I agree with Scott. It was just a matter of time.

@Nic said:

My bet is that Starbucks et al weren't making enough money to cover what they were paying Facebook for the privilege of getting suggested. Contracts are ending and now FB is scrapping the program.

That's not surprising. Often those kinds of programs cost a fortune and deliver relatively little.

Stop "Russian" Things! (bah dum psst)

I think for the majority of people today, at least at home, just surf the web. Not many applications being installed for average users. Chromebooks are ideal for them. Very low cost, low power consumption, very easy to use and no extra worries about antivirus, updates, getting ripped off by Geek Squad, etc.

The US is very anti-immigration, more than just about anywhere (except Japan.) We lose tons of talent simply because we either turn them away outright or they just give up because it is not worth it. It's more than just losing incoming talent, talent flows out of the US as well.

That's insane. Luckily Oracle DB is rare in the SMB.

Great link, thanks for providing it here.

@scottalanmiller said:

I still have a BB. <insert sad face>

LOL...ah my first phone that pocket dialed people!

@scottalanmiller said:

I've been doing a lot of Hadoop work over the years and I know of several other people who work on it too. Including SW, for example. Not just my banking and financial contacts. Hana is making noise but I've not seen it anywhere in the enterprise space yet, though.

That's really interesting, we actually moved over to a derivative of SAP Q1/2012 so I'm a bit of a fanboy of them I think.

Yeah, we use these at my wifes store for customer loyalty etc. target marketing. LoyalBlocks is the name of the service. it's neat!

I found it, it must have gone up since you posted the news. Netgear ReadyRecover

@scottalanmiller said:

If I use my fingers to gauge the length of Japan, going from end to end of the main body would be similar to a Seattle to San Diego trip here.

Basically yes.

The common quoted phrase is "1/3 the population of the US in a land area the size of California."
That is not exactly right, but makes it easy to see on a map of the US.

Thanks!

@scottalanmiller said:

Makes sense. They've been heading in this direction for a while.

You see this alluded to in a lot of PowerShell literature too.