Second this, and mod parent up into the heavens. I have been using Julia for number-crunching ( trial factoring large numbers, finding Fibonacci primes, large matrix multiplication, PageRank on large graphs => eigenvalues on very large matrices ), and Julia is simply brilliant. The two guys behind the project seem to be working day and night, bug fixes are very very fast, speak 1 week. Julia runs on LLVM, is lightning-fast, and has a rather coherent design. A colleague ( researcher ) of mine is still on Matlab, as she has simply no time now to learn Julia; hearing her curse Matlab is as frequent as lunch breaks.

Holy shit !

Are there actually people still believing that Bushian crap ? Obviously, yes ( at least you ). Up to the next interventionist war which will cost the already-bankrupt US a trillion dollars. Well done, well done.

That is a blatant case of techno-optimism, and a surefire recipe for failure.

1) a protocol

2) sufficiently wide approval of said protocol

So how do we get that ? In our world, there are five ways to build systems: a) technoloy-driven ( done by the Gyro Gearlooses of our world ) 2) purpose-driven systems ( MS Office et al., ain't gonna work here ) 3) sociotechnical systems ( may work here ? ) 4) politicotechnical systems ( basically, things like the entire Internet, or national highway networks ) 5) open source systems ( seems to be the best candidate here ? )

The country I live in is not perfect, true. Although, not having reached the same level as not-perfectness as the USA, in spite of its population's tininess, it beats said USA by a couple of horselenghts. I live in Austria, BTW.

Do you really believe that, as you have an NRA and a gazillion of shotguns all over the country, you are capable to keep your own government in check ? Then, how come that all those rifle-toting and hard-working rednecks did nothing to prevent your own government from 1) spying upon you 2) running your federal deficit up wazoo, to the point of being, as a state, virtually bankrupt 3) losing three major overseas wars ( Vietnam, Irak, Afghanistan ) in a row with your own money ?

Good point. The French revolution began in Paris, with its - for then - record-high concentration of poor people. So did the communist revolution: it began in St. Petersburg. Not on the countryside. LA, what are you waiting for ?? ;-)

As a European, as a matter of fact, I do have that understanding. Hence, my post. ( The French Revolution, 1789 - 1792, began for less than what is going in the US today, BTW. )

Mod parent up into the sky, please. As a European, I am watching at the sideline, with ever-growing incredulity, how US Americans take all this, and worse, and more, from their so-called "government", from their unbelievably brutal "law enforcement", from what once was their state. What do you people need for an incentive to kick off a revolution ? Maybe if the US government put almost 1% of your population into prison, you would finally protest. Oh no, shit, wait....

Interesting. This issue seems to have about the same potential to form the subject of a religion war as, say, programming languages, IDEs, editors or OSes. Very interesting.

I use a Blackberry. A BB Bold, to be precise. It makes me look with pity upon iOS / Android / Windows Phone users. Security is tight, the OS is as stable as QNX ever was. Someone here complained about the thing getting hot when used for gaming. Heck - a BB is **not** a toy, you use it for doing business. Apps ? Over more than 2 years, I downloaded exactly 2, for very precisely described needs. All the rest I need ( email, contacts management, evernote, calendar, LinkedIn ) was **already** on the phone when I got it. If BB goes down, I'll have a major problem. If not, I'll be one of their staunchest supportes. But then again - I use NetBeans as an IDE, and drive a Saab :-)

"We were not missed before we came / when we'll be gone, it shan't be different". Anyone who realizes that, can happily set him- or herself such a limit as in TFA. Not a bad idea at all. My limit is the day I will be obliged to admit, honestly and only to myself, that I can't do productive work anymore. Wurscht if that is 60, 75 or 80.

Where are the fucking mod points when you need them... Mod parent up.

Nope. Not on one of my many Linux boxes. But I have it running on my sole, proud Solaris / Intel box :-P

Because Google Maps compares awfully with Open Street Maps and other mapping services. Moreover, Google has gained too much power, way too large a piece of real estate in the town called the Internet, and knows too much about too many of us. Google should be broken down into pieces, just like Bell once was.