I hope everyone is having a peaceful holiday. For the 12th day of Christmas, a simple management pack to track changes in your MOM 2005 configuration.

By Allison Randal

People periodically ask me about competition in the open source community, especially competition between various languages.

One thing Microsoft seems to have figured out is that developers want multiple languages to choose from and will always want multiple languages to choose from. Diversity is an advantage, not a disadvantage. Ruby, for example, benefits from Perl, PHP, and Python's success, just like they benefit from Ruby's success. Java would likely never have been released as open source if it weren't for the success of the other languages. Having multiple successful open source languages each used by multiple successful projects makes it that much easier for companies to consider open source alternatives. The more the merrier.

Many a writer, analyst and blogger have put the label of “disruptive” on Skype.

I think NOT.

The proper term, as I have said before is “subversive” and what the following will prove and point to that exact claim. Now for those who don’t see the fine points of differentiation, disruptors upset the status quo. Michael Robertson at SipPhone, best known for MP3.com is an example of a premiere disruptor. Subversive types do an Al- Quada  type 9-11 unexpected attack and profit from it.

Filed under: Developer, Internet, Text, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, Open Source

This blog is devoted to the impact of the Web and other information technologies on companies, not on culture. But partly because it’s the holidays and partly in response to Time’s declaration that the Web 2.0-enabled ‘You’ is the Person of the Year, I wanted to relax the boundary just a bit and discuss one of the persistent criticisms of Web 2.0 (and one I’ve also heard made about Enterprise 2.0). This is the idea that the profusion of online content is leading to a ‘dumbing down’ of our culture and/or society.

I’m still on a light posting schedule until next year but this was too choice to ignore.In a front page article today, (available online, but subscription required) the Wall Street Journal details a medical records horror story.A middle-aged woman’s fiance commits suicide.

There is lots of buzz lately around hosted solutions and the Software as a Service (SaaS) model, web based business applications that are hosted and maintained by an service provider. Salesforce.com is the canonical example, they've been very successful providing hosted CRM and are expanding their offerings, Microsoft has launched Office Live and there are rumors of a Google "Office" killer in the works.