Open Source Software

For all practical purposes, open source software is free alternative to popular expensive software like Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Outlook etc. The best way to get a taste of it is to download few open source software like Openoffice, Firefox or GIMP and try for few days. You will love it.

The free software is developed by dedicated individuals in their free time as well as by full time developers in open source companies like Redhat, Novel, IBM. All communication and collaboration among the open source developers is done through Internet.

Open source is nothing short of a silent revolution. It is a kind of those rare revolutions which can be brought by just being positive and without fighting a war or being against someone.

Vested interests of proprietary software companies do get damaged. These consider open source a threat. These companies are trying to fight back with by spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) against the open source software. A recent study says that free open source software is costing proprietary software companies (like Microsoft, Oracle, Adobe and lot of others) $60 billion per year.

Secure Internet Communications

All internet communication between your computer and the website can be intercepted by your network administrator, ISP or any other party between you and the website. A large number of really simple network tools are available which make it easy to decipher communication between your computer and the Internet.

That is why when you access your online bank accounts on internet or any other confidential site, the server forces you to use https instead of http in the URL. Almost all websites asking for credit card or other personal information use https. Infact you should avoid putting your confidential information on a website page if it is not using https.

Though there is no need to get paranoid about security, situations do arise when you should know how to protect your internet communication. One of the popular applications on internet is email. If you are like me and use Gmail, you can force Gmail to use https instead of http to login and read and write your emails securely.

By default, Gmail uses https only for your login information. Rest of the communication (reading, writing emails) is not protected. But if you start your login process with https (e.g. https://mail.google.com/, Gmail will keep you connected through https. This is true for all google services including google apps.

Not all websites provide secure access through https which is ok most of the time. However you can investigate or ask the webmaster of a particular site for https access if you are sending any confidential
information over the Internet.

Digging Deeper

Lahore's traffic police was replaced by an entirely new one last year. The newly replaced force also includes female staff. The new policemen/women are called traffic wardens. This was a pleasant change for us traveling on the roads of Lahore on daily basis.

The old police was corrupt and treated ordinary motorists like criminals. Motorists were often seen "bargaining" with them at the corners of the roads.

The new police is educated, polite, well fed and (so far) does not take bribe or pressure of any kind. The police tries to give a warning to the offender or just issues a ticket for the violation. No "bargaining".

The most interesting part of this change was how it was done. Instead of bringing change into the existing traffic police department, a new department was created and new hiring was done.

Sometimes it is better to replace complex and stagnant systems with new ones. Sometimes we need to dig a new hole at a different place to find some oil instead of digging the same hole deeper. This strategy, however, requires a lot of courage and willingness to take risks which might be there with the new system.

Vitamins are Harmful

First there was a revelation that drinking too much water as advocated by many doctors, was not good. (Press TV, Scientific American). Now there are even more startling research results that vitamins taken through pills are not only useless but harmful and can possibly kill you.(Reader's Digest)

"Drinking too much water is good" was perhaps "discovered" by water bottling companies who wanted you to spend money unnecessarily to buy their products. And Vitamins are good only to the health of pharmaceutical companies producing those vitamins.

We should not be surprised to find these new discoveries. Sometimes corporate interests take precedence over human values. This is clearly evident from the manufacturing and sales of tobacco products. We continue to sell tobacco even after fully aware of its harmful effects. Short term gains take control.

During discussions with a highly learned Homeopathy doctor, the doctor always rejected the notion of using vitamins, food supplements or drinking a lot of water to make your health better. He said that if there was any deficiency in the body, the body would crave to get that deficiency fulfilled through food. Sweats will taste real good when you have glucose deficiency and so on.

If you are taking reasonably balanced diet you should normally not have any deficiency. Any deficiency in the body is due to the malfunctioning of the assimilation function of the body for that particular vitamin or salt etc. This malfunctioning should be corrected (possibly with homeopathic medicines) and any related deficiencies will go away.

Edward de Bono

The New Model of Brain

Our brain works as a pattern-making and pattern-using system. First pattern is difficult to form. Once formed, this pattern is reinforced with further incoming patterns.

Over the passage of time there are a large number of well-established patterns and it becomes increasingly difficult to form new patterns.

Making new patterns is the key to creating new things. Lateral Thinking tools make creating new patterns a step by step process.

This is the model of brain that Edward de Bono gave us in his book 'Mechanism of Mind'. This model explains how our thinking habits, creativity, learning abilities, decision making skills are all triggered.

Enhancing our Thinking Skills

When we know how something works, we can usually take better control of it. Same is true for our brain. Based upon this model, we can be more creative (Lateral Thinking), improve our thinking skills (Thinking tools), better understand and control different type of thinking involved in our day to day lives (Six Thinking Hats).

These new thinking skills (Lateral Thinking, Thinking Tools, Six Thinking Hats) are all based upon this new model of how our brain works.

Effectiveness of teaching thinking skills can be judged from a single evidence which deBono describes on his website. "In one mine, fights between the tribes working there were reduced from 210 a month to just four through the direct teaching of my thinking methods to totally illiterate miners."

The Need for New Thinking

The need for new thinking is aptly explained by this quote of Albert Einstein. "The problems of today will not be solved by the same thinking that produced the problems in the first place."

A brief bio of Edward deBono is available at wikipedia. He publishes a weekly messages on his official website www.edwdebono.com.

Help Me Help You

Being in the field of IT consulting, I receive a large number of support requests from my customers, friends and family members. Sometimes there is a bug in the software I delivered. Sometimes the home PC of my friend is sluggish due to multiple anti-virus software and a large number of browser plug-ins installed. And his only hope is my advice. Here are few tips which will help me help you better.

1. 1. Use descriptive subject for your email
   
   Subjects like 'Please help me', 'Please solve this' or 'Urgent' make it difficult to look through and prioritize an issue from my list. My list of things to do sometimes contains more than 100 items and subject makes it easy to choose the next one.
   
   You even do not need to repeat your request in the body of the email if the subject says it all.
   
   
2. DO NOT USE ALL CAPITALS LIKE THIS. THESE ARE DIFFICULT TO READ AND ARE TAKEN FOR SHOUTING IN INTERNET COMMUNICATION ETIQUETTES.
   
   
3. Provide a particular reference (form name, report name, invoice number etc.) to reproduce and understand the problem. Do not assume I am clever enough to figure it out all.
   
   
4. More is better. Send one email for each different issue instead of combining all issues in one email.
   
   
5. Use small sentences and numbered paragraphs to make your request clear.
   
   
6. Do not send a new email to remind a pending issue. A reply to an already sent email with something like 'A reminder, it is urgent' keeps everything in context for both of us.