The vote by the stockholders was approved to sell Sun Microsystems in July 2009.

This will be my last blog at Sun Microsystems.  I do not know what the future holds at this point.  I imagine that I will be told along with everyone else when/if the Oracle acquisition of Sun occurs.  I am ending my blogging at Sun because it just feels like the right time to do this and I want greater flexibility in expressing my personal views.  I do clearly understand and respect the legal requirements when  a company is being acquired.

I chose the photo above because my best memories of Sun were at Sun's Club for High Achievers and that was called Sunrise Club.  I was fortunate in that I was selected to go to 7 of them in my career.

Sun Microsystems will be just a memory, but a GREAT memory for those of us who put in a lot of blood, sweat, hard smart work, and fun all while creating lifelong friendships.   I came here as a true believer in "Open Systems for Open Minds" and that has been part of my DNA.  I will always bleed Sun purple :-)

What was the most fun I had at Sun?  That's really easy.  Working with Dave Patterson at Berkeley to reinvent the machine tool industry with MTConnect. 

What was I the most proud of?  My oldest son, John, being selected Sun's Campus Ambassador of the Month out of over 500 Sun Campus Ambassadors.

What team effort at Sun am I most proud of?   That is much harder for me.  I would say it would be a three way tie:

• The East Coast Technology Center (ECTC) that was an all SE volunteer group that created a Technology Center that held over 400 benchmarks and POCs in the Dunn Loring and McLean, VA Sun Microsystems offices.
• Software Genius University (SGU) This was also an SE led effort working with a variety of groups around Sun that put together over 740 hours of content.
• A little background history...
  
  Sun SGU grew out of the extremely successful Software Genius Program (SGP).  The
  genesis of SGP was a conversation that Scott Radeztsky and I had in the fall of
  2005 when we asked the basic question, "what can we do to help the SEs to
  embrace the developer and Sun's software stack?"  In January 2006, we kicked
  off the Software Genius Program Council (SGPC) where the SEs in Americas
  Software Practice created ten courses, or twenty hours, of software training.
  This program had one goal - to ensure Sun's Systems Engineers were properly
  equipped with the necessary software knowledge and skills to be successful.
  
  Sun SGU served a very important need when it was announced globally on July 1st
  2007.  SGU now has 740 hours of course work in it and the best of that content
  will be transitioned to Software University.  There are countless individuals
  who should be thanked for the (literally) 1,000s of hours that went into Sun SGU.
  We will continue to make the necessary student competence mappings transitions
  from the Sun SGU's University certifications levels to Software University's
  Accreditations much like we did with the global Solaris training that came out
  of Dan Berg's organization last FY.  We will make it very clear regarding the
  how, when, where, why and what as we go through this effort.
• Last but not least, was the  High Performance Workstations opportunity that put $2BILLION (Billion with a B) into Sun Microsystems over the years.

• A little background history...

  When I first spoke with Sun Microsystems, it was the summer of 1984 and Betsy MacLean (later Ferry) and Steve Ferry had recently went over to Sun Microsystems from Systems Development Corporation (SDC) a Division of Burroughs Corporation.  I met Betsy and Steve while we were all at SDC.  It is interesting to note that SDC based in Santa Monica, California, was arguably the world's first computer software company as noted by Wikipedia.  I was not smart enough to go over to Sun in 1984 :-)  

  Sun was founded in 1982 with Sun standing for Stanford University Network (SUN).

  In 1986, I was an SE for SDC and technical lead for a HUGE and extremely challenging opportunity for High Performance Workstations opportunity where Sun Microsystems was the digital workstation and Masscomp was the analog workstation of choice.   At the end of 1986 and long after the completion of the bid and benchmarks,  I started talking to Sun Microsystems about working there.   I started on May 4th, 1987.  

  Betsy hired me and was a great manager and leader.  My mentor was Neil Groundwater who was clearly the smartest person in computers that I had ever met.  In the summer of 1987 we found out we won the HPW business that has since been worth at least $2 BILLION to Sun Microsystems over the years - yes that is B as in BILLION. Steve Ferry was THE Sales Rep on this opportunity and to this day is far and away the best Sales Rep I have ever seen/worked with and a great friend to this day.
  

