And those 78,000 users, many of which used email for about 20 minutes a week. In 2011, those 78,000 users each have a desktop, laptop or tablet, and phone, connected to the system 24/7.

Very different.

It looks like a standard Gnome 3 window to me.

There is a model of how to have an encrypted system replace its clear-text equivalent. SSH.

Math nerds are just making everything too complicated. Yes, there may be some technical perfection which we can strive for, in version 3.0 Version 1 is just totally fucked, it is both unsuccessful at being perfect, both technically and politically, and is just too fucking hard. Make 2.0 work, and work everywhere. When faced with a technical question, see what SSH does.

http://ask.slashdot.org/story/11/08/06/1841210/Ask-Slashdot-Does-SSL-Validation-Matter#We can solve 90% of the problem basically overnight, and put those bloodsucking extortionists out of business. Do what SSH does.

In addition to changing the circle itself, over the past 5 years they have also added a 3rd lane to both Chebucto (reversible) and the Bay Rd.

Traffic volumes have increased. I think that goes without saying. Maybe down in the past couple of years with gas prices and slightly better transit, but the 2000s are higher then the '80s.

It is always backed up at rush hour now, and it was before, too. But so is North St getting onto the bridge, and the Joe Howe interchange getting to the other bridge or the Bedford highway, and the 102/Joe Howe lights getting onto the 102. Fortunately, as much as we like to bitch, rush hour doesn't even last an hour. Try getting off Manhattan, at 4:30....

Meh, anyway. The guys with the iron rings hire high school students to count cars. All the statistics say that roundabouts are better in general, and specifically in Armdale too.

Indecently, they are adding/converting to roundabouts a lot in NS. The new interchange on the 102 for Bedford west has no less than 3 roundabouts within 500m. I don't know what has happened with the rotary at Picto, the one at the causway hasn't changed, but given its grade changes, it has had special rules and been barely recognizable as a circle for ever.

It used to be a rotary, with lights. Now it is a roundabout, without lights. And it is unquestionably better now.

When a "rotary" the main circle had two concentric lanes. And traffic entering the circle had the right of way. Traffic in the circle having the right of way is so mindbogglingly stupid it isn't worth further discussion. Anyway: concentric lanes means that to use the inside lane, you need to cross traffic twice: once to get in, and once to leave. When at all busy, the outside lane cars really have no chance at all to see signals, so changing to the outside lane, and especially crossing lanes to leave was borderline impossible.

With a "roundabout", the lanes are nested spirals. And you choose your exit when you enter, the lanes are clearly marked with overhead signs. You only cross traffic once, entering. Which means usually from a stopped position (unless there is no traffic, and then it doesn't matter). So the one question of dangerous movement you make when stopped. Leaving the circle happens automatically, as the spiral lanes leave the circle.

The rotary did have lights, but these were necessary given that design. The lightless roundabout is slightly more efferent then the signaled rotary it replaced. All the engineers and city planners were on the record that lights could return, if necessary.

Oh, did I forget to mention that the rotary was not fully operational all the time? I did.... During rush hours some of the entrance/exit options were blocked off by a commissionaire. Unless you were a taxi or a bus, you couldn't exit onto Quinpool during the afternoon rush.

As is, better than before. Safer, easier, more functional. Without the cost of lights and commissionaires (which, I grant, are pretty minimal).

Lets grant your point then. Lets assume that the general problem of updating software hasn't been solved by your local admin, your OS or the universe in general. Lets assume that updating software is the responsibility of the software VM and the various miscellaneous politics and technology that surrounds it.

Java imposes a set of problems *at least as bad* as just straight upgrading software.

I'm faced with the problem of updating firewall rules on an ASA. So I fire up ASDM to do so. And it fails, because its been a couple of weeks since I did it last, and Java doesn't want to work any more. So I try to upgrade Java, and am faced with the decision of installing the Yahoo toolbar in my browser or not. Really? Are you fucking kidding me?

Personally, I don't really care if the ASA OS is written in 6502 ASM, or in VB on an embedded 386. And I especially don't care if the fancy management tool is written in GWT (which actually does "just work", unlike JWS stuff), Java, or for that matter, even Flash. In this example, what I *want* to do is write a firewall rule. In dealing with this minor problem, I'm forced to deal with the insanity that is desktop Java - which is neither provided by SMS or a zypper repository, due to Suns apparent desire to annoy me.

