There is a new map of the Sun Campus Ambassadors on the Sun Developer Network site. There are over 500 of these guys, and the list promises to grow dramatically next year.
Thursday May 15, 2008
Wednesday May 14, 2008
First look: OpenSolaris 2008.05 a work in progress: "The most impressive aspect of OpenSolaris is the installation
experience, which is painless, intuitive, and easily on par with Ubuntu
and Fedora." -- Ryan Paul, Ars Technica
I agree. And this is a big deal for regular people like me (non-engineering types, I mean). When I started on the OpenSolaris project four years ago, I could not install the pre-Solaris 10 builds, and I struggled with subsequent versions of Solaris Express. I always had to get help. Solaris was always for pretty high end people, but that's all changed now. Actually, the install has been pretty easy for about a year now, but with OpenSolaris 2008.05 so many other things just work. Beautiful.
I agree. And this is a big deal for regular people like me (non-engineering types, I mean). When I started on the OpenSolaris project four years ago, I could not install the pre-Solaris 10 builds, and I struggled with subsequent versions of Solaris Express. I always had to get help. Solaris was always for pretty high end people, but that's all changed now. Actually, the install has been pretty easy for about a year now, but with OpenSolaris 2008.05 so many other things just work. Beautiful.
It's great to see the Sun community offering resources to help
the people affected by the natural disasters in Myanmar and China.
Sun's relief drive is year round, of course, but there are two
immediate needs. Those who are far away watching these horrible events
unfold need not feel helpless. Financial contributions are the best way
help to get food, medicine, and supplies into the hands of rescue
workers. Also, as employees contribute, the Sun Microsystems Foundation
has a matching funds program. All the best to everyone out there. And
remember, these things can happen to anyone, anywhere, any time.
Tuesday May 13, 2008
Check this out -- Beijing OpenSolaris User Group 16th Meeting (May 20th, 2008). The Beijing OpenSolaris User Group is doing a joint meeting with the Beijing Linux User Group to hear
a preso from Louis Suarez-Potts on OpenOffice. Cool. Nice to see the communities collaborating more and more like this.
The OpenSolaris community in Japan
will hold a launch event for OpenSolaris 2008.05 here in Tokyo on
Friday May 23rd -- OpenSolaris
2008.05 リリース記念セミナー. The event will be led by Sun's Globalization
engineers, Ohsone-san and Hasegawa-san, as well as Ohta-san and Sato-san from OpenNSUG/OSUG.
Sumitomo Electric in Japan is switching 15,000 desktops to OpenOffice
-- 住友電工が
OpenOffice.orgを採用. Cool. I wonder who loses out on that deal? More
importantly, I'm hearing about more of these corporate deployments here
in Japan, so the OpenOffice community must be strong and growing here.
Monday May 12, 2008
Very interesting. A little Japanese inside China -- [i18n-discuss] Solaris Teacher Training and Sun University Tour- Dalian.
Next time I visit China, I have to spend some time in Dalian to explore
this China-Japan connection. I first read about this in a Tom Friedman column, but it's not talked about that much here in Japan. Gotta check it out.
Nice to see the Sun blogging policy evolving -- Sun Guidelines on Public Discourse. Linda Skrocki has all the details.
With thousands of Sun employees blogging and participating openly in public forums these last four years, it's amazing to see the
quality standards remaining so high. We in the OpenSolaris community
can learn from Sun's blogging experience. In fact, at the OpenSolaris
Summit last week we discussed this issue a bit, and I think the OGB
will be driving for set of guidelines on list participation.
