Some thoughts

I was quiet busy reading up on various papers , sites , etc on latest ideas on OS tech - most books seem a bit outdated.
I came across some very interesting papers - but what was more interesting was that some of the really good ones were from the 80s and 90s (the earlier ones are part of the books ;) ).
For last few years - I could find most interesting papers from google , everyone else seemed to be interested in other fields.
Which got me wondering and I started to dig up about google.
I came across
*An interesting blog
*Google architecture
*GFS
* An NY times article
*Google watch and Google watch watch ;)
*Article on feasibility of doing a gmail by others is here

in one of my excursions today.

I came across internal papers , albeit old ones (92-94) , about some ideas from sun labs too - maybe they are public now ... not sure of that.
In another discussion with one of my collegues at Sun , I got some new ideas on how UI should be/would be.
He was expounding on what one of our Distinguished Engineers (UIRB) said on UI - "The best UI is no UI" !!
We were more specifically discussing on the hierarchical structure of a file system : folder/files and how this is exposed to the users. His point was that you dont need to expose folders to the user at all.
The idea of a user is "I want that file/application/resource" - you should not constraint him by asking him to go through a structured way of accessing it/forcing him to remember the "path"/location of the required resource.
The logical structure is imposed for developers/system to manage things and the enduser is really does not care if the binaries are in "/usr/bin" or his docs are in /home/uid/docs" -> the result is important for him - not the how/where.
(Ofcourse , we are talking of proper info here , not some spoof , etc - like a trojan for executables !)
Though I am not yet understood this idea/convinced about it - it was a very interesting discussion , which I hope to continue next week. And (from my perspective) it did open new avenues to ideas and more radical thoughts ;)

Speaking of which , some happy news too -

* A collegue of mine who joined along with other 38 of us at Sun is gtting married tommorrow at Tirupathi !!
Wish her all the best for a Happy , Prosperous married life
* My flatmate is getting engaged tommorrow.
He remains a bachelor still - but will soon lose that freedom ;)
Wish him the best too !!!

Looks like a season for typing knots :)
All this talk about love , true love , passion , etc from NKV is sure worrying : considering that "love is in the air" and people are getting hitched ;)