Q:Where are the Indian hackers? A:Mountain View.

The Hudson Institute = right wing think tank = press release from them is meaningless.

Just as long as these guys don't get as much power as the PNAC did, we'll be fine.

It's a bit shallow to sum a 5000 word essay which spans the history of the FSF, the rise of linux, and the cultural friction between the two, viewed (oddly, but intruigingly) through the lens of one's editor with 'you said editor, let's not talk about editors' .. well it's sort of missing the point of the essay, IMO.

I can remember thinking back then that Apple ought to get out of the hardware business. It might in fact have been the right move under any other CEO than Steve Jobs. He has beaten the Japanese at music players. How many other American CEOs could have done that?

About indian hackers... ohh they're out there all right... they're out there.

indian cities like chennai ,bangalore,bombay ,pune and delhi have really making the most of the unconference,hacker & silicon valley culture that's slowly building up.

There have always been examples of startups with a combination of design and development teams across india and us can do . take zimbra, riya , slingshot ,et cetera, or the startups more established in india like zoho and slideshare . but for the smaller ones, you need to keep your eyes glued to unconferences and blogs.

If you're flying down to india, you might want to subscribe to http://upcoming.yahoo.com/group/3556/ for the upcoming unconferences .

Its run by gud friend - and pythonista siddhi govindraj who for instance runs a one man project management s/w called silver stripe. Hey i think i might even talk more about the best hacker's in india i've had the privilege of ...uhmm adding to their feed subscriber list 8 )

ravi mohan, who just happened to port all of google director peter norvig's AI book code to java - is a one-man hacker working on nothing but the best of AI related work for the past few years.

swaroop ch whose python hackery got him into adobe's flex team in india ,has written a book on python .he's one of the inventors of the ipod charger called ion.

gopal v , heads the open source project dotGNU,apart from contributions to native php code from yahoo's bangalore office is one of the most talented native code hacker's out there when it comes to the open source stack.

sriram krishnan, who 's story and 'curve to geekdom' is possibly the most enchanting, is a great example of a hacker getting noticed in the blogosphere, and all the way to microsoft.he nows works in the popfly team at redmond.

sidu ponnappa, is very 'agile' hacker with very diverse skill sets working in thoughtworks bangalore, apart from a very interesting mobile sideline project with a few friends called inactiv .

abdul qabiz , macromedia/adobe/yahoo/ and now hacker at Nanocasts r&r(called Mixercast ) is a also a hacker in the flash/flash space.

pvsundarram, who's addiction for designing scalable apps from native mvc to jabber & erlang ,to javascript hackery has taken this hacker to be invited for a number of startups in bangalore,bombay and chennai. he now works at zoomin ,and was my colleague at tutorvista where we worked on the whiteboard & chat collaboration product.

balakumar muthu , anantha narasimhan , antano solari, i could go on..

Heck, even i've quit and now finally taken time off to hack up a few open source projects ,apart from bootstrapping for the startup i'm co-founding . (Note: this is where i hint that ppl interested in joined me can ping me ;) )

one thing about all of them is that they're all got a very diverese skillset,and can express themselves verry well.i could go on with more people i know..hmm wish i could export my google opml .... The day of reckoning will however be when the first ycombinator with indian hacker's . Grab a couple of the names from above and make a team - now that my friends will be history in the making 8 )

But anyways - in the end we've can't say that we don't have the hacker's right now . i think it's the "getting it to market" ability that we are still perfecting. and part of that has to do with the eco-system for startups and entrepreneurs...

The good news is that that's exactly what is fortunately getting better ... in fact when i read "icon : steve jobs" a few quarters ago - i could'nt help but notice how lucky i was to be in india right now. Very much reminiscent of the hacker culture from the 1980's ...

Can't wait to get started 8 )

Keep Clicking,

Bhasker V Kode hacker,proud to be indian... 8 )

wow what a giant mess of ignorance and generalizations. I can write an entire article refuting every point he attempted to make.. there are so many Western "innovators" in the artistic field who were "inspired" by Eastern "copycats." Then again, their innovative works were partly influenced by previous artists who were, interestingly enough, Western. Point being, there's no difference in the willingness of one to be innovative, East or West. There are standardized social constraints in any culture but to those with the will to innovate they are irrelevant in making their decision to execute.. results and consequences are a different story. Sorry if this sounded like a rant.. I was just upset by the reality that people with this kind of uneducated views are still abundant. New York City with slanty eyes?? come on

The advice in this column doesn't seem so bad.

Looks to me like Apple has taken some of these tips, partially taken others, and taken others farther than James Daly even suggested.

3. Start pampering independent software vendors: Taken -- what could be more pampering than switching the underlying OS to one programmers like?

7. Don't disappear from the retail chains: Taken farther -- They certainly have a retail presence now, with the opening of Apple stores.

8. Buy a song: Taken farther

10. Get a great image campaign: Taken

12. Build a fire under your ad agency: Taken

15. Dump (or outsource) the Newton, eMate, digital cameras, and scanners: Taken

18. Stop being buttoned-down corporate: Taken

25. Portables, portables, portables: Taken farther

34. Port the OS to the Intel platform: Taken

50. Give Steve Jobs as much authority as he wants in new product development: Taken

That's just the most obvious ones (to me) from the first 50. I bet other people here could note more of them. Point is, though, many of these tips were beneficial.

And finally he makes a prediction:

101. Don't worry. You'll survive. It's Netscape we should really worry about.

Cue scene of 1000s of Indian hackers cresting a hill, each holding a copy of SICP.

I wonder how much it's really satire. You'd definitely be better off with their replacements than the original list.

Denny says Gigamon "contradicted Gartner", and "Gartner was dead wrong". This is my space, too. All due respect, Denny, but, not so sure of your policework there.

Gartner predicted the demise of the standalone "intrusion detection system". Denny's product is enabling infrastructure for network monitoring and network security tools. It's not an intrusion detection system; it's lower on the value chain than that.

The market for intrusion detection systems, which are sold almost entirely to enterprises, evaporated in the 3 years following that Gartner report. There were several hundred million addressable dollars of it in 2003. Now there may be 50.

You probably don't care about this. But what you might care about is, there's a difference between bootstrapping a company into a 15MM/yr niche and funding a company to go after a billion dollar market. The former has an outcome like nCircle's, where you limp for the next 5-10 years of your life. If you do well, you get a "lifestyle company". The latter has an outcome like SourceFire, which involves private jets.

Lifestyle companies are great. But they don't have promising exits. The "Paul Graham Way" involves exits; murder yourself for 2 years, never work again. This is more the "Joel Spolsky Way"; end up with private offices, a 4 day work week, and an Aeron chair.

We've been bootstrapping for a couple years now. It's definitely cost us time, and we have the constant hazard of falling into a lifestyle company. I'm not saying one approach is better/worse than the other. But if you're selling to enterprises, ignore the analysts at your own mortal peril.

How about: don't run ads (except trailers) before films. It is so obnoxious to be forced to sit through an ad before something you're paying for. Especially in a theater. If an ad on TV bothers you, you can turn off the sound or go into the next room. If an ad in a newspaper or magazine bothers you, you can cover it or turn the page. But an ad in a theater you are getting shoved in your face no matter what.

Ads have a cost. People who think they can keep sticking more and more ads on things don't realize that they're gradually making whatever it is less attractive. But eventually you cross a line.