THE on SWiK

Chococlock controls your Chocolate Desires!

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:14:11 -0700

Can’t control your hunger for sweet stuff? Here’s a Chococlock that will let you set a time when you are supposed to eat candy.

Chocolate’s yummy, innit? So why deny your love for the scrumptious stuff when you can celebrate it with the whimsically daft Chococlock. This stylish retro-modern timepiece is a bit like a cuckoo clock but when its shutters open, on the hour every hour, it delivers a scrumptious chocolate treat to the tune of the ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy’. You then have 30 seconds to retrieve your reward before the clock snatches it back. Loo break? Forget it.

via ohgizmo, firebox

Brought to you by: Zedomax.com

Chococlock controls your Chocolate Desires!

So what’s in it for Zoho?

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:07:04 -0700

My last post on why we compete with Google attracted a bit of attention, and quite a few questions. Ignoring the questions on my IQ or my competence in English (isn’t the internet great?), let me come to the most central one of all: if business software is so much less lucrative than consumer internet offerings, why does Zoho want to be in it? To rephrase it, if the argument is that it won’t prove to be lucrative enough for Google, why does Zoho want to do it?

The pat answer, of course, is “Zoho is not Google”. The long answer is “AdventNet is not Google”, and what that means is you should understand our history. In a nutshell, for AdventNet, this market means moving up in the value chain, while for Google, it represents going down that value chain. Here are a couple of quick examples to illustrate this process: why does McDonalds want to compete with Starbucks while Starbucks clearly isn’t going to enter the fast food business? Why does Wal-mart want to offer organic foods, while Whole Foods is never going to offer clothing or toys? Coffee has better margins than hamburgers, organic food has better margins than clothing.

AdventNet, the parent of Zoho, is an unusual company: we have never ever raised any outside investment in our 12+ years in business, and we still remain private. We are over 850 employees now, and the company has multiple divisions, Zoho being the most recent and the most glamorous. But we haven’t forgotten our roots. We are still the leaders in the market we started to serve 12 years ago. That is the business of selling software to network equipment vendors (the so-called OEMs). It has been a good business for us, but it is also a famously low margin business. We cut our teeth in that tough business.

So why would we enter a low margin business? Leaving aside the IQ question of the CEO, a low margin business let us get a toehold with relatively little marketing/sales/branding investment, relying purely on our engineering skills.

By 2004, we had gained sufficient scale to enter the next higher level in the food chain, with our ManageEngine suite of products, sold directly to business customers. It offered us the opportunity add more value than we could in the OEM business, but it also required higher investment in marketing and branding. We have been quite successful in that business.

In 2005/2006, we took the next step, with Zoho. Clearly, Zoho addresses a far bigger market than what our OEM or ManageEngine product lines address. To address that larger market, much larger investment in infrastructure, marketing and branding would be required. Fortunately, AdventNet is at a size now to be able to afford that investment. Of course, Zoho also offers us more opportunity to differentiate our offerings, which is the key to creating higher value.

None of this is particularly original. Most bootstrapped companies go through these phases. Microsoft started as an OEM software company. Oracle was originally a consulting company. 37Signals started out as a design consulting company, before evolving to be a strong player in software-as-a-service. Atlassian started out offering issue tracking software, before branching out into Wikis and enterprise collaboration, which is a much higher margin product. Let’s not forget that Google got its start OEMing its search engine to AOL and Yahoo - a much lower margin business than the one it is currently in.

The reason this model looks odd to most people is the relative rarity of bootstrapped companies in recent times. The venture capital model enables companies to leapfrog these evolutionary stages, directly going higher in the food chain, in their quest for rapid value creation. That comes at a price, which we have not been willing to pay at AdventNet - more on that topic later.

So to answer the question on Google vs Zoho: the business software market makes perfect sense for us, as a move up the value chain. I am not sure it makes all that much sense for Google.

India retains World Youth Chess Olympiad title

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:07:04 -0700

I know the Olympics just ended. But I am not going to talk about it, because India was, like 50th in the medal tally. Did you know no Indian had ever won an individual gold medal before, until this Olympics. If you said “Indians suck at sports”, I would say you are being too polite.

