Beta Sector: Unformatted

Parable of the Three Witches

2012-02-10T08:22:00.002+05:30

A tale, from our world, bequeathed and shrouded from deluding magic, which though banned is practiced without knowledge and darkness looms over as people struggle to survive.

They say it takes three witches to form a coven; only then can more be coerced to join.

As prophesied in ancient time. In a seat of learning, a great University, unique in its kind, where logic, art and craft where taught, great Philosophers of the past slowly disappeared. Lesser creatures and street magic abusers, rank, yet above petty thieves whose flowery craft, though mundane and low, slowly took up chairs of teaching.

Blinded by lust for power and control, the three Witches thrived on inflicting pain on the minds of all whom they met. That was food for their dark magic, with which they blinded the great King who had built this wonderful seat of knowledge.

Even, the three young Princes of the King, were not spared attack from their evil wizardry, for they sought to destroy them and take over the King's throne destroying all in their way. The King too was blinded and deluded, for to him too was a wicked advisor, crooked like worm-tongue to Theoden.

Many white Knights, who discovered their evil, lay defeated by their spells; scorned and scoffed, disgraced and imprisoned. They filled all with an illusion deceiving even the cleverest of minds, tricking the gallant to disgraceful defeat.

Yet, formed evil as they were, they could not share their power with anyone. They coerced all to join them and imprisoned them. The stronger were cursed to remain in their tether as dark Knights. The weaker were disgraced, disposed and violated. The wiser were banished, for their presence could not be risked.

The pained remained, in hopes of a White Knight who will ultimately defeat them and restore all goodness. The eldest Prince had learned of their Treachery, and secretly planned to slaughter them all anon, without alerting the Jackals and Hyenas they set around them to guard.

Not knowing that their time was short, they were blind to remorse. They believed not in the goodness of God, nor the fairness of life on earth. They witched and bitched, dark tales they pitched, foul deeds they stitched, slaves - they whipped. Warnings they did not heed, for they grew drunk in their power, casting spells hither and thither.

When the eldest Prince came, they knew not what came upon them, for he was not just a philosopher, but learned in the arts and crafts of white magic. He wielded the weapons of the gods, which he held. He bid them to plead guilty, yet he found they were cunning linguists, whose foul tongues knew no truth. Seeing how corrupted they were, he finally lay on them a volley of magic, his brothers, the Younger Princes joined, and soon all gallant Knights they had wronged came to battle against them.

At their defeat, they were shown the same mercy they shewed others; For cleansing the great seats of knowledge and restoring the University as a place of learning was no mean feat. Yet, the eldest Prince, heir to the King, he was never swayed for he was the son of Kings. No mercy was shown after they tried to delude him, they were finally destroyed - their evil was ended - and they burnt at the stake, a stake of their own creation, for they misunderstood their own stakes which lay beyond their imagination.

Logic, art and craft was taught against once more, no longer with evil, but with love and affection by the Philosphers who returned. The Prince was crowned King, for this was but one of his duties, to set right his own houses, that his subjects may prosper.

The three witches were no more and the prophecy of the White Knight lay fulfilled. Destiny had its way, for He was to become Emperor, not just of his Kingdom, but for all Land - and this he began, seeing that dark sorcery had taken over almost all the empire lending suffering. He became the Journeyman King, who traveled to lend hope to the bereaved, lead the outcasts and give strength to the weakened.

At last, when he became Emperor he issued an edict that Three shall never hold office together, to prevent the prophecy of the Witches coven from returning to plague the seats of learning his father, the King, had created.

Finished Pencil Sketch (K A)

2012-02-08T00:11:00.003+05:30

From Pencil Sketches (2012)

There was a preview I posted before this, but that wasn't scanned. This one is scanned, the tone is almost what you would see on the paper, though it has been touched up in pencil, finished and ready for preservation.

Do give me comments. This is supposed to be Kajal Agarwal, the actress. If you believe I need to make any corrections, I am most happy to listen to your suggestions. This work took quite some time. (For information on how it was made, and what feedback I'd like 'Read on ...')

It was completed using B, HB, HB - ultradark graphite [Steadtler] 2B, 4B pencils - though most of it is actually HB and B pencils. It turned out fairly clean without much smears. There are dark spots where the two A4 half scans were joined, I haven't removed them outright. The full sketch in A3 is gonna be framed and be part of my room decoration shortly.

I should really thank Jerry for bringing my attention to this face, which is actually not very difficult to draw - but to show without make-up and ornament, it took a bit of planning to create a situation. I found one still or picture (donno) with her wearing waterproof make-up and used that as the base idea.

If anyone can do an A3 scan straight, I'll be really happy, I'd keep it from framing if someone offers me that option.

Bandwidth Wastage is Energy Wastage

2012-02-03T07:39:00.001+05:30

Click to Zoom

The Internet is plagued by Spam and now Bacn. This has an impact on the Internet and Energy consumption that we have so far not paid attention to.

To tackle the second menace, e-mail service providers like Google (through Gmail) have begun auto tagging them as "bulk" for easier filtering and removal. Increasing use of Internet resources by Spam, Bacon and other Unwanted content consumes valuable energy [as major communication networks get overloaded.]

For each unwanted message which gets propagated or "Like"d on Facebook or commented, it is not only 'Facebook' that spends bandwidth, it is all the users in who access the content who also spend vital bandwidth. This holds good for any content on the Internet, including fun videos, games and the like.

Of the entire market capital raised by Facebook (assuming they do cross their $5bn target) most of the funds are going to be paid to Internet service providers, who are in turn going to pay it to Power/Energy companies who manage their data centers and communication lines.

This is basically power used for communication and for running the data center being utilized for something that has lesser priority. Until the world finds a strong, consistent and long-term alternative for Energy sources, we should all ration our energy use and conserve it as much as we can.

It is better to have an energy reserve that ensures us Food, Sheltering, Heat and Clothing at the minimum than waste it on social networking memes that perhaps are too short-lived or have no intrinsic or extrinsic values. The future of energy is entirely dependent on what we do now in the world.

SC Verdict on 2G Scam

2012-02-02T16:40:00.002+05:30

Justices GS Singhvi and AK Ganguly delivered the verdict on the 2G Scam today. The above graphic highlights the 3 major points of the verdict. TRAI is yet to study the full implications of the verdict. If a service provider has to renew their license and go for bidding again, then mobile phone call costs may get higher.

The request from Prashant Bushan to have a Special Investigation Team (SIT) review and supervise the CBI investigation of the scam has been denied.

The decision on whether, the Home Minister, Mr. P Chidambaram will be investigated will be taken up at the trial court of Justic O P Saini.

This scam, amounting to around INR 1,800 Cr is considered to be the costliest scam ever in the history of India.

Smaller players, possibly 5% of spectrum subscribers are those who would be affected according to a preliminary comment by TRAI, who are yet to study the verdict in full.

Reliance communications has assured that all their licenses were taken prior to 2001 and therefore subscribers need not be worried. This statement has come as subscribers have been worried about RCOM services after it just posted accrued loss of over Rs. 30,000 Crore.

It is notable that 3G Licenses have not been entirely under investigation. TRAI too is an independent body that will have to issue directions based on the verdict to any operators who have been affected by this cancellation of Licenses.

For now, there are no immediate worries to subscribers and consumers about termination of any mobile communication services.

Early Morning Photography

2012-02-01T07:22:00.002+05:30

Punch Doggy

Here's an early morning photograph, with my favorite German Shepherd. I have done some post work without messing up with the lighting. Just click through for the high resolution version. This was done without a D-SLR. I like that fact a lot. We call him 'Punch' (after Punch and Jody), and yes there's Judy girl who is tougher to photograph, but will probably make it to my album soon enough.

Expression on the Internet

2012-01-30T15:26:00.003+05:30

TheInternet today is a distributed medium enabling free expression worldwide. Freedom of Expression is under threat by measures of Censorship initiated across Nations.

QuotingWilliam Blake, "Everything that lives, Lives notalone, nor for itself." Humans like to express opinions to others. If weobserve or listen, we may respond at least in thought. Communication is also anessential means for survival. Hence, increasing the number of media ofexpression is to our advantage. Erroneous content and falsified content alsoexists within media.

Nothing we see, hearor experience is verified individually or by groups. Verification is the realmof "Scientific Method." Objectionable material, toindividuals [breaching privacy] has existed for long. What is Gossip, if notprivacy intrusion? Erroneous and Objectionable material is found in all media.

Creation of the freeworld began with tolerance and permissiveness of expression. The Renaissancewas rebirth of freedom of expression. It spread across the world during an eraof trade and colonialism. The Individual became more magnified in society thanever before after renaissance brought more freedom of expression. Freedom toelect governance, gender freedom, educational freedom followed and are still in a stage of growth.

The Internet is afacilitator of free expression. It is built on prior work from an age ofwritten material. Social Networks facilitate expression beyond geography, culture, nation, language are built on the Internet andaugmented by other technology. Universities are no longer core proponentsof knowledge, but the Internet providing the Multiversity platform.

The Internet itselfevolved to serve a purpose it was not originally meant for. Social Networksaugmented by Internet are also evolving. People interact beyond cultureswithout relocation. The dream of a 'Flatworld' is now real. Educating people to use new media like the Internet knowingthat all content is not verified nor accepted is important.

Tolerance is thefirst step before accepting or acknowledging an alternate idea. It is necessaryin the wake of rapidly evolving technology. People therefore must learn to bemore tolerant to use and enjoy the benefits of new media. Censorship will put usbehind an iron curtain and ultimately blind us from knowledge.

Wikipedia demonstrates thatknowledge without screening is better than screened encyclopaedic work. Wikipedia continues to be in perpetual growth.

Censorship willfreeze development and reverse benefits of the Renaissance. It is alsoauthoritarianism which is no longer an accepted form of social order.Censorship is impossible as speed of content creation and distribution getsfaster. Censorship requires consensus, while creation and distribution ofcontent does not.

We must educateourselves to be tolerant and dismiss what we deem unnecessary whileindividually perusing any content. The forbidden fruit is always sweeter thanthat within our reach. Governance and Social order must also evolve tofacilitate growth of humanity.

Censorship is anidea stifling growth. Freedom is active growth. We always prefer growth. Censorship isevidence of immature society and governance. We must not blame governments orindividuals for censorship.

It is therefore necessary especially at this time to continue toembrace freedom and in essence, holistic growth. Let us do our individual part against censorship by permitting alternate ideas which we might not agree with. Tomorrow is built on today's decisions. We are the decision makers for our own future.

We are witnessing the culmination of memetic evolution (memes being a term some disagree with), which we may be capable of shaping, but incapable of stopping. Freedom of the Internet will only slow down growth, before it recovers by freedom itself. Why stifle that which is already destined to empower us further?

Acer Iconia Tab A200 Review

2012-01-25T00:21:00.001+05:30

Without a 3G/GPRS, and only WiFi connectivity, it seems ideally suited for environments like schools and colleges. It is pricey, but it is feature rich in every aspect.

It has no more than what it takes to have a tablet that is purely WiFi, doesn't need operator tethering and is by far one of the best Android devices ever. Better yet, there is a rumor that Ice Cream Sandwich will ship or be provided as immediate updates to those who go for it.

The price point and the features (considering the lack of the phone) make it very attractive.

Tablet Review [Template designed by "Sunil Beta", Sources: mobilecruze.net and lots more.]

With multi-touch enabled they could have experimented with a Stylus, though it isn't too common. This is fully Google App Market compatible.

For a Higher Resolution version, you should just [ Click Here. ]

Human Learning

2012-01-23T10:33:00.003+05:30

I have been reading recent articles debating that the earliest Homo Sapien fossil over 1.5 Million years old, contrary to popular assumption. The most intact one dates back to almost 30,000 years ago. New evidence seems to point to the fact that we lived alongside several other members of Homonidae and Australopethicus including some ancestral species who did not evolve into newer species.

For Administrators, Lecturers, Students and Teachers who believe that the capacity of the Human Brain to learn and understand is variant across different people, I have created a presentation clearly showing that the physiological capacity is (almost equally) existent for all humans, but behavioral aspects may influence styles or patterns of learning - and the perceptions of a need to learn.

Learning and therefore Education itself has to undergo the next revolution. The Institutions that are Schools and Colleges today will have to progress and permit learning-from-home, apprenticeship, certification reducing the need for too much infrastructure. This is to allow everyone choose their own patterns of learning and consulting authorities. At the same time, the infrastructure required is only going to increase, but its usage collectively or in volume is going to be less regular - in the interest of propagating actual Skills and Knowledge.

Here is the presentation for Download [FilesFlash]
Human Learning.pptx - 4.61 MB (Use Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 or Higher for Best Experience)

For a better experience in reading the presentation, you could read my prior blog entry on the "Ascent of Man" which has an infographic which shows the scholarly accepted dates for several evolutionary events specific to Humans.

Succouring Satanic Verses

2012-01-22T09:46:00.001+05:30

[ Jaipur Literary Festival, India ]

This January, at the Jaipur Literary film festival 2012, Salman Rushdie is not permitted to visit. More distressing is the fact that ambiguous concerns [police investigating public reading of the work] fueling fear led Hari Kunzru, Amitava Kumar, Jeet Thayil and Rushir Joshi to take the exit before the festival could start. All this ruckus has turned our attention away from the "Literary" part of the festival and instead shifted our focus toward 'freedom of expression' and 'human rights' of individuals.

[ The Tolerant India ]
Historically, India has been the least totalitarian or extremist. We have tried not to ban books on account of content even if it were against a majority. However, due to a complex mix of population, India has always been careful to listen to the requests of minority groups and ban works hoping that the sentiments of the minority will not be insulted. In truth, the populace of India, who are probably not very literate and definitely not very well read - and have never read works like 'Satanic Verses' merely react to the opinions and orders of another individual who does "moral" and to a certain extent 'philosophical' policing.

[ Threats to Indian Tolerance ]
The frenzy that follows has always been governed by crowd and herd behavior resulting in the need of the government to react with nothing less than removing the cause of their unrest - in this case ban of a book. This is partly possible because all published media and material are strongly controlled in India and the mechanism for banning them is far too easy insofar to implement. This is true of course, only for works in print an not to electronic material (yet.) In the end, silently, people read the book that has been banned, for it usually acts as a promotion.

Those who read it in silence are not pursued and persecuted like the stories (of the infamous STASI) from East Germany. Public Reading however within literary circles is sometimes risky and leads to the arrest of a small number of perpetrators. The penalty for publishing or voicing banned material is at a maximum of six(6) months and is seriously not considered a major crime except in the cases of works censured for association with treason. Strangely, in the absence of media attention, we never know what is going on. Circulating works that cause "hate", "violence" or "unrest" within a community are definitely crimes against society. This was done in Karnataka, specifically in Mangalore. As Law enforcement did not take appropriate Legal action against the material circulated, moral policing of outside-agencies smeared the image of the BJP government seated in power.

[ Media Play ]

A vast majority of independent cinematic, artistic and literary works are not covered by the press, media or anyone else - and irrespective of the matter contained within, they do not cause public unrest. Therefore, the Media has to bear half the responsibility for what has transpired. It is quite possible that someone played the media to their advantage, but undeniably, the media was indeed played and has been instrumental in the event, eventually handing over a lot of publicity, I am not sure Salman Rushdie truly deserves.

Despite all the media criticism, if a country were to film or chronicle and produce a comprehensive documentary of Salman Rushdie's works that would be India. We do censor material on and off, but most material do not stay censored for life. Looking back, Richard Burton's works on the Arabian Nights and the Kamasutra were disallowed in India, but for a short period as they carried no hate messages, and their threat to morality was considered infinitesimal.

[ Ethnic Conflicts ]
The same Indian government would not react to two ethnic groups or linguistic groups debating the construction of a Dam or one minority group opposing the operation of a Nuclear reactor as their is very little the government can simplistically act upon. Violence, murder and fighting involving a few individuals are easily controlled at both State and Central levels. However, at larger scales, when Caste, Creed and Religion are in the way, the Government becomes a bystander, not knowing which side to take and whom to save.

[ Satanic Works ]
There is absolutely no doubt that Rushdie's sarcastic parodies have deliberately insulted several characters who are popularly held in reverence. It is not only true of "Satanic Verses" for which the Fatwah was issued first by the Iranian supremo, Ayatolla Khomeini. Considering partisanship within the followers of Islam, this Fatwah is only overemphasized by the Media in India.

The only slight of the Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code" was to reinstate a proposal that the Christ was mortal and therefore had a monogamous relationship, and children. This resulted in a ban of the work which was revoked much later (possibly because of the Lobby from the Motion Picture Industry).

Needless to say these are the works of least importance that form the list of banned books. Here is a more comprehensive, though less authoritative list of [banned] books from e-Charcha.

[ Self Censorship ]
The work is still censored by most part of the Christian minority within India who labeled the work as Heresy. This censorship is self imposed - like in households where Television is banned for reasons others usually find funny.

Many semi-urban and rural Muslim households do not encourage reading which is most concerning - considering that they were once very well learned in multiple languages and formed a strong intellectual group in society.

Less than 20% of the books available for reading are taken for reading, and the statistics from Libraries in the past 4 years (including 2008) have been dismal to say the least. The list of books banned in India is numerous, although no proper published list is available from even the Office of the Chief Commissioner of Customs. There are sporadic lists from the media, but no complete list - which obviously questions whether enforcement is actually possible at all. Those who have been through immigration at Airports are probably well aware of the knowledge level of the Customs Officers at the field.

Either way, Self Censorship in terms of reading has always helped communities keep material that they disagree with away from their populace. This may be because they are catering to a community that overreacts to sensationalism or misunderstands criticism.

[ The Dilemmas of Democracy with Heterogeneous Population ]
A Democracy is supposed to respect the rights of all people, which in diversity is sometimes very difficult to serve when one section is opposed to the ideas or actions of another section. Therefore interference in administration is often done by censorship and other measures which seem like Totalitarianism, but are merely reflective of the sentiments of the people. I see political leaders being blamed for what has transpired in Jaipur.

[ Questions forgotten: Security ]
The same advocates of freedom would not remain quiet if Rushdie were to be mortally injured by a mob, or other writers are badly injured because a group of miscreants decide to cause mayhem? How much of police protection would they eventually need? We cannot justify their protection by showing that politicians use 'Z' class security cover but never extend it to the rest of the people - which is a matter of scale, cost, quality and necessity. We have to address the issues of politicians misusing state resources to get their own private security as a separate issue rather than believe that they can extend such protection to the people and immigrants and non-residents with ease.

[ The Rushdie Farce ]
For those who have been veiled from reality, Mr.Salman Rushdie is a British Citizen who was born in India. He is classified as a 'British Indian', and his nationality is much the same as actor Ben Kingsley or British Cricketer Montey Pannesar. I haven't seen them being extended such courtesies through media attention whilst visiting India though. His interests in India and his writings therefore are strongly pedagogical. Most of the time Governments try to ignore these 'Intellectuals' simply because, they have an idealistic lack of perception of reality especially of Administration and of Mass response in a heavily populated country such as India.

[ Satanic Thoughts ]
Is it ethical, walking to your neighbor's house and publicly voicing your ill opinion about your neighbor's character or his family's character? Is it ethical to assassinate the character of a person in an organization you work either in public or in the hood of gossip? Is it morally correct to publish a letter tarnishing the image of a person and circulating it to a group of people who can influence that person? These are all ethically incorrect, irrespective of how factual the information might be. Free speech is good as long as it does so without the intent to hurt anyone. There are many good authors who have demonstrated the handling of extremely delicate material. A great example is "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" (whose Authors sued Dan Brown for allegedly using text from their book without permission.)

Rushdie's works do evoke one to think, even as most satires do, but kindle feelings of hatred and anger either against a person of renown and respect or a community or against Rushdie himself. Hence the literary essence of the work is overshadowed by the implications of what it expresses. I can assure you that most people in India haven't even seen the cover of the work 'Satanic Verses', nor have read a single Chapter in it. Too few have read "The Moor's Last Sigh" which too has pejorative references specifically to Political Figures in India. This book has not been banned, though the pejorative references are directly towards Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Bal Thackeray, Mahatma Gandhi, Mohammed Ali Jinnah.

Representatives of the followers of Islam in India requested the Government to refuse entry to the Indian born, British Citizen Mr.Salman Rushdie, over a piece of work that (they believe) is truly insulting to their creed. Followers of Islam constitute of 138 million citizens of India. Now, whom should the Government listen to? The self-proclaimed voice of the 138 million citizens (even though it may not be fully representative of all of them) and hold of what could become sectarian unrest all over India -- or bow down to the ideals of Democracy [which I do not see anywhere in the world] and call upon doom protecting one man, which they did in 2007 when Media attention was focused elsewhere.

[ Verdict ]
Asking Mr. Rushdie to buzz off, after the media crowded into the issue like flies was good for his safety - particularly because Central Reserve Police Forces (CRPF) are already rerouted for Election duties and allocated based on the schedules of State Election. This is a crucial issue that many people forget. The best security in India is confirmed when the CRPF is present. In their absence, it would be administrative folly to try to provide security when media is also fueling unrest and causing sensationalism when there are more pressing matters at stake.

[ Ignoring Verity - Media Lies ]
The stability of the Indian Government is at stake. Power production and therefore Industrial Produce and therefore jobs in Industries are flaky due to major unrest. The request for Telengana has rendered Andhra Pradesh almost crippled. The Maoist insurgency in Chattisgarh and surrounding states has forced major reallocation of military. A huge drop in temperature has resulted in paralysis of Indian Military troops stationed in the border causing a major Defense concern.

A global market meltdown is still possible over fluctuations of oil prices, dollar rates, foreign investments and fears of war. Over 20,000 birds have been culled in Orissa alone due to concerns of Bird Flu. Elections simultaneously in multiple states actually render the country in a weak situation in terms of social security as specialized security forces including the Railway Police and State Police get concentrated at District Headquarters and Polling Booths.

Major attacks on the Internet have resulted in stolen Identities, rendered several websites defaced and are becoming an international concern of cyberterrorism, which is worse when it has no face and no specific group claiming responsibilities for all recent intrusions.

