You are right in that desktop Java aldready was a mess when Oracle took over. And I agree that distribution was a hassle. At the time it was hard to create standalone .exe or .msi for distribution. Webstart broke so often it was impossible to use outside strictly controlled corporate environments
But the bundling of Ask toolbar came about in 2013, so that was definitely Oracles doing.
Sourcesafe is a 90-era product. PDP-11 was discontinued long before Sourcesafe was even released.
There were version control software around in the 70’s but I do not think that the adoption rate was very high. I think it’s reasonable to assume that they didn’t use it in this case.
Flatrate models usually means that a large majority of users actually covers the costs for a the minority high consumers. It is true that the marginal cost for more transmitted data is almost zero, but the overhead costs of running (and expanding) networks are certainly not. Cost has to be covered and you could very well argue that it makes sense that the large consumers pay more.
It used to be that Swing/AWT really sucked. The default theme on every platform (Metal) was really ugly. Everything was purple. The "native" look and feel was emulated (poorly). It was also very slow. That's the reasons why SWT was started in the first place. Swing would just not cut it for any app that wanted a nice UI.
Nowadays the situation is completely different. Swing looks and performs great compared to SWT. IMO it would make much more sense to just use Swing.
JavaFX never happened. People just went web instead. No one uses it and it's officially deprecated.
I've worked professionally on a fairly large SWT-based project. This project was started when Swing was slow and ugly so SWT probably seemed fresh. Also, having a native L&F was important in those days.
We had tons of problems and they where almost never easy to fix. Layouting in SWT is hard. Custom widgets are hard. SWT did not play nice with Swing/AWT on Linux so it would crash if you needed to use both. I remember I spent a lot of time getting automated testing working reliably (on mac) but eventually just gave up.
Things might have improved since I worked on this 7 years ago but I would not bet on it. SWT is basically a support library for Eclipse and therefore Eclipse is more or less the sole driver for any development.
I would rather just use Swing. Compared to when SWT was started Swing has evolved a lot and IMO the rationale for going with SWT does not exist anymore.
Here in Sweden no one really buys UHT milk. I guess all stores carry it but it's rather a niche product. However, during recent years we have gotten something that's sort of in between UHT and regular milk. I don't know exactly what the process is, maybe they it's just pasteurize it for a bit longer. You need to keep it refrigerated but it will last for weeks. Some people claims it taste a bit different. To me it tastes the same as regular milk. It tastes nothing like UHT though.
First of all, if a company fires someone because they are on parental leave, that's a lawsuit waiting to happen. Now how a company handles employees depends. In some cases you hire a temp, in others your colleagues covers your responsibilities.
I work as a developer and in the places I've worked it has never been a problem. You leave and while you're gone your responsibilities are shared by other colleagues. When you're back you resume your old position. It's true that you might not get back to doing exactly the same work as before you left, but in my experience that's rarely a problem. In my case it's been quite the opposite and an opportunity to take on new things. I think this is quite common
It's true that the employer overall needs to keep more staff around since some percentage will be away on parental leave and your need to cover those fluctuations. For small companies this can be a problem but in general I think this system has great acceptance with the public.
What you say is about deer hunting in Sweden is true. But only for Roe deer. They are quite small deers that you are allowed to hunt with shotguns and Class 2 rifles, meaning 800j at 100m. That's typically a .222 Remington. The legality of this stands out when you take the rest of Swedish hunting laws into consideration. There reason is probably historic. There is a Swedish tradition to hunt Roe Deer these types of guns and so the lawmaker kept it.
Even though Class 2 rifles are legal it's my impression that they have become less and less popular. Most people tend to use something like a 6.5x55, .308 or 30-06 since that gives you more margin of error.
Roe deer is the also largest animal you're allowed to hunt with a Class 2 rifle. The next size deer (Fallow deer) is Class 1, meaning >2000J. You can use shotguns with slugs on boar and fallow deers, but not on Roe deer. This shows that it's not always clear how the lawmaker reasons.
Hunting laws in different countries often reflect tradition and might not always have a sound base in science. In the US you are allowed to hunt with falcons, muzzleloaders and bows. That's criminal in Sweden.
You are right, but for a while this was not true. When Apple switched to x86 the MacBook was competitively priced. I remember buying one because it was cheaper than comparable PCs.
But the bundling of Ask toolbar came about in 2013, so that was definitely Oracles doing.