The funny thing is that new features (like closures) have been appearing much more regularly since Oracle took over. The author of TFA seems to forget that after Sun released Java 6 (in 2006) there wasn't major release for years, and Java developers despaired as useful proposed new features got mired in the JCP.

Since Oracle took over we've had two major releases - Java 7 (in 2011), and Java 8 (in 2014) - as well a multiple minor releases. Java 9 is targeted for 2016. It's hardly a language that is stagnating.

And they don't learn anything that you don't know (or don't want them to know).

Exactly. You would think that a self-proclaimed "Strategic Developer" would know that! :-)

You don't have to imagine. They are already working on it.

I have a Sony reader too, which I still use and like a lot (I much prefer e-ink displays to backlit displays). But I never used the software that came with it. I got bitten before by the software that came with a Sony MP3 player which was a bloated piece of crap (I need a service running all the time just to occasionally copy music onto the player - really?)

So I used Calibre from day one and, when the Sony eventually dies, I'll continue to use Calibre with whatever replaces it. There's a lot to be said for having the software independent of the device.

Yes indeed. In my current job, we are currently looking at cloud providers. We'll be watching this case (and the appeal) with great interest!

Eh, no. You seem to have missed the point. Those buyers got something they definitely *did not* want as a result of aggressive price cutting by the retailers. The mantra of "cheaper is always better for the consumer" is simply not true.

Amen to that! It's disheartening that many more modern clustering technologies can't do what VMS could do 20+ years ago.

There's a lot of people who would disagree; like shoppers in the UK last year who bought supermarket ready meals only to later discover that they contained horse meat instead of beef or pork. The supermarkets tried to blame the suppliers. But in reality it was the supermarkets themselves, abusing their position and power in the supply chain to relentlessly push supplier prices down, that was the problem.

Many consumers fixate on price, but don't seem to make the connection between price and quality ("How come my £1 beef lasagne contains no actual beef?"). Suppliers can't sell their wares below cost; they'd just go out of business. So when relentlessly pressed on price they use lower and lower quality raw materials, employ fewer/less competent staff, move production to the 3rd World, etc. And quality suffers. Ultimately you get what you pay for.

Letting dominant (or monopoly) retailers set the agenda purely based on price is a recipe for a race to the bottom.

Quite so. And furthermore, rather than doing the normal criminal investigation thing (collect evidence, arrest likely suspects, bring them to trial, etc), Israel decided that they "just knew" who did it and sent the Israeli Airforce in to flatten their neighbourhood. Israel was very quick to jump on the bandwagon of George W. Bush's "war on terror"; label all your enemies as terrorists and use that to justify whatever you do to them.

To put that in some context, how would the international community have reacted if the British government (during the Irish "troubles") had sent the RAF to bomb neighbourhoods in Belfast or Derry because "we think there are some terrorists there"? It wasn't acceptable then and it's not acceptable now.

Have you considered that maybe it's you, not Firefox? Have you got flaky plugins installed? Or flaky extensions? Some extensions have been known not to play nice with others.

I use Firefox heavily every day (always on the latest release) and I haven't had it crash in literally years. Nor have I found it a memory hog. As I type this I have 10 different sites open and Firefox is using ~400 meg.

Whereas capitalism, in contrast, is a tide that "raises all boats". Oh, wait.

Yeah. It's not exactly "boldly going where no man has gone before", is it?

Got bad news for you. While the activities of the NSA may be technically legal *inside* the US, they are certainly not legal anywhere *outside* the US. The same is true in reverse; the US certainly doesn't operate a "live and let live" policy towards foreign espionage agencies operating inside its borders.

In any event, the point here is that US companies operating in foreign countries can't use the Patriot Act (or any other US law) as an excuse for flouting local laws. The personal data of EU citizens is protected under EU law. If US companies want to do business in Europe then they must abide by those laws.

The US wouldn't tolerate foreign companies breaking US law in America. What makes you think other countries should tolerate US companies breaking their laws?