Where did Java go?



  • My server just 'lost' Java.  Like many programmers, my programs don't start in the morning without java. 

    The last update changed the path to Java, but not the PATH that Windows uses. 10 second fix, but annoying.



  • Was this an automated update? I don't really trust them (especially when the JUSched process - like the sodding Flash Update Nagware - refuses to die in a fire)



  • Well if you use a proper web browser (Chrome) then you never haffto worry about updating Flash. It gets updated automatically and in the background.



  • @gu3st said:

    Well if you use a proper web browser (Chrome) then you never haffto worry about updating Flash. It gets updated automatically and in the background.
     

    And what if I don't want it automagically updated, rather like the OP and Java? What if I don't want an update service to run in the background and keep nagging me that flash is out of date? Will installing Chrome prevent those nags?

    Arsehole.



  • @Cassidy said:

    @gu3st said:
    Well if you use a proper web browser (Chrome) then you never haffto worry about updating Flash. It gets updated automatically and in the background.
    And what if I don't want it automagically updated, rather like the OP and Java? What if I don't want an update service to run in the background and keep nagging me that flash is out of date? Will installing Chrome prevent those nags?
    I'm afraid successful troll was successful.



  • @Cassidy said:

    (especially when the JUSched process - like the sodding Flash Update Nagware - refuses to die in a fire)

    Open up your JRE installation in Explorer and go to its bin folder. Right-click on javacpl.exe and 'Run as administrator'. Disable the auto-updater and watch it stick this time. Yes, Sun/Oracle actually managed to produce a control panel add-on that does not properly acquire administrative priviledges for system-wide changes. The icing on the cake is that instead of reporting any kind of failure to the user, this piece of crapware will fail silently and the user will be none the wiser.

    Hold your applause though; it gets better...

    You see; the actual JUSched process does request administrative priviledges through UAC, and will happily knock you out of any fullscreen application when doing so. This may potentially break said application and may lead to unrecoverable data loss, such as losing a few hours of progress in a videogame. Did I mention yet that this runs on a schedule in the background and a regular user has no way to know when it will pop up? Timebomb anyone? Not to mention the security ramifications of training users to accept unannounced UAC prompts just so they can go on with whatever they were actually doing at the time...

    When it finally does pop and JUSched has finished the download of an update, it will run the updater automatically, but may fail to request administrative priviledges for it. This will cause the updater to claim the downloaded update was corrupted, when it is simply a matter of the updater not having been run with the correct priviledges. The kicker? To perform an update that will succeed, again you run javacpl.exe as an administrator directly from Explorer and use its [Update now] button instead. The javacpl add-on will, when having been started with administrative priviledges, pass those on to the update's installer correctly and the installer will be able to do its job. (Who the hell was in charge of this clusterfuck? Seriously; you fail to use UAC to request administrative priviledges, but you do have the foresight to call the updater in a way that passes those priviledges on correctly?)

    TL;DR:
    FUCKING JAVA!



  • @Ragnax said:

    You see; the actual JUSched process does request administrative priviledges through UAC. When it has finished the download of an update, it will run it automatically, but may fail to request administrative priviledges for the actual updater. This will cause the updater to claim the downloaded update was corrupted, when it is simply a matter of the updater not having been run with the correct priviledges. To perform an update that will succeed, again you run javacpl.exe as an administrator directly from Explorer and use its [Update now] button instead. The javacpl add-on will, when having been started with administrative priviledges, pass those on to the update's installer correctly and the installer will be able to do its job.
    It gets worse though. If you have it set to prompt you before installing updates, then it will pop up a UAC prompt before telling you anything. And Microsoft has made it very clear that no legitimate app should ever do that; part of what makes UAC "work" is having the user deny unexpected requests. So by Oracle UAC prompting unexpectedly, they're conditioning users to act insecurely.



  • @TwelveBaud said:

    It gets worse though. If you have it set to prompt you before installing updates, then it will pop up a UAC prompt before telling you anything. And Microsoft has made it very clear that no legitimate app should ever do that; part of what makes UAC "work" is having the user deny unexpected requests. So by Oracle UAC prompting unexpectedly, they're conditioning users to act insecurely.

