The Open Source world (or, anyway, the Open Source Initiative, or maybe just ESR) is in pretty sad shape when it finds itself pleading with some rapacious corporation to free a stupidly-designed language created, in the first place, just to attack some other even-more rapacious corporation. Sun is free, and welcome, to make itself irrelevant to Free Software, and the world at large. It would already be forgotten if not for its multi-billion dollar bank account, which (incidentally) feeds OpenOffice and SCO alike. Java itself is already irrelevant to Free Software: Java needs Free Software, but Free Software doesn't need Java. As Sun fades from our minds, so will Java, and good riddance.
It makes me feel better to think that Free Software is not in similarly sad shape. Then I look at the Mono and dotGNU projects. They're not begging anybody, exactly. One might say, rather, that they're asking for it. I'm not sure which is worse. I guess this is what the mainstream is like: fools make themselves irrelevant, the rest of us (or "them", maybe) go about our business, and it all comes out OK, because we're not in the middle of an apocalyptic struggle any more.
Speaking of worse, I just finished the worst book I have read in years -- "Chindi" by Jack McDevitt. It's awful from the very first line: "The Benjamin ... was at the extreme limit of its survey territory". Each chapter is worse than the last, each deft touch reveals it as the more tawdry. Chapters start with quotes from great but dull works of the 23rd century. The ship captain is gorgeous but unfulfilled. Every character is bored with his or her life and life's work. Reading it was like watching a train wreck. Recommended, sort of.
Orkut has got quite boring. The only thing I'm watching for now is when the membership count of the "I hate Java" community passes that of the "[I like] Lisp" community. "I hate Perl" had been tracking "I hate Java" just twelve members behind, but has lately almost stagnated. Of course nobody hates Python, and probably won't until 3.0, when all the "list comprehensions" and Lispy doodads make Python programs incomprehensible. (Meanwhile, membership in "M-x viper-mode" and "I resent Lisp" creep obscurely upward. Ha ha, they have no idea what lies in store!)
Galeon 1.3.12 on my home machine is still leaking zombie processes like a parthogenetic rabbit. I have to shut it down daily when it hits the 206 mark and freezes. Oddly, that doesn't happen at the office, where I never look at eBay; evidently my wife's eBay usage triggers something nasty. Otherwise it's a great browser.