MacFUSE

Have been reading for a while about MacFUSE. This is a port of the FUSE filesystem api on Linux by Google's Amit Singh. FUSE is Filesystem in USErland. It lets the operating system see everything as a filesystem. So you can connect to GMail and see it a mount with all mails in it, or you can ssh to a remote box and see it as a mount and browse to it. There is a driver to mount NTFS filesystem on a Mac. This should be reason enough to try it out.

The Mac port is still in beta though and can be had from the above link. It has a wiki which provides all the info. One more link with a simple howto.

You can mount ssh connections as a filesystem without going through MacFUSE. You will need to visit sshfs for Darwin.


Looking forward to trying this out. :)

BPO to the Villages

Came upon this story during my periodic browsing of BusinessWeek Online.

"If work can shift from the U.S. to a city in India, why can't work from cities in India shift to villages in India?" says Ramalinga Raju, chairman of tech services provider Satyam Computer Services Ltd. and founder of the Byrraju Foundation.

This is an interesting use of IT to spread the economic benefits to the people of real India (70% of the population lives in villages). If this all works out, in say 10 years, it will help in increasing the IT literacy among the people leading to increase in government IT spending (since the government will be a major spender on such projects, a new vote-bank maybe(?)) a domino effect of sorts.

Entry-level GramIT employees, all with at least three-year college degrees, earn $800 a year, compared with $2,000 to $5,000 annually for an employee at an urban outsourcing shop. And because there are few other good jobs in these communities, GramIT's centers see just 5% annual turnover—dramatically better than the 60% rate in places such as Bangalore.

One other good side-effect would be that the next or next to next generation would be more and more IT savvy creating a talent pool for the tech industry.

It still has to pick up steam and hope it really does well.

If the internet connectivity is really good, I wouldn't mind shifting to my native village, grow my own stuff, enjoy life.

Picking Locks and Cracking Safes

Haven't we all seen Amitabh crack open safes in Natwarlal. Always wondering what is that they do when turn the dials, listening with stethoscopes etc. etc. etc. Well, I came upon this wonderful article by Tim Hunkin when searching for the smell of plastic explosives (I had read in a Frederick Forsyth novel that it smells like marzipan).

I agree with Tim Hunkin that cracking safes and picking locks is an art and most of the cracking and picking is done out of intellectual curiosity rather than crime.

Let me see if I can recollect any other Bollywood movies with safe cracker as a lead :)

Go through it here.

Blood Money, Blood Diamond

Today read an article in LA Times (read it here), about the Gates Foundations investment practices harming the very people they are trying to help. From the article:

The Gates Foundation has poured $218 million into polio and measles immunization and research worldwide, including in the Niger Delta. At the same time that the foundation is funding inoculations to protect health, The Times found, it has invested $423 million in Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and Total of France — the companies responsible for most of the flares blanketing the delta with pollution, beyond anything permitted in the United States or Europe.

Gates has screwed up the computer world with Microsoft practices looks like he wants to branch out to the real one.

New look Blogger

Did a bit of an update to the template to give a simple look. Upgraded to the new Blogger.

Have to check out the features yet.