Garbage collection. GC makes people angry for some reason, but I'm personally happy not having to malloc memory all the time. Also hardware and OS independence. It's nice to just open a file and read and write from it, and not really care what the OS is, or what filesystem it's using, and so forth. Same with inputs and outputs, memory management, thread handling, etc. You could add all of these things to your hypothetical intermediate language, but in the end you'd just be recreating the JVM.

A fair number of languages besides Java run on the JVM. Others have been "ported" onto the JVM. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_JVM_languages

I think the JVM is here to stay. We're moving more and more towards high-level, interpreted languages. Hardware is fast enough, and with things like JIT there's no real performance loss anyway. Why not write on a JVM, which does so much for you?

That is the craziest thread I've read in a long time. Thanks for destroying my morning's productivity! :-)

I heard about this on RadioLab awhile ago - a trash dump full of fragments of old scrolls. I believe it was the "Detective Stories" episode: http://www.radiolab.org/2007/sep/10/

They were saying it would take centuries to match up all of the pieces, because they only had a few people working on it, and so many scraps to go through. My immediate thought was that they should scan them all and put them on the Internet, and some bored 17 year old would write a program in Scala that would run in the cloud and match everything up in a weekend. Sounds like somebody else had the same idea ...

Do you mean Dale Vince?

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilities/article5438441.ece

Assuming the article is correct, Mr. Vince built his first windmill himself like you said, and then borrowed money from a bank to build more, and now solely owns Ecotricity, worth 10M GBP. He seems like a neat guy, talking about how he absorbs good stuff from other company cultures "like the Borg." His favorite movie is Aliens 2.

Ha! That would be hilarious.

Or just put a much bigger Chinese flag ... right next to the little US flag. Start up WW3!

Where in the world do you have access to either a well-stocked library, or some way to purchase books, but don't have any way to access the Internet? For a Kindle (current technology) you either need brief wifi access from a coffee shop or McDonalds or someplace, or you pay a little bit more to get ubiquitous 3G data access. I live in Chicago, but I've bought and downloaded books in Europe while on vacation without issue. You don't need to be "tethered" to anything to enjoy your digital books. And that's current technology, which will get replaced by devices and services we haven't dreamed of yet.

If you enjoy carrying around heavy, fragile paper versions of books, then more power to you, but you're on the wrong side of history. Before you know it you'll have to dig around in flea markets to find old paper books. Did you notice how fast VHS tapes disappeared? They technically still work, but they've been so completely replaced by DVDs and BluRay disks that you only see them at yard sales anymore. Paper books are up next.

And more to the point, the rest of the world hasn't caught up with plain ol' Ethernet. Your home network is still a bit faster than what you can realistically get from your broadband supplier, so who cares? If somebody started offering 1 Gig download speeds, I don't think we'd still be happy with Ethernet.

Then wouldn't the price of the service go up some similar amount? It went up 50%

I think they were either underselling it, or the streaming portion has got more expensive since they started it, due to studios and networks trying to get paid more. Streaming is actually a weirdly weak spot for Netflix. Due to the way our content laws work, Sony can demand more money for the same product next year - the rights to stream. In the original model, Netflix could in theory buy DVDs from Walmart and start shipping them to customers, so there was always a constraint on the cost. It's gonna stay weird for awhile.

Yup. Like the woman who paid $10/month for DECADES for one of those old black rotary phones? http://www.mergermonster.com/?m=2&s=111&id=106

The pilots have a federally-issued ID, which they show at security. If the ID is good enough to get them into the cockpit, it should be good enough that they don't have to stand in the lines with the rest of us plebes and get scanned or patted down. The guy that scrubs the toilets doesn't go through the stupid scanners, I really don't understand why pilots do.

And really, if a dude shows up DRESSED in a pilot's uniform, but doesn't have matching ID? I think that dude goes into a back room for more questions.

The difference is, usually "think of the children" is used to reduce our rights. It's used to argue for web filtering, .xxx domain, logging of your traffic on internet servers, adding security cameras on the street, etc.

So yes, it's still a crappy argument, but the cases are definitely different.

Honestly, are there better uses of your time than keeping in touch with the various friends and family that you have? Sharing images of your life, and seeing other people's images? Sharing special occasions with people? You know, the things that humans have been doing and loving to do for millions of years?

You made a random prediction, I'll make mine. Social networks will be around forever. Facebook may go the way of MySpace and others, but there will always be something around. A safe bet would be it would be something better suited to a mobile experience, but there will always be something like it.

I grew up in a tiny town in Africa. We barely had electricity (just for a few hours a day, sporadically) and definitely no video games or TV. My parents, being peacenik missionaries, never bought me any toy guns or knives or anything, opting instead for Legos and Construx and such. So what did I do? I made guns out of Legos and sticks and whatnot, and still played "war" and "cops and robbers" with my friends. It seems to be hard-wired into us, in some ways.

Personally, I would rather my kids (when I have them) take out their aggressive tendencies in the safe confines of a video game, rather than get into fights in the neighborhood because they're bored. Yeah, Manhunt is a ridiculous game, but as a parent I would be able to NOT BUY THAT for my kids.

Or, I can just not bother, and get on with my life. It doesn't seem reasonable that I should have to jump through hoops and argue with anonymous people that know the system way better than I do, to maybe have my edit go through. I can think of many better things to do with my free time. If the Wikipedia organizers want more people to edit the articles and make it better, they need to start by removing these ridiculous articles. This is a constant criticism that comes up every time a Wikipedia article gets posted on Slashdot, so fix it already.

You have to work pretty hard to install apps on an iPhone that DON'T come from the Apple App Store(tm). You have to use a security hole in the OS to root it and install a modified OS. You void your warranty, you open your phone up to potential security issues, and you have to battle with it each time Apple releases an iOS update. With Android, you select the "Allow install of 3rd-party apps" checkbox, and you can install an app from any old website. Super-easy!

So yeah, there's going to be a lot more piracy on Android; the barrier is really low. I don't think it has anything to do with the relative costs of the devices, they're pretty much the same. It's still ridiculous that people pirate a $2 app - just eat one less donut this week, jackoffs.