The media lays less stress on the above problems swayed by political pressure hoping to divert focus on a non-issue. Seriously, I would never have known the existence of a person named Salman Rushdie until the Ayatollah decided to issue a Fatwah against him and had his photograph splashed on every paper.

[ Conclusion ]
It is best that India does not ponder on this issue any longer, for it has acted like a true (representative) democracy. The freedom of thousands (actually 138 million Muslims) precedes the freedom of one foreign national with roots in India. Several others have been prosecuted without any help too, like the journalist who spent his life's work in exposing the Union Carbide leak in Bhopal and the real damage to human life and environment as it stands. Several missionaries in Independent India have been murdered by sectarian violence.

The Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi was murdered due to sectarian disagreement with his pluralist viewpoints. In comparison Salman Rushdie doesn't command any further interest - not even of the literary kind after this terrible incident - even if the press & media fueled it on their part without his consent. He can stay in the UK where he has citizenship or try watching 'Top Chef' which he stopped doing after 2007 (sarcasm intended.) Incidentally someone was asking about why they let him in during 2007 - he was accompanied by an American citizen (Padma Lakshmi) of Indian origin, his wife at that time and focus was tilted towards her adding more cover to him. She is no longer his wife as they are divorced.

Other figures like the great M F Hussain were censored for similarly injuring present perspective on religion. He is probably not the first to draw a nude representation of an Indian deity, nor the last. There have been others, and some are millennia older than him. This too has been done, to avoid provocation.

[ Freedom ]
Freedom, is not purely the responsibility of a Government. It is a mindset that the people, the citizens should carry. It is us who should be tolerant of all viewpoints and thoughts. Even in my fractional interaction with people, incomparable with those mentioned above, I have seen blatant refusal to open thinking in the minds of the people. This has been irrespective of their religion, caste, language and geography. The tendency to dismiss an idea without even permitting an alternate perspective is not a mistake of a Government but the people of whom the Government is built. Democracy is definitely a Government by the people and of the people. Whether it works for the people, is largely dependent on the people it originated from. Hence crying foul over this issue, is merely questioning hundreds of millions of Indian citizens about their refusal to be open minded. Society in India is becoming Victorian, closed, backward and small-minded. Rushdie is merely a surface wave of a deeper insidious effect.

"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free

...

Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake."

Rabindranath Tagore

A message to Advocates against Corruption

2012-01-20T10:52:00.002+05:30

(corruption index from 2010 ref: infographicsinsights.com)

It is true that corruption, bribes and inefficient governance have been the bane of India as it transitioned to a Republic. In the last five decades of independence, our growth has been stalled, primarily due to several internal factors. Corruption - the illegal use of office to build one's own wealth or empower the treasury is deeply rooted in history.

So here are some quotes on 'Governance' from the Arthashastra, written by Kautilya (translated, edited, published by L N Rangarajan {pp. 269 - 274} ) with the original written work dating to 150 CE, related to the Mauryan empire (c. 321 BCE - 185 BCE ). This work differs from an earlier translation by Kangle, which is more literal and does not attempt to add context to pronouns. Chanakyan, was synonymously used later with Machiavellian originally. This alternate name was born much later according to research. It is generally presumed that Kautilya and Chanakya are aliases.

Here are some sections, cut from the book for the enlightenment of the Reader.

"Special Levies, Taxes and Collections"

A King, who finds himself in great financial difficulty, may collect [additional] revenue [using the methods described below]. {5.2.1}

INTRODUCE SPECIAL LEVIES

On Farmers - usually requiring them to pay a third of their produce as tax or a varied proportion as the King may decree.

Force Compulsory Purchase - making the Government earn money on what the people may not want to buy especially in terms of food grains.

Levies on Merchants, Craftsmen and Professionals - Actors, Courtesans - 50% of their revenue, Fixed levies on Precious Gems, Precious Metals, other Liquids and Metals, Traders, Commodities like wood.

Levies on Livestock Owners - for Cows, 10%, Small Animals, 16%, Cocks and Pigeons 50%

Miscellaneous - Prostitution being legal, Brothel owners shall on command of the King, send the youngest and most beautiful to collect additional revenue*.

Voluntary Contributions - All the Wealthy shall give as much of their wealth as feasible as the King demands.

Expropriating Temple Property - The King shall annex Temple property that has not been donated by "The King" to Brahmins and directly account them in the Treasury.

Exploiting the Gullibility of People - People will be forced to contribute to strange ventures like Temples built overnight, Unnatural Happenings explained as Divine phenomena, Frightening People with (Evil Spirits) requiring an "offering" to ward it off, Selling Remedies against (Evil Spirits), Poison water and blame the illness on a Curse or Evil and sell the antidote.

Cheating to Collect Revenue - When a person stands , of a crime, (a) use women to entrap and blackmail him/her, (b) Cause rivalry within families causing one to murder another (c) Force a [criminally] condemned to accuse someone as a Traitor and then cease his wealth (d) Kill a condemned person and blame it on one as a Traitor (d) Accuse one as a Traitor of Child sacrifice, seize his wealth. {summary of 5.2.52 - 68}

The last section listed above: (Cheating to collect revenue) is supposed to be used only against Criminals and (real) Traitors, although its potential to misuse is imaginable.

One must not belittle the Arthashastra, for Artha follows Dharma and it is the duty of a King to keep his subjects happy, and resort to the above methods that seem to tread on the fine line between ethical and unethical only when in dire straits. Law was always written to provide means to keep the subjects comfortable (if not happy) and therefore the King had to be the most comfortable even if it were an ideal Oligarchy.

He also outlined twenty-eight of the forty ways of stealing from the public, which in modern time is considered corruption or illegal manipulation of funds intended for the Government Treasury. This is particularly from a table summarizing {2.8.20,21} in L N Rangarajan's translation.

Revenue Collection

Revenue due on a given date is allowed to be paid later [for a consideration].
Revenue not due on a given date is collected earlier by force [to compensate the above.]
Revenue due is suppressed (after collecting a bribe.)
Revenue not due is forcibly collected. (after not receiving a bribe.)
Revenue is not paid but is shown as paid (for a bribe.)
Revenue paid is shown as not paid. (and misappropriated.)
Small amount of Revenue paid is instead accounted for as the full amount.
Though paid in full only a smaller amount of the Revenue is accounted for.
Revenue paid by one is accounted under the name of another [a bribe giver.]
Revenue paid in one kind [of higher value] is shown of another kind [of lower value.]

Payments

Making payments earlier than they are due [as a favor to the official.]
Delaying payment due on a given date.
Making payment to someone that is not due (due to coercion or as a favor.)
Not paying the due amount, but pocketing it.
Large payment is misrepresented as a small one.
Small payment is misrepresented as a larger one.
Payment due to one person is paid to another person.
Payment made in one kind [of lower value] is shown as another [of higher value.]

Purchase and Sale of Goods and Commodities

Goods bought in wholesale are shown as bought at retail (higher) prices.
Goods sold on retail are shown as sold on wholesale (lower) prices.
Suppressing a sale by giving away the goods (as gifts or bribes.)
Suppressing a purchase by refusing to deliver the goods.
Even when the goods are not received, a payment is made creating a supposition of a sale.
Goods are delivered, but payments are not collected (in return for a bribe) ** [verify]
A high priced item is sold at a much lower price.
A lower price is paid for a higher priced item.
Prices are lowered (as a bribed favor) to select people.
Prices are artificially raised (to those who refuse to pay the bribe) harassing selected people.

Collection of any Payments and Fraud Associated

Fraud in the period of collection of payment is frequent (in days of a month, or in months of a year.)
Discrepancy is frequent in

personally supervised work
Heads of Account or the Accounts Officer.
Labor Accounts at the time of disbursing salaries
Accounting formalities including Totaling
Variation of quality and price of the deliverable goods.
Variation of weights and measures to change quantity.
Variation of containers of the goods to change quantity and quality simultaneously.

The punishment for all these was usually a heavy Fine imposed on the official and a transfer. If an informant withdrew his or her claim, the punishment was death assuming that the informant made a false claim against a public servant. Unless the Government servant found guilty of corruption was also found guilty of stealing the King's property (treason), no action was usually taken - except for a passable fine imposed. This allowed corruption to go on, though laws existed which the King could exercise if the treasury was lean to prosecute them.

Above, you notice the eerie similarity to modern law. The laws exist, but their enforcement is reserved for times like emergencies or during periods when force majeure is in effect. Daily enforcement is not possible because the law is being circumvented at the level of the general public and not directly by the King (in the case of the ideal Oligarchies mentioned in the Arthashastra.)

In page 284 of his translation, L N Rangarajan mentions that Kautilya intended to use spies (or Intelligence agents in the present day) to find the true cause of incorrect revenue collection before meting out any punishment. We can therefore assume that this was all centralized to a single investigation agency directly under the control of the King or his Council. {2.9.10-12}

Fighting Corruption Today

While activism on part of the people is absolutely necessary, the solution involves us, the people, to stop meting out the bribes. Since that is not possible in a flash, a two pronged (top-down and a bottom-up) approach needs to be outlined and then carefully implemented. To add to complications, we now have India divided into States with a certain level of autonomy conferred to them for their governance and administration. Hence the top-down approach hits too many obstacles. The bottom-up approach can only be done by social activism. Insofar social activism including crowdsourcing has been concentrated to smaller populations, never large populations like India. The real India is not necessarily well connected nor is it literate (42% illiteracy or lack of education among children, if not more.)

Our hurry to create yet another top-down body, the Lokpal and the Lokayukta is merely adding one more 'Spy' agency with modern accountability in terms of its investigation. At the end, if the ground-level official influences the citizen more, controls their ability to procure essential commodities, water, housing and electricity, the Lokpal and the Lokayukta would remain blind to the suffering of the people, just as the CBI, CID, State Police and other Authorities against Corruption remain blind. The people will receive severe backlashes as the Officials and Politicians act like Oligarchies (or parties or gangs or sub-groups) passing information within each other making it difficult to break their curtain. Hence, despite the existence of corruption, inevitable as it is, I am yet to read a practical strategic solution to it. This is not just about India. Any country would have it, its just the documentation that would be missing about how much is happening, where and why.

Standard Bearers in India
While Kejriwal, Hazare, the Bushans and team have really brought a lot of things together, I have not read any innovation in their solution, except a strong "call for action" (which is great), but is rendered of ill-use without a true mechanism that can help people in getting good governance, after all, each of the issues listed in terms of corruption is directly related to the well-being of the people. I am not skeptic, for I know that someone has a solution, but they have been suppressed from throwing the document for all of us to read - understand and act upon. If that is done, then this call by Kejriwal, Hazare, the Bushans and team gets stronger momentum. I put Kejriwal first, because, all said and done, he seems to be the person risking everything in bringing all of this forward. It's just my perspective.

The Element of Fire

2012-01-19T13:06:00.002+05:30

Fire, especially at Night - and a Campfire is so beautiful and dazzling, you love to keep your eyes at it, and you enjoy being near it when its cold. Lighting one in the modern day is rather easy, but fire-light in the camp, as it dances, waxes and wanes and lets in the star-light, is most beautiful - and yet by nature burns you if you're too close.

Camp Fire by Beta

Click to view it in high-resolution, I am no ace photographer, so this is one of my good clicks.

Free for Freedom

2012-01-18T12:25:00.004+05:30

The US Congress would like to pass two laws, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Internet Privacy Act). Officially these acts are to prevent Internet Identity Theft and Security Theft on the Internet of various kinds. In reality, this gives more teeth to harm the privacy of Individuals in the name of increasing security and stopping piracy.

Piracy on the Internet is not tackled correctly fundamentally due to the lack of strong business models to distribute content (that eventually gets pirated.) Apple iTunes Store already demonstrated that a viable model for content delivery will work. To follow suit, Amazon Kindle users can avail special library membership options to get access to multiple works for reasonable periods of time that facilitate reading. You don't have to go around buying (a copy of) everything you want to read.The hardware locks and software locks have always been broken when they have not been built on sound technology.

In addition Countries like India are contemplating laws which permit prosecution of the 'Content Delivery Network' rather than the 'Content Creator', forcing the Content Delivery Network to enforce strong censorship, lacking which they are targeted with fines. This is definitely in response to the acts that are being considered in the US Congress. Although part of the Internet was created as ARPANET, CERN also contributed heavily and there is much European involvement in the history of the Internet.

Today, the architecture of the Internet serves global communication infrastructure to all countries hooked on to it. China's attempts at building their own alternatives to everything 'search', 'social network', 'messaging services', 'e-mail' to create a monitored and walled cyberspace has not been successful, but has been a strong deterrent to free speech to several whose opinion is not aligned with the official People's Republic of China.

USA is undoubtedly a guardian of Democracy in the modern world, and despite their control of the press have always allowed for free thought and expression on a scale higher than average. They haven't been on top though in giving full freedom. However, concerns of MPIAA and RIAA turned to anti-piracy laws and led to the creation of DRM 3.0 which resulted in the consumer/user rights being fully restricted.

Imagine a world where the Government can always throw you out of your house if they wish to and do it legally. Imagine a world where the government can burn down what you have built under pretext that it does not fit their legal precedences. Imagine a world where people can disappear for having spoken against the laws of the government. Imagine a world where our property including books and equipment can be confiscated because they have or can cause alleged harm to the government. Imagine teenagers being slapped $500,000 - $1.5M in fines because they downloaded pirated movies or given prison sentences in addition. This is already happening to a certain extent, and would perhaps be further enabled. "Fear" will become the new tool of governance of the Internet, not reason - and that is precisely what everyone must stop.

Hence let's do our part to try and stop SOPA, stop everything that threatens freedom, freedom of expression in particular. Most lawmakers do not understanding electronic media - their ignorance is prevalent because they come from an alternate generation, and those that are knowledgeable thirst for control when they are close to power, for control and power are almost synonymous in this day and age.

Freedom as we know it ought to exist, and never deter anyone from expressing themselves. If one person injures another, there are laws for those individuals to address it judicially and legally. There is no need for the Governments to add laws to snoop into everyone. We do not want the East German STASI resurrected under a different name. For every intrusion starts with a small peek, and then ends up in much much more. We have come a long way from the Inquisition and no longer need be bothered about heresy. If a group of people feel insulted, they have but to stop reading and spreading the word they do not want to be read. They may publish alternate works to express their points of view, but never burn the expression that is in opposition to them.

Freedom isn't free, but the whole world paid in blood in the 20th Century to earn its freedom. We do not want to lose it for gaining it will be a painful struggle and set us back in future.

Security: Strong Passwords

2012-01-18T10:33:00.001+05:30

With Identity Theft and Information Security being compromised in several instances in the recent past, users of the Internet and Electronic Digital Services have a duty to improve the quality of the passwords, the keys to their Digital Real Estate. Here's a nice infographic (src: http://lifehacker.com/5876541/use-this-infographic-to-pick-a-good-strong-password ) which shows how to get it stronger, and why it isn't strong at the moment.

Click to View Full Image in Picasa

Let's at least keep our doors locked properly and not provide a walk-in to Internet thieves. We owe at least this much to our 'digital' selves.

Bitching, Gossip and Politicking

2012-01-17T08:03:00.001+05:30

Whilst working in India, I notice that in several semi-urban Companies/Organizations, a large percentage of time is spent in gossip, politicking and bitching (blaming a third person who is not present) in a conversation.

This habit of gossip and politicking stems from the fact that we are a native populace who are over a millennium old at the very least - even the migrants among us. We have enjoyed large reserves of food, and long periods of time to kill - and during this time, as part of a social structuring exercise much time has been spent in gossip and politicking as means of reworking social structure. Early evidence of such politicking is evident in historic annals of the Nanda Dynasty (which destroyed the Gana Sanghs of the Gangetic Plain and gained strong control) and had many achievements but eventually fell to a more actionable successor - the Mauryas led by a strategic expert 'Kautilya'.

Today, Companies & Organizations where people get too comfortable because they are blindly trusted by their superiors or management end up having a lot of politicking and gossip. If a leader does not see this and leaves it unattended, providing time and opportunity for politicking to continue, this negative culture erodes the entire organization and effectually decreases or neutralizes productivity. Slowly, the Company (or Organization) marches towards certain extinction until a point where even a Turnaround Leader (like a Lee Iaccoca) can no longer make amends. This culture usually stems from people who earn strong trust, but continue to feel insecure despite that deep trust. The worst type of leader in an organization is the 'yes-man' who never tells facts and contradicts management/investor/stakeholder's requests. They always say 'yes' when it is the top-boss/investor asking for some result and then try, but eventually fail when it is physically impossible. Slowly the rot of politicking erodes the organization like the termites of Saruman (frm: LOTR) and leaves everyone's morale in a low, also spreading mass stress usually combined with indifference and depression.

If you are inside a company where your boss pretends that factual reality is wrong and relies on perspectives of some individual on whom she has invested all her trust, it is a sign that you ought to leave. This is the true manifestation of 'Maya' (as Indian Philosophy calls gnosticism.) There is little to be done after the decision-maker is swayed by the virtuosity created by her trustworthy lieutenant. The one thing you can do is to leave the organization without scruple, for the repairing the damage is no longer in your hand. Unless you can bring your boss back to reality and see beyond the veil created by the trustworthy lieutenant who is creating the virtual realm and simultaneously harming the organization, there is not much to do; except if you believe in revolt. Switch to an company or organization where people spend much less time blaming, in gossip, in politics and more time producing and attending to their customers.

If you are the one feeling insecure and creating the virtual world, stop and think. Eventually your hunger for control (which is the same as the hunger for power) and your assumptions (which were never based on fact) are about to bring the ship down. If you do not have true affection and concern for society and are feigning it, then you are about to see truth reflect on you - for it always triumphs, and "truth's triumph" doesn't mean that the resultant is sweet. The bitterness might leave an organization and its people in shambles. Provoking people and making them talk about a third person to feed your own egotist self is the best way to tear down morale and trust below you. Finally no one will respect you nor trust you - for this nasha (or madness) will be your own undoing of yourself - for you will find that true happiness will elude you and leave you in perpetual pain, (even if you were a sadomasochist.)

You need help first, you need to understand that nature does not take kindly to those who eat into organizations into which they are most trusted by their bosses. Nature is strong and when it reflects on you - no human can save you, for you will be destroyed, not by people. The longer you continue, the stronger will be nature's backlash. The organization will turn unprofitable, revenue will be difficult, customers will be slim, employees will have no morale, no attachment - they will create smaller cycles of the same evil you do to others.

Eventually all will fall, with no one to protect you, save Nature itself and the Omnipotent Creator. Save yourself and prevent it. Remember that this world changes almost instantly and only all the good you have done or have tried to do will be with you when you find dire straits - you can get back and undo the damage you have knowingly or unknowingly unleashed. Blame someone else when you have all the authority, time shall wear you down - for you shall continually find hell on earth and be accustomed to repeat your vices. Life is short to be wasted feeling hell.

When you look for a new job, check the employees about 'blame-games', 'finger-pointing', 'gossips', how they spend free time, actual profit/loss statements, achievements per unit time in the recent past and then invest your time in that company.

Do not, in desperation join an environment that robs you of your sense of fulfillment and happiness because of a politicking marauder and a hyper-trusting top-boss. Real organizations will not work in binary/extremes. They will create balance and an environment for people to shine, not whine. Find this for it exists in the subcontinent, do not spend your career in a pained place where everyone is suffering and passing only the suffering on to employees and customers alike. Stay alert and try not to hurt anyone no matter what.

The 'Yes-man' will not exist in an organization where the Top-Boss listens and senses the environment with empathy and logic, thereby removing them and placing realistic achievers who achieve, yet never say 'yes' to every request. This is the best environment, where you will find mentors, not bitching/gossip/politicking - these environments exist for India is soaked in deep wisdom of its past. Finding them is also easy, it merely requires diligence.

Find them and escape those vices that can destroy you. Life is what we experience through time, and it is ill-news to waste it feeling pain. Life is to be relished, enjoyed every moment. Life is not a wave of joy and sorrow, it is ultimately what we feel and paradise is on earth, it is our response to the environment; and it is our choice to choose or create this environment where we find paradise and no pain. Mukthi and Nirvana is achieved on earth, for our great past has taught us much. Mere dressing-up and make-up will never have true results. Mere talking will never help for your identity is derived from what you do; "you are what you do."

Dawn at Parisutham Valley

2012-01-14T06:47:00.000+05:30

Youshould actually refer to this as me waking up early, having my usual black coffee and then figuring out that theWiFi was out, either someone was charging something, or it was out, that wasimmaterial - but now it

Today,there are two options, participate in the 'exciting' flag hunt or take off totake a look at the resort that someone has come up with nearby who'swhereabouts don't seem exactly known. Insofar it has been decided that'Senthil' (Jack of Clubs) drive them over, while I find a reason to stay back.

Sunriseshould be happening as I write this, or should have happened already, but thedawn, not yet visible out here in the hill. The valley must be beautiful now,so I'm off to grab a few stock photographs. I should be back after this.

Dinesh has a bruise under his eye, swelling up quite visibly, and at least I am not carrying shades - being a spectacled phenomenon on my own.

Alexander the Great

2012-01-12T12:16:00.001+05:30

This is a mindmap for those who have read Valerio Massimo Manfredi's trilogy on "Alexander the Great." All historical characters highlighted have been shown in the mindmap. This will serve to easily remember the names. A few characters including "Ada" have been omitted.

Ascent of Man

2012-01-11T10:14:00.001+05:30

A Chronology on the "Ascent of Mankind"

Humankind, as we know ourselves have been on this planet for hundreds of thousands of years. Yet, our knowledge of the past is restricted. This infographic is to bring to perspective the state of civilization today and the ages that have already passed perhaps without record.

Dates for some events is speculative. The rise and fall of civilizations sometimes has happened with the merger of civilizations and has not been indicated. The prominent human-like species has been indicated. The debate on 'Homo Floresiensis' is still on. Some civilizations have been too short-lived to be indicated. Most civilizations depicted have at least risen to beyond 1000 cities for hundreds of years.

