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May 11 Moving home to wordpressLooks like spaces became too constrained for me to live here for long. I need simple wysiwig way of creating the entries. I am moving to wordpress.
May 08 One session for the language geeksJohn Lam and Jim G 's session at this year's mix nixes the holy grail. This session weaves languages like c#, ruby, python, javascript and frameworks like linq in one simple sample which just blows the imagination. Microsoft's persistance with constructs which could support dynamic language and improving the runtime support is paying off. I guess people do not realize the slew of technologies which have been announced and released at Mix mean a tectonic shift (yeah you read it right).
May 04 Learning about VirtualizationCore
3. Virtual distributed Environments in Shared infrastructure -
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/~dxu/pubs/Adapt_VIOLIN_Tech_Report.pdf 5. Virtual Machine Monitors: Current Technology and Future Trends (Rosenblum, Garfinkel)
other
9. Frangipani
Books
1. Smith and Nair, Virtual Machines: Versatile Platforms for Systems and Processes, Morgan Kaufman, 2005
2. Wolf and Halter, Virtualization: From the Desktop to the Enterprise, APress 2005
Links
Bottomline - this is not groudbreakingly new stuff. Only recently since last 3-4 years it has caught the imagination of consolidators/dev-test teams/data center folks etc. April 30 Right of Way, GPS in Netherland, Australia repeating the feat1. Ani - mentions about the right of way. I think we have this behavior ingrained. We think the size of the vehicle and texture of cloth will have the right of way. You can see this in action, A bicycle uses the creakish horn on the footpath user, the biker gang of Ani/Tririckshaw using their tools of sound arms on everybody else, they also act pretty funny, when they are politely asked to stop with hand sign. Somehow they seem to have hurry to reach all the places(I call them having #2 hurry- the call of nature is too strong, you can't avoid it). Tri-rickshaw and Biker gang never ever use the lane, they create this video game kind of scenario on the road where half of the time you are braking to avoid hitting them as they zip past as if in motor cross and other half respondig to folks who think you are dumb giving way to all those knuckleheads.
The drivers have major types.
1. A BPO/private vehicle with yellow tab,
2. a young can't keep still driver of either sex,
3. an experienced(in/watched an accident) driver with family,
4. an old fiat/ambassador, a government vehicle which blare its emergency through its horn,
5. a tourist who seems to stop at every place he should not(rickshaw and bikes do the same) - think of road turning, think of junction, think of just after/before the turn, or just right in the middle. The idea is to block everybody else and no desire to take the vehicle out of the caused jam.
6. The lady on the bike - this is dangerous species as many of them take turns or make moves without any kind of communication. They have the right logical thinking for this action though. They are under impression everybody is anyway watching them - so people will watch they are doing and "adjust".
7. Beasts of nature - cows etc
8. Beasts of the road, trucks who blink on one side and turn on another - idea is to take as much space to turn. Transport buswallahs who have the competition to stand in the middle of the road otherwise they will get stuck in corner.
9. Traffic police - who have penchant of stopping the truck/bus/car/two wheeler, right in the middle of the traffic and walk across with imaginary rope around the vehicle.
BTW this behavior is same across all the cities without any affiliation to caste/creed/religion/place.
The problem is bigger as people who have seen better managed places with rules and regulations come back and break every possible rule in the book :).
Another of the behavior on the cross with or without traffic lights of "surging tsunami". Imagine traffic going from north to south. A small cross road joining in from west will have first a puddle slowly turning into gurgling wave made up of eager bikes, snarling rickshaws. If in the right mind you better keep horn pressed (sometimes this does not help) but blaring it a top decibel keeps folks aware you mean business - that is to cross the road when you have the way. Other times you will see people just ignore the signal and keep crossing, follow them otherwise you might get hit as I did at 7.45 am at dairy circle becuase i was waiting as abiding citizen for light to turn green. Last but not the least on traffic signals with decreasing wait time, you will see people try and leave about 10 secs earlier - it is a norm - do not fight it.
2. GPS/Maps in Netherland uses google maps. Over in India - Yahoo has flawed but maximum collection of cities under the map. Satellite data sucks. Google/Live are catching up with Yahoo at this juncture.
