Humans Do NOT Have Not Multiprocessing, Multithreaded Brains Stanford Study Says....

While having lunch with my long time and good friend Brian Raymor in Seattle, the topic of human multitasking came up.  Brian was kind enough to send me the Multitasking Stanford Study done by study conducted by Stanford researchers Eyal Ophir, Clifford Nass and Anthony Wagner.  The article written by Adam Gorlick and Jack Hubbard.

It is a GREAT study!   The link above also has a video with it.  This is a must read article in my opinion.  There is a great statement made in the video, "multitaskers are lousy at multitasking."

Here  are a couple of points from the article: 
                  
"High-tech jugglers are everywhere – keeping up several e-mail and instant message conversations at once, text messaging while watching television and jumping from one website to another while plowing through homework assignments. But after putting about 100 students through a series of three tests, the researchers realized those heavy media multitaskers are paying a big mental price.
"They're suckers for irrelevancy," said communication Professor Clifford Nass, one of the researchers whose findings are published in the Aug. 24 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Everything distracts them.""

This backs up several, ok many, conversations that I have had with my sons about multitasking:

                        "Sorry, you're not multi-threaded with multiple CPUs in your skull,
                         *no* humans are - turn off the damn TV, iPod,
                          video game and concentrate on ONE TASK AT A TIME!"



 

Apple, Let Google Voice in the App Store!

The Washington Post has an article today stating the "FCC is looking into Apple's block on Google Voice App as part of a bigger investigation into how wireless industry practices affect consumers."

Good!  

While I like my iPhone, I can not stand that some of the best apps out there are either blocked by Apple or that some software vendors simply do not even port to the iPhone because they know Apple will either not allow their app in or worse, Apple has such a hold on multi-tasking in their SDK that it makes true business apps almost a joke.  This is why you see businessmen carry a Blackberry and an iPhone.  There is no reason that the iPhone could not be a serious business tool.  I had better calendar and email on my old beatup Treo 650 than I do on my iPhone.  That is just ridiculous.  Yes, my Apple fanboy friends (not npg BTW)  like to say things like, "but Dave, while all the business apps are lousy individually, together they are fantastic and beat anything out there."  OK, I was never great at math, but a bunch of  "C-" apps do not add up to an "A+" smart phone.   


I want my google phone number and it should not take the FCC to get involved to get it for me on my iPhone.  I really hope Android takes off in a huge way.  We need an open source alternative in the mega-proprietary Apple iPhone world....

NYS Forum IT Corporate Roundtable on September 30th

I am speaking at the following event:

NYS Forum IT Corporate Roundtable
MetroNY Program Launch
September 30, 2009
8:30am  10:30am

NYC Human Resources Administration
180 Water Street, 12th Floor
New York, NY 10038

Below is the description of what I will speaking on:


Dave Edstrom has worked in the computer industry for 31+ years in the Washington, DC area.   Dave meets with countless government agencies who are implementing open source with the goal of increasing the quality of services while reducing costs.  Dave will share the good, the bad and the ugly of open source initiatives in the government with an emphasis on applying these lessons learned not only today, but also into the future of the cloud.

Alan Turing Receives a Posthumous Apology from Prime Minister Gordon Brown

A week ago, Alan Turing received an apology (posthumously) from Prime Minister Gordon Brown.   Below is the final part of Brown's apology:

"It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe's history and not Europe's present. So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan's work, I am very proud to say: we're sorry. You deserved so much better" 

Alan Turing is recognized as true genius whose works during the war can not be overstated.  It is nice to see this apology and I hope that the next step of knighthood for Alan Turing will happen.  It is not an overstatement to say that without Alan Turing, the world could be a very, very different place today.


The Turing Test is still the canonical human intelligence test today and probably for a long, long time.


 While the human race has progressed, we are still a long ways off in terms of some of our stupid biases.  If Alan Turing was born 45 years later, he would have been a multi-millionaire today as his genius would have been recognized and he would have his pick of companies to work for.  However, if Alan Turing was born 45 years later, the number of free countries on planet earth would likely be much, much less than today....

My $1Million 1994 Ford Taurus Is Gone....

In April 1995 I exercised 4,000 options at $4.45 a share (split adjusted) to purchase a fully loaded 1994 Ford Taurus.  Those 4,000 options gave me $17,800 to purchase the car and I took a little money out for some other minor things.  Most of the money went for the 1994 Ford Taurus.

Below is a picture of the Taurus before it was put on the trailer.  I gave it to Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and they sell it. I guess they let me know how much they sold it for and it is a tax break or something like that.  I really don't care since I doubt I could have gotten $300 for it.   It failed only one test by .10% for CO% at 15mph.   I tried BG44K and that helped some, but not quite enough.  It would have required too much diagnostics and electrical work as well as fuel work that simply did not make sense with John and Mike at VT and Tim not yet driving.

