Great Unix Buttons

The great part of Unix lore can be captured in the buttons.

I am not sure the 1983 USENIX button would be allowed today :-)

Thanks npg

David Axmark's Open Source Law

I was speaking with David Axmark, Co-Founder of MySQL, at the Chaminade Resort atop the Santa Cruz Mountains that overlooks Monterey Bay. David made a very interesting statement that really caused me to pause and think. We were discussing open source and David said, "you are not doing open source until someone says no."

The key point David was making was that if you are open sourcing your code but retaining 100% control of your entire code base, that is not doing real open source. Obviously, there are many examples of companies/individuals doing this type of release (retaining 100% version control) very successfully, but David makes a great point.

There is a corollary on the sales side of the house that I heard many, many years ago which says:

You are not selling until the customer says NO.

There are not too many Laws that have both technology and sales parallels, but this is clearly one of them.

Sun Grid Engine 6.2

I had the good fortune of traveling with Curt Harpold down to Virginia Tech on January 28th, 2009 to listen to Curt present, "How To Program 1,000s of Processors". Curt wowed the ACM members on the challenges of programming lots of processors as well a the many tremendous features of Sun Grid Engine 6.2.

For complete details of this along with a video as well as Curt's complete presentation, please go to John Edstrom's blog entry here.

If You Live Your Life Based On Facts....

Below is my /etc/motd on my Solaris 10 Toshiba notebook.

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in
numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it,
when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager
and unsatisfactory kind it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you
have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science.

William Thomson, Lord Kelvin

Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Whatever is said in Latin sounds profound.

This video at YouTube is a must watch if you believe,as I do, in the importance of quantifying challenges. If you want to watch the narrated version, go to this video.

Sunset: May 4th, 2009 was my 22nd Anniversary at Sun....

I started 22 years ago on - May 4th, 1987 for Sun Microsystems. Back then I was young, 27 years old, no kids. In four weeks I am old, I turn 50. Julie and I have three sons - John a Junior at VT, Michael a Senior at Broad Run who will be at VT next year with his brother and Tim an Freshman at Broad Run High School. My oldest son John is Campus Ambassador for Sun and President of the ACM at VT - so I kept Sun in the family.

Chances are extremely, extremely low that I will celebrate a 23rd anniversary with Sun Microsystems as Sun will likely be just a memory a year from now - much like Burroughs, DEC, Apollo, Data General, Sperry Univac and countless other computer companies that either acquired, merged or simply went belly up.....

The photo above I took on our 25th Anniversary last year when we spent a month in Europe with a 12 day cruise in the middle.

The Right Way To Think About Open Source

"There are two types of users - those who are ready to spend a lot of time in order to save money, and those who are ready to spend a lot of money in order to save time.”

- Mårten Mickos, CEO MySQL

This captures the true essence of the two poles of open source. I would say that most individuals are not on the extreme ends, but are someplace in the middle. Open source is a continuum. The definition of open source 25+ years ago was Bill Joy sending around BSD tapes of the source. Open source continues to evolve. Those who think open source simply means, "this is how we do our development" are short-changing what is really occurring. For those who are heading out to JavaONE, I would strongly encourage you to swing by the Moscone Center on Monday the 5th to truly see what is going on in open source by attending CommunityOne.

Baseball and Physics

Let's take a break from computers and use two examples that everyone thinks about in the spring – baseball and car engines (outdoor car shows with open hoods) – using physics to explain the Photons-Electrons name.

One of the books that I highly recommend (I have no financial interest here) is a book by Ricki Linksman, M.Ed. called "How To Learn Anything Quickly". In this book Ricki Linksman has a survey that will tell you what type of learning style works best or you. I learned a number of things about myself that has absolutely helped me in learning new subjects. I came out as a kinesthetic right-brain type of learning style.

So, how does this tie back into photons and electrons? The two things I think about with new topics are UTAF and DTM (not from the book referenced above). UTA is Understand The Architecture First and DTM is Do The Math .

