Latest entries from yakovfain.javadevelopersjournal.com @ OPEN SOURCE MAGAZINE

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Ebay Spends More Than $1 Billion To Buy BillMeLater And DBA.dk, And Lays Off 10% Of Employees

It’s a big day for eBay. The company is laying off 10% of its workforce, or about 1,000 employees plus several hundred temporary positions. They will take a $70 million to $80 million restructuring charge around the layoffs, they said. And they’ve made two acquisitions: Denmark’s DBA for $380 million and Amazon-funded BillMeLater for $820 million in cash and approximately $125 million in outstanding options. Regarding the two acquisitions: We covered dba.dk, Denmarks’ le

Oct. 6, 2008 08:49 AM

Parts Of California & Oregon Want To Become The 51st State

Two and a half years ago, John posted an article about efforts to split the California into three for economic and cultural reasons. Now here’s another move, but with a different cut. Are there other parts of the country that would like the secede from their current state? Here’s the ‘official’ website of the new [...]

Oct. 6, 2008 08:30 AM

Even Stephen Fry fails to get cloud computing

Stephen Fry recently published an article on cloud computing. Like many others he got it completely wrong and was describing nothing more than what the Internet is. Cloud computing is not the second coming.Leave CommentRelated Entries:Cloud Bootcamp announced, learn what all the fuss is aboutAmazon's EC2 now with Windowsdot.com bubble2.0Upcoming online webinar - Flying through the cloudsFrom deep within the bowels of SUNTime for VMWare to change its pricing modelAmazon S3 suffers an 8hr outage

Oct. 6, 2008 05:40 AM

Market at bottom?

Guardian: Now Wall Street may shun $700bn bail-out. "Analysts believe that the mere presence of the government as buyer of last resort will be enough to get credit markets moving again, and that a large number of banks would not need to take part for the legislation to succeed." Time to buy?

Oct. 5, 2008 08:26 PM

Microsoft's Lofty Direction

With the PDC coming up shortly and Microsoft's trickled announcements of Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0, what is Microsoft's direction, and will it work for them?

Oct. 5, 2008 10:30 AM

The opposite of Do Not Disturb

Often, on the back of a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign is a ‘Make Up My Room Now’ message of some sort. But, now matter how they phrase it, isn’t it the same as an “I’m Out, So This Would Be a Good to Rob Me, Especially If You Are Squeamish about Violence” sign?

Oct. 5, 2008 07:56 AM

Inventions and PR

Inventor invent things. What a revelation! But the thing is that often they invent things just for the sake of inventing things. Take a look at this mini motel for travellers that got stranded and have to sleep in the airport or other . Visualize yo

Oct. 5, 2008 04:04 AM

More Impedance mismatch: Cloude Computing

I noticed a news on an additional source of Impedance mismatch: Cloude Computing...Geir Magnusson, vice president of engineering and co-founder of 10gen, presented at a conference called Web 2.0 Expo, a talk: "The Sequel to SQL: Why You Won't Find Your RDBMS in the Clouds."Magnusson said "an RDBMS is what you need, but not in the cloud." Magnusson seems to support O/R mapping: "O/R mapping blends the power of an RDBMS with the programming simplicity of an ODBMS [object database management system

Oct. 4, 2008 08:59 AM

Quarterly Royalty Statement

Format Net Units Net Sales Royalty % Net Royalty -------- -------- -------- -------- -------- 3rd Party Translation 2 1,850.00 25.0000 462.50 Book 4,810 63,744.69 10.000 6,374.47 *Reserve Withheld -1,274.89 On-Line Access 3 3,736.12 10.000 373.61 PDF 6 113.69 10.000 11.37 -------- --------

Oct. 3, 2008 04:13 PM

Save the dates…

TechWave 2009 will be held at the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, D.C., Aug. 16-20.Original Entry

Oct. 3, 2008 10:17 AM

The Art of Customer Surveys

I posted an entry in American Express blog entitled the "The Art of Customer Surveys" based on some information sent to me by Dave Wanetick, the managing director of IncreMental Advantage. He points out deficiencies in typical customer surveys that you will find interesting, and he boils down effective surveys to one simple question.

