Speaking Experience @ ILUG Chennai Monthly Meet

This is the first time that I am speaking in Indian Linux User Group, Chennai. ILUG is most active LUGs in India. The meeting generally happens in IIT Madras (the place I wanted to study). Again, I want to reiterate the fact that speaking about Open Source in Open Source meeting gives me enough motivation and abundance of energy. I registered the topics with Mr. Bharathi Subramainan and he gave be slot immediately. Today, I also noticed what happens when people with passion sign up to do something. Unlike other meetings, the members were very punctual and I could see considerable number of people waiting in the hall and some people working in computers in another room. Today's incident enlightened me about valuing others time and I will never forget this in my life. Apart from that we also had good knowledge sharing session.

The talks started at 3.15pm and the first talk was hosted by Selvakumar K from NRC-FOSS on KTechLab, an Open Source IDE for Electronics and PIC Micro Controller Circuit Design and Simulation. He talked about analog and digital simulation tools in Linux. I feel that the tool will help any electronics student to do experiment in his/her laptop/computer. The colleges should seriously consider to have this tool in their department and encourage students to use when they are doing practicals or learning theory.

Next, I started my talk on Java Code coverage and explained about need for code coverage and features of Emma. I talked about various ways of using Emma such as with IDE, nightly build, from command line, online instrumentation and off-line instrumentation. Towards the end, I gave a quick demo on using Emma with Eclipse, on-the-fly instrumentation from command and HTML reporting.

Towards the end, Prof Dr C N Krishnan talked about NRC-FOSS and its Phase 2 initiatives. He requested the help from ILUG-Chennai. He also expressed his concerns on giving feedback to NRC-FOSS.

We have also been given some stickers, pens and Fedora CDs sponsored by Ubuntu and the speakers have been given caps (so, I got one) from Ubuntu. This Saturday was fulfilling and exciting as well. Looking forward for more such knowledge sharing session.

Creating Virtual Machine in VirtualBox - Screenshots

For more than four years, I have been using VMWare workstation and from last year I started to use Virtual Box. Virtual Box is a virtualization product by Sun which virtualize X86 platform and supports Windows, Linux, Solaris and Open Solaris as guest operation system. It is good that Virtual Box is released under open source license and it is available for free of cost. You can download Virtual Box from here. Installing Virtual Box should not take more time and it is very simple like installing any software. Just double click the binary executable and answer few usual questions. You are done. I captured the screenshots of creation of Ubuntu Virtual Machine. One feature, I like about Virtual Box is you can reuse Virtual Disk. We will see this in another post. I am presenting the screenshots that I captured. By following this post, you should be able to create a virtual machine and start installing operating system of your choice.

1. Create New Virtual Machine

2. Click Next in "New VM Wizard"

3. Specify Operating system, distribution and give a name to this VM

4. Specify the virtual RAM size (leave at default)

5. Create a new VM and new virtual disk

6. Click next in "Virtual Disk" Wizard. This is the sub-wizard in the main wizard. If you already created virtual disk, you can skip this setup by choosing virtual disk from available list.

7. Choose virtual disk storage type (leave at default)

8. Specify a name for Virtual Disk and size

9. Click "Finish" to create virtual disk

10. Click "Finish" to create VM. After this step, a new VM should have been created.

11. Open settings and choose either CDROM or ISO file location. So that VM will use CD/ISO for OS installation

12. And finally start the VM. Now VM is ready to install Operating system. From here, VM is as good as physical machine.

In this post, we saw how to create virtual machine. The steps are same irrespective the guest operating system. Virtual Machine behaves much like a physical X86 based system and as of now many flavors are Linux, Windows, BSDs can be installed as guest operating system. Guest operating is the operating system that gets installed in the virtual machine. For example, in a Windows XP system, we can virtualize many virtual machines. The operating that gets installed in the virtual machine is generally called as guest operating system.

