On April 5th, 2007 the Washington Post Business Section there was an excellent article by Rob Pegoraro - the Personal Technology Columnist, titled, "Draconian Windows Watchers".

Living in the DC area, I am a Washington Post paper customer, as well as an online subscriber. Mr. Pegoraro's articles are always insightful and well written.

In the article today, Mr. Pegoraro brings out some very important changes in how Microsoft is enforcing legal use of its Vista operating system. Mr. Pegoraro makes two points that stand out in my mind:

1) Instead of just checking to see if you have a legitimate license at install time, Vista will continue to check - FOREVER. As Mr. Pegoraro brings out:

"It's not enough to authenticate a new Windows setup once.
You must keep passing these tests. It's as if the Costco clerk who checks
your receipt on the way out of the store follows up by visiting your house
every month to verify that you don't have stolen goods."

2) The second point that stands out for me is the obvious challenge Microsoft has in not
only being accurate in determining who has an illegal copy of Vista, but more importantly,
how they should enforce these types of violations when discovered. Turning Vista into
"reduced functionality mode" sounds like a way to make some folks pretty mad if they
have legal copies of Vista or if Vista enters "reduced functionality mode" because of a bug.

Mr. Pegoraro provides many interesting examples in his article, and I would encourage everyone to read it.

This monitoring with Vista reminds me of the 1970s and early 1980s when software companies used to try every trick in the book to keep track of who was using their software with every type of copy protection known to man. It was a disaster then, and it will probably be a disaster now.

This exactly why eveyone should take a serious look at Open Solaris . We just want everyone to enjoy the best operating system on planet earth - FREE. We are too busy innovating and doing great things with the open source community to waste our time on such Big Brother monitoring efforts...

April Fool's Pranks At Sun I Have Been Involved With

Sun Microsystems is known for some GREAT April Fools Day Goofs. One of the most memorable was when Bill Joy's Ferrari was put in a pond (on stands) at our original 2550 Garcia Avenue Headquarters.

Bill was given a small row boat to go get it :-)

I have been on two teams that have put together GREAT April Fool's Day Pranks.

The first one consisted of John Meyer, Neil Pierson and me. We hatched a plan for April Fool's Day 1997 when we found out Dr. Dennis Govoni would be in California for two weeks starting March 31st, 1997.

Dennis has his PhD. in botany and our first thought was to turn his office into a miniature rain forest, complete with flora, fauna, waterfalls, and so forth. But the expense and difficulty in locating appropriate materials for the goof ruled this out. Then we hit on the idea: let's use a Jurassic Park theme. This was just what we wanted. It was cheap, easy, and fun. Neil and I had five boys under the age of eight at the time so stocking the office with dinosaurs, Jurassic Park paraphernalia, and toys was certainly no problem.

Neil set up two live video feeds on Sun's world-wide internal network that would tie into our web page. This meant that anyone in Sun could see a real-time picture of Dennis' office and anyone who walked into it for two whole weeks and there was nothing Dennis could do about it.

The priceless moment was watching Dennis's wife Barbara get upset that we had dinosaurs eating her grandchildren :-)

To see pictures of the 1997 April Fool's Day Govassic Park Prank

The second April Fool's Day Prank was my favorite. We enlisted Steve Fritzinger for this one in addition to John, Neil and me.

I have to admit, as Steve Jobs would say, " SunCLONE ONE was insanely great!" We had tons of props in addition to all the "science" we needed to create - we had a working 427 cubic inch engine from a Corvette thanks to Steve Ferry and a 7 foot working robot thanks to some friends of Sun in Gary Grimes office.

Bill Joy's Wired article, "Why The Future Does Not Need Us", was of course a motivating factor in this April Fools Day Goof.

This SunCLONE ONE science makes string theory and any Grand Unification Theory look like tinker toys.....

Below is the internal announcement we (John Marselle send it out as if it was real - thanks to John Crane) sent out: At the end of this is the url to go see the full announcement with LOTS-O-PICTURES and even more detailed science behind this.

