Chuck, let's go. And get Chuck's opinion on him. Chuck Hollis, as many of you know, is a prolific blogger. How you doing, Chuck? Great to see you, always a pleasure. And not just a blogger and a writer, great thinker, somebody who really has a pulse on technology, he can articulate it well, translate technology into business value on a good day. Chuck's a guy that talks to a lot of CIOs, a lot of customers, a lot of internal people. You got a lot going on. Chuck started the social media efforts at EMC, what seems to be like, oh yeah, I guess in social media terms, decades ago. Yeah. It worked. Yeah, it worked. It worked, well done. Chuck, we were talking earlier, you're getting a lot of traffic on your blog, you're well known in the circles. And you talk a lot. You get called in as the guru for customers. You've been, how many memes have you had? So it's a little scary. It's a little scary, isn't it? You get pulled into this stuff like, you really want to talk to me? Where's Chuck this week? You have, as I say in the Irish world, good rap. Yeah, good rap. Good rap. So we're talking about our rap here today is the sizzle and steak going on at EMC World. The sizzle is big data, and the steak is the deployment of virtualization, the cloud, and stuff that's in the trenches. So Dave, sizzle, big data. Big data's hot. So he defined big data. So what is big data? Well, yeah, let's ask Chuck, because I've heard some decent definitions, but Chuck, you always have a really crisp way of articulating these things. I suppose there's all these different ways to define it, but what I see it as a change in mindset, from data being a bad thing, from IT being a bad thing to, oh my God, if we assemble all this information together, we can make a lot of money, sorry. If we assemble all this data together, we can make a lot of money and actually create a lot of value. And if you look at most traditional IT thinking, it's, oh my God, we've got to get rid of our data, we've got to lower IT costs, those damn users, what do they want? Big data, IT is different. It's about value generation, whether it's finding a cure to cancer or discovering a new insight and buying behavior. It's a whole different mindset that says, hey, we can make money and create value from this stuff, it's not a bad thing. I love that. Big data is an opportunity, right? For decades, all we've been talking about is, oh, I got all this data, I can't find anything, I can't find emails, I can't manage this stuff. And you're saying we got to flip our mindset, data is making money. So when you go into one of these industries and you meet a big data team, more data is a good thing. The more, the better. Yes, they want better, faster storage just so they can get more data. The tools are more of the self-service variety. You don't go to the high IT priests and ask for a report or an application. It's about empowering and enabling these knowledge workers to find new insights in their information. The funding model is all about creating new value as opposed to running the business as usual. And for those of us who've been in IT for such a long time, we got into it because we thought it was really cool stuff, we can change the world. I think Pat said it best. Big data can change the world. It can improve healthcare, it can improve energy, it can improve all these things we care about as social issues. Many of the answers have to do with using data more intelligently. The number one social issue today is PlayStation Network is down. And that's a social game, everyone's playing it. But that's a cloud issue, right? So we were talking earlier about the phenomenon, Chuck, in the world today. And that is, there's two real worlds colliding. It's the sandbox of entrepreneurship and innovation with Hadoop and application development that's out there. And it's really fostering innovation. There's a real, and it's still an open book at this point. The future is unwritten and there's new stuff happening. And then you got clients and your clients want to go to the OPEX benefits of the cloud and are racing there. And what you're seeing is a fail in the system. Amazon crashed, big news with Amazon going down, which is, you know, public cloud. But granted, Quora was down, a lot of these apps that kind of moved into scale. People were upset. So that highlighted the fact that, okay, we got to get serious. So people are really thinking about that bridge that they have to cross. Who do they cross with? Obviously, you guys are positioning EMC to be that vendor. But you got to play nicely. You got to play nicely in the sandbox.  We'll ask that. So you're talking about a lot of important issues here. You know, what I learned from the Amazon experience was the need for good governance. You know, some people saw Amazon fail and it was like, yeah, okay, we've got our plan. We're ready to go. Other people were absolutely shocked that an IT service provider could have a bad day. They didn't have a plan B or plan C. And what I see with my customers who are moving to these external cloud services is they're doing it with open eyes. They're doing it with good governance. They want to remain in control. They're very careful about the workloads they put out there and take by. But let's say we get all through this. It's now two or three years from now. We virtualize infrastructure. We consume cloud. We're reasonably comfortable about it. What do we want to point all of that at? And I think that came out in both Joe's and Pat's presentation is, big data is how we create value from this stuff. So you listen to today's cloud tracks about saving money and better IT and IT as a service. All that's great. But at some point we get past all of that and we say, how are we going to take all this great technology and find the next drug or figure out how to consume energy more efficiently? And that's where so many of us get excited about big data. It's creating new forms of value from this stuff. How do you view, and obviously EMC is going to wrestle with this question, is how do you not foreclose innovation at the same time foster innovation while delivering production level, scale, value? I'll give you an example. Take a look at what the Green Plum guys are doing. So for example, you can go to Green Plum's community and download a free community version of all the Green Plum tools, the visualization tools, the database, open source, click twice, download it, have a nice day. But we're very clear, not for production environments. So there's an innovative part where you want to create environments where people can play with this stuff without having to execute a large license agreement and a big IT decision. Okay, now you're ready to go to production. Would you like to have dedicated infrastructure for that? There's the Green Plum data computing appliance. How about a compatible service provider? Maybe you don't want to own the infrastructure you want to render it. So I think the trick is, as people start exploring big data, showing them different and different consumption models that not only meet their economic requirements, but also their governance and trust requirements without having to front-end load of that. Typically in IT, when you had a good idea with big data, you had to start with a big checkbook in an IT staff. We are meeting people who are producing amazing things from their existing data that's causing this entrepreneurship thing to tick off in large organizations and say, hey, we can do more, and we can do it in a way that doesn't require a $5 million commitment on day one. So I think it's a good point. So John, I love the fact that EMC is actually making an announcement in Hadoop today because this could have just been, you know, big data, big data, big data. I keep saying big data, and eventually the world will associate us with big data. Say