blogcamp @ Chennai

For the first time in India, the blog community has come up with an event of its kind. It should be a "BLOGGER'S PARADISE", with most of the mainstream bloggers of the Indian arena joining hands to make this occasion count as a success. For more details check out this link more_info

HACKING

Hacking!!! This word has started to become more of a phenomenon now in my college. The moment a student enters the technical institute his thought process is somehow channeled into hacks and intrusions into systems. How exactly that happens and why is stuff to be analysed by experts. But it is driving me crazy!

This is a generation inspired by NEOs of the virtual world. There are many who are trapped inside the virtual world and in fact feel liberated when they soar high in the paradigm of the artificial.

When the efforts of the world are guided towards making the machines think like a human, our fresh generation is engaging into becoming one of the machines.

Color of blood is the same ... crimson ...

The reason that i didn't post any new topic is not that i didn't have anything new to write about, it's actually the other way round! I had so much that couldn't decide on what to write! First, there was this Pondicherry trip which gave me a truck load of stuff to write about and then back in here itself had so much to tell everyone.

I watched a few movies last night. I must admit that the most distressing thing that i've ever wathched was CRASH. This movie juddered my soul!!! For those of you who have not seen it yet(i do recomment it for all), let me give a quick review. The movie talks about how racism and discrimination has got so deep down in our society and our hearts that it's sometimes impossible to do away with it even if you feel it's unfair to judge anyone on the basis of how the mirror reflects their physical being. It talks about the guilt associated with all acts of atrocities on people of dark skin by people of (supposedly)dark instincts!!! It explains how such a discrimination is not just hampering the growth of the dark but also how it is eating into the society of the non-colored.

I happened to read a very good book last week, Freakonomics(by Steven D. Levitt). Of the many things that it talks about(and some pretty freakish indeed), there is also the issue of associating the "black community" with crime in general. Before i start to say anything that makes me the next target of some young-liberalist-with-an-AK 47 let me tell you that i'm a man who respects the power and will of the Almighty and i feel that all mankind(and even the not so 'kind men') have a right to put forth their views and do what their mind and heart tells them to(as long as it does not harm any other life physically or emotionally). I feel that the issue of racism has it's roots in the formation of mankind itself! There are biological reasons to support my views as well. It has been proved that in order to get a better generation the mating partners tend to choose the most healthy organism. There is no doubt that color playes a major role in it, making the choice easier in most of the cases, as it is easy to recognize an unhealthy white person than an unhealthy black (wo)man. This by no means implies that black people are not healthy, in fact most of the atheletes winning gold medals in games are black. It only means that black can sometimes give a deceptive appearence. Regarding the crime rate and it's correlation with any specific color is highly hypothetical and could be misleading as well. This is because the fact remains that the black community still continues to be underprivilaged and thus is more prone to crime(either as a victim or the other way round which is the case most often brough to discussion tables).

I just hope all this ends someday and that day comes fast enough!!! But, on the face of it i feel that it would require not just wars and terror and blood. It would require a deliberate effort on part of every individual to be able to bring about a change in the current society.

Pondicherry...need help !

I'm planing a trip to pondicherry next week. Does anyone have some good suggessions for me. I have already been there 2 more times and have seen all that an outsider usually looks out for. So, this time i need to go and look around for some stuff like places of historical importance or places/people that have been lately forgotten.

I read some special things about pondicherry in a book by Yann Martel, The Life Of Pie, can i do some research over that? Just tell me anything that i can do over there. I'll have ample time and resources.

Friendship day !!!

To all my friends and their friends ... happy friendship day ...

Dreamz!!!

Had a great dream last night! Which also made it quite clear that dreams are totally illogical . I dreamt that i was sailing around India in a special boat(which somehow changed its size depending on my own requirements), and in my voyage i found the route to be discontinous with an obstuction of about 20feet in my way.

Dont know what more to say or what to ask. This is what i saw and this is what i thus report!!!

Matrix

How long can we hide?