    I know. I was just updating my post to include that juicy little bit.



  • Isn't it clear? Oracle hates Microsoft, so they want to make Windows look insecure. They do this by training Windows users in poor security practices, thus increasing the number of intrusions on Windows systems.



  • @Cassidy said:

    What if I don't want an update service to run in the background and keep nagging me that flash is out of date? Will installing Chrome prevent those nags?


    Yes, because chrome doesn't use Adobe Flash, it uses Google Chrome-brand Adobe Flash-like Substance.



  • @Ragnax said:

    and will happily knock you out of any fullscreen application when doing so. This may potentially break said application and may lead to unrecoverable data loss, such as losing a few hours of progress in a videogame.

    Yet another reason applications should be written for Windows and not DOS, and run in windows and not fullscreen taking control of the video mode.



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    @Ragnax said:
    and will happily knock you out of any fullscreen application when doing so. This may potentially break said application and may lead to unrecoverable data loss, such as losing a few hours of progress in a videogame.

    Yet another reason applications should be written for Windows and not DOS, and run in windows and not fullscreen taking control of the video mode.

    Video. Games.



  • @Ragnax said:

    Seriously; you fail to use UAC to request administrative priviledges, but you do have the foresight to call the updater in a way that passes those priviledges on correctly?)

    More like they didn't explicitly remove the permissions. They are inherited by default.



  • @Ben L. said:

    @MiffTheFox said:
    @Ragnax said:
    and will happily knock you out of any fullscreen application when doing so. This may potentially break said application and may lead to unrecoverable data loss, such as losing a few hours of progress in a videogame.

    Yet another reason applications should be written for Windows and not DOS, and run in windows and not fullscreen taking control of the video mode.

    Video. Games.

    I don't get it. Video games are apperently a special class of application that get to pretend there's no graphical OS and only one monitor?



  • JUSched is such a POS. I don't believe it ever worked correctly, back before Oracle acquired Sun. The majority of the time on my old machine it will notify, then I tell it to update, and it'll crash. Sometimes two copies will spawn and one of them will work while the other one dies. And really, why a background app? How about doing it the way Apple does, using Scheduled Task instead of eating RAM? (Though in all honesty, Apple Software Update sucks its own brand of ass, always recommending you install their other junk, because QuickTime isn't old and retarded enough, iTunes isn't bloated enough, and Safari isn't buggy enough.) Anyway, I've taken UAC popups regarding jusched.exe as Java's personal notification that there's an update and I should care (even though there seems to be less and less reason to have it on my computer; if I didn't mess with webOS, I probably wouldn't need it). Then there's the installer. Why can't it download everything in one piece, and look like a normal installer? What's up with that squat downloading dialog box with the solid green progress bar? And why does everyone ask to install Ask Toolbar? I wish it would automatically update and not bother me. Oh, and somewhere along the line it disappeared from my PATH.



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    I don't get it. Video games are apperently a special class of application that get to pretend there's no graphical OS and only one monitor?
     

    Videogames are a special class of application that can refuse to share your attention and to interoperate with anything. They don't pretend that they are not in a graphical OS, they just pretend that the system-wide shell doesn't exist... What's quite a great thing for a game to do.

     Also, yeah, for some reason they can pretend you only have one monitor.

     



  • @Mcoder said:

    Videogames are a special class of application that can refuse to share your attention and to interoperate with anything. They don't pretend that they are not in a graphical OS, they just pretend that the system-wide shell doesn't exist... What's quite a great thing for a game to do.

     Also, yeah, for some reason they can pretend you only have one monitor.

     

    Why do they get to do that though? Why can't I pull up my own music while playing, or check emails and send ims between respawns? These are both very real things I like to do while playing games! Many "dedicated gamers" I know have two separate computers because of this!

    If I was in charge of Windows, I'd have any application that tries to set the video mode get shunted to a virtual desktop where it thinks it's running at 1024*768*16 when it's really a window on a 4800*1980*32 desktop spanning several monitors.



