I had the pleasure of interacting with a group of very thoughtful and smart people today as part of a session at IIW-East on the role of Government as an Identity Oracle (Attribute Provider).

It's been a rather long day, so I will follow-up another time with a blog posting on the session details, but I would be very remiss if I did not thank the folks who attended the session and made it an interesting discussion with their insights and active participation.

In no particular order, a big thank you goes out to Ian Glazer from Gartner (who did double duty as both participant and scribe), Dr. Peter Alterman from NIH, Gerry Beuchelt from MITRE, Nishant Kaushik from Oracle, Laura Hunter from Microsoft, Pam Dingle from Ping Identity and many others.

I have always had a very Microsoft Windows centric environment in my house with all of the machines in the house joined to an Active Directory domain to provide management capabilities such as centralized login, software deployment, re-direction of My Documents folders to my NAS, and more.

Up until a couple of years ago, I even used to run a mail server at home.  Overkill, I know, but this was not a case of "need" as much as "just because I could" and since I don't do this professionally any more, a way to keep up with what is going on (and as strange as it may sound, I found it relaxing). But that stopped being fun when I simply could not keep up with the deluge of spam. That resulted in me outsourcing my email infrastructure to the Cloud via Google Apps for Domains.

Recently, I made a switch to using a Mac as my primary desktop as well as my travel laptop. The switch was driven by my kids getting getting new Macbook Pro laptops as replacements for their previous hand me down PC laptops. My wife has always had a Mac laptop from work but that had never impacted our home network except for her having the ability to use the home printer.

This, of course, has resulted in me running as fast as possible to catch up with them as they explore the capabilities of their laptops. The great thing for me has been the forced reunion with my Unix roots.  I used to run FreeBSD servers back in the day before I switched over to Linux (because it had more apps) to finally arrive in the Windows world.

For folks who are going thru this I would highly recommend the O'Reilly Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual and Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Snow Leopard Edition, both by David Pogue.

What I have liked to date:

• Hardware fit, finish and usability touches
• Software installation and un-installation
• Keyboard short-cuts
• Trackpad gesture support
• Spotlight (Desktop Search)
• Multi-monitor support
• Power management
• Parental Controls
• Scripting for automation support
• Integration with my Netgear ReadyNAS
• Integration with Google Apps for Domains

What I would change:

• The seemingly blind, but ultimately misguided, belief in the security of the OS as demonstrated by the firewall being turned off by default even on the laptops

On the whole, the transition has been pretty smooth as I have found the same programs or close analogs on the Mac side that I have traditionally used on the Windows side.  In other places, I am using the Remote Desktop Client for the Mac, from Microsoft, to connect to my existing Windows Machines when I need them.

My son has multiple food allergies, so dining out as a family is something we do not do on an ad-hoc basis but approach with a great deal of planning and care.  This becomes a bit more complex when we are traveling or on vacation.  Given that we have family in Western Canada, one of our favorite places to vacation is Banff National Park. The opportunity to go completely off-grid and to hike, bike, horse back ride and just enjoy the magnificent Canadian Rockies is something that we look forward to.

I don’t typically make a point of calling out places that we have patronized but this is an exception given that many families are in the same circumstances as mine when it comes to travel and food allergies. 

We had a great experience this summer (and for many years before) at the Rimrock Resort Hotel in Banff where the combination of Chef Guy St-Hilaire and the Food & Beverage Supervisor Mr. David Perry did an absolutely top notch job of addressing our concerns and coordinating the service that we received from any of the restaurants and from all the food service staff. And they did it in a friendly, personalized manner that made my son feel special and not different. He absolutely had a blast and we can’t ask for anything more than that.

If you are traveling to the Banff area, my recommendation would be to give them a call before you get there, ask to speak to either Guy or David and let them know your food allergy concerns. I would bet you that they will take as good care of you and/or your family as they did mine.

I had the opportunity last week to visit with the Beverly Hills Police Department as well as their CIO and his staff. My areas of discussion with them were primarily focused around Information Security and Identity and Access Management.

Found them to be a very impressive organization, from the technical infrastructure they have in place, their desire to leverage information technology for the benefit of their customer base (both government and residents), as well as the partnerships that they have forged across many different arenas.

It was particularly interesting to hear the comments from them about how they are a sought after employer by some very talented people because of the very interesting projects that they work on and the technologies that they get to utilize. As a technologist, I definitely enjoyed their data center tour as well as an overview of upcoming capabilities that they are working on. Very cool stuff.

Funniest moment: Walking back from lunch with the Chief of Police. Waiting to cross the street. A young guy in front of us starts to Jaywalk! Instant shout from the Chief "Hey, Hey, What are you doing?" It was like watching the guy hit a rubber band. Instant backpedaling back to the sidewalk with an mumble that he thought the light was green. Punch-line: Chief is in business clothes. Not in uniform. Sheer authority in voice got the response!

P.S. Yes, please spare me the Eddie Murphy jokes; By now, I have heard them all :-)

Especially for those with young kids (This has now become a Christmas Eve tradition at our house) ...

Continuing a more than 50 year old tradition, NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) will be tracking Santa on his Christmas Eve flight across the world. You and your kids can track Santa on NORAD's Track Santa web site.

A big "Thank You" to the men and women of NORAD, who have selflessly volunteered their time to personally update children via phone calls, emails and the Internet on Christmas Eve. Some further information:

• Why NORAD tracks Santa
• How NORAD tracks Santa

I recently came back from vacation to find that my primary desktop at home (a Dell Unit) was not booting up and the only indicator was a slowly blinking yellow power light.

After some investigation, it turned out that this was due to a bad power supply. On top of that, it appeared that the power supply fried the motherboard on its way to the land of no return. My first inclination was to buy another brand name computer. But in shopping around, I really was not happy with choices that were being offered, so decided to go the custom build route. 

