Whatever... [Deepak Alur's Blog]: Deepak Alur's Blog @ Sun

If not for Sun and Unix, I wouldn't be here, not in this country. Let me explain a bit. My first OS was a Unix System V while I was a student. Then, after graduating from my engineering school, I worked for a cool company in India (CMC Limited) for 6 years. During the early 90s, I saw a lot of my friends and colleagues move to the US. I was somewhat reluctant because I loved my job and did not want to move away from friends and family. Or maybe I was just picky. In those days, one of my passions was Unix internals. So after unsuccessfully trying to ship me off abroad, my managers realized there was one thing I wouldn't be able to resist a gig which would have me working on some Solaris stuff. So one day they called me and said, "Hey Deepak, there is an opening for a gig at Sun that might let you work on Solaris related stuff, do you want to go?" I was like, "Did you say Sun & Solaris? Heck! Yeah! ". Within a month I was in California with 200 borrowed dollars in my pocket.

When I reported to work i found out it all wasn't true. Yes, the gig was at Sun, but never mind that it was nowhere near anything Solaris. Fast forward 18 months and I transitioned to become a full-time Sun employee and had a fun 10 years of working in different roles and projects.

I still remember, back then, one of the huge reason and attraction to join Sun for me was being able to work with the smartest, intelligent and highly talented folks at Sun. That still holds today for anyone who is thinking of working at Sun. Sun has to simply be one of the best (if not the best) technology company to work for, and it is not an easy company to leave. But, I must say that now my first act at Sun is completed. As you know, I just completed 10 years of working at Sun in October 2005. I am very proud of reaching this milestone in my career . So, after a somewhat difficult process, I have decided to leave Sun and pursue other opportunities. I resigned from Sun on February 6th and tomorrow is my last day at Sun as an employee.

Over these years, I have met and worked with so many amazing folks at Sun that it is impossible to list the impact that each one of them have had on me. So I thank them all, where ever they are now.

My personal website will still be at www.deepakalur.com on which you will find my background and contact information. My new personal blog is at www.deepakalur.com/blog. This blog at Sun will be available as always but all my future postings will appear on my personal blog.

OK. If you don't think this is cool, you ought to think again

Now, I am no datacenter expert, but do get the opportunity to work with some every now and then. With today's announcement, I wanted to see for myself what the fuss is all about. First I checked out the cool but brief technical chat between John Gage and Marc Tremblay, the Chief Architect of the new UltraSPARC T1 processor. I highly recommend spending 8 minutes to listen to these two guys talk about what's cool about UltraSPARC T1 (click on the "Technical Video". Anyway, while browsing around, one thing caught my eye: a cool Java application to simulate data center configuration by dragging and dropping different rack systems and to see for yourself what the impact of different configuration is on your data center in terms of space, power, cooling, throughput and of course the dollar cost. (Note to the simulator developers: You have to make this tool more visible, link to it from the sidebar on the main page). There is also a power calculator, but that is not as cool as the data center simulator.

Anyway, I just tried to build a data center out of the box and here is the comparative picture.

Now, that is cool! Go see for yourself.

PS: Spanish translations by AltaVista. [No hablo español. Deseo que lo hice.]

DataCenter Architecture UltraSPARC Microprocessor

My son pointed this out to me today about how much a war costs. It is mind boggling to think about this. Take a look for yourself. Source : costofwar.com

Astonishing ways the resources could have been alternatively spent: Paid for 23,570,077 children to attend a year of Head Start. Insured 106,559,360 children for one year. Hired 3,083,967 additional public school teachers for one year. Provided 8,626,826 students four-year scholarships at public universities. Built 1,602,311 additional housing units Fully funded global anti-hunger efforts for 7 years. Fully funded world-wide AIDS programs for 17 years. Ensured that every child in the world was given basic immunizations for 59 years.

Cost Click on image for details.

