Torture and the ticking time bomb

I really don't know what is the correct way to resolve this dilemma, but thinking about it objectively, isn't torturing someone to extract information that would save millions of lives equivalent to killing someone in self defence?

And no, the argument that the torture might have been in vain if it turns out that the person being tortured didn't really have the information doesn't cut it; by a strange coincidence, I ran across this in a novel I'm reading right now:

"...he was feeding his pigs out of a bucket with his back to me, telling me how he didn't rattle, how he wouldn't piss on a cop on the pad if he was on fire, then he put his hand down in his jeans and I saw something bright in the sun and heard a click, and when he turned around I put a big one in his forehead. It was his Zippo lighter, man. Can you dig that?"

And you are still against the death penalty?

From an article by Praveen Swami:

At lunchtime on Sunday, Handwara-based dental surgeon Mushtaq Ahmad Shah was tied to a tree, tortured, and finally beheaded with an old-fashioned barber's razor. Villagers working in the cornfields around Naupora Kalan, near Sopore, pleaded for Dr. Shah's life but were shooed away at gunpoint.

Dr Shah's 'crime' was to cooperate with the authorities.

1. If the terrorists who committed this crime aren't punished in a suitable manner, how the heck can we convince people like Dr Shah that the Indian government will take care of people who respect and cooperate with it?


2. Something doesn't sound right when you consider the pain and agony undergone by Dr Shah and his family and compare it to the punishment of life imprisonment -- which is not even a fscking life sentence -- which would be awarded to the terrorists if (and this is a big if) they are caught.


3. Even if the people who did this do not fear death, the deterrent of the death penalty is sure to make at least a fraction of these fanatics think twice before embarking on such things.

Has this ever happened to you?

You are with a group of people, and you start to say something, and somebody interrupts you, and wanting to be polite, you defer to that person, and allow them to make their point, and when they are finished -- you don't want to repeat their mistake and interrupt them -- you start over again, only to be interrupted again, this time by another person, and you still want to be polite... this goes on for a couple more times, and then it's five minutes later, and you have almost forgotten what it was that you had wanted to say, and then you remember it, but by then the moment is long past, and an observer would conclude that you are a pushover, when all you were trying to be was a frigging polite conversationalist.

Is it just me...

or does this IceWeasel logo look like Mother Earth is being humped by an over-ambitious arctic rodent? Check out the gleam in the creature's eye, BTW.

North Korea conducts nuclear test

Years ago, we made a train journey from Delhi to Haldwani, on the way to Nainital for a long weekend. We were stupid/brash enough to barge into a reserved compartment when we should have proceeded to the unreserved one, and occupied the space next to the toilets. The rightful occupants of the compartment didn't protest against this, and we settled down uneventfully. A couple of stations later, sometime in the middle of the night, someone opened the door, and a fellow 'unreserved' passenger, a pretty unkempt, ragged individual, entered the compartment. I did nothing; who was I to complain, after all? But get this: a well-to-do gentleman, a rightful occupant, woke up and caught sight of this bloke, and proceeded to indignantly berate me for letting him in, knowing full well that I too was in the same category as the new entrant. I could do nothing, except watch in astonishment.

Anyway, this incident was more or less the first thing that came to mind when I read that India and Pakistan were protesting North Korea conducting a nuclear test. What breathtaking hypocrisy!

Here are some 'soothing' sounds from CNN-IBN (these were run as part of the graphics at the bottom of the screen, probably as an attempt to mitigate the hypocrisy):

• Pakistan supplied nuclear technology to N Korea


• Indian nuclear program is wholly indigenous


• If India did not protest, it would be construed that we are supporting N Korea

Nope, I am not convinced.

An eye for an eye

I came across this article about how the Amish are dealing with the shootout in the schoolhouse, about how they are treating the assassin as a human being, offering condolences to his family and helping them cope with the disaster.

Considering how I feel about the clemency petition for Afzal, this got me thinking: is there something wrong with my value system? Is it incorrect to bring an element of vengeance into the whole thing?

The answer to this may be yes, but this does not mean that Afzal's sentence should be commuted. "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind" may make all compendiums of quotable quotes, but there is a more fundamental law at work here: the law of karma, the law of action and reaction. Your reap what you sow.

Thus, though it may be wrong to harbour vengeful feelings towards the terrorist, it is equally wrong to interfere in the natural scheme of things.

One could, of course, argue that the death penalty in this case may be too harsh, but that should be addressed by changes to the penal code and/or the constitution, and not by an outside-the-system decision based on political expediency.

Dumbass quote of the day

The sum of the players is greater than the sum of the team.
-- Commentator's (David Platt?) remark during the England-Macedonia Euro 2008 qualifier, about how England, though it has a lot of great players, does not perform well as a team

That's funny

I get a download speed of about 30 kbps using the Conexant-based ADSL modem in Linux. I used to get 55-60 kbps earlier, but that's another story.

The funny thing is, when I connect to the internet from Windows -- installed as a guest OS using VMWare -- using the VMWare virtual network interface, and the same freaking connection that runs from Linux, I get 65-70 kbps. What am I missing?

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time

For once I am in complete agreement with the folks who write letters to the The Hindu.

If there is one group of countrymen I still have respect for, it's those soldiers who climbed the peaks in Kargil, knowing full well that the odds were stacked against them, and there was a better than even chance that they will not make it back to their bases alive. Requesting clemency for Afzal is akin to spitting on the graves of these soldiers.

Oh but that's not me

I am the fifth biggest fan of Van Halen's Mine All Mine in last.fm.

Methinks it's time to do some creative chart manipulation. Let's see, where can I find documentation on the Audioscrobbler API?

Bloglines podcast enclosures

There seems to be a problem listening to podcast enclosures in Bloglines: the audio plays at a higher-than-normal speed. I discovered this when trying to listen to one of James Robertson's Industry Misinterpretations podcasts recently. The problem is not restricted to Firefox; Opera too seems to be susceptible to this (let me check Konqueror: nope, Konqueror simply displays a link to the whole MP3 file, instead of the embedded Flash thing). I have contacted Bloglines about this.

Update: It looks to be a Flash Player issue. I received this email from Bloglines today (October 12):

Thanks for writing Bloglines regarding the podcast feature.

The Macromedia Flash player has a problem playing files that are encoded at a rate that is not a multiple of 11.025 kHz. This effect is sometimes called the “chipmunk” effect; in other words, the file is played at double speed. To avoid this, encode MP3’s at 11.025 kHz 22.050 kHz or 44.100 kHz.

