BBC says:
“The US Federal Reserve has cut interest rates to 2.25% in recent months to try to stimulate the housing market and consumer spending.”
and yet the mortgage interest rate continues to slowly climb. So I guess we’re using ’stimulate’ in the needle-in-the-heart sense.
First - there’s an advert that points out that kids usually take too much, especially toilet paper. Then they go on to explain how their new lavvy roll is ultra soft and you can take less off.
I throw my hands up in despair - apparently the plan behind the advert is to state the bleeding obvious, and then make a claim that is utterly unrelated. “Oh.. I’ll just explain that to my child and I’m sure he’ll take less off. Now he knows it’s nice and soft, we won’t find a toilet bowl full of paper when it’s time to flush”. I guess as long as the name sticks in your head (and maybe some idiot blogs about it) then they think it’s good advertising. Don’t make people believe your product is good - just make them remember the name. Brand advertising is so irritating.
Now over to Football. The Welsh sports minister has pointed out that he’d like to see the Welsh national anthem played at Wembley before the FA Cup Final, given that Cardiff have qualified. They won in 1927, which was the only time a non-English team have won, and the last time one was in the final (Cardiff were also runners up in 1925, and Queen’s Park of Scotland were runners up in 1884 and 1885).
My first thought - “Too right”. My second thought - “Hang on, what about the English national anthem?”. In those short moments I feel I’ve pretty much described the UK national question from an English point of view. “Sure”, and “What about us?”. Currently every game starts with the British anthem of God Save the Queen.
The various options listed over at Wikipedia are interesting. Cricket have been using “Jerusalem” since 2004. Rugby used “Land of Hope and Glory” for a while and then reverted back to “God Save the Queen” (though the fans seem to like “Swing Low Sweet Chariots”, or at least used to). The page also suggests “I Vow to Thee, My Country” and “Rule, Britannia!”. Interesting page to read - I think I edge in favour of “Land of Hope and Glory” with “Jerusalem” in second place. The Commonwealth games plays “Land of Hope and Glory” for England, so that one seems to be the closest to a national anthem, and the tune is definitely something that we’re used to.
I like giving my opinion. I can be quite logical at times, but often am happy to let my gut take over and make instinctive leaps. Both modes are fun and can assist in flow. I also tend to talk in trees, hoping to return back to the branch point and continue on.
Something I’ve had to learn over the last few years is to do that less. Due to the parallelization abilities of email such a habit lends itself to being the maintainer of long threads. Nowadays it has to be - less is more. Is that statement really valuable? Just because someone has pointed out that the proposed Commons J2ME should have a different name, would there be any value in my saying “Hey, Commons Mini!”. Often the answer is no. For a while this lead to enormous amounts of time spent writing emails; 90% of which was a hidden iceberg of text that was never sent. Not because I didn’t want people to know I’d written that text, but because I kept refining the focus of my text.
I don’t claim to be good at that yet btw. Screwing that up is still a regular offence, but I’m trying.
Part of learning to let it lie is at the heart of delegation. Trust others to have expertise in the area; chances are they have more expertise than you anyway. Figure out where your focus is most effective. An equivalent OSS part is delegating to a community of people - you know that the group are going to come up with the ‘right enough’ answer. It won’t be the one you personally wanted, but it will be one that after a discussion you’d have accepted as a compromise. So here the aim is to choose your discussions.
One other thing I seem to have a knack for is starting huge threads. I’m not sure if that’s because I have a social inability to understand that there is a white elephant in the room, or if it’s because I don’t do a good enough job building the foundation for a focused discussion.
On a related topic - something I need to start figuring out how to do is weaning myself of my achievement addiction. It might be okay, just once, to have an evening in which all I achieve is relaxation without feeling guilty.
Watched Children of Men tonight - very good. Oddly, the first movie I try to compare it to is 28 Weeks Later, which we saw the other week. Not because they’re at all similar in feel, but because it’s one a recent epidemic of “it’s all gone pear shaped” movies set in the UK future. This one has some nice touches and a good story line.
Oddly it was one that both Carrie and I wanted to watch. I was going through sci-fi award winners and adding to our netflix list, and she’d already added this having heard it was good (but no idea what it was about). Anyway - very recommended if you’ve not seen it already.
We just got a computer to be our “under the TV” machine. That means that things like watching the latest shows on nbc.com, and old stuff on joost.com can be done.
We’ve watched Transformers and GI Joe on Joost so far. It’s under my account, and so far the advertising is not impressive. Having the little popups that can be clicked on is good - though we don’t have a mouse attached so can’t do much. It also keeps ’selling’ us Windows Server 2008 (with one of those lame adverts that has no actual valuable content about the product). Given that so far I’m watching the desires of a young child, seems like it’s not doing a good job so far. In fact it keeps doing the same advert again and again - bet how unimpressed that makes me as a user.
It also likes to say “GIJoe will be back after these adverts”, and then immediately comes back without showing me adverts.
Free is good though - and unlike My Name is Earl (which I watched from nbc.com last night), it actually fills the screen. Downside - the Joost UI is sluggish and slow on this new machine. Frusrating having to wait while the mouse moves around. Oh… and here’s the same useless advert again. *yawn and mute*
90 min or so of Brad Smith and panel [Shuttleworth, Bottomley, Updegrove], mostly about the recent patent promise and the various patents alleged to be directed at Linux (or was it Open Source?).
Question from the audience - why charge businesses a ’small fee’?
