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Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft's Lost Decade (vanityfair.com)

Submitted by onetwentyone
onetwentyone writes: A very telling look into how Microsoft has stumbled along for the last ten years from Vanity Fair.

"Amid a dynamic and ever changing marketplace, Microsoft—which declined to comment for this article—became a high-tech equivalent of a Detroit car-maker, bringing flashier models of the same old thing off of the assembly line even as its competitors upended the world. Most of its innovations have been financial debacles or of little consequence to the bottom line. And the performance showed on Wall Street; despite booming sales and profits from its flagship products, in the last decade Microsoft’s stock barely budged from around $30, while Apple’s stock is worth more than 20 times what it was 10 years ago. In December 2000, Microsoft had a market capitalization of $510 billion, making it the world’s most valuable company. As of June it is No. 3, with a market cap of $249 billion. In December 2000, Apple had a market cap of $4.8 billion and didn’t even make the list. As of this June it is No. 1 in the world, with a market cap of $541 billion."
Television

Submission + - Is TV Over The 'Net Really Cheaper Than Cable? (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "More and more people are joining the ranks of "cord-cutters" — those who cancel their cable TV subscriptions and get their televisied entertainment either for free over the airwaves or over the Internet. But, assuming you're going to do things legally, is this really a cheaper option? Depends on what you watch. Brian Proffitt contemplated this move, and he walks you through the calculations he made to figure out the prices of cutting the cord. He weighed the costs of various a la carte and all-you-can-eat Internet streaming services, and took into account the fact that Internet service on its own is often pricier than it would be if bundled with cable TV."
Linux

Submission + - Linux.org Quietly Comes Back To Life (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "The venerable Linux.org site quietly relaunched some weeks ago, offering much of the original useful content on Linux as well as some new articles. The site is still associated with Michael McLagen, a somewhat controversial figure due to the fights around the Linux Standards Assocation back in the late '90s. McLagen has not responded to requests for comments on the relaunched site."
Microsoft

Submission + - The Terrible Management Technique That Cost Microsoft Its Creativity (forbes.com)

Submitted by
KingGypsy
KingGypsy writes: "Vanity Fair has an article in its August issue that tells the story of how Microsoft “since 2000 . . . has fallen flat in every area it entered: e-books, music, search, social networking, etc., etc.” According to a summary available online, the article finds a devastatingly destructive management technique at the heart of Microsoft’s problems....."
Linux

Submission + - Tux and the God Particle (itworld.com) 1

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "One CERN physicist, going by the username d3pd, took to Reddit to publicly thank Linux for the role it played in the discovery of what just might be the Higgs Boson particle.

I don't see any CERN related things here, so I want to mention how Linux (specifically, Scientific Linux and Ubuntu) had a vital role in the discovery of the new boson at CERN," wrote Reddit user d3pd. "We use it every day in our analyses, together with hosts of open software, such as ROOT, and it plays a major role in the running of our networks of computers (in the grid etc.) used for the intensive work in our calculations.

"
Microsoft

Submission + - Former Microsoft exec: Microsoft has 'become the thing they despised' (bgr.com) 2

Submitted by zacharye
zacharye writes: Microsoft has a long and storied history of leadership in the tech industry, and the company has driven innovation for decades. In recent years, however, Microsoft has fallen behind the times in several key industries; the company’s mobile position has deteriorated and left it with a low single-digit market share, and Microsoft won’t launch Windows RT, its response to Apple’s three-year-old iPad, until later this year...
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - A Cashless, High-Value, Anonymous Currency: How? (itworld.com)

Submitted by
jfruh
jfruh writes: "The cashless future is one of those concepts that always seems to be just around the corner, but never quite gets here. There's been a lot of hype around Sweden going almost cashless, but most transactions there use easily traceable credit and debit cards. Bitcoin offers anonymity, but isn't backed by any government and has seen high-profile hacks and collapses in value. Could an experiment brewing in Canada finally take us to cashless nirvana?"
Software

Submission + - RIP 'Software' Companies; Hello 'Data' Companies (forbes.com)

Submitted by onlynmkj
onlynmkj writes: This has a lot of implications for a range of organizations. The crossover from being purely a software provider to a data empire-builder seems like a natural transition many software players could make. As part of a move to the cloud, for example, they could provide metrics and monitoring data that help customers run more efficiently.
Linux

Submission + - Fedora Introduces Offline Updates (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "Thanks to a new feature approved this week by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee, you won't hear Fedora 18 users bragging about systems that have been running continuously for months on end. 'Fedora's new Offline System Update feature will change the current system to something that is more Windows- and OS X-like: while many updates can still be made on the fly, certain package updates will require the system to be restarted so the patches can be applied in a special mode, according to the Fedora wiki page on the feature,' writes blogger Brian Proffitt."
Open Source

Submission + - FLOSS For End Users May Be Facing Extinction (itworld.com)

Submitted by
itwbennett
itwbennett writes: "If you buy into the idea that tablets (and ultrabooks, and smartphones) in the enterprise are nothing more than glorified thin clients, then Microsoft's Surface presentation seemed more flashback than future. And if you're a fan of free software, the announcement might also have struck fear in your heart. While Microsoft has never locked out apps based on license, it's not impossible that they might chose a more locked-down Apple-esque approach for Surface, writes blogger Brian Proffitt. 'And that could put free software for end users very much at risk.'"

Submission + - Physics Community Afire With Rumors of Higgs Boson Discovery | Wired Science | W (wired.com) 5

Submitted by sirlark
sirlark writes: The latest rumors circulating around the physics blogosphere suggest that scientists with the Large Hadron Collider will announce the discovery of the Higgs boson within weeks. “The bottom line though is now clear: There’s something there which looks like a Higgs is supposed to look,” wrote mathematician Peter Woit on his blog, Not Even Wrong.

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