You know, this has become a meme? I.e. a meaningless social idea that's repeated again and again. We live in a world of incredible abundance, where you are orders of magnitude more likely to die of heart failure due to overeating than from hunger. I tried looking up the number of people who die each year of hunger to get some exact numbers? They're so small that nobody can agree on them. This is historically unprecedented and is directly an effect of industrialization - i.e. of making people "jobless" through mechanization. What has changed is the notion of poverty. Now you not only need food, shelter, free public education, a road system, a police etc. You now need an iPod, a computer, a snazzy phone. I live in the hood of my city - really I pay $350 a month in rent. My neighbors are mostly uneducated, those who are employed work factory jobs. It never ceases to amaze me at the incredible stereo systems and cell phones these guys can afford. A good friend of mine is currently unemployed, has two live at home kids, lives off of the dole and has a brand new iPhone 4s. Fuck I wish I could afford one of those. These poor people in poverty, it's a really tough rap.

Go to Somolia or Uganda to see what the United States was like 150 years ago. We have no notion of poverty in this country, really no idea at all. In fact, in an informed historical sense there is no poverty in the United States or Europe. Even massively populated countries like China and India have successfully met the essential requirements of their people for the past decade - an incredible accomplishment. We live in a post-poverty world where dying of starvation is many times less likely than dying of heart disease from over-eating. So you see other young adults such as myself crying about poverty in this country - usually from their iPad at Starbucks and it's a curious spectacle. It really is a kind of social meme, a meaningless chant coming down from ages past when the smokestacks of the industrial revolution towered high above the impoverished and starving workers. You find similar myths (and I mean that in the most positive sense) sung in the halls of religious worship. It's an idea, a way of understanding the world. And like many of these religious notions it has no bearing on reality. At the moment we are living in the utopia imagined by our forebears. And once in a while it's profitable to stop for a moment and appreciate that. Then we can go back to pushing the limits and redefining poverty to mean owning at least 2 HD televisions.

Well, I guess second hand. Anyway, my brother worked up on ANWR for an oil company. Every single thing was movable, including the building. It was insane what expenses they went through to protect the wildlife. He had a friend who was getting into his truck in the morning and a rabid fox was in the floor boards. When it tried to bite him he reflexively hit it with a flashlight - killing it. Rabies is really common up there apparently. The guy was fined $1500 and immediately fired. I thought that was really sad that killing a rabid fox in self-defense can cost an otherwise honest worker his job. Also, ANWR is a complete wasteland for 11 months out of the year. For 9 months it's a block of barren ice, and for the other two it's a giant mosquito infested mud pit. People have no problem with pumping oil out on their lawn in Oklahoma - yet a barren waste in the arctic nets such trepidation? I myself wonder why? The 1% can afford to protect some mystical northern fairy land, everyone else needs the oil and the jobs. Thankyouvermuch.

You know, I think you're absolutely right! Getting lulled into a sense of security in a free market is very much like sleeping in the shark tank. I've worked to with too many CEOs at too many companies. They make a split-second cost-benefit analysis to their bottom line and that's it.

However, I'm not under any delusions that we have any other choices. I would rather have The Prince be a selfish jackass who got his power from providing a service or product to the public successfully than a selfish jackass who got where he was by ass kissing or shooting people. Those are your basic choices; "free market" princes or sword wielding ones. Both do everything for their own selfish interest. The less power the state has the less power these fuckwits can get at. And believe me, if you create a huge and powerful state to supposedly limit and control "the free market" then you might as well spend your time punching beehives. Because you're not going to stir up more small-minded stinging insects by doing so. On the contrary, every power hungry asshole in the country will move to your capital and ass-french their way up the chain of command.

They're the same people, the question is where do you want to put them? Organizing soft drink delivery and production, or war making and nation building?

I don't know who marked you "Flamebait" but seriously, who likes police states? And furthermore, who doesn't think we're heading for one? The only people I know of are the actual "police" themselves. Every leftist I know hates the "Patriot" act as much as any right wing nut. We are united against the establishment, in this one thing.

Why the heck aren't they at least using Parrot? It's not hard to target and it would really help the project to get some extra programmers on board. In theory Parrot would allow code sharing between all the different languages that target it. So Dart could call Ruby which can call Python, etc. It's the great unifier of the programming religious wars, and nobody seems to talk about it anymore. Even when it's finally DONE! If you're going to make a new dynamic language, please, please make it using Parrot.

