Author: Rahul

There are far too many brands available for every goddamned thing out in the U.S.! And each brand says that it offers something obscure which the other ones don’t. Of course, this makes simple tasks, which we’d usually perform almost involuntarily here, take many times longer to do than here. This is the Problem of Choice.

Take good old Coffee, for example. At the Conference, I wanted a simple cup of coffee. You know, the few hundred millilitres of steaming, muddy brown liquid we consume in unstable, thin, crumply plastic cups at weddings, scalding the tips of all fingers by the time we’re done. How long does it take to get yourself a cup of coffee? Fifteen seconds at max? Well, it took me far, far longer than that the first time at the conference. Let me contrast Here and There:

Here:
Locate where they’ve got coffee and tea tanks. There’s one labelled Tea, and the other Coffee. Big pile of plastic cups beside. Take one, hold under Coffee tank, turn the tap on, fill cup, turn off, walk away. Enjoy juggling the cup from hand to hand.
Time: 15 seconds.

There:
Locate where they’ve got coffee and tea tanks. Realise they haven’t got any. They’ve got a whole line of flasks there, along with multiple envelopes, stirrers, glass cups, plastic cups, mugs, glasses and a large subset of an average kitchen-full of other things. Read labels on flasks. Latte. Decaf. (?? What about “Coffee”?) There are other machines with buttons that have a picture of a coffee cup on them, but have weird names like Expresso, Ristretto, and other ones. No, I don’t think I saw a Stiletto. I don’t think that would have gone too well down my throat. Where’s Coffee? A kind soul tells me that I could have any one of these; all of them were Coffee. OK. I settle on Decaf. The name sounded the most like Coffee – perhaps it was American slang for “The Coffee”. You know? De Caf. Take a cup. Pour out Decaf. Out comes the darkest, most foul-smelling liquid you’ve seen. Oops. Perhaps Decaf is slang for Skunk Gland Juice. No way can I drink it like this. Maybe here we need to add milk too.

Locate Milk. Turns out they have Full-fat, Skim, Toned, and numerous others labelled with varying percentages of fat. Hmm. Skim looks the least harmful. Pour Skim into cup until we get Normal Colour, till it at least *looks* like the Coffee back in India. Sip nervously. Nope. Still tastes like something from a skunk. Maybe sugar would help. Do I try sugar cubes, powdered sugar, sugar crystals, sugar packets, or sugar-free sugar substitues? Aarrgh! I want ^$%#ing sugar, dammit! I try the crystals. Nope. Keep adding more. Traces of the skunk reduce, but they’re still there.

By now a small crowd of about a half-dozen curious onlookers has gathered. I try to give them my most winsome smiles. One of them later tells me it looked like those faces you make when Nature calls most vociferously. I try more sugar. In fact, I keep trying till I can see the letters D-I-A-B-E-T-E-S floating in the cup. After a few iterations of Try-Sip-Almost Retch I can tolerate the concoction. Coffee, anyone?
Time: 11 minutes, 39 seconds = 699 seconds.

And they say it’s Easy the American Way! Bah!

My problem with beagle‘s been fixed. And with help from none other that Joe Shaw and Jon Trowbridge of Novell, the developers of Beagle! Thrilled to hear from them!

The issue was pretty simple, actually, and mostly my fault. Just a simple case of dbus’ environment variables not being available to best. A simple export fixed all that. Beagle works supremely fine, and I use it simply all the time!

Here are Joe’s and Jon’s replies:

Hi Rahul,

I'm Joe Shaw, one of the Beagle developers, and I came across your blogentry on Beagle.

The command "eval `dbus-launch --auto-syntax`" command sets up someenvironment variables which direct beagled and best how to contact thedbus session daemon.  The problem you're seeing is that since you'rerunning beagled in the same terminal as the dbus-launch command, it hasthose variables, but best (which you must be running from anotherterminal) doesn't.

The easiest thing to do would be to run "set | grep DBUS" and thenexport those environment variables in the terminal from which you runbest.  Alternatively, you can use .xim to run dbus-launch as part ofyour X session, which means that all programs and terminals will havethe environment variable set.  There should be instructions on how to dothat for SUSE on the beagle wiki (http://beaglewiki.org).

Hope this helps,Joe

Hey Rahul,

I saw your blog post about having problems with beagle... I think theproblem is that since you are running d-bus by hand, the d-bus-relatedenvironment variables only get set in that terminal.

