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Talk to Sun's 'Open Source Diva'
Danese Cooper is Manager of Sun's Open Source Program Office. A Google search on Danese turns up more than 1000 results. She's a frequent speaker at IT industry events and conferences, and is, without question, Sun's staunchest internal Open Source advocate. Sun is moving toward Open Source in fits and starts, and Danese is behind a lot of that motion. Feel free to ask her anything you want (one question per post. please) about the trials and tribulations of being an Open Source person within a company that hasn't yet fully grasped the concept, and how she goes about trying to change that. We'll post her answers to 10 of the highest-moderated questions within the next week or so. The only question she can't answer is whether/when Java might be Open Sourced. I already asked her, and she replied, "Sadly, I have no news on that..."
It's mid-afternoon, and we're in the middle of our annual 'improve the perception of IT' fortnight. Things are going just great.
The boss has a bee in his bonnet about my liberal interpretation of the promotional slogan 'delivering what the client needs'. Apparently, my
helpdesk instruction sheets on how to deliver 'a damn good kicking' weren't within the intended scope of the motto...
He was in an even worse mood after the hand-proximity sensor on the line printer failed to operate while he was attempting to stop said
instruction sheets from printing. The fast moving paper gave him a large and deep paper cut that he won't be forgetting in a hurry. And the
PFY and I certainly don't know how that heavily salted water got into the first aid antiseptic bottle.
But his irritation began after spotting a publicity photo of one of the members of the company's football team (sponsored by the IT division)
walking around with his football jersey untucked. Beautifully crafted, and costing enough to make a beancounter weep, the jerseys have a
lovely little IT crest (a couple of crossed keyboards on a burning PC background, emblazoned on the left breast). The words 'IT - giving you
more' are in large letters on the back. When untucked however, the words 'of a shafting' become visible. The boss was not impressed.
The PFY and I make no attempts to escape his wrath knowing full well that he has to pass the head of IT's room to get to us. He's not so
keen on doing that since some complete bastard uploaded a new ring sound to the head's cellphone - a sound not dissimilar to that made by a
lentil casserole after its trip through the digestive tract.
Accordingly, the IT department managers' meeting he attended this morning was a swift affair, and certainly not one that really should have
been 'aired' as a live video conference and PR opportunity. Even the cafeteria staff saw it and wouldn't serve him the onion bhajis at
lunchtime.
Not that I feel sorry for the boss. The whole 'improve the perception of IT' initiative was all his fault in the first place for mentioning that it
'must be about that time of the year' to the head of IT.
No-one likes these PR weeks because the bosses like to answer all those stupid user questions such as: 'Can I send 1,000 copies of my CV to
the printer? Can I talk to one of your network guys for an hour or two?' and 'Do you know who set my car on fire?' with 'yes', 'yes', and
'no' instead of the far more appropriate 'not if you want to see another birthday, not if you want to see another birthday', and, 'us, we
thought it was your birthday.'
But the thing that really puts the boss under the gun is that he's invoked a 'response time' clause in our contracts that was meant for call-out
duties which says we have to respond within a reasonable amount of time to a user's problems.
In PR week, 'reasonable' means 10 minutes. Now perhaps the boss can have a good game of MDK in 10 minutes, but a networking
professional cannot!
Sure enough, I'm just firing up MDK when the phone goes.
"Hello?"
"Yes?" I ask, expecting the worst.
"I've got a problem with my network."
Here we go...
"Hmmm?" Why waste words on these morons? They're much happier with a bit of grunting and a few soothing clucking noises.
"It's a little difficult to explain over the phone - could someone come up?"
Sigh.
I flip the PFY for it and am stunned when I lose. Then I realise that the little bastard has switched my double headed 50 pence for a double
tail model.
It really does me proud to see him turning out so well.
Of course, I still won't be telling him that I removed the safety grille from the whirring blades of the cooling fan at the back of his PC, but
there you go.
I get to the user's office and it's the same old thing. They moved the PC and the network stopped.
"But it never used to do that."
"No, but now that we don't use thin wire network cabling it does."
"That doesn't sound like a good move."
I manage to extricate myself an hour later (after the story about how technology was much more reliable in the 1950s) and get back to the
office.
The PFY chuckles maliciously.
"He rang back - the lead's fallen out of the computer and he's scared to plug it in."