Photons-Electrons in the context of baseball and engines from a physics viewpoint.

When you coach kids in baseball the number one thing any young player wants is to get a hit. Not a bunt, not an error, but an out of the infield, honest to god hit. When you are coaching kids - the most important thing you must do is SIMPLIFY THE TASK.

Hitting a baseball becomes a physics lesson. You need to explain to the young player (and sometimes to the parents) that the most important aspect in hitting a baseball is bat speed - form is actually second. You must explain the physics of the bat being swung is 1/2 mass times velocity squared. In other words, the speed of the bat is four times more important than the weight of the bat. So, how do you know if the bat is too heavy? You have the young player grab the bat at the very end and hold it in one hand straight out for 7 seconds. If they are leaning backwards or shaking while they are doing this exercise, then clearly the bat is too heavy and you need a lighter bat.

The second key point from a physics standpoint in baseball is getting your hips into the swing. You tell the young player that as they swing the bat, pretend there is a bug is below their rear foot and to CRUSH THE BUG HARD as they swing. This will get their hips into the swing.

The third key point you see above is to make sure the player extends their arms fully when they swing and meet the ball with the bat being level to the ground. This again is a physics lesson - you lose tremendous amounts of power by having the arms bent when you meet the ball.

Finally, make sure the player has the right grip on the bat. The players door knocking knuckles should be lined up as in the picture below. Why? Because this will be the proper hand position when they hit the ball. They might complain that it feels uncomfortable at first, but it is the right way to grip a bat. Special thanks to my middle son Michael for demonstrating the correct baseball techniques in the above photos.


Of course there are other important points to hitting, but these first few are what will give a young player success. At least it worked with my three boys :-)

Let me give a second example horsepower. Horsepower is calculated as:

(torque times RPM) divided by 5,252

What is torque? Torque is twisting force. In the above formula, imagine a one pound weight that is one foot from a pivot. If we rotate this one full circle we have done 6.2832 foot-pounds of work (pi * the 2 foot circle).

Everyone knows RPM is Revolutions Per Minute

Why divide by 5,252? James Watt said the average horse could lift 550 pounds a one foot distance in once second. Since we are talking about RPM, we multiply 550 time 60 and we find that a horse can do 33,000 of foot-pounds of work in a minute. When we divide 33,000 foot-pounds of work in minute by 6.2832 we get 5,252.

bc
scale=10
33000/6.2832
5252.1008403361


Stated another way, if we have one-pound of torque at 5,252 RPM it is equal to 33,000 foot pounds per minute aka Watt's mythical horse.

Why does this matter? Because torque and horsepower curve will always cross at 5,252 RPM. Also, you can now discuss with your friends why it is possible to have an engine that has a lot of torque, but not great horsepower. You can pontificate on the technical torque differences between Harley-Davidsons and Suzukis.

For example, the engine below (a picture of my 98 Corvette's engine) is reported as having a pretty flat torque curve from 1,600 RPM to 5,000 RPM with the maximum torque coming in at 5,300 RPM according to different articles I have read.

This is why it can be very handy to memorize to horsepower and torque calculations so that when the car salesman blurts out:

"This engine is 430 horsepower."

You then will follow up with the natural follow-on questions:

"At what RPM was that calculated? When does the torque curve flatten out?"

This is why you should always tell the car salesman that you want to see the torque/horsepower curve printouts before you buy any car.

So, IMHO, photons are the big picture and electrons the key aspects of any topic and how they interact is what is most important and that is where I came up with the name of the blog....

John Edstrom Campus Advocate of the Month For Sun

Congratulations to my oldest son, John, who was selected to be Campus Ambassador of the Month for Sun Microsystems. Increasing the number of Campus Ambassadors is one of Jonathan Schwartz's most brilliant strategic investments since he became CEO. John is doing lots of very interesting Tech Talks, on topics such as Chris Melissinos discussing Gaming, Solaris with Dr. Harry Foxwell at Virginia Tech that have been extremely well attended. There are many other activities that John has been doing (such as the NetBeans 6 demo he did for students and faculty) and you can read more about that here at his Sun blog.

