Jeff Dillon

Leaving Sun
It has come time for Marcie and I to leave California and return home to Chicago. Sun has been an excellent experience for me, so the decision to leave was not an easy one. I am going to work as a Java developer for a very small financial trading company in downtown Chicago. I have always been interested in financial markets and automated trading in particular, so this was a great fit. My email address is j e f f [dot] d i l l o n [at] gmail [dot] com.

Taking another CS course
I am taking another Computer Science course at Stanford this summer. This time I am taking a Database class, which should be interesting. I have noticed that before a new class I am excited, during the class I am ready for it to be over, and after the class I am glad I learned something new. Things always seems more interesting when you don't have deadlines, homework, and exams. :)

Command Line Interface in the Browser
There's a new N1 product out called Sun N1 System Manager which features a command line interface that is accessible through a web browser. The whole thing is accomplished with some fancy java script, not applets. It is pretty slick and I had not seen anything like this before. (Here is a screen shot.) It also supports most of what you would expect in a bash shell, command line completion and command history. I thought this was pretty slick. Also, the rest of the product is pretty slick for server management.

I rode a Segway
Marcie and I went to the San Jose Tech museum today and they had a Segway out that people could try out and ride around. It was pretty interesting. It felt so strange that the thing wouldn't tip over. The first 5 seconds I stood on it, my mind didn't trust that it was stable. But, after only a few seconds, it was extremely easy to turn and move around, both forwards and backwards. A pretty amazing piece of engineering actually.

Back to School
I am in the process of signing up for a graduate level computer science course at Stanford for next quarter. The class is titled "Cryptography & Computer Security". I haven't decided if I am going to go for a CS Masters degree yet. If I take one class at a time (which seems reasonable with a full time job) then it will take me about 5 years. For now, I am just going to take classes that sound interesting and see how I do balancing school and a job. I can actually participate in the class remotely by video from my own Sun campus which is a very cool concept.

Server Side Apps Change Everything
I see more and more applications becoming web based browser solutions. Some people don't like this since a web browser does not provide nearly the flexibility of things like Swing, WinForms, or Cocoa. While we are still far from having a complicated application like an Office suite run within a web browser, more and more applications are becoming browser based. Software development shops like Google, Amazon, Ebay have it easy. Here's why:

• No piracy The server based solution makes it impossible to steal the application. You can not steal Google's Gmail or Amazon. Companies that develop video games, operating systems, or office applications have to deal with this somehow.
• No installation Anyone that has ever had to create an installer for an application knows the installation is complicated and painful for end users, testers, and developers. Installation stinks.
• No updates Traditional client applications need to be updated for bug fixes, security problems, and features. For server applications, this all happens without the end user doing anything. You never need to install the latest Amazon patch, it just happens when you visit the site. Traditional application software updating stinks.
• GPL, No Problem When the GPL was written, software distribution meant mailing around software on tapes. Since Google, Amazon, and Ebay are not distributing software in the traditional sense, they can do whatever they want with respect to GPL licensing.
• No distribution If you are not going to redistribute your software, you can do some interesting things. For example, I have known companies who actually modify pieces of the Java libraries for use on their own servers. Since, the modifications never leave their servers, they are in the clear.

These are big reasons for many people to work on server side applications instead of traditional window programs. Small companies don't have the financial resources to solve all of these problems. I think some people forget about these things. Installation problems alone have plagued software from the beginning.

Installed JDS
The other day, I installed Sun's Linux distribution, the Java Desktop System on my PC at work. (I require a PC to run Windows since the product that I work on supports Windows.) The install went very well and everything just worked after the install was complete. There is nothing about this particular Linux distribution that blows the others out of the water, but overall it feels very well put together and has everything already included. Of course you can install another distro and then later install Java, Star Office, and Evolution but it's nice that they are included and configured. I plan on using it on a daily basis now when I don't need to look into a Windows issue.

IBM releases Solution Installer
The other day IBM announced the spec release of their Solution Installation. IBM submitted this XML specification to the W3C in order to get it widely adopted. They also threw some other companies names on the spec submission to make it look like it just wasn't a bunch of IBM PHds that came up with the idea. I worked with alpha versions of this product for about 8 months while working at InstallShield. Overall, this product attempts to address the problems of installation for a multiplatform product. (A "multiplatform" product does not necessarily mean a Java product. For example, products like IBMs DB2 run on pretty much every OS out there and is not Java.) As it stands today, installation in the multi-platform world really stinks. Most people have to do MSI on Windows and custom scripts on Unix. Systems like RPM and PKG are pretty simple and do not allow for much in terms of describing the dependencies and requirements of a complicated system like an Application Server or Database system. So, IBM looked at all the package management solutions out there and came up with a new XML based solution. Everything sounds great so far.

The first problem is that the system is incredibly complex. The requirements of an application server are simply very different than the requirements of a OS driver. IBM tried to cover every single type of application out there. This is a noble objective, but the complexity is simply overwhelming at times. It is easily 20 times more complex than MSI and about 100 times more complex than RPM or PKG. Don't expect an Ant like learning curve. (I wrote my first complex Ant script in about 2 hours.)

The second problem is that the engine itself is absolutely enormous. It requires a JVM, a database to store application information, and many library dependencies. It even has code to access IBM specific things like WebSphere. This doesn't make sense for small apps, especially non-java ones which do not even need a JVM.

I don't think Solution Installer is ever going to see widespread adoption. I always thought that it would be cool to have an Ant like installer which simply kept track of simple dependencies and performed simple actions. Solution Installer is so incredibly complex, I expect only big players to take a second look at it. There are many pieces of it that are almost humorous in the language that is used to describe applications. Terms like "Federated Installation Unit" make it obvious that the system was designed by a Phd.

