Father to young son, “If you eat any more ice cream, you are going to explode!”

Son to Father, “Pass the ice cream, and stand back!”

That is about what I feel like right now, although I am ingesting Information Security information rather than ice cream.  If I try to stuff one more arcane detail about encryption algorithms, security models  or communications protocols into my brain, I think it will explode.

So … pass the information and stand back!

It is was fitting today that as I studied the subject of encryption in preparation for my CISSP exam, I stumbled upon information about the newly-formed United States Cyber Command, a US armed forces sub-command subordinate to United States Strategic Command. The command was officially activated May 21, 2010 and is slated to reach fully operational readiness by October 2010.

The Cyber Command:

“ … plans, coordinates, integrates, synchronizes and conducts activities to direct the operations and defense of specified Department of Defense information networks and; prepare to, and when directed, conduct full spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, stated in the official June 23rd announcement:

“Cyberspace and its associated technologies offer unprecedented opportunities to the United States and are vital to our nation’s security and, by extension, to all aspects of military operations. Yet our increasing dependency on cyberspace, alongside a growing array of cyber threats and vulnerabilities, adds a new element of risk to our national security. To address this risk effectively and to secure freedom of action in cyberspace, the Department of Defense requires a command that possesses the required technical capability and remains focused on the integration of cyberspace operations.”

OK.  This sounds like a good thing to do.  But what was really intriguing and fitting for me today was to learn that the command’s handsome new emblem contains an encrypted message its inner gold ring: 9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a.

Can you figure out what it means?  The Wikipedia article for the command states:

“The text "9ec4c12949a4f31474f299058ce2b22a", which is located in the command’s emblem, is the MD5 hash of their mission statement.”

This is consistent with a statement from a command spokesman quoted in an article by John Cook of Yahoo! News.  However, something is not quite right.  John explained:

“We tried encrypting that entire statement using an MD5 hash generator, and we didn’t get a match to the logo code. So it looks like just a portion of the statement has been encoded.”

Wired Magazine has launched a contest to see who can crack to code.  Can you do it?  You can win a t-shirt from Wired or a ticket to the International Spy Museum.

Even better, rumor has it that the Cyber Command wants to hire 1,000 new cyber specialists over the next few years.  Maybe this game is part of the recruitment process.

Or … maybe this will remain another obscure mystery destined to someday being mentioned in a novel by Dan Brown.

I think that Kerberos (or Cerberus), the three-headed dog from Greek mythology that guards the gates of Hades, ought to be proclaimed the mascot of the CISSP exam.  I think studying for the exam (including Kerberos, the computer network authentication protocol) is going to eat me alive.

An interesting ZDNet article by Larry Dignan yesterday described Songdo, South Korea, which is aiming to be a global business hub and a sustainable city. This new city is being developed on 1,500 acres of reclaimed land in South Korea along Incheon’s waterfront, 40 miles from Seoul.

Songdo is also being wired by Cisco as a “grand telepresence experiment.”

According to Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco Systems’ emerging technology group:

Every home will have a Telepresence unit built in like a dishwasher. And it’s the developer that is putting those into those apartments as they get built out, because that is how education, health care and government services will get delivered right into the home. It will come to you. You don’t have to go find it. And that is how they will reduce traffic congestion and pollution in the cities. …

Until you’ve tasted it, it’s hard for me to explain to you what it’s like. But you can literally sit back on the couch and see your friends and family in life-size, full high definition, right in your living room, and interact with them. It’s not a small computer screen. You get a full view of everyone. And it’s very different.

But that is just 10% of why I’m excited about it, because the other 90% is that I believe it will do what the browser did for commerce into your home. You used to drive down the street to buy things. Today you go online, and it arrives at your doorstep once you’ve purchased it.

Home telepresence would do the same for services. Today, you still go to see your banker, your lawyer, your accountant, your tutor, etc. Well, what if these services can come in a virtual model right into your home and you can consume them in that way?

OK.   Sounds cool.  I have an appointment to visit my doctor on Monday afternoon.  It would be nice to visit him electronically.  But in order to make that work, it would need to accommodate things like weight, temperature, O2 and blood pressure measurements – all by remote control. How would that work?

It will be interesting to see how this works in South Korea … I’m looking forward to getting on the bandwagon in Mesa, AZ.

Thanks to Mike Waddingham for sharing the link to an article in the Canadian National Post on Monday:

“Telus announced an electronic health service yesterday that will give patients instant online access to all their medical files.”

