Displaying items by tag: Software

The Open Source community has been one that many leverage to help build their applications. It has become a great place to find applications packages that make building out a larger application or eco systems less time consuming. We see this in just about every development space from large to small. Having helpful sources of working code can speed up the development lifecycle and allow for greater interoperability as many applications use the same dependencies and core functions. The open source community is a great resource and typically is one that you can trust to pull code from.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has finally come out and publicly said what we have been reporting for the last couple of months. Things are changing from the Ballmer way. What that exactly means is yet to be determined though as Nadella is also a proponent of Microsoft’s cloud computing initiative: “We live in a mobile-first and cloud-first world”. In a memo to all Microsoft employees that is posted on Microsoft’s web site Nadella states that he wants Microsoft to “rediscover our soul – our unique core”.

In a somewhat surprising decision the US Supreme Court has rules that patents that cover an “abstract idea” are not valid. This was the final outcome of a battle between two financial institutions, Alice Corp and CLS Bank. The story is one that has played out very often, Alice Corp. holds the patent for the concept of an electronic escrow system. CLS wants to use the same type of system, but as the patent held by Alice Corp is so vague and abstract they cannot do so without running the risk of infringing.

Conflicting information coming from the company Nike, concerning the further development of their smart sports bracelets FuelBand. At the beginning of last week they announced the expansion of business and the launch of a separate drive for the development of this device in San Francisco. Additionally they announced the partnership with companies from the sectors of fitness, such as MyFitnessPal, RunKeeper and Strava, and the expansion of the FuelBand availability in cooperation with these related companies.

Ken Schwencke, the Los Angeles Times journalist and computer programmer developed an algorithm that is able to autonomously generate a newspaper report about an event just a few moments after the same happens. To start things off he focused on proven quality source of information, so he took a report on earthquakes from the U.S. Geological Survey, the thus obtained data used to populate the default form and create a newspaper article.

Current Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will see weaker sales of Windows 8 and RT surface on his own salary. By the board's decision, for the fiscal year 2013 he earned smaller bonus than he did in previous years.

According to Newton there is a reaction for every action. Now this law was intended to be applied to the world of physical objects and how they interact with each other. However it would seem that it also applies to how we interact with each other on more than just a physical level. One new example of this is that stock holders are looking to remove Bill Gates from Microsoft as Chairman of the Board. Gates was a strong supporter of Steve Ballmer during his tenure. He supported the move to a products and services company and many other moves that Ballmer took.

“I will speak slow so that those of you with PhDs in the room can understand.” – Doug Carlin, “Deja Vu,” Touchstone Pictures, 2006

Having been around the software industry from the earliest PC days (and before) it is interesting to see the companies come full circle and the uproar that is surrounding the latest announcements that software would be on a subscription basis.

Much of the furor comes out of a very basic misconception … that you pay once and you “own” the software.

Unfortunately, that tells me that few people really read their license agreements.

Last year, AMD decided to reward future owners of the Radeon HD 7900 and 7800 series with free keys for Far Cry 3, Hitman Absolution, Sleeping Dogs and a discount for Medal of Honor: Warfighter. Satisfied with the results of those actions, this year they created a new one, with an even better range of popular gaming titles.

The famous adage that the customer is always right can also be applied to open source software, that is, in relation to the Linux kernel and user software. At least that is what we hear when we ask for the opinion of Linus Torvalds about his creation; Linux.