Posts by Ian Michael Gumby

IT questions Obama's IT stimulus

@vincent and AC

Dude!

The only IT people who wear suits are those interviewing for a job or the contract workers who have the skills to bail the companies out because their underpaid and undertrained staff only know the latest and greatest pieces of the pie. Try getting a junior java programmer to learn python scripting.

You want irony? Check out cnn's money section. IBM Is offering their RIF'd employees a chance for work in a low paying foreign company. Meaning that they are trimming jobs in the US and if you're one of the US workers let go, you can go to India, work for Indian wages and if you lose your job in India, tough luck.

HP gives SMBs zero per cent financing

@CoonDoggy

Yes you are correct that you can do a start up just by filing for an S-Corp in Deleware online and then file with your local state.

The catch is that when HP does the 0% they usually run a D&B on your corp and then do a credit check with your corp's bank.

The 0% is an excellent way to attract businesses in to upgrading their technology. As a rule of thumb, you have to upgrade every 3 - 4 years or so, but companies have been stretching it out. With a 0% option, it will drive customers to continue on the 3 year cycle.

3 years because Moore's law works in the SMB's favor so that even if their server needs don't grow, they can afford to downsize, reducing the maintenance costs on their software licenses along with using less energy and have a quieter machine room. (If they have a machine room).

Its a smart thing to do.

Unfortunately the AC is right that 0% isn't for everyone. You still need to have excellent credit rating and show a consistent cash flow for several years.

I'm a sceptic now, says ex-NASA climate boss

Lets get some facts straight...

The article isn't saying that anyone is contesting that there isn't a climatic change occuring.

What is being contested is if the 'global warming' phenomenon is a result of too many humans putting too much CO2 in to the air.

I think we all agree that its not really a good idea to keep pumping out a lot of CO2 or other toxins in to the environment.

As to what could be causing the phenomenon? Hmmm how about a shift in the magnetic poles?

That nice little magnetic field that surrounds the earth protects us from those nasty cosmic rays that will do more than tan your skin. A shift in the poles could cause a change in the magnetic field. A change in the magnetic field could mean a change in the amount of cosmic radiation that hits the earth, which could lead to a change in the weather patterns, like global warming.

But hey! What do I know? I've evolved from some sort of organic sludge that probably wouldn't have ever mutated if it wasn't for some of those pesky cosmic rays.

Mine's the jacket with the extra holes for my wings as I continue to mutate in to the next dominate species on earth!

Humvee with frikkin laser on it takes out killer robot

@AC

If you were to create a squad/man portable unit, I'm sure that you could design it to take out a human target with less chance of collateral damage.

Since the laser will travel at a line of site, you don't have to worry too much about wind and bullet drop, or shooting at an extreme angle. Just sight your scope in and it will be 'true' at any range.

At least in theory. You still have to worry about dust and debris obscuring your vision and also having an effect on the laser.

The point is that you can take out a target, even with a human shield. What you have to be careful is that they're not wearing a bomb and a dead man switch which will explode when he dies.

(Good stuff for a sci-fi adventure flick... no?)

IT vendor layoffs: The axeman cometh

You've got to be kidding!

Of course IBM is going to lay people off in the US.

This way they can hire them in 3rd world countries as cheap labor.

IBM will make their margins by moving their outsourcing commitments to off shore labor whenever possible. They will also use the lack of internal resources in the US to onshore the cheaper labor when possible.

Add to this the fact that they will be looking for handouts when Obama starts with the tech bailout.

Not a pretty sight.

IBM defies hardware woes with record 2008

@AC re HP Services...

Yes, you are correct. HP has EDS.

But how long ago did they purchase EDS?

Compare that to IBM's 3 division approach.

My point was that IBM has 3 core sources to draw from and a large customer base that is used to at least one or more of their division's products. IBM also resells competitors products too.

I think that with the focus on Sun as an example is to show the direction that Sun wants to go, but they have a lot of ground to make up.

If we look at Sun's software, Java as a language, Glassfish as an app server, and JavaDB/MySQL as their database platforms. (I'm sure I am missing stuff ) The point is that Sun has software, but how are they making money from it.

I know that AC2 was more defensive of HP. Yes HP has software yet it doesn't really have the brand recognition that IBM has. HP's notable stuff is more on par with IBM's Tivoli.