Fry's in Chicago
I spent last week in Chicago and saw that Fry's just opened an enormous new store in Downer's Grove, IL which is a suburb of Chicago. I had to check it out since it is almost next to Marcie's work. In summary, it was every bit as good as the Silicon Valley Fry's. It will be interesting to see if they can compete with the already saturated market of Circuit City and Best Buy. Although I would pick Fry's over those lesser stores any day, I am not so sure that the conservative Chicago market will work for the geek wonderland.

With showers at work and a restaurant at Fry's, there is really no reason to ever have to go home. ;-)

The State of IM is pathetic
The state of instant messaging today is absolutely pathetic. I need three commercial IM clients just to talk to everyone that I know due to the gross incompatabilities for something as easy as sending a text string. Of course, there are a few solutions out there to work around this stuff, but they are not addressing the real problem and are always in catch-up mode.

Imagine if email were invented by a corporation instead of the academic community. We could easily have AOL email clients not able to communicate with MSN email clients which would be terrible. The real problem is that the big commercial IM applications do not want to be compatible with each other since it is perceived to diminish their communities.

The only reason for hope in this mess is the very open Jabber Software Foundation. Although they are doing some great work, many people are entreched in whatever IM client they use today so I am not sure that the situation will easily improve.

Perhaps instant messaging entering the business market will force change.

Matt Wright in a Slashdot Poll
Recently, a friend of mine and my college roomate, Matt Wright, was listed as an option in the Slashdot poll! For anyone, that is not a geek, getting your name on the Slashdot front page is a pretty cool thing. It turned out that I was the first one to point him to the poll, which may suggest that I read Slashdot too often. Matt has done some various things which have allowed him never to have to get a "real job".

Despite my multiple votes for him, he still managed to come in last place. But, being in the same company as Tux and Darl McBride is something truely special.

Next week, I am going to Chicago to spend time with Marcie, my family, and go to my friend Anjali's wedding. Should be fun.

Application Provisioning
The group I am a developer for at Sun is called N1 Grid Service Provisioning Server. The basic idea is that one master server contains a XML based description of all the software components that need to be installed on other systems. This master server is able to deploy these applications to other systems on a network. This allows for all the software to be managed from a central console. The product currently supports Solaris, Windows, AIX, and Linux.

The interesting thing for me is that while working at InstallShield, we always talked about doing this with our Java product. We continually had customers asking for this kind of functionality. However, the complexity of the project seemed too high with our already busy schedule. InstallShield was always focued on the world of a single machine.

The ability to manage software across many machines is a very powerful concept. It is very cool to be able to now work on a project which I have been thinking about for a couple years.

Blogging From the Top
Recently, Jonathan Schwartz started his own blog. Having an executive like Jonathan blog is a really cool thing. First of all, I think it has the potential to go a long way to set the record straight on certain issues. Instead of Jonathon's message being turned into sound bytes by the media, he can communicate ideas directly. Often times people's ideas and messages can be manipulated by others who already have made up their minds on certain issues. Jonathan also has some very exciting and innovative ideas about the future of software and hardware, so this blog has the potential to be very interesting.

The Sun Blogs home page also has a new design which is very nice.

The Office
I recently finished watching the first season of The Office on DVD. Along with being absolutely hilarious, it was also touching and had really excellent character development. I highly recommend it. I heard that it was a good idea to turn on subtitles to catch some of the more subtle jokes. This is how I watched it and it seemed to help.

I rented this one without Marcie since I didn't think she would like it. I was kind of expecting an Office Space like comedy, which was not her thing. But, this was really different. It's more than a really funny comedy series. It really made me think about the relationships I have with people at work. People that you spend almost as much time around as family.

Dealing with Zealots
Everyone's favorite zealot, Eric Raymond, just wrote a new article titled "Get the FUD". The title of this article is somewhat ironic since portions of the article are doing nothing more than spreading anti-Microsoft FUD. Now, let's get this straight. I am a hard core Linux and Unix user. However, I also do not like exteremism and am annoyed by misinformed zealots. This quote from Raymond's article made me laugh out loud.

"I also expect a serious effort, backed by several billion dollars in bribe money (oops, excuse me, campaign contributions), to get open-source software outlawed on some kind of theory that it aids terrorists. We can only defeat that by making sure that national governments become so attached to open-source code that their military men and bureaucrats will short-stop the bribed legislators, rather than let their vital infrastructure be outlawed."

This is worse than some of the garbage that I read on Slashdot. The real question that I am interested in, is how do you combat zealots when they are spreading misinformation? Sun has been taking some heat lately for plans to open source Solaris and I think about this question. Do you combat zealots with more zealotry or combat them with pragmatism and facts? I read Scoble on a regular basis and I really respect him for his pragmatism. I think the world needs more pragmatism and less extremists. Scoble gets some of the most idiotic comments in response to his posts and he always responds to them in such a cool-headed pragmatic way. I think this is a good approach. The problem is that sometimes the facts are not enough.

In general, people have a very small view of the world and many of their opinions come from that small view. Solaris developers tend to think, "no one uses windows in the data center", because they have never seen it in a data center. Windows developers tend to think, "No one uses Java since Windows has 95% desktop share", while they completely ignore the multi-billion dollar enterprise and J2ME markets. The real trip is if you talk to Mainframe or OS/400 programmers today. Some of them still think that the PC is a fad and they have no idea on how to do anything with Unix or Windows.

Can't we all be more pragmatic about this stuff? Linux is a great thing. If you can really accept that, you don't have to attack everything else.