Sun Employee Blogs - RSS Orange : RSS Feeds

Что самое важное в Бразилии? Очевидно футбол, самба, карнавалы и Ваш приезд в Бразилию чтобы пообщаться с разработчиками: ПО с открытым исходным кодом.  На этой неделе сообщество разработчиков, включаю студентов, на три дня собиралось в Бразилии. На картинке сверху показана плотность застройки города, основанного в 1532 году. На картинке Вы также видите страну, являющуюся мировым лидером в развитии программного обеспечения с открытым кодом. На данный момент, каждый десятый разработчик ПО живет в Бразилии!

Я имел удовольствие лично, от имени Sun, поблагодарить Сена Мэлони (Sean Maloney), EVP и Chief Sales Marketing Officer из Intel, за его партнерское выступление на первой Всемирной Конференции Разработчиков Sun 2008-2009 в Сан-Пауло. У Intel, являющегося партнером Sun, вместе с остальными нашими партнерами из AMD и Ericsson, на этой неделе было чем поделиться в плане технологий. Как партнер, Сен обсуждал новые идеи Solaris.  Инновации очень важны для сообщества разработчиков открытого ПО OpenSolaris, что бы ни думали некоторые.

Я выступал после Сена, и обсуждал важную роль сообщества в нашем деле.  Я продемонстрировал, как opensourced ПО виртуализации для настольных станций дает возможность разработчику работать с несколькими операционными системами одновременно, как с виртуальными машинами.  Я показал, как виртуальная машина OpenSolaris 2008.05 (локализованная - на Brasil Portugeuse) устанавливала и удаляла программные пакеты, совершенно прозрачно , с помощью своего менеджера пакетов.  Релиз OpenSolaris 2008.11, выходящий в следующем месяце, будет еще лучше.  Черт побери, с помощью виртуальной машины, через браузер Firefox и My Yahoo, мы даже последили за последствиями кризиса на фондовой бирже U.S.!  Ну и в конце, мы запустили на виртуальной машине OpenSolaris несколько задач сервисов хранения данных, таких как ZFS и мгновенные снимки.  Эти технологии важны для тех, кто собирается разрабатывать свое свободное программное обеспечение для хранения данных. 

Продолжай идти впереди, Бразилия!  Bravo.

I recently moved over to the Directory Services team to take on the Product Line Management position.  I had a lot of fun working with the OpenSSO team and I am excited about the great things that team has released into the market place.  Another exciting thing about the job change, besides continuing to work with the OpenSSO team as they embed OpenDS as the configuration store in their product, is that I get to work with another team that values the importance of User Experience when building software.  Enterprise software for years has promulgated the myth that all that matters is innovation or features within new releases.  User Experience has always been an after-thought.

OpenDS has worked hard to promulgate a different approach which puts User Experience at the top of the priority list.  You can see this in the installation experience of the software.  MySQL builds software with a design guideline Martin Mickos call the "15 minute rule".  This is the rule that their enterprise version should be downloaded and installed in 15 minutes or less.  OpenDS can beat this by being installed in less than 3 minutes.  This is even true when you are allowing OpenDS to generate 2000 simluated Directory Entries.  Powerful stuff.  Not only do you get a great directory engine up and running quickly but if you are a Developer or QA Engineer you can get going quicker as well.

More to come on the performance data and some of our plans soon.  See for yourself how great the User Experience is for OpenDS in the video below:

¿Qué es importante en Brasil? Sin lugar a dudas, el fútbol, la samba, el carnaval, y si vienen a Brasil y hablan con los desarrolladores: el software de código abierto. Esta semana, en Brasil, la comunidad de desarrolladores, incluidos los estudiantes, ha celebrado una reunión de 3 días. La imagen refleja la densidad de una ciudad descubierta en el año 1532, pero también nos presenta a un país que lidera el progreso del software de código abierto a nivel mundial. En la actualidad, uno de cada 10 desarrolladores de software reside en Brasil.

He tenido el placer de agradecer personalmente, y en nombre de Sun, a Sean Maloney, Vicepresidente ejecutivo y Jefe de ventas de marketing de Intel por su discurso en la 1ª Conferencia Mundial de Desarrolladores de Sun 2008-2009, celebrada en Sao Paulo. No podemos negar la gran cantidad de tecnología que esta semana pasada se ha compartido entre Intel, Sun y nuestros otros socios de AMD y Ericsson. Sean planteó la innovación de Solaris desde un punto de vista de socio. Esa innovación tan valiosa que llega a la comunidad de código abierto a través de OpenSolaris a pesar de lo que otros puedan pensar.

Hablé después de Sean y traté del valor que se transmite y se recibe de la comunidad cuando las tareas de innovación, colaboración e integración se realizan de forma conjunta. Demostré cómo un software de virtualización con código abierto creado para escritorio permite a un desarrollador trabajar con varios sistemas operativos huéspedes como si fueran máquinas virtuales. Teníamos una máquina virtual OpenSolaris 2008.05 (en idioma local, Portugués Brasileño) que instalaba y eliminaba paquetes sin la menor dificultad gracias a su gestor de paquetes. El lanzamiento de la versión OpenSolaris 2008.11 previsto para el mes próximo sólo puede servir para mejorar. ¡Diantre, si hasta pudimos hacer que la máquina virtual llevara el seguimiento de la crisis del mercado de valores de EE.UU. con un navegador Firefox y Mi Yahoo! Por último, pusimos la máquina virtual OpenSolaris a trabajar para probar los servicios de almacenamiento de datos, como ZFS e instantáneas. Tecnología importante si queremos construir productos de almacenamiento en abierto.

¡Sigue mostrando el camino, Brasil! ¡Bravo!

