Random Notes http://www.kaush.com/ en-us kaush@kaush.com Copyright 2022 2022-02-04T12:29:20-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 Test message http://www.kaush.com/archives/000553.html Just trying to see whether this web log is still working... 553@http://www.kaush.com/ Just trying to see whether this web log is still working

]]> words 2022-02-04T12:29:20-05:00 Stray thoughts on building sustainable advantages in IT http://www.kaush.com/archives/000550.html - McKinsey Quarterly recently published a report (unavailable without priced membership) about the comparative advantages in IT industry for India and China. The report concluded that Indian IT industry's economy of scale, established ladership and business practices provides India with powerful advantages. Chinese IT industry - because of its highly... 550@http://www.kaush.com/ - McKinsey Quarterly recently published a report (unavailable without priced membership) about the comparative advantages in IT industry for India and China. The report concluded that Indian IT industry's economy of scale, established ladership and business practices provides India with powerful advantages. Chinese IT industry - because of its highly fragmented nature - would take a long time to catch up. It seems to have gotten wide coverage in Indian media.

- I recently read news coverage of an interview with Narayan Murthy (Infosys Chairman) in which he talked about the infrastructure burdens of the cities (power, roads, water, transportation) and how these are limiting the growth of IT industry in India (I lost the link).

-International Herald Tribune has a story about how Wipro is trying to widen its talent pool:

" By hiring Prity Tewary, Wipro, India's third-biggest software exporter, may have found the key to expanding the engineering talent pool that Indian universities produce in a year .... She and 1,100 others, many of them plain vanilla science graduates, are studying for a four-year master of science degree in software, telecommunications and microelectronics on Saturdays. Wipro is paying their tuition, providing them with classroom resources on its sprawling, university-type campuses, and giving them stipends that start at 6,000 rupees, or $137, a month. In turn, the student-workers are helping the company go beyond the limited universe of 184,000 fresh engineers available for hiring as programmers each year.

"We build our own engineers," says S.K. Bhagavan, who oversees Wipro's in-house "talent transformation" team of 70 faculty members. In a year, Bhagavan's team conducts 150,000 hours of training, and that includes coaching in "soft skills" needed by a work force that interacts with clients globally.

... At an aggregate level too, India needs to convert more of its generalist scientific talent into software professionals to sustain the industry's competitiveness. Of a total population of 7.7 million science and technology professionals in 2000, about half, or 3.8 million, were science graduates. Only 970,000 were graduate engineers, according to an estimate by the Institute of Applied Manpower Research in New Delhi. While India does need more science doctorates to carry out research, it doesn't need more unemployed physics graduates.

Seven out of 10 employees hired in the last three years by Infosys Technologies, Wipro's slightly bigger competitor by market value, were fresh graduates. In order to raise the quality of the talent it hires, the Bangalore-based company has released some of the course material it uses to train employees to universities under a $2 million "Campus Connect" initiative."

- Joel Spolski gave some interesting advise to computer Science graduates in USA a few weeks back (via Kingshuk). They are as applicable for Indian developers:

Would Linux have succeeded if Linus Torvalds hadn't evangelized it? As brilliant a hacker as he is, it was Linus's ability to convey his ideas in written English via email and mailing lists that made Linux attract a worldwide brigade of volunteers.

Have you heard of the latest fad, Extreme Programming? Well, without getting into what I think about XP, the reason you've heard of it is because it is being promoted by people who are very gifted writers and speakers.

Even on the small scale, when you look at any programming organization, the programmers with the most power and influence are the ones who can write and speak in English clearly, convincingly, and comfortably. Also it helps to be tall, but you can't do anything about that.

]]> South Asia 2005-02-07T06:49:20-05:00 Catering to the BPOs in India ..... http://www.kaush.com/archives/000549.html According to Nasscom, India has around 8.13 lakh IT professionals , which amount to at least 8.13 lakh meals per day. Taking Rs 30 as the minimum cost of a thali, you can earn a mouth-watering Rs 244 lakh per day! With many BPOs serving two square meals a day,... 549@http://www.kaush.com/ According to Nasscom, India has around 8.13 lakh IT professionals , which amount to at least 8.13 lakh meals per day. Taking Rs 30 as the minimum cost of a thali, you can earn a mouth-watering Rs 244 lakh per day!

