Monday, January 22, 2007

நான் ஏன் மதம் மாறினேன்...?

தருமி: 55. நான் ஏன் மதம் மாறினேன்...? 3

An interesting blog. Good writing by all participants. Since questioning is not often encouraged in Christianity and Islam, I guess Dharumi's "thought process" is more interesting than a Hindu questioning.

In the realm of mind, all questions will be there. Allow them as they exist only in the realm of mind. When questions can't be answered by books or introspection, the mind gives up and enlightenment happens. You become free from all bindings.

Then, there is a rebel mode that happens when the bindings are gone. But slowly and surely one sees these bindings as something within the mind and He stays more conscious. One can even play with these bindings and see the mind deriving little pleasures. This is the active state of being. The Gita talks about the active state with enlightenment where the sthita-prgna performs his duties without attachment to the effects of it.

When enlightenment happens, in the passive state, it is not possible to differentiate between living and non-living, good and bad, God and Evil. That is the state of being God. At that level of consciousness, God is not someone or something sitting in a far off universe watching you; God is something that you are, you experience and the experienced.

Until one reaches that state of consciousness, allow for all debates on God and see experience of futility of the concept of God and that of the debates.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Airtel - Is there someone out there to manage their sites

Search for airtel broadband on Google or just click the link airtel broadband - Google Search.

You will come across at least 4 sites - airtel-broadband.com, airtelworld.com, airteltelephone.com and airtelbroadband.in. I don't know why an ISP needs so many sites with so little information. I am trying to find out a best broadband usage plan and none of the sites have this information. Some of them just do not respond and some show jsp / jrun errors.

It seems too many people outsourced the web site creation for airtel. Here is a company that doesn't care what their web presence is. I guess their sleek commercials give them the confidence that they can run a business successfully with bad customer service and support.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Scott Rosenberg: What Makes Software So Hard

Scott Rosenberg: What Makes Software So Hard

The hardest part is not making software but explaining to Managers on why software development is hard.

Recently, I took over maintenance and enhancement of a piece of software from a junior developer who left the organization. He had made less than reasonable decisions on where to store some options. His decision was based partly on the business Manager's input and partly on lack of experience and guidance. The business guy had wanted a page in which he would be able to enter gifts that we recommend for various occasions. The developer chose to keep the occasion information at page level and have corresponding numbers attached to the product set at the database level. This is not the best decision, but considering the time crunch and the push from the Manager, the developer went with this decision. Over the next few weeks, the requirements got more complex - there are occasions where you need to get the age of the person involved, where the person lives and so on. The developer kept patching it up and then left the job. I hope this project wasn't the reason.

When I had to maintain the system, I did some cleanup and moved the occasion information maintained at the code behind level. Now comes the next request. It is to add a new occasion. The business guy thinks that adding an element to a drop-down is all that we need to do. He is not able to think in abstract to define requirements. The usual way he works is, I show a UI and then he wants changes. This time I decided to move the information further behind to the database level. Before I do that, I am waiting on what more information should we look for and do a total redesign.

That's how software development works.

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