The future of MySQL and Java ?
Definition of ”Oracle” : (esp. in ancient Greece) an utterance, often ambiguous or obscure, given by a priest or priestess at a shrine as the response of a god to an inquiry. Source : Dictionary.com
In trying to keep up with the real meaning ,Oracle Corporation , is really trying hard acquire Sun Microsystems , in an attempt that would give straight competition to IBM, the global leader in System Solutions and Engineering and reach the top . After the recent clearance by the U.S. Department of Justice for the deal , the open source communities were deliberating the future of MySql and Java. Thanks to EU, that it has presented its objections to the proposed acquisition. To this Oracle has publicly claimed that the hyper-protective bureaucrats of the EU’s Commission have demonstrated “profound misunderstanding of both database competition and open source dynamics”
However there are mixed responses to this merger. Ecommerce Journal says that Oracle’s previous acquisitions of “InnoDB” and “BerkeleyDB” did not affect their licensing policies and further supported the development and support to these two products. SAP has real concerns about customer choice in the database market and the future open licensing of Java.
Open Database Alliance, united its efforts to ensure that Sun’s MySQL database software would live on as a cheaper and open source alternative, really did attract the EU’s regulators
MySql , an open source database is presently being used by facebook,amazon and even this blog site, hosted by wordpress. Millions of websites which are hosted using linux and mysql, do not incur anycosts for the OS and the database saving about 2000-4000 US $. So there is a real worry about the open licensing of the MySql post acquisition.
I feel that MySQL should be separated from the deal and allowed to be spin off as an separate independent company to pursue its mission. Iam sure Larry Ellision would dump the deal in such a case. lets wait and watch
The CTC of a defence officer
There has always been a lot of confusion as to what does a CTC of a defence employee is ? and while comparing government employees with the employees of the private sector there has been no standard basis for carrying out the comparitive cost analysis with them. As such when the concept of operational costing is not strictly followed by government agencies specially the defence sector, wherein inputs cannot be equated to the outputs,it would be very difficult to arrive at the Cost to Government(CTG). However XLRI ,Jamshedpur was tasked with this difficult analysis by the Sixth Pay commission, so as to arrive at the tangible and intangible benefits of the government employee.
This was done to understand the benefits in monetary terms , which would help the pay commission to arrive at the pay scales which are acceptable by the government employees,specially when there have been huge demands by all the govt organisations to be at par with upward spikes, in the CTC’s of the private sector during the economic boom. But here we stand today happily in the midst of an economic recession, boasting about the nice package, a secured job and a relaxed life. Cheers!! Lets have some beer and kababs
But still one would always like to know about where they stand when compared to their private counterpart. XLRI has really done a good job in arriving at the CTG of all the employees , when the true and accurate cost estimates are not available from the government sources.Thanks to our governments transparent systems where you can see closed boxes marked “confidential” and nothing more than that. I just hope that RTI would be able to extract that information in future and put that for public perusal, while justifying their fiscal policies with a near accurate fiscal deficit policy.
Some of the important findings for those who dont have time to go through the report
(a) A compensation consists of two components name “Transactional” and “Relational” returns.Transactional consists of Monetary and Non Monetary which an employee perennially receives. Relational returns are Self esteem,Self satisfaction.
(b) CTC only consists of the Transactional Returns , Relational returns cannot be quantified in monetary terms
(c) Calculation of CTG by following table below: Multiply the Index value with the Basic Pay
CTG calculation of a Defence Officer
(d) Components of the Pay
Components of Pay - LtCdr/Maj
Source : XLRI,Jamshedpur report of CTG calculation for Sixth Pay Commission
I hope you guys enjoyed this article.Please gimme feedback if any
One Laptop per Child in India
According to an an article in business week, the Indian Governement wasnt interested in the OLPC program, which was to bring computers to the Indian Primary Schools. Although the laptop would cost $100, it was never even considered to try on a pilot run by the Indian Government. Finally the Reliance ADA Groups “Digital Bridge Foundation” has taken up the initiative to provide these laptops.
