Andrew Ferrier

(This post is probably of most interest to my IBM colleagues – however, since the AT&T Network Client is also available for other organisations, I’ve posted this here in case it’s of use to other folks.)

I recently installed Ubuntu 64bit (amd64) on my Lenovo Thinkpad T61. Unfortunately, the Network Client is not available in a 32bit edition. So I had to perform a few tweaks to get it to work. Here’s the steps I took:

• Install the ia32-libs package and all it’s dependencies:

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs

• Install the AT&T client itself (IBM colleagues can obtain this from the OCDC website):

sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture agnclient_1.0~2.0.1.3000-3_i386.deb

• Add some symlinks:

sudo ln -s /usr/lib32/libssl.so.0.9.8 /usr/lib32/libssl.so.4
sudo ln -s /usr/lib32/libcrypto.so.0.9.8 /usr/lib32/libcrypto.so.4

• You should now be able to start the Network Client from the Internet section of the Gnome menu, or from /opt/agns/bin/agnclient. Click Connect and enter your details as normal.

I’m sitting in the departure lounge at Las Vegas airport after attending an IBM internal conference for a week. Las Vegas is indeed as tacky as expected, and wouldn’t be first on my list of places to visit on holiday, although I’m thinking about making it part of my ‘road trip’ when I eventually get round to planning it (the short version is SF to Vegas across Death Valley, the long version is the length of Route 66 – I expect the result will be a mixture). The conference was useful, and I got to meet some folk I’d previously only interacted with online, such as the prolific blogger Dan Zrobok. The airport is also surprisingly pleasant, with fast and friendly check-in (surprising for American), short security queues, and free wi-fi (hence this post). Now all I have to do is endure the 10-hour flight (with a full plane) from LA to London. Yuck.

I’m in Toronto this week, working with some of my colleagues from the Toronto development lab.

Some observations on the trip so far:

• If travelling via the US, JFK is preferable as an interchange to O’Hare – the terminal is modern and pleasant, and changing is easier. But:
• Go direct to Canada if you can – you cut down on immigration paperwork.
• My car (a Pontiac G6) is pretty cool, and like all North American cars I’ve driven, very usable and drivable. Driving here in Canada doesn’t seem to be much different from the US.

Thinkpad problems mean that I’m currently borrowing a T42 from work. It took me a while to get WPA working with Knoppix 5.1.1. Here are the magic incantations required:

wpa_passphrase YOURSSID YourWPAPassPhrase > /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
wpa_supplicant -ieth1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf &
ifup eth1
pump -i eth1

Replace eth1 in the list above with whatever network interface name Knoppix has assigned to your wireless card (reading through the output of dmesg should help you with this). Don’t forget to double-check that your router has the MAC address of the card (use ifconfig to find this) if you’re using MAC address filtering.

David Hill wrote recently on a Lenovo Blog about the design qualities that make Thinkpads great. Whilst some of these are shared by other laptop manufacturers, I have to say I largely agree – even if mine is supplied ‘free’ for use on company business. After dropping it again the other day (yes, I’m clumsy, sorry boss), it took a huge chunk out of my wooden floor. But after the battery had been popped back in, it spun back up and back to life. Truly amazing.

I would buy one myself.

So we’ve just finished our last day with the customer here in Norway, and presented on the work we’ve been doing for them. All in all, it’s been a pretty enjoyable (if stressful) week, and I’m looking forward to doing more direct customer work in the near future.

Due to a mix-up with dates, my flight doesn’t leave until Saturday evening, so I’ve got Friday and Saturday in Oslo to find out a bit more about the city, have a good time and take some pictures. I’ve just checked into the third hotel so far this week, so time to relax for a bit before heading out to find food!