EDS vs BCS? Not on the same level. EDS is more of a Tier 2 GSI. (Yeah IMHO ;-)

Does that make sense?

BTW, I really want to hear more about today's blood letting. My guess was that the cuts were mainly in BCS/IGS. But from the sound of it, I'm way off base. :-(

Lets get some facts straight...

First, to the author, IBM renamed the DB2 pillar in Software Group to Information Management.

Naming your Brand and your product the same name was a dumb idea. (Lotus is a brand. Notes is a product. DB2 was the brand, DB2 was the product. Now its IM or Information Management and Informix, Datastage, DB2, etc are the products)

Second, if the rumors are true, IBM is laying off 16K employees in the US. I believe most of this restructuring is in Global Services. (When the market upticks, IBM will re-create these jobs, but not in the US or EMEA, but in India or some other low cost center of the world.)

Third, the only reason IBM is doing ok is that it has 3 areas to pull in revenue. Services, Hardware and Software group.

Neither HP nor Sun have those 3 major divisions. Sun , while they would like to call themselves a well rounded company is still a hardware company. Sun hasn't figured out how to make money off of software (Java, MySQL) and have traditionally used them as a tease to sell more hardware.

IBM hopes that the new Obama administration does push forward with some tech initiatives. IBM would love to land those accounts, keep the margins, and employ more people in India.

(That wasn't a joke.)

Open-sourcers get with the git

Git sounds like Rational's clear case...

Not that I've played with git, but the main feature outlined in the article about git is a feature of clear case..

Microsoft halts construction plans, won't renew leases

Of course its IT...

All the article does is confirm that Microsoft is letting attrition bring down the US employees as they build up their cheaper off shore labor pool. This way they can't say that they fired an American while they hired an Indian/Vietnamese/Brazilian/<insert your favorite Eastern European country> at a lower cost.

Aussie air zealot savages prêt-à-porter stealth fighter

@Adrian has it right to a point...

The F117 was very effective against Iraq in taking out their radar defenses. However, in the Balkans where the terrain is mountain/hilly, and approaches to targets can be limited, the F117 was vunerable to attack and I believe one was shot down by the Serbs.

The point is that 'Steath' technology isn't perfect nor impervious to detections.

The author of the article points to an Israeli raid deep in to Syria where advanced Soviet ground radar was ineffective. Again the point is that the way to overcome a defensive shield is multifaceted.

As to the Aussie 'genius', just a few points.

1) Clearly the F35 isn't as 'stealthy' as the F22 Raptor. Forget about looking at the specs. The US is selling F35 to their allies, but not the F22. That alone says it all.

2) Steath technology is very expensive. I mean horrendously expensive to design, test and build a prototype. If the UK, EU or even the Aussies wanted to do their own stealth program, have at it. It will crush your economy.

3) The F35 is stealthy enough. In aircraft combat, an F35 against a less 'stealthy' fighter would have a real advantage. (First one to see the other guy usually wins) Against ground attack, how accurate are those shoulder launched rockets against a 'stealth' aircraft? And thats the point. How does the airforce that owns an F35 plan on using it.?

4) In a large scale air assault, you lead with you stealth aircraft or you can use sat imagery and JDAMs / Cruise / etc to launch stand off missiles against the radar shield. Either you knock them out, or you get them to turn them off. Either way, they lose their radar defense.

The point is that as a cost effective, reduced radar signature of the F35, along with its ability to be a multi-role fighter, you have a viable plane to replace your aging fleet of 70's and 80's era of technology. There has to be a trade off.

Which would you rather have, a Harrier jump jet or an F-35 equally outfitted to that role?

Personally I'd love to see an upgrade to the SR-71. Sats are too easy to predict in orbit and the SR-71 was fast enough to evade anything even after detection. Purely as an observation platform, it did its job well.

'Miracle' plane crash was no miracle

Does the author ever proof read his article?

"I am certainly glad that pilot Chesley Sullenberger was at the helm. Like so many pilots at American Airlines, he's an ex-fighter pilot. He's also a consultant in aircraft and airline safety and the former safety chairman for the Airline Pilots Association. And, perhaps most importantly, he's a glider pilot in his private life."

Uhm the ditched plane was a US Airways plane. I don't know where the American Airlines statement came from. (BTW the majority of the pilots are ex-military)

As to it being a miracle, yeah I guess unless you're the Pope and you want to consider this guy for sainthood, you wouldn't call it a miracle. Even with all of the training, there are a lot of things that could continue to go wrong. You may call it luck, but what's the difference between being lucky or having a guardian angel or a miracle?

