At 10:45 PM 4/29/96, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
Scott Brickner writes:
I don't understand what you mean by "insufficiently powerful". It's as expressively powerful as most high-level languages, and computationally Turing equivalent. It's lack of power seems entirely in the performance arena, which may be solved, eventually.
Java applications can't save files to disk or use data files on disk. If you were, for instance, buying two CPU weeks of idle time on some machines, you would need stuff like checkpointing or the ability to save intermediate results.
Java applications _can_ save files to disk, and read them. Further, even the presently-more-constrained applets can retrieve certain types of files. For example, "getImage" and "getAudioClip" methods. I mention this point for two reasons. First, it says the applet model is not forever and totally blocked from reading disk files. (And I would not be surprised to see additional file retrieval methods "allowed." To be sure, this raises more and more security issues to look at, but TANSTAAFL.) Second, the relevance for providing sources of entropy for Java applets. I haven't looked in detail, but I'll be willing to bet quite a bit that someone has already or soon will run a QuickCam video input, not to mention sound input, in a Java applet, and that this could easily be used as a source of entropy bits. --Tim Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."