Entrepreneurship

Hi All
Today I read a small query on LinkedIN by one Mr. Alexander Zachary "Why aspire to be an Entrepreneur?"

Peter Nguyen has provided a beautiful response here ... As I have linked to earlier I am a fan of Peter's blogs such as Real Time Success Secrets and I-wrote-the-book-on-blogging and read and re-read them as and when possible.

Thanks to both Alexander and Peter for such a wonderful converstion on LinkedIN.

Best wishes to all of you.
And Happy New Year for the forthcoming. Have a great time. Party hard and have fun

And if you drink ... dont drive !!! Please !!!

Cheers
Gautam

Landmines in Africa

Hi All

Today on LinkedIn one particular message drew my attention. Apparently it was some online competition asking you to enter your email ID and some details and you stand to gain some free holiday stuff. Now usually I am quite sceptical of such things and protect my details online assuming everything "guilty unless proven innocent".

This time also I have not entered the competition and would advice others to use their discretion.

Now that the standard disclaimer is out of the way, the advertisement was on behalf of an organization that apparently have been trying to draw attention to a serious problem threatening our African (and anyone in Africa ofcourse) friends.

Landmines in Africa !

Landmines are disgusting explosive devices hidden underground and can kill or - even worse - seriously cripple those who step on them. Any weapon of war is a cruel device but something that continues long after the war and warriors are gone is - or should be - unacceptable to human society.

Some statistics like

• It is estimated that there are over 100 million landmines on or beneath the surface of this planet.
  
• They kill or maim someone every 20 minutes, usually women and children.

As the Mineseeker website says, this is not a natural disaster or God's act like a Tsunami or a volcano ... this is a man-made disaster.

Thankfully it is heartening to see organizations like the Mineseeker Foundation and "The Sole of Africa" which are making a serious effort to save Africa from this horror. They are being supported by some eminent people across the world - like the Nelson Mandela and the Queen Noor of Jordan and Brad Pitt.

I suggest my readers take some time to view the websites and if you still want the competition link - it is at

Best regards

Gautam

Return to Google SpamoCop

Hi All
Last month I wrote about being flagged by Blogger's spam classifier for my Teletechgyan blog. The Google team wrote back the same day saying
" Your blog has been reviewed, verified, and cleared for regular use so that it will no longer appear as potential spam. If you sign out of Blogger and sign back in again, you should be able to post as normal. Thanks for your patience, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused."

No further explanations ... particularly since I had also asked them why it had been flagged so in the first place ... Well apparently I am not the only one suffering ... apparently even Google's own blog has been hunted down by this 'SpamoCop' ...

Hmm remember that old tale about the King who had a pet monkey? And when the King went to sleep, the monkey used to carry a sword in order to protect its master from mosquitoes ... No prizes for guessing what happened next ...

Hope that Google is not slipping up ... I love it too much ... Here is a positive black link from them ...

Have a good time ... and thanks for coming in ...

Best Regards
Gautam

Guru Pournima

Hi All
Sunday, July 29, 2007 is the auspicious date of Guru-Pournima. While for a disciple, every date has the same importance in terms of regards and respects for his/ her Guru or teacher, Guru-Pournima has a particular significance as it signifies the relationship of love and care between the teacher and disciple.

The Hindu culture and religions accord the highest place of worship to the Guru with the following Shloka.

Gurur Brahma, Gurur Vishnu, Gurur Devoh Maheshwarah,

Gurur Sakshat Parabrahma. Tasmay Shri Guruveh namah !!!

This date has significance for all - whether the Sanyasis who having left the material world seek the ultimate knowledge to free themselves or the knowledge-workers like myself who seek to live and prosper in this material world -- for what is this knowledge, if not the blessings of all our Gurus who have guided us throughout our student and professional life.

As I thank all the kind teachers who from time to time guided me on the right path, I remember and seek blessings of the One Supreme Guru - Sadguru Shri Saibaba of Shirdi - who has always guided me through all moments of my life and whose mercy and kind grace I seek beyond anything else.





For the disciples of Shri Saibaba, the festival of Guru-Pournima is indeed the most significant one as it is said that this is the only festival which Baba himself asked his disciples to celebrate ...

