Raise your sights

The article Cricinfo - Raise your sights, India by Peter Roebuck on the state of Cricket in India and what it should do next in Cricket is an interesting one. The arguments raised in it can easily be applied to personal life as well:

1. In the long run it was not the result that mattered but the response -- rise like a phoniex from the ashes is what they say
2. A newly formed nation relishes every achievement because they instil confidence and create identity. A mature country is not so easily pleased. Certainly, it does not live in the past. -- but it does remember it so as move forward in a better manner
3. Defeats have led not to rational introspection but to loud protest -- do not blame someone else but see what more you could have to done to win
4. Goals help to define actions -- no better truth than this one
5. extract every last drop of ability .... keep working, keep improving. -- the only thing constant is change

Offshoring

Interesting article on offshoring from Sramana -- Trend Radar 2008: Offshoring - Sramana Mitra on Strategy
A year back I would have disagreed with her, but with the learnings in the past one year, I think she is right on the count that in 5 years time the cost of living in Indian Metros would be comparable to that in the US.
However, if India has to stay on top then we have to develop ourselves into a product development industry rathar than a service industry. That would help India to maintain its niche in the IT industry.

And with lots of activities going on in Indian IT industry I have little doubt that India wont be able to make it.

Techy: Questions

Q1. Find k random elements from a very long linked list. The size of the list is not known.
[Update: if the size of the list is given then how does the answer change]

Q2. Find the kth smallest element from a list of integers.

More on Chak De

From Mr. Narayan Murthy's observations on Chak De India in the Times Of India:

1. We have to identify as Indians first and rise above our affiliations with our states, religions and castes.
2. We must accept meritocracy and enthusiastically play the role we are best suited to. We must embrace discipline to strictly follow every step required for success.
3. We have to put the interest of our nation ahead of our personal interests, subordinating our egos and biases.
4. Finally, we have to put in tremendous hard work and make short-term sacrifices for long-term glory.

To this I would like to add one more point which is also the biggest:

Self Belief. If the coach didn't believe that the team could win, the team wouldn't have won. He took risks and knew given the right training and right strategy the team can be a world beater.

Techy: CPU affinity on Linux

How do you assign a process to a specific CPU on a multiprocess Linux box?

Ans: Use "taskset". There are C functions for this command also, which can be see using "man taskset"

Techy: How to find stack size of a process on linux?

To find the stack size used by a process on Linux use the "pmap" command.

Indian Communists and Reliance Retail

This post echos similar thoughts as in one of my earlier posts: Pandian v/s Geetha.

Today's newspapers carry a report about the attack by members of Forward Block, a left wing party, on an outlet of Reliance Fresh (a grocery store chain owned by corporate giant Reliance Industries) in Calcutta. The outlet was still not open and was under construction when the members of the Forward Block vandalised it. When asked about the reason of this attack the members of Forward Block said that they think that Reliance Fresh is a threat to small businessmen.
What I interpret from this attack is that the communists think that it is their duty to protect the small businessmen from the onslaught of a corporate giant which is a symbol of crony capitalism in their eyes. Now I have been to Reliance Fresh stores in Noida and have found that it works on a very good marketing strategy. Sell one or two items which are popular real cheap and sell everything else a shade costlier than the market price. So a customer is attracted by the low prices on say, potatos and onions, and when she goes to buy these she invariably buys the rest of the vegetables from the store as well. Now the other vegetables are not cheap, so the total grocery bill is nearly the same as it was earlier when I bought these stuff from the small neighbourhood store. The only difference is that now I get everything from a single store and that is a huge convinience. So now, for me, it is a choice between convinience of buying everything from a single store or going around the whole market to buy the rations.

The question now arises, if I can see this, why can't the communists see it, that what stores like Reliance fresh offer is convineance and not low prices. What is wrong with letting the common man have some convineance? And since when the communists started favoring the small businessmen. They are after all businessmen who are doing business for profit and not for charity and would not deter from making an extra profit if they have a chance.

I think the communists are just opposing the corporates because it is in their nature to don't let anyone grow. They want everyone to be remain small and fight to live, not to live to fight. As I had highlighted in Pandian v/s Geetha, the communists need to look at the big picture not the small ones.