My Thoughts!

IIT for International Institute of Technology

2011-05-18T16:01:00.006+05:30

IIT may brand "Indian" "Indian" worldwide, but functionally, it wouldn't raise many eyebrows if called "International Institute of Technology". Only difference it would carry is, to get into it you need to be an Indian or NRI. To get out of it is fully "International - go anywhere".

Recently, a govt. panel recommended a sharp 5-fold increase in fees to help them remain independent. After 60 long years, govt. realised the investment it was making into IITs weren't going anywhere into the country, so it took decision to pass the burden of education to students themselves.

Some govt. institutes have a policy of mandatory work for students it sponsors. It means the college bears the fees as well as provides scholarship for education. In return, students are obliged to work for certain no. of years. for the sponsoring institution. They can also get relieved of it provided they deposit a certain large sum of money. Prime examples are SCRA (Special Class of Railway Apprentice) and AFMC (Armed Forces Medical College).

I wonder why IITs never had such a provision even after 6 decades. SCRA and AFMC are much smaller institutes wrt. IITs. The investment brought into IITs are also high-worth. In recent times there has been significant Alumni contribution to IITs. Still, more or less they have run on govt. large-hearted aids (which runs into several crores) to sustain and maintain the high-standards. I wonder why govt. never had any provisions for IITians to work in PSUs or return the aid by cash, given that brand IITian became bigger and bigger as they showed their potential in international market of technology, significantly in US. In fact, I want to go a step ahead. I suggest that Govt. should prefer to get the returns through "work" only rather than "cash-back", given it is not short of cash after all! This may be done either by making the barrier of return-cash high, or extending the degree into PhD programmes which automatically includes research and development at ground level.

When I posted it on my facebook wall, there were expectedly sharp reactions. Many argue that it may amount to forced or bonded labour. Students should have a free will to choose their work place or work nation. At least, they should always have a "be-free" policy by paying back the cash through loans or whatever feasible medium.

Frankly, I am not against it. As long as one graduates from a private college, pays the requisite fees on its own (or via loan), one can work for anyone, at anywhere. Concept of "Free will" lies only till at the path you're taking all steps on your own. If the ladder of aid is provided not by ourselves, our obligation towards it rises.

Is IIT a public charity from govt.? I guess NO. It's not a primary/secondary education to impart basic knowledge of life, nation, nature to people. Govt. of India established top technology institutions by donating large funds almost 5-6 decades ago, when India was not so rich, however, it had a vision of "technological independence". It saw how technology changes the economy, it realised we must own it, instead of ending up buying from already established technology-based economies of US and EU. It was an expensive investment, but in long run it was expected to generate multiple-fold results in form of technological innovation in the country.

Sadly, it did not happen. Even after providing world class facilities, faculty and top-class science students, it did not achieve any such goals even after half-a-century. Instead, it turned out to be a Labour Supplier to the world economy. It became a channel to create well trained engineers in almost all disciplines ready to take up advanced technological challenges either in US/EU universities or their companies. In the end, IITs indeed produced many sharp world-class engineers, but not for India or its companies, but for US/EU. IITs are indirectly supporting a highly technology dependent economy of US/EU. In crude terms of investment, Govt. of India is pouring large stash of funds to sustain and grow world economy than its own!

What is Govt. of India? It's set of representatives elected by people, and to work for "People of India" at large, not specific to individuals. Then, why IITs (and IITians) which are almost fully funded by govt. do not contain any direct responsibility to the Indian nation? Had it been a private instt. it'd been a different question. But it isnt!

Had our PSUs fallen out-of-shape if IITians were fed in it?

Had our institutes lacked the faculty class if enough IITians were fed in it?

Worst, had we turned into a labour nation if enough IITians were fed in India to create the economy and system?

For me, the hopeful answer is No. Even if best-in-class students may have shied away from IITs had the stringent work policy put in place, even average-in-class students would've done wonders for these govt. institutions, given indian culture for studies and no shortage of sharp students.

Many (often portrayed in media) are happy the way IITians have shined worldwide (read US/EU). They even claim to have benefitted India at large by creating outsourcing jobs. This has turned India into a horrible image of labour force. We basically work for world : give us any work and we are up for it, anywhere. It was envisioned to create economy and systems in India by putting IIT-trained students into it, what turned out was most IITians went the west way.

Why are IITians flowing by the west wind? Free movement of labour, Free trade are is what I hear(well those who still bet for it, listen to UK and US since recession). You get opportunities in systems already in place in US and already in advanced stage and ready to capture you, but weren't these same systems supposed to be created in India which could create such opportunities in future?. You get the best price for your education in US, but wouldn't that have been offset by creation of new technologies right here in India?

I think IITs have been great. Govt. has done a decent job funding it. With time, we have developed great IIT culture to excel, but it rather looks like that we have stopped at a 'self-centric' and 'technology-centric' approach, missing the "country-centric' approach like that of govt., our sponsor. In fact, for over two decades, even "technology-centric" approach has died down : hardly students take up and continue their technology discipline, literally wasting all the training (think of a trained boxer dying to play cricket)..a senior '89 batch from IIT Kanpur wonders only 3-4 batchmates are left in technology domain out of 25. But for system to work the approach has to be system-centric than self-centric..no team excels with individual excellence but only with vital team contributions.

More often than not we picked individual-self than the systems we were meant to be part of.

By utilising IITians zeal and on-par technical training, we can improve our systems at par with others..most of our systems need it..have needed it all the way..

(with inputs from atul narayan, binit jha)

Weekly Politics 09 Jan 2011

2011-01-09T15:12:00.001+05:30

Congress has maintained a practice of undermining functional bodies and posts, altering law to suit personal benefits and party’s prospects in polls in general, since IG times. CBI is called Congress bureau of investigation or Central bureau of INC(case of a gangster pursued at highest priority in Gujarat), Governors are spokesperson of congress party (Bhardwaj in Karnataka often comes with new tactics to bring down govt.), CVC is also known as Congres Vigilance Committee (it’s head is known party loyalist), PAC has been given arbitary powers to examine PM, President has an unknown existence and PM is a puppet of its party president.

Congress has repeatedly politicised governmental schemes, specially central. Naming central schemes after gandhi and nehru family has been there for decades. Recent developments have seen taking advantage of large funds at its disposal, apparently to run vote buying schemes (at center). In recent bihar elections, both RG and SG along with MMS spoke at length on how they give funds to bihar more like generously than bound by constitution of federal structure. Congress has repeatedly blamed non-congress ruled states to gain credit for schemes from center, thereby politicising the ownership of schemes to the political parties running the governments.

India, unlike most other country, has kept tribals at their natural habibat without destroying them. Christian missionaries and muslim propagandas have immensely penetrated deep tribal regions of India. Tribals are losing their tradional style of living and livlihood. Due to different cultures, they find it difficult to cope up and adjust with mainstream culture. They also face humiliation and discrimination. Recent expeditions and excavations due to mining / timber benefits into hilly regions and traditional tribal areas have led to worst of all situations.

Weekly Politics 02 Jan 2011

2011-01-02T21:16:00.005+05:30

Indian diaspora left out of current India due to political boundaries are required to be dealt with wisdom. These are people who may not or could not retain their motherland even though to their highest commitment. It is current India’s role to look into these affairs.

Divide and Rule plus poll beneficial agenda of congress has given undue powers to separatists in Kashmir.

Border problem of India with neighbouring countries specially Bangladesh, Nepal and Srilanka must be dealt with stern action. India as a large nation and saviour of the region must take control of border region on both sides to stop infiltration and cross-border terrorism. It has been established that home-grown terrorism has never been successful in India. In all cases terrorists are either from outside India or trained by outsiders in or out India. Unauthorised citizens of Bangladesh, Nepal and Srilanka must be sent back to their parent country.

Border with Pakistan must be cleared. India must maintain no sight of artillery on the side of pakistan across the border. Any sight of life must be dealt with severe penalty. These kind of measures may help India stop infiltration.

Indian history has been hostage of central govt. whenever congress have ruled. Largely this practice has been borrowed by Britishers in particular and europeans in general. Method of glorifying “our people” and putting others in backdrop by congress ruled govt. has led us to one-sided written history. Post independence, time and again congress governments have tried to change the general perception of an event in order to gain political mileage. Even today, the way bofors scandal or bhopal tragedy or emergency era or anti-sikh riots are handled by current govt., mechanisms are required to allow transparency and truth prevailed.

Weekly Politics 26 Dec 2010

2010-12-26T19:30:00.000+05:30

Yeddyurappa is making investment in temples around karnataka and nearby states. This shall strengthen one of the basic foundations of our society in villages and many corners of state, ie, temples. Temples are symbol of integrity and people connect through it. Betterment of temples provide confidence of prosperity in people and also that state is nurturing forgotten pride of their regions.

BJP should avoid harsh remarks against govt. but should rather stick to democratic ways of being in opposition. Gadkari has considerably reduced his usually sharp tongue. Few BJP leaders are impolite that way.

Jagan is playing old style politics. Rising on the wave of popularity of his father, emotional politics involving his mother and dying people and finally, divide and rule politics. Even after keeping dalit CM Rossaih for an year could not solve deadlock among zamindar reddys, by calling quits jagan has defied to work under any leadership.

BJP should come forward to join the new anti-corruption bill drafted by noted scholars (http://www.indiaagainstcorruption.org). Karnataka has the most active lokayukt in country, it does not spare even ministries and CM. Difficult how it may be, BJP should move towards strengthen the bill by politically assessing it’s worth and improve it’s quality.

Maha politics is at all time low. Ruling party is deep down drowned in corruption, be it expose of crores donation for sonia’s rally or adarsh or countless others. Regional shiv sena and MNS are fighting like brothers fight for batwara in home. BJP though 3rd largest is insignificant without a prominent leader. Raj is stronger leader than Udhav. Bal is ageing. BJP should come forward and join the hands of two brothers and strengthen each other.

Situation of Andhra and Karnataka govt. are similar but handled differently. Simple majority followed by series of calamities on both govt. has marred state issues and politics, even destablising govt. BSY first saw revolt from reddy brothers, land scams, dissidence in MLAs and even it’s governor acting as opposition leader. Telangana has become a huge issue. Untimely death of YSR led to division in Andhra congress. YSR magic had worked more in Andhra than Sonia’s, and Jagan has been defiant on this issue. Rossiah took the office for one year as sitting-in CM but nothing helped. Jagan has broken ties with congress and so his supporters. Current farmer crisis after havoc rains has intensified it. The difference between the two states is the way these tough situations are handled. Karnataka has overcome most problems and moving as stable govt. Andhra govt. is in tatters and things may go out of hand sooner or later.

Mid-term elections have usually favored BJP and allies. Nitish ji won first major elections after president rule in Bihar (a hung assembly). BJP’s first govt. in south came after a hung assembly in Karnataka, due to JD(S) and Congress style politics. BJP’s 1st govt at center which ran for full five year term ever, came after a hung parliament.

Politics in TN and AP needs to re-invent on the lines of KA. The first credible step should be to free Media houses of political clout.

Federal structure of India has taken a hit. States have grown stronger while center has adopted preferential policy among states in India. Center has often showed federal structure is not for stability but as a favour to states, which it may not be liable to.

Weekly Politics 19 Dec 2010

2010-12-19T14:11:00.000+05:30

Central politics has gone hollow now. Congress is talking about RSS and Hindu extremists even though the issues are buried down as of now. Corruption is at its peak but there is no tough and convincing talk. Most of the central leaders try to speak out of their mind, create controversy and like to stay in media limelight for some time. Digvijay, rahul and sonia are good examples of that.

BJP’s central leadership has gone thin now. Only jaitely and swaraj are visible at higher stage. Gadkari, Shourie and many others usually keep mum. Advani is ageing. In a way it is a good thing because hollow government needs a hollow opposition.

Yeddyurappa has won major battles. Two inner and many outer. Fight with reddy brothers were important as it involved finance, whereas fighting against dissidence established his leadership. Tackling corruption cases gave him a tough man stand.

Bihar politics is next generation politics : above caste and religion. Many states have to follow it yet.

Congress style of politics is dying now. Dynastic rules like I and my family rules the party. Corrupt politics that to use state/central wealth to fund political agendas. Gifts and Freebies like free rice, TV, power, loan waivers, water and others. Divisive politics like muslims vs rest of India or Upper castes vs lower castes. Central leadership (lack of federal structure) where leaders at center decides who is chief minister in a state. Corrupt bureaucracy where IAS officers believe they are raja of districts and departments and ministers treat mines as their birth right properties. Selective development where one region is full of industries and wealth while other region is left in lurch and poverty. Anti-Pakistan where pursuance of bilateral talks are kept alive even after 26/11 attacks.

State politics is rising now. Each state is producing their own “hero” CMs, who are doing great in uplifting the common people. It would only be matter of time when one of those will rise for the occasion to lead at the center.

Americans for a change have shown the door to open journalism and hence democracy. Assange’s role in exposing Iraq war documents on human rights violations has not angered general american, might be because it did not talk about american casualties but of non-americans, mainly resident muslims. America’s scant regard for other countries is not just imbibed in its bureaucracy and government but seemingly also in people. Series of publications by american news NYT show that various diplomats around the world as well as spying in the countres is not in the right spirit by govt. We are yet to see Americans backlash on this to govt. However embarrassing it may be, Obama’s admin stands little affected in the eyes of americans. War has happened in Bush era and diplomatic problems affect him little now as he has got enough problems at home. Not to wonder, Obama has only played hide and seek with wikileaks, and has not even filed a criminal case against it.

The Two Dreams

2010-10-12T15:10:00.004+05:30

Dream#1
It was a festive time, just like the times around. May be it was between durga puja and diwali. As usual, my grandfather was interested in "cooking" some special items. It was "white rasgulla" for a change, usually he makes gulab jamun (or black rasgulla). As usual, things never go smooth with him. Tension was up for grabbing stuff around, gathering utensils, this and that. Anyways, the milk was heated too long (acc. to him) before lemon was poured. Not that usual, only few rasgulla could keep their size and shape at the end. Rest broke down into small bits and pieces. Well, after having done the job of what a conductor does in bus for quite a while, I wasn't quite ready for all that blame game (the over heating part, besides many many others, literally anything i did). And it all backfired. I was all upon him. When I looked around, the eyes were upon me. Seems they were right, I was wrong. I could sense that. It was remorseful, it woke me up.

Dream#2
It was almost end of day. I was walking by the main road. Took a turn towards gully leading to my house. Dogs are no news to bangalore gullies. One walked behind me. Others were walking towards me from front. It felt like a gang attack. They were closing in. I was carrying a polybag. They were four or five. They were pushing me from all sides. I knew the dogs bark before they bite, they din't. The gherao was happening, I had forseen it a while ago. The run was an option, I could hardly pull my feet though. The attack was inevitable. Before they could bite, I woke up.

Often that I've played the "act of blame", and the part of not pulling up the feet at the time its heavy. Enough of that.

Why is BSNL better than Airtel?

2010-09-21T13:50:00.004+05:30

There again, we go. After an year pause, we have another terrorist attack on our door knocking, right at CWG site. To add to that, there’s an intimidating email sent to all media junkies, who din’t take a flash of second before publishing the threat on almost all news portals and tv channels.

For long time terrorists have used fake sims to carry out terrorist activities in India. What’s a fake sim anyway? For fake name, fake address, fake photo and fake identity. A sim is so powerful today that it can connect u to anyone in the world and internet, and if it’s fake, without a trace! But who cares? A sim makes money for me. Fake or No fake, "chalta hai"!

