C#, Basic, or Sun's Java never meant to be 'fast', get a clue. On the contrary, these were created to be fool proof and 'secure', meaning restricted, often deliberately slow so noobs can't abuse their systems or compete with their own first party software.

Do not confuse thin HTML/Javascript frontends for server services like /. or Google maps with application software.

Seeing nobody is really eager to jump-start their platform, but who is surprised? They give you Javascript and HTML (webOS) as a creative tool of choice. There are thousands of application and software, but I can't name one that uses Javascript/HTML, so good luck with that Palm, way to follow industry standards and help people transition their software to your platform. Somebody forget to tag this 'defective by design' ?

C (or C++ if you want something more advanced) are ISO/IEEE standard languages, not burdened with patents, trademarks or other agendas -- industry standards if you will.

The requirement of these Java, C#, Python, Perl etc. secondary languages should not burden core and vital system components as these have to run on many platforms and we do not have time in our lives to manage them all.

Is there some 'sane' reason to include languages like C# for purpose of installing GNOME and other vital parts of the system ? I could not agree more with RMS here.

Thanks for the reality check here.

The notoriously pricey roofing costs, with electric shingles the maintenance might skyrocket and one can easily lose all the potential electrical "savings". They wire each shingle ? I would like to see some pilot deployment in action >>

procedure to work without killing the patient is far, far beyond current technology

/. crowd is not much into biotech, it looks like you have some insight here, can you tell us whether we can theoretically do anything with aging in say 10 years from now?

Too small ? Earth is still very underpopulated, look how many people Japanese can sqeeze per mile. US is an 'empty space' compared to Philippines, Japan, Singapore or similar place.

Today even massive 10MB binary is not much of a problem, most new users have half T disk and some GB of RAM. Static linking adds only about 2MB or to the executable, managers and people in general think bigger = better, more content there is the more valuable it must be, haha.

self-contained applications

TFA problem is easily resolved by statically linking the stuff. And the thing you pointed up is the Achiles heel of pretty much any *NIX system where the app dependencies are often much more widespread and the app itself is not self-contained, but rather disseminated over the whole system.

Physical media? Forget it.

Old PSP owners ? They are flying bi-planes, do you want Sony to allow them to attach the second wing on the jet the PSP Go is ? Forget it.

For people with to much money ? Downloads were, are and always will be cheaper. AppStore clearly shows the competition drops prices to sane levels pretty quick. Do you somehow in your mind believe that the physical media allow price competition ? How ? Forget it.

Sorry, had to troll a bit about this, seen too many deaths (by cancer) around me.

Ok, bear with me, I am only an upset observer here, I know nothing about their methods, biology etc. But isn't prudent to get the cancer cells into some ecosystem or bioreactor, apply various factors and study them there instead of this Nazi like trial and error research involving those animals ? With the current state of technology one could imagine we should be able understand and see into these things well enough. They claim to be able to sequence much smaller DNA so why not 'sequence' or look into the cancer here. Also inside organisms they are able to highlight and target cancer with some agent and see exactly where the cancer cells are using that PET scanner technique, but unable to use the same path to deliver treatment to those areas. It seams to me that this cancer 'industry' is trying to do prolonged and expensive healing, but not to cure.

This drug regimen is $4/months cheap -- this might threaten the whole cancer industry. I bet results of this trial will disappear quickly or some 'sponsored' research will soon came with a counter claim.