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Security Today – Magic or just a throwback to a 1960's episode of Star Trek?
Stealing a quote from Arthur C. Clarke: "Any technology, sufficiently developed, is indistinguishable from magic". Some people would certainly consider security these days as magic. Okay, so much for that reference, but what does Star Trek have to do with government and security, my typical topics. Star Trek, although mostly about exploration sure seemed to have a bit of a "Space Military" characteristic to it. Isn't that what the Star Fleet was all about? (no offense intended, Capt. Kirk.)
Lately, I've been doing some research for a paper on the integration of physical and logical security (I did an initial paper that you can see here: Click on "The Necessity of Security") and it dawned on me how very similar the technology of today is to the science fiction of the 1960's, or in Mr. Clarke's case, magic. So here is a synopsis of some of my observations. I'm sure there are more; please feel free to reply with what I've missed or your own favorites.
Can you tell me who had the first big screen TV? Well, maybe not a television, but I can tell you who had the first TelePresence unit in the universe. That would be the Starship Enterprise. Big screen, 2-way audio/video, high definition. Everyone wanted one, they were all the rage. And how about the "Replicator", a.k.a. protein resequencer, a term that originated on the Star Trek series. It was capable of creating any food or drink requested, and in later shows, many other devices. Hmmm, now that sounds a little like the 3D printers that are getting a lot of attention these days. As a matter of fact, not only are they capable of printing rigid objects, but Dr. Anthony Atala, director of Wake Forest's Institute of Regenerative Medicine, recently printed a real, working kidney. Now that's what I call resequencing protein.
So what about security and technology. What was the badge on their chest, their communicator? It had voice recognition and could be used to identify and locate anyone, anywhere in the universe. It was voice controlled once tapped, and it sounds and acts a lot like my cell phone. Have cell phones come a long way, or do they have a long way to go?
The communicator appeared to be much more than just a 2-way communications device. Remember all those sliding doors on the Enterprise? I don't ever recall seeing a doorknob, card swipe or motion detector anywhere. How did they know who was allowed into each location? Somehow they found a way to integrate physical and logical security. The communicator worn by every person was detected and the doors would open as they approached assuming they had access. Cell phones as a way to access everything, everywhere? Hmmm, now we're getting to the next paper, so I don't want to give too much away.
What about video and video surveillance. Apparently, a camera everywhere, although never seen, that had an inexhaustible amount of video storage, since you could find video from any location, any direction, from any time in the past, present, and sometimes future, that included all of the travel logs. And talking computers, named "Computer" if I remember correctly. Very original. Knew everything there was to know, ran all the systems, located crew members, etc. I don't ever recall seeing the computer, but it was there, somewhere behind all the panels, knobs and lights that they would show. Some of cloud computing's finest moments.
So much for reminiscing, let's get back to reality. Way back when the security industry was first forming, it was considered security, not physical, logical, cyber, just security. Physical and Logical were one, and the systems interacted as one, just like they should. So where did we go awry? When did physical and logical security become separate entities? Well, who knows, who cares, it is what it is. But now, it's my opinion that the technology is available to integrate the two and that's what I'm all about and what got me to reminiscing in the first place. Watch for my next paper on the integration of physical and logical security, coming soon, and feel free to comment on the integration of the two, or, any technology, security or otherwise, that I've left out of this post. I'd love to hear your comments about how today's security parallels science fiction of the 60's, whether it's Star Trek or some other show.
Until they figure out the transporter, warp speed Mr. Sulu. Let's go home.
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2 Comments
Bob Bartlett
Yes and the little tablets look very much like the tablets of today. Wonder if they had trouble with wireless security and signal propagation.


text:
About This Document
Intended Audience
This document describes hardware installation of a storage system – precautions and preparations, installation procedure, cabling, installation check, power-on, and grounding.
This document is intended for:
- Technical support engineers
- Maintenance engineers
As part of an effort to improve and enhance the product performance and capabilities, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. periodically releases revisions of the hardware and software. Therefore, some functions described in this document may not be supported by all versions of the software or hardware currently in use. For the most up-to-date information about product features, refer to the product release notes.
If a product does not function as described in this document, contact Huawei technical support.
Change History
Changes between document issues are cumulative. The latest document issue contains all the changes in earlier issues.
Issue 09 (2019-04-15)
This issue is the ninth official release. The updates are as follows:
Optimized description about the account _super_admin.
Issue 08 (2018-12-30)
This is the eighth official release.
Optimized some description.
Issue 07 (2018-08-30)
This is the seventh official release.
Optimized some description.
Issue 06 (2018-05-30)
This is the sixth official release.
Added the description about how to use the optical fiber binding tape.
Issue 05 (2018-02-05)
This is the fifth official release.
Optimized some description.
Issue 04 (2017-07-31)
This is the fourth official release.
Added the description of PDU in Connecting AC Power Cables.
Issue 03 (2017-03-30)
This is the third official release.
Added the Follow-up Procedure to (Optional) Checking and Setting the Working Mode of the SmartIO Interface Module.
Issue 02 (2016-09-30)
This is the second official release.
- Added the Connecting two disk enclosures to the 2200 V3 (single controller) figure to Connecting Disk Enclosures.
- Added Removing SAS Cables to Connecting Disk Enclosures.
- Added Changing IP Addresses of Management Network Ports Using DeviceManager.
Issue 01 (2016-04-30)
This is the first official release.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
During the Final Fantasy XIV beta stress test, a tiny Lalafell named Legless Marathon fell through the world. It was the beginning of a grand adventure.
Normally, falling through the world would be a bad thing, but little Legless here has a grand old time. He does battle with vicious creatures that can't technically touch him. He critiques the world's construction. He strips off his clothing and declares himself Jesus.
Another player might have cursed Square Enix for creating a shoddy game, or simply teleported to safety, free from the grip of physics-twisting code problems. Not Legless.
I think the video serves as a pleasant reminder that games like Final Fantasy XIV are supposed to be fun. Just because a toy is broken doesn't mean there isn't entertainment value left in it.


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I have several ideas, but I am finding it hard to get started. What I am interested in is making my own decals for signs, newspapers, artwork for the walls and others. So far I haven't had any luck. Is there a site that has LEGO clip art backgrounds, lettering, etc.?
closed as unclear what you're asking by jncraton♦, Ambo100♦ Sep 8 '13 at 22:34
Please clarify your specific problem or add additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking. See the How to Ask page for help clarifying this question. If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
2BrickLink has a huge collection of sticker sheets which can be used for inspiration. My answer from a previous question explains how you can obtain decals from existing sticker sheets. – Ambo100♦ Apr 15 '13 at 13:00
1Your question is vague. Are you having difficulty with inspiration, artwork, printing or something else? What do you want "LEGO clipart backgrounds" for, and what do you think they are? – Josh May 5 '13 at 12:30
Well I don't exactly know what you mean buy a sign like one that he/her can hold or a sign in the ground? Moving onto the newspaper you can get white sticky clay and get two white 6x5 pieces or a size you like and fill in the crack in the middle then put one piece of clay in the Lego persons hand and shape it in a Lego rectangle size Hope this helped


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AnglicanGuy necesitaba un nuevo diseño de logotipo y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 17 diseños de 4 diseñadores freelance.
St. Andrew's Anglican Church
St. Andrew's is an Anglican church that will come into being this autumn in the American city of Rome, Georgia. Our worship is liturgical and traditional, but with openness to some more contemporary music. We have a wide range of parishioners, but most are in their early 30s to late 40s. We worship in an historic church building in a depressed area of the city with a ethnically diverse population we aim to reach.
St. Andrew's aims to attract Christians of all ages and social status. Our city is a college town. We also have a large number of professionals. But we meet in a depressed, low-income part of town that is ethnically diverse. Because most of the worship opportunities locally are of the contemporary variety, our largely traditional and liturgical worship is a distinctive. That said, we aim to bring in those who might not have been exposed to liturgical worship in the past. A logo can communicate solid reliability and trustworthiness (distinguishing it from the myriad of contemporary logos out there that have a breezy feel). It can, as with our name, communicate a connection with that which is old and venerable--without being staid, stuffy, or overly formal.
We would like our logo to include a St. Andrew's cross (an 'X'). A rich red should be a predominant color (although we could be convinced otherwise). We need a logo that can be used on letterhead, business cards, web pages, and signage. We would like something simple and clean, that conveys the seriousness of our faith but the warmth of our welcome also.
We're not into clouds or hearts or dancing stick figures or sunsets or rainbows.
Other designs that could be included in addition to the St. Andrew's cross would be a Canterbury cross or a familiar Roman cross--although how those would be integrated isn't clear.
The name "St. Andrew's" should have greater prominence than "Anglican Church."
We need versions that can be used against light backgrounds and dark, and perhaps a horizontal "banner" version that could be used across a page as well. We need at least one version that includes "Rome, Georgia" under the church name in smaller letters.
A logo we very much like is that of another church plant in the area:
Descubre cómo funciona un concurso de diseño u obtén más información sobre nuestros servicios de diseño de logo.


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In case you haven't been following, Peter Moore's "don't whine about your time at Microsoft" NDA expired this week, and he's been pouring his heart out over at The Guardian. It's been fun stuff. Particularly the bits where he totally slags off Rare, saying that the industry had "passed Rare by" and that they "were not applicable in today's market". Ouch. Well, Microsoft are having none of it, Phil Spencer telling GI.biz "Rare is a great studio that continuously delivers high-quality, award-winning titles for the Xbox platform and will continue to do so in the future". Which may or may not be true. Who knows. Spencer's smart, however, to also remind Moore of Rare's work on the 360's new avatar system, which in a strange twist of fate may turn out to be the most important thing they ever do for the console. Microsoft defends relevance of Rare to Xbox business [GI.biz]
Microsoft: Nun Unh, Peter Moore, Rare Is So Relevant


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Humanitarian Kershaw gets Branch Rickey Award
DENVER -- Clayton Kershaw didn't wait for fame before sharing his fortune.
