One Foot in the Mudd

There seems to be a serious amount of consolidation that appears to be happening over the internet. Initially, there was the client – server architecture that had the world blown with its advanced technology at the back end and “dummy” terminals at the front end. But then, gradually, as people became pressed for time, more and more applications started moving to the desktop, and there were more powerful and faster computers, and the transfer rates within the computer did not keep up with the rates of the network. That means, the network rates were much slower, and it reduced over distance. So the cost of transferring data over longer distances seemed to be increasing. However, the size of data also seems to be on the rise. So, what does one do?

Move everything online. That is on the server, yet running off the client. Perfect example Ajax. Heavy application running off the server and page gets dynamically updated without referring back to the server on the desktop unit itself. Now how’s that for technology.

I feel that IT is going through the same process that the manufacturing companies took. First the bigger is better, then bigger is not better, then better is bigger, and then better is better.

Big companies came in, the dot com boom, the dot com bust, the dot com rise. in processing, things are getting smaller, like manufacturing, batch sizes are decreasing, for optimization on the production line. more and more items are getting intergrated.

the VoIP wars seem to be heating up. VoIP of voice over IP, heralded in a new form of long distance communcation. with the internet speeds icnreasing very fast, packet sizes are becming smaller, and more packed. MPLS, now moves away from ATM and Frame Relay networks, offering high avaiability networks that can run voice and data and have QoS installed on it, now HOW cool is THAT! Skype’s tryst with the internet seems to be taking beatings in all quaters. Voice quaility is good on skype, and the only downside was the free skype to skype calls. that means, unless skyps esits, its paid calls for a skype out connection. The gizmo project came out with something “better” you could call your contacts off-net numbers for free. but that is so cunning that it does not seem to work for me, even though I have fulfilled all the pre-requsit requirements. Very deceptive! well, the Behemoth of the internet google is slowly making inroads. I fear that soon, they will rule the internet, an if they decide to start charing for their service, god help the others!!! 🙂
anyways, skype’s “unique” peer-to-peer protocol, which suspect was improved on from Kazaa days is not the usual SIP/SIMPLE protocol that is deployed by gizmo. It has its own propritary protocol that it is riding on. Now with google getting into the instant communcation space using jabber, i seriously think things are going to get heated up. the enterprise space seems to be dominated currently with microsofts, ibms and other large players. OpenSource seems to have taken a backseat, mainly due to support issues. Now, that I am sure will be something that is slowly growing out. The Ubuntu forum seems to be the a brillinat place to be able to get information, with the pool of knowledge of users giving rookies a fair taste of seemless intergration. Google’s promotion of Jabber, a protocol used for presence and IM. i first used it on apple talk. found it so cool. if you log into you gmail, the same thing pops up and shows you if your contact is online or not. imagine now moving this to a mobile unit. if I look at my mobile phone, I can see if my friends are online, and send then an sms/ instant message.

I think the entire shift is towards mobility, information and speed. Wimax has been deployed, now with a wimax enabled phone, you can log into your phone, surf, and make calls, voip as well as via the cellular network.

wimax will have the ability to stream video and audio with bandwidths of Mbps as opposed to slower than 33.6 Kbps on a gprs.

the future is wide open!

I was bored! well, not bored, just did not feel like processing work. so i decided to let my creativity take flight! and this is what i got. I must warn you, i have shite loads of work, but then sometimes, you just dont feel like doing squab! and this is what i felt before indulging in this. I do like the outcome…. someday i might just show you what the orignizal picture is. i saw some nice clouds from my desk, and clicked it with my phone. then transfered this to my desktop and edited. I wonder, five years ago, this would not have been possible. gwash! technology is here to stay!

1. Bhutan
2. Cairo – Egypt
3. Tulavu
4. Norfolk Islands
5. Timbuctoo
6. Maldives : Lhaviyani Atoll, Maldives : Bright white beaches, lush vegetation and high-end resorts conspire to make the Maldives, a cluster of remote islands in the Indian Ocean, one of the sexiest destinations in the world. Lhaviyani Atoll, known for its abundance of sea creatures, is also home to Kuredu Island Resort. On the northern reef of the atoll, Kuredo offers thatched-roof bungalows and private villas. Room rates start at $100 per night over the summer and include breakfast. http://www.kuredu.com/
7.Lofoten Islands, Norway, Ranked as the 2nd most beautiful island. http://www.lofoten.info/infoguide/en/

Marketing Practice

Every morning, I board a bus to come to work. the bus service is operated by the company i work for. I get picked up at an early hour, and its a good one hour ride to work. similarly, the return journey in the evening is a grand hour and a half long. towards my drop off point, i am one of the few people left.

the morning pickup, inevitably has me thinking about life. the pickup point is the local bus stop. The point where the public transport system and the private transpot system form a union. the Metropolitant transport buses come, people run about, the young the old, the frail the healthy, men, women children, grandchildren, all come to board the bus. the come, they stand, they see, they run, they smoke, they laugh. these emotions, carried on through the time, waiting and watching. Watching if its their bus that comes, talking on cell phones, talking to friends, just thinking. as their transport approaches, they run, desperate to get onto this one, else they have to wait longer. the thought of getting the next bus that might be even more crowded. does not appease the person waiting.

then comes the IT busses, they stop, people get on. more than sufficuent space to sit. people in the busses look down on the bus stop. looking down literally and figurativly, you wonder, what special thing did we do to deserve this treatment? are we, the ones in IT really all that great to look down on people? are we really helping the industry or are we increasing the CPI due to the extravegant spending.

