Software as service

I read many articles pointing to the new wave of software applications offered as "services" on the web; Instead of buying and installing a piece of software on your machine, you rent a service that does the same thing for you over the internet; Its like using electricity and gas; use as much as you want and then pay up; except that software is not an "exhaustive" resource like gas, and need not be "regenerated" (although it has to "upgraded" regularly);

When I read about companies like salesforce.com it reminds me of the idea behind the "Multics" operating system that was planned by IBM, Bell labs and GE but never took shape (instead, we have today a popular OS called Unix that implemented many ideas planned in Multics). Multics infact extended this whole idea of rent and use to all computing that you will ever need to do; The idea is that users would rent some computing time, do whatever work they need to get done and then logoff; you will be charged for the time you spent doing computation on multics; Infact, the early "Mainframe" computers implemented the same concept;

I thought about the pros and cons of computing as a service...
advantages:
1. You dont have to own a computer; just a sumb terminal would do; hook up to any one of the good services in town and you are suddenly working on a computer; (its like cable TV)
2. No hassles of installing and maintaing your software (including OS). So no need to buy individual copies of your own collection of software; (Again think of how cable TV works; you dont pay for each channel; the cable company pays for each channel and distributes it; overall, it is a win-win situation for the customer and the operator)
3. You will have a choice of platforms; you can prefer to work on a sophisticated when you are doing business and then switch to a less powerfull one when you are just at home watching a movie / browsing the web etc. Everyone can tailor their account to suit their needs;
4. Enormous power - A lot of computing power can be put in your hands without actually paying to buy that kind of a computer (or even leasing out a super computer for a month); Say you just want good power for a week or a month, you can step up your account and get the power you need; later step it down.
5. If you are a corporate company, probabaly you can buy a central computer to which all your users can hook on; (Think of your own power plant to generate power for your enterprise).

Disadvantages:
1. Makes you dependent on what the computing company provides; Taking the cable TV analogy again, if you want to watch a channel thats not provided by your operator. But software can be customized to your needs; still it needs to be verified how much customization can a generic computing services company can provide for you without burning your ass given the range of hardware platforms and things-to-do.

2. Privacy?? what about privacy?! The computing services company can track what you've doing; thats scary to many.

3. The idea of a "Personal computer" brings with it many emotions and feelings that are really strong given human nature of distrustfulness; that is why the PC became an instant hit. Microsoft realized this way back; so they brought out cheap "personal" computing to everybody; and they made good money.

In the old days big fat Mainframe computers provided centralized computing services to everybody in the neighbourhood; Then the PC wave struck; The trend is going back towards centralized services; only now, the platform is the internet; so the grand illusion is that you get to keep your "personal" computing, but then also access computing services via the world wide web. What does that mean? it means you can compose your e-mail online, you can compose your business proposals on an online word processor (and probably store it on the service provider's website so that it would be accessable to you anytime anywhere), and do all your computing by logging on to another computer;
People are talking about the new wave of web-service based software like salesforce.com; while there are big advantages to this model, think about the 3 points in the disadvantages section above? do they still apply?

Ubuntu!

Just installed Ubuntu Linux on my T43; am happy with it. It took a little prodding to properly install the GUI; but all in all, a good desktop system to be with; especially when you are a comp science student; planning to erase windows completely off my laptop soon; as soon as I get linux replacements for all windows software I use :)

Where it all began

I went to University of Chicago with Dave on tuesday. As we appraoched the building we had to visit, dave showed me a strange bronze structure like that stood like a monument in the centre of an open area. Thats the first place where a controlled nuclear (fission) reaction was succesfully carried out by Enrico Fermi on December 2 1942 !!

So now I can say if a third world war breaks out... I know I know where it all began ...

What it takes

So what does it take to excel in life? to achieve one's goals? you can come up with a host of words like hardwork, persevrance, blah bah; hmm, all that is required, but they dont work when the key factor is missing - and that is called "drive". When you lack the drive to do something, no matter how much hardwork you put into it, you cant get where you want to.

Now how do you get the "drive" to do something?? is it a quality that you have to practise and improve? no! not at all! drive should come naturally. It will. Every human being has a drive to do a different thing. Some person might get a high by coding, another will get it while playing music, yet another will really happy just sleeping most of the day. Now the society tends to call the last kind of person as "lacking any drive". Thats because we view this person as not doing anything that will advance him/her as a human being.

There goes! so all human beings are basically trying to "advance" or "evolve" into something. We have lots of desires. To satisfy some, we go to any extent that is needed. But to some others, we remain "as if" helpless and hope that they will be "automagically" satisfied some day. One day we all want to be able to bring all our desires come true just by thinking about them. That is where we want to go.

Drive comes out of passion, and passion, out of the deep desire. Every human being has a drive to do something, its just a matter of listening to our inner selves and find out what that drive is.. it doesnt take too much time to discover it, you can ask your close friends to tell you what is it that you talk about most often and they will help you discover what your drive is.

When a person works along with the drive, he outshines others. There are too many people around working opposite to their own drives. I see too many people wanting to be onething, and then being something else becuase of the "circumstances". What happens if you dont do what you deeply want to do all your life?? Nothing much, you live a life of mixed happiness and unhappiness and at the end of it all, you suddenly realize that you should have shown the finger to the world and gone ahead with your passions; hmm, and then you choose to return to this world - with a different name, with a different form. Will that help? theres a caveat. You also choose to forget all about your past life, comfortably so it wont disturb you when you are experiencing this life.

This is a giant illusion, that we choose not to see. So, go for it today. What is that you are passionate about. Go for it!