it often enough, people will believe you. Right, and that's actually good marketing sometimes. And you already got a big data from the last night. Luke Launergen last night was talking to me, and he was very adamant, and Bill Cook came over. We had a very intimate conversation. You know, Joe Tucci was watching us, and like, what are these guys talking about? But I said there's a Holy War opportunity that could be avoided. You have to avoid this Holy War around Hadoop and just say, hey, value creation. It's there? Let's take Hadoop as an example. Great open source technology, but it's also great open source technology. Got to go to the downside, download it, compile it, support it. You want high availability. Sorry, you're going to have to do that yourself. You want enterprise class support. Sorry, you're going to have to do that yourself. You want to size the infrastructure. Sorry, you're going to have to do that yourself. So what we saw the opportunity is take this great open source distro and actually commercialize it so you can consume it for enterprise purposes. Not everybody is there yet, but it's nice to know that if you're getting started with Hadoop and just exploring with it that it should you find something of value. Yeah, there's a vendor who can kind of work this up and make it as robust and as predictable as the other enterprise class. It's early. Pat Gelsinger would say, these are market decisions. It's not about current product, but about, to me, my analysis is that EMC is basically making a game statement. We're getting into this market. It's not so much speeds and feeds right now. And we'll see how you guys play that out in terms of technology contribution to the Apache Foundation. But that's an issue. And I think you guys will figure it out. Hopefully it won't be Holy War around who's going to land grab for Hadoop. Well, but this is a big signal to the market though, right? It basically, EMC could have done that without coming out with its own distribution. Go back 10 years. Let's talk about the Linux distros. How many Linux distros are out there? And you as a customer have a wide choice of who's distro, what kind of support environment. At least from my perspective, we still have a much innovation going on in the Linux distro world as we ever had. We just have a variety of consumption options. Yeah, it's not about the competition because all the press will talk about the competition with Cloudera. Cloudera is number one. And we'll talk about it too. No, but it's about distribution. I mean, everyone should come out of their own version of Hadoop and compete on value. Well, on value, right? But to your point, Chuck, the corollary is how many of those distributions have a $9 billion market cap? Right, one. Okay, and so this to me is a signal to the marketplace that EMC saying, you know what? Well, Yahoo had it fast. This is a serious business, and we're going to essentially validate that this is a serious business. It is. I think your radar is right. But I think the end state ends up looking like the Linux market is today. There's a couple of big distros. There's all sorts of little ones that do clever things. But most enterprises tend to go to Suzy and tend to go to Red Hat. The two guys like that. Well, early on, though, it didn't take that distribution when it was developing. The trajectory of the Linux market early on was, and Hadoop's still vulnerable. So there's a lot of politics going on in the Hadoop world, as you know, but it's still a little early. Hadoop is just another tool in the tool belt. It is not the answer to everything. If you saw Pat's presentation, there's a stack there, right? You need some enabling technology. You need some great scalable decision support databases. You need some great analytic tools. You need to collaborate and present the data. And in that schema, Hadoop is just another component in the stack. And I would bet you a year from now we're talking about the next thing that people are very, very interested in. I could offer up some buzzwords. But I could see a position where more and more of these open source technologies become candidates for big data analytics and they're looking to vendors to commercialize them. Today's darling is Hadoop. I may not be the same a year from now. We may be looking at something else that we're all very intrigued with. Right, right. Now we also heard about project lightning.  Well, I have the question for you. Isn't the best IO, no IO? Yes, we'll just send all the computers home. We don't have to do anything today. What is project lightning? So they want to tell us, Chuck. Very cool. And a nutshell. We all probably realize that we're going through transition from disk to flash. And as flash prices come down, we see less and less disk being used, more and more flash. But the trick has been, how do you get the application and the data close to each other? Historically, we've had the application on a server and the storage over here on a storage network separated by a wire. The premise behind project lightning is we can put storage flash on the server and intelligently cache data in and out of it. If you remember back for the DAS versus SAN arguments, there's one school of thought that says you need to have little disk drives, another school of thought that you had to have SAN. We're not going to go down that religious war this time. The answer is going to be yes. There are some environments where you have a lot of compute and a little bit of data. Makes sense to locate the data on the server in flash cache. There are other environments, and I think they tried to show this on stage, where, hey, I've got a little bit of compute and a whole lot of data, better to bring the VMotion, the compute environment close to the storage array. So what we're basically saying is that we can need to redraw the boundaries between what is server and what is storage. Storage can live on the server if we can intelligently use it. Certain server workloads may make sense to relocate to a storage device and run the virtual machine. So again, we didn't announce the product today. You can't go buy it, as I like to joke, it's made out of unobtainium today. But very quickly, we have this history of turning our ideas into products. Demand is showing up in these environments that need very, very fast IO. And again, the idea of locating the data in flash close to the server environment is very attractive, these people. Probably familiar with Fusion IO and violin. A little bit. So Dave, someone wrote today, storage is sexy. How's your line? I stole that from last year. So Chuck, you just wrote a blog post. He just wrote a blog post that says, storage is sexy again. So that was last year. This is even more sexy year. It's porn this year. Yeah, getting sexier if that's possible in Vegas. So you wrote a post basically saying flash is great in your blog post. Some people are construing this as a supporting argument against Steve Duplessy, for Steve Duplessy's argument for Fusion IO. So actually, I think Steve Duplessy came out on the side that says, hey, just putting flash on a card and sticking it in a server is not going to be enough. And I don't know which side of the argument it was. Regardless of who said what, we think that there's an opportunity to have some parts of the storage stack and flash on the server, some parts of the storage stack on storage arrays and the intelligence to move them back and forth. I think that last statement you made is the interesting part to me, is the intelligence to move it back and forth because you're talking about- I think in the day this turns out to be software. Yeah, exactly. So you're talking about fast. Right. You're right. EMC has a track record of announcing products and then delivering. Now you've- On a good day. On a good day. And EMC's smart. Thank you. And it sees the trends in the marketplace.  