  • I dunno, faster rendering? That's generally the case. You don't have to draw anything behind the game, while a windowed game has to draw the shell and window decorations.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Ragnax said:

    TL;DR:
    FUCKING JAVA!
     

     tl;dr: fuck java



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @Ragnax said:

    TL;DR:

    FUCKING JAVA!
     

    <p> tl;dr: fuck java <br></p><span style="display:none;overflow:hidden;max-width:400px;padding:4px 8px;font-size:11px;letter-spacing:0px;z-index:5000;line-height:120%;text-align:left;border-radius:5px 5px 5px 5px;" id="xpndit_tooltip"></span>
    tl;dr



  • @Ben L. said:

    Yes, because chrome doesn't use Adobe Flash, it uses Google Chrome-brand Adobe Flash-like Substance.

    Interestingly, my Chrome just updated (I should say, I updated it, because it starts to become unresponsive whenever there is an update pending) and managed to break Flash.



  • Don't you love the Flash installer/updater?

    How it self-deletes regardless of whether it succeeded installing or not? (did the install fail? did you want to keep the executable because you're going to install in several computers? oh, and you forgot to make a copy first this time? Well, go download it again why don't you?)

    And how it asks you whether you want it to update silently or just notify you Every. Single. Time. without defaulting to your previous choice?

    And of course, how it stays on top of all other windows? (I'm looking at you, "need to restart to update Windows" popup)

     

    And why, WHY?, does Adobe software need to load every single plugin when it starts?



  • @Zecc said:

    And how it asks you whether you want it to update silently or just notify you Every. Single. Time. without defaulting to your previous choice?

    It updates automatically within the same minor version. However, every new minor version requires manual interaction, e.g. the change from 11.5 to 11.6. I can understand a requirement for manual interaction when bumping the major version number, but not the minor one!

    It must be some kind of scam — you're forced to go back to the Adobe website and mess with their scummy download pages, when the updater could simply query a web service for the download URL of the current version and download it directly for you. This is completely different to simply exercising due caution if it turns out that each minor version does bring serious compatibility changes. Which don't believe anyway.



  • @TGV said:

    I'm afraid successful troll was successful.
     

    Ah, arse.

    @Ragnax said:

    Open up your JRE installation...
     

    Well, shit. Handy to know, ta.@Ragnax said:

    this piece of crapware will fail silently and the user will be none the wiser.

    Terrible. "we failed to inform you of our failure"

    @Ben L. said:

    Yes, because chrome doesn't use Adobe Flash, it uses Google Chrome-brand Adobe Flash-like Substance.

    Didn't know that. And - giving into the troll - given how sluggish Firefucked is getting these days I'm seriously contemplating swapping over to chrome.

     

     



  • @GMMan said:

    I dunno, faster rendering? That's generally the case. You don't have to draw anything behind the game, while a windowed game has to draw the shell and window decorations.

    Except my other three monitors are still business as usual. Hell, it doesn't even shut off DWM.



  • @TwelveBaud said:

    @Ragnax said:
    You see; the actual JUSched process does request administrative priviledges through UAC. When it has finished the download of an update, it will run it automatically, but may fail to request administrative priviledges for the actual updater. This will cause the updater to claim the downloaded update was corrupted, when it is simply a matter of the updater not having been run with the correct priviledges. To perform an update that will succeed, again you run javacpl.exe as an administrator directly from Explorer and use its [Update now] button instead. The javacpl add-on will, when having been started with administrative priviledges, pass those on to the update's installer correctly and the installer will be able to do its job.
    It gets worse though. If you have it set to prompt you before installing updates, then it will pop up a UAC prompt before telling you anything. And Microsoft has made it very clear that no legitimate app should ever do that; part of what makes UAC "work" is having the user deny unexpected requests. So by Oracle UAC prompting unexpectedly, they're conditioning users to act insecurely.

    It gets worse though.  On my W7 box, jusched pops up a UAC prompt if you so much as right-click on the systray icon.

    Seriously, WTF? 



  • @MiffTheFox said:

    @GMMan said:
    I dunno, faster rendering? That's generally the case. You don't have to draw anything behind the game, while a windowed game has to draw the shell and window decorations.

