India's Tata Motors said on Wednesday it had bought British luxury icons Jaguar and Land Rover from struggling United States carmaker Ford for $2.3-billion as it expands its global reach.
The all-cash deal is part of Tata's efforts to grow outside Asia, but analysts have questioned how the Indian firm -- maker of the Nano, the world's cheapest car -- will absorb the two high-end marques into its operations. "We are very pleased at the prospect of Jaguar and Land Rover being a significant part of our automotive business," Tata group chairperson Ratan Tata said, pledging to keep the identities of the famous brands "intact".
Tata Motors, part of the sprawling tea-to-outsourcing Tata Group empire, said the "total amount to be paid in cash" would be $2.3-billion and added Ford would contribute up to about $600-million to the Jaguar and Land Rover pension plans.
The purchase, which has been the subject of speculation for months, comes amid an economic downturn that has put the squeeze on demand for prestige vehicles. In January, Tata unveiled the Nano at a price of $2 500, hoping that the no-frills auto could revolutionise travel for millions in India and elsewhere.
But with the acquisition, Tata would be in the unusual position of making the cheapest car in the world as well as some of the most expensive.
Of late, tough global economic conditions have put sales of expensive cars into reverse. US and European sales of Jaguar fell by over 30%, year-on-year, during the first two months of 2008.
"Both brands are already experiencing declining sales," said Aniket Mhatre, auto analyst at Mumbai brokerage Prabhudas Lilladher.
Interestingly, just this year Forbes included 3 Indians in top 10 richest individuals. Is india becoming a global economic power? The question for Pakistan is either to work with Indian companies to benefit from their experience or go all out confrontational and competitive alternative for foreign investors.
If industry is to grow here in Pakistan then government need to participate and indulge itself into supporting > expanding local industry to the position that they compete with international brands as a financial muscle.
Friday, March 28, 2008
The end of Software... Part II
That’s a p-r-e-t-t-y big statement which I roughly translate as: “Get lost.” And while I wonder at the wisdom of engaging in what Jevon calls a ’schoolyard brawl’ with Microsoft, the reaction indicates that Microsoft is determined to protect its turf. But will the IBM/Microsoft approach, based as it is in the past, be enough to win the day?
I’m going out on a limb here because many of my colleagues look at history and think it kinda repeats itself. I disagree. As Limbert says, startups are the future winners. While today, the top slots in the enterprise market may be the same as they were 10 years ago, let’s not forget that Facebook (as an example) came from nowhere in 2006 to dominate the news in 2007 and gathered the now fabled $15 billion valuation. Microsoft may be aligned to Facebook on advertising but that leaves Facebook owning the customer relationship. Duh? Google went from strength to strength and many believe the war for dominance of the ‘internet cloud’ is already over with Google declared a winner. So picture this:
The startups who are doing the outside in stuff as outlined above become established in 2008, deepening their understanding of how relationships are created and sustained. One of them realizes that the people centric principles delivering CRM 2008 value can be equally applied to Social Capital Management. In other words, they can supplant today’s Human Capital Management solutions. What happens then to so-called core business processes? I think SAP knows, even if it might struggle to get there. I’m not convinced that IBM, Oracle or Microsoft are remotely close. Libert most certainly knows even if the eventual 800lb gorilla’s identity is yet to be revealed. As the old saw goes: we live in interesting times.
Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.
