It’s with great amusement that I am watching the ongoing battle between Google and China. What started as an almost diplomatic allegation over “hackers” gaining entry to Google’s developers’ desktops in its Chinese offices, is now threatening to blow over to a full scale war.
But however, is it only me who is seeing Google and China as unlikely opponents? Here are some similarities I found between them:
Google operates as a monopoly, so does the Chinese government.
The Communist party has a two tier membership – one for the influential and one for the masses. So does Google – Class A & B shares divide the influential and the peasants.
Chinese practice an open “people’s government” in which it chooses what should be open and what not. Google too practices an “open internet” policy, in which it chooses what is open and what not.
A world economy without the Chinese manufacturing backend cannot be imagined in any way. Similarly, a world economy without Google’s information peddling backend cannot be imagined.
China aims to achieve global superiority by being totally self-reliant and also by buying up other countries. Google also is trying to be self-reliant in its own sphere of economy by entering into diverse areas such as Electricity, Broadband, Wireless, TV/Radio and even Real Estate.
These similarities do not end here. But does continue in other areas. Nevertheless, we will never know the actual reasons behind the current face-off between Google and China.
But, IMHO Google must strike a deal with China and stay back just in order to live to fight another day.
Of late, we’ve been getting a huge number of mails from freshers/final year students looking for jobs. Though we are not in a recruiting mode now, we encourage people to send their résumés. But, most of them fail to make even a basic impression with the covering letters they send.
Take a look at one such:
Dear sir/madem,
Im ***********, persuing final year MCA in ********** (VTU affilated) I will passout in 2009.
I here by request u that give an opportunity to work in ur company.
Plz Inform any openings.
I attached my resume here.
Thank you,
This person has studied throughout in urban schools and is from an urban background and even his academic credentials look good. But it is pretty obvious, he cannot communicate properly.
To be honest, my prior experience tells me that lack of communication/language skills, doesn’t really stop people from being innovative or hardworking. But the initial impression doesn’t allow these persons to get a chance in most cases.
I sincerely believe, switching the communication mode to the language in which they are most comfortable with – ಕನ್ನಡ, for example – might make a difference.
We scored one more for a migration of a Windows based network to a Linux based one. The nitty-gritty’s yet to be done. The situation currently at the company in question is typical of many SMEs.
When a company pays for a vendor lock-in, they buy not only into the upgrades/support, they also “buy in” a assured End-Of-Life date for the product. Though it’s natural that any product reaches it’s EOL sooner or later, open source based products usually follow a evolutionary approach to progression and growth.
I’ve seen Sendmail installations that have withstood the march of time and have been maintained and upgraded regularly without the need for any redeployment, massive reconfiguration or any increase in IT budgets. I’ve seen software systems deployed at a time when the term open source was not at all coined running the show without any complaints.
Open Source based solutions really work wonders on a SME’s infrastructure breadth, stability, budget. The only weak link in such deployments are the availability of skilled people to maintain and enhance the services.
This is where we come in. We do take out a lot of headache for SMEs (and a couple of Large corporates too).
BTW, we have an interesting internship programme for students, freshers who wish to learn more about Linux deployments. If you’re interested do drop me a mail
Thanks to sachin, saw this movie a week or so back. I would rate this one as one of the best dramas ever I’ve experienced. The best thing about the movie are the dialogues. Sample this:
Though out of context, it might not make much sense. Watching the entire movie really gets one thinking. It got me! Reflecting!!
