Biggish Blue's latest update adds XML Server as well as Java 7 capabilities to the System/z COBOL platform. According to the company this update will extend the overall lifespan of COBOL by regenerating it towards the cloud computing arena. It is not clear if this will work until there is an evil COBOL, which no one ever talks about, but appears by surprise and is played by John Hurt.

According to IBM, there a lot of COBOL about and it is used to power critical systems. It claims that the new update will help companies reduce cost and processing times but will also benefit them by enabling them to take advantage of cloud, mobile and web technologies.

IBM claims the update will speed up the performance of applications by up to 20 percent.

Kevin Stoodley, chief technology officer at IBM, said in a statement "With this new software, IBM is helping companies reduce operating costs and processing time associated with these applications while delivering new capabilities to take advantage of cloud, web and mobile devices."

He thinks that the platform will be at par with other modern cloud platforms without requiring a complete re-write of applications. Companies and businesses, ranging from retail to finance to insurance, can use the power of mainframes to power mobile and web applications, he said. 

Of course you will still be able to run Firefox in Ubuntu 13.10 it is just that it will not be the default. The reason is that the Ubuntu Touch stack is being powered largely by Chromium/WebKit so they now have a vested interest in its success.

It was not an automatic choice.  According to Phoronix, some felt that data migration from Firefox isn't too obvious, extensions don't migrate between browsers, and Chromium isn't supported on all architectures.   Chromium doesn't work with the Orca screen reader and doesn't integrate well for accessibility reasons, there is no native PDF plug-in, and Chromium is said to have worse performance under memory pressure. There were also some concerns expressed about differences with WebApps in Chromium.

But Chromium currently provides a better user experience for the desktop and surpasses Firefox in its features and performance.  It is not a unilateral change.  Ubuntu developers are planning a discussion on an Ubuntu mailing list to solicit a more broad range of feedback on switching from Firefox to Chromium.

But as far as Firefox is concerned, it is another sign that it is slowly falling from grace with the IT community.

Increasingly, message boards are filled with complaints that Firefox has evolved into a “bloated resource chewing monster”.  After all, its existence was to provide a better browser than IE - but it is now a “memory hogging CPU killer” which hijacks the entire PC resources and “crawls along at the slowest pace” if more than four or five  tabs are in use.  It also does not give back memory after it has been closed down.

In the early days of the Apple II, the reason for owning one was software called VisiCalc. The early spreedsheet gave companies a reason for installing the computer. However as software went it was not that great and IBM wanted something that would work with its much more serious Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS.

In early 1983, Lotus 1-2-3 put PCs on everyone's desk. It was far faster than other attempts such as SuperCalc and Microsoft's first spreadsheet, MultiPlan and with the opening of the Intel architecture and MS-DOS to IBM PC clones, Lotus 1-2-3 became the essential application for the 1980s PC revolution.

Its absolute dominance was short lived. Excel and Quatro Pro were giving it a good kicking by the late 1980s. By the early 1990s, 1-2-3 had fallen into third place in the eyes of spreadsheet users.

After Excel took over, Lotus was bought by IBM in a hostile takeover. It was expected that the ultra-liberal Lotus would not sit very well with the suits in IBM and nothing really happened to Lotus 1-2-3 after that point.

In 2012, IBM started retiring the Lotus brand. Now 1-2-3's story is over. In a press release IBM tells us that effective from 11 June, 2013 IBM will withdraw from marketing part numbers from the following product releases licensed under the IBM International Program License Agreement: Lotus 123 Millennium Edition V9.x, IBM Lotus SmartSuite 9.x V9.8.0, and Organizer V6.1.0.

Customers will no longer be able to receive support for these offerings after 30 September, 2014. No service extensions will be offered. There will be no replacement programs. It has passed on! This spreadsheet is no more! It has ceased to be! It has expired and gone to meet its maker!

"It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! It is pushing up the daisies! 'Is metabolic processes are now 'istory! Its kicked the bucket, Its shuffled off 'is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisible!!" an IBM spokesperson did not say.

Lotus' groupware client program Notes and its server component Domino will live on, although god knows why.  IBM will no longer be offering any Lotus-branded programs. 

Business Insider reports Fjeldheim went on to say that Oracle is practically a dinosaur and that it and SAP should be scared of competitors like NetSuite. Oddly enough, the praise might have not been the best thing for NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson, who was also in attendance. 

Nelson used to work for Oracle and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is the majority shareholder of NetSuite. Fjeldheim also sat on Oracle's board, which makes his comments even more interesting and proves Silicon Valley is a bit like European royalty – everyone is related in one way or another. 

Punters don’t believe that Oracle is going anywhere soon, as Oracle and SAP are still the backbone of boring big business. 

According to ZDNet, the reason why Android phone and tablet owners never know if or when their device will get the shiny new version of Android from Google is because the whole process is controlled by the carriers and the OEMs.

For a while now, Google has explained that this is why the system is breaking, but it has not offered any answers to the problem.

