BinaryDay

You must have heard about Issac Asimov. He was one of the best known science fiction writers in the world.

He is the person who gave us the Three Laws of Robotics.

Asimov thought that The Last Question, first copyrighted in 1956, was his best short story ever.

Do take out a few minutes and read this. If you have even a little bit inclination towards science, you will love this.

Links:
- http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm
OR
- http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html

PS: Do not read the end first, if you really want to enjoy this.

Almost all of you who have studied even a little bit of programming must identify these words “hello world”. I am pretty sure the first program you read printed these words on the screen.

The first known instance of the usage of the words “hello” and “world” together in computer literature occurred earlier, in Kernighan’s 1972 Tutorial Introduction to the Language B, with the following code:


main( ) {
extrn a, b, c;
putchar(a); putchar(b); putchar(c); putchar('!*n');
}
a 'hell';
b 'o, w';
c 'orld';


Then it was used as the first program in the famous book “The C programming Language” by Kernighan and Ritchie.
The code is below :

main() {
printf("hello, world
");
}


For a detailed information on Hello World programs check out this link on wikipedia

It’s not necessary to have a big thing to make history !!!

Looks like it is going to be a lousy year for Indian IT professionals. Yesterday TCS sent out a letter to its employees, informing them about a cut in the pay. And now Mint reports that Indian firms including wipro,satyam and HCL are predicting a lower hike in salary this year.

On the positive side Infosys expects a 12-15% salary hike as usual. And more importantly techies can expect the smaller companies to continue to pay higher salary packages. You can read the complete post here

TCS employees became the first casualty of the appreciating rupee and the recession in US, as in a strange move the company has given a notice to the employees about a reduction in their salary based on Q3 oerformance. It comes as a rude shock to the employees who have helped make the company one of the most respected company in the world. Ironically my previous post was about Tata Consultancy Services was rated the best performing IT services company

The cut will be something close to 1.5% of the CTC for the next 2 months. However it may translate to a higher percentage of the take home amount for many employees. I have absolutely no clue about how to interprete it. Hoping that it is just a temporary setback and not a long term setback. Any TCS employees? Please share your views in the comments section.

Here is the text of the letter forwarded to me by a reader

***********************************************************************************************
Dear Colleagues,

Last week, TCS posted results for the third quarter of 2007-08 with revenues rising at 5.04 per cent sequentially to Rs 5,924 crore and net profits rising 6.72 per cent sequentially to Rs 1,331 crore.

As you are well aware, our variable compensation policy is linked to EVA, based on the overall performance of the company and your individual performance. The variable pay component is paid monthly, based on the company’s expected performance for the quarter. As indicated in the annual compensation letters, variable pay may change based on actual performance of the company and the ongoing performance of the individual.

In Q3 this year, we met our revenue target but we fell short of meeting our EVA target due to a combination of internal and external factors. The EVA target forms the basis for the variable pay computation and has been given in advance, each month during Q3. Based on the audited results the EVA-based variable payout amounts to Rs. 293 crore for the quarter. The actual variable payout based on expected EVA given in advance amounts to Rs. 376 crore. The advance payment that has to be adjusted amounts to Rs. 83 crore, which will be recovered during Q4 from the employees. The recovery would be reflected in your salary in the months of February and March 2008.

TCS continues to enjoy industry-leading growth. We expect to meet our EVA targets in Q4. There is a strong business pipeline and we are very positive about the future. In order to be globally competitive and maintain our leadership position, we not only need to grow revenues, but also manage our costs better and enhance operational efficiencies.

In Q4, we will follow the same basis of advance payment of Variable Pay as per expected EVA projections at the beginning of 2007-08. When the audited results for Q4 are announced in April 2008, appropriate adjustment in Variable Pay will be made either upwards or downwards as the case may be.

We will shortly let you know the actual amount to be recovered through a letter in Ultimatix. On viewing your letter, in case you need any further clarification, please send in your query to the following mail address – eva@tcs.com and we will respond to your questions

***********************************************************************************************

P.S: I have posted the letter exactly as it was sent to me.