An It employee with stock options gets so much money that he/she does not know what to do? where in this earth would you have thoght that at some point you would be sitting on stock thats worth in the million range! i mean, get a grip. so this is a classic case of big bigger biggest fish.

There is a rather long series of articles on office politics on a news website. in each article the format is standard, a case, and then dissection by psychologits (shrinks). well, what do shrinks know? in a larger scale of things, i will give them credit to be able to see it from a macro level, but ground reality is simple. water does not flow the way you want it to flow. it has its own mind. human beings are just the same. theories of constipation, procastination and squalor will not apply to all in situations when there are lots at stake. at best, there could be a general direction hat human beings go to, but then this is a rather “technical” explanation. a depressed person might kill himself or mightnot kill himself. now hows that for an explanation? rather generic. well, yes. but as they say, there is still a lot that needs to be discoverd about the human mind, and typecasting a person is getting that no where.
office politics like with politics everywhere, on the playing field, in the classrooms, everywhere are the same. the protagonist is the boss, and the pawns are the helpless people being outdone. but, is it possible to be able to survive in a highly politically charged environment, and yet remain neutral? well, i belive it is so. staying out is harder. people prefer to take sides, and the side they take, can be either one sided or two sided.

practicing the art of staying out, should be spread as the gospel truth!

in the midst of a rather serious article on office politics…. “Learn Buddhism – Help yourself and others be healthy in body mind & spirit. Distance ed – Ads by Google”

kinda added a rather humurous touch to the article! 🙂

there are many times when i go into these “phases. i wonder many a times, as to what are we doing. here, there, everywhere. i wonder why i come to work, and what am i doing here. everyday after lunch, i stand at the canteen window, and from there it is an unristricted view of just open spaces.(my office is situated far outside the city). i do think it should be justified to make any call to my office a long distance call, its rather inhuman to travel so far to work. anywyas, when i see these large tracts of land i wonder, if we are doing all we can. i wonder i am doing what i can do best? am i doing what i like? what brings me here? its so wonderful to see open land, green, with vehicles in the distance, trawling up and down, like little ants. motorcycles, auto’s, very few in number, jus floating through. traveliing at what seems to be its own pace. that coupled with a blue sky, washed fresh with a few clouds. aaaah.. you wonder… why, why am i standing behind this glass and looking out? why am i not out there? and why am I NOT creating a path where others can follow?

so, are we trapped? by the shackles of society. society that does not allow us to do what we want to do, a society where it is black and white, right and wrong, traditions followed blindly without question. questions that make one wonder where this is headnig or why it has to be done in a way. we take things and accept them as we are, but what we fail to see is the underlying reason or truth beind it.

look at advertsing. no one sells coffee anymore. everyone sells either the experience of drinking coffee or the emotion of drinking a coffee. so what abuot the good ol cup of caffeine? the much needed boost to push you through the day. marketeers push to differentiate the product from the competition. so, at the end of the day, the coffee in the cup that you drink is the same, but the way they sell it to you is different, else why would they try and “differentiate” their products to the customer? the customer, (me in this case) is intelligent enough to be able to know the differnence between the coffee. but no, the marketing person needs to “think up” a differentiator. why?

Microsofts tryst with unified communications. Unified communications is a platform on which all forms of commnication, voice, im etc etc are combined to a single “dashboard” where people find it easier to use. in the sense tht from a sort of “IM” screen, one can send out IM, phone calls, audio and video confrences- share files & Applications and on the whole, a host of other productivity enhancement tools right to the desktop. So how does this help?
this means that using a single screen, i can connct, disconnect and get work done in order to “improve” my productivity and ability to respond faster and quicker.
But whats MS got to do with it? well, in my opinion, almost everything. they heralded in the popluarity of the instant messaging platform with their msn messenger that was literly forced down everyones throat, in a way its a good thing. and in a way, its well, force feeding. i am sure people will say there have been instatn messaging solutions before msn popularized it across the internet, like ibm’s lotus sametime and all, but the popularity of this has definitl surparsed.
MS now decided to foray into enterprise wide IM, and then said, “hey, i think i can start charging for this” casue after all, its my client. so they decide to charge for it. which in my mind is THE mos ridicilous step they can take as i would not want to pay for something that the whole world uses for free!
now they get wiser. in 2004 -2005 gartner showed MS getting its hiney kicked by Siemens, Nortel etc etc, so they decide to do what MS is best at, sink in tonnes of money and bring out a crappy product that serves no better purpose that what its already serving now, and i hve to pay more for it. gwahs, with MS you really need to rename them buggers to MonopolySoft and not Microsoft.

When you read the news today, where is all the happiness going? where are all the good things going? you see only violence, hatred, war? why is the world slipping into the dark ages, where its not becomming mroe than an eye for an eye, but more like a body for your eye, and outright war for my eye.

is it fair on what the state of the world is?