3. Australia browbeated the opposition to take another world cup. Every other team was reduced to being paper tigers.The best team has won. Adam Gilchrist embodied the valley which resides between Australia and rest of the teams.
April 26 First ammendement, traffic woes and othersI had to mention - Ani 's latest entries about
1. First amendment - Although I am all for individual liberty but I agree with Ani - "there has to be influence of good kind" - now this could be contrused in various ways - brainwashing with right/left/liberal wing thoughts. It is funny to see some of the books which talk about bringing up kids in particular way. Actually I am not sure bringing them up in certain way is going to plug future "events".
2. Traffic woes in Bangalore - I envy Ani's happiness/glow since he has got that two wheeler while I drone through the traffic in 4 wheeler. I am going to join his tribe soon. Application VirtualizationVirtualization 101
Shed the vendor pitch(disclosure - I do work for Microsoft) and focus on what it means (indirection of another kind to achieve a set of goals - centralized/controlled rollout/management/monitoring/upgrade, consolidation )
- hardware virtualization (storage,network)
- os virtualization
- application virtualization
- presentation virtualization
For last couple of months I have been working with few customers to help them minimize the costs associated with managing the desktop. One of the technologies which just "clicks" with customers is recently acquired Softgrid.
- It allows applications to get isolated environment to execute and not trample the common infrastructre items(registry,COM dlls,File system etc)
- It has feature of streaming the application to the desktop ensuring only the required footprint is present on the machine.
- It allows monitoring/metering of the applications to ensure applications can managed more effectively. Allow locked down Group olicy based execution/access to the software.
- It allows easy upgrade of the applications/os in controlled fashion.
- Helps ISVs/Enterprises by lowering the cost of testing for application compatibility and leads to software as service.
Where it is applicable?
- Anywhere when a pc based application needs to have isolated environment allowing easy upgrade, rollout, limited footprint and closed monitoring.
eg.;
- One pc used by many folks each having different set of applications possible sharing common dlls having different versions.
Scenario
- Healthcare front desk/Callcenter/Insurance-Finance company desktop where managed environment is essential.
Where to get it
Contact your Microsoft rep. It is available as part of Client optimization pack. Ask for MDOP information. "The Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance is a dynamic desktop solution available to Software Assurance customers, that employs innovative technologies to help reduce the TCO of the Windows desktop by accelerating OS and application management, and enhancing IT responsiveness and end-user uptime. "
What is the licensing Contact your Microsoft rep.
Is it available to general public?
In its present form - it has been made available to our SA -Software assurance customers who want to enjoye trouble free maintenance and migration of the desktops.
Can I download it?
It is available for customers/softgrid enabled partners through trial-in-box models through local microsoft rep. IF you want to become partner again contact your local microsoft rep.
Q. How does it work
An application is "packaged" using sequencer and served off the server to the client having the softgrid client. When user clicks on icon/shortcut to the application, rights to access it are queried with ad/sofgrid server and only required bits are streamed down to the client.
Q. Are disconnected scenarios supported
A. Yes
Commonly asked questions
Q. What is sequencing?
A. Verb - act of recording what common elements(FS/Registry/COM etc) are changed/accessed by the application during installation and use and creating a application "bag" which contains all regular app stuff virtualized by the sequencer. This application "bag" is stored in the SVAS(SoftGrid Virtual Application Server) which in turn is delivered to the clients on demand.
Q. What is the role of AD?
A. Sequenced applications are provisioned based on the access rights in AD. So idea is launch rights etc are given to the right users. For eg., you might want to provide Excel access to Finance users and Photoshop access to designers. This allows those users to use those applications "only".
Q. What does the client do?
A. Client runs a piece of software to communicate with SVAS to get the required applications. It contains the infrastructure to "communicate" and
"recieve" software on demand to the machine.
Q. What does sequencer do?
A. A sequencer application runs on clean machine running the nearest configuration of the client(OS/apps).
Q. What does SVAS do?
A. It provides the
- store of the sequenced applications in filestore
- way to authenticate and authorize the clients with AD.
