My reply to a friends query on how he can use Windows 7 and his problems with Ubuntu 9.04 (quoting) "Also my UBUNTU 9.04 showing some probs like - Automatically Log Off, Sometimes just freezes and I have to reboot. I think now I have had my share of experiments with the latest gigs, can somebody suggest a STABLE and yet FULLY functional DISTRO for me to try"

===My Reply===

Download the Windows 7 RC1 which is legal/valid till June 2010. Else someone coming this side I can give the DVD!!

As about Ubuntu 9.04 - typical desktop Ubuntu problems - view the quick updates for trying to keep pace with the latest and greatest (there was three kernel update in the last month!!!) and some tends to be broken!! I thus typically use Debian (Debian 5.0 Lenny) view its updates are more thought out, less frequent and very very stable!! The freezes (mostly due to display hardware issues with the windows manager like Gnome/KDE!!) are non-existent in Debian. But I should admit, Debian configuration/tweaking does require a bit (actually - more than a bit!!!) of Linux familiarity!!

But my destop recommendation of choice is Mint (Mint 7 'Gloria' based on Ubuntu 9.04 and KDE Graphics Manager released a few days ago) Distribution. (http://www.linuxmint.com).
Read a nice review at http://1n73r.net/2009/05/09/linux-mint-7-review


I would recommend you use Mint 7!!
And of course how I wish Windows 7 was Open Source :-(
Am finding it rather good :-) and wouldn't mind paying for it only if it was open source!! (High Hopes!!!)

Wow!!! The 'India's Got Talent' show has been deservedly won by the 'Prince Dance Group', a group of gritty, talented, courageous group of young men from a small town called Berhampur, Orissa, India. I am humbled, proud and privileged to belong to the same place!! They showed the world that despite poverty and lack of resources, Indians can put up World Class act. A lesson for all of us!! BRAVO!!

A nice analogy - from 'the' man himself!!!


===Quoting====
Q: What makes you believe Linux will continue to gain momentum?

A: I think, fundamentally, open source does tend to be more stable software. It's the right way to do things. I compare it to science vs. witchcraft. In science, the whole system builds on people looking at other people's results and building on top of them. In witchcraft, somebody had a small secret and guarded it -- but never allowed others to really understand it and build on it.

Traditional software is like witchcraft. In history, witchcraft just died out. The same will happen in software. When problems get serious enough, you can't have one person or one company guarding their secrets. You have to have everybody share in knowledge.

--- Linus Torvalds

== End Quote===

Source: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2004/tc20040818_1593.htm

Wish someone presents me this book :-/

After watching these videos from the “India’s Got Talent” show, am sure not only would you be proud to be an Indian, but be inspired by the talents, dreams and humility of these group of ‘Mazdoors’!! As Shekhar Kapoor would say – Mazdoor Zindabad!!

And I should add, I am also proud to belong to that small town in Orissa – Berhampur – from where these group of courageous men have emerged from.

Please watch the videos – and if you like ‘em, do – please do – vote for them!! And pass this on!!! Thanks

The Krishna Dance


Proud to be an Indian


A better video, with complete Judges comments (do watch the ending – sure to make you teary eyed!!) – but unfortunately missing the initial intro of the group


http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments&v=ioUMPOlMz5s

Dealing with Change

I am at a stage in life where I have to deal with 'Change'. A small word, but with big implications!!!!

Change view a job promotion, growing children and growing expectations from not only others, but also self!!!!

Some people, and some organizations, deal well with change. In fact, they seem to thrive on it. They take its challenges as sources of enormous energy to drive them forward -- yet they cut their own path. Like a surfer riding the face of a thundering comber, they use the power of the wave to create their own kind of beauty.

Read a lot on the Internet on dealing with change - and came across this inspirational video by Nido Qubein

Trusting the Administrator

Read this interesting article in Slashdot

"I'm a manager at a startup, and decided recently to outsource to an outside IT firm to set up a network domain and file server. Trouble is, they (and all other IT companies we could find) insist on administering it all remotely. They now obviously have full access to all our data and PCs, and I'm concerned they could steal all our intellectual property, source code and customers. Am I being overly paranoid and resistant to change? Should we just trust our administrator because they have a reputation to uphold? Or should we lock them out and make them administer the network in person so we can stand behind and watch them?"

Very relevant to my current job requirements and something that I have been persistently asking around.

