Category Archives: general issues

The Scourge of Silly Software Patents

I was about to link to a story about a major software company suing another for software patent violations which included such brilliant ideas as “System and method for providing and displaying a web page having an embedded menu“. Then … Continue reading

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Dreams of the Future

Robert Fortner reminds us that speech recognition is going nowhere: The accuracy of computer speech recognition flat-lined in 2001, before reaching human levels. The funding plug was pulled, but no funeral, no text-to-speech eulogy followed. Words never meant very much … Continue reading

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Thoughts on Randy Pausch

I will be posting more on Randy Pausch’s “The Last Lecture” in a different post, but before that, I wanted to talk about the context in which his lecture takes place. Taken by itself, the speech is very inspiring and … Continue reading

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Are Indian Software Developers “Code Donkeys”?

The recent 40th StackOverflow podcast with Michael Lopp had some pretty harsh words for Indian software programmers and the outsourcing industry in general. The transcript is incomplete, so you have to hear the podcast, but what I heard went something … Continue reading

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Are You Warming the Earth with Google Searches?

The Times (UK) has an item on the environmental effects of Google searches. Apparently, each Google search takes up the equivalent of half the energy of boiling a kettle. The report also cites a Gartner report that the global IT … Continue reading

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Indian Software Product Innovation

This is a follow-up from my previous article, The Rising Rupee-Dollar Ratio“. Whenever there is talk about the growth of the Indian IT industry, there is much lamenting of the fact that almost all the revenues come from outsourced services such … Continue reading

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The Rising Rupee-Dollar Ratio

I recently received an email article entitled “Stronger Rupee, Stronger India”. The essay was about the appreciation of the Indian Rupee against the US Dollar since the beginning of the year. The author’s argument was that a stronger rupee was … Continue reading

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Flash Forward

There was an incredible story in the news today about a Polish man, Jan Grzebski, who woke up 19 years after having fallen in a coma. He attributed his survival to his caring wife, Gertuda, who stayed by her husband’s side … Continue reading

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Tragic Massacre at Virginia Tech

The killing of more than 30 people at Virginia Tech has shocked the country. The list of victims has been released. Among the faculty, there is a Holocaust survivor. 4 other teachers and more than 20 students died, including a … Continue reading

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Helping Developing Nations

The developments in many Third World countries over the past few decades show that poor nations cannot go it alone in their development efforts. Richer nations are expected to help them. Many countries need a basic level of growth (at or … Continue reading

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