On Princeton's "Freedom to Tinker" site, the founder of the ENIAC Programmers Project summarizes 20 years of its research, remembering the "incredible acts of computing innovation during and just after WWII" that "established the foundation of modern computing and programming."

Commissioned in 1942, and launched in 1946, the ENIAC computer, with its 18,000 vacuum tubes, was the world's very first modern computer (all-electronic, programmable, and general-purpose). "Key technologists of the time, of course, told the Army that the ENIAC would never work."

Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes Cory Doctorow: The ENIAC programmers had to invent programming as we know it, working without programming codes (these were invented a few years later for UNIVAC by Betty Holberton): they "broke down the differential calculus ballistics trajectory program" into small steps the computer could handle, then literally wired together the program by affixing cables and flicking the machine's 3,000 switches in the correct sequences. To capture it all, they created meticulous flowcharts that described the program's workings.
From the site: Gunners needed to know what angle to shoot their artillery to hit a target 8 to 10 miles away.... The Army's Ballistics Research Labs (BRL) located women math graduates from schools nearby [who] worked day and night, six days a week, calculating thousands of ballistics trajectories which were compiled into artillery firing tables and sent to soldiers in the battlefields. It was a tremendous effort. Second, the Army and BRL agreed to commission a highly-experimental machine... [Six] women studied ENIAC's wiring and logical diagrams and taught themselves how to program it...

After the war, the Army asked all six ENIAC Programmers to continue their work -- no solider returning home from the battlefield could program ENIAC... Others made other pivotal contributions: Jean Bartik led the team that converted ENIAC to one of the world's first stored program computer and her best friend Betty Holberton joined Eckert Mauchly Computer Corporation and wrote critical new programming tools for UNIVAC I, the first commercial computer, including the C-10 instruction code (predecessor to programming languages). You can still find its original operating manual online. ("Do not open d-c fuse cabinet with the d-c power turned on. This not only exposes a person to voltage differences of around 1500 volts but the person may be burned by flying pieces of molten fuse wire in case a fuse should blow.")

It performed calculations that helped design the world's first hydrogen bomb.

Technology writer Matthew MacDonald began writing QuickBASIC code back in 1988 on the DOS operating system, sharing it on a 3.5-inch floppy disk. "I still remember writing code in white text on its cheery blue background..."

He tells his readers on Medium that "I have a confession to make. Before I became a respectable developer working with modern curly-bracket languages like C# and Java (and that hot mess of a platform we call JavaScript), I was a dedicated fan of the wildly popular misfit Visual Basic..."

At the same time that Microsoft released Windows 3.0 -- the first version that was truly successful -- they also launched Visual Basic 1.0. Here was something entirely new. You could create buttons for your programs by drawing them on the surface of a window, like it was some kind of art canvas. To make a button do something, all you had to do was double-click it in the design environment and write some code. And you didn't use cryptic C++ code, with piles of classes, complex memory management, and obscure calls into the Windows API. Instead, you wrote friendly-looking VB code, like a civilized person.

All the graphical pizzazz was impressive, but the real secret to VB's success was its practicality. There was simply no other tool that a developer could use to sketch out a complete user interface and get coding as quickly as VB... By the release of VB 6 -- the last version of classic Visual Basic -- it was estimated that there were ten times more coders writing in VB than in the unforgiving C++ language. And they weren't just mocking up toy applications. Visual Basic wormed its way into company offices and even onto the web through ASP (Active Server Pages), another monstrously popular technology. Now you could create web pages that talked to VB components, called databases, and wrote HTML on the fly...

Today, Visual Basic is in a strange position. It has roughly 0% of the mindshare among professional developers -- it doesn't even chart in professional developer surveys or show up in GitHub repositories. However, it's still out there in the wild, holding Office macros together, powering old Access databases and ancient ASP web pages, and attracting .NET newcomers. The TIOBE index, which attempts to gauge language popularity by looking at search results, still ranks VB in the top five most talked-about languages. But it seems that the momentum has shifted for the last time. In 2017, Microsoft announced that it would begin adding new language features to C# that might never appear in Visual Basic. The change doesn't return VB to ugly duckling status, but it does take away some of its .NET status....

Visual Basic has been threatened before. But this time feels different. It seems like the sun is finally setting on one of the world's most popular programming languages. Even if it's true, Visual Basic won't disappear for decades. Instead, it will become another legacy product, an overlooked tool without a passion or a future.
He remembers that the last versions of Visual Basic even supported object-oriented programming with interfaces, polymorphism, and class libraries, but argues that to create .NET, Microsoft "had to throw away almost all of classic VB."