I’m going out on a limb here because many of my colleagues look at history and think it kinda repeats itself. I disagree. As Limbert says, startups are the future winners. While today, the top slots in the enterprise market may be the same as they were 10 years ago, let’s not forget that Facebook (as an example) came from nowhere in 2006 to dominate the news in 2007 and gathered the now fabled $15 billion valuation. Microsoft may be aligned to Facebook on advertising but that leaves Facebook owning the customer relationship. Duh? Google went from strength to strength and many believe the war for dominance of the ‘internet cloud’ is already over with Google declared a winner. So picture this:
The startups who are doing the outside in stuff as outlined above become established in 2008, deepening their understanding of how relationships are created and sustained. One of them realizes that the people centric principles delivering CRM 2008 value can be equally applied to Social Capital Management. In other words, they can supplant today’s Human Capital Management solutions. What happens then to so-called core business processes? I think SAP knows, even if it might struggle to get there. I’m not convinced that IBM, Oracle or Microsoft are remotely close. Libert most certainly knows even if the eventual 800lb gorilla’s identity is yet to be revealed. As the old saw goes: we live in interesting times.
Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The end of software... Part 1
First, we have the mega vendors who think they ‘own’ the enterprise but have little clue what they’re doing when it comes to providing community style collaborative software. As Barry Libert, chairman of Mzinga said to me: “Does Microsoft have a relationship with me? Do any of the ‘monster’ vendors?” Second, we have the startups who are largely making their money by selling social media style solutions to marketers. While the two solution sets may look the same from the outside, they are being bought in fundamentally different ways and are setting up a tension that today is barely felt but which will have a disruptive effect on the software buying patterns of the future.
“IT is largely taking the view that Microsoft Sharepoint and Lotus Connections are the way to go. In some cases, startup vendors that could offer a much faster time to value are automatically dismissed.” In other words, IT shops are making sure the status quo is firmly maintained. But if you believe Libert, then this is entirely the wrong strategy because at heart, both Microsoft and IBM are offering behomoth frameworks that are file based, require development and are not people centric.
Where the startups fail but where the incumbents succeed is in identifying a specific value proposition within specific industries. His view is that Sharepoint will be a ‘big winner in the next five years.’ If the amount of noise being made by Microsoft is indicative, then it should be a winner. But…he also says: “Sharepoint deployments are horrendous and I really don’t know why people put up with them.” I do. They keep IT shops busy.
It’s time for IT to leave the ivory tower and become part of the decision-making culture of the business. The entire notion of IT as being somehow separate, or having independent goals from, the non-technical parts of an enterprise is absolutely ridiculous.
Doug Merritt, who runs SAP Labs who said that: “Taking a FriendFeed approach will tell me much more about potential employees in the due diligence phase of hiring than I can get from HR.” Did I hear a light bulb go on? Apparently so.
I’m thinking that SAP is realizing that it could get much closer to the millions of people who use its software rather than the IT shops that buy their stuff. The challenge, which Merritt thinks doesn’t get solved for another 2-5 years, is how companies like SAP adapt their software design strategies to accommodate this new reality. Enter the startups.
Cont.
Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.
“IT is largely taking the view that Microsoft Sharepoint and Lotus Connections are the way to go. In some cases, startup vendors that could offer a much faster time to value are automatically dismissed.” In other words, IT shops are making sure the status quo is firmly maintained. But if you believe Libert, then this is entirely the wrong strategy because at heart, both Microsoft and IBM are offering behomoth frameworks that are file based, require development and are not people centric.
Where the startups fail but where the incumbents succeed is in identifying a specific value proposition within specific industries. His view is that Sharepoint will be a ‘big winner in the next five years.’ If the amount of noise being made by Microsoft is indicative, then it should be a winner. But…he also says: “Sharepoint deployments are horrendous and I really don’t know why people put up with them.” I do. They keep IT shops busy.
It’s time for IT to leave the ivory tower and become part of the decision-making culture of the business. The entire notion of IT as being somehow separate, or having independent goals from, the non-technical parts of an enterprise is absolutely ridiculous.
Doug Merritt, who runs SAP Labs who said that: “Taking a FriendFeed approach will tell me much more about potential employees in the due diligence phase of hiring than I can get from HR.” Did I hear a light bulb go on? Apparently so.