Sunday May 11, 2008
Great article in Newsweek from Fareed Zakaria -- The Rise of the Rest
-- about how large chunks of the world are dramatically improving and
growing significantly in an era of ever reducing violence. Finally. A
positive view of globalization, and one distinctly lacking all the fear
about the US falling to second class (or even third class) economic
status (which is nothing more than propaganda). The gloom-and-doomers
and isolationists in the US are an obviously and obnoxiously vocal
minority, and they will miss this positive view because it's actually
based on embracing the entire world with that nasty word --
immigration. Zakaria says that "the potential for a new burst of
American productivity depends not on our education system or R&D
spending, but on our immigration policies. If these people are allowed
and encouraged to stay, then innovation will happen here. If they
leave, they'll take it with them."
Can You Become a Creature of New Habits?: "Whenever we initiate change, even a positive one, we activate fear in
our emotional brain. If the fear is big
enough, the fight-or-flight response will go off and we’ll run from
what we’re trying to do. The small steps in kaizen don’t set off fight
or flight, but rather keep us in the thinking brain, where we have
access to our creativity and playfulness." -- New York Times on M. J. Ryan, author of the 2006 book “This Year I Will...”
Take one step at a time. And small steps are best. The tiny, continuous improvements add up, though, and this is actually a very efficient way to just get things done and better in the process. Kaizen.
Take one step at a time. And small steps are best. The tiny, continuous improvements add up, though, and this is actually a very efficient way to just get things done and better in the process. Kaizen.
You catch that Fortune article -- You
have 7 years to learn Mandarin
-- about China surpassing the United
States economically in seven years? Whether it's seven years or fifty
doesn't really matter, I suppose, since people will be arguing
about how to measure this for a while. And the measurements themselves
are changing, it seems. How convenient. Whatever. I think it's cool
either way because it offers new opportunities, and that´s what I´m
after. In fact, aside from the word freedom, I can´t think of another
word that describes Americans better than the word opportunity. Can you?
But Fortune seems defensive. We are supposed to "worry" about this, and we are told that American individuals "can avoid competition with Chinese workers by doing place-based work, which ranges in value from highly skilled (emergency-room surgery) to menial (pouring concrete). But the many people who do information-based work, which is most subject to competition, will have to get dramatically better to be worth what they cost. For government leaders: Improve U.S. education above all."
The first part of that paragraph is ridiculous. You can't "avoid competition" in a global economy, and I´m not "worrying" at all. Why not embrace the change as an opportunity? In fact, wouldn't be cool to live in China for a bit to check all this out first hand? Wouldn´t it be cool to learn some Chinese and interact with Chinese from their perspective for a while? I don´t see very many people in the US thinking this way about the rise of China (and India, for that matter, and some other emerging markets around the world, too). In fact, Sin-Yaw Wang has it right when he comments about the Fortune piece: "The new generation of business leaders, now in their 20s or 40s, must learn to do business in China and with Chinese. 7 years is not that long to master a language, especially when one is not even trying." I agree. And I´m reading this view (the not trying bit) over and over again. It´s defensive. Oh, well. I suppose that´s an opportunity for those who see it differently, right?
But Fortune seems defensive. We are supposed to "worry" about this, and we are told that American individuals "can avoid competition with Chinese workers by doing place-based work, which ranges in value from highly skilled (emergency-room surgery) to menial (pouring concrete). But the many people who do information-based work, which is most subject to competition, will have to get dramatically better to be worth what they cost. For government leaders: Improve U.S. education above all."
The first part of that paragraph is ridiculous. You can't "avoid competition" in a global economy, and I´m not "worrying" at all. Why not embrace the change as an opportunity? In fact, wouldn't be cool to live in China for a bit to check all this out first hand? Wouldn´t it be cool to learn some Chinese and interact with Chinese from their perspective for a while? I don´t see very many people in the US thinking this way about the rise of China (and India, for that matter, and some other emerging markets around the world, too). In fact, Sin-Yaw Wang has it right when he comments about the Fortune piece: "The new generation of business leaders, now in their 20s or 40s, must learn to do business in China and with Chinese. 7 years is not that long to master a language, especially when one is not even trying." I agree. And I´m reading this view (the not trying bit) over and over again. It´s defensive. Oh, well. I suppose that´s an opportunity for those who see it differently, right?