O que é importante no Brasil? Obviamente, futebol, samba, carnaval e, se você vier ao Brasil e conversar com desenvolvedores: software de código-fonte aberto. Esta semana, a comunidade de desenvolvedores, incluindo estudantes, se reuniu durante três dias no Brasil. A fotografia acima mostra a densidade de uma cidade descoberta no ano de 1532, mas também representa um país que é líder mundial no desenvolvimento de software de código-fonte aberto. Atualmente, 1 em cada 10 desenvolvedores de software reside no Brasil!

Tive o prazer de agradecer pessoalmente, em nome da Sun, a Sean Maloney, vice-presidente executivo e diretor de marketing e vendas da Intel, por sua palestra na primeira conferência mundial de desenvolvedores (Worldwide Developer Conference) 2008-2009 da Sun realizada em São Paulo. Na última semana, houve sem dúvida um grande compartilhamento de tecnologias entre a Sun e nossos parceiros como a Intel, a AMD e a Ericsson. Sean analisou a inovação do Solaris do ponto de vista de parceiro. Essa inovação tão valiosa chega à comunidade de código-fonte aberto através do OpenSolaris, a despeito do que outros possam pensar.

Falei depois de Sean e analisei o valor que representa para comunidade a realização de processos conjuntos de inovação, colaboração e integração. Demonstrei como um software de virtualização de código-fonte aberto para desktop permite que um desenvolvedor trabalhe com vários sistemas operacionais convidados como máquinas virtuais. Tínhamos uma máquina virtual OpenSolaris 2008.05 (no idioma local, Português do Brasil) que instalava e removia pacotes sem o menor problema graças ao seu gerenciador de pacotes. A versão 2008.11 do OpenSolaris, que será lançada no próximo mês, está ainda melhor. Só de curtição, colocamos a máquina virtual para verificar o desenrolar da crise do mercado de ações dos EUA por meio do navegador Firefox e do My Yahoo. Por fim, executamos algumas tarefas com a máquina virtual OpenSolaris para demonstrar os serviços de dados de armazenamento, como ZFS e instantâneos. Tecnologia importante para a criação de produtos de armazenamento abertos. 

Mantenha-se na vanguarda, Brasil!  Bravo.

ブラジルで大切にされているものは何でしょう。もちろん、サッカー、サンバ、カーニバルです。ここブラジルに来て開発者と話すと、オープンソースのソフトウェアも大切にされていることがわかります。今週ブラジルで 3 日間、学生も含め、開発者コミュニティーのメンバーが一堂に会しました。上の写真を見ると、1532 年に発見された都市の密度がわかります。この写真はまた、オープンソースのソフトウェアを推進している世界的なリーダー国家の姿も象徴しています。今日ではソフトウェア開発者の 10 人に 1 人もがブラジルに在住しています。

私は Sun を代表し、Intel 社の主席副社長兼最高セールス/マーケティング責任者である Sean Maloney 氏に、Worldwide Developers Conference 2008 ～ 2009 年の最初の開催地となったサンパウロでパートナー基調講演を行なっていただいたことについて、個人的に感謝を表明します。Intel に加え、AMD や Ericsson といった Sun のパートナーには、共有できる技術が数多くあると今週わかりました。Sean さんはパートナーとして、Solaris の革新性について議論しました。異なる意見もありますが、OpenSolaris に基づくオープンソースコミュニティーにとって重要となる革新性です。

Sean さんのあと、私は基調講演で、協力して革新、コラボレーション、および統合を実現した場合、コミュニティーに対して与える価値とコミュニティーから与えられる価値について意見を述べました。デスクトップ向けのオープンソースの仮想化ソフトウェアがあれば、開発者は仮想マシンとして複数のゲストオペレーティングシステムを利用し、作業できることについてデモしました。ソフトウェアのパッケージマネージャーを使用し、OpenSolaris 2008.05 の仮想マシン (現地の言葉であるブラジルポルトガル語) にパッケージをシームレスにインストールおよび削除してみました。来月配布される OpenSolaris 2008.11 リリースはさまざまな点で改善しています。私たちは Firefox ブラウザと My Yahoo を使って、仮想マシンからアメリカ株式市場の危機の続報を確認するデモもしました。最後に OpenSolaris 仮想マシンを動かし、ZFS やスナップショットといったストレージデータのサービスをデモさせてみました。オープンなストレージ製品を構築したいのであれば、重要となる技術です。

ブラジルはこの調子でがんばってもらいたいです。ブラボー。

在巴西什么最重要？显然是足球、桑巴舞、狂欢节。但是如果您来到巴西，一定会跟开发人员讨论开源软件。  在这一周，开发人员社区（包括学生）将在巴西一起度过 3 天。从上图可以看到，这座于 1532 年建立起来的城市现在已经相当拥挤。这个画面还代表着一个在开源软件领域迅速成长的世界领先国家。今天，每 10 个软件开发人员中就有一个来自巴西！

我非常荣幸地代表 Sun，感谢 Intel 的 EVP 和首席销售市场专员 Sean Maloney 在 Sun 在圣保罗举行的 2008-2009 年度第一届全球开发者大会上奠定了合作伙伴的基调。在过去的一周中，Sun 的合作伙伴 Intel、AMD 和 Ericsson 和我们分享了大量技术。作为合作伙伴，Sean 讨论了 Solaris 的创新。无论其他人持何种观点，我认为 OpenSolaris 创新对开源社区具有极其重要的意义。

在 Sean 演讲之后，我讨论了社区对创新、协作和集成的价值。我演示了桌面开源虚拟化软件如何使开发人员能够将多个来宾操作系统作为虚拟机使用。我们使用一个 OpenSolaris 2008.05 虚拟机（当地语言版本 - 巴西葡萄牙语），通过其包管理器无缝地安装和删除包。OpenSolaris 2008.11 版本将在下个月发行，它的性能更好。我们甚至可以使用虚拟机通过 Firefox 和 My Yahoo 查看美国的股票市场情况。最后，我们使用 OpenSolaris 虚拟机执行了一些工作，以演示 ZFS、快照等存储数据服务。如果您想要构建开放存储产品，这些技术尤其重要。

继续勇往直前，巴西！我为您喝彩。

I saw the South China Sea, ran a couple miles along the beach. Warm breezes, little fishing boats at dawn, large cargo ships along the horizon. Spent the week on Haikou, a northern city on a island called Hainan.

