Posts from — October 2003

An anecdote of the 500-mile email, for the amusement of the geek in you!

Definitely worth a chuckle or two! :-)

We have yet another case of a company firing an employee for writing stuff related to the company on his/her blog. This time, the company is Microsoft and the blogger who has been fired, is Michael Hanscom.

Last Thursday (October 23^rd), Michael posted an entry on his blog mentioning how Microsoft was using Apple Power Mac G5 computers in its Redmond campus. The post also contained a photo of a truck offloading the G5s. This seemingly innocuous post was either noticed or brought to the notice of some in Microsoft. And on Monday (October 27^th), Michael’s manager called him to inform him that he was “no longer welcome on the Microsoft campus“. In short, Michael was fired for allegedly violating security.

While blogging about the company you work for, is a dicey practice (and I strongly advise people to refrain from doing it), the way Microsoft has reacted in this incident can only be termed as knee-jerk and haphazard. By summarily firing Michael Hanscom, it has, no doubt, courted a PR disaster. What might’ve stayed fairly unknown, is now spreading across the Net at the speed of blogs.

What I fail to understand is… the photo contained in the post was completely innocent in itself. Michael chose to qualify it as being a pic of inside the Redmond campus. It was his word against that of Microsoft, had Microsoft chosen to merely refute Michael’s claim. But by choosing to fire Michael, Microsoft has implicitly admitted that the photo is indeed what Michael claims it to be and that G5s are indeed used within Microsoft. (I have it from reliable sources that Microsoft uses LINUX quite heavily inspite of publicly deriding claims that Linux is a serious competitor to its Windows line of Operating Systems).

Surely, Microsoft cannot be this naive!!

New Scientist reports that a Colorado based start-up is going to launch what is possibly the world’s smallest full-featured PC, the MCC (Modular Computing Core).

The device is a single portable unit into which all the essential computing components are crammed. At 76 by 127 by 19 millimetres (5 x 3 x 3/4 inches), the MCC is not much bigger than a deck of cards.
…

nside the MCC is a 1GHz microprocessor, 256 MB of RAM and a 10 or 15 GB hard drive. It will also run a full version of Microsoft’s XP operating system, instead of the stripped-down operating systems used by handheld computers.

And, what would you have to shell out to go in for such a hybrid device? Almost $4000!!!

The flight to India

George Monbiot argues that the jobs that are fleeing from the developed nations to developing ones like India are nothing but the jobs that were snatched from these very developing countries by Britain and other imperialist regimes at the height of colonization in the 18th and the 19th centuries.

And even though, I detect a leftist tinge to the whole article, I do agree on most of the points raised by the author of the article.

There is a profound historical irony here. Indian workers can outcompete British workers today because Britain smashed their ability to compete in the past. Having destroyed India’s own industries, the East India Company and the colonial authorities obliged its people to speak our language, adopt our working practices and surrender their labour to multinational corporations. Workers in call centres in Germany and Holland are less vulnerable than ours, as Germany and Holland were less successful colonists, with the result that fewer people in the poor world now speak their languages.

Quite true! The vast spread of the British empire all over the world for nearly two centuries ensured that English was the dominant language in the world. To add to this, the servility to which Indians were reduced under the British rule also ensured that any Indian wanting to rise above his peers and countrymen looked up to his white-skinned masters and learnt their language. The ability to speak English was considered to be a differentiating factor and almost a status symbol. This trend, albeit in a milder avatar, continues to this day.

[the article via Manju's journal]

AR Rehman has been chosen, alongwith a Finnish folk troupe, to score the music for the musical stage version of The Lord of the Rings

“We are recreating Middle Earth and we needed the music that goes with it to be unique,” said Kevin Wallace, who is producing the West End show.

“Rahman writes brilliant melodies with an exotic quality and we know he will write something which audiences will adore,” he added.

Another feather in Rehman’s already much-feathered cap!!