Desicritics Category: BizTech: Software

Book Review: Database in Depth

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Mon, 7 Jul 2008 00:32:13 EDT

One of the most critical components of the IT framework in any organization is unarguably the database. With the consolidation of relational database management systems of different brands, there is a correspondingly demand for knowledgeable Database Administrators of good caliber at the administration end of such a critical component. This book comes as a theoretical shot in the arm for people aiming for such a profile.

For almost all the database products in use today, the foundational paper remains E.F. Codd's Derivability, Redundancy, and Consistency of Relations Stored in Large Data Banks. One of the important objectives of this book is to clarify the relational theory to practitioners. The author of the present book was one of the colleagues of E.F. Codd and has a much clearer understanding of the original paper as well as developments on it through to the present day. The author of this book along with Hugh Darwen has a formal proposal for the basics of future DBMS.

In the book under review, there is a very clear explanation of the theoretical concepts and their working without getting convoluted with particular implementations of the theory. Based on the components of the relational model throughout the beginning chapters, the eighth chapter gives the full-fledged definition of the relational model. It is defined in terms of five components that are discussed in the preceding chapters.

A must read portion of the book is the foreword by Jonathan Gennick giving the key reasons why any database practitioner should have this book in their collection. There is a warning for the reader though that they approach the book with the intent of learning, as the prose sometimes gets difficult to understand and needs multiple readings to get the point.

One of the only curiosities that the reviewer has is how the author of the present book would analyze the various branded implementations currently in the market in a sort of comparative study. Any such article would make a very interesting read indeed.

Book Review: The Book of IMAP

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Sun, 6 Jul 2008 03:56:10 EDT

IMAP is one of the most common protocols for e-mail servers on the Internet. Web-based e-mail services like Gmail and Hotmail use IMAP to retrieve and display e-mails in the browser, and e-mail clients like Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird support the protocol. In The Book of IMAP, there is a thorough practical explanation for setting up e-mail servers with courier IMAP or cyrus IMAP. By default, these include the POP3 server. IMAP is a more mature version of POP3 allowing users to manipulate operations on their mailboxes stored on the mail server.

The book is divided into three main parts - the first deals with the generic set up and maintenance of IMAP servers, Courier-IMAP and Cyrus-IMAP implementations are covered in the second and third parts.

For large scale implementations of IMAP mail servers, there is a requirement to efficiently handle the mail requests in real-time. For this purpose, there is the requirement of load-balancing among servers connected to a common storage at the backend via SAN/NAS. An alternative way is to split the mail database access across several servers based on some ordering of the mail accounts. Both of these implementations are explained in detail. Again, for very large environments there is the possibility to have a IMAP proxy arrangement in place which can each lead to the load balancing arrangement of IMAP servers connected to the fast storage backend.

Other important topics covered include setting up webmail clients for these mail servers such as Squirrelmail and Horde/IMP, migration of IMAP servers due to reasons such as new IMAP server software or migration from POP3, in-depth discussion for the cyrus and courier IMAP mailserver configurations and features.

To summarize, the book is a useful and thoroughly technical read for the mailserver administrator working on IMAP or related professionals wanting to know more about this opensource mailserver technology.

Tech Review: Vysr - A Lookup Bar, Not A Toolbar

Rajiv Renganathan — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:14:57 EDT

I found Vysr from FastCompay.TV's demo-cum-interview of Guda Venkatesh (Alumnus of IIT, Kanpur). Vysr is a new toolbar released in beta for Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. It aims to enhance the browsing experience by giving easy access to popular services like Google News, Wikipedia, YouTube, MapQuest and others (called Apps) within the current view of the Webpage. Even better, it adds a context of the selected text to these apps. What this means is that you can select "abc" on a webpage and click on the Wikipedia app on Vysr. An in-page display shows the Wikipedia page on "abc". I like that! This acts like a lookup within the scope of my current webpage rather than opening another window or tab. Hence, I call it a Lookup bar, rather than a Tool bar.

The positioning of Vysr is different too. Vysr does not take away valuable real estate in your browser. It is well positioned in the bottom right corner. It is also easier to enable or disable with just a click, without having to search through the browser menus.

For developers, they plan to release a set of APIs. I'm looking forward to designing a Vysr app to search for shopping deals in India with DealSearchMaadi.com and stock analysis with Stockoogle.in.

Apart from the developer API, here is my wish list:

1. Google Web search app. (How could they forget this in the first place?)

2. The bar gets longer as I choose more apps. I would like to have a Windows quick launch bar's double-arrow styled option that on clicking, pops up the other apps.

3. Geo-focused apps, especially for India for local weather, maps, stocks, news, search etc.

I would ve interested to see if Vysr is capable of replacing my Google toolbar over a period of time, also considering the possibility of Google using its toolbar to sketch Google Trends!

The World Congress of Information Technology 2008, Malaysia

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Fri, 6 Jun 2008 13:28:10 EDT

I had the honour of attending and speaking at the WCIT 2008 conference in Malaysia and here are some rather disjointed notes that I had while listening to the speakers. I tried to clean it up, but again, apologies for not being able to make this very professional indeed.

Monday

The conference center is big! And I got lost in the exhibition hall. Quite an impressive setup. So then finally managed to extricate myself from poking into the guts of various exciting electronics bits, went looking to find the plenary hall, and found myself sitting in the hall looking at an ant hill of activity. I could not imagine how on earth will they manage to fit 3200 people and assorted volunteers and managers into this hall but they sure did.

Typically, there was the media scrum when a Prime Minister arrives....We were welcomed by 40 children welcoming us in 40 languages representing 90 odd countries here, but the language used through out the conference is English. Curious, no? the prevalence of English in the world?

He also said that UK and South Korea are behind Malaysia in the World Competitiveness Index, and I can well believe it. Although checking the Global Competitiveness Report here seems like the results are different. Perhaps he is talking about this report. Anyway, mere quibbling. And now the PM has left and literally the front 1/4th of the hall has emptied! Some more speeches about WITSA.

Then Dr. Craig Bennett, Chairman of Intel, started talking about how we have a billion people on the Internet and now we have to get the next billion on the Internet as well. He said that four factors are important for knowledge based economic development

Physical access to technology
connection to internet and connectivity
content targeted at local population
education on how to use the tool

He said that a well educated teacher is the magic and not the PC in the classroom. He showed a video about a Nigerian school which has embraced technology but said technology again is not really the only answer.

He talked about taking a holistic viewpoint, what's the point of giving a $200 PC while the monthly connectivity costs are $250 per month in many countries, 100kb monthly cost in Japan is 6 cents, 50 cents in USA and more than 80 dollars in Sub-Saharan Africa. Now you can get an idea how tough it will be to get these people on the intranet or to roll out the broadband revolution to them (more about the exception being that of India later on).

He talked about how Pakistan is being used as an example of pushing broadband and network connectivity out into the sticks. 60mm dollars is the budget, rolling out in untouched areas in Pakistan, he invited a Pakistani chap to the stage who is the CEO of the public company which is helping to push this (didn't catch the name). Connectivity is a challenge. Satellite is way too expensive. Fiber is the only way. Rolling out fiber is tough, so tehsils where its not remunerative for private companies, this company gives money and offers seed capital, it helps to improve the business case for the private firm. This was a good step. The Pakistani chap said that Govt should not be involved that much in this business, put power to public private consortiums or just private firms, give them a stake in the business and then it will work. But I am not holding my breath, I want to know whether connectivity actually helps or would more investment in say better teacher training help?