On Sunday, please join me in seeking the blessings of Shri Saibaba, to remember our Gurus with love and respect and to pray for peace and well-being of all ...



Best Regards

Gautam

Spam Gyan?

Hi All
This afternoon I was quite dismayed to find my blog on telecom information being blocked as a spam blog !!!

I have no real clue why this has happened. Whether I have offended one of the robot's rules or I am having too many bookmarks in the posts (believe me every single one of them is valuable ... if one has the time to read ...) or just plain bad luck at getting up on the wrong side of the bed today.

Hope this resolves soon ... I really don't want to move my blogs from Blogspot.

Till then, thank you for being here ...
Good evening, good day and have a safe time ....

Cheers
Gautam

Yes Mrs President

Finally the inevitable has come true ... India's first woman president, Mrs. Pratibha Patil. We may have wanted her to win the election or we may not have ... but now that she has, we stand united behind her.

We only hope that she will live up to the wonderful personality of outgoing President APJ Abdul Kalam and the hope and inspiration he lighted up among thousands and lakhs of Indians in India and abroad.

Best of Luck, Mrs. Patil.

Best Regards
Gautam Sarnaik

LinkedIN Answers

Hi All,
I managed to make it to the front page of the LinkedIN Answers section. Hmm .. you have to scroll down all the way to the bottom to see it ... and I wont be there for more than few hours as others join in and march ahead ...


So whats the big deal?
Other than some unabashed self promotion and visibility (I received emails and invites from some very high quality members of LinkedIN), it also is a great deal of self-satisfaction -
LI is a user driven professional networking site so every time one answers, one is adding value and content to the community.


At the end of the day that value generation is worth much more than all amount of self-promotion :-) the second helps too ... particularly when a recruiter writes in asking for the CV ...

Have a great day and see you on LinkedIN ...

Best Regards
Gautam

Recycle

Just my two-pence for the green ...
Please see the next two URLs and see what you can do ...

http://www.reducerubbish.govt.nz/recycle/tips.html
http://www.foe.co.uk/living/poundsavers/top_tips_waste.html

Best Luck ...
Best Regards ...

People -- Assets or Stakeholders?

Someone asked an interesting question today on LinkedIN. It went something like "Does anyone really believe that people are the most important assets for an organization?"

It reminds me that one of the first principles of COBIT is that IT Resources includes "people" (along with "applications", "information" and "infrastructure"). So also other literature and best practice guidance classifies people as an important IT or business assets.

So far, so good. :-)

I find it a bit difficult to agree to people being classified as assets or resources along with infrastructure, applications etc.

In our view of assets, we expect them to add value to the business or work at hand without asking any questions! I mean one doesn't have to seek a "buy-in" from an application to get it to work -- sometimes 24 hours a day without asking for any "return" of any sort. Imagine doing that with any person anywhere.

Just to stretch it a bit more, one needs preventive maintenance on most physical assets to ensure the quality and productivity of the assets. The nearest to this with "people" assets is the training and improvement programs that need to be conducted. In this scenario, the maintenance program acts on the asset which can be termed as a passive recipient. Contrast this with training programs where the best trainer cannot achieve much if the attendees are not receptive and motivated. Without adequate participation by the "human asset", ensuring quality and productivity is not achieved.

IMO, people should not be viewed as "assets" but rather as "stake-holders". Only that view will incorporate the fact that people do things with an objective and expect their efforts to be met with due returns.

Whether the returns are monetary or otherwise and what means there would be to ensure motivation are different stories. Let us at least accept that people are much more than just "assets" or "resources".

Have a good day and thanks for spending some time with me.

Gautam

Business Acumen for Security professionals

Have you ever had that experience when you keep thinking of something for a long long time ... maybe months sometimes ... and then something totally unrelated points you into the right direction ?

(Yeah I know I sound like Archimedis and Kekule, but no, I haven't made any discoveries yet).

What I was referring to was an excellent excellent article here http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/secmvp/sv0507.mspx written by Gideon T. Rasmussen.

A lot is said about the need for Information Security to align with business and for professionals to be sensitive to business needs. Gideon comes up with some practical advice on the "how". Read it first-hand at the site.

