I went to a Christian school and this was hardly a secret. We had to take Christian Studies classes, where we learnt the history of Christianity including things like this.

Organized relegion is not just composed of faith but also of tradition and social order. In Christianity faith is belief in Jesus and hence God. Chrismas on the other hand is a mater of tradition, and to some degree social order. The fact that it was originally a pagan festival does not lessen its importants as a mater of Christian tradition.

Similar distinctions can be seen in religions around the world. In Islam (in my limited understanding), faith is the belief in Muhammed as the final prophet of God, while tradition and social order are primarily determined by Sharia Law. Sharia Law in itself is only in part derived from the Quran. As many Islamic communities have faced what they feel are existential crisis, they have turned to tradition and hence stricter observation of Sharia law.

In Japan, Shinto could be seen to exist as a 'relegion' but it is in reality devoid of all aspects of faith. It continues to exist as a mater of tradition with the observance of thousands (probably tens of thousands) of festivals/observances at shrines around the country. On the face of it, these festivals exist to (mostly) placate look Shinto 'Gods'. However, nobody seriously believes in these local 'Gods'. Even with Budhism the faith aspect is generaly very weak. Probably the biggest aspect of 'Budhist' faith in Japan is the visting of ancestral graves, which is closer to ancestor whorship than Budhism.

I'm sure there are similar examples from plenty of other countries as well but these sprang to mind.

To be clear I don't hate C++ at all. I find it a very powerful and expressive language but if the project requirements allow for it I'd rather use Java/C#. They're much more productive language to program in imo. No waiting for compiles, better tooling (e.g. refactoring), nice runtime errors, and the relative ease of integrating third party libraries being the main factors.

Couldn't agree more with you about Microsoft VC++. Clang is sooo much nicer.

No smartarse. The VC++2012 Chrono did have bugs and fail to conform to the standard but afik my code was compliant. VC++2013 fixed the VC++2012 bugs and introduced a new set of its own (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24586804/c11-chrono-in-visual-studio-2013)

Compiles in GCC/Clang/VC++2012 but not VC++2013**:
std::chrono::seconds a(10), b(20);
auto test = a / b; // Could also be uint64_t test = a / b;

** Disclaimer: I'm on Linux at home and so can't test that particular block. uint64_t test = a /b; definitely fails iirc

Java doesn't provide a higher level syntax than C++/Obj-C but it does provide a much more easily parsed syntax. The result is lightning fast compilation, sane compilation errors and excellent tooling support. Auto-completion, powerfull refactoring, background compilation and powerful lint tools make for a very productive programming environment. Even C# doesn't have full proper background compilation yet. Intellisense is close but there are whole classes of compile time errors that it doesn't pick up.

Similarly stability has done a lot for the language. Java is one of the few languages were I'm confident that I could build a project I wrote ten years ago with no issues. C++ on the other hand... ugh! Just last week I shifted a project from VS2012 to VS2013 and had spend an afternoon fixing random code breakage because MS broke their Chrono libraries and their retarded compiler gave errors in the template definition in their header file rather than the actual lines breaking compilation. Not to mention the ball of fun that was trying to get the latest versions of our dependencies to compile... Fun stuff like the 64bit build for some reason produced 32bit obj files... In Java land I add a line to Maven or for Android drop a library in the libs file and add it to the dependencies... Presto, nothing more to think about.

It's also a very readable proramming language imo. Packages=directories and one public class per file make navigating Java code very easy. Types are obvious and code is simple to follow. I've worked in C++,Java,C#,Javascript,Python and also on my own time in C and Haskell. Out of those I'd say Java and C# easily have the best readability. (For the record Haskell has the worst by far imo.)

I'm not sure if that is ironic. The Java runtime brings other benefits than cross platform compatibility. If I dereference a null pointer or use an index outside of array bounds, the Java runtime will give me a nice error telling me exactly what the error was, which line of code in which class caused it and what the sequence of calls that lead to the error was. Try doing the same thing in C++/Obj-C. If you're lucky the code will be running on a developer machine and you can hook in the debugger and if the code isn't too heavily optimized maybe even get the line of code it occured on. If you're unlucky the code is on a production server/client system somewhere and your stuck trawling through a log to find the error. (For the record record Haskell easily takes the title of hardest to debug language thanks to lazy evaluation.)

Plus it's not like C++/ObjC have no runtime. For example, if you don't have the right VC++ redistributable installed, you'll get nowhere trying to run C++ application compiled in VC++. Their runtime just doesn't include a JIT compilation stage (for better or worse)

Anyway here's the tl;dr: Java doesn't have exciting language features but it does have excellent tooling, excellent readability and is one of the easiest languages out their to debug. That too me is way more valuable than exciting language features. I prefer C# but I'm happy to work in Java instead.

My company got a few licenses for a project recently since our client wanted it done in C#.

From version 3 it has the ability to write cross-platform GUI code. The other option being to write Android/iOS GUI code seperately through C# mappings of their native apis. I wasn't responsible for trying the x-plat GUI part out but I do know that ultimately we were unimpressed and elected not to use it, instead developing for Android and later porting the GUI code to iOS. From memory it was just too limited.

It may be acceptable for routine business apps but then why not just develop them as a web-service and avoid the Apple-tax and pain of dealing with Apple's provisioning cluster fuck. (Seriously why do so many company's want to use iPads for internal apps? Distributing apps on them is a major pita)

The other pain point for us was third party libraries. In theory you can import jars and it will automatically map them to C#. In practice that doesn't work. We had to support mobile scanners with a laughably bad and somewhat broken API and broken default apps. I ended up writing an Android service to deal with all that crap. When it is time to add iOS support we'll have to write an iOS specific layer.. (iOS bluetooth access is too limited to directly access the scannner so that will probably involve treating it as a keyboard and capturing keystrokes...)