I saw the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen. How long is the horizon? Shades of red that I did not know existed, layered on top of each other, all along the horizon.

I saw the Aurora Borealis - spooked me out completely for a few seconds. The flight back from Beijing took the polar route, and I was just too disturbed to sleep. Luckily, I was forced onto a window seat and was looking out for hours when I saw these lazily dancing rays of lights, weird shapes, ethereal colors, like ghosts. I thought I was hallucinating, perhaps too much Stephen King in my earlier days, and then I realized that we must be over the north pole. A quick check and indeed. What a sight. I wish I could have shared these moments with some others.

I saw the Grand Canyon earlier this year, was my fourth time there. Its beauty still astounds. The words that both, the GC and the Aurora conjure in my head - magnificent, epic, spectacular. The difference for me though, the GC invokes thoughts of an old lover, reunited. The timing in my life was such, late April this year. Sadly, the Aurora will always remind me of those beautiful days, forever gone. A sense of loneliness, emptiness.

I saw a spectacular sunrise, on the Arctic coast. Miles and miles of nothing but white, and the sunlight creeping up, glinting on ice. And then, sleep for a couple of hours, the body just seemed to fall into total exhaustion after the last week.

My team and I spent the week in Haikou, meeting the Financial Services sales teams from the APAC countries. We had about 100 people there, with representation from China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand and Australia. Fantastic crowd, responsible for about USD0.5B worth of FS business to Sun. Most very optimistic, irrespective of the financial correction.

Most countries are modernizing at a rapid rate, and as predicted by yours truly, the smaller domestic dominants are viewing this correction as a way to take market share away from the globals. The Indian government is encouraging the local banks to merge, and create larger entities that can compete on a global level. The use of technologies is rampant, how do you expect to reach a 1 billion unbanked, underserved populus? Not by branches, not by ATMs, not by the internet. By mobile phones. Good that my team has been working on our mobile banking solution!

I come back well fed - tripe, pigs feet and shrimp that looked ready to leap out of the dishes they were served in, not withstanding - well educated and a tad tired. My team is enthused, we have a lot of work to do but the enthusiasm of the APAC sales teams have given us a boost of adrenalin.

And I did play some golf, how can one resist golfing in China? Played at the West Coast Golf Club, where a LPGA tournament kicks off at the end of this month. Hopefully Michelle Wei will not be too upset by the divots I left behind! I am the one in the bright red shirt, with my good friend and irritatingly good golfer, Samad Ali.

Oh, and a quick recap of the markets thus far in October.

Oct 3
- Congress passes USD700B bailout package.
- Citi fights the now proposed Wells buyout of Wachovia.
- US loses 159K jobs in September, 2x that of August, most in the last 5 years
- Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. mulls merging its securities unit, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities Co., with Morgan Stanley's Japanese securities unit.

Oct 4, 5
- The German government guarantees all private checking and savings accounts.
- European countries, one after another announce deposit guarantees. Iceland and Denmark issue guarantees on monday after Germany, Ireland, France, Greece and Sweden did the same on sunday.
- Germany's private financial sector promises to put up an additional E15B, in addition to the E35B already pledged, to help Hypo Real Estate bank, one of Germany's largest housing lenders.
- BNP Paribas takes control of the Belgian and Luxembourg businesses of troubled financial group Fortis in a complex rescue that makes Belgium the French bank's biggest shareholder. BNP Paribas buys a 75 percent stake in Fortis' Belgium and 66 percent of the bank's Luxembourg banking activities.
- China's second largest insurer Ping An Insurance reports a loss of about 15.7 billion yuan (USD2.3 billion) on its investment in Fortis. The loss is one of the largest suffered by a Chinese financial institution so far in the turmoil.

Oct 6
- Allianz SE invests USD2.5B in Hartford Financial, a large US based Property and Casualty, and Life insurance carrier, after Hartford announced a USD2B loss for Q3 (most from its investments in the Capital Markets industry).
- On a positive note for us end user consumers, Oil prices drop to USD88/barrel (high was USD147 in July 2008) on concerns that demand would slow globally.
- Bank of America reports a 70% drop in Q3 profits, again as a result of losses stemming from mortages and other debts.

Oct 7
- Saying Iceland was at risk of "national bankruptcy," Prime Minister Geir Haarde prepares to give regulators authority to take over the nation's ailing banks as a worsening financial crisis all but cuts off the island from the global financial system.
- U.S. Treasuries soar as worries about a global credit crisis and a slow economy slam stock markets around the world and sends investors scurrying for shelter in low-risk government debt. US dollar posts a sharp rise against other world currencies.

Oct 8
- Indonesia's markets are suspended after its key index falls 21% after the first hour of trading. They remain closed for the next 3 days.

Oct 9
- Citi backs out of the Wachovia deal. Interestingly, Wells Fargo came back to the table after the IRS introduced a regulatory clause that allowed Wachovia's losses to be taken as a tax write-off. This prevented the feds from buying out these losses, which is what Citi had negotiated (see my previous blog).
- Hong Kong's Hang Seng index hits 3 years low amidst global sell-off.