There is always a cry foul over BSNL about it’s services. The servicemen are not responsive, slow. Connection takes lots of time. Complaints are never handled. Too many trips to the main office. A friend of mine got a reliance internet connection even though she does not have an address proof! Sure it was easy, but do we ever look at what are we encouraging?

Servicemen in BSNL are “employed”, Airtel people are contractors. Airtel folks are mandated with targets, thereby making them get through it by “hook or crook”. With no pressure on head, BSNL folks are procedural, they take steps as they should be. When both parties (suppliers and consumers) are eager to get connections for virtually scrapping the whole process involved, what happens in the end? Are not we abetting terrorism too?

The tactics in the name of quick and so called hassle-free "aaraam se" door-service has led only to havocs both for consumers (junk calls, junk sms) but as we can see, even for the nation!

our population is evidence of pathetic pre-1947 policies

2010-09-07T00:23:00.007+05:30

Population Blast is a common topic taught in secondary education course. We even learn about it's problems and it's proximity to cyclic poverty. Alas, this term has led the middle class and upper class to blame the blast upon the below poverty line. Poverty may cause population growth, but population growth is caused equally by both rich poor and any living on this country land.

It's surprising that it's often considered गरीब का बच्चा बोझ और अमीर का बच्चा देश का भविष्य (poor man's son is a burden but rich man's son is future of the country).

I do not see any reason as why below poverty line should not re-produce. Usually it is reasoned that you’d re-produce as much as you can ‘afford’ to. But affordability also comes from more people. On similar line, in classic jaane bhi do yaaron, there’s a line ‘when poor drink they create chaos and beat their family, besides they can’t afford it. But rich remain civilized after drinking, besides they can afford it’. Quite catchy!

The population burst of india is due to 100-200 year rule of policies adopted by east india company in agricultural lands, on farmers, skilled workers (craftsmen etc). They killed the old traditional skillset of people and forced them to work them in their factories and produce for them. Many fertile land went waste for forced production of neel and other substances which adversely affect land.

Unless families stabilise financially, they would re-produce more in order to aim for more earning. For them, child labour is important source of the income. In their families, everyone works : man, woman and kids. And why shouldn't they? As long as they can feed their children, they have all the rights on this land to do it. On moral grounds? Well, let's talk of rich's morality first!

The Myth of population explosion

PS : on sidelines, I never believe that lakhs working in factories can ever have stable economy with ample jobs for all to live happily. world has hit recession several times now and has caused the worst world war. we must move our economy to more sustainable form, with less strain on earth and with potential to higher scalability and flexibility enough to lower down (both employment and scale of economy). Take UK, where sharp shortage of employment seekers has led to compulsive immigration, meaning it is failing sustainability to scale down it's economy as the population has went down.

Typing in Indian languages on Windows Xp or Vista

2009-07-14T23:28:00.009+05:30

Ever wondered how to type in Indian languages, say Hindi or Bengali, on your own desktop or laptop? Imagine chatting in Marathi or Assamese with your same-tongue friend.. isn't that cool? Well, here are some steps which can help you guys do it. In case you have Windows Vista or Windows Xp, you can do it very easily. All you need is your Windows Installation CD.

1. Installation of Language Fonts
Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Language Tab -> Supplemental Language Support -> Check the first check-box "Install files for complex script....." -> Click on "OK" -> if it asks for CD, insert the Windows Installation CD and browse till "i386" folder -> installation over -> NO NEED TO RESTART

2. Setting up your Favorite Language
Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> Language Tab -> Click on "Details" button -> Click on "Add" -> Select "Input Language" (like Hindi, Kannada etc) from drop down list -> Click "OK" -> Click on "Language Bar" to see language bar settings -> Click on "Key Settings" to set language shortcut -> Click on "OK" -> Click on "OK" -> That's it! DONE!

3. How to learn Hindi Keyboard (or for other languages)
Before you can chat with your friends in Hindi or your favorite language, you need to learn the keyboard layout. That is, as most of you would have English keyboard, you would need to know which key in English would type out which letter in your language. Open the link Windows Keyboard Layouts and select your language. It opens a pop-up, which would show a typical keyboard layout. In case of Hindi, "Devanagari INSCRIPT" instead of "Hindi Traditional" keyboard. Press right shift or/and right alt to know more characters on that keyboard. In case of Indic languages, usually all vowels are on left side while consonants are on right side. Other characters are spread here and there, which you may need to find out as you need them.

4. How to right in your favorite language.
Say you want to chat with your friend in Hindi. You open gtalk and click on your online friend. While that chat window selected, you can click the "language bar" and select "Hindi". Now slowly type some letters by seeing the Hindi keyboard layout, you would see the Hindi characters on chat window as well.
What more you want? The more you chat, the more you learn.
The more you use, the more you get comfortable.

5. Some tips :-
a) a handy shortcut is "Left Alt + Left Shift". It alternates between different languages you have added. So, as you would need to alternate between Hindi and English keyboards for whatever reason, just press Left Alt + Left Shift and you have changed the input language.
b) chat slowly but as much as you can, in your language. I can now type in Hindi as fast as I do in English, only because i use it whenever possible in my day to day interaction.
c) as scripts for Indic languages are phonetic based, they have almost equivalent keyboard layouts too. For example, प (its English equivalent is "P") in Hindi and in Bengali is typed using same letter "h". This gives an easy way to learn various Indic scripts on computer.

I found this way far better than using google transliteration methods, as this gives you 1) to actually type in the script of your language instead of English script and 2) type exactly what you want, instead of walking through the guesses of google. In fact, it got me so interested in typing in Hindi, that I have taken a pet project to translate my friend's website completely into Hindi. :-)

My stint with reading

2009-07-03T18:08:00.006+05:30

I have been very lazy in reading.. and by that i mean reading anything.. news, novels, textbooks, mags.. anything! However, this week I casually visited our library and browsed the books there. Couple of books I picked, one of them was

A Flag, A Song and A pinch of Salt - Freedom Fighters of India by Subhadra Sen Gupta.

The title of the book surely shows some inclination of mine towards nationalistic writings. Since it was about freedom era and its a lean thin book, it was my obvious first choice. I kept my pace for some time but couldnt even cross 100th page. I had to return the book today and in return I got "Imagining India" by Nandan.

The book is very succinct about lifestyles of different people like Maulana Azad, Subash Chandra Bose, Mahatma Gandhi including many others. It starts with their anecdotes, one of them notably by Netaji, "तुम मुझे खून दो, मैं तुम्हें आज़ादी दूँगा" (You give me blood, I'll give u freedom). It talks about their education, family background and how it impacted their final inclusion into freedom struggle. Almost all of them had adverse upbringing to become freedom fighters. Instead, they could have turned to be rich barristers and loyal british servants. Many of them belonged to rich family and their father were either big zamindars or holding high posts in british india. However, when it comes to their freedom struggle story, author has unbiasedly included Gandhi into almost every nukkad of the hero's story, quietly undermining their importance. Paras have been written only if Gandhi has been part of those incidents. Worst, authoring is more perceptive in nature (as author understood) than descriptive (what actually happened). Instead, I would have liked these short biographies from a rather neutral perspective, specifically, not written by a Gandhian to explain how exactly Gandhi affected other freedom strugglers.

I read some of the starting stories but they turned out to be boring, as most of them had singular stand : either go with Gandhi or fight with him. I returned it within a day. I had issued another book on India, called Philosophies and Religions of India by Yogi Ramacharaka. This is another short book, and the author turns out to be in disguise. Hope to find it closer to the truth.

Is Columbus Dead?

2008-01-13T01:38:00.000+05:30

The life of sailors isn't so easy.. first there is an ocean.. then there is direction.. and then there is this path which u need to cross.. n then there ur destination, ur manzil lies..

Sailors look so fascinating.. all kids wanna be them.. even I did.. thought of making my own boat.. my own direction.. my own destination.. thought of discovering a new land.. a new India.. but it wasn't so easy..

Each of them sail on their own boat.. after all God gifted one to every1.. but not many would go far.. most of them will return to the shore before it becomes the horizon.. many will go little further, do fishing, come back home with great fantasy stories and thrill the standing lot..

but I'm not talking about them here..

I'm talking about those kids who dream of a shore on the other side of ocean.. 1st time they sail and come back.. 2nd time they go little further, do fishing n come back again but they don't have any stories to tell.. because they have something bigger in mind.. and every time, the further they go the lonely they find themselves, because others are busy catching fishes and so are left behind.. but he doesn't care much.. cuz he has something bigger to catch.. something unheard of, nobody knows what its like..

Life isn't easy for those sailors who are catching the big fish, looking for the subtle island.. WHEN u find yourself alone in the middle of ocean where u can't see a shore, where u can't make ur directions, where u start fearing the God.. THEN what u need is some patience, some hope and lot of courage to even stay there and then to try to go ahead..

Not every1 is a sailor.. not all who sail know directions.. and not all who sail and know directions cross the ocean and reach the shore.. but yes, they are there..

So Cheer up my friend, if you're the one, then you'd show us the new Land, the new India.

Is Columbus Dead? I don't think so..

Bad Things are So Cyclic..

2007-12-10T02:37:00.000+05:30

Things are so cyclic.. what u do is what u get.. jo durson ke liye gaddha khodta hai woh khud hi usme gir jata hai.. almost all bad things make a cycle to reinforce it, and almost all good things lead u high but hav nvr a "backpush" from any cycle. Why?

Life of a kid is so much like an observer.. he finds bad things in family, he learns good things from family, hes determined to overcome difficulties, he always assumes to hav seen the future, but Why do things turn up so badly in adulthood?

When u were graduating u had only family in my mind, well we all hav it.. when u talk about a job then u mention "for my family".. when u get a good news u disclose it first to ur family.. but all this mechanically scheduled job life leaves u little to think about nething.. or rather, it leaves u with the only thing as ur salary and nothing else.. of course, your resume, your networking, all those bullshit which are trackbacking u.. haunting u..

But then even if i knew how badly u had fared, i made it a point that i wont do the same.. i wud be different, i wud really do nething for my family.. i wud spend everything on them, after all its their hardwork and sacrifices which has led me to this peak of my career, i wont get defeated by this life like u did.. but nothing, i was just dreaming..

And this is the reality.. when u grow up, when u get the job, it detaches u from family more than it attaches u.. they nvr ask u for nething, u see they hav everything.. u reduce their needs to mere gifts, and meetings to mere yearly visits.. guys make plans for great career, for shifting to US, for dng an MBA or a PhD.. and girls start saving for their going-to-be, the tough unknown life they havnt seen, parents seldom even accept gifts from them (a girl?!?), they live a life as if they hav already passed their duragavan.. well sooner or later it has to happen..

Detachment is inevitable.. and this slow-poison, killing work life makes it worse.. the distance is reduced by cheap telecom services but that also becomes a series of formalities of set of questions, which u ask everyday and on every phone call.. all the smiling dreams u had turns to be gloomy, the sweat on the head makes u feel tired.. but who asked for this all?

Is making money so hard in the world? ..that it makes u leave ur past behind like it never existed.. school friends and college friends become ur close pals.. u tend to forget ur past rivalry and greet even ur college foes with a pleasant smile.. u tend to make shallow friendship becuz u nvr know when u wud need them in future.. u may still sit together, laugh, eat on the same table with one whom u just back-stabbed a while ago.. u form fake goodwill around becuz u want to hide ur ill ambitions..

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

No i dont mean I'm not loving my parents, I also dont mean I'm avoiding my responsibilities, but where is the passion I used to feel when I was kid? Why was it there when I didnt own a pocket, and why is it disappearing when i hav all full-four pockets?

things hav changed so much in this short span job life.. the respectful attitude for people, the sweet love for girls u've crush upon, the non-stop to-be-on-the-top spirit.. all of these seem to fade out.. to materialise.. and person in me is getting hard.. more n more oblivious to the nature.. to the people.. may be, to myself too.

Should IRIMEE, Jamalpur offer non-SCRA seats?

2007-09-29T19:03:00.001+05:30

SCRA, which stands for Special Class Railway Apprentice, is higher class officer in Railways in Engineering discipline. The degree is provided by Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Jamalpur. It is a Government Engg. College , the only one in India of its kind and also among the oldest of all technical training schools, and offers four year degree programme in Mechanical Engineering, specially suited to the needs of Railways. How? Most of their practicals are carried out in the oldest Indian railway workshop at Jamalpur itself, which is my birth place too. IRIMEE, which is far older to IITs, was established to fulfill high engineering and research needs of Railways. Needless to say that their contribution to improve railways has been immense..

Though SCRA has tie up with BIT Mesra, it is not very well publicised among elite students outside Bihar and has very few seats (just 10 as of now, for appearance of more than 1 lakh students!). As Railways is finding ways to take required engineers through IES, the need of IRIMEE is falling down. As you can see, the total intake has fallen to 10 for general category! However, as I said before, the students at IRIMEE are extremely bright and are soundly comparable to IITians (who need to pass IIT-JEE for entrance). In fact, many of IRIMEE graduates hold a seat in IIT, which they leave for getting admission into IRIMEE to become SCRAs. This is because SCRA is regarded as highest entry point for graduates into Railways, and are provided with high class facilities and training and has a great future.

From the viewpoint of Railways, though SCRA is falling in its charm and importance, however, from the viewpoint of Jamalpur as town, IRIMEE and Railway Workshop has been very important. IRIMEE not just qualifies as the only engineering college in Jamalpur, but also an old and elite one. Hence, from the viewpoint of Jamalpur, I personally believe that IRIMEE needs to expand as a Govt. Engg. Institute, than just being a legacy to produce SCRA graduates.

No doubt that IRIMEE is a high-class institute with modern training facilities in Mechanical and Electrical discipline. More so, its location is perfect as Rajmahal Hills at Jamalpur, which is safe from floods due to Ganga as well as has calm atmosphere around. The town itself is well connected to Calcutta and Delhi via many trains and has frequent connectivity with Patna, capital of Bihar. Due to large Railway Colony, the people are elite and educated, hence setting a good educational and healthy environment. The faculty is world-class and BIT Mesra professors add to its glow. Jamalpur Gymkhana is big and beautiful, and has all facilities for sports and entertainment. More so, it can even be expanded due to its uncrowded location. No doubt, IRIMEE has all the qualities to become a world-class Engineering Institute, not just in Mechanical and Electrical discipline, but also in today's hot picks like Computer Science and Engineering, Electronics Engineering etc.

Then, why not open IRIMEE for non-railway seats too? Its true that currently its a different case. SCRAs get stipends instead of paying fees, they have secured jobs and more so, they are specially trained in Railway systems, as that's where they are going to be placed too. SCRAs are provided with 1st class officer facilities. These things obviously make it an attractive place, even over IITs to many students. However, opening it for non-railway jobs may not be the same and hence would need a different system. Fees need to be structured for them. Labs would be needed for Computer and Electronics experiments. However, most important place where IRIMEE can gain is its placement. Being an old and proven institute, it can easily invite good companies or even have an agreement with other Govt. bodies who also go to IITs and other engineering institutes for recruitment. As it has a great faculty already, this can make IRIMEE a complete engineering college and will not take much time to reach to global stage.

Why to lose a great engineering college at a time when engineering is becoming the profession of the common youth? Government is already trying for new engineering colleges and inviting IT companies to set up their extensions here, seeing the success in south of India. We do need a visionary, and we do have many of them too. IRIMEE has a great chance to make it to the world and perhaps this is the best time, both for railways, and the people of India, specially Bihar.

