24 May 2002
Fri, 24 May 2002
Seize the day - Barney Kessel needs help
I often wonder, if the music business were the utopia that many of us dream about in which artists received benefits directly via a micro payment scheme or the like, wouldn't tragedies like this be a lot easier to deal with? In other words, a simple hyperlink could present the artist's music, visitors are moved to visit the link by his terminal cancer story; maybe you're someone who would never have heard his record had he not wound up in this situation, but you listened and found a bit of humanity in those records, and in doing so his final days were made just a little easier by the payment that he received as a result. I've watched too many people find this fate and it pains me.
Legendary Jazz Guitarist, Barney Kessel Needs Your Help [eJazzNews.com]
Posted at: 08:12 | permalink
BEA, J2EE, open source
Rebelutionary says:
"BEA Systems made a fortune selling software to the elite. Now it's stealing a page from Microsoft: evangelizing to the geeky masses."
I think it's great that BEA has realised that they need to get more love from J2EE developers. Every J2EE developer I know who uses BEA hates it - their managers chose it not them (95% of them would rather choose Orion).
That said, I personally think BEA is going the wrong way in evangelising themselves. VB-like, ultra-easy-to-use development environments are one thing but nowhere near the whole picture. (As an aside, Weblogic Workshop doesn't seem close to VB in functionality from what I can see - it's basically only for web services).
If I were running BEA I'd start a division to contribute to Open Source Java projects. That's the sort of thing that gets developers on your side, and also generates useful code for yourselves. Red Hat gets a lot of mileage out of this, Apple is starting to be appreciated by the Open Source community and even Sun is not so hated anymore because of its contributions to Gnome and StarOffice.
So why does BEA seem to hate Open Source? For that matter, are there any J2EE vendors who contribute to Open Source? (Apart from JBoss - they don't count!)
The answer to that final question is complicated, but it has a lot to do with Sun's J2EE licensing which seemingly works against open source projects, notably enhydra and jboss (the latter of which I'm an an enthusiastic supporter, having suffered with BEA at the hands of some ill-headed executives). See this article for more details.
Posted at: 07:54 | permalink
Research confirms the fine line between genius and madness
STANFORD RESEARCHERS ESTABLISH LINK BETWEEN CREATIVE GENIUS AND MENTAL ILLNESS [( blogdex : recent )]
Posted at: 06:33 | permalink
Macrohard must end
Washtech.com Open-Source Fight Flares At Pentagon [( blogdex : recent )]
Posted at: 06:30 | permalink
Rebelutionary blogs Evan Williams in Fast Company
Niki just pointed me to this article The Revolution Will Be Webified. Good stuff. [rebelutionary]
Posted at: 06:26 | permalink