The E Key

First problem with my Acer 1641: the E key suddenly stopped functioning, unless I pressed it extra-hard. I pried out the key -- man, these things are like chiclets, by the way -- and found that the problem was because of insufficient contact between the key and the rubber thingummy that sends the keystroke to the computer. A small piece of paper wedged between the key and this rubber thing took care of the problem, but the whole incident has brought down my confidence in Acer somewhat.

All right

I'm going to decouple my Robert Fisk articles blog from robert-fisk.com. The owner of that site hasn't updated it for nearly four months, and it doesn't feel right to come across Fisk's articles in Bloglines from other sources like The Independent's RSS feed and not do anything about them.

Now that's how trailers should be made

I have been watching movies on the Sony Pix Channel this week. It all started when I accidentally caught the start of the The Great Train Robbery this Monday. BTW, I loved the double entendre-laced dialogue between Sean Connery and the bank chairman's horny wife, and the reference to the '50 Miles Per Hour Club' -- a sort of pun on the Mile High Club, with steam engine-powered trains chugging along the countryside replacing jets in the sky.

Anyway, there were a lot of promos for other movies on the way, and I was struck by the quality of these promos: instead of splicing together short bits from a number of (memorable?) scenes from the movie, these promos focus on just one scene, interspersed with the details like the director/actors' names. This scene is invariably the scene in the movie, and you end up being impressed enough to catch the movie when its number comes up.

I was so taken in by this approach that I sat through a crappy thing called Krull. I don't know which was worse: a) sitting through the entire movie, or b) actually enjoying some of the cheesy action sequences. Oh well, never mind, The Golden Voyage of Sindbad is on as I type this. Someone, please take away the remote from me.

ISI hand in 7/11 Mumbai blasts, say police

Dudes, I sure hope that you have much more clinching evidence with you, evidence that you are not disclosing at present for whatever reasons, because reading today's lead story in The Hindu leaves me feeling distinctly unconvinced:

All but one of the Pakistanis escaped. He perhaps could not get down from the jam-packed train compartment, and died in the blast at the Khar station. His badly mutilated body remained unclaimed. Mr. Roy said police had got the face reconstructed and conducted DNA tests on the body. Investigators learnt from narco-analysis tests on one of the arrested persons that it was the body of Salim, a resident of Lahore, Pakistan.

Mr. Roy said 11 Pakistani militants in three groups had reached India via three different routes — from Nepal in the north, Bangladesh in the east and from across the Gujarat border with Pakistan. One Pakistani died in an encounter with the police at Antop Hill shortly after the July 11 blasts. Nine of the 11 escaped and might have left the country.

You better have something more concrete to confront the Pakistanis with, as they are going to laugh you out of the door otherwise (they don't call it "plausible deniability" for nothing).

By the way:

1. I wonder what the "narco-analysis tests" were. Hypnosis? Truth serum?


2. To the presstitutes: please stop calling every bombing incident 7/11, 12/13, etc. For one thing, India follows the day/month format. Secondly, it reeks of attempting to shamelessly warm yourself in the embers of the American 9/11.

Movie Review: The Hills Have Eyes

Shocking and disturbing.

No, I don't use these words to describe the use of so much gore and violence in the movie. It's shocking and disturbing that I spent Rs 150 and wasted a perfectly fine evening -- I took off early from work, for God's sake -- on this piece of sh*t of a movie.

I don't care how faithful the prodigy director has been to Wes Craven's classic, and even bettered Craven's effort, if some horror movie buffs in IMDB.com are to be believed, or how original and uncliched his rendition is. All I know is that I spent the last half an hour so laughing my ass off at the way the story unfolded, and wondering whether it would sink any lower, and laughing even more as it did.

So this was the jumping-the-shark moment in Friends

I was watching one of the 'Best of Friends' episodes last night, the one where Joey 'pretends' that he speaks French. At the very end of the episode, when the credits are rolling by, he proves to Phoebe that he can really drink a gallon of milk in ten seconds, and makes a right royal ass of himself (and the entire show) by proceeding to drench himself in milk.

People, it's not an either/or choice!

Vajpayee on Musharraf's book:

The former Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, on Tuesday said the Agra Summit of 2001 failed because Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf refused to accept terrorism as the cause of bloodshed in Jammu and Kashmir, insisting that it was a result of the people's battle for freedom.

I think it is incorrect to think that freedom fighters cannot be terrorists. Just because the phrase "freedom fighter" brings to our mind great people like Mahatma Gandhi and Subhash Chandra Bose, it seems to get our goats when we hear terrorists referred to as freedom fighters. A terrorist is someone who kills innocent civilians in order to attain a political objective. Going by this definition, a terrorist who kills civilians belonging to an 'occupying' country in order to attain the objective of removing the occupier is very much a freedom fighter, never mind whether the quest for freedom is legitimate or not.

Have you seen this man?

He's in his late forties, has a two-day stubble, and has bloodshot eyes. He's probably drunk, or is just getting out of his hangover. His clothes, though not ragged, are well-worn.

But he's not just an average joe; there's something in his face that sets him apart, an innate intelligence or cunning. He's the one sitting idly in the tea shop and passing knowledgeable comments as someone reads out the day's stories from the paper. He's someone who's fallen on hard times, probably because of his drinking. Talk to him, and you'll find that he's very articulate, maybe even in English. But beware, he's very likely to impress you with his language and sophistication, and touch you for whatever you can spare him.

Why am I blathering on about this person, you ask? No reason, except that I saw a person fitting this profile a couple of days ago, and this triggered a train of thoughts; one incident in particular, when I was conned out of five bucks by such a person (he claimed to be blind or something, I forget).

Anyway, you can't help but like this person, scoundrel though he may be. He's the guy who's wasted his life looking for quick deals, the hottest racing tip that nobody else knows. He has burnt his fingers quite a few times, and is cynical as hell. Life has passed him by, in all probability, but he's still out there, keeping a lookout for an opportunity, a mark, while all he's certain about is the temporary relief he feels every night as the booze hits home, if only he could hustle the money for it by six o'clock...

Too disgusted to think of a title

A person gets admitted to hospital because of a brain hemorrhage. The hospital has two choices:

1. Operate on the hemorrhage


2. Give the man a haircut

Which option should it choose? Well, if the hospital were anything like the Tamil Nadu government, it will be option 2:

Next, these tribals will be able to use (a) motor to draw water from the well, build toilets and improve hygiene. Their children will be encouraged to spend more time with books and their overall living will improve.

The above comment is from a bureaucrat, who's talking about how some remote hamlets in the state have gotten to see a light bulb for the first time in their lives because the government wanted them to be able to enjoy their free television sets.

What breakthrough?