- monitors the access/licensing etc
Q. Does it have an SDK to extend either client/sequencer/server
A. Not yet.
Q. What is the storage used for?
A. To Store profiles and access/authorization/metering information
Q. Is the store configurable to something else?
A. Sql Server 2005
Q. Does it allow IE sequencing?
A. While Internet Explorer cannot be sequenced, plug-ins and add-ons such as Java, JRE, Macromedia, etc. can be. For more information refer to Answer ID 174, "Recipe: Microsoft Internet Explorer".
Q. What is the relationship to SMS
A. SMS/MOM is all about management of assets/monitoring etc. Softgrid integrates with SMS through connector allows easy patching,update, asset inventory etc from single view. It thus allows virtualized applications to be inventories.
Q. What is relationship to Virtual PC, Virtual Server or terminal services?
A. Microsoft SoftGrid virtualizes the application layer. Virtual Server virtualizes the Windows Server and Virtual PC enables you to run a virtual session of the OS.
Q. Where is the core site for softgrid
Other kind of virtualization
1. OS - checkout virtualpc, virtual server (we use them for testing/quick provisioning/deprovisioning/demo)
Pathetic trumpeting of understanding of religionReading books by Jyotirmaya Shrama - "Hindutva","TERRIFYING VISION: MS GOLWALKAR, THE RSS AND INDIA" etc, following are the conclusions
1. To be Hindu and declare oneself is sin. 2. It is better to look yourself through the eyes of "PrafulY", "JohnX", "IrfanZ" or Leftist educated card carrying communism 3. Your thinkers are nothing but axxxxxs. 4. If you try to think logically and on your own and try to question we will crush you since we know the english vocabulary and our army of haters will impound you on tv channels, books and articles. 5. Wait for emancipation from us. (fill in the religion, philosophy)
I liked(sic) a book "disappearing daughters" based on female infanticide in India. But I fail to understand the reason of hate and looking down upon anything related to Hinduism by the left bastions of thinking in various universities in present India. It is awful to see a guy interlinking, extrapolating works/words of Aurobindo/Vivekananda. (maybe as bad as me talking about this) There are ton of things which are wrong with Hinduism, what I personally like is freedom from one "controller" of anykind. Challenge for all these kind of people who evaluate and try to come up with "understanding" is that Hinduism is not "limited" by "Books/One messenger" and written stuff and keeps evolving. So their commentry and idea of linking it to voilent nationalism which they have been fearing for decades (secretly hoping it comes true - as it makes them experts ;)) never really comes true in large scheme of things. The feeble attempt to understand the simplest ritual of morning in middle class house to a farm worker where most of the things are dedicated to God first are beyond their meagre minds. RIP all the left brainwashed impractical folks in "frontline", "jnu".
When not to outsource -Blackberry blackoutBlackberry is becoming victim of its own success? I don't think so. A current story reflects sad parts of it. This is not unique to the blackberry. In general
1. Don't outsource the core capability on which your business depends - in this case the network or at least have reasonable SLA to twist a collar/collection of collars(white or blue).
2. Be clear, concise in when explaining an event and respectful of the customer's concerns. Unfortunately public facing team here did not have good plan to manage the expectation. Customers know things can go bad, what they need to know is things are under control and will be resumed after a point in time. ( Disclosure - Always heard good thing about balckberry use, never used it. Presently I am a Microsoft employee) February 14 Hindi BlogsGot hold of good hindi blogs through chetan(indibloggers nomination)
गीत गाता चल ओ साथी Hindi blogging help http://www.akshargram.com/sarvagya/index.php/Making_a_Hindi_blog Ratlami at his best - http://www.tarakash.com/content/view/150/197/ Need for curse(“gaali”) - http://fursatiya.blogspot.com/2004/09/blog-post_13.html Communists - http://theluwa.blogspot.com/ - one hell of satire February 06 StatisticsLately I have been a born again statistics enthusiast. (please notice the word enthusiast, statistics and its marriage with probability used to suck all the enthusiasm out of my growing up years where we mugged up the poisson, normal distribution without getting a real feel for them)L ately at work I have felt the need to dip again to connect statistics with visualization.
