Just couldn't watch and let it happen!

The media is talking a lot about Blockbuster's plans for hostile takeover for Hollywood Entertainment.

I just couldn't sit and be an observer to the events which affects me so much (I rent a couple of movies a month). So I fired up a short e-mail to antitrust@ftc.gov explaning why this is not in the best interest of the consumers urging it to do something to block the merger. I for one want choice in my howntown when I choose to rent a video. If this merger goes through, BlockBuster will have a monopoly in the rental business and I will have nowhere else to go if I don't like the business.

Well, I have had problems with BlockBuster charging me late fees for which I am absolutely sure I returned on time and the people weren't happy about it when I argued for a refund. Also, the 2 day rentals never works for me.

I for one will switch to NetFlix or something like that if this deal goes through.

Book of the month: The Tipping Point

I have finished my earlier book and just started reading The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. The quality of the book shows in the first few pages itself. It is very fun to read and engrossing. I am not just finding enough time to read it as fast I want it between the busy work.

The Scientist in the Crib

Have been reading The Scientist in the Crib : What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind and not quite done yet. This books was suggested to me by a researcher at University of Washington whom I met when I took my son for a study. My son is about ten month old and he facinates me every second. You may find this book boring if you don't have an infant.

Also, don't miss the "The Baby Human" TV series in Discovery channel which I and my wife watch regularly. We find both the book and the TV series very educational and informative in helping us understand our son and makes us enjoy even the occasions when he gives us a hard time.

CSS Quiz

I took the CSS Quiz and got 19 out of 20 answers correct. I was hoping to get 20/20 given my technical background.

I find web programming very interesting and have worked for few years until I realized that there is not much left for me to learn in the world of HTML/CSS/DHTML/Scripting/ASP. So I switched to the world of C++ and COM programming a few years ago. I must admit that I realize how much more to learn in this area. This will keep me busy for at least 5 more years and will probably find myself in the same spot wanting to move on to bigger and better things. I am not sure if I will ever be good as Raymond Chen whom I worship a bit :-)

Internet Explorer and order

http://www.news.com has this article about:
Pennsylvania State University's Information Technology Services department recommending that students download other browsers to reduce attacks through vulnerabilities in the Microsoft software.
"We're not telling people to wipe off IE, because you need IE to do operating-system updates," Robin Anderson, a spokeswoman for Penn State's ITS department, said in an interview. "We're telling (students) there are alternatives--and for them to strongly look at those."

If you read carefully the second paragraph above, it could be interpretted as "If MS didn't require Internet Explorer for Windows Update, we could have recommended users to uninstall IE" or something like that.

The IE team is back in the business and has a blog now and is asking user's feedback. There is also a rumour that the old timers are coming together to make it big again. Please feel free to drop by their blog and leave your feedback.

Not a day goes by w/o me reading about another IE vulnarability. Here is my 2 cents for the IE team. The only features our customers would love to see and want is "Security", "Security" and more "Security". I do not take the excuses that some people give about IE being the most dominant browser and so it the center of attention. If it is so dominant and under scrutiny, why isn't that MS isn't putting few hundred more people to work on security and weed out the last security issues???!!

Does Microsft really care about you?

Short answer is, I am not sure. I admit that I work for the big brother and I enjoy what I do. But that doesn't mean I can't speak my mind. I have been watching Microsoft's moves in the last couple of years and nothing that I see tells me we are heading in the right direction. Does that mean it is going down? Not anytime soon. It is going through what IBM went through in the last couple of decades with and it would take a good few years before a major re-structuring happens like in IBM. Here is why?

1. Linux : "Your Potential, our passion", this is our mission and it sounds nice when you hear it. But does MS lives up to its expectation? No. In reality, it reads like "Your potential to be our desktop OS user is our passion. If you go for something else, screw you. We will do everything to make sure your experience is miserable". Microsoft's first and the greatest mistake is ignoring the linux. First it was a cancer to the society, and then officially became our main competetive threat.
   Why hate Linux so much? Instead, just like we made MS Office & IE available on the Mac, I would have loved if it jumped on the opportunity and built Office and its other flag ship applications for Linux. That would have shown its real passion and enabled many of our user's potential. Instead, we chose to fight for nothing. I see Linux as just another platform in which Microsoft has huge market opportunity which it missed entirely. I for one want Linux to be a mainstream OS so that users have a real choice instead of the choice of "XP Home"/"XP Pro"/"XP Starter Edition" etc. This is not what I call choice but a repackaging off the same stuff for a different price.
   


2. Internet Explorer: Everytime I think of how IE was handled, I feel pretty sick about how bad MS screwed it up. MS reacted to NetScape only because it saw a threat to Windows dominence. Once the battle was won, it ignored the product pretty much and moved on to other things. It just left the 95% or so users in limbo and didn't care to listen to their needs and improve on it and fix the damn security bugs. When one has this much market share and potential, you just don't turn your back and move on to other things when you claim to be passionate about software and its potential.
   


