In an event not as surprising as this morning’s buyout announcement, but still noteworthy, Oracle has purchased BEA Systems. The middleware maker was snapped up for the sum of $8.5 billion, the second offer Oracle put forward. “BEA had long been considered a prime takeover target in an industry that has been consolidating for several years, but BEA executives had repeatedly dismissed Oracle’s overtures, saying the company could perform superior independently. Mr. Icahn began buying up BEA shares last summer, and today owns 13 percent of the company. The deal makes Oracle the undisputed leader in the market for middleware, business software that gets its name from its role as a layer of programming code that resides between a company’s database system and the payroll, human resources and inventory systems that use the same data.”

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Filed under: Products and services, Industry, Competitive strategy, DaimlerChrysler (DAI), Ford Motor (F), General Motors (GM), China, Toyota Motor Corp. (TM), Next large thing, AutoNation Inc (AN)

Five Chinese manufacturers are fielding display vehicles at the 2008 North American Auto Show. Amid a flurry of drab Chinese displays, misspelled promotional materials and one unscheduled auto tour through an ongoing press conference, China is presenting cars in the hope that the American auto-buying public will take them for real. I wonder how they feel about this at General Motors (NYSE: GM), Ford Motors (NYSE: F), Toyota (NYSE: TM), and Chrysler.

This influx of Chinese auto manufacturers represents a 400% increase in their presence at the auto show over just two years ago. Should the massive auto makers be scared yet? This blogger hardly thinks so, yet the above picture is the Geely-Beauty Leopard, an automobile of Chinese manufacture which has been marketed quite successfully in Europe since 2002.

Based on a premise made integral to auto manufacturing by Henry Ford, China is attempting to provide inexpensive transportation to the masses, but they might yet lack expertise in the realms of design, form and function. Go take a look at how your child’s Tonka trucks are built as a potential example of Chinese car construction: die-stamped parts with slot and tab construction and nary a weld to be found. That’s the trouble with cheap automobiles, you’ve to cut corners somewhere.

This is a situation wherein our feeding of federal activism through taxes shall play a key role. China shall first need to satisfy our EPA before they sell too many automobiles here. The Consumer Product Safety Commission will surely also take a hard look at Chinese motor cars. Then, we have the insurance industry which shall mercilessly crush dozens of Chinese vehicles in the effort to protect us from substandard crap. Finally, the ultimate decision shall rest with consumers who will decide whether or not to buy cheap Chinese-made cars. Remember also that those vehicles will need replacement parts, those coming on a slow boat from China.

As one who staunchly defends the rights of free enterprise and the tenets of honest competition, I have no place in my thinking to simply deny the Chinese an attempt at our auto market. Let them come. I have no concern over auto manufacturers who have yet to figure out that the buyers of affordable automobiles are looking for cup holders and dual windshield wipers, or do I?

There’s just one thing that I might add to the cheap auto discussion in the interest of informed consumerism: It is my distinct desire that every auto China imports into this country must obviously be painted bright blood red, lest we forget our past experiences with the Chinese.

But that’s just my own democracy-loving thought.

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In an event not as surprising as this morning’s buyout announcement, but still noteworthy, Oracle has purchased BEA Systems. The middleware maker was snapped up for the sum of $8.5 billion, the second offer Oracle put forward. “BEA had long been considered a prime takeover target in an industry that has been consolidating for several years, but BEA executives had repeatedly dismissed Oracle’s overtures, saying the company could perform superior independently. Mr. Icahn began buying up BEA shares last summer, and this day owns 13 percent of the company. The deal makes Oracle the undisputed leader in the market for middleware, business software that gets its name from its role as a layer of programming code that resides between a company’s database system and the payroll, human resources and inventory systems that use the same data.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Anonymous writes “Security researchers Greg Hoglund and Gary McGraw poked around in World of Warcraft and other on the web games, finding vulnerabilities and exploiting the system using online bots and rootkit-like techniques to evade detection. Their adventures in on the web game security became fodder for the book, Exploiting On the web Games. McGraw discussed with securityfocus the say of security in modern video games, cheating and anti-cheating systems, how the market for cheats, exploits, and digital objects is growing, what we could learn from the design of these big systems, and how game developers react to submissions of security vulnerabilities.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Filed under: Products and services, Industry, Competitive strategy, DaimlerChrysler (DAI), Ford Motor (F), General Motors (GM), China, Toyota Motor Corp. (TM), Next large thing, AutoNation Inc (AN)

Five Chinese manufacturers are fielding display cars at the 2008 North American Auto Show. Amid a flurry of drab Chinese displays, misspelled promotional materials and one unscheduled auto tour through an ongoing press conference, China is presenting automobiles in the hope that the American auto-buying public will take them for real. I wonder how they feel about this at General Motors (NYSE: GM), Ford Motors (NYSE: F), Toyota (NYSE: TM), and Chrysler.

