This is like saying just because China and the US act much in the same way (for example, they are the leaders in environment pollution) there is no distinction between people who believe in a communist regime vs. in a democratic government. Of course a distinction between Republicans and Democrats is useful. For example it is a good prediction to say if you have a PhD, you are probably not a Republican.
Got to reply to myself here. I forgot to mention Joe Haldeman who still writes and is one of my forever SciFi heroes because of "The Forever War". And now I discovered that Ridley Scott (Bladerunner, Alien) is going to do "The Forever War" in 3D! So, yes, Sci-Fi is dying, but as long as true fans of the pure art like Ridley Scott are around, there is hope.
Only someone who doesn't truly love Sci-fi can say that ... Also, if you are saying that Dick is dull (by the way, Dick is totally different from Heinlein), than you have no clue and your opinion does not count. :-)
I am a hardcore sci-fi fan. Although I basically grew up in a library, the most fascinating part of it were the two or three racks nobody frequented than me: the racks were full of hardcore sci-fi like heinlein, asimov, pkdick, silverberg, leguin, pohl, you name them. In that sense, Sci-Fi is actually dying, because in the last 10 years, I hardly found something that even remotely compares with the great work of these guys except for the works of one author, Iain. M. Banks.
All germans know that this is not going to happen. The euro is here to stay, and germans (at least those who generate most of the GDP for germany) are willing to pay in order to keep it. After all, we can do the math.
Open standards are nice, and Javascript is in many ways better than Java or C# (but not better than F#, for example). But I am a professional programmer, and from my point of view Javascript is still a boring mess. Heterogeneity is the key, and native apps will rule. After all, that's what protocols are for, to mediate between different entities. I want to be able to create content that is not limited to technologies imposed by the W3C.
I am happy with 2.8, I use it to develop another programming language :-) I am careful though to depend not too heavily on Scala libraries, because of surprises I have experienced in that area, too. But honestly: there is just no other programming language as mature as Scala while being as productive (until my new programming language is finished, that is :-))