Giving an application a window icon in a sensible way

[Twisted]

At this point, the issue isn't even your approach to the original
problem, it's your outright refusal to consider any advice that's been
given to you.

Actually, in a way you are correct. This nonexistent "outright refusal"
certainly is the issue -- or at least, the continued gulf of
misunderstanding whereby some people here still believe that this
mythical "outright refusal" exists.

Or do you consider a refusal to jump first and ask questions later to
be equivalent to a blanket refusal to *ever* jump?

Of course, you don't see it as advice, because we are all
just a bunch of meanies because we don't think your approach is the
best thing ever.

I never said that. However, there are a minimum of three serious
bogosities I already called attention to dozens of times and apparently
must call attention to at least once more:
1. Someone posted here with an honest question, and then information
about their honest efforts to solve it themselves, and the results, in
good faith, and was promptly derided ("Why the hell are you doing it
THAT way?!" or words to that effect). That's uncalled-for.
2. Alternative ways of doing the same task are suggested; when the
original poster does not immediately say "I'll get right on that sir!"
and instead has *questions* and points out possible *problems* (based
on his necessarily incomplete knowledge of the details at that time)
hoping for further information, the responses, by and large, treated
said poster rather in the manner he might expect if, as a military
cadet, he had questioned something instead of saying "Sir, yes, sir!"
and doining it promptly. However this is not a military academy, boot
camp, base, war, or branch of service, it is an unmoderated Usenet
group. Issuing fifty lashes for insubordination to a pseudonymous
participant is not only rude, it's also stupid, since you can hardly
enforce it.
3. This one tops the others, easily: despite the fact that the original
poster did NOT unconditionally reject the suggestions he received, he
is accused, repeatedly and by multiple people, of having done so.

And this is actually leaving aside all the tangential issues that have
arisen in connection with this mess, involving google's search engine,
google's usenet portal, various unfamiliar tools, file extensions, and
URLs, and so forth, in connection with which there is a similar pattern
of placing blame with that same person for the apparently heinous
crimes of a) not being omniscient, b) not just trying things and
finding out (even where those things are known as a general case,
regardless of specific exceptions not knowable in advance by the person
in question, to carry potential security risks for their computer), and
c) daring to speak up in their own defense and in the defense of their
choices (not one of which, mind you, was malicious or negligent or even
resulted in a single failure or problem at their end) rather than
automatically and uncritically accept the various harsh criticisms that
were leveled at him.

It is the insistence that I should have uncritically accepted not just
one thing, but *everything*, that I find here most appalling.
Especially in an area where a) practical engineering is concerned, and
the way the world really works is far more important than opinions,
church dogma, conformity, orthodoxy, or what-have-you and b) there are
also security considerations from time to time. Uncritically accepting
that X isn't a security risk, that Y isn't a waste of time, or that Z
isn't going to in a particular case be more work than it's worth, would
be things I would consider to automatically disqualify someone from any
development team *I* ever ran. I'd want the devs thinking about what
they were doing and asking questions in preference to just taking
anyone's word for anything. Most especially if they were coding
anything with security implications.

One thing I certainly would not tolerate in any place where I could
forbid it is anyone ever, with whatever excuse, blasting someone merely
for harboring skepticism of *any* kind, or riding someone for not
uncritically accepting what they said, or whatever. The *only*
exception that I can think of is the specific case of military officers
issuing orders, particularly where either a) time is critical or b) the
receiver is being trained to react as quickly and obediently as
possible to prepare them for a). And then only if someone signed up for
it; I don't generally support any sort of draft unless there's a direct
and imminent threat to the homeland, and even then I'd sooner see
draftees doing the dishes and cooking than on the front lines if
possible; 21st-century conflicts aren't usually to be tilted in one's
favor by throwing ten million pieces of greenhorn cannon-fodder at the
enemy, unlike 20th-century ones, in which that sometimes worked, or
19th-century and earlier, in which it was usually the deciding factor.

Of course by this point, nothing I say is going to change your mind.
You are firmly locked into the mindset that everyone is just out to get
you.

Actually, it's worse than that. I'm firmly locked into the mindset that
several people here (including you) are clinically insane, and you lot
have done a right good job of convincing me of what I previously merely
suspected, mainly by either a) not comprehending or simply b) not
reading my postings while nonetheless responding (other than with "I
don't quite understand this; please elaborate?" and the like, for case
a)).

 

[nebulous99]

The decision is trivial to fault when I observe that simply clicking
the link

WRONG.

You must have mistaken me for one of those bozos who clicks on anything
shiny or flashy they see and then comes whining to the nearest geek
(probably you, in the case of the ones you know personally) about how
their machine has slowed down and gotten wonky and suddenly every web
site is full of popups, and you then spend the next sixteen hours
either a) cleaning spyware off their machine or b) telling them in
detail why you now refuse to do likewise.

My policy isn't to click on any links unless I have already got a
fairly good idea of the link's purpose and what the content at the
other side is (which does include if it answers a question and I know
the question but not the answer, by the way -- so long as I know that
the link answers the question).

For one thing, there are so many links and there's so little time.
For another, I like to keep my computer mine, rather than handing it
over to some spammer, marketing researcher, script kiddie, or faceless
large corporation on a silver platter. Needless to say, links that end
in unusual extensions are treated with extra suspicion, and .exe, .scr,
..dll, and the like are pretty much just ignored. Links in Usenet or
email (especially unsolicited) are also especially suspect, unless they
come from a person I know and trust. Of which there are currently zero
posting here, in case you are wondering.

