The black belt

A student goes through a rigorous martial arts training regimen for years, and the day dawns when he is about to receive his black belt. He goes to his sensei, kneels in front of him, and waits.

Sensei asks him, before handing over the black belt - "What do you think is the meaning of the black belt ? ".
Student replies "It is a reward, a recognition for all the hard work I put in"
Sensei waits for some time, and tells him "Come back in a year - you are not yet ready for the black belt"

Next year, the scene repeats :

Sensei : "Do you know the meaning of the black belt now ? "
Student : "Yes, master. It is the pinnacle of achievement in our art"
Sensei : "You are not ready yet. Come back next year"

The third year :

Sensei : "Do you know the meaning of the black belt now ? "
Student : "Yes master. It is but the beginning of a journey of constant improvement, of pushing my limits, of becoming better and better at my art. "
Sensei : "You earned your black belt now !"

Homeplug - power line as transmission medium

This is awesome ! Homeplug uses your existing power cabling to set up ethernet class networks in your home., using just your existing electrical wiring ! And this alliance of all vendors in the value chain, has already started coming up with products. Huuuuuuge shot in the arm for home networking and smart homes - i am amazed. A very old article in Commsdesign about the technology gives a brief overview of the challenges faced in using powerline as the transmission medium, and mentions the MAC layer innovations involved

Furl

Checked out this cool new web app at www.furl.net - i always wanted something like this where i could capture my surfing experience, without having to rely on IE bookmarks. I have a feeling this is going to catch on. I have added Furl links to the blog as well.

PC/Xbox Games development seems like such a perfect candidate for being done out of India.

Why ?

Because
a. its extremely labour intensive, requiring not just programmers but 3D artists and their ilk.
b. its a make or break thing, so u want to minimize the investment required upfront, since u dont know the chances of success
c. 3d animation, a related industry is picking up in india - getting good artists at reasonably cheap cost, should not be a problem
d. there are lots of people in india who want to get into the gaming industry, but there arent many companies into it

Found an interesting article,on what a game development startup should NOT do and its sequel.

Built To Last is another awesome book I read in the recent past. One of the interesting terms coined by the authors is "Big Hairy Audacious Goals "(BHAGs). Research done by the authors reveal that outstanding visionary companies usually have a tendency to take up BHAGs at certain points, and they strive to reach it, with all their might, and a single minded focus. Examples abound - Boeing's stubborn pursual of the 747 and IBM's 360 mainframe investments - both of these huge projects, if they failed would have probably destroyed the companies. From personal experience, SUN Microsystems is another company which believed in "All the wood behind one arrow", as we called it at SUN. Prolonged bleeding, I think has made SUN much less of a visionary company than it was, a few years back - and it would be interesting to know, whether BHAGs on which to bet the company is still the norm there - I doubt it.

Finished Liar's poker today - it sure is an unputdownable book ! One character - that of Michael Milken - interested me a lot. Googled him up, and boy - I wonder why I never heard of him before. Milken was this reclusive self built financial wizard who some say was an evil emperor ( he was tried on technical grounds for irregularities in financial transactions ) who bought about the era of hostile takeovers by takeover-artists, while others say, he was the saviour of Corporate America, by forcing them to cut their fat, and become leaner and meaner. What is interesting is that he turned conventional wisdom on its head, and made junk bonds, the flavour of the moment. The insight he had, in a nutshell, was that, "fallen angels" ( companies which were great but fell on bad times ) or small high growth companies, were often unable to raise money in the debt market, because bond rating agencies like Moody's would give them a high risk rating. This rating system was flawed, as it just considered past results, and not the future or the current wealth creating ability of the firm. Milken's genius lies in recognizing that with adequate research he could identify firms which were unlikely to default, inspite of their ratings, and raise money for these companies by floating "junk bonds", which, because of the risk associated with them, would pay out larger interest rates. His USP was his ability to talk many influential money managers into buying these junk bonds, creating a huge market for junk bonds, thus creating almost an equity like market in the debt market itself ! Another interesting development that he orchestrated was to use junk bonds to finance hostile takeovers by folks like Ronald Perelman - these guys would use out and out leverage from their junk bond raised money to target even biggie corporations for takeover bids.

For many, Milken was one of the most significant characters of the "decade of greed" - the roaring 80s, typified by fictional characters like Gordon Gekko ( "Greed is good !" ) from Wall Street - the movie

I am reading these two books to get myself a glimpse into the world of management consulting and trading/i-banking - the two feeder jobs for B school grads - and both the books are excellent reads so far. Thoroughly recommended.

One is Liar's poker, which follows the travails of a wannabe in the jungle of bond-trading @ wall street - just started it, and its already got me hooked. Its hilarious, and I wonder whether it smells of reality in certain parts :)

The other is, The Mckinsey way - a short book on the different ways Mckinsey folks approach and solve problems. Very fast read - but it has a lot of useful sane advice, which are applicable to fields not limited to consulting. I want to read it twice !