So we prefer to celebrate the wins we do get, like this one from The Hindu:

India, which crushed Russia 3.5-0.5 in the second round but almost lost its way in the second half of the 10-round competition, caught up with the top seed at 28.5 points and took the honours due to superior tie-break score.

What is particularly thrilling to us is we at AdventNet had a small hand in it. About a year ago, the Hindu carried an article that said a gifted chess player in our state was looking for help acquiring a laptop, so he could polish his game. We gifted him one. He is one of the players in the team that won the World Youth Chess Olympiad. Congratulations, Priyadarshan, you make us proud!

I want to emphasize that our role in this is small and incidental, but we are really happy it made a difference. There is plenty of talent where he comes from. One of the most satisfying things we do at AdventNet is to help surface such talent - in the field of software. But there is a lot more than software talent in India, that is waiting to be discovered.

Zoho Notebook for your Stock Research

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:07:04 -0700

Some users like managing their portfolio using a simple spreadsheet like this one (it uses our recently launched VB Macros, BTW).

While a spreadsheet is good one for such use, research is a different story. Apps like Zoho Notebook comes in handy in such cases. Good news about Zoho Notebook is, you can even include such spreadsheets inside your notebook.

Mike Hogan from Barron’s talks about using Zoho Notebook (and Google Notebook) for your Stock Research.

BOTH NOTEBOOK SYSTEMS make it easy to sort out the HTML-bound text, pictures and videos you want to keep from those you want to lose. Yes, popular desktop applications accept hyperlinks, graphics and other HTML gingerbread, but not with anything approaching predictability. Web elements can change a receiving file’s formatting; and, if your mouse stumbles over an embedded link, you can find yourself transported to an image or video application or some other Web page.

Google Notebook is better at selectively stripping out Web links and other formatting, or turning a big note into plain text with the click of an icon. Zoho Notebook is more oriented toward page-building than text conversion. It has standing menu options that let you create multimedia notebooks by mixing images, RSS feeds, spreadsheets, presentations and other non-text elements, or even record audio and video directly to a notebook. In addition to text- editing tools, it has a drawing toolbar for page layout and object manipulation — and a truly impressive ability to deal with disparate Web-page elements.

Google Notebook’s strength is in on-the-fly research, where the fewer mouse clicks, the better. But Zoho’s multimedia elements make for greater comprehension, and facilitate sharing. In this age of social media, being able to bounce your research and ideas off other market speculators is an important part of investing.

Both services let you create public folders online — including password-protected ones accessible only to approved collaborators. But Zoho Notebook has more version-control and collaborative features for group projects, as well as chat access via Skype’s (www.skype.com) instant-messaging and phone service. Both can be included as toolbars in Mozilla’s Firefox browser (http://en-us.www.mozilla.com). With a right mouse click, you have the option to capture a Web page’s URL to Google Notebook or the entire Web page to Zoho Notebook.

Full article here.

Research is obviously the core usage of Zoho Notebook. We have been making some good progress towards it for the next version to further simplify the research process with a better plug-in etc. More on that later.

Open source is dead, long live open source

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:05:40 -0700

A couple of articles have been published recently that point to a growing realisation/admission about the role that open source will play in the future of enterprise software.

In “The Commercial Bear Hug of Open Source” Dan Woods details the various methods by which open source has become increasingly commercial in recent years, while in “The Microsoft-Novell Deal and Trust in Princes” Bruce Byfield discusses the relationship between business and open source.

Neither article is perfect. Woods, in particular, appears to paint open source in the role of the glorious failure - failing to surpass traditional licensing models and being subsumed into the mainstream (a subject I’ve touched on before).

For his efforts Woods earns the wrath of Dana Blankenhorn, who points out that Woods has confused the idealism of free software and Richard Stallman with the pragmatism of the open source and Eric Raymond.