Your best bet is to start the d-bus session bus along with your Xsession.  For more information, see:http://beaglewiki.org/index.php/Starting%20a%20D-BUS%20Session%20Bus

Good luck,-J

Here’s further proof of IBM’s true committment to Linux and the Open Source Movement – the IBM Linux Scholars Challenge.

The Linux scholar challenge is a wonderful win-win effort from IBM. It targets the “next generation” of developers while they’re still in University. Not to mention awareness about both Linux/OSS and IBM itself. China and India did particularly well – China had 7 winners in the Top 20; India had 4. Also, Anna University in Chennai won a 16-node Linux cluster for the maximum number of participants. Go India! All winners received an IBM Thinkpad each – with incentives like these, no wonder we get the kind of participation we do!

Contests like these demonstrate clearly where the next wave of talent is coming from. Talent is fine, but we need technological leadership as well, though, . We need to put in a lot of thought into how to leverage our brilliant minds for leadership in the technology industry.

I now get as much spam in my GMail inbox as I do with my Rediffmail account. I created the Rediff account in early 2001, and have used it liberally since, when filling out forms and the like. The GMail address has been subjected to the same kind of public display for the past year.

However, Rediff’s spam filter sucks. No matter how many times I click on “Report as Spam”, I get the same emails repeatedly from, among others, a very persistent lady who’s very impressed with my “size”, and a man who wants to sell me Rolex watches at hugely discounted prices, and approves house loans and my mortgages without me asking for them. I won’t even mention the other kinds I get – you’ve seen them too.

I get those same emails with my GMail account – except that they’ve all – without exception – landed up in the “Spam” folder. I have never had to “train” the filter, or create rules, or anything of the sort. Spam filtering “just works”. The filter’s never been overenthusiastic either – where well-intentioned emails have landed up in the Spam folder.

Yessir, GMail rocks!

About an hour ago, I brought home my first digital camera! This baby’s a Sony Cybershot DSC-W1. About as large as a deck of cards, the specs are roughly:

• 5.1 Megapixels.
• 3x optical zoom.
• 128MB + 32MB memory sticks.
• Huge 2.5″ TFT-colour LCD viewfinder.
• Optical viewfinder.
• Macro mode for close-range shots.
• Quick: less than two seconds between power-up and operation.
• AA-type rechargable cells for power.
• Can capture movies too!

I’ve buried my nose in the manual here, reading all about automatic focus, burst mode, preset modes, night photography, histograms, and a hundred other features this baby seems to have.

Steve’s Digicams – one of the most authoritative sites for digital camera reviews, has this to say about the W1:

The Cyber-shot DSC-W1 is an affordable yet high-performance 5-megapixel digital camera that offers a Carl Zeiss 3x optical zoom lens, large 2.5-inch color LCD, automatic simplicity and advanced features that you can “grow into” later, housed in a very compact, stylish and durable metal body about the size of a deck of playing cards. The Cyber-shot W1 is the perfect camera for photographers desiring to step-up to a higher resolution and faster performing camera or for those who are just beginning to explore the wonders of imaging in the 21st century.

Here are two reviews of the W1: At Steve’s Digicams and CameraHobby. I’m going to have a lot more to say about this one once I’m through discovering all it’s got to offer! Yes, I’m excited! Can’t you tell?

Tim Bray talks about how all this concern about bloggers being fired from their companies for saying too much is a bunch of bullshit. In fact, he says, in a world where communication is of the essence, having a strong online prescence can only aid your career. As regards getting into trouble:

Put it another way: not blogging won’t protect you from career-limiting moves, and if blogging provokes one, well, you were probably going to do it anyhow.

:-) Nice! So, for your reading pleasure:

Ten Reasons Why Blogging is Good For Your Career

1. You have to get noticed to get promoted.
2. You have to get noticed to get hired.
3. It really impresses people when you say “Oh, I’ve written about that, just google for XXX and I’m on the top page” or “Oh, just google my name.”
4. No matter how great you are, your career depends on communicating. The way to get better at anything, including communication, is by practicing. Blogging is good practice.
5. Bloggers are better-informed than non-bloggers. Knowing more is a career advantage.
6. Knowing more also means you’re more likely to hear about interesting jobs coming open.
7. Networking is good for your career. Blogging is a good way to meet people.
8. If you’re an engineer, blogging puts you in intimate contact with a worse-is-better 80/20 success story. Understanding this mode of technology adoption can only help you.
9. If you’re in marketing, you’ll need to understand how its rules are changing as a result of the current whirlwind, which nobody does, but bloggers are at least somewhat less baffled.
10. It’s a lot harder to fire someone who has a public voice, because it will be noticed.

