Running for President? No, Thanks.

I had to laugh at this interesting thought from my dad:

Dear Dave:

I finally decided that I have only one interest in the upcoming election and it involves your birthday.

Since you and Obama are of the same generation and about the same age, it occured to me that your life experiences are much broader than his.

You have served in the military, have operated a business under difficult circumstances, and have never had to shape your beliefs for political purposes as all politicians do.

Just wanted you to know I am glad you are not running for president.

Love,

Dad

Bernadette's Mom Has Passed

Bernadette's mom died this morning at 2:30 AM US EDT. She passed peacefully in her sleep at 91 years old.

The family requests that mourners consider sending a contribution to the Rhode Island Hospice or your local Hospice. Contributions are tax deductible.

NetKernel Architects Conference

This year's NetKernel Architects Conference is being held 25-27 September 2008 at the University of Mary Washington, right here in Fredericksburg, VA. Brian and I are helping Peter and Randy from 1060 Research to organize it.

1060 will be introducing NetKernel version 4.0 Pre-Release. Each attendee will get a copy on the first day. Brian and I had the chance to see and play with it last month in London. All I can say is, wow! Fans of resource-oriented computing are about to get a very powerful tool to add to their toolbox. The Architects Conference is a great way to learn the concepts and get a jump on the competition.

The conference schedule and price list are on the Web.

Y'all come down now, y'hear?

New Linked Data Blogroll

Talis has set up a blog aggregator for discussions of Linking Open Data at http://planet.linkeddata.org/. Good show, Talis.

Gartner Gets FLOSS; Late as Usual

A new report by Gartner on Free/Libre/Open Source Software concludes, " ... if you do not think you use it, then you use it; and if you think you do use it, then you use lots more of it than you know." No kidding. They rightly call out the fact that many common big-enterprise vendors use FLOSS components, but fail to mention FLOSS use by the dominant players like Microsoft.

The full report is accessible only by those with money, but KMWorld reported on it, as did ZDNet. Both reporters focused on the use of FLOSS by cloud computing centers, but the report is much more interesting than that. The most interesting statement to me was the positioning of SaaS for enterprises as a primary cost-cutting measure. SaaS is just another form of outsourcing, but this time to a much more level playing field.

Gartner is a funny organization. I haven't quite forgiven them for reporting in 1997 (!) that the Web was not likely to be important to businesses. They even gave that ridiculous statement a 70% confidence rating, IIRC. This time, they seem to be on track, but reporting a bit late. Why wait until FLOSS use is so ubiquitous in mainstream software before telling enterprise CIOs about it?

Digging out from Under

Whew! I've submitted my Ph.D. thesis (finally) and am now waiting upon the reviewers. It should be a couple of months and then an oral defense. I may be able to post more regularly once I find my inbox so I can start clearing it.