Thanks Chris and my Father - Two Tours of Duty - Memorial Day

I received an email from my cousin Chris Edstrom. Chris has done two tours of duty in Iraq as well as a tour in Afghanistan. I was at my sisters house yesterday and my father was there. My father did two tours of duty in Vietnam and is the world record holder for number of years with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL).

Chris and my father are just two of the many heroes we should have thanked yesterday for their service to our country.

As someone who lives in Northern Virginia, I am very proud of the GI Bill of Rights that Senator Webb proposed. It is absolutely inconceivable to me why ANYONE would be against this Bill.

As The New York Times wrote on the 50th anniversary of the G.I. bill: “Few laws have done so much for so many.”

“These veterans were able to get a first-class future,” Senator Webb told me in an interview. “But not only that. For every dollar that was spent on the World War II G.I. bill, seven dollars came back in the form of tax remunerations from those who received benefits.”

Senator Lautenberg went to Columbia on the G.I. bill, and Senator Warner to Washington and Lee University and then to law school.

The Bush administration opposes the new G.I. bill primarily on the grounds that it is too generous, would be difficult to administer and would adversely affect retention.

This is bogus. The estimated $2.5 billion to $4 billion annual cost of the Webb proposal is dwarfed by the hundreds of billions being spent on the wars we’re asking service members to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. What’s important to keep in mind is that the money that goes to bolstering the education of returning veterans is an investment, in both the lives of the veterans themselves and the future of the nation."

I think back to when I was with Joy W. and my wife listening to Oliver Stone present at a small College in California. Oliver Stone was asked, "why did the Vietnam war go on for so long?" Mr. Stone replied, "Do you really NOT know? - that is EASY, because Senators and Congressman's sons were NOT dying."

Why is it that it is always the politicians who were never in battle are ALWAYS the ones who are quickest to send our sons and daughters in harms way, but then have the complete LACK OF CHARACTER AND LACK OF COURAGE to take care of them when they come home?

Thank you Senator Webb for you LEADERSHIP!

Five Unsung Heroes of the Virginia Tech Tragedy

"Courage is the first of human qualities because it
is the quality which guarantees all others."

Winston Churchill

The tragedy at Virginia Tech is still heart wrenching. As a parent of a VT freshman, it is still hard to comprehend the magnitude of this tragedy. There
were many heroes on VT's Campus on April 16th, 2007. Many
are well documented in the press.

There are five individuals who were behind the scenes
that are absolute heroes in my mind. Those five heroes are
the individuals who run online Collegiate Times which is
VT's main online paper and kept the world informed on the
latest breaking news coming out of VT on this senseless
tragedy. These five individuals were literally working
around the clock, giving up sleep to keep their fellow
students, parents, family, friends, faculty and the rest of
the world informed.

These five unsung heroes all have the "first of human
qualities" - courage. It would have been perfectly
understandable if these five individuals would have given
up when their servers went down. But they did not. They
had the courage to literally work around the clock to get
the server back up *and* keep the rest of the world
informed of the latest updates to one of the most of
horrific days in the history of our country. The five
individuals are:


Chris Ritter, Online Director
Tim Tutt, Web Developer
John Edstrom, Associate Web Developer
Gabriel Martinez, Associate Web Designer
Collin Smith, Multimedia Editor

One of the many amazing statistics is that the
Collegiate Times received up to 53 million hits by
early afternoon on Monday April 16th.

Wikipedia has a nice history of the Collegiate Times with the
picture that appeared on the Collegiate Times April 17th, 2007,
edition titled "Heartache."




Below are just some of quotes on the fantastic work that
these five unsung heroes did under
tremendous pressure.

The OnLine Newshour on PBS

"The Internet became a prime place for people to
get the news out of Blacksburg. The college
newspaper, the Collegiate Times, scooped the major
media, getting the story online, right after the
first shot rang out, and staying on it non-stop
ever since.

The 104-year-old paper received up to 53 million
hits by early Monday afternoon, forcing the site
down for a time. It also listed some of the dead
early Tuesday morning, prompting the New York Times
Web site and other news outlets to link to the
Collegiate Times."


The Shield - University of Southern Indiana Student Newspaper

"The information on the Web site is remarkable.

Besides the list of confirmed deceased, the site
provides a graphic map of the shootings, a photo
gallery, personal accounts and interviews and
related stories ranging from emerging donation
details to the impact on the nearest hospital. The
staff has handled the facts correctly, but not
without compassion, which is a difficult task.

The Collegiate Times editorial says, "When
considering the number of deceased victims, 32 is
devastating, but those lives are not just a number,
each one is a member of our community." Journalism
cannot be disregarded due to a personal tragedy,
since citizens rely on journalists for information.
Such journalists must remember, however, that
although horrific tragedies stir media attention as
sensational, there is nothing sensational about
human suffering and coverage must be conducted
tastefully.

Well done Collegiate Times staff.

To those that believe campus newspapers are a waste
of time and funding, let this tragedy serve the
purpose of proving the necessity of campus
newspapers nationwide."


Chronicle of Higher Education

"National Public Radio is among news organizations
that have profiled and praised Virginia Tech
student newspaper, The Collegiate Times, which has
become a crucial source of information for other
reporters covering Monday's events.

The papers online edition, said NPR's Larry
Abramson, has grabbed international attention
indeed, on Tuesday The New York Timess home page
linked to the student publications list of
confirmed victims of the shooter. Mr. Abramson
also pointed out that Collegiate Times staff
members know how to mine Facebook for information
inaccessible to many older reporters who are
unfamiliar with the social-networking site." -


WGHP Fox TV VIDEO:


"The team at The Collegiate Times, the campus
newspaper, will remain. So far, they have been
setting the pace for all journalists"



Middlebury Campus


"The face of a crisis, the writers, photographers
and editors of Virginia Tech's student daily, The
Collegiate Times, transcended their roles as
college journalists to not only inform their
community, but to inform the world. With many local
news sources shut out, only limited comments coming
from Virginia Tech officials and an entire campus
on lock-down, the importance of these students'
work was heightened to an extreme. The written,
photographic and video posts to The Times website
throughout the day were among the most vivid and
honest portraits of the campus available. Working
from computers outside of their offices, the
students held nothing back, and produced a raw,
emotional narrative of the tragedy. Their reporting
was effective, critical and in every sense, brave."

