Love thy neighbor... Even if he slaps you!

The headline carried on the front page in today's edition of the Times of India just riled me no end. 'European Union raps India' it shrieked. And below the headline were the words, 'Describes Church Attacks as Massacre of Christians'. And may be I got out of the wrong side of the bed today morning, but the words just put me off. The church attacks were a reference to the recent attacks on Churches in Karnataka and Orissa. Of course, the issue has been hotly debated in many forums - on mails, by casual bloggers, by seasoned columnists, in the television and print media. But the point really is not about the attacks. It is about a conglomeration of countries trying to interfere with the sovereignity of a nation. A nation's internal security is it's concern alone. And people living in glass houses certainly shouldn't throw stones. Look at what the French President, Mr. Sarkozy had to say about the issue of Sikhs in France. "We respect their customs and traditions and they are welcome to France. But we have rules regarding the neutrality of civil servants... So while we respect the customs of Sikhs, we expect them to follow the rules of the Republic", he said. This was Mr. Sarkozy's response when asked about the ban on Sikh turbans in government-funded schools. And honestly, I admire him for his clear words on the topic. Unlike the ruling coalition in India, where the leaders hem and haw about calling a spade a spade. For clinging on to their chairs. To preserve their votebank. And do not utter a word about a third party interfering in the nation's internal affairs. To give an analogy, this is like your neighbour giving you sermons on familial harmony because he happened to overhear that argument you had with your wife last night. Not only that, imagine the same neighbor calling you a serial wife-beater! Calling the attacks on the churches a 'massacre' is being exactly like the neighbor. Well, if he (the neighbor) were to do that to me, I'd tell him to shut the *#$** up! But our premier, being the genial Sikh that he is, gives an 'assurance' to the neighbour about 'the constitutional right' of the minorities 'to profess and propagate their respective faiths'!! I can understand the profess part. But propagate?! What the hell does he mean by that?! But then you expect no more from a man who 'professes' the 'love of Indian people' for Mr. Bush, the president of the US of A! What riled me was the fact that this remark was a slap on the administration of the country. And the fact that the administration remained a mute spectator, instead of reminding the EU to keep their noses out of a sovereign nation's affairs.

The box said 'Requires Win 95, NT or better'. So I installed Linux

Yes, it is true... I've just switched loyalties to Linux! I'm now using the Ubuntu 7.10 64 bit edition, and from my initial experiences, I'm just loving it! Especially, the graphics part, which IMHO (in my humble opinion ;)) is way beyond what Windows Vista has to offer. The nVidia GeForce 6150 Graphics card which was lying unutilized all this while (yep, I'm not a great gaming enthusiast), suddenly sprang to life and the snazzy effects are cool, to say the least. Well, there were teething troubles in getting up my notebook to full functionality, so to speak. But they were just that - teething troubles. And thanks to the huge Ubuntu community out there, getting them sorted out was no sweat. That's the best part about using Linux. There's a whole bunch of guys out there, who've likely faced the same problem that you're facing right now, and you'll find the answer on a forum. You just have to google on your problem, and Voila! And oh, the ubuntu official forums are there, too. So getting my Wireless connection up and running, and fixing the sound issue (no sound) was done in a matter of an hour or two (well, the sound card issue was vexed).
The move from Windows was prompted by an itch, really. An itch to do something different, to just experience a different OS for a while (OK, OK, I'm a geek ;)). And at not having to pay through your nose for softwares, and updates - who doesn't like free stuff?! And real quality free stuff!! The installation itself was pretty easy. I've worked on Linux boxes quite extensively during my grad student days at IIT, Bombay, and so Linux installations were nothing new. In fact, Linux itself was nothing new. And there was a time when I was more comfortable at command lines than Windows-based apps (for one, it really helps on a notebook, when you don't use a mouse). But installing Ubuntu from the disc proved nothing at all like installing that Linux distro I'd installed on my machine during my IIT days. No manual partitioning, no setting up /boot, /home, /swap; no being prompted for LILO or Grub. Just a glide through the set-up process where you're asked for the place settings and a couple of administrative things. The whole set-up was done within half an hour, and I was ready to go! Next followed setting up the Internet connection (the LAN card was configured correctly, so this was smooth), and getting help on setting up the Wireless connection. And fixing the sound issue. This far the UI,while being on par with Windows, was pretty ordinary after all. Then I installed the restricted firmware for the nVidia Graphics card, and boy! The snazzy effects while switching between apps, opening or closing a terminal, switching workspaces... A whole lot of cool stuff! Then downloaded the security updates from the Ubuntu site, and there I was ready to go.
I've been using Ubuntu for the last couple of days, and the experience has been perfect. In fact, it does all the things Windows does, and more! So unlike the Linux distro that I'd used in IIT-B, I don't have to mount and unmount the CD-ROM and USB drives - they're done by the system. Even though I'm comfortable with that part, that was a pleasant surprise (yep, I hadn't quite been in touch with the evolution of Linux the last couple of years). At the same time, the command line just puts a lot of power at your fingertips (literally and figuratively). I don't think I'd be moving back to Windows any time soon. So here's to Linux!
Cheers!!

