I H-A-T-E WINDOWS !!

Greetings:

It has been a really long time since I have posted anything about Macs or Windows or Unix or Linux or Zenix or anything like that.  But, recently, I tried to "upgrade" my Win-7-Pro installation and, before you could say, "Stop, Billy!  Stop!" WinDoze had gone and re-partitioned my HD.  Just as I had finally gotten everything installed the way I wanted in on the new machine. 

Yes, I know, I know.  WinDoze is not like Unix or Mac where you just upgrade the OS and nothing else is directly affected - well, not normally, anyway.  And I guess I was just hoping that maybe, just maybe, I was condemning WinDoze too early because it took two days to get everything RE-installed for just the WinDoze part.  After all of the upgrades, and more upgrades and more upgrades...  Ad infinitum ad nauseum.  And, well, you know what happened.  It really did re-partition the HD and erased all of my hard, three-weeks work. 

So, now I get to start all over.  WinDoze STILL ain't anything like Unix nor Linux nor Mac.  And I really, really, REALLY HATE WINDOWS !!!  And, no, since it was a new machine, I had NOT installed the backup software nor done a backup.  Bad, bad, programmer!!  Mea culpa.  But, I've learned my lesson.  Backup, backup, backup!  Especially with WinDoze.  My Macs are always backed up all the time. 

I guess I deserve what I got for treating WinDoze like a red-headed step-child.  But I only have two of them; a Big Dell desktop with 12GB of HS-RAM, great graphics and a dual-i7 cpu (quite old now - almost 2 years) and a new quad-core-i7 Toshiba laptop with 8GB of RAM that I take out to my clients.  The rest are all Macs.  The Big D will have to wait until I have some quiet weekend time to get everything installed.  But I will backup everything as I go this time.  Just in case it kicks me in the pants again.

Shalom,
jco

Decision Camp 2013

Greetings Programs:

You may have heard already.  Maybe not...  But, just in case, here it is! >> Decision Camp 2013 is coming November 4 - 6, 2013, to San Jose, CA.  It will be hosted by >> eBay - thanks eBay!!  This will not replace IntelliFest but will be in addition to IntelliFest.  Speakers will include but NOT be limited to:

• Carole-Ann Matignon (CEO of Sparkling Logic)
• Dr. Charles Forgy (inventor of the Rete Algorithms)
• Mark Proctor (inventor of Drools)
• Dr. Jacob Feldman (inventor of Open Rules)
• Carlos Seranno-Morales (inventor of ND-Advisor, later Blaze-Advisor)
• Kenny Shi (Decision Management Leader, eBay)

And, get this, ATTENDANCE IS FREE !!  Yes, totally FREE.  As in NO CHARGE.  FREE.

So, just get there, pay for your own meals, your own hotel and attendance is free.  More speakers to come.  It's just been announced  Sign up now because space is limited.  Tell'em James sent you.  It won't mean anything but tell'em anyway.  :-)

Shalom,
James Owen

You MISSED IT !!

Greetings:

Yepper - you really missed it!  If you weren't here (here being IntelliFest 2012 in San Diego, October 22-26) for the past three or four days, you missed that once in a century, maybe once in a millennium, happening.  We had

• Dr. Charles Forgy, inventor of Rete, Rete 2, Rete III and Rete NT
• Dr. Doug Lenat, inventor of the 30-year and still-ongoing CYC program
• Dr. Stephen Grossberg, one of the Godfathers of Mathematical Neural Networks
• Gary Riley, inventor of CLIPS, the standard for rulebased systems 
• Mark Proctor, inventor of Drools and all things Drools-related
• Carlos Seranno-Morales, inventor of Advisor (Neuron Data) and Sparkling Logic
• Dr. Jacob Feldman, inventor of Open Rules
• Dr. Vijay Bandekar, early AI pioneer and BRE architect at Cisco
• Dr. Alex Guazzelli, creator and author of PMML, Predictive Modeling Markup Language
• Dr. Wolfgang Laun: Jess and Drools Guru, Rulebase Patterns creator and all-round cool guy
• Kenny Shi, Rule guru at eBay on fraud detection
• Paul Snow, inventor (among many) of Fifth as well as DTRules
• Paul Vincent, former Neuron Data guy and now Tibco guru

