Welcome to my Imagine Cup 2008 blog! This year's worldwide finals are being held in Paris, France! This is my 4th year as head judge of this global competition that identifies the best college students in the world in the field of technology. Between July 2nd and July 9th (2008), I will be blogging the events and activities of the competition...
In my last post, I told the tale about my travels with UAC and Pre-Vista/2008 Ready Applications. In tonight's post, as promised, I'm going to attempt to explain why UAC and Pre-Vista/2008 Ready Applications interact they way they do (in a semi fairytale format). Hopefully... you all like it. :>)
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SQL Server 2008 Installation Strategies and Best Practices
Part 2 of 5
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I’m a big fan of outsourcing one’s email to Google, and then continuing to use one’s favorite email client. (I’ve never switched away from Eudora.) Accordingly, I rarely use the actual Gmail interface – except when traveling and hence away from my desktop computer.
Recently I have been on vacation, logging directly into Gmail a lot. And so I started noticing the contextual ads that appear above the lists of messages. It turns out that – well, on the whole they’re not terribly contextual. Highlights include:
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Since the Terry Childs and San Francisco story has been making headlines in the IT industry these days, I believe it's important to discuss why such an event took place. As more of this story unravels, it appears that Childs was in fact very dissatisfied with how San Francisco's IT department (DTIS) was run. Was this simply a ploy by Childs to get attention to the matter?
With increased demand, shrinking budgets, and discouraged workforces, the "IT market" in general can be a difficult place to spend every day at work. We're sometimes taken for granted, under-appreciated, and under-compensated for the level of complex and demanding work that organizational leaders demand.
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It seems like that for as many network security threats there are , there tends to be an equal number of new methods to stop them. Today we find a promising new tool from researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that uses security metrics and network pathways to predict attack risks that could ultimately help IT folks keep ahead of network security battles. For a moment anyway.
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It turns out that OSCON isn't a great venue to talk to people about datacenters :(
Given this, I decided to deviate from my standard beat and attend a session that my friends Selena and Gabrielle were doing aon "How to run a user group". There's a good crowd here, about 40 people plus Selena and Gabrielle.
Selena and Gabrielle began by discussing how important introductions are for the effectiveness of any social group. They then asked everybody to introduce themselves by saying their name, and giving three "tags" that describe themselves. Introductions began rather serious and got comfortable and comical around half-way through the audience.
My name is Michael Halligan and my tags are datacenters, outsourcing, and infrastructure.
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Once described by Cisco as an "isolated problem" the network giant has made its biggest move yet to 
stamp out exam cheating. Beginning Aug. 1, candidates will receive preliminary score reports imprinted with their photos and unique authentication codes, among other measures.
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Cisco emerged as the most familiar manufacturer cited by service providers who were questioned about their perceptions of the main VoIP vendors. Cisco, Acme Packets, Alcatel-Lucent and Sonus, were identified as the "top VoIP equipment manufacturers," by service providers interviewed by Infonetics Research. However Cisco lost to Sonus in scoring the highest rating for technology, product roadmap, security, management, and price-to-performance ratio. The survey was conducted for Infonetics' Service Provider Plans for VoIP report.
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Cisco has dug a little into its pocket to purchase privately held Pure Networks, a Seattle-based provider of
home networking-management software and tools. Pure Networks, which will be integrated into Linksys, enables consumers to set up a home network connecting a range of devices, applications and services, says Cisco. Pure already partners with Cisco to provide the software infrastructure and tools used to create the Linksys Easy Link Advisor (LELA), aimed at smoothing the process of organizing and managing a home network, according to Cisco.
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Here's a small batch of photos from the expo floor today at OSCON in Portland.
A lot has been made about baseline benefits and ROI, however it can be difficult for the average information worker to see how it will improve their job performance and satisfaction. No one really likes cubicles and hard offices are hard to come by or reserved for upper management. How does an enterprise of any size meet the desires of its employees to work in comfort and privacy? Unified Communications is key to that strategy.
