Farewell to the team

Hi buddies,



It's my last day at the office. As you know, I expect to leave Beijing

as a result of a deliberate decision. I clearly remember the scene of

the first dayI entered the office. Wow, it was almost five years ago.

I didn't expect the time would pass so fast. I simply didn't feel it.

Part of the reason is because of you. It's you who offer a flexible

and friendly working atmosphere. It's you who I got novel ideas from

via arguments. It's you who make me enjoy the happy hours in the team

building. I'd like to take this opportunity to show my appreciation to

the manager Ray. Thank you for providing me diversified opportunities

to grow in the past years. I appreciate having had the chance to work

with other fellow colleagues. Thanks for your coaching, supports and

collaborations. Here is the place where my career started, where I was

transformed from a college guy to a professional and where most time

of my twenties is devoted. The days with you folks are always memorable.

Anyhow, the good thing is since we are still within one big Oracle family,

there are lots of chances to meet in future. Please continue to do your

good jobs. See you.



Yours sincerely,



Miles

OK, write something.

I don't blog as I don't have much to share these days. Today I persuade myself to sit in front of the screen to write something. My blogs have been watched by my parents, my alumni, my fellow colleagues, the friends and enormous anonymous guys. So admittedly speaking, someone can't write freely when he is placed under the spotlight and examined carefully. I'm more willing to write in English so fewer guys are reading this. Each time when I wrote stuffs, it reminded me about the possible reactions from the audience. The topics were deliberately chose. The words were castrated. It's less about my feeling but more about my daily life or something less relevant. What's the hell am I doing! After all, blogging is not diary-writing, but somewhat like marketing. OK, please bare a pity guy in blue to pour out his bad mood this time. I'm not satisfied with myself. The life can't be continued in this way.

Sun sets

Sun approaches the horizon as the final stage of Sun's integration process into Oracle starts today with the notification of removal from Nasdaq and S/P 500 Index. 28 years, Sun has been a symbol of the innovation in the industry. Java, Solaris, SPARC, NFS, ZFS, Glassfish, SunRay and newly acquired Mysql, Virtualbox ... You name it. For its employees, Sun offers a great flexibility to boost their working days. A number of talents were cultivated here. I just realized all of us, the Sun guys are going to become Sun alumni in a way or another. While the wiki page for Sun Microsystems is approaching its final updates, yet the history is worth being written into the MBA textbook as a good case to analyze. Anyhow, Sun will rise again, but this time in Oracle red.

Your career is more about your expertise

Several days ago, I had a talk over the the phone with a younger alumni working for a famous U.S. IT company in Shanghai. He is unsatisfied with the working circumstance. He thought he was so junior that nobody took him seriously even though he had contributed a lot.

I told him to take things easy. Well, I think it's the case almost every freshman can encounter. The career is full of challenges. In some cases, it's not about your expertise. But it's about how to deal with the people in your job, how to handle the crucial conversations with others and how to protect your interests while others also feel happy. Yeah, it's no easy work. The very first thing is to make yourself clear about your ultimate goal and your baseline. Your expertise can be the fundamental to promote your growth. But other qualities such as conversation, persuasion and negotiation are essential. Even those serious interest confrontations can be treated as judo but not a fight. The spirit of judo is to crack somebody down using his own strength. A fight in the job, I believe, can more or less hurt yourself even if you still survive.

Anyhow, your career is more about your expertise. Your life is more about your career.

Oracle to buy Sun

ANTA CLARA, Calif., April 20, 2009 -- Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) and Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) announced today they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Oracle will acquire Sun common stock for $9.50 per share in cash. The transaction is valued at approximately $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun's cash and debt.

Here I'd like to reference a famous Chinese poetry.