Kershaw, a left-hander of historic accomplishment for the Los Angeles Dodgers, added to his lengthy list of awards on Saturday when he received the Branch Rickey Award, created in 1991 by the Rotary Club of Denver and presented by AMG National Trust Bank.
DENVER -- Clayton Kershaw didn't wait for fame before sharing his fortune.
Kershaw, a left-hander of historic accomplishment for the Los Angeles Dodgers, added to his lengthy list of awards on Saturday when he received the Branch Rickey Award, created in 1991 by the Rotary Club of Denver and presented by AMG National Trust Bank.
This week, Kershaw was revealed as the winner of his second National League Cy Young Award in three years. The lefty has a Rawlings Gold Glove Award, and he has been to the last three All-Star Games. Last year, Kershaw earned Major League Baseball's Roberto Clemente Award, another well-recognized humanitarian award.
But it was in 2010 -- before even his first All-Star Game -- that Kershaw began contributing away from the field. That year marked the first time Kershaw accompanied his wife, Ellen, to Africa. Ellen Kershaw previously went to Lusaka, Zambia, and a young orphan named Hope -- who was battling HIV and AIDS -- stole her heart. Kershaw decided then and there to spend his non-baseball time making life better in Africa, as well as at home.
That 2010 trip led the Kershaws to start "Kershaw's Challenge," and found their cornerstone charity, "Arise Africa." In 2012, the charity opened a home that now houses nine children who come from desperate situations. "Kershaw's Challenge" is contributing to the inner cities of Los Angeles and Dallas, the lefty's hometown. According to organizers, the Branch Rickey Award, honors those who personify the Rotary International Motto of "Service Above Self."
At 25, Kershaw is the youngest of the 22 winners of the award, all of whom are inducted into Rotary International's Baseball Humanitarians Hall of Fame. Kershaw is glad he didn't wait until he was older to serve people outside of baseball. It's a message the pitcher said can be useful even for those without his platform.
"That's kind of the whole point of 'Kershaw's Challenge,'" Kershaw said. "You don't need to get established to give back. You can start doing stuff right where you're at. For us, we're 25 and 26. We don't have a whole lot of life experience, and we know that.
"But that's kind of the point of the people that we're trying to reach. People that are in high school or right out of college or just trying to find a job or things like that. Even though you're not completely settled in who you are, there's something for you to do right where you're at."
It's a busy time for "Kershaw's Challenge."
Kershaw, who raised $116,000 for "Kershaw's Challenge" this year by donating $500 for each of his NL-leading 232 strikeouts, will leave Wednesday for Africa to oversee "Arise Africa's" next goals -- rebuilding a community school in the heart of Lusaka and adding five classrooms and paying salaries for higher-educated teachers, as well as drilling a new well to bring fresh water to the town. Additionally, Kershaw is involved with "Sharefest" in Los Angeles and "Mercy Street" in Dallas -- charities that provide after-school and sports programs, not limited to baseball, to at-risk youth.
"No matter what was going to happen with his career, both Clayton and I knew that we wanted to give back," Ellen Kershaw said. "It's always been part of the fabric of who Clayton is. He doesn't do this sort of thing to get honored. Actually, it's kind of funny because he's so humble, but being in baseball puts him in the spotlight."
Thomas Harding is a reporter for MLB.com. Follow him on Twitter @harding_at_mlb.


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(click to enlarge)
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
2012 - Signs of the apocalypse
(click to enlarge)
15 comments:
- Michael said...
You should try Pages, Numbers and Keynote instead. You can still read and export MS Office formatted documents but you also get the better, cleaner Mac way of doing things. There's a slight learning curve, but in the long run I think you'd be happier.
- January 3, 2012 at 6:25 AM
How useful for those in doubt. Eyeroll commencing shortly.
- January 3, 2012 at 6:31 AM
- Dafeenah said...
Now that just pisses me off I had legit complaint against a seller and when I tried to "review" and posted the "good" as well as "the bad" amazon refused to accept my review. Great next time I'll just write in cave man speak maybe my post was too intelligent for the amazonians to comprehend.
- January 3, 2012 at 7:54 AM
I guess they forgot to load grammarcheck
- January 3, 2012 at 7:58 AM
- vicki said...
when i went from a pc to mac ... i quit office and went to iworks and ipages is so much easier and better ... ditch the microsoft and stick with the mac products for mac you'll be happier in the long run
- January 3, 2012 at 10:21 AM
- Grumpy, M.D. said...
Sure, NOW you tell me after I shelled our $100 for the download. Sheesh.
- January 3, 2012 at 10:22 AM
- Officer Cynical said...
Fire bad.
- January 3, 2012 at 10:53 AM
- Moose said...
Actually, I would recommend OpenOffice instead. It's completely free, it's supported by the people who write the code [instead of drones who may have never even run the stuff] and it is 100% compatible with Microsoft office products. And unless you're doing something super esoteric you will be able to do everything you can with Office, too.
Free & Open Source Software isn't just for the unwashed nerds anymore. There's a big movement afoot to create and support FOSS for the medical world, too! And you do not have to change your computer -- any computer, Macs & Windows machines, too, can run FOSS programs. [I run 90% FOSS on my Windows laptop.]
- January 3, 2012 at 11:18 AM
- arzt4empfaenger said...
Gee, how useful!
Out of curiosity, does Amazon actually send you the download link and code by email or do they send you a paper booklet with the printed code and web link? I just bought our office for mac student edition from a third party website (here in Germany) and they directly displayed the link... I wasn't sure if Amazon did this, and didn't want to wait, so I didn't go with them this time.
- January 3, 2012 at 11:49 AM
Colorful spinning ball pretty!
- January 3, 2012 at 11:53 AM
- Silliyak said...
Your kid can probably figure everything out, but we had to buy a 2" thick manual to figure out how to do things, and I STILL end up asking a friend/imac expert for help.
- January 3, 2012 at 5:31 PM
- History Doc said...
Well, it does.
- January 3, 2012 at 9:57 PM
Now, now people. Nikonuser might not be a native English speaker.
- January 4, 2012 at 9:33 AM
If your kid is writing something more complicated, Scrivener ($45) is an excellent word processor/research organizer. It has a proprietary format, but will export to just about anything -- including a really nice HTML.
- January 7, 2012 at 9:19 PM
Office for Mac works good, all except for the grammar checker.
- January 8, 2012 at 3:20 PM


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Easy As Can Be
If you haven't realized yet, Brucie is a bit of a maniac. As you go and visit him to get this mission after receiving a text message from him, you'll get your next assignment. Brucie is a maniac, though, because he's taking bull shark testosterone he ordered from Chile, and he's even more out of his mind than usual. After yelling at his girlfriend for not telling him it was you that was here to visit, he'll give you what appears to be an easy enough assignment. The guy you just killed for him had a nice car, and it's sitting around just waiting to be stolen.
Naturally, you'll be the thief here. The car is at the north end of Dukes, on a road called Yorktown Avenue. It's actually not that far from Brucie's crib, so all you have to do is find a car and the GPS will bring you to where you need to be easily enough. You'll arrive at Yorktown Avenue and will have to go on foot to a nearby alleyway where the car is parked. Once you arrive at the car and get in, however, you'll realize this mission wasn't all Brucie said it would be.
Lyle's boys are none too happy that you're absconding with his ride, and they're ready to take you out for trying. There will be three cars full of guys with guns. This isn't a fight you can reasonably win. As a result, your best bet is more certainly to drive to Brucie's lock-up (following the route on your GPS) with the gunmen in pursuit. Getting out of your car and attempting to take these guys out is risky business, but if that's what you want to do to make your life a little bit easier, then by all means, go ahead. Strangely enough, when you approach Brucie's lock-up on Mohanet Avenue, the guys who were pursuing you will back off. This will allow you to pull the car into the garage and leave it with Brucie's trusted mechanic. Case closed.
Was this guide helpful?


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The family of an Egyptian-Canadian journalist imprisoned in Cairo issued an urgent appeal for Ottawa's help Wednesday, as they learned the man had abruptly been charged with being a member of a terrorist group.
Mohamed Fahmy was among 20 employees of satellite news broadcaster Al Jazeera who were charged with several offences in what's believed to be the first time Egypt has referred journalists to trial for terrorism.
Fahmy was charged with using illegal equipment, broadcasting false news that endangered national security and being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a group Egypt's military-led government has branded a terrorist organization, his family said.
"It's become a very desperate situation," Fahmy's brother Adel told The Canadian Press.
"We are very proud Canadian citizens. We became Canadian citizens because we know that Canada is the most decent country and always protects its people. We need the Canadian government to save my brother."
Mohamed Fahmy and his two colleagues — Australian Peter Greste and Egyptian Baher Mohamed— were taken into custody on Dec. 29 at a hotel room in Cairo where they were working after authorities raided the offices of Al Jazeera English.
Egyptian authorities characterized the arrest as part of a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, and depicted Al Jazeera as being biased towards former Islamist president Mohammed Morsi — who was ousted by the military in July — and his Muslim Brotherhood-led supporters.
Al Jazeera, which no longer has journalists reporting in Egypt, has denied any bias and decried the latest developments.
"The world knows these allegations against our journalists are absurd, baseless and false," a spokesman said. "This is a challenge to free speech, to the right of journalists to report on all aspects of events, and to the right of people to know what is going on."
A statement from Egypt's prosecutor said the journalists accused Wednesday — eight of whom are said to be in custody — had established a media network which used two suites in a luxury hotel in Cairo as a media centre, supported with cameras, broadcasting equipment and computers.
The statement said they allegedly "manipulated pictures" to create "unreal scenes to give the impression to the outside world that there is a civil war that threatens to bring down the state" and broadcast scenes to aid "the terrorist group in achieving its goals."
Fahmy, Al Jazeera English's acting bureau chief in Cairo, was singled out by an official investigating the case.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Egyptian-Canadian was an alleged member of the Muslim Brotherhood, led the media operation that "fabricated footage" and aired it on Al-Jazeera and CNN with the "aim of harming Egypt's reputation."
Fahmy's family said evidence they and Al Jazeera had provided to refute those allegations didn't appear to have been taken into account.