The priceless moment with SunCLONE ONE was when Sun's PR Department received a call from the Press asking if it was real. Yes, it is real, Sun is cloning humans. Please do not tell anyone :-)

John Meyer hosts these two April Fools Day Goofs.

Below is the email that was sent to all of Sun:

I am very proud to announce that Gary Grimes, Southern Area Vice President for Sales, has been promoted to President of Sun's newest subsidiary SunCLONE. It was extremely important to SMI that we select
the right person to lead SunCLONE. We needed a fast-moving leader to master this dynamic market. Gary Grimes was selected because, after careful examination, we have determined that Gary is not only the fastest VP at Sun but also on planet Earth. Gary is the only VP at Sun to have a racing license and could have been a world class driver if he had chosen to pursue a racing career. Gary has driven and owns some of the fastest cars ever produced and I know that the stress of a very fast-moving market would not be a problem for him. I needed someone who would not be distracted by some of the religious, ethical, privacy, and consumer issues that will undoubtedly crop up with this announcement. With his laser-like focus on execution, I feel that Gary is the right man for this job.

WHAT IS SunCLONE ONE?
=====================

I am very pleased and excited to announce that we have beaten every other company and Government lab in the race to clone a human being and have mapped the human genome and the human brain into JDNA/JMRI Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs). JDNA/JMRI EJBs are the first truly integrated software/hardware helix stacks that have mapped DNA and the brain accurately into a Java class with real-time sub-attosecond response time.

The SunCLONE ONE is the first product using JDNA/JMRI EJBs. This bio-robotic device fully captures all aspects of the human base unit such as IQ, personality, and a lifetime knowledge base. Plus, unlike the human revision, the SunCLONE ONE is field upgradable via our patented JDNA/JNLP protocol. The SunCLONE ONE was designed at our SUNdEnPjMsF World Class Secret R&D facility in McLean, VA.

TECHNICAL DETAILS of SunCLONE ONE
====================================

The SunCLONE ONE is Java/Jini/JXTA/JDNA/EJB/J_Quantum_Servlet SunCLONE(TM)-certified. Each "appendage" (or option) is loosely-metaphysically coupled but highly recursively-intelligently aligned. A fully configured SunCLONE ONE is made of self-healing kevlar with 340 undecillion (340 BILLION BILLION BILLION BILLION or a one-to-one mapping with the number of IPv6 addresses) autonomous MAJC processors embedded in the kevlar for a lifetime of work. All parts are self-diagnosing and every single data path has 1 million levels of ECC-based protection.

By using our patented SunCLONE DNA extraction techniques, we can do mass customization for each SunCLONE ONE. For example, if you want a SunCLONE ONE of yourself, no problem. Our home DNA extraction kit, available in supermarkets and convenience stores, will allow you to painlessly extract the needed samples of DNA in less than two minutes.

Working with every manufacturer of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) systems, we have created a process for taking MRI images of the brain using JMRI, our JDNA process, and leveraging them to have a truly integrated software/hardware helix stack that is the ultimate definition of the NetEffect. These MRI systems will be embedded in existing supermarket checkout line scanners and will automatically transmit an accurate 14.6 petabyte scan of your brain to SunCLONE headquarters using satellite technology.

To those of our customers who are concerned about Sun having access to every SunCLONE ONE owner's DNA and brain scans, we politely say, "Get over it, you don't have any privacy now anyway and we need to do SOMETHING to turn this economy around!"

LONE ONE
==========

Gary Grimes was the first to actually be cloned and have his own SunCLONE ONE. By extracting Gary's DNA and having Gary walk through a JMRI enabled MRI scanner, we were able to clone Gary and map his DNA/MRI brain scan into JDNA/JMRI Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) working in a SunCLONE ONE. We have a working Gary Grimes(TM) SunCLONE ONE in the McLean, VA office. Through extensive testing, we have proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Gary Grimes SunCLONE ONE is identical to Gary's knowledge base and personality in every possible way. This test has been so successful that today we are announcing the proCLONEmotion (Sun patented term that means when your SunCLONE ONE takes over your normal job) of Gary's SunCLONE ONE to VP of Sales, GSO Southern Area. If there are any problems, the Pat Cox(TM) SunCLONE ONE can help out Gary's SunCLONE ONE.