Fossil Evidence for the first Female Human ancestor (Mitochondrial Eve) is fairly accepted. Evidence for the first Male Human ancestor is still disputed.

All civilizations indicated have at least used Metal or Metallurgy (Iron/Bronze). Epics indicated are from the perspective of the Indian subcontinent, 'Troy' being the only exception. This has been done based on the influence of the prehistoric event that may have led to the birth of a legend. Dates for events are for occurrence and not documentation. Hence the evolution of writing or evidence of written material does not exist for most prehistoric events. Mesoamerican Civilization includes the Mayas, Incas, Olmecs, Nazcas and other ancient finds in that region.

This infographic is just to show that our history is merely a glimpse in the ages of the earth, and the vastness of life itself on earth ( to put it in perspective, Dinosaurs suffered a major extinction event about 65 million years ago - while this chronological infographic starts later than 5 million years ago.) This is a very simplified representation for quick and easy reading.

Click on the Image to view the graphic in high resolution.

Origins of Freemasonry

2012-01-10T05:30:00.000+05:30


Click on the Image to read it in full. Contact me if there's trouble viewing this.

Freemasonry has often been speculated to be devil worship and has been subject to the gossip of society. However, the truth is the Freemasons strongly believe that the brotherhood of men is not as easily formed as it can be broken. Their aim is to preserve mankind as a civilization through all kinds of turmoil and disaster - political, natural, religious, social - and restore a system of morals.

It is noteworthy that Sir Isaac Newton, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington - have all been Freemasons. Their have been great attempts to discredit the Freemasons, for most who are part of the brotherhood, do not know any of the greater secrets that are vested in them.

Yet, it is not true that the Freemasons harbor anything against the Church itself. The Vatican itself relies on an order, that remains secret, the Knights of Malta to protect itself from intrusion, and to prevent secret knowledge from being stolen.

The strongest arguments against freemasonry rests on the simple premise that a 'secret' is something to be hidden from society itself. As much as individuals exercise privacy, all clubs, companies and organizations have secrets.

As for the question of religion, Freemasonry preserves itself by presenting itself as Religion Agnostic. It is not the only secret order, nor was the only order available after the Templars. The Order of the Cross and the Crescent too, probably existed long before the Templars.

The above timeline is to give those interested in knowing Masonic history a few key dates and events that are closely associated with Freemasonry. The Deluge, being a very important part has been given due importance. The Father of Syncretism, Akhenaten is not mentioned to avoid close linkage with the roots of Syncretist - particularly Christian-like religion.

Books to Read on "Software Project Management"

2012-01-09T12:54:00.000+05:30

Books and Media to read for Project Management

A list of books with a tentative plan for reading them. The readingtime is relative to my reading speed, it might vary for you.

Name	Author	ISBN	Link	Description	Reading Time
"Microsoft Secrets"	Michael Cusamano	0684855313	NIL	Microsoft's Project Management Practices, they are quite strong and usable. The fundamental principles can be caught in a quick read	2 days
"Software Engineering in Practice"	Pankaj Jalote	0201737213	NIL	A book that tries to home in only on the Software Engineering aspects of Project Management. Does not contain the newest research by Michael Boehm	1 day
"The Design of Design"	Fred Brooks	NIL	nps.navy.mil	An Essay on Project Management.	1 hr
"Software Engineering - A Practitioner's Approach"	Roger S Pressman	0072853182	NIL	The Best book on "Software Project Management" until the 6th edition	7 days
"CMM in Practice"	Pankaj Jalote	0201616262	NIL	This is an exclusive Project Management book that covers the CMM standard (and not the new PM-CMM). The newer edition has a description of Infosys' processes	4 days
"Walk the Talk" (NDTV)	featuring Infosys	NIL	Walk The Tech Talk	Shows their project management work	1.5 hrs
"The Mythical Man Month"	Fred Brooks	NIL	0201835959	The last revised edition has a "No Silver Bullet" essay. These are essentially criticisms on project management and are meant to be read after a book on project management is read.	3 days
"I Sing the Body Electronic"	Fred Moody	0140176551	a9/amazon	Learning how to turn around a disaster, enCarta!	2 days
"Project Management" for geeks	Anonymous	NIL	wikipedia	For the impatient and jumpy souls, this is what you should be reading.	3 uSecs on 3GHz HTs
"Quality Software ProjectManagement"	Several	81-7808-767-7	NIL	For themost comprehensive book on the subject.	15 days

Dilemmas of India - Dec 2011 - Entering 2012

2011-12-17T22:39:00.002+05:30

Manmohan Singh returns after attempting to further Indo-Russian relationships.

The press quoted that the Prime Minister promised to have Kudankulam up and running in two-weeks to further Nuclear Cooperation and have work on Plants 3,4 started out there. However, most of the Scientific folk agree that it would take between 2 months and 4 months to actually start power generation in Kudankulam after the Fuel Rods are installed in the site. The political unrest out there is preventing any constructive work from progressing. There have been enough reports hinting that a foreign power has been stalling our progress. Yet we are unable to resolve it.

The Mullai-Periar Dam Row seems rather mute, once someone reads the facts about the structure's strength and stability. Despite all attempts, no one has been discussing about measures that should be taken, should the Dam fail. That possibility must always be considered, for we cannot always take these for granted when Human lives are at stake. Hence, procedures and measures for responding to large scale disasters have to be in place, not merely for this Dam, but for any other Dam in India.

A further hike in Fuel Prices in India has merely been postponed to appease the general public. However, this hike is inevitable and will have to happen either immediately at the beginning of the new year or just before the new year.

It is hypothesized that if India does not resolve the power crisis it is facing right now, it will soon enter the dark ages - an age without electricity, consequently lose the ability to consistently manufacture goods and provide services. This issue requires a huge solution. With the Opposition party, preventing the ruling party from being able to discharge any of its duties that would be beneficial to the civilian population. Hence Central Government Paralysis is a joint responsibility of the ruling party and the opposition party.

With a broken education system, India is churning out hundreds of thousands of graduates in technical, scientific and non-technical field. Very few of these people are capable of contributing dynamically toward the growth of Industry. This unemployability of graduates fuels the lack of growth in many sectors, results in wage-inflation and also furthers unemployment with too little or no advantages for society which is investing heavily in education.

Indians, having lived as natives for several millennia are probably one of the few natives who have the luxury of living in their own land as free people with so much cultural diversity. Unfortunately, this social advantage translates to a disadvantage due internal barriers of language. The high population results in people developing a 'scarcity' mentality forcing the to exhibit lack-of-confidence, mistrust and results in heavy politicking with trust getting breached too frequently. This social problem is so deeply entrenched that addressing it would require a revolution in education at the very minimum.

Research in India does happen in a few segments, and is useful for the people of the world. However, this research is limited in comparison to the population and bears fruit too late and sometimes is not beneficial.

When the Indian Republic was first formed, the principle of 'Socialism' was absorbed, forcing all essential services as Public Sector Units (PSUs). Despite the availability of high quality administrators, technical labor and blue-collar labor, the PSUs have often been criticized of performing below expectations creating heavy deficits eating into the budget and therefore the tax-payers money.

Corruption easily exists within the political system as implementing a system to circumvent or prevent corruption has been proven to be too difficult, particularly when everyone in the system is involved. Further, problems like corruption include involvement of the citizens of the nation also - however, they are unable to remove a deeply entrenched system that has broken the bureaucracy which was made strong by the original British Civil Services.

Crime continues to increase at an uncontrolled rate in several cities which are critical to India's Export-Oriented-Units. However lack of enforcement interlinked with entrenched corruption aids in increasing crime levels - which are very high in cities like Bangalore, Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon demonstrating fewer and fewer sites to setup computers.

The relevant question to ask now, therefore, is what can each of us individually or as teams do about these undecided issues. The future is definitely in our hands, with so many issues to tackle before India can become a superpower in 2020.

The Cracker Hackdown

2011-11-16T06:30:00.000+05:30

For all pun intended, we, the privileged members of the hacking (programming, improvising and resolving tech issues in a constructive way) should teach press to avoid misuse of the word hack in all forms of media.

If you want to become a black-hat or a cracker, you should try visiting "astalavista[dot]com" for a set of basic tutorials. You should understand that these tutorials teach you how systems are secure and therefore their vulnerabilities. Exploiting the vulnerability for nefarious purposes including Denial-of-Service attacks (DoS) or database stealth of sensitive, private user information is against all principles of professional ethics. They will obviously be considered breach of law in every country which has now incorporated laws to govern transactions and activities possible on computing terminals, the internet and on electronically stored data.

You can be good at computing, software and be termed a hacker for being able to innovate and create code wherever necessary in short notice. To do this:

You need to understand the basics behind the mathematical theoretical basis
You need to understand Operating System Architecture, System Software
Algorithms on Security - especially hashing, Cryptography need to be well understood
Know the weakest link in security, for that is how any network or computer system is attacked.

Those who work towards understanding or using their knowledge of the above is deemed a true "hacker" in the MIT sense of the word. A hacker can identify exploits or design flaws or use the design to build software or tools that ultimately are beneficial. The developers of the Linux kernel ( visit: http://kernel.org ) are referred to as "kernel hackers."

It is usually enthusiasts in Computers, and therefore Hackers, who crack the whip on crackers who infiltrate computer systems and networks for nefarious purposes. A good example would be the dissection and reverse engineering of the 'Duqu' worm which posed a security threat. Therefore let us drive the crackers out, and let the Hackers [enthusiasts ref: dictionary.reference.com #2.b] work toward building things better and understanding equipment still better.

Kudankulam, India and the Nuclear Power Stalemate

2011-10-28T06:11:00.002+05:30

Would a government build infrastructure like an 8-lane express highway and then refuse to use it because there might be accidents on the highway in the future? I haven't heard this happen ever. Politics, it seems, leaves no such event untouched - and has demonstrated it through the effective self-sabotage of the operation of new Public Projects including Electrical Power Plants.

In the state of Tamil Nadu (TN), India, Kudankulam is a new Nuclear power plant with a capacity of 990MW. However the local populace have decided to conduct stirs, agitations and paralyze all efforts to render the plant operational. The Prime Minister of India has allegedly sent at least two letters to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu to ensure that this plant is operational. However, nothing to this effect has been done.

The residents of this area have expressed fear over a Nuclear accident of the scale of 'Chernobyl', and after new sensationalism after the Japanese disaster - they quote 'Fukushima' as an example. Whenever these protests are given coverage by the media, a huge number of Catholic priests from that region are seen participating and organizing the event. Tamil Nadu already enjoys power from one Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam in Chennai. Increasing Power Infrastructure which does not depend on fossil fuels is a top priority considering the population and growth of the Country. Further, the Government has yet to table a bill on the privatization of Electrical Power Generation plants which might hedge the financial risk of power production and distribution. This too has been on the back-burner for too long.

Due to the recent low pressure region in the Bay of Bengal, the Eastern coast of the peninsula including most areas in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh have been receiving almost incessant rainfall. To add to this, agitations demanding separate state for Telengana (now a part of the state of Andhra Pradesh) have halted Coal productions from that region. With most power plants in Tamil Nadu having a cache of less than 4 days of Coal (against the mandatory 30 day supply required,) a serious power crisis looms, which if it happens, will undoubtedly affect industry and citizens alike in the immediate.

The people who are protesting and fasting against the operation of the Nuclear power plant including their press and publicity teams seem blissfully unaware of Nuclear Power Technology. Should a few people be allowed to hold an entire Country to ransom, when Electrical Power Generation here and more plants could ensure self sufficient power production in India if done at a quick pace.

Both the State Government (Tamil Nadu) and the Central Government have failed to act in the interests of all the people to get this plant operational. It is a bigger shame that the State Government of Tamil Nadu has personally requested the Central Government to halt all work at the Nuclear Reactor until the local populace's fear is allayed.

India has been suffering under Politicians (not Administrators - who are schooled by the Indian Administrative/Civil Services.) This negative influence has been persisting too long in delaying and sabotaging constructive efforts of the people. If we don't get enough electrical power, we will plunge into darkness and that would fuel poverty and confusion. All these governments are trying the patience of the people for a revolt without attempting to work with the people. India is undoubtedly the most populated democracy in the world and needs to be so. Everyone's opinion needs to be heard, but the needs of the majority are always ahead of the needs of a minority - be they elite, regional or communal groups.

It is sad that we watch the destruction of our own country by the inaction of the so-called representatives who administer the state. All the skullduggery at work at Kudankulam will only take India back to the dark ages, starting with the very state it has been constructed in to meet power shortage problems.

The easy way out: the plight of Higher Education in India

2011-10-19T07:13:00.000+05:30

I have been spending time working at an engineering college (as they call them in India) named PITS (Facebook Page) in Thanjavur (my hometown) in the state of Tamil Nadu in India. I have been helping out in Technology, setting up an Incubation cell and a Placement cell. Here, I get a chance to observe closely the spirit, behavior and attitude of the students as they slowly reach their final year. Tamil Nadu has about 455 registered engineering colleges. Together they churn out almost 25,000 - 30,000 new engineering graduates every year.

After spending more than a year near the academic folk (I'd like to call them that, as they are entirely different - just as geeks and marketing guys and management gurus and medicos differ from each other), there is a lot I have understood about the how & why behind the failure and success of the society I live amidst.

Under the current system, the students reach either Polytechnic institutes or Engineering colleges without any hint of a career plan. A few consult relatives or senior family friends who offer some early advice. Parents believe in populist propaganda and succumb to peer pressure, at times, forcing their children to join Engineering courses in which the children have absolutely no interest. It is a wide misconception that Engineering and Medicine are fields that give one an opportunity to easily find a vocation. As decisions are made on poor input or lack of any input of how to choose a career - the result is left to fate rather than their own preferences and interests. This, at that time, seems to be the easy way out. It is only much later that many realize their mistakes.

Fundamental education in India has been deteriorating over the last three decades. Teaching in Schools (K-14) is a profession nowadays chosen only by those who find it inconvenient or impossible to find the one in the Industry. The testing, rating and evaluation system for school students in India is purely text based. In rural and semi-urban areas, students are trained to become memory devices for textbooks while their capacity to think out of the box and solve problems remains unattended. Communication is often in their mother tongue even if the medium of instruction is officially English. Despite English playing the role of a unifying language for India - especially North and South India, too few Teachers can speak the language fluently. This is true even of privately funded schools. No one bothers to better Language and Spoken Language at this level as it involves a lot of effort. Instead, they leave the issue to providence - the easy way out.

Students, while entering engineering, have already gone through a rigorous regimen of textual training that ensures that their analytical skills, out-of-the-box thinking skills are replaced by text in memory. Recall becomes an easier alternative to on-the-spot analysis and problem-solving. This significantly hampers their ability to understand concepts. Schedules during their 10th Standard and 12th Standard (or Pre-University in some states) are hectic. They stay in wait for joining Higher Education institutions believing that this would let them escape from hectic schedules - hoping that this is an easy way out.

When these students enter Engineering Institutions, few retain their problem solving skills and analytical skills. As Indian society is extremely protectionist, rural and semi-urban students suffer from lack of freedom and the ability to take decisions themselves to gradually mature. When they enter Engineering Institutions, they have an option to be away from their protectionist family with lesser restrictions for a long period of time. The first thing they seek is freedom from the protectionist attitude. Most education for Indian children are sponsored by their parents. Hence the children themselves have little understanding of how important it is for them to perform in their courses.

Spoon-feeding is extremely common especially in education in South India. Students are never encouraged to find solutions themselves unless they do so of their own volition. Intensive Training for Engineering Entrance Examinations and IIT-JEE is done by Institutes most of which leave no room for original thinking. This kind of "conditioning" is the easier way out rather than teach the same students to think for themselves and find their own skills.

When these students reach an Engineering Institution, the challenges faced by the Professors are humungous. As students have already come in without much training in English comprehension, writing and speaking -- this becomes a function of the Engineering Institution. Lacking adequate knowledge of English, which is the most common medium of instruction, students fair poorly. Too much time needs to be devoted to teaching them the medium of instruction.

Most students have little knowledge of the plight their parents face in paying for their education. Education inflation has been a global phenomenon and has had a similar impact in India. The cost of education and therefore fees to be paid by the student for Engineering education is between Rs.300,000 and Rs.750,000. This is almost always paid by the parents without any terms of returning the financing. Beyond this many privately funded institutions require capitation fees which can easily be Rs.1,000,000 or several times higher depending on the Institution. When students do not take responsibility for the finances and do not try to help themselves and their own family by taking campus jobs or running a small firm, they take the easy way out.

Students spend their time without attempting to concentrate on their studies. Having not been taught the fundamentals well, the students frequently suffer from being unable to understand Basic Engineering concepts. The medium of instruction also becomes a huge turn-off. Further, the staff in Engineering Institutions come from the same school of thought as those teaching in Primary, High and Higher secondary schools. Most teachers lack interest in the actual task of teaching. They too prefer the easy way out. They'd rather let the students decide their fate themselves rather than find new ways of teaching. Some of their reservations are because of the failures they have met while experimenting newer techniques in the past.

Students seldom bother about their future until the end of their course. This is usually 4 or 5 years depending on the course taken. They end up unprepared to face job interviews and reality. Their last minute dash over the last 3 months of their education is definitely not enough to help them. Industrial companies and Information Technology majors in India spend at least 6 more months training shortlisted candidates and filtering them for a second time after their recruitment processes. Many, who lack communication skills, creative thinking, verbal reasoning and analytical reasoning skills end up being unable to get a job. The result is frustration for themselves and their parents who funded their education.

Worse yet, Parents discourage their children to participate in sports, technical, non-technical and cultural competitions due to several reservations. They believe that the period spent in earning the graduate degree is yet another time for adding more textual memory. IBM's 'Watson' too might detest such an expectation. The resultant is unhappy individuals with short attention spans who forget their own talents and skills as more and more is forced upon them without considering their interests and likes. As children forget their own talents and skills, they end up taking the easy way out. They'd rather sleep than spend a day playing sports of learning something new or working on a practical project.

"Education is teaching students how to learn - and what to learn - and never forcing them to imbibe in memory, the content that should be learned." This is almost entirely ignored by most Engineering Institutions I have seen. The focus of teaching students skills rather than elementary textual knowledge is fostered by the Universities in India and has not changed over the past three decades at the very least. For Universities, change is a nightmare in logistics and they would rather prefer not to - choosing the easy way out.

Most people never find this. Furthermore for students who have grown up studying in gender-exclusive schools, the co-educational systems in Higher Education send them into a path of confused relations with the opposite gender. While conservative and protectionist society continues to shun the idea of boys interacting with girls on a friendly basis, this becomes a strong preoccupation besides gossip and smalltalk.

It is easier to enforce rules and regulations with fear as a motivator, rather than use empathy and allow individuals to reason for themselves. Most have already been motivated by fear throughout their schooldays and hence stop responding to empathic motivation and initiatives to develop self-discipline. Parents send their children to educational institutions and believe that some magical transformation would lend them to become Engineers with certifications and academic laurels. They spend too little time in the interest of their children's education. They too prefer the easy way out.

Students do keep asking for longer periods of time to relax and rest after being numbed in boring Lecture classes. If this is provided, they find more time to take on the vices of society - alcohol, tobacco, drugs - being the least of them. If this is denied they end up being further numbed and refuse to improve themselves consistently. They would rather take the easier way out than work hard to learn and add skills and expertise to themselves.

During the last few months of their Engineering studies, students expect to be recruited somehow by Industrial companies and Commercial groups in Recruitment drives majorly composed of campus interviews. Few think of alternate options like Entrepreneurship. Some are prepared to take a post graduate degree outside India, after having figured out that the education insofar received has been of no use to them. Some prefer to leave the field of Engineering and enter the field of Business Administration - a rather poor choice considering that they could have pursued it earlier as their graduate course too. Students develop a strong mentality to always choose the easy way out.

Summarizing what I have observed and learned, the Indian Education System and the Higher Education System does not add any value to students. The only help it provides them is an environment where they can interact with others and therefore build social camaraderie. That is too little value for the price paid for education. Some knowledge is retained, but practical knowledge is always found lacking. Curiosity, the inner need to Learn, reading habits and the ability to resolve practical engineering problems is found entirely lacking.

Indian students in general lack taste in perfection. This is primarily because mediocrity is tolerated in education. Mediocrity and substandard results are tolerated, and worse yet - accepted by the parents. Hence Companies never recruit based on Engineering course scores, but prefer to conduct their own screening examinations and have complex recruitment processes which cost them heavily in HR recruitment budgets. There have been recent comments that the premium Engineering & Technology Institutions of India, the IITs, the NITs have also been dropping their quality over time. As more and more students graduate, all of them come out with a tendency to always choose the easier way out. They are unprepared and often unwilling to work long hours - a habit they acquire during their Higher education days that festers as time goes by. It is always the easy way out, rather than taking a challenge.

The result that the country faces is hard to digest. Today, Engineers in India are more unreliable than technicians in creating, maintaining and servicing products. A carpenter takes better measurements than a Civil Engineer. Computer Engineers can seldom program when they come out of college. Lack of appropriately skilled people reduces the value produced by the country and impacts the GDP heavily. Despite high population and therefore potential to create value in this age of Technology, India finds progress too difficult.

Issues like corruption are not uncommon in the field of Education. Universities engage in malpractices which are nothing short of extortion from students. Indians, especially in the South where educational institutions are numerous - have unfortunately attempted to take the easy way out. No one has tried nor succeeded in changing the system.

In the end, life is never easy and the easy way out turns out to be a blunder. It renders the country with substandard individuals dreaming of higher standards of life which they themselves are unable to create. The discrimination between blue collar labor and white collar labor is too high in India. This results in blue collar laborers moving themselves and their own children to white collar labor resulting in dearth of skilled labor. In the end the country is slowly grinding to a halt. Those who are extremely intelligent, and have succeeded despite the ill environment of the Higher education system pursue jobs abroad and contribute too little or naught to their own Country. Slowly, but surely, India is crumbling - as everyone continues to choose the easy way out.

