This assumes you can tell your phone is "missing" within 48 to 72 hours and is actually stolen. I know I've "lost" my phone for as long as a week and then found it again stuck between the couch cushions, or on some shelf under some paperwork. There's also the problem with having your phone cloned and not stolen which you'd probably only notice the next time your bill showed up, potentially 30 days from the time it was "stolen".
Am I the only one that sees this as completely ass backwards? I mean, part of the lure of scripting languages is that we skip that whole compile phase of things, and so achieve a certain degree of platform independence. So long as the system being targeted has a implementation of the scripting languages interpreter, you just run the script inside of it, and you can distribute the same script (more or less) for any system with an interpreter. Now they're talking about essentially compiling a scripting language to one of several different byte codes to target one of several different VMs, which then of course need implementations on whatever systems you're targeting. How is this an improvement over the previous way of doing things?
What exactly are we getting out of this? The language developers don't have to worry about the details of the underlying machine, but as a trade off they now need to write implementations for whatever VM is out there, which is turn will require them to worry about the details of the underlying machine, so we've just pushed that pain point down one level of abstraction, but not eliminated it. The only up side I can see to the entire thing is language interoperability which is nice and all, but how does that fit in with the multiple-VM approach being touted here? Each language is most likely going to require some minor changes in order to support interoperability at the VM level, and of course there will be quirks and gotchas on each VM as well. Unless all the VM developers get together and agree on the exact changes that will be required to each language we could end up with a situation in which each language will come in multiple slightly different syntaxes depending on exactly which VM it targets.
Nah, Christians have always been more of the sticking swords in people, and nailing them to crosses kind. Sometimes they'd hang people, or tie them to a tree and then set it on fire. For the most part they don't do any of that anymore, although some of the dumber sects still light stuff on fire from time to time. Christians are mostly a danger to themselves and their immediate family, very rarely to someone they don't know.
Troll? Really? Exactly what in there wasn't factual or accurate? It's perfectly true that Christians are mostly a danger to themselves and their immediate family, they very rarely do anything that hurts anyone they don't know. Muslims on the other hand are far more likely to kill either random people, or people they've never actually met before. As for the rest of the comment, that's all historical and well documented (much of it even in the Bible, ignoring for the moment whether that qualifies as "historical" or not), so you can't argue with that.
Is it possible for a simple statement of facts to be a troll?
I don't think the problem is Muslims, I think the problem is "Youths". Youths are always causing problems, we should just eliminate these Youths.
No, no, no, people are the problem! All we need to do is eliminate all the people, and we get rid of all the problems. This is something system administrators have known for years, it's the users that are the problem!
The GP never said anything about it being a "religion of peace", just a general statement of "Western distrust if Islam" which seems a perfectly valid statement. It was the PP that tossed in the comment about "religion of peace". It's true most westerners distrust Islam, and for many very good reasons. Many westerners also distrust Christianity, although admittedly a lot fewer than those that distrust Islam. Pointing out general distrust in Islam is neither a statement advocating or opposing Islam, merely an observation of the prevailing attitude.
Nah, Christians have always been more of the sticking swords in people, and nailing them to crosses kind. Sometimes they'd hang people, or tie them to a tree and then set it on fire. For the most part they don't do any of that anymore, although some of the dumber sects still light stuff on fire from time to time. Christians are mostly a danger to themselves and their immediate family, very rarely to someone they don't know.
After some poking around and a bit of google-fu I found this: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mobile/ which has all the builds. There's also instructions in installing it on a Nokia N810 here.
He wasn't talking about Fennec in the webpage, he was talking about Firefox in the title. The title should have been "Mozilla releases Fennec 1.0 Alpha 1", or alternatively "Mozilla releases mobile browser based on Firefox". Also, it's impossible to RTFA now, the site has been slashdotted.
