Do it right the first time!

Recently, a senior scientist involved in the Pokrhan II Nuke Test went to media claiming the tests were failure kindled interest of the media to go after every one involved in the "incident" right from guy who was heading the project, to PM to scientists involved for a comment. I thought they should have gone after the guy who dug the hole to conduct the tests as well, just to bring closure. But again, its their choice. You see...

But what amused is Pak. Foreign Spokesman mentioned. He thought it was disturbing to hear that India might conduct another test.

Well, I tell you Mr. Spokesman..., going by the media reports it doesn't seem like anyone knows if it was successful or failure; or anyone knows what criteria determines if its success or failure. It seems we didn't do it right. So we are planning to do it again. I don't know why it is disturbing to you. If you refuse to accept that, then this is also disturbing to me.

But scientists, come on. Arrive at a consensus soon. It pays to be right the first time itself.

Do it on your own...

Google or G, has always been a "smart" company. Always way ahead of its time. One example is energy consumption. The motto was simple, make internet accessible to everyone. To do that, it ought to be free. (Who would pay for search when they don't have enough money to get drinkable water?). To make it free, G ought to keep their operational cost very low considering they have the re-sourcing cost this high.

It's common sense. But what's amazing is the time this was thought about. In 1998-99, when dot-com bubble has not even started full fledgedly, G was also a startup, it had thought about how to keep the operation cost low. The data centers or the cloud computers it had planned must be highly efficient to keep energy cost low. It worked on a simple design of the server. No Mainframe. No UPS. Then how did it achieve?

It had the simple design of locally powered battery for each server which reduced the cost of transmissitng power over lossy transmission lines and also maintaining reduntant UPS. G built its own servers to data centers using both AMD as well as Intel processors. The concept of maintaining data centers inside a shipping container was thought about very early and adopted to bring down the cooling cost. The focus always being on reducing the cost per query.

G, till now tight lipped about the server power, data center, energy efficiency has exposed it power for the first time to help other companies reduce their energy cost and bring high operational efficiency. (http://tinyurl.com/cunwoo)

Does it take some one to showcase a working model built using common sense for other companies to pick it up? Then what is the position Vice president, President of Operations for? Duh!

Wonted or Wanted?

I was reading through Chinmayee's Blog the today about GH in Chennai (or anywhere in India for that matter) and followed on to other blogs with similar messages.

Being "out of touch" (I would say) with realities in India, I could only image the proportion of frustration for a common man. But they are acceptable. But I have always thought, every person writting a blog or leaving comment wants a "beautiful" country and clean city. But have we taken a moment to step back and see what mistakes do we make and correct ourselves first?

I had (yeah..past tense) a working iPhone until recently when I went into the swimming pool with the smart (or not so smart) phone still in my shorts pocket. The way Apple discovers a phone has been water damaed is with the help of a litmus like sensor which turns pink or red depending on acidity on contact with liquid. Apple does not cover damages due to liquid. So I was searching deliberately for answers in online forums to get that back to life. Out of may be 40-50 forums I have been in, I found 2 or 3 messages in all when they said paint the sensor to white and give it back to apple! Brilliant!

Immediately, I thought what would have happened if it was in India! May be the first step will be to try paint that sensor white and only when that fails try other options. In one of the forum, another member had left a reply to the "original idea", "Its because of people like you, we are paying the cost for the device that costs twice as much in the first place". "Very true". Aren't we paying the cost for all non-voters? Aren't we paying the price of delay in travel times or congesstion in the road, because someone wanted to take illegal U-Turn in the middle of the road?

The lack of self descipline and being true to their conscience is what is lacking.

Imagine, if each one of us follow the self descipline of going to a poll booth and voting. Wouldn't that make the difference? Or may be a everyday scenario of stopping at all red signals on the road (even bearing the abuses of the motorist behind)! May be it's time.