peace(e)fied…seriously? December 3, 2008

Hi All!

This entry is being written with the feeling of anguish and abhorrence and a sense of insecurity and helplessness that is now part and parcel of every Indian (of course politicians are not part of this group). Why I am writing it after everything is over? So that I can blast out at the callous bunch (read politicians) and not be called insensitive if the same was said when the rescue operation was carried out. So here it goes…

What we witnessed just a few days back is not just another terrorist attack on Indian soil.It was different. A group of brain-washed arses, all in the age group of 20-25, entered Mumbai equipped with assault rifles, hand grenades and ammo (which can last for days) and our intelligence agencies did not know about it. They came using boats and coast guards did not have a feel about it.They started their killing spree and state did not have an answer about it. We have lost more than 150 precious lives and Mr. R.R. Patil, Maharashtra’s deputy C.M. is too relaxed about it. And this attack was not just confined to taking lives, they were able to stretch the whole ‘situation’ for more than 50 never-ending hours and it has mixed feeling of ‘fear’ and ‘insecurity’ in the air.

Yes, we were able to nab/kill them, but don’t you think they have already accomplished their mission. What else do you think they were looking for? (Not even a question to ponder about.)

This is preposterous. Every now and then, they come and destroy our houses, they let us again build them, they know that we(people who run the country) won’t learn the lessons from our last encounters and once we are done rebuilding our houses, they again crush them(the houses).The terror groups have managed to hit us hard again and again. India has witnessed unprecedented level of terrorist activities in last few years. Mumbai, Bangalore, Jaipur, Malegaon, Delhi, Hyderabad, Ahmadabad, Guwahati and Surat has been terror targets in just a span of year or two.Is it that the common man is the victim in all the cases that nothing is done about it?  What on earth is intelligence and government doing?

Let me put in front some of the things which has become routine activity during/after these dastard acts. Just by going through them, you will feel like asking, Why…Why these these politicians are not terror targets? How can political brownie points at this time be more important then spreading the message of unity? So lets start:

• People involved in this heinous act won’t be spared: I cannot reminisce any arrest except for few made for Malegaon blasts.
• We will enhance our internal security and equip the state agencies with resources to combat such situations: Why not follow the footsteps of the phrase “Prevention is better than cure”. There is a lot of planning which goes behind such terror acts and hence it gives the chance to nab them before the d-day itself. If any tom, mick and harry goes out and start killing people, it is definitely very difficult to check them. However, planned activities can be definitely checked if we have intelligence agencies who do what they are paid for. I have not heard of a single terror act in America post 9/11.How are they able to learn lessons from their mistakes?
• There were only xxx incidents and yyy deaths due to terrorist activities during their regime. However, there has been just xxx-3 incidents and yyy – 5 deaths during our regime: Oh, Yes! You were great in saving lives. Few words for such people from all the Indians: “Go and shoot yourself”.
• Bring us back in power and you will feel more secure: O Gosh! We know what happened back then, we know what is happening now. And seriously, media itself should beat up such people who made such statements when the whole rescue operation was going on in Mumbai.
• 1 crore each, 50 lakhs each, all medical bills to be paid by the state and blah, blah blah: The country loses bravest of its men and the politicos still have the guts to make false promises.In 2005 Delhi blasts, a bus conductor(Budh Prakash) was critically injured while he threw a bomb out of the bus and thus saved many lives. A lot of promises were made at that time by the Delhi state government. Even the medical bills of this brave-man has not been taken care of by the government.
• Our brave commandos took care of the situation and thwarted the evil intentions of the terrorists: Yes sir, it took 9 long hours  before the NSG was even made available in Mumbai.We did not have an aircraft available in Delhi which can take 200 commandos at one go from one place to another. The only force competent enough for such situations is only and only based in Delhi. So, no matter which part of the country is attacked, terrorist get ample time to be at a vantage point. PLEASE PLEASE ..learn a lesson, we must have one such group in every state. Above all, we DO NOT even want to prove that we are bravehearts, lets nab the cold-blooded terrorirst before they execute their plans.
• “Such small things do happen in big cities like Mumbai” and “We had an intelligence input about the attack” and “Lipstick wearing woman should not protest” : I do not understand how these grey haired guys can talk such bogus trash talk. They think terror acts as insignificant and they ever dare express it in public too. They knew about the attacks and they have slept all the way through. They show their callous, immature, uncalled-for behavior and they think that the common man will keep mum all the way through.No not this time.This is vindicated by the protest march that took place in Mumbai today (3rd Dec,08).
• Mumbai is resilient, Delhi is resilient, Bangalore is resilient, etc, etc: Every city in this country do has a NEVER SAY DIE spirit.But why do we even need to test it.Why is it that after every few months that this spirit is goes through a litmus test? Why cannot these terror activities just stopped. Parliament is attacked and we were almost close to a war with out neighboring country and after that attack only common man was the target and maybe that is the reason we see no action being taken.