So long as it doesn't keep me from sending my internets I'm not worried. Now just the other day one of them companies dumped a tremendous amount of data in the tubes and it buried my internets. If you get some of that tremendous amount of data could you look through it and see if maybe one of my internets is stuck in there somewhere?
Like I said, it depends on how you choose to define operating system, reading a book doesn't have anything to do with it. We're both right depending on which definition you choose to use, although strictly speaking Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. under the definition you're using are both OSes as well as distributions (being that only a subset of the utilities they ship with can properly be considered part of the "OS", therefore the full contents of the install is the OS + other software). The fact that it's impossible to obtain the "OS" without also getting all the other software has no bearing on that.
And seeing as you started in with the snide comments, maybe you should work on your reading comprehension and reasoning skills.
"Linux" is not an operating system, its a kernel. Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. are Operating Systems.
It is and it isn't depending on how you choose to define operating system. If you define it as the API that's used to interface to the hardware then yes, the kernel, that is Linux, is the operating system. If you instead choose to define it as the UI the user interacts with then no it's not. Under the strictest technical definition the kernel is the OS, and anything else is a utility (standard or otherwise). None of that however changes the fact that if they advertised support for Linux, but only supported a particular distribution or two people would bitch about it and demand to know why they can't run it under another distribution and/or what the technical requirements to get it to run are. I mean it's not that hard to just post a required libraries/drivers FAQ and be done with it.
It's not about money. The companies would actually make more money by picking the better product. Instead the companies pick products based on which company can suck up to the managers the best and/or confuse them the most with market drivel. The problem is really that they have non-technical people making important technical reasons for no other reason than they want to try to justify their hyper-inflated paycheck. PHBs figure that since they get paid more than those working under them, then they know more about everything and should be making all the decisions when the reality is demonstrably not so.
Wow, where to even start on this rant. First of all, people are more inclined to listen to your points when they're written in well formed sentences free from typos. Take a minute to read over your post before you hit the submit button and make sure you've eliminated most if not all of your mistakes. It's almost painful trying to read your post due to the typos in every third word (not to mention entire sentences that are mangled). Second most of your points are flawed in one way or another. Just as an example, it is possible to get an mp3 out of iTunes, it's just a royal PITA to do so. You also can't fault Apple for non-Apple hardware failing to work properly on a cracked version of OS X that's been jury rigged to run on generic hardware. I mean at that point you're not even dealing with Apple software really. It's like hacking up a copy of Chromium so that it manages to run under Linux and then bitching that Google sucks because Chromium crashes when you try to visit some website. Now, you could complain that Apple sucks because they won't release a version of OS X for non-Apple hardware, but that's different than the point you made.
Eh, who am I kidding, I'm arguing with an AC about the quality of his post, I might as well be arguing with a tree for all the effect it will have. Also, before grammar nazis descend in droves to pick apart my post be forewarned that I don't care, and I invoke muphry's law (and no that's not a typo).
Why use software X version 1.0 when I could use software Y version 6.1?
Some people just see the bigger number.
And those people are called PHBs (or CEOs), and sadly they sign the checks and often make the decisions. Of course by the same token if given the choice between software X 1.0 by company Z which just took the CEO out to an all expenses paid lunch at some fancy restaurant and gave him a shiny handout claiming the software would do everything he ever dreamed of, and software Y 5.4 by company T that their IT staff says is the better application but the CEO never heard of, odds are their getting software X 1.0.
When we play LAN games at my apartment we play as though we were on Battle.net. That means no character editing (we haven't found a good editor yet anyway) and no item duping. We all play different builds, so there's rarely any argument as to who should get what item.
And how's that work out when you've got a level 30 a level 6 and a level 12 that all want to play together and don't want to have to start brand new characters, or change to a different class (or build) because someone's already playing that class?