Dont Look, We're changing! Bet you can't NOT look!!

Amidst a lot of hype and buzz, the Android phone was finally launched in the US on September 23. I guess it'll be quite a while before it comes around to Indian markets, but looking at the features it really made me wish I could lay my hands on one. Here is the coverage on Techcrunch, and you can read another post here. Now you'd think that these 'smart phones' are only for the nerd and geeks amongst us, but if you scratch the surface, it's kind of a revolution that's happening in the mobile space. It began with the iPhone launch in July, and it's really catching up with the Android launch. Mobile phones are no longer just devices that you use to make calls, or text messages to your friends or girlfriend. They are packing in a whole lot of features - right from checking your e-mails to searching maps to cool apps that allow you to do a whole lot of stuff that seemed just un-imaginable just an year ago! You can use your mobile phone to listen to your favourite songs, to chat with your friends, to browse the web, to check your e-mail (and make sure that it syncs up with the mail server!)... And the list goes on... Heck, you can even take snaps, record a video inpromptu, and watch full-length movies on that small device! And you can carry all this functionality in your pocket! And with at least 8GB of storage, you don't have to offload data every other day to your notebook. I seriously can't think of something that my notebook can do that these phones cannot! Now a lot of phones had these kind of features for a while now. They were restricted to the cool dudes with hot pockets. Or the business executive who'd use them as a PDA. But with these phones being launched in the USD 200 range, they've become a lot more you-and-me-friendly, from the cost point of view. The fact that the iPhone 2G sold as many phones in the first week as the first iPhone sold in a month says something! The Android phone may not (yet) give the iPhone serious competition, but it's sure to revolutionize the segment, and give Steve Jobs something to think about. The mobile phones are changing in yet another aspect. They started out as big, bulky devices, and then moved to a phase where small was in. Now it seems that the catch-phrase is Big is Beautiful and life for the mobile phone seems to have come full-circle! But then looking at everything that's packed in there... Well, I can't wait to get either the iPhone or the Android for myself. But I guess I'll have to wait... At INR 31K, the iPhone in India is still a bit out of my range. And the Android G1 will take a while to come to our shores... Till then, you can drool over some of these images ;)

T for technology, T for terror

Came across this post on TechCrunch about GnuPG, a software that helps you to encrypt mails, to avoid a hacker looking into your private mails. The post is a little bit geekish, but contains nice step-by-step instructions to use both GnuPG and FireGPG, a Firefox extension which provides a nicer interface than the command line one given by GPG. I haven't tried it (well, I don't have any incriminating mails to hide, for one. For another, I'm not running for a public post, to have some enthusiastic hacker look into my mailbox ;) ), but it looks pretty useful tool to have. But call it the effect of the current security situation, call it paranoia, the thought occured to me that this could easily be (mis-)used by terrorists or anyone with nefarious motives to communicate securely, without having the intelligence agencies eavesdropping. Already the bad guys seem to be one step ahead of the good guys, and in these times of cyber-crime, cyber-fraud and cyber-terrorism, this is a real serious prospect. The Internet has shrunk the world, and while it certainly helps me to chat with my friend in the US, it also helps the bad guys to co-ordinate their plans for that bombing in Cairo, sitting in Alaska (OK, no reference to Palin here ;) )! As terrorists and criminals become increasingly hi-tech and get more educated, highly qualified people into their fold, it's becoming a case of playing catch-up with them. Now I'm not saying that the bad guys are not already using encryption and this site will have some one saying 'Eureka!'. But the point I'm trying to make is that there's such a wealth of information available online that can easily be mis-used. Like Naseeruddin Shah's character says in Wednesday, "Internet pe 'bomb' ke liye search karo toh 352 sites milengi!" Yes, sad but true. We talk about technology enabling our lives. But it is also being used in the pursuit of much more dastardly acts, acts that are claiming more and more lives - across the world...