3. Product Quality: Microsoft's product quality is mediocre. It is not because it does not have the best minds and resources. It is because, it has compromised on quality in favor of more ship cycles and its thinking that investing in fixing the existing code does not give any return on investment. Fixing bugs in existing code is not a priority for us. Instead, adding more new (buggy) features are the mantra. With Microsoft products, bugs tend to live forever. (I proposed recently about fixing an ugly printing bug found in the product we just released in the new version we are working on and the asnwer I got was not to touch the code since it would mean testing investment etc etc. This is not just once and happens periodically.)
   You would think that product version X + 1 will not have the same bugs that were there in version X. You are wrong. Product X +1 version will have all the bugs that the previous version had plus more bugs. I am a developer and I can't tell you how many days I felt really bad about postponing bugs just because someone decided that it is not a mainstream scenario. The bad part is it doesn't get fixed in the future releases either.
4. Focus: I see a lack of focus overall in the company. MS seems to be in a lot of businesses where it shouldn't be. It is because the company is not seeing the impressive growth it had in the early ninties and is entering into anything and everything it can to show everyone that it could still keep the profits up. IBM did something similar before it shed its excessive unwanted fat (under Lou Gerstner) and focus on its core business. A better approach would be to spin off small companies that could work better and faster due to its smaller size. This is the focus on another MS employee's blog and I read his often with some interest.

I do want to work for a company that not only gives me challenging work but also embrace OS diversity just like it belives in diversity in people & culture. Few more years and if I don't see a change, I sure be the one to find opportunities elsewhere.

Microsoft has a long and tough road ahead. It hasn't been making any progress on embracing the OS diversity, customer interests and of course being the "Good" company.

Note: I made some edits on 2/18/05.

Why pay someone for what is yours?

For a long time, I wondered why I should pay the credit bureaus to view my own financial history a.k.a Credit report and the FICO scores.

The credit bureaus invest their resources in collecting data about everyone they can and sell it to businesses under the federal guidelines. That is perfectly O.K and I have no problem with that. What doesn't make sense to me is why I should pay to access information about me? It costs close to $40 to get the "All 3 credit agencies" report.
Is it the cost that prevents them from doing it? I don't think so. In this 21st century, the cost of delivering information is dirt cheap (I am talking about electronic delivery) and it is not an excuse to not let us see our information. For example, Google is offering 1GB mailbox and it costs nothing. How do they do it? Well, others just don't get it. Is this a conspiracy by the big 3 credit reporting agencies to rip the consumer? You bet!

I was a bit glad when the govenrment required the credit reporting agencies to offer one free credit report a year. Now, I could go to http://www.AnnualCreditReport.com/ to see my report. But MSNBC reported that many users coudn't use it because of all sorts of problems. The cause of the problem was reported to be overwhelming traffic!! What the hell is wrong with them? Did they expect no one to want to see their information? The big 3s would rather spend their resources where they could make more money. This is what I could get it from their execution.

This is great and we are making progress. But why can't I see this information when ever I want to? What I would like to to be able to check mine once a month and would live with 12 reports per year.

GM Crops should be banned

I recently watched Dr. Vandana Shiva's speech in UCTV about "Genetically engineered crops" and I should say I am impressed by her speech and as concerned as she is. Since then I have been googling and learning about GM foods. I am very gravely concerned to read about how lax the approval process for GM foods are by FDA. Here is a quote from the article http://www.rense.com/general59/cchm.htm
....One thing that surprised us is that U.S. regulators rely almost exclusively on information provided by the biotech crop developer, and those data are not published in journals or subjected to peer review,” said co-author Schubert.

Added Freese: "In one case, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ignored a published study by an Food and Drug Administration (FDA) scientist suggesting that GM corn could cause food allergies, and instead asked Monsanto and Syngenta to essentially re-do FDA's analysis."

I have been coming across many such articles these days and nothing I learn from them is telling me that we really need genetically modified foods due to the lack of long term study on the effect on Humans and our eco system.

Agreed, pesticides use is bad as well but trading one evil for the other is unacceptable and unwise.

I shared my findings with my wife and we decided never to even buy any GM foods. At least one less consumer.

Is this the America I know? Why are people so stupid?

I have been running into a lot of articles and news bits lately about how rural America is going back to the dark ages. Here is one article I ran across today School board OKs challenges to evolution . I sometimes wonder how America is different compared to the so called radical muslim societies where religion overrides common sense. So many people are so stupid here I even wonder how this country got to where it is now!

I read the book "Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion" by Edward J. Larson long time ago which is an excellent read on this issue.

