My current home machine is a first generation (ordered the day after the announcement) PPC Mac Mini. I initially ordered it with 512Mb RAM and no WiFi or Bluetooth. It has since been upgraded to 1G (the max this machine can take) and had the WiFi/Bluetooth added (and it now lives in the UK rather than California where it was bought). When I first bought it it was as a secondary machine to learn where MacOS was, I hadn't used MacOS since System 7 at that time. It soon became my our primary home desktop and got given gifts of a (wired) Mac keyboard and 20" Cinema screen in addition to its upgraded memory and wireless capabilities.
It has been serving us well but I feel like a new machine. While I love OpenSolaris and spend a huge number of hours developing for it and using it MacOS is what I want to continue using for my personal stuff for now (I like iTunes, iPhoto, Safari and more importantly so does my wife). So if the current PPC Mac Mini is to be repurposed it needs to be Apple hardware.
I titled this "Missing Apple Mac hardware", why ? I can't find a non laptop Mac that actually fits what I want in terms of computing resources and cost. Disk space isn't an issue I'd buy the machine in the lowest possible disk configuration because all my data is stored on a ZFS on a separate system running OpenSolaris and mounted on the Mac using NFS.
The best CPU/RAM combination I get buy on a current Intel Mac Mini is 2GHz and 2G RAM for £558. The next option is a Mac Pro and that starts at a wallet breaking £1,749, it is a nice workstation but out of budget for my desktop machine. There is Mac hardware in between that price range but with, for me, a fundamental problem because it has an integrated LCD and comes with a keyboard. Now integrated systems are great I remember fondly using the Sun ELC workstations at University and my current Sun machine at home (and the office) is a Sun Ray 270 (ultra thin client with integrated LCD). However I like my 20" Apple Cinema display and I want to keep using and it doesn't need to be replaced, same for the keyboard/mouse.
The Apple Mac I want to buy would have a CPU around 2.4 to 3GHz and 4G RAM, a single disk and a reasonable graphics card - this isn't a games machine (I use consoles or my phone for games these days) - for helping with photo processing. Of course it should be "green" in that it should allow me to reuse my existing LCD monitor and keyboard (both Apple products!). Pretty much something like a Sun Ultra 20M2but capable of legally running MacOS X 10.5 and for about that price
So Apple where is my missing Mac ?
Update: I know I can do dual monitor on with an iMac (first saw that on a mono SE30 with an external colour display and putting windows "across" the boundary it was done perfectly!) but I already have two monitors on the desk (the Sun Ray 270 mentioned above) and I don't really have space for another one. The big issue with the top end Mac Mini is the memory only goes to 2G according to Apple and some of that will be taken away by the Intel GMA graphics. One of the reasons I need at least 4G RAM is that there is always two users logged in (with fast user switching) to this machine. A bit of space to upgrade beyond 4G of RAM would be nice.
Stephen Hahn, Bart Smaalders, and Danek Duvall talk about the new OpenSolaris Image Packaging System
that enables users and developers to get the software they need when
they need it. IPS is also a new tool for community growth as
developers around the world build and maintain packages and contribute
the software to the network repository. To contribute, go to the IPS project. 
Well, it seems it's more than just a panel, eh? Barton has all the details -- GNU/Linux Distro Smack Down! Only at CommunityOne. Should be a lot of fun.
Update: Here are the guys from the panel last week:
Karsten Wade, Fedora; Barton George, Sun (moderator); Glynn Foster, OpenSolaris; Jono Bacon, Ubuntu; Zonker Brockmeier, OpenSUSE.
Seems like for some reason I didn't actually post this when I wrote it on Jan 10th 2008, so I'll post it now
I've just read over the PC World "10 Worst Keyboards of all time" article. Out of the 10 there was only 3 I hadn't actually used (the IBM PCjr, the original PET, and the Atari 400. All the others I've actually used at least once. I found it interesting on the selection of the Sinclair keyboards, the ZX Spectrum one suffered all the same problems as the Timex 1000 but the metal "cover" also came off over time. I replaced the key membrane on my speccy at least once and upgraded the heat sink to try and stop it failing again (didn't really help in the long run)).
My current vote for the worst keyboard of all time is actually the iPhone/iTouch - yes it doesn't have a real keyboard but an on screen touch one instead, and the later lacks Bluetooth for connection of a "real" keyboard. I don't own an iPhone/iTouch just played with friends so maybe it gets better over time.
My favourite keyboard - Sun Microsystems Type 7 (USB) US UNIX layout. The layout is critical despite being a Brit I hate the UK keyboard layout with a passion it sucks for writing C or shell code because " and # get moved! The UNIX layout is also important so that Control is on the same row as return - caps lock has no use since I stopped writting COBOL code.
A few good words for OpenOffice from the Instapundit..
Update:: it's now grown an RSS icon. Thanks!
