Word of the day: Orthogonal

March 1 2006

or·thog·o·nal:

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.

Ed Brill Metra Train #2129, Upper Deck Category:  Lotus  Add/View Comments [12]

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  1. 1  Bill Geimer  | 3/1/2006 9:07:05 PM

    @Ed - and enjoy it and gain from it I did. Plus, you were quite clear without the microphone, but as you say, it could stand some improvment so it can be used when they split the room in two.

    I thought the the Lotusphere Comes To You presentations were very, very good. Especially when it was the first time through the material for some. Kudos to all the presenters, and to the live demos, which were successfull, even given the early beta code. Brave too!

    As to the video, well, I do not have quite that high an opinion. The high definition flat screens were very sharp, high contrast and great even with lights on. The projectors however, tended to be just slightly out of focus. All the screens, both projector or hi-def flat tv screens tended to have either the left or the right of the video cut off (and it varied from room to room and in one case, from one presenter's pc to another.) In the "tech" room, the view was so cut off for David Marshak's Sametime 7.5 demo and Joseph Linehan's WP 6 screen cams that almost half of the navigation window was lost. The demos were great, everything live worked, but it was hard to follow at times with part of the pc screen missing.

  1. 2  Axel  | 3/2/2006 4:00:11 AM

    A question for the more technical oriented readers of this blog:

    Can I tell people that rss/pox* is for REST webservices architecture on Domino and SOAP is for SOAP webservices architecture on Domino? Or is that wrong?

    Both have their strengthes and weaknesses, but thats another point.

    thx Axel

    * pox= plain old xml (love that). Stuff like ?readXmlEntries, f. ex.

  1. 3  Steven Joseph  | 3/2/2006 8:34:17 AM

    Does the new innovation pack come with a spell checker update that contains the word "blog"?

  1. 4  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 3/2/2006 9:23:17 AM

    @3 LOL - that would require a core code update :-)

  1. 5  Bruce Elgort http://www.bruceelgort.com | 3/2/2006 9:36:44 AM

    All of the PDP-11's and VAX's I have worked on had very small drives. The PDP-11 had maybe a 10mb drive and the VAX's had maybe 40mb drives.

    Was there ever a VAX in the 80's/early 90's with a gigabyte hard drive?

    Also, what more can you tell us about the blog template and RSS stuff?

  1. 6  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 3/2/2006 9:41:41 AM

    Too soon to say more in terms of detail on the blog template and RSS stuff.

  1. 7  Michael  | 3/2/2006 10:57:38 AM

    About RSS Stuff, if it's not in core code then :(

    I was hoping for feature like @Date conversions to rss format and stuff like that

  1. 8  Bob Congdon http://www.bobcongdon.com/blog | 3/2/2006 11:26:38 AM

    @5: The Vax got as big a few large refrigerators -- and eventually as small as a desktop workstation -- remember the MicroVax?. As I recall, the RM05 drives we had on our Vax 780s in the early 80s had 300 MB spindles. But the drive itself was pretty large -- the size of a washing machine. It contained a removable pack of platters that was 14" in diameter and maybe 8 inches high. And the Vax systems of that era typically had 4 MB of memory -- on a large set of 256K boards.

  1. 9  Bruce Elgort http://www.bruceelgort.com | 3/2/2006 12:42:44 PM

    I ran PathWorks LAN with 700 PC's on it on a MicroVAX 3100. We then moved it to a MicroVAX 4000. Do you remember "Disk Services"? Reminds me of VMWare disks :-)

    My college also made freshman purchase the DEC Professional 350 desktops back in 1981 which ran a special version RSX-11M Plus. Man I am old.

  1. 10  Ports http://www.mrports.com/ | 3/2/2006 5:34:50 PM

    Ah VAX/VMS! That takes me back to my first job in the late '80 where amongst other thinks I was supporting a collaborative application called Dec Notes. Funny how things come round again.

    On our Vax 780 we had a 10Mb removable disc called an RL02 on which I stored all the DIBOL programs that I developed. I never managed to fill it.({ Link }

  1. 11  Declan Lynch www.qtzar.com | 3/2/2006 8:23:49 PM

    Pathworks.. That was one of the first networks I ever worked on. Good old DEC LAN :-)

  1. 12  Robert Wenc www.bluemesatech.com | 3/2/2006 9:32:41 PM

    Even though I didn't get to see any of the Ed's sessions (I stayed on the Dev track), the event was really good. The hannover release is really coming along nicely and sametime 7.5 looks great. Good event. A bit warm in some of the rooms though.

    //That new IBM facility in Chicago feels like you're stepping on board the USS Enterprise... nice place.