sabbatical

[Max Habibi]

I need to take a sabbatical from the 'Ranch for a while. I'll still try to pop in every now and so, but I can't commit to a regular moderation schedule as I'd like to. It's really been great being here, and I'll try to come back after December.
In the meantime, I've saddled Jim Yingst with a request to help out 'round here. As most of you know, Jim's an extremely talented developer, and an excellent Communicator. With Andrew, Vlad, Phil, Bharat, Tony, etc., around, I doubt you guys will even notice that I'm gone
ps- I have one or two hanging discussions to finish here(thanks to Vlad, who raised some very sophisticed points ), and will get to those before I disappear for the longer term.
All best,
M

[Vlad Rabkin]

Hi Max,
It is sad to see you taking a break from us

I doubt you guys will even notice that I'm gone

It is not true. I will be missing you and your input.
Irregardless of my test results I will still be here when you come back!

Good Luck and see you later!
Vlad

[Jim Yingst]

Max Habibi... hmmm, sounds familiar. Didn't we used to have a regular poster by that name? It's so hard to remember now...
Ok, kidding. Max will of course be missed. But I think his basic point is valid - even if Max, Andrew, and I all left at once, there are enough other quality posters here that I think the forum would still have lots of good dicussions even without any "official" moderators. This is really a good group here.
Anyway though - don't be a stranger, Max, we'll look forward to the occasional visit. Meanwhile, enjoy your sabbatical!
[ September 25, 2003: Message edited by: Jim Yingst ]

[Tony Collins]

Yeah cheers for the help Max, much appreciated.
Tony

[Jim Yingst]

As you may now see above, we've taken this opportunity to bring back another name a few of you may remember from the recent past...

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Have a good break Max, and good luck with the new book. Please don't be a stranger, and come back soon.
Regards, Andrew

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Welcome back Mark. We have some very complicated designs for you to roll your eyes at

[Bharat Ruparel]

Hello Max,
Thanks for all your help! The offer to be a reviewer (or beta tester) for your upcoming book is open.
Warm Regards.
Bharat
p.s. I hope Andrew, Jim, Mark, Phil, Vlad, Tony stick around or else I am in BIG trouble.

[Philippe Maquet]

Hi Max,
Till after December, you'll miss us. Anyway, good luck for anything you'll be doing in the meantime.
In the meantime, I'll probably get rid off that f.....g assignment (passed or failed), but I decided to keep around here anyway, as far as I can (I mean that after this, I'll urgently have to search for a job and probably I'll find one, but I'll try to keep an average 30'/day available for the forum).

ps- I have one or two hanging discussions to finish here(thanks to Vlad, who raised some very sophisticed points ), and will get to those before I disappear for the longer term.

I don't know what "sophisticed points" you are refering to, but I keep in mind a "SCJP-level" point which is still pending in this thread (about notifyAll() in lock()).
Here is my last post about it :
-------------
Hi Vlad,
Vlad:
But, there must be a reason why Max used notifyAll() in lock method (reserveDVDs()) in his book and you can kill me, but I don't understand what for!?
I see now what you are talking about : it's on p. 129 of Max's book, line 9 (notifyAll()) of his reserveDVD() method. Well, that line is even commented : "Line 9 notifies waiting threads that reservedDVDs is free, and the method returns". I do think it just should be mentioned in the errata : that line is useless IMO. Now maybe Max will explain why all of us are wrong... (I hope so !).

    public void reserveDVD(String upc) throws InterruptedException {        
        synchronized (reservedDVDs) {
            //if the record is already locked, then wait
            while (reservedDVDs.contains(upc)) {
                reservedDVDs.wait();
            }
            reservedDVDs.add(upc);
            reservedDVDs.notifyAll();
        }
    }

It would be great if you argue against (or surrender ) before quitting for three months.
Best,
Phil.

[Mark Spritzler]

In honor of Max and Andrew
web page
Mark

[Max Habibi]

Philippe,
In my opinion, it's a sophisticated point, because only Vlad had the withal to ask the question, as opposed to 'me too'-ing it. I'll address it as soon as I get a chance to come up for air.
M

[Philippe Maquet]

Hi Max,

In my opinion, it's a sophisticated point, because only Vlad had the withal to ask the question, as opposed to 'me too'-ing it.

Do you remember ? I promised to you and Jim, to loose my english language complex. So I will not complain here... But anyway, what I could understand by reading the sentence above is this :

In my opinion, it's a sophisticated point, because only Vlad had the ??? to ask the question, as opposed to 'me ??? it.

.
Despite my dictionary, I couldn't fill the blanks.
Mmh... What could I reply then ?
You're right ! Thanks to Vlad who xxx, we xxx ... !
Best, (actually !)
Phil.
[ September 26, 2003: Message edited by: Philippe Maquet ]

[Tony Morris]

I may be wrong (as I'm yet to submit), but I have designed my application such that a call to notify() is a must in order to conform to the follow requirement:
"If the specified record is already locked by a different client, the current thread gives up the CPU
and consumes no CPU cycles until the record is unlocked."
If a call to notifyAll() is made, all waiting clients will compete to acquire the exclusive write lock for that data record. It is not guaranteed, however, that the client will acquire the lock, thus, using CPU in attempting to do so.
My design is such that a call to notify() will wake just one thread who is guaranteed to acquire the lock. I have written robust JUnit test cases that spawn up to 100 threads who all compete for this lock several times at random intervals, thus I am ~97% confident that the implementation "works".

[Tony Collins]

Why is the thread that has been awoken guaranteed to get the lock it may be waiting after a different lock than the one that has just been unlocked.
Tony