just how global is global in java?

as everyone says and my own testing shows, static members are indeed (as one would expect) shared across instances of the class to which the member belongs. i also come across assertions that they are not only process global, but VM-global (which was a bit of a surprise to me, but a welcome one).

so, in practice, does that mean that they are global to my entire box? for example, if i have 2 java icons in my system tray - which i have always understood implies two running VMs - are those statics still shared, or only within each VM? Or, as I really expect, do i need to use shared memory for TRULY global shared static data machinewide as I would in a "normal" environment?

no, I don't think they're shared across VMs