SOA Basics To Think About

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Basics To Think About...

Common Services are defined for all developers to use

The perfect program would simply call existing services SOA is about being pragmatic:

• Iterative and incremental adoption and build out “Wrap and Reuse” instead of “Rip and Replace”
• Going back into legacy code that is running fine, rip it apart, insert new functionality is typically not a good idea
• Sometimes a rewrite in a more open and scalable language is the correct answer
• The rules to use create and use these services is called governance
  Governance is the BOTH the definition and enforcement of these rules aka policies
  

Brazil and Java

• A Java application sent and received 25 million income tax filings in two months.  That was 100% of all income tax filings.  
• The main news organization stated that the number of submissions had surpassed all of their estimates, there were no problems reported, no last minute issues and they were “without words” in their analysis :-) 
• Java is the language that is used to control 100% of all external commerce of Brazil Java is used in all the government owned banks for the ATMs 
• A Java application manages the education system for all students in all public schools in Brazil.
• Java and the LWUIT (Light Weight UI Toolkit) will be the Brazilian Digital TV Standard.
  

Thanks Mark Hapner - Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems

This past Friday was Mark Hapner's last day at Sun Microsystems.  Mark was a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems.

Mark has been a real friend and mentor.  I was very fortunate to be able
to learn from Mark over the years.  This included not only software at Sun Microsystems but in our private lives as well.  Mark is a real Corvette and automotive expert.  We went to Corvettes at Carlisle last year which was a lot of fun.

Mark was hired as a member of Sun's object technology group to work on the specs Sun was preparing for submission to OMG.   Mark later joined JavaSoft in early '96 to work with Graham Hamilton and Rick Cattell on JDBC which lead to the creation of J2EE.

Mark is a real thought leader and just a great guy.  Mark can not be replaced and will be sorely missed.  I wish Mark nothing but the best and hope we will remain in contact.  

Thanks Mark.

The Two Things You Need To Know

Glen Whitman, Economist( (his Two Things You Need To Know is here), was asked the following at a diner:

“What are the two things you need to know about Economics?  Glen replied with:
         
                  1) Incentives matter.
                  2) There is no such thing as a free lunch.

He then came to the conclusion that:  "For every subject, there are really only two things you really need to know. Everything else is the application of those two things, or just not important.”

I think Glen Whitman is brilliant in his clear, concise and compelling summary of topics.


“I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”  Mark Twain ended in a letter to a friend

Droid Does Advertisements/Commercials

I love the new Android 2.0 "Droid Does" commercials.

• iDon't customize
• iDon't have interchangeable batteries
• iDon't run simultaneous apps
• iDon't allow open development   

      Everything iDon't

Have I mentioned that I want Android to kick the iPhone's butt in the market place (even though I currently own an iPhone as do two of my sons) ?

Successful SOA in the Enterprise

I am in Moncton today to give a keynote on SOA in the Enterprise.  I am going to share some of the data over the next week regarding successful SOA in the enterprise.  This is an extremely strong area for Sun.  Below is just one example of Java being used for a variety of applications in Brazil.

• The Brazilian National Health Care System treats about 1.2 million inpatients and 100 million outpatients per month, providing everything from immunization to heart transplants. 
• Complex, diverse computing systems that can effectively exchange huge amounts of patient data are a central requirement of a seamless health care system 
• One of the main goals of the BNHCS was to avoid vendor lock-in or proprietary technology.   Two technologies -- Java technology and the XML data format -- were chosen to achieve this goal.  
• The nature of the project called for multiple vendors and system integrators to implement the system, and it was necessary to ease integration without hampering the different implementations.
• XML, Java technology, and HTTP were used as the "glue" to bring these diverse implementations together relatively quickly. 
• A Java application sent and received 25 million income tax filings in two months.  That was 100% of all income tax filings.   The main news organization stated that the number of submissions had surpassed all of their estimates, there were no problems reported, no last minute issues and they were “without words” in their analysis :-)
• Java is the language that is used to control 100% of all external commerce of Brazil Java is used in all the government owned banks for the ATMs
• A Java application manages the education system for all students in all public schools in Brazil.
• Java and the LWUIT (Light Weight UI Toolkit) will be the Brazilian Digital TV Standard.
  

Scott McNealy's Keynote at Oracle World - Top 10 Innovations at Sun

If you are a fan of Sun Microsystems, a fan of Scott McNealy or just a student of computer history, this video of Scott McNealy at Oracle World is a must watch. 

Scott listed his Top 10 Innovations at Sun:

1. NFS/PC-NFS Technology
2. SPARC
3. Open Source Technology
4. BSD + UNIX System 5 = Solaris
5. Java (Java Card, Java SE/ME/EE and JavaFX)
6. E10K Starfire (came from a Cray acquisition)
7. ZFS/Open StorateFlash (Exadata)
8. Project BlackBox
9. Sun Ray
10. CMT (Chip Multi-Threading)

I agree with this list except for Project Black Box.  I think DTrace should be in its place.  I am biased, but I don't think there is a company that has been a better steward of technology and innovation than Sun Microsystems.

