Regarding #2, I've heard an interesting statistic recently.
The blue workers average salary went up 5% in one year in France. The reason? Recent waves of layoff impacted lower salaries more than the others. So the average went up, but the lucky ones who kept their job didn't see an increase on their paycheck.
Well, the thing is both Chrome and Firefox get updated automatically but IE doesn't.
So the problem will not IE versions that are already old (IE6, IE7) but current versions of IE - even future versions before they implement these new standards.
As these features roll out to Firefox and Chrome, users of these browsers will have to them because of the auto-update pretty quickly.
Eventually IE will implement them, maybe in version 12, and you'll have users still using IE10. Heck, maybe they won't be able to upgrade their IE because it won't run on their aging Windows 7.
Unless IE switches to the auto-update used by Firefox and Chrome, and stops dropping Windows versions in their new IE, I don't see the problem going away.
It's not that it's "Scala adapted to Java", but more like a choice to do async and functional programming even in Java. That makes stuff a bit verbose sometimes because to pass a function you have to pass an anonymous class.
That will become better with Java 8 and lambdas without having to break compatibility with older Java versions (they will still use anonymous classes).
I actually remember hearing an official from Cote d'Ivoire insisting that we should use "Cote d'Ivoire" in all languages.
People localizing their country name creates confusion, typically a citizen from Cote d'Ivoire unable to explain to an airport official where he's from because the official only knows the locally translated name.
Unfortunately modularity goes against the interests of companies producing gadgets. They'd rather have you buy a full upgrade every 2 years than just change a few components once in a while.
It's actually what's happening on mobile. Everyone uses webkit but they all have a different version, with their own set of patches and compilation options.
The user is not necessarily the customer, or the buyer.
In a company, the buyer or customer may be a manager but the user the members of his team.
In a consumer product, the buyer or customer may be a middle-aged man but the user his 12 years old daughter.
Words have meanings, and randomly inverting them will only cause more confusion. When you sell a product it's important to know who is the custmomer and who is the user. If they're not the same person they will have different goals and needs, and it is important to understand them.
Or, buy a phone that can resist a 1 meter drop on concrete without a case. That's pretty much any phone except the iPhone 4 and 4S.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elKxgsrJFhw
Yes, sure, full glass is beautiful. But not very drop resistant.