We announced the first commercial release of OpenSolaris - targeting high speed developers and development teams (not consumers...). OpenSolaris focuses on developers wanting to be freed from proprietary software models, who see innovation and automation in operating systems as a source of competitive advantage.
If Solaris 10, OpenSolaris's older brother, is for IT departments prioritizing carrier grade stability over rapid innovation, OpenSolaris targets the exact opposite - developers, from high performance computing to social networking, that prioritize a constantly refreshing repository filled with community innovations (and ZFS-based automated rollback) over an unchanging qualification target. Go to OpenSolaris.com to download a free copy, or click on the OpenSolaris logo to have a bootable CD delivered to you (free of charge). Or if you want a simpler way of trying it out... just go to Amazon!
We also announced a partnership with Amazon, through which we've made OpenSolaris, alongside MySQL and Glassfish, available with commercial support on Amazon's elastic computing cloud. From where I sit, this is a profound change in the industry - the world's most popular database is now available, and commercially supported, as a cloud service. As is the fastest growing Java container, and a redefined OpenSolaris for the modern world.
The traditional software industry, first revolutionized by open source, next by software as a service, is now embarking on a third revolutionary change... infrastructure as a service.
Sure feels like the clouds are parting.
(And again, if you'd like a free copy of OpenSolaris sent to you on a bootable, "live" CD, just click on the OpenSolaris logo above.)
Here are a few more images from the 2008 OpenSolaris Summit this weekend in Santa Cruz. The summit was an excellent event. Many good sessions, but even more importantly, it was fantastic meeting all the people around the world I've been dealing with for four years now. Check in on the summit wiki in the next couple of weeks because the presos will be posted there.
I'm thrilled by the latest delivery of the Sun's OpenSolaris distro, and I was happy to see the "party" atmosphere at Community One on Monday. A lot of people have worked very hard to put the thing together, and everyone wanted to mark this event - both as the culmination of a lot of work, and as the beginning of a new phase of building out the distro with more content - both by Sun, our business partners, and by our communities. Thanks to everyone for their efforts.
If you haven't already given it a spin, try it out - it's a live CD image you can download from here.
I do remember when i did try to use The FreeBSD kernel with Debian userland softwares. I do remember when i have tryed/used the Solaris 9 environment with the NetBSD ports system, and Gentoo portage system too. Yesterday, i think that whole problem was fixed, with the release of the OpenSolaris distribution. I think a lot of users and admins that work with POSIX (unix like) Operating Systems, were waiting for a Solaris environment with a real package manager. Now, it’s true!
I remember the desire to see Apple releasing OSX to x86 hardware, and using a unix like kernel… maybe the time was the problem here, because with some luck we could have now a OSX based on Solaris/OpenSolaris. But what i really think is the next step (or just my will), is see Apple selling (i don’t imagine they releasing it for free :), the Aqua interface/applications to any unix like OS: GNU/Linux, *BSD, and… OpenSolaris! C’mon, i have a great OS already…
Can you imagine that? Solaris + a solid package manager + Aqua?
Ok, we have great environment and applications (gnome, kde, enlightenment), i don’t need to list them all… but don’t you agree that would be great?
As I did for the preview releases, I'll collect links to mirror sites here. These will also get links on the various download pages out there.
Bart and I just finished updating the package repository with the new packages we'd received the past few weeks, and that means 2008.05 is out the door. (Thanks to everybody who tried the release candidate, filed a bug, shuffled a package, wrote or proofread a document, or just spent energy anticipating the bits.) You can get the ISO image, suitable for burning to a 700 MiB CD or immediate use in virtual environment, directly from the following locations:
via HTTP from 
dlc.sun.com, and
via HTTP from genunix.org, via HTTP from ftp.df.lth.se, via FTP from ftp.df.lth.se, via HTTP from mirrors.xservers.ro, or
via BitTorrent.Reading the logs, and talking with some of our mirror sites, we know we all served out a lot of downloads for the previews; if you're interested in being a mirror, please let me know. (2008.05 remains completely redistributable.) We're using a bigger download complex this time, but every mirror helps.
If you already downloaded and installed Preview 2, it's more complete, easier, and probably faster to update directly using image packaging: see the update guidelines. These instructions involve a small script to safely update a clone of your installed system, and then switch to that on a system reboot. (If you were running Preview 1, you should update that to Preview 2, and then go on to 2008.05.)
Update 1: My thanks to Tobias Lundquist, who's once again mirrored via FTP and HTTP (Internet 2) in Sweden.
Update 2: My thanks to Luca, who's put up an HTTP mirror in Romania.
These links are for the gzipped CD image, which contains the 12 "primary languages". It installs quite a bit faster, particularly on systems with slower CPUs. There is also an LZMA-compressed image, which has localization support for 42 languages, including those primary ones. It's available from dlc.sun.com, genunix.org, ftp.df.lth.se, mirrors.xservers.ro, and as a torrent. (Consult the language lists for specifics.)