But hey! In my mind, anytime you can walk away from a crash, its a good thing. A miracle? Maybe not to you, but if you asked those on the plane, I'd think they'd agree with the term.

Church of Scientology seeks 'ban' against HIV+ protesters

Interesting legal issue ...

I think that while everyone here is on the 'bash the scientologist ' they missed a very important point.

How did the 'church' know that these two were HIV+?

Unless the 'church' can show that the two protesters openly posted or admitted that they were HIV+, then the 'church' just created a very serious legal situation.

Questions concerning how they obtained the medical information can lead to showing that there were HIPAA violations made on the part of the 'church', or on behalf of the 'church' by one or more of its employees or members, or both.

How they obtained the information can also lead to potential criminal charges as well.

I wonder what the lawyers have to say about this...

The IT? because while this is interesting, where's the IT angle? :-)

Steve Jobs takes medical leave from Apple to focus on health

No reason to panic.

Truly Steve Jobs is a visionary. Yet Steve Jobs' greatest strength is that he has the ability to get the top talent to actually take his vision to fruition, along with the ability to get the projects to market.

While its sad to see Steve take a breather, one shouldn't worry about Apple or its future. Jobs had assembled a good team and they are well funded.

Sad face because its never good to see someone leave the company due to health reasons.

Apple patents map mobile future

USPTO fails again!

Sorry but the majority of the patents should not have been awarded. Prior art exists.

Most of these patents are pretty much unenforcable because the underlying technology has existed and what they are patenting is one possible use of the underlying technology.

New York judge OKs Amazon Tax

Major blow to Amazon!

Part of Amazon's business model is to utilize affiliate sites to help drive business to Amazon.

Maybe they're big enough that they don't have to continue to do this, but this could mean that Amazon will probably phase out their affiliate program because of the risk it has to their revenue.

Its definitely feasible for companies that do business on the internet to actually calculate and charge the appropriate state sales tax. There isn't really a large burden on the retailer since most of the systems are on a computer and are automatic.

Looks like the tax man is coming to an e-tailer near you!

Storage RAIDs Jobless Apple show

Perfect Hardware to go along with the IBM Informix port!

As people talk about the potential jump of Apple in to the business marketplace, there are some things that are already available on the Mac OS/X platform.

There exists a port of IBM's IDS (Informix) engine for the Mac OS/X platform. With the availability of the raid systems using SAS, you can have one heck of a server on an all Mac OS solution.

Toyota USA goes all chatty

Oh come on! Its a money maker....

They'll sell you a subscription service to not send you these voicemails. Now that's the money maker!

Obama urged to relax US tech restrictions

Sure ... there's no threat...

Yes the Soviets are no longer the threat.

Its just the Chinese hackers that have targeted Nasa and other government agencies.

Does it bother anyone that China imposes security restrictions on hardware manufactured overseas? Maybe there's a reason for their paranoia?

Take a hammer to your hard drive, shrieks Which?

Wimps!

Yeah thermite is fun, but if its home made, you have to be very careful.

I also like to use the hard drive as a target.

A 7mm Rem Mag round through the drive definitely gets the job done. As to shrapnel, not really a problem when shooting 100+ yrds away.

Yes, its lots of fun and yes it takes some skill to hit these smaller drives at that distance.

Satyam chairman quits, admits faking accounts

Yes!

It looks like the third world countries have caught up with the West when it comes to corrupt CEOs.

So I guess 'offshoring' doesn't live up to their claims?

Samsung swaggers in with 100GB SSD

Huh?

Sorry for the huh? title. I'm just a little bit confused by the math in the article.

They say replace 4 older drives with one new one?

Ok, so lets say your older drive is a 73GB 15K drive. How do you get a 100GB drive to equal 4 times the storage? Assuming that they were talking about 34GB drives, maybe the math might be close. (132GB vs 100 GB)

And they don't mention the cost or how long the drive is expected to last.

You can't really do a TCO analysis if you don't know the life span of the product, right?

IBM approves Obama's IT stimulus package

What a crock!

First, the idea of the stimulus package is to create jobs and not completely fund them. The theory is that the stimulus would incent customers to purchase upgrades to their IT infrastructure.