James Gosling, the father of Java, also came on to speak about what he sees happening with Oracle and Java.

Neil Groundwater Wearing Virginia Tech Solaris Shirt in Africa :-)

Above is Neil Groundwater wearing the Virginia Tech Solaris shirt I designed for my son John when he was a Sun Campus Ambassador and President of the ACM.

Thanks Neil for having Beth take this very cool photo!

My Global Chief Technologist Role for Software At Sun

I was in Milan, Italy this past week meeting with lots of customers from all around the globe.  On the way home, I had lots of time :-) to think about how much I enjoy my role as Global Chief Technologist (CT) for Global Systems Engineering in the Software Line of Business.   This was very exciting for me as I was named the CT for North America's Software Practice in the summer of 2004 and a couple of years later I was the CT for America's Software Practice which included both North and South America.

It was on June 4th, 2009 I was announced as the Chief Technologist (CT) for Global Systems Engineering in the Software Line of Business reporting to James Hollingshead.

This Earth Rise Photo reminds me of my role :-)

This position of being the CT for Global Systems Engineering Line Of Business has allowed me to further  emphasize the global nature of my job and here is just a list of some of the functions I have greatly enjoyed:

Working with Sun's global customers, global partners and global employees is something that I truly enjoy doing on a daily basis.

Providing input to Sun's Software Business Units (BU) via the Product/Technology Leads Group that I lead was a key factor for Sun's Software direction.  We would gather global input from Sun's customers, Partners and employees in a very organized fashion.


The SoftWare Technical Roundtable (SWTR) is a weekly technology show that I initially hosted from a North America, then an America's perspectice and a few years ago I took it global for both Sun employees and Sun's Partners.

I am very proud of the work I have done with MTConnect, MTAG and being on the MTConnect Institute Board of Directors - all of which is global in nature.

I have greatly enjoyed being Principal Field Technologist (PFT) Guide for SEs around the globe.
Attending the World Congress for Information Technology was a tremendous experience.

It was a real pleasure to lead the creation of Software Genius University (SGU) with some of our top SEs in the Software Practice and across Sun that delivered 760 hours of content and to see that be embraced globally as well.

I was the "father" of the Mid Atlantic Area Technology Center for Sun.  This multi-million dollar Center had over 300 customers from around the globe through it in just over seven years and has posted world class industry leading benchmarks.  The Center won the 1996 World Wide System Engineering Creativity Award.

Just selecting one global trip of note is hard, but when a small group of us went to Bangalore to meet with Sun's Engineering group and spending a week there it was very educational and interesting.

Going to Puerto Rico to speak in front of 200 Presidents of companies from around the globe was a trip to remember as well.

Working Java One every year is always very education and interesting to talk technology with folks from around the globe.

Attending seven of Sun's prestigious Sunrise trips that were recognized globally was always a thrill.

These are just a small fraction of the global activities I have had, but I thought it was worth capture at least some of these...

Google's Android - I Hope and Expect it to beat the iPhone

I have an iPhone and like it for most of the stuff that is not that important.  What I mean is that after getting an iPhone it became quite clear why business people will carry both an iPhone and a Blackberry.   The reason is that Apple has a choke hold on creative business apps such as email.  There is an article I just read in the New York Times about Android where there is much great emphasis on the developer.


I would absolutely love to see Android kick the iPhone's rear in the market place. I do not have anything against Apple or my iPhone 3GS, I just want to see open systems win.  Also, don't get me started on Google Voice and the iPhone :-)

SPARCstation IPC Can Be Still Be Useful :-)

This is someone's actual urn - a SPARCstation IPC:

Personally, I would like to think my "forever after" is worth more than 15.8
MIPS, but an IPC is about the right physical size.  Check out the caption as
well on the IPC - priceless :-)

Reminder That The Open Source Tipping Point HAS ALREADY Occurred

It is worth reminding everyone that it has been almost a year and a half since Gartner stated that the tipping point in Open Source has already occurred.   

Gartner stated that 2/3 of clients are using open source software in Mission Critical Applications!

