Unreliability or a bad unit?

For years I praised the reliability of Sun systems. I did have some good experience too when systems ran for months before being rebooted. That was one reason why I bought so many Sun systems over the years - sparcstations, ultra-5s and then sunfire v100. I was so excited with my v100 that I told pretty much everyone about it who ever discussed Sun systems with me. One day it bailed on me for no reason. First I thought it was the bad harddisk. I tried booting the system with a CD after removing the harddisk from the system but to no avail. I tried quite a few things from the PROM prompt as far as I could know. My belief of the reliability of the Sun system shattered. It shocked me as it was my database server and so was the CVS and also had my web servers running. I forgot what data I lost but they were plenty. I bought a new harddisk to replace the old one and would try to get a brand new build. I have not tried it yet but I don't think it should work. When at Sun we challanged the reliability of PCs, this incidence has raised some serious questions.

Sun will die the next day if Java is opensourced

"You don't give away your assets free" - Donald Trump, reminds me of the talk industry is having to force Sun Microsystems to open source Java. And why should they? Is the JCP not enough? Is the progress Java made in last 10 years not with the right pace? Sun is not financially benefitted with Java either so why to sell (??) the flagship of the company?

How to make Solaris more popular?

Rename its' x86 to Redhot Linux

So who won the Iraq war?

Is it US? Militarily yes, politically not yet. Is it Iraq? Militarily no and politically no either. Looks like it was Iran who won this war or atleast this phase of it. If the news to be trusted then it was the Iran backed Iraqi opposition leaders who spread false information about the WMDs in Iraq. It was Saddam's massive stupid poker bluff too which helped Iran's cause. When the world was preoccupied in the Iraqi affairs, it was Iran who continued to work on it's nuclear establishments. Now what options does the UN have on Iran? A military action is likely but with Iraq politically unstable it will create an explosive situation. Any compromise with Iran's current government will be another stupid idea. It will give an open invitation to other un-democratic governments to choose the same path. Iran's successful exploitation of personal vendetta between Bush and Saddam to its political advantage has created a quagmire which is worse than the cuban crisis. There is no military solution in sight. The only amicable solution is to lend hands to the democratic forces in Iran who can by vote overthrow this government and then be allowed to continue the peaceful uses of its' nuclear energy under an internationally audited agency.

Why is the color important?

I had the opportunity to be involved with world's atleast two most well known and practiced martial arts - Karate and WingChun. I did Shotokan Karate where my goal was to have a black belt which demonstrates a mastery on an art or a new phase of learning which ever way you wanna see it. On the other hand I wore black pants and shirt during our Wingchun practice and the goal was to get white shirts as we progress. The choice of colors and it's relation to ones progress has strong bonds with it's traditions. In Karate, where the color white corresponds to nascency or a blank slate which will get the color of knowledge, black relates to the color of maturity where all colors eventually meet - a state of empowerment. Wingchun starts with black showing a state of darkness or no knowledge and white the color of light which brings an ability to see i.e, to gain knowledge and understand the truth. Two completely opposite traditions and the way of learning, but the goal remains the same - to achieve an ability to understand the truth. The ultimate goal is not to defeat an enemy in a combat but to avoid the combat itself. The goal is peace and harmony which Yoga has taught us for thousands of years and has filtered out in the various forms of martial arts practiced today. So the color does matter or may be totally irrelevent depending on the goal of your chosen path to the ultimate truth.

Anti gravity, free energy and NASA

This is an interesting story, an interview with Gary McKinnon - the hacker who hacked NASA computers. He talks about possible reengineering of alien' anti-gravity aircrafts and research on free energy. Not sure how much truth this content has but I do believe in the alien technology. If an 8000 old known (Indian) civilization can have such depictions of the technology which can't be one man's imagination then there is no reason not to believe it. Something does exist which is not completely known to the today's human race or only to very few. The conditions which prevailed on Earth millions of years ago could exist or have existed in other parts of the galaxy or beyond. Just I am not part of such research or if it is even found say thousand years in future, I won't be alive to feel good about it. Or who knows I might be travelling in one of those UFOs :-)

A wireless cable television

There is a potential of this product. A cable coming in and hooked to a miniature router. And the TVs having antennas tuned to the frequency of the local "router". Similar to the wireless internet but for the cable television.

What went wrong in Sun?

This was the question asked to Jonathan recently. I do not recall what he said but my perception is a little different. I get furious when someone questions the relevance of Sun or tells me as if it is gone forever. Earlier I despised the question for my blind love for the company and now for the direction it is taking. So what went wrong in Sun? In 2001 it needed a big cut off in the employee number. Sun took the decision a little late. Second, for long it kept (fat) people in the decision making positions. By fat I mean the people who could not see where the industry was going - those immobile managers. Third, it tried too many things on different fronts. It was not taking decisions it was gambling with ideas. Fourth, it could not keep the right people in the company - Ed Zander for one. Fifth, when water gets stagnant you stir it up. It played around with different organizational changes but did not bring the new leadership (middle management) up the channel. It was the same group of people moving around as the leads and they failed in all of them. So, what did they do right? They kept the R&D going. You lose when you follow. Sun is not similar to anyother company because it runs on the new ideas and new technologies. Sun never lost its relevance in the industry. The programmers community stood behind it. The Java community grew and so did the Solaris' and the "network is a computer" concept. This is a company of brilliant engineers and stupid sales force. And who knows? 9000 less employees and there might be someone looking for an Operating system to add in their stack.