Oct 10 - Black Friday
- Credit Suisse shares plunge to five-year lows, falling faster than Swiss peers and the European banking sector as investors fret over the impact of the financial crisis on the bank's earnings.
- Dow Jones Industrial Average finishes the worst week in its 112 year history (18% decline). The 1018.77 point swing on Friday October 10th was the largest ever. 11.16B shares traded on the NYSE, the largest ever.
- While in China, I was watching Bloomberg TV and saw every single stock market get pummeled. Nekkei fell 9.6%, Singapore down 7.3%, HK down 7.2%, India down 7.1%, Australia down 8.8%.
- Yamato Life Insurance of Japan files for bankruptcy
- The Group-of-7 (G7) countries, which I believe is an anachronism in this century, gather to try and put together a coordinated response. As expected, no concrete steps are agreed upon.
- US, Germany and UK start to put plans together to nationalize the banking system - "King Henry" Paulson says he will use government power to buy assets - not just the bad ones! - and look to invest in banks. The British government may end up owing as much as 30% of 4 of the largest banks - RBS, Barclays, Lloyds TSB and HBOS. HSBC, Standard Chartered Bank and Abbey National refuse capital infusion from the government.

Oct 11
- The G20 meet, their jointly issued communique is here.
- The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private-sector lending arm of the World Bank, plans to launch a $3 billion fund to capitalize small banks in poor countries that are battered by the financial crisis.

Oct 12
- The 15 countries that form the Euro zone announce 3 key measures - they agree to guarantee new bank debt issuance until the end of 2009, which should spur interbank lending; permission for governments to shore up banks by buying preferred shares; and a commitment to recapitalize any ``systemically'' critical banks in distress. How much will this cost the taxpayers? Unknown.
- Oil falls to USD77.70 a barrel.
- Morgan Stanley's woes intensify. The infusion of USD9B from Mitsubishi UFG is expected on tuesday (Oct 14), the worry is that MS might not survive that long. Antitrust regulations in the US require a 5 day waiting period.
- IMF says the worldwide economy is heading towards a recession, with global growth falling. The WHO says the rates of depression and suicide globally are expected to rise.

Solvency vs. Liquidity

Lets get this one straight - this is *not* a stock market crisis. The stocks are down because of negative sentiment all around. If I had liquidity - liquid cash I could move around - I would be buying right now, a lot of good stocks are being hammered by association.

Everyone keeps saying that this is a liquidity crisis. That the US government bailout is to inject liquidity into the financial system. Really? Is this really a liquidity problem? I disagree, to a certain extent. I think there is enough liquidity around, banks are actually hoarding cash. So what is the problem? Its the fear that if I loan money to my neighbour, he might never pay it back, that he might be insolvent and even he might not know it! Why is that? Because if he is invested in the original CDO toxic assets, he has no clue what they are worth, and how solvent he actually is! So even though I have money to loan him, I will not do it. So even though there is liquidity, it not really liquid - its not moving around. Fears of solvency are preventing it.

The US government is looking to buy these insolvent assets, using a reverse auction scheme. If there is a large enough sample, reverse auctions work well. That is the hope here, and that seems to be the only way to put a $ amount on the worth of these assets.

I was with friends last night, a couple of whom are in the business. They claimed that the only way to get the credit markets - which are used to make loans - moving is by the governments guaranteeing these loans, especially the short term ones. Not unlike the FDIC insures your bank accounts. Note the entry for Oct 12 above!

The fun continues, and moves eastwards at a rapid rate.

After Bailout, AIG Execs Lounged At Resort

先日、仕事で立命館大学を訪問しました。

立命館は3つのキャンパスに分かれているのですが、私が訪問したのは
「びわこ・くさつキャンパス」（通称BKCというらしい？！）です。

最寄り駅は南草津。ここまでJRで行き、そこからタクシー10分で現地に到着。
大阪オフィスからここまで約1時間半。
この距離を通うのは、なかなかしんどいです。

ミーティングまで結構時間があったので、学食を覗いてみました。
お昼時で、かなり混雑した様子。自分の学生時代を思い出し、
懐かしさにひたりながらうろうろしていたんですが、（怪しい者と思われたかも。。）
ふと気が向いたので、ここで昼食を食べることにしました。

ここでは、まずトレーをもって一品ずつ 選んでいく方式でした。

システムがよくわからないまま、まずはご飯と味噌汁を取り、おかずのエリアへ。
どんなメニューがあるかわからなかったので、一番近くに置いてあったハンバーグを選び、
そして冷奴も追加。

野菜がないのが気になったのですが、どこにあるかわからず、諦めて会計へ。

これだけとって、しめて440円。さすが学食！安い！

味は、学食っぽい味とだけ、言っておきます。
でも、費用対効果は高いと思いました。

食事中、今の学生がどんな会話してるんだろうと、周りの学生の会話を
聞いていると、隣にいた男性5人の集団では、

「そろそろクリスマスやなー。今年は何しよ～。」

なんて、トピックが出ていました。w

まだ10月やで！と心の中で突っ込みつつ、
クリスマスまでの彼の活動にエールをおくって（もちろん心の中で）
その場を去りました。

結構楽しかったので、これから大学に行くことがあったら
学食に行くことを課題としてみようかと思っている今日この頃です。

• Общее количество человек - 22
• Количество сообщений - 5
• Продолжительность - 2 часа 10 минут
• Распространено дисков Solaris Student Pack - 14
• Распространено дисков NetBeans&Glassfish - ~30(МНОГО)

• он масштабируем, как мало кто: я смог развернуть этот сервер под Windows XP на 512Мб ОЗУ, и он работал! Подтормаживал, конечно, при редеплое, но работал исправно. Так же нужно указать, что одновременно с ним на той же машине был запущен NetBeans, браузер и MySQL-сервер - что более, чем порядочно. Одновременно с этим у меня не возникает вопросов, на каком сервере приложений запущен, скажем, сайт sun.com
• очень внятная админка - она мне до сих пор нравится больше, чем админка WebLogic
• поддержка всего самого нового и самого "вкусного", что Sun добавляет к Java EE. В третьей версии, к примеру, поддерживается архитектура OSGi - сервер становится ещё быстрее и легче за счёт отключения неиспользуемых модулей

The Acer Aspire One uses the new disk partitioning scheme, the diagnostic / recovery partition is mirroring the partitions Windows XP Home is installed on.

