Is it really a surprise that a failing business like Yahoo! would ignore its users in an attempt to make money?

Look, the obvious lesson here is that no business can be trusted to keep secrets. Also: Water is wet, fire is hot. Don't give out anything you don't want to get out there, no matter what some PHB promises you.

At some point, we're going to have to accept that the devices we carry around with us aren't really "phones" anymore. They're powerful computers that happen to be able to make the odd phone call in between accessing the internet, playing games, taking photos and storing data.

That established, I'm pretty happy with my iPhone 4s. The glaring omission is turn-by-turn directions -- I consider it a public safety issue when I see people looking down at their phones trying to figure out what exit they need to get off on.

I work for a large company, large enough that I see people I don't recognize on our campus every single day.

Two years ago this weekend (Presidents Day, which is a holiday at our office) we had an enterprising thief roll a cart around our office around 5 PM on Friday, loading up laptops. Of course, by then most everyone had skipped out for their long weekend, but if someone was in the office he'd tell them it was for the "weekend virus scanner upgrade", promising people that their machines would be back on Tuesday morning.

I don't know this part for a fact -- our security people and management don't talk about this at all -- but I've heard it enough that I believe it: When someone objected to having their laptop taken, he'd act irritated and ask why they "didn't reply to any of the emails about the upgrade" and then make a show of updating his clipboard -- he'd collect the asset tag from the machine, office number and actually get the person to sign on the line.

I have no idea how many machines he made off with, but it was enough that we all had to suffer new BS security procedures for a year afterword. I would imagine that you could do this at pretty much any big office and get away with it.

Don't forget c++0x and the Chevy volt!

they actually needed to do a study?

sorry, read my post (and the paper) again: "original c++" > "original java". After expert improvements (Jeremy Manson): "original c++" == "improved java" (see my orignal quote). I am assuming here that by "original C++ implementation" the article refers to the c++ version without any tuning (mainly no hash_set, which is not official standard, yet).
My point is that, you can get pretty much the same performance out of java and c++, but you need a good java programmer to do that. On the other hand you need a failry good programmer to get a working c++ version at all.

essentially they say that you need some kind of expert to produce java code that is on par with "straight forward c++". This corresponds somehow to my own experience (java can be fast, if you put in the effort). On the downside, you need some kind of expert to create normal (=good) c++ code in the first place...

It is relevant, because Java (especially the SUN hotspot VM, so this includes scala) must have been the most ambitioned attempt to create a fully hw-independent, garbage collected and jit-ed "language platform" ever. Java is the best representative for any comparison of "non-native" vs. "native". Still, contrary to what has been claimed, in most cases you can only achieve "sub-native" performance (especially when you consider that the java vm, by design, makes it impossible to directly exploit stuff like SSE, which can have a huge impact).

the firefox team already divided it by infinity five years ago

*warning: false dilemma ahead*
BUT: If I was, for any reason, forced to choose a single language to use (i.e. get work done) in the future, it would probably be c++.

Bravo, sir. Bravo.

He took our jerbs!

I used to work in Engineering -- this takes me back. Who owns those building now? Celestica? The new Cray spin-off?