It was a good car, good tires, good brakes, but no A/C, ripped interior and I had this cable you had to pull to get a better connection from the battery to the starter.  Both John and Michael (my sons) learned how to drive on the Taurus.  I once pulled a deer head out of my neighbor's trash and mounted it to the Taurus before John left for school his Senior year during the Holiday Season.  He was not as thrilled as I was :-)   When the A/C went Michael asked what he would do when it got hot out with no A/C.  I told Michael that growing up we had 455 A/C.  I told Michael that 455 A/C is open four windows and drive 55mph :-)

 Below is my custom tag that no one ever figured out, including Neil Groundwater :-)  My wife Julie said, "NO ONE WILL EVER GET YOUR LICENSE PLATE!".  I said, "you're wrong, Neil Groundwater will get it first try."  Neil is brilliant, but Julie was right about this one :-)   John and Michael HATED the fact that the Taurus had custom tags.  I remember John came home one day after driving the Taurus home as a Junior and said some Senior girl said to him, "hey John, the only custom tags you should have on your car is POS!"  I felt it was important for my boys to appreciate cars by starting out at the bottom - plus it was cheaper to insure :-)

Anyway, back to the story.  On August 28th, 2000 SUNW was trading for $255.62 a share (adjusted for splits).   Sooooo, my 1994 Ford Taurus was worth $1,022,480  (which was 4,000 * $255.62)

I told the story back at a Sun meeting and the funny part of it was  once (years later) I was at a large Sun meeting and this Sun VP gets up there and tells MY STORY.  I raise my hand and say, "I'm the guy.  I STILL OWN that Ford Taurus."


The Taurus was still worth $36,880 when I gave it away.  Do you think I can write it off on my taxes this year? :-)

The Reality of Data Transfer - Pigeons :-)

There is a great example of data transfer challenges done in a humorous way:

As Engadget stated:   "Unlimited IT, so exasperated by South Africa's leading supplier of slow internet connectivity that it pitted a Telkom ADSL line against a real-live homing pigeon in a 60-mile data transmission race. The pigeon arrived with the 4GB memory stick in just over an hour with another hour required to load the data onto the computer. As for Telkom? Well, after 2 hours it had barely reached 4%."

The canonical example of moving lots of data is the truckload of DVDs or the 747 full of DVDs is faster than wirelines.

MTConnect Institute and MTConnect Technical Advisory Group Meetings

I am on the Board of Directors for the MTConnect Institute and I am a member of the MTConnect Technical Advisory Group (MTAG).  Last week we held meetings for both groups in Latrobe, PA at NCDMM.    The meetings were very successful and the MTConnect open and royalty free standard continues to gain momentum.


The National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM) was established in 2003 to address and support the broad manufacturing and machining needs of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and its Suppliers.  NCDMM's Headquarters in the same complex with Kennametal.   As stated on Kennametal's homepage, Kennametal has engineered innovative metal-cutting products and techniques for nearly 70 years using complex metallurgy and materials science in tungsten carbide, ceramics, high-speed steels and other materials.

One of the great things about staying involved with MTConnect is that opportunity to visit such great organizations such as NCDMM and great companies such as Kennametal.   The President of NCDMM, John VanKirk, was kind enough to take us to the Latrobe Golf Course that Arnie Palmer owns and where Arnie learned how to play golf.   It was Arnie's 80th birthday the second day of our MTConnect Meetings which was September 10th, 2009.

Mr. VanKirk was kind enough to arrange for a tour of Kennametal and allowed us to take some pictures that were in the public area.  Below is a photo that I took:

What you are looking at above is the classic V twin from Harley Davidson.  What Kennametal does for Harley Davidson is an extrude honing process to clean up the interior passages.  Extrude honing is essentially forcing a liquid that has abrasives in it that is forced through passages to clean up internal passages.

PC Control Irritrol Software and Support ROCKS!

I am using a young person's term for great software and support because I think it most accurately reflects how a top notch piece of software and support should work.

The definition of a great software, great hardware, a great car or just great technology is if you appreciate or like it better after having used it the first six months. A great piece of software is PC Control's Irritrol sprinkler control software.


When I was looking at a sprinkler system three years ago I realized that I wanted a nice interface and not the typical box of dials in my garage.  I found exactly what I was looking for with PC Control's Irritrol sprinkler control software.

Below are some of the features I find very useful from PC Control's Irritrol homepage:

Software provides simple, drag-and-drop zone scheduling from a home computer Two-way handheld remote allows system checks and manual operation of zones from up to 1,000' line of sight

Photos of the homeowner’s actual home and yard make zone identification simple Web connectivity allows schedules to be sent over the Internet to and from the contractor or Irritrol for suggestions or changes

Scheduling Advisor™ saves water by adjusting zones according to online weather forecasts Scheduling simplicity makes it easy to customize a schedule to comply with local watering restrictions Rain Sensor compatibility means system can shut off automatically when it rains

This sprinkler control software makes life so much easier because you make
all of your changes on the computer screen as opposed to going to the garage and turning some dials.  I really like how they architected the system that has the two way remote that allows you to walk around the yard and control your sprinklers directly if you choose to.  Your changes on the screen are tranmitted from the two-way hand held remote to the controller in the garage.  The controller in the garage has a 9V battery as backup in case you lose power.  This way you do not lose your sprinkler schedules.

The support is FANTASTIC as well.  Whenever I had a question, I was always amazed how quickly and thoroughly my questions were answered.  My questions had nothing to do with the great user interface or software, but rather how I could more easily move all the data from one PC to another after I have created sprinkler configuration files.

