Koozie Notes

Gatorade and Icarus

I found a nice series of articles about the Icarus system developed at the University of Florida (who invented Gatorade). Icarus is made up of mostly Perl scripts with the backend database running MySQL.

THERE'S NO DEBATE ABOUT ICARUS' EFFECTIVENESS. Before it was turned on, there were as many as 3,500 simultaneous violators at any given time on the Gainesville campus, school officials say. On the day the switch was flipped, 1,500 violators were caught. There were only 19 second-time violators and no third-time violators. Purged of the digital cholesterol of media files, the network saw an 85 percent drop in uplink data volume.

-Chris

The Google Way

Chad Dickerson wrote an interesting article titled, "The Google Way," about a session given by Nelson Minar at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference.

As a general practice, Google also requires that its engineers spend 20 percent of their time working on personal technology projects unrelated to their primary projects.

I had the pleasure of discussing scripting languages over some cold beer with Nelson Minar one evening during Gnomdex 3.0. Let's just say I'm a big fan of Perl and Nelson like using Python. :-)

-Chris

Access and MySQL

I must say I'm really happy with MySQL, a SQL server released under the GPL. I recently had to combined around sixty (60) MS Access 97 databases containing the same 3 tables defs. Each database was running around 80-150 MBytes in size. I wrote some VBA code that would attach to each MDB file and run 3 append queries that would push the data into 3 tables on MySQL. After I was finished, the largest table had a little over 30 million records. Once again, I'm impressed with MySQL.

-Chris

Pepsi & iTunes

Today I found my first free song on a Pepsi bottle without cheating. I'm 1-1 so I better stop while I'm ahead.

-Chris

AT&T Trips Up SCO

Frank Hayes opines on the SCO vs IBM litigation. His piece refers to a 1985 document that AT&T put out that explains the confusing topic of who own derivative works based off the original AT&T Unix code base.

It was a copy of "$ echo," a newsletter published by AT&T in 1985 for its Unix licensees. In it, AT&T clarified what that derivative-works clause in the Unix license meant. (Apparently, there was confusion about it even then.)

AT&T said it wanted "to assure licensees that AT&T will claim no ownership in the software that they developed -- only the portion of the software developed by AT&T."

In other words, AT&T never intended for Unix licensees to give up ownership of code they added to their versions of Unix. That was never part of the deal. And the deal AT&T cut is the one SCO has to live with -- even 19 years later. That's how contracts work.

That sounds promising.

-Chris

High-Tech Tag

I wonder if Lockergome will provide nTags (RFID enabled badges) at Gnomedex this year. They look pretty slick.

For about the price of a meal, nTAGs multiply the effectiveness of your gathering, help your event run more smoothly, replace other costs, and capture valuable data on every aspect of your event.

Mike made a good point about convincing your employer to pay for your trip to Gnomedex. It would be an easier sell if the "3 day open bar" icon was removed from the main page.

-Chris

Hazardous Waste

David Margulius wrote a good piece on how discarded hardware can hurt you or your company.

Last month, Dell provided a "Drop-Off Day" in Austin where you could drop off any old computers, monitors, printers and etc. I have also donated old equipment to Goodwill.

Do make sure that you clean ALL DATA off your hard drives. Simply reformatting the drive will not suffice. I have used Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) disks to clean and wipe my drives. DBAN is a great tool provided at a great price ($0.00). DBAN also provides bootable CDROMs if your newer machine is missing a floppy drive.

-Chris

Eben Moglen Blasts SCO

I really loved reading "Now They Own It, Now They Don't: SCO Sues Novell to Stay Afloat" by Eben Moglen.

The SCO licensing campaign--which has been all bark and no bite since its introduction by way of threatening letters to the Fortune 1500 last summer--lost a wheel last month, and is now headed for the wall.

-Chris

Gnomedex in ????

Looks like the lockergnome crew headed by Chris Pirillo is about to announce details for the next Gnomedex. Stayed tuned. Thanks for the tip, Mike.

-Chris

Update: Pirillo hints at 3 day open bar.

My notes from Gnomedex 3.0 (JULY 2003). [Day1][Day2][Photos]

IBM vs SCO Hearing

Groklaw has the complete text of the < a href="http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20040209231214944">IBM vs SCO Hearing. A tad long, but a good read if you are interested in this sort of thing.

-Chris