I want to learn

After all these years of talking I have done with Pramod, reading up on the Internet and hearing the buzz all around me, I badly want to learn one of these programming languages

Ruby or Python or Lisp or Scheme or Haskell or just any dynamic programming paradigm.

But its so hard to find motivation just to learn the syntax. I know that coding some pet project in these is the right way to learn but I am more driven by the idea of the project than the method of its execution. I think the only right motivation would come from a requirement driven in my professional life.

Waiting for life to give me an opportunity? I do not know..lets see

My memory and Terminologies

I have always had a problem with remembering terminologies. I was talking to my friend about the importance of learning Java Design Pattern. He was telling me about a few. I think you learn things when you want to use them or when you have encountered an issue and you think that the knowledge of these would help. Particularly with Patterns, I have never understood them when I tried right after college. I guess you need to see its usage to realize its importance.

During this conversation I only realized that I have used a few good practices without knowing that they were good practices. Mostly by looking at others code. Like the use of Static Factory or how to use CONSTANTS and the like. Its just I have never associated these practices with a name or a pattern.

But I do agree that in a discussion it makes ideas more concise and understandable if you use relevant terminologies. I have seen a few terminology freaks who over-use, misuse or abuse them. And I always interrupt asking them to translate it to me. I guess I am not literate enough :)

Tell me why?

There has to be a reason why you use, the way you use. I am speaking about data structures in Java.

I have seen quite a bit of code written by my co-developers who just use either a Vector or Arraylist without a thought behind it.

I ask them why? And the answer usually is, "Whats wrong with it?"

Use them with a reason. Its like, you write bulky code and then later bring in a team called Performance Engg. to optimize your code. How stupid? Another example is the profuse creation of String Objects without understanding that its really costly. Folks there is a StringBuilder (or a StringBuffer) just for this.

I can understand if you say "I want it thread safe or mutability", to your justification for using either Vectors or Strings. But not unless there is a reason.

Well unfortunately or fortunately I was not allowed to make these mistakes and learn from them. I was told or directed to do certain things in a certain way. But you need to realize these at some point. Its really worthwhile to think while you code. It does help save cost and time.

New Rediffmail look

Have you seen the new Rediffmail interface. Go check it out. By default you login to your old interface. Click on a stupidly placed, top-right corner link which says something like "Try the new rediffmail". I don't think this is anything like "invite only".

Looks excatly like Yahoo Mail Beta.

I am curious to know who is doing all the coding for these guys?

Paranoia or What?

What?

[Source: A Slashdot comment]

I have two questions.

1. Do you really mean this?
2. Does your eye hurt after reading it?

Google, Java and Linux

This is just about what I was waiting for.

But what about JVM on unixes. GCJ is good, but still I am curious to know how the linux community would react to Sun's thought on changing Java's license for linux.

Another interesting development which happened sometime back was RedHat buying JBoss.

There is some traction on Java and Linux. Lets see where this is headed to. But finally its good that both the Linux and Sun community have realized that its only benifitting to partner.

Free GPRS finally

Competition has this effect, though this was late. I was wondering as to how Reliance can do it and not the other service providers. I now have a free GPRS connection. No rentals and Re 1/10 kbps. Now I want the handsets to improve. Though I have Nokia 6670, I want better display size and innovative still intuitive (mostly when we target the former "i" we loose out on the later "i") webpages.

Heck I want http to swallow GPRS. Most things become easy then.

What next Google ?

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own, and no other party necessarily agrees with them.

Its known that Yahoo, Google and MS (to some extent) are fighting for this webspace. Whether they will continue to be this and share the profits and losses equally or will one of them gaim prominance over the other is a different issue. If you take an analogy of TVS, Hero and Bajaj and try to apply the same fact to these companies then yes they will all even out and there will only be minor margins and product differentiators. However, the history in the software industry is not quite similar. There has always been monopoly and I see this behaviour to continue. Eg. Oracle, Apache, Cicso, MS etc. Please do not brand monopoly to be bad all the time. Its usually because of amazing products a company or a community comes up with or at times, diplomatically speaking, the dynamics of the market (a simple producer/comsumer problem which a company addresses at the earliest and not necessarily technically superior) which puts some higher than the other.

