Competing for Employees

June 06, 2007: IT giant Infosys [Get Quote] is having all its employees sign a non-compete clause which states that even after the employee quits the company, he/ she cannot work for any of Infosys' competitors.

I attended the first day of the SAP Summit in Mumbai. Did not stay too long, so didn't learn very much more than the fact that the Belarus SAP rates now match India SAP rates and that SAP (India) wants to have 12,000 customers and 8,000 employees by 2010.
If they achieve this, SAP will have more customers in India than employees. Think about it. We have our great IT icons. TCS, Infosys, Wipro... Their targets are all about hiring employees by the thousands. And then we have SAP. Whose business model, and targets are all about adding customers by the thousands. No prizes for guessing which model creates more long term value.
And now we have Infosys. A company that competes on value against the best companies in the world. Or so we believe. A company that now wants to retain employees, not by competing for their 'business', but by decree. By dictating terms to people who are ill equipped to stand up for themselves. Not by demanding fair payback for training costs. But by doing the 800 pound gorilla act.
Yes, yes I know. Other companies have been doing this for years. This is the way the system works. Blah Blah Ad naseum.
But then we all thought Infy was different. A company that could take the Money = People x Time equation and change the algebra. A company that could take the derision away from the term 'cybercoolie'. But I guess we thought wrong. Maybe competing on value is too difficult after all. How the mighty have fallen....

MS-DOS History

In 1980, when IBM was building its new personal computer code-named "Acorn", they needed an operating system and a computer language.
At the time one of the most successful computer languages for microcomputers was Altair BASIC, written by Microsoft, and the dominant operating system CP/M, a product of Gary Kildall's Digital Research.
In 1980, IBM approached Bill Gates to write BASIC for their new computer and approached Gary Kildall for the operating system.
Microsoft was only too happy to comply. They had already created a version of BASIC for the 8086, which had been displayed by Seattle Computer Products, a computer hardware company, at the 1979 National Computer Conference.
Legend has it, that when IBM first approached Digital Research, Kildall was out of the office flying one of his planes, and never met them. This was not strictly true - although he was out flying, he showed up for the meeting, a little late. He had a discussion with the IBM representatives on a flight back to their office in Florida. They never reached a deal. Kildall wanted more than the $200,000 IBM was willing to pay, to get a royalty-free license in perpetuity.
So IBM went to back to Bill Gates, and asked whether Microsoft could do the operating system as well.
At the time, Tim Paterson of Seattle Computer Products had written an operating system called "QDOS," an acronym for "quick and dirty operating system, for the 16-bit, Intel 8086 (according to Byte Magazine it was “thrown together in two man-months”). QDOS was in every important respect a clone of CP/M rewritten for the 8086.
Microsoft purchased the rights to QDOS from SCP for $50,000, and tweaked it so that it could run on the 8088. (The 8088 chip was a subset of the 8086 family and could run on the same software with minor alterations).
Gates sold DOS to IBM for $50,000 and persuaded them that he should retain the rights to license the system to other computer manufacturers.
The rest as they say is history. The ‘other computer manufacturers’ made the millions of PC clones, and had to buy a copy of MS-DOS from Microsoft for every PC they sold.
Kildall was furious. He claimed that DOS was a copy of all the best features of CP/M, but unfortunately software copyright law was not mature at the time, and there was precious little he could do about it.
****
In 1981, Tim Paterson quit Seattle Computer Products and found employment at Microsoft.
In 1994, Gary Kildall, by now an embittered man struggling with alcohol, died in a Monterey bar from injuries sustained to his head. An inquest called the death "suspicious," but no one was charged.
An Inside Look at MS-DOS
The Dross of the DOS
The Man Who Could Have Been Bill Gates
***

Response to LIB$DAY error report

They don't answer user complaints like they used to. The following is a response dated 13-Oct-1983 by Stanley Rabinowitz at DEC.
----------------------------------------------------------
SPR PROBLEM ABSTRACT:
User claims year 2000 should not be a leap year.

SPR ANSWER FORM
SPR NO. 11-60903
SYSTEM VERSION PRODUCT VERSION COMPONENT
SOFTWARE: VAX/VMS V3.2 VAX/VMS V3.2 Run-Time Library

PROBLEM:
The LIB$DAY Run-Time Library service "incorrectly" assumes the year 2000 is a leap year.