All the above shit happens, but what can we do. No matter who gets in the power, it is just the the mask which changes, the man behind it always remain the same. The situation in the country is getting grimmer everyday and we do not  want to have barricades, barbed wires, baggage scanners and armed force at every mall, hotel, school and college, in the name of security.We do not give a damn to what happened, how it happened, why it happened, who is responsible and any other reasons or explanations. We just want the GOOD TIMES back. Maybe there is an ear this time who listens to the common man or as heard in the movie WEDNESDAY:

“EK AAM ADMI KI SATAK GAYI TO WO TUMHE ROK HI NAHI RAHA HAI THOK BHI RAHA HAI”

Google chrome: chromed or bombed September 6, 2008

Hi!!

It has been a bit toooooo long that i have come up with a blog entry. And if you ask me to be brutally honest while giving the reasons for it, I will say “A fair mix of me being busy and me being laZZZZy!”.

Ok, coming back to what this blog entry is meant for. For all the google worshippers, google fanatics and google lovers, it is a time to jump in joy as google has again hit the headlines with a bang! The much rumoured and talked about google web browser is finally out and what it aims at is to topple the yet-undisputed-and-crowned-king-browser Internet Explorer. Yipppeee ! (I am among the worshippers )

The evaluation as a normal end user by me will start a bit late in the entry, lets first give you all the info about the web browser. To download the application on your Windows system, click  the link and follow the instructions on the page opened. Keeping up with its tradition, google has launched the beta version, which means that this is not the final product but this is more or less what the final product will look like. To read more about chrome, watch its videos and read the leaked comic book (which forced google to release the beta version early) , follow this link.

So, once you are done with installing chrome, open the chrome web browser and it will very neatly import all the relevant data from you default web browser (Internet Exploer or Firefox). Once, this is done, the window that opens up gives you the all pleasant google-feeling which is: things looks very simple and classic with no fuss and mess in and around the window.

Here comes the evaluation or call it my views on the first hand experience with chrome.

Lets look at things thatI liked about chrome:

• Looks classic and elegant, is not filled with millions of options to tweak the browser and sticks to the feel that google products are normally associated with.
• The welcome page is quite gooooOOOd. The page is divided into frames that show most visited links with their snapshots, your recent bookmarks, tabs you have closed recently and a google search bar! Whooof! Quite a stuff but all are decently placed and the snapshots are well suited if you do not surf too much of adult stuff to make it part of your most visited links!
• There is an incognito mode of browsing. Incognito mode which means ‘With your identity concealed ‘ is also called private browsing mode. Using this option, whatever you do on the internet, any information (browse history, search history, cookies) won’t be preserved by the browser on the system you are working on. However, the bookmarks you create and files you download while browsing in this mode will be preserved. And all the mischievous heads, don’t get too elated! All the information, which the visiting link’s server or your Internet Service provider wants to store about you, will still get stored. So, do not think that you can use your naughty head to do some cognizable cyber crime and you won’t get caught
• If one of you browser tab misbehaves or crashes, the whole browsing windows does not crash. So, if you are editing a mail on one tab, writing a blog on another and watching a video using third tab and for some damn reason, all of a sudden tab on which you were watching a video crashes! Do not worry, the whole window is not supposed to pay the price for this untoward beaviour by ‘a tab’. So, the rest of your to-be-edited and unsaved stuff are not touched/harmed by this tab-crash! Cool Stuff, isn’t it!
• You can searh from the address bar (the place where you write the web page address you want to visit) itslef. So, if you write India on the address bar and press Enter, it will automatically consider it as a search string and show the search results using the search engine you have set(google by default).
• The tabbed browsing experience in chrome, is a bit different. Now, apart from the normal tabbed browsing which we have experienced in Safari or Firefox or Internet Explorer, we can even drag and drop a tab from one chrome window to another.

