Value Based Management is the next phenomenon. It is already in after the Enron Crisis. The world blamed the top B-schools. Business ethics got into the prime league. What is Value Based Management ?
Management that Creates 1.Creating Value
2.Managing Value
3.Measuring Value

I am gonna write more about Outsourced Development, Project & Program Management and Value Based Management techniques that help Corporates go to the no man's island in the era of corporate poaching.

Pras @ Devil's Labs

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
On the way to Darjeeling 

 
In a Pub in Darjeeling 

 
Snaps on the Way to Nathulla and Lachen 

AjaX is the thing I am proposing to Ram Sateesh for the GUI "Standards". Well Is it some thing new to me.. I remember doing a similar concept back in 1999 in Vizag but that was on VB Script and it used the same asyncronous calls back to server.. but that was both pull/push based rather than Post/submit -> Respond Back manner... Jargon(Read it as CRAP-Commonly Reused Articles and Particles)

I guess I love it..

hmmm Made another Paper Presentation on PCtvt. Prof.Raj Reddy was the Guest of Honor at the CSI-2005. I made a presentation on PCtvt:Poor Man's Super Computer and You bet- It was a damn rocking show.. I got bunch of fan mail :)).... I had to skip my B'lore trip - Commando Training and participate in CSI stuff... I was happy to see some known Old(Read Wise) faces Like Prof Kesav Nori, General Bugga, Ganta Subba Rao and V Raja Raman and biggies..did I forget Prasanna Rambhatla- Ya he was there too

Wowww... Mission Possible... Got my baby's passport...well that was certainly a MI-2 task. Had to play(NO I am against PAY)so many people. Finally, Gutsy show dude.. Damn Bugger, Nope not you, the guy who came to verify was pretty straight forward in asking for Bribe... I played a tough cop n showed him the exit door, politely. Poor Chap had to leave- No Xcuses for being corrupt. Scoundrels, should be hung till death. I know I am being hard, but to bring the Glory of the country, People should be tough, I am taking the initiative.

Work on the UI front started. I gathered some fundas for the MSITians. Looks like I am good job (again ??). well the freaks say that is a regular paradigm with Prasanna-Pras.. Focus Dude... Yeah.. Getting back to UI front. Prof.Raj Reddy suggestion was to add multilingual aspects onto the site. Now I have a new team member,Nilu. She is cute n pretty friendly.We are colloborating on the UI course and I am sure she will work magic on her aspects- provided unnecessary JIB(jump-in-between) resist themselves from being the spoil sport.

See People say I am lazy... I dont think so.. Do you??

Google Print for Libraries is officially rolling. Beginning today, Google is making available digital copies of a substantial number of public domain books, scanned from the collections of several large research libraries.

Microsoft is jumping on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) bandwagon with two new products targeted primarily at consumers and small businesses.

The first, Windows Live, includes Web-based tools for e-mail and instant messaging along with utilities for PC health and virus scanning. The second, Microsoft Office Live, includes a set of 20 SaaS business applications, including project management, sales and collateral management, customer management, expense reports, time and billing management, and collaboration tools.

Google Services Unavailable??

Google realm was down. Bunch of folks were popping up to show the "page cannot be found" signal, on hitting the google's URL. Google, I guess, has become a demigod for i-World. If it is down, it is some thing close to virtual and far from reality.

May be some Dos attack or something?? Jus need to wait n see what google folks have to say

Back to Basics
Started working on Architecture & Process and I need to push lot of content from the private to public site.
Well points to Ponder are:
The static aspects of the Design and Architecture are represented by the Structural Diagrams namely:

Class Diagrams
Object Diagrams
Component Diagrams
Deployment Diagrams

Lets Dig Deeper on each of them

Pras @ USi Labs

Changing Rules of Outsourcing
Time to outsource(Decision-To-Action) is shrinking as the International Borders of Separation. The rules of the game are changing to such as extent,Outsourcing word will be abused and outdated soon. A new layer of wrap-up (Value-Added Services,Relationship-Services and Commodity Services(ASP Model) is picking up. I blv companies are outsorcing the Legacy systems to move ahead in the rat & rate race by innovating the business model and focusing more on the strategic side.. IT Companies, for some reason, don't like the ASP Model of COmmodotization.Like any other field,competetive and Customer driven markets are forcing the providers to offer a boutique of services(Commodities) for lower margins. This service will kick-off the time to market & innovate for the Companies.

