The US Financial Meltdown.

In his op-ed column titled All Fall Down, Thomas Friedman provides a rather succinct account of the chain of financial missteps that the US financial environment was able to permit in recent years. This is a good reminder, and an analysis, that some form of regulatory oversight is required to prevent such meltdowns from occurring. Thus, the ideological "hands-off" approach of some politicians regarding the economy is very flawed. 

What is always required is some sort of oversight to ensure that the resources in a system are deployed properly. Why else do we have operating systems overseeing resources in a computer system?

College Education in a Barack Obama Administration

In an increasingly competitive global and knowledge-intensive world, it is extremely important for a government to provide mechanisms to ease the burden of college education among today's college-bound students. While Barack Obama's proposed campaign promise is 100 hours of community service in exchange for a $4,000 tuition credit, it is the approach that is to be commended. 

100 hours translates to about 12 days (of 8 hours each), or about 3 months of elapsed time if a student uses only weekends to perform the community service.

Let us hope some effective educational program on these lines will indeed be implemented by the Barack Obama administration.

Is your civic responsibility done?

Dear Fellow Americans:

Have you voted yet? It is important you do because America is at a significant point in its history. Credit-based excesses at every level have brought the country to a strange condition, not fit for a nation that, until very recently, was the very epitomy of strength in the world. (If you understand Kannada, you can read my blog post in Kannada on America's credit excesses; as I wrote that post, I also added the America's national debt counter on this blog's sidebar). As a matter of fact, a large part of the immigration into this country in the past several decades is attributable to such strength.

Recent events have brought out all kinds of sentiments, including some humorous ones such as this one titled Britain is repossessing the U.S.A. And, on a more serious note, an article by Fareed Zakaria makes The Case for Barack Obama. I also found a book that compares the voting records of Obama and McCain, shown at left. I suspect it is interesting, but I have not read it.

Anyhow, I have already decided on how I would vote. Have you?

-

R.

TiEcon 2008, Day 2, Saturday, May 17, 2008

This blog post is about some of my thoughts on the 2nd day of TiEcon 2008. This is not intended to be complete by any means: there are other blog sites that may provide a complete version.
Mike Malone, who handled a fire side chat with Elon Musk today, characterized him as really Entrepreneur Extraordinaire. The discussion on Wikipedia itself is an ample illustration of that. Elon's versatility is quite self-evident. An individual who built several successful information technology companies has now gone on to build several more in other fields: SpaceX, Tesla Motors and SolarCity.

The presentation by Chamath of Facebook was another excellent one. The slides were not at all busy, but still made the points very eloquently. For networking professionals focused on actual plumbing, it is very thought-provoking because he introduced a "social stack", after discussing the OSI stack and the LAMP stack. It looks like Facebook is really a good platform for consumer-oriented social networking applications. Its applicability in the business world, however, is not all that obvious [to me].

Probably the most moving of all presentations was one by John Wood. After leaving Microsoft, he founded Room to Read, a non-profit organization focused on promoting education of under-privileged children in the world. To date, it has produced awesome quantitative results. With a few more John Woods, the world will be a much better place to live. The presentation brought tears to my eyes.

ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಬ್ಲಾಗು (blog).

Folks not familiar with Kannada will wonder what this blog post is about. This is about an excellent new feature in Google's Blogger: the recent addition of support for Indic languages. The man-machine interface is so good that you can create real Kannada characters just through a browser, as you can see below. However, the software is still evolving and not all input avenues produce the same result always. (This is very reminiscent of lack of object-oriented behavior that early Microsoft products used to have).

[Warning: Kannada characters show properly only in Internet Explorer and Safari; I don't quite know what is not right with the Mozilla Firefox].

You can use any natural phonetic transliteration that you can think of, and you are prompted for possibilities. In other words, all the procedures you had to go through using Baraha seems unnecessary. If you didn't get it right, no sweat. You will get a popup Kannada keyboard mini-window from which to select the right Kannada representations. (In Internet Explorer 7.0, the popup mini-window sometimes shows up almost outside of your view area).