RESPONSE:
Thank you for your forward-looking SPR.
Various system services, such as SYS$ASCTIM assume that the year 2000 will be a leap year. Although one can never be sure of what will happen at some future time, there is strong historical precedent for presuming that the present Gregorian calendar will still be in affect by the year 2000. Since we also hope that VMS will still be around by then, we have chosen to adhere to these precedents.
The purpose of a calendar is to reckon time in advance, to show how many days have to elapse until a certain event takes place in the future, such as the harvest or the release of VMS V4. The earliest vcalendars, naturally, were crude and tended to be based upon the seasons or the lunar cycle.
The calendar of the Assyrians, for example, was based upon the phases of the moon. They knew that a lunation (the time from one full moon to the next) was 29 1/2 days long, so their lunar year had a duration of 364 days. This fell short of the solar year by about 11 days. (The exact time for the solar year is approximately 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds.) After 3 years, such a lunar calendar would be off by a whole month, so the Assyrians added an extra month from time to time to keep their calendar in synchronization with the seasons.
The best approximation that was possible in antiquity was a 19-year period, with 7 of these 19 years having 13 months (leap months). This scheme was adopted as the basis for the religious calendar used by the Jews. (The Arabs also used this calendar until Mohammed forbade shifting from 12 months to 13 months.)
When Rome emerged as a world power, the difficulties of making a calendar were well known, but the Romans complicated their lives because of their superstition that even numbers were unlucky. Hence their months were 29 or 31 days long, with the exception of February, which had 28 days. Every second year, the Roman calendar included an extra month called Mercedonius of 22 or 23 days to keep up with the solar year.
Even this algorithm was very poor, so that in 45 BC, Caesar, advised by the astronomer Sosigenes, ordered a sweeping reform. By imperial decree, one year was made 445 days long to bring the calendar back in step with the seasons. The new calendar, similar to the one we now use was called the Julian calendar (named after Julius Caesar). It's months were 30 or 31 days in length and every fourth year was made a leap year (having 366 days). Caesar also decreed that the year would start with the first of January, not the vernal equinox in late March.
Caesar's year was 11 1/2 minutes short of the calculations recommended by Sosigenes and eventually the date of the vernal equinox began to drift. Roger Bacon became alarmed and sent a note to Pope Clement IV, who apparently was not impressed. Pope Sixtus IV later became convinced that another reform was needed and called the German astronomer, Regiomontanus, to Rome to advise him. Unfortunately, Regiomontanus died of the plague shortly thereafter and the plans died as well.
In 1545, the Council of Trent authorized Pope Gregory XIII to reform the calendar once more. Most of the mathematical work was done by Father Christopher Clavius, S.J. The immediate correction that was adopted was that Thursday, October 4, 1582 was to be the last day of the Julian calendar. The next day was Friday, with the date of October 15. For long range accuracy, a formula suggested by the Vatican librarian Aloysius Giglio was adopted. It said that every fourth year is a leap year except for century years that are not divisible by 400.
Thus 1700, 1800 and 1900 would not be leap years, but 2000 would be a leap year since 2000 is divisible by 400. This rule eliminates 3 leap years every 4 centuries, making the calendar sufficiently correct for most ordinary purposes. This calendar is known as the Gregorian calendar and is the one that we now use today. (It is interesting to note that in 1582, all the Protestant princes ignored the papal decree and so many countries continued to use the Julian calendar until either 1698 or 1752. In Russia, it needed the revolution to introduce the Gregorian calendar in 1918.)
This explains why VMS chooses to treat the year 2000 as a leap year.
Despite the great accuracy of the Gregorian calendar, it still falls behind very slightly every few years. If you are very concerned about this problem, we suggest that you tune in short wave radio station WWV, which broadcasts official time signals for use in the United States. About once every 3 years, they declare a leap second at which time you should be careful to adjust your system clock. If you have trouble picking up their signals, we suggest you purchase an atomic clock (not manufactured by Digital and not a VAX option at this time).

END OF SPR RESPONSE

History of SQL

In June, 1970 Dr. Edgar F. Codd published a seminal paper, "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks". Codd's model became widely accepted as the definitive model for relational database management systems (RDBMS). After Codd published this paper, two projects were started to test its viability: Ingress at UC Berkeley in 1970, and later SystemR at IBM's San Jose research center in 1974-75. Ingress (INteractive Graphics REtrieval System) used QUEL (QUEry Language) as a query language and SystemR used SEQUEL.
The term SEQUEL was originally coined as a pun on QUEL (since it came after QUEL it was named sequel). In 1977, Revised SEQUEL/2 was defined. This was later renamed to SQL due to a trademark dispute (the word 'SEQUEL' was held as a trademark by the Hawker-Siddeley aircraft company of the UK). Although these query languages were greatly influenced by Codd's work, they were not designed by Codd himself; the QUEL language design was due to Michael Stonebraker at UC Berkeley, and the SEQUEL language design was due to Donald Chamberlin and Raymond Boyce at IBM. IBM published their concepts to increase interest in SEQUEL (later SQL).

