mock

what an ass-whopping question paper can do to the smartest of the lot..

i like to believe that there is some place where what i think is okay is okay to everyone else..
here

why?

why do i like to sleep listening to some conversation from some sitcom?

why do i get better ideas when i watch these lame sitcoms?

why do i watch em even if i don't understand em or can't relate to em?

why do i like having silly conversations playing in my head?

Smart eh? :)

Dancing around a bon fire in a cold night to save the nuts from freezing with a bottle of vodka and a plate of lard..
RUSSIA ROCKS :)

oh so (darn disgusting) beautiful!

The problem with Intellectual Property is that it makes absolutely no sense to the not so intellectual majority of good ol' momma EARTH.
Not everyone understands the beauty of a well-written poem, or a beautiful song, or a colourful painting or even some nice few lines of code :-\ That is a pity. Absolute collapse your knees drop down and cry pity.
It is so upsetting mainly because if there aren't too many people to enjoy what we make, there is lesser reason for us to make it in the first place. And if there aren't too many people who need what you make, survival becomes difficult.

What made me think of this is the recent problems being faced by Satyam.
The bunch of code crunchers at Satyam had a good name for being pretty darn good at making Software Solutions (programs) for a pretty long time. But they seem to have lost their luster now.
How is that possible?
I know for a fact that you become better at programing as you do more of it.
So, their sudden downfall must be attributed to something else.
Oh yea.. Money.
There is no point making money if you cannot manage it.
Money is strange. Plainly because managing it is more difficult that making it.
If you make a million and spend a million, you aren't a millionaire. It is as simple as that.
That is what went wrong with Satyam. They were very good at what was their profession. But the entire company left the job of managing that money, which was their responsibility, to Raju. And if you didn't know, He messed up..
And a poor track record at managing money reflects poor management of power. And that is evident from what happened with The World Bank.

So, in a nutshell, if you are good at your profession, you need to be good at your responsibility. But if you are not good at your profession, you have no responsibility.
What does this have to do with intellectual property?
This: If Satyam had to be torn apart and fed to the sharks (the banks n stuff), the land, buildings and computers would be like the meat. And the software they have made would be the soul (useless). Giving the software to an angry money lender would be as useless as a surgical knife to a chimp (you know why.. you ought to know why)
That is the bitter truth that awaits my generation of 'Software professionals' i suppose. Maybe we are essentially creating nothing. I'll put it this way.. maybe we are creating nothing that makes any sense to anyone but our own selves.

Maybe that is why we have so many great coders stashed in online communities that call themselves Open Source and free.
They make new kernels, new file systems, amazingly tiny bits of code that can do marvelous stuff, make things like the EXT4 and many more things.
They do their coding and they keep the dangerous element of money away.
But still, half the world has no idea what is going on in these communities and detest the idea of making clickity clakiting noises in a dark room with the only source of light being the Monitor.

I still don't have a clear idea of what may happen. Will the world find more sense in what the programs are worth once they become computer literate?
Or, will money hunt us down like wild barbarians chasing civilised humans who might have stepped into their border and then make us sit in a boiling 'andaa' and do wild jungle dances around us an taunt us?
I'd like to hear what Raju has to say about this.

and oh yea... Kriya and VSM

revelation

My guess is that a person's house is as good as the person is.
You don't find paupers living in palaces do you?

I spent New Year's Eve and the following day in Ooty with Gilli.
This might be an understatement (if so due to the fact that my vocabulary is not what i would deem praise worthy.. not because the place was not good enough) Ooty is a beautiful place.
That is when it struck me : most of the world we live in is beautiful. This world that 'God' made for us to live in truly is breath taking!
So, he probably meant for us to be worthy of such an abode.

It is when i saw the fairy tale landscape of Ooty that my darker sides that clung on to the rest of me like dirt suddenly ashamed me. I have not been the best of people.
I have been sarcastic, unkind, ungrateful, silly, cruel and inconsiderate.

But i don't want to be any of that any more.

