http://cfengine.com/markburgess//blog.html Mark Burgess en-br Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:28:47 -0500 Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:28:47 -0500 mark@iu.hio.no mark@iu.hio.no http://markburgess.org/blog.html#knowledgemgt Knowing things, as an individual, is the most important part of being alive. Where do we get food and find kin? How do we navigate the terrain? How can we repeat procedures that are successful and avoid repeated others that aren't? We learn, and learning is often a lengthy process. The more times we rehearse or learn a lesson, the better it sits with us and the more we trust its validity. But how does knowledge scale to a group, a company, an institution, even a country? In a world of database thinking and URLs, this is one of the least well understood questions in modern IT. Thu 19 Jan 11:13:15 CET 2023 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#knowledgemgt http://markburgess.org/blog.html#startup You have a good idea, and you want to make it your life's work, or perhaps you want to change the world. You never did anything like that before. Where to go? What to do? Here are some notes, based on my own experiences, about the startup landscape and commercialization of software. They don't try to beautify the struggle. They summarize conversations I have with would-be founders as well as my own experiences. Thu 19 Jan 11:13:15 CET 2023 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#startup http://markburgess.org/blog.html#fedintent So, you bit the bullet. You've broken up your software or organizational monolith into a number of departments or services. Let's call them microservices. Your seat reservation system performs a reservation in four steps: i) access a user profile, ii) select a seat, and iii) make a payment, then iv) add the reservation back to the user profile. In your wisdom (or because contemporary developer politics strong-armed you) you've separated these into three services: users, seats, and payments. Now you have to be sure to visit them all in the right order and keep the state of your order in mind--remembering to complete all stages to ensure a successful outcome. Thu 19 Jan 11:13:15 CET 2023 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#fedintent http://markburgess.org/blog.html#neuro2 Neuroscience overlaps with networking in a number of ways, and on a number of levels. Let’s examine one particular case that concerns the origin of meaning from sensory experiences — otherwise known as cognitive semantics. This involves two distinct networks: an outward looking network that collects and processes information, and an inward looking memory representation. The latter encodes and actively uses the information to adapt its own understanding with the help of the former. Wed 21 Sep 10:36:50 CEST 2022 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#neuro2 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#neuro1 Space and time play central roles in almost everything that happens in the world, but they are also subjects that are designed to be overlooked and suppressed as background issues. Thanks to popular science, we often think of space and time as something to do with the outer space of Einstein or Hawking–the domain of physicists, and the idea of an “inner space” sounds just a bit too New Age and hippy to be scientific. In this short essay, I want to show you that, in fact, our idea about space and time is too limited, and that network science helps to unravel an deeper understanding of processes, especially in connection with neuroscience. With this reorganized understanding, many phenomena reveal space and time to be far more central to explaining behaviours than we imagine. In particular, they lead us to a natural approach to cognition, to reasoning, and to adaptive processes at every scale. Wed 21 Sep 10:36:50 CEST 2022 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#neuro1 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#dowhatwewant One of the hardest things about trying to make something happen - whether it's a transformation from the old to the new, or an entirely new construction - is the problem of cooperation. What we do alone, we do easily. What we do together is fraught with complexity and division. As a theoretician, I've studied cooperation as part of Promise Theory, often together with my long time collaborator Jan Bergstra, spanning cases from machinery to human workplaces, even politics. As a fellow human, I've witnessed the theory in action, through the startups and organizations I've helped to build and evolve. I've learned that, even as I begin to understand it, putting it into practice, and getting it all right is the hardest thing. But I like to start with understanding, so this is what I want to describe in this new series of posts. Tue 28 Dec 12:07:53 CET 2021 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#dowhatwewant http://markburgess.org/blog.html#dataanalytics Every volume of space, each snapshot in time, embodies a microcosm of information bursting with meaning. What’s it all for? In our modern world of smart technology, information can be offered to us in the form of services that are engineered for human consumption. In this new series of blogs, I’ll use a practical version of what I’ve already discussed in my book