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oldpond's comments

oldpond | 6 years ago | on: IBM Closes Acquisition of Red Hat for $34B

My point is that IBM didn't invest in open source to improve it, they invested to take advantage of it. Open source software was still frowned on since "free" was a dirty word in that culture. We never sold it in our deals. The explosion of innovation and creativity created by the open source community never reached IBM. We just kept selling Websphere and Domino. I think it was 2008 before CENTOS started creeping into our solutions. IBM did not buy Redhat because they believe in Linux. They did it to buy market share.

oldpond | 6 years ago | on: IBM Closes Acquisition of Red Hat for $34B

I guess I should have said "When I was at IBM, the academy released a report, etc." No air quotes, required; I was there. I was on the open source community of practice core team at the time.

oldpond | 6 years ago | on: Fighting climate change may be cheaper and more beneficial than we think

I think we should place a royalty on the pipelines, not the pumps. Take 10% from everything that flows down the pipeline, and use that money to drive us into the clean energy age. Where else are we going to get the funds to fix this enormous problem?

The problem with using consumer taxes to fund these things is that the consumer has to consume the planet in order to save the planet. If I don't pay enviro-levy taxes at the cash register, my district can't afford waste removal. If I don't buy enough gasoline, we won't collect enough carbon tax to pay for these wetlands we need to build.

oldpond | 6 years ago | on: Fighting climate change may be cheaper and more beneficial than we think

Carbon tax is pure economic foolishness. Imagine there's one pipe with smoke coming out of it, and imagine there's another pipe with a lever. If you pull the lever, bags of money will come pouring out of the pipe. That's the carbon tax. The thinking is that the pipe with the smoke will stop belching, but it won't. There's no direct connection between the pipes. We HOPE drivers will drive less if the carbon tax hits their pocket book, but there is no guarantee. It's like changing the interest rate and hoping the economy will improve.

oldpond | 6 years ago | on: IBM Closes Acquisition of Red Hat for $34B

Not really. The IBM Academy reported that open source software was the single biggest threat to their business model, so they "invested" in Linux to keep their foot in the door. They've had mindshare at Apache and Redhat for almost 2 decades now. I don't think they'll make any money from that investment.

oldpond | 6 years ago | on: Why Recycling Doesn't Work

What about grinding it up into soil? They have developed techniques in British Columbia to grow fully mature forests in 10 years by laying down a mixture of soil and nutrients 6 feet deep and then planting seedlings very close together. The close competition causes the seedlings to grow faster.

Grind it up, soak it with nutrients and plant forests on it.

oldpond | 7 years ago | on: Open Distro for Elasticsearch

I find it very ironic that AWS is behind this. Whenever I buy books from Amazon I am amazed at their broken search engines. Just search a topic on Amazon and then try to sort the results. LOL.

oldpond | 7 years ago | on: Software Methodology: Why One Size Fits No One

"Software methodologies are all about handling risk." Not even close. Methodologies should about creating working software with a short feedback loop between customer and engineer. That old blue cool-aid about risk doesn't fly anymore.

oldpond | 7 years ago | on: Time to look beyond Oracle's JDK

I agree Java is dying, but so is .Net. Microsoft is trying it's best, but .Net Core is no where near as popular as .Net 3.5. (google trends). Embrace the Beam. :)

oldpond | 7 years ago | on: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

This happens to me all the time, and I'm in my 50's. I'll be lying in bed thinking about some topic, and my wife will poke me and say, "Turn over, you're snoring", and as far as I can tell I never fell asleep at all. It doesn't affect my rest as far as I can tell. I find it enjoyable.
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