Sunday, April 11, 2010

A good leader is not a control freak

A good leader is not a control freak

Posted: 20 Mar 2010 07:11 PM PDT

DNA, 21st March, 2010

H.H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

When you are working, use your head. But in situations outside the workplace, its best to listen to your heart

What are the qualities of a good leader? How can you be a dynamic, confident and an enthusiastic leader?

A major aspect of good leadership is letting go of control. Are you in control when youre sleeping or when youre dreaming? No! Are you in control of any other function in your body? Your heart is pumping all by itself. Are you in control of the Sun and Moon moving around the globe or even the globe rotating on its axis? Are you in control of the thoughts that come into your head? So, when you realise you really do not have any control over all major things that are happening in your life then you will realise that the idea that you are in control is an illusion. And this will relax you.

A leader sets an example. He doesnt just order things; he does it first so that others can do it. A good leader is the one who creates leaders and not followers. He takes good care of those whom he is leading. He delegates responsibility.

A leader does not worry about position. The respect that one gains through virtue is very different from the respect one gains through the position. The respect you get through a position is short-lived and temporary. But the respect that you gain because of your virtues and your attitude is there with you all the time. You may be a chairman of this committee, a president of that committee, or you may be a barrister here or a governor of some state - these are all momentary, temporary. These positions come and go. And the respect you get because of this position is not genuine, it is not from the heart, it is not true. But the respect you gain because you are a nice person is genuine, it lasts long.

A good leader is one who does not drop things when challenges appear. Rather, he is alert in times of crisis rather than being disturbed by it. A leader should have a fine balance of listening to the head as well as the heart. If you mix head and heart, you are in a mess! When you have to work, you work with commitment and you live with your head. In life, in situations other than when you are working, listen to your heart.

Be multidimensional - put yourself in the other persons shoes, look from the other persons point of view. Be a good communicator and have a direct approach.

Self-judgment is an obstruction. Dont judge yourself. When you judge yourself, you are judging others also. Then you oscillate like a pendulum. Judgment is very similar to self-blame and blaming others. A good leader is one who does not care for comfort, but who stretches himself beyond the comfort zone. Anything creative, dynamic and great can happen only when you stretch beyond your comfort zone where you are often stuck. You think you cannot do something: just make an effort and put one step ahead, and you will find that that you are expanding your comfort zone. Creativity transcends your comfort zone.

A leader should have a long term vision and should have short term plans to work on it. A leader should have integrity and should be sincere in wishing well for the country before oneself. That sense of sacrifice is needed.

A good leader should be satya-darshi (truthful), sam-darshi (equanimous), priya-darshi (pleasant personality), par-darshi (transparent) and door-darshi (farsighted). A leader should have a mission and a vision and a spirit of sacrifice, compassion and commitment.

(H.H. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is the founder of the Art of Living)

Saturday, April 10, 2010

SAVING IS SIN, SPENDING IS VIRTUE

"SAVING IS SIN, SPENDING IS VIRTUE"

- BY Jagdish N Bhagwati

Japanese save a lot. They do not spend much. Also Japan exports far more
than it imports. Has an annual trade surplus of over $100 billions. Yet
Japanese economy is considered weak, even collapsing. Americans spend,
save little. Also US import more than it exports. Has an annual trade
deficit of over $400 billion. Yet, the American economy is considered
strong and trusted to get stronger.

But where from do Americans get money to spend? They borrow from Japan ,
China and even India . Virtually others save for the US to spend. Global
savings are mostly invested in US, in dollars. India itself keeps its
foreign currency assets of over $50 billions in US securities. China has
sunk over $160 billion in US securities. Japan 's stakes in US securities
is in trillions.

Result: The US has taken over $5 trillion from the world. So, as the world
saves for the US , Americans spend freely. Today, to keep the US
consumption going, that is for the US economy to work, other countries have
to remit $180 billion every quarter, which is $2 billion a day, to the US !
Otherwise the US economy would go for a six. So will the global economy.
The result will be no different if US consumers begin consuming less.

A Chinese economist asked a neat question. Who has invested more, US in
China , or China in US? The US has invested in China less than half of what
China has invested in US. The same is the case with India . We have
invested in US over $50 billion. But the US has invested less than $20
billion in India . Why the world is after US?

The secret lies in the American spending, that they hardly save. In fact
they use their credit cards to spend their future income. That the US
spends is what makes it attractive to export to the US . So US imports more
than what it exports year after year. The result:

The world is dependent on US consumption for its growth. By its deepening
culture of consumption, the US has habituated the world to feed on US
consumption. But as the US needs money to finance its consumption, the
world provides the money. It's like a shopkeeper providing the money to a
customer so that the customer keeps buying from the shop. If the customer
will not buy, the shop won't have business, unless the shopkeeper funds
him. The US is like the lucky customer. And the world is like the helpless
shopkeeper financier. Who is America 's biggest shopkeeper financier?
Japan of course. Yet itʼs Japan which is regarded as weak. Modern
economists complain that Japanese do not spend, so they do not grow. To
force the Japanese to spend, the Japanese government exerted it self,
reduced the savings rates, even charged the savers. Even then the Japanese
did not spend (habits don't change, even with taxes, do they?). Their
traditional postal savings alone is over $1.2 trillions, about three times
the Indian GDP. Thus, savings, far from being the strength of Japan , has
become its pain.