Smart Spacetime (SST), as well as in a number of papers belonging to the Semantic Spacetime Project. Sat 14 Aug 14:44:57 CEST 2021 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#dataanalytics http://markburgess.org/blog.html#beskar Review of composers Lorne Balfe and Ludwig Goransson. Fri 8 Jan 14:49:22 CET 2021 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#beskar http://markburgess.org/blog.html#documentary This year 2020, I made a series of 3 x 50 minute documentary films about our mutual world--the one we all help to create: it's called Bigger, Faster, Smarter. It's a three-part film quest that takes viewers on a journey through the real world, with an eye on technology and the science behind it. It asks a simple question: How is it that we're so good at technology, and yet so poor at human cooperation? Today, many technologists live in a bubble of their own making. In a sense, it's been my life's work to prick that bubble. Of course, we need some principles to unpick such an audacious claim. So, through music and imagery, I've tried to put a story of how it all came to be into a kind of perspective. And to think about where it might be going. Sun 3 Jan 12:03:13 CET 2021 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#documentary http://markburgess.org/blog.html#oshima Review of Japanese composer Michiru Oshima Sun 3 Jan 12:03:13 CET 2021 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#oshima http://markburgess.org/blog.html#agile What tools do we have for understanding the dynamics of an organization? For years now, leadership has been obsessed with agile, and companies often spend millions on so-called “agile transformations.” It’s certainly not the only game in town, but its commercialization has exceeded the others many times over. As a commercial enterprise, some of what falls under the aegis of Agile can be regarded with suspicion. Trademarks fly and so-called best practices rain from fully authorized heavens. Fri 18 Sep 16:32:43 CEST 2020 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#agile http://markburgess.org/blog.html#speech Earlier this year, I was encouraged to revisit the philosophy of speech acts by friends and colleagues from the Open Leadership Network, when I learned of the subject from an unexpected angle: it turned out that John Searle's student Fernando Flores had written on this subject too, and applied it to study the language of business dealings---with its own following. Flores' essays, privately held from the 1980s onwards, were collected in 2012 and published in a volume called Conversations for Action: Instilling a Culture of Commitment in Working Relationships by his daughter Maria Flores Letelier---sparking a new following in the business world. Tue 4 Aug 18:03:44 CEST 2020 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#speech http://markburgess.org/blog.html#pandemic Friends and colleagues have begun to ask me what I think the COVID-19 pandemic means for the future. Is this going to change us? Although I'm a bit taken aback by the sudden question, here are some moderate off-the-cuff remarks. Mon 21 April 15:11:43 CET 2020 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#pandemic http://markburgess.org/blog.html#barrygray A love letter to the music of Barry Gray. Mon 25 Nov 15:11:43 CET 2019 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#barrygray http://markburgess.org/blog.html#arnold Portrait of David Arnold, film composer, notably of Bond movies. Thu 31 Oct 15:54:22 CET 2019 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#arnold http://markburgess.org/blog.html#carroll A review of Sean Carroll's new book, Something Deeply Hidden. Thu 3 Oct 15:46:29 CEST 2019 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#carroll http://markburgess.org/blog.html#hisaishi In the West, Joe Hisaishi is known to select fans as the composer behind Hayao Miyazaki’s iconic anime films for Studio Ghibli, which have garnered a significant following in recent years. Thu 29 Aug 13:29:20 CEST 2019 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#hisaishi http://markburgess.org/blog.html#spacetime19 Physics is the study of stuff that happens---or, at least, that's how it began. As its reputation deepened and its cultural baggage expanded, it became---like every other specialization---pickled in its own special culture and norms, as the preserve of what physicists consider their own territory. But physics is useful in other disciplines too: Information Technology, for one. Should physicists have the sole rights to narratives that are so important on all levels? Do physicists get to decide on the boundaries of physics? My new book is about just this topic, and I argue that there is much to be learned in both directions by rethinking the hallowed ideas of space and time, and appying them to the modern world. Tue 05 Mar 2019 10:46:06 AM CET http://markburgess.org/blog.html#spacetime19 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#sound There are two schools of thought when it comes to music. There are those for whom the quality of the sound plays no role in the musical enjoyment. Only the notes matter. If music is played with some feeling and it’s reasonably on key, then the truth of the music is preserved. Then there are those for whom searching for the perfect listening experience is half the