“It [Raymond's 'open source' concept] accepted the idea of commercial interests from the start,” writes Blankenhorn. “It saw new business models evolving from shared development effort.”

For that reason, Woods asking “Isn’t open source a community-based movement that was set to overtake the world of commercial software? Wasn’t the famous LAMP stack, Linux, Apache, MySQL and Perl, Python and PHP going to open a world in which software existed outside the traditional realm of property?” is something of a straw man.

However, his central point that “commercial and open source are fellow travelers” is valid, as is his point that “it is almost impossible to tell the difference between the most popular open source software and commercial alternatives”.

That brings us to Byfield’s article in Datamation. While it is ostensibly a discussion about the extension of Microsoft’s Linux deal with Novell, the article focuses heavily on the relationship between business and free and open source software (FOSS).

“What tends to get lost is this: the fact that business is friendly to FOSS does not mean that it has adopted its values,” he writes. “The free software camp’s concern with philosophical and political freedom has almost certainly not been adopted by most FOSS-friendly companies, while the open source camp’s emphasis on increased software quality is probably shared by middle-management at best. Business –gasp!– is interested in FOSS to improve the bottom line, and often no other reason.”

This is a statement that leaves Matt Asay with mixed emotions. “Commercial open source is starting to find its feet,” he writes. “There isn’t a grand contradiction between giving code away (seeding the market) and suggesting a purchase (reaping the market). In fact, the two go together perfectly. As we realize this, open source will become even more dominant. Open source and business can be bosom buddies, not enemies.”

I would maintain that the relationship is closer than that. However, from Byfield’s viewpoint there remain barriers. “Sooner or later, an open source business is going to act more like a business and less like a citizen of the FOSS community,” he warns. “The two can certainly co-exist, and both can benefit from doing so. But, forced to choose, the average FOSS-based business is going to choose business interests over FOSS every time,” he adds.

The tone of Byfield’s article is driven in part by his evident belief that business and open source are at least partially exclusive. This, like Woods’ confusing of free and open source software, is a mistake in my opinion. Business and open source are intertwined.

It is worth remembering that open source is a business tactic, not a business model. Open source is not a market in and of itself, nor is it a vertical segment of the market. Open source is a software development and/or distribution model that is enabled by a licensing tactic. It enables new revenue generation strategies.

Companies that build revenue streams around open source software do not choose between business and open source, they choose business and open source. You could call this a commercial bear hug of open source, or you could see it as an evolution of commercial business models based on the economic principle that sharing development has the capacity to lower development costs.

Either way the result is the same - the increased adoption of open source as a development and distribution model by mainstream business. Which is, after all, what the open source movement is all about.

Want a Free Pass to The Ajax Experience?

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:01:08 -0700

That’s right, a free pass! We are raffling off one free pass to The Ajax Experience show in Boston, September 29 – October 1. That means that you can attend the $1495 event for free, courtesy of Ajaxian.com.

There’s no catch. We are giving away one free pass to The Ajax Experience. The free pass only includes entrance to the event, so if you don’t call Boston home, you still have to cover your own travel and hotel.

How to enter: Click here and enter your information in the form by Friday, September 5th. Please make sure to enter a working email address. Then we will pick one name out of a hat and one of you will receive a free pass.

We look forward to seeing you at The Ajax Experience next month!

Learn how to start a blogging business here

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 23:21:29 -0700

What the hell is blogging and how can you start a blogging business? Read my blogging tips that involve the four steps of successful blogging and you’ll be on your way in no time at all.

http://www.aksworld.com/blog/2008/07/08/breaking-the-slide-to-inertia/

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 04:44:21 -0700

Tony Robbins program-A right and excellent way to maintain extremely good physical and mental health at the edge of the life.And transform your life and your emotions.

Jeff Paul -NO SPAM Internet Marketing Toolkit Only Source on Internet for Internet Marketing

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:39:12 -0700

Jeff Paul – Internet Marketing Toolkit, Only Source on Internet for Internet Marketing.Your step-by-step toolkit to catapult you to financial freedom. www.squidoo.com/internetmarketingtoolkit

The Secret You’ll find out

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:31:39 -0700

I’ve managed to get it down to an exact science in a guide I’ve written. I’m going to show you the science behind The Secret You’ll find out.

