World: r3wp

Is sun going to be the technology leader instead of IBM? - http://www.sun.com/emrkt/blackbox/index.jsp

I welcome what both companies do with supporting their open designs 
.... after all those years Sun is even opening JAVA ....

wow, thats a big step

Is sun going to be the technology leader instead of IBM? -

what does IBM meant to you nowadays?


To me, they are just a Professional Services Organization.. , granted, 
they have R&D etc.


But, they have been slowly getting rid of various assets over the 
years.

'The "Penelope" project's intention is to join the Eudora® user experience 
with the Mozilla platform. We intend to produce a version of Eudora 
that is open source and based on mozilla and Thunderbird. It's *not* 
our intention to compete with Thunderbird; rather, we want to complement 
it.'

http://wiki.mozilla.org/Penelope#Current_Status

Yeksoon - are you kidding, right? Dunno precise SUN portfolio, but 
except their CPU/Server technology plus corresponding sw, JAVA, what 
are they doing technology wise?

IBM, in that regard, even if they sold their PC business, has much 
more broader aproach ...

... not to mention their sw division ...

FireBird 2.0 goes gold - http://www.firebirdsql.org/

Wish RT would support Firebird natively ... :)

Can't use it on Linux ..., and I see it now has support for incremental 
online backup too.

good experience with FB? Do you use ODBC driver?

Yes ... so stuck on windows

why no Linux? I also read it can be used in non-server = local file 
version?

Firebird is on Linux, Solaris etc.  But how to connect?  No Rebol 
driver.

there isn't odbc driver for linux?

Not that I know of .. but odbc is not supported on Linux anyway.

http://www.reboltalk.com/forum/index.php/topic,304.0.html
See Carl's answer.

eh, did not know it ... I thought that Command SDK does support it 
cross platformly ...

Not that I know of.

is there description of FB protocol anywhere? I mean - to do eventually 
tcp driver?

FB is natively tcp .. but there is no description that I know of.

uhm, that is a pity - how then other langs do their support?

I guess they must have read the firebird C sources and figured it 
out.

why have you decided to use FB for your EMR system? Wouldn't you 
be better serverd by mySQL e.g.?

Good question!

Licensing for one.

mySQL does limit you license-wise? IIRC it is completly open. Just 
their embedded library is licensed differently IIRC ... but well, 
I am not good at all that licensing stuff myself .... also PostGress 
is reported being really profi and we have good driver for it too 
....

I didn''t have enough experience to get Postgresql driver working.

http://www.ibpp.org/open source C++ client interface to Interbase/Firebird

hmm, just got myself to http://rubyforge.org- there is really many 
community projects ongoin with Ruby ..., just go to project tree 
...

IBM, in that regard, even if they sold their PC business, has much 
more broader aproach ...

Pekr, I will try to answer from a marketing perspective.


Your statement suggest that a company with a broad based approach 
(diversified) in various markets is better than one with a narrow, 
focused approach.


My own study of companies suggest otherwise. I believe General Electric 
is one such case study. Throughout the 80s, they have acquired many 
companies across many industries, today... they have sell off a lot 
of the units that they have acquired.


Same goes with IBM. IBM is divesting their assets in a suitable time 
frame. They still have a 'broader approach' because of legacy baggages 
that they have not discard.


In fact, most companies that leads in their market segment do so 
because they are focused (during that time). SUN was focused on UNIX 
; Apollo did not.

MS was focused on PC; IBM says from mainframe to midrange to workstation 
to home PC....ironically MS is losing focus (do you think MS will 
win in the various new markets?)


It is not whether IBM has a broader approach that matters; it is 
about how fast IBM can reduce the excess baggages that it has acquired 
throughout the years.


SUN, in my opinion, is more focused than IBM now. At least , to me.... 
they own the 'datacenter' mindshare.


Corporates strategies facinates me. 2 of the most (fatal) management 
theories :

- diversifcation; why diversify when your core market is fragmenting...shouldn't 
you focus on one fragments instead? 

- convergence; eg. AOL-Netscape-TimeWarner...why do companies believe 
that different categories of business are coming together and not 
dividing further?


I, too make the mistakes above...and needs to clean up my 'business 
wardrobe'.

diverstity helps you not to sink when you only market (even if you 
are its leader) wanes or vanishes.

SGI was the undisputed leader in gfx and for some time had  very 
compelling and diffrentiated servers.

although VERY bad decisions where made (like selling of their gfx 
R&D and calling that nvidia) had they not diversified somewhat, they 
would be a memory for a while.

Direction of change should not be mix with diversification. (my opinion).

if sillicon gfx had just kept their R&D and *licenced* their technology 
or simply made nvidia themselves as a spin off, they would still 
be "in the game"  right now, just about the only thing worth buying 
is their linux server stuff with very high-end add ons and HW tech.

they did change direction in how they structured the company, trying 
to focus more on what was becomming a more important part of their 
business (servers)

Sun chooses GPL http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6134584.html?tag=nl.e589

Hmm, we all IBM all over the place. The thing is, that SUN has very 
low market if some market share at all in CZ - that says something 
too. I am not saying that diversified aproach is better, but I also 
don't think that diversification may mean non focus.

For me, simply IBM is technology leader, absolutly - please name 
any other company which is. Intel, HP, Sun?

but these things do evolve out of the market.  CEOs want their shares 
to go up, so they do what's trendy... not always what is the best.

Bill Buck having a good time and enjoying blogging :-) Today a bit 
about Amiga, Carl, VisCorp, new ideas etc. - http://bbrv.blogspot.com/

Carl - 10 years ago, back in days when VisCorp planned to resurrect 
the Amiga. Those days, he was writing ABL\E, predecessor of REBOL, 
together with Jim Goodnow IIRC ...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/[54643129-:-N00]/292689722/

interesting... AltME wants that to be an Email address

hehe :-)

There is a new scripting language in development called F3 from Sun, 
specifically designed for GUI programming. It allows designing Flash-like 
GUIs with ease and can call Java libraries directly. You can launch 
demos and get more information from the related blog. - http://blogs.sun.com/chrisoliver/category/F3

View is starting looking old ...

Now JAVA finally has its VID ...