My, I, Me for First Person.
You, Your for Singular 2nd Person.
Us, We for Plural First Person.

In general, Us, We have been used with an inclusive nature – When some said “Let’s go out and play” to a group of friends, it typically meant that everyone (including the speaker) were expected to go out and play.

If someone said “Please clean this room”, it generally excluded the speaker from having to perform any action – the speaker is asking/requesting the listener(s) to perform the action.

Thanks to various reasons, this definition has changed, especially in the corporate context (not sure about others – how do kids talk these days ? )

When we (note that I am including myself in the definition of we here) intend someone else to take some action, instead of using (2) above, we tend to go with (1).

Let us make sure that the slides are updated by End of Day, says the manager to the employee in an email or a verbal conversation.

Unfortunately, the above does not mean that the employee can sit back and provide the speaker to hone his power point skills. Far from it, the statement directly means that the employee is expected to perform the task.

On the other side as well : When an external entity is asking for some work to be done, instead of taking direct responsibility (I will get back to you/ I will do it), we tend to introduce a sense of collective responsibility (We will get back to you) even when it is clear that no such shared responsibility exists.

Why does this happen ?

For the first case, the primary reason I could think of is that our White Collar collaborative work force etiquette indicates that it is rude to use an instructive /direct order tone with one’s peers / reports. Or as a corollary, we think that being inclusive in words (if not in actions) we are being friendly.

This might be true to a certain extent initially, but once a person finds out that all instances of stated inclusion are actually thinly veiled direct commands, the polish of the language comes off and a sense of cynicism sets in.

For the second case, the answer is simpler. I feel that resorting to “we” provides us something to hide behind, in case we are wrong. Or in cases where work has to be picked up, it provides an exit in case one doesn’t / can’t commit to the job. By using this, in most cases we are diluting the direct responsibility and ownership for a task/action/statement. This is fine in some cases, but not in the vast majority where we use it anyway.

Cisco is one of the unique companies, which is not only getting people to work from home, but also enabling most of the *other* companies to get their employees to do the same

And thanks to the increasing broadband speeds, along with some great work by the IT  infrastructure teams of companies like ours, working from home no longer means frequently disconnecting vpn connections, slow access etc – you can actually get a lot of work done, same as you were in office.

Another piece of good news – this is just the beginning.

With more mobility enabled devices (Cisco Cius, for one), increasing broadband speeds, and better video conferencing from home, things like personal telepresence in India are really not that far away. Apart from increased employee flexibility (and goodwill thus generated), the reduction in travel, carbon emissions etc are also some direct benefits of such solutions.

Good job, Cisco (and Cisco IT) !

Kudos to the Medical Council of India for still mandating a minimum cutoff. That aside, how depressing that in a country marred by shortage of education at all levels, there are unmotivated people who are encouraged to get into a reservation mindset at this early age.

This is not to say that all reservation is bad, or unnecessary. India has a vast legacy of socio-economic inequalities, due to which some of the lower castes have been suffering, both economically and by being social out castes. It would be impractical to think of a simple solution, on either side of the balance – whether it is by introducing reservation as is being done today, or, on the other hand, by removing reservation altogether.

A fine balance needs to be attained in creating policies which help the most deserving (read unprivileged/poor/socially backward today, rather than due to  some historical classification) young minds to work hard and make the most out of the opportunities that are provided to them. Opportunities that are, like it or not, scarce, and provided to a given set of people at the expense of another group.

Gmail's Nested Labels - Notice the lack of collapse functionality and first label being hierarchy parent

Only, it doesn’t, completely. What it does is, display  the  *first* label (x/y in this case) as the hierarchy parent, and then list all the others as children. To create a real hierarchy, you need an EXTRA label (x). This is surprising, more so, when there is a firefox addon called Better Gmail 2, which has been around for a long time, which does this very same thing in the proper way. Screenshots below.

Better Gmail 2 addon - has been going nested labels The Right Way for a long time

Better Gmail allows collapsing label trees, with a convenient +/- sign.

Verdict : If you really want to use Nested Labels, use Better Gmail (The option in the preferences is called Folders4Gmail).

