MTConnect Is Not an Application - MTConnect Is Not Middleware

MTConnect Is Not an Application - MTConnect Is Not Middleware

Dec 15, 2011  (Note: I wrote this for the IMTS Insider)

By Dave Edstrom

Last month, I discussed what MTConnect is. This month I am going to discuss what MTConnect is not. 

Many times I am asked, “What is MTConnect?” I always enjoy the conversation, no matter how many times I am asked. Sometimes, it can be a little bit of a challenge describing what MTConnect is and is not, because it is not something that you can touch, like a machine tool, or see, such as a software application. MTConnect is the protocol, or the “rules of the road,” that connects these two together.

MTConnect is important for manufacturing because it is the game-changing protocol that is allowing plug-and-play connectivity for manufacturing equipment and applications. Think of MTConnect as the “Bluetooth for manufacturing.” MTConnect’s mantra is, “Different Devices, Common Connection.” Now let’s look at both ends of the “what MTConnect is not” spectrum.

At one end is the shop owner, plant manager or manufacturing professional who has just been introduced to MTConnect. At IMTS 2010, more than a few times someone would walk up and ask to buy a copy of it.  Sometimes, folks would even pull out their credit card. It is great that people are excited about MTConnect, but it is also important that it is clear what MTConnect is and is not — and it is not something you buy. But it is perfectly understandable that someone would look at the screens we had set up in the Emerging Technology Center at IMTS and assume that MTConnect is an application such as Microsoft Excel.

It can sometimes be a challenge to explain that MTConnect simply is the protocol or rules of the road on how an application speaks to a piece of manufacturing equipment. Sometimes it is helpful to show people what a protocol is. The easiest way to think about what a protocol does is a simple question and answer scenario between an application and a machine tool.

The diagram above shows the simple two-step MTConnect protocol:

1.    A client application makes a request – such as an MTConnect “sample” command.

2.    The MTConnect agent at the machine tool answers the sample command with an XML document that has all of the sample information in it.

That’s really all there is to it at the highest level — a simple request-reply protocol.  MTConnect is quite elegant in its simplicity. Simplicity is important when both deploying a technology as well as scaling a technology.  Complexity breaks protocols.  I wish my sons were MTConnect compliant because then I could put in a simple request and it would be done the first time.  I would not have to ask them 10 times (or more!).  But I digress from the topic at hand.

The other end of the spectrum is the software vendor in manufacturing.  It is not reasonable to expect an end user to understand what a protocol is, but it is certainly reasonable to expect someone in the business of software to understand.   Recently I was told, “Dave, MTConnect is middleware.”  I asked, “who told you that?”  When I was told it was a company that was supposed to be in the manufacturing software business, I knew there could only be two reasons for this.

First, this company, which should absolutely know better, took a cursory, 100,000-foot view of MTConnect for a fraction of a femtosecond and then jumped to the wrong conclusion.  The other possibility is that they view the open and royalty-free protocol of MTConnect as a competitor and stated this view to purposely confuse the marketplace.   Let’s give this company the benefit of the doubt and assume they were simply confused and take this opportunity to discuss what MTConnect is not.

I will provide a definition of what is middleware is so hopefully we can clear up this incorrect analysis of MTConnect.

A definition that is clear and well written definition of middleware is from webopedia:
(mid´&l-war) (n.) Software that connects two otherwise separate applications.  For example, there are a number of middleware products that link a database system to a Web server. This allows users to request data from the database using forms displayed on a Web browser, and it enables the Web server to return dynamic Web pages based on the user's requests and profile. 

The term middleware is used to describe separate products that serve as the glue between two applications. It is, therefore, distinct from import and export features that may be built into one of the applications. Middleware is sometimes called plumbing because it connects two sides of an application and passes data between them. Common middleware categories include:

• ESBs
• TP monitors
• DCE environments
• RPC systems
• Object Request Brokers (ORBs)
• Database access systems
• Message Passing

The above definition is the most basic definition of middleware.  Middleware connects two applications with ANOTHER application.  MTConnect is a protocol.  MTConnect is not middleware, because MTConnect is not an application. MTConnect cannot control a machine tool or any other piece of manufacturing equipment. MTConnect is a very simple, read-only protocol based on http and XML that makes information available in a common universal format. 

A very simple example is that you could have a sensor that was MTConnect enabled.  Applications could simply ask the MTConnect enabled sensor for data and it is returned to the application.  That is not an example of two different applications that are speaking to a third middleware application.   The webopedia definition makes it clear that middleware is distinct from import and export features that may be built into applications. 

We are sometimes guilty of over simplifying MTConnect when we say, “think of MTConnect as a simple and secure webserver.”  That is not technically accurate, but it can sometimes help folks visualize MTConnect.  We do this because most people know what a web site is.  However, that does a disservice to those individuals who really want to know what MTConnect is. To state that MTConnect is a webserver is incorrect. The logic fallacy of this can be demonstrated by the following.  A Corvette is transportation. A boat is transportation. Therefore, a Corvette is a boat.   Just because a protocol CAN use a webserver does not mean that it is webserver.

