Security Through Obscurity

I didn't get the receipt for an online insurance premium payment that I had made recently, so I went to the LIC home page to find a phone number I could call regarding this. But instead of a number, I found something even better: a link called 'Next Due', which would tell me the status of my payment without my having to talk to someone. On clicking on this link, I was prompted for my policy number (note: no login/registration required), and on entering the number, I was shown the premium amount, the date of the most recent payment and the date by which the next premium was due.

Neat. Only problem is, this information is available for the whole world to see.

Quote of the day

If this was the Middle Ages, and Magellen was an American, and we sailed around the planet and found out it was round instead of flat, we wouldn't tell anybody so we could attack from the rear.
-- William S Burroughs

Distro Promiscuity

Well, after finding an easier way to integrate the Conexant modem into the kernel, I have made Kubuntu (the distro on which I piloted the approach) my primary distro. Coupled with putting my data and software in their own separate partitions, accessible from multiple installations, the move from Suse to Kubuntu was pretty much seamless. Though it feels good to be back to a 100% non-commercial distro, I might continue playing with other distros, seeing as to how easy the switch has become.

Speaking of Kubuntu, it has come a long way since my last brush with it. Definitely ready for prime time.

Some More Chess

No, I'm not going to post any more smartass Tao quotes.

I have gotten quite good at engaging the computer. I even managed to obtain a legitimate draw last week (albeit by means of a perpetual check, but a draw is still a draw).

The secret of this success lies in my decision to stick to just one line of openings; I have resolved that I will open all my games with d4 (i.e. the queen pawn). The computer reacts to this in a pretty standard and predictable way, so I have managed to steer clear of errors and reach a balanced middle game most of the time. Research reveals that there are only about 13 openings involving 1.d4, so boning up on the main ideas and objectives behind them shouldn't be too much of a task.

Using only a little knowledge,
I would travel the Great Way
And fear only of letting go.
The Great Way is very even;
Yet people love the byways.
                  -- Lao Tzu

(Sorry, couldn't resist)

Mindlessness

I have posted about this before, but thought I would mention it again in a related context. One of the 'no-mind' [*] activities that I engage in quite often is ironing my clothes. It's usually a mechanical activity, and I don't give much thought to it, but looking back over the years, and paying more attention recently, I realise that in addition to getting to wear neater clothes, I have benefited in other ways as well: for someone like me who spends most of his time in left brain activities, the fifteen or so minutes I spend ironing a shirt provides my mind the rare opportunity to wander unfettered. Mind you, this is different from meditation, where the objective is to quieten one's mind. The benefits also seem to differ from the rest obtained by the mind from a good night's sleep.

[*] I am using the term 'no-mind' in the inaccurate, but nonetheless common, sense. It has a wholly different meaning in Buddhist philosophy.

Related thought experiment: how would it be like to go through a whole day without any kind of verbalisation: no talking, reading, programming, not even 'thinking in words' (i.e. practising the real 'no-mind')?

Of Kernels and Modules - Part II

A quick and dirty way of doing things is in place. I still get "LCP terminated by peer" errors when I try to connect after installing the driver this way, but this may be a problem with my set up, since the modules get loaded properly and the modem firmware is also loaded. Still working on it.

Update: Got things to work. Had to set up the connection using pppconfig.

Of Kernels and Modules

Taking a fresh look at my instructions for setting up the Conexant AccessRunner modem in Linux, I realise that they don't address a quite common scenario: what if you already have a kernel later than 2.6.10? Some digging around reveals that it is not very difficult to compile a module into an existing kernel (this page provides good instructions). I'm going to give this approach a shot and post the results, both here and on the How To page.

Oh, and I finished reading LOTR. As a mark of my respect and appreciation, my posts for the rest of the month will be in the style of Westron or the Common Speech.The title of today's post is an attempt in that direction. Just kidding. Verily.

King Kong

I watched King Kong yesterday, or more accurately, King, since we left the theatre during the intermission. We could only manage front row seats, and that too at the edge of the screen. If you have not experienced this situation, trust me, it's no fun craning your neck upwards at an unnatural angle and turning your head this way and that all the time to stay with the action. The closeups of the hideous natives in the island didn't help, either.

