Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Sri Lanka - a birds eye view over paradise island

Nice video about SL. :-)
10 minute birds eye view over paradise island

Monday, June 08, 2009

Autonomic computing vs Artificial intelligence

This article "Looking to nature for smarter software systems" explains the use of autonomic computing in a very simple way highlighting how it is different from Artificial Intelligence.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Tears and smiles..

This is a day that Sri Lanka re-writes her history in a new chapter. The myths that were surrounded with the separatism and terrorism are gone with the wind. Who said they are invincible...?
During my whole life what I saw was WAR.
Bombs were frequent and people used to ask "how many are dead?" Just a routine question. If there is a politician involved then there is something special in the news. Otherwise its just another blast.
Irrespective of day or night ambulances were rushing along the Galle Road from Ratmalana military base. That was a sign of renewed fighting. People flocked in front of TVs again to hear the score. Deaths of humans who used to breath like you and me are just numbers. Sometimes villagers have to cremate a sealed off body of a fallen soldier. My friends/relatives had to cut their leaves short as they were called for the duty. Families had to keep their uncertain eyes open until they come back during the next vacation that no one can predict.
We had to think twice before we schedule our work in Colombo. People were suspicious if you carry a bag or suite case. No chance of keeping it on a rack or under a seat. Buses were randomly stopped at check points. We had to walk through lines with our identity cards ready and wait for the inspection. Men, Women, Elderly and Children alike.
Large amount of money spent on WAR. Military vehicles scrolled along half made dusty roads while the children studying in open class rooms, waving their hands to soldiers.
Without any prior notice roads were closed in the city for VIPs passing by. You have to wait for hours in a bus packed with exhausted commuters. Sweating, cursing, hungry and angry.
This was the life of our generation. If you feel uncomfortable hearing my story, being a Sinhalese, lived in a Suburb of Colombo, you should never hear what a Tamil friend in my age have to say.
Those who preach us to negotiate with the world's most ruthless terrorist organization, never gone through the trauma we gone through for three decades. Those who are trying to satisfy Tamil diaspora just because of few votes, may they lose every election before they rot in hell. Those who put ridiculous conditions, just to give us a "loan", please keep it to yourself. After all we have to pay it back one day.
My heart goes for those families who are now displaced and are living in camps. Remind me the Tsunami in 2004. May they find their way back soon and start rebuilding their life. The worst is over. Its time to move on. No more bullets but ballets. May the politicians at least keep their personal agendas for 5 more years for themselves and work for the betterment of average Sri Lankans. Especially for the sake of those live in North and East.
Finally I would like to pay my gratitude to our armed forces who fought bravely to give a country that is free of terrorism. You are the best people who knows how awful the war is. Not the NGO "gembos" who preach us about the repercussions of war to get their pockets filled with easy $$$s. And HE the president, defense secy and all those who gave their fullest support to reach the target under the pressure from ignorant West. I salute you Sirs. A job well done. But be safe.
I wish the next generations would never ever go through such an experience. May the tears dry and bring a spreading smile along with peace and prosperity for my people.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Cloud computing presentations

Ayanthi has published the presentation done by Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana at the SOA symposium on cloud computing.

I'd like to add this presentation done by Dr. Rajkumar Buyya from the Grids Lab to it. This was presented today at the university and it brought a very interesting discussion.

The presentation discusses the evolution of Cloud Computing and how is it different from other paradigms such as Cluster and Grid. Further it discusses about certain case studies that used the Gridbus middleware.

And some interesting definitions for "Cloud Computing can be found here. [Beware 21 of them]

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Workflow management systems. A liability or an asset?

Today more workflow systems appear to assist the business process management. The usual procedure is to draw a business process as a workflow diagram using a notation such as BPMN which will be converted to a code or more preferably to a process execution language script such as WS-BPEL (aka BPEL4WS).

This works fine until there is a requirement for a change in the process flow. The change can be a permanent one or it can be an ad-hoc one that caters for an exceptional situation. In the first case the process definition is changed which is known as an evolutionary change/adaptation. Where all the future instances of the process definition adhere to the new one. In the case of ad-hoc change only a particular process instance is changed which is known as momentary change thus would not affect the future instantiations.

One solution for this is to include all the possibilities into the process definition. For example BPEL switch statement. But some run time changes cannot be predicted during the design time. And even it could, the plethora of possibilities can make the design a very messy and complicated one.

Thus a running business implementation may have a business process but the frequent ad-hoc change might make it a liability than an asset. Making the stakeholders to by-pass the workflow definition rather than adhering to it. Thus it is required to find more flexible ways to design business processes that facilitate the frequent adaptation or change.

This will be my first post on this and will be followed by a series of discussion that will discuss the possible strategies to face the above challenge.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

All Marketers are Liars

Seth Godin speaks at Google...

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

What is cloud computing?

This video explains the basics of cloud computing.