And so you've made this announcement that to me, what's interesting is fast. Now, I think they're both right, by the way. Well, again- I don't see this as a fusion IO killer per se because fusion IO has some other software technologies that eliminate things like the SCSI stack. So I mean- Yeah, I mean the difference between a product and a capability. You know, back in the beginning of 2008, we were the first vendor to say, here's these flash drives, they go into a big symmetric. We started talking about software that could locate things back and forth. We said the promise would be it can run a lot faster and a lot cheaper. But that was all kind of within the array. All we're really doing now is taking that discussion, saying, let me draw a boundary through the server and have that exact same discussion as before. Some of the storage lives in the server. Just to clarify, on my position on the whole fusion IO debate with Duplasti and others is simply that, and the Wall Street Journal came out with an article that was anti-fusion IO. And everyone was dissing fusion IO because they have Facebook as a client. And I think everyone wants Facebook as a client. We know other vendors are being booted out of there because they don't have that robust feature set. So all I was saying was, I'm not dissing fusion IO because they have Facebook as a client. Yeah, if they lose their client, then it might not be worth as much. But my argument was, my argument was, there are going to be more environments that look like Facebook. That was my point. So that's the debate. And that's an interesting, but that's validated by EMC today. Two years ago, we were arguing about Google IT. We're all obsessing around how Google does IT. We all need to have IO. This year, it's Facebook IT. Is Facebook the model for IT and large scalable web applications? The answer is yes and no. Will you see more environments that look like Facebook? Yes. Will the vast majority of IT environments look like what Facebook does? I don't buy that argument because Google's a search engine. It's not an enterprise app. I think Facebook has data dimensions that look like an enterprise. Mobility, the mobile's a very big app. You have latency issues around application tie-in and commodity infrastructure. So if SSD is a caching layer initially, I think it's just morphs into the cloud meets big data. So to me, Facebook's a cloud app. Yep, with one map. Yep, Facebook. So I look at Facebook very clearly as how Hadoop plays in there as possibly where the data centers are going to move to. And you guys have the Vplex vision, which quite frankly is a great vision. Let's talk about another cloud app. Let's take smart grid.  The first time have billions of IP addresses showing up and saying, what's going on with power consumption? You got to capture that stuff. It's not enough just to cache it and serve it up to the next guy who wants to see a picture. It's a cloud app. It's scalable, but it's IO profile is very different than what Facebook has to do. So I think these are all interesting. People will argue with me that Twitter IT looks very different than Facebook IT. Like that is short message. Twitter has no IT. Twitter has no IT to say. Yeah. Yeah. But here with Chuck Hollis, legendary blogger, a lot of fans out there. No Chuck. Chuck's been around. His figure. Now he's someone's a celebrity at EMC. We were talking about this. How do you feel about that by the way that you're very big authority at EMC and in the industry. I don't know if I'm 100% comfortable with it. You know, I started this blogging thing. I started talking to people. And all of a sudden I started getting some notoriety and I'm like, boy, you know, something's wrong here. Either I'm smarter than I thought I was or they're not that discerning out there. But I think I've kind of evolved into an interesting role where you can just kind of converse with people on topics like this and create alternate point of views. I don't think anybody has the right answer. But what you can bring to the table is good arguments, good perspectives, and let the best ideas win. You know, I think Joe said it on stage. Every aspect of IT is changing today. Infrastructure, applications, user experiences, consumption models through the cloud. And anybody who shows up and says, hey, I've got this all figured out, you know. You know, EMC's got a very impressive management team. I got to say, I mean, across the board, even working with us with social media, they get that the world's changing at the end user level. And then backing into the data center. I think that is a mindset that translates pretty well. I mean, can you guys carry the day? Obviously, you own VMware that's looking good. Can you get into the- The VMware thing worked out pretty well. Got some great acquisitions. I mean, I think, you know- Name a better acquisition in the history of the computer industry. You can't, you know. I mean, we'll eat. I promise them that- Name a close second. Then once you go do it again. Hey, that worked out so well, yeah. I'm HP Buc Compact. Seriously, what? HP Buc Compact. HP Buc Compact? Okay. That's like the, is that the IBM PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC. That's up there, but not nor even close to the value that's needed. Certainly doesn't have the caught the right wave at the right time type of dynamic.  I mean- Yeah, but just in terms of value creation, I mean, it's absolutely incredible to me. Interestingly enough, we have a fair number of people knocking on our door saying, how did you guys put together this whole M&A strategy thing? Because if you look at the track record in tech, it hasn't been really good. You know, how many good companies you'll get swallowed up and you never see them, their people, their brand again. I don't want to name names, because a lot of them are partners, but there's a lot of M&A that goes down that you wonder- The integration is the challenge.  But you know, EMC wasn't always good at M&A. Oh no. EMC's first acquisition was Epic. I don't even want to talk about it. Bob Devoner's company was horrible. It was a disaster. The first two or three were terrible, and then all of a sudden- Joe came along. And that's why I think there's hope for NetApp. I really do. I think it's that Joe realized that you had to get good at it. Well, NetApp's a good niche storage vendor. I mean, I got to say, NetApp, Val would argue with that. I guess they're niche player. But it doesn't happen overnight. So I don't want to pick on NetApp here, but name an acquisition they've done that's worked well. They're not really pro-acquisition. I mean, we've sat down- And I think it's part of it is because they've got some Decru, gone, Topio, gone, Bycast, I'm still looking for it. Bycast, I don't know. Spinnaker, Onaro, okay. We'll see about our corner. But I would argue, this is not just picking on NetApp. This is any IT company. You've got to build a competency, an organization- It takes a long time. It takes a long time to get good at it. It's like any other varsity sport. You don't just show up and play one day. And again, I think there's a lot of opportunity to do more here. But this is important because Oracle, graded acquisitions, IBM, graded acquisitions, EMC, graded acquisitions, HP, pretty good. Yeah, I don't get there. You have to be. HP's been pretty good lately. After the Compact Acquisition, they got a lot of scale. And by the way, you lay down a lot of money for something like 3PAR, you got to make it work. I mean, there's a certain- That looks good. EMC to me is one of the leaders in the industry. I mean, $59 billion market cap. We've said $100 billion market cap within 2015. Looks like a long track for that. You're right there. And acquisition prowess is one of the key attributes of those companies. The other thing I think we bring to the table is, we get most of our good ideas from our customers. Because of our customer profile, we'll talk to them saying, hey, we found this great technology. It does this. It solves this problem. And a lot of our M&A ideas literally come from our customers who are using these technologies. So we do our own screening. We do a lot of our own investments. But I can point to named acquisitions where it was a couple of customers who came to us and said, this stuff is cool. You got to go take a look at it.  