do it. think it. blog it! ... a twisted world

Thursday Jun 30, 2005

According to this atricle, we at Sun are now into the laptop business. Way cool.... The laptops that we sell are specially designed to let engineers and scientists perform demanding computer tasks away from their desks.
The Sun Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation uses Sun's Sparc microprocessor and lets engineers and system administrators and other users of Sun products to run the same applications as on large, mid-range servers and workstations, which are powerful computers used by engineers and scientists. All the performance and power expected is present, with the Sun Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation available with a range of 64-Bit UltraSPARC processors, graphics options, 802.11b wireless networking, 15-and 17in. SXGA+ TFT LCD displays, Integrated Gigabit (10/100/1000Base-T) Ethernet and of course the Solaris 10 Operating Environment. The laptop is offered with either a 550MHz or 650MHz UltraSPARC IIi processor or 1.28GHz UltraSPARC IIIi processor and can take up to 2GB of RAM.
I'm myself am all eager to hear more news on this forefront. Anybody got more info on this ?

Wednesday Jun 29, 2005

PART I : I guess it's everyone's deep desire to have their blog read by folks apart from just family & friends. Well, but finding one's blog can be a daunting task even with the existence of google as a resource. Google not only indexes blogs and content but uses a unique page ranking technique that lists certain websites at the top of the search list. There's also technorati, yahoo and several others. But google being the primary source for blog:traffic. PART II : Heard of MLM?. Well if you've not, google it and you'll learn more. BOTTOM LINE : It's not good. but hey !! It works !! PART III : I thought of blending Multi Level Marketing techniques with blog:traffic generation using the conventional tagging method. And when google stumbles on one such tagged:blog, the chain starts. Here's the idea: lets get tagging. I ie: the blog:father start by choosing 10 bloggers and proclaim them to be my blog:children (a term that I pirated from instapundit.com). I then tag them ie: link their blogs from mine. Now my blog:children would need to reciprocate by linking back to me and proclaim 9 other blog:children of their own asking their blog:children to link back to them and their blog:father. Now when this tagging:trail continues, google sure would have some serious modifications that would need to be made to their current pageranking algorithm ;-) Here are my random 10 picks : blog:children: Letitia Gouveia, Samuel D, Chuck Mortimore, Tatsuo Kudo, Ranjith P Antony, Patrix M, Dave Massy, Mary Mary Quite Contrary, Fishayl The Bile, Storm JJ, Scott Partee I shall keep adding to this list as time rolls by :
last but not the least, You could also use other blogs to tag yourselves ;-) Whenever you reply to anybodys post, simple sign your name at the botton and tag yourself. that might work too...
Another important reason as to why I came up with this is because the Survey Results of Corporate Blogging were Out Today. You can read about it here. but in short, the results say :
"Link Popularity" makes a big difference with search engine rankings. Link popularity is essentially the number of links pointing back to a specific page and domain (a.k.a. "backlinks") combined with the relative popularity and relevance of each of the backlinks that companies have received from their corporate blogging efforts, thereby demonstrating the reasons why a company should consider blogging.
more blog:children Annie Withey, Stephen Turcotte, Mark Carr, Tom Murphy, Adrian Trenholm, Dana VanDen Heuvel, Kristine, John Cass, ben, Lisa

