is about as neutral as one
can be.

Damn. Now it's starting to look like *you* can safely be accused of
being dumb, without much likelihood of being wrong. Either you said
that honestly believing it (dumb!) or you said that thinking to trick
me and thinking I might actually fall for it (dumb!!) or you said
something that came out extraordinarily different in meaning from
anything you even intended (dumb!!!) ...

Perhaps you can enlighten me as to what you really intended with that
particular piece of "advice". Then I can better classify you. (As to
intent/neutrality, as well as IQ).

My intent was "don't worry about what others think of you so much". I'll
actually give you an example of this strategy right now. You think I'm
really dumb, right? Ok, fine.

It's a little late for that. Instead of ignoring them, you criticized
them; and then you didn't even take the hint that you should have
ignored them if you didn't like them (and that, since you didn't, you
should apologize).

Sorry.

[...]

It's actually "PofN", rather than something else that you contracted to
that in the (incorrect) assumption that I'd nonetheless know who you
were talking about and be able to (how? Magic?) reconstruct the long
version?

Come on. I know usenetters, and if there's one thing they love to do
more than baffle you with bullshit, it's aggravate you with acronyms,
half of them made up on the spot and the rest still unintelligible to
most people even with some educated guessing and a google search or
two.

Yes, "PofN".

http://groups.google.ca/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/ace60e77355980fa

It's impossible to avoid being insulted if the insults are unprovoked,
if "don't provoke the insulters" is what you mean to suggest.

In my opinion, it's not impossible. If you'd like a demonstration, wait
a few days until I've forgotten about this thread, and then insult me out of
the blue, without provocation. I predict that I won't feel insulted.

Eh what? No, you seem to have misunderstood. The options are to avoid
the insults even being said or to rebut them. Ignoring them is
emphatically not an option, since silence implies assent. Or have you
forgotten that part?

It's not forgotten, but disagreed.

[...]

This is not only false, it's a complete joke. At no time did I do
anything of the sort. I asked about various things that occurred to me
as possible problems with the "standard" solution, and I pointed out
specific advantages of "my" solution (which do not in any way imply it
to be superior -- a few ticks under the "pro" column does not mean
there aren't even more under the "con" column, after all).

I am starting to suspect, however, that people honestly believe that I
believe what you are saying they believe I believe,

I'm glad.

and that they
actually do think that my putting a couple ticks under a "pro" column
means I've decided that choice is superior already. If their grasp of
even the most basic rules of logic is as terrible as you suppose,
though, then WHAT THE BLAZING HELL ARE THEY DOING IN comp.*?!

Everyone's free to post in comp.*; even those you deem to be unable to
grasp the most basic rules of logic. Personally, I appreciate their
presence: even if they cannot grasp logic, as you state, they do seem to
know quite a bit about Java. When I ask Java questions here, someone usually
has an answer for me.

Logically, someone who can't tell the difference between putting some
entries in a debit column of a ledger and actually being in debt should
probably be unable to program his way out of a paper bag.

You'd be surprised.

What other posts? I'm not reading the 5000 a day that get posted here
just on your recommendation; I have far too many other demands on my
time, and this froup, of late, is already consuming rather more than
its fair share.

So read 2000 of them. Or just 20 of them. Or just 2. It doesn't really
matter. Pick a thread you did not participate in, and see if you perceive
the same disapproval there that you perceive here.

[...]

In other words, you finally agree with me that I've done nothing wrong?
Hooray!

I've never been in disagreement with you about that. Like I said, it
really has nothing to do with right or wrong. It's more about cause and
effect.

What was the intent of the "advice" to "just say OK" whenever anyone
accused me of being wrong?

I'm still waiting on that.

To help you in avoiding the responses you seemed to not want to receive.

I still can't determine what game you're playing, if any. The two
hypotheses that best explain your behavior, "playing some subtle game
or other" and "honest, neutral, but prone to fits of confusion" seem to
do about equally good jobs...

Another rule of thumb I usually use on Usenet is: If there are two (or
more) interpretations for a given message, and one of them makes you really
angry or upset, but the other one leaves you neutral or even happy, pick the
latter one. You'll end up having a happier life.

- Oliver

 

[nebulous99]

I am not particularly concerned with its global truth value, but am
rather interested in finding out whether or not it will finally sink
in

By which you mean what? Whether sheer repetition *will* have some of
the lesser intellects hereabout believing it? Whether you can actually
eventually confuse *me* into believing it? Or at least baffle me long
enough to slip a zinger by under my radar and unopposed? I wouldn't bet
on it...

Admittedly, this depends a lot on what operating system you use and
what you've done with it but the general case is that the back room
safe in this case is made from fragile glass and it is left outside in
the back alley.

Not *this* box. You must be thinking of Joe Blow's Windows XP SP1 box
with full raw sockets and no firewall, or his Win98 box with wide-open
NetBIOS hole, or Joe Inc.'s rack of NT/IIS servers all lubed up and
ready to accept whatever prong someone wants to poke into them, most
with outdated Symantec or McAfee products and nothing else in the way
of protection software.

"Semi-serious" basically means "not a throw-away one-use program that
I just need to this thing right here right now".