With many BPOs serving two square meals a day, 8.13 lakh meals is a much discounted figure. The delectable dal makhani and palatable paneer can earn you lakhs. Those who smelled this inviting opportunity early on are now earning big money.

Here is the whole story

]]> South Asia 2005-02-05T18:12:21-05:00 Interview with a blog spammer http://www.kaush.com/archives/000548.html Thanks to people like these, I eventually decided to turn off comments in this weblog. (via comment in Crooked Timber). I had over 50 trackback spams yesterday. But MT 2.6x makes deleting spam much simpler. But wading through this stuff is still very irritating and depressing.... 548@http://www.kaush.com/ Thanks to people like these, I eventually decided to turn off comments in this weblog. (via comment in Crooked Timber).

I had over 50 trackback spams yesterday. But MT 2.6x makes deleting spam much simpler. But wading through this stuff is still very irritating and depressing.

]]> 2005-02-01T18:18:17-05:00 Communication history trivia http://www.kaush.com/archives/000547.html It does give you a sense of proportion: On Feb. 10, 1825, a young man named Samuel sent a letter from Washington, D.C., to his ailing wife Lucretia: "I long to hear from you," he wrote plaintively. The next day, Samuel received word that his wife had died the day... 547@http://www.kaush.com/ It does give you a sense of proportion:
On Feb. 10, 1825, a young man named Samuel sent a letter from Washington, D.C., to his ailing wife Lucretia: "I long to hear from you," he wrote plaintively. The next day, Samuel received word that his wife had died the day before he mailed his letter. By the time he got home to New Haven, Lucretia had been buried for three days. The man's full name was Samuel Finley Breese Morse. He eliminated the possibility that such a tragic irony would ever darken anyone else's life by inventing the telegraph in 1844.

And on July 14, 1846, a young U.S. Army captain was posted from Charleston, S.C., to a new base in Buena Yerba in the Alta California territory. How long do you think it took him to arrive in what we now call San Francisco, as fast as the U.S. Army could muster? The trip took six and a half months.

The captain and his wife wrote letters to each other every day. In April 1847, he finally got his first letter from her; she had written it in October 1846. When this soldier, William Tecumseh Sherman, became famous for his March to the Sea in 1865, his two priorities were to destroy the railroads in the Southeast and cut the telegraph lines. He knew exactly what he was doing.

In three breathtaking years from 1866 to 1869, travel time from the East Coast to California dropped from six months to roughly two weeks?and nearly everyone who crossed the continent survived. Suddenly, food and medicine could traverse immense distances in time to save lives. Suddenly, today's New York Times described what happened in Europe yesterday, instead of what had happened two or three weeks earlier. Suddenly, people could learn that it was a matter of life and death for them to get somewhere immediately; and they could actually get there.

Now how could anyone claim, as one venture capitalist did in early 1999, that the Internet is "the greatest invention in the history of the world?" It's simply an incremental improvement in the high speed at which we already share information by phone and fax and FedEx. It's a big deal, but the telegraph and the railroad were at least as big.

From Jason Zweig's speech to Morningstar Investment Conference in June 2001

]]> business 2005-01-31T06:56:09-05:00 Orwell online http://www.kaush.com/archives/000545.html Charles' Orwell links is a great George Orwell resource. Over at that website, I read Politics and the English Language. 59 years after Orwell wrote it, it still feels fresh. ".. English language ...becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it... 545@http://www.kaush.com/ Charles' Orwell links is a great George Orwell resource. Over at that website, I read Politics and the English Language. 59 years after Orwell wrote it, it still feels fresh.

".. English language ...becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts ... Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers."

Towards the end of this essay, Orwell wrote that all writers should follow the following rules:

"-Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
- Never use a long word where a short one will do.
- If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
- Never use the passive where you can use the active.
- Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
- Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous".