Stephen Hahn, Bart Smaalders, and Danek Duvall talk about the new OpenSolaris Image Packaging System
that enables users and developers to get the software they need when
they need it. IPS is also a new tool for community growth as
developers around the world build and maintain packages and contribute
the software to the network repository. To contribute, go to the IPS project.
David Stewart is back on YouTube -- OpenSolaris on Xeon video, Episode 2 - Saving Power
-- talking about how to improve power management, which is certainly a
good thing for a world using way too much juice. If you want to
contribute to this effort, go to the Tesla Enhanced Power Management Project and also the OpenSolaris Intel project.
Saturday May 10, 2008
At the 49 second mark of this YouTube clip -- Sun Headline News: CommunityOne 2008
-- you'll see me, Bonnie Corwin, and Shawn Walker sitting together at
the OpenSolaris keynote on Monday. That's cool. I remember the guy
pointing his camera at us. But what gets me is this: there was
practically no light in the audience at all. How did that camera pick
up so much detail under those conditions? Amazing. Anyway, I also saw a
quick shot of Michelle Olson, and Peter Tribble actually gets a little
talking role at the end. Thanks to Bill Rushmore for pointing out the
video.
Elite Korean Schools, Forging Ivy League Skills and South Korea's Top Students:
"It is 10:30 p.m. and students at the elite Daewon prep school here are
cramming in a study hall that ends a 15-hour school day. A window is
propped open so the evening chill can keep them awake. One teenager
studies standing upright at his desk to keep from dozing. Kim
Hyun-kyung, who has accumulated nearly perfect scores on her SATs, is
multitasking to prepare for physics, chemistry and history exams. 'I
can’t let myself waste even a second,' said Ms. Kim, who dreams of
attending Harvard, Yale or another brand-name American college." -- New
York Times.
Can't waste even a second, eh? Humm. I wasted a lot of seconds when I was in school. Mostly on sports, but a lot in school, too. Oh, well. I'm working hard now. Next life I'll start a bit earlier.
Can't waste even a second, eh? Humm. I wasted a lot of seconds when I was in school. Mostly on sports, but a lot in school, too. Oh, well. I'm working hard now. Next life I'll start a bit earlier.
On Visit to Japan, China's Hu Has No Time for Old Grudges:
"China has become Japan's largest trading partner, with the trade
volume between the two nations at $236 billion last year. More than
20,000 Japanese companies operate in China, many of them selling
precision equipment and industrial materials that are essential to its
export-driven boom." -- Washington Post.
20,000.
20,000.
Thursday May 08, 2008
Open Source at Sun Microsystems, 2008:
"No other major IT platform vendor has committed so much of its core
assets to the open-source software model as Sun Microsystems.
Certainly, companies such as IBM, Oracle and BEA Systems have
dramatically expanded their own open-source strategies in recent years,
but only Sun has literally open-sourced nearly the entire family of
products — that is, its intellectual property (IP) — from its operating
system to Java." -- Gartner
FOSS at Sun. It's a lot.
FOSS at Sun. It's a lot.
Nice to see OpenSolaris 2008.05 already moving in China. Two blogs from Sun's Qingye John Jiang: OpenSolaris 2008.05 in Retrospect (see Chinese version here) and Photos from the Installfest (in Chinese and English). If you are familiar with the OpenSolaris activities in China, you know
that it has been an utterly amazing year there -- especially on
universities. But now that Indiana is out there as a product, I have a
feeling that the China OpenSolaris community is going to actually
increase its growth rate. Also, the OpenSolaris community in China is
now directly interacting with the community in the U.S., Europe, and
India and people all over the are noticing this development. A quote
from John's blog: "20 years ago, there were less than 50 universities
in China that had a
computer science department, while this number exceeds 800 in 2008."
