A destiny or Just floatin' around

Kindle beyond tipping point

2010-12-26T18:52:00.000-08:00

You know that kindle has caught on, when you find the priest in a hindu temple in chicago, reciting shlok (prayers) from a text on his kindle.

Poor resolution, took it from a distance, was in no-photography zone, but couldn't resist capturing this "tipping point" moment.

Also, the blog has been in-active for years.. and I don't know when will I post again. Sorry!

Google's solution for deep web.. But, can you really copy all that data?

2007-03-24T15:53:00.000-07:00

Greg Linden has a very good summary of the Google's approach for handling the deep web content here and here, mainly based on the Dec 2006 paper.

(This blog is a reproduction of the comments I originally posted as response to Greg's posts)

Overall, he is proposing that Google is approaching the problem by caching all the deep web content, thereby, putting an end to the federated solutions to this problem. However, I strongly suspect making a local copy of all the data using "deep crawl" is perhaps not the right approach for Deep Web.

1. The number of queries you need to pose for each form is huge. Specially, if you have text fields. Further, the scenarios where cardinality of input values is virtually infinite.

2. How do you model all queries to all these diverse forms? Going back to author's comment that there are a wide range of domains. How do derive the set of queries to be used to probe each of the sources?

3. The load on server for each probing query is much more than simple crawling of a surface web page. It would generally require a database query on the server side.

4. The data is quite dynamic. Such as price information - in much of the ecommerce domains, such as flights, hotels, etc. Given the required load for one cycle of "deep crawl", you cant have to many refresh cycles.

5. Keeping all the query enumeration, schema matching and mapping challenges aside, web sources imposes very unique challenges. There are a very few "get" based forms these days; Such offline "deep crawl" would not be *easy* to deploy in forms involving POST and javascripts.

Ofcourse, there are many more challenges in handling deep web content. In above, I have pointed out the ones that are very specific to "deep crawl" approach.

I work in a start up named Cazoodle, and we are taking a very different approach to solve the challenges in Deep web. We will be presenting our system prototype in ICDE. Hope to catch up with you if you are flying in there.

python string += string

2007-02-22T23:28:00.000-08:00

I use the string += operation very commonly in all my python programs, and sometimes store a few MB of data in memory before flushing it out to disk.

I just learnt that its implementation makes it a very slow operation. Basically, in python strings are immutable. This means += operation is destroying and creating objects on every call. Imagine doing this a few hundred thousand times in each program.

Today, when a simple loop was taking infinitely long time, I was forced to investigate, and sure enough someone had explained it on this thread on python forum.

But I cannot keep invoking file ios for each append operation either. Even though file writes already have buffering implemented, I like to explicitly store data in memory for a few steps of string appends, and then flushing it to disk. This is important if you want to monitor the progress of your program using these logs - deterministically - such as every 1000 steps of the loop. I wrote this simple class that makes this task very easy.


class hugeFileWrite:
        def __init__(self, fname, step=100):
                self.sout = ''
                self.step = step
                self.fname = fname
                self.count = 0

                f = open(fname, 'w')
                f.write('')
                f.close()

        def addString(self, smore):
                self.sout += smore
                self.count += 1
                if self.count > self.step:
                        self.flush()

        # Make sure you call flush() after your last addString
        def flush(self):
                f = open(self.fname, 'a')
                f.write(self.sout)
                f.close()

                self.sout = ''
                self.count = 0

Google 101

2007-02-21T07:58:00.000-08:00

Google folks are offering a class in UWashington - CSE 490h: Problem-solving on large-scale clusters: theory and applications.

What we study in the distributed systems classes is quite basic, and bit outdated compared to Google like infrastructure. This class might be pretty useful for people developing large scale cluster systems.

Also, see this talk on Google Cluster covering GFS, MapReduce, Sawzall and BigTable.

Thanks to Greg for all the pointers[1][2].

inspiring

2007-02-16T00:22:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while, you come across acts that are inspiring. Speeches that boost up your motivation.

The famous inches speech by Al Pacino playing the football coach in Any Given Sunday:

And this image. (The website I found this image had some copyright notice, and was warning when I tried to copy this image. I hope I dont find myself fighting lawsuits for posting it here.)