"All the progress that we achieved with the lawyer, the interrogations, have become nullified today," said Fahmy's brother. "My brother is the furthest from such ideologies or such connections with these groups."
Fahmy's parents — who travelled to Cairo from Montreal two weeks ago — informed Canadian officials of the latest developments but said they were aware there was only so much consular staff could do.
Canadian officials have said they are providing consular services to Fahmy and his family and have raised this case with senior Egyptian officials.
Wednesday's developments were condemned by the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, which said it was "extremely concerning" Fahmy was being treated solely as an Egyptian national despite holding Canadian citizenship.
"This seemingly minor detail may have serious implications for Fahmy's case," the group said. "It is essential that the Canadian government intervene in the case of Mohamed Fahmy to ensure that these trumped up allegations are dropped, lest he be convicted in a deliberate attack on journalists working in Egypt."
Fahmy's family moved to Canada in 1991. He lived in Montreal and Vancouver for years before eventually moving abroad for work which included covering stories for the New York Times and CNN.
— with files from the Associated Press.
Follow @dianamehta on Twitter.
Also on HuffPost


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JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - As police returned 45-year-old Michael Dunn from Brevard County to Jacksonville on Tuesday to face murder and other charges in Friday night's shooting of 17-year-old Jordan Davis, his lawyer said Dunn felt threatened and saw a shotgun coming from the SUV he fired into.
"Absolutely he was threatened. He was threatened," Dunn's attorney, Robin Lemonidis, said. "With a firearm. Mr. Dunn is very, very familiar with firearms. He is an avid firearms owner. Has a concealed weapons permit. Had his firearm properly secured and encased in his glove compartment, no rounds in the chamber, and when he started hearing epithets, and I don't think I should say them here, in polite company, epithets that were extraordinarily threatening to him."
She went on to say what her client told her he heard the teens say.
"Uh, 'Kill that mother (expletive),' 'That mother (expletive) is dead,' 'You dead (expletive),'" Lemonidis said of what Dunn heard from the teens. "And he sees that much of a shotgun coming up over the rim of the SUV, which is up higher than his Jetta, and all he sees are heavily tinted front windows that are up and the back windows that are down, and the car has at least four black men in it, and he doesn't know how old anyone is, and he doesn't know anything, but he knows a shotgun when he sees one because he got his first gun as a gift from his grandparents when he was in third grade."
Jacksonville police said Monday there was no gun found in the victim's vehicle.
"I humbly suggest that they may not have looked hard enough, and it certainly would not have been in the vehicle when they looked unless they had stopped it immediately, which I doubt they did," Lemonidis said.
Police said Dunn fired eight or nine shots at an SUV full of four teenagers at a Gate station on Southside Boulevard after a dispute over the teens' loud music.
According to the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, Dunn and his girlfriend had attended his son's wedding earlier on Friday, and they were on their way back to their hotel when they stopped at the gas station at Southside Boulevard and Baymeadows Road about 7:40 p.m.
Police said three 17-year-olds and an 18-year-old were in a SUV at the gas station, and Dunn told them to turn the music down.
Davis (pictured right), a 17-year-old Wolfson High School student, was hit by two bullets, police said.
Lemonidis said Dunn and his girlfriend had stopped to get a bottle of wine before heading back to the hotel after the wedding.
"All he did was pull up next to this car, or the car pulled up next to him, he's on the passenger side of their car, and he said, he rolled down his window and politely said, 'Would you mind turning that music down?'" Lemonidis said. "And the driver apparently turned it off immediately. Then he hears from the back, 'That (expletive), he can't, that (expletive), we ain't going to tell us where to turn our music down,' and boom, they cranked it back up as loud as it would go. Louder than it had been."
Investigators said Dunn's girlfriend was inside the store when the shooting happened. Dunn was sitting in the driver's seat waiting for her.
"When he saw the shotgun barrel come up in the rear passenger window, he saw about three to four inches of it," Lemonidis said. "He estimated the gauge of the shotgun, the type, everything, he's very familiar with firearms, as I said, owns firearms and has since he was in third grade. He immediately went into self-defense mode, which any responsible firearms owner would do."
Police said Dunn's girlfriend came running outside and jumped in the vehicle, and they took off. Police said Dunn's girlfriend will not face charges because she has cooperated with investigators.
Police said Dunn and his girlfriend stayed at the hotel, and when they saw the news the next morning that someone had been killed in the shooting, they went back to Brevard County.
"Because he was, his understanding was that he had only fired at the vehicle, not at anybody," Lemonidis said of why he didn't call police after the shooting. "He was also concerned with leaving the area because he didn't know if these gang members, what they were, who. He's in a strange town. He doesn't know if they're on their cellphones saying, 'Hey, come back and get this guy in the Jetta.' He just wanted to get to a safe place and try and figure out what to do."
Several people at the gas station witnessed the shooting and provided police with a description of the car. One remembered Dunn's license plate number, allowing police to track him to his home in Satellite Beach, where he was arrested on Saturday.
According to the arrest report, one of the victims in the SUV that was fired upon picked Dunn out from a photo lineup.
Copyright 2012 by News4Jax.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


text:
Laptop for Grandma
Comments (6) Visits (23100)
Happy Winter Solstice everyone! The Mayan calendar flipped over yesterday, and everything continued as normal.
The next date to watch out for is ... drumroll please ... April 8, 2014. This is the date Microsoft has decided to [drop support for Windows XP].
While many large corporations are actively planning to get off Windows XP, there are still many homes and individuals that are running on this platform.
When [Windows XP] was introduced in 2001, it could support systems with as little as 64MB of RAM. Nowadays, the latest versions of Windows now requires a minimum of 1GB for 32-bit systems, with 2GB or 3GB recommended.
That leaves Windows XP users on older hardware few choices:
Here is a personal example. A long time ago, I gave my sister a Thinkpad R31 laptop so that she could work from home. When she got a newer one, she passed this down to her daughter for doing homework. When my neice got a newer one, she passed this old laptop to her grandma.
Grandma is fairly happy with her modern PC running Windows XP. She plays all kinds of games, scans photographs, sends emails, listens to music on iTunes, and even uses Skype to talk to relatives. Her problem is that this PC is located upstairs, in her bedroom, and she wanted something portable that she could play music downstairs when she is playing cards with her friends.
"Why not use the laptop you have?" I asked. Her response: "It runs very slow. Perhaps it has a virus. Can you fix that?" I was up for the challenge, so I agreed.
(The Challenge: Update the Thinkpad R31 so that grandma can simply turn it on, launch iTunes or similar application, and just press a "play" button to listen to her music. It will be plugged in to an electrical outlet wherever she takes it, and she already has her collection of MP3 music files. My hope is to have something that is (a) simple to use, (b) starts up quickly, and (c) will not require a lot of on-going maintenance issues.)
Here are the relevant specifications of the Thinkpad R31 laptop:
The system was pre-installed with Windows XP, but was terribly down-level. I updated to Windows XP SP3 level, downloaded the latest anti-virus signatures, and installed iTunes. A full scan found no viruses. All this software takes up 14GB, leaving less than 6GB for MP3 music files.
The time it took from hitting the "Power-on" button to hearing the first note of music was over 14 minutes! Unacceptable!
If you can suggest what my next steps should be, please comment below or send me an email!
technorati tags: IBM, Windows XP, Microsoft, Thinkpad
Next Week - ECTY and Webcasts on Virtualizatoin
Visits (12974)
This week, I am in Taipei, teaching Top Gun class. There was concern that another typhoon would hit the island of Taiwan later this week, but it looks like it is now headed for Hong Kong instead.
Elsewhere in the world, there are several events going on next week, so I thought I would bring them to your attention.
technorati tags: IBM, South Africa, ECTY, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Chris Saul, SAN Volume Controller, SVC, PowerVM, VMware, vSphere, Microsoft, Hyper-V, Oracle, SPARC, OVM
Busting Four Myths About Tape
Comment (1) Visits (20392)
This week, I am in beautiful Sao Paulo, Brazil, teaching Top Gun class to IBM Business Partners and sales reps. Traditionally, we have "Tape Thursday" where we focus on our tape systems, from tape drives, to physical and virtual tape libraries. IBM is the number #1 tape vendor, and has been for the past eight years.
(The alliteration doesn't translate well here in Brazil. The Portuguese word for tape is "fita", and Thursday here is "quinta-feira", but "fita-quinta-feira" just doesn't have the same ring to it.)
In the class, we discussed how to handle common misperceptions and myths about tape. Here are a few examples:
Next month, IBM celebrates the 60th anniversary for tape. It is good to see that tape continues to be a vibrant part of the IT industry, and to IBM's storage business!
technorati tags: IBM, Google, Microsoft, EMC, Brazil, LTO, TS2900, TS3500, Space Shuttle, Challenger
Accessing OS/2 Stacker Compressed Diskettes
Visits (19369)
Back in Februray, my blog post [A Box Full of Floppies] mentioned that I uncovered some diskettes compressed with OS/2 Stacker. Jokingly, I suggested that I may have to stand up an OS/2 machine just to check out what is actually on those floppies. Each floppy contains only three files: README.STC, STACKER.EXE and a hidden STACKVOL.DSK file. The README.STC explains that the disk is compressed by Stacker, a program developed by [Stac Electronics, Inc.]. The STACKER.EXE would not run on Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7. The STACKVOL.DSK is just a huge binary file, like a ZIP file, compressed with [Lempel-Ziv-Stac] algorithm that combines Lempel-Ziv with Huffman coding.
In my follow-up post [Like Sands in an Hourglass], I explained how there are many ways I could have tackled this project. I could either use the Emulation approach and try to build an OS/2 guest image under a hypervisor like VMware, KVM or VirtualBox, or just take the Museum approach and try taking one of my half dozen old machines, wipe it clean and stand up OS/2 on it bare metal. This turned out to be more challenging than I expected. The systems I have that are modern and powerful enough to run hypervisors don't have floppy drives, so I opted for the Museum approach.