I already thanked Scott, Bill, Andy, Vinod and John previously, but you can check it again here.

For everyone else, there are way too many people to thank from fellow employees to customers to partners and most importantly - family and friends.

Most importantly, I must thank my beautiful wife - Julie - for all her support through thick and thin.

 If you are interested in following Dave Edstrom's blog, my private blog is at:

Dave Edstrom's private blog

I will definitely keep blogging on software, technology, life and of course Corvettes :-)

You can also reach me here via LinkedIn:

My private email is edstromvette@yahoo.com

I would be a liar if I did NOT state that I am bummed that Sun Microsystems had to end this way.  As the often quoted old poem by John Greenleaf Whittier. (1807–1892) goes:

"Of all sad songs of tongue and and pen, the saddest are these, what might have been....."

Stay in touch, take care and remember the three things that I, Dave Edstrom Sun employee #3705, always tells people:

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

This is very cool recognition:

Sun is number 13 in Computerworld's list of the "100 Best Places to Work in IT 2009".

Having been here at Sun for over 22 years, I absolutely believe it.  I wonder where we were ranked during the dotcom heyday?   If you know, please leave a comment here on my blog....

 I should have blogged about this announcement of my new role when it occurred on June 4th, but I was so busy with JavaOne and a lot of customers, that I have not had the time for blogging.

 Since this is the first day of Sun's FY10 and I am on vacation here in Ocean City, Maryland waiting for the morning fog to burn off, I thought I should mention my new role Chief Technologist (CT) for Global Systems Engineering (GSE) in the Software Line  of Business (LOB).  That is a long title, but one that I am very, very excited about and thankful to have this new role at Sun.  I was the CT for North America and then the Americas (including Canada and South America). 

 Sun is still second to none in the ability to create strong software communities in the open source world.  We are continuing to tweak the monetization framework to adjust to this evolving economy.  Without question, open source already has won and it is just a matter of time before everyone realizes this.

Below is a snippet of the text from my announcement on June 4th, 2009.

Dave joined Sun in early 1987.  In 22+ years at Sun he has held a variety of positions working with a broad range of products and applications for a wide ranging set of customers in both commercial and government markets. Dave has been in the computer industry since 1978 and has held programming, management, sales and systems engineering leadership positions for a variety of companies, and has been working with Unix since 1981.  Most recently, Dave was the CT for North America's SW Practice holding this position for almost five years.

Dave led 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. Each week, Dave hosts a technology webinar, with Brian Leonard, for Sun's global
 employees and Sun's global partners.

Dave was the "father" of the Mid Atlantic Area Technology Center for Sun.  This multi-million dollar Center had over 300 customers 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.

Dr. Harry Foxwell was kind enough to provide me with a copy of his GREAT book on OpenSolaris.  The book is extremely well written and a must buy for all those interested in the best operating systems in this universe.  A little history here -  I interviewed Harry prior to him coming to Sun in 1995.  Harry has been a fantastic SE and an even better friend.  Harry likes to exxagerate how hard the interview really was.  Now, I have to admit that I was going through my Patterson and Hennessy Computer Architecture phase, so I was treating prospective candidates as if they were postdocs at either UCB or Stanford :-) 

As Harry signed below, "This will help Solaris "go to 11"!  

Below is the cover of Harry and Christine's book. 

Apress's Pro OpenSolaris is the second English language book to be published specifically about Sun Microsystems' OpenSolaris open source operating system.  The first was the comprehensive,1000-page, OpenSolaris Bible published by Wiley in March 2009.  That book purposely covered all aspects of OpenSolaris for those with only basic familiarity with Solaris and UNIX as well as for those with greater administration and developer experience; it reviewed desktop tools, networking, shell programming, and system administration along with the unique features of OpenSolaris.

Pro OpenSolaris, published in April 2009 and based on the OpenSolaris 2008.11 release, assumes the reader is already comfortable with the user and development environments of GNOME and Linux; it focuses primarily on the key OpenSolaris features that should be learned and exploited for Web development.  It includes an extensive chapter detailing a sample Webstack project based on the zones, ZFS, security, and SMF topics introduced in the preceding chapters.  The book also highlights relevant online references and resources for further learning.  Although all of the information about OpenSolaris is available on myriad Web sites, books such as Pro OpenSolaris give you a roadmap and recommended sequence of what to learn first.  It also strongly emphasizes that open source solutions can be effectively hosted on OpenSolaris as well as on Linux.

