Thursday, February 26, 2009

Connecting to remote machines and working

I would like to curse all the managers, team leads, directors who ask developers to connect to remote machines in different country and develop from there.

These are the curses that I am cursing them.


  • They will always work on remote machines which has to be connected by doing VNC to one machine in different country, and from there again VNC to their machine which is in another country over a very slow speed internet.
  • They will suffer forever with Windows Vista or very similar OS, and struggle with incompatibility at all levels including hardware, application softwares, device drivers etc.
  • They will spend $150,000 every year for their softwares for upgradations, and would go bankrupt very soon. (Microsoft Office Pro - $1150, Vista Ultimate - $850, Visual Studio Team Suite - $15,000, MS SQL Server Enterprise - $35,000, Exchange Server - $10,000 etc., and had to pay four times for Quad Proc machine)
  • After developing and successfully releasing one breakthrough software which collapses 20 companies, and outdates 50 products, they will realize that, they used one library which is under GPL v3 and copyrighted by only Richard Stallman.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Lost Generation

I realize this may be a shock but
"Happiness comes from within"
is a lie, and
"Money will make me happy"
So in 30 years, I will tell my children
they are not the most important thing in my life.
My employer will know that
I have my priorities straight because
work
is more important than
family
I tell you this
Once upon a time
Families stayed together
but this will not be true in my era
this is a quick fix society
Experts tell me
30 years from now, I will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of my divorce
I do not concede that
I will live in a country of my own making
In the future
Environmental destructions will be the norm
No longer can it be said that
My peers and I care about this earth
It will be evident that
My generation is apathetic and lethargic
It is foolish to presume that
There is hope.

And all of this will come true unless we choose to reverse it.

Please read it in the reverse order (from bottom to top)

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42E2fAWM6rA

Sent to me by Deep Joy Majumdar

Sunday, February 22, 2009

First Cartoon on Loksatta



Text Inside Cartoon : Our's is non-violent Naxalism.

Text Ouside Cartoon : We should not have said like that Sir. Since our government is doing non-violent encounters.

Press Release of Dr.JP on this : http://news.loksatta.org/2009/02/lok-satta-is-non-violent-naxalite-party.html

Courtesy: Eenadu.net

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Your Privacy is an Illusion


It is technically possible for your cell phone provider to know where all places you have travelled with exact timings and the distance with a granularity of 0.5 km - 2 kms.

For cell phone to work, it has to send signals to the nearest tower. When it sends the signals, the tower comes to know of the area of this cell phone. If the service provider of the cell phone stores that information, then they can find out where all that person has gone at what time. It literally means, we are telling all our movements to the service providers.

This is the reason why Richard Stallman does not use cell phones.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Ain't this the truth??????

John Smith started the day early having set
his alarm clock (MADE IN JAPAN)
for 6 am. While his coffee pot (MADE IN CHINA )
was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (MADE IN HONG KONG).
He put on a dress shirt (MADE IN SRI LANKA)
designer jeans (MADE IN SINGAPORE)
and tennis shoes (MADE IN KOREA).
After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet (MADE IN INDIA)
he sat down with his calculator (MADE IN MEXICO)
to see how much he could spend today. After setting his watch (MADE IN TAIWAN)
to the radio (MADE IN INDIA)
he got in his car (MADE IN GERMANY)
filled it with GAS (FROM SAUDI ARABIA)
and continued his search for a good paying AMERICAN JOB.
At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day, checking his Computer (MADE IN MALAYSIA)
John decided to relax for a while. He put on his sandals (MADE IN BRAZIL)
poured himself a glass of wine (MADE IN FRANCE)
and turned on his TV (MADE IN INDONESIA)
and then wondered why he can't find a good paying job in AMERICA.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

How Important is Process in Development?


One team is facing the following problem.

The team is developing a new application. At the time of installing the first version, it needs to be populated with some data. If the data is in a structured format (like csv or xml), then the application can import it. But, the data is in unstructured format, and it needs to be converted to structured format.

All the team members are brainstorming on how to solve the problem.

Sr.PM: I agree that, it is not a challenging task (It means, it is very dirty work). If you want, I can get one contractor who can do this work of converting from unstructured format to our own format.

