Sick or not, intellectually he's spot on. Reread his concerns about US and war and taxes.

Then pretend you're a large scale fraudster with control over (literally) trillions of dollars, and key control points peppered throughout US government. Then consider how YOU would design and run a large scale fraud (Commons Fraud). Then consider how YOU would use your government control points to fleece unwitting tax payers out of billions and trillions of dollars per year.

Perhaps you see Brandon Raub's concerns. If not, you're an example of when, why, and how democracy fails. In theory, every patriotic citizen should be deathly concerned that democracy has been turned on its head to use as a vehicle for overwhelming fraud.

Brandon Raub is concerned, but you're not. Really? Who's nuts?

Also kudos to Brandon Raub for his psychological fortitude. Soldiers, military families, and military friends are all very susceptible to the state of denial about war corruption because they are likely to have lost close ones to such crime. That's a heavy and for some insurmountable emotional and psychological burden to overcome with intellect. Since these frauds typically involve going to war unnecessarily, Brandon Raub has already transcended the typical emotional, patriotic, psychological trap of war veteran victims (and their families and friends).

Ditto the war veteran actors and consultants on movies like "The Green Zone" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Zone_(film)].

Casualties to fraudster wars are horribly tragic victims of terribly predatory faceless fraud run abusing overwhelming government power. So, the fact that a military veteran (Brandon) has transcended this psychological trap speaks to his intellectual stamina. Is he crazy? His friends don't think so. Even the ones who are military veterans, but you do?

About 911, Raub points out that a building fell down all on its own. Until you (or someone) could explain that glaring incongruity definitively, don't say he's nuts for calling 911 an inside job. 911 adds up far more likely as an inside job courtesy a US intelligence agent (Osama bin Laden as anti-Russian agent repurposed as scape goat). Recall 911 launched several meaningless and misguided wars with HUGE impact on USA debt --- a basic money laundering / extortion / embezzlement scheme from American taxpayer wallets to stracketeer bank accounts. That's all Brandon Raub is pointing out... and he's not alone.

So, next time you hear that the 911 wars were a farce, and that 911 was more than likely an inside job, think twice.
When you recall that the Bush family is at the heart of several election rigging schemes, think twice.
When you consider that BushLeague family and associates installed Supreme Court Justices who are central to the most ludicrous SCOTUS opinions in the nation's history (including GWBush reelection as President), think twice.
When you consider GWBush started a war (in retrospect) on total pretense (e.g., see movie "The Green Zone" with Matt Damon for docufiction of what must have happened regarding WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction farce) on the ground in Iraq), think twice.
And in case you didn't know that the Bush family has been linked to the similar behavior and motive for WWII (financing Nazi Germany war machine), i.e., across multiple generations, think twice.

Once you consider all that, it makes perfect sense that the Bush family would have an out of country (somewhere in South America) family compound for when all the proverbial shit hits the fan. Because when you put 2+2 together, some superficially crazy shit starts to make perfect sense. Which is probably why Brandon Raub says we're headed for a revolution.

You see, when democracy (or any government) breaks down --- a growing number of citizens realize their government is a vehicle for fraud and there's NOTHING we can do about it --- it's just a matter of time until a critical mass of knowledge spreads and ignites. History repeats itself, and our "democracy" has barely lasted 200 years. The BushLeague fraudsters have ruined it for us. No, GWBush may not be smart enough to pull off a scam at this scale, but he's just a puppet... in a long chain of puppets (like Reagan before him) --- a political instrument for massive fraud. And anyone is smart enough to act that part, because our "democracy" has no accountability feedback loop (no jailtime for going to false war, allows reelection by BushLeague installed SCOTUS judges, SCOTUS judges who never get jailed or even censured, etc.) so GWBush just played political stooge --- and our "democracy" just goes along with it like nothing's wrong.

So think twice (thrice, etc.) before calling someone crazy for questioning Modern American Democracy (MAD). Brandon Raub is a war veteran, a patriot, a courageous citizen, and may just know (at least the germ of) the truth of it all. He's pleading for democracy to work --- and gets jailed for his trouble.

