another-technology-whore dept.

Linus Torvalds now uses a Power Mac G5 as his main workstation.
But of course, he runs Linux on it.

strange-quotes dept.

And then leaning on your window sill
he'll say one day you caused his will
to weaken with your love and warmth and shelter
And then taking from his wallet
an old schedule of trains, he'll say
I told you when I came I was a stranger
I told you when I came I was a stranger.

-- Leonard Cohen
(The Stranger Song)

the-story-of-my-experiments dept.

I am an hopeless eccentric. The one or two people who know me, and many who claim to know me will testify to this. I have my own pet likes and dislikes and although I try to maintain a facade of disinteredness in all controversies, truth is, I'm as much a fanatic as the next guy. Maybe a wee bit more.

My pet peeves? Astrology (ooh, don't get me started), blind ritualism, tribalism in urban life (I don't believe anyone quite understands what that one exactly is), and social inequality (which I am prepared to discuss extensively and know that my inclination to put my money where my mouth is is absolutely zero).

I absolutely detest astrology and astrologers, to the point where I sometimes fear I shall resort to violence when the 'believers' begin to stonewall all logical arguments against this absolutely unscientific art. Most astrologers are flatterers, liars and great manipulators -- in short, extremely disagreeable people, and I try to stay away from them as much as I possibly can. You see, if you think scientifically, sure, astrology may have validity as a possible area of scientific research, but then you see it being practised, or rather, people being practised upon, and then you know that human nature is too fundamentally flawed to allow astrology to become a purely scientific pursuit. It has been, is and will always be a political tool.

Well, there have been a spate of deaths in my family and many of my clansmen/women (some of them very well educated, and apparently, very suave and urbane) actually want my family to appease the supernatural powers-that-be with some mindless pagan rituals. An aunt said, "Well, you know, not that I believe in them, but people just talk". I asked her to name the people who will talk, I will personally go and bash their brains in. Needless to say, this gentle approach does not win me many friends. I have begun to slowly garner the reputation of being an unreasonable hothead, and I see people being somewhat circumspect when round me.

Which brings me to the third topic, which is more a fact than some anomalous human behaviour. Human beings like to congregate and settle into specific kinds of hierarchies and social patterns. Useful to create systems where the individual does not have to think. Now, I have been raised in many places, and never have had the chance to enmesh myself in these 'social grids'. So it frustrates me to see people not willing to think outside this box they confine their minds to. And then there's the problem of language! The language becomes rife with symbols drawn form the grid (peoples, their experiences together, etc.), and then it becomes impossible for an outsider to join in.

And that leaves social inequality. All well-to-do young men have a soft-corner for the underdog. Well there is no shortage of underdogs in my fine country.

Signing out.

mac-and-me dept.

This piece is about my new Powerbook. Nerdy, you say? Well, balls to you then. I love it, and I'm shouting it out from the rooftops. A fine piece of engineering like a Mac is something to be cherished and something to motivate oneself to achieve after days of hard work.

Already, I hear whispers from people (Computer Engineers, mind you, not functional illiterates): "What is he going to do with a 17" powerbook?". Question is, what will I not do with it.

Millions of years ago men were monkeys and lived in trees. Some monkeys thought it would be good idea to live on the ground instead. Others said, "But Why? There's foliage here, and fruit, and we all live perfectly mediocre, meaningless lives. Why strive for more when there is enough less to go around?". Thankfully, the first group just shook their collective heads and went their way, did their thing, and well, the rest is history. Unfortunately, the first group hung on to their coat tails and we still see them around.

You know when you try to better yourself, and someone pops up and says, "But Why?" -- you now know where they're coming from.

Balls to them!

the-real-me dept.

the real me
Originally uploaded by l1w0lf.

a-new-kind-of-business-model dept.

I have heard much talk about the book A New Kind of Science (NKS) by Dr.Stephen Wolfram, and even considered buying it. But today morning at the on-going IIT Techfest 2005, I saw a video presentation by Dr.Wolfram, and I was hooked. Because of my relative ignorance of higher mathematics, I'm afraid I do not possess the credentials to comment on its contents. But it does seem to reconfer a degree of simplicity and accessibility to science that has been eroding away with the increasing complexity we see around us. I hope to learn something new from this book, and am currently reading it on-line, though I will most certainly buy it soon :).