I live in the poor part of town, mainly for the low rent. It's a HUD housing and welfare district. Anyway, I know every one of my neighbors and without fail they all have iPhone 4s. Yes, they may be single moms, or currently unemployed. Yet mysteriously they have a phone that I know I can't afford.

Welcome to the United States. Maybe this is a good indicator for why our politicians of both parties consistently choose to spend more money than we make.

And nothing of value was lost.

I don't have a Galaxy or other Android tablet, so I really don't know. But looking at the app store from my EVO there really aren't as many productivity applications for Android yet. At least not any that are really usable. So it appears to be a consumption device. My iPad has completely replaced my laptop for 95% of my productivity. The only thing it doesn't have that any good is an adobe suite. Here's a list of my apps I regularly use in my professional life:

1. Writing documents: Pages is really great and very usable.
2. Spreadsheets: Numbers, again an Apple product.
3. Powerpoints: Keynote, yes Apple again.
4. Movie editing: iMove is Sweeeet. I like it better than the Mac version.
5. Text Editor: Textastic is great, I can edit files right on an FTP server with syntax highlighting for a wide range of languages.
6. SVG Vector graphics: ne.Draw is an Inkscape replacement, Freeform is really good too.
7. Basic photo editing: Photoshop Express is sometimes useful.
8. Drawing/Painting: ArtRage is AWESOME, it's better than Photoshop for doing original artwork. Obviously not a PS replacement though.
9. Git repo functions: iOctocat helps me track changes my team is doing.
10. Customer invoicing: inVoice2Go is better than any desktop app for billing and invoicing.

I want to also mention that there are a few apps for which there is no usable Desktop alternative. In particular the Notes Plus app has nothing remotely as usable for taking notes on any Desktop platform. The thing is just incredibly smooth and transparent, it beats paper hands down. Also, Sorted is pretty sweet for managing projects. Although there are Desktop apps that will do the same thing, Sorted just makes it simple and painless.

I believe that the whole "it's just a consumption device" thing is primarily a FUD against tablets. The touch interface allows some applications to be much easier and more productive once you've learned the interface. In particular, the entire Adobe suite could work on an iPad MUCH better than any Desktop. Just because of the touch interface.

It's really a shame that Bitcoin is getting such negative press. It has real, legitimate and web changing possibilities if it drops the negative associations and begins to become legitimate. In particular, it would allow anonymous micro-transactions without a per-transaction fee. This could be HUGE for web developers, designers, bloggers and anyone who works online for a living. It would allow us to bypass the big advertising networks and get money directly from our customers with little-to-no transaction fees and no dangerous exchange of information. Yes, it's true that users won't spend $1.00 to read or donate to your blog. But they might spend 0.00005 BTC. If bitcoin transfers were so easy to do and integrated into your browser (perhaps with a <purchase receiver="12SW1w5mvp9ExwMbM9kMwTbN4D9e75KQDr" cost="0.00005> tag. This would change the way content producers get and receive payments. And it's a very legitimate use for which there is currently no alternative offered.

I never went to University for CS and I studied assembly. In fact, I wrote a CGI library for Linux x86 assembler that didn't link with libc. This allowed you to write a native CGI application in 120 bytes! Although it only supported GET requests and I only wrote atoi() of all the conversion functions in libc. Pretty sweet if you ask me. This time that I spent so long ago has paid for itself many times over. And even more as I transition into iOS programming. Contrast that with my buddy Daniel who graduated from a state school with a masters in CS and doesn't know ANY assembler. He learned Java byte code, but never native assembler. He and his professors espouse the "but you'll never need to know that" school. It's a waste of time because the JIT/compiler can write better assembler than you can. Pshaw, children these days, lawns needing vacated.

What? Why is this modded negatively? I worked at an ISP back then, we did NOT install Netscape for users so most people used ie 3. which was absolute crap.

I would say that having similarities with c# is not going to make a language elegant. I left flash development when they came out with as3 and haven't looked back. JavaScript isn't the most elegant language, but it is one of the most understood out there. And things like coffeescript help where it falls short. As to your concerns about FlashBlock (which I love), browser vendors will add similar features. Just like popup blockers. Remember when there were no popup blockers? Now everybody has one. We just have to wait for (or write) a nocanvas plugin. Cheers

I've tried Bing again and again hoping that it would replace Google for me. I keep wishing that someone, even if it's evil MS, will provide some serious competition in the search market. I'll keep trying Bing every year and probably keep going back to Google. Let's hope they really decide to up the ante and do something completely new and original. It's uncharacteristic of MS, but maybe they'll acquire a start-up that has something new?

If I had mod points I'd do it. Someone get this dear poster a book deal.