John gave a nice interview about his activities as a Campus Ambassador at VA Tech.

Why I Do Not Have An iPhone (yet)

I am growing tired of answering the question, "Dave, why don't you have an iPhone yet?"

First, do I think the iPhone is amazing technology? You bet. Do I think Steve Jobs is an absolute genius? Without question. Is Apple a great company? Yes, they are an amazing company. But, let me list what Apple should do for the iPhone if they want me as a customer (yes, I realize that Apple does not care if I am a customer :-)

1. No cut-n-paste. Are you kidding me? When friends tell me, "Dave, you just don't understand the Apple lifestyle." Yes, I guess that is true..... When I hear on podcasts that Apple is researching the best methods for implementing cut-n-paste, I just have to laugh. If this is true, let me give you a hint, go ask the folks at Palm, they have it figured out.
2. No removable storage. It is very handy to have the ability to remove a SAN disk.
   
3. Not all apps can take advantage of the horizontal mode. This is ridiculous.
4. The battery is not removable. Yes, the most recent updates help, but Apple is not there yet. I want the ability to carry a second battery with me.
   
5. It should be a reliable phone. If I had a dollar for every time a friend said to me, "hey, I am using my iPhone so we might get dropped and I will have to call you back", I would have enough for at least a dinner out :-)
   
6. The iPhone is simply too proprietary for me and I believe that it stifles the amount of innovation we would otherwise see with the iPhone. Yes, Apple does a great job with ease of use and overall experience, but I prefer freedom.
7. The idea that Apple will "brick" your phone is just repulsive to me.
8. I want real keys to type on, not a picture of a key. Yes, I know this dates me :-)
9. The App Store has so many rules on what type of app it allows that, IMHO, it stifles true creativity and true competition. Checkout this article at the New York Times titled: Apple's Capricious Rules for iPhone Apps
   
10. No Java for the iPhone. Hopefully this might change someday....
    
11. No voice activated calling.
12. You can not record video.
13. I do love the features of the G1, but have not gotten one yet. The Palm Pre sounds VERY promising as well.
    
14. NO MULTI-TASKING THIS WILL SERIOUSLY LIMIT THE i-Phone
15. I will keep my old Treo 650 that just works great as a phone and basic PDA with a limited browser, until there is something that is at least as good as the G1.

If Apple addressed these, would I buy an iPhone? In a femto-second.

GREAT OpenSolaris Book by Dr. Harry Foxwell and Christine Tran

Dr. Harry Foxwell was kind enough to provide me with a copy of his GREAT book on OpenSolaris. The book is extremely well written and a must buy for all those interested in the best operating systems in this universe. A little history here - I interviewed Harry prior to him coming to Sun in 1995. Harry has been a fantastic SE and an even better friend. Harry likes to exxagerate how hard the interview really was. Now, I have to admit that I was going through my Patterson and Hennessy Computer Architecture phase, so I was treating prospective candidates as if they were postdocs at either UCB or Stanford :-)

As Harry signed below, "This will help Solaris "go to 11"!

Below is the cover of Harry and Christine's book.

Apress's Pro OpenSolaris is the second English language book to be published specifically about Sun Microsystems' OpenSolaris open source operating system. The first was the comprehensive,1000-page, OpenSolaris Bible published by Wiley in March 2009. That book purposely covered all aspects of OpenSolaris for those with only basic familiarity with Solaris and UNIX as well as for those with greater administration and developer experience; it reviewed desktop tools, networking, shell programming, and system administration along with the unique features of OpenSolaris.