Although I have built multiple computers in the past, I have not been keeping up with the current hardware esoterica, so got some recommendations from folks at work that led to a pre-built list of computer parts through the SlickDeals forum. An additional criteria was that since I had a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate lying around that I still had not installed on any of my systems, and since Vista SP1 had come out, I wanted this to be a machine that was capable of running Vista.

It took me 2-3 hours to put the system together on a Saturday with the additional benefit that it was a cool thing to do with the kids.

I am happy to note that all of the parts work together seamlessly, have full Vista driver support and once Vista SP1 and all of the latest updates were installed, I have a very smooth running machine.  While my Aero score was not at the top end, it still is enough to give me the full Aero experience with Vista (Per the Vista Help, the current base scores for the Windows Experience Index ranges from 1 to 5.9).

For those who are interested in building a very decently performing Vista compatible computer at a reasonable price, I have turned my list of parts into into a NewEgg Computer Wishlist for a Mid-Range Computer. My experience with this was very positive and I would recommend both the vendor as well as the parts.

Awesome! I hope this act wins!

"... part of our job is to make deliveries of metal to deserving customers. Business is Good!"

An excerpt from a conversation with an Army Colonel.

I typically don't do this, but this particular job opening in my organization is for someone that I will be directly working with.  As such, it is in my best interest to make sure that the opening gets socialized to folks in the right communities so that I can continue to work with folks who are a whole lot smarter and more knowledgeable than I am :-)

So if you have a knowledge base that spans identity, security and privacy technologies, would like a job that has a direct impact on and enhances of the security of the nation, and would like to work in an environment that values your individual contributions to a kick-ass team, we are hiring! 

Here are some of what I consider to be the relevant details of the job opening. The full description of the job, as well as how to apply for it, can be found on the official job requisition.

The ideal candidate will have a knowledge base that spans identity, security and privacy technologies as well as the ability to bridge the software development and computing infrastructure domains.

Duties:

• Provide subject matter expertise in implementing identity and access control solutions in support of a variety of sponsors in the Government and Intelligence Communities. [...]
• Maintain current knowledge of identity technologies in the commercial marketplace with an eye towards how it could be applied to sponsor needs. Expectation is that the candidate actively participates in the technical community [...]
• Actively work to share knowledge and experience gained in external community participation and project work via participation in internal Communities of Practice, online forums [...]
• Participate in standards organizations such as OASIS, W3C and others on behalf of JHU/APL in the creation and modification of standards [...]

Desired:

• Self-motivated to learn and apply technology to solve problems
• Ability to “Argue like you are right, Listen like you are wrong”
• Self-starter who proactively searches for and obtains potential solutions to problems
• Demonstrated experience with the implementation of identity solutions which may include:
  • Application of relevant standards such as SAML, XACML, WS-SX, etc.
  • Implementation and/or administration of directory services (LDAP etc) and/or Virtual Directory Capabilities,
  • Implementation and/or administration of PKI,
  • Implementation and/or administration of Web Access Management solutions
  • RBAC/ABAC
• Full lifecycle implementation experience as related to an Identity Management Project

Required:

• Demonstrated experience in one or more of the relevant areas of Identity, Security, and Privacy with an interest in focusing on the Identity Management area.
• At least 5 years of increasingly complex software development with one or more of the major software platforms (i.e. .NET and/or JEE) and/or infrastructure experience with one or more major operating systems (i.e., *nix, Windows) in an Enterprise class environment
• Awareness of the fundamental principles of Service Oriented Architecture
• Must be eligible for US Department of Defense (DoD) clearance requiring background investigation and/or polygraph examination.  [Please be aware that holding a U.S. Citizenship is part of the requirement for obtaining a security clearance]
• [...]

If you are interested, apply via the official job site, but in addition, drop me a note that you have applied with your attached resume to my work e-mail (anil dot john -at- jhuapl dot edu), so that I can have it flagged internally and properly routed.

If you would simply like to find out more about the job, the work environment etc, or would like any clarifications before you take action, please feel free to contact me.  Needless to say, if you know of someone else who would be interested, please pass the details on to them.

A new “Information Sharing Strategy” (PDF) from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence warns that traditional security practices that restrict disclosure of information have become counterproductive.

“The Intelligence Community’s ‘need to know’ culture, a necessity during the Cold War, is now a handicap that threatens our ability to uncover, respond, and protect against terrorism and other asymmetric threats,” the document declares.

The new Strategy defines information sharing goals and as well as near-term and long-term implementation objectives. Goals include uniform government-wide information policies, improved connectivity, and increased inter-agency collaboration.

Source: FAS Project on Government Secrecy

The document notes that in order to achieve their information sharing vision, the IC has "...  adopted a new information sharing model, which is depicted in Figure 1:"

We finally decided to upgrade to a High Definition (HD) TV setup in the house.

The initial choice one needs to make is to go with either a LCD or Plasma display for the  HDTV. LCDs consume less power, are a better choice to be used as a computer display, provide better value for the money if you are looking at a < 50" screen and depending on the brand/model may not provide a wide viewing angle. Plasma displays provide better value for your money if the screen size is > 50", are said to be able to display a deeper black on the screen and have a wider viewing angle. Even though they have improved in this area, they are also susceptible to burn-in. The burn-in is especially an issue if you are also using the display as a computer monitor (Taskbar etc. is always on the screen).  We chose the Samsung LNT4661F,  which is a 46" LCD HDTV which supports a "Full HD" 1080p resolution and was recently ranked the #1 LCD HDTV by a national consumer ratings organization. It has 3 HDMI and 2 Component inputs plus a variety of other inputs. The short version is that the the unit looks great and picture is simply awesome!