Creating a WoW

We, as a human being are like goats. By and large, we go with majority. When so many people in a room say that "world revolves around me", we will also agree with it. If they say, they want to create a wow, all of a sudden and without understanding the science and art of innovation, we will jump in and say "yes, we will". Up to this, it is quite good. At least you have the curiosity. But the worst things is many of us tend to stay in the same place without taking any initiative. We just want to build a marvelous building at this moment without any foundations/hard work. Creating a wow or innovation is easy. But it is not so easy and does not come just like that. I am not a innovator and I have distantly worked with some innovators. Here is my point of view.

Many of us are working on creating wow for others. I don't question the willingness and focus to create wow for the others (mainly customers). But I do like to ask you a question. Have anyone did something for you that impressed you. Otherwise, did anyone in your life created a wow for you. How does a wow smells, what do you feel about it, does it speak to you? When someone did it, did you feel that you were in heaven. Without understanding what a wow is and without even experiencing something, how can you create a wow. Even if you create a wow, how can you say that it is "wow". Creating a wow once or twice is easy and may be gotten due to luck. Do you know how to do it consistently? Do you have the magic of converting the air as wonderful music like a flute.

First of all, may it be innovation or quality or productivity, it sucks without daily improvements. The daily improvements are the foundation. Here my point is not the final product (the big idea) but it is what we do to bring that big idea. The knowledge we gather, the type of people we interact, the number of minutes, hours we think and so on. Without focusing these foundations, creating a wow is just a lip service and I am sure that it is never going to happen. Innovation is a chemical reaction, the reaction that takes place in your brain and you really need to work hard and be consistent in fusing your neural circuit.

Creating wow is not an one time event. We need to come up with techniques where we can create wows like an engine. The customer may not like to stop with just one idea. She wants two, three, and infinite. The ideas are going to give an impression , and it is also true, that you care for her (though it is not the only way to impress). So, if you are consistent, you will be in the game. Else the customer is going to say that you are outdated.

Another thing that we are doing is "ritualize" wow creation rather than internalizing it. When you practice as a ritual, you do it but without involvement, passion and halfheartedly. After internalizing and comprehending it, you do it more with involvement and wholeheartedly. This is another key thing that we need to watch out for.

The final thing is give people the resources and freedom. The resources can be in terms of time and environment that is suitable for creating wow. You cannot expect an idea when people are squeeched and used to maximum possible extent. If you ask a stressed guy, he can only give mediocre ideas. Give them time to think and then expect sparkling ideas.

The above discussed things are my viewpoint. I look forward for your response/comments to learn more on this.

Economic Slowdown - When are going to hit the ground?

It is a trillion dollar question that when are we going to hit the bottom before making a recovery. This is a very hot news and it is minutes after US Fed released minutes. In summary, Fed sees that the economy is deteriorating and downside risk is high. And another point here is the economy is deteriorating more than expected and it is likely that the customers will hold back the spending which again lead to production cuts which leads to lay-offs. This is going to be cyclic and will take sometime to break the cycle and to go in counter direction. In summary, there is lot of downside risk in short term before something happens in a long term

Hold your breath and read through these pages.

Google News
Yahoo News
CNN
Bloomberg

Again, in another two months, the markets are going to see another bottom, may it be capital markets or job market. Now, we should believe someone who says the recovery is going to take three years :-(. Hard truth, but it is truth, we have to digest and move forward.

How to Mount Windows Partition from Linux

I have dual boot in my laptop with Windows XP and my favorite Ubuntu. Windows XP is factory default. Two years back, I installed Fedora and after trying the recent version of Ubuntu, I wanted to install Ubuntu and it has become my favorite in no time. I simply like it. Since I backed up some important Ebooks and documents into Windows partition, I wanted to access those both from Windows XP and Ubuntu. After doing some searching in Internet, I found a mechanism to mount windows partition to Linux.