Gideon is an experienced Information Security professional, one of the leading members of the CISAforum group on Yahoo and has been recently honoured with the Microsoft MVP award. His personal web-site is at http://www.gideonrasmussen.com/

Happy Reading ...

A car is just a machine to get from point A to point B

Hmm ... I am definitely not a car lover (btw that's both my wife's and my father-in-law's biggest disappointment in me ) but hey, when a 76 year old leader is upstaged from the market, one has to sit up and take notice ...

Thats about Toyota finally getting ahead of GM in global vehicle sales. Okay quickly, Toyota just managed 2.35 million to GM's global 2.26 ... so GM who has been the world leader for 76 years may just come back ... But this quarter atleast Toyota is the world leader. My friend Yash, who loves his Toyota is going to be happy over this ...

Me? I still am a Maruti-Esteem fan (thats my first and ex-car) & would go for a Nissan Pathfinder as and when I get a driving license here in Kuwait ... Aha ! But that driving license is another story altogether ...

Btw this story about cars made me remember how my best friend Navin used to be all crazy about good looking cars when we were kids ... Hes in Oregon (hoping that I spelt it right), USA now and I hope he has a great car with him ... Wonder if it is a GM ?

Blackberry blackout

Last week's Blackberry blackout refreshes two important lessons for IT Operations.

First is ofcourse never deploy without adequate testing. RIM went on record to state that the outage on Tuesday/ Wednesday which left millions of users affected was caused by an untested (or atleast 'not tested sufficiently enough') system update. Talk about explanation being worse than crime ...
http://www.topix.net/business/telecom/2007/04/system-update-led-to-blackberry-outage and
http://news.com.com/2100-1039_3-6177829.html?part=rss&tag=2547-1_3-0-20&subj=news

Anyone who feels that testing is so much waste of time and resources (imagine setting up a separate test environment ... and what about all those deadlines) ... should just take a look at what RIM customers are just thinking about ... Blackberry Dependency Re-evaluated After RIM Service Outage ...

Another aspect comes from the following "Blackberry said in a statement that the failure was triggered by 'the introduction of a new, non-critical system routine' designed to increase the system's e-mail holding space. " -- From BBC News Report

Consider the 'non-critical'. If something that affects millions of users is 'non-critical', then there is something seriously wrong with the classification perception.
How is a technology asset classified? Is it on the value of the hardware or the number of lines of code in the software patch ? Or is it on the potential impact to customers or loss of value in business that could be caused by such a failure?
Was there a business owner for this asset who signed-off or approved the application of a change/ update? Was he informed of the "non-critical" classification with a reliable data? Was he involved at all in the classification process?

So many questions. RIM is a great company and I am sure they will already have thought about these and many more things. They will only grow stronger and come back with stronger processes to avoid such things in the future.

The point is if such a great company can make a mistake that can lead to such a high impact, the rest of us need to be doubly careful ... So are, your technology assets classified adequately?

Have a good time ...

Business Continuity Management

BSI has recently come up with a new standard for Business Continuity Management (BCM) -- the BS25999 ... This is a continuity of PAS 56 which is now withdrawn. You can buy the standard here at http://www.bsi-global.com/en/Shop/Publication-Detail/?pid=000000000030157563

In step with it, The BCI (Business Continuity Institute) has updated its Good Practice Guideline (GPG) which is available for free download at http://www.thebci.org/gpg.htm

The GPG (2007 version) is nicely aligned with the BS25999 so that even if you have not seen the Standard, the guideline has the entire information and more. So I would definitely recommend it for those who want to study or implement BC in their organization.

It is common sense that BCM is desirable and that organizations should implement BCM. But in real life only a limited number of organizations consciously work towards creating and maintaining their BCM plans. So I was wondering what is it that motivates those organizations or their Managements to put BCM on their radar? Are there some differentiators between those organizations that do put in the efforts towards their Business Continuity and those that pay only lip service ?
As a corollary, what could motivate an organization to start or increase its efforts towards establishing a BCM? Do post your comments ....