Just Another Story of Depravity.. or Deprivation?

2007-08-20T23:27:00.000+05:30

Today, after a long time, I went to eat to the nearby north Indian mess, so called Dilli Dhaba for dinner. I was damn hungry on one side, and on the other very tired after a hectic day. As usual, these folks would take hell lot of time to bring ur food on table, of course, unless, u shout at them, with a serious tone.. par bhai.. ab to aadat si pad chuki hai..

However, it didn't seem yet another day at the mess. I could spot the mess owner, his wife and his big lad sitting near congested counter, which was a "rare encounter". Situation looked messy as I was able to spot that two of the workers were missing and hence load was unusually high on the rest. Not very long it took me to figure out that last night those two missing faces looted whatever money left in the counter and ran away, supposedly to Delhi.

That time, only few folks were left in the mess, as I went quite late (around 11PM). No wonder they were oldies and shared much longer relationship with mess, even the owner seemed to know them well. The night was quite gloomy, they were discussing about the incident last night, obviously they were all cursing them. "why dont you complain to the police?Call me too, I will also complain against these idiots"..."tell me his dad name and village, I will get him beaten, that will surely give him a lesson of life"..."henceforth you should take complete check on these workers before hiring them"...and the wrath was all around.. and I was just silently humming Vande Matarammm...

I burped with a sarcastic laugh. I just recalled about those two folks. For almost 6 months every night I have eaten in this place, except on Sundays, as they are closed on the sunny weekend. I remembered their silly talks and the daily excuses they would make for bringing food late. I thought I knew them well. And when I heard the news, I wasn't shocked. I actually felt pity. I felt pity for the owner as well as those folks who were barking at them. I felt sad.

Let me tell you one simple business funda. If you want to make money in food business, and if you have a North Indian expertise, you can make heaps of money in BANGALORE. Bangalore boosts one of the most expensive food habits. A chapati costs you 3 to 5 bucks at the minimum even in the worst of the mess or restaurants you visit. Local food can not be your staple food. And unless you don't have a liking for south Indian meal (thats also a big business, but run by Telugu folks here), outsiders just run for these cheap food vendors. Surprised? They are actually, the cheapest.

Not to contrary, this mess also must be making huge money. This dhaba is one of the most popular in locality, actually there is no such one in the area at all and hence there is no competition. Almost all time you would find the queue for finding vacant seat (now you understood why it always took long time to serve food here). But how much do these workers get paid? Just pennies! These folks not only make and serve food, but also take care of the mess in general. Seldom I saw the owners making round of their own estate, a so called "rare encounter" as I mentioned before too. Funny that these bunch of some 5-6 guys who make the mess "run" would crave for each penny in their life. How long will they resist the temptation of owning the money they earn for their owner everyday? This act of deprivation is bound to give birth to the feeling of depravity.. and leave it grow slowly..

Hence, I felt pity. I felt pity on the cheapness of the owners. I felt sad for their extreme misery and selfishness. Not surprisingly, the owners didn't look very upset with the incident. They said they are used to it now. Because on the whole, they make more money by hiring them on rates far below to par and letting them run away once in a while with handful of bucks, with the chillars of the nation.

But I wanted to bring an important point here. I think they are missing the bigger picture. Actually, its not the money which they lost is a concern here, but the act of cheating, so called namakharami, which makes it look worse. What could be the plausible reasons for the raise of betrayal in the minds of workers, which give them their livelihood? Is this handful of looted money going to make them rich? Why do they leave a high paying city like Bangalore, where just 5 golgappe are sold for 10 rupees, and run to other cities? If these people are paid well and according to their value to the business, I'm sure not only the same breed would become the more loyal, but also a helping hand in the times of crisis.

Its high time that these "gharelu" business people pay concern to standards and ethics of their labour. Else, they would face such acts again and again. And let me tell you, in my opinion, they deserve it!

Why Did I Go for BSNL Broadband?

2007-08-05T19:20:00.000+05:30

By now, people call me "BSNL Ambassador". They think BSNL has paid me for popularizing their product. Why? Because whenever someone asks me suggestions over Broadband services, I put BSNL Broadband a.k.a. DataOne on the TOP!

The instant comment most of my friends/colleagues would make on BSNL would be "It would take months to get the connection!", and NO, none or only few of them have BSNL as such :) General perception seems to be lethargic, poor services, local people (who dont understand english/hindi).. but I really dont buy this theory.. cuz I actually had different experience.

Most private players in this space, notably Airtel, Tata Indicom, Hathway, Sify etc. are actually small players.. they can afford to have door to door service, where customer does not even need to move an inch, except that to the reach of his wallet, well that is for the payment :D

Well, I take this fact. True, that BSNL is a Govt. player, and they wont run behind you to give the connection. On the contrary, you have to run behind them, and unlike private players, they are open on Saturdays too. Many people also criticize BSNL as it needs separate landline connection for installing Broadband service. But this sounded me funny, cuz all broadband service would need a landline connection anyway, whether u use them or not (funny though, in the case of Airtel, they say "you get a free landline connection too alongwith Broadband :D lol). Just that BSNL has a separate process for getting landline connection, and actually, its this process which is as old as BSNL and hence, somewhat lethargic. Getting broadband if you own a landline connection is just matter of a week.

To add to the facts mentioned above, I stay in one of the congested areas of Bangalore called Koramangala. Getting phone line connection was a 4 week affair for me. I got broadband next week. Its almost 6 months now, no forgery bills, once in a month downtime for couple of hours in case of rains or something(if at all!), great speed (soars higher than 32KB mostly), and as I see that BSNL has great infrastructure, I can only say that its future is definitely better, that I can always switch to other services as I want.

On a larger note, I find it funny when people are afraid of following a system and keep looking for shortcuts to get their work done. BSNL is one of the oldest and stable player. They don't provide service where just "money" lives, but where "people" live (may be cuz they are from Govt.).. and let me remind you, that people live in outskirts of city, villages too, where it might not be profitable for private players to play. These private players attract the customers by promising them no bhagam-bhag saar.. no extra fees saar.. free landline saar.. free service for two months saar and blah blah.. but most of them turn out to be poor players.. they cheat later for speed, downtime, bills etc etc.. and its extremely hard to negotiate with them.

So folks, Go for BSNL. Go for DataOne.

डूब मरो ऐ मीडिया वालों..

2007-08-03T08:54:00.001+05:30

डूब मरो ऐ हिंदुस्तान वालों - लालत है इस खामोशी पर was not just another news article for me. It made me understand the obvious direction in which media - the voice of people, is heading to. Unusually, I felt that somehow people, whose voice media folks claim to have, are actually silent. And the media is forcing their ugly economics propagandas and thoughts in the eyes, ears, mouth and brains of the people. No wonder, I just send my comments to editor for such a bad state of media in the country, India. This is what I wrote to him,

Dear editor,
All I can say is, we read what is given to us to read. If u publish some news in the left botton corner of 3rd page, tell me who is going to read it? If u publish something on the top, most probably everyone will read it.
I fully understand u know what people want to read. But, do u know what u want the people to read? Its a question of business vs profession, money vs work, which go hand-in-hand only for a short while but not long. As I see the booming economy, I know media has also gone to loot its share and I'm sure they are making huge money.
It was really easy to make statement of "doob maro hindustan walon". U know that u are not representatives of this public, so u easily got escaped.
The subject should have been "डूब मरो ऐ मीडिया वालों..".
Sorry for the harsh language,
Regards,
Shaurabh Bharti

Lets Hope.

Cricket 3D

2007-07-28T15:54:00.000+05:30

Cricket 3D : http://www.cricinfo.com/3d/

Doesn’t that sound amazing?

Sorry if most of you have seen this before, but it was nice surprise for me to spot Cricket 3D at from CricInfo. Besides scorecard and normal statistics, its now possible to see three things a) ball by ball action b) animation and sound c) action with different views of camera. Now, you may put me in the list of cricket buffs, but actually I’m a Web2.0 one J . I found it very interesting because a)it’s a realtime application and b) its based on web.

A deeper look at this took me to SportFlashBack, a company which masters in Virtual Visualization of Real Game Events. They has done similar job for faster games like Rugby and Football as well !!!

Now coming back to Cricket 3D, it has SEVEN default views for the cricket, besides Master view, which means it will show the cricket with a mix of many views. There is also a complete custom view generator, using which u can zoom in to the view of the ball and zoom out to the view of whole stadium (Wow!). Not just that, it has voice too.

But the most interesting part for me was, how does it play animation for every ball bowled, playing action with bat and subsequent fielding action etc? It is significantly different from a normal text based commentary done on many sites. Even if program is hardcoded with typical action sequences (fast or spin bowling, actions for making shots, fielding actions for keeper, slip and even umpire), it would need a well formatted input of all these sequences so that the same sequence which happened in real can be animated on web (imagine the case with fast paced games like football ! ). Best part is its performance. I found it fastest among popular sites for cricket scores including cricinfo.com and cricbuzz.com. So at the end, you are seeing an animated live match best in realtime.

Life and Wife

2007-06-24T23:33:00.000+05:30

Let me clear that I'm NOT married. And I'm not with "single and looking" status either. But be it or not, at least it seems I have some understanding of how the life could be, in the coming times..

I was watching a hindi movie "Anuradha" (Google Video - Anuradha) , a movie with no glamour no sex no matka-jhatka no item numbers and stunts. Ohh! I forgot to write its made in 1960, its a black-and-white picture. Though old hindi movies even if made 50 yrs ago resemble a lot of our today's life and have lot of meaning and I keep a special liking for them, "Anuradha" somewhat stands out.

I had just started the movie and my mom called up, so I paused it and talked to her. When I mentioned I was watching "Anuradha" she quickly asked "पुराना वाला या कोई नया आया है? ( purana wala ya koi naya aaya hai?)" . Of course, she praised the movie as she does for all her favorites बहुत अछ्छी है, हमारे ज़माने कि hit फिल्म है, तुम्हे भी अछ्छी लगेगी (bahut achchi hai, humare zamane ki hit hai, dekh lo, tumhe bhi achchi lagegi") so I said to myself, "Fine. She knows me more than myself, She's my Mom, lets watch it Now".

Movie starts in the style of back-track, nevertheless, it was easily understandable unlike today's flicks. You like the girl immediately (though she is portrayed to be a singer but has a bad voice in real and perhaps need more training in speaking hindi :D). A girl, married to a doctor, with a mindset of dedication towards society, and, lives in a village. Now, you can easily guess the rest part of it, I mean, what would a girl living in a village gets to live and enjoy, anyway? But the movie goes, and it sort of shows how much it really takes to be a social animal. A woman, who is well educated and full of her own talents but devotes everything for her man, whereas a man, who is a doctor, believes in giving life to the whole dying world and has devoted his life to the service of people.

Somehow it struck to me, life in India is so much different. I think of women who leave (100%-0.1%) their homes and past life, as if, re-incarnated. On the other hand, the man, designs the future and tries to adjust the newcomer somehow in some "corner". Ohh, you got it wrong. The "corner" may also be the whole room sometimes. Indian Life and Indian Wife perhaps come in all varieties and qualities.

Lets take the stereotype, the man working and the woman a housewife (means she is not working). Now, what does this man marry the woman for? Cooking, Washing, Cleaning, Outing, Peace(No Fighting..lol) and last but not the least, Sex.. err Making Love. What does the woman marry this man for? Well even though that's a million dollar question I would (try to) answer free for u, hmm, Jewellery? Love? Food? Clothes? Fighting? Outing? definitely NOT sex. But then, family seva and satkaar is obvious and not to be mentioned explicitly. Sadly, both their lives become so packed day-to-day that they end up having little of their expections. The Man treats the woman no different than a kaam-wali, and the woman keeps herself engaged in fulfilling her own list of demands. Sometimes, she hopes her service would build a strong respectable image before her husband, but she has realized that this is Life! Still, a woman is the sea of hope. They hope till death.

But there are many not-so-stereotypes also present in the society. Take this, Man working and Woman working. (obviously she is a housewife too). The legacy of being the Owner of house is not left yet, for the man. Even though woman might be earning equal or even more, man is still the Boss. She works and cooks food and takes care of children and all, in short, housewife, while Man enjoys watching T.V. If the Man has mercy, he would take part in work, else, watching TV silently is no less mercy, isn't it? Same pinch. Woman keeps expecting someday her man would realize how difficult it is to manage all this, only to realize later what the Man thinks "Obviously, I can't do it, and, its her duty, isn't it?".

I'm not done yet. In fact, I'm just started. How about the REST of all? The Dictator Woman? some men seems to like dictator women, they make your life much more eventful with your family (सास-बहु-ननद-देवरानी-बाकी कि कहानिया तो आज कल के बच्चों को भी पता है (saas-bahu-nanad-devrani-addMore ki kahaniyan to aaj kal ke bachchon ko bhi pata hai). Of course, many men prefer not to call those "some men" as "men" at all, rather, they are called "Jodu ka Gulam" Then there are love couples who are lost day and night and morning and evening in the eyes of each other, i mean, Love. They had a "real" love marriage, and they love each other so much, that they prefer to do each other's work instead of their own, for example, the man cooks while the lady brings the sabji from market, then they have a candle-light dinner and a hot night. Daily. LOL. There are also types where woman is lattu on the man or the man is lattu on woman. Situation is obvious here, The lattu keeps revolving around to please the other, while the master enjoys having all sorts of other fun. There are lots of such small small types you'd find around and huge variations in them. But then, there is one special type, very special, the rarest of all, the Real Social Animal, and the Devotee.

They are not too rare. Not hard to find, actually, they are easily spotted than others. You must be knowing at least one such kind in your locality as well. The Man who believes in being a social animal. He believes in the society he lives in, the importance of neighbours, doodhwala, paperwala and also lattuwala. He puts his family on stake, and takes his woman for granted. He believes that the pain of other people is more painful than his own beings. He believes its important to feed others than feeding his own children. He believes in paying or lending money to the needy, though his own kids might be studying on loans or craving to pay their fees. He believes in gifting a shirt-pant to a poor man, even though his woman dreamt of a new saree long back. He believes in the social service.

But what about the woman? The greatness of her man has not left her untouched. It fills pride in her too. Unlike other woman, she builds a similar image to her man. She is also regarded high in the society. Not just being a wife of a great man, She maintains her own identity. She believes in daan and dakshina for poor. She believes in serving good food for others, even though her own kids might be eating the plain dal-roti-rice. She would save every penny to buy a new shirt for her man, even though she knows her man would rarely buy her another saree. The great respect for her man makes her very much like a Devotee, a Dasi. Yes, unlike others, she does not have a hope. She left it within months of her marriage. It didn't take her too long to understand her man.

"Anuradha" is the story of the very much the same man and woman. Ironically "woman" part is not portrayed well though movie is named after her. But the picture of the man is quite clear. Same old freak, जिसने जिन्दगी में कई ठोकरें खाई पर हर ठोकर को महसूस किया और समझा कि ये ठोकर किसी और को भी लग सकती है, उसने प्रण किया कि उसे यह ठोकरें हटानी हैं| (jisne zindagi mein kayi thokaren khayi par har thokar ko mahsus kiya hai aur samjha ki yeh thokar kisi aur ko bhi lag sakti hai. Usne pran kiya ki use yeh thokaren hatani hai), the man whose life is shaken so deeply, that he has taken the charge of being the "rarest of all", yes, the Real Social Animal.

