I first used SLS 1.02, in late July of 1993. I downloaded a slew of floppies and booted up on a generic 386 with 8M of RAM and a 30M hard drive. The install took a couple of hours, doin' the floppy shuffle.
After getting on-line and checking out several gopher sites, I finally found all the info I needed to configure the Cyrus video card (which had 256K video RAM). When I got X up and running, I ran xgas. And then, the coolest thing: I ran xgas again. And again. Until I had the screen filled with xgas windows.
It was the coolest thing, seeing all of those xgas programs doing their thing at once. This was true multitasking, and I finally understood what the term meant. I realized this OS was so
Then I learned all about virtual desktops with olvwm. I eventually moved over to FVWM, which is still around. Man, was FVWM cool when they included the ability to use.bmp textures in window decorations.
I wrote up how to install SLS 1.03 in this article. I know I'm geeky, but it was a lot of fun to go back to see the early days again.
Let's not forget that many drugs are developed based on research funded by our national college systems. That is: developed based on research performed with our own money.
Most of their money is spent advertising, rather than doing R and D; and what money *is* spent on R&D is all about penile erectile dysfunction, or hayfever.
This is stupid. I've played with Playstation Home, and it's ridiculously stupid. And that's essentially what the whole "Virtual Store" is.
What I'd rather see is augmented reality, where I can stand on a street corner, and the buildings and shops have descriptions, ratings, comments from customers, and so on. I'd like to be able to look at an historic building and find out why it's historic. I'd like to have my GPS show directions overlaying the actual streets. I'd like to be able to find a decent damned Thai restaurant in Cleveland within walking distance, and have the path outlined for me so I don't get lost (not that I've ever been lost; I have been a fearsome confused for a while).
And so on.
I can already "browse" a virtual store. It's called a web page. It has the products, is searchable, and fairly easy to navigate, even for a large selection of products.
Most of y'all are presenting a false dichotomy. It's not "Either learn abstract formalism OR learn practical languages." You can do both, you know.
I have met too many people who think that, because they can write some tangled, fucked-up C++, they are software engineers. Never mind the fact that they couldn't learn LISP, Objective-C, Java, or any number of other useful languages, as they don't know the first thing about actual computing.
Teaching Java or C++ doesn't matter. Sure, you need classes on practical application of your knowledge. But if you ignore what Dijkstra says here, you're going to end up with a bunch of code monkeys who have to test every element of the set, rather than test the rules of the set.
In my experience, those who started off learning theory, then learned how to apply that theory in practical situations, are far better programmers than those who are taught "practical" languages.
There's some very good advice in that paper. Calling him "out of touch" is a bit shortsighted.
The poor tend not to remain poor, and the highest earners tend to turn over quite a bit as well. And here's a hint: the poor who improve their standings are the ones who don't rely on forced redistribution of wealth through taxation.
Let's talk about the real world.
The poor in the US do tend to stay poor, and the rich stay fairly rich, in general. There isn't as much churn as you imply. In fact, 40% of the population controls less than 1% of the wealth. And here's a hint: that 40% works very hard, in general, simply to maintain shelter and food.
Just in case you intended to imply that working hard makes you financially successful: that's not supported by evidence. In fact, the evidence suggests that those that are well-off by birth tend to have a much higher financial success rate than those that are not well-off by birth.
However, it's rare a poor person can become financially-successful by sitting on their ass, either.
Look, I really don't like Palin, but to call the AIP "terroristic" is just stupid. The Alaska Independence Party is a peaceful organization, and have never condoned violent secession. They simply believe that Alaska should vote itself out of the union, as is its state right.
Their goals are unrealistic, of course. Alaska relies too much on federal money. Alaskans pay about $5k/year federal income tax per capita, but the state receives about $16k/year per capita in federal money. So the idea that Alaska is better off outside the union is currently the wish of a bunch of ignorant yahoos.
Evolution is nothing more than the changes in allele density in a population over time. Genetic diversity is part of that process.
The only way for evolution to stop is if the environment becomes homeostatic. As our environment is constantly changing, even with our attempts to regulate it, evolution in humanity has not stopped.
The concept of punctuated equilibrium is based on the idea that environments remain fairly stable over long periods of time, allowing genetic diversity within various populations. Then, the environment shifts suddenly, and those populations are selected for various traits, often bifurcating the population with respect to allele distribution.
Thinking humans are somehow beyond or outside evolution is just another case where humans think we're special in some way. Except in our specialized ability for abstract thought (which is not unique, any more than a cheetah is unique in running), humans are not special.