Tips for a successful Blog

A question today on LinkedIN (not from me) put into words exactly what I had been thinking ... how to build a great blog.
The answers are still coming in but the initial ones pointed to a couple of very good links at:
http://www.avivadirectory.com/successful-blog-launch/?p=1 (21 Surefire Tips ... a very interesting compilation of tips for the new blogger. Hope I manage to follow it well.)

http://www.cafemama.com/etiquette.html (This one is about etiquette in the blogosphere ...) .

Speaking on etiquette, Tim OReilly has an interesting "Code Of Conduct" proposed some time back at http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/03/call_for_a_blog_1.html which took a lot of bouquets as well as brickbats.

Happy Reading ....

Telecom Gyan Blog

Taking a cue from Peter's post ( http://iwrotethebookonblogging.blogspot.com/2007/03/44-if-you-dont-know-who-you-are-writing.html ) , I decided to set up another blog. This one for those who want to learn about and discuss Telecom Industry -- both technology and Operational processes.

Btw, I strongly recommend reading Peter Nguyens blogs at
http://iwrotethebookonblogging.blogspot.com/index.html
http://realtimesuccesssecrets.blogspot.com/index.html


The telecom blog is at http://teletechgyan.blogspot.com/ ... As usual here is hoping that I actually keep putting some content there :-)

Cheers

The WC Show

Uggh ... sorry if this sounds under the belt ... particularly for those who know nothing about Cricket or the World Cup ...

The headline is "Sachin, Sourav questioned for poor WC show" (really ?) ... The brave can read it all at ... http://worldcup.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1850356.cms

Cheers


PS: Thanks to Shehryar Malik ... my Pakistani brother ... for pointing out this great headline ...

National Cricket team

The below is from an email I sent this morning to a friend in reply to an email over the World Cup. Just some random thoughts.
-------------------------------------------------

With reference to cricket or any other sports, I really fail to see why any country (or atleast in our own context, why India) should have any 'national team'? Let me explain
Whether cricket or football or hockey or even Kabaddi, it is a game played by n number of players for their own recreation. Possibly these games are watched for recreation or 'pass-time' (or worse, time-pass) by whoever need the 'recreation' or 'time-pass'.

Further, with the due commercialization each individual sportsperson is a business-man or professional out to earn his income - no grudges to that. Each sport is hence only a mechanism or vehicle for that businessman to achieve his business goals.

Now the question comes: Do we have a national business? Are there world-cup competitions of engineering (bridge-building or running railway trains or making roads) or of the medical profession ( treating ordinary colds to high precision surgeries in the most sensitive parts of the body)? Do we have competitions of 'selling chappals' or of 'auditing corporate finances'?

Now consider these sports businesses. Hundreds of people go crazy with saying "Indian" team and "Pakistani" team and whatever. Songs are written about football teams ("Braazzziiiil ... ara ... ra.. rara .. rara .raaa) :-)

But what is worse is using national flags and symbols - even use of anthems and national songs. Who gave any crowd the right or the moral ground to burn flags whether our own or even of Pakistan (our highest visibility 'enemy' in India) in the name of sports? Consider any high profile match ... people wave about national flags, then when they are tired these same flags are kept to a side without any respect and sometimes people even sit on them. Finally at the end of the match there are incidents of flag burning and desecrations. So why?

People often give the argument that BCCI is a profit making organization and is not taking subsidies from government. Same is not the case with other sports businesses. Even in case of the profit making ones, how much are they then paying the Government or the People of India to use and insult the Indian national flags? Does our flag have a price?

It works both ways when 11 people go and win the 1983 world cup or when another 11 people go and lose to the Bangalis in 2007, why should the nation feel either pride or sorrow or why should the nation be affected at all? Is the Nation smaller than the abilities and priorities of the 11 people out there? Sad is the day when a loss on a sports field is taken to affect the destinies of millions of people in the country.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay so ramblings ... but I wonder if there are people who think on similar lines ...

Cheers
Gautam

Sudan Pictures

Pictures from our Nile boat trip taken over the Blue Nile in Sudan are here
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/gotya101/album?.dir=/c601re2&.src=ph&.tok=phQO7cGBtUxE1.k2

Hope you enjoy these ...

Khartoum - Sudan

Am in Sudan! Here on official trip for MTC. But that's not what I want to write about.

