Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Balancing WS-* vs. REST

Interesting article about WS-* vs. REST .. worth the read (and not only because I'm metioned ;-)).

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Google's evilness increasing

Argh!! Don't hijack my 404 pages!

Now Google "remembers" all of your searches too if you happened to have told the browser to remember your Google login for GMail or Blogger or any of their other services.

Nice and useful? Yes, but remember who else has access to your search history ..

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Terrorism: At its worst in Sri Lanka

February 4th 2008 marked 60 years of independence from Britain. The government of Sri Lanka organized the usual military parades under very tight security as it was expected that LTTE would try to do something really bad.

Well, they marked the independence day too - with a series of bombings all over the country. The worst was a suicide bombing at the Colombo Fort railway station (the central station in Colombo). A female suicide bomber blew herself up killing 14 people and injuring more than 100 others. Amongst the dead: 7 school children from D. S. Senanayake M.V., a major boys school in Colombo. (My mother used to teach there many years ago.) The boys were all members of the school baseball team - they were returning home from a game in Kandy. Half the team had come back the day before- but these boys had stayed back to visit some of the historical sites in Kandy. Little did they know what was waiting for them in Colombo. Also dead is an old-boy of the school, one of the coaches of the team. Oh BTW, amongst the dead, an 18 year old Tamil boy. Yes, a member of the community that the bastard LTTE terrorists claim they're fighting for. TV in Sri Lanka had shown the 7 caskets lying in the school auditorium - I cannot imagine what that must have been like (I'm traveling right now and so wasn't there to see it). In addition to these 7 school boys, two more 12 year old school girls were also brutally murdered by that female suicide bomber.

As part of the independence day celebrations LTTE also blew up a bus at the Dambulla bus depot - a bus full of buddhist pilgrims going to a ceremony in Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka's nearly 2000-year old first capital city.

They went on to attack another bus with a claymore mine in Weli-Oya.

Rumour is ripe in Sri Lanka that LTTE has committed to making a "1000 mothers weep" .. killing children of 1000 mothers. The government has closed all schools in the Colombo area for this entire week as a precaution - the threat is real. Why only Colombo schools? LTTE is doing this to get attention and to try to provoke the population .. best way to do that is in Colombo.

So this is what terrorism is about. I hope this helps all those people who think that the LTTE are "freedom fighters" understand what these maniacs are like. There's no place on this earth for LTTE's leadership; they belong six feet under it.

Would any other country allow a group of terrorists to hold territory, have a navy and have an airforce? Yes, LTTE has all that. However, Sri Lanka has always been dinged by various countries when we try to destroy the terrorist movement in Sri Lanka.

Example: The US invaded two countries to destroy terrorists that attacked them, but when we fight back and say "enough is enough; no more ceasefire bullshit- you are now dead" what do we get? They cut off aid to Sri Lanka. Yes, we were taken off the Millennium Challenge opportunity - of $11m. THANK YOU Senator Leahy. Rather, up yours, Senator Leahy. (And maybe I should ask- how much money did LTTE lobbyists give your PAC?) You want to talk about human rights? Come to Sri Lanka and talk to that Tamil mother who's son was killed by that suicidal maniac.

Ever heard the statement "those in glass houses should not throw stones" Mr. Leahy? Your country circumvented the Geneva Convention and you want to tell us about protecting human rights?

Tell me Mr. Lahey, how far would your country go if there was a group of maniacal terrorists holding a part of your country, having their own navy, their suicide squads, their own airforce and their own gun running ships? You think you guys would be showing "human rights" to them??

That's ok. You can keep your $11m and spend it in Iraq, where you really need about another $11000B to cleanse it of all "enemy combatants." We'll survive. We have elephants in Sri Lanka - and there's another saying you should keep in mind: "elephants never forget."

Oh yeah, its not only the US who's doing this- Japan is threatening us with cutting aid too if we don't stop fighting these maniacs and start talking to them. Japan- the very country that one of our leaders spoke loudly in support of at the San Francisco Conference in 1945 to help them get back on their feet. Come on Mr. Akashi, drink some saki and think again about what you're doing.

The last time we almost eliminated the LTTE was in 1987. Then Indian Air Force planes came and air dropped supplies to the LTTE (which they nurtured with financial and military support in the 80s) and basically threatened Sri Lanka with invasion if we didn't stop. Then the Indians came to Sri Lanka as peace keepers and after a while left licking their wounds - LTTE killed more than 1500 Indian troops in Sri Lanka. India is now a true friend - they now help us and, probably most importantly, are not getting in the way.

The Sri Lankan government has said unequivocally that the time for talking with the LTTE is over. We can start talking again after its maniacal leader Prabhakaran is dead. Its really sad that LTTE foot soldiers are being killed regularly in the process - they are really Sri Lankan citizens who have been mislead by this bastard. Unfortunately we haven't yet been lucky to get Prabhakaran - but sleep lightly bastard, your days are numbered. Maybe you should start counting in hours.

As I blogged earlier, killing off the LTTE does not solve the underlying problems in Sri Lanka which lead to terrorism raising its ugly head in Sri Lanka. However, we CANNOT solve those as long as there's one group that has appointed themselves the "sole representative of the Tamil people" and kills off all non-compliant Tamil leaders. Sorry; you guys just need to go away from the face of this earth- then let's talk and figure out a way forward.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Microsoft buys open source company

Microsoft has just bought their first true open source business! No, not WSO2 :-).

Zimbra.

Assuming the Yahoo! deal goes through, MSFT will be the proud owner of Zimbra .. a company which gives its software away for free under an OSI approved license and makes (a lot of) money by offering a service. It also happens to be a serious Exchange alternative. So now it doesn't matter whether you stay with Exchange or not .. you'll still be paying Microsoft!

I don't see them changing Zimbra's business model at all- while the revenue may be trivially small by MSFT standards, they reportedly had tremendous revenue growth. Plus combined with the fact that whatever revenue they get from that is revenue they are probably losing from Exchange, its a sweet deal.

Interesting times .. but makes perfect sense to me. Open source is here to stay- I suspect this'll be the first of many open source purchases for MSFT .. and maybe not indirectly the next time around.

SAP is now the only major software vendor without an open source play of some sort. Who will it be?

Friday, February 1, 2008

Open Enterprise 2.0 Mashup Summit - in NY on Feb 1st!

Duh. We're also participating at the Open Enterprise 2.0 Mashup Summit in New York City today (Friday, Feb 1st)! Should've blogged about it earlier ..

Keith Chapman, the lead architect of our mashup server, will be giving a talk about it. I'm really sorry to miss this event- looks like all the cool mashup players will be there!

Web Services on Wall Street 2008 Conference



We're sponsoring this year's Web Services on Wall Street conference on Monday, February 11th. Jonathan will be in the opening panel talking about enterprise mashups .. which is of course very timely for us as we've just released our mashup server product!

We will also be launching our WSO2 Registry product that day!

If you want to attend and need a pass drop me a note - as gold sponsors we get to invite a bunch of people. You can get my email address from here.