Pro OpenSolaris, published in April 2009 and based on the OpenSolaris 2008.11 release, assumes the reader is already comfortable with the user and development environments of GNOME and Linux; it focuses primarily on the key OpenSolaris features that should be learned and exploited for Web development. It includes an extensive chapter detailing a sample Webstack project based on the zones, ZFS, security, and SMF topics introduced in the preceding chapters. The book also highlights relevant online references and resources for further learning. Although all of the information about OpenSolaris is available on myriad Web sites, books such as Pro OpenSolaris give you a roadmap and recommended sequence of what to learn first. It also strongly emphasizes that open source solutions can be effectively hosted on OpenSolaris as well as on Linux.

You can purchase Pro OpenSolaris here at Amazon or at Barnes and Noble.

Thanks For The GREAT Memories Sun Microsystems: Scott, Bill, Andy, Vinod and John

With all the news today, I just wanted to share some memories of Sun over the past 22 years I have worked here at Sun. Note, I am still here at Sun, just thought I would take a couple of minutes to write down some of my memories over the many years.

When I first spoke with Sun Microsystems, it was the summer of 1984 and Betsy MacLean (later Ferry) and Steve Ferry had recently went over to Sun Microsystems from Systems Development Corporation (SDC) a Division of Burroughs Corporation. I met Betsy and Steve while we were all at SDC. It is interesting to note that SDC based in Santa Monica, California, was arguably the world's first computer software company as noted by Wikipedia. I was not smart enough to go over to Sun in 1984 :-)

Sun was founded in 1982 with Sun standing for Stanford University Network (SUN).

In 1986, I was an SE for SDC and technical lead for a HUGE and extremely challenging opportunity for High Performance Workstations opportunity where Sun Microsystems was the digital workstation and Masscomp was the analog workstation of choice. At the end of 1986 and long after the completion of the bid and benchmarks, I started talking to Sun Microsystems about working there. I started on May 4th, 1987.

Betsy hired me and was a great manager and leader. My mentor was Neil Groundwater who was clearly the smartest person in computers that I had ever met. In the summer of 1987 we found out we won the HPW business that has since been worth at least $2 BILLION to Sun Microsystems over the years - yes that is B as in BILLION. Steve Ferry was THE Sales Rep on this opportunity and to this day is far and away the best Sales Rep I have ever seen/worked with and a great friend to this day.

There are so many people to thank for the great, great memories that I have of Sun Microsystems. I have to first thank Betsy for hiring me, Neil for being a great mentor and a great friend. I have worked with and for lots of great individuals for 22 years at Sun. I had the privilege of working for three great SE Directors - Joy Warfield, Brad Kirley and Sue Walls who all showed great leadership and courage. Most importantly, Joy, Brad and Sue firmly believed in the Sun mantra "work hard and play hard". In the "play hard" vein, Dennis Govoni and I pulled countless pranks on each other and have teamed up with others on some very memorable April Fools Goofs as well.

During the past five years I have been the Chief Technologist for the Software Practice and it has been the most fun I have had at Sun. I have had the great fortune for working for a true software leader in Dave Profozich. Dave has been a great leader and friend.

By far, the most fun and rewarding experience I have ever had was working with Dave Patterson of Berkeley on MTConnect.

Finally, a huge special thanks to Scott McNealy, Bill Joy, Andy Bechtolsheim, Vinod Khosla and John Gage. While John was not officially one of Sun's four founders, he was always known as the "fifth Beatle" and employee #21 John coined the term "The Network Is The Computer". Below is one of the classic photos that we always used for presentations to show the founders.

Above is the photo from the Sun Founders Panel night at The Computer History Museum on January 11th, 2006.

I remember Scott McNealy signing my Sun 10 Year Anniversary Yearbook in 1992 with the message:

I remember being with Bill Joy, John Gage and Neil Groundwater having dinner in Georgetown and the wine list was given to me to select. This is the classic pig staring at a Rolex watch type of scenario with Dave Edstrom looking at a wine list. I looked at the list and said, "how about a pitcher of Busch beer?" Neil Groundwater gave me one of those looks that could kill. Bill Joy was very cool about it. Bill said, "Dave, a cold beer sounds good and John, why don't you select a bottle of wine as well."