A word about Stephen Wolfram -- he is the creator of Mathematica, one of the most sophisticated mathematical modelling software packages out there. He is also the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research, the company that markets Mathematica software. At Rs.80,000 a pop, I do not see myself buying it in the near future, unless I manage to have a child, decide to home-school him/her, and furnish evidence for the same to Wolfram Research (which makes me eligible to buy a student copy without being a student myself). Being such an unabashed lone wolf, neither have I any hope of finding a friend with access to Mathematica and with the attendant degree of generosity and comfort to let me have a crack without an accompanying monetary transaction of any kind.

But I can afford the book, and perhaps the explorer kit that allows one to further the experiments described in the book. At this point it might be relevant to note down some of the themes Wolfram elaborated on in his two-hour live presentation:

• Until NKS, Science has been trying to explain apparently complex phenomena with almost equally complex models and mathematical equations. There is perhaps a simpler way of looking at things by considering complexity as a net result of iterative or nested applications of simple rules.
• The universe and all in it should be viewed as an ongoing computation. The computation throws up interesting patterns like sentient beings on a lonely planet trying to explain the state of their own being :).
• Science in the last century was, because of the success of its empirical investigations, more obsessed with testable hypotheses (statements that clearly stated the conditions for their refutation). NKS moves the focus away back to the realm of pure mathematics, where the emphasis is more on building conceptual models of things that 'generate' physical laws iteratively. There is nothing that needs to be refuted. The state of the world is just one possible path in a pyramid of successive computations.
• Wolfram uses the phrase NKS to refer not only to his book, but as a generic term for a new paradigm of science (In the same sense that we use the words Arithmetic or Geometry or Calculus, but with, obviously, a much wider scope of reference).

All this is very interesting, and also interesting is the way Wolfram puts out his message. When he talks, he comes across as more of a used-car salesman than a scientist. One can only marvel at the way he markets his new science:

You first buy the book, then the accessories: the explorer kit that allows you to play with some of the experiments described in the book. Then a programmatic interface to the explorer kit that presumably, plugs into Mathematica. Finally, mathematica itself, in all its license incarnations.

But his enthusiasm for the pursuit of truth seems to be genuine, and is almost infectious. Perhaps this closing anecdote would illustrate how...

At the end of his lecture, Wolfram was taking questions. An IIT academic (let us not name him) asked him very laboriously in a five-minute, rambling monologue, if he agreed that tools like Mathematica could be effectively used as educational tools. Instead of nodding his head and prosaically saying in his pucca British accent, "Yes", which was all that was expected of him, Wolfram excitedly brought up his latest Mathematica daily build, and started building a spontaneous pedagogical experiment to illustrate the convergence of Fourier series.

He would merrily have continued on into the day, if the IIT folks hadn't stopped him when time ran out.

unpremeditated,-i-swear dept.

More stupid quizzes, this time, one with a surprising result...

You are the king of smooth -- enough said. Take the What Pulp Fiction Character Are You? quiz.

Thanks to this guy for the diversion.

back-to-the-future dept.

This has been splashed around in print and on the news all this week. I got around to reading it today, following a link from iMule's blog.

Makes one think (among many things) about the implications of population control. Is it really as bad as they say it is? Is having the second largest population in the world such a dubious distinction after all?

Japan and Europe are gradually becoming older, thanks to decades of falling birth-rates (mostly offshoots of economic prosperity and personal sexual independence). Productivity is falling (the report claims that this may allow India to match the GDP of some of the large European countries as soon as 2020!), but the fiscal burden of supporting an ageing population (health-care, social security) is coming back to haunt them.

On the contrary India and China are poised to launch into a sustained growth spurt on the coat-tails of a youthful, energetic population that is just waiting to be harnessed by market forces. This may take some time in coming to see radical shifts (if you feel the decade from 1995 was not radical enough :)) in the look and feel of our country. The report has a projection for Chinese and Indian GDP growth rates as percentages of US GDP for the next half-century or so -- the knee of the curve is somewhere in 2010, (A good time for me to be a grizzly ageing wolf, raising a pack of cubs ;)) so presumably that's when India will see the kind of growth spurt South-East Asia saw in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Super Highways will start getting built, cities will start getting monstrous new skylines (Cranes, Cranes, Cranes everywhere -- the Bangkok of 1992 of my memories) and fancy transport systems.

Coming back to the issue of population control, I have long felt that it is a moot point. Reources are scarce, and must be managed. Fair enough. But the truth is that they are taken by the strong and the weak die out for want of them. This is ground reality, and the world scarcely bats an eyelid as it perpetuates it. So why bother? The rest of the world is dying out (not for want of resources, but out of renunciation ;)) -- we (as Indians and Chinese) are in a position to seamlessly fill their shoes, taking the reins of the technologies they built up on the rising and ebbing tides of European and American rivalries and ambitions.