You can purchase Pro OpenSolaris here at Amazon or at Barnes and Noble.

I started 22 years ago today - May 4th, 1987 for Sun Microsystems.  Back then I was young, 27 years old, no kids.  In four weeks I am old, I turn 50.   Julie and I have three sons - John a Junior at VT, Michael a Senior at Broad Run who will be at VT next year with his brother and Tim an Freshman at Broad Run High School.   My oldest son John is Campus Ambassador for Sun and President of the ACM at VT - so I kept Sun in the family.

Chances are extremely, extremely low that I will celebrate a 23rd anniversary with Sun Microsystems as Sun will likely be just a memory a year from now - much like Burroughs, DEC, Apollo, Data General, Sperry Univac and countless other computer companies that either acquired, merged or simply went belly up.....

The photo above I took on our 25th Anniversary last year when we spent a month in Europe with a 12 day cruise in the middle.

With all the news today, I just wanted to share some memories of Sun over the past 22 years I have worked here at Sun.  Note, I am still here at Sun, just thought I would take a couple of minutes to write down some of my memories over the many years.

When I first spoke with Sun Microsystems, it was the summer of 1984 and Betsy MacLean (later Ferry) and Steve Ferry had recently went over to Sun Microsystems from Systems Development Corporation (SDC) a Division of Burroughs Corporation.  I met Betsy and Steve while we were all at SDC.  It is interesting to note that SDC based in Santa Monica, California, was arguably the world's first computer software company as noted by Wikipedia.  I was not smart enough to go over to Sun in 1984 :-)  

Sun was founded in 1982 with Sun standing for Stanford University Network (SUN).

In 1986, I was an SE for SDC and technical lead for a HUGE and extremely challenging opportunity for High Performance Workstations opportunity where Sun Microsystems was the digital workstation and Masscomp was the analog workstation of choice.   At the end of 1986 and long after the completion of the bid and benchmarks,  I started talking to Sun Microsystems about working there.   I started on May 4th, 1987.  

Betsy hired me and was a great manager and leader.  My mentor was Neil Groundwater who was clearly the smartest person in computers that I had ever met.  In the summer of 1987 we found out we won the HPW business that has since been worth at least $2 BILLION to Sun Microsystems over the years - yes that is B as in BILLION. Steve Ferry was THE Sales Rep on this opportunity and to this day is far and away the best Sales Rep I have ever seen/worked with and a great friend to this day.

 There are so many people to thank for the great, great memories that I have of Sun Microsystems.  I have to first thank Betsy for hiring me, Neil for being a great mentor and a great friend.  I have worked with and for lots of great individuals for 22 years at Sun.     I had the privilege of working for three great SE Directors - Joy Warfield,  Brad Kirley and Sue Walls who all showed great leadership and courage.  Most importantly, Joy, Brad and Sue firmly believed in the Sun mantra "work hard and play hard".   In the "play hard" vein, Dennis Govoni and I pulled countless pranks on each other and have teamed up with others on some very memorable April Fools Goofs as well.

During the past five years I have been the Chief Technologist for the Software Practice and it has been the most fun I have had at Sun.  I have had the great fortune for working for a true software leader in Dave Profozich.  Dave has been a great leader and friend.

By far, the most fun and rewarding experience I have ever had was working with Dave Patterson of Berkeley on MTConnect.

Finally, a huge special thanks to Scott McNealy, Bill Joy, Andy Bechtolsheim, Vinod Khosla and John Gage.  While John was not officially one of Sun's four founders, he was always known as the "fifth Beatle" and employee #21  John coined the term "The Network Is The Computer".   Below is one of the classic photos that we always used for presentations to show the founders.