I came up on link @ sharan's blog about TED about prof hans rosling video. This video shows the professor in his element explaining the world data in more comprehensible fashion. Too say the least it is mesmirizing. February 01 ParityI landed up on some of the sun's blogs and quickly added them lest I forget. I specially like sun yaw's blog which captures the essentials and history, tidbits quite nicely. What I ended up on was also the our own version of msinsider at sun's china site. While surfing through the linked blogs also learnt about http://www.corporations.org/system/top100.html(thanks Amiram Hayardeny). " An interesting observation from this list, is that out of the world's largest 100 economies, 51 are corporations, and only 49 countries..."
Sun yaw also has 4 day tour guide for beijing and adated but great advice for peopler planning career in china (applies in many ways to India too;), in case of India add infrastructure, corruption at many places, "connectivity" and educated snobs).
Lastly read up on another "to read article "- heck I am not connected any more - this basically explains the perils of using imperative language like c# or java after being exposed to Haskell or similar functional language. It is actually demoralizing but also fun to see ruby/python fans fight over nothing. Although it is comforting C# has angels like Erik M fighting on. January 29 Pointer to Pointers[Update] - Better Channel 9 video which talks about language future. Slowly .net languages are adopting functional world. This is better and hopefully the concurrency which is more of immediate problem is being handled in future version.
GC- There is great entry by Vineet Gupta on GC - a must read - as it manages to bring diverse things together.
SQL - Vinod points out a great series of posts by the sql team. These contain horrendous details for the sql query plan diggers.
Rest vs WS-* - I stopped following whole Rest was WS-* debate long time back as it became irrelevant and was mostly directed by user adoption. "Restians" have started questioning every ws-protocol(last count was 50?) , which I guess is natural. One needs to just talk enterprise and see the folks get confused. Pete has better terms for the warring camps - "RESTafarians " and "SOAPies "
- David Megginson predicts the demise. You can continue reading the impact of this at various place with different perspective.
- Tim just moves on.
- Paul takes whole rest to extreme.
- Paul also has great picture depicting choreography vs orchestration.
- Hmmm....soapSucks (groking this i was surprised by JE 6's WS support and the example VinodP gave)
- OHara has interesing conclusion
---also has pointer to interesting paper by Rohit khare.
---Amazingly simple approach to the scripting world which most of the folks who want to get job done prefer rather than armchair a*.
- Anne admits how easy it is do enterprisey ws-* stuff with wcf.
---- she also points to the "convergence" between warring vendors on certain standards.
---- She also predicts uselessness of BPEL
It is so easy to look at the past, I am just catching up ;). Not affected by the immediacy becuase I do not have rss reader or do not browse from home or office.
All that Web 2.0 stuff
Off all the web 2.0 ness (mashups,ajaxian utopian land, CSS vs other ui layout world, presence of rss, tagged world-digg/delicious, Ruby over rails and other unwanted garnishing attributed to it)
- I think microformats are one thing which seem to be catching on.
- Sparql ? -No thanks - too much of information stuffed into the url.
Misc
Thingamy - provides an interesting approach to applications(business processor). I like #8 as data head and frustrated with umpteen messaging/distribution attempts.
