Scarce and Abundance

First of all, I am not an expert in economic. I just write what I think. It maybe incorrect.

I remembered that I attend the Informatics Entrepreneurship II course, and there was a student asking a teacher about how could the music industry deals with the copyright infringement problem. The music industry was losing money, because people do not buy their CDs. The guest speaker introduces the concept of scarce and abundance. At any given time for something, there are something a little (scarce), and there are something a lot (abundance). For example, for the music industry, the abundance is the music available from the Internet, and the scarce could be the concert ticket.

In my opinion, it is necessary for an entrepreneur to detect what is scarce and abundant. I agree with the guest speaker on the scarce and abundance concept. 

In 1997, there was  an economic crisis in Thailand. Before the crisis, the real estate was bubble. People bought real estate (houses or land) for investment, but they did not buy real estate for living or do something. They hoped that the prices would increase. The prices of real estate were indeed increased. However, after the economic crisis, the prices drop significantly. People do not have money to pay back to the bank. When people can not pay back, the banks took the real estate properties. The abundance would be a lot of cheap real estate. The scarce would be the money. If anyone had bought the cheap real estate properties at that time, they could sell at very high price now, because the real estate business has improved. The situation is similar to the credid crisis occurred in USA recently. If any one has money, they can buy a house cheaply. 

 

 

 

If I remembered correctly, the guest speaker also mentioned about the situation in 2001 for IT companies. A lot of companies laid out software developers. Abundance would be the programmers. If anyone with money, they can start an IT company cheaply by hiring those laid out  programmers cheaply. When the economic is back, they can sell their IT products.

Curious about the Correlation example in Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation Step by Step book

I have read the Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation Step by Step book.  Overall, it is a good reference book.

 

However, I am not quite sure about the application example illustrated in the Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation Step by Step book in “External Data Communication” section. The example may not illustrate the true purpose of using the correlation parameter.

The example is about a process of a truck. One workflow has only one truck. There could be many workflows in the system. Each workflow has one truck ID. A truck ID is part of the correlation parameter. 

Perhaps, I am wrong. It seems to me that the application try to use the truck ID to differentiate different workflows, so the runtime could send the message to the correct workflow.  I think that the runtime uses Guid which is a workflow instance ID stored in the EventArgs object. The EventArgs is created when the runtime fires an event to the workflow. This Guid is used to differentiate between different workflows, but not the correlation parameter.

Activities in the same conversation are chained together through the value of the correlation parameter.  A better example of using the correlation parameter could be that there are many tasks running parallel in a workflow. Note, this example could be found in my previous blog, “Communication Between Inside And Outside Of A Workfow In Windows Workflow.” Each task sends a request and waits for response. Each task has uniquely Task ID. The response sent by task 1 would go back to task 1. The response sent by task 2 would go back to task 2. In this case, there are two values of Task ID which are 1 and 2. The example found in the book simply has  only one Truck ID for the whole workflow which is not make sense.

I think that the objective of the correlation parameter is to bring back an event from outside to the correct activity in a workflow, not to bring back an event to the correct workflow.