The Netherlands exit the rusty labour market

Yesterday, our new government finished negotiations. The two parties that together form a majority, VVD and PvdA, have reached agreements on their mutual policies for the next four years. It's a challenging combination of right-wing (VVD) and left-wing (PvdA).
Even though these definitions vary considerably across the globe, I think I can suffice by saying that VVD generally favours the rich, while PvdA favours the poor

But, all that doesn't matter. The topic for this post is the definitive decision that severance pay will be maximised at 75 thousand euros - period. Where it currently would be double, triple or even more of that

Innovation and inclusion - a matter of space and time

[Image by Salim Virji]

I am not sure anymore on relationship between innovation and inclusion . Need to think through it during the long flight to India tomorrow
— Vijay Vijayasankar (@vijayasankarv) October 26, 2012

Vijay Vijasankar and Ethan Jewett dragged me into a conversation on innovation and inclusion. Well of course they didn't, I butted in as usual

My answer was:

@vijayasankarv @esjewett that can't be true. They mean the extent of inclusion in space and time - I sure do hope
— Martijn Linssen (@MartijnLinssen) October 26, 2012

Android? Car mode? Speakerphone auto-on? Bluetooth volume fail? Micro-USB design-flaw!

[Disclaimer: this information is provided 'as is' without warranty of any kind. Use at your own risk]

Are you -that is, your phone- suffering from the following symptoms?

• weeks or even months ago, "car mode" started to seemingly randomly get enabled
• ever since, that seemed to happen more often
• at some point, when you made or received a call, the speakerphone would sometimes be automatically turned on
• since a while, when you make or receive a call, the speakerphone is always automatically turned on
• since then, when connected via Bluetooth to a speakerset, you can change the volume on your phone up or down but that won't have any effect
• it drives you crazy

A pyramid scheme is bad form, Cloudwork

As some of you might know, or rather, should, Integration is my middle name - you might even call me a one-trick pony and I'd take that as a compliment. So, when I saw that Cloudwork offers unprecedented integration (cough), I signed up immediately! I was even so enthusiastic, I even forgot to use a fake identity - and very much regret that now

Cloudwork didn't have me sign up. No, Cloudwork baited me into giving away my email address, so they could decide themselves when to send me that valuable invite to their beta:

How and why common sense will beat REST

In my previous post I described how REST would replace SOAP. If you paid close attention you will have noticed that I actually didn't say anything in favour of REST, but everything at the expense of SOAP.
Because it indeed seems like REST will be the new SOAP - which is in contradiction with the idea that today's Enterprises that have any form of Service Oriented Architecture will replace their current implementations by those fit for the future

Because "REST" just doesn't make any sense in that context. Mind you, I'm talking about the REST that the low-level techies hijack; exactly what I described, i.e. JSON with the four HTTP verbs. Not the REST as Roy Fielding intended, i.e. a verb-independent style. Apart from all the heavy caching on every side of any connection, which really enabled the scale he was looking for. Without cache, there would be no Internet. Period.
And in case you want to know what Roy thinks of the current hijacking of REST, just read this and this

I'm sorry, you're just not incompetent enough to get it

Olivier Blanchard made me do it.

@martijnlinssen :D As far as I can tell, incompetence isn't a driver of failure. It's a driver of advancement.
— Olivier Blanchard (@thebrandbuilder) October 16, 2012

And it is. Definition of advancement? Coming up soon. But this is the driver for most, if not all, of your life: work, life, religion, politics, social media (sic) and last but certainly not least successful Enterprise products.
Come again? Yes

TIBCO's Silver Fabric - a golden lining

I attended TIBCO's PaaS workshop, where they showed and demoed Silver Fabric - the product that has come forth from the DataSynapse acquisition in September 2009. Erik Hageman, Mario Invernizzi and Steven van der Kroft lead the session.
The location was the Radisson Blu near Schiphol, a fine location with excellent service and food & drinks. After we had those, the session started at 1 PM

Silver Fabric is a middle layer between the OS and application. It sits right in between, so it can allow for upgrades, scale up or down, and failover and failback - without human intervention (hold your horses please)