Wednesday May 07, 2008
OpenSolaris 2008.05 took
center stage at CommunityOne yesterday. I just walked around and took
photos and talked to people all day. The buzz was palpable. Congratulations to
everyone involved in bringing this distribution to life. New users go to opensolaris.com
along with those interested in developing applications for the
operating system, and developers interested in working on the system
itself and many other related projects go to opensolaris.org.
Monday May 05, 2008
Here are a few more images from the 2008 OpenSolaris Summit this weekend in Santa Cruz. The summit was an excellent event. Many good sessions, but even more importantly, it was fantastic meeting all the people around the world I've been dealing with for four years now. Check in on the summit wiki in the next couple of weeks because the presos will be posted there.
Sunday May 04, 2008
I finally made it to the OpenSolaris Summit in Santa Cruz. These are
just some warm up shots from the bar last night. I got in late so I didn't get everyone who was there, but everyone will show up here at one point or another. The conference starts
today and runs through tomorrow. Should be fun ...
Friday May 02, 2008
Fascinating piece about this guy Li Yang teaching "Crazy English"
to huge crowds of people in China. His technique is rather unique, but
I can see how it may have significant benefits for anyone learning
another language as an adult. The larger language issue in China,
though, is illustrated by this utterly amazing quote from the article:
"Linguists estimate the number of Chinese now studying or speaking
English at between two hundred million and three hundred and fifty
million, a figure that’s on the order of the population of the United
States." Just think about that. Just think about how that changes
things in the future with language barriers beginning to melt away and
what means for global communications and global economics. Also,
Ampontan has a detailed analysis of the article that's well worth reading and adds some interesting context from Japan.
Thursday May 01, 2008
Catch Intel's David Stewart on YouTube -- OpenSolaris & Intel Xeon Processors: Episode 1. More videos coming. More engineering info at the OpenSolaris Intel project.
I put the OpenSolaris Summit and CommunityOne graphics on the front page of the Advocacy Community Group.
Need to do something with all the photos we have, though. We have more
than 4,000 images of community members on Flickr now. It would be nice
get them on the ACG pages in some way.
Nice to see the shirts and hats and kits arrive in India -- BOSUG Meeting April 2008. Those guys had the biggest shipment of all the UGs. Can't wait to go back to India ...
Wednesday Apr 30, 2008
Jesse sent around a new graphic for the OpenSolaris Developer Summit ... very nice.
I'm planning the first OpenSolaris Fishbowl at the OpenSolaris Summit. That's how we are going to run the Advocacy panel.
If it doesn't work out, I'll just blame Simon. It was his idea. But I'm
sure this will be very cool, and I'm jazzed to try it. Background here. Summit info here. I've seen only one Fishbowl way back at a Jini community meeting.
It was excellent. I'll have to moderate this one, though, so that may
be challenging. But I believe in the concept, so I'll get into it.
Earlier this morning (well, my morning), the OpenSolaris Governing
Board voted to approve the Website Community Group proposal. This is
good news. We are making progress in small steps on the website itself,
and now we'll have a CG to be home for website development and content
projects. Background here, here, here. We'll get this set up in the next couple of weeks.
Tuesday Apr 29, 2008
Well, it seems it's more than just a panel, eh? Barton has all the details -- GNU/Linux Distro Smack Down! Only at CommunityOne. Should be a lot of fun.
Update: Here are the guys from the panel last week:
Karsten Wade, Fedora; Barton George, Sun (moderator); Glynn Foster, OpenSolaris; Jono Bacon, Ubuntu; Zonker Brockmeier, OpenSUSE.
We are only a few days away from CommunityOne in San Francisco.
This year's show promises to be bigger and more diverse than the
inaugural event last year. There will be dozens and dozens of sessions
from open source communities around the world. OpenSolaris will have eight technical sessions that will dive deeply into the latest innovations from the Opensolaris community. Don't miss it!
This blog copyright 2008 by jimgris
