installing java at work
June 15, 2007 11:54 PM   Subscribe

My work doesn't allow computers to install java. Is there a way around this or maybe an alternative I could use?
posted by nyu2 to Technology (6 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
What do you need java for?
posted by bigmusic at 12:35 AM on June 16, 2007


If you can come up with a plausible work-related reason for needing Java, your path of least resistance is to talk to work's IT people.

If you don't, and they have a no-Java policy, then attempting to work around it in order to achieve non-work-related ends is asking for trouble.

If the primary barrier to installing Java is technical rather than political, and you don't care about possibly losing your job over this, post back and I'll help you get admin access to your box.
posted by flabdablet at 12:57 AM on June 16, 2007


yeah, we'll need to know what you want it for before we can suggest an alternative.

There are numerous possible approaches involving running a virtual machine with an image from a portable storage device, or making a network connection to a computer where you have admin rights (through rdesktop in the windows world, for instance.)
posted by Zed_Lopez at 1:51 AM on June 16, 2007


No need for virtual machines or getting administrator privileges or any tricky things if you can run downloaded .exe files directly.

The JRE or JDK works fine without installing it. Just copy the e.g. jdk1.6.0_01 directory from c:\Program Files\Java\ directory from another computer where the JDK is installed to a USB memory stick or a directory on the computer and associate .jar-files with the java.exe file in jdk1.6.0_01\bin\ or use the command line to run programs.

Getting applets to run in IE or firefox is trickier.

If you need to run applets you can use the appletviewer.exe program from a full jdk-installation (just copy the jdk-directory instead) to view them in separate windows. Run e.g

e:\jdk.1.6.0_01\bin\appletviewer.exe http://www.example.com/pagewithapplet.html

from the command line or Run in the start menu. (Replace e:\ with the correct path to the jdk directory). It wont work with all pages.
posted by rpn at 3:03 AM on June 16, 2007


Maybe you should look into running a virtual machine if the concern from your IT dept is your desktop environment. Since the machine is virtual, any abusive java applets will never extend outside of it and bleed into your default desktop.

One place you could start is with a company called VMWare. With the VMWare Player you could have a virtual windows or linux environment on demand for running questionable Java applets. (Only catch is you'll need a nice amount of memory to run virtual machines smoothly)
posted by samsara at 1:16 PM on June 16, 2007


Response by poster: I'd like to use it to monitor my stocks during the day. Unfortunatley the streaming realtime program my online broker uses is java
posted by nyu2 at 4:37 PM on June 16, 2007


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