Paw Prints: Writings of the maddog

Campus Party Colombia!

Jun 26, 2008 GMT

Campus Party....what can I say? More than a computer conference, it is a technology showcase and multi-media fair geared toward the high school, college and post-college age people, although a few grey-bearded geeks can also be found in the crowd. Started in Spain about 12 years ago, expanding to Brazil last year, Campus Party is now having its first event in Bogota, the capital of Colombia, where it is held on a fairground, spread across multiple buildings. I arrived on the late evening of June 23rd, having flown from a previous event in Mexico City, so my first exposure to the Bogota event was the next day when a driver came to transport me to the fairground.Arriving at the event (and...

Software Guru: An event in Mexico City

Jun 26, 2008 GMT

Mexico City had a small, but vibrant event on June 21-24th. The event, SG'08 Conferencia y Expo, was produced by Software Guru magazine, and was oriented toward software developers, although I also found that CIOs and other executives were in the crowd. The event was four days, held in a Sheraton hotel in the historic sector of Mexico City, and included two days of tutorials, two days of conference and an exhibit floor of both large (IBM, HP, Sun, Oracle) and smaller companies like Microsoft. While there were only 30 companies represented in the exhibit area, the floor was packed with attendees talking to the vendors and looking at products the one day that I was at the conference. The...

Red Hat Summit Summary

Jun 20, 2008 GMT

The Red Hat Summit (http://www.redhat.com/promo/summit/2008/), held in Boston, Massachusetts, USA June 17th to 20th is over, but FUDcon (http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FUDCon/FUDConF10) goes on for at least one more day with a BarCamp at Boston University. The Summit was a very well-planned and executed event held at the Hynes Convention center (where the FUDCon was also held). It started off with a Keynote by Jim Whitehurst, the CEO of Red Hat Software. Jim gave the impression of someone who "really got it". One of his more memorable statements was: "We are leaders in Open Source...it is who we are and what we do." He discussed a patent settlement that he said is...

Linus Torvalds to be made Fellow of the Computer History Museum

Jun 18, 2008 GMT

The Computer History Museum (http://www.computerhistory.org/about/) in Mountain View, California is one of the largest multi-national museums in the world dedicated to the computing industry. Every year they choose technologists and entrepreneurs who have made great contributions to computer science and honor them by admiting them to "The Hall of Fellows". Past Fellows have included Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, Maurice Wilkes, John Backus, Jay Forrester, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and others whose contributions were of stellar calibre. In 2007 I heard that the nominations were open, and having seen the quality of people who had been selected in the past, I submitted a...

The Future of Code

Jun 15, 2008 GMT

I went to watch a movie at our local "Art" movie theater the other day. The movie was called "The Future of Food" by Deborah Koons Garcia, which talked about the issues of generically modified food. Without going into all of the issues surrounding altering genes in food, one part of the film was devoted to the fact that some farmers were being sued by companies who found genetically modified grain in the farmers' fields without the farmers having purchased the grain. The farmers claimed that the grain was carried there by the wind or birds, and that they had no way of keeping the modified grain out of their fields, nor even knowing that it was there. "No...

Time For Reflection

Jun 15, 2008 GMT

Sunday, June 15th is "Fathers Day" in the United States, and while I have never been married and have no "blood-line" children of my own, my favorite breakfast restaurant was overflowing with families celebrating and this has caused a bit of reflection. For those of you who are parents and are hunched over your computer terminal today (or tomorrow, or the next day), take the time to reach out to your family and show them you love them. For those of you who are not parents think about volunteering to talk about Free Software, or even software in general, at a local school or youth organization. Even though it is "Fathers Day", I also make these suggestions...

Paw Prints: Observations, News and Musings on Free Software

Jun 11, 2008 GMT

Last night a storm moved through the area where I live. For the past several days we had record high temperatures for this time of year, but when I heard the trees rustling and saw the flashes of lightning, I knew that a cold front was coming and the temperatures would drop to something tolerable. When I was very young my father taught me to understand the changing weather, and to know what to expect afterwards. Today as I sit here writing my first Blog for Linux New Media, I remember the lessons my father taught me, and which I have tried to apply my entire life. Observe what is happening, try to understand why it works that way, change it if you can and if you feel it will make things...