mm405: Boston, Day 1

June 9, 2008

MUDGE’s Musings

Whew!

Just finished a very long day, the first day attending the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston.

I don’t go to so many conferences. In fact, in the nearly four years of employment at the Heart of Corporate America (not its real name), as well as the three years of contractor status that it, this is only the second conference that I have attended under the HCA aegis. How ironic that it is also located in Boston, the site of the event that I attended last summer. Of all the towns in the world…

But, I do like Boston, even though, as alluded to last post, I feel stranded in the middle of a desert, located as we are in a concrete jungle of a redeveloped industrial district. Boston is a wonderful town in which to be a pedestrian — but not in this corner, not that I could pedestre very well anyway. [Looks like I may have coined another word — the ‘r’ is silent; but it does sort of look like pederast, doesn’t it. Oh, well, back to the drawing board.]

Although I title this Day 1, the event’s organizers, as is often done apparently, treated today as Day 0, Monday being the more popular business travel day than Sunday. The sessions today were lengthy tutorials. A choice of two each, morning and afternoon. 9am to 12:30pm; then 1:30pm to 4:45pm. Then a further two hour panel discussion that finally ended at 7:30pm. The real action starts tomorrow. I’m already worn out.

I do take copious notes. Now, many of my fellow attendees today, perhaps most of them, brought their laptops to the sessions. There were even power strips scattered along the floor, for the first half-dozen lucky people each who got to them.

Now, yr (justifiably) humble svt would have been happy enough to note take via laptop, but as there were no tables, just rows of chairs, and as I, uh, don’t have a lap for said laptop, just a short slippery slope as it were, that might result in a potentially lethal slide for same, I took my notes the old fashioned way, pen on notebook page, six tightly printed pages to be exact. I have a lot to show for 8-3/4 hours of conference. But it all has to be transcribed.

I wanted to keep up with this daily; perhaps even transfer some of this post into the event’s blog that I’ve heard exists although I haven’t found it. But, as I type this it’s already 10pm; had too much to eat at the hotel’s surprisingly good restaurant (surprising mainly because they have no competition for at least the half-mile radius until another hotel appears in this wasteland called the Seaport neighborhood); and I was up early. Never sleep well in anyone else’s bed except my own, and the hotel is justifiably proud of its comfortable bed. I’m just a crotchety old curmudgeon.

Anyway, there are six pages. Let’s see if I can summarize, while it’s all still fresh.

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mm382: One Laptop Per Child gets Windows

May 17, 2008

MUDGE’s Musings

We return to a popular (at least to yr (justifiably) humble svt) topic here in this nanocorner of the ‘Sphere©. Previously:

One Laptop Per Child @ L-HC

mm088: Meet the XO
mm089: Amateur mapmaking…
mm099: A $99 Desktop…
mm149: India’s take…
mm153: By a Laptop, Get one…
mm162: Laptop with a Mission
mm170: Technology and Ed …
mm179: OLPC for India after all?
mm189: OLPC cranks up!
mm203: OLPC: News; discouraging word
mm212: Cheap computing…
mm219: OLPC — Harvard speaks
mm232: Li’l green laptops a hit in Peru
mm247: OLPC — reviews are coming in
mm249: OLPC – News, and a review
mm267: XO – A Missionary Position

In an apparent blow to the true-believing open source community, OLPC and Microsoft have reached an agreement to make Windows available on the XO laptop.

It is only fitting that the NYTimes’ story has as its header a photograph of students in India praying before class time, since there is no doubt that in the world of personal computing technology, operating systems are a religious choice. Windows vs. Apple vs. Open Source (mainly, Linux).

nytimes

laptopsOLPC8517

Pal Pillai/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Students pray before working on their computers in Vasti Vidhalaya, India. The XO laptop comes with a video camera.

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mm341: Boo-hoo Yahoo

April 7, 2008

MUDGE’s Musings

Stanley Bing of Fortune is one of my favorite guys. His The Bing Blog has been part of the Left-Handed Complement blogroll from the early days.

Today’s post discusses the latest news of the tug-of-war now entering what is probably its final phase: Microsoft’s intention to take over Yahoo.

 

bing

Yahoo thoughts and Microsoft dreams

The Bing Blog | Monday, April 7, 2008 at 1:00 pm

I thought I would begin the week here by taking a moment of silence for all the good folks at Yahoo (YHOO), now under assault by the great and powerful conquistador from Redmond (MSFT).  Today Yahoo management found it necessary to combat comments made by Microsoft top pate Steve Ballmer to the effect that the company was in serious trouble and would probably tank in the very near future without the timely rescue now under consideration. This could be seen by some cynics as a blatant attempt to lower the value of the property Mr. Ballmer and team are looking to acquire, but you won’t find any cynics here. Just sympathetic skeptics who have been there and done that.

Few topics among we who toil in the vineyards we call “IT” are more likely to elicit a curling lip than the subject of the Ogre of Redmond, “Micro$oft.”

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