Much as I'd like to agree with that, I'm afraid I can't. If they came out and said they supported Linux, but only Ubuntu and Fedora, people would scream bloody murder. They'd also receive a bunch of calls where people would say "Yeah, I'm using Ubuntu" when they're really using Gentoo because honestly, there's not that big a difference between them. They both use the same libraries (for the most part), and they have similar configuration systems, it's just the package management system and minor differences in configuration that separate them. Someone that's halfway competent with Linux could perform the same task on either a Gentoo or Ubuntu system without too much trouble.
Now, if they came out and listed all the technical details of how to get everything setup and running in Linux, but only offered a step by step walkthrough for a couple distros that would be an approach that might work. If they had something like "You need to enable the glx X11 driver, and configure it to use 16 bit color depth. You also must install lib foo 2.6 or compatible.", but then had a walkthrough showing how to do all that in Ubuntu or Fedora that would take care of everyone. The gentoo users could use their distros documentation (or their own knowledge) to make sure they had everything setup properly, and the Ubuntu users could do exactly what the page tells them to, and in either case they're "supported".
I tried running WoW inside of WINE, but I was taking about a 20 FPS hit for doing so. I also have a handful of games that simply don't run inside of WINE, so for the foreseeable future I guess I'm stuck with at least one system running XP. Still, it is nice to know that in a pinch I can run WoW in Linux without too much of a hassle.
Something I'd be interested in knowing is if doing development/testing against WINE actually leads to a more stable and bug free application.
We often played D2 at LAN parties with item editors because it was just simpler that way. Rather than have everyone make a new character, or have characters that we only played on the rare occasions we had a LAN party, everyone just broke out the character editor and created a character at the level we all agreed on. It also prevented people from bickering over loot, because if something particularly nice dropped we'd just dupe it and give one to anyone that wanted one.
You're forgetting to factor in the update messages to let you know about what the other 5 players are doing. Lets assume you get into a 4 way fight and each player has managed to field 100 of their units. Now you need to send an update on 200 of your own units, and also receive an update on 300 opposing units for a total of 500 units being tracked. This also assumes a centralized server off the network, so if one of the systems on the LAN is acting as the server (not unreasonable, many internet based multi-player games have a "host" computer) that system is also chewing up bandwidth receiving the bounced updates from all the other systems on the network, so you've just doubled the total bandwidth imposed by each additional person.
You forgot to give a clear example of what you meant by that learning curve. If anyone has trouble with that, try to picture the difference between C and C# with.NET. Good luck using C to do what you can do in C# using just a few clicks.
You're conflating the tools with the language. There's nothing inherent within C# that cannot also be done with C given the proper libraries. Likewise there's nothing that you can do in C that you cannot also do in assembly. Of course the effort involved will be different from the standpoint of the programmer using the language depending on what libraries one utilizes. When you add in tools (such as IDEs like Visual Studio which.Net programmers tend to forget is different from the language) certain operations are optimized further in that you can use large chunks of what is essentially boilerplate code inserted automatically by the IDE, but you also sacrifice control and flexibility in that case (a well written tool should allow you to override it, but once you've made that jump it's essentially useless for further adjustments of that same piece of code).
An honest appraisal of a language should be done in two parts. First you should compare the language itself. What features does it provide, what sacrifices have been made, how stable is the language, etc. Secondly the tools, libraries, and IDEs should be compared. Any decision concerning a language needs to factor in both the things the language excels at, as well as the availability of tools and libraries for the language to accomplish the task you're attempting.
Exactly! There's very little difference among the syntax and features of most languages. Sure there's big differences in some areas from one language to the next, but there's also usually big similarities to offset those. Once you've got 6 or 7 languages under your belt, there's very little that's genuinely "new" in any language, it's just a question of the subset of things you're already familiar with that happen to be included in X language.
The libraries and runtimes of any particular language on the other hand are unique for just about every language out there (exceptions being those that re-use large portions of existing libraries/runtimes such as Groovy which isn't so much a new language as it is an alternative syntax for Java), and that's where most of the time in "learning" a new language comes from. Just about any remotely competent programmer can write hello world in any language you choose with access to minimal documentation and about 5 minutes, but to write a clean and efficient implementation of any non-trivial program takes a serious time investment to learn the libraries and APIs.