For example, "Classic VB programmers had to change the way they counted array elements. No longer could they start at 1, like ordinary people. Now they had to start at 0, like official programmers."

Intel's One API project aims "to simplify application development across diverse computing architectures."

Now an anonymous reader quotes Phoronix: Intel announced an interesting development in their oneAPI initiative: they are developing a new programming language/dialect. Intel originally began talking about oneAPI last December for optimizing code across CPUs / GPUs / FPGAs and as part of "no transistor left behind...."
The article then acknowledges "the SYCL single-source C++ programming standard from The Khronos Group we've expected Intel to use as their basis for oneAPI," before noting Intel is going "a bit beyond..."

"Data Parallel C++ (DPC++) is their 'new direct programming language' aiming to be an open, cross-industry standard and based on C++ and incorporating SYCL."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The Oregon Department of Corrections has banned prisoners from reading a number of books related to technology and programming, citing concerns about security. According to public records obtained by the Salem Reporter, the Oregon Department of Corrections has banned dozens of books related to programming and technology as they come through the mail room, ensuring that they don't get to the hands of prisoners. At least in official department code, there is no blanket ban on technology-related books. Instead, each book is individually evaluated to assess potential threats. Many programming-related books are cited as "material that threatens," often including the subject matter ("computer programming") as justification. The Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) worries that prisoners could use the tools mentioned in some of the programming-related books to compromise their systems. But what's odd is the scope of the ban. Justin Seitz's Black Hat Python book failed the prison's security test since it's geared towards hacking, but so did the book Windows 10 for Dummies, Microsoft Excel 16 for Dummies which simply teaches proficiency in Excel and Windows 10.

Officials at the DOC argue that knowledge of even these basic programs can pose a threat to prisons. "Not only do we have to think about classic prison escape and riot efforts like digging holes, jumping fences and starting fires, modernity requires that we also protect our prisons and the public against data system breaches and malware," DOC spokesperson Jennifer Black said in an emailed statement. "It is a balancing act we are actively trying to achieve."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: A MongoDB database was left open on the internet without a password, and by doing so, exposed the personal details and prescription information for more than 78,000 U.S. patients. The database contained information on 391,649 prescriptions for a drug named Vascepa; used for lowering triglycerides (fats) in adults that are on a low-fat and low-cholesterol diet. Additionally, the database also contained the collective information of over 78,000 patients who were prescribed Vascepa in the past. Leaked information included patient data such as full names, addresses, cell phone numbers, and email addresses, but also prescription info such as prescribing doctor, pharmacy information, NPI number (National Provider Identifier), NABP E-Profile Number (National Association of Boards of Pharmacy), and more. According to vpnMentor, the company that left the database open may have violated HIPAA, and may be in line for a hefty fine for failing to encrypt the patient data it had stored on the database server, a HIPAA golden rule," the report adds. "However, Dissent, the administrator of DataBreaches.net, a website dedicated to tracking data breaches and HIPAA violations, told ZDNet that just because a system stores medical information, it doesn't mean it's necessarily covered by HIPAA. Until the database owner is found, no other conclusions can be drawn."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Oracle on Tuesday published an out-of-band update patching a critical code-execution vulnerability in its WebLogic server after researchers warned that the flaw was being actively exploited in the wild. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2019-2729, allows an attacker to run malicious code on the WebLogic server without any need for authentication. That capability earned the vulnerability a Common Vulnerability Scoring System score of 9.8 out of 10. The vulnerability is a deserialization attack targeting two Web applications that WebLogic appears to expose to the Internet by default -- wls9_async_response and wls-wsat.war. The flaw in Oracle's WebLogic Java application servers came to light as a zero-day four days ago when it was reported by security firm KnownSec404.

Apple is counting on apps built for the iPad and the iPhone being converted to the Mac as a way to infuse new energy -- and a lot of new software -- into the granddaddy of its devices. From a report: The party started last year at WWDC 2018 when Apple announced a "sneak peek" at four of its own apps that it converted from iOS to MacOS. Those four were News, Voice Memos, Home and Stocks. But when the apps showed up in MacOS Mojave, they weren't greeted with much enthusiasm from Mac users because all four were rudimentary at best and didn't take advantage of the Mac's extra capabilities. Good news. Apple is fixing them. At WWDC 2019 earlier this month, Apple announced Project Catalyst, which streamlines the process for all software makers to bring their own iOS apps to Mac.

