BZ Media’s Software Test & Performance Conference is our largest and most popular technical conference. In case you didn’t know, it’s coming up next week, at the Hyatt Regency in Cambridge, Mass., just across the Charles River from Boston. At each year’s STPCon, we assemble a tremendous faculty with experts on everything from test design […]
Apple makes some excellent products, specifically the Macintosh hardware/software and the iPod. But not everything that Apple makes is great, and not everything that Apple does is wise. Specifically, Apple has laid two noteworthy product eggs recently: the Apple TV and the iPod Hi-Fi. In fact, a quick search for the Apple iPod Hi-Fi (pictured) […]
I was fascinated to receive an e-mail newsletter from Michael Desmond, editor-in-chief of Redmond Developer News, admitting that even Microsoft-centric IT professionals thought that Microsoft did a bad job in its failed attempt to fast-track Office Open XML through the ISO. Redmond Developer News, published by 1105 Media, is a publication for developers focused on […]
Here’s an idea: What if commercial and enterprise development teams were organized and managed like open-source teams? That is, individual architects, developers and testers could choose which projects to join up with, based on projects anywhere in the company. The members of each team would be organized as a self-selected meritocracy, using a set of […]
In their bid to recapture momentum from Google, the Yahooligans are behaving very, very badly. On Monday morning, I received an automated e-mail from Alexander Falk, founder of Altova, saying that he was changing his e-mail address: I have a brand-spanking-new Yahoo! Mail address. Hello, I have switched my e-mail address from email hidden; JavaScript […]
In April 2005, my colleague I.B. Phoolen wrote a humor piece predicting that The SCO Group would sue itself. Two-and-a-half years later, it’s still funny… and possible. Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick
As a former fan of the New England Patriots (I stopped following them after moving to California in 1990), I was appalled to read last week’s story that the Patriots were using a video camera to steal signals from the New York Jets. However, I wasn’t surprised: Sports is rampant with cheating. The NFL was […]
When my wife — a classical pianist — stumbled across a CD by a group called the 5 Browns, she was impressed by the concept of five siblings playing ten-handed arrangements. The CD contained short arrangements and medleys using pieces like Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, Stravinsky’s The Firebird, Copland’s Simple Gifts and Dvořák’s Symphony #9 […]
The SCO Group filed Chapter 11 today. Here’s the full official release: The SCO Group Files Chapter 11 to Protect Assets as It Addresses Potential Financial and Legal Challenges Reorganization ensures business as usual and that assets remain for continued support of customers and channel partners LINDON, Utah, Sept. 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — The SCO Group, […]
Speaking of unwanted spam, sometimes they’re at least good for a chuckle. Here’s phishing e-mail, received this morning, purporting to be from Citizens Bank: Good day dear clients, We are sorry to inform that the fraudulents with the accounts of our bank have recently increased. That is why our bank changes the security system, which […]
The marketing folks at Hewlett-Packard are very, very polite. As a matter of practice, I’m fairly aggressive about unsubscribing from unwanted e-mails, when I know that they come from legitimate sources. (By contrast, I delete and block true spam, such as messages from unknown sources.) I get on a lot of mailing lists, and since […]
Is 9/11 just another day? Should it be just another day? Do the terrorists win if we commemorate the day, reliving the horror? Do the terrorists lose if we remember those horrible events on our terms? Those are big questions, and although I sometimes fancy myself a philosopher, those questions are too big for me, […]
When reading one of the cover stories in the Sept. 1 issue of SD Times, I was struck by a comment from Ashok Reddy, a manager at IBM Rational. In “Negative View of Security Standing in Way of SaaS,” he was discussing how willing people were to put critical data out on hosted CRM services, […]
I’ve been honored by Carnegie Mellon University’s Silicon Valley campus by an invitation to talk about media relations. The talk is called, “Press relations: Telling the world about your better mousetrap,” and it’s a part of CMU’s exciting new Masters in Software Management program. The talk is described thus: If you build a better mousetrap, […]
Robin “roblimo” Miller has done it again. Robin is one of the most thoughtful and gratuitously humorous people I’ve ever met. Yes, that’s a compliment. I’ve never been bored reading anything that he has written, from blog posts to technical articles — even if the subject matter wasn’t of particular interest, Robin’s writing style making […]