I could go on and on with stories, but this is enough for today.

It is a sad day when a company that had so much energy and creativity as Sun Microsystems dies. Sun is probably best known for Java, Solaris and SPARC but there is so much more at Sun Microsystems. If you worked for Sun during its peak, it was quite the company to work for. As my oldest son John, who works for Sun as a Campus Ambassador, told me this morning, "Sun had quite a ride." Yes, it was a great ride!

Who knows how this will all shake it out, but at this time I am reminded of the old phrase, "You can not adjust the wind, you can only adjust your sails...."

OneStop is VERY COOL!

Without question, the most popular internal site at Sun Microsystems (this is quantified by both the numbers and the internal employee surveys is OneStop. Mike Briggs, Principal Engineer and Robert Holt do a fantastic job creating the perfect online technical community. Mike and Robert discuss what OneStop is as well as what the Secret Sauce is behind OneStop. Mike and Robert give me credit for suggesting that they start blogging about OneStop, but the idea behind me suggesting this comes from the fact that I know there are many Sun customers who have been shown OneStop by a Sun employee and the customer response is always the same: "This is GREAT!"

I would encourage any Sun customer to check out what Mike or Robert are doing with OneStop and to drop them a comment if you want to learn more about how they run OneStop - it literally is the first and last place most Sun employees go to for information. It is run by Mike and Robert with over 300 all-volunteer army of authors.

Inside Sun Microsystems, the sentence, "have you tried OneStop" is the morale equivalent of RTFM! :-)

Transition Software Genius University to Software University

This page will have non-proprietary updates on the Software Genius University (SGU) to Sun Software University (SU) transition.

A little background history...

Sun SGU grew out of the extremely successful Software Genius Program (SGP). The genesis of SGP was a conversation that Scott Radeztsky and I had in the fall of
2005 when we asked the basic question, "what can we do to help the SEs to
embrace the developer and Sun's software stack?" In January 2006, we kicked
off the Software Genius Program Council (SGPC) where the SEs in Americas
Software Practice created ten courses, or twenty hours, of software training.
This program had one goal - to ensure Sun's Systems Engineers were properly
equipped with the necessary software knowledge and skills to be successful.

Sun SGU served a very important need when it was announced globally on July 1st
2007. SGU now has 740 hours of course work in it and the best of that content will be transitioned to Software University. There are countless individuals who should be thanked for the (literally) 1,000s of hours that went into Sun SGU. We will continue to make the necessary student competence mappings transitions from the Sun SGU's University certifications levels to Software University's Accreditations much like we did with the global Solaris training that came out of Dan Berg's organization last FY. We will make it very clear regarding the how, when, where, why and what as we go through this effort.

HUGE Thanks to George Selix and Joe Campbell of Sun Learning Services for their leadership and guidance in this transition. We will be transitioning selected SGU content to Software University immediately. Bob Eskenberry, Jerry Neece, Catherine Sees and I will be leading this effort.

SGU's "Learn Once, Work Anywhere" philosophy will continue with SU.

More Details Sun(SM) Software Genius University

Sun ^SM Software Genius University (Sun SGU) is comprised of three majors:

• Identity Management
• Java CAPS
• Solaris

Sun SGU is designed for two categories of individuals designed for Sun and Sun's Partners:

• Systems Engineers
• Professional Services Consultants
  

Sun SGU curriculum is based on the university taxonomy where upon completion of a year the individual can:

• A Freshman (Step-1) can give a quality technical presentation.
• A Sophomore (Step-2) can give a technical demonstration.
  
• A Junior (Step-3) can give a customized technical demonstration.
• A Senior (Step-4) can lead a Proof Of Concept (POC).
• A Master can lead a customer deployment.
  

Each Major (undergrad) represents 280 hours of work in a mixture of disciplines with a strong emphasis on hands-on learning.

Sun employees can access Sun SGU.

Partners will have access to Sun SGU in the August timeframe.