First, you need to identify the number of Windows partition and locate the partition that you want to mount. "df -k" will help you to identify all the partition/disk in your system. Then, use the "mount" command to mount. For example, here is the sequence of steps to be followed. Run "sudo fdisk -l" and identify windows partition and then mount it using script given after fdisk output.

lnarasim@lnarasim-laptop:~/scripts$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 78.5 GB, 78518522880 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9546 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd0f4738c

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 1958 15727603+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 1959 9546 60950610 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 1959 4569 20972826 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 4570 4736 1341396 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7 4737 4985 2000061 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8 4986 9546 36636201 83 Linux
lnarasim@lnarasim-laptop:~/scripts$

lnarasim@lnarasim-laptop:~/scripts$ cat win_mount.bash
#! /bin/bash

sudo mkdir -p /media/c
sudo mkdir -p /media/d

sudo mount -t ntfs -o nls=utf8,umask=0222 /dev/sda5 /media/c
sudo mount -t ntfs -o nls=utf8,umask=0222 /dev/sda6 /media/d

I have also come up with a simple shell script to do that. If you want, you can also add this in startup scripts so that Windows partition is mounted automatically after startup. With simple use of Linux commands, we are able to access Windows partition.

Absorption and Agility - Learn from Animals

The recent days is testimony for many companies for their absorption capability. There are times when the companies should be agile in looking out opportunities and some times it so happens that they need to tuck their tail and sit idle waiting for opportunities. Sitting idle, as the words suggest, will not yield any benefits other than optimizing the operational costs. I remember that I read that in some business journals that the best companies in the world invest in innovation and making new products which supposed to take chuck of money. Being an uncertain time, many of us fear about the future's prospectus. It greatly applies to individuals also.

There are times when one needs to retreat and practice "wait and watch" game. And sometimes and the situation is in favor, we need to be agile to make use of the opportunity. Few months back, Microsoft's intention to buy Yahoo is an excellent example how things should not be done. Microsoft gave enough time to Yahoo and Yahoo thought that Microsoft undervalued Yahoo. The deal did not go through affecting the stakeholders of Yahoo.

If you ever wonder how to learn "Absorption and Agility", watch this video. We have to learn a lot from animals. Because, they do not have greed like human beings and their agenda is just to survive. I am sure, you will love it.

Lip Service, Laziness and Five Years in Hell

My father was a teacher in state government and he has retired now. When he was in service, he used to go to election booths as presiding officer. When we were kids, he used to tell us about his election experience. There would be so many people inquire him about his election experience on how people stone the election booths. Generally he used to go to other constituency and during all his election duties he never stopped exercising his duty - casting his vote (through post) .My grandmother is now 80s and she never missed one. Check with your family, you will have many great grandparents who are still casting their votes and show us that casting votes is such an important one. But these days, the people are merely enjoying a holiday either watching movies or mini-serial or mega-serial. You have whole bunch of entertainment channels. Also, this time, we also have IPL. Whether it is Congress or BJP or XYZ, why should I bother? Whatever is going to happen is going to happen? I can always yell at politicians or my servant just in case the economy fails.

Sometime back, the senior advocate and journalist Mr Cho. Ramaswamy, in his speech said that people of this generation do not exercise their electoral rights properly. It was proven right during that time that a by-election in TN registered a record polling of 90%. God and politicians only knows how they made the record. Sometimes, even God does not know. When we are not going to exercise our votes, there are two things that can possibly happen. Either someone cast your vote or wrong candidate has been selected to represent you because you did not vote. When you sum up, both the cases is sufficient enough to take our country backwards. If you are going to assume that no one will cast your vote other than you, you are dead wrong. This is secret for record polling. With this economic recession, the prosperity will be evaporated if a wrong party or party with protectionism comes to power. So, use your voting rights to pick the right candidate and right party.

Let us make this place a better one for the future generations. Let the future generations know that their great grandparents are visionaries and thought leaders. If you choose the other way, the next five will be "hell".

Speaking experience @ VIT, Vellore

This is the first time that I am visiting to Vellore and Vellore Institute of Technology. Today, I happen to be there for a talk on Linux Process, POSIX Threads and Linux Scheduler as a part of a workshop on "Open Source Initiatives and Linux Kernel Internals" organized by School of Computing Sciences VIT. I was very fortunate to share the speaking podium along with eminent and highly accomplished Prof. Dr. C N Krishnan and ILUG-C co-coordinator Mr. Bharathi Subramanian. We started in Chennai around 6 am and reached Vellore at 8.30am. The faculty members and Director gave us a warm welcome.

