Oracle Buys Sun 906

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday April 20, 2009 @08:11AM from the there-can-be-only-one dept.

bruunb writes "Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) and Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash. The transaction is valued at approximately $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun's cash and debt. 'We expect this acquisition to be accretive to Oracle's earnings by at least 15 cents on a non-GAAP basis in the first full year after closing. We estimate that the acquired business will contribute over $1.5 billion to Oracle's non-GAAP operating profit in the first year, increasing to over $2 billion in the second year. This would make the Sun acquisition more profitable in per share contribution in the first year than we had planned for the acquisitions of BEA, PeopleSoft and Siebel combined,' said Oracle President Safra Catz."

Comment Missing Category (Score 1) 423

by caffeined on Thursday December 11, 2008 @10:13PM (#26085437) Attached to: My top-level book organization is based on ...

I think that there's a missing category - "size and color".

Once, my cleaning lady found the apartment in pretty good condition and decided to be productive and organized my bookshelf. She chose to do it base on color and size, so that I came home and found that my shelves looked a bit like a rainbow - within each category (red, green, etc.) she used height as a tie-breaker.

My initial reaction was not happy - ironically I had spent about 4 hours that prior weekend re-organizing my bookshelves along more traditional subject matter/author/etc. ordering.

Well - you wouldn't want to organize a library this way, but I have to admit that for my own personal collection in which I personally know how each book looks, this actually worked pretty well!

The DRM Scorecard 543

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday August 01, 2007 @08:26PM from the guess-who's-ahead dept.

An anonymous reader writes "InfoWeek blogger Alex Wolfe put together a scorecard which makes the obvious but interesting point that, when you list every major DRM technology implemented to "protect" music and video, they've all been cracked. This includes Apple's FairPlay, Microsoft's Windows Media DRM, the old-style Content Scrambling System (CSS) used on early DVDs and the new AACS for high-definition DVDs. And of course there was the Sony Rootkit disaster of 2005. Can anyone think of a DRM technology which hasn't been cracked, and of course this begs the obvious question: Why doesn't the industry just give up and go DRM-free?"

Molyneux on the Vanity of Gamers 91

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @01:31PM from the i-think-personal-appearance-when-i-think-gamers dept.

Fable 2 is turning out to be a fantasy game unlike any other, with a new feature announced almost every time Molyneux opens his mouth. At a games industry event in Brighton, he sat down for a chat with Gamasutra to discuss using vanity as an incentive. "Fable 2 will take a similar dramatic approach to the concept. Drained of health points and laid out on the ground, players will have the choice of losing experience points - the game's key method of building up a selection of fearsome fighting moves - and immediately jumping up to regain the action, or letting the enemy close in and work them over with stabs, kicks and punches ... Worse than that, when you eventually get up again to fight another day, the marks of your beating will remain for all to see." These scars will be important, somehow, in Fable 2 online mode, a topic they still aren't discussing in detail.

A Majority of Businesses Will Not Move To Vista 378

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday July 31, 2007 @11:34AM from the happy-where-they-are dept.

oDDmON oUT writes "An article on the Computerworld site quotes polling results from a potentially-divisive PatchLink survey. The poll shows that the majority of enterprise customers feel there are no compelling security enhancements in Windows Vista, that they have no plans to migrate to it in the near term and that many will 'either stick with the Windows they have, or turn to Linux or Mac OS X'. A majority, 87%, said they would stay with their existing version of Windows. This comes on the heels of a dissenting view of Vista's track record in the area of security at the six month mark, which sparked a heated discussion on numerous forums."

Classic Gaming Expo 2007 14

Posted by Zonk on Monday July 30, 2007 @10:48AM from the your-gaming's-so-old dept.

This past weekend Game|Life went to Vegas, to attend the annual Classic Gaming Expo event. They came back with a bevy of tales about the show. The best include a short interview with Pitfall creator David Crane, a look at the classic games museum set up every year at the event, and (of course) glamour shots of dealer swag.

Comment Deadline For NYC Photography Permits 238

Posted by kdawson on Monday July 30, 2007 @02:42AM from the drawing-the-line dept.

DrNibbler writes "August 3, 2007 is the deadline for submitting comments on the proposed permit requirements for photographers in New York. Here is a sample submission."

First iPhone 3rd Party GUI App Compiles 196

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday July 29, 2007 @09:11AM from the getting-closer-now dept.

CmputrAce writes "Well, it's here now. The #iphone-dev team has compiled the first third-party application for the iPhone. Of course, it is the standard "Hello, world." application, but it's native to the iPhone and uses the iPhone's GUI. This opens up the iPhone for development by anyone who can forge through the process of cracking the iPhone, installing the iPhone "Toolchain", writing an application, compiling, translating, and finally installing the application to the iPhone. With the pace of development at present, expect to see commercial "jailbreak" (mod-enabling) applications soon as well. You can already get high-quality applications (Mac) to theme the iPhone and add your own ring tones (Win) for the phone."