See the URL at end of this announcement for a live webcam of Gary's SunCLONE ONE in action.


MARKETING DETAILS of SunCLONE ONE
====================================

We have heard from our customer focus groups that celebrity SunCLONE ONEs would be a great option and so far we have experimented with the Ed Zander(TM) SunCLONE ONE and the Masood Jabbar(TM) SunCLONE ONE. While testing continues on these configurations, beta units are available at full price with no warranty, provided the customer is willing to sign our rather large stack of legal disclaimers.

Although some may feel that cloning is a "controversial" market for Sun to be in, we believe that everyone will eventually want a clone for the jobs that they do not want to do. Our customers have asked the question, "Obviously, the employees at your subsidiary will receive multiple Nobel Prizes, but how can you make money from something so well made?" We thought about this long and hard and decided not to sell the SunCLONE ONEs but lease them. We will freely auction off their services to the highest bidder at any time. For example, if someone wished to play a practical joke on his neighbor, he could place the highest bid and buy time from Sun to overtake the controls of the SunCLONE ONE and have it do whatever he wants. At this time we have no plans to allow Government agencies to buy time to control or monitor your clone, but this may change in the very near future if the stock market does not improve.

Continuing our line of top-quality slogans (no, not that stupid dog Network that we had put to sleep) from "The Network Is the Computer"(TM) to "We're the Dot in Dot-Com"(TM) our new marketing focus will be "We're the 'N' in DNA"(TM).

Please join me in congratulating Gary Grimes on his new role of SunCLONE President.

WHAT THE PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT THE Sun CLONE ONE
==================================================

"This is really the fruition of our entire Sun Remote
Services(TM) (SRS) strategy. If we have problems at a
customer site, we can clone the right person in no
time. Let's say, for example, if a customer has a Java
question, ship out the James Gosling clone. A question
on vi or csh, a Bill Joy clone is on the way. Problems
solved!"

Larry Hambly
Vice President
Enterprise Services


"This makes my entire life's work seem insignificant."

Bill Joy
Sun Co-Founder
Employee #6

"I *am* a rocket scientist and I don't understand the physics
behind this. Not only have they created the SunCLONE ONE,
this group created a new branch of science -- amazing."

Dr. Rick Lytel
Distinguished Engineer and Director
RAS Computer Analysis Laboratory and
Physical Sciences Center


"This is so far beyond insanely great, I am at a loss for words..."

Steve Jobs


"When James Gosling, Ivan Sutherland, Bill Joy, Rob
Gingell, Mike Splain, Bob Sproull, Jim Mitchell and Greg
Papadopoulos all told me that the SunCLONE ONE would be
more important to Sun's future than NFS, the 386i,
SPARC, Sun Write/Paint & Draw, NeWS, DOE, Solaris, Java,
Jini, StarFire, Cobalt and the Serengeti line combined,
I was in absolute shock."

Scott McNealy
Sun CEO
Sun Co-Founder
Employee #3


"The SunCLONE ONE is the ultimate example of technology.
I tried to help out on some of the design work, but the
combination of computer science and physics involved
with SunCLONE ONE had Bill Joy and myself just
scratching our heads. This is so brilliant it is
scary ..."
Dr. Greg Papadopoulos
Sun's Chief Technology Officer


"I am putting everything I own into SUNW stock, so
should everyone else. If the SunCLONE ONE is half as
successful as I expect it to be, this will change the
economy more than anything I could ever do."

Alan V. Greenspan


"Now I wish I would have stayed. I would gladly have
given back the $245 million I personally made in selling
Granite Systems if I could have been a part of this. I
bet Vinod would come back as well."

Andy Bechtolscheim
Sun Co-Founder and
Employee #1


"Andy is right, Scott has begged me many times to come
back. If I could work with the SunCLONE ONE group, I
would quit my VC stuff and come back to Sun in a
femtosecond."

Vinod Khosla
Sun Co-Founder
Employee #2

"This is the ultimate use of the MAJC processor I
designed. They took my processor and did things with it
that I felt were absolutely impossible if I had not seen
it myself. Their patented atto-parallelization
techniques involving quantum spin rates is
mind-boggling."