Install Try #1

So  I used partition magic to remove the diagnostic / recovery partition (4Gb) and moved the Windows XP Home partitiion to the front of the disk and shrunk it to 40Gb.

Not good Windows XP does not boot anymore

Install Try #2

Recover hard drive from recovery DVD, use partition magic just to shrink Windows XP Home partition to 40Gb.

Windows XP Home still boots

Download latest nightly build of OS, probably about B99, I knew I needed the Realtek driver fix.

Get all the way through an option 4 install (the Intel video chip is not allowing Xorg to run in Option 1) to the select UFS / ZFS then onto fdisk.

 Fdisk says two partitions are sharing the same space and just stops. Refuses to go forward.

Install Try #3

Go back to B98 DVD, option 4 install, this time when I get to the fdisk section it does not complain at all, creates a ZFS partitiion and the install completes normally.

So now I can boot Windows XP Home or OpenSolaris B98

Video is coming up as VESA at 800x600 not 1024x600 which is the native resolution

No Realtek Ethernet

No Atheros WiFi

SDCard driver says it cannot initialized the hardware

Weird thing that I've never seen on any other machine laptop, desktop or server is the time after Hostname: os-one appears and ZFS coming up is about 4 minutes, no disk activity, no network activity, it just sites there, doing nothing, then starts correctly (still trying to debug this)

NOTE: This fdisk issue has disappeared in the full B100

It looks like Ireland along with the rest of the European Union will soon ban the sale of most traditional incandescent light bulbs. I've been using Compact Florescent (CF) bulbs where possible since the early 1990s but I have mixed feelings about government's one-size-fits all energy micromanagement. I don't think the fact that my neighbor uses CFs to illuminate his garden gnomes, eves and driveway 24/7 makes him environmentally greener than the doctor, dentist, mechanic or person with visual difficulties (e.g. cataracts...) who chooses incandescents for applications where they excel.

Mini screw mount CF bulbs only became available in Ireland about 1 year ago. Most stores here still only carry the bayonet CF bulbs. I haven't yet found any dimmer capable CFs in Ireland. We did find 9 watt CF bulbs which fit in the 240V/40W GU10 halogen sockets but I find that a combination of 40W halogen and 1.6W LED bulbs is more effective for some applications because both halogens and LEDs focus the light better than CFs do (. The "soft focus" of CFs actually worked to their advantage in our kitchen where they eliminated harsh shadows thrown by the spotlight bulbs but they still work best when paired 2CFs for ambient light and one incandescent for directional task light (cooker, table and counter.)

The CFs also flicker more are bluer and take much longer to reach full brightness. The (very difficult to find) Edison screw CF bulbs which fit our bathroom fixture only operate in that cool, damp environment for a few weeks before burning out. Fortunately, Ireland's new light bulb law requires merchants to take back duds. The average lifespan of brand name CF bulbs seems nowhere near what it was in the 1990s.

I can almost understand why governments are trying to force us to use CFs. CFs are functionally equivalent to incandescent for MOST applications while using 1/5th to 1/3rd the wattage. But if we can overlook edge cases, why stop with light bulbs? Sun Rays are functionally equivalent to desktop PCs for MOST applications while using only 1/40th the electrical power. Replacing PCs with Sun Rays would saves between 8 and 13 times as much as moving from incandescents to CFs. So why not ban desktop PCs?

Installed the lasted development build of 6.5 alongside the release from a few weeks ago, everything seemed find until I went to deploy a project, it fails to start the app server, no matter which one is chosen.  Starting them manually from the Services tab works fine though...

For some reason running Netbeans on JDK 6 u7 seems to bork opening projects... JDK 5 u16 still works fine...

MySQL start command
C:\Windows\System32\net.exe start MySQL

Glassfish datsource context
com.sun.enterprise.naming.SerialInitContextFactor

I'm astonished to see that I haven't blogged for so long. Sorry to my readers, it's been some very busy times lately, and I hope I can write more in the coming weeks. I also owe an apology to the people that pointed out a bug with my ZFS replicator script and cron(1M), I'll look into it and make it my next post.

Barcamp at Sun in Munich

Yesterday, I attended Barcamp Munich 2008 which was sponsored by Sun (among other cool sponsors) and so it took place in the Sun Munich offices.

I was surprised to see that both sessions I proposed were accepted, plus one about Open Source Software at Sun that my colleague Stefan proposed with some support by me. So, here's a roundup of session descriptions, slides and other links and materials for those of you who attended my sessions or could not attend, in chronological order.

Enterprise 2.0 - From Co-Workers to Co-Creators

This session was similar to the talk I did at Webkongress Erlangen a few months ago.

We had about 20 people in the room and quite a fruitful discussion on how to motivate employees to use new tools, how to guide employee behaviour and the challenges of opening up a company and making it more transparent.

Feel free to glance through my Enterprise 2.0 slides or read an earlier blog entry on a related subject. Also, check out Peter Reiser's blog, he has a number of great articles from behind the scenes of our SunSpace collaboration project.

Open Source Software at Sun

Stefan Schneider proposed a session about great software products that are available from Sun for free, as open source. We went through his list from least well-known to most popular.

Obviously, MySQL, StarOffice and OpenSolaris were at the end, but the more interesting software products were those that made the attendees go "Oh, I didn't know that!". One example of this category was Lightning, a rich calendar client.

I hope that Stefan will post his slides on the web and will ask him to do so, then I'll edit this article and include a link for you.