In an interview with CNET at WWDC, Apple software chief Craig Federighi confirmed that the four iOS apps for Mac released last year will get major updates based on the new technology in Project Catalyst. But he also revealed that the apps will get new designs to make them more Mac-like. "They're getting improvements," Federighi said. "The underlying technology has matured...Some of that is super low-level stuff. Some people have dissected those apps and realized that they were sort of two halves: an AppKit half and a UIKit half, literally running in different processes. That's all unified now. This has become much more of a native Mac framework...So automatically, the apps we built last year are upgraded."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: The latest Windows preview from the 20H1 branch, build 18917, has some hidden components that signal a future where the Windows Shell UI parts, such as Action Center, will be separate from the rest of Windows and can be updated with shell packages. A developer who uses the Twitter handle Albacore gave a breakdown of a new component in Build 18917 called 'Shell Update Agent,' which he notes is "capable of obtaining and updating the shell on demand."

That capability may mean nothing to most Windows 10 users. However, for Windows watchers it could be an interesting development of Microsoft's unannounced plans for Windows Core OS, in which Windows is modularized and calls on a range of shells that target different form factors, from HoloLens to Surface and dual-screen devices like the recently revealed Centaurus laptop, whose shell is called Santorini. Albacore goes on to explain that the Shell Update Agent references 'Package Family Names,' which suggests that the "shell will indeed be a separate, packaged component." Those shell packages can be acquired from both external and internal sources, which could mean shell components like the Start Menu, Action Center and Taskbar could be selectively built, based on these acquired packages. Finally, one more shell-related change noted relates to a new method for syncing settings. "The new one should support syncing more advanced and previously 'legacy' options such as File Explorer configuration," Albacore notes.

"JetBrains released its State of Developer Ecosystem 2019 report, which found while Java is still the most popular primary language and JavaScript is the most used overall, Python is gaining speed," reports SD Times: The report surveyed about 7,000 developers worldwide, and revealed Python is the most studied programming language, the most loved language, and the third top primary programming language developers are using... The top use cases developers are using Python for include data analysis, web development, machine learning and writing automation scripts, according to the JetBrains report. More developers are also beginning to move over to Python 3, with 9 out of 10 developers using the current version.

The JetBrains report also found while Go is still a young language, it is the most promising programming language. "Go started out with a share of 8% in 2017 and now it has reached 18%. In addition, the biggest number of developers (13%) chose Go as a language they would like to adopt or migrate to," the report stated...

Seventy-three percent of JavaScript developers use TypeScript, which is up from 17 percent last year. Seventy-one percent of Kotlin developers use Kotlin for work. Java 8 is still the most popular programming language, but developers are beginning to migrate to Java 10 and 11.
JetBrains (which designed Kotlin in 2011) also said that 60% of their survey's respondents identified themselves as professional web back-end developers (while 46% said they did web front-end, and 23% developed mobile applications). 41% said they hadn't contributed to open source projects "but I would like to," while 21% said they contributed "several times a year."

"16% of developers don't have any tests in their projects. Among fully-employed senior developers though, that statistic is just 8%. Like last year, about 30% of developers still don't have unit tests in their projects." Other interesting statistics:

• 52% say they code in their dreams.

• 57% expect AI to replace developers "partially" in the future.

• "83% prefer the Dark theme for their editor or IDE. This represents a growth of 6 percentage points since last year for each environment.

• 47% take public transit to work.

And 97% of respondents using Rust "said they have been using Rust for less than a year. With only 14% using it for work, it's much more popular as a language for personal/side projects." And more than 90% of the Rust developers who responded worked with codebases with less than 300 files.

"It took 10 months to get it done, but the Granite State is now officially a Geeky State," writes Concord Monitor science reporter David Brooks.

"The latest New Hampshire Historical Highway Marker, celebrating the creation of the BASIC computer language at Dartmouth in 1964, has officially been installed. Everybody who has ever typed a GOTO command can feel proud..." Last August, I wrote in this column that the 255 official historical markers placed alongside state roads told us enough about covered bridges and birthplaces of famous people but not enough about geekiness. Since anybody can submit a suggestion for a new sign, I thought I'd give it a shot.

The creation of BASIC, the first programing language designed to let newbies dip their intellectual toes into the cutting-edge world of software, seemed the obvious candidate. Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code has probably has done more to introduce more people to computer programming than anything ever created. That includes me: The only functioning programs I've ever created were in vanilla BASIC, and I still recall the great satisfaction of typing 100 END...