Now, lets look at the other side of the coin:

• It has just been two days and people all around the world (even normal end users like us) knows how to instantanously crash google chrome! For all who still do not know it, let me spread the fire
  Type anythting followed by a : (colon) and a % (modulus) and chrome will peacefully crash!! e.g. type googlechrome:% and press enter to see the rest of the magic.
• They are creating a separate process for every tab and every window you open in chrome, which makes it a very heavy application once we have something like 5 chrome windows with 2 tabs in each opened. For all the computer nerds, the way they have developed chrome can be briefly understood by following this link. For the rest, let me clear it with an example:
           Consider a case where there is a constant supply of biscuits (a stack of ‘n’ at a time) and you need to put all the stacks of incoming biscuits in the  biscuit jar(s) you have. Now, what happens in case of other popular web browsers (like firefox or safari or internet explorer) is, when ever their current jar is filled and it cannot accommodate the incoming stack of biscuits, these browsers increases the size of their jar and accommodate the incoming biscuits (Yes! you can do that in technical world). The disadvantage using these browsers is, if the biscuits are being consumed, and no more biscuits are to be put in the jars, the jar size is not decreased and hence a lot of jar space gets wasted.(I hope you all understood it till here:) ).However, in case of google chrome, they create a new jar for every incoming biscuits stack.This way, every time a biscuit set is consumed, that jar is destroyed and hence they do not waste the jars if the requirement is not there. But! But! But! A major disadvantage of creating a new jar for every incoming stack of biscuits is, you consume a lot more jars and hence you waste/compromise a lot of your time and speed creating new jars.
  Lesson learnt from the story: Creating a new jar is a heavier task than increasing the size of an already available jar in the technical world.
  If you still haven’t understood it, read it again and even after another read you cannot understand it, consider the above paragraph as pure shit and understand that opening too many tabs and windows on google chrome makes your system real slow. It even made my Intel core Duo desktop with 1 GB RAM behaves sluggish. This is some real big issue and I believe they will definitely sort this out before they come up with a full n final release.
• This hurried release is only confined to Windows users, so Mac and Linux users need to wait a bit more before chrome is released for a wider range of Operating Systems.

My final verdict: Its good to see Google enter into the web browser market and they have done reasonably good with chrome beta. However, a lot still needs to be done with respect to performance before it can jettison or outshine the positions of Internet Explorer or Firefox.

That’s it from my side for chrome. Adios!

Where was I :) Let’s talk again! July 20, 2008

Hi All..

It’s been long that i have not come up with a blog entry. And THE REASON, the reason is same that more than a million people in this country can give these days. The normal chores (yes just the normal chores!) of a software industry did not even let me sleep, leave the luxury of writing a blog!!

So what was I really working on? To explain it all (my work) by stripping it all (the technical details), I would state:

It’s very similar to what is normally done in the real-human-world. We use resources and as soon as we do not need them we just consider them as garbage and throw them away. This way we participate actively in making this world a lot messier! However, a few good men collect this spewed stuff. Very similarly, a computer program uses some resources and when the program is done with it, those resources are thrown in wild, even though they can be recycled and reused! I with my team was collecting this garbage (by writing and using another computer program) and making it fit and available for reuse!