The real question to ask about any particular language is what are its priorities? Does it focus on minimalist syntax in an attempt to speed development but at the cost of reduced readability? Does it use strong typing to improve efficiency and reduce runtime bugs but at the sacrifice of flexibility? In other words, what trade offs has the language made?
... and as a non-american, I wonder how come (esp after 8 years of Bush/Cheney) McCaine is still in the race.
And I am not saying this as endorsement to the Democrats, but by default, any other major opposition to McCaine should have won the election by now. Just 8% lead? This probably will explain why such lists exist and abused.
First, you can't judge anything by the statistics put out so far. Looking at the trend graphs exactly who is in the lead at any given time depends on when you ask, and which source of data you use. Mostly it comes down to how the pick the people to poll.
Second, McCaine is still in the running for a variety of reasons. To start with, he claims to represent a government reform and responsibility platform. Whether he'll follow through on it, or if it really is as he presents it (instead of say a way to make life difficult for politicians and organizations he doesn't like) is yet to be seen. He also, like it or not, has a better foreign relations policy (at least as of right now) at least from an economic standpoint, something many Americans are particularly worried about right now. There's also the (unfortunately) strong right wing Christian contingent that will vote for him because they perceive him (and his young earth creationist running mate) as strongly supporting the Christian church (whichever one that happens to be). Lastly there are a depressingly large number of people that are just plain racist and will vote for him for no other reason than the opposition is a black man.
In other words it's great for making statistical predictions based on historic data, but sucks at spotting small variations in a largely randomized data pool. Gee, who would have thought.
On the topic of TFA, is it just me or did they basically say the equivalent of "We didn't have an option for 'we hate this guy because he disagrees with us, he should be harassed' so instead they picked 'terrorist'"?
Slashdot Mirror
This assumes you can tell your phone is "missing" within 48 to 72 hours and is actually stolen. I know I've "lost" my phone for as long as a week and then found it again stuck between the couch cushions, or on some shelf under some paperwork. There's also the problem with having your phone cloned and not stolen which you'd probably only notice the next time your bill showed up, potentially 30 days from the time it was "stolen".
Am I the only one that sees this as completely ass backwards? I mean, part of the lure of scripting languages is that we skip that whole compile phase of things, and so achieve a certain degree of platform independence. So long as the system being targeted has a implementation of the scripting languages interpreter, you just run the script inside of it, and you can distribute the same script (more or less) for any system with an interpreter. Now they're talking about essentially compiling a scripting language to one of several different byte codes to target one of several different VMs, which then of course need implementations on whatever systems you're targeting. How is this an improvement over the previous way of doing things?
What exactly are we getting out of this? The language developers don't have to worry about the details of the underlying machine, but as a trade off they now need to write implementations for whatever VM is out there, which is turn will require them to worry about the details of the underlying machine, so we've just pushed that pain point down one level of abstraction, but not eliminated it. The only up side I can see to the entire thing is language interoperability which is nice and all, but how does that fit in with the multiple-VM approach being touted here? Each language is most likely going to require some minor changes in order to support interoperability at the VM level, and of course there will be quirks and gotchas on each VM as well. Unless all the VM developers get together and agree on the exact changes that will be required to each language we could end up with a situation in which each language will come in multiple slightly different syntaxes depending on exactly which VM it targets.
Nah, Christians have always been more of the sticking swords in people, and nailing them to crosses kind. Sometimes they'd hang people, or tie them to a tree and then set it on fire. For the most part they don't do any of that anymore, although some of the dumber sects still light stuff on fire from time to time. Christians are mostly a danger to themselves and their immediate family, very rarely to someone they don't know.