Tuesday Jun 28, 2005

With an announcement this AM, the aquisition of SeeBeyond for $387 Million in Cash we see ourselves dedicated and driving hard towards a much awaited directive for Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) implementations. I see this more as a reinforcecment of one's commitment to drive an organization towards success. Well, for those pessimists out there, success is way closer than you think ;-) John Loiacono has a very nice writeup on his blog on this aquisions and a few prior ones. Gartner had very recently positioned SeeBeyond in the Leaders Quadrant of its Magic Quadrant for Integration Backbone Software, 1H05 Here's an excerpt from a report on The Motley Fool :
Scott McNealy, doesn't mince words. When he bought StorageTek recently, he advised investors to expect other deals. He certainly wasn't wasting any time. Sun's SeeBeyond acquisition will bolster the company's embrace of Web services, standards-based technologies that allow an organization to better link and access its servers, applications and databases.
Remember what I said in my prior post ?. You will soon be shockingly impressed !!
BTW:The TOP RANKED ANALYSTS : Gardner, Richard from Smith Barney Citigroup & Fortuna, Steven from Prudential & Wagonfeld, Joel from First Albany Corp. & Bachman, Keith from Bank of America Securities & Shope, Bill from J.P Morgan have ALL rated SUNW with 5 stars, However Hunt, Kevin from Thomas Weisel Partners & Chu, Richard from Sg Cowen & Co. have rated SUNW with 4 stars.
According to this report, IBM will continue to license and use Java technologies from Sun, including Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE), Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) and Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) and Java Card throughout its software products, including its middleware and web services portfolios for another 10 years. Now that's a very nice birthday gift for Java's 10th birthday. Additionally, in response to customer demand, IBM will broaden support of its DB2, Rational, Tivoli and WebSphere software to include the Solaris 10 OS on x64 AMD Opteron based platforms.
Customers from multiple industries have voiced support for IBM applications running on the Solaris 10 OS.
Way back in January this year, Jonathan Schartwz challenged IBM to make a move to Solaris, (which can be read here); and even though analysts reports that sprouted from this were contrary (like this, this & this) to popular belief, we see that the results prove otherwise ;-) & Hello World, we have a lot more proof of our Horse Power coming you way soon.

Saturday Jun 25, 2005

By this coming Monday all major federal agencies are required to submit detailed implementation plans to the White House Office of Management and Budget that describe how they plan to meet the smart-card requirements outlined in Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 201 (download PDF). The 2004 presidential directive requires all federal government agencies to use smart cards to authenticate employees for access to resources.
The requirements stem from Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, which calls for electronic identity cards to be issued to all federal employees and contractors as part of a bid to better secure access to government facilities and information systems. The cards must support two-factor authentication via digital certificates, a password or personal identification number, and biometric identifiers. They also are expected to be interoperable across all federal agencies.
SmartCards aka Java Cards are effective... very very effective. The Java Card Development Kit, includes a complete environment in which applets written for the Java Card platform can be developed and tested. It enables developers to create applets that utilize the features of the Java Card API. Now : This technology is not something new. We've been at it for ages... Why do folks shudder with reluctance when they are given new technologies to play with? Well, ask us, and we shall show you how ;-) According to this report, Taiwan had distributed Java Cards to it's population (22 million) way back in 2003. So did Taiwan, India, China and others... (I just cannot find those reports, I shall provide you links to those reports as soon as I find them) This article that dates back to 2000 would show you that we truly are the early adopters of this technology. So why is the federal sector still fumbling with their deadline for deployment soon approaching.
Sometimes It's best to let the experts show you the way. Why not ? Haven't you seen the Sun folks walking around with Java Cards for a while now ?
and hey, The DoD nomenclature for Java Cards is CAC (Common Access Card), and who do you think is behind it ?? Well, truthfully, the peices of plastic are from Schlumberger, the card readers for windows are from ActiveCard and THE REST, By US !!! ;-) Java Card technology is one of the best secure authentication technologies for trust, privacy and verification of identity on the network, deployed in way over 500 million smart card and mobile phone environments around the world. Sun is building on this success and applying its expertise to the Windows environment though inclusion of Java Card technology support in its Java Desktop System and Java software systems. This model will not only secure access to the device (mobile handset, desktop or infrastructure), but access to network services, and ultimately access to and distribution of content. This guarantees authentication of the device, of the sender, and of content represented, helping reduce victimization through fraudulent Web sites, and e-mail spam and viruses.
Think about it feds.. You got our number.. (and if you didnt know it, it's +1-800-786-0404)
Andrew Layman is Director of Web Services Interoperability for Microsoft Corporation. He participated in the design and development of XML as an interoperable format and protocol mechanism since its beginnings in 1997. Andrew was co-editor of the Namespaces in XML specification,co-author of the seminal XML Data Schemas specification, participated in the W3C XML Schemas specification, and co-authored the specifications for SOAP and the Web Service Description Language. Currently, Andrew manages a team responsible for making sure that the Web Services specifications provide an integrated protocol framework for platform-neutral, language-independent interoperability across multiple vendors and application domains. Robert Brewin is a Distinguished Engineer and Architect for Sun's Developer Tools and a leading advocate for various tools initiatives with an emphasis in improving the ease of development capabilities in both the tools and platforms. Within these roles he was also the architect for Java™ Studio Creator as well as the Java Studio Enterprise and Sun Studio product lines. He has been involved in a number of Sun initiatives, including the SunOne architecture and various technical and architectural teams within the Sun software organization.
SO : Andrew would be at the JavaONE 2005 conference presenting on :
Java™ and .NET are the predominant platforms for new software development. Many developers need a good understanding of the architectures of both platforms in general and how they interoperate in particular. The standards and profiles based on XML and SOAP are the pillars for on-the-wire interoperability between the platforms. This session features the visionaries and architects of the infrastructure of both platforms. The WS-* Web Services protocols are interoperability protocols supported by the .NET platform. The session starts with a brief walk through the standards for interoperability and touches upon the current support for these in both platforms. The session highlights some practical aspects of interoperability with some case studies and examples based on some existing and relatively newer standards. Finally, the session covers the future roadmap for interoperability between the two platforms. This cutting-edge session is for developers and architects who need a technical overview of the practical aspects of interoperability. Hear straight from the architects designing the platforms for better interoperability. After attending this session, you should have a good understanding of on-the-wire interoperability, the support for it in both the current Java and .NET platforms, and the efforts being made for the future.
This was just an FYI for those that many that may forget this IMPORTANT presentation.