The Linux Juggernaut

2011-08-18T07:30:00.000+05:30

The awesome growth of GNU/Linux from 1992 till date is a huge demonstration of the impact of Open Source and the principles behind it. The Linux kernel itself has been growing, much to the chagrin of some, it has become bloatware.

Destroying Mother Earth in Thanjavur

2011-05-28T14:19:00.001+05:30

(revised once on 3-Mar-2011 and again on 28-May-2011)

I was earlier horrified at the destruction of a garden maintained by the public beside the Grand Anaicut (GA) Canal road. Yesterday, while passing by, I witnessed the most horrid result. Not only has the garden been removed, but the banks of the canal and the side of the road have been changed into the worst possible garbage dump. There is literally little to write about, these pictures are evident of what has happened.

I had earlier written a post in February of this despicable act. Here is what has unfolded.

The once Green banks of the GA Canal in Thanjavur

This was how this place once looked, beautiful, greenery carpeting the banks of the canal. It was a pleasure taking a walk beside it. The work to maintain and keep the banks clean went (without assistance, but unhindered by the local municipality) for over 20 years. Recently, not by ignorance, but by planned, calculated work, they have swindled the town and its citizens of the greenery. The green vandals (who are supposed to engineers in the interest of the public - being part of the municipality and the public works department) have systematically destroyed the greenery, dirtied a water canal, and converted it into a garbage dump. This is not the legacy we wish to leave to the children of the future. This must be stopped now. They must pay and toil for what they have foiled.

On the last day the greenery remained, 24 January 2011

Greenery systematically destroyed

Greenery is now an engineered Garbage Dump!

The Garbage legacy, left for Thanjavur, once Rice Bowl of South India

Earlier, I was misinformed to think this was a mere act of deforestation to build something constructive. Only Yesterday I found that this was a plan to convert our water resources to sewers. This is evil, the devil lives in the hearts of the greedy. They are blinded and darkened by their lust for the sparkles. All that is gold does not glitter. This greenery and the clean waters were a treasure we had, one that nature kept replenishing. Destroying it, I hope nature's retribution will be swift.

Those responsible for this heinous act must be warned. This is not merely about reversing this. INDIA NEEDS A REVOLUTION! THE TIME IS NOW!

Death of a Canal, Destruction of the Earth!

I hear plenty of comments on Fukushima and the great environmental threat it poses. Yet, we the people in Thanjavur stand by while others destroy the city before our very eyes. We do not see the true threat that comes disguised as urbanization.

The government mutes a corrupt and irresponsible press who cares not about people, but serves only sensationalists. Where is the Press? It seems Press in India is officially DEAD, India controls media far more than all the dictatorships of the entire world. "Democracy" in India is a farce. Misplaced Capitalists steal freedom and destroy this land again, and again, and again.

We are known as a tolerant nation. Tolerance of evil, Tolerance of destruction of our soil, Tolerance of wrong action - that is the true cause of all pain, turmoil and suffering. This deed shall not go unpunished. The perpetrators will fall. They will either rebuild the greenery and clean the surroundings, or unto dust and ashes will they pass.

I am most angered and consumed by my inability as a citizen to take any action. I see politicians squabbling and wasting tax-payers money. A few people of the present stand to destroy the future of mankind - they want to lead us to extinction and fade the achievements of our greatness. If the sewage flows through a river, mother earth shall turn them to blood. The quakes in Japan and Thailand should only remind us not to play foul with nature, for the power of nature that shields us and protects us can as easily leave us vanquished.

Update (28 May 2011)

The claim of the PWD, with a carefully taken photograph that avoids the bank having all the garbage and trash is on the newspaper here - http://www.hindu.com/2011/05/26/stories/2011052661140100.htm

Anyone looking at the canal in summer will know that there is absolutely no flow of water - and the picture in the article from "The Hindu" is evident. I am not sure why de-silting works cannot be taken up without destroying all the ecology and turning the entire canal into a sewer.

The bigger picture is the NABARD has offered them a huge sum to put cement blocks on the canal flow - which is an ecological blunder. This will only make the canal maintenance more difficult in the future. There is also no certainty for the free flow of water here. The floor of the canal has to be specially designed to be water proof (concrete) and never impede flow of water. Looking at the pace, these machines are just waiting for the monsoon to wash them away.

Design has to be done with garbage disposal methods in place, which is not what they are doing here. Here is some information on water-proof concrete flooring on canals to avoid silt formation and therefore permit better drainage - http://www.cee.mtu.edu/projects/projects2006/Carmelo_Watts.htm

It is quite funny that similar concrete has been used to put up roads at several areas in Thanjavur - roads based on such concrete slabs. I have not seen such badly designed roads elsewhere.
The temporary halt of work, they say is due to the Assembly Election. That seems to be the convenient excuse for having halted all building work and should never be the case.

End(s) of the World

2011-05-20T19:22:00.002+05:30

Time and again, people have been predicting the end of the world. This has been largely harmless as the rest of the world has chosen to ignore the claim of a minor group. I write this entry in wake of the immediate date - May 21, 2011 which has been made popular by Harold Camping, a 90-year old man who is also a Talk Radio broadcaster and President of Family Radio. According to him the end of things as they are is to come in the period between May 21, 2011 and October 21, 2011. He had previously predicted the end of the world with the Biblical Second Coming of Christ in September, 1994.

The amount of publicity he has received is most surprising, as are the billboards that have sprung up with messages on the end-of-the-world. One would notice Investments and coordinated marketing toward this - despite knowing that there are numerous instances of the Biblical Second Coming of Christ predicted earlier (including 1999, 2000 and even much earlier in recorded history.) A good majority of the people of the world have ignored the May 21, 2011 rapture and are continuing with their plans for the rest of the year (and years to come.)

There are other theorists who pin December 21, 2012 as a date based on the reset of the Mayan Long Count Calendar and a little understood ancient Maya text which they claim is a prophecy of the end of the world.

Experts who study the Mayan culture have pointed out that the time-keeping techniques of the Mayans is worthy of praise. The Mayans calculated lunar cycles with high accuracy. It is probable that they also calculated the cycles of the Planet Venus with considerable accuracy.

However, from their complex creation myths and vastly different culture (which we cannot easily relate to,) it is almost impossible to understand surviving texts of the Mayans in proper context. It is also true that large volumes of Mayan documentation in bark-paper was destroyed in a regrettable move to stop idol worship by the then conquerors of the new world. The text that has survived as testimony of the heritage of the Mayan culture and archaeology has helped in scientific efforts to understand them.

Scientifically, efforts still continue to understand the culture of the Maya, their understanding of nature and particularly their fascination with astronomy & time-keeping. Most scholars agree that their time keeping was good and far better than the rest of the world in the time they flourished, but not comparable with the understanding of time and the level of time-keeping that exists today.

There are several claims about doomsday scenarios in 2012 - which attempt to connect the year and dates to the reversal of the earth's magnetic poles [which occurs roughly over 780,000 years - possibly taking a period of 1,000 years to effect], a solar climax [which occurs roughly every 11 years], mass extinctions [which paleontologists claim - happen roughly every 26 million years] and stranger theories. It is even unclear whether the Mayans believed in prophecies literally.

There are others who attempt to connect the fictitious 2012 end-of-word scenario with Babylonian creation myth, which is far more complex and is less understood. Some profess that an unidentified planetary object called Nibiru is headed on a near-collision or collision course with the earth. This theory is probably the most implausible.

There are earlier instances when such fictitious predictions created mass hysteria and resulted in deaths or mass suicides which were socially engineered. I recall the more recent tragedy of the cult Heaven's Gate in March, 1997 in which 39 members of the cult committed suicide during the period Comet Hale-Bopp was at its brightest. Earlier cults in the 20th century included the People's Temple and the Solar Temple.

As Michael Crichton expressed in his novel "State of Fear", fear or heightened anxiety spread across society can be a complex behavioral element used in sociopolitical control. It is easy for people to be confused, deluded or harried by convincing arguments of cataclysmic scenarios which seem scientific and plausible. If a large population is swayed by fear of possible cataclysms, it would set the stage for groups or cults or even nations to use this fear to their strategic advantage. The damage could be anything between heightened stress levels to hostile behavior to ritual suicide or even war.

It is time to see our Demon-Haunted World (as Prof. Carl Sagan elegantly wrote) in the right scientific perspective. It is far too easy to ignore mainstream science for populist pseudoscience. In known history, Humanity has been continually progressing, and always striving to improve. Understanding possible Disaster Scenarios to plan Disaster Recovery techniques and allocate resources to handle those scenarios is a scientific pursuit. There are also strategic studies to help plan resources for the future, optimize energy usage and re-engineer our cities for better living conditions. Much of this happens in day-to-day work (like city/town planning) and is not considered strange. Science continues to help us understand the our reality in a consistent way and simultaneously explore ways to create solutions to uplift our quality of life.

If anything diverts our current consistent and clear progress as a unified civilization, the setback might cost us dearly. Most of these diversions come from socio-political behavior. It is important that we do not engage our time in efforts that would destabilize human society. War has been known to wreak havoc on progress and improvement of the quality of life in several historic instances. Irrational belief in a time of natural disaster has also caused the destruction of past civilizations.

Pursuing myths of the end of the world or reality as we know it, could land us in such a situation if enough of us are convinced. We need to continue increasing our awareness, employ scientific method and use our awareness for the betterment of all life as we know it. History shows us periods like the Middle-Ages existed during which reason was abandoned, and we had to wait for the Renaissance to regroup and continue our collective pursuit of growth. We have to learn and avoid making similar mistakes that could cost our civilization several centuries of peace and quality of life. Reacting coherently and rationally to true natural disasters would also help us fare better.

The world of Cloud Computing [infographic]

2011-05-03T00:14:00.001+05:30

Via: Wikibon

Osama Bin Laden, Terrorism, What Now?

2011-05-02T11:06:00.001+05:30

Today, President Obama announced to the world that Osama bin Laden, founder of the Al Qaeda has been killed in an operation led by United States Armed Forces personnel at Abottabad (District) in the North-West Frontier Province in Pakistan. Before the announcement the Social Media Network was afire with speculation of the announcement. The People of the world believe that the removal of Osama bin Laden is a key victory in the war against Terrorism - which is what the United States administration from George W Bush's government has been targeting. This also comes at a time when Obama begins a crucial campaign for a second term of Presidency. As the announcement came out, news channels were keen to point out that defense forces of the USA and several other nations will be on full alert to watch out for any backlash from the Al Qaeda.

Does the assassination of one man spell a major victory over a political ideology that has troubled several nations worldwide? The answer at this point seems to be affirmative. The elimination of the leadership of the LTTE in Sri Lanka created a sense of victory to the Sri Lankan forces and a semblance of stability in that region. Despite that, a permanent humanitarian solution for the ethnic conflict in the island nation of Sri Lanka is yet to be found.

As President Obama reminded his audience of the resolve of his people after the infamous 9/11 attack - he definitely conveyed the opinion that elimination of one man, who masterminded several terrorist strikes that threatened civilians worldwide, an apt counter strike, akin to a victory in open war.

True change however will have to come as secular and inclusive ideology in countries where this ideology has been threatened - particularly by terrorist & extremist elements. Each country will have to respect the people of other countries in settling their own internal disputes. At this time there are several countries including Libya where their is internal turmoil threatening the stability & being of those nations. Despite what everyone may say, humanity has shown that concerns for people go beyond borders. As this influence beyond borders can only increase, people and leaders need to take great care in exerting their influence to initiate any change.

Here is another pragmatic, rather skeptic view of the claimed "triumph" - http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/05/02/neil-macdonald-osama-bin-laden.html

Education System - Today

2011-04-27T08:49:00.000+05:30

I have been always thinking that the education system needs a major change. Recently, I came across a video animated by RSA Animation, a talk given Sir Ken Robinson on (posted here http://bit.ly/gRi2pP). The similarity of the present education system to Industrial manufacture (batches graded in terms of years [of manufacture]), the absence of emphasis on creativity and the systematic removal of divergent thinking is definitely counter-productive to humanity. While we spend a vast portion of time dedicated to education, the entire process would be wastage unless we correct it. The best way to start improving the system is to first understand it.

Watch this video - the animation makes it easier to stay with the talk.

Sachin Tendulkar, the Bharat Ratna or What?

2011-04-11T22:56:00.000+05:30

As Cricketing nations celebrated in fervor, the grand finale of the ultimate championship in cricket, the ICC Cricket World Cup, in this year 2011 - fans had already started backing 'Sachin Tendulkar' for a Bharat Ratna.

The "Bharat Ratna," in India is given for exceptional contribution in the fields of art, literature, science and social service. The criteria does not have any mention of sports.

Considering the prior recipients of the Bharat Ratna are either involved in politics in the interests of the people or are exceptional in a form of art. Cricket, insofar is not defined as a form of art either.

The real question is whether a Sports Person should be bestowed the "Bharat Ratna". The tradition of the gems of India predate our colonial history. Not even in those ancient courts adorned by the Ratnas - was a seat reserved for a sportsman.

To get through the red tape, someone from the sports ministry will have to present a proposal to include sports among the criteria for selecting candidates for awarding a Bharat Ratna. This proposal will have to accepted by the union cabinet. After this, a debate on which sport first, recollecting great names in sports, in much earlier times will definitely ensue.

So we are presented with a new problem; we seek new solutions. For incomparable commitment to a game, taking the game beyond its limits with performances that kept on eclipsing prior performances, an award that salutes the genius of the Cricketer that Sachin Tendulkar is, must be instituted and given to honor him, for he has already honored the sport, his team and his country. Looking at a Sports Award that indeed does some of what we've listed, the Laureus which has already been awarded to Rafael Nadal. All winners of this award seem to be European.

To recognize the likes of Bradman, Sachin Tendulkar, a new cricketing award can be instituted. It is most important that the award recognizes the team commitment and honors the person beyond borders. His achievements are jewels to his home nation and his team, never lesser. As a core cricketing nation in the world, we could institute an award that lauds exceptional achievement in Cricket. Should the award be given when the player announces retirement or prior should be decided. Sachin deserves a new award, one that will define cricketers and sportsmen of the future! At what better time can the ICC institute such an award?

FTA: EU & India -- Medical Impact

2011-03-02T21:41:00.001+05:30

India is on top in manufacturing and delivering generic pharmaceutical drugs. India is also the world's largest democracy and the second most populous nation. The first HIV/AIDS case was reported in India in 1986. By 2007, over 23 lakh people are reportedly suffering from HIV/AIDS. Treatment of HIV/AIDS cases in India would be unaffordable if generic drugs were not available. Only 10% of these cases are provided "free" treatment by the government. This is possible only because of the availability of generic drugs.

The "Free Trade Agreement" (FTA) between the European Union (EU) and India has been pushed rather discreetly by the Prime Minister's Office. Intellectual Property Rights on pharmaceutical drug manufacture has been interpreted correctly in India. This has given freedom to the pharmaceutical industry to manufacture medicines with innovative processes, while delivering them at affordable costs to the public. The situation insofar has favoured the citizens.

Patenting a mathematical formula is impossible. In simplistic comparison, patenting a discovery is also not possible. The discovery of Penicillin (the antibiotic) by Alexander Fleming and the X-Ray by Röntgen are attributed to be accidental. Knowing that discoveries cannot be patented, we could safely assume that neither Penicillin nor the X-Ray can be patented. A method or process or machinery to produce them can be patented, but the X-Ray itself or Penicillin (the molecule) itself cannot be patented. Our understanding so far is correct. Industrial production of Penicillin during World War II was critical. Rightly so, techniques for production of Penicillin were patented.

The advent of industrial biotechnology and nanotechnology would provide us with new methods to create substances that we have discovered. Pharmaceutical companies spend huge budgets in research. This research ultimately leads to the creation of new drugs that benefit people. The Pharmaceutical companies hope to recover the money invested in research when they sell drugs. However this slows down their ability to fund themselves. By licensing the manufacturing method they could enable multiple entities to manufacture and distribute a drug in return for a licensing clause-of-multiples. The volume of drugs produced could increase and therefore benefit both the company and the people. So Intellectual Property Rights on the whole seems good.

Now, if a company patented one method to manufacture a pharmaceutical drug and forced everyone to use only that method to manufacture a drug while imposing their Intellectual Property rights, they would (in an evil way) make more money. They would also stifle innovation, thereby preventing people from affording medicines that could save lives. This issue is certainly not new. Jonas Salk, during his famous televised interview with Edward Munrow quipped, "Would you patent the sun?"

Complying with a Free Trade Agreement with the European Union to permit a single manufacturing process to take over will inflate the prices of drugs, make generic drugs unavailable to the truly needy and ultimately hurt society. A "Free Trade Agreement" must facilitate trade and be mutually helpful to all people involved. Concerns on this FTA have been voiced several times last year.

They haven't reached the ears of the policy-makers though, until NGOs made a public demonstration to bring this to light. Let their concerns be heard and answered. While trade needs to be liberal, no policy should ill serve the people, and definitely not scourge those who are suffering from HIV. If we want to help those suffering from HIV let us not burden them, not by blindly signing policy in the name of development. We need to actively research and find ways to cure them. Such research and cure are truly not stifled in the absence of this FTA.

Bulldozing the Green Drive (Thanjavur)

2011-02-10T15:07:00.001+05:30

"Going Green" has been a mantra, India seems to echo in every trend. The people of Bangalore want the Garden City back. The Government recently banned the use of plastic sachets for tobacco. Environmental initiatives have been aplenty. The impression that civic sense was returning, echoed through. We have a cabinet minister, acting as an environmental crusader, Jairam Ramesh.

Living in Thanjavur, with 'The Big Temple', as a tourist attraction and UNESCO World Heritage site, I have been witness to the creation of new infrastructure. The National Highway links, have finally been made four-lane and bypass the city actually. Within the municipality, though, the roads next to my home have, for quite some time not been built (just after a starting a rain-water harvesting drive, and a proper sewer system that hadn't already been planned.)

The Green is gone!

Driving through the G. A. Canal road [google maps, satellite], a portion which had been made green and maintained earlier as an initiative of people with good civic sense; I saw all the greenery gone! Fences preventing people from misusing the canal as an open-air toilet, a garden that stood bordering the canal had been pulled out. This was no urbanisation, uprooting trees, but rather a misinformed and misdirected initiative. The greenery bordering the road had all just disappeared! I had no idea, what strangeness chanced upon this place leaving it barren, devoid of all greenery.

I learnt later, that this was some urban development drive. "Some urban development drive," indeed. Is our sense of development so obscure and misdirected? Are people supposed to resume using this as an open-air toilet? (Shamefully, that was the case, at least two decades back.) On later enquiry, I learnt that the banks of the canal were being maintained as a garden by citizens of Thanjavur.

Once Green

A Saint once said, "It is impossible for us to sense God; for as human beings, we sense what is, and suddenly is not - like 'light' and 'darkness' (the lack of it); How can we know God, when he always is." That is wisdom indeed.

We ignore nature, and fail to notice initiatives that make our world a better place. It was quite difficult to find a photograph of the same, before this happened. As luck had it, I managed to find quite a few. The road, happens to be frequented by tourists as it is home to a hotel, and is geographically, quite close to the 'The Brahadeeshwarar Temple', our World Heritage Site (map).

Stranger, was the fact, that press had most ignored any mention of it whatsoever. Not a word had been published on any of the local dailies. "Free Speech" and "Expression" for the citizen, it seemed were blissfully forgotten.

The "Bulldozing the Green" drive

I inquired further, and found photographs taken when they had bulldozed through all this. They had done this on the 24th of January, 2011, just a day before the world's eyes trained on Egypt. I had driven past at least a dozen times, and had failed to notice all the greenery and the neatness with which it was maintained.

If they were planning an initiative to make the town greener, this definitely wasn't what I was expecting. Upon further search, I found that such urban "green demolition" (mumbai) was not uncommon.

To the outside world, Thanjavur is supposed to be the "rice bowl" of South India. Bangalore was the "Garden City". What is the legacy, that we can leave to the children of the future: Cars, Mobile Phone towers, Technology, Patents or the protection of nature?

The Patriot's Paradox

2011-01-29T00:25:00.000+05:30

I had to wait a while ( just 3000 seconds . I love waits (they're wondrous, sometimes they get me wild enough to leave immediately and save my day) before the Guest turned up. The welcome programme began with the right rhythm - welcoming, keynote, honouring (the Chief Guest.) The next item was "Chief Guest's Address," given the absence of a schedule, my narrative should do insofar. The event started just an hour late. Punctuality is to be suffered by the few who choose it.

The Chief Guest took to the lectern, and opened out what seemed to a long written speech. He is a Software Developer whose entire career has been between a Large Township supporting a Factory and Academic updates at a Regional Educational Institution. Until then, he had not spoken a word, and we looked at him with reverence.

The floodgates of callous, anachronic, disconnected sentences poured open the most obnoxious speech, I have ever heard of my Nation. "India is a nation that has always been and continues to be slaves. We have been and ever will be slaves to technology, except for the happenings of the past 3 decades where some hope has dawned." he began, shocking though as it was. This was the moment, the idiom "empty vessels make more noise," had waited for. He went on, "Alexander, the Great (Alexandros Megasthenos) defeated an Indian warlord Purushottam because they had superior technological advantage in cavalry. Purushottam (or Porus,) was defeated by the supreme army because he had slow moving elephants, while Alexander's cavalry were swift and made quick work of Porus' defeat." According to the Chief Guest, this was a great historical example of how Indian technology has never developed and bowed down to western greatness.

Insulting the people who lived in that time (c. 326 BC) and attributing a reason out of nowhere, while giving the keynote address of a Scientific Paper Presentation discourse. He seems to have forgotten that Elephant formations used cavalry for protection. Agile archers wearing no armour using the thick forest covers easily ambushed him. Given the genius of Alexander the Great, he defeated Porus with fair strategy. For a strange reason, he let him live, and also let Seleucus Nicator venture South Westward to establish the later Seleucid empire. Alexander's battle troops were too tired to be trained for better tactics to face interior India. The Kingdom of Porus is within the territory of present day Afghanistan. Accounts cite that Porus, grieved at the loss of his son, surrendered but refused to accept Alexander as his Emperor. Alexander's teacher Aristotle once quipped, "The east has a way of swallowing its enemies." The visit proved that to be true.