And I think that gives you an edge on the solution side. When you test stuff internally, and you got a culture where, IT guys usually have a gun to the head, execute and then if anything goes wrong, they get fired. But you guys are bringing in virtualization. You got Green Plum in there. We're here and you guys doing a lot of new stuff. So I think that gives you an edge on the technology side. So one part that I point to is the customers. The other thing I want to highlight is our own IT organization. Three years ago, they made a decision to go cloudify their operation. There's one thing to talk about the dream. It's another thing to live it. And we learned more about not the technology, but the change in the organization, the operational processes, the new skill sets, new governance models. It's one thing to say, here's a bunch of technology, go build yourself a cloud. It's another thing to look at what has to happen from the organization and human capital side to make that reality. As we learned from that, we understood the best way to help our customers was yeah, okay, great technology and great partners. Okay, here are the new skill sets, here are the new roles, here are the new processes you're going to need to implement to really be an internal IT as a service provider. And you don't get that just by, you know, living in the technology domain. How do you feel as an EMC employee who's been through the road? You've traveled the EMC half. Living the dream, baby.  Necessarily EMC is totally transformed from a, you know, big gear, iron storage vendor to information infrastructure, big data cloud. I mean, you're growing up, as Joe Tucci says, the smallest of the bigs and growing. How do you feel about that? We're still humble. Every day we wake up, we look at the opportunity and say, you know, we're very happy about what we've done, but gosh, there's so much to go do.  So, you know, part of our ethos is, you know, take a little success for about a microsecond of what you've done and get on to the next task. What gets you excited the most right now in terms of out there? I mean, what's on the table, what you're cooking up and what you see. Can you talk about what gets you excited right now? For me, it's two things. And I think, you know, I'm not just beating the corporate line. You know, cloud for me is the transformation of the IT industry. We're restructuring every part of it and the people involved around new skills. All right, now we've restructured IT as a service. What do we want to go do with it? We want to create new value for information. That's big data. And I got to tell you, we've got two or three years left of just investing in technologies around this before we can look at you and say, yeah, we've got this all figured out. And that's what kind of gets you up in the morning is the dynamic of change. Well, to me, it's really interesting. We've talked about EMC before and the whole transformation.   You're coming at this. Now, I think one of the areas that you need to do a better job, I love your thoughts on this is just selling to the CIO, selling to the line of business. You know, we're going to be at Sapphire next week. You go to Sapphire, you meet a lot of application heads, a lot of line of business heads, a lot of CIO types. It's the business crowd. And that's not EMC's traditional crowd. It isn't, it isn't. If you think about it, most IT leaders were put in their place to run business as usual. Do what you did last year, plus or minus 5%. Make it incremental, right? They were not basically risk takers and let's plug it in and see what happens. Okay, as Joe said, infrastructure's changing, application is changing, user experiences are changing, consumption models are changing. Also, that IT leader is being measured on how quickly they can implement changes in this new paradigm and less on the measurement system that they had two or three years ago. Now, if you're a career IT leader, this is not a pleasant experience.  Now, also, everything's changing. You're on crazes looking for jobs. You're going to do something else. And where I think we've done very well is to be empathetic with that need to change. We're offering new ideas, new ways of doing things. We're not the guys that got them into the trouble they were in. And it's not uniform throughout the IT spectrum, but the people we tend to meet are into this accelerated change thing. And, again, you really have to meet these guys to see kind of the implicit fear in their eyes that the game is changing quickly. They want to lead. They want to do the right thing for their business, but the rules have changed so quickly. I think the enabling for those people. Personally, I feel like there's a little bit more work to do there to get higher at the level.  You know, we always can do more. I love what Jeremy has done with the marketing and the branding. I was always frustrated, personally, that we had a great story, but you had to sit there and listen to us for six hours to understand it. You're talking a lot. Okay, you can just put on an ad. You know, people talk, it's big data. Chuck's done talking. Thank you. Did you see the streets? People get to snark in our business about advertising and marketing. They say, you know, but it actually works. It actually opens people's minds up to what we're doing. So we find it a lot easier to have the discussions we want to have based on the face of the marketing. So, yes, you know, we might laugh at the MiniCoopers and all that. People pay attention to that stuff. And the tape ball. You like the tape ball. Which we use, by the way, in a blog post because I got a picture next to the tape ball and Google backup fail. Yeah, because of tape. So we ripped out that picture. No, not because of tape, but anyway, good story. And it was tape. They wiped out tape. They wiped out tape. That was classic, right? Oops. Hey, it was still a good theater for the blog. That's for sure. But, you know, the marketing helps a lot. It just makes it so much easier to then have those discussions. And, you know, at your point, the company's evolving. And people want to have dialogues around transformation and change these days, as opposed to do exactly what you did last year, five to 10% better. And that's what gets me out of bed in the morning. That gets me out of the bed here. Well, this is John. This is what's interesting about, you know, we're talking about Hadoop and the Holy Wars and so forth. I mean, EMC's marketing prowess, that just lends credibility to that market. And then, you know, talk about, you talk about Cloudera. Cloudera's got no marketing, in my opinion. Cloudera does not have strong marketing. I mean, the old expression of when I worked at HP was, if they made fish, it would be cold dead fish. How many thousands of direct reps? We've got an ecosystem of partners. We've got service providers who go stand this stuff up. You do VCE, you've got 900 people on it. They could kill Hadoop instantly.  