I’m thinking that SAP is realizing that it could get much closer to the millions of people who use its software rather than the IT shops that buy their stuff. The challenge, which Merritt thinks doesn’t get solved for another 2-5 years, is how companies like SAP adapt their software design strategies to accommodate this new reality. Enter the startups.
Cont.
Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Data center as a service
Hewlett-Packard on Monday plans to launch an effort to offer data center as a service to large enterprise customers.
The move is notable for the following reasons:
- Cloud infrastructure has been primarily focused on small- to mid-sized businesses that have been leveraging companies like Amazon Web Services.
- Large enterprises can wrap in HP’s service along with existing outsourcing contracts.
- The economy is slowing and IT managers may be able to expand their infrastructure by shifting from the capital spending line (build your own data center) to the operating expense line (a service subscription).
HP is betting that its service will gain traction among customers trying to create one instance of SAP as they migrate to SAP 6.0.
HP calls the effort Adaptive Infrastructure as a Service (AIaaS), but it’s basically a data center you can subscribe to. The service will be powered by HP’s existing data centers. HP has been consolidating its own data centers and plans to cook them down to six when the consolidation is done. U.S. customers will subscribe to HP’s new paired data centers in Atlanta (the one HP CIO Randy Mott runs the business on) and European customers will have a dedicated facility outside of Paris, says Pat Adamiak, vice president of portfolio, marketing and alliances at HP Services.
Adamiak outlined the four flavors of its data center as a service lineup optimized for various situations a large company would face. Each service configuration, which promises 99.9 percent uptime like Amazon does, has been tested with unnamed customers. Among the services:
- A compute intensive data center service for companies that need a lot of processing power, say oil companies that need geothermal analysis and content companies that need to render movies.
- A version that is optimized for SAP 6.0. I’d reckon that this configuration could be a popular choice. Many companies have three or four flavors of SAP in their shops and they are all trying to get to the latest version in one instance. There are a lot of hardware planning costs that go along with such a move. By cutting over to and SAP 6.0 rollout with a data center as a service approach you could save time and money since you could in theory lop off older SAP instances.
- A service optimized for Microsoft Exchange with uptime, failover and archiving.
- A data center as a service optimized for Windows, Unix and Linux. Under this arrangement, customers would bring their own apps since “a lot of customers like to control the application,” says Adamiak.
The initial game plan for HP is to target large companies, but eventually the company is likely to move downstream.
Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.
The move is notable for the following reasons:
- Cloud infrastructure has been primarily focused on small- to mid-sized businesses that have been leveraging companies like Amazon Web Services.
- Large enterprises can wrap in HP’s service along with existing outsourcing contracts.
- The economy is slowing and IT managers may be able to expand their infrastructure by shifting from the capital spending line (build your own data center) to the operating expense line (a service subscription).
HP is betting that its service will gain traction among customers trying to create one instance of SAP as they migrate to SAP 6.0.
HP calls the effort Adaptive Infrastructure as a Service (AIaaS), but it’s basically a data center you can subscribe to. The service will be powered by HP’s existing data centers. HP has been consolidating its own data centers and plans to cook them down to six when the consolidation is done. U.S. customers will subscribe to HP’s new paired data centers in Atlanta (the one HP CIO Randy Mott runs the business on) and European customers will have a dedicated facility outside of Paris, says Pat Adamiak, vice president of portfolio, marketing and alliances at HP Services.
Adamiak outlined the four flavors of its data center as a service lineup optimized for various situations a large company would face. Each service configuration, which promises 99.9 percent uptime like Amazon does, has been tested with unnamed customers. Among the services:
- A compute intensive data center service for companies that need a lot of processing power, say oil companies that need geothermal analysis and content companies that need to render movies.
- A version that is optimized for SAP 6.0. I’d reckon that this configuration could be a popular choice. Many companies have three or four flavors of SAP in their shops and they are all trying to get to the latest version in one instance. There are a lot of hardware planning costs that go along with such a move. By cutting over to and SAP 6.0 rollout with a data center as a service approach you could save time and money since you could in theory lop off older SAP instances.