This is the reason that taxonomists now use genetic information rather than morphology, as the latter can lead to erroneous classifications (something that's happened quite a lot in the past).
No kidding.
I find the whole concept of "species" to be flawed in this respect. The only practical way to describe relationships between populations (*not* species) is the genetic differential between those populations.
The whole concept of "species" is part of what drives the creation science crowd. "Oh, but you've never witnessed speciation!" Yeah, that's because there's no such thing as speciation. It's an artificial term that represents the false concept of species!
All we have is variance of alleles within different populations. We don't have "species." Evolution is nothing more than the changes in allele occurrence in a populations over time.
And to get back to the stupid-head article, that is still happening in humanity. As for all of you folks saying that medicine has stopped evolution in humans, that's ridiculous. We still have selection pressures, though those selection pressures may be minimal. All we're doing is allowing a massive amount of genetic diversity within our populations. The next time selection pressure shifts (and it will -- it always does), we'll have a *lot* of genetic variation ready to meet the challenge.
This is all simple evolution. Most of you probably studied the exact same thing in junior high, with the decrease in wolves leading to an increase in rabbits, and then the wolves ramping up again to kill off the rabbits, and so on. This cycle (which is highly simplified) is what we're experiencing now. At some point, our environment will change, and we'll be glad to have all the genetic diversity we're building up now.
Yeah, but this leads to information pollution. There are so many different spins on the "facts," that the facts themselves are obscured. Consider the evidence presented by the government in the lead-up to the Iraq war. While other papers were debunking this evidence (whatever else you might think of the Guardian, they nailed that), ours were toeing the Presidential line. It wasn't until Joseph Wilson published his response in the NY Times that we started even talking about the validity of the evidence.
And even that was misdirected with the Valerie Plame incident, which effectively drew attention away from what Joe Wilson was talking about: the fact that at least some of the evidence was outright forged.
This whole mess is insane. How can we, as citizens, make valid choices, when we can't even get basic facts? The news stopped focussing on presenting facts, and started focussing on interpreting those facts, to the point where the facts are lost, and the interpretation is all that remains.
I keep hearing how the government "practically forced some companies to make loans." This isn't supported by the facts. The bill in question (passed by Clinton in '93) essentially mandated fairness in lending -- that if banks gave a loan to one person, they couldn't refuse a similar loan to a similar person.
In fact, deregulation allowed standard banks to behave as speculative agencies. It wasn't Fannie and Freddie that gave these sub-prime loans, and nobody was forced to do so. The fact is, they were highly profitable in the short-term (say, 15 years, which is plenty to make a killing and get out). Other banks purchased up blocks of loans. Couple that with increasing privatization of Freddie and Fannie.
There was so much return on these subprime loans, that Fannie and Freddie were financially pressured into purchasing up blocks themselves. As they are the biggest mortgage lenders, they ended up with huge numbers of these loans.
The economy started spiralling down about the same time the ARMs came due, exacerbating the rate of mortgage defaults.
I believe Dennis Kucinich is much more liberal than Obama. And I was certainly ready to vote for him. He'd barely be "moderate" in most mentally-healthy countries.
I am from Alaska. I have family in Wasilla, some who know Palin. The facts: Palin asked the city librarian if she would remove books from the library. The librarian said, essentially, "Not on my watch." So Palin attempted to change the watch.
She did try to do something about it, at the cost of a well-liked city librarian. She did so because of her scary fundamentalist ideology, the same thing that caused her to push through measurements requiring rape victims to pay for their rape test kits.
This "censorship" thing is not a strawman. I'm not sure if two cases make a pattern, but the "Troopergate" (stupid name, I know) affair indicates she likes to fire people she doesn't like, or who stand in the way of her doing things like censor libraries.
You've come pretty close to my definition of evil: "Fucking over someone else for your own gain."
You've also described something I like to call, "Casual selfishness." It's those actions that only slightly inconvenience other people, but really gain you very little at all, done without consideration, and with forethought only about your own slight gain. I see casual selfishness every day on the ride in to work -- from those who don't queue up in slow moving traffic until they force their way in at the very end of the merge, for instance, or those who ride your ass though you couldn't go any faster.
Fortunately, those people are in the minority. I'd say it's only a percent or two who do things like that.
