Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView Cincom Product Manager jrobertson@cincom.com Mon, 19 May 2008 07:14:52 EDT http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/images/cst_small.jpg Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView 50 81 en-us James A. Robertson Copyright 2007 Cincom Systems, Inc. 2008-05-19T07:14:52-04:00 39.214103 -76.878807 Facebook to die with Yahoo? http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=Facebook_to_die_with_Yahoo&entry=3388634092 itNews Mon, 19 May 2008 07:14:52 EDT

Scoble is reporting that MS will first buy Yahoo search (which will kill it), and will then buy Facebook (killing that).

I suppose it's a great time to be competing with Microsoft - they'll be busy with two huge cases of indigestion if Scoble is right.

]]> 3388634092 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/servlet/CommentAPIPBServlet?guid=3388634092 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?guid=3388634092 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/servlet/CommentAPIServlet?guid=3388634092 Smaller values of Stupid http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=Smaller_values_of_Stupid&entry=3388597031 itNews Sun, 18 May 2008 20:57:11 EDT

Spotted in Engadget:

"In light of developments since the withdrawal of the Microsoft proposal to acquire Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft announced that it is continuing to explore and pursue its alternatives to improve and expand its online services and advertising business. Microsoft is considering and has raised with Yahoo! an alternative that would involve a transaction with Yahoo! but not an acquisition of all of Yahoo!"

The thinking seems to be that MS wants the search business from Yahoo. That would be a smaller value of stupid than buying all of Yahoo, but still a problem. Why? Well, look at the infrastructure: Microsoft uses Windows based everything, Yahoo tends to be a Linux/Unix shop using a variety of other things. MS' entire track record of acquisition involves rewriting the acquired stuff in MS technology and rehosting on Windows - along with relocating everyone involved to Redmond.

Now, let's assume that MS doesn't actually do any of those things this time around - does it matter? Not really, because all of the acquired Yahoo employees will assume that's what's in store, and the good ones - the ones MS would really like to keep - will start bailing in huge numbers. The remaining staff will end up in a (losing) knife fight with the MS employees who already work in the search area.

The result? A smaller net search business than Yahoo or MS have individually right now. Why will they try to do the merger, given that all of this is obvious? Because most executives have been "out of the trenches" for so long that none of this registers. To them, technology A and technology B are interchangeable, as are the developers who work on them. That's why they end up positively stunned when the supposed synergy fails to arrive.

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]]> 3388597031 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/servlet/CommentAPIPBServlet?guid=3388597031 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?guid=3388597031 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/servlet/CommentAPIServlet?guid=3388597031 DropBox - very cool http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=DropBox_-_very_cool&entry=3388472436 itNews Sat, 17 May 2008 10:20:36 EDT

I just snagged an invite to the beta of DropBox, and it is very, very cool. Rather than have me extoll its virtues and explain it, go watch this video now.

]]> 3388472436 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/servlet/CommentAPIPBServlet?guid=3388472436 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?guid=3388472436 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/servlet/CommentAPIServlet?guid=3388472436 Stupid buys Bad http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=Stupid_buys_Bad&entry=3388249728 itNews Wed, 14 May 2008 20:28:48 EDT

Oh boy, Comcast, last seen doing packet shaping, has bought Plaxo, last seen doing bad things with data they shouldn't have access to. It's a match made in hell.

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]]> 3388249728 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/servlet/CommentAPIPBServlet?guid=3388249728 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?guid=3388249728 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/servlet/CommentAPIServlet?guid=3388249728 Some Bugs just linger http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=Some_Bugs_just_linger&entry=3387954713 itNews Sun, 11 May 2008 10:31:53 EDT

With the rise of Macs, this is the sort of old bug that matters: a 25 year old flaw in Samba for BSD. Makes me wonder how many other "oldies but goodies" are lurking in the codebase of BSD...

