IIUC, Android under the hood is largely C with some C++ on top of that. True, the part that makes Android different from Linux may be largely C++...

The thing is, startups pay lousy money, but sometimes you get compensated in stock options, or even stock, and sometimes that stock turns out to be worth a lot later. Granted it's a crap shoot, but there's no safe way to make lots of money unless you already have lots of money, and even then it's not certain.

While there is a need for strongly typed languages, that doesn't imply that all languages should be strongly typed. More to the point, however, Scala appears to be staticly typed (I'm believing documentation here, I've no experience). Many problems are addressed only with difficulty via a staticly typed language.

Compatible with Java. OK. So is Jython, so is JRuby. Object-functional? Not quite sure what you mean, but I would guess that so are Jython and JRuby. Also Groovy.

This isn't really a response to the article, but rather to your comment. Unless you are in love with the Scala syntax, you don't seem to justify your point. Even Clojure would meet all the benefits that you list. (As well as several other languages.)

Personally, I dislike intensely Java's 16-bit char system. I much prefer either utf-8 or utf-32. Perfferable either chosen as needed. Alternatively the Python3 opaque string type with conversions to the desired representation also has its benefits. (My real preference is uft-8, but then most of what I work with is ASCII, and I only need occasional double or triple byte characters. But for that to work the language MUST have appropriate library support. As Python, Vala, D, etc. have. Ruby has it via an add-in gem. Java doesn't seem to really have it, and as a result neither do any of the languages that are symbiotes. C and C++ are, admittedly, as bad as Java. You need a large and clumsy external library. Racket Scheme has this aspect handled well, but there are other reasons that it's less than desireable.)

So. Which languages will you need in 10 years? It's one that isn't popular yet. Vala is a possibility. So is D. And prehaps there will be applications for which Swift is desireable. I'm really dubious about Java. C will probably still be necessary, but I'm not sure about C++. Some successor of the current Scheme versions would be desireable, but it MUST implement IPC much better than any current Scheme does. Some dataflow language would be highly desireable, but I don't know of any decent conderes. (The one's I'm aware of are too specialized...though one of them could grow out of that.)

The language really needed hasn't yet been written. It will be designed to be easy to write multi-process programs in. And it will be easy for processes to submit messages to each other's read queues. Erlang is almost right, but it concentrates too much on immutability, which works quite well for a certain subset of problems, and is terrible for many others. The reall concept needed is isolated mutability, where mutability is all "thread confined" (except that I mean process confined). I don't think that it should be possible to pass pointers between processes, but perhaps it could be done if the pointer only pointed to totally immutable data and it's recursive equivalents.

As I said, this language doesn't seem to exist yet, but various languages have implemented pieces of it, so I don't see any intrinsic difficulty in creating the language.

Personally, I count the time that TSR took over D&D as the point at which the game started delcining and rigidifying. Prior to that is was much more creative and interesting.

OTOH, they did make it MUCH easier to mover characters from game to game.

The problem affecting the kernel appears to only be enabled with a specific set of optimizations, and only to matter for a specific class of programs.

Also, apparently the problem has actually been present for a number of iterations of the compiler, but a shift within the Linux kernel code has caused the compiler error to manifest. But the shift within the Linux kernel code was still valid C (C++?) code, so it was a compiler problem, even though it didn't affect most programs.

I, personally, dislike swearing even when "sanitized".

OTOH, I do realize that this is my personal taste. I feel it makes the communication less clear.

OTTH, written communication lacks the richness of communication by speech. This means that there is no inherent channel corresponding to tone of voice. When someone uses swearing as a substitute for certain tones of speech, it's really hard to say there is a better option. The alternative work-arounds tend to be verbose. Also, swearing via the use of the term "shit" appears to be something we inherited from our common ancestor with chimpanzees, because if they are taught to sign they will automatically use the term "shit" to describe persons and situations that they dislike.

Of the winners in computing, those that won because of technical merit are swarmed by those that won for other reasons.

I mean just look at some of the match ups
DOS vs Everything else available ?
Windows vs Everything else
Microsoft office vs Everything else
X86 vs Everything else
ISA bus vs NuBus vs MCA
DirectX vs OpenGL

Technical merit only seems to matter when it completely crushes every other factor as in transistor vs tube, IC vs transistor, CMOS vs TTL.

Theocratic is not fascist. The Muslim groups were originally theocratic, and that is what they appear to be headed towards again.

Just because it's vile and evil doesn't make it Fascist. Fascism involves commercial entities (usually corporations) having power over the government, and the government having power over the commercial entities, in such a tight bond that both do wha tthe other desires. In the original fascism this was the unification on Italy, and the creation of a powerful military so that nobody will laugh at it. (It did unify Italy, but the military wasn't all that great.)