Maybe Raub really _is_ crazy then... to believe MADemocracy could ever recover from this political corruption and fraud spiral, but he's voiced his concerns loud and clear. If he's convinced even one more person that something is amiss with MADemocracy, then he's done his country proud. IMO, our country could use more "crazy" patriots like Brandon Raub who voice _real_ national concerns for the rest of us to learn.

[
P.S., if we had enough "crazies" like Raub, we might even be able to avert revolution and retake our country via peaceful political means, but do you think that's even possible in a MADemocracy world? IMO, that's the umpteen trillion dollar "democracy" question: Can MADemocracy recover from massive internal corruption and control fraud?
]

Government in bed with... military industrial complex (Cheney) Afghanistan/Iran/Iraq Hoax Wars and highway robbery of our youth.
Government in bed with... Wall St. financial collapse + Wall St.'s "Mortgage Bailout" and highway robbery of the tax dollar.
Government in bed with... Journalism government "tuned" journalism and highway robbery of any journalistic independence.
Dilution of Common Rights & Principles more Plutonomics (See Michael Moore's film, "Capitalism: A Love Story").
-- Bottom Line --
US Democracy US Peasantocracy (no rights, no power, no money: See "The Matrix"; yes, "The Matrix" but with a plutonomics view).

The regulator is not naive. He knows he's rubberstamping, and giving a lame excuse.

If I were debugging a program and I said:

'I think this is a trustful design change we are making. There can't be a design fault because it is the final result of a long debugging session between the application and me.'

You would probably think I was crocked in the head. Long sessions usually indicate deep faults, not easy design fixes. Long negotiations don't suddenly become "trustful" just because the two parties couldn't get close enough for amicable agreement. This negotiator knows that. He's part of a scam.

In other words, he's not naive, but we would be naive to believe that this agreement is anything but a hoax, or that he's innocent of this hoax.

This agreement is not the usual rubberstamp you are looking for. Move along.

Software Patents are no more than Business Land Mines in the form of Monopolies. The whole idea of monopolizing an idea is ludicrous. The idea of choosing what's innovative and what's not is absurd. If necessity is the mother of all invention (and it usually is), then one man's "innovation" is another's necessity.

Business-wise, they are nothing more than government granted monopolies, and hidden land mines. They are totally ludicrous from a social perspective because they hurt everyone.

I lied.

They don't hurt *everyone*. Patents feed IP (Intellectual Property) lawyers and subsidize the legal industry. Think of them as a legalized tax to subsidize IP lawyers and law firms (while clogging the courts, impeding software engineers, and increasing software business risk and expense).

Which brings me to a first-hand observation: When software developers fought the patenting of software at the USPTO hearings, one side of the room was lawyers, and the other side was software engineers. One side was in favor of institutionalizing s/w patents, the other against. (Guess which side was which.) Aside from the merit of anyone's arguments, the sides were well represented since the room was crowded on both sides of the aisle (how did people know which side they belonged on!?).

I lied again.

The front table... you know... the one making the final decision... was ALL LAWYERS. So much for balanced representation and due process.

Yup. Foregone conclusion. The all lawyer council hosted the hearings, presented the issues like it was being debated, and then rubberstamped it into existence. We're still suffering, without a fix in sight.

You don't believe me? Just ask Bruce Lehmann. He ran the USPTO, railroaded software patents into existence using his position. Oh, I'm sure he'll lie and tell you he did no such thing, but he did. (Oh, and see WTO and DMCA for follow-ups by same guy. He's not a brainjob by my reckoning, just a puppet.) I believe the legal industry pulled a fast one on Joe Public with software patents, and is still raking in the big bucks while innovation, good business, good government, and consumer product development suffer.

It's hard to get police to enforce the law, especially on white collar crime. And not just about 99c theft, but also billion dollar crimes. So you may be right in your theory, but the police argument is specious.

