IBM buying Sun......

There are talks that IBM may be buying Sun for $6.5 billion. I'm hoping this deal goes through. You may already know that I'm a huge fan of Sun hardware. However, their sales staff SUCK SUCK SUCK. You could find a still functioning team at Lehman Brothers probably better than Sun sales staff (I've dealt with them now in 2 states and a few times).

Why do I say that? I say it because
1. They never follow up with you.
2. You could call them - tell them I want to buy your hardware - and still not hear back with BASIC information that would allow you to finish pricing your stuff.
3. Even when they know you're going to buy their hardware if they give you information, they take their own sweet time with it.
4. If you start a sales call - they never bother to follow up on what happened or if you need more information or read 2.

(Yeah - all the above are almost the same - but I'm venting a little too )

So - with that said - IBM - I give you my blessing :-) Please fire the Sales staff - keep their techies, but please fire the Sun sales staff. You'd probably INCREASE your sales of Sun hardware after you've fired the sales staff!

Windows 7

Ok - any of you who know me personally - know that I dont care for Microsoft products too much. I've said that they're an OS company and should first get that right and then go into other products which do things you don't want it to do (Office anyone?).

I got a copy of Windows 7 Beta and installed it. First impressions - HOLY COW - It's good! I had barely a couple of interactions with the installer before it presented me with the installed version. I've not played with Mac much - so I wouldn't know, but I hear they've borrowed a number of ideas from the Mac OS (and thank god? :-) )

Apart from that, it was able to recognize all my devices, and get running quickly. I'm definitely impressed so far. Lets see what it has in store soon.....

To Be an Entrepreneur....

You not only should have ideas & passion, but the intensity to power through the problems that come your way. Otherwise - it'll be half done and you'll be wondering what went wrong.

I heard a part of the above sentence on "The Biggest Loser" while flipping channels. It struck a chord with me. I think the number of projects that dont get done or are left half way are because of the lack of passion & intensity behind the project.

I am definitely one among them, not because I don't have the passion or intensity, but if something doesn't get done quickly (and with the same intensity and passion as I have by the rest of the team) and to my liking, I almost put it aside, never to come back to it. I think it's the one thing I really have changed about myself, and have a little more ways to go. I think most people suffer from the lack of interest, but the difference between the people who succeed and don't is the drive to COMPLETE what they started - whether you like it or NOT!

Bad Assets on Bank books (Bad Assets Bank?)

The Bad Banks plan to start unclogging the banks balance sheets is in the talks -- and now there is so much discussion on what to pay for these bad bank assets? The banks want a "fair value" of it (which is ofcourse much higher than what the current market value is and incidentally the least amount of money loss) and the Govt doesn't want to pay a value which will cause the tax payers harm or even too low a value which would hurt the banks!

How do you value something that pretty much can't be valued in todays market? How about take the last known value (or in cases where you can value it - that value) and buy it at that value - with a caveat. If the Government makes over 20% (insert your favorite number here - but I say 20%) of profit on selling that asset, then the Banks can have a share of it. The rest of the profit goes directly into shoring up social security. The principal + 20% should go towards paying off the debt.


What do you guys think?

Books...

The Borders close to my house was closing, so I ended up buying quite a few fiction books. Needless to say - I've been reading them faster than anticipated!!! An ex-colleague of mine writes about the books he reads and I thought I'd take a page out of his blog postings and do the same :-)

The latest book I just completed is The Tenth Justice

It starts off with a newly hired Supreme court clerk leaking a multi-million dollar decision accidentally and goes from there. While the story is a little implausible, it was a good quick read and page turner and I enjoyed it.

I also recently read The Wheel of Darkness which was a very good read. The author takes you all the way from Tibetan monks to a story that ends on a luxurious cruise ship.

The two other John Sandford novels I just finished are The Devils Code & The Hanged Mans Song. The Devils Code is pure torture, and feels like the author published the book before removing all the unnecessary parts. He could have taken out about 30 pages and still made the story well, and probably a little more entertaining.

The Hanged Mans Song on the other hand was a good read and was a little redemption for John Sandford after the Devils code book! Both of them delve start off from some sort of hacked computer / hackers and keep it there, but at a really high level.

WTF - House of Reps voting on the Stimulus Bill

One of the most important bills was supposed to be passed today in the House of Representatives. It was the stimulus bill. The President (Mr Obama) did his duty and did more than his predecessor (mr decider) did in the past 8 yrs in trying to woo the opposition party as well as his own. For all that effort - this is what he got from them.

