Comment Yahoo! should merge with... (Score 5, Funny) 124
Yahoo! should merge with Ask, AOL, and Lycos. They could call themselves That 90's Web Company.
Comment Yahoo! - Time to Grow Up (Score 4, Interesting) 200
Yahoo still doesn't know what it wants to be when it grows up. Is it a news aggregator? A search engine? An email service? An online gaming site? A social network? A web hosting company? A bookmark sharing site? A photo sharing site?
Yahoo reminds me of that old SNL skit - it's a floor wax, and a desert topping. Only Microsoft comes to mind as a parallel when reviewing the absolute scattershot approach to online monetization that Yahoo has taken, but M$ has a host of other products / services (ok, just Office & Windows) that keep it's bottom line solid, allowing it to experiment w/ various approaches online until it finds a "hit". Yahoo doesn't have the luxury of online experimentation that M$ does; it needs to find a magic formula and stick with it, which it seemingly refuses to do.
BTW, I bet dollars to donuts that in ~5 years, Yahoo, AOL, and IAC (Ask.com) merge. They could call themselves "That 90's Web Company". LOL
Yahoo reminds me of that old SNL skit - it's a floor wax, and a desert topping. Only Microsoft comes to mind as a parallel when reviewing the absolute scattershot approach to online monetization that Yahoo has taken, but M$ has a host of other products / services (ok, just Office & Windows) that keep it's bottom line solid, allowing it to experiment w/ various approaches online until it finds a "hit". Yahoo doesn't have the luxury of online experimentation that M$ does; it needs to find a magic formula and stick with it, which it seemingly refuses to do.
BTW, I bet dollars to donuts that in ~5 years, Yahoo, AOL, and IAC (Ask.com) merge. They could call themselves "That 90's Web Company". LOL
Comment Sorry to see Google killing Desktop Search (Score 1) 138
Shutting down Desktop search really sucks. GDS was an amazing productivity tool and will be sorely missed; it was and still is so much better than the native search faculties available on Windows and OS X. The review I wrote about GDS in '05 still stands.
Comment Hmmm... (Score 5, Funny) 130
Sounds sketchy...
Comment Re:Dear Creators of Opa... (Score 1) 253
Mathieu,
I'll take this up with you over email then. I appreciate the response.
- DrGroove
Comment Dear Creators of Opa... (Score 3, Insightful) 253
Dear Creators of Opa - Honestly, what were you thinking? Opa is basically another crack at the same approach that ColdFusion tried years ago, and failed at. Opa isn't Object Oriented, meaning that developers working in an OOP language (Java, .NET, Python, PHP, Ruby, Perl, etc) will have a tougher time making the transition - it also means that Opa can't implement or support standard Design Patterns, which is a huge mistake IMnsHO. The sample code on the Opa site shows a mix of Opa functions, database interaction, markup language, CSS, Javascript... what a mess. Haven't we all learned that clean separation of functional application concerns is the only way to write scalable, enterprise-class programs yet? Opa doesn't appear to support any database beyond it's own build-in, slightly obfuscated one, meaning it will gain no enterprise/business traction. As much as I like to see new programming languages succeed, I have to agree w/ a lot of the other posters on /. - Opa is dead on arrival.
Comment HP is one of the "Big 4" (Score 4, Informative) 514
I'm a little surprised more /.'ers aren't familiar with HP's software and services division. HP is considered to be one of the "Big 4" of enterprise infrastructure, service, and asset management, along with CA, BMC, and IBM. HP's acquisition of EDS strengthened their professional consulting position, and put them squarely in competition with IBM as their main software/services competitor.
Enterprise software is basically a license to print money. Companies and governments spend inordinate amounts of cash on the Big 4's closed-source software, enterprise license agreements, support contracts, and implementation services. If HP is anything like CA or IBM, they're making the vast majority of their money on enterprise software and services, and very little on PC's and devices. Spinning off or selling their PC / device manufacturing business made sense for IBM, and it makes sense for HP, especially in light of the consumer competition in that space. There simply isn't the same competition in the enterprise space, hence why the Big 4 can charge the inflated prices they do for their software and services.
