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Saturday, May 28, 2005 |
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Microsoft Makes Available KnowledgeBase through RSS ( on technology) If you are a heavy user of Microsoft products or a developer, you must have known that KnowledgeBase makes it incredibly easier for you to check out your issues against what others have already experienced, and allows you to understand the issue much faster. There are thousands of articles there. By now, you must have heard also about RSS ( Really Simple Syndication). It allows you to use a reader to pull the information into your computer instead of browsing the page one by one. The great news is that Microsoft is now providing RSS feeds for over hundreds of topics of their knowledgeBase. Check this site for the RSS feed Product Index Page.
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Low in Virtual Memory ( on technology) One of the computers I sitll use is a Pentium III with 256 mb memory running Windows 2000. A couple of times a day, it reports that it is low in virtual memory. I thought it is because, well, 256 mb is not a lot nowadays, and I run a lot of programs, and of course, I scarcely turn it off, or just hibernate it, so I figure that it just slowly eats up whatever physical memory I have. I just click on OK, and reboots it whenever convenient. Apparently, the real reason is my page swap settings. Setting it properly CAN eliminate this problem. Here is an article on it you might want to read about the proper virtual memory settings.
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Microsoft's next Big Boss? ( on technology) Here is a writeup about Eric Rudder, potentially, they say, the next big leader in Microsoft after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. How did he get the respect of Bill Gates, who is known to be very demanding? It says here that in 1992, Eric, then at 25 years old dared told Bill Gates that he was wrong, and showed him his mastery by outlining how. Bill Gates thought for a moment after hearing him out, and said, "You know what? I guess you're right..." Leaders are made of people who do their homework, who master the learning better than anybody else, and who is not afraid to be wrong.
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Monday, May 23, 2005 |
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What is One Terabyte ( on technology) More and more, we are getting to work with more customers who request and need one terabyte systems. Lest we forget how big really a terabyte is, here is a good way to visualize it in vivid words. It is - - storage for 125,000 MP3 songs, or 1500 CDs. - equal to a 1.42 mile-high stack of 1.44 floppies - 2 weeks, 2 days, 19 hours, and 12 mins. of continuous DVD movies - if 1 byte is represented by 1 sheet of paper, it's a stack of paper 66,000 miles high. - if 1 byte represented 1 heartbeat, it's 2 minutes, 24 seconds worth of all the human heartbeats on earth. - 8,000 times more data than a human brain retains in a lifetime. - if 1 byte represented 1 grain of sand, it's enough sand to fill a 240 ton mining truck.
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Thursday, May 19, 2005 |
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Its the Software, Stupid! ( on technology) I remembered a few years back I was visiting some cities in China with a Hong Kong friend, and commented on the rapid beautification and transformation of the various cities there. He then commented that China still has a long way to go, that while skyscrappers were going up all over the place, it was all hardware and no software. What he meant that in spite of the great buildings and roads that you see around, China still has a long way to go because the people's skills and thinking ( the software) will take a long time to transform than the hardware. So while Shenzhen looks every bit as impressive as Hong Kong, or Shanghai every bit like New York, the comparison ends there. Beneath the impressive glass buildings, the software still needs a lot of retooling and works. Recently, I have read Thomas Friedman, a noted New York Times journalist commented it in even greater detail in his book, Lexus and the Olive Tree, which talks about the trends of globalization.
In fact, he compared the country to the basic choices you get in the computer. First, he says, is the hardware, which for him was the actual shell around the economy. Here, he says, is whether the country choose to have a free-market economy or a communist one, or something in between. Basically like the computer war, the hardware war is over --- people all over the world have chosen that it would be the capitalist , laissez faire market economy.
What is the competition now of nations is how well they implement the " operating system" of the hardware, and also the software application itself ( which essentially and paradoxically is the same issue in the world of IT -- it is the software plus how it is properly implemented and executed that counts. Hardware nowadays is almost a non-issue). A large number of countries, including countries in South America, Eastern Europe and all over Asia now are adopting the basic hardware of liberalized markets, but many of them are not implementing the software components or managing it effectively.
