I don't buy that the court's reason is to simply parse existing bad laws and derive more bullshit bad laws from it.
The courts aren't supposed to make (derive) laws. The constitutional purpose of the justice system is to clarify laws and set precedents for how they apply in specific situations. Law-making is reserved for elected officials, so that those laws presumably come from citizens. It would be cumbersome and potentially tyrannical for citizens or their elected proxies to pass judgements in individual circumstances; such was the practice in ancient Greece and it's responsible for, among other things, the death of Socrates.
This is how the US constitution treats the justice system, but I admit that individual states don't have to treat it the same way. South Carolina may well give some legislative authority to its courts. I doubt it, though.
So what does a court do when it comes across a bad law? It's not the court's responsibility to determine what a "bad law" is. Is it bad because it hurts people? Or is it bad because we think it goes against common sense? Is a bad law one that hurts more people than it helps? Or is a bad law one that hurts us, specifically, everyone else be damned? Usually these concerns are not distinguishable to individual judges. The population is responsible for determining whether it's a bad law, not the court. Therefore the court must uphold the law to the letter, and if the result is bad, let the citizens and the elected officials change it.
Take the infamous Citizens United case. The Supreme Court justices were completely out of touch with the campaign finance system: the majority opinion expresses incredulity at why corporations might have motives bad for the country, or why allowing individual entities to make huge donations might harm campaign finance in general. Did they rule that corporations are people because that was the letter of the law, or because that was what they believed? If it was the letter of the law, the blame rests solely on the law makers, who may well have intended for corporations to be people. If it was their personal beliefs, however, then the blame rests with the court, which is probably setting precedent against the intent of the law.
Furthermore, the way to overturn a court decision is to write a new law that supersedes it. If the courts are allowed to create law, what happens when the law makers respond to a court case by making a new law (maybe even a constitutional amendment) that deals with the specific situation in that case? Can the judge simply overturn the new law? Do we want unelected officials to have that authority?
So yes, the court's reason to exist is to parse existing laws and derive the (bullshit) implications. Don't think you want judges to try and "correct" bad law; you and the judges might vociferously disagree on exactly what makes a "bad law".
---
tl;dr: constitutional law making and judging, what makes a law bad and who says it is, Citizens United, how to fix bad laws; read the last paragraph.
It's too bad you didn't mention Cobol. This is an old language that nobody wants to learn and nobody wants to program in. But, plenty of organizations have TONS of legacy code in Cobol that is central to their organization, and Cobol programmers are in demand for maintenance and sometimes reengineering.
Don't try too hard to break into the world of trendy hi-tech companies. There's a lot of agism around. You should try to find a job where people will see you age as a sign of wisdom and not a sign of senility.
This is the most important point. I don't feel safe updating Adobe Reader on Mac because it pops up saying "Please let me have admin access to update/install something." And then I have to go to Adobe's actual web site and clog my computer with the installer every time so Adobe will stop bugging me. I think most of us appreciate that security holes get fixed and updates get pushed out (in fact many of us would like it to happen more) but the updates really should be distinguishable from random malware pop-ups.
Having taken the entire course through to the final exam, my overall assessment is: It's amazingly, shockingly awful. Some nights I got seriously depressed at the notion that this might be standard fare for college lectures encountered by many students during their academic careers.
I thought (wrongly, I suppose) that this might be an indictment of college courses in general. Most of the issues he found are, in my experience, valid for live college courses as well. It is "standard fare for college lectures" to have very little student feedback, gigantic jumps in difficulty, and missing definitions of key ideas. To me, though, it does not follow that online courses are inherently inferior. Obviously Delta thinks every teacher gives at least as much effort to teaching as Delta thinks he does himself. Online courses are supposed to solve this problem by creating access to supposed rock star teachers, and at worst (i.e. this Statistics course) they are simply as bad as live mega-lectures, but no worse.
Also, while this is a clear example of poor teaching, I'd like to suggest that the quality of the teacher is not the biggest factor in crummy classes. That factor, I've been thinking lately, is actually the administration. Currently, most of the best k-12 principals simply get out of the way of teachers; the worst create a hostile work environment and undermine the motivations of the student body. While college administrators typically do not exercise the kind of direct control over classes, they do set priorities for the university. Good lesson plans simply are not a priority, perhaps because students don't pay more when they do better. Research, in contrast, is highly lucrative, and working harder at it is likely to produce more research grants.