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So, Brocade has bought Foundry. I may be wrong, but to me it looks like these companies have gazed into the future, not liked what they have seen, and jumped into each other's arms out of fright!
Personally, I think that Cisco are right in believing that storage and Ethernet networks will converge in the data center - and Cisco has just the device to ease that convergence: the Nexus 7000. If Cisco is right about this transition, Brocade might end up getting squeezed further.
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Results of our WAN acceleration product feedback are in, and here is a quick summary of what we heard. For starters, if this were the application delivery system version of American Idol, Riverbed’s Steelhead would win.
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Networking market research firm, the Dell'Oro Group, provided their insight regarding the recently announced Brocade/Foundry merger:
 "Brocade’s recent purchase of Foundry is an excellent example of two companies combining to address the opportunities of a converged fabric in the data center," said Alan Weckel - Dell’Oro Group Senior Analyst for Ethernet Switch and IP Telephony Enterprise Market Research.
"We continue to see the market segment into more specialized products focused on unique network areas." |
"First, datacenter requirements are evolving towards a converged fabric such as the ability to combine Ethernet and Fibre Channel."
"Second, the wiring closet continues to push VoIP and WLAN requiring PoE, QoS, and robust security."
"This divergence in product requirements is making it difficult for vendors to develop a product for one segment and then modify it slightly to address another market."
"Hence some smaller vendors will be required to pick one area of specialization or to partner in order to offer a complete solution that covers the unique characteristics from the wiring closet edge to the data center core."
"In the case of Brocade, they decided to acquire Foundry instead of partnering to increase the breadth of its product portfolio."
 "Brocade and Foundry bring complementary strengths to the table in terms of technology leadership, product portfolio, and the ability to capitalize on key market trends," said Bobby Johnson - CEO and President of Foundry Networks.
"Together we believe we will be a much stronger entity with a compelling value proposition to compete more effectively in, and across, our respective markets." |
Enjoy the Foundry Slide Show Presentation of the Foundry/Brocade deal.
The New Brocade: End-to-End Networking Solutions Provider
View the financial results of Foundry Networks for its second quarter which ended June 30, 2008.
 "We believe the industry is at an inflection point in the way enterprise and service provider networks and data centers are being architected," said Mike Klayko - Chief Executive Officer of Brocade.
"Customers are demanding networking solutions that meet the needs for today and can address the many advances in network convergence that are still ahead." |
"Brocade has taken an important step through this acquisition in developing a networking infrastructure strategy that will serve as the foundation for capitalizing on these dynamic opportunities."
Enjoy the Brocade Slide Show Presentation of the Brocade/Foundry deal.
Summary: Brocade's Acquisition of Foundry
View the financial results of Brocade for its second quarter which ended April 26, 2008.
Additional Resources:
Listen to webcast of Brocade/Foundry merger announcement (registration required)
View webcast transcript of Brocade/Foundry merger announcement
Wall Street Shaves 21% Off Brocade Stock Price (While Foundry Soars 32% Higher):
In the opinion of yours truly, the "smoking gun" that has motivated Wall Street to be so negative in driving down the Brocade stock price can be found within the merger announcement webcast transcript detailed below:
Jayson Noland - Robert Baird & company — Analyst
"Thank you."
"First, Bobby congratulations and what would your role be in the new company?"
--------------------------
Bobby Johnson - Foundry Networks, Inc. — CEO
"So, we have just concluded the deal at about 1:00 pm this afternoon."
"Let me, let me be clear; Brocade has acquired Foundry."
"Mike Klayko is the CEO."
"My role will be to support Mike, and we’ll work over the next few months to define my ongoing role."
"I love this technology, and for people that may not know the history here, Brocade and Foundry are more or less siblings."
"Seth Neiman of Crosspoint was the initial seed money for both companies."
"And so we’ve kept in touch with each other throughout the years, and this was a great opportunity for both sides."
"So my role is still undefined."