Life War Peace

OK, chatting online cost me a lot of money this week. But, I am not complaining. I was looking for someone to help clean my rain gutters on my roof which are clogged with so much leaf debris, thanks to some pine trees in my yard. I searched on smartpages.com and found a number of listings around my area. Some listings had links to websites. One website caught my eye. This guy Doug, had listed his AOL IM (AIM) Id online right next to his email and phone numbers on his contact page. I pinged him and started chatting about all the job details, prices and scheduling. I was done in a few minutes of my time and gave him the job all over AIM. And then later we continue chatting, the guy starts talking about Sun and Solaris and AMD and Gateway and Dell. I was like, whoa, this ain't no ordinary gutter guy! This guy was an IT insider before he decided to do something totally different with his skills and start a new business.

I told him one of the reasons he got the job because he was on AIM. I think this guy has figured out how to use technology to gain more business. I wish more people like him adopted this as a customer service tool and published their AIM id along with their phone numbers in the yellow pages and websites. Some big online stores do that with a "Live Chat" feature. But, with the (increasing) ubiquity of internet connectivity it would be great if I can reach my plumber or my electrician or whoever with just a message on AIM. Ding Ding! Ka Ching!

Life AOL IM Chat

I remember this old but cool movie called Powers of Ten, which was an elaborate creation of photographic art based on the work of Ray and Charles Eames. The movie is basically a series of images that scale up or down by a power of 10 to show the continuous connection between the very large (universe) and the very small (atoms or sub-atomic particles). I tracked the official Ray and Charles Eames site at Eames Office which links to this Powers of Ten site which talks about the 9 minute original movie and other related stuff. If you don't want to shell out for the DVD, then be satisfied with this online Java Applet imitation. A couple of years ago someone had emailed me that link which I rediscovered today. This is not the original Powers of Ten, but gets the point across. It's Java, online and free!

Life Universe

So I saw this thing about Sun Bloggers and South Park characters at Geoff's blog. I could not resist giving it a spin. Here is what I ended up with as my very own South Park character. How do I look?
Check out Janina's website to create your own character.

Cartoon Life

Lots of things happen in a cab. I have met some interesting cabbies over the years. OK, and some not so interesting ones as well.

Ok, first it was the chefs. Now, the cabbies are out to get me

On the way to Chicago couple days ago, the cabbie that took me to the airport was an Afghan. He asked me where I was from and I said I am from around here. I knew what he was going to say next:
"No, where are you really from? You must be from India..."
And then he starts blasting Bollywood music on the car stereo. I am like:
"Hello? Can you please turn the volume down? I am getting a call dude."

Inevitably, when I ride cabs in the bay area and most indian/afghan cab drivers around here take one look at me and start playing the latest Indian movie songs. But, I am not really into new indian movie music. I might sometimes enjoy some oldies and ghazals. But who's asking.

But the wierdest cabbie encounter happened to me a few months ago when I traveled to Chicago (coincidentally). This guy turned out to be an evangelical cabbie, a kind I hadn't met until then. And he was one rude evangelical cabbie. Halfway there, he started a casual conversation with me and out of the blue he asked me:
"Have you accepted Jesus Christ into your life?"
I was a bit dumb founded. So I staggered a bit and said:
"Err...no. What do you mean?"
He said: "Do you believe Jesus is the Christ?"
I said: "I don't know. I am not a christian if that is what you are asking."
He kept blabbering on about this and that and when we reached the hotel he got a bit agitated and angrily said: "If you don't accept Jesus Christ as your savior you are going to hell!"

Boy, was I glad to get out of his cab or what? No tips for you, nasty cabbie! He scared the bejesus out of me!

Life Taxi

Now, is this innovative or what... a $100 Laptop?? According to MIT Media Lab, this $100 Laptop will be a Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop, with a rear projecting the image on a flat screen or by using electronic ink. Totally cool. I wish I had one when I was a kid. But before you start wanting one, read this:

Please note: these laptops are not in production. They are not—and will not—be available for purchase by individuals.