I'm not suggesting that universities shouldn't do so much research. Research is good! Rather, we're starting to get to the point where we need some level of education between (current) high school and college. In many places, community college provides that level - student-focused instruction of introductory college-level knowledge. I don't think a person should start studying at the university level until that person is learning things that research faculty will actually find engaging to teach (how many math professors love teaching basic calculus?). And once one is studying with those professors, the student should be ready to engage with messy intellectual ideas instead of clear-cut facts, and that's what research faculty deal with all the time.
Indeed, the article is not actually talking about "rock stars" but about poaching senior developers. It is also quite possibly the most perniciously agist thing I have ever read. "People do their best work when their head is barely above water," huh? How about the "truth" that the person who's "slogged through it 100 times before" also knows where the pitfalls are? The entire article reads like a bad stereotype of crotchety old developers too arrogant to follow directions.
Yes, using grams is not at all correct because I'm sure the actual mass was not changed (at least that's not what they were trying to prove). The only reason to get different mass on a scale is if the scale was intentionally calibrated wrong, since scales really measure force and not mass. But if the kilopond is meant to equal one kilogram at standard earth gravity, wouldn't it be wrong to use that unit as well, since "standard earth gravity" is the concept being tested? Shouldn't we instead measure/report Newtons exerted on the gnome?
No, because in that case the force would not be straight down, but mostly transverse and the mass to your left would cancel out the mass to your right. The center of gravity may still be right beneath you but unless it's something close to a sphere you can't approximate the gravitational force as all coming from the center of gravity.
I suppose I should qualify myself that "slave labor" was hyperbole for the working conditions in sweat shops, not literally meaning owning people as property. Beyond that, I could suggest that everyone should just get along but there isn't really anyone reading what I'm writing that would benefit were I to suggest what the unions should do differently. How about a vague suggestion that you shouldn't throw out unions (and therefore the only powerful representative for workers' rights) because of any particular problems, and instead seek to solve those problems by negotation (assuming both sides are open to compromise)?
First thing I'll point out, which anyone involved in education will tell you, is that teachers are an entirely different group than "an overgrown and overpaid administration apparatus." Often the two groups are greatly opposed to each other. In fact, teachers unions exist to protect teachers from this administration, not to obtain undue rewards from everyone else.
I'm willing to accept that some people may abuse the system, but I've never heard of someone get rich off of teaching. My general impression is that teachers get paid less than those with similar investment in acquired skills in the private sector (a bachelor's degree and some certification, plus a master's degree in most circumstances), and that nobody in their right mind becomes a teacher in the hope of exploiting some non-existant get rich quick scheme.
If teacher's unions did not exist, the most likely thing to happen would be little to no job security. It's already that way in the California university system; university administrators try to avert unions by refusing to hire full-time tenure track positions, instead hiring a slew of part-time lecturers who often have to waste lots of gas going to multiple universities for enough work. I'll admit there are budget problems in California, but the unions are standing with students against tuition increases and the cuts are actually coming from the state, not from those administrators. It's a tough situation but I think it's fair to ask that nobody's life be made worse than it was when progress is supposed to go forward.
Of course, the #1 reason unions exist is to prevent sweat shop conditions. We forget, but that's how factories used to operate in the US before unionization (late 1800s). Everyone should read up on the Gilded Age and various mining corporations and commodity monopolies.
I'll admit there are sometimes problems with unions because they generally don't know or care about budgetary constraints and argue only for the worker's interests. I heard of some caribbean nation where the companies and unions worked together in good faith, sharing accounting information in a fashion not generally allowed in the US. They were able to come to happy compromises because the unions were then able to understand the situation and even suggest what the workers could sacrifice in exchange for their other priorities. I think that the interests of everyone are best served when the workers can form a union, and when both the union and the management respect each other and are willing to compromise.
Not sure whether you're being serious or not, but yes I'm aware that plenty of people don't like teacher's unions. About the same number of people that don't care about slave labor in third world countries, I'd guess. The idea is based on trying to apply for-profit business principles to education, which generally doesn't work because, among other reasons, teachers are already selected for not caring about high pay. Ideologically speaking, pro-union means pro-individual (protect individuals from bad things that businesses do, like mistreat workers or pollute the environment), whereas anti-union means pro-business (protect business rights to treat workers and dispose of waste as they see fit, usually coupled with an assumption that the free market will sort things out for the general good of all). It sure makes sense that the greatest businessman in the world was pro-business, but that's not what we really expect from the cool guy in the Mac & PC commercials.
