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The Embedded Systems Conference — "where solutions come looking for great minds." Gee, sounds fun. Valleywag correspondent ConFonz dropped by and left dazed and confused.

The Embedded Systems Conference in San Jose was pretty cool, in that hardware geekery kind of way. The shwag sucked, the lunch was terrible, and the coffee was only available for free in between sessions. Aside from that, it was kinda fun out there. But, can someone please explain what exactly DSO is? Wind River had a huge, expensive booth touting DSO as the life changing technology of the future, but I still don't know what the fuck it is! I don't really know that anyone else at the show did either. Enea gave a presentation in Wind River's booth about databases, and their talk actually began with an in-depth discussion of what a database is. Seriously, they were explaining how a database is a collection of data stored outside of the program itself. No shit?! Lemme get a pad of paper and write this stuff down.

But who knows, maybe these hardware guys don't know what databases are. They certainly don't know what shwag is, as my empty show-bag attests. Two pens and a squishy Earth do not a conference make, people!

But 10,000 companies announcing IP stacks for microwaves, toaster ovens, and testicular implants do a conference make. Beware people, Web 3.0 has already been tagged as being the integration of real-world devices with the Web. No, not yer cell phone, fucker. That's Web 2.5. Web 3.0 is cameras, temperature sensors, wind velocity monitors, sunlight measurers, spedometers, and vaginal temperature gauges all hooked into the Web for greater effect.

No real gossip to report, as everyone here was too busy talking about soldering and building robots out of spare parts. But who was the poor fucker in the frog suit? The poor bastard musta been sweating his ass off, and no one at this event was drawn to a booth by someone in a fucking furry suit. Save those for the consumer shows, folks.