And while I was busy as a bee doing this stuff there was a lot happening around, let’s together have a glance:

• Left pulled its hands out of the government, and the trust vote situation has come up. Now, all we see is the slug fest to save/derail the government. And all that we see on the TV or read through the newspapers has evaporated, even the last drop of dignity which was associated with the term ‘politicians’. Of all the stories making the rounds, one that top the list is MPs bought for a whopping sum of 25 crores! Interesting…Pretty Interesting!

• Nuclear deal has brought the pugilists in the political circle out in front of every one! On a serious note, I have swayed in favour and against the nuclear deal every time after hearing/reading comments in favour or against the deal from all the big shots. I, who has followed it rigorously through public media, am not sure of the profitability/non profitability of the deal. How on earth these politicians can make a statement that people of this country need or do not need this deal to go through! Considering the fact that more than 70% live in rural areas and they have too many other things to follow but the nuclear deal. May the better sense prevail and people who have a brighter vision for this country have the final say in the deal.

• Aarushi’s murder case handling by Noida police has shown the ugliest face a top cop can really make. A child is dead, a father has not yet mourned for her death, and a cop comes and makes public statement mudslinging the character of the dead and her father! “Rajesh Talwar resented the closeness between Aarushi and Hemraj, even though he is as characterless as his daughter was.”- statement made by Inspector General Gurdarshan Singh, Meerut Zone in a press conference. A word from me: You were least expected to add spice and tadka to the story sir.

• The media does not even bat an eyelid when it is asked why has it given approx 50% of its prime time to Aarushi’s case, why has it distorted things by showing some scandalous and fabricated MMS alleging the girl in it is Aarushi, why has the media made the accused, the killer long before the person is even presented in court, leave being convicted?? Why do we see news channels (particularly Hindi) making statements that they have just found a ladder to heaven in a small place in Uttar Pradesh, and a lot more fake stories? One of the leading journalists replied saying, “This is what people want to see” and got a big applause from the sitting audience. I say, “Media has a big responsibility on their shoulders sir, if people want to see rapes and murders, you just can’t start showing these things! Use your head, and redo the vows that you took before taking the job of being part of media, and think, are you really helping us, or, creating/forging an untruthful-unrealistic world for the sake of multi-billion dollar business that media has now turned into. You have done brilliant job when considering the Jessica Lal case or Katara case, keep up the great work but do some serious self regulation. We want media to be free”

• A fantabulous, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (means awesome, fantastic!) campaign called TEACH INDIA initiated by a leading newspaper: Times of India. The social initiative is initially targeted to be implemented in four cities, viz. Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkatta. The best part about it is, you as a volunteer are supposed to give just 2 hours per week (or more if and only if it is convenient to you) and even the NGO best suited according to your choice of teaching location will itself contact you when you sign up for this initiative.2 hours per week from our side will make a big difference in the life of small underprivileged children, isn’t it exciting. I have already signed up for it and I will definitely share my set of experiences of teaching. For those who live in other cities, and are willing to participate actively in such kind of activities, just find an NGO near you and since we now know that only 2 hours per week can bring in a positive change, lets put our best foot forward. Its just one of the biggest contribution (apart from paying taxes, hehe!) that we can make in shaping a bright future of our country. For further details about the above said social initiative, you can follow this link: teach.timesofindia.com.

Now, that’s all from my side, my blog entries will be a lot regular affair until I get involved into another software related task to be taken care of!

NjoYY !

Review:The ‘Unhappening’ HAPPENING June 16, 2008

I originally planned to write a blog on ‘What is religion’ (ohh, not another heavy topic mayur), ‘life in college’(sounds fun) or ‘two years in corporate world’ (yippeeee!) and some how I cannot resist myself from writing my experience of watching ‘THE HAPPENING’. And you will know the reason(s) as you read along!

THE HAPPENING…Movie written and directed by a guy from Indian origin, Mr. M. Night Shyamalan and released in India on 12th June, 2008.The star cast includes Mark Wahlberg, Zooey Deschanel and John Leguizamo.

Lets unfold the events of 13th June, 2008 when I along with my three younger (includes two cousins) brothers for THE movie.