He video conferenced a doctor from Brazil into us, how location differences for patients versus diagnostics versus doctors versus care had disappeared, and this tele-medicine actually is helping far more people than medicine and doctors were previously. Then there was some corporate stuff with some kids brought on stage and it ended. It was a bit too slick and the questions with the kids was too obvious and that left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Such a senior chap shouldn't need such kind of gimmicks to play around with such an important topic, we are all adults, you don't have to take us to be children or idiots to play that game.

I was a bit impressed with what he had to say, but what he had to say was crucial (leave aside all the silly posturing and even more silly marketing of Intel stuff). His point was, throwing money at technology and expecting better performance from students was wrong, the idea is to teach the teachers to be better, that will provide better results than thousands of PC's and laptops.

Nothing much to note for the next few sessions. The post lunch session for the Ministerial panel was a bit interesting. Mainly because you could see how various governments approached this entire idea of information technology. You know what was the most disappointing? It was the Philippines MP. She came across as a complete Neanderthal, saying that in many parts of her constituency, there is no electricity power anyway, forget about PC's, and it was a whine. The Philippines government should really have thought that through. The Malaysian government minister and other ministers were smart, they obviously were pushing their countries and with due reason, telling us, the corporate folks, what we wanted to hear..., but Philippines? Pathetic. She is a blot on that country's face.

The next wireless broadband session made me go to sleep. Pure and simple, those two Romanian scientists, bright as they were, made me doze off specially when they started talking about antenna design, and specially after that excellent lunch.

Woke up to an excellent presentation by Professor Takenaka. He talked about how he was made the Minister for Finance in Japan by a certain Lionheart PM of Japan. Fascinating tale of how he took on the entrenched might of bureaucrats and financial institutions and won. And I well believe him, given some down sides, generally that time was brilliant, it still shows that even in a consensual driven society such as Japan, you can still have mavericks who hire mavericks who really make a huge difference! Brilliant fellow. Unfortunately he was not allowed to fulfill his destiny and do all that he wanted to do but there you go, he literally broke the back of the Japanese economic stalemate. I was personally quite impressed but I suspect that quite a lot were not as he was talking more about economics and finance than IT. The IT piece came way afterwards, a little bit and as an after thought.

Then we had Bill Gates in a hologram talking about Microsoft and then Dr. Zhang also, not very clear about what, was flagging badly by that time.... and then we went off back to the hotel, did some more emails and then some calls back home and then off to dinner, again, dinner was brilliant, and pigged out and came back and went to snore, i mean sleep.

Tuesday

The day started with perhaps one of the most interesting panel discussions I have ever attended. It was to do with how to produce innovation and creativity and what can be done to enhance it. These were the people there.

- Arnold Gay, Anchor, CNBC - Moderator
- Kamil Othman, Vice President, Multimedia Development Corporation
- Fritz Attaway, Executive Vice President, Motion Picture Association of America
- Terry Thoren, Chief Executive Officer, Rocket Fish Studios

You cannot get a better collection of people talking about the most creative of industries, motion pictures and a very educational and interesting debate happened. Terry said that the world is changing, Malaysia has twin towers now while USA no longer has it. Who knows what's going to happen in the future? He has severe distaste for politics but great admiration for tech, people, process, creativity, etc

Kamil went into deep details on how to build an innovative industry? Animation in Malaysia. Disappointing take up, long way to go, to make a Walt Disney, you need to start with one million children drawing in grade 8. You cannot create a flash laboratory, shove people in there and wait on the other side of the Lab waiting for Toy Story or Cinderella to drop out of the other side. It has to be started from the very basic levels, people cannot look down on the arts which they do at this moment.

Monetisation of opportunities and content is a challenge, how do you do it? look around you, all countries are pushing people to get educated and into the knowledge sciences, but not all people are thus inclined. Many people simply do not like mathematics or technology. Some people want to study arts, or paint or simply do not have the mathematical skills. What do you do to them? Those who want to write poems? How does he get paid? or fed?

There were conversations around how to create a movie or animated film, quite interesting to see how Hollywood and Silicon Valley literally took decades to develop, you cannot do that just by throwing technology at it. Quite thought provoking indeed. Perhaps one could question whether it is possible to force people to become creative? Or can you just provide the infrastructure and let them get on with it? or is it just let people be, and trust in them to come up with the goods?

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The next session had more ministers but I was quite interested and taken by A Raja, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, India. I have to admit, I was quite cynical at first knowing about Indian politicians, but was very impressed to see what he had to say about it all, how they are powering ahead with the licence's, what mistakes they made, how the process of governance is happening, who gets to approve what? and so on and so forth. Pretty good and well, I will think that what he is saying is right, because I have experienced the mobile phone revolution in India.

As usual, it has to be different. Rest of the world goes through scientific revolution, industrial revolution, then wars then dial up then broadband and mobile, India starts off with revolutions in 3000 years BC, then has fun, then goes into decline, then starts off with a revolution in Y2K and then the next revolution is mobile and mobile internet and mobile commerce is bigger now, how strange and unique... Very curious, loads to think about there. The technology trajectories of these two countries, based upon what Dr. Jiren of China said, are so different. One wonders what will happen in the future.

Incidentally, there was a gentleman from Saudi Arabia who made me think of the previous session. He spoke on about how much money has been pumped into the industry in Saudi Arabia, the emergence of knowledge cities, and the like. Not impressed at all. Not at all impressed. Setting up a knowledge city and throwing money at it does not solve the problem of creativity or having knowledge industries. For that, you need to have creativity at the school level. They have to inquire and challenge everything. Can you imagine something like that happening in Saudi Arabia? Which is the reason why I couldn't take it any more and went outside to grab a coffee. Perhaps the organisers should have kept coffee on tap, this was crazy, they dont want the participants to keep awake? dont they know we drink coffee by the gallon?

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The next topic was rather dry, Dr. Mobius talked about where the next hotspots will be. And I lost my notes on this lecture so this part is a bit vague. I remember him showing loads of graphs about where and when returns are made. It was an asset management view, so was a bit dry. Still, was a bit interesting, specially around the returns of the various sectors in the Asian economy. That is much that I remember... if and when I get my hands on his slide deck, and have time to read it again, will comment...

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For the next session, I went to the "Asia, the destination of choice for Shared Services and Outsourcing" session.

- Dato’ Narayanan Kanan, Senior Vice-President, Multimedia Development Corporation – Moderator
- Michael F. Corbett, Chairman of the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals
- Dr Ganesh Natarajan, Chairman, NASSCOM
- David Wong, Chairman, Outsourcing Malaysia
- Stephen Braim, Vice President Governmental Programs, IBM Asia Pacific

Very interesting, Michael spoke about the impact of the US elections on international outsourcing. I was, frankly a bit puzzled by that kind of emphasis. For two reasons. The first aspect is that the actual number of jobs which are dependent upon the classical aspect of outsourcing is reducing, and the second aspect is, did he really think that the elections will make a tiny bit of difference? Obviously yes, but I am rather disappointed that it was more American rather than International. Also, I was a bit saddened that there was no discussions about international aspects, taxation, technology which allows remote working, etc.

But overall, it was quite interesting, there was discussion about education and how that will help in various countries. What Malaysia is trying to do. What the IBM view was from the perspective of government initiatives and education and so on and so forth. But also, I was a bit disappointed that most people's perspective was the next 8 - 12 months, not more. Still, lets go to lunch, was feeling quite hungry now.