Oct. 2, 2008 11:27 PM

Skytap Provides Cloud Access and Licensing for ISV Solutions; ITKO LISA is an Initial Partner

Skytap, Inc., a leading provider of cloud-based virtual lab solutions, today announced its Independent Software Vendor (ISV) Alliance program to enable on-demand distribution of commercial software solutions through its Virtual Lab platform. Skytap's initial ISV partners include ITKO LISA. Skytap's Virtual Lab automation platform, combined with ITKO LISA, will enable customers to dynamically spin up entire IT environments for service-oriented testing or training labs. I'm here at STARwest in ho

Oct. 1, 2008 10:38 PM

Apple drop the NDA for the Official iPhone SDK

Today on http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/ Apple decided to drop the Non Disclosure Agreement for the Official iPhone SDK for all registered developers.On the website Apple stated... "We put the NDA in place because the iPhone

Oct. 1, 2008 01:55 PM

Stack Overflow Podcast #24

The whole Stack Overflow team got together in person at Fog Creek's shiny new office in New York City for a roundtable discussion about the future of StackOverflow.com, which is up as this week's podcast. Shanah Tovah u-Metuka! Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Oct. 1, 2008 10:32 AM

Running Toronto Marathon - 9/28/2008

A couple of years ago my friend Kaushal Vyas blogged about his first marathon experience. His blog entry started with some quotes from Lance Armstrong on his first marathon: “the hardest physical thing I have ever done. Even the worst days in the tours, nothing was as hard as that and nothing left me feeling the way I feel now in terms of sheer fatigue and soreness. I think I bit off more than I could chew, I thought the marathon would be easier…”. It didn’t resonate with me at t

Oct. 1, 2008 12:28 AM

Why Adobe chose FXG over SVG

I am currently on a speaking and press tour in Asia talking about some of the new stuff we are doing in Flex 4. One of the things that people seem to be really excited about is FXG and Thermo, and the improved designer / developer workflow that they promise. However, I have received a couple of questions about why we didnt just choose to use SVG instead of creating a new format. This is actually addressed in the specification: When initial work on an XML-based graphics interchange format began,

Sep. 30, 2008 07:25 PM

The Contribution Revolution

The October edition of the Harvard Business Journal has a contributed article by Intuit co-founder Scott Cooke on how to build your business using communities. I thought it interesting that he used many of the standard “crowd-sourcing” examples like Skype and Wikipedia but no open source software examples. Given Intuit’s proprietary nature I guess I [...]

Sep. 30, 2008 02:12 AM

16 Challenging Steps to Becoming an Experience-Driven Organization

I am speaking at UI13 in a couple of weeks, and have been mulling on what I should talk about. I’ve decided on a talk tentatively titled “16 Challenging Steps to Becoming a Customer-Experience-Driven Organization.” The point being, it’s a slog, and you ought to be prepared for it. The 16 steps come from our work and research at Adaptive Path. Here they are. Assess your organization’s experience maturity. Understand people as people. Execute a quick win. Evangelize succe

Sep. 29, 2008 09:59 PM

OSUG - Special Guest

Sybase - PowerBuilder Family senior product manager - Sue Dunnell will be attending the next Ottawa Sybase User Group meeting ...

Sep. 29, 2008 09:02 AM

Zakaria on Palin

Fareed Zakaria: Palin Is Ready? Please.. Has a presidential candidate ever announced a new running mate this late in the game? If not, there's always a first time!

Sep. 28, 2008 08:19 PM

Drowning in a sea of data or thriving as a Numerati?

I overheard two engineers joking the other day. One says to the other “There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't”.A couple days later I decided to catch-up on some reading and took up a dated edition of Newsweek in which I read a short excerpt from Stephen Baker’s great new book called 'Numerati'. Baker posts a blurb in his website that describes the book as:“A captivating look at how a global math elite is predicting and altering our

Sep. 26, 2008 12:30 PM

Updated Update on Rule Representations

Jim Sinur, newly returned to the Gartner camp, just made an interesting post on rule representations. As TIBCO is attending the OMG and W3c rule standards meetings this week, we’re probably in a good position to critique Jim’s view (and make some, er, suggestions). Lets start at the top. Jim says business rule experts can choose from a variety of representations: “semantics” (by which I think Jim means formal vocabularies rather than OWL-type ontologies and things like C