People who post a link without saying much or anything about why or
what it leads to can therefore expect it to be ignored.

People who additionally get on my case for not following the link in
question are not simply ignored; they land squarely in my shit-list
because they obviously don't respect my time or my desire to keep my PC
uninfested. If they respected either, they'd do me the courtesy of
either a) giving me more information to go on about their stupid little
link, b) not posting the link in the first place, or c) at least not
exploding when, after some time has gone by, I still haven't touched it
with a ten foot pole.

Of course, it may be that some of you who do this are making an honest
mistake. I have fingered four of these as the most likely:
1. You think that I know (or somehow *should* know) what's at the other
end before going there or being told what to expect by anyone.
2. You think that I can somehow infer this from the link's URL text
itself. This is patently not the case, and whenever I've pointed out
that some particular case will lead to an inference different from
what's actually there, the response has been to tell me that I'm dumb
to be making that inference. I'm not, and *you're* stupid for expecting
me to make any *other* inference, given that I have no other
information to go on.
3. You are unaware of my link following policy (I've stated it before,
but half of what I write is being ignored, so it bears repeating, as in
this message) and furthermore you neglect to think through the
consequences of following the more liberal policy you seem to expect,
to wit, that of following every link you see.
4. Or, you think I should adopt a different link policy, probably one
that whitelists links from you personally. Sorry, I don't know you well
enough. I won't treat your links any differently than any others on
Usenet, unless one day I *do* know you well enough. (For many of you
here, by the way, that day will hopefully be "never", and for those of
you who have ever insisted that I should trust them intimately with my
time and my computer's safety on the very same day that we first met,
it certainly is.)

 

[nebulous99]

Unlikely to happen. Certain required social skills, like being able to
work with others, are not in evidence.

ITYM "being able to kowtow to others". I've not been asked to "work
with" anyone here, but some people do seem to get annoyed that I don't
bend down and kiss their feet because they graced me with their
presence and honored me with some less-than-friendly news post or
another.

That probably does mean that job positions where the boss has certain
personality traits are right out; but then those are jobs I don't want
anyway.

[snip unamusing "sponsored link"]

Spammer.

 

[nebulous99]

It's not just Patricia, I find it only takes a couple of minutes to
write a 30-line Swing app to illustrate some problem or it's solution.

I use Eclipse. I'm surprised you find using Eclipse to be so difficult
that you'd not attempt this!

I find using Eclipse to be much easier than using either text editors +
command line or any other IDE I've ever tried.

But I certainly do not find that what you describe takes "a couple of
minutes". Creating a new project and main class with a blank main
method and blinking insertion point, maybe, and even then it wouldn't
be long before my workspace was cluttered with ten billion tiny
projects, all of them for some one-time use. Seems a waste.

If there's some clever shortcut you're not telling me about to just run
some one-off quickie code in Java with Eclipse, then by all means,
don't let some stupid NDA stop you from sharing it.

Incidentally, you don't happen to know any fix for this
tangentially-related issue do you? In Eclipse I've gotten around to
creating three or four projects of various sorts. When started, Eclipse
*always* starts with the first of these as the "current" project (no
matter which was the last edited) and a blank package explorer, whose
active "up arrow" button needs to be used a couple times to get the
full project and package listing.

Worse, folding shut some of the projects causes weird side effects; on
one occasion the package explorer got stuck blank with the "up arrow"
button disabled and Eclipse had to be restarted to make it useful again
(closing and recreating the package explorer "window" did not suffice).

It seems to have a concept of "current project" separate from the run
MRU and open source files MRU, such that the name of that first project
(now collecting dust for months) is always in the titlebar, and it
isn't obvious how to change it...folding shut all but one of the
projects doesn't change it to the one, for instance, nor does
navigating in the package explorer into one project's classes.

The Project menu is also not informative on this particular matter.
Properties brings up the properties for the project that's active in
the usual sense, so if I call the one stuck in the title bar and where
the package explorer always starts (well, is after one up arrow click
after being blank on startup) A and the one containing the source file
currently being edited B, it's B's properties that come up; if I select
a project C in the package explorer and pick that item again C's come
up (all while A remains in the title bar of the main window, by the
way).

Related is that the Problems window lists every problem in any project,
not just in whichever one is currently active (in either sense!); one
old project has dozens of them (because it's woefully incomplete rather
than because it's woefully broken, mind you) and the list seems to
limit itself to 100 (configurable nowhere that I can find), with the
predictable results...

(The above are just about my ONLY issues so far with Eclipse, though,
which is remarkable for anything of its scope and complexity. The only
remaining niggle is that browsing the library API docs directly from
type names, method names, or whatever is not apparently possible. For
some reason, functionality that produces an abbreviated piece of the
API docs (if applicable) in a tooltip on hovering over an identifier
mysteriously started existing (or at least started working) a week or
two ago, and F2 does turn this into a scrollable less-abbreviated
version, but being able to go from there to a basic HTML browser
capable of following the docs' hyperlinks would be nice, or even to
make it launch a Firefox tab into the docs, with the second frame in
the package and the third in the specific place...)