This influx of Chinese auto manufacturers represents a 400% increase in their presence at the auto show over just two years ago. Should the big auto makers be scared yet? This blogger hardly thinks so, yet the above picture is the Geely-Beauty Leopard, an automobile of Chinese manufacture which has been marketed quite successfully in Europe since 2002.

Based on a premise made integral to auto manufacturing by Henry Ford, China is attempting to provide inexpensive transportation to the masses, but they might yet lack expertise in the realms of design, form and function. Go take a look at how your child’s Tonka trucks are built as a potential example of Chinese car construction: die-stamped parts with slot and tab construction and nary a weld to be found. That’s the trouble with cheap cars, you have to cut corners somewhere.

This is a situation wherein our feeding of federal activism through taxes shall play a key role. China shall first need to satisfy our EPA before they sell too many vehicles here. The Consumer Product Safety Commission will surely also take a hard look at Chinese motor automobiles. Then, we’ve the insurance industry which shall mercilessly crush dozens of Chinese vehicles in the effort to protect us from substandard crap. Finally, the ultimate decision shall rest with consumers who will decide whether or not to buy cheap Chinese-made cars. Remember also that those automobiles will need replacement parts, those coming on a slow boat from China.

As one who staunchly defends the rights of free enterprise and the tenets of honest competition, I have no place in my thinking to simply deny the Chinese an attempt at our auto market. Let them come. I have no concern over auto manufacturers who have yet to figure out that the buyers of affordable cars are looking for cup holders and dual windshield wipers, or do I?

There’s just one thing that I might add to the cheap auto discussion in the interest of informed consumerism: It is my distinct desire that each auto China imports into this country must obviously be painted bright blood red, lest we forget our past experiences with the Chinese.

But that’s just my own democracy-loving opinion.

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Filed under: Rumors, Products and services, Competitive strategy, Marketing and advertising

While privately-held EMI Group announced plans yesterday to cut around 2,000 jobs worldwide, the company also announced intentions to allow corporate sponsors to brand artists. According to British music journal NME, the plan will encompass connections to new releases from such large name acts as Coldplay, Kylie Minogue, and Babyshambles. This announcement coincides with several comments from EMI acts that they intend to withhold pending releases from the company until assurances can be made about marketing and digital promotion. Radiohead reportedly left EMI after assurances in those areas weren’t made by the record label, and when the company balked at giving the band rights to its back catalog.

A move like this should not be surprising, especially taking into account that other media and entertainment outlets have long used promotions of this sort to sell new products and releases. Most prominently are the deals film studios make for product placement and tie-ins with new films. Last year’s Transformers comes to mind more than any other current film in that regard. But where it is simple to insert a vehicle for product promotion into a scene, the same can’t be stated about music. Even though it is unlikely Coldplay will begin to sing about some new model car about to be revealed, the amount of control that artists may lose is daunting. The basic amount of attachment artists have toward albums seems to make this kind of deal unmanageable. If it is Britney Spears though, who would want to attach their brand to her at this point?

Unless the promotion is for some brand of musical device or instrument, this arrangement just seems hard to manage and especially hard to sell to artists that are very willing to withhold albums in light of issues already out of their control.

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Anonymous writes “Security researchers Greg Hoglund and Gary McGraw poked around in World of Warcraft and other online games, finding vulnerabilities and exploiting the system using on the internet bots and rootkit-like techniques to evade detection. Their adventures in on the internet game security became fodder for the book, Exploiting On the internet Games. McGraw discussed with securityfocus the say of security in modern video games, cheating and anti-cheating systems, how the market for cheats, exploits, and digital objects is growing, what we could learn from the design of these big systems, and how game developers react to submissions of security vulnerabilities.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Krow alerted me that MySQL has been bought by Sun. Right now there’s only a brief announcement but it discusses what the acquisition will mean for the core developers, community etc.

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Krow alerted me that MySQL has been purchased by Sun. Right now there is only a brief announcement but it discusses what the acquisition will mean for the core developers, community etc.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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I Don’t Believe in Imaginary Property sends us news from F-Secure of what they claim is the first rogue cleaning tool for the Mac. MacSweeper is a Mac version of Cleanator, hosted from a colo somewhere in the Ukraine. The article points out that the company’s About page is lifted verbatim from Symantec’s site. With the Mac’s market share closing in on double digits, perhaps it’s not surprising to see the platform targeted with crapware as Computers have been for years. The F-Secure author adds as a footnote that a journalist stated to him something you don’t hear each day: “I visited the macsweeper.com website. I know I probably shouldn’t have but I used a Windows PC so I knew I wouldn’t get infected.”

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