enjoyment. They experience the enjoyment of music and the details of its performance – with their whole bodies – feeling the vibrations and “seeing” the music in space ahead of them, savouring every nuance of the instruments and the acoustics of the recording. Thu Oct 25 18:58:15 CEST 2018 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#sound http://markburgess.org/blog.html#smallthings About the process of `decentralizing intent' and the effect it has on the predictability of our systems; it is about the changing face of what we can know (in order to make predictions or extrapolate experiences) as we scale systems. Sun Jan 21 12:43:28 CET 2018 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#smallthings http://markburgess.org/blog.html#money A summary of work on the promise theory of money as a network technology. Wed Nov 29 12:39:41 CET 2017 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#money http://markburgess.org/blog.html#react Modularity for introverts and extroverts ...or what it means that large things are an accumulation of small things... Based on Keynote for Reactive Summit 2017. This is an essay about how we draw boundaries around things, and what that means to us. Sat Oct 21 14:51:03 CEST 2017 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#react http://markburgess.org/blog.html#AR In a series of recent papers, I sketched out a particular way of looking at reasoning, based on the idea that space and time are at the root of all our cognitive and logical processes. It's a simple idea with deep consequences, that reasoning is about the ability to represent aggregate clusters convergently, rather than the traditional one that reasoning is about addressing and searching for nodes in a tree. The results have been implemented (as proof of concept) in my Open Source Cellibrium project. The application of these ideas has many possibilities, especially in cognitive computing. However, in this commentary, I dare to ask why IT monitoring technologies, suitable for automated reasoning, have failed emerge and take hold of modern systems. Mon Sep 4 12:44:36 CEST 2017 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#AR http://markburgess.org/blog.html#bbf The economic model we live by grew out of humanity's effort to scale up its supply of basic needs, giving communities the means to survive, raise their standards of living, and escape poverty. Successive generations embraced and evolved methods of planned and mechanized production, with each growing its output, while preserving a tradition of asset ownership and seasonal productivity. The result today is a model of economics that strives for short-horizon profit. Now that technology makes the goal of plenty attainable, a new model may be needed for a `smart world', one that redefines the goal of the economy from growth for its own sake to something more invested in social cohesion. Thu Jan 12 21:31:14 CET 2017 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#bbf http://markburgess.org/blog.html#saedu Guest editorial. December 12:27:27 CEST 2016 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#saedu http://markburgess.org/blog.html#dumb Smart materials, smart houses, smart cities: are these things related to artificial intelligence? I argue that they are, but that our notion of AI, shaped by the desire to ape human capabilities, is currently too narrow in scope and scale to understand the connection. Studying systems that we don't normally consider to be smart is the route to understanding what smart means, and understanding how intelligence scales is the key to understanding how its scope and limitations. Wed Jul 27 12:27:27 CEST 2016 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#dumb http://markburgess.org/blog_spacetime3.html#sstime Theoretical physicists have owned the term spacetime since the beginning of the 20th century. Today, it conjurs popular figures like Albert Einstein, Relativity, Stephen Hawking, and Black Holes; but, it would be a mistake to dismiss it as only of interest to theoretical physicists and astronomers. Spacetime is far from a theoretical fancy. It is both everywhere and all of the time. What could be more practical than that? Mon Jun 27 15:28:49 CEST 2016 http://markburgess.org/blog_spacetime3.html#sstime http://markburgess.org/blog.html#smart Comparing what we mean by `smart' with the technologies and processes that matter to us, now and in the future. We might need to rethink what we believe smart is. If smart is simple and generic, can we engineer it into everything? What would that mean? Could we live in a truly smart world? Sun Mar 27 12:25:33 CEST 2016 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#smart http://markburgess.org/blog.html#cities In information technology (IT), we think we know a thing or two about scaling systems. Recently I stumbled across some fascinating work started at the Sante Fe Institute, on how the properties of cities scale with population. This grabbed my attention immediately, because it deals with many issues for which we have no data in IT. It was a chance to apply promise theory to exactly the kind of problem it was intended for. Fri Feb 19 11:04:45 CET 2016 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#cities http://markburgess.org/blog.html#work Giving up our world to the robots, and why it bothers us... What