Prasanna Rambhatla @ Devils Worksop

Socially Useless but privately valuable... Well this statement of Kenneth Arrow is very true to most of the Blogs on the web... Not many of the blogs people write are very useful to the rest of the world, just like this one :)... But this is a lot to me..

In 1969, UNIX was created at Bell Labs.

For decades, the source of the AT&T dialect of UNIX came from the researches of workers in department 1127.

When the "Baby Bells" split from "Ma Bell," department 1127 survived. When AT&T and Lucent split, 1127 survived.

But the new reorg at Bell Labs finally breaks up what's left of 1127 entirely. Theory people will go to one place, systems people to another, I'm told. I'm not sure what happens to those who fall in neither camp. There was no malice, so far as I can tell — just an administrative reorg forced by recent cutbacks and layoffs and departures that left the whole research area with too many managers and too few researchers.

Ken Thompson retired to California.
Brian Kernighan is a Professor at Princeton.
Doug McIlroy is a Professor at Dartmouth.
Rob Pike and Dave Presotto and Sean Dorward are at Google.
Tom Duff is at Pixar.
Phil Winterbottom is CTO at Entrisphere.
Gerard Holzmann is at NASA/JPL Lab for Reliable Software.
Bob Flandrena is at Morgan Stanley.

To the best of my knowledge, Dennis Ritchie and Howard Trickey remain, enisled.
A former employee at 1127 remarked:

"My take is that 1127 probably reached Schiavo status when Rob, Presotto, et al. fled west to Google.
"But it's still sad to see the final demise, both of a particular institution and as a further nail in the coffin of the sort of research environment Bell Labs once represented."

That may be the worst effect. DEC Labs are gone. XEROX PARC transmogrified into "Palo Alto Research Center Inc." on 4 January 2002. It's a waning of research potential.

Ave atque vale, guys. "And thanks for all the fish."

Vizag- Crash
Finally I landed in Visakhapatnam after a heck of body crunching journey. I watched Mangal Pandey, good screen play.. I observed one goof up in the movie.. In one scene the US of A flag comes up rather than the UK(Company flag)... I was wondering how patriotic our oldies were... fighting with the useless East India Company.

I certainly enjoyed Lagaan more than Mangal Pandey... Performance of AK was much better in Lagaan as it was a double barrel fully loaded character..

Pras@
iLabs

Puranas.
18 Puranas: There are 18 puranas and 18 upa-puranas. The 18 puranas are :

Ma 2 : Matsya and Maarkandeya
Bha 2: Bhavishya and Bhagavat

Bra 3: Brahma, Brahmaanda and Brahma-Vaivartha

Va 4: Vishnu, Varaaha, Vaamana & Vayu (?)

A-Naa-Pa-Lin-Ga-Ku-S (7): Agni, Naarada, Padma, Linga, Garuda, Kurma and Skanda.

(?) Some include Siva Purnam instead of Vayu.

UI Course and HCI Fundamentals need to be evaluated.
Beyond the invisible,the subtle factors that make or break any app are what I need to do a storming session abt.. Well, I know this stuff is not Ian Rand's stuff but then... I need to be tough fellow with mgmt of time,fearing nose dive, MSR wants jus 20 hrs of stuff ... he is at times impractical...All I care is abt my qork for my alma matter....

UI

Apache - I hate ??
All versions of Apache previous to 2.1.6 are vulnerable to a HTTP request smuggling attack which can allow malicious piggybacking of false HTTP requests hidden within valid content. This method of HTTP Request Smuggling was first discussed by Watchfire some time ago. The issue has been addressed by an update to version 2.1.6.



Pras @ iLabs

POD(Personal-On-Demand) Casting

Podcasting is a method of publishing(Ofcourse thru the Internet) allowing users to subscribe to a feed of new files (usually MP3s). It became popular in late 2004, largely to automate downloading of audio onto portable players or personal computers.