Telus chief executive Darren Entwistle said this move will "revolutionize" health care:

"Now, Canadians will have the ability to create, store and manage their personal health information across their computers and smartphones and, in the future, TVs," Mr. Entwistle said in an announcement at an e-health conference in Vancouver.

"In a world where wireless network technology has enabled powerful mobile computing, their health information can be right at their fingertips, wherever their lifestyles or business travels take them because their smart-phone will accompany them."

The article further states:

In a demonstration, Telus officials showed how a patient could start a personal health record, inputting their own information — from childhood vaccinations, to allergies, to blood pressure readings — to share with their doctors, pharmacists and other health-care providers.

In turn, patients would have access to their medical records, so if they move, see a specialist or end up unexpectedly in an emergency department, vital health information would be instantly available.

Parents would be able to start and maintain health records for their children.

I applaud this type of automation that puts more control of personal health information in the hands of consumers.  While it certainly demands necessary privacy and security controls, this move recognizes the need to make health records from multiple sources more available, which should lead to improved health care and reduced costs.

It will be interesting to seek how quickly this type of system become available in the US.

Pretty cool to see what can be done with Legos if you put your mind to it!

We have built lots of neat stuff with Legos at our house, but nothing quite this complex.

Earlier this week, BBC News published a short article about the bi-annual “Top 500 supercomputer list.” An interactive “tree map” created using Prefuse Flare software, developed by the University of California Berkeley, allows a user to easily see different views of the list, according to attributes such as  speed, operating system, manufacturer and country (shown below).

The number one supercomputer:  Cray XT with a maximum speed of 1.759 peta FLOPS with a total of 224,162 cores (AMD processors running Linux).  Crazy!

First, the disclaimer:  I grew up in the Magic Valley area of southern Idaho on a small dairy farm.  Because of that, my worldview is often skewed in terms of Idaho milk cows.

This morning, IT World Canada reported,

“Researchers at Hewlett Packard Co.’s HP Labs presented a paper on using cow manure from dairy farms and cattle feedlots and other "digested farm waste" to generate electricity to an American Society of Mechanical Engineers conference held this week.

“In the paper, the research team calculates that "a hypothetical farm of 10,000 dairy cows" could power a 1 MW data center — or on the order of 1,000 servers.”

So, it takes waste from 10 cows to fuel 1 server!  I immediately thought of my Dad, a retired farmer who still lives in the Magic Valley area of Idaho.  He once told me that the only thing growing faster than the number of cell phone towers in Magic Valley were the stacks of cow manure.  That is probably due to the 382,214 dairy cows that lived in Magic Valley as of the latest report of the United Dairymen of Idaho. 

With the ever-increasing overabundance of cow manure in Idaho, I was encouraged by the HP study.  In all of Idaho, there are 532,353 milk cows – a ratio of roughly one cow for every three human residents (see Census Bureau)!  This is enough cows to fuel 53,000 servers. 

This could lead to Idaho being home to huge data centers, all powered by bovine effluent.  If HP’s estimates are accurate, the current Idaho dairy cow population could fuel 53,000 power-hungry servers, all while increasing dairy farmers’ profit rate eliminating smelly piles of cow manure.  A win-win-win for Magic Valley, I’m sure!

Plus, I know some Oracle reps who would love to sell that many servers (with all due respect to the HP study).

When he learned I would be re-joining Oracle after my time at Sun Microsystems, my son suggested that I take a drive down Oracle Street in Mesa, Arizona, to celebrate.  It is a small street with a big name, located about a mile from my house.  Here is evidence that I took the trip.

Boomerang:

• noun, “a bent or curved piece of tough wood used by the Australian Aborigines as a throwing club, one form of which can be thrown so as to return to the thrower.”
• verb, “to come back or return, as a boomerang”

I first joined Oracle in 1997, as a pre-sales consultant on the Oracle Telecommunications sales team, and then spent an intense three years literally travelling around the world in support of Oracle sales activities to many telecommunications companies.  I learned much, worked with outstanding people, had great experiences, and then was lured away to a Silicon Valley startup just before the .com bubble burst. A series of interesting experiences with small companies led me to Sun.  It turns out that the executive who initially hired me at Oracle was the same one who referred me into Sun.

So now, after nearly a decade,  I will be leaping back into the Oracle fold with my Sun colleagues, eager with anticipation, looking forward to many more exciting years.