7978776
submission
ericatcw writes:
Tablet computing fans are revving the hype engine again, this time declaring that on-the-upswing netbooks — 50 million sold in the past two years — are already on the way out. Mind you, this annual rite is is nearing two decades old, reports Computerworld, without fulfilling its prophecy. The article notes other reasons — economics and ergonomics — why netbooks will still trump over tablets next year.
7860618
submission
ericatcw writes:
Relational database startups and even established vendors are jumping onto the MapReduce/Hadoop bandwagon, with Sybase and Teradata being the latest. But what about the big three of the database market: Oracle, IBM and Microsoft? Turns out, one is embracing Hadoop, another is dismissing it, while another says it's been offering it for almost a decade.
7818386
submission
ericatcw writes:
Most /.ers know that old Bill Gates demo where Windows 98 crashes catastrophically after the hapless assistant plugs in a scanner (it's only been watched on YouTube 1.5 million times). Ever wonder what happened to that young guy? Rather than being fired or exiled to the mailroom, Chris Capossela kept rising. Today, he's back in the spotlight, as Microsoft's marketing veep for Office, Exchange, SharePoint and their new hosted equivalents. Capossela explains what Office's ace in the hole is in its fight for big business against Google Apps, how Microsoft is starting to co-opt Twitter, and how the Redmond culture really is a bit like the Borg.
7666404
submission
ericatcw writes:
Barnes & Noble, Sony and other e-book vendors may have the manufacturing muscle, but the brains directing the challenge against Amazon.com's Kindle eBook Reader is Adobe Systems. Like Microsoft, Adobe has built a formidable ecosystem of partners to whom it supplies software such as its encryption/DRM-creating Adobe Content Server. Adobe paints Amazon as being like Apple: secretive and playing badly with others. Amazon argues it just ain't so, and takes a jab, along with other critics, at Adobe's alleged open-ness.
7344506
submission
ericatcw writes:
Through tools such as Visual Basic and Visual Studio, Microsoft may have done more than any other vendor to make drag and drop-style programming mainstream. But its superstar developers seem to prefer old-school modes of hacking code. During the panel at the Professional Developers Conference earlier this month, the devs also revealed why they think writing tight, bare-metal code will come back into fashion, and why parallel programming hasn't caught up with the processors yet.
6865738
submission
ericatcw writes:
Despite facing lawsuits from Hollywood AND the Canadian music industry, popular BitTorrent search engine isoHunt has so far evaded the same fate of P2P filesharing networks Napster, SuperNova and The Pirate Bay. One reason, 26-year-old founder Gary Fung told Computerworld, is that isoHunt uses the same approach as Google. Moreover, isoHunt is working with at least one record company to remove torrents leading to copyright-infringing music, says Fung. Fung's real hope is to actually broker a truce between consumers and content owners, and he's launched a new site to do so.
6813362
submission
ericatcw writes:
ChromeOS has yet to arrive to save the dying Linux netbook, but no matter: Linux is doing just fine on tiny laptops. According to Computerworld, about a third of of the 39 million netbooks shipping this year will come with Linux. Linux may actually overtake Windows on netbooks by 2013, according to ABI Research's forecast, as ARM-based netbooks running Moblin, ChromeOS, Android and Ubuntu gain popularity. Could that be why Microsoft recently listed Red Hat and Canonical as official competitors for the first time? ABI analyst Jeff Orr tells Computerworld a tactic that he thinks would help Microsoft stave off Linux on ARM.
6677431
submission
ericatcw writes:
Influential members of the open-source community say that fears over Oracle's takeover of the open-source MySQL database are overblown, and that the EU's interference with Oracle's pending acquisition would set a very bad precedent, reports Computerworld. They reject claims by MySQL co-founder Monty Widenius and free software guru Richard Stallman that the GPL license (ironically, created by Stallman) fails to protect MySQL against potential bad behavior by Oracle. One even sees Microsoft's "shadow" behind the politicking to get the EU to force Oracle to sell off MySQL.
6648797
submission
ericatcw writes:
Real men only eat bloody steaks, and they only overclock water-cooled gaming rigs, right? Wrong. Computerworld has a roundup of 5 easy(ish) ways to crank your netbook up to eleven, from safely fiddling with the motherboard voltage, boosting a 'Hackintoshed' netbook's graphics, to sawing off your HP Mini's anti-overclock hardware lock.
6500917
story
ericatcw writes
"Taking a page out of McDonalds 'billions and billions served,' Microsoft says it reaps $1.3 billion a year from more than 100 million users of its SharePoint collab app. But some suggest that the figures are consciously inflated by Microsoft sales tactics in order to boost the appearance of momentum for the platform, reports Computerworld. A recent survey suggests that less than a fourth of users licensed for SharePoint actually use it. SharePoint particularly lags as a platform for Web sites, according to the same survey, a situation Microsoft hopes to fix with the upcoming SharePoint 2010."
6496245
submission
ericatcw writes:
Taking a page out of McDonalds "billions and billions served," Microsoft says it reaps $1.3 billion a year from more than 100 million users of its SharePoint collab app. But some suggest that the figures are consciously inflated by Microsoft sales tactics in order to boost the appearance of momentum for the platform, reports Computerworld. A recent survey suggests that less than a fourth of users licensed for SharePoint actually use it. SharePoint particularly lags as a platform for Web sites, according to the same survey, a situation Microsoft hopes to fix with the upcoming SharePoint 2010.
6329861
submission
ericatcw writes:
Driven by increased crackdowns on BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay, software pirates are fast-moving their warez to file-hosting Web sites like RapidShare, reports Computerworld. According to anti-piracy vendor, V.I. Labs, 100% of the wares in its survey were available on Rapidshare, which according to Alexa, is already one of the 20 largest sites in the world. V.I. Labs' CEO predicts file-hosting sites such as Rapidshare to supplant BitTorrent, as the former appear better protected legally.
5656807
submission
ericatcw writes:
Reviewers and netbook users are complaining that Windows 7 can cut a netbook's battery life by almost a third compared to XP, reports Computerworld. For instance, Laptop magazine found that the Toshiba NB205's battery life fell from 9.5 hours to under 7 when switched from XP to 7. Commentators at forums for Asus, Acer and MSI have complained the same thing. Microsoft didn't comment, but this would appear to contradict its earlier proclamations that Windows 7 would boost battery life over Vista.