Spotify Sued For Patent Infringement 151
An anonymous reader writes "Celebrated online music player Spotify just entered the US market a few weeks ago, and already it's being sued for patent infringement. Welcome to America! The patent in question is a very very broad patent on distribution of music in a digital form, which basically describes how anyone would ever distribute digital music. The company suing, PacketVideo, has no competing product. It just wants money from the company that actually innovated."
New Virus Jumps From Monkeys To Lab Workers 160
sciencehabit writes "It started with a single monkey coming down with pneumonia at the California National Primate Research Center in Davis. Within weeks, 19 monkeys were dead and three humans were sick. Now, a new report confirms that the Davis outbreak was the first known case of an adenovirus jumping from monkeys to humans. The upside: the virus may one day be harnessed as a tool for gene therapy."
Comment Firefox on Android (Score 2) 47
I'm a Firefox user on my laptop, and decided to download it for my Droid X. It runs so painfully slow, however, as well as having some odd behaviors (double-tap to zoom causes it to zoom WAY in, rather than the more measured zoom approach of the default Android browser) that I uninstalled it.
Wish Mozilla would release a lighter weight, faster, more user friendly browser for mobile...
Windows Phones Getting Buried At Carriers' Stores 412
tripleevenfall sends in a PCMag story about how Microsoft's problems in driving Windows Phone 7 adoption stem in part from how the phones are represented to customers in carriers' stores. Quoting:
"At AT&T, the salesperson was a recent iPhone to Android convert. She was enthusiastic about WP7 devices, saying that Netflix was on WP7 and not available on her Android, and looked embarrassed when she walked me over to AT&T's unkempt WP7 display shelf. ... At a Verizon reseller kiosk, a salesman clearly tried to deter me from buying a WP7 device altogether. Not only did not he appear to know the fundamental difference between Windows Mobile and WP7, his kiosk didn't even offer WP7 devices and said you'd only find WP7 demo products at a few of Verizon's big retail stores. 'Honestly, only 1 out of 500 customers comes in here asking for a Windows phone,' he said. 'Verizon won't roll them out to kiosks until it performs better on the market.'"
Comment Re:ITIL for Operations and Management (Score 1) 444
Agree completely. Certification in ITIL demonstrates not only that you understand technology, but that you understand how technology works to support the goals and processes of the business.
Comment To be fair... (Score 1) 46
I only spent 10 seconds looking at the website of ExtJS' producer, Sencha.
But... the first thing I noticed is that ExtJS is available both as open source, and as a commercially licensed product that one pays for.
Errrr... OK. So, which is it? Frankly, any software product that is available as both open source and as a commercially licensed product is ... well, it's scary. The last thing I want is an "open source" framework where the producing company has the ability to pull the rug out from under me and start charging me, or claiming that any product I've personally developed that uses their code infringes on their IP.
I'm all good with commercial / closed source software - don't get me wrong. Capitalism rocks and all - go America. But, pick a license and stick with it. The whole license bifurcation thing is just too shaky.
Didn't anyone listen to Mr. Miyagi? Open source yes? OK. Open source no? OK. Open source maybe? Squish like grape.
Comment A hair-washing robot... (Score 1) 181
...because washing your own hair is just too hard.
GCC Moving To Use C++ Instead of C 546
An anonymous reader writes "CodeSourcery's Mark Mitchell wrote to the GCC mailing list yesterday reporting that 'the GCC Steering Committee and the FSF have approved the use of C++ in GCC itself. Of course, there's no reason for us to use C++ features just because we can. The goal is a better compiler for users, not a C++ code base for its own sake.' Still undecided is what subset of C++ to use, as many contributors are experts in C, but novices in C++; there is a call for a volunteer to develop the C++ coding standards."