天净沙 秋思

枯藤老树昏鸦，
小桥流水人家，
古道西风瘦马。
夕阳西下，
断肠人在天涯。

My Blog, My Life

Those who have ever read my blogs would find the contents have little to do with technology stuffs. I'd say I dislike mixing my work and my life since I've already contributed most of my time to the work while awake. It's terrible to infect my blogs with the tedious work details. And technology-intensive stuffs can simply drive most of my readers away. I do love my job. But it should never annex my life. Calling to mind, I wasn't a student purely on science and engineering. I was totally addicted to reading geographic books and catching odd insects in my childhood. In the senior high school, handling the courses such as biology, geography, history and English is a piece of cake for me so that I was hesitated to continue my study in the science class or the literature class when the students were asked to make choices. Later, I selected computer science as my major with no reasons that convinced myself. Now I have a fancy to read Wikipedia and visit museums to digest the geographic, historical and sociological information. Afterward, I experienced it by traveling. What I'm enthusiastic to do is to share my Picasa album which records the world in my eyes and represent my feeling of the world. No matter what sorts of frustrations and tangles that come to me, the world is splendid. I like keep talking to deliver what I know. But little echos were received. Anyway, as I indicated, to me it's the best gift on earth to experience the amazing world.

Where to go, Chinese college graduates?

Miles Xu

These days quite a lot of guys lose their good appetites. Global economy is aggravating. Companies are laying off people. The housing price is flying high. The world seems to be surrounded by these eye-catching words. Among them are the college graduates. As reported, graduation means unemployment for millions of graduates this year. They find their way hard. But the financial crisis is the only part of the story. At most, it's merely catalysis. Years ago, I thought this moment would come, sooner or later. Now the crisis just accelerates the process.

Why dare I say so. "Thanks to" the commercialized higher education policy starting from 1999, the number of college students has been growing like a balloon, from 1 million in 1999 to 6 million in 2009. As a contrast, university facilities don't catch up with the speed. Now one job recruiting show can attract as many as tens of thousands graduates. Sure, the job opportunities are limited especially in this bad economic climate. So most of those applicants will be screened out. Anyway, as least it sounds like good news for employers, right? They own a large candidate base. But still the complains from employers are rising to the recent graduates for their lacking competences. Most recently the graduates, who were once decorated as the "social elites", have been enlisted into the class of people that need help along with rural migrant workers. What's the hell are we doing these years?

In this circumstance, the whole nation were mobilized to increase the employment rate of the college graduates. Some odd ideas are invented. Some congressmen suggest universities should create "post-undergraduate" positions akin to "post-doctor". The unemployed graduates are encouraged to seek jobs in rural areas as a solution. Beijing and Guangzhou local authorities decide to hire graduates to serve communities. Shanghai local authority is giving financial support to fresh graduate start-ups. The whole society seem to be enthusiastic to resolve the issue. And MoE has implemented the plan to raise the number of the master students by 5% in 2009. Then will it work?

Are we resolving or just relieving the issue? Why are graduates unwilling to work in the rural areas? Because the working and living conditions are poor there. Some graduates came from villages. Their family spent lots of money to afford the college fees in the hope that the children can change their fortunes. But now nothing has changed. The family's investment doesn't bring them a matching return. As indicated, those "post-undergraduates" won't sign formal contracts with employers. I think it equals to opening a backdoor in the Labor Law, giving the chances to hire employees without basic salaries and social insurances. And since those graduate start-ups lacks too much experience, the possibilities of surviving are low. I see no wisdom to encourage it.

Anyhow, the essential idea is good, to diversify employment opportunities. In short terms, these measures can relieve the pains. But we are surfing on the peak of second wave of baby-boom graduates in the last half century. The society just can't digest the flood. That's the point. So I think there should be a hierarchical change in the higher education. Do we really need so many bachelors, masters as well as doctors in near future? Do we need some many colleges to set majors such as Computer Science/Engineering and Business Management? Do we really need so many future philosophers and scientists? We are creating too many homogeneous graduates with low quality. I think what China lacks currently are skilled workers, proficient peasants and smart businessmen. The university education is not essential. Community colleges or professional schools may be better choices for them. Yes, it's hard to change, especially when it's related to some people's interests. But anyhow, it's crucial to take a responsible attitude to the nation's future.