The Future of Technology in 10, 20, 30 Years and More

This was a spontaneous talk that I offered after having seen the Barcamp Munich wishlist where people asked for a session on future technology developments, their effects on society and how one can cope with it.

I took some slides from a couple of earlier talks I did a while ago on similar topics and updated it for the occasion. The updated "Future of Technology" slidedeck is in German, but if enough people are interested, I can provide a translated version as well.

We started by looking at Moore's Law as an indicator of technology development. In "The Age of Spiritual Machines", Ray Kurzweil, a well-known futurist, pointed out that this law also holds for technology prior to integrated circuits, all the way down to Charles Babbage's difference engine of the 19th century.

With that in mind, we can confidently extend Moore's Law into the future, knowing that even if traditional chip technology ceases to deliver on Moore's Law, other technologies will pick up and help us achieve even higher amounts of computing power per amount of money/space/energy. Again, Kurzweil points out that if we compare the amount of computational power that one can purchase for $1000 for a given year with the complexity of all neurons of a brain and their connections to neighbouring neurons at their typical firing frequency, then the 2020s will be an interesting decade.

Key technologies of the future will be: Genetics and Biotechnology, Robotics and Nanotechnology.

We watched a fascinating video about Molecular Visualizations of DNA (here's a longer, more complete version) that made us witnesses of DNA being replicated, right before our eyes, at a molecular level. It's amazing to see how mechanical this process looks, almost like industrial robots grinding away on ribbons of DNA, cutting pieces, replicating them, then splicing them back in. In the near future, we will see personalized medicine, based on our own DNA, and optimized for our individual needs as well as novel applications of biotechnology for clean energy, new materials and the assembly of early molecular machines.

Robotics are another fascinating area of technology and we're seeing more and more robots enter our day to day life. Industrial and military robots may be an "old hat", but did you know that today, millions of households are already using robots to vacuum their floory, mow their lawns or perform other routine work? And we will see many more robots in the future, I'm sure. Meanwhile, I'm happy to say that my Roomba robot indeed saves a lot of precious time while fulfilling my natural geeky desire for cool gadgetry.

Finally, Nanotechnology will open up a new category of advanced technology that will affect all aspects of human life, the environment and the world. We watched a vision of a future nanofactory that fits onto a common desk and is capable of manufacturing an advanced laptop with 100 hours of battery life and a billion CPUs. But nanotechnology can do much more: Highly efficient solar cells, clean water, lightweight spacecrafts, nanobots that clean up your bloodstream, more advanced versions of your organs, brain implants and extensions, virtual reality that is indistinguishable from real reality and much more.

Check out the Foresight Institute's introduction to nanotechnology for more information about this fascinating topic, including a free PDF download of K. Eric Drexler's book "Engines of Creation". Real engineers will probably want to take a look at his textbook "Nanosystems Molecular Machinery Manufacturing and Computation"

One controversial topic when discussing the future is the Technological Singularity. This is the point in time, where artificial intelligence becomes powerful enough to create new technology on its own, thereby accelerating the advancement of technology without human intervention. A discussion of this topic can be found in Kurzweil's newest book "The Singularity is Near".

Another great way to think about the future is to read Stefan Pernar's sci-fi thriller "Jame5 - A Tale of Good and Evil". This book starts in the best Michael Crichton style and then becomes a deep and thoughtful discussion around the philosophy of the future, when mankind confronts the powers of strong AI. You can buy the book or just download the PDF for free. Highly recommended.

One of my favourite citations is said to be an old chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times."

Many thanks to all the people that I met during, or attended my sessions at, Barcamp Munich 2008, it was a most interesting event.

My Acer C90S laptop has the Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller, 11ab 4364.

I've been running the sysconnect skge driver for about a year and a half, it's worked really well.

I have notice recently that dladm show-link could not see the state correctly, this caused the new nwam not to be able to switch automatically to the atheros wifi if I unplugged the cable.

This is also a 64Bit Intel dual core desktop processor laptop, so I need to be able to build 64 bit drivers,

I found another blog entry that talked about the myk gld3 driver available from http://homepage2.nifty.com/mrym3/taiyodo/eng/.

After downloading the mac.h and mac_ether.h and installing in /usr/include/sys, following the instructions in the enclosed README.txt to change the links in the directory I built the driver.

I removed the old SKGE driver and did the update to the myk driver.

nwam now see's when I unplug the cable and rolls to the wifi, all the icons in the gnome-netstatus-applet 2.12.2 within the gnome panel are changing also, this is the new feature track system active interface.

I'm still trying to track down why /etc/resolv.conf does not get updated when I roll back to the ethernet adapter, it gets left as set by the wifi.

 pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x00 function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x2770
 Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ/P/PL Memory Controller Hub

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x01 function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x2771
 Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ/P/PL PCI Express Root Port

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1b function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27d8
 Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1c function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27d0
 Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1c function 0x01: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27d2
 Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1c function 0x02: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27d4
 Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1c function 0x03: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27d6
 Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1c function 0x04: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27e0
 Intel Corporation 82801GR/GH/GHM (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 5

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1d function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27c8
 Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1d function 0x01: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27c9
 Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1d function 0x02: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27ca
 Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1d function 0x03: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27cb
 Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1d function 0x07: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27cc
 Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1e function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x244e
 Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1f function 0x00: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27b8
 Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Bridge

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1f function 0x02: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27c0
 Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller

pci bus 0x0000 cardnum 0x1f function 0x03: vendor 0x8086 device 0x27da
 Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller

pci bus 0x0001 cardnum 0x00 function 0x00: vendor 0x10de device 0x0407
 nVidia Corporation GeForce 8600M GT

pci bus 0x0002 cardnum 0x00 function 0x00: vendor 0x11ab device 0x4364
 Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller

pci bus 0x0003 cardnum 0x00 function 0x00: vendor 0x197b device 0x2360
 JMicron Technologies, Inc. JMicron 20360/20363 AHCI Controller

pci bus 0x0005 cardnum 0x00 function 0x00: vendor 0x168c device 0x001c
 Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter

pci bus 0x0008 cardnum 0x01 function 0x00: vendor 0x1180 device 0x0832
 Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller

pci bus 0x0008 cardnum 0x01 function 0x01: vendor 0x1180 device 0x0822
 Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter

pci bus 0x0008 cardnum 0x01 function 0x02: vendor 0x1180 device 0x0843
 Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller

pci bus 0x0008 cardnum 0x01 function 0x03: vendor 0x1180 device 0x0592
 Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter

pci bus 0x0008 cardnum 0x01 function 0x04: vendor 0x1180 device 0x0852
 Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller

Chris Hoy answering this question: "What do you think about when training?"