Check it out. I think its a cool idea.
Technology Life

If this isn't an example of misdirected use of technology, then I am not sure what is? What prompts such an invention? Is there really a market for this? Who knows. Anyway, if the guy forgets to do the laundry, will the dirty laundry keep piling up? Because, the machine is inoperable unless we alternate the user. So will she be left with more dirty laundry than usual? From the article:

"Spain is changing a lot, and I wanted to come up with an invention to enable men to do more around the home."

This ain't funny.

"Some men may disagree that it is a good present for Father's Day and argue that it is more of a gift for the lady of the house."

Some men? Some? Men? I wonder which men agree it is a good Father's Day present. I hope this invention stays in Spain.
My prediction: has excellent potential to become a relationship killer inducing more / faster break-ups. It's a Breakup Machine, Eh?

Humor

If you liked the Project Lifecycle cartoon, you are going to love this. While entertaining myself by reviewing the list of referrers to my blog, I happened to find this, which has lots ot work related cartoons. I found one which looks like an older version of the Project Life Cycle cartoon I posted earlier.
Enjoy!

Cartoon

Are Carpools designed by sadists? I think so. Carpools are just plain evil!

I live in the SF bay area. Today I was driving from Palo Alto to Milpitas and after I got on to Highway 237, I began crawling in the middle lane with traffic barely moving for almost 8 miles. And then on my left, I see this wide open car pool lane, with just an occassional car or two whizzing by. What the ding?!! 25-30% of the lanes are reserved during peak time for who now? This makes no sense. I see countless cars in my lane and the lane to my right all barely moving and the lane on the left is empty! So I think carpools are evil and a waste of thousands of hours, because:

• Carpools take anywhere between 30%-25% of the available lanes.
• Number of cars using carpool lanes is a miniscule fraction of total cars in all lanes at the time.
• This means a majority of the people who are stuck in regular lanes are stuck to provide incentive to this miniscule population.
• The majority of the cars are stalling and guzzling gas to let a few handful vehicles have the luxury of breezing through for 4 peak hours of traffic.
• A majority of us cannot carpool. It is impractical to arrange a carpool unless you live and work with your carpool partner!
• I don't think the Carpool lanes are encouraging carpooling. I haven't seen any increase in the number of cars using the carpool lanes.
• Most carpoolers are not really carpoolers by design, but by accident.
• Carpools are un-American and anti-democratic.

Bottomline, Carpools are an unjustifiable failure that waste lots of gas and lots of productive worker hours.

There is only one way to like carpool lanes. If you are driving in it. Or if the car is in the pool!

Life Carpool Humor

Is Apple being silly or what ? I had not heard of this upcoming book, and even if I did I probably would not have paid much attention to it. Until I saw this and this today. Apple pulled Wiley books off their shelf despite the author and publisher saying that there is nothing negative about Steve Jobs or Apple in this book. I think this silly move by Apple is going to make this book a best-seller. This book is now on my list to buy now. There is probably more to this story. I am intrigued. What gives?

Books

Effective, Yes. Fun? Perhaps. Safe? Not sure.
There may not be a better way to get clobbered in a sports bar!
That is, if you get caught first!

Humor Gadget

First, Cookie Monster went vegan! What next? Count Von Count counting Big Bird's calorie intake? No. It's only that
PBS is going commercial. They are launching a new channel called PBS Kids Sprout on Comcast. While the On-Demand feature looks interesting (access any show anytime), it seems to be more mainstream commercial than the regular PBS Kids channels we are used to. Atleast according to the media reports.

According to this column:

...public television executives say the advertising will all be very low-key. Commercials will run only between programs.

Huh?? Does that mean we won't get to see Cookie Monster gulping down a Diet Coke during the show.