Is this “India Shining” ? i doubt
Mozilla Unveils Aurora Concept Browser
Mozilla has changed the way people access internet using their browsers.
After the release of Firefox Ver 3, which has started capturing the browser market,displacing the Internet Explorer’s strong hold, now it is planning to unveil a new concept browser, named “Aurora”. The Mozilla Labs foundation is requesting people to contribute ideas and design for its upcoming browser.
The Dabbawalas – A work of Social and human ingenuity
Whenever i read a lot of articles about the Dabbawalas in various Management articles, I always feel proud of this team and sometimes dream of achieving a similar fete along with my team members in the field of my working domain.
The Dabbawalas of Mumbai ,have made a place for themselves in the top business schools of the world .Harvard Business School recently has prepared a case study for the students, presenting them an organisational strategy which is purely dependent on social and human ingenuity , with an accuracy of 99.9999% to convey over 170,000 meals to their destinations each day at right time and place.Their accomplishment does not depend on any analytic models, technology or efficient business practices which most of the corporates follow. This is something extraordinary which they have achieved over 20 years experience with a team of 5000 employees and have been awarded Six Sigma Certification for an error rate of one per 6 million.Amazing isnt it!!!
Foreign Equipment and lowering morale issues for the Army
Dependence on imported equipment and low morale of the officers was posing a serious problem for the Indian Army, its former chief Gen. V.P. Malik said here Saturday. “Even today we are importing 70 percent of our equipment. As long as we have to depend on equipment from outside, we will be inconvenienced by any rise in prices,” he said.
To buttress his argument, Malik referred to how Russia suddenly escalated the cost of an aircraft carrier by $1.2 billion last year.
Malik,Ex Army Chief chief during the 1999 Kargil war, said at that time, Indian troops were low on tangible assets, but high on morale and confidence.
“This asset is almost on the verge of extinction now. There is an acute shortage of officers. Young men and women with great leadership capabilities are not joining. Those in the army want to quit,” he said, while addressing a seminar on “Indian Defence Forces’ preparedness to deal with challenges of the 21st century.”
“The low morale of the forces is becoming visible. I couldn’t dream of such a scenario when I joined the army,” he regretted.He also criticised the political leadership for ignoring the recommendation to create the post of Chief of Defence Staff.“That was a right recommendation made years ago. But the government chickened out. This was unfortunate.”
Malik expressed himself against using the army for internal security duties.
Source:ThaiIndian
Linux Beats Windows again in the Green Test
In a test by networkworld.com, power consumption was observed as a way to judge the ‘Greener’ operating system. The test points to Linux as the winner of the green flag by margins that topped out at 12%.
How Google Plans to Win the Wild West of the Mobile Web
It’s hard not to be impressed by the latest demonstration of Android, Google’s soon-to-be-released open-source mobile OS. While last100’s Dan Langendorf is reserving judgment, I’m already sold on Android’s User Interface. Of course, the biggest promise of Android isn’t its UI but its openness, and it’s here where comparisons to the iPhone are also inevitable. But Google is banking on one app that carriers and handset makers won’t want to touch – the browser.
Android’s UI looks to have borrowed just enough from Apple’s iPhone, as well as some of the design Zen of the original Palm OS, to more than satisfy my needs. However, on the one hand Google wants us to believe that Android isn’t a direct response to Apple’s own offering (which, chronologically, may well be true), but at the same time is keen to remind developers that in contrast to the iPhone they won’t need to get Android applications certified by anyone, nor will there be any hidden APIs (application programming interfaces) accessible only to handset makers or mobile operators — another dig at Apple.
What Google is less keen to highlight, however, is how Android’s openness could potentially lead to the platform becoming fragmented, resulting in a mishmash of incompatible flavors or implementations. That’s because, notes The Register, Google plans on open sourcing Android “under a freewheelin’ Apache license” in which carriers and handset makers will be able to make any modifications they like. These could be as innocuous as cosmetic changes to the UI, such as replacing icons with the networks’ own branding, to something more significant like swapping which default applications and services are installed, including the option to remove Google’s own wares and, say, replace them with Yahoo’s or a carrier’s own.
