So, are these naturally-ocurring aggregated diamond nanorods (ADNRs)?

The removal of mod tools is because Infinity Ward are a bunch of PC-hating cocktards.

What that has to do with "RPG elements" is presumably left as an exercise to the reader?

(Also, Bioshock is a terrible example, since it's a spiritual successor to a legendary RPG, System Shock 2. In many ways, Bioshock was SS2 dumbed down with more 'FPS elements'. Now shush.)

Have you been watching the same Who as the rest of us?

The production design has been unfailingly excellent since it was resurrected, and we've had some top notch writing from the likes of Stephen Moffat, Paul Cornell, Gareth Roberts and (if he's in a good mood - whisper it!) even Russell T. Davies.

And the implication that the actors on classic Who were bad is a travesty for the most part. Troughton through Davison were amazing actors, including the beloved Tom Baker.

I hope you're all preparing to welcome our new Shuggoth overlords.

I suspect I, for one, will.

Java hasn't eliminated constructs that are harmful, all it's really done is popularised a few more harmful constructs of its own.

I think Java-the-language has lost the battle against C#. Given its stagnation as a language, and how "of its time" it feels, I'm inclined to say good riddance.

Java-the-platform, however, I think has a sterling future ahead of it as an open source platform for newer, more innovative languages. You only have to look at the brilliant work being done by Martin Odersky and Rich Hickey with expressive and sexy new languages like Scala and Clojure, and then you realise that Java-the-platform has a good chance to live on via its wayward offspring.

You're right, of course. Microsoft Research has a number of fellows who are at the very cutting edge of programming language research, including the likes of Simon Peyton Jones (Mr Haskell) and Don Syme.

And these people have had a direct hand in the evolution of C# (through its type inference, lambdas and LINQ), through F# (which started as a project to port Haskell, and then O'Caml to the CLR), the DLR, Parallel Extensions...

The level of geekiness that Microsoft encourages at the top end of .NET is remarkable.

Java's problem is not that it's "too complex".

Java's problem is that it was designed in 1967.

I feel I'm being mocked here, but I'm not exactly sure what for.

Is it because I is rude about Java?

How do you feel about the time and resources Microsoft has poured into developing Visual F#, Linq, Parallel Extensions, the DLR, IronPython/IronRuby, not to mention the funding of Microsoft Research, many of whose fellows such as Simon Peyton-Jones (maintainer of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler) are at the very bleeding edge of programming language research?

Are these the actions of a company that wants to stultify programmers' minds?

Microsoft, for all its failings, understands its developers. Always has.

Then you are fortunate. The JVM is a good abstraction, but it is a leaky one. The point is that you can't just *assume* it will work on any platform that runs a JVM, which was the original (I would claim largely irrelevant) point behind WORA.

The interesting thing was that Sun used WORA as a surrogate argument to accept the validity of virtual machines. It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when VMs were treated with scepticism or outright hostility by most programmers.

These days it's hard to imagine creating a programming language that wouldn't adopt a VM of some kind.

Neither the CLR or the JVM truly enable WORA, but it doesn't matter. We have learned that VMs have a value to a programming language *far* beyond that rather limited concern.

As a professional Java programmer, I've watched as Java-the-language has stagnated. Java-the-platform has only thrived thanks to Open Source, and no thanks to the sclerotic Java Community Process and an ineffectual steward in Sun Microsystems.

Java programmers have watched in horror as C# gained fully reified generics, lambdas and closures, arbitrary monadic comprehensions and Hindley-Milner type inference, whilst we've only grudgingly been allowed a broken generics model whilst Sun spent years rejecting and rewriting closure proposals that are still 1-2 years away from adoption.

C# is thriving because it has a benevolent dictator in the form of Anders Hjelberg. Java the language is a stagnant mess.

It's wouldn't be susceptible to parallax error. They had it in the Star Trek future, why can't we have it in our proper future?

Man is annoyed by this.