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Web Services: Freedom of choice

From the Don Box's interview in the MSDN magazine:

MSDN Magazine: If COM is Love, what are Web Services?
Don Box: XML and Web Services are about freedom—specifically, freedom of choice.

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Bill Gates bullish on India

Bill gates seems to be very bullish on India. After pledging $100 million towards AIDS spread/prevention causes through his charity, he now says that Microsoft will invest $400 million in boosting education, business partnerships, localisation efforts and software development in India. This is the largest set of investments ever done by Microsoft outside US. Bill Gates and Microsoft see the oppurtunity that India provides with billions of home still unconnected (and without desktops) and the remaining connected ones with Microsoft OS's and softwares. Linux is still entering the Indian market and I guess some part of this $400 million will be used to compete against it.

Analysts say Microsoft needs India's vast army of software developers to make cheap and reliable software based on its Windows operating systems to meet competition from Linux which is a free, easily modifiable rival.

Microsoft will also be releasing the localized(Hindi) versions of Microsoft XP and Office XP softwares.

Read all about Gates India visit here: Gates in India.

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Get content-to-code ratio of your blog [via Kiruba.com]

A cool application, GetContentSize, that calculates the ratio of text content to total page size for a given Web page. To do that it strips all HTML, JavaScript and CSS code and then determines how much of the document is actual text.

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Atlast Commenting added

In the past, some of you had complained about lack of Commenting system on our blog. Guess, we were lazy to implement that. Well, here's it atlast. We are using commenting system by Haloscan. So Happy Commenting !!

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Why is Pakistan still called a Democracy?

I don't understand, why Pakistan is still being called a Democracy. Economist writes after the Military Dictator, General Musharraf, postponed the opening of the country's new parliament.

IN MOST democratic countries, governments are made and unmade in parliament. Not so in Pakistan. A month after the general election of October 10th returned a hopelessly fractured parliament, there is still no knowing when parliament will actually meet to approve a prime minister.

After the most farcical elections in Pakistan, We are seeing a hung parliament. General Musharraf has distorted the entire constitutional and legal process in the country in such a manner that Pakistan can no longer be called a Democracy. And he is not done yet. With Benazir Bhutto's, Pakistan People's Party and Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) party which is an alliance of six islamic parties striking a deal (that's a different story altogether) to keep General backed Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid away from the power, he has gone ahead and delayed the start of the parliament by atleast a week. And even if this state of hung parliament is resolved, one thing is clear, Pakistans new government cannot be formed without the help of MMA, and the real fun starts there. Pakistan needs US backing and financial support and I'm sure US won't like talking to an Islamic-Secular alliance(which talks of expelling US forces from Pakistan) in its fight against Al-Qaeda and terrorism. So what are General's choices? Promise for another Elections in three year's time period, til then enjoy being a dictator. Who cares, The World's still calling Pakistan a DEMOCRACY.

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Calling Bangalore

Good article on R&D boom (and in general software) in Bangalore, India. Bangalore is the capital of Karnataka, a state in Southern India. Also known as the Garden city it boasts of itself as the Silicon Valley of the east and true so with almost all the big software/IT companies presence there.

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Few good articles on Web Services

Understanding DIME and WS-Attachments, " This article explores the rationale behind attachments, including the key ideas around packaging and message delineation, and then looks at how DIME and WS-Attachments arose from these ideas"
Web Service Development Kit (Tech Preview), "Detailed walkthrough of the WSDK Tech Preview for WS-Security, WS-Routing, and DIME protocols. Provides sample code repackaged for VS .NET, some extensions of sample code for more realistic scenarios, and tips on how to avoid 'InvalidSecurityToken' faults when working with X.509 Certificates." [via Sam Gentile's Weblog]

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Happy Diwali

A very Happy and Prosperous Diwali to all of you. May this festival bring happiness, joy and good health to everyone. Greetings from both of us.

Monica and Deepak

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Bill Gates India visit

Bill Gates shattered the urban myth that 32 % of Microsoft employees are of Indian-origin. Here's an excerpt of an interview with Bill Gates published in The Times of India:

"TOI: The urban myth is that 32 per cent of Microsoft employees are of Indian-origin, but that seems a stretch.
Bill Gates: Yes, that's too much. But if you took just our engineering departments then it's about 20 per cent.
TOI: That's still huge.
Bill Gates:Yes, that's huge and that's just the engineering department. It's a good-sized community. Hey, they even have a cricket community. But I will say the Indian restaurants in Seattle could be better. But we are working on that."

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Dave Winer's SOAP definition

Dave wrote in his blog that Doc Searls liked his definition of SOAP, which goes something like:
"It's a simple way to call procedures running on other machines, on other OSes, written in other languages, using different economic systems, without being forced to pay a tax to Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Sun or the W3C."

Well, not everyone liked his definition.

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Tutorial on DIME

PerfectXML has a new article on DIME. DIME is a specification which can be used to combine text, image, and video data in XML messages.

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Loosely Coupled, Explained

John Hagel has a very good definition of the term, Loosely Coupled. He defines Lossely Coupled as, "an attribute of systems, referring to an approach to designing interfaces across modules to reduce the interdependencies across modules or components – in particular, reducing the risk that changes within one module will create unanticipated changes within other modules. This approach specifically seeks to increase flexibility in adding modules, replacing modules and changing operations within individual modules."

John writes of the benefits of Loosely Coupled system and how if this term is not understood and used properly will waste the benefits the new wave of technologies can provide. He does not mention this new wave of technology but It has to be Web Services.

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Atlast, am back

OK, I didn't say that I'll be back, but yes I'm back...:). We (I and Monica) were off on a quite long vacation to Pune, India. So now we will be updating the site on a regular basis. There will be some updates on India, things certainly have changed back home. Also, a lot has happened since my last post in the tech world. It will take some time to catch up on things. So keep checking.

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XML Web Services: Means to an End

Don Box on end to the Web services era, at least on a standards level:

Don Box, an architect in Microsoft Corp.'s developer division told an audience of Web services conference attendees Wednesday: "The end of the XML Web services era is near. I predict two years from now we won't have this conference."

Box said XML Web services are a means to an end. "We have to get the plumbing sorted out," he said. "We have a couple more years of plumbing work, but after that we move on to applications," he said. Box said the "protocol work is starting to wind down, the infrastructure is catching up with protocols and it's time to start thinking about applications."
Very well said.

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Don't stop Blogging, Sam

Sam says that he's got kind of bored right now with the blogging and that he would like his blog to morph into something else which he has not decided yet. Well, Sam yours is one blog we goto for .Net related stuff. Your blog has become a huge knowledgebase of .Net news and articles. So keep the ball rolling while you try to find what you need to do with your blog. Cheers !!

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Web Services' True Promise

This time Informationweek reports on Web services hype and reality:

"With Web services, as with any software project, your chances of success hinge on basic but essential steps such as performing a thorough needs assessment, gaining a good understanding of the technology and the vendor landscape, and using a pilot program before undertaking large implementations. Once those fundamentals are covered, chances are that Web services will result in greater efficiencies for your business. And that's what will transform the technology from today's hype to tomorrow's reality."

Another interesting paragraph from the same article.

"The fact is that the Internet never made anyone rich, never increased a company's bottom line, never made anyone's life easier. What the Internet does do is provide a valuable tool that lets businesses and individuals benefit from squeezing inefficiencies out of their processes. Just as a Steinway piano won't turn an ordinary person into a virtuoso, new technology won't let an IT department with a lackluster plan achieve significant benefits."