There is more money in the web than many assumed. Yahoo initially and then Google have proved it time and again. The differentiator between the two is what interests me the most. Yahoo claims itself to be more a media company and not majorily a search company. The recent hiring of Terry Semel proves it further. Whereas Google, for long has stood as a search company. No matter what each claim both get a major share of revenue through ads and this is a known fact. Maybe Yahoo has a higher share of service sellings than Google but Google has Adsense, what more !


I have been closely following the products (the whole beta suite) which Google has been releasing. As I can see they can be broadly classified into two categories. Personalized search, music, movie reviews, mail, writely, RSS reader, Gtalk and now cl2. And the other, Maps and Adsense etc. One is the producer of user specific data and the other is the consumer of this data. The outcome being the targetted ads. Its quite simple isn't it.

I won't be surprised even if Google rolls out a product each to map all of Yahoo's existing services and give it a "use it so that we can dig your data" angle, since making every usage user specific is an engeneering problem which Google is extremely good at solving.

If you have seen the new Google calendar, you can "Add Public Calendars" (Cricket World Cup, Soccer World Cup etc). Go to your calendar and click on these events and you are directed to maps. What next ? Google Travels, then Google shopping. This is the place where you mails, personalized search, RSS reader and may be desktop search and many others would play a role.

I wonder why Yahoo does not have something similar. I can see mindset and myweb has been there for sometime. I wonder how long the model of "we have large user base, hence give us money" would work. Or is there a different direction or an alternative model which Yahoo is looking into.

Its quite interesting isn't it ?

Fedora Core 5 - Oh My God !

If you don't want to read any further and want to end right here right now, then let me give you the summary of it. Its a little bit (a little over little) of a pain to install it. Once installed it rocks.

If you are a Gnome fan you have lot to be delighted about with the much awaited 2.14 bundled with mono, beagle, F-spot (photo management tool), Tomboy etc. A KDE 3.5 comes packaged with this.

Why does the setup process score low ?

** Do not use Pirut (the new Add / Remove Software tool). Its built on yum and hence does a look up on the internet and not on the removable media you choose to install from. It could be taxing if you didn't know this. I called my broadband service folks and shouted at them for slow internet connection little realizing that pirut was the culprit. This apparently is a replacement for the good old system-config-package, which was predictably reading from a CD/DVD**

1. Package selection, I do not see "Everything" as an option. I always give a huge memory to usr and do not bother to custom pick my packages. I suddenly started to worry if I was the only one who found a use case for this.

2. You need to be damn luck so that you dream about this. During package selection >> right-click >> select all optional packages is available.

3. Previously, a memory counter would tell me if I had enough space on my HDD (/usr) to contain the packages I was selecting. Now I don't see it here.

4. What is with this "layout" ? The terminologies used while partitioning is a little different. You will get confused.

Other References

I do not want to write the same old reviews, instead I would suggest a few which I looked up.

A good one with screen-shots. He missed mentioning TomBoy. Though a small app, its good.

If you are a newbie refer this.

Post install

1. Any media you insert, usb, CD or a DVD, is mounted on /media with the name of the file. Eg. I inserted a DVD (a King Arther movie) and had a /media/KING_ARTHUR_UNRATED. I wonder if this is the new LSB.

2. If you want to play other codecs (mp3, DVD etc), refer this. Just the first five commands setup mp3 support for amarok and xine to play DVD. This was way too easy. Just include livna and freshrpms in your repos and you are done.



3. Here you would find detailed instructions for setting up support to play various other formats in xine.

It is good to see that the two bugs which I had filed on FC4 are resolved here. The last thing which I want to try now is to get my TV tuner card working. The rest is all set.

Ricardo Semler - How to manage a team ?