Come on, EMC. I don't know about that, but, you know, size and scale actually helps with a lot of these new technologies, where you can take a new idea, put it on a working machine and bring it to life. Are you making that call? EMC, Vice Cloudera? I think, well, Yahoo are, Yahoo are. Yahoo, now that's interesting. Yahoo are Cloudera, I think EMC will buy one. That would be a great play. Chuck talked about this earlier. Innovation, if you foreclose innovation by playing, pissing in the sandbox, as they say. That's where all the creation and entrepreneurship's going on. It just pollutes the ecosystem. I think, Pat, we've heard from EMC, fostering an ecosystem is number one priority. And it was this early in the game, it might be really good for you. Well, let me give you an example of that. You probably noticed we have a data scientist summit. Yeah, we've heard about that.  You know, that's not really of interest to them. What that is interesting is having access to the data they need, using it productively and creating value. So, one of the reasons we have the data scientist here is nobody really has a dialogue with who are you guys, what do you need and what would make your life easier, as opposed to us as technologists arguing, is it vanilla, is it chocolate, is it strawberry? At the end of the day, there's a guy there who's trying to extract value of that data. And I think you're going to see more of this going forward where we actually reach out to the communities that are forming, but want to use these technologies as opposed to the debates we usually have amongst ourselves over here. Yeah, but can you say the same thing about EMC, Chuck? Well, you know, at the end of the day, the guy who buys the storage technology doesn't care so much about the storage technology. He cares about the business outcomes, the relationship that he has. Well, sometimes he cares about the storage. I mean, it can get really religious, but I understand your point. Well, since we're not being religious, I thought I'd throw that out there. I'm sorry, I don't like your fiber gel. You know, I think the interesting thing about Red Hat is that, you know, Benchmark, who's contemplating financing Yahoo, and the Yahoo spin-out of Hadoop, which is being discussed, was the backer of Red Hat. John, something I've learned about you is to follow your predictions, because I track you. And your batting average is pretty good. I got it. So I'm not routinely dismissing everything you're saying. I agree. Batting average. She is good, she is good. I've been on the right horses. And Chuck, I've been on you every time. You're impressive, very candid. You like to get into an argument when it's the right time.   We'd like to work with you. I enjoy working with you guys. It's great. I love what you guys are doing here at EMC World. I don't know how this all came to be, but I hope we can do more of it in the future. Yeah, we hope so, too. So we'll be at SAP Sapphire next week. So look for us there. And Chuck, well, I'm sure we'll see you around. Always welcome on theCUBE.


Hello my friends and welcome to the 77th episode of Patterson in Pursuit. This is going to be a special episode about the Catalonian independence referendum that's coming up. In fact, it's going to take place in just a few hours from when I'm recording this. I did something similar for when the Brexit vote happened, and it's a great opportunity to talk about the underlying political philosophic principle of secession. Before we start, I want to give my thanks and welcome to several new patrons. That have signed up to support the show at patreon.com slash Steve Patterson. Thanks so much guys, I am glad that you're getting value from this show. And a special shout out to a very generous donor on PayPal. I finally set up my PayPal correctly, so you can do easy one-time donations and you can also do monthly donations. And this gentleman made a very generous contribution, which I deeply appreciate. So let's talk about Catalonia. For those of you who don't know, the eastern most district in Spain is going to be holding a referendum to secede and declare independence from Spain. Catalonia is where Barcelona is. The Spanish capital is in Madrid, and they do not approve of the Catalonian referendum. In fact, I just listened to an interview with some foreign minister who said there is no referendum happening. He said there are no voting premises, there are no ballot papers, and no authorities to check the authenticity of the vote. In other words, this is an unapproved, contentious referendum that is taking place, as millions of people are very likely to be voting, very possibly in favor of their own independence. In fact, the Spanish government has started to crack down on this vote taking place. And last I saw something like 13 Catalonian politicians had been arrested. The Spanish police are cracking down all over the place, and as you can imagine, it has angered a whole lot of people. So rather than talking just about the details of this one individual secessionist movement, I want to talk about the principle of secession. So full disclosure, I am biased. Prior to diving deep into philosophy and mathematics and physics, I got really interested in the world of ideas through the study of politics and economics. And so from my biased perspective, I think some political issues in fact are pretty much solved, at least on the theoretical side of things. There are some edge cases that are unclear, but I think the general principles are pretty straightforward. I supported Brexit, I support Cal Exit, I support Catalonia Exit, and any other groups that went to secede from their government. And the reason is fairly simple. It makes crystal clear sense to me that if a group is not being represented by their government, that they have a right to secede from that government and form their own political system. In fact, I think that should be the default approach to thinking of political issues. Why don't people, by default, just opt out of political systems that they don't like rather than to try to fight and struggle in a vicious political system wherever you are in the world? If you think of the default as being secession, that actually I think it's kind of a helpful way to frame any issues about concrete cases of secession around the world. Because if secession were seen as normal and obvious, then I think you'd actually have a really difficult case to make against secession. Rather than spending time arguing for secession, which I'll do in this episode, I think just a shift of perspective to where we think of secession as the norm, and we critically listen to cases against secession, I think would make people a heck of a lot more skeptical of the idea that political unity at all costs is a good idea. Okay, so we begin with a question in the abstract. Not about Spain, not about Scotland or the U.S. Take any group of people and let's say they do not feel represented by their government. Let's say they're a minority. You've got a million people who have a different, let's say cultural background, they have different economic priorities, they have different values, and they find themselves outweighed completely by the voice of the majority whom they disagree with. So the question is this, who determines whether or not those million people can govern themselves according to their own rules? Do they get to make that decision? Or does some other central government make that decision? I find it very peculiar to think that a minority of people has to seek legal permission to secede from a government that they view as not representing them. It's like, imagine that two people get married. And the man says, I completely support your right to get divorced so long as I give you permission to divorce me. That seems like a pretty bum deal. But that's what's going on with political structures. If you can only secede and govern yourself and be free, if those in power permit you to do so, how are you supposed to guard against tyranny? You're supposed to ask permission from the people who you think are tyrannizing you? Now with marriage, at least most of the time, this is a voluntary contract of two