Troll? Really? Exactly what in there wasn't factual or accurate? It's perfectly true that Christians are mostly a danger to themselves and their immediate family, they very rarely do anything that hurts anyone they don't know. Muslims on the other hand are far more likely to kill either random people, or people they've never actually met before. As for the rest of the comment, that's all historical and well documented (much of it even in the Bible, ignoring for the moment whether that qualifies as "historical" or not), so you can't argue with that.
Is it possible for a simple statement of facts to be a troll?
I don't think the problem is Muslims, I think the problem is "Youths". Youths are always causing problems, we should just eliminate these Youths.
No, no, no, people are the problem! All we need to do is eliminate all the people, and we get rid of all the problems. This is something system administrators have known for years, it's the users that are the problem!
The GP never said anything about it being a "religion of peace", just a general statement of "Western distrust if Islam" which seems a perfectly valid statement. It was the PP that tossed in the comment about "religion of peace". It's true most westerners distrust Islam, and for many very good reasons. Many westerners also distrust Christianity, although admittedly a lot fewer than those that distrust Islam. Pointing out general distrust in Islam is neither a statement advocating or opposing Islam, merely an observation of the prevailing attitude.
Nah, Christians have always been more of the sticking swords in people, and nailing them to crosses kind. Sometimes they'd hang people, or tie them to a tree and then set it on fire. For the most part they don't do any of that anymore, although some of the dumber sects still light stuff on fire from time to time. Christians are mostly a danger to themselves and their immediate family, very rarely to someone they don't know.
After some poking around and a bit of google-fu I found this: ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mobile/ which has all the builds. There's also instructions in installing it on a Nokia N810 here.
He wasn't talking about Fennec in the webpage, he was talking about Firefox in the title. The title should have been "Mozilla releases Fennec 1.0 Alpha 1", or alternatively "Mozilla releases mobile browser based on Firefox". Also, it's impossible to RTFA now, the site has been slashdotted.
So long as it doesn't keep me from sending my internets I'm not worried. Now just the other day one of them companies dumped a tremendous amount of data in the tubes and it buried my internets. If you get some of that tremendous amount of data could you look through it and see if maybe one of my internets is stuck in there somewhere?
... you're right. It is about money for the PHB/CEO NOW (for sure) and money LATER (maybe).
I'll agree to that with the following clarification.
Like I said, it depends on how you choose to define operating system, reading a book doesn't have anything to do with it. We're both right depending on which definition you choose to use, although strictly speaking Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. under the definition you're using are both OSes as well as distributions (being that only a subset of the utilities they ship with can properly be considered part of the "OS", therefore the full contents of the install is the OS + other software). The fact that it's impossible to obtain the "OS" without also getting all the other software has no bearing on that.
And seeing as you started in with the snide comments, maybe you should work on your reading comprehension and reasoning skills.
"Linux" is not an operating system, its a kernel. Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. are Operating Systems.
It is and it isn't depending on how you choose to define operating system. If you define it as the API that's used to interface to the hardware then yes, the kernel, that is Linux, is the operating system. If you instead choose to define it as the UI the user interacts with then no it's not. Under the strictest technical definition the kernel is the OS, and anything else is a utility (standard or otherwise). None of that however changes the fact that if they advertised support for Linux, but only supported a particular distribution or two people would bitch about it and demand to know why they can't run it under another distribution and/or what the technical requirements to get it to run are. I mean it's not that hard to just post a required libraries/drivers FAQ and be done with it.
It's not about money. The companies would actually make more money by picking the better product. Instead the companies pick products based on which company can suck up to the managers the best and/or confuse them the most with market drivel. The problem is really that they have non-technical people making important technical reasons for no other reason than they want to try to justify their hyper-inflated paycheck. PHBs figure that since they get paid more than those working under them, then they know more about everything and should be making all the decisions when the reality is demonstrably not so.