Iran and WMD

There's an article in today's Hindu about Iran's nuclear ambitions and how we have not really come up with a consistent way to handle atomic energy. It makes for some pretty depressing reading. An analogy that comes to mind is the way my jousts with the chess computer have been ending of late: I am about 25 moves into the game, all the pieces have been developed (to the best of my abilities), and there are no immediate threats to deal with. But there is something structurally wrong with the whole setup; I do not seem to have many options. Any option I consider seems to have some negative implication, some gotcha that seems insurmountable. The only way out is the meta-solution, i.e. the reset button.

The problem with the current situation is that instead of a reset button, there is only a big, red one.

Google Earth on Linux

Following the instructions in the Gentoo wiki, I managed to install and run Google Earth in Linux, but only after trying my luck with three different Wine versions (0.9.4 did it for me, finally).

After going through all these troubles, I must confess that all the effort seems to have been in vain (sort of): though I am able to zoom in and out and twirl the globe with my mouse, the menu items and the navigation buttons appear only when I hover the mouse over them. I also haven't figured out how to input coordinates and zoom there directly, if that is at all possible.

Put me down for Less Than Impressed.

Smeagol, my precious

I am nearly through with LOTR, and the action is pretty much over: the ring has been successfully destroyed and the characters are well into singing their songs of glory, and guess what? The one thing that sticks to my mind, the one thing I'm sure I'll remember long after I forget everything else in the book, is the Gollum character. Tolkien's writing really stands out in Gollum's utterings; one is filled with delight and tender pity for the wretched creature, with its soliloquies and peculiar way of talking.

Robert Fisk on Ariel Sharon

Mandatory reading.

MBAs and Distributive Justice

There is yet another full-page ad for IIPM in The Hindu today. I am not going to say much about the solicitation for admissions, except that it seems inappropriate for someone to call the IIMs and their ilk "the MBA mafia" and at the same time use their name in their advertisements ("Dare to think beyond the IIMs..."). My post is about an article that appears as part of the ad. The article can be found here.

1. The article (IMHO) correctly recognises that unbridled capitalism is not a Good Thing (tm) and must be tempered by humanism, which it claims is the "social vision" of IIPM. But distributive justice, the proposed remedy, and "to each according to his need" seem too close to communism for comfort.


2. The reason given for the faster expansion of business in China seems pretty weak and nebulous:

   ... present MBA course structure concentrating only on market segments by individual profit making units. This fails to explain the potentiality of market expansion through distributive justice. Potentiality of business is always in harmony with growth rate of national economy. That is why business expands much more rapidly in China compared with expansion of business seen in India in the past.

   though I do agree with the ultimate aim of "raising the living standards of the people at the bottom".


3. The footnote claims that the column has a monthly readership of 75,000,000. I am not sure whether this astronomical figure is for the online edition or for the print version. In any case I would like a cite before taking it seriously.

Cruelty to Animals

In the end, only kindness matters.

-- Jewel

A sight that one often comes across on the roads of Chennai (or, for that matter, on any Indian road) is that of an emaciated bull struggling to pull an overloaded cart, frothing at the mouth, while its master keeps whipping it in order to spur it up the incline. The only way I can reconcile this injustice in my mind is by taking recourse to karma: may be the bull had done some evil things in a previous life for which it is now payback time. May be it was a Hitler, or who knows, it could even be that it played the role of the cart-driver in an earlier avatar. But even assuming that this 'explanation' is true, the current suffering of the poor creature still doesn't seem right. Screw karma.

The Tao of Chess

The knight is without a place to thrust its dagger
  The rook is without a place to affix its claw
The queen is without a place to admit her blade

Why is this so?
 Because your pawns are strong.

Commentary: Avoid standard pawn weaknesses: the isolated pawn, the backward pawn and the doubled pawn.

Lead the organisation with correctness.
 Direct the military with surprise tactics.
Take hold of the world with effortlessness.

Commentary: Always make moves that either win the initiative or maintain it.

... to rise above people,
One must, in speaking, stay below them.
 To remain in front of people,
One must put oneself behind them.

Commentary: Avoid moves that impede the development of other pieces.