“They can add to it. They can remove from it. They make it their own”, Android project leader Andy Rubin told attendees of last week’s Google I/O developer conference in San Francisco.
However, even if this means that handset makers and carriers can customize and control the ‘out of the box’ configuration of Android-based phones — since the platform is open, users should also have the same freedom to add to it, remove from it, and make it their own, right?
Not necessarily.
In theory there is nothing stopping any Android vendor, regardless of if they are a member of the so-called Open Handset Alliance or not, from locking down portions of the OS, even going as far as removing access to certain APIs. Rubin confirmed as much at the I/O conference, but attempted to reassure developers who are worried that their applications may face compatibility problems, by revealing that Google will provide tools to easily verify the make-up of each Android handset.
“We’re providing a piece of technology – I can’t go into a great amount of detail – that tests the APIs,” quotes The Register. “This will be a script that you’ll be able to run… and determine whether all the APIs are there.”
In other words, users may be faced with the situation of downloading and attempting to install applications on their ‘open handset’ only to be greeted with a message saying that their particular Android phone isn’t compatible.
Also see: Worries over Google phones: What if they’re just ordinary?
While this is probably painting a worse-case-scenario, the whole point of Android is that it is supposed to help address the current status quo in which “the mobile platform is unbelievably fragmented”, according to Vic Gundotra, Google’s vice president of engineering. So it’s somewhat surprising that the company would allow such a possibility in the first place.
Or is it?
How else could Google persuade carriers such as T-Mobile, Sprint and Telfornica, along with a host of incumbent handset makers to come on board in the form of the Open Handset Alliance?
Besides, Google is really banking on there being at least one application that the carriers and handset makers leave well alone, regardless of how else they tinker with the OS. And for Google’s purposes that application far exceeds the importance of any other, and offers the best hope of giving developers, including Google themselves, the unified mobile platform they crave.
That application is of course Android’s mobile Web browser, built on the same WebKit source code as Apple’s version of Safari for the iPhone. Nokia also utilizes WebKit in its own browser, albeit one built on older code.
Gundotra has already gone on record saying that the iPhone features “a better mobile browser than anyone had ever delivered before”, and that he expects others to follow Apple’s lead and adopt WebKit-based browsers of their own, helping to eliminate the need for developers to create separate versions of their web applications for each device — or at least if those apps stay in the browser.
All of which makes perfect business sense for the world’s largest Internet ad company.
“Google does reasonably well on the open Internet. We’d like that model to come to mobile phones,” says Gundotra.
Iceberg – Grand Theft Application! Contest-Hurry up Developers
Iceberg, an online web solution for development of applications with amazing ease for the programmers.The company is holding a fun competition for the developers who come up with the “Best Application Idea”
Since the launch coincides with the launch of Grand Theft Auto, the company is holding a fun competition to see who comes up with the best application idea.
- First prize is an Alienware Laptop and
- Second prize is an X-Box Elite 360 with a copy of Grand Theft Auto IV to play
- Third prize winners will get 1 year free hosting for their Iceberg applications
There are 5 third prizes available, all fully operable hosting solutions with dedicated IP, free domain registration and professional features that will enable the users to create any type of web presence they want (websites, blogs, e-commerce, etc).
To enter all you have to do is download Iceberg from www.geticeberg.com or signup for the online service. To qualify for the prize, simply fill in the short questionaire that pops-up when you click the download or the signup links and tell us what do you want to do with Iceberg.So… Lets get started! Click here then click download to get Iceberg and get rolling!
Creating your own fonts
I think this is one of the first online sites which allows users to create their own font types, who are not satisfied with the existing fonts available in applications like Photoshop,Corel Draw etc.
A nice video demonstrating the ease with which , you can create your own font is posted below
Introduction to FontStruct from fontstruct on Vimeo.
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