people for the most part, getting together voluntarily and entering into some kind of arrangement. With government, it's even worse than that. It's like an arranged marriage. You are born into a political system based on the happenstance of the geography of your birth. You didn't even choose to be part of this political structure in the first place. So how odd would it be then to seek permission from the king, to seek permission from the authorities in charge, to govern yourself and to have your community govern themselves as they see fit? Like I said, if you make the default, the right to secede, I think you're forced to make really peculiar arguments to defend this notion of political unity. Let me give you another concrete example for my life. I was raised in upstate New York. Upstate New York is completely different than living in New York City. I mean it is night and day. People living in upstate New York have more in common with rural people living in Scotland than they do with people living in Manhattan. Of course, when you say from New York, everybody assumes you're from New York City. But from anybody that has experience in upstate versus New York City, they know it is just two completely different worlds. It's like Kansas and Los Angeles, just totally different. Not only are there different economic differences between people living in New York City versus living upstate, there are radically different cultural differences, different cultural values. People in upstate New York tend to be a lot more religious than those living in New York City. They tend to want a lot smaller government than those living in New York City. They tend to want to have access to their guns much more so than people living in New York City. And so isn't it peculiar that both of these groups of people would be forced together to live under the same political structure? I assure you many, if not most, people in upstate New York, outside of the big cities, are not happy with the way that the government of New York has run. And hell for that matter, probably many New Yorkers living in the city aren't happy with it either. But they at least have a bigger voice because the big population center is in New York City. So why should it be the case that rural farmers in New York should play by the same rules as people living in Wall Street living in Manhattan? That is totally bonkers to me. Not to mention, culturally, these two people not only are different, but they don't like each other. This isn't just exclusive to New York City and upstate New York. This is true for pretty much any city versus rural living. The city folk look down on the country bumpkins. The country bumpkins don't like the city slicker. This isn't even exclusive to the United States, of course. This is true all around the world. Huge cultural and economic differences that come from living in a city versus living in the countryside. So why then would we force two groups of people who are different by virtually every metric into the same political structure? Force them into the same Congress where neither group of people can probably fathom the life of the other unless they've lived in the city if they're from the country or they lived in the country if they're from the city. I totally support the idea that the way to resolve a bunch of dramatic New York politics is to have upstate New York be its own self-governing body and you have New York City be its own self-governing body. And heck, there's enough people in New York City. You could probably have each borough have its own government that is going to more accurately represent the constituency of those locations. So that would be like a new exit. I support new exit. But the same thing, of course, applies to Catalonia. And this is why I support Catalonian secession. Even though a lot of the people like with the Brexit vote, a lot of the people arguing for secession probably will support higher taxes, maybe a bigger social safety net. Those kind of governmental policies that I as a libertarian don't support, I still support the principle of self-determination, of you being able to choose what government you're going to be a part of and you being able to say, if I'm not being represented, you schmucks in Washington DC or Madrid or London, I'm out of here. I'm going to associate with those who I freely associate with and I'm going to have my own governance structures. Now, sometimes people will object to this idea of secession and they'll say things like, oh, so you're just going to get national defense or you're just going to get the benefits of the bigger government without having to pay. You're going to opt out of paying for your taxes, to which I answer, sort of. Of course, opting out comes with its own strings attached. If you opt out of a political structure, you cannot then claim benefits of that political structure, assuming there are some. So for example, if California were to opt out of the United States, something I totally support, they then couldn't get access to Social Security. So if you're not paying for the services, you don't get to use the services. However, the wonderful, perfect, beautiful upside of that is if you don't want the services, you don't have to pay for the services. So if I don't want Social Security, which I don't, I don't have to pay the taxes for Social Security.  Wouldn't that be beautiful? Imagine that you had some kind of political structure where you could pay for the services that you wanted and you don't have to pay for the services that you don't want. That's the kind of political structure I want. You could think of that political structure as something like a voluntary governance. The scary word for it is anarchism, which is a fun word to throw around to have people gasp at you. Oh my gosh, you're an anarchist. Really, it's just saying, yeah, I want to pay for services that I want to use and I don't want to pay for services that I don't want to use. The Catalonians think that they are being unfairly taxed by Madrid. They do not feel like they are being represented adequately for that taxation and so I say, hey guys, you should be able to opt out and you shouldn't have to pay your taxes to Madrid. It's beautiful. So I have a question, a serious question, to anybody that disagrees, that thinks secession shouldn't be allowed to work like that. You would have to take the position that central governments are the ones that determine whether or not a group of people can secede. So my question to you is this, by what authority do you invoke? To say you or this group of people that I deem worthy are the individuals who have the authority to determine the political structure of others, even if those other people would, on their own free volition, choose an alternative political structure. By what authority can you make such a judgment? I think everybody agrees that at some point you have to agree with the principle of secession. There is some circumstance in which I think every single person would support the idea of illegal, let's say, secession or secession that goes against the claims of the central power. So imagine you've got this gigantic super state of the Soviet Union, which if you're in Ukraine, you are literally undergoing mass starvation because the central government of the Soviet Union is forcefully taking your grain, taking your wheat, shipping it off to Moscow for them to centrally distribute. You don't keep enough of it and your people are literally dying. Do you then support the right of the Ukrainians to say screw off Soviet Union? We're going to form our own political structure so that we quit starving to death. If that's not enough, of course we can just keep ramping up the stakes. Imagine that in some political structure you've got, let's say, five million Jews and the majority within the political structure