Deverloper: I can do this. You don't need to get a vendor for this.

PM: How will you do it?

Deverloper: I will write a script in vim to parse the unstructured format, and to change the data to structured format.

PM: Hmmmm. How will I run it?

Deverloper: I don't expect you to run it. I will run it. If you want to run it, you need to install vim. I will give you a script and a command, and you just need to run it.

PM: What about production machine?

Deverloper: I don't expect it to be installed on production machine. To install it on production machine, we need to get clearance from Legal department, and we will have many other problems. I expect this to be run only once on our local machine to convert the data from unstructured format to structured format. If the data is changed, then I can run this again to get the new data in structured format.

PM: But, if you write any program, then it has to be documented, and we should have clear instructions on how to install it and run it. The test team should be able to test it. If you only run it everytime, then we will have dependency on you.

Deverloper: No. You cannot do all those. It is a small script. Assume that, I am doing it manually.

PM: No. If you are going to write any program, then it has to be documented, tested and checked in the source control. You have to follow the entire process.

Deverloper: In that case, ignore whatever I said.

After that, the PM happily spent few days in manually converting the data from unstructured format to structured format.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

No Respect for P.V.Narasimha Rao


Few days back, Congress had one big meeting in Nagpur. All the Congress leaders across the country attended the meeting. In that meeting, photos of all the previous and present congress leaders are there except one leader. That leader was none other than P.V.Narasimha Rao, the first Prime Minister to rule for 5 years and not from Nehru's family. He was the only congress leader who ignored Nehru-Gandhi's family completely and still stayed in Congress. When he was the Prime Minister, he completely ignored Sonia Gandhi and all the followers of her (like N.D.Tiwari, Arjun Singh etc). That was the main reason, why he never got any respect from any congress leader. He will not get any respect from Congress till Sonia Gandhi is there. Eventhough he is the only leader from Andhra Pradesh who became Prime Minister, still Andhra Pradesh Congress leaders never bothered to remember him.

When the Congress meeting was going on in Nagpur, at the same time Senior BJP Leader Narendra Modi, and Prajarajyam Party Leader Chiranjeevi praised P.V.Narasimha Rao for his economic reforms and development of the country. I am sure, none of the Congress leaders take this as an insult. When, the leaders of the opposition in the state and centre, L.K.Advani and N.T.Rama Rao gave so much respect to him, still congress leaders never bothered about him. Why will they bother now?

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Programmatically Disabling Search in Sharepoint

To disable search in one sharepoint Website

SPWeb spWeb = new SPSite("http://krishna/sites/rama").AllWebs["Narayana"];
spWeb.AllowAutomaticASPXPageIndexing = false;
spWeb.ASPXPageIndexMode = WebASPXPageIndexMode.Never;
spWeb.NoCrawl = true;
spWeb.Update();

To disable Search for all the Web sites in the given site collection in Sharepoint.

foreach (SPWeb web in new SPSite("http://krishna/sites/rama").AllWebs)
{
web.AllowAutomaticASPXPageIndexing = false;
web.ASPXPageIndexMode = WebASPXPageIndexMode.Never;
web.NoCrawl = true;
web.Update();
}

This code will not disable the search box, but, gives zero results for any search query.

Sunday, February 08, 2009

Evacuation


XYZ Office -> A fire alarm rang at 6 PM when almost all shift employees are in office (approx 5000). As usual entire office was evacuated within 3 mins & every employee gathered outside office.

10 mins passed
..............................
5 more mins passed.


Security Officer -> Announcement started, "Dear Employees - With melting heart I am making this announcement that for many of you it will be the last evacuation drill, as we are laying off almost 80% of the employees. While moving in who-so-ever ID card won't work are laid off & all their belongings will be couriered to them tomorrow. We followed this approach as we don't want to fill email box size with layoff mail in thousands & also to avoid any fight inside office". Hope you have nice career ahead. Please move in & try your luck.

Thursday, February 05, 2009

Layoff


Once upon a time the government with Ruling Party XYZ.. had a vast scrap yard in the middle of a desert. Ruling Party XYZ Said..
- "Someone may steal from it at night."