I haven't read many management blogs or articles. This would probably be the first. But this surely was a good learning read. A couple of excerpts,

"If you were to draw a graph of innovation and Microsoft's wherewithal in terms of people, capacity, recruitment, training and salaries, you would find that the more Microsoft hired the best minds at the highest salaries, and so forth, the less innovation it got. For a user, there are no substantial changes whatsoever between the various versions of Microsoft Windows. For anybody who's used a 1990 version, a '96, '98, 2000 or XP version, it just seems like the color of the icons changes. Does it take 5,000 engineers with postgraduate degrees to change the color of icons?"

Wow, this really is true. I have always wondered..

"Or another example I particularly like is Gillette. Does it take $600 million to stick another blade between the other two?"

You can read the entire interview here.

You can also see the video (48:09) of his latest talk at MIT School of Engineering here.

My Ideas and Google

Me and my innovative ideas. I don't want to think any more. I know Google would have thought about it and will bring it out sooner or later. Though the utilities Google is coming up with are quite routine, either their feature set or them leveraging other existing Google services would gulp my idea.

However I still have a couple. I am yet to formalize them. They sound very much on the lines of a nothing new about this tool, but a couple of features is what excites me the most. Lets see how things go.

Google Search Trends

Did you check this new feature ? If you are as addicted to Google personalized search as I am, then this will get you excited. I have been using Google Personalized search for quite some time now and find it absolutely useful. I wonder why these use cases weren't realized the very next moment search became an active player in the Internet. And now trends is just another fun tool from Google. This shows the pattern of your search. Your Top searches and Top clicks, Monthly, Daily and hourly search statistics. And more interstingly, people who search the same as you. I would have been more excited if there were to show related user profile (even delicious doesn't have this kinda linking) if they are, say a LJ or a Blogger user. They are anyway trying to provide a single sign-on for a not so integrated suite of applications, I ask why not link them up ? This would make social networking based on search and search usage pattern, which I feel is a more safer option to make anonymous friends (which is already a happening thing. I mean making friends on the internet).

What next ? They would ask a user to use their engine for a period of time. Then based on Top click pattern, they would configure their search engine for you (I guess they are already doing this) However, is this another approach to providing semantic web ? or just trying to provide a more appropriate and an accurate search result to users. This is great and I like the way Google is proceeding. They are being pragmatic in their approach I guess. Good job guys.

Sankranthi - India's biggest harvest festival

Naksha and her cousin (both 8 yrs of age) dressed on the occasion of Makara Sankranthi. This is the day when the sun begins its northward journey. Certain Hindu festivals are associated with the annual cycle of seasons. Pongal in the South is celebrated to mark the withdrawal of the southeast monsoons as well as the reaping of the harvest. It is the biggest harvest festival, spread over three days.

Excerpt taken from here.

Good and well configured tools = Good developer

Is this true ?

I have met many people in the past and the very moment I see their desktop, I want push them off their seat, grab hold of their computer and configure things and make them realize how beautiful it actually can be.

Things like:
* Use vi on FreeBSD least knowing that you could as well write a .vimrc and alias vi='vim'
* Use bash on FreeBSD and hit ls in /etc and you see no color differentiation. (alias ls='ls -G')
* Worst of all, use a 17' monitor as 14'. God save them.
* Open browsers in restore mode and continue to browse.
* Group similar windows, and spend an extra minute to get your last open link in a new Firefox window (How notorious can one get. I mean a new *window*)
* Not use an IDE for JAVA (I used to do this for sometime, before I learnt how useful was it to have one)
* Not many realize this, but do try out 'ksystraycmd'. Its a wonderful utility command.
* this list can go on...

Not knowing many of these is different. But you need to feel the need to see/have your fond feature in your tool. Its like, "if only I had this, it would have been really useful". Then go explore to check if you can use your tool the way you want to. But just accepting things the way they are and bluntly using them is really boring. I understand its personal, but you need to have a reason to use the way you are using it. I am put off when they tell me, "hey it ok, I don't mind it that way"

But what do you think ? Does the choice of tools and a neatly configured desktop/tool reveal anything about a developer.

I can understand if you say, "I don't have good hardware and so work on runlevel 3".

Dare to dream - Search ++

A lingering thought and an equally motivating article led to this post.