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Over lunch, we had a speech by Dr. Rowe, where he was talking about how the worlds of virtual reality and real life reality meet and how they work together. Quite an interesting topic and he spoke quite a lot about his own personal experiences and the like. But not much about real life applications. I then sent him an email afterwards, and this is what I said to him.

At ABN AMRO, we used Second Life to actually recruit, it was very challenging and interesting but it ultimately failed because of lack of regulatory frameworks. Ended up with 5.5 FTE dedicated to Second Life but then scaled back.
We also used a virtual world to help mentoring. Such as when we have just 2 IT employees in Uzbekistan, then how do I get the junior chap mentored? So we setup a virtual world where mentors and mentee's can congregate in a persistent state across the world. This helps in knowledge capture and better employee retention.
My friend from BP is using a virtual world to track every employee in complex and potentially dangerous plants. This location tracking and graphical display of every employee is used for fire, safety, evacuation and training purposes.

Second life and other virtual lives have become really challenging world and are throwing up some seriously challenging questions for us, again which have not been fully explored just yet.

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Unfortunately, I missed the next slot because we had to go and get powdered up for our session at 3. Not much to speak about in there, check out the slide deck. Also managed to miss out a large proportion of the next presentation from Dr. Pachauri because we were supposed to be in a room answering questions. But did manage to catch snippets of his talk. Quite interesting.

I had to take an office phone call so managed to miss out on the next one as well. So that was that. Nice dinner, watched a charity auction, observed some very nice and lovely looking ladies. This lady was standing 2 feet away from me. Very fragrant. Nice hair even.

Wednesday

This day was going to be challenging, specially since it was also the Champions League Final day.

The day started with me taking breakfast in the Trader Hotel Lounge, where I had been put up, its just next door to the KLCC so very convenient indeed. So took some pictures from the 34th floor lounge while having breakfast.

Here are the twin towers, at the base you can see the gigantic 6 story mall with two wings. It is absolutely stonkingly huge, that mall. Anyway, the twin towers, and the very well landscaped park around the buildings. The building on the left of the twin towers is the Mandarin Oriental where many other guests were also put up.

Then the day started with two debates on the future of the Internet. A deep discussion erupted over the net neutrality issue. To be honest, I have never really thought about it till I was forced to sit and listen to these two debates. Not that I have really firmed up my thoughts but the question is, who pays for the internet? It is my firm belief that nothing is free in this world, somebody will ultimately pay, either the taxpayer, stockholder, consumer, today you or tomorrow in the form of your child. Somebody has to pay. So this idea that the net is free is frankly stupid and more worryingly, it shows a childish view of the world.

Also, the idea that a communications network will or should be free is against human history. Do you think that the pigeon post was free to everybody? or the pony express allowed everybody to send stuff over? or how about the fact that letters still cost to send stuff to each other? Or the fact that we have public and private ownership over the postal system? Or the fact that we have regulations governing what can and cannot be sent over the posts? Or how about the fact that online classifieds are killing newspapers? Or how about the issue that emails are killing the postal system? So when we do not have any issues over that, why do we suddenly end up having an issue over the net neutrality aspect? Here is a good overview article. Very complicated matter, but I suspect it will end up like we have the health service. A Universal service provision which will provide some kind of a basic internet, which is slow and unreliable, while a paid for internet which is better and faster. Pretty much common compared to other industries, if you ask me.

Then there was a discussion about Silicon Valley, it started in 1940's, it took 10 years to know, 10 years to come, 20 years to investment, etc. etc. Takes a heck of a long time to start developing an industry. See what Taiwan did, took them decades to get to it but get to it they did. Now they are the champions, and almost every PC in the world has some Taiwanese components in it.

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Next session I had to miss, then popped into the Mexico session for a few just to realise that they were talking about near shoring. I mean, d'oh, get on with the programme, people are now in the 5th generation of out sourcing and we are still in the terminology of the 1st generation. Crikey! that made me so depressed that I went back to the room and started my calls. Also had a quick bite to eat in the room itself, couldn't’get out of the calls but went back to catch the next great debate.

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Not much to report on other than the fact that one of the guests (I told you, lost all my notes because my stupid My Documents folder decided that it wants to forget all about my previous history and start afresh to synch...). said that the adoption of energy efficiency standards by California means that the energy usage per citizen has now leveled off compared to other states. But if you think about it, the lesson from this is to start imposing energy standards more and more, get people challenged to be smarter about their energy usage. So while the usage will rise, but it will level off at some point!, interesting, no?

So I went looking for some data. What does this tell you? Well, it did make me go hmmmm. We are actually seeing a dip in the energy consumption per capita in North and South America, albeit from a relatively high level. Delving deeper into North America, Canada and Mexico are showing an increase while, very surprisingly, USA is dipping down and decreasing. How curious. 40 countries out of 134 countries actually showed a dip in energy consumption between 2000 and 2003. Some of them were obviously banana republics which were facing economic downturns such as Zimbabwe, or contractions such as Argentina, Ivory Coast, Bolivia, Eritrea, etc.

But what explains this reduction for countries as varied as Belgium, Brazil, Australia, Chile, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, UAE, United Kingdom and USA? Can it be that despite increasing populations, their energy efficiency is improving? Dont take my word for it, check out the data. It is from the IEA even, so would be ok as well. Population information from the United Nations.

The next topic was the most interesting one, so I will put up another dedicated post for it. Came out to grab a coffee before going back in and saw that the sky was cloudy, the KL Tower was nearly hidden under clouds. Unfortunately, all the photographs with the top of the tower hidden did not come out, but hope you can make out the onion dome in the back being hazy in the mist.

One of the living legends of the internet age, Dr Vinton Cerf, Vice-president & Chief Internet Evangelists, Google, spoke on the topic of "Tracking the Internet into the 21st Century". This was the final presentation of the WCIT and the entire hall was absolutely crowded, people were standing on the aisles waiting to hear that great man.

He talked about the future of the internet. Said that the internet penetration around the world is strange. Asia, Middle East and Africa are bad or low or both. Only 20% of the world is connected. He used the World Population Reports from the UN about the 2300 figures and displayed them, some interesting rises and dips. I presume he is talking about this report. See the graph on page 19 of the report. High scenario shows a horrifying 36 billion people on the planet, with a medium one of less than 10 billion. Bloody interesting report but this is not the place to go into it.

He talked about how only 20% are connected to the internet and more will grow. Incidentally, I found it much easier to observe him up on the main screen rather than watch him on the far left. Which begs the question, if this was webcast, then I wouldn't have traveled to Malaysia.... (theoretical question...). Which made me go off into a different train of thought.

My facebook, orkut, myspace, etc. accounts are nothing but very primitive clones of myself. I cannot be everywhere, so my primitive clones operate on my behalf. Just like my email system does and my voicemail system does. As a matter of fact, my home is also a sort of a clone. It has an address which is independent of me. People can communicate with me on an asynchronous basis and I can get back to them whenever. So when people are writing something on my facebook wall, are they communicating with me? or with my clone?

Say I have an active Second Life account. Is that me or is that my clone? Or both? I feed those clones with information and they act/react based upon my preferences. So I can be in another place via my robot/clone and get back information to me when it is convenient to me. I do not have to be face to face with you to get information. You can email/voicemail me and I can pick it up at my convenience.