I remember Scott McNealy signing my Sun 10 Year Anniversary Yearbook in 1992 with the message:  

I remember being with Bill Joy, John Gage and Neil Groundwater having dinner in Georgetown and the wine list was given to me to select.  This is the classic pig staring at a Rolex watch type of scenario with Dave Edstrom looking at a wine list.  I looked at the list and said, "how about a pitcher of Busch beer?"   Neil Groundwater gave me one of those looks that could kill.  Bill Joy was very cool about it.  Bill said, "Dave, a cold beer sounds good and John, why don't you select a bottle of wine as well."

I could go on and on with stories, but this is enough for today.

It is a sad day when a company that had so much energy and creativity as Sun Microsystems dies.  Sun is probably best known for Java, Solaris and SPARC but there is so much more at Sun Microsystems.   If you worked for Sun during its peak, it was quite the company to work for.  As my oldest son John, who works for Sun as a Campus Ambassador, told me this morning, "Sun had quite a ride."  Yes, it was a great ride!

Who knows how this will all shake it out, but at this time I am reminded of the old phrase, "You can not adjust the wind, you can only adjust your sails...."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Both Dennis and I had the privilege of jointly working for three great SE Directors - Joy Warfield,  Brad Kirley and Sue Walls who all showed great leadership and courage.  Most importantly, Joy, Brad and Sue firmly believed in the Sun mantra "work hard and play hard".   In the "play hard" vein, Dennis and I have pulled countless pranks on each other and have teamed up with others on some very memorable April Fools Goofs as well.  There is not enough space on all the sundc servers to talk about all of those.   We were very fortunate that during that time we had the best HR person of all time in John Gardner.  John clearly understood the importance of office chemistry and its affect on employee productivity and morale.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A week from today, on April 22nd, we are having a:

Identity Management Road Show in Dallas

Need to move your business beyond compliance?

         Find out how from the leaders in Identity Management.

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

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

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

The Idea Factory That Spawned the Internet Turns 50

Below is a snippet from Stephen Barr's article:

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

                  Will you change their platform priorities?

                             Absolutely not.

                 Why not?

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

 

 

Above is my last slide that I left with them. 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As a Sun employee, last Tuesday night was priceless. 

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

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

 

My all time favorite comment in the Unix kernel is:

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

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

 

 

As Neil Groundwater recently told me:

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

From: Dennis Ritchie <dmr@alice.att.com>
Date: 2 Apr 92 09:34:24 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill NJ

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

 

 

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

 
 

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

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

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

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

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

 

The first day I knew Sun was dead serious about Software was Monday August 29th, 2005.   Of course Sun has always been extremely dedicated to the Developer and the operating system.  This commitment goes back to Sun's founding on February 24th, 1982.  Outside of the Developer and the Operating System,  we never had a tremendous investment in application software.  This made sense because of our strong Partner Network.

 So what was it about Monday August 29th, 2005 that made me change my mind?   This was the day that Sun Microsystems hired Dave Profozich.   Dave came from a 20 year background in software and was a well known author of "Managing Change - with Business Process Simulation".

 

The reason this was so significant is because it clearly demonstrated to Sun employees that we are going outside of Sun to hire top individuals with significant software experience.   The second day was in April 24th, 2006.    That was the day when Scott McNealy turned the reins over to Jonathan Schwartz.  Jonathan came to Sun via a software acquisition and gained fame at Sun with his fresh and creative look at Sun's software stack.

 When I met Dave Profozich on that day in August of  2005, I told him that he picked a perfect time to come to Sun Microsystems.  I went on to tell him that he will be a hero or a zero depending on the strength of his Partner program.   He delivered, and today we have a very strong Partner Program in the Americas.

 Dave Profozich is  Sun's Vice President of Sun's Americas Software Practice.

I should also state that I highly recommend his book  (plus I get $1 per book sold, since I work for the guy, just kidding :-)   This book takes an interesting look at using simulation software to manage change.  My favorite Chapters are 1 and 5.  Chapter 1 is  titled Battling a Random World.  The chapter starts out with a quote by George Bernard Shaw, "The power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those who have not got it."   This quote is even more powerful today.   This chapter provides real life examples on how to think about this challenge.

