Sun IEC meetings

Today was spent in meetings at Sun’s IEC (Indian Engineering Centre) here in Bangalore. [Of course Sun now has facilities in other parts of India, so perhaps the title is becoming inappropriate.] Most of the discussions revolved around engineering practices, site planning, and developing the senior technical talent in India. In the last session of the day, I met the engineering team that’s working on some of Sun’s N1 systems management technology, and I was asked to say a few words about systems and network management at Sun, and about where Sun is heading. On the first subject I know quite a bit. I was involved with a number of Sun’s programs in this area – SNM, SEM, SDM – particularly when I was doing CTO duties in the Solstice group. I also participated in several of Sun’s “visionary” initiatives – JMAPI, the original N1, and G2. Even if you don’t actually build the vision, you learn a hell of a lot from it.
Where Sun’s heading…. Hmmm. I didn’t have anything prepared, and I didn’t want to simply trot out the corporate strategy pitch. I decided to focus on three big trends:

  • The shift from compute-centric to data-centric systems thinking
  • Open source
  • Utility computing and virtualization

I’m not going to go into detail now; suffice it to say that each of these trends has huge implications for Sun. It’s not just the products we build and the services we offer; it’s how we do engineering, and how (and with whom!) we collaborate.
My laryngitis has not yet abated, but I’m glad to say that I didn’t actually become speechless at any point during the day. And I didn’t find myself fading out, either: I think this travel schedule (leaving the US in the afternoon and arriving in India around midnight) works for me.

Just testing (nothing to see here)

There’s something odd going on. I posted two items today, but they’re not showing up on my RSS feed. I suspect there’s some kind of timestamp issue, or perhaps an interaction with the various posting tools I use.

Lufthansa

I’ve uploaded some pictures of my journey from Boston to Bangalore to my photo gallery. As I pointed out, Lufthansa feels like an early 1990s airline. They tend to focus on the First and Business class customers, with features like in-flight Internet access. I’d have loved to try this, but there’s no way I can get out my laptop and use it in a full cabin of 32-inch pitch coach seating. Lufthansa doesn’t seem to be interested in competing for the economy passenger. For example, they are way behind the competition – BA, Virgin, Jet Airways – in in-flight entertainment (IFE) for economy passengers. LH, BA and VA all bought 744s at the same time, but BA and VA have aggressively updated their economy seating to incorporate the latest technology (video on demand, games, etc.). Moreover it’s not just a question of the age of the fleet: LH’s newest A330-300 and A340-600 aircraft also lack individual IFE in economy.
LH744
Is there any point in competing for coach? Clearly LH doesn’t have the kind of cost structure to complete with newcomers like Jet. On the other hand, both BA and Virgin have recognized that there’s a market for a Premium Economy product positioned between business class and economy. Many companies (including Sun) will only pay for economy, and I can’t afford to pay for an upgrade to business class with all the trimmings. However I’m happy to pay a few bucks to get a slightly bigger seat with a few inches of extra legroom, and I’ve done so on several occasions.
The bottom line is that LH feels very much like an old-style quasi-monopolistic flag carrier. For economy traffic between European cities and long-haul destinations, and between North America and South Asia, they have a fabulous hub in Frankfurt (see my itinerary) and a tolerable price point. They don’t think they need to do anything else to compete, so they concentrate on the premium traffic where they are competing against service-centric carriers like Singapore and Thai. (No US carriers offer any real competition any more.)
So why do I fly them? Convenience, and Star Alliance. (Most of my LH flights were purchased as UA codeshares.) But I still hope that some enterprising carrier will put A340-500s or (eventually) B777-200LRs on non-stops from the north-eastern US to India. (BOS to BLR is 8,139 nm; the A345 can do over 9,000.) I’d switch in a heartbeat.

Lousy time to get laryngitis

I got a good 7 hours sleep last night, interrupted only by a phone call (and I didn’t pick it up in time). The bad news is tht the persistent tickle in my throat during the flights has turned into full blown laryngitis: my voice is distinctly limited. Oh well….
Went out shopping this AM. In theory this was to get to a pharmacy and stuff: in practice the driver always needs to stop at a friend’s craft (souvenir) shop. I played along and picked up a few things.
The city looks beautiful – very different from my last (soggy) visit.

Checked in

Just checked in to my hotel in Bangalore. (Naturally the first thing to do was check Internet access.) It’s 1:37am local time; let’s see if I can get some sleep.
Flights were uneventful. Lufthansa is so 1990’s, though.

Contrasts

This time last year we were waiting for the big winter storm. This year (in the Boston area, anyway), it’s “Winter? What winter?” 55F, sunny, breezy…. (OK, occasionally more than breezy.)
Also looking back at my posts from last year, I never did get to see Aliens of the Deep. I guess I should pick up the DVD.
And that week I was also waxing lyrical about the T-shirts from JiNX. Of course, back then I didn’t have a grandson to indulge… Anyway, I just bought him the perfect thing for a 7-month old hacker….

So much for "Web 2.0"

Great rant by Zeldman on the Web 2.0 meme:

But nothing, not even the rants of political bloggers, was as exciting as the scent of money. As the first properly valued “Web 2.0” properties began to find buyers, a frenzy like the old one popped hideously back to life. Yahoo spent how much? Google bought what? Here was real blood in the water.
But how to persuade the other sharks in the tank that this blood feast was different from the previous boom-and-bust? Easy: Dismiss everything that came before as Web 1.0.
[…]
As for me, I’m cutting out the middleman and jumping right to Web 3.0. Why wait?

(Via Slashdot.)

Disillusioned about Harvard

I really have to stop raising my blood pressure by reading The Weekly Standard. However I followed a link to a piece by Harvey Mansfield (William R. Kenan Jr. professor of government at Harvard) entitled The Law and the President, and thought it might be interesting. It was – but not in the way I thought. It was sophomorically bad. Is this bozo REALLY a tenured professor at Harvard?
An example from the very first paragraph: “But enemies, being extra-legal, need to be faced with extra-legal force.” Say what? Aren’t all criminals “extra-legal”? Does this mean we give the police “extra-legal” force? Or take this sentence: “The Federalist tells us that a republican constitution needs energy and stability, terms taken from physics to designate discretion and law.” In what way does “energy” correspond to “discretion”?
Of course all of this is in service of his dubious thesis that the Constitution should be interpreted as endorsing a unitary (unchecked) executive:

In rejecting monarchy because it was unsafe, republicans had forgotten that it might also be effective. The Framers made a strong executive in order to have both power and security, and they took note of emergency occasions when more power gives more security.
Separation of powers was a republican invention of the 17th century, but the Framers improved it when they strengthened the executive. They enabled the executive to act independently of the legislature and not merely serve as its agent in executing the laws.

Note the selective use of the word “emergency”. Mansfield (and others of his way of thinking, like Alito) introduce the word to justify exceptional action in exceptional conditions, and then quietly drop it to leave the impression that they’re talking about ordinary, everyday powers. The equivocation is relentless – and blatant.
For a more complete take-down of this “profoundly silly” piece, see David Luban’s analysis over at Balkinization.