I don't mind people believe in creationism but teaching the kids that evolution is just a theory just simply is stupid and totally unacceptable to me. Grow up guys! No wonder Bush played the evangelical card and won the election and he continues to keep the status quo for his own benifits.

How Would You Move Mount Fuji?

Just finished reading the book
Overall, it was light reading and fun to read about the company I work for. It even had mention of few people I know!!. Though I knew most of the puzzles, some of them were new and had fun writing programs to solve some of them.

Free Culture

Last week I finished reading Professor Lessig's free culture. I respect him a lot and have been reading his blog for the last couple of months regularly. His blog is at http://www.lessig.org/blog

I am deeply concerned about the shrinking "Public Domain" and the ever increasing lobbying of corporations that makes us criminals for things we take it for granted. One that became very clear after reading the book was that today's corporations turn towards IP and Copyright to protect their interests instead of embracing change and trying to be competitive.

Microsofties for Kerry!!

Well, everyone I talk to at work seems to favor Kerry over Bush 9 to 1. The slogan I have often heard is "Any body but Bush". Kerry is defiitely getting our vote for sure. Here are the the reasons I can think of:
1. Kerry is not stupid like Bush. Our incumbant president is someone who cannot speak clearly and coherantly. Check out The Slate's Complete Buhism list. Kerry on the other hand seems like an intellectual.
2. Bush is too hard on the right taking pro-life, No Gun control and favors constituitional amendment to remove gay rights. I consider Kerry a moderate and he is pro-choice and though he does not approve of gay marriage, opposes constituitional amendment.
3. I really liked the Kerry I saw in presidential debates. I just could not tolerate Bush critisizing kerry saying "It can't be done" on many issues just because he could not do it.
4. He still hasn't caught Osama the mastermind. He is completely off track on war on terrisom.
5. Bush is someone who seem to have never made a mistake and it looks like because of that he never has grown up or learned anything
6. He looks to the Bible and kneels down before God to show him the way when he is confused.
7. Bush'es foreign policy is a mess.
8. I hate Mr.Dick and is cunning look.
9. Bush needs "Four more years" to make America safe. Lets not elect him so that he could work on that full time. Otherwise, he can't resist Camp David and will be slacking off.
10. John AssCroft needs to go. That SOB is not good for America and what it stands for.

When are the printer manufactures going to learn?

It looks like customers are going to have a choice when it comes to ink cartridge refills. Here is the story link http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,118341,00.asp on the recent court ruling.

This article petty much says it all about the dirty tricks the printer manufactureres pull to lock in the customers. But they do it so badly, I have seen pretty easy(and smart) ways to fool the system into thinking that it got the original cartridge.

I consider these practices totally unfair who ever does this. The corporations are slowly turning into evil monsters that would do anything to get your every last penny. What next? Here are some projections:
Clothing companies will come up with things that we could only wear once
Food companies designing the food to expire more quickly to increase the sales

It seems that the corporate world is moving towards products that are short lived, use once types or products that dictate what we could do with to maximize and guarantee their survival.

Ashcroft working for Microsoft?

Recently I started noticing a trend towards eliminating some common phrases that has been in use for years at MS. My manager asked our team to start using the new phrases instead as they are less offending (to who?). Some of the phrases that were replaced are:

Bug Hell to Bug Jail- This is a term we used to refer to when a person has product bugs assigned to him that is beyond the bar agreed upon. We normally drop everything else we are doing and work towards getting below the bar. I guess the word "Hell" has some religious context to it and they are trying to avoid it.
Post mortem to Postpartum - We use this term to refer to process used by Product teams which do a post analysis of how well it did in the last milestone or release to look for process/product improvements and lessons to be learned. The reason for the change is that someone higher up thought that the term is inappropriate as post mortem is done after death.

When I first heard about these changes, it totallly pissed me off. Don't we have better things to do? These are words that are used in daily life and don't mean a damn to me. I clearly understand the context and the meaning when it is used. For someone to think of it like this reminded me of John Ashcroft's first acts as Attorney General. If you don't know what I am talking about, here is what he did (from http://prattle.antipope.org/archives/001192.html):
...Within weeks of Ashcroft's arrival, the revolution began, although initially only his subordinates realized it, as it came in the form of a scolding memo. According to a former Justice Department lawyer, the phrases We are proud of the Justice Department and There is no higher calling than public service, both of which had been pro forma in certain letters sent out to citizens and congressmen above the attorney general's signature, were to be excised. A call to Ashcroft's office provided an explanation of sorts: Pride is one of the seven deadly sins; therefore we could not have a letter going out that would have the word 'pride' or 'proud'. Moreover, there is a higher calling than public service, which is service to God.