It's a dark day

As expected, Beijing had a rain after 110 days' drought, which cast the sky in dark. As planned, we had a job laid-off in China, which cast our hearts in dark. I still can't comfort myself since some of my friends are let go. I don't wanna comment much here since the stories behind the facts are beyond my imagination. I just say "You guys are the best. Good luck!".

Sun's Q2 FY09 Financial Results

(The following words only represent my own opinions, which has nothing to do with the ideas of Sun Microsystems.)

Our CEO Jonathan Schwartz just wrote about Sun's quarterly financial results in his blog.
http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/q2_fy2009
As expected, it's mixed as the world is in the recession. But the results do show strong growth businesses of Sun, from Java to Mysql, from Solaris to xVM, from CMT to x64 to Open Storage. I see Solaris plays an important role in the growth, not just Solaris subscription billing itself. Solaris enables the functionality of xVM, CMT and Open Storage.
And I really appreciate the insight in the blog.
"Like the market for traditional storage, the networking marketplace is characterized by very high prices, proprietary software and restrictive hardware platforms - exactly the environment in which open source software and commodity components create choice and competition, welcome changes for customers seeking budgetary and technical relief."
Will we have Open Switch based on OpenSolaris in the future just like Open Storage? I don't know. The market should determine it.
The company is on the way of reshaping itself, transforming the innovation into the revenue.

Farewell to 2008

It's time to say goodbye to the year 2008. It's an amazing year for the world. "Earthquake", "financial crisis","Olympics","Omaba", all of these have become the keywords of the year. For me, what does it mean? It's my third winter in Beijing, my second year to work at Sun after graduation. I acquired more opportunities to develop myself. I started to conquer projects independently, coach other engineers and expose myself more outside the team.

Looking forward, I think the year 2009 is a really challenging year ahead. Everybody understands the impacts of the recent financial crisis are significant for the industry, especially for the company. The global economy is sure to slow down. I'm part of a U.S. company who relies a lot on its Wall Street customers, so of course 2009 will be full of uncertainty to me. I can't tell myself what's going on in the near future. But one thing I can promise is that I will continue to commit on what's necessary to keep my competence. Sometimes men have a tendency not to scarify their current interests for their future good. The crisis is the opportunity to make it changed.

Happy new year!

Miles Xu

December 31, 2008

Excellent TV Show Every Midnight, Don't Miss It.

Are you suffering from insomnia? Are you feeling boring at midnight as a cat person? Are you having a terrible emotion these days? Now there is a savior on earth. He can resolve all the problems you are suffering. Who is he? He is an excellent doctor, outstanding actor and ridiculous salesman. His name is Hou Xinzu, so called "Hou Zong". Where is his clinic? Is it expensive? Wait till one clock every midnight, and turn on your television. He will appear in his personal treatment session with his pretty assistant on most of the local TV stations. Not only can he cure your insomnia, but also you are watching a world-class comic show. But it's not enough. The most important point is that he educates you how to become a creative salesman. So what about the name of his TV program? Direct Sales TV Advertisement. The most representative show he has ever performed is to sell the watch with the brand Rosdenton.

What? You never heard of Rosdenton. It's a shame. According to Mr. Hou's words, Rosdenton is a world famous watch brand and it has an elegant alias------"Rolls Royce in the watch world". Now you should admit that you are behind the times. Believe me, after watching his TV show, you will throw your bad emotions to the sky. He's crazy and funny! He acted with his heavy-accent Mandarin like this: Now Rosdenton is the most famous watch you can find in China. It represents your social status. It can gain you active position in the business negotiation. It will be popular forever. Look, the surface is made of French sapphire with 0.06 carat South African Diamond and 2 carats Austrian Crystal Diamond. Inside the watch, the core is made in Switzerland.
Guess, how much is the price of the watch?
The pretty assistant sitting beside says, 20 thousand Yuan?
Absolutely too high, the watch is directly sold from the factory to the customer, guess again.
10 thousand?
No, since we are the very first channel to sell the watch, the company offer a great discount.
5 thousand, it can't possibly be lower. It's a diamond watch!
Well, your assumption is still too high. It only costs you 2888 Yuan!
Wha, I can't believe it. I also need one!
Believe it! I would be crazy. How can Rosdenton offer such a low price to the customers. It's unfair! I got no profits! My heart is deeply hurt by the discount! I can't do the job! Come on, my dear customers, don't be hesitate! Dial our service number to order the watch belonging to you! We can only offer 10 watches this session. If you miss the opportunity, I'd like to congratulate to you! Why? Because you will never have the chance to get it any more.

