Risk

You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.
- Andre Gide

We have come across a long way to here.  When you look back to the very beginning of the adventures that mankind underwent, it is evident that risk is part of evolution.  Whether it is discovering new oceans and land or flying in the air, we assumed risk.

It is essential that the supporting information for taking risk is from authorized source. Be sure to do your research before taking it granted that the effort you put in the process will work as you expect them to turn out.  Sometimes it will, sometimes it may not – it may all by a chance.

2010 – The Divine Beginning

We headed to Sri Ranganatha Temple in Pomona, NY, had a wonderful dharsan.  By evening, we headed to Arsha Vidya Gurukulam in Saylorsburg, PA.  We stayed overnight at their wonderful Gurukulam cottage and enjoyed the morning (5:45 AM) abhishekam of Sri Medha Dakshninamurthi.
We then headed to Sri Sharada temple in Stroudsburg, PA and had a beautiful Dharsan.  We headed back to Sri Ranganatha Temple for another wonderful event – Srinivasa Kalyanam

HP Phenomenon – KQED Forum

If you have 60 minutes, listen to the KQED forum with Charles House the author of HP Phenomenon.
The talks involves a very intense discussion on the history of HP and the culture in HP. There is also a question & answer session.

http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R912041000

Enjoy!!!

If Writing is your Business

You don’t have to be a journalist to write, today almost everyone in the corporate is faced with writing for business.  From a simple E-Mail message to a more complicated Policy and Procedure involved an extensive art of ‘writing’.

I was reading Writing Exceptional Policies and Procedures by Stephen B. Page (ISBN: 9781929065035) – (Chapter 6).  Author of the book explained more about how to set the heading and other parts of the document in MS Word.

I see a very great disconnect in the ‘Art of Writing’.  With more and more Word processing in the market, the author is forced to learn to typeset the document rather than concentrate on the ‘Writing’.  I feel that we are focusing our energy in the wrong direction.  While the author’s main job should be the content of the document and the job of a typesetter should be the layout of the document.
The author should decide,

• Section Headings
• Body of the document
• Other references, etc

The typesetter should decide

• The layout of the document
  
• Font Styles
• Headings
  

There is a tool for just that, it is called

Ubuntu 9.10

It is just 5 days away for the most popular Linux distro’s next release 9.10 a.k.a Karmic Koala.
With ext4 as default file system, Empathy as IM, GIMP 2.6 and GNOME 2.28 should be more interesting.
Ubuntu software center – a single point contact for all the application needs keep me exciting.
Wondering how the upgrade will be.

Cluttered by E-Mails – The Problem

Believe it or not, I often hear people complaining that they are cluttered by E-Mail or falling behind their emails.  When ever I come across such conversation, I immediately think of ‘Poor Management’.  E-Mail is by far a poor communication tool and when used for critical business process, it should always backed by some rigid communication.  It is like tossing the coin in the fountain, you have no idea whether it reached your recipient and does not guarantee any facial expression.  If the message is critical, normally people always backup with a phone call or an instant messenger.

Why so many E-Mails?
One of the prime suspect is the ‘CC’ traditionally translated to ‘carbon copy’.  People became acquainted to using CC and using it liberally became the problem.  You are tagged between a conversation between two recipients (From & To) which may sometimes get over 10 E-Mail thus overloading your Inbox.  By the end of the day, all you need is a single E-Mail with the outcome of the conversation between ‘From’ and ‘To’.

The next suspect is automated systems.  Today, any system (from hardware to software) can send an E-Mail.  If one system/software send you one E-Mail every 4 hours, then by the end of the day you have 6 E-Mail to ignore.  Most of the new system tools today are using ‘Dashboard’ mechanism to keep you informed and eliminate E-Mail clutter.

‘Poor Management’
This one is vital as it serves and supports the strategy of any business.  Trust me, cluttered E-Mail shakes the business.  If you are unable to keep up your E-Mail, it means either your business does not have a clear regulations on E-Mail communication or you are over loaded with responsibilities.  Either way, the work is not get done on time.

This applies mainly to business leaders, for others it is a different story.

HTML 5

Ian Hickson said he is reluctantly dropping the codecs subsections in the HTML5.  By doing so, we are not building a standards, instead we are trying to play nice.  This is totally wrong.  The specification should look a head and provide a open implementation.  Since, the majority of the player agreeing upon Ogg Theora and since Ogg is a open standard container, it should be adopted in the specification.  By doing so, there are couple of benefits in the long run.
- Apple can adapt its hardware for Ogg support.
- Ogg Theora can improve.
As Ian Hickson pointed out the options and possibility of including ogg/H.264 in the future.
But the codec should be included in the final specification, otherwise, we will end up with the same situation we have for <img> with no specifics.

Devices are for future

As we go through generations of innovation in technology, it is clear that while today is the day of computers, the future is for devices.  As the devices are evolving, it is pertinent that these are capable of doing more yet weighing less and fits in your palm.  From music player to game machine, they are the loaded beast, enough to replace the traditional computer today.

A gentle introduction to Cloud Computing …

I would like to take few minutes of your time explaining today’s industry buzzword – Cloud Computing. I will briefly narrate the definition of cloud computing.

History

The term cloud was coined in the IT industry by Ramnath Chellappa during his Dallas Speech in 1997. In a very concise measure, a cloud is the infrastructure behind the ‘service’ offering. It is also loosely termed for internet.

Service Definition

According to ITIL V3, a Service is a means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks.

One of the key points of Cloud Computing is the ownership of the costs and risk associated with the process is poised on to the service offering organization relieving you as a customer from those hurtles.

Understanding Cloud Computing

In order to understand the cloud computing, let us take a very simple example of web hosting. The hardware and software to run the web server is not owned by you, instead a web hosting company will take the burden from you and you simply use the service. However, a web hosting is not a typical cloud computing.

Cloud Computing is also closely related to the electricity grid and hence also termed as ‘utility computing’. Today, we take it for granted when we plug our ‘appliances’ to an electrical socket, we get the electricity. Back back in 1930, when the national grid was not available,

Cloud is Green!!!

The fundamental way a web hosting differs from cloud computing is the effective use of resource. In a web hosting, you are allocated a fixed amount of processing power and storage, while from the cloud computing prospective, the processing power and the storage is either shared among others or fixed and volatile or both. For this main reason, Amazon’s cloud platform is named as ‘Elastic’ In case of cloud computing, you pay for what you use. In most cases, you have the complete control of your ‘instance’, so you can increase or decrease the capacity.

Terminology

Cloud is the umbrella term for

• SaaS – Software as a Service
• PaaS – Platform as a Service
• HaaS – Hardware as a Service

Since, cloud computing is often deal with the internet or web, the service offering is done through ‘web services’.

In the future post, I will cover the benefits, drawbacks and industry players in this field. So Long…

Middle East Movement

We all know, what’s happening in the Middle East (esp. Iran). It clearly shows the people power. Apart from political aspects (which I won’t cover), from day one of the civilization, every one is wishes for the power to lead. In our scientific evolution, we still need to learn from ants, bees and other tiny animals that surrounds us. I started to think, are we really civilized? I highly doubt.

Just because we make discoveries does not really make us stand out of these silly creatures. We need to step back and start all over again in the right path or just stay in the early stages of evolution (very early).

After reading Thomas L. Friedman‘s column, I started to wondering what makes the Oil a power. I always thought Gold and Silver are the power and Oil as a killer – well it seems I am wrong. After all we use those oil and kill the planet and think the powerful nation is the one that carry this poisonous liquid.