Milestones in RDBMS development
1970 Dr. E. F. Codd publishes his first paper on the relational model
UC Berkeley INGRES prototype work begins
1974 IBM SEQUEL language and prototype developed
IBM System R Prototype work begins
1977 Relational Software Inc. (RSI) founded
Revised SEQUEL/2 (subsequently renamed SQL) defined
1979 Teradata Corporation formed
Britton-Lee, Inc. (later renamed ShareBase)formed
Oracle released by RSI (now Oracle Corporation)
1981 SQL/DS for VSE announced by IBM
INGRES for VAX/VMS announced by Oracle Corporation
1983 DB2 for MVS announced by IBM
1984 First DBC/1012 database machine shipped by Teradata
1985 Teradata acquired Britton-Lee
1986 First version of SQL standard released
Sybase Inc. formed
1987 NonStop SQL announced by Tandem
1988 Microsoft, Sybase and Ashton-Tate develop Sybase for OS/2
1992 AT&T purchases NCR and Teradata
1993 Microsoft and Sybase end partnership
Microsoft rebrands Sybase as SQL Server and releases Windows version
1995 Computer Associates acquires INGRES as a part of its Ask Group purchase
1997 NCR becomes independent company
1998 In-database OLAP and data mining appear in RDBMSs
2000 RDBMSs continue to add OO capabilities and support for complex data
2001 Native XML support is provided for the first time in an RDBMS
2003 W3C enhances XQuery, the XML query language
2004 SQL:2003 standard is published

Out of Africa and into India?

A recent study (February 2006) published in The American Journal of Human Genetics suggests that the origins of Indians are largely indigenous, dating back to the Palaeolithic period. According to the study, the genetic influence of the Indo-European-speakers who established the caste system was small.
Their conclusion is that while some lineages did move in from the outside, many of the major ones are likely to have arisen within India. Specifically, five major haplogroups (C5-M356, F*-M89, H-M69, L1-M76 and R2-M124) were likely to have originated within the subcontinent. The origins of one common haplogroup (R1a1-M17) could not be determined.
(- Polarity and Temporality of High-Resolution Y-Chromosome Distributions in India Identify Both Indigenous and Exogenous Expansions and Reveal Minor Genetic Influence of Central Asian Pastoralists, S. Sengupta, et al.)

Modern humans can be traced back to a group of people who lived in Africa around 100,000 years ago. We know this by analyzing genetic markers in the Y-chromosome and mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) structure of contemporary populations and projecting them back in time. People with similar sets of genetic markers are grouped into haplogroups and links are established between the members of a haplogroup and the marker's first appearance in the group's most recent common ancestor (MRCA).
Determining the origination of a genetic lineage and its subsequent spread is a science fraught with uncertainty. In its simplest form current high frequency and high diversity may mark the origin of a lineage. But there are other ways by which these can arise – high frequency by genetic drift, and high diversity by admixture. And of course there is the fact that people move. There is high frequency and high diversity of genetic markers in Australia. Yet there is no origination in Australia theory.
The time is generally calculated by imputing mutation rates. There are a variety of different techniques, so molecular dates tend to be less certain than archaeological ones.
Notwithstanding the dangers, there is growing genetic evidence that the subcontinent of India has been a major corridor for the migration of people between Africa and the rest of the world.

Studies of maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA are revealing the excursion choices of our earliest ancestors. In their Perspective, Forster and Matsumura discuss two new studies of the mitochondrial DNA of the indigenous peoples of Malaysia and the Andaman islands (Macaulay et al., Thangaraj et al.). These studies suggest that the earliest humans took a southern route along the coastline of the Indian Ocean before fanning out over the rest of the world. - Forster P and Matsumura S. 2005. Did early humans go north or south? Science 308:965-966. Science Online