And this article from Washington Post says:

PBS programming would not have commercials "in the traditional sense"; it will, however, include about the same dose of sponsorship spots as other PBS fare. They will be targeted at parents and caregivers, not children, and will appear only between programs, said PBS spokeswoman Stephanie Aaronson.

Note to self: Time to join Campaign for Commercial-Free Childhood.

Life Humor Kids

Don't you hate being stereotyped? I do, anywhere anytime.

This time, I think the restaurant chefs are out to get me! They want to find out how spicy I can eat, because they hear Indians can eat very spicy food with ease and delight. So this is exactly what happens to me in some restaurants and especially in ethnic restaurants. And especially if I am new to that restaurant.

When I find a new restaurant, I really really want to check it out. So, when I get my food, I find that they made it the spiciest they can, without checking with me first! And then hand it to me with a big smile and say what I have now heard many times in many places:

"I made it extra spicy for you!"

And I am like:

"What the...Oh no! I hate friggin extra spicy! Spicy is ok, but extra spicy? Darn!"

Of course, I do not say that aloud to them, because I might want to come back there again. So nowadays while ordering my food, I ask them upfront to go easy on the extra spicy.

On the plus side, spicy food does have potential benefits. Check out Kormatherapy! ^Korma
Hmm...Maybe I am shouldn't be complaining after all!
Todd Fast points out Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages, which provides a detailed look at each of over a hundred spices.

---

Programmer's Kormatherapy

Now, let me draw a parallel lesson in software development from the afore mentioned experience. If in the above anecdote, I substitute as follows:

• Replace Chef with Programmer
• Replace Diner with Customer
• Replace Food with Code
• Replace Spices with Features

Now i wonder how often programmers produce code with extra/excessive features than what the customer really asked for in the first place. For instance, if customer asks for a feature set {A, B, C} and the programmer churns out {A, B, C, D, E}, would the customer be delighted? Probably, if {A, B, C} were implemented to meet the requirements. However, a more likely scenario is that the programmer churns out {A, X, Y} because {X, Y} is what the programmer thinks the customer asked for when they described {B, C}. But a more interesting reason might turn out to be the wanderlust programmer implementing {X, Y}, which seem a lot more fun than implementing boring old {B, C} !

YouRIt: Programming Life

I have a problem with this study by Danish researchers. Looks like you can pass off anything nowadays as research and the media is eager to buy it as such. I would just plain ignore this Danish research. Nothing in this report says indicates that mobiles are any more safer now. Yet, I heard it on the BBC Radio News and read on their website here that mobiles are now 'safe'. My problem is that the study is not conclusive in any way. But the reporter on BBC last night and their website headlines claim that they are now 'safe'. Some observations on this research:

• they only "talked" to around 1000 people. That is statistically insignificant!
• they want more data because technology has been around only for a few years. Huh?
• they questioned the survey candidates and checked their phone bills to ensure that they were provided with accurate data. What no trust?
• they do not resolve any previous questions on safety. So much for this friggin study!

To top it off, the Danish Researcher leading this study, one Dr. Christoffer Johansen says:

"We advise all people who use a mobile phone to use a hands free set. It reduces exposure."

Ya, Sure. That's some advise I can live with. Thanks, Doc. Where did you go to school BTW? You might want to read How Cell Phone Radiation Works when you get a chance.

On a more serious note, I think this IEEE Spectrum report from August 2000 on this topic is much more detailed and credible. If you want to check your cell phone radiation level, go here and there.

If you thought open source is only for software, think again. I came across Open Source Yoga Unity which is a nonprofit organization to oppose the litigious position Bikram Choudhury is taking against the Yoga community by his attempted enforcement of copyright protection. I never thought Yoga could be copyrighted. But it seems that Bikram has done exactly that. Then I saw this article in CIO Insight that says:

...Recognizing the value of this lucrative practice, Choudhury did what many smart businesspeople and software-industry entrepreneurs have done: He protected his intellectual-property rights by declaring on his Web site in February, 2003, that his yoga routine, called "Bikram's Basic Yoga System" or simply "Bikram Yoga" was copyrighted and trademarked. ...(read full)

Time for me to copyright walking, breathing, running, jogging, ...sigh.