Now that's hard! I almost wrote 'like a breath of fresh air' at the end of the first paragraph and 'easier said than done' at the beginning of this paragraph ....

]]> words 2005-01-27T07:36:16-05:00 Death and taxes http://www.kaush.com/archives/000544.html David Cay Johnston is the rock star of tax reporting in USA. He recently wrote a book with a provocative title 'Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else'. I havent read it. But City Pages of Minnesota recently interviewed... 544@http://www.kaush.com/ David Cay Johnston is the rock star of tax reporting in USA. He recently wrote a book with a provocative title 'Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich--and Cheat Everybody Else'. I havent read it.

But City Pages of Minnesota recently interviewed him:

"Not everyone agrees, for example, that it?s a bad thing to shift the burden of taxes. And that?s why in the paperback I emphasize ... that the most conservative principle in western civilization is taxation based on the ability to pay. Because that is the principle that led to the creation of Athenian democracy. Plato, Aristotle, Adam Smith, the father of capitalism, David Ricardo, John Locke, John Stuart Mill--every single one of the worldly philosophers has concluded over 2,500 years that taxes should be based on the ability to pay. I meet all sorts of people who think that Marx thought this up, or FDR, and they are very ahistorical about it......

In ancient Athens there was a flat tax, and when the Athenians had a flat tax, Athens was a tyranny. That?s where we get the word from. When the moral philosophers of Athens reasoned that those people who got the greatest economic benefit from living in Athens had the moral obligation to bear the greatest burden of maintaining the society that made them rich. That is, when they invented taxation based on ability to pay, they also invented democracy."

Good interview - although I should note here that I do not completely share his views and certainly not his opinion of unions.

]]> politics 2005-01-26T07:15:04-05:00 Two Texans http://www.kaush.com/archives/000543.html Harold Meyerson's new column 'A Tale of Two Texans' is the second most e-mailed story in the Washington Post website this morning.... 543@http://www.kaush.com/ Harold Meyerson's new column 'A Tale of Two Texans' is the second most e-mailed story in the Washington Post website this morning.

]]> politics 2005-01-20T07:43:00-05:00 More wars? http://www.kaush.com/archives/000542.html Today, I had a flashback - a conversation I had with KB a few days before the 2004 election. As usual, like other pseudo-Europeans, he was having enormous fun with what he considers the era of 'decline and fall of American power' and found my agonizations over the US election... 542@http://www.kaush.com/ Today, I had a flashback - a conversation I had with KB a few days before the 2004 election. As usual, like other pseudo-Europeans, he was having enormous fun with what he considers the era of 'decline and fall of American power' and found my agonizations over the US election ridiculous. His point of view was - how can it get any worse? The worst is over. The deficit is already huge. Iraq is already a basket case. Europe would not lend any additional troops no matter who becomes the president. Neither would the other middle eastern countries lend a hand. Whoever wins the presidency would have to wade through muck anyway. I feebly countered that if Bush wins, (among other things) there is the threat of war in Iran. Before I could say anything else - he laughed. And after a while, I laughed too. After all, Neocons couldn't be serious about another war in the middle east, right?

Right?

This week, Saymour Hersh has a new article in the New Yorker called The coming wars.

If you feel that it is time to educate yourself about the back story on Iran, check out All the Shah's men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror

]]> 2005-01-19T08:16:44-05:00 Summers does it again http://www.kaush.com/archives/000541.html Where angels fear to tread ... This is ONE hornet's nest. It would be really funny watching the left-liberal, Summers admiring bloggers talk or not talk about this. ..I am trying to get my work life back into some sort of control. Once I do that, I hope to blog... 541@http://www.kaush.com/ Where angels fear to tread ...

This is ONE hornet's nest. It would be really funny watching the left-liberal, Summers admiring bloggers talk or not talk about this.

..I am trying to get my work life back into some sort of control. Once I do that, I hope to blog for often.