The 244-188 vote was not what Mr. Obama had hoped for. A week of presidential wooing -- including a visit to the Capitol, a return visit to the White House by moderate House Republicans and a bipartisan cocktail party Wednesday night -- did not yield a single Republican vote. The president also lost 11 Democrats.

That is most disturbing. While they may have differences, the fact that the entire Republican party didn't vote for it, showed how partisan this has become. I for one, hope that this bill is a huge success, and everyone who didn't vote for it, especially in the house gets crucified in the upcoming elections. They dont deserve this kind a president. I hope Mr. Obama decides that enough is enough and really does play politics with these guys. Then they'll come back to earth!

It's unfortunate that Mr. Obama has got this splat right on him at the start of the Presidency, but he's got to take it as it comes!

Aarghhh - Hold on Geithner and Clinton

I dont know what more can be done other than move the US economy to the brink (some would argue it's already past the brink) and 2 wars and everything else to get the Republicans to act with a speck of decency, urgency and f'ing sincerity.

All around, they say - they expect the Treasury secretary pick & Sec of State pick to be confirmed. Why the hell can't they confirm it for the first day of the presidency? Do we really need to go another 2 days without these 2 people taking up their posts? For that answer - look at the damn markets and the damn world!

Seriously - yesterday (1-20-09) the markets were in a tailspin because they were worried that the US would nationalize all major banks and wipe out shareholder value. My question is - why can't someone put out a statement indicating otherwise or indicating what is going to happen? How about the treasury secretary? - Oh wait! We don't have the new one confirmed yet!

Seriously - how about we all work together at a time of national calamity and then you guys can start being your own f'ing selfish, backstabbing self - Please? Pretty Please?

1-20-2009

Today - the end of an error!

Israel vs Palestine

For a country that was formed about 60 years ago, they have a lot of clout, military power and definitely, better life for their citizens. However, their neighboring state (?) is forever in turmoil.

Conflicts are everywhere, and some of them are steeped in history. Whats disturbing right now is the fact that it's so one sided or in fact biased.

If there were about 500 deaths on the Israeli side and more than half of them civilian - what would the US be doing right about now? I don't care for terrorists, however, the US has this history of supporting some terrorists and its come back to bite us. I just hope that the US is not so short sighted that our foreign comes back to bite us in the ass again. Here's to hoping that Obama and Hilary will be different!

Ideas without Marketing = Death?

I recently started a small company. We have a product, launched it in Alpha, got some feedback. We're working towards a Beta. However, our biggest hurdle is the lack of someone to help market it. Let alone market it, someone to help us to understand how to market the product. Some products are very straightforward - you need a telephone, you love the iPhone etc.

Some products, you need to change the mindset - in some small way or the other. There needs to be a reason for people to like your product- whether it makes their life easier - or adds value to their everyday life. Some may argue that if you can't see the value immediately, then it's probably not going to take off. I disagree! I take a simple example of my former employer - Blackboard. 20 years ago, people would say - what - why online courses - today students want it that way. Same with many other products.

Right now, we're in a spot where we definitely need someone to help us market it - or make those contacts!

With this experience - I have learnt one thing though (even though I probably knew this all along but was naive enough not to accept it) - marketing / market validationn is a lot more important than a new cool feature. If you don't have people to use those new cool features - it's probably not going anywhere. You need someone who can think of a way to sell your product or it's probably all for nothing - even with all these startups coming online!

My reader(s) - your comments are most welcome!

Comparisons - Microsoft software and Iron Man!

I'm trying to understand Microsoft Operations Manager - it's a beast. It's something that is powerful, but is complex and at this point very mind numbing.

I'm starting with this and someone walked over to my desk and asked me "Whats going on?" I couldn't resist not comparing this with the beast in Iron Man.

The "real" Iron Man has a very nice finesse robotic suit - where as the beast - is over engineered and can't do everything that the "real Iron Mans" robotic suit can do not to mention the beast is ugly and has a huge footprint!

I say this - because when we are developing tools / software -we try to make it as flexible as possible. However, when you try to give someone a tool with every lever possible, you need to find a way to make sure it has some value right out of the box. Otherwise - all your left is with frustration and possibly loss of users, not to mention productivity!

Executive Salries - Can we please STOP talking about them!

It seems that the media can't let go of the salaries of some of the CEO's or management in companies. I for one am sick and tired of hearing about it.