Hence, what is the lesson? That is, a nation cannot grow unless the people
spend, not save. Not just spend, but borrow and spend. Dr. Jagdish
Bhagwati, the famous Indian-born economist in the US , told Manmohan Singh
that Indians wastefully save. Ask them to spend, on imported cars and,
seriously, even on cosmetics! This will put India on a growth curve.
"Saving is sin, and spending is virtue." Before you follow this neo
economics, get some one to save so that you can borrow from them and
spend.

This is what US has successfully done in last few decades.

Monday, March 22, 2010

Time Magazine's quote on Sachin

When Sachin Tendulkar travelled to Pakistan to face one of the finest bowling attacks ever assembled in cricket, Michael Schumacher was yet to race a F1 car, Lance Armstrong had never been to the Tour de France, Diego Maradona was still the captain of a world champion Argentina team, Pete Sampras had never won a Grand Slam.When Tendulkar embarked on a glorious career taming Imran and company, Roger Federer was a name unheard of; Lionel Messi was in his nappies, Usain Bolt was an unknown kid in the Jamaican backwaters. The Berlin Wall was still intact, USSR was one big, big country, Dr Manmohan Singh was yet to "open" the Nehruvian economy.It seems while Time was having his toll on every individual on the face of this planet, he excused one man. Time stands frozen in front of Sachin Tendulkar. We have had champions, we have had legends, but we have never had another Sachin Tendulkar and we never will.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

YouTube Comprises 10% Of All Internet Traffic

YouTube Comprises 10% Of All Internet Traffic

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/06/19/youtube-comprises-10-of-all-internet-traffic


For the first time in four years, HTTP (Web) traffic has overtaken peer-to-peer (P2P) applications in bandwidth consumption, according to data released by Ellacoya Networks. YouTube takes the biggest chunk of all of them.

Based on usage data from about a million North American broadband subscribers, the study showed that streaming video and audio downloads have spiked HTTP bandwidth usage to 46 percent of all traffic on the network.

P2P applications now amount for 37 percent of the total traffic.

“The popularity of browser-based video such as YouTube is having a significant impact not only on overall bandwidth consumption but also on the distribution of application traffic on the network,” said Fred Sammartino, vice president of marketing and product management at Ellacoya.

“The way people use the Internet is changing rapidly - from browsing to real-time streaming. We expect to see new applications over the next year that will accelerate this trend.”

Within HTTP, traditional webpage downloads like text and images represent 45 percent of all Web traffic. Streaming videos pulls in 36 percent and audio just 5 percent.

All by itself, YouTube comprises 20 percent of all HTTP traffic, or nearly 10 percent of all traffic on the Net. Let's repeat that: one site takes up 10 percent of the bandwidth on the entire Net.

As for other types, Newsgroups take up nine percent; non-HTTP video streaming grabs 3 percent; gaming 2 percent; and VoIP 1 percent.

Controlling streaming video traffic on a network

Controlling streaming video traffic on a network
http://searchnetworkingchannel.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid100_gci1269980_mem1,00.html

Streaming video traffic from sites such as YouTube is flash-flooding bandwidth pipelines throughout the Internet. A recent report by deep packet inspection equipment provider Ellacoya suggests that P2P traffic is no longer the Internet's largest consumer of bandwidth. Instead, video-streaming formats that utilize the Internet as a transport mechanism have taken the top spot, accounting for 46% of all Internet traffic. In fact, streaming video represents 36% of all HTTP traffic. And of that 36%, YouTube represents 20% – equating to 10% of all traffic.
Why is this situation important to VARs and service providers? The simple fact is that the explosion of real-time bandwidth-intensive applications such as streaming video can put a substantial dent in the performance of your customer's key business applications. Estimates regarding YouTube's total daily bandwidth usage (through its content delivery partner, Limelight Networks) vary between 25 and 200 terabytes. The trick to delivering prerecorded video content is to rapidly transfer it to the client's machine and then have the client play it from a local hard drive, instead of directly from the site. Most video sites deliver files to the client faster than real time, so a two- to three-minute video is received in as little as 20 seconds, thereby giving the best local playback experience.
The problem with streaming video is not the file size (usually four to 10 megabytes, although it can be as much as 100 megabytes); rather, it's the rate of delivery. The content distribution network's sole purpose is to get that file down your customer's Internet connection to the client as quickly as possible, using as much bandwidth as possible. Even companies with substantial bandwidth can experience backups and clogged network traffic. No matter how much bandwidth your customer might have, the content distribution network on the other end has even more. Thus, every click on a YouTube video unleashes a tsunami of data that floods your customer's connection. These factors can pose a real problem for businesses that rely on Internet-based service providers for business-critical applications, such as payroll or CRM systems, and those businesses that host customer-facing services on their office's Internet connection. Service degradation and brief outages can occur if the connection becomes saturated with bursts of streaming HTTP traffic.