Fewer traffic rules = Fewer accidents?!

A week back read an article in the Times of India about a town in Germany that did away with traffic signals. Not only this, it also tore down kerbs and erased all marked crosswalks. To quote from the article:

Bohmte has scrapped its traffic lights, torn down the kerbs and erased marked crosswalks. The main street is now shared equally by bikes, pedestrians, cars and trucks. Initiatives like this which aim to break the hegemony of cars are popping up across Europe.

Now a really interesting result of this experiment was that the town actually witnessed accident rates declining! When I read the article, a thought came to my mind, can this work in India? And the very next moment, I found the very idea simultaneously revolting and ridiculous. Why, well, we already have many parts which do not have signals; sidewalks if they exist at all, are taken up either by hawkers or by motorists (yes, you can try to navigate the sidewalks of Bangalore or Pune!) and whoever saw marked crosswalks! Drivers lack even the basic courtesy, forget about road discipline, honking incessantly and overtaking even in a crowded street. Pedestrians consider the road as a park, strolling along without looking right or left. Add to this, the occasional cow ambling across the road. And what you have is nothing short of total mayhem! The philosophy of fewer rules is based on one simple thing - consideration for your fellow drivers, or pedestrians. But do we see that here? Everyone is in a tearing hurry, either to get to work, or to rush back home, or to catch that movie show. The article talks about the concept of "shared spaces" pioneered by Dutch engineer Hans Monderman. This concept can work when people take time to slow down a little bit. On the road. And in their lives as well... When they inculcate a little bit of discipline. But most of all, when they learn to be considerate about their fellow citizens. Till then, I don't think that fewer rules will lead to fewer accidents in Indian cities.

A Saturday...

So after a busy week, Saturday evening was a welcome break. There's nothing like enjoying a weekend of movies, eating out, and especially when you've really had to work hard through the week. 'Work hard, party harder' as they say! Saturday evening was spent watching two movies, and eating out at Bombay Post, a restaurant on Airport Road in Bangalore. We rented DVDs for A Wednesday and Rock On, two movies I'd been planning to watch for a long time. And 'A Wednesday' just had me floored. I do not remember the last time Hindi cinema gave such a hard-hitting, fast paced, taut, thriller of a movie. It's a must-watch! I'll not be a spoiler and say anything about the plot. Anupam Kher and Naseeruddin Shah, are at their best, reprising their parts to perfection. Kher's character, Prakash Rathod, the Commissioner of Police of Mumbai, is a tough cop, efficient and calm in the face of crisis. Watching the movie really made me feel that we need officers like Prakash Rathod leading our police force today - tough, calm, efficient and quick decision makers. The other actors are pretty fine as well, but this movie is only about Prakash Rathod, and an anonymous caller who threatens to blow up the five bombs he has planted in various places across the city. This morning's papers carried a small item about Taare Zameen Par being selected as India's official entry for the Oscars. A Wednesday was in the contention as well. Now I haven't seen TZP, but I really felt that Wednesday deserved the wider audience that it would have got, had it made the cut. For the rivetting performances, for the plot, but most of all for the message it carries. For the thoughts that it spurs in the viewer's mind. Especially in this age, when terrorist bombings have become disturbingly common. Especially in India, which is bleeding through a thousand cuts - Mumbai, Lucknow, Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, and now Delhi...
The other movie we saw was Rock On, and I don't know whether it was because I saw a movie like Wednesday just a few hours before this one, but honestly felt that it was OK. Well, yes, just OK. The music is fantastic, no doubt. In fact, in music, I think this is a movie which has dared to be different in a long, long time. And it's no small compliment that the music of Rock On featured in Rolling Stones magazine! Only the second time Indian music featured in Rolling Stones. But the movie itself drags at times. I felt that a little bit too much takes place in flashback. And the theme of friends re-uniting after a misunderstanding causes them to drift apart is pretty stale. We saw the same thing in Dil Chahta Hai. OK, the movie is not bad, not at all. But there are times when it left me looking at the watch. And when that happens, well, you know it... Farhan Akhtar makes his acting debut in the movie, and he does a good job of portraying Aditya. The rest of the cast is good as well. I especially liked Purab Kohli in his role, infusing a youthful charm into the movie. Of the leading ladies, Prachi Desai looks really cute. Goswami has also played the role of Debbie nicely. Overall it wasn't a bad watch, but well, it was Wednesday which rocks!!