Update: If a taxi driver says he doesn’t know the way to a major hotel, but he ‘can stop at a gas station and ask’, should you worry? In this case, it worked out fine, but I was nervous…

Sometimes travel produces the strangest combinations of experience. I was upgraded to Club Europe by BA on my flight to Oslo (probably something to do with the AA Gold Card that I was mysteriously sent after returning from San Jose earlier in the year). So as I write this inflight, I’ve just finished an impressively delicious chicken curry, polished off a bottle of red wine (no, not THAT size), and a decent bit of Stilton (which, I might add, goes particularly well with left-over curry sauce – yes, really). I’m listening to Kellie Pickler on my phone-cum-MP3-player with an operating system that barely manages to go a day without rebooting (but it’s OK, I’m gonna upgrade to an E61 soon, which Dave assures me is the bee’s knees). Kellie Pickler, incidentally, is pretty much the equivalent of Gareth Gates – as an American Idol almost-made-it – but the novelty of country music means that the unadventurous style is lost on me, and it evokes pleasant feelings of my trip to California anyway (yes, even California has country music).

All this is an unusual combination, to say the least. I’m checking into the Radisson SAS Plaza downtown later tonight, which Chris assures me (from a trip to Oslo earlier this year) is pretty decent, although sadly the team has to move after tonight as it seems that the whole world has checked into Oslo for this week and all the hotels are full. We have to move 50km away, so maybe I’ll be brave and hire a left-hand-drive MANUAL car. God help me.

Now all I have to do is make the week worth it by helping to impress the IBM customer I’ve come to see with our products. I’m nervous, but excited.

Later update: Hotel is OK, team is very friendly and seems very capable. I’m feeling quite positive about this week. I have discovered that we’re only at the customer till Thursday (rather than the Friday I thought), so I’ll have to find something to do on Friday. Maybe locate the local IBM office, or maybe take the day off. We’ll see.

Oh, and it’s 11:30pm and it’s still almost light outside.

Chris Tomkins and I both work on the WebSphere ESB team, and have been blogging about it and related IBM SOA products for some months. We’ve now decided to join forces and launch a new blog called SOA Tips ‘n’ Tricks. This will contain technical tips on ESB and other products as well as wider issues – we don’t know exactly how it will evolve so please feel free to leave us some feedback on the things you read – what you like, and what you don’t. I plan to discontinue writing about ESB or SOA specifically here on my personal blog, although I’ll continue to discuss wider IBM issues.

IBM loves patents. We’ve held the record for thirteen years for the most U.S. patents granted each year. IBM’s margin over the competition is also good (2941 in 2005, compared to 1828 for our nearest competitor, Canon). IBMers are actively encouraged to develop patents (which is probably why we do so well in the patent charts), and IBM is a large company with a lot of resources and a disproportionately large R&D spend – perhaps no-one should be too surprised.

But in the chart position / size stakes, Nathan Mhyrvold‘s company, Intellectual Ventures, is impressive. Their only products are patents – in much the same way, says Mhyrvold, as Coke‘s product is a brand (trademark), and Microsoft‘s is software (copyright). In other words, they are just focusing on another aspect of IP. A recent In Business episode looked at Intellectual Ventures, and they hold the record at 25th place for most U.S. patents granted in a year, despite being a minnow in a world of IBM and Canon. It’s an unfair comparision with IBM really, as IBM produces much more than just copyrighted product (a substantial portion of IBM’s business is services, not software), but IV has a fascinating business model, and one that’s still comparatively rare.

Update 2006-10-23: It’s unlikely to calm the debate I’ve been seeing on this topic any, but as Richard points out, IBM has just filed suit against Amazon for patent violation.

Update 2006-10-25: Greg at IBM Eye has more details on the suit.

Update 2006-10-29: John Simonds from IBM Analyst Relations (We allow these guys to blog? Wow!) has a personal perspective on the IBM-vs-Amazon case.

Update 2006-10-30: For some comment in defence of Amazon, see this article from PC Magazine.

I didn’t realise this was going to happen, but after my recent posting about the virtues of corporate blogging, ibm.com has gone all-out and has posted a directory of IBMers who are blogging externally on the front page, so it’s entirely possible you’ve arrived from there – in which case, welcome!

I work on one of the test teams for WebSphere ESB, and we’re currently working hard on the recently announced 6.0.2 version, so I haven’t been posting quite as much on work topics recently as I normally aim to do. But if you’d like to take a look at my past postings on SOA and ESB or WebSphere, or indeed anything else on my blog, please do, and please feel to leave a comment, ask a question, or get in touch.

Thanks.