All this Microsoft and Yahoo stuff has got me thinking — how desperate are the CEOs of Microsoft to narrow the gap between them and Google?
At the current time Google have a 55% market share, up 20% in 2 years. Pretty good growth for any business. Microsoft and Yahoo (including all their subsidiary companies) only make up 45% and their market share is slipping year on year because of Google. Microsoft and Yahoo are desperate for more share in the market, and I can’t blame them.
But hang on. Even if the $44.6 billion Microhoo! deal does happen, do they really expect their market share to improve, profits to increase and Google to die as quickly as it rose in the sidelines?
The most likely thing that will happen is that competition will increase against Google, which will all but fuel Google to further improve their already superior search. Come on! If you’re two biggest competitors have to merge just catch up with you, you have to be doing something right!
For me, and other internet developers, the merger would be good news however you look at it. Better tools and APIs from Google, a comparable alternative to Google and maybe a Yahoo page written in ASP!Â
Steve Ballmer said:
“We have great respect for Yahoo!, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market,”
What he meant to say was:
“We are so desperate to kill Google that we’re willing to acquire Yahoo, once the only company to compete with us. To make sure they can’t say no we’re going to be throwing an inordinate amount of money at it, and hope that this whole Google business can just go away! *throws chair at reporter* ”
I believe that Microsoft were better than to think that “2 + 2 = 4″ on the web, and that just bolting different companies together will solve all their problems. It’s like shoving two cars together, and thinking it’ll go quicker, or putting two stupid people together and making a genius. It just doesn’t work!
I have recently found myself deviating away from C and C++ towards a newer, cleaner, smarter and much less annoying programming language -Â Python.
I was knocked back from it’s sheer simplicity in code and the vast selection of built-in libraries for easy programming. For example this one line of python code broadcasts a web-server on port 8000:
Ridiculous! And how about this… completely tokenise a string, one line:
“Hello my name is Andy”.split(’ ‘)
This one may not seem too amazing; php has the explode() function which basically does the same, but this very piece of code took me well over 50 lines of C code to do exactly the same thing.Â
Also Python natively supports Regular Expressions, whereas it would have to be a dodgy undocumented class add-on for C++.
This is exactly why I have chosen to do my next piece of Compilers coursework in Python. We are to construct a compiler that has an input of a self-defined language, use Lex (or equivalent) to produce perform lexicographical analysis and tokenization, Yacc (or equivalent) to produce the parser for the language, and my brain (or equivalent, i.e. Google, Wikipedia et al.) to produce efficient assembly language for the input source.
Just starting this coursework in C++, would involve extensive research to discover how one would accomplish the first two stages, let alone the last – and evidently most important one.
However in Python, I have imported the built-in Lex and Yacc tools, written 62 lines of code and the code already tokenizes and parses my custom language. All that’s left is the funny error messages (see below) and assembly code production.
My XML coursework is finally done. As I couldn’t get any work done at home, I went into Uni from 5 on Saturday…
… at 2am, I finally left with the coursework done. I walked back home feeling zombified with companion from exceedingly drunk Union-ites. This is a screeny of my report properties:
Yes… that’s 6 hours 2 minutes and 58 seconds of editing! Ouch.
During printing the 23 full colour pages of the report, my printer credits plummeted…
I feel overwhelmed that my Convex Hull algorithm coursework is complete.
We got just over 4 weeks to complete this work, but along with another 4 pieces of coursework that were due in before this one — most people didn’t start until the last week, and are therefore unable to get anything complete in time. Luckily, I started this work a week before we were to hand it in, and handing it in 5 days late… oops.
Due to no one handing the work in on time, a lot of jiggery pokery has been happening behind the scenes to make sure that we don’t get marked down for the late hand-in.