Out of Africa

There is evidence that all modern extant human Y chromosomes trace their ancestry to Africa and that the descendants of the derived lineage left Africa and eventually completely replaced previous archaic human Y-chromosome lineages.
Over 400 binary polymorphisms currently describe the Y-chromosome tree. Several mutually reinforcing binary mutations divide the Y-chromosome haplotype phylogeny into two distinctive components, haplogroup A and the remainder of all other haplogroups, specifically B through R.
A and B lineages are restricted to African populations. These lineages are diverse and suggest a deeper genealogical heritage than other haplotypes. Representatives of these lineages are distributed across Africa, but generally at low frequencies.
At least three mutations lie at the root of all the remaining Y-chromosome haplotypes that compose the majority of African and non-African lineages, namely haplogroups C through R (Underhill et al. 2001b).
The mutations that define this node deep within the interior of the Y tree reflect descendants of males who successfully left Africa and formed the scaffold on which all other Y-chromosome diversification with geography has accumulated.
The geographical distribution of this diversification allows us to try to understand some of the major movements that occurred after anatomically modern humans left Africa. The original founders diversified into important lineages that display an irregular geographic distribution.
The majority of Y lineages in the world are composed of a tripartite assemblage consisting of (1) haplogroup C, (2) haplogroups D and E, and (3) overarching
haplogroup F that defines the internal node of all remaining haplogroups G through R. These geographic patterns of genetic affinity and diversification provide insights into the population dynamics associated with migration, population subdivision, fluctuations in population size, and more recent gene flow episodes.
The third major and most peripatetic subcluster of M168 lineages is characterized by at least three mutations (one of which is M89) that define the root of haplogroup F from which all other haplogroups (G through R) deploy.
This F subcluster is suggested to have evolved outside Africa early in the diversification and migration of modern humans. Early Upper Paleolithic peoples throughout Eurasia provide sources from which later populations derive. The differentiation of haplogroup F within Eurasia helps to begin understanding this complex period of the peopling of the world.
The early diversification of a haplogroup F population in Eurasia between 40,000 and 30,000 years ago would have given rise to at least six Y-chromosome populations. Thus, there were multiple independent formations and fragmentations of populations carrying F-related lineages throughout most of Asia, displacing the earlier haplogroup C and D lineages toward the margins.

- Inferring Human History: Clues from Y-Chromosome Haplotypes, P.A. Underhill

Tracking the Y-Chromosome

Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) are binary markers that can be identified in the DNA of the Y chromosome; they occur very rarely, so that two men sharing a particular SNP state in their DNA almost definitely inherited this from a shared ancestor, who may have lived many thousands of years ago. Setts of SNPs are typed, and used to define Y chromosome types called haplogroups, which in turn can be arranged into a 'family tree', or phylogeny. If two men belong to different haplogroups, this excludes them from sharing a recent common ancestor. An example of a SNP is shown in the diagram below.

Short Tandem Repeats (STRs)
Another type of marker on the Y chromosome consists of short units of DNA (typically 3 or 4 bases long) that are repeated in tandem several times (see diagram above). These are called microsatellites, or short tandem repeats (STRs); variation in these markers occurs much more frequently than at SNPs. Different Y chromosomes can carry varying numbers of repeats at a set of specific STRs, called a Y-STR haplotype. Haplotypes can be compared to identify differences between men within the same haplogroup. Related men will show the same or very similar patterns in terms of the numbers of repeats seen at a set of markers, while unrelated men will tend not to.
- Surnames, Genes and the History of Britain

The Ultimate Alpha Male?

Approximately 8% of the chromosomes sampled from a large region of Central Asia (a remarkable ~0.5% of the world total) belong to a closely-related cluster of lineages in haplogroup C with a time to most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) of 1,000 years (95% confidence interval: 700–1,300 years)
Although it is not uncommon for a lineage to drift to predominance in a single small population, this cluster was found in 16 different populations including the Han Chinese, who are the largest ethnic group in the world, and could not have risen to such a high frequency in such a short time by drift alone.
The cluster seemed to have originated in Mongolia, and on the basis of its time and place of origin, its geographical distribution (which matched the former Mongol Empire) and its presence in putative male-line descendants of Genghis Khan (circa 1162–1227), the authors suggested that this leader, his male relatives and the dynasty that he founded, were responsible for its spread. The alternative explanation would be that, despite the 20,000 descendants of Genghis Khan reported in 1260, just a century after his birth100, no trace of his Y chromosome can now be recognized, but that of another man living at the same time in the same place has spread in this unprecedented fashion.
The human Y-chromosome: an evolutionary marker comes of age, Mark A. Jobling* and Chris Tyler-Smith‡; www.nature.com/reviews/genetics