Editor and Publisher


"While the editors of the student newspaper went
about their work with inspiring leadership,
internal communications by Virginia Tech
administrators showed the University was less than
fully prepared. As more and more details about the
sequence of events have been released, it has
become clear that administrators did not notify the
entire campus or order a full lockdown until more
than two hours after the first round of shooting
began. Whether or not any of the deaths in the
second round of shooting could have been avoided,
we should realize the need for all institutions to
prepare for the unimaginable. And in the face of
this shooting, college administrators everywhere
should recognize the need to share information with
their communities quickly and clearly, even as the
full extent of a crisis may remain unknown."


"The college paper at Virginia Polytechnical
Institute kept a running account of the tragedy
that struck the campus today, with more than 30
students gunned down in at least two areas of the
campus, a dorm and a classroom. The shooter is
allegedly dead as well, but not identified. It is
not known if he was a student ...

Here is how the student-run Collegiate Times
reported it, blog-style, with the most recent
posting first. A full article is now posted there,
which includes the note that police "are also
investigating if it has any relation to the recent
bomb threats on Tech's campus."

Seattle Post Intelligencer


"For unique reporting on the massacre read the
Collegiate Times, Virginia Tech's student-run
newspaper."


University Daily Kansan

"While news organizations like CNN have done a
thorough job in covering Monday's events, I'd like
to point the readers of kansan.com to Virginia
Tech's student newspaper, the Collegiate Times.
After overcoming early technical difficulty when
the news initially broke, they've done what I feel
is an admirable job as the student voice of the
Virginia Tech community.

In the process of learning about these tragic
events, be sure to not overlook the students
themselves. http://www.collegiatetimes.com"


WRAL

"I found a couple sites with unique angles on this
story. One of the most interesting is The
Collegiate Times, which is VT's student newspaper.
Their staff apparently first reported this shooting
this morning. The server is overwhelmed right now,
but it will be interesting to check their coverage
in the days and weeks ahead."

Forbes

"Monday's shooting at Virginia Tech provided a
grim, real-time stress test for the effectiveness
of Web 2.0 technologies. And on Monday, all of them
seemed to work: Information flew through text
messages, blog posts, Web sites, online videos and
social networking sites.

The Internet reacted to the event immediately--and
more quickly than Virginia Tech administrators, who
took two hours to warn students, via e-mail, about
a first shooting. The Web site of VT's student
newspaper, the Collegiate Times, crashed when
students flooded it after the first shooting. As a
replacement, students created a low-tech blog,
CollegeMedia.com.

It posted the first entry about the event at 9:47 a.m.,
minutes before the second shooting began."

Yahoo News

"The student newspaper, the Collegiate Times,
regularly updated its website proving to be a
valuable resource for the campus as well as the
national media."



Daily Californian


"And as this happened, students at the Collegiate
Times, the Virginia Tech student newspaper, were
able to live-blog the days events. The Web site
began the day with a post at 9:47 a.m. EST,
reporting Shots were fired on campus and
provided continuing updates throughout the day. The
entries of the papers staff provide an
illuminating window into the fear and questioning
that doubtless gripped the campus in those
uncertain hours."


"The Collegiate Times, Virginia Tech's campus newspaper,
was the first media outlet to break the story Monday with
on-line reports of shots fired on campus."

Manhattan Mercury

"No amount of on-the-job experience or education
could have prepared Kelly Furnas for what he's
faced this week in his capacity as an editorial
advisor to the campus newspaper at grief-stricken
Virginia Tech University.

.....

To be honest its been pretty much non-stop working
with the student newspaper I have not had time on a
personal level to sit down and digest everything
yet," Furnas said.

The Collegiate Times, Virginia Tech's campus
newspaper, was the first media outlet to break the
story Monday with on-line reports of shots fired on
campus.

"I can't put into words how proud I am of our
students," Furnas said. "They have provided
desperately needed information to their readers,
and they have done that with gusto. I think the
campus newspaper's reputation with the students
here has helped a lot."

The Age (Australia)

"'The school's student newspaper, The Collegiate
Times, filed up-to-the-minute online dispatches. At
4.44pm: "Police have confirmed that the shooter
took his own life." At 4.54pm: "University
Relations has confirmed 31 deaths at Norris Hall,
in addition to two deaths at West Ambler Johnson."


Gulf Times

The Collegiate Times (its server quickly crashed
and a blog written by editors with messages from
students appeared instead on the web site of the
newspapers owning company), as well as to media
outlets around the world, including CNN and the
BBC. Regardless of where the contributions are
aimed, the back and forth on facebook.com and other
social networking sites are equally an instant and
new resource for news producers and reporters

NPR


"As reporters from around the world descend on
Blacksburg, Va., one publication stands out:
Virginia Tech's student newspaper, Collegiate
Times, is doing a truly remarkable job of covering
the story."

About 15 staff members were rushing to update the
site about every 15 minutes with news of the
convocation, shooting investigation and candlelight
vigil plans.

"We're getting like 10 billion phone calls,
everyone from Al Jazeera to tiny radio stations in
Iowa," Kendall said.


LA Times


"The paper's scoops included eyewitness accounts of
the shootings, interviews with a classmate of the
shooter and a list of victims' names that was
posted late Tuesday. A reporter was one of the
first to question administrators about why they
didn't warn students during the two hours between
the two shootings Monday morning."


Poyneronline

"The Web staff for Virginia Tech's student
newspaper, The Collegiate Times, was also
scrambling for solutions after its servers crashed
around 10:30 a.m. the day of the shootings.

Online editor Chris Ritter's main goal was to get
the site back to its original state -- a large,
graphical and Flash-intensive homepage. When that
couldn't happen, Ritter and his staff opted for a
simple text page with blue background -- to ensure
they could communicate information quickly to
users. After that page continued to overload its
own server, The Collegiate Times tech adviser,
Scott Chandler, suggested that the staff use the
College Media server, the parent company which
hosts the publication's site.

