Staying on the IPL

... I think the way the commentators mention the name of the sponsors every chance they get ("DLF Maximum Sixers", "Citi Moment of Success" and so on) is simply disgusting.

Kapil on the IPL

Today's Hindu has an interview with Kapil Dev. As expected, it's about his take on the IPL. There is a hint of sour grapes ("What stops film stars from playing a T20 match in the IPL"), some doomsday predictions ("...club culture will command a bigger loyalty than State or even country") and a dash of wishful thinking ("The BCCI is finished as an organisation"), but we should give credit where it' due: no one can deny Kapil's efforts in lighting a fire under the BCCI's ass with his ICL initiative. To rub salt into his wound, some BCCI official even had the gall to say that he had been dreaming about the IPL for years. Considering Kapil's contributions to Indian cricket -- his 1983 World Cup triumph is about 1,743,449 times worthier that the Twenty20 World Cup victory, notwithstanding all the hype surrounding the latter -- the least the BCCI should have done is to have roped him into the IPL in some administrative capacity.

Amen to that

I've always felt that the talkers were winning (or have already won) the battle against the doers, and this quote from Sam Smith (via Xymphora) nailed it for me:

We have created an economy based not on actually doing anything, but on facilitating, supervising, planning, managing, analyzing, tax advising, marketing, consulting or defending in court what might be done if we had time to do it.

India is not there yet, but give it just another decade or so.

WSIF Provider for Spring

Rather than have folks leave a comment or email me about my WSIF Spring Provider implementation, I have uploaded the files (sources and sample WSDL) to my web site.

KDE 4.0

Reasons I don't like KDE 4.0:

1. No way to customize the panel - can't change the size, transparency, auto-hide, etc.
2. No way to change the menu to, say, the classic view.
3. Speaking of the classic view, changing the icons does not change anything.
4. Limited options to configure the clock. It's now on a par with the %$^# Gnome clock (one of the reasons I switched from Ubuntu)
   
5. Cannot manipulate the contents of the system tray.
6. Cannot move the icons around in the panel.
7. Where do I specify shortcuts for the menu items?
8. The options for keyboard shortcuts is a subset of what I used to see in 3.5.
9. Where is the option to hibernate?
   
10. On the whole, it's just a Vista wannabe - widgets and all.

While I'm on the subject, I might as well bitch about Firefox 3 as well - the GrayModern2 theme is yet to be ported to v3; I am left with a poor substitute: Phoenity Modern.

Twitter

I'm on Twitter.

Heirs Try To Freeze Nizam's Funds

The heirs of the Nizam of Hyderabad are trying to get back the millions of pounds of family funds held in a frozen account in a London Bank. Reminds me of this great quote from a recent Anti-Empire Report:

"Get off this estate."
"What for?"
"Because it's mine."
"Where did you get it?"
"From my father."
"Where did he get it?"
"From his father."
"And where did he get it?"
"He fought for it."
"Well, I'll fight you for it."

StS2008 Coding Contest

I've been working on my entry to the Smalltalk Solutions 2008 Coding Contest for the past three weeks or so, and it's been a pretty good experience so far: at last, an opportunity to work on a non-trivial Smalltalk project. The decision to provide three months for the contest is a great one; it gives sufficient time to put together something worthy. I'm sure there are going to be some great entries, but I'd be more than happy even if I manage to submit only a minimal (yet fully functional) entry.

Movie Review: American Gangster

It happened with Just Like Heaven two years ago, and it again happened with American Gangster the week before last: one can see the microphone at the top of the frame in at least a third of the scenes. In fact, it was so bad at times that it would have been an improvement if they had handed out hand mikes to Denzel Washington and Russel Crowe. I doubt that the movie editors would have overlooked such an obvious thing, so the blame most probably lies with the folks in the theater projection room.

I initially thought I'd say something about the movie's plot, the characters and so on, but two weeks after watching the movie, the fiasco with the microphones is all that I can remember. Oh, and how the protagonists try to prove who's the most testosteroney of them all.

Quote of the day

A metamodel is a model used to model modeling itself.
-- MOF 2.0 Specifications

Moview Review: National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Cliched scenes, too-clever-by-half dialogue, lame sidekick, over-the-prime hero, a plot that requires one to a) leave one's incredulity at home with the family dog and b) be the village idiot to find interesting -- you name it, National Treasure has it. The saving grace is the climax; not a particularly engaging one, but nonetheless a huge improvement when compared to the rest of the movie.

Some scenes that stand out for all the wrong reasons:

• The ease with which the sidekick hacks into Buckingham Palace's network

• Photographing the wooden piece by making use of the camera at the traffic light (and of course getting the $%@^ sidekick to hack into the police database to retrieve the photograph)

• The absolutely irritating conversations between Ben Gates' parents

Playing the stock market

From William Blum's Anti-Empire Report:

...there are numerous significant information gaps and misconceptions in the choir's thinking, often leaving them unable to see through the newest government lie or propaganda trick; they're unknowing or forgetful of what happened in the past that illuminates the present; knowing the facts but unable to apply them at the appropriate moment; vulnerable to being led astray by the next person who offers a specious argument that opposes what they currently believe, or think they believe. The choir needs to be frequently reminded and enlightened.

He might as well be talking about the financial press. I have been following the stock market for the last month or so (not to mention losing some money as well), and the one thing that struck me after reading the daily reports on movements of the Sensex is how the reporters unquestioningly quote the market players' take on things. You either find incredibly banal, motherhood statements like "More than 50% of India's exports are to the United States" (to account for the fall in the stock prices of companies which rely on exports for their revenue -- conveniently forgetting that the same companies' shares rose yesterday when the state of the American economy was practically the same as today), or plain deceitful stuff like the now-infamous "decoupling" theory.

SMS Polls

Deccan Chronicle runs an SMS poll everyday, asking for readers' opinions on one of the burning issues of the day ('Do u thk v shd lynch SRK pblcly or in prvt?'). Now, what kind of folks take part in such polls? It's not like all the entries are placed in a lucky draw or something. If people still send in their votes, it's either because they are interested in shaping public opinion (i.e. vested interests), or they think voicing their opinions will lead to a more informed public discourse.

Both of these reasons don't seem plausible to me, especially in light of the poll numbers; invariably the percentages are too round for my liking, like 60% ayes and 40% nays: it's exceedingly unlikely that the total number of votes was a multiple of 100. Yeah I know, the stated percentage can be reached for any total, say, 50 (30/20), but this actually leads me to my postulate: I suspect that the totals are usually less than 100. Knowing DC, I wouldn't be surprised if they were actually in the single digits -- a DC reporter, his editor and the typesetter voting 'Aye', and said reporter's wife and dog voting 'Nay'.

A look at the results of yesterday's poll: 76% for 'Yes', 24% for 'No'. Hmmm, what's the smallest number that yields whole numbers for these percentages? 25, I think. I bet the DC folks are jumping with joy.

Movie Review: Halla Bol

My first impression on leaving the theater was that I liked Chak De India better, but I changed my mind on further reflection. Right from the initial scenes where the cynicism of Bollywood society is laid bare, to the gripping finale, Halla Bol grabs your attention and doesn't let go (alright, maybe it does let go a bit during the inevitable, but mercifully few songs).

This was my first Ajay Devgan movie (sue me), and I must say, he has presence; lots of it. He may not be as good looking as the Bollywood hunks who cannot act their way out of a paper bag, but makes up for it with the intensity he brings to his role.

Some of the scenes are over the top, like when Ajay Devgan's character pees on the Persian carpet at the minister's house (where did they get hold of this guy, BTW? They might as well have replaced him with a cartoon), or when Pankaj Kapoor's truck develops bullet-proofing capabilities when he makes his dramatic appearance to save Mr Devgan. There are also some made-for-cinema coincidences (including the above-mentioned appearance of Pankaj Kapoor at the right place at the right time) like the old director's granddaughter being a forensic pathologist who plays a vital role in the revival of the murder case, but these can be overlooked in light of the movie's other redeeming qualities.