Meaning you won't use version control on "hello, world", but you might
on a two-class pipsqueak that you rigged to automate picking your
lottery numbers or some shit like that?

Looks like you draw the line at dropping that nuke when the toilet
begins to look visibly grimy.

What do you use to recharge your laptop, a tokamak?

It would surprise me if Eclipse did not support seamless version
control.

I had the impression that it could, after some one-time configuration
headaches of unknown magnitude. I'd have to research that sometime
tomorrow though to confirm it and to measure the severity of said
headaches on the Saffer-Simpson scale.

In my experience, getting started with Subversion consists of
dowloading the software, installing it (easy enough), reading the
manual (thereby learning that there is pretty much nothing you need to
configure) and getting on with things. Of course, as always, YMMV, so
you could certainly stumble into problems I did not.

That's what I was afraid of. It's been *my* experience that if you
download any type of server software, install it, and do "pretty much
nothing" to configure it, you've just hung out the welcome mat for
Christ alone knows what. From which a firewall *might* save your bacon.

Now maybe that's not the case with Subversion specifically, or you're
talking about a local-only version control product that doesn't open
any network ports, but you didn't actually say so, so ...

 

[Simon Brooke]

Please tell me why you think it should ever even occur to me to visit
this URL when not developing a weblication of any kind? Because unless
you can think up a good reason, what's actually at that URL is moot --
some of the people to whom it (supposedly) applies will not look there
for it anyway.

Because, as other people have already politely told you it isn't
about 'weblications', it's about standalone desktop applications. It's the
standard way to make sure standalone desktop applications have all the
right resources they need to run successfully. Got that?

Any large enough project I assume you mean. It sounds like it adds
complexity to pretty much every stage of the cycle, though, so not any
sufficiently small project. And the dividing point is shifted towards
larger projects for version control novices, for whom there's
additional overhead involved.

Anything more complicated than Hello World benefits from version control
and the overhead is negligible. It's much simpler to commit into the CVS
than to make a backup.

--
(e-mail address removed) (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/

;; MS Windows: A thirty-two bit extension ... to a sixteen bit
;; patch to an eight bit operating system originally coded for a
;; four bit microprocessor and sold by a two-bit company that
;; can't stand one bit of competition -- anonymous

 

[nebulous99]

Twisted wrote:

<1147 lines of somewhat rambling argument>

For me, that's too long to be worth reading. If you are still interested
in anyone's help, and if there was any Java question buried in that,
maybe you could post a few (<10?) lines stating *one* issue you'd like
help with.

Unfortunately, since you didn't quote any of the original article, I
don't know to which one you are referring. However, it seems likely it
was a response to Oliver, and it is fairly likely that neither of those
contained anything of real interest to you.

 

[nebulous99]

Well I *am* experienced with using CVS in general.

What it took to create the local repository was:

1) Open the CVS manual
2) Find a chapter that says something like "create repository"
3) read the commands described there
4) run the commands described in the manual
(cvs -d c:\data\cvsrepos init)
5) setup my cvs client with the correct protocol to access the local
repository

Does that really sound like more then 10 minutes?

Nope, but I expect it to take longer for someone unfamiliar with using
version control.

Also, this is only the installation and configuration of the system.
Setting up (or migrating) an individual project and whatever you do
differently when working with that project's sources wasn't mentioned,
nor was the time taken adjusting to any workflow changes involving
frequently-performed activities that occur as a result. The latter is
probably inapplicable except to a total CVS n00b, of course...

Well I am *not* surprised that you don't believe that, as you disbelieve
*anything* that was said on this thread (I admit I might have missed the
responses where you actually said: "Oh, thanks for the answer, I will
try that out")

There have been some where I've clearly stated that I may investigate
something further, yes.

 

[Simon Brooke]

What is it then -- network install? (Run installer. Pick features. It
then downloads only what you need, as opposed to you downloading 50MB
of self-extracter and only installing 10MB worth of the contents.)

Oh, at last...

That's a joke, right?

If I'm running a server that gives direct access to the code, then it's
damn easy for someone to mess with it.

And if you're behind a firewall, they can't, can they?

It looks like maybe you define "semi-serious" as "multi-programmer", or
perhaps as "aspiring to some sort of commercial use or to working
professionally in the field" (yeah, right, when there's a glut of
experts already, and lots of the others have industry contacts and
industry experience that I lack).

As for "few hours", that sounds wildly optimistic to me, considering
the evident complexity.

Ten minutes, more like it.

apt-get install cvs

There's the question of how it might interact
with my existing development tools, too, of course (including *whether*
it would, or I'd have to transport data manually between the two,
though I think I saw something somewhere about eclipse being
configurable as a client for version control servers).

Eclipse isn't configurable as a client for CVS. Eclipse is a working client
for CVS straight out of the box. There's no configuration to do, beyond
pointing it at your server.

 

[Simon Brooke]

Sorry, I don't have any software on my system for interpreting .jnlp
files, whatever those are. (And I *do* have software for the common and
even many of the more obscure formats for images, archives, and the
like, just to put that into some sort of perspective...)

Then you don't have Eclipse on your system.