Evolved individuals regard the center and not the eye.
 Hence they discard one and receive the other.

Commentary: Control the center (the squares d4,e4,d5 and e5).

A good lock has no bar or bolt,
 And yet it cannot be opened.
A good knot does not restrain,
 And yet it cannot be unfastened.

Commentary: Make sure that all your pieces are defended at all times.

(Apologies to Lao Tzu)

Accurate-but-unintentionally-funny definition of the day

Tax'i·der'mist n. Someone who mounts animals

The Lord of the Rings

After watching Parts 1 and 3 of LOTR, I finally got around to reading the book. While I do concede that it is good (I am about 350 pages or so into the book, so this opinion is subject to change -- for better or worse), I am yet to see any justification for the cult status that the book and its author enjoy. One positively irritating thing is Tolkien's presumptuousness (if that is the right word): the way he goes on and on about how the chronology of the entire thing was recorded for posterity by various people, the elaborate family trees, indices, appendices and so on. It's almost as if he knew beforehand that the book would become a bestseller, and he decided to milk it for all its worth. People who are just interested in a compelling, well-told story simply do not care about these details (they care even less when one of the innumerable characters bursts into long-winded, crappy poetry -- some of it not even in English, but in some made-up language the author came up with when he was probably stoned).

So does that mean I have what it takes?

Since I got right three of the four questions that Joel posed here? I don't know JavaScript and hence didn't attempt Question 2, so I guess I should feel even more snotty :-)

To be fair, the two C questions are trivial to anyone who has done anything worthwhile in C. The Scheme question was a bit trickier for me, since Scheme syntax is slightly different from Common Lisp, but again, nothing an average Lisper would find too challenging.

On a related note, it's getting quite predictable:

1. Joel writes something controversial


2. His acolytes jump in and express their concurrence enthusiastically


3. A few nay-sayers pipe in with their objections and


4. A legion of geeks go to bed that night, satisfied that they have done their bit to uphold their geek cred

How to touch Reader's Digest for Rs 150

1. Start with a common saying or idiom, say, "quitting when ahead".


2. Modify this slightly so that it is still grammatically correct, but has an altogether different meaning. Example: "quitting when a head".


3. Think up a contrived, patently unfunny story that has the above phrase as the punch line:

   Finally, after six girls, Luke's wife had a boy. But he had only a head - nothing else. Luke didn't care, though. He was just happy to have a boy.
   
   On the kid's 21st birthday, Luke took him to a bar. "A shot of your best Scotch," he ordered.
   
   The boy drank it, and - POOF - he grew a neck. Amazed, Luke then ordered another and - POP - a torso sprouted. "Keep 'em coming!" Luke shouted. Eventually, the boy had a whole body. Everyone cheered.
   
   Tipsy, the boy stood on his new legs and stumbled to the left ... to the right ... out by the front door and into the path of a truck.
   
   The bar fell silent.
   
   "He should've stopped drinking," the bartender said, "while he was a head."



4. Submit this story as a contribution to Laughter the Best Medicine


5. Wait patiently for the Rs 150 cheque

Book Review: Mystic River

Imagine that you somehow get talked into going to a B-grade action movie. You sit through the entire movie, fidgeting, and finally get to the climax, in which the villain and his minions have the hero at their mercy, with the hero's sweetheart writhing helplessly in the hands of two leering henchmen. The villain starts his standard heh-heh-I-got-you-what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it spiel, and though you know it's a cheesy flick, you start to look forward to the hero escaping from his bonds and start kicking some serious ass.

What happens instead is that the villain finishes his speech in his own sweet time, asks the hero to say his prayers, and after waiting for the customary ten seconds, pulls the trigger and the hero drops dead.

Cut to the villain riding off into the sunset with the hero's girl by his side (who has quickly adjusted to the turn of events and is in fact wondering what she ever saw in such a good-for-nothing bloke who can't even best a B-grade villain, who, by the way, doesn't seem that bad, if you think about it).

Now what has all this got to do with Mystic River, you ask. Nothing, except that I felt the same way after finishing the book as you would feel walking out of the theatre after seeing said imaginary movie.

(Alright, I admit that this doesn't exactly qualify as a book review)