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Top 10 best things about not being CEO

Scott McNealy is still on top of his game:

No. 10: "I don't have to apologize for the stuff I say to Wall Street, Jonathan does."
No. 9: "I'm no longer on the most overpaid CEO list."
No. 8: "I just say, 'See Jonathan on that.'"
No. 7: "I read Hockey News without guilt."
No. 6: "I shave even less often."
No. 5: "No more SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley) certifications to sign."
No. 4: "I have someone to blame now."
No. 3: "I can sell my last business suit."
No. 2: "Jonathan doesn't golf, so I guess I gotta do it."
No. 1: "My new office is very close to the men's room."

- Reprinted from "Good Morning Silicon Valley", Editor

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solaris 10 on vmware

My direction over the past month has been towards building a developer platform on vmware. More time than usual has been expended toward getting Solaris 10 to run correctly, so this post documents where I've been and where I'm going. This started on a vmware forum: Dear Dr VM Ware, I am so confused

Sun and vmware have been in a strategic partnership for about two years. So when does Solaris break out of the "experimental" stage into a fully supported host and guest. I asked this question on a vmware forum.
I've been installing Solaris 10 in the experimental mode on both vmware Workstation and the free VMserver product. The problem is the lack of vmtools support for the Solaris platform, and Juergen Winkelmann provided a brilliant solution for vmware ESX server; use the linux version of vmtools, and run it on Solaris with "lxrun".
I tried Juergen's implemenation on vmware Workstation, and it worked fine. When I deployed Solaris 10 on VMserver, it destroyed my Solaris 10 install with endless illegal references to /kernel symbols. I haven't worked out the issue there yet.
Solaris 10 Update 2 beta was announced, and I successfully deployed that on both VMserver and Workstation. I just didn't apply the vmtools.
The Solaris 10 Update 2 install on vmware, requires two manual steps to make it work correctly.
- From command line, run kdmconfig, change the implemenation from Xorg to Xsun, and reboot the system. The Java Desktop comes up fine.
- Follow the instructions for getting DHCP to properly configure the network, from the BigAdmin site, Setting Up Solaris to work with cable modems. For vmware:
  cd /etc
  touch dhcp.pcn0
  cp /dev/null hostname.pcn0
  cp /dev/null notrouter
  cp /dev/null resolv.conf
  vi nsswitch.com ... /hosts: ... hosts: files dns reboot
Installing software on Solaris on vm
The simplest way to deliver software to the Solaris virtual machine is by attaching virtual cd images (.iso) to the drive.
You avoid all the complications of managing downloads and sharing filesystems, and the .iso image can be delivered to any virtual machine. It is by far the easiest medium for all VM's, and especially Solaris. For example, on my Windows machine:
- Download Studio 11
- Start cygwin console
- gunzip2 xxx.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
- Bring up winiso 5.3, drag the untarred files to the window,
File/Save-As ss11.iso.
- In vm, Edit machine settings, choose the CD drive, and attach the .iso to that drive.
- Bring up the Solaris 10 virtual machine, and the ss11 CD icon will be on the desktop.

-- To Be Continued --

VMWare Goes Free in Bid to Counter Microsoft Virtual Server

VMWare Goes Free in Bid to Counter Microsoft Virtual Server
Paul Thurrott, February 6, 2006

How does one compete with low-ball Microsoft pricing? By making one's offering available for free, of course. This morning, virtualization leader VMWare announced that it's offering a free software virtualization server, dubbed VMWare Server. This product will compete with the suddenly inexpensive Microsoft Virtual Server products.

Just how inexpensive is Virtual Server? Microsoft announced last month that customers who acquire one license for Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition could obtain the high-end Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise Edition at a reduced price of $99 through June 30, 2006. But even the standard Virtual Server pricing isn't exorbitant: Virtual Server 2005 R2 Standard Edition retails for just $99, and the regular retail price of Enterprise Edition is just $199. Previous to the R2 versions, Virtual Server cost $499 for Standard Edition and $999 for Enterprise Edition.

VMWare says the industry's new pricing models suggest that virtualization is going mainstream. The free VMWare Server product, a successor to the fee-based VMWare GSX Server, will capitalize on the company's superior virtualization technologies and provide features that Microsoft doesn't. For starters, VMWare Server runs on both Windows and Linux. And unlike the Microsoft offering, VMWare Server will support 64-bit guest OSs such as Windows XP Professional x64 Edition.

Virtualization products such as VMWare Server, Virtual Server, and the client-based Microsoft Virtual PC let users run complete OS environments in software-based virtual machines (VMs). Although interactive virtual environments run at only a fraction of the speed of true hardware-based OS installs, they are useful for testing and Help desk scenarios. Server-based VMs, however, are increasingly useful for consolidating legacy servers in a central location. Because they aren't typically used interactively, server-based VMs often perform surprisingly well.

A beta version of VMWare Server is available now for download from the VMWare Web site. The company says that the final version of the product will ship sometime in the first half of 2006.

http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

If you get involved with vmware, you need a strong download manager.
The Free Download Manager is one of the best, in my opinion.

Free Download Manager

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Sun labs and HP labs:

Sun Labs:

Sun Microsystems Laboratories is collaborating with 28 universities around the world as it strives to enhance Internet and network security, improve search capabilities for music files, and create new programming languages.

Sun Labs, which developed the hugely successful Java programming language, claims to have one of the highest rates of transferring technologies developed in the labs to commercialized company products. Since the lab was established 15 years ago, its technologies have earned more than $4 billion for Sun.

And while the lab's researchers comprise about 1 percent of Sun's 16,000 engineers, they earn about 12 percent of the patents awarded annually to the company.

Still, Sun Labs' funding decreased after the dot-com bust, mirroring the decline in nationwide R&D spending in 2002 driven largely by corporate cutbacks.

Saffo, of the Institute for the Future, says corporate research labs are "hanging in there, but they're not doing well.'' While such labs can claim the creation of the scientific calculator, the Macintosh computer and the Windows interface, there haven't been any big breakthroughs recently.

"The irony, and I think this is true for all these labs, is a lot of these companies are like Moses,'' Saffo said. "They led these industries to the Promised Land, but they're doomed to stay in the desert themselves.''

HP labs: A trim 40-year-old
A decade ago, HP Labs boasted having 1,400 employees. Today, its head count is down to about 600.

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TCP/IP Configuration Files - Quick Config Guide

TCP/IP Configuration Files - Quick Config Guide

The hardest part of configuring solaris is setting up the network.

The computer is NOT the network ?

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Java? It's So Nineties

Java? It's So Nineties

Peter Yared, CEO of software maker ActiveGrid, spent a critical chapter of his career steeped in Java, the programming language developed by Sun Microsystems (SUNW ). In the late 1990s, Yared was chief technology officer of NetDynamics, which pioneered an application server designed to boost the performance of Web sites. It was based squarely on then wildly popular Java. He went on to spend five years as an executive at Sun. So it's especially surprising that Yared holds this view: "Java is a dinosaur."

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