Who is poor? Indian or American?

No doubt Americans have rich life but are they rich?

Let us say my neighbor and I draw the same amount of salary. My neighbor buys a home and a new car without having to take a loan. I decide to buy a huge home and luxury car taking a big loan. My loan amount is 90% of my annual income and takes several years to pay off.

Average American debt nearly 90% of their one-year GDP whereas average Indian carries a debt of 15% of their GDP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt

From Indian culture perspective, Americans are poor because the _net debt they carry is larger. From American culture perspective, Indians are poor because they are not enjoying the life as much as they do.

Americans are rich as long as American GDP PPP stays above their average debt. It is the fact!!

GMAT Decision Tree Alternative

I found decision tree somewhat complex. A tabular format of the same would be more suitable to scan and select the right choice quickly.

	I	II	I&II
A	/	X
B	X	/
C	X	X	/
D	/	/
E	X	X	X

For each question, mark the result for I, II and if needed I&II to arrive at the answer. It easy to compare the results of analysis against the table and mark the answer.

Q1. / X ----> leads to answer A
Q2. X X / --> leads to answer C
Q3. X / ----> leads to answer B

The other situation is when you need make an educated guess.

Q4. ? / --> leads to answer B or D (guess)
Q5. / ? --> leads to answer A or D (guess)

My mind and eyes are used to the way data filter works in MS Excel. So, I am thinking to use this system instead of decision tree as given in material.

Socialism in Capitalism

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/topstories/story/1044130.html
"That might not sound like much, but the National Retail Federation estimates that shoplifters stole almost $13 billion in merchandise from stores across the country last year.

Much of the loss is passed on to consumers:

The federation estimates the average household pays $350 a year in higher prices as a result of shoplifting."

10 ways the House bill would change health care
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/3351547
"5. Provides federal financial help for lower and middle income consumers so they can obtain coverage."

Tricky Statements.

"You are more than welcome"

My first Eclipse Plugin

I created my first Eclipse plugin, which I have always wanted to. It was very easy and fun. I created a plugin to generate a WSDL from XSD that adheres to the specific standards used in the organization I work.

Prior to this, a WSDL always had been hand-written here and now we have a right-click and generate option.

Quotes & Notes.

“The freedom to fail is essential to the freedom to succeed” - Margaret Thatcher

"A picture is worth thousand words. A video is worth a million words" - Anonymous.

Ron Somers, president of the US-India Business Council, said that he talked with Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd., India’s largest company, after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visited Washington in mid-2005, and asked him what would be the best way to demonstrate the new partnership between the US and India. “He said, ‘Let’s launch a man to the Moon together.’”

"We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction." From his book, "The Road Ahead," published in 1996. - by Bill Gates

dream
is not what you see in sleep
is the thing which does not let you sleep - Abdul Kalam, President of India(?)

Top 5 Telugu Film Personalities

Old Movies
N.T.R - actor
A.N.R - actor
Gantasala - playback singer
Savitri - heroine
Relangi - comidian

New Movies
Chiranjeevi - actor
S.P. Balasubramanyam - playback singer
Vijaya Santhi - heroine
Brahmanandam - comidian
Ravu Gopala Rao - Villain

Java - One liners

// replace the text between two tags with *s.
System.out.println("12345".replaceAll("(?)12345", "*****"));

Automate random audit.

One of the innovative ideas to improve performance of some IT services is to 'randomize' some of the aspects which are currently being performed once-in-a-while by human resources.

Automation of 'random audit activities' is to me the next "aspect" of IT.

Match - High Valued Customers and High Performers

As part of 'tiered services' strategy, there should be a way for organizations to match a 'high-valued' customer to a high-performer in the company at every possible business-interaction.

Here a high-performer can be a top-employee in customer support (via email, phone or web chat) or an IT service with high QOS (response time, availability, activity).

XSLT

I tried to view the output of an XSLT in IE7. It just doesn't show the SOAP tags that I wanted to printout. Instead it shows the 'content' within the tags. So, I searched for "View XSL Output" and found a microsoft 'utility' that I installed (don't forget the last step of installing .inf). And boom I got the option "View XSL Output" in IE7 upon right-click.

Datapower & Integration at enterprise Edges.

WOW - I am looking at the 'possibilities' at the edges of an enterprise. So far I have been gathering my experience intra-enterprise integration projects. While doing study of Datapower, I came to know the challenges and exciting new solutions for intra-enterprise integration projects. Datapower does make life easier if you are dealing with 'heavy xml', 'stringent security needs' and lack of options from a J2EE or traditional EAI servers like WebMethods for your intra-enterprise integration projects.

WebServices and J2EE

I am _struggling_ to understand why NOT J2EE define a new container or at least a componenty-by-itself for 'web services'. When they have 'Servlet' and a sibling called 'JSP', 'EJB' (and a variety of them), 'Web Page' etc., - why couldn't they define a simple 'Web Service'. Lets face it.