I really cannot understand what the fuss is all about. India and Pakistan have agreed to resume talks, that's all. Call me a cynic, but nothing on the ground is going to change; we have been down this road too many times. This is just a ploy by both countries to pretend to be moving somewhere while all they're doing is just running on the same spot.

Update: Do they take us all for idiots? "NAM totally opposed to terrorism", says a declaration. Oh goody, we can all go home now. The terrorists have been defeated.

Now I know why Intel is struggling

From their ad in today's Hindu:

[Intel Core 2 Duo Processor] automates routine tasks like billing. And lets you keep track of which clients have paid.

Either Intel have added accounting capabilities to their chips, or they are counting on the cluelessness of their customers and are deliberately misleading them into thinking that their chips have capabilities not present in their competitors' products. Either way, they don't come out smelling of roses.

Circularly Defined Word of the Day

From today's Dictionary.com Word of the Day:

inhere: to be inherent.

Tell me something

How is talking on a hands-free mobile phone while driving different from talking to the passenger in the car? Aren't both equally distracting?

Friedman's at it again

There was absolutely no reason for the Hezbollah attack on July 12 across the UN-recognised Israel-Lebanon border, in which eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two abducted.

and

If Hezbollah could just attack Israel -- unprovoked -- claiming among its goals the liberation of Jerusalem, and using missiles provided by the Iranian regime that says Israel should be wiped off the face of the map, then it was a war about everything.

Comments:

1. Did the abduction of the Israeli soldiers really happen across the border?


2. Is it really fair to call the "attack" unprovoked, when hundreds of Lebanese people are languishing in Israeli prisons, and the abductions were a way to negotiate for their release?


3. I was under impression that the "wipe Israel off the face of the map" phrase was shown by Juan Cole to be an inaccurate translation?

To give credit where it's due, at least Friedman recognises that

Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon are unsustainable.

I don't even know why I still read his column.

Two specific instances

...of our netas taking advantage of loopholes in the system:

1. Contesting an assembly election as an independent while being a Rajya Sabha member of a political party


2. A state assembly speaker sitting on a decision to disqualify two MLAs for 18 months because he wanted to protect the government

Both instances can be avoided by amending the concerned law, but do you think these scumbags will ever allow that?

And to think that people bristle at even the idea that Kalam could have used the 'hey-no-hurry-take-your-own-time' option to stall the Office of Profit Bill indeterminately.

Joke of the day

From a post in COLA:

> If I want to create a distro called
> "Death to the Infidel Linux"
> I should be allowed.

It already exists.
It's called Microsoft Vista.

This is not funny

From a letter to The Hindu:

New Delhi, Varanasi, Mumbai, and now Malegaon. The incidents are the same, so is the reaction. Only the people who deliver the dialogues are different. The Chief Minister concerned calls for a high-level meeting, condemns the blasts, and declares ex-gratia for the family of the dead and the injured. Visits by the Union Home Minister, the Prime Minister, and the President follow. The Prime Minister says no power on earth can divide the country, that the culprits would be arrested, and that the people should remain calm. News channels make merry. They offer to talk to anyone who is ready to offer an opinion. After about a month, the incident is forgotten.

I agree with all this, but would like to add one more thing to this: people write insightful letters about the incident to newspapers.

(Maybe two things: people also write blog posts about it)

Blah blah blah blah?.............Bah!

"...business service supply that meets the demand created by the agile business facing solution delivery environment"
-- From an article on SOA

(Yeah, like I'm really going to link to the article)

Seaside

While digging through the archives in my work PC yesterday, I found that I was in possession of VisualWorks 7.1 install files; I promptly installed VW, and as I was sitting there, idly wondering what to do with it, the 'enterprisey' side of me told me I should check out Seaside. I googled for a tutorial, and spent the next half hour going through it. Impressed with what I saw, I resolved to dig deeper, and came home and downloaded Squeak. Mistake; Squeak fonts look crappy in my Linux (OpenSuSE 10.1) box.

I turned my attention to VisualWorks. I managed to run the sample counter application in my browser, but not before some pain: you need the SeasideForWebToolkit parcel to install Seaside. This depends on the WebToolkit parcel, which in turn depends (among others) on the Regex11 and Opentalk-CGI parcels.

While I agree that managing these dependencies is not all that difficult, especially for someone used to Linux package management, a mechanism that automatically downloads and loads these parcels -- a la apt-get -- would definitely have eased the way. This was particularly apparent when I couldn't determine where I could get Regex11 (BTW, I ran into Isaac Gouy's post asking the same question -- hi Isaac); I took a guess (correctly, it turned out) and downloaded the Contributed.tar.gz file.

OK, now when I try to exit VisualWorks, I get a 'Message not understood' for some method called 'clearPageCache'. Not happy.

Update: Tried Squeak again. Fonts don't look that crappy now, for some reason. More importantly, Squeak's package management -- SqueakMap -- is more in line with what I mentioned above. I was able to download and install Seaside and its depedencies with no fuss. Nice.

Free insurance cover for tourists

This has got to be one of the more hare-brained schemes our beloved bureaucrats have pulled out of their asses. I can very well imagine a prospective tourist saying, "Honey, where shall we go for our annual vacation this year? Hmm... let me see...look, free insurance of Rs 10 lacs if we are killed by a terrorist bomb while boating in Dal Lake... sounds like a good deal... imagine, if both of us get our asses blown up, our kids will get 20 lac rupees! Talk about a no-brainer!"

It's different this time

Here's an excerpt from the preface to "Understanding Enterprise SOA" (don't even ask how I ended up reading this book):

Clearly there was merit in bringing the market back to earth. Valuations were high and rounds of venture capital funding, rather than business models, were sustaining many poorly conceived companies. But had the "irrational exuberance" been wholly irrational? The answer will surprise many: the initial optimism was justified. In fact the potential had been understated. As we will explore in this book, the fruition of the Internet's promise is coming and the resulting value creation will dwarf even the boldest estimates of the past.

Translation: You mean the Rolex I sold you three years back was a dud? Never mind, we'll settle that later. In the meantime, why don't you look at this fantastic deal I've got for you? It's a bridge in ...

Socialism

Today I saw something familiar on my way to work: a crew of about eight workmen from the Electricity Board, pushing a trolley/wheelbarrow, on their way to perform some repair work. They were a very relaxed and happy bunch, with hands on each other's shoulders, cracking jokes and generally pleased with their lot.

Nothing wrong with this scene, except for the fact that, when they reach their spot, not more than two or three of them will roll up their sleeves and get down to work. The remaining five will undertake the following tasks:

1. Smoking


2. Providing words of encouragement to the ones actually doing the work


3. Criticising the way the work is performed


4. Relieving themselves behind some nearby bushes

Meanwhile, back at the 'headquarters', their supervisor is probably on his way to his first break of the day, not even aware of where all the buggers have disappeared to.

