Microsoft 2019
March 3rd, 2009
A very interesting view of the future from Microsoft Labs in 2019. The future of the wallet, education, health care, air travel, news papers, you name it….
Cyber-squatting: patel.com and patel.net
March 3rd, 2009
Background on patel.com and patel.net and why I think the owner is guilty of cyber-squatting….
Current owner
Pravin Patel (as per whois listing) from San Jose
Initial contact (Dec 2005)
E-mails show willingness to speak over phone. Owner requests that I call his phone number (408-499-6677).
Initial Discussion (Dec 2005)
Owner discloses the fact that he has 20yrs of telco experience. Owner indicates desire to make money from these domains. Wishes to start up a Skype/VoIP type of service, but has failed numerous times. Offers to form partnership with myself if I can basically build his telco service for him and make him rich, when asked what he would be doing the answer is merely a dismal silence (aka. nothing). Bad vibe already, and since I only want to buy the domains and no interest in his failed telco dream I do not follow up.
Follow-up (Jan 2009)
E-mail sent to owner asking if he is willing to speak about selling these domains. I receive a reply, Feb 1, 2009, asking me to call the same number I called in 2005.
Follow-up Discussion (2009)
Almost verbatim from our 2005 discussion, the owner repeats his speech: (1) 20 yrs telco experience (2) failed at starting telco (3) can you do it for me and make me rich.
At this point, I’m thinking “give it up, your cyber-squatting and its obvious, didn’t even try changing up the story from last time!” I mention to the owner that I spoke to him in 2005 and he gave me the same story. I ask the owner if he is using the domains for any purpose since 2005 and the owner clearly answers “no”. I follow-up and ask the owner “since you are clearly not using the domains would you be willing to sell the domain”. The answer is “yes” this time, but he says “I can give you a subspace, like patel.com/
At this point, I asked him if he understood was cyber-squatting is doing and clearly mention to him that he’s just playing games and trying to hold the domains for no purpose.
I later find out that there are several others, one specifically from NJ and TX, United states, who have also contacted him. So given that there is some sort of demand for these domains, who agrees with me that this guy is playing games and could potentially be illegally pulling our chains?
Why I wrote this entry: I don’t mean to be bringing any patel-on-patel challenges, but rather that anyone holding onto a domain where somone else wants to purchase it (ie. do an exchange for a good/service with payment as the returning favour) should be allowed to — especially if the domain is just sitting idle and not serving any meaningful purpose.
CIO Outlook 2015
March 2nd, 2009
The world is changing, businesses need to change and help consumers and other businesses adapt to the coming climate. I found this slide show below a great summary of the IBM CIO Outlook Dave Newbold and his team produced. Take a look and leave some comments!
Music: Amazing glass instrument
February 23rd, 2009
Exeunt from IBM Rational
November 12th, 2008
Some of you know, some don’t; but its been a few months now so I’ve decided to put it in official writing. Late last quarter I accepted a new position at IBM, in the Global Technology Services (GTS) division as an IT Architect doing Strategy and Change related work; thus, marking the end of my 4 year stint in Software Group (SWG).
I feel that I leave on a high note. During my last few months in SWG, I led our team to the release of IBM Rational AppScan v7.7 GA (Developer and Build Edition). As the Software Architect and Development Lead for these products, we successfully managed to provide brand new security-related offerings (based on Eclipse) in the IBM Rational portfolio in almost exactly a 1 year timeframe. The products have been setup for a great amount of marketplace and technological potential, and as I exeunt from IBM Rational I leave my team with this potential, knowledge, and my mentorship to break new ground.
All in all, I have enjoyed my years within the IBM Rational brand. I have come to learn about the Rational brand, provided value across various SWG brands (such as Rational, Tivoli, WebSphere), contributed to the open source Eclipse project, led several software products in architecture and development capacities, enhanced my leadership skills, and met a lot of smart people. I don’t discount coming back to IBM SWG, but perhaps in a different capacity.
World Community Grid Update
November 12th, 2008
The updated statistics of my contribution to the grid are in:
- Registered: September 22, 2005
- Run Time: 961 days
- Points: 1,272,640
- Results: 3,648
My last update on April 3, 2007 had statistics of the following. Not bad, given I can’t even remember which machines are crunching out the results!
- Registered: September 22, 2005
- Run Time: 477 days
- Points: 394,264
- Results: 1,623
For those who don’t know about the World Community Grid program, read more here. Also congratulations to the organization for its 4th year anniversary, check out these statistics published in their recent news letter:
World Community Grid celebrates its fourth anniversary
On our fourth anniversary, we celebrate our tremendous volunteer force of more than 411,000 volunteers who have registered more than 1,111,000 computers. Together, we have contributed enough computing power to make World Community Grid the largest volunteer effort of its kind on the planet. More than 195,000 years of computer run time have been provided, allowing for 216 million results to be made available to important humanitarian research.
