I recently gave a talk at Google, for launch of the Bangalore Google Technology User Group. The Google folks were kind enough to put up the video (warning this is 1.5 hours long!), so here it is:

See update at the end

Dear Seagate,

I am one of the unfortunate users of an ST31000340AS (Barracuda 7200.11) who has been hit with the firmware (SD81) bug that has locked up the drive (the infamous BSY error, where the drive is not even recognised by the BIOS).

The 1 TB drive contains precious data which I am unable to retrieve, and your India representatives are of no help, sending me to expensive and exploitative Data Recovery firms who can’t help me.

Your notice states that Seagate would help its customers recover from this firmware bug. However your India representatives have only offered to replace my defective drive, not rescue the data trapped on it, which (according to you) is safe.

The drive was part of a Maxtor Basics external USB drive kit, and I had no way of knowing that the drive inside was a ST31000340AS until the drive locked up and your India representatives permitted us (in writing) to open the plastic housing to get data recovery done. They did not inform us about the firmware update (which can be found here).

Your website refuses to help me, saying that this drive was sold to an OEM manufacturer, and that I should contact that vendor. The OEM manufacturer, Maxtor, is a brand owned by Seagate, having been acquired by Seagate a long time before I purchased this drive (in November 2008).

The dealer I bought the drive from has tried his best to help me, but has now given up hope, since your India representatives, Accel Frontline, has not offered any solution.

I trusted your brand and your warranty, and I know that under normal circumstances, you are not obliged to help people recover data from a crashed drive. But in this case, the fault is clearly yours, and you acknowledged this, and have offered to help affected customers. So why am I not getting the help I need?

Please contact me and help me – some of the photographs, videos and documents that this drive was purchased to back up are irreplacable, going abck almost 20 years.

Please help, Seagate!

Anyone reading this – if you can get Seagate’s attention and help me, I would be extremely grateful

UPDATE: Since posting this entry, I have come across this page that describes how to manually resurrect the drive: http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128807. I don’t have the necessary tools or skills to do this, and I am really worried that I try this (or someone does for me) and the drive gets fried, at which point even if Seagate is willing to help, they would now not be able to do so.

This SOOOOO reminds me of the 1980s

In 1985, after I graduated, I looked for a job in Mumbai and Bangalore. I had, for the past 4 years, learnt a number of “computer languages”, but I was most productive in dBASE II and III. I had already written full applications, and I could see that this would become a common thing soon (Clipper and Foxbase were still a while in the future).

Not a single job offer. Not one of the “computer companies” knew what dBASE was, and hence I was rejected everywhere.

I was so disheartened that all my abilities were going waste that I joined a “computer course” at DataPro to learn COBOL and stuff like that, which was the only thing in demand.

Then I saw an ad in the papers for programmers, and one of the languages listed was dBASE. The ad was for qualified programmers with a couple of years of professional experience, and of course I didn’t qualify as a fresh mechanical engineering graduate, but I wrote to the advertiser and thanked him for at least recognising that dBASE was a “computer language” that could be used to write business applications. I sent off the letter (snail mail, no less!) and promptly forgot about it.

A week later, my dad called me saying that there was a letter for me. It was a reply from the CEO of the company I had written to, asking me to drop in.

Not expecting much, I hoofed it to Cuffe Parade, and met up with the man.

I walked into his office, and he looked at me, and asked me who I was, and I told him and reminded him about my letter. He spun around in his chair, handed me a bunch of papers, and said “I have been working on this problem for the past 24 hours [and he looked it!], see whether you can crack this in dBASE”. He pointed me at a free machine, spun around, and went back to what he was doing.

Not having anything better to do, I sat down, and went to work. By nightfall, I had cracked the problem, written out the app, tested it against test data, then live data. All that time, the CEO of the company sat on the desk next to me, working like a maniac on another problem.

When I was done, he checked my code, showed me how to correct my coding style, corrected a few things I had assumed wrongly, showed me how to speed up a few routines, etc. Then, with both of us near collapse with exhaustion, he asked me to come back in the morning.

We didn’t speak about salary or anything else for nearly a month after that. We just worked. And I had the time of my life. I learnt new stuff, and was introduced to Clipper, and used my dBASE skills to the hilt.