Google's Sundar Pichai recently made a statement that the company is still trying to figure out how to make it better. He has taken the poisoned chalice of trying to fix the problem in both Chrome and Android.

We have heard statements like this from Google before, and this one is just as vague. So far, Pichai does not seem to have a cunning plan, although he does have an idea. ZDNet reports that he thinks there are ways Google can accomplish this, but it is early days.

At the moment Google is "talking with our partners and working our way through it". He said that Google needed time to figure out the mechanics, but it's definitely an area of focus for him and for the team.

Android users might think that sort of statement is not good enough, given the mess that the system is collapsing into. Android has been out for ages and there is a huge global market. But the whole lot could collapse if users collectively decide they are hacked off about the lack of upgrades on their model.

It could also go pear-shaped if, for example, the EU decides that buyers of Android phones and tablets have the right to expect regular updates for the reasonable life of those products.

Where consumer watchdogs could give Google a good kicking is that updates are not just about new features, but more importantly, security updates and bug fixes. But Google's problem is that the carriers and OEMs do not really want to update phones. The sale has been made, the contract has been signed, why they should give a monkey's?

This is the reason that in 2011 Google formed its Update Alliance which was supposed to get carriers and OEMs in line to give proper updates to their customers. Needless to say it didn't.

Pichai saying that it is "talking with our partners and working our way through it" clearly is not going to happen. If it had, then the alliance would have worked.

One idea is for Google to adopt some form of subscription service at the hardware level which phones home to the company to pick up regular updates. Apparently the phone companies and OEMs do not want this because it would have to include all the driver updates for each product. Since this would mean them having to supply drivers to Google, they are not that keen. That would be helpful and efficient and they are neither.

If Google had the will it could easily push the OEMs and phone companies into line, a straight contract pledging to update every phone within hours of an upgrade could do it. But for some reason Google does not have the will to take on the phone companies. That could change as Android becomes more ubiquitous. In the days where Apple ruled the roost, the phone companies could say "we will just work with Apple" - but either way Google will have to do something fast, or lose ground unnecessarily. 

Redmond's chief marketing officer, Tami Reller, told JP Morgan's Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in Boston that Windows 8.1 will be delivered free to Windows 8 and Windows RT users.

She said that the update will be "easy to get from the Windows start screen through the app store," so that punters who have Windows 8 or plan to buy a device in the near future can get the Windows 8.1 fairly easily.

Of course she did not say when Windows 8.1 would become available but hinted that Vole was "very sensitive to the timing of the holidays".

The hint means that Vole will provide devices with Windows 8.1 pre-loaded in time for the holiday 2013 season, but those who purchase a Windows 8 device later this year will be able to easily upgrade to 8.1.

Microsoft will release a public preview of Windows 8.1 at the Build conference. After 26 June, the preview will be available for anyone to download, Reller said.

It looks like Vole will be expanding the allowable size of tiles that one can place on Windows 8's Start Screen, and adding customisation options, among other things. Microsoft will bring back the start button.

Microsoft has been rolling out small updates via Windows Update since the October launch of Windows 8, but hinted that Windows 8.1 will be "more substantial" than anything Redmond could deliver via daily or weekly updates, Reller said.

Windows 8 users will be told when Windows 8.1 is live, she added. 

For those who came in late, Microsoft produced a version of its Windows operating system which had an interface designed for smartphones and was surprised that PC users found it inconvenient.

But it seems that the mood at Vole is changing from hurt and surprised to hacked off.

Writing in the company blog, Frank X Shaw, vice president of corporate communications at Microsoft said that he was fed up with extreme knockers.

He said that these days everyone is a publisher and there is a trend to the extreme. The only way to stand out is to opt for sensationalism and hyperbole over nuanced analysis.

"In this world where page views are currency, heat is often more valued than light. Stark black-and-white caricatures are sometimes more valued than shades-of-gray reality," he poetically pointed out.

Normally selling 100 million copies of a product is a good thing and listening to feedback and improving a product is even better.

But for some reason all that goodness has been ignored in favour of "extreme" criticism. Even the Financial Times said the upcoming changes to Windows 8 mark one of the most prominent admissions of failure for a new mass-market consumer product since Coca-Cola's New Coke fiasco nearly 30 years ago, moaned Shaw.

That other tabloid, the Economist, attacked Microsoft when it said "restoring the Start button will not restore Microsoft to its former glory."

At the heart of all this negative criticism is that Microsoft took away the Start button or boot up into desktop mode.

Shaw insists that Windows 8 is a good product and is getting better every day.

"A computer operating system offers different experiences to different customers to meet different needs, while still moving the entire industry toward an exciting future of touch, mobility, and seamless, cross-device experiences," he wrote. 

The anonymous Microsoft developer who contributes to the Windows NT kernel wrote a response acknowledging the problem and explaining its cause.

He later deleted the post because he felt it was too cruel and did not help make his point, which is about the social dynamics of spontaneous contribution. It was republished here  by those who did not agree.