As it has been pointed out, if there is an uptick in IT infrastructure spending, IBM will use offshore/onshore resources along with equipment which is probably manufactured overseas.

With respect to the AC post about electronic health records, its bollox. (Sorry if I misspelled bollox, I'm a yank!) In the US, medical costs are high due to many factors, not just nursing. You have more expensive equipment and drugs that are being used to treat patients. Also doctors are *using* the more expensive diagnostic equipment more. At the same time, until there is tort reform, doctors are paying for the high cost of malpractice insurance and for the mostly frivolous lawsuits. If electronic patient records were the issue, hospitals and medical practices would have jumped on the band wagon long ago.

Sorry, but while the proposed stimulus plan is necessary, the monies should be spent on infrastructure in the US along with subsidies to lower income families to have access to said IT infrastructure. In addition more money should be spent on material sciences research in the US.

But hey! What do I know? I'm just a regular guy... ;-)

Obama may militarise NASA to save money

It will never work...

Ok it *is* a good concept. You can then roll DARPA underneath them.

The reason it won't work is that you have a large diverse agency (NASA) which has major security leaks. The US will have to spend $$$$ money on security checks and implementing an IT lockdown.

BTW who do you think does all of the Chinese govt's research for them? :-)

RIM sues Motorola

Countries?

Illinois is a right to work state.

While Moto and Rim may battle things out, the real issue is that with AT&T aka Bell Labs in Naperville IL not hiring (most of the work has been shipped off to overseas offshoring sites) what is one to do.

Telephony handsets and switches has a limited number of companies. (Nokia, Tellabs, AT&T, Moto, Rim, etc ...) Since a lot of the workers at Moto couldn't qualify for a security clearance, you can forget Rockwell.

Also note that most of these companies are having a hiring freeze so the number and types of jobs are limited.

Since Illinois is a right to work state, Moto can sue, but the would lose the case.

To also make things interesting, RIM doesn't have a physical plant in IL. (At least none that I have seen.) So if they are hiring the staff, these staff would have to relocate to Canada. If they are being hired as work at home... well that would make things interesting.

A lot has to do with the noncompete clauses in their employee agreement.

1) How much of a burden is placed on the worker.

2) Term of non compete

3) Types of restrictions, what or how a competitor is defined

4) Compensation for the non-compete agreement.

IMHO, moto should let some of these slackers go. After all, if you're trying to rebuild your handset business from the ground up, do you want the same people who made design and coding mistakes to build your new products?

Motor quango thumbsup for satnav speed restrictions

Interesting and while technically feasible, it will flop.

There are really only two companies that make the map data for all of the sat nav systems.

TeleAtlas which is owned by TomTom, and Navteq which in a couple of days will be a wholly owned subsidiary of Nokia*.

One of the issues is that the map companies release their data once a qtr to their customers who then release the data on an annual basis to their customers which are the consumer. So if there is a speed change, not everyone would have it and it wouldn't be reliable. It is possible for these companies to make data available on a quarterly basis, however the onus of downloading the updates falls to the driver.

A larger problem is the accuracy of the hardware. Depending on the kit, the accuracy of the position and speed will be influenced on the number of sats and the accuracy of the clocks in the system. Lets not talk about the changes in the atmosphere or sun spots since we're not trying to get down to the centimeter accuracy.

If the concept is to create a method of enforcing speed on the highways, there are other technologies that can be used in conjunction with sat nav, or as a replacement.

Some of the Sat Nav systems incorporate an FM receiver to pick up traffic information. The same system could also broadcast route information and speed limits. This could be flexible enough to allow for speed zone changes based on the time of day or volume of traffic. Add to this the possibility of positioning rare earth magnets in the road and you *can* create a system that could use a sensor to determine your vehicles speed as well as align the center of the car to the center of the road. (Even this system will have issues too.)

So in theory, we could develop a system that could be used to help steer, and maintain speed on the roads. But it will flop. Real life has things like road debris, heavy traffic and the drivers do not drive uniformly. (Do I need to remind everyone about the Asian driver jokes that are told in California.)

Also another big reason. Part of the enjoyment of driving is being in control of your car. ;-)

* Navteq is owned by Nokia, but the transition is not yet complete.

Record industry refused Jammie Thomas appeal

@Paul

Sorry you can't apply this ruling retroactively and I believe that the majority of those settlements were agreed upon outside of a trial.

