Do we need SEZ's ?

There is a lot of debate going on in
India about SEZ(Special Economic Zone)
SEZ's are being projected as an elixir,
which will give a huge impetus to the
Indian economy.
Big industrialists are pumping in huge
amounts of money in lobbying to create a
favourable atmosphere for SEZ's.

What is an SEZ -> As the name suggests, it
is a piece of land, running into thousands
of acres. This area would have special
labour laws. The industries operating
inside these SEZ's would get huge tax
benefits. There would be housing complexes,
malls, restaurants, movie theatres, etc in
SEZ's. One salient feature of SEZ's is
that govt would be acquiring land, mostly
from farmers for SEZ's at supposedly
throw-away prices and simply evict the
farmers. More on this later.
In short SEZ's would be like leeches on the
economy. They would enjoy benefits from
India, without much obligation to pay
back. SEZ's are promising huge employment
opportunities, for getting these benefits.

Do we need SEZ's ?
To take care of industrial development,
each state in India has got a state
Industrial Development corporation, which
creates industrial areas, and take cares of
the infrastructure needs of industries.
Also to take care of export oriented
industries, most of the states have EPZ aka
Export processing zones. Industries under
these zones, are given import duty benefits
under the condition, that all their
products would be exported.

SEZ's are supposed to enjoy the benefits of
EPZ's but not the responsibility, i.e. the
export obligation won't be there. This
would give the industries in SEZ's an
unfair advantage over companies, which are
operating outside SEZ's. This question is
still largely vaguely answered.

Opposition to SEZ's
Opposition to SEZ's is from several quarters
- farmers
Farmers are asking, why should they be
displaced ? A fair question. If someone
comes at your doorstep and tells you to
leave your house, and get relocated what
would be your re-action ? The situation
gets more complex, when you consider that
the livelihood of these farmers is their
very own land. Their skills are in
farming, and they have a lot of attachment
to their land. Govt and the SEZ lobby
wants the farmer to learn new skills, and
be part of the industries under SEZ. This
is like telling a software professional
to start working on a farmland. So
outlandish, and absurd ofcourse.

- Economists
Some economist, are questioning, whether
SEZ's will really help India. A report of
a recent SEZ has shown that the company
proposing that SEZ had earmarked 45% of
the land for housing and related things
like malls, etc. And 55% for industrial
activity. So the real motive is to create
hosuing enclaves under the facade of
industrial development ?

- Credibility
There is a huge question on the
credibility of private players. In the
past private sector has been largely
socially irresponsible. So it remains
to be see, if the private sector, can
really achieve the stated goals of SEZ's,
rather then becoming real estate
companies.

- Area of Land
The size of land that these SEZ's are
demanding are raising serious doubts,
about their real motives. Thousands of
acres of land is being ear marked, without
a real need for it. In fact the actual
need is only a fraction of the land
that is being demanded.


There have been violent opposition to SEZ's
from farmers, and they have a very good
reason for it. The govt is behaving like a
dictator, and caring less for the
farmers. The recent spate of demonstrations
by farmers in the state of West Bengal and
Maharashtra, have put the state governments
temporarily on a backfoot, and they have
softened a bit. Lets see what happens next.

Open Sourced processor

I was pleasantly surprised to see that SUN has opensourced the architecture of
their UltraSparc T1 processor.
http://opensparc-t1.sunsource.net/ contains a lot of stuff related to the
processor. The docs are very good. Chip architecture is very useful for s/w
programmers, since the h/w plays an important role in the way kernel behaves,
so essentially it helps them understand why things work in a certain way on one
processor and otherwise on another processor.

HP the new IT giant !

As per the latest financial results from HP, it has surpassed IBM
as the world's largest IT company. HP has forcasted that in
2007, its revenue would be $97 billion. Which is more then
that of IBM's. Though that won't be so easy for HP, since
if IBM manages to improve its revenue HP would remain
on the second spot.

IBM's revenue for 3Q 2006 -> $22.6 billion
http://www.ibm.com/investor/3q06/3q06earnings.phtml

HP's revenue for 3Q 2006 -> $24.6 billion
http://h30261.www3.hp.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=71087&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=932290&highlight=

For Q3 2006, HP was the world's largest PC seller,
surpassing Dell. A feat, which was thought to be
almost impossible to achieve.

Sony going down ?

Sony - a company once respected for its products and their extremely high quality, now seems to have lost the quality tag. The recent recall of Sony laptop battery is a huge embarrassment for the company, add to it the delays in shipping PS3.
Earlier Sony was at the forefront of innovation. Today its rivals are catching up. Today I saw a Sony ad, featuring "James Bond 007 TX Spy Gear "http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_ViewStatic-Start;sid=v5yQ4vF7zfKQ77Qxax2a6b52OiDLXemnNE0=?page=static%2fpromos%2fcr_TX
What I saw amused me very much. The VAIO laptop, featured in this ad crowed about a feature called - "Sony Display Privacy Filter", which had this feature -> " Work on confidential documents in public without worrying about onlookers. This privacy screen makes on-screen data visible only to the persons in front of the PC." I had long considered this as a mark of poor LCD quality :-) Many times, I get pissed off by this so called "feature" that Sony has. Since when I want to show something on my laptop to many people, not all can view it properly, particularly for those looking at inclined angles. Talk of innovation !