Web Application : Cross Browser Incompatibility Handling Client Side Code Management

2007-05-01T12:34:00.000+05:30

The issue of cross browser incompatibility is not new and has been well dealt and criticized. As I am also involved into development of one such project, I am facing same set of problems which people have been dealing with and fixing them. However, what’s more serious problem I am facing is how to manage code development in such scenario. While being through, I learned some of my ways of handling the same, which might sound little unconventional and involves following steps :-

Code is centrally developed only for one browser and its latest version, which is called Parent Browser (Firefox in this case). This is called Parent Code (referred many times later). Codes for removing incompatibilities are copied and edited accordingly later, which is need for each browser. These are called Browser Codes. For each browser, Browser Version Codes are written in order to remove incompatibilities within multiple version of browser itself. This also includes parent browser.

Maintain separate codes for each browser and its different versions. Specific client side codes are downloaded, only after detecting the browser and its version, in order to provide maximum compatibility.

In Browser Codes, codes snippets handling incompatibilities should be marked for each of them. It turns out that only some parts of code are misinterpreted by different browsers, hence marking these sections helps editing them later.

The architecture and data handling should not be changed and should be same as parent code. Variables should not be changed either.

Codes for each browser and version are developed by different set of people, who have gathered knowledge of incompatibilities between parent and other browser and for different versions too. The translation structure is Parent Code => Browser Code => Version Code. Code for browser is compared with Code for parent browser, while browser version codes are compared with their Browser code.

All new code insertions/updations in parent code are well documented, so that it can be easily passed to browser codes. Code transfer is done in terms of versions and not for small changes. Hence, only after certain development, changed codes are updated in browser and its child codes. This method also matches with the idea of releasing versions of web application as a whole, as it synchronizes all these codes before release. Ideally, there should be 1-to-1 mapping to parent and browser codes, however, can be merged into few, as code changes in browser codes would be minuscule for each set of version of parent code.

New code insertions are marked with different color to previous version for easy identification. Color shades are not passed to higher versions (as they will be having their own which would create unnecessary confusion), however, they are retained in the current version for later references. Line numbers can not be used in this case as they would change as more codes are inserted elsewhere. However, unless codes are not updated, new codes should be preferably added in the below in order to maintain line number relation as much as possible. This might sound mismanaged but as code incompatibilities are small, it does not turn out to be. In case color shading is not supported in editor, /*….*/ labels should be used with different syntax.

All future code developments are passed in this manner a) last version of parent code which was incorporated in current version of browser code is taken and compared with current parent code using color shades and line numbering b) new sections are identified and are mapped to places where they should be put or lead to change some codes in the browser code c) current browser code is saved in case of maintaining it as a version, else code changes are directly incorporated in current browser code which are changed to handle code incompatibility wrt parent code. Browser version codes wrt its browser code are maintained in similar manner as parent code and browser code. However, the code updations are much less frequent as compared to them.

As incompatibility codes are not mixed together, it reduces size of client side library to large extent, as well as maintains quality issues to higher level. Similarly, as incompatibility codes are developed by people who have expertise in them, even after being unknown to original application, such operation can be carried out efficiently. As browsers are evolving fast and probably some in same and some in different directions, expertise for handling all such problems by same set of people in same version of code will lead to errors and mismanagement.

It loses the advantage of using one code everywhere, however, such integration of code can also be developed by looking at the changes done in browser code. Such versions can also be kept, however, should not be used at least for development, though may be for distribution.

Hope this helps in some manner to resolve browser incompatibility issues.

Is Conscience above Science? the Fifth Force? The Sixth Sense?

2007-04-21T10:37:00.000+05:30

Is Conscience above Science? ..was exactly what I asked myself when I was thinking about Ancient Indian Giants. I have myself read Ramayan and Mahabharat many times where Rishi Muni and their followers will do many miracles which we can only imagine today. I was watching this movie Wo Hu Cang Long aka Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon sometime back, where this Li Mu Bai charactor tried to hold his life through Meditation on just Last Breadth! I have heard many footballers (the greater ones) and watched movies based on them.. and amazingly they often claim that Football is not played by muscle but by Mind, the Head! The goal you score does not come from your flexible body, day and night exercises and all that gym power, but only because you believe in doing so! Its same with cricketers, tennis players, all of them. Certain miraculous incidents even you might have come across like "a little boy lifted a truck to save his sister.. " or something like that.. makes you sometime question the same,
Is Conscience above Science?

Now, even though the question is a lot debatable in the present frame of science, but its almost impossible for science to describe anything above which sound pretty OK and simple statements. Because, science only believe in materialistic facts. Now, even though it believes in certain manner in forces (as there are four forces), notably the gravitational one, which is presently described using gravitons, but what kind of force is this one.. the fifth one? the one which controls the conscience.. the one which disguises the world for real.. the one which can break the physical laws because it was beyond all the forces?

While reading relativity some 6-7 years back, it was interesting to read how space is not a free place like I thought vacuum was, and that it has its own constraints.. and even it couldn't fly faster than the 'c'.. and then I looked at the Universe.. and it looked far beyond the 'c'.. it didn't look controlled but infinite.. the real infinity.. having the power of doing anything.. but was it all above conscience?

What is conscience? They say A Man's reach is his Imagination .. but what is the limit to imagination? And what is real? There is a famous recitation in Mahabharat.. and it says life is nothing but a dream from which we never get up.. and when we die we never come back.. just like when we get up from dreams, there is no way our dreams can catch us back.. and that there is only one form of life we have.. and that is Aatma.. and that is truth, and the only truth.. and that is what our Bhagwan is connected to or known to.. and perhaps that is where our faith in God comes.. and that we still, and never will, be able to find Him ..unless we die.

The behavioral science is so huge and so ancient and so successful that I wonder how long our civilization would stay with this kind of scientific model.. which is too materialistic to go beyond such boundaries.. the power is within us, we need to discover it.. but whats the fun if we end up spending all our strength n money on sheer competition? we hav to take the path of vivekanand.. it has to be for society, for human beings..

How does brain handle multiple sources of information around it? ..like waves?

2007-04-15T17:05:00.000+05:30

Perhaps this would be my first blog relating to my IIT days.

Old IIT Days! IIT was an upside down to "my" life, rather "our" life. Blame it to the IIT or that growing age or to the IITians itself, but it really happens. What I learned and what I forgot, what I earned and what I lost or such debates are endless, but whether good or bad, it was the foundation for the future.

Good things? I really don't remember. But I can surely list all bad things :D hmm.. like chatting, bhatting (bhatting is nonsense gap-shap) slangs and of course, NOT TO STUDY! Amazed? but that's true. I remember guys getting furious if you call them "muggu" ("muggu" essentially falls into the category of nerds :D).. folks didn't want to attach themselves with books and classes simply because "it was just so out-of-fashion".. and the first and last thing i can say about studies would be when exams used to come. If u ask me to draw a graph of how many "tension" hours guys put on study with days left for end-sems, it would turn out to be exponential, a steep fall.. So now lets think, how do IITians study?

Interesting Question. There might be lot of answers to this question, and also various aspects. But, have you heard things like "I can't study without loud music"? or "increase the volume yaar, I can't concentrate!"? Well I do not exclude myself from those people who study like that, and I would also claim that major chunk of people were like me. Not just that its unusual to study in a loud noisy atmosphere, but also that it was "better" way to study for some people. Many guys would go to other rooms to study just because "they played louder music, and it was easier to concentrate there". I could never understand the very "how" and "what" of this, cause it sounded so contradictory to me that they wanted to create noise around in order to concentrate, which is so much contradictory to the normal understanding of concentration, where you get disturbed if someone is making noise. Though for long in my mind, something yesterday sparked my mind.

Yesterday, I watched a fabulous movie of 2006 The Prestige "thrice", they mentioned about "Tesla", the familiar unit for magnetism. I searched about the scientist and I came to know that he belongs to special category of possessing Eidetic Memory, which Wikipedia.org describes as the ability to recall images, sounds, or objects in memory with great accuracy and in seemingly abundant volume. As I was exploring more and more about it, the same old question flashed before my eyes, What does drive our concentration? How do we or can we increase the perception rate of what we learn? How does the brain respond to innumerable phenomena around the body?"

..like Waves?

The thought process has a frequency through one talks to the self. When we are silent, our mind is actually not. It keeps throwing and exchanging information, not exactly in form of words and sentences but rather expressions and feelings, which are much faster way to communicate. Though different people may have different frequencies at which they talk to themselves, it has got a "real" connection to the sounds and noises around us. By default, it's always easy to concentrate in a silent place, say a temple or a garden. We find no sounds disturbing our thought process, we feel relieved in such places. But such a place rarely exists today specially in cities. Sounds and noises are everywhere! Then, how do we continue our thought process? How do we concentrate, if I were to ask in simple words?

In a typical scenario, tons of things go around us. Take an example, say I'm at office. In front I have my laptop, with an internet page opened, slow music is also on, couple of folks sit beside me close, they are doing their stuffs or may be talking around, fans are on the top of my head, and every minute there is surely someone in the hall to shout a line or a word, which I can clearly hear. But I'm not paying attention to anyone but the page I'm reading. That's exactly what is going inside my mind, not the music, not the noises, not what folks are talking there, but just that page. And I'm so much locked into it, that if my boss comes and says hi to me from back, it scares me just like u shout "DUH" from the back to a person sitting idle .

Our mind behaves just like a signal receiver. Thousands of signals are being received through our body sensors like nose, ears, eyes skin etc. Most are fade and unclear like noises but few are loud and clear and in higher density. Just like a fine tuner, our mind tries to suppress effects of signals from all sources except the one we would like to concentrate upon. Some minds does it so well that any changes in other sources gives a shock to the brain. Some minds, on the other hand, work like dexterous, and hence can fine-tune more than one signal with equal ease and accuracy at the same time (more suitable for things like games!).

Each mind has its unique tuner and works at a peculiar frequency. If I go back to original example of studying in a loud music, it explains a lot of things. Anytime there will be noises coming from neighborhood as music or shouts or talks or discussions or something else. As these noises change in their strengths and frequencies rapidly with time, it becomes hard for mind to concentrate on a particular thing, say reading notes. Even worse, uncontrollable thoughts from our mind itself because of hell things happened sometime ago, does not let you concentrate. Hence, something is needed which not only dampens the noise around but also the noises from inside our mind, like a Loud Music System. Here, We don't want a soft instrumental, but loud techno trance beats. However, different situations may suit different songs to be played. This whole thing makes it easier for brain to handle just couple of sensors, like reading a note and listening to song.

Perhaps talking in more generic sense will make it more clear. So here's another question, Have you seen folks who usually tend to do something in particular, like waving legs while sitting, rolling pen, gently beating desk, chewing chewinggums or something like that, while being in concentration? Well, I've seen. I remember my ma'm used to scold me for moving legs while teaching (I used to sit in front row). But actually all I was trying to do is to concentrate upon what she is teaching!

Either Have a Strong Mind, or Deceive to Have One!

Thurs, 19th April, 18:47hrs
All this, when I read today again, didn't look much different to meditation. After all, what is meditation? It's an approach to reach immortality from mortality. However, I could easily see Indian Meditation techniques never needed such ghostly speakers to reach divinity, it was all from within, it wasn't ghost but something pure, truly silent which could enlighten the path even in the darkest of nights. Will Indian Education Institutes ever use our traditional techniques to provide meditation to IITians, when its evidently clear that they need it desperately? Waiting..

Group Discussions aka GD - tips

2007-04-06T00:48:00.000+05:30

My sister has recently qualified for an interview, and she is extremely worried about her performance in the Group Discussion a.k.a. GD as we fondly call it. She called me after a day long practice session in an institute which she recently joined for improving her GD skills.

As a matter of fact, I have never faced any GD in an interview process (though otherwise I'm most welcomed for all discussions). Still, I asked her to calm down and relax. She was restless about her performance whole day, and she wanted honest feedback and suggestions from me. Her trainer praised her for outspoken abilities, but criticized for speaking before others finish, to be in haste and not composed besides others. Still, she was not satisfied with his remarks. She wanted something more concrete.

If I were to participate in a GD, I would have looked it as a game or a play. Practice sessions, regular criticisms and more practice sessions definitely helps to improve strength, still, its the match which decides how good you are. Its a game where you play by instinct. I suggested her to directly (not blindly though) follow her instinct in any session. Do not wait for the "best" moment, but speak at any "good" moment, i.e. when your instinct asks you. Keep quite when you do not feel comfortable pinching in between discussion. For me, it would be definitely the baseline to follow.

GD has many parts as such. Topic, comes as the most important of all. If topic is very generic (or simple), like, women issues, reservation etc, it would be a hard one. Thoughts have to be composed, points have to be strong in order to defend here. Otherwise, if topic is uncommon and not widely criticized, discussions can go over dilute points and hence simpler case. Ironically, my sister thought otherwise, that a topic she knows well is an easier one, and the topic she does not is harder. What she forgot was the fact that what she knows well is likely to be known well by others as well. Points should be composed and long.

Next stress should directly upon behaviour. Basic manners like "excuse me", "I'm sorry I did not mean to hurt you but..", "pardon?" and other numerous ones make GD lucid and easy-going. A positive attitude is crucially important. No matter what, one must not lose his/her temper and calm. Attitude of negating others and bolster own points may sound harsh among set of people.

The last one, as they always say, hero wins the queen. Being stylish and speaking lucid can be quite helpful. It lets people grasp your views and help them understand you better. A well mannered speaking, slow and steady, always helps. A positive Body language, as another point, also makes good impressions before observers.

No matter how long I take this long, perhaps, most important things of GD are the same two words which I said to her in my very first line, i.e. calm and relax.

I wish her Good Luck from all my heart, and I hope she gets through it.

Sex and Sexuality.. and Homosexuality?

2007-04-03T13:15:00.000+05:30

As another plunge in the sex pool, I Cant Think Straight is releasing (read
Alternate sexuality: Out of the closet?) soon. No wonder it will make rounds of news (i already gave a reference :D), people will watch it assuming a porn flick, directors will portray it as the hidden picture of society, an art.. and at the end, friends will ask u straight "Are you a HomoSexual? You don't seem to have a girlfriend, anyway!" ..man I'm out of words.

Is staying with my friends (of same sex) makes me gay? or women lesbians? seriously.. what the f**k is all this?

Man, don't we have to anything else to talk about? huh!

Semantic Web may get Pass Marks

2007-03-23T12:47:00.000+05:30

One of my friend sunny forwarded me this link Why the Semantic Web Will Fail, which enlisted perhaps a lot of frustrations researchers have faced and much more artifacts. But I had an immediate reaction.

IMHO, certain ways semantic web may work if we have a look at following thoughts :-

1) When we talk of semantic web, the first picture comes into mind is to "integrate ALL information across web", right from US to India, from Russia to Japan, Europe, Africa everywhere. The image is very similar in case of enterprises also, as we assume to do things what author has said like expose APIs, agree over standards etc etc. The vastness and complexity of the WHOLE system makes people doubt about its success, which I think is wrong perspective.

2) The right picture of semantic web, actually lies in small small parts of world. Many semantic web projects are on (there are companies whose sole business is this!). Even from nature of information perspective, disparity on meanings (atleast on words, may not be on definitions) does not vary smoothly across one end of world to another. Disparities are minimal in localized areas, and they disruptively increase as certain boundaries are crossed. Hence, this nature of information disparity directly suggests multi-tier integration model in place of one-tier model which point (1) suggests. This means, information has to be grouped locally (which is based on nature of information, somewhat coupled with geography of its storage) in 1st stage and then integrated globally in 2nd stage to provide larger picture (there can be more than 2 stages).