Dr. Marc Tremblay
Chief Architect MAJC
Distinguished Engineer


"These new clones will be a big help in our FO plans
since OSHA does not require that clones have their own
cubicles. I am thinking about renaming HR to HR/CR
(Human Resources/Clone Resources). I will make an
announcement shortly that Officers of Sun can not be
cloned unless it is for non-business use."

Crawford Beveridge
Chief HR/CR Officer


"Constitutional scholars tell me that my SunCLONE ONE is
eligible for two more terms."


William Jefferson Clinton
Former President of the USA


"The SunCLONE ONE goes to 11."


Nigel Tufnel
Lead Guitarist
Spinal Tap

Sun CloneONE Headquarters

Best Books On Open [Innovation/Source]

Many folks talk about Open Source today. When I think of Open Source, there are many non-intuitive aspects that need to be understood to be truly successful. In that context, there are four books that are important to read and understand as it relates to innovation and Open Source. One of my favorite books (below is my copy and a must read IMHO) is Dr. Henry Chesbrough's book “Open Innovation”.

This much acclaimed book lays out, in very clear language, the important differences between “Closed Innovation” versus “Open Innovation”. There are many interesting points that are brought out in his book, two points that he makes in his book that I think are extremely relevant in today's open source world:

"We don't have to originate the research to profit from it."

"Building a better business model is better than getting to market first."

This book is a must read for anyone who is trying to understand Open Source. This book takes a higher level view that is important to understand prior to digging into specifics of software open source and is rich with real life examples.

Dr. Chesbrough has a new book that I am going to buy and look forward to reading called, Open Business Models".

The second must read book is Eric S. Raymond's landmark book, "The Cathederal and The Bazaar".

This book is often quoted in the world of Open Source. It is a great historical book. The two points from this book that stand out in my mind are:

"Often, the most striking and innovative solutions

come from realizing your concept of the problem was wrong".

Raymond quotes Antoine de Saint-Exupery:

"Perfection (in design) is acheived not when there is nothing more to add,

but when there is nothing more to take away."

The third book certainly worth reading is Clayton M. Christensen's "The Innovators Solution", which is, of course, the follow-on to "The Innovators Dilemma".

The most interesting chapter, IMHO, is Chapter 6, "How To Avoid Commidization". The main point that Christensen makes is that "The companies that are positioned at a spot in the value chain where performance is not yet good enough, will find profit."

Obviously, Mr Christensen's point can be easier said than done, but the examples in the book help the reader to find the framework to think about in the context of their own industry.

The fourth book that I find a must read as well is Chris Anderson's "The Long Tail".

The subtitle of the book, "Why the Fture of Business Is Selling Less of More" is the central theme of the book that is brought out in his Chapter 4, "The Three Forces of the Long Tail".

"Democratize the tools of production.

The results of this are more stuff, which lengthens the tail.

Democratize the tools of distribution.

The result is more access to niches, which fattens the Tail.

Connect Supply and Demand."

The result is it drives busines from hits to niches.

It is the examples in this book that I find are very compelling.

I know there are many other books, that I plan on purchasing and reading. Which books have I left out?

Curt Harpold and How To Program ,1000s of Processors

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.

Balancing Act: Community Version versus Enterprise Edition

Thanks to Mabimal for the great questions and comments on open source monetization. Recently, on April 29, 2009 at 11:02 PM EDT, Mabimal asked the following:

Hello Dave,

Thank you so much for putting efforts on creating this article.

What i understood from this article is that, open source project cannot be a standalone project as it must be backed up by enterprise versions which generates revenue for open source projects as well, and when the feature of open source project gets stable it will be transformed to enterprise version.The developers and employees developing open source project gets their income from the revenue generated from enterprise versions.

I hope i understood exactly as u r trying to make me understand.
If not please clarify me.

Thank you so much.

Yes, you are absolutely right. That is the general framework. Where things can get a little more complicated are the corner cases. What becomes extremely important is the latency or delay between the Community Version and the Enterprise Edition.

