Looking back at my invoices, I can see that I usually work more hours those two months than any other months of the year.
I also get depressed from lack of sunlight in the dark Scandinavian autumn days.

On the other hand a total of one (and that was some trivial layout) bug was reported on the code I coded and shipped in that period this year.

Maybe the bugs are only found later?
That also suggests that the bugs found in October and November was introduced by the interns during the summer vacation?

The chances of me giving birth to anyone are astronomical ;-)

I am not a trekkie, but you must be referring to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_First_Contact

The Enterprise arrives in the past, on April 4, 2063, the day before humanity's first encounter with alien life after Zefram Cochrane's historic warp drive flight.

So I assume that Zefram will invent it. I'll be sure to suggest that as a name candidate for my future grandchildren.

Thank you. I was not aware of your book.
Looks good.

Make your black box join a wifi network or blutooth.

Then make apps for Android and iPhone that can control your device.
That way the customers can choose which device they want to control your device with.

As a default device you can tape som generic Android tablet to your device.

Same idea as http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/en/

Of course I realize that your application is probably much more serious than a flying toy, but the basic idea is good for many applications.

This is why I think Scala will succeed.

Scala has all the advantages that the article mentions AND you can integrate and reuse your old Java or .NET code and libraries.

It's there. The tooling doesn't suck half bad anymore. The world just needs to find out.

I personally think that Scala will win over the 10% best Java programmers as soon as the tooling is comparable to Javas.
And that might happen within the next 1-2 years.

Take a look at Scala collections.

Scala lists look and feel immutable, but under the covers they are really mutable to remain more performant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg4trPZFUwc

I dual boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu and I can't install Windows 7 SP1 because it can't handle that I use grub as my bootloader.
So, yes, they are doing it already.

Though this one must go down to the Napoleon quote: Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor

I always found the coolest geek insult was: "I can replace you with this (hold out thumb and index finger) much code".

I've done it a couple of times too in my career.
But I must admit that I never had the guts to say it to the face of the people I made obsolete...

lazlo at jay dot net

thanks mate

They should recall it and ship it when it is done ...

From what I have read BF3 will be micro payment hell, where you have to pay real money to get each and every weapon upgrade.
Call of duty 3 looks like it will have a monthly fee to play online without a handicap.

Finally a chance to kick my FPS addiction?

I hope that google will pick up Scala soon as a first level language at google.
Scala is just so damn cool and useful.

I never get any modpoints any more, but if I had I'd mod you up.

For a personal app, the time and effort it takes to get it done also counts and here Swing and Java2D are well thought out.

Another hint.
Last I tried any drawing in java was 5 years ago.
I found it easy to set up a look that kept redrawing my canvas every 500ms.
I then ran the program through the debugger in eclipse, and I could see the image change as I changed the code, due to javas hot code replace.

Now a days I wouldn't write java code in my spare time.
Scala is more entertaining, and Scala also takes the pain out of Swing applications.
Take a look at this spreadsheet demo application:
http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/wikla/OTS/Sisalto/examples/html/ch33.html

Example is from Programming Scala. Best programming book I have read in years.
http://www.artima.com/shop/programming_in_scala