Unfortunately, over the past few months they have been disturbingly unreliable. Couple of incidents where the cab was booked, and right before the reporting time, they canceled the booking and were not able to send a cab. This despite booking it 12 hours back !

Interestingly, each time the blame was put on “technical errors” or “system issues”, so much so that they claimed to be unable to talk to the drivers when the system was down. Haven’t heard of such advanced technology being used in India, where no offline record of driver details etc are kept

Not sure how their competitor Easycabs is in this regard – haven’t used them as much as Meru. Other friends have had the opposite experience though – good for them

I think that with the price premium they charge diminishing (Local guys also charge 13/- per km, they charge 15/- as compared to a 5/- difference earlier), their services have taken a hit. Or maybe with the recession being over, their demand has increased more than their supply. In any case, its their brand which is going to eventually take a hit, as they are completely contradicting their stated USP.

Bottomline is, they can’t be relied upon 100% to send a cab when you need it, so better be careful and have other options in mind .

Cisco marketing should start thinking (and registering) a few more such names. Given the popularity of its brand repertoire with cell manufacturers, this could well be a good way to make some quick money !

P.S: To be fair, not that Cisco is the only company using that word. Check the wikipedia entry for more uses.

Downloaded the tar.gz from the eclipse site directly, and gave it a go after unpacking. While the splash screen came up and there was some activity in loading the workbench, etc, the IDE hung with a blank dialog box. The logs under workspace/.metadata/.log complained:

!ENTRY org.eclipse.ui.workbench 4 0 2009-10-10 18:44:28.933
!MESSAGE Widget disposed too early!
!STACK 0
java.lang.RuntimeException: Widget disposed too early!
at org.eclipse.ui.internal.WorkbenchPartReference$1.
widgetDisposed(WorkbenchPartReference.java:171)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.TypedListener.handleEvent(TypedListener.java:117)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.EventTable.sendEvent(EventTable.java:84)
at org.eclipse.swt.widgets.Widget.sendEvent(Widget.java:1158)
-startup

Seems to be a bug with xulrunner. While the version that fixes the issue (xulrunner) is available on karmic, the downloaded installation does not point to it.

To get this working, just add the following to eclipse.ini on a separate line:

-Dorg.eclipse.swt.browser.XULRunnerPath=/usr/lib/xulrunner

Where /usr/lib/xulrunner is the location of version 1.9

This forum thread discusses the issue in more detail.

Saw this on one of my friends’ accounts, who happens to be married.

Finally got a chance to get back to Ubuntu (Hardy Heron, or Ubuntu 8.04 as it is known -> upgraded to Jaunty Jackalope, aka Ubuntu 9.04) – and boy, what an improvement ! Partially due to the better (than the T60 I was having) specs – more Processing power and RAM, maybe. But more importantly, I found the following things which make Ubuntu a much more powerful and serious candidate for being the OS for non-geeks too:

• Upgrade / Install Process – Very smooth, with a lot of hand-holding when required. A breeze to install !
• Run from within Windows, or as a Live CD (I found a Live USB much faster than a Live CD)
• Gnome – has improved a lot !
• Compiz – Extremely powerful graphics, with great window management capabilities. While it has been around for a while, it works pretty well out-of-the-box, starting with Hardy Heron.
• Good File sharing via dropbox, spideroak
• Nice apps for twitter (Tweetdeck, Twhirl)
• Some cool backup apps
• Picasa available via wine, and working like a charm !
• Thunderbird 3 (beta) with *much* better calendaring support (lightning nightly) – freedom from Outlook Web Exchange, and Evolution !

What’s missing :

• Google Chrome ! Firefox gets too slow sometimes due to the addons and stuff. The only thing about Windoze I miss is the ultra fast experience by chrome.
• For the large part, Openoffice is fine – but some docs at work have macros and vba code that does not work – Office is required.

Good to see such student/institutional initiatives, but wonder how many people avail these.