Learning the tricks of the trade

2007-02-15T18:57:00.000-08:00

Industry experience adds a lot of weight to any person's resume. Sure, coz you learn many tools that are used in industry. But, I have started to believe that its partly also because you have learned how the system works.

When new, you dont want to come out of your mould, but sooner or later, you tend to give in, and start to pick up the tricks of the trade.

This is quite beautifully illustrated in this segment of Devil wears Prada on You Tube. I dont know how long this segment will be alive due to all the DRM issues. But until then, enjoy.

All the whinning about high salary of a CEO

2007-02-13T15:05:00.000-08:00

I came accross a very interesting debate on the high salary (1 M) of Paul Levy, the CEO of a 100 B hospital in Boston. In a rare move of its kind, Paul has justified his salary and invited comments. As others, I am also impressed with his openness in such a political issue.

The major criticism are about the hospital marketing itself as non-profit, but using its size as the justification for 1 M salary of its CEO. Also, some people argue that a part of his salary could be better off being spent on acquiring additional resources for hospital.

I am actually just stepping out of school, and have seen very little of how economy and society operates. However, being an infant in the working class, impressed with the simplicity and democracy of a capitalistic economy, I find any opposition to his salary ridiculous, to say the least.

I completely endorse his salary. I think in a capitalist economy, salaries should be commensurate to the contribution of the individual. We need to pay as much as it is required to attract the most suitable talents.

Infact, unlinke some commenter, I dont even find anything wrong in athelets earning millions for just catching a ball. I dont think just because being a doctor is socially more noble than playing baseball, it deserves more respect and pay. If hospitals help people live longer life , entertainment helps people live happier life . In the end, what good is the longer life, if you werent not happy in those extra days.

As to someone trying to reframe the question, by saying we could pay Paul 0.5 M and spend the other 0.5 M in hiring extra nurses. Well, the thing is, Paul would perhaps move onto an organization that pays proportionate to his talent. Or may be wont strive so hard if not paid proportionate to his efforts. And therefore, this move might actually be counter productive. Its not a simple linear system, you see.

blogger pains

2007-02-13T12:53:00.000-08:00

Why is switch to google's platform implying so many inconveniences for the users of Blogger?

First, they asked to do what-not-i-dont-remember. I was just clicking on whereever it was asking me to click. And then, it told me, I am now using Google version of Blogger. Well, okay! Why couldnt you make it simpler and more transparent to user?

As if thats not enough, everytime I now come to Blogger, I have to login twice. First, I login using my previous Blogger identity. And then it detects that this previous Blogger user is now using Google account. So gives me another login screen.

Why cant you use the same login screen for both the accounts, in the backend check against both databases, untill all your blogger users have moved into Google account? Which certainly would never happen coz of so many idle accounts. So until when do I have to keep logging in twice to use Blogger?

Another related bug (or is it a feature?) in Google Apps is, whenever you want to use some service, such as, Gmail, Orkut, Google Account, Blogger, you are required to login for the first access to each of the application. However, as soon as logout from any of them, it automatically logs you out from all the application. Well, why is this unsymmetry?

I will survive

2007-02-13T12:44:00.000-08:00

Living in Midwest (urbana-champaign to be precise) makes you very strong.. well atleast in fighting against weather.

Today, we have prediction of over 1 foot of snow. Over 5 inches of snow fall happened overnight. Here is the note from Chancellor of UIUC:

Chancellor Richard Herman

All classes have been canceled for Tuesday (Feb. 13) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. More than 5 inches of snow fell overnight, upto another foot of snow is possible by Tuesday night and a blizzard warning...

So what exactly is all this talk about global warming? On the one hand, we have a-glacier-like-situation in urbana.. on the other hand, we have polar glaciers melting. Perhaps, global warming just implies severe changes in climate.. not that it would be warmer in absolute terms.

Founders at work

2007-02-12T15:09:00.000-08:00

I really liked this book by Jessica Livingston.

Its full of inspiring stories. I particularly like the first hand comments that are generally lacking in many other similar books I have read.