I would strongly recommend anyone who is buying a sprinkler systems to check out PC Control's Irritrol software.

Microsoft's Great Intern Program

I would be remiss if I did not thank Microsoft for a fantastic intern program that my oldest son John participated in this summer.

John spent the summer in Redmond working on the next version of Windows.  Microsoft provided a fantastic experience both during the work day as well as nights and weekends.  As a parent and someone who has been in the computer industry for 31 years, this is the best intern program that I have ever heard of.

As theodp wrote yesterday on Slashdot    "Despite layoffs and a blip in earnings, the Chicago Trib reports that Microsoft's summer interns still enjoy the VIP treatment. Although there were 20% fewer of them this year than last, still 85% of the interns are offered full-time jobs. In addition to being paid $4,600-$6,000 a month, a housing stipend, and relocation costs for the summer, the 600 or so Microsoft apprentices enjoyed other perks — such as a police escort to speed their way to a private museum party where they screened the most recent Harry Potter movie and were given a free Xbox 360. 'You feel like royalty to be escorted by police,' said Joriz De Guzman, an intern working toward his MBA at Wharton. BTW, before he got mixed up with those MBA-types, De Guzman earned some fame as the Doogie Howser of computer science."

 

Julie, Michael, Tim and I visited John and we spent time with my wife's relatives. Julie's relatives live on Lake Washington not to far from Bill Gates house.   They have done well :-)  It went so well at Microsoft that John is considering doing it again next year after he graduates from VT and before he enters the Masters Program at VT in Computer Science.

Thanks Microsoft!

Remembering September 11th - 9/11

My thoughts and prayers go out to those families and friends who endured loss on this day eight years ago. Living five minutes from Dulles Airport, I will never forget watching two military fighter jets making large circles around Dulles with no commercial flights in the skies. I also remember driving buy The Pentagon the next day to see the damage done there as well.

I just read in the Washington Post that they still have not started construction at ground zero. According to the Washington Post:

"Eight years later, the site known as Ground Zero remains mostly a giant hole in the ground. A projected completion date has been pushed back years, if not decades. The project has been beset by repeated delays, changing designs, billions of dollars in cost overruns, and feuding among the various parties involved in the complex undertaking.

"It's just one big political nightmare," said Jim Riches, a retired New York deputy fire chief, who lost his firefighter son, Jimmy, on 9/11 and who has attended meetings on the progress of the construction. "I think it's a national disgrace," he said. "I really think it's horrible. We can put a man on the moon, but we can't get all the politicians in New York . . . to build the World Trade Center back up again."

Corvettes at Carlisle 2009 with Mike Geldner

This year was another fascinating Corvettes at Carlisle. It was fascinating for a number of reasons.


I went with another Corvette fan - Mike Geldner. Mike and I used to work together and share a common interest in Corvettes. Mike owns multiple Corvettes and is a huge ZR-1 fan and expert. Mike took a lot of great pictures.

Mike Geldner and I had a chance to spend some time with Tadge Juechter, Corvette Chief Engineer. Tadge is just brilliant and it was a real pleasure to speak to him for about a half an hour. That is me above with Tadge on the right.

• That is me above in a new ZR1 that my wife wants me to trade up to. It is only $117,000 :-) The ZR1 is tremendous bang for the buck. My first house was $89,000, so this is still a chunk of change in my mind, but it relative to the other super sports cars, this is a steal.

That is Mike Geldner in the ZR1 above. Mike looks more at home in the ZR1 than I do since he has had three of them.

Mike and Stever Ferry were also at Carlisle this year. Steve is who first told me about Corvettes at Carlisle. It is always interesting to talking to two real experts on Corvettes such as Steve and Mike.



We found the most amazing Corvette I have ever seen. It is a 1963 Z06 that was completely restored with current Z06 parts and customized. Above is the interior that was just perfect. The owner used nine cow hydes of leather just for the interior.



Above is the under carriage of the 1963 Z06 - simply amazing amount of work went into this Corvette.

Checkout all of Mike's photos here.

The story behind "The Network is the Computer"

I had the privilege of having dinner with both John Gage and Bill Joy on a number of occasions. Sun Microsystems famous tag line, "The Network is the Computer" was created by John Gage on a train in China with Bill Joy. How do I know this? John and Bill told me the story on separate occasions.

On January 10th, 2006, I happened to be out at Sun's Headquarters in Menlo Park, CA when I heard about the Sun Founders Panel to be held the evening the next day at The Computer History Museum. Like any long time Sun employee or geek in general, I wanted to be there live. When I went there in the afternoon of the 11th, I was told there were no more tickets left. I asked the nice folks at The Computer History Museum what could I do in order to get in. They said that there would be a waiting list that they would start at 6:00pm taking names. I asked if I purchased a very nice Computer Museum polo shirt would I be #1 on the list. They smiled said, "I think we can do that." Luckily for me, I was one of the few on the waiting list who did get in that night.

It was a fantastic night that was hosted by John Gage with all four of Sun's founders there - Andy Bechtolsheim, Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy and Bill Joy. I learned about Vaughn Pratt and the huge contributions that he made to Sun Microsystems. Vaughn designed the famous Sun logo, which features four interleaved copies of the word "sun"; it is an ambigram according to wikipedia.