The show timings were from 9:00 p.m. and some how we entered the Audi, where movie was being shown, at 9:20 p.m. and I swear to God I have never been as happy as this for reaching late!!(These are post movie feelings…Hehe).By the time clock struck 9:40 there was a big banner on the screen which said ‘INTERMISSION’. Can you imagine, four maarwadis(a community in India who are known for their money-making and money-piling but not easily-spending capabilities) going for a movie, spending 600 bucks for the tickets, get the intermission message within first 20 minutes of watching the movie!! Can you imagine!

If this was not all the movie was over by 10:25 p.m.!! As Russell Peter’s father always say ‘Somebodyz gonna getta hurt’!!

Ok, so how was this miniature of a movie..? The best part of the movie is that the director kept the trump cards to his chest even till the time the credits were shown! The movie ends and you don’t get to know what was it all about, what really happened in the movie, what was the director-writer wanted to show/portray/communicate. Maybe it was not made for lesser mortals like us, maybe he had in mind some audiences (which just cannot be from this world) and maybe the censor board of India cut it so much that the story was lost in the chiseled (quite a word to be used in this context) leftover.

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER: What happens in the movie?

People starts getting suicidal, they start killing themselves, first terrorists are blamed for this, then the plants, trees and grasses, then wind is blamed to spread it, then three somehow survives(God knows how!), then a girl child who never spoke a single word speaks a complete line, and then again in France people start becoming suicidal!Now don’t lie and don’t be shy, wasn’t it a spoiler worth reading! I just saved you from watching the movie

All in all i can say I recommend this movie to everyone as a ‘must watch’ because I can’t bear the pain alone! The movie is just a made-for-couples movie, no matter whatever gets you busy in the darkness of the theater you just do not miss any part of the movie!

Quote(a) Unquote June 13, 2008

“……After all the whole purpose of the Constitution as proclaimed in the Directive principles is to move towards what I may say a casteless and classless society……”
Statement made by the visionary and our first Prime Minister Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru in Lok Sabha on January 13th of year 1951. May be the politicians present right now were too young at that time to understand why these words of wisdom came out.

Before starting with anything I must make myself very clear that I am not against reservation, I am against the way it is being implemented. The methods which are used not to bring the socially and educationally backward to the fore front of the Indian equation but to fill in the ‘vote bank’, to pinch the communal harmony so that the reaction itself causes hatred, to be stored perennially in the heart of the people involved.So lets start discussing what all things in the current implementation is not only ridiculous but deserves to be ostracized.

Lets talks about few questions cum thoughts in my head:

Data Used: The only caste-wise census which is available was done in the year 1931.Somebody please tell these guys that this is 16 years even before India was declared an independent state! Things have changed dramatically if we consider year 1931 and year 2008, we cannot use this safe-to-be-put-in-museum data for finding out backward classes now. If the backward classes in 1931 and 2008 are same, and still faces same oppression from other classes of the society, we definitely have some serious pondering to be done on associating the word ‘developing’ with our nation.

Time frame: Reservation is being executed for decades now. Why on earth we don’t have any report, any other kind of material which says that this policy has done well for people and hence the motive of uplifting and educating the backward is being taken care of. We (not excluding anyone because of his/her class) don’t want this reservation ‘thing’ to go on forever. The motive itself is washed away and mudded if perpetuity is attached to this policy.

Why is it that there is no revision taking place after every, say 5 years, to see how much has reservation served the backward classes and what all leaks(if any) are to be plugged. Do I see vested interest of the demons hidden in khaadi only worried about vote banks and Swiss banks (read accounts)?

Beneficiary: If a person in a family or one generation of a family gets the benefits of this policy, why is it that everyone down to ‘n‘ (tends to infinity!) succeeding generations gets to enjoy even though once cycle of such benefit is enough for a family to be dissociated from the ‘oppressed’ and/or ‘uneducated’ tag. I can’t hear that if someone in the family gets through an IIM (for example), and then the succeeding generations will still remain ‘economically’, ‘educationally’ and ‘socially’ backward.