(A quick [history of OS/2] might be helpful. IBM and Microsoft jointly developed OS/2 back in 1985. By 1990, Microsoft decided it's own Windows operating system was more popular with the ladies, and decided to break off with IBM. In 1992, IBM release OS/2 version 2.0, touted as "a better DOS than DOS and a better Windows than Windows!" Both parties maintained ownership rights, Microsoft renamed OS/2 to Windows NT. The "NT" stood for New Technology, the basis for all of the enterprise-class Windows servers used today. IBM named its version of OS/2 version 3 and 4 "WARP", with the last version 4.52 released in 2001. In its heyday, OS/2 ran the majority of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs), was used for hardware management consoles (HMC), and was used worldwide to run various Railway systems. After 2001, IBM encouraged people to transition from Windows or OS/2 over to Java and Linux. For those that can't or won't leave OS/2, IBM partnered with Serenity Systems to continue OS/2 under the brand [eComStation].)
Working with an IBM [ThinkCentre 8195-E2U Pentium 4 machine] with 640MB RAM and 80GB hard disk, a CD-rom and one 3.5-inch floppy drive, I first discovered that OS/2 is limited to very small amounts of hard disk. There are limits on [file systems and partition sizes] as well as the infamous [1024-cylinder limit] for bootable operating systems. Having a completely empty drive didn't work, as the size of the disk was too big. Carving out a big partition out of this also failed, as it exceeded the various limits. Each time, it felt the partition table was corrupted because the values were so huge. Even modern Disk Partitioning tools ([SysRescueCD] or [PartedMagic]) didn't work, as these create partitions not recognizable to OS/2.
The next obstacle I knew I would encounter would be device drivers. OS/2 comes as a set of three floppy diskettes and a CD-rom. The bootable installation disk was referred to affectionately as "Disk 0", then Disk 1, then Disk 2. Once all drivers have been loaded into memory, then it can start looking at the CDrom, and continue with the installation. In searching for updated drivers, I came across [Updated OS/2 Warp 4 Installation Diskettes] to address problems with newer display monitors. It also addresses the 8.4GB volume limit.
The updates were in the form of EXE files that only execute in a running DOS or OS/2 environment, expanded onto a floppy diskette. It seemed like [Catch-22], I need a working DOS or OS/2 system to run the update programs to create the diskettes, but need the diskettes to build a working system.
To get around this, I decided to take a "scaffolding" approach. Using DOS 6 bootable floppy, I was able to re-partition the drive with FDISK into two small 1.9GB partitions. I have the full five-floppy IBM DOS 6 set, I hid the first partition for OS/2, and install the DOS 6 GUI on the second partition. I went ahead and added a few new subdirectories: BOOT to hold Grub2, PERSONAL to hold the data I decompress from the floppies, and UTILS to hold additional utilities. This little DOS system worked, and I now have new OS/2 "Disk 1" and "Disk 2" for the installation process.
(If you don't have a full set of DOS installation diskettes, you can make due with "FORMAT C: /S" from a [DOS boot disk], and then just copy over all the files from the boot disk to your C: drive. You won't have a nice DOS GUI, but the command line prompt will be enough to proceed.)
Like DOS, OS/2 expects to be installed on the C: drive. I hid the second partition (DOS), and marked the first partition installable and bootable. The OS/2 installation involves a lot of reboots, and the hard drive is not natively bootable in the intermediate stages. This means having to boot from Disk 0, then putting in Disk 1, then disk 2, before continuing the next phase of the installation. I tried to keep the installation as "Plain Vanilla" as possible.
I had to figure out what to include, and what to exclude, and this involved a lot of trial and error. For example, one of the choices was for "external diskette support". Since I had an "internal diskette drive", I didn't think I needed it. But after a full install, I discovered that it would not read or write floppy diskettes, so it appears that I do indeed need this support.
OS/2 supports two different file systems, FAT16 and the High Performance File System (HPFS). Since my partition was only 1.9GB in size, I chose just to use FAT16. HPFS supported larger disk partitions, longer file names, and faster performance, none of which I need for these purposes.
I thought it would be nice to get TCP/IP networking to work with my Ethernet card. However, after many attempts, I decided against this. I needed to focus on my mission, which was to decompress floppy diskettes. It was amusing to see that OS/2 supported all kinds of networking, including Token Ring, System Management, Remote Access, Mobile Access Services, File and Print.
Once all the options are chosen, OS/2 installation then proceeds to unpack and copy all the programs to the C: drive. During this process, IBM had informational splash screens. Here's one that caught my eye, titled "IBM Means Three Things" that listed three reasons to partner with IBM:
You might wonder how these OS/2 splash screens, written over 10 years ago, can appear almost identical to IBM's current [Smarter Planet] campaign. Actually, it is not that odd. IBM has been keeping to these same core principles since 1911, only the words to describe and promote these core values have changed.
To access both OS/2 and DOS partitions, I installed Grand Unified Bootloader [Grub2] on the DOS partition under C:/BOOT/GRUB directory. However, when I boot OS/2, I cannot see the DOS partition. And when I boot DOS, I cannot see the OS/2 partition. Each operating system thinks its C: drive is the only partition on the system.
Now that I had OS/2 running, I was then able to install Stacker from two floppy diskettes. With this installed, I can compress and decompress data on either the hard disk, or on floppy diskettes. Most of the files were flat text documents and digital photos. After copying the data off the compressed disks onto my hard drive, I now can copy them off to a safe place.
To finish this project, I installed Ubuntu Linux on the remaining 76GB of disk space, which can access both the OS/2 and DOS drives FAT16 file systems natively. This allows me to copy files from OS/2 to DOS or vice versa.
Now that I know what data types are on the diskettes, I determined that I could have decompressed the data in just a few steps:
However, now that I have a working DOS and OS/2 system, I can possibly review the rest of my floppy diskettes, some of which may require running programs natively on OS/2 or DOS. This brings me to an important lesson. If you are going to keep archive data for long-term retention, you need to choose file formats that can be read by current operating systems and programs. Installing older operating systems and programs to access proprietary formats can be quite time-consuming, and may not always be possible or desirable.
technorati tags: IBM, Stac, Stacker, OS/2, DOS, Microsoft, Windows, ThinkCentre, Compression, Liv-Zempel
Running Windows on IBM Mainframes, New 15K Drives, and RVU Licensing
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Yes, it's Tuesday, and that means more IBM Announcements! A lot was announced today, so I have selected an eclectic mix for your enjoyment.
If you are contemplating a visit to an IBM [Executive Briefing Center], then April and May is a great time to come to Tucson. The weather is ideal here. The cold snap appears to be over, and spring is in the air!
technorati tags: IBM, zEnterprise, zBX, Microsoft, Windows, Storwize V7000, RVU, Tivoli
Bundle Up! Announcing the IBM Storwize Rapid Application Storage
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For most of us in the United States, it is cold out there, so you better "bundle up!"
Today, IBM announces the [IBM Storwize Rapid Application Storage] bundle, an integrated solution that improves storage efficiency and application availability. It comes in two offerings:
Why bundle? Here are the key advantages for these offerings:
To learn more, check out the IBM [landing page].
technorati tags: IBM, bundle, Storwize V7000, Tivoli, FlashCopy Manager, Productivity Center, TPC, MRE, SSD, Easy Tier, SAP, Exchange, DB2, Oracle, Microsoft, SQL Server
IBM Storwize Product Name Decoder Ring
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IBM had its big launch yesterday of the [IBM Storwize V7000 midrange disk system], and already some have discussed IBM's choice of the name. Fellow blogger Stephen Foskett has an excellent post titled [IBM's Storwize V7000: 100% SVC; 0% Storwize]. On The Register, Chris Mellor writes [IBM's Midrange Storage Blast - Storwize. But Without Compression]. In his latest [Friday Rant], fellow blogger Chuck Hollis (EMC) feels "the new name is cool, if a bit misleading."
In the spirit of the [HP Product Line Decoder Ring] and [Microsoft Codename Tracker], here is your quick IBM product name decoder ring:
If you think this is the first time a company like IBM has pulled shenanigans with product names like this, think again. Here are a few posts that might refresh your memory:
But what about acquisitions? When [IBM acquired Lotus Development Corporation], it kept the "Lotus" brand. New products that fit the "collaboration" function were put under the Lotus brand. I think most people can accept this approach.
But have we ever seen an existing product renamed to an acquired name?
In my post January 2009 post [Congratulations to Ken on your QCC Milestone], I mentioned that my colleague Ken Hannigan worked on an internal project initially called "Workstation Data Save Facility" (WDSF) which was changed to "Data Facility Distributed Storage Manager" (DFDSM), then renamed to "ADSTAR Distributed Storage Manager" (ADSM), and finally renamed to the name it has today: IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM).
Readers reminded me that [IBM acquired Tivoli Systems, Inc.] in 1996, so TSM could not have been an internally developed product. Ha! Wrong! Let's take a quick history lesson on how this came about:
I participated in five months of painful meetings to figure out what to name our new inte
However, the new IBM Storwize V7000 midrange product had nothing in common with the appliances acquired from Storwize, the company, so to avoid confusion, the latter products were renamed to [IBM Real-time Compression]. Fellow blogger Steven Kenniston, the Storage Alchemist from Storwize fame now part of IBM from the acquisition, gives his perspective on this in his post [Storwize – What is in a Name, Really?]. While I am often critical of the names and terms IBM uses, I have to say this last set of naming decisions makes a lot of sense to me and I support it wholeheartedly.
To learn more about the IBM Storwize V7000 midrange disk system, watch the latest videos on the IBM Virtual Briefing Center (VBC). We have a [short summary version for CFO executives] as well as a [longer version for IT technical professionals].
technorati tags: IBM, Storwize, Storwize V7000, Stephen Foskett, decoder+ring, real
On Android, Java, and Innovation - My new Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant
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In preparation for my [upcoming trip to Australia and New Zealand], I decided to upgrade my smartphone. My service provider T-Mobile offered me the chance to try out any new phone for 14 days for only ten dollar re-stocking fee. For the past 16 months, I have used the Google G1 phone. This is based on a storage-optimized Android operating system, based on open source Linux, with applications processed in a storage-optimized virtual machine called Dalvik, based on open source Java. According to Wikipedia, Android-based phones have #1 market share [outselling both BlackBerry OS and Apple iOS phones]. There are over 70 different companies using Android, driven away from the proprietary interfaces from Apple, BlackBerry and Microsoft.
