Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 18th Mar 2009 11:48 UTC, submitted by PLan
In a move that would certainly shake up the computer industry quite a bit, IBM is reportedly in talks with Sun Microsystems about the possibility of IBM acquiring Sun. Sun is going through hard times at the moment, and has been actively looking for someone to be acquired by.
Thread beginning with comment 353633
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2006-08-24
Member since:2005-07-12
"
IBM would
- kill Solaris for sake of crappy aix
- kill Sun Java for sake of crappy ibm java
- kill netbeans for sake of eclipse or ratıonal crap
- kill glassfish for sake of bloated pig called Websphere
- kill servers (chaper)
- kill mysql for sake of db2
"
This is my fear, too - especially Netbeans and Glassfish, both of which are vastly superior to IBM's current offerings. Over the last year or so, Netbeans has seriously leapfrogged ahead of Eclipse. And Glassfish is quite nice, too. And practically anything is better than Websphere. Heck, a steaming pile of dung is better than Websphere. I've done other Java devs who have sworn to never take a contract that uses Websphere, ever again. The thing is a nightmare.
And oh yeah, both Swing and JavaFX will suffer bit rot, as IBM is the creator and principle maintainer of SWT.
All in all, I'd rather Sun got to HP, Dell, or Fujitsu.
I am in favor of Sun getting acquired. I just have serious doubts about Sun surviving long term on it's own. And being the owners/maintainers of Java, Sun getting acquired would be a good thing.
Member since:2005-07-06
- kill Solaris for sake of crappy aix
I doubt it. There are still a lot of Solaris users out there (some even running solaris on IBM hardware), and IBM want their support contract and consultancy money. Killing Solaris means that they'll have to move to another platform, moving to another platform means the posibility of moving to another vendor and all of a sudden IBM will be competing for customers they could have had 'for free'.
- kill Sun Java for sake of crappy ibm java
Probably more of slow merger than a quick killing. Yea, There'll eventually only be one JVM, but only after the best features from both have been mereged and IBM has has made damn sure that any customer switching from either JVM to the new JVM won't lose any features or performance.
- kill netbeans for sake of eclipse or ratıonal crap
Quite possibly, but since netbeans is open source it will probably survive if it really is that much better at certain things than eclipse.
- kill glassfish for sake of bloated pig called Websphere
Probably not in the short term for similar reasons as Solaris. You don't want to make your existing customers think about the posibility of switching vendors.
- kill servers (chaper)
Again I doubt it. IBM makes it's money from support, service and consultancy. They really don't care too much what hardware you run. Sure where there is overlap they probably won't keep two lines going, but where Sun does something interesting, like Niagara, I don't see IBM simply killing it.
- kill mysql for sake of db2
MySQL and DB2 play in two different leauges. If IBM is smart they'll use mysql as a gateway drug. Start you off on MySQL and once you hit a situation that MySQL can't handle offer you some very nice tools to easily migrate your database to DB2.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
Sponsored Links
Member since:
2005-07-06
that would be a terrible thing.
IBM would
- kill Solaris for sake of crappy aix
- kill Sun Java for sake of crappy ibm java
- kill netbeans for sake of eclipse or ratıonal crap
- kill glassfish for sake of bloated pig called Websphere
- kill servers (chaper)
- kill mysql for sake of db2
And unlike Sun products, apart from eclipse no IBM product is open source. This would be a terrible terrible thing for the IT industry.