If I communicate with my son online in Second Life via both our avatars while we are both across the world, am I still his father? to what extent? How about love? Can I show my love to him? via that medium? How does he know that it is me? Or if I was seeing Dr. Cerf across the world on a webcast, how would I know it is him? Just because somebody said so? identity problems galore. Does this mean that more friends you have, more your identify is confirmed? Like an amazon or ebay seller, more positive recommendations, the better is the identity and better is the trust. What do I do when I am dealing with a financial institution? Curiously, microcredit or microfinance rests on this premise, it lends money to people on the basis of guarantors from their community. So a person has to be social and know people and be trusted by them in order to get money. Bit different from my neural network Kohonen map based credit scoring model, eh? But I digress.

He talked about IPv6 (a network address for every device on this planet and then some, even some for your socks..), better search engines. He said something that I will come back to, he said that the monetisation and earning potential online will be less and the current business models will have to change.

He also talked about BIT rot, how on earth will you manage to open a Powerpoint 1997 file in Windows 3000? Forget about that old a problem, here is my problem. I wanted to dig out some research that I had done way back in 1990. I did not have the files here in London so had to wait till I got back to home and went to poked through my old cupboard. Besides the nostalgic kick, I finally found the floppy disks. 5 1/4 inch floppy disks to be precise. I have also operated the 8 inch floppy disk but well, the data that I had was in two formats, Lotus 1-2-3 and dbase. I remember sitting back on my haunches, looking at the dusty pile of floppies, and thinking back to those hours and days that I spent in typing in the financial data of the companies and did the basic analysis. Do you know, I even managed to calculate multiple regression on the damn things in there? Anyway, for all purposes, that data is now lost to me. I do not have a floppy drive anywhere near me, none of the 4 home pc's have it. I have an old laptop which has a floppy drive but it is 8 1/2 inch drive, not the older 5 1/4th inch drive. So I am stiffed.

Fast forward today. Financial institutions are supposed to keep data for up to 10 years. So your transactions and your records are supposed to be kept nicely and carefully within the firm for 10 years. Now the transactions are processed, on an average, via 10 odd applications. There can be many more depending upon the country and product but just think about it, 10 applications, multiple operating systems, multiple upgrades, multiple hardware requirements, multiple network systems, multiple servers, so many different types of technology stacks, and we have to maintain a record of this. Within 5 years, it becomes a major issue to keep up to date with technology, we are talking about 100's of years? No bloody way.

Museums are now struggling with electronic art. I could have taken those disks to a museum but they are also facing problems. Here's a great paper written in 2001 and the problem has become even worse now.

He also talked about the inter-planetary internet. That just blew my mind away but it needs much more thought before I can write more about it, its not fully comprehended yet. Anyway, he got a standing ovation at the end. I ran to attend his Q&A after getting distracted by an email, but still managed to get to the hall to ask him a question. I asked him, you have talked so much about what will happen in 2035 and 2300, the physical shape of the internet, the devices, the penetration rates, and and and. What do you think would be the value system, the monetary framework, the price formation or who will pay for it all? It was obvious that I had asked a wrong question immediately because it did not go anywhere fast. I did ask some follow up questions, but he is a great man, he had to rush off to meet somebody else.

This is my problem. I am supposed to think about what's going to happen in 5 years time in the financial world. This is what I am seeing currently. People who are in the 15-25 years of age category, the great unwashed herd who will be our future employees and customers, are not that well versed in value creation online. And why would they be? Look at what kids do online these days. He watches movies, plays songs, plays games, chats with people, participates in joint coding, and so on and so forth. Almost all of this is free or stolen. His email is free, his programming language is free, songs and movies are free, his video is from YouTube, his chatting is free via text and messenger, his voice is free over VoIP. So all these assets that these kids are using, they are all free at this moment.

So I am most certainly not surprised that they do not know the value of online assets. So when you ask them, how much are you worth? or how much will you work for? or how much do you wish to charge for your ideas? or how much funding will you need for your great online idea? no idea. And that is the issue that I am struggling with. In 5 or 10 years, the link between physical work, money and online assets will be inextricably broken. So how much would I pay a coder? How much would Microsoft pay a programmer when most online assets are free?

My son said something to me today that completely blew me away. He said that he will go create some online jewels and armour in World of Warcraft as birthday gifts for his friend who lives 5 houses down. No money, no nothing, just pure and simple virtual asset formation, entertainment and happiness increased but with no reference to money at all. Deeply worrying.

So to go back to Dr. Cerf, on what basis will anybody pay for a book in 2300? or a share in the company making Windows 3000? or the ability to write code? Or to create a powerpoint presentation? I do not have an answer, but I didn't get one either. I will be struggling with this as part of my job as well, but I am seriously not sure what the answer is. We saw some amazing valuation modeling during the internet boom. But they did put a value on an intangible asset, no? It was a bad value, but a value none the less. Also goes to the heart of what Mark to Market is all about. If this is all too philosophical, think about this, my son is happier getting a World of Warcraft spell rather than an intricately carved wooden box which I got for him.....Should I have gone to the local electronic fair in Kuala Lumpur and bought a user-id/password for him instead? How would I judge what is a fair amount to pay? I have no idea whatsoever. No reference points at all.

That brought me to the end of the conference. The last day, Thursday, was a trip to Cyberjaya and Putrajaya, the IT and administrative hubs of the country, but dont think that fits in here, so you can see some pictures here. I have also written another essay on my observations on Malaysia and that should be published soon as well. End of the day, fascinating indeed and perhaps it was appropriate that that brought my professional career stint with technology to an end, now its moving back into the front office. But technology will remain with me, either with my shareholder, customer or employees. Food for thought, will try to attend the next one in 2010 in Amsterdam.

Technorati Tags: Technology,Internet,Web 2.0

Attrition And New Recruits

Tanay Behera — Sun, 1 Jun 2008 10:26:44 EDT

Attrition is a growing concern for many the firms across various sectors in different corners of the world but today the pain is felt more in India. This bruise gets highlighted more in an Indian context because of the growing gap between the growing economy and the engines which are partners in this ride to deliver. Because of employee attrition few initiatives are put on the back burner. The HR managers are having a tough time locating a suitable replacement with required experience and ability, to fill up the vacancies created on account of exit of key employees.

The points that I mention here as to why employees, especially new joinees leave the firm, a little after the embryonic stage of their job career cycle are from what I have seen in the real world corporate dynamics, heard about experiences from friends and few from the learnings and readings from various articles, journals and blogposts. These points are mostly centered around those who have spent their time and energy in the industry (mostly IT/Tech/Tech Services/Engineering) from a range of one year to four years after their graduation from an engineering school or a technical institute. Even few of the points apply to those who don a much higher number of years experience hat. The points mentioned below are not in any order of significance or priority and is just a compendium of views.

1. Opportunities available: The present economy has opened up the doors of opportunities. If a person is skilled, smart and is an inventory of ideas, s/he is like an appetizing cake, waiting for the market to react. Present day progressive forward looking youth aspire to see their career advancement as well as improvement in his financial earnings in the shortest possible time. Demand for smart talent is always there, so when an individual doesn't find his/her present place of work to offer a hotfooting atmosphere, there are other avenues to explore may be in another firm, a start-up or a similar place.

Thanks to his own ambition, and to the Indian outsourcing boom, he escaped. He gained admission to the best engineering school in India, then landed a job that he could hardly have dreamed of as a child: writing software for Oracle, the U.S. technology giant.