 I don't think these guys will be together again in one place again this century.  Not all at once in one place where you or I can talk with them, have breakfast, lunch or supper with them, talk about the universe in general or rules or AI in particular with them individually or in a group, listen to them expound or argue with each other, discuss things...  It was absolutely, positively, GREAT!

And you missed it.  Oh, well...  I tried to tell you.  Mark tried to tell you.  Jason tried to tell you.  Everyone here tried to tell you.  But you wouldn't listen.  Nooooo...  You were too busy with this and that and the other.  Well, you missed it.  Just like Woodstock.  Just like Paul McCartney's last concert.  Just like BB King's last concert.  Just like SRV's last concert.  You missed it.  And all you can do is hope to see one of the slide presentations if and when they become available - which most won't since the authors won't release them to the public.  Sorry, Charlie.  You missed it.

Oh, one other thing.  See my blog on Bad Bahai for my comments on my stay at the Bahia Resort Hotel.  It was close to terrible.

Shalom,
jco

IntelliFest 2012 Friday

Greetings:

Lots of cool things happening today but I'm working this morning - SCRUM meetings, training and other meetings taking up most of the day.  Did get to have lunch with Dr. Doug Lenat and Mark Proctor though.  Also, got to listen to part of Carlos Seranno-Morales' presentation on "Converting a Ton of Data Into an Ounce of Knowledge."  He and Dr. Charles Forgy are really working on data analysis for fraud, something that should go together quite well with what Dr. Stephen Grossberg presented on Tuesday.  Got part of the presentation by Paul Vincent of Tibco on "Decision Modeling for Better Decisions" - that was part of the business focus track that we were supposed to have had but that never quite happened.  Still, it was a good presentation - what I saw before going back to work.

Back to work and missed most of the rest of the day but had supper with Dr. Forgy, Gary and Linda Riley.  Gary and Linda are a really nice couple - I can see why they have been together so long.  Gary is so laid back that he and Charles just seem to listen to Linda talk about whatever - especially since she is a highly qualified programmer as well.  Anyway, Gary is from Texas, Charles is from Texas and I'm an immigrant to Texas; Linda is the only Yankee import so it's nice to have an outside opinion now and then.  More tomorrow but it's been a great conference.

Shalom,
jco

IntelliFest 2012 Thursday

Greetings:

Thursday - my turn in the barrel.  I did a pretty simple talk on Benchmarks and how far we've come in the past 25 years when Dr. Miranker first got them started.  Yep, first up at 0830 followed by Dr. Charles Forgy (inventor of Rete, Rete 2, Rete III and Rete-NT) at 0930 talking on just why the benchmarks worked like they do and why most are pure junk and how to modify so that they run properly.  Then he was followed by Charles Young of Solid Soft who spoke on the trust value of Applied AI.  Finally, just before lunch, Dr. Doug Lenat of Cycorp presented a really great talk on Cyc, a program on which he has been working for the past 30 years.  I felt like a real groupie today.

After lunch Kenny Shi of eBay gave  his presentation on Emotional Business Rules.  Then it was "Old Home Week" when Rob Rossi (formerly of Neuron Data and one of my running mates at Norwest Bank in Des Moines back in 1998) gave a neat presentation on what they are doing at XTOR to do AI in the Cloud.  What a neat idea!

The final two presentations were by Dr. Jacob Feldman of Open Rules who spoke on Constraint Programming and Dr. Wolfgang Laun who followed his boot camp with Reasoning on XML Data.  What a great day!!!  All in all, if you weren't here today, you missed a great time.

Shalom,
jco