- A service optimized for Microsoft Exchange with uptime, failover and archiving.
- A data center as a service optimized for Windows, Unix and Linux. Under this arrangement, customers would bring their own apps since “a lot of customers like to control the application,” says Adamiak.
The initial game plan for HP is to target large companies, but eventually the company is likely to move downstream.
Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Democracy - new beginning again!
In Pakistani today, democracy will take a new birth and let’s hope this time will last long. Unfortunately here, it only last of 5-7 years before some dictator takes control of the country of country's sake (and unfortunate fact is that our politicians (opposition parties) welcome that change or take over for that matter).
If this new government can give one thing in return to its people then I would suggest 'a constitution which is high above everything'. Every citizen’s rights are protected and practiced under it. If we only recognize the fact that constitution is highest legal document in this country and it will protected & practiced in every way possible then it will solve many problem of ours. With democracy comes freedom of speech and life and only true democracy is the answer to many problems of Pakistan which includes terrorism, hate, depression and injustice.
If this new government can give one thing in return to its people then I would suggest 'a constitution which is high above everything'. Every citizen’s rights are protected and practiced under it. If we only recognize the fact that constitution is highest legal document in this country and it will protected & practiced in every way possible then it will solve many problem of ours. With democracy comes freedom of speech and life and only true democracy is the answer to many problems of Pakistan which includes terrorism, hate, depression and injustice.
Friday, March 14, 2008
AOL acquires Bebo: The race is on...
AOL has made its social networking move, acquiring Bebo and getting access to its membership of 40 million worldwide.
In a statement Thursday, AOL said Bebo is a “perfect complement to AOL’s personal communications network and puts us in a leading position in social media.”
Indeed, Bebo does make AOL a player in social networking (see Techmeme). Meanwhile, if you couple Bebo with AOL’s ad networks and other initiatives like Open AIM 2.0 Time Warner’s online unit has some mojo.
Let’s add up AOL’s assets:
- AOL has spent almost $1 billion on ad acquisitions including ADTECH, buy.at, Lightningcast, Quigo, TACODA and Third Screen Media to create Platform-A.
- AOL has a lot of inventory through AOL.com, Moviefone, TMZ and Engadget, which is surprisingly never mentioned in Time Warner propoganda.
- And now it has Bebo.
The big question is this: Can AOL monetize Bebo as well as its other inventory? AOL talked a lot about “engagement advertising,” but the jury is still out on that one. AOL has struggled of late. And if Google has headaches monetizing social media I’m not sure AOL can figure it out any better.
Now it’s up to AOL to do something with Bebo within the bureaucratic structure of parent Time Warner. Another key thread is that the social networking field has narrowed dramatically. AOL has Bebo. News Corp. has MySpace. And Facebook is in bed with Microsoft.
As for the rest of the field, AOL’s purchase of Bebo is likely to set off a round of consolidation among smaller players that would be fine tuck-in deals in a larger setting.
With Bebo off the table sites like Ning and LinkedIn have just become more valuable–especially to a company like Yahoo, which appears to be left out of the social networking party.
Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.
In a statement Thursday, AOL said Bebo is a “perfect complement to AOL’s personal communications network and puts us in a leading position in social media.”
Indeed, Bebo does make AOL a player in social networking (see Techmeme). Meanwhile, if you couple Bebo with AOL’s ad networks and other initiatives like Open AIM 2.0 Time Warner’s online unit has some mojo.
Let’s add up AOL’s assets:
- AOL has spent almost $1 billion on ad acquisitions including ADTECH, buy.at, Lightningcast, Quigo, TACODA and Third Screen Media to create Platform-A.
- AOL has a lot of inventory through AOL.com, Moviefone, TMZ and Engadget, which is surprisingly never mentioned in Time Warner propoganda.
- And now it has Bebo.