"I fell in love," he said, recalling his first visit to Oracle's campus in Bangalore.

But Jain's zest eventually fizzled under the repetitive rigors of the Indian back office. So he did what a parade of burned-out functionaries in Bangalore have begun doing: He quit outsourcing to create his own start-up - in his case, designing cellphone software that blocks calls from telemarketers.

2. Incorrect picture painted in campus placement talks: Many global firms work as different legal entities/operating units but under one global brand umbrella in India. To make things clear, let’s take a fictitious firm 'Desicritics Corp', which has under it many legal entities such as ' Desicritics R&D Center', ' Desicritics Software Services Center', ' Desicritics Consulting Team', ' Desicritics Technologies', etc. In most campus placements, ' Desicritics' would go as a single team for hiring but the offer letters are delivered by the different groups under its canopy. To a campus recruit, who is not aware of all these internal corporate crosswords everything appears to be the same. But after working in the industry for a year or two, when s/he realizes that s/he was offered a cozen pill, looking for opportunities elsewhere is the most pragmatic option.

3. Big names don’t matter much anymore: Today big brands in job market do not draw as much awe as it used to few years back. Big names are subtly occupying increasingly lower positions in a candidate's priority list. Individuals are perfectly fine working with small and mid tier firms because it's a known fact that sometimes the biggies cannot match the salaries offered by successful second-rung companies which functions to an extent on a start up blueprint. More so many big firms have even now withdrawn ESOPs, which were the main draw a few years ago. In contrast smaller companies are able to offer profit-sharing plans, interesting projects and more responsibility at an early stage in the candidate's career. This is like a ready made dish for a candidate working in a big firm shrouded with global policies, indefinite/infinite processes, layers of politics, and most important lack of visibility in a big crowd.

In just 3 short years, the world has changed. When I wrote this column for rediff.com in June 2004, it was still a big deal to join one of the Big Five. Except, perhaps at an IIT.

With the rising aspirations of fresh grads the same jobs have lost their sheen. The net has to be spread wider and wider, to tier 2 and tier 3 colleges, which would not be on the recruitment map at all a couple of years ago.

At a lesser known college it is a matter of pride that 'Infosys picked up 6 students'. The feeling is that of having 'arrived'.

But next year when 60 join, and then 100, the same 'we are being recruited like alu and pyaaz' feeling sets in.

Bottom line is: 'Aapne kaam se maatlab raakho, yeh big brand maain rakha kya hai'.

4. Company and personal goals clash: Many of the smart recruits in many local and global firms are hired through campus placements in engineering schools during the pre-final year days. Placement talks are like major brand shows and each of the hiring firms tries to outshine others in the fray by attractive presentations in diverse formats. Company goals and visions are put forward to candidates and these tastes like the best recipes to accelerate one's career. The message that is sent is: 'With the company's goals, all measures are taken for an employee's personal development also'. I am not denying the fact that there are companies who do orchestrate company's goals and employees' personal goals but the number is less. Come to the work place, the real world is not that hunky dory. This is completely out of phase, of WYWPIWYG assurance (what-you-were-promised-is-what-you-get). In short most of the cases of attrition thrive on the thread that firms place their priorities ahead of employees' goals, without understanding the employees' basic aspirations resulting in friction.

Although their HR depts claim that they have systems which ensure a smooth induction, training and deployment onto projects that isn't quite the case for everyone.

An interesting post related to this ishere.

5. Change in mindset, among individuals and society: Gone are the days, when one stuck to a job even though it was not satisfying, solely on grounds of monetary benefits. The present young generation wants money, no doubt about that, but it's just not money, it has to be enwrapped with stimulating job assignments and responsibilities that tickles one’s tastes. More often than not, the most heard verdict among individuals is.

Besides, they soon learn, the job is not really about programming at all... One such dude sums up the average IT career path on a Pagalguy forum:

There is not much of a ladder is S/W industry as such. For most life is quite typical. One or two years in a company. Then a chance to go onsite and see some money. Then back home. Another 2 years and then one becomes an analyst and after 5-6 years, a manager. And your engineering branch is the last thing that would matter here.

Even parents and family members, do not evaluate much when they realize that their children are not very happy with their professions and wish to pursue something that is completely out-of-the-box and divergent to their present occupations. These parents stand as pillars supporting their individuals realize their dreams. I know of few people who have left their regular 9 to 5 jobs in tech firms to work full-time for a NGO, to practice as a freelance photographer, to run a restaurant, etc. The attrition resulting from this is miniscule but it is happening these days. This case is more like pre-caution is better than cure. So when one realizes that s/he had boarded an in-correct ship that would never reach the destination s/he had sculpted in their mind, so better get down in the initial phase before it’s too late.

6. Higher studies plan: A sizeable number of campus recruits move to the U.S. or other countries to pursue higher studies and explore more attractive career opportunities after working in the industry for a year or two after their graduation. They form a small pool of the attrition camp. Few go abroad for their Masters degree, few for their PhDs and few others stretch their stay in India to apply later for an MBA program abroad later. It's not that foreign lands are the only destinations, these days many prefer to go for a Masters program in the IISc, IITs, NITs, or even BITS in the engineering and tech stream and to the coveted IIMs and other top ranked B-Schools after clearing the CAT in the domain of business management. Even ISB with its global tag in business education along with many other private schools in India partnered with other western schools of Business Management is an irresistible destination for many who wish to put their lives on a fast track road. Every year just before the admission season, many managers wait dumbfounded to see how many of the ambitious wickets would fall.

7. Manager-employee Relationship: A smart manager is one who can understand the aspirations of his/her employee and can harness the true capabilities and potentialities to the last drop, brusquely pointing the areas of improvement among the team members. Now that appears as a picturesque and cheeky definition never to be realized in reality because a greater chunk of IT related work in India is service and maintenance oriented, which in turn is purely dependent on margins and numbers. More often than ever, a manager can't do justice to both numbers and fulfilling aspirations and finds him/her self in a Catch-22 situation. For some inflammation or misunderstanding arising at work, involving the manager and employee, mostly the bosses chalk up the tension to a personality clash. There is a tendency, according to management experts, to think that personality is the cause of organizational discord rather than perhaps an effect of it.

Ben Dattner, an associate at Dattner Consulting executive coaching firm, believes that personality conflict might be a symptom of a larger organizational issue. "When I work with my clients, I often try to get them to see how it is not just a conflict between two people. I try to get them to see that it is also potentially a conflict between two visions, two agendas, two constituencies or two visions for the future."

The most applied remedy in this case by young employees is to nip off the problem at its root, just leave the job and find a job elsewhere that suits to one's personal liking in most aspects. Quite a number of exits happen in many firms because of the above mentioned reason.

8. Team one works for: Fresh out of engineering schools, many graduates have a swelled head for being a product from a top school in India. This is very much human and expected behavioral pattern that this crowd aspires to be a part of best of the available work/assignments in any organization in the initial days of his/her career. But since most of the IT industry in India is doused in services and maintenance layer of the entire business cycle as stated in Point. 7, easy to follow processes are defined to streamline the execution segment with élan and efficiency. After doing the same work in repetitive cycles, it's no rocket science and even a normal graduate can tackle that in the most cost effective way without necessitating the presence of smart engineers who demand higher pay checks for the same job.

This air of exclusivity and clannishness lingers in the minds of many for the initial few years. Unfortunately if they happen to belong to a team that is of a different clan/tribe than their's in many vistas, they connect with their friends and settle in zones that match their bandwidth. A sizeable number of exits in many firms fall under this category.