Did he know that the Greeks rode all the way down across Persia, with a cavalry, riding bareback on horses that did not have a saddle? Did he know that the Indian cavalry of Porus had saddles, and armory for the horse?

More words, now came, in torrents with confidence on a subject with minimalist knowledge.
"Babur invaded India somewhere in 500 AD, or something. He had superior artillery power which gave him full advantage and some other King in India, who had not invested time nor effort to build technology. That is why we (Indians) are slaves to technology."

This was Babur's special mention in historical annals. A force of 10,000 defeated Ibrahim Lodi's stronger force of 110,000 (arithmetically equivalent to 1 averaging 110 kills.) Ibrahim Lodi, despite strategic advantage lost. Wait, where and how did Lodi come from? At least at that time, Lodi wasn't considered a native Indian, but a descendant of recent migrants. The battle also took place in 1526 AD (a frequent one in 'are you smarter than a fifth grader?' [India]) We have forgotten that this is one migrant attempting to thwart another.

Emperor Ashok became King in 274 BC and held what is probably the largest Indian empire for another 8 centuries. Let's ignore him, his technology, the Arthashastra. Politics is misunderstood as history. It is also recorded that Ashok was one of the earliest monarchs to have passed an edict that outlawed slavery. Most battles are won or lost the moment planning is done, execution at every level has its surprises, but the political gameplay controls (almost) everything. India had advances in politics and diplomacy at that time.

He continues to drum on, while I reined in my eagerness to chip in. He then went on to say, "SAP started in 1973, with founders who had left IBM. They believed in a new model, but held their resolve for two decades, only to reap one of the largest market rates in 1993. We, Indians are not resilient, and therefore do not achieve."

SAP, as a company has a history, quite unlike the garage startups which originated from the Silicon Valley. Was SAP too slow to deploy? Did they find too early a solution? In today's market no one can be resilient? If they had started two decades later, we wouldn't be referring t them here.

Are Indians Resilient? Historically, we have always shown great resolve. All cultures who invaded us, we have assimilated. India: "Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated." The ancient lifestyle is recorded in many books including the Arthashastra for a period 300 BC. After 12th Century AD, we have several documented examples to refer to and show our resilience. Indian software developers tend to develop a culture of sticking to a mother ship, rather than hitch hiking the galaxy on space trawlers. Yet, we are not slow, we are big, huge, larger than imagination might yield.

He tried his hand at humour, but that comedy is subject for another post.

He continued, "We Indians are still having the slave mentality. All the global companies I had worked with used to state that we are a nation of snake charmers. We do not want to start our own companies or build our own Intellectual property [snip] Indian Infotech professionals create IP and sell it cheap to big clients who make millions, if not trillions of dollars We are not patenting or creating new ideas and intellectual property. We must start creating at least now and not continue to slave and make products for big companies elsewhere in the globe."

Interestingly, he seems to forget that IP is not only created and monetized in India, but is protected by networks of law firms for the geographic region. Vinod Dham or Sabeer Bhatia probably aren't counted as Indians. All the technocrats who originated from here, what happens to them. India now has a TIE chapter (pun intended), several meets where VCs and Investors meet Sponsors. Entrepeneurship, IP creation, Originality, it's all here. Brand "Bangalore" has been made. No longer is India a land of Snake Charmers.

Can inventing, creating be given enough focus in college curriculum or should curriculum be shortened to teach essentials, allowing inventions and creativity to follow through in extended apprenticeships? That is food for thought. If what we are creating is invisible to the eye and intangible, and yet, we continue reaping fruits of our labour, we are creating, competing and getting better. Who owns land or the intangible is always debatable under legal jurisdictions.

Note to self: Next time you go to a function, take the last seat. If you are disinterested, leave the hall pretending to take a photograph. Run for some sanity cover.

Tablet Renaissance - 11 Items to Check

2011-01-27T12:32:00.000+05:30

Tablet computing is reaching a vortex with Consumer Electronics vendors, pushing them into the market more enthusiastically than ever. The concept of the Tablet was tried more than once earlier (termed Tablet/PC), deriving designs from the Laptop/PC. Those attempts had mixed results, but no roaring successes. The HP Tablet/PC image on the right is sweet memory of what looked like an oversized Compaq/HP/iPaq. With new Mobile Microprocessors, the advent of platforms like Android, the game has undoubtedly changed. The Laptop/PC itself has evolved into the more portable and light-weight Netbook. We would quickly associate the term "tablet" to Apple's much hyped iPad.

Yet, will people take to using tablets? Practical usability of Tablets would depend on

Size, form factor of the Tablet
Interface usability - display readability, touch screens, keypads, voice recognition
Weight of the Tablet (People hate lugging heavy slates.)
Battery Life (surviving longer without a recharge.)
Connectivity options (3G, WiFi, WiMax, USB, ethernet ...)
Memory Storage (Internal Storage, Expansion Options, Maximum Limits)
Application availability (Application stores, reasonable variety of options.)
Utility and Productivity value (Business and Entertainment use.)
Freedom to customize, theme and personalize
Availability of Accessories (Docks, Sleeves)
After Sales Support and Services!

As the market is highly nascent, 'size' is something that has not crystallised yet. Devices with display sizes varying from 5" to 11", with/without keypads or touchpads are available. The popularity of the Amazon Kindle (as an eBook reader) seemed to have triggered a Domino effect in creation and commercialisation of Tablets. Comparisons and theories on whether Apple iPad started the Tablet craze or the eBook readers did are abundant.

I find the form factor of tablets, a little heavier to carry around; while my laptop is still remains indispensable for my work. Screen size definitely improves readability, and the iPad probably got it just right in terms of readability.

I do find the tablet useful for

Quick information lookup and search
Updating a microblog
Checking email
Reading documents, eBooks
Getting Navigation Assistance
Testing out mobile applications
An alternative when I cannot carry my Laptop

I still find a few issues that would have to be sorted out, as the devices become more commonly used:

Charger compatibility and standardisation
Video output for quick use as a presentation tool
Easy solutions to carry a Tablet
Information security and privacy concerns
Seamless and dynamic network connectivity/migration
Pricing of Tablets, upgrades and accessories is yet to settle down
Dependence on the "Cloud Infrastructure" is heavy, but is Cloud infrastructure failsafe?

Solutions do exist for the items I have listed, but they still remain open in search of better solutions. The Tablets overlap an application space taken up by smartphones, and once served by the PDA. Their advent in the markets is more an evolution of the PDA (into the Smartphone, and now the Tablet.) Players who were successful earlier, like "Palm" have found it difficult to keep up with the momentum of the smartphone era. Players who have succeeded in the Smartphone era like "Research In Motion" (RIM) are worried about their survival in the upcoming Tablet era. New entrants come in with lots of innovations. The "Notion Ink", for example, (image, left) on one variant claims 15 hours of battery life. Will such claims hold when the devices are put to real use?

Telephony Network: Voice & Data Access in India

2011-01-18T12:40:00.000+05:30

The growth of Indian Infrastructure nation-wide over the last couple of decades has not been consistent and well planned. This accounts for Transport, Food, City/Town Planning and various arenas.

One area where Indian Infrastructure has been doing well (largely by having opened it to the private sector) is 'Telecom, Network reach, Voice and Data accessibility.' Data on actual network access has not been easy to get given the diversity off the players in the field. This Internet usage statistics (IWS) seems to ignore mobile users who now have some form of Internet access.

Mobile phone usage in India ranks 3rd in the world (ranking China and the EU ahead of India.) An independent study mentions that 40 million users access the Internet from Mobile phones. A paper by Dr. Ashok Jhunjhunwala and team illustrates barriers in technology while expanding India's telephone network (which made major upgrades in 1991-2010) incrementally improving accessibility.

Today, urban and rural users of telephony in India rely heavily on mobile phone networks. Accessibility in rural areas has also been growing. I was impressed by the availability of teleph ony, mobile network and broadband data access in remote estates south of the eastern ghats. The main user community are villagers around the area, while the nearest towns are located almost 200km away from the main ghat sections. The cost of voice/data services in India has been at an affordable level in comparison to other countries and regions.

Technology entrepreneurs are now relying on continuing increase of users to push solutions through mobile telephony. Every business, and therefore other infrastructure segments now have an opportunity to reach more people through communication. Applications targeted at farmers to help them in pricing their produce and planning their crops are good examples.

The volume, availability and affordability of telephony in India has been fuelled in part by the Government's Spectrum allocation and largely by corporate pricing wars across multiple players and entrants.

Linux Unleashed (2011)

2011-01-10T21:18:00.001+05:30

Over a decade ago, the landscape of open source was predominantly GNU/Linux with Mozilla and the Apache foundation. Teamed up with MySQL, the server scape was slowly assimilated. The Desktop was young with Slackware, Debian, Redhat, Mandrake making early in-roads. Few saw Linux as a solution for the desktop where usability translated to simplicity. Hackers (programmers), sysadmins adopted GNU/Linux in whatever form it was available. At the same time, IBM was demonstrating Linux on its mainframes and packing it onto a wristwatch. They had proven that it was practically scalable. The impact at that time was subtle, but a revolution had begun.

In the early days of GNU/Linux, there were frequent comparisons of Linux with Microsoft's Windows and Mac OS (many serving as flame-bait in mailing lists and forums.) Computing devices were not yet commodity and the OS/System Software space was presumed to be an oligopoly. The "OS" was seen as a product, an end in itself, rather than the means to an application (which is easier from today's perspective.) To be fair today, Linux does not have a single perspective (or personality) to project it as a 'de facto' desktop OS alternative. Ubuntu, Knoppix, Linux Mint, Arch, CentOS, Fedora, OpenSuSE and the list goes on.

I remember a discussion in 2001 with my then CEO (Codito), Harshad Pathak. We were a group of hackers trying to define data abstraction, data hiding and data encapsulation. He came up with lines of wisdom, "I don't care what Operating System my Phone is running as long as I can make calls and use it for texting. Embedded Linux, Windows CE - it really doesn't matter." As techies, to us, the OS was sacred, and that transformed the discussion into an argument. An Operating System must facilitate the user to accomplish something, which could be done only through an application or service or a mix of both.

Today, we are precisely in the scenario where the GNU/Linux ecosystem has facilitated end-user productivity through applications, platforms and cohesive technology. Google uses data centres powered by the GNU/Linux ecosystem. Android derives from a Linux kernel. Chrome-OS derives from a Linux kernel. Facebook runs scalable servers powered by GNU/Linux. Desktop options powered by GNU/Linux are innumerable as this infographic reveals. Alternate OS platforms including Sun (now Oracle)'s OpenSolaris, OpenStorage, BSD's contributions as FreeBSD (forked as Darwin became a part of Mac OS), OpenBSD and NetBSD offer a much larger palette to choose from.

Android users are clearly using a phone, empowered with applications and web services from google. The Internet has many businesses providing services in a SaaS model, a good number of them powered by the ongoing Open Source revolution. Business models have undergone radical changes. Semiconductor companies (Intel, AMD, ARM, TI, FreeScale - to name a few) have gone out of the way to ensure System Software (compiler, OS) level support for new Silicon solutions through the Open Source Community. As this has gradually happened, there is a perceived reduction in solution costs that have been passed on to the end user. The spectrum of smart-phones and tablets at CES 2011 was more than proof of how semiconductor majors worked on reducing time-to-market and system-software costs.

Businesses are increasingly adapting and learning to use community source (rather than roll their own code for everything,) wherever it gives them a significant advantage. The businesses having understood the potential, have also begun to reciprocate to the community. It's happening right now, almost oblivious to the glitz and glamour of a Consumer gadget show or a Technology forum.
Proprietary stand-alone platforms are quickly revising and re-inventing. To name a few, Microsoft Live, Microsoft Azure have been Microsoft's answer to the changing technology scape. Rumour mills suggest Apple Sabertooth could be Apple's answer to the change.

Ultimately, what began as the GNU revolution, and then the GNU/Linux revolution, to a full-fledged ecosystem expanding with options as new players joined has changed Information Technology irreversibly. 'The Cloud' is often compared with earlier ideas proposing 'Network Computers', later 'Network Computing.' Yet, the cloud solutions available rely on the evolved Open Source ecosystem. Community Source / Open Source has finally emerged as part of the change and catalyst to the change. The entire system has evolved without serving goals or targets of its own original projects by allowing itself and therefore impact, goal and user-base to change. The business model of the Open Internet Venture is here to stay. Corporate Entities and Governments are also embracing Open Source (WSJ).

Wikileaks, Censorship and Privacy

2010-12-31T13:11:00.000+05:30

Until recently I was under the assumption that "the right to privacy" was granted as part of Constitutional rights to a citizen. On further reading, however, I have found that explicit references to "the right to privacy" of an individual (or an entity) do not exist [ ref: legalserviceindia ] in the Indian Constitution. Upon web-trotting, I also found that the constitution of the "United States of America" also has no explicit reference [ ref: usconstitution.net ] to "the right to privacy." Interpretations of the Constitution, and therefore in terms of law, "the right to live" is assumed to include "the right to privacy."

In the interest of good governance, the public have "the right to information." In India, this is empowered by an act ( official manuscript ) passed by the parliament (in 2005.) For USA, the "Freedom of Information Act" (FOIA) passed in 1966 provides access to privileged information. Such acts provide a legal, authoritative and official channel to citizens enabling them receive information on request. In sharp contrast, governments also have an Official Secrets Act ( references ) which aid in limited circulation and censorship of sensitive information, broadly in the interest of governance and security. Interestingly, the United States of America does not have an Official Secrets Act, though the Espionage Act (ref: cornell) intends to secure military and defense information.

The Freedom of Press (ref: commentary, India ) is also empowered by the first amendment in the USA, while it is an act in India. Simplifying, freedom of press in modern society is allowed so long as the interests of the government and public security in a broad sense remain unaffected. Freedom of Information ( reference, pdf ) is upheld as an Internationally protected Human Right by the United Nations. The objective behind freedom of information is to ensure good governance. The United Nations hopes that freedom of information will help curb oppressive regimes and ensure human rights to the people of the world.

People do not want governments to invade their privacy. People have asked for governments to reveal information that was deemed classified to further their rights to better governance. The right to information, concerning an individual, might amount to invasion of the right to privacy of another. The same right to information, concerning government, under circumstances violating national security, may amount to espionage. It is fair to conclude that the delineation between the right to privacy and the right to information is unclear and therefore open to interpretation (or re-interpretation) in each context.

The information released by WikiLeaks was not done in a manner consistent with governmental release of information in the interest of the public. Furthermore, the information leaked by WikiLeaks included information pertaining communication across countries. Information released by WikiLeaks was not done on request by the people of the world. It is still unclear as to how the people of the world were meant to benefit.

The last release of contents of cables by WikiLeaks showed lack of adequate security measures of Information that was deemed classified. By simple reasoning, the initial reaction was to tighten security measures and improve practices. In a certain sense, WikiLeaks as an entity has invaded the privacy of the nations (primarily the USA,) and therefore citizens of those nations whose communication has leaked. International relations have been affected. Nations have been forced to react to the content of the "leaks." It is only logical that Nations provide accessible means to experience the right to information without affecting the right to privacy of individuals.

When content is obtained through unofficial means, possibly outside the framework provided by law, it is likely that some (or all) of the information is either incomplete, incorrect or outside the correct frame of context. It is time to establish a global framework to deal with such unprecedented leaks. Release of information outside channels established by government must be discouraged. The privacy of the individual is as valuable as the privacy of a government. When established procedure exists to call for information, and acts are being passed in countries to facilitate the same, efforts must be invested to ensure de-classification and right to information within the framework of governance. Encouraging right to information and promoting official channels that facilitate it will be in the right spirit.

WikiLeaks, in 2010, stands out as one of the largest unprecedented disclosures of information in volume and content. We must take adequate action to ensure that the repetition of a similar leak in the future can be dealt with, without affecting international relationships or threatening global security and peace. In this age, information (or misinformation) in itself could be deployed as a weapon to disturb or confuse nations and individuals equally. Information released without context can easily lead to misinterpretation or misunderstanding. In an age where we respect Intellectual Property Rights, disclosure of information without consent from the entities is invasion of privacy at the very least. As much as an individual considers access of one's own information by another without consent - an invasion of privacy, Governments representing people they govern do have similar rights to privacy.

Let us use information responsibly, respect everyone's right to privacy, freedom of expression and right to information.

and Promises kept ...

2010-12-27T13:15:00.000+05:30

Well, this is more on today's high speed, Tech savvy, texty, screeny, tweety, yuppy crowd. I've noticed that keeping promises in a fast paced world (things as simple as, I'll return your book tomorrow, I'll give you some templates tomorrow ...) are easier said than done. The immediate explanation all my friends jump to is that our generation is careless, callous holding a cavalier attitude to life. Every individual faces stress related amnesia.

I used to blame myself for forgetting trivia (now that I have gone lengths to preserve all requests that I have answered on my stead on a notebook to help me remember.) But the link above throws some light on the fact that we are actually pushing our mental faculty over the cliff. This results sometimes in short term memory loss. Here's the catch: unless you remember things within your short term memory, they have nil probability of being archived into our long term memory.

It is true that the human mind is almost not duplicable, distinct and a wonder in its own way. Yet, all of us refuse to accept that the very power we lean on, is the very limitation that holds us. Funny as it might seem, our senses are the sole windows for our souls to the world outside; likewise they are the very ones who can fool us about the world outside. (Gnosticism derives extensive conclusions from this assertment.)

The solution I've slowly been working on is to fight the cause rather than the symptom. Noting things down in a notebook for better memory retention is symptomatically addressing the problem. In contrast, improving short term memory rententivity should help transfer memory streams to our long term archive. However, reducing immediate and unplanned work load by extensive planning and anticipation is a much better approach.

Symptomatically of course, I find that being transparent (and therefore sharing information with more people) can only improve our chances of not forgetting what we promise. Being an ardent admirer of Agatha Christie's works, I admire Hercule Poirot sitting in his armchair, wading through information (more of misinformation in his context) to beget the fruits of his mental labours.

A promise kept, is one of the most self satisfying exercises in the world as I know it. The one forgotten easily grows into a consciencous torment that eats us until we morally dissociate ourselves from it. (There are those of us who consider this a sin in its own demerit.)

My experience is to keep working hours shorter, relax longer, read more; plan longer than you work, and avoid confusing entertainment with work - their separation is a strong relaxative, the blurring a nightmare that you'd better avoid. A calmer, lucid mind has a better chance to achieve, keep promises and stay on the square within the circle of gentlemen.

Dr. Binayak Sen, what has unfolded ...

2010-12-25T09:23:00.000+05:30

Justice as it seems is difficult to understand. Dr. Binayak Sen (ref. The Hindu) has definitely done whatever he could to help the rural population. It also happened that the same population he was helping was in a state of confusion and conflict; turmoil that had almost cut off the Indian government's hold for quite a while. The verdict was "guilty" on sedition. Many prominent individuals and political analysts have expressed shock over the verdict.

The Communist Party (Maoist) which had been banned considerably influenced the life of public in the region where Dr. Sen pursued his mission. The verdict seems to have drawn quick conclusion from post hoc reasoning. The possession of a copy of "Das Kapital" by Karl Marx has been taken in as evidence against him. This is undoubtedly creating a crisis of freedom and identity which is beyond Dr. Sen as an individual.

The accused in the horrific "Bhopal Gas tragedy", "Satyam Computers services scandal," and the currently investigated "Telecommunication License Scandal" do not seem to be under the heat of the scanner. The shocking verdict projects an image of lesser burden to individuals with High Net-worth. Ironically, this seems to reinforce the very ideals of the banned Communist Party (Maoist). The blanket ban on the party has also been on grounds of their support for naxalists and their activities that disrupt governance. There seems to be a complex identity crisis, where the ban cannot be on a group of naxalists or ultranationalists who disrupt government, but on the entire party and anyone with memberships or affiliations to that party. This inability to establish "identity" of those imposing a real threat (by naxalism, terrorism and anti-national activism,) is a serious issue.

Democracy must show tolerance to ideas, support individuals who go out of the way to help the needy. The true strength of democracy will be seen only if support to the needy is possible, when the needy are handicapped further by groups with stances and ideals opposed to the government. Sadly, the Judicial system has been unable to uphold the rights of free people - who fundamentally try to help others to experience the same freedom. As the Largest Democratic Republic in the world, our nation and its citizens are standard bearers of the very ideals of Democracy.

Helping people who are in a state of conflict with the government owing to prior failure of governance to address the issues led to what the courts have ruled as "sedition" and "conspiracy to commit treason." The "Chattisgarh Special Public Security Act (2005)" and "Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (1967)" are said to have been violated. Justice to the letter without consideration of the circumstances and the actual role of the person as a human rights activist seems obfuscated. The same individual has received International awards for outstanding work in providing healthcare.

The first priority of a country is freedom of its people, and therefore preservation of freedom (including national security,) its next and immediate care. The constitution is a rather complicated document (far more complicated than Isaac Asimov's laws for robots.) The interpretation of the rights permitted by the Indian constitution has been inconsistent.

Has freedom of people been preserved by the verdict?
Has freedom of the individual and consequently his freedom of expression permitted unabated?
Are we misinterpreting a true attempt at overthrow of Indian government by misplacing our sympathies with one activist?
Has our attention been drawn toward this issue because of the action taken on Dr. Binayak Sen?

These answers are presently clouded. The first care of the Indian government (or the Judicial authority) is to elucidate and free information that aids us in finding answers to these questions without doubt.

google.com was not accessible with my ISP

2010-10-25T09:05:00.000+05:30

I have been using a home broadband connection which is considered quite reliable in my part of the world. Unfortunately "google.com" and all "google.com" affiliate sites stopped responding three days earlier. I had alternate connectivity (and still do.) I have another box running Linux on which I run pdnsd for dns resolution and caching. I also run squid as my proxy server on that box. I found that google.com (despite accurate DNS lookup) did not respond on this machine for http and https access. I noticed that several other google sites like orkut also did not respond. However facebook does, bing, microsoft.com, digitalriver, steam, xbox-live, kernel.org, slashdot.org in no specific order respond fine.

