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news

Warren Buffet to give away 85% of his wealth

Warren Buffet to start a steady process of donating 85% of his fortune – mostly to the worlds largest philanthrophic society – Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This is in the order of billions by the way. Wow. Just recently Bill Gates announced that he is stepping down from the throne at Microsoft and he is going to concentrate on his philanthrophy.

[Fortune artlcle]

I wonder, if these two events are related ??

[news gathered from slashdot]

Categories
news

HP cuts down on telcommuting

HP and Sun were one of the first companies in the silicon valley to bring in telecommuting. ‘Working from home’ became a phrase common in the valley. After almost 4 decades (telecommuting started in 1967 in the company), the new CEO is tightening his reins and has said ‘no’ to telecommuting. His rationale behind this rule is that, people need to get back to teaming and increasing productivity. He has said that high performers do not pose a risk or a problem when they work from home, but it is the lower end of the productivity spectrum employees who usually do not benefit. These people would increase their shared learning and increase the productivity if everyone came to office, and all leverage on one-another’s strenghts.

I think I kinda agree with him. I believe strongly in teaming, in shared learning, and in leveraging on one-another’s strengths for a single common goal.

[news link]

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news

Kamasutra worm … would hit on Feb 3

Dear readers:

Be careful while opening attachments (any attachments) on Feb 3. The now much acclaimed Kamasutra worm is said to hit on this day. It is said to have the dubious distinction of being the first virus/worm which “blogs”. Everytime it infects a computer, it goes and accesses a webpage with a webcounter in it – thus marking one more success on its part.

For more info, read the yahoo news article here.

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news

Information Week looks at Software companies in India

A wonderful article in Information week, where a reporter spends a week down in India, touring the software giants and seeing how much of opportunities abound and how much more of challenges and hurdles exist.

The closing paragraph:

Microland showed us a 14-page job description for a staff position, filled with details about the technical capabilities required. The attention to detail, technical and management skills, and professionalism demonstrated by these organizations–and their talk of 30% savings–had a calming effect on my IT colleagues listening to their pitches. There are still questions to be answered through reference checks and pilot programs, but I’d say India’s outsourcers have a good chance of winning another customer.

[link]

Categories
news

Hard drive rivals unite …

Seagate buys Maxtor for USD 1.9 billion. Read more here.

Categories
news technology

Can this man change M$ ?

NY Times has an article about Ray Ozzie – the new CTO at Microsoft. The article talks about how Microsoft bought Groove Networks, the company that Ray Ozzie had founded, primarily to get Ozzie. Ray Ozzie has been enlisted primarily to get Microsoft to ‘rethink’ and ‘refocus’. Ozzie would be heading Microsoft towards the web services model . Though, they do not really admit it, this is to counter Google and several other small startups who are begenning to show up their web-services – which can potentially hit Microsoft where it hurts – revenue. Lets see what happens.

Read the full article here.

Be sure to peek into the leaked-out memo from Ozzie – a longish read, but a worthwhile glance. So the giant is indeed noticing what is going on.

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news

Yahoo buys del.icio.us

Just read on Wired that Yahoo bought the tagging service del.icio.us . Being a big fan of the del, I hope this does not get sucked up into any slow yahoo app. If it gets integrated into the new Web 2.0 ‘ajaxy’ interface, that yahoo is working on, then I have no problems 🙂

Read the article here.

Categories
news technology

America’s High-Tech Quandary

A brilliant article in DesignNews, which I found through an ACM news letter on how the US is appearing to lose its technical edge. A very third party-ish neutral article, urging the people of the US to wake up. The article is laden with facts – some of them which surprised even me. I usually do not write about US-bashing, but this article is a genuine plea.

Some nuggets:

China is headed toward a million engineers a year … and India isn’t far behind

“Numbers aren’t everything,” adds Orsak of SMU. “But it’s a lot easier to find a diamond when you’re searching through ten times as much material.”

Some contend that China’s national will in this matter is similar to the one it applied to sports more than two decades ago. Back then, China’s desire for a powerhouse basketball program resulted in a “genetic conspiracy” that culminated in the birth of an 11-pound, 23-inch boy named Yao Ming, says a new book titled Operation Yao Ming. Yao, whose father was 6′-10″ and whose mother stood 6′-2″, was quickly funneled into the Communist sports machine. He grew to the extraordinary height of 7′-5″ and became a national icon.

Today, China is said to be applying a similar form of national will to engineering. And, as it did 20 years ago, its desire for success is trickling down from the top. Heads of state are applying their engineering knowledge to a desire for the country’s biggest companies to “get more than mere pennies on the dollar” for the products created there. By developing intellectual property, instead of merely specializing in knock-offs of existing designs, Chinese officials hope to grab a bigger share of every economic pie, much as Microsoft does in the U.S.

 Interest in engineering among American students is dwindling, particularly at the Ph.D. level, where 51 percent of the students are now foreign-born. Moreover, applications to U.S. engineering schools are down 60 percent from China and 40 percent from India during the last two years, suggesting that our foreign spigot may be running dry.

For many, the most frustrating part of the entire phenomenon is engineering’s lack of appeal among American-born students. A combination of factors—salaries and public image, as well as offshoring of jobs to Asia—has made engineering appear undesirable to high school kids who might otherwise choose it as a career path. Add to that the fact that it’s generally recognized as the toughest undergraduate curriculum in American education, and that many of its students increasingly see their college experience as an extraordinary grind, and the result is that worst of all cultural images: uncoolness.

Read the full article here

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misc news

Golden Quadrilateral Project features in a NY Times article

A nicely written by rather lengthy article (read 7 pages) in NY Times details how India is building its roads slowly. The British concentrated on building the Rail network in India (which I must admit, they did very well – seeing the extremely vast system that is present today – read the wiki page). The last time, roads were buit in such a grand scale was ages ago – when Sher Shah Suri built the Grand Trunk Road (GT Road). The previous goverment in India, led by Vajpayee of the BJP party had kick started this project of building a vast highway network. This project was to connect the 4 large metro cities of Delhi, Mumbai (Bombay), Chennai (Madras), and Kolkata (Calcutta) by 4-lane and 6-lane super highways. Governments have changed, but thankfully, most of the projects are still going on. This was mainly because Vajpayee had established an autonomous body to oversee this project. I personally have been some stretches of this road network – and I should say, it is a pleasure to drive on these roads.

I do not totally agree to some of the points made in the article, but then it is written by an observer/reporter who spent one month in India and wrote the article. I would excuse and forgive him, for the reason, that, he only wrote what he observed.

Read the full article here.

Categories
misc news

Management guru Peter Drucker dies …

R.I.P.Management guru Peter Drucker died at the age of 95, at his home in Clarement, California. A well respected figure and a great author of management books. He is also known for coining the terms ‘knowledge workers’ and ‘management by objetives (MBO)’.