So they created a night watchman position and hired a person for the job. Then Ruling Party XYZ Said..
- "How does the watchman do his job without instruction?"

So they created a planning department and hired two people, one person to write the instructions, and one person to do time studies. Then Ruling Party XYZ Said..
- "How will we know the night watchman is doing the tasks correctly?"

So they created a Quality Control department and hired two people. One to do the studies and one to write the reports. Then Ruling Party XYZ Said.. ,
- "How are these people going to get paid?"

So they created the following positions, a time keeper, and a payroll officer, then hired two people. Then Ruling Party XYZ Said..,
- "Who will be accountable for all of these people?"

So they created an administrative section and hired three people, an Administrative Officer, Assistant Administrative Officer, and a Legal Secretary. Then Ruling Party XYZ Said..
- "We have had this command in operation for one year and we are $18,000 over budget, we must cutback overall cost."

So they laid off the night watchman.


The same thing can be applied to software industry also. In that, the developer would be laid off instead of the night watchman.

Sunday, February 01, 2009

Alliance of TDP and TRS


The alliance of Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) is finalized. TDP is giving 46 Assembly seats and 9 Parliament seats to TRS. TDP is contesting in 50 Assembly seats out of 119, and 4 Parliament seats out of 17. TDP is giving the remaining seats to Communists. This is the first time for TDP to give that many seats to other parties. Till now, they have given maximum 15% seats to other parties, and now they directly jumped to 60% in Telangana region.

I cannot understand why TDP is degraded to such a situation. But, it is a big advantage for Loksatta.

K.Chandra Shekar Rao is the Chief of TRS party. He won from Karimnagar parliamentary constituency in 2004. In 2006, in an argument with Congress Leader M.Satayanarayana Rao, he resigned to his M.P. seat and contested again there. He won with more than 2 lakh majority. In 2008, all his MLAs and MPs resigned and contested again. The people got fed up with him for repeatedly resigning, and they voted for other parties which can win. Out of 16 assembly constituencies, TRS won 7, Congress won 5 and TDP won 4. Out of 4 parliament constituencies, TRS won 2 (one is KCR himself), Congress and TDP won one each. KCR won with a majority of 15,000, a big drop from 2 lakh in the previous election. At that time, people had chosen the party which can defeat TRS in that election, and voted for that. By that, TRS lost badly.

In Dec 2007, MLA of Khairathabad at that time, P.Janardhan Reddy, died and by-election was conducted with the 16 assembly constituencies vacated by TRS. P.Janardhan Reddy's son P.Vishnuvardhan reddy contested from Khairatabad and won with a big majority. In that election, Loksatta's candidate Katari Srinivasa Rao came in second position and TRS got third position. TDP did not contest in exchange of similar situation in Terlam, where the MLA of Aleru died, and his son contested from TDP, and Congress did not contest from there. Sympathy was a major factor in the easy win of Congress.

Khairatabad was a very big constituency. In the restructure of all the assembly and parliament constituencies, it was split into four constituencies, Khairatabad, Kukatpally, Serilingampally and Jubilee Hills. Loksatta Candidate in the last by-election Katari Srinivasa Rao is going to contest from Serilingampally in the next general elections.

I was campaigning in Serilingampally constituency and there was one common concern among many educated people. Those who understand economics little bit know that, Congress is destroying the state. It is must to bring down the Congress government to save the state. So, they said, because, they do not want Congress, they are going to vote for TDP which is the next probable win. They also said, if TDP does not contest, then they would vote for Loksatta.

Anyone who understand economics can clearly say that, Jayaprakash Narayan and Chandrababu Naidu are the only leaders in Andhra Pradesh, who do not make state to go bankrupt. Congress had already emptied entire treasury. Chiranjeevi is the one who does not know anything about economics. When he was asked the question, whether he is Leftist or rightist, he replied that, he is a humanist. Till now he has not disclosed his manifesto or his economic policies. If TDP is not going contest at any place, then I am sure, most of the voters would prefer to vote for Loksatta instead of other parties. So, this alliance is of big advantage to Loksatta than any other party.

By the way, TRS is going to contest in Serilingampally, and most probably Katari Srinivasa Rao would be first in the list of MLAs of Loksatta.