The issue persisted after I renewed my PPPoE connectivity several times. I finally reached out to a google server meant for australia using the IP address and adding entries in my pdnsd.conf file (which is a terrible idea.) I finally received a ping response and was able to connect. The only possible explanation is that a route cache stored on a router either provided or used by my ISP is stale and incorrect.

The experience however helped me realise in a scary predicament. I have been using only one e-mail id personally for years although I pay for an alternate account with another service provider. Blocking me out of my e-mail communication made me realize that the centralized e-mail account or e-mail accounts from only one company create a single point of failure. Creating a google offline cache is not always a viable option as reliability of personal data storage needs to be on par or better than the service provider (which is difficult.) I had meeting schedules, shared documents and other content linked to one google account accessible through one google server. From a user/consumer's point-of-view this is not always reliable. I use a BlackBerry phone and their services have come under threat of government censure or disconnect for information disclosure for homeland security.

On the commercial side, ISPs and Network Service Providers of any kind do provide clear quality of service terms to their clients. In the event of any service outage they should be able to fix it or be answerable to damages arising due to denial of service. This already exists for services provided to the corporate sector. The individual SO/HO user is yet to benefit from stringent quality control measures. The ISPs are answerable to the government authorities for disclosure of user information without objections at any time. The government (of India, among many other nations) has passed laws to get user access information and personal access information under the argument that the social security of the people is served. It is only fitting therefore that the people receive uncensored information as a reserved right. Blocking of one site or route by an ISP can be censorship or a security-response. But this must be clearly reflected and informed to the users.

Getting Presentations to work for you

2010-06-17T17:55:00.000+05:30

After getting a bummer on a few lectures, I finally figured out a few tricks the hard way. Keep the audience restricted to a number who are most likely interested in the topic of the presentation. Human attention span is impressively short, if I have a 50 slide presentation (even if it were pictures) I know I need to cut down and focus. I find a 15 minute time line useful to have focus on a topic. After this I've learnt to move to an activity, usually a game or something that everyone (including me) thinks is fun. Everyone gets involved for a while. Then we get back to another 10 or 15 minute presentation. I looked up Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 emphasis.

Pictures are good on slides but animations (relevant to the topic) on the pictures are even better. Background music that's soft, almost barely audible also helps. Presentations in the afternoon are meant for sleeping. Activities can happen any time and a short message while everyone is at play is a nice trick to squeeze a presentation in. I've managed 6 hours with the tricks for one full day. The most important thing is to get feedback. The first session ought to be short and only for feedback.

If you can have a video of yourself presenting, that's cool, it gives you the right view of what's going on. Everyone (if they're old enough) can give their opinion on the presentation (Feedback forms ought to be short and easy to fill, no "writing text", just check boxes or simpler stuff.) I figured out that getting voice to work with the environment's audio setup (with or without a microphone), the presentation system, any video backgrounds or music or sound effects (used sparingly) ought be checked out.

Everyone (kids and adults) like to play or do something which fits their idea of fun. A presentation works if people get involved by doing something more than talking. Breaking my earlier rant on this topic, people generally pay less attention to a presentation prepared earlier because they never saw us spend time making one. Surely they aren't imagining how hard it would've been when they see the presentation. The only answer to this is to make presentations with lesser effort graphically.

Here are the things I've finally figured to stay out of. Never start the presentation by starting your favorite presentation software. This used to be magicpoint, later I tried out Microsoft PowerPoint for all the cool effects and made this mistake. The Presentation ought to be made as a story board or a flow diagram on paper and has to be imagined or acted out before creating the cool aid. I found a few programs like SmartDraw which claim to help creating story boards without actually showing any presentation. I haven't used them, but I guess that'd be cool. I am also trying to figure out what Tom Hanks (playing Robert Langdon) in the movie The DaVinci Code uses during his introductory presentation on symbology in the movie. I haven't seen the movie on HD, so I can't guess from the stills.

Guest Lectures and an old Geezer

2009-12-29T18:09:00.000+05:30

My series of guest lectures came to an abrupt halt thanks to the audience being most unresponsive. I know stuff can be boring, but with every effort to make it interesting with pictures and illustrations and with new stuff for the kids I hoped they'd find it interesting. They found it over the head and I did my best to reach them and make them ask doubts, talk to me, respond to queries, opine, suggest, whatever.

Nothing useful came out and I decided that I was being taken for an old geezer. I spent at least 6 waking hours (considering I've been sleepy all the while strangely) preparing the presentations. Consecutive guest lectures are a bad idea if the audience isn't appreciative of the effort taken to prepare a presentation or lecture for them. The one I'm referring to was on Memory Management and was comprehensive, utterly simple and only a sleepy absent audience could ignore it and they did.

"Who in their right mind would ever need more than 640K of RAM!?" Bill Gates, 1981. That's exactly what these kids are thinking right now. Down with MMUs and Virtual Memory.

My next one was to be on algorithmic complexity analysis. I doubt they can take much math and it takes time to prepare slides on math, easier to write down on a board with chalk. So what the heck, indefinitely postpone the presentation - that's the best thing. Let them finish their course and I can then find out if they really know algorithmic complexity. Guys are shy to talk because they'd be labeled nerds. Girls don't want to be non-girly. Barf!! What is the point of lecturing people who don't think it's useful? Lose-Lose for both sides, best solution - avoid it.

Nature triggers a Comedy of Errors

2009-12-22T18:39:00.000+05:30

Today I set out to buy a mobile phone, a bluetooth headset and a battery for my old phone. The former were to be gifts for Christmas. I joined Mom and my Sis in their shopping routine. As my planning went I had in mind "Univercell" who advertise quite frequently as the best-price providers in the state. When I reached there I found the place devoid of customers and of the Nokia 5800 model I was looking for. I was told that this model would be available by 4pm in the evening and the sales staff happily took down my number. I never received a call from this person even 3 hours after 4pm.

I got to the Nokia authorized mobile shop by almost 1:15pm. One of the chaps in charge asked me to wait while he checked on the model and told me that this Nokia 5800 was available. The price quoted was lower than "Univercell's" markup price. He told me it was in a nearby warehouse and he just had to pick it up. He then started making several calls to someone presumably in the warehouse. After half an hour, I was told that the mobile will be available only by 3:30pm. I had ordered for the Nokia battery for my older phone by this time. I left the order unpaid and told him that I would come by 3:00pm or later and get the phone.

I had already planned to refuel my car and check my tyre pressure in the afternoon and this would be no tall order. In the afternoon I set off after receiving a call from the salesman of the Nokia shop. Rain had started pouring heavily. Unknown to me the rain had set off disconnecting phone lines that connected ATMs and Credit Card machines around town. I reached the shop after fueling my car (paying cash, no curse, I had planned for this at least) and checking tyre pressure. I went to the Nokia shop, ordered an extra pouch for the phone I was buying as a gift.

Then started the comedy of errors. I have three cards, none of which were accepted. On calling the bank executive I found that my accounts were in order. Then the shopkeeper checked his line with his own card and found that his machine wasn't connecting and ended up with an error message "server busy." This was a HDFC bank POS machine. The shopkeeper called up his customer care line and they told him that this error can be fixed only by their service staff who are not available. Then the shopkeeper told me that from yesterday morning this machine seemed to be out of service. I was beginning to get impatient which was only natural.

I decided to go to the nearest ATM which was at walking distance. Another service person in the shop told me that the nearest ATM had been out-of-order for at least the past two days. But the shop-keeper affirmed that it was fixed in the morning and it was working fine. It was heavy rain. I braved the rain with an umbrella, reached the ATM to find that it was "Out of Service." This was an "Indian Bank" ATM. The bank security staff in charge of the ATM told me that this ATM was out of order from the morning.

I took leave of the shopkeeper temporarily and tried the next nearest ATM which was about a kilometer away. The downpour was heavier by now and it was good I wasn't knocking off anyone on the road as visibility was really poor. There was a big pool of water in front of the ATM and I had to get my feet wet to just get to the ATM. This too was out of service. The guard in charge of the ATM finally told me that I could try as the "online" message started flashing back again. As I started my transaction the ATM hung up abruptly. I was only thankful that the software ejected the card on a hang-up.

Now dejected, I called my local bank executive and asked him whether I could withdraw cash. He answered in the affirmative. So I went, withdrew money from my account the old-fashioned way with a withdrawal slip and came back. I was still short of some cash as the Nokia shopkeeper had calculated it wrong. I then went back home to get the balance from my draw and then went back to the shop. I was a bit vexed by now. The downpour was on and off. Finally I managed to get all the three items, the gift, the battery I intended to get and the headset. I forgot all about the pouch as I drove back home. That was the difference for which I had already visited home.

I finally asked the shopkeeper to do me a favor by dropping the pouch at my house as I hadn't availed a single discount. I am yet to receive this item. But one heavy rainfall cutting off ATM lines can change your plans drastically. This is what I learnt through my long (relative to the day) ordeal. Imagine a full natural catastrophe. It can send all our plans berserk because of our heavy reliance on technology. All technology is not failsafe and one possibly cannot make technology that is entirely failsafe. Even the old timely tested processes and methods rely on some sort of technology and are not failsafe. Humanity's great progress can be halted by one lash of nature. This is not the time of the year it rains in my town, at least not regularly. While this may not be indicative of climate change, it beckons us to learn and understand nature better before we build processes and technology to ease our daily lives.

Fake Medicines in India, a Personal Experience

2009-12-16T07:57:00.000+05:30

I just experienced the fact of fake medicines recently as I was taking a particular prescription drug. I had tried out the same drug as a "Physician's Sample" (My Dad being my Physician.) The drug worked incredibly well and was most effective. I decided to have a regular regimen of the drug for the prescribed duration and bought the drug from a medical shop. I had bought the drug of the same manufacturer. The result was no effect from the drug. The problem I experience is lack of sleep to which this drug was great help. It was most frustrating to find the same drug with the same pharmaceutical ingredients listed not working as the samples worked. No who said "demos are better than the actual software application" is true only for the Software Industry. The Pharmaceutical industry isn't far behind.

I later found an article from Indian Express: link to article which illustrates the problem of fake or adulterated drugs. It is generally accepted that 20-25% of the drugs with the label "made in India" are fake. The first article on this was run on medindia about seizure of fake medicines in Europe in 2005. This news item appeared in 2006. There are no effective enforcement agencies within India to ensure that fake medicines are identified early and the respective manufacturers penalized. Most drug inspectors either succumb to the loss of adequate time for inspection or to the vicissitudes of corruption that denies them from being able to execute their duty.

The worst part I found about fake medicines is that they extend from popular drugs, over-the-counter drugs and now to life-saving drugs. Unless citizens take a wake-up call and fight against such medication, there is absolutely no hope for getting rid of this problem. The companies blame it on agencies in their supply chain rather than taking responsibility themselves which could impact their brand name heavily. Further there is sporadic news about China introducing medication with a "made in India" label. While this is plausible, this may be only a follow-up to the fact that fake medication is unmonitored and tolerated in India.

Formula One in 2010

2009-05-10T21:11:00.000+05:30

Everyone is watching the F1 Sport open up through 2009. The good news is the attempt to reduce expenses and create fuel efficient solutions and wear efficient solutions for Race cars. The Automobile industry players (Manufacturers) have been of mixed opinion on Bernie Ecclestone's (a.k.a FIA) changes to the FIA rules which do not favor teams with $$$. This is the 5th year in succession that the rule-book has been redone, which is good to know. You hardly think there is any plan to it though. This is no Peeling the Onion by Larry Wall (for Perl fans.)

The second goal was to make racing look like racing with almost anyone in the field being able to challenge for the lead. You're probably laughing - Yes, F1 racing hasn't seen much racing except in pit garages for quite some time. It has been a case in the past and even on most circuits today that F1 races look like parade laps for sports cars with very little overtaking and real racing happening through an entire hour. You can watch the First corner for some early racing and the top 8 positions being fought for during the endgame. (That's the first 5 and the last 5 minutes.)

This has to change to bring in the true feel of racing. Everyone participating has to agree to race lap after lap. The A1 format has nice multi-tier races that are good to watch. They might even include in-team Dead Heat rounds if you had two cars in a team (A1 has one car a team.)

This is the time, F1 needs to take a few cues from Champ Car racing or the Indy 500. The field must be close with cars "Racing". Winners and Loses must not be decided purely on strategic chess games. Driving, Pit Crews, Race Engineers, Team Managers during the race weekend must be the deciding factor. Major Aerodynamics, Engine, Chassis innovations, if allowed must be coming fully tested or not allowed at all. Banning interim testing, but allowing massive changes to help teams who cannot run cars for testing is not the best way around.

Teams should Share technical information on the secret racing recipe that will be fixed for the year, but block pit conversations, strategy, fuel load information so that the whole game is played in the weekend, not in a Factory. Tough to digest for the FIA, but better for the fans, teams and drivers. That's weekend to weekend racing, nothing is decided completely in a factory - especially the doom of a team.

Right now, F1 2009 has less electronic control. It has public team/driver conversations (sounds like Indy and Champ Car?) It has a fowled up aerodynamic package by design constraints. This forces cars to rely on tyres for grip and better braking. A few teams managed to get good Aerodynamics out of the new rules. Some call them smart and some call them foul, but they're the one's scoring. Engines have to last multiple races, gear boxes at least 2 races. while many of these have reduced the variables, the FIA worked backwords by introducing a "You could use this technology if you want - KERS (pronounced Curse)" which made everybody guess what 25kg extra can do to ruin (seldom help) your race. The variable which is changeable over race weekends is no longer a variable. All cars that run KERS(curse) never make it to #1. That's a given. The technology is immature and unreliable, with most teams opting out. The FIA can dictate engine restrictions, prevent turbo and ask teams to build energy recovery systems, but leave designs to the teams contrary to how KERS(curse) was proposed.

In Earlier years, F1 teams had the luxury to change cars (gearboxes, engines and almost full packages within the rules) during the start of the race if there was a false start. I remember M.Schumacher racing from a T-Car more than once in different scenarios. Teams reworked cars after qualifying, made fuel loads impossible to guess. The Qualifying run was a strategy game and only teams with the best strategists and enough resources (more tyres, fuel, settings) got the better out of it.

Despite all efforts from the FIA, results are slow. Cars are closer in qualifying, but you could still predict who would take #1, #2, #3 with reasonable accuracy and maybe even the rest (some of which is just chaos.)

Here is the 2009 team line-up:
Brawn GP - found the hole in the interpretation of the laws and got better aerodynamic efficiency for the cars despite the strict restrictions, Top Dog Drivers, Result - Podium, Top Constructors points.
Red Bull Racing - built a better car within the strict restrictions. Result - Podium, Awesome drivers, Top Constructors points.
Toyota - hefty racing budget, good drivers, erratic performance, can win races, but tries not to.
Williams - good team, best brains in the park, top class drivers, can win races, tries really hard not to.

Ode to the earlier World Champs:
McLaren Mercedes - New Car, Good Drivers, No speed, Unable to defend a Championship. Seriously, what did the FIA think?
Scuderia Marlboro Ferrari - New Car F60, The Best Drivers, Seldom Reliable Machinery, Can Race within 20% of the fastest car (that would be a Brawn usually in 2009 or a Red Bull or a Toyota.), Race crew manages strategy by random polling, blind to all else that moves.
Renault - New Car, Good Drivers - one fiery ex-world Champ, Not enough speed, Unable to fight for championship.

Then to tag along with the yester-champs are more teams. Nothing much to be said about most of them.
BMW Racing, Toro Rosso, Force India F1 (Drink Kingfisher, but don't drive to the finish - just kidding.)

The constructors already saw it coming. A1 GP is another format which has a lot more racing, but still continues to be a parade. The only good news is with fewer variables each result is a bit unpredictable. The big mistake is having country sponsored or named teams that sorts of kills racing spirit. This ain't football or cricket.

In 2010 FIA wants to do more big brother work and cut spending of teams to EUR 40M. This will exclude only the pay package of the drivers. That's plain horrible for 200-600 odd staff that man a full racing team. It's asking all these guys to go home packing. Budget Cap, Cost Cutting - I've heard of it before. This is not the way it must happen here. FIA is suddenly turning towards socialism and wants to be backed by capitalist car manufacturers (serious!) This is not going to work, as many teams have already started to rebel.

By 2010, FIA wants to be the one body that rules 'em all; like the one ring - seriously, scary!!! The ring may never be forged, and there may be no more F1 in the manner we have seen it before. It is time for the constructors to bring in some method into this madness.

F1 has to be a sport enjoyed by engineers, race crews, drivers and fans. It might end up in memory as the Key you press to get "Online Help." 2010 will define the future of F1 Racing itself. F1 can continue if FIA becomes history, but that move has to happen sooner. The best is for the Constructors and the FIA to work together in better terms with more sensible ideas to the table. It will be tough, so Bernie Ecclestone has all to do in 2009 to save racing in 2010.

There are some who believe that F1 racing is a waste of fuel lap over lap. With parade laps it will be difficult to contradict them. There are at least 4 circuits out of 19 that permit almost no overtaking in racing conditions. (Monaco, Spain, Singapore, Bahrain) The rest can play it to weather and other variables simply because all F1 races save one (Singapore?) must happen at 1200GMT in the time-zone of the continent of the venue. Not much thought has been given here. Rain is not just unpredictable, but sometimes unsafe and can prematurely end a race. A wet track is what took Ayrton Senna out in 1994 - low air pressure, low bodies and multiple incidents before the Senna crash.

All said, Lotus, Tyrell and Super Aguri want to join in the fun by 2010 which will have space for 13 teams. That could be a move in the right direction.

Startups, Open Source and Revenue - Myth vs Truth

2009-04-15T17:21:00.000+05:30

Many believe that if you release your software product with the source open, any customer can procure it, better it and sell it thereby eliminating you in the market outright. This is one of the frequent arguments against opening source code and therefore to "Open Source" that many businesses quote.

I believe they will need to cite a case here. Buy Product Once, Get Source and Kill; sounds too easy to be true.

Actually I have source code of some game engines released by id software, and I know gaming companies who compete who have this, yet, I don't see anyone killing "id". I also have pieces of OpenSolaris and OpenStorage from SUN. IBM shouldn't have even made that $7b bid after expressing interest in OpenStorage among other areas from Sun.

I could even do this with "proprietary software" where source is offered whenever I pay (a much smaller sum than net worth of a company.) There are tons of companies who are willing to part with source for higher costs.

Sun wouldn't have "bought out" Virtual Box and MySQL if they could just use the source instead. Buying Out is one of the available "exit strategies" for a cash-strapped startup.

Clearly someone has to prove that Redhat's profits have dropped because Canonical and almost everyone else who has taken on pieces of code has cut into a static pie of consumer market. The truth is software markets are closely linked to a lot of other markets including service markets. These markets grow or shrink dynamically. The whole pie however depends on user base which has been constantly expanding.

For OpenOffice, I think resurrection of Lotus with the OpenOffice source is proof enough that an entirely different company used this. Transgaming's Wine is open-source except for a portion of the DirectX (not all of it) libraries. You could potentially run your own company and beat them, or a "Giant" can have them without buying source. Transgaming emulates Windows libraries on Unixes (starting with Linux and now on Mac OS X.) Does an Apple certified vendor or Apple actually sell proprietary Microsoft Windows Games support? (Not to my knowledge.)

Revenues: Eric Raymond probably has a few tips. Product Engineering outfits do widget frosting, the model that's simple to understand. Some "violate" Open Source citing that they cannot make profits; on similar arguments raised here. Savings as revenue is an oft cited case. Today it is far more relevant. If your cost to create something is potentially reduced you can reduce the price a customer has to pay while you still make a profit.

My former employer did buy software for incorporating into products. My former employer is a profitable product company. However, because we could not modify one small piece of the bought-in black box (with no possibilities to acquire source at any cost) we just had a 25% increase in development life-cycle. That was "Loss." We decided never again to consume anything from "closed source" companies as it potentially created black boxes of uncertainty within our own products.

Open Source is not Free(dom) Software always nor is it Free (Beer.)

Source code (which is open,) is a more primitive formal expression of the binary format of the product which is re-usable and easier to modify than the binary format of the product.

The binary format (executable files) of many products can also be reverse engineered. (Remember Borland!? They did not advocate Open Source but where caught up with Sidekick.) This is also easy for a heavy-weight as opposed to a smaller group.

Myth: "Open Source makes a startup vulnerable to acquisition."
Truth: "Low on Cash makes anything vulnerable to acquisition."

Myth: "Open Source companies suffer a handicap while trying to make revenue."
Truth: "Companies unprepared to serve their customers suffer a handicap while trying to make revenue."

Time, the press stopped incorrect interpretation of Open Source as non Revenue Generating.

Watch this video (at youtube) for Guy Kawasaki's take on "Revenue from Open Source" and "Open Source enabling Startups."

Censorship and India

2008-08-25T06:54:00.001+05:30

The new "Axe Deo, Dark Temptation" ad has been deemed vulgar and removed due to some moral policing. The unfortunate effect of this action is that the "other" Axe ads go away as ones that have been accepted by those who have done the same moral policing. In simplicity almost all the Axe ads have treated women as creatures with Pavlovian responses. Pulling off a statement with one ad is just to give a clean chit to the rest of them.

It is better instead to leave this judgement to the people who in their minds have already dispensed off the ad. I

Moral policing in Bangalore has required almost all Pubs and Discotheques to apply for "extra licenses" or to be treated at the same level as "Dance Bars" (which are illegal.) This, coupled with confusion on what licenses are required and what freedom is allowed has put an abrupt halt to the night life. Owing to the fact that fewer people are out at night, there are very few reports of crime at night. This is not the first time a ban has been issued on the status and strict 11:30pm closure has been policed. Many officials seem to view this as a welcome change.

The end effect of moral policing is to pass a strong message to the citizens of India saying, "We are incapable of moral choice and self-discipline." This choice is being made by "authorities" who believe they are "capable" of moral choice. It is sad to see that after 60 years of independence, independent people in India are believed not to have self-discipline nor the capability of moral choice.