 

[nebulous99]

Knowing that you basically consider yourself to be flawless is helpful
when composing answers to your posts, hopefully increasing the
usefulness of those posts. This is a benign side effect. I can't
off-hand think of any typical malign side effects that might arise.

To put this in context -- ultimately, I consider everyone to be
flawless that doesn't act either a) with malice aforethought, b)
precipitately without thinking first (other than when confronted with
an emergency), or c) with a sufficiently broken worldview that their
idea of acting without malice includes things like murder and whatnot.
The former need to go to jail, the latter to the padded variety of
cell, and the ones in the middle may just need some help.

I, obviously, am none of the above (including the middle one; in fact,
people here are, to a substantial degree, trying to fault me for,
apparently, thinking without acting precipitately first!)

 

[nebulous99]

As for game theory, if that is what you are trying to apply here then
it seems to me you are entirely ignoring the shadow of the future in
your analysis, and you may be stuck in a trivial model where you think
there are only two distinct players in the game.

Actually, my model is fairly sophisticated. The model I use for verbal
mudslinging (wherever it might arise) is as a game where there is a one
to one correspondence between participants and people, and each
participant has a score. This score is never positive, and the only
actions available are to insult someone (lowering their score by an
amount that depends on the insult) or to defend (raising one's own
score). In fact, it's even more complex, since each participant has an
associated log of insults received, each with a weighting (the sum
gives the participant's score) and a logical model of the semantic
content of the insult of some kind. The score is worse for insults that
make nastier claims ("idiot" is not as bad as "murderer") but less in
magnitude for insults that are unbelievable (e.g. "he screwed his
great-grandmother's distant monkey ancestors -- every last one of
them", which is difficult to believe as it requires a) an awful lot of
screwing and b) a time machine). Actual evidence strengthens an insult.
A defense has a similar structure and involves evidence opposing an
insulting claim, or the pointing out of a logical fallacy whereby an
insult's conclusion is not properly inferred from the premises. A
simple model would break down a given insulting message into individual
insulting claims and a purported chain of logic from premises. More
independent chains from independent premises strengthens it; ludicrous
premises weaken or nullify it; and the severity of the accusation in
the conclusion is also significant. A rebuttal either breaks a chain
(by finding a flaw in the inferences made) or attacks a premise (e.g.
with countervailing evidence), and when successful, nullifies the
insulting conclusion. In the simple case of one insult with two
independent supporting arguments and one rebuttal that exposes a flaw
in one of those arguments, a score of minus 2N occurs but is increased
to just minus N, pending successful rebuttal of the other argument (or
the appearance of new insults).

The game is obviously negative-sum, so whoever starts an insult fest is
clearly an idiot.
Once started, though, the goals of the participants vary. Some seek to
exit with a zero score and others seek to cause a target to exit with a
negative score. The best case scenario is a zeros all around, because
the targets' rebuttals are successful and the attackers give up.

It can be complexified, for example in trivial ways like permitting
someone to defend a third party; or considering a rebuttal's effect to
begin decaying if excessive time passes between insult and
corresponding rebuttal. As considered in practise, I assume that a
rebuttal that is a direct followup to an insulting usenet post is more
effective than a rebuttal located elsewhere, since a reader of the
insult is most likely to also read the rebuttal in the former case.

Unfortunately, there is clearly no strategy that guarantees a
zero-score exit. The closest is to monitor for, and rebut, insults as
they come, and to remain vigilant until a substantial amount of time
has elapsed without a new one, suggesting that all of your attackers
have given up on holding your score down and moved on to other targets
or quit the game entirely.

Perhaps a simpler analogy is to a bunch of people in a swimming pool,
in which a person can hold another's head underwater, a person can keep
their head above water (requiring constant effort if under attack, and
as a simplifying assumption none otherwise), and one's score is one's
blood oxygen level (which drops when held under, rises when you are
afloat, and, in the real world, becomes dangerously low after four
minutes of being held under). Clearly in this model the target not
defending is suicide, but the attack is still futile (given the
assumption that the target can indefinitely survive through continuing
defensive action; in a real pool of water, with people of varying
strength, that obviously doesn't work) unless the defender is really,
really stupid.

Of course, the first serious complication (in both models) is adding in
a rule by which *an attacker is allowed to try to trick a target into
not defending*...

Actually, there are some variation scorings that may apply to real-life
situations. In one, the attackers' goal is to waste targets' time, or
else it's to either waste targets' time or make an insult stick. In the
former, the defender should ignore the attacker instead of defend, but
this only applies to a real life situation in which a) there's no third
party present for any of the insults and b) the attacker gains somehow
by the defender's waste of time, despite the attacker spending a
comparable amount of time. In the latter, the attacker always wins,
since the defender is either insulted or wastes time; to "win" all you
have to do is make an insult(!).

Timewaster? You bet, but then again, this *is* Usenet...