The movie also ventures into controversial territory, with party cadres (Shiv Sainiks?) going on the rampage against Devgan, and leaders of the Muslim community offering support to him (BTW, his refusal to accept their help because he believed that he could get justice in a secular country seems more like a nod to political correctness than a portrayal of how things are in real life).

All in all, definitely a must-watch movie.

(In other news, hell froze over at 19:21 IST today. The met department attributed this event to an oath a certain individual took re: Bollywood movies about a decade or so ago).

Joel, Meet CMM

From Joel on Software:

To reach this sweet spot, we borrowed an idea from Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of Toyota. He calls it Five Whys. When something goes wrong, you ask why, again and again, until you ferret out the root cause. Then you fix the root cause, not the symptoms.

Fishbone analysis by any other name smells just as CMMy. To be fair, blogging about all the outages and what you're doing about them is a novel, Web 2.0 wrinkle.

Maybe it's just the cynic in me, but doesn't it sound like a way to save money instead of blindly giving a rebate to all customers who suffer a downtime?

We let the customer decide how much they want to be credited, up to a whole month, because not every customer is even going to notice the outage, let alone suffer from it.

And Joel, you might do well to keep an eye on Michael; his email seems like he's doing quite a nice job of managing his boss, if you know what I mean.

Simplicity

Yesterday I was at the Trivandrum airport, waiting to catch a flight back home, when a friend pointed out that the Chief Minister of Kerala was about to board a plane. I looked around, and sure enough, there was a doti-clad person, walking purposefully towards the boarding gate. What caught my attention was that there was just a single policeman accompanying the Chief Minister; no retinue of self-important sycophants jostling around. I know nothing about Kerala politics -- levels of corruption, development, and so on -- but this was a refreshing change from the personality culture that is prevalent in the rest of the country.

Ironically, I witnessed something completely at variance with the above scene, just two days ago at the same airport: a huge retinue of supporters expressing their adulation (via man-high garlands and slogans shouted at the top of their voices) for a bishop of all people.

The Jallikattu Controversy

Public opinion seems to be in favour of the ban on Jallikattu, as evidenced by the letters to the editor in The Hindu. There are a few voices opposing the ban too. Here's one:

Animals suffer at the hands of human beings in many ways. They are overloaded and tortured in agricultural fields, used in transportation in inhospitable terrain and circumstances, and held captive in zoos and homes. They are sacrificed in religious functions. Considering all these, the so-called ill-treatment of bulls, which are nurtured throughout the year, one day is nothing.

Consider this analogy: Two people are beating up a person, one with a heavy club, the other with a much smaller stick (but big enough to cause pain to the victim). Per the above logic, we might as well allow the second guy to continue his actions. Here's another one:

The apex court verdict does not take into consideration the views of the stakeholders, in this case the villagers, bull-owners and tamers

Conveniently leaving out the uber-stakeholder, who's getting chilli powder thrown into his eyes and being set upon by ten or twenty 'tamers'.

It's different this time

From The Economist:

The authors show that, although details may vary, banking crises follow the same broad script. Each blow-up is preceded by rising home and equity prices; an acceleration in capital inflows driven by optimistic foreign investors; a rapid build-up of debt; and--immediately before the storm hits--an inverted V-shaped path for the economy, with growth first picking up and then faltering.

The quote refers to the American economy, but it could as well be referring to India.

I have been subscribing to the Economic Times for a month or so, with a view to making some money in the stock market (changed priorities and all that). It's been a pretty mixed experience; not investment-wise -- I am yet to dip a toe into the waters -- but in terms of gaining insight and understanding. Will probably post something on this later.

Alright, Stop it Already

I have written previously about jokes in Reader's Digest that are predicated on taking a well known idiom or expression and rewording it in order to produce a punch line. Here are two more examples of this despicable technique from recent issues:

A rope walks into a pub. The barman says, "You were in here causing trouble. Go on, get out."

The rope shuffles outside and winds his top half round his bottom half, vigorously rub his head against a lamppost then goes back into the pub. "Oi!" shouts the barman. "Didn't I just throw you out?"

"Nah, mate," says the rope. "I'm a frayed knot."

I'm afraid not. Get it? Ha ha. The next one:

One man hated that his wife was always nursing sick birds. At home he found a crow with a splint on his beak sitting in his favourite chair. On the dining table a feverish eagle was pecking at an Aspirin, while in the kitchen his wife was comforting a shivering little wren that she found in the snow.

"I can't take it any more!" he said. "We've got to get rid of all these darn..."

His wife cut him off in mid-curse. "Please, dear," she said. "Not in front of the chilled wren."

Oh, I get it. Not in front of the children. Bwahaha, stop it, you're killing me.

Movie Review: I am Legend

[Warning: spoilers]

Let's start with the name of the movie: I am Legend? What kind of a crappy title is that? Talk about egomania.

The movie piques your interest initially, what with the scenes of overgrown New York streets with not a human being in sight, deer and lions having a free run, and all that, but this wears off quickly, once you are filled in on how this miserable state of affairs came about. The rest of the movie is very depressing, with no turning-of-the-tide moment, with the protagonist going through one misfortune after another [the family pet gets killed, for God's sake (a totally unnecessary Old Yeller moment thrown in for good measure, too) -- how much more dystopian can you get?].

There are so many holes in the story:

1. How does Dr Neville get to set up a well-barricaded house, with a state-of-the-art lab in the basement, in the face of all the turmoil and confusion (we are told) that accompanies the virus outbreak?


2. What's up with all the folks who get turned into 'mannequins'? Why have their bodies not decomposed/turned to dust/whatever? (Update: Well, it turns out they are mannequins, probably set up by Dr Neville to tide over his feelings of loneliness.)


3. Couldn't the doctor have hooked up earlier with any other persons who are immune to the virus?


4. Where does the electricity come from? I'd have asked the same question about the fuel, but they show Dr Neville pumping it from a gas station, so I'll let it go and assume that he has not run out of gas for three years because he is getting his supply from various gas stations all over the city.


5. Why doesn't he escape with the woman and the kid at the climax? Why the need for sacrifice and martyrdom?


6. Why does he leave the dog to roam around freely when there is a real danger of the dog running into the den of darkness seekers (or whatever the heck they are called)?


7. We are told that the bad guys have de-evolved completely, i.e., they have lost all their human qualities and have become like animals, but they still retain the intelligence to device a clever trap to try and capture the good doctor.

Minus two stars out of five.

Aamir Khan on Black

Well, if I'd sat through the entire movie and had done a full review of Black, it would definitely be in alignment with Aamir Khan's take (sorry, the quote is from DC, so no link):

The sensibility wasn't right for me, I couldn't make out if they were living in a museum or a library or a church. The performances were over the top.

No doubt referring to Big B's fricken British accent.

Most importantly, it was about a child who had these problems, an alcoholic person comes and says you have to leave her alone with me for forty days, and he slaps her around. I don't know of any parent who would agree to that.

Ouch. And I wasn't even thinking of the pedophile angle.

Dish TV Sucks: Part 9564

1. You log in to the web site and are asked to change your password. You change your password, but when you try to log in using the new password, you get an error saying that your password contains invalid characters. You disable this validation by turning off JavaScript temporarily, and voila, you're able to log in. Sigh.


2. You enter your credit card details and click on Submit. Payment gateway error. Against your better judgement you repeat this three more times, and hit the same error each time. A part of you is worried that you've actually paid them four times, but a phone call to Citibank reveals that no transaction has gone through. Whew. Come to think of it, I think I should consider moving this to the (non-existent) "Why Dish TV is Great" list.