The developer said that Windows was slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening.

He wrote that the reason was social and while there are naive people at Microsoft who try to make things better, they always fail.

Microsoft will only improve kernel performance for specific scenarios that people with the ability to allocate resources believe impact business goals.

However, there is no formal or informal program of systemic performance improvement.

The only reason Microsoft started caring about security was because pre-SP3 Windows XP was an existential threat to the business. Low kernel performance was not a threat.

The developer also said that there was little incentive to create changes in the first place. On linux-kernel, if you improve the performance of directory traversal by a consistent five percent, you're praised and thanked. In Redmond, if you improve performance and you do get your code past the Ob owners and into the tree, your own management doesn't care.

Making a massive improvement will get you noticed by senior people and could be a boon for your career, but the improvement has to be very large to attract that kind of attention.

In Redmond, incremental improvements just annoy people and are, at best, neutral for your career.

As a result people stop trying to do unplanned work after a little while.

Microsoft also has a problem keeping talented staff - as Google and other large Seattle-area companies keep poaching the best and most experienced developers.

Redmond has solved this by hiring kids straight from college to replace them. These developers mean well and are adequately intelligent, but they don't understand why certain decisions were made, don't have a thorough understanding of the intricate details of how their systems work, and most importantly, don't want to change anything that already works, the whistleblower wrote.

These junior developers also have a tendency to make improvements to the system by implementing brand-new features instead of improving old ones.

He said that Vole had some old-fashioned hardcore talented developers and the NT kernel is still much better than Linux in some ways.

But Microsoft's good workers keep retiring or moving to other large technology companies, and there are few new developers achieving the level of technical virtuosity needed to replace those who leave. 

According to a business daily, Calcalist, Reuters reports, due dilligence is already underway after a term sheet had been signed. It is understood that initial talks started late last year.

Facebook could want to implent Waze's functionality, which makes use of satellite signals from smartphones, turning that data into real time information to generate maps, or build intelligence on traffic. This information then becomes accessible to other users. The two began a partnership October 2012 that lets users of Waze interact with Facebook friends. 

Although information is a bit thin on the ground, this deal seems a little bit more measured than the impromptu buy of Instagram, thought to be masterminded on a top-down level from Zuckerberg himself. Since listing publicly, shareholders hoped Facebook would put a little more thought into its purchases before it spends top dollar.

Facebook has heaps of valuable data, but it is still not monetising as much as it should be at this point - so it will be interesting to see what Facebook plans to do with Waze, should the deal actually go through.

Waze's userbase has shot up in recent years. 

Israel produces plenty of tech savvy start-ups and Facebook has previously acquired other companies from the country, in the Snaptu and Face.com buy-outs.

Strapped with imagination problems, it seems that the game makers have been using  mages of real guns in their games as a sort of in-game advertising.

However, as the gun industry takes a hit after its products ended up in the hands of school kids in various mass shootings over the pond, the game makers are starting to wake up to the relationship being a PR nightmare.

Electronic Arts licensed the images of weapons from companies like McMillan Group International as part of a marketing collaboration for Medal of Honor: Warfighter. Activision Blizzard gives "special thanks" to Colt, Barrett and Remington in the credits for the Call of Duty franchise.

Rifles by Bushmaster, which was the brand used in the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting last December, have also appeared in the hugely popular Call of Duty, according to Reuters.

As the world tried to look for who to blame for the shootings, the National Rifle Association, of all groups, tried to blame the games industry. NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre called the videogame industry "a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people".

While most of the sane world would say that was an obvious case of the pot calling the kettle black, it seems that EA is taking such comments seriously.

This week EA said that it is severing its licensing ties to gun manufacturers. At the same time it is saying that it has the right to continue to feature branded guns without a licence.

For those who have never played these sorts of games, the marketing of the guns is fairly full on. Some, like the Colt M1911 pistol in Call of Duty, are turned sideways to face the screen during reloading so you can see the brand name.

EA felt that this gave the games "enhanced authenticity".  But the games industry was worried that the gun makers would sue them. After all, they were associating their product with violence, something that gun makers always try to avoid. In the end, licensing was seen as a good way to avoid such legal hiccups. It seems that money did not change hands between the gun makers and the games outfits.

Last year, games fans started to object to EA putting links to weapons companies like the McMillan Group and gun magazine maker Magpul, where gamers could check out real versions of weapons featured in the game, on its Medal of Honor: Warfighter website.

As a result EA pulled the links and dropped the marketing tie-up.

EA's move does come with some risks. Aircraft maker Bell Helicopter is cross that it used its helicopters in the game Battlefield was beyond fair use and amounted to a trademark infringement. EA is hoping to win that case and put this licensing problem to bed for good.

What is strange about the situation is that gamers should notice no difference to the status quo. The only difference will be that the game makers will not be in a cosy relationship with the gun makers. Products will still be advertised and kids will still be able to spot the difference between a Colt and a Glock before they can identify the capital of South Africa.