Random Curry

…but I bet it’s hard to cut the grass in the front yard…

What Is This? - Satellite dishes

(h/t Gizmodo)

…but with a smile

MySQL Creators Move to Keep MySQL Open

I had the privilege of flying 2/3 of the way across the country today, which among other things gives you the opportunity to think a little bit. I reflected on how lucky I am…

One of my favorite books is called Illusions, by Richard Bach. For those who haven’t read it, it’s the story of a man who meets and follows a “reluctant” messiah and learns a bit about life. In the book, he references another book called “The Messiah’s Handbook,” which contains short lessons that are used to teach the narrator what he needs to know. Bach has thankfully published this by itself, and my daughter gave it to me for Father’s Day. She didn’t know about Illusions, so I told her a little about it.

I showed her what I consider the most important lesson in the book…

Everything in this book could be wrong.

When I showed that to her, her reaction was essentially, “Well, that’s obvious. Why would anyone think anything different?”

Whoa.

I explained to her that there are a lot of people that can’t accept this lesson. In fact, a lot of suffering happens in this world because of the inability of some people to accept this.

It’s really cool to meet someone who understands this. It’s especially cool to have that person be your daughter. I couldn’t be a more proud father today if I tried.

It’s IndyCar and CART all over again, fifteen years later…

F1 to sue group over plans for rival series

Common Tag Brings Standards to Metadata

One of the primary steps on the transition to the Semantic Web is the tagging of content and data so it can be located in the proper context. Here is an initiative that is trying to address the chaos of using tags when everyone and their brother is making up their own. It’s enough of a paradigm shift to include tags with your content - perhaps this will make things easier.

Of course, this effort will run into the natural resistance people have to standardized structures - everyone has the best idea on how to do things, and they rarely match. I wish the Common Tag folks luck in overcoming this obstacle.

At the suggestion of my friend James, I attended two events this morning that rate pretty high in Geekland…

Event One: The release of the Palm Pre smartphone, at the local Sprint store in Roseville, CA…

Here was the crowd - about 15 people…

It’s kind of hard to tell if they’re waiting for Sprint to open or waiting for coffee.

Next, Event Two: The opening of a new Apple store in the Roseville Galleria…

There were a few more people…

The staff was a little more animated…

…and the line actually went out the door of the mall…

Now, not all of these people were there for just a phone, and they were giving away t-shirts at the Apple store, but I think this illustrates the state of play in the electronics world these days…

By the way, I went back to the Sprint store at about 8:15 to check out the phone, and was able to play with a display phone for a few minutes. My capsule review - Apple has nothing to worry about. Paraphrasing Rachel Maddow, the Pre is “teeny, teeny, tiny…” The form factor of the phone is closer to something like the LG Shine than the iPhone, so everything is really small - the typing keys, the fonts, and the buttons on the touch screen. Not really good for fat fingers like mine. Also, it has the feel of something you buy at Toys R Us. I’ll stick with lusting after the iPhone for a while longer…

My latest contribution to the Baseline Consulting blogs…

The Project Manager as News Reporter

I’d love to know where they get those pictures…

Enjoy!

OK, this is getting ridiculous…

Five-Dimensional DVD Could Store 1.6 Terabytes

Warning: this article could make your brain melt…In summary, the scientists have found a way to store more than one piece of data in each data “slot” of a DVD, and it would be compatible with the existing Blu-Ray technology.

I’m blown away already by the fact that you can walk into your local technology store and get 1.5 TB of storage for well under $200…now, you could get the same on a 5-inch disc…wow…

You’ve no doubt heard the news by now of Oracle’s $7.4b takeover of Sun Microsystems. Apart from Oracle’s apparent desire to become IBM, the database world is abuzz with opinions on what will happen with the MySQL database that was purchased by Sun last year. I though it time to add my two pennies to the discussion.

My initial response to this news was fear and disappointment, having been a party to an Oracle takeover in the past (I was a member of PeopleSoft Consulting). I’ve come to love and appreciate the MySQL database over the years due to its robustness, speed, ease of administration and, obviously, cost. When a company like Oracle comes to town, you can be fairly assured that any software, especially a product that competes directly with Oracle’s flagship database offering, is doomed.

Of course, Oracle is commenting publicly that MySQL will be “an addition to Oracle’s existing suite of database products…” That may be true from the “let’s keep a dozen or so people in some building in case someone calls for support” perspective, but I think there are a couple of fairly recent examples that show what might happen:

Does anyone remember Informix? How about FoxPro?

Informix and FoxPro were vital players in the database market about 10 years ago, in the enterprise and desktop markets respectively. They were both purchased by larger competitors - Informix by IBM, FoxPro by Microsoft - looking mainly to remove competition for their own products (DB2 and Access respectively). Of course, that wasn’t the stated objective, but it was the practical result from the technology trenches where I was at the time.

So, what happened? Well, Informix was not actively marketed by IBM, so it faded from the enterprise scene, but still to this day has a few niches where it still performs well. FoxPro was essentially denied oxygen for survival and has died completely except for some legacy desktop applications - the last update to the environment was released with virtually no notice almost two years ago.

I find it hard to believe that Oracle will devote many resources to MySQL now that they have it, even though the product has a fairly large footprint in the open-source world. Yes, it could be argued that this lack of support has existed since the Sun acquisition, but I think it’s even more likely now. Two main reasons for this feeling: the obvious one where it’s a competing database product, and also that it was not the primary thing Oracle acquired with Sun - it just came along with the package.

One of the few positive articles I’ve found about the MySQL acquisition involves the marketing of the product, which doesn’t speak to well of the technological basis for retention of the product by Oracle. My fervent hope is that some group steps forward and takes advantage of the open-source nature of the product and creates a variant that continues technological development and returns the product to its community-based origins.

I’m not holding my breath, however…

So, I watched the Mike & Mike Show on ESPN2 this morning, listening to Roger Clemens continue his aggressive denial act, and then one of the authors of the new book about Clemens. I was struck by the response of the emailing audience during the show. Just after the Clemens appearance, the email was running about 99% against him. Then, after the author’s appearance, which wasn’t too hot, the email tide turned in favor of Clemens and his “believability”.

We live in such a binary society these days, it really drives me mad. Now, I know that the same people that emailed during the Clemens appearance are likely not the same people that emailed later, but damn, people…just because you didn’t like the writer doesn’t mean that Clemens is any more believable. It’s not a yes-or-no situation - I think they’re both full of it. Shades of gray, people…it makes life go a lot easier…