After reading what Steve Jobs has to say about education reform, it suddenly made sense that he's actually a soul-crushingly ambivalent-to-human-rights modern businessman, not the LSD revering environmentalist hippy that was more his image.
You wish we had those laws. Don't forget that would be a restriction to free trade! In the (fake) words of the World Trade Organization's Anthem of the Global Economy, "Free Trade is our God, Free Trade is our King, All hail Free Trade and His Invisible Hand!"
You overestimate the power of gaming to control Windows.
In the home, a lot of computer purchases are just because the purchaser has to have a computer. Think of some grandma. What are the options? 95% Windows. Since grandma doesn't know or care about performance, there's no reason not to buy the $300 crapfest box that only runs Windows.
In the office, people like Windows because it's easy to administer. Remember all those security holes in Windows? They exist in part because a large part of Microsoft's clientele want to be able to remotely control their machines. I've heard that Windows is an amazing platform for managing dozens of computers remotely, with group policies and login schemes and even mass installations. I've also heard that Mac isn't quite so simple, or at least isn't as well supported. And Linux? I suppose you could go with the famous Red Hat support, but then how do you get Microsoft Office? Large organizations usually run on Exchange email servers, and before you dismiss that as unnecessary think of how important it is for people in a business to not only coordinate information but also schedules. Exchange makes that easier with integrated calendars and event invitations. All this not to mention the fact that MS Office (and to a lesser extent Excel) is THE industry standard for what it does.
When it comes right down to it, Windows just has momentum. People use it because it's what they've always used. Why did they start using it? Not because of games, I assure you. You could buy a Nintendo if you wanted to play games. It's probably because MS vendors successfully penetrated the business world, and use of Windows trickled down from there.
How do you defeat Windows? Not by making a better desktop OS; that's been tried. Until Windows 7, damn near every other OS was superior in almost every way. With Windows 7 it's closer but MS is still not in the lead. No, you defeat Windows by being Steve Jobs and popularising entire new device categories (laptops, then smartphones, then tablets) that can slowly undermine the entire premise of having a desktop OS.
OK, so I've never actually even seen Python code. I've only heard of how amazing it must be and I assumed it was weakly typed because it's a scripting language.
I only suggested Python because I heard some universities have already started using it for introductory courses. Of course I'm not suggesting it be the primary platform but there has been success in teaching basic programming principles without dealing with Java-specific issues immediately. I would say the progression ought to be:
Python (or any other simple, untyped language)
C++ (so the students can be all "whoa that's way harder")
Lisp (hey wut this language is nothing like the rest)
C# or Java (combined with an OO design course)
branch out to various languages used in practical fields like Bash, Perl, PHP, Javascript, Cobol, Fortran...
Java makes for a really shitty first entry into programming. Its primitive niceties (no not talking about primitive types) can only be appreciated after one has had to deal with C++ shit.
You're right, I didn't RTFA. It would seem, however, that what you just pointed out is the only detail I missed.
Anyway, I wasn't aware there was "javahate" on Slashdot. I've mainly heard Java fanaticism from certain peers and I'm sick of it. Unlike most of them, I already knew about object-oriented programming before learning Java. I'm convinced that even Ruby has a better object model. And in direct opposition to Slashdot's far more prevalent Microsoft-hate, I will say every grievance I have with Java is solved in C#.
It is a tragic day. First I find out that someone was working on an open implementation of Java, then I find out that it's cancelled? Oh well. Here's to hoping that the universities speed up the inevitable transition to Python so we can see the glut of Java programmers disappear.
VMWare Fusion is a consumer-oriented desktop virtualization application for Mac OS X. It's generally used to run virtual Windows on Mac, although it can also be used to run virtual -any-OS-, including OS X server (but then who actually cares about Mac server? Even Apple is slowly abandoning it). I can attest that it is much more polished than the other possible solutions in this area, Parallels and VirtualBox. It could just be that VMWare has the enterprise experience and so knows how to make things stable and workable, rather than flashy like Parallels. Unfortunately I think the consumer market is tending towards Parallels.
If the speculation of this news item is correct, that would just be another nail in the coffin. Based on other comments, it would seem that what's holding VMWare back is their business side. This isn't a problem with Fusion. I think it would be a real shame if what seems to be the best solution ends up dying because the business people can't figure out how to sell it. It's indescribably pathetic that the purchasing process seems to be more complicated than the software itself.
