Thanks for *everything*.
You will be missed.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
The Lawyers and Youtube
I noticed, going back to old posts, that many youtube links of music videos I had posted are no longer valid, due to copyright restrictions.
Now, I don't dispute the right of the respective record companies to ask for those videos to be removed from youtube, but I do find it puzzling. Why? Because almost all of those videos were created as promotional material designed to help sell records, and because the record companies allowed (and still allows) MTV to use them free of charge (i.e MTV doesn't have to pay residuals, etc...). The cost of making the videos has been amortized a long time ago.
You'd think that keeping a 20 year old video alive (eg B52's Deadbeat Club, for instance) would continue to keep the songs in peoples minds, resulting in record sales. They don't seem to get that this is free money and advertising for the record companies, because the records are essentially out of print, to use a publishing industry term.
Now, I don't dispute the right of the respective record companies to ask for those videos to be removed from youtube, but I do find it puzzling. Why? Because almost all of those videos were created as promotional material designed to help sell records, and because the record companies allowed (and still allows) MTV to use them free of charge (i.e MTV doesn't have to pay residuals, etc...). The cost of making the videos has been amortized a long time ago.
You'd think that keeping a 20 year old video alive (eg B52's Deadbeat Club, for instance) would continue to keep the songs in peoples minds, resulting in record sales. They don't seem to get that this is free money and advertising for the record companies, because the records are essentially out of print, to use a publishing industry term.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Oracle buys Sun...
I used to work at Sun, and while it has many of the qualities of a large company, a soft spot for that company remains in my heart. When I was growing up, Sun, DEC & Cray were the 3 companies I wanted to work for, since they all built products that put technology into the hands of the people who could use them, rather than the approach taken by IBM. And of the 3, Sun is the last to go.
The Oracle/Sun merger is probably the best fit available, although Oracle is a lot more like IBM, culturally, than people would like to admit. Still, over the last 10 years, Oracle has managed to survive the onslaught of open source and Microsoft with it's profits and pricing model intact, which is an amazing feat.
What the merger means is this: Oracle, like IBM, has over the last few years been moving more and more towards a model of selling turnkey Database systems, that includes the hardware and software, specifically using Linux clusters.
What the Sun acquisition does for them is give them a much broader and stronger systems base upon which to build that strategy. People forget that Sun used to be Oracle's main business partner before and during the dot-com boom, and Sun made billions of dollars selling large Sunfire boxes running Solaris/Oracle as back-ends to websites like Amazon. Moreover, having direct control of Solaris, ZFS and Java can only benefit Oracle.
For the Sun people, knowing that you're building systems primarily for Oracle will help bring a focus and purpose to systems design that I think has been lacking. If Sun innovates, and implements new features on their systems specifically designed to make Oracle installations easier to build, that in turn could spur external demand for their products.
There are a few questions that remain:
The Oracle/Sun merger is probably the best fit available, although Oracle is a lot more like IBM, culturally, than people would like to admit. Still, over the last 10 years, Oracle has managed to survive the onslaught of open source and Microsoft with it's profits and pricing model intact, which is an amazing feat.
What the merger means is this: Oracle, like IBM, has over the last few years been moving more and more towards a model of selling turnkey Database systems, that includes the hardware and software, specifically using Linux clusters.
What the Sun acquisition does for them is give them a much broader and stronger systems base upon which to build that strategy. People forget that Sun used to be Oracle's main business partner before and during the dot-com boom, and Sun made billions of dollars selling large Sunfire boxes running Solaris/Oracle as back-ends to websites like Amazon. Moreover, having direct control of Solaris, ZFS and Java can only benefit Oracle.
For the Sun people, knowing that you're building systems primarily for Oracle will help bring a focus and purpose to systems design that I think has been lacking. If Sun innovates, and implements new features on their systems specifically designed to make Oracle installations easier to build, that in turn could spur external demand for their products.
There are a few questions that remain:
- Will Sun operate as a semi autonomous entity outside of databases ?
- Will Oracle/Sun continue to service the general IT market
- Will Oracle/Sun continue their presence in HPC ?
- How much of the staff, specifically engineering, will Oracle retain ?
- Will the engineering direction at Sun change dramatically ?
Friday, April 10, 2009
Good Friday....whaaaa??
Since moving to the US, I've noticed that Americans really don't celebrate holidays, as such, but use them, instead, to punctuate shopping seasons. I mention this, because I woke up this morning and wondered to myself: "Isn't it Easter soon?", not noticing that today is in fact Good Friday, the start of the most important religious holiday in the Christian calendar.
In the UK and the rest of Europe, this is a long weekend, with both today and Monday as holidays, and there's usually a huge buildup. But, here, in the US, the stock market (and the banks, post office and other federal offices too) is closed, but other than that, unless you were paying attention, you could easily miss, as I did, all the signs of Easter.
And this comes to the fundamental bone I have to pick with the Rollers, who claim that this is a Christian country, and that Christmas needs to be saved, but yet do nothing wrt Easter. Now you might think, as an atheist, that I have no skin in this particular game. But you'd be mistaken, because culturally I am a Christian (1/2 Church of England, 1/2 Catholic), and even though I don't believe, I do take great comfort in the social constructs and traditions imposed on our western society over the years by the Church.
In the UK and the rest of Europe, this is a long weekend, with both today and Monday as holidays, and there's usually a huge buildup. But, here, in the US, the stock market (and the banks, post office and other federal offices too) is closed, but other than that, unless you were paying attention, you could easily miss, as I did, all the signs of Easter.
And this comes to the fundamental bone I have to pick with the Rollers, who claim that this is a Christian country, and that Christmas needs to be saved, but yet do nothing wrt Easter. Now you might think, as an atheist, that I have no skin in this particular game. But you'd be mistaken, because culturally I am a Christian (1/2 Church of England, 1/2 Catholic), and even though I don't believe, I do take great comfort in the social constructs and traditions imposed on our western society over the years by the Church.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
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