3. You try the credit card payment the next day, and it goes through. Only problem is, the default option in the renewal screen is for the basic package; therefore you do not get the full complement of channels. And it takes you one hour of arguing with the call center person -- after waiting patiently for 24 hours for the activation to kick in -- to figure this out.


4. You ask to be put through to the supervisor so that you can complain about the poor service, and are asked to give your phone number; the supervisor will call you back. You do so, not really expecting a call back. Your expectations are met fully and completely.


5. The IVR system is faulty; it works with certain mobile phones and not with others.


6. Staying on the subject of the IVR, you select the option for English, and are connected to a representative who impresses you with his chaste Hindi.

Alright, maybe there is one item that can go on the "Why Dish TV is Great" list: for all their other shortcomings, the set top box's interface is miles ahead of Tata Sky in the usability department. Ironical, when you consider how badly their web site's usability sucks.

Blackwill Booga Booga

From The Hindu:

Indian cities could be targeted by extremists who could lay their hands on nuclear weapons once Iran develops them, the former U.S. Ambassador to India, Robert Blackwill, said here on Monday.

“If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, some Arab countries may follow suit and who knows what western city or Indian cities such as Delhi or Mumbai could be a target,” he said at a session at the India Economic Summit

.

ClearTrip.com

My first impression of cleartrip.com was a negative one -- their TV ad where a person sees a good looking woman in a bar and removes his ring so that he can pretend to be single (what's up with these brain-dead advertising folks? [*]) -- but a visit to their web site left a positive impression on me. Clear design, works fine in Firefox, an excellent summary page where you can mix and match flight options... what more could one ask for? Not to mention the fact that you can use said excellent summary page and identify the flights you want to take, and then mosey over to the airlines' own web sites and book your ticket, saving yourself at least a couple of hundred bucks <evil grin>.

[*] Before a certain commenter (I know who you are, BTW) jumps on me and calls me dumb, let me make myself clear: it's the inappropriateness of the wedding-ring-as-marital-status indicator in the Indian context that I'm ranting against.

And the winner is...

Open source software.

For some reason, I couldn't open my Gnucash data file after installing Kubuntu. A post to the gnucash-user mailing list produced suggestions from some helpful folks, but they didn't fix the problem.

An hour or so of digging into the sources (made possible in no small measure by the log messages in /tmp/gnucash.trace) and tweaking the XML validation code, and three years of data accessible once again. Phew.

I still don't know what the long term effects of the tweaking will be, but for the moment I'm happy that I am able to make changes to the file and save them successfully.

I also have to figure out for how long am I going to be running my own fork of Gnucash. I guess the best option would be to use the 'forked' Gnucash to open my current data file as an archive file, but use the plain vanilla Gnucash and create a new file for everyday use.

Resident Non Pakistanis

Well, it's now the turn of the Pakistanis: there was this picture of a bunch of them crossing the Wagah border to attend the India-Pakistan ODI at Mohali, at a time when their country is in complete turmoil. It beats me how can these people sit in a stadium and cheer their team when their fellow countrymen are spilling blood on the streets, opposing the military crackdown.

Resident Non Indians

I've always wondered what to call folks in India who are Indians only by name and nothing else; the kind of people who go to wine and cheese parties, greet one another with pecks on the cheek instead of the traditional namaste, celebrate Halloween in Chennai (gag) and so on. A lot of colourful expletives come to mind, of course, but I'll settle for RNI: Resident Non Indians.

I came across this moniker a couple of days ago in Deccan Chronicle. Though I know it's practically impossible to search for any article older than 24 hours in the DC web site, I googled for the phrase all the same and found that it has been in existence for quite some time -- the hijacking of the original phrase (NRI) seems obvious in hindsight -- but has not exactly been used in the context I'm referring to.

Staying on the subject of Deccan Chronicle, some obligatory DC-bashing: their daily supplement contains a section called 'Party Whirl', where a stringer with a cheap digital camera goes (probably uninvited) to various parties in town and clicks pictures of guests for tomorrow's edition. The 'journalist' doesn't even bother to take down the names of some of the party goers; instead you find pictures with captions like 'This lady was seen enjoying herself' or some such tripe. Somebody just shoot me.

Sheesh

I left the sound on during the commercial break for a change, and regretted it immediately: a car carrying a bunch of beach bunnies stops near a surfer dude; the girls break into song -- I don't remember the lyrics, but the gist is that they are feeling naughty, and would the surfer dude like to rub some sun tan lotion on them?

How many times must it be drummed into the heads of the bozos who come up with such crap? Indians are not looking to acquire a sun tan. We want to look Fair and Lovely (tm) or Fair and Handsome (tm), depending on whether we are beach bunnies or surfer dudes.

What's your point?

There's an article about terrorism (nope, don't bother with the link) in today's DC by Kuldip Nayar. Nothing wrong with this, except that a) the article adds nothing to the discourse b) it doesn't add any new bits of information c) it does not provide any insightful commentary. Then what *does* it do? Here are some samples:

Every Indian must ask himself why terrorism is rearing its head in the country.

OK Chief, why is terrorism rearing its head in the country?

The terrorists who attacked the dargah are hardly concerned with Jayaprakash’s message of non violence.

No sh*t, Sherlock.

It has a bit to do with poverty or lack of education, but more with fundamentalism.

You think?

What happened in Ajmer or Ludhiana may have been a violent protest against pending cases of injustice.

Sigh.

New Delhi’s problem is that it has no well-thought-out, long-term strategy to tackle terrorism. There are ad hoc efforts, with little coordination between the Centre and the states. The United States, a larger country than ours, has not experienced any act of terrorism after 9/11. The reason is that the intelligence agencies there work hard, not like those in India which do not follow up even prior warnings. India is a soft state which requires to change its attitude, but it does not need another special police force or a harsher law.

In other news, the Sun rose in the east today.

Not a bad idea when you think about it

Here's a way to make the "more educated and initiated class in India" participate in the electoral process in greater numbers: make voting via SMS possible.

The idea is from Arindam Chaudhuri's "column" from one of the full page ads for IIPM that assault our senses periodically (the saving grace is that they seem to have changed the "Dare to think beyond the IIMs" to simply "Dare to think beyond").

Gutsy Gibbon

Ubuntu has taken all the fun out of installing a new version of a distro. Whatever happened to the thrill of discovering via Slashdot or Reddit that a new version is out, patiently downloading the ISO, looking at the current installations and deciding which distro/partition to jettison for the new version, going through the actual installation, finding that the new version has nuked your wireless networking (just kidding)...

Gutsy Gibbon is out, and the only indication I had of its availability was a message in Update Manager to the effect that a new version (7.10) was available for upgrade. Well, the blame is actually mine, as I've not been to Slashdot and Reddit for something like two months.

Anyway, 946 MB worth of downloads later, my desktop is more or less the same (heck, it's practically the same) as it was before the upgrade. I know that there are new features -- the login screen that appears on waking the laptop after hibernation displays an additional button called 'Leave Message', for one thing -- but they aren't readily apparent.

I ended up changing my windows theme to Slate Horn Blue just to remind myself that I have upgraded to 7.10.

OMG I got an email from Kareena Kapoor

Here's an email I received yesterday (some content edited to prevent the accrual of thoroughly undeserved publicity to the folks involved):

Hi Rajesh,

Right from the time I was a little girl, I looked forward to the festive season.

Friends, family, parties, the festive aura and looking your best – that’s what makes it so special. Things are no different today. And to make sure I am fashionably festive this season, I have the young and talented designers at <deleted>.

I have personally experienced the latest fashion collection which revels in a riot of colors from the bold to the earthy and a variety of silhouettes and cuts. See how I look and download some vibrant wallpapers and screensavers by clicking on the links below.

Dip into this ocean of innovative and colourful fabrics and prints, which will be difficult to find anywhere else. Most of these are already my favourite possessions: Shirt-dresses, Printed dresses, Kalamkari Ghagra Skirts and Cool Embroidered Tunics. I am enjoying every bit of it and hope you have your share of fun too. I am sure you don’t want any misses in your wardrobe.