I particularly liked this line

"Currently we are in the age of keyword box, superficial statistical semantics, stateless systems, text dominance, and archived data. All these factors will be challenged by technology because the nature of data and devices is rapidly evolving beyond text and archived data."

The way I want to think of this is to have an Open standards based device which can be used for searching your own personal things. Oh God how often do we all do that. Wouldn't it be great if you could just throw around things after tagging them. Later go to this super cool device and ask it, beep where that things was. Things could never get stolen. Your eye glasses, pen, company ID card or your vehicle keys. Then it starts beeping or shows a map from where you stand to where that article is. And then we go further. It throws down a list of similar things which are more advanced, may be "coming soon" or you can find it here or "upgrade to this" available in the market. Intel, I guess is moving towards this. What they call digital homes.

Will we ever graduate to this :)

Supporting revenue model around FOSS - Part 2

This is in continuation to my previous post. I found more convincing reasons after attending FOSS.IN that there could potentially be good money out there. Every, practically every developer who had come out there as speakers had this to say. "Contributions need not only be in the form of code. You could write documentation, translate, maintain websites, correct typos, evangelize OSS etc". When an enterprise adopts a FOSS based product, they could well offer these as value added service. Ofcourse you need to have a good marketing guy to do the promotions. That is obvious.

Supporting revenue model with FOSS

Let me come straight to the point. How many times have you gone through a FOSS based tool or an API and have cried in agony about the lack of documentation. If the tool/API is flourishing, then you would atleast find a statement saying "Documentation for this section has not yet been entered" or something equivalent, else nothing at all. You pray to Google to give you some information and if lucky, you may end up with mailing list archives or a half written geekey document which you could have well avoided reading.

The outsourced testing services market is about $4.6bil, of which $3.0bil is sent offshore. Well, this is true and what is also true is the raise in enterprises adopting FOSS products. And when they sell services around it, they mean that the product has gone through some validation and is of some quality ready for usage (either enterprise deployment or small scale). Productizing definitely constitutes good documentation, however have we thought about making documentation one of the core aspects of productizing a software ? or documentation as a business provider in itself as is testing ?

For example, monodoc is an amazing tool which encourages developers to contribute as and when they meddle around with the API. Why can't there be wide speard drive to motivate all IT related guys to contribute to documentation ? I understand the job can get a little boring but tools like monodoc are really the way to go.

Documentation of FOSS products has so far been a community effort which is good. And when enterprises take up a software, they do provide good docs, but can't the process be a business in itself or is it such a trvial activity ? However we all realize that it sure has a significant impact on its users.

Along Came a Spider

1. Shoot the tyre

2. Aces&Eights

3. Profiling a profiler

Who is the villain ? The rule is; don't turn the subtitle on.

The above clues are in no particular order. Use them to guess who the villain is within the first 1 hour of the movie. If you can do so, consider yourself really clever. The last of the clue is the concept on which the movie is based on. Do you want a bigger clue than this ?

A must watch movie.

Let me know if you really cracked the villain within an hr. Also tell me what was the hyperlink Morgan Freeman clicks on.

xine - A Free Video Player

The last time I used xine was on RedHat 7.1 some 4 years back, when my resolve to use FOSS based software was on its peak (it still is :). It was so crappy then and was such a major put off.

I got desperate yesterday after seeing all my Windows colleagues playing wmv and other music formats on their media players and wanted to have my own on my FC4. So started off expecting a tedious journey of compiling from sources. However I wanted to give an initial shot at the binaries available on the site.

Guess what, ten minutes and I was up and running with a Windows media player kinda featured player. I can now play all music and video formats.

To install xine you need to get the binaries or sources from here and then to get support for various codecs you need to do this.

Manually degaussing your monitor

This is what I did when I noticed my monitor flickering too often for very long durations. I initially tried switching it off and back on many times. If your monitor is fairly new, this should effectively degauss it. Mine is a seven year old monitor hence had to take this step.

After some googling I found this.

