Which hell did you have in mind that is so plainly spoken of as a "real place"? Sheol (Hebrew for the grave)? Hades (Greek for the grave)? Tartarus (not forever, not for people)? Gehenna (trash heap outside Jerusalem)?

Yes, those are all spoken of as "real places". None of them are plainly a "place where people go to live forever while they're being tortured", which is what "...much of what modern Christendom believes about hell..." and which is derived from Dante et al and not from the Bible.

A possibly interesting tangent:

It may surprise /. folks to learn that much of what modern Christendom believes about hell is actually from this man and not from Moses, Jesus, Paul, Peter, et al. I.e.: The Bible doesn't really teach the version of hell everyone seems to believe in. Rob Bell has an easy to read book ("Love Wins", to which Francis Chan's "Erasing Hell" is a somewhat non sequitor of a response) and Edward Fudge has some somewhat more in depth treatises on this for people who want to exercise their Google-fu.

And yes, it's more complicated than "Dante Created Hell", with ideas from philosophers and other religions entering the mix. Dante just gave preachers a nice manipulative tool to scare the ignorant into toeing whatever line they drew. And, perhaps, give us some feeling of justice for truly evil people.

I don't think this has anything to do with consumers risking money on new products. This is a case of Really Bad Branding. Many consumers are not even aware that their new Windows tablet won't run Windows applications (if it's Windows RT). Not only so, but deciphering whether a tablet had "Real" Windows or Windows RT isn't always clear when looking at products even if you do know the difference.

I also don't think there's room for a "me too" tablet OS that has nothing compelling over iOS or Android.

OTOH, I really think Microsoft should be tooting their horns a little louder about tablets running real Windows 8.1 that can run any Windows application.

If any of these go to trial, then they may certainly present that as their defense at their trial.

It will be up to the judge and/or jury to decide if they believe them. A variation of your defense could also be used in attempted rape or murder cases. "I was just trying to see how hard (s)he would fight. I'd never have actually gone through with it."

Oh, and Clinton didn't inhale, either.

I am serious. Why does /. consider an article by a Microsoft shill bashing Google and recommending Microsoft's product to be worthy of our time?

Thank you in advance for any serious answers.

Exactly.

OP doesn't seem to know anything about Java.

This will not affect standalone Java programs, only applets.

It could be argued that they should have done this a long time ago.

Mark

From the second fine article: "It's the nature of employees to want to do the things outsiders might do for you. And it's not just money it's costing you. People coming from outside your organization are free to think without the encumbrances of insiders."

No, it's not. It's the nature of consultants to want to separate you as a company from your money. It is the nature of consultants to attempt to sell their services by any means possible, including questioning the work ethic and intelligence of employees.

"People coming from outside your organization are free to think without the encumbrances of insiders."

Yup. Instead, they are completely shackled by the encumbrances of outsiders: Not being truly invested in a company's well-being at the top.

I've been at this awhile now. I've been a consultant (and liked it) and an employee (and liked that, too). I've seen organizations go through the outsource-insource-outsource cycle enough to know it makes little difference.

BREAKING NEWS: Consultant Thinks You Should Hire Consultants.

You do know this is a True Holy Grail that people have been trying to build for a long, long time, right? Object orientation was, at least partially, supposed to be a step in this direction.

I think Smalltalk had promise (and still does), but it seems I'm the only person who actually likes it. :)

I think LOGO kinda sparks people's imaginations. I remember a product called "Object Center" on our Sparcs in the 80s or 90s that was really just a class browser. Then I saw Interface Builder on a NeXT and thought that was gonna be it. But it has turned out to be really, really hard.

You would be a hero if you developed a working, practical, usable graphical (which I think you mean by "symbolic") programming language.

Mark

I think the fact that it has Windows (and not RT/iOS/Android) makes it different. If it ran OS-X, I'd be just as interested. There is software I (and, I believe, others) use that only runs on OS-X and Windows. That would be a reason for some to get this. I've wanted a tablet. There isn't an OS-X one and the other ones that run Windows (again, RT is not Windows) are much more expensive than this. Of course, if Apple ever comes out with an OS-X tablet, it's probably going to cost at least $1,500.

Ok, I don't get the "meh" posts. Touchscreen. Keyboard. $400 for 64 gb version. Real Windows (i.e.: Windows 8.1, not RT).

This is a pretty nice computer at a very nice price.

And yes, it WOULD make a great movie plot. The protagonist really is a spy. And he really is a herpetologist, And he's pretty good at both. His character flaws could easily be written to develop from his time in secrecy and from the unfair disqualification of his research. Brown is just an epilogue: 35 years after his death, it turns out his research was right. They don't even need good writers if they stick to what actually happened.

Today's Dilbert is somewhat relevant.

I looked for and couldn't find anything about my religion (since the author says they had his wrong.)

If you think you're giving something away by giving them the initial information, you're sadly naive.

I do hope the site is truthful because the data they have on me was way wrong. Since it says we're hopelessly in hock up to our eyeballs and upside down on our mortgage (we're neither), I left it alone hoping that misinformation might get a few marketers to look elsewhere for someone with some spare money to throw their way on their stuff.

Mark

Sadly (and really only generally speaking - there are exceptions), private schools' quality is driven by market forces whereas public school policies are driven by politics. School officials obtain and maintain decision making positions and power by there connections. There is little to nothing even a group of parents can do to address this. When they do, it gets taken away.

For example, in my city, parents organize "booster clubs" to raise money for their local schools and improve the quality. But parents in poorer sections of the city are often genuinely unable to do this. For example, they have a disproportionate number of families with a single parent who barely makes ends meet and works too many hours to have time to invest in a booster club. Since this is unfair, the school system is working to take money from the booster clubs to distribute to the poorer areas. So, the parents have the incentive removed and, disheartened, give up. The school system has decided, essentially, "If those schools are going to fail, it's only fair that all schools fail."

The parents can't do anything to fix their public school, so the ones who can afford it take their kids out and put them in private schools. Ms. Benedikt is correct that there are Bad Persons at play. She is dead wrong about who those Bad Persons are.

As TWiTfan implied, this is one of those extremely rare examples where trickle-down economics actually works. Someone has figured out a way besides "Art" to get wealthy people to trickle some of their money out.