But BASIC wasn't just a toy for classrooms. It proved robust enough to survive for decades, helping launch Microsoft along the way, and there are descendants still in use today. In short, it's way more important than any covered bridge.
The campaign for the marker was supported by Thomas Kurtz, the retired Dartmouth math professor who'd created BASIC along with the late John Kemeny. "Our original idea was to mention both BASIC and the Dartmouth Time-Sharing System, an early system by which far-flung computers could share resources. They were created hand-in-hand as part of Kemeny's idea of putting computing in the hands of the unwashed masses.

"However, the N.H. Division of Historical Resources, which has decades of experience creating these markers, said it would be too hard to cram both concepts into the limited verbiage of a sign."

The highway marker calls BASIC "the first user-friendly computer programming languages... BASIC made computer programming accessible to college students and, with the later popularity of personal computers, to users everywhere. It became the standard way that people all over the world learned to program computers, and variants of BASIC are still in use today."

In the original submission, an anonymous Slashdot reader notes that last month, Manchester New Hampshire also unveiled a statue of Ralph Baer, whose team built the first home video game sold as Magnavox Odyssey, sitting on a park bench. "The Granite State isn't shy about its geek side."

Python reached another new all-time high on the TIOBE index, now representing 8.5% of the results for the search query +"<language> programming" on the top 25 search engines. Python overtook C++ this month for the #3 spot, now placing behind only Java (#1) and C (#2).

That's prompted TIOBE to make a bold prediction: If Python can keep this pace, it will probably replace C and Java in 3 to 4 years time, thus becoming the most popular programming language of the world.

The main reason for this is that software engineering is booming. It attracts lots of newcomers to the field. Java's way of programming is too verbose for beginners. In order to fully understand and run a simple program such as "hello world" in Java you need to have knowledge of classes, static methods and packages. In C this is a bit easier, but then you will be hit in the face with explicit memory management. In Python this is just a one-liner. Enough said.
InfoWorld reports: Also on the rise in the June Tiobe index, Apple's Swift language is ranked 11th, with a rating of 1.419 percent. Swift was ranked 15th at this time last year and 18th last month, while its predecessor Objective-C language ranked 12th this month with a rating of 1.391. Tiobe expects Objective-C to drop out of the top 20 within two years.
InfoWorld also notes that Python is already #1 in the Pypl index, which analyes how often language tutorials are searched for on Google. On that list, Python is followed by Java, JavaScript, C#, PHP, and then C/C++.

Python was also TIOBE's fastest-rising language in 2018 -- though in 2017 that honor went to C, and in 2015 to Java...

dryriver writes: If anybody remembers the good old Commodore 64, one thing stood out about this once popular 8-bit computer -- as soon as you turned it on, you could type in BASIC (Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) and run it. You didn't have to install a programming language, an IDE and all that jazz. You could simply start punching code in, and the C64 would execute it. Now that we live in a time where coding is even more important and bankable than it was back in the 1980s, shouldn't operating systems like Windows 10 or Android also come with precisely this kind of feature? An easy-to-learn programming language like the old BASIC that greets you right after you boot up the computer, and gives you unfettered access to all of the computer's hardware and capabilities, just like was possible on the C64 decades ago? Everybody talks about "getting more people to learn coding" these days. Well, why not go the old C64 route and have modern OSs boot you straight into a usable, yet powerful, coding environment? Why shouldn't my Android phone or tablet come out of its box with a CLI BASIC prompt I can type code into right after I buy it from a store?

Catalyst is Apple's framework that enables developers to easily bring existing iOS apps to the Mac, while SwiftUI is a new, Swift-based technology that makes it easy for developers to create one app that runs on all of Apple's platforms. Jason Snell from Macworld highlights the slow, invisible transition of these new technologies. From the report: Catalyst, which arrives this fall, will allow developers who are well-versed in the vagaries of writing iOS apps to use those skills to write Mac apps. This will most commonly take the form of bringing iPad apps to the Mac, with additions to make them feel more like native Mac apps, but it's more than that -- it provides iOS developers with a familiar set of tools and access to an entirely new platform, and it makes the target for professional apps across Apple's platforms broader by including both the iPad and the Mac. iOS apps are currently built to run on devices running Apple-designed ARM processors, and if the rumors are true, that's another transition waiting to happen. But given that all Mac and iOS developers are already using Apple's Xcode tools to develop their apps, I suspect that the pieces have been put in place for a fairly simple transition to a new processor architecture.