You really have 2 options -
1. Find a person who can do a better job at a lower salary.
2. Become a board member of the company and do something about it.

I don't get the point why the media or people have to complain about someone elses salary. If someone is not doing their job fire them. If they are or protected you as an investor from significant losses, then they deserve their salary. If you think you can do a better job - go for it, convince the board of directors.

What I don't get is, why the hell are you talking about it day in and day out, when there are significant other topics to be discussed about! Some executives don't deserve their salary, but when the company is not doing anything about it - why are you - perhaps a non-investor so worried about someone elses pay!

Republicans killing the bailout

I have only one question - weren't most of these guys fired during this previous election.

Didn't they see what happened when a big company like Lehman went down. You really really dont cut off another hand when one of them is bleeding.

Update: Now they're going back to the TARP funds. Didn't the Democrats ask the White House to do that in the first place?

The Republicans can have a new mantra - "Republicans - Our Way or the Highway" or "Republicans - Ask Us How to Lower Your Net Worth"

Perl vs Java!

I had to write a simple program to send an email when a log file didn't have the right data. This log file is always apppended to - and the last line is what I needed.

That meant reading the file backwards - or perhaps from the end. I wanted to find something really simple in Java to do it. As much as I looked (FileInputStream, FileReader) etc, it all involved copious amounts of work. Since, I didn't know the length of each line, I couldn't easily go to the end of the file, and set an offset!

Here's one of the examples I found: readingfilebackwards for java.

Here's how I did it in perl:

open FILE "$file";
@lines = reverse ;
foreach $line(@lines)
{
do something
}

Simplicity simplicity simplicity!

Human Communication changes....

When the Mumbai blasts happened, one thing was new - the social networks. Twitter! The number of messages on #mumbai during the blasts, almost a blow by blow account. There are stories where people inside the hotel used twitter to find out if it was really true, and blasts were occuring. Twitter for communication!! Next generation of quicker communication! Move to SMS's and Twitter! Smart phones are changing the way we communicate with each other.

I'm excited to think of what the next generation of communication is going to be - while wondering - are we as humans going to lose the actual social network of sitting at a table and making a deal?

Mumbai Blasts

This was a little disconcerting on all fronts. A number of questions raced through my head.

1. How could after a parliment attack in Dec 2001, India be so woefully unprepared with the placement of the commandos?
1. Why should it take 9 hrs for commandos to get there?
1. Why on earth should there be only one unit based in one place for a country as large and populous as India?
and many more (and yes, they're all 1 because they're all screaming questions).

That said, after the initial 60 hours of gruelling, just by 10 people, we now have a situation where we're not doing anything. The reason the ISI or whoever keeps coming after us, is because theres a ridiculously poor response to an attack. Right now - theres a woeful lack of leadership in India. I heard there were protests in India with the slogans " A country of Lions lead by a a leadership of donkeys" (I paraphrase) - but the quote is such an accurate depiction of most of the leaders in the country today.

I don't know what to say at this point. I feel so helpless (for the lack of a better word) right now. I really wish I was in India. I wish I could be putting together some sort of team - a leadership team of sorts, to start a grass roots movement. May be not now, but in 5 years time, we could be in a better position to demand from our leaders, or put better leaders in place, or perhaps be leaders ourselves?

All that though - starts from the individual. The more I think about it, the more I believe that each individual that starts thinking about the betterment of their surroundings, starts talking to their friends and neighbours and starts forming groups and networks is what will be required to get a better country. It seems so simple - but when you put a diverse group of people - who's first thought on their minds are - how am I going to earn my lunch today - it gets immensely difficult.

The middle class per se - is already caught up in the material wealth gaining - so the middle class turns a blind eye, and when nothing else - bribes its way to what they need. We need to stop doing that. We need to ask for better leaders - and we need to start making sure that our kids can become better people!

Hardware at a Software problem?

I'm trying to get people to change their thinking. Should we really be throwing more hardware at inefficient code? Not all code is inefficient, but some of it is! What is the cost tradeoff? People say, it's ok to throw money at Hardware because it's cheaper than getting a human to fix the code and everybody is over worked and underpaid!

I've always thought that you fix problems at the software level, so that your software runs absolutely efficiently and performs better, but is a new way of thinking? Hardware is cheap (especially in the INTEL /AMD world as compared to the Sun world), developers are expensive? I understand that at one point that it will get significantly more expensive to change the hardware, but till then?

What would you do?

Faster Disks for Dbs?