3) Semantic Web can not work like web services, which succeeded on standards. This is mainly because information across web can not be controlled over schema and all, its too small for that. On the other hand, things like metadata in current form does not have richness to allow semantic searches. Methods like semantic thumbnails, controlled folksonomy etc can definitely augment semantic searches (atleast based on words, may not be on definitions) across web. The alternative of using RDF may not be viable as its expensive.

We have been quite successful in machine-to-machine integration (i.e. web services) and also people-to-people integration (i.e. web2.0). Both are loosely correlated in terms of domain, technologies, standards, market etc. It is people-to-machine or machine-to-people integration that merges two extremes of web interactions today, which is tough. Semantic Web plays exactly a role there.

Folksonomy - a Failure? Google Suggest - a Success!

2007-03-09T20:42:00.000+05:30

It wasn’t the first time I heard that Folksonomy is a failure (I’m talking about my yesterday’s meeting). For those unknown to Folksonomy, “it is a user generated taxonomy used to categorize and retrieve Web pages, photographs, Web links and other web content using open ended labels called tags” (source : WikiPedia.org). When they want to get little fancy on web, they say include tags, take annotations from people, that’s what collaboration and involving people is all about! When it comes to solution building, perhaps the first wreck which falls would be “tags” (lets leave annotations now, they are comments). Arguments like “Tags are good to have feature, but you can not rely upon them, they are unreliable”, “they are not quality stuff and actually, they are vague and may mis-classify content” etc are common. Just had some thoughts around them.

First, its should not be “obvious” to assume that tags added as content to web page improve search results (that’s what they assume). Tags, as they are, need rigorous analysis and management to support folksonomy supported content, including change in search algorithm for tag-based system.

Second, tags, in themselves are not full of quality, we need to make them so. Processing tags, conversions, finding spelling mistakes etc are common ways we can improve tag qualities. (I’d suggest not to get over fancy and talk about multi-lingual tags here). They need a good database, as most of time tags are pictorially represented as graphs, large graphs.

Third, we can not improve on content search unless we have the “analysis” part into picture. Tag is not “smart” in itself, however, it can convey some intelligence once its connected (related) to other tags. Most of time these relations are overlooked, though I think its this computation which brings value.

Google Suggest, perhaps, is the most successful (not in publicity but quality of results) among all folksonomy build in my view. I have always benefited from Google suggest in order to select my next key word I will use for search. Now, Google Suggest may not look directly a folksonomy example but it is. Search Keywords are the tags for search results. Thousands of people around world have been tagging different search results with their search keywords every second. Once Google correlated all of them, u can see the value.

India's unlikely nuclear recruits - a comment

2006-12-11T14:43:00.000+05:30

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4970208.stm
By Monica Chadha, BBC news, Mumbai

Truly nice article!

I have visited BARC once in dec 2003, it was a great place to be there. I saw nuclear reactors and those huge cadmium rods.. it was hilarious.. we saw a super computer out there and had some fun on it.. we had a presentation from Director of BARC, and we were amazed to see the kind of research activities going there.. it was wonderful time there!

However, when question of joining these institutions come in, it becomes harder choice. For, 1) work load/quality for freshers is quite pathetic 2) they pay quite less 3) system is quite rigid, and hence promotions and future prospects of growth is pretty slow 4) It’s a Govt Job ( perhaps its just the thing that people want to stay away from govt job)

We also talked to director of TIFR, Mumbai that time, and one of question we had was
“What are they doing to advertise themselves as leading research institutes among engineers?”
Perhaps it was not the relevant question for them!

The Universe and Information Symmetry

2006-11-23T22:30:00.000+05:30

My fascination for Universe has not gone yet, actually it peaks up whenever it finds a chance.. its an amazing place to be and a wonderful dream to see.. right from its birth to its growth, it has the most fascinating history (what all is there and what all is believed!).. initially we didn't have anything! Then, there was this big bang (I don't support it, just putting the common perception).. it blasted universe off and universe started expanding.. and it has grown this much already.. and it is still growing..

Complete Composition of universe is another secret which people are crazy to find.. still stars and gas makes most part of it.. Lifecycle of stars is yet another beautiful story to listen.. the way its born and brought to shine the whole universe, and finally it dies and sleeps forever.. but actually the part which is not inferable from this is, stars are renewable, that is, they are born again and again and again..

Universe has presumably almost fixed mass-energy.. however, transformations between mass and energy as well as one mass to another mass is perpetual.. most part of universe contains hydrogen and helium.. these lighter gases (under weakestest gravitational force) flock together to build huge huge masses which finally collapses under its own gravitation to induce fusion reactions, and finally, the star gets its birth! However, in the process these H and He converts them into carbon and Beryllium, which in turn composes higher metals and heavier ions. At later age of star, when almost all hydrogen and helium are eaten up, the star ages old, it further collapses in its own gravitational force, and commonly, blasts off itself as supernova to release left H & He as well as heavy metals into sky.. these leftovers again merge to in millions and millions of years to create yet another star.. and the process goes.. the star has been recycled.. (now plzz don't ask me how's a black hole gets recycled!)

This aggregation and segregation of masses and energy in universe states a good philosophy.. that the bits of masses are always same, they concentrate to create something valuable ( a star here), then in long run they segregate when it loses its significance, and creates yet another valuable for a longer run..

Actually, the story for "our world of knowledge or information" does not have very much different philosophy either.. The cloud of information available in this world is more or less fixed, just like mass and energy in this universe, and depending on our interest and needs, we keep merging, modifying, bifurcating and transforming information with time, just like stars or rather, energy/mass do.

Lets take an example. If two formulas build a new formula like E=mc^2 and E=hv builds lambda = h/mc, then its merging of information. If we derive two equations from one equation like two values of x from a quadratic equation, its "bifurcation" of information. Modification of information, or in other words, addition or deletion of some part from whole information are nothing but cases of "merging" and "bifurcation" of information. Last but not the least (and quite common too), if some information is transformed into other representation like gravitation formula can be derived from statistics of planet motions or sin(x) can be represented in Euler's formula which is nothing but same information, we say its "transformation" of information. (stars also go transformation through different stages, energy conversions, also, star is a source of energy, hence mapping to source of information)..

Well that was mathematical. In philosophical terms, these are quite common in day to day life. We gather information (merging), build our own understanding (transformation), throw away redundancies (bifurcation) and achieve our goal. This is exactly the way big brains of the world have created huge amount of knowledge for us to read (just like huge amount of energies and smaller(simpler)masses have converged into bigger masses which were not there before). With time information gets more and more complicated and so are masses (with higher and higher nuclear masses). There are many such things which look wonderfully similar to the way it happens to masses/energy in universe.

If we look closely, we really can not "destroy" information to vacuum or "create" them out of the blue (vacuum). It has to come from somewhere or transform in other form. There are various ways to store them. Most common and stable version is "written". Knowledge is also in form of verbal and other ways of communication (like music, dancing, marshal arts and other many interesting practices).

Couple of things still remains. One of them is Supernova explosions. Will we ever see such explosions in Information? Those, which would destroy them completely and throw them around with little value left.. does it happen in its Lifecycle also? is it apocalypse, btw? Lol..

But, do we have stars here? If energy is information, then stars must be the Geeta, Ramayana and Upnishads, Bibles, Kuran etc which have been enlightening our lives and society since its inception. They would be alive for another thousands of years and keep guiding our lives.

Another interesting fact which puzzles is, what about co-existence of previous and present information? For example, at present, both Newton's and Einstein's gravitational formula exists! Which actually sounds like both "Energy" and "that-energy-converted-into-mass" are existing together, violating constant mass-energy theorem. But actually, its an illusion. Taking the same case, newton's formula just becomes special case of Einstein's formula. In terms of mass, we are actually looking at its "one of parts" instead of a "separate one".

Another aspect is "information delayed", which is very much similar to relativity. Many times some information has spread to an area but some are not! News are the best example. Many people have heard something, many others have not! In relativity, we always associate "time" now with mass, very similarly, we need to associate "time" with information too.

And then, it almost completes the symmetrical existence of Information and the Universe! There.. Forever!

Evolution of browers - Failure of applets => Birth of WemPuters?

2006-11-22T22:56:00.000+05:30

Client side coding to improve web experience wasn't a unique idea in 2005. People have done it long back and have been doing it for long time, just different ways in different times. Today, it got easiest. It became successful. Now, everybody knows it. Recently, they have even started bothering enterprises!!!

But, as a matter of curiosity, why did older approaches fail? Specifically, why did applets fail?

I still pity them. I made my first applet program in my last semester. Before, I feared it and hated it. When I learned, I understood its the answer to anything on web. However, while using them I was always bugged by failures in "applet loading" or "applet initialisation" or "connection lost" or most commonly, it simply used to hang!!! But why? Java applications worked pretty well on desktops. Then, why are not upto the mark on web?

Browsers! Yes, I think it has been a strategic (or fateful) design of browsers, which finally eliminated applets from browsers. None of browsers run applets efficiently, even though they do the same thing well in javascript. Applets look like heavy applications on web browser, even though they were designed to look lighter! Applets opened a lot of opportunities like "fully running on client side without a compiler", "advertisement on web" (now taken over by flash completely).. and lot of things.. sadly that they are dead..

With the advent and fast-spread of network worldwide, no wonder network is going to be the ultimate driver and platform for all business and applications. If browser vendors would have dreamt properly, browsers have strong potential to eliminate OS from systems itself! why not run everything, right from menus, applications, songs, etc etc on browser itself! But no.. browsers are competing.. competing to go nowhere.. they are fighting for common standards.. huh!

Wake up! World is waiting for We(b Co)mputers!

Mashups and Aggregation - a Boundary Line

2006-11-19T02:50:00.000+05:30

Mashups are truly attractive.. they are made of Google Maps, Flickr, Google Videos and other attractive sites, which hold you on these sites for long time w/o boring you! Not a surprise that they hav been good internet hits..

..however.. as I've been working on building a mashup myself, I always find problems describing a good mashup example for a particular scenario.. confusion actually lies in its definition itself.. what is a mashup anyway? Is it mere aggregation of huge data on web? But then.. how large the data should be? And what kind of data? Is showing google and yahoo search results on a single page a mashup? If not, then why not?

Mashups actually came into limelight with Housingmaps.com, the site which you’d know why people appreciate after visiting its parent site craiglist.com. It was built on Google Maps as enabler. Two disparate sources of information but large, one is geographical details of places visually presentable and other is housing rent details, “mashed up” using address as the “key”, presented in useful manner, and guess what? People like it..

But what about simplyhired.com? it virtually incorporates almost all job sites in world and present details before you.. huge data sources but data are similar in nature (not disparate).. hence the common key is not uncommon rather, they are many.. but then, are they Mashups?

IMHO, they are not. They are mere aggregation. No matter how huge is data source, its essentially a collection of data instead of matching data with each other. Total data displayed surely increases, but the atomic size of data (job description or resume in case of simplyhired.com) does not increase! Take another case, kayak.com. It gives flight details from almost all airlines in world. Even a normal search would end up in 100s of flight details. But it mere stands as a aggregation of data from multiple site, it can not be said a true Mashup.

The original clarification stuck into my mind actually after going to answers.com, which is essentially an aggregation of definitions on a topic from multiple web dictionaries and encyclopedias around. I figured out that, this should not be called a Mashup. Actually, these cases become even tougher as they need a well defined Ontology Base in order to ensure terms are compared properly in case of data from different sources. For example, in case of kayak.com, fares from all airlines should be compared at one place and so are the codes for different cities and countries. In case of answers.com, verb definitions can’t be mixed with adjective or noun definitions. Unlike Mashups where only few properties (one in general) of data are matched or compared, ensuring similar properties are grouped in same basket is a challenge in case of raw data.

Mashups, go in one-to-one kind of mapping, where around the common key, you can map one data of a source to one data of another source. Here, the atomic size of data increases ( visually location of house address + rent details in case of housingmaps.com).. which in turn increases the size of total data displayed.. data are disparate in nature.. they have most of properties different except some common attributes (Location in case of craiglist.com and Google Maps)..

Mashups are attempt to integrate multiple dimensions of information around a similar topic, so that a complete information can be portrayed on web. How it is portrayed, I think only RIA people can answer them.. (think about scenarios where data mashed up aren’t two but four or five!!!)

Answers.Yahoo.com.. is it Web2.0? Web3.0? or Online Consultancy? Answers here..

2006-11-18T19:43:00.000+05:30

This may be my first blog on web20 on my own blog, even though I have written about it considerably in other places like our own infy groups. Web 2.0, which is just the "facade" for new techniques of experience on web, encompasses almost anything which u see and which fanatises u. For example, if you can voice clips over net which u weren’t doing before (Google Talk).. BINGO! you just met one web20 feature! Now you can share videos and watch them anytime anywhere without even bothering to download them on ur desktop (Youtube! (now Google's) .. why? because what’s the point wasting my own space for those videos when those rich people r doing for me? or.. if you can make smart documents (so called word doc) for free on web.. why to buy office at all??? that too.. with advantages of accessing the software as well as documents "anytime, anywhere"!!! Now there is no reason to buy a laptop.. because ur anything personal.. is already there :)

anyway.. lets be back to the original topic.. and lets stick to it.. is "Yahoo Answers!" also web 2.0? Lets see, why and why not!

well I've seen yahoo answers pretty long back when It was launched.. initially it was weird to see the tag "get answered by experts for free!".. and what kind of questions? just any.. be it extreme technical like "how exactly you solve gravitation al equations" to lamest one like "how do I make HOT WATER???" (that was good!).. be it anything in your mind and get it clarified by people who are online 9initially i suppose answer capabilities were limited to some 'hidden folks' but now its open..)..

..sounds strange but so did WikiPedia.com.. but now nobody questions Wikipedia for its a huge success.. in online wiki, people create their own terms or words, define in their own way, and it 'saturates' by involving more and more people around that term who understands it well.. now for example, if you want to define "gravity", you'd write its definition, but that’s not enough! Someone knows its formula and would put it too.. someone would put its history and someone else would put its applications like rocket science.. someone would also put profiles of scientists who have worked around gravitational problems.. and then it completes the definition..

..sounds pretty simple as long as things go well.. but what about unwell things? what if people put their "sexed ads" in there? or what if people start fighting over Darwin's theory of evolution in there? but strangely, it works, and it works coherently with all kinds of views or definitions of the same topic in the world!!!

Okk.. lets be back to the topic again and yes lets stick to it.. well wiki defines just a term.. like "Aishwarya Rai".. but what about questions like "Who is more beautiful, aish or sush"? Essentially these are sentences which relates two or more terms in some manner to create understanding of some concept.. but they are infinite, isn’t it? How many questions does a human being have in his life? Infinite.. for sure..

Yahoo Answers, strangely attempts to address a similar issue (or may be to find out the "limit" to the infinity of questions :P).. it tries to incorporate people to share "all kinds of phrases" which occur in their mind in form of 'questions' and also to share 'all kinds of answers' to those questions by them itself! Does that sound anything close to working?

