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Is this anything which should concern LION users? (I have NO idea.)

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/security/have-...323?tag=nl.e539

FWIW it does not concern me. Java is the only commonly used application environment that from its inception was designed to be secure and to minimize, if not eliminate, the risk of its being used to create malware. So in spite of the fact vulnerabilities have been found in the Java Virtual Machine Java applets, applications, and servlets are still relatively secure. Note too that Oracle/Sun has been very quick to close those vulnerabilities. In today's environment where creating malware is a multi-billion dollar industry almost any operating environment such as Windows, Flash, Java, and even OS X will be attacked. The best defense is keeping everything scrupulously up to date and apply all the security patches to everything.

Admittedly having programmed in Java, and some of my favorite applications are written in Java, I tend to be a bit prejudiced. But that is just my opinion.

To be honest, much of the IT jargon is beyond me so I rely on others - of sound mind and body - to help me out with related articles found on The Net.

Further, some of the writers on ZDNET (where I found the link above) have an anti-Mac/Linux bias . . . so I am not always confident in their assessments, warnings, etc. regarding applications for MACS.


Thanks for your input.

I share your assessment of ZDNet which is why I am here at FineTunedMac.

Not to pick nits, but MAC is a technical acronym for Media Access Control, a unique identifier hardwired into network devices. Mac (note the case change) is a Macintosh computer. It is little stuff like this that can easily create mis-understanding

Fair enough.

However, I used the word MACS - with an "s" - and not MAC (without the "s").





P.S. "Misunderstanding" is not hyphenated . . . at the risk of nitpicking.

I actually do use Java. There's a data acquisition application I use called Processing that's basically an app framework for Java; I use it to read and display data from an EEG I built.

But I suspect the majority of folks who use computers have precious little use for Java, and can likely remove it from their systems with no ill effects. It's a bit like X11; the people who need it, *really* need it, but the vast majority of folks will never even know that it's there or have any occasion whatsoever to care if it's gone.

A little birdie told me that JAVA is not included with OS X LION . . one would have to deliberately install it after the computer left the factory.

Where would any JAVA stuff most likely be located on the MBPro if it were installed?

Thanks, again.

Actually Lion will offer to download and install Java the first time you attempt to open a Java application and I suspect that would be true of a Java applet as well.

As to where the Java files are installed, I just did a Spotlight search with System files included and found Java files in an amazing variety of places including Widget resources, but mostly within the /System folder. To my surprise I also found more than a few security and network utilities I rely on are written in Java.

If you want to find if you have java, just open the terminal and type:

java -version

If you want to know where it is, type:

whereis java

[The standard "I'm running OS X 10.5.8, so this may not be relevant" caveat applies here.]

On my machine, the bulk of the parts and pieces constituting "Java" are found in /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/. The "java" returned by typing

whereis java

in Terminal is an alias, residing in /usr/bin, to the Unix Executable file /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/A/Commands/java—one of 32 commands in that folder which are so aliased. (I assume that's to facilitate Java programming from the command line.)

Oops. I didn't even look to see if usr/bin items were links.

. . . /JavaVM.framework/

Thanks for the tip. No sign of this folder/file in my MBPro.