Although I don't believe we have a right to correct information, it'd be real nice if politicians and corporations were held responsible for their misinformation. Our choices (in Truth, wild religions, pink elephants, or political controversy) are only as solid as the information on which they are built, and unfortunately, our Public Representatives (from city council members on up) feed us only the information we require to achieve the goals they desire. There seems to be no regard for the validity of the information.
It's our responsibility as citizens to hold liars responsible for their lies. As we've seen with Clinton and Bush, though, lies are accepted as truth, even in the face of physical evidence.
Oh, well. I guess we (as a population) also have the right to accept any gilded bullshit as gospel, and build our worldview on that.
The "sim chip thing" is GSM, which most places (T-Mobile, AT&T, etc) use.
If you need it for day-to-day use, QTopia is stable and pretty. You can then develop using Qt, which isn't bad, as long as you like C++ (or you can use Python bindings or whatnot).
If you want to explore, install the FSO image, and develop using Vala, which has a C#-like syntax, but compiles using an intermediate C step. It's fast, efficient, and not a bad language, even if it *is* modelled on C#.
It has easy access to accelerometers, GPS, WiFi, and the GSM modem. It's hobbled by slow video access, and the stupid video chipset manufacturer is a little less than helpful on the 3D accelerator specs. But, if all you want is a good hand-held computer that doubles as a phone, it's a damned good choice.
I love my Freerunner. I'm working on it right now.
Well, the whole "flip-flopping" tag worked against John Kerry. Why not try it again? If we can get enough sheep repeating it without really understanding the issues, it just might work!
There has been no experiment that has determined that nature of QM. All the uncertainty principle (and Bell's experiments) showed was that there is no "hidden local variable." We've learned a lot since then, and it looks like there might be hidden variables.
All the theories trying to describe the nature of QM have failed. String theory is in chaos right now (ha-ha, it's a pun!) because it grew so complex, there's not even a single String Theory. So far, the things we know about QM are:
1) QM events are statistical in nature. 2) ? 3) Profit!
That about sums it up.
Oh, we know a lot more details, but we have no binding theory. Some day, we might even have a viable hypothesis. (Is it string-based M-brane theory? Is it Planck-scale energy fluctuations? Is it living geometry? Is it the Mind of God?)
The best thing for us to do right now is acknowledge our ignorance, stop pretending we have a clue, and go on about our day. There is no practical difference between true randomness and sufficiently-pseudo-random deterministic chaos, so this whole free-will / predetermination argument is mutual intellectual masturbation. It doesn't make a difference to us, honestly, so let's stop pretending it important, shall we?
Actually, what we really need to do as a nation is give up the ridiculous "war on drugs" which, to date, is the source of more civil liberties infringements than any other issue, including the "war on terror".
Meh. Give 'em some time. The "war on terror" has only been around less than a decade. You haven't given it a chance to start infringing on civil liberties yet.
As I said in my reply to the OP, vested interests cut both ways, IMHO the track record of science is much more impressive than the track record of politics and industry.
Yeah. It's all fun and games until the science gets confused with politics and industry. The scientific method is good and all, but it's so easy to spread disinformation with the goal of influencing public perception, and thereby guiding public funding of scientific research.
Is there nothing that politicians and corporations can't fuck up?
WHile I agree with a lot of your message, there is one bit with which I disagree:
It sure doesn't hurt that C# is a vastly more pleasant language to work with than C++ or Java or Python or any of the other "preferred" free software languages.
Well, considering C++ sucks, and Python uses stupid whitespace-for-scoping (but otherwise isn't a bad language), and the Java libraries look like something that exploded at a dictionary factory, you're not comparing C# to the best of the best. But even then, I find C# to be just like MS-Windows -- not bad-looking, but there are some stupid design decisions that fuck it all up.
Have they fixed the race condition in which you can invoke a delegate, and have someone remove themselves from the delegate at the same time, and you get an exception? I mean, how stupid was it to design a core language feature with a built-in race condition? Then you have to create accessor functions to mutex your delegate. (That's a phrase that sounds dirty, but isn't.)
C# has many little things like that. It came close to being a decent re-mix of Java, but missed wide of the mark on stupid stuff like that.
Other than that: I definitely agree that having an independent implementation of the CLI and CLR is important.
Slashdot Mirror
I first used SLS 1.02, in late July of 1993. I downloaded a slew of floppies and booted up on a generic 386 with 8M of RAM and a 30M hard drive. The install took a couple of hours, doin' the floppy shuffle.