I've had a Series 2 Tivo in the house for more than two years and the decision to upgrade  to HDTV also motivated us to obtain a TivoHD. Tivo currently has a special for current subscribers that will enable them to obtain a new TivoHD with a lifetime subscription (No monthly fees ever). The TivoHD provides dual tuners, support for viewing and recording HD shows, has an HDMI output (which I am using) and supports CableCards. The device actually supports 2 CableCards so you do not need a STB/"Digital Box" from your cable provider in order to de-scramble and view the digital and premium channels. If the CableCard is a Multi-Stream (M-Card) CableCard, you only need one installed (in Slot 1) and it will work with both of the tuners built into the TivoHD. If the cable provider has only Single-Stream CableCards available, the TivoHD needs 2 of them in order to use with both tuners. I currently have an appointment scheduled with my cable provider for them to install the CableCards. BTW, the folks over at the Tivo Community Forums (Not affiliated with Tivo) are very helpful when it comes to questions about Tivo's, CableCards and more.

I am sitting out the HD vs. Blu-Ray DVD format argument. To that end, I chose to  invest in an Up-Converting DVD Player to get the best value out of my HDTV investment. Basically what these types of DVD players do is to "up-convert" a regular DVD to a resolution that displays on an HDTV. I actually did a fair bit of research on this and chose the Oppo DV-980H DVD player which has an extremely good reputation in the AV community. The Oppo can do a high definition up-conversion up to 1080p (which my TV supports), has an HDMI output (Oppo is a class act in that, unlike most other vendors, they include a rather good HDMI cable, which I use, in the package) and also supports 7.1CH Audio. In addition, it also supports playing a variety of formats including DVD-Audio, SACD, DVD-Video, XviD, DivX, MP3, WMA and is compatible with CD-R/RW, DVD+R etc. An additional benefit with the Oppo is that, it is incredibly easy to turn it into a region-free player. This is works very well for me, given my liking for Bollywood movies. All I can say is that the quality of the picture that you get is pretty spectacular!

Of course, all of these units came with their own remote controls, so in the interests of  simplification, we decided get the Logitech Harmony 880 Universal Remote to consolidate and simply the user experience. I was able to use the USB interface to the remote to configure all of my new and existing devices via the computer. It was a rather painless way of configuring and consolidating all of the device remotes and I love the combination of LCD display and the hard buttons on the remote. In addition, given that the remote is rechargeable and has a dedicated base, there is a regular place that the remote will always be found, which is an important thing in a house with kids!

I am anxiously awaiting the CableCard installation on my Tivo which is scheduled for early next week. But so far, I am extremely happy with the quality of the components that we got and the manner in which they work together.

Source: Comic for 17 Nov 2007

I've been away on vacation with the family for the last week or so.  This is probably the first time in about 3 years I decided not to take a laptop or any type of electronic device with me (except for a cell phone) on a vacation and to consciously disconnect from the grid.

Best decision I ever made and highly recommended for folks who really want to de-stress on their vacations.

We have family in western Canada and decided to enjoy the scenery and slow down for a bit and enjoy the mountains and the fresh air.  So we made the road trip from Edmonton to Banff, which is always a very scenic and enjoyable drive. I still remember the first time I made that drive and seeing black bears playing by the side of the road, snow capped mountains and the amazingly beautiful lakes. The vistas were just as spectacular this time.

We rented a chalet in Banff, did some trail riding on horseback, read some books and in general sat around and did a whole lot of nothing except have fun and explore nearby areas such as Lake Louise.

It was great! I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

"For the second time in a generation, the United States faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of an insurgency. In April 1975, the U.S. fled the Republic of Vietnam, abandoning our allies to their fate at the hands of North Vietnamese communists. In 2007, Iraq's grave and deteriorating condition offers diminishing hope for an American victory and portends risk of an even wider and more destructive regional war.

These debacles are not attributable to individual failures, but rather to a crisis in an entire institution: America's general officer corps. America's generals have failed to prepare our armed forces for war and advise civilian authorities on the application of force to achieve the aims of policy. The argument that follows consists of three elements. First, generals have a responsibility to society to provide policymakers with a correct estimate of strategic probabilities. Second, America's generals in Vietnam and Iraq failed to perform this responsibility. Third, remedying the crisis in American generalship requires the intervention of Congress. "

-- By Lt. Col. Paul Yingling in the Armed Forces Journal

For the record, ARMY LT. COL. PAUL YINGLING is deputy commander, 3rd Armored Calvary Regiment. He has served two tours in Iraq, another in Bosnia and a fourth in Operation Desert Storm.

I had a chance to geek out over dinner with a couple of friends, Ken Laskey and Chris Bashioum, as well as a colleague of theirs (Rob Mikula) from MITRE. We got together to talk about SOA Governance since both Ken and Chris are fellow members on the OASIS SOA-RM TC and the three of them team teach a SOA course at MITRE that heavily leverages the SOA-RM.

Unsurprisingly, the conversation ranged across the board from SOA adoption, granularity of services, performance impact of composite services and possible ways to mitigate them, the role of the UDDI protocol, data model extensibility in Repositories, WS-Policy, Consent of the Governed and how it applies to SOA Governance, the role of a Center of Excellence in the adoption and operation of a SOA and more... :-)

A discussion that we were having also provided me with a way forward in something that I've been struggling with regarding the SOA course that I will be teaching for Johns Hopkins University. What type of project/exercise work can the students work on for the class? What Ken, Chris and Rob do in their two day class is to have their students work through a case study on integrating multiple information systems using a SOA approach. Given that I have a semester's worth of time, a case study with drill downs in specific and relevant areas running the gamut from governance and requirements to actual implementation of services could be very useful in driving home the lecture/discussion points while at the same time providing me with a mechanism to gauge if the students are actually grokking the information. Will have to give some serious thought on how to go about structuring this.

All in all, an immensely enjoyable evening!

I was invited to attend the Microsoft MVP Summit last week. If you want to know what the Summit is about or what a MS MVP is, Google is your friend.