ಈ ಪುಟದಲ್ಲಿ ಕನ್ನಡದ ಕೆಲವು ವಾಕ್ಯಗಳನ್ನು, ಮತ್ತು ವಾಕ್ಯಾಂಗ ಭಾಗಗಳನ್ನು, ನೀವು ನೋಡಬಹುದು.

1. ೧. ಸಿರಿಗನ್ನಡಂಗೆಲ್ಗೆ.


2. ೨. ಅ ಆ ಇ ಈ ಉ ಊ ಋ ೠ ಎ ಏ ಐ ಒ ಓ ಔ ಅಂ ಅಃ


3. ೩. ಇಳಿದು ಬಾ ತಾಯಿ ಇಳಿದು ಬಾ.


4. ೪. ಸರ್ ಮೋಕ್ಷಗುಂಡಂ ವಿಶ್ವೇಶ್ವರಯ್ಯ.


5. ೫. ಮೈಸೂರು ವಾಸುದೇವಾಚಾರ್ಯರ ಯಾವ ಕೃತಿ ನಿಮಗೆ ಗೊತ್ತು?


6. ೬. ಶ್ರೀಮತಿ ಗಾಯತ್ರಿ ಅವರೇ, ನಿಮ್ಮ ಮನೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಈವತ್ತು ಏನು ಅಡಿಗೆ?


7. ೭. ನಿರ್ದೇಶಕ ಮಾಸ್ಟರ್‌ ಕಿಶನ್‌ ಸಂದರ್ಶನ


8. ೮. ಮೈಸೂರಿನ ಬೆಣ್ಣೆ ಮಸಾಲೆ ದೋಸೆ.


9. ೯. ಕನ್ನಡ ಕಸ್ತೂರಿಯಲ್ಲಿ ನೀವು ಕನ್ನಡ ಶಬ್ದಕೋಶವನ್ನು ನೋಡಬಹುದು.
   


10. ೧೦. ತಾಯಂದಿರ ದಿನ, ೨೦೦೮, ಅಂದರೆ ಮೇ ೧೧ ಅಥವಾ ಮೇ ತಿಂಗಳ ಎರಡನೇ ಭಾನುವಾರ.

As you can tell, I have not yet figured out how to produce Kannada numerals automatically within the ordered list. The other annoying thing is that, if you want to mix English and Kannada in the same blog post, you have to keep tweaking your Blogger.Settings.Basic. I have no doubt that will get fixed in the not too distant future: Google engineers can be relied upon to produce that.

Finally, Kannada publishing seems to be so enjoyable that I have started a new blog site exclusively devoted to blogging in Kannada.

Internet and Vedanta?

Yesterday, I caught the last few minutes of a chat session broadcast on one of the public television stations in the Silicon Valley (I don't remember the name of the station), about Deepak Chopra's book Life and Death.

During the Q & A session, Deepak Chopra discussed the impact of technology on promoting the idea of universal consciousness. As posted at the hyperlink of this post's title, "... the Internet is cloning our soul."

I couldn't help reflecting that Facebook, "Internet as a platform", Semantic Web, Web 2.0, etc., are foundational concepts for a richer society.

A View on VMware.

The stock of the company VMware has been on a tear ever since its IPO earlier this year. Usual metrics - e.g., P/E ratio - for evaluating stocks will tell you that it is expensive today.

However, if we look at the essential value that it adds to the computing environment, it seems to have some properties that are very perpetual. End nodes - namely, desktops, laptops, servers, etc. - now can be very versatile, thanks to the software VMware.

In other words, the ubiquity of VMware seems to be very assured. Thus, the company VMware seems to have the strength to remain alongside Google, Microsoft, Oracle, etc., in a permanent lineup. With the cash the company is generating, it has the wherewithal to enter adjacent markets.

I'll wait for some pull back in the stock to take a long position.

China, India and U.S. Immigration Policy

Globalization has been occurring briskly while the U.S. debates on immigration reforms. It seems to me that the U.S. lawmakers have not quite comprehended the magnitude and speed of the change that has occurred so far, and will continue to occur for the foreseeable future. There is a definite need within the U.S. to create an immigration policy that encourages talented minds to migrate to the United States; otherwise, America's competitiveness is going to be compromised. The future will be more and more influenced by the knowledge economy, and countries are going to need educated and talented minds to keep the economy vibrant and growing.

