- Business - Comments

But retirement is fun too

garym — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 20:33:35 -0500

Thanks for the kind words; one perk of being shot out of the water is that I no longer need any pretense of pretending to get along for fear of losing clients, and there's a certain freedom in that.

I went and got a day job, and things are manageable. maybe someday I'll do this hired gun thing again, but not for a while. there's no future in it if you're in it for the money, and I can't afford to be in it for the fun.

very true

garym — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 20:24:22 -0500

or maybe I regard them the same way I regard May's pasta soups, but either way, thanks for lending that watchful eye. For the rest of you coming late to the game, never mind, it's been fixed.

Adaptive et Al, Munich Meetup

Fri, 17 Sep 2004 08:14:37 -0400

This is for all members of a model development project: the developers, the QA engineers, spec and technical writers, project coordinators, technical translators, consultants, contractors, designers, content providers, communicators. International crowd preferred. All flavors and trends: Adaptive, Agile, Extreme, Open Source.

Goal: talking shop *across disciplines*
networking and project aquisition *beyond sandboxes*. Southpark Dilbert style humor required .

More details here:
http://softwaredev.meetup.com/45/boards/view/viewthread?thread=799524

I suppose there's a balance

garym — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 16:56:38 -0400

There's only two things I'd say in my defense, one that in _this particular case_ the ads were malicious and deserved to be singled out and dragged censoriously into the light, and second that in general it's not a bad idea to gently remind people that web advertising is the only revenue most websites have, and Google's AdSense is really (in general) very reasonable in the matches, so if there's any chance your attention can be diverted for just a moment ...

As they say, "Please support our sponsors ..."

Where is your AdSense?

Wed, 19 May 2004 02:10:00 -0400

Oh, okay now I see your ads, at least they look like Google Ads. Anyway I thought you could get canned for telling people to click your ads? Or did I get the entire context in a miniscule way instead of the magnamoneous effort.

About time...

Wed, 19 May 2004 02:01:48 -0400

They started getting the kids off drugs!

BC
Edmonton
Calgary
Regina
AB

Mandrakesoft's Patent-Lobbying HOWTO

garym — Mon, 17 May 2004 15:43:29 -0400

From the latest Mandrakesoft plea for public action to derail this railroading bill ...

You can convince even more of [ the EU governments and media ] to reject software patentability. In order to do that, please take some time to read about the issues at stake, and spread the information across your friends and business contacts, the press, your members of the parliament and your government. It is essential that elected policy makers get back into command of the situation and do not leave the patent offices decide alone.

Here are some texts which can help you to present the issues to the media and to convince policy-makers of all countries of the European
Union.

A very readable analysis by FranÃ§ois Pellegrini explaining the legal and economic issues of software patentability:
"http://www.abul.org/article191.html":http://www.abul.org/article191.html

A thorough analysis by Jonas Maebe of the difference between the three versions of the directive, and why software patents are indeed illegal with respect to TRIPS:
"http://www.elis.ugent.be/~jmaebe/swpat/councilanalysis/paper-en.pdf":http://www.elis.ugent.be/~jmaebe/swpat/councilanalysis/paper-en.pdf

Positions of the member countries of the European Union:
"http://swpat.ffii.org/akteure/":http://swpat.ffii.org/akteure/ (add "pt", "ie", "fr", "de", "be", "gr", etc to have the positions of the
member countries)

The page of the FFII giving some directions for actions:
"http://kwiki.ffii.org/?LtrSmePolit0405En":http://kwiki.ffii.org/?LtrSmePolit0405En

A recent paper published in the Washington Post describing the current situation in the United States:
"Patenting Air or Protecting Property? Information Age Invents a New Problem"
"http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54548-2003Dec10?language=printer":http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54548-2003Dec10?language=printer

31 companies sued for using the JPEG image format (the plaintiff filed for a patent while recommending the adoption in international bodies of a standard including its patented technology):
"http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63200,00.html%3Ftw%3Dwn_bizhead_1":http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63200,00.html%3Ftw%3Dwn_bizhead_1

A US company sues companies of on-line content distribution:
"http://www.e-data.com/":http://www.e-data.com/
"http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5205529.html":http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5205529.html
"http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5144097.html":http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5144097.html

A well-documented file on the reference site Law.com:
"http://www.law.com/jsp/statearchive.jsp?type=Article&oldid=ZZZV4RVSSPC":http://www.law.com/jsp/statearchive.jsp?type=Article&oldid=ZZZV4RVSSPC

Thank you very much for your help.

