Staring to like Russia? You do realise that it's one of the most undemocratic and corrupt countries on earth and that most promises of significant reform that Medvedev/Putin have made over the years are meaningless. If you don't believe me go and live there for a while..
Or put http://www.senatoronline.org.au/ first. If they get a senator in, you can direct them to vote how you want and lobby your friends to do the same..
I wonder if anyone read TFA or just saw the word Monsanto and started frothing at the mouth/keyboard. For those too lazy to read it, here is what Prof Jones said about them: "Some fear the domination of the seed industry by multinationals, particularly Monsanto. Monsanto is certainly the most determined and successful agbiotech company. In their view, they had to be; they bet the company on agbiotech because unlike their rivals (who also sell nylon or agrichemicals) they had nothing else to fall back on. But monopoly is bad for everyone. Here's a part solution; deregulate GM. If it costs more than $20m (£13m) to get regulatory approval for one transgene, lots of little GM-based solutions to lots of problems will be too expensive and therefore not deployed, and the public sector and small start-up companies will not make the contribution they could. Never before has such excessive regulation been created in response to (still) purely hypothetical risks. The cost of this regulation - demanded by green campaigners - has bolstered the monopoly of the multinationals. This is a massive own-goal and has postponed the benefits to the environment and to us all." That sounds more to me like he is encouraging changes that would open up companies like Monsanto up to more competition. There are perhaps other regulatory changes that may help too (removing subsidies and relaxing the scope of what is patentable and for how long would also be very helpful) but the comment he makes seems quite valid. And not the sort of comment that a shill would make.
I kind of have the opposite view. The language is ok - but kind of verbose and a bit quirky as one of its design goals was to keep it similar to C++.
However, for all the criticism that you may level at its API (and not all of it is awful - most is reasonably usable) what I like is that it does *so much* and it's available everywhere and works in the same way. That's a huge time saver. When I moved from Windows to Linux as my main OS, I didn't have to relearn *anything* to continue doing Java development; the main Java IDEs were identical as they're written in Java too. And when I go back to Windows at a client's site and they're using Java, it doesn't phase me more the same reason.
I agree that Java is showing its age. C# has the advantage that is was designed several years after Java and learnt from its mistakes. Also, Java had a philosophy (for quite a while although it seems to be changing) that language changes should be made quite conservatively.
However, there are some languages that run on a JVM that integrate perfectly with the Java API but have all the C# features you mention (and many more). I highly recommend looking both at JRuby and Scala.
More importantly, use a List interface (or even better, a Collection if you don't need all the methods in List) to reference whatever type you decide to instantiate. That way, you can change between ArrayList, Vector, LinkedList - and a whole lot of other types by just keeping the change in one place - where the variable was initialized. If you use Collection, you can use ever more types. Remember, your program is a "living" thing - it _will_ change so make it easy for it to change by using interfaces appropriately...
There are a small number of countries that contribute to the majority of greenhouse gas emissions - China, India, the USA are all major contributors.
Developing countries like China and India are likely to increase their emissions at a greater pace than developed countries to continue their faster economic growth.
Politicians are loath to make unilateral cuts in emissions because it undermines their international economic competitiveness - and in many cases what impact would country "X" cutting its emissions have globally if nobody else follows along?
Politicians are loath to take effective economic measures (eg carbon tax) not only for the reason above, but also because many people are more concerned about their jobs and how much money they have to spend and this is, has and always will be a major political motivator.
Getting an effective global agreement that requires *all* countries to co-ordinate their efforts for a greater good (be it the environment or economy) while making significant economic sacrifices at home that are politically unpalatable is *extremely* difficult. I believe the Kyoto agreement and the last global trade round (which is almost dead) are good examples of this type of failure. (Neither the WTO nor Kyoto are total failures but on the balance they fall far short of what they ultimately wanted to achieve).
If you accept all of this, a technological solution to counter global warming, if it is economically viable has one great advantage: it would be simple to implement (politically speaking). For that reason alone, it is worth continuing research for the day if (when?) other solutions fail.
Indeed, Christians aren't that great either. I wonder how many of them have read these in The Bible:
God orders the murder of all the worshipers of a different god in their very own church! In total God kills 371,186 people directly and orders another 1,862,265 people murdered.
The God of the Bible also allows slavery, including selling your own daughter as a sex slave (Exodus 21:1-11), child abuse (Judges 11:29-40 and Isaiah 13:16), and bashing babies against rocks (Hosea 13:16 & Psalms 137:9).