Take a soldering gun. Charge it on for some time. Hold it against your monitor (your monitor switched on ofcourse :). For some time I didn't notice anything happening. In dismay, I started hitting the monitor with the hot gun :). But after some 10 min, the monitor suddenly went blank. When it came back, it was neat and clean with no flickering. I can tell you one thing though. You need not hit the monitor to mend it :)

Multipost - Google Talk, Bluetooth on Linux & Madikeri Snaps

This is multi-post entry. So please bear with me for not organizing this well.

Google talk - Gaim

I tried Google talk today. Was again disappointed at first, not to see their client based product not being supported on Linux, but down below I say a link which said "other IM clients". I was greatly delighted to see Gaim being one among them.

It was good to see everything work out of box on Gaim. This shows that there has been some considerable amount of testing done by Google. It not just worked on FC4 (office) but also on FC2 (home). I understand that it was more to do with jabber protocol, but yet, good to see that Google is considering Open Source as potential market for its products. In the past, there have been a few questions raised about Google's contribution to the Open Source community after consuming so much of it and now I see some traction towards it.

Bluetooth on Linux

Yesterday, I badly wanted to mount my phone's filesystem on Linux. Tried a million ways, always ending up some problem or the other. Eventually I gave up and tried to connect using bluetooth. My laptop comes with bluetooth enabled. Hence all I did was to

* switch the bluetooth on
* sudo service bluetooth start
* started bluetooth on my phone Nokia 6670
* eureka, there you go. All works fine.

However what could have been better is to see big market players in various technology fields take Open Source seriously and start testing their software release on Open Source platforms as well.

Trip to Madikeri

There are a few snaps which I have uploaded. I had been to Madikeri last week. A few snaps which I captured with my handycam.

Another Project Trainee who left a lasting impression

Sridhar Vishwanathan left for the day. I have heard and seen so many project trainees come and go but very few are as obssively passionate about Open Source/Linux as Shridhar was. He is a true geek but also an amazing allrounder. He is the second guy I know who is a college topper apart from being a geek/very good programmer (the first being Ramesh). Hats off to you man. I am sure you will succeed in your future endeavors. Keep in touch.

People and their questions. Beware of Aunty Q

"Please note that, this post is specific to Indian sub-continent and more for southern Indians. Hence this might not appeal to global audience."

Which programming language do you code in ? Oh C, you know my son codes in Java.
God save me. With the development of things in our society, I can expect these to be added to the list of the "grand aunties" questions to judge her son/daughter as superior.

Assume you are of my age. You accompany your parents to a marriage or any social gathering. Your parents introduce you to their peers (peers here are those whom you wouldn't have seen after having grown over 2 feet, forget the rest). Now is the time when my mind is the fastest. I have always been good at people reading. So I get all geared up to answer the first routine question, which is essentially a giggle, showing that you do have well arranged teeth and that you do brush regularly. Now what is the question. "Oh you have grown so tall, you were this small when I last saw you. Good, Good, you have become Good. (now that means I can participate in WWE :)"

What are you doing now?
I am working aunty.

Where?
Aztec software.

Oh, where does it come?
(Some where on this earth, I am not going to tell you if you plan to visit me with your relative's daughter's photo :)). No that would a bit rude isn't it ? )
Diary circle.

[If they have roamed about bangalore a bit, they would have noticed our huge boards. We have 4 branches in all]
Oh, how does it look (its an imperative statement for which you only have to bend a little forward to pay heed to them, trying to describe your company's logo) its a 'z' written like @ in red (good she is computer literate, or she has a relative in the US and she keeps mail contact with them is what you can deduce with her guessing "@")

[If she is not one of those roaming aunties them. Note: There is branch in the control flow here]
What does Aztec stand for ? (and she doesn't stop there. She wants to flaunt that she is well in touch with the software boom, so she goes ahead and guesses) is it 'a' to 'z' technologies ?
(actually aunty I can take the name of any God you desire me to, but please spare me)
No no no, (This is a test of your patience. Don't break down) Its just "Aztec".(and if she is expecting more from you them) There was an old civilization by the name "Aztec". So the name. (At this point in time, the uncle beside will usually give a totally confirming nod in acceptance of my answer and only then the Aunty Q will assimilate my answer)