Wow, where to even start on this rant. First of all, people are more inclined to listen to your points when they're written in well formed sentences free from typos. Take a minute to read over your post before you hit the submit button and make sure you've eliminated most if not all of your mistakes. It's almost painful trying to read your post due to the typos in every third word (not to mention entire sentences that are mangled). Second most of your points are flawed in one way or another. Just as an example, it is possible to get an mp3 out of iTunes, it's just a royal PITA to do so. You also can't fault Apple for non-Apple hardware failing to work properly on a cracked version of OS X that's been jury rigged to run on generic hardware. I mean at that point you're not even dealing with Apple software really. It's like hacking up a copy of Chromium so that it manages to run under Linux and then bitching that Google sucks because Chromium crashes when you try to visit some website. Now, you could complain that Apple sucks because they won't release a version of OS X for non-Apple hardware, but that's different than the point you made.
Eh, who am I kidding, I'm arguing with an AC about the quality of his post, I might as well be arguing with a tree for all the effect it will have. Also, before grammar nazis descend in droves to pick apart my post be forewarned that I don't care, and I invoke muphry's law (and no that's not a typo).
Why use software X version 1.0 when I could use software Y version 6.1?
Some people just see the bigger number.
And those people are called PHBs (or CEOs), and sadly they sign the checks and often make the decisions. Of course by the same token if given the choice between software X 1.0 by company Z which just took the CEO out to an all expenses paid lunch at some fancy restaurant and gave him a shiny handout claiming the software would do everything he ever dreamed of, and software Y 5.4 by company T that their IT staff says is the better application but the CEO never heard of, odds are their getting software X 1.0.
When we play LAN games at my apartment we play as though we were on Battle.net. That means no character editing (we haven't found a good editor yet anyway) and no item duping. We all play different builds, so there's rarely any argument as to who should get what item.
And how's that work out when you've got a level 30 a level 6 and a level 12 that all want to play together and don't want to have to start brand new characters, or change to a different class (or build) because someone's already playing that class?
Much as I'd like to agree with that, I'm afraid I can't. If they came out and said they supported Linux, but only Ubuntu and Fedora, people would scream bloody murder. They'd also receive a bunch of calls where people would say "Yeah, I'm using Ubuntu" when they're really using Gentoo because honestly, there's not that big a difference between them. They both use the same libraries (for the most part), and they have similar configuration systems, it's just the package management system and minor differences in configuration that separate them. Someone that's halfway competent with Linux could perform the same task on either a Gentoo or Ubuntu system without too much trouble.
Now, if they came out and listed all the technical details of how to get everything setup and running in Linux, but only offered a step by step walkthrough for a couple distros that would be an approach that might work. If they had something like "You need to enable the glx X11 driver, and configure it to use 16 bit color depth. You also must install lib foo 2.6 or compatible.", but then had a walkthrough showing how to do all that in Ubuntu or Fedora that would take care of everyone. The gentoo users could use their distros documentation (or their own knowledge) to make sure they had everything setup properly, and the Ubuntu users could do exactly what the page tells them to, and in either case they're "supported".
I tried running WoW inside of WINE, but I was taking about a 20 FPS hit for doing so. I also have a handful of games that simply don't run inside of WINE, so for the foreseeable future I guess I'm stuck with at least one system running XP. Still, it is nice to know that in a pinch I can run WoW in Linux without too much of a hassle.
Something I'd be interested in knowing is if doing development/testing against WINE actually leads to a more stable and bug free application.
We often played D2 at LAN parties with item editors because it was just simpler that way. Rather than have everyone make a new character, or have characters that we only played on the rare occasions we had a LAN party, everyone just broke out the character editor and created a character at the level we all agreed on. It also prevented people from bickering over loot, because if something particularly nice dropped we'd just dupe it and give one to anyone that wanted one.
You're forgetting to factor in the update messages to let you know about what the other 5 players are doing. Lets assume you get into a 4 way fight and each player has managed to field 100 of their units. Now you need to send an update on 200 of your own units, and also receive an update on 300 opposing units for a total of 500 units being tracked. This also assumes a centralized server off the network, so if one of the systems on the LAN is acting as the server (not unreasonable, many internet based multi-player games have a "host" computer) that system is also chewing up bandwidth receiving the bounced updates from all the other systems on the network, so you've just doubled the total bandwidth imposed by each additional person.
