Posted 2:13 PM (0) comments

OS war over, OS dead

According to the Register, Sun's Scott McNealy is at it again. This time, he's not only declared the "OS war" (between Windows and Solaris) over - with Sun victorious, of course - but he's declared that operating systems, themselves, are doomed. Seems that, according to Scott, "web services" (especially those based on Java) will become all the rage as people move to non-PC internet-connected devices accessing Sun servers running web engines. Just two things I'd like to point out:

1) those web services run on web servers powered by operating systems (and, for that matter, so do the clients); and

2) .NET can already run rings around Java.

Proving, yet again, that Sun may know what developers want, but Microsoft knows what the end-users want.

Posted 11:53 AM (0) comments

The devil made them do it?

IBM's Al Zollar (he's listed as "IBM eServer iSeries general manager sales") was addressing the company's Asia Pacific Strategy Planning Conference in Australia the other day, and according to ZDNet ("IBM claims anti-Linux conspiracy") he said that a "set of forces...mostly located in Redmond" was out to derail adaptation of Linux. This conjured up images of Bill Gates as the emperor in the original Star Wars (with SCO's Darl MacBride as Darth Vader), but it could also have you thinking of Satan and Beelzebub.

Or maybe the image Zollar wanted to paint was more like the powers of darkness in Ghostbusters. Think about that cast of characters!

Posted 10:40 AM (0) comments

Chili Out!

Since 1991, one of the more enjoyable parts of Comdex in Las Vegas (some years, the only enjoyable part of Comdex) has been the Chili Cookoff, a charity event thought up by MicroGrafx's Paul Grayson and sponsored by the company ever since. This was both a big fundraiser for children's causes as well as a good place to socialize with the elite as well as the hoi-polloi of high tech.

Micrografx is now gone (absorbed by Corel), and Grayson has moved on (to Alibre) so the Chili Cookoff is no longer a part of Comdex.

But just like Phoenix (the bird, not the overheated city in Arizona) the Cookoff is rising from its own ashes to be reconstituted as Texas Chili for Children. It's not in Vegas any more (a decided plus, I think) but much closer to Grayson in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.

It's a very good cause, it's pretty good eats and DFW airport is fairly easy for most folks to get to - put it on your calendar for this fall, October 29, at Dallas' Fair Park (and say hello to Big Tex while you're there!).

Posted 9:46 AM (0) comments

Because We Should, not Because We Can

Politics doesn't run in a straight line from left to right (as we might think as we grow older, and more conservative). It actually runs in a circle, frequently seen head on. For most of us, the "center" is in the front, trailing off to the left and right - but those two seemingly disparate ideologies eventually meet. The meeting place is hidden from our view, though, as we look at the center. Nevertheless, we can see evidence of this meeting in, of all things, ideas about technology.

Both the right-wing ideologists (the ones the left call "neo" or "crypto" fascists) best identified with US Attorney-General John Ashcroft and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have similar thoughts about technology best exemplified in the formerly proposed "Total Information Act" (TIA) to collect, collate and characterize electronic activity as an aid to identifying terrorists and criminals. The same mindset can be observed in the attitude of those involved in the Napster/Kazaa-style music downloading issues.

No, not the RIAA, although they do want to know who's doing what and when. No, I refer to the millions of people infringing copyrights by pirating music and film.

Ashcroft wants to violate our privacy, Napster's Shawn Fanning wants to violate our property and both could agree on why they should be allowed to do so. Its simple, they believe that because something is possible then it follows that its OK to do it.

Technology makes many things easier including both the peer-to-peer swapping of files ripped or recorded from other media and the mining huge volumes of data from disparate places and come up with very complete individual dossiers.

Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should do it..

Its time for us all to re-discover ethics, the study of the principles of proper conduct. Ethics is what separates man from the lower animals. Our ethics tell us which activities are right to do of the myriad of possible things we are able to do. Ethics are the basis of society.

If Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Fanning and all who support either don't begin to consider their activities in an ethical light, then we might just as well move back into the trees - armed with a shotgun and an MP3 player, of course.