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I am being taxed. Lately, not just by my colleagues, but by the government too. Only two things in life are certain, they say: death and taxes. Valuably, you can get away with cheating death a few times - I've been missed by a whisker by the occasional vehicle, eaten and the drunk the odd thing that I shouldn't have, and several times I've only just missed being in the wrong place at the wrong time by hours and even minutes. Even so, I'm still here.

You can see that if the grim reaper keeps a tally, he definitely has a score card for me. Only that is all part of living. Unloved taxes, on the other hand, are something I prefer not to cheat on. The consequences seem slightly worse than death. Here, I've spoken to a few people who have been pursued by a government because said government deemed them - sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly - to owe more than was paid. Only the government, it seems, does a dab hand at bullying. Where taxpayers were completely in the right, even there they tell me that on many occasions they would have preferred to just pay a reduced fine to make the hastle go away. All that stress affected their lives, their health, their business. But government tax inspectors, it seems, go to the mafia school of interpersonal relations. On the whole, they seem to start with the course "getting a horse's head in your target's bed", then advance from there until they culminate with "heart attack induction: the gentle art of making your victim realise that there is more to life than arguing with tax inspectors".

Ultimately I prefer not to come close to a tax inspection. The code inspections I do are hugely preferable. At the very worst, a code inspection can lead you to a new thedailywtf entry, at its best it can eduate and entertain. So did you see my clever segue into code there? Unfortunately I felt like having a grumble about tax, but Jack insists that I talk about something related to Java performance. Competently, I did both (see, just there, I mentioned Java performance, and again here!).

Keeping with Java, those of you not bothered with the latest "Java is dead or useless" drivel won't have noticed that some prof wants students to learn how to write programs using silicon imprints rather than Java - but even for those of you not interested, aerospace engineer Mark Graybill explains in detail why Java is progress in most spheres. Jolly well worth a read.

BCNU - Javva The Hutt.

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