Review request for initial lambda functions and utils

[Mike Duigou]

> On Tue, Aug 9, 2011 at 9:55 AM, Colin Decker <cgdecker at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> I'm curious about cases such as Predicates.IS_NULL and Predicates.isNull()
>> where there is both a public constant of type Predicate<Object> and a
>> public
>> method that returns Predicate<T>. For one thing, I find the existence of
>> both fields and methods for these standard functions kind of awkward,
>> particularly when there's both a field and a method for the same thing.

My intention is for the static utility functions to be the primary way to access these objects. There are no features available only via the static final fields. 

One value for the public static final field is the rare cases where having a field allows for conditional compilation behaviour not available using the static method.

The inconsistent typing and abuse of erasure do advocate towards making these fields private.

Mike