Dave Cutler - Red Dog

All of us ex-DEC, ex-VMS folks have wondered if Dave simply fell of the edge recently, but after the PDC keynote it's clear Dave has simply been busy. He's been off writing a global operating system. Given it's up and running, I basically consider it a global operating system deployment, or "GOD", for short. Dave was never short on ambition and not everyone gets to create a god in their own image (isn't it normally the other way around...?).

Can't believe he isn't here doing any of the Azure / Red Dog sessions...! Bummer, but I don't think he's into crowds...

In L.A. for PDC 2008...

With a few highly lamentable conflicts yet to be resolved, these are the sessions I'll be trying to hit:

- "Oslo": The Language

- "Oslo": Building Textual DSLs

- "Oslo": Customizing and Extending the Visual Design Experience

- "Oslo": Repository and Models

- "Dublin": Hosting and Managing Workflows and Services in Windows Application Server

- "Dublin" and .NET Services: Extending On-Premises Applications to the Cloud

- Architecting Services for the Cloud

- A Lap around Cloud Services Part 1

- A Lap around Cloud Services Part 2

- Live Services: Building Applications with the Live Framework

- Architecture of the Building Block Services

- Logging, Diagnosing, and Troubleshooting Applications Running Live in the Cloud

- Messaging Services: Protocols, Protection, and How We Scale

- Service Bus Services: Connectivity, Messaging, Events, and Discovery

- Services Symposium: Enterprise Grade Cloud Applications

- Services Symposium: Cloud or No Cloud, the Laws of Physics Still Apply

- Workflow Services: Orchestrating Services and Business Processes Using Cloud-Based Workflow

- Architecture without Big Design Up Front

- Framework Design Guidelines

- Modeling Data for Efficient Access at Scale

- Managed Extensibility Framework: Overview

- Improving Code Quality with Code Analysis

- Microsoft .NET Framework: Declarative Programming Using XAML

- WF 4.0: A First Look

- WCF: Zen of Performance and Scale

- WCF 4.0: Building WCF Services with WF in Microsoft .NET 4.0

- WF 4.0: Extending with Custom Activities

- PowerShell: Creating Manageable Web Services

I really think the next PDC needs to run for a full five days, rather than four, with more duplicate session in order to resolve lots of unfortunate session conflicts. As it is, Andy Sherwood and I are going to have to split some of them up so we get good coverage between us and we'll still miss some good ones. Hope they record all the session so we can catch the ones we miss as can all those who couldn't attend...

Sure, blame the Democrats

This is a rare, off-topic cross-post on my part from the Yosemite rock climbers' forum site, SuperTopo.com (yes, they are as split as anyone else...). I wrote up this analysis of the current crisis in response to Republican claims that Democrats are really to blame for this mess. Sure they are...
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Let's be real clear here. Reagan (and Bush I) expicitly and enthusiastically embraced financial socialism in the housing market to boost a lagging economy. Only under their administrations, the mortgage giveaway was exclusively aimed at the middle class. In 1992, the Democrats were just finally saying so long as you're giving away government largess, how about at least spread it marginally wider. Their intentions were good, and in fact the Clinton Administration put breaks on the whole affair in its first term, though loosened up in their second while under siege.

But the party really only hit high-gear after Senator Phil Gramm killed Glass-Steagal's Depression-era firewalls. And once the hyennas in W's administration got in office, they further greased the tracks of the runaway train by crippling much of the remaining oversight and enforcement. They deliberately did nothing to stop it because they realized the housing market 'bubble' was the only thing that could prop up their long-planned war in Iraq.


Note in particular, the rise of Asset Backed Securities (ABS) issues coincides with the war; just in time to prop up the economy as it started to correct itself in the face of that crisis. Oh, and it wasn't just mortgages - those ABS issues also comprised the Student Loan Crisis which saw a parallel frenzy of fraud as the banking community figured they could roll those loans into the ABS mix along with autos and credit card debt. Essentially, all forms of our common debt were rolled into the MBS/ABS slice-and-dicer to feed a very large and all encompassing Ponzi scheme built on 'vanishing' risk.

In fact, if your read the details of the 'technical analysis' currently all the rage in the financial sector today, it all revolves around the fact that all our debt was sliced-and-diced so finely and repeatedly that it is now largely impossible by almost any means for the ABS holders to trace those instruments back to individual houses, automobiles, students, and cardholders - the whole debt market effectively acted as a massive money laundering operation the scale and scope of which the Mafia could only have wet dreams about.

A good friend, who in the late 80s got his Ph.D. in Accounting (Auditing / Regulatory Oversight), summed it all up succinctly:

"Corporations, absent appropriate regulatory oversight, are indistinguishable from organized crime."

He said it was pretty obvious from the go-go, junk-bond 80's where this was all headed. He noted that that same crowd mounted sustained and continuous attacks against government oversight from the 90's on once the 'easy money' and lootable piles of unprotected cash of the 80's dried up and they were all faced with the prospect of actually having to go back to [honest] work.

So, while there is plenty of blame to go around, make no mistake about it - this was all a socialist party thrown by Republicans and then crashed at the eleventh hour by financial felons in the banking industry and the hooligans on Wall Street...