I have almost forgotten Borland if not the recent news about it being acquired by UK based Micro Focus for $75 million.
If you have been doing computer programming, especially since the 80's or 90's, there is a very high possibility that you used Borland's product before.
During the good-old DOS time, Borland had been famous with their Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, Turbo C++, SideKick, etc. When the Windows time come, Borland continued their popularity with Borland C++, Delphi, C# Builder, JBuilder, etc. They also produced software development tools for Linux, such as Kylix.
Beside being famous in programming tools, Borland had also been the company behind some office productivity products such as Paradox (vs MS Access), Quattro Pro (vs MS Excel), WordPerfect (vs MS Word). They had made attempt to combine these 3 products into Borland Office as rival to Microsoft Office. Later, this office productivity business was sold to Novell in the mid-90's.
During their time of glory, Borland also bought over Ashton-Tate, the company behind the once very famous database software -- dBase & Interbase.
Over the year, Borland gradually lost ground in their competition with Microsoft. Nowadays, Visual Studio succeed in engulfing their software development tools market, and Borland Office has long lost their market to MS Office.
The name of Borland faded in the 2000's, especially after the departure of their founder Philippe Kahn, and was almost forgotten by many programmers who once developing software with their superb products with nice Integrated Development Environment (IDE), especially during the DOS era.
Philippe continued to bring wonders to the world after his departure from Borland in the mid-90's. He has contributed to wireless devices data synchronization technology, invented the first camera phone, and is currently the CEO of Fullpower Technologies, a company focuses in converging life sciences, wireless technology, accelerometrics, nanotechnology and MotionX solutions.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
The rise and fall of Borland
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
National Career & Entrepreneurship Carnival 2009
Organised by Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) and managed by My Events Sdn Bhd, the National Career & Entrepreneurship Carnival 2009 (Karnival Kerjaya & Keusahawanan Kebangsaan 2009, K3G 2009) to be launched by the prime minister is targeting for the largest career and entrepreneur fair in the country entering the Malaysia Book of Record.
Theme: Realize Your Dream Job
Venue: Putra World Trade Centre (PWTC)
Date: 15- 17 May 2009
Time: 10 am - 7 pm
Dress code: Business casual
Admission: Free
This event provides exhibitors from GLC, corporate company and entrepreneur a great opportunity to meet face to face at one localized place with a variety of talented job seeker and aspiring entrepreneurs from all over the country. The exhibition will also serve as an exclusive platform to showcase exhibitors’ jobs which are in demand in the job market.
The floor plan for this event is as below:
Activities including:
- Resume Clinic
- Stage activities
- Internship corner
- On-the-spot interviews
- Consultations on career and enterpreneurship
- Career talk by industry experts and successful enterpreneurs
Gold investment with passbook account
Gold is a kind of precious metal that is internationally recognised and accepted to be always interchangeable with cash based on the exchange rate in its own market. It is well-known to be hedge or safe haven against any economic, political, social, or currency-based crises.
Besides keeping the physical gold (in forms of coin, wafer, ornament, etc.), Malaysian can also invest in gold with passbook account in the way similar to passbook savings account with Maybank and Public Bank. The gold price offered by these 2 banks are pegged to international gold commodity prices in the market.
The benefit of investing gold with passbook account is that you don't have to keep the physical gold. This will save you from the hassle or risk of:
- storage cost (eg. keeping in a safe box)
- lost, theft, etc.
Generally, Public Bank trades with you in a smaller gap between the selling and buying price of the gold. This also mean that Public Bank sells to you at a lower price than Maybank, and buys from you at a higher price than Maybank, which is more beneficial to the investor.
However, Maybank also has some other advantages, such as:
- They have more branches nationwide available for you to make the gold transaction with them.
- They allow you to withdraw your gold in physical gold wafer or gold certificate format.
- They don't impose annual service fee even though your balance is below 10 grams.
- The minimum initial deposit and balance required is lesser.
Is now a good time to buy gold? What I can tell you is that now the price is at the historical high end of a long term bull. How long can this bull go further? You have to do your own homework.
Click here to check the gold rate of Maybank GSPA.
Click here to check for the gold rate of Public Bank GIA.
