StillSecure, After All These Years

Green Day news

No this is not a post about the band (though since I discovered a 15 year period of music that I seemed to have missed, from the mid 90's till now, Green Day has become one of my favorite bands), but instead about an ambitious project announcement that I read about tonight. It seems that PG&E and FPL, two of the largest power companies in the nation (FPL is my local power company in Florida) are teaming up with a company called Ausra, Inc. that is based out in the valley and venture backed by Kleiner, Perkins and Vinod Khosla to build several state-of-the-art solar power plants that when complete will provide 2,000 megawatts of clean, renewable solar power.  Enough to power about a million homes!  I say what has taken so long? 

This announcement made at the Clinton Global Initiative in NY is just the sort of undertaking we have to do as a country and for the world for so many reasons. It will negate all of the greenhouse gases that would have been used producing this much power with coal fired plants.  It decreases our dependence and therefore the influence of some of the oil producing countries, who use the wealth generated for extremist, terrorist or other undesirable ends.  It helps to create new jobs and technologies here in the US, which allows us to maintain our lead in these areas. But it also allows other jobs to be outsourced and migrate in a "flat world".  It is being done without government subsidies and at market competitive prices.

We need to find similar types of technology to make our cars run clean, green and lean.  In the coming years whoever can develop and bring to market new alternate clean energy will claim the mantle of economic leadership for this century. I wish as a country we were more focused on this and had more success stories such as this to announce. 

This story brought to you by Al "Gore" Shimel, the man who did not invent the internet ;-)

I love it when Hoff uses big words, but he is wrong about evolution

So my friend Chris Hoff, I guess back from Africa (wasn't that a movie? No it was Back to Africa, I think) takes exception to my post on the inherent flexibility of people as opposed to appliances.  I love it when Chris uses big words, and he does not disappoint here, throwing out orthogonal (meaning at a right angle), to describe my argument to the original topic. 

Of course what Chris really takes exception to most in my post is that I talk about most appliances being actually just COTS hardware with a fancy bezel on them.  He throws some dirt around the other stuff, which I will dig into in a minute. However, Chris wants to make sure that everyone knows that at least for the enterprise, the way to go is big honking appliances, as sold by his favorite company.  Hey Chris, easy big fella, I recognize that the Crossbeam X-series is not just some Dell Server with a fancy bezel.  I also applaud the fact that you can run multiple apps on there without it turning into a "ghetto" as Robert Mitchell at ComputerWorld wrote about today.  However, there are too many damn appliances out there and people are paying a premium for them when for the most part they don't have to.  But I think you actually understand and agree with that.  So lets get into the people thing then.

Chris, not sure of what your experience has been but I think you can easily move somebody from patching to IDS monitoring and work him up to administrating firewall rules.  Hell, send him to SANS or something.  But you can't do that with an appliance. For the most part, you throw them out and start over.  How many people have you worked with who have grown into bigger and better roles?  I see it happen all the time.  People learn, grow and adapt, single task appliances don't and you can't re-purpose them. 

On the issue of evolution and extinction, Chris you are right, the platypus is one funny looking monotreme (you see I can throw a big word in once in a while too. BTW monotreme's are mammals that lay eggs).  However, species who become too specialized are the ones susceptible to extinction events.  The ones who survive are the generalists who have the ability to adapt to multiple factors and thrive.  Just like IT people who can do more than one job.  Hell, I would bet under Darwin's law that even a Chief Strategy Officer like you or I can be taught to do something of higher value, like customer service rep or something ;-)   Welcome home Chris!

Editors note: The book image is from amazon and is by Jonathon Wells.  You can get it here

What is really important and there is hope

I know many people don't watch the MDA-Jerry Lewis Telethon. It can be depressing, it can be campy and many of us are just to busy with our lives to really spend any time watching it.  We may give money at 7-11 or to the local fireman and then move on.  I have watched the telethon since I was a little kid and the telethon was only in NY.  Twenty plus years ago my Mom and her brother, my Uncle, were stricken with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease).  ALS is a terrible disease that in the overwhelming majority of cases is not hereditary, but is always fatal.  It is one of the 40+ nueromuscular diseases covered under the MDA umbrela.  Ever since then I have been involved in the fight for a cure for ALS and MDA.  Every year I force myself to watch at least some of the telethon to support the cause, donate what I can afford and watch in shock and awe at the courageous victims and their families of these terrible diseases and the great work that MDA does.

Over the last several years the researchers have been making more and more progress finding the genetic roots of many of these diseases.  However, tonight I saw a real miracle that moved me to tears.  They had a family with three beautiful little children.  The youngest daughter had one of the fatal forms of MD (I think it was called Pompe's disease). In fact, this family had had another daughter who has died from this same disease. Due to research funded by MDA, approval was just given to a drug that supplies this little girl with the enzyme that her muscles are lacking.  She takes it intravenously every other week. She is now walking and well on her way to recovery.  Seeing this family benefit from this miracle of modern medicine, while realizing it did not come soon enough for their other daughter, just put me over the edge.  Having little children of my own, I could not even begin to fathom the pain and loss these people went through.  I could also not truly imagine what it  must be like to know, that at least one of their daughters may actually survive and recover, while feeling the pain of the loss of their other. Talk about bittersweet.  It gave me hope that one day, we will find cures for all of these terrible diseases and no one will ever suffer watching their loved one become trapped in a body that doesn't work anymore. I know there are many worthy causes out there, but MDA and the great work they do is one that I think is more than deserving.

We spend so much time talking about this worm, that disclosure and other topics in security.  Every once in a while we should stop and look at what is really important and the things we take for granted every day. Our health, our children's health, just walking, running and breathing.  I hope you are never touched personally by any form of MDA, but for the sake of those who are, I write today and ask that you do something about it.

A trip to Atlanta to see the fish

My two boys and I flew to Atlanta this weekend to visit the new Georgia Aquarium.  We met my friend Rajat and his two children Chloe and Rishi, our friend Chad and his daughter Sophia and our other friend Dave.  It was a daddy's weekend and we flew in literally from all over the country to see the new Aquarium in Atlanta.  It is touted as the largest in the world with a spectacular of sea creatures.  My two boys and the other children were very excited for the visit.  We stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Buckhead. We  all woke up early Saturday and went down for our 10:00 o'clock admission.  We had bought tickets on line weeks in advance, because the aquarium sells out quickly we were told. 

We stopped for breakfast at CNN center, in the food court there.  There are not a lot of other places around the aquarium to eat breakfast.  Then we went in.  There are 5 exhibit areas, each sponsored by a major corporation.  It is still new and shiny and beautiful.  There was no shortage of fish and with floor to ceiling and sometimes roof views, you can see everything.  The acrylic used for these tanks give you views into the habitats of these fish like you have never seen before.  The tropical reef, the cold water section, the deep sea and river views were all great.  My favorite was the white beluga whales and the tropical reefs.  The staff is very friendly and very helpful.  My kids really loved it.  Also, we paid the extra $5.50 to see the 4-d movie adventure which was cool too.  Overall, it is a great aquarium.  My only knock is that we finished the whole thing in about 3 hours (which is the suggested time).  It is an awful long trip all the way to Atlanta for 3 hours of viewing.  We had planned to do other stuff in Atlanta today, but the weather was lousy and we came home early.  It was a trip my kids and I will remember for sure!