The most apt answer that I felt answered this query was by mysidia:

"This suggestion above is equivalent to proposing that managers have to learn electrician skills to wire the most important room in the building, for fear the paid electricians might sabotage it, or they have to learn locksmith skils to key the locks on the most sensitive file room, because they can't trust locksmiths not to share a copy of the key or sneak in one night.

The simple fact is the management of key systems should be entrusted to skilled IT professionals whose primary responsibility is maintaining consistent, operational, available systems.

That doesn't just mean setting up systems and forgetting it, it also means implementing secure backups, monitoring audit trails, managing the complex access controls, monitoring system logs, and correcting problems."

And by Eskarel

When you hire an outsourcing company, you're hiring the company, not it's employees. You do due diligence on the company, it's achievements, it's reputation, and you hire the company. You sign a contract with them, with the same sorts of conditions you'd stick in a regular employment contract to try and ensure that you're going to get what you're paying for. The employees of the outsourcing agency are not your employees and there's really nothing you can do about them because your contract isn't with them, it's with the agency.

That doesn't of course mean you just go with "whatever you decide" on non staffing issues, the company works for you the same way an employee would and you take their advice as appropriate, but who they hire is really none of your business, so long as the company meets its contractual obligations to you. Most of the outsourcing problems are caused by companies not realizing that the outsourcing agency is essentially an employee and not writing stringent enough contracts, or hiring the cheapest option without looking at their ability to actually deliver(which is no different than hiring an18 year old to do a job which requires substantial education and experience simply because you can get them on the cheap).

Not all outsourcing is done on the cheap, sometimes it's done because it's more efficient that way. It's always good to have multiple people with your skill set to bounce ideas off of, and to have backup for absences and the like, but most smallish companies can't afford to have 3 or 4 DBA or sysadmins, etc. So they contract out to another company who, because they provide services to a number of companies, can afford to have more extra people to fill key roles. Their economic situation allows that.

There are advantages to outsourcing beyond just being cheaper, but there are disadvantages to. You don't have the same control of the staffing, you don't have the same kinds of relationships with the staff, and the loyalty of the staff is generally to their employer and not to you. That's not always a huge problem, but sometimes it is, and if it is, expect to have to pay for a redundant DBA or sysadmin so you can keep your place going when they go on vacation. There are pluses and minuses to everything, including outsourcing, and sometimes outsourcing isn't done because it's cheaper, and sometimes when it is, it doesn't turn out to be. When you run your business based entirely on trying to reduce costs, generally you eventually go out of business, that applies to pretty much every field, not just IT our outsourcing.

This is pretty interesting!! You have to follow the comments on this article to understand the passionate views of many, some pretty sane like this one, which I completely agree:

Right, and it's not just an issue of outsourcing. The reason you should trust your network administrator is that you *have to* trust your network administrator. Whether it's in house or outsourced, you have to trust someone to do the work. The only alternative is to do it yourself-- like literally you, personally.

If I'm your network administrator and I come into your office and work for you directly, I could still read your emails, steal your IP, etc. You could ask me to set up the security so that I can't do that, but you still have to trust me to do that well and not leave a back-door for myself. Also, you should understand that it might inhibit my ability to do some things. For example, if I encrypt your disk so that I can't even access it myself, and then you lose the password, I won't be able to recover anything on your hard drive. Sorry.

So that's the deal. You can try to institute some checks and balances, but there's a certain amount of trust inherent in the job. If you're concerned about security, then make the effort to find people that you can trust, and recognize that you might have to pay extra for better employees. It's an issue of what your priority is when you hire someone (or hire an outsourcing company). Which is most important, getting the person you trust most? Getting the person with the best resume? Getting the cheapest solution available?

Those might be 3 different people. Under most circumstances, I'd pick the person I trust.

Linux for Moms and Dads

A nice essay which is pretty relevant, logical and states a question (Moms can be read as Dads too!!!) which I also felt defies logic.
Read on

==================

Why Aren't All Our Moms Running Linux?

by Dave Berton (July 11, 2002)

This is a serious question, so don't laugh. I used to get phone calls about once a week, on average; it's my mom, telling me that 'my computer is running out of virtual memory' or 'my email keeps beeping at me' or 'I can't read this document' or (the best one) 'my computer is -broken-'. I knew that, at the time, she was of course not running Linux. Then, one day, listening to yet another complaint, it hit me. Why aren't all our moms running Linux on their computers?

