New Internet Rules: Privacy does'nt matter ( AOL blunder)

After my last post, i had almost decided to put-off this blog. ( more on that later)
But AOL blunder is too much for me to stomach.

NYT reports AOL made a blunder by making public the search queries of users.
OK they realized it. Fine.
But at the bottom of article there are comments/trolls which makes me puke.

"I don’t think there is a real privacy concern,” Mr. Linden said, “especially in a day when we see millions of credit card numbers leaked by one group and millions of Social Security numbers released by another government agency.”
The uproar, he said, would hurt university researchers trying to explore new types of searches who did not have access to data about users.

Do they consider real online people as frogs in the laboratory, on whom they can dissect as they wish?

Google, about which i have privacy concern, seems like angel considering these thugs.
There are few who realize this, but for masses, its going to be too late.

Mumbai Blast: Inept Government. What people should do?

Last time when the parliament was attacked, india moved its forces. It costed millions of dollars. For india and its neighbour. Will such a terrorist act happen again? I am sure, they will think hard before doing it. (because it costs our neigbour too)

For past 10-12 years, time and again bus/trains/markets gets bombed ritually. And what goverment does. "We salute the bravery of our citizens". What ?

First things first. Say, If you are trusted to guard a small fortune. But it gets looted time and again. What would your boss do ? If it were a bank, forget the boss, the whole bank goes down with you (if it happens the second time). But here, its human life we are taking about !
The terrorist does his job(sarcasm). What is our police, intelligence, leaders doing ? They say, you have to solve the underlying problem. Fine, but before that they need to stop something like this happening. Today its, kashmir. Tomorrow it could be assam , reservation and some day may just that "some-guy-having-a bad-day". So, are we going to wait till all problems get solved? I bet, there would be no-one left.

With heavy heart, i say, if you are a indian, living in big metro, then its "each one for himself and god-for-everyone". Trust history, it makes no difference, for governement, whether you get bombed or its the dog on the street. But its our life. Our family/friends and dear ones. They trust you with thier protection.

So what we do?

Change the government? (But the previous government was no better.)

Make you own societies? Hire private protection. They make sure, the bus/train you get in is safe. Use markets, with video surviellance and trusted private protection.
( Seems too extreme and costly)

Emmigrate to other countries. ( Easy way out. But you can't take everyone)

What other practical choices do we have?

Colossal Business Disaster: How Intel Burnt $ 5Billion into $600 Million

Embedded.com reports that intel invested around $5 Billion dollar into the business that it sold to marvell for $600 million this week. That makes it one of the worst business disasters of all time.

How can a big and successfully company, full of so many bright/talented people do this ?

I guess, only a "big and successfully company" can do such a thing. Intel had so much success on its side, that its easy to see that it got carried away.

While harvesting dollars from desktops, intel saw the mobile/handheld market coming. A company who's executives monopolists desktop business, tried to extend the same philosophy over embedded market. It made huge investments and tried to buy into the market.

And the results:
From the baseband processor market of $6.5 Billion(mobile-phones), intel last year had revenue of $8 Million ( that's 1 %) !

I believe, there is a lot of heated-thinking going inside intel and this decision is a strong step towards "moving on". Intel is at the forefront of many upcoming -technologies which have great future. And so does intel.

And there are lessons learnt for everyone. Big-or-Small, whenever we venture into unknown domains, do it with utmost caution.

This is one of those business-stories, which many of us will remember for long time to come.

How will collaboration shape future jobs

Why do people form companies to work ?
Why do we work?

Forming a company, gives a focus to all activities. Within a company, it becomes a need to collaborate towards more productivity. This creates better products and more profits. Win- win for all.

The new web2.0 resurgence has given a boost towards more collaboration. delicious/digg/myspace/youtube are pulling more and more users towards this activity.
Initially people are collaborating for fun.
In times to come, this  activity  will spill over from fun towards  productivity.  When people realize  that its  easy to  collaborate with like-minded over the network and create products more efficiently, the concept of 'office' job will change.
The tools/ways and people to do this are not there, at present. But this future seems not too far to me.

In the political-landscape, we have evolutionised from monarachy/communism/socialism/ to a democratic setup. Similiar evolution in socio-finanacial landscape is long overdue ?

When will web2.0 do a safe landing on my desktop ?

Web 2.0 has become synonymous with  desktop like look and feel on browser.
But , for a true desktop feel, desktop to network transition should be made smooth.  I mean, browser should manage cache of my important web2.0 services and user should connect to network only to check/post new contents. Any application doing that ?

I believe, in times to come the browsing/web/desktop experience will significantly change.
To start with, don't you feel centralised Wikipedia doesn't make sense. Distributed/Unassociated computing is coming. Is it ?

US Agency Datamines You, Are you Surprised ?

""New Scientist Magazine has discovered that Pentagon's National Security Agency, which specialises in eavesdropping and code-breaking, is funding research into the mass harvesting of the information that people post about themselves on social networks. And it could harness advances in internet technology - specifically the forthcoming "semantic web" championed by the web standards organisation W3C - to combine data from social networking websites with details such as banking, retail and property records, allowing the NSA to build extensive, all-embracing personal profiles of individuals.""

Check out the full story here

I am not surprised. All this information is laying so open, that anyone can do it. What is the issue then, if that happens to be NSA.

The fault is of the no-data-privacy policy over the web.

Embedded Chip makers Seeing a Boom ?

Latest announcement from Nvidia just strengths the feeling that embedded chip makers will soon experience a booming market

"Nvidia posted record revenue of US$2.38 billion for its latest fiscal year through Jan. 29, and is on track to generate close to US$3 billion in its current fiscal year, Rob Csongor, vice president of corporate marketing, told Reuters on Friday.

He said some of the best growth was coming from mobile products such as cellphones, as well as new computers being outfitted for 3D graphics for use with Microsoft Corp.'s new Vista operating system due out late this year."

Weak Forecasts from Intel had led the suspicion for a slowdown. But it seems, growth in desktop market is narrowing and the handled-device market is witnessing strong growth.