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To: Kachina who wrote (13814)	5/13/1998 2:55:00 PM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Respond to of 17305

Kachina, I hope you keep posting. No one likes to hear just one side of an issue. The fun of chat sites such as SI is the convergence of divergent opinions. The best part of this thread, IMO, is that people here have not been afraid to voice dissent. Now, as for Y2K... What the heck have you been smoking? No no no, just kidding. That was a line someone who used to have their own popular thread used to say. I was using it for comic relief (gg). First of all, the reason why Yardeni has been getting attention is because he, himself, used to be an assembly language programmer. So he not only can talk the talk but walk the walk. Second, Y2K is not just software, but embedded systems. Third, even if a company is 100% Y2K compliant, if they single source a part from a company who is not, they could be toast. I personally talked to the guy in charge of making Kraft Foods Y2K compliant and he said they were so concerned about that that they actually bankrolled the Y2K compliancy projects of some of their subcontractors because they were afraid to have them go under! He told me that Kraft has to discontinue products to keep on schedule for the rest of their stuff. Even more frightening, he said he talked to others in his position at similar companies and they are just in the planning stages! So, the moral is, just because you or your company is foresighted enough to become Y2K compliant, doesn't mean the same is true for your peers. And, lastly, check out the testimony of Gartner Group before Congress to see how well businesses are handling Y2K (hint: not very well!): Message 4441781 - Jeff

To: Kachina who wrote (13814)	5/13/1998 3:07:00 PM
From: roller	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17305

Kachina, Java being easier to crack then other conventional languages... I think in general, Java is no different than any other programming language. While its true that you can discern a lot of class information from Java bytecodes, that still doesn't give you the code. There are a lot of disassemblers for C/C++/etc (I assume these are what you referred to as conventionally compiled language) that can display something very close to source code by looking at register usage, etc. and predicting variables. I can't comment on "quietly copy the application" and "replace it" because I haven't had the background on that side of the industry, so you may be right. But I don't think Java is any better or worse in respects to cracking it. However, I'm not even a novice in biology and haven't had many chances to dissect coffee beans :-) I hope you are wrong ! -Jony >If someone breaks in via physical or network means to a site >running a conventionally compiled language, all they can do is >damage. But with Java, they can quietly copy the application, >study it at their leisure, and then replace it with one that >does what they want.