I did not realise that I should only use one forum. I can see the point now though. As I posted the question first at the sun forum, with regret, would you mind cancelling this topic. Thank you for your help.
We accept the apology. Please read what you posted in the last post on the Sun forum; you said you had only posted here. Please check where you want the discussion to continue.
I have checked and it is policy that we permit posts on several websites, so I am leaving the thread in question open. Keiran Murray has requested people reply on Sun, however. I seem to have overreacted, which I am sorry about.
If there is any further discussion, however, I don't think this forum is the right place for it, so I am tranferring this thread.
To clarify the JavaRanch... well, I don't want to call it a 'policy', but maybe philosophy:
we don't care if you post the same topic/question SOMEWHERE ELSE, but it should only be posted once on OUR site. that is not to say that OTHER web sites won't take issue.
If you do post somewhere else, and get an answer somewhere else, it would be nice if you came back here and updated your post with the answer.
There are only two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things, and off-by-one errors