Ewen McLaughlin wrote: > Could I canvass your opinions of the following statements, which were > given in response to a request to install Java, for chemistry teaching > purposes, at a college I work with? > > "a) Java allows malicious activity that could damage the system" > Any software that you install on your computer principally allows malicious activity. And the system itself does so also, even if it is just by opening up numerous security holes. If you take a look at the reported security problems, there are also Flash and the Adobe PDF document reader on the list. Even by opening an image you could infect your system with some malicious software.
The only way to make sure that your system will not be harmed is to leave your computer switched off! And even then your harddisk might fail... Coming back to Java now. If you stick to unsigned applets and unsigned Java Webstart applications the risks are at least rather low (and not higher than with Flash, maybe even lower). > "b) Java is an outmoded way to provide educational resources as everyone > is using Flash now" > Although a still increasing number of websites is replacing HTML with Flash (and not Java in most cases that I know of), the thing that is really upcoming now is AJAX. And if you look at the programming skills requested on the IT job market, Java is highly requested. I just looked for example at a german IT job site (http://www.it-jobs.stepstone.de/): Java : 1134 C++ : 498 .NET : 435 Flash: 118 Regards, Rolf ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Open Source Business Conference (OSBC), March 24-25, 2009, San Francisco, CA -OSBC tackles the biggest issue in open source: Open Sourcing the Enterprise -Strategies to boost innovation and cut costs with open source participation -Receive a $600 discount off the registration fee with the source code: SFAD http://p.sf.net/sfu/XcvMzF8H _______________________________________________ Jmol-users mailing list Jmol-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/jmol-users