As I mentioned here, the points stated above are my personal views and are collected from various sources. This is definitely not intended on any organization, firm, group or for that matter anybody and everybody. This is an open post and would love to hear other diverse views, if you have any.

E-Governance and Grassroots Governance

Shantanu Dutta — Wed, 14 May 2008 10:45:49 EDT

When I engaged the services of a smart, suave lawyer to draft the Trust Deed that I had to register, I thought that I was being smart. Getting good legal advice to have the paper work sewn up well seemed to be a good move. Drafting the deed well was the main half of the story; registering the deed itself would be child’s play afterwards; or so I thought. I was wrong.

Whereas the lawyer had drafted any number of Trust Deeds and drafted mine too in a jiffy, registering the deed turned out to be a nightmare. A visit to the sub-registrar’s office to register a document – any document at all is the best possible proof that if any job at can be performed by machines and computers, they should be asked to do so without any further ado and interaction with human beings is best kept at the irreducible minimum.

The first sight to greet you as you approach the sub registrar’s office is a slew of soft drink and bottled water sellers. That sight ought to make any one’s heart quiver; for if such sellers abound like vultures, it only means that there is a market for their wares in the form of indeterminable delays.

Once you alight, you are in the midst of what can best be called a maze with all sorts of people milling around – clients, petty shopkeepers, hangers on and tough looking people in tight T Shirts. Although there are enough signage; the one most prominent is one advising the client to “beware of touts”. And yet with no clear reception counter or window or help desk, and a swarming crowd trying to find its way through the chaos, the only one who knows the drill to get the job done with as little delay as possible is the tout. Getting your job done without a tout’s help in that run down office where the babu sits behind shuttered windows under a fan and the client lines up under the blazing sun without the pretense of even a canopy is like trying to cross the Sahara desert without map or compass.

I remember the times before e-ticketing in the railways became common when the bookings were all manual. Whenever we went on summer breaks, the first job to do was to make a trip to the railway station to book the return ticket. The process took effectively the whole day and was fraught with uncertainty as the bookings were made manually on a giant ledger and with the queue moving at a snail’s pace, there was no assurance that by the time, one reached the head of the queue, the ticket one sought would still be available.

If there is one area where e-governance has made a difference to a whole lot of people, it is in the area of railway bookings. Another may be banking, especially the adoption of core banking by many of the public sector banks. Several embassies have reduced human contact and give online appointments for visa interviews and other related formalities which too are of help. But what is surprising is that despite a few proven successes in improved governance; the government has not demonstrated the political will to extend IT solutions to other government offices that the public have to visit.

The sight of unsightly and ill manned offices with unhelpful clerks in the National Capital and confused clients roaming around under the raging noon day sun surrounded by touts and other unidentifiable characters who seemingly can “fix” any thing is enough to undermine any good that the government might have done in other areas. If e-governance is the panacea of the future, it is much more so at the places where the public congregates to interface with the government and is met with uncouth, sour faced clerks than in the Prime Minister’s office and other such high profile establishments. E-governance needs to expand at the grassroots and do so quickly.

Book Review: Head First Software Development

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 10:42:47 EDT

Head First Software Development is targeted at developers and project managers who have to reach for the elusive perfect project. This book spread over 12 chapters and 2 appendices, brings a bunch of tips and a whole new approach to doing the software development.

Many of the ideas in this book seem to be derived from singed and weather beaten experiences to evolve a set of useful best-practices. Example is the preference to use the iterative approach throughout the development, breaking user requirements into do-able tasks,keeping an efficient version control, using a build tool for a team to convert source code into a running application, a continuous integration tool that performs a repeatable process including the version control, compilation and testing phases.

At the start of the discussion, there is a difference made between a big-bang approach and a iterative approach of software development. This a guiding principle throughout the book. The basic concept in the iterative software development is to make the end-user a participant in the development-to-delivery process as well as using small steps to reach the end-user requirements. The detailed way in which the authors have explained the iteration way to reach the software development goal would be an asset to many a “big-bang” developer who has seen the long faces of a frustrated end-user.

Sometimes the entire package of concepts could overwhelm a novice, even though the Head First approach is used . The book is a good one for the experienced software developer who has had a few half-baked/burnt project experiences under the belt before reading this book to get a feel of what is being discussed here.

Linux Live CDs: A Convenient Approach to Personal Computing

Yash Sharma — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:38:08 EDT

The Linux platform for computing is difficult to understand for an average personal computer user. The traditional Microsoft Windows Operating System users especially find it inconvenient with the excessive amount of options Linux presents.

There have been numerous cases for and against Linux desktop usage for personal computing. Individual users have some very diverse requirements from a computing environment. As against a business setup, where the tasks are well defined and laid out, individuals users tend to use computers for very different and, often, changing needs.

The choice of an operating system often results from the perceived ease with which these tasks can be accomplished. I would like to focus on Linux Live CDs as a way for an individual computer user to simplify computing.

Live CDs started out as a marketing tool for different Linux “distributions” (or distro). A distribution in simple terms is a customized version of Linux. It is created by compiling and packaging software components geared towards a certain type of usage. All Linux varieties we see are certain distributions developed by a group of people or companies. They can choose the distribution to be commercial or free, general purpose or highly specialized.

A “Live CD” offers a way to boot your system using the CD/DVD/USB media.

You just pop in the CD and start your system. The entire Operating system resides on the CD media. (It could be a DVD, USB flash drive, even your iPod). The operating software is read off the CD and loaded in the computer memory. You don’t have to install and load the operating system through the hard drive. Certain Live CD distros need disk capacity as low as 50 megs for the complete system to reside in.

Live CDs are considered to be slow because reading data off the CD drive is slower than reading it off the hard drive. This is one of the reasons why we find Live CD usage for day to day computing to be rare. Recently higher CD drive throughput has made it possible to use Live CDs for certain tasks.

How to create a working Live CD?

There are multiple ways of doing that, and most Linux systems that offer Live CD distros describe very clearly how to create the live CD. Generally one has to download an “image” file from the distro’s Web site. An image file is a compressed set of files that have to be written on to the live CD for it to work. It usually has an .iso extension but it could also have other extensions. An image file cannot be directly written onto the CD, special CD writing software is needed. There are loads of commercial ones like Alcohol or Nero for Windows. My favorite one (for linux) is X-CD-Roast. It has an easy graphical interface. On an Ubuntu box (Ubuntu is a very popular Linux distro) this capability is within the operating system, all one needs to do is right click download ISO image and choose “save on disc”, which invokes the Nautilus CD burner, where one just has to chose “save”, and you get a working bootable CD!

Live CDs offer a very obvious advantage: You can have multiple operating systems, and boot off any you wish. Live CDs makes it possible to have multiple operating systems for ready use. The low costs associated with external media (a 700 Meg CDs, USB drives, DVDs) makes it possible for one to have more than one OS available for use. I have about 11 Live CDs that I use for various purposes.

For my usual tasks like going online, document editing or using email clients I use Knoppix Live CD. It automatically detects my NTFS partitions and Network cards, has the best hardware detection capabilities in all “distros” I’ve worked with. General Knoppix distro release 5.1.1 has a lot of improvements like faster write speed to NTFS partitions. (I have a Windows box which I rarely use.). Initially when I started with Knoppix, I did have some problems connecting to the internet. Some Indian ISPs block off requests from OS’s other than Windows, so one has to specifically ask them to fix it.