Jeff Paul - Instant Internet Cash Marketing Bible - Jeff Paul's Internet Marketing Secrets Revealed

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 01:37:29 -0700

Jeff Paul – Instant Internet Cash Marketing Bible Teaches you how to get on the road to marketing success with very Simple & proven business models you can copy to make your on-line fortune at www.squidoo.com/bigleagueplayersclub

Psychology On The Golf Course

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:25:54 -0700

If you want to improve your putting technique and therefore supercharge your entire golfing game, simply follow the methods and techniques that I’ll lay out for you and I guarantee you’ll become a better golfer.

How A Proffessional Golfer's Achilles

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:38:02 -0700

If you’re always looking to improve your game, there’s no easier way to maximize your skills than learning the art of putting. http://professinlg.wetpaint.com/

How to unit-test code that interacts with a database

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 19:03:09 -0700

I got some interesting comments on my previous article about unit testing Maatkit, including echoes of my own conversion to the unit-testing religion. One of the objections I’ve heard a lot about unit-testing is how it’s impossible to test code that talks to a database. “It’s too hard,” they say. “Oh, it’s easy to test a module that calculates a square root, but a database? Way too much work!”

Is it really impossible or even hard?

I disagree. In one of my previous articles I said The Rimm-Kaufman Group, my previous employer, has a comprehensive unit-test suite. When I say comprehensive I mean it: database interaction is fully tested, too. I know because I was heavily involved in building it. Even extremely complex things like big reports that are generated from lots of data are tested. And believe me, sharding the databases would have been much harder without complete code coverage. It’s really not that complicated to unit-test against a database, and it’s so worth it. Here are some hints about how you can do this.

There are many ways to do it, but I’ll just describe the basics of the system I helped build. There are several moving parts to the test suite (”smoke“), but one of them sets a magical environment variable. And then, all code that connects to a database server magically gets back a different database connection from the create_me_a_connection() function. This is because there is a database connection abstraction library that respects the environment variable. It’s really pretty simple for the most part; instead of doing DBI->connect(…) you just call this function, which is a thin wrapper that hands back a connection object.

This wrapper is itself unit-tested thoroughly, too. This ensures that when some code is being run from a test, it cannot (I mean cannot!) connect to a production database, and vice versa. There are some conventions about production and test servers that make sure the abstraction library can tell for sure. If there’s any confusion, of course, it will die in a non-recoverable way. Safety first.

Building a good development environment

Just as each developer has their own copy of the code from version control, each developer has their own private database server running on the dev machine. There are some simple conventions that make this possible: Unix user ID plus a constant for the port number, etc. It’s really quite easy. The private database server is a slightly modified version of Giuseppe Maxia’s MySQL Sandbox tool. It can be torn down and set up afresh as desired. It is wiped clean and re-filled at the start of every test, with a small, tightly focused dataset carefully chosen to represent the conditions the code is supposed to work with. (Each test has its own dataset).

If this sounds like a system that can’t work on a large scale, well, it does. That’s the secret sauce that I won’t reveal in this post. (It’s my past employer after all, and I can’t go revealing everything about them can I?) You just have to be smart about it. When a database is central to your business, you either figure out how to get this right, or you pay the consequences in lost time and poor code quality.

I and the other developers there (another secret: it’s a small team; small teams build great things) built several quick utilities to help develop unit tests against a database. There are utilities to get a minimal necessary dataset for testing and dump it into a file that can be loaded by the test. There are utilities that can migrate schemas and update the tests to match the schema changes. And so on, and so on. This is possible because of careful planning for testability, and really smart things like super-consistent and sensible naming conventions for database objects. (Ruby On Rails owes a lot of its success to simple things like this, too. Conventions are really powerful.) Maybe I’ll write about the database naming conventions some other time — I have to credit Alan Rimm-Kaufman a lot for designing those conventions. It was a stroke of genius.