I also liked the fact that its not just a collection of super-successful-cant-be-replicated stories of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Apple. It covers a wider spectrum of companies, many of which happend in quite recent times, which makes it easier to relate to.

the power of web

2007-02-08T17:46:00.000-08:00

I really liked the following video that illustrates what is web, and how we can use it in an influential way. As John Battelle also points out, equally intriguing is the fact that the creator isnt an engineer but an anthropology prof.

Now its Microsofts turn

2007-01-30T13:32:00.000-08:00

Few days ago, I posted about all the criticism Yahoo is facing in Yahoo is here to stay.. or is it?

Now this time, its microsoft's turn. Everyone seems to be disappointed with the giants progress so far. See the articles on CNET and and by Henry Blodget.

Echoing the similar sentiments as I expressed earlier for Yahoo!, I feel it would be too bad for search industry if Microsoft were to perish here. Those with more grey hair seem to have similar opinion [1] [2].

A solution that always works for incompetent leaders

2007-01-24T16:27:00.000-08:00

Dont know the real problem? Know the real problem, but not bold enough to attack it?

As a leader what do you do in such a situation? Well, you cook up lot of non-issues, solve the non-existent problems, and amuse yourself with the idea of having contributed towards a better tomorrow.

The case in point is the recent decision by IIT Bombay authorities to limit the usage of internet and intranet services. Please read the email message at the bottom of this post to get the context.

The authorities find that the student attendance in classes are not as high.. Academic performance is going down.

At the same time they observe that students are spending lot of time on internet.

You see a change, you see an effect. Bang! You label the change as cause of the effect.

Internet is just a medium. Its nothing more than a technology shift. It isnt for the first time that we are seeing a technology change. When newspapers came in, they ate into the time we used to spend on other things. When radio came, samething happened. Then television came. Today internet is here.

As engineers, it is incumbent upon us to embrace the new technology with open arms. We are the creators of these technologies.. if we dont believe in change, why did we come into engineering to begin with?

Take any industry.. First we used to commute by road.. which limited the distances we could travel. Then came the railroads.. And the air travel has made it possible to collaborate and connect with people spread all over the world.

With addition of new technologies, we subsume the possibilities of yesterday.

Now that it is clear that we need to embrace the new technology, the next question is how to make the best use of internet. This medium gives us great power. And together with it comes the great responsibility.

What do you do when you are endowed with a great responsibility?

You rise to the occassion and deliever.

What is being done in IIT is, no.. we cant handle so much responsibility.. Lets reduce the responsibility to the level we know how to handle.

Is this right message for your students? How do you expect we will continue to believe that you can impart in us the qualities that makes a great leader?

I am not saying leaders should not do anything, and let things take their own turn. No.. I agree that a technology shift demands an adaptation. And this adaptation would require several initiativies from the leaders of our institute.

What I am arguing here is that the approach being taken is a very short-sighted one. The right solution requires bold leadership, a visionary who can lead us in this time of change. May be someone with qualities in JFK, or Rajiv Gandhi..

It is a pity that in a country with a population of 1 Billion, we cannot find the right leaders for the nation's best institution. Helplessly, we have left it in the hands of a bunch of incompetent managers ready to compromise the future of next generation of promising citizens with temporary fixes.

Now, I dont have the maturity to lay out a grand plan that can be enacted upon with 100% success rate. Nonetheless, I know a few high level things that needs to be done. You need to teach people, help them imagine the possiblities for creating useful tools using the new technology. You adapt your course structure to the new medium. You show them the vastness of knowledge, far larger than Main Library, that they can now learn to shape up their future. You teach them how to broadcast themselves into the world, as it gets flattened and democratized with the widespread adoption of internet.

On the other hand, it is pretty obvious that the approach being taken is not the right one. If there is a new technology, and we dont know how to make best use of it, lets not allow our students to use it. By restricting its usage, we will be able to minimize its bad effect.

I wonder what happens when students graduate from IITs, and get unlimited access to the internet? Well, who cares? They are not our liability any more.

What did you say? We didnt teach our students how to handle great responsibility?

Give us a break. It was never a part of the IIT's curriculum.