After getting on-line and checking out several gopher sites, I finally found all the info I needed to configure the Cyrus video card (which had 256K video RAM). When I got X up and running, I ran xgas. And then, the coolest thing: I ran xgas again. And again. Until I had the screen filled with xgas windows.
It was the coolest thing, seeing all of those xgas programs doing their thing at once. This was true multitasking, and I finally understood what the term meant. I realized this OS was so
Then I learned all about virtual desktops with olvwm. I eventually moved over to FVWM, which is still around. Man, was FVWM cool when they included the ability to use .bmp textures in window decorations.
I wrote up how to install SLS 1.03 in this article. I know I'm geeky, but it was a lot of fun to go back to see the early days again.
Let's not forget that many drugs are developed based on research funded by our national college systems. That is: developed based on research performed with our own money.
Most of their money is spent advertising, rather than doing R and D; and what money *is* spent on R&D is all about penile erectile dysfunction, or hayfever.
But those only become a problem after hitting them with a hammer.
Only if they are yours.
No, the 90s where a turbulent time filled with drugs, rock music and Java.
When you put it like it, Java actually sound like a lot of fun.
The only way you can code in Java is after consuming a lot of drugs. It's not for fun -- it's necessity.
This is stupid. I've played with Playstation Home, and it's ridiculously stupid. And that's essentially what the whole "Virtual Store" is.
What I'd rather see is augmented reality, where I can stand on a street corner, and the buildings and shops have descriptions, ratings, comments from customers, and so on. I'd like to be able to look at an historic building and find out why it's historic. I'd like to have my GPS show directions overlaying the actual streets. I'd like to be able to find a decent damned Thai restaurant in Cleveland within walking distance, and have the path outlined for me so I don't get lost (not that I've ever been lost; I have been a fearsome confused for a while).
And so on.
I can already "browse" a virtual store. It's called a web page. It has the products, is searchable, and fairly easy to navigate, even for a large selection of products.
Most of y'all are presenting a false dichotomy. It's not "Either learn abstract formalism OR learn practical languages." You can do both, you know.
I have met too many people who think that, because they can write some tangled, fucked-up C++, they are software engineers. Never mind the fact that they couldn't learn LISP, Objective-C, Java, or any number of other useful languages, as they don't know the first thing about actual computing.
Teaching Java or C++ doesn't matter. Sure, you need classes on practical application of your knowledge. But if you ignore what Dijkstra says here, you're going to end up with a bunch of code monkeys who have to test every element of the set, rather than test the rules of the set.
In my experience, those who started off learning theory, then learned how to apply that theory in practical situations, are far better programmers than those who are taught "practical" languages.
There's some very good advice in that paper. Calling him "out of touch" is a bit shortsighted.
The poor tend not to remain poor, and the highest earners tend to turn over quite a bit as well. And here's a hint: the poor who improve their standings are the ones who don't rely on forced redistribution of wealth through taxation.
Let's talk about the real world.
The poor in the US do tend to stay poor, and the rich stay fairly rich, in general. There isn't as much churn as you imply. In fact, 40% of the population controls less than 1% of the wealth. And here's a hint: that 40% works very hard, in general, simply to maintain shelter and food.
Just in case you intended to imply that working hard makes you financially successful: that's not supported by evidence. In fact, the evidence suggests that those that are well-off by birth tend to have a much higher financial success rate than those that are not well-off by birth.
However, it's rare a poor person can become financially-successful by sitting on their ass, either.
Look, I really don't like Palin, but to call the AIP "terroristic" is just stupid. The Alaska Independence Party is a peaceful organization, and have never condoned violent secession. They simply believe that Alaska should vote itself out of the union, as is its state right.
Their goals are unrealistic, of course. Alaska relies too much on federal money. Alaskans pay about $5k/year federal income tax per capita, but the state receives about $16k/year per capita in federal money. So the idea that Alaska is better off outside the union is currently the wish of a bunch of ignorant yahoos.
But they are not "terroristic" in any way.
Evolution is nothing more than the changes in allele density in a population over time. Genetic diversity is part of that process.
The only way for evolution to stop is if the environment becomes homeostatic. As our environment is constantly changing, even with our attempts to regulate it, evolution in humanity has not stopped.
The concept of punctuated equilibrium is based on the idea that environments remain fairly stable over long periods of time, allowing genetic diversity within various populations. Then, the environment shifts suddenly, and those populations are selected for various traits, often bifurcating the population with respect to allele distribution.
Thinking humans are somehow beyond or outside evolution is just another case where humans think we're special in some way. Except in our specialized ability for abstract thought (which is not unique, any more than a cheetah is unique in running), humans are not special.
