I think it's a bit disingenuous to say that this is the second-largest human created structure. While this is an impressive experiment which I think is very clever and great for physics, calling this a structure is a bit of a joke. If you were to call an array of phototubes a structure you could easily compare it to, say, the street lights of Los Angeles -- which I'm sure would be counted as a larger "structure".

I live a few miles away from this neighborhood. Just for clarification: This is your normal run of the mill suburban neighborhood. I'm guessing that the vast majority of the people who live in the area are unaware of the existence of the range.

I just want to point out that this is absolutely 100% different in the Bay Area. In the Bay Area there are essentially zero unemployed qualified programmers. I'm an employer who is actively hiring -- every candidate that I've sent an offer to has received at minimum 3 other offers (usually within their first week of interviewing). The salaries have skyrocketed (thanks google & facebook) -- a qualified developer with 5+ years of experience starts at $100k -- minimum.

Uhm... an API is much more than a phone number. I think equating those two is ridiculous. An API is a huge set of interfaces with specific names and behaviors. A better analogy would be a phone book -- but one that you created from scratch and wasn't based on any public information.

The real point, in my opinion, is whether Oracle *protected* their copyright to the API. It seems to me that Sun/Oracle treated the API more-or-less like it was public domain. I never accepted an agreement that stated I only had permission to read the API docs for use with an approved JVM. This is sort of like publishing a short story on the internet, it goes viral and is used by tens of thousands of people (reposted on blogs, etc), and then ten years later someone puts it a book and the original author claims that it's copyright infringement. Typically with IP law you have to protect your IP or you loose your rights.

I agree that it's annoying, but in practice I don't think this causes any compatibility issues. Before did you worry separately about whether you support 3.5, 3.5.1, ..., 3.6,3.6.1, etc? Probably not. Now you should probably just think of FF4-7 as being essentially the same version until you find out otherwise (just as you likely did previously with the minor version numbers).

I agree that we should start considering replacing javascript as a language. Why not provide a strongly typed extension to javascript? Javascript would get a lost faster.

While this is impressive, it has been done before (and better): GWT Quake

But what do you mean "under similar conditions"? Over interpreting "under similar conditions" is equivalent to throwing away induction.

And if you're willing to throw away induction then we need to say goodbye to all of science. Past experiments show that apple's fall to the ground, but none of these experiments have been conducted in the year 2012. Therefore saying that apples will continue to fall to the ground in 2012 is an unscientific statement.

I'm sorry, but I prefer all of the knowledge that science has gotten us, and that includes empiricism *and* inductive reasoning.

I'm so tired of people saying this -- if you can't replicate an experiment with the same starting conditions then it's not science -- that it total and complete bullshit.

Science works like this:
Step 1. Formulate a hypothesis.
Step 2. Test the hypothesis.
Step 3.
If hypothesis checks out, repeat step 2. After sufficient iterations call it a theory.
If hypothesis doesn't check out, throw it out and formulate a new hypothesis.

*no where* in the above does it require you to have the same starting conditions. In the case of global warming the hypotheses are of the form "Higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will lead to higher temperatures". There are *many* ways you can test these hypotheses -- you don't need to have a model earth to play with.

That's not even remotely right.

Here's how science works (as it applies to astronomy):
- You form a hypothesis. In the case of astronomy this would most likely be a concrete mathematical model.
- Your model has predictions which you test.
- If the predictions are valid you look for more ways of testing the model. If not, you scratch it.

Observing the creation and death of one star is *not* necessary to test these models. There are an astronomical(!) number of stars to observe. You have plenty of stars in different stages of development to test the model with.

Certainly the model could be wrong, even if the data are consistent with it, but that does not make it unscientific.

So in theory if you can get an electrical signal to the graphene, you can use it to modulate laser light up to 500ghz. Awesome!

That just leaves two fatal flaws:
1. You need to modulate the electric signal with useful information at 500ghz. I'm not an expert, but it seems like we're a long way off from being able to do that. Can anyone comment?
2. How do you demodulate such a signal?

Totally agreed. A helicopter that relies on the ground effect isn't practical. But neither is a human-powered helicopter. Practicality is obviously not the point here.

Not even close. Trusting people is *not* the same as faith in the religious sense. Not even close. When you trust an expert, you hold them accountable. If someone claims to be an expert and gives you advice that turns out to be wrong, you stop trusting them as an expert. In essence you use empiricism for evaluation which experts to trust.

It is ridiculous to conflate this with a blind belief in a supernatural entity with *no evidence*. There is *no* empiricism in religious faith.

It's a blurry line between ideas and implementations. For example, Edison wouldn't have been able to patent the "idea" of a bulb that produces light, but he was able to patent the "implementation" of using a metal filament in an evacuated bulb, etc. But that's just an idea too, and you could say that the specific implementation would involve the exact size of the filament and metal composition, etc -- but that's more specific than his patent.

My point being: The term implementation in software tends to mean something much more specific than a patent is intended to protect. In software an implementation typically refers to the specific code. The lightbulb analogy would be the specific shape of the glass, the specific composition of the filament, the size, the way it's mounted, etc. Patents are *broader* than that, but not so broad that you can just cover some arbitrary idea like "an electronic device that produces light".

Wage depressing strategies?

I'm sorry, but this is BS. I'm an employer in California desperately searching for skilled programmers. I've been searching for about 3 months now and I haven't found any qualified programmers (java web developers) with a salary requirement less than $100k. Of about 50 serious applicants I've reviewed less than 5 have been citizens. A few of those were qualified but were looking for salaries at minimum of $100k.

The unqualified americans were looking for salaries roughly around the $60k mark. Compare that to the 45 H-1B applicants who were also not qualified, but given the job description I legally would be required to pay them $72k/yr.

From my perspective there's nothing wage depressing about H-1B visas. You're legally required to provide them the prevailing wage, and in my case I can find americans with similar skills for less than the legally required wage.

There is a serious lack of talented skilled american programmers. You can't find them until you get in the $100-$150k/yr range.

If you're a talented programmer 4 years out of college you can easily be making $100k/yr. I just can't see that being a deterring factor when people are deciding which career they want to go into.