Gas Problems

Ah, I never thought that getting a gas(LPG) connection could be such a nightmare. It has been more then 4 months, that I am trying to get a gas connection for my house in Pune, and still waiting, waiting.....

HPCL had such a good reputation(earlier), and now it sucks. I just hope, my building gets piped gas soon.

It is very strange that across India, there is such a shortage of LPG, and shockingly is hardly in the news. The news channels are mostly after spicy, glamorous news items, and the ones, which don't need them to roam around, leaving their comfortable surroundings.

In Pune the waiting period for a new connection is now 4+ months (atleast with HPCL and Indane, and the part which I am staying.) A google search however shows that it is not just my part of Pune, or rather Pune, but many parts
of the country are facing LPG shortage. Metros seem to be better.

Also the LPG shortage, is not a one-off instance, rather, LPG shortages happen several times, particularly in small towns and cities.

To make matters worse, the hike in petrol and diesel prices have made driving vehicles on LPG(not CNG) an attractive option. And though doing such a thing is illegal(I hope I am right here), it is very rampant across India.

It is a shame, that a basic thing like LPG should be so difficult to get, and there are talks going on of India becoming a SuperPower. Maybe their vision of India is where people are using Solar, or some other source of power, which is appreciable :-/

HP back with a bang ?

The second quarter revenue for HP, was very high, a whooping 51 % rise in profits http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060516/earns_hp.html?.v=15 This is the same HP, which was dying a couple of years back. The results have exceeded analysts expectations. Mark Hurd surely seems to be delivering. More importantly, HP might overtake IBM as the biggest IT company. Its 2Q revenues of $22.6 billion have overtaken IBM's 1Q revenues of $20.7 billion. Have a look at HP and IBM's propaganda, and its very clear that the battle between these two giants has become fierce now.

http://h71028.www7.hp.com/ERC/cache/107553-0-0-0-121.html?ERL=true the above speaks about HP-UX 11i, and it is titled "The Real Story about HP-UX 11i", and makes some statements like HP holds the # 1 position in units and revenue for high-end enterprise UNIX on a worldwide basis. Seems interesting. Also keep in mind that IBM is investing heavily in AIX, and AIX is improving, with support for NFSv4 in AIX much before other *nix vendors. Personally, I was very much surprised that HP-UX 11i is still around :-)

However it remains to be seen, if HP can sustain this sort of growth.

Pune's heading towards doom ?

Although, I have been staying in Pune, for more then 3 years now, I still long to go back to Mumbai, my hometown. When I first came to Pune, the first thing I observed was that, it had very less traffic as compared to Mumbai, and that made me very happy.

Pune's pro's are
*. The weather is pleasant in the mornings.
*. Less crowded then Mumbai.
*. Lower real-estate prices, as compared to Mumbai.

However Pune is loosing out on its advantages. Its population is increasing, and along with that, de-forestation is increasing at an alarming rate, which has caused the average temperature to rise considerably. Its infra-structure is poor, compared to Mumbai, and it is worse then Mumbai's far-flung suburbs. Water scarcity is going to hit Pune hard in the near future, already the municipal corporation is having trouble supplying water to the growing suburbs. Upcoming area's like Kondhwa, Wiman Nagar, etc are already facing water scarcity problems, and with no good plans to augment Pune's water supply, the situation is ought to worsen.

Pune's municipal corporation needs to seriously consider these issues. The state govt also needs to look into the health of the city, since Pune is home to many IT companies.

The above holds true in some respects for most of the booming mid-size cities
of India. By mid-size I mean, those, who have a population of a few million, and
witnessed rapid growth in recent times.

Not all people endorse my view though, have a look at the below
http://skyscrapercity.com/archive/index.php/t-158205.html
It shows the positive side of pune. With more focus on the upcoming
buldings , malls and IT campuses.

OutSourcing

With all the hoopla around outsourcing and the current state of Indian IT,
the below link contains a lot of info, on both
http://www.openoutsource.com/resources-index-req-MostPopular-ratenum-5-ratetype-percent.phtml

It is a collection of news items related to Indian IT and BPO.

Technology as an enabler.

If given a choice to most software engineers, most of them would choose to work on OS Internals and related area's. Most of the software engineers are often fascinated by kernel development stuff. However, for the end-user, what matters most is how can technology help him to become more productive, and how much value it can add.