Open Government: Lessons Learned - NYS Forum Presentatation

Last week I was in New York City giving a keynote at the NYS Forum.  I put together a proposal for a keynote at the following event:

                            NYS Forum IT Corporate Roundtable
                                   MetroNY Program Launch
                                      September 30, 2009
There were only two proposals accepted and mine was one of them, which I felt great about:

                            Open Government: Lessons Learned

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

The talk went exceptionally well and I received a number of very positive comments and discussions for follow up.  I am looking forward to working with the great folks of NYS Forum.  Below is the overall agenda of the day:
Below is the agenda that  I created for this talk:

• First, Some Common Vocabulary
• The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Open Source Software in Government
       We'll get Bad and Ugly out of the way first :-) 
• How To Create A Open Source Revolution 
• Clearing Up The Clouds 
• The BIG Picture Points To Remember
  

As one of my slides points out:

• The first motivation with open source software is typically about saving money.
• If saving money is higher than #3 on your list you likely have the wrong motivation.  Choice and  Flexibility, Security, Standards and building on a platform all should rank higher than saving money.
• You're not NSA, don't try to be. Unless you measure your Data Center in acres and you have floors of world class Ph.D.s , then don't fork your own OS or major application.
• There is a fine line between clever and stupid. (great Spinal Tap line :-)
  
• A room and/or software library full of new piece parts will end up being a history bin full of old piece parts.  Think governance. 

Thanks to Chris Hankin and Mike Dergurahian of Sun Microsystems for their great pointers and suggestions!
I will include more specifics and photos in later postings when I get back from Milan, Italy next week.

In Milan, Italy Attending EMO MILANO 2009 - Machine Tool Conference - MTConnect Intro

I am in Milan, Italy this week week attending EMO MILANO 2009.  I am attending for Sun Microsystems and working the MTConnect Institute demonstration booth meeting with customers, OEMs, vendors and Partners.    EMO MILANO is a HUGE machine tool conference.  What is a machine tool?  

I will meet with Sun's customers later this week to discuss cloud computing as well as MTConnect.   

What is MTConnect?

By far the most fun and most satisfaction that I have had in my 29+ years in the computer industry and my 20 1/2 years at Sun Microsystems has been working with the Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT).
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 were 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.

MTConnect is now being officially introduced to Europe via EMO MILANO 2009!

Key Java Stats

Key Java Stats
Java has become an integral part of our daily lives...
 
2.6 billion Java enabled mobile devices

850+ million Java desktop computers, 91% of worldwide desktops

5.5 billion Java cards

40+ million Java powered TV devices (Blu-ray players, Set top boxes)

6.5 billion total Java enabled devices

And a vibrant environment with a growing developer community:

6.5+ million Java developers worldwide

850,000 GlassFish downloads a month

33,000 GlassFish registrations a month

7,000 GlassFish developer community members

250+ million downloads of the JavaFX runtime and 400+ thousand downloads of the JavaFX SDK

Great Calendar App on iPhone - Informant

I have been using this calendar app called Informant for a few months now and
with the recent upgrade it now falls in the category of one of the best
calendaring apps I have ever used on any smart phone.  It has tons of very
useful features.

The other thing that really impressed me was how quickly I got answers back to
my questions and could put in RFEs.  I would send an email late at night or on
a weekend and get an answer back in minutes.  Maybe it is just one person on
the other end :-) but it was certainly very responsive in my case.

The only gotcha to be aware of is Apple's control of the SDK that does
not allow for any background processing.  As they state:

         "We do not sync directly with the iPhone Calendar or support off-line
         alarms due to lack of access to that functionality by the legal iPhone
         SDK."

The simple workaround is that you simply sync back to the iPhone's calendar
and/or get remote push alarms.  I use Informant to sync to Google's Calendar
and then sync to iPhone's calendar.  Yes, it sounds like too many steps, but it
just works.

Just as an FYI I have no financial or other interest in Informant - I just like
the product and thought I would pass it on  :-)

Fifth Annual IT Security Conference in Baltimore October 26th-29th

I am attending an IT Security Conference in Baltimore the end of October.  The details and agenda look quite interesting.


There are a number of sessions discussing Secure Content Automation Protocol (SCAP).

The net/net is that this looks like a great conference and I will report back after attending.

Very Interesting Larry Ellison Interview by Ed Zander

The Churchill Club had an 1 1/2 hour interview with Ed Zander interviewing Larry Ellison.  Definitely worth checking out.

SunCLONE Sun April Fools Prank 2001

As I mentioned, I will point you to some of the contributions to Sun that a few of us made over the years that made it to this site, specifically some April Fool's Pranks :-)
  
This was the same team that was responsible for Govassic Park: John Meyer, Neil Pierson and Dave Edstrom. 

SunCLONE

John Meyer wrote this up as well for TheNetworkIsTheComputer.COM.


Pulling an April Fool’s Day prank on your Area Vice President is a tricky thing, but one that the Southern Area pulled off marvelously in 2001. The team of renegade engineers responsible for Govassic Park did it again, this time to Sun VP Gary Grimes.
The prank involved Java, cloning, a spit-and-polish mint-condition Corvette engine, and robots, and must be seen to be believed.

