ಕಸ್ತೂರಿ ಕನ್ನಡ (Kasturi Kannada)

ಆ ಹಾ!!, ಕನ್ನಡದಲ್ಲಿ ಬರಹ ಎಷ್ತು ಸೊಗಸಾಗಿದೆ !
ಗೂಗಲ್ ತ್ರನ್ಸ್ ಲಿಟ ರೇಷನ್ (Transliteration) API ಗಳನ್ನು ಉಪಯೋಗಿಸಿ ಮಾಡಿರುವ ಈ ತಂತ್ರಜ್ನ್ಯಾನ ಆತಿ ಸೊಗಸಾಗಿದೆ. ಬರೆಯಲು ಕಸ್ಥವಾದರೆ, ಸ್ಕ್ರೀನ್ ಇನ ಮೇಲೆ ತಕ್ಷಣ (Transliteration) keypad ಮೂಡಿ ಬರುತ್ಹದೆ
ತಂತ್ರಜ್ನ್ಯಾನ, ಒಂದು ನೆಲವಿಲ್ಲದ ಬಾವಿ !
ಇಲ್ಲಿ ಸಾದ್ಯತೆಗಳು, ಸಂಭವಗಳು ಅಪರಿಮಿತ, ಅನಂತ !!

Show me the money..

Once upon a midnight dreary...

I pondered about the magical word 'cost' in developing and maintaining software, I found this classical example of 'Practical Cost' in software development / maintenance.

The scenario is upgrading your windows PDA/phone from windows mobile 2003 edition to wm5 or 6. Now, if you ever wondered why there aren't any dynamic upgrades possible on mobile os's, like the ones on desktop platforms (for instance windows xp to windows vista ), the answer may not be evident at first.

http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2005/10/06/477999.aspx

According to Microsoft, "But, by and large, the number of devices that will upgrade are pretty small." and therefore

Total cost of doing the upgrade) / (number of people who will use it) = (unreasonable price)

Total cost of doing the upgrade includes

1] Changes in the drivers / kernel etc. from the Hardware manufacturers.

2] Time required for testing new drivers on the 'new' operating system software.

3] Testing required by Mobile Operators (eg., o2, vodafone etc.) for the 'new' operating system so that it operates smoothly on their networks without any interferences whatsoever.

All this because of a Software Upgrade, essentially an Operating System upgrade ?!!

People at Microsoft argue that the cost for the upgrade will often be unreasonable and more or less equal to the cost of a new 'cool' phone ,may be with an already upgraded operating system.

Off late trends may be that there are equal windows mobile phone users and desktop users. Now, i wouldn't buy a new pc just because of a new operating system,but why wouldn't the same thing happen on a PDA/Phone ?!!

Microsoft may be true when they say that too less people would want to upgrade (could your grandmother do it!! :D) and therefore the above cost analysis may be right.

but i somehow strongly feel that there are other factors contributing to it like,

1] Hardware changes in terms of faster processing speed and technologies are significantly higher in mobile phones and PDA than the desktop market i guess.

consider PDA's such as the ones manufactured by HTC, IMate, O2,Apple iPhone etc. hardware changes and technologies evolve much quicker than a shift from single processor to quad processor on the desktop.

2] Imagine Hardware with virtual machines, just like software, processors with virtual instruction sets and thereby support for virtual drivers etc.

3] Virtual operating systems for PDA/Phones. (not sure if Virtual PC emulates Windows mobile 5/6)

My Favourite Bloggers/Inspirations

Dr.David Grey
Dr.David Grey's Blog

Mr.Rob Miles
Mr.Rob Miles's Blog

Both of them are from the University of HULL. What ever i could say about them here would be way far less than giving a try on their links to find out more about them for yourself.

Nikhil Kothari
Nikhil's Blog
A software architect in the .NET Developer Platform group at Microsoft., I mostly like all his discussions on ASP.net and ASP.net Ajax (formerly Atlas framework)

The Intern - Asok (Spelled 'Ashok' in India)

Scott Adams introduced 'Asok' as an indian intern who is very sharp and intelligent but lacks experience and is naive to the business world unlike the experienced wally, dogbert or dilbert. more here[http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/the_characters/html/character2.html]

MSF and P&P

Microsoft Solutions Framework

The MSF Link

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/solutionaccelerators/msf/default.mspx

Started using MSF and researching MS patterns and practices. Microsoft patterns & practices are Microsoft’s proven recommendations for how to design, develop, deploy, and operate architecturally sound application for the Microsoft platform.

If you start exploring P&P, the best thing about it is it sparks off innovative technology ideas!!, apart from learning the best patterns and practices.

For instance, Consider Mobile development,

check this out:

Mobile client factory:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480471.aspx

I am using MSF extensively in my university distributed systems project and is definitely the way forward.

Life is so miserable for a software architect given the type of application , the stakeholders and domain. oops!

Agile or scrum, RUP or MSF or just Iterative development!! ??!!

It's now that I've realized "The only way around it is through it" and it comes for a price called "EXPERIENCE"!!!