The big question is this: Can AOL monetize Bebo as well as its other inventory? AOL talked a lot about “engagement advertising,” but the jury is still out on that one. AOL has struggled of late. And if Google has headaches monetizing social media I’m not sure AOL can figure it out any better.
Now it’s up to AOL to do something with Bebo within the bureaucratic structure of parent Time Warner. Another key thread is that the social networking field has narrowed dramatically. AOL has Bebo. News Corp. has MySpace. And Facebook is in bed with Microsoft.
As for the rest of the field, AOL’s purchase of Bebo is likely to set off a round of consolidation among smaller players that would be fine tuck-in deals in a larger setting.
With Bebo off the table sites like Ning and LinkedIn have just become more valuable–especially to a company like Yahoo, which appears to be left out of the social networking party.
Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Government role in nation building
I had a very detailed discussion with Bilal (office colleague and friend) about government role on promoting or say building industries in country. My argument is that government needs to provide infrastructure and environment that help flourish need ideas into practical. Like you can not produce good students out from school or university unless institute provide him the environment that brings out the creative soul of that student, where s/he can put ideas into reality without any fear, either that fear comes in shape of loss, dogmas, traditions.
If you do not provide a fair playing ground, not every player in the team would be lucky to deliver and perform. You've to engine next generation in a way that it becomes a prolific unit of the country. Every country has its own traditions which differ from others; similarly we can not expect that an engineer, doctor or scientist can deploy/implement strategies which were successful in US or UK. Every country has its own economical, political and regional dependencies that might effect the outcome.
Civil society alone can not do nothing, it's the Goverment which needs to put financial muscles to utilize manpower according to its needs.
The change must come from within, it can not come from outside.
If you do not provide a fair playing ground, not every player in the team would be lucky to deliver and perform. You've to engine next generation in a way that it becomes a prolific unit of the country. Every country has its own traditions which differ from others; similarly we can not expect that an engineer, doctor or scientist can deploy/implement strategies which were successful in US or UK. Every country has its own economical, political and regional dependencies that might effect the outcome.
Civil society alone can not do nothing, it's the Goverment which needs to put financial muscles to utilize manpower according to its needs.
The change must come from within, it can not come from outside.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Taking another twist
Pakistani politics is as difficult as Woman's nature. You can not predict for a moment what will going to happen next; yesterday foes are today's friend. Now days, we're watch a continuous struggle from lawyers to restore judiciary and political parties joining hands with them to remove President of the country.
Yes, institutions are important and individuals have no comparison to it.
Yes, institutions are important and individuals have no comparison to it.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Firefox3 5x faster than IE7
The almost-but-not-quite-final beta of Firefox 3 (FF3 beta 4) is now available for download. The most noticeable improvement is speed. In some tests, it’s three times faster than Firefox 2 (meaning the test completes in 1/3 the time), and a whopping five times faster than IE 7:
Other improvements in beta 4 include:
- Smarter location bar that tunes itself to your browsing habits. As you type in part of the URL it will offer suggestions based on where you’ve been before.
- Better native look-n-feel on Vista, Mac OSX, and Linux. This includes continuing work on icons, menus, native controls.
- Zoom just the text or the whole page. Zooming the text was one feature I missed from Firefox 2.
- Reduced memory usage. This is the main reason I switched to Firefox 3 for my everyday use. The old version often became unstable after a long session with many tabs open.
To see all the changes made so far in Firefox 3 read this excellent summary by Percy Cabello or see the release notes. Mozilla watchers expect one more beta before the production version is released.
Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.
Other improvements in beta 4 include:
- Smarter location bar that tunes itself to your browsing habits. As you type in part of the URL it will offer suggestions based on where you’ve been before.
- Better native look-n-feel on Vista, Mac OSX, and Linux. This includes continuing work on icons, menus, native controls.
- Zoom just the text or the whole page. Zooming the text was one feature I missed from Firefox 2.