Answer: "The short term goal for that session and giving your best for that"

Let me tell you why I have the coolest job at Sun.  First, I get to build datacenters all over the world, talk with thousands of customers, build new communities to unite datacenter peers globally, and play with all the new Sun technology years before it is released.  But, today I did something I have never done before. I became a Secret Agent...

The Marlowe-Pugnetti Company used our Santa Clara campus to film some scenes for their upcoming movie called "The Awakened". James Marlowe, the director, contacted Sun a few months back and asked if he could use the campus to finish his movie.  As soon as he saw the datacenter, he knew it was perfect.  It had "the high-tech look" for the agency, like it was in a bunker 30 floors underground. The "secret government agency" called S.H.A.D.O.W. had an intense situation room scene in the Mansion as well as a datacenter scene.

Brian Day, (my Chief of staff in real life) and I were extras playing agents from S.H.A.D.O.W., the Specialized Homeland Alien Department of World Wide Security.  We played well dressed datacenter technicians (we all know they usually wear shorts) working on the supercomputer in the back. They put a laptop on top of a pull out KVM and had the sun servers in the background. The laptop had some great computer animation including scrolling code (no idea what it was, but it looked good).  The geeky agency guy realizes there is a major paroblem and has to pull out his flash drive to keep the evidence. Brian was in the background playing with a power cord and I was in the back side have a conversation with Jennifer, another extra near the other "super computers".  This was Jennifer's first time as an extra as well.  She is a regional sales manager from Dynasplint. Looks like we will have our 3 seconds of fame in that scene (if it's not cut).  :-)  But, best of all our datacenter and Sun servers will now be immortalized in the movie.

The next scene I was in was in the mansion sitting with about 20 other extras simulating a war-room environment for this agency. Christina Lucke, from Sun marketing, was also able to join the scene and sit next to me at the conference table. Everyone but me seemed to get makeup. I guess my forehead doesn't shine.  :-)  The interesting thing was the other extras were from Applied Materials, VMWare, and even a Santa Clara coroner (72 years old and doesn't plan to retire). I believe these were just different people that James has worked for or with in the past on other corporate type of jobs.  It's all in who you know, eh?  All of us were different ages and nationalities and it made the scene look good.  Another extra was Hooman Khalili, the Alice radio personality and star of HoomanTV on YouTube.  In the scene, we were discussing amongst each other as the head guy came in. Robert Picardo, who played the doctor on Star Trek Voyager, and is the new commander of the Stargate Atlantis, is the agency head in the movie. He is an all-powerful commander type who lambastes a newly transfered agent from the NSA who is questioning the agencies spending and practices.  All of us had to give different reactions and facial expressions to the exchange between the agency head the NSA agent.  It was a pretty cool scene that took about 3 1/2 hours to film.  Four angles, wide, closeup and background shots. Robert was really nice and kept cracking jokes between scenes. 

In the end, the mansion and the datacenter were perfect locations for the shoot.  I think it will add quite a bit to the production.  So, back to the datacenter (until Steve Spilberg calls).  :-)

Being "let off" lightly on saturday, I also did the Aber twin Peaks race on sunday, arriving 2 minute before the start! The weather was a real contrast to the previous day with a pleasant, sunny 18 degree centigrade and no wind. The course was just under 8 miles with about 1000ft of up and I finished in 1 hour and 3 minutes. Most of the runners were road runners, so the rather muddy decent from Pen Dinas suited me just right and allowed for some overtaking. Many thanks to the one shoed runner who called me a "bloody idiot" as I passed him while he was looking for his other shoe in the mud, it was a lovely compliment in this context.

My friend C was moved from ICU to a regular hospital room.  He was looking much better, and in spite of the still ever present pain, was feeling better.  It was nice to see him moving his arms more....doing things we all take for granted, like reaching for a glass of water.  Previously I only saw him move his finger to press down the little button that would release more pain killer into his IV.  

He still has a really long road to recovery...but its good to see the recovery beginning!!!

На днях скачал дистрибутив MilaX. Это альтернативная сборка OpenSolaris от Александра Еремина. Цитата с сайта http://www.milax.org:
Version 0.3.2 requires at least 256MB RAM and a Pentium or Celeron to boot into a JWM desktop.
Этакий мини Solsris для слабых компов. LiveCD занимает чуть более 128МB, есть возможность установки на винчестер с помощью специального скрипта, можно доставить дополнительные пакеты. Классная штука!!! На моем ноутбуке (Toshiba) OpenSolaris 2008.05 даже ставиться не хотел, вызвал пепрезагруз, этот же загрузился в лет!

Надо отдать должное, что OpenSolaris 2008.11 previw тоже загрузился на моей Toshibe. GParted помог мне переразбить диск, правда Vista ругается после этого, но грузится. OpenSolaris 2008.11 previw - меня порадовал этим, но есть и огорчения: Wi-Fi после ручной настройки с отключением NWAM-а заработал, но оказалось, что нет WPA, только WEP. Ладно, это терпимо. Очень огорчило, что DNS-нормально не заработал, хотя с обычной сетевой проблем нет. Второе огорчение, второй видеовыход (на проектор) не заработал, но эту проблему я глубоко не копал. Будем ждать финального выхода в ноябре, может все исправят.

