I am a huge fan of Top Gear on the BBC. There is something about that show that makes you want to watch it. Kelly even likes to watch it and she normally hates car shows. There is a test driver on there they call “THE STIG” and no one knows who it is. He is always seen in a white racing outfit and the identity of The Stig is not know. We all found out who the first Stig was after he was killed off, but the new Stig is just a mystery, until now.
I am about to tell you who The Stig is so hang on.
So I got my session evals from COMMON. I didn’t do all that bad, but one comment made me laugh and sad. First it was my first year giving everything but, Do You Ubuntu? So all this material is stuff I know just need to work on the delivery, hey cut me some slack!
This comment was from my Shell Scripting Session:
“This session was a waste of time. The instructor is an embarrassment to IBM!”
My Comments: I didn’t that I did so bad I embarrassed IBM, good lord, do you think they know I am an embarrassment. The joke here is I don’t work for IBM and the last time I was even remotely connected to the was when I was a contractor in 1998. While I have been an embarrassment to many people in my life I didn’t know I stunk so bad as to offend a company that has nothing to do with me, and for that matter I am probably an embarrassment to Blogging too….
Thanks for the comments. Shell Scripting while important is not my best session, yet it got one of the nastiest comments and some of the better scores, hell the session I thought I knocked out of the park got crappy reviews. The Bloggers session was “average”. Lordy lordy we are in trouble.
I also got some other more useful and correct comments like:
“David is a great speaker and knowledgeable. “ - WOW thanks!
“Very simple and well shown - thanks! ” - That is nice
“Was very good. Was late and seemed a bit unprepared. Could be a great presenter. “ - In my defense I could not find the room? But at least I could be great!
“Found out about Web min - good tool!” - Webmin Rocks!
“We could have used more time, great handout.” - I miss being with you too!
So it’s not everyday that an IBM vendor gets nominated for advertising, and I know IBM might never fall into that category. It’s a cold hard fact of life. IBM has never attempted to really be bold in advertising. I digress. Bytware on the other hand has made is a bad habit to be bold, and to make advertising campaigns that “suck you in” and hold you captive until you reach the bloody end. They have gone the normal route and given away things over the years but the recent ads and videos on YouTube have been fun. NEWS
Link to System i News Blog Post
Please sign up on the Webbey Awards site and vote for them. I really want to see them win and it would only make other i based companies think about doing more to reach the world and not just the 7 customers they have now.
Also take a look at the i5Virus Game.
I can feel the downloads starting, the bit torrents are a buzzing and the next release is only a day away. I know this has nothing to do with the i or IBM but it’s important and needs to be talked about. The next version of Ubuntu is a day away! OSNews
“All in all, this release packs some interesting new features and frameworks, some of which should have been part of any Linux distribution three years ago. It is quite clearly a beta though, and definitely not ready yet to be labeled as a ‘long term support’ release. Let’s hope they take their time to polish the rough edges, and deliver a stable release. It is needed.”
Lets just hope!
And despite his excitement about the possibilities now that the operating system is done, Ubuntu Linux founder Mark Shuttleworth said he knows there’s a lot of competition in the enterprise marketplace.
“We’re modest about where we stand,” Shuttleworth said. “We know we’re a new entrant in that game and that we have a long way to go still.”
In addition to releasing the new server edition of the operating system, Ubuntu also will release Version 8.04 desktop Linux on Thursday. Both versions will be available for free download at Ubuntu’s Web site. Both are LTS releases and will be supported by Ubuntu’s commercial sponsor, Canonical Ltd., for five years, much longer than Ubuntu’s standard 18-month support cycle, he said.
“The LTS [does] appeal to those who are making larger scale deployments,” such as businesses, that want to replace their systems again for a long time,” he said. “I think this is our most significant release ever.”
If Mark Shearer would have told us that i V6R1 is buggy and crap but we are going to release it to you and it’s a work in progress, we as a community would have had his head on a stake!
For Microsoft to say to us that Vista is a work in progress is just ridiculous. It just shows you that they don’t have any respect for you the consumer or any pride in the product they deliver.
While I don’t think Vista is a work in progress and what they delivered is any better than Ubuntu Desktop, and can’t hold a candle to MacOSX. You see the problem is Microsoft is not a company that thinks you all out there are very smart. They assume you will buy a new PC and just love Vista. I am not sold on the idea, and was recently in a Best Buy where the sales “dude” tried to tell me how much he loved Vista and in a matter of minutes I had pointed out all of it’s problems as I saw it and he agreed with all of them, then I delivered the death blow, with all of these problems how can you call it a good product? He answered, “I ignore them.”
