Volume 16, Number 12 - March 26, 2007 Archives - Page 2 of 3

Fortran Creator, John Backus, Dies at 82

March 26, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

John Backus, the IBM systems programmer who led the team that created the Fortran programming language back in the 1950s, has died at the age of 82.

Fortran, which is short for the IBM Mathematical Formula Translating System, was created in 1956 for the IBM 704 computer, the first electronic computer in the world with floating point math capabilities; this machine was launched in 1954 for scientific and technical applications, and Backus’ Fortran proposal was part and parcel of the system, although it follwed it to market several years later.

Fortran was one of the first high-level programming languages–and arguably

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Magic Software Hires a New Chief Executive

March 26, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Magic Software Enterprises, a provider of application and integration software for midrange platforms, said last week that it has hired a new president and chief executive officer in the wake of a restructuring that it underwent last year.

David Assia, who is chairman of the company’s board and who has been acting CEO since that restructuring last October, announced that Eitan Naor has been hired to fill those two roles at the company. Naor was previously president and CEO at ECtel, an Israeli supplier of integrated revenue management software, which detects fraud and does credit risk assessment as well

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Software Powerhouses Agree on SOA Standards Bodies

March 26, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

In December 2005, seven software companies got together in an unnamed group to pitch the idea of creating some standards to govern the way applications written to a service oriented architecture should be implemented; last July, the group expanded its membership to 17 companies–many of the major software players, minus Microsoft and Sun Microsystems. And last week, the SOA group, now with Sun as a member, but still not Microsoft, decided to submit its proposed Service Component Architecture (SCA) and Service Data Objects (SDO) standards to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, or OASIS.

The

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Black Market for ID Theft Has Strong U.S. Ties, Symantec Finds

March 26, 2007 Alex Woodie

Curious to know what your personally identifiable information could fetch on the black market? While it may be priceless to you, hackers, cyber criminals, and other ne’er-do-wells of the underground economy charge from $14 to $18 for a deluxe identity theft package that includes a U.S. bank account and credit card numbers, date of birth, and government issued identification number, whereas a valid credit card number could be had for as little as $1, according to Symantec‘s latest Internet Security Threat Report.

Every six months or so, Symantec issues an Internet Security Threat Report that details the latest trends

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IBM to Meet Upset WDSc Shops Half-Way on Features?

March 26, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

After a hullabaloo for the past month about features within the new WebSphere Development Studio Client V7.0 integrated development environment for the i5/OS and OS/400 platform, IBM appears to be ready to make some changes to appease customers who want to use the Standard Edition of the product but who do not want to pay for an Advanced Edition license to get what they perceive as two key features that are aimed at traditional green-screen programming.

Those features, Screen Designer and Application Diagram, are only available in the Advanced Edition of the product, and as the story by Bruce Guetzkow

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As I See It: Workplace Heaven

March 26, 2007 Victor Rozek

I think I may have found it, that mythical and much sought after place where meetings are optional and vacations are mandatory. A place where workers set their own hours and choose their own managers. A place where employees are so trusted they are even allowed to propose their own salaries. Impossible, you say? Quit smoking the ganja, you say? Well, scoffers, I swear to you–it’s true. I’ve blundered onto workplace heaven, and I’m not even dead yet.

Actually, no one needs to die in order to get there, but if you want the non-virtual version, you will have to

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IDC Chops Server Forecasts Thanks to Virtualization, Multicore Chips

March 26, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

The IT analysts are finally coming around to the idea that server virtualization and multicore processors are going to have a disruptive effect on the server market from this point forward. Only weeks after IDC announced its figures for server shipments and revenues in the fourth quarter of 2006, when virtualization and multicore chips started a small downdraft in the server space, the consultancy has revised its server market models through 2010 significantly downward.

Years ago–and I mean like three or four years ago–the growth projections for the server market from IDC and Gartner did not really take into account

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Oracle Sues SAP Over ‘Corporate Theft on a Grand Scale’

March 26, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Database and application software maker Oracle last Thursday sued competitor in the application space, SAP, for what it called “corporate theft on a grand scale” in its complaint. The suit was launched in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, in San Francisco. Oracle and SAP Americas are both Delaware corporations, and the choice of venue in California was chosen because of state laws against computer fraud.

According to the suit, Oracle is seeking a jury trial after it discovered that SAP took software products and other confidential materials related to the support of Oracle’s products

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IBM to Meet Upset WDSc Shops Half-Way on Features?

March 26, 2007 Timothy Prickett Morgan

Those features, Screen Designer and Application Diagram, are only available in the Advanced Edition of the product, and as the story by Bruce Guetzkow

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