Lets see if people are even interested in putting questions, let alone wanting for the answers.. to put figures straight.. 65 millions+ answering millions of questions are already up there.. I'm sure many of them are repeating.. many not even worth to have look.. many are personal or psychological types which might make you feel sick.. some are asking for good medicines (you may say they are doing online consulting here for doctors!!!).. it kicked of as fun place but now its seriously having some quality and useful stuff which people look up to..

in short, "Helpdesks have been Unified"..

Almost every company or system has a Helpdesk but believe me, except none all goes backfired by people with their bad quality of answers.. most would leave you pissed off or unnecessarily complicate your problem instead of solving them.. many times you'd yourself guide them to solve your query as they didn't know any answer!!! Here, at Yahoo Answers, you find all of them under one umbrella.. that is, no matter what your problem is, let people listen to your problems and let them help you with the "actual" experience they had instead of what is written in the "papers".

I personally see Yahoo Answers as extremely successful web2.0 application, except that it does not have those "Flashy" or "Ajaxy" RIA stuff.. but it has the power to create questions in their mind.. and belief that they would be answered.. actually, with my following discussion, you may rate Yahoo Answers! as "first potential contender" for Web3.0 .. keep reading..

well.. what about "Archives"? Now that Yahoo Answers have millions of questions and answers, what do we do with archives? Are they Trash material? Or they are like "Yesterday News is stale and unhealthy to read?" How do people look for what they want which might have been already answered! How do people search for questions? How do people search for answers? Can Google/yahoo search do it? Answer is, NO!

when I was talking about "terms" described in wiki and "phrases" described in Yahoo Answers, you might have guessed I'm silently moving from "meanings of words" to "meanings of phrases or sentences".. Even though Wiki might be having huge information around definitions, it does not have much information around how these terms combine to generate answers to problems.. And in real world (sounds like moving from assumed 2-D world to real 3-D world), people have problems in sentences and not a single term.. so if we want to actually mobilize information in wiki in our day-to-day work, we need to have portal like Yahoo Answers, where these terms aggregate to produce knowledge as solutions than just "for your information"..

Now that Yahoo already has a strong base of semantically generated useful data, its a challenge to converge them under suitable taxonomy (or may be just tagged with "suitably weighted" tags).. to define correct data-structure to store this valuable information in order to enable semantic searches.. good thing is data is pretty refined in its nature.. its in form of questions and answers which have their domain pretty much defined and hence they are less vague than contents like "for your information"..

Once this is done, certainly yahoo answers would be the place to look answer for any kind of question which might even pop-up in our dreams but we wanted the answer LIVE!

Gravity and Intelligence

2006-08-18T20:49:00.000+05:30

Ruchin_pandey recently asked questions related to Relativity, one of my favorites J Definitely the questions were really inquisitive. It goes like -
a) Suppose a person can do a particular calculation (for example 3952 + 26901) in mind in t seconds on earth. If s/he travels with speed close to speed of light, what effect will be there on the speed of thinking and how much time will be required to do the same calculation in mind? What will be the effect on speed of learning new things?
b)Similarly, if a person is just outside / on event-horizon / inside black hole, whether s/he will be able to think? If yes, what will be the effect in the speed compared to speed of thinking on Earth? What will be the effect on speed of learning new things compared to speed of learning on earth?

My answers were short. They go as,
a) Two aspects
i. At conceptual level, at (or close to) the speed of light, a person (from his reference) can think at the same way ( or speed) he does anywhere. For people in slower (very small compared to speed of light) frames, he would look like a dumb person, who would answer 2+2 in years.
ii. At the practical level, a person will never be able to remain in a state of a “physical” being, when he is close to speed of light. The more we go close to ‘c’, the finer an object would be, rather a body/object would be close to photons kind of structures. In other words, body wouldn’t exist but only photons. Hence, the question of thinking goes off immediately.
b) Answer is same again, at event horizon the only things which may exist are photons and not masses. At the speed of light, only photons exist, which have rest masses as zero.
i. A better question might be if the same person is once on jupiter and other time on earth, will he have different thinking capabalities assuming all other conditions same. Now, it has different dimension.
1. If the person has grown up in earth, the body fluid motions are definitely adjusted to gravity (the only difference u find betn earth and jupiter, keeping other conditions same). Hence, thinking capability would be different, if u put the same person in jupiter, where the body structure might not suit the high gravity
2. If the person is grown up entirely in jupiter itself, then he would be more intelligent J Reason is, higher the speed, higher the intelligence.

Essentially, the part which interested me most was the last one. That is, how does gravity affects our intelligence? How would people be different in their behaviors if they develop on say, Jupiter, only on grounds of gravity?

Your comments invited..

Also read Life Science.

Auto-Summarisation of Text Document!

2006-05-22T15:09:00.000+05:30

Of course, who has not seen the AutoSummarise tool in Word from MS Office. Some might have also played with it by changing the compression quotient i.e. the ratio of size of summary to document.

I really don’t know the algorithm used inside (of course, how can I? Its Microsoft!). Nor do I attempt to completely address all issues of auto-summarization. I was just trying to analyze how exactly do we summarize when we summarize a document? It involves a lot factors, besides picking up important details out of document, its title and other aspects like how short the document is going to be among others, who is going to read it (students, professors, researchers, layman etc) and others.

One thing which simply struck me was shortening big concepts made of small words into small set of big words. By big/small words, I mean how complex is its meaning, and not by its length. Dilution is a very common concept of language, where we tend to dilute a word into simpler words, just like we do in our computer languages (representing bigger modules using smaller/basic modules). While summarization is of course related to picking up prominent words in a document, however, I have not seen if these tools use new words to describe the document. Not all concepts are listed in a document in a detailed manner. Not just that, its quite helpful to simply replace set of words by single word, which more or less conveys the same meaning. In short, I’m talking about mapping of a meaning/semantics with single definition words.

Is it easy? NO. However, by semantic graphs (of RDF), perhaps the first stage can definitely be grown. For, if slight changes in meaning or structure of words occur, the graph is minimally perturbed. Complexity increases when higher-degree mapping is used for same definition. That means, when a same word can be composed of different words by rearranging smaller words into different groups. This may be reduced by grouping similar words, which implies picking a word from that group to replace a word does not change the meaning of the sentence.

Suggestions invited.

WSDL 2.0: A Pragmatic Analysis and an Interoperation Framework

2006-05-16T00:33:00.000+05:30

http://webservices.sys-con.com/read/219029.htm

Just received the notification that the article got published finally on web at sys-con site.

WSDL 2.0: A Pragmatic Analysis and an Interoperation Framework

Minimizing interoperation issues with a WSDL version management framework

Web Service Description Language (WSDL) represents an IDL describing the contract between the service requestor and the service provider in much the same way that a Java interface represents a contract between client code and an actual Java object. The crucial difference is that WSDL is platform- and language-independent and used primarily (although not exclusively) to describe SOAP services.

Upload and Download

2006-05-08T14:21:00.000+05:30

well who hasnt heard of Youtube.com? Its a fabulous site, lets you upload upto 100 MB any video, moreover you can share them publicly privately or NOT share at all :P fun n masti becuase you can watch other videos too ;-) so i wanted to upload just a simple before-video things, well i mean MP3s I wanted to upload.. so i dint make a second thought.. went to youtube.com, signed up, verfied it, went to upload page and simply clicked 'upload'.. but it said " Sorry, We cant upload due to firewall problems!!!"

I was shocked to see that! How else I'm going to upload my files :(( These site sucks, they dont even allow a 3 MB file to upload.. (well i jst didnt want to curse my comp nemore so.. :P)

I searched net, and found this Google Ad saying "eSnips ". Perhaps this was teh first time i click on a Google Ad :P I just signed in and simply wanted to see if it can upload atleast a 1KB text file or not :P well.. to my amazement IT DID!!!!! wat else i needed.. It was giving 1GB space online.. i can share it with anybody.. and I just did.. I just uploaded my song called "Enigma - Angels Weep". Thank God!

All this.. just for a COMMENT!!! LOL...

Patna Rice

2006-05-07T15:44:00.000+05:30

I read about Patna Rice for the first time (and I'm from Bihar) even though its quite popular in European Regions (ghar ki murgi daal barabar)).
You may read more about it here, which is really cool compilation about it.

http://www.biharbrains.org/patna-rice-articles1.php

I like cooking, and would love to collect more recipes and food stuff.

Chanakya : An Introduction!

2006-05-07T15:31:00.000+05:30

I have always been fascinated by Chanakya and his life. Here you may read a short introduction to the great man.
http://www.bhojpuria.com/people/chankya.php

Expect a consolidated detail about Chanakya and his work sooner!

Native Indians and Birthdays American!

2006-05-06T01:45:00.000+05:30

My friend in Canada recently had her birthday. I was quite excited to wish her exactly on time (by that I meant 12’O clock midnight, when, by default, all guys and girls are born :D). So, as soon as the needles reached 12’O clock, I called her and wished “A Very Happy Birthday to you! I wish you have a Great and Prosperous year ahead! ”

Ofcourse, I expected her to thank me and stuff, and she did it. However, she wasn’t much excited. She said,

“Its really sweet of you to call me now and wish me, but you know what? Actually my birthday is TOMORROW! Its still ‘day’ here and Its not a great feeling to get wished a day before your birthday. It would have been really great if you wish me tomorrow or today midnight!”

I was so shocked as well as angry to hear that! I thought she would show great joy and all…

“Hey c’mon, you were born in India, weren’t you? And if I take your real birthday, then you were born NOW and not the Canadian 12 midnight, isnt it? So, Happy Birthday again! And you better be Happy too!”

“But you know I was born at 2 am…”

“Well, even if you forget that point, you see your birthday is NOT coming in a leap year, hence the regular 6 hour shift which is avoided to be adjusted in every leap year has still not been taken into account! Hence if you want to actually calculate when you have to wish your birthday this year, you need to put those 12 hrs (6+6 after 2004) to calculate the exact time of your birthday. (well she didn’t even know that this even happens every year, btw she is an undergraduate :P)”

“What are you saying…”

“No, that’s correct! Didn’t you know that? Actually, once in four year our birthdate changes (and it has to). This is because we forget that an year consist of the last 6 hrs after 365 days, and if you take that into account, a person, for example, born at 16hrs on 15th August should celebrate his birthday ‘next day’ of his actual birthday, after two years of last leap year, , i.e. 4 hrs 16th August!, and on 10 hrs 16th August after three years of last leap year”

“Are you eating my head…”

“NoNo, not just that. Actually, 6 hrs account for the whole year u know, and you have not even passed three months! So you should propotionately divide these 6 hrs depending upon how many days and months u spent in an year, and adjust your birth time. Then only you’d get the right time and date of your birthday!”

“Shaurabh, what are you saying I’m not able to get anything! Why should I celebrate my birthday next day when its not on that day? There’s no sense to it! Nobody does it, you know that, right? Even you don’t do it, do you?”

“Yes! That’s exactly my point is. Our society is so ‘unscientific’. We should change our social systems and practices, and make it move towards reality. We are the young guns, and we should take initiative yaar, what do you say? So from now on, we shall celebrate our birthdays on proper date and time OK? So, next year I shall wish you on next day. DONE!”

“LOL, I know you are eating my head with all that junk which I don’t understand even a bit. Anyway what gift you’ve …”

And then, the topic changed, we talked some stuff and I put the phone down.

‘Seriously’, it was one of the ‘funniest’ talk I have ever had (and somewhat scientific too :P hehe)

Fundu Ad for IBM

2006-05-02T15:55:00.000+05:30

DISHA : Set the Direction of Life!

2006-04-30T01:05:00.000+05:30

DISHA provides a platform to discuss all job related queries, from software industry to I.T to hardware jobs to mechanical industries under one roof. It would not only SAVE YOUR TIME of gathering such information but also provide you with wealth of information gained by personal experiences of the people who have undergone the recruitment process of various companies. This whole project has been undertaken in view of the fact that engg. students of BIHAR are not exposed to such a culture of on-campus recruitment process.

DISHA will take you through the entire simulation process of recruitment of a company from written test to G.D to P.I and will provide you with a complete evaluation of yourself on ALL BIHAR basis. This will not only help you enhance your skills but you also get a chance to encounter your weaknesses and overcome it before you face your actual recruitment process.

Visit DISHA at here and make it succesful!

Thanks!

Fine Grained Staged Event Driven Architecture for Service Oriented Network Management Systems

2006-04-29T13:12:00.001+05:30

I published a paper long back in november in International Journal of Web Services and Practices. It was about Fine Grained Staged Event Driven Architecture for Service Oriented Network Management Systems. It came on web as well as on Infosys’ site sometime back here. You may access the papers directly from IJWSP as well. Paper can be downloaded in pdf form from here

Thanks!

Practical Realisation of SOA and Web Services

2006-04-29T12:59:00.000+05:30

Well I forgot to put this before. Our talk regarding “Multiple Methodologies for realising Web Services” was already on Infosys’s site. This was enlisted as multiple events happening regarding infosys under heading “Practical Realisation of SOA and Web Services”.

You may visit it at http://www.infosys.com/Events/practical-realization-of-soa-2006.asp

Thanks!

Dr C.K. Prahalad

2006-04-25T17:28:00.000+05:30

A wonderful story, of a wonderful person, "Dr. C K Prahalad", a must read for all.

Can C.K. Prahalad Pass the Test?

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/49/prahalad.html

Tips & Tricks: AJAX

2006-04-25T01:50:00.000+05:30

Tips & Tricks: AJAX – Not Just Limited to XMLHttpRequest
— There are many alternative ways of dynamically changing the current page, without refreshing it, writes Shaurabh Bharti, in this discussion of some of synchronous communication using the POST method instead of the more usual asynchronous communication using GET method.

Before the Mic *\|

2006-04-23T15:01:00.000+05:30

On 18th, I gave my first external talk as a speaker. It was a great day for me, and here are the excerpts.

When I first came to know about it, I felt great. There was a lot of time to it, hence I started preparing for it. I wanted it to be as good as possible. Finally we built the abstract of our talk and we agreed to give seminar on “Multiple Methodologies for realizing Web Services”.

Finally the day came. Our present was to start just after lunch. Before-lunch session was devoted exclusively to SOA and hence web services was not in the picture at all. Web services were supposed to start only after lunch, right from our presentation. As usual, there were lots of questions and confusions about SOA. Can u tell us some business cases of SOA fitting in present scenarios? Is SOA just a hype, or does it actually deliver its promises? Is SOA enough to satisfy business and IT requirements alone, or is it not ‘that’ worth without orchestration engines like BPEL? Two presentations; Fundamental questions; Morning session was almost a hullabaloo and seminar looked more like a discussion forum than a boring one-to-many presentation function!

We didn’t have heavy lunch! Our session started little late due to delays in morning session. Mr. Kumar gave a short introduction for us, and Mohit started with our presentation. Initially we got quite apprehensive, for no questions popped up from crowd even after 10 slides! Are they understanding us or not? Only later realizing that our slides were quite self-explanatory, finally a question came up, “Can exposing a legacy system as web service be an SOA approach to development of services?” The answer was simple, NO. I figured out that audience were still in the dream of SOA, and they did not receive the buzz of entering Web Services, the technology which actually realized the decade old concept. Answer was, even though bottom-up approach is not a true SOA approach to development, this is the approach which actually delivered the value of SOA into industry through successful deployments of legacy systems as web services. They produced quick results and showed the value of web service standards, being developed over a period of last 4-5 years.