This was my fifth(?) time at an MVP Summit and except for some specific exceptions I was under-whelmed by the majority of the "official" part of the summit this year. I do not know if it is because of the quality of the sessions, or because over the last number of years I am spending so much time in the wider technical community (Java, Open Source, Architecture, SOA) that I have a greater understanding and appreciation of what exists in the eco-system, which in turn allows me to be knowledgeable enough to ask the following questions:

• Does this capability already exist in the wider community? If so, what is the rationale for the MS capability?
• Is MS supporting the accepted and existing standards (official or un-official) or going their own way?
• If MS is going their own way, do the benefits justify adopting this path of possible vendor lock-in?
• Is this capability something innovative that MS is providing? If so, how can this capability benefit my community?

It is probably a bit of both.

Some of the items that I was exposed to really seemed to be taking the tack that even though a comparable capability exists in the community, they are planning on "taking the best of what is out there in the community" and doing a MS specific implementation. Not my thing, as re-inventing the wheel leaves me rather cold. I would rather they work to support existing community standards and shape the direction via participation in the standards process.

There were, in some cases, exceptions to this approach where they are addressing problems in unique and interesting ways, which left me asking if it would be possible to extend the approach to other platforms and technology stacks.

One thing that I want to call out is the time that I spent with folks from Microsoft's Application Consulting & Engineering (ACE) Team. Particularly the ACE folks who focus on Security. If I understand their role correctly, compared to product teams for Vista, Office, ASP.NET etc., ACE folks support Microsoft's internal Line of Business applications. Given their role, they have some unique insights to offer in the areas of threat modeling applications and providing value to the business. There are some really nice lessons to be learned from those folks in the areas of IT Governance, demonstrating how security adds business value and more. Wish they would publicize some of their best practices and lessons learned or provide them as service offerings, as it would be of immense benefit to a lot of organizations.

So much for the "official" part.

The un-official part of course is the community of folks that you come in contact with, the relationships you build, and the information and lessons learned that you exchange in such a setting. It is also something that lasts beyond the event.  That, as usual, was simply outstanding and is in a lot of ways the primary reason I attend this event. I'll pass on the name dropping, but since he blogged about it, I'll simply say that my mind-meld with JD (who IMHO is one of the most effective PMs at Microsoft) was as usual outstanding and worthwhile.

If you happen to have an Acura or Honda vehicle with a built-in navigation system, you will run into the Daylight Savings Time issue with your clock i.e. It will not automatically adjust to the new time. Acura/Honda is aware of the problem and is working on a software patch to correct this issue. Until the patch becomes available, you will have to manually work around the problem.

For the Acura TL:

• Nav System > Setup > 4 > TimeZone/Clock > Auto Daylight Savings Time [Off]
• Update Time Manually

Kids are out in the back sledding and from the sound of things having a blast!

I'm gone!

By the end of this year, the contents of all 1,800 courses taught at one of the world's most prestigious universities will be available online to anyone in the world, anywhere in the world. Learners won't have to register for the classes, and everyone is accepted.

The cost? It's all free of charge.

Source: How to go to M.I.T. for free | csmonitor.com

A sample of the courses offered include:

• Java Preparation for 6.170, January (IAP) 2006
• Software Engineering for Web Applications, Fall 2003
• Cryptography and Cryptanalysis, Spring 2005
• Network and Computer Security, Fall 2003
• Database, Internet, and Systems Integration Technologies, Fall 2004
• Practical Information Technology Management, Spring 2005
• Communicating With Data, Summer 2003
• The Software Business, Fall 2005
• Negotiation and Conflict Management, Spring 2001
• and much, much, more...

This is a pretty amazing resource! Check it out @ MIT OpenCourseWare

"Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

The above quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson applies equally well when speaking of years as it does to days. 

In that spirit I wanted to wish YOU, the reader of my blog, a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!

Got blog-tagged by Scott. Given that this is my second time around, I am simply going to take the easy way out and point you all to my first response to being tagged.

Looks like I've been tagged by Pete. Thanks!

Here goes. Five facts you don't know about me.

1. I used to play field hockey when growing up in India. Was very disappointed that only women play field hockey in the USA :-)
2. My favorite fiction book series is the Honor Harrington series by David Weber
3. The first time I ever traveled on a plane was to the USA from India when I was 13. By myself.
4. I learned how to drive a car before I came to the USA.
5. I like Bollywood movies (Unfortunately!)

Time to pass on the favor. Here are 5 random picks from my blog roll. J.D. Meier,Paul Fremantle, Brenda Michelson, Casey Chesnut, Dare Obasanjo. You are It!

A conversation with Jon Udell about his new job with Microsoft
Originally published on Fri, 08 Dec 2006 12:25:38 GMT

Now, this is an interesting move!

SLAM is an interesting project from Microsoft Research. Some of the Interesting bits:

"It is a mobile device-based application that enables lightweight, group-centric real-time communication, location awareness and photo-sharing. 

The core concept behind Slam is a “Slam”, a group of people with whom you can exchange messages and photos. When you send a message in Slam, it is automatically sent to everyone in the group to which you sent it. For smartphone users that have the Slam client installed, their phone will buzz and they will have an indication on their phone’s home screen that there is a new message. For SMS users, they will receive the message as an SMS from the Slam server. Like smartphone users, SMS users can be members of multiple slam groups. SMS users will send / receive messages to a different phone number for each slam group they a member of.

Scenarios for Slam include:

• Real-time Coordination
• Instant Group Photo Sharing
• Broadcast Communication

The Slam smartphone client does not use SMS to send and receive messages, it uses HTTP to post messages to the server and to poll for new messages from the server.

Slam users can also see where other people in their groups are on a map. The Slam client will periodically let the server know where it is, then, when someone in a group requests it, the server generates a map using MSN’s Virtual Earth with everybody’s location marked. Of course, this only works from slam smartphone clients, not SMS users. However, this feature does not require a GPS device, as it attempts to determine location based on the cellular towers your phone detects.