Once the site stabilized on the additional server,
The Collegiate Times began posting photos and
videos to a third server usually reserved for
design research and development. To prevent
crashing again, a Virginia Tech server is now
hosting videos and photos for the site.

Monday night The Collegiate Times staff redesigned
its homepage from scratch to have a Web site that
was "intuitive and a graphically pleasing display"
of its special content for the shootings. The
Collegiate Times began creating breaking-news
multimedia when escaped convict William Morva shot
two police officers at Virginia Tech on the first
day of school last August.

Since then, Ritter said users are looking at the
Web for information more than ever before, and the
staff has adopted a Web-first attitude change."


Roanoke Times on CT:
Coping Through Journalism Video

SnOA Snake Oil Architecture

One of my pet peeves is going to a Conference, watching someone ask a very basic question, and then listening to the speaker or panelist go on and on using every buzzword every invented and not saying a damn thing. This is especially true when topic is Service Oriented Architecture. I brought this up at the last conference that I attended. When someone asks what is SOA and the answer provides zero real life examples, then chances are you are hearing a description of what I like to call SnOA - Snake Oil Architecture. I have a very simple framework for judging answers that I call my THREE "C's"

1. Is it CLEAR?
2. Is it CONCISE?
3. Is it COMPELLING?

Stereo and Home Theater SOA

The above photo is a snapshot of a small percent of the back of my cabinets that hold the AV equipment on the main floor in my house. Yes, it is a damn mess. This was created back in the 1980's and I just kept adding to it over time. There are countless 75 ohm splitters and god knows what color coding that I was using. It is too much of a mess today to break because it just works. Integrating any new piece of AV equipment in turns into a nightmare, so I have not updated this setup in years.

Above is my Home Theater SOA for where I created a AV closet and tied into both existing as well as new devices. Notice that I wired in for future use. Future use means I pulled 100 pound test fishing line so that as new cable technologies come out it will be easy to pull this. This is a good example of AV eEways or BCs (Binding Components) to speak to various input/output stereo/AV equipment.

Above is a picture of my Stereo/AV (NMR) Normalized Message Router in SOA OpenESB speak. Just like a real SOA, as npg would say, "you want lots of goes_intas and goes_outas" with as many logical tees and filters as you can afford.

BlueRed Shift - When Blue Shift Quickly Moves Toward Red Shift

Sun's CTO, Greg Papadopoulos, has coined the terms Red Shift and Blue Shift as it relates to applications that customers have that are growing faster or slower than Moore's Law.

But to steal from Senator Barack Obama, we do not have Blue Customers, we do not have Red Customers, we have Sun Microsystems Customers who have a variety of computing needs - some blue and some red. I am going to discuss what I call BlueRed Application Shift.

Red Shift, of course, comes from the astronomy definition of a shift in the spectra of very distant galaxies toward longer wavelengths (toward the red end of the spectrum) which is generally interpreted as evidence that the universe is expanding.

Please note that the "Universe is expanding" is the same reason the young Alvy Singer in Woody Allen's 1977 picture of the year "Annie Hall" gave for not studying at school. "If the Universe is expanding, what's the point?" he told his mom and the school official :-) But I digress...

Blue Shift from an astronomy definition (this is from Wikepedia) is the shortening of a transmitted signal's wavelength, and/or an increase in its frequency, due to the Doppler Effect, which indicates that the object is moving toward the observer.

As Greg defined it, "Red Shift" are those applications that customers a have that are growing faster than Moore's Law - ie Web 2.0 companies. Greg also defined "Blue Shift" as those applications that companies have that are not growing as fast as Moore's Law, so by definition, those companies need less square feet of computers because speed of computer processing is faster than their business is growing.

So, what am I calling a BlueRed shift? A BlueRed shift are those applications that companies that have been historically blue shift and now because of a significant event, have moved quickly out of Blue part of the spectrum, raced through green and yellow and orange part of spectrum heading towards Red. I expect that with MTConnect, we will see companies that have been historically classic blue shift applications, will become BlueRed shift applications as they see their compute and storage needs start to take off. This is not a risky prediction as we have seen this happen again and again when markets embrace open and royalty-free standards.

Why do we need the term BlueRed Shift? Because we need to indicate that Blue Shift applications with customers do not have to be slow growing forever and events do change industries.

More on this as I attend the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) 2008 this week in Chicago.

Sun Joins MTConnect Technical Advisory Group (MTAG)

Below is the offiical announcement where Sun announces we are joining MTConnect Technical Advisory Group (MTAG)

SANTA CLARA, Calif. - (Business Wire) Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq:JAVA) announced today that it will join the MTConnect Technical Advisory Group (MTAG) to further define the open communication protocol standard it helped create for the manufacturing technology industry a year ago.

MTConnect is an open manufacturing technology standard that uses proven, royalty free Internet communications technologies as its basis to allow manufacturing technology vendors and customers to safely and easily communicate.

"Sun Microsystems has a very long history of working with the industry and academia to create and promote open technology standards that drive genuine innovation,” said Dave Edstrom, Chief Technologist of the Americas Software Practice for Sun Microsystems. “Open source and open standards are the keys to unlocking manufacturing innovation and efficiency around the world, particularly in growing emerging markets. I am thrilled Sun has been able to play a pivotal role in the development of such an important initiative as MTConnect."

The Challenge in Today's Manufacturing Facilities and Machine Shops

A typical manufacturing facility includes hundreds, if not thousands, of machines and autonomous systems that must operate together to produce high-quality products in a timely and cost-effective manner. While each of these machines and systems accumulates information on its operation, this data cannot usually be shared, which makes it difficult to track machine efficiency, process flow, energy usage, toolpath validation and other metrics. As a result, manufacturers are challenged to coordinate and optimize machines and systems to ensure that these individual components and the factory as a whole are operating at acceptable levels.

