Software: Opinions

Windows XP is 10 years old, yet a substantial number of businesses are still using it. They’re not really at fault. Upgrading to Windows Vista was considered too much work for too little payoff, and for many businesses upgrading to Windows 7 has for a long time seemed unnecessary.

Last week, Facebook announced that it had amassed 500 million users, a formable portion of the global Internet audience. But even as Mark Zuckerberg and company celebrates, others are busy trying to uproot Facebook's popularity by establishing a set of open standards to share Facebook-like features across the Internet.

So Google finally made good on its promise to uncensor its Chinese search engine and/or leave the Chinese market. And China is now making good on its promise to make Google very sorry for ever bringing it up.

Google prides itself on releasing products early and improving on them quickly, but this philosophy sometimes does a disservice to the company and to its users, as illustrated by this week's ballyhooed release of Buzz in Gmail.

804. That's how many versions of Linux there are now, according to the definitive guide, DistroWatch.com. And yet people complain that six versions of Windows 7 is far too many.

The following is a reader-written article from David Pinkus, a former high-level Google employee who is now senior vice president of information technology for Universal Technical Institute. 

Google's decision to build a PC operating system could be a master stroke or a colossal blunder, depending on whether the company has the resources that such an ambitious and long-term undertaking will require.

Will Oracle be good to Java's developers?

In two years, the federal government will begin divvying up $19 billion in reimbursement money to help health care organizations and doctors cover roll out electronic medical records (EMR) technology. In the meantime, the cost for the technology, which can run tens of millions of dollars for large facilities and tens of thousands of dollars for private physician practices, rests squarely on the private sector.

How do MySQL users feel about Oracle Corp.'s takeover of the open-source database through its acquisition of Sun Microsystems Inc.? Judging by Twitter, anxious -- and snarky.

At what temperature do electronic books catch fire? We're going to find out sometime this year. E-book sales are about to ignite.

Well, the word is out. Microsoft has finally confirmed the number of Windows 7 SKUs (stock keeping units) that it will foist upon the marketplace next fall.

Oh, not again. Last week, the SANS Institute and Mitre released yet another list of the most serious programming errors that break software security. And this time, SANS and Mitre got dozens of other organizations to sign on, including Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Tata, Symantec, the US Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency.

According to Net Applications research data, Mac OS X market share is inching its way to 10% of all computing platforms, currently at 9.93%. The Net Applications data comes by tracking the OS through web browser activity, so it's not a direct measurements of computers. But it's on-target with other market surveys.

Microsoft may be nearly ready to release Internet Explorer 8, but if current trends are any indication, IE's reign as king of the browsers is quickly coming to an end.

Google has been slowly, but surely, displacing Microsoft as the number one PC technology company.

Microsoft cuts 5,000 jobs. That's the big news of the week. Not just because the layoffs will cut one in 20 of Microsoft's 91,000 employees. Not only because it signals just how hard Microsoft has been hurt by the failure of Vista and by shifts in the way big customers license and use software. Not even because of the grim sign it represents for the rest of the IT industry.

We suppose it happens in families too, where one twin seems charmed from the start while the other lives under a shadow. Certainly that's the case with Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista, the one almost universally heralded and the other widely snubbed. Still, isn't it odd? How do two operating systems, born together and sharing so much DNA, arrive to such different fates?

Microsoft has long been worried about Linux competition in the server market. When it came to ordinary PCs and laptops, however, it knew it had little to fear.

Companies in a tough economy should seek alternative software options, says the CEO of open-source database-maker Ingres.