Oddly, we put the web page on my external site, where an industry analyst stumbled upon it some days later.   I immediately received a frantic phone call from a worried Sun Analyst Relations person who said the analyst was speculating that the joke was in some way related to discontent within the Sun employee community around Sun’s then-newly-announed SunONE software initiative. Gimme a break, it was an April Fool’s joke!

Govassic Park - Sun April Fools Prank 1997

As I mentioned, I will point you to some of the contributions to Sun that a few of us made over the years that made it to this site, specifically some April Fool's Pranks :-)
  

Govassic Park

John Meyer wrote the text below for TheNetworkIsTheComputer.COM:

Dr. Dennis Govoni was the Sun Southern Area’s senior network engineer (later Chief Technologist for Sun Federal) and one of the most satisfying people in the world to torture. Dave Edstrom, Southern Area Systems Engineer, Neil Pierson, Federal Region systems engineer and multimedia ambassador, and yours truly, John Meyer, Federal Region systems engineer and technical systems ambassador, hatched a plan for April Fool’s Day 1997 when we found out Dennis would be in California for two weeks starting March 31st.

Dennis has his Ph.D. in Botany and our first thought was to turn his office into a miniature rain forest, complete with flora, fauna, waterfalls, and so forth. But the expense and difficulty in locating appropriate materials for the goof ruled this out. Then we hit on the idea: let’s use a Jurassic Park theme. This was just what we wanted. It was cheap, easy, and fun. Dave and Neil had five boys under the age of eight between them, so stocking the office with dinosaurs, Jurassic Park paraphernalia, and toys was certainly no problem.  I spent most of Easter Sunday preparing a “Govassic Park” logo and web page, while Dave collected toy dinosaurs and Neil set up two live video feeds on Sun’s world-wide internal network that would tie into our web page. This meant that anyone in Sun could see a real-time picture of Dennis’ office and anyone who walked into it for two whole weeks and there was nothing Dennis could do about it. Remember, this was 1997: real-time video on the Internet (let alone Sun’s wide-area network) was unheard of at the time.

When all was in place around 9 AM on the 1st, we sent out an e-mail to just about every Sun employee in the world, inviting each and every one of them to visit our web page.    Meanwhile, Neil collected some very interesting statistics on who visited, when they saw the page, and where they were from.


See the pictures and reminisce at http://www.wspot.net/sun/goofs/govassic/fool.html

The Network Is The Computer - Sun History Site

As Sun winds down and is likely completed absorbed by Oracle, there is a tendancy of the long time employees to reminisce.  A sign of getting old I guess :-)   A very cool site is Sun's The Network Is The Computer

I blogged about this history of the phrase, "The Network is the Computer" a few weeks ago.

Next few days I will point you to some of the contributions to Sun that a few of us made over the years that made it to this site, specifically some April Fool's Pranks :-)

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

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

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

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

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

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



 

Apple, Let Google Voice in the App Store!

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

Good!  

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


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

NYS Forum IT Corporate Roundtable on September 30th

I am speaking at the following event:

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

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

Below is the description of what I will speaking on:


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

Alan Turing Receives a Posthumous Apology from Prime Minister Gordon Brown

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

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

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


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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

The Reality of Data Transfer - Pigeons :-)

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

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

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

MTConnect Institute and MTConnect Technical Advisory Group Meetings

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


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

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

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

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

PC Control Irritrol Software and Support ROCKS!

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Microsoft's Great Intern Program

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

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

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

 

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

Thanks Microsoft!

Remembering September 11th - 9/11

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

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

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

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

Corvettes at Carlisle 2009 with Mike Geldner

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


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

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

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

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

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



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



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

Checkout all of Mike's photos here.

The story behind "The Network is the Computer"

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

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

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

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

My /etc/motd file I have had forever

To measure is to know.

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

"In physical science the first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the state of Science, whatever the matter may be."

Lord Kelvin - Sir William Thomson

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

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

Below was the invitation:

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

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

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

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

The Two Things That Will Separate Cloud Computing Companies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Year Ago at Corvettes at Carlisle

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

Above is the logo on the amazing Corvette ZR1.

Above is the ZR1 638hp LS9 engine.

Above is the LS9 SuperCharger.

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

Leo Laporte - President of the Internet and TWiG

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

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

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

Interesting Lunch with long time friend Roger Fujii

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

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

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

LOG OF WHO PAID FOR LUNCH

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

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

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

The premise of the article is:

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

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

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

Gladwell tells a great story of Bill Joy at Berkeley:

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Myth of "May You Live In Interesting Times"

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

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

Voting Machines: A Logical Approach

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

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

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

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

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

My Favorite Phrase from The Pentagon

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

A vision without resources is called a hallucination.

Great Unix Buttons by npg

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

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

Privacy, Domestic Intelligence, and Information Sharing on CSPAN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As Mr. Anthes states:

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

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

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

Identity Managment In A World WIthout Fences

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

The title of the talk was

"Identity Management In A World Without Fences."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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