What does " software" consititute? It is the measure of all things that fall broadly in the category of the rule of law, and the degree of which its officials and citizens understand, embrace and make it work. It includes banking laws, commercial laws, contract laws, business codes of conduct, property rights, judicial integrity, accounting standards, regulatory agencies, and others. As he say, the hardware is easy, but the software works is difficult.
It is easy to open a stock market, but the challenge is really how to enforce the law so that it will protect also the people and its investors. It is easy to permit free press. What is difficult is to establish a free yet responsible and credible press. It is easy to open up a country to importation liberalization. What is difficult is how to put the process to execute it properly so that local manufacturers, and even legitimate importers will not get burned.
Similarly for businesses, the argument is no longer that you should have a good inventory and logistics system. Rather it is how comprehensive and well-implemented your whole process become. There is no more argument that you should computerize your payroll system, but rather how well it is executed. Merely having one is no longer a competitive edge, because everybody is supposed to have one. Database and groupware systems abound, but how well the features work together in enhancing communications, and retaining as well as presenting important information and analysis so that data becomes intelligence and a source of important decision making will determine the winners.
The software challenge continues, for countries and governments, as well as businesses. The challenge and the winners will be determined how countries and businesses choose and execute the various aspects of the software.
In most business situations, similar challenges are -- whether you are talking about technology, music, movies, and others. Software determines the hardware. There is a similar cry that what will make a person valuable is not anymore his technical skills, but his soft skills.
I close with a quote from Lao Tzu ( although made in another context, and with a different presumption) , made over two thousand years ago, but as relevant today , "The softest things inthe world overcome the hardest things in the world".
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Tuesday, May 17, 2005 |
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IBM sets Blogging Guidelines ( on tech) Blogging made it to the front page cover of Fortune and BusinessWeek the last few weeks. After claims that Sun and Microsoft each now have thousands of bloggers, IBM claims they have 3,097 bloggers in the internal network, and publicly issues guidelines to all their employees.
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Tuesday, May 10, 2005 |
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Some facts about Google's new Accelerator ( techdrivenlife) 7:36:53 PM comment [] trackback []
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Dell Complains Red Hat too Expensive ( on techdrivenlife) 7:33:53 PM comment [] trackback []
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Saturday, May 07, 2005 |
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Technology and ROI ( techdrivenlife)
I was talking to a top executive of an international computer services company. They now use and buy a lot of Microsoft products, and he was informing me that it may be possible that they are considering some open source products to be able to save on licenses. The following are some of the details of the things that we talked about and I am sharing this because it hopefully gives you another viewpoint on how to view IT investments. Before I start however, I like to inform the readers that our company has been a Microsoft partner for the last 10, so you should be aware that selling and working with Microsoft is one of our business, though not the only one. I am also a designated Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) whose part of the job is to evangelize on technology in general, and Microsoft in particular. However ,this executive says he likes Microsoft products, and the decision is purely a financial decision, so I will develop it at that. This is not a debate on which technology is better or secure or discussions about evil empires or monopolistic practices, but purely on a business viewpoint -- which option will save more money, and give better returns. He told me that initially their own study reveals that if they want to migrate from Microsoft to open source, it will mean a couple of things -- reinvestments in hardware, rewriting some of their computer software programs, massive reorientation and migration of data, as well as retraining of their people. They also expect some amount of confusion, some amount of downtime, as well as possible loss of data or productivity. They also took into consideration the employee man hours needed to rewrite and deploy programs, as well as do other changes. Taking these into consideration, they have come out with a financial model that they would end up losing money the first three years, with breakeven point around the fourth year, and eventually making money ( actually saving money on software licenses ) starting on the fifth year, and recouping back the loss of the first 3 to 4 years by the seventh year, and start making money on the 8th upwards. Well, you don’t invest something , especially on IT, that will only give returns after eight years, especially on a system that seems to be running fine. It is not as if you had