Musings – Abhay S. Kushwaha

Today is an easy day. After a long time… *sigh*

Long hours continue… back to work.

I came to office on November 16, 7:02am.
I left for home at 7:12am on November 17.
I was back in the office at 9:19 am.
Right now it is 2:55am on November 18.
I’m still at office. I’ve almost been working non-stop.
I was threatened 5 minutes ago of dire consequences by the driver who sleeps in the office next to mine.
Now I’m wondering what I’m doing here.

Oh well. Back to work.

According to Brad Garlinghouse (VP, Communications Products) on Yahoo! Search Blog yesterday, Yahoo! Mail now has three new features:

• Better Search
• DomainKeys Implementation
• DHTML

Nothing too surprising or exciting in search features since it was expected after Gmail‘s search within their mail interface. Yahoo! merely seems to equal their feature list for now; only Gmail’s interface remains faster.

DomainKeys however is a surprising move. Keeping in mind Microsoft’s SenderID implementation for the MSN sites (Wasn’t it supposed to get activated on October 1?), and their recent IP-related problems, it does make sense for Yahoo! to be aggressive about pushing it across as the next viable solution. They even have an opensource reference implementation on Sourceforge. The complete site for DomainKeys makes for an interesting read, though I doubt it will become a standard any time soon. Not even with Yahoo!’s claim that big-time providers like EarthLink are joining hands with them in the implementation. As of now, Yahoo! Mail will sign all outbound messages and verify inbound messages as well.

The DHTML isn’t surprising either. For now they’ve implemented the autocomplete through it which is something they managed to do through a standalone windows application before. Now they’re at par with Gmail for having done it through DHTML. This is the Oddpost technology at work guys! When Yahoo! had taken over the company (News.com, Slashdot, Oddpost), many-a-eyebrows had risen and mused on what it meant for Yahoo! Mail. Now the water is finally distilled and has started flowing out the Yahoo! Mail tap. I look forward to the other enhancements that should in the pipeline too.

But then, Gmail recently announced free POP access and that is something Yahoo! Mail is charging a neat sum for. Once upon a time, Yahoo! had POP access under the condition that users accept advertising from select partners. It remains to be seen how Yahoo! will counter Gmail for this, if at all.

Today is a long day.

Yes, it’s true according to The Guardian‘s this report.

Instead of paying hefty fees to international chemical companies for patented pesticides, they are reportedly spraying their cotton and chilli fields with Coca-Cola.

What is funny is towards the end of the report, at least one uncorroborated use of New Coke and some other proven uses of Coke are listed. Real good stuff in there.

Microsoft has been continuing its campaign against Linux. Now Novell takes the first big step towards countering the MS propoganda by unveiling a specific site Unbending the Truth: Things Microsoft Hopes You Won’t Notice that builds a case for Linux while clarifying the facts stated by Microsoft.

It’s ironic that first Microsoft used selective passages from the various reports comparing Windows and Linux to its advantage only to be countered and shown in bad light by Novell quoting other selective passages from the same reports. Of course, the authors of these reports continue to say that their reports make sense only when read in full so that proper context is established. Yet, to counter a brick with a stone will make Microsoft think twice before attempting such a thing again. For now, I am expecting it to whip up a storm countering Novell’s site by finding out and quoting other facts.

Linux for an average user
I am constantly evaluating the performance of Linux with that of Windows in terms of stability and ease of use (which I think are the only two criteria that matter significantly for an average joe). My filter is when I will move to using Linux at my home PC that my father uses for his correspondence and office use.

Over the last few years Linux has certainly gained ground in its interface and when I used it recently for an extended period, I did not miss Windows at all, and there were many things (middle-click copy & paste for example) that made my life a whole lot more easy. My environment did not call for any unique software and between Sylpheed-Claws, OpenOffice, Gaim, Firefox, Liferea and gFTP, I was happy.

However, in my father’s case, he needs to use software like Adobe PageMaker which simply does not run on Linux. So, even though I’m comfortable that he will be able to handle Linux’s interface, simply because there are not enough applications that he needs is going to keep him away.

This is precisely the reason I had to shift back to Windows. I did not have a native SWF player in Linux. At work, I evaluate a lot of .SWF files that are sent to me by my team. I could drag them to a browser or even set up a script to set up a fancy workaround to have them open in a browser on double-click with the proper height & width. But it simply wasn’t practical to do from the Sylpheed-Claws interface or even otherwise very comfortable or fast enough on my poor old desktop. I shifted back to Windows only because of the standalone Flash player that runs only on Windows. I still use Firefox, Sylpheed-Claws and Gaim on Windows though I’ve started using MS Office for documents — if licensed version is available, why waste the license? 😛

Conclusion
So, is Linux ready for mainstream? Yes.
Are mainstream users ready for Linux? Yes.

Why stop? Lack of enough applications. To me, all other excuses don’t hold water at the moment. Over the next 4-5 years, this reason is going to disappear.