At the end of the evening, there was time for question and answer. I thought this was a great time to permanently capture the story of "The Network is the Computer". I went to the microphone and asked Bill and John to retell the story, which they did. Watch Sun Founders Panel and here the story behind the best company tag line of all time.

My /etc/motd file I have had forever

To measure is to know.

If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.

"In physical science the first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that 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 meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of Science, whatever the matter may be."

Lord Kelvin - Sir William Thomson

SunDC Sunset Party at Clyde's in Tysons Corner, VA

On Thursday the 27th, 2009, we held a SunDC Sunset Party for former (and some current) Sun Microsystems employees. We were hoping to get 20 to 30 to show up since it was a Thursday, it was a prime vacation week and it was simply a get together. This was not Sun sponsored and Sun did not pay for anything. We were shocked and thrilled to have over 300 Sun employees (past and some current) show up.

Below was the invitation:

Host:	Cynthia Renshaw Lion
Location:	Clyde's Tysons Corner 8332 Leesburg Pike Vienna, VA 22102 US
When:	Thursday, August 27, 5:00PM
"It ain't over 'til its over"! And Sun's game is definitely not over! But as the ninth inning closes in, lets take the opportunity to celebrate 27 years of Sun! You are cordially invited to the SunDC Sunset party! Do you remember the days of Friday beer busts, June 30 New Year's Eve parties, $12M DISTRICT goals, the $1B company-wide celebration? Come on, dig out your oldest Sun Ts, dust off that Sun paraphanalia, and come join your fellow Sun and Sun Alumni for one last chance to Kick Butt and Have Fun!!!! As you can see this invitation list is quite long! Special thanks to Kathleen Fox, Dave Edstrom, Donna Walker and Bob Ebling for helping to assemble it. Hard as we tried, though, there are names missing! So please pass the word!! Finally, Dave Edstrom has created a DC Sun Alumni group on Yahoo. Please take a minute to join, whether you can attend the party or not: Group Name: SunDC-Alumni Gorup home page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SunDC-Alumni Group email: SunDC-Alumni@yahoogroups.com Look forward to seeing everyone there! Crenshaw, Rebling, Kathleen, Dave and Donna *Disclaimer: This is NOT a Sun sponsored event. Sun Microsystems is not liable for any expenses or other claims resulting from attendance.

It was the most fun I have had in a long time. I have never seen so many people smiling, laughing, hugging and kissing in my life!

Every person that showed up said that Sun Microsystems was the best company that they ever worked for. Sun was a very special place to work and it was great to see so many long time friends in one great night.

We plan on doing it again next year......

The Two Things That Will Separate Cloud Computing Companies

I firmly believe that the two most important areas that will separate real cloud computing (CC) companies from the wannabes will be:

• Service Level Agreements (SLAs)
  
• Certified and Accredited Security
  

SLAs came out of the telco industry and I have always had a fundamental belief that you look to the following industries for best practices:

• Telcos--> availability and scaling
• Wall Street--> real time and availability
• Intelligence Agencies--> security
• Health Care--> privacy and security
• Search Engines-->Massive scaling
  

Right now we are in the hype phase in terms of cloud computing. Except for the companies that already understand scaling, security, availability, privacy and real time, we will see new cloud computing companies stumble in the marketplace which will hasten the time when we enter the "trough of disillusionment" as Gartner has coined it. In my opinion, those companies will not just hit the "trough of disillusionment", but they will die. We will still see the "trough of disillusionment" happen because the many who will fail will cast a long, dark shadow on cloud computing. I expect that to happen in late 2009 and 2010.

Cloud Computing is the right answer for many, but not all problems. It was Sun Microsystems Founder Scott McNealy that used to call for the Big Friggin' WebTone Switch (BFWS) as he called it. Scott was right when he would ask the question of customers, "why are you building this yourself?"

If the cloud computing company you are dealing with does not have a clear SLA, run, don't walk to a different company. Just a couple of weeks ago Twitter went down. That was not surprising to me, but what was surprising to me was the example of a company that had planned to use Twitter that day as its only mechanism for a product announcement. Are you kidding me? Who possibly thinks that you can place such a large bet on a company that has a best try mentality with no guaranteed SLAs in place?

Security is hard. Period. Full stop. Here is the bottom line on security.

• All data in motion or at rest must be encrypted.
• Realtime governance is the enabler or disabler for security.
  

A great example of this issue is the article in The Washington Post today titled, "European Cyber-Gangs Target Small U.S. Frims, Group Says". As the article brought out:

"The FBI said it is working to stem the problem.

"We share a mutual concern with respect to criminals' unrelenting intent to target our nation's financial sector and customers, whether through computer hacking or by other schemes to steal customer account information and make unauthorized withdrawals," Steven Chabinsky, deputy assistant director for the bureau's cyber division, said in a statement."

This article amplifies the importance of security and some of the real costs that can occur.

The reputation of a cloud computing company can be lost with just one major outage or security violation.

A Year Ago at Corvettes at Carlisle

Mark Hapner, Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems and I attended Corvettes At Carlisle. Corvettes at Carlisle is always a great experience with the highlight being the ability to speak directly with the Corvette Engineers.

Above is the logo on the amazing Corvette ZR1.

Above is the ZR1 638hp LS9 engine.

