Care to enlighten us?

Why don't you support your sarcasm about Indians being law abiding with some statistics? Stop generalising.

"We introduced the idea of "country" to them. Nomadic tribes don't generally hold land, and non-nomadic tribes hold very small pieces of land"

And the gallery breaks into thunderous applause.

As a new Mac user (my new employer is a mac shop) I can attest to this. I have a dual boot machine booting Win7 and Ubuntu which I use at home and I'm perfectly comfortable using either one. But using the office mac just seems as if it was purposely constructed to make my life harder. Everything is screwy. I need to use a two-key combination for folder navigation. Really?

Meanwhile, my iPhone too has been a victim of iTunes buggery. And of course, iTunes is the very pinnacle of crapware.

Sadly thogh, the whole industry seems to be some sort of oligopoly, with each company trying to out-do the other in screwin me. Sometimes I feel we should all just give it all up and go live in the mountains or something.

I'm an average garden vareity user. I've always admired Motorola, even during the dark days before the Droid. Today however, I've been put off Motorola for ever.

I do not need, or intend to install custom ROMs on my phone. As many people said, I'm only interested in the urgent email, photo pf my lunch and tweets. I do however take offense at not being able to do something for a device that I've paid for.

I take offense at being patronised. If I'm savvy enough to install a custom ROM on my phone, then I know I'm doing it at my own risk. I'm sick and tired of the suits trying to control me.

They are everywhere, trying to take control of my phone, my console, my internet even! What is the take of you guys on this? (And meanwhile, I'm probably going to stick to a dumb phone now, and get myself a tablet or something).

I'm by no means knowledgeable about political affairs in Africa. However, like a true slashdotter, I too will throw in my two cents.

Normally, the people at large would eventually succeed in overthrowing the said despots. Problems however arise when powerful external forces (this can be anyone, a neighboring country, big corporations, a non-neighboring country, the flying spaghetti monster even) supports the tyrants with weapons and money. This way, the struggle becomes not against the power of the local despot, but against the forces supporting him. For a small population, already weakened by poverty, disease, lack of education, fear, these are mammoth odds.

Again, I don't know if this is actually what happens, but you will agree that this can happen and if so, would be a big part of the problem.

Hmm...., let's see. Poof poof, and poof. There, god created the universe.

The "other theories" on the other hand... Big Bang -> elementary particles combine -> create hydrogen -> fusion -> higher elements -> radiation -> complex compounds -> simple life -> evolution (*gasp*) -> life as we know (and don't know) it.

If I believe in the second theory, then the floodgates open for exotic stuff, say like gravity (two rocks attract each other? Bah, it's the love of god binding them).

Whereas the elegant, simple, first item on the menu, leads me to the wonderful world where nothing is impossible, demons possess people and wizards would be zipping around on brooms if it were not for the church to ban them (sorry Harry).

Anyway, I digress. The thing is, nobody possesses the absolute knowledge of the universe. If god created then who created god? If it was the big-bang then what was before it, and what caused it (admittedly though scientists are working on it)? The good thing about the scientific side of the fence is the fact that we admit when we don't know something and somebody somewhere gets a grant to look into the matter, instead of declaring it the handiwork (noodlywork?) of the spaghetti dude.

On the cosmic scale my friend, we are all ignorant, or innocent.

Guess the joke is on me now :") I just got ticked off by all the vicious anti-Java posts appearing here lately. I'm all for newer languages to leverage new advances in language design and design philosophy.

I agree with you about user interfaces. I don't really know JavaFX, but the fact that it didn't take off probably says something about it.

However, I do like Java in the server based, enterprise development arena. And I find it odd that you should say it doesn't offer fast turnarounds. Especially now that JSF is a part of the spec, I feel Java is awesome (even though I don't know if we should consider frameworks while talking about the language).

But again, I probably haven't seen better alternatives. I'll see the link you have provided, and get back to you sir :)

I would love to see you develop modern enterprise apps in C++. Different languages often are suited to different tasks.

And why exactly are you so anti Java, to the extent you are making a froth mouthed fool of yourself? It's alright if you don't know how to program in Java. There is plenty of respectable, often much more cerebral, glamorous work you can do, from writing device drivers to application prgramming. What is 'your' beef?

and badly written code is not just a Java phenomenon. See http://thedailywtf.com/ for examples in most common languages.

*sigh* If wishes were horses :-/

I for one wouldn't want to live in a smoggy city with toxic food and water, slowly dying of heavy metal poisoning. In fact if this is the alternative, give me my EPA and plain old hammer. I'll do without the neodymium magnets.

You sir, hit the proverbial nail on the head. The real issue is the industrial base going out from the US, and lots of other western countries. I can hardly find any product without a "made in china" stamped on it.

The million yuan question is, can the world recover from this? Or have we been all conquered by the China already?

This just goes to show despite showering all sorts of contempt at Google's Pr0n friendly pedestrian fragmented operating system, Mr. Jobs is actually concerned about it posing a credible threat to the supposedly divine, pure, family friendly, idiot proof iPhone.

Mr. Jobs I don't want you telling me what to do with the device I've already paid for. It's mine now. Please let me do what I want to with it.