Happy to go over it, we went ahead quite smoothly. Subsequent slides were not that complicated. Until, a very intuitive question came, “Can u illustrate different business cases, where these three approaches u listed (Bottom-up, Top-down and Meet-in-the-Middle approach, MDA approach was still to be spoken) may be differentiated rather clearly?” Naturally, I landed up in a diplomatic answer, for choice of development methodology depends upon large factors including budget and time constraints for deployment besides system’s architecture. Hence, most of fresh developments land up in meet-in-the middle approaches, where advantages of both bottom-up and top-down approaches co-exist.

Model Driven Approach to Web Services was itself a new concept for many listeners. I started with an introduction, and landed up explaining how quite-matured-by-now MDA approach could help delivering large SOA products in practical sense. MDA uses models to represent a system, and hence maintaining integrity is an easier task between multiple sections of the system. Although both MDA and Web Services address the same issue of interoperability in IT industry and hence might appear as supplement for each other, actually they complement and co-exist. UML diagrams and MDA techniques are quite well suited to model business logic into pictorial form, which are easily understood. A complete automation of UML models into web services ( not all UML models can be converted to web services, as some of them are platform agnostic while web services is not) can not only leverage the value of web services, but also retain the advantages of UML representation.

In last, I explained the best practices for designing error components in web services. Our presentation too, got stretched almost half an hour, and in last we wrapped up to finish our presentation fast.

We were quite satisfied with our presentation. It was a great experience for me and Mohit. I am certainly looking to give more such talks in future.

Thanks a lot to Vibrant Tech for inviting us!

Robert Miles : Excerpts

2006-04-23T02:12:00.000+05:30

I have heard him a lot now. I don’t have his huge collection, though those 20 some songs are enough to impress. The first song I heard of him was Children – Dream Version. That was OK. I heard Instrumental (I wonder if this is the name of song, but that’s what I have). Following were Fable, Landscape and others. Later only when I got his larger selection of songs (then I had only some 7/8 songs), I admired him to the depth. I heard Freedom, I heard God is a DJ and I liked it. Piano in the trance, Rain and Princess of Light were quite good as well. Then I heard One and One.. Its alrite to fall apart sometimes.

I liked Naked and Sacred most!

Office Work!

2006-04-22T10:30:00.000+05:30

Harder, Better, Faster, Estronger

Work it

Make it

Do it

Makes us

Harder

Better

Faster

Estronger

More than

Hour

Never

Ever

After

Work is

Over

Work it harder

Make it better

Do it faster

Makes us stronger

More than ever

Hour after hour

Work is never over

Work it harder make it better

Do it faster makes us stronger

More than ever hour after hour

Work is never over

Work it harder

Make it better

Do it faster makes us stronger

More than ever hour after hour

Work is never over

Work it harder

Do it faster

More than ever

Work is never over

Work it harder make it better

Do it faster makes us stronger

More than ever hour after hour

Work is never over

Event Driven Systems - Mystery!

2006-04-19T15:51:00.000+05:30

I was just discussing the event driven systems. The systems in domain were those which communicate frequently with servers, i.e. request and response arch. How exactly event-driven arch. helps, and why do we need them? Why event-driven systems are more robust towards load, and high peaks?

Most of such systems are synchronous. For example, server may fetch and send email data to requestors who provide name to the server. If requestors become large in number, the ‘load’ picture starts building. Depending upon the bandwidth of wire, processor capabilities and database communication speed (and others), the server response to load is calculated (since we are on server side, lets avoid client/requestor constraints). That basically indicates the strength of server to respond to number of responses in a given period.

This strength can definitely be increased by increasing any of those three parameters.

However, if a deep look inside the way server receives requests and sends responses, a different perspective for increasing efficiency can be looked at.

Lets take an example of chat over web. Sending a message is easy, all is needed is to type message and click send button. How does chat window receives a message? It keeps asking the server for any message headed for his username. Server sends a message if its there, else null. Assuming chat client asks server for new message every second and there are 100 such chat clients, the load on server is 100/sec. If the capacity of server is 100/sec as well, and 10 new users log in and open chat clients, atleast 10 of them will receive message after 1 sec period. Load conditioning talks about handing these loads by the system. One way, as I proposed would be increasing processor numbers/speeds, data-width or database response etc. This is also called synchronous communication. Mind you, even if there is no message for next 10 sec, client still pings server every sec. So, the load is almost independent of actual message exchanges.

Lets talk the other way, the event driven way. This says a client asks server for new message only if a new message has arrived (lets not get into how does this mystery happens!). The arrival of a new message is called an event. Alternatively, server sends a message to client whenever a new message arrives (lets not get into how does this mystery happens!) meant for it. The client contains a listener from server, which receives message and displays it. This way, firstly, the load of listening continuously has been transferred to client side, avoiding that load on server. Secondly, this is an asynchronous approach to the same problem if u didn’t realize. The amount of server-processing or number of server responses is order of that of actual messages. In other words, server sends only 10 or 20 messages for 100 chat clients instead of 100. This is because on average only 10 % (a rough estimate) of users sends message in a particular period of second. That’s quite a good achievement!

Event driven systems are completely asynchronous and load-conditioning systems. System operates only if an event/set of events occur. This helps utilizing capacity of server to full strength.

Lets not get into the mystery here!

Deadlines!

2006-04-10T12:29:00.000+05:30

Its not been long time since I came from pune. They termed it ‘shorter onsite transfer’. They wanted me to be happy. They asked me to bring ‘pune specials’, which I forgot. ‘They’ are my team mates.

Time was passing, and work was piling. I was not really happy with my long stay at pune regarding work (otherwise it was one of best times ofcourse!). Even though I worked as much I could, the work didn’t take the perfect shape, not even close. When I arrived bangalore, I was already loaded. Things were getting tense. Bangalore was getting hot (now hotter). Headaches were more common than breakfasts. Things were not going at the right speed. However, some things do go on a regular pace, ‘Time’. It neither went fast nor slow. Still, hopes have to be there, and I had them too. I still worked at my own pace. They say even ‘turtles’ finish races, what if world also had ‘hares’. And sometimes, they even win!

“Hey, why all those bushes on ur face? They look ugly!”
“Ohh them? Today is their Deadline too!”

PreNatal Sense of Music

2006-04-09T12:22:00.000+05:30

How many of you listen to music? Ohh I must be kidding! Most of us LOVE to listen to music, don’t we?

I’ve been into music and songs since my self-recognition as a being. However, I bumped into western music quite oflate, 5 years now. It would take a lot of words to describe the journey, but currently I’m lost into instrumentals specially from Enigma. I have heard Enigma before as well specially because I like ‘Return to Innocense’ a lot. And then, I heard ‘D-Emotion Project’. I kept listening to every song, and realised I have already listened to them many many times. Its an awesome album.

I love ‘June’ most. It reminds of my sweet memories at home; 'home' where my away period has been more than stay period. Those pleasurable sunsets, big open windows, sweet light breeze, chirping birds headed to home! And Complete Silence!

‘Sunless Sea’ is the feeling of the Lost Love. Not just that, It also calls the never_to_return_love perhaps with words like O Jaane Wale Ho Sake to Laut ke Aana!

..and then, ‘Angels Weep’. Another touching composition, where a mother soothes her kid. She promises she will never scold him again, and they will stay together, forever!

‘November’ will certainly move your heart with joy! The joy of slow dancing! Dance you’d love to do alone! Its beautiful composition, which pushes hope and faith into mind!

Finally, ‘LOVE ME’! Beautiful seductive music, where u say Love Me!

That was all they told me, those Speechless Compositions!

Music doesnt need words. It has its own vocab. You can write a whole novel on it, and still be called silent!

I liked Planiatta, Evolution, Paradox, Beyond Invisible and Close to Heaven as well.

Billiards!

2006-04-08T12:07:00.000+05:30

I have been playing Billiards for almost 6 months!

Well, I never saw Billiards Table before coming here! When i started, I didn't even know how to hold the stick! My existing colleagues showed me the game. They were playing so well! They were already making big scores. I couldn't even hit the desired ball. Every evening I'd see them playing great, and I’d scarcely score a point. Finally, I took the challenge that I had to score highest! I started playing it day and night. Everytime I’d find some spare time (I mean the times I played were spared times, I’d play it. Things started getting better, I scored sometimes higher. Whenever I would feel down, I would go with some free novice and he would score nothing. I felt pride showing them how to play the game :D. And finally, the day came when I reached the highest level of it, I finished the game in just 2 and ½ minutes and scored the highest (more than 3000).

That’s why, I love Flash Games! Billiards.swf!
I love My Computer too!

Universe - within 1 sec of birth

2006-01-16T01:19:00.000+05:30

It wasnt long before when I first asked myself this question, "wats up with nuclear force?" The visit at TIFR, Mumbai, back to dec 2003, still have bitter n sweet memories in mind. The person was a gr8 guy in physics, perhaps most senior (clear from his ageing voice n silver-white hair:P).. I was already most irritating person in group of all JBNSTS scholars as I'd never ask questions gently (y d hell i shud:P).. he was talking about particle accelerators and how pity it was for neutral particles like neutron to get accelerated :P neway we were still in context of charged heavy particles and so my suggestion was...

"whats wrong with nuclear force? cant we make accelerators using them? The field forces r so strong that they will give further accelerations to the particles.. Though they work only very close but they work very strong.. may be its technological fault but theoretically is it possible to do so?? do we have such accelerators??"
And the answer was...
"LOL!"

It was right. Later, my juniors questioned me of how i can be so stupid to ask such question. Most of time I've been so theoretical that i really forget to question validity of some of possibilities. Anyway, I forgot the question there itself, never searched for the answer till now.
After a looong time I started reading about space again. And it was none other than our Stephen Hawking's famous short story "A Brief History of Time". I was on the chapter 8, pg 128 (which is about origin and fate of universe), where he puts a question that " why is universe so uniform? At the early stage of universe birth, things would be so fast that it would be impossible for light to transfer any information between parts. Then, how is temperature and mass and everything so uniform in every direction of universe?"

A very genuine question, but the answer lies only if we leave out certain constraints in our mind about Light due to heavy developments in the past century. That is, 1)Light is the only medium of communication and 2) Light is the fastest medium of communication. I always doubted it, and I still. But in our context,it has important consideration. Universe was very hot at the time of birth. Particles were escaping like anything. And the first force which came into action, was nuclear force. Slowly and slowly protons and neutrons got slowed enough not to ignore strong forces, and they collapsed to make hydrogens n higher (later). Why are nuclear forces carriers are supposed to move with speed of light? does it meet all needed calculations? I wonder if it does. For, why should a particle move slowly in an environment which can support higher fluctuations in space? Stronger force gives an edge to nuclear waves carries over photons on speed. So, Nuclear waves were carrying excess of asymmetry to more symmetrical state of universe, just like photons do for heat and others. In other words, they transferred the extra pressure at left part to right part (or vice-versa). As there was no scope of action from light, only action which could be taking place was due to nuclear forces. And of course, its intuitive.

As I was reading further, Prof. Hawking’s asserts that relativity cant really hold in that state of universe, as its certain assumptions like infinite density and zero volume makes hard to apply it. Assuming that uniformity was the perfect true principle to follow that time would be naive.

What I further need is, to find out what exactly would be the states of all phenomena around the world, if we don’t observe them using speed of light. Would it be different? Would we be able to solve mysteries of black holes, dark matter, and of course Origin of Universe?

Big Work Ahead.. and Its all mathematics, and I’m weak at maths :(

But.. Most of the equations are solved inside brain, and not with pen and paper.

Waves and Languages

2006-01-12T21:30:00.000+05:30

can we express languages just like we do waves?? That was exactly the question i came into my mind, when everyone was so much bothered about translating Indian languages into one-other. They share so much similarities, but still its hard to find them, or rather hard-code them to be machine-readable. I had this idea in a flash, and thought of sharing with the lecturer Dr. Raj Reddy. I am sharing it now with everybody :)

Hullo Sir,
Let me introduce me first. This is Shaurabh Bharti, a fresh graduate from CSE, IIT Kharagpur. I attended your lecture at TechVista @ Bangalore, organised by MSR India. It was one of most thought-provoking lecture I had. Some of provided thoughts are here.

I was looking at the problem we are facing due to languages. Languages, as they are so diverse, each language have different grammar (arguably), syntax, alphabet etc. However, our brain still understands all of them. Of course, all languages have same expressive power (again arguably), and this gives a natural intuition that they can be translated into each other, at least in the semantic value they contain. Semantic, was actually the base I was looking into. I was looking into it as a middleware using which one language can be translated into other. Overall, I mean it wont be meaningful to create systems to convert one-to-one language translator systems, rather translate each language into a central semantic language system(ofcourse NOT English, again arguably) , and get the semantic meaning translated into other language. Picking up a language, which has power of expressing everything is important here, as all languages can be good contestents. (just another intuition, Sanskrit looked me tbe best option here, for its most pure, and least locally transformed).

Well, that was about language translation. However, this is not the thought exactly I had during the lecture. I was looking language as a waveform of alphabets(for photons) with different wavelengths(for different small meaningful parts of sentences). Whenever a person speaks a sentence, its never a pure sentence (just like a wave-generater can never produce a pure waveform). Rather, it’s a mixture of some grammatical sentences (again, here by grammar I meant a hypothetical grammar which is unambiguous. For waves, its universal Maxwell’s Electromagnetic Theory). By breaking down them into pure less powerful sentences(ie with less amplitude, that it conveys small part of total meaning), we can decipher what it means. Again, just like waves, it can have lots of noises. However, none of waves we transmit go without noises, and still they are doing great jobs.

Just like a mixture of pure sine waves looks hard to decipher for meaning, so is a sentence. Given a ‘raw wave’, its hard to decipher it into constituent pure sine waves intuitively. We need pure mathematics for that. Similarly, each raw sentence can be broken down into pure sentences, and they can be exactly found out using mathematics.

Such a correlation looked to me so intuitive, that I couldn’t resist it sharing with you.

Regards,
Shaurabh Bharti

Chanakya

2005-02-16T14:58:00.000+05:30

3 days n 3 nights !
I finished 47 episodes, one-hour each of CHANAKYA, a hindi drama aired on DoorDarshan in early 90's. Eyes red, body tired, mind lost, thinking changed, and finally the language.

It portrays what happened actually around 400BC. History of India, though largely unknown, impresses people a lot. The way things were organised at those ancient times, were really unbelievable, though not included in 7 major Miracles of history. Chanakya, a Guru of Politics, RaajNitigya-cum-KootNitigya, was the man responsible for the way Alexander was expunged out of India. The master-mind behind satta-parivartan of Nand Dynasty to Maurya Dynasty, the writer of Arthshastra, is commonly known as Kautilya or VishnuGupt, his original name. With Rashtra-Ekta as the only goal behind all his steps, he tied all the Major Janpads of India under one Head, ChandraGupta Maurya, so that no foreign power can destroy Bhartiya Sanskriti. Being a Guru, he took the lead to organise all teachers/students in India. He made the paths, they walked the paths. Still united , India will remain rdini of Chanakya !

ChandraPrakash Dwivedi, director of the serial and actor for chanakya, is the best man inside. His confidence, his writing of the long saga, the way he has written dialogue, quite reflects the current issues of India(though largely unknown if they were actually that era too). Immensely impressed by every episode, I feel being quite a fan of Chanakya !

However, what I wonder, is the things he left out unchanged in India. If India had so big minds that time, why was technology left behind so badly? didn't we ever felt its absence in society? Communication was still done mouth-to-mouth. There was no other way ! Why did we concentrated so much upon Sanskritic development of India? Is this the Converging end of all the developments the world faces !?