says, hey, you know what? We're going to start killing Jews in this location. And the Jews say, no, we're going to secede. Your supposed political authority is no good here anymore. We're obviously not being represented, so we're not going to pay taxes for our own destruction. Surely everybody can agree with that type of secession. So if we agree on the principle then that at some point individuals have a right to govern themselves, my question is where do you draw the line? Do you say, oh, well, when it's an ethical problem like the Holocaust, then you can do such a thing? Or is there some economic threshold? Where do you say this is the line in the sand where people can legitimately govern themselves versus no, they actually can't? I have heard some individuals in Madrid make the argument that, oh, Catalonian secession goes against the Spanish constitution. I think this is a very funny argument. The Catalonians are essentially saying the Spanish constitution has not given rise to a political structure that we like or that represents us. So the response of the people in power is to say, oh, but according to this document, the Spanish constitution, the Spanish constitution says, oh, you don't have the right to choose your political structure. That's what the document says. Sorry, guys. I have a feeling that there's not many Catalonians that find that argument very persuasive. All right. So I'm going to take this idea and push it to the extreme because philosophy demands consistency. And if you apply this idea consistently, I think you get some pretty extreme conclusions, at least extreme in regard to how most people think, not extreme as in it's some bad idea. So I think this can be a very uncontroversial way to reduce the scope and power of central governments to say that as a general rule, if there is some political disagreement that can't be resolved and some group insists that they're not being represented, they have every right to secede. So where then do I draw that line? Am I saying that every group of 15 people should be able to opt out of their local government and form their own government? And my answer is no, it's more radical than that. My claim is this is actually a human right that goes down to the individual level. My ideal political system would be one that says every single service of government you can secede from, you can opt out of. That includes trash collection. That includes the construction of roads. But of course these all come with the caveat that if you don't pay for the construction of roads, you then can't use the roads. But I really see this principle of secession going all the way down to the individual. That's the only place philosophically where it strikes me as consistent. Where I can say yes, nobody else on planet Earth has the right to say you, listener of Patterson Pursuit, you only have the right to govern yourself if somebody else says you have that right. That you have to be given permission to govern yourself by some other group of self-appointed individuals. That because of the geography of your birth, you actually don't have the same types of rights as those individuals making the laws. That strikes me as a very monarchical and old way of thinking about politics. I have yet to encounter anybody in my travels around the world and my time spent as an intern on the hill in DC interacting with a bunch of congresspeople. I've yet to find anybody who I'd say, that person should be the one determining whether or not other people can govern themselves. That guy has the kind of metaphysical essence which makes him above everybody else. And he can say, you know what? Do the Catalonians have a right to govern themselves as they see fit? I'm going to say no. Or I'm going to say yes. I've never met anybody like that. Even the Pope. Of course I've never met the Pope. But I wouldn't want the Pope to have that kind of power. And of course historically speaking, the Pope had quite a deal of political power and I don't think that was for the better. I do think interestingly we're in a transitionary period in 2017. I hope we see lots more independence referendums. I think with access to the internet, with access to free communication which is naturally kind of more individualistic and cuts at the authority of many of these lying politicians who don't have the well-being of their constituency at heart, I think we are beginning to see cracks around modern political structure of the nation-state. I could see a very plausible future in which maybe we don't have individual anarchism. Maybe we'll get there in the long run. But where you have city-states essentially, where let's say the people in New York City or the people in San Francisco or Los Angeles are so fed up with the way that Washington D.C. tries to govern 350 million people, that it says screw it, I'm not going to follow their laws, I'm going to do my own thing. We're going to govern ourselves at a more local level. Just think about how in the United States, there are states now, whole states, that are completely disregarding the medical marijuana laws that come from the feds. I think this is a wonderful thing. Colorado has given the middle finger to the rulers and to the supposed authority and legitimacy of the authority of the federal government. And I think it's beautiful. I wish other states would do that with all kinds of issues. Just say, hey, look, we're going to do our own thing.  I would love to see it and I'd love to see it in Catalonia.  We're going to govern ourselves. I think that would be beautiful. I think that would be a better system. I think it would solve just a trillion political problems around the world, because you would have much more homogenous groups of people that are able to create governments that they want. You would have competition amongst governments, just like it's good to have many car manufacturers that are trying to do different things to satisfy their customers. I think we should have many different types of governance, where people in politics are trying to do different things to satisfy their constituency at a small scale. And when you have success with, let's say, low taxes in some district, works really well, businessmen and consumers benefit, other small geographic political areas can then adopt those policies and say, hey, it worked there. Free markets worked in Hong Kong, it worked in Singapore, let's try it here. And I think in general, it's kind of a one-to-one correlation. So the smaller the political structure, I think the better, and the bigger the political structure, I think the worse. So imagine that we had, instead of one set of laws for the 50 states, imagine you had one set of laws for all of North America. So though the people from Mexico have different values, different language, different expectations, different culture, different economic needs and desires, imagine we all had to follow one set of laws. And then now all the Western Hemisphere. Right, imagine we had one set of laws for how individuals are allowed to behave for the whole globe. I mean, that would be a dystopia, right? Books have been written about this to try to play out the idea of the scary one-world government. So on the most extreme end of the spectrum, you have, let's have one government for the whole world, which I think is probably the worst idea ever. The other end of the spectrum, you have my ideal solution, which is let's have every single individual on the planet be able to choose his own political structure and be able to opt out, regardless of the geography of his birth. Now I know I said this before, but I'm going to say it again. I am really genuinely excited about the idea of secession becoming popular, because I think it has the ability to unify people who are in completely opposite ends in the political spectrum. It's one of the beautiful things about libertarianism and freedom in general. You and I can totally disagree. We can still live within the same political structure peacefully. But what other political solution will have farmers living in Kansas agree with bankers living on Wall Street who will agree with people living in Hollywood who will agree with people living in inner city Detroit? To say, hey, hey, hey, I know we all disagree. I know a lot of these people, we don't even like each other. We don't like each other culturally. We don't respect one another. But how's this for a political solution? You guys in Hollywood, govern yourselves.   