The stronger part of this message is delivering it at Bangalore deemed the InfoTech capital of India. This is the part of the country where the "Intellectual" labor force is concentrated. The weakness of the Indian constitution in preserving all forms of freedom of expression without the need of taking up any licenses for each of the freedoms in article 14 of the constitution is clearly exposed.

Making things work!

2008-03-24T19:20:00.000+05:30

At work, of late, things have taken a rather different turn for the better. The working hours are quite strict, with the only (and my most preferred) form of entertainment being Table Tennis at the gymnasium. I have found that just a single game preceded by a short warm-up can have your mind savvy to take on problems with much more ease. Adding more to it, if you do tend to move a lot while playing Table Tennis (which I do a lot), it also works as a very positively fulfilling exercise for both the body and the mind.

The resultant is the ability to quickly think of solutions to problems, create results when they are required without bleeding across the working hours. Our new working hours depend on the new location, availability of service staff and facilities. Ultimately you start learning to do more with less time and less stress to body and mind. Of course, there were times when I felt I was taken up to spending a lot more time at the gym rather than at my terminal. Finally one can always create a balance to enhance both work and play. Both of them become equally rewarding to the self.

This also leads me to believe that games are the best way for the human mind and body to exercise together in tandem helping one's health by both relaxing and pushing physical fitness. There's the fun too. Perhaps many corporate companies are missing out on an effective tool that can help employees enhance productivity. The other self-imposed exercise activities including cycling and walking or running the treadmill do not have the element of excitement that a game gives, and serve purely a physical fitness purpose. There are those who need that too, but I find far less people frequenting them.

As I've tried and planned out all my weekends and sometimes weeks to involve a greater amount of social interaction than I previously had, this week seems to be bringing in the results I've been looking for. While I do not specifically go on creating new year resolutions; I like bringing into myself change that suits me and helps me become better in every perspective. It's been a long time since we had a team outing with Dinner and a Movie at least, and we hope to be doing that this week just ahead of a hopeful outing (where it's presently raining cats and dogs.)

Holi and the Holy Week

2008-03-23T08:14:00.000+05:30

It has been quite a long time since I've posted on my own Blog. Today being Easter, is probably a nice day to post. It is actually a mark of the beginning of resurrection. It is truly a wonderful day; on the basis of showing mankind that even after what might be perceived a fall or unfavorable conditions, there is triumph of the unabated soul through resurrection.

During this week, specifically this year a lot of festivals came up together on the day I remember as "Good Friday." At work there has been specific devotion to product quality improvement, new product planning, preparing our unit for stronger leadership and taking more roles on my part to see things through smoothly and strongly. This has taken a lot of positive effect, infused energy and enthusiasm to make our jobs as problem solvers more satisfactory.

We also played Holi on the day of Good Friday where I chose to be at office having taken leave on Maundy Thursday. I must say this is the first time during my 1 year 10 month stay in Bangalore that I chose to participate in Holi. Back in Pune, I used to be literally scared of the colors and the dyes, so much that I used to vanish before dawn only to be at work while the fun lasted. I understood that Holi (in its present cosmopolitan form against its true origin) is a sociable, fun-filled, friendly event. It might seem in converse to Good Friday which is spent in mourning for the suffering of Christ. I have no regrets on the choices made for the day.

At home, there has been the dawn of a calm after an unexpected turn of events over the last year which I had commented on my blog prior. There are those who have suddenly sought to contact me after a long while. Old friends have networked with me (including schoolmates, I had lost touch with.) There is also the rain that has showered this week, after (literally) sunny days where our usual afternoon walk (at office) seemed a bit more unpleasant than it usually was.

Some paid lighting visits over the month on trips to Bangalore and as a gesture of friendship I accommodated them at least long enough for them to refresh for their busy day in the city; arranged for transport to help them get back to the airport. There are those who chose to stay out of contact from me who have suddenly chosen to start communicating. Either way the effect has been more social contact. Across every week/weekend either I have visited (usually closer to my house) or someone has visited me (close to my house or at home.)

There have also been those who have solely communicated by phone (who believe the phone is an instrument that guarantees privacy over long distances; an urban myth I do not subscribe to). As I prefer to do any personal talking from home rather than while at office or on the move or outside; this has sometimes led me to sleep later than I've wanted to. I like e-mail as the high speed equivalent of written communication, which wastes less time and carries with it more clarity.

There have been those reading my blog frequent enough without commenting and expressing opinion. Either way it makes for readership of what I thought was a vain loss of expression. That is what makes this exercise of blogging fulfilling. Ultimately the scribes get to write History that lasts longer than the events. The blog if it survives on the Internet (for long enough), will do exactly the same thing that a "Minutes of a Meeting" do after the meeting. So perhaps there is readership and record.

On the whole, The Holy week was filled with peace and calm and as the entire period of Lent came to an end with a fulfilling joy in the mind; combined with mixed feelings at work (where we presently seek and await new Leadership), yet appreciate all the energetic things we've done till now.

We are also planning a farewell to someone at work who has chosen to spend time rather differently, indulge in self-exploration and understand the true fulfilling pursuits of self. We intend to club it with a team picnic and make it memorable to all of us as an outing we haven't had over 9 months. These details are being worked out and executed at a pace that is too fast to describe.

Training, Fun and Work!

2008-02-23T08:15:00.000+05:30

This week was much less on work load. We had a nice training session by Dexter Valles. His way of showing how we could improve our managerial skills was interesting. We did a few psychometric exercises to understand ourselves. We had a few activities which, irrespective of the results, reflected our current style of doing things. Our scotoma in being more task-oriented than goal or vision oriented showed up. We used the opportunity to learn new ways to rid ourselves of this scotoma. The entire training session setup for a period of 2 days was fun filled and also gave us the opportunity to meet managerial teammates across D-Link.

We had initiated at work a more spirited fun-filled exercise of requesting everyone to decorate their cubes with a theme that was across an entire team. This too was well done. The Video team guys came up with a D-Link in 2020 theme, while we EmSys chaps came up with "Hardware/EmSys going Green" which was more about the company's own mantra. Ours was a more permanent setup that did not disturb our workplace and looked less like decor. We liked it. There were other interesting themes about which were checked out by our CEO Mr.Jangoo Dalal.

Friday, was a time for birthday celebrations and fun of all sorts. We organised an ethnic wear competition and followed it up with a collage game. There were special snacks served for the day (which is not done as usual at this office.) Everyone seemed to thoroughly enjoy it, and we made sure that the fence-sitters were also sufficiently entertained. The first steps of making work more fun was initiated with this.

via nova

2008-02-13T05:48:00.000+05:30

With the shift to the new office facility complete on 11-Feb-2008, I am now using a new timing (0730hrs - 1630hrs) every day at office. This is coupled with 90 minutes of travel to and fro under ideal conditions insofar. The total distance is 21.5 km which is 43 km to and fro no matter what short-cuts you can try.The way to office is a little better in terms of road condition and traffic [the time being earlier in the day]. There are pick-ups and drops for two timing shifts 0730-1630 and 0800-1700 in use presently. These are mostly Chevrolet Taveras which are quite roomy and comfortable.

Doing this journey by myself (thanks to my Chauffer) has required me to be much more disciplined in my sleep and wake-up. I no longer have the luxury of error in the morning owing to the traffic that swarms the new via everyday. There is an elevated highway in construction on the new route. However that seems to be taking quite long and probably until 2009 or sometime into 2009 to near completion. Further the elevated highway is being created as a 2-laner which may result in traffic problems in the future when it is commissioned for use.

Facilities at the new office are nice. People still find the shift from 0930-1030 to 0730-0800 difficult to adjust. This is probably the first week of the human body's rebellion to change. I have been lucky to start office with breakfast and my favorite coffee.

The Release ...

2008-02-05T21:13:00.000+05:30

One of the teams at my company is making a field trial product release. This had a lot of dependencies from my team which we had to close with a lot of "process" to avoid political conflict. For the first time insofar at D-Link, I have been able to breathe easy while The Release is on. This will soon be followed by a Product Launch shortly with the press and marketing events.

While it has been essentially a good show so far, there have been few show-stoppers. Things that people took for granted earlier came back. Murphy's law is active in full swing. The release has been postponed by two days (and is presently almost a tomorrow() function which never really happens today()). I see frantic activity to solve at the last minute whatever could have been addressed and sorted out earlier.

I know for a fact that in most academic centers (schools and higher educational institutions alike), there is mass behavior of handling examinations and practicals at the last minute. I tend to believe that this behavior is carried on to work and life as one comes out of the academy into the real unforgiving world. Perhaps one important thing that most schools and universities miss out is to teach students timeliness and ensure that last minute work is discouraged with the strongest possible measures.

People find it difficult to do more with the time they have everyday. Everyone who takes up multiple responsibilities out of interest find themselves unable to serve all. People hardly benchmark and find their capacity nor do they work on increasing their capacity to deliver more in less time. This could be simply an exercise of recording daily activities whilst at school or work. This way activities that take too long can be weeded out and that time can be put to better use. I have done this by having a latent diary record, a realtime record (of activities as and when they are complete). These tools helped me plan.

I feel that whoever is postponing tasks at the last minute has been too busy prior with other problems that some were ignored until they popped up late. The real solution to being cool, calm and level-headed during a Product Release is to avoid ever having been too busy to have ignored other responsibilities whilst tackling a Gordian knot.

That said, when one is in a situation it is hardly useful to be retrospective. One needs to get out of the bear-hug of the last-minute. This can only be done with strong leadership, assertive decision making, participative management and guidance to whomsoever seeks it. Then people will be able to get out of charybdis. Perhaps a lesson in Greek Mythology would also help!

A Special Day at School

2008-01-25T16:49:00.000+05:30

On the 24th, I had the opportunity and the privilege to be part of a great gathering at my school, Don Bosco Mat. Hr. Sec. School, Thanjavur. This was the celebration of the Silver Jubilee (25 years of the institution) from 1982-1983. It was nostalgic and more a family re-union than a celebration of an event.

Many former Rectors and Principals of this school made it to the function. I remember especially Rev. Fr. Joseph Fernandez, Rev. Fr. Paulraj Maniam, Rev. Fr. A T Thomas, Rev. Fr. Patrick Alphonse, Rev. Fr. Amalraj Thomas. It was sad that Rev. Fr. V. V. Abraham (who gave me my first opportunity to use a laptop) was unable to attend because of an illness which has kept him indisposed in Delhi.

Several teachers, including beloved Mr. Sekar, Mr. Albert, Mr. Souvuriraj, Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Kumar were able to attend the function. Mr. Paulraj, Mr. Gabriel, Mr. Balasubramaniam, Ms. Jacintha, Mrs.Hazell were all part of the events and continue to be involved in the everyday activities of the Institution.

I had the privilege to share a few words about my experiences at school, which was taken in good light by all the former rector principals who had arrived for the solemn gathering. We shared more experiences on our personal life, exchanged business cards and "re-connected" the family. I shall never know how the skills and values imbibed in me through the days at school can ever be repaid for.

Of the past pupils several from the batch of 2004 had made it. The earliest batch who managed to make it had one participant, Dr. Leo Joseph who practices in Thanjavur who also shared his experiences of the earliest days of the institution. Sadly a few residents of Thanjavur Dr.Manoj Xavier and Dr.Anand Mohan were indisposed and unable to attend the function. Most of my batch-mates (1997 pass-out) had the information too late and were unable to plan the trip due to dearth of tickets as the Music festival in Thiruvaiyar has already begun.

The day started with an early and long mass. The function had several performances from both the Primary and the High school. The function took until 1345hrs and was followed by a luncheon buffet in which all the past pupils, and parents of the past pupils partook with the members of the Salesian family.

I had the opportunity to mingle with some of my juniors (past pupils) and get to know them better. This was indeed a most wonderful and nostalgic event. The institution merely did not give us academic opportunity. All the teachers, brothers, Fathers and the non-teaching staff of the institution instilled in us skills to become better people with better values and respect. It was nice to see Ms.Lourde Marie being honoured for her service to the institution as the caretaker maid for the Primary school. I remember her getting me to eat when I was in preparatory school (then called Dominic Savio, in honour of a boy saint chared by Don Bosco.)

The values to treat individuals as equals, to respect everyone's opinion and to put morality above all else are priceless. This is what the institution had instilled in everyone. They had done this with a paradigm of education named "The Preventive System" whereby students are not "punished" for their wrongs, but rather guided in a way they would avoid mistakes and correct themselves had they committed one.

Today, Newspapers talk of the "Education Ministry's" order to prevent "punishment" in schools that cause potential injury. Most schools are ill-placed to really understand and implement this law.

The Preventive System does more than that, it instills self-discipline in the "Individual." In the words of my first Principal in school Fr. Berkman, this Family was, is and will continue to be a place for creating "Persons" (who by definition are people to whom one can relate with, not beings or individuals in isolation) with high regard for morality and social values.

We, the students of this school will always remain Students of Don Bosco Mat.Hr.Sec. School, Dear School of our Hearts!!

Under the Blue Hood

2008-01-21T21:26:00.000+05:30

The building in the neighborhood has almost completely been taken down. This can be barely noticed under the blue tarpaulin hiding the work that goes inside and effectively keeping away the dust from the demolition. Now, at the last phase of demolition, they need to take away the car shed. The bad news is that the car shed (almost) shares a load bearing wall with my car shed.

For the last few days I knew that they had made great progress, but had no awareness of how far they had progressed. Now there does exist a chance that there will be damage to the car shed which will result in the initiation of heavy repair work; not to mention thoroughly strained relationships with the neighbor.

With the help of a close aide, I have kept watch on the work for most of today and am informed that the supervisor (again) was not present while the workers (who probably have never been to any school sadly) were sledge-hammering the car shed. I have warned that there will be legal (and more than legal) action taken if they were to attempt anything stupid without proper guidance. Further, the house owner has also been warned that the city municipal authorities will be notified if a single crack shows up.

The reason I revisit this demolition is, people seem to need constant monitoring or would get back to their old ways of doing things. In this case, the old way is irresponsible, clumsy and dangerous to self and others. The owners of the neighboring land have also shown a little less than callous attitude towards addressing this.

They have the most to lose or gain. The more clumsier and uncontrollable their contracted employees; the less the chance of a good "building" and "timely completion" of the work. Worse still is their social image in the neighborhood which already has taken a bit of a fall.

All human beings seem to operate with the ideal that once they are out of sight, no one is watching. That means they have the freedom to break every law (if it were man-made and could be broken) and fall back on every word they gave. In simple words "honor" is a lost word in society. "Honor is what no one can give you and no one can take away." - Rob Roy. People who would rather appear to be something they are not do not hold integrity. By that, their place in society is questionable. Inaction of society too can abet the destruction of society. That is precisely how the society allows people of low (or no) integrity to survive and in some sense prosper degrading society itself.

This problem of a simple building demolition with no consideration to the neighbors is probably nothing in comparison to what people are capable of doing in their own self interests. That would not mean that it is palatable and passable in society. This is just how we add on to society's woes which we finally never get to solve, unless we go "John Woo" style.

Sourcery

2008-01-20T21:21:00.000+05:30

This weekend was spent tinkering with a lot of code and updating systems. I also have a visitor at home for the weekend which is really nice (as I tend to be alone most of the time.) I have also taken up the task of getting FreeBSD installation CDs from the web. My only concern at present is which of my boxes is to be converted. Unlike my earlier days, I now have to take these decisions far more carefully because I have lots of data stored all over the place and would really miss them if I ended up formatting or slicing things again. I have decided to postpone the decision to the end of the week.

The other news is, after a lot of talking and contacting, the neighborhood demolition work is being done professionally. I haven't had to worry too much except about the dust plumes from the site. The coming week would be really important as there are a few of my teammates shifting; and therefore throwing parties out for the same.

The Video Gauntlet

2008-01-19T08:43:00.000+05:30

The whole week at work was spent in a gauntlet with people perceptually rating video quality on something I'm working on. Perceptual qualification, whether statistical or empirical is a nightmare. Unfortunately marketing teams have to depend on human behavioral traits to sell, so doing perceptual quality analysis is supposedly good.

This is probably the fourth time within a quarter that people who originally admitted quality was much better than prior, reverted saying it wasn't so and needed improvement. That reminded me of the Akbar-Birbal story (sometimes attributed to Tenali Rama) of how a line drawn on the floor can be made shorter without changing it. Birbal in one version of the story just draws a longer line beside it demonstrating relativism. By induction that line too could be made shorter.

Thanks to some help from a Camera expert and a few more efforts, we did get a good percentage of techies to be happy with the results. I find that as human beings our qualification of everything in this world is relativistic and based on prior experience. If something is entirely new with nothing to compare with, we still find something in our mind and provide a relativistic score as to how "good" or "bad" something is. The whole technique is platonic.

This relativistic comparison is so deep-rooted that it becomes a major drive for social improvement and improvement of civilization as a whole. Human beings always comparing and trying to find the "better" are the drive for constant improvement. Kaizen is rooted biologically in our very selves as evolution itself would be.

Engineering attempts to freeze specifications are against this very biological instinct. We probably need a new technique in this world of rapid change to create products or solutions for people. The Gordian knot here is "when do we stop comparing?" This is food for thought.

An Accident in the Neighborhood

2008-01-13T17:52:00.000+05:30

With the demolition work going on without any engineers or supervisors involved, just goading people to "finish" work as much as they can for a measly some of less than 80 INR per day (a little less than 2 USD), one of the younger workers, probably a person less than 15 years of age fell down. Lucky for him he didn't have major bruises, but had to taken to the casualty ward at CMH (Chinmaya Mission Hospital.) A passer-by almost got under the debris but was just a few seconds away. It was nothing short of a miracle that no one was badly injured.

After a long conversation with the workers (with the supervisor and the owner of the house conveniently absent from the site), I found that this was a clear case of labour exploitation against the labour laws of India. Furthermore, the supervisor (or contractor as they refer to him, although there is really no binding contract) has been telling them that if anyone were to be harmed, the "exploited workers" would be held responsible.

Part of the problems to humanity are created by being insensitive to what happens within one's circle of influence. Today I have made sure that I enough people concerned with the problem have been informed. I can only take this one step at a time. The first step is to ensure that those who are working for two square meals a day, have a life to live after they finish this.

After safety, I shall evaluate and take up my concerns on their exploitation.
This might be a more endemic and deeper problem that cannot be addressed in too small a context. I end this day on a happy note that I have done something however infinitesimal (and irritating to some) to make life better for some others whom I have had no prior knowledge of.

Debris Field

2008-01-13T10:10:00.000+05:30

The house neighbouring mine has been having some demolition work in progress. In Bangalore, I am apalled to see complete disregard for other people and the neighborhood and the workers' own safety standards when they work on a demolition/construction project. None of the workers wear helmets, so I assume they like playing humpty-dumpty.

Worse still, the only separator they have across the houses is a torn piece of tarpaulin. There are no other safety guides. Yesterday I took some photographs of much of the debris fallen onto where I normally park my car. The caretaker of my house had been careful enough to suggest that I park outside to prevent any mishap. I had followed his direction.

Finally, I tried to speak reason to the workers, their supervisor (who can't speak a word of english nor is familiar with the term engineering) and the owner of the house who has no regard for safety. I believe that I will finally have to take more stern measures. The workers can't even speak any of the local language as they are immigrants. They have been hired as they are the "cheapest" to hire. However their capabilities of demolition and suicide have not been taken into account.

The neighbour who owns the building and has commisioned the work has the gall to tell me that the police and law is corrupt in this city, and therefore I am not going to have any say in the matter. I think I shall put his statement to test as I am not turning my cheek for any neighbour who'd rather be an insensitive clod. If I have debris falling anywhere near the house, I can very well repeat the favor.

A Week less ordinary

2008-01-11T23:21:00.000+05:30

This week was more fun at work than I'd anticipated. We have finally laid the benchmarks and lines to take one of the products I've been involved with out to the market, engaged a few customers and are already working on revisions. To add to the thrill, there's one more product also in the field where I was involved in redoing an algorithm.

Beyond this, I have been trying to squeeze the best performance out of a CMOS sensor for improved realistic images. It looks like I might have hit some of the physical boundaries of CMOS sensor technology beyond which only smart post-processing could help. I am also set for a trip for my School's Silver Jubilee; set for 23, 24, 25 January. I am hoping to be present from 24 January to keep my presence at work maximal (this being one of my new year resolutions.)

Noisy Neighbourhood

2008-01-06T10:57:00.000+05:30

This Saturday introduced me to a big change in the neighborhood. The building next-door is going in for reconstruction (preceded by demolition of the existing edifice.) The owner has involved a team of noisy people (who chatter louder than the work they do and become a nuisance day and night) to complete the demolition. I have been facing a sudden change in ambient noise level and dust level. They have yet to construct a partition between the houses that would at least serve as a barrier for the dust.

To add to the adventure, there was another group of people taking down nature's edifice, the tallest tree in the neighborhood. It was heavy and it was taken down in heavy intermediate modules. One of them knocked off part of a barbed wire fence on my house's compound wall while being "safely" taken down. The enormity of the tree and the way it was taken down gave quite a few people a good scare of what could happen if nature came crashing down. This made me more worried than the man made edifice generating noise and dust plumes for now on another side of the house. The task took almost after sundown to complete. Recapitulating, a branch from this tree had damaged a window in my house during a storm.

The noise change did have an impact on my sleep. I was so annoyed by the "new" noise that I decided to try and sleep off earlier, which actually didn't work straight forward. It took much longer than that. I used to live in a flat off one of Pune's most noisy highways. At that time nothing in the morning 8:00am rush could take me off my bed as I was so used to it. But a change in the noise levels when I moved to a new silent neighborhood in Pune made me extremely sensitive to noise. I have begun to understand that our brain tunes itself on the basis of ambient noise available near our habitat and our workplace to help filter out the excess and remove any stress related to that. This process is however not instantaneous and takes a bit of time (something like subconscious learning.) Until that is done, I will be extremely aware of this new level of noise in the neighborhood.

Expressive!