Let me give you a specific example. Let's say we have a Community Version that has nightly builds. Let's also say that we have an Enterprise Edition that was being released semi-annually. If the Community Version introduces a specific feature that the market place is clamoring for. Let's use as an example a Enterprise Service Bus (ESB ) with a new healthcare protocol adapter. If the customer base is clamoring for this particular adapter, the obvious question jumps to the forefront:

Does the new healthcare protocol adapter have to "wait" until it is rolled into the Enterprise Edition from the Community Version?

There are different ways that some companies address this situation. Some companies believe that you never, ever support the Community Version and you simply tell the customer to wait until the healthcare adapter gets rolled into the Enterprise Edition. Other companies believe that you do support the Community Version, but do it from your PS services group at a premium cost with the idea that you move your customer to the Enterprise Edition as soon as the healthcare adapter is officially supported.

My personal view is that when you are designing your Community Version and Enterprise Edition monetization framework, that you carefully review what makes sense to have as plugins that can be rapidly supported in the Enterprise Edition. Keeping with the example above, it would certainly be logical to separate out the protocol adapters to allow for flexibility in official product support in an Enterprise Edition. I also believe that it is perfectly reasonable to have certain plugins as non-open source in the outer ring of the Community Version/Enterprise Edition monetization framework.

There is a hard core group of open source enthusiasts who firmly believe that EVERY line of code must be open source and the only two driving factors are indemnification and support. These hard core enthusiasts call anything that is not totally open source as being crippleware. I believe crippleware is software that has had a critical piece of code purposely removed from it. An example of this is not allowing saves to a file or limiting the size of a particular structure or file. I do not subscribe to this view that EVERY piece of code must be open source. I believe that it is a balancing act between the Community Version and the Enterprise Edition.

My 1985 version of the Sun Microsystems Catalyst

The book above is my 1985 version of the Catalyst. As it states on the cover:

A catalog of third-party referrral software and hardware from Sun Microsystems

Catalyst

Spring 1985


This Catalyst was "only" 360 pages in length. In the latter part of the 1980's, our Catalyst catalog became much larger. Why is this so significant? The number of high quality software and hardware Partners a computer company has will always be a fundamental requirement for success. Sun Microsystems has always been a very Partner centric company. Andy, Vhinod, Scott and Bill understood from February 1982 that Sun will live or die with their Partner network. Sun's Partner infrastructure is what I first noticed about Sun in 1984. Although, as my wife likes to remind me, I was too stupid to realize how successful Sun would be back in 1984.

The Catalyst was the "kerthump" factor that all of the Sales Reps (SRs) and Technical Systems Engineers (TSEs) used to drop from four feet above the customers desk to emphasize the strength of Sun's software and hardware partner solutions. You would simply not go on a sales call without bringing a long a few Catalyst Catalogs. On the back of the Catalyst was the price $24.95 We never sold it as far as I know.

It is fun to look through this Catalyst and see a 15 MFLOP board level array-processor that went for $14,900.


I am a HUGE believer in Sun's Partner ecosystem. Sun is first and foremost an infrastructure supplier and we depend on our Partners to complete a customer solution. I will be dedicating a reasonable number of cycles in Edstrom Photons-Electrons to discuss interesting technical solutions Sun's Partners are creating. I will talk later this week about where the name Edstrom Photons-Electrons comes from....

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.

Monetizing Open Source - The Framework For Success

I was asked on my blog regarding open source by Mabimal on April 17, 2009 at 05:49 AM EDT the following: 

Hello Dave,

It's nice to update my knowledge on open source, but i m always eager to know how do open source project get revenue. Can you please provide the details on that?

Mabimal, sorry for taking twelve days to address the real key point of open source. I should have taken the time to address it as part of the initial posting, but then thought I would do it separately. Since the 17th, things have changed for Sun Microsystems, but my core belief in the importance of open source and how we need to frame open source monetization has not changed.

First, my early thinking on open source has been largely shaped by Scott McNealy, Bill Joy and Rob Gingell. My thoughts on open source monetization has been largely shaped by Rich Green and the two founders of MySQL - Monty Widenius and David Axmark. I really believe that Rich Green was on the exact right track prior to him leaving Sun. 