To be 100% clear, MTConnect is a communications protocol. A communications protocol is simply the set of rules for exchanging messages.

MTConnect is not an application. MTConnect is not middleware.

For those not in technology, this might fall into the “who cares” category. The reason to care is that words and correct definitions of words matter – especially in technology. As MTConnect continues to grow globally, the proper definition becomes even more important when we introduce different country languages into the equation. MTConnect is an open and royalty-free protocol for manufacturing.

Christmas 2011 Ashburn Deer

I received this very nice anonymous card in the mail this year regarding my deer:

 

Richard Clark's "CHEW' Four Types of Cyber Crime

Interesting article at SD Times:

Richard Clarke talks cyber crime

By Alyson Behr

Clarke invented an acronym, CHEW, to describe the four pre-eminent types of attacks as he sees them.

•  C stands for crime.
•  H belongs to “hacktivism.”
•  E is for espionage
•  W stands for war

I thought this was an interesting comment in the article:

"About 20 to 30 countries, including the U.S., have formed cyber war units. The Pentagon has also established a huge new organization, designed for offensive purposes, called the Cyber Command; it is of composed of the Army, Navy and Air Force. The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is also developing offensive tools."

Another Great Mark Albert MTConnect and [MC]2 Article

We have no better friend of MTConnect than Modern Machine Shop's Mark Albert.  Here Mark has another great article on [MC]2 MTConnect Connecting Manufacturing Conference and MTConnect.

Thanks Mark!

Not Again....

This past Thursday, December 8th at 1:14pm, I get the following text from my son Michael, who is a junior at VT:


      We are alright FYI


When you are a parent who had a son at VT for that horrific day on the 16th of April in 2007, the absolute first thoughts are, "oh my god, another gunman at VT?"


I did not think they was a fire, or some type of car accident or any other rationale thought.  I immediately thought a gunman at VT.    Thank god it was NOT another 4/16 event.  My mind immediately went to VT's Collegiate Times photo back in 2007.  

I remember how hard my son John worked on the Collegiate Times with his room mate Gabe Martinez as they were the two individuals that were responsible for the website.  They had to rebuild the website when it got over 50 MILLION hits that day.

Thankfully, this time VT did react properly and let everyone know what the hell was going on.  This was much different than how they handled it 2007 where certain VT staff members decided to let their family and friends know of the first  shooting on April 16th, 2007, but chose not to tell the rest of the VT students and faculty until almost two hours later.  How NO ONE WAS FIRED FOR THAT is still a freaking mystery to me and that they are appealing the $55,000 fine is morally wrong.   It was tragically ironic that senior VT police officers and university officials were all in DC as the university appealed that $55,000 fine by the Education Department in connection with the 2007 rampage at the time of this latest gunman on campus.

VA continues to be a backward state and allows the gun show loophole.   I also called into the Kojo Nnamdi Show when he had an anniversary show on the VT shooting.   If you go to the 11:52 mark, you can hear my statements and question that goes until the 13:14 mark.

The best news that came out of this is that VT's admins appear to have learned a very valuable lesson and are now a model for the rest of the world in terms of how to deal with a loose gunman on campus....

My Question of Dr. Vint Cerf on Internet Authentication

I was at Google Atmosphere 2011 and asked Dr. Vint Cerf a question on Internet authentication.   I asked the question at the 18:10 mark in the webinar.




As I stated previously regarding Dr. Cerf, but it is worth me quoting me here :-)  Above is a true living legend - Dr. Vint Cerf.  Vint now works for Google.  I have had the privilege of speaking with Vint on a number of occasions.  It is better to be lucky than good and I have been lucky enough to get invited to events where Vint was at.  Vint is VP & Chief Internet Evangelist for Google.  I asked Vint the very first question of the entire conference.  The question was a security question regarding true user authentication on the Internet today and what needs to be done to enable this.  Vint said it was a tough question and gave a very thoughtful and detailed answer.  He apologized to the audience for "geeking out" during his answer, but I appreciated it.

He, Bob Kahn and a few others claim the joint title of "father of the Internet".  What is absolutely true is if you reduce the "father of the Internet" status down to just TCP/IP then the two individuals who claim that title are Cerf and Kahn.  I was fortunate to meet both and have both sign the original TCP/IP white paper (twice).  I have one and Neil Groundwater has the other original.  As Bob Kahn told me at the time, "this better not be on eBay tonight!"  I told him, "no, I will hold off until tomorrow."  I then had to say, "I am kidding - this will never be sold."  Both men are brilliant.