to, I told him. After all, when you bet your company on changing your technology infrastructure, it is extremely risky and also entails a lot of work with precious IT people that could have been used to do something else, and it better be worth the while. The basic of financial decision making is simply the more risk, the more returns you should expect, and eight years is particularly a long time to get a return. Moreover, in eight years, the technology landscape will have changed massively. I asked him how he did his computations -- after five or six years, were they expecting the current open source software and Microsoft licenses to be at the same price points? He admitted that it was indeed the assumption, and I cautioned him that it might have been too optimistic. I told him that the market dynamics such that every enterprise is obligated to maximize shareholder return, and thus, every company cannot be giving things away free for long. Witness that listing in Ebay was almost free before. When they got market share, they started to charge. Texting using cell phone was free before. Now they are charging. Red Hat Linux is hardly free nowadays -- and it is increasingly becoming expensive, and it is to be expected -- after all, they are listed in the stock exchange and valued at over 2 billion. With sales of only over 100 million dollars, and net income of slightly over 10 million dollars, why would a company be valued over 2 billion? Obviously the market expects them to enjoy a ten to twentyfold increase in revenues in the next few years, and you cannot get that kind of revenues by simply getting market share --- you have to gain both market share AND better prices. As a result, there is scarcely anything now from Red Hat that is considered cheap. You can argue whether what they are selling is free license with paid support, as akin to paid software with free support, but the fact of the matter is that the price now stands at more than 780 dollars PER server. You are not allowed to get a copy of their Of course, Red Hat competitors will continue to be cheap, until they gain on Red Hat, then they will also start to charge more. So market dynamics are never simple and cannot be assumed to be static. There will be two scenarios that can happen after five years. The first scenario is that Microsoft keeps its market share and continues to be expensive, and Open source will continue to have a small market share and continues to be free. If that is so, as a service company, it may be worthwhile to pay extra to work with a technology which 90% of their customers also use. That means there is a value in maintaining a technology that everybody else uses because it makes everything much easier -- less training, easier interchange of files, easier to get the business, etc. The second scenario is that Microsoft will have lower market share and open source will have higher market share. When that happens, you don’t particularly expect Microsoft not to respond, and you cannot expect also the open source companies not to start charging. In both cases, I told him, the financial model may not hold. In the technology world, it is hard to project beyond the second year. Unless you know where you stand, you should thread with caution on investments that do not pay back in 3 years. What is your opinion?
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Monday, May 02, 2005 |
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Protecting Your Data ( the techdrivenlife) If you are like many of the people I know, you probably use a computer in the office, but also have a notebook or another 1 or 2 computers in the house. The office computer is not a problem -- professional administrators protect and secure the network, makes sure it is running smoothly, and takes care to backup the necessary files religiously. The problem is your notebook computer or the one in your house. People I know hold a lot of personal data and software in these machines, and until recently, relied on the absolute reliability of their computers not failing, and dreading the day their hard disk may suddenly fail. Many use thumb drives (from 128 mb to 1 gig) and also have most of their data on it. But when the crash day comes, you will be sure that many installed programs and many larger data ( like pictures or music files) otherwise not in the MyDocuments folder will be lost. What the person really wants to back up is not the few important megabytes but most of his files, which can easily be 5 to 20 gigabytes -- still not in the province of most thumb drives. I currently use an 40 gig mini hard disk connected through a USB2.0 external adapter ( cost -- less than $100) . It is as big as a small packet of cigarettes which makes it easy to carry along, and it is big enough to backup multiple computers, including store my music and picture files.
If you run Windows 2000 or Windows XP, you will find on right clicking on the hard disk, that there is a Windows facility to backup the whole hard disk, including all your system files and configuration. Of course, as personal users, we don't use backup tapes, and until recently, it was expensive to backup a hard disk so this program was hardly useful. But with advent of cheap and big hard disks with low priced enclosures, you may want to give this a try.
As a reader, tell me about your experience and the utility you use. And also tell me if you are just relying on a prayer that your hard disk will continue to be alive and well.
6:19:06 PM comment [] trackback []
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Last update: 7/11/2005; 10:17:05 AM .