Now I have to choose between a simple Java class vs EJB as my 'Web Service' implementation. Isn't?

And why should people use the term "SOAP over JMS"? Some how this doesn't sound like 'platform neutral' as in "SOAP over http". Check this one out for another opinion from other gurus -

http://www.subbu.org/weblogs/main/2005/03/soap_over_jms.html

http://dev2dev.bea.com/blog/pdone/archive/2007/03/using_soap_over.html

My original jokes...

Divorce rates are high coz people are used to "return policy".

"The race is not about race or sex". - a thought on Democratic Campaign 2008.

American Idol is a huge success and Indian Idol is too. Chinese Idol wouldn't work because people can't vote in China.

SOA Best Practices.

Use urn: for declaring name spaces instead of http: I understand the use of usage of http for XSDs that are published online. But the usage of http for every schema definition is not required.

Usage of 'http' in XML documents is not elegant.

Laptop for Java/.Net Studio Programmers/Architects

Update - I canceled my Dell order. Couldn't get hold of right-person easily even after being on the phone for more than 30 min. Waiting on phone for customer support is the last thing I want to do in life.

After plenty of wasted hours on comparisons and reviews I have made a U-Turn from opting the fabulous Lenovo Thinkpad T61 and ordered Dell Vostro 1400.

I got the following configuration for $1550 including taxes and shipping.

OS - Vist Business. I was rooting for XP but was advised by my brother-in-law to go for Visa.
Processor - Core 2 Duo 2.0 GHz with 2MB L2 cache
RAM - 3 GB. I need as much RAM as possible for memory-hungry IBM software.
Harddisk - 160 GB 5400 RPM.
Monitor - 14.1" . I have ordered with TrueLife. After what I read about it, I am going to change it to Matty while my order is still "in production". Also 14.1" has been my personal choice while shopping for laptops.

In the same price, I got integrated webcam, dedicated graphics card (i.e, discrete graphics) and 3-year warranty with accidental protection (i.e, complete care).

All in all, if you are budget-minded like I am and are willing to take 'risk' and don't have brand-image-consciousness then go for Dell. If you typically see yourself buy the premium-brands like BMW/Honda cars, Sony cameras, Bose headphones.... then Thinkpad may well be your choice.

Thinkpad is sleek, has great keyboard and proud history. However it doesn't come with s-video and has a weird placement of cntrl key (next to fn key). I can live with the higher-cost if they provide better customer support. I found that the order-processing is very slow with Lenovo. I hope everything else with Lenovo customer support is better.

Theory of Relativity

The closest I can understand...
http://www.onestick.com/relativity/

Log4j in J2EE Container.

http://www.webagesolutions.com/knowledgebase/waskb/waskb004/index.html

Initializing Log4J has been a thorny problem for a J2EE application. There are two ways to initialize Log4J:

First - Call PropertyConfigurator.configure(String propertyFileName) - This function takes the full path name of the properies file that contains Log4J configuration information. A J2EE application should not make any assumption about where its files are located in the file system.
Use of this function requires the application to know exactly that.

Second - Do not call PropertyConfigurator.configure() and let Log4J look for a properties file called log4j.properties in a J2EE module's class path. The lookup takes place when the Logger.getLogger() method is called for the first time. In this article we recommend using this approach.

Third approach is to configure log4j.configuration=yourlog4j.properties as system-property.

I prefer the first one for each war/ear file in a J2EE app-server. But I couldn't make it work at this point I am stuck with the third option.

My favourite places on the web.

http://www.nandyala.org/mahanandhi

http://www.immigrationvoice.org/

http://www.cricinfo.com/

http://www.google.com

Unique indian english words and phrases...

It's very common for Indians to copy English buzzwords/lingo into their own style. Some of the examples given below are to reverse Indian English to American English.

"flats" - plot of land/piece of real-estate

"fly over" - overpass?

"post" - mail

"take home" - net salary

"hallo hallo" - yea.. Hello is almost prounounced and out-spoken twice in the flow of words :D

“full amount” – to pay the sticker price (without bargain/negotiation)

“xerox” - to copy

“hotel” - used for both restaurent and hotel - typically where we eat food.

“lift” – elevator

“bathroom” – in U.S.A it’s called rest-room for GKR (God known…)

“bill” – check/receipt

“barrer”, “waiter” – attendant, bartender

“we couldn’t able to” – we are NOT able to (or) we couldn’t

“we could able to” – we are able to

“steps” - stairs

"cricket game" - i.e, cricket sport. game and sport are almost used interchangeably.

"tiffin" - breakfast

"traffic signal", "traffic stop", "traffic lights" - In American english - "lights"

I just came across wiki page for this "Indian English" topic.