It's official

Joel is just trolling for hits.

I am going to continue reading his stuff, not because of the quality of his writing, but for the feelings he evokes: admiration for the cool way he runs a business, his entrepreneurial spirit, and the sense of freedom and joy one feels when visiting his web site (I especially like the panoramic pictures at the top) .

This is really starting to bug me

This is the third time that sound has simply died in Kubuntu. No error messages, no warnings, nothing.

I have a feeling it's just the volume being turned down to zero because of some package update, but both KMix and ALSAMixer indicate otherwise.

Now I know how Robin Williams' character felt

... in Good Will Hunting.

I am an average IITian. I am not the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. My net worth is nothing to write home about. I have not won any awards, either for my distinguished career, or for my efforts for the betterment of mankind.

Having said that, I still consider it fscking demeaning that a billionaire alumnus will contribute an amount to the alumni growth fund, an amount that will match the sum total of all the contributions other 'ordinary' IITians will make, provided that they do so by a certain deadline. It's almost like saying "Ha! Is that all you plebes could come up with? Watch me match it from my loose change".

The true way of showing gratitude and affection for your alma mater is to write a cheque, for an amount that you arrive at on your own, without indulging in any one-upmanship or putting down others.

Dish TV, get your act together

I have ranted about Dish TV in the past, and they have improved their customer interface somewhat, but it's still nowhere near good enough.

They recently took to airing Star channels, but the channels are off the air now. Regular subscribers have been promised that they can get Star channels for free till December if they renew their subscription pronto. Having gotten used to seeing Seinfeld and Cheers again, I went to their web site to renew my subscription.

Long story short:

1. The site's usability still rates -19 on a scale of 1 to 10.


2. There is no option for renewing your subscription if the subscription is not due already. If you want, you can 'update' your package (but I don't want to do that; didn't you guys tell me I can get the Star channels without an update or upgrade till December?)


3. Alright, let me bite the bullet and try an update: but I don't see the Star channels (Star Movies, Star World) anywhere in the listed packages. Methinks the web site is lagging behind the rest of Dish TV's marketing campaign.


4. The way the online display of your transactions is designed leads me to this age-old question: what prompts otherwise normal human beings to commit such unspeakable acts of cruelty on their fellow men?

This list is by no means complete, BTW. I could go on and on, but let them figure out at least some things on their own.

Natwarji, please STFUji

None of us gives a rat's ass what you think.

Hitler's Cross

What a moron.

Unless, of course, he's way ahead of us and has been gunning for this publicity all along.

Observation

Reddit : Digg == Slashdot : Kuro5hin

I unsubscribed from Digg quite a while ago, not on account of any shenanigans that I perceived, but because a) it had too many stories, with a very low signal/noise ratio -- at least for me b) the stories seemed to be slanted more towards sensationalism and somehow getting a visitor to have a look at them and c) quite a few of the submissions were really old ones, reminding one of the Eternal September.

Funny Firefox bug

Happens only in Windows, at work, so I'm not really bothered about it:

When I try to open a link in a new tab by clicking the mouse scroll wheel, nothing happens till I move the mouse, even if only by a fraction of a millimeter. If I don't do this, Firefox simply sits there, looking at me dumbly, and not doing anything about my request, till I say Alright, you win and tap the mouse ever so slightly.

Interesting discussion

over at the RI Forum about libertarianism.

As I am reading the thread, I feel like a spectator at a tennis match, turning my head this way and that, following the path of the ball. I used to think libertarianism had its positive aspects and was a good thing in general, but now I'm not so sure. The quality of the debate is such that I find myself nodding my head in agreement to the arguments from both camps. As with most questions in life, the answer seems to be a mix of "It depends", "Yes, but only as long as one doesn't take it to its extreme", "No, but there are other mitigating circumstances", etc. In short, nothing is black and white.

Dad will pay

Thomas Friedman on the Lebanon crisis:

Hezbollah and Iran are like a couple of rich college students who rented Lebanon for the summer, as if it were a beach house. "Come on, let's smash up the place," they said to themselves. "Who cares? Dad will pay!" The only thing Nasarallah didn't say to the Lebanese was "Hey, keep the change."

Comments:

1. I am not clear how "a certain amount of money for every family to rent for one year, plus buy furniture for those whose homes were totally destroyed" translates to $3 billion, when the total number of families "number 15,000".


2. Hezbollah is a 100% local resistance, who do not simply visit Lebanon on vacation. As Seema Mustafa points out, they stand shoulder to shoulder with those providing relief to the affected families. If the Lebanese don't really support Hezbollah, don't you think they would have asked Hezbollah to cease and desist their activities long ago?

Excuse me, Mr Driver, but are you sure this is really the 21st Century?

Two news items:

1. Jats to protest against Natwar's "ill-treatment"


2. Mahim seawater draws big crowds

Here's a suggestion

Instead of holding something like the South Asian Games, where there is a small probability that one of the minnows we beat the crap out of refuse to stick to the script and end up winning a few medals, why don't we conduct the Indian Games, where the only participant is Bharat, and we can -- golly -- win *all* the medals?

The Premier League has kicked off

... and the matches are in full swing. If somebody had told me yesterday that I would be home, but instead of watching the action, the TV would be off, I'd be listening to One and Don't Cry and Estranged, and wishing that I were stone drunk, I'd have told them they were full of sh*t.

'Cause I see the storm getting closer
And the waves they get so high
Seems everything we've ever known's here
Why must it drift away and die

Quote of the day

"If there is a problem between a weak nation and another weak nation and the UN takes action, the problem disappears. If there is a problem between a strong nation and a weak nation and the UN takes action, the weak nation disappears. If there is a problem between a strong nation and a strong nation and the UN takes action, the UN disappears."
-- Carlos Romulo, former president of the UN General Assembly

What?!!

Question posed to the wise ones at The Hindu's Science and Technology department today:

Why does the colour of urine vary from light to bright yellow when we do not drink water for a long time?

Some people have waaay too much free time on their hands.

Come to think of it, maybe not as much time as the bozos at the paper who have actually decided to take this question seriously and have wasted about eight inches of newsprint to answer it. I didn't bother to read the answer, but I can guess it probably has to do with the chemical changes in one's body as one sits and thinks of idiotic questions to pose to newspapers' science desks.

Here's a shoutout

... to aabeirah :-)

Hmmm....

Maybe there is some merit to my rambling.