And they all fell down...

After a brief lull, I'm back to blogging! The week just whizzed by, and here I am on a Saturday afternoon chained to my desk at work, working on the technical paper submission deadline! (Well, the chained to the desk part was exaggerated :D) But while I was busy trying to get everything done before the deadline, the world outside was witnessing a huge turmoil. The week began with the frontpage news on Monday crying out that Lehman Brothers is filing for bankruptcy. That too the biggest Chapter 11 bankruptcy claim filing in US history! This was followed by news of AIG looking out for buyers, and doubts being expressed about other banks like Morgan Stanley as well. Suddenly, the who's-who in the world of investment banking were on their knees, begging for government largesse. While Lehman filed for bankruptcy, the US government attempted to bail out AIG with an infusion of US$ 85 billion. Here is a post on the mess that the big banks find themselves in. The numbers are staggering - 4 trillion dollars down the drain! The next few days carried the grim news of the aftermath, with the effects being felt in India as well. Almost all of 2500 employees in Lehman's India operations would be losing their jobs. And when the banking and financial sector was facing such a tough time, the impact was bound to felt on the IT industry, with BFSI (Banking, Financials and Insurance Services) being a major part of product/services offerings of some of the top players. So news of lay-offs and pink-slips in organizations world-wide was not unexpected, though the sheer numbers were shattering. HP announced cuts up to 25000 people, while Satyam announced it was 'right-sizing' about 4500-odd people. And suddenly, IT professionals became aware of the Sword of Damocles hanging over their head. The stock markets, too, reacted to this turmoil, and several millions of rupees of investor wealth was wiped out. (Though they did bounce back on Friday, and gave investors something to cheer about as the week ended.) What will happen in the weeks ahead? No one knows how deep the rot brought on by the sub-prime crisis has set in. After all, when a Bank that had never posted a loss in any single quarter in its 158-year old history goes bust, you really do not know what to expect...

Viral Marketing

Read this editorial in today's Times of India about viral marketing, and it got me interested. I'd already come across this term a couple of times before (on TechCrunch, a blog covering start-ups and cool technology products and services), but hadn't given much thought to exactly what it is. So when I saw the phrase 'viral marketing' in the tag-line of the article, I dived into the full article, to understand what it exactly means. So viral marketing is basically word-of-mouth publicity, albeit on the internet. To quote the article, 

... Viral advertising involves companies or marketers creating messages so funny and interesting that consumers feel compelled to forward them to their friends and family. 

Now word-of-mouth publicity has of course been a very potent tool to market products and services, but the internet takes it all to a whole new level! For one, with the amount of content shared online these days these campaigns reach out to a huge population across geographical boundaries. For instance, I watched the new Microsoft commercials, featuring Gates and Seinfeld on YouTube, even though they are airing on televisions in US (and not in India). Social networking has led to the world shrinking, and sharing of services, applications, has never been so easy! And marketers have of course latched on to this opportunity to use the Web as a marketing tool. The goal is to identify users with high Social Networking Potential (SNP) and create viral messages that appeal to this segment and have a high chance of being passed along. Viral marketing can be in the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, images, or even text messages (SMS). Viral marketing has serious implications for the traditional media of course, with the Internet eating into the ad spend for print and television. To quote some figures from the Times of India article again, Google witnessed a 42 percent jump in revenue in Q1 2008, over the same period in 2007, while a leading American newspaper reported a revenue dip of 9.2 percent. Companies are clearly putting their bets on the World Wide Web! 

