The economics don't work in reverse. Paying $0.0006 to NOT see an ad generates very little revenue and takes a lot of people to do it. The people paying $0.0005 to put an ad in your face are buying lots of millions at a time and are expecting to make much more then that in aggregate by you buying their stuff. So from the advertising company they would push back against this. And even if they didn't the web host wont reverse the economics. From the web page hosting company if they wanted equal revenue, to make it work you would have to get as many people to pay to NOT see ads as you get paid for each ad delivered. But the ads delivered are bought in bulk - only a few people to invoice and paying you checks. Scale of billing is painful when your billing millions of people $0.0005 instead of dozens of people $1000. The cost it takes to bill and collect is generally linear per invoice not per amount. And then there is customer management and service. How much money will you spend answering emails and phone calls about "But I paid you 10 cents to hide 1000 ads ! I saw one today !" ... just answering that call/email will have eaten your profit for 1000 customers. So no, your not going to see add free paid-for services anytime soon ... the only way I could see this work is at an ISP level where as part of your ISP bill you strip ALL ads out ... but then do you really want the ISP mucking with your data flow ? Really ?

By 10th grade we weren't allowed to cite encyclopedias ... had to have Primary Sources.

Are you living in the 80's or what. I don't bother getting off the couch to make a power-point ... I don't bother getting out BED for that.

-XX11 is useful as its +1 faster than -XX10, should be the default really.

The Nobel "prize" isn't worth the money its printed on. Its a popularity contest, not an honor.

This only effects builders of FF not users. If they need a 64 bit system to build their own code who the hell cares ? Lame++

A) Steve wanted world dominance and couldn't stand the thought of users doing actual programming ... OR B) Hypercard basically sucked as an application and wasn't going to make any money

As A coder I can testify that the metrics have very little to do with the end result meeting up with the specs. What the Managers (aka 'bean counters') want to know is who should be paid more or less for their contribution. You can fairly easily measure code product quality against specs, and there are a million ways to do that. ( and a million different interpretations but its doable) what has NOT been found, to my knowledge, is to measure the developer ... did he do it fast enough ? efficient ? Elegantly, if he spent more time would the result be better or worse ? If you put 10 paid people on it would the results be as good ? better ? Thats the hard part. Measuring the *developer* not the product.

No I mean real BS. The core problem is not measurement but defining *what* is to be measured. To my knowledge that has never been achieved. Focusing on measurement is BS until we can agree on what is to actually be measured. To use your analogy. What is the measurement of a good cabinit ? How about a good piece of art ? Good in what way ? Value ? Prettiness ? Novelty ? Usefulness ? Uniqueness ? Utility ? Color ? Mass productivity (cabinits built per hour by X technology) ? Weight ? Shipping cost ? Price to produce ? Sales ? Measuring software IS BS until we define what the metrics are.

BS

Technology inst going to save your a$$ Pay attention and write with pen and paper. If you think recording the audio will help, watch "Real Genius". If your not paying attention (and asking questions) while the lecture is going on , you wont do so later.

As another poster mentioned, its not the "main" class that takes time its all the other jar files a real world app needs. A detailed analysis of this was presented at Balisage 2009 by Norm Walsh and myself. http://www.calldei.com/pubs/Balisage2009/index.html http://www.balisage.net/Proceedings/vol4/html/Lee01/BalisageVol4-Lee01.html Includes some pretty pictures and charts running tests across multiple OS's and platforms running real world XML processing in java, both by piecemeal (starting java for each operation) vs integrated into a single app (xproc and xmlsh). Results are 50x and up performance difference between having to start java for each operation or not. And these are pretty hefty operations to begin with (not "hello world"). -David

If you want the government to pay for you to "educate yourself" your in the wrong country. You may call it "bullshit financial reasons" but the the simple fact is that education in itself doesn't produce squat. It may be personally satisfying (and historically has been the Provence of the rich and aristocracy ) and if that's your goal then your on the right track. Work your 'day job' to pay for your 'hobby'. Its a great combination. You get paid and you get to enjoy your educational hobby. But if you that somehow you think academic ivory tower education is an actual economic benefit to society at large and deserve to be paid for it on its own merit without producing services of perceived value to society then you should stay in your tower. -David

So who in this story is saying "Don't Worry" and who is "Blocking the Exits" ? I get the part about "Great Publishing" and "Fire" - end-of-the-world stories make great news. But the rest of your comment is way over my head ....

So exactly whats the serial number of the universe your living in ? Great *salesmen* do the above. Great *Engineers* rarely ...