You can share the hottest fashion trends and your personal experience at <deleted>,at kareenakapoor@<deleted>

Let <deleted> and me help you get fashionably festive this season.

Wishing you and your Family a Very Joyous Season!

Kareena Kapoor

The sad part is that there are enough clueless people who will actually think that they got a personal email from Kareena Kapoor.

Congress' Death Wish

The Congress Party's insistence on pushing the nuclear deal through even at the cost of losing power at the center has always been puzzling; the single word that kept coming to mind was 'blackmail'. Now Bharat Karnad (don't bother going to the link; Deccan Chronicle's enlightened web designers have successfully ensured that the link will become stale tomorrow) weighs in with a somewhat similar opinion:

It only deepens the mystery about why it is that the ruling Congress party is trying so desperately to shove this deal down the nation’s throat, even at the cost of being thrown out of power. It must be some very powerful set of personal and collective motivations indeed, which the US official documents declassified 30 years hence or sooner (courtesy the Freedom of Information Act) will no doubt reveal.

Guffaw

On the other hand, China is completely immune to the (anti-semitic) slur. Mention the Holocaust to the Chinese and they’ll think you are referring to the Rape of Nanking.
-- Xymphora

Twenty20

From an article on the Twenty20 format:

Every conscientious lover of cricket cautioned against the inherent risk of the format: in a pool of adrenalin-filled moments, how does one sift the outstanding from the irrelevant? With every six hit, every wicket taken, every catch snagged celebrated homogenously [sic], how does one determine the context?

Well, duh, the context is 13 needed off the last over; the context is scoring 36 runs in the penultimate over to post a competitive target; the context is...

I cannot for the life of me understand how paid columnists get away with this crap.

Quote of the day

"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it's not real?"
-- Albus Dumbledore

The Celestine Prophecy / New Age crowd could not have come up with a more inspirational defining statement of their philosophy if they had tried.

I initially wanted to do a review of the book, but considering that it took me something like a month to finish the goddamn thing -- man does it drag in the middle -- it's probably not fair.

One positive outcome of finishing the book is that I can now go ahead and read Stephen King's review without the fear of running into spoilers.

Movie Review: Chak De India

Eminently watchable, mainly because Shah Rukh Khan doesn't have much scope for the kind of histrionics that make my hand start twitching involuntarily for the remote. Though there are some scenes -- the slo-mo stride through the tunnel after the melee at the McDonald's, for example -- where the usual Bollywood macho BS is evident, such scenes are mercifully few in number.

The barbs at cricket, though well-intended, seem overdone and artificial; especially the way the cricketer boyfriend is spurned in front of the paparazzi.

If you set aside the fact that the undisciplined-underdogs-transformed-into-champions by-coach-with-something-to-prove motif has been (ab)used by Hollywood at least 1372 times, Chak De... is definitely an entertaining watch, with the added bonus of rekindling some much-needed patriotism in the viewers as well.

Note to some folks in audience: guys, it's a given that India will win the championship -- it's Bollywood we're talking about, after all -- so don't tell me you *really* didn't know that the goalie saves the final penalty stroke?

IT superpower my a$$

The other day somebody was telling me how a typical day at work goes for him: come to work at 2 PM for the afternoon shift, log in remotely to 32 servers, check the CPU utilisation, check the memory utilisation, clean up system log files older than three days...

Oh, BTW, he has a masters from one of the top colleges in the country.

Adieu to Conexant

Well, I finally got an Ethernet modem, and the much-loved Conexant-based USB modem was retired from service. Bittersweet feelings as I unhooked its cable and stored it in the cupboard (sentimental guy that I am, I ensured that the ISP guy didn't take it with him; turns out I had paid upfront for the modem, so there were no issues). Seems like my only connection to the modem is going to be my instructions page.

Achievements

Political parties have a habit of taking out full page ads trumpeting their achievements during the first 'n' days in office ('n' is typically 100 days if you are ru[i|n]ning a state; 365 days if you have been given a mandate to screw over the whole country). If you pay close attention to these achievements, you'll find that more than half of these are not really achievements at all, since they are nothing more than statements of intent or, worse, hollow promises. Case in point: some of the 'achievements' of the Mayawati government:

• Police administration given strict orders to protect people belonging to the poor and downtrodden sections of the Sarva Samaj


• Decision taken to set up power plant

And, incredibly, these gems:

• Demanded Rs.800 billion from the prime minister for a special development package for Bundelkhand and Purvanchal regions


• Demanded Rs.22 billion from the central government for flood relief

So true

From an article about the intrusion of Blackberrys into our lives:

The mobile device was sold as a form of liberation: now your office can be the beach. The trouble is, it’s turned the beach into the office.

Granny's got a gun

It's all well to give guns to villagers for their protection, but who's there to protect these guys when the militants turn on them with doubled fury after one of their folks are finished off by a lucky shot from granny's gun? The disastrous Salwa Judum initiative in Chhattisgarh is a case in point.

An 'Oops' Moment

Telling the IT support person that you are able to tunnel through the corporate firewall because he has opened port 22 for your machine's IP address, hearing that the port has not yet been opened, scratching your head in puzzlement, only to realise a second later that the tunnelling is possible because you were sneaky enough to install corkscrew in Cygwin, and keeping your fingers crossed that he doesn't probe further, and hanging up at the earliest chance you get...

Much as we appreciate your patriotism

... don't you think you can put your time to better use, like, I don't know, preparing for your frigging board examinations?

$CATCHY_TITLE

Somebody tells you to obey whatever instructions they give you, no matter what. Assume for the moment that, for some reason -- love, loyalty, respect, life-and-death situation, whatever -- you are willing to go ahead. The first instruction is for you to do something, and keep on doing it even if that person subsequently asks you to stop. You say OK, and proceed to do the thing, upon which he/she immediately cries for mercy and begs you to stop, saying that the thing you are doing is too painful. What do you do?

The obvious answer is to persist, because didn't the person ask you not to stop, no matter what? Not so fast. If you have go by the meta-instruction -- "Obey whatever instruction I give you" -- what prevents you from obeying the second instruction?

I don't think there is a logically sound answer to this [*]. I am at home on sick leave, so I don't have the energy to think this through, but things like self-referentiality, meta-levels, and the fact that it is impossible to completely answer the question "What is truth?" (maybe Godel's Theorem as well?) come to mind.

(Context: I am about 530 pages or so into Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the scene where Dumbledore and Harry Potter are attempting to destroy one of Lord Voldemort's Horcruxes. Sheepish grin).

[*] On second thoughts, there is a logically sound answer -- keep obeying the latest instruction till the requester drops dead or at least loses the ability to issue further instructions -- but this doesn't really serve the purpose.

The Left is at it again

...running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. They will oppose the 123 Agreement, but if it comes to a vote, they will walk out of the house, in effect an abstention:

Communist Party of India (Marxist) Members of Parliament will walk out if there is a vote on the 123 agreement with the United States, as sought by the Bharatiya Janata Party, according to veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu.

“We are critical of the nuclear deal …but will walk out in the event of a vote on it,” Mr. Basu said after a meeting of the party’s State Secretariat. He reiterated the Left parties’ demand for a discussion in Parliament on the agreement.

And you guys wonder why you have zero credibility?

Dolphin Smalltalk discontinued

Considering that they had to compete with the 800 pound gorilla that is Visual Studio , it is to their credit they hung in there for so long.

BTW, their intense dislike of OSS is surprising; it's OK to believe that the OSS model is fundamentally flawed and is at odds with viable commercial software development, but the intensity of the dislike is a bit, well, intense.

How to handle sarcasm

For some reason, I cannot stand sarcastic people. If you want to say something, be man enough about it and say it straight; don't beat around the bush. If you want to prove how witty you are, get a fricken blog or become a comedian.