A month later, I was handed a cheque – my first salary – which was far higher than I had ever expected for a first job. And my boss, seeing my surprise, told me “I have been looking for someone like you who understood how important dBASE as a development environment was – I don’t want to lose you over a silly matter like money”.

That was 1985 – 24 years ago.

And I owe my entire life and career to the foresight of Ashok Hingorani, the CEO of Compu-tact. Whatever I am today, whatever you know me for, whatever spirit you see in me – it is because this man had the vision to recognise that something that no one else here had heard of would become something very important in the future. And he was right.

In 1985, my skills at dBASE were the thing that made me better than others.

In 2009, it is knowledge of python and other tools from the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) world that show you who the smart guys are.

A company that doesn’t know that a python developer is usually more productive, proactive and knowledgeable than a cookie-cutter “C/C++/Java” programmer who has done a 6 month course at some “computer institute”, is a company that will forever be doomed to be mediocre, non-innovative, and a place I would never recommend to any student as a place to work.

Wake up, corporate India! You need to re-evaluate your evaluation criteria if you want to remain relevant! Do you have any idea how many competent developers you are losing because you don’t have a clue what development in the 21st century means, or what its tools are?

p.s. This rant is a spur of the moment thing, and I am going to refine it after a couple of hours. But I needed to get this point out NOW.

p.p.s. This is NOT a rant against C/C++/Java devs, or FOR python devs – it is a rant against companies whose recruiting policies don’t recognise that a person who teaches herself python (or any other kind of 21st century development medium) is precisely the kind of progressive, self-starter, innovative developer that you are so desperately looking for!

I will be in Pune this weekend to give two talks:

“The Business of Open Source” at the Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication (SIMC) on Saturday, the 28th of March. This talk addresses how Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) influences and drives businesses today, and how people can get involved in the process.

and

“The World is Changing” at the Pune Open Coffee Club on Sunday, the 29th of March. This talk is an updated version of my keynote from Proto.IN earlier this year, and talks about how the world today is different for startups, some of my own experiences, and some tips for startups.

Both events appear to be free for all, so if you are interested, do drop in.

On Friday, the 23rd of Jan, I will be giving a talk at proto.in, *the* event for Indian startup companies.

I have been closely associated with proto.in since the first event (this is the fifth one), and over time, this event has become as important to the Indian startup world as my other baby (FOSS.IN) has become to the Indian Free and Open Source Software world. If you are a startup, or just want to get a feel of the Indian startup world, then missing this event is, according to me, shooting yourself in the foot.

I am also part of the PitchCamp mentor team that helps people finetune their pitches to be more effective. This is in partnership with the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

My talk, “The World is Changing”, talks about how things have changed in the product market, and what startups have to look out for both in terms of opportunities as well as “gotchas”, including perceived business models, especially given the current economic climate.

And I get to speak right after the man who can be credited with bringing out India’s first true product – Bharat Goenka, of Tally fame. I was there at the very beginning in the late 1980s, when Bharat started the project (then known as “PFA”, for “Peutronics Financial Accountant”), and it is great to see how well he has implemented his product vision since then.

On Saturday evening, I fly to Cochin, to speak at FOSS Meet@MEC on Sunday, the 25th. My talk will be on the role Free and Open Source Software in preparing students for their careers. This is very different from “getting a job”, and hopefully, people attending my talk will understand this difference, and act accordingly. Shreyas, my fellow FOSS.IN organizer and colleague at Geodesic, will also be speaking at this event.

If you are at either of these events, come and say hi! We love meeting people!

Hello from Berlin, Germany, where I will attend the world’s largest congregation of hackers and technology enthusiasts – the 25th Chaos Communication Congress (25C3), which runs from the 27th to the 30th of December.

Shortly before I left, someone asked me a very curious question, which could be paraphrased like this:

“Why do you attend a Hacker conference? How does that help you in your work?”

This long post is my answer to that question.

Read the rest of this entry…

Every now and then, I pick a song that defines my state of mind, or whatever I am doing. Over the years, this has been The Scorpions’ “Wind of Change”, but right now, I am getting more aggressive about things.

So, to totally annoy at least one person who hates all things 80s and 90s, and especially any pop-rock song I choose, here is my theme until further notice.