Disqus - Latest Comments for krishnan

Re: Google Docs snipes at Office with .docx, .xlsx format uploads

krishnan — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:41:16 -0000

I thought Zoho Office Suite offered this function since long back.

Re: How I made over $2 million with this blog (Scripting News)

krishnan — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 13:31:30 -0000

Great post Dave.

Re: What If Your Model Is Wrong?

krishnan — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 01:16:07 -0000

Fred, I am not sure if this is a good suggestion. Going to college is not just to learn quantum mechanics or Algorithms. It is an experience that shapes a person to who he/she is and how he/she can face the world in the future. I hope you come up with a better answer to Frank's question. How is your suggestion different from home schooling where parents teach christianity and creationism? We cannot remove college experience and still expect the person to have an all round development. My 2 cents.

Re: The cloud isn’t for everyone

krishnan — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:48:24 -0000

I want to point out that your non portability argument is not valid. Amazon's AMI is just a compressed version of the root file system which you setup in your local machine. If you are making an AMI for a virtual appliance based on a specific web app, you are creating that environment using the linux file system of your favorite distro + app and then compressing it to reduce bandwidth usage. This compressed version is called an AMI. There is nothing to stop you from using the uncompressed version with another provider. This argument is totally meaningless. Plus, your arguments about security and control applies without any changes to the traditional hosting models too. Claiming it as a cloud based issue is just an attempt to sow seeds of distrust in the minds of people (Isn't it called fear mongering?).

As far your argument about performance is concerned, you haven't provided the specs of traditional server and the servers used in the cloud. In the absence of specs, the comparison could be like that of comparing apples to oranges.

This article appears like an article with agenda. I am sorry for being blunt. This is not an objective analysis.

Re: The fix is on? iPhone 2.1 software out tomorrow.

krishnan — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 22:06:26 -0000

By "for most customers", does he mean that the battery life will be screwed up for jailbroken phones? :-)

Re: Initial thoughts on the Palin nomination (Scripting News)

krishnan — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 23:00:34 -0000

Just check out Twitter for "Little Known Facts" meme and see how many Hillary voters are happily participating in it. Well, it will be time consuming for you but you will get the point in there.

Re: Computer forensics & cloud computing

krishnan — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:09:33 -0000

From a purely security POV, it doesn't matter between a physical server sitting in a data center or a virtual server on the cloud. Can you show me how cloud makes it easy to compromise?

Re: Computer forensics & cloud computing

krishnan — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:05:42 -0000

Sure. Thatz the case with traditional servers too. We have to be responsible about the security of the server right from maintaining the software up to date to following safer security procedures like checking the MD5SUM of the software we download. I will soon be posting about these kinda memes floating around in the tech blogosphere (in a new blog on cloud computing which will be launched soon). I will send the link your way then. I can assure you that all the vulnerability issues pointed out in the cloud computing realm is true in the traditional hosting realm too. Adding EBS to the server is as easy as mounting a backup drive we have in traditional servers. With services like Rightscale, this will happen with a few clicks on your browser.

Re: Computer forensics & cloud computing

krishnan — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:57:14 -0000

Andrew, this is not the case. EC2 has now released EBS, which is the persistent storage for EC2 instances. Also, you can backup snapshots to S3 from EBS with ease. Even if the instance shuts down, you can still keep all the logs and any trace left by crackers (along with several snapshot backups). In fact, this makes forensics much easier than the traditional web hosting because backup snapshots will help you identify timeline better than traditional servers.

Re: Gmail fails; that Google Gears integration can’t come soon enough

krishnan — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:42:59 -0000

Imap access works for me

Re: Is your web service open source?

krishnan — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 02:28:08 -0000

I have dealt with this question many times in my blog. The bottom line is that Tim doesn't get opensource at all. He sees it from a totally narrow POV as a licensing platform and/or business model. I was planning to respond to his post based on OSCON talk but inertia kept me from doing it. Opensource is kind of a philosophical platform with openness being its defining "property". We don't have to worry about the literal constructs of do we have to use GPL on web services blah blah blah. I see Open APIs, Open Architectures, etc. as a by product of "opensource platform". Even though I agree with his conclusion of open architecture in his post/talk, his arguments to take the discussion to that result is weak and, in a way, wrong. His argument that diversity in the hardware platform as the reason for the very existence of opensource is incredibly stupid. Opensource would have existed even if we were struck with just the x86 systems. He should understand that the very basis for open source movement is the idea of knowledge sharing that came from science and open apis, open architecture, open data, open publishing, etc are just the evolution of the idea of openness which Richard Stallman borrowed from academia. Tim's claims like "Opensource has no future in SaaS" or the slightly evolved statement like "Opensource doesn't matter, it is the open APIs and open architecture that matters in the web services world" is the case of narrow point of view. Also, I have shown in many of my blog posts why opensource, as defined in a narrow domain of licensing, also matters in the web services era. Tim's insistence on this topic appears to be meaningless when seen from a broader view of open source as a platform.