So there's a financial crisis it seems, and what has happened in Belgium is certainly not unique.  The government has taken action to save 2 of the 3 big banks: Fortis and Dexia.  As both stocks are very widely held by small individual investors, pension funds and social organisations, this has created quite a stir in Belgium.  I'm no specialist, so it's difficult to judge whether the right actions were taken, I guess time will tell.

One thing that has really made me mad however is one event that happened this week.  A division of Fortis, it's investment arm of the insurance part that is still part of the noted Fortis Holding, has organised an event for a select group of big investors.  Apparently the event was hosted in an expensive hotel in Monaco, at a cost of 150K EUR.

As you can imagine the press are all over it, crying outrage over how top bankers are behaving inappropriately, and are wasting the taxpayer's money (the Belgian government partially nationalised Fortis).

Granted, the timing of this event is bad, but let's consider a few facts:

• Planning such an event takes months, and canceling at short notice probably will incur penalty charges
• Even in times like this, you can not stop your marketing and relationship building.  Now more than ever business needs to be secured

 I can only imagine the headlines should the following scenarios have taken place:

• The event was cancelled, and 150K EUR was spent without a return
• The investors that were not invited take their business elsewhere

So the situation is very difficult to say the least, and stories like this demonstrate how companies that are doing business these days (especially banks) are threading on very thin ice...

To me it's simple, let the banks go about their business, and leave it up to the official institutions both inside Fortis and the government to judge.  Stories like this only make the distrust in the financial system worse, so do not help the situation at all. 

What is your opinion about this story? 

Switching from Tomcat to GlassFish is very easy, specially with recent additions like Valves Support; The only somewhat tricky area were dependencies on MyFaces APIs or behavior. A simple solution to this problem is to use the UseMyFaces properly, as mentioned in this thread. This approach is directly applicable Alfresco; see Mandy's post.

PS, I'll clarify if UseMyFaces is officially supported or not.

Web applications need access control. I'm not gonna justify that fact. All web applications have the ability where you can restrict access to the resources that reside on it by simply modifying the deployment descriptors (web.xml). This method is called declarative security or declarative access control. Well, but does this really suffice ?

Well, say hello to XACML. XACML stands for eXtensible Access Control Markup Language.

It is a declarative access control policy language implemented in XML and a processing model, describing how to interpret the policies.

Support for XACML allows our customers to share access control policies across corporate boundaries and offers more dynamic standards-based tools for creating federated mashups. As a result, our customers can continue to expand their business reach while using open-standards to enforce security decisions and minimize security risk.

Please Note: This is NOT sunxacml. sunxacml is implementation of XACML 2.0 specifications from sun labs. This does not have support for SAML2.0 profile of XACML 2.0 and is not part of OpenSSO.

OpenSSO XACML implements SAML2.0 Profile of XACML2.0 - supporting XACMLAuthzDecisionQuery and XACMLAuthzDecisionStatement. PEP makes XAML2.0/SAML2.0/SOAP request to PDP and gets response. The OpenSSO XACML client sample is a remote client library that could be used by an application to make XACML calls to PDP.

The returned XACMLAuthzDecisionStatement has XACML Response, Result, Decision and so forth. The OpenSSO XACML implementation leverages SAML2.0 capability of OpenSSO to manage SAML2 metadata of PDP and PEP and exchange SAML messages.

Here's a simple 5 step guide to running the XACML client and testing it with opensso.

• get the OpenSSO.zip, extract and get the opensso-client.zip under samples directory
  
  
• extract the opensso-client.zip, and goto "sdk" subdirectory
  
  
• follow the README file to setup the samples
  
  
• follow the instruction in scripts/run-xacml-client-sample.sh to setup the XACML.

Well, a lot of folks ask me often if I have fun @ sun. Well, there's TONS of reasons why I love this place. and one small reason being the fun!!. Our execs don't stop at just making sun a fun place to work at, in addition to the fun@sun perks ! they go all out !!! Here's video about Jonathan Schwartz getting "pwned" !!!

We sure know how to have fun @ sun !!!! and we LOVE IT !!!

~if you love what you do, everything is fun !

Here's a video about mySQL ndbcluster presented during google tech talk. The presenter is Stewart Smith who works for MySQL AB as a software engineer working on MySQL Cluster. He is an active member of the free and open source software community, especially in Australia.

ABSTRACT
Part 1 - Introduction to MySQL Cluster The NDB storage engine (MySQL Cluster) is a high-availability storage engine for MySQL. It provides synchronous replication between storage nodes and many mysql servers having a consistent view of the database. In 4.1 and 5.0 it's a main memory database, but in 5.1 non-indexed attributes can be stored on disk. NDB also provides a lot of determinism in system resource usage. I'll talk a bit about that.

I heard somewhere that Obama actually liked The Weather Man. If that doesn't make him totally out-of-step with the rest of American society, or a full-blown terrorist bent on the destruction of all life on this dear dear dear planet which we call home, whichever is worst, I don't know what would.

This New York Times Op-Ed speculates that Wall Street geeks and 'quants' outsmarted themselves with computer algorithms to create the current financial debacle:

"Somehow the genius quants — the best and brightest geeks Wall Street firms could buy — fed $1 trillion in subprime mortgage debt into their supercomputers, added some derivatives, massaged the arrangements with computer algorithms and — poof! — created $62 trillion in imaginary wealth. It's not much of a stretch to imagine that all of that imaginary wealth is locked up somewhere inside the computers, and that we humans, led by the silverback males of the financial world, Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson, are frantically beseeching the monolith for answers." Full Story