The modding of this comment is ridiculous. You may not like the conclusion but this is how we should hope people engage on a community forum. You know, by explaining themselves in detail. Obviously it's debatable, but 100% unassailability should not be the threshold for being modded up or down.

I think endless copyright and the advent of more server-side applications are somewhat related but mostly different things.

Also, I suspect (hope? dream?) the days of extending copyright indefinitely are over. One of the big excuses with the Bono act was that it put us in line with the rest of the world (read: Europe), I don't think there have been any extensions to Copyright beyond the status quo globally to support that. I also think the 98 fight woke a lot of people up to this racket and there will be major push back.

We live in an age where the ability to create new works is more democratic than ever and my guess is people will be more enthused about leveraging that to reimagine and elaborate on older works than ever. I'm looking forward to seeing what people do with The Great Gatsby and The Trial.

Having said all of that, maybe I am naive. I certainly expect Big IP to put forward some nonsense nakedly self-serving argument to extend again but I think a lot of the consolidation we've seen on media production side indicates they know the jig is probably up.

Maybe I am misreading you, but to act like there is no difference between Feudalism and Capitalism is a stretch that even Karl Marx would call you out on.

How exactly? I hear this a lot but I don't see much empirical to support this claim. I ask as a "black" person from the US.

Have you looked much into Google's Nashville lawsuit (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/01/att-and-comcast-finalize-court-victory-over-nashville-and-google-fiber/)? From what I recall the monopoly is more implicit due to intense bureaucracy around attaching wires to poles. Whatever you want to call it, rents are being sought and granted.

At no point did I say iOS was "clean and easy." I said it's possible with C#. Having said that, I use Xamarin a lot and their AOT compilation technique - while a little unwieldy if you're not on a Mac - works surprisingly well.

If Xamarin can do what they've done with C#/.NET then obviously it's POSSIBLE to do this in Java, but I haven't seen any actual implementation. This is why I said "right now." Or maybe I've missed the Java project that allows you to share 90% of your code between iOS, Android, and Windows.

If by "back end" you mean server side infrastructure you are correct, but only because Xamarin doesn't have to pay much attention to the back end. .NET has an entire stack devoted to such matters and Microsoft foots the bill on maintaining it. Xamarin just focuses on the "last mile" if you will.

You're right, it is mostly lambdas and extensions. After all these years my head has conflated the concepts as they all came around the same time.

"99.5% of the code I encounter doesn't use above Java 1.4 or .Net 2.0, so all the nifty language features are pretty much theoretical sizzle on roughly the same steak. And even so, the nifty features often have negative value because they while save the programmer 2-3% of his or her time, the maintainers often end up breaking things because they're not all that familiar with the new hotness in language features."

Obviously I can't tell you what you've seen but, in comparison, I see LINQ (.NET 3.0 I think) everywhere. Async/await is pretty popular too but it is newer and isn't as universally usable so it is not as common as LINQ.

It depends on your situation but, right now, C# is the only language that you can use to write programs for Windows Desktop (including Win32/.NET/Modern), Web, Mac Desktop, Android, and iOS.

And with all of the OWIN stuff you'll be able to run pristine .NET apps on OS X and Linux.

And you'll be able to host all of this code in one source-controlled Visual Studio project.

It may not be a reason to switch a shop entirely, but there is definitely a unique value-proposition.

So I live in Downtown Atlanta Ga which is far from suburban. There are plenty of taxi stands around but I prefer to use Uber. Why? Because almost invariably the taxis do not operate "within the law as the state, the counties, and the cities require."

When I walk up to a cab they ask me where I'm going, and if I'm not going very far they almost always refuse to give me a ride. Many also don't turn on their fare meters and make up rates (I've lived Downtown for 16 years, I know what a ride is supposed to cost). My understanding is that both of these actions are in violation of the ordinances that govern the operation of Taxis in the city.

Could I report these people or challenge their bogus practices? Sure. But instead I just take Uber where these issues don't exist and I ALWAYS get excellent customer service - whether in a Town Car or a Hyundai.

The situation in other cities might be different, but here, the cab drivers have dug their own graves.

http://www.xamarin.com/

The Prizes were intended to be his atonement for that.

That depends. Perfecting that process was not free (R&D, manufacturing ramp up etc.) so chances are the widget will cost more than before. It may even cost more than 12x more. If it doesn't, that extra money would go toward other goods. Or maybe it gets saved.

In either case, that money would not go to the original widget making industry and as a result, money might flow somewhere else causing that sector to contract. Or maybe they end up selling a ton more of their durable widgets and hire more people with the increased revenues.

Just a random comment, but if Windows Phone uses the NT Kernel, I would find it hard to imagine it not having low latency recording given the presence of massive amounts of pro-audio apps for Windows. Or is that a function of DirectX or some other add-on which isn't present in the Windows Phone version of the kernel?

I have a T420s and while I don't doubt you have experience what you describe, I haven't had most of these problems. I have seen the issue where it doesn't turn off when the lid is closed (maybe four times) and I'm not a huge fan of the screen. The software is weak to me too but I wiped it and installed stock Windows 8 and it works well.

I'll tell you what I do like about it:
- 3.5 lbs weight
- The keyboard (of course)
- The ability to add another battery via UltraBay
- The ability to add another SSD via the mSATA port
- The Ultranav setup is better than most with the larger trackpad. I don't normally use the trackpad but in Windows 8 it has increased utility (opening charms bar, switching apps) that I appreciate.

I just got a 15.4 Retina Macbook Pro and, outside of the screen of course, the T420s outclasses it in every way. I've been a ThinkPad guy since the late 90s myself and I've definitely seen changes that I don't like but, even in the current state of the line, I don't know that there is any other vendor that I would choose.