Have as many children as you like, really...Enough so that you can give them the essentials for their personal survival in this new age -- good education, nutrition, enlightened company and a good social network that makes the fulfillment of their aspirations more of a thing of collective concensus than something to really struggle for ;). If you can't do that or won't do that and that's your excuse for having a single child, get some ambition, god-dammit -- stoke that fire in your belly :).

A far more important issue for India to tackle in the coming years would be the seriously worrying disparity in the child-sex ratio across the country.

But I wonder if there's a study out there that compares historical shifts in global population growth rates (with migration factored in) with economic prosperity?

reasonably-funny dept.
Some guy called Vinod has a decent sense of humor, apparently.

haw-haw-haw-haw dept.

disks-get-harder dept.

I don't know jack about disks.

I had no clue that the average hard-disk on the desktop had only one platter. Neither did I know that the CHS (Cylinder-Head-Sector) model of a disk I learnt in school (and from a lot of geek magazines) is slowly going out of existence. Seems to me that drive mechanics has finally evolved to a point where disks are essentially, gradually starting to behave like large tape spools with a big on-board read/write cache :)...Tape Spools yes, albeit with much better random seek performance.

analytical-poetry dept.

This just in. Maybe this is a crazy thought. But the mathematical analogue of poetry is really -- a digital signature. What is poetry but a condensation of a sensation or the rounding off of experience? In terse and simple words, the poet seeks to capture pain, rapture or equanimity in equal measure. A digital signature or message digest is of course, a lossy method for summarizing data content i.e. a digital signal. Now, Messrs. Shannon, Nyquist et al tell us, that downsampling a signal (effectively, trying to compress it beyond what its base information content allows) may cause us to lose information during the process, if the downsampled result is too terse.

From our hypothesis that poetry is the analogue of signal compression applied to linguistic expression, the same effect of ambiguity should apply.

At this point, it may be beneficial to introduce the notion of a well-intentioned poem, which we define as follows:

A poem written with a specific meaning in mind by the poet, with the clear intention of letting the readers of the poem be able to decipher the intended meaning.

Unfortunately, the available corpus of poetry that can be classified under this heading, is as we know, quite sparse.

Agreed? Shall we move on? Alright then, if we would have to demarcate good, skillfully-written poetry, it would now be reasonable to assume that such poems would be well-intentioned poems whose informational analysis would leave them hovering somewhere near the boundary where compression begins to become lossy.

Hmmm...can this intuition then, be encoded into a versification algorithm? Is poetry, as we know it, doomed to become the domain of cold-hearted automatons? Is there really no hope in this world for all those ugly people out there looking to get laid (well, actually, there's always beer)?

For answers to these and many other equally vexing questions, tune in next time...

Homeland-Insecurity dept.

Lovable American Desi works like a mule, pouring bucketfulls of sweaty money into the American social security system (which he knows is going to give him a royal thengaa), only to find himself swindled out of an ethnic identity and emotional security. With great enterprise (and some steadfast support from his best buddy -- also a Desi), he extracts a two-week leave and returns to his Des for some spiritual R&R.

Aforementioned Desi is actually Shah-Rukh Khan in a Caravan, who in a subtle masterstroke is also simultaneously running a giant sleeper ad campaign for Phillip Morris Inc. Calmly he winds his way unobstructed through the idyllic countryside in search of his lost Aaaya. There he meets interesting, lovable, quirky people with some equally quirky problems. Also a really dapper school teacher (with what seems like an inexhaustible wardrobe of the best Kanjeevaram silk), who, after a still-born first impression, he manages to thaw into some edible state after a cleverly disguised item number masquerading as a Ram-Leela performance. Together they run amok reminding all those country bumpkins what bumbling fools they really are. The country bumpkins listen patiently, agree, then help Desi Dude build a neat-little science project.

The dude though, himself briefly dithers before he makes the obvious choice -- he dumps his silver Jag and a swanky apartment (with wooden flooring and designer plumbing!!!) plus a job managing a satellite that looks strangely like Space Shuttle Columbia for a lifetime of replenishing his Desi Ma'am's Kanjeevaram wardrobe.

Oh, and all the time he's away, best buddy faithfully handles his boss John Q.Something and covers for him with unselfish generosity. Like any other typical Desi, he covers his manager's ass without coveting his manager's job.

