Mark Hinkles Blog: Linux, Open Source, Free Culture, and more

Associated Press - May 16, 2008: A Brown University student says she&# 8217;s been suspended for hitting a New York Times columnist with a pie during an Earth Day speech. Margaree Little was one of two people who heaved green whipped pies at Thomas Friedman because they disagree with his brand of e nvironment alism. Little has refused to identify the [...]

It seems a given that mobile social networking is going to be “the next big t hing” ;, but squinting at tiny text is still a pain on to day’ s phones. To deal with this issue, Blabnote, a British startup that is currently in private beta, has created what may be the wor ld’s first R 20;vocal social net work.̶ 1; [...]

Fortran IF (A-B) 20,20,1010 A = B20 CONTINUE Fortran IV IF (A .LE. B) GO TO 30 A = B30 CONTINUE Algol 60 if a > b then begin a := b;end PL/I IF A > B THEN DO; A = B;END; BCPL IF a > b DO $( a := b$) C if (a > b) { a = b;} Algol 68 if a > b then a := bfi Python if a > b: a = b There are lots of ways to write an if statement. One of the worst was Fortran's arithmetic if statement, which jumped to one of three line numbers depen

The quiet market town of Banbury, O xfordshire in England is not a place you would expect to see in the news very often. But, according to the Banbury Guardian, a bingo cashier in the town&# 8217;s Gala bingo hall was jailed this week for stealing a pproximate ly $32,000 from her employer. Apparently , the bingo hall uses a [...]

I recently completed work on an internal S ilverlight app. The project was a blast ? it really reminded me of how coding could be fun again . One of the surprising gaps I found in S liverlight was the inability to get the current user context (e.g. dete rmine...(r ead more)

This morning, we've had two unconf erence sessions, here at the Berkman tenth anni versary co nference. And I have to say, as far as I can tell, it's going really well. The participan ts (formerly known as attendees) filled in the grid of times and places with a set of great topics, ranging ...

In this next entry in my peer networking discussion series, I talk about some of the reasons why just having a pure peer network isn't good enough for today's modern apps - we need more.

Earlier today I attended a presentati on by Bernt Wahl on the work he’s doing specifying neighborho od geodata. A

I bought my camera from Amazon (a Canon SD900) years ago and when they launched the Eye-Fi based on my past buying pre ferences they sent me a special offer for the Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card. Otherwise I would never have found this very cool little device. The Eye-Fi is a SD Card and Wi-Fi combo [... ]SHARETHIS .addEntry( { title: "Review: Eye-Fi Wireless SD Card", url: "http ://sociali zedsoftwar e.com/2008 /05/16/rev iew-eye-fi -wireless- sd-card/" });

More on the topic of Java Object Per sistence ...I have this time interviewe d the following ODBMS.ORG experts Jose Blakeley ( Microsoft) , Rick Cattell (Sun Micro systems), William Cook (Univ ersity of Texas at Austin), Robert Green (Versant) , and Alan Santos (Pr ogress).Th e panel addressed the ever open issue of the impedance mismatch, a problem which has existed ever since computers were used to persist ently store data - in file systems or database management systems -, and where no fully sati

Novalys is once again holding their annual survey of PowerBuild er users. Once you complete the survey, yo u’ll be allowed to access the results of the survey for the last several ye ars.Origin al Entry

What are you doing now? There's no words there!!! Fill in the approp riate four letter word.

OK, some women are  concerned about sexism in IT.  Here&rsquo ;s what I think. First, I do not like when people curse in public .  Not just because that there are women in the audience, but it’s just plain wrong.Seco nd, there is v

Sun has launched the "Student Reviews Contest": it is reserved to students that are regularly enrolled in an educ ational institute and would like to write a review about Open Solaris or NetBeans 6.1. The prizes are small ($250 grand prize and...

and much to my surprise, the public beta of the flash player 10 is out.  I knew this would be coming before too long, but didnt realize that it would be out so qui ckly.  ; This new version is filled with lots of new features aimed at allowing

Congratula tions ... Sybase 4; IQ analytics server has set a new Guinness World Reco rd™ by ...

Guiness World Record - Sybase and Sun - a PetaByte sized data warehouse. Yes - size DOES matter.

Lots of new toys to play with. You can find all of the informatio n on labs.

I’m giving a p resentatio n on “The Politics of Metrics ” in Rochester on May 15th, for a seminar being organized by the IT Metrics and Produc tivity Institute; it’s an updated version of the presen tation I gave in Orlando a month or two ago. You should attend in person, if possible, so you can not only hear my [...]

Join us Aug. 4 ? 8 at the Mandalay Bay Resort &Casino in Las Vegas, NV... for the 10th Annual Sybase User Training and Solutions Conference .

I recently picked up Ron Paul&# 8217;s “The Revolution : A Manife sto” . I’ve made my way through the first two chapters which do a great job of simply explaining the problems with our g overnment. A few of the highlights include, for example, the 1996 election won by the Republican party: The Contract with America was typical [...]

This years JavaOne was a not to be missed event. Here are my views on how the conference has changed.

New APIs, new algorithms and new pr ogramming language. Want more can a geek ask for?

As I write the last of my event summary reports and follow up action items, I am now officially putting a bow on the TIBCO user conference (TUCON 2008) What a madhouse. I was acco untable for the TIBCO Analyst Summit (TIBCO?s first ever), two days of the Business O ptimizatio n track of presentati ons (combining [...]

At the end of this week, I will no longer be employed by BEA Systems. It has been a great 4 years working at BEA, and u ndoubtedly the highlight of my career thus far. I have enjoyed the opport unity to write for the BEA developer community, and to lead Tooling at BEA these last 3 years.