It's still more work that gui dev because you have to marshal state between the server and the app, but it's gotten a lot better.

libraries like jquery have been solving this problem for a while.

"I left out one more trait: they don't quit trying even after initial success is achieved." haha, so true. I've known some that lose their money because of this.

"When asked if it can be done, they don't start with "no"." I lot of them take this to an extreme and have no qualms promising things that are very hard to deliver. On a side note, I have a friend that owns a medium size company. He bought it after it was medium sized and it's shrunk ever since. I think it's because he's the opposite of this trait. Rather than trying to expand to new things, he focuses on cutting costs.

I know a number of rich .com people. They aren't that smart (above average for sure but not super smart), in fact most of the non rich geeks that built their systems are a lot smarter. I'm convinced that intelligence isn't the prime factor, or even in the top 3, of becoming rich. Ability/desire to take risks may be the top factor. Singular unhinged focus on "business" to the exclusion of all kinds of things like their family seems to be another. Both of these are above intelligence as factors determining wealth in my experience. I also know a lot of really smart people that are just middle class. They have a terrible time functioning in a structured environment and prefer to spend their time pondering whatever whim interests them at the moment. This isn't a recipe for wealth, but it is a recipe for intelligence. So I have two anecdotes to your one. Does this mean anything?

Go Bellkor!!! Sorry, I'm biased :)

cloud computing doesn't have a clear definition, but if we are talking about things like big table and map reduce then it certainly isn't inefficient in a big picture way. It basically breaks down like this. If the data set you are working with can be handled by a single machine then that will always be more efficient, but if you know that your data set is too large for that then things like hadoop are a much better approach, and more efficient, than the traditional methods.

these micro benchmarks don't mean much of anything in all honesty. I'm not sure what you mean by "native code". Java uses a jit so it uses native code for many things. Also, the jvm can make optimizations at run time that no static compiler can.

I'm not a fan of java the language, but the jvm is an awesome piece of software. Sadly I think java the language has given the jvm a bad name.

You didn't say JVM, you said Java. :) I'm sorry

Clearly in the context of processor efficiency. So now you're claiming that my use of java instead of jvm in the context of processor efficiency leads to a logical reply about poor java libraries?

I know most people that are reading at this point think I should drop this, but I'm endlessly fascinated at the lengths people will go to avoid admitting any form of mistake or oversight.

And the jvm is far more efficient than python. The stuff done with the jit is very impressive.

Let me see if I understand. You read the original comment about cash cows and efficiency. You then read my reply about the jvm being efficient (in the processor time sense) and you decided to laugh at me because java as a language has poor libraries. Really? Please keep talking because your simply digging a deeper hole. Btw, there are many languages on the jvm. I happen to use jruby and would use that on GAE not java. I'm not a fan of java either, but the jvm is a great platform. This past week I wrote a threaded indexer in jruby using java's util.concurrent library. Try that with regular ruby and C then get back to me.

You completely missed the point. The person I replied to was stating the the jvm is slow and that google would make a fortune because they charge for processing time. Your comment has absolutely no relation to the issue at hand.

libertarianism and anarchism are essentially the same thing from different angles. For example, Noam Chomsky described anarchism as the philosophy that any coercive power held over people must have benefits that overwhelmingly outweigh the loss of freedom.