Interoperability from Design Studio to Shop Floor

MTConnect is an essential first step to connect these production islands and will open up new markets and opportunities for the manufacturing technology industry. Bringing unprecedented interoperability from design studio to shop floor, MTConnect helps enable third-party solution providers to develop software and hardware that make the entire manufacturing enterprise much more productive.

With MTConnect, the manufacturing technology industry can mirror the success of the information technology industry, where common, open industry standards are used to design hardware and software technology to enable different manufacturers’ products to work with each other. Just as large compute farms are used to accurately model microprocessors today, MTConnect should help enable the vision of "art to part, first-time correct" by taking advantage of large compute clusters.

Sun’s Leadership

As a leader in creating open standards for the IT industry, Sun is in a strong position to help the manufacturing industry create a common, open standard. The Solaris™ Operating System, Java™ technology, the Sun Java Real-Time System, Sun™ SPOT, Sun™ xVM software and MySQL™ software are among the innovative technologies that will help enable MTConnect to deliver complete and open interoperability on the manufacturing floor, seamlessly connecting to the enterprise as well as to technology manufacturing partners in ways that were previously impossible.

Sun’s long history of innovation in CAD/CAM, HPC, grid computing, simulation, real-time and modeling technology provides the ideal platform for MTConnect. Indeed, manufacturing technology companies could have immediate access to Sun computing resources via the Network.com Software Catalogue platform, allowing them to easily build, test, and deploy MTConnect enabled applications on-demand over the Internet.

MTConnect History

Although developed through an open collaborative effort, the MTConnect initiative was initially led by Dr. Dave Patterson, Professor in Computer Science of the University of California at Berkeley, and Sun’s Dave Edstrom.

Edstrom was inspired to approach Dr. Patterson after attending the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) in September 2006. “I was absolutely convinced that creating a manufacturing technology standard using proven, open and royalty-free Internet technologies was an imperative effort in which Sun must invest,” he said. “The expected impact of MTConnect on the manufacturing sector is analogous to the effect that the browser had on the development of the Internet: MTConnect will revolutionize the manufacturing technology industry by providing a common, open platform which, in turn, will revolutionize manufacturing.”

Dr. Patterson commented, “It is great news for the manufacturing technology industry that MTConnect is becoming real, and that Sun Microsystems will be officially joining the MTConnect Advisory Group."

"Sun recognized the potential of utilizing the power of information technology to move manufacturing to levels of productivity never seen before,” added John Byrd, President of the Association for Manufacturing Technology. "When the history of MTConnect is written, Sun Microsystems will be recognized as having played a critical role in the development of the initial concept. Dave Edstrom's vision and foresight enabled thought leaders of our industry to step out of their comfort zone and tackle the most significant issue the manufacturing technology industry will face in the 21st Century."

MTConnect will be demonstrated at next week’s International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS 2008).

About Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems develops the technologies that power the global marketplace. Guided by a singular vision -- "The Network Is The Computer" -- Sun drives network participation through shared innovation, community development, and open source leadership. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Java, Solaris, MySQL, Network.com and The Network Is The Computer are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Rebecca Lui, 650-786-8365
rebecca.lui@sun.com

The First Standards Fight

On March 6th, 2008 I gave the keynote at the AMT-NCMS Manufacturing Technology Forum.

This was a global two day conference where I spoke about the importance of standards and MTConnect. The slides below provide a highlight of my keynote. To drive home the importance of MTConnect, I used Sun's historical tagline to frame my talk.

Great MTConnect Video

There is a very cool video at MTConnect that does a great job describing the historical challenges with standards in the machine tool industry and laying out where MTConnect will address these important challenges. Plus, I am in the video is another reason to watch this :-)

Thank You and Farewell Dr. Dennis Govoni

Scott McNealy has said on many occasions, that a big part of Sun Microsystems overall historical success is the tremendous talent and passion of Sun's pre-sales technical contributors.

Today, Wednesday November 19th, 2008, we say farewell and best of luck to one of the best there ever was -- Dr. Dennis Govoni.

I have been here at Sun a long time (21 1/2 years), and I can say that without question there is *no one* who has had more positive and long lasting impact on the technical community in the DC area for Sun Microsystems than Dr. Dennis Govoni.

For those of you who have not had the privilege of working with Dennis, let me give you a little background.

Dennis Govoni has been working with computer technology since 1967. He became Associate Professor of biology at Virginia Wesleyan College (VWC) in 1973, and introduced timesharing computing into both the business and academic areas of the college. He also received a National Science Foundation grant to develop a generative CAI program to help students understand Mendelian genetics.

After leaving VWC in 1983 to work full-time in the computer industry, he joined Prime Computer, Inc. as a Networking and OS specialist. Responsibilities were in both the government and commercial worlds. Upon leaving Prime, he joined Tandem Computers, Inc. in the Telco District as a senior analyst supporting the new fault-tolerant Integrity UNIX line.

In 1992, he joined the Sun Microsystem as a network architect and specialist. While serving in this capacity, he developed the Networking Survival Kit, a Web site devoted to providing information and teaching materials for system engineers around the world as related to networking and Java technologies. This effort resulted in his being named network ambassador of the year for 1995.

In January 1999, Dennis Govoni worked with Astronaut Sally Ride on EarthKAM: NASA, the Internet, and Education Working Together.

In 2002, Dennis was one of the first three Technical Directors selected from the *entire* global pre-sales technical community. Dennis was one of the creators and leaders in the Southern Area Technology Facility (now the Solution Center), an author for Sun Journal, SE-Times, The Technocrat, mentors for many SEs, creator of the Sun New Hire program that the rest of Sun embraced, the SATC, the Worldwide Technical Readiness Council with industry thought leaders such as Hal Stern and Dan Berg, Technology At Sun Group, Java Evangelist, Java Realtime expert, security expert, networking expert, and countless other committees and councils, the list just goes on and on....

I have worked worked with Dennis on literally countless technical and business opportunities both inside Sun and outside with Sun's partners and customers. If the problem was extremely complex, Dennis was always the first one consulted. Dennis would bend over backwards to help out anyone who asked.

