The main value of an IDE is having a Window Editor and being able to step through with the debugger. Although a window editor doesn't really help you very much in Java!! http://madbean.com/anim/totallygridbag/.

If the web was really going to focus on "performance" the W3C should start working on a precompiled_bytecode tag. Thus alleviating the browser from munging though all that text and then compiling. (Re-posted because I can't have angled brackets in plain-old-text how lame.)

If the web was really going to focus on "performance" the W3C should start working on a tag. Thus alleviating the browser from munging though all that text and then compiling.

"On The Origin Of Species" was a populist book also. From the wikipedia article: "The book was written to be read by non-specialists..." There was also a very interesting NPR show a couple of weeks ago about Darwin's life which went into how Darwin probably was writing the book for his wife who was adamantly against his theories.

I believe this is the crux of the issue for most people. Most people don't care about the source code they are using to modify a document. However, they do care if at some point in the future the document is un-editable in ANY software package. I believe the establishment of fully open and standard document formats is critical for the future growth of information technology. It seems we have many commercial forces at work (RIAA, MS, Comcast, etc.) trying to limit the usage and growth of technology for their own profit (no surprise) and open document formats (for word processors, audio and video, etc.) is one of the most important areas.

Yes - and the only recourse labor has is collective bargaining. Unions have been getting a progressively worse rap since the turn of the last century. Of course no doubt there has been a sustained campaign from business corporations and the government because unions aren't good for business. Other than that governments have the movement of labor stitched up so for things to be really fair we would have free movement of people in a global economy and that would sort things out right away.

I agree - but then make two types of computer:
1. an appliance which has limited functionality but does what most people need, e.g. internet, media, email and office, and is guaranteed to perform
2. a full functioning computer that gives the feedback that shows how the computer is working.

The main problem with Windows installs are the OEMs. Basically straight out of the box the user experience is shit. There is so much running in the background that boot up times can take up to 15 minutes. My daughters Toshiba laptop running Vista is virtually unusable. I managed to get it to a usable state after a couple of hours tinkering around stopping applications and services starting up at boot-up, and only using "classic" mode. Additionally, the user feedback is terrible. The OS does not give the user enough feedback for them to be able to act intelligently when something is opening, closing and generally taking up time. I want to see an OS which shows the user what is happening - not just turn the cursor into an hourglass - if you're lucky! I think the paradigm of computers has to change where more internal workings of the CPU, RAM, networking and disk drive are exposed to the user and part of operating a computer is getting to know what these things do and what they mean. We do this for driving a car - why do we have to hide the important feedback about the computer from the operator? This is especially important because we will continue to push the limits of the hardware with more complicated and resource heavy software (and we don't even have a really useful consumer level speech recognition solution yet!)

This is insane - if I was this kids parent I would BEG the school to treat this as a internal disciplinary matter rather than use legal means of redress. The principal is doing this student a FAVOR by acting as a calm responsible adult in this situation and showing that there are consequences for actions.