I share a notion with most of other people like me on this planet, the notion that i have nourished with reasoning since i got the sense capable of doing that. It is the notion of safety. One of my biggest beliefs is that i will live to see the next day. That is how i plan my life(i'm sure that goes for each one of you). Ever imagined how life would be in a situation when you are not sure of the next moment, let alone the next day. It would be a feeling that grips up each time we wake up from a real bad dream.

The generation that i'm growing up with(i feel that i'm still growing up!) is one for whom MATRIX is one of the best movies that they have watched. How long will we be sleeping in our cocoons? When will we shake off our slumber and start to realize that things are not as blissful as they look like? Is not the time ripe? Are we not delaying things a bit too long?

For me(like many others around the world) life would remain quite the same the next day. People will get murdered near-by but i will always have the luxury of commenting on the events. I will always escape the grind. I will always have a spectator's view of the arena(though i may not always enjoy what i see, but nevertheless i will only be a spectator!).It's time now that things changed. Let's try to do something, something as humble as opening our eyes to see the world that is transforming right in front of us!

Orkut

Its starting to get frustrating now, with no Orkut around for a week now i feel something important is missing, the way i used to miss my girl ! There has always been this problem with their servers. I still dont know how google can have such a problem even after cosidering the fact that Orkut has swollen to such an unimaginable mass!

Its a classic example of quatity Vs quality! Once you start getting more of something you are actually not getting what you wanted in the first place! Consider a perfume with a classic name(which only the elite would be able to pronounce correctly) borrowed from another land, with a stunning ad-line and an irresistable appeal attached with the model in the campaign. What makes it special is to a greater extent its exorbitant price more than anything else! So, when you go to a high-end store to buy such a product, you pay for it being so costly(besides the other obvious qualities like its fragrance, which the other products would have as well). Once such a product gets affordable to a larger mass of people, it starts to slip from the list of 'would love to have' to the list of 'must have at-least one'!

Do you know ?

Got this picture from a friend and i'm using it without his consent(will go and ask for his permission tomorrow!). If you observe it clearly, you can view the Chinese border in it. The few hut-like structures on the left of the picture belong to China!(well, that's what he told me!)

Well, there's this other friend of mine who has a pendant with similar(read same) illustrations on it like the ones you would see on the big rock. I wonder if anyone could tell me what all that means? I'm sure it talks about some sort of inner awakening or may be world peace! But, whatever it is, it has a mysterious charisma to it!

Can India learn from Lebanon ???

Parallels are being drawn between the Lebanon-Israel conflict and the situation that has always existed between India and her neighbour.There are many temptations for the Indian government to try to consider the situation as a prototype for solving its own problem of cross-border terrorism.However, any such action has a number of setbacks in store for India. It may be proper to say that the recent bomb-blasts of the economic centre of India could be reason enough for her to come up with a resolve to settle the situation for once and for all, but the issue is not as simple as it may look like. There are a number of factors that govern the way India and Pakistan look at this.

The political outlook of both the countries is different and is highly respected in either of the nations. The people of both the countries identify their land by the way it acts in situations of crisis and emergency. Then there is the big international community which expects both the nations to behave in the way they have been doing in the past! A drastic contradiction in the policies of the past and the present may lead to heavy loss in terms of international support to both the countries. There may even spring up various nations that may come out in support of either of the nations igniting a catastrophic situation.

The social structure of both the nations is clearly reflected in the way their policy making bodies work. In India for instance it would be really hard to convince the people that any strong action is necessary, the way it was done in the USA by the Bush administration. A feeling of extreme insecurity would clearly stand as a known illusion because there is not much to boast-off about in terms of how secure India is(a recent survey-cum-poll gave India a 6th stand in the list of countries being most unsafe for children). Extremist action is often shunned in our country so, a lot of explanation would be required and no political establishment would want to run in such dirty waters and hamper its chances in the next elections.