This is the reason that taxonomists now use genetic information rather than morphology, as the latter can lead to erroneous classifications (something that's happened quite a lot in the past).
No kidding.
I find the whole concept of "species" to be flawed in this respect. The only practical way to describe relationships between populations (*not* species) is the genetic differential between those populations.
The whole concept of "species" is part of what drives the creation science crowd. "Oh, but you've never witnessed speciation!" Yeah, that's because there's no such thing as speciation. It's an artificial term that represents the false concept of species!
All we have is variance of alleles within different populations. We don't have "species." Evolution is nothing more than the changes in allele occurrence in a populations over time.
And to get back to the stupid-head article, that is still happening in humanity. As for all of you folks saying that medicine has stopped evolution in humans, that's ridiculous. We still have selection pressures, though those selection pressures may be minimal. All we're doing is allowing a massive amount of genetic diversity within our populations. The next time selection pressure shifts (and it will -- it always does), we'll have a *lot* of genetic variation ready to meet the challenge.
This is all simple evolution. Most of you probably studied the exact same thing in junior high, with the decrease in wolves leading to an increase in rabbits, and then the wolves ramping up again to kill off the rabbits, and so on. This cycle (which is highly simplified) is what we're experiencing now. At some point, our environment will change, and we'll be glad to have all the genetic diversity we're building up now.
Uhm....
Good point.
Can I mention Bernie Sanders (a socialist) and redeem myself?
Yeah, but this leads to information pollution. There are so many different spins on the "facts," that the facts themselves are obscured. Consider the evidence presented by the government in the lead-up to the Iraq war. While other papers were debunking this evidence (whatever else you might think of the Guardian, they nailed that), ours were toeing the Presidential line. It wasn't until Joseph Wilson published his response in the NY Times that we started even talking about the validity of the evidence.
And even that was misdirected with the Valerie Plame incident, which effectively drew attention away from what Joe Wilson was talking about: the fact that at least some of the evidence was outright forged.
This whole mess is insane. How can we, as citizens, make valid choices, when we can't even get basic facts? The news stopped focussing on presenting facts, and started focussing on interpreting those facts, to the point where the facts are lost, and the interpretation is all that remains.
I keep hearing how the government "practically forced some companies to make loans." This isn't supported by the facts. The bill in question (passed by Clinton in '93) essentially mandated fairness in lending -- that if banks gave a loan to one person, they couldn't refuse a similar loan to a similar person.
In fact, deregulation allowed standard banks to behave as speculative agencies. It wasn't Fannie and Freddie that gave these sub-prime loans, and nobody was forced to do so. The fact is, they were highly profitable in the short-term (say, 15 years, which is plenty to make a killing and get out). Other banks purchased up blocks of loans. Couple that with increasing privatization of Freddie and Fannie.
There was so much return on these subprime loans, that Fannie and Freddie were financially pressured into purchasing up blocks themselves. As they are the biggest mortgage lenders, they ended up with huge numbers of these loans.
The economy started spiralling down about the same time the ARMs came due, exacerbating the rate of mortgage defaults.
Jeez, doesn't anybody listen to NPR anymore?
I believe Dennis Kucinich is much more liberal than Obama. And I was certainly ready to vote for him. He'd barely be "moderate" in most mentally-healthy countries.
She did try to do something about it.
I am from Alaska. I have family in Wasilla, some who know Palin. The facts: Palin asked the city librarian if she would remove books from the library. The librarian said, essentially, "Not on my watch." So Palin attempted to change the watch.
She did try to do something about it, at the cost of a well-liked city librarian. She did so because of her scary fundamentalist ideology, the same thing that caused her to push through measurements requiring rape victims to pay for their rape test kits.
This "censorship" thing is not a strawman. I'm not sure if two cases make a pattern, but the "Troopergate" (stupid name, I know) affair indicates she likes to fire people she doesn't like, or who stand in the way of her doing things like censor libraries.
You've come pretty close to my definition of evil: "Fucking over someone else for your own gain."
You've also described something I like to call, "Casual selfishness." It's those actions that only slightly inconvenience other people, but really gain you very little at all, done without consideration, and with forethought only about your own slight gain. I see casual selfishness every day on the ride in to work -- from those who don't queue up in slow moving traffic until they force their way in at the very end of the merge, for instance, or those who ride your ass though you couldn't go any faster.
Fortunately, those people are in the minority. I'd say it's only a percent or two who do things like that.