Ok ....next time find something original to write about or shut up ;)
November 28 Small TidbitsSql DW sizing - HP’s DW Sizer for SQL Server can be found here http://h71028.www7.hp.com/enterprise/cache/3887-0-0-225-121.html Good Sql Book SQL Server 2005 Practical Troubleshooting: The Database Engine - Bart Duncan & Ken Henderson One of the powerful Reporting service api http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa258532(SQL.80).aspx - I had to generate 25+ different kind of reports for 2 given parameters. I used this api and subreport feature to generate the same pretty easily over the long half a day. Thanks to Ram for pushing me to look at subreports otherwise I would have taken the other route alltogether. Sample Code for Adding Custom Ribbon/Gallery etc http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms788199.aspx http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms406046.aspx http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms406047.aspx Fun Stuff Offcourse little late to read this wtf - http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=392707 - oo guys let loose on the code generators ;) . I did end up seeing this one and others @ http://oracle-wtf.blogspot.com/ Surreal - http://oraclesponge.wordpress.com/ (Permanent Link to Another Example of Asking Too Much) August 04 Phantoms in the brainLet me share the latest positive thing I read about an area I closely follow. My father suffers from stroke, which has resulted in aphasia, limb control loss etc for 4 years. With advent of availability of information on internet and books I tried finding reasons of why and how of the disease which renders one helpless and humble. The neuroscience subject is very vast dealing from control of limbs, thought process, sense of me etc. Ramachandran and people like him had noticed the phantom arm phenomenon - where mind does not realize that arm has been paralyzed/cut off etc. Recently it was reported in two seperate experiments - that people fitted with bioelectrical receptor/controller helped some of these people to move robotic arm. That is huge improvement. Almost magical.
Offcourse all this thinking also induces debate in head about what is real and not real. It puts question mark on all our experiences and their interpretation. It also empowers one to rate personal experience better than blind faith.
Nation of apologistsOver the years going drilled through the history, initiation through our fabled new generation of fiction writers and glimpses of greatness amongst the numerous saints, I have found we have turned into educated apologists for our country and our culture.
I have had liberal mindset throughout, with no pressure to formulate an opinion through growing years/ I had been exposed to both rss and communist/leftist paths and interpretation while growing up. But lately the "english" writers amaze me with their vitriolic and brainwashed notion of freedom while killing/making fun of the local writers and seeing the history through eyes of the foreign history writers. Unfortunately this perspective has made most of them product of the JNU/Calcutta philosophy. This viewpoint unfortunately looks at natives as hazards and uneducated filth so foreign rulers are more than welcome. Recently while reading Amitav Ghosh's "The Imam and the Indian" I had a similar experience. His interepretation of Baburanama gives clean chit to Babur and the invaders in general, he even gives him license to attack and maraud saying ruling/getting new empires was given to him in inheritance. He complains about native Indian rulers and pushes forward the theory of Krishna temple on stupas. Offcourse by saying that he implies that destruction of temples was allright and even promotes the understanding that Hindu culture survived becuase of promotion and help from the foreign rulers. Unfortunately this is far from truth as black is different from white. I wonder how collective conscious has recorded the invading armies all over the world across differently from these armchair interpreters and leftist ideals.
No wonder these kind of writers in spite of their good linguistic abilities and scholastic achievements remain far away from the culture they are supposed to be telling about.
Now I know the usual arguments which I also used to give earlier
- non confirmation to usual leads to unacceptance.
- Pls be non conformant to everything that is evil, morally wrong, inhuman practices, religious wrongs - expose caste, child labor, women problems. Pls expose the wide space between haves and have nots. Pls expose the corruption, godmen of disrepute. All those provide enough ethos and background for the next big novel.
- it takes courage to talk about unpleasant things.
- Pls talk about them, use a loudspeaker. But don't assert doubtful facts. Take a fictional liberty, but don't push everything that you have been brainwashed with as the written truth and everything else as myth.
These kind of books and writings confirm my earlier fear about truth about written word and how it can get propagated. Just imagine if at this moment the major centers decline and over the years new anthropologist/archeologist discover and interpret the history from the perspective of the written word. How do they know what is truth or not? How do they know what has been written about a place, person is a fact or fiction. How?
July 31 Israel & HappeningsThere are some amazing articles on Web, it is refreshing to see different perspective than one colored from our right/left wing media and "middle east experts".
1. znet - Gideon Levy
2. Whiskey Bar
My personal view - What Israel is doing now is unfortunate, although I do not agree with other organization's tactis of teasing and waging low intensity war without coming in the open. But honestly I fail to understand how come religion which can bind does not bind the people of the book( all 3 of them share the messengers, stories and places ).
July 29 MusingsCCR & ilk
Finally the CCR is online, what does it do - it provides the semantics and clean syntax for doing language neutral(for now library based - someday each language will support it in native way) actions in seamless concurrent way. All the features of win32 and more from the world of join/pi calculas - hopefully we will see unification with Herb sutter's ideas down the line. It is always better to readup on Larry's concurrency series before you attempt using/understanding CCR.
