boot-camp dept.

A lot of the A-list techno-bloggers in the blogosphere are speculating furiously over Apple's release of Boot Camp, a program that allows Intel-based Mac owners to dual boot OS X with other OSs. Robert X.Cringely has been the most imaginative, coming up with ever more fanciful ideas about the business logic behind Boot Camp.

Guess he doesn't have anything more interesting to write about.

Apple has a much more marginal market share than windows, as far as the personal computer market is concerned, and is never ever likely to prove a serious threat to the Windows/Intel juggernaut. Today their business is more about selling music, than about personal computers. My reasoning behind their releasing boot camp is much more mundane -- it is just an acceptance of market reality from Apple.

People have always run Windows applications on the Mac using VirtualPC. This is just a move to retain the market, and create another incentive to people who otherwise might shun apple hardware for compatibility reasons. So many people out there only buy Wintel machines because they *have to* use Windows software at work. So many games exist only for windows. Boot Camp will allow Apple to make inroads into that market, where people would buy Macs as high-performance PCs that run all the great mac applications out there *and* can run windows side-by-side.

The apple website recently linked to this story where XP benchmark results were compared for Apple hardware (Macbook Pro and the iMac -- wish they'd also covered the new iMac mini core duo) versus other high-end PC vendor machines. Apple either lead or was behind very marginally on most benchmark results.

evolutionary-mishaps dept.

Four million years ago, at the dawn of the age of the age that would belong to him, man mastered the art of tool-making.

With his tools, he tamed the world around him and created a food-surplus economy.

With the leisure that prosperity brings, he fought wars, persecuted, plotted and redeemed himself in equal measure.

Then to enliven this desperate struggle that is his life, he invented movies.

The thought that four million years of evolution led to Maalamaal weekly being made, can truly be depression-inducing, but I'm sure mankind has meandered before through evolutionary deadends.

However, a reviewing of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey can be a surprisingly effective cure.

Especially when supplemented by an elucidation of the subtext in that film.

yet-another-review dept.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind is another Charlie Kaufman product. The same bizarre imagination that produced Being John Malkovich and Adaptation.

I have always been awestruck by this guy's wizardry with the art of plot-development (or should I say dismemberment?). Which reminds me of the time I bought a VCD of Being John Malkovich. I had a couple of (ahem) friends then, who had the temerity to borrow it and then to say that the movie was perverted to my face, loooking me over as if I were some decadent pervert myself.

Well, they were right, because I was blown away by both movies Kaufman wrote after that.

crash dept.

I saw Crash last week. Not having seen many movies this year, I cannot compare it with the other contenders that competed with it for the Oscars.

The acting was great, and so was the tautness and structure of the movie. It was a bit intense and draining to sit through, but in a good way, because it engages and disturbs constantly.

The movie is very analytical and does not take a stand, which is a good thing -- I believe it really shows it like it is for many people, not just in LA