IBM Rational AppScan Developer Edition v7.7 Open Beta 2
June 21st, 2008
There are been a lot of buzz around our latest earth-shattering beta release of IBM Rational AppScan Developer Edition v7.7, and I’m happy to now talk a bit more about it! After Beta 1 (in December 2007), I led our development team into the creation of a security analysis tool that goes beyond the typical blackbox testing (aka Dynamic Analysis in our product documentation) of a website.
As the AppScan DE Architect, it became quickly known within the team that we needed to start creating technology that gives developers a stronger “confidence level”in the security issues reported to them. We all know a developer’s job is tedious, and knowing which issues are the most critcal to fix is very important because in reality even if a tool reports 100 issues, only the top 10 may get fixed at development time – so its imparitive that we as tool creators let the developer know which are the 10 most critical issues to fix.
So we set out to do some innovation of our own! We started engaging the idea of integration other forms of analysis with dynamic analysis, specifically static and runtime analysis, to help us get that confidence level we wanted. Shortly after the new year, we spent the last 4 months creating value with this idea.
Last night, really late last night actually, we released a refresh to our official Beta 2 release (that went out on May 31, 2008, just before the IBM Rational Software Development Conference – RSDC 2008). In addition to the delivery of 100 bug fixes, we released two versions of our product. Yes you heard me, two versions – which is what the market has been asking for – believe it or not.
Our Beta 1 was released to be an extension ontop of the RAD 7.5 Open Beta; however, the uptake on that release wasn’t what we wanted. In the new year I repeatedly asked management “What are customers saying? How many downloads do we have? Any feedback?” – in the true sense of Agile development I suppose I was just doing my job 
The answer back was “urgghh”. I quickly figured out that we needed something light-weight and quick and dirty for users to use, so I proposed the plain eclipse solution. Eclipse has an integrated update mechanism known as the Classic Update Manager, and naturally integrating the delivery of our software through that mechanism was the path we needed to take. Hence, our Beta 2 release now includes two installation routes, you can use whichever you prefer:
So enough yammering from me, here is some product highlights for our new functionality in Beta 2:
Product Information (Click here to view the IBM product page)
- Integrated dynamic, runtime, and static analysis: In one scan, you can conduct these types of analyses -
- Static analysis: Also known as white box analysis, this type of analysis allows you to check Java source code for security vulnerabilities.
- Dynamic analysis: With dynamic analysis (also known as black box analysis), you step through your application from a hacker’s perspective, tampering with inputs to uncover security holes.
- Runtime analysis: When you create a scan that includes dynamic analysis testing, you can set the scan to track the flow of execution for any security issues that are found.
Also a shout out to our team (Babita, Alexei, Jennifer, Jeff, and me) who made this beta possible, we all worked extremely hard!
So, what does it mean to be a Patel?
March 16th, 2008
I found this really interesting a few years ago and made a PDF of it. I got it from here but it seems its been removed.
CHIDANAND RAJGHATTA
TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ MONDAY, AUGUST 15, 2005 01:16:52 AM]
Scientists have mapped the rice genome. Researchers have devised drugs aimed at a specific ethnic population (BiDil, a drug for congestive heart failure, works exclusively on Blacks).
Somewhere between these developments I began to wonder if they will start studying the make up of ethnic types or communities renowned for specific skills — such as entrepreneurship.
My own favourites are Patels, a clan I am increasingly fascinated by and about whom I boned up a little bit recently following their remarkable success in East Africa, UK and now the US.
The name Patel, I gather, derives from ‘patedar’, the record-keeper named by princely rulers of Gujarat to keep track of crops,‘pat’ being a parcel of land. So obviously, they are good at numbers, but their area of interest now extends far beyond land. Infact, it appears to extend in almost every sphere of human endeavour.
According to the year 2000 census, there were 49,740 Patels in the US. The Patel surname ranked 591 in the list of most common last names, ahead of such notables as Dalton, Roth, and Nixon, and ahead of the Singh, which one would assume would be more common (there are only 22,383 Singhs in the US).
A majority of the Patels are entrepreneurial types, mostly in hotel, convenience store, and fast food franchise businesses. Of the 52,000 hotels and motels in America, roughly 18,000, nearly one-third, are owned by Indians, a majority by Gujaratis, and a majority among them Patels (hence the term Patel Motel). They are also muscling into gas stations, convenience stores, and liquor store business.
What gives here? Well, one if of course their legendary sense of clannishness (they are, after all, said to be descendants ofRam’s sons Lav and Kush). So one Patel brings his brother, who brings his brother-in-law, who brings his cousin etc. The result– low attrition, low overheads, no overtimes, no hand in till etc.