From: General Secretary Academic Affairs < gsecaa@iitb.ac.in >
Date: Jan 19, 2007 6:32 AM
Subject: Minutes of the meeting on Network Usage by IIT Students
To: General Secretary Academic Affairs < gsecaa@iitb.ac.in>

Hi all,
Attached are the minutes of the meeting on Network Usage by IIT
Students. Please go through the mail. In case you have a suggestion
or concern, use the forum iitb.general to share it with students and
faculty, instead of personal mails.

For the unaware, iitb.general is a forum that is accessible to all
students, faculty and alumni and is used for discussions and exchange of
ideas. To access iitb.general , visit http://varta.iitb.ac.in and log in
with your netmon ID and password.

Minutes:
----------------------------------------------------------------
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, BOMBAY
OFFICE OF DEAN STUDENT AFFAIRS

19th January 2007

A meeting of the committee consisting of the following members were
held to discuss matters relating to computer and network usage by
students when the following members were present:

Prof. P. Gopalan, Dean, SA Convener
Prof. Anurag Mehra, Head, Computer Centre Member
Prof. Nand Kishore, Chairman, HWC Member
Prof. G.Sivakumar, Head, CSE Member
Prof. Raghav Varma, Warden, Hostel 10 Member
Prof. C. Amarnath, Ex-Dean, SA Member
Gen.Secretary, Hostel Affairs Member
Gen.Secretary, Academic Affairs Member
Mr. Swapnil S. Sachdev Invitee (MLC)
Mr. Parijat Garg Invitee

Item No 1:
Video streaming :
The committee decided that video streaming in inter and intra hostels
should be disallowed. For using this facility prior permission from
Head, Computer Centre should be obtained.

Item No.2:
Download limit:
The committee put a download limit of 3GB per month.

Item No.3:
Time based ban on internet access in hostels:
The committee had the requested to the students to give their inputs
in September 2006, but no inputs were received at that time, however
during the meeting the students proposed that internet access be
blocked between 2 am and 6 am. However, the committee decided that LAN
access only be available in hostels between 12.30p.m to 11 p.m.
Student dissent was noted. This policy would be effective from 26th
January 2007. It was agreed to review the policy after a period of two
months.

Item No.4:
Illegal Content :
The Head, Computer Centre brought to the notice of the students about
signing of an IT policy of the Institute by every student, which
says that they would use the IIT network to download any illegal
content on any computer connected to the Institute network for which
they are responsible. It was also discussed that the Institute
network is being used to disseminate "illegal materials" like films,
songs etc. by persons running ftp servers on their computers. It was
decided that it will be the task of the elected representatives
(councils) to report this to the Wardens for further action. It was
decided that a poster would be put up by 31st January 2007 after the
same has been vetted by Prof. Sivakumar and Head, CC. The poster
would explicitly spell out the consequences in case of violation
relating to the use of IIT network for the disseminating illegal
contents in any form.

(P.Gopalan )
Dean,SA

----------------------------------------------------------------

A big fraud.. or was I too lucky?

2007-01-22T23:57:00.000-08:00

During some debugging, I was checking the access log on my web server.

Accidently, I noticed following (and many other similar) entries. Why would google, yahoo and microsoft all get interested in refreshing their index of my photo album at exactly the same time? Perhaps, some crawler out there is faking its identity.

I tried nslookup for these ips, and the info seem to correspond to microsoft, yahoo and google respectively. My network admin tried to convince me that I was lucky that all 3 search giants are simultaneously interested in me.

Likelihood of such an event is so small.. Assuming the refresh cycle of 30 days, and the scheduling epoch of one hour, the probability that all 3 companies would have scheduled a particular page in the same hour is something like (30*24)^(-3) = 3 out of a billion.

My probability estimation is missing some terms. You need another division by 20 Billion to account for "a particular page", and a multiplication with 30*24 for "the same hour".

I dont believe in so much of coincidence. Either there is a big fraud going on.. or the big giants have some collaborative projects going on..