The one that is the best, and more importantly, most intuitive for non-geeks is, by far, Dropbox. What sets it apart from the rest is :

• Cross Platform – works on Windows, Linux, Mac (?)
• Seamless – integrates into the file explorer on the OS (Windows Explorer, Nautilus) without any user configuration required. Just creates a folder called “My Dropbox”, and indicates using icons whether the particular folder/file within the dropbox is synced or not
• Version Control !! – Quietly manages revisions of the same file, so that older versions of a file are also available
• Access Control !! – Share folders with specific people by inviting them. Share folders/files with the world by putting them in a folder marked “public” – simple ! Also, create a URL using a right-click on the file/folder icon in the explorer itself – and share the link directly.
• Browse using multiple computers, or without installing the app using a browser. The UI in the browser is also very simple, intuitive and functional.
• 2 GB free, more than that requires upgrade

Some other file syncing services which came before dropbox, but which pale in comparison to Dropbox :

• SpiderOak (Yeah, Wierd Name). Good, but not good enough. One of the earlier ones
• Microsoft Live Mesh – Decent, also offers 5 GB. Does not support Linux through an app though.

Their argument – drivers are rarely responsible for fatal accidents. Road conditions, traffic, pedestrians are the other causes.

Walk on any road in Kolkata, and you will find buses running not in one lane, but between two – to block other buses, and ensure that the buses breathing down its back do not get ahead. The result : daily, a minimum of 5-6 people injured or killed, so that the bus drivers earn some more commission, and their masters earn some more money.

What encourages these people is the lackadaisical and irresponsible attitude of the government (the minister can’t even organize a felicitation for Maradona properly, let alone worry about transport), and the fact that, as is the case with these things, the decision makers and owners do not have to venture out on the streets on foot – they have drivers and convoys with security, and do not understand the common man’s plight.

The situation is the same as above, just from a different view – get up in the morning, prepare breakfast/lunch (most times without any help), pack hubby/kids off to office/school, leave for office, come back, prepare dinner – and repeat most of this on weekends too. While husbands take refuge in the fact that they do not know how to cook ..or that they are tired having been in office a bit longer ..

All of the above, IMHO, are the real superwomen (and not just of any month). Titles mean nothing to most of them, and giving a title to one of them is non-consequential in the larger scheme of things. Given that such programs and initiatives in most organizations are part of promoting gender equality (a very noble cause), the target audience needs to be refined. There are other social strata (less educated, rural/semi-urban areas) where women are not given their due, and these programs should target them. Bringing such events in big programs is largely like preaching to the choir.

Footnote: I’m not sure how many people realize that women and men can never be equal (in the literal sense of the word). Why compare them all the time ? It makes sense where uneducation is rampant or the social system is still archaic – so just target that segment.

Courses I have taken this quarter:

• Spreadsheet Modelling for Business Decisions (SMBD) – A good analytical course which focuses on solving problems using spreadsheets. The problems range from Finance, Marketing, Risk management. Very interesting, especially for me as I have been exposed to spreadsheets right from the DOS days of Lotus 123 – when having 512 kb of memory meant you were a millionaire (almost )
• Brand Management (BM) – A fitting climax to all the marketing courses I have done, probably. Very enthusiastic professor who keeps us on our feet with his questions and comments. A good subject with an excellent blend of theoretical frameworks and their applications – in fact, the first presentation is on Cisco v’s HP’s Brand Identity w.r.t the Telepresence offerings
• Social Entrepreneurship (SE) – This is a “bonus” course, as I am only required to do two courses to complete the credit requirements. Thought of doing this course to learn about the “other” India, which in fact is the bigger reality rather than our IT and “India Shining” tirades. The professor is one of the most active persons in crusading for social and political reforms, and was instrumental in getting the Right to Information (RTI) act to be passed.

Not sure how useful or different it will be though – we all know who wins in the end in such quarrels

While I still stand by the statement, given that my company is providing a great gym facility – and my work hours are such that I can manage getting an hour out in office much more easily than out-of-office – I decided long back to work out there.

After numerous logistical and planetary interruptions which prevented my gracing the gym, finally made it today. Was very tiring (which I hope is good )

Target weight loss – 6 kgs in 6 weeks. Is it do-able ?