gets overlooked, in the polemics about how humans will be replaced by `robots and A.I.', is that the arguments we use to express fear of automation apply not only to information technology, but to every kind of delegation of work, whether it be to a machine, an animal, or to another person. Thu Sep 17 21:59:03 CEST 2015 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#work http://markburgess.org/blog.html#cyborg Robots and artificial intelligence remain widely misunderstood, and a prime target for fear-mongering about the future of human jobs. I am not particularly afraid losing control to a machine intelligence, or even of losing my job to a machine. What we might lose control of, on the other hand, is our notion of civil society, as factions within us increasingly want (not to be replaced by, but) to actually become the machines. Sun Jun 7 13:04:59 CEST 2015 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#cyborg http://markburgess.org/blog.html#ipaddress As we redefine space to be increasingly functional, actionable, and with agency, then we have to be able to locate and reach functions and services, as well as understand what they will do for us. This is the world of pervasive computing, and smart environments. Thu Apr 16 13:04:19 CEST 2015 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#ipaddress http://markburgess.org/blog.html#complexity Complexity theory, as it is often called, has caught the popular imagination in recent years, with many authors claiming to write about the subject from a layman's perspective, applying it to all manner of problems from business to system design. But is there a science behind the bravado? Tue Mar 3 09:49:12 CET 2015 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#complexity http://markburgess.org/blog.html#broadcast Software Defined Networking (SDN) sometimes seems a little bit like Las Vegas. The shiny virtual facade defies the shaky foundations it's built on, and there seems to be a song and dance (and a certain amount of gambling) involved to come out of it richer on the other end. This essay sketches out ideas about networking that I think are increasingly obvious to users in the datacentre, but which also needs to be applied to a larger Internet of Things. The key is all about tenancy. Within a truly shared infrastructure, the straw building up on the camel's back will be the container. Sat Jan 18 12:36:57 CET 2015 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#broadcast http://markburgess.org/blog.html#peer Peer review is often upheld as one of the revered checks and balances that ensures some kind of quality in science; but, in an increasingly competitive world, peer review in journals has become ineffective way of getting to the best science, and it is not always used with honorable intent. Today, if the proliferation of thought and ideas is your goal, the best chance you have is simply to publish work openly online and wait for peer review to come. Wed Dec 10 19:19:14 CET 2014 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#peer http://markburgess.org/blog.html#spacetime I propose a new angle for exploring infrastructure abstractions, building on all of the idea of an abstract material or space. This offers a foundation for scaling, and unifies the different aspects to address a number of basic questions for networking, computation, storage and knowledge. Thu Nov 20 16:14:14 CET 2014 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#spacetime http://markburgess.org/blog.html#time This is a very brief sketch of the current timescales we deal with in infrastructure management. Without a proper understanding of time and how it is used, we end up wasting a precious resource as well as looking foolish. Mon Nov 17 14:45:32 CET 2014 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#time http://markburgess.org/blog.html#pedagogy Are we losing the art of communication? Thu Aug 14 11:22:50 CEST 2014 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#pedagogy http://markburgess.org/blog.html#poverty On measuring our successes. Thu Aug 14 11:22:50 CEST 2014 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#poverty http://markburgess.org/blog.html#game Are APIs opening up IT services to a free and open dialogue with users, or are we on a collision course with complexity? Thu Jul 31 21:49:52 CEST 2014 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#game http://markburgess.org/blog.html#brain At what point should an organism become a society? Tue Jul 22 08:59:54 CEST 2014 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#brain http://markburgess.org/blog.html#tunnel Could we make the analogue of a wind tunnel for scale testing of software? Thu 10 Apr 13:13:18 CEST 2014 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#tunnel http://markburgess.org/blog.html#kindle As someone who uses Latex for its superior print quality, I was disappointed (but not surprised) to learn that the tools for publishing on Kindle do not include Latex support. So here is how to build Kindle from Latex using CFEngine. Sun 9 Mar 19:18:54 CET 2014 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#kindle http://markburgess.org/blog.html#cd Continuous delivery of software has been championed lately, and made popular by Thoughtworks philosophers, most notably Jez Humble and David Farley, amongst others