Day 1 of the 2004 North Africa Developers Conference got off to a rough start, but it still doesn’t suck, even without hummus and lots of second hand smoke. (Nor did last year.) I had the first session after the keynote (on ASP. NET Mobile Controls) and the keynote was 30 minutes over. (The Keynote was all in French, but it was pretty cool, showed Whidbey Smart Device Extensions and new Language Features to name a few.) When I got to my room the A/V was not working. But I started as soon as I could. But there was no translator!!! After about 15 minutes they passed out the translation headphones and life was good.

I spoke about the Mobile Web Controls for the first session and many people really got into it and laughed at my translated jokes. I showed the adaptive rendering for different devices, so I showed each example in HTML (both IE and Netscape) and OpenWave and Nokia browsers as well as the pocket pc mobile IE. The audience mocked my lousy French. At least I did type in "Bonjour Monde" instead of "Hello World."

After lunch by the pool, did my second session “SQL Server Notification Services” and after that spoke at length with the Casablanca Stock Exchange IT guy about using SSNF over their customer home grown solution.

Now I am at Casa de Malek doing the email thing and blogging. Goskin, Ingo and I will go to the Hassan II Mosque tomorrow, the second largest mosque in the world (behind Mecca) and the largest closed religious building in the world.

Of course I am here with the other Regional Directors, we had a dinner last night:

• Clemens (I will not drink too late with Steve and be late for my session like in KL) Vasters
• Scott (I will go to bed early) Hanselman
• Yann Faure
• Andrew (The Odd Couple) Brust
• Sylvain (I speak French, thererore I am) Duford
• Ingo (I am taller than Stephen) Rammer
• Eric Groise
• Goksin (Motorbike) Bakir
• Malek (Party to Damascus) Kemmou

My first day in Casablanca went off as expected. Arrived in town and met up with Makek, Clemens, Ingo, Andrew et al and had dinner at Makek’s Mom and Dad’s house, a traditional Moroccan meal. Then Malek, Andrew and I painted the town for a while and saw a Scottish band (with a cute lead singer named Lola) play at a local watering hole. Tomorrow the NDC begins…

So part of the deal of Nicole living with me while she was going to culinary school was that she had to hand over her gourmet pizza recipe. Since she heads back to Munich real soon, I had her walk me through her Pizza recipe last week. Yes techies can cook!

We started in the morning with the dough. Here is what we used:

1 1/2 c. flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 c. warm water (max. 100 deg. F)

1/2 tsp. dry active yeast or 1 tsp. fresh yeast

a pinch or two of sugar

1 tsp. flour.

We used 2 parts all purpose flour and 1 part slept flour, but maybe would do 3 to 1 next time. Before I left for work it the morning we made the dough and I had lots of fun making it! Adding the yeast was the most fun. As I was working all day, the dough was rising.

When I got home we went to work on the rest. First up was the sauce. Here is the recipe for the sauce:

About 350 grams of whole, peeled tomatoes

2-3 cloves of garlic, finely minced (Nicole minced it!)

1/4 cup olive oil

1/2 tsp salt

a few leaves of fresh basil

So I put the tomatoes into the blender and added everything in to a pot and let it simmer.

Next we started caramelizing onions and cooking a red pepper.

Ok lastly we brought it all together! The oven was set to 500 degrees. I took the dough and rolled out to fit onto a 12 inch pizza pan. Rolling was cool. By now I started to drink wine and Kathleen (the guinea pig) arrived and was starting to distract me and Nicole was on the phone, so I was really flying without a net! Once I put the dough on the pan, I put on the sauce and toppings. Kathleen wanted Mushrooms on her side of the pizza. We also added corn and zucchini. I was also accused of being a onion hog.

So I put it in and after about 8 minutes I put on the basil and fresh mozzarella. I left the pizza in for about 4 more minutes and out came my masterpiece!

Kathleen was one happy customer.

One of the coolest places I have even been to, Aguas Calientes at the foot of Machu Piccu , was hit by a big mudslide. The rail link was covered and hundreds of tourists are stranded and 11 people died.

This is sad since it is the only town around. It is a 5 day trek to Cusco over a 13,000 pass. I'll be thinking about eveyone down there this weekend.

I have to say that today I am proud to be a member of the Association of Competitive Technology since its inception. I have been very active with them, ACT has put me in front of Congress several times on a variety of tech issues.

ACT is demanding that the state of Michigan and the U.S Department of Justice immediately withdraw their lawsuit against Oracle Corp, a suit I find silly.

ACT won’t bring this up, but in the late 90s when ACT was advocating the DOJ drop their lawsuit against Microsoft, Larry Ellison, Oracle’s absolutely insane Chair and CEO hired a private investigator to go through our garbage in the ACT headquarters in Washington DC. So I have a pretty large personal dislike of Larry, and still think the DOJ is wrong.

I am all prepared and ready to go back to Africa for this year’s North Africa Developer’s Conference. Second time to Africa this year already.