It so happened, that I had visited my cousin, and he wanted me to create a web-site for him. Now, I am not that interested in web related stuff, since to me, the coding is not challenging. However, for my cousin, he doesn't cares about kernel programming and stuff, and what he wanted was a web site, for his business. So there I am, playing around with html and stuff. Just to add, I had done a module on E-Commerce, while in APGDST, and that experience helped me, in building a website for my cousin.

That's the reason, why guys working in Enterprise computing are paid more :-)

Hibernating Humans

While travelling to Pune this week, the bus was mostly empty, unlike, past week, when it was fully packed due to the holiday season ( which peaks in May, and when people travel out of Mumbai to visit their relatives, or go to some hill-station). Since most of the folks, who have gone on vacation, are about to return back to Mumbai, now the traffic is in the reverse direction, i.e. people are travelling back to Mumbai, however this passenger traffic will dwindle too in a month, and I would be able to travel more comfortably.

For the transport companies off-season is a problem, since they have to run empty buses. State Transport corporations, are badly hit by this, since unlike the private transport companies, they cannot easily hire people on contract. This problem, where-in companies need people, when they need to cater to more customers, is universal, and applicable to almost all industries. The current solution is to hire more people, when people are needed. Most companies hire people on contract for short-term, to meet a surge in demand.

There can be another solution to this problem, how about hibernating human-beings. People would hibernate, when not required, and would only rise(awake) from their sleep, when they are needed. These humans, would fill up the gap, when demand rises. Maybe we can create humans, with this specific capability. However this will require advances in medical technology as well as in our society. Are we willing to create such a class of humans ? Considering the greed (i.e. the need to cut cost :-), which has engulfed our generation, I think yes. Since it would also help us improve our life style.

Hibernating humans, has been considered for space travel, wherein, they would go in hibernation, and awake, when they reach their destination. It has also been considered in warfare http://worldthinktank.net/wttbbs/index.php?s=738ede4b5e31e224c3137fda690baf56&showtopic=984&st=0&#entry6442 The above web page has quite a good amount of pointers to human hibernation concept.

Their is a suggestion, that people, who have incurable diseases should go in hibernation, and awake, and check for cure, if cure is not found, go in hibernation again. Imagine what happens if the entire human race keeps doing this stupid thing, and waiting for someone to find a cure for their disease. That doesn't sounds good :-)

Software Engineering

Recently I came across the book
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
and was surprised to find that the very same problems still exist even 30
years later !!

Bored

I am bored.
maybe its the cloudy weather.
Many of my (good) colleagues have resigned, that has added to it.

I hope to pep up myself. Lets see.
Need to involve myself more in AFS.

I found some windows trivia on the net
http://backyard.homeunix.net:8080/~ben/docs/comp/windows/nt-history/
It gives info about evolution of Windows NT.

The weather in Pittsburgh is becoming more cold, today it dipped below zero degree (Celsius)
I was feeling a bit dizzy, hence slept a lot this weekend.

Lazy

Last few days were a bit lazy.
Discovered some new things like There's a lamp in my ThinkPad :-) , found it pretty
useless though.
Tried taking snaps from my new Sony digital camera. Took a snap from my window.
Transferred the image to my TP(ThinkPad) . Not much impressive images though.
The supplied batteries are alkaline, and Sony says use Ni-MH.
The supplied batteries are no good. I had to buy a charger.
Sony is a real cheat company, the supplied memory card is 16 MB. for sony cam's you need
a memory stick pro/duo , etc - sony's proprietary technology. These memory cards are
expensive then other memory cards.

I am researching a bit on Camcorders.
Again Sony comes a cropper. They have the most expensive cam's in the market.
Seems Sony is capitalising real hard on its brand name.
I went to bestbuy last weekend. Saw some cam's , was disappointed with Sony's price tag.
Cam's with similar features from other comapnies were priced approx $100 less.


Nothing much exciting at work. I was working on a new feature for a PC. Have submitted it
in my company, lets see what turns up.

Some news on my once favourite company though - SUN.
They had to cough up something like $82 million to kodak , for using kodak's technology
in Java !
Good they got a dose of their own medicine.
With ibm hot on heels on SUN, it remains to be seen, how does SUN survives now.

Down in Pitt

The weather in Pittsburgh was a bit gloomy today. Didn't felt like doing much.
Got bored a bit.
Spruced up my mind, by having a look at the collection of e-docs on my m/c.
I need to keep myself charged, will work more on that.

First Dive

Hi All,
This is my first blog
Well a little info about myself.
I am one of those millions of faceless s/w developers.
I currently work in an IT company and work on distributed File-Systems.

I work on *nix systems. Most of the times AIX, Solaris, Linux and on some odd day HP-UX.
I was a strong MS(windows) hater once upon a time. Though now I don't care about much
about MS.

Bye,
SVC