Petty hatred? Microsoft made a lot of real enemies on the way up. Microsoft drove a lot of people out of business. Microsoft funded the massive expansion of H1B visas in the late 1990s by hiring Harris Miller to form the ITAA to bribe Congress, Clinton and Bush. We got outsourcing and Microsoft having a special subsidy that cost developers lots. [ source : Four Indian IT outsourcers topped the 2008 list of companies obtaining H-1B visas - http://www.eweek.com/c/a/IT-Management/Indian-Outsourcing-Fi... ]. Microsoft acted like Walmart for 15 years : destroying their American competition and suppliers. Now that they're looking for buddies. They're scraping the bottom of the barrel for alliances: SCO, Novell and now Nokia. Sleep with Redmond and you die. This may save Nokia from bankruptcy in the short run and enrich some executives, but it spells doom in the long run. The fear is well justified.
With federal debt at 66 year high, there's a problem
Politicians, regardless of label, seem to kick the can down the road. They spend their money on their friends ("necessary infrastructure", "critical defense spending", "defending social security", etc.). The bill to pay goes to grade school kids.
Maybe interfacing to javascript libraries has replaced actual new javascript development and people search for, for instance, "jquery" instead of javascript.
1) The persistence of C. Looks like it will remain "the glue" between the machine and "higher level" operations for the next decade and beyond. It's strong niche in the "must be fast as possible and still portable" arena helps, too.
Properly using vi , especially the macros feature, will save you from carpal tunnel syndrome. Typing "set -o vi" first thing in bash will save your sanity.
Nokia should quietly spin Qt off to avoid making more enemies.
IBM beat Apple by promoting an open platform : the PC. The eventual winner of the smartphone/netbook/tablet wars will do the same.