The interesting thing is that this case sets up a precedent that the burden of proof is on the RIAA to actually catch the transaction occurring and not allow the court to assume that because the files are out there that an illegal sharing did occur.

IMHO this could be reversed by a higher court.

As it stands, if the RIAA were to continue with their witch hunt, then they have to show that a transaction or rather a file was shared and they'd have to go after both parties.

I believe that the RIAA has stopped these suits because they negative publicity has not stopped those who are going to share from sharing. Also that there has been a negative backlash. People are just saying no to music sales.

While I agree that there should be some protection from the artist, I also believe that there has to be a paradigm shift in the music industry. If the Grateful Dead could exist and make money on tour, allowing their fans to freely record their live concerts, then there exists a possible new model where artists can exist and fans get the music that they want.

In truth, it may mean that these 'rock stars' no longer make the multi millions that they make from record sales and that the music industry shifts from their current business practices of grooming acts and then pimping the acts to the radio stations.

Big Blue urged to open Notes and Domino

Tree is living in a fantasy world.

Sorry but IBM will do thing if they can see a way to leverage the product to make money.

To quote Tree from the article:

"Over recent years we have seen the decreasing traction of the Domino product line among enterprise customers, lower conquest rates in small enterprises, and a lack of penetration in the SMB market," Tree writes. "This decline in position of the product has continued despite clear IBM commitment to the ongoing development, marketing and support of the product line. Competitors in the messaging and collaboration space are increasingly applying the 'legacy' tag to the product line and winning conversion projects that result in more expensive and less functional solutions for the existing customer base.

-=-

Tree is drawing a conclusion that it incorrect. IBM fails to win in the SMB marketplace because IBM doesn't know how to sell in the SMB marketplace. Were Tree to have spent any time with IBM's S&D organization, it would become apparent that the SMB market is a tough nut for IBM to crack across *all* divisions and the pillars of SWG.

The cultural barrier that has to be bridged for IBM to succeed in the SMB marketplace would cause a corporate wide revolution. Remember that Steve Mills is a product of IBM and does not have the mindset of how to deal with the smaller customer who can't afford to spend enough money to warrant a dedicated IBM team.

Calling for a product to be released as Open Source because its now perceived as legacy software is insane.

If we look at what IBM did put out in to the open source community, we see Cloudscape (Now Derby and JavaDB) and Eclipse. (A version based on Eclipse is sold as RAD under the Rational Pillar)

We could hold a separate set of discussions on IBM's involvement in Derby and Eclipse, however that would take away from the Lotus question.

With respect to Lotus, yes, its getting long in the tooth. Companies have a choice on how to spend their IT dollar. If they feel that Lotus offers a value, they will use Lotus. If they think exchange offers a value, they'll use exchange. If they feel that they can get along with an alternative solution, they will use that.

The key isn't making Lotus an open source product, but either IBM enhances Lotus to show its value to their non-core market (Aligned and Integrated accounts), or the Open Source community determines what are the benefits of Lotus and how to build a better mouse trap.

In the end, Tree's efforts show that there is an opportunity for a Lotus replacement, however there isn't enough interest in the open source community to build something from the ground up.

But hey! What do I know? Its not like I *worked* for IBM. (Oh snap! I did. :-( )

-G

I chose the stop sign because one should not live in the fantasy world of expecting big blue to make generous contributions when they can still make a buck on their products.

Fast and 'free' beats steady and paid on MySQL

Interesting ...

So now MySQL will have forks in their Open Source distribution.

This must really put a crimp on Sun's plans for their conversion of MySQL users to their paid for supported version.

This isn't to say that Sun won't further release 'free' versions. Only that Sun will want punters to pay for the best and more efficient database engine that they derived on MySQL.

At least when IBM bought Informix, they knew what they were getting for their billion dollar investment. (Technology and a revenue stream with a real ROI and ttROI under 10 years.)

Didn't Sun realize that those who chose to use MySQL wanted a simple, lightweight, 'relational database' that was free?

Sorry but the brains at Sun are still asleep at the wheel.

Paris, because she apparently has more brains in her blond little head than all of the BoD and C level execs at Sun.

Walmart's Jesus Phone no better, no worse

@Glenn Gilbert

How do you know what Wal*Mart negotiated from Apple?

The point is that you don't know what Wal*Mart agreed to in terms of quantity and price.