Note that Fascism is not at all the same as nazism. I'm not even totally convinced that nazism is even a form that fascism can take. They did have certail similarities in methods of operation, but many of those are used by most governments, which makes them useless for categorization. Nazism seems to have been a combination of dictorship and theocracy, though I can't really say I understand it well enough to be sure.

Also not that just because I'm saying the Muslims are drifting towards theocracy doesn't mean I think they're heading towards nazism. I don't. What they *are* headed towards might, however, not be any more pleasant. They seem to be headed towards a "reestablishment of the Caliphate" whatever that means, but it seems to include a divine dictator at the center, with his sucessor chosen by a violent internal power struggle whose details are hidden. This seems calculated to pick the slimiest schemer as the successor. The one benefit is that he'll almost certainly be intelligent.

OTOH, just because they are currently drifting in a particular direction doesn't mean that they'll ever get there.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/dr/hl...

Since my answer is a bit nitpicky, I doubt that you'll be satisfied, and additionally I am not deeply knowledgeable about the current situation, howevr:

First, please note that fascism is not nazism.
Fascism: (from Wikipedia) Most scholars agree that a "fascist regime" is foremost an authoritarian form of government, although not all authoritarian regimes are fascist. Authoritarianism is thus a defining characteristic, but most scholars will say that more distinguishing traits are needed to make an authoritarian regime fascist.

For me the additional factor is that corporations and the government work together in a tight connection.

Given this, I would say that both Israel and the US are fascist governments. Both are a bit weak on the authoritarian aspect, but the US, at least, has been becoming increasingly authoritarian over the past few decades. I'm not sure about Israel. I have a feeling that Israel might be tending more towards a theocracy, but I have no direct knowledge.

OTOH, loosely used (as I suspect the grandparent was using it) fascism is a powerful group that uses its power to oppress those opposed to it. That clearly fits most existing governments, but people usually refuse to see that the definition is to broad to be of any use.

Thirdly, the fact that your family was victimized by some group 50 years ago doesn't prevent some group you currently support from practising the same tactics. I'm sorry if you find that comment distasteful, but it's also accurate.

As for the "anti-semetic" part, most of the Israelis are not Semetic. Many of them are ethnic Russians. There's a tangled history behind that, but most of the Semetic Jews are Shephardic. (Not all, but the Diaspora was a long time ago, and over the centuries there was a lot of interbreeding, joining by conversion, etc. to the extend that the non-Shephardic jews are only very slightly Semites.) So to be anti-semetic in this conflict you would be against the Palenestinians (who also aren't all that Semetic, but are more so than most of the Jews).

Pardon me if I don't think that would solve the problem. Passing a law doesn't prevent people from violating it, and neither Israel nor the Palestinians have any reason to trust that the other would continue to be peaceful once the foreign eyes were off them.

Israel is already about the minimum size for a viable country. You're asking it to be further reduced in size. And it's not at all clear that if it made the agreement AND the Palestinians kept their part of it AND the Israelie's kept their part of it, no other neighboring country wouldn't decide to expand its borders.

I don't like being pessimistic, but I don't see any decent end to this conflict.

It's not a very moral attidude, but it's a very human one. I'm sorry if your species disappoints you. (I wish it didnt' regularly disappoint me.)

People tend to care more about a friend's daughter's puppy being rescued from a well than they do about 100.000 people they've never heard of being tortured to death. It's not exactly moral, but it's the way people think. They can empathize with the friend and the daughter, and even with the puppy more than they can with the "larger number than I can picture" number of strangers they've never met.

No. The main difference is that in Syria the conflict as several plausible solutions. In the Israeli problem I see only three, and the most humane would be condemned by every Jewish, Christian, or Muslim on earth. (I.e., conscript 100% of the infants born in either Israel or Palestine, anonymize them, and place groups of them in Kibbutz run by combined groups of the parents, There is a 75% chance that one of the kids they are raising is their own, but they don't know whether or which. If parents aren't willing to participate in the Kibbutz, sterilize them, and let them go.)

Unfortunately, the other answers I see involve one group killing off almost all of the members of the other.

Even more unfortunately, I don't think my "anonymize the kids" approach would work as designed, because the racial stocks are now too different, so the adults would able to determine that there was no chance that they were related to a large number of the kids. And you need to have adults raising the kids, because communal nursuries where that doesn't happen fail miserably. There might be a way to adapt it, but why bother, it will never be tried anyway.