Here’s an article that provides, finally, an analysis of Google that is thankfully devoid of any of the hundreds of conspiracy theories that abound over the Internet about Google’s plan to take over the world.

The writer takes apart conspiracies one-by-one and provides more sane justifications for Google’s actions.

The article is disappointing in one funny way – you tend to agree with most of the writer’s arguments, but that means that Google isn’t, after all, some out-of-this-world, astonishing company with a top-secret master plan that it’s going to unleash upon the world. By taking away the suspense, the romanticism and the mystery surrounding Google, we’re left with nothing more than a tech company with a firm focus on its area of expertise, that’s just doing far more things right than wrong. That’s all there is to it. The writer’s attempts to rationalise, though, are bang on.

Hey look. Someone else is predicting that Google will user their super-mega-ultimate-supreme server farm to replace your PC’s operating system.

That sounds familiar.

I do not buy it. Let’s look at some of the arguments:

“Google has hired OS experts like Rob Pike and Marc Lucovsky! Clearly they are toiling away on the Manhattan project of OS research, which will culminate in some kind of…SOMETHING! Some kind of something which will sweep Microsoft from the face of the earth!”

A more likely scenario is that Google does indeed perform OS research, but not for you and I. For themselves. Their clusters use a custom filesystem. They run linux, but it’s been modified from the original Red Hat. They need (and can attract) smart folks to build and extend these systems. But it’s all for the benefit of storage and search. They didn’t hire Rob and Marc to work on giving you online spreadsheets. Sorry.

“Google uses wowie-zowie javascript for Gmail and Google maps! Clearly this is the harbinger of their browser-based OS-like-thingy!”

I think they use javascript because it works well. It’s one step beyond html. Like any other technology-driven company, they’ll use the best tools they can, even if those tools aren’t mainstream yet. I’ve looked at the source code for both Gmail and Google maps, and I believe they are two entirely different projects, run by two separate groups. The goal of one is to make a good web-based email service. The goal of the other is to make a good online map service. I find it difficult to fit those pieces together into a master strategy. I think they evolved independently.

“Google has invested in native clients like Picasa and Keyhole maps and Desktop Search! Clearly this is an aggressive move into the consumer application space!”

Well, that’s partly true. But Google isn’t primarily interested in selling consumer apps. I think Picasa and Keyhole were acquired because Google wants to own delivery channels (browsers) for data that doesn’t currently have a good delivery channel. Html data is delivered by a web browser, and it’s probably a bit late for Google to own that. But Geographic data (the real thing, not road maps) has no browser, except either a full-blown GIS system or a lightweight client like keyhole. Photos on your hard drive have no browser (unless you have a mac).

I think Google desktop search was kind of a fluke. Something they could do fairly easily (right?) with some market opportunity (because windows default search BLOOOOOOOOOOWS). A low-investment play that incidentally forced MS and Yahoo to play catch-up.

Let’s talk about business strategy. It’s fun to imagine that Google has some awesome master plan for controlling all computerdom. But I have a simpler theory that I think fits the evidence:

A) Google cares first and foremost about web search. Most of their architect-level employees will be working on making search better. I think one of Google’s big shots said something similar right out loud. Search is what they do.

B) Google cares secondly about new kinds of search. Book search. Place search. Image search. Discussion group search. Product search. Email search. Because they have an advertising model that can be targeted to most any type of search. (Google also cares about new kinds of search because web ads may not work forever.)

C) Google cares thirdly about interesting new things. These come from employees. Depending on which source you believe, Google employees spend either 10% or 20% of their time working on personal projects. (Update: It looks like 20% is the correct number) The really successful projects get publicized via Google labs. Google maps started as one of these. I bet Gmail did too.

I’m especially interested in (C). 20% is a lot of time. Would your company willingly slash 20% from its developer-hours? Why is this important?

For one thing, it’s the world’s best marketing department. Those Google labs projects don’t generate much revenue, but they draw mindshare like crazy. How often does your company announce something genuinely new and interesting? Because of the constant bubble of percolating personal projects, Google enjoys near-constant online buzz.

Would your company sacrifice that 20% development time if it meant they could fire the entire marketing department, spend $0 on web advertising, and still boost their media coverage?