Sun ^SM Software Genius University

Learn Once, Work Anywhere

Background on Sun(SM) Software Genius University (Sun SGU)

On July 1st, 2007, I announced Sun^SM Software Genius University (Sun SGU), which is comprised of 840 hours of content, internally to Sun employees as well as a status update to Sun's Partners. Sun SGU is available today for Sun employees and we will be moving all of the content to a new system for Sun's Partners. Date for Partner access is TBD.

I will use my blog as one of the communication mechanisms for SunSM Software Genius University (Sun SGU).

What is the history of SunSM Software Genius University (Sun SGU)?

Sun SGU grew out of the highly successful Software Genius Program (SGP), which consisted of ten courses, or twenty hours, of software training. This program had one goal - to ensure Sun's Engagement Architects (EAs) were equipped with the software knowledge and skills to be successful. Later, the Systems Engineers (SEs) also started going through the SGP. The initial 20 hour Software Genius Program is now the Software Baseline Foundational Framework that has the first 20 hours of the SGU for each Major as well as a complete update to each course.

What exactly is SunSM Software Genius University (Sun SGU)?

Early on, an important decision we made was to build a comprehensive software foundation based on the well understood American University taxonomy (Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior, and Masters Level). Later, I was personally educated by Sun employees outside the United States :-) that we should clarify this leveling for International use as well as Sun's internal skills assessment terminology.

By using the university taxonomy we have designed learning paths that have well defined proficiency levels and clear exit criteria for each Sun SGU "year" aka step. The Sun SGU framework was well vetted to meet the ever-changing learning demands that cover the complete spectrum from an SE entering Sun SGU as a novice to a PS consultant who will need to lead a customer deployment.

How are the Sun SGU "Years" aka Steps defined in each Major?

Freshman aka Step 1 aka Sun Knowledgeable Level
1. Speak knowledgeably about product and how it solves business problems.

2. Give a technical product presentation.
22 hours of the total 42 hours for this level is comprised
of the Software Baseline Foundational Framework that encompasses the entire software stack in an overview fashion.
The remaining 20 hours are Major specific content.

Sophomore aka Step 2 Level
1. Give a technical product demonstration.
This Level is 80 hours in length.

Junior aka Step 3 aka Sun Practioner Level
1. Customize and deliver an integrated demonstration.
This Level is 80 hours in length.

Senior aka Step 4
1. Can lead a Proof Of Concept (POC).
This Level is 80 hours in length.

Masters aka Sun Ambassador aka Sun Master Level
1. Recognized as a thought leader in this Major.
2. Can lead a customer deployment.
* Please note we are working with PSD for the Masters Level.

Please note hands-on technical training is a very important aspect of Sun SGU.

What are the Majors in Sun SGU and why were these Majors selected?

Sun SGU is comprised of three Majors. The Majors are:

• Identity Management

• Java CAPS

• Solaris.

We selected Solaris because it is the best platform for developer tools and applications.

We selected Identity Management because this is an area Sun is the undisputed leader and is critical to the success of any enterprise.

We selected Java CAPS because Java CAPS via the NetBeans IDE will be the defacto development environment on the Web.

How were the courses selected for Sun SGU?

The set of courses for these Majors were selected by Sun Microsystems Subject Matter Experts to help both pre-sales SEs and professional services consultants with a quality technical learning path. First and foremost, we looked for existing courses. Creating new courses only came (and will come)
about where there is a clear business and technical need.

How will Sun SGU be kept current?

The Sun SGU Program Council will keep these Majors current working with Sun's Learning Services aka MyLearning.

Any questions or comments or if you need a copy of the announcement, please drop me a note.

$202 Per Consumer Record Data Breach

The Washington Post had a very interesting article Tuesday February 3rd titled, "Data Breaches Are More Costly Than Ever". The author Brian Krebs quotes a survey by Ponemon Institute that reviewed 43 organizations that spent approximately $202 on each consumer record that was compromised.