Re: I Requested That Verizon Drop Their Deal With 1938media

krishnan — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:37:58 -0000

I am totally with you Corvida. Loren and people who justify his nonsense take the freedom of speech idea to an extreme. With freedom of speech comes the huge responsibility and if people don't exercise this responsibility, they should face the consequences. I am sure Loren knows about it and he may or may not care about it. The sad part is the attitude of a group in the tech community who encourage such nonsense. If we have to take the arguments of people like Allen Stern, then Freedom to hold guns will imply freedom to shoot anyone. Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom to insult people. Period.

Re: Protests over Verizon deal with 1938media

krishnan — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 02:32:57 -0000

I agree with the freedom of speech argument. But, with that freedom, comes a huge responsibility. If people fail in that responsibility, they should face the consequences. Freedom to hold gun doesn't mean freedom to shoot others. Similarly, freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom to insult others. I am disappointed with your line of argument.

Re: Can You Build A Business On Browser Extensions?

krishnan — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 15:03:11 -0000

Also, one of the extensions where I see lot of potential for building a business model is feedly.

Re: The Big Switch

krishnan — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:52:49 -0000

Congrats again Deepak. Waiting for more posts related to cloud computing in this space.

Re: Do You Want In On Live Mesh?

krishnan — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 01:34:15 -0000

Hi Sarah,

Remember the debate on Twitter the other day? I think that itself should be a good reason for you to send an invite to me. You can then convince me on Live Mesh :-). If you think this is a valid reason, send one to live (at) krishworld (dot) com :-)

Re: Continuing thoughts on innovation models

krishnan — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:52:21 -0000

I completely agree with you on that. It needs a complete revamp to reduce the friction between academia and industry.

Re: Continuing thoughts on innovation models

krishnan — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:00:47 -0000

Deepak,

By asking how do we reward innovators by business models, you are making an inherent assumption that these innovators are there for monetary rewards. In fact, many are not all that worried about monetary rewards. What we need is an environment where innovators who want to build a business on top of their work should be able to do it easily and those who are not interested in monetary benefits should be able to continue with what they want to do and anyone who builds a business on top of the work done by these people should be made to contribute back to this environment so that the second group of people continue with their innovation without worrying or getting affected by the commercialization of their work. I hope you get what I am trying to convey here.

Re: http://www.readburner.com/item/58330/carter-hugs-hamas-hamas-hugs--obama

krishnan — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:22:18 -0000

This is the dumbest post I have ever come across. How is this nonsense related to technology?

Re: Web as platform: Bret Taylor on Open Data

krishnan — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:47:02 -0000

I agree with the idea of making web itself to be one huge database. Here is how I view this issue.

When I was discussing about the problems in Wikipedia itself, I had argued that we will be better served by a huge collection of vertipedias (vertical wikis specializing in narrow fields of specialization) instead of one centralized repository of knowledge. Such specialized vertical wikipedias will have a much higher levels of accuracy because the participants will be specialists in the niche area.

I would apply similar logic when it comes to warehouses of data. The web should serve as a single database which, in turn, sources from specialized 'mini databases'. Even though I agree with Bret's idea of open data, which is my belief for a long time, I think I disagree with his idea of how it should be implemented.

Re: We need a Wikipedia for data - Bret Taylor's blog

krishnan — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:10:17 -0000

Good post Bret. I am thinking about this problem for quite some time too. Another problem which I am having in mind and want someone else to implement (:-)) is the idea of open reports. This idea follows that of the open data idea. Companies like Gartner and Forrester are making tons of money by tapping the elusive nature of data in the world. With open data and the free processing power of idle human minds, we should be able to dig out a repository of open reports. In other words, open source reports making some meaning out of open data. Such open reports will help those individuals/companies who want to make meaningful decisions based on the open data available. This is nothing new. It is an extension from the scientific community. We need to bring in such a collaboration into the technology and business community too. In fact, we can get started with open reports repository even with whatever data we have access to at this point. We just have to put the processing power of our minds into writing a report and, more importantly, aggregate it in a wikipedia kinda system.

Re: Facebook Friends Aren’t Real?

krishnan — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 19:38:28 -0000

And I thought if you are a facebook friend and you interact extensively through facebook and other social networks, you can be considered real world friends too. It is time judiciary spends some time understanding technology and how it shapes the life.

Re: UGC: BusinessWeek misses the point

krishnan — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 00:31:32 -0000

Does business week think that big publications offer great content? I think they should check out this insanely dumb article on WSJ

http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2007/11/05/google-...