Firefox reaches 500 m :-)

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Its my favorite browser. My only browser for that matter (yes, I sometimes do use Konqueror) and only use the more ubiquitous IE but only to go to Mozilla site and download the latest release of Firefox.

Its great to know that all of us have contributed to the magic number. 500,000,000. There’s hope to this world after all :-)

Read more about the milestone here.

One more example of how the user and customer opinion and feedback was taken into account while developing the product. It sometimes becomes very difficult to choose between the two dictums Customer is always right and To thine own be true. Many a times people have to make those hard choices in order to keep a business running. So what if the product is slightly flawed … the customers wont complain, because they do not have any other obvious choice. Yes I am talking about you-know-who-who-bundles-their-browsers-with-their-operating-systems. Try uninstalling IE from WinXPSP2 and you will know what I am talking about.

Well, now they do. And they know about it!! Power to the people!!

Meetings

Prasad Ajinkya1 Comment

Its 4pm today (read day-before-yesterday), when I have started doodling this blog post. Yes, I am one of those people who sometimes write their blog post on paper before they digitize it. This is being done in the throes or should I say meanders of a meeting. It had started 2 hours ago, and I am getting shudders remembering it. From the start, all of us knew that it was going to be a monster of a meeting.

Still, we managed to touch base upon pollination of flowers, onion and potato rates and how interesting the commodities market is becoming. We had assembled to finalize SAP process flows. We are a retail merchandising firm. I love meetings.

The ideal number of people in a meeting is 3-4, the moment it goes above that, you are asking for trouble. You will have atleast one person (like moi in this case) who will be doodling on a piece of paper.

Focus Prasad!! Focus!!!

Its 8pm now, and we have managed to cover some ground, but it looks pretty glum from my end. I decided to put together a small list that people like me can do when they end up in meetings such as these –

  • Think about the more recent interesting stuff you have read
  • Start a screensaver in your mind, I personally like the Hufo’s Smoke on a linux machine
  • Butt into the meeting with something that borders between sense and incoherence to make your presence felt
  • Try listening for a change and even add “value” to the meeting
  • Try playing your favorite tune in your head
  • Send stratified SMSes to your loved ones
  • Make lists such as these, preferably with a straight face
  • Think about new ways to customize your blog and your website
  • Order for coffee and biscuits
  • Move about the meeting as if people are calling you out for something important or the other
  • Drink enough coffee/water that you have to visit the water closet

Got any more? Do drop me in a line then!!

Cheers.

N3tH@c|<

Prasad Ajinkya3 Comments

The mountain giant picked up a boulder and heaved it towards me. My female orc wizard ducked and narrowly missed the hulk of rock. I decided to take my Wand of striking and kill both the giant and the killer bee buzzing behind him in a single strike. The giant absorbed the magic and moved on to pick up the boulder for another shot. I smote off the killer bee with a couple of blows with my trusted +4 magic staff and turned to face the giant. The goliath had managed to pick up the boulder, now was the time … I took out another wand of magic missile and let go its fury at him. No effect. I would have to kill this one by hand-to-hand. No matter. The staff was up for the challenge and my mithril coat was unharmed. A fast flurry of blows was exchanged the giant lay bested at my feet.

No, this is not a dream. Its one of my favorite games, NetHack!! This is a single player game released in around late 1980’s … the development of this game has been completely on the net … and its a hack and slash game … hence net + hack = nethack :-)

Everytime I play the game, theres something new that happens. The maps are different, the characters are many to play with … and the game decides to behave differently on a full moon day!!

Just one more example of how a product has developed in a decentralized fashion over an open interactive medium (IRC and Usenets) to result in a customer oriented product.

Enchanted: Recapturing Innocence lost

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When I was a small kid, I used to absolutely love reading fairy tales. My grandfather had bought these two hardbound volumes from the seven seas yonder that were absolutely full of them. I never managed to completely read the book end to end, but I had read a lot of them.

Then came school, junior college, engineering, work, mba, work and with all of them, the facts about life. Now I am a person who can safely say is well-grounded in reality. So much so that I have more or less stopped watching cartoons, even Tom & Jerry, which my father still loves and laughs out loud like a small child when watching the same.

Disney and this new movie, Enchanted brings out that mirthful child in all of us. I had an absolute rollicking time throughout this movie.

The plot is simple, a fairy tale couple (prince and princess, with their chipmunk friend) are thrown into reality by the wicked witch step-mother. The princess is hurtled into Earth and this guy who is your normal Joe, who also happens to be a divorce lawyer. As the plot thickens, by and by, reality also has its effect on the fairy tale world and I wont spoil it, please watch the movie :-)

After a long time have I seen an all out movie, the likes of Cinderella or Snow White, et al. A musical cartoon flick which turns into a romantic comedy movie. Very nicely done. I think I will try to get my hands on the digital version of this movie. Definitely an 8.0

Creating a personal blog

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Blogger logo

So, a lot of us like to blog, and of course would it not be super cool if we had our own blog url and all the jazz effects at of course a minimal of a cost.

Well, now we can. And even the most basic of a computer user can go ahead and have his personal url blog … here’s how you do it.

  1. Go to a domains seller. I bought mine from Aalphanet. Needless to say, you will have to register first.
  2. Search for an available domain eg- kidakaka.com
  3. If available, go for the kill, purchase it. A .com comes for somewhere around Rs. 450.00 per annum, a .in comes at half the price.
  4. Once that is done, buy the Manage Domain rights for your domain. This costs an additional Rs. 45.00 per year.
  5. Now start a blog on the blogger platform
  6. In the Settings->Publishing->Advanced settings, go to the your own domain name, and provide the same.
  7. The complete instructions are given here, but this is what you do simply –
    1. Enter you domain name in the Advanced tab
    2. In your Manage DNS section of domain dashboard, make a CNAME entry for your domain to point to ghs.google.com
  8. It should take an hour and two and Voila!!

The blog now is hosted on the blogger platform, but the url is yours. A customized personal blog for less than Rs. 500.00 a year.

Business World

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Theres a section of Business World which is Quick take, the question of the next week’s issue was posted to me via through a friend.

The Indian IT industry has several set backs –

  1. Lack real technology work – with around 60% of the work lying in the AMC and Testing (Support) bracket, there is dearth of scope for your average Indian techie to get their digits (pun intended) dirty in some concrete techie work.
  2. Project orientation – Most of the biggies in the Indian IT industry are service oriented, and more concerned with projects for foriegn customers. Their business orientation is towards projects, so much so that the entire organization bases its financials upon projects and their profitability. It may seem as a sweeping statement, but think about it, projects for the same client cumulate into an account. Accounts cumulate into a Geography. How this is bad is that there is no focus on IT products in the market.
  3. PPP of economies – How can one sustain themselves on pure projects alone? Esp. those that are based on a foreign economy. The moment the domestic economy starts doing better than the foreign economy (read those of the clients), the cost of the project rises (either for the firm or for the client). To remain competitive vis-a-vis other foriegn IT vendors, the indian firm will have to drop rates, losing profitability.
  4. Attrition – With an average attrition of around 15%, the costs of a project are constantly going up. Whenever a resource switches to a new firm, he gets a pay hike. A pay hike translates into more costs for the same resource. More costs without increasing revenues results in reduction of profitability.

That was my answer, I was a little surprised to learn that theres such a small amount of people who agree with me. No matter, it will be a good thing for India if I am wrong ;-).