We understand that our users are as concerned as anyone with privacy, and letting people, even your friends and family know where you are automatically can be scary. That’s why we include several privacy features, including the ability to set who can see your location, when they can see it and even let you hide your location except when you’re in “public places”, areas where you specifically indicate it’s OK for others to know where you are. Please note, though, that location tracking is on by default in Slam, you must opt-out to disable it. "

Currently it is available only for Windows Mobile SmartPhones, but I can see some interesting applications for this tech.

A co-worker of mine will be showcasing some of  his work with geospatial technology, browser based clients, portal technology and web services at the upcoming GEOINT Symposium. He has deep expertise in geospatial technology and has managed to meld it with some of the other cutting edge tech out there to create some really compelling solutions. If you are going, do stop by the JHU/APL booth and check it out. Have a blast OC!

We live in Interesting Times. My current non-fiction, non-techie reading list is to a great extent being shaped by my need to know more about Geopolitics and Military History.  I've been very fortunate in working with folks who have provided me some great reading recommendations in this area. If you are interested in getting greater insight into some of the current events, especially of the military variety, let me pass on a couple of book recommendations:

Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War
From the Publisher:  This definitive account of the Gulf War relates the previously untold story of the U.S. war with Iraq in the early 1990s. The author follows the 42-day war from the first night to the final day, providing vivid accounts of bombing runs, White House strategy sessions, firefights, and bitter internal conflicts. 

Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq
From the Publisher: Informed by unparalleled access to still-secret documents, interviews with top field commanders, and a review of the military's own internal after-action reports, Cobra II is the definitive chronicle of America's invasion and occupation of Iraq - a conflict that could not be lost but one that the United States failed to win decisively. From the Pentagon to the White House to the American command centers in the field, the book reveals the inside story of how the war was actually planned and fought. Drawing on classified United States government intelligence, it also provides a unique account of how Saddam Hussein and his high command developed and prosecuted their war strategy." Written by Michael R. Gordon, the chief military correspondent for The New York Times, who spent the war with the Allied land command, and Bernard E. Trainor, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general and former director of the National Security Program at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Cobra II traces the interactions among the generals, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and President George W. Bush. It dramatically reconstructs the principal battles from interviews with those who fought them, providing reliable accounts of the clashes waged by conventional and Special Operations forces. It documents with precision the failures of American intelligence and the mistakes in administering postwar Iraq.

I am turning off Trackbacks and Pingbacks on this blog as I am getting far too much Trackback and Pingback spam. DasBlog does a good job of blocking the majority of both, but enough is getting through for it to be seriously annoying.

I am having some rather strange problems with DasBlog and embedded images that are not not showing up in IE.

The issue crops up when I try to embed an image in a blog posting: An example is @
http://www.aniltj.com/blog/2006/10/01/TestingTheMailToWeblogInDasBlog19X.aspx

If you view the above posting in Firefox, there are no issues and you can see the image just fine. If you view it in an RSS reader, you have no issues either. But if you view the blog entry in IE, the image simply does not show up! It is there (you can right click and do a Save picture as..), but it is simply invisible.

At first I thought that the issue was with some ACLs on my \content and \content\binary directory tree. But that is not the case. Hey, I got the awesome Orcsweb as my hosting provider, so if they tell me that the ACLs are properly applied, it is so! Then I thought the issue was with the theme that I was using. But I am having the same problem when I switch to the default DasBlog theme as well. Am a bit frustrated at this point. Anyone running DasBlog run into this issue before?

UPDATE (Oct 5, 2006): Thanks to all the folks who provided suggestions. It was indeed a CSS issue and it has now been resolved!

I am in the process of helping to build and refine a Strategic Plan that is going to help provide clarity as we move out on a specific path. It is an interesting process in which you start with Outcomes that you would like to see happen, whether it is for your own organization or for your client/sponsor. Given a specific outcome that you would like to see, you have to define specific goals that will generate that outcome.

The issue that one often faces in this process is that it is all too easy to come up with generic, amorphous goals that sound good, but really don't accomplish much. An acronym that I've come across in my travels (I've seen it many places, so am not sure who to give credit to) when facing this issue is SMARTER.

Specific
Measurable
Acceptable to those working to achieve the goals
Realistic
Timely
Extending the capabilities of those working to achieve the goals
Rewarding

So, asking "Is this a SMARTER Goal?" is an important step that is really helping me narrow down goals that will in the end generate tasks that must be actionable.

Per the publicly available Network Diagnostic Tester at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, VA:

TCP/Web100 Network Diagnostic Tool v5.2.0f
click START to begin
Checking for Middleboxes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Done
running 10s outbound test (client to server) . . . . . 1.82Mb/s
running 10s inbound test (server to client) . . . . . . 15.53Mb/s

I love FiOS!

We had an awesome vacation in India! It was the first time ever for the kids, and the first time in more than 10 years for me and my wife. So many changes! This was the first time, in a very long while, that I’ve spent time completely disconnected from the Grid, and it was a very liberating and wonderful experience!

Currently it is between the end of the rainy season and the beginning of the hot season, so although it was a bit humid, it was still a great time to visit. We spent the majority of our time at the family house. The house is L shaped with one section of the L the “new” section, and the other the older section of the house. New in this case is rather relative as that section of the house was built in my grandfather’s time. A rather interesting experience for me was explaining to my kids that the older section of the house was more than 200 years old! Given their ages, they were finding that length of time rather difficult to grasp, so my Dad’s comment to them, which they immediately got, was “It’s older than America” :-)

We also took the opportunity to spend some time up in the Hill Range ( ~ 4500 ft above sea level), to visit one of my cousin’s who is the manger of a Tea Estate that was originally set up by the British. While the temperature at the family house was hot, we actually had to use blankets at night while we were visiting the Tea Estate. Had some of the most amazing tea while we were up there and when we enquired about it, was informed that the entire estate has been certified to grow organic tea (no pesticides etc.). Yes, we did bring back some of that tea!