Things to avoid

There are several things I do not recommend doing when you unit-test code that talks to a database. I’ll just mention a couple:

mock

test an implementation instead of a behavior

Never let a test connect to a production database. Never, ever. Worlds of hurt will follow. Not only are you risking your production data, but what about the risk to your code? You’re testing against things that will almost certainly change and break your tests; and you’re possibly polluting your live data with testing data and/or changing live data from the tests.
I also recommend developing unit tests for your current database functionality if you’re thinking about changing it much. Don’t like MySQL’s lax error handling? Plan to set the SQL_MODE to something stricter? Dive into that database abstraction library and make your tests run in strict mode first by setting SQL_MODE on every new connection that’s created when running inside a test; fix all the breakage in the test suite; feel sure that your code isn’t going to break in production. That was easy!

Summary

Once your creative juices get flowing, you’ll see tons of places your unit test suite can help you out.

If you’re in the Oracle or SQL Server world, or any other world where you can’t just set up and discard database instances at will due to licensing problems, you’re going to have to be a little more inventive. But you can still do it. (Don’t you wish you’d chosen Freedom?) And unit tests are just as beneficial for apps based on Oracle as they are for MySQL.

Have fun! Go forth and test some more!

mysql, Test Driven Development, testing a database, The Rimm Kaufman Group, unit testing

Solar Powered Necktie is Poorly Designed for Geeks-Only

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:08:42 -0700

In todays’ world, a company should make things that are useful with a usable design. In the case with this Solar Powered Necktie, we feel it’s been very poorly designed so no one would buy one.

Regardless, we do like the idea that you can charge your iPhone while walking down the street looking like an idiot.

Who knows, maybe no one will notice it though.

Now a group of researchers at Iowa State University have created a necktie using newly developed solar fabrics. The neat thing, is that the tiny solar panels are arranged in a grid that looks kind of like what you might see on a tie anyway. There’s even a pocket sewn into the back where you can stash the device you’re charging.

via dvice, gadgets7

Brought to you by: Zedomax.com

Solar Powered Necktie is Poorly Designed for Geeks-Only

The W3C Markup Validation Service

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:40:11 -0700

JSON: The Fat-Free Alternative to XML

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 07:21:06 -0700

JSON: The Fat-Free Alternative to XML

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 07:18:04 -0700

IMHO: Hibernate: how to map a collection of embedded components keyed by one of the component's properties?

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:54:26 -0700

RokSlideshow Overview

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:05:58 -0700

How Maatkit benefits from test-driven development

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:15:50 -0700

Over in Maatkit-land, Daniel Nichter and I practice test-first programming, AKA test-driven development. That is, we write tests for each new feature or to catch regressions on each bug we fix. And — this is crucial — we write the tests before we write the code.* The tests should initially fail, which is a validation that the new code actually works and the tests actually verify this. If we don’t first write a failing testcase, then our code lacks a very important guarantee: “if you break this code, then the test case will tell you so.” (A test that doesn’t fail when the code fails isn’t worth writing.)

Most of the time when I do this, I write a test, it fails because I haven’t written any code yet, and I then go do some kind of clean-room coding. Then I run the test and it’s busted, and I have to go back to the code and figure out why, and after a few more tries I get it working. And then it feels great. (That’s the other thing about test-first coding. It’s really satisfying, like cooking the perfect dinner, arranging the plates beautifully and then eating.)

This time I wanted to write a pure-Perl implementation of CRC32, and embed it in mk-table-checksum. We try really hard never to rely on external modules, even modules that ought to be distributed with Perl itself. That keeps Maatkit as portable as possible and makes sure there is no installation hell. You can generally just get and run the Maatkit tools with no installation. So I referred to an existing CRC32 implementation, in Digest::Crc32. I wrote a test by referring to the value I got from MySQL’s built-in CRC32:

mysql> select crc32('hello world');
+----------------------+
| crc32('hello world') |
+----------------------+
|            222957957 | 
+----------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Here’s the test:

is($c->crc32('hello world'), 222957957, 'CRC32 of hello world');

CRC32 is CRC32, so my code better agree with a working implementation. And then I wrote the code, which is a refactoring of the math in the module I linked to above. And then I ran the test, and it Just Passed with no further ado. w00t! This is pretty much a historic first for me! I thought at first that I’d screwed something up with the test, but I checked again. This is like getting a hole-in-one for me :-) So I just thought I’d share it with you. It feels awesome.