Mandrakesoft Online Team.

I click

Sun, 16 May 2004 15:11:37 -0400

And make sure your java script is enabled,that way you'll see the ads.A few clicks here and there to help,is such an easy thing to do.

Locating the Online Component

garym — Sun, 09 May 2004 01:17:02 -0400

Ah, well, _that_ was web-friendly! To get the skinny on how to join up with the online component, you have to _download the PDF file_ where it is indeed spelled out quite plainly in the sidebar of the 3-column print brochure:

bq. The conference will be webcast live worldwide and made available after the event in archive form using the KMDI ePresence interactive webcasting system http://epresence.kmdi.toronto.edu/

oh ... did they mention? Registration for the _webcast_ is $95 -- that should trim out the riff-raff, eh? Little wonder they left that gem for the fine-print footnotes of the PDF.

Ok, on second thought, I think I'll wait for the post-mortem blog distillations ... and maybe spend the $95 I don't have on mom.

Webcasted

garym — Sun, 09 May 2004 01:00:57 -0400

No hints as of midnight Saturday as to where and how this thing is going to be 'webcasted', and I note with some resignation that this 'comprehensive' program makes no mention of the community or _labour saving device and not product_ aspects that are the true meaning of free software -- hopefully this will surface and all we can do is revert to pre-dotbomb methodologies of polling the page over and over to find out what's going to be what with it.

You can watch for page updates here on the communiqué in the SiteCloud sidebar, especially as there's no blog, and no RSS feed, which I suppose is unsurprising considering this is a venue who see fit to _host_ their webbycasting on a "Windows Server 2003 running Microsoft-IIS/6.0":http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?mode_u=off&mode_w=on&site=http://osconf.kmdi.utoronto.ca/

Amazon's Webservices Taste Test

garym — Wed, 10 Dec 2003 22:59:21 -0500

Still think I'm being unreasonable in my assessment of the emperial wardrobe they call dot-net? Consider this one, reported "by xml.com":http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/12/09/xml2003amazon.html relaying the presentation by Jeff Barr, Amazon's web services evangelist, who had explained to XML 2003 attendees how Amazon had decided not to decide between the XML over HTTP (ie REST) vs RPC/SOAP camps, and offered identical services over both protocols.

After several years of happy users and Amazon profits, what are the taste-test results? ...

bq. In the end Amazon provided both and let developers make the choice. Despite it being the "standard", only about 15% of Amazon web services calls are made with SOAP, the remainder with REST.

85% prefer REST --- and why not: Simpler, cheaper, reliable, secure, well understood, and proven in the field.

So tell me again how, "everybody's doin' soap" ...

Spelling

Fri, 21 Nov 2003 08:43:41 -0500

It's wanton. A wonton is Chinese pasta.

Royal Bank of Canada investment in SCO

Wed, 19 Nov 2003 05:19:58 -0500

I think we are witnessing another form of capitalism, which may be perceived as a strategy to support Microsoft. Microsoft is a key business partner for banks.

No different than Royal Bank (or any other firm) outsourcing their IT development to India as opposed to hiring local talent.

Heart-breaking!

Fri, 07 Nov 2003 17:18:32 -0500

I've only just discovered the communique. I find it a tragedy that you are going out of business because you aren't one of the hordes of IT snake-oil salesmen out there!

I just hope that whatever happens, you and May make out okay in the end.

Perhaps, it is the case as was quoted elsewhere on the site, you were "born too soon". The whole system (not just IT) is becoming unsustainable. A lot of people are being displaced as a result of the current turmoil.

I believe that things are going turnaround eventually, and that is when the people with integrity and ability will be valued.

Mamading.

The Toad and the Steamroller

garym — Sat, 09 Aug 2003 13:56:09 -0400

Sometimes there's good insight in the observations from a complete outsider, and that's certainly the case in this National Post item on the plight of the toadish SCO, and especially on how this harmless test-case is really an innoculation for the emerging enterprise Linux market ...

bq. if we were to perversely pick a poison, the SCO suit has a lot going for it. SCO is strong enough to provoke a strengthening of Linux's defences but not so strong that it poses any real danger.