The word "podcasting" is a SIGMA that combines the words "broadcasting" and "iPod." The term can be misleading since neither podcasting nor listening to podcasts requires an iPod(Boy ! I thought iPod is a Pre-req) or any portable music player.


Pras @ iLabs

MOBile

Thinking on the foot as Google R&D quotes, People are getting hooked to mobiles ( I heard of some divorce cases,Yup !the privacy intruder-The Mob. Phone), Now the big players in the wireless domain are competing to hook the mobile on to the net... AOL wants to prove it to the world with their new idea which is going for the QA phase soon...

Users can reach the site directly from their phones by typing in the address (mobile.aolsearch.com).

EVERYBODY'S PHONE SURFIN' NOW

AOL's test comes amid a flurry of other major deals between phone manufacturers and wireless operators. In June, Google struck a deal with Deutsche Telekom's mobile arm T-Mobile to use Google as the starting point for surfing the Internet on T-Mobile handsets.

Yahoo struck a partnership with handset maker Motorola Inc.to make accessing e-mail, news, instant messaging and searching easier on more powerful phones...

I did write a suggestive piece to Apple folks to launch.. an iPod Mobile... a mobile + iPod ... This would rock... a device of iPod's size(MEMORY) with mobile features and bigger display on the same panel and they can have a foldable UI/or a Soft UI(I need not tell Apple folks abt UI design...) then iPod will sweep the market.. The countdown has begun... 9..8...7..

Pras @ iLabs
Prasanna Rambhatla

IP Multimedia Subsystem, or IMS for short, is a new network architecture designed to give telecom operators more flexibility to deliver services
Great Resource:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_Multimedia_Subsystem



Pras
@iLabs

Java Open Source Stuff..

http://www.theopensourcery.com/javaopens.htm

Crandy is the first independent company in Europe to be issued with an
E-Bank Licence. This allows them to operate a mobile payment system and
believe me, these things aren't easy to get hold of. They're a German
operation, though their website is in English, French, Spanish and
Turkish too, which gives an idea of their ambitions.

Their major success so far has been in Germany, with 200,000 users,
largely driven by word of mouth as the mainstream press seems intent on
ignoring them. What's also weird is that despite their relative success
and apparently excellent product, I've never heard of them until some of
their people left a comment on my blog. So forwarding the pretty useful
update of life.

Hossein Eslambolchi of AT&T Global Networking Technology Services and AT&T Labs gave a fascinating talk -- about three times too fast, alas -- about the rise of collaborative IT networks. A few highlights:

Customer business drivers include:

Security (anti-viruses worms, spam, terrorism, etc.)

• Right-time collaboration (broadband, Metro Ethernet, presence IM, IP, VoIP, Grid, new access technologies)

• Mobility/remote worker (telecommuting, wi-fi, Wimax, RFID, sensors, personal firewalls)

• Flexibility/pay per use: We're at the beginning of on-demand computing design, virtualization, real-time enterprise, software as a service.

• Business process/integration. More companies are moving to web services. The network is shielding the customers.

• Compliance challenges: as much as 8% of corporate budgets is spent on compliance technologies for section 17a3, Sarbanes-Oxley, etc.


Pras @
Creative Labs -Redefining

Good Article on HTTPClient and FileUpload From the house of Apache
http://www.theserverside.com/articles/content/HttpClient_FileUpload/article.html

Pras @
iLabs

Many People ask me the difference between GET & POST

I asked myself and jotted down the Diff. between GET and POST

When the user enters information in a form and clicks Submit, there are two ways the information can be sent from the browser to the server: in the URL, or within the body of the HTTP request.

The GET method, which was used in the example earlier, appends name/value pairs to the URL. Unfortunately, the length of a URL is limited, so this method only works if there are only a few parameters. The URL could be truncated if the form uses a large number of parameters, or if the parameters contain large amounts of data. Also, parameters passed on the URL are visible in the address field of the browser—not the best place for a password to be displayed.

The alternative to the GET method is the POST method. This method packages the name/value pairs inside the body of the HTTP request, which makes for a cleaner URL and imposes no size limitations on the form’s output. It is also more secure.

Source:MS Blogger
Pras @ US-Innovation Labs

The compiled .NET code is stored as an assembly.
The assembly stores:

IL code.

