The Scott McNealy Keynote was ok. I mean he had his rants and the slapping of the back by some consulting firm. Orbitz won a Dukie award for using Java and Jini that was cool. It�s nice to see a Chicago company get some recognition.

I went to some good sessions and some dogs. I attended a session on the new programming language Groovy. It is really nice and eliminates a great deal of java boilerplate. A friend of mine would like the support for closures and autoboxing. The Angry Penguin would like it because it can be run as an ant task.

I attended a session on instant messaging and presence. The best takeaways from that session were that the programming is slowly getting easier and this is going to big. Imagine a context aware device that facilitates and intermediates a customers experience. I say cool and the sooner the better.

Stay tuned more boring commentary to come.

I just upgraded my laptop from Win 2K to SuSE 9.1 professional. I had some trouble with the install configuring the docking station display properly. I had to call in the Angry Penguin for assistance to resolve the problem. When I undocked the laptop again had a problem configuring the LCD. Using my feeble Linux skills I was able to resolve the problem. Display configuration aside Suse 9.1 is great. extreamely well developed and packaged. I have used RedHat 7 & 9 and Solaris none are as polished. I could replace my windows based system with SuSE 9.1. Wine is included and would allow me to run Office. Java is supplied along with most of the big open source software products.

Look out Mr. Gates a German lizard from Utah is coming to get you.

I attended a software engineering conference last week. Richard Mark Soley CEO of OMG was the keynote and gave an interesting presentation on MDA. Without going into the drawn out detail there was a panel discussion on the future of software engineering. One of the topics was licensing of software engineers by state governments. It seems there exists a group of people who believe governmental intervention will improve the quality of software.

What one thing is better after governmental intervention? In my opinion, legislation rarely results in an increase in quality. The environment and public education seem to be glaring examples were legislation has not resulted improved quality.

If software companies were held accountable for bugs, then we might see an improvement in software quality. There is a fine line to between holding companies accountable and hindering the industry. I am not sure that our fine government could find that fine line and not cross it. I guess that’s why state governments would rather put in place laws that could create classes of software professionals. As soon as you begin to require software engineers to take specific course work through universities we tie the opportunities in software engineering to socioeconomic institutions.

The workers control the means of production!

Well, is everything patented? The idiots at the US patent and trademark office are sure letting anyone patent just about anything. I think Amazon has patented everything dealing with shopping on-line. How can a business do anything if the outward process of doing something is patented?

One click ordering owned by Amazon, Fixed price auctions owned by some former CIA spook. Competition has moved beyond products into customer behaviors and desires. I don’t know if this is a good thing but it sure seems to restrain the marketplace.

Liberty is defined by Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. 2002.http://www.merriam-webster.com (2 Apr. 2002) as, “freedom from arbitrary or despotic control” or “the power of choice.” I think I will try to patent Liberty. Looks like there could be a few people infringing.

TC