Java has a vast ecosystem, excellent threading and concurrency support, robust monitoring and debugging tools, and can rival (or exceed) the performance of traditional compiled languages.

This is true for both small scale and large scale problems. For example, I wrote a little tool to do LDIF transforms in perl. Six hours later, it wasn't even half finished. Rewrote it using a Java library (UnboundSDK) and it finished in about twenty-five minutes.

On the other end of spectrum, I wrote a load-testing application that scaled cleanly to tens of thousands of threads. In a couple of hours. With no experience writing anything to that scale before.

(And the idea that Java is strictly Android these days is absurd. Your cable box runs Java. So does your blu-ray player. Along with ATMs, cash registers, voting machines, any number of enterprise applications, webservices, etc, etc. It is an incredibly pervasive language.)

It also turns out you can implement everything in plain Java libraries. In fact it is a heck of a lot easier, since you don't need to wrap the C modules; everything Just Works.

How big a stack do you need to match a 1320 tape library? Even using 4TB disks you're talking 825 disks, which means 51 enclosures. And then four racks to hold those enclosures. And enough floor space to hold those racks. And enough circuits to power those racks.

At that level of scale, tape is simply a better option for archival storage.

Or just drive the damn car.

I swear, I'm SO sick of this driverless car crap. I don't want one, I don't want to share roads with one, I don't want to even see them.
It's bad enough dealing with humans, the last thing I want is this.

We HAVE a way to get around without you having to drive. It's called public transportation. Get on a damn bus, taxi, or train.

I was expecting a troll - got a hilarious troll-tolling site instead. Very nice :)

I gotta agree. I mean, we know that they just made a sphere and mapped the photos onto it as a texture, but I would have preferred them to use either no star map or whatever was visible in the real photos.

NASA doing crappy CGI just makes it harder to convince people of the real stuff.

Yup, same here. I never *chose* to be a programmer, I wanted to work on AI/robotics. It just sorta happened, and I got out of that field *fast*.

IT in general - just - kids, don't do it. When you do good work, they want to lay you off or outsource you. When you screw up, everyone hates you.

My kids saw my work and decided to go into autos and welding. Says it all right there.

Yup, that's exactly what I was referring to. The paper white is actually quite nice.

I found that I truly detest reading on the new kindle, but the e-ink version and the e-ink Nook are both pretty nice.

I really like the new stuff, makes me almost want to start coding C++ again.

Hasbro has no idea what to do with it. They're probably not even sure what it is - so I guess we're just lucky it's not "My Little Pony Conan Adventure"

Interesting, as I'd argue that 3.5 and Pathfinder are like 99% the same, with the exception that Pathfinder doesn't have R.A. Salvatore on call, and they smoothed a few rules.

But hey - play your game your way, that's what it's all about :)