[ T: OpenSolaris indiana ]
Hmm. Always wondered if I could write a blog entry "live" from a conference session. Since I'm writing this entry "live", I'll apologise ahead of time for muddling my tenses as I move more into the present tense!
I'm here at community one listening to Joost Pronk and Achim Hasenmueller talking about the latest improvements and coolness in VirtualBox. Achim's team has just released version 1.6, which has an impressive list of features that can be found in the changelog right here.
Now the Q&A begins
Now some roadmap items that are being worked on
You can download VirtualBox 1.6 by following the downloads link from virtualbox.org.
First, download the OpenSolaris CDROM.
Here's the py file I'm using... Your path to pygrub will differ if your using a linux dom0.
: alpha[1]#; cat pv.py
name = "opensolaris-pv-install"
vcpus = 1
memory = "1024"
bootloader = "/usr/lib/xen/bin/pygrub"
kernel = "/platform/i86xpv/kernel/amd64/unix"
ramdisk = "/boot/x86.microroot"
extra = "/platform/i86xpv/kernel/amd64/unix -B console=ttya,livemode=text"
disk = ['file:/tank/guests/install/opensolaris/os200805.iso,6:cdrom,r',
'file:/tank/guests/opensolaris/disk.img,0,w']
vif = ['']
on_shutdown = "destroy"
on_reboot = "destroy"
on_crash = "preserve"
: alpha[1]#;
Setup your paths correctly, create your disk, etc. Boot the OpenSolaris LiveCD
: alpha[1]#; xm create -c pv.py Using config file "./pv.py". Started domain opensolaris-pv-install v3.1.4-xvm chgset 'Fri May 02 10:23:19 2008 -0700 15873:3e3bd3d19023' SunOS Release 5.11 Version snv_86 64-bit Copyright 1983-2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms. Hostname: opensolaris Remounting root read/write Probing for device nodes ... Preparing live image for use Done mounting Live image USB keyboard 1. Albanian 22. Latvian 2. Belarusian 23. Macedonian 3. Belgian 24. Malta_UK 4. Bulgarian 25. Malta_US 5. Croatian 26. Norwegian 6. Czech 27. Polish 7. Danish 28. Portuguese 8. Dutch 29. Russian 9. Finnish 30. Serbia-And-Montenegro 10. French 31. Slovenian 11. French-Canadian 32. Slovakian 12. Hungarian 33. Spanish 13. German 34. Swedish 14. Greek 35. Swiss-French 15. Icelandic 36. Swiss-German 16. Italian 37. Traditional-Chinese 17. Japanese-type6 38. TurkishQ 18. Japanese 39. TurkishF 19. Korean 40. UK-English 20. Latin-American 41. US-English 21. Lithuanian To select the keyboard layout, enter a number [default 41]: 1. Chinese - Simplified 2. Chinese - Traditional 3. English 4. French 5. German 6. Italian 7. Japanese 8. Korean 9. Portuguese - Brazil 10. Russian 11. Spanish 12. Swedish To select the desktop language, enter a number [default 3]: Configuring devices. Mounting local partitions/cdroms Reading ZFS config: done. opensolaris console login: May 5 08:06:30 opensolaris in.routed[639]: route 0.0.0.0/8 --> 0.0.0.0 nexthop ... opensolaris console login:
Log into LiveCD (jack/jack). Make sure your networking is up (it can take a minute or two until the DHCP client runs).
opensolaris console login: jack
Password:
Last login: Mon May 5 08:07:00 on console
Sun Microsystems Inc. SunOS 5.11 snv_86 January 2008
jack@opensolaris:~$
jack@opensolaris:~$ ifconfig xnf0
xnf0: flags=201004843 mtu 1500 index 2
inet 192.168.0.117 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.0.255
Start up a VNC Server, connect to it on port 5901, and run through the install.
jack@opensolaris:~$ mkdir .vnc;cp .Xclients .vnc/xstartup jack@opensolaris:~$ vncserver You will require a password to access your desktops. Password: Verify: xauth: creating new authority file /jack/.Xauthority New 'opensolaris:1 ()' desktop is opensolaris:1 Starting applications specified in /jack/.vnc/xstartup Log file is /jack/.vnc/opensolaris:1.log
Once your install has completed, create a py file for the your new guest, and you are ready to go...
name = "opensolaris" vcpus = 1 memory = "512" disk = ['file:/tank/guests/opensolaris/disk.img,0,w'] vif = [''] on_shutdown = "destroy" on_reboot = "restart" on_crash = "destroy"
Have Fun!
Sunday I spent at Moscone, teaching laptops and projectors to get along. Saturday, Nathaniel, Benjamin, and I dropped in for lunch at the Developer Summit. I managed to talk with a few people before the boys found large whacking sticks, and then it seemed best to drive to Pescadero for some beach time.