Slashdot Mirror
The courts aren't supposed to make (derive) laws. The constitutional purpose of the justice system is to clarify laws and set precedents for how they apply in specific situations. Law-making is reserved for elected officials, so that those laws presumably come from citizens. It would be cumbersome and potentially tyrannical for citizens or their elected proxies to pass judgements in individual circumstances; such was the practice in ancient Greece and it's responsible for, among other things, the death of Socrates.
This is how the US constitution treats the justice system, but I admit that individual states don't have to treat it the same way. South Carolina may well give some legislative authority to its courts. I doubt it, though.
So what does a court do when it comes across a bad law? It's not the court's responsibility to determine what a "bad law" is. Is it bad because it hurts people? Or is it bad because we think it goes against common sense? Is a bad law one that hurts more people than it helps? Or is a bad law one that hurts us, specifically, everyone else be damned? Usually these concerns are not distinguishable to individual judges. The population is responsible for determining whether it's a bad law, not the court. Therefore the court must uphold the law to the letter, and if the result is bad, let the citizens and the elected officials change it.
Take the infamous Citizens United case. The Supreme Court justices were completely out of touch with the campaign finance system: the majority opinion expresses incredulity at why corporations might have motives bad for the country, or why allowing individual entities to make huge donations might harm campaign finance in general. Did they rule that corporations are people because that was the letter of the law, or because that was what they believed? If it was the letter of the law, the blame rests solely on the law makers, who may well have intended for corporations to be people. If it was their personal beliefs, however, then the blame rests with the court, which is probably setting precedent against the intent of the law.
Furthermore, the way to overturn a court decision is to write a new law that supersedes it. If the courts are allowed to create law, what happens when the law makers respond to a court case by making a new law (maybe even a constitutional amendment) that deals with the specific situation in that case? Can the judge simply overturn the new law? Do we want unelected officials to have that authority?
So yes, the court's reason to exist is to parse existing laws and derive the (bullshit) implications. Don't think you want judges to try and "correct" bad law; you and the judges might vociferously disagree on exactly what makes a "bad law".
---
tl;dr: constitutional law making and judging, what makes a law bad and who says it is, Citizens United, how to fix bad laws; read the last paragraph.
Shocking! This just in: a slashdot summary is wrong/misleading!
It's too bad you didn't mention Cobol. This is an old language that nobody wants to learn and nobody wants to program in. But, plenty of organizations have TONS of legacy code in Cobol that is central to their organization, and Cobol programmers are in demand for maintenance and sometimes reengineering.
Don't try too hard to break into the world of trendy hi-tech companies. There's a lot of agism around. You should try to find a job where people will see you age as a sign of wisdom and not a sign of senility.
This is the most important point. I don't feel safe updating Adobe Reader on Mac because it pops up saying "Please let me have admin access to update/install something." And then I have to go to Adobe's actual web site and clog my computer with the installer every time so Adobe will stop bugging me. I think most of us appreciate that security holes get fixed and updates get pushed out (in fact many of us would like it to happen more) but the updates really should be distinguishable from random malware pop-ups.
I'd love to hear your plan to extract that helium, but only after you explain to me how to get a scrambled egg back in the shell.
When I read this:
I thought (wrongly, I suppose) that this might be an indictment of college courses in general. Most of the issues he found are, in my experience, valid for live college courses as well. It is "standard fare for college lectures" to have very little student feedback, gigantic jumps in difficulty, and missing definitions of key ideas. To me, though, it does not follow that online courses are inherently inferior. Obviously Delta thinks every teacher gives at least as much effort to teaching as Delta thinks he does himself. Online courses are supposed to solve this problem by creating access to supposed rock star teachers, and at worst (i.e. this Statistics course) they are simply as bad as live mega-lectures, but no worse.
Also, while this is a clear example of poor teaching, I'd like to suggest that the quality of the teacher is not the biggest factor in crummy classes. That factor, I've been thinking lately, is actually the administration. Currently, most of the best k-12 principals simply get out of the way of teachers; the worst create a hostile work environment and undermine the motivations of the student body. While college administrators typically do not exercise the kind of direct control over classes, they do set priorities for the university. Good lesson plans simply are not a priority, perhaps because students don't pay more when they do better. Research, in contrast, is highly lucrative, and working harder at it is likely to produce more research grants.