Every time I have seen Vint he is in a 3 piece suite which is his style.  One of the interesting stories he told was that he has temperature and humidity sensors in his house grabbing readings every 5 minutes to properly balance out his ducts.  Now THAT is a true geek :-)

The first time I met Vint was at Yorktown High School in VA when he was giving a talk on interplanetary IP.  I walked into the auditorium a little ahead of Dr. Harry Foxwell who I was with at the time.  Both Harry and I worked at Sun.  I am walking toward the front when Vint says, "hey, come here and help me with this."  I come running down.  I do all the things Vint asked me to do - move some stuff, sweep up some things and help him get ready.  I then ask, "Dr. Cerf, would you please sign this book."   Vint then says, "who are you?"  I reply, " I am Dave Edstrom from Sun Microsystems and I am here to listen to your talk."  He then laughs, "I thought you were the janitor. Thanks for helping me out."  It was great talk then and he is a great guy - even if he does think that I am this janitor stalker that follows him around the country asking him questions :-)

All of the Google Atmosphere 2011 videos are located here.

Google's Driverless Car TED Presentation

I saw this car live and listened to a presentation on this - very, very cool at Google Atmosphere 2011.

DMC - Defense Manufacturing Conference 2011

DMC - Defense Manufacturing Conference 2011 was a good conference at Anaheim this past week.  The booth traffic could have been better, but it was worth the trip for some of the meetings and conversations we had regarding MTConnect.  I went to the Factory of the Future presentation/panel and 4 out of 5 of them panelists had MTConnect in their slide decks.

Below are some short videos of the MTConnect companies in our booth at DMC 2011:

Social Media and Manufacturing

Thanks to npg for sending this to me.  This is an interesting article by Michele Rempel at media vine marketing with an articled titled:

             Social Media? But We’re a Manufacturing Company!

Here is a snippet:

"Jim Carr, President of CARR Machine and Tool Company in Elk Grove, Illinois, has been successfully using social media for a while now and believes that social media will be leading the way in helping small and larger corporations reach out to a new customer base. When his company experienced hardship during the economic downturn, Carr turned to a marketing company to design a strong web and social media presence. He believes that, going forward, corporations need to embrace the online culture because that’s where their next generation of customers already exist.  Source "

The primary points I agree with are the following from Michele Rempel's article:

Give value. If you just think of social media as a place where you are just going to sell your products, your efforts will drop like a lead balloon. Instead, think about information you can share with your potential customers that will be beneficial to them- as well as remove barriers to the buying process. Good content makes prospects notice your company. Blogs and videos accomplish this goal very well.

Encourage interaction and be prepared to listen. Many manufacturers are using social media as a forum to connect with prospects and receive feedback that can be used to improve product quality, stay current, and improve customer service.

Let your products tell stories. Like many manufacturers, your products probably end up becoming part of another product, and so on. Use photos and videos to tell a story of how your products become part of something larger. And if you can connect your products to people’s lives, so much the better! Most people have little information about how their favorite products come to be. Although you probably don’t sell directly to consumers, you can still connect with prospects in a unique and strong way when they are in the information-gathering phase.

 

Yet Another Reason Why You Go To The Track

There are a million reasons why you don't race on the streets. Pay the small amount of money and go to the track so you can do it safely.   Look at these two knuckleheads - one in a C5 (5th generation Corvette) and the other in a C6 (6th generation Corvette):

Stanford's Jung-Tsung Shen's "Fun With Light" aka Quantum Computing Talk at Google

Nanophotonics and Quantum Dots

 Digital Manufacturing Report has a very interesting article on nanophotonics written by John Kirkley on November 22nd.   The article discusses Ubiquitous High Performance Computing (UHPC) and the challenges with power.

Below is a snippet:

According to the release, "A team at Stanford's School of Engineering has demonstrated an ultrafast nanoscale light-emitting diode (LED) that is orders of magnitude lower in power consumption than today's laser-based systems and is able to transmit data at the very rapid rate of 10 billion bits per second.
The researchers say it is a major step forward in providing a practical ultrafast, low-power light source for on-chip data transmission." Their findings have been published in the most recent edition of the journal Nature Communications.

Earlier this year the Stanford researchers had come up with a nanoscale laser that was also very efficient and fast, but it only operated at temperatures below 150 degrees Kelvin – a trifle cool for your standard datacenter. However, the new laser-based system can operate at room temperature, making it a prime candidate for next generation computer chips. The researchers say the device is a major step forward in providing a practical, ultrafast, low-power light source for on-chip data transmission.

The new device is a miracle of engineering that employs the scientific discipline known as nanophotonics. The Stanford team has inserted "quantum dots," tiny flecks of material made of indium arsenide which, when pulsed with electricity, emit light. A photonic crystal surrounding the dots acts as a mirror that bounces the light into the center of the LED and forces it to resonate at a single frequency.

Of interest to exascale designers is the fact that tests of the device show it can transmit information 10X faster than conventional devices while consuming 1,000 times less energy.

According to the Stanford press release, "In tech-speak, the new LED device transmits data, on average, at 0.25 femto-joules per bit of data." By comparison, today's typical "low" power laser device requires about 500 femto-joules to transmit the same bit.

"Our device is some 2,000 times more energy efficient than best devices in use today," said Jelena Vuckovic, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Stanford and the lead on the project.

