At the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit (which I attended on June 13), Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, accurately portrayed that the Linux movement has changed. He stated that, from the enterprise perspective at least, the days of having to build awareness for Linux, and for open source in general, are long since […]
According to Managed Objects, a company that sells software service management software, software is at the root of all evil. Managed Objects has conducted a survey of 200 IT managers in the United States, and report that 61% of those IT managers say that software is generally the culprit for IT downtime, compared to 21% […]
The software security tools market has been ripe for picking, for two reasons: • We had a lot of small, privately held companies developing exciting, but in many cases, overlapping, technology, but those companies had trouble finding customers and going to market. Their exit strategy is to be gobbled up by a big fish. • […]
A great article, for all you methodology fans, is a cover story in today’s SD Times: “It’s Lean, But Is It Agile?,” written by Jennifer deJong. As Jenn writes, Are lean software development and agile software development—of which XP is the most prominent example— one and the same? They both are iterative approaches to developing […]
This morning, CodeGear sent me a new picture of David Intersimone, to replace the several-years-old file photo that I used in my previous blog posting and on our conference Web site. David I, as he’s widely known, is an incredibly well-respected developer evangelist at CodeGear, and is a keynote speaker at EclipseWorld 2007. So, cast […]
“Life’s too short to run beta software.” That’s long been my philosophy, specifically in regard to my own personal workstation. Back when I did a lot of hardware and software testing, there were servers and workstations designated as testbeds, while my personal workstation (sometimes a Mac, sometimes a PC) was sacrosanct. Every so often, however, […]
It’s an incredible coincidence. The same day that BZ Media put out a press release about the record-setting June 1 issue of SD Times, CMP Media put out a press release about its continuing shift to an online media company. That involves laying off 200 people, and shuttering three publications. Network Computing and Optimize. Both […]
We just announced a second keynote for the EclipseWorld 2007 conference: Robert C. Martin, founder and CEO of Object Mentor. “Uncle Bob” is a top expert in object-oriented design, with tremendous expertise in C++ and Java, and also speaks and writes brilliantly on agile methodologies and software craftsmanship. Also, at EclipseWorld, “Uncle Bob” is teaching […]
Steve Jobs’ keynote at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference is sometimes huge with news, sometimes less so. This year’s news was weaker than most. Jobs didn’t unveil new hardware or new developer tools. He didn’t announce new software, but did distribute betas of Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” to paid attendees (not to press/analysts). […]
Today, IBM announced that it’s buying Telelogic, a leading company in the modeling space, specifically a leader in model-driven development. Last week, IBM announced that it’s buying Watchfire, a mid-sized innovator in security and software testing. These are both savvy moves by IBM. But while the Watchfire deal is good for everyone, the Telelogic deal […]
If your house or office is anything like mine, there are dead computer bits lying around everywhere. Desktop PCs, old notebook PCs, the occasional server, monitors, keyboards, even a pile of 36GB Ultra2 SCSI hard drives. I’m buried in computer detritus. What can you do with it? • Some stuff gets sold, though it’s hard […]
I’m delighted to report that registration is now open for EclipseWorld 2007, coming in early November to Reston, Va. This is the third annual EclipseWorld, an independent conference produced by BZ Media. This year’s conference, scheduled for Nov. 6-8, will be the biggest ever, with more than 70 full-day tutorials and technical classes. Our opening […]
It’s time for our regular quarterly look at the SCO Group, which released its fiscal second-quarter financials today. The quarter ended on April 30. SCO’s revenue continues to fall. Total top-line revenue for this quarter was US$6,014,000, compared to $7,126,000 in the comparable quarter last year. That’s a 15.6% drop, if I did the math […]
Computers, yes. PDAs, yes. Cell phones, yes. But programmable calculators as virus targets? Amazingly, yes. According to Symantec, the popular Texas Instruments TI-89 calculator can be infected by a virus named TIOS.Tigraa. (Credit to eWeek’s Brian Prince for reporting this story yesterday.) According to Symantec, “TIOS.Tigraa is a memory-resident entry point-obscuring infector of ASM files […]
It’s a good week for developers: Sun pushes its compilers to do more with Linux and multi-core systems, while Microsoft unveiled more about the next version of Visual Studio. Sun’s developer toolchain for native (C/C++ and FORTRAN) code is called Sun Studio. This is different and distinct from Java Studio, which is an entirely different […]