"A separate call," I cry, "that makes it your turn!"
"Toss you for it?" he asks, not understanding where the line should be drawn.
"I'll go for tails for a change."
"Bastard!" Sensibly, the PFY doesn't admit to anything.
"Oh, by the way, make sure to mention how reliable IT is nowadays, especially when compared to the 1950s..."
The PFY grumbles a bit before slouching over to the door.
"Have you seen my access card?"
"Yeah," I reply, "I needed it to get into the comms room this morning. I think it fell down the back of your PC. On the cooling fan side..."
- The BOFH Troll
She has a common surname. Here's the correct search, which returns 212 results.
hahahahaha another +1, Sad But True
A Google search of CmdrTaco gets about 12,000 hits. I guess we know who would be on top in that relationship!
Don't wait till Sun is finally "ready" to make the Java Platform Free Software. Use what we already have today.
) and you have a great programming language integrated with a free desktop environment.
The GNU Classpath project (http://www.classpath.org/) brings us the standard Java runtime libraries (except Swing, but see below). And they have recently merged with GCJ (http://gcc.gnu.org/java) which allows you to compile your applications to native code. You can even mix and match interpreted Java bytecode, with native compiled Java libraries and C++ code (http://gcc.gnu.org/java/papers/cni/t1.html)!
Then you use the GNOME java bindings (http://java-gnome.sf.net/) or the KDE java bindings (http://developer.kde.org/language-bindings/java/
There are even free J2EE things out their such as JBoss (http://www.jboss.org) and Jakarta (jakarta.apache.org). Sun now even includes parts of that project into their own (proprietary) Java platform releases!
Not having any idea how you look, I'm curious: As one of the few high-profile she-nerds, do you find geeks coming on to you often? If so, what approaches seem to be the most common?
I'd hate to hit a tree at 30 mph and end up looking like this guy.
sucking up vs sucking off.
El mensaje... primero!
Single? :)
and of course the coralary to the question:
how many sources have you had to open to get
where you are today ?
Uh, do you, like, have, uh breasts and that? What size are they? Can I feel them? I'm feeling them now unnh uhhhh.
you're apparently not married.
Or he's married to a transsexual pre-op guy.
I am hoping he was just lazy. Otherwise he doesn't quite crasp how href's work.
i'd like to shove 6 large angorian rabbits into danese cooper's snatch, then fuck her tight anus.
flesh eating ants records
I bet you'd like to have a big, fat, circumcised jewish cock up your ass, now wouldn't you?
I'm gonna have to take this bit by bit so as not to confuse you.
Funny, you call some one sexist and follow it with a derogatory term for a female body part (the vagina).
No, twat is a derogatory term for a person. It means vagina, it's called slang. It isn't sexist, it may be construed as rude, but not sexist.
On top of that, you offend Christians across the board by using Jesus Christ's name for no apparent reason, certainly not one pertaining to Christ.
I don't remember saying the guy offended anyone. I just said he was being sexist. Therefore me offending (or not) anoter group has no impact on my point.
Props to the wicked Ali G shades!
You moron bitch. Claiming that he was "sliding" inside his own foreskin during sex gave you away We don't "slide" during sex. The uncircumcised glans becomes exposed during sex, you idiot! You just didn't like the appearance of his dick because you had never seen one before. For your information, most of the men in the world do not mutilate their reproductive organs.
Furthermore, don't you think your "folds" have an odor no matter how much you try "keeping it clean"? That odor you describe is the odor of the male of the species.
Circumcision is a barbaric, medically unnecessary and dangerous ritual that costs your man the sensitivity on his dick. If your man was claiming increased sensitivity he was plain out lying to make you happy. Don't you think the evolution would have made us men circumcised if it made the intercourse more pleasurable and thus helped the human species to reproduce more efficiently?
I hope your man is happy having to use a lubricant every day he masturbates and having lost the natural sensitivity of his penis for your whims sake.
YAAD
Given the fact that many computer geeks, by name alone, are viewed as dorks and undesirable, do you think it prudent to actually wear the glasses I saw in your photographs. And your hair *sigh*.
;)
For everyone who has said it - WORDS LIKE TWAT, CUNT, COCK, DICK, ARE NOT SEXIST!!!!! WAKE UP!!!
Cunts are not bad things, but if you *are* one, that is an insult!