In a major development, James Gosling, the father of the Java programming language, has left Oracle Corporation.

http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/04/gosling_leaves_oracle

There are quite a few lessons to be learned here:

• You can invent Java and still be out of a job!
• No language lasts forever.
• Nothing will replace “select *” aka SQL. It has nothing to do with computer science. The foundations of mathematics are built on set theory — unless some other language can be invented on top of set theory that betters SQL.
• Time to go functional/dynamic: The object-oriented era is coming to an end.

Per the grapevine, Gosling is probably looking at the following choices:

1) Join Google.
2) Join IBM.
3) Move to academics (like Bjarne Stroustrup did).

It would indeed be something if he joined Microsoft instead! Don’t think that’s likely though…

It seems like Solid State Disks (SSDs) on servers have finally arrived. Since most environments use storage area networks (SANs), it’s a huge performance boost to use SSDs unless there is a need for storage in excess of 250GB on the local drive for servers.

What is a Solid State Disk?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive

HDD vs. SSD

http://www.overclockers.com/hdd-vs-ssd/

Going by the above article, SSDs promise 10 times faster reads/writes.

Reads 2x SSD Raid0 = .072ms * 1000 = 72ms 2x HDD Raid0 = 9.590ms * 1000 = 9590ms.
Writes 2x SSD Raid0 = .104ms * 1000 = 104ms 2x HDD Raid0 = 1.167ms * 1000 = 1167ms

Availability:

http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd-buyers-guide.html

1TB SSD:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/194327/want_a_cheap_ssd_oczs_4000_ssd_may_not_be_for_you.html

Budget options:

http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&q=SSD&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=94XIS5mDLoL78AaVmLCHBw&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&ct=title&resnum=3&ved=0CDYQrQQwAg