Who's Your Data? http://www.whosyourdata.org/ en Copyright 2008 Tue, 25 Sep 2007 14:31:31 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=3.2 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Why It is what it is At DLT we have a chief scheduler for all professional service and consulting projects. We call him “The Cleaner” after The Harvey Keitel character, “The Wolf” in the movie Pulp Fiction.

]]> http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/09/why_it_is_what_it_is.html http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/09/why_it_is_what_it_is.html Matt Hamilton Tue, 25 Sep 2007 14:31:31 -0500 No Passion How come nobody is cursing or throwing things?

I participated in a throw down between Microsoft, UNIX (variety Solaris) and open source proponents (me) for a customer in DC last month. It was a very young crowd except for yours truly. Young and disturbingly nice.

]]> http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/09/no_passion.html http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/09/no_passion.html Matt Hamilton Thu, 13 Sep 2007 17:07:07 -0500 Brother Can You Paradigm A customer asked me to send our very best consultant to his site to troubleshoot a software problem.

]]> http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/08/brother_can_you_paradigm.html http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/08/brother_can_you_paradigm.html Matt Hamilton Fri, 31 Aug 2007 11:40:54 -0500 He Hate Me When I was finshed reading Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen I was left with a single thought…he hate me.

]]> http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/08/he_hate_me.html http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/08/he_hate_me.html Matt Hamilton Tue, 28 Aug 2007 16:36:21 -0500 OpenOffice Doesn’t Suck Anymore! Great news for us open sorcerers…OpenOffice is OK now!

I used this world beater when it was StarOffice. Somebody in Germany in the mid-1980s thought MS Office needed some open source competition. It was acquired by Sun Microsystems during the summer of 1999 and StarOffice 5.2 was released in June of 2000. I used it for the first time in July of 2000. It was awful.

]]> http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/08/openoffice_doesnt_suck_anymore.html http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/08/openoffice_doesnt_suck_anymore.html Matt Hamilton Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:39:01 -0500 How I Spent My Summer Vacation We went to Breckenridge and did a lot of family activities in the mountains. I was struck by how non-pervasive…non-universal…well, there are lots of places that still don’t use new-fangled, computer based, automated technology. It’s fun to work with the largest IT enterprises in the world every day, but it is also fun to see how the common folk do things.

]]> http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/08/how_i_spent_my_summer_vacation.html http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/08/how_i_spent_my_summer_vacation.html Matt Hamilton Tue, 14 Aug 2007 18:11:00 -0500 What Would Bill Gates Do? This morning I was talking to a customer about an obscure set of protocols and routines known as an Application Program Interface (API).

]]> http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/07/what_would_bill_gates_do.html http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/07/what_would_bill_gates_do.html Matt Hamilton Thu, 05 Jul 2007 12:21:35 -0500 Wish List A customer wants to backup, replicate, de-dupe and encrypt their data without a significant performance hit. They also want seamless storage management, volume management, network management and endpoint security.

]]> http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/06/wish_list.html http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/06/wish_list.html Matt Hamilton Mon, 25 Jun 2007 11:16:25 -0500 Right back at you Here are my answers and comments to some questions and comments you have posted online in response to various weblogs.

]]> http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/06/right_back_at_you.html http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/06/right_back_at_you.html Matt Hamilton Fri, 08 Jun 2007 12:23:21 -0500 Things to do in Newport Beach when you’re done Pete Smith and I finished up early at a customer site this week in Newport Beach, CA. It seemed right to hit the Corona Mexicano Bar (& Grill we heard). It was happy hour. We were thirsty. The following is what you talk about at 6pm on a Tuesday night in Newport Beach when you’re done.

]]> http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/06/things_to_do_in_newport_beach.html http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/06/things_to_do_in_newport_beach.html Matt Hamilton Wed, 06 Jun 2007 17:10:34 -0500 A nod is as good as a wink to a blind man A customer asked me yesterday what I thought of VMWare. I do not get paid for smart aleck answers, unless you count this blog and my work on radio for whosyourdata.

]]> http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/05/a_nod_is_as_good_as_a_wink_to.html http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/05/a_nod_is_as_good_as_a_wink_to.html Matt Hamilton Mon, 21 May 2007 14:19:04 -0500 First Life, Second Chance This blog is about a religious conversion. A few weeks ago I experienced the wonders of Second Life @ www.secondlife.com. I would now like to be the first blogger in the universe to comment on the experience (trust me; no one has blogged this yet).

]]> http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/05/first_life_second_chance.html http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/05/first_life_second_chance.html Matt Hamilton Mon, 14 May 2007 16:59:31 -0500 Are You Opinionated? I have had the opportunity to work in several different types of environments in my career. I started out working for the U.S. Congress at a support agency called the Office of Technology Assessment, or OTA for short. And have since worked for a Wall Street bank, for a small con-sulting company at a multinational technology company and at Emu Software, the corporate sponsor of the open source system console project, NetDirector, that I Co-Founded in 2003. This diversity provides me with a perspective on the degree of “opinionatedness” that people have in different industries. No where, in my experience, are people even half as opinionated as they are in open source.

]]> http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/05/are_you_opinionated.html http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/05/are_you_opinionated.html Greg Wallace Mon, 14 May 2007 11:18:59 -0500 The Best Tech Show in the World This morning a colleague called and asked if I thought the upcoming Symantec Vision conference in Las Vegas was worth attending. I have been to six Vision conferences and I will be at this years as well. I gave my friend a resounding Yes. Symantec has so many products and so much technology on the table the conference is a great way to get up to speed on their offerings.

]]> http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/05/the_best_tech_show_in_the_worl.html http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/05/the_best_tech_show_in_the_worl.html Matt Hamilton Wed, 09 May 2007 14:25:30 -0500 Smart Cards, Coffee Cards I am staying at a Marriott hotel this week and I can’t find my customer loyalty card that earns me free nights and upgrades. What happened to the universal smart card? I went to a seminar in the 1980’s that promised it was just around the corner. I just looked around the corner…it aint there. Was it the civil libertarians who killed the smart card? Maybe I am confusing that with the electric car. Why would a civil libertarian care if there were electric cars? Supposedly the smart card will usher in the dreaded Big Brother Orwell thing. The problem with that argument… 1984 was a book. It’s not real. It never happened. The only freedom we have lost is convenience.

]]> http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/05/smart_cards_coffee_cards.html http://www.whosyourdata.org/2007/05/smart_cards_coffee_cards.html Matt Hamilton Fri, 04 May 2007 14:11:42 -0500