For god's sake (Here is one that could be banned as well) I don't work in a religious establishment. I work for a technology company and censoring (yes, it is a form of censoring to me) in the internal communication means some religious psycho is enforcing his own views on everyone. I could think of a lot of words that we use in our daily lives and at work that could be replaced as well. Here are some:
"Triage" is one word which is used a lot in MS and should be eliminated since it refers to sorting and allocation of treatment to battle and disaster victims.
"Fucked up" is another word I hear a lot from people, in e-mail and even in source code comments. I know it is just a phrase. It does not mean the act of "F******".

Lets find something better to do next time. No thanks on your new alternatives.

Citizen Microsoft

This is a must read for every washingtonian. Here are some excerpts from the article:
...Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer told an audience of Eastern Washington University alumni: "Taxpayers in the state have to come to grips with the notion that we need to invest in higher education." It was a warning shot of sorts from the most influential CEO in the state. Ballmer had to know, however, that Microsoft wouldn't be footing much of the bill if taxpayers increased education funding. Seven years ago, Microsoft opened a small office in Reno, Nev., to collect the money it got from PC manufacturers that installed Windows and Office on the computers they sold. In the years since, Microsoft has sheltered more than $60 billion in royalty revenue in Nevada, a state with no corporate income tax, costing Washington an estimated $327 million in unrealized tax revenue. Ballmer's remark wasn't the only time Microsoft has been hypocritical about taxes and education... Democratic state Rep. Sharon Tomiko-Santos of Seattle, who sits on the House Finance Committee, disagrees. "One hundred million dollars more for schools could go a long way toward improving teacher compensation, reducing class size, or directing some targeted dollars to those struggling schools and students who might be able to use additional resources," she says. "It would seem to me that we could add a significant number of slots on the basic health care plan if we had $100 million. A hundred million biennially is a significant sum of money."

I couldn't agree more. Microsoft needs to re-think whether this soft offshoring is good for the state. What the author is talking about is the loss of revenue to the state that could have been used to improve the roads, schools & healthcare system.

Boing is no exception. It has even threatened the state with moving the production plants somewhere else to get huge tax benefits last year.

This started me into thinking if our state would be better off without them as the author suggests.

My new Dell laptop

I just got my Dell 700m laptop. My initial impression is great given the reputation I had for dell. My configuration is 1.8Ghz Pentium M 745 Processor/512MB RAM/80 GB HDD.

If you plan to buy one, check the online sites which have dell coupons. Don't ever buy w/o the coupons. I saved around $600 using the coupons.

The Fox and the Grapes

This my story behind my XP SP2 upgrade. It does read like the Fox and the Grapes story.

Once upon a time, like everyone else, I was waiting for the SP2 which promises to make Windows more secure (I think it does a fairly good job. But that is not the story).

First, I first tried download it from microsoft.com and it wouldn't install as I did not have enough space to install!! Well, 400MB doesn't seem to be enough in my primary partition and few GB left in my other partitions.

Then I thought I could get around that this if I get my hands on the CD. Usually, you could get them at the building reception and so I tried. But it looked like that was the hot item and she told me that she didn't have any and referred me to some other building's reception which had a few copies. I was lazy enough to drive to the other bulding to get my copy. So I decided that I wouldn't bother upgrading it.

Couple of weeks passed and then came the internal event TechFest (or was it product fair?) were all the teams showcase the cool stuf they are working on. When I saw the XP SP2 booth, I ran towards it like a kid running towards a candy shop. I finally got a copy of the CD. Well my happiness did not last long. When I tried to install it, I was back to square one with the same "Not enough space" problem. I then told myself just like the fox that the grapes were sour anyway and never thought about it again.

Couple of weeks pass by without me not even thinking about this. One fine weekend, windows update kicked in and upgraded my machine w/o a glitch. I finally got my grapes.

Granted I have a old machine with all my hard disk filled up with crap, but I expected Microsoft to handle the upgrade much better which is very important to every one. In fact I uninstalled all my apps to cleanup disk space with no luck. I think we ought to get real and create solutions with real users and real scenarios in mind. I can't imagine how my mom would have upgraded to SP2 ever if she was in the exact situation. Long way to go Microsoft. You still are not listening as far as I can tell.

Apple Annoyance!

I have QuickTime 5.0.2 in my home machine. I wanted to remove it from startup programs. So I removed it using MsConfig.exe quite a few times. But it adds itself to the startup programs when I use QuickTime next time. Also, there are no options to turn this off in the Edit->Preferences. What kind of software is this that does not respect or allow user to control it? Quick google search didn't bring anything relevant!

If it was not for some sites requiring QuickTime, I would have un-installed it from my PC just for this. The RealPlayer really used to annoy me a lot which I uninstalled. QuickTime is probably next. I am happy with my media player

At last!

I have long been planning to create a blog for myself where I could post my thoughts on current affairs and about things that happen in my life. I really care less to make it popular. This is a primary means for me to capture my thoughts on a daily basis.

Let me see if I can stand up to this task.