The best way to handle sarcasm is to play along. When I was in college, I once went to a workshop class not wearing the requisite khaki uniform (I forget the reason -- most probably because I hadn't done my washing). The instructor smiled very sweetly (now that I think of it, he could have auditioned successfully for Professor Umbridge's part in OOTP; yeah, I know that Umbridge is a woman) and asked me whether it was raining, the implication being that my uniform hadn't dried in time for the class. I quickly said no, I had washed it, it had not dried in time, and so on. In hindsight, all I should have done is smile back even more sweetly at the bastard and said yes.

Here's an example of this technique in action:

Bruce Schneier: By today's rules, I can carry on liquids in quantities of three ounces or less, unless they're in larger bottles. But I can carry on multiple three-ounce bottles. Or a single larger bottle with a non-prescription medicine label, like contact lens fluid. It all has to fit inside a one-quart plastic bag, except for that large bottle of contact lens fluid. And if you confiscate my liquids, you're going to toss them into a large pile right next to the screening station -- which you would never do if anyone thought they were actually dangerous.

Can you please convince me there's not an Office for Annoying Air Travelers making this sort of stuff up?

Kip Hawley: Screening ideas are indeed thought up by the Office for Annoying Air Travelers and vetted through the Directorate for Confusion and Complexity, and then we review them to insure that there are sufficient unintended irritating consequences so that the blogosphere is constantly fueled. Imagine for a moment that TSA people are somewhat bright, and motivated to protect the public with the least intrusion into their lives, not to mention travel themselves. How might you engineer backwards from that premise to get to three ounces and a baggie?

Ouch, didn't see that coming, did we?

Way to go, Xymph

Hilarious stuff:

I note that the agreement still has to make it through the Occupied Territories, aka, the American Congress.

and

Anthony Weiner, Jerrold Nadler, and, needless to say, Tom Lantos (all D–Tel Aviv, ...

Time may not exist

If only they had listened to me. Could've saved themselves the, umm, time and effort.

By the way, here's something ironical: I was searching my blog for the post I've linked to, and found that nearly all my posts contain the word "time". We sure use the word a lot, even though we can't seem to define it.

Wireless

One year after getting myself a laptop, I decided that it was high time I started treating it as one, instead of shackling it to my table in order to stay connected to the Internet. Here are some insights and lessons learnt from my attempt to free the laptop:

1. Wireless routers are a Good Thing, even if you screw up and don't get a modem/router combo and end up having no USB slot on the router to stick your old, tried and tested ADSL modem into.


2. Setting up wireless networking in Windows is a breeze. Not so in Linux (well, Ubuntu at least; much easier in Suse). I still haven't managed to get the ipw220 driver in 2.6.20 to connect to the router without hanging the machine, forcing me to fall back to 2.6.17.


3. Laptops come with a button for switching off the radio/wireless. This is to conserve battery power. Pay more attention to the output of tools like iwconfig. When they say 'no radio', they are trying to tell you something important.


4. In my current setup, the old IBM PC is connected to the Internet via the USB ADSL modem; the laptops -- plural because the Windows laptop from work has also been commissioned into the home LAN -- use the Internet connection (I'm running Privoxy on the PC) via the wireless router.


5. Accessing the Internet from behind a proxy is no fun, even if you have full control over your Proxy server. All software depending on access to other ports (most notably P2P) will stop dead in their tracks, unless you bone up on things like SSH tunnelling. The sooner you get an Ethernet modem and retire the proxy, the better.


6. Though Gmail is my preferred email application, I still like to have offline access to my emails by pulling them from Thunderbird. Problem: how to access Gmail's POP server from behind a proxy? Solution(s):
   
   
   • Run a POP3 proxy
   
   
   • SSH tunnel through the HTTP proxy
   
   
   • Export your Thunderbird email folder in your laptop via NFS to the PC, and run Thunderbird once a day on the PC (replicating the Thuderbird profile to all your Linux installations does come in handy, after all)
   
   Naturally, I opted for the more complicated, unorthodox solution, i.e. the last choice.
   
   
7. The Switchproxy Firefox extension is worth its weight in gold.


8. I don't know if my rudimentary networking knowledge is a contributing factor, but both Privoxy and Squid have some DNS issues; I tried all these combinations: starting my Internet connection manually before starting Privoxy/Squid manually, starting the proxy manually before connecting to the Internet manually, sticking the connection script in /etc/init.d/boot.local and starting the proxy automatically using YAST System Services, but I invariably ended up with "Could not resolve..." errors. The solution finally was to compile Privoxy from the sources and run it manually, after connecting to the Internet manually. Whew.

Filing your tax returns online

I filed my tax returns online today. Impressions:

1. You need Acrobat Reader 8.1. Since only 7.0 is available for Linux, you need Windows. Big bummer.


2. Don't try opening the PDF in 7.0, either in Windows or in Linux. Acrobat will chew your RAM up and pretty much freeze your machine.


3. v8.1, while it does the job, is still not perfect. The first time I was in the middle of filling the form it crashed on me, forcing me to reenter all the data (Note to Adobe developers: it's not cricket to raise the hopes of users by volunteering to recover the lost document and not fulfilling your promise).


4. Doing your own taxes is not a cinch, but is still doable, provided you are willing to invest the time (three and one half hours in my case).


5. The surcharge is 10% of the total tax; the education cess is 2% of (tax + surcharge). This one stumped me for a while (the education cess bit, that is).


6. When you are Googling for tax slabs and such, make doubly sure that you are looking at the figures for the correct year, or you'll end up tearing your hair out, trying to match the numbers obtained from a tax calculator for 2002-03 with your Form-16.


7. I don't understand the need for having something called an assessment year. Why can't we just say we are filing the returns for FY 06-07, instead of saying AY 07-08?


8. You still cannot avoid standing in a physical queue, unless you digitally sign the form.

Fool me once

Here's a scam to watch out for the next time you fill petrol for your car.

You stop at the pump, roll down your window and tell the attendant how much petrol you would like: say, a thousand bucks' worth. All modern pumps have a facility by which the attendant can set this amount on the display and then proceed to fill the tank; the pump automatically stops the flow of the fuel when the amount reaches the Rs 1000 mark. The attendant sets the amount, but before he starts pumping the gas, his colleague approaches you and asks you some seemingly innocent question, the real purpose of which is to distract you while the first attendant surreptitiously resets the pump display to zero. He then commences the filling, and as the reading approaches say, Rs 900, the second attendant once again distracts you, this time with a query about the bill or the credit card. While you are busy answering him, the first guy stops the pump and quickly sets the reading manually to Rs 1000. Congratulations: you've just been scammed out of Rs 100.

I was scammed out of Rs 85 by a bunch of scumbags employing this M.O. at the petrol pump in Indira Nagar. I couldn't do much about it then since I was in a hurry at that time; I also felt that if I took up the issue, it would be the attendant's word against mine.

Anyway, I resolved never to fill petrol there again, but, as luck would have it, I was very low on gas one day and had no choice but to pull into the same thieves' den. This time I parked my car at a different pump, and things started out normally; I mentioned the amount, the attendant punched this number in, but before he could start, up came his accomplice with some stupid question, and what did I see on the display when I looked up after answering the bastard? You guessed it: 0.00. That did it for me: I got out of the car and planted myself about 18 inches away from the display, and didn't take my eyes off till the last paisa rolled up on the screen.

On second thoughts, I am still not sure whether I got my money's worth of fuel; folks who resort to such scams probably adulterate their stock, too.

I'm no fan of the BJP

... but is this all you could dig up on Shekawat?

1. He served in the police force under the British during 1942-1948.


2. His state government was dismissed after the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, as part of the bid by the central government to be seen to be doing something, no matter how tangential and ineffective it was.