Sep. 26, 2008 12:07 AM

IASA New England Meeting October 2

Sorry for getting this out a bit late, have been on the road the past couple of weeks... I just wanted to let everyone in the Boston area know we're having the next meeting of the IASA New England chapter next Thursday, October 2 from 5:00pm-8:00pm at the Microsoft office at 201 Jones Road, Waltham, MA 02451. I will be talking about why interoperability is so hard, and then Brian Kelly and Yev Bronshteyn will be giving an overview and demo of the new Artix WCF product, which provides native

Sep. 23, 2008 02:06 PM

Peopleware seminar in St. Petersburg, Russia

I’m giving a one-day seminar presentation on “Peopleware” in St. Petersburg, Russia on Sep 22nd. If you’d like to download the 3-megabyte PDF file, click on the icon below.

Sep. 21, 2008 02:23 PM

After the success of the App Store TMobile launch their DevPartner Progam

After the phenomenal success of the Apple App Store it looks like TMobile are following their lead after flicking the switch on their Dev Partner program. As with the Apple App Store program applications have to be verified at the programmers expense by True North Services. No news on how much this will be yet but expect around $200 per application. If you are a UK developer do not get too excited as to enter an application you will need a US employer identification No (EIN) and

Sep. 21, 2008 10:06 AM

Latest entries from yakovfain.javadevelopersjournal.com

Inventions and PR

Posted: Oct. 5, 2008 04:04 AM

Visiting Israel. Part 5. The Wedding.

Imagine, if for some weird reason the USA would have to accommodate the entire population of Italy (58Mil) and provide everyone with social benefits like medical coverage, food stamps, incentives and financial gifts used toward the purchase of the ho

Posted: Oct. 4, 2008 12:49 PM

My Trip to Israel. Complete Edition

This is a compilation of the blog posts about my trip to Israel in 2008.1. Arrival 2. Ashqelon 3. Bat Yam 4. Exodus 5.The Wedding

Posted: Oct. 4, 2008 11:27 AM

Visiting Israel. Part 4. Exodus of Jews from Israel?

Haifa is a large port in the North of Israel. My friend lives with his family in one of the Haifa’s suburbs, and I always enjoy meeting him. He’s one of a small number of gifted people who knows everything about everything. I always

Posted: Oct. 2, 2008 09:02 AM

Visiting Israel. Part 3. Bat Yam.

Bat Yam means Daughter of the Sea. It’s a southern suburb of Tel Aviv. The housing sector here is old, but the beach area is pretty. Citizens of Bat Yam give credits for this to the current mayor. During the celebration of the New Y

Posted: Sep. 30, 2008 07:08 PM

The most moronic job interview question

The subject of job interviews always interests me. What people ask? How people answer?Today, I ran into an article on Yahoo! where the author talks about how he asks the question “What are your weaknesses?” and what answers he expe

Posted: Sep. 29, 2008 03:02 AM

Visiting Israel. Part 2. Ashqelon.

Population of Israel is 7 million including 5.5 mil of Jews. You may be surprised, but there are 1.5 mil of Arabs who are loyal citizens of Israel who use buses for commute and not to blow themselves up. They are pretty happy living in Israel among J

Posted: Sep. 29, 2008 03:01 AM

Visiting Israel. Part 1. Arrival.

Next week I’m attending the wedding of my niece in Israel. My flight was originating in Newark’s airport. Have you noticed that the planes flying to Israel are usually parked at the gates located in the very end of the terminal? I can&rsq

Posted: Sep. 27, 2008 04:41 PM

Who's da man in IT?

Many years ago I started my career as a programmer. These days people try to come up with other definitions for this trade, like software developer, application developer, system analyst, application architect et al. But if most of the day you

Posted: Sep. 23, 2008 05:29 PM

Our Flex book is moving along

Slowly but surely our book Enterprise Application Development with Flex is moving along. By the end of the month we are submitting three more chapters. So far O'Reilly got just the chapter on comparing Flex frameworks. I just want to give y

Posted: Sep. 22, 2008 07:56 AM