Conundrum

The recent recession has given us enough real world examples of what happens when certain business theories are ignored for the sake of short term gains. This post from HBR , which appeared last week has excellent timing for two reasons. One; It's a nice case study practitioners can learn from (obviously). Two; It's useful for me in preparation for the semester exams, having just finished going through Financial Management. Theory around Degree of Leverage and Ratios sticks better when coupled with a real world example. Sadly, certain theories are well demonstrated by citing instances where companies failed due to ignoring them. Nevertheless, thank you Lehman Brothers (and others) for the case study on Overleverage.

I finally decided to get a 3G connection as a backup for my ADSL one at home. I often find myself ending up in places without readily provided Internet and wishing for a mobile solution. After doing a bit of research, I found Airtel as the best deal. If you are wondering about Airtel 3G coverage, all I have to say is that I live and usually spend my time within a 20-30 Kilometre radius from the city of Colombo. And when I go out of this zone, Internet or a Laptop or anything related to work is usually the last thing on my mind :) So getting 3G coverage in rural Sri Lanka isn't a huge priority! That, and the fact that this is a supplementary connection, which means it should cost at least 50% or less compared to the primary connection made the choice very easy. Now for the fun part. Hating how the usual Huawei E220 modem looks, I opted for the more elegant Prolink PHS100, which can be bought with no vendor lock (let's not get started on vendors locking hardware for which I pay

Best of open source platforms and middleware | Open Source - InfoWorld WSO2 Carbon is the foundation of WSO2's componentized SOA platform. Carbon provides the framework for all of the core functionality -- data services, ESB/routing, process management, registry, monitoring, and security - allowing you to plug in these components as necessary. The ESB and additional modules for governance and identity are good, and the process server is also decent, and with Carbon the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.