Came in here yesterday. Sudan seems a poor country but a very beautiful one in what I saw since yesterday. My hotel has a nice view of both the "White Nile" and the "Blue Nile" which confluence somewhere in/near Khartoum (that's where I am) and then flows on as the Nile. The roads are narrow and dusty and overall it couldn't be any different from a small town in India. The temperature is rising (it was 43 Celsius when we reached here yesterday and it is just the start of summer ). But there is a pleasant river side breeze ... overall the place seems beautiful ...

Yes, I know there are lot of problems and violence in and around Sudan. Darfur is only too well known. But just wanted to put in this post that there are some good things out here too ... Wish the best to the people of Sudan for a peaceful and developing future ahead ...

Creating Passionate Users

I started off posting some links from this blog to my shared items.
Then the more I read, the more I wanted to share it with you ... so finally let me just recommend this blog to you all.
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/

In their own words, Kathy Sierra and Dan Russell -- "The Creating Passionate Users bloggers are all fascinated by brains, minds and what science can tell us about the practice of making users passionate about their lives and tools " !

Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I do.

Google Reader and sharing blogs

I recently started using Google Reader. From what I am seeing its a nice piece of software which collects updates from all across the web -- particularly places like blogs and web sites which get updated at a sporadic rate.

I have defined a few sites which I like to check for updates and it alerts me when there is a new post (thanks to RSS of course -- what RSS is I truly am blissfully unaware of -- I never had the heart to go check what made it tick really). But anyways, it works.

So what? Well more beautiful is a small feature they have provided which ties up what I read and like with what I can update on my blog -- "Share"!
So now if I find things interesting I can just share a link through this place.
I am not 'copying' anything so not a threat to anyone's IP and at the same time I can redirect people to more worthwhile readings than my ramblings :-) That's the good thing.

Happy reading ...
Bye for now

Still Alive

I thought that I will post some apologies and some explanations putting it down to laziness etc etc as to why there is nothing new on this blog.

But the objective of this space is not to spend time on regrets, gloom and repentance (that can be done in private) rather to try to make amends and move on in our quest to add some value.

So for all the lost time, here is a set of links to browse through before I come back with something better.
Related to Unix systems security controls or audit:
http://security.berkeley.edu/MinStds/Disabling-Unix.html
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-0365/6mg5vpmfh?a=view
http://www.niiconsulting.com/tuaph1.html
http://www.softpanorama.org/Articles/notes_on_solaris_hardening.shtml
http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-0365/6mg5vpmjd?a=view

Unix Shell programming:(old bookmarks, may be slightly outdated -- but very good for beginners)
http://www.esscc.uq.edu.au/~ksteube/Bshell/
http://www.ucs.fsu.edu/docs/unix_commands.html

Hope this is of use ...

Link of the Day - 3

Yet another Link of the day to cover up for my laziness.
http://www.tmforum.org/browse.aspx?catID=1648 This is an overview of the eTOM framework for telecom operators.
I promise to write more about this later in this space.

Cheers
Gautam

Link of the day - 2

Another lazy day and another lazy environment out here in Kuwait. Its raining since morning. Wet, cloudy and definitely anything but conducive to work. This is the type of weather to sit in the garden under a big umbrella, feel the breeze in your face and watch the clouds and the rain play tricks on your mind ... not to forget the cup of hot tea ofcourse ...

Well seems great -- so that's what I will do ... In the meantime, you can visit the following website to know more about Enterprise Risk management :-)
http://www.casact.org/research/erm/

Okay, just to be nice to you also, I will also leave you with a Leisure link of the day ...
http://www.digitalcamera-hq.com/digital-cameras/ Quite a good site to be checking out digital cameras, understanding features for newbies and making all sort of comparisons between vendors and models. Don't buy a digital camera without looking at this site ....

Cheers

Link of the day -1

Since I was too lazy -- as is to be expected -- to really post some great new information here, I thought let me just put out one good link that I have recently visited here. Will call this the link of the day and try to be regular in updating this for my readers.

Link of the day -- 1
http://operationalrisk.blogspot.com/ --> Blog space on Operational Risk Management

Enjoy.