essential books on QA/testing

Many thanks to Tony Davis for compiling this list.

http://www.sqaforums.com/showthreaded.php?Cat=0&Number=430242&page=0&vc=1

The following list of books has been compiled through discussion threads on the SQA Forums site. Criteria for entry on this list were decided on the following factors:

1. Cost – Less than $75 USD. This did exclude some excellent materials, but when it is usually the individual purchasing the books to further their knowledge, a limit was set.
2. Generality – Must be a general knowledge area and not a specific area of testing. Items like "Testing SAP Solutions" would be to constrained in the information provided to cross technical areas of testing.
3. Level if Interest – Items are from an entry/fresher level of perspective on the areas of involvement. This means that anyone who has no prior knowledge can learn something from the list of books in this document. It doesn’t mean that people who have been in the field for years won’t gain anything from reading the books listed, but it is not the primary focus.

General Testing:

* Software Testing Techniques - Beizer
* Testing Computer Software - Kaner/Falk/Nguyen
* How to Break Software - Whittaker
* How to Break Software Security - Whittaker/Thompson
* How to Break Web Software - Andrews/Whittaker
* The Web Testing Handbook - Splaine/Jaskiel
* Software Testing in The Real World - Kit
* Testing Client/Server Systems - Bourne
* Systematic Software Testing - Craig/Jaskiel
* Effective Software Testing:50 Specific Ways to Improve Your Testing - Dustin
* Software Testing and Continuous Quality Improvement - Lewis
* Quality Web Systems: Performance, Security, and Usability - Dustin/Rashka/McDiarmid/Nielson

Case Studies:

* Lessons Learned in Software Testing: Kaner/Bach/Pettichord
* Dare to be Excellent - Jarvis/Hayes

Requirements:

* Software Requirements - Wiegers
* More About Software Requirements: Thorny Issues and Practical Advice - Wiegers

Automated Testing:

* Automated Software Testing: Introduction, Management, and Performance - Dustin/Rashka/Paul
* Just Enough Software Test Automation - Mosley/Posey

Metrics:

* Metrics and Models in Software Quality Engineering - Kan
* Software Metrics: Establishing a Company-wide Program - Grady/Caswell

Test Management:

* Managing the Testing Process - Black
* Bad Software:What to Do When Software Fails - Kaner/Pels

Logic:

* The Philosophy Gym: 25 Short Adventures in Thinking - Law
* The Craft of Research, 2nd edition (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing)- Booth/Williams/Colomb.
* Crimes Against Logic - Whyte

Programming/Technical:

* Code Complete - McConnell
* Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days - Liberty/Jones
* Learning PERL - Schwartz/Phoenix
* Core PYTHON Programming - Chun
* Microsoft VBScript Step by Step - Wilson
* Webmaster in a Nutshell

Security Testing:

* The Art of Software Security Testing

Perf Time: Layer Wise Breakdown

On Mar 8, 2010, at 6:44 PM, Rahul Bhatt wrote:
> I have been given a task to calculate time spent in each tier of the
> application. The application is web based j2ee application which
> uses oracle in backend.
>
> I have used Fiddler, Loadrunner and HP Diagnostic to calculate these
> timings.

> Fiddler - total time (t1)
> Loadrunner - Web + App + DB (t2)
> HP Diag - App (t3) + DB (t4)

> Client time (IE rendering + network) = t1 - t2
> Web tier = t2 - t3 - t4
> Application tier = t3
> Database = t4

> I would appreciate if this can be validated by experts in the forum.
> All suggessions are very well welcome.
>
> Thanks
****************************************************************************
-----Original Message-----
From: LoadRunner@yahoogroups.com [mailto:LoadRunner@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of James Pulley
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 10:15 AM
To: LoadRunner@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [LoadRunner] Time spent in each j2ee tier

I have a far simpler proposition if you want to know how much time is spent inside the java tier (assuming that this is on a dedicated host)
(1) Grab a protocol analyzer
(2) Set your filters to include traffic to and from the Java host from the next upstream and downstream architectural components.
(3) begin recording conversations
(4) Reassemble streams into sessions using your protocol analyzers capabilities
(5) Look at timestamps (to the millisecond) from the last frame of the request to the first frame of the response. The difference is the time spent in your Java tier.


And it works in production too.

As to Fiddler? Have you considered the advantage of the Graphical Virtual User technology which will not only collect the response times inside of LoadRunner, but you can then present the data compared to API calls on the same graph, where the difference is time in client (which includes client processing plus rendering)

****************************************************************************
Alternate path. Dump your Java Server logs. Analyze the information with Microsoft LogParser for requests and responses data.