However, I recently chanced upon an excellent way to search for print ads. The Times of India has an ePaper website, which allows full text search of all articles – and more importantly – ads ! So, when I wanted to search for the various ads on Sony Bravia LCD TVs over the past couple of years, I just keyed in “Bravia” with the appropriate date range, and was able to search the Bangalore Edition of Times of India, including supplements, over the past few years, and get all ads printed ! These can then be saved, converted to PDF, etc – very handy for research required for courses like AdMan, ProdMan, and ConB.

Wish I had known this earlier …

Other courses were Product Management (PM) – a decent course in terms of workload, but not as insightful as the others (probably because I have done enough marketing courses already). Still, was a good refresher of the Marketing 101 concepts.

No course, though, can beat the best course I did – Leadership and Organizational Change (LoC). While I generally stay away from hardcore HR/OB courses, this was one exception and definitely worth the effort. The classes were very interactive and discussion oriented, with a lot of CP (class participation) gurus being present. Our personality review paper and presentation (on Dr. Verghese Kurien) was very well researched by us.

One more Q down, with only two courses required – Spreadsheet Modelling and Brand Management. Can take up a third, if I find it interesting. That will leave me with only a project to do in the 3rd Quarter, after which everything will be over

Still .. given the less involvement required from this Q onwards – am already considering the course to be done – and planning to get back to life

He battles a weak heart, regulations (he misses the registration deadline for participating, and then his motorcycle -  a relic of the past – fails safety tests),  but finally gets to achieve his dream of racing at the Mecca of Motorcycling.  The buildup of suspense, and the subsequent climax, are very effective in keeping one on the edge.

Overall, a great movie.

Trivia : The Salt Flats are also the location of other movies, including Indpendence Day and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.

This goes on for 5-10 minutes (around 2 kms). Evidently done with the news (it was more like one of those supplements with more pics than content), he moves to his cell phone. Again, while driving. Fumbles it a few times, so that his attention is diverted from the road ahead, onto the floor of the car.

And such people will come to office, and make a hue and cry about the traffic in bangalore, how cab drivers and office shuttles need to drive carefully, and how Bangalore traffic is going to the pits.

The center is housed in a grand architectural marvel bigger than Rashtrapati Bhavan in size.

From the article:

The GEC imparts centralised residential foundation programme for Infosys employees, including generic and stream-specific training in various technology areas, apart from soft skills and leadership programmes to fresh engineering graduates who have joined Infosys.

It is great that Infosys is working towards keeping itself competitive, but effectively, the implication is that most of us engineers who come right out of college are unemployable, and need “real” training to be billable or productive.

Even in Bangalore, there was news of one bomb being defused near Forum Mall, very near to madiwala – the same area where yesterday’s blast had occurred.

Theories of “rehearsals” for some bigger attacks abound. All major cities are under high alert. People are now afraid to go out of their homes, and rightly so.

I just hope that the authorities and security agencies get to the root of these crazy events and take some action against the culprits, the audacity of which would act as a deterrent to such further acts of terrorism.

Update: Total 16 blasts (and counting), 18 killed, over 70 injured. WTF???

I was passing very near one area (Madiwala) just after the blast is supposed to have happened, but did not get any indication of anything being amiss.

These events force us to revisit the question of basic safety of our lives in the city – something as innocuous as waiting for a bus can be fatal

I am not sure what the solution is, but citizens as well as the government need to take a deep look into the issue and get to the root cause of why such a large-scale tragic event is planned and executed in the first place. Only they can we create adequate safeguards against suchoccurrences.

• Perform the search. Open interesting results in new tabs
• Save all tabs which you find relevant, using Bookmarks->Bookmark all tabs (Ctrl+Shift+D). This saves all tabs in a different folder, so that you can do  “Bookmarks->Right-click on a folder->Open All in tabs”
• If you do not do the above, you can still use Google’s Web History feature to search for the search again at a later date, and get some of the results

Was a lifesaver a few minutes back ! And BTW, Firefox 3′s Beta works great, and is a LOT faster on Windoze !