You forgot to give a clear example of what you meant by that learning curve. If anyone has trouble with that, try to picture the difference between C and C# with .NET. Good luck using C to do what you can do in C# using just a few clicks.
You're conflating the tools with the language. There's nothing inherent within C# that cannot also be done with C given the proper libraries. Likewise there's nothing that you can do in C that you cannot also do in assembly. Of course the effort involved will be different from the standpoint of the programmer using the language depending on what libraries one utilizes. When you add in tools (such as IDEs like Visual Studio which .Net programmers tend to forget is different from the language) certain operations are optimized further in that you can use large chunks of what is essentially boilerplate code inserted automatically by the IDE, but you also sacrifice control and flexibility in that case (a well written tool should allow you to override it, but once you've made that jump it's essentially useless for further adjustments of that same piece of code).
An honest appraisal of a language should be done in two parts. First you should compare the language itself. What features does it provide, what sacrifices have been made, how stable is the language, etc. Secondly the tools, libraries, and IDEs should be compared. Any decision concerning a language needs to factor in both the things the language excels at, as well as the availability of tools and libraries for the language to accomplish the task you're attempting.
Exactly! There's very little difference among the syntax and features of most languages. Sure there's big differences in some areas from one language to the next, but there's also usually big similarities to offset those. Once you've got 6 or 7 languages under your belt, there's very little that's genuinely "new" in any language, it's just a question of the subset of things you're already familiar with that happen to be included in X language.
The libraries and runtimes of any particular language on the other hand are unique for just about every language out there (exceptions being those that re-use large portions of existing libraries/runtimes such as Groovy which isn't so much a new language as it is an alternative syntax for Java), and that's where most of the time in "learning" a new language comes from. Just about any remotely competent programmer can write hello world in any language you choose with access to minimal documentation and about 5 minutes, but to write a clean and efficient implementation of any non-trivial program takes a serious time investment to learn the libraries and APIs.
The real question to ask about any particular language is what are its priorities? Does it focus on minimalist syntax in an attempt to speed development but at the cost of reduced readability? Does it use strong typing to improve efficiency and reduce runtime bugs but at the sacrifice of flexibility? In other words, what trade offs has the language made?
... and as a non-american, I wonder how come (esp after 8 years of Bush/Cheney) McCaine is still in the race. And I am not saying this as endorsement to the Democrats, but by default, any other major opposition to McCaine should have won the election by now. Just 8% lead? This probably will explain why such lists exist and abused.
First, you can't judge anything by the statistics put out so far. Looking at the trend graphs exactly who is in the lead at any given time depends on when you ask, and which source of data you use. Mostly it comes down to how the pick the people to poll.
Second, McCaine is still in the running for a variety of reasons. To start with, he claims to represent a government reform and responsibility platform. Whether he'll follow through on it, or if it really is as he presents it (instead of say a way to make life difficult for politicians and organizations he doesn't like) is yet to be seen. He also, like it or not, has a better foreign relations policy (at least as of right now) at least from an economic standpoint, something many Americans are particularly worried about right now. There's also the (unfortunately) strong right wing Christian contingent that will vote for him because they perceive him (and his young earth creationist running mate) as strongly supporting the Christian church (whichever one that happens to be). Lastly there are a depressingly large number of people that are just plain racist and will vote for him for no other reason than the opposition is a black man.
In other words it's great for making statistical predictions based on historic data, but sucks at spotting small variations in a largely randomized data pool. Gee, who would have thought.
On the topic of TFA, is it just me or did they basically say the equivalent of "We didn't have an option for 'we hate this guy because he disagrees with us, he should be harassed' so instead they picked 'terrorist'"?