How NOT to install OpenSUSE 10.1 in 20 Steps

1. Download only CD #1 of the five-CD set, hoping you can wing it.


2. Boot from CD.


3. When it's partitioning time, delete the existing Kubuntu swap partition, thinking that you can fool Kubuntu into using the new swap partition that is going to be created for Suse.


4. Realise the folly of Step #1 when the installer demands to have access to CDs #2 and #3.


5. Abort installation of software and keep fingers crossed as the system reboots.


6. Pleasant surprise as system somehow manages to boot, albeit into a minimal FVVM desktop.


7. Install Conexant driver (this is becoming a real breeze, nowadays).


8. Realise that the minimal installation doesn't contain any web browser.


9. Pat yourself on the back as you use wget to download index.html from www.getfirefox.com and determine the Firefox Linux download URL by parsing this file.


10. Download and install Firefox.


11. Use Firefox and Google to find out how to add online installation sources for Suse 10.1.


12. Fire up YAST and try to repeatedly add these URLs, but fail each time, with either the 'Adding Catalog' dialog box hanging, or nothing happening on clicking 'Finish'.


13. See if you can at least go back to Kubuntu, after tweaking it's /etc/fstab to use Suse's swap partition: nope; see Step #3.


14. Go back to Suse 10.1 and download the mini ISO.


15. Find that cdrecord (downloaded separately) complains that it cannot find /dev/pg*.


16. Boot from both Kubuntu and Knoppix Live CDs and realize that thinking that you can get K3B from a Live CD to burn CDs is, well, dumb.


17. Reinstall Kubuntu in a new partition.


18. Burn the mini ISO from the new Kubuntu install.


19. Boot from mini ISO and realise that it expects a freaking network connection before showing me a root prompt, dashing all my hopes of installing the Conexant driver and then proceeding with the Internet install.


20. Make the new Kubuntu install my new home and proceed to spend the whole day customising it and installing all my favourite software. Sigh.

Movie Review: Cars

Cars is a delightful movie. Animation that is so good that you almost mistake it for the real thing sometimes, great drama, endearing characters, a wistful reminder of the Norman Rockwell times, a good story -- cocky, unwelcome outsider and a bunch of suspicious locals who nonetheless develop respect and love towards each other (I know it's clichéd, but still) -- all in all, more than worth the price of the ticket. Oh, forgot to mention this: there are no humans in the story; it's all cars.

And to think I almost didn't get to see the movie, thinking it would be yet another syrupy piece of crap.

Dial A Diaper

You are holding your baby on your lap, cooing to her gently, and the baby, overcome with the sheer joy of your cooing, does what babies do best. You crinkle your nose, lift the baby up and place her on the rubber sheet. You then clean her up, and reach for the Shmuggles pack (or whatever the heck these things are called) and oops, you find that you're out of diapers. What do you do?

You dial for a diaper, of course.

I'm not making this up. I saw a van yesterday cheerfully proclaiming to answer just these kinds of calls.

Kubuntu screwed me over

I'll try a haiku this time:

libasound.so
Where art thou? Try reinstall
Half of KDE gone.

Alright, I admit, there's one extra syllable, but I'm too pissed off to care. There was not even a peep from Kubuntu that so many dependent packages will be uninstalled as well. I'm off to download Suse 10.1. Since I moved to an unlimited download plan with Airtel, at least I don't have to worry about my broadband bill.

How refreshingly different would it be if

... an actor/singer, instead of saying:

<insert name of film/album here> is very different from my earlier work

says something like this:

It's the same old crap. What? You expect me to come up with something new and magical everytime? Do you really think I'm a creative genius or that my producer would allow me to wander away from the tried-and-tested path? Why should I even try when I know there are hordes of die-hard fans (read sheep) who have left their senses way behind and continue to watch/listen to my stuff out of sheer sentimentality? Oh wait, come to think of it, this is different; this is my 37th movie/album, while the previous one was, let me think ... yeah, my previous one was my 36th.

This rant was the result of watching yet another performer lamely trying to promote his latest PoS on TV.

Linux security in action?

I know that this is pretty trivial, but thought I'd mention it all the same.

I downloaded the binary installer for Poseidon 4.2 and attempted to run it by opening a bash shell and retrieving the file using the shell's auto-complete feature. But the shell couldn't locate the file for some reason. Then it struck me: if you are trying to execute a file, the shell will not bring it up unless the file has its execute bit set, which, in this case, wasn't so, in order to prevent malicious programs (especially those downloaded from the Internet) from executing. Neat.

Or is it Firefox which sets the file permissions during the download?

PETA plans protest outside KFC outlet

Where was PETA all these years? I've been seeing chickens carried in bicycles, tied upside down, practically all my life, and now when it's KFC it's a big deal? Something tells me it's not animals' welfare these people are really after.

I am underwhelmed

Is this the same Joel who wrote such great essays? The trilogy of management-related essays has culminated in something called The Identity Management Method, a singularly uninspiring piece containing nothing but a rehash of standard management best practices and a plug for his wonderful company where everyone gets to eat catered lunch everyday.

Rajesh is not on vacation. This post was blogged live. So there.

Star channels available on Dish TV

I don't know when this happened, but I am now able to receive the Star TV channels on Dish TV. I guess there is now full interoperability between the content providers and the satellite TV vendors.

Now I have twenty more channels that I can ignore. Just kidding. It felt good to watch The Simpsons and Seinfeld after, what is it, three years?

Another schadenfreude moment in Formula One

No, I don't mean Schumacher retiring from the race just when he looked like finishing fourth and whittling down Alonso's lead further. I mean the nuts falling off Alonso's right rear wheel and forcing him to crash into the protective barrier.

I used to not like Schumacher till a little while back, but my even greater dislike of Alonso has made me a Schumi fan -- sort of.

Anyway, today's race is, hands down, the most dramatic and unpredictable of the whole season.

A Line in the Sand

I have discovered Gerald Seymour only recently, and A Line in the Sand is my second Seymour novel. Great read, but this post is not about how good the prose is, but about how one of the dialogues in the novel set off a train of thought in my mind:

"... every attack abroad by the Iranian killer squads has the authorization of the highest echelons of government. It's only the appeasers who say otherwise. Government provides the training for the killers, the weapons via diplomatic pouches, the digital secure-phone links, the passports, the finance. Every operation abroad is laid before the foreign minister, the interior minister and the defense minister sitting on the National Supreme Security Council. It is authorized, sanctioned, on one condition only. The condition? There should be no smoking gun in Iran's hand ..."

The above words are uttered by a Mossad station officer in the story.

