the stinkin' blog

HP, Intel, and Yahoo today announced they were forming a consortium aimed at performing research on cloud computing. This initiative is part of HP’s Shane Robison’s view of “Everything as a Service” which is quite the interesting concept.

Personally, I think we are a little ways off from the singularity he is predicting where everything I use talks to everything else I use and they all think like I think, but the uses are enormous. The one drawback is that if “my cloud” is doing all of my thinking what is left for me to do? Will that make me more productive and allow me to focus on the task at hand? Or will it simply make us all Alzheimer’s patients?

Food for thought.

On the Datamation blog our friend, Adrian has a dilemma. He wonders how “Will a $19.99 Ubuntu Succeed Where the Free Version Hasn’t?” But really who says it would?

Let’s get a short lesson in routes to market. You see Ubuntu is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). It just so happens that Canonical has added to the FOSS model by never charging for anything Ubuntu. Canonical is a for-profit venture, however. What Canonical is doing is finding other routes to market where it can build a revenue stream. I will say that $20 will probably not cover much since the box, printing of manuals, pressing of DVDs and shipping probably eats up most of that, but that is not the point here. The idea behind this route is more of a marketing ploy than one of profit. You see if people see it in Best Buy then, by golly, it must be worthy of $20.

For some reason Adrian digresses a bit from his headline. Not sure why, but he feels like Ubuntu (or maybe all Linux distributions) cannot be operated by the normal human being. But really can anyone operate or fix Windows? All they ever do is…reboot…uh oh that didn’t fix it….re-install. So what is different in any other OS?

I did not look at the date, but Adrian seems to be stuck in the 1990’s with his argument. Instead of bashing Canonical for trying to get Ubuntu further out into the masses, let’s bash someone else for charging too much for trash! Nah. Let’s just all go out and contribute to Canonical by buying the $20 copies of Ubuntu from Best Buy. They are doing a bang up job at promoting Open Source, communities in general, and living life as a good corporate citizen.

Ok so I find TwitterLocal and as you see have it nailed down to 1 mile from Tampa, FL, yet I do not show up in the stats. What the? How the heck does this api pull it’s info? Not that I want to be listed, but come on. Also it shows time in zulu time? Hmmm.

Something is amiss at the circle k, my friends.