As its not unknown to us, that India, originally, has never been harsh/brutal in its behavior. They fight, but only till it satisfies the thirst ! Being itself so big, stable and full of natural blessings, it was the best place to live in. If you at all compare Indian traditions with contemporary ones from other civilizations, you will realise the difference in GOAL of living. Sukh-Sampda was quite more stressed than Looting others. India has been ruled by big dynasties, especially in ancient times, untill barbar attackers came and destroyed its virtues. With back in mind "hum-chuni digare nest", they did everything to destroy others, and keep themselves uprooted. However, the root is still there, though largely uprooted !

Not going in deeper details, Chanakya is definitely a lesson to all think-tanks of India. Though shiksha is practiced quite in a different way now, out basic approach is still very much similar to earlier times. The goal is to help society/people/sanskriti develop, and to destroy all elements which come in its way. Myself being largely moved, I wish if I could really do some +ve changes in India.

Definitely, a must see to all Indians !

GooGle : the Magic : the Fun : the Trick (with Anurag Acharya : scholar.google founder)

2005-01-06T19:21:00.000+05:30

And today the mystery was unfolded of GOOGLE. Not far after I started using net, I got addicted to Google. The addiction is important to note. I always wondered the way Google works, and always thought it to be sort of "Magic". An "Academic Magic" which extensively uses search algorithms, and bigger complex optimisations, which only BIG PPL understands.

The "Magic" has turned out to be rather "Fun". Google is Funny and it does its Magic with Tricks and Only Tricks.

The big lecture Dr. Anurag Acharya(IIT Kharagpur'87 passout) gave today, was inspiring. He explained the methodology used in google. Thats too long, and I must write it down sometime else. Quite of things he still kept undisclosed (cause of copyrights), however, the overview he gave was good enough to open another GooGle.

However, I found a flaw in the search, which I did point out there. The flaw is Google does not really avoid efficiently pages generated by "Other Search Engines". For example, try Gary Jules Madworld mp3 and look for result belonging to mp3shits.com, the confusion shall be clear. Out of 25,000 pages, the void search page is ranked 3rd !

Dont think its an isolate pity example ! I have come across such instances many times, when I click on a result and what turns out to be a search page of some other search engine with no results either. I am sure even you have come across similar situation.

I am sure Google does use some heuristics to avoid these pages( and if it does not, then it must do it soon). There could be two reasons for such results. 1)Either these sites keep generating false search pages for the sake of being displayed in other search engines, even though they dont really have the product/relevant material to the search. 2) Its Fault of Google. Google never checked for such flaws.

My special Skill !

2004-11-26T01:38:00.000+05:30

Well.. this is quite personal about me. My own special things, which makes me different, and special.
I must say I am quite fast with my finger work. Finger work includes anything which uses fingers. Harmonium, flute, piano, guitar, Typing and all related stuffs are good examples which need some skilled operations of fingers. Fingers move everywhere, in every direction, in different configurations and motions, and one need to master that.
It was quite late, when I started using them. It was seveth class, when I learnt harmonium. My sir, Udit Heera was wonderful. However, he always avoided to teach me that. He taught all girls and friends that. I was one of best singer among them. So, I think he wanted me to stay away from instruments. But finally I gave up my patience, and started learning myself. Horse(for harsh) helped me a lot. Within months I was one of the best players around, though many people esp. girls have been fighting through whole year ! It went better always.. and I mastered it almost. Sir was , however, not astonished. But he used to appreciate it in sort of hidden way.
When I left playing harmonium in 9th(primarily for studies), it was just months before I touched it again. My papa bought a beautiful one, and I went with same speed with it. He was, especially so happy. I played on many bhajans and with singers.

Well, that was quite elaborate. But it didnt stopped there. Next thing was flute, which I started playing in no time, with my fingers flipping on holes. Piano, guitar were no different. My fingers move just too fast !
Notable was my skills in typing. The way I type on keyboard, with generally very less errors, has always been appreciated. Even I wonder sometimes, how come I type so beautifully(cause thats the grace). I got computer in Jan02. Most of my friends got it nearby. most of us were unfamiliar with it. Typing and programming was specially big task. My speed grew at no time.. and within 2-3 month, I was like professional typer. I did some tutorial too, just half of that, and I felt I have reached the saturation. Thats it !
I believe it to one of best quality.. and I am going to exploit it fully.

Theory of Science

2004-11-22T16:09:00.000+05:30

I have thought of it quite a few times. There are two scientific approach to nature : Theoretical and Practical. This world has practiced two practical approaches to it since long time : Indian and Western(modern science).
Modern science has simple theory : reason why, what, how ! try to know the logic of all operation, if possible. If not possible, try for it again. Experiments are done. Theories and Thoughts are made. They are tried to be made generic. If not, some restrictions are put on the environment, the most complex, random and uncontrolled factor still unknown parameters largely. Anyway, things look quite good if logics work perfectly with data/experiments. If they don't, drawbacks are found, and theories are improved(changed).This is the whole system. In these 300-400 years, we have developed so many things, life has totally changed, the whole world is changed!
Indians have been quite similar in intention but different in execution/achieving goal though. The approach is different, and important to keep in mind. Ancients OBSERVED a lot, and not Experimented(diff1). The nature is full of surprises. Many phenomenon happens, and goes unnoticed. Its the eagles eyes which catch them(so called genius eyes). Indian bosses knew many things, including medical surgeries, and importance of number system, the right approach to mathematics, and many other aspects(largely destroyed). The old literature not only depicts the high-quality living style of them, but also the methods they used for observing systems, and to explain them, using no reason, but axioms(diff2).
Here comes the difference in approach. I talked some day before about randomness of nature. This Nature is unknown until we don't know which direction it goes beforehand , ie. , the random function it follows. The Modern Science is trying to know it, that through experiments and theories. Its pretty obvious to be impossible. However, Indians took the nature as it is. Yes, the nature is random, and beyond our control; the so called God. They accepted every phenomena of nature as axioms, without reasoning(as it was never needed). IF sun rise in east, it rises;theres no reason to protest why it doesn't rise in west. The drawback is , it deviates us from the basic intention, that is, to understand nature, and to help humans through gained knowledge.
Its more important to observe the "effects of rise of sun" than to understand "the very rise of sun".
Humans are complexed chemicals, and they output as psychological behaviors. Medicos have tried to understand the chemicals for long time, but how many will they? In every human there are almost infinite of them. The nature, the existence, everything is so complex that it might take long long time to understand(rather control) the humans . Here the deviation. Instead of observing changes, we are trying to change/control it, finding governing laws behind it. However, I make a point, that its not possible at all, and that its not NEEDED at all too.
Here Indians have benefited. Indians never separated the enzymes/hormones(whatever). they even didn't try to know which chemicals are inside body and their structures(thats the most amazing thing to look at.. the helix,fullerences and all.. isn't it?). However, they tried to study humans by observations, by looking at their behavioral changes, by changing environmental conditions. We marked changes in humans, for different changes in environment. For every input, theres an output. Thats the rule.
Behavioral changes. When a system is too stable, as humans are, it directly implies it must have many superimpositions of different systems(rather less stable). If we try to bifurcate each of them, it would take millions of days(because there are so many superpositions as well!). Instead, we should accept it as the Big System. At higher level, The Behavioral Descriptions of System is far more important than its very implementation. Humans have explicit way of outputting every change outside through censors(like eyes and all). Almost all changes inside can be observed outside, and fast also. Instead of learning the exact implementation of humans, we should try to learn the behavior of human system, which is largely unknown still.
If we take humans as behavioral described, many similar analogies can be put up. Even a slight change(even unknown that its a change at all) may change the whole system and its very stability. All of us know this, because of implementations of big systems. Even in there, to make a stable system(flawless), its more important to understand interaction of system with environment than very implementation system. Actually, its meaningless and wastage of time.
Thats why, Indians always succeeded in their execution. They didn't have flaws. They have all logics to be accepted as nature laws, which we cant change anyway.
If we are to concentrate on human development aspect, I think its more important. Nothing including Relativity and Quantum theories can help this point.
Thats it for today. Think I will get back.

The God

2004-11-22T15:12:00.000+05:30

An attempt to understand the Driver(as they say), the God. When I went to meet my sister at Kolkata after very very long time of 14yrs, she was very happy with me. I made a proposal to go for famous Kali Mandir.
"we can go. but.. ohh!! do u believe in God??" " After being at IIT for 3 yrs, it doesnt sound good that a hi-tech like you should believe in such unscientific things."
"Well.. i dont know. but mom and dad do lots of puja-path.. u know it. So even I have bit interest in that.. thats it!"
"ahan.. u r escaping my question. tell me do u believe in God?"
"hmm.. well I think its nothing but faith. If one believe in it, its there. If one doesnt, its not. It cant be proven, thats for sure. Actually, I dont care whether it exists physically or not. However, I feel always an ecstasy after praising someone superpower, the God. I always feel happy after doing puja. Its a sort of psychological advantage for me."
"true.. very true. Even i think so. Definitely, there cant be a God acc. to science.
have you heard of Mother Teresa? They say she cured some people just by touching them.But i dont believe anything. It might give some psychological satisfaction to patient, but unless supported by medicines+care, its impossible to do so. Its very pathetic when people make such comments."
"yeah.. forget Teressa and take up Jesus. He did many amazing things that only a SUPERPOWER can do. We dont have any proofs of whatsoever he did. If one believe in it, he cant defy "Existence of God", or else all those stuffs are bogus, definitely not possible by any means(acc. to science)."

This debate will never end. God exists, God doesnt exist. If we discuss on above path, we will never achieve a soln. Science proves that there cant be a SUPERNATURAL. However, when one fails to explain certain amazing things/events, one starts believing God. After all, who can do it otherwise? cause science offers no explanation to it !

Our perception of God is very true:Who does everything around us! Jiske bina patta bhi nahin hilta ! Each phenomenon is fixed, it happens by its own rules(god knows who made them... hah again GOD!!!???). We try to understand it; whether actually do it or not, it has to happen its own way, a different way. And if one puts some brain to understand it, the way thigns happen is the way its environments force it to do. The factors, which are present around. Can one find all these factors? Impossible ! Simply Impossible ! they are infinite, they are unpredictable, they are themselves changing every moment(on any scale). In other words, its RANDOM(called chaos scientifically).

"God is, the other name of, the Random Function."

God is nothing but the Funcion that drives world. Its the randomization and unknowingness of the future which takes the place of God(thats the way its defined:if we dont know, god knows it !) . The Whole World, or rather Universe goes with complete insecurity, under the hands of Human, cause they dont know it at all, they dont have even a hint of it(how can they run it?) .

Two potentially fastest growing fields and perhaps the most exciting: to decipher The Human Body AND to decipher the structure of Universe(ie the origin and developement) have puzzled the most intelligent beings on earth.After all, How could one even think of such a complicated system, which has developed on its own, over millions of years, along the paths which lead to complications may be unknown to us, whether it be human body or universe.Forget about universe, which is almost 100% out of reach to us, and lets talk about Humans, which we are.

Every corner of human body is exposed to us. A sustainable growth of almost 70-80 yrs under average conditions, is maintained by a body after been trained inside its mother. They say, everything is encoded in just 46 strings, like every complication of Social life is written down in Mahabharat and Ramayan. The people, who are interested in both the fields equally, can see how much the two feilds are correlated in its outcomes and publications. Almost everyday, one may find a publication on a very small subset of the concerned, which may(rather must) be contradicting other theories, with a attached statement "This will open complete new field or era of research" OR " This is going to be the Hottest within coming years" [whatever](I didnt mean any offence, what I meant is , all these discoveries are NULL % wrt to what we need to know, they dont actually help knowing it better, but just seems to be).

Anyway, nothing is promising at this stage atleast, and Universe will remain still undeciphered for remaining many years , and so Human Body. If one says we are moving on right tracks, I will ask which track!! As I mentioned early in the first line, the world is random, and that is God. None of the random functions can be understood from statistics (if its really random), make it sure if one doesnt agree with me. Though another very hot field present[thanks to Computer Revolution], random functions are still most under-understood functions. Since computer is self driven by random functions, its hard to understand them using them. Even their ultra high speed is unusable due to lack of basic understanding of them. Not to be amazed, Universe [as well as a Human Body] is under control of some random function, which could be in INFINITE ORDER of RANDOMNESS. It could be correlated to a function with infinite Order of Differentials( dont think higher orders fade away,as supposed in general, cause their coefficients are also random).
Instead of learning the actually function, one should rather concentrate on the behavior of the function(mind it, its not learning the implementation of funtionn but learning the outputs for given inputs). Only that way the God can be learnt. This function definitely exists, and so The God !

the Magic of Orkut

2004-11-21T13:50:00.000+05:30

hmm.. have u heard of orkut?
http://www.orkut.com
the online portal for social meetings, or rather friends searching !
Opened by Google the greats, as usual, it has wonderful simplicity but high technological complexity. Within months of its launch, it has crossed 2 million users ! (and these are not fake like yahoo ids/profiles.. they are working ACTUALLY registered ones !) One of the most handy tool to find people around is now in the market.. I am here to describe its magic !

It wasnt very long after I got an invitation for orkut. I already had a century of friends. Most of them were seniors and batchmates. Many of them said Hi after adding me. I said Hullo to most of them too. It was , like , the whole past refreshed before eyes, and settled as normal , as it was before.

I got a personal message, from a guy in IITB, Vinay Sharma is his name.

Hi Shaurabh,
do u know Piyush Dev Singh? I have seen a guy named "Rahul Dev Singh" who sounds to be brother of him. Can you confirm this to me ?? Piyush is my close friend and I have been searching for him since I lost contact with him. Actually he left before 7th class, and since then we havent talked at all !
please do the kind
Vinay

well.. shocked.. really shocked was I to see a message. It was no banda-bandi/bandi-banda message, no *-IIT message, no community-join message, no forward message, but was a personal request !
Rahul Dev Singh(alias RD) is my friend. Not very much interested in orkut, he hasnt even put his pic in his profile. Besides that "he is a male" and he resides in "IITKgp", there was no info either.
Even if one browse my 100+ friend-list(for no reason), he will find RD in the last, for he didnt have pic. Moreover, his name doesnt come out in any search in orkut(even I tried it most, using all combi, but no result). Since he directly contacted me (rather than RD), it seems he found him through my friend-list only. What a Tedious Task !!!

Feeling a filmy messenger of a guy(as if searchin for his child-love), I was excited if this true. As usual, we met in Gym and after some exercise I asked about his siblings. I asked if his brother name is Piyush ! he was shocked! he wondered what wrong his brother this time(as he thought he was very naughty!). I told him the whole story. Everything sorted out. Vinay was true.

Finally RD contacted him, and gave info of whereabouts of Piyush. Finally they contacted each other, I am very sure they met in the hols this DP.

If orkut can make rendezvous of such kind, its really a magic. It can do anything, really, anything !

3 cheers to it !

The First One

2004-08-06T13:44:00.000+05:30

well.. this is the first step in here.. the first writing to start with.. ooh.. the whole day goes with doses of peejays .. either through mails.. or messenger.. or friends.. this is neither a bad spot.. its full of views.. specially those ones which need not be spoken.. rather are NOT spoken but always ready to come out.. I have read blogs of many known people.. theie points are quite different from their On-the-Spot nature and I know its quite NATURAL... I will write back soon.. so many things to pen down .. and my fingers are frozen.. but will keep it going definitely.. keep an eye upon..