And let's not all try to force our political structure on one another. Let's respect that different groups of people have different ideas, they have different needs, and they want different governmental rules. Now, if that idea were to take hold, which I think it has the possibility of doing, I think it would literally solve 90% of all political problems in the country, and not just this country, of course, all over the world. I'm sure rural Frenchmen feel the same way about their government as rural Americans do. I'm confident, based on the Brexit vote, that people in London feel very differently about big government than people in rural England. And both groups think very, very poorly of each other. So this is it, guys. You can phrase it in such an exciting way. It's so obvious. Once you grasp this idea, we can let people make their own free decisions. I feel like, man, this can just catch on like wildfire. Are you tired of politics? Yes. Are the Catalonians tired of politics? Yes. Secession is the way to get there. So that's my thoughts. Not only is it immensely practical, I think it's moral, and I think it should be seen as the default way that we resolve political problems. I find it highly dubious to think that there's some group of enlightened folk out there who are so intelligent, who should have the legitimate authority to determine whether or not you and your community should have the individual right to govern yourself as you see fit. But that's my thoughts. Let me know if it's your thoughts. Let me know if you think I'm totally off base. If you remember, this was a similar conversation I had with Dr. Bruce Kane out at Stanford, which was a little bit of a tense conversation, but a good one. If you really enjoyed this, you can become a patron of Patterson in Pursuit and my work in general enjoying the other 90 patrons at patreon.com slash Steve Patterson. Every dollar makes a difference, and make sure to share these ideas with your friends. Of course, you can share the link to this episode. That'd be great. But grasp these ideas if you agree with them and find a way to communicate them to people who you totally disagree with. And I bet you will find there's inroads that you can make. This idea has legs. All right, that's all for me this week. I should have a pretty kickin' series of interviews coming up for you over the next few weeks. Make sure to tune in, and I'll talk to you guys next week.


It's not really a town, it's just a community, and we have a very good dairy queen. The subred recovery is pretty easy to do. It just takes a little manpower. The only reason we hesitated was because Powderly Methodist Church is such a small church. We really couldn't do much without the support of our community. We have five churches that are support for us, and each church supplies a meal. Each church gives donations. We have guest speakers come in from those other churches, and it really keeps our community grounded and keeps celebrate recovery in the forefront of their minds. I am celebrating recovery from an opioid addiction, and I was addicted for 20 years, and I moved here, and I started attending the celebrate recovery in Paris, and got involved, and I really enjoyed it, and it kept me grounded, kept me from relapse, which happens anyway. But then Mark, our pastor, this is my church, and he came to me one day and he said, how can we help you? Because I had gone to treatment, and when I came back from treatment, he said, how can we help you? What can we do as a community to wrap our arms around you and help you through this? And I said, I'll tell you what. What would help is if we could start a celebrate recovery group right here. The thing about celebrate recovery is we're helping people in a way at a level that is pretty serious. Jesus Christ gave his life to help other people. We're not there yet, but we're not doing nothing. When we go through the step process with the four books, the first thing we do, we get everybody in the group's phone number and their name, and from the first group I went through, I'm going through it the second time now to help the new ones go through, but I made friends that I had nothing in common with. We got doctors and we got car salesmen, different people like that in the group, and I was thinking, you know, I'm an extra drug addict and sold drugs to support my habit, but I got their phone numbers and still, and that's been two years ago when I've done that, there's not a week goes by, I'm not in contact with those people. Anytime I need help, and I got a sponsor, you know, when I get to thinking wrong or if there's something bothering me I need to talk about it, I can call him anytime, day or night, and he'll be there. And I know I can tell him anything going on with my life, and he won't judge me or condemn me, he's just there to help. It's a joy. I look forward to Thursday nights the way I look forward to Sundays, you know, because we worship. It is a form of giving, it is a form of helping, and I need to also be doing that on Fridays and Saturday nights, as well as Mondays and Tuesdays. You know, we have Bible study on Wednesday and then we have church on Sunday. I need to be doing it every day, so we do that on Thursday nights.


So this is a simple one, but a really powerful one, and this is a file that exists on pretty much any device that you're running CircuitPython on, and it is called bootout.txt. So let's take a look at what this is and why it's useful. So I've got CircuitPlaygroundExpress plugged in here. It's running CircuitPython. I'm going to hit open and head to the CircuitPy drive, and instead of opening code.py, which we usually do, I'm opening boot underscore out.txt, bootout.txt. There we go, I've got it open now, you can see the file name at the top there in the tab. So the bootout tells you these important things. What version of CircuitPython we're running on here, so we can see this says I'm running Adafruit CircuitPython 7.3.3, and that was from the 29th of August, 2022. And then it lets me know the board I'm on. So I've got an Adafruit Circuit PlaygroundExpress with a SAMD21G18 and the board ID, which is CircuitPlaygroundUnderscoreExpress. So this is great because sometimes you may wonder what version am I running here, this is where you can find out. So that is what that friendly little file is for. And so that is how you can use bootout.txt on your CircuitPython hardware to figure out what version of CircuitPython you're running and more. And that is your CircuitPython Parsec.


with your naked eye but researchers discover that every time we lie our pupils dilate a bit. A company called Converis is giving this chance the pupil change a closer look with device called eye detect. They say it can catch somebody in a fib. Conervis says their new lie detector could one day assist police with keeping an eye on crime. Our hope is that our technology can help make us safer and help protect us from those that would want harm. Converis, I think I've said it three different ways so far in this story. They think the pupil change is cause because it takes mental effort to lie. You told the truth? I told the truth so my pupils didn't dilate when I said I butchered their name.