Is it a US based company?
No aunty. (beat me up for going further and saying this "but we have branches all over the world aunty")

[For most aunties/uncles, if you are an India based IT company, you have to be in Infosys, Wipro, TCS, else it doesn't count. You giving any answer will not suffice them, thereby deciding you as a looser in you academic life and thus joined a gully (a narrow lane or a crossroad is called gully in India) company]

Do you have opportunities to go abroad? (At this point in time she would have a list of things which she would want to send to her relative in the US or a list of people who travel to US more often)
I have just joined in so probably after I get a bit experienced I may be sent, but people do go aunty (this last part of the sentence is unnecessary)

Aunty : You know Kumar uncle, he goes to US some 3 times a month.
[Thought running through mind]Me: So ask him to get a laptop and give him my birthday.
Me: Grim only, nothing more.

Note: If you are from Infosys you are the most eligible bridegroom on earth. This is a standby instruction to all Infosyians. Beware of "Aunty Q"

Then comes the dreaded question. You could classify this as dreaded for people on both the sides of the conversation. I wouldn't like to publicize my income as I do get well paid and I strongly believe in "nazar" and for Aunty Q, she knows she shouldn't be asking and that her husband will shout at her for doing so later, but she can't stand. She desperately needs enough reasons to put me below a few IT chaps whom she knows more dearly.

How much do you get paid?
(I am not going to marry your daughter, (I want to make the previous statement in the same pitch and tone she would ask me the question))
I get well paid aunty (and a grim)

I would probably cough at this point in time and ask for an excuse to go fetch some water. I have um teen trick to manage such situation :).

So there we go. A brief description about few of the questions which most Anuty Q's would ask. Be prepared, be intelligent, know her daughter, stay away from her (both the ladies I mean)!!

Lipton Bangalore International Marathon

Running with Bangalore. A good 80 member team, participated in the Lipton Bangalore International Marathon. Accompanied by a huge HSBC team and a couple of other social organizations in our slot, it was absolute fun to run 7 km. See the snaps to know more.

What is wrong with the software industry ?

This post is motivated by my horrendous attepmts of adding an image to my profile. What went wrong? Actually everything. .. I logged into my blogger account and went straight to my settings. I clicked on the photograph URL. I wonder why things cant be kept simple sometimes...All I wanted to do was to upload an image and I know the easiest way to upload it is like the way we attach a file to a mail. But no, softwares cannot be so simple. The moment I clicked on the link, it took me to hello from picasa (its actually hello but from picasa , hence its "hello" from "picasa"). I wanted to try this for some time now but never had time to work with a Windows machine and that's another thing. Why are Google and their partners so centralized with their target platform or is Linux and Open Source not appealing enough !! More on this later.

Then what. The opening page at "hello from picasa" said that "Hello is a new way to look at pictures with family and friends". Crazy you....All I want to do is to put a snap on my blog. My craving need to see my snap with my cool laptop on my lap :) is pulling my right weak heart out :).

Ok, my perseverance was now tested and I was going to stand all up to it. The time ticking away to glory at half past 1 AM. (Rohit you were cribbing today with your PM by the side, about falling sick because of lack of sleep and he is going to read this blog. Shut up and go to bed). But no, I had to prove my metal and mental strength. I was half mad already with my drowsy eyes, my bugging typos and this dammed "hello from picasa".

Ok I downloaded the software (supported only on Windows). Then installed it after biting those agonizing questions "Do you want start hello at startup", "Do you want hello on your Desktop", "Do you want to hello on your Quick launch", bloody you, I want my snap with the laptop on my lap on my freaking blog. The only motivating aspect was that hathway gave me a consistent 11 kb download rate, which was cool.

Then, finally I got it running. There I go. A jazzy UI. An Eclipse to manage photos when I asked for a vim. Even vi would have been ok (Man proposes and God disposes) :( (let me rub off my tears now).