 Chapter 5 is titled, Competing and Neighboring Technologies.  This chapter also starts off with a quote that certainly stands the test of time by Homer.  The quote by Homer is "It is not possible to fight beyond your strength, even if you survive."    Chapter 5 is extremely rich with great examples discussing optimization technology,  scheduling technology, simulation based scheduling, business diagramming, CAD systems, workflow management, and ERP systems.

Even if you are not considering simulation software, I highly would recommend this book because it helps the reader understand the right way to think about managing change.

In today's Washington Post Business Section  there is an excellent article by Rob Pegoraro - the Personal Technology Columnist, titled,  "Draconian Windows Watchers".

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

John Meyer hosts these two April Fools Day Goofs. 

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                        Larry Hambly
                                        Vice President
                                        Enterprise Services


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

                                        Bill Joy
                                        Sun Co-Founder
                                        Employee #6

 

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

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


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

                                        Steve Jobs


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

                                        Scott McNealy
                                        Sun CEO
                                        Sun Co-Founder
                                        Employee #3


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


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

                                        Alan V. Greenspan


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

                                        Andy Bechtolscheim
                                        Sun Co-Founder and
                                        Employee #1


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

                                        Vinod Khosla
                                        Sun Co-Founder
                                        Employee #2

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

                                        Dr. Marc Tremblay
                                        Chief Architect MAJC
                                        Distinguished Engineer


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

                                        Crawford Beveridge
                                        Chief HR/CR Officer


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


                                        William Jefferson Clinton
                                        Former President of the USA


        "The SunCLONE ONE goes to 11."


                                        Nigel Tufnel
                                        Lead Guitarist
                                        Spinal Tap
 

Sun CloneONE Headquarters



 

 

Without question, the most popular internal site at Sun Microsystems (this is quantified by both the numbers and the internal employee surveys is OneStop.  Mike Briggs, Principal Engineer and Robert Holt do a fantastic job creating the perfect online technical community.  Mike and Robert discuss what OneStop is as well as what the Secret Sauce is behind OneStop.   Mike and Robert give me credit for suggesting that they start blogging about OneStop, but the idea behind me suggesting this comes from the fact that I know there are many Sun customers who have been shown OneStop by a Sun employee and the customer response is always the same:  "This is GREAT!"

 I would encourage any Sun customer to check out what Mike or Robert are doing with OneStop and to drop them a comment if you want to learn more about how they run OneStop - it literally is the first and last place most Sun employees go to for information.  It is run by Mike and Robert with over 300 all-volunteer army of authors.

 Inside Sun Microsystems, the sentence, "have you tried OneStop" is the morale equivalent of RTFM! :-)

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

Why the name Edstrom Photons-Electrons?

If you are in the computer industry and you understand photons, electrons and how the two interact, everything else is either an abstraction exercise or just an implementation detail .  OK, perhaps an oversimplification :-)  but give me a chance to explain.

Since today is the first day of Spring, let's take a break from computers and use two examples that everyone thinks about in the spring – baseball and car engines  (outdoor car shows with open hoods) – using physics to explain the Photons-Electrons name.

One of the books that I highly recommend (I have no financial interest here) is a book by Ricki Linksman, M.Ed. called "How To Learn Anything Quickly".  In this book Ricki Linksman has a survey that will tell you what type of learning style works best or you.  I learned a number of things about myself that has absolutely helped me in learning new subjects.   I came out as a kinesthetic right-brain type of learning style. 

So, how does this tie back into photons and electrons?  The two things I think about with new topics are UTAF and DTM (not from the book referenced above).  UTA is Understand The Architecture First and DTM is Do The Math .

Photons-Electrons in the context of  baseball and engines from a physics viewpoint.

When you coach kids in baseball the number one thing any young player wants is to get a hit.  Not a bunt, not an error, but an out of the infield, honest to god hit.  When you are coaching kids - the most important thing you must do is SIMPLIFY THE TASK.

Hitting a baseball becomes a physics lesson.  You need to explain to the young player (and sometimes to the parents) that the most important aspect in hitting a baseball is bat speed - form is actually second.  You must explain the physics of the bat being swung is 1/2 mass times velocity squared.  In other words, the speed of the bat is four times more important than the weight of the bat.  So, how do you know if the bat is too heavy?  You have the young player grab the bat at the very end and hold it in one hand straight out for 7 seconds.  If they are leaning backwards or shaking while they are doing this exercise, then clearly the bat is too heavy and you need a lighter bat.