These thoughts are on my first visit to China; a travelogue can be found elsewhere. The hard work that I see occurring everywhere in China and the comparable benefits that are available to anyone that can afford it are signs that China can compete very effectively with U.S. and other multinational businesses worldwide. If English language is a handicap at all now for China, it is just a matter of time before the language arbitrage is reduced to nothing.

The good news is that all of this globalization is a way to unify humanity. After all, country demarcations are nothing but man-made devices to manage the population in some orderly manner.

The World is Getting Flatter

Today, I came across a new service that Google has introduced. Free. Google 411. Yes, a directory service that is free (and only costs what you have already paid for the telephone company). I tried it out and it works! Granted it has some constraints for now ... but that will be easily remedied, given that Google has a large army of talented software engineers.

Tom Friedman has earned himself a place in the history books by writing the book The World is Flat. The implication of Google 411 is enormous. Anyone in the world can find out, for a relative pittance, this kind of local information. Even though most of this information is already available through Google Local and such, the simplicity of the man-machine interface of the telephone service is what will make this usable by many more.

If someone - Larry Page or Sergey Brin or, even, Eric Schmidt- were to take the trouble to describe in a book how they have built Google so far, that will be immensely valuable to entrepreneurs!

Cisco and WebEx - Part II

What Cisco has bought, by spending $3.2B, is a powerful operating network that can be enhanced endlessly by adding more value to the users of the network.

WebEx calls their network MediaTone Network and has been successfully using it to conduct real-time collaboration for their subscribers. (I have been a participant on several such collaboration sessions although I have used only solutions where audio was networked through a 800-number network rather than over the IP network). MediaTone Network is accessed over the Internet; however, once on the MediaTone Network, the collaboration information traverses primarily the MediaTone Network except, of course, the first and the last miles.

Now, just imagine any new kind of software as a service (SaaS); this powerful private network need only be programmed with additional applications to provide this new service; if necessary, of course, you can throw more hardware at the problem. And, if you take a look a the WebEx financials, you'll find that their gross margins are significantly higher than the 65% we are accustomed to from Cisco. This is a win-win situation for both Cisco and WebEx. (Actually, it has already been a win for WebEx in their recent stock price). I wish that this merger goes through. (I own some shares of Cisco).

Cisco and WebEx

This morning's announcement that Cisco has agreed to acquire WebEx makes it a bit clearer as to the direction Cisco is taking for its evolution. Web-based online meetings are what WebEx has been serving up to its customers, mainly small & medium businesses (SMBs), and this acquisition has a potential to turn small businesses completely online. The advent of Google Apps is but a modest start, also in that direction. And, Microsoft Live has been online for quite some time now.

Makes you also wonder about the kind of value-added applications that would succeed 20-25 years from now.

Happy New Year, 2006!

People have highly individual approaches to making new year resolutions. Even Uncle Sam wants to help, and does so by providing statistics on the kind of resolutions people make. I would like to wish you with something different this year.

Through my alumni connection, I found an extremely interesting book, displayed at left, titled 'How to be a Star at Work', that was recommended to me by one of the alumni of the Indian Institute of Science, Prof. A. K. Rao, when we met in November 2005. This book is a result of Prof. Robert Kelley's research into why only a handful of scientists and engineers go on to become stars.

The author emphasizes people networking as the most significant trait that distinguishes stars from non-stars. Note in an anecdote that he contrasts the work approach, and the effectiveness of individual knowledge networks, of two otherwise equally well-endowed individuals, Katy and Rob. "Katy and Rob are an even match for the 60 percent of knowledge from their own brainpower, but Rob's network is no match for Katy's when it comes to closing the 40 percent knowledge deficit they face on their new assignment." In conclusion of that same chapter, he states, "Without [knowledge] networks, the stars know, they are on their own. And to be on your own in this mind-boggling knowledge economy is to be lost."

Deciding to improve networking, as described in this book, is a worthwhile new year resolution for everyone in general, and professionals in particular. I wish you a very happy new year in cultivating your professional network.