Prior to Rich leaving, he was in the process of standardizing our software strategy much like MySQL had already put together. My personal belief is that it is absolutely critical to have the Dave Edstrom 4 Cs as I like to call them:

1. Clear
2. Concise
3. Compelling
4. Consistent

Consistent is the most important to really drive volume. You can not have each Product Manager rolling their own strategy. That will just confuse the marketplace. The marketplace being customers, partners, developers, employees, ....

Below is the high level monetization framework that MySQL used. You create a community or platform with your free Community Edition. You support your Community Edition with a binary, for sale Enterprise Edition that emphasizes the unique vertical markets or massive scaling aspects that customers are willing to pay for. I have heard the founders of MySQL say this countless times. Of course, there are professional services that can go along with this.

Something that MySQL did was list the questions to determine whether or not you or your company should go with the Community Edition or the Enterprise Edition. This really helps the individual determine their own skill sets and and needs. Please see below:

The image below is what is commonly called inside Sun, the Rainbow or Donut Blue Print for Open Source Monetization. The key to this is that the light green is the community version/edition and the orange is the Enterprise Edition. The Enterprise Edition is based on a revision of the Community Version, but also has the massive scaling, industry specific addons , 24x7 support, best practices, hot fixes and enterprise monitoring that large enterprises will want/need **IF** they do not have the in house expertise. My personal opinion is if you think you will make all your money off professional services and indemnifcation, you better go back and do some more financial modeling. Speaking of Professional Services, this is predicated on having a strong support and services organization.




I believe that we will see another layer to this model and that is cloud services. You can not simply throw your applications into a cloud and think you now have a cloud. That is like putting a 638hp Chevrolet Corvette LS9 ZR1 engine into a Vega and thinking you now have a sports car :-) More on adding the cloud layer to the donut or rainbow later.

Hope this helps Mabimal ....

Jim Fiori Performance God

Jim Fiori recently presented at Virginia Tech's Association for Computing Machinery Meeting. My oldest son, John, blogged about Jim's GREAT 2 1/2 presentation. Jim's slides are also here.

If I was told, "Dave, you get to pick one person on planet earth to solve the most difficult software performance problem mankind has ever seen, and if this person fails, the earth as we know it burns up in an attosecond."

I know exactly who I would pick: Here's a hint, it would not be Bill Joy, Dave Patterson, Steve Bourne, Dennis Ritchie, Ken Thompson, Neil Groundwater, Grace Hopper or Bjarne Stroustrup.

No disprespect to those computer legends above, but I would select Jim Fiori. Jim Fiori is a great example of Malcom Gladwell's Outliers primary premise, which is you need to get to 10,000 hours of actual hands on experience, along with selecting the right parents, being born at the right time and finally, being in the right place at the right time - Jim Fiori meets all of these criteria.

Jim Fiori is a Principal Field Technologist at Sun Microsystems and is THE GOD IN SOFTWARE PERFORMANCE TUNING AND PROBLEM SOLVING.

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.

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 this morning dispelling the age old myth about the origins of the phrase"May you live in interesting times"

As Mr. Robinson writes today: "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."

I nearly forgot, Happy Thanksgiving everyone....

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."

Thanks SDN! -- Sun's University World Tour - Meet our Rock Stars

Sometimes, very rarely for me, when you are googling around, you find something that is both a surprise and makes you feel great at the same time. I was discussing just how bogus MTBF is with my oldest son John, when I told him he needs to read Dave Trindade's GREAT book on Applied Reliability. Many years ago, Sun had some challenges with e-cache. e-cache is the abbreviation for external cache or cache that is not directly on the microprocessor. I was the lead in terms of delivering the detailed message to customers. Dr. Dave Trindade is a god in statistics and a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems. It was Dave Trindade who did the statistical analysis and told us all at Sun the right way to think about this challenge that really made ALL OF THE DIFFERENCE with conveying the message to customers.