Given that my cousin is the manager of the Estate, we got a personal tour, via a 4 wheel drive vehicle, of some of the more scenic parts of the estate. And there is no way to get to some of these remote areas without a 4 wheel drive vehicle or by horse! The scenery and the climate were just about spectacular.

On the way back from India, we made a point of stopping over in Delhi and driving to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal. It is a four hour drive from Delhi to Agra and two of those hours are spent just getting out of Delhi! The traffic in Delhi, where cars, buses, auto-rickshaws, motorcycles, bicycles, people and animals all share the same road has to be experienced to be believed! 

It was very hot in Agra but it was just an amazing experience for all of us! I, for one, had never seen the Taj before and was just amazed by the sheer size and the incredible symmetry of the place.  We also had a very good guide that explained in great detail a lot of the architectural and historic details of the Taj Mahal.

We also had some truly pleasant service experiences on the trip. Two that were memorable were our experience with Kingfisher Airlines, which is the domestic airline that we used in India, and with the Radisson Hotel in Delhi where we stayed while in Delhi.

Flying with Kingfisher was just about the best flying experience that we’ve had. As soon as we reached the airport, folks in Kingfisher’s livery came to meet us at the car and accompanied us and transported our luggage through the security checkpoints all the way through to check-in. During the flight, we were pretty much pampered with bottled water, little gifts for the kids and a full service meal. We also had great leg room in the seat and individual entertainment centers with a variety of music and entertainment programs. Once we landed, folks in Kingfisher livery again pulled our luggage off the belt, took it to our waiting transportation, and loaded it onto our vehicle. Oh, did I mention that I was traveling COACH!!!! I don’t think I’ll fly with another airline in India ever again!

As to Radisson Delhi, by default you got the superb service that you can expect from a 5 star hotel. But what impressed us more than anything were two things. The first was that given that my son has food allergies, their kitchen was very willing to prepare special meals for him. Secondly, we were scheduled to leave the day after the London Terror threat story broke, so there were extremely long delays and a lot of confusion at the Delhi airport. When the concierge at the Radisson found out that we were flying out that day, he actually came with us to the airport and basically guided and helped us through the checkpoints, the multiple luggage checks and stayed with us until our bags were completely checked and we were ready to go through security! Just an amazing experience.

All in all, we had a wonderful and memorable time. If interested, I have posted some additional pictures for your viewing pleasure. I most definitely have some more experiences to relate, but I’ll save those for another post.

We are in the final stages of our preparation to visit India. First time for the kids, and the first time in more than 10 years for both my wife and I. Connecting via Delhi to Cochin. On the return segment, we plan to break our journey in Delhi so that we can make a side trip to Agra and visit the Taj Mahal. We are a bit apprehensive about the Delhi/Agra segment given our lack of familiarity with Hindi and the area in general, but did not want to deprive ourselves of the chance to see one of the true wonders of the world. I am especially looking forward to seeing my kids resolve their current view of India, which to a great extent has been shaped by Bollywood movies, to the reality. :-) 

All in all, we are very much looking forward to this trip. NOT looking forward to the 16+ hours flight!

My web search skills are coming up short on this and I am not a regex expert, so would appreciate any advice from the DasBlog experts out there…

My web root has multiple domains pointing to it and I would like to consolidate all of those entry points into a single domain. For example, the domains SecureSOA.*, SecureCoder.* and aniltj.* all point to the same webroot. I would like to make sure that SecureSOA.*/blog, SecureCoder.*/blog all get pointed to aniltj.com/blog. Is this possible to do this using the DasBlog.UrlMapper?  If so, how would one go about writing the regex for this?

Got the latest issue of Infoworld and the chance to peruse this listing. It is a listing of “… 25 leaders who exemplify the best in IT management and innovation”.

I do believe that I’ll stick to Jon Udell’s column, the Infoworld Test Center Reviews, and the Off the Record column from now on.

I got a chance to see Mission Impossible III with a friend tonight. I liked it! In fact, I think this may just be the best of the three and it really had nothing to with the Hero (Ethan Hunt/Tom Cruise) of the movie but the Villain (Owen Davian/Philip Seymour Hoffman)!

Smart, ruthless and with his own brand of physical courage (you gotta give it to a guy who can still calmly threaten someone, after being hung out off a flying jet).  In short, everything a proper villain of the old school variety should be! Someone you’d love to hate because of the sheer evil-ness of the person.

[Now playing: Deliver Me - Sarah Brightman]

The current issue of Infoworld has a review of two Java based open source portals. JBoss Portal 2.2.1 and Liferay Portal 4.0.  The rankings are pretty close but Liferay edged out JBoss based on ease of use, both on the admin front and the user front.

The interesting thing to note in this review was the sheer breadth of technologies that are supported as part of the implementation. Content Management Systems, Authentication & Authorization capabilities, JSR 168, WSRP support and more.. These are truly legitimate and fully functional contenders in the Portal space. Even though JBoss came came up short, you cannot rule it out given its superior support for standards. Not to mention the end-to-end stack that is in the roadmap now that Red Hat has acquired JBoss.

I was a bit disappointed that the review was focused just on the Java/J2EE space. Would have been nice to have seen some comparisons to open source portal implementations on the .NET side as well, such as DotNetNuke which is available under the BSD licence.

[Now playing: Jal Jal Ke Dhuaan - Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena]

It would appear that the GPS Receiver that comes with Microsoft Streets & Trips 2006 does NOT work with the GPS enabled Microsoft MapPoint 2006 software!

I had purchased a copy of MS Streets & Trips 2006 with GPS some time ago. It worked precisely as advertised. Then recently I got a copy of the MapPoint 2006. Since it had some additional capabilities I figured I would replace Streets & Trips with MapPoint. After all, same company, same product line etc.. etc..