Is the Wal*Mart, trailer park, rural community ready for an iPhone? Lets face it, its a lot of cash for a phone where disposable income is at a premium and 3G service may not be available.

It could be that Wal*Mart didn't buy in large enough quantity and are using the iPhone as a draw to their stores where they have a more lucrative market for other electronics. You know, where they're punting older TV models at a steep discount to the prices of the new models. Clearly Wal*Mart isn't looking for a loss leader and is just putting their toe to test the waters.

As to those who like Verizon, sorry, but they're a bunch of crooks and incompetent wankers.

Mattress maker can no longer spring for SAP roll-out

Look at the bigger picture...

SAP requires that the company perform a paradigm shift as to how they do business. This shift can make even the most straight forward migration from their old system(s) to SAP a potential corporate failure.

Nike sued Oracle and SAP for their botched implementation many moons ago. In fact Nike told the financial community that this botched implementation had cost around $1 Billion USD in lost revenues and waste in their supply chain.

When will companies learn that IT has become a critical requirement of their business and that you can't cut corners and that when you're changing your core business systems, you have serious risks.

If you want to blame SAP or their BP consultants for under estimating the job, go ahead. But also blame the corporations that don't do their due diligence or get all of the company's stakeholders buying in to the system change, including the need for new hardware.

Sorry, but you could write a very long book doing case studies why SAP implementations go wrong. (Then a followup on Oracle/Peoplesoft screwups.)

Don't blame SAP. Blame everyone involved.

Scientology refuseniks sue over compulsory workplace courses

Bogus 1st Amendment claim by company...

"Disklabs argues that religious instruction in the workplace is protected by the First Amendment, making the proposed sanction unconstitutional."

If this is their defense, they will be patently shot down in court. (Not going to bore you with the legal issues, but in short, the minute you force someone to listen to you, you're no longer protected. )

I agree with the German government. I for one find it weird that anyone would work for a company that forced indoctrination. Were I microsoft, I'd be worried about a supplier having said stance.

Tesla takes Top Gear test to task

Its an interesting car, but Top Gear failed...

As it has been pointed out, Top Gear took several super cars and went and ran them on the track with 1 gallon of fuel to see how far they would go.

Tesla is a brand new car and its still in early production.

There are a lot of things 'wrong' with the car that will be fixed in future generations.

When TopGear tests a car on their track, they are hard on the machine. Tesla wasn't really designed for that sort of abuse. (Driving down the street or the 101 isn't going to deliver that sort of punishment.) Don't blame Telsa if they get worried about negative spin. They are in a crucial period where they're selling because of their novelty and not their reliability or overall performance.

In all electric cars, battery weight and capacity will be an issue until there are improvements in battery tech. Of course this will hurt performance.

Tesla also made a decision to use a singe engine and a power train to the wheels. Other cars have the motors in the wheels and no power train. It would have been interesting to see Top Gear show both on the track. (The one sports car that competes with Tesla is British so I don't know why they didn't do this.)

As some point to Hydrogen, its not a simple thing to try and create a hydrogen infrastructure. How do you make, store, handle hydrogen on a commercial scale? (Hint: Relying on solar to split water in to O2 and H on demand won't cut it.)

But why doesn't TopGear do an all electric show?

They could have some fun with it too.

Internet gambling mogul surrenders $300m in guilty plea

Just FYI...

I believe he was caught while visiting in the states. So he actually did himself in.

300m on Billions? Not a bad way to get out of a sticky situation.

Its not an issue of "protectionism" since US corps can't do online gaming themselves. Its a case of the "Moral Majority" (which is a minority) has influenced government policy which is akin to prohibition.

Apple's holiday Mac sales flatline

Saturation of the Mac market?

As the Reg has pointed out, iPod sales are down. Everyone who wants an iPod has one. If they aren't broken, why replace one. So of course sales are down.

Considering that the Mac has been outside of commercial/business sales for its core community how frequently does the kid's PC get updated?

I think that you have to look not only qtr/qtr sales, but yr to yr and qtr to same period last year sales to get a better picture.

Adobe learns lessons of open-source Flex

'The Badger' has it right...

Adobe, like IBM want a free lunch from the Open Source Community.

If we look at IBM's licensing for Eclipse, they are free to use whatever is created as part of their commercial products based on Eclipse code. (Rational Application Developer).

If we look at IBM's other open source initiative Cloudscape now released as Derby or Sun's JavaDB, the main supporters of the open source work are contributors of Sun and IBM. (I think those from IBM have since moved on and most of the support for Derby is coming from Sun developers.)