But Patels are also blessed with an extraordinary business sense. I now know of many Patels, including successful physicians, who are diversifying into other business (hotels, restaurants, real estate, packaged food etc), and the reason is not the high rate of medical malpractice insurance (which is driving other physicians out of private practice).
The most famous example is of course Florida cardiologist Dr Kiran Patel who parlayed a modest practice into a billion dollarhealthcare empire with interests so wide and varied that some months back he gave a $18.5 million donation to a little-known university to establish a centre for global solutions (that came on top of $5 million he gave for an arts centre.)
Last week, I came across another intriguing example of an entrepreneurial push by a professional Patel. Michigan physician Dr Asha Patel, from all accounts, has a successful internal medicine practice near Detroit. She and her psychiatrist husband Hiten Patel have two small kids, and lead a busy life.
Not busy enough, it seems. Inspired by a passion for food, and what she says are her ‘Patel genes’, she has just kicked off asha Foods, starting with a modest line of curry sauces which she herself delivered to some 40 stores.
In no time, it attracted the attention of the local Detroit Free Press, and a subsequent article by the paper’s food writer (under the headline ‘Curry in a Hurry’, which is fast becoming a fashionable name for new restaurants) has sparked off even more interest (the local TV station called next, Dr Patel said).
It won’t surprise me to see Asha’s Tasha on my supermarket shelf in Washington DC in a few weeks time because the good doctor is already set on growing her business — without giving up her medical practice. She’s banking on her family experience in the spice trade (they have been exporting for a century) and her own knowledge of medicine to crank up healthy sauces with less calories and less salt that what are currently on the shelves.
More importantly, she has vision. “Forty years ago, there were no pasta sauces in the US,” she told me over the phone. “Look now…there are dozens. The same thing is going to happen with curry sauce.” Yes, only if she can sell beyond Indian grocery stores, I remarked, recalling the growing Asian food section, including many curry sauces, in my local Whole Foods, which caters to mainly to Americans.
But Doc Patel was already on the ball. Among her first sales call was on Detroit’s Papa Joe, who bought into the product — which means it soon go out to the Average Joe, and not just the Desi Joe. I guess we can safely add another Patelite to the Indian business constellation.
Human’s can put man on moon, but…
February 22nd, 2008
Human’s can put man on moon, but human’s still haven’t invented a microwave that is long lasting… The other day my Panasonic Inverter microwave NN H665WF “died”. You know how when a microwave turns on, it starts off with a low-speed fan sound then jumps up to a high-speed fan noise? Well with my oven now, it starts off at a low-speed and stays there….that’s it! This is our family’s 4th Panasonic oven and we’re now ready to try something else!
I called Futureshop, where I purchased the oven back in August 2005, they told me the warranty was for 1 year from Panasonic – so tough luck. In consideration that I may just end up getting a new oven if the repair costs were outrageous, I asked the fellow if he knows which oven has the lowest after-purchase claims; but I got no answer from the guy…useless. Here I am talking to a Futureshop “warranty” expert and he apparently isn’t an expert. My next question to him was if he could recommend any repair shops in Toronto where I could take the oven. He tells me there aren’t any! At this point he’s already earned a status lower than “idiot” and “jerk” whatever that may be – perhaps the opposite of “genius”?
At this point I decide to check out Panasonic’s website. In 5 seconds I load up a list of 5 repair shops in my area using their customer support webpage! I start off by calling each one. The first one I get a Chinese lady who doesn’t apparently understand my English, so I tell her I’ll call back some other time. The second person I call, I try to explain my problem but I get the feeling they aren’t listening to me because the fellow keeps saying “just bring it in, we’ll look at it”. I get suspicious and ask him “is there a cost to just look at the oven?”. The fellow says “$16″. I’m thinking “gotcha, bugger”! The next, and last place I call, the lady on the phone explains to me that she’s seen the problem before and its about $40-60 to fix. I mention to her that I might as well get a new one, she laughs and says “yeah, its probably a better idea”! Now that I got her on my good side, I ask her what the Futureshop expert couldn’t answer, “is there any brand that you recommend I try other than Panasonic”. She mentions that she’s had a General Electric (GE) microwave oven for over 7 years and she’s never had a problem! I’m thinking bingo! I search up GE microwaves on Futureshop, Bestbuy, Sears, and Wal-mart’s websites. Futureshop and Bestbuy don’t carry anything other than Panasonic and Danby. Sears carries some GE, but they appear to be high-end models. Wal-mart has exactly what I’m looking for, 1.1 cu ft with 1100 watts and its ol sale for $85!
I just picked up the GE oven and we’ll see how it compares to the Panasonic over the next few weeks!