65.55.209.52 - - [22/Jan/2007:19:15:25 -0600] "GET /~gkabra2/publish/summer2005/navahoPass/slides/P1040659.html HTTP/1.0" 200 14002 "-" "msnbot/1.0 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)"

74.6.86.107 - - [22/Jan/2007:19:29:34 -0600] "GET /~gkabra2/publish/summer2005/helen/slides/IMG_1050.html HTTP/1.0" 200 13570 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)"

66.249.66.171 - - [22/Jan/2007:19:31:27 -0600] "GET /~gkabra2/publish/summer2005/4thJuly/slides/P1050115.html HTTP/1.1" 304 - "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1;+http://www.google.com/bot.html)"

Vertical search engine market

2007-01-20T23:40:00.000-08:00

Search engine watch has interesting article on the rise of the vertical search engine market. This is a very good news for my company, Cazoodle, for we are building tools that will facilitate development of verticals.

However, this article seem to confine the scope of verticals to the services similar to Yahoo search bulider and Google custom search engine. These services allow you to narrow down your search to a pre-specified set of sites. Some of them also expose a few enhanced search functionalities like keywords to include/exclude, term weighting scheme, etc.

I would imagine verticals include many more search services.. ranging from people search to google finance.

It is interesting though that, inspite of the narrow definition, verticals have been projected to be 1B industry by 2009. I wonder what would be the total market size if you consider the broader definition of verticals.

On the other hand, this article seems to indicate that the job portal sites are losing their market share to other niche, more sophisticated job domain portals based on social networking. However, the giants like monster, careerbuilder seem to be taking counter measures.. forming alliances to stretch out their reach. I guess the problem is not in their design but in their reach to larger audience. Yes, thats exactly what our company is building. So stay tuned!

Yahoo is here to stay.. or is it?

2007-01-18T22:25:00.000-08:00

Yahoo is facing a really bad time.. with its revenues going down quarter by quarter.. wall street is losing faith. But yahoo is such a giant.. I think Yahoo is here to stay.. or is it?

Read the wired article on how yahoo blew it. There are various interesting points to note.

First, which is not entirely a news, but Yahoo has been conservative in various acquisitions.. But I dont see it as incompetency of its execs. No one can justify the price tags for these hefty acquisitions.. YouTube going out for 1.65 B. Its valuation is far smaller.. Paying myspace 1 B just for serving ads.. Google current revenue through myspace is perhaps 10% of this price tag.

But you still have to do it.. As it turns out, this industry happens to be the one where winner takes it all. To emerge as winner, you have to consolidate, and kill competition. That requires very bold moves, and confidence of investors in your crazy decisions.

Second, acquiring two pieces of code doesnt imply you can now have both. Yahoo acquired inktomi and overture.. But it took a long time before yahoo could integrate them both.

Third, systems are often overhyped for their value.. This was true in overture's case.. While it was the best ad serving system, it was not ready for the global scale yahoo wanted to deploy it on. It required various re-engineering before yahoo actually started making money out of it.

The current problem yahoo is facing is because it doesnt have an equivalent of adSense. Google makes 20 cents per search.. Thats a lot of money. Yahoo has been developing Panama for a long time.. but its still not ready. I really wish it works, and produces great results. Because, even for a "winner takes it all" industry, it is important that there are more than one player.

Something that strikes me most is.. today people are so comfortable and talking so freely about advertising as source of revenue.. In general, I would imagine people to be critical of search companies for showing advertisements, and making money out of it. I find the comfort of costumers and analysts with this business model very surprising.

Consulting career

2007-01-16T00:50:00.000-08:00

When graduating from IIT, I was mostly interested in business consulting jobs.. So much that I didnt even want to interview with any software company. I couldnt imagine myself writing programs.

However, better senses prevailed.. I came here to grad school. This is where I really started loving writing softwares. Techies rule the world.. Consultants seemed like the spectators betting on who will win the game, and developers seemed like kicking the field goal. I started losing respect for management career, and at this point.. I cant imagine myself doing anything other than writing softwares.

Given this background, you would perhaps be able to understand why I thoroughly enjoyed reading this blog post by Joel Spolsky. While he is trying to make an entirely different point, the scenarios he uses amuses me. :)

CBS 15 second

2007-01-14T20:50:00.000-08:00

CBS has announced a 15 second video contest.. Here is my message to the world, on my 15 second video on You Tube:

data center on cargo containers

2007-01-08T15:10:00.000-08:00

Data centers tend to be a huge deal these days.. The challenge comes specially because companies are now dealing with humongous amounts of data. Google, Yahoo, MSN, with the goals of caching every byte of digital media, and being able to search through them in fraction of second, require storage and processing of petabytes of data.