An Evening in Paris

Saw a French movie at the Alliance Francaise de Bangalore yesterday. The movie titled 'Fauteuils_d'orchestre' depicts the tale of a young small-town girl, Jessica, who comes to Paris and finds a job as a waitress in a smalll cafe. She is the sort of a narrator of the whole movie, as we often see the other characters expressing themselves to her; we see her amused and bewildered at some of the plots that enact out before her. For instance, the pianist Jean-Francois expresses his frustration at the world of formal music concerts when she is serving him his order. And she cannot understand why such a great pianist would want to run away from it all! The plot of the movie can be found on the movie's Wiki page. The movie is a nice, gripping narration of the incidents in the lives of the five lead characters of the movie. The characters themselves are nicely portrayed, and all the actors have done full justice to capture the nuances of the characters. Cecile de France as Jessica is superb, portraying the curiosity of a small town girl nicely. Overall, a nice evening, with Cinnamon and Butter Croissants, Banana and Coffee cake (at the canteen in the Alliance Francaise), and Fauteuils_d'orchestre!

A Journey to the Beginnning of the Universe?

So the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have begun with the first proton beams completing a full circuit of the particle accelerator. It is being touted as the Next Big Thing in the world of particle physics; with the data collected from the experiment being used to test out the math worked out by the theoretical physicists. Amid all the hype and hoopla surrounding it, there were also fears that the experiment would lead to the world being wiped out, but those were nothing more than a few Chicken Littles' running around saying, "The Sky is falling!". Here are a few links on the various aspects of the experiment - hope you find them interesting! 

• http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080905/full/news.2008.1085.html - some interesting numbers on the experiment.
  
• http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/11/72198?currentPage=all - a series from Wired.com. 
  
• http://blogs.uslhc.us/?p=328 - a blog by a US team involved in the LHC experiment.
• http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=c51JNQ1nH_o - the moment of the first circulating beam. 
  

Update: just came across this interesting video: 

Google Chrome... Rock ON!!

OK, so this one is for nerds. Or is it?! I'm referring to the launch of Google's new browser Chrome. One would think that a post on a beta launch of a browser would be strictly for nerds, but look at the publicity it generated! I don't remember the last time a browser launch received so much widespread coverage!! The internet of course led the pack with reviews of the new browser as soon as Google launched it on September 2. But articles in the leading newspapers, and even the tabloids!! Here is the article in Mumbai Mirror. And the Pune edition (Pune Mirror) also ran an article reviewing it, where they asked a serious techie to review the browser for its readers! All this within 24 hours of its launch! Well, so I guess this is no longer for nerds or techies exclusively. I guess I'm not really a nerd, but then your's truly was also waiting impatiently for the launch of this browser - in fact stayed awake late in the night waiting for the launch at 11:00 AM PDT! And I've been using it ever since, and to quote the Mac tagline, 'I'm loving it!'. Yes, the browser has a clean UI, and is almost minimalistic on the UI front. But boy, is it fast! Don't know how exactly browser speed is evaluated, but I tried loading a few rich content pages into Chrome and Firefox 3.0.1 and the new Internet Explorer 8 (which also launched less than a week back - aren't the browser wars hotting up!?). Just to be sure that the pages were not cached, I cleared the browser cache in all the cases. And Chrome trumped the other two hands-down! Another cool feature of the browser is the "Omnibox" as Google engineers call it. There is a single bar that serves as the address bar and the search box. Also the auto-suggest entries are displayed in a list in the same box. Google claims that the browser's main feature, or USP, is it's rock-solid stability. This is the first multi-process browser, in that each tab runs as a separate process. So if one tab hangs, then you don't have to close the entire browser, just the particular process can be killed. Oh, that reminds me, the browser has it's own process manager! Oh well, I could go on and on about it. Instead, let me just direct you to the experts - Chrome's official web-site. For those of you interested in knowing a little bit of engineering that goes behind Chrome, you can find it here, in this comic strip. I've been using Firefox for a long while now, but I guess I'd be compelled to switch to Chrome. Chrome simply rocks!! And oh, it is open-source. I can't wait for the next release, and for plug-ins for Chrome. 