But come to think of it, why do we want the President of the country to be a person of impeccable character, integrity, and so on? Why can't he/she be more like the rest of the scumbags? In other words, let Pratibha Patil become President; she'd fit right in with the crowd.

Oh, by the way...

I've not taken a sudden liking to Bollywood music. The Last.fm tracks displayed at the right are not mine, they are my SO's.

Ta Ra Rum Pum? I'd rather shove a stick in my ...

Killing hope

Every month I get The Anti-Empire Report newsletter from William Blum, and it never fails to make me disgusted; not at the author, but at the actions of the sole superpower and its allies. The newsletter is all the more damning because nearly all of its references are 'impeccable' news sources like The Washington Post, The LA Times, and so on.

No Linux in corporate laptop

Our IT department is currently setting up my laptop, and I asked them about the possibility of creating a separate partition in it where I can install Linux.

Nice try. Corporate policy prohibits dual boot machines, it seems. If required, they can install Linux, but only Linux, no Windows. Heavenly though this sounds, this is not an option for me, because I need to have access to Lotus Notes for corporate email. I think POP3 support is provided by our email server, but then I will not have any way to access already archived emails. I have decided to run Linux from VMWare for the time being.

The no-dual-boot restriction smells like an MS dirty trick as part of the corporate licensing deal; however it could simply be a requirement to push standard corporate images on to machines.

What's worse than

... getting a big dent in your car because some moron crashes into you?

Getting a big dent in your car because some moron has just learned driving and doesn't know how to park yet and bangs into your car (which is quietly enjoying an afternoon nap in the parking lot) and doesn't even have the courtesy to leave a sorry note.

And what is even worse? When the above moron is not some random stranger, but your coworker.

Item #12, coming right up.

Is it time to unsubscribe from the RI blog?

Habits are hard to let go, but for quite some time I have been noticing that RI forum posts are way more interesting than Jeff's blog. No offence, but there's only so much occult and UFO stuff that one can take. I can't even believe half the things there, anyway. Another nit is Jeff's non-usage of blockquote tags, which makes it very difficult to separate what he says from what he quotes.

(This post was triggered by a post expressing a similar sentiment, albeit for different reasons)

Quote of the day

From an RI Forum post:

... dubya will probably be reborn as a slug, or a worm, and probably stay there for several lifetimes. Good hard work building up the soil will be a starting point for his long journey back to sentience.

Movie Review: Ocean's Thirteen

Maybe it's the geek in me, but any movie that has scenes involving computer messages like 'Transferring file from FBI' (gag) instantly loses two stars, notwithstanding the fact that it boasts of a star cast that includes Al Pacino, Brad Pitt and George Clooney.

There's nothing new in the story -- hi-tech gang targets Casino/Bank/Museum and walks away with a gazillion bucks, with the roll of the dice favouring it in all the -- ahem -- dicey situations. I am also fricken tired of the too-clever dialogue, the main purpose of which is to show how smart and clever the characters are, rather than providing entertainment for the audience.

Here's a plot idea for Oceans' Fourteen (do you think we'll get off that lightly, with only two sequels? Oh no): Willie Banks and Terry Benedict join hands together and start a casino on Mars, spending something like a trillion dollars. The casino also serves as a Swiss Bank (should I say Martian Bank) and houses the bestest and the most famous precious stone in the world. The security of the casino/bank is ensured using unbreakable quantum cryptography, developed by a quadruple Nobel/Fields prize winner. Well, unbreakable for mere mortals, actually, for Ocean and his buddies travel back in time and bring back Schrodinger's cat, whose left pupil has the amazing property of decrypting quantum cryptography beams by diffracting with the above diamond's light rays...

Goodbye, Oracle

Well, today seems to be a day of goodbyes.

About six months ago I had wished that we had opted for PostgreSQL as our database backend instead of Oracle, and I'm happy to say that the wish has been granted. Not exactly granted, because moi had a say in pushing for a move away from Oracle and towards Postgres, but I'm not complaining. Our enterprise app has been migrated to PostgreSQL without any hitches. Hibernate and minimal reliance of Oracle-specific features probably contributed a lot to this.

Having worked with Oracle for practically all my professional career, there is an element of bittersweetness about the whole thing (not to mention an erosion of my Oracle skillsets value), but open source is open source, baby.

Goodbye, SUSE

After a long stint with SUSE (and KDE), it's time to bid adieu. openSUSE 10.2 is probably the most bloated and buggy SUSE version I have used till date (for what it's worth, 9.1 was the most solid and polished distro during its time). I am now running Feisty Fawn; I had downloaded 6.10 a while back, and wonder of wonders, it had an option to upgrade to 7.04.

Two things I'm missing in FF are a) its inability to use a higher resolution than 1024x768 (Update: Turns out there is a simple fix for it), and b) the Ubuntu equivalent of Kinternet (I've heard of something called Modem Lights, plan to look into it). But these are more than made up for by Ubuntu's blazing speed and GNOME's simplicity (I know, I have said dirty things about GNOME in the past, but you reach a point in life when you are tired of all the bells and whistles and want to return to Simplicity (tm). Anyway, there was always the nagging but unstated thought at the back of my mind about not staying true to The Unix Way and taking a liking to something like KDE).

Well, talk about irony. I learn the correct way to capitalise openSUSE after I ditch it for good.

Kodai blogging

The helmet controversy

From a letter to The Hindu:

In a democratic society, the view of a majority of two-wheeler riders ought to be the basis for any rule. I am sure most of the two-wheeler riders are not for the compulsory helmet rule. By not wearing a helmet, one does not cause any harm to anyone else. Why should it be forced on the people?

Since I consider most two-wheeler riders to belong to a life form slightly lower than an amoeba, I'd be willing to agree to this sentiment -- I'm all for it if they want to commit harakiri on the streets of Chennai and voluntarily reduce their population, but for the fact that it is not strictly true that they don't harm anybody else by not wearing a helmet. If a helmet-less jerk gets into an accident, he causes more trouble to the other party if he croaks off in said accident than if he suffers only minor injuries.

Swing mini design pattern

I don't know whether this qualifies as a design pattern, but here goes anyway.

Intent/Motivation
You have a Swing MDI application with the main window managing the lifecycles of the child windows. When the user selects a menu option, the corresponding child window should be displayed. But no action should be taken if the menu is selected when the child window is already displayed. We cannot check for the null value of the child window data member (and spawn a new window) because there is no way for the child window to set itself to null when it is closed.

Applicability
Swing MDI applications where only one instance of a child window should be displayed at any point in time.

Implementation
Have the main window class implement a callback interface:

public interface CallBackHandler
{
    public void call(int ID);
}

public class MainWindow implements CallBackHandler
{
    //repeat for each child window
    public static final int CHILDWINDOW1 = 1;
    private ChildWindow1 childWindow1;

    public void call(int windowId)
    {
        //repeat for each child window
        if(windowId == CHILDWINDOW1)
        {
            childWindow1 = null;
        }
    }
        ...

The child window constructor is passed the main window reference (but is only bound to the CallBackHandler, though nothing would prevent a ctor defined with a parameter of type MainWindow and accessing MainWindow's (public) members).

        ...
        //code to invoke child window
        if(childWindow1 == null)
        {
            childWindow1 = new ChildWindow1(this);
            childWindow1.show();
            ...
        }

public class ChildWindow1
{
    private CallBackHandler cbh;
    public ChildWindow1(CallBackHandler cbh)
    {
        this.cbh = cbh;
    }
        ...
        //code in listener that handles window closing
        cbh.call(MainWindow.CHILDWINDOW1);
        ...
}

The Ugly Indian Motorist

As promised. The Ugly Indian Motorist:

1. Will not take his hand off the horn even when he can see that there is no fricken way for the car ahead of him to move even an inch.