If you’re not doing test-first coding, you ought to give it a try. If you are conscientious about writing tests first, your code will always be easy to test. If you don’t, you write untestable code. Then it’s tough or impossible to ever get tests on it, and you spend the rest of your life wasting time on stupid bugs and slow, fearful development, never knowing what else you are breaking with your “fixes.”

Test-driven development is one reason The Rimm-Kaufman Group’s in-house bidding system blows away their competition. (RKG is my previous employer.) The comprehensive unit-test suite lets you know right away if you’ve broken something. That keeps the code clean and makes it possible to be extremely productive. I remember once when one of my co-workers there implemented a major feature in a very short time. It was also incredibly helpful when sharding the databases (anyone ever done this without a test suite? Would you like to share about how much of your systems broke during sharding? It was almost a non-event at RKG). The people I worked with before I joined RKG looked at me like an alien when I tried to explain that this was possible.

If you’re thinking that your code is not “that kind of code,” that “only certain kinds of code lend themselves to unit tests,” then stop. I’ve heard this before, and you’re wrong. It’s only “untestable” because you didn’t write tests first. Write tests first, and your code — all of it! — will be “that kind of code” that is testable. It’s hard. No one says it’s not; good programming is much harder than sloppy programming. But it’s well worth it.

Converting untested, untestable code into tested code is not so much fun, though. And in my experience you’ll rarely be rewarded for it, and your coworkers will not appreciate you raising the bar for them. Maybe you need a new job. I hear RKG is hiring. Did I mention that their codebase is built from the ground up on unit tests?

* OK, we’re not perfectly disciplined about this, but we’re pretty good about it.

CRC32, Daniel Nichter, mysql, Test Driven Development, The Rimm Kaufman Group

The Vinecast

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:05:53 -0700

Pimp Your Firefox: 12 Essential Extensions for Web Developers & Designers - FreelanceSwitch - The Freelance Blog

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 12:10:26 -0700

Pimp Your Firefox: 12 Essential Extensions for Web Developers & Designers - FreelanceSwitch - The Freelance Blog

CAOS Theory Podcast 2008.08.15

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:13:46 -0700

Agenda:

* CAOS Report 8 - Community Linux
* Linuxworld review
* A look at SourceForge
* Microsoft’s new database push

iTunes or direct download (26:48, 6.1MB)

The International Rule of Dealing With AT&T Customer Service

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 17:14:30 -0700

It's now common knowledge that the iPhone 3G suffers from sub-par data throughput across the board. Informal testing also proves it's likely a hardware issue. But what happens when you need to deal with AT&T on the matter? What's their take? Find out how to navigate the waters in this next consumer advocacy edition of Gilbert Tang's The International Rules!

WSJ Op-Ed: For Most People College is a Waste of Time

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 08:03:53 -0700

Knowing what we do with our own alternative to college in India, multiple people sent me this op-ed at the WSJ by Charles Murray For Most People College is a Waste of Time, asking for my opinion. Before I proceed, let me first state one thing clearly: the problems I have with Indian college education, which inspired our alternative, are of a different nature than the problems (I do have some!) I have with American college education. I have experience with both, and I believe the issues are fundamentally different.

Charles Murray mainly attacks the traditional (if that is the right word here) liberal arts component of American college experience:

Outside a handful of majors — engineering and some of the sciences — a bachelor’s degree tells an employer nothing except that the applicant has a certain amount of intellectual ability and perseverance. Even a degree in a vocational major like business administration can mean anything from a solid base of knowledge to four years of barely remembered gut courses.