People related to CCR are Satnam Singh, Jeffery Richter and George Chrysanthakopoulos.
Paper related to CCR is here.
Much more accessible MSDN magazine article is available here.
Quaero & EIT
Europeans are going ahead with yet another public money funded venture to counter technical hegemony(as they percieve) of US corporations to set MIT counterpart, google counterparts. I wonder if Linux love is also a counterforce as a reason to hate Microsoft. They have to realize their earlier efforts of minitel/prestel did not go anywhere. This is the basic problem becuase US has pretty much liberal immigration, it goes after the bright students, provides much more balanced neighborhoods, support for the career with glass ceilings. It has better history of supporting bright people irrespective of their background(if one ignores the over the top display of holllywood, political thinktanks - who do not know how to guide an empire - it is one albeit a shy one - one day history will judge them to be better than the others who existed at other times). Europe has lost the opportunity by turning into shell just like Japan did - it interacted more closely with US than its neighbors where the wounds are much deeper(just look at the attempts of EU to integrate Turkey - they allowed cyprus to join eu but offcourse turkey ineligible). These are misguided attempts unless they result in breaking down the shackles and also inviting the VC community to seed and nurture the silicon valley concept which allows failures and rewards the risks.
July 18 Takeshi's castle & Lone wolfLeave it to Japanese to bring innovative entertainment. Takeshi's castle is something I picked up after I was forced to watch kid's channel POGO with my niece. It is hilarious, no-nonsense, straight out fun with no preaching or negative effects of normal tv. Alas they had to screw up it too as the producers decided to get Javed jaffery and other "comedians" to provide Hindi interpretation of what is happening. Sometimes the comments made by these people are very adult and outright dumb. It is like the murder of the commentry(cricket, football, hockey) by certain wannabe "professionals". The channels like Hungama with serials like Kochikame, Doremon. Manga comics have got hold of the Indian kids. Adults like me pick up the books from the crossword (yeah they have manga section now). And also try to save for the odd european/us print with dark themes. Comics still take one out of the daily mundane settings to the world of their own. Japanese comics despite wierd characters and powers seem more real than other things around.
Anyway I digress away from lone wolf series which I liked for the simplicity of themes and ability to convey motion, desolateness and ability to convey grandeur of surroundings with simple black and white impressions. Offcourse I was not aware of the wild popularity of this series and its influence over the years. For me it was something I liked reading for first 20 pages and wanted to take home to read it. I wished I had done wiki search before hand.
In the mean time two of friends have joined the blogworld - Prakash - He is a program manager with diverse tastes. I hope he continues the succint writing for longer time.Suhasini hopefully fills up the journal as she goes along.
May 16 Dymanic Languages - new found loveIn the age of Ruby confessions and python priests - it is relevant to read up on hilarious take on making haskell the "one language to rule them all" - Erik's humble ode. Many of the papers there point to the origins of c-Omega and LINQ.
Sense of history - Bookless in BaghdadWhile reading Shashi Tharoor's excellent collection of essays/articles - "Bookless in Baghdad", one thing which stood out was paragraph in "Bhartiya sanskriti in the Big apple". Page 136, Para 2:
"one intervention that I found particularly striking was that of the kannada poet, playright and filmmaker Kambar, who argued that Indian Cultural sensibility was marked by its non linear notion of time:'time is not a controlled sequence of events in our minds, but an amalgamation of all events, past and present.' Against the western notion of 'history', Kambar posited a view of 'many age and many worlds', including mythic, constituting the Indian sense of present reality. Krishna's lesson to Arjuna on Kurukshetra battlefield, Kambar argued, is not remote for us;'
This is confusing statement for others but not most of the Natives. Mahabharata was modified/added with local myths and stories in countless years it has existed including Shashi's own interpretation. This liberal sensibility of local time and place and freedom has existed in our region but is becoming rare in cacophony of attempts to "impose"/distort our view of past.
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