Back to the story :-) While googling for Dave Trindade, I found this link called Sun's University World Tour - Meet our Rock Stars that was at Sun's Developer Network page that is also known as SDN.

When I saw that the folks at SDN honored me by being on the same page with these other legends at Sun it absolutely made my night. My sons said that I had to actually bribe someone to be on the page :-)

Below is a snippet of this page in case this page goes away at some point :-)

Sun-1 at the Irvine, CA Office

I was at the Sun Office in Irvine, CA a few weeks ago and they had a 1982 Sun-1 in the lobby. Below are two photos I took from my cellphone.

As Wikpedia states: Sun-1 was the first generation of UNIX computer workstations and servers produced by Sun Microsystems, launched in May 1982. These were based on a CPU board designed by Andy Bechtolsheim while he was a graduate student at Stanford University and funded by DARPA. The Sun-1 systems ran SunOS 0.9, a port of UniSoft's UniPlus V7 port of Seventh Edition UNIX to the Motorola 68000 microprocessor, with no window system. Early Sun-1 workstations and servers used the original Sun logo, a series of red "S"s laid out in a square, rather than the more familiar purple diamond shape used later.
The first Sun-1 workstation was sold to Solo Systems in May of 1982.^[1] The Sun-1/100 was used in the original Lucasfilm EditDroid non-linear editing system.

As I have first personally heard Scott McNealy say, "the first serial number was 15 so customers did not think they were getting one of the first systems."

Something cool to check out is the SUN Workstation Architecture, Andreas Bechtolsheim, Forest Baskett, Vaughan Pratt, Stanford University Computer systems Laboratory Technical Report No. 229, March 1982

Another interesting tidbit of Sun history that I learned at the 25th anniversary of Sun Microsystems at The Computer History Musuem was that Vaughan Pratt was the person who designed the famous Sun logo.

As Wikipedia points out, the Sun logo, which features four interleaved copies of the word "sun"; it is an ambigram

The Right Way To Think About Open Source

There are many individuals who are confused about open source and monetization.

The first two rules on open source and monetization come from Marten Mickos in 2007 who was CEO from MySQL at the time:

“Success in open source requires you to serve:

1. Those who spend time to save money
2. Those who spend money to save time."

The important concept that Marten Mickos is driving home is that just like every other topic on planet earth, open source monetization is not black and white, but a gray scale continuum that we are still discovering some of the finer points.

1) There is no guarantee of monetary success just because you have lots of users.

2) If you ask someone about their monetization strategy and they come back to the concept of lots of users, then they have not a clue what they are talking about. There is no direct cause and affect between lots of users and guaranteed monetization. Yes, there is tremendous potential, but just like voltage - which is called potential, what you really want amperage. If you think this is not true, go google Xerox PARC's history and let me know how well the ROI went there.

3) There are analogies between open source monetization and every day products that you used today. Do you buy a warranty for a product that has a reputation for never breaking down? Probably not, unless your duty cycle is much more strenuous than the typical user. If you are running a business and you are using free software that never needed to be updated and never broke down would you worry about service? Probably not. Are there very many examples of software that you never update? Unless you are talking about a black box aka embedded application, the answer is not too many. There is an important analogy between home devices/appliances and enterprise software. That analogy is duty cycle.

My uncle, Merle Edstrom owns his own Welding business called Cannon Welding in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. One of the metrics that Merle cares about is the maximum duty cycle for a welder. The welding duty cycle is defined as the percentage of time in a 10 minute period that it can be operated continuously before overheating. As a professional businessman, Merle's duty cycle needs are very different than your typical home owner. Quick advertisement for my uncle. If you live anywhere near the mid part of Minnesota, Cannon Welding is the best and you should call Merle for all your welding needs!

In software, duty cycle is defined many different ways, but a common link to hardware duty cycle would be the reliability of the software expressed in the classic SLA or Service Level Agreement. If my business is running a mission critical open source application (as most are these days), then having a single throat to choke, 24x7x365 support, hot patches, professional services, value added services for massive scaling or vertical industry specifics are just some of the things that I would be willing to pay for.

At Sun we are clearly defining our Community Version and Enterprise Edition software.

