December 08, 2005
Sad, Sad, Sad, Sad, and far away from Home
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| Just a classic shot of CNY in Flight |
Just another TDY, this time to meet Scott Mcnealy. On a personal level I found him irritating...Given the CEO's presence, I can't help but shake the feeling that Sun needs the government more as a customer than the other way around...
Sun's strategy used to be accepting Linux (which imho [and that of some of Solaris' developers] is a far better kernel), now its strategy is distance and bashing. Some things Solaris does better, sure, but they're wholly irrelevant for what our group does. There was more FUD coming from McNealy's mouth than I've heard from most of the Microsoft guys I've talked with (to their credit, Microsoft has realized its last Common Criteria evaluated system was done in 2000 or so, and they're not going to break into the high assurance server market without the TPM). Laying on the Fear about the GNU Public License was even more amusing to me, as Sun is incorporating the GPL'd Xen into Solaris soon. The question I bit my tongue on is, "will that make the Solaris Kernel GPL'd, Scott?" The answer is, of course, no.
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| Just another license plate which makes me wonder how offended I should be |
Odd meetings aside, the trip was a riot. We missed our flight back after our fearless leader decided to have three too many beers. A long drive and a fistfight in the hotel later, we got back just in time to be summoned back into work (on 4 hours sleep) to discuss research proposals for 8 hours.
Yes, I'm still looking for a new line of work...
No, I don't work for IBM, but I'm going to guess that you work for Sun...
I never said Linux was a superior kernel. Feel free to point to any part of my post that might have convinced you that I did. As I actually *did* say: "Some things Solaris does better, sure, but they're wholly irrelevant for what our group does."
The servers we write for are not high-load (single cpu machines are fine, so nix your scalability comment), do not require persistent storage for anything beyond the operating system and base server software (nix your scalability). We do not use third party software (nix your ISV's), and these are not development machines. In fact, for security reasons we cannot have a debugger installed on the machine (so nix dTrace).
It's fine to tout Solaris' superiority in all those areas, but again they don't matter to us. What does matter is security, security, and security. Containers are actually useful here, but there are linux virtual machine kernel modules out there, that could be made high-assurance through funding. Besides, Sun's strategy seems to be Xen. Funny, that's also Red Hat's strategy. So I'd call it a draw.
Trused Solaris 8 is / Sol 10s Trusted Extensions are going to be nice, but from the government's perspective are no better than RHEL if, again, we throw some money at them. If we're going to fork over the money either way, why not get the ability to incorporate stuff like GRSEC and other whiz-bang features that we can actually own?
I'm not ragging on Solaris here (I was a Solaris admin for a few years and really dug it), I'm just ragging on McNeally's rabid frothing that we *need* it and touting exactly the features you mentioned, none of which do anything for the software we write and use.
Posted by: Reid on December 11, 2005 10:49 PMPost a comment
Further back...
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Previous Trips...
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Hiking Mount Whitney, 2007 
Spring Break in West Virginia, 2005
New Year's in Paris, 2003-2004
Coming to America, 2003
Protesting in Berlin, 2003
Prague Bier-Tour, 2002
Dresden, 2002
Recent Reading
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Stealing the Network
I first bumped into the Stealing the Network series when reading the exploits of Joe Grand, one of the book's many hacker authors.
The 'Stealing the ...' series of books follows a rather disparate group of computer hackers as they help a former NSA spook (many of them unwittingly) gather the money he needs to retire.
The stories themselves are not fantastic fiction. The writing is uneven and choppy, the characters are stereotypical and not very well thought-out. What is fascinating about this book series is the technical accuracy of the exploits (at some points *too* accurate, with screen shots and step-by-step instructions).
It's a great series to read if you're a system administrator, or just getting into the wonderful field of computer security.
Rated 
by reid
on March 06, 2011
by reid
on March 06, 2011
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Close to the Machine
Ellen Ullman is one of those authors that somehow avoided my radar. Until now...
Close to the Machine is less a book than a collection of loosely related personal anecdotes from Ellen's time as a very rare thing -- a successful female bisexual independent computer programming consultant.
In the course of her work and relationship life, she learns hard lessons about programming, running a business, being lonely, and loving the wrong people. I found it particularly poignant being a crypto-nerd with difficult times in relationships and a more-or-less NDA'd, secret work life.
This book is a must-read for anyone into running their own business, programming, or anyone dating a person that is a business-a-holic or programmer.
Rated 
by reid
on November 23, 2009
by reid
on November 23, 2009
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The Long Trip Home
I had the joy of dining with the author in Florida. We went to a little Brazilian BBQ where he spoke with our waitstaff in (what I can only assume was) flawless Portugese.
Brian Wyllie spent 1969-1971 living in Brazil working for the Peace Corps. His recent book outlines his trip back to the United States via Bolivia, Peru, and the Carribean chain, by way of bus, train, and sailboat. The format comes spattered with observations from the modern day, and makes me think, "this must be what John McPhee's journal looks like."
The trip sounded like a fantastic one, but I was left wanting more detail...where did the gun (being snuck through customs in a variety of places, no doubt) come from? And how did Geneve's hair smell? Alas, we'll have to wait for another book to find the answers.
Rated by reid
on April 16, 2009
by reid
on April 16, 2009
I'm sorry, the Linux kernel beats the Solaris kernel? You are smoking crack, sir. I get way more scale, way more ISV's, way higher quality and predictability, PLUS I get ZFS and dTrace and containers - with Solaris10. Stuff that Linus will work on in 2018. Dream on, guy, the world's moving on, and your rhetoric sounds childish. You work for IBM?
Posted by: Barton Fink on December 9, 2005 08:36 PM