If any extreme step is taken by the Indian defence, Pakistan cannot be expected to act in a way similar to Lebanon. The Pakistani defence would instantaneously become active and join the terror establishments that it already supports, though under covers. It would mean a proper war and would not be limited to the border areas as both the nations have rather good striking capabilities. For much more densely populated nations like ours any action that crosses the border areas could spell disaster with unimaginable casualities besides a ruptured infrastructure. Clearly none of the nations would want that.

Specially for India, there is a big financial boon around for quite sometime now. The foreign investments have not ceased to flow-in giving a never before stability to the economy. It is far better for India to counter such rare(though rapidly increasing in frequency) attacks rather than to go in all out and kill its progress completely.

Clearly, neither of the nations would want to initiate any dramatic move at this point of time. As far as Mr.Musharaf is concerned, it is a win-win situation for him and his administration. He can come out openly in support of India in her war against terrorism while still sit comfortably enough knowing that his countrymen love him for doing what he ought to do, that is, do nothing to make any substantial effect on the progress of India's cause!

How unfortunate ...

My senses tremble and send shivers down the spine ... a young final year student of my college, (supposedly) plotted and murdered his girlfriend !!! There is a very alien air around now, people who have known each other for ages are feeling an insecure aura engulfing the whole campus.

People, as they often do, are viewing the whole incident as a story which took shape in front of them and endend-up with a supreme climax of some typical tamil movie(read manmadan). I wish to look at it in a different way, from a totally different perspective. What motivates any young mind to take such an extream step(killing someone or ones own self)? Is it the insecurity which is omnipresent or the haste of the generation or just an influence that the media and the cinema cast on the wet wax? I believe that it can be summerised in just one word-patience(or the lack of it). All of us tend to take short-cuts, if a download takes more time we get another ram stick, if the queue is a bit long in the mess we go to the canteen, if there is a lot of coding required we get a floppy!!! How this attitute affects our professional life is totaly different story, but, the consequences of such an attitude on our social life and mental make-up can be devastating!!!

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I have trouble with understanding the way the social structure of this place is entwined. There is so much discrimination on the basis of sex that it seems impossible to acknowledge that the fields like education have a fair share of the fair-sex!!! Even in the professional fronts i've found a lot of representation by women, still when a movie star slaps his lady-love on-screen the director is applauded, when a male-chauvinist father dictates his terms on the poor daughter the social architects praise, when an administration bans a healthy interaction between the members of the opposite sex in a work-place people accept it without a frown.

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We need to realize that the world is expanding, things that were termed obnoxious in the past are acceptable and approved by the world in-fact a certain level of 'openness' is required(even in sexual matters) to be able to survive in the present world(read the 'AIDS terror')!!! Information is abundant and varied and is right in front of us, how we use it is for us to decide and such decisions make who we would be in future. Stupid ways of parenting and moral-policing are alone responsible for such unfortunate incidents.

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Let's discuss

The indian market space

Today my friend's day went away finding out a way to get through with his motorola and the airtel internet connection via bluetooth. This may seem a very bizare thing to say to anyone but it has higher implications. We are in India and have nokia as the prime brand for any type of a cell-phone, motorola and other brands for that matter have no standing on the Indian market(even though the world space has a completely different story to tell)

This is a very enchanting question for a number of reasons. How did nokia become a name signifying quality when the indians were still in their infancy with the sweet little device? How did we associate other brands with lack of service and foul quality when we knew so little about it?

Perhaps it is a case of reaching to the market first with a product that takes everyone with a surprise!!! I'm sure the congress had such a notion in mind when they brought up Ms. Sonia Gandhi into the political arena! And there it had another advantage of being a 'product' of foreign nature and an Indian appeal!

Let's all hope for someone to tell the Indian public that the 'motorola' can indeed be a good option if we are ready to experiment and break from the spell of the market leaders!!!

THE BLENDS !!!

Life is all about blends! how good the quality of your life is depends on how well the various flavours of your life blend together. in india specially, there are people who can boast of a very successful life based on how churned up their life is! The best examples are ofcourse our beloved politicians.