- Reduced memory usage. This is the main reason I switched to Firefox 3 for my everyday use. The old version often became unstable after a long session with many tabs open.
To see all the changes made so far in Firefox 3 read this excellent summary by Percy Cabello or see the release notes. Mozilla watchers expect one more beta before the production version is released.
Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Hunting - Is it addiction?
On Friday, I had my very first close experience of hunting birds and my very first observation would be: Now, I know why people become serial killers.
Killing becomes part of their addiction, they always felt the need for more or I should say, it's the thirst which never ends unless it ends him.
The first face expression on every shooter (and killer for that matter) was sense of joy and achievement. Some may argue it's different from killing a human-being and I shouldn't be comparing a human life with an animal or bird, and not all hunters are serial killers.
I think, its only the experience level which makes them different otherwise, if someone has killed two or three people after some intervals then it is certain s/he will kill another whenever he gets the chance. Or in other words, tendency of killing human is more in who has already done it (whether he is police man, solider or some innocent killer).
I've already planned to buy my own 12 bore shotgun (for bird hunting ONLY)... ;)
Killing becomes part of their addiction, they always felt the need for more or I should say, it's the thirst which never ends unless it ends him.
The first face expression on every shooter (and killer for that matter) was sense of joy and achievement. Some may argue it's different from killing a human-being and I shouldn't be comparing a human life with an animal or bird, and not all hunters are serial killers.
I think, its only the experience level which makes them different otherwise, if someone has killed two or three people after some intervals then it is certain s/he will kill another whenever he gets the chance. Or in other words, tendency of killing human is more in who has already done it (whether he is police man, solider or some innocent killer).
I've already planned to buy my own 12 bore shotgun (for bird hunting ONLY)... ;)
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Confidence level - Girls have it now
Last night, I was on my school friend's mehndi (one of the traditional function in Pakistani marriage). We dance, enjoyed and had lots of halla-gulla there then we decided to leave for McDonald's (RWP) for good reason but told everyone to be back soon.
On McDonald's, one of our friend who is a chain-smoker went out to smoke and when he came back, he was excited and had something interesting to share with us. Here is in his own words of what happened there. He was smoking, a well-dressed and good-looking girl walked to him and told him that she has come along with children and just now she found that she's carrying no money. She would be grateful if he can lend him some money which she'll definitely return (she has brought kids with her, and she can't disappoint them without having food here). Like most of us, he does not carry paper money with him. He told her to come to drive way and he will pay then he gave his cell number to her.
He comes back inside and was sharing this experience with us that he gets a call from her, asking where he is? We decided immediately to go out to the drive way :). Earlier I thought, it would be joke... How a married woman can do that? But interesting she was there with family (without husband) and he paid for her family's meal :). What we discussed in-between is something personal which I can not share here ;) She called back to her saying thanks and telling him that she will give him a buzz at night :D... Just imagine, she'll give him a buzz and rest, I leave that to your imaginations... ;) We then went to Gelato affair in Islamabad, and some had shakes and some hot coffee... Now one can image who would have ordered what?
In past, I had couple of strange personal experiences of confident girls but a married woman - what can I say about it?
(Alas! I don't smoke, but now I'm seriously thinking about changing this BAD HABIT ;)
On McDonald's, one of our friend who is a chain-smoker went out to smoke and when he came back, he was excited and had something interesting to share with us. Here is in his own words of what happened there. He was smoking, a well-dressed and good-looking girl walked to him and told him that she has come along with children and just now she found that she's carrying no money. She would be grateful if he can lend him some money which she'll definitely return (she has brought kids with her, and she can't disappoint them without having food here). Like most of us, he does not carry paper money with him. He told her to come to drive way and he will pay then he gave his cell number to her.