I was having a conversation with my colleagues on Db performance, when it veered into Solid State Drives for TempDb. Assuming that since TempDb is very high writes and less reads, the faster the disks can write, the better it is, and the more you have the I/Os split up, the faster it will be.

That got me thinking - for places that manage a number of databases or even 1 with high volume, wouldn't it make significant difference if we drop in a solid state drive for Temp? This got me further thinking - if all Temp is expendable, and not really stored, why should it be a drive at all.

Why not use RAM Disk instead? Power outage - doesn't matter - since the data is all Temp anyways!

But what about taking it up a notch. (If it's not done already - I'm claiming rights to it :-) ) . Why not storage providers like EMC or others offer Tray's of just RAM for Temp storage? DBA's could potentially create the TempDb / Tablespace on the RAM Disks. When DBAs are managing large number of instances (Oracle) they could just as well point to this RAM disk in this tray.

Wouldn't that significantly improve performance? Instead of always looking at increasing I/Os on disks - especially for Temp, wouldn't this be a better way to go?

I'm writing this before any research on this topic, but I couldn't stop myself! Have any of you done any experiments with this? Do you know of / have any articles on this topic? If so - can you send me a link :)

India - Stark Contrasts!

I recently came back from my vacation in India. I love India. It's where I was born, where I studied and was raised for a better part of my life. Now that I stay in the US, and only go back for vacations and family visits, I can talk about how it has developed and perhaps not....

What I found in most places I traveled to was ...The roads need to get better. People need to be more civic minded. People need to realize that the Government cannot do everything! Ofcourse - you can also see that the Government employees are only interested in making sure that their wallets are well padded and more money flows under the table than in public. Thats for another discussion.

The reason I write this is is - I've visited a couple of Software Development shops there. They're awesome. Some of the larger ones have canteens to buy food at (not vending machines, but actual food) and a very nice atmosphere. I was surprised at the number of flat screens. I also visited a number of malls ( you cannot believe the number of these complexes that have sprouted up all over the city - even in almost villages!). You can get some of the finest designer items from Gucci to Versace to anything you name it you get it. Whats even more surprising is, that most of these shops have buyers - and most of them are middle class working men and women!

Here's where the stark contrast comes in. When you enter any of these malls - it feels like you've been transported into a different country. The creature comforts, the designer brands and what not. Exit that mall and you're back in the midst of bad roads and sometimes very polluted air. I think this tells more on the government of the city, state & country more than anything else. The people in India are very creative. They make the best of what they have. Yet - the Government does not reciprocate, their employees - all they do is pad their pockets with bribes, and spend that money in these malls, but no services are provided to the public.

Until that mentality changes, until the people demand more, get educated (they try, but a huge uneducated population is better for the politicians - give them a beer and ask them for their vote) and DEMAND more - I don't think the city is going to change.

They changed to an open market, because the country as a whole was pushed to the brink with it's debt and policies. I hope the country is not pushed again to the brink due to the lack of infrastructure. This is probably the best time for India to reinvest in the infrastructure - not just by private industry, but by the government too....

I guess I could have summed this whole post into one word - Infrastructure!

I wish I did have pictures though. It would definitely show the stark contrasts.

Another Open letter - call to arms for the Rescue package

Another open letter to Obama...something I wish he would say or something along these lines...

Dear American People: Today the Congress didn't pass a very important bill and I understand many of you called your Congressman / woman to oppose the bill because it's a bail out for Wall St & their bad investments. However unfortunate it is, what affects us affects them and vice versa. Today, the big banks and investment houses on Wall street are crumbling, because they are unable to get loans. What this means to us, the ordinary consumer, is that when we want to buy a car there wont be money available or when you want to get a loan to grow your small business, buy a tractor to farm your land or buy seed, the interest rate you will pay will be beyond the normal, and perhaps wont allow you to get a profit. The young people who are starting a family and need a loan to buy a house ...wont have the ability to get a mortgage. This is why this bill is important. While it looks ridiculous that we the tax payer, have to bear the burden, it is because the stakes are so high, that the government has to intervene. The Government must be the place where an ordinary American can go to get help, but it should also be the place where businesses come as a last resort.

Tonight, we must take this step to help these businesses, while keeping our core principles of oversight and protection for the tax payer we must make sure that the American financial system is better and healthier, and this is why this package is that important.
I urge you to call your representative in the house and senate and tell them that you will not let America fail and they should not let America fail.
You voted them to be your leader and representative in the government. Tell them to lead and represent you.