I will probably never understand the depths of the people I previously thought were rubbish. I shouldn't jump into conclusions.
I will probably never wholeheartedly help others the way some people have helped me. I will probably never understand what it feels like to share and enjoy.
I will probably never be the kind of person i want to be.
But there is no harm in trying is there?

The world deserves a better me.. And i'm gonna try and satisfy it.. :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

courtesy : gilli

What do you do when you have to compete with others in a race that none can win?
Do you roll up your sleeves and get busy?
If you do, is it so that though you may never make it to the finish line, you can take the last breath knowing that it was worth the while?
Or, do you just lie down and go to sleep?

The smartest people i meet don't seem smart enough.

oldschool

ever thought about why Old-school is always better?

or let us frame it this way : why do we continuously make things worse?

think about it..

mobile phone : the new ones are more difficult to use, clumsy and weak. the old ones were brilliant (literal and otherwise).

cars : new ones aren't even nearly as fun as the old ones. to a family being driven around by an enthusiastic someone in one of the classic cars, the journey is in itself an adventure. in the new ones, everyone snores noisily and they are so quiet that u have no option but to listen to them.

furniture : the classic ones feel like nature spent several years growing over itself to give you nice wood that is then crafted by someone who puts all his energy and passion into it.. they make you feel special.. like you are worth all that trouble.
the new ones feel like someone stole a couple of metal walking sticks from helpless blind people who spent an afternoon sleeping on a park bench that are then crafted by a stingy person whose vision is compromised.

people : the new ones (everyone from the sniggering centers of laziness who surround you where ever you go to the engineers who always seem to make the wrong thing to the guy who spends evenings outside the college handing out leaflets to people who throw them 10 feet away from them instead of he himself throwing them all into the air) are all useless. the old ones have books written on them.. they have cool things named after them.. they made cooler statements too..

movies : i don't have to prove myself on this one do i?

clothes : the best selling clothes of today have ESTD.18xx or 19xx written on it. so, evidently, that was the good ol' days. the clothes most people wear today are torn (by a kid in some industrious little city in india) and faded.

i am not a 60 year old. but i do want to know what it would feel like to live in a world where everyone made sense.
help me out if u can..

o, and if u are the ghost of Darwin, i think we have a new theory to work on.. g3-408.. drop by..

GO SPEED GO!!!

i love cars!

i have been love with their growling engines, sleek curves, squealing tyres, flashy lights, road hugging grip, ehilarating speed and the noise ever since first grade.
that was when i first saw Batman n robin speed through Gotham city in George Barris' BatMobile. a couple of years later, when i saw speed racer's mach 5, my love became sheer craze.

As years grew by, modern science and stupid adults woke me up from my dream world : i was forced into labelling my childhood dreams as non sense. Speed racer, batman, wacky racers n everybody else seemed fake.

as with everything else, once u wake up to realty, u'll be stunned for a little while. but later, once it sinks into u, u don't remember much about ur dream.
that is what happened with me. i still loved cars, but not the cool cartoons n fantasy stuff.

was i too old for them?
or didn't i want to get fooled again?
i don't know for sure. but i do know that i let those days and memories settle in the dark corners of my mind.

it is partly due to this that i didn't want to see the speed racer movie. but as i gave into seeing a few scenes of the movie, i decided to give the boy racer one more shot... at resurrecting the kid within me.. and man.. am i glad i did :)


Speed racer is a spectacular movie. it is one of those movies that is boldly imaginative.. an attempt at injecting fresh blood into a classic without taking any of the lunacy or passion off.
it is as colourful as an african lady's robes, as hi-tech as a space craft, as passionate as love and as childish as pikachu. it is everything i remember the old speed racer was except that it offers much more of it.

the review gurus of the west might write it off as senseless stuff. But, to the kid within me who has just woken up from a loooong slumber and is looking for bits of paper to scribble pictures of cool cars on while humming noises of what the best car's engine should sound like, the speed racer movie is a classic.

OR, and this is just a speculation, maybe.. it is last evening's 145 (courtesy of Karthik.. and obnoxious IMS noodles and boring classes) that could be still underplaying my thoughts :)
either way, i am a kid again :)

MAN & MACHINE