March 7th, 2006
Word of the day: Orthogonal
Adj.
[from mathematics] Mutually independent; well separated; sometimes, irrelevant
to. Used in a generalization of its mathematical meaning to describe sets
of primitives or capabilities that, like a vector basis in geometry, span
the entire `capability space’ of the system and are in some sense non-overlapping
or mutually independent. For example, in architectures such as the PDP-11
or VAX where all or nearly all registers can be used interchangeably in
any role with respect to any instruction, the register set is said to be
orthogonal.
Ah, the PDP-11 or VAX, such memories of room-sized
computers with monstorous gigabyte hard drives. Anyway.
I used the word “orthogonal” today to describe the “innovation
pack” planned for Lotus Notes and Domino in mid-2006. This is
the set of capabilites including a blog template, RSS feeds, and Notes
on a USB key that were announced at Lotusphere. They’re “orthogonal”
because they are not a 7.1 or 7.5 release…in fact, no core code is disturbed
at all. This is critical to those organizations who have testing
requirements in order to deploy a “new” piece of software. The
“innovation pack” is separate from the core Notes/Domino codestream.
Apparently, the “orthogonal”
nature of this deliverable taught several people in the room a new SAT
word.
Other notes from today’s Lotusphere Comes to You in Chicago:
- About 120 customers and partners attended. Speakers included Kevin
Cavanaugh, Rob Ingram, David Marshak (demonstrating Sametime 7.5 live!),
and Joe Linehan.
- In my session on Notes/Domino directions, all of the attendees were on
ND6.x or 7. A number of Linux and iSeries customers represented,
as well as some pSeries and Solaris. Oh yeah, there were Windows
users, too.
- Today was my first visit to the IBM offices at 71 S. Wacker, Chicago.
This is the address that has been on my business card since August,
but until today, I had never been there. Nice place, very sleek.
The A/V equipment is first rate (except the wireless microphone setup).
But now I can no longer point out that as a telecommuter, I’ve never
been to my own office. Though I still didn’t go looking for where
my snail mail is stored.
Originally by Ed Brill from Ed Brill on March 1, 2006, 1:09pm