IMO. the real value is for Windows shops that want to utilize their existing investment in tooling/developer training, reuse existing core-logic code and/or write their core logic once in C#. For places like that it could be worth the several thousand dollars per developer.

If you don't mind me asking, what were you running on the servers which allowed an easy switch over? How did you go retraining a group of Linux admins to run Windows? Why not move off Redhat to another Linux platform?

CentOS 7 (so presumably RH7 and other RH clones) has a service command which just redirects to Systemd - exactly what you want. Chkconfig is also half turned into a Systemd wrapper. I recently set up a CentOS 7 gateway/DNS server/firewall/MTA. I think I had to type one or two Systemd commands to enable services. It was very easy and I don't think I even had to look at the man pages. Just started from the chkconfig output. No binary logs either. All the text logs I needed were in /var/log as always.

As has already been pointed out you were off by a factor of 100 and that's assuming the basis of your calculation is correct. It isn't.

Here is the actually CBO report: https://cbo.gov/publication/45...

They estimate 1.4 trillion over the next __10 years__ with a net cost of $36 billion in 2014. 36 billion for 11 million people is approximately $3300 per person per year. Without considering inflation that is about $33,000 per person over 10 years.

For comparison the US goverment in 2012 spent $4075 per person on healthcare (http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH_STAT#).

On a side note, European nations providing free healthcare to their entire population spent about $3500 (Purchasing Parity USD) per person in 2012. Adding in private expenditures and the US spent about 2~2.5x the amount per person on healthcare as comparible nations in Western Europe / Australia / Japan and generally achieved worse out comes in pretty much all categories.

I'm sure there are lots of valid criticisms of the Obama presidency but I'm not sure his foreign policy is so easy to fault. I mean, what exactly would he have been better of doing in any of those places?

What exactly was he meant to do in Iraq/Syria? Undo the decision to invade Iraq? Fix hundreds of years of tribal and religious divisions, which had already torn appart other neighbouring countires? Pump weapons and cash to some different assuredly better rebel group in Syria?

Building a coalition of local forces and providing aerial support / special forces support seems to be about the only sane path that doesn't get America (and its partners) even deeper into a massive mess.

Ditto for Ukraine. What should he have done? Or to put it differently what actions should he have taken to better suit the national interest of the United States - a very powerful but still very limited player? The reality is the problems have existed since long before Obama became president and he is ultimately as powerless to influence events as his predecessor was to influence events in Georgia. He has actually come out far more forcefully than Bush did in 2008. Current American sanctions are actually damaging to Russia and America has managed to lead an unwilling Europe into sanctioning Russia as well.

Then there is Afghanistan. What would you consider the right path there? The original objectives of the war - kill Osama and neuter Al Qaida had been achieved and he chose to withdraw. Was this the wrong decision? If now was the wrong time then when would have been the right time?

I'll have you know the website implementation process was par excellence for corporate software*.

Based on agile principles, the project was overseen by the VP for production, with advice coming from no less than two management consultancies. Actual day-to-day management was of course delegated to a team of internal PM's, carefully interfacing with the external consultancy PM's.

Stakeholder needs were carefully documented by a team of externaly contracted business analysts prior to commencement. Based on the documented stakeholder needs an internal team of architects, assisted by external advisors, handled the detailed design. Final implementation was handled at HP's center for excellence in Banglore, with BPO consultants providing the pipeline between the project managers and the implementation team.

Finally after coding was finished IT was presented with the completed website.

* Disclaimer: You may be surprised to know but n no way did I actually have anything to do with this project or have any idea how it was implemented.

When Valve has local (already higher than US) pricing in Australian dollars and forces people through their Australian store it is hard to argue that they don't have a business presence in Australia. Similarly when retail box games sold in Australia require Valve to be installed, it is hard to argue they don't have a local business presence.

I'm not sure if Valve does have assets in Australian but in the event they did attempt a "runner", the logical method for enforcing the ruling would be to sue them somewhere they do have assets. Courts aren't going to look nicely on failure to comply with court orders issued after due process of law, in countries that you had a business presence in.

Text books in Japan aren't actually very expensive. A typical text book might be about $20~$30 and doesn't include bullshit attempts to circumvent your ability to resell it.

Coming from Australia, I find books incredibly cheap in Japan. 750yen ($7.50) for a novel. I'm not sure where you are getting $10-$15 for magazines either. Most I've seen are about half that. For example Toyo-keizai (Japanese equiv. of the economist) is only 650yen ($6.50). The manga magazines are even cheaper than that.

The source for that claim is a BusinessWeek article from 2008. Here is some actual research: http://energytransition.de/2013/04/germany-builds-minus-six-coal-plants-after-nuclear-phaseout/

Basically:
1. Since the nuclear shutdown 2 new plants have been completed and 8 are under construction. However all were planned since before the nuclear shutdown.
2. Since the nuclear shutodwn 0 new plants have been planned for consstruction. Additionally, 6 plants which were planned have been canceled.
3. So the total change in planned German coal capacity is -6 plants and don't hold your breath for more, coal is becomming uncompetitive in Germany.

The OP's claim that US coal exports have increased is not incorrect (http://energytransition.de/2013/04/german-reliance-on-coal-from-the-us/). However it is a substitution affect. Not an increase in German imports. Actual coal energy production in Germany has remained flat

P.S. Sorry for the bad formating. Slashdot butchered my attempt to add an <ol> list with superflous <p> tags

I'm not Singaporean but of the Singaporeans I have met, I'm not sure many would agree about it being a choice. Plus the implication that they gained security, education, affordable housing and health care through giving up their freedoms is clearly wrong. Plenty of those countries have all of those things without being ruled by a billionaire dictator and his family.