Around 9am, we headed to the auditorium for the workshop. The first part of the workshop is on NRC-FOSS. Dr Krishnan covered the agenda of NRC-FOSS (Phase 1 and Phase 2) and why FOSS makes sense to India. It was insightful and towards the end, I could find many students charged up to take open source in their mainstream learning.

Next, I spoke on Linux Process Management, POSIX Threads and Linux Scheduler. The students were very much interactive and had a lot of enthusiasm to ask questions. I too felt that some questions really made me think. After my talk, Mr. Bharathi took the session on Linux Device Driver and showed how to write simple kernel module and simple dummy character device driver. Again, this talk helped me to refresh whatever I learnt some 3 yrs back.

During the workshop and throughout the day, we received an excellent hospitality from the faculties and students. Overall, it was another productive Saturday and I can sleep with a lot of satisfaction. You can view some of the pictures that are taken during workshop @ here.

Be an agent of Change

Have you ever thought that this generation is going to do a turnaround. This is going to be a history in evolution of mankind. We saw a dreadful effects of hyper leverage, the retirement funds of many senior people eroded, lifetime wealth were gone without traces and the economy has come closed to a depression, if not grinding halt. We thought that "entry today" and "exit tomorrow" is a great game. Having said that, today, many organizations, business leaders and most importantly policymakers, economic experts are trying to make this as turnaround. We are in the verge of witnessing one more revolution which, I believe will take the economy and mankind to next level. I am sure, we will and it is just a matter of time. If each one of us take part in this change, I feel, the recovery will be fast and post recovery will be great. How can you take part in this change? Read on.

The concept is going to be simple but difficult. As Scott Berkun used tell, if something is simple, it doesn't mean that it is easy. Many simple things in the world are difficult. For example, consider a mother giving birth to a baby. The doctors and even some elderly folks many know that the process is simple. But they will also agree that it is difficult. The work of the security guard is simple - to continuously watch the trespassers. But it is difficult to watch consistently. So, many things in this world is simple but yet they are difficult.

Similarly, it is very much easier to say "be an agent of change" and it takes a great deal to be the agent and consistently trace the agenda - wellness to mankind. When I write this, I hear a good news from US of some data better than expected number. Can we try to shorten our turnaround time? Yes, it lot depends on how we work and face the challeges in front of us. This is the time that we should demostrate a state of high productivity and fully focussed on the work. It is the time that we show some mercy to people who lost jobs and try to help them to find their way. You can try to impart your knowledge to next generation and take sometime to make "education poverty (illiteracy)" a history. When economy recovers, the entire mankind should have a reason to cheer and not just few "so called" gifted souls.

Make use of this time to build your home, town, state and country. After a year, the economy will take of itself and show a great recovery. Think about this. What will you do if economy recovers? How do you want to see your people in a recovered economy? Don't we like to see a green ecosystem, dont we like to see computers in village schools or showing computers to these kids at least once. Devote 5% of your time to others. Believe me, it is not spending your time, it is investing. If you invest now, you will eat fruits, and then your generations. If you don't do, then, you will be a history and so is your generations.

This is the time to be a agent and hero or to die.

Happy Recovery :-)

What can you say? Is it a progressive society

It was late in night and all the big shots in Indian business gathered. Right from liquor king to king khan. When you allow these people, they will talk in length about social responsibility. Their social responsibility stop at either putting a web link in their company website, establishing aviation academy in a tribal village, or at maximum doing a lip service in their movies. They were in a big posh place and guy hitting the hammer. All were wearing fashionable dresses. Gents were in full suit and ladies :-( (I dont remember exactly they were wearing, but I believe there should be some dress). Thanks to Modi, CEO of IPL, who commercialized playing cricket. Thanks to media who gave him award for being innovative. Thanks to BCCI for brining an excellent cricket session. I know they are working really hard, squeezing their brain to bring only best cricket to Indian cricket lovers. It was great to watch movie stars, business guys, cricket players, spouses of stars/business guys/players. Each one of them involved in IPL deserve special award. But it is the cricket lover who has been cheated by these guys to make money. Read on.