The article is spot on and it goes to show the issues with adopting certain open source projects or tools. Sorry while I am a big fan of Open Source, I realize that certain applications that are in the Open Source world do not match their commercial counterparts.

Novell dishes up OpenSUSE 11.1 details

Nothing wrong in "playing nice" with Mickysoft..

C'mon. Don't you know the old adage ... "Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer."?

Or how about ... "... turn the other cheek." ?

The point is that Mickeysoft is still the 800 lb Gorilla in the room and sometimes you get farther playing nice than trying to compete head on.

Lets get real. Microsoft is coming to terms that they can't stop Linux. So if you want to exploit them, play nice and make a deal. Trying to fight them is going to be a losing battle. Linux companies don't have the $$$ to waste on lawyers and the other guy has more than enough bucks to keep them in court and bankrupt them.

Clouds mass over data warehousing

Interesting but a bit flawed.

Not really a green solution.

MIT boffins crack fusion plasma snag

@Bload...

Does the plasma in the containment field behave like a liquid?

If so, it will work. Not a big fail as you suggest. In other words, if you can get lets say the center band of plasma moving due to the radio waves, how does the other plasma around it react?

There's obviously more to this, but I doubt you'd grok it.

HP claims market-topping 2.5-inch storage

@Alex Lee

What's the performance of your SATA drive vs a SAS drive?

While the SAS drives don't have the larger storage capabilities of the SATA drives, they are faster.

The good thing is that with 2.5" drives in a 2U high server, you could put a set of 7 disks of SAS and a set of 7 disks of SATA in different raid configurations. With mulit-core xeon chips, your single server could now be both a web/mail/app server and a database server.

Add in redundant power supplies and you've got yourself a box that most SMBs would love.

Double this and use HDR on the database along with load balancing of your web app, and you have extremely good uptime and reliability for a very low relative price. (relative to what it would have cost you 5 years ago.)

Nokia trims expectations again

Nokia has a lot of interesting bones...

Nokia has some potential only its not well organized.

The N810 could be viable as a product if they had some removable external storage and a cell phone.

I agree that Nokia's GPS units are weak. They work well enough to let you know roughly where you are. In the city, its hard for them to get a good sat signal and for some reason they don't recognize position from nearest cell tower like an iPhone which lacked GPS. (Its supposed to be the fall back).

I have the E90 because of the keyboard. The camera is slow . There's a camera on the inner screen that looks like it would be good for a vid conference but will only work in the EU 3G, not on wi-fi.

Again the E90's GPS is barely adequate. This is due to their choice of lower power chip sets and its a smaller chip set than what you find in other GPS systems.

The potential is there. Its just that the software works barely well enough. Better code, better apps and they have a chance.

Nintendo in profit on each Wii sold

Large difference in technologies...

What makes the WII experience is in their unique interpretation of the game console and hand units.

Give them kudos for that because it does allow for other types of games than remembering complex codes to get a player to make a fancy flying kick or what not.

But if we look at the PS3, we have a bit more complex circuitry under the hood along with Blu Ray players built in. The cell technology chip sets are pretty fascinating and if you wanted, you could actually boot up Linux on the PS3 as well as run IBM's IDS database. The cell chip technology has some interesting capabilities and I believe is also available in blade format from IBM for some of their higher end blades.

This investment doesn't come cheap and the platform may lose money now, however in moving forward to the next generation, the PS3 has an advantage.

What would the profit margin of PS3 had they just stuck with DVDs and not used Blu Ray? Would they have made money per unit at the expense of future technology and gaming options?

Just a thought...

Tux because on a PS3, you can load of Linux, a real production grade database and do something with it besides playing games. ;-)

Snipers - Cowardly assassins, or surgical soldiers?

@Stuart

"2) But didn't Hathcock use a 50-cal, the very round you said caused potentially fatal shrapnel?"

Hathcock used the .50 cal M2 Machine gun a couple of times since he could tap off a single shot.

(I don't have a copy of his book in front of me so going from memory...)

They put a scope on the machine gun, and his target was a VC on a bicycle approx 2300 yrds away.

In the field, AFAIK, he used a Winchester M70 bolt action rifle.

Getting back on topic of the article, the .50 cal bullet is large enough to be able to hold things like an explosive core and some micro-electronic circuits.