I’m delighted that despite all predictions to the contrary, print publications are doing just great. The June 1, 2007, issue of SD Times is the biggest in our seven-year history. The 60-page issue has more articles, and more advertisements, than ever before. This issue includes the 5th annual SD Times 100, as well as three […]
The winners are…. YOU! If you’re a software developer, or development manager, you’ll want to read SD Times’ fifth annual SD Times 100, a listing of the most important companies, people and projects in the software development industry. The 2007 SD Times 100 came out today, in the June 1, 2007, issue of SD Times, […]
Ever since Microsoft shipped Office 2007 for Windows, Mac users have been at a disadvantage. Office 2004 for the Mac (the current version) can’t read and write the new file format used by Office 2007. Microsoft didn’t place the creation of file-format converters for other platforms (and for older versions of Office) on the critical […]
Microsoft TechEd, the company’s top training event for developers and systems administrators, is coming up in a few weeks: June 4-8, in Orlando. TechEd is focused tightly on currently shipping Microsoft tools, platforms and applications, so you’ll see lots of classes on things like Windows Vista, Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, Office 2007 and […]
I have nothing against gambling. I enjoy playing blackjack from time to time in places like Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe, and even turned a nice profit once at the Monte Carlo Casino in Monaco playing craps and roulette. However, we should all be outraged at this report saying that the U.S. military makes money […]
Renee Bader Niemi, I owe you dinner! I’ve known Renee for nearly two decades, starting from when she worked on the launch of the Poqet PC, the first MS-DOS palmtop around 1989. At the time, I was executive editor of IDG’s Portable Computing magazine. After Poqet folded, we worked together again when she was at […]
When Guy Kawasaki became a technology evangelist for Apple, the world lost a wonderful stand-up comic. To wit: The audience for his half-hour keynote address at the Salesforce Developer Conference was in stitches for about, oh, 30 minutes. Guy has a wonderfully casual, self-deprecating style. He bemoaned that he potentially lost a couple of billion […]
About 700 people crowded into the Santa Clara Marriott last Monday, for the Salesforce Developer Conference. I stayed for the first half of the event, enjoying the opening and keynote speeches, but then bailed after lunch. (The afternoon program consisted of technical sessions on Apex programming, enterprise mashups, and launching a business based on Salesforce.com’s […]
Psst! Nominations for the Software Test & Performance Testers Choice Awards officially open on Friday, June 1st — but the nomination form is available now, and we’ll take early nominations, no problem. We kicked off the Testers Choice Awards in 2005, and the response has been enthusiastic with ST&P readers. Here’s how we describe it: […]
Some of my favorite stories about software or systems failures happen when a system is upgraded. My personal low happened when I worked at LAN Magazine in the mid-1990s. I was working in our LAN Lab, and noticed that the firmware on our main NetWare 3.x infrastructure server, called FS1, was very out of date. […]
Microsoft’s strategy for dealing with open source software – not just Linux, but focused on Linux – is becoming clear: Litigate, not innovate. Or, as I would contend, threaten to litigate, but don’t actually litigate. Frankly, I doubt that Microsoft is going to begin broad lawsuits to protect the 235 patents that Steve Ballmer claims, […]
After the heady euphoria of last week’s JavaOne conference in San Francisco, I’ve been inspired to release some data from BZ Research’s sixth annual Java Use and Awareness Study, which was completed in December 2006. The study, which we’ve been doing since 2001, asked a wide range of questions to 758 software development managers. (I’m […]
Of several panel discussions at Software 2007, only one of them had any real meat: a diverse group of CIOs talked about what they’re doing and what they look for. The CIOs were Neil Cameron from Unilever, Rob Carter of FedEx, Patricia Morrison of Motorola (pictured) and Tony Scott of Walt Disney. The panel was […]
One of the keynotes at last week’s Software 2007 conference was S. Mahalingam, CFO of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), one of the biggest IT outsourcing companies in India. Mahalingam’s keynote was in the form of an interview with Steve Hamm, senior writer from BusinessWeek. Here are some of my notes from that talk; none of […]
Ever since I started using Entourage 2004, the e-mail/calendar client in Microsoft Office 2004 for the Macintosh, my Mac has periodically “gone away,” with Entourage becoming unresponsive for a minute or more at random intervals, and with a lot of disk activity bogging down the machine. It took me a long time to realize that […]