Right...

Sigh! If only real life could be that simple...

since-we-are-in-verse-mode dept.

I can see the world turning in its haste to engulf itself
I do not see myself segregated from it; I am It, it is Me
I am but a little eddy in a heady whirl of unheard voices
A little furl of cloth in the violent seas, merrily riding on

I have been a criminal, a liar, deeply have I offended
(I have even felt softly rising, the pangs of remorse)
I have walked upon this earth, on my own feet, jaded
And declared: none was like me, nor will there be another

one-before-i-turn-in dept.

With every aching bone, and a tired mind,
embrace the night; welcoming, knowing
Shoved around in the bustle outside
for you, the gift: the joy of forgetting

there-and-back-again dept.

In the last four days, I have travelled almost 900 kilometres, 450 of
which I drove myself. Which isn't much, considering my previous expolits in the great American emptiness, but significant nevertheless.

And at each end of the journey, waits a different life, with people with a different idea of who I am, holding on to radically incompatible symbols that represent the idea of who I am for them. And whats more, holding out the unreasonably intransigent expectation that I yield unquestionably to their stupid prejudices. More than the driving, its the patience that has to be shown with childish incomprehension that is more tiresome.

I think I know now how kindergarten teachers feel :).

Going to Sleep

Now that day wearies me,
My yearning desire,
will receive more kindly,
like a tired child, the starry night

Hands, leave off your deeds
mind, forget all thoughts;
All of my forces
yearn only to sink into sleep.

And my soul, unguarded,
would soar on widespread wings,
to live in night's magical sphere
More profoundly, more variously.

-- Hermann Hesse

Fading star, memories of those that were,
With the eye, firm, beholding the new light
The coldness within, will stay awhile, awhile
Softly, the wind blows, the day arrives.

Cold, cold heart, indulge me some more
Partake of this, the unstained warm delight
No sun waits for the the dew drop's shiver
No pain falters , a leaf is not that shall not wither

that-same-old-tune-again dept.

Again a tryst with my old friend, the grim reaper. This time he was standing ominously in a passage, and I sighted him and looked him in the eyes. Some part of me must be indentured to him, for him to stalk me so obsessively. One day, under a clear sky we shall meet, and settle our account.

bull[ae]-shah-di-gal dept.

In one of my desultory channel browsing sessions (the only effective algorithm to watch television without ending up buying a .44-steel-cast Magnum and shooting up everything in sight), I was rivetted by a video on one of the Punjabi music channels. A Sardar in full regalia, strumming a six-string all over India. The artist: Rabbi Shergill, and the song was "Bulla ki Jaanaa", his rendition of the famous Kafi by 18th-century Sufi saint Bulla-Shah (also known as Bulle-Shah, I'm told, but that does not mitigate his name one bit ;)). Needless to say, since I have recently been impressed by many things Punjabi (pronounced Ohye, Punhjhaabbee!), I managed to get my hands on the album.

I was impressed with what seems to be a debut album. The lyrics are good (all in Punjabi), with a few classical selections like the Bull[ae]-Shah poem, and some by other famous Punjabi poets. Rabbi writes amazingly perceptive lyrics himself, but comes up a little short on composition. The result is this odd feeling you get on the B-sides of listening to Walt Whitman recited to the tune of Raghupati Raghav Rajaa Ram. Well, maybe it needs a bit of getting used to or maybe the engineering on these songs is a little overwrought. But this man's talent as a bard/balladeer is undeniable. In this age of mindless Britney-pop, he is a true visionary, a man with depth and true insight, and most important of all, great emotional sincerity. No wonder he was given the boot by all the recording labels before being signed on by the guys who founded Tehelka.

A good read is this article by Minty Tejpal of Tehelka, documenting Rabbi's journey.

and-in-other-news dept.

The doctrine of puritanism must probably be as old as religion itself (or perhaps, it is religion itself?). Every few years sees the emergence of a new species -- a new shade of the same old color. There must exist some well-defined pattern behind this cycle of resurgence and demise. There also seem to be many flavors of puritanism -- one that arises out of economic upheaval, one that is brought on as a reaction to rapid social change etc. etc.

I don't know much about history, but here's a highly readable article that describes the evolution of English Puritanism. The article's main theme is a polemic that correlates it with the current wave of Christian conservatism that Bush seemed to ride on to victory in the recent U.S. Presidential Elections. But still, readable nonetheless...