I'm not suggesting that universities shouldn't do so much research. Research is good! Rather, we're starting to get to the point where we need some level of education between (current) high school and college. In many places, community college provides that level - student-focused instruction of introductory college-level knowledge. I don't think a person should start studying at the university level until that person is learning things that research faculty will actually find engaging to teach (how many math professors love teaching basic calculus?). And once one is studying with those professors, the student should be ready to engage with messy intellectual ideas instead of clear-cut facts, and that's what research faculty deal with all the time.
Indeed, the article is not actually talking about "rock stars" but about poaching senior developers. It is also quite possibly the most perniciously agist thing I have ever read. "People do their best work when their head is barely above water," huh? How about the "truth" that the person who's "slogged through it 100 times before" also knows where the pitfalls are? The entire article reads like a bad stereotype of crotchety old developers too arrogant to follow directions.
A laser cutter is safer than even a jigsaw.
Safer than a jigsaw? As in, a jigsaw puzzle? I didn't realize the edges of the puzzle pieces were that sharp...
...or maybe it's a jigsaw puzzle of a laser cutter?
Step One: Convert PowerPoint to randomly switch colors every third word when using Star Trek-like background styles.
(for those who rtfa on the slides)
Yes, using grams is not at all correct because I'm sure the actual mass was not changed (at least that's not what they were trying to prove). The only reason to get different mass on a scale is if the scale was intentionally calibrated wrong, since scales really measure force and not mass. But if the kilopond is meant to equal one kilogram at standard earth gravity, wouldn't it be wrong to use that unit as well, since "standard earth gravity" is the concept being tested? Shouldn't we instead measure/report Newtons exerted on the gnome?
No, because in that case the force would not be straight down, but mostly transverse and the mass to your left would cancel out the mass to your right. The center of gravity may still be right beneath you but unless it's something close to a sphere you can't approximate the gravitational force as all coming from the center of gravity.
I suppose I should qualify myself that "slave labor" was hyperbole for the working conditions in sweat shops, not literally meaning owning people as property. Beyond that, I could suggest that everyone should just get along but there isn't really anyone reading what I'm writing that would benefit were I to suggest what the unions should do differently. How about a vague suggestion that you shouldn't throw out unions (and therefore the only powerful representative for workers' rights) because of any particular problems, and instead seek to solve those problems by negotation (assuming both sides are open to compromise)?
First thing I'll point out, which anyone involved in education will tell you, is that teachers are an entirely different group than "an overgrown and overpaid administration apparatus." Often the two groups are greatly opposed to each other. In fact, teachers unions exist to protect teachers from this administration, not to obtain undue rewards from everyone else.
I'm willing to accept that some people may abuse the system, but I've never heard of someone get rich off of teaching. My general impression is that teachers get paid less than those with similar investment in acquired skills in the private sector (a bachelor's degree and some certification, plus a master's degree in most circumstances), and that nobody in their right mind becomes a teacher in the hope of exploiting some non-existant get rich quick scheme.
If teacher's unions did not exist, the most likely thing to happen would be little to no job security. It's already that way in the California university system; university administrators try to avert unions by refusing to hire full-time tenure track positions, instead hiring a slew of part-time lecturers who often have to waste lots of gas going to multiple universities for enough work. I'll admit there are budget problems in California, but the unions are standing with students against tuition increases and the cuts are actually coming from the state, not from those administrators. It's a tough situation but I think it's fair to ask that nobody's life be made worse than it was when progress is supposed to go forward.
Of course, the #1 reason unions exist is to prevent sweat shop conditions. We forget, but that's how factories used to operate in the US before unionization (late 1800s). Everyone should read up on the Gilded Age and various mining corporations and commodity monopolies.
I'll admit there are sometimes problems with unions because they generally don't know or care about budgetary constraints and argue only for the worker's interests. I heard of some caribbean nation where the companies and unions worked together in good faith, sharing accounting information in a fashion not generally allowed in the US. They were able to come to happy compromises because the unions were then able to understand the situation and even suggest what the workers could sacrifice in exchange for their other priorities. I think that the interests of everyone are best served when the workers can form a union, and when both the union and the management respect each other and are willing to compromise.
Not sure whether you're being serious or not, but yes I'm aware that plenty of people don't like teacher's unions. About the same number of people that don't care about slave labor in third world countries, I'd guess. The idea is based on trying to apply for-profit business principles to education, which generally doesn't work because, among other reasons, teachers are already selected for not caring about high pay. Ideologically speaking, pro-union means pro-individual (protect individuals from bad things that businesses do, like mistreat workers or pollute the environment), whereas anti-union means pro-business (protect business rights to treat workers and dispose of waste as they see fit, usually coupled with an assumption that the free market will sort things out for the general good of all). It sure makes sense that the greatest businessman in the world was pro-business, but that's not what we really expect from the cool guy in the Mac & PC commercials.