Ah, now we know what Microsoft users all have in common, instead of fixing the problems or improving them, they just ignore them. How very useful. If Ubuntu would have just ignore the issue or short coming with it’s desktop then where would we be? If Apple would have just kept putting out MacOS9 and never really made MacOSX where would we be? So when Microsoft creates a new OS and it’s plagued with problems the users simply love it because it’s new and flashy and the only thing most of them know how to install on the PC they just purchased and have learned to ignore all the problems. Interesting.
Don’t worry Mark we are not going to ignore anything in the new release of i or the new POWER hardware because as a community we expect more from IBM, but have always expected less from Microsoft.
It warms my heart to see IBM wanting to try out Apple hardware and software internally. The same thing happens when I think about Lotus 8 and the new “office software” it comes with as alternatives it makes me all happy inside. See the day is coming when Microsoft is going to start having to cut jobs, and rethink it’s business units. They will announce “restructuring plans” and how they are going to change the way we think. I know it’s not this year but it’s coming. The day SONY buys the XBOX division, and Microsoft starts selling off divisions like Great Plains and other company’s they don’t serve them well. All because big IT is not moving to Vista. IT people hate Vista and it’s not worth the RISK to make that change. Microsoft knows this so they are trying to force everyone hand and when they do that companies like IBM look for alternatives. Maybe they will bring back OS/2? Maybe the world will move to Apple, or is Linux about to have a real sunrise in this arena?
Thanks Steve for saying what we all have been thinking…..Vista is crap and you put it out before it was fully cooked. To bad the junkies that work at Best Buy are all drinking the Windows Kool-Aid and refuse to cal Vista crap.
“Lotus on Linux is a secure email, scheduling, calendaring, and messaging platform. It’s a simple, easy and affordable way for small and mid-sized business to enjoy enterprise performance and scalability with the rock-solid reliability, security and simplicity of linux. All at a substantially lower cost with no compromise.”
Hello,
I am not one to bring by the Girl Scout cookies to your desk or ask people to sponsor me, my church or other things at work, but I think as Lotus people we all have a community bond that is both technical and personal. Yancy Lent, the owner of PlanetLotus.com, has posted a request of sorts and needs our help.
I hate it when kids get cancer, it’s just not fair. Kids should have to worry about bumps and scraps but not about who is going to donate bone marrow to them or if they are going to die. So if you feel so inclined please donate, if not I understand. Make sure to you end the amount in 8 to let the cancer fighting community that there is a Lotus Community behind them!
http://charity.planetlotus.org/
Also share this with anyone you think would want to help out. Someday soon I think we are going to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but the families it effects now need our help.
-Thanks,
David
I was just at COMMON in Nashville with Al as most of you were. This past Friday Al Barsa Jr. passed away. I had to read it a few times as I did not think it was right or maybe it was some other Al Barsa but in the LIST I found people talking about it. I would like to send out my heart felt condolences to the Barsa family, this must have come as a shock. Al did not look great at COMMON this year and had a band-aid over his right eye the entire time. Sad sad news.
Again I was in the airport today traveling and while there I did my standard poll, Intel/Windows based laptops vs. Macs.
After I was done total came to 25 Win PCs vs 18 Macs. I think the number of Macs are growning. On the other hand the number of iPhones and iPods is uncanny. It’s only a matter of time.
I did a few sessions at COMMON this year and there were more Macs in my sessions than in the past. Good to see.
So I am on the road and watching a special on Canada’s Oil Sands and now Colorado is looking at getting into the Oil Shale extraction business again. If you have every read the book, Atlas Shrugged then you have to wonder how much is made up and how much is true……I think it’s more true than we all know. Oh well Atlas is Shrugging now!
David | 
AIX on POWER, Davids Stuff, IBM, Linux on POWER, POWER Hardware, i on POWER | 
04 5th, 2008| 
No Comments »Trevor got me thinking about System i Addict and how it is very narrow and locks me into doing mostly i stuff, and I want to be more inclusive and I want to make sure we can all be addicts. I want POWER Addicts!
So I thunk and thunk and came up with Addict Army. Addict Navy didn’t sound right. I want to build a place to hang out and learn.
So what is Addict Army? It’s going to be a place that when done all of the POWER Addicts can hang out and have a love fest for everything POWER. I think it’s a step in the right direction and I will continue to blog on all things Addict.
We are going to have shirts, and other stuff you can buy to show your addict colors. I am going to take that money and put it all right back into the web site & other things. I have big dreams that this will all be something I can always give back to you the Addict Army. Experts in the industry blogging in their own blogs and trying to get more information and stuff for all of us. I am excited and it’s late so I will wrap it up.
Nothing says you are moving forward like talking about VM. And no one not even Sun can hold a candle to what IBM can do in the virtualization space much less tell anyone they have a better product. I know that for fact.