Not just the search companies, but any data intensive industry, such as financial trading firms, telecom industry, ecommerce sites like ebay, amazon, etc. need huge data centers.

The increasing demands have so far been coped with ad-hoc construction of data centers by putting together racks of cheap or high-end machines, depending on criticality of application. Dissipating heat and huge power requirements have been the fundamental issues in design.

Well, obviously, these ad-hoc solutions are still expensive and often far from optimal. Mobility is another special challenge. To start a data center in Paris, Google will have to send out its crew of engineers for days, often a cost companies cant bear.

So now industry has come up with a very indeginous solution. Cargo Containers. Yes, data centers that can be customized, and shipped in cargo containers.

Read this research paper from Microsoft:

http://www-db.cs.wisc.edu/cidr/cidr2007/papers/P35.pdf

Look at this promo video from Sun's Black Box project:

http://sun.feedroom.com/?skin=oneclip&fr_story=FEEDROOM162914&rf=bm

Wonder who else in industry is going to manufacture these containers.

[Update] I recently learned from this post from John Battelle (the author of famous "search" book) that even Google itself had similar project.. But it was abandoned because managers didnt puruse it far enough.

dual boot - gentoo on a winxp machine

2007-01-03T16:22:00.000-08:00

I recently installed gentoo on a HP machine running win xp. The gui installer that comes with LiveCD is actually pretty easy to use. You first need to burn the iso image of LiveCD:

url

Now the problem is the disk paritioning part of the GTK installer. If you try the recommended partitioning, it fails. The reason being my xp is already using up 2 primary paritions. This leaves only 2 more paritions as MBR allows a total of 4 partition. You cannot create the extended paritions using this gui.

The workaround is to use fdisk/cfdisk to create the extended partition. (1) Create one (ext2) partition of ~100MB for boot. (2) Create an extended paritition. (3) Create a logical paritition for swap (change type using t) of about 2*ram-size. (4) Create a logical paritition (of ext2) for the rest of space. You will specify the sizes using the starting sector and +SizeMB.

Further, you will need to set up the filesystem on these parititions. Otherwise, the GTK installer does not recognize the paritition type created from fdisk.

Next, you should not forget to mention the mount points in GTK gui.

Another reason why your installation might crash is because of inappropriate selection of additional packages to install. Many of the packages need to be downloaded from internet. Some of which will fail to download. There are still others that require you to accept licences, etc. So be careful in selecting the packages to install.

The major problem was with GTK not allowing to create extended parition I guess. Rest of it were minor issues.

My laptop seems to be already using all 4 entries. I wonder how I would set up dual boot there.

cycles of life

2006-05-31T23:33:00.000-07:00

I stumbled over an interesting article about cycles of life. Honestly, nothing new. Everyone probably is already familiar with this philosophy through personal experiences.

However, it gives a good perspective about being aware of these cycles, listen to the internal and external signals to conciously decide the phase, rather than accidently working against these signals. I suppose this happens quite naturally most of the times, but then who would argue that accidents do not happen.

The author actually has a lot of other interesting articles on the website. I found the one on conquering fears quite inspiring. The articles on sleep and getting up when alarm goes off, though written with all seriousness, seemed quite funny to me. May be conveying messages lightly is his style of writing.

Some quotes from the article on courage:

Raise Your Consciousness

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
- Anais Nin

Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace.
- Amelia Earhart

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
- Eleanor Roosevelt

What Is Courage?

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
- Ambrose Redmoon

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear.
- Mark Twain

Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.
- John Wayne

Move From Fear to Action, Even if You Expect to Fail

When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Most of our obstacles would melt away if, instead of cowering before them, we should make up our minds to walk boldly through them.
- Orison Swett Marden

Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.
- John Quincy Adams

Embrace the Daring Adventure

Before you embark on any path ask the question, does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it and then you must choose another path. The trouble is that nobody asks the question. And when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart the path is ready to kill him.
- Carlos Castaneda

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
- Kahlil Gibran

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
- Dale Carnegie

billg

2006-03-25T00:19:00.000-08:00

I recently read the book buisness@speed of thought by Bill Gates. Very inspiring. Talks about how different industries can benefit from the digitization of information. The gyan is more useful for the chief executives. To me its something that adds more substance to the belief, quoting Bill Gates from yet another book, "Its a great time to be alive."