In case you don't know what Linux is, here's a clue for you. Linux is a free Unix-type operating system for your mom's computer. Now, what does this mean exactly? More importantly, what does this mean for your mom?

Linux is extremely powerful. Consider the average Linux desktop. It could appear in one of many thousands of shapes, colors, sizes or flavors, all of them fully customizable. It would typically have many applications, each one carefully tailored to perform a particular task, all running simultaneously (but don't fear: the Linux kernel will ensure that every ounce of power in the computer is brought into play, allowing each of the applications the freedom to get their tasks done).

Now, consider the average mom. They are normally bright, attentive and patient (after all, they raised -you-, now didn't they). Moms can do many things at the same time, switching between work and play, between the computer and helping you with your homework, all without missing a step. Often, they will use computers to get a lot of this work (or play) done.

Tragically, Linux on the desktop is extremely underutilized, specifically amongst the mom population. Why is this happening? Well, typically, computers are bought with a default operating system other than Linux. These default systems tend to be slow, crammed with unwanted advertising, have ongoing maintenance problems, are susceptible to viruses or other attacks, degrade in performance, have trouble handling more than a handful of tasks, and generally seem to do everything possible to make mom's life (and by extension, my life) harder. However, like the setup menu in your TV, it -is- the default, and it's what most moms would simply take for granted, never thinking there was Another Way.

So, I am here to finally tell the moms of the world: you can trash the default operating system, replace it with Linux, and have the full power and reach of your computer, finally, in your hands. No more error messages, no more advertisements, no more sending your personal information to 'register' your machine with some giant corporation, no more lost work, lost time, lost minds. Once you make the switch, you'll wonder how you ever got this far driving behind the wheel of that old clunker.

Now, of course I wouldn't instruct you to perform this little operation if I hadn't already done it myself. I consider my mom an average non-technical computer user -- she requires a web browser, a word processor and an email client. These are just a few of the things a computer can do for users, so considering that Linux can do so much -more- than that, I knew it would more than suffice for my mom. In the event she wanted to delve into some serious computer graphics, or run regression tests for the latest gcc snapshot, she certainly could, but at least the basics are there for her -- and really, that is all she is interested in at the moment. OK, then.

She has a Duron 800MHz, with a generic network card, a CD-ROM, and some tiny speakers. To make quick work of it, I went out and picked up an extra hard drive (20GB) rather than fool around with the partitions used by the default operating system. This provided a clean slate for the Linux system, and also provided a Plan B in case the new HD was faulty.

The drives were swapped in about ten minutes (four of which were spent cleaning out three inches of dust bunnies that had overwhelmed the motherboard since the last time the case was opened). Next, I popped in a Debian install CD (if you are going to upgrade the operating system, you might as well upgrade it All The Way), and let it run.

I felt like a chicken pecking my way through all the defaults until I finally had all the packages copied over (took about twenty minutes of installing to get to the point of a login prompt). A few more commands brought down security updates, the X Window System, as well as a few applications I knew my mom would need. There were many choices for a desktop; I selected KDE, which has reasonable defaults and coherent functionality as a work environment.

She needed a web browser, so I plonked mozilla down. Email was handled by KMail (part of KDE) and word processing was left to OpenOffice. The real work of the installation was in making sure that the sound and network modules were loaded by the kernel on startup, and making sure the old hard drive was mounted properly so that my mom could get at her old documents (conveniently, KMail imported all her old email messages for me). Once that was configured, I called my mom back into the room to let her have at it. Total upgrade time: two hours. Total cost: $70 for the extra HD. Total value: priceless.

So -- why aren't all our moms running Linux on their computers? The answer, sadly, is: you. (Well, either you, or some other geek unwilling to swap a hard drive and then sit through a Linux install.) Just go get it done. Pick up the phone, call your mom, and 'borrow' her machine for a few hours. Let her know you care.

Microsoft Acknowledges Linux Threat To Windows

http://tinyurl.com/kokdww

Extract:

"Microsoft for the first time has named Linux distributors Red Hat and Canonical as competitors to its Windows client business in its annual filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The move is an acknowledgment of the first viable competition from Linux to Microsoft's Windows client business, due mainly to the use of Linux on netbooks, which are rising in prominence as alternatives to full-sized notebooks.

"Netbooks opened Microsoft to the possibility that some other OS could get its grip on the desktop, however briefly," said Rob Helm, director of research for Directions on Microsoft. "Now it's alert to that possibility going forward."