Both Dennis and I had the privilege of jointly 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 and I have pulled countless pranks on each other and have teamed up with others on some very memorable April Fools Goofs as well. There is not enough space on all the sundc servers to talk about all of those. We were very fortunate that during that time we had the best HR person of all time in John Gardner. John clearly understood the importance of office chemistry and its affect on employee productivity and morale.

My all time favorite April Fools Day was Govassic Park on April 1st, 1997 when John Meyer, Neil Pierson and I turned Dennis's office into a version of Jurassic Park called "Govassic Park".

My personal favorite memory of Govassic Park was when Barb Govoni was upset when she saw we had dinosaurs eating her only two grandchildren :-)

My all time favorite customer visit was when Bill Joy's office called and asked Dennis, Conrad Geiger and me to visit a company in Chicago. This company claimed to have *invented* a storage device using sub-atomic particles and aspects of quantum mechanics. We all made the trip out there on a very cold winter day. Let's just say, that this "company" clearly did *not* invent anything. Makes for great memories though... Dennis, Conrad and I laughed all the way back to the airport :-)

Dennis, we all want to thank you for your tremendous contributions over the past 16+ years at Sun and wish you nothing but the best.

Dennis, you can *NOT* be replaced....

You can reach Dennis at dngovoni@verizon.net or you can leave a comment here at my blog.

A GREAT CEC 2008 (Customer Engineering Conference) 2008

This was the best CEC by far. The training was World Class quality. It
never ceases to amaze me that when we ask Sun's technical community to put in
the nights and weekends to create top notch hands on training - they always
deliver. That we are able to capture all of this is even better.

While we have seen a great deal of change at Sun Microsystems in the past few
years, the one constant is the deep passion Sun's technical community always demonstrate when it comes to helping each other and Sun's Partners get smart
about our technologies.

I had the privilege of giving a one hour presentation on Open Source Monetization that I will share parts of later this week on my blog.

Most importantly, we all owe a HUGE Thanks to Kirk Brown, Sun Global Software Chief Technologist, for his great leadership of CEC 2008.

Thanks Rich Green

Rich Green, Executive Sun VP of Software, did a fantastic job leading Sun Software over these past two and half years (Rich came back to Sun on May 1st, 2006) and I am really bummed to see Rich leave. Rich oversaw the most important and significant changes to Sun's software portfolio that Sun has ever gone through since we transitioned from SunOS to Solaris.

Rich has had a long and impressive history with Sun. He was VP of the Java Group, where J2ME, J2SE and J2EE were defined and developed. Rich was personally responsible for the success of Sun's Java strategy and platforms. Obviously, Rich did a great job.

Prior to leading the Java organization, Rich was VP of the Solaris Products Group and prior to that he managed the design and development of distributed object systems, network communication products, desktop integration technologies, software development tools and database systems.

Rich was a real thought leader in Sun's open source software strategy. The acquisition of MySQL can also be credited largely to Rich as well.

Rich liked to say, "Volume Drives Value." This is a simple but powerful concept: the more developers there are on the network, the more compelling devices and services they create, the broader the market opportunity for Sun's network innovations - hardware, software and services.

On Monday November 13th, 2006 - Sun open sourced Java:

Rich said at the time, "This undoubtedly is the largest single open-source contribution in the history of IT."

Mike Dillon, Sun General Counsel was quoted at the time:

The transition was tedious and legalistic, said Sun General Counsel Mike Dillon. "Java Standard Edition contains about 6 million lines of code," Dillon said. "Our legal team [of 190 lawyers] had to go over it, line by line, and look for all copyright marks and third-party involvements. Where Sun didn't have the correct licenses, we had to contact the owners, one by one and determine the rights." In some cases, Sun had to settle with copyright owners. Dillon said the company considered some of the 200-plus open-source licenses but settled on the GPL because "it has the largest development community at this time driving innovation, and that is what Sun is striving for."

Something that Rich and I shared in common was that we both love the movie Annie Hall. Annie Hall has more great lines than any other movie that I can think of. Woody Allen played the character Alvy Singer in Annie Hall.

Alvy Singer: "I remember the staff at our public school. You know, we had a saying, uh, that those who can't do teach, and those who can't teach, teach gym. And, uh, those who couldn't do anything, I think, were assigned to our school."

Thanks for everything Rich. Best of luck to you in all your endeavours.

Introducing MTConnect

By far the most fun and most satisfaction that I have had in my 32+ years in the computer industry and my 22 1/2 years at Sun Microsystems was working with Dave Patterson of UCB to create MTConnect.    While Dave and I were the catalyst that provided the guiding vision and roadmap for MTConnect, how any great standard becomes real were/are the many talented individuals that came together from manufacturing, the computer industry, academia, industry groups and most importantly customers to build a great, open and royalty free standard.  AMT - The Association For Manufacturing Technology provide the funding to make MTConnect real.   Without their leadership and money, MTConnect never happens.

AMT's membership includes machine tool and software companies used in the CAD/CAM industry. Machine tools are the large machines that are used to create a variety of parts such as engine blocks out of raw materials typically by using a variety of cutting devices. AMT's membership also includes software companies used in the CAD/CAM industry. This is a classic American industry. This industry employees many of my relatives who live in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Back to the beginning of the story.   I was ask to line up a Sun Manufacturing Executive to speak at AMT's Annual Member Meeting in October 2006. When my third contact at Sun was no longer available to speak, I called the President of AMT, John Byrd, to apologize that we had let AMT down. After finishing the half-hour long conversation with Mr. Byrd, Peter Eelman, VP of Marketing for AMT, called me and asked if I would like to do the keynote. While I was flattered that I would be asked to give this keynote, I explained I would Need to get up to speed on the machine tool industry.

To prepare for the Annual Meeting, I spent two days in Chicago at the International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) meeting with a number of companies in mid September. IMTS is the world's largest trade show of machine tool companies. I was very fortunate to have Paul Warndorf, ATM's CTO, taking me through IMTS introducing me to the largest as well as the most influential hardware and software machine tool-CAD/CAM companies.