Unsatisfied with just making me think of Java and Sun when I just click on some link somewhere and upgrade, I'm force to go through a barrage of links and licenses before I can download the software. On Linux, I'm forced to agree to the license *again* before I'm allowed to create a symlink by-hand to get it to work. Under Windows I'm forced to uncheck someones desire to force the Yahoo toolbar on me.

Again: Are you fucking kidding me? Faaaaahk! I don't have to jump through this many hoops to get MSDN software. Or trials from Novell, let alone shareware or OSS stuff.

Has no one at Sun ever tried installing software from anywhere? Is installing Java easier then it was in 1994? Sure. What is the hardest desktop software to install in 2010? Java.

Is building a JWS cheaper then paying for an Installshield license? I suppose. Is building a JWS easier then writing a .spec? It couldn't be harder, that I know. But I'm not a developer. I have 0 desire to have Java on any of my systems; it is a means to an end. Why must I think about it? Why is a developer tool trying to install a shitty search toolbar on my user centric web browser?

Java may (or may not, I'm not really willing to grant that point) make life easier for developers. But Java makes everyone else life harder. And does so with pleasure.

Of course, this is entirely beside the larger issue of "Java Web Start" that it not running in a browser (and this includes Flash), by definition, makes it not web based.

But the reality is that with DEBs and a repository, RPMs, and a repository, or MSIs and a SMS or Zenworks server, things Just Work(TM).

With Java, and "Java Web Start", any regular person runs such JWS programs so infrequently, that something working the last time is little guarantee that it will work this time. They upgrade their browsers between sessions, and break Java. Upgrade Firefox from 3.0.17 to 3.5.0 and *boom* everything gets faster, except Java applets, which break. For that matter, upgrade from 3.5.1 to 3.5.2, and things break. Go to java.sun.com and spend an hour finding the right JVM, JRE, JSE, JEE, JWTF, and click through licenses 3-4 times per, and you might get the right thing to make Java work again. Or give up trying.

Java - Sun, Oracle, whatever - has shot themselves in the foot here, I grant. Their asinine redistribution policy's all but forbidding anyone else solving this really trivial problem for them. The Java technology (in the billion senses of that word) is passable.

The Java politics is so mindbogglingly stupid that it managed to drag down a pretty good hardware company to scraps a software company bought up for pennies on the dollar.

Personally, I deal with a bunch of things that run Java. The server stuff isn't that bad, it does generally Just Work (though, I'll point out that Atlassian generally encourages people to run their "bundled" apps, rather then trying to add a .war to an extant Tomcat install.... .WARs solve only self-imposed problems, but don't even bring one back to the normal of 1993, let alone making a sysadmins job easier then everything else in 2010). But the applet which was built inhouse, and the Cisco ASA tool just about never work when I try to run them after an arbitrary amount of time.

I'll grant that JWS stuff works better then getting the unbathed masses to install a fat app. Is that a really high bar to get over? Has no one at Sun looked at management tools in the last 20 years?

Comparing JWS to DEBs, RPMs, or MSIs with a reasonable and quite doable management infrastructure, Java isn't playing the same sport, let alone being in the same league.

(Well, Id be rich and not bother doing anything. But lets say I did...)

I would expend my efforts on developer tools, not game engines.... Correction: content authoring tools, not developer tools or game engines.

My perfect end-game would be that some map developer could load in the raster format of a 1:50000 topo map, set some parameters like "Forest = Canadian Shield" "Season = Summer", click go, and boom, you have a new map. Trees where there are trees, buildings where there are buildings, roads, etc, etc. You don't only have roads that are relevant to the "story", you have roads and trails randomly as in real life. Your buildings all work, you don't have sealed doors because you got lazy.

Either there is a library of 1,000 trees, or the tool just generates some; there is a library of 5,000 buildings, or the tool generates some, etc.

So my money would be spent on building up that library of 1000 trees and 5000 different buildings, and auto generating the landscape from real GIS data.

Now, I grant that I don't know anything about developing maps, and I'm sure that the actual map part isn't the hard part. For something like Half Life, you are really building a special map around a story. But for some really hard core FPS - a team CTF, or whatever... the maps get boring. Some moderate player can be an expert at a given map and really dominate over an expert FPS player.

If you can generate a map in an afternoon, then you would. And that really would remove any bonus people get from being map experts.

Bzzzt. Wrong.