Friday Jun 24, 2005

Stephen Shankland from C|net blogged about Scott McNealy and his midwestern values compelling him not to leave recovery to someone else. Well, to start with, the term "recovery" kinda distrubed me. Recovery from what ? Stephen quoted McNealy saying :
In McNealy's opinion, much of Sun's problem is merely perception compounded by flawed Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) that draw attention away from the company's track record of cash generation. We have one of the two, maybe three operating systems that are going to survive: Windows, Solaris and maybe Red Hat.
AH!! MAYBE RedHat (are we serious ?)!! Scott went on to also saying :
I'll start with the vision. We believe we're moving out of the Ice Age, the Iron Age, the Industrial Age, the Information Age, to the participation age. You get on the Net and you do stuff. You IM (instant message), you blog, you take pictures, you publish, you podcast, you transact, you distance learn, you telemedicine. You are participating on the Internet, not just viewing stuff. We build the infrastructure that goes in the data center that facilitates the participation age. We build that big friggin' Webtone switch. It has security, directory, identity, privacy, storage, compute, the whole Web services stack. We build that infrastructure piece. We have a mission, and that's make money and grow. That allows us to realize our cause, and that is to eliminate the digital divide. We believe our strategy, way more than a PC on everybody's desk or a mainframe everywhere, is the way to make that happen. We have a strategy that's very different from everybody else's, and it's community development. The way we say that is with the S curve in all our new literature. It's not for Scott, it's not for Sun, it's for "share." We're grabbing that word and saying, of anybody, we own the word "share." We own that space. [.........] We are now at 2.5 billion Java devices on the planet--(including) 700 million cell phones, 700 million PCs. We had 17 million and 20 million downloads in the last couple months of the J2SE environment. That is a stunning number. [.........] Last quarter, we lost $3 million dollars. We are nine months into this fiscal year. Year-over-year, on an operating margin basis, we have improved for the first nine months, year-over-year, $550 million. If you believe what the analysts say, it's going to be between a $700 million and $800 million improvement year-over-year in operating margins, pretax, pre-GAAP, pre-one-time any of that stuff. That, on an $11 billion or so revenue run rate, is stunning. If I do that again next year, move over Jack Welch in the hall of fame.
I believe that like all other news channels and media sometimes "analysis" and "perspectives" from direct reports can be damaging. One's opinion about statements made can be tweaked to drive a different message home. Therefore I am not gonna give my perspective about this report, but have DIRECT excerpts from Scott's Starements posted here. Read it and guage it for yourselves. Be your OWN judges. We @ Sun tend to THINK a lot, It's time you did that too and not leave it to the news media to do the THINKING for you. (cause if they did, and you followed blindly, you'd be no better than anobody else)