As to the shape of the bullet, you could mount a sensor even in the "pointy" nose of a bullet so you could retain the streamlined BC of a .50 cal boat-tail round.

Whats scary is that I know this stuff. ;-)

@Jake...

Did you try a .308 FMJ round?

Didn't think so.

The FMJ = Full Metal Jacket and the round will not frag that quickly.

Also if you did any ballistic tests, you'd see that the bullet would behave differently based on the distance to target. On targets where the bullet has retained most of the original muzzle energy, the bullets did frag more. On targets down range, further from the rifle where most of the energy was lost due to flight, the bullet retained more of its initial weight and fragged less.

Guns and Ammo, a hunting magazine did an excellent article on the different types of hunting rounds fired in to gel at different lengths to show their terminal impact at both close range and normal distance to the target.

So unless you hand loaded your rounds to take in to account that the energy of the bullet would be much less... seems like your myth just got busted. ;-)

Unlike most hunting cartridges, an FMJ doesn't have a hollow point or a ballistic tip for creating large frags.

Trained snipers are more than just Designated Marksmans. They are *scout/snipers*, meaning that they also function as recon. So they may not kill you with a long shot, but may also call in an air strike too.

What if computers went back to the '70s too?

And the point of this article was ...?

Hey! Does this mean I'm now over the hill because I cut my teeth on RSTS on a PDP-11, then learning 6502 Assembler and Basic on an Ohio Scientific C3-A? Then SYS III on a DEC?

Sun Micro's 3/60 workstations while in school?

Or I am too young because I remember where I was when the Morris worm hit?

Yeah, I started young. Had my Cat 300 Acoustic modem then the 1200 "digital" (no hand set)

Remember all those home brew kits? Heathkit's H8, IMSAI, CP/M machines? Oh yeah. the memories....

US gun lobby blogs Thanksgiving gun 'facts'

Its Hunting Season!

You have the rut going on, and its time to start planning for x-mas.

Also you have an incoming US President who's anti-gun so you want to start that lobby engine ...

Deleted

What do you mean no IT angle?

To quote the article: "The ensuing Victoria's Secret fleshfest was notable for the presence of Czech model Karolina Kurkova, who for some reason doesn't have a belly button."

If there's no belly button, then she wasn't born in the "natural" fashion.

Could it be that some evil scientist has learned how to clone humans after all?

Or is she some form of extraterrestrial life form?

You be the judge....

IBM employee poaching suit hypes Apple

This just goes to show two things...

1) IBM considers their employees slaves. They are salaried on a 40 hour work week yet they lose any freedom when it comes to working outside of IBM

2) Apple does not play in the same space as IBM. (At least for now.) So IBM's panic is either without cause or premature.

Gates joins ex-Microsoft CTO to register patents

Hmmm I smell a shareholder lawsuit...

Lets get this straight. If there is value in IP (Intelectual Property) and at the time of filing a patent, the "inventor" is a Microsoft employee, then why wasn't the patent filed via Microsoft?

In short, this conversion of IP to a non Microsoft entity would be grounds for a shareholder lawsuit since the IP should belong to Microsoft and the value of the patent should be Microsoft's.

Not that I'm pro-microsoft, it just seems that we're seeing theft by conversion and the shareholder is being left out in the cold.

Sun Java piggybacks Microsoft searchbar, divorces Google

No Wonder Where Sun is getting their *other* revenue from!

Wow.

That would explain their MySQL and Other software services bringing in 34+ million last qtr.

Note that they were trying to give the impression that it was MySQL revenue, however, this "opt-out software download" isn't free to Microsoft. They *are* paying Sun per each download where the user accepts the install.

Just goes to show you how desperate Sun is to get revenue ...

Second French rogue trader case sparks risky thinking

Managing trading risks?

The article is right that there are no silver bullets. The problem with derivatives is that there are down side risks that are hard to estimate. So you don't have a way to determine your exact exposure. A mark to market will let you know your current value of the investment but it doesn't tell you how much you can lose on your derivative investment, only what you would have made/lost if you had sold your investment at the time you did the mark to market.

The interesting thing is that the "rogue" traders are making uncontrolled trades in derivatives. That is, trading in derivatives are supposed to be a hedge against an underlying trade/investment and there should be oversight by upper management/senior traders.

While this isn't directly an IT issue, the technology does exist to help catch exposure...