"Since Java itself never mattered except to sell books..."
Wow...that has to be one of the most idiotic statements I've ever read from one of you guys.
I'm no Java evangelist, but saying Java itself never mattered is like saying C (or even C++) never mattered - it just smacks of total ignorance.
Java has had a HUGE impact on software development, especially in the enterprise. I won't say it's all been great...but it's certainly made a difference in a lot of areas.
If the language really never matter, there would not be such a large community of developers using Java, and Microsoft would not have bothered to change their entire development platform to be so much like it (i.e. C#/CLR/.NET).
I'd thought you Slashdot guys were smarter than this. I guess I was wrong.
Actually standard of living is a big reason why people are willing to drive that 200 miles to/from work...
In the past decade or two, a gap has grown between the cost of living in and around major metro areas (including the suburbs immediately surrounding them) and counties further out throughout the U.S. Much of this was fueled by the housing boom, but even with the market cooling off it hasn't helped offset this problem much.
When people can get a 3/4/5 bedroom single-family house sitting on a nice plot of land for the same price as a 1 bedroom condo downtown (or close to it), and are willing to suffer a longer commute, many people are going to for the big house...especially when there's a family in the picture.
And if you factor in drastic differences in taxes between various counties , the cards are pretty-much dealt in favor of people choosing long commutes.
It's true there is a cultural element to this - in the U.S. we all hear about the American Dream: Nice house with a family and kids and all that - but there's a stronger economic sense to it as well...in many areas it's just too damn expensive to live near work, and it can actually cheaper to drive the long distances to and from work than try to live nearby.
They can ignore community wishes (IE between the death of Netscape and emergence of Firefox is an example) I think this one example is truly telling of where Microsoft's priorities have always been. They haven't given a damn about whether they are creating a quality product, so long as they are dominating a market.
Of course, someone could probably write volumes on the browser war itself, which is just filled with plenty of shady actions by Microsoft. But the fact that, following the ultimate destruction of Netscape and release of IE 6, they did NOTHING (aside from bug fixing) with the browser for YEARS - and then only when Firefox began to gain momentum - is the perfect example of a company that does not give a damn about other than market domination.
From day one Microsoft's only goal has been to dominate the computer industry. Period. Anyone remember Bill Gate's saying he wanted a computer in every home and running Windows? Nobody really stopped to think what he'd do to achieve that goal.
I have the same type of weaknesses when it comes to soda: I've tried to drink diet (the only flavor I can even tolerate is Diet Coke w/ Lime...every thing else just tastes crappy to me), but regular is just better-tasting to me.
Part of the problem of curbing your intake of soda is to simply break yourself of the habitual routine of drinking it all the time: if you simply find ways to keep yourself from buying the stuff (don't take any spare change to work so you can't raid the soda machine - if you get the stuff for free, you'll have to be more creative...), it can go a long way toward helping you reduce your intake.
The other part is breaking your body's addiction to it. Not long ago, my wife and I gave the South Beach Diet a try. What I found when on that diet is that the key to curbing your soda (and overall sugar) intake is breaking your body's addiction to sugar. Once you break your sugar addiction, it's all too easy to stop drinking soda completely (diet or otherwise). The bad part is that you have to get pretty extreme if you go this route (for South Beach, you basically go "low-carb" for a couple weeks, cutting almost all your sugar intake - but your sugar cravings are usually gone after only a few days). When doing this you'll get a rather severe drop in blood sugar. For me, this tended to have a similar effect as caffiene withdraw: I was very lethargic for a few days, but once I got past the initial "low sugar shock" I was fine.
I'm not suggesting that you take the extreme path like South Beach, but the key to breaking these type of bad habits when it comes to food is understanding why you tend to eat/drink the things you do in the first place.
Dr. Ian Malcom:
"Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. "
Just because you can implant RFID, or even just use it any one of the ideas that are mentioned, doesn't mean you should. There are just too many problems with RFID (which other's have mentioned already) that make me think twice about using it at all. To say nothing of implanting it in my body.
While we'll certainly see totally-CG actors in a few movies, I don't think they will be as wide spread as most would think for one simple reason: unions.