The article also states: "Eighty-four percent of the companies surveyed had at least one data breach or loss prior to 2008, said Larry Ponemon, the institute's founder. The cost of a breach in 2007 was $6.3 million, and roughly $4.7 million in 2006".

The figures above do not reflect the loss of confidence that consumers and other companies will have when they see these types of CNN moments. This is where the importance of having a open and secure operating system and infrastructure becomes mandatory - as does having all of your data encrypted on disk. How often to we read about notebooks stolen that are loaded with confidential or classified data?

This is just one of the reasons why Solaris with Trusted Extensions and ZFS will just continue to gain market share

Tax Day and Security

April 15th is tax day for Americans. A day everyone just loves :-) When I think of April 15th, I think of security and how it is more important than ever. There is an article today that I just saw on Yahoo!

Hackers grabbed more than 285M records in 2008

• By JORDAN ROBERTSON, AP Technology Writer - Wed Apr 15, 2009 12:05AM EDT

Jordan Robertson states: "Hackers made off with at least 285 million electronic records in 2008, more than in the four previous years combined, according to a new study that shows identity thieves are getting better at exploiting careless mistakes that leave companies vulnerable to attack."

The rest of the arrticle can be read here.

I believe the days of single factor authentication are over and the days of securing at the pipe level alone are over as well. As much as I am not a proponent of big government, I do think there are many valuable services that government has and will do for society. Does the Internet happen if not for DARPA funding? I don't think so. When I think of the right way to do identity management, I think of the DoD's Common Access Card (CAC) program.

Sun Microsystems was a big part of the CAC program and, we at Sun have taken a similar approach with our Java Card.

Now for a controversial suggestion :-) Have the US government follow DoD's lead and issue CAC to every single US citizen above the age of 6. I have kevlar underwear on for this one :-)

Getting away from policy and back to technology, two extremely important standards going forward for security will be SAML and XACML. More on those in coming days....

Solaris TX Could Have Saved San Francisco

The story that came out of San Francisco on August 12th, 2008 should be extremely frightening for all IT Managers. The Washington Post, has a great article on this written by Ashley Surdin.

Ashley brings out, "San Francisco is being forced to overhaul security measures on the computer network that controls data for its police, courts, jails, payroll and health services, as well as other crucial information, after the technology administrator entrusted with the system blocked access for everyone but himself last month and for days refused to reveal the password, even from jail. "

There is a misconception that Solaris with Trusted Extensions is only for the three letter government agencies and it is simply not true. A very important aspect is how Solaris Trusted Extensions - Labeled Security for Absolute Protection - simply extends Solaris security. The paragraph below is brought out on the Solaris TX page and is key for everyone to understand:

"It utilizes User and Process Rights Management, Solaris Containers, file systems, and networking and doesn't require a new or separate kernel. Best of all, it doesn't require ISVs to requalify their applications to run them with sensitivity labels. And because it's an extension to the Solaris 10 OS's security policy, Solaris Trusted Extensions technology is flexible and quick to deploy: You can add new applications, new users, and more, very quickly, without extensive analysis of each application — and without the need to write complex, error-prone security policies that require a system reboot."

Solaris has been and will continue to be a leader in being the most open and secure operating system on planet earth.

Why the name Edstrom Photons-Electrons?

Why the name Edstrom Photons-Electrons?

If you are in the computer industry and you understand photons, electrons and how the two interact, everything else is either an abstraction exercise or just an implementation detail . OK, perhaps an oversimplification :-) but give me a chance to explain in future posts.

My First blogspot blog entry

Hello,

My name is Dave Edstrom and I am starting to blog here.

Who is Dave Edstrom? I am a Technical Director at Sun and Principal Engineer for Americas Software Practice. On May 4th, I celebrated my 22nd anniversary with Sun. I started in the computer industry in the fall of 1978 programming in assembler on a Honeywell 2080A mainframe using punch cards for the US Government. My work blog is here:

Looking forward to blogging here as well. I am going to put in some of my other blogs that I created here as well.

--Dave