Above is the LS9 SuperCharger.

Above are the AMAZING specs on the ZR1. Check out ZR1 Nurburgring Official 7:26.4 Record Corvette Run

Leo Laporte - President of the Internet and TWiG

Leo Laporte was elected President of the Internet in a mock election.

Leo Laporte is the best host of podcasts that I have ever heard and I listen to lots of podcasts. Leo's education, training, work background and a natural ability to bring up topics that are relevant and keep the discussion moving is a gift he truly has. My only disagreement with Leo is the amount of time spent discussing twitter. I agree with John C. Dvorak that the amount of time on TWiT should not be spent 50% of the time talking about twitter.

Leo just started TWiG - This Week In Google. I listened to the first three podcasts this weekend while riding my bike on the Washington and Old Dominion. I thought it was an interesting podcast to subscribe to for those interested in not only Google, but cloud computing in general.

Interesting Lunch with long time friend Roger Fujii

I don't use the term "old friends" since it is neither as accurate as "long time friends" nor can it be misinterpreted in a derogatory fashion :-)

Roger is one of the most brilliant programmers I have ever met - ever. I still like to tell the story of watching Roger, write an assembly language program in his head, assemble the code to the machine code, convert that back to decimal, place that code in a BASIC DATA statement, execute a gosub to that DATA statement and watch it execute. This was a classic, "kids don't try this at home unless you chose your parents VERY WISELY." TRUE STORY......

The other purpose of this post is to act as a semaphore on whose turn it is to buy. We both
fight for the check, so hopefully this will end those fist fights :-)

LOG OF WHO PAID FOR LUNCH

• August 17th, 2010 I paid.
• March 8th, 2010 Roger paid
• October 29th, 2010 I paid
• April 7th, 2011 I paid 
• November 2011 Roger paid
• February 22nd, 2012 I paid 
• June 22nd, 2012 Roger paid
• August 31st, 2012 Roger paid (note, Roger insisted on paying since it appears I paid twice at one point) 
• December 19th 2012 I paid
• August 20th 2013 Roger paid
• December 16th 2013 I paid 
• August 7th 2014 Roger  paid   (I should pay next two times for the Z-Wave Door and Window Sensor Roger gave me)
• December 12th, 2014 I paid at Clydes in Reston Town Center
• April 17th, 2015 I paid at Spartans in Burke, VA 
• August 11th, 2015 Roger paid at Buffalo Wing Factory in Ashburn 
• June 28th, 2016 I paid at Passion Fish in Reston 
• November 22nd, 2016 Roger paid at Ted's Bulletin in Reston Town Center 
• March 20th, 2017, I paid at Blue Ridge Grill for lunch and Ford's Fish Shack for dinner since Roger helped me move to UI5 for Vera Z-Wave and this was a HUGE improvement
• August 11th, 2017 I paid at Spartans in Burke, VA where we talked with Kumar's nephew about manufacturing jobs in Ontario, MTConnect and Z-Wave.  Roger gave me a few cameras to try out as well.
• December 6th, 2017 - I paid for Roger, my son Tim and I at Mediterranean Breeze in Ashburn

10,000 Hours: Bill Joy, Bill Gates and The Beatles

Thanks to Neil Groundwater, long time friend, mentor and Unix legend, who sent me this fascinating article called A gift or hard graft? written by Malcom Gladwell.

The premise of the article is:

"This idea - that excellence at a complex task requires a critical, minimum level of practice - surfaces again and again in studies of expertise. In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is a magic number for true expertise: 10,000 hours."

Gladwell discusses the great amount of time that Bill Joy invested to hone his programming skills:

"According to Joy, he spent a phenomenal amount of time at the computer centre. "It was open 24 hours. I would stay there all night, and just walk home in the morning. In an average week in those years I was spending more time in the computer centre than on my classes. All of us down there had this recurring nightmare of forgetting to show up for class at all, of not even realising we were enrolled.""

Gladwell tells a great story of Bill Joy at Berkeley:

"In 1975, Joy enrolled in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. There, he buried himself even deeper in the world of computer software. During the oral exams for his PhD, he made up a particularly complicated algorithm on the fly that - as one of his many admirers has written - "so stunned his examiners [that] one of them later compared the experience to 'Jesus confounding his elders' "."

The legend of Bill Gates and the amount of time is well documented. What is not well documented is just how hard and long The Beatles worked. I was always under the impression that John Lennon and Paul McCartney were just pure musical geniuses and it just easy. Gladwell corrects this perception:

The Beatles ended up travelling to Hamburg five times between 1960 and the end of 1962. On the first trip, they played 106 nights, of five or more hours a night. Their second trip they played 92 times. Their third trip they played 48 times, for a total of 172 hours on stage. The last two Hamburg stints, in November and December 1962, involved another 90 hours of performing. All told, they performed for 270 nights in just over a year and a half. By the time they had their first burst of success in 1964, they had performed live an estimated 1,200 times, which is extraordinary. Most bands today don't perform 1,200 times in their entire careers. The Hamburg crucible is what set the Beatles apart.