Unlike 20 years back, these days cricket are played frequently. One dayers, test match and recent T20 cricket. The main strength of T20 is that it steals a lot of time but we do not know that it is stealing time. A normal cricket lover watches a match for 4 hours and these match certainly will be in memory for another 4 hours. Another 4 fours he spends in mere dreaming on how the match is going to be and seeing highlights of watched match. Totally, the "cricket fanatic" is going to waste 1.5 day of productive work. This is a case of one match. But generally these matches never come in single. There is a proverb in Tamil - "Sani ponam, thaniya poogathu". Each match except Semis and final are "sani ponam". And this is going to happen for almost 2 months in year. So for every year, on an average basis, a cricket fanatic is going to waste 3 months (I lost count and hence let us maintain the lower limit as 3 months). Also, you cannot say who is going to be the cricket fanatic.

Once they decided to go mad, they go mad to an extent which you and I cannot imagine. It catches everyone right from Vice President to Software Engineer, Homemaker to Aeroplane pilot. The cricket can make anyone idiot. It doesn't care whether he is Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Actor Vijay, Vijay Mallaiya, Srinivasan, Ramamoorthy, Gunasekaran, Prabhakaran, Karthi, Jopesh, Aslam, he, she, they, it, you and I. I also feel that we can official introduce betting as a part of IPL T20 so that it also helps us to earn (this is joke. dont take it seriously. i certainly feel that it may happen and tomorrow CNN-IBN will give me award for innovation. LOL)

Is it a sign of responsible society? If you are reading this, please think for a while, are you gaining anything because of T20 or does it lead to any benefits to our country. When you sum up, India loses more, IPL T20 is making Indian lazy and unproductive. Playing in casino is a gambling and IPL T20 is an organized gambling with cricket lovers as mere jokers. The "cricket fanatics" has to remember that it is energy sucker and growth ****er.

Ironically, these business leaders when they go and sit in their office they want their employees to be productive. But they forget the fact that they are the main culprits for making Indians unproductive. It is good that this time we are not going to have T20 in Indian soil. Let us say good bye to 2-month long T20, Lalit Modi, BCCI, Owners of the team and players. Let us spend sometime in thinking on how to make ourselves better and India better. If you are one of the policymaker or responsible citizen, please spread the awareness to fellow Indian. It is the people of India who make the future India and not these kinds of energy suckers. As Gerald Weinberg says, there is thin line between doing and over doing. Even a good thing done beyond a point turns out to be the negative. IPL is now overdoing cricket and let us stop it before it becomes overly non-sense.

Let Indian and India to grow.

Have a Reason to Cheer - Indian IT

It is not even over a month that Mr Obama addressed congress and made a powerful voice against outsourcing. He announced the end of tax breaks to the companies that outsource jobs to other countries. Within a month, I hope, he understood the value that outsourcing creates to US. In the recent statement, Mr Obama, rewrote his words that he was not against outsourcing low-level, low-skill jobs. Is there a reason to say this? Are there any hidden agenda? I believe yes. The emerging markets like India have become no non-sense market place for MNCs because of their consumption power. It is that consumption power that made US, the super power and it is the same consumption power that is going to make India, a super power.

The consumption is so powerful and that is how Pepsi, Coke, Colgate and many other brands are making money. Thanks to globalization. If there is a policy decision against outsourcing, the other countries where the jobs are outsourced will also make some policy decisions against these MNCs. Without outsourcing, the existence of these MNCs is Win-Lose proposition with emerging economies in losing side. I hope that the business organizations in US have understood this and this is right time for the policymakers in emerging markets to keep a watch on the developments. Also, with the current economic slowdown, MNCs will not be able to withstand any further blow. When the economy recovers, the stand on outsource will become irrelevant. Even in the current climate, the US companies wanted to push some "risks" to high value & risk taking Indian companies. So, the outsourcing helps to diversify their risks. :-)

Overall, apart from direct benefits, the outsourcing leads to a lot of flexibility and this flexibility is quite essential for all developed nations, not only to the US. So, moving forward we will see the dilution in "stop outsourcing" slogan and this will be done or can be done as a lip service.