Foo - IBM buying Sun?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/business/19markets.html?_r=1

Nothing wrong with it, and it would strengthen IBM in the long run because it would be one less competitor in the big iron department. IBM would gain ownership to Java (which they use extensively).

IBM has one nice advantage. In a lot of industries, IBM is a one stop shop. You aren't chucked between the OS maker, the computer hardware maker, the app vendor, and some muckety-muck hardware peripheral vendor. Instead you get transferred between divisions of the company, which is annoying, but eventually you can get some type of duty manager to get people on a 3-way call and nail down the problem for good.

I just wish IBM hadn't dumped their PC business to Lenovo.

clock -3600

IBM is a company I really like, Sun too. It seems like a good move. However, as much as I like their direction, I don't think its going to last over the long haul. That loss of the Apple-Macintosh processor had to be a huge hit to them. Java is a nice architecture, but I think it won't last well in the long haul.

Interesting, IBM makes good servers probably a win/win for both companies.

IBM is a company I really like, Sun too. It seems like a good move. However, as much as I like their direction, I don't think its going to last over the long haul. That loss of the Apple-Macintosh processor had to be a huge hit to them. Java is a nice architecture, but I think it won't last well in the long haul.
It's an excellent cross platform language.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/business/19markets.html?_r=1

Nothing wrong with it, and it would strengthen IBM in the long run because it would be one less competitor in the big iron department. IBM would gain ownership to Java (which they use extensively).

IBM has one nice advantage. In a lot of industries, IBM is a one stop shop. You aren't chucked between the OS maker, the computer hardware maker, the app vendor, and some muckety-muck hardware peripheral vendor. Instead you get transferred between divisions of the company, which is annoying, but eventually you can get some type of duty manager to get people on a 3-way call and nail down the problem for good.

I just wish IBM hadn't dumped their PC business to Lenovo.

I'm kind of with on you the Lenovo deal, but that market has gotten really competitive. It's hard to consistently make a buck, especially when so many other companies could easily undercut IBM with cheaper hardware.

Of course, I'm a little wary about IBM buying out their (biggest?) competitor.

It's an excellent cross platform language.

Yes it is...that's why I said it had a good architecture. I'm not saying I don't like it, just that my gut feeling is that it won't last. .Net is starting to move, even to *nix platforms with Mono and I think a lot of people are moving to it.

I like both IBM and Sun. My worry is that their cultures are so different. Sun originated from Stanford's university network, UNIX through and through, and IBM added UNIX to the portfolio in the mid 80s as an alternative to mainframes, OS/400, and OS/2.

It wasn't that long ago when Apple was about to be bought out by Sun, how times change.

That's some news.... 2 giants... lots of things will change. Great move for IBM. Helluva move actually.

Maybe they're hoping to get so large that they get a bailout check too.

That loss of the Apple-Macintosh processor had to be a huge hit to them.At the same time that Apple was dumping PowerPC in favor of x86, Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft were designing consoles around variations of the chip. IBM did okay in that tradeoff.

Yes it is...that's why I said it had a good architecture. I'm not saying I don't like it, just that my gut feeling is that it won't last. .Net is starting to move, even to *nix platforms with Mono and I think a lot of people are moving to it.

Haven't heard anything about Mono since long ago, back then it was unstable and flaky and lots of things didn't work with it. Haven't heard anything since then so I assumed it never took off.

It's an excellent cross platform language.

Tell that to anybody with a BluRay player that takes 5 minutes to boot up.

Haven't heard anything about Mono since long ago, back then it was unstable and flaky and lots of things didn't work with it. Haven't heard anything since then so I assumed it never took off.I don't use Mono myself, but a friend of mine who keeps up with the latest happenings more than I was saying that a while ago (he said about 6 months ago at least) Mono came out with a release that was very stable and had nearly all features of either .Net 2.0 or 3.0. Then Mono really started taking off after that.

Granted, this is all 2nd hand knowledge, but I just don't see java based things getting more plentiful out there. That's my biggest 'litmus test'...if anything I see less and less.

I personally used Java for a year or so a while back (like 5 years ago) on a project at work. My biggest complaint was that anything created in it was a HUGE slow beast. I created a simple test window once that had about 2 controls (button and text box), and that one small window was taking up about 80 MB of memory. Additionally, JVM didn't use native drivers (obviously), so many of your normal features on your input devices (like scroll wheel on mouse) didn't work inside of Java apps.

