If You Live Your Life Based On Facts....

Below is my /etc/motd on my Solaris 10 Toshiba notebook.

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in
numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it,
when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager
and unsatisfactory kind it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you
have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science.

William Thomson, Lord Kelvin

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.

This video at YouTube is a must watch if you believe,as I do, in the importance of quantifying challenges. If you want to watch the narrated version, go to this video.

Sunset: May 4th, 2009 was my 22nd Anniversary at Sun....

I started 22 years ago on - May 4th, 1987 for Sun Microsystems. Back then I was young, 27 years old, no kids. In four weeks I am old, I turn 50. Julie and I have three sons - John a Junior at VT, Michael a Senior at Broad Run who will be at VT next year with his brother and Tim an Freshman at Broad Run High School. My oldest son John is Campus Ambassador for Sun and President of the ACM at VT - so I kept Sun in the family.

Chances are extremely, extremely low that I will celebrate a 23rd anniversary with Sun Microsystems as Sun will likely be just a memory a year from now - much like Burroughs, DEC, Apollo, Data General, Sperry Univac and countless other computer companies that either acquired, merged or simply went belly up.....

The photo above I took on our 25th Anniversary last year when we spent a month in Europe with a 12 day cruise in the middle.

The Right Way To Think About Open Source

"There are two types of users - those who are ready to spend a lot of time in order to save money, and those who are ready to spend a lot of money in order to save time.”

- Mårten Mickos, CEO MySQL

This captures the true essence of the two poles of open source. I would say that most individuals are not on the extreme ends, but are someplace in the middle. Open source is a continuum. The definition of open source 25+ years ago was Bill Joy sending around BSD tapes of the source. Open source continues to evolve. Those who think open source simply means, "this is how we do our development" are short-changing what is really occurring. For those who are heading out to JavaONE, I would strongly encourage you to swing by the Moscone Center on Monday the 5th to truly see what is going on in open source by attending CommunityOne.