This yet another book is Bill Gates Speaks by Janet Lowe. Its a compilation of various anecdotes and comments of Bill Gates and his acquantainces, compiled to create a biographical sketch. Here are some excerpts:

Part of his problem was that Gates couldnt decide what he really wanted to do with his life:
"... everything seemed so attractive, and when you had to pick a specific one you had to say no to all the others. Id think, well, if I went to that law firm some partner might not like me, and they might assign me to these crummy cases, and I would think well, God, that could be crummy." - Bill Gates.

As a result, Gates spent a lot of time brooding:
"... sitting in my room being a philosophical depressed guy, trying to figure out what I was doing with my life." - Bill Gates.

Gates doesnt seriously wish he'd taken a different career path:
"I dont waste much time ruing the past. I made my decision, and the way to do it best is once you make it, you just dont waver at all. You dont think, gosh, what a doctor I would have been, what a tennis player, playboy, poker player I couldnt been. Being hardcore and forward looking about what you do is a ncessary element of doing it well". - Bill Gates.

"Dont make the same decision twice. Spend time and thought to make a solid decision the first time so that you dont revisit the issue unnecessarily. If you are too willing to reopen issues,
it interferes not only with your execution but also with your motivation to make a decision in the first place. After all, why bother deciding an issue if it isnt really decided?" - Bill Gates.

"If Microsoft were a car, it would have a large gas pedal and small but workable brake. It would not have a rear view mirror". - Mike Murray, Microsoft Vice President of HR

Bad news, says Gates, can be acted upon.
"We never waste a lot of time talking about what we are doing well. It just isnt our culture. Every meeting is about 'Sure, we won in seven of the categories, but what about that eighth category?". - Bill Gates.

"It doesnt matter if we bang our head and fail. We keep right on banging and banging and banging and banging and banging".
- Steve Ballmer.

"We tell people that if no one laughs at at least one of their ideas, they are probably not being creative enough." - Bill Gates.

"But we can afford to make a few mistakes now, and we cant afford to not to try. Because of the scope of opportunity, and with shareholders' expecatations for us to keep sales and profits growing, everything's about big horizons at Microsoft now. But, hey, we can tackle big horizons. We're expected to tackle big horizons. We love big horizons." - Bill Gates.

From the book: Bill Gates Speaks:
Gates is as frugal with time as he is with money. From when he first started Microsoft, Gates was always in a hurry. If his airplane left at 10 am, he would leave the office at 9:50, racing to the airport and dashing onto the plane just as the door closed. He still hates wasting time.

"For example, when I go to a meeting, I keep specific objectives in mind. There isnt much small talk, especially if I am with colleagues I know well. We discuss accounts we lost or where overhead is too high, and then we are done. Bang! There are always more challenges than there are hours, so why be wasteful?" - Bill Gates.

"Because there arent enough hours in the day, its tempting to try to do two things at once. Right now I'm perfecting reading a newspaper and riding an excercise bike at the same time - a very practical form of multitasking". - Bill Gates.

Hello, Stranger!

2006-02-03T23:42:00.000-08:00

I often read random blogs, and follow few of them quite closely. Dont think I know many of those people personally, but like reading their blogs.

Have been thinking about creating my own blog for a long long time now. And finally I did it today. Congratulations to myself!

Get quite a lot of random thoughts all the time. And I feel like sharing them with someone. But any sane person would go crazy if required to tolerate me like that. Nonetheless, I fail to resist the temptation, and end up boring my acquaintainces to death, which clearly is not sustainable.

So I decided to create a blog, zot them down, and may be some random surfer out there will read them.

I suppose there is no purpose to this blog other than satisfying my psyc that I am sharing my thoughts with someone. And you just happen to be one of them. Hello, Stranger!