He comes back inside and was sharing this experience with us that he gets a call from her, asking where he is? We decided immediately to go out to the drive way :). Earlier I thought, it would be joke... How a married woman can do that? But interesting she was there with family (without husband) and he paid for her family's meal :). What we discussed in-between is something personal which I can not share here ;) She called back to her saying thanks and telling him that she will give him a buzz at night :D... Just imagine, she'll give him a buzz and rest, I leave that to your imaginations... ;) We then went to Gelato affair in Islamabad, and some had shakes and some hot coffee... Now one can image who would have ordered what?
In past, I had couple of strange personal experiences of confident girls but a married woman - what can I say about it?
(Alas! I don't smoke, but now I'm seriously thinking about changing this BAD HABIT ;)
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Is Musharaf indispensable for Pakistan?
In Pakistan, after some time the ruling regime (premier for that matter) come up with an conclusion that s/he has become indispensable for this country and without him, the country can not seal through the difficult period, it is currently in... (interestingly they avoid addressing, if they're responsible to take this country to this place of chaos or they even now become a part of the problem) . Not surprisingly, in last 3 decades, all our premiers were in that illusion.
If we neutrally evaluate 3 of the most prominent political/military figures in Pakistani - Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and Musharaf. Surprisingly Pakistan became more democratic, liberal, progressive and independent in foreign policy in a military ruler's tenure. We saw IT, telecom, educational reforms were introduced and first time skilled labour were prefering to work in Pakistan, infact huge number of skilled menpower came back to Pakistan.
On the whole, international image of Pakistan was improved under Muharaf regime till 2005. But suddenly like every other premier in Pakistan, he start feeling that he alone is responsible for the positive financial, social activities and without him, everything will come apart. Earlier his speaches were sense of inspiration for many, people always believed what he was saying (even though he never took-off his uniform as promise but it was not the concern of common man). He was on helm of affairs then things took a u-turn on him... came along the 'lal masjid' incident (a right decision but wrong execution) and last nail to his coffin (though I still believe it will not effect Muharaf's regime) was chief justice removal case in 2007 - it's still an on going struggle between anti-Musharaf lobbiest and Pro-Musharaf.
Today, Pakistan see at least 1-2 suicide bombings killing dozens each week. If you ask Pakistanis, what is the quickest solution to this menace, 95% (including Pro-Musharaf) would suggest to remove Musharaf and everything will normalize. Is it so and is it the right choice?
If we neutrally evaluate 3 of the most prominent political/military figures in Pakistani - Benazir Bhutto, Nawaz Sharif and Musharaf. Surprisingly Pakistan became more democratic, liberal, progressive and independent in foreign policy in a military ruler's tenure. We saw IT, telecom, educational reforms were introduced and first time skilled labour were prefering to work in Pakistan, infact huge number of skilled menpower came back to Pakistan.
On the whole, international image of Pakistan was improved under Muharaf regime till 2005. But suddenly like every other premier in Pakistan, he start feeling that he alone is responsible for the positive financial, social activities and without him, everything will come apart. Earlier his speaches were sense of inspiration for many, people always believed what he was saying (even though he never took-off his uniform as promise but it was not the concern of common man). He was on helm of affairs then things took a u-turn on him... came along the 'lal masjid' incident (a right decision but wrong execution) and last nail to his coffin (though I still believe it will not effect Muharaf's regime) was chief justice removal case in 2007 - it's still an on going struggle between anti-Musharaf lobbiest and Pro-Musharaf.
Today, Pakistan see at least 1-2 suicide bombings killing dozens each week. If you ask Pakistanis, what is the quickest solution to this menace, 95% (including Pro-Musharaf) would suggest to remove Musharaf and everything will normalize. Is it so and is it the right choice?