Then I had to learn about how to upload snaps through "hello from picasa" where all the highlight in the software was to "Add friends", "Share photos", "Chat" and the rest of the cool features which this sleepy world of mine does not deserve.

Then I finally did a few miraculous click to see my snap on my blog. Wow! There I go, I don't see it on my profile (the right hand top corner) but as a new blog post. A big snap of me and my baby laptop. What is wrong with this world ?

All along this journey of marked experience, I went through a realization. Was I using the wrong software. If yes, then why was it promoted to me there, where I wanted to upload one snap. Was the software usable. No. Its too complex for a routine computer user to spend his valuable time on. But for a photographer, yes may be, but please spare me. For mankind's sake, please make usable software.

Aren't there more easier intuitive approaches to build software. A rich client for snaps is a cool idea but not with all the features confusing you. Have two separate tabs. "Normal usage" and "Advanced users". But for God's sake don't promote it to the wrong people at the wrong place where most of the users want a properly, easily usable, trivial function.

Why did Google and "hello from picasa" do this to me or was I too sleepy ? Eventually I went to bed with no snap of, either me or my laptop on my lap on my blog :(.

Youngest Blogger - My cousin

My cousin joined me when I returned back to Bangalore. After a couple of days he was inquisitive about online blogging and the entire feeling of making your presence on the web. I gave him a HTML crash course (not that I am good at either of them - HTML or teaching). I suggested an alternative to use bloggers/lj. Now he sure is making me proud. Check out his first post. And he has no typos :) , unlike me.

s5 - A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System

I have been using s5 for our internal training sessions. I find it very handy for a lot of reasons.

1. All the file transaction mess is avoided.
2. I get a feeling that this is the right way to present. httpd comes default with Linux and why not use it.

The presentation I have uploaded here is very minimal in its content, that is, if you are looking at the content.
I have also removed all the insignia it usually has, in terms of corporate symbols and emblems :).

All you have to do is to open index.html, after you unzip it, in a browser.

RnD Team Outing

Image(121)
Originally uploaded by rohithv.

We went on a day outing to Shakti (Best club) hill resort. Nice fun. I swam for just 2 hours, but my body says I swam across the English channel. Now what do I believe :)

How Nerdy Am I ?

hmmm...I guess its right !!

Why will Microsoft end up losing shares ?

Lets look at why Microsoft is big in the market now. Because of Microsoft Windows Operating system, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Visual Studio ? These stand out, quite obviously. There are many more which they claim to be good at, however most of them happen to be stolen ideas or extensions to existing concepts powered and re-fueled by a lot of glamorous marketing. Good for them, it has worked all these days.

What is happening now ?

The computer using community is growing richer in knowledge. They are undergoing a marked realization in terms of cost effective software products. They are realizing what quality means in general. Not that all Microsoft products lack quality, but not all are gems either.

As more desktop applications move towards the web, the internet which almost directly maps to httpd (Open source), gains prominence. This is good as the web standards are not controlled by Microsoft yet. It is applications like delicious, meetup, blogs and tadalist which people are finding useful. Community software companies like Yahoo and google are doing a good job at these and Microsoft is either late or stubborn to realize this fact. But with MSN spaces, Microsoft desktop search and a new search engine, we sure can say that they want to play a major role in this market as well.

A major deciding factor here would be the governments, who define the policy. And Bill G is definitely in good rapport with them. Makes sense from business perspective.

With RedHat proving that you can make money with Open Source, companies now want to experiment. Services and support are making more sense now than ever before. "Taking cost out of software" is catching up quick.

Microsoft has always banked on presentation of data than data and its quality. This is changing as people's understanding and requirements are improving.

As software is becoming a commodity, low cost products and quality servicing will drive a company than good GUI and flamboyant marketing.

Theres lot more to it than just these.

iPod - Redefining Music !!!

I had the opportunity to try my brothers new 20GB iPod and what do I think about it ?

Music seems to have a new flavor. I was realizing what a surround effect means. Instruments were not just adding flavor to the voice but were dominant, just to make the music be more than a pleasure, to hear to. There were around 156 songs, mostly English and a few AR Rahman's. Though not a major fan of rock, the voices were more significant and appealing. The usual crappy tunes were making sense, or was I trying to make some sense out of it :).