I am going to be presenting on three topics this year:

·        SQL Server Notification Services

·        ASP .NET Mobile Web Forms

·        TSQL Enhancements in SQL Server 2005 (aka Yukon)

I am going to be staying with Malek at his house in Casablanca in a guest room (along with Clemens). I guess we will have it out with rows and columns for das Blog with Malek the referee.  

This is a very international event and speakers from all over the world are going to be there along with a strong showing of fellow Regional Directors. There will be a slew of technical information on both current stuff and Longhorn, Whidbey and Yukon.

The Mets won their first game of the year last night, defeating the evil Atlanta Braves. Rookie Kaz Matsui from Japan hit a home run in the first pitch he saw in the Majors, and went 3 for 3, go Japan power!

The Treaty of Versailles was probably less obvious. Sun’s agreement with Microsoft on Friday further doomed Sun Microsystems. Sure Scott and Steve can be on stage together all they like and exchange hockey jerseys declaring “peace“, but it really was Sun giving up a worthless front in the war for its survival.

Microsoft has never really been a super threat to Sun. Maybe recently with Windows Server 2003, but in the last 20 years of Scott calling Bill Darth Vader or making fun of the fact that Bill Dropped out of Harvard, Microsoft was the boy in Redmond that everyone in the Valley loved to hate.

So while Sun was announcing layoffs and blackmailing Microsoft for 1.8 billion in the same day, they pulled off a great coup. Sensing that settling with Sun would help Microsoft end its legal problems (Sun also said the settlement satisfies the objectives the company was pursuing in the European Union actions pending against Microsoft.), Sun used Bill and Co for a desperate influx of cash. Too bad it is too little to late.

Even after cutting almost 10% of its workforce and doing a management shakeup, Sun is still on life support. Linux is really Public Enemy Number 1 for Sun. Sun has no Linux strategy and Linux is a technology that could render Sun obsolete. Linux is based off Unix and makes it obsolete since it is more modern and cheaper (Linux is not free). Sun sells Unix. Linux runs on low end machines. Sun’s Unix does not. Sun makes lots of money selling very expensive hardware. That business is getting worse and worse by the day.

Not to mention IBM’s recent love-fest with Linux and more recent attacks on Sun. This makes IBM public enemy #2 for Sun.

Maybe Scott should sue Linux and IBM too…After over 7 years of using the American and European legal systems and costing the taxpayers billions, Sun got a few month operating cash out of Microsoft. I hope you use it wisely.

Netscape co-founder, Marc Andreessen speaking at the 3rd annual "Open Source in Government" at George Washington University in Washington DC last week, and came up with his personal top twelve reasons for why open source will boom over the next 5-10 years. Too bad they are all wrong, here is my point by point rebuttal. Here they are:

1.       "The Internet is powered by open source."

Steve’s Rebuttal: Not true Mark. Microsoft’s IIS server powers the majority of the internet. On the client side Internet Explorer is the dominate client.

2.       "The Internet is the carrier for open source."

Steve’s Rebuttal: True, but also it is a carrier for all other types of software, just browse the internet and there are tons of sites selling the stuff.

3.       "The Internet is also the platform through which open source is developed."

Steve’s Rebuttal: I prefer my software development teams all in the same room, not scattered around the world in different time zones. I know it is all cool and “new age” to say you want to have a team all spread out around the world, but it is just not at all efficient. All management gurus are on my side, sorry. This was cool in the dot com phase, time for the industry to grow up.

4.       "It's simply going to be more secure than proprietary software."

Steve’s Rebuttal: NOT true. See yesterday’s blog.

5.       "Open source benefits from anti-American sentiments."

Steve’s Rebuttal: You are a sad and cynical man to say this.

6.       "Incentives around open source include the respect of one's peers."

Steve’s Rebuttal: And NOT profit. This ensures that only cool features get built, NOT the mission critical features. Where is incremental backup and replication in postgress. What about transactions and stored procedures missing for so long in MySQL. See my blog here. Sorry Marc, capitalism works, just ask our friends in the USSR.

7.       "Open source means standing on the shoulders of giants."

Steve’s Rebuttal: This is so vaigue, I am beginning to think that you are taking yourself way too seriously. My thoughts are that Microsoft, Apple, SUN, SAP, etc are a giants.

8.       "Servers have always been expensive and proprietary, but Linux runs on Intel."

Steve’s Rebuttal: As does Microsoft. TCO for Microsoft is much lower than Linux. I have proven this so many times I am sick of doing so. See my New York City Council testimony.

9.       "Embedded devices are making greater use of open source."

Steve’s Rebuttal: This is flat out false.

10.   "There are an increasing number of companies developing software that aren't software companies."

Steve’s Rebuttal: What are they then, hobbyists? They are not doing QA then? No code reviews? Is the software mission critical? Are they using Linux? And who cares if they are making software then?

11.   "Companies are increasingly supporting Linux."

Steve’s Rebuttal: That is grand. They are also supporting Sun and Microsoft and many other technologies.

12.   "It's free."

Steve’s Rebuttal: Not true. Linux is NOT FREE. See my New York City Council testimony.