    Except my other three monitors are still business as usual. Hell, it doesn't even shut off DWM.

    With games, it's probably inertia. With older Windows versions (think XP and older) you did indeed take a hit on the performance front if your game wasn't full screen. That changed with the new architecture in Vista if I recall correctly and now it's not really that much of a problem to run your game in windowed mode.

    Some games even offer you the best of two worlds if you're running multiple monitors: They offer windowed mode but upscale and position the viewport in such a way that you don't see the window decorations. But for all intents and purposes, it's a windowed game which means that you can easily change to your browser on a second screen without the need to alt-tab out of the game.

    It's probably the same inertia which made it impossible to even alt-tab out of some games without crashing the game, even when Microsoft actually demanded for full-screen applications to support alt-tabbing and provided documentation as how to accomplish it.



  • One of the tips I've seen people say to do first with Source-based games is adding -window -noborder to the command line to make it alt-tabbable.

    Hopefully in a few years when Metro is ubiquitous everything will just use the Metro WM and if they try to set the video mode Microsoft won't let them into the app store.



  • @GMMan said:

    I dunno, faster rendering? That's generally the case. You don't have to draw anything behind the game, while a windowed game has to draw the shell and window decorations.

    We have another poster just out of the cryo-freeze! Yes, that 0.0001% reduction in performance from drawing the window decorations is really going to affect your gaming experience.

    Let me guess, you hang out with all the Linux clowns who claim having a GUI on a server "slows it down", right?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    We have another poster just out of the cryo-freeze! Yes, that 0.0001% reduction in performance from drawing the window decorations is really going to affect your gaming experience.

    Let me guess, you hang out with all the Linux clowns who claim having a GUI on a server "slows it down", right?

    I didn't say window decorations exclusively slow anything down. There's a marked difference, at least on really old hardware, between windowed and full screen on a game at the same resolution. But then the hardware is old enough it won't run Vista.

    I used to run Linux on an Xbox, and having a GUI running takes up a chunk of the 64MB RAM. So yes, it does slow things down, especially if I'm going to run it headless.



  • @GMMan said:

    I didn't say window decorations exclusively slow anything down. There's a marked difference, at least on really old hardware, between windowed and full screen on a game at the same resolution.

    Yes but as it turns out, it's not 1997 anymore. Shocker.

    @GMMan said:

    I used to run Linux on an Xbox, and having a GUI running takes up a chunk of the 64MB RAM. So yes, it does slow things down, especially if I'm going to run it headless.

    Then Linux sucks. Windows swaps-out the GUI when not in use. Pedantic dickweeds: well except maybe 100k to keep the login screen handy but that hardly counts.



  • @GMMan said:

    I dunno, faster rendering? That's generally the case. You don't have to draw anything behind the game, while a windowed game has to draw the shell and window decorations.

    It has surprisingly little to do with the overhead of drawing the shell and window decorations themselves. It has a lot to do with the fact that a fullscreen D3D application can lock the entire screen for exclusive access and wire it to function directly as the application's primary drawing surface. This opens up some neat possibilities, such as using buffer flipping directly with the screen surface instead of having to rely on blitting (i.e. buffer copying) operations.

    There's a post on Stack Overflow that goes into more technical detail on the matter.



  • @Ragnax said:

    Seriously; you fail to use UAC to request administrative priviledges, but you do have the foresight to call the updater in a way that passes those priviledges on correctly?

    As far as I know, all you need to do for that is just call the updater while not thinking about privileges even slightly. Elevated processes run their children elevated by default.

    All of the Java update privilege misbehaviour is perfectly consistent with a never-questioned assumption that every process running on any Windows box out there in the real world will always have full admin privileges. To be fair, this was 100% true before Windows NT, and remained de facto though not necessarily true until UAC was introduced with Vista in 2008; I'm sure that in Oracle's view, non-elevated processes on desktop boxes still count as a New Thing. And what with XP's zombification date still being more than a year away, there's just no real incentive to take this issue seriously - I'm sure it never crops up on Ellison's workstation.


Log in to reply