2. Will think nothing of driving on the right side of the road in order to overtake a vehicle.


3. While performing the aforementioned overtaking maneuver, will end up blocking the opposite traffic. Everybody sits and cools their heels while UIM sheepishly tries to merge back into his own side of the road.


4. Is under the impression that all vehicles with horsepower less than his own will have to give way for him even if they are already struggling to cling on to the margin of the road.


5. Will respond with a blank stare when posed the term "lane discipline".


6. Ditto for "signal" and "speed limit".


7. Most probably does not know how to read.


8. Most probably drives somebody else's vehicle. In other words, is not responsible for its upkeep.


9. Terrorises hapless vehicles in front of him by revving his massive engine while waiting at the signal (the Big Red Light one needs to stop for, I mean).


10. Chuckles to himself when he thinks of the stupid bureaucrats who have planned for zebras to cross the road when we all know that zebras live only in Africa. Duh!


11. Is geeky enough to sport a bumper sticker that says "No place like 127.0.0.1", but still doesn't know that to turn right, one has to stay in the, um, right lane. On second thoughts, Mr UIM's son in the States probably sent the sticker to dad.


12. Does things like this.

You could've knocked me down with a feather

Congress meeting authorises Sonia to decide on chief ministerial candidate.

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

No, this is not turning into a literary blog. Came across this news item, that's all.

What's with Indians and queueing?

Let me qualify that; not Indians in general, but the 'educated', young IT professionals.

There is a coffee counter at the cafeteria at work with three sides from which the vendor can serve customers. Always, and I mean always, my beloved coworkers take up positions on these three sides, not caring about niceties like allowing the vendor to serve others who came before them.

I always make it a point to stand in a queue of sorts, taking care that I don't barge in front of somebody already there. People do cut in front of me, of course, but I limit myself to a dirty look at them and questioning their parentage in my mind. But yesterday I decided to confront one of the jerks, and asked him to join the queue behind me. He did give in to my request, but the look of horror and indignation on the faces of his companions almost made me feel as if I had insulted their mothers.

And to think these are the cream of the shining India, who are powering us into the 21st century.

Tomorrow we will turn our attention to another Ugly Indian, the Ugly Indian Motorist.

Don't you guys have any shame?

As usual, the CWC abdicates all decision-making to the uber-extra-constitutional power.

The Soul of a New Machine

The Soul of a New Machine arrived last Saturday. The story of how some of Data General's smart engineers became disillusioned and quit the company after a pet project of theirs got cancelled reminded me of Cringely's latest essay. Just a coincidence, I thought, until I came to this, at the beginning of Chapter 4:

A young computer engineer, known to be one of the most skillful in Westborough's basement, said he had a fantasy about a better job than his. In it, he goes to work as a janitor for a computer company whose designs leave much to be desired. There, at night, disguised by mop and broom, he sneaks into the offices of the company's engineers and corrects the designs on their blackboards and desks.

Hmmm, I could swear that I've heard this story before.

Looks like a lot of folks drew -- ahem -- inspiration from this classic.

Warning

Eating halwa may be injurious to your health.

BJP is a well-wisher of Muslims

Yeah, in the same way that a wolf prays fervently for the well-being of sheep.

The Accountants' Green Belt

From The Undercover Economist:

Other professionals, like doctors, actuaries, accountants and lawyers manage to maintain high wages through other means than unionisation, erecting virtual 'green belts' to make it harder for potential competitors to set up shop. Typical virtual green belts will include very long qualification periods and professional bodies that give their approval only to a certain number of candidates per year.

Add to this the foiled attempt to restrict their members from acquiring additional qualifications:

The Supreme Court has quashed a notification issued by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) imposing restrictions on its members on the use of the diploma or designation of `CFA' awarded by the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India (ICFAI).

Enough is enough

Notwithstanding all the negative things I've said about Kalam, I'm all for giving him a second term. The way things are going, I'll not be surprised if someone from the DMK is nominated for the presidency (or, heaven forfend, someone from -- shudder -- the PMK).

You know you are living in India

... when it's the 21st century and a paper called The Hindu publishes this on its front page:

The caste composition of the Cabinet is: three Brahmins, one Muslim, one Thakur, one Bhumihar, one Vaishya, four Scheduled Castes and eight OBCs.

Don't let the door

...hit your ass on your way out.

The Undercover Economist

I picked up The Undercover Economist at the same time I got Freakonomics, and while I was not that greatly impressed with the latter, I still didn't think The Undercover Economist would actually turn out to be the better book.

My first impression was that it was a wannabe, trying to cash in on the fame of Levitt's bestseller, but I was quickly dispelled of this notion. Tim Hartford does a great job of laying out the fundamentals of demand and supply, with lucid prose and a good storytelling technique. The book is still a very enjoyable read in spite of most of the stuff not being new for someone who devoured Paul Samuelson's classic with a vengeance and topped the single Economics course he took in college (I am talking about *ahem* moi, of course).

One slightly jarring note was Hartford's contempt for Cameroon and its corrupt ways. I'm sure he has travelled to all kinds of third-world hellholes, so he must have had a really bad experience there to stick it to it so much.

Oh, by the way, the Freakonomics Blog's brief stay in my Bloglines feed list is over. Turns out the blog is not even half as interesting as the book.

Had Columbus never come to America...

Pat Buchanan on the Virginia Tech massacre:

Almost no attention has been paid to the fact that Cho Seung-Hui was not an American at all, but an immigrant, an alien. Had this deranged young man who secretly hated us never come here, 32 people would heading home from Blacksburg for summer vacation.

The rest of the article builds up on this, and lays the blame for the massacre squarely on the immigration policy of the American government.

I have always wondered why people disliked Pat Buchanan. Now I know the reason.

Movie Review: Night at the Museum

Ben Stiller:	Good as usual
Robin Williams:	Can't blame him, role not weighty enough for him
Overall impression:	Good enough for a few laughs on a Saturday evening if you don't have anything better to do

I must really stop these movie reviews unless I have something specific or compelling enough to say. Only problem is that till I do them there is a nagging feeling at the back of my mind, like I've forgotten to zip my fly or something.

Couldn't agree more

From a Squeak blog via James Robertson:

The Smalltalk community, while small, is one of the most intelligent, kind, supportive, and fun communities I have ever been involved in.

Staying on the subject of Smalltalk, the VisualWorks JSON implementation is done. Don't know whether it is worthwhile (or good enough) to submit to the public repository.

Freakonomics

How has my life changed after reading Freakonomics (I am through with the book; reading the bonus material now)? Let me count the number of ways:

1. I have gotten to spend a pleasant three hours or so -- the time I took to finish the book


2. My wallet is lighter by Rs 273


3. I have added the Freakonomics blog to Bloglines


4. I am wondering what's the reason for the shortage of Aavin ghee in Chennai

Bleh.

On a more serious note, some of my opinions with regard to gun control, money winning elections and so on have changed. But without the data and the tools and techniques available to a trained economist, I see no way for a layman to find answers to whatever novel questions he can come up with.

Suse 10.2 - No sound? No problem.

Run Zen Updater, sound gone
No, speaker not muted
Volume all the way up
No messages from dmesg
Alsamixer
Headphone -> line-in? WTF?
Happy happy, joy joy

World Cup 2007

Some passing thoughts:

• I can't for the life of me imagine how Lasith Malinga has been allowed to continue to perform in international cricket (I have similar thoughts about Murali, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt)

• The farcical way the tournament ended has sealed my view that cricket is undeserving of even passing attention; it is a game of, by, and for moneygrubbers

• This paragraph succinctly sums up why Indian cricket will never, ever reach the heights scaled by the likes of Australia:

  No moment in Gilchrist's innings, however, revealed more about Australia than the delivery before his dismissal. Ricky Ponting tapped a ball fine. Gilchrist made the call and ran like hell. If the throw had hit he was out. To run that single for his partner when he was 149 made it clear what this was all about.