Assembly metadata (manifest).
Identity: Name, version and culture info.
Names of files within the assembly.
Types access data: private or otherwise.
Security permissions.

Type metadata.
Details of types, methods and properties within the assembly.

Resources: an assembly is therefore self-describing. It does not depend on external things like registry entries or type library files for reuse. ILDASM tool shipped with .NET gives an insight into the manifest and type metadata.

Future Imperfect:Deficit Economics


I was at the IMAX for watching XXX-2, Seeing the spending, the mental graph started plotting and I recalled the gerantocratic explosion,soon to be realized, on THIS planet we live. By 2k24,The gray would dominate the Planet. As the youger generations of the present are lesser frugal, I wonder what would happen to the Economies of Various Nations. As the Savings Capital Index goes down with the ageing population, The baby boomers when they hit their 60's , their savings rate would go down and so would the Capitals of various nations..... This is rolling up to take a Snow Ball effect...The solutions I can think of are,

1. National Gov's should encourage by giving more % as interest
2. Tax exemptions for people who save money
3. Gov should introduce a Social Security program that would enforce a fraction of salary to be regular mandatory savings towards the pension schemes.

The top 10 questions would-be entrepreneurs should ask themselves before pursuing an idea for a business:

1. What is new and different about your innovation?
2. What other things like this are out there? Why is yours better?
3. How big is the market? How many people have this problem?
4. How much would it cost to make this product? And what do you think the market will pay?
5. How defensible is the concept? Is there good intellectual property?
6. How is this innovation strategic to my business?
7. How easy is it to communicate the innovation?
8. How could the product evolve? Is there an opportunity to build it out into a product line? Can it be updated/augmented in future versions?
9. Where would someone expect to purchase this product?
10. What will be tricky or difficult in developing this product?

Fault management is about finding things that go wrong such as failed or damaged components, broken cables etc. This is about things that 'should' be working correctly but aren't. It is not about misconfiguration or user error.

Therefore the best way to tackle fault management is by Monitoring.

Once any piece of hardware, cable or network process is running properly it will normally only stop due to failure (of a part etc.) as long as none of its environmental factors change.


When a problem occurs, the task of fault management is to detect, isolate, and repair malfunctions in the network and its associated systems.

The first step, detection, can be thought of as an online process that gives indication of malfunctioning. Real-time detection mechanisms are usually implemented within the network protocols and devices. These can raise alarms either directly or via monitoring software.

The second step, consists of fault localization and identification. Fault localization is typically achieved through algorithms (procedures) that compute a possible set of faults while fault identification is done by testing and comparing the hypothetical faulty component(s) with known working equipment.

The last step, repair is achieved by taking corrective actions. This step may need equipment replacement, change of system configuration, or software removal of bugs.

Example: AppleTalk
On an AppleTalk network you can watch the Sockets of your major network applications such as AppleShare. If one of these applications crashed your monitoring software would register the fault. It could then inform you by beeping, paging you or even emailing other staff.

Fault Management SystemsAre used to monitor and record information about software and hardware on your network. Each time a fault occurs it should be logged so that the "fault history" of each component of the system/network can be recorded.

Typical information that should be recorded is:


Time/Date fault occured.
How was the fault detected?
What was the duration of the fault? = How long until service restored?
How was service restored? = repair, replace, etc.
What was the cost (time/labour/other) of restoring service?
Time/Date service restored.

By keeping a record of at least the information mentioned above you can easily determine how often a particular item breaks down, when an item is no longer worth repairing, which components are most reliable or otherwise.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some Open Source e-Learning Systems.
Bodington - The Bodington System is a software tool that can be used, in conjunction with a database product, to implement an interactive web site. Its original purpose was to implement a virtual learning environment for the University of Leeds - Bodington Common.

