Ross Finlayson

Technical Interest Areas

Other Hobbies and Interests

• Mountain biking, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, racquetball, hiking, (and, although not recently) skiing, bridge, and windsurfing.
• I also like to follow space exploration and rugby. .

Background

• Born August 11, 1959, Auckland, New Zealand. (Now a U.S. Permanent Resident.)
• BSc & MSc degrees (Mathematics), University of Auckland, 1980.
• PhD (Computer Science), Stanford University, 1989 (in David Cheriton's "Distributed Systems Group").
• Computer scientist at Apple Computer (from April 1989 to April 1993), where I headed operating systems research.
• Computer scientist at Sun Microsystems (from April 1993 to June 1995) - worked on networking, security and distributed object systems (CORBA-based).
• Founder, Live Networks, Inc. (LIVE555.COM) (incorporated August 1995) - an Internet technology and consulting company, currently focusing on infrastructure software for streaming media

Some trivia

• I attended the same high school as Sir Edmund Hillary and Russell Crowe. (Not at the same time, of course. Hillary attended many decades earlier than I, and Crowe a couple of years later than I.)
• I personally witnessed the solar eclipse of August 11th 1999 (on my 40th birthday), the 1999 Izmit earthquake (magnitude 7.4), the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake (magnitude 7.1), and 'The Play'.
• I have hiked to the top of: the highest mountain in the contiguous United States, the highest 'mountain' in Australia, Half Dome, Yosemite Falls, and Ayres Rock.
• I have a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. (Coincidentally, I'm from the the same Scottish clan as the Gracies.)
• One of my great uncles was an All Black. (Like most New Zealanders, I worship the All Blacks, even though they have a nasty tendency to choke during the Rugby World Cup.)
• Despite the preceding three trivia items, PE was by far my worst subject in school. (Come to think of it, though, I was almost as bad at art.)
• My 'Erdös number' is 4.
• Here's where I was for 'Y2K', and here's where I was for the real turn of the millennium. (The latter photo was taken out-of-focus; the coordinates shown are "N22.89018, W109.90094".)
• For fun, I enjoy visiting degree confluence points. Here are the points that I have visited (or attempted to visit) so far.
• There are at least four other "Ross Finlayson"s on the Internet: A consultant from Idaho USA, a deep-sea fishing boat captain in Cairns Australia, a college graduate in Glasgow Scotland, and a teenage football (soccer) enthusiast from Dundonald Scotland. (I don't appear to be related to any of them. However, because my ancestors were from Scotland, it's conceivable that I'm distantly related to the last two.)

Address