Thursday Jun 23, 2005

I was directed to koders.com today. It's an excellent toolkit for coders to search for open source code. This opensource code optimized search engine boasts of currently spawning 205,234,850 lines of code. Well, for those opensource developers out there, this tool is way more handier than google. There was a time where I'd just google my way to glory searching for code snippets that I could use as guidelines and examples of developing a component. But what would enrage me most was the results that popped up were nowhere close to what I intended to find. But now with koders, I can be rest assured that the results are more specific. I'd recommend this tool to anybody, anyday !!. Developers of opensource projects on dev.java.net, sourcecforge.net, osdp.org, or any collaboration or independent platform could submit their site and CVS trees to be included in these koders.com. koders currently have plugins for eclipse, visual studio.NET 2003 & mozilla firefox. I would be contributing a koders plugin for netbeans soon.
you could search for open source code using this search box :
From this day on koders would stay my google for code. koders also enables you to search for code snippets in any particular programming language. Cool aye !!!

Wednesday Jun 22, 2005

Well, the title of this post is not to offend anybody or any person at Microsoft. But This report on tes.co.uk with the headline Ditching microsoft Can Save millions caught my attention. The report's verbatim lists :
Primary schools could cut their computer costs by nearly half if they stopped buying, operating and supporting products from the world's largest software company, government research has found. Secondaries could also slash their information technology overheads by a quarter if they moved away from Microsoft and other commercial programs, according to an analysis carried out by the British Educational Communications and Technology Association, the Government's ICT agency. The findings could undermine Microsoft's hold on the education market, but they raise the prospect of millions of pounds of savings for British schools and colleges which spend around £1 billion a year on ICT.
The association analysed costs at 33 schools which use paid-for software, and compared them with 15 which have pioneered the use of free programs, known as open source, and the pared-down hardware to run them. Average costs, including software, hardware and support costs, were 24 per cent less per computer in secondaries using open source.
Well, It's high time the eduction sector turned towards OpenSolaris and other open source products and operating systems. And while at it, It would be a good idea for these sectors and the others too to not only evavluate the cost factor, but also the security factor associated with it. From my perspective, I dont see any other operating system other than OpenSolaris being a choice here, bearing in mind that "security" is also as critical a component as the cost factor. But is cost savings just in using Open Source Software. Dont these analysts also look at the hardware and tangible components. Why use a PC ?? aint a PC a cost factor too (or is it a expense center) ?. They surely should consider using a SunRay; and not to forget, OpenOffice & OpenSolaris & NetBeans. The Danish university, Westminister University, Carrolton University, University Of Mainz, Michigan Tech University, Mountain View Elementary, Celebration School, newark unified School District are already amongst the few from the Education Sectory who have already adopted and embraced SunRay's with Solaris/OpenSolaris and Openoffice/StarOffice.
Some Lead (like reported [here, here, here, here and here]), The Others Follow (similar to the reports here, here, here, and here);-)

Monday Jun 20, 2005

A SPECIAL OFFER FOR CANADIANS! Join us for Canadian Night at Sun's 10th annual JavaOne conference June 28th, 2005, at The Argent Hotel. Come mix and mingle with other Canadians attending the show....Canadian exhibitors,developers and media. This is a special year since we are celebrating a decade of Java technology. Don't miss this exclusive Canadian night where you will have the opportunity to meet James Gosling, the Father of Java.
You do need an invitation to attend. If you would like an invite (remember, this is your Canadian Passport to the reception!) please let me know and I shall send you one. I really hope you'd be there!