I'll be busy for the morning of CommunityOne. For Rich's keynote, I'll be running some of the less violent demos. Almost immediately after that, lead modernizer David Comay and I will be going into more detail in our session
S297399 Getting Started with OpenSolaris™; New Features & Building OpenSolaris™ Packages; 11:00 a.m., Moscone South/Esplanade 300.We've got some additional demonstrations, including a worked example of package publication using some pre-release tools, which could be exciting.
I'm hoping to have some time for questions during the session but, if not, I'll be circulating during the afternoon and happy to talk to people about 2008.05, image packaging, or whatever. And, of course, there will be time to talk at the party after the day's sessions. In any case, I should be easy to spot: I have a new tie.
I'm told you can still register on-site—it's not too late.
[ T: OpenSolaris pkg CommunityOne ]
This originally was going to be a post-mortem on dtrace.conf, but so much time has passed, that I doubt it qualifies anymore. Back in March, we held the first ever DTrace (un)conference, and I hope I speak for all involved when I declare it a terrific success. And our t-shirts (logo pictured) were, frankly, bomb. Here are some fairly random impressions from the day:
Notes on the demographics at dtrace.conf: Macs were the most prevalent laptops by quite a wide margin, and a ton of demos were done under VMware for the Mac. There were a handful of dvorak users who far outnumbered the Esperanto speakers (there were none) despite apparently similarly rationales. There were, by a wide margin, more live demonstrations that I'd seen during a day of technical talks; there were probably fewer individual slides than demos -- exactly what we had in mind.
My favorite session brought the authors of the three DTrace ports to the front of the room to talk about porting, and answer questions (mostly from the DTrace team). I was excited that they agreed to work together on a wiki and on a DTrace porting project. Both would be great for new ports and for building a repository that could integrate all the ports into a single repository. I just have to see if I can get them to follow through now several weeks removed from the DTrace love-in...
Also particularly interesting were a demonstration of a DTrace-enabled Adobe Air prototype and the very clever mechanism behind the Java group's plan for native Java static probes (JSDT). Essentially, they're using the same technique as normal USDT, but dynamically generating the tracing description structures and sending them down to the kernel (slick).
The most interesting discussion resulted from Keith's presentation of vprobes -- a DTrace... um... inspired facility in VMware. While it is necessary to place a unified tracing mechanism at the lowest level of software abstraction (in DTrace's case, the kernel), it may also make sense to embed collaborating tracing frameworks at other levels of the stack. For example, the JVM could include a micro-DTrace which communicated with DTrace in the kernel as needed. This would both improve enabled performance (not a primary focus of DTrace), and allow for better domain-specific instrumentation and expression. I'll be interested to see how vprobes executes on this idea.
Requests from the DTrace community:
Ben was kind enough to video the entire day. We should have the footage publicly available in about a week. Thanks to all who participated; several recent projects have already gotten me excited for dtrace.conf(09).
As part of the changes to get Developer Preview 2 ready, we decided to
rejigger the HTTP handling on pkg.opensolaris.org
so that we could
have more options as more people attempt to use the early versions of
image packaging. Previously, we ran pkg.depotd directly on port 80,
in its read-only mode; now we use Apache HTTPD to listen on port 80, and
use mod_proxy to proxy those incoming requests to a
pkg.depotd instance listening on a separate port. With a couple of
different approaches
Proxying and rewriting is one of those endlessly fun activities that somehow actually ends up being productive. Last time, proxying fun led Steve and I to fiddling around such that we ended up with proxy and rewrite patterns to enable the country portals for opensolaris.org.
If you want to share the top-level component of your URL space, you'll
need to watch pkg(5) developments, as you have to map the list of
operations one-by-one—and I know there are some new operations
forthcoming. That would involve adding something like the following to
a VirtualHost directive in your Apache configuration.
ProxyRequests On Redirect /index.html http://pkg.opensolaris.org/status ProxyPass /abandon http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/abandon ProxyPass /add http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/add ProxyPass /catalog http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/catalog ProxyPass /close http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/close ProxyPass /feed http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/feed ProxyPass /file http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/file ProxyPass /filelist http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/filelist ProxyPass /manifest http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/manifest ProxyPass /open http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/open ProxyPass /search http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/search ProxyPass /versions http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/versions ProxyPass /css http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/css ProxyPass /logo http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/logo ProxyPass /icon http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/icon ProxyPass /status http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/
Configuring your server in this fashion allows you to mix an image packaging server in with your other site content. You can easily deliver static content alongside your depot, for example.
If you don't mind pushing your package repository down one level in your URL space, then the above simplifies to
ProxyRequests On ProxyPass /pkg/ http://pkg.opensolaris.org:10000/
(which should be a hint on how to create a repository farm under a
single URL). To use the latter, you would use pkg(1)'s image-create
subcommand
$ pkg image-create -F -a mypkgs.com=http://www.myserver.com/pkg /path/to/image
to connect your image to your reverse-proxied packaging depot.
