Child of Elros

Google's proprietary Dart language.

I have to agree with Peter Bright's conclusion.  Javascript is busted.  Dart is not the way to fix Javascript problems.

So, Google?  All those Javascript developers - those who developed jQuery, node.js, Firebug, YUI, all sorts of highly-interactive, highly dynamic Web apps, including your own frakkin' Google Apps developers?  All of those people who poured blood, sweat, and tears into developing libraries, frameworks, developer tools, debuggers, and apps?  All those people who worked 14-, 16-, 18- hour days, who put their lives aside, who amped themselves up on coffee, Jolt, Red Bull and G-d knows what else to get through it?  Who sacrificed their relationships, families, friendships, and health to deal with Javascript's quirks and limitations, not to mention those of the DOM?  Who spent countless years collaborating with each other on the often fractious, unwieldy ECMA design committees?

You're demanding that they just throw this all away - everything they've learned about large-scale software development with a language not originally designed for that, everything they've created, all the tools and glorious wonderful interactive dynamic Web 2.x sites, and all for a proprietary language that you developed in-house, with no input from the developer community or from vendors of browsers other than your own.  You piss on the ECMA Technical Committee and on collaborative development in general.  And you expect us (yes, I'm a burnt out former developer) to swallow your proprietary language and your arrogance without complaint.

What the fsck ever happened to "Don't be evil?"  You're turning into another Microsoft; indeed, you're beating Microsoft at their own game.  At least Microsoft is being dragged kicking and screaming towards greater support for open Web standards.

Page and Schmidt: You want to break the Web.  You want to turn the Web into your proprietary playground.  You want to own every bit of our personal information, every app that we use, every piece of data that we need to store someplace.  You want to destroy any notion of personal privacy:

[H/T mattbastard]

Jeffrey Sachs acknowledges that wealthy corporations and individuals are making war on poor and working-class people, with the help of both major political parties. He nails it when he says that Obama has done nothing but kowtow to the rich:

Obama swept to power on the promise of change. So far there has been none. His administration is filled with Wall Street bankers. His top officials leave to join the banks, as his budget director Peter Orszag recently did. He is always ready to serve the interests of the rich and powerful, with no line in the sand, no limit to “compromise.”

Mr Sachs thinks that should the Rethuglicans be successful in enacting sweeping cuts to programs that benefit poor and working-class people, that these people will rise up in resistance:

In the end, I don’t think [the Rethuglicans] will succeed. For the moment, most Americans seem to be going along with Republican arguments that it is better to close the budget deficit through spending cuts rather than tax increases. Yet when the actual budget proposals are made, there will be a growing backlash. With their backs against the wall, I predict, poor and working-class Americans will begin to agitate for social justice.

But there's one thing that Sachs is not considering: The intensity with which the Obama Administration is ramping up the police state.

Because, you see, the Cravencrats are not a counter-party to the Rethuglicans. They are not an alternative to the Rethuglicans. The Cravencrats and the Rethuglicans are two prongs of the same strategy of turning the US into a neo-liberal haven for the rich, of destroying the middle class (partly by cooptation of the upper end into the upper class, and partly by pushing the rest into poverty), and of literally mandating mass homelessness and starvation for the poor and working class.

And when it comes to using the police state to ensure that the poor stay not only poor, but disenfranchised: Obama indeed says, "Yes We Can" to the wealthy of this country. I mean, gee, if East Germany was so successful in getting its citizens to snitch on each other, why can't we, President Obama? "Yes We Can!"

Now I'm not saying that it would be impossible for poor, working-class, and (the fast-disappearing) lower-middle-class people to rise up against the capitalist system, but I do think that Mr. Sachs isn't taking into account just how effective the US police state has become, the brutality with which it operates, and the technological means that they have at their disposal (funded, of course, by wealthy individuals and corporations) to spy upon, capture, detain, and torture protesters and to suppress dissent in general.