Knoppix also throws in a load of software for personal computing, OpenOffice being my favorite. Nowadays I’m mostly booted in Knoppix because I’m pretty sure I can do most of the stuff I need to without having to boot back into something else.

Ubuntu is next on the list as a Linux Live CD must have. They can send you the CDs on registration from their Web site. It is completely free. So you don’t even have to burn the CD on your own. The latest release offers the installation CD and live CD on one media. Ubuntu as a distro has grown in popularity recently, and is the arguably the most user-friendly Linux available. It has the best combination of free software bundles, and is best optimized for speed, recommended for anyone who is starting out on Linux or Live CDs.

Fedora Live CD: Fedora is next in the evolution of “Red Hat” the most popular Linux distro of yesteryears. The latest version 8 (Werewolf) had a Live CD project for all platforms as of writing this article. I have always maintained Fedora is not a distro for the average user. The configurations and setups for various tasks are not very intuitive and it is not the fastest distro around. I use it rarely and only to try out something that might not be working for me in other distros.

This brings us to some very specific distros, which are created keeping some very specific features in mind. These are what make the Live CD concept very interesting:

MoviX: Is a light media distribution that supports streaming, TV cards, slideshows, and internet radio. So if you are just looking to watch TV, listen to internet radio or play DVDs, you can use this distro to boot your system and enjoy. It has a very interesting subdistro, eMoviX, which is just 8 Megs anbd when booted will automatically start playing all the video files stored in the root directory.

eLearnix: Formerly FreeLoader Linux, this has a host of Linux tutorials to get you started on the basics of Linux. It's about 320 megs, My favorite for learning Linux.

UBCD: (Ultimate Boot CD) Bundle software for repair and fix your system. I have used this many times to test and diagnose problems on my hard drive. It has an amazing combination of tools for repair and rescue.

Oralux: I haven’t tried this one but from their Web site: distribution for blind or visually impaired people. The CD includes Flite, a free Text-To-Speech software available in English and French.

FIRE: This is for forensic analysis, incident response, data recovery, virus scanning and vulnerability assessment.

There are numerous other Live CD projects in various stages of development for some very niche computing requirements. It’s interesting to note how an entire operating system is designed dedicated to a certain type of computing requirements. This results in very optimal usage of computing resources available to the user. Some examples of stable/under development distros:

For Bioinformatics sciences: bioknoppix, DNALinux, VigyaanCD
For Education purposes: eduKnoppix, Knoppix for kids, Linux-EduCD

For Gaming: AdvanceCD, GamesKnoppix, KnoppiXMAME, LinuxConsole

For Geogrphic Information Systems (GIS): GeoMorphix, GisMorphix, Quantian, StarCD

For Media: Caster, DeMuDi Live, Mediainlinux, Musix GNU+Linux

For Medical sciences: CDMEDICPACSWEB, LiveOIO, OpenVistA VivA

It is worth noting that specialization like this is not possible with proprietary operating system business models. Imagine a Microsoft Windows release just for clinical research!

Live CD based computing offers a paradigm shift from normal routine computing where you start your system and it boots up in the same OS for you. It expands the possibilities of computing for a user and enables him or her to test and examine options non-intrusively.

I have been using Live CDs for a year now, I rarely boot off my hard disk. My favorite advantage of a Linux Live CD is (apart from the fact that it is free), that I can switch off my machine without going through the long “it is now safe to turn off your machine” routine!

Apple is Wrong About the Safari Update via iTunes

Venkatesh Sridhar — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 12:19:57 EDT

Recently, Apple shipped out an update via iTunes that included the installation of Safari, the default browser on the Mac OS X, which is also available for Windows. Now, if you read it once again, with a bit of concentration you would see that, Apple went ahead and included the installation file and also pre-selected it for the user. (Photo Courtesy CNET)

As you can see in the image above, a 22.65 MB installation file for Safari was included in the update. This lead to a lot of uproar in the blogosphere led by Mozilla's CEO John Lilly, who went so far as to say that Apple was pushing malware to its customers.

Though, I do not completely agree that Apple was pushing malware, but I strongly believe what Apple did with this update was ethically wrong, The reason why is that a majority of users will not bother to read through the text and will just implicitly go ahead and install both the items. Now, imagine that a 22.65 MB file has taken that much bandwidth plus the time for something the user may rarely use. I mean, if someone really wants to use Safari, then they will go over to Apple's Web site and download it, install it and use Safari.

This has been widely criticized in the blogosphere, because many are livid at Apple's tactics and see this as misusing the dominance of the iPod+iTunes Platform. As you know, anyone who owns an iPod or an iPhone has to use iTunes to sync content between your PC/Mac to your iPod or iPhone. Now, whenever you install iTunes, you install the Apple Software Update, which is like the Windows update all PC users are very familiar with.

Now, the job of a software updater should be just that - update software. Now, all software on all Operating Systems have bugs - a software update allows the vendor to address it.

John Lilly explains it better in his post about the Safari fiasco:

Keeping software up to date is hard — hard for consumers to understand what patches are for, how to make sure they’re up to date.

It’s also critically, crucially important for the security of end users and for the security of the Web at large that people stay current. If people don’t update software regularly, it is impossible for them to remain safe; good software developers are creating improvements constantly. That’s why Mozilla spends so much time making sure our own Automatic Update Service works, and why we spend so much time agonizing over the user interface for the updates. We look at the data every time we do an update; we obsess about what we call “uptake rates” — the percentage of Firefox users who are on the most current version of the browser a day or a week or a month after release. As a result, Firefox users are incredibly up to date, and adopt very quickly.

There’s an implicit trust relationship between software makers and customers in this regard: as a software maker we promise to do our very best to keep users safe and will provide the quickest updates possible, with absolutely no other agenda. And when the user trusts the software maker, they’ll generally go ahead and install the patch, keeping themselves and everyone else safe.

Anyone who uses iTunes on Windows has Apple Software Update installed on their machines, which does just what I’ve described above: it checks for new patches available for Apple-produced software on your Windows machine, alerts the user to the availability, and allows updates to be installed. That’s great — wonderful, in fact. Makes everyone more likely to have current, patched versions of Apple’s software, and makes everyone safer.

The problem here is that it lists Safari for getting an update — and has the “Install” box checked by default — even if you haven’t ever installed Safari on your PC.

That’s a problem because of the dynamic I described above — by and large, all software makers are trying to get users to trust us on updates, and so the likely behavior here is for users to just click “Install 2 items,” which means that they’ve now installed a completely new piece of software, quite possibly completely unintentionally. Apple has made it incredibly easy — the default, even — for users to install ride along software that they didn’t ask for, and maybe didn’t want. This is wrong, and borders on malware distribution practices.

It’s wrong because it undermines the trust that we’re all trying to build with users. Because it means that an update isn’t just an update, but is maybe something more. Because it ultimately undermines the safety of users on the web by eroding that relationship. It’s a bad practice and should stop.

He is right on the money as far as I am concerned, simply because of the trust issue. I mean I am sick of having to install QuickTime too when I have to use iTunes (only for syncing content with my iPod or iPhone). I do not use iTunes as my music player on my PC anyway and I do not intend to do so ever. I do not like it that I cannot use iTunes to do a backup of either my iPod or my iPhone.

