Raja Bell unexpectedly stepped into the starting lineup tonght and sparked the Suns to a resounding 106 – 86 win over the Mavericks. Each Suns player seemed to elevate his game a notch in response to Raja’s inspired play. Boris Diaw actually slam dunked over Dirk Nowitzki!

Now, back to Dallas on Thursday! It’s a great series!

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After stating that “Generation M will not use technology the way we are used to doing. For one thing, they have real mobility. Mobility is key. Multitasking is key. Multimedia is key. The three Ms of Generation M,” JP Rangaswami proposes, “People in Generation M will have n identities at the same time. N jobs at the same time. N residences at the same time.

I guess JP knew about our house. We have more computers, cell phones and iPods than televisions. We are all addicted to email. My 12 year old daughter is perfectly at home with PowerPoint and Google. Family newsletters and photo albums are digital.

But among all this hype, there are still some troubling realities. How many billions of people have never made a telephone call? Or watched television? Or typed on a computer? How many never have enough to eat, let alone be bothered by Multimedia?

WorldHunger.org reports that “malnutrition plays a role in at least half of the 10.9 million child deaths each year–five million deaths.”

What became of the the identities of each of these children? Should the fourth M of Generation M be “Malnutrition”? A sobering thought.

Particularly when I realize that I just spent 30 bucks on dinner that was so large we brought doggy bags home.

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Digital Identity,
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World Hunger,
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As I pause to ponder the significance of Memorial Day, I can almost hear the haunting strains of Taps being played by a lone bugler, a solemn salute to one of our fallen heroes.

I treasure human freedom as I treasure life itself. I consider freedom to think, speak and act central to the human experience. So those who give their lives, in act of ultimate sacrifice, to preserve the freedom I love, will always have my deepest respect.

My heroes, today I salute you!

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Taps

The Suns lost another game to the Mavericks Sunday, falling victim to their short bench, reduced intensity and very visible lack of Raja Bell.

As reported by Jerry Brown in the East Valley Tribune, Steve Nash said, speaking of the injured Bell, “I think we really miss his leadership, the way he plays, just by example … how he fights, and how he never gives in. It would be easy to say his talent and the depth it would afford us, but more than anything I think it’s his toughness and attitude.”

Will Raja be back for game 4? Will it make a difference? We’ll wait anxiously for answers to both questions.

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An interesting article by Ed Taylor in today’s East Valley Tribune highlighted a Mesa, Arizona, company that was selected by Lockheed Martin to supply USB key devices to “allow its customers, partners and vendors to gain access to the corporation’s guest network.”

Sweet Spot Solutions claims “Sweet Spot® S3™ Key is the world’s first driverless and clientless integrated Two-Factor Authentication and VPN client solution. S3 boasts a simple user interface and backend rights management that puts companies in complete control when extending network security policies to end users.”

It was nice to hear that a small company, located about four miles from my house, is making a positive contribution to the world of Identity Management.

Technorati Tags: Identity,
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Friday night, we attended my daughter Holly’s dance concert during the Suns/Mavericks playoff game. It may be considered heresy in some circles, but we kept up with the score of the game via my Treo 650 PDA. Alas, the Suns lost. But they take home court advantage back to the US Airways Center on Sunday.

Scott Bordow of the East Valley Tribune reports that Phoenix Still Has Reason to Smile: “The Suns got what they came for – a split and home-court advantage. Beyond that, they proved they can hang with the Mavericks without Raja Bell.”

I think Suns will win in 7 games.

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Ballet,
Dance

Dave Kearns stated yesterday in his Network World newsletter that “Oracle was quite proud” to be in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for user provisioning services. Well, they should be – they are in good company with Sun Microsystems! Dave failed to mention that Sun is ahead of Oracle on both the Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute axes. (Note:Dave’s articles are sent out by email. They appear on the Network World website a few days after initially relased.)

Dave also observed, “Of course, everyone wants to be in the ‘Leaders’ quadrant and no vendor I know ever sent out a press release declaring that it made it into the Challengers, Visionaries or Niche Players quadrant!”

Well, it appears that both Courion and M-Tech were proud enough about their position in the Challengers quadrant that they did issue press releases.

Don’t you love it when a simple box with names inside generates so much interest?

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The Suns won the first one: 121-118. Amazing finish. Boris Diaw had a career high 34 points to lead the Suns. It’s going to be a great series!

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Dallas Mavericks
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My good friend Terry Sigle sent me an email from Dallas today entitled “Go Mavs!”

I think he remembered last year when I blogged about the Suns beating the Mavericks in the NBA playoffs. Now, NBA MVP Steve Nash will battle his good friend Dirk Nowitzki in the Western Conference Finals.

Well, the battle is on! Phoenix is up 14-10 in the first quarter. We’ll see what the series brings.

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“Significant problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” – Albert Einstein

We are meeting with one of Sun’s large Identity Management partners today, discussing some innovative ways to deploy Sun’s Identity Management products. A recent email from one of the key participants in today’s workshop included this Albert Einstein quotation.

Albert probably didn’t give much thought to Identity Management, but his challenge to elevate our level of thought to meet new problems certainly applies to our industry. Identity systems must accommodate business models which we weren’t even considering a few years ago. Issues such as leveraged Identity services, contextual Identities, Identity auditing, global federation, and Identity-enabled business process integration certainly weren’t in the forefront of Identity Management thought until recently. Now these very real issues and real-world business models demand that we expand our collective minds to deliver solutions that work in new ways to solve new things.

It is an exciting world to be in.

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Digital Identity,
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Albert Einstein