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Staring to like Russia? You do realise that it's one of the most undemocratic and corrupt countries on earth and that most promises of significant reform that Medvedev/Putin have made over the years are meaningless. If you don't believe me go and live there for a while..
Or put http://www.senatoronline.org.au/ first. If they get a senator in, you can direct them to vote how you want and lobby your friends to do the same..
I wonder if anyone read TFA or just saw the word Monsanto and started frothing at the mouth/keyboard. For those too lazy to read it, here is what Prof Jones said about them: "Some fear the domination of the seed industry by multinationals, particularly Monsanto. Monsanto is certainly the most determined and successful agbiotech company. In their view, they had to be; they bet the company on agbiotech because unlike their rivals (who also sell nylon or agrichemicals) they had nothing else to fall back on. But monopoly is bad for everyone. Here's a part solution; deregulate GM. If it costs more than $20m (£13m) to get regulatory approval for one transgene, lots of little GM-based solutions to lots of problems will be too expensive and therefore not deployed, and the public sector and small start-up companies will not make the contribution they could. Never before has such excessive regulation been created in response to (still) purely hypothetical risks. The cost of this regulation - demanded by green campaigners - has bolstered the monopoly of the multinationals. This is a massive own-goal and has postponed the benefits to the environment and to us all." That sounds more to me like he is encouraging changes that would open up companies like Monsanto up to more competition. There are perhaps other regulatory changes that may help too (removing subsidies and relaxing the scope of what is patentable and for how long would also be very helpful) but the comment he makes seems quite valid. And not the sort of comment that a shill would make.
I kind of have the opposite view. The language is ok - but kind of verbose and a bit quirky as one of its design goals was to keep it similar to C++. However, for all the criticism that you may level at its API (and not all of it is awful - most is reasonably usable) what I like is that it does *so much* and it's available everywhere and works in the same way. That's a huge time saver. When I moved from Windows to Linux as my main OS, I didn't have to relearn *anything* to continue doing Java development; the main Java IDEs were identical as they're written in Java too. And when I go back to Windows at a client's site and they're using Java, it doesn't phase me more the same reason.
I agree that Java is showing its age. C# has the advantage that is was designed several years after Java and learnt from its mistakes. Also, Java had a philosophy (for quite a while although it seems to be changing) that language changes should be made quite conservatively. However, there are some languages that run on a JVM that integrate perfectly with the Java API but have all the C# features you mention (and many more). I highly recommend looking both at JRuby and Scala.
More importantly, use a List interface (or even better, a Collection if you don't need all the methods in List) to reference whatever type you decide to instantiate. That way, you can change between ArrayList, Vector, LinkedList - and a whole lot of other types by just keeping the change in one place - where the variable was initialized. If you use Collection, you can use ever more types. Remember, your program is a "living" thing - it _will_ change so make it easy for it to change by using interfaces appropriately...
There are a small number of countries that contribute to the majority of greenhouse gas emissions - China, India, the USA are all major contributors.
Developing countries like China and India are likely to increase their emissions at a greater pace than developed countries to continue their faster economic growth.
Politicians are loath to make unilateral cuts in emissions because it undermines their international economic competitiveness - and in many cases what impact would country "X" cutting its emissions have globally if nobody else follows along?
Politicians are loath to take effective economic measures (eg carbon tax) not only for the reason above, but also because many people are more concerned about their jobs and how much money they have to spend and this is, has and always will be a major political motivator.
Getting an effective global agreement that requires *all* countries to co-ordinate their efforts for a greater good (be it the environment or economy) while making significant economic sacrifices at home that are politically unpalatable is *extremely* difficult. I believe the Kyoto agreement and the last global trade round (which is almost dead) are good examples of this type of failure. (Neither the WTO nor Kyoto are total failures but on the balance they fall far short of what they ultimately wanted to achieve).
If you accept all of this, a technological solution to counter global warming, if it is economically viable has one great advantage: it would be simple to implement (politically speaking). For that reason alone, it is worth continuing research for the day if (when?) other solutions fail.
Indeed, Christians aren't that great either. I wonder how many of them have read these in The Bible:
God orders the murder of all the worshipers of a different god in their very own church! In total God kills 371,186 people directly and orders another 1,862,265 people murdered.
The God of the Bible also allows slavery, including selling your own daughter as a sex slave (Exodus 21:1-11), child abuse (Judges 11:29-40 and Isaiah 13:16), and bashing babies against rocks (Hosea 13:16 & Psalms 137:9).
For more see here.