I wonder why they don't help out with the Lithium-Sulphur battery idea and start from there...

Done and done: see Demolition Man

I think you've got it right - for some ideal world lacking other impetuses.

A more interesting question in my mind is: how to predict business' push for one type of app over the other(s)?

Microsoft is in some respects falling by the wayside, so they've jumped on the subscription bandwagon for applications - not just support/service - which seems to contradict all of their previous practices as they nix MSDN subscriptions and forbid Windows versions of some Xbox games...

Concurrently Google has been removing many services people like and charging more for things like map-related services while they play around with YouTube and other websites many netizens seem to love. But they're also pushing their own OS, browser, and now hardware...

We live in interesting times, my friend.

8-PP

> without resorting to violence

From paralyzation and death from "accidents" for participants through nigh-typical gameplay, to soccer hooligans and riots when men's college, national, and international teams win (or lose!), to a figure skater having a competitor's leg(s?) broken...

I think you can see the violence inherent in the system.

8-PP

Joda is not the solution to anything, except another academic's ego.

You can thank the SpringSource people for that xml configuration POS.

They even thought they'd make their own version of Rails (even they already have SpringMVC) and came up with Grails - which is actually much, much worse than you might expect when it *cannot* produce a stack trace less than 150 lines long, and it makes all the problems with all of their other frameworks (which Grails relies on, even though it is rumored to have been based on Groovy) that much worse - imagine the lack of implicit configuration and frameworks you've experienced so far, except that *if you're lucky* you get less informative error messages than you've seen before. Typically instead of that something simply doesn't work as you would expect and you have to research it for a couple hours (or in the case of one of my colleagues, a couple WEEKS) to figure out why it doesn't work. And then use Groovy to change class behaviour to work around SS's POS.

Yeah, like that.

So when is Nokia going to release a phone?

frak the fracking?!

I remember the whole class getting stumped on how to use variables - in Algebra in 6th grade. It took a lot for us to finally wrap our heads around it. Unfortunately I'm not sure how it finally happened - Eureka moment or not.

I hate that. And it started in high school! Except for Calculus: good book + good teacher + dedicated student = edification!

Who are you referring to? Do you actually think *anyone* voted in as POTUS has a better chance doing something counter to the current establishment? Even if they did, how/why would people believe them during the election season (2 years now?) Politics has won: humans can't believe anything anyone says so all you have are the *grunt*grunt* political parties - mobs voting for mobs, and no one is accountable, responsible, or worthy of respect.
Do tell: what is the alternative in this modern age?

mod parent up! Do *not* welcome your lawyer overlords!

This. Mod parent through the roof!

Naive question perhaps, but: what are the alternatives to a central bank? Past, fiction, theoretical, etc. example apprecitiated!