The rise of rupee might have eroded their profit margins but it has not been able to harm their importance in the global arena. Yes I am talking about the out-of-fashion indian IT firms.

In a global survey to find the top-100 IT companies in the world, Indian companies came tops in 4 out of the 10 it-service categories.Tata Consultancy Services was rated the best performing IT services company. HCL Technologies was rated the best performing infrastructure service provider. Genpact was rated the best performing BPO provider and WNS Global Services was the rated the best performing FAO provider.

Fifty-seven per cent of IT service employees working in delivery centres were located in India. Only 18 per cent were based in the US. Need any more proof of Indian might?

In the top-100 list india was second to US alone. There were 29 firms from India compared to 4 from China? Whatever happened to the chinese threat??

Read the orginal document here

Linuxquestions.org is a great place for all sort of discussions related to Linux, Unix, or any posix Operating System and in general Open Source.
It has got lots of forums in different categories. Whether you are a newbie or an advanced user, developer or administrator, you have hardware compatibility issues or any software issue or you just want to do any non-technical discussion… (the list is practically endless) Just visit Linuxquestions.org .
I am sure it will be useful for you….

So very often we have been frustrated because the manager does not take the obvious path to solve a problem. Rather they tend to take a complicated path, that just aggravates the problem. Like when a project is behind the schedule and the project manager goes out and brings 5 more resources after much fight. If anything it just increases the level of confusion.

In this wonderful post about the mythical man month, Sulkshan talks about how “Assigning more programmers to a project running behind schedule, shall make it even more late“. Then why do the project managers put in more people into a project running late? He might not have read the book but if he has spent anytime in software development, then he has definitely experienced a similar situation.

To understand why managers behave the wat they do, just put yourself in the shoes of a manager. Now assume that your project is running behind schedule. Your manager asks why it is running short and what you are doing about it. The truth is you goofed up and you have no clue about how to fix it. You know it but do you admit it in front of your boss? No way. So you come up with the standard answer that you were given fewer resources than required, that some of your key people left in the middle of the project and without your brilliance the project would have been much more behind the schedule. See you have now converted an adversity into an opportunity to prove how smart you are Since the project was delayed because of lack of man power, the natural solution is to put more people onto it.

Even the project manager knows that putting more people onto the project will not solve the issue. But the problem is he does not know what will solve the problem. Any clues from your experience??

Social networking sites have somehow changed our lifestyles. whether at work or leisure most of us are logged into one or the other social networking site, be it orkut, myspace, linkedin, etc. Companies are making lot of money from these sites. There are so many debates about how good or bad these sites are but I don’t want to get into these debates.

If you are a memeber of 3 or 4 of these sites and you know 9 or 10 such sites then just have a look at this list of social networking sites.

Man!! I never knew there were so many sites like our orkut.

Did you know?

I believe that the Future of TV is Internet. If some company is able to link TV telecast to the internet in real time and enable users to get more information about what they are watching, just imagine how much value it will create.

I will explain it with few examples:

1. A user watching a car ad can get more info about the car, like its reviews, on road price in his city and dealer contacts etc.

2. A user watching a Travel Serial can get info about travel plans and costs for the destination he is watching in the serial.

3. In an extreme case, a user can get the subtitles of a foreign language program in his native language.

You can just imagine the possibilities.

Now coming to the technology part, I have some ideas on how this can be implemented. The telecaster embeds some keywords related to the content. These keywords can be name of the product in the ad, or name of the location being shown in the travel program or the text feed of the audio (in extreme case). These keywords can then be passed on to the internet (ok.. Google), processed and meaningful results can be displayed to the user.

The idiot (box) wants some intelligence.

Found this(http://www.ebookee.com) nice link where you can get lots of free ebooks. I used it only for computer books . I got famous books like CLRS, introduction to algorithms, Compiler design by Aho, Ullman & Sethi, Operating systems by Tanenbaum and rare books like The Minix book by Tanenbaum. And the best part is that you find books in various formats (.chm, .pdf, .rar, etc.).

Itis basically a book sharing place. You can also upload a good book if you have . Also if you don’t find a book you can request for it and someone will probably upload it. All in all a good site.

Knowledge is free….