]]> 2005-01-18T08:38:41-05:00 Short stories http://www.kaush.com/archives/000540.html On my bookmarks waiting to be read ... Short short stories by Dave Eggers (via Kingshuk) Best Russian short stories Surrounded by Sleep by Akhil Sharma Hills like White elephant by Ernest Hemingway Hell Heaven by Jhumpa Lahiri (The last three links via Another Sub Continent) Did you know Dante's... 540@http://www.kaush.com/ On my bookmarks waiting to be read ...

Short short stories by Dave Eggers (via Kingshuk)
Best Russian short stories
Surrounded by Sleep by Akhil Sharma
Hills like White elephant by Ernest Hemingway
Hell Heaven by Jhumpa Lahiri

(The last three links via Another Sub Continent)

Did you know Dante's Divine comedy is available online? (And no, I am not planning to read THAT!)

]]> words 2005-01-12T07:08:39-05:00 Dark clouds http://www.kaush.com/archives/000539.html Last saturday LA Times had an understated, but sobering op-ed on the co-option of doctors in military's administration of torture in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq. I grew up in a social environment that had an abiding respect for the written word and for doctors. I have known about torture by... 539@http://www.kaush.com/ Last saturday LA Times had an understated, but sobering op-ed on the co-option of doctors in military's administration of torture in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq.

I grew up in a social environment that had an abiding respect for the written word and for doctors. I have known about torture by some practioners of medicine in Nazi concentration camps. But I always felt that it was a complete aberration anyway - that most people who go into medicine and practice medicine maintain some fundamental commitments to morality and ethics.

When I read that alongside this Newsweek story on Pentagon's thoughts about putting assassination squads in the middle east, I start questioning my basic assumptions about democratically elected governments of our times (obviously, we are not talking about Kazakhstan here where the president boils his political opponents or about West Africa where torture and cruelty have lost their power to shock).

I dont see any hope at all of things getting any better anytime soon.

]]> politics 2005-01-11T07:57:23-05:00 http://www.kaush.com/archives/000536.html Not away; just very busy at work. 'll probably start posting again by this weekend.... 536@http://www.kaush.com/ Not away; just very busy at work. 'll probably start posting again by this weekend.

]]> this and that 2005-01-05T15:33:18-05:00 http://www.kaush.com/archives/000535.html It has been very depressing. It feels slightly tacky to blog about my everyday petty concerns. It feels even more useless and redundant to talk about the devastation knowing how very little we can do other than giving some money to the charities supporting the victims. The sheer helplessness in... 535@http://www.kaush.com/ It has been very depressing. It feels slightly tacky to blog about my everyday petty concerns. It feels even more useless and redundant to talk about the devastation knowing how very little we can do other than giving some money to the charities supporting the victims. The sheer helplessness in the face of such disasters is scary, humbling, depressing - it brings home like nothing else the complete uncertainty of our existence.

It is hard to make new year wishes - when you know even the most basic wishes of over 100,000 people did not find a place in our world.

I wish you peace of mind and hope that you make those around you happy. At the end of the day, that is pretty much the only thing we have.

I am thankful to my readers who have been coming to this weblog regularly. Sometime in the last few weeks, this weblog reached its three year anniversary. I dont know if any of you have been reading 'Random Notes' for three years. But if you have been, thank you.

]]> 2004-12-31T13:32:42-05:00 http://www.kaush.com/archives/000533.html South East Asia Earthquake and Psunami weblog is regularly updating its list of volunteer organizations and charities supporting Tsunami victims and seems to have the most complete list. It is also a clearinghouse for information on resources, aids, donations and helplines for Tsunami victims New York Times has a comprehensive... 533@http://www.kaush.com/ South East Asia Earthquake and Psunami weblog is regularly updating its list of volunteer organizations and charities supporting Tsunami victims and seems to have the most complete list. It is also a clearinghouse for information on resources, aids, donations and helplines for Tsunami victims

New York Times has a comprehensive list of agencies in USA that are providing assistance to the Tsunami victims and are accepting contribution. Washington Post has a slightly different list of agencies to which one can donate money or supplies. The Post said that most groups are recommending donation of money (wherever possible).

]]> South Asia 2004-12-28T11:30:28-05:00