 

[nebulous99]

Sure you are. One command, run only once ever:

apt-get install cvs

Here's the breakdown for you:
Time Expense Task
c. 12 hours $500 Obtain new low-end computer
c. 7 days* $0 Get, configure, familiarize
self with Debian, Ubuntu,
or similar
c. 10 minutes $0 apt-get install cvs
c. 12 hours $0 Familiarize self with cvs
and configure it for 1st
time
c. 10 minutes $0 Configure new project
c. 24 hours** $0 Become used to new procedure
for editing source files
c. 9 days $500 Total expenditures
* May be too optimistic
** Optimistic if new procedure != old procedure, pessimistic
otherwise

It will take a *lot* to convince me that applying version control to my
four-class project is worth 9 days and 500 dollars to me, especially in
light of my current disposable income (or lack thereof).

Of course, the above is specific to the "apt-get" suggestion you made.
It may be possible to knock a week and all $500 off those estimates if
there's a sensible Windows port and corresponding installer, which
means you'd then only need to convince me that it's worth about two
days of my time.

(Assumed is that CVS and apt-get are free software, which I'm fairly
certain is the case.)

The most optimistic scenario assumes that (though it doesn't seem
likely) CVS does not alter the procedure for editing source files at
all, despite everything I've heard about checking things in and out
when using version control. (Edit conflict resolution is, I assume,
moot for the single-user case.) The time drops from days to mere hours
in that case, which may still require marshaling a lot of evidence
given that my project is all of four .java files big (not counting
XImageSource and its dependencies).

However, I have the feeling you're asking me to believe that getting
started using version control for the first time ever is as simple as
running an installer, perhaps rebooting, and then doing the same thing
you already did. If that's the case, either the benefits of version
control are some form of magic, or nothing actually changes (except my
free disk space, down by Christ alone knows what, of course).
Because surely things like reverting changes, accessing older
revisions, branching or forking the project, diffing stuff, and whatnot
aren't just going to happen by simply thinking about them; they'd
require some learning and time and familiarization with the interfaces
of tools of some kind.

Logically, the benefits don't manifest themselves until *after* the
above investment of time and effort. Therefore said investment is not
warranted until significant such benefits are at least on the horizon.
So far as I can tell, for me, for this project, right now, that is not
the case. (At least, not yet, and until then, YAGNI.)

Then all you need to do is go to the 'Team' menu in the Eclipse package
explorer and select 'Share project'.

Share with whom? I thought this was single-user we were discussing. (Or
is it just called that?)

After you've done that, every time
you've finished a day's work, select 'Team -> Commit', and that preserves
where you were up to at the end of that day.

One added step per project and one more at intervals while coding. Plus
of course whatever is needed to actually use this as anything other
than a fancy backup system (and even that assumes that it *copies*
rather than *moves* my .java files so that two clones of the project
(the one in the repository and the original one) are being kept in
synch. )

Creating versions and branches is a little more complex and merging
branches is a lot more complex, but you don't need to do those things on a
single-developer project (although even on a one-person project branches
can be handy).

I expect anything that actually makes this a value-add is more complex.


Keeping the slow accumulation of a copy of every sourcefile for every
single change ever made to it from eventually exhausting my disk space
is also going to become significant at some point if I ever use this
thing. I don't expect that's straightforward, either. (Best case: pull
some menu down, "delete...", "revisions older than [date drop-down]".
Worst case: RTFM, crack knuckles, open a command prompt, type something
in, pray, and then curse God upon finding that yes, you did just delete
everything *newer* than <date> or somesuch. Least probable case: you
just find and delete ordinary .java files with old last-modified dates
from some directory you one day discover to be occupying 60% of your
main partition.)

 

[nebulous99]

You don't have to set up the server - it works straight out of the box.
There is no configuration to do.

Oh, goody. So all you have to do is a) have a firewall(!), b) make any
newly-open port not internet-accessible in same while making sure it's
still locally visible, c) learn how to point Eclipse at it, and d)
learn how to use the fancy new features (which may well involve blowing
up several dummy projects and mangling and mutilating numerous dummy
source files).

That should only take sixteen hours or so of my time. When I have
something on the front burner with enough scope and complexity to
warrant this, I'll be sure and let you know, OK?

 

[nebulous99]

Well, its been fun [insults and threats deleted]

[Nothing with any logical content detected]

Hrm. Nothing here to refute, other than to note that the original
message contained an inaccurate and disparaging characterization of me
and no supporting arguments, premises, or evidence.

 

[Patricia Shanahan]

I find using Eclipse to be much easier than using either text editors +
command line or any other IDE I've ever tried.

But I certainly do not find that what you describe takes "a couple of
minutes". Creating a new project and main class with a blank main
method and blinking insertion point, maybe, and even then it wouldn't
be long before my workspace was cluttered with ten billion tiny
projects, all of them for some one-time use. Seems a waste.

Indeed, it would be a waste. That is exactly why I don't do it that way.
I have a project called "tests", with its own directory, just for this
purpose.

Patricia

 

[Joe Attardi]

Twisted, are you seriously still convinced that somebody is
manipulating Google Groups to limit your postings? It's not just your
total posts; as I've said before, it is the short time period between
them that causes it to be blocked. I have run into this limit several
times in the past when participating in heated political flame wars in
alt.politics.bush. It's frustrating, yes, but still better than paying
for separate Usenet access, isn't it?

You claim that your message was immediately met with hostility and "Why
the hell are you doing it THAT way!?" type responses, and challenges to
your IQ. Let's review.

* You posted your original question, asking about bundling the
application icon with the app.
* Larry Barowski replied, suggesting the usual method of
Class.getResource()

(http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/7bddc5eccb372826)
* Mark Rafn replied, clarifying the notion of a URL, and further
expanded on the example of Class.getResource().