The Screen Actors Guild would never allow CG actors to gain a foothold and take jobs away from real actors the same way the UAW won't let complete automation of assembly lines take jobs away from autoworkers.
Slashdot Mirror
"Since Java itself never mattered except to sell books..."
Wow...that has to be one of the most idiotic statements I've ever read from one of you guys.
I'm no Java evangelist, but saying Java itself never mattered is like saying C (or even C++) never mattered - it just smacks of total ignorance.
Java has had a HUGE impact on software development, especially in the enterprise. I won't say it's all been great...but it's certainly made a difference in a lot of areas.
If the language really never matter, there would not be such a large community of developers using Java, and Microsoft would not have bothered to change their entire development platform to be so much like it (i.e. C#/CLR/.NET).
I'd thought you Slashdot guys were smarter than this. I guess I was wrong.
Actually standard of living is a big reason why people are willing to drive that 200 miles to/from work...
In the past decade or two, a gap has grown between the cost of living in and around major metro areas (including the suburbs immediately surrounding them) and counties further out throughout the U.S. Much of this was fueled by the housing boom, but even with the market cooling off it hasn't helped offset this problem much.
When people can get a 3/4/5 bedroom single-family house sitting on a nice plot of land for the same price as a 1 bedroom condo downtown (or close to it), and are willing to suffer a longer commute, many people are going to for the big house...especially when there's a family in the picture.
And if you factor in drastic differences in taxes between various counties , the cards are pretty-much dealt in favor of people choosing long commutes.
It's true there is a cultural element to this - in the U.S. we all hear about the American Dream: Nice house with a family and kids and all that - but there's a stronger economic sense to it as well...in many areas it's just too damn expensive to live near work, and it can actually cheaper to drive the long distances to and from work than try to live nearby.
Of course, someone could probably write volumes on the browser war itself, which is just filled with plenty of shady actions by Microsoft. But the fact that, following the ultimate destruction of Netscape and release of IE 6, they did NOTHING (aside from bug fixing) with the browser for YEARS - and then only when Firefox began to gain momentum - is the perfect example of a company that does not give a damn about other than market domination.
From day one Microsoft's only goal has been to dominate the computer industry. Period. Anyone remember Bill Gate's saying he wanted a computer in every home and running Windows? Nobody really stopped to think what he'd do to achieve that goal.
I have the same type of weaknesses when it comes to soda: I've tried to drink diet (the only flavor I can even tolerate is Diet Coke w/ Lime...every thing else just tastes crappy to me), but regular is just better-tasting to me.
Part of the problem of curbing your intake of soda is to simply break yourself of the habitual routine of drinking it all the time: if you simply find ways to keep yourself from buying the stuff (don't take any spare change to work so you can't raid the soda machine - if you get the stuff for free, you'll have to be more creative...), it can go a long way toward helping you reduce your intake.
The other part is breaking your body's addiction to it. Not long ago, my wife and I gave the South Beach Diet a try. What I found when on that diet is that the key to curbing your soda (and overall sugar) intake is breaking your body's addiction to sugar. Once you break your sugar addiction, it's all too easy to stop drinking soda completely (diet or otherwise). The bad part is that you have to get pretty extreme if you go this route (for South Beach, you basically go "low-carb" for a couple weeks, cutting almost all your sugar intake - but your sugar cravings are usually gone after only a few days). When doing this you'll get a rather severe drop in blood sugar. For me, this tended to have a similar effect as caffiene withdraw: I was very lethargic for a few days, but once I got past the initial "low sugar shock" I was fine.
I'm not suggesting that you take the extreme path like South Beach, but the key to breaking these type of bad habits when it comes to food is understanding why you tend to eat/drink the things you do in the first place.
Just because you can implant RFID, or even just use it any one of the ideas that are mentioned, doesn't mean you should. There are just too many problems with RFID (which other's have mentioned already) that make me think twice about using it at all. To say nothing of implanting it in my body.
While we'll certainly see totally-CG actors in a few movies, I don't think they will be as wide spread as most would think for one simple reason: unions.
The Screen Actors Guild would never allow CG actors to gain a foothold and take jobs away from real actors the same way the UAW won't let complete automation of assembly lines take jobs away from autoworkers.