Rumored as (but not) The First Known Cyber Attack on American Utility

This was very interesting article by By Ellen Nakashima at The Washington Post titled:

Foreign hackers targeted U.S. water plant in apparent malicious cyber attack, expert says

Below is the first paragraph from Ellen Nashima's very interesting article:

"Foreign hackers caused a pump at an Illinois water plant to fail last week, according to a preliminary state report. Experts said the cyber-attack, if confirmed, would be the first known to have damaged one of the systems that supply Americans with water, electricity and other essentials of modern life."

Below is a snippet regarding that the facts are still being gathered:

"Federal officials confirmed that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security were investigating damage to the water plant but cautioned against concluding that it was necessarily a cyber-attack before all the facts could be learned. “At this time there is no credible corroborated data that indicates a risk to critical infrastructure entities or a threat to public safety,” said DHS spokesman Peter Boogaard."

 After Y2K efforts, I was under the wrong assumption that the security of the utility systems were being addressed.  It would be interesting to know exactly what the utilities have been doing for the past 11 years.   This is why we need more emphasis and cross pollination of computer security in colleges and universities in disciplines outside of computer science such as mechanical engineering.

Later, this was update by Ellen Nakashima with the following (thanks npg):

Federal officials said Wednesday they have found no evidence to support an initial state report that foreign hackers caused a pump at an Illinois water plant to fail this month.

Below is from the article that was quite surprising to read:   "The contractor, who had remote access to the computer system, was in Russia on personal business, the source added."

 

I could certainly see why that would get someone's attention :-)

Friends Don't Let Friends Watch Fox News

Quantifying Unfair and Unbalanced:  

Fox News Viewers Know Less Than People Who Don't Watch Any News: Study 

Below are two snippets from the article:

 "Fox News viewers are less informed than people who don't watch any news, according to a new poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University."

"This isn't the first study that has found that Fox News viewers more misinformed in comparison to others. Last year, a study from the University of Maryland found that Fox News viewers were more likely to believe false information about politics."

Is MSNBC any better?  I have not seen any studies, but would be very interested to know...

Visit With My Godmother - Dorothy Johnson

A week ago on Wednesday the 16th I was in Mountain View, CA and drove out to have lunch with my aunt Dorothy who is also my godmother.  She lives in Glen Ellen which is the heart of wine country and a beautiful little town.

Below is my aunt with her youngest son - Lynn.

It was a beautiful day and Lynn took Dorothy and me for a ride.  Below is just one of the wineries we saw.

We had lunch across the street from Lynn's wife Janie's (seated next to Dorothy) workplace.  We had a very nice lunch at The Black Bear Restaurant in Sonoma.

Richard Muller of UCB Changes His Tune on Global Warming

Richard Muller was funded by the Koch brothers to examine global warming.  Below is a snippet from NY Daily News on October 31st, 2011.

"One of the most prominent global warming skeptics is changing is his tune.   Richard Muller, a physicist who spent two years trying to see if mainstream climate scientists were wrong about the earth's climate changes, determined that they were right, the Associated Press reported.  His findings showed the temperature had risen about 1.6 degrees since the 1950s."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/richard-muller-koch-brothers-funded-scientist-declares-global-warming-real-article-1.969870#ixzz1eICqrWGL

It sill absolutely amazes me the number of people who insist the global climate change is not real.  They need to stop watching Fox News.  Of the current Republican candidates, only Jon Huntsman seems to have the courage to embrace science when he tweeted, "To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy."  Too bad that the Republican base is so anti-science, because Jon Huntsman seems a very capable candidate who could capture the all important central part of the voting block.


Below is a snippet from a Washington Post editorial. 

A bad month for climate-change skeptics

A Washington Post Editorial, Published: November 18, 2011

THE PAST MONTH hasn’t been good for climate-change skeptics. At a congressional hearing Monday, Richard Muller, a former global-warming skeptic at the University of California, Berkeley, told lawmakers that, after a two-year review of historical world temperature data, he has verified the scientific consensus that the earth is warming — by about 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 50 years. This is not surprising; as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported last year, the warming of the planet, detected in multiple, independent lines of evidence, is “unequivocal.”

Mr. Muller said that exactly how much humans contribute to such warming is difficult to calculate. But, as the Economist pointed out last year, even if the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is off by a factor of five in its reckoning of the climate’s sensitivity to an eventual doubling of the amount of carbon in the atmosphere, that still leaves only a 50 percent chance of relatively minor temperature change. The developed world and large developing nations, meanwhile, continue to pump immense amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. The Energy Department released an analysis this month concluding that global carbon emissions in 2010 increased by the largest amount ever, to a higher level than the IPCC’s worst-case projection.

Return of the IOCCC - International Obfuscated C Code Competition

Another interesting article by

Alex Handy of SD Times on:

                Obfuscated C competition returns 

 Below is a snippet and the whole article is very interesting.  This was always an interesting topic at Sun Microsystems when the winning code examples were announced.

