Finally, about the fact that you have to be careful about the stuff that you install, which is orthogonal to the problem that Windows systems slow down themselves even if you don't touch them: the problem is that people need to install stuff to make their computers work. Want to read PDFs (most people will)? You get one knick-knack with the relevant auto-update. Want to watch YouTube (most people will)? There goes another one. Want to be able to download stuff from the internet? If you're not an expert, and most people aren't, you're going to need an anti virus, and there goes another invasive software you'll need to install. The point is that my bathroom can be cleaned without burning down my house, whereas there's no such option to clean up Windows, which is another major design failure - in addition to the fact that the system slows down by itself.
It is not a matter of HD activity, either, and it's not superstition. Just two examples: in the case of Windows XP, which is post-Windows 98, we had the catastrophic Windows Update failure to scale that caused all Windows XP machines to become unusable for hours just some months ago. Back then it was a matter of CPU usage, not disk. In the case of Windows 7, which is post-Windows 98 too, you might have noticed that on machines with 2 GB of memory or less (which is twice the minimum required amount) another Windows Update bug caused the Windows Update service to eat all the available RAM and thrash the machine, again, into the land of unusability. In this case, it was a matter of RAM usage, not disk.
But above all, all points, even if they were true, are but minor differences in implementation, compared to the huge fact being the very nature of a bytecode that is supposed to be run by web pages, that alters the open nature of the web by making its pages write-only, and the introduction of a compiler into the workflow of HTML development. (Who will make the better compiler, Microsoft or Mozilla? Will php scripts output bytecode or do we have to change server-side scripting? What's the failure model for browsers implementing an older subset of the bytecodes?)
3) How is this different from Java, Flash, Silverlight?
It is different because:
A) It' s a w3c standarized effort
B) All the big players are behind it (Google, Mozilla, Microsoft and Apple)
C) It relies on the browser security model, it does not bypass it
D) It' s a low-level bytecode, more so than AS3, JVM or Silverlight, so it can run any language.
E) It runs in the same "space" as the DOM, it's not a separate/embeeded app.
In other words, it's exactly like Java but instead of being designed by a software company, it's being introduced by personal data sellers, ad designers, NSA henchmen, DRM paladins, government lobbyists and walled-garden tenders. And unlike Java, it's going to be used by every single web page and we won't be able to uninstall it. Sounds great, what could possibly go wrong.
Have the actions of Snowden, and, apparently, the use of weak encryption, made the world less safe?
Talk about yourselves. The world isn't UK, you know. If anything, Snowden's revelations have shown that it's the UK who performed hostile acts of espionage against their European allies, together and on behalf of their trans-atlantic big buddies, not Soviet Russia.
It has always been about preserving the privileges of the elite, and enhancing class distinctions.
I don’t know how it works in China, but in my country that’s the job of freemasonry.
Designing a language is a matter of trade-offs; certain languages are designed to make you code quickly (VBScript), which doesn’t mean that you can’t write robust code with them, and others are designed to make you write robust code (Java), which doesn’t mean that you can’t write buggy code with them.
Which addition operation triggers undefined operation in C because of unmatched types?
However, to be honest, I recall having problems with failing floppies all the way back to the 80s. On the C64, the drive would begin making a LOUD rattling sound as if its head had fallen off the disk and it was banging against the end of the rail; given my age at that time, this usually happened while a game was loading the last level that I had been playing for half a day to reach (no savegames back then). On the PC, I still remember how many times I found myself torturing the R key at the "Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail" prompt, usually to no avail. A friend of mine recommended me to put the failing floppies inside the fridge and try reading them again while they were fresh.
What the hell do French private labour laws have to do with the public debt crisis in Greece?
The banks won't allow any flexibility about my working conditions when I ask for a mortgage to buy my house; doctors expect to be paid with no flexibility when I have to maintain the health of my family; bills needs to be paid inflexibly at the end of the month. So I have to confess that this concept of "flexibility" that we are importing from the US is starting to piss me off, because basically it means that workers, the weaker part of economy and the one that actually does the job, have to take on their shoulders the risk of entrepreneurship, which historically was the moral justification for investors to make money without working.
And hearing that this is necessity from politicians who sit on mountains of public money, and on behalf of CEOs who can earn one hundred times as much as their employees, and can take the citizenship of Monte Carlo to even avoid paying taxes on that much, is unbearable. Again, I'm not talking about the CEO of Mandriva, it's just a generic rant.
All seems condemned in the long run to approximate a state akin to Gaussian noise. -- James Martin