(http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/dc87d41e9c4585b0)

So far, you've had two helpful replies without a hint of sarcasm or
hostility.

* Patricia Shanahan simply asked what the advantage was of your
approach you decided on over the getResource approach. Patricia is
always very helpful on this group and I doubt it was meant with
sarcasm.
(http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/b54c7fbbb62f2150)
* Mark Rafn again reiterated the getResource approach. While he did
capitalize MUCH (Wouldn't it be MUCH easier), it's clear this was for
emphasis on the word 'much' and not to be yelling at you.
(http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/1b1b884c4c15cd1f)

Here comes the sarcasm.

Your reply to Patricia has a very condescending tone:
Andrew Thompson picked up on the sarcasm, and responded with a bit of
his own:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/9d43e685b5e5edd9

However, a couple of messages later, Andrew Thompson replied again,
with more helpful advice for you,
about finding the user's home directory, mentions Java Web Start, and
touches a bit on the advantage
of getResource:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/a656a65ac11ac355

Then Chris Smith replies, discussing getResource some more and gives
you advice on the exception
handling. Seems pretty helpful to me.
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/d4fc60e0adc59fd5

Next up, I enter the fray. I made a small, admittedly sarcastic post
asking why you think learning Ant is a bad thing.
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/5f66b204966b0e8d

Daniel Pitts replies. He is challenging your approach a bit, but it
does not come across as hostile or sarcastic. States his opinion that
"It Just Works(tm)" is a bad approach to software, then poses the
question of what happens when you need more icons later on. He then
suggests another alternative, using a ByteArrayInputStream and ImageIO.
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/0aea208016123260

Here's where it gets ugly!! And guess who has the next post. Yup, it's
Twisted:
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/bf15e0c47ddd12a6

You complain about bashing - which hasn't happened, just disagreement
and **GASP** discussion of why your approach might not be best.
A remark about people's egos, which apparently means stating your
opinion on a matter.
You mention the replies are universally hostile-toned. There were maybe
two replies up to this point that had a sarcastic or mildly hostile
intent. Not universally.

And of course from there, it gets ugly very quickly. Twisted, you are
the one that turned this thread into an ugly argument, so don't try to
put the blame on the rest of us.

 

[Joe Attardi]

Which, by the way, means that your decision to investigate this
"usenet" thing was an extraordinarily stupid decision, at least in
hindsight.

You seem to imply that I am new to Usenet. A quick search of Google
Groups can tell you I've been around on Usenet groups since 1997 or so.


Dumbass.

 

[Patricia Shanahan]

Incidentally, you don't happen to know any fix for this
tangentially-related issue do you? In Eclipse I've gotten around to
creating three or four projects of various sorts. When started, Eclipse
*always* starts with the first of these as the "current" project (no
matter which was the last edited) and a blank package explorer, whose
active "up arrow" button needs to be used a couple times to get the
full project and package listing.

....[Several more Eclipse questions]

For general Eclipse questions, I suggest the eclipse.org web site,
including http://www.eclipse.org/newsgroups/.

Patricia

 

[foobarbazqux]

ITYM "being able to kowtow to others".

You've mistaken courtesy for kowtowing.

Nebulous> I've solded my problem by doing X

Other> Have you tried Y? It has these advantages ...


There are two ways to respond to such a suggestion ...

Nebulous> How dare you question my virility!

or

Homo Sapiens> Thanks for the suggestion, I'm happy with X for the
moment but appreciate your help.


Only a dolt would think the second response is "kowtowing".



Anyway, why not unravel the statement that produced the NPE so that you
can identify the variable that became null? Don't you have ANY
intellectual curiosity?

 

[Bent C Dalager]

Needless to say, links that end
in unusual extensions are treated with extra suspicion, and .exe, .scr,
.dll, and the like are pretty much just ignored. Links in Usenet or
email (especially unsolicited) are also especially suspect, unless they
come from a person I know and trust. Of which there are currently zero
posting here, in case you are wondering.

If someone is trying to take over your computer via an HTML link, they
will serve you a .html that has its MIME-type as
application/x-msdos-program or whatever, thereby getting executed by
your OS. They are not going to give it a suspicious extension since
that is not necessary to get the URL executed by the attacker's chosen
application.

Your only practical safeguard against these attacks is to exclusively
install software that you have a reasonable degree of trust in on your
machine or else keep a watchful eye on the MIME-type-to-application
registry on your OS. If you have done this, then it doesn't matter
which links you follow since they won't be able to harm you anyway
(assuming your trust was well placed). If you have not done this, then
any link is suspect no matter how comforting its name may be.

Cheers
Bent D

 

[RedGrittyBrick]

I find using Eclipse to be much easier than using either text editors +
command line or any other IDE I've ever tried.

But I certainly do not find that what you describe takes "a couple of
minutes".

Really, I wonder why it is that I am so much more productive? Oh well.

Creating a new project and main class with a blank main
method and blinking insertion point, maybe,

I have a Project called Testing, so I don't need to create a new one
each time. I just click the "testing" project then click the "new class"
button. These two button clicks take only a second or two of the "couple
of minutes".

and even then it wouldn't
be long before my workspace was cluttered with ten billion tiny
projects,

Ten billion? You wouldn't be exaggerating unecessarily would you?