"When Landon Curt “Chongo” Noll was trying to fix a bug in an early BSD version of Finger on March 23, 1984, it was a moment of enlightenment. He and cohort Larry Bassel (who had been trying to fix a bug in the Bourne shell) were chewing the fat between bug-squishing sessions at National Semiconductor when the pair compared their woes, surmising that they couldn't write more confusing and difficult code if they had tried.

And with that, the International Obfuscated C Code Competition was born. The pair put out a call on Usenet asking for C coders to submit their own confounding programs within a preset size limit. The goal of the competition was to write C code that compiled to a functional application, but upon closer inspection of the source code, the connections between the functionality and the code itself should not have been obvious."

[MC]2 Google Earth Fly Over of [MC]2 Sponsor Companies

Below is a very cool video that Mike Geldner of Google put together for the [MC]2 MTConnect Conecting Manufacturing Conference's Sponsoring companies.

Unfortunately, the internet at The Hyatt Regency (wired, not wireless) was having some latency issues, so this was not shown at [MC]2.  I wanted to share it now. Mike had a number of very cool videos that he had lined up, but the latency issues forced Mike to do a real time adjustment and Mike did a fantastic job adjusting in his great keynote

The MTConnect® Institute Awards Institute Partner to MacKintok Information Architects and Designers

November 8, 2011
 

Contact:
David A. Edstrom
President, Chairman of the Board
MTConnect Institute
703-728-8885
davidallenedstrom@gmail.com

The MTConnect® Institute Awards Institute Partner to MacKintok Information Architects and Designers

McLean, Va. … The MTConnect Institute is very pleased to announce MacKintok Information Architects and Designers as an MTConnect® Institute Partner for their creation of the new, state-of-the- art MTConnect web site. This new web site features a complete redesign and includes news and information about MTConnect, a list of Institute members, a special section for developers and more.

The new web site is the result of 6 months of intense work and collaboration. MacKintok Information Architects and Designers are unique in that they are MTConnect members and also have a broad array of capabilities, including web site design. Dave Edstrom, President and Chairman of the Board for the MTConnect Institute said, "The new MTConnect web site will allow us to do things that we could never do before to promote MTConnect and collaborate with our members. We could not be more pleased with our relationship with MacKintok, as well as the quality of the new MTConnect web site."

The new MTConnect web site was designed to go live in conjunction with the [MC]2 MTConnect: Connecting Manufacturing Conference. In addition to the overall upgrades in usability and navigation, the new web site will support the many hours of video content that will be generated at [MC]2.

Ken Tock and Gary Bronson, principals of MacKintok were the lead architects in creating the new MTConnect web site and will work jointly with the MTConnect Institute for updates. The new MTConnect web site is based on Umbraco, which is an open-source content management system and is used to run more than 110,000 web sites, including Wired, Fox and Microsoft, to name just a few.

Some improved features of the new MTConnect web site include:

• Directory of MTConnect members, including their services, experience, products and contact information
• User-friendly navigation
• Robust site-wide XML-based search function
• Improved video player interface

Future upgrades to the website will include social media and news feeds, an MTConnect case studies section and a training and learning center.

The new web site also includes historical information about MTConnect, as well as a list of MTConnect’s business and technical benefits. Edstrom continued, “The entire manufacturing community can benefit from this groundbreaking, open and royalty-free communications standard called MTConnect. Shop owners, plant managers, manufacturing equipment manufacturers, software developers and anyone who wants to learn more about this open standard absolutely must visit the new MTConnect web site to see everything it has to offer.”

 

                                                                               #   #   #

                                        

MTConnect® Institute
MTConnect Institute is an organization that develops and provides open standards intended to foster greater interoperability between manufacturing controls, devices and software applications by publishing data over networks using the Internet Protocol (IP). The standards offer a solution to the exchange of data from shop floor devices to higher level systems. For membership information, visit www.MTConnect.org.

 

Stairway To Heaven Turned 40 Years Old On Nov 11th

Thanks to npg for sending this to me on Stairway To Heaven turning 40 years old 8 days ago.   Here is the history of how the song came about - on NPR of course :-)

HTML 5 Overview

This was mentioned at Google Atmosphere 2011 last week as worth checking out on HTML 5 http://HTML5Rocks.com

New MTConnect Website

Below is the press release on the new MTConnect website.  We owe this to the great work by Ken Tock and Gary Bronson of MacKintok Information Architects and Designers!

November 8, 2011 - The MTConnect Institute upgraded its website. This website features a complete redesign and includes news and information about MTConnect, a list of Institute members, a special section for developers, and more.

Dave Edstrom, President and Chairman of the Board for the MTConnect Institute said, "The new MTConnect website will allow us to do things that we could never do before to promote MTConnect and collaborate with our members."

The new MTConnect website was designed to go live in conjunction with the [MC]2 MTConnect: Connecting Manufacturing Conference. In addition to the overall upgrades in usability and navigation, the new website will support the many hours of video content that will be generated at [MC]2.