At the end of the second day I met with John Byrd, along with a number of his VPs, to discuss what he learned. I told them I felt the machine tool industry did not have a manufacturing problem, but a computer science collaboration problem. When I inquired on the economics of our industry, I was told that the American machine tool companies have seen their domestic market share go from 70% in 1986 to 15% in 2006.

I made two suggestions for the machine tool industry:

1) They needed a wakeup call to start a revolution.
2) They needed to hear from someone who has led technology revolutions.

I said that I could, with proper preparation, do the wakeup call. The real challenge was that I knew of only one person who had the credentials to discuss the technology revolution that our machine tool industry CEOs would be able to relate to. That person was Dr. Dave Patterson of University California at Berkeley. I told AMT about Dr. Patterson's leadership with RISC and RAID. I said I would reach out to Dr. Patterson, but I felt the odds that Dr. Patterson would be available to do this, in a little over five weeks time, would be a long shot at best.

Fortunately for the American machine tool industry, Dr. Patterson agreed to change his busy schedule to come to speak at our member meeting.

There were numerous emails, con calls and meetings during that brief five week period to bring both Dr. Patterson and me up to speed as well as to collaborate on the wake up call and the revolution or "moon shot" as I called it.

The title of my talk was, "How The Internet's Participation Age Will Drive Dramatic Changes In The Machine Tool Industry".








Historically, the Machine Tool industry has been very Microsoft centric from the developer tools to the systems running the actual machine tools on the shop floor. I drove home the importance of open systems and open standards to AMT's members. I discussed the importance of taking advantage of the grid to reduce costs. Embracing standards has been a huge problem for our industry. In 2005, the manufacturing industry lost $90 billion dollars in data incompatibility costs. I discussed Sun's NFS Connectathons as a viable mechanism we could model to take standards from theory to reality.

The title of Dr. Patterson's talk was "Creating a Thriving Manufacturing Base in 21st Century America".







Dr. Patterson explained the "miracle" of university research. Dr. Patterson pointed to one example after another of university research efforts that turned into multi-billion dollar a year companies and industries. As he summarized his presentation, Dr. Patterson issued a set of challenges to the CEOs in attendance to start the revolution. There was a lengthy Q&A session after Dr. Patterson's talk.

The meeting was a tremendous success.   Dr. Patterson was brilliant and I was not too bad myself :-) in providing a wakeup call and issuing a set of challenges to our industry with a clear framework to accomplish these very important goals.

Next I will blog about what has happened in the past year since Dr. Patterson and I spoke in Lake Las Vegas at AMT's Annual Members Meeting.....

My 21st Anniversary * CommunityOne & JavaOne 2008

Today, May 4th 2008 was my 21st anniversary working for Sun Microsystems. I am in San Fancisco preparing for CommunityOne and JavaOne. 2007 on May 4th, it was hard for me to believe that twenty years had gone by so quickly.

CommunityOne will become more important than JavaOne by 2015 in my opinion. More important in the sense of the overall scope and reach. JavaOne will always be an important event, but the depth and breadth of CommunityOne should just continue to grow and mature. The open source model will continue to grow and evolve with new twists and turns that we can not even predict today. Last year at CommunityOne, Rich Green made the statement to Jonathan Scwhartz, that "today we have Robin Hood in reverse." Rich went on to explain that, "today, we have the rich taking from the poor." He was referring to large companies taking code from the small developer with little or no direct payback.

The truth, with open source today, is that most large companies are funding open source. This is no secret to anyone who is the business. The challenge going forward will be around creating new and interesting revenue opportunities so the small developer or small partner can make a living off being a developer in the pure open source world.

CommunityOne starts tomorrow and if it is anything like last year's inaugural event, it should be a great day. I was amazed at the attendance and excitement last year at CommunityOne. JavaOne starts and when you have Neil Young as part of your event, how can you go wrong? :-)

Identity Management Road Show in Dallas on April 22nd

On April 22nd2008, we had a:

Identity Management Road Show in Dallas

Need to move your business beyond compliance?

Find out how from the leaders in Identity Management.

Come join some of the leaders and experts in the field of identity management and learn about the best approaches to your identity management strategy. You will hear from key analysts, engineers, customers and some of Sun's identity partners, which will enhance your knowledge on the benefits Identity Management will bring to your organization.

You will see:

• Analyst presentation along with Q&A
• Sun engineers providing product content and demos
• Identity partners presenting use cases
• Customer testimonials
• Sun executives

Sign up for a road show event in your area. Each city has their own customized agenda, which will be available upon registration.

Happy 50th Birthday DARPA

Stephen Barr of the Washington Post has a great article titled:

The Idea Factory That Spawned the Internet Turns 50

Below is a snippet from Stephen Barr's article:

"Like many government initiatives, DARPA was born out of a crisis.

The Soviets launched the satellite Sputnik in 1957, beating the United States into space. At the direction of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, DARPA opened for business the next year, focused on helping guard the nation against technological surprises. The agency's mission has been evolving ever since, and today DARPA also works to create its own technological surprises that permit the U.S. military to overwhelm adversaries.

Unlike most federal agencies, DARPA operates with little red tape. It has only two management layers, encouraging the rapid flow of ideas and decisions."

It is it possible the Internet would have happened without DARPA? I seriously doubt it....

Greg's NYT "Thinking Outside The Company's Box"

Sun's CTO, Greg Papadopoulos is quoted in a very nice article in the New York Times that is called "Thinking Outside The Company's Box"

"How to resolve the tension between make and buy varies from one organization to the next. Sun, for instance, has created many important technologies in-house, including a family of microprocessors based on an original design and the Java language, popular with programmers.

Yet even companies that maintain their own powerhouse research-and-development units are increasingly aware that valuable ideas can sprout anywhere. For instance, Sun broke with its home-grown tradition this month, when it paid $1 billion for MySQL, which makes the most popular open-source database program.

Sun needs a database program to support its line of powerful server computers, which can be optimized to work with MySQL. To create a viable database from scratch might take Sun 10 years, Mr. Papadopoulos figures. Instead, Sun gets a vibrant product overnight — and immediate contributions from scores of
database engineers around the globe.