I un-installed S&T and installed MapPoint. Plugged in my USB based MS GPS unit that came with the S&T. Immediately get a message that it is an unknown device! I do a search for a driver (local + online with windows update) and it installs something. At this point if I do scan for a GPS receiver from the GPS panel inside MapPoint, it recognises the existence of the MS GPS device. The unfortunate thing is that it simply does not seem to be able to use it! It consistently says in the panel that it is “receiving data” but that no satellites can be found. Given that I was able to, from same the physical location, get GPS data with my S&T 2006, and it is highly unlikely they moved the satellites during the last week of so :-), somehow I don’t think the issue is with the GPS unit.

There are some things I expect to work seamlessly out of the box and consumer facing software is one of them. Not impressed so far.. Guess it is time to rip and replace.

[Now playing: Moonlight Sonata - Beethoven]

I had an opportunity to watch “Inside Man”, the new Denzel Washington, Jodie Foster and Clive Owen movie. As I have always enjoyed caper movies and given the actors involved and that it is directed by Spike Lee, it was a given that this would be something that I would really enjoy. And I did! Recommended!

I almost fell out of my seat when the opening credits came up and it (and the end credits as well) were set to a familiar song from the Hindi film “Dil Se”.

Spike Lee in a recent interview

“What about the music sequence at the beginning and at the end of the movie? Why that choice?”

“Well here’s the great thing about New York and all types of music. I’m a professor at New York University’s graduate film school; I’ve been a professor for the last eight years. One class we were talking about musicals, and one of my students suggested I see some Bollywood. I knew about it but I had never seen a Bollywood film. So I said, “Name one!” She said, “Dil Se.” Next class she gave me the DVD, I liked the movie very much. That song, ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya,’ is in Dil Se. So, I made a promise with myself that one day I’d like to use it. So one day we did a song with Terence Blanchard, our composer, then we got Punjabi MC to do the rap, so that’s how that happened”

And yes, I am listening to it right now :-)

[Now playing: Chaiyya Chaiyya - Dil Se]

I’m confused by the value of the offerings from Microsoft!

I’m thinking of moving my personal e-mail to a hosted solution. To that end, I am exploring the options that are available from both Google and Microsoft.

Here is what I am looking for:

• Value! I don’t mind paying but I expect to get get additional value for the paid service when comparing it to a free service.
• POP access to e-mail accounts
• Clean and usable web interface to e-mail. This is going to be used by non-technical members of my family, so ease of use is very important.
• Decent amount of storage space. Decent is defined by me to be 1–2 GB of storage

The solutions that I am looking at are GMail for your Domain by Google and Windows Live Custom Domains from Microsoft.  Both are presently in beta.

The GMail solution has a straight-forward description. The account is free for up to 10 users, the administrative interface is clean and each e-mail account I create has all the features that a regular GMail account has, including more than 2GB of storage space and POP access.

In looking at the Windows Live Custom Domains, you can have unlimited number of users but in order to get 2GB in-boxes for your accounts you will have to get accepted into the Windows Live Mail Beta. Otherwise you are limited to a 250MB Hotmail in-box. Another kicker is that you don’t get POP access with the free account. In order to get off-line access (I’m not calling this POP yet, and I’ll get to that) to the mailboxes, I will have to upgrade to a Premium E-Mail Solution such as MSN Hotmail Plus which costs $19.95 / year.

The Hotmail Plus does upgrade your in-box to a 2 GB in-box, which means you don’t have to go through the Live Mail beta to get the bigger in-box. But then it says “Check and manage your Hotmail Plus e-mail through Outlook® Express, Outlook 2002 (XP), or later versions”.  Does that mean POP access or just access from Outlook and Outlook Express using some sort of a custom message protocol? Nowhere is the phrase POP mentioned! Is there POP support or not?

From what I can see, it would appear that by paying ~$20/year to MSN, I will get an account that is comparable to what Google will give me for free. The only disparity is that Google has a 10 user limit for free usage which is not a big deal for a personal e-mail solution given that it fully supports e-mail aliases.

What gets me is that in order to get some of the details on the MS solution, I had to go to about 3 different MS properties (Live, Hotmail, MSN) to pull the information together. So what exactly will I be receiving for that $19.95/year from Windows Live Custom Domains as compared to Gmail for your Domain? Hmm..?

[Now playing: The Rhythm Divine - Enrique Disc 1]

We recently bought a new car. Since I was going to be the primary driver of this car, my 6 year old was kind enough to keep me company as I was shopping around and test driving the cars. When we finally decided on a particular model, it was left up to him to choose the color of the car, which he did. And rather quickly!

When I asked him why he chose that particular color, his response was "Dad, it's the same color as my Game Boy!"

Works for me :-)

Have you ever received an e-mail from someone who is a Blackberry fanatic? They usually have a signature that says something to the effect “Sent from my Blackberry hand-held”, right?

I recently got an e-mail from an old friend who just so happens to run one of the premier web development firms on the East Coast. The sweet spot for her firm, and I believe one of the primary reasons for its success prior to, during and after the DotCom boom has been the focus on usability and customer experience.  Some time ago, given the lack of usability focus in a lot of the major Content Management Systems, they went so far as to build a very user-centric Content Management System called Tacklebox. It has been deployed and is being used by some major, high traffic sites out there such as the Department of Energy,  AOL and others. From what I understand, they would like to take the system to the next level, both in terms of functionality and in terms of partnering with a larger company who shares their vision about User Interface Design. So if you are such a company or want to know more, by all means contact them.

I digress a bit, but my point is that this is someone who lives in the usability world and has the street creds to back it up. So naturally, I was intrigued by the tag-line in her signature that said “Not sent from my Blackberry”, which in turn pointed to an article that she wrote called “When Innovation Outpaces Communication”. It is a story about the perils of the Blackberry user interface :-)

My car was rear-ended on Friday. Dealing with the aftermath combined with some other things that unexpectedly showed up over the weekend has been ….. trying.