2008-01-03T20:57:00.000+05:30

Today, a good part of the day was spent in trying out some techniques that my mentor recommended for a technical problem. There were results, not dissimilar from prior ones that I had passed through. Either way, it was seen as a positive development.

Most of the day was spent in meetings. A friend who had provided training to colleagues had come to update me on his availability and schedule for the year. I admire his planning and self-driven nature. The usual weekly meeting (normally scheduled on tuesdays), today was mostly driven by me. There was some apathy towards my boss who chaired it, which I did divert by going pretty expressive on ways we could do better going forward.

The one thing I hate is retrospective thought and doubtful thought. The two most hated lines I have heard are "Why didn't you think of this solution which has solved a major issue prior?" and "Do we really require high-end equipment and tools to improve product quality, can't we just improvise with what we (don't) have?" These statements form the lingo of a colleague of mine whom I have been trying to convince with great effort to avoid retrospect and to employ intuition, lateral thinking and risk in solving tough problems. As he has been least receptive, it has been difficult to convince him in one shot, but with expressive moments including today increasing, I am hoping I shall get to him.

I did get a little overboard with my expressiveness towards the evening swallowing almost 1 hour of my colleagues' time in the evening. This basically was in an attempt to converge attitude, thought and method across our team. I do hope that despite whatever boredom I generated, it would have had some help to the ends I've tried to meet. Today has been one of the most expressive of my days where more time was spent on output than on input.

A Nice Day at the Office

2008-01-03T07:56:00.000+05:30

The whole of Wednesday, reckoning the new year was quite nice at office. We had a nice session where my mentor did give me some useful ideas to improve things I was working on and review some of my skills. I really liked the time spent as it was most useful.

For the next part, I was most interested in an open-house where the management shared information on the last quarterly performance of the company both in numbers as well as inside. While many were asked to come up with their questions, I noticed that everyone was looking at the possibility of pointing out at issues that had not yet been taken up. The speaker had made sure that these issues will not be the point of (an endless) discussion in the most polite and acceptable fashion.

Everyone seemed intent to find fault with "decision making" or "policies" that had not been taken up. The trouble was no one (who was criticizing middle management as a blocker) was pro-actively fighting it out by getting things done by convincing the necessary people. As it was someone else's job function, they were hoping that it should have been done by those responsible and were unwilling to try it out themselves. I find that the environment does allow people to do things themselves at every level.

As each system is held back by some sort of inertia, the response time is a drastic factor in deciding whether a pro-active approach of changing things is really worth the while. It is unfortunate that people switch jobs hoping that another system with different inertial properties will help them. If one can't get something from the present outfit/establishment they are working/interacting with, they should at best sharpen their skills. These sharpened skillsets can help them change the system itself rather than require them to switch. This holds good unless there is something drastically wrong or factually impossible. Such cases are rare and occur when a system is at its end.

The grass is always greener on the other side. Many leave finding good pastures, but the one thing they might definitely find is a temporary change in compensation. For that switch; it would seem a reasonable thing. Better administration and management do not necessarily mean that they are superlative, they would still have their fallbacks. I find great opportunity in making something grow better, and the more latitude of growth it has, greater the offer.

I do agree that any system that disallows change is doomed to self-destruct. The environment constantly changes dictating everything that is part of it to react and change suitably. Nothing within the environment can reverse these tides of change. Changing the environment would require many systems or a large number of systems that are part of it to affect the environment in such a way (drawing similar analogy.)

Well Begun

2007-12-30T13:30:00.000+05:30

Of course, after spending quite some time on Friday over the logical approach of a puzzle we were trying to crack, a bit of retrospect and lateral thinking brought us to a solution. It does have side effects, but was consistent and stable with respect to the problem we were trying to solve.
That made a good start to the weekend in general. Friday night was spent watching Television. The whole of Saturday did not turn out to be much too different.

I did watch a good movie, "Bug" which is on quite a difficult subject. The movie was given a "Horror-Movie" tag, while it really is more of a drama with a message that is slightly horrific. It deals with group psychosis, a strange thing that is usually not witnessed with such dramatic outlet as shown in the film. Ashley Judd has again proved herself in the movie in her role.

Further, I am working to find out what is really lacking for an opensource developer while creating embedded application development platforms (the entire Operating System underneath including a kernel, bootloader with the core utilities for a system.) There seems to be a considerable gap being addressed by very few projects like "emdebian" and "openembedded." It would be a good time to give these projects some competition.

On Cameras and Pictures

2007-12-27T21:42:00.000+05:30

This day at work, my boss was down with fever and I was taking up the weekly status review in his stead. It took half the time which was well spent, attendance being thinner than usual. The rest of the day was spent in finding another (sigh!) anomaly with camera images on something we were working on. By the end of the day, we did find an answer to it, but we had created collateral restrictions working on it.

Another friend debunks from work to take a really long New year weekend vacation. That would leave me hunting down more bugs sitting by myself. I do like doing it, but sometimes it can grow to become quite a weight bearing down on oneself.

Coming back to the main thing, Camera's are odd devices - the modern digital video sensors. The CMOS Sensor Interface originally dismissed as a lower quality (and therefore low cost) alternative has gained popularity with much change in technology. Most sensor companies have decided to put a Application Specific Digital Signal Processor with their Sensors. This actually means that even if a CMOS Sensor is sensing video with less accuracy and sharpness than its cousin, the CCD, we could have "patches" or workarounds that "post-process" the captured image and show it to be of better quality in digital terms.

As these sensors are intended to be integrated in very small designs, they are generally low power consuming. That might seem like a feature to most people, however that means strict restrictions in communicating/programming a CMOS sensor. The major part of the problem that I've been tackling through the day has been on sequencing the program to the DSP paired with the CSI (CMOS Sensor Interface.)

Debugging it seems would occupy a major portion of the timeline of any product development. It is sometimes an interesting exercise if you would discount the human communication aspects at the time of facing a blocker and working through it. Mildly put whenever you encounter major problems in any product/service that on sale would fetch revenue, someone needs to be "accountable" for the "delay" (therefore loss of opportunity) in providing a consistent solution (even a workaround if it were reasonably secure and consistent.)

I do remember Alan Cox's speech on ratio of errors in hardware versus software on which I disagree entirely with his opinion that hardware is relatively much more bug free. I see that hardware is designed in a generic manner to send most of the complexity to "replaceable" and/or "upgradeable" software. This would mean that with higher complexity and offer of features over a generic platform, software would take the bane of being more buggy whenever engineered within strict time-frames with requirements changing along side (on the assumption that software can adapt and incorporate changes much easier than firmware/hardware.) Further, I see that a good number of hardware bugs (including the infamous pentium f00f bug) were worked around in "software."

So whenever a system as a total malfunctions, as most of its features rest in software, so do most of the errors (proportional to the features.) Unfortunately this relationship of software[features:errors] is not normally linear. I would assume that the mathematical non-linear relationship is statistically acceptable in any system that is operational with almost 0 probability of total failure and almost unity probability of being functionally useful for a predetermined set of tasks.

With reliability paradigms existing, like 5 nines or 7 nines, it is reasonable to assume that man-made system in an open environment has a 0 probability of failure (and therefore total perfection.) So engineering time spent in tilting the probability of failure towards 0 for any system grows in an asymptotic non-linear manner as you close in on the 0 but never reach it. That's a nice way of looking at "systems with embedded software" and their failure.

The unfortunate part is that I'm right now having to spend non-linear time in creating these shifts to close the probability towards 0. It does become exciting quite often as you crack the jigsaw puzzle a few pieces at a time.

A Good Christmas!

2007-12-26T20:55:00.000+05:30

This Christmas, I chose to have a full holiday from Saturday all the way till Tuesday making it a really long weekend. Mom and Dad visited as planned, and we had a good time together. Bangalore, it seems wasn't as cold as Thanjavur at least for these days as a tropical cyclonic formation had rained cats and dogs there making it much colder. The temperature though with lesser humidity did make me feel quite cold.

Christmas was warm and we had food from a good friend. We all watched more than a fair share of Television as moving around Bangalore wasn't really the in-thing to do. On Christmas day we went over to St.Mark's for the service. It was unusually crowded and we were lucky to get seats in the second row to the left. I did enjoy the service, though earlier I was quite lazy to actually leave for church having coded for my pet-project till late night on christmas eve..

A good friend called and wished me and parents. Many relatives got in touch to wish us all a merry Christmas. Mom had brought two cakes made by a friend and that was really nice. I also had a longish phone conversation with my niece, and also wished my Sis and family. They had braved the Delhi cold for the watch-night service which ended shortly after midnight.

Today, Mom and Dad left for home, which due to bad roads and construction work on the way, took almost 10 hours. They left about 7:20am and reached about 5:15pm which was almost the same time they had taken on their trip to Bangalore. The only other person celebrating Christmas at office (people from Goa having returned to their homes) was Natarajan, D-Link's new Marketing head. My Boss was excited about a movie named "Welcome" and was encouraging us all to watch it.

Indeed, it was truly a merry Christmas! I loved it. It helps me prepare myself for my new-year resolutions which would hold quite strong this 2008, as my ever increasing commitment to new-year resolutions is at an all-time high.

When Saturn Smiles

2007-12-23T07:37:00.000+05:30

Saturday is usually a pretty gloomy day with not much plan on working things out. This Saturday thankfully was different with my parents at home. There was a lot of the usual conversation that goes on at home; the usual Christmas clothes and more of the Christmas spirit than the decorations which is a lone star in the house that ain't attributed to me.

Nothing else was done through the whole day. Parking arrangements were made where possible to accommodate the car over night. Plans of visiting friends are on schedule; except that most schedules haven't been synced.

Battling the Passe

2007-12-21T05:44:00.000+05:30

My whole day was spent in trying to find the source of a many an issue, each of which, if eliminated would make the product I am working on look more polished. The more critical things having been addressed, these are what I term less critical, but necessary finishing touches.

Yet, when you are working on a product where the components are by and large passe and someone has already done it before, probably better; the only way out in software is sometimes fix the symptom of the problem before you find what really causes it. In most cases tracing aetiology of indeterministic and non-repeatable bugs happens by chance.

I believe that the chief architect of a product must anticipate and understand what is necessary rather than what is best. There must be an incentive for providing in short time the necessary ones before closing in on the best solution which would be an end-point. This requires a vision and imagination of a product long before one has even got to the drawing board. This is the one thing I see lacking in completeness.

Christmas season already having arrived, I would like to think of the pleasant things in life and rather cherish the time than crib about bad architects. One can spend hundreds of hours on a badly designed product and achieve nothing much, save wasting precious time. People justify why they "could not" have achieved better once the design imposes constraints that are hard to work around. Last Christmas a prototype of this product was made ready and had a problem no one anticipated, but the architect decided was good enough. The results were of course discontent remarks. The bridge between expectation and realisation wasn't built right. That would entirely be a PR exercise.

Despite the reasons, I am unhappy at being at the same level one year later. There are so many reasons one can attribute it to. Much could have been solved by stronger investment in testing equipment when there was known uncertainty with Silicon components and problems whose source was too difficult to identify with the limited debugging equipment. No one likes to take a risk that could pay off and get things solved. They'd rather waste time than money, as they have no idea that time in today's world is most of the times more precious than money.

If this product does fail in the market, it would be because of archaic architecture and management that is passe. The use of tools and debugging equipment that is not state of the art has added to the uncertainty. Expectation is a license that is free for all, but not by forcing people to slave longer.

A Weekend that wasn't so gloomy

2007-12-16T19:34:00.000+05:30

This weekend, I have been following up with everything that I've been doing over the week in my spare time. I decided to do some real coding and come up with something creative that I could probably deploy even at work. The result is something quite nice where I've pieced together the initial ingredients for what should become a useful toolbox for embedded system/user-space applications. Part of my drive was to create a usable replacement for busybox which almost stands out as the single swiss-army-knife that embedded linux deployments use.

At this stage I haven't started a project page and involved more people, but through the next week that should be possible.

I was also tweaking the iwp3945 drivers as I had quite some trouble getting my custom kernel working on my laptop with wireless access enabled. Pairing with the AP wasn't ever happening. While all this was on, I needed to move a heavy table near my desktops and pulled a muscle and probably tore a ligament in my back. I took some rest finally and feeling much better am just trying to cruise on with the code after reading some interesting articles on anthropology.

It seems that the product I've been working on at office would finally hit the road after one last weekend of stress testing. I haven't heard someone screaming for help which means there is a stable set of system software that should be able to take it without surprises.

On Saturday, I met up with a friend after quite a while having some time to have a long conversation with both of us not too busy. I did experience the horrific traffic on MG Road in Bangalore in an Auto (Driving my Car was out of the question.) This being a Saturday, it was probably amplified thanks to the inching work on the Bangalore metro project.

Saturday Lazed out

2007-12-09T08:25:00.000+05:30

This Saturday wasn't too different from the many I've spent in the past weeks. I did very little "useful" work. I was watching some movies, playing games, randomly reading kuro5hin, slashdot. I had skipped plans of visiting foss.in on the last day out of partial disinterest. It is bad, I should've gone for a friend's talk at least, but heck what I never made to within 9 km of IISc Bangalore. My chauffer's not in town and with my direction senses I wouldn't take the right diversions (to a straightforward route.) I simply didn't get down to doing it and instead cocooned myself at home.

I was hoping to write an arm related code commentary that went out of the window thanks to movie watching. Then I did some PC maintenance and updated it for vulnerabilities. That should be the only useful thing that went on the whole day. I just lived on chocolates. No noodles, nothing else. (Bad Idea, this too.) Hopefully Sunday would be better as it has been from last week with more personal productivity.

A Debugging Day

2007-12-07T22:33:00.000+05:30

Today, the early part of the day was spent in the unbiased understanding that out of five of us in our team three were attending a training session. That left me and another teammate in opposite cubicles sitting and feeling more lonely than anything else.

Through the day, I scanned through more CVs and Resumes, shortlisting a few after some careful thought. We also had a trip planned that had to be rescheduled to a prior date necessitating immediate action to book to/fro tickets for 4 (including myself.) My reporting head did a really dedicated job at getting this done.

I went through the next phase of debugging everything in a strange audio driver for one of the products I am working on. I found that "readprofile" gave very low granularity and actually only gave a slight hint on what we should be looking for. It did give some positive results, but we have something that always ends up in a cascade failure. I now need to work my brain on the actual cascade failure to really get the indeterminate problem sorted out.

Finally, the day ended with more than an hour discussing our moving to a new facility, improving some processes and the last item of the agenda scratched out as we ran out of time. Phew! I got back to debugging with another geek and we did build some ground after which we chatted and wasted at least half an hour before I got to exit from office.

Come home, and I had noodles for dinner as that would be the quickest thing to prepare at this time. That done, I didn't have much else to do than to type out into my blog. Ultimately only the debugging thing stays fresh in my mind though I'd actually list today as a very productive one.

Foss.in

2007-12-06T22:13:00.000+05:30

Today, I spent time actually listening to people on Free/Libre Open Source Software (FOSS/FLOSS) at the Foss.in Conference. It was a nice experience listening to many of the speakers. I enjoyed Rusty's talk more than anything else. The event had some strange things. The sponsors (including IBM, Sun, Google, ABB, GMI/Trolltech, Redhat and others) were seriously headhunting.

The organisation (of the event) had its share of technical snags. The one thing that did function right was WiFi access to all the delegates. The rest was a bit shabby but better than all the earlier events. I also got to meet a few old friends and acquaintances. In some ways my hacker (MIT sense of the word, wanting to write code that adds features/solve problems in a cool way) side was ignited.

It was also different from a normal day at work which also added up. I am feeling a bit bad that I wouldn't be attending a "want to be there" talk tomorrow by Harald Welte. But hopefully that should be doing something nice at work.

Another Saturday!

2007-12-02T10:48:00.000+05:30

I usually don't have a "plan" for Saturday. I let it go the way my moods go. This time I decided I'd watch "The Devil Wears Prada." A nice movie indeed. I also got to watch "Zodiac" which was quite another average Hollywood movie. It seemed that that "Zodiac" was more about FBI incompetence than about a serial killer being hunted down by a civilian who just got interested from his boring day job.

Otherwise I didn't do much about eating except some noodles for lunch and chips'n chocolates for dinner. Well, that's the standard. I didn't get out of the house except to return the movies I'd got. That was that.

The rest of the day was trying out configurations on my new phone which was amusing for perhaps an hour. At least three cups of double espressos to keep me going (whew!) My plan (for some time) has been to hack on an opensource project on Saturdays and Sundays. The truth is I do have the time, I just don't get myself to do it. It seems its about time, I did that on Sunday and stop wasting time on movies (being the movie buff I am.)

Strangely there were absolutely no phone calls to me (except from the service provider about some new features for free costing $$$.) It was in that manner quite peaceful. I did not take the time out to call anyone either. I sometimes think I'm building a cocoon around me, but that isn't entirely factual.

The Carrot and the Stick

2007-12-01T09:09:00.000+05:30

Before a "Grand Inauguration" of a new facility, at least my teammates were expecting their performance Bonus. Processing for the same and scoring was already done and the figures had already been presented on paper to the team. But like all efficient organizations and with the assistance of an absolutely insensitive clod of a reporting head (who ain't bothered coz he's got no financial deficit right now) this wasn't credited.

That meant a lot of people were unhappy. I had a bitter taste too after having detailed all the necessary information, nothing was working out.

I am probably very impatient in many ways. This of course helps me in more ways than it can harm me as I get things done on the double.

I am not very happy either at the end. I might end up not visiting the Grand Inauguration even if I could, just for saving a few bucks on transport (fuel) and spending some quality time playing around with the linux kernel.

There were other precipitating factors like the inability to recruit new people because the company's offer of salary is too disagreeable to anyone whom we select. Market correction of the salary is a long way down the line. I am sure more people will quit before they realize. The point is the management think they have the Carrot and the Stick. It looks to me like the Stick is with the people who actually create it. If you don't invest you get nothing out of people or bricks. The Truth being, today's world does call people "Human Resources" and are more interested in "Capital Assets" and "Human Resources" like other resources are a liability.

(Yeah these are the words of a disgruntled employee in part.) That doesn't change what's what at the end. You give everything you have when you want to get more than what you have; that's the personal loyalty sense of today. Otherwise it has a negative effect that you stop giving everything you can give, that makes you dull. You'd rather switch and do more rather than stay back unhappy and do less. That seems to be a valid argument to me.

The unfortunate part is, no matter where you go, you're still a brick. There are those who are Dogs in the manger (managers) who'd rather never give up for a horse.
There's just the watermark of what you get that gets adjusted. When you reach it, you get unhappy all over again and switch. So where do you stop this all? One way, is to start on your own with your dreams and put yourself and everything you have at risk to get much more than what anyone else can offer. The other way is to learn to change the place you're already in to think differently. The former being easier (although too risky), the latter being much more difficult (although it looks less risky.)

Fighting Murphy's Law

2007-11-29T20:41:00.000+05:30

Today was, in retrospect, a fine day indeed. Quite a few things I'd planned at work had started to go wrong. I had to go and reverse a decision, thanks to a new input on a microprocessor I was working on. Then there was buggy software that almost went along with a product to the field.

The strange thing is, we managed to stop all of this just at the eleventh hour. While I would say this ain't good management, it is strange that (at least) some of these things showed up before we got products on the field. I was running around quite a bit all through morning understanding before everyone else did, what was at stake. Everyone thought I had a panic reaction and finally after addressing the situation, people were quite happy about the way I'd rushed through it.

Afternoon was much more relaxed. I was supposed to meet somebody or rather the other way around by evening. Unfortunately the person was attending TI's Developer Conference and I chose to leave a little earlier than my published 1830hrs.

There has also been speculation on the dates on which my Company is actually shifting location of operations. That's adding one more uncertain variable specifically a disproportional increase in commutation cost and time. The sooner it comes, the sooner I would be forced to consider addressing it as a risk that I'd rather not take. Perhaps, this got me a bit worried in the morning, but nothing actually got to me to snap my cool.

The one thing I could learn today was, "So long as you react quick enough you can prevent things from going wrong later." Although masked by urgency, addressing problems quickly can potentially prevent a catastrophe. The other rule was of course to take responsibility for what you've done earlier. That makes it easier no matter how everyone reacts.

The Party, Hosts and Guests

2007-11-28T20:56:00.000+05:30

My company is having a new building open to the employees. Its a bit further out of B'lore which means it adds hours to your commuting time. We have an inauguration party and we are the hosts. The Admin team decided to inform all of us who work at what's called Company R&D unit/BLR just during the week on which the "Grand Party" is scheduled. The cranky part was they informed the guests coming from various units of my Company around India and nearby a month earlier (which meant we had the info in our Gossip networks already.)

Finally, after almost screaming :Hell: they sent out an invitation for family (spouse and kids). Then there's a mail in "Red", acidic as it might look, saying "Note: Friends, Relatives and Parents Not Allowed." The chap who manages the Admin department, probably bad at communication didn't really catch the impact. Finally a good number of folks sent e-mails and phone calls to the Corporate HR HQ quoting this very line which in Indian cultural terms meant disrespect to Parents. The worst part was this guy actually told folk including me that it was company policy not to allow Parents to parties. That kind of cut the attendance to less than 30% of the local guys'n gals who'll actually be moving to the new facility.

Then the Admin chap who sent the original message instructs his junior to send another mail saying families and parents allowed. That line sounds hilarious as they haven't really given an engineering specification on who's family/parents are allowed. I guess we're in for a good flame war in Office.

This is just one example of how a single person messing up communication can spoil the reputation of an entire department or worse still the whole damn company. I find that devious and deceptive individuals or plainly those who simply can't write a line right, can be a massive liability even if they're hired to save $$$ by efficient "cost-cutting."

I want to make a request for pets tomorrow and see how that goes. On second thought, I'd probably keep my pet safe at home.

A Personal Blog at Last!

2007-11-27T21:06:00.000+05:30

After quite a bit of thinking, I thought it would be nice to jot down everyday thoughts that crept in my mind. I already have another blog that I haven't been updating in a while. This would have lighter writing and be more a personal window.