In my experience, American undergraduate engineering education is very, very good, but you have to know where to find it. A “middling” or even a “low” school is better for most students because the faculty is more focused on teaching vs a “prestige” school, where the faculty is purchasing that prestige through research (more on that later) so teaching is a chore for them. The humble community colleges offer the most bang for the buck (literally) in most basic math/science/engineering courses - and indeed, that has been our role model in our own internal initiative. If you are short of money, this is the path I would recommend: take all the basic math/science/engineering classes in your local community college, and then transfer credits to a middling state school for more advanced ones. You can get a fine engineering education for very little money this way.

On the subject of research, let me state it very plainly: most research in engineering, even in prestige schools, is bunk (note: I didn’t say “all”, I said “most”, there are rare exceptions). Academia at that level is a tenure-chasing paper production game. You master the art of packaging trivia in impressive sounding language. In hard sciences and engineering, the language that truly establishes your superiority over the rest of humanity is mathematics, so you end up writing highly unreadable - I doubt even dissertation committees truly read that stuff - mathematical garbage. I had seen it when I was doing my PhD in the early 1990s (I was well connected, with tons of friends from India across a broad range of schools) and most recently I see it clearly in programming language research in Computer Science, which I have attempted to follow.

On liberal arts American education, I fully agree with Murray. Let me give a bit of background to this. When I was an engineering undergraduate in India, I found myself utterly bored and miserable with the education that was on offer. There was a period I did nothing but read, read and read. George Orwell, in particular, was my favorite (I was recently reminded of it at Hacker News, and ended up re-reading Nineteen Eighty Four) - I read every one of his works. I was also well schooled by Bertrand Russell, attempted to but failed with Karl Marx, and found inspiration with Ayn Rand. None of it had anything to do with my “official” education in Electrical Engineering - let me just say that I sacrificed Maxwell for Orwell - but by then, I had decided I was going to do it on my own.

So why is that relevant here? Orwell’s Politics and the English Language proved even more educational than I realized, when I came to America, with liberal arts faculty providing the perfect, if unwitting, illustration - here is a link on deconstruction for you.

Returning to engineering, there is a fundamentally different reason I believe alternatives to college education are needed, and that has to do with contextual knowledge and the ability to hold the interest of students. Think about a subject like programming languages. A typical “good” Computer Science program (assume a really good teacher) gives you a very good grounding in parsing, compilers and such. The issue I have is the psychology of most students. No matter how well this subject matter is taught, it is going to be boring for most, because the context is all wrong for them to pay attention. There is no shared purpose in that classroom context: when it comes right down to it, the typical student is focused on getting through with the torture and getting a decent grade, so he or she can get on with their lives.

More on the subject of contextual knowledge later.

Office Sound Masking and The Cone of Silence

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 05:18:49 -0700

Running Eclipse with the Realtime JVM

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:04:49 -0700

Holidays to South Africa

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 04:03:02 -0700

Book Holidays to South Africa, South Africa Holidays, Cheap Holidays in South Africa, South Africa Tours, Travel to South Africa at affordable rate.Holidays to South Africa

John Conroy @ CMSWire on Zoho

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:03:39 -0700

CMSWire’s John Conroy has an interesting take on Zoho and our parent company AdventNet, in an article titled ‘Why Web Startups Work Better as Divisions of Larger Companies‘. Excerpts :

Startups in the Web applications arena can take a lot of lessons from Zoho: its extremely rapid development cycle, its attitude to monetization and to PR. And, by no means least, the way it scaled. And this latter element owes a lot to the fact that Zoho does not stand alone.

Zoho is a division of AdventNet, a multi-focus software developer which sells OEM, other database software and a multitide of enterprise products, and has been kicking around the scene since the mid-nineties. Crucial in Zoho’s success has been the presence of the parent company, which can pump manpower and financial resources into a blossoming start-up to mitigate against exploding servers, user downtime, and buggy applications. And hopefully do it as quickly as necessary, which today, for any Web service, means NOW.

Thanks to John & CMSWire.

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John Conroy @ CMSWire on Zoho