On one hand, I am really excited that they found a way for me to post my thoughts without having to log into their site. On the other hand, they have my picture, my name, and know that I’m interested Lindsay Lohan’s accidental nudity. On top of that, it allows Facebook to better target their ads based on my browsing preferences.

Also, I thought I had turned this functionality off?

In recent years, Sun outsourced much of its sales, counting on resellers to promote its products. That’s anathema at Oracle, which employs 22,000 salespeople and 11,000 software consultants who work directly with its largest customers. … “Astonishingly they laid off all the sales people and they laid off all the field service people. They just got rid of them all,” he said. “Guess what? Sales dropped. It’s breathtaking!”

I am not going to mention what company this reminds me of. I will mention that the quote is from Larry Ellison. I think this article is required reading for anyone in the enterprise IT market.

“We’re so glad you’ve recently enjoyed the special treatment Hilton HHonors® guests receive at Hilton hotels.”

This really irks me since they had given away my room, despite my honorary Gold status. I had to take a Taxi to the next Hilton property after a grueling international trip. I ate some disgusting pizza with Tuna fish on it, since the kitchen was closed. The room was terrible and had a lumpy mattress. So if by “special treatment” you mean “being treated like a stray dog”, then yes, I did have to enjoy that. I am pretty sure I do not ever again want to be a Hilton HHonors guest!

Since Hilton has my email address, it would have been nice to receive a personal apology. At a minimum, if you are going to email your customers, you should at the very least check to make sure that there were no issues before sending out a “Thank you, please come again” message. The benefit of having all these computers is that you can analyze client data and send relevant information to improve your loyalty and customer experience. Lastly, the email did not even contain a survey link where I could give them some honest feedback about the service that I received.

Several decades ago, before the emergence of computing, if you wanted to start a new business and you had to set up an office to accommodate your employees. The office would have staplers, desks, lamps, etc. You might have wanted to get a mimeograph machine as well. These were all things that could be leased or purchased.

Over the last two decades, there have been rapid changes in the amount of computing resources needed to perform office duties. If you wanted to set up an office, you needed to purchase or lease computers. In addition, you needed to purchase licenses of software, hire expensive technicians, etc. The capital costs of opening an office skyrocketed. And you still needed to purchase a mimeograph machine, which they were calling a “photocopy” machine.

Out of this shuffle, there is now a general consensus about core hardware and software that is needed to successfully open a new office. For example, we know that each employee will have a computer with monitor, email, internet access, a word processor, a spread-sheeting program, etc. If you didn’t have the latest version of these software programs, you couldn’t do business with suppliers, partners, and customers.

So now the technology and bandwidth is available to host these office applications securely at a central site, and to provide employees with on-demand access to it. If you want to think about it another way, you can have someone else lease the package as a service. In addition, you can lease thin clients, and get the same services at lower monthly cost. This dramatically lowers the capital investment needed to open a physical office. You’ll probably still have to purchase staplers and lease a scanner or photocopier.

The true effect of Cloud Computing is to lower the cost of business for SMBs. Why SMBs? Because newer, smaller organizations will be better positioned to embrace this shift. They have the most to benefit, since capital costs for computing would have previously consumed a far greater percentage of their resources. Because of the complexity, older and larger companies will find it much harder to embrace this Cloud Model. Also, larger companies already have established IT budgets and it consumes far less as a percentage of their resources. Lastly, there is a false consensus that control over IT resources results in security or advantage.

Widenius said that while the code could be easily copied, the main problem was the ecosystem around MySQL — companies making business from it, developing it and using it. “If it would be easy to fork (copy) it, no-one would have paid a billion dollars for it.”

It isn’t a revolutionary concept. However, it illustrates the point that the real value of Open Source projects is not the code, but the community and ecosystem around the project. Growing the community and eco-system should be the primary function of a company that “owns” an open source project, since that is where the long-term value is. This in turn drives adoption and revenues.

(02:35:10 PM) Sal Darji: hi, are we having problems with teamsite?
(02:35:25 PM) HelpDesk2: Thank you for contacting the IS&T service desk. My name is Rio. How may I help you please?
(02:35:36 PM) HelpDesk2: i understand your concern sir
(02:35:48 PM) HelpDesk2: we are currently having an outage on the teaming website
(02:36:09 PM) HelpDesk2: what we can do for now is that i will create a ticket
(02:36:21 PM) HelpDesk2: a team is already taking care of the situation
(02:36:25 PM) Sal Darji: ok
(02:36:46 PM) HelpDesk2: we will inform you soonest on any developments to correct your issue
(02:37:21 PM) HelpDesk2: let me provide you with a ticket for reference and a specialist shall contact you through email
(02:37:35 PM) HelpDesk2: please wait for the incident ticket thank you
(02:37:38 PM) Sal Darji: ok, thanks!
(02:38:34 PM) HelpDesk2: please provide me with your contact number and novell email address
(02:39:11 PM) Sal Darji: shouldn’t you already have that?
(02:39:35 PM) HelpDesk2: this is just for update and verification sir
(02:39:46 PM) Sal Darji: <>
(02:39:53 PM) Sal Darji: <>
(02:40:17 PM) HelpDesk2: HDnnnnnnn this will be your ticket number sir
(02:40:26 PM) HelpDesk2: hope to resolve your issue soonest
(02:40:29 PM) Sal Darji: ok, thanks
(02:40:53 PM) HelpDesk2: your welcome is there anything else that i may assist you?
(02:40:59 PM) Sal Darji: no, thats it, thanks!
(02:41:37 PM) HelpDesk2: ok your welcome , we will keep you posted for more updates and development on the current issue thanks and have a wonderful day

We parked in one of the many car parks in the city today, and I noticed that the parking structure had a sensor above each spot. The sensor allows the car park to know what spots are open. Open spots have green LEDs. In addition, a board announces the number of open spots on each level.

I noticed this when I was in Europe too. It strikes me as odd that I have never seen this type of system in the US. There may be a few in the US that have this system, but it it isn’t that common.