A single press of the delete key can reduce the clutter (I've not
bothered so far)

Alternatively, when the clutter seems too much, you can create
appropriately named source folders within the project (I have "layout",
"jdbc" and so on) and drag & drop classes into them.

all of them for some one-time use. Seems a waste.

For me, it's never a waste to learn something new about an interesting
topic. I keep them around so I can go back and remind myself of a
solution or to use them as a basis for another test case.

If there's some clever shortcut you're not telling me about

There's lots I'm not telling you about, but that is because you haven't
asked or because it is not apparent that you don't know.

It's not because (as you imply) that I am deliberately withholding any
information. Not that you've any right to demand info from me, you're
perhaps lucky that I, and others, are happy to give it.

to just run
some one-off quickie code in Java with Eclipse,

I use Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to save a lot of typing. I really don't
understand why you think this is hard or time-consuming?

then by all means,
don't let some stupid NDA stop you from sharing it.

What NDA?

Incidentally, you don't happen to know any fix for this
tangentially-related issue do you? In Eclipse I've gotten around to
creating three or four projects of various sorts. When started, Eclipse
*always* starts with the first of these as the "current" project (no
matter which was the last edited) and a blank package explorer, whose
active "up arrow" button needs to be used a couple times to get the
full project and package listing.

I don't have that problem with Eclipse 3.1, so I can't offer any certain
solutions. Have you tried creating a "Working set" (see menu under
down-arrow to right of title in Package Explorer). At start-up Eclipse
remembers my last-selected working set. They are also a great way to
eliminate clutter (I don't see any Testing classes in Project Explorer
when working on my main project).

Worse, folding shut some of the projects causes weird side effects; on
one occasion the package explorer got stuck blank with the "up arrow"
button disabled and Eclipse had to be restarted to make it useful again
(closing and recreating the package explorer "window" did not suffice).

I've not experienced that.

It seems to have a concept of "current project" separate from the run
MRU and open source files MRU,

That is what I see too. I don't find it a problem, so I've no experience
of trying to tailor this characteristic. I sometimes find it useful to
have java files form several projects open for the following reasons:
- I can cut & paste between projects more easily (e.g. real to testing)
- I have my own common library classes in a separate Project.

Did you know that you can right-click a source tab and select "close
others"? It might ameliorate the issue you have with this behaviour.

such that the name of that first project
(now collecting dust for months) is always in the titlebar, and it
isn't obvious how to change it...folding shut all but one of the
projects doesn't change it to the one, for instance, nor does
navigating in the package explorer into one project's classes.

The Project menu is also not informative on this particular matter.
Properties brings up the properties for the project that's active in
the usual sense, so if I call the one stuck in the title bar and where
the package explorer always starts (well, is after one up arrow click
after being blank on startup) A and the one containing the source file
currently being edited B, it's B's properties that come up; if I select
a project C in the package explorer and pick that item again C's come
up (all while A remains in the title bar of the main window, by the
way).

When I select a project in Package Explorer, then choose Properties from
the Project menu, it is the selected project whose properties are
displayed. This seems to differ from your experience. Are you using a
different version of Eclipse?

Related is that the Problems window lists every problem in any project,
not just in whichever one is currently active (in either sense!); one
old project has dozens of them (because it's woefully incomplete rather
than because it's woefully broken, mind you) and the list seems to
limit itself to 100 (configurable nowhere that I can find), with the
predictable results...

You can tailor this, I did so. Select the "Problems" pane, at the right
of the title is a set of icons, one is "filters" click it, there are
radio-buttons for "On any resource", "On any resource in same project"
and so on. I suggest you select one of the narrower scopes.

(The above are just about my ONLY issues so far with Eclipse, though,
which is remarkable for anything of its scope and complexity. The only
remaining niggle is that browsing the library API docs directly from
type names, method names, or whatever is not apparently possible.

Yes it is possible. Position the cursor over any Java Class name and
press Shift+F2. You'll need to download the Javadocs (if you have not
already) and tell Eclipse where to find them.

http://tinyurl.com/avqq8 Has more detail including screenshots.

For
some reason, functionality that produces an abbreviated piece of the
API docs (if applicable) in a tooltip on hovering over an identifier
mysteriously started existing (or at least started working) a week or
two ago, and F2 does turn this into a scrollable less-abbreviated
version, but being able to go from there to a basic HTML browser
capable of following the docs' hyperlinks would be nice, or even to
make it launch a Firefox tab into the docs, with the second frame in
the package and the third in the specific place...)

See above.

N.B. If this is at all useful, a simple thanks would go a *long* way.

 

[Bent C Dalager]

(Explanation)

Very well, then, it seems that the model has at least two major flaws:

1) It completely disregards the shadow of the future.

2) It presupposes that everyone who observes and participates in the
game is using the same scoring rules that you do. I expect that a
great many people, and in particular people on this newsgroup, do
not. This will tend to result in you coming out of the game with a
completely different score, as viewed by others, than what you
believe. It also exacarbates the negative effects of (1) above.

Cheers
Bent D

 

[Tom Forsmo]

I thought it was implicit but obvious that I don't actually have any
alternatives. The only other web news I'm aware of is narrowly specific
to a handful of newsgroups (and this one is not one of them); my ISP
discontinued usenet access for its customers months ago (without, I
might add, discontinuing the monthly cost of providing it from my
monthly bill).