The article ends with a very interesting point about the importance of being born in the years 1954 or 1955 with great summary of Sun's founders:

"By the way, let's not forget Bill Joy. Had he been just a little bit older and had to face the drudgery of programming with computer cards, he says he would have studied science. Bill Joy the computer legend would have been Bill Joy the biologist. In fact, he was born on November 8 1954. And his three fellow founders of Sun Microsystems - one of the oldest and most important of Silicon Valley's software companies? Scott McNealy: born November 13 1954. Vinod Khosla: born January 28 1955. Andy Bechtolsheim: born June 1955. "

Now I know where I went wrong in life, my parents waited four years too long to have me :-)

The Myth of "May You Live In Interesting Times"

The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson writes a very interesting article almost a year ago dispelling the age old myth about the origins of the phrase"May you live in interesting times"

As Mr. Robinson wrote on November 27th, 2008: "May you live in interesting times" is supposed to be an ancient Chinese curse, but I can't find evidence that the saying is Chinese at all, much less that it's ancient. One of the earliest reliable citations seems to be a 1950 short story by the British science-fiction author Eric Frank Russell, writing under the pen name Duncan H. Munro, who quotes the imprecation and then adds: "It isn't a curse any more. It's a blessing."

Voting Machines: A Logical Approach

One of my three sons wrote a paper on Voting Machines that briefly discusses David Chaum's logical approach to this challenge.

Below are three paragraphs from my son's paper. I am posting this not because I am just trying to fill up my blog :-) , but the three paragraphs below do clearly and concisely state a logical approach to voting machines.

"A new more reliable voting machine has been developed by David Chaum, in which you physically type in the name of the person that you are voting for. When your choice is confirmed 2 receipts that look like a random scatter of squares print out, although you only take one. The other receipt drops down into the machine, and it is stored, in case your vote needs to be recounted. Your receipt is specific to the card you didn't choose, and the candidate you voted for is saved from being lost. I felt this was an ingenious idea to keep people's votes from being left out and made it fairly easy to recount them. You can even check online by typing in the serial code on the receipt into a web site to find out if the person you wanted to vote for got your vote. I like the idea of a receipt that is merely an encrypted card; it doesn't tell people who you voted for, but it is simply used to verify that the vote that is cast belongs to that specific card.

These voting machines can affect our system of democracy in both expected and unexpected ways. The obvious way is the technical errors; despite what we would like to believe, machines are not perfect. They do break down, and they can make mistakes. While it does reduce the human error of physically losing a paper vote, it creates a whole new set of possible errors, such as casting a vote twice, not casting it at all, or even casting it for the wrong candidate. This could cause the wrong person to win an election that maybe should have gone to the other candidate. This would certainly affect our democratic election. Such problems on national scale would not go unnoticed and the proper actions would be taken to correct the problem, but the few who do experience these problems probably never know it. The lack of a paper trail means we are putting our vote into something that we cannot physically see or touch, and this can frighten most people.

This leads to another unseen impact the machines have on democracy: people's willingness to vote. In the states where only machines are allowed, a person with very little confidence in the credibility of these machines, may feel so inclined as to not even show up to vote on Election Day. This does not apply to everyone, but I'm sure it is very possible. This is why I feel the best solution is to get the most reliable machines to cast our votes in election, but always provide paper to the people who want it."

My Favorite Phrase from The Pentagon

Sometimes the most clear, concise and compelling statements come out of the military. My current favorite from The Pentagon is:

A vision without resources is called a hallucination.

Great Unix Buttons by npg

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

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

Privacy, Domestic Intelligence, and Information Sharing on CSPAN

This is a CSPAN captured video titled "The Way Forward: Privacy, Domestic Intelligence, and Information Sharing" on CSPAN is absolutely worth watching. As was stated at CSPAN: "The Majority Staff of the House Committee on Homeland Security hosted this series of roundtable discussions on the future of privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties at the Department of Homeland Security in Cannon House Office Building."

The balance between privacy and security is an ongoing balancing act. A good point brought out is that we need not only a CTO for the United States, (John Doerr suggested Bill Joy) but we need a Chief Security Czar as well.

Sun Microsystems has the absolute best Identity Management solution that is being open sourced with Sun's Open SSO Enterprise being a great recent example. As I have often said, look at the Intelligence Agencies for the right way to think about security, look at Telcos for the right way to think about availability and look at manufacturing and NASA for realtime and look at Wall Street regarding putting all three together.

Look for Sun Microsystems to continue to show leadership in all of these very important markets.

Unix turns 0x28 or 40 (decimal) this month...

Gary Anthes, writes a great article in Computerworld about Unix turning 40 this month.

I have been working with Unix since 1981 on a Microsoft Xenix system. Yes, for you young kids out there, Microsoft was a leader in Unix with its Xenix software. As Wikipedia states:

"Xenix is a version of the Unix operating system, licensed by Microsoft from AT&T in the late 1970s. The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) later acquired exclusive rights to the software, and eventually began distributing it as SCO UNIX."

As Mr. Anthes states:

Forty years ago this summer, a programmer sat down and knocked out in one month what would become one of the most important pieces of software ever created.

I would disagree. Unix is THE most important piece of software ever written.

Thanks to Neil P. Groundwater (npg) for sending this on and introducing me to Dennis Ritchie many, many years ago. Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie are gods in the computer industry and they deserve to be....

