Why not? Some people prefer phones that are phones, listen to music on their home or car stereos, don't take pictures, and don't need or want a tablet. Even some old-school geeks of the type that Slashdot still has plenty of. People with Slashdot IDs in the range of mine.

Now me, I'm an old school geek in some respects, but I do have a smart phone, digital camera, "mp3" player*, and a handful of thumb drives. But I certainly know people who don't.

* I assume it plays mp3s, though I've never used it with anything but oggs.

You must not know many people, then. Since I started using test-driven development, I find I rarely turn to a debugger any more. Not that I ever used one much in the first place. In the early days, I found I was most likely to need a debugger when I started getting sloppy, so I tried to stop being sloppy, with reasonable success, and my use of a debugger dropped dramatically.

But it's partly a matter of style. Some people like to step through their code to make sure it's all doing what they expect. I find that tedious, so I like to write the code so that it tells me if it's not doing what I expect, so I don't have to bother stepping through it. I've also been programming long enough to be fairly confident in my understanding of my own code. (Other people's code is a different story, and my main use of a debugger these days is to step through other people's code.) Horses for courses.

Add in another $100 or so for a Windows license, at least in my case. And then, if you're going to connect it to the internet, you're probably going to need a bunch of security software as well. (Certainly I would, as I have no idea how to secure Windows. I haven't used an MS product since '97.)

The US gummit, yes, but not, unfortunately, state governments. Fortunately, the widespread works by the University of California Regents that so many of us use (like the Berkeley socket API on every machine with TCP/IP) have licenses that mean that we're safe even if APIs magically become copyrightable.

And it's not just random APIs that will become copyrightable. There is precedent against that. Oracle is trying to argue that because their API is so big and complicated that it some how magically becomes more than just functional. Most APIs aren't that big or complicated. So it's not going to be the disaster that some imagine, if Oracle wins. But it will be a disaster.

APIs were supposed to be settled already. There's always the chance that someone will come up with some bizarre new argument that goes against all precedent (which is basically what happened in this case). You can't ever assume you're safe doing anything creative (not just coding). But if the judge follows all the ample precedent (and the EU decision, which he is aware of), then it'll be that much less likely that anyone will try something this ridiculous in the future.

Mounting a losing lawsuit is not cheap. And for a public company, it can make you look bad in front of the stockholders. Ol' Larry is likely to be facing some hard questions from his about this whole case, especially after the appeals are done.

Bah. If their competitors don't know how to use robots.txt, they're not competent enough to be competitors. On the other hand, if Google is ignoring robots.txt, then I think that would count as unauthorized access, and, given Google's monopoly position, a matter of deep concern.

Note: I think a great deal of the anti-Google nonsense that gets posted on slashdot is total nonsense (if not outright astroturfing), but what the EU is looking at here is something I think they are fully justified in investigating: actual potential anti-competitive behavior that would make sense for Google to engage in. But I agree with you that investigate is the key word there.

Our modern world would not be possible without the genius of most of these guys (with the possible exception of that dick, Edison), and many other people as well. Tesla is a sympathetic case, what with needing years and years to get recognition for many of his inventions, in part due to his crippling social dysfunction. At the same time, his refusal to accept modern physics (relativity and QM) lead him to waste a great deal of time and energy on impractical lines of research. (Some of which is still adored by cranks and the woo-woo crowd, who love to claim that his ideas are "just now coming out".)

I'm not saying he doesn't belong on the list, or that he's not a good candidate for your vote. I'm just saying that he may be getting a bit overrated these days, due to sympathy for the fact that he was severely underrated during his lifetime.

Sure, defend your crappy, puerile sense of humor by pretending that anyone who doesn't share it lacks humor. :p :)

Man, what are you on about? I'm not trying to define "star". I think the current definition is probably fine. I only mentioned an oversimplifed definition to contrast with my proposed definition of planet. If you've got a problem with the definition of star, talk to an astronomer. If you've got a problem with my proposed definition of planet, then I'm the one you should be pestering. :)

That's nice, but the rest of us, who aren't trying to sleep with any of the Slashdot crew, aren't forced to laugh at their "jokes". :)