In the two examples above, you should of course replace
machine names like pkg.opensolaris.org and port numbers
like 10000 with values appropriate to your own installation.
Happy proxied package serving!
Feel free to share your alternative configurations or approaches with other
HTTP servers here, or on pkg-discuss-AT-opensolaris.org.
[ T: OpenSolaris Solaris pkg httpd ]
We announced the results of our third fiscal quarter (Q3) on Thursday last week, and the results weren't what I, or any of us, wanted.
As you can read in the press release, we delivered $3.267 billion in revenue for Q3, roughly flat with a year ago. On that revenue, we delivered a GAAP loss of 4 cents (equal to the charge associated with the acquisition of MySQL, which closed within the quarter) - on that revenue, we generated around $320m in cash.
The low light of the quarter was revenue in the US - which declined year over year by nearly 10%, a big step down for a geography that typically contributes 40% of our total revenue. The highlight of the quarter was our India performance, up 30% year over year - and our chip multi-threading Niagara systems, which grew (billings) 110%.
We had growth in 12 of 16 geographies in which we sell, but a shortfall in the world's largest economy (and the largest in Sun's portfolio), is tough to make up elsewhere. So we showed no growth at the corporate level.
Despite a weak US economy, we still see growth and opportunity across the world. We are going to be making some changes as a result of the quarter, certainly, but not in our core vision or strategic direction - network infrastructure is being built out across the world, developers will continue to define its architecture and shape demand, and we will continue to position ourselves to drive and capture that market.
With that, I'll go through a few questions:
What happened in the US?
Late in the quarter, we saw a fairly aggressive slowdown - among smaller customers, and for larger systems (like enterprise servers and large tape libraries). As you recall, we left Q2 with a healthy backlog, lots of momentum, and feedback from customers that we were totally on the right track, so we were as surprised as anyone that deals started stalling in early March.
Why did big systems slow?
It's counterintuitive, but larger systems and purchase orders's are easier to slow down than smaller purchases. When you sell the systems and storage behind a big buildout, it's typically a long selling cycle, and a fairly long implementation process (systems aren't powered up the day they arrive). So holding off for a few weeks, either because you're spooked about the US mortgage crisis or because your CFO decided to put a pause on capital spending, is fairly straightforward.
And remember, our business is a portfolio - from high growth, low end blades and training services, to slower growth, high end enterprise systems an infrastructure software. There is no one system or product for all workloads, it's a portfolio.
So how are you going to adjust going forward?
We'll continue to diversify our business - geographically, and with the introduction of our Open Storage initiatives this past week and acquisitions like MySQL and Vaau, we'll continue moving into adjacent markets.
We also announced a restructuring plan, through which we'll be making targeted reductions in operating expenses. The net result will be the elimination of up to 2,500 jobs.
To be clear - we are taking assertive, and prudent steps to focus on growth opportunities, and to pull our cost structure in line with our business model. As we've done in years past, we're doing both - making choices to invest and disinvest.
Evolving companies are never done making choices.
Where did you grow in the quarter?
In 12 of the 16 geographies we serve - including India (up 30%), Brazil (up 20%), up in China, Russia, the Middle East, Canada, to name a few places. In general, the world continues to look to technology as a source of growth, automation and efficiency. Even our Wall Street business was up this past quarter.
On the product front, our focus on energy efficiency continues to pay off, with Niagara systems grew (billings) 110% year over year, and our newest (AMD, Intel and SPARC) blade systems growing at an even higher clip. The MySQL team delivered a great growth quarter, and Service revenues were up 3% (a major portion of which are software related, of course). Disk storage billings were up 6%.
Deferred product revenues were again up nicely, more than 25% - these deferred revenues tend to be for higher end systems and more complex configurations, with gross margins above the corporate average. Deferred Services were down, attributable to the ERP transition I mentioned earlier (we expect to recover that in Q4).
What didn't go well?
Enterprise systems, which were great growers in Q1 and Q2 (20% and 8% growth, respectively), were down in the quarter - and not specifically attributable to competition. We saw exceptional performance on our APL systems built with Fujitsu, and a strengthening partnership. Tape libraries were also down, although media sales were strong.
Given the size of both these line items, our higher volume lower end businesses were not yet at a sufficient scale to eclipse the slowdown on the lower volume, high end systems.
Why don't you just stop giving your software away?
Because we prioritize developer adoption. Let me give an example.
Last week, we saw a very high profile media company raise a considerable sum of money. They had not otherwise been on our radar. I sent a note to the head of our global sales team, given the fundraising had cited a growing infrastructure buildout, and asked if we'd made contact.
He said no, but we were immediately reaching out - and it turns out they're completely built around MySQL.