Having spent some time with the MySQL folks at a Sun off-site, I am extremely impressed with the MySQL team. These are very interesting times at Sun and in the computer industry. Thanks to npg for sending me this article.

As serious as a heart attack....

January 16th, 2008 will go down as a HUGE DAY for Sun Microsystems. On that day we firmly answered the question, "is Sun serious about Software?" Serious? We are as SERIOUS AS A HEART ATTACK! We announced on the 16th plans to acquire MySQL

Jonathan answered one of the concerns that some individuals had when he posed and then answered the question below.

Will you change their platform priorities?

Absolutely not.

Why not?

• Because the L in LAMP stands for Linux, not Looney.
• Customers prioritize MySQL's platform choices, not Sun.
• As with Glassfish, their number one download platform is still Windows and we're very committed to those developers, as well.

Sun has had a number of impressive acquisitions over the years, as well as some that did not work out quite as well as we had planned, and I believe that this will go down as a landmark acquisition for Sun Microsystems. I could not think of a smarter use of 1$ BILLION than to acquire MySQL.

Thanks Temitayo Olajide - Howard University Campus Advocate Talk

On Tuesday, November 13th, 2007, I was very fortunate to be asked to speak to Howard University by Temitayo Olajide. Temitayo is an extremely bright and passionate young man who is Sun's Campus Advocate at Howard University.

I really enjoyed the night at Howard University and I think the students enjoyed it as well. I was extremely impressed with the students at Howard University.

Realizing that the talk should be both technical and interesting, I decided to give my talk the above title.

The best lesson that I can pass on to young folks is on the magic of compound interest. The above story is from the great book "The Wealthy Barber."

I left the students with the following three things they should always remember:

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

Heisenberg Compensator on Sun's HPC Water Cooler Blog

This is one of the best spoof technical videos that I have seen in some time on the Heisenberg Compensator

I wanna be, I wanna be like Chris Melissinos - Virginia Tech Gaming Presentation

On the night of 6th of November 2007, Chris Melissinos - Sun's Chief Gaming Officer, put on the best presentation that the Virginia Tech (VT) students of the ACM in Blacksburg may have ever seen. Certainly the most interesting. These are not my observations, but that of the President of the ACM. Chris and I drove down to Blacksburg together that Tuesday. It was a very educational day for me, (see here for history of gaming) because I had a chance to get a better understanding of the entire gaming world from the expert on planet earth. It would be analogous to driving down to a physics seminar on Quantum Mechanics and you had the pleasure of spending four hours with Werner Heisenberg.

I have had the privilege of personally seeing many, many Sun and non-Sunluminaries wax eloquently to enthralled audiences.

At VT on November 6th, 2007 Chris Melissinos surpassed anything that I have ever witnessed before.

The audience was 60 extremely bright Computer Science students who are also members of the ACM at VT. VT is one of the top Computer Science and Engineering Schools that is well known for their deep Linux expertise.

The students started showing up early at 7:00pm and Chris spoke until 11:30pm with no breaks until we finally had to leave. The President of the ACM said:

"I have seen countless ACM presentations by every
company you can think of and I have never - ever -
seen this type of response and this amount
of incredible interest."

It was simply amazing to see CS Majors sitting on the edges of their seats for over four hours.

How this all happened was thanks to Jonathan's increased investment from 180 Campus Advocates to 500 this year. In the case of the VT Campus Advocate, it happens to be my son,
John, who has known Chris for six years and has been to Chris's house to see his amazing collection of every gaming system from Pong forward, asked Chris to speak at VT. Since I love to see Chris speak, I offered to drive Chris to Blacksburg from Ashburn.

When I think about the stock symbol change from SUNW to JAVA, I think of extremely talented, passionate and hardworking Sun employees like Chris Melissinos. Chris is the perfect example of the type of leaders we must have to capture these new and emerging markets.

If you would like to listen to this event, the audio is here and the slides are here.

As a Sun employee, last Tuesday night was priceless.

Chris also blogged about this and has some great photos of the night as well.

SOA at Restaurants

My wife and I went to a restaurant in Leesburg, VA called Vintage 50. It is a good restaurant and when the owner stopped by I asked him what the key point to make money in his business. He said the number one issue is cross-utilization. I thought it was interesting that the most important issue in the restaurant business is the most important issue in the computer business. The owner went on to state that if you have a small restaurant, you can have more custom selections. As as restaurant grows in size (scales) the ability to easily share ingredients (components) to offer better utilization of the meals (applications) becomes extremely important. Next up is Home Theater SOA...

Sun-1 at the Irvine, CA Office

I was at the Sun Office in Irvine, CA last fall 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

My all time favorite comment in the Unix kernel is:

/* You are not expected to understand this. */

I first saw this comment in 1987 when Neil Groundwater showed me
the button that he created with this on it.

As Neil Groundwater recently told me:

"Life with Unix" is by Don Libes and Sandy Ressler, ISBN 0135366577. Libes used to work at NBS/NIST. He told me that he saw the button on me in the elevator at the USENIX conference, in Washington, DC, Winter 1987. He admiredit and I gave it to him. I guess I made 50-100 of them.

"At the Phoenix, Summer 1987, conference Steve Jobs saw the badge on someone.
(I think Jobs gave the keynote address.) He said something like, "That means something, I know it," and the person later led Jobs (and his handlers) over to me and I gave him a badge.

I spoke at a U.K. USENIX they gave me a sweatshirt with the comment printed on it."

You can see the source code where this comment exists at this Bell Labs site.

Below is an email from Dennis Ritchie on this topic in April of 1992.

The full thread of this can be found at The Unix Heritage Society

From: Dennis Ritchie 
Date: 2 Apr 92 09:34:24 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill NJ

People might be interested in more of the context
of the famous `you are not expected to understand this' comment.
(Tim Smith is wrong on the details.)  It was made somewhat in
the spirit of `this won't be on the exam,' not as a contemptuous
challenge.  Nevertheless, people did find it necessary
to understand it, and the comment was too flippant.