And then there's SwiftUI, which may be a harder concept for regular users to grasp, but it's a huge step on Apple's part. This is Apple's ultimate long game -- an entirely new way to design and build apps across all of Apple's platforms, based on the Swift language (introduced five years ago as yet another part of Apple's long game). In the shorter term, iOS app developers will be able to reach to the Mac via Catalyst. But in the longer term, Apple is creating a new, unified development approach to all of Apple's devices, based in Swift and SwiftUI. Viewed from this perspective, Catalyst feels more like a transitional technology than the future of Apple's platforms. But we're talking about the long game here. Transitional technologies are all a part of the long game. Catalyst will bring those apps to the Mac. iOS and Mac developers will pick up Swift and SwiftUI. Mac apps can integrate iOS stuff via Catalyst. iOS apps can integrate Mac stuff for use on the Mac. And all developers can begin experimenting with SwiftUI, building new interfaces and replacing old ones in a gradual process. "And then we'll turn around sometime in the 2020s and realize that all of this talk of UIKit and AppKit and Catalyst is behind us, and that our apps are written in Swift with interfaces created using SwiftUI," Snell writes in closing. "It will have all changed due to Apple's slow and steady pace of iterative, continuous improvement. The long game never stops, and it can be hard to see that you're even in it."

Game Builder is a new video game from Google that allows you to create simple Minecraft-style games for yourself and others to play through. "The game lets you drag and drop characters and scenery into an empty sandbox to construct your world, then use preset commands to string together how things interact," reports The Verge. "It's free to play and available on both Windows and macOS." From the report: The game comes from Area 120, Google's incubator for experimental projects (some of which have quickly disappeared, others of which have made their way into other Google products). Game Builder has actually been available through Steam since November 1st last year (it already has 190 reviews, with a "every positive" score), but Google only publicized it today, which is certain to get a lot more people playing. Game Builder has a co-op mode, so multiple people can build a game together at once. You can also share your creations and browse through the games made by others. The interaction system works with "if this then that" logic, and players can craft their own interactions with JavaScript if they're familiar with it.

Google Maps is rolling out a new feature that will tell you if your taxi driver goes off-route in an attempt to rack up a higher fare. Sure, you could always use Google Maps to pick the shortest route possible, but the newest feature does the work for you. BGR reports: The feature is especially useful in cities you don't know, but also at home, allowing you to get live updates on your route. Google Maps will send an alert to your phone every time you're off-route by 500 meters, xda-developers explains. Moreover, your route will not be rerouted automatically, which is what happens when deviating from your route while using Google Maps for regular navigation. That's because the feature will help you stick to your chosen route rather than continuously adapting it.

Once you start receiving the alerts, you should notify the driver that you're aware of the changes he or she made, and ask to revert to the shortest route possible. It's unlikely they'll try to cheat again once it's clear you're keeping tabs on the journey. And don't believe them when they say that traffic is the reason for the detour unless you can verify it with Google Maps, which should give you an idea of what traffic to expect on your route. It's unclear whether the feature will be available in other markets or when it'll launch. You'll want to be on the lookout for new Maps buttons that says Stay safer and Get off-route alerts in the navigation menu to take advantage of it.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: U.S. Customs and Border Protection has confirmed a data breach has exposed the photos of travelers and vehicles traveling in and out of the United States. The photos were stolen from a subcontractor's network through a "malicious cyberattack," a CBP spokesperson told TechCrunch in an email. "CBP learned that a subcontractor, in violation of CBP policies and without CBP's authorization or knowledge, had transferred copies of license plate images and traveler images collected by CBP to the subcontractor's company network," said an agency statement. "Initial information indicates that the subcontractor violated mandatory security and privacy protocols outlined in their contract," the statement read. he agency first learned of the breach on May 31. When asked, a spokesperson for CBP didn't say how many photos were taken in the breach or if U.S. citizens were affected. The agency also didn't name the subcontractor. The database that the agency maintains includes traveler images, as well as passport and visa photos. Congress has been notified and the CBP said it is "closely monitoring" CBP-related work by the subcontractor.

The editor of Dice's "Insights" blog argues that Apple's Swift language "has begun to eclipse Objective-C in a key way." Apple was never shy about prioritizing Swift. As one developer on Twitter pointed out, once Swift dropped, Objective-C documentation and tutorials quickly started vanishing. Since then, the company has iterated on Swift and continued to shy away from Objective-C (except when necessary, such as supporting libraries and frameworks). Swift 5 made an important step forward with ABI stability, which means Swift code worked directly with a binary interface. Before ABI stability, the only safeguard was code was compiled on the same compiler, a fingers-crossed approach Apple really had no option for avoiding...