Consider the not so old case of Mr. Mahajan and his family, the way the destiny unfolded the events was quite close to a tv soap's unpredictable story. but in the end what matters is how one deals with it, how you are able to make people forget(and more importantly, how you yourself are able to forget!) about all the misfortunes and how you are able to construct a fairy-tale ending to the whole affair!

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It has often been proved that man has a short memory which somehow lets all the ugly faces evaporate into thin air and makes way for new and refreshing momories, memories of our heros(read political leaders) who are so great that they sacrifice their personal interests to do us good, heros(read movie stars) who bring joy to our sordid lives and a ray of hope through their kind acts and near god like doings, heros(read social reformers) who are always able to find a way to bring quickness into our melancoly life by means of constant agitation.

As long as we have our heros with us there should be no worries and no complains because since we cannot be supermen and krish ourselves our heros shall find a way to make us merry!!! So, until you become a hero yourself, keep up the faith!!!

We are the makers of big crimes

WE are all responsible for the problems that threaten us at our faces today! There have always been talks of the lax attitude of the security forces of our cities towards crime that happen day and out nowadays. When a small crime (say a petty theft) happens in the neighbourhood all that we say is that it is "very common these days", forgetting the fact that a criminal left free is an invitation to a bigger crime.

Then there is the omnipresent political gunda. If there is a henious crime somewhere near it is mostly true to assume that it would be a politically motivated one or one having a strong political backing.It is in our hands to stop the unfortunate incidents like the Mumbai blasts from happening over and over again! Just keep your eyes and ears open and report even the smallest of crimes to the police, it is there to help us! If your prompt actions are met with apathy just dont stop there, keep churing the wheels till there is some action taken and a proper probe has been made.

enlighten your minds!!!

Dr.K S Chari,senior director, dept of IT Govt. Of India, was in my college during the last week. being in touch with such a charismatic and energetic person for such a long time and interacting with him for so long has brought about a transformation in me.(well, great people like him can do that very easily i suppose!).

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this has also stirred up a lot of questions in my mind. but the best part of it is that now i think i have the courage and confidence to find a way out of all the junk of questions that keep coming on.

very few people can say that for them the day's work at all days is a 20 hours affair!!! Dr. Chari is one such man.

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if you ever get a chance to visit him or attend any of his lectures or seminars just dont miss the chance, it could be your chance to a total awakening!!!

politics(an indian perspective)

i think we need to reconsider our political situation. certain questions need to be answered, questions like-who can be a politician? what should be the rights of a politically associated person, both administratively and socially? should there be a minimum qualification for entering politics? should more and more scientists join the main-stream politics?
well the questions are there for everyone to answer but perhaps i can give my point of view! any person who thinks that he can cope-up with the pressures and resposibilities and benifits of a political life can become a very good politician.
imposing a minimum qualification(academically) to a politician would make it impossible for hard working non-education-exposed people to join the political mainstream and since such are the guys that work at the grass-root level, we may find some really talented people missing from the work force.
i firmly believe that a person who is exposed to science and other studies of logic would find it very hard to keep peace with the ways of the real world, the world of politics! So, it makes sense to let the person do what (s)he does best.

IP and India

i'm doing a workshop on Intellectual Property rights right now , and its heartening to know that the awareness in such an important issue is so poor! there's an immense scope for Indians towards becoming a leader when it comes to IPs and patents but the indifferent attitude of most of us toward the issue has lead us to a work and get paid era!!!if at all this has to change we need to educate the educated and make then realize that there's more to it than they think, its not just about them but about the country as well. infact there are many cases in which indian professionals are working for an mnc placed abroad and getting patents and recognition for them!!! the cause of the nation is clearly lost !!!

Perhaps the news got lost !!! The Italy win over France was so overwhelming that Nadal's failed attempt at the Wimbeldon arose no surprises at all !!! It was actually more of a surprise to me, considering that he had such a comprehensive win over federer in the french open! there is one more issue associated with this: the fact that all power players like Nadal are injury prone and fail to be in the commanding position for a long time !!!