After reading what Steve Jobs has to say about education reform, it suddenly made sense that he's actually a soul-crushingly ambivalent-to-human-rights modern businessman, not the LSD revering environmentalist hippy that was more his image.
You wish we had those laws. Don't forget that would be a restriction to free trade! In the (fake) words of the World Trade Organization's Anthem of the Global Economy, "Free Trade is our God, Free Trade is our King, All hail Free Trade and His Invisible Hand!"
You overestimate the power of gaming to control Windows.
In the home, a lot of computer purchases are just because the purchaser has to have a computer. Think of some grandma. What are the options? 95% Windows. Since grandma doesn't know or care about performance, there's no reason not to buy the $300 crapfest box that only runs Windows.
In the office, people like Windows because it's easy to administer. Remember all those security holes in Windows? They exist in part because a large part of Microsoft's clientele want to be able to remotely control their machines. I've heard that Windows is an amazing platform for managing dozens of computers remotely, with group policies and login schemes and even mass installations. I've also heard that Mac isn't quite so simple, or at least isn't as well supported. And Linux? I suppose you could go with the famous Red Hat support, but then how do you get Microsoft Office? Large organizations usually run on Exchange email servers, and before you dismiss that as unnecessary think of how important it is for people in a business to not only coordinate information but also schedules. Exchange makes that easier with integrated calendars and event invitations. All this not to mention the fact that MS Office (and to a lesser extent Excel) is THE industry standard for what it does.
When it comes right down to it, Windows just has momentum. People use it because it's what they've always used. Why did they start using it? Not because of games, I assure you. You could buy a Nintendo if you wanted to play games. It's probably because MS vendors successfully penetrated the business world, and use of Windows trickled down from there.
How do you defeat Windows? Not by making a better desktop OS; that's been tried. Until Windows 7, damn near every other OS was superior in almost every way. With Windows 7 it's closer but MS is still not in the lead. No, you defeat Windows by being Steve Jobs and popularising entire new device categories (laptops, then smartphones, then tablets) that can slowly undermine the entire premise of having a desktop OS.
LISP?! We already have enough trouble attracting quality CS students - are you trying to drive everyone to becoming Philosophy majors?
No, just to the dark side.
OK, so I've never actually even seen Python code. I've only heard of how amazing it must be and I assumed it was weakly typed because it's a scripting language.
What about Mono?
I only suggested Python because I heard some universities have already started using it for introductory courses. Of course I'm not suggesting it be the primary platform but there has been success in teaching basic programming principles without dealing with Java-specific issues immediately. I would say the progression ought to be:
Java makes for a really shitty first entry into programming. Its primitive niceties (no not talking about primitive types) can only be appreciated after one has had to deal with C++ shit.
At least it's better than Perl.
You're right, I didn't RTFA. It would seem, however, that what you just pointed out is the only detail I missed.
Anyway, I wasn't aware there was "javahate" on Slashdot. I've mainly heard Java fanaticism from certain peers and I'm sick of it. Unlike most of them, I already knew about object-oriented programming before learning Java. I'm convinced that even Ruby has a better object model. And in direct opposition to Slashdot's far more prevalent Microsoft-hate, I will say every grievance I have with Java is solved in C#.
It is a tragic day. First I find out that someone was working on an open implementation of Java, then I find out that it's cancelled? Oh well. Here's to hoping that the universities speed up the inevitable transition to Python so we can see the glut of Java programmers disappear.
VMWare Fusion is a consumer-oriented desktop virtualization application for Mac OS X. It's generally used to run virtual Windows on Mac, although it can also be used to run virtual -any-OS-, including OS X server (but then who actually cares about Mac server? Even Apple is slowly abandoning it). I can attest that it is much more polished than the other possible solutions in this area, Parallels and VirtualBox. It could just be that VMWare has the enterprise experience and so knows how to make things stable and workable, rather than flashy like Parallels. Unfortunately I think the consumer market is tending towards Parallels.
If the speculation of this news item is correct, that would just be another nail in the coffin. Based on other comments, it would seem that what's holding VMWare back is their business side. This isn't a problem with Fusion. I think it would be a real shame if what seems to be the best solution ends up dying because the business people can't figure out how to sell it. It's indescribably pathetic that the purchasing process seems to be more complicated than the software itself.