IBM’s partitioning is tested and true and was on the Mainframe S/390 long before it every saw the light of day on any Sun platform. HPUX isn’t even in the same zip code right now either.
VMWare is a player in the market and while VMware is doing neat things, IBM beat them to the punch long ago when you could partition up a single pSeries or iSeries server into many server without much thought, only no one was calling it VM at the time.
Now with the platform, POWER, VM on Power is real and well over 10 years old not to mention all the years before that on the S/390 and before. IBM this week really put things into high gear with PowerVM and the logo is spiffy too.
IBM hs also released a new logo for AIX on Power and like Linux I wanted to make sure you saw it as well. It’s just impressive.
There are a new set of logos with a new set up web sites. I want to make sure you get an image and a Link to the new places.
I am at the Opryland Hotel this week and was out for a little dinner and guess who was a few tables over, Gene Simmons. I had seen him earlier in the day but thought he was too short to be Gene, but come to find out it was him, he is the same size as me, about 5′11″. Just a plain old dude.
As a kid he looked 9 feet tall. No one would leave him alone either. I think it’s kind of rude. We made eye contact but that was about it. I just treated him like anyone esle in there and noded. He had been bugged enought.
At what point does someone like Gene tell everyone to leave them alone. I thought about it all evening. I would hate to be hounded by people every minute of the day.
If I would have had a chance to talk to him I would have thanked him for all the fun I once had dressing up as KISS with my brother, Jonathan and Matt Jones. I think about that all the time. Matt was always the Kitty!
I don’t get to talk to Scott as much as I would like but I get to hear about Scott plenty. He is one of the nicest people I know. He is alwasy wiling to help and he comes to COMMON for the people. He is here to help. Chris Maxcer got a chance to talk with him and this is what Scott said.
Thanks Scott for what you do. You a very kind person to give as much as you do. The community moves forward because you share what you know.
David | AIX on POWER, COMMON, IBM, Linux, Linux on POWER, POWER Hardware, System i, System i News, i on POWER | 04 2nd, 2008| 3 Comments »
Since I started in this career path in 1990 I was constantly told by “others” the AS/400 is dead, then the iSeries is dead, after that the System i is dead. So now it’s dead right?
Wrong.
It’s larger than all the other systems in it’s space.Today during the Town Hall Meeting at COMMON, Mark Shearer released a gigantic can of industrial sized whoop ass on the competition. I know I have said it before and I meant it but this is the right move at the right time. The System p and System i become POWER. The i5/OS has become i, yeap just i. See it’s simple.
Mark showed a slide that was one of my favorites, where is showed IBM Power trending up while HP and SUN were both trending down and not even close to the number of installations or server IBM had. This gap is going to grow wider now and anyone thinking of moving off the i to Sun or HP should be sent home and consider a new line of work. IBM is the owner of the midrange space and now with a entry level server and a blade that runs any of three OSes, i, AIX, and Linux is just way to powerful a statement for the Solaris and HPUX people to ignore.
also showed off the Power blades for the “S” Blade Center. The idea some 18 years ago of running a i on a card about the size of an old SPD card or laptop was a silly thought. Now if I wanted to put my Websphere AIX server, my JD Edwards i server and my Linux File and print server all in one foot print with disk I can and I can do it with POWER. So what about Windows? You can place intel based bladed in the “S” and run it there too, right next to the i, AIX, and Linux.
What does David think about this move?
We now have a name that can work for the OS/400, i5/OS and it’s i, just i and it works for me. The i is for buisness logo is awesome. All the new logos are awesome and very nVidia like. I have been in the loop with IBM and nothing they have told me about today has made me think negative things at all. These changes are all what most of the forward thinking people in the community have been thinking all along.
As I get more details I will share them, the event was worth the price of admission. I am a proud member of the i community and today was what most people call an industry earthquake. IBM took it’s most powerful assets and leveraged them into POWER!
We hop to see many many more combined advertising and educational activities in the future, while IBM promised it I still don’t know if they have a plan. This was all very fuzzy and very PC at the same time. I would have liked to have seen a plan for advertising, and after years of being blasted for not doing much you would have thought they would have shown up with a marketing plan. That would be my only comment about the new release.
Lastly someone at IBM needs to take the i OS and find all the places where it says AS/400, OS/400, iSeries, System i, or anything other than POWER or i to remove it. The i needs a clean up.
IBM also released what has to be some of the best looking logos to date and I will post them all soon.
Thanks IBM for a great COMMON!
Sorry Ken no Video Card, but I can tell you this is way better!
So the TOWN HALL MEETING they usually have on Sunday is today. I will post an update ASAP if anything comes out of this meeting. I have a feeling that because of the timing, in that they changed the date and bumped sessions to do it there is going to be significant information.