You may be surprised if you actually looked it up at how much Google and YouTube use Python. Here, let me do that for you: http://www.python.org/about/quotes/. Facebook is built on PHP, a language designed to solve the same types as Ruby. Other than Oracle and IBM, none of those companies make much if any use of Java as a core language for any of their products.

The reason Java is still alive and well is not because it's a good language. It's not because Oracle does a good job patching security faults with it. It's not because it may be able to run most of it's code on any given OS that can run its VM.

The reason Java is still alive and well is because it is the OO language most schools, universities and colleges teach in their CS classes.

It's obvious who came up with this idea too. It certainly wasn't one of the developers thinking it would be "a good feature to add". It was some suit in an office that had this 'great idea', ran out and said "CODE THIS"!

THIS.

I was about to post the same thing. The 5th Amendment is there as a protection to help enforce the burden of proof. By forcing someone to answer the question "Did you commit the crime?" removes the prosecutor's burden to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the defendant is guilty, and places it on the defendant to prove their innocence. The difference between the police finding a bloody knife in the house using a search warrant, and directly answering the question "Did you do it?" is that the defendant didn't escort the police and show them where the bloody knife was -- the police do not require any involvement from the defendant to get a search warrant and execute it to find a bloody knife in the suspect's home.

The fact that this didn't even enter the OP's mind is not only worrisome, but then to devise a 'contest' so he can then say "No one was able to show me in my terms how my logic is flawed!" is even worse. Unfortunately, that also shows that he has precisely the required mindset to be a very successful politician in today's day and age.

This is the guy you see walking down the street, holding his iPhone at eye-level while texting...because it avoids neck pain.

It's OK. It's obvious he's not doing serious programming. He can't figure out where to put his laptop in relation to his monitor; how's he gonna figure out how to put a char inside of an int?!

Doesn't take a blind frog, or a frog with eyes on it's ass for that matter, to learn they don't like getting the shock treatment...

I got my 1.206 Septillion IPv6 addresses, who's with me?

I do concur.

I must type slowly, cause it wasn't there when I started my reply...but Slashdot comments work on Lightning Speed.

It might be just me, but it sounds like about a year ago, especially in the US, was when the price hikes for online 'radio' streaming stations was such BIG news that they were all about to be shut down.

#1. The RIAA didn't like it cause they didn't get their $$$.
#2. They lobbied to have the prices increased cause they were plain greedy, and apparently don't like people to listen to music.
#3. What's the difference to radio in your car?
#4. For me - I've had a 3G or EVDO phone capable of streaming Net Radio for years. 1xRTT or Edge coverage? Pick a lower-bitrate station. Same music.
#5. Why pay $15/mo. for Satellite Radio ala XM or Sirius when you can stream from your phone and plug into your car stereo? Sure it might cut in and out now and again, but you're not forced to pay $$$ for your music, and no radio upgrades to "HD Radio".

Especially with the advent of the iPhone, and the iPod Touch, music players with built-in WiFi, a lot of this issue goes away. I can tell you there's RARELY a time I'm either 1.) Away from my computer. 2.) Somewhere without my iPod Touch or iPhone. 3.) Somewhere I'm lacking 3G/Edge coverage on my iPhone. And if I am in a place like that, I turn on the ACTUAL CAR RADIO, or listen to some of the albums I've BOUGHT. Wow. Listen to the music you own, or to what other people are listening to. What a concept.

I think the RIAA shot themselves in the foot here, by trying to get their $$$ and forcing such a HUGE increase in royalties paid that they ended up bringing so much attention to the issue that everyone jumped on board. Whoops. How much did streaming radio stations save in advertising revenue to get listeners, when the RIAA yelling and screaming 'NO! MY MONEY!'??? Bring that kind of national attention to yourself, and folks will flock from everywhere to see what it's all about.

Downloading and owning your music is good and all - and a lot of folks have posted as such - that they want to own it. Then BUY THE CD or buy the album from iTunes. If you just want to listen to random music ala radio - stream it, what's your problem?

Plus, you can't discover new music and new artists by listening to the same shit that you OWN over and over and over. That's at least ONE thing the streaming stations provide.

That, and YOU try and find me ONE real 'radio' station that everyone can tune in to that plays the same stuff as GROOVE SALAD from Soma.fm on the regular airwaves. Then tell me it's not worth it.

No one has mentioned TestDisk yet??

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

I've used this plenty of times, restoring 'blank' hard drives (especially USB drives who's partition tables were corrupted) and file recovery works great with NTFS, as well as most other filesystem types...