This signals the beginning of the end of Java. I will no longer use or support Java that has now become essentially closed source or will be soon. Gates hates Java and this is the start of the death spiral from being one of the most popular languages to being marginalized. Soon that wretched Visual Whatever will be more prominent and that will be that for Java. I'm still sticking to Perl and JavaScript for now for web apps. But as I said... goodbye to Java (Topcat, Websphere and Weblogic too) and Sun can just go fade into the sunset.

This is like buying an iPhone. Why? I've been successfully creating and/or exchanging M$ Office format documents with MS Windows users using OOo for many years. The Redmond Encumbered Ones never know unless I tell them.

These Indians have no UNIX experience for the most part but have lied about it to get the job. I tech'd a couple that told me they had 5 - 6 years experience when they had told another guy on the project a week earlier they had none and asked what books should they buy to give them the information on basic UNIX commands. I guess so they could pass the tech interview I gave them. They answered enough of the basic questions and seemed to know their around vi when in fact they had no experience at all in UNIX and had never written a shell script.

I have a feeling they lie about the advanced degrees they list too. So when is the last time some HR department called the colleges in BF, India and confirmed their degrees? IBM also uses L1 visa holders meaning they are IBM India employees and do not have to be vetted or go through the H1B process. They just show up and go to work - so to speak. Any task given them takes far longer to get done and often has to be redone. I have had to redo a lot of their work on projects. And now IBM has many mid-level managers from India so problems are hidden or passed of to others.

Just as buggy whip and vinyl records and 8" floppy disks have gone so mechanical players and rolls are going away. As a former registered PTG piano tech I worked on my share of these player machines. I never rebuilt one but have made minor pump replacements and glued up the occasional bellows and made adjustments. As musical instruments older pianos are built to last a 100 years or more so these instruments are not going to disappear anytime soon. The rolls on the other hand are paper and can be damaged and just plain deteriorate long before the player part quits working. I hope someone will step up and keep a supply of rolls coming. It'll be a niche market for sure but just like keep ancient planes and autos running it will be worth it for future generations to see how 'The Old Folks'(tm) lived in The Good Old Days.

I went abroad to study a broad. Actually I studied many broads while I was abroad.

This may be the way to go. It appears you can get a Masters degree in CS in a few weeks in some places in India without knowing how to do anything more than write simple programs taken from book examples of Visual BASIC. Then you can claim a year's worth of experience on your resume for each program you code.

Meh. It was 80 here in Brandon, Fl yesterday (Christmas). My daughter who is home on break from college complained it was too hot so we had the air conditioning on all day and night. She's going to school in Indiana so this is a big change for her.

Among other things granted to the Chinese during the Clinton administration was the relaxation of having to meet FCC part 15 subpart B for electronics. Some Chinese power supplies put out tremendous amounts of RF all across the spectrum. Might check that too if you are having problems with radio reception. When I can get them I always buy Taiwan made power supplies because #1 they are better engineered and built, and #2 they do not radiate RF. They have to meet the RF emissions requirements. So far I've had a large failure rate of Chinese power supplies because of being under engineered and the poorly made components. Electronics are like everything else being made in China today. They cut corners and mismanage and put out crap clothes, electronics, baby food, pet food, toys, medicines, and every body just keeps letting them get by with it. Most of my Chinese made shirts don't come with pockets anymore, the thread count of the cloth is lower, the sewing thread is smaller diameter and of poorer quality. The seams are sewn right up against the edges so they rip out in the washing machine and buttons disappear after a few washings too. And if you take medicines ask your pharmacist what the country of origin is. It might surprise the hell out of you. Almost everything I take now (blood pressure and kidney meds) are made in India. That scares the bejesus out of me too but not nearly as much as Chinese made meds.

It is true there were issues with earlier MS Windows but I stand by my statement that C++ was a key problem with the later version of the platform. Bad design was another. I am not denying early Windows was written in C and ASM. MS should have stayed the course there and kept away from that wretched monolithic 'everything is connected to everything else so it all has to be loaded design so you solve our scalability issues by throwing hardware at it' design.

Gates wanted MS Windows to be as far away from UNIX as it could be made. And he succeeded. UNIX - I've had servers up and runing for years without being rebooted. My laptop running XP has to be completely shut down every couple of days or it becomes nearly unusable due to memory leaks and fragmentation problems with that stupid pagefile.sys instead of using proven paging and swap file technology from UNIX.

I'd bring up security but I need to finish this before Christmas. A UNIX system right out of the box is many times more secure than Windows... although there is some progress there. Virus writers don't pick on Windows because it's so popular. They attack Windows because it's so easy and still has many vulnerabilities. So still, when I have to provide a secure and stable environment for applications I don't even consider MS Windows. It's OK for desk top apps (which I do not get involved with any more) although I get by with work alikes on UNIX and Linux.

And that is not just my opinion but a rather broadly held one. In fact this is why after NT4.0 several architects and myself working at a large telephone company data shop stopped developing any applications on Microsoft OSes. That and for me C 6.0/C++ 1.0. That was shortly after the time Gates decided to stop being an operating system and compiler vendor and started his drive to take over all aspects of the personal computer. The published APIs changed and decent third party apps were bought up and killed off or driven out of business.

I'm not surprised BS is down on Java. It does to OOP what C++ was supposed to have done but instead just crapped up a good problem solving language. To support this I have almost 30 years of programming and architecting on micros, minis, and mainframes running TRSDOS, DRDOS, CPM, MSDOS, UNIX, MVS, AND Linux for large enterprise wide comm servers and client/server apps. I have done 'at the metal' coding in C and ASM for comm servers. My list of languages include BASIC, C, and yes C++ - but I hated it, FORTRAN, COBOL, ADA (hated it), RPG II (hated it), REXX, Intel-Zilog-and Motorola ASM, PERL, HTML, Java, JavaScript, many UNIX shell variants, SQL, DBII, Pascal, and who knows what else I may be leaving out this early in the day. In other words, been there done that. Unless some damn fool pointy hair boss interferes I chose the OS and language to best solve the problem. And right now if Microsoft is the answer then the question was not phrased properly. I can even code in C# (Microsoft's feeble attempt to undermine Java) but use Mono on UNIX/Linux. So I feel more than qualified to say to Stroustrup, "Sit down and STFU". You had your shot at language developing and screwed up a lot of things. MS Windows instability over the years is a prime example of using C++ when C was a much better choice to build an OS. You may have a different opinion. I especially want to hear from Visual Studio coders who can only do VS BASIC or C++ on Microsoft and think they are programmers. When you have earned your Silver Back status and designed and built applications handling millions of dollars in transactions daily running for 6 to 8, and in one case almost 10 years error free, or apps doing 1,000s of transactions hourly without a glitch, then come sit down and we'll do lunch.

I had a 'fever blister' about every month when I was a kid. I had better follow up on this. Although we never had any Alzheimers in the family my oldest cousin and her ex-husband both have it. There was never a case in his family either.