Sakai - The Sakai Project is a $6.8M community sourceCommunity source describes a model for the purposeful coordinating of work in a community. The software development project is founded by the University of Michigan, Indiana University, MIT, Stanford, the uPortal Consortium, and the Open Knowledge Initiative (OKI) with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The project is producing open source Collaboration and Learning Environment (CLE) software with the first release in July 2004.

eConf - eConf is an open source e-learning software, written in Java. It allows to easily record web sessions and has been used to record multiple computer science courses. eConf is an add-on to an HTTP proxy that is able to capture the web pages shown during the session and the voice of the presenter. The audio and the web pages are then synchronized to allow the students to listen to the recorded course. The current release of eConf is built on top of the W3C's Jigsaw proxy but any other proxy may be used.

eLedge - This software is designed to provide the framework for creating a web site for online instruction, including student registration, authentication, content creation, quizzes, exams, homework graders, report uploads, instructor gradebook, class calendar, and online help. Eledge does not provide knowledge content; we only provide a convenient, flexible way for instructors to make their course materials accessible to students over the Internet.



Javanti - Javanti is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for interactive presentations and eLearning applications. It allows you to easily create virtual, interactive slides for your presentation, lecture or training session.




http://www.bodington.org/index.html
http://collab.sakaiproject.org/portal
http://econf.sourceforge.net/
http://eledge.sourceforge.net/
http://www.javanti.net/

Finally, I could win over my laziness and procastination. I took the initiative to go to Tirupati and we did spend awesome 3 Days in Tiruapti, We had a magnificient darshan and thats pretty much it abt Tirupati, I tried looking for out N/W cam setup near Vaikunta Q complex but couldn't trace it out. Anyways, I am just back @ work

Back from the MSIT Campaigning, Dr.Reddy suggested to get the credit transfer doc. Need to get it done by Prof.MSR and Send it to Dr.Carter & Dr.Raj Reddy.
On the Defense Front:
Things are taking snowball effect with the new roles of work and new challenges in the pipe line

PCtvt: Exception Handling Framework Revision One -Blue Print is done
PCtvt: TV Tuner Card Issue is not gyet fixed.
3COM: Technologies & Topologies first two iterations are done, need to embed this stuff into RAIN-AP
On SIMP: IN touch with CS & ASJ, WOrking on the blue prints of the BP.
MF&SF - DUE- DUE - DUE!!! (BAD BAD BAD) Dead line approaching..

Prasanna Rambhatla
Technical Architect

John Doerr on Great Start-up Entrepreneur
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/headlines/vftt_doerr.shtml

What makes a great entrepreneur? According to Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr, the best ones "are missionaries, not mercenaries."

"Mercenaries have a lot of drive, they're opportunistic and always pitching their latest deal," he told a packed house of business students March 3, "whereas missionaries are more passionate and strategic. Mercenaries are sprinting and often have in their organizations an aristocracy of founders, whereas the missionaries are in it for the long run, obsessing on customers, not competition. They try to build a meritocracy—a loud, noisy place where the best ideas can get on the table."

In a wide-ranging View from the Top speech at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Doerr reflected on his own career, which took off at Intel in the mid-1970s just as the company was coming out with its famous "8080" 8-bit microprocessor. Doerr held various engineering, marketing, and management assignments at Intel and was one of its top-ranked sales executives. Then in 1980 he joined the Menlo Park-based venture capital partnership of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where he showed a talent for picking winners. Among startups he backed that have since become household names: Google, Compaq, Intuit, Netscape, Lotus, Sun Microsystems, Amazon.com, and Symantec.

Pointing to a large biz school-style report card on the overhead screen, Doerr gave himself high marks for his performance as a venture capitalist, for his relationships with family and friends (though he said he wished he had adopted his two children 10 years sooner), and for his recent involvement in public policy initiatives. He is particularly proud of the role he played last year promoting California's successful $3 billion ballot measure to fund embryonic stem cell research.

Doerr also admitted to some "visible failures" along the way, including his first job as a burger chef, and his own chip-design venture—Silicon Compilers—which he co-founded in the early 1980s. The company experienced technical difficulties and Doerr ended up hiring a more qualified executive from Intel to replace himself as CEO. Later the company merged with Silicon Design Labs and then was acquired by Mentor Graphics.

These days, Doerr and his venture capitalist partners are interested in backing health care technology that will enable providers to keep better track of their patients' records and provide more personalized service. For example, Doerr said physicians someday may be able to take tissue samples from women with breast cancer, digitally analyze the DNA, and predict with high confidence which patients would benefit from chemotherapy.