Modern communication Theory

Fourier Series
A series proposed by the French mathematician Fourier about the year 1807. The series involves the sines and cosines of whole multiples of a varying angle and is usually written in the following form: y = Ho + A1 sin x + A2 sin 2x + A3 sin 3x + ... B1 cos x + B2 cos 2x + B3 cos 3x + ... By taking a sufficient number of terms the series may be made to represent any periodic function of x
A periodic function is one that repeats itself over time. Fourier proved that any "reasonably behaved" periodic function could be written as a sum of sine and cosine functions. This is important because sine and cosine are easily represented and recreated. The Fourier series allows periodic signals to be sent over a wire

Shannon’s Theorem
The Shannon theorem states that given a noisy channel with information capacity C and information transmitted at a rate R, then if R <> C, an arbitrarily small probability of error is not achievable. So, information cannot be guaranteed to be transmitted reliably across a channel at rates beyond the channel capacity. The theorem does not address the rare situation in which rate and capacity are equal.
Simple schemes such as "send the message 3 times and use at best 2 out of 3 voting scheme if the copies differ" are inefficient error-correction methods, unable to asymptotically guarantee that a block of data can be communicated free of error. Advanced techniques such as Reed-Solomon codes and, more recently, Turbo codes come much closer to reaching the theoretical Shannon limit, but at a cost of high computational complexity. With Turbo codes and the computing power in today's digital signal processors, it is now possible to reach within 1/10 of one decibel of the Shannon limit

Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem
A signal that is bandlimited is constrained in terms of how fast it can change and therefore how much detail it can convey in between discrete moments of time. The sampling theorem means that the discrete samples are a complete representation of the signal if the bandwidth is less than half the sampling rate, which is referred to as the Nyquist frequency. Frequency components that are at or above the Nyquist frequency are subject to a phenomenon called aliasing, which is undesirable in most applications. The severity of the problem depends on the relative strength of the aliased components.

Saraswats - Migration to Goa

The Saraswats were a people who lived on the banks of the river Saraswati about 5000 years ago. The take their name from the river, or possibly from the sage Saraswat Muni who lived by the Saraswati.
During the times of the Puranas, brahmins were divided into two groups based on their geographical origin. Verses in the Skanda Purana, Uttaradha, refer to brahmins living to the north of the Vindhyas as Panch Gaudas, and those residing to the south as Pancha Dravida. These two Puranic divisions of brahmins were then further divided into five subdivisions each. From the five subdivisions of the Gaud Brahmins, the ones which lived to the west of the Saraswati River were referred to as the Saraswat Brahmins.
The drying up of the river Saraswati, circa 1900 BC, led to the migration of the Saraswats. In all probability, the Saraswats migrated southwards along the west coast, following trade routes that existed from North India to ports on the western seaboard, and settled in Goa. Even in ancient times, Goa was a major port of trade. The Mahabharata refers to Gomant (Goa) as a trade port. Goa was known to the ancient Greeks as Tyndis, to the Arabs and Persians as Sindabur.
There is no historical evidence that traces the migration of the Saraswats from North India. However, the Skanda Purana states that Parashuram brought ten munis, or bramanans, who were residents of Trihotra in Pancha Gauda and established them at Gomachala (Goa). In fact the Saraswats still categorize their lineages under ten main stocks or Gotras. (Saraswat Families, S.S. Talmaki, P.N.Nadkarnim, 1997)
A Gothra – (Go=Cow, thral=Shed in sanskrit) literally means Cowpen or Cowshed in archaic rigvedic Sanskrit. It is used to indicate lineage stemming from a rishi or satguru and bearing his name. It was originally described as several (joint) families sharing a common cowshed.

At the time of the early Saraswat migrations, Goa was populated by many communities including the Daivadnyas, Bhandaris, Kunbis, Karhadas and the Chitpavans. The Kunbi tribals, exist as a distinct community to this day. They are a sturdy people mostly settled in Salcette, who though converted to Christianity, still retain their ancient folk traditions. Their unique social and non-religious songs and dances can still be seen in Goa.
The first wave of Saraswat migrants landed along the Konkan coast, around 1000 BC. According to one version, “A group of ninety-six families, known today as Gaud Saraswats, settled in what is now the state of Goa. Of these, sixty-six families took up residence in the southern half in today's Salcette (Sasasthi) taluka which derives its name from the Sanskrit word "Sassast" meaning the number 66. The other thirty families settled in the northern area in today's Tiswadi taluka which derives its name from the Sanskrit word for the number 30.”

The second wave of migrants, sometimes referred to as Shenvis and Trivargas, settled in two villages of Salcette named Kushasthali (Cortollim) and Keloshi (Quelessam), and came to be known as Kushasthalikars and Keloshikars.