  The fundamental difference between an Indian batsman and his Australian counterpart is that "running for his partner" is an alien concept to the latter. You run for your team. Period.

Windows Networking

I (re)installed Windows in my old PC today -- don't blame me, it was the missus who wanted MS Office -- and realised what a PITA it is. After installation I wanted to configure the network so that it can connect to my laptop, but found that the network configuration wizard wouldn't start at all, complaining that my network interface/hardware was not present. I haven't figured out how to get it working; a Google search with the exact message is probably in order.

Compare this to the ease with which the Suse installation manages to hook up to the laptop with no fuss. Not just Suse, but all the distros I've so far tried out in the PC.

Just thinking out loud...

I see that a Squeak package exists for JSON, so is it worthwhile writing a JSON library for, say, VisualWorks?

Maybe I'll just go ahead and do it just for the heck of it.

Movie Review: The Namesake

This is my first Mira Nair movie, and I must say that it bettered my expectations, since I've always considered her movies -- at least her recent ones -- to be controversy magnets and nothing more Update: Oops, it was Deepa Mehta I had in mind.

Having said that, I spent a good portion of the movie wishing it would end quickly. At times it just drags on and on, with nary an idea of where it wants to go (to be fair, maybe it did, but whether we wanted to go along with it was another issue).

The movie did pique my interest in the second half, after Tabu's character matures and starts asserting herself. Speaking of Tabu, she's probably the classiest, most poised lady I've seen in an Indian movie for quite some time.

Re: the protagonist Gogol, he comes into his own only after he bonds with his father and realises that there is another side to his family, i.e. its Indianness. Nothing great from him till then.

Favorite scene(s): when the Ganguli family visits India (for the first time?)

Least favourite scene: when Maxine breaks up with Gogol. Man, talk about stereotypes and cliched dialogue.

OpenSuse 10.2

Well, Suse continues to be the best distro I have tried till now -- it got sound working out of the box, after all, unlike certain other *ahem* distros -- but its package management sucks quite a lot. As I type this, the message "Transaction failed: Resolvable gstreamer010-plugins-base 2992-0 (http://download.suse.com/update/10.2/) not found." is staring me in the face, courtesy of the automatic update tool. I don't know if it is because I have added all the package repositories, but the tool seems to be finding new things to downloads every fricken day, too.

I used to be able to make Kinternet auto-connect to my ISP in 10.1, but have been unable to make it work in 10.2

All in all, a pretty mixed experience so far. Oh, and I forgot to mention this: Suse continues to be s.l.o.w.

Way to go, Robert Fisk

... using a pretty minor detail (i.e. that one of the groups participating in the smear campaign against Taner Akcam is into Holocaust denial) to start the article on a sensationalist note:

Could it possibly be that the security men who guard the frontiers of North America are supporting Holocaust denial? Alas, it's true. Here's the story.

The only reference to Holocaust denial in the article is this:

"Allegations against me, posted by the Assembly of Turkish American Associations, Turkish Forum and 'Tall Armenia Tale' (a Holocaust denial website)..."

The end is the beginning is the end

This has got be some sort of a record: five distros in three weeks.

I started with Ubuntu 6.10 (couldn't get it to display higher resolutions; GNOME sucks), moved on to Mepis 6.5 (great distro, but no sound, no go), followed this with Mandriva 2007 (first step towards using it: it should, well, install), turned to Gentoo in despair (no comments, except to say that once you are used to the ease of installation of the mainstream distros...), and finally returned to OpenSuSE, albeit to 10.2.

One disturbing thing I noticed is how some of these distros glibly overwrite the existing GRUB entries. Not nice, and not something any self-respecting Linux distro should do.

Yeah, it's their war, alright

From the field manual on counter-insurgency produced by the American army (quoting Lawrence of Arabia):

Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them.

Pray tell, where was this war prior to 2003?

MEPIS

Continuing with my policy of not staying in the comfort zone too long with any distro, I looked around for something to replace OpenSuse with. Ubuntu 6.10 was the first choice, but I quickly got tired of its limitations (GNOME, Ubuntu's inability to exploit the higher resolutions of my laptop, etc.). I decided to give Mandriva another try, but the installation CD refused to go beyond the first (gaudily yellow) screen. The funny thing was that the same CD installed successfully in my other computer -- an old IBM ThinkCentre.

Next choice: MEPIS.

MEPIS seems to be a great distro, except for the fact that I cannot get sound to work, no matter what. Reminiscent of the trouble I had with Kububtu 6.06, which was in fact the prime reason why I moved to OpenSuse.

As a last resort, I am downloading the latest kernel sources as I type this; let me see if this brings the speakers alive.

Bingo!

I've always had my suspicions about all the high-profile hobnobbing and rubbing-shoulders-with-powerful-people, and I guess this proves it. Why settle for just being one of India's richest men when you can aim for the title of Leader of a Billion People (tm)?

Bah.

(Come to think of it, this is going to put ideas into a certain bearded industrialist's head. *Shudders*)

Much as I hate Windows...

This is a bit rich:

All the computer people use Macs or Linux now. Windows is for grandmas, like Macs used to be in the 90s. So not only does the desktop no longer matter, no one who cares about computers uses Microsoft's (sic) anyway.

(I know, I said I don't read Paul Graham's essays anymore. I came across this via Reddit)

The Robert Fisk articles blog

As a first step towards returning to the blogging world (no, I will not use the term blogosphere), I updated the Robert Fisk articles blog. It looks like Fisk has been quite prodigious in his output: there are 21 articles since January 26, which was the last time I posted an article of his.

It would have been really helpful if I could have just right-clicked on a link and say 'Post to blog', and have it appear directly on blogspot.com. I daresay a Firefox extension exists for this, but in my case the added complexity is that I need to circumvent the captcha that Blogger so helpfully sets up for me to jump through.

Amma

S.Vijayalakshmi23/4/1942 - 1/4/2007

The most evil, duplicitous statement of all time

We have given to the Iraqi nation more than any other nation could have asked for in the world.
-- Richard Durbin, US Senator

So much BS, so little time

I came across this article about the calibre of students from IIT.

Let me start by taking a deep breath, exhaling slowly, and calling BS.

The real reason companies like Tata Steel don't recruit IITians is that they will not join them if offered employment there, and not because we are not good enough. (Disclaimer: I was not considered good enough for Tata Steel during my campus interviews at IIT Madras; I had already gotten placed at SAIL, and Tata Steel was my -- ahem -- dream company then).

Re the ranks of IITians being filled with crammers from coaching centers: I have said this before and I'll say it again, no amount of coaching in the world can polish a turd into anything else.

While I do concede that getting through four years at IIT is a lot easier than passing the JEE, one cannot get by without knowing the subjects at least a bit intimately; "the students were able to clear the tests without having to read books..." sounds like an extreme generalisation to me. It is possible to get passing grades with minimal study, but to go from there and extrapolate this behaviour of a minority of students to the entire bunch is not correct.

To narrate a personal experience, some students from IIT Madras interned under me recently, and I could find a marked difference in the way they were able to understand and tackle problems when compared to others. I'll take this affirmation of the continuing excellence of the students any day over a brief, non-representative experience mentioned in the article.

And what about this:

Instead of giving ranks purely on the basis of JEE performance, IITs can adapt multiple criteria, giving a weighted score. Some of the criteria are JEE test scores, some marks for showing leadership qualities, marks for demonstrating social concern and talents in sports, music, arts, etc.

Here's a suggestion: why not go one step further, and rename the IITs as "Indian Institute of Performing Arts and Social Sciences"?

Lies

From a Microsoft anti-piracy ad:

Pirated or counterfeit software could have critical bits of code missing, allowing viruses and other malware to enter your IT systems easily, putting your data at risk.

(Falls off chair. Gets up, dusts self, and reads on)

With original Microsoft software you are assured of a highly reliable & secure IT environment.

(Falls off chair again)