Other areas of interest to the venture capitalists at KPCB include technology to enhance computer processing power and innovations in energy. The partners also are eager to back social policy entrepreneurs who are trying to make a difference in education and global poverty. (Doerr is a particular fan of the ONE Campaign, a movement aimed at fighting AIDS and world hunger.)

For more tips on what makes a young company great, Doerr recommended Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration by Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman. The book's case studies, ranging from the Manhattan Project and Xerox PARC to the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign, have several common threads, Doerr said.

All the groups described in the book started out with strong leaders and talented people who had a sense of mission. They were pragmatic but optimistic. And most important, the leaders were very young. "All typically had their best work done by people under 35," Doerr said. "They didn't know what they didn't know, so they attempted the impossible."

Doerr closed with some "unsolicited advice" to the under-35 crowd in Bishop Auditorium. "Always, always network," he said. Keep business cards. Call somebody you weren't going to call every day and talk for at least 10 minutes. Call your mom once a week whether you need to or not. Take your first assignment based on the opportunity to learn and grow, not on the compensation.

"And please, please, please," he told the students, "in your drive to become great leaders, don't forget the fundamentals: learning about recruiting, hiring, firing, inspiring, managing, developing, and motivating others with the kind of tough love that makes leaders very effective—not this Donald Trump thing, 'You're fired!' There are extra points for humor."

Now started working on the NW course with 3COM.
The following stuff helps reduce the confusion...Work on PCtvt with the team is going on and now PCtvt with a diff perspective... From technical architect to... I also added another role,to understand the n/w technologies that will help PCtvt scale up..



802.11b was the first version to reach the marketplace. It is the slowest and least expensive of the three. 802.11b transmits at 2.4 GHz and can handle up to 11 megabits per second.

802.11a was next. It operates at 5 GHz and can handle up to 54 megabits per second.

802.11g is a mix of both worlds. It operates at 2.4Ghz (giving it the cost advantage of 802.11b) but it has the 54 megabits per second speed of 802.11a.

PCTVT & Chandra Babu Naidu & Raj Reddy

Today we had a demo to Ex-CM at his residence. Dr.Raj Reddy and other team members were in the office of naidu & I was in his camp office and I went to naidus office and spoke to him and got a snap with him.


Prasanna Rambhatla
PCtvt-Techinical Architecht

CM Rajsekhar Reddy & PCTVT & Raj Reddy
We presented the PCtvt to CM Raj Sekhar Reddy today . It was a pretty good show.
Dr.Reddy took me to the CMs chamber along with him. There are so many gaps that need to be filled in PCtvt. But the Demos are going fine.


@ GYANe Labs
Prasanna Rambhatla
Technical Architect PCtvt

PCtvt Challenge of the Day

I couldn't capture Audio on recorded video(PVR) so I realized the problem is:

The Audio is not recorded when I capture an AVI file using the AMCAP capture program.

It is actually the Sound Card that will capture the Audio portion of the AVI files. The TV capture application will allow you to capture both by syncing the Audio and Video together. But the sound card will actually capture the sound.
If you do not record the Audio when you are capturing Video Clips, you want to make sure that the sound card's Line In mixer is setup to Record audio. Sometimes they are set for Playback only. To Check this, click on Start - Accessories - Entertainment (or Multimedia), in the Windows Volume Control, go to Options then Properties. In here click on the Recording Bullet. Below you should see the Mixers that are set to record make sure that the Line In is checked and click on OK. Then make sure that it is not muted. Try to record some audio through the Line In jack using Windows' Sound Recorder. This program is found in the Multimedia group.
If you can record audio using the Sound Recorder, then you should be able to capture audio with the capture program.

Back @ Gyan-e-Labs

PCtvt & Gyane's Life

The Updates for the day are:
The TV Tuner om TG Machine in not up !
Guess ! there is a screw up with the H/W.
My C# code for the TV App works on the Zenith machine but not on the TG Machine (PG Says he is not getting audio). I am trying my best to get the TG Machine @ home up. No Luck so far.

I did lot of cerbral-communication with the Zenith's PCtvt prototype.
Need to take a small break.
Oh Yeah ! I completely forgot that My mom is in town.. Poor people came here to spend time with me & I am house arrested with my budding PCtvt.