I was stopped at a red-light after picking up my kids from school when my car was struck from behind by one of those heavy duty pick up trucks.  While my son seemed to be all-right, both my daughter and I had headaches afterwards, and I am still dealing with what feels like strained muscles in my neck and upper back.  At the same time, I am so very thankful there were no life threatening injuries.

I have also gained a great deal of appreciation for how cars are designed to protect their passengers. As you can see by the picture, the bumper did exactly what it was designed to do, which is absorb the impact. But the impact was great enough, and the pick-up has a high enough ground clearance that there was enough energy transferred to cave in the trunk of the car.

Of course, the physical incident itself is simply the first phase of an accident. One still has to survive the aggravation of dealing with the repairs and the insurance companies involved. In this particular case, since I was not at fault, the other party’s insurance company is handling the logistics of the repair as well as providing with me with a rental car replacement while my car is in the shop.

The annoying part is that the insurance company in question is balking on providing me with a rental that is comparable to what I have. According to them, they are not required to do so. They just have to give me a replacement car, which can be much smaller in size. Given that I provide daily transportation for two kids in booster seats and their associated equipment, I am a bit perturbed that I even need to have this particular discussion with them. I've negotiated them up to a bigger car, but still not one that is comparable to what I have. Also, since none of the body shops that the insurance company deals with are open on the weekend, I have to deal with the process of getting my car into the shop and picking up the rental during the week.

But in the end, all of those annoyances are minor compared to the fact that we are all okay! And here I was thinking that I would be having a relaxing weekend! C’est la vie!

“Time is [..] a unique resource. Of the other major resources, money is actually quite plentiful. People-the third limiting resource-one can hire.

But one cannot rent, hire, buy or otherwise obtain more time.  The supply of time is totally inelastic. No matter how high the demand, the supply will never go up. Moreover, time is totally perishable and cannot be stored. Yesterday’s time is gone forever and will never come back. Time is, therefore, always in exceedingly short supply.” – Peter F. Drucker

[Now playing: Dus Bahaane (Remix) - Dus]

You do know that NORAD Tracks Santa as he makes his around-the-world trip, right?  This has become a family tradition at my house with the kids.

This is possible due to the great work by the fine folks at NORAD-USNORTHCOM. Thank You!

I realized today that I’ve not been getting my regular backup notifications from my SBS box. The issue seems to be specific to the Task Scheduler in SBS 2003. As in, it does not run any of the tasks! I am getting the following error when I try to set-up or run a task:

---------------------------
Task Scheduler
---------------------------
General page initialization failed.
The specific error is:
0x80090016: Keyset does not exist
An error has occurred attempting to retrieve task account information. You may continue editing the task object, but will be unable to change task account information.

A search revealed the following KB “You receive error message 0x80090016 or error message 0x8009000f when you try to schedule a task” that seems to be relevant. But the products that it refers to are all W2K. SBS2003 is W2K3 based, so I am bit hesitant to make this change. Anyone using SBS2003 have any pointers?

UPDATE (12/31/05): Solution is to delete the following corrupt file "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application
Data\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\S-1-5-18\d42cc0c3858a58db2db37658219e6400_xxxx"
(xxxx means a string)

Once I did this, I also had to recreate all of my scheduled tasks.

... they are "Cylinders of Excellence"!

Feedback that I got when I was giving a brief this week :-)

I had the opportunity to try out Fog Creek CoPilot to help out a family member set up a new computer today. I had read about it on Joel Spolky’s weblog some time ago, and given that this was a new laptop that was being set up, decided that this would be a good opportunity to try it out.

I was able to get access to my relative’s desktop with a minimum of fuss and do everything I needed to do (Verify Firewall settings, set up Windows Update, install Anti-Virus software, configure the e-mail software) with relatively good performance right from my desktop. I am sure that it did help that both myself and my relative have a high speed connection. I also took the opportunity to configure Microsoft Messenger and verify and do a walk through of its remote assistance capability for any future “Help Desk” calls.

It was altogether a very pleasant experience and the software worked as advertised. Highly recommended for those friend and family help desk situations!

I currently have a Tivo on my home network.  Beyond the time shifting capabilities, some of the things that the Home Media Option (HMO) enabled Tivo gives me is ability to is:

• Play my MP3 collection through my home theater system
• View my digital photos, which are stored on my network, through my TV
• Web based scheduling of shows
• Ability to transfer my recordings to a Computer

But at the same time, I have found the official Tivo To Go software to be pretty limited. I have in the past used a program called Java HMO but recently upgraded to the next version called Galleon by Leon Nicholls.  This has got to be the coolest, and FREE, program for the Tivo! Take a look at the capabilities:

• Play MP3 files using the builtin player or with your favorite Winamp skins.
• View your photo collection using many slideshow effects and background music.
• View interesting information about each MP3 file such as album covers, lyrics and web images of your favorite artists.
• Listen to online streaming radio stations including Shoutcast stations.
• Organize your media files in many flexible ways.
• Play your favorite playlists including iTunes playlists or dynamically create playlists.
• View local weather forecasts and alerts.
• View internet webcams.
• Read your email.
• Read your favorite RSS feeds.
• Automatically download recordings from your TiVo using keywords.
• Automatically download your favorite podcasts.
• View local movie listings.
• Copy video files from your PC to your TiVo using GoBack.
• View Internet Slideshows.
• View online Videocasts.
• View upcoming events in your area.
• View traffic conditions in your area.
• Change the look-and-feel of Galleon by using your own skins.

There is a lot of functionality incorporated into the program. For example, when a song is playing, it will automatically download and display the album art using Amazon web services. And you also have the ability to download and view the current song’s lyrics using the XML API at Lyrictracker.com.

Beyond the capabilities of the program, one of the things that I have been impressed with is the professional polish that exists around the documentation, which includes demos and screen cast tutorials. If you have a Tivo, I would highly recommend checking this program out at http://galleon.sourceforge.net/