The first issue is that this is quite a neat way of demonising your enemies using fiction. The second issue I have is on a more fundamental level; an event -- a bombing, an assassination -- has occurred, and one party points its fingers at somebody. When proof is asked for, it simply says the perpetrator has hidden its involvement so successfully that there is no smoking gun, and you'll just have to take their word for it. Sort of like the opposite of Occam's Razor: go for the most complicated, unprovable solution to a problem.

Movie Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

I really had high expectations for this one, what with all its record-breaking box office collections. But boy, did the movie suck.

Except for Johnny Depp's antics -- even they were a bit over the top sometimes -- there is nothing in the movie to grab your attention and hold on to it. Indiana Jones-style brushes with the natives, hideous creatures, general mayhem in the high seas, been there, done that, next please.

The RCMP rocks

There is a fitness plan developed by the Royal Canadian Air Force, called the 5BX Plan, which contains a set of just five exercises to be performed in 11 minutes. It's at least 40 years old, but still very relevant today.

I had a PDF version of this in my old (as in the late nineties) PC, and subsequently lost it. Google searches didn't really help me because I mistakenly thought that a) it was called the 5B plan and b) it was the RCMP who developed this.

I contacted the RCMP, not really expecting a reply, and was pleasantly surprised to receive the PDF from a very helpful gentleman.

My earlier experience with the plan was not very successful, as I presumptuously skipped the earlier charts and started in the middle; I stopped after three or four days after my body threatened to go on an indefinite strike. This time I am starting at the bottom, and going by the book. It's been five days now, and my body is holding up pretty well so far (touch wood).

Something happened on the way to the plane

Last night, at the Mumbai airport, I gave my boarding pass to the person at the counter and got into the shuttle. The shuttle travelled for about a hundred meters, made a U-turn and returned to the same spot we started from, but on the opposite side, and we got down and got into the plane, which had been waiting for us morons patiently all the while, right outside the building, probably shaking its head at the foolishness of it all.

Bonus weekend

I travelled to Mumbai yesterday. The trip was initially planned for four days, but there was a change in plans, and I returned home last night itself. End result: whatever time I have this weekend at home is bonus time. I don't need to stick to any schedule, don't have any chores to run, nothing planned. So what does one do in such a situation?

1. Spend the entire two days without reading a single word, either on the computer screen or on the printed page (the non-verbalisation thought experiment).


2. Do two days of zazen (yeah, like I really could).


3. Find out what it's like to stay in bed the whole day.

Something tells me this weekend will be no different from the countless ones before. I have been in the rut for too long to do anything so out-of-the-box.

Movie Review: The Inside Man

Easily the best movie I've seen this year. No special effects, no slick production values (frankly, some of the scenes are quite mediocre), but a great story and some cracking dialogue. I really hated Clive Owen in King Arthur, but he redeems himself in this one. Wearing a mask and hood most of the time probably helped, too. For once, Denzel Washington comes off second best.

Not going to say anything about the story; I am too sleepy to ensure that my post will not contain any spoilers.

Never really knew folks could dance like this

I watched three spoofs of Shakira's Hips Don't Lie, and while one of them is absolutely hilarious, there's this other one where everyday (but really hot) folks profess the integrity of their hips. I haven't seen the original video, but here's a suggestion: release this video as an alternate and watch it take off on the charts; it's that good.

BTW, I know that this goes against everything I stand for, but a side effect of watching these spoofs multiple times is that I have started liking the song as well. While I consider Shakira incredibly sexy, I hadn't really paid much attention to her music. Now I am.

The Sound of Silence

The only thing missing from the Linux setup in my laptop was games, so I fired up Adept and rectified the situation. After playing a few rounds of Nibbles and Patience, and a bit of surfing, I tried playing some music, and found that there was no sound. This was not a problem with Amarok alone; even XMMS and Kaffeine seemed to be afflicted. The surprising thing was that there were no error messages, either from the UI, the console, or even the system logs.

My only experience with resolving sound issues in Linux is 'killall artsd' and switching between ALSA, OSS, etc., but none of these tricks helped this time. I narrowed things down somewhat by booting from the Kubuntu LiveCD and checking whether the sound worked (it did, so the problem is definitely not hardware-related).

Going to look into this tomorrow.

Update: Problem solved, sort of. I installed ALSA from the sources and fiddled around with gnome-volume-control, and the sound came back. Only thing is, there is a constant hiss from the speakers and an occasional high-pitched whine. The sound of my keystrokes also are faithfully reproduced by the speakers. Wait a minute, is it because of the mic volume? It is! Turned it down, and I am again able to type in peace.

Mystic Microsoft

I am reading Kraig Brockschmidt's autobiography, and this paragraph at the very end of Chapter 4 caught my attention:

For me, total acceptance of my situation helped me let go of what I thought my career should look like, and once I let go, the right things started happening almost without effort. It wasn't long before I was able to look back on my "failure" and know that I just wouldn't have had it any other way.

I've been grappling with this question for quite some time: Does the universe only wish the best for us, and any setbacks that we face are really course corrections that set us on truly happier paths, or is it just that our brains/minds are hardwired to make the best of a situation -- so that we are spared the agony of painfully lingering over what happened?

To be fair, there have been instances in my life which, in retrospect, were really for the best, but can this be attributed to a benevolent universe instead of random chance?

I guess it's ultimately a question of faith.

Everlong

If everything could ever feel this real forever
If anything could ever be this good again

I watched Foo Fighters' Everlong video last night, courtesy of the 100 Best Music Videos of All Time. The video is not that great, actually, but the song? Probably the single most adrenalin-pumping thing I've heard, except for maybe Goo Goo Dolls' Long Way Down.

The thing is, I have The Color and the Shape somewhere in my collection, but I haven't even thought of this song in ages. All the more reason to convert the rest of my tapes to MP3.

Indian government blocking blogspot.com?

I think the authorities will come to their senses soon (assuming that the story is true, that is). Anyway, I am able to access blogspot sites by using Tor.

The funny thing is, the Boing Boing page contains links to helpful pages that supposedly tell you how to bypass this block, but these pages themselves are from a blogspot site.

BTW, the Torbutton Firefox extension is *way* better than SwitchProxy.

You know you are in the wrong profession

... when you sit through a presentation that contains an architecture diagram with pretty boxes in five different colours, with arrows going hither and thither, and everybody is smugly congratulating one another on how wonderfully SOA-compliant the whole thing is, and then somebody brings up non-functional requirements and how all responses should be sub-second, and everybody looks at each other, and concur that, yeah, in such 'special' cases maybe we should bypass the calls to the Enterprise Service Bus and collocate the business/service/component layers, and maybe the servlets should directly call the fricken business objects...