Friday Jun 17, 2005

June 26th - June 30th is JavaONE 2005 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. I wish I could be there, but unfortunately this year around, I just would not be able to make it over. However I have a laundry list of things at JavaONE 2005 that I would have done. So I'm gonna list them here. And If any of you who happen to attend JavaONE 2005 is kind enough, please do share your resources/notes with me (and probably the rest of the world by posting it here as comments).
  • Scott Delap, from MetaMatrix would have a session on "Creating a Desktop Java Technology Application Leveraging Open Source"
  • Matthias Schorer, from FIDUCIA IT AG speaking on "Large-Scale Client Deployment Using Java Web Start Software"
  • Hideya Kawahara, & Paul Byrne, from Sun Microsystems would speak on "Project Looking Glass"
  • Simon Guest, from Microsoft Corporation & Raghavan Srinivas, from Sun Microsystems would be speaking on "Advanced Web Services Interoperability"
  • Geir Magnusson, Jr., from Apache Software Foundation would be speaking on "The Apache Harmony Project"
  • Ian Formanek, Gregg Sporar, Patrick Keegan, & Jack Catchpoole, from Sun Microsystems would be speaking on "Profiling in the Real World"
  • Alejandro Abdelnur, Dave Johnson, Patrick Chanezon, from Sun Microsystems & Kevin Burton, from Rojo Networks would be speaking on "Beyond Blogging: Feed Syndication and Publishing With Javaâ„¢ Technology"
  • Bill Roth, & Michael Carey, from BEA Systems, Inc. would be speaking on "The Case for Data Services: Bringing Order to SOA"
  • Tanjore Ravishankar, & Aseem Sharma, from Sun Microsystems, Inc. & Laurent Lagosanto, from Gemplus would be speaking on "Java Card Technology and Tomorrow's Security"
  • Martin Nystrom, from Cisco Systems, Inc. would be speaking on " Nine Ways to Hack a Web Application"
  • Rich Salz, from DataPower on "Web Services Security Attacks in Action"
  • eBay's Greg Isaacs, & Sean Crotty on "Web Services in the Real World"
  • Pat Patterson, & Eve Maler, from Sun Microsystems, Inc on "Multiple Platforms, Single Identity: Interoperable identity" I AM ALL ANXIOUS TO HEAR THIS ONE (remember my old post)
  • Peter Murray, Michael Hayward, & Joe Bradley, from Sun Microsystems, Inc would be speaking on "RFID and Javaâ„¢ Technology"
  • Alan Samuel, Apple on " Mac OS X and the Javaâ„¢ Technology"
  • Jaana Majakangas, & Zoltan Varga, from Nokia would be speaking on "Using RFID and Visual Tags"
  • Vijay Sarathy, from Sun Microsystems on "Sun Javaâ„¢ System RFID Software"
And hey, You could also collect doubles of those freebies and send me some.. Please be Generous ;-)
Java ONE 2005
& Guess What, MICROSOFT IS COMING TOO, They have a 15-foot-by-15-foot booth all for themselves ;-). The Last time Microsoft Officially Attended a JavaONE Conference was way back in 1996. Now Ain't that something to Celebreate !! SO Hey !! apart from those cool Java freebies, expect some Microsoft Goodies too...

Thursday Jun 16, 2005

Redhat had announced recently that their "aquired" AOL Netscape Directory server would be released as an opensource product. There have been debates on whether RedHat would make this move especially after they spent 20.5 Million Dollars in this aquisition last september. Well, If you have been fololowing the developments at RedHat, you'd notice that the Fedora Directory Server Community have been abuzz with developers scrambling around to better the product and build plugins etc. They have also begun to publicly make available sourcecode for migrating from openLDAP to Fedora Directory Server.. Every startup in the silicon valley had a tendency to use OpenLDAP or OEM the Sun Directory Server. Would this move by RedHat prompt a startup:wide move to Fedora Directory Server ?. Well, I dont think so. The startups have invested a lot of effort, time and energy arpound either embedding OpenLDAP or OEM the Sun Directory Server. Making architecture change in a startup company is not a simple move as their product turnaround times are dicatated by their venture capitalists and the release announcements that they have already made. In addition the folks who have OEM'd the Sun Directory Server have this huge group of support engineers on standby to help enable deployment. If startups had to make a move from Sun Directory to Fedora Directory, they would have to SACRIFICE the backend support, their currently embedded features and a whole lot more. But those who have been using OpenLDAP might most probably consider a move to Fedora Directory Server. One organization I am thinking of is infoblox. They might use Fedora Directory as an embedded product for ldapONE, their LDAP Appliance. but will they make this move? or would they consider OEMing the Sun Directory? Guess time will tell.
UPDATE: I Just noticed the infoblox is not advertising their ldapONE as a product offering now, I assume that have simply pulled out of the idea of shrinkwrapping openldap into an appliance. Guess they have decided to stick to their DNS offerings as Cricket Liu is their trump card.