"We’ll work on that, but I’m committed to making this happen, and I’m committed to helping Mike and both teams."
--------------------------
Mike Klayko - Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. — CEO
"Thanks Bobby."
"Let me add one other piece of color to the point that we’ve been working up to the minute."
"We’re going to have this dialog."
"Anybody that’s got 30 years of experience, obviously we came up with roles, and there’s more things to do than there are hours in the day, so what we have to do is come up with something that keeps him within 24 hours a day of occupying his time, so there’s gong to be lots of opportunities."
--------------------------
Jayson Noland - Robert Baird & company — Analyst
"Bobby has quite a following in the networking world, and obviously it would be great to be able to retain him, as well as the Foundry sales force."
--------------------------
Mike Klayko - Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. — CEO
"Well, we agree."
--------------------------
Wow!
After reading above that Bobby Johnson has no defined role in the "new Brocade," yours truly can't help but believe that Bobby Johnson is cashing out and moving on!
Related story:
Initiative - try to challenge our Unified Fabric and Data Center 3.0 Vision
Cisco certainly does not appear too worried about the Brocade/Foundry merger announcement!
Do YOU agree with yours truly that Bobby Johnson will bolt from the new Brocade after the merger?
Search 56,004 current Cisco Job openings worldwide!
Seems the Spam King is also an escape artist. Eddie Davidson this week just walked away from a federal prison camp in Colorado where he had been serving 21 months for his massive spamming activities.
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A Slashdot post by kdawson puts the trouble with the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) in perspective. After much fanfare when Google opensourced the AJAX-based toolkit a year and half ago, not much else has happened. And not many developers are using it. As kdawsons writes:
I have to admit that I am more than a little disappointed by its low profile in the UI community. I've been trolling their blog and have seen a few books out on it. But the one thing I'm not seeing is its use outside of Google.
Adult entertainment for handheld devices has been around as far back as the Palm Pilot (giving us bad puns like "Porn in your Palm", etc.), so of course it was only a matter of time before it hit the new iPhone 3G as well.
Los Angeles-based iRoticNet.com this week launched its services for the iPhone – for $9.95 per month users can get unlimited access to full-length movies and more than 1,000 adult entertainment clips. It appears that the service would be available through the Safari Web browser, it doesn't appear that this would be available on Apple's AppStore (correct me if I'm wrong).
And let's be honest – as problematic as this service may appear to be, there's a lot of money expected to be made in this market. The company quotes Juniper Research estimates that by 2012, the mobile adult content market will achieve $4.6 billion in revenues.
Here's the "ewwww" quote in the company's press release, from company rep David Solmonson:
"Over an average public Wi-Fi hot spot, users can begin watching a high quality 30-minute scene in under 10 seconds, and it shouldn't be too much more than this over 3G."
And you thought that guy at the table next to you was checking stock quotes on his iPhone.
Three out of four bank Web sites examined by the University of Michigan had at least one security vulnerability that could leave customers' at the mercy of cybercrooks (10 of the Worst Moments in Network Security).
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According to TechCrunch, Google is in final negotiations to buy social networking site Digg for about $200 million, something that's been rumored since March. But why?
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In my last blog I talked about the different punishment standards recently introduced by Microsoft. A test-center (CPLS) only faces a suspension, where as an individual faces a life-time ban. I think we need to further address the punishment for cheating – by both individuals and by CPLSs – uh “test-centers”.
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A recent blog posting of mine referred to Fuzzy Lookups and Fuzzy Groupings in SSIS and the ability to merge duplicate data based on inexact matches. Well, someone at Microsoft must be reading this blog because it has recently acquired a company called Zoomix that specializes in just this type of Fuzzy Logic. Looks like SSIS is going to receive a significant boost in functionality. According to the Zoomix web site, Zoomix's Accelerator software "combines semantic and linguistic analysis with machine learning to classify, match and standardize complex corporate data". Sounds like Fuzzy Logic to me. It even uses the word "de-duplicate" which seems to get through my spell checker just fine.
