Ravi S. Iyer: Worldly

Good to see US President Joe Biden show support for Asian-Americans in the context of Atlanta Spa shootings, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Atlanta_spa_shootings , that killed 8 of which 6 were Asian-Americans. As per the wiki page, the shooting is not viewed, so far, by the police as a hate crime. But it seems that at least some Asian-Americans perceive it as a hate crime. This CNN video which I have shared has some anti-Trump (former US President Trump and his administration) remarks which I do not endorse in any way. I looked around to see if Joe Biden's video statement is available on his Twitter feed but could not find it. Also the CNN interview does have two Asian-Americans (seem to be of Chinese and/or South East Asian descent) speak of the racism and hatred they faced over their lives in USA, which I think is valuable testimony. So I am sharing the video. I repeat I do not endorse any anti-Trump remarks of the video. I am publicly politically neutral in US politics. I ...

Last updated on 26th March 2021 Minor update on 28th May 2022 Readers may want to see my related post: Chinese-American computer pioneer An Wang (1920-1990) and Wang Laboratories founded by him: some aspects of their history of interest to me - Part 1,  https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2021/04/chinese-american-computer-pioneer-wang.html , 1st April 2021 (next/previous part link is provided in each post of the 3 part series). This post gathers material that I have written about my Wang VS computers work as parts of other posts and a book. [14th Oct. 2021 minor update: Note that new material added in other posts after this post was created or last updated (excluding minor updates) would typically not be included in this post.] Extracts from my post: Some info. on John Chambers and his association with Wang Laboratories, based on Web articles, https://ravisiyermisc.blogspot.com/2019/01/some-info-on-john-chambers-and-his.html , Jan-Feb 2019 : First I think I need to explain my inte...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web informs us: "English scientist Sir Timothy Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989." Given below are extracts from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser#History The first web browser, called WorldWideWeb, was created in 1990 by Sir Tim Berners-Lee.[6][7] He then recruited Nicola Pellow to write the Line Mode Browser, which displayed web pages on dumb terminals; it was released in 1991.[8] 1993 was a landmark year with the release of Mosaic, credited as "the world's first popular browser".[9] Its innovative graphical interface made the World Wide Web system easy to use and thus more accessible to the average person. This, in turn, sparked the Internet boom of the 1990s, when the Web grew at a very rapid rate.[9] Marc Andreessen, the leader of the Mosaic team, soon started his own company, Netscape, which released the Mosaic-influenced Netscape Navigator in 1994. Navigator quickly became the most popular br...

This document authored by Prof. Bjarne Stroustrup, who is also the creator of C++ (programming language), is titled: Thriving in a crowded and changing world: C++ 2006–2020 and is dated June 2020. The overview (abstract) of the document can be viewed here: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3386320 . Download link for the full document which is a lengthy 168 pages: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3386320  . As I am out of technical detail level stuff now, I did a quick browse-read of the initial part of the 168 page document, and have given my comments below. Congratulations to Prof. Stroustrup on the long and energetic life that C++ has had in the software industry for a period of around three and a half decades (assuming 1986 was when it started getting used in a significant way in industry). That is an extraordinary achievement in the fast changing tech. world especially given that C++ had not had "serious commercial backing" like some other programming languages. Stro...

Last updated on 11th March 2021 This post has my views based on my experience as an employee and later as a consultant in Indian software export services companies, for most of my software industry career from 1984 to 2002. I started my software career as a trainee programmer in Datamatics in March 1984 and was with Datamatics till 1990 by which time my designation was 'Project Leader'. The post is based on my part of some correspondence with others with some appropriate modifications for a general post like this. The post also has some later additions from me (not part of the original correspondence). There is some level of repetition and some lack of cohesion which the reader will have to kindly tolerate. Overview Datamatics and similar other Indian software consultancy services (IT services companies) did not have the advantage of a good domestic market for software products that USA and European software companies had, allowing the latter to create stable software products ...

Contents of my post:  https://www.facebook.com/ravi.s.iyer.7/posts/3076678892548667 Did John Sculley really fire Steve Jobs? John Sculley says no (or rather not exactly)  As per John Sculley, from the standpoint of accuracy, one cannot say that Sculley fired Jobs. Sculley disagreed strongly with Jobs on company strategy at a time when Macintosh was not doing well financially, and as CEO he felt obliged to go to the board with his disagreement. The board agreed with Sculley as they felt that Jobs' approach would financially harm the company, and then they cut down authority of Jobs in the company (and Macintosh division in particular), at which time Steve Jobs informally left (did not get fired to be precise, did not resign to be precise, as per John Sculley). John Sculley: Steve Jobs 'was never fired' from Apple, https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/john-sculley-steve-jobs-was-never-fired-from-apple/articleshow/47376067.cms , 21st May 2015 John Sculley spills the beans on fi...

When author of post or comment is not mentioned, it should be assumed that it is me (Ravi S. Iyer). To save time, I am usually not providing my FB post links but only contents. I am also not hyperlinking links. So readers will have to copy-paste links from this post onto a browser link box and then browse to that link. ==========================================  Interesting straight talk in end 1980 from Singapore's then leader Lee Kuan Yew about capitalist model & profit versus planned & controlled economy of communist countries then - China and Soviet Union, with China under Deng Xiaoping exploring changing its economic model to bring in capitalism (but not name it as capitalism and name it as 'Communism with Chinese characteristics'). Yew talks about China learning from Hong Kong, and experimenting with Shenzen then. Of course, 4 decades later, Shenzen is a major financial success story, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenzhen, and so is Chinese capitalism (offici...