As we go

Even as we said in the introduction, the intention is to spread knowledge and positive thoughts using this blog.
Be aware that I have tried this before ... with very very limited success. And somewhere at back of my mind, I know that this blog space will also fall into dis-use soon. :-)


Before I give you the links of previous failures (gloom ? -- no failures are stepping stones to success hence I do not view them negatively) -- but before I do that let me give you links to the reason I am here making a fresh attempt.

First the blog of a very good friend -- Praveen Bhat. I do not know whether he has assumed a new name in his life in the Sanyas zone ... but his blog is very much active at http://anythingwise.blogspot.com/ -- He puts some thoughts so beautifully that one can only marvel at his observation powers and ability to record both his thoughts and feelings.

Another very good reason were the blogs being maintained by Sasikumar (I should correctly say Dr. Sasikumar) who beneath is polite and soft-spoken appearance is one of the most deep thinking teacher and inspiring individual that I have ever personally met. His blogs are at http://the-little-sasi.livejournal.com/ and http://thelittlesasi.blogspot.com/

Finally, Dr. Ramani's logs on http://newstudentresearch.blogspot.com/ -- He, as always, has made an inspiring and innovative use of his blog-space to stimulate serious student research into areas of ICT. I hope he is able to inspire and mentor as many young researchers as he did when he touched our lives in NCST.

Well, looking at the blogs of all these great people above, I thought of having some small place for myself also to try to contribute something good to the world.

As I wrote earlier, I did try some of this earlier -- but it was either a negative cribbing or unabashed self-promotion.
You can check my blog at MSN space although be assured you are not missing anything if you don't -- http://spaces.msn.com/members/gsarnaik/
You can also check my web sites at http://www.sarnaik.net and http://gautam.sarnaik.net both of which degenerated into self-promotion so I don't update it too much!
Anyways these links are here just for the record. So when i come back here, I will remember where my pages are :-)

Well, have a good day and see you soon.
InshaAllah, I will have more positive information here in future.

PS: The original post was published days back but had some major errors on account of not using a spell-check! For those who missed it I am not going to say what they were hence today -- Jan 21, I am putting out a corrected version.

Introduction

Let us just say Shri Ganeshay Namah !!! and start with it.

Being a reader by habit, an auditor by profession, and engineer by education there is an inbuilt compulsion to conform with the practice of putting an introduction first and foremost [luckily I dont have to put an index/ table of contents here].

The title to begin with -- Surya-rath : meaning the Chariot of the Sun.
I remember reading a few lines from the Bhagwad Gita wherein Shri Krishna says to Arjuna that this mind/ thoughts are like the horses of a charioter. All are strong able-bodied horses and each wants to go in his own direction and speed.

Just like that the mind wanders as it goes ahead and random thoughts of differing strengths go through it. Sometimes it is just a pleasant journey, seeing where the chariot goes ... tasting what is pleasant in the sight and sounds as they come ... So does my mind wander first to this then that ... The Internet only gives a well paved highway for such wandering.

Some times the wandering leads to uueful subjects like technology, IT, Management, Money, friends, networking, career, education etc etc .... and sometimes it drops one down into swamps from where it is difficult to extract oneself. but now we truly wander.

Anyways so the same Shri Krishna has also said that the Yogi (dont know who he is but lets just go ahead) is like a skilled charioteer who knows his horses well and guides them all along a common and good direction. Thats what makes an efficient chariot -- let us also guide our ramblings and thoughts into a common good direction.

That wandering must have explained the rath i.e. the chariot. If chariot it is, then I can think of only a few symbols -- "Shri Krishna and Arjuna" "Ben-Hur" and our own Surya-dev or Sun-God. It is said that the Surya dev has a Golden rath of 7 horses. All strong and able bodied ... But the charioteer, Aruna [For the record, Aruna was the elder brother of Garuda which is Vishnu's 'vahana' or vehicle]

Since the intention of this blog is both to wander about and talk about/ experience the good which better rath than that of the Sun-God. Just as He with his mere arrival dispels away all gloom and darkness, and keeps away everything dark and shadowy -- let this blog only experience the good and try to keep from wandering into the dark or negative ...

With this few words ;-) let us go forth ...