Although Sun Bug Database is somewhat unpopular it is at least one way to influence the future of Java. I have read many articles on the web where developers demand for including closures in Java 7. It is really strange that the issue 5014235 "Closures support instead of annonymous inner classes" (submitted in March 2004) only has 24 votes!

http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=5014235

Want closures in Java 7? Vote!

 Update: now (Oct, 24) the issue has already 105 votes and should appear on the list of "Top 25 RFE's" soon. I would like to thank everybody who voted and hope that our votes will be taken into account and that closures will make it into Java 7.