 

The second key point from a physics standpoint in baseball is getting your hips into the swing.  You
tell the young player that as they swing the bat, pretend there is a bug is below their rear foot and
to CRUSH THE BUG HARD as they swing.  This will get their hips into the swing. 

 

The third key point you see above is to make sure the player extends their arms fully when they swing and meet the
ball with the bat being level to the ground.  This again is a physics lesson - you lose tremendous
amounts of power by having the arms bent when you meet the ball.

 Finally, make sure the player has the right grip on the bat.  The players door knocking knuckles should be lined up as in the picture below.  Why?  Because this will be the proper hand position when they hit the ball.  They might complain that it feels uncomfortable at first, but it is the right way to grip a bat.  Special thanks to my middle son Michael for demonstrating the correct baseball techniques in the above photos.


Of course there are other important points to hitting, but these first few are what will give
a young player success.  At least it worked with my three boys :-)

Let me give a second example horsepower.  Horsepower is calculated as:

        (torque times RPM) divided by 5,252

What is torque? Torque is twisting force.  In the above formula, imagine a one pound weight that is one foot from a pivot.  If we rotate this one full circle we have done 6.2832 foot-pounds of work (pi * the 2 foot circle).

Everyone knows RPM is Revolutions Per Minute

Why divide by 5,252?  James Watt said the average horse could lift 550 pounds a one foot distance in once second.  Since we are talking about RPM, we multiply 550 time 60 and we find that a horse can do 33,000 of foot-pounds of work in a minute.  When
we divide 33,000 foot-pounds of work in minute by 6.2832 we get 5,252.

        bc
        scale=10
        33000/6.2832
        5252.1008403361


Stated another way, if we have one-pound of torque at 5,252 RPM it is equal to 33,000 foot pounds per minute aka Watt's mythical horse.

Why does this matter?  Because torque and horsepower curve will always cross at 5,252 RPM.  Also, you can now discuss with your friends why it is possible to have an engine that has a lot of torque, but not great horsepower.  You can pontificate on the technical torque differences between Harley-Davidsons and Suzukis. 

For example, the engine below (a picture of my 98 Corvette's engine) is reported as having a pretty flat torque curve from 1,600 RPM to 5,000 RPM with the maximum torque coming in at 5,300 RPM according to different articles I have read.

 
 

This is  why it can be very handy to memorize to horsepower and torque calculations so that when the car salesman blurts out:

        "This engine is 430 horsepower."

You then will follow up with the natural follow-on questions:

        "At what RPM was that calculated? When does the torque curve flatten out?"

This is why you should always tell the car salesman that you want to see the torque/horsepower curve printouts before you buy any car.

So, IMHO, photons are the big picture and electrons the key aspects of any topic and how they interact is what is most important and that is where I came up with the name of the blog....

I guess I should address who I am, why I started blogging second and later this week I will discuss where the name Edstrom_Photons-Electrons came from.

Who is Dave Edstrom?   I am a Technical Director at Sun and Chief Technologist for Americas Software Practice.    On May 4th, I will celebrate my 20th anniversary with Sun.  I started in the computer industry in the fall of 1978 programming in assembler on a Honeywell 2080A mainframe using punch cards for the US Government.

 

Why did I start blogging at Sun?  John Clingan started calling my mother at home and on her cellphone making derogatory statements about my family tree because I was not blogging.  When John started working his way up the family tree attacking my deceased Grandparents, Melvin and Dora Thompson of Zumbrota, Minnesota,   my mother called pleading with me to start blogging so John would stop hounding her.  Thanks John :-)    A serious thanks to the Sun employees who answered my beginner questions on blogging.

Seriously, John Clingan was very encouraging.  What was intimidating to me was the high quality of the Sun blogs. The real catalyst for blogging was Catalyst.  I was in Pittsburgh a week ago and I remembered the book below.

 

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

 

A catalog of

third-party referrral software

and hardware 

from Sun Microsystems 

 

Catalyst

   Spring 1985 


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

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

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


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