I am not sure that this is true. Many countries in northern Europe such as Iceland, Sweden, and Norway eat quite healthy.

Using body mass index as a (arguably quite bad) proxy for a healthy diet we find [0] that many of the southern countries such as Spain, Greece and Portugal are more overweight than many countries farther north.

[0] http://apps.who.int/bmi/index.jsp

Sure, thats why I said generally. The UK and Germany don't have especially healthy diets in my opinion and have a lot more people than the Scandanavian countries that you mentioned.

Agreed. However, Germany is typically not regarded as a part of Northern Europe. Although that can be argued since there is no formal definition if Northern Europe.

Important restriction:

for the initial release, the only supported module is java.base

I.e, we will not be able to compile our own code ahead of time just yet.

> I.e, we will not be able to compile our own code ahead of time just yet.

That's not really true. From the same doc:

> AOT compilation of any other JDK module, or of user code, is experimental.

So it's "experimental", but possible to do.

While Java 8 is the only version that is freely supported from Oracle, it is still possible to buy commercial support for older versions of Oracle's Java platform.

The speed at which they stop freely supporting older versions feels much like a way to squeeze big, slow moving organizations for support contracts.

Indeed, see http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html

I appreciate that, even with this "fast" pace I still need to target Java 7, and I am aware of projects in even older versions.

I appreciate changes that make it easier to monitor and debug applications. Looking forward to some small goodies that I haven't heard much about before:

http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/228 - Add More Diagnostic Commands. For example more insight into JIT:ed methods and the code cache.

http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/158 - Unified JVM Logging. Logging from the JVM, e.g. GC logging and classloader logging, are configured and printed uniformly.

http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/259 - Stack-Walking API. Efficient API for walking the current call stack.

> http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/259 - Stack-Walking API. Efficient API for walking the current call stack.

Oh, nice! At any given moment in time, how many server CPUs are burning cycles to create a full StackTraceElement array, just because the logger is set up to provide the convenience of call site information with every write?

It should be noted that the chart shows s&p 500 which does not include dividends. Real returns are higher when dividends are accounted for.

Indeed. Reinvestment of dividends makes a big difference. I made similar plots here:

http://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2015/Dec/pay-down-mortgage-or-in...

Note that they do include dividends though, according to the legend. So probably using the total return or net total return index.

Indeed, I stand corrected. I missed that part. I thought the returns were too low to include dividends, but that must me the inflation adjustment tricking me.

Very good point.

While there are total return (i.e. with dividends re-invested) and net total return (i.e. with dividends partially re-invested, as if after tax) versions of the S&P 500, they're almost never quoted.

The German DAX is the only major index I can think of that's primarily quoted as a total return index.