More on my favorite (ok, one of my favorite topics :-) later....

The Stimulus Package and The Win/Win For Americans/Healthcare/IT

The Wall Street Journal reported that early reports are the stimulus package may have the following amounts for Healthcare:

• $39 billion in subsidies to health insurance for the unemployed; providing coverage through Medicaid
• $90 billion to shore up state Medicaid programs
• $20 billion for health-information technology systems
• $4 billion for preventative care

This will be a great opportunity for companies like Sun Microsystems that has a very strong software infrastructure stack and known for our secure and scalable software. The canonical quote is that 40% of Healthcare costs are administrative. The other statistic that is often quoted is that nearly 98,00 Americans die each year due to medical mistakes. President Obama stated on Monday the 9th that healthcare premiums have doubled for the average family in the past eight years.

There is an article at Sun where Bill Vass brings out the following:

"So, here is the background: If the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) is the information highway for health data exchange, CONNECT is the universal on-ramp for federal agencies. CONNECT is a software solution that lets federal agencies securely link their existing systems to the NHIN. More than 20 organizations collaborated to build CONNECT through the Federal Health Architecture (FHA), and as a result, agencies are heading down the road toward interoperability.

Using Sun's entire Open Source middleware stack as its foundation, including our SOA and IdM technology, the FHA built the CONNECT gateway software from open-source code. Talk about an Open Source poster child! The solution was jointly developed by federal agencies yet it will be deployed individually at the agency level. The decision to build the solution in open source provided the usual benefits (I know you have heard these from me before):

· Cost reductions for each agency and taxpayer savings

· IT consistency and compatibility across multiple agencies

· Decreased deployment times

· Security"

One of Wayne Gretzky's famous quotes is:

"A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be."

Healthcare is where the IT puck will be going....

THANKS Dr. Bruce Haddon - Software Development Legend

In my 30 years in the computer industry and 21+ years at Sun, no one has been better at discussing Software Development than Dr. Bruce Haddon. Bruce has the rare ability to talk to a CEO one second and the Java Real Time Developer the next. There are countless examples of Bruce speaking to a large group of Developers and the final question is ALWAYS, "Bruce, this is GREAT, when can you come back? " I always went out of my way to attend any of Bruce's talks since I always learned something new and interesting.

There is not enough storage space on http://blogs.sun.com to list all of Bruce Haddon's many accomplishments. I will name just two of a very long list. Bruce was the Father of Java Center Of Excellence (JCOE) as well as my co-author in Software Genius University (SGU). When I was told that we only had one chance to speak to an extremely important customer about software development, my response was always the same, "call Bruce, no one is better on this planet."

Dr. Bruce Haddon is the definition of what the ultimate professional should be.

Thanks Bruce for your INCREDIBLE LEADERSHIP in Software Development at Sun Microsystems with so many customers, Developers, Partners, University students, employees.....

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.

Open Source: Making Money on Technology in a Recession.

In today's incredibly tough economy and with the likelihood that 2009 will be much worse, there has never been a better time to look at Sun software. There is a well written article in eWeek titled Making Money on Technology in a Recession.

The article states: "More optimistically, CompTIA recently released a study of 772 small to medium -size businesses that found that 51 percent said they expect to increase IT spending while 49 percent said they plan to decrease IT spending.

The long and the short of this is that nobody knows for sure what exactly is going on with IT budgets in 2009, other than some companies are trying to cut back some spending across the board, while others are trying to cut back IT spending in some areas so they can spend more money in other areas."

Open source is listed in the number one slot as the main item to consider in IT's recession planning. I would argue that open source should always be #1 on the IT list and not because of cost, because it's smart. Most CxO's that I meet with have dual stack approach for both a legacy/proprietary strategy and an open source strategy.

The open source strategy is something that most CxOs are evolving over time with the Sun's open source software being a significant part of that strategy. Sun has donated more source code than the next five contributors combined.

Below is a link to Sun's Free and Open Source Licensing White Paper

Licensing plays an important role in shaping an open source community. Read about Sun's view on Free and Open Source licensing.

Free and Open Source Licensing White Paper

This whitepaper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

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...."