If you had given it a shot you would have found this free nntp server, I
found it on the first google search i performed:

http://news.aioe.org/

the world is apparently bigger than your head...

tom

 

[Twisted]

Twisted, are you seriously still convinced that somebody is
manipulating Google Groups to limit your postings? It's not just your
total posts; as I've said before, it is the short time period between
them that causes it to be blocked.

That's ridiculous. Of course there is a short time period between them
-- people tend to read and post news in a single hourlong session (or
thereabouts) rather than trickle their usenet activity out over a full
day. So it's a perfectly normal activity pattern to do a whole lot of
fetches and posts at intervals as short as five minutes (posts) or <1
(fetches) for a few tens of minutes, and then nothing for as much as 24
hours, and so on and so forth. If that activity pattern triggered a
block, then
a) It would mean the people running the show at Google were complete
retards and
b) I'd encounter this far, far more often.

It's frustrating, yes, but still better than paying
for separate Usenet access, isn't it?

Except that I *am* paying for separate Usenet access; I'm just not
*receiving* it anymore. As I'm sure I mentioned earlier in the thread,
my ISP stopped providing usenet access (to any of its customers,
apparently nationwide) but they did not reduce my monthly bill at all,
which means that whatever portion of that covered their costs is now
just going straight into their pockets.

Needless to say, the ISP in question is on its way out, but the shoddy
state of north american broadband competition means that this actually
requires I move. At this time, I've had one showing and zero offers on
my house, so the move may not happen for a few months yet ...

(No, I didn't actually put my house up for sale just because by ISP did
something shoddy. There are a number of factors prompting the decision.
ISP misbehavior is one of the less significant of these factors.)

You claim that your message was immediately met with hostility and "Why
the hell are you doing it THAT way!?" type responses, and challenges to
your IQ. Let's review.

Hasn't that already been done -- by *me*? Or did you not read that part
of the thread? (I'm not surprised.)

* You posted your original question, asking about bundling the
application icon with the app.
* Larry Barowski replied, suggesting the usual method of
Class.getResource()

I shall note here that by the time he did so I was already done
implementing the method I'd discovered via further googling, and busily
tweaking the icon itself in photoshop after a successful test.

* Mark Rafn replied, clarifying the notion of a URL, and further
expanded on the example of Class.getResource().

To which I'd later point out that I'd meant "internet URL" by "URL" and
was covering file URLs under "file on the local hard drive" separately.
I might have been clearer in the original post on that point; likewise
he might have read a bit more before jumping on that use of "URL",
whereupon my separate treatment (and non-neglecting) of the local
storage option would have become apparent to him.

So far, you've had two helpful replies without a hint of sarcasm or
hostility.

No; that only started once I posted what I'd discovered using google to
the thread.

* Patricia Shanahan simply asked what the advantage was of your
approach you decided on over the getResource approach.

She had already misunderstood something if I'd decided on the approach
used "over" anything; at the time I implemented it, I had yet to become
aware of the other. See above. However, misunderstanding isn't a
serious crime. (It has been known to lead up to one mind you.)

The implication that she found "my" approach (which is another
misunderstanding; I don't claim any originality but conversely the
approach I encountered and ended up using carries the cachet of having
been described by a Sun developer-oriented article, a point that seems
to be ignored by everyone else in this sorry mess of a debate) to be
questionable. At this point, there's at least a hint of trouble
brewing.

* Mark Rafn again reiterated the getResource approach. While he did
capitalize MUCH (Wouldn't it be MUCH easier), it's clear this was for
emphasis on the word 'much' and not to be yelling at you.

Despite which, the implication is "Why the ****?!" and therefore "Are
you a moron?!". At this point, the downhill slide is apparent. And my
own posts prior to that point appear to be without serious fault. If
there was a flaw, it was a clarity issue surrounding the use of "URL"
in the very first post, and *that* did *not* explode into a huge
controversy.

Your reply to Patricia has a very condescending tone:

I do?

She asked "what are the advantages..." and I answered that question by
listing five possible reasons. Was this somehow wrong? (If you think
so, I shall make it clear that I don't agree.)

In fact, this is another potential point of hypocrisy. Someone earlier
criticized me for *not* answering tangential-at-best questions put to
me here. Now here is an example of where I *do* answer one, and you
criticize me for *that*. Apparently if I do I'll be attacked for it,
and if I don't I'll be attacked for that, so it's already too late for
me to avoid being attacked the moment someone *asks* a tangential
question.

That can't be right...at least, not "right" in the sense of "just"...

However, a couple of messages later, Andrew Thompson replied again,
with more helpful advice for you,
about finding the user's home directory, mentions Java Web Start, and
touches a bit on the advantage
of getResource

Fascinating, although the user's home directory is clearly
inappropriate for an application icon.

[snip some]

I'm not claiming that every response was hostile. Only some of them
were, but that just goes to show that an otherwise useful debate,
discussion, or entire forum can end up dominated by the behavior of a
few loudmouths (and anyone that ends up forced to keep rebutting the
loudmouths).

This is, curiously, reminiscent of a related claim about Usenet: that
about 50% of the traffic is now composed of spam and the cancels
negating the spam. OTOH, most users don't see either, whereas here the
insults and their "cancels" drown pretty much everything else out.