Creamy Layer: There are people (a lot i know) who earn good, has done schooling from good institutions and are part of a well-off family. However, they have a surname which gives them a stamp of backwardness at the time of birth and hence make them eligible to reap the reservation policy benefits! Why does a child of a politician, well-off businessman, doctor, engineer, etc get the privileges of reservation policy because of their surname? What makes these people backward and give me one good reason that they need to be part of in-need-of-reservation crowd. Is it that these guys and not the ‘really backward’ guys, the biggest beneficiaries of this quota system? Think.. Think…

Levels: If we cannot provide the backward class with primary education what is the use of providing reservation at higher levels, levels as high as professional education. If the education till class 12th cannot make the student understand what is good/bad for him/her, change the way you teach and don’t make them more handicap by saying: ‘beta (son) do not study, you will anyway get into any graduation college’. Give them excellent primary education for free, prepare them for graduation level entrance exams for free, give them an acceptable leverage of around 5 % when preparing the admission list but in any case don’t let them sit and relax. Don’t make them feel that even if they score 10/ 100 they are so eligible, even though a general category(and so called forward because of his/her caste) student with a score of 50 can’t even manage to come in the waiting list.

Opportunity: The constitution of this country is in favour of equal opportunity to and for all. I agree we need to give reservations to the backward class and work in synergy to bring them among the equals. But..and i emphasize…WHY an institution, which has the capacity to accommodate more students(as all the seats reserved for backward class people were not filled) not allowed to fill the vacant seats with general category students? Why is this opportunity not available for grabs? Why someone, because he is tagged forward from his birth be denied education even if it is so easily possible?

Solution and Who should get the reservations: Okay here comes the bomb, if not caste, then what? If you ask me, I would say look into the financial factor of a family. This is something you will find common among the really oppressed (socially and/or educationally) Dalit or a Brahmin or person from any caste. A poverty stricken forward (forward only because of his caste) has the same right to get to the IITs, IIMs or any other good institution as the really-backward backward. And please for god sake lets have a census, some verified data which is not older than our independence!

And though he/she may enjoy free education, accommodation, food and other basic needs even till the professional education level, but the reservation should only be restricted to schools or at most graduation.

People who have reaped the benefits of reservation should be made clear that they have already got all the support system, perks and privileges but this privilege won’t be provided forever. This will ensure that the person understands the responsibility and take care of his/her family from now on and removes the tag of backwardness forever.

We should have a time frame for this policy to implement and give the required results. If we can have time-frames for carbon-emissions, targets to eradicate polio, targets of growth then why can’t we have a target for reservation. We should even have a revision plan, which checks the path on which reservation policy is traversing and plugs all the holes and leakages found and make amendments. The policy must do some good for the people at the end of the day. Isn’t it?

So, coming to an end to what all i wanted to communicate. Let’s have some eyes opened and not believe in this funda of dividing the society only on the basis of castes (Remember, we still curse Britisher for their Divide and Rule policy!). Let’s not play with the social and communal harmony because the line between peace and home-war is very thin. Let’s have the vision of Pt. Jawaharlal Nehru being realized.

Why blogging ! June 12, 2008

okies…now why do I really want to get into this world of BloGGinG..!
And the answer is:

I have a lot of thoughts to share, discuss, crib and holler about…I have view points on various current and past happenings particularly in my country (India)…I have views which cannot be termed apolitical in any situation…I really want to get rid of the whole weight of questions that hammers my head continuously when I see ugly things taking place under a reverent roof…and except for some rare occasions, I want to be brutally honest..the rare cases will include some hardliner groups evenly distributed in this country to take lives on no offensive comments…he he…so, some way or other I wish to Contribute using this media…

I want to share my set of experiences on things which changed the way I looked at things..changed the way I related to my surroundings..things which have veered my thinking on where do I see myself ‘n’ years down the line..my minuscule experience in the corporate world and some of my technical enlightenment..

I want to talk about my college life..four years which I call the “defining period” of my life…I want to gab a little about how an ensemble (read friends) from all part of the country can make you think/ponder on the not yet grazed land…

and last but definitely not the least, a maarwadi head thinking of a day when I get enough no. of hits at my page to earn some $$$$$$