Karan messaged me that my headphones have been bought. But he won’t tell me which model out of the choice I’d given him. Oh boy! Am I excited. I haven’t never ever prayed for anybody to get an air-ticket and after he told me he might have to skip flight and come to India only in Feb, I had trouble digesting that. My goodies! 😉

Thanks Karan. Much appreciate your help. Wish you a very comfortable journey to Chandigarh.

Thanks to Vijay for sending me this small story. No idea who the original author is or if this has been modified from the original but it is timely and talks a lot to me.

The Story
One of the most memorable case studies I came across on Japanese management was the case of the empty soap box, which happened in one of Japan’s biggest cosmetics companies.

The company received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soap box that was empty. Immediately the authorities isolated the problem to the assembly line, which transported all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soap box went through the assembly line empty.

Management asked its engineers to solve the problem. Post-haste, the engineers worked hard to devise an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors manned by two people to watch all the soap boxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty. No doubt, they worked hard and they worked fast but they spent whoopee amount to do so.

But when a rank-and-file employee in a small company was posed with the same problem, did not get into complications of X-rays, etc but instead came out with another solution. He bought a strong industrial electric fan and pointed it at the assembly line. He switched the fan on, and as each soap box passed the fan, it simply blew the empty boxes out of the line.

Moral of the story: Always look for simple solutions. Devise the simplest possible solution that solves the problem. Learn to focus on solutions not on problems.

I sent out a small one liner in the office about starting a Mexican Wave. I received many responses and ended up on this particular page: Mexican Waves (Laola) – A quantitative analysis of the propagating human wave. Good stuff.

I found this documentary of looking into a IBM Death Star crash and further making things confusing, very very interesting. Look at those platters! Wow!

Pluto (my Boxer) had a small incident today where he went limp, eyes glazed, jaw locked and could not breathe for a few seconds. I’ve now been told by helpful people in a very awesome Boxer community called Boxerworld that he could have Aortic Stenosis. I’m going to get this information to his vet and see what he recommends. I’m getting him tested for it for sure since from what I’ve read, a lot of symptoms do match.

Today I received 5 comment spams on my blog. My first blog spam!

Looks like BlackBerry is in India through a tie-up between Research in Motion and Airtel, part of India’s largest telecom conglomerate, Bharti Enterprises.

The wireless service is designed to forward customers’ e-mails from a desktop to a mobile device and synchronize changes between the two. RIM will offer three BlackBerry wireless devices–the 7730, 7230 and 6230–to customers in the country, the company said.

I am an Airtel subscriber. Let’s see what these guys come out with for the consumer and how soon it reaches my circle.

I miss three numbers:

• 9
• 14
• 21

Don’t think anybody can figure out the meaning of that cryptic message though. :-/

I hate coming back to office in the morning when I’ve left for home early morning. I want to sleep like Pluto. *sigh* Feeling patently tired.

Came across the story India Emerges as Innovation Hub on Wired today. It highlights 4 technologies in development in India that are aimed at rural/backward areas of the country and which could find widespread use in the so-called Third World countries:

• Script Mail (a regional language handwriting recognition & mailing system) – HP Research Centre, Bangalore
• K-yan (a compact media center with a projector) – IIT Mumbai
• Shakti (an English to Indian languages translator software) – IIIT, Hyderabad
• Digital Gangetic Plain Project (Connecting regions without last-mile connectivity through Wi-Fi) – Media Labs Asia (in collaboration with MIT)

You really have to read the article to actually appreciate the level of work that has already been achieved–Script Mail will probably be selling early next year as a finished product; K-Yan has already sold 180 units; Shakti is going strong and translating to Hindi, Marathi & Telugu pretty fairly; and DGP has an active wireless triangle between Kanpur, Lucknow and Allahabad and is expanding.

Wow, huh?

Anand has written a 16-page article about his one month use of a Mac. Written pretty objectively, he’s done a marvellous job of pointing out the small nuances and the big issues — from software to hardware — and what makes what click. A must read.

I checked out the My Yahoo! Search beta today. From the 5-10 minutes I spent looking around, I liked what I saw and will return later to explore it further.

Coming Back To Life – Pink Floyd
From The Division Bell (not Dark Side of the Moon as stated earlier — thanks Sergio).

Where were you when I was burned and broken
While the days slipped by from my window watching
Where were you when I was hurt and helpless
Because the things you say and the things you do surround me
While you were hanging yourself on someone else’s words
Dying to believe in what you heard
I was staring straight into the shining sun

Lost in thought and lost in time
While the seeds of lifeand the seeds of change were planted
Outside the rain fell dark and slow
While I pondered on this dangerous but irresistible pastime
I took a heavenly ride through our silence
I knew the moment had arrived
For killing the past and coming back to life

I took a heavenly ride through our silence
I knew the waiting had begun
And headed straight..into the shining sun

Thanks to ST for introducing me to this song.