Wednesday September 14, 2005
Wednesday September 14, 2005 
Props to Bryan Cantrill
for a well-deserved award. Last week, the MIT Technology
Review awarded Bryan Cantrill a TR35 award, naming Bryan one of the 35
Young Innovators under the age of 35. Bryan was nominated for his work on Solaris 10 with DTrace (which is open source software and is part of the OpenSolaris project. An active OpenSolaris community is found here.) For fun, I dug up some old Slashdot quotes about Solaris DTrace (I'll post the links later):
"DTrace rocks my socks."
- Slashdot user 1359
"Freaking [expletive deleted] on a stick. DTrace might be among the two or three most powerful tools I've ever used."
- Slashdot user 2898
"[Expletive deleted] almighty! It's like they *saw inside my head* and gave me The One True Tool!"
- Slashdot user 159009
I've blogged about Bryan before - no need to wax philosophical now. I will say this, though:
1. Do check out this great podcast interview with Bryan, courtesy of I/O Podcast by Richard Giles, and see why innovation stems from anger.
2. If you've not read Bryan's Observation Deck blog, check out this story titled: Man, myth, legend, and get hooked. Bryan's a gifted storyteller, and he ropes you in and infects with his passion and his voice.
3. Love Stephen O'Grady's comment in his del.icio.us bookmarks about Bryan's aforementioned story:
"anybody remember the scene from Cryptonomicon where Comstock gets hopped up on stimulants to keep up w/ Waterhouse? this is the real life equivalent"
4. Check out the great Bryan quote from Ozan Yigit... it's a classic.
[And, added item#5 on 10/7/05]
5. Here's a Contrarian Minds article about Bryan and DTrace titled No Bad Dogs: How to Make a Dog-Slow System Sit Up and Speak.
Congratulations, Bryan. It's an honor to work with you.
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris
(2005-09-14 01:11:49.0) Permalink Comments [3]
[Updated: #9 and #10 added below.]
I sheepishly admit that ever since we stopped having those Sun Network Conferences, the NC0xQx quarterly product launches have been off my radar screen. Not this one, though. NC05Q3 in New York is very much on my radar screen. And if you get a glimpse of one of the Galaxy boxes I think you'll see why. These boxes are beautiful, from a design perspective. Aesthetically, functionally, environmentally, fiscally and darwinianly beautiful. They're good for business and good for the soul.
I've long been a fan of Top 10 lists. The proof is here. So, while I'll let the geeks comment on the modern matte Sun Fire X2100, X4100 and X4200 servers and the Sun Grid Rack System, I'll put on my marketing hat and share some NC05Q3 favorites from an alternate version of reality:
Top Ten Favorites of the NC05Q3 Launch:
1. Jonathan rings the Closing Bell at NASDAQ in NY. Check out the pics. Was it thrilling, Jonathan?
2. Online collection of rejected ads about ass-whoopin' servers! Somebody had fun with this one. :-)
3. Online library of approved ads. Sweet. And still a bit edgy.
4. Martin Hardee and team's Stunning New Web Pages. In particular - the photo galleries.
5. Some creative soul took to the friendly skies to spread the word. Specifically, and I quote, "Sun hired a plane to fly a "Sun's Got a New x64 Server" banner over the Bay Area. Planes also flew a "Thanks AMD" banner over Austin, Texas, and a "Sun's got a new x64 server. Watch out Dell!" banner over Dell headquarters in Round Rock, Texas." It didn't take long for an email to show up in my inbox from a friend of a friend of a friend who works at Dell - with the picture attached:
6. Postcard greetings (really, invitations) from New York, Silicon Valley and from around the world. You can find them on the NC05Q3 press kit. My favorite - the one "from around the world":
7. Use of the word "hodgepodge" in a Sun press release (specifically in a quote from Jonathan.) I know, I'm not being a big fan of "press release voice" - but I love this word just the same. Shows we're loosening up a bit, huh? I quote:
"Until today, the thought was that a move to an industry-standard platform meant a move toward hot, inefficient servers, with weak management and a hodgepodge of system components. We're here to call an end to that era," said Jonathan Schwartz, chief operating officer and president, Sun Microsystems.
8. As with Laura's Box of Chocolates, amid all the pomp and circumstance about the beautiful boxes, I like this line about OpenSolaris (yeah, yeah, I'm biased...)
And following Sun's recent move to make the source code to the Solaris OS available at opensolaris.org under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL), more than 7,000 users have registered to participate as part of the OpenSolaris community.
[Updated on 9/14/05: #9 and #10 added below.]
9. I like these statues. Does that mean that size does matter? Nah, it's not the size, it's the handwritten scribble of equations that brings to mind late nights of brilliant engineering. (This photo doesn't have the scribbles. Once I find a photo with scribbles I'll replace it.)
10. The centerfold. Check out the horse. "Warning. The following statements contain explicit content. By viewing them, you are making the statement: I am viewing explicit content." See why Bryan calls this "easily the funniest ad in Sun's history."
Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris
(2005-09-14 00:19:25.0) Permalink