]]> 3387954713 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/servlet/CommentAPIPBServlet?guid=3387954713 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?guid=3387954713 blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=Some_Bugs_just_linger&entry=3387954713 blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=Some_Bugs_just_linger&entry=3387954713 <a href="http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs/troy/blogView">Troy Brumley</a> 2008-05-11T11:26:31-04:00 <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>Comment by <a href="http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/userblogs/troy/blogView">Troy Brumley</a></p> <p> <p>Your post made me think of a few things:</p><ul xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <li>First that some software lasts and lasts, and the bug in question seems pretty minor, which is probably a contributing factor to its longevity.</li> <li>These bugs can get fossilized in software when people working on code higher levels in the stack code around them. How many programs broke when this particular bug was fixed? Probably not many based on my reading of the description, but some other long lasting bugs become features as users and other programmers conform to the bug's behavior.</li><li>At least this wasn't declared a feature, like most of Microsoft Word's bugs ;)</li></ul> </p> </div> Re: Some Bugs just linger http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/servlet/CommentAPIServlet?guid=3387954713 Think Petabytes http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=Think_Petabytes&entry=3387617912 itNews Wed, 07 May 2008 12:58:32 EDT

I can still recall buying a second 40 MB drive for my first x86 pc, and thinking that it would never fill up. I currently have over 3 TB of storage in my office, and HP is talking about petabyte storage. The mind boggles.

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]]> 3387617912 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/servlet/CommentAPIPBServlet?guid=3387617912 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?guid=3387617912 blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=Think_Petabytes&entry=3387617912 blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=Think_Petabytes&entry=3387617912 George 2008-05-08T13:57:18-04:00 <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <p>For things we know grow exponentially (e.g. hard drive capacity, clock speed), we should just switch to logarithmic measurements.</p> <p>Your story would then be, "I can still recall buying a second 7.6 Logo-Byte drive for my first x86 pc... I currently have over 12.5 LB of storage in my office, and HP is talking about 15 LB storage."&nbsp; The mind would boggle a little less (though, of course, it very much should boggle).</p> <p>Similarly, my old Apple ][+ ran at 6.03 LHz, whereas one of the quad-cores at work runs at a staggering 9.56 LHz.</p> <p>Or we could multiply all those numbers by 10 to make audio engineers more comfortable: 60.3 LHz, 95.6 LHz, 76 LB, 125 LB.... "My processor runs 1.1 dB faster than yours!"</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> </div> We should switch http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/servlet/CommentAPIServlet?guid=3387617912 Reality 1, Scoble 0 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=Reality_1,_Scoble_0&entry=3387315126 itNews Sun, 04 May 2008 00:52:06 EDT

Scoble:

Yahoo is a bleeding animal. Left lying, gasping for its breath, after a larger animal (Microsoft) struck and then walked away after it proved too difficult to eat.

Reality:

Yahoo's revenues were $1.82 billion for the first quarter of 2008, a nine percent increase compared to $1.672 billion for the same period of 2007. Marketing-services revenues were $1.572 billion for the first quarter of 2008, a seven percent increase over the year-ago period. Gross profit for the first quarter of 2008 was $1.063 million, an 11 percent increase over the first quarter of 2007.

Not great, but black is better than red. For all the verbiage, this is good news. Neither company has to go through the raw chaos that a merger would have brought.

Mathew Ingram thinks Yahoo should have taken the deal:

In my view, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has gone way beyond fiduciary duty and has been effectively blocking this deal in any way possible. I expect to see the stock tank, and deservedly so. If I were a shareholder, I would be calling for Yang’s head. This deal was by far the best opportunity the company had to achieve some value.

Depends. It would have been a nice deal for the large shareholders, I suppose. For the company and its products? Not so much.

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]]> 3387315126 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/servlet/CommentAPIPBServlet?guid=3387315126 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?guid=3387315126 http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/servlet/CommentAPIServlet?guid=3387315126 Dave Thomas on the Software Game http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView?showComments=true&printTitle=Dave_Thomas_on_the_Software_Game&entry=3386923438 itNews Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:03:58 EDT

(Smalltalk) Dave Thomas gave an interview to InfoQ at last year's OOPSLA, and the video is online now. It's short and interesting.

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