Swift's performance has also improved. For some time, when compared to Objective-C, Swift compiled slower. Because of ABI stability, performance has improved, and compile-time differences have vanished... Apps written in version 5 are also roughly 10-15 percent smaller than Objective-C apps. Bridging performance also improved.

A lot has gone into Swift 5 to make it more stable, and those improvements have resulted in performance parity with Objective-C... It's time to seriously consider the move to Swift.
In 2017 the creator of Swift (and a self-described "long-time reader/fan of Slashdot") began a five-month stint running Tesla's Autopilot team -- and stopped by to answer questions from Slashdot readers.

An anonymous reader reminded us about the open source reimplementation of Java Web Start, a framework originally developed by Sun Microsystems that allowed users to more easily run Java applications in an applet-like sandbox using a web browser.

From OpenWebStart.com: Java Web Start (JWS) was deprecated in Java 9, and starting with Java 11, Oracle removed JWS from their JDK distributions. This means that clients that have the latest version of Java installed can no longer use JWS-based applications. And since public support of Java 8 has ended in Q2/2019, companies no longer get any updates and security fixes for Java Web Start.

This is why we decided to create OpenWebStart, an open source reimplementation of the Java Web Start technology. Our replacement will provide the most commonly used features of Java Web Start and the JNLP standard, so that your customers can continue using applications based on Java Web Start and JNLP without any change.
Red Hat is apparently involved in its parent project, IcedTea-Web, which it distributes as part of their Windows OpenJDK distribution.

"As a consumer, the idea of Apple sign-in is genuinely an exciting one..." writes developer/tech journalist Owen Williams at Char.gd.

"As a person in digital marketing, as well as a coder and startup founder, the feature terrifies me... I don't have a choice. Apple plans to force developers using third-party signin features to add its signin along any competing ones, rather than allowing them to make the choice. Essentially, Apple will force its success..." [B]y selling the tool as a privacy-focused feature, the company is building a new identity system that it owns entirely. Because it is a powerful privacy feature, it makes it hard to debate this move in any constructive way -- personally, I think we need more tools like this, just not from the very platforms further entrenching their own kingdoms... All of the largest tech companies have switched gears to this model, including Google, and now sell a narrative that nobody can be trusted with your data -- but it's fine to give it all to them, instead. There's bitter irony in Apple denouncing other companies' collection of data with a sign-in service, then launching its own, asking that you give that data to them, instead. I definitely trust Apple to act with my interests at heart today, but what about tomorrow, when the bottom falls out of iPhone sales, and the math changes?

I'm not arguing that any of these advertising practices are right or wrong, but rather that such a hamfisted approach isn't all that it seems. The ad industry gets a bad rap -- and does need to improve -- but allowing a company that has a vested interest in crippling it to dictate the rules by forcing developers to implement their technology is wrong...

This feature, and the way it's being forced on developers, is a fantastic example of why companies like Apple and Google should be broken up: it's clearly using the App Store, and its reach, to force the industry's hand in its favor -- rather than compete on merit.

Microsoft and Oracle announced a new alliance today that will see the two companies directly connect their clouds over a direct network connection so that their users can then move workloads and data seamlessly between the two. This alliance goes a bit beyond just basic direct connectivity and also includes identity interoperability. TechCrunch reports: This kind of alliance is relatively unusual between what are essentially competing clouds, but while Oracle wants to be seen as a major player in this space, it also realizes that it isn't likely to get to the size of an AWS, Azure or Google Cloud anytime soon. For Oracle, this alliance means that its users can run services like the Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle JD Edwards on Azure while still using an Oracle database in the Oracle cloud, for example. With that, Microsoft still gets to run the workloads and Oracle gets to do what it does best (though Azure users will also continue be able to run their Oracle databases in the Azure cloud, too).

For now, the direct interconnect between the two clouds is limited to Azure US East and Oracle's Ashburn data center. The two companies plan to expand this alliance to other regions in the future, though they remain mum on the details. It'll support applications like JD Edwards EnterpriseOne, E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Oracle Retail and Hyperion on Azure, in combination with Oracle databases like RAC, Exadata and the Oracle Autonomous Database running in the Oracle Cloud.