It seems unthinkable today — but more than two decades ago, when personal computers were still new and everybody listened to music on a Walkman, Steve Jobs was cast out of Apple. The year was 1985. IBM and Microsoft dominated the world of computing. The revolutionary Macintosh, launched with such fanfare just a year earlier, appeared to be…
 Brisbane Times |
mps to debate Sri Lankan conflict
BBC News mps will debate the conflict in Sri Lanka next week as protests by British Tamils continue in central London. Commons Leader Harriet Harman announced the discussions, requested by the Lib Dems, would be held on Wednesday. Video: Sri Lankan civilians 'escape' rebel stronghold – 22 Apr 09 Al Jazeera Sri Lanka rebels refusing to surrender: military AFP Voice of America – The Associated Press – Hindu – New York Times all 4,649 news articles |
An anonymous reader writes “TTVK, a Finnish national copyright lobby, is threatening a book renal service called Bookabooka for allegedly running the ‘Pirate Bay for Books’. Bookabooka however does not offer a torrent tracker service, nor does it enable a user in any way to download eBooks; it simply provides a place for book owners to rent textbooks to each other via the traditional mail service. It is mandatory that all textbooks must be originals. The service is used by a lot of School and University students, and it does not handle the shipping or returns of the textbooks. Nevertheless, the Finnish book publishers’ association (Suomen Kustannusyhdistys) is convinced the service is breaching the copyright laws and threatening their business. TTVK has given Bookabooka until Friday to cease operations or face a lawsuit. Bookabooka’s founders have vowed to keep the service online and ignore the threat.”
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Geon Lasli writes “Reporters caught up with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in Moscow to get his take on Oracle’s deal to buy Sun Microsystems for US.4 billion. Ballmer was at a loss for words: ‘I need to think about it. I am very surprised.’ According to a source, IBM hadn’t given up on purchasing Sun and was blindsided by Oracle’s move. I guess IBM must be regretting playing tough 2 weeks ago. Unknown to outsiders, Sun had probably found the Oracle lifeboat before they decided to pull the plug on the deal.”
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Soon your computer and electronic gadgets could be much smaller, faster, cheaper, more reliable and even greener thanks to a new form of computer memory technology called racetrack.
Microsoft’s supposed open-source guru Sam Ramji has asked open-source vendors to focus on “value” instead of “cost” with respect to competition with Microsoft products. This is especially funny given the Redmond giant’s recent “Apple Tax” message. “While I’m sure Ramji meant well, I’m equally certain that Microsoft would like nothing more than to not be reminded of how expensive its products can be compared with open-source solutions. After all, Microsoft was the company that turned the software industry on its head by introducing lower-cost solutions years ago to undermine the Unix businesses of IBM and Hewlett-Packard, and the database businesses of Oracle and IBM.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Microsoft’s supposed open-source guru Sam Ramji has asked open-source vendors to focus on “value” instead of “cost” with respect to competition with Microsoft products. This is especially funny given the Redmond giant’s recent “Apple Tax” message. “While I’m sure Ramji meant well, I’m equally certain that Microsoft would like nothing more than to not be reminded of how expensive its products can be compared with open-source solutions. After all, Microsoft was the company that turned the software industry on its head by introducing lower-cost solutions years ago to undermine the Unix businesses of IBM and Hewlett-Packard, and the database businesses of Oracle and IBM.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Sun Microsystems appears to be down to its last option as far as a white knight is concerned, but the problem is, that knight has gotten on its horse and ridden away.
 MiamiHerald.com |
RPT-Q&A-Who are the Somali pirates?
Reuters By Andrew Cawthorne NAIROBI, April 12 (Reuters) – It took the capture and rescue five days later of an American hostage to draw world attention back to the long-running phenomenon of Somali piracy. Video: Maersk: Captain Grateful to US Navy The Associated Press How Captain Phillips was rescued BBC News The Associated Press – guardian.co.uk – Xinhua – Telegraph.co.uk all 10,196 news articles Langue : Français |
Death Metal writes with this excerpt from a story about COBOL’s influence as it approaches 50 years in existence: “According to David Stephenson, the UK manager for the software provider Micro Focus, ‘some 70% to 80% of UK plc business transactions are still based on COBOL.’ … Mike Gilpin, from the market research company Forrester, says that the company’s most recent related survey found that 32% of enterprises say they still use COBOL for development or maintenance. … A lot of this maintenance and development takes place on IBM products. The company’s software group director of product delivery and strategy, Charles Chu, says that he doesn’t think ‘legacy’ is pejorative. ‘Business constantly evolves,’ he adds, ‘but there are 250bn lines of COBOL code working well worldwide. Why would companies replace systems that are working well?'”
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