A great doctor and comic actor, isn't it? Funny and Ridiculous. I can't help laughing since I saw a monkey with exaggerated facial expressions jumped here and there. Sure, I doubt about its ability to stimulate consumers and then promote sales. But in terms of entertainment, I would never suspect it's the gospel of millions of sleeplessness including me in the lonely night. Some guys are totally addicted to the show, which is almost the only way to make them sound asleep every night. I should have full confidence Mr. Hou would be the super comic star of the next generation.

You may be curious about the watch. It sounds good. But how can it be that cheap? 2 carats Austrian Crystal Diamond, that's not real diamond. Mr. Hou says,"I didn't say it's a real diamond. I said it was Austrian Crystal Diamond, another material." OK, then how about 0.06 carat South African Diamond? It's real. 0.6 carat costs about 20 thousand Yuan. 0.06 carat is 1/10 of 0.6 carat. Does the diamond cost 2 thousand yuan? No, 0.06 carat is merely nothing, and only worth several hundred. Then the limitation is 10 watches this session? Yes, please notice every time we replay the ad. It's another session. So if we play the show for 1 thousand times, we can afford as many as 10 thousand watches. At this point, you must be angry. You were cheated. I had the same feeling when I got to know the fact. But never mind. Mr. Hou can comfort you,"Are you OK? You expect to get a real diamond watch with 2 thousand yuan??? I expected your intelligence quotient to be normal. And I never cheat you. I have full confidence in the watch. I will never recommend it to you without having a deep understanding in Rosdenton. If you guys thought I was cheating, Rolex isn't cheating,right; Omega isn't cheating, right? Are their watches worth the money you paid? You know, I spent much money to screen the ad and run the company. At least I sold the watch at the price it should be. But those guys sold them at the price much higher than the actual cost. But you foolish guys never complain about Rolex and Omega. You treat wearing them as a form of luxury."

Up to this point, I think we, the consumers should think about the issue once again. Mr. Hou's words is somewhat reasonable. As consumers, we often stays in circumstances of being cheated in purchasing products and services. We get the software with defects. We get the house decoration service with low quality adobe. We get the milk with poisoned materials. How to avoid cheats? We have to be the expert of all aspects. If that day does come, I think it's the sorriness of our society.

Beijing Olymics Night Piece

I was working on a hot issue of the company, which exhausted much of my time. So I didn't write blogs. But I hesitate to show you some pictures I took on the day the Olympic openings was held. Amazing fireworks, isn't it?























And I took a walk around the Olympics Stadium last night.
Here are some photos. I didn't use a tripod(So you know it's not an easy task). Please forgive me.

The Fireworks After The 2nd Rehearsal For Beijing Olympics Openings

Hi buddies,
As I mentioned, my current residence is a choice position to watch the fireworks, part of the Olympics Opening Ceremony. Yesterday, the second round dry run was held at the National Stadium. And a grand fireworks across the Central Olympic Zone(especially at the Olympics Village) followed it.
Here are some photos to share with you guys.

The days before Beijing Olympics 2008

As my residence isn't far from the National Olympic Stadium in Beijing, everyday the cluster of stadiums can be found in the distance when I look through the window. Well, we know the world's feelings are complicated towards the Games. No matter what kind of attitude everybody has, applause or resistance, this year will definitely be an extraordinary one for the nation.
Though unluckily I don't get any tickets, I often comfort myself that at least I can watch the amazing fireworks at a choice position in person. That's not too bad.