Since I was already familiar with the Android operating system, I chose the Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant. I liked my G1, but it had only a small amount of internal memory to store applications. The G1 supported an external Micro SDHC card, but this only was used for music and photos. There was no way to install applications on the memory card, so I found myself having to uninstall applications to make room for new ones. By contrast, the Vibrant has 16GB internal memory, plenty of room for all applications, and supports Micro SDHC up to 32GB in size. My model can pre-installed with a 2GB card, of which 1.4GB is consumed by James Cameron's full-length movie Avatar. On the G1, swapping out memory cards was relatively easy. On the Vibrant, you have to take the phone apart to swap out cards, so I won't be doing that very often. I will probably just get a 32GB card and leave it in there permanently.
(FTC disclosure: I work for IBM. IBM has working relationships with Oracle, Google, and lots of other companies. IBM offers its own commercial version of Java related tools. I own stock in IBM, Apple, Google. I have friends and family who work at Microsoft. My review below is based entirely on my own experience of my new Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant phone. Samsung has created different models for different service providers. The T-Mobile Vibrant is an external USB storage device with telephony capabilities, comparable to the AT&T Captivate, Verizon Fascinate, or Sprint Epic 4G. The majority of mobile phones in the world contain IBM technology. This post is not necessarily an endorsement for Samsung over other smartphone manufacturers, nor T-Mobile over other service providers. I provide this information in context of storage optimization, state-of-the-art for smartphones in general, and disputes related to software patents between companies. I hold 19 patents, most of which are software patents.)
When Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems, it inherited stewardship of Java. Java is offered in two flavors. Java Standard Edition (SE) for machines that are planted firmly on or below your desk, and Java Micro Edition (ME) for machines that are carried around. Most Java-based phones limit themselves to Java ME, but Google decided to base its smartphones on the more powerful Java SE, but then optimize for the limited storage and computing resources. These two levels of Java have radically different licensing terms and conditions, so Larry Ellison of Oracle cried foul. On The Register, Gavin Clarke has an excellent article with details of the Oracle-vs-Google complaint. Daniel Dilger opines that Oracle [might kill Google's Android and software patents all at once]. Fellow blogger Mark Twomey (EMC) on his StorageZilla blog, argues that [it's not about Android phones, but Android everything].
My Vibrant is roughly the size of a half-inch stack of 3x5 index cards in my hand. In my humble opinion, the problem is the grey area between mobile phone and the desktop personal computer. Laptops, netbooks, iPads, tablet computers, eBook readers, and smartphones fall somewhere in between. At what point do you stop licensing Java SE and start licensing Java ME instead?
Let's take a look at all the stuff my new Samsung Vibrant can do, and let you decide for yourself. I have 140 applications installed, which I can access alphabetically. I also have up to seven screens which I can fill with application icons and widgets to simplify access. The screen measures about 4 inches diagonally. Click on each image below to see the full 480x800 resolution.
Just in case I switch to a local SIM card while abroad in another country, I asked T-mobile to unlock my phone, which they happily did at no additional charge. For example, while I am in Australia, I can either leave my T-Mobile USA chip in the phone, and pay roaming charges per minute, or I can purchase a SIM chip from a local phone company with pre-paid minutes. This often includes unlimited free incoming calls to a local Australian phone number, and voicemail.
Unlocking the phone to use different SIM cards is different than "jailbreaking", a term that refers to Apple's products. For Android phones, jailbreaking is called "rooting", as the process involves getting "root" user access that you normally don't have. The only reason I have found to have my phone "rooted" was to take these lovely screen shots, using the "Screen Shot It" application. This is another application that I paid for. I used the free trial for a few screenshots first to check it out, liked the results, and bought the application.
So, this new smartphone looks like a keeper. I got a screen protector to avoid scratching, and a two-piece case that snaps around the phone to give it more heft. All my chargers are "Mini USB" for my old G1 phone, and this new Vibrant phone is "Micro USB" instead, so I had to order new ones for my car, my office, and for my iGo (tip A97).
This review is more to focus on the fact that the IT industry is changing, and what was traditionally performed on personal computers are now being done on new handheld devices. Android provides a platform for innovation and healthy competition. Let's all hope Oracle and Google can work out their differences amicably.
Time for a New Laptop
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My how time flies. This week marks my 24th anniversary working here at IBM. This would have escaped me completely, had I not gotten an email reminding me that it was time to get a new laptop. IBM manages these on a four-year depreciation schedule, and I received my current laptop back in June 2006, on my 20th anniversary.
When I first started at IBM, I was a developer on DFHSM for the MVS operating system, now called DFSMShsm on the z/OS operating system. We all had 3270 [dumb terminals], large cathode ray tubes affectionately known as "green screens", and all of our files were stored centrally on the mainframe. When Personal Computers (PC) were first deployed, I was assigned the job of deciding who got them when. We were getting 120 machines, in five batches of 24 systems each, spaced out over the next two years. I was assigned the job of recommending who should get a PC during the first batch, the second batch, and so on. I was concerned that everyone would want to be part of the first batch, so I put out a survey, asking questions on how familiar they were with personal computers, whether they owned one at home, were familiar with DOS or OS/2, and so on.
It was actually my last question that helped make the decision process easy:
How soon do you want a Personal Computer to replace your existing 3270 terminal?
I had five options, and roughly 24 respondents checked each one, making my job extremely easy. Ironically, once the early adopters of the first batch discovered that these PC could be used for more than just 3270 terminal emulation, many of the others wanted theirs sooner.
Back then, IBM employees resented any form of change. Many took their new PC, configured it to be a full-screen 3270 emulation screen, and continued to work much as they had before. My mentor, Jerry Pence, would print out his mails, and file the printed emails into hanging file folders in his desk credenza. He did not trust saving them on the mainframe, so he was certainly not going to trust storing them on his new PC. One employee used his PC as a door stop, claiming he will continue to use his 3270 terminal until they take it away from him.
Moving forward to 2006, I was one of the first in my building to get a ThinkPad T60. It was so new that many of the accessories were not yet available. It had Windows XP on a single-core 32-bit processor, 1GB RAM, and a huge 80GB disk drive. The built-in 1GbE Ethernet went unused for a while, as we had 16 Mbps Token Ring network.
I was the marketing strategist for IBM System Storage back then, and needed all this excess power and capacity to handle all my graphic-intense applications, like GIMP and Second Life.
Over the past four years, I made a few slight improvements. I partitioned the hard drive to dual-boot between Windows and Linux, and created a separate partition for my data that could be accessed from either OS. I increased the memory to 2GB and replaced the disk with a drive holding 120GB capacity.
A few years ago, IBM surprised us by deciding to support Windows, Linux and Mac OS computers. But actually it made a lot of sense. IBM's world-renown global services manages the help-desk support of over 500 other companies in addition to the 400,000 employees within IBM, so they already had to know how to handle these other operating systems. Now we can choose whichever we feel makes us more productive. Happy employees are more productive, of course. IBM's vision is that almost everything you need to do would be supported on all three OS platforms:
The irony here is that the world is switching back to thin clients, with data stored centrally. The popularity of Web 2.0 helped this along. People are using Google Docs or Microsoft OfficeOnline to eliminate having to store anything locally on their machines. This vision positions IBM employees well for emerging cloud-based offerings.
Sadly, we are not quite completely off Windows. Some of our Lotus Notes databases use Windows-only APIs to access our Siebel databases. I have encountered PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets that just don't render correctly in Lotus Symphony. And finally, some of our web-based applications work only in Internet Explorer! We use the outdated IE6 corporate-wide, which is enough reason to switch over to Firefox, Chrome or Opera browsers. I have to put special tags on my blog posts to suppress YouTube and other embedded objects that aren't supported on IE6.
So, this leaves me with two options: Get a Mac and run Windows on the side as a guest operating system, or get a ThinkPad to run Windows or Windows/Linux. I've opted for the latter, and put in my order for a ThinkPad 410 with a dual-core 64-bit i5 Intel processor, VT-capable to provide hardware-assistance for virtualization, 4GB of RAM, and a huge 320GB drive. It will come installed with Windows XP as one big C: drive, so it will be up to me to re-partition it into a Windows/Linux dual-boot and/or Windows and Linux running as guest OS machine.
(Full disclosure to make the FTC happy: This is not an endorsement for Microsoft or against Apple products. I have an Apple Mac Mini at home, as well as Windows and Linux machines. IBM and Apple have a business relationship, and IBM manufactures technology inside some of Apple's products. I own shares of Apple stock, I have friends and family that work for Microsoft that occasionally send me Microsoft-logo items, and I work for IBM.)
I have until the end of June to receive my new laptop, re-partition, re-install all my programs, reconfigure all my settings, and transfer over my data so that I can send my old ThinkPad T60 back. IBM will probably refurbish it and send it off to a deserving child in Africa.
If you have an old PC or laptop, please consider donating it to a child, school or charity in your area. To help out a deserving child in Africa or elsewhere, consider contributing to the [One Laptop Per Child] organization.
technorati tags: , Anniversary, DFHSM, MVS, DFSMShsm, z/OS, dumb terminals, cathode ray tube, personal computer, DOS, OS/2, ThinkPad, cloud computing, Web20, Windows, Linux, MacOS, Apple, Microsoft, OLPC
IBM FlashCopy Manager v2.2
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Well, it feels like Tuesday and you know what that means... "IBM Announcement Day!" Actually, today is Wednesday, but since Monday was Memorial Day holiday here in the USA, my week is day-shifted. Yesterday, IBM announced its latest IBM FlashCopy Manager v2.2 release. Fellow blogger, Del Hoobler (IBM) has also posted something on this out atthe [Tivoli Storage Blog].
IBM FlashCopy Manager replaces two previous products. One was called Tivoli Storage Manager for Copy Services, the other was called Tivoli Storage Manager for Advanced Copy Services. To say people were confused between these two was an understatement, the first was for Windows, and the second was for UNIX and Linux operating systems. The solution? A new product that replaces both of these former products to support Windows, UNIX and Linux! Thus, IBM FlashCopy Manager was born. I introduced this product back in 2009 in my post [New DS8700 and other announcements].
IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager provides what most people with "N series SnapManager envy" are looking for: application-aware point-in-time copies. This product takes advantage of the underlying point-in-time interfaces available on various disk storage systems:
For Windows, IBM FlashCopy Manager can coordinate the backup of Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server. The new version 2.2 adds support for Exchange 2010 and SQL Server 2008 R2. This includes the ability to recover an individual mailbox or mail item from an Exchange backup. The data can be recovered directly to an Exchange server, or to a PST file.
For UNIX and Linux, IBM FlashCopy Manager can coordinate the backup of DB2, SAP and Oracle databases. Version 2.2 adds support specific Linux and Solaris operating systems, and provides a new capability for database cloning. Basically, database cloning restores a database under a new name with all the appropriate changes to allow its use for other purposes, like development, test or education training. A new "fcmcli" command line interface allows IBM FlashCopy Manager to be used for custom applications or file systems.
A common misperception is that IBM FlashCopy Manager requires IBM Tivoli Storage Manager backup software to function. That is not true. You have two options:
IBM FlashCopy Manager is an excellent platform to connect application-aware fucntionality with hardware-based copy services.
technorati tags: IBM, Announcements, FlashCopy, FlashCopy+Manager, Microsoft, Windows, VSS, UNIX, AIX, Solaris, Linux, TSM, Exchange, SQL+Server, SAP, DB2, Oracle
Imitation is the Sincerest form of Flattery
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They say "Great Minds think alike" and that imitation is "the sincerest form of flattery." Both of these quotes came to mind when I read fellow blogger Chuck Hollis' (EMC) excellent April 7th blog post [The 10 Big Ideas That Are Shaping IT Infrastructure Today]. Not surprisingly, some of his thoughts are similar to those I had presented two weeks ago in my March 22nd post [Cloud Computing for Accountants]. Here are two charts that caught my eye:
Perhaps we are all in just one big ["echo chamber"], as we are all coming up with similar observations, talking to similar customers, and reviewing similar market analyst reports. I am glad, at least this time, that Chuck and I for the most part agree where the marketplace is going. We live in interesting times!
technorati tags: , Chuck Hollis, EMC, IBM, HP, Microsoft, telephone operators, IT infrastructure, cloud computing, Cisco, VMware, , , Oracle, Sun, NetApp, EqualLogic, iSCSI, NAS, Dell, VDI, Ubuntu, Linux
IBM Events in April 2010
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Now that the US Recession has been declared over, companies are looking to invest in IT again. To help you plan your upcoming investments, here are some upcoming events in April.
It's looking to be a busy month!
technorati tags: , IBM, SNW, DS8700, XIV, SONAS, SBSC, Tivoli, CTO, ProtecTIER, Deduplication, SAP, Microsoft, webinar, summit, Orlando, Florida, Scottsdale, Arizona, #ibmsystems, #dyninfra
IBM Achieves Highest Growth Among Top Three Storage Vendors
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The marketshare data for external disk systems has been released by IDC for 4Q09. Overall, the market dropped 0.7 percent, comparing 4Q09 versus 4Q08. While EMC was quick to remind everyone that they were able to [maintain their #1 position] in the storage subset of "external disk systems", with the same 23.7 percent marketshare they had back in 4Q08 and revenues that were essentially flat, the real story concerns the shifts in the marketplace for the other major players. IBM grew revenue 9 percent, putting it nearly 5 points of marketshare ahead of HP. HP revenues dropped 7 percent, moving it further behind. Not mentioned in the [IBM Press Release] were NetApp and Dell, neck and neck for fourth place, with NetApp gaining 16.8 percent in revenues, while Dell dropped 13.5 percent. Both NetApp and Dell now have about 8 percent marketshare each. These top five storage vendors represent nearly 70 percent of the marketshare.
Given that HP is IBM's number one competitor, not just in storage but all things IT, this was a major win. Bob Evans from InformationWeek interviews my fifth-line manager, IBM executive Rod Adkins [IBM Claims Hardware Supremacy] where he shares his views and opinions about HP, Oracle-Sun, Cisco and Dell. I'll add my two cents on what's going on:
To learn more about IBM results 4Q09 and full-year 2009, see [Quarterly Earnings].
technorati tags: IBM, EMC, IDC, HP, NetApp, Dell, SPARC, Itanium, POWER7, cloud computing, three screens and cloud, VMware, FC, iSCSI, NAS, FCoE, Microsoft, printers, Productivity Center, LeftHand, EqualLogic, PDF, CutePDF, BullZip, 4Q09
Tivoli Storage Manager v6.2
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It's Tuesday, and that means more IBM announcements!
I haven't even finished blogging about all the other stuff that got announced last week, and here we are with more announcements. Since IBM's big [Pulse 2010 Conference] is next week, I thought I would cover this week's announcement on Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) v6.2 release. Here are the highlights:
technorati tags: , announcements, IBM, Pulse, conference, TSM, Tivoli, SSAM, backup, archive, VMware, VCB, Hyper-V, Microsoft, SSL, AES, encryption, in-flight, Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, ERP, DB2, Oracle, RMAN, SAP, BR*Tools, ibm-pulse, pulse2010
IBM Launches POWER7 processor and server line
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In addition to dominating the gaming world, producing chips for the Nintendo Wii, Sony PlayStation, and Microsoft Xbox 360, IBM also dominates the world of Linux and UNIX servers. Today, IBM announced its new POWER7 processor, and a line of servers that use this technology. Here is a quick [3-minute video] about the POWER7.
While others might be [Dancing on Sun's grave], IBM instead is focused on providing value to the marketplace. Here is another quick [2-minute video] about why thousands of companies have switched from Sun, HP and Dell over to IBM.
To learn more, see the IBM [Press Release] and announcement [landing page].
technorati tags: , Nintento, Wii, Sony, PlayStation, Microsoft, Xbox, IBM, Linux, UNIX, POWER7, Sun, HP, Dell, #POWER7, #powersystems
Storage Software with System x Servers
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From Timothy Morgan of [The Register]:
"With Cisco Systems, EMC, and VMware teaming up to sell integrated IT stacks, Oracle buying Sun Microsystems to create its own integrated stacks, and IBM having sold integrated legacy system stacks and rolling in profits from them for decades, it was only a matter of time before other big IT players paired off."
Once again we are reminded that IBM, as an IT "supermarket", is able to deliver integrated soft
For full details on these new ordering options, see the IBM [Press Release].
technorati tags: System x, BladeCenter, IntelliStation, Cisco, EMC, VMware, VCE, Oracle, Sun, HP, Microsoft, FastBack, FlashCopy, GPFS, Windows, Linux, SAP, SVC, VSS, DS8000, DS5000, DS4000, DS3000, SQL, Lotus, Domino
Day3 Mountains Hiding in the Mist
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Continuing my coverage of the Data Center Conference 2009, held Dec 1-4 in Las Vegas, the title of this session refers to the mess of "management standards" for Cloud Computing.
The analyst quickly reviewed the concepts of IaaS (Amazon EC2, for example), PaaS (Microsoft Azure, for example), and SaaS (IBM LotusLive, for example). The problem is that each provider has developed their own set of APIs.
(One exception was [Eucalyptus], which adopts the Amazon EC2, S3 and EBS style of interfaces. Eucalyptus is an open-source infrastrcture that stands for "Elastic Utility Computing Architecture Linking Your Programs To Useful Systems". You can build your own private cloud using the new Cloud APIs included Ubuntu Linux 9.10 Karmic Koala termed Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (UEC). See these instructions in InformationWeek article [Roll Your Own Ubuntu Private Cloud].)
The analyst went into specific Virtual Infrastructure (VI) and public cloud providers.
If you prefer a common management system independent of cloud provider, or perhaps across multiple cloud providers, you may want to consider one of the "Big 4" instead. These are the top four system management software vendors: IBM, HP, BMC Software, and Computer Associates (CA).
A survey of the audience found the number one challenge was "integration". How to integrate new cloud services into an existing traditional data center. Who will give you confidence to deliver not tools for remote management of external cloud services? Survey shows:
Some final thoughts offered by the analyst. First, nearly a third of all IT vendors disappear after two years, and the cloud will probably have similar, if not worse, track record. Traditional server, storage and network administrators should not consider Cloud technologies as a death knell for in-house on-premises IT. Companies should probably explore a mix of private and public cloud options.
technorati tags: , Eucalyptis, IBM, HP, BMC, CA, Amazon, AWS, EC2, Microsoft, Azure, IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, LotusLive, Eucalyptus, S3, EBS, Ubuntu, Linux, UEC, VMware, vCloud+Express, VMware+Go, Xen, Citrix, C3, CloudWatch,


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Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i expands with five new researchersUniversity of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Posted: Feb 1, 2010
The University of Hawai'i at Mānoa's Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i has successfully recruited five noted cancer researchers to join its faculty, adding expertise that will translate into better cancer care for state residents.
Three of the researchers—Drs. Clayton Chong, Naoky Tsai and Linda Wong—are well-known cancer specialists in Hawaii. Chong and Wong will join the Center as recipients of two federal ARRA grants that were awarded in December to fund "translational" research that spans the continuum from lab study to patient care.
Two additional recruits come from the mainland: Wen-Ming Chu, MD, PhD, formerly of Brown University's department of molecular microbiology and immunology; and Toshihiko Kawamori, MD, PhD, from the University of South Carolina's department of pathology and laboratory medicine.
"We are making great strides in expanding our research capacity with these newest recruits," said Michele Carbone, MD, PhD, director of the Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i. "Their expertise will strengthen our clinical and natural products programs, and ultimately the people of Hawaii will benefit from their study of specific cancers, including liver, breast and colon cancer.
More information on the researchers:
Dr. Clayton Dai Kwock is the chief of oncology at The Queen's Medical Center. A graduate of Kamehameha Schools and Harvard University School of Public Health, he has a strong interest in health disparities among ethnic groups, and specifically studies breast cancer and its incidence among Native Hawaiians. He is an associate medical professor at the John A. Burns School of Medicine's (JABSOM's) department of Native Hawaiian Health. He was formerly with the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, and is a graduate of JABSOM.