That 20% is also key for attracting talent. Working at Google has a lot of perks (so I hear), but for a developer, the ability to work on personal projects is magic. To my knowledge, no other company offers this. (Update: My knowledge is sadly limited – see comments)

Finally, those outside projects (call them lab projects, personal projects, forever-in-beta projects, whatever) are a powerful competitive weapon. Microsoft probably understands that the real competition with Google is (A) and (B). But I bet they’re focusing way too much thought on the projects from (C). From a competition point of view, (C) is a feint. (or maybe it isn’t! ha ha!)

Put another way, it’s fire and motion. For instance, Microsoft is working on a new version of IE. MS will need to test their browser against Gmail and Google maps — arguably the most complex websites in existence — and God help them if their new browser breaks those sites. For anyone who has spent hours testing code against IE, this is delicious irony, sweet and savory.

So that’s my theory: There is no secret replace-windows master plan. Google is just a smart company with a solid business strategy, an understanding of their core competency, good talent and a few tricks (simple tricks!) for leveraging such talent.

But this theory could be wrong. If Google creates some kind of OS of the gods, I’ll happily admit my error :)

I finished reading Michael Crichton’s “Timeline” a couple of days ago. I can’t stop raving about it! This book probably ranks among the top 5 books I’ve read!

The premise of the story is so fantastic – the guy’s melded Quantum Physics and the Middle Ages in Europe – and he’s done a damn fine job! He’s also put in a lot of research into the topic. This is my first Crichton, but I’ve been told by a few of my friends that deep research is a Crichton hallmark.

This is a book that thrills every single page! It’s made me contemplate missing my dinner last Tuesday, and keeping me awake till 1:30 AM Wednesday and Thursday. Oh, and the climax is simply amazing! Totally absorbing. One point which a lot of thrillers sorely lack is closure. This book, though, doesn’t make that mistake. Nothing’s left hanging in the air. Ending it give you a nice, satisifed feeling.

A lot of my friends, even after grudingly acknowledging Crichton’s writing skills, have accused him of writing books for the sole purpose of getting them adapted into movies. I guess that stems from the unparalelled success of Jurassic Park and The Lost World. If he does, so be it. It makes the book more enrapturing.

Go read it! Of course, be prepared for a wretched drop in productivity!

I finished reading Michael Crichton’s “Timeline” a couple of days ago. I can’t stop raving about it! This book probably ranks among the top 5 books I’ve read!

The premise of the story is so fantastic – the guy’s melded Quantum Physics and the Middle Ages in Europe – and he’s done a damn fine job! He’s also put in a lot of research into the topic. This is my first Crichton, but I’ve been told by a few of my friends that deep research is a Crichton hallmark.

This is a book that thrills every single page! It’s made me contemplate missing my dinner last Tuesday, and keeping me awake till 1:30 AM Wednesday and Thursday. Oh, and the climax is simply amazing! Totally absorbing. One point which a lot of thrillers sorely lack is closure. This book, though, doesn’t make that mistake. Nothing’s left hanging in the air. Ending it give you a nice, satisifed feeling.

A lot of my friends, even after grudingly acknowledging Crichton’s writing skills, have accused him of writing books for the sole purpose of getting them adapted into movies. I guess that stems from the unparalelled success of Jurassic Park and The Lost World. If he does, so be it. It makes the book more enrapturing.

Go read it! Of course, be prepared for a wretched drop in productivity!

This page on Google, about the company’s corporate philosophy:

Google Corporate Information: Our Philosophy

Google’s philosophy centres around ten things the company has found to be true. Each of those ten points offers valuable advice for any business. Definitely worth reading.

A lot of companies probably need to pay more attention to two aspects of Google. One, their focus. As the page says: ” Google does search. Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat. With the largest research group in the world focused exclusively on solving search problems, Google knows what it does well and how it could be done better”. It’s tempting for a company with the kind of talent and reputation that Google has, to branch off into new markets. But the company’s steadfastly refused to do anything of the sort. And that’s the reason for its phenomenal success. That’s how simple it is.

The other is the legendary way they keep their employees happy. By breeding a culture that’s radically different from anything else in corporate America, Google maintains a “geek-friendly” atmosphere throughout. This is a company that considers free food, soft drinks and haircuts as investments, not expenses. And that shows in the mind-boggling productivity their employees are famous for.

Finally, Google’s motto sums it all up. “Don’t Be Evil” and you’ll always do well!