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Because I often teach classes about Vista in which Vista runs in a virtual machine, where you can't see the AERO interface, I like to use my laptop to demo certain Vista AERO features: live thumbnails, Flip3D, and so forth. So it was relevant to ask whether Server 2008 could put forward a reasonable facsimile of the Vista GUI.
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It's a marginal gain but a gain none the less. The June numbers show Microsoft's Live Search gained 0.3 percentage points, putting them at 9.2 percent. Google lost that same amount. (Yahoo also gained.) Is Microsoft's Live Search strategy working?
Frankly I'm surprised Microsoft is already at 9.2% of the U.S. Web search market. Obviously an acquisition of some or all of Yahoo by Microsoft would greatly accelerate the quest for market share but that's anything but certain these days. While 9.2% is great progress so far, gaining only three tenths of a percent each month will make Live Search's climb up a slow one. Microsoft's got to figure out new ways to pull users off the Google home page and onto Live Search.
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Most folks who pursue a CCNA certification find that it's a time-consuming process. If you do it completely via self-study, a CCNA can take you months to achieve. The Professional-level Cisco certifications, and some of the specializations (CQS certifications), take longer because more exams are involved and the general level of difficulty is higher.
Of course, earning certifications can take you a lot less time from start to finish if you can take courses or a boot camp. But for most folks who are chasing an Expert-level certification, such courses are of only limited help in the get-me-there-faster sense. There's simply so much you need to know and master to pass the CCIE exams (and the forthcoming CCDE exams) that you're in for a haul either way.
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Kris Buytaert is talking about "openQRM is not dead" at the Linuxsymposium 2008 in Ottawa !
He is talking about the next generation of openQRM ported from java to php. Please find the slides of his talk at http://www.krisbuytaert.be/blog/node/688
Many thanks to Kris for pushing the openQRM Project to the next level. Also big thanks to Aland for organising the virtualization miniconf on behalf of Linuxsymposium !
Enjoy !
From Microsoft Subnet editor Julie Bort: Earlier this month, Zune Arts released an online comic book series called "The Lost Ones." Zune is Microsoft's brand name for its collection of interactive entertainment offerings (the most famous of which is the Zune MP3 player). I asked my brother, Steven Goldstein, to review the comic book for the Microsoft Subnet blog. Steven is not only a long-time comic book collector, a graphic artist and photographer, but is also a member of a secret society called the "Dark Ones" that he won't really tell me much about.
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Recently there has been a lot of buzz concerning the latest reports on Government entities being hacked and in some cases their web sites are being defaced. With the increase in sophistication and change in motivation I would not be surprised if some of these attacks were successful.
Web mafias and other foreign organized crime syndicates are of prime concern for businesses alike. With the advancement in malicious code and the increase in vulnerabilities discovered, targeted Trojans are being designed to penetrate defenses.
In fact there is such a high volume of new and unique malware released on a daily basis that it creates a sustained denial of service.
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Judging by the amount of traffic (and comments) on my post regarding my iPhone 3G experience, I guess I may have hit on a topic about which no one is neutral! Some of the comments have been funny, some very helpful, and some just plain nasty. I’ve enjoyed the first two types and I’m choosing to ignore the third. Here’s a summary and some feedback:
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The last blog entry covered DTMF relay. This blog entry will focus on Cisco IP Phone and Cisco SIP Trunk DTMF relay support. Cisco’s first generation of IP phones do not support RFC2833 DTMF-Relay. All digits are sent out of band in either SCCP or SIP signaling packets depending on the phone load. Cisco first generation phones are referred to as Type A phones in the Cisco Unified Communications Manager 6.x SRND (Solution Reference Network Design) guide available at www.cisco.com/go/srnd. Type A phones include the following phones:
• 7902
• 7905
• 7910
• 7912
• 7940
• 7960
Cisco’s second generation phones support RFC2833 DTMF Relay when registered with Cisco Unified Call Manager versions 5.0 and later. These phones include the following:
• 7906
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