Do your customers ever tell you that what you deliver is not what they asked for ? Always? Well, this explains it all. My colleague Girish Ippadi sent me this picture I could not resist sharing. We don't know who created this, so if anyone knows, I would be happy to credit the creative artist who came up with this. Enjoy!

Yes! I couldn't believe it. But, I stumbled across this in Blogoworld... Just been reading it for the last couple of days and it seems like a very honest and open commentary on his daily life.

Hmmm...do you know if this is authentic or some blogger just taking me for a ride ?

[Update 3/28/05-3:30 PM Pacific Time]

Turns out it is a hoax afterall, thanks to one anonymous comment (below) for enlightening me ... Man, the blog really had me for a while. Anyway, according to this NY Times article (Note: requires NYT login/registration), this blog is said to be a hoax. Quote from the article:

"To some who remember Mr. Clinton playing the saxophone on ''The Arsenio Hall Show,'' such high jinks may have seemed plausible, if a bit odd. Likewise his ruminations on his travels, his marriage and Senator John Kerry's presidential candidacy. Delve more deeply into the postings at billclintondailydiary.blogspot.com, at once thoughtful, educated and down home, and only one conclusion can be drawn: it's a hoax."

Was an interesting read while it lasted. If you still want to check it out... [End Update]
the hoax blog is at: http://billclintondailydiary.blogspot.com/

Here is a nice article titled How Open Source Is Special by Mitch Kapor. Without restating what Mitch states in his article, I agree with the drawbacks especially when you come across a new open source project that seems to address your needs. For example, a while ago, when I was looking for a Swing based diagramming/graphing and visualization components/framework to use, I found several : JGraph, JUNG, and Prefuse to name a few. I played around with all of them for quite sometime before settling on JGraph. But as I started getting deeper into it, I started facing some of the drawbacks Mitch discusses. However, JGraph has improved a lot since I first started using it and has since gained that reputation (another of Mitch's point), and has developed good responsive community infrastructure (yet another of Mitch's necessities for success) supporting its adoption. On the benefit side, I did not have to write my own graphing framework from scratch! That's huge. I just picked JGraph as one personal example, but the same issues and aspects are applicable to any open source project. You can read Mitch's article for full details because he summarizes lots of things about OpenSource in a very concise manner.
Quick and nice suggested read.

So, you have a blog, but, who are you?
If your blog does not indicate who you are and what you are all about, this is for you, O anonymous blogger!

OK, I do understand that you can choose to be anonymous, that is one of the aspects of blogging. [Update: As one reader commented, in many cases, anonymity is justified due to personal and/or political reasons. In other cases...] I find it is frustrating to read your blog without knowing who you are... even (especially) if you are a brilliant writer. I find blogger anomymity very strange, you are writing in public to communicate with your readers, aren't you? On many blogs like yours, I scroll down to the bottom of the page looking for a copyright line hoping to figure out the author's identity. And not everyone has a copyright line. And on many other blogs, I browse the archives hoping I can catch the first blog entry introducing the author. And not everyone has an introductory entry.

Even well-known bloggers display their names on the blogs. Why not you? For example, take a look at Tim Bray's blog. Everyone knows (atleast in Blog world) who Tim is and his website URL (http://www.tbray.org/ongoing) hints at his name. But, what I like on his blog is that he has a link titled author that when clicked clearly communicates who he is. There is another link titled What This Is that clearly states what his blog is about. Why can't you do the same?

So, O wise and famous (to be) anonymous blogger, do me and others a favor. Please forsake your anonymity.
Please tell us who the heck you are (on your blog). The world will be a better place.

Thank You.

Yo! Wazzup! Yo prowlin on the webizzle? Check this tizzy out: da sizzle search engine.

Shizzout!