I agree we should be free to think as we will.
Although I don't believe we have a right to correct information, it'd be real nice if politicians and corporations were held responsible for their misinformation. Our choices (in Truth, wild religions, pink elephants, or political controversy) are only as solid as the information on which they are built, and unfortunately, our Public Representatives (from city council members on up) feed us only the information we require to achieve the goals they desire. There seems to be no regard for the validity of the information.
It's our responsibility as citizens to hold liars responsible for their lies. As we've seen with Clinton and Bush, though, lies are accepted as truth, even in the face of physical evidence.
Oh, well. I guess we (as a population) also have the right to accept any gilded bullshit as gospel, and build our worldview on that.
Amen.
Computers (and operating systems) still suck. They just suck in different ways.
BTW: Where the fuck's my flying car?!? I WAS PROMISED A FLYING CAR!
Very empowering and positive and true to what PC's are about.
True to what PCs are about? So they're running Linux or BSD?
The "sim chip thing" is GSM, which most places (T-Mobile, AT&T, etc) use.
If you need it for day-to-day use, QTopia is stable and pretty. You can then develop using Qt, which isn't bad, as long as you like C++ (or you can use Python bindings or whatnot).
If you want to explore, install the FSO image, and develop using Vala, which has a C#-like syntax, but compiles using an intermediate C step. It's fast, efficient, and not a bad language, even if it *is* modelled on C#.
It has easy access to accelerometers, GPS, WiFi, and the GSM modem. It's hobbled by slow video access, and the stupid video chipset manufacturer is a little less than helpful on the 3D accelerator specs. But, if all you want is a good hand-held computer that doubles as a phone, it's a damned good choice.
I love my Freerunner. I'm working on it right now.
Well, the whole "flip-flopping" tag worked against John Kerry. Why not try it again? If we can get enough sheep repeating it without really understanding the issues, it just might work!
There has been no experiment that has determined that nature of QM. All the uncertainty principle (and Bell's experiments) showed was that there is no "hidden local variable." We've learned a lot since then, and it looks like there might be hidden variables.
All the theories trying to describe the nature of QM have failed. String theory is in chaos right now (ha-ha, it's a pun!) because it grew so complex, there's not even a single String Theory. So far, the things we know about QM are:
1) QM events are statistical in nature.
2) ?
3) Profit!
That about sums it up.
Oh, we know a lot more details, but we have no binding theory. Some day, we might even have a viable hypothesis. (Is it string-based M-brane theory? Is it Planck-scale energy fluctuations? Is it living geometry? Is it the Mind of God?)
The best thing for us to do right now is acknowledge our ignorance, stop pretending we have a clue, and go on about our day. There is no practical difference between true randomness and sufficiently-pseudo-random deterministic chaos, so this whole free-will / predetermination argument is mutual intellectual masturbation. It doesn't make a difference to us, honestly, so let's stop pretending it important, shall we?
Actually, what we really need to do as a nation is give up the ridiculous "war on drugs" which, to date, is the source of more civil liberties infringements than any other issue, including the "war on terror".
Meh. Give 'em some time. The "war on terror" has only been around less than a decade. You haven't given it a chance to start infringing on civil liberties yet.
As I said in my reply to the OP, vested interests cut both ways, IMHO the track record of science is much more impressive than the track record of politics and industry.
Yeah. It's all fun and games until the science gets confused with politics and industry. The scientific method is good and all, but it's so easy to spread disinformation with the goal of influencing public perception, and thereby guiding public funding of scientific research.
Is there nothing that politicians and corporations can't fuck up?
WHile I agree with a lot of your message, there is one bit with which I disagree:
Well, considering C++ sucks, and Python uses stupid whitespace-for-scoping (but otherwise isn't a bad language), and the Java libraries look like something that exploded at a dictionary factory, you're not comparing C# to the best of the best. But even then, I find C# to be just like MS-Windows -- not bad-looking, but there are some stupid design decisions that fuck it all up.
Have they fixed the race condition in which you can invoke a delegate, and have someone remove themselves from the delegate at the same time, and you get an exception? I mean, how stupid was it to design a core language feature with a built-in race condition? Then you have to create accessor functions to mutex your delegate. (That's a phrase that sounds dirty, but isn't.)
C# has many little things like that. It came close to being a decent re-mix of Java, but missed wide of the mark on stupid stuff like that.
Other than that: I definitely agree that having an independent implementation of the CLI and CLR is important.