sight outside my residence


close-up


the National Olympic Stadium "Bird Nest"




the National Swimming Center "Water Cube"


the newly built skyscraper adjacent the stadium

Project Brussels NGE driver support putback to Solaris Nevada Build 86

Project Brussels NGE Gigabit Ethernet driver support has been put back into Solaris Nevada Build 86. Currently, there isn't a unique interface for configuring parameters for NIC drivers in Solaris. The configuration of a NIC driver may be customized by driver.conf, ndd, etc. Project Brussels aims to provide a standardized interface for configuring all GLDv3 NICs via the system tool dladm. And NGE driver(the driver of Nvidia nforce chipset Ethernet controller) is widely used in Sun servers and such as X4200/X4100 M2, X2200/X2100 M2 and workstations such as Ultra40, Ultra20. So it's a good step ahead.

What I need to emphasize is that this putback is a joint effort of the community member and Sun engineers. I think it a good example to demonstrate the open development practices in OpenSolaris community. OpenSolaris.org doesn't just make the code open-sourced. It's on the way to open the development process. And more, NGE driver is somewhat a special case,which requires the code reviews and approvals of engineers from Nvidia to ensure no Nvidia IP are leaked unintentionally. OpenSolaris community member Jason King provided the original code. The code is pretty much done. But he found some problems during the tests. The driver would fail to attach when the system was booting. So he turn to help from Sun engineer through OpenSolaris.org. I'm the responsible engineer for NGE driver. I contacted him, got his code and found the root cause soon. Not just the root cause, we also refined the code, did the tests in our lab and provided feedbacks to him. Jason updated the code for our reviews once again. Sun engineers Ted and Sowmini also gave their comments on the code. It's an iteration practice, in which we were interacting with each other well. After all the tests are passed, I help Jason to get Nvidia's code review and approval. Finally, we successfully put back the code into Solaris Nevada Build 86. So basically, this time, what the community developers do is to write the initial code and modify the code accordingly. What Sun developers do is to troubleshoot the code, refine the code, do the tests, do the legal review and put back the code. From my point of view, I think there is one advantage for Sun developers in the process of development is that we may be more familiar with the code, which made it easier to find the cause of the problems. and We may have more testbeds and test suits in the lab to reveal the bugs before the code is put back.

Lastly, I'd like to show my appreciation to Jason King's work in Project Brussels. Well done, Jason! And also I'd thank Ted and Sowmini and other colleagues for their supports in this putback.

About Miles Xu

Currently Miles is an operating system kernel engineer at Sun Microsystems China Engineering and Research Institute (SCERI) after the graduation from the Department of Computer Science in Nanjing University since July 2007. Earlier he was serving as an intern for SCERI. Currently he still keep the record as the youngest regular employee in SCERI where the average age of employees here is around 30. Most of his previous experiences focus on operating system kernels, computer networks and embedded systems related stuffs, which also brought him some awards such as global top 10 and Microsoft Multimedia Award in 2006 IEEE Computer Society International Design Competition, global top 30 in Microsoft Windows Embedded Student Competition. Besides, he was awarded the second prize in 2006 National Undergraduate Student Embedded System Contest and the 2007 Special Scholarship for Technology Innovation of Nanjing University, etc. For those who are interested in his experiences, you can find his detail profile here.

Born in a what was so called semi-English-speaking family, he is possessed of a good command of English and can speak it fluently. His characteristics varies a lot from a traditional engineer in most people's minds. He is not a tech nerd(at least not just a tech nerd)but an active talker and enthusiastic about making new friends. His interests also cover a lot of area -- sociology(especially North American culture), history, geography and biology. In the casual time,he is in favor of traveling, photography and 3D animation creation. And maybe one day he will get the chance to travel around the world, just like he always goes after.

Last words, welcome to Miles' blog. We can be friends^_^

Show Mac Book Pro -- Cool Stuff!

I got "my good buddy" today. Cool stuff! Though I haven't get used to it, I felt better when I found the shell. After all, it's a Unix system, not a strange stuff for a Solaris/Linux guy, right?

Share some pictures with you guys.