Identity Managment In A World WIthout Fences

In 2008, I gave a talk at The Fairmont at The Open Group's Conference in San Francisco.

The title of the talk was

"Identity Management In A World Without Fences."

As noted above, in 45 minutes, I discussed three topics.

The above slide barely touches the numerous standards that become involved with Identity Management when the fences start coming down. These fences started to come down in a significant way when Sun Microsystems led the Liberty Alliance effort.

The vision statement on the Liberty Alliance Project firmly set the stage for the network identity on the web:

"The vision of Liberty Alliance is to enable a networked world based on open standards where consumers, citizens, businesses and governments can more easily conduct online transactions while protecting the privacy and security of identity information. This world, where devices and identities of all kinds are linked by federation and protected by universal strong authentication, is being built today with Liberty’s open identity standards, business and deployment guidelines and best practices for managing privacy."

XACML is and will be a very important standard and why you see that I highlighted on the slide above.

Since my good friend Dr. Scott Radeztsky was attending the conference I felt the need to tie in Quantum Mechanics to this talk since Scott's Ph.D. is in particle physics. I also felt the need to create a corollary to Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle

The first bullet above is my attempt to create this corollary what I stated:

"It is impossible to predict both the method a developer will take in solving a problem and the many different ways that end users will want to use software. "

The slide above is my summary slide. The slide is self explanatory except possibly for the ABAC. ABAC is Attribute Based Access Control. The real key point for this talk is that security is in the message and the context/security level of the message can change while in transit with today's composite applications.

The final four bullets are beliefs that I have had that have stood the test of time.

Oh yea, after I totally customized my talk around Quantum Mechanics and Identity Managment, Scott Radeztsky blows off my talk :-)

Apps on my new iPhone 3GS

Here is the list the apps I have as of Wednesday April 28th, 2010 on my iPhone 3GS:

1. Informant
2. Evernote
3. Whitepages
4. GoogleCalendar
5. Shazam
6. Call Google 411
7. Units
8. Stocks
9. Planets
10. Dictionary
11. Urbanspoon
12. pic2ship
13. YP.ca
14. Trapster
15. Translator
16. PhoneFlicks
17. Google Earth
18. Huffington Post
19. Facebook
20. TideApp
21. YouTube
    
22. WorldView
23. Seadragon
24. DocsToGo
25. Mover
26. AP Mobile
27. Heads Tails
28. Sleepmaker
29. BargainBin
30. TouchCalc
31. Voice4Mail
32. GuitarTuner
33. VIN
34. WifiFofum
35. WiFinder
36. Free Wi-Fi
37. TripIt
38. LinkedIn
39. LIVESTRONG
40. FreeBooks
41. Movies - Flixster
42. LDAP Directory
43. LDAPeople
44. Air Sharing
45. OpenTable
46. Panorama
47. The Weather Channel
48. Bump
49. USAA
50. iSSH
51. Constitution
52. AroundMe
53. Skype
54. myWireless
55. zippo
56. CNN Money
57. AppBox Pro
58. PhotoMap
59. Appsaurus
60. Time Mobile
61. OperaMini
62. Yelp
63. C-SPAN Radio
64. Trails
65. Spending Lite
66. Alarm Clock
67. Mover
68. Dragon Diction
69. Washington Post
70. Constitution
71. FactBook
72. myWireless
73. Spinal Tap
    

GREAT MTConnect Student Competition - Trip to Milan, Italy!

There is a GREAT Student Competition for MTConnect with the winner going to EMO Milano 2009!

Develop a novel application for MTConnect^SM , and you may win a trip to the EMO Fair (Europe’s premier manufacturing show) in Milan, Italy next October 2009!

Below are the Contest Details from the MTConnect site. After you read the contest details you can click through to the MTConnect student competition site with lots and lots of details that can get you started!

Contest Details

Use MTConnect to develop and report on a novel application for intercommunication between manufacturing systems, machine tools, devices, sensors, software and have a chance to win a grand prize of a trip for your and your team to attend the EMO Fair in Milan, Italy, October, 2009 and display your work to the international manufacturing community.

Simply:

1. Go to MTConnect.org, and become a member of MTConnect^SM community (free) by following the login procedure.

2. Go to the student competition area of the website for competition and entry procedures. Sign in and download information/resources including:

· MTConnectSM Draft Standard (0.9.11) (Final),

· MTConnectSM Simple Client Application,

· XML Schema,

· MTConnectSM White Paper and

· watch the Student Competition Video at YouTube (follow link) to get familiar with MTConnect.

Sample project applications are also available on the MTConnectSM Student Competition Website.

3. Develop a cool MTConnect^SM application for manufacturing using MTConnect^SM.

4. Write a report documenting the details of your application (motivation, approach/procedure, results, future potential, etc.) of your application and send it in. See Judging Criteria below.

5. Do it before May 15, 2009. (See details below about concept paper submission by March 13th, 2009 – approved concepts will be able to submit a final competition entry).

6. Winners will be announced on June 1, 2009.

7. Winning entry team members will be invited to EMO Milano 2009 in Milan, Italy October 2009 to display their project at the MTConnect^SM Booth.

CLICK on this link to learn more about this GREAT Student Competition for MTConnect with the winner going to EMO Milano 2009!