Some improved features of the new MTConnect website include:

• Directory of MTConnect members, including their services, experience, products and contact information.
• User-friendly navigation
• Robust site-wide XML-based search function
• Improved video player interface

Future upgrades to the website will include social media and news feeds, an MTConnect case studies section, and a raining and learning center.

The new website also includes historical information about MTConnect, as well as a list of MTConnect’s business and technical benefits. Edstom continued, “The entire manufacturing community can benefit from this groundbreaking, open and royalty-free communications standard called MTConnect.  Shop owners, plant managers, manufacturing equipment manufacturers, software developers and anyone who wants to learn more about this open standard absolutely must visit the new MTConnect website to see everything it has to offer.”

MTConnect Institute
MTConnect Institute is an organization that develops and provides open standards intended to foster greater interoperability between manufacturing controls, devices and software applications by publishing data over networks using the Internet Protocol (IP). The standards offer a solution to the exchange of data from shop floor devices to higher level systems.
 

How Congress Trades Behind Closed Doors To Their Benefit

As is stated at the 60 Minutes site--> "Peter Schweizer of the Hoover Institution says the most valuable intelligence is often traded behind closed doors."

This 60 Minutes episode on how Congress is legally allowed to be insider traders is a must watch. 

New Corvette 2012 Brochure Is Out

The new Corvette 2012 brochure is out.

It is different than our typical car brochure and has interesting stories, lots of specs and great pictures.  Tommy is Tommy Milner who is just one of four Corvette Race drivers.  Doug is Doug Fehan and is the Corvette Racing Program Manager.   Below is a snippet on the 24 Hours At LeMans which is very cool:


TOMMY With six hours remaining in the race, we were looking good. our sister car, the No. 74 Corvette, was in the lead, and we’d been running the No. 73 steadily in the top five for 17 hours. Then— bang!—the 74 Corvette gets tangled up with a Porsche, and suddenly ferrari’s now in first and we’re a lap down. But as a team, we told ourselves: “We can make that up.”

DOUG Louis Chevrolet was himself a racer, and his motto, “Never give
up!” is a philosophy we embraced from our first visit here. Tommy’s
codriver, Antonio Garcia, just started chipping away at the ferrari,
cutting the margin every lap. Tommy took over at the 21st hour and
continued to reel in the ferrari, gaining as much as six seconds per
lap during his stint. With about two hours and 10 minutes to go,
he made the pass for the lead on the Mulsanne  straight. Antonio
brought it home for the win, just one lap separating first and second.

TOMMY That was the hardest race of my life. I’d been super
comfortable in the car all day long, but I was not comfortable right
then, when I caught the ferrari. We still had a few hours to go, and
the pressure was crazy. I was just trying to drive the car to what the
track would allow. Every lap it changed, every corner it changed.
for 24 hours, the only thing you’re living, breathing and sleeping is
racing. You drive into the night and through the night. The sun comes
up and you go, “oK, we’re almost there, right?” You look at your watch
again—another eight hours to go. You’re just completely engulfed in
this one race.

DOUG Le Mans is a test of man and machine, and testing yourself
and your limits, and seeing how well you can perform for 24 hours
straight without making any mistakes. I think our come-frombehind win embodied the spirit of our Chevrolet cofounder.

Google Atmoshere 2011 and SUNW Memory Lane Tour

This blog entry is a combination discussion Google Atmosphere 2011, which  started Sunday the 13th with a nice reception on Sand Hill Road at a high end resort  as well as a trip back down SUNW memory lane.  Thanks to Mike Geldner of Google for putting my name into for consideration to attend Google Atmosphere 2011.

This was trip of mixed emotions.  The Google Atmosphere 2011 was great and seeing the ghost of Sun Microsystems was less than great :-)  Just as an FYI, Sand Hill Road is a very famous road in the history of Silicon Valley.

Atmosphere 2011: A View from the Cloud

Google Atmosphere 2011 was held on November 14th and 15th at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California.

As Google states on their website:  "This annual event unites 350 of the world’s leading CIOs to explore how successful businesses are using the cloud to develop innovative solutions to today’s business challenges. As with previous events, the focus will include thought leadership from noteworthy speakers and lively debates with business leaders, well-known authors and industry experts"

Above is me standing in front of Bldg. 40 at Google and the logo for Google Atmosphere.

 Above are Google valets so Googlers (what they call Google employees) do not have to waste time parking their own cars.  I am serious...

 Above are two photos of the old "Sun Quentin" Campus that Facebook now owns.  I sent the photos to some old Sun employees and the response was the same, "well, that is depressing...."  Yep...  What did crack me up is that Facebook just put Facebook stickers over the old Sun Microsystems signs.  Everything else looks the same.    As Forbes Magazine stated at the time (January 2nd, 2011):  

Facebook appears to be on the verge of moving its headquarters to Sun Quentin.

