Jack Messman kicked off the conference keynote by indicating that
Brainshare doesn’t do Windows.  They have pushed that all of the
PCs around the conference are running SuSE Linux Distributions.

As he is going through the “Promises made, promises kept” he is
indicating that they are offering “Flexibility and Choice” …
“Customer Focused” …  “Linux in the Enterprise”.  He is
emphasizing the value of Ximiam and SuSE.  He is also emphasizing
the support that Novell intends to provide to customers – Support,
Consulting, Certification, and Training.  He indicated there are
800 training partners.  Novell is pushing to become *the* “trusted
support partner, 24×7, for Linux”.

Security is the next place that Jack is talking about.  Promoting
Red Carpet Enterprise as a solution for systems management and
maintenance.  He even indicated that if your systems were attacked
and wiped out, Red Carpet can re-image.  What?  I thought it
was all so secure …  😉

Liability and Indemnification … Novell will provide this with
contracts.  I was impressed that Jack chose not to spend much time
on this, nor even mention the SCO name.

Migrating to Linux … Novell will provide the process to make this
simple and possible.  They are pushing a “Getting Started”
promotion to begin this migration.  He then moved to the “roadmap”
… They are going to accelerate the release of NetWare v7.0 … by
releasing Open Enterprise Server … a product that will include both
kernels.  He continues to emphasize Novell’s “we have answers”
position.  He then moved through the various product lines …
their application development stuff (good move … they are adopting
Eclipse!) … the directory products … open source contributions of
iFolder and YaST.  It seems to me that they are open sourcing YaST
with the new emphasis on Red Carpet.  iFolder in Open Source will
be cool … I’ll look forward to checking out the project.  I saw
a session where they indicated they were rewriting in C#/Mono …

New partner announcements – PartnerNet Program now consists of Solution
Providers, Technology Partners, and Training Partners.  The focus
on these Partners will be: Linux, Secure Identity Management, Resource
Management, and Web Services. 

I came across this announcement the other day, and it really bothered
me at how misleading this information is.  Even the title of the
article starts off with mild misinformation.  It ought to say
“Macromedia to test Wine support” … or even “Macromedia to test
UNIX-compatible support”.  It seems that few people really
understand what *is* Linux, and what is *not* Linux.

Macromedia to test Linux support
Speaking at FlashForward, an annual
conference for developers who work with Macromedia’s Flash format, Chief
Software Architect Kevin Lynch said the company would begin soon by offering
optimizations to allow Flash MX, its main set of tools for creating Flash
content, to work smoothly with Wine, an emulation program that allows Windows
programs to run on a Linux PC. Depending on developer interest, the next step
would be to produce Linux-native versions of Flash MX and other applications.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5170061.html

What is misleading is that Macromedia is not writing anything to Linux
per se … but instead writing code optimized to be compatible with Wine.  What is Wine?  Why
don’t we peek at the Wine web site where they define themselves:  “Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix.”

So the article even further blurs the “truth” when it says that Wine
has something to do with a “Linux PC”.  It really ought to
indicate that Wine allows Windows programs to run on UNIX and
UNIX-compatible operating systems.  Linux is simply a
UNIX-compatible kernel … coupled with a lot of UNIX-compatible tools
and applications.  Wine works with Linux because Linux provides
UNIX-compatibility.  Macromedia tools will work with Linux because
Wine works with UNIX-compatible operating systems.

As for the native versions of
these products, Macromedia would be far smarter to write to POSIX APIs,
or stay with UNIX-compatibility.  Why cut out FreeBSD, or Solaris
… or any of the other flavors of UNIX?

Round Four with Novell Complete!
So I am now done with Round Four at Novell. I have been working at Novell for the last year, and have enjoyed it tremendously. I returned this last time to complete a number of outstanding issues from the past, and to pursue from possibilities that I saw. I also was committed that I would leave Novell this time under completely different circumstances, and I have!

This time, I offered to be layed-off when it became obvious that my projects were not going to be funded and supported for success. There is nothing wrong with this … it’s just a choice of the current executive team and leadership, based on the type of company they are looking to create.

This break is going to give me a chance to get caught up on reading, writing, and a number of other things I want to get complete! Life is grand! 😉

How to create pop-up windows in HTML with no menus or toolbars …
My co-worker Scott Villinski found this after we had talked about it the other day. I have wanted to create some pop-up browser windows, but not have any menus or toolbars in them. Here it is!

Todd and Cheryl … expecting any moment …
Yep … and you can check it out at their web site: Project Jellybean

We are all anxious to know when the big moment comes!

Novell’s Portal Services supports RSS
This morning I read an e-mail from Scott Villinski where I learned that Novell’s Portal Services already has a gadget that supports RSS format news. So I am posting this for Scott, and I have a feeling that he is going to be using Radio pretty soon to keep an up to date news feed on his web site at home. He was already installing portal services there …

Demo for Jesse …
This is a post that I did as the last one of the night … just so that Jesse could see how cool this is. I am entering this locally on my laptop, and then clicking the “Post & Publish” button … and bam … my weblog is updated on my web site …

Now I just have to edit my base web page to add the frame that I want … 😉