Dr. Naoky Tsai is currently at Castle Medical Center in Kailua and the Liver Center at St. Francis Medical Center in Liliha. Also a JABSOM professor, he attended Taipei Medical University in Taiwan, held an internship at St. Mary's Hospital, and a residency in internal medicine at The Griffin Hospital, an affiliate of Yale University.
Dr. Linda Wong specializes in the treatment of liver cancer and those at greatest risk, including patients with viral hepatitis B and C. Hawaii has the highest incidence of liver cancer in the U.S. Dr. Wong is a clinical professor of surgery at JABSOM, a surgeon with Surgical Associates Inc., and director of the liver transplant program at St. Francis Medical Center. She earned her medical degree from University of California-Irvine and is a graduate of Stanford University and Punahou School.
Dr. Wen-Ming Chu studies inflammation and colon cancer. Most recently, he was an assistant professor at Brown University's department of molecular microbiology and immunology in Providence, Rhode Island. He earned master and doctoral degrees from the Peking Union Medical College in Beijing, and his medical degree from Nanjing Medical College.
Formerly with the University of South Carolina's department of pathology and laboratory medicine, Dr. Toshihiko Kawamori studies chemo-prevention of colon cancer. Kawamori earned his doctoral degree from Gifu University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan and his medical degree from the Gifu University School of Medicine. He is the recipient of numerous awards, and is a fellow of the International Academy of Toxicologic Pathology. He will arrive at the Cancer Research Center of Hawai'i on May 1.


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Trey Ratcliff necesitaba un nuevo diseño de página web y lanzó un concurso de diseño en 99designs.
Un ganador ha sido elegido entre 10 diseños de 4 diseñadores freelance.
Stuck in Customs Newsletter
My name is Trey Ratcliff and I have a personal website about photography and travel. It is called "Stuck In Customs" and it's at http://www.stuckincustoms.com. We recently launched a newsletter and I really want a template that matches the site.
Readers of the Stuck In Customs blog.
I have all the source files from the website to give you a big head start. So no need to start from scratch!
You can see the current newsletter design by signing up at http://www.stuckincustoms.com/newsletter/ . Please observe the "Welcome" Newsletter that arrives after you finish the signup/confirmation process.
You can see the existing template at http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/565159/N…plate.html
The PSD for the theme of my website: http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/565159/S…%20Art.psd
- The newsletter should have images in it, but it should also look okay if the images do not load.
- The top of it should use that "Stuck In Customs" logo, but add the word "Newsletter" in a stylish way.
- Try not to use TOO many images. These will be linked from my website, where the .jpgs will be stored.
- The second half of the newsletter will always contain about 10 big images, 1024 pixels across. The top half of the newsletter will have text. That text does not need to be 1024 wide. In fact, the text looks quite bad if it is that far across.
- A finished HTML file.
- Newsletter background/template images should point to http://www.stuckincustoms.com/images/newsletter
- All the images "sliced up" so I can put them in the above directory
- 2 or 3 variations on the theme so we can have different templates and keep things fresh.


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What are the prospects for East Asian monetary integration? A high-level conference on September 5-6 at Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, provided a venue for two dozen distinguished speakers and discussants to examine the range of policy options. The conference, organized in cooperation with the universities of Paris-Dauphine and Mannheim and commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of Chulalongkorn's Faculty of Economics, drew approximately one hundred participants from academic, business, and policymaking communities as well as a large number of Chulalongkorn students.
The conference included lively sessions on specific country issues, such as macroeconomic policies in Thailand after the crisis and the future of multiple monetary systems in China in the face of increasing economic integration between Hong Kong SAR and the Chinese mainland, explored in a paper by Shu-ki Tsang of Hong Kong Baptist University. But alternative monetary and exchange rate regimes for East Asia provided the gathering with its central theme. The debate also addressed related issues, such as capital controls and international "last resort" lending.
Policy proposals
Notwithstanding the role of quasi-fixed exchange rates in the run-up to the Asian crisis and the apparent smooth functioning of Asian inflation targeting regimes, such as Thailand's (discussed in a paper by Chayodom Sabhasri, June Charoenseang, and Pornkamol Manakit of Chulalongkorn University), participants were generally skeptical of the long-term desirability of floating exchange rates for East Asia. This skepticism appeared to be chiefly motivated by two considerations: the desirability of limiting exchange rate volatility from the perspective of regional economic integration, and the potentially destabilizing effect of exchange rate swings in emerging economies with short-term debt denominated in foreign currency.
Beyond this theme, however, little consensus emerged on which exchange rate regime might constitute the best alternative for the region. Discussion largely centered on three main proposals:
- Soft peg to a basket of currencies%. A soft peg, argued Takatoshi Ito of Hitotsubashi University, could limit exchange rate volatility while maintaining a degree of flexibility, thus avoiding the types of misalignments that had preceded the Asian crisis (particularly in the case of the Thai baht). Ito noted that a soft peg could be achieved by allowing some flexibility within a band and by choosing basket weights that were approximately in line with trade importance. This would imply a much higher weight for the Japanese yen than in Thailand's precrisis basket peg, and thus make the peg less vulnerable to swings in the bilateral U.S. dollar-yen exchange rate.
- East Asian dollar standard%. Ronald McKinnon of Stanford University proposed a system of long-term parities that would tie East Asian currencies—including the Japanese yen—to the U.S. dollar. While temporary suspensions would be acceptable at times of intense exchange market pressure, governments would commit to return to original parities after such crisis episodes (although on a flexible timetable). This would fix long-run expectations and thus reduce exchange rate overshooting in the face of speculative pressure, as many East Asian currencies famously experienced in the second half of 1997.
Maintaining long-term parities to the U.S. dollar would require considerable fiscal discipline, he said, but this was something most Asian authorities were quite capable of. The advantages of such a standard, McKinnon emphasized, were a clear nominal anchor—including against expectations of deflation in Japan—and the reduction or elimination of financial instability caused by the combination of flexible exchange rates and foreign currency-denominated liabilities. Moreover, a "good peg" could be expected to lower interest rate differentials and might thereby reduce incentives to borrow short term in U.S. dollars, gradually reducing systemic vulnerability over time.
- East Asian currency union%. Robert Mundell of Columbia University, Srinivasa Madhur of the Asian Development Bank, and Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard University each proposed variations of an East Asian currency union. Mundell and Madhur envisaged a process of monetary integration along European lines, requiring a combination of exchange market intervention agreements and a coordination of macroeconomic policies during an interim period, and eventually leading to a common currency. The principal advantage would be closer regional economic and financial integration.
Hausmann, on the other hand, was primarily concerned with the risks that foreign currency borrowing—the "original sin" of emerging market economies—implied for financial stability. Dollarization or "yenization" would, he indicated, eliminate these risks, lower real interest rates, encourage domestic savings, promote financial deepening, and provide a fully credible monetary anchor. However, a multilateral arrangement—in other words, a currency union with either the yen or the dollar at its core—would be preferable to the unilateral adoption of the dollar or the yen, because it would provide some seigniorage-sharing and a lender of last resort function that would benefit all members of the system.
All three proposals generated lively exchanges. Some participants criticized Ito's and McKinnon's proposals on the grounds that these monetary systems remained vulnerable to speculative attacks—a concern that would also apply to an arrangement similar to the European exchange rate mechanism. In McKinnon's proposal, temporary flexibility, disciplined macro policies, and commitment to a return to long-run fixed parities might give the system some resilience. But if equilibrium exchange rates shifted for reasons other than macroeconomic policies—for example, as a result of the discovery of large implicit liabilities, or major real or external shocks—a return to the original parities might be painful and perhaps not credible.
Finally, currency unions built around the yen or the U.S. dollar and an East Asian dollar standard that excluded Japan could create competitiveness problems for Southeast Asia in the event of large swings in the yen-dollar exchange rate. For this reason, both Mundell and Hausmann stressed that their proposals would work best if exchange rate volatility among the dollar, the yen, and the euro were limited.
Other instruments
One conclusion that can be drawn from the discussion is that defining a "perfect" exchange rate arrangement for East Asia might be difficult because too much is being demanded from it: providing a nominal anchor, promoting regional trade and economic integration, maintaining competitiveness, and safeguarding the financial system. To really address these multiple objectives, it might be necessary to invoke additional policy instruments.
Conference participants dwelled on two such potential instruments: capital controls, the subject of a paper by Masahiro Kawai, Deputy Vice-Minister for International Affairs in Japan's Ministry of Finance, and Shinji Takagi of Osaka University; and an international lender of last resort, discussed by Jeromin Zettelmeyer of the IMF. According to Kawai, capital controls are rarely successful over an extended period, but might have a useful role to play in specific circumstances—in particular, as a way of imposing a standstill in a financial panic that arises despite fundamentally sound domestic policies. An example, he said, might be the brief imposition of controls on short-term outflows in Malaysia after the Russian crisis. The Malaysian authorities used capital controls to create breathing space for domestic financial and corporate restructuring and other needed reforms while maintaining a sound macroeconomic framework.
Zettelmeyer argued that maintaining actual or even potential exchange rate flexibility—in other words, any exchange rate arrangement short of full dollarization—might require an international lender of last resort to help domestic financial safety nets deal with the risks associated with foreign-denominated debt. However, neither strategy was without problems, as the authors themselves and subsequent discussants pointed out. Imposition of capital controls, even if only in the context of a panic, might be interpreted as a signal of government willingness to restrict investor rights, and thus could have a damaging effect on the country's credibility and on inflows of foreign direct investment. And the backing of domestic financial safety nets by an international guarantee might increase both country and investor moral hazard, unless the guarantee could be carefully tailored to the quality of the financial safety net and to domestic financial sector policies.


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Q&A: Tennis Channel Seeks Marketing Advantage With Players, Partners, Fans
By Barry Janoff
September 8, 2012: In 2003, Tennis Channel was a fledgling cable station that reached three million homes and had limited access to the players and tournaments that drove the sport.