I implemented the entire program in C++ using classes, but not to the best effect I could have done. I also had to use Divide and Conquer methods to optimise the algorithm execution and show of that I can code it…
It was also the first project that I’ve ever implemented in Xcode – Mac OS X’s development program. I was quit surprised at the relatively shallow learning curve of using the IDE, but the compiler errors from gcc which I’ve used before in KDevelop, were not as useful as they could have been. It didn’t help that I upgraded to Leopard half way through development — I got a lot of linking errors when I did…
Well, if you’re just reading this to get the code, here it is:
This picture was taken swiftly by me on an open day.
Could prospective undergraduates and parents then have a completely different view on the University’s on-campus hotel, ‘Black Horse House’ ‘doubling up as a brothel?
I probably shouldn’t be writing this, but never mind!
I’m currently up to my neck in computer science coursework, a total of nine pieces in all.
1st: Essay on trends of computer architecture development (done, tomorrow)
2nd: ‘Disscussion’ to contrast fixed, variable and hybrid length instruction encoding sets. (not started, tomorrow [oops])
3rd: In groups, draw up 4 types of UML diagrams for a made up pesticides company (half done, friday)
4th: Develop and document a graphical implementation of 2D Convex Hull in a language of your choice. (algorithm kinda working, next friday)
5th: Create XML, XSLT and XSD documents for the C++ implementation of MPI + fat report. Goto xml.microplop.com to see it!!! (half done, three weeks left)
6th: Read, discuss and critique a Divide and Conquer algorithm based technical paper. (DONE!)
7th and 8th: Two Career Management Skills coursework peices, about something… I haven’t read it yet…. (two weeks)
9th: Design, develop and document a UK charity website in a team for a real client, using best design principles possible. (Febuary final deadline, but prototype site in 2 weeks)
I think that’s it! Glad to get that off my chest!
Expect to see a fat article on here soon about computer architecture, and the lively and sexy delights of varying instruction set encoding systems!
Yes, I’ve finally gone and done it… I’ve bought an Apple MacBook.
The deal was far too tempting and actually not as expensive as I once thought.
For just over £700 I’m getting:
A White MacBook 2.2Gz Intel Core 2 Duo, 120Gb, 1GB etc..
A 8Gb powder blue iPod Nano
The only reason why I got another iPod was because Apple have a special offer for University students — a £79 mail-in /online rebate when you buy a Nano. Then I got a further student discount to the Mac latop – just over £50.
Although, even after all these discounts and rebates I just about blew my entire term student loan forking out for the laptop. No food for me for a little while then.
Buying my MacBook got me thinking about Apple’s future as the main competitor to Microsoft (well, 7% market share is still competing… right…). News came yesterday of Apple’s impressive forth-quarter fiscal profits; Up nearly 100% from the same quarter last year. With increasing choice, more-than-tempting student offers, complete interoperability with Windows and Linux with BootCamp and sheer the style and sophistication that Apple’s products carry, it’s no wonder why they’ve had such a good year.
In contrast, Microsoft however have had a mixed year. They have just agreed to comply with the EU ruling with regards to monopolistic methods (after about 4 years and countless appeals later). Their new Vista OS has not made a dent in the percentage of use world-wide as server administrators refuse to deploy it over worries over security. The new version of the Zune media player (that noone actually owns) has failed to impress.
As I have moved back to Reading University for my second year, I have moved into a house nearby the Uni with three of my friends. The house is quite old, dusty and grotty but apart from that it’s really nice being in a place of your own, rather than in halls. Plus more sleep, as there are less drunk and rowdy students about at 3am!
One considerable downside is that the network situation has not been fully completed yet. We have an extremely makeshift network consisting of very temperamental Virgin “2″ Mb broadband ( see picture below), a firmware hacked cable modem (for QoS), a weak wireless point and a Ethernet cable running upstairs going to another router, connecting two other computers.
To add insult to injury, we found after a good hour with Linux console and ndiswrapper that my newly bought off-the-shelf Wifi dongle, doesn’t easily work in Linux. Grrr! Windows, for now, it is!
As you could imagine, all of the above do not lead to a reliable internet connection as the following picture demonstrates: I’ll hopefully soon get this sorted!