Wednesday Jun 15, 2005

I was directed to this website today. As the name itself suggests, this website is an awesome start for folks who like to network. Well, networking is a pretty important facet of out lives, whether it's with friends, family, colleagues, or associates, it's as important as your daily meal. I have started an Open Source Development Professionals meetup group, with hopes of networking together with folks living in my vicinity. Another very interesting group is the bloggers meetup group. This group enables you to hookup with fellow bloggers in person rather than in a virtual world. Another meetup group that I have started is the OpenSolaris Canada Group. Now lets get kicking. If any of you OpenSolaris advocates live in and around the GTA, please do join up. And, well, IF you are not from the area it still would be worthwhile to keep in touch with other folks from the country A nice start to network with folks of similar interests.... Lets see how this goes.

Monday Jun 13, 2005

When I was flying (to work) early this morning, I picked up a copy of the GlobeAndMail for my inflight reading. Yep, same old stories, gossip, movie reviews, baby boomers saga, Michael Jackson trial, etc.. But one article did catch my attention. The headline read
HARVEY SCHACTER'S GUIDE ON HOW TO HANDLE EVERYTHING FROM OVERFLOWING E-MAIL INBOXES TO MEETING OVERLOAD
Well I did relate to the headline right away, and that's what prompted me to read further. Schachter quoted Deepak Malhotra, a Harvard Business School professor saying :
a sure way to win is to unscrew your steering wheel and throw it out the window so your opponent knows you can't possibly change course. Similar tactics can be applied in negotiations, to make a credible threat that the other negotiator must take very seriously:
  • Openly restrict your retreat possibilities. Make sure your options are irreversibly restricted and visible, as in the steering wheel example.
  • Visibly incur sunk costs, like the company that signals it is serious in negotiations over price with its information technology supplier by not only saying it will create an in-house capacity but also plunking down $150,000 in unrecoverable costs for the necessary hardware.
  • Delegate authority to somebody who will follow through on the threat -- generally somebody who has less riding on the outcome and is likely to be tougher.
  • Create a reputation for making credible threats and carrying through on them, sacrificing dollars if necessary to principles.
"As many of the strategies suggest, sometimes the best way to make your threat credible is to act in a way that would normally be considered irrational," Schachter notes in Negotiation magazine.
This reminded me of a few friends of mine who used to make comments on my company being a superfast highspeed racecar on the autobahn without a steering wheel, Well, I hope they read this !! This is the kind of reading material every inflight magazine should have. Here's Jonathan Schwartz's presentation on "The Dot.com Bubble was a Proof of Concept". Please listen to it carefully and try to co-relate. I sincerely hope you see what I see...
I was not sure what to blog today.. nothings coming to my mind, and i'm a little busy with some other task on hand... but I just could not rest in peace knowing that my blog would not have an update today... ;-) I had to post something, no matter how stupid it was. Anyway I came up with a brilliant idea (Dont even think about it, I have it PATENTED, Patent #US1234567890) for buying out google. If you follow the following 5 steps you could own google in due time (and hey I'm in the running myself).
  1. Start using blogger and setup as many individual blogs as you can
  2. Publish ad's using google's very own adsense program
  3. Generate revenue from google for serving their ads
  4. get google to directdepost your earnings into your ameritrade account
  5. Use those funds to buy google shares
When you have accumulated sufficient funds to buy majority of google's shares, you automatical own google. Pay me a "royalty' for the idea. and all's good !! Cheers & Good Night!!!