Sigh.

Mystery

I installed Windows in my laptop yesterday using VMWare. I installed the driver for my ADSL modem, and proceeded to download and install the things you cannot run Windows without: Firefox, ZoneAlarm, AntiVir, etc. Only problem was, before connecting to the Internet, I had to physically pull out the modem cable from the USB port and plug it back in, in order to force the (Linux) cxacru driver to relinquish control over the modem. Not willing to settle for such a hack every time I booted Windows -- rare though such occurrences may be -- I decided to try to make Windows use my already running instance of Privoxy as a proxy server. Bzzt. Found that Privoxy was listening on 127.0.0.1, which cannot be accessed by the virtual network interface helpfully set up by VMWare for the Windows virtual machine. I could, of course, change the Privoxy listen-address to that at the Linux end of the virtual interface, but somehow this didn't feel right.

Here's where the mystery comes in: just for the heck of it, I booted Windows and started Firefox without pointing it to any proxies, and I was able to connect to the Internet. What gives? Not that I'm complaining.

Movie Review: The Da Vinci Code

Some books, even good ones, don't make the transition to moviehood that well. That being the case, considering what a piece of crap the book was, I guess I shouldn't really be surprised by how badly the movie sucked.

There was no evidence that the lead actor had won three Best Actor Oscars. But Tom Hanks (who, BTW, looks like Quentin Tarantino on steroids) can't really be blamed, what with the poor quality of the material he had to work with. And the less said about Audrey Tatou the better. Is she the same pert and endearing girl that I liked so much in Amelie?

I didn't mind the innumerable and lengthy digressions in the novel where one of the characters (or even the author) launched into monologues about this and that -- the novel had far worse things to bitch about -- but these digressions don't sit well in the movie at all. Couldn't a better way of conveying this information have been found? A summary at the beginning, a voice-over, etc.?

Here's where all the Zen training comes in handy

1. I mistakenly assumed that the final would start at the same time as the earlier matches. Set the alarm for 12:25 AM and went to sleep, only to be woken up at 11:50 or so by shouts of joy from next door. Hurriedly jumped out of bed and switched on the TV, to find that the match had been in progress for 20 minutes, and that I had missed two goals.


2. The power went off shortly. The inverter mercifully kicked in, and I was able to continue watching the match.


3. Spent a miserable hour and a half, fearing the worst every time France looked like they would overrun Italy's defences.


4. Bittersweet moment as Zidane gets red-carded. Good for Italy, but man, what a way for Zizou to bid adieu.


5. Just as the penalties are about to get underway, the inverter's batteries finally run out of juice.


6. I spend the next ten minutes or so in pitch darkness, listening to my neighbours' shouts of joy as they cheer the result of each penalty kick (did I mention that everybody in our street have electricity except me?).


7. There is a final, humongous celebration all around as one team is finally left standing.


8. There is a stoic smile on my face as I shake my head, switch off the dead TV and lights, and return to bed.


9. Just before I fall asleep, it strikes me that, had I not had my laptop on for the duration of the match, the inverter's batteries might very well have lasted another 15 minutes, and that I could have seen Italy lift the Cup. Oh well.

Confession

I didn't watch the Germany-Portugal match. For one thing, the third-place playoff match is so pointless; I also didn't want to make the Monday morning blues worse by staying up late for two nights in a row. I missed saying goodbye to Figo, but to be fair, though I have great respect for him, he's not on the same level as Zidane for me.

Dear David McGowan

It's been three months since your last essay. Please, please release stuff more often. Putting up an RSS/Atom feed for your site wouldn't hurt, either :-)

Movie Review: Superman Returns

The movie was too long, Superman's expressions were plastic, Kevin Spacey's lines were quite run-of-the-mill, the world domination plot was so is-that-all-you-can-come-up-with ...

I am willing to overlook all of these things, if someone can explain to me how, by just donning a simple pair of spectacles, Clark Kent is able to fool everybody and disguise the fact that he is Superman. It's not even the case that he is a shadowy figure whom only a few people have laid eyes on -- he stands around grinning idiotically and posing for cameras as he holds up the giant Daily Planet globe, for God's sake (not to mention having his mug beamed on giant screens in sports stadiums all the time).

Del Piero is one of my all-time favourites, but ...

Dude, get a grip:

Alessandro Del Piero, who scored the second goal in the 2-0 semi-final win over Germany, has taken to comparing himself to mythic heroes. Asked why he didn't talk to reporters before the tournament, he gave a unique response. "I went up on my hill to think like Achilles did before war," he said. "It's not important to me how many wars I fight, but how I fight them."

Italy 2 - 0 Germany

I had almost reconciled myself to penalties (with Germany the odds-on favourite to get through with their clinical efficiency) when Grosso scored.

I know that the feeling is very fleeting, and the joy I experienced will be but a distant memory in about a week's time, but for one instant it felt like I'd died and gone to heaven.

And just when you thought it couldn't get any better, Del Piero goes and scores a humdinger of a second goal.

I don't even care if the Italians lose in the final. They've given me something to remember for the rest of my life.

Brazil 0 - 1 France

Only the fact that Zidane gets one more chance at World Cup glory mitigates the sadness of Brazil's exit. To be fair, Brazil seem to have too many superstars for their own good (a certain top-flight Spanish club comes to mind, as well).

Yet another affirmation that you cannot take anything for granted in football, especially the World Cup.

Movie Review: X-Men: The Last Stand

Though the movie ought to be remembered for its great action sequences, the one thing that stays in your mind long after the rest of the stuff is forgotten is the betrayal at the end. Though it's for a good cause, it still hits you hard and leaves a bad taste. I guess that's what good cinema is all about (I never thought I'd use 'good cinema' and 'X-Men' in the same sentence, but there you go).

Movie Review: MI-3

Good action, but not great. One thing missing was the high-tech plotting and scheming to get at a goodie that is protected in a Fort Knox like environment (though Cruise gets to do his dangling-from-a-cable-inches-from-the-ground bit in another scene).

On the whole, a *lot* more watchable than MI-2, with it's over-reliance on action sequences at the expense of everything else.

Got myself a laptop, finally

It's an Acer 1641, straight out of the box except for the additional 256 Meg RAM and an external Microsoft mouse. Running Kubuntu on it; installation and hardware detection was a breeze. Only thing left is to hook up my Epson CX4500, but don't foresee any problems there.

The 24-Pass Goal

I missed the Argentina V Serbia match because of a doctor's appointment, and finally got to look at the 24-pass goal via YouTube.

All I can do is shake my head in wonderment and make this Reason #13.