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Microsoft puts a note on VMWare and Virtualization
Hyper-V, formerly known as “Viridian”, greatly differs from the virtualization product from Microsoft currently marketed as Microsoft Virtual Server in that it uses a hypervisor to provide hardware abstraction services to the OS environment and do resource allocation and partitioning. This differs from products such as Microsoft Virtual Server, VMWare Server and VMWare Workstation, Parallels, Linux KVM, and the recently Sun-acquired Virtualbox from Innotek use a technique known as host-based virtualization in which a host operating system such as Windows or Linux runs a subprocess provided by its native kernel called a Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) to provide virtualization services such as a virtual CPU, memory and devices to a virtual machine.
A hypervisor, on the other hand, is a thin abstraction layer which boots on the native hardware that performs some of the functions of an OS kernel, but abstracts much of what is needed to run multiple operating systems with their applications on top of it.
The advantages of hypervisor-based virtualization is that it tends to be faster and more enterprise scalable. The disadvantages are that hypervisors tend to be heavily hardware dependent and usually require hardware acceleration, such as Intel’s “VT” or AMD’s “Pacifica” extensions present in the latest Xeon and Opteron chips, such as it is with Hyper-V and Xen-based solutions, and require modified OS kernels and special paravirtualized device drivers to be run in the VM environment to facilitate enhanced I/O and networking performance.
Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.
A hypervisor, on the other hand, is a thin abstraction layer which boots on the native hardware that performs some of the functions of an OS kernel, but abstracts much of what is needed to run multiple operating systems with their applications on top of it.
The advantages of hypervisor-based virtualization is that it tends to be faster and more enterprise scalable. The disadvantages are that hypervisors tend to be heavily hardware dependent and usually require hardware acceleration, such as Intel’s “VT” or AMD’s “Pacifica” extensions present in the latest Xeon and Opteron chips, such as it is with Hyper-V and Xen-based solutions, and require modified OS kernels and special paravirtualized device drivers to be run in the VM environment to facilitate enhanced I/O and networking performance.
Note: Source taken from ZDNet blog.
Pakistani Politics - Taking a new twist
This is the first time in our recent past that major political parties are sitting together to form a national government and for the first time our opposition is planning (at least claiming in press-conferences) to play a proactive, constructive role. If Q-league (Pro-Musharaf party) keeps its word and take part as helping body then it will certainly help them not only in next election but will also set a new tradition in Pakistan.
I also hope, opposition or any other party for that matter will not undermine ruling party to complete its constitutional term of 5 years.
So far, Zardari role is impressive and I think for longer interest of his party - PPPP, he should keep himself away from running as a front-line contender for PM. Leave this place for senior most party member and play a father-like figure in PPPP, and build/improve is bad image of Mr. 10%.
Pakistan, at this critical juncture need no more surprises of floor-crossings or forward-blocks. Changing loyalties for small political/economical gains have never helped Pakistan, this is time we should denounce and reject anyone who put personal gains over national.
I also hope, opposition or any other party for that matter will not undermine ruling party to complete its constitutional term of 5 years.
So far, Zardari role is impressive and I think for longer interest of his party - PPPP, he should keep himself away from running as a front-line contender for PM. Leave this place for senior most party member and play a father-like figure in PPPP, and build/improve is bad image of Mr. 10%.
Pakistan, at this critical juncture need no more surprises of floor-crossings or forward-blocks. Changing loyalties for small political/economical gains have never helped Pakistan, this is time we should denounce and reject anyone who put personal gains over national.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
My first post and I lost it...
My first post wasn't saved so I lost it before publishing it... A very encourging and successful note to start my blogging activity :). So I decided to change my blog title from 'Is revolution in our doorstop' to 'My first post and I lost it'...
Anyways, my first post should be more about who I am rather what I am good in doing - lossing things... ;)
Oks, catch everyone tomorrow and I am sure there will be no comment in next 30 days from anyone unless I start telling people personally to post their comments here ;)
Anyways, my first post should be more about who I am rather what I am good in doing - lossing things... ;)
Oks, catch everyone tomorrow and I am sure there will be no comment in next 30 days from anyone unless I start telling people personally to post their comments here ;)
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