If you will live anywhere south of Virginia and east of Nevada, swap AT&T for Verizon in this description (all the way down to the finally "is usually slowest" comment). Even the prices are similar.

Use a VPN service. I've used a corporate VPN and one based out of India (to avoid U.S.-centric blocking issues) called SwitchVPN. While they both worked fine, this was a year ago. The best thing to do is look at the current VPN companies and see who is being blocked today and why. If several from one country are getting blocked, choose one based out of a different country that doesn't have close ties with that country. It changes all the time, but it doesn't turn on a dime. It seems like the blocking happens in fits and starts (a bunch blocked a couple months ago, a bunch of different ones blocked next month, etc.) One thing I've found is that corporate VPNs seem to almost never get blocked, so if you have access to one of those, it is a good backup.

Seriously, it isn't even like Java is a particularly good language/environment. Frankly, I would rather deal with architecture issues and multiple platforms and just use C/C++ than put up with Java's issues.

I know it's ridiculous, but my first thought when I read this was an image of over-inflated hospital patients ballooning into the sky and bursting into flames with cries of "oh, the humanity!" I need to watch less TV.

I think the subject says it all.

You know what would be better idea than patching Java? Uninstalling it.

I concur. Excellent author. Two excellent series (the Patricia Hutchins series and the Alex Benedict series), as well as several stand alone novels and short stories. I've never read one of his books I didn't enjoy.

I completely agree with you, but I don't think he (the 97 year-old guy) did this intentionally. I think he was just blurring a couple of technical problems together: The Apollo 13 return trajectory problem and the Apollo 14 LEM computer problem. The Apollo 14 LEM computer started to malfunction during Lunar descent and required emergency reprogramming, which required the help of some MIT folks. This is documented. I'm not sure any of those MIT folks were ever recognized, and I could easily see something like what he described happening: NASA decides to honor them for saving the landing, meets hippy type, changes mind about the publicity.

Businesses. Companies that buy a lot of laptops don't like to send them out for a lot of warrantee repairs, especially for minor things (like replacing the keyboard, battery, or a hard drive. It is difficult and expensive. Why? For starters, most companies that care about security require removing or wiping the hard drive before the machine leaves the control of company personnel. If the hard drive can't be removed easily, or is some kind of custom thing that only works in this one model, that can be a real problem when you need to wipe it and the machine won't boot.