So before we arrived, before we were engaged, and before they began building out a large infrastructure, the MySQL team had scored a design win - ahead of the proprietary competition. What should we have charged them beforehand? No matter what it was, they wouldn't have used the product - startups and developers don't pay for software. But here's a diffrent question: what would we have paid them to select MySQL over the proprietary alternatives before embarking on a massive expansion?
Right question. We didn't pay them, the MySQL team earned their adoption.
Will they buy a license now? Maybe not, but we'll be well positioned if and when they, like Facebook or Nokia or the New York Times, do. And in the interim, it costs us nothing for the reference. I was with a bunch of startups at our StartupCamp this morning, and asked how many folks in the audience *didn't* use free software... no hands were raised. Why are we focused on startups? Because we're focused on all developers, in big companies and small.
How do you feel about the competition?
Just fine, we looked at the deals slowing in the US, competition wasn't our big issue - it's not that someone else was getting the purchase order, it's that no PO was being issued in the quarter. We're more exposed to the US markets, and potentially more exposed to discretionary purchases (although I don't really believe that servers are more discretionary than storage - they're converging). Avnet, one of our big distributors, had a similar experience in the US.
Why didn't you pre-announce the quarter?
We wanted to be sure, when we made our announcements, to have finalized our numbers and our plan to adjust our cost structure going forward. Given we're in the midst of an ERP transition, we were still finalizing work late into April. Secondarily, we needed to review our FY 2009 restructuring plan with the board before going public. We announced as soon as we'd met, reviewed and approved the plan.
How did you lose money compared to a year ago profit?
Well, without dipping into GAAP accounting, we generated a lot of cash in the quarter (more than $320m), and getting from cash to GAAP income involves a fair number of line items associated with acquisition accounting, amortization of goodwill, tax provisions, stock option expensing - all of which, on a non-cash basis, added up to 22 cents worth of charges.
Are you repurchasing your own shares?
We don't comment on buyback plans, but we'll report any potential purchases at the end of the quarter.
When will the US recover? Will the malaise spread overseas?
We build network innovation at Sun, we don't predict the global economy.
And with that, you've hopefully got a clearer sense of what we saw, and what we see. So I'll end on a particuarly vexing question,
"Why does Sun's CEO waste time writing that blog?"
Because I believe in providing clarity surrounding our strategy and operations - not just once a year in the Annual Report. I believe clarity behind our direction is useful for our shareholders, customers, partners and employees.
In good times, and in challenging ones.
________________
Safe Harbor Statement
Jonathan's blog contains forward-looking statements regarding the future results and performance of Sun including statements with respect to the effects of our restructuring plan, and expectations for deferred revenue. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties and actual results could differ materially from those predicted in any such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in such forward-looking statements include: risks associated with developing, designing, manufacturing and distributing new products; lack of success in technological advancements; pricing pressures; lack of customer acceptance of new products; the possibility of errors or defects in new products; competition; adverse business conditions; failure to retain key employees; the cancellation or delay of projects; our reliance on single-source suppliers; risks associated with our ability to purchase a sufficient amount of components to meet demand; inventory risks; and delays in product development or customer acceptance and implementation of new products and technologies. Please also refer to Sun's periodic reports that are filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2007 and its Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarters ended September 30, 2007 and December 30, 2007. Sun assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update these forward-looking statements.
Nos meus 33 anos de idade, já escrevi sobre os maiores jogadores de futebol que vi nos gramados, e agora escrevo sobre o maior treinador que já vi no Sport Club Internacional: Abel Braga. Não sou muito de colocar a culpa nos treinadores, e poucas vezes “fiz campanha” para troca de treinadores no colorado, pois acredito que o principal são os onze jogadores que estão ali, dentro das quatro linhas. Mas com base nestes jogadores, digo, na qualidade que cada torcedor enxerga no plantel do seu clube do coração, criamos expectativas…
Considero o Muricy Ramalho um bom treinador, mas depois de três anos à frente da equipe colorada, sem conseguir chegar numa final (Copa do Brasil, Campeonato Brasileiro, Copa Sul-Americana), Muricy foi alvo das minhas críticas. O internacional tinha um grupo qualificado, montado também pelo Muricy e pelo então presidente do Interancional, Fernando Carvalho.
Gosto de futebol, e portanto acompanho o que acontece neste esporte dentro e fora do Brasil. Nesses meus 33 anos de colorado, fora o título da Copa do Brasil de 1992, minha melhor época como torcedor do Internacional tinha sido com o colorado sob o comando de Abel Braga, ainda no início de sua carreira. O Inter com Abel Braga venceu o gre-nal do século, com uma virada histórica com um jogador a menos em campo, vindo a sagrar-se vice-campeão Brasileiro. No ano seguinte a segunda melhor participação do colorado em uma Libertadores da América até então: 3° lugar.