The point of interfaces is to write something that everyone subscribes to and shouldn't change, but sometimes the interfaces do change. If you are poo pooing refactoring then I hope you're not using the linux kernel which uses refactoring. The Microsoft kernel appraoch does exactly what you describe. Which is why USB operations in windows are slow. Instead of fixing old broken USB code, they patch it up and call the old, broken implementation which is tied to that old interface. In the linux kernel, all references to drivers are updated to the new better, faster way of doing things when the API changes. They break the API, try to compile and fix all references, and you benefit as a result. You poo poo exactly what runs this site, the linux kernel, and probably what you use every day. You don't get the irony now, but someday you will.

You cannot do this practically with Javascript since any Javascript code over 500 lines ends up using eval. And then execution goes into a black box which cannot be looked at by Eclipse. Or you might at runtime decide to add a method to a JS class if a certain event happens. Eclipse won't pick up that method until the program actually runs. So you will be sitting there looking at your code with a small glimpse of your class, which is worse than having no glimpse of your class. You will get the false notion that you know all the methods of the class when you don't. What makes javascript nice is statically weak typing and dynamic programming. But it's a double edged sword, programs like Eclipse can't inspect javascript code as nicely as they can inspect java code or any other language that is statically typed. Java, on the flipside, doesn't offer the nice type tricks you can do in Javascript. I guess that is what non-fanbois do: recognize weak points / strong points in everything. You on the other hand, wax poetically about the wonders of Javascript. You are a Javascript fanboi. I use Javascript, Java and Python every day, I'm a fanboi of none of these. If someone has a valid reason for Java stinking, I will listen if it's a good point. Same thing for any language. You on the other hand have nothing but a fanboi worker mentality.

It caches. The GWT compiler at compile time assembles the JS into different files and decides based on the browser, language, property files, which files to send over. You can of course duplicate this and reinvent the wheel. More power to you. Here is a blurb on how it caches:

Once the user has downloaded it (which can take a while) it does not need to be downloaded unless there is a new release. The existing program stays in the browser cache and gets used the next time the user goes to your web site. All that gets transferred the next time is a tiny HTML file which is a way of checking whether a new release is available.

Knowing your fanboi mentality, you will jump on the "which can take awhile" quote. That is what fanbois/corporate types do. You are in the discussion to appease your ego, win the argument, make the boss proud, get promoted, etc. But I have had the pleasure of knowing very well YUI, Dojo. They all have loads of js files to give you despite JS compression.

Java kool-aid. Yes I see the fanboi in you comes out. No facts, just fanboism and ancient tribalism over a programming language. Java bad. Javascript good.

You are the Master Programmer type. Evertyhing is trivial. So you want to write the code that determines the browser type. You don't address even making things cross-browser compatible. GWT takes care of a) generating the cross-browser code b) sending only what the browser needs. No platform does that. Use YUI. I suggest you do. I do, all the code is munged in. If you have opera, you will download the IE checks. Now you can recreate GWT. Make your own 'trivial' framework. Figure out the quirks behind IE javascript vs Firefox javascript. Generate/delete HTML Dom elements depending on the browser. 'Cat' them together, trivially. You know everything. If only I knew everything. I suggest you put your money where your mouth is and work for yourself. Call your company the Everything Is Trivial company. Post on slashdot about how everything is trivial, make millions to satisfy that craving ego of yours. If your boss hasn't fired you by then, that means you work for the government.

I guess that is why you still have a boss. When you live in a world where you have your own company, you can't be a condescending ass, you adopt the best technology for the job vs what your inner egoic fanboi tells you to use. You rely on me to educate you about GWT vs using it or even reading about it. Your path in life is a path of anger, resentment, people not liking you. I say this not to hurt you, I say this for your own good. Read your fanboism, now lose it and all your problems go away. Now if you will excuse me I have some javascript programming to do.

It actually looks quite normal in the latest Opera Weekly Build.
Get it at http://my.opera.com/desktopteam/