• A design methodology for reliable software systems
• Goto statements considered harmful
• Hierarchical program structures
• Protection in programming languages
• Global variables considered harmful

There were a few more.  She also explained liskov substitution principle.  The next talk was by Dr. Raj Reddy.  I liked his knowledge navigator video very much.  After this, Sir Tony Hoare talked about the international verified software initiative.   Today’s programs were concluded with a panel discussion on lack of research initiatives in Indian education institutions. Various reasons and possible remedies were discussed. 

ACM Bangalore chapter is organizing compute-2010 tomorrow and day after.  I’m planning to attend the morning session where they talk about cloud computing.

I always believed that those harmful rays always existed.  Only difference is that, you will never be able to see the Sun directly due to its brightness.  This is possible on an eclipse day.  More over, though the light appears not that intense on an eclipse day, its good enough to harm your cornea.  Note that, Cornea doesn’t have any way to sense pain and you will never see when your rods and cones are getting burnt. 

This report from Nasa supports the above argument.  Here are some excerpts. (Thanks to Girish for pointing out to this report)

The only time that the Sun can be viewed safely with the naked eye is during a total eclipse, when the Moon completely covers the disk of the Sun. It is never safe to look at a partial or annular eclipse, or the partial phases of a total solar eclipse, without the proper equipment and techniques. Even when 99% of the Sun’s surface (the photosphere) is obscured during the partial phases of a solar eclipse, the remaining crescent Sun is still intense enough to cause a retinal burn, even though illumination levels are comparable to twilight [Chou, 1981, 1996; Marsh, 1982]. Failure to use proper observing methods may result in permanent eye damage or severe visual loss. This can have important adverse effects on career choices and earning potential, since it has been shown that most individuals who sustain eclipse-related eye injuries are children and young adults [Penner and McNair, 1966; Chou and Krailo, 1981].

There are other Indian superstitions to spice up an Eclipse.  I’ll leave that for another post.

RFC 3601 (Text String Notation for Dial Sequences and  Global Switched Telephone Network (GSTN) / E.164 Addresses) defines the implementation of pause and tonewait as follows:

Implementation of  ‘pause’  and ‘tonewait’: 

• one instance of a ‘pause’ SHOULD be interpreted as a pause of one second between the preceding and succeeding dial string elements;
• a ‘tonewait’ SHOULD be interpreted as a pause that will last until the calling party hears a dial tone or another indication  that more dial string characters may be processed. An off-hook  indication MAY also be interpreted as this kind of indication      (meaning that the audio channel has been opened to the  receiving party)

As you notice, the above number sequence is very long. Sometimes, Airtel doesn’t connect you correctly within the 4-8 seconds delay you introduced between the numbers.  You can add a ‘tonewait (w)’ instead of pause.  So, if you modify the above number like this:

1802202w123456789012#w0015172345678#w123456#
Note that, ‘p’ has been replaced with ‘w’.  In this case, phone waits for the next set of sequences at every ‘w’.  You can listen to the prompt and ask phone to send next sequences.  On nokia, you will see the prompt “Send” against one of the option keys.  Blackberry shows the next sequence of numbers  and wait for you to press the trackball to send those numbers.  I noticed that Blackberry ignores the ‘w’ if you have a ‘p’ and ‘w’ together.

However, storing the numbers like this become annoying soon because:

• Airtel doesn’t have the notion of recharging.  (This service is outsourced to another company).  You get a new account number when you ‘recharge’ and you have to edit your phonebook and update all numbers that you stored this way.
• You may want to dial different numbers. Dialing this entire sequence (if not stored in the phone book) is time consuming considering that quality of service is not great from Airtel and there is no guarantee that you will get connected at the first attempt.   More over, your line will get disconnected multiple times and you will have to redial if you are taking the call while traveling in Bangalore.
• You will take more time to get into a conference number because you have to dial a large sequence of numbers.

This is where I started exploring the way of registering your phone for the account number that you receive so that if I use my phone to dial out, I don’t need to enter the account number.  This FAQ from Airtel was the starting point.  This didn’t work as expected and the customer care was clueless as usual.  Here are the steps to register your phone.

• Dial 1802202
• Enter your 12 digit account number
• You may be asked to choose the language if this is the first time you are using the number after a recharge
• Dial 111# after the IVR announces your account balance
• Follow the IVR.  Press 1 for registering the card.
• You will be asked to enter the PIN.  The default PIN is 0000 (4 zeros).  You can’t change this.
• You will be given another set of options related to phone registration.  Follow the IVR and register the phone.  You will have to enter 0091 before your 10digit phone number.

Henceforth, you will be presented with your card balance anytime you dial 1802202 using your registered phone.  Your dialing sequence becomes simple now. For eg.

