A Truly Small Conference

Mar 29, 2011 GMT

 On Saturday, April 2nd I will be attending a small conference at Worcester State University in Worcester, Massachusetts in the United States, the Northeast GNU/Linux Fest. The conference will be a single day, lasting from 10:30 in the morning until 3 P.M. in the afternoon. It will have a single track, four speakers and be oriented toward a student audience (although anyone is invited). The entry fee is “free”, but for thirty dollars a person can “support” the conference and get a “free” T-shirt. If you want to be an exhibitor, 30 dollars will get you a table and electricity, if needed. I did not even know about this conference until a couple of months ago, but...

Off Topic: Mom&Pop(TM) - the passing of Marian Rhoda (nee Burns) Hall

Mar 11, 2011 GMT

Mom&Pop(TM) were married in Trenton, New Jersey on June 27th, 1942, Pop was a 21 year-old graduate from Luscombe's School of Aeronautics fresh from upstate New York and Mom was a graduate of the business program of New Jersey's high schools, barely 19 years old at the time. Thus started a sixty-eight year commitment of love.They moved to Baltimore, Maryland to build airplanes at Glenn L. Martin in the war effort of WW II. Rubber for car tires was a dream, so they rode bicycles to work. Not having any money for furniture, they slept in sleeping bags on the floor until they could afford a bed, but after they bought that bed they shared it for over sixty-eight years, except for a week...

CeBIT in Hannover, Germany: the trade show I hate to love

Feb 20, 2011 GMT

With over 4000 exhibiting companies from 68 countries, over 5000 journalists from 66 countries, and 340,000 attendees CeBIT is the world's largest trade show for computers and telephony.CeBIT is also different from other trade shows because it tends to be more “business to business” and “vendor to vendor”, where large opportunities are discussed and deals are created over a beer. More on the beer later!CeBIT is so big, and has so many people attending, that often exhibitors have to stay in private homes rather than hotels, due to lack of hotel space, and if you stay too far away from the actual fairground, it may take you hours slowly moving in traffic to get to your booth....

Rest in Peace, Kenneth Harry Olsen

Feb 07, 2011 GMT

 I just learned that Kenneth Olsen, one of the founders of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), died on February 6th, 2011 at the age of 84. From now on I will refer to him in this article as “KO”, as did most people who worked at DEC. At DEC no one had to ask who you were talking about when you said “KO”. Readers of my blogs and columns know of my very long association with DEC. It started in 1969 when I was a college student, and one of the first computers I ever programmed was DEC's PDP-8. I taught myself how to program the PDP-8 in machine and assembler language based on the information from two paperback books that Digital published at the time. Each book cost five...

RTFM: It is not just for computers

Jan 31, 2011 GMT

 Some friends of mine own a consulting company with about twenty employees. Every once in a while they buy “something nice” for the common area used by all the employees, and very recently it was an automatic coffee maker. This is not just any coffee maker, but a very sophisticated machine that can either use ground coffee OR it can grind the coffee beans and put them directly into the brewing cycle. The machine can also heat and froth the milk for cappuccino, make small or large cups of coffee, and allow all sorts of adjustments for weaker or stronger coffee. The number of buttons on the front is only slightly less than you would find in the cockpit of a Boeing 747...

Fermilab, the Tevatron, and Linux

Jan 11, 2011 GMT

It was 1998 and I was attending a Comdex event in Chicago. Comdex was one of the largest computer trade shows on earth, and for a while they held two events a year, a Fall event always in Las Vegas, and a Spring event typically in some other large city.That year “Spring Comdex” was in Chicago and my company, Digital Equipment Corporation was there along with a motley crew of companies pushing this concept of Free Software. One of the Comdex organizers, Sonny Saslaw, had started a small exhibit area of Comdex pushing Linux and we were attracting our own set of attendees. One of the main companies involved with Comdex in Chicago was this young upstart called “Red Hat”.At that event...

Pearls Before Swine

Jan 09, 2011 GMT

 I have written about my frustrations with service before, but I wanted to share three more items. For those of you who have not seen today's (January 9th, 2011) “Pearls Before Swine” comic strip, it mirrors some of my frustration with service groups. This was the first item I wanted to share. The second item was with my Internet service. For many years I had two different land-based telephone lines coming into my house. One of them was a “residential” account, and one of them was a “business” account. Having worked for the telephone company in my younger days, I even understood the rationale between having two different types of accounts, and charges, for...