Longe do Internacional Abel Braga ganhou campeonatos estaduais, ajudou a revelar bons jogadores no futebol nacional e chegou por duas vezes consecutivas à final da Copa do Brasil (uma vez com o flamengo, e outra com o fluminense). Vale lembrar que com times relativamente “fracos”, onde na minha visão, o trabalho do técnico foi fundamental. Quando o colorado anunciou a saída de Muricy Ramalho em 2006, eu gostaria de ver o Abel Braga novamente no comando da equipe colorada… e foi quando o título deste post começou a ser criado: “O melhor Inter que já vi“!
Abel Braga chegou e começaram as mudanças… primeiro trouxe Fabiano Eller, cria sua, e o segundo melhor zagueiro que já vi jogar no beira-rio (o primeiro foi o Gamarra). Com Clemer no gol, montou a zaga com Fabiano Eller e Bolívar (que antes não era nem relacionado, agora era lançado como zagueiro). Sem Élder Granja na ala direita, Abel colocou Ceará (outro que não era aproveitado, e muito criticado), e Jorge Wagner na ala esquerda. Abel Braga também trouxe Fabinho para primeira função ao lado do incansável Tinga, Alex e Fernandão na meia, e Rafael Sóbis na frente. Uma campanha irreparável no gauchão, perdeu apenas um jogo no início do campeonato, e perdeu o título com dois empates na final. Foi duramente criticado por alguns que “achavam” que o inter tinha obrigação de ganhar do grêmio, e ainda golear. Imaginem que em um dos maiores clássicos do futebol Brasileiro, um time entra com a obrigação de ganhar e ainda golear…
Bom, dois empates em grenal não é nada absurdo, e eu continuava crente no bom trabalho que estava sendo feito. E a sequência deste trabalho o mundo já sabe: Campeão da Taça Libertadores (perdendo apenas um jogo), vice-campeão Brasileiro, e Campeão Mundial FIFA (lançando Alexandre Pato para o mundo, com apenas 17 anos). No ano seguinte, 2007, o Abel Braga não conseguiu uma boa participação na Taça Libertadores, eu acredito que em virtude do Internacional não ter reposto jogadores importantes que tinha perdido do plantel campeão de 2006 (principalmente na zaga). O Internacional vendeu jogadores como: Fabiano Eller, Bolívar, Fabinho, Tinga, Jorge Wagner, e Rafael Sóbis. Abel saiu após a eliminação do Inter na Taça Libertadores daquele ano, e voltou no segundo semestre de 2007 para o segundo turno do Brasileirão. Nesta fase, o técnico colorado começou a recriar a equipe… alguns jogadores importantes puderam estrear no colorado em agosto (Guiñazu, Magrão, Sorondo, volta de Fernandão de Lesão, término da suspensão de Marcão, etc..)
Este ano, o colorado já começou ganhando o torneio de Dubai, com um time todo remodelado, e mais uma vez tendo uma campanha impecável no campeonato gaúcho. Já na Copa do Brasil o Inter passou das duas primeiras fases da competição ganhando dos adversários por mais de dois gols de diferença. Sem necessidade de segunda partida. Dia 24 de abril deste ano, o colorado precisava golear o time do paraná para passar para a próxima fase da Copa do Brasil. Era necessário vencer por 3 gols de diferença, pois havia perdido o primeiro jogo por 2×0. Com dois desfalques importantes (Guiñazu e Alex), com vários jogadores no departamento médico em virtude de uma epidemia de Hepatite A, Abel armou um time que não só fez 3 gols de diferença, mas fez 4 (5×1, com mais uma aposta sua marcando dois gols e fazendo o passe para mais um, Andrézinho). Hoje, mais uma vitória épica aconteceu no beira-rio, o internacional sagrou-se campeão gaúcho pela 38ª vez, vencendo o Juventude por 8×1!
Esta o Abel estava devendo pois nunca havia ganhado um gauchão…
Abel Braga foi campeão da Libertadores ganhando do São Paulo de Muricy Ramalho, e que tinha o time atual campeão da competição, e campeão mundial. Ganhou o mundial FIFA enfrentando a equipe do Barcelona de Ronaldinho Gaúcho, e neste ano de 2008 já ganhou o campeonato gaúcho e o torneio de Dubai, batendo a equipe da Internazionale.
Faço questão de escrever isto antes de saber se Abel levará o Inter a mais algum título ou não, mas porquê acredito que já está mais do que provado que Abel Braga foi o técnico das maiores conquistas do Sport Club Internacional, e hoje é um dos maiores técnicos do futebol Brasileiro. Seria interessante ver o confronto de Abel e Luxemburgo na Copa do Brasil, mas não será contra o Palmeiras que o colorado irá disputar a partida das quartas-de-final, e sim contra o Sport Club do Recife.
Por último, parabéns a todos os colorados espalhados pelo mundo, por mais esta conquista maiúscula! E seria bom que parcela da imprensa, e também dos torcedores do colorado, demonstrassem o respeito e reconhecimento que este grande técnico merece.