The events organized were :

• Symposium, with a competition for IIMB students, who presented their take on strategic initiatives for various companies
• Corporate Quiz, with registrations from around 100 teams across Bangalore
• Keynote Address on Innovation and Product Management by Mr. Aravind Sitaraman, VP, Cisco India
• Panel Discussion on “Building an Innovation Ecosystem”, with participants being top leaders from the industry and academia.

More details here

 This article provides some interesting insights into the history of Oracle, the evolution of the Oracle Database, and Oracle’s entry into the Apps arena

To laugh is to risk appearing the fool.
To weep is to risk appearing sentimental.
To reach for another is to risk involvement.
To expose your ideas, your dreams,
before a crowd is to risk their loss.
To love is to risk not being loved in return.
To live is to risk dying.
To believe is to risk despair.
To try is to risk failure.
But risks must be taken, because the
greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.
The people who risk nothing, do nothing,
have nothing, are nothing.
They may avoid suffering and sorrow,
but they cannot learn, feel, change,
grow, love, live.
Chained by their attitudes they are slaves;
they have forfeited their freedom.
Only a person who risks is free.

– Author : Unknown

Isn’t it time that HR firms came of age and did some basic research on the profiles before an all-out broadcast of every opportunity to everyone ? Most of them also come with a reply-to address of a yahoo or gmail account, which is a glaring indicator of unprofessionalism (cmon guys, if you can’t have your own email domain, get out of the business !). In addition, the mails are so poorly worded that had the mail been an application from a candidate to a firm, it would have found its way to the trash even before the resume is opened.

I would assume “Show” to show the details of which message failed and why, but it shows a blank screen and then returns to the normal display – and the error disappears. Of course, there was no message to be sent in the first place, so I am not sure how the message is appearing.

The same message also appears in Hindi if I change the language. (1110i has support for Hindi and Marathi, and I use Hindi as my default language of interaction. I even send sms’es in Hindi, though unfortunately many people reply back saying they got “junk”.)

How could basic, functional testing have missed such an easily and consistently reproducible issue ? I do not have another handset to see whether the bug is present on all handsets, but a google search indicates that many users have encountered this problem.

The sessions will be held on

Sunday, 17th December 2006 (Bangalore)

Sunday, 7th January 2007 (Chennai)

Registration for the session can be done via this link.

The PGSEM 2007 Application Form is also available. Details here.

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.

-- Blaise Pascal

Which means that the office will be empty these 3-4 days – an ideal time to get some work and study done

Especially when the subject of the case does everything wrong.

From the article :

“PGSEM endeavours to provide the most current executive general management education to middle and senior professionals of the software and information technology industry to pursue a career in management. The programme aims to transform professionals with strong technical knowledge to business leaders with equally strong management knowledge and a global perspective.”

This even works when the owner is offline, of course. The utility of such a technology is enormous… adding a whole new dimension to web-based interaction and collaboration. A demo provided on this page !

So here goes :

• PMBA is a great selection of books to go through to learn the basics (and advanced theories, sometimes) of management, at your convenience and pace
• PGSEM is a part-time 2.5 year (minimum) course at IIM Bangalore, one of the premier management institutes of India, that caters to software professionals (but is GENERAL management course, like the ful time PGP)

• PMBA costs near to zilch, as the only financial investment required is the cost of around 40-odd books
• PGSEM costs a bit (INR 1,50,000 per year, for a total of INR 3,75,000 over 2.5 years) – not frightfully expensive, as students also work full time throughout the duration of the course.

• PMBA emphasises on self-learning, and requires a lot of dedication in reading the books in a paced manner
• PGSEM emphasises on self-learning, but being a formal course, has examinations, assignments, case studies which ensure application of theories

• PMBA books comprise of all fields, and are more “practical” oriented. They are the bestsellers in their respective areas, and the authors are generally well known business writers/management consultants
• PGSEM course material contains a lot of theoretical text books, augmented by case studies and demonstration of application of these theories through case study discussions/assignments

• PMBA does not have as much interaction and networking as does PGSEM, due to the virtual nature of the PMBA movement. PMBA Live is a great step towards enhancing interaction by live chats and e-collaboration, but this is still a limitation which has not yet been addressed fully (LUG-type meetings would go a long way in removing this disconnect)