Tennis Channel now has the rights to show live coverage from all four Grand Slams, and has significant presence year-round at events including the ATP Masters Series, WTA Tour championship competitions, Davis Cup and Fed Cup by BNP Paribas and the Hyundai Hopman Cup.
By the end of the 2012 U.S. Open on Sept. 9, Tennis Channel will have aired nearly 245 hours of coverage during the two-week event, including 70-plus hours of live coverage and about 30 original hours of U.S. Open Tonight and Breakfast at the Open.
Among its commentators and analysts are a Who's Who of Tennis, including Jim Courier, Bill Macatee, Mary Carillo, Martina Navratilova, Tracy Austin, Justin Gimelstob and Lindsay Davenport.
The cable station said it is currently available in 34 million homes nationwide via nine of the top 10 multi-system operators (MSOs) and Verizon FiOS TV, and has a national footprint via DirecTV and DISH Network.
That reach could be greatly expanded. A recent ruling by the Federal Communications Commission mandated that Comcast Corp. add an additional 18 million households to the three million that currently had access to Tennis Channel on the Comcast system. Comcast appealed the decision and, on Aug. 25, was granted a stay by the Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., which is still in effect.
Robyn Miller has been svp-marketing with Santa Monica, Calif.-based Tennis Channel for more than five years. She previously was svp-marketing for Fine Living Network (a Scripps Network sibling of HGTN, Travel Channel and Food Network), where she met and worked for FLN's founding president, Ken Solomon, now chairman and CEO of Tennis Channel. Before that, Miller spent 15 years at the Walt Disney Co. as a marketing, creative and product strategy executive for the home entertainment division.
Earlier at the 2012 U.S. Open, NYSportsJournalism spoke with Ken Solomon, chairman and CEO for Tennis Channel, about the current and future state of tennis and Tennis Channel. Here, Miller talks to NYSportsJournalism about the challenges and rewards of marketing a multi-media firm devoted 24/7 to the players, events and lifestyle of tennis.
NYSportsJournalism.com: What were some of the key challenges and goals when you joined the Tennis Channel?
Robyn Miller: At the time I joined Tennis Channel, the main challenge was that we had not yet negotiated many significant rights deals. We did not have a lot of product to bring to marketers. Since then, we have signed deals with the French Open, the Australian Open and the U.S. Open. And that opened up entirely new opportunities for advertisers and viewers. So now I'm able to market live coverage, original programming such as U.S. Open Tonight and Breakfast at the Open, original content, and the fact that we have access to and air more tournaments with the top-rated men's and women's players than any other network. That is a major change.
NYSJ: What would be your biggest challenge now?
RM: Awareness of the Tennis Channel. We are in 34 million homes. That is a strong base, but that can only go so far in terms of spreading the word and raising awareness. Which is why Comcast is so important to us. My budget is highly restricted. So what I try to do is get out of the Tennis Channel circle to expand awareness about the U.S. Open, about the attributes of Tennis Channel, without spending money. I don't have the money to do major advertising campaigns. I don't have the money to advertise on ESPN or any other cable network.
NYSJ: How do you create marketing and buzz without a big budget?
RM: We look for like-minded partners who will help us. They take our content, and they have the penetration that we need to create awareness. We partner with IndoorDirect, has television monitors in 1,200 fast-food restaurants around the country (such as Wendy's, Denny's, Arby's and KFC). When you go to get a burger, you'll see a promotion that the U.S. Open will be on Tennis Channel. We market outside our circle in ways like that without spending money. We just signed a deal with ClearVision, an airport TV network from Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings [scheduled to debut this fall], so we will have programming in airports nationwide. Throughout the marketing world, we are able to find partners who love our content, who want to showcase the players and who enable us to broaden our reach.
"We look for like-minded partners who will help us. They take our content, and they have the penetration that we need to create awareness."
NYSJ: How does this impact Tennis Channel's position in the world of business?
RM: We have a strong position, which is still growing. Ken Solomon has solid credentials and a strong business background. And the partners we work with are leading companies. If you're asking about whether we get the respect of the business community, a good example is that on Aug. 31, Ken, Chris Considine [president for Wilson Sporting Goods} and others [rang] the opening bell for NASDAQ on court at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
NYSJ: Since there are not tournaments to cover 24/7, how important has other programming become to the growth of the Tennis Channel and to the way you present the network to marketers and potential sponsors?
RM: Very important. We are not just a tennis network, we are also a lifestyle network. We are the only sports network where half of our viewers are women. At ESPN, 80% of their viewers are male. The same with hockey, soccer [networks]. The fact that our viewership is split 50-50 attracts a variety of advertisers and provides a great potential of opportunity from our programming, which is directed toward both men and women. We also have the most affluent demographic among sports channels, with a large portion of viewers who have disposable income. That is attractive to a variety of high-end advertisers — Mercedes-Benz, LaCoste, Longines — who are targeting that demographic.
NYSJ: How would you describe that demographic?
RM: As I said, 50-50 between men and women. I'd say the majority is in the 35-54 age range, and a strong demographic of baby boomers or people who have retired and have money to spend. But online that is younger. We have a very robust presence in social media, which tends to be younger. Through our Facebook page, Twitter, YouTube and other outlets, we are reaching younger fans who we then direct to our cable channel. We want to show them that we cover the entire range of tennis and [tennis-related] lifestyles, which should be a strong reason for them to stay with us. We like to think of tennis as a [lifetime] sport, so you have kids playing it and people in their 90s playing it. We marketing to the [older] audience as well as to younger people who are active on Twitter and Facebook.
NYSJ: Are players becoming more responsive to Tennis Channel and making themselves more accessible?
RM: Absolutely. They certainly want to be part of what we are doing. When we started, no one knew who we were. Now, we have a presence at tournaments throughout the year, there is a set on-site with commentators, we have Bill Macatee talking to the players after they win a match. So the players are far more aware of our reach and input. Honestly, we used to struggle to get players to speak with us during a tournament. Now, they are happy to speak with us, and they make time in their schedule to sit down with us.
NYSJ: How important has it been to have on-air personalities such as Jim Courier, Bill Macatee, Mary Carillo, Martina Navratilova, Tracy Austin, Justin Gimelstob and Lindsay Davenport?
RM: Very important on so many levels. They know the game inside and out, so their credibility is higher than anyone else's. Viewers and players know them and know they have been in the game. They can talk about the game from a personal level, talk about situations on and off the court that they experienced and to which current players can relate and understand. Our commentators are well-educated on how to market our message as well as how to market the players. They know all the different venues we have to get the game to fans, not just on-air but Internet, mobile, social media. Our production people are really smart when it comes to using Bill, Tracy, Martina and all of our talent.
NYSJ: Andy Roddick announced his retirement. Is the Tennis Channel a good place to work for former players who want to become commentators?
RM: Absolutely. (U.S. Davis Cup captain) Jim Courier joined us last year for the U.S. Open, and it wasn't hard to get him to expand his role this year. We have a fantastic relationship with him. I think if players who have retired look at Tennis Channel they can see we have a great relationship with all of the former players who are commentators for us.
NYSJ: How important has it been in talking with potential marketing partners and in expanding the role of current partners that Tennis Channel is not just focusing on tournaments but has embraced the lifestyle of tennis?
RM: That has become a major part of what we do and how we work with our partners. If you watched our coverage at Wimbledon, for example, you would have seen a piece on the best driving trips in and around London, the top hotels and places to visit and shop if you are on a budget or if you have some pounds to spend. During the French Open we did a Paris Underground special. They are sponsored by American Express or brought to you by one of our other partners. We have original programming, such as Destination Tennis, where we explore the cities that host WTA and ATP tournaments, which is presented by Orbitz. The sport itself is fantastic. But what we do, with the help of our partners, is weave into our programming all of the lifestyle elements.
NYSJ: How has the fact that four men — Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray — have been so dominant in recent years played into Tennis Channel marketing strategies.
RM: We are always interested in the story. For a time, it was about the rivalry between Federer and Nadal. Then Djokovic established his presence at the top, so we talked about the three players and the rivalries among them. Then Andy Murray came in, so it has been about the way these four guys really battle each other. They are all players well-known in the U.S. and around the world, which makes it even more intriguing when you are talking about marketing the Tennis Channel itself or building marketing with our partners or potential partners. The awareness among tennis fans and even people who don't follow tennis on a regular basis is very high, and that is something that marketing partners look for.
"The awareness among tennis fans and even people who don't follow tennis on a regular basis is very high, and that is something that marketing partners look for."
NYSJ: The women's side has been more in flux, although Serena and Venus Williams are well-known in the U.S. How has that affected Tennis Channel's marketing tactics?
RM: The women's side has been a lot more tenuous. Somebody is No. 1, then the next week someone else is No. 1. There have been seven different women winning the last seven Grand Slam titles (prior to the U.S. Open). But when you have Maria Sharapova, Serena Williams, Venus Williams, they have great stories. They have very high awareness among fans and a demographic that marketers can focus on. So we tell their stories, and tell the stories of the other women who are helping to make tennis so interesting today: Victoria Azarenka, Samantha Stosur, Na Li, Caroline Wozniacki, Kim Clijsters was a big story since coming back from having a baby, and then announcing that she would retire after the U.S. Open. She is a good example of someone on who we can put our focus on and off the court, being a Grand Slam winner, a mom, someone who has balanced her private and professional life.
NYSJ: With Tennis Channel's 10th anniversary coming in 2013, what are you looking at as far as marketing and activation?
RM: Ten years is a big deal. We are still a very new and very vibrant network, still growing. The actual anniversary is May 2013, which is right before the French Open (May 26-June 9), so we will probably have a party in Paris, which is not a bad thing. (Laughs.) We are speaking with our partners about involvement in our celebration. We are looking at on-air programming. We are talking with people in the sport. And of course we want to have activation that involves fans of tennis and viewers of Tennis Channel. It will be about celebrating the fact that we started in three million homes and now have more than 30 million homes, and are still growing.
Q&A: Tennis Channel Sees Net Gains, Feels Growing Pains