It’s the obvious dodge point and answers were relatively unfulfilling. Personally - I think it’s so they still have them for cross-patent negotiations. I’ve not seen anything saying everyone gets the same small fee. [UPDATE: I’m told they’ve talked about doing RAND, which would mean everyone gets the same fee]
Next question - you’re getting involved in Eclipse now, would you use EPL?
Again relatively unfulfilling - they’d probably consider it some day. This is a standard answer in reality - you use the license of the community. So MS Eclipse plugins - I bet they’d be under EPL.
Next question - a pretty loaded one complaining that the leaders MS are talking to big companies, not open source. Fair enough - though I’m quite happy with the three people up there talking to Brad (Ubuntu founder, Linux guy (I think involved with the Linux Foundation) and a standards lawyer). Not very answerable.
Next up - “what’s the furthest compromise you’ll make”. Whee. Not answerable at all.
Next - Bill Gates said OS was Communism. Steve Ballmer said it was a cancer. When did this change? My understanding of the explanation is the obvious one - the world changes.
Financial Analyst asks why charge for the patents if not much money. Brad explained again that they think it is a necessary model.
Second question from the analyst is whether you’d keep supporting the open infrastructure at Yahoo. Brad points out he can’t answer that due to securities and wossnames.
Question from the front - can we create a model whereby a kid in a garage can make the new Windows without being afraid of being sued to death.
Brad answered interestingly here. Early on MS looked to copyright, but in the 90s the courts in the US said look to patents not copyrights. I can’t quote his exact phrases, I should carry a tape recorder eh? But he explained that that was not ideal.
Whee. Question for everyone else on the panel. Can MS ride both OS and proprietary wave. Everyone says yes. Mark explained that moving to services means copyright/patent less important, and he expects MS to figure that out. James pointed out that there is a standard invitation to all to be involved in OS, including MS. Andy predicted a flip where ‘those out there’ were more dominant than ‘those at MS’ and that MS should get involved sooner rather than later.
Matt Asay (host) asked: “Why MS? Why not Oracle, IBM etc. ” He thinks not because they have the most to lose, but the most to gain.
Recording that without misquoting Brad would be hard - he explained how he’s proud they have the courage of their convictions, and pride that they’re listening.
Overall - panel went quite well.
This came up a couple of times here at OSBC, not overblown but mentioned. It’s a bit painful to hear Legal people worrying about something that doesn’t feel like it should be a huge deal.
Then I noticed Alfresco’s nice FAQ entry on this:
<a href=”http://www.alfresco.com/legal/licensing/faq/#faq6″>FAQ #6</a>
Panel of people with big thoughts on the future of our beloved open world. Roger Burkhardt (Ingres), MySQL (Zach Urloff stood in for the ill Marten Mickos), John Roberts (SugarCRM), Jeff Whatcott (Acquia (Drupal company)) and Mark Shuttleworth (Ubuntu). Chaired by Michael Skok.
A somewhat interesting session, it went over the survey from before the conference and asked the panelists if they agreed with those surveyed. Very good way to model a panel session. I remember Mark Shuttleworth speaking at ApacheCon and not being very impressed simply because his focus (Linux/Desktops) was not a good fit for our general focus. Mark was very impressive on this panel - his comments were at the right time, applied to the right place etc, and always very good.
Of course there were bits I disagreed with - one day it would be interesting to do one of these panel things where I would feel the urge to get up there and speak my mind. Generally too English (polite… timid… quiet… whatever) to argue with them.
One of my disagreements is on a question as to whether Open Source is:
a) Business Model
b) Marketing Model
c) Development Model
d) All of the above
e) None of the above
The true answer is f) Community model. Wikipedia is a great Open Source success story. a), b) and c) are all true when you realize they are on top of a community model. As someone at lunch pointed out - very Cathedral & Bazaar; or Cluetrain as I pointed out. Open Source is a business model in that it’s a community model, communities are about conversations, and business is at the end of the day about a conversation in which defined value is exchanged.
While talking about the effect of Open Source on the economy, a very good point from the Jeff Whatcott - “Absence of money is a bigger push for innovation than lots of money”.
A couple of t-shirt ideas:
* “Open Source is People”
* “Open Source was Social 1.0″ (or maybe 1.5?)
Mark Shuttleworth asked a good question. Have we reached the IBM point yet? Is Open Source usage the default answer now and you have to justify not choosing that? Opinion was divided on whether we’ve reached that yet.
Sounds like Carrie is having fun with Nathan: Thinking on Creative Play.
I’m very happy with the lad. As Carrie explains, creative play applies to anything.
Personally I like to take a chunk of the credit for when I taught N to lie/make a joke. In classic Red Dwarf style one night, I held up a teddy bear and said “Banana”. He cackled. A few days later he started to do it too, understanding the hilarity in calling a teddy bear an elephant.
Creative play is inside the mind, not inside the toybox.
Awake. Breakfast. A price that only hotels can charge.
Registration. Bag, spam filled, but will probably prove useful once it gets home as conference bags usually do. We use ApacheCon bags to pack our shopping, and an EclipseCon bag will probably be my hospital bag.
Speaking of, fingers crossed everyone that nothing happens back home btw. Repeat the mantra… “Hang on, hang on, hang on”.
One item of note in the bag, a last minute addition of a presentation on “Can Open Source communities survive acquisitions and mergers”. That’s an interesting topic nowadays, so suspect I’ll head along.
Nice. “Video Killed the Radio Star” just came on - but some idiot has the bass turned way up and the initial drums sounded like a brachiosaurus farting.