Ouch, that must've hurt

Richard Williams on the English World Cup team:

• ... the most overrated and under-performing team at this World Cup


• On Thursday, the midfield resembled a man who has been asked to write a novel in a foreign language, using only a quarter of the letters of the alphabet.


• Apparently the latest tests identify (Frank Lampard) as the fittest member of the squad, which merely suggests that the medics are testing the wrong things.

Thirteen reasons why the World Cup scores over club games

1. In the World Cup, you represent your country. In club games, you represent your club, which may not even be your home, come next season. Makes a big difference, commitment-wise.


2. The shot of the Japanese player's closeup fading into the blood red Nippon flag as the national anthem is played.


3. How you always end up supporting a team -- usually the underdog -- no matter how detached you are the start of the game.


4. How your legs involuntarily kick out to take possession of the ball as you see the striker either overhit the ball or run out of steam as he approaches the six-yard box.


5. How you can sort of understand how things like ethnic cleansing happen, when you look at the supporters of the opposite team crowing after their team scores a goal (just kidding).


6. You want your team to escape defeat so badly that it doesn't matter how the goals come -- your team's witch doctor could have put a spell on the opposite team's goalie, for all you care.


7. The sheer relief of hearing the final whistle, as the underdog hangs on by the skin of its teeth for the last ten minutes, defending with only ten men against the hot favorite.


8. There is not a single empty seat in the stadium.


9. You know it has something to do with the Stockholm Syndrome, but you still feel stupidly sentimental as the opposite team give the ball back after your team sportingly put it out of play so that one of their players can receive treatment.


10. Every game -- even at the group stages -- is do-or-die.


11. You'll never forget the sight of Ronaldo being overcome with emotion in the substitutes' bench, as he waited for the whistle to blow in the 2002 final, after he had more than paid back for the ignominy of France '98, including two goals in the final itself.


12. The agony and the human drama associated with a penalty shootout.


13. The 24-pass goal.

And we are back to Mandriva

For all its ease of installation, inbuilt support for the Conexant driver and the nifty Free Serif font, Kubuntu 6.06 did not prove to be immune from my PC's freezing problem. Back to Mandriva.

Cheesy Word Play / Quote of the Day

Cometh the hour, cometh the Ahn
-- Gary Bloom on Ahn Jung-hwan scoring South Korea's winning goal against Togo

Time

Two interesting quotes from a novel I am reading:

Time was not a big deal with (him). Everything was right now. He could read a history book about Rome and get angry about the Roman empire.

and

Time passes, but sometimes it beats the shit out of you as it goes.

Speaking of time, one of the techniques I use sometimes to fall asleep is to try to define the concept of time. How much ever one tries to do so, it's difficult not to end up with one of these conclusions: a) the passage of time is strictly a mental construct or b) time is very tightly coupled to matter and space; one cannot talk of time in a manner that is orthogonal to either of these things (I sure as hell don't understand relativity theory, but the space-time continuum does sort of make sense).

Rajesh's Law #177

Law #176 doesn't always apply.

Rajesh's Law #176

If a team leads by the odd goal in three when the halftime whistle blows, bringing an exciting 45 minutes to an end, and you look forward to more goals in the second half, you are invariably bound to be disappointed; there will be no more goals, and you will be left wondering whether these are the same players who disappeared into the tunnel during the break.

Meta bad, very bad

I am sitting through ESPN's pre-match discussion of the Germany-Costa Rica encounter. The TV is on mute, and as I keep half an eye on it while my attention is focussed on the computer, a thought strikes me: the amount of time these guys spend talk about something (as opposed to letting one enjoy the actual event) is simply unbelievable. Game plan, win-loss record, who said what about whom, who is hot and who is not, yada yada.

By the time you get to the game, a) your senses are dulled by the sheer amount of commentary you had to put up with and b) you have been fed all kinds of BS predictions which invariably fail to materialise.

P.S. ESPN gave me a fright when they kicked off the match with Hindi commentary; mercifully, this was replaced by English commentary very quickly. Guess somebody had a cojones-in-the-vise moment.

How in the name

... of all that is ineffable, sacred, heavenly and profound did &*^%#ing Harsha Bogle become ESPN's World Cup anchor? Who is responsible for this? And where the hell is John Dyke?

And the World Cup is here (finally)

Some of the matches begin at 6:30 pm IST, so unless I dash back quickly from work, I may miss the first fifteen minutes or so. Come to think of it, going to bed at 2:30 every night for a month may also not be feasible. I could do it easily when I was in college, when Italia '90 coincided with the summer vacation, but not so now.

Smoothest switchover ever

I must say, the switchover to Kubuntu 6.06 went very smoothly and painlessly, even considering your host's considerable (ahem) Linux experience. I completed the installation in about half an hour or so last night, and started the customisation/tweaking at about nine this morning, and by noon I was pretty much done. My desktop is practically identical (in both look and feel and functionality) to the previous distro -- Mandriva -- minus Mandriva's glitches. Mind you, I have not really started working on the development tools -- gcc, CVS, Anjuta, etc., but all my day-to-day needs are taken care of.

Going to reward myself with a perfect cup of tea.

My work is done

I installed Kubuntu 6.06 today, and was not exactly looking forward to carrying out the steps to install the Conexant driver, when, to my very pleasant surprise, I found that the 2.6.15 kernel has already done so.

I guess I can update my instructions page, lean back and put up my feet.

"Purchase free if you don't get a receipt"

I used to look at a similarly worded sign at a local pizza joint and wonder what purpose it served. Now I know the reason.

Reservation

The more I think about the whole issue, the more I feel that it is a turf war between two rich and powerful groups; the prize being money, power and position, not just for the current generation, but for their progeny as well. Each group puts forward seemingly fair arguments -- the supremacy of merit on the one hand and the setting right of social injustices on the other -- but the real motives are pretty transparent. While all this is happening, the real people who deserve reservation are completely ignored by both groups. The politicians are meanwhile having a whale of a time.

BTW, The Hindu editorial flaming President Kalam for sending back the government's Office of Profit Bill is totally uncalled for; here's one guy who is calling BS on the politicians, and all you can say is that "he's throwing a spanner in the politics of the country"? Shame on you. If you ask me, we don't need a spanner; we need a nuke.

WSIF provider for Spring

Today I did something worthwhile for the OSS community -- if I get around to releasing it, that is: I wrote a WSIF provider for the Spring Framework. It was pretty trivial actually, as I reused quite a lot of the code from the existing Java binding.

Speaking of WSIF, I still fail to understand why it hasn't taken off in a big way; I can't think of a more performant and flexible way to do an SOA in a Java world.