Podcast Update

• Robert Lefkowitz, VP Enterprise Systems & Architecture, AT&T Wireless, talks about The Semasiology of Open Source. Before you ask, semasiology refers to the study of the development of words and their meanings. Robert does an excellent job of dividing the term "open source" into a variety of possible connotations and such. This very interesting presentation includes consideration for how an IT organization might view open source from an accountant's perspective. For those of you familiar with FASB 86, this is quite interesting. Robert also notes the changes that have occurred in how we diagnose problems with systems and how this has changed over the last 20+ years. In this context, logging has become perhaps more important then being able to use a debugger. A very interesting idea indeed, when was the last time you, if you are a techie, checked the contents of a register. Robert also talked about what constitutes source for open source. His discussion would apply to closed source too. In this context, he builds a good case that it isn't just the code. In fact, it starts with the requirements. This is a rich presentation with great analysis and wonderful historical references. ITConversations includes a link to a transcript of the presentation too.
• David Ritter, VP Boston Consulting Group, delivered an inspiring and information packed presentation about Making Connections. I recommend listening to this one while viewing the slides which ITConversations provides. This presentation talks about how networking has changed the dynamics of many industrial processes including, but not only, software. Networking, in this context, while enhanced and aided by technological capabilities like the Internet, is more about how organizations and people connect with each other. David's presentation includes a good selection of examples including what happened with a single provider of a critical component for ALL Toyota cars burned to the ground. Many other Toyota providing vendors worked together with the original provider to bring Toyota plants back online (an amazing story). David drives home the importance of transparency and offers some interesting tidbits about network analysis in this regard. I highly recommend this presentation. ITConversations also provides access to a transcript of this presentation.
• Steve Gillmor (ZDNet), Glenn Reid (Five Across), Dorée Duncan Seligmann (Avaya), David Sifry (Technorati), and Linda Stone (Apple) talked about Attention. My first glance at the description of this session made me think I wouldn't find this presentation interesting. To the contrary, this interesting panel discussion brought to light the real essence of what my everyday is like in many ways. The whole notion of continuous partial attention is so apt. I highly recommend this presentation.
• Jonathan Schwartz, President of Sun Microsystems, was interviewed by Kevin Werbach. Jonathan offers some very interesting perspectives about open source and the importance of decentralizing the control of technology. Jonathan is insightful and outspoken. This is another presentation I would highly recommend especially if, like me, you share an interest in software development and open source from a software vendor's perspective.
• Kartik Subbarao, Hewlett Packard, talks about embracing Open Source within an enterprise. Particularly, he uses an interesting analysis incorporating a metaphor of water (open source) and earth (closed source) and Venice. He talks about the characteristics of both are necessary to support Venice's existence (and yes he addresses the fact the Venice is still sinking). His examples include HP's use and contributions to OpenLDAP. I highly recommend this presentation. The world of enterprise software today is not just choices between buy and build. Open and closed source. Great, fast, short presentation.
• John Smart delivered the opening presentation at the Accelerating Change conference. This presentation was predominantly an overview of the other presentations to come and at first swipe, this may sound uninteresting. The contrary is true. I am actively seeking the podcast of the presentation on technical singularity to which John referred now. Go listen. :)
• Several lawyers, Lauren Gelman and Wendy Seltzer, participated in a panel discussion moderated by Jennifer Collins about the legal rights and responsibilities of bloggers. This is a very informative and interesting discussion that any blogger would find value listening to. They provide good coverage of the issues surrounding borrowing text, using music, and talking about others.

Podcast Update

• I listened to Dr. Moira Gunn interview Robert Kaplan about his book Imperial Grunts. He talked about the experience of doing the research to learn first hand about the experience of American soldiers in the field. He described much of our work as imperialistic. I was surprised until he defended why he applied that definition. In fact, we do spend a lot of time consulting and training troops in other countries. To do otherwise would require us to have to strong of a presence in the host countries. Very interesting interview and I have added his book to my desired reading list.
  
• I listened to a panel moderated by Liza Sabater. The panel included Debi Jones who blogs as mobile jones, Ellen Spertus a computer science professor, and Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez who blogs and writes. It was very interesting to listen to this group of women talk about how to manage and react to those who would flame, shame, or blame (this was the title of the panel) others via blogs, email, and such. It was fiery and very interesting. My wife and I listened to this and a few other podcasts while driving on a long trip. This is the only one my wife liked. My wife does find IT as interesting as I do.
• Jeremy Zawodny, Yahoo, led an interesting presentation about the infrastructure of some of the software at Yahoo. He particularly addressed open source used at Yahoo. A good and thorough presentation.

Anonymous Posts Not Welcome

I suspect this blog is read by few. And that is ok, I am using this as a personal log and if someone finds my ramblings interesting fine. But, clearly anonymous posts that are not related to the log entries themselves are not really welcome. The few I get seem to be spam. I wonder if there is a different word for them when they are posted to blogs like this. Hum.... Probably so.

The Dark Tower - Finally or No, Not Yet!

Stephen King has written the last of the Dark Tower series and I have been reading them as they have come out since the 1980's. What a long time! I thoroughly enjoyed the journey through the books. I have found it difficult to read other books of this type (read as Tolkien and such). Yet, I was attracted to this story and its main characters. It has been a great read.

First, I was excited to learn the last one was done. Finally, we get to the tower! Second, I was sad to think the journey was to end. Roland and his ka-tet traveled far, fought hard, and shared their souls.


Thanks for the trip, Stephen.

Rave - I Figured Out How to Use My Zen Sleek

I have had my Creative Zen Sleek for a few months now, and finally I have learned how to use it correctly. My major mistake was to somehow get my music loaded on to the player where each artist and album was treated as a folder. Thus, the desktop software seemed to suck when it came to looking at all songs for sorting and such. I reformatted and loaded anew. This time I selected all the tracks on the PC tab after selected the various directories within which I may have music and drug them to the "Music" tab on the player. Now, I can slice and dice 'em. Don't know how I started down the folder path, but it sucked. I can also look for the most recently loaded on to the PC. Thus, noticing what needs to be moved is now easy. Yeppee!

Podcast Update

• Andrew Zolli, Z+ Partners, participated in an interview as part of Globeshakers with Tim Zak. During this interview, Andrew talks about the impact of demographic distribution changes on the world and domestic economy. This is a very interesting presentation that I would recommend. Unfortunately, I listened too long ago and didn't take notes so I can't state an specifics about the interview. But, I know I liked it.
• Anne Thomas Manes, APS Research Director for the Burton Group, talked about The Advent of Superplatforms. This information packed and insightful presentation is well worth listening to if you are an architect. Anne correctly notes that the major platform providers like Microsoft with .Net and IBM with WebSphere are including 100's of support applications with their suites. Thus, while the promise of web services, open source, and industry standards would lead you to think that a new world of plug and play is on the horizon, we may in fact, be seeing something entirely different emerge. I can't help but think this is sort of more of the same. That is, the IDE and infrastructure providers build in features that help lock you in to their solution (and their problems). I don't read this as good or bad. It is the nature of things. Anne also notes that Open Source is essentially an alternative choice. One that on a feature basis may not compete directly with the comprehensive suites of the commercial providers. My primary concern with implications of her analysis is that continuing notion of vendor lock-in at the platform level. But, her analysis definitely has merit and for many companies, the information she provides is surely of high interest and value. Thanks Anne for a very thought provoking presentation.