Not San Quentin, the notorious Marin County prison-by-the-bay that is home to California’s Death Row, but “Sun Quentin,” the sprawling former Sun Microsystems campus on San Francisco Bay in Menlo Park, California, at 1601 Willow Road near the western end of the Dumbarton Bridge. TechCrunch reported on Saturday that Facebook is close to a deal to move to the former Sun site from its current 150,000 square foot home on California Avenue in Palo Alto, close to the Stanford University campus. Note that reports Facebook was considering a move to the 2.5 million square foot Sun site first cropped up in late November.

For long-time Facebook staffers, this might not be such happy news. Remember that less than two years ago, Facebook moved its home base from downtown Palo Alto, close to restaurants, shops and Caltrain, to the current location on the edge of the residential neighborhood known as College Terrace. The new site is in walking distance to almost nothing, a nice spot if you happen to be commuting from the East Bay, but otherwise a fairly isolated location in terms of services and transportation options.

But the site has plenty of space. And nice views.

I don't come to SF without going down to Scoma's for great meal.  Dungeness crabs with lots of garlic below.

 Above is the host - Harvard Professor - Jonathan Zittrain.  He did a very nice job running the conference.

That's right 24.71% of ALL Internet traffic is Netflix!

Google is getting serious for business with specific SLAs and support.

Above is a true living legend - Dr. Vint Cerf.  Vint now works for Google.  I have had the privilege of speaking with Vint on a number of occasions.  It is better to be lucky than good and I have been lucky enough to get invited to events where Vint was at.  Vint is VP & Chief Internet Evangelist for Google.  I asked Vint the very first question of the entire conference.  The question was a security question regarding true user authentication on the Internet today and what needs to be done to enable this.  Vint said it was a tough question and gave a very thoughtful and detailed answer.  He apologized to the audience for "geeking out" during his answer, but I appreciated it.

He, Bob Kahn and a few others claim the joint title of "father of the Internet".  What is absolutely true is if you reduce the "father of the Internet" status down to just TCP/IP then the two individuals who claim that title are Cerf and Kahn.  I was fortunate to meet both and have both sign the original TCP/IP white paper (twice).  I have one and Neil Groundwater has the other original.  As Bob Kahn told me at the time, "this better not be on eBay tonight!"  I told him, "no, I will hold off until tomorrow."  I then had to say, "I am kidding - this will never be sold."  Both men are brilliant.

Below is from Cloud Beat's Jolie O'Dell who covered the conference.  Below is where Vint address my question and this comes from the Cloud Beat article titled: 

          Vint Cerf: The government is going overboard in Internet copyright control

Cerf also talked about a topic quite close to Google’s heart: the ability to traverse the Internet anonymously, if one so chooses. Google’s own suite of social tools, Google+, recently came under heavy fire for allowing its users to sign up only with their “given names,” linking their online activities with their real-world identities.

However, this decision has been reversed, due in no small part to the backlash from hackers inside Google’s own campus — including Cerf.
“We should preserve our ability to be anonymous or pseudonymous,” he said today, “but we also need strong authentication tools.” While certificates, Cerf said, are “not working too well,” users still and will always need secure ways to prove who they really are.
“We have serious work to do as a community to implement new technologies and… improve security on the Net.”

One of the main points Cerf made about security wasn’t about the need for better programmatic ways of thwarting attacks; rather, he said, consumers themselves need to get smarter about where their information goes when they click and browse around the web.
“I am comfortable that we have some good technologies for basic cryptography,” he said. “What worries me are all the other avenues that people can get information without having to break code.”
He said a recent episode of >spear phishing attacks on Gmail users “is a case in point… People clicked on those messages because they look credible.”

Cerf continued, “I’m much more worried about these open avenues for attack [including social and email attacks and malware from browsers], the social engineering, the tricking… we’re going to have to teach our children and each other much more about… the risk factors of doing certain things on the Net.”

Every time I have seen Vint he is in a 3 piece suite which is his style.  One of the interesting stories he told was that he has temperature and humidity sensors in his house grabbing readings every 5 minutes to properly balance out his ducts.  Now THAT is a true geek :-)

The first time I met Vint was at Yorktown High School in VA when he was giving a talk on interplanetary IP.  I walked into the auditorium a little ahead of Dr. Harry Foxwell who I was with at the time.  Both Harry and I worked at Sun.  I am walking toward the front when Vint says, "hey, come here and help me with this."  I come running down.  I do all the things Vint asked me to do - move some stuff, sweep up some things and help him get ready.  I then ask, "Dr. Cerf, would you please sign this book."   Vint then says, "who are you?"  I reply, " I am Dave Edstrom from Sun Microsystems and I am here to listen to your talk."  He then laughs, "I thought you were the janitor. Thanks for helping me out."  It was great talk then and he is a great guy - even if he does think that I am this janitor stalker that follows him around the country asking him questions :-)

Above is a photo of the morning keynote: "Chance Favors the Connected Mind" - Steven Johnson - Author, ‘Where Good Ideas Come From.  It was a very interesting keynote.  Google gave us lots of SWAG and one of them was Steven Johnson's book in paperback.  As luck would have it, I bought his hardback version was reading it on the way out.  I now have two copies :-)