Sunset.... This was my last post at Sun Microsystems

The vote by the stockholders was approved to sell Sun Microsystems in July 2009.

This will be my last blog at Sun Microsystems. I do not know what the future holds at this point. I imagine that I will be told along with everyone else when/if the Oracle acquisition of Sun occurs. I am ending my blogging at Sun because it just feels like the right time to do this and I want greater flexibility in expressing my personal views. I do clearly understand and respect the legal requirements when a company is being acquired.

I chose the photo above because my best memories of Sun were at Sun's Club for High Achievers and that was called Sunrise Club. I was fortunate in that I was selected to go to 7 of them in my career.

Sun Microsystems will be just a memory, but a GREAT memory for those of us who put in a lot of blood, sweat, hard smart work, and fun all while creating lifelong friendships. I came here as a true believer in "Open Systems for Open Minds" and that has been part of my DNA. I will always bleed Sun purple :-)

What was the most fun I had at Sun? That's really easy. Working with Dave Patterson at Berkeley to reinvent the machine tool industry with MTConnect.

What was I the most proud of? My oldest son, John, being selected Sun's Campus Ambassador of the Month out of over 500 Sun Campus Ambassadors.

What team effort at Sun am I most proud of? That is much harder for me. I would say it would be a three way tie:

• The East Coast Technology Center (ECTC) that was an all SE volunteer group that created a Technology Center that held over 400 benchmarks and POCs in the Dunn Loring and McLean, VA Sun Microsystems offices.
• Software Genius University (SGU) This was also an SE led effort working with a variety of groups around Sun that put together over 740 hours of content.
• 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.
• Last but not least, was the High Performance Workstations opportunity that put $2BILLION (Billion with a B) into Sun Microsystems over the years.

• A little background history...

  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.
  

I already thanked Scott, Bill, Andy, Vinod and John previously, but you can check it again here.

For everyone else, there are way too many people to thank from fellow employees to customers to partners and most importantly - family and friends.

Most importantly, I must thank my beautiful wife - Julie - for all her support through thick and thin.

If you are interested in following Dave Edstrom's blog, my private blog is at:

Dave Edstrom's private blog

I will definitely keep blogging on software, technology, life and of course Corvettes :-)

You can also reach me here via LinkedIn:

My private email is edstromvette@yahoo.com

I would be a liar if I did NOT state that I am bummed that Sun Microsystems had to end this way. As the often quoted old poem by John Greenleaf Whittier. (1807–1892) goes:

"Of all sad songs of tongue and and pen, the saddest are these, what might have been....."

Stay in touch, take care and remember the three things that I, Dave Edstrom Sun employee #3705, always tells people:

1. Life is short.
2. Death is certain.
3. If you do not make your own decisions now, time will make them for you....
   

MTConnect HUGE Success At IMTS 2008

MTConnect at IMTS 2008 was a HUGE SUCCESS. Above is the sign describing the approach to MTConnect based on open, royalty-free standards.

IMTS is an amazing show to attend. As the good folks at AMT like to say, machine tools are the "things that make the things". What you see above is an engine block that is approximately 16 FEET in length and made with a machine tool. Machine tools are just one example of the manufacturing technology that is shown at ITMS.

Above is Dr. Dave Patterson (second from the left) and three members of the AMT Board of Directors watching the MTConnect video at the MTConnect display at the Emerging Technology Center.

Above Dr. Armando Fox and Dr. Dave Patterson discuss MTConnect during the private executive tour.

Andy Dugenske of Georgia Institute of Technology, sent me this photo when we were watching one of the MTConnect videos when I happened to be on the video stating that "MTConnect will be a revolution and not an evolution in the manufacturing technology sector".

Above was the most popular screen at the MTConnect area at the Emerging Technology Center where you could select one of the 25 companies listed and get real time data on what the machine tool was dolng at the exact second. A great example of how easy MTConnect can be to implement is the lower right LNS selection. LNS asked if they could be part of MTConnect on a Tuesday evening. Will Sobel, Consultant and Adjunct Professor at UCB pointed them at the MTConnect homepage where the MTConnect SDK lives. They spent that evening writing the adapter. The next morning Will Sobel went to their display and had them up and running in less than a 1/2 an hour.

Above John Turner of GE FANUC shows of GE FANUC's MTConnect GE FANUC PC8 (that is a black box that makes it extremely easy to plug multiple types of machine tools on one side and ethernet ports on the other) to Dr. Dave Patterson of UCB. We believe it was the PC8 first MTConnect sale EVER and it happened at IMTS 2008.

Above is the close up of GE FANUC's PC8 MTConnect device.

MTConnect and specifically AMT is sponsoring an MTConnect Student Competition where the winner(s) will receive a trip to Milan, Italy to attend EMO MILANO!

You can see that all of us are extremely happy that MTConnect was such a huge success. From left to right, Dave Edstrom, Dr. Armando Fox of UCB, Dr. Dave Patterson of UCB, Dr. Dave Dornfield of UCB, Will Sobel, Consultant and Adjunct Professor of UCB, Andy Dugenske of Georgia Institute of Technology and Athulan Vijayaraghavan, Ph.D. student at UCB. This is the most fun and most technically satisfying experience I have had in my 30 years in the computer industry....