I don't use Mono myself, but a friend of mine who keeps up with the latest happenings more than I was saying that a while ago (he said about 6 months ago at least) Mono came out with a release that was very stable and had nearly all features of either .Net 2.0 or 3.0. Then Mono really started taking off after that.

Granted, this is all 2nd hand knowledge, but I just don't see java based things getting more plentiful out there. That's my biggest 'litmus test'...if anything I see less and less.

I personally used Java for a year or so a while back (like 5 years ago) on a project at work. My biggest complaint was that anything created in it was a HUGE slow beast. I created a simple test window once that had about 2 controls (button and text box), and that one small window was taking up about 80 MB of memory. Additionally, JVM didn't use native drivers (obviously), so many of your normal features on your input devices (like scroll wheel on mouse) didn't work inside of Java apps.
Thanks for the heads up, grabbing one of their handy VMWare images with Mono installed on SuSE to try it out. :thumb:

Apparently it's quite decent now.... but we'll see. ASP for Linux had the same effect on me till I actually tried it and found multiple large features just missing.

Thanks for the heads up, grabbing one of their handy VMWare images with Mono installed on SuSE to try it out. :thumb:

Apparently it's quite decent now.... but we'll see. ASP for Linux had the same effect on me till I actually tried it and found multiple large features just missing.

That's a good point..... I like .Net (as well as Java) in terms of how they are designed, but .Net does have a similar issue in terms of hoggishness. I have been working converting a project (7 separate related ones actually) to .Net from VS 6. Our old DLL compiled to about 1MB, under .NET it compiles to about 15MB.

On the high-end market, Java's been gaining by leaps and bounds. I used to do a lot of Oracle DBs using .net or ASP years ago. Their latest 11g database running on Linux works so much better and interfaces through front-ends with Java. Much cleaner when you can be running Linux, Windows, or embedded devices for clients. I think MS has missed the boat on the small handheld embedded market.

Java is an OK language, but because of its performance issues (and Java-heads and I argue with this constantly), Flash emerged as the dominant Web platform. Flash also had good support for video. Had Java had this, it likely would have been Java that Youtube and others would be using as opposed to Flash which is so platform limited.

Sun also should have looked at incorporating or making deals with video card makers so Java could use OpenGL extensions for very high performance 3D stuff. Imagine a game that just cares about OpenGL compatibility (which a lot more platforms offer than DirectX).

Java is an OK language, but because of its performance issues (and Java-heads and I argue with this constantly), Flash emerged as the dominant Web platform.

:wtf:

I mean, flash has it's place, but in terms of the uses they're completely separate in terms of what they're deployed for.

For number crunching applications Flash seems to suck horribly, and you'll commonly see Java applets doing that, plus Java Server Pages are something that flash can't touch.

And all flash sites are complete trash produced by people that fail at web design.

Flash has it's place with interactive applications on websites, however it was only a part of what Java could do.

My worry is that their cultures are so different.

That is correct- Suns is bureaucratic and stupid, and IBM's culture gets stuff done.

I've worked at both companies. When I was at IBM they had smart people and dumb upper management who let them get away (to do good work at SGI and Netscape and VMware). I didn't think it was possible then, but IBM has managed to turn their culture around to where good people want to go there. Their embace of open source was a big sign that they got it.

Sun is no longer an innovative company, with a few small exceptions that Corporate is squashing. Most of the smart people have left and the ones who are still there are busy squabbling over smaller and smaller fiefdoms. Sun was remarkably stupid and political when I was there and they have gotten much worse since.

IBM's buying Sun's service business. The hardware is not worth much, and IBM will have to fire a lot of people to make the whole thing pay.

:wtf:

I mean, flash has it's place, but in terms of the uses they're completely separate in terms of what they're deployed for.

For number crunching applications Flash seems to suck horribly, and you'll commonly see Java applets doing that, plus Java Server Pages are something that flash can't touch.

And all flash sites are complete trash produced by people that fail at web design.

Flash has it's place with interactive applications on websites, however it was only a part of what Java could do.

That is true, Java is used in academia often. However, if a website is going to use something for media, its not going to be Java, it will be Flash. Flash is used server side, but for the most part, it is becoming a bit player for client apps.