Every effort put in by the composers, every word echoed by the singers were reaching me better than ever before. It made sense to be a huge music fan with iPod.

Its a pleasure. Try it, to feel the music...

Is Being a Geek necessary ?

Most people believe that a lot of work in the IT industry gets better done by being a geek, by having a blog, by going to good IT gatherings. I wonder if these things are required to write a neat, logically impressive piece of code. Most IT companies want their fellow employees to deduce solutions, given a real world requirment/problem. Now do we have to be a geek to do this. I say no. Being a geek is an individual's passion.

Now one more question. Is implemention, the only God acknowledged, superior phase in a project. I guess most organizations hand over a problem definition to their employee and he/she has to figure out a way to solve it. The way they approach it might be influenced by their experience or a greater intellectual capability or reasonable common sense. I guess the Indian IT market wants more people from the last category. Its not all about writing code. You need to analyze the risks involved while concluding in a solution. You need to see whether there were similar approaches in the past, whether they failed, if yes, why ? if no, why is it prospering ? what feature does it lack ? what can add more value to it ? There are several such, not so, trivial questions which you need to solve. Now putting up solution using a programming construct is the last fragment of a business solution. You don't need to be a geek to do this. !!

Open Source - The way ahead

If you are even remotely related to Open Source or can spell it..read this article. It speaks about Novell's history and the way they look at Open Source, as a potential placeholder in the IT Community.

US Presidential Election

What the hell !! Just turn on BBC, all you get for 16 hrs a day is about US Presidential Election, US Foreign Policy, Oil, Bush vrs Kerry, Bush Senior vrs Junior and ofcourse, the war against evil. I wonder why the media is so frenzy about this. A bit of it, has prominence, a lot of it - hmm cliches it. I just loved one of them though, more because of Madeleine Albright's wonderful, knowledgeable opinions. All her opinions were so explicable with sure facts. This programme also had a very high profile discussion panel. A must read for all those vivid followers of this presidential election. Just check the link to get interested.

A small part of the discussion was to analyze the effect of the raising powers of the 21st century, primarily India and China. Their effect on the world economy, the relationship USA has with them and its current foreign policy towards both of these countries. A few of the facts were raw truth. Tony Blair's unpopular decision to go hands with USA; USA, shunning Korea as not being a more potential threat (knowing the fact that they were increasing their nuclear arsenals), which was a mistake, when compared to Iran; unilateral action of Bush though there were multilateral solutions available. Such a tragedy. One interesting agenda was whether USA really wants any coalition. Is it not a giant to manage all by itself?

But how much of this is media going to live on. Is this all ? People want news, too much of it dilutes it. They seem to be digging too deep to thrive on it. I wonder how much of it is framed !!

Contributing to FOSS - a dilemma

There seems to be an ethical dilemma. Working for an organization, contributing to huge software development, following life cycles etc., each of these activities teach you a lot (provided you are willing and open to learn). Now one important aspect which you will surely acquire is Knowledge. Now given a scenario, where you are passionate to contribute to the Open Source Community and the contribution is along the lines which one of your previous projects thought you, What would you do? I remember signing a NDA (Non Disclosure agreement) when I joined this Organization. Is it a matter to worry about? Will you be able to professionally reason it out. Is it a sin ?? I question.

M$ versus Linux :))

Offlate I have been so much in a tangle about the Linux/Windows war that it is becoming increasingly difficult to breathe fresh air. Who is going to win the battle? An article I remember reading in one of the blogs said - "Where Linux takes root is in new applications, like Web servers and handheld devices. As those get better, applications will get sucked off the desktop onto the Internet, and that's what will undo Microsoft". This looks so true. For sometime now, I have been trying to realize more factors to base my decision on who is going to win. But thinking about it in a more pragmatic sense, I see no winners.

The market will see a whole new set of players with radically different business models. There will be choice and quality, and more importantly, there will be freedom and not monopoly. Eventually, everyone will have their own space.