• Both PMBA as well as PGSEM provide an opportunity for application of concepts learned to the student’s profession (something a full time course does not)

More to be added when I find time .. got a few assignments to take care of for tomorrow’s class

If you were looking for a verdict as in X was better than Y, sorry ! This is just to highlight some differences in the two courses. Both have their Pros and Cons, and both can provide as much (or as less) value as the person doing it wants. I would love to keep going through the PMBA reading list, as I continue with the PGSEM

Hectic..but fun .. as long as there are not too many quizzes like the two next saurday..

• “Welcome to PGSEM, all the best, and my sympathies with your families who will see a lot less of you”
• “You will not have to manage your life while doing this course – you won’t have one !”
• HRs mention “work-life balance” to manage. This is to become “work-life-study” balance

We received the books for the courses for the Quarter – Strategy Management (SM), Financial Accounting (FinAc), Micro Economics (Not sure what the IIM Lingo for this is). A few cases to read for next week, some stuff to prepare..

The fun has begun !

What is it about Americans (or should I say non-Indians) that allow then to live happily in diverse professions, and enjoy life as it comes ? When will we Indians get to this kind of life-style ?
I like the part where he mentions the source of his travel money to be the booming Real Estate Market.. with 20/20 hindsight, Bangalore real estate would have been a good bet

In case someone wants advice/help/tips/answers-to-questions on PGSEM, or is wondering what this is all about, please join the yahoo group.

My take on this would be – neither. In The Goal, Professor Goldratt has mentioned that the primary goal of an organization is to earn money. This would make the most important stakeholder, for any firm, to be its promoters and shareholders.

Most people might not be as blunt as Professor Goldratt, but the machinations of any organisation do, on close scrutiny, affirm this belief. During a recession, for example, what would a company considering employees or customers most valuable do ?

• The Pro-Employee camp would probably believe in making sure that the employees are not “inconvenienced” – no layoffs, minimal pay cuts, business as usual – after all, aren’t the employees their most prized asset?
• The pro-customer camp, on the other hand, would make sure that the customers continue getting value-added products, and services. If the customers cannot pay for these? Reduce prices ? Give it away for free ? Anything to keep the customers, no matter what happens to the balance sheet ?

A more pragmatic approach would be to make sure that the financial health of the organization is not harmed to the best possible extent. This might mean pay cuts, products not being agressively marketed or even rolled out, customers being politely refused – but in the end, the firm would live to see another day.

This is not to say that the first two groups are not valuable or that they are unnecessary. Both are equally important for the long term success of any organization, and every organization should – especially in the current global environment – provide the best of facilities and opportunies to both the employees and customers. It is just that playing a game of “Which is more important” is futile.

Thoughts ?

There are a large number of participants who are also involved in startups, and it would be a nice opportunity to interact with them !

More later ..

• Ability to share Calendars with the world
• Multiple calendars per account
• Calendars can be overlaid into a single display, so that you can schedule across multiple calendars
• Natural language processing – Allows you to ass an appointment using simple english – for eg: “Breakfast at MTR at 5 AM”
• And of course, slick UI !

The standard of Indian journalism and news channels scaled new heights today, with the “Breaking News” and endlessly-repeating-feature of the day being Mallika Sherawat’s endorsement of the 7up brand.

It is amazing how all these news channels can keep airing such kind of news, hour after hour, when there are much more important things which should be brought to the notice of the public. Sadly, all channels are guilty of this lack of sensibility.

I do understand that in today’s world of cut-throat competition and 24-hour news consumption, no channel wants to be left behind in the race for more TRP’s. I also wonder whether I would do something different were I responsible for a media house.. I do hope I would !

The Computer-based test will be available from June, through Thomson Prometric and Pearson VUE testing centres around the world. The exam price is USD 100.

This contradicts other studies by the Dutch and British, that did not find any harmful effects in the radiations from TV and Cell towers.

So, who is right ? I do not know, but keeping the cell usage to a minimum would not be a bad idea, both medically as well as financially