Maybe I just have a twisted, warped sense of humor, but a number of things struck me as funny while in San Francisco for Oracle OpenWorld earlier this week.
The strangest thing I heard
Tuesday, 10am. Stockton Street.
"And that's why I won't do crack."
I'm disappointed that I missed the first half of what surely must have been an interesting conversation near Union Square. I didn't even turn around to see who was so loudly and clearly voicing their opposition to crack, but I did find it to be the funniest thing I'd heard all day, given that it was taken completely out of context. I mean, did dude really need a better reason than 'it could kill you' to make this momentous decision? All I can say is, "good choice, buddy".
The strangest thing I saw
Wednesday, 10am. San Francisco International Airport.
Dude is well over 6 feet tall, wearing the quintessential cowboy getup; a big black hat, white shirt, black vest, banjo in its case strapped across his back and .... a fanny pack.
Something about the fanny pack and a cowboy just made me fall into fits of internal giggling. The fanny pack is not something one expects to see on someone dressed as though he just walked out of a Marlboro ad. Maybe it's just me, but it was just funny as hell to me. Perhaps the sight of this guy is why dude on Stockton Street won't do crack?
The strangest FUD I heard
Tuesday, 5pm. Moscone Center
"Solaris 10 is free and it doesn't have the licensing issues that other products are having, because we own the kernel."
At first I was appalled to hear this coming out of a Sun representative, even one whose primary purpose was to entertain conference attendees. But it makes sense. The only vendor making money on selling operating systems these days is Microsoft, and we're betting its days are numbered there also. RedHat makes money off services and support, not the OS, and Sun, having given up and made Solaris 10 free for all comers, has to give users a reason to want to use Solaris over Linux. The best reason it could come up with is SCO's lame licensing claims??
Come on, guys. Give it a rest. You want me to use Solaris 10, fine, tout containers and some of the other nifty neato keen features in the OS. Don't give me FUD - I had some for breakfast, thank you.