1802202w0015171234568#w12345#

(Use ‘w’ or ‘p’ as explained earlier).  Just register your phone after a recharge every time and then you don’t need to update your phone book entries.

One last line of caution for those who use your mobile phone for taking calls. I noticed that my line gets disconnected at every hour.  Airtel customer care tells me that there is a DoT regulation that the lines should not be active continuously for more than an hour.  I don’t know if this is true or this is a way of Airtel managing a large number of customer base with fewer lines.

Sony announced PRS-600 and PRS-300 at the same time.  I decided to go for PRS-600BC for the following reasons

• Touch Screen
• Free hand highlighting and note taking capabilities
• Built-in dictionary
• Multiple format support

The last one was the decision point when I have to choose between Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader.

I received my Sony Reader (after some struggle due to back orders) just before I left Utah.  I was hoping that I can use the Reader as a tool for my references, like read through multiple books, mark sections, refer them back etc.  I realized after using ti for a couple of days that, eBook Readers are best used just as a Reader. It’s slow to skip through pages and highlight (on screen writing works pretty well though).  I switched to using this just as a Reader now. 

I’ve been using the Reader for over two months now.  I’m very used to with the Reader and its there always with me when ever I go out.   Here are my observations….

Good Stuff first…

• Small and convenient to carry around
• Can be used for taking small notes
• Over 350 books with you always
• Supports PDF

And things that I don’t like

• While PRS-505 looks better than real paper, PRS-600 has a lot of touch screen glare.  Its difficult to read in a room with fluorescent light.
• PDF docs needs to be zoomed for better readability. You can’t copy text in this mode.
• Music and image quality is not great.

Operating System Supported

You need Sony’s application to purchase ebook from Sony’s ebook store.  I wish I never have to use this software.  Sony supports only windows platform.  I took almost an hour to figure out how to transfer some files to the device.
I searched around for a linux client before I purchased the Reader.  Calibre is much better than Sony’s own software (except that you can’t purchase books) and supports multiple platforms.  I use my linux laptop to manage the device completely using Calibre.

I’m very happy with my PRS-600BC.  Its very handy and convenient with its leather book like cover.  I already finished 4 books (including the Lost Symbol!!!) already and I’m afraid that I’m getting addicted to the Reader.  However, I would recommend PRS-505 anytime if you are not very interested in dictionary, online note taking etc.

• Google Calendar
• Google Voice (Funny that these two are still not integrated)
• Gizmo VoIP  
• Desktop applications
• System Date and Time
• GroupWise
• Thunderbird lightning

Why can’t they all read my primary timezone from my desktop and give my an option to set it accordingly. I wish HTML5 has an option for webservices to read your local time and set if required.

• Majority of people will be most advanced beginners in a particular skill
• being an expert in one skill might make you competent and proficient in in dozen others (in a lighter note, if I know how to debug on one platform, I can do it on any!!!)
• Treat your junior team members in a similar fashion as you would your experts and show them the big picture

What do you think???

Here is a WikiPedia reference to Dreyfus model of skill acquisition for the more enthusiasts.

Another pretty good collaboration by Google and Gizmo a week back added SIP support for Google Voice through Gizmo.  I just got my Google Voice and Gizmo integrated for both incoming and outgoing calls.  Google Voice call quality is amazing.  Its very easy to use and integrates well with your google address book.  Now, my next project is to get my phone, google and ovi to sync contacts and appointments so that I have a single list of contacts across all my collaboration services.

Presentations also started today.  I must admit that the sessions were targeted mostly towards CTOs and CFOs.   These are not very technical in nature, but strategic and direction centric.  There were case studies by organizations and early adopters of cloud.  The day started with a number of presentations from Burton Group on Application architecture for the cloud.  A few interesting suggestions were:

• Consumers should build their applications by consuming various services available in the cloud rather than building themselves
• Simply migrating applications is not a a Cloud Application Architecture
• Lack of clarity and hype slows adoption of cloud and increased skepticism
• Bill Peter of Intercontinental Hotels Group said SLAs not sufficient in Public, one of the main reasons they went ahead with private cloud
• Eli Lilly came up with the challenges they faced while moving to cloud

Vendor Hospitality Suites is one of the attractions for this conference.   Vendors are given a chance  to demonstrate their technologies and talk to customers here.  Novell was unveiling the Cloud Security Services.  Novell was given a room and a demo place in the interoperability lab where Novell demonstrated SSO to PivotLink through NCS.

Novell NCS Kiosk

Tom Cecere talking about NCS in the vendor lightning round

Tom Cecere explaining the product to a number of potential customers

Dale Olds and Mike from PivotLink talking to some of our Quest friends