Another Colorado School Tragedy

Our communities here in Colorado are dealing with the Platte Canyon High School tragedy the day after a gunman entered the Bailey High School and traumatized six female students, then shot 16 year old junior Emily Keyes who later died, then shot himself.

Bailey is a wonderful small community that's just past the foothills of Denver, about 40 minutes away from Columbine High School in Littleton / Jefferson County. I can't imagine this type of tragedy happening to this awesome little town. Why here? I'm so sorry for the kids that have to deal with this. I heard one story today about a girl that has been doing home school and just yesterday her family decided to allow here to go to public school. This was her first day in Public School!

My heart goes out to the family of Emily Keyes and the families of other students that have been affected by this senseless act. Also my thoughts and prayers are for those who were first responders such as the SWAT team and other team members, many who were also respondents to the Columbine High School tragedy!

Make sure we all tell our children and loved ones every day how much we appreciate and love them. You never know what will happen when you start your day. But let's not fear, but try harder to have a solid foundation of love and trust in our homes so our children will have confidence inspite of the ugly things that can happen. I believe this world is still full of wonder and we can find happiness and peace, but we have to take that concious effort which starts with each one of us in our homes.

God Bless


More Info

Happy Labor Day! How much less are you making?

Happy Labor Day! So... how much less are you making? Here is a map showing how far median income has dropped over the last six years. Look at Utah! Down 10 1/2 percent!

That's because of all the layed off Novell workers! ;-)



http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2006_09/009444.php

My new business plan...

I have to admit. Sometimes this business plan looks attractive!

Flexibility - key to success

A large portion of success is derived from flexibility. It is all very well to have principles, rules of behavior concerning right and wrong. But it is quite as essential to know when to forget as when to use them.

- Alice Foote MacDougall - Entrepreneur

10 Things you didn't know about Bill Gates

10 things you didn't know about Bill Gates

Bill Gates is the richest man in the world, but how much do you really know about the billionaire with the bad hairdo?

1 Gates was just 17 when he sold his first piece of software — for $4,000.

2 He went to Harvard, but dropped out during his junior year.

3 He once liked all-night poker games and now plays bridge online under the handle "Chalengr."

4 At 31, Gates became the youngest self-made billionaire in history.

5 Despite his laidback image, Gates often berated underlings at Microsoft with his trademark put-down, "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!"

6 Gates paid $30 million for a collection of writings by Leonardo da Vinci.

7 His massive home on a hill overlooking Lake Washington is the world's most expensive house, valued at a cool $125 million.

8 Gates' mom chided him at his wedding to be a philanthropist. "From those who are given great resources, great things are expected," Mary Gates said.

9 His foundation has given away more money than Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller put together, even when adjusted for inflation.

10 Not that he's hurting now, but he was worth more than $100 billion in 1999 — before the dot-com crash erased more than half his fortune.

Salute to Sun's Scott McNealy

Stephan J. Vaughn-Nichols says goodbye to Mr. McNealy.
McNealy wasn't just an industry giant, he changed the IT world forever.

Read the article

But let us not forget, let us never forget, that without Scott McNealy we would have neither the Internet nor the open source that powers so much of it.

Article - Sun's McNealy: IT's Tragicomic Figure

The landscape of IT history is littered with the carcasses of companies that tried to be the one that finally brought down Microsoft: Ray Noorda's Novell, Jim Manzi's Lotus and Philippe Kahn's Borland (Larry Ellison and Oracle are still going strong).

But no one tried harder, or wanted it more, than McNealy. The Sun CEO and co-founder, who stepped away from his role recently, made sticking it to Microsoft his personal Holy Grail.

Essay on why we love to hate Microsoft!

- Bucky

I recently posted a blog on "What's up with Microsoft?". This blog talks about the delays of Vista and how that might be an opportunity for the Open Source Community as well as Apple. Historically there has been an "us" vs "them" mentality. Microsoft has been seen as the Big Bully, the Monopoly, or the Borg of the tech world. We love to hate em. Bill Gates is the tech nerd of the century. We all have a love hate relationship with this guy. Bill Gates and Company have pirated, lied, and made some incredible shrewd and awesome moves to get where they are today.

Here are just some of the victims that have tangled with Microsoft: Netscape, WordPerfect, Borland, Sony, Nintendo, Quicken, Seattle Computer Products, IBM, CA, RealAudio, Google, Digital Research, Apple, AOL, and of course the once great Novell - very bruised, beaten, but still on life support.

Not all these are victims, but they have all tangled with Microsoft. Microsoft pirated or practically stole DOS from a company called Seattle Computer Products for a measly $50,000 and turned right around and made the historic partnership with IBM.

IBM and Microsoft extended their partnership producing OS/2 while Microsoft secretly worked on their own version of Windows NT. In 1991 Gates severed the IBM partnership. "Thanks IBM - See ya!"

In 1995 in one of the smartest moves ever, Bill Gates moved the Microsoft behemoth into a quick about face, and embraced the Internet. MS started MSN and directly competed with CompuServe and AOL. MS then went after Netscape and the browser market and destroyed Netscape.

Steve Jobs and Apple vs Bill Gates and Microsoft have long had a love hate relationship. They have been both enemies and friends. “The trouble with Microsoft is they have no taste,” said Steve Jobs in a 1996 PBS documentary. “I don’t mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way.”

In the 70's Apple ruled the new PC industry. But in the 80's Microsoft's decision to license the DOS OS to IBM, and later to IBM clones propelled Microsoft to the top position in the software industry. Apple accused MS in the late 80's of copying the look and feel of the GUI or Graphical User Interface that Apple held with the Macintosh, (which they stole from Xerox Research Parc). The courts ruled in favor of Microsoft.

Microsoft uses a slogan, "Embrace, extend, and extinguish". In the 90's Microsoft tried to embrace Novell and even had talks with Ray Noorda, then CEO of Novell, about merging. In the early 90's Novell held 80% of the market share of Network OS's. Ray Noorda lived in ethical mormonville Utah and saw through Gates tactics. I remember Ray telling us a story about how Microsoft was trying to get Gates and Noorda together to have a heart to heart talk, but Ray said that was impossible because Gates didn't have a heart.

Gates really couldn't embrace Novell so he tried to extinguish Novell. They pretty much succeeded because of 1- The Market Machine of MS. 2 - Mistakes made by Novell (Losing site of the core business and taking on MS with the merger of WordPerfect, Borland, and Novell). 3 - The engineering and speed of the OS became a mute point with faster chips and hardware and lower cost of hardware. 4 - NetWare is great at file and print, but lousy as an Application Server.

Now you know why we call Microsoft the Evil Empire. Beaten and bruised Novell just trying to survive needed to A - Rewrite NetWare from the ground up to be better application server, or B - Port Novell Services over to another platform. Novell is doing an excellent balancing act by going with choice B. They bought two Linux companies, Ximian and SUSE. Novell joined the Open Source community which is totally opposite from Closed Source Microsoft. Novell now needs to convince the die hard Novell NetWare customers to stay with Novell and embrace Linux and Open Source meanwhile staying with Novell Services such as GroupWise, eDirectory, Identity Management, and ZENWorks.

I personally think Novell is doing a good job. Microsoft keeps telling customers that Novell is dead. But watch Novell. They are still breathing and are starting to make waves. Is Novell relevant in today's IT buying decisions? It'll be interesting to watch this play out.