Google Chrome.... Rock ON!! 

Update: Here is a look at the market share of Chrome, a week after launch. For those interested for a review of Chrome, you can find a good one here.

M for Media, M for Monster?

Just read this article on Rediff about how the media in India tends to sensationalize at best and completely distort people's comments and actions. The gist of the article is how the media distorted Raj Thackeray's comments, and gave him an opportunity to score some brownie points in a political struggle of one-upmanship with the Shiv Sena. Now I'm not going to go into whether Raj Thackeray is right or wrong in raising this issue of Mumbaikars versus (so-called) non-Mumbaikars. In fact the article uses this issue only as a case in point. The larger issue being how the television and print media in India distort issues and statements to influence people's opinions (for better or for worse). Whatever happened to impartially reporting a particular incident? Here is an earlier post on the same issue, that was inspired by the depiction of the media in the recent film Mumbai Meri Jaan. Is the media fast turning into a monster, a Frankenstein? 

Of Idlis, Orchids and a serial entrepreneur

Just finished reading “Idli, Orchid Ani Mee”, a book by Vitthal Kamat. The ‘Orchid’ in the title refers to Hotel Orchid, Mumbai, and the author is the owner of the ‘ecotel’ – Hotel Orchid. The book is written in a simple, yet lucid narrative style. The reader is transported through the life of the author, a self-styled entrepreneur. The book looks at the journey of the author from ‘Hotelwala Kamat’ to ‘Restaurantwala Kamat’ to the owner of the five-star, deluxe ‘Ecotelwala Kamat’. Reading the book one thing struck me, that to be an entrepreneur the first thing you need is to dream big – not be content with your achievements and rest on your laurels. Though not new to the hotel business – his father already owned a couple of restaurants in Mumbai – the writer went on to open and successfully run almost fifty odd restaurants in Mumbai, and other cities around India and the rest of the world. To this list were added a couple of three-star hotels, and finally a four-star hotel in a prime locality in Mumbai – Airport Plaza, later renamed Kamat Plaza. But not content with this, he dreamed of opening a five-star hotel where Kamat Plaza stood. Dreaming big is just the beginning, but the second thing you need is a burning passion, a fire within that is all-encompassing. You need to breathe, live, eat your dream; not worrying about hunger or sleep, for these are but human frailties that get in the way to realizing your dream. You need to work, work and work. As the author recalls his father saying, “Kamat naav asel, tar kaam kara” (if the name is Kamat, all you should do is work – work is loosely translated as kaam in Marathi). And so the author often put in eighteen-to-twenty hour work days, overseeing the work on his dream project. Everyone sees a flourishing business, but few see the hours of blood-and-sweat that behind its creation. The book offers a glimpse into the trials and tribulations that Kamat faced in the realization of his dream. Overall the book is a good read. At times, it gets a little mundane, and you find yourself losing interest. But once it gets to the point of Kamat’s single-minded pursuit of his dream, it makes really wonderful reading. The book is also replete with many anecdotal tales of incidents over the almost twenty-five to thirty odd years of Kamat’s journey from ‘Hotelwala Kamat’ to ‘Ecotelwala Kamat’. These make interesting reading, offering an insight into the author’s personality. They give an insight into his powers of observation and innovation, of how a serial entrepreneur relishes challenge, and converts every obstacle into an opportunity. An insight of how, in business, the biggest profit or gain is gaining goodwill of your customer(s). Overall the book makes quite a good read, and is definitely recommended for wannabe entrepreneurs. As the author quotes a saying in Marathi, “Pudhchyas thech, magcha shahana” – the mistakes of the one in front teach the followers quite a lot!