SugarCRM succeeding using open source as a business model

Proof that OSS can be monetized: here's TFA.

Turn off those automatic updates...

because Microsoft WGA is broke! Doing an update before the problem is solved could invalidate your legitimate copy of Windows.

I would poke more fun at this, but seeing as how I only run windows at the moment (on my work machine and my sole personal laptop... I own no desktops atm), I really can't jeer at this too much.

Crunchtime

The irony of the last post is that taking my work and everyday life seriously and not partying hard is precisely what got me to this point in my life. And in order to sustain my pattern of upward mobility, and by upward mobility I don't necessarily mean monetary status, I'm going to have to keep it up.

So here's the background - I've got to finish work and writing on a thesis if I want to complete my Master's degree. The thesis is the only requirement I have left. My original goal for completion was May of '07, which obviously didn't happen. Now, this Summer hasn't been the most productive season for performing research work and I've spun wheels the entire time. Basically, I keep tweaking and adding to my little API to work with the Netflix Prize dataset, which one day I'll release to the public as an OSS library once the degree is finished. The work I've been doing to my API/code should, in theory, make experimenting with the dataset easier. The problem is that I've been doing all sorts of tweaking and no sort of experimenting.

Now it doesn't help that I've been working full-time jobs for nearly the entire time I've been working on the thesis (the lone exception was about 2 weeks I spent at my parents' new house helping my Pops with odds and ends). Chances are strong I will probably continue to work full-time too. But, I don't want to be in the business of making excuses. So now it's mid/late August and I've got roughly 2-3 months to wrap this thing up and get something near final written up.

So with that said, I probably won't be very accessible for a while, at least until I get near a finishing point. Instead, I'll be throwing down the coffee and getting my butt in gear to finish this thing and make a contribution to research... and obtain a Master's degree :)

Working too much

Great little opinion/blog over at c|net on working too much.

Flash Sucks?

According to this guy, flash sucks because it's apparently a usability problem for users. He may have listed other reasons, but I don't know what they are because I stopped reading after the second paragraph:

The ironic thing about Flash is that its use is so frequently self-defeating. Flash is often used in an attempt to make sites more user friendly. But replacing familiar browser components with custom Flash garbage only hurts usability. Consistency is imperative for a UI — users learn how to do something once, and can apply that knowledge in tons of places. But with Flash, overzealous designers try to “fix” what they see as bad interface models by creating custom Flash crap. This sucks.

Hmmm... I wonder if this guy has ever used Youtube. You know that INSANELY popular video website that is easier to use than automatic car door locks? And guess what, the video player Youtube uses is built on Flash! The problem here isn't the technology, the problem is the implementation of said technology. Your random movie promotion website might get extremely obnoxious with their use of Flash, but that doesn't make it a technology that "sucks".

August is now officially my favorite month of the year

Two Reasons:

1. Football season is beginning - teams are in training camp and the anticipation is mounting
2. I no longer have to attend training camp
   

Does Wired pay attention to research?

Hey Wired, you mentioned that you want social networks to be open to the greater web, solving the problems of the content found within large social networks being closed to the rest of net (MySpace and Facebook, in particular), right? So how on earth could you write that article and not even consider, let alone make mention of, the Semantic Web as one of way doing it? It's simple... the web is not going to be able to establish the complex and open relationships Wired is so quixotic about without an implementation of the contents of the Semantic Web. I find it foolish to even imagine such a thing be widespread, and usable to general public without it.

California's Secretary of State takes it to voting machines

Here's a summary from the NYT.

Basically, the Secretary of State of California, Debra Bowen, had some Cal-Berkley security researchers go to town on the voting machines being produced by the top three electronic voting machine vendors and every single one was cracked, and very easily.

It's really simple if you ask me... voting machines are completely unreliable and so amazing vulnerable right now to being attacked to rig our elections. We need a paper trail as part of electronic voting machines so that our elections can not be completely stolen. Here's a bill currently sitting in Congress that may actually address this.

Southern California

This past weekend, my friend Kristin came in to town. We rented a car and took off down Highway 1 south and drove all the way from Santa Cruz to Los Angeles on Highway 1. For some reason, all of my friends who have never visited California think of it as nothing but sunny beaches and bikini babes, etc. etc. But driving Highway 1 south of Santa Cruz was anything but sandy beaches. It basically rivaled, and I dare say exceeded, the Blue Ridge parkway in terms of its beauty.

We stuck around for a night in Northern L.A. and drove around Beverly Hills, Bel Air, and Hollywood for a morning - enough to say we've been and have seen what it's all about. We were essentially being tourists. We then took off to Santa Barbara for the rest of the weekend and did some major relaxing and ate some great Mexican and Indian food, as well as drinking lots of really good coffee. Santa Barbara was by far one of the coolest towns I've ever visited. Extremely clean and relaxed downtown, sits on the beach, lots of great little restaurants, and not very crowded at all.

I may have some pictures soon. Of course, I still live in the stone age and use disposable cameras for all my pictures, so you'll have to wait until I finish the roll and then go get all of them developed. One day I may invest in a digital camera just for this purpose... or not :)