But, what Apple did with Safari was highly unethical. I do not want to be shipped out programs under the guise of a security update. I think Apple should realise that it is playing with fire as things like this will surely prick the ears of the antitrust authorities in the US and EU. Especially, EU which is far more aggressive at policing considering its stance vis a vis Microsoft, Apple has been dragged to court in the US over iTunes + iPod and the EU followed it up with an investigation of its own into iTunes and the territorial restrictions (you can only buy if you have a card from a bank in a country where iTunes Store is available) that are placed on the consumers and this Safari fiasco just aggravates the situation.

Why do I say so? Because, the defense (which was quite strong) that Apple had in all of these cases was that it was not a monopoly in the digital music market and it did not abuse it as it built up the market based on merits. Microsoft was not fined for having a monopoly position in the OS market but for abusing it by prevent other OEM's from using any other browser apart from Internet Explorer when they shipped Windows. That was abuse of a dominant position in the OS market to push another product down the consumers throat.

That is what Apple did with Safari too, pushing an unrelated application under the guise of software update. Now, this pains me a lot to see why my favorite company Apple is doing something so dangerous and is actually mimic our rivals up north in Redmond (read: Microsoft). This fiasco actually led Ed Bott at ZDnet to write a post titled, "What Microsoft can teach Apple about software updates" He compared both the Apple Software Update and the Windows Update in a gallery showcasing the difference with the conclusion that Microsoft's process was more opt-in, i.e. the consumer had the choice and the right over what was being downloaded onto his machine and Apple's process was more opt-out, i.e. the consumer had to be alert and vigilant and of course knowledgeable enough to opt-out.

Probably, Microsoft learnt the hard way because I remember Microsoft once sent me an update for Windows Media Player 10 when I was using Windows Media Player 9, but I did not want to install it at that point as it was too new and my strategy with Microsoft's products is to wait a bit before installing it (yes, I still run XP SP2 and I have zero plans to change to Vista anytime soon, most probably will move to Mac OS X Leopard and will install XP using either Parallels or Fusion.)

Now, why opt-out so bad and something Ed did not cover in his post was because of what John said - Consumers instinctly, implicitly and intrinsically trust a vendor like say an Apple or a Microsoft when it comes to security updates, because for the vast majority of users, security update descriptions are mumbo jumbo, they don't understand how a bug in the system can be exploited and they don't care about all this mumbo jumbo, they just know its bad so what they do is just tick all and install all updates, I personally have done this many times.

I sincerely hope that Apple for its own good does not keep repeating this and that it really keeps the antitrust authorities at bay. I would like Apple to render an unconditional apology for having done this and promise not to repeat it, it would do wonders for Apple (I know this is more of wishful thinking but hey what the heck!).

Budget 2008-2009 - A Bird's Eye View

Kiran Dhanwada — Mon, 3 Mar 2008 00:59:35 EST

Budget 2008-2009 (hereon referred to as the Budget) was eagerly awaited after a very structured and thought-out Railway budget. This was supposed to be one last shot for P.Chidambaram (hereon referred to as P.C) to present a dream budget. With the impending general elections next year, public consensus pointed towards a more populist budget – and P.C presented exactly that. Aim for the middle-class and agriculture, rest of them can take a backseat till next year.

Here is my view of some of the salient aspects of the budget –

1) Smart Moves –

a) Tax Holidays – IT industry seems to be disappointed with no news on extension of tax sops beyond 2009. Maybe it’s only me – but why does an industry which has enjoyed 10 years of tax sops, contributes around 4% of GDP and has matured to an extent where it can compete with global firms on an equal footing require tax sops? P.C has conveniently and rightly ignored this set of players – they better pay back to the nation what they have received all these years; enough of announcing terrific profits, the basis of which is the taxpayer’s money.

However, tax holidays were rightly extended to hotels and hospitals – the tourism industry needs a boost immediately (what with the Commonwealth games coming up) and if hotels can pass on the benefits to the consumers (which they will, provided enough competition is present) – tourism would take off in the positive direction. Healthcare needs huge investments, and if India is going to have the right provisions in place for the future for a substantial older population in years to come – the foundations have to be laid now.

b) Finance – Increasing the short-term capital gains from 10% to 15% will immediately put off many traders who already operate on razor thin margins – thus contributing to lesser volatility in the markets. The STT has also been given a provision of being treated as a deductible expenditure. The banking cash transaction tax has been abolished (thank god! I didn’t know why it was introduced in the first place – why should I pay tax to withdraw my own money?!) However, the tax relief on medical insurance (limit increased to Rs. 30000 on Section 80D – 15k for the individual, 15k for his/her parents) though being beneficial to individuals is a huge setback for the insurance sector. Clarifications regarding reverse mortgage was more than welcome – the product had really not taken off with the older population, simply because the tax liability on the monthly income received was unclear. This budget has announced that there would be no tax liability on the income received in case of reverse mortgages – a move hailed by both the banking sector and the older population, and rightly so.

2) Dumb Moves:

a) Rs 60000 cr debt write-off to farmers who have less than 2 hectares – I can understand a populist budget, but if it is costing the taxpayers money to the tune of Rs. 60000 cr without any clear delivery mechanism, it’s clearly a dumb move – P.C very well knows it, political pressures demanded this move. One of my biggest peeves at this move is that genuine farmers who have repaid the loans have been made to look like fools. Secondly, it will take a huge toll on the banks if they have to write entire loans off their books. The banking credit system for rural areas is still maturing and this move will only make banks to impose stringent credit-lending rules for the rural areas (thus creating a vicious cycle – no lending, farmers commit suicide etc.). Thirdly, most of the small farmers (<2 hectares) borrow from money-lenders who charge usurious interest rates – this move clearly does not address this set of people who are the majority.

What I don’t understand is why should the farmers be stuck at the ‘sustainable’ level? Why should the govt. not provide enough avenues for farmers to look beyond mere sustainability? There could have been multiple ways to handle this issue in a more competitive way. The govt. could have announced a zero interest regime for these loans, they could improve the delivery mechanisms of transporting the produce of the farmers to fetch a better price, improved the commodities market for the farmers to have a transparent look at the prices and expectation of the market and many many more. Populism or the illusion of populism – this move clearly benefits the middlemen more than it does the farmers. If history is anything to go by, any govt. who has announced a populist budget has never been re-elected.

3) Cat-on-the-wall moves:

There were some announcements whose effect I think would be felt only after a few months – and these have been termed as Cat-on-the-wall moves.

a) IT exemption increased – The personal IT exemption has been increased from Rs. 1,10,000 to Rs 1,50,000 for males, Rs 1,80,000 to females and Rs. 2,25,000 to the retired. Widely hailed by the salaried class that the Finance minister has finally considered the biggest taxpayers in the country, this increase in exemption also seems to be a populist move. Although I directly benefit out of this move, I am actually skeptical how far it would work. Yes, it would leave more disposable cash in the hands of individuals, which in turn might fuel inflation (the other way to look at it is that it would pep up the consumer durables sector) and this in turn would lead to increase in interest rates, stunting growth. India is supposedly very unique in tinkering with its Income tax slabs every other year – other countries hardly touch these slabs. Only time will tell – whether the effect of this move is positive or negative and two, will the govt. in 2009 sustain these levels?

b) Decrease in excise duty for small cars: Increase in personal tax slabs combined with decrease in excise duty for most of the consumer durable goods and small cars is like adding fuel to the fire. It is indeed beneficial to the individuals concerned, but what effect does that have on the economy? RBI is sure to increase its monitoring on inflation after this move.