Next up, I enter the fray. I made a small, admittedly sarcastic post
asking why you think learning Ant is a bad thing.
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/5f66b204966b0e8d

Which presupposed that I even did.

I think one recurring misunderstanding is to misinterpret "not now" as
"not ever". So if I suggest that I either have too much on my plate or
no use for it at the present time, some people take that incorrectly to
mean that I have rejected it outright as *ever* being useful, and since
such a thing *would* itself be incorrect, they then launch all
missiles. Unfortunately, at a target that's actually innocent...

Daniel Pitts replies. He is challenging your approach a bit, but it
does not come across as hostile or sarcastic. States his opinion that
"It Just Works(tm)" is a bad approach to software...

Well, you know what they say about opinions. Like assholes, everyone's
got one and they all stink.

I'd agree if what he'd objected to was an attitude of "it doesn't
matter if you don't understand why, so long as it works", but what I'd
actually expressed was more along the lines of "a surefire method is
superior to something that only probably works". In the specific
instance in question, the icon "works" with the same certainty that a
string constant works, rather than depending on some kind of delicate
I/O operation to succeed. The icon might therefore be best off where it
is, or externalized under the same circumstances where a string
constant might be, such as if it's to be localizable or customizable in
some other way. I doubt that there's anything to object to in that
assessment.

He then
suggests another alternative, using a ByteArrayInputStream and ImageIO.
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/0aea208016123260

I don't recall responding specifically to that, but in case anyone's
wondering, I think it likely that the array constant would be bulkier
in the source code. Up to three digits per character in the string
constant makes it potentially 3x the size, more since every byte value
would be comma-separated vs. characters grouped into strings. So say 4x
the size.

You complain about bashing - which hasn't happened, just disagreement
and **GASP** discussion of why your approach might not be best.

Really? First of all, if I mentioned bashing it was because there was
bashing. (Unless, of course, you mean to call me a liar, on top of
everything else that I've been called lately.) Certainly at the time I
felt rather put-upon, having suddenly found that I was expected to
either defend my code or rewrite it (or at least defend it or look
foolish). I chose to defend it, and, frustratingly, instead of my
reasons being accepted and everyone getting on with their lives, people
just continued to question me and imply that I was doing something
wrong or stupid!

In the posting in question, also, I was referring to two additional
threads that contained (at the time) even more overt
bashings-in-progress. (Only one of those is still active, though it
remains hostile at this time, and in the meantime this thread rapidly
worsened until it became easily the worst of the bunch for "bashing".)
A pattern in which everything I said was being subjected to unasked-for
and unwanted scrutiny and criticism had become evident, and it was that
whole pattern that I attacked as being rude, unreasonable, and
unsolicited. Just because I ask some narrowly-specific question about a
particular small aspect of a project does NOT mean that I welcome a
broad-based inquest into every detail of the entire project in
question, or that I am looking for some sort of general critical
review; I'd like the specific question answered and that's all and I'd
like any judgmentalism checked at the goddam door first; just answer
the question in a neutral manner please.

Unfortunately, this wish of mine, expressed then and expressed again
just now, is clearly either lost on just about everyone participating
in the "debate" here or actually being wilfully disregarded. The former
suggests a serious reading comprehension problem (which is odd --
surely anyone who considers himself or herself qualified to answer
Java-related questions here must have the necessary skills in that area
to read the API documentation, at least?) and the latter is outright
disrespectful and rude.

The thing that has most "set me off" though has certainly been the
posts that have let a judgmental opinion shine through rather than
maintaining a professionally neutral demeanor.

You mention the replies are universally hostile-toned. There were maybe
two replies up to this point that had a sarcastic or mildly hostile
intent. Not universally.

Up to that point there had been many that were judgmental. Most of the
truly hostile toned posts had arisen in two other threads up to that
point, but as I'm sure you'll agree, this one swiftly followed them
into the depths of the selfsame toilet-bowl. And went on to set some
sort of goddam record.

And of course from there, it gets ugly very quickly. Twisted, you are
the one that turned this thread into an ugly argument, so don't try to
put the blame on the rest of us.

Incorrect. I responded harshly to a continued pattern of judgmental
responses, and to outright bashing happening in two other threads.
Perhaps I should have separately responded in those threads and kept it
in proportion, in each of the threads, to the worst offense committed
in that particular one. Perhaps. Regardless, as soon as the first
judgmental attitude was permitted to show through in someone's posting,
it was already too late. As long as a neutral discussion of *software
code* was going on, things were peachy. As soon as it became about a
*person* and whether or not they were <insert judgment here>, it became
impossible to avoid a serious argument, since that person then
necessarily had to entrench their position and rebut the judgmental
content in followups, lest they otherwise be perceived as accepting the
wrongful judgments.

[Large amount of quoted material with no further original material
snipped]

 

[Twisted]

You seem to imply that I am new to Usenet. A quick search of Google
Groups can tell you I've been around on Usenet groups since 1997 or so.

Dumbass.

A) I don't care;
B) I don't google people I'm debating hunting for irrelevant stuff to
drag in to use as attack ammunition, unlike some people around here
*cough*PofN*cough*; and
C) I never claimed your decision was recent. Dumbass.