The basic premise of his talk is that there are very few "Eureka" moments in innovation.  It is a combination of hard work and taking input from a variety of individuals and sources, thus the title of his talk  "Chance Favors the Connected Mind".   The fuzzy DNA like looking chart you see above was a picture I took from his slide where Steven spoke about a book he wrote called The Ghost Map.  What you are looking at is the number of deaths from the worst cholera outbreak in Victorian London.  In the book, Johnson discusses how Dr. John Snow's solution revolutionized the way we think about disease by using data via graphics.   The data that was represented by deaths at street addresses showed graphically and led him to believe that cholera was not airborne, but in the water.

I go to use the restroom and above the urinal is a Design Patterns quiz on Java code.  Only at Google would you see this :-)

Short video of the first morning.

Google bike for Google Maps.

Above was a very interesting talk by Dr. Astro Teller.   As Wikipedia states:

Astro Teller was born Eric Z. Teller in Cambridge, England. He is the grandson of both Gérard Debreu and Edward Teller.^[1] Dr. Teller holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science from Stanford University, Masters of Science in symbolic computation (symbolic and heuristic computation), also from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence from Carnegie Mellon University, where he was a recipient of the prestigious Hertz fellowship.^[2] After working as a teacher at Stanford University, Teller became a business executive.

The talk was titled  "Building the Impossible".   The basic premise is that history is rich with very smart people who claimed that something was impossible only to be proven dead wrong.


Talk about a great gene pool - BOTH of your grandfathers are famous Nobel Prize winners?


He was asked the obvious question, "how did you get the name Astro?"  I am thinking Jetsons, but I was wrong.  The story he told was that when he was filling out his registration form for Stanford, there was a blank left over in the "nick name" box.  He thought, "well, it is never a good idea to leave anything blank on the form, so he put in "Astro".  The individual who type in the info at Stanford accidently switched his real name and nick names into the computer.  At that point, it became too hard to go back to Eric and he stayed with Astro.

A live Google self driving car video I took.  Google shut down a block in Menlo Park and rented out the Fox Theater for the second private party we had.

I met tons of interesting folks that were both attendees, speakers and Googlers.  My standard line is to look at someone's badge and ask, "so, what do you do?"  It usually takes off from there :-)

My main goal was to have a detailed understanding of Google App Engine and if Google is interested in working with MTConnect partners.  After speaking with lots of Googlers, it became very clear to me what the business and technical play is here.

Google App Engine is one of Google's Top Five Properties as they refer to it.  Most everything Google builds is on Google App Engine or GAE as they sometimes refer to it as.    There are very important technical distinctions between Amazon's Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2), Simple Storage Service (S3) and GAE.  EC2 and S3 are an IaaS or Infrastructure as a Service and GAE is PaaS or Platform as a Service.

Google is trying to remove the complexity of the entire Virtual Machine Image (VMI) paradigm by providing a platform where the developer worries neither about computing or storage speed or latency issues.    This is a big difference that might play well for the MTConnect developers.  The basic idea is that Google will provide lightning fast computing and storage scaling and the developer does not worry about those level details as they must with EC2 and S3.   For MTInsight, the project I am on at AMT for BI, Amazon was and is the best solution for that.

There are limitations for GAE that might hinder the MTConnect developers.  These are around the languages and frameworks supported.  Most manufacturing software developers do not view Linux and Java as their first choices in OSes and programming languages. 

A big issue I see with GAE and MTConnect is that Google does not have any PS or consulting services.  I told their Executives that this was a big mistake in my opinion because if you rely entirely on Partners, you can never give the customer the "single throat to choke" which many customers demand.    Google does offer developer support though.

I am going to explore having one of the many Google Partners for GAE I met present either in person or remotely at an MTCTAG meeting so they understand the capabilities of GAE.

After speaking with numerous Google employees, I understand where they are going and why.  The net/net is a pure partner play and therefore Google is not interested in  having direct relationships with an organization like the MTConnect Institute.  It is nothing against MTConnect, it is simply in line with their business framework as pure partner play.

All the Google Atmosphere 2011 videos are here

After the Google Conference, I drove by the original Sun buildings on Garcia Avenue.  2550 Garcia Avenue was Sun's Headquarters address for many, many years.  The Building 6 sign is where we had tons of System Engineers field events where all the Sun execs, engineering managers, marketing folks and you name it would come by to speak to the field employees.

Speaking of Sun alumni, I ran into Peter van der Linden at Google Atmosphere 2011.   Peter is a computer legend, great author and we both started at Sun Microsystems at the same time.  It is always great to speak with the old Sun folks. 

You can not come to Silicon Valley and not have lunch at In-n-Out Burger, then go over to KrispyKreme (goto the ones on Rengstorf as that is a shopping center that has both about 100 yards apart :-)  and then stop by fry's electronics after that :-)