About a week ago, i did start to face a problem with my desktop computer at home. The machine was just hanging, or sometimes shutting off… after the first shuttdown, when i did try to power on the computer, i did hear a tipical “bip” serie from the CPU, and have saw the BIOS message about overheating. Ok, we are not totally blind now, we have a clue about the origin of the problem. So, i shuttdown the computer, and did start a cleanning procedure on the heat sink. I have another heat sink (used) here, but after the cleanning, i just add another thin layer of thermal grease to the heatsink, and gave it another try… no luck…
Second chance, did change the heat sink, and another try… no luck again. Now i was not much confident about the overheating, because i start to think: “two heat sinks with dissipation problems“? And we are not in summer here… The computer’s BIOS has some indicators about the CPU thermal state, and so i did look it and took note of the numbers. About 60° C, even 70°C.. i do confess i did not have any parameters. So, i did a new power on, and running against time i did install lm_sensors (excellent application, i think OpenSolaris needs something like this on x86 hardware). The only problem i did see with the ubuntu gutsy installation, was the fact that after i did try to use the gnome applet, i had to realize that i need to execute the sensors-detect perl script. The Debian rules avoid user interaction at installation time, but i think here a dialog was essential…
Now, with the gnome applet up and running, i could see the “red” alarm about overheating. The numbers were slightly different from the indicators of the system BIOS, but by the red color on the CPU temperature, i could see that something was really strange with the CPU. The CPU is a Pentium IV 3.0 Ghz, and i have a old 2.4 Ghz CPU on a “not working” motherboard, so… i did change the CPU to see if the problem was not the CPU itself. No luck again…
Ok, now i was convicted that the problem was not the CPU or the heat sink, and the problem was on the motherboard or the power supply. I was praying to be the power supply because i already have a not working motherboard, and my computer is a old one (socket 478), with 2,5Gb DDR RAM, etc… So, let’s try the power supply first!
Bingo! After remove the connectors from the motherboard, i could see that the connectors were not in a good state, and after change the power suppy… everything was working again! The gnome applet is showing 45° C on average, and the color is yellow. I did change the heat sink for a new one, and the speed is 2850 RPM on average. Last step is take note of these “normal” values to have a parameter for future situations like this.
Peace.
If you're attending JavaOne this year, do come to my session on Wednesday at 2:50pm. It's T-7064 and I will be talking about the Adoption-Led Market and the challenges it brings to the open source and free software community of communities. It's in room 305.
Alternatively, come to the Thirsty Bear on Tuesday evening around 8pm and I'll see you at the open source un-BOF for chat, food and drink.
I did receive a good feedback (email, at #opensolaris irc channel, etc… c’mon people, leave a comment :),about my last post about the OpenSolaris.com bubbles. So, i have decided to use the new logo on my blog header for a while. Tomorrow is the great release of the new OpenSolaris binary distribution (project Indiana), and that’s a good reason to keep the bubbles too.
Long and successful life for the bubbles!
Compiz is now available out of the box in OpenSolaris 2008.05 (and also since nevada build 85).
To enable it you just need to start the GNOME appearance preference dialog. It is located on Opensolaris 2008.05 under System->Preferences->Appearance-> Visual effect tab.
In nevada it's located under Start Menu->Preferences->Appearance-> Visual effect tab
If your system is capable of running compiz you'll see the following dialog :
To enable compiz select either the normal or extra settings and that's it :)
If you want to customize your compiz fusion plugins settings you can access the compiz settings manager either via the preferences button or via system->preferences->CompizConfig Settings Manager.
If you are presented with these choices and you know your hardware doesn't support compiz you might be hitting bug 1408.
If you find bugs in either the desktop integration of compiz or compiz itself let me know by logging a bug at defect.opensolaris.org.
In case anyone didn't notice, we released Solaris 9 containers too. There's a datasheet on it right here, and Dan Price has a great entry on it here.
We're talking about OpenSolaris 2008.05 over on IRC, using the #os200805, from now until 2 p.m. Pacific Time. If you haven't got an IRC client, you can use freenode's Java applet, which worked great (until Danek kickbanned me). Enter a nickname, and then ask some questions.
Apparently the load from 60 000 users blew out the chat system, so we moved to IRC.
{ rant du jour }
Just FYI. If you have a teenager looking at college be sure to remind them that having a degree doesn't really mean much anymore. It is a lot of time and a lot of money spent with no promise of return on investment.
Here is a short list of people that did not ever attend or graduate from college or university :
Planet Solaris is an aggregation of weblogs written about Solaris. The opinions expressed in those weblogs and hence this aggregation are those of the original authors.
Planet Solaris is not a product or publication of Sun Microsystems.
Planet Solaris is powered by Venus and is run by David Edmondson.
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Last updated: May 11, 2008 10:17 PM GMT