Sometimes the old methods are the best methods. The BBC reported today that Royal Nepal Airlines, faced with persistent electrical problems with one of its Boeing 757 aircraft, decided to address the root cause… and sacrificed a goat to the Hindu god of sky protection. If the solution works, I’m going to suggest to my […]
Nearly every room in my home and office has a decent stereo system playing in the background. Just about any time of the day or night, you’ll hear Classical 102.1 KDFC in our home’s dining and living rooms, and the conference room at BZ West. (We never turn them off.) Meanwhile, my office’s stereo (a […]
See Ian Skerrett’s follow-up to the previous post. I wonder if there will be a .NET version? Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick
Palm has canceled the Foleo, its Linux-based quasi-laptop device that was designed to be a mobile companion for smart phones (that is, Palm’s smart phones). According to a blog post from Ed Colligan, CEO of Palm Inc., the company instead will be focusing all its efforts on creating a next-generation development platform and UI for […]
Despite rosy spin by its PR department, Microsoft has suffered a setback in its attempt to ram OOXML through the standards process. We should all celebrate (even Microsoft people should celebrate) that there’s still some amount of credibility in organizations like the ISO. Microsoft’s Office Open XML specification – a 6,039-page document – has been […]
My Glaswegian wife is a follower of all things Gaelic (at least, of the Scottish dialect of Gaelic, as opposed to the Irish one). Although she’s a Mac user, Carole was delighted to learn from the BBC about a forthcoming version of Windows Vista being translated into Gaelic.Scottish Gaelic is a Celtic language popular on […]
While on the subject of funny posts, you should add “Worse than Failure” to your RSS subscriptions. This blog, run by Alex Papadimoulis, documents some of the strangest goofs in the world of software development. Often, he runs great stories about death-march projects, or the Dilbert-like world of enterprise development. The best stuff, though, are […]
All I can say is, Ian Skerrett has written one of the funniest blog posts that I’ve read in a long time. Ian is the director of marketing for the Eclipse Foundation. Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick
Many analysts, myself included, have been increasingly unhappy with the ham-handed way that Microsoft handles software piracy. With Microsoft, beginning with Windows XP, your copy of the operating system had to be validated by Microsoft in order for all its features to work… or in some cases, for it to work at all. When Microsoft […]
Shortly after issuing our press release for the Inc. 5,000, I received a call from Reprint Management Services, a company engaged by Inc. to license stuff relating to the Inc. 5,000 award. Why? We had pasted the Inc. 5,000 logo on our BZ Media home page, and on our press release page. We were politely […]
I’m delighted to announce that BZ Media LLC has appeared on Inc. Magazine’s first-ever Inc. 5,000 list, which ranks the fastest-growing private companies in the United States. BZ Media, founded in 1999, was ranked as the 2,529th fastest-growing company in the United States, and as the 48th fastest-growing media company, according to Inc. More about […]
Sun Microsystems is changing its stock symbol from SUNW to JAVA. The symbol has been SUNW (reflecting Sun workstations, the company’s original product line) every since the company went public in 1986. Why is Sun doing this? Because Java is a popular brand. According to CEO Jonathan Schwartz, on his blog last Thursday, As I […]
My 15” MacBook Pro contains an expansion slot. Called the ExpressCard/34, it’s the successor to the old PCMCIA slot (which, of course, means, “People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms”). According to the PCMCIA (okay, the Personal Computer Memory Card International Association), the ExpressCard standard is to “carry forward the benefits of ‘plug-in’ I/O cards to […]
IP addresses may not be renewable resources. Over coffee one day, my colleague Andrew Binstock suggested a problem I hadn’t considered: Many applications and systems are hard-wire to access specific IP addresses, rather than fully qualified Unique Resource Identifiers (URIs). This, in turn, may be generating unwanted network or Internet traffic that probably can’t ever […]
Okay, I’m really hooked: I upgraded my original BlackBerry handheld device to a newer model. The upgrade was carefully considered, and was to solve very specific problems. However, the new model is significantly better than the previous one in every way. Let’s go back from before my colleague Alex Handy loaned me a second-hand BlackBerry […]