of Martin Fowler's group. Their excellent book Continuous Delivery lays out the reasoning. I am a great supporter of this manifesto. Today, we are being challenged to apply it to all manner of information driven processes, not just software building. Tue 25 Feb 13:34:33 CET 2014 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#cd http://markburgess.org/blog.html#universes With the help of the Quantum Food Guide and Devomonitorama Brain Extender, we are able to overhear the thoughts of two parallel instances of An Ops Guy in parallel universes contemplate the meaning of configuration management in their businesses... In universe #1, GuyOps runs an online business; in universe #2 he runs a hotel/restaurant business. His thoughts allow us to see how CM is really a knowledge management issue. Tue Aug 13 12:43:50 CEST 2013 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#universes http://markburgess.org/blog.html#principles 2013 is the 20th anniversary of the CFEngine project. Sometimes I get asked what makes CFEngine different from other software. Here is my answer: design principles that get the basics right. Whatever your aesthetic preferences, design princples have kept CFEngine reliable and secure for 20 years, under a welter of dynamic challenges. Thu Jan 31 08:15:56 CET 2013 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#principles http://markburgess.org/blog.html#trust Although I have never properly met Bruce Schneier, and we have only exchanged a handful of words over the years, I have often viewed him as a kindred spirit, handling the topics he discusses just as I might have. So I suppose it is no surprise that I am going to recommend his latest book. Mon Dec 31 19:04:54 CET 2012 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#trust http://markburgess.org/blog.html#scicult In 1994, I produced a CD-ROM for Norwegian schools, touting the slogan (in Norwegian) in the title of this essay. Over the years, I've repeated this phrase on many occasions, in different contexts, as I believe there is a lesson here that the gatekeepers of learning seem to be unable or unwilling to preserve. I was reminded of this just the other day, while talking to a friend, caught between these worlds in another way, and it reminded me of the discussion about DevOps culture that is being played out on the net today. Thu Nov 22 15:23:09 CET 2012 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#scicult http://markburgess.org/blog.html#devops DevOps is evolving from what started as little more than a rally cry, into a culture for continuous delivery of IT services. As more pieces of the puzzle fall into place, we understand that DevOps is primarily a matter of human collaboration -- assisted, but not encompassed by, certain tools and technologies. This essay is my take on DevOps, and why I think it is about embracing distributed, autonomous operational methods that support scalable human-computer processes. Sat Jun 23 20:25:03 CEST 2012 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#devops http://markburgess.org/blog.html#cap In this essay (in two parts), I want to explain the issues around CAP more carefully and add a broader perspective from the viewpoint of time. The aim is to talk about its potential impact on the world of infrastructure operations. I shall try to pick apart what CAP is about, what it does and doesn't mean, and what is important to understand in the discussion for DevOps. Thu Aug 9 18:09:45 CEST 2012 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#cap http://markburgess.org/blog.html#scaffold What if I don't know the answers? What if I won't know what to do? A common nightmare surely everyone has had at some time -- being immobilized before an impending crisis, helpless, unable to move or do anything about it. The nightmare is only a dream fantasy, but the reality is lived out by someone, somewhere in a workplace in every generation of change. The dark force of this immobilization? Insufficient knowledge. What if that happened in a mission critical IT system? How could we get smart fast enough? Thu May 24 10:42:33 CEST 2012 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#scaffold http://markburgess.org/blog.html#amortal Some comments on Caroline Mayer's book Amortality: the Pleasures and Perils of Living Agelessly. Thu Apr 5 14:16:01 CEST 2012 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#amortal http://markburgess.org/blog.html#clouds Is there an academic divide -- a chasm between business and academia? Should there be a divide and, if so, should it be bridged? Cloud, in IT, is a technology that purports to be about bridging the business-IT divide -- it allows evolutionary improvement of IT-based activity, which is a perfect platform for society to advance. Surely there are analogues worth learning from. Sat Mar 10 19:09:17 CET 2012 http://cfngine.com/markburgess/blog.html#clouds http://markburgess.org/blog.html#order Recently I have been hearing the resurfacing of an old debate: whether order matters in the execution of configuration management policy. The debate started years ago when CFEngine introduced a declarative approach to configuration in order to separate the WHAT from the HOW -- and move to a more knowledge-oriented form of management. Alva Couch, my friend and colleague, likened CFEngine to Prolog. Wed, 26 Dec 2011 