Sounds like the start of a Ruby fanboi crowd right here on /.

Javascript is a powerful functional protyped-based language that is just as powerful as any other dynamic language. Libraries like jQuery show just how powerful and expressive the language can be while applications like google maps, gmail, etc show how capable the language is.

It gets most of its negative sentiment from devs who don't understand it fully to appreciate its strengths. I would suggest using the resources on http://www.crockford.com/javascript/ to learn some advanced techniques.

For anyone who's interested I have a Class.js as described on my blog http://www.servicestack.net/mythz_blog/?p=3 that simplifies using OOP in Javascript.

Every operating system can be further optimized. What's being tested here are the 'Default Settings' as proposed by the installer directly off the Installation Disk.
'The Defaults' also tend to have the characteristic of being the most widely used.

You are generally unemployable coming out of any University. A University teaches you the theory of the subject matter and how to learn. Its up to you to take those learning skills and master its practical application in the real world.

It's only them do you become employable/useful in a commercial environment. Otherwise you don't stand a chance of getting a job over other students who do (unless of course you took a minor in bull-sh*ting).

Somebody stop them!

I agree, I'm finally happy to settle with win7 for my desktop and deploy on a mix of win2008+.NET / linux+mono for server deployment.

I spent too much time over the last few years trying out a plethora of desktop OS's over the years because I was not happy with any Desktop which is why I'm still left with a mix of OSX's, Linux and now have switched my windows laptop & desktop to win7 at home.

OS X was a breath of fresh air but as a development environment I find myself a lot more productive with .NET/Java/Python development on win7 with its better keyboard shortcuts and VS.NET+ReSharper (which in my mind is the only killer app booting into windows at all).

I still prefer using OS X as my media centre, general web browsing and of course iPhone development, although I'm now happily settled on Win7 as my primary development platform.

The only real lacking feature I miss is a good command line interface, however Cygwin + vmware helps a bit in this area.

So I'm finally happy to spend the next few years on win7 instead of hunting down the perfect desktop OS - although as a power Ajax developer I am really looking forward to Google Chrome OS and hopes it shakes up OS Development again.

Win7++
XP sp2++
2000++

Everything else:
FAIL

We'll my friend the bottleneck is either with you or your computer.

OMG, Can anyone here post without a clue??

Silverlight is the runtime (think: JVM) of course you can't have a windows JVM and install it on Linux. That's stupid.

It's not the Silverlight runtime thats cross platform, it's whatever apps you build for that platform that makes it portable.
Let me break it down for you:

Silverlight Runtime ~= JRE
Silverlight Runtime ~= Moonlight runtime

These runtimes only runs on the platform it was built for, i.e. you can't run a windows JRE, on OS X, an OS X jre on Linux, etc, etc.

Silverlight .xap ~= Java applet .jar
Silverlight .xap ~= Flash .swf

The exact same .xap will run *NOW* on Silverlight+Windows/IE/FF/Chrome or Silverlight+OSX/Safari/FF

That my friend is what we call cross-platform, the same .xap I developed with VS.NET (or eclipse: www.eclipse4sl.org) will run unmodified now on OSX and is likely to run on Moonlight+Linux.

Once Moonlight is feature complete and all tests pass, the exact same .xap will run on Moonlight+whatever platform moonlight supports.

Save your phone money.

You should probably try it before you make any calls.

Here I'll write the test script out for you:

1. Enter a search-term in the search box.
2. Start your timer then press the enter key.
3. Double click in the middle of the search results page on a track.
4. Stop timer when you start hearing sound.

Timer should read 1s, Check.
What did you get?

This is because its Microsoft right? and Microsoft is incapable cross-platform software right?

So its just co-incidence that it also runs in OS X right?

I wish there was a filter to remove these baseless un-informed comments.

Microsoft itself supports silverlight on OSX (with safari/FF), so it will guaranteed to run there.

Any other platform/browser variant will probably need to be supported by moonlight to run (http://mono-project.com/Moonlight).

Moonlight compatibility is actually pretty advanced, as far as I understand there is a support contract between MS and Novell (Mono) that gives Novell access to all their Silverlight test suites, which is actually a big step in true-compatibility as if all the tests pass there is a very good chance that your silverlight app will work under linux as well.

Although even if Silverlight works it wont be able provide the User Experience that Spotify does, which is a very well-written truly native application with a primary focus on speed.

Well everyone at work uses it, so the best way I use it to discover music is to actually listen to each other's playlists.
To share a playlist just right-click on the playlist click 'Copy HTTP Link' and IM the link to a friend.

Other than that I just basically search for genre, i.e. 'acoustic', order by popularity and let it play.

They also have Artist radio (which I don't use very much), which basically looks like listening to a random set of tracks from similar artists.

I've actually discovered a lot more music I like on Spotify than any other service for a long time.

It's actually that good a service that I'm probably one of the few people paying the monthly £9.99 p/m to listen to music without interruption, as I think the service is actually worth paying for.

Because it's the fastest music player with the smallest footprint available that lets you listen to *any song* you want.
You can search and play a song in milliseconds.

There is no equal, period.

+ ReSharper.

Maybe your ok with "Qt apps look and operate just fine on Mac and Windows", but Google wants to build "the best browser they possibly could" for the most popular platform available, end of story. They've ended up producing the fastest browser available with a simple, clean and unobtrusive UI.