Pursue Your Own Dream

by Miles Xu

Twenty three years ago, a boy came to the world in Wuhan, a beautiful city along the Yangtze River. The father named him Min which is the abbreviation of the father's hometown Fujian Province since the father left there for years and missed it very much. But the life didn't offer an easy start. The boy was thought to have the deficiency in his legs and he could not stand stable like other kids. It made the parents rather anxious. Luckily, it was proved that the symptom was the lack of calcium, a major element for composing the bones and could be easily cured. Later, the father decided to move the family back to Fujian. In most Chinese people's memory, Fujian is a southeast mountainous land without rich natural resources compare to its neighbors. But the people there were favored with the sea to connect to the outside world. All of these make the people ---- the ocean's offspring possess the characteristics such as hardworking, bravery, smartness and adventuring, which are also applied to this boy. This boy is me.

Fujianese are often identified as adventurers. My life journey started in Wuhan, then move to Fuzhou, and later in Nanjing for my higher education. And now as you know, I'm here in Beijing to start my career.(I will show them a map.) Believe me, in the past 23 years of my life I had stayed in the universities for 22 years. Since my parents are university faculties, when I was a little boy, the campuses had been the playgrounds for us ----- my little friends and me. Compared to most of my little buddies who were forced by the parents to learn instruments, calligraphy or fine arts after class, I was lucky. My parent provided a world with fewer regulations. I could act as a happy wild boy in the muds, bushes and river banks. But wild doesn't conflict with knowledge. I love the nature. The nature taught me the knowledge that I could hardly learn in the house. One advantage of having teachers as your parents is that you can own abundant books with many subjects at home. Though I'm an IT guy currently, geography, history , sociology and biology are my favorite. I should thank my parents for satisfying me with those books, which greatly increased my curiosity of the outside world. What you can't imagine is that I was completely addicted to them at that time.

When I grew older and stayed in the middle school, I had to spend much longer time in finishing the tremendously increased school-assigned homework in order to pass the exams times and times again. In China, it's the reality that we should face. Yep, I passed them while some of the contemporaries failed. But it was not the kind of life I could enjoy. I saw no meanings to repeat the similar exercises just to increase the stabilities of scores in taking exams. So I decided to go on my way. I just finished part of homework and not attended the extra classes in the weekend. At first, my teachers blamed me for not finishing the exercises and worried my decisions might affect my grades. But later I still kept a front pace in the exams since I could enjoy enough time for sleeping, and for some more meaningful work. From then on, the teachers acquiesced in my actions. The books and maps that I read in the childhood couldn't satisfy my need any more. I started to seek the geography, history and sociology knowledge on the Internet. In the vacations, I traveled around China with my parents. Even more, during the time as a university student, I was admitted into a computer contest's global final held in the US after the hard work. The half a month's stay provided me a good chance to experience this nation on my own. And a dream rooted in my childhood became stronger and stronger.

Now the little boy has become a young man. But the dream in my heart never fades away. I have a dream that one day I can take on the backpack to travel around the world. I have a dream that one day I could stand on the top of the world and dive in the water with the beautiful coral reefs. I have a dream that one day I can roam along the ancient Egyptian pyramids and the Greek Parthenon. I believe that the true meanings of life could be illuminated through experiencing the nature and the civilization of the world. That's me.

Seasons In Sun

Almost one month has passed by since my joining Sun Microsystems China Engineering and Research Institute in Beijing, China. I dare say life is wonderful. I do love the working atmosphere here. I'm keeping myself in tight schedule all the time. Though I was a intern here last year, I'm a green hand in this area. The abundant knowledge drives me just like a thirsty man coming across a water pool. Enjoy your life in Sun, Miles!

our office building, in Tsinghua Scientific Park


my cube


our office room


the park at night


my Sun Badge

Long Time Suspending . . .

It's been quite a few month since my last update. The reason is sophisticated. One is that I got too many commitment these days. The senior project, my undergraduate thesis,the exams... And time for fun, of course! Enjoying the last month of my campus life seems to be a rough thing for a active guy. It's frustrating to make a balance between the coursework and the entertainment.
After all, sticking to this blog is my long term commitment on condition that I can't find somewhere else better to do English blogging.