13:11:01 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#order http://markburgess.org/blog.html#3challenges There is a very clear change taking place in the way that system administration is being done in a wide range of organizations - it is being driven by the needs of businesses in modern society -- the need to support the wealth of freedom that we as end users enjoy thanks to mobile devices. We see a proliferation of IT that has already swept across the western world and shows no real sign of abating -- and that is driving maturity as well as big changes in the way that sysadmin is done. Wed, 7 Dec 2011 13:11:01 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#3challenges http://markburgess.org/blog.html#paris How shall we use humans and technology to manage IT resources? During the past twenty years there have been large shifts in the technologies used to manage IT systems, but very few shifts in the underlying principles of management. I believe that we need a better understanding of this collaboration between man and machine to understand management in general. In this keynote, I will use the theme of human knowledge and comprehension to drive a picture of what is needed of IT management in the future. Fri, 27 Oct 2011 13:11:01 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#paris http://markburgess.org/blog.html#approx A talk presented at Amsterdam University on 20th June, in honour of Jan Bergstra's 60th birthday. It discusses how a search for a solution to division by zero confirmed some theory on which CFEngine is based. Fri, 17 Jul 2011 13:11:01 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#approx http://markburgess.org/blog.html#total Research has shown several times that transactional rollback is not a reliable or meaningful operation in IT management. Indeed, it can cause as much harm as the original error one attempts to back out of. Referring to the work of Bergstra and Tucker, this work done with Alva Couch proves a link between "undo" and inverses of operations that have incomplete information. In the case of a policy enforcement, a "rollback" corresponds to division by zero... Fri, 24 Jun 2011 13:11:01 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#total http://markburgess.org/blog.html#velocity The key challenges for infrastructure designers and maintainers today are scale, speed and complexity. Mark Burgess was one of the first people to look for ways of managing these issues based on theoretical analysis. Much of his work has gone into the highly successful software Cfengine, which is still very much a leading light in the industry. In this session, Mark will ask if we have yet learned the lessons of infrastructure management, and, either way, what must come next. Mon, 16 Feb 2011 12:11:01 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#think http://markburgess.org/blog.html#think Today, a growing proportion of the populace aspires to be on a par with experts, and sees real experts as suspicious or even bogus figureheads, like the rich landowners of the industrial revolution who kept the general population poor with malice and greed. I now see this kind of challenge quite often when people don't like the conclusions experts present: a head-in-the-sand rejection of knowledge in what is now seen as a kind of open market for being right. Mon, 16 Feb 2011 12:11:01 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#think http://markburgess.org/blog.html#kmw I recently chaired a Knowledge Management workshop at LISA 2010. I have said on several occasions that Knowledge Management is one of the central challenges of the next decade. Below is a brief summary of the workshop. Mon, 13 Dec 2010 22:11:01 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#kmw http://markburgess.org/blog.html#cmdb Glenn O'Donnel and Carlos Casanova have written perhaps the first worthy analysis of the success and future of the CMDB, with a title befitting a good spy drama. Sat, 23 Nov 2010 08:11:01 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#cmdb http://markburgess.org/blog.html#mandel The death this year (14 October 2010) of the Polish-French-American mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, best known for introducing the idea of fractal dimension to mathematics, reminded me of issues that I have moved away from over the last ten years, but which are every bit as important now as they were back then. Sat, 30 Oct 2010 08:11:01 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#mandel http://markburgess.org/blog.html#twp What has beloved physics turned into? Certainly not science, that much is certain. It has become a vanity fair and media circus, often little better than pulp fiction, which overshadows the work of real science. String theorists especially have stolen far too much attention. Wed, 9 Oct 2010 08:11:01 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#twp http://markburgess.org/blog.html#3myths Hierarchy, rollback and ordering ... three words that have haunted me like a sour reflux for the past 15 years. It's time to put pen to paper and explain why I believe these notions are harmful the IT industry. Wed, 9 Sep 2010 00:11:01 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#3mthds http://markburgess.org/blog.html#nordheim June 2010 has seen the passing of one of Norway's most important composers: Arne Nordheim. He was a central figure in Norwegian music, who wrote the opening music for the Lillehammer Winter Olympics, and who has stirred controversy as a modernist. Wed, 7 Jul 2010 14:11:01 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#nordheim http://markburgess.org/blog.html#savalue Many, if not most, business leaders see IT services as a cost centre, a sump for funds to disappear into. They tend not to see it as a strategic tool for supporting business growth or developing new opportunities. They need a trusted interpreter. Knowledge Management is a central pillar to developing and measuring system administration value: System Administrators must become teachers. Sat, 8 May 2010 14:11:01 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#savalue http://markburgess.org/blog.html#mij Japan is the most alluring of worlds. Old meets new without obvious disdain, and there is no shame in visual expression, as long as it is tempered by ritual modesty. I spent only 10 days in Japan, travelling with friends between Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Naoshima and Kinosaki Onsen, but this hardly seems to scratch the surface of what must be the most intriguing place I have ever been. Sat, 1 May 2010 14:11:01 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#mij http://markburgess.org/blog.html#prvr Cfengine today has developed a broad range of virtualization techniques that simplify the packaging and configuration of computer systems. Still, there is a lot of confusion about what virtualization is and is for. Promise Theory (on which Cfengine is based) could be seen as a form of virtualization itself, so how does Promise Theory help us to understand and manage virtualization and its Cloud Computing dreams? Sun, 29 Mar 2010 18:13:01 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#prvr http://markburgess.org/blog.html#vr Recent documentaries by the BBC. Sun, 28 Mar 2010 11:13:01 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#vr http://markburgess.org/blog.html#promises A draft promise theory book is released. Sun, 7 Mar 2010 17:16:45 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#promises http://markburgess.org/blog.html#efficiency I was recently been moved to think more about the efficiency of the technologies we use... Anyone who has used Windows along side Linux on the same PC, knows about inefficiency from painful experience. Software engineering teaches programmers to be resource hogs. Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:16:45 +0100 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#efficiency http://markburgess.org/blog.html#busval The status of system administrators as experts is at stake as both technology and businesses evolve. To evolve in step, professionals need to become more business aware. Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:16:45 -0500 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#busval http://markburgess.org/blog.html#alien This year is the 30th anniversary of Ridley Scott's film Alien, and in commemoration, there is a finally a digitally remastered re-release Gerry Goldsmith's brilliant film score for the movie. Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:16:45 -0500 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#alien http://markburgess.org/blog.html#nightmare Knowledge management in organizations is a serious and pressing issue today. As the pace of our world increases and people move more quickly from task to task, or even job to job, knowledge that is locked inside people's heads tends to remain there. Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:16:45 -0500 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#nightmare http://markburgess.org/blog.html#phd PhD students learn unique skills in order to develop an overview of their subject: they have to understand the breadth and depths of their topic, embrace common sense, and learn to defend against every kind of criticism. To succeed they have to learn time management and task prioritization. These are exactly the skills needed to run a business. Why is it then that business and academia are such unwilling bed-fellows? Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:16:45 -0500 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#phd http://markburgess.org/blog.html#origami Guy Deutscher's The Unfolding of Language. Steve is a compulsive linguist. In this book, Guy Deutscher (whose name is even indicative of his multi-national life and learnings) describes the state of modern linguistics with enviable skill. Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:16:45 -0500 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#origami http://markburgess.org/blog.html#happiness A couple of years ago I came across Richard Layard's book on Happiness. This book describes the research that has been done on what makes people happy. Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:16:45 -0500 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#happiness http://markburgess.org/blog.html#research In modern society, academics are not valued very highly; research is often seen by many as a way for unstructured layabouts to get free money for doing something that no one understands. Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:16:45 -0500 http://markburgess.org/blog.html#research