And of course, the real joke was that we did not understand
what what was really happening either:  the setu/retu mechanism
of pre-Seventh Edition Unix was basically unworkable,
because it depended inextricably on subroutine calling
conventions of the PDP-11 implementation, and more fundamentally
because it was not the right way to do things.   Specifically,
as the comment says, `savu' arranges that a routine
that subsequently calls `retu' jumps out not to
a location near the `savu' (as with setjmp/longjmp),
but to the routine that called the routine with the `savu.'

May 4th 1987 was when I started at Sun Microsystems

Back in my college days in the mid to late 1970's, we were all told that if you stayed at the same company for more than three years that you were killing your career. As the old adage goes, "it is better to be lucky than good" and I have been very lucky to be at Sun.

There are too many people to thank over the years. But, if I had to pick two, it would be Betsy (Maclean) Ferry who hired me and Neil Groundwater who has been my mentor over the years. Neil is the first user of Unix outside of the state of New Jersey and a certified Unix god. He is a retired multi-millionaire who does what he want when he wants these days.

Below is my first Sun t-shirt that I received on my first day of work. Still wear it :-)

Below is the wall in my office with seven Sunrise Plaques as the highlight.

Below is Scott McNealy's signature on my Sun 1982 to 1992 Ten Year Anniversary book. I may have prompted Scott on how I wanted him to sign this, I can't remember :-)

SunSpot Changing The Game

How many Sun employees earn our Java One passes is to help out in a lab or at a booth at Java One. In 2007, at Java One, I was very fortunate to help out in multiple labs. This is more interesting to me than attending the lectures because it is actually doing something, but more importantly, you are talking with folks who are doing interesting things with Java. The most exciting and standing room only lab was for SunSpot. I am sure it will be the same way this year as well. SPOT stand for Small Programmable Object Technology.

Above is the SunSpot kit that you can get more information on at SunSpotWorld.

The best place to get more information is at David G. Simmons SPOT blog.

The number of interesting applications with this is really limitless. What is also very nice about SunSpot is that it can be programmed with NetBeans.

Below is from the Sun SPOT introduction hands on lab from the listing of Java One curriculum that has Spot in the keyword.

BOF-1692
Session Title:	Introducing the Sun SPOT (Small Programmable Object Technology) and Sun SPOT Community: Java on Wireless Sensor Networks
Session Abstract:	The Sun Small Programmable Object Technology (Sun SPOT) is a commercially available, small wireless sensor that runs a version of Java technology called Squawk that is compliant with Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME). Users of the Sun SPOT and those interested in finding out about the platform are encouraged to come to this session and meet each other. The Sun SPOT platform, developed at Sun Laboratories, is a small, battery-powered wireless device with an application development environment based on the Java programming language. The Sun SPOT, smaller than a deck of cards, comes equipped with a 32-bit ARM processor and an IEEE 802.15.4 radio for wireless communication. Stackable boards include sensors and actuators such as accelerometers, light detectors, temperature sensors, LEDs, push buttons, and general I/O pins. The device can be duty-cycled to run for months on a single charge of its rechargeable battery. The small-footprint Java virtual machine, called Squawk, can host multiple applications concurrently and requires no underlying operating system. The full platform includes tools for programming, deploying, configuring, monitoring, and debugging a network of Sun SPOTs. The session is informally structured and includes several demos and presentations on existing Sun SPOT projects. Speakers include members of the Sun Laboratories Sun SPOT team as well as members of the Sun SPOT community. Those thinking of using the Sun SPOT for specific applications are encouraged to describe their ideas to the group, so it can discuss the suitability of the platform for the application. Attendees will find fruitful contacts and should leave with their questions answered.

Thanks John Gage! and JavaOne 2008

It was a great JavaOne in 2008 . It was very memorable on a number of fronts.

Below was the night of CommunityOne where ten of us on the System Engineering (SE) side of the house in Americas Software Practice went out for a nice dinner.

Above, starting on the left and going clockwise is Jeff Bounds, Pavan Venkatesh, Bill Green, Michael Drevna, Bruce Haddon, Peter Gratzer, Dave Edstrom, Jim Hoffmann, Ron Gregory and Scott Fehrman.

Above is Rich Green, James Gosling, John Gage (holding a Gold Duke Award) Jonathan Schwartz and Chris Melissinos on stage at JavaOne 2008 (video here) after Jonathan presented John with a Gold Duke Award.

John Gage is the most amazing person I have ever met. John is Sun employee #21, the first Sales Rep at Sun, The creator of Net Day, the person who coined Sun's tag line "The Network Is The Computer", “the most connected person ever" as Scott McNealy stated on the last day of JavaOne, the person who did more for Java than anyone else on planet Earth. Yes, James Gosling is known as the Father of Java, but IMHO, without John Gage, Java would have just been another language and not the dominant programming language that it is today. Without John Gage out there explaining the vision of Java, I really don't think Java would have won purely on its programming excellence.

This list of John Gage's accomplishments just go on, and on, and on... I have personally heard John Gage and Bill Joy tell the story on how John came up with Sun's tag line on a train ride in China. That tagline has and will forever stand the test of time. As a matter of fact, at the Odyessys in Technology - Sun Founder Panel that was held to honor the history of Sun Microsystems on January 11 ^th, 2006 at the Computer History Museum, I was the person that went to the microphone and asked John and Bill to retell that story. You can watch the video here.

I have often said that if I had to make a slow train trip across the United States and I had to make a choice between having a super model next to me or John Gage – I would choose John Gage in a femtosecond. John would be able to tell amazing and true stories for the entire trip of places he has been, famous people he has met and remarkable things he has done. BTW, I would make the same choice even if I was single :-)

Thanks for everything John Gage!

Above is Jonathan Schwartz, CEO for Sun Microsystems, John Edstrom, Sun Microsystems Campus Ambassador for Virginia Tech (as well as Campus Ambassador of the Month for Sun in February of this year) and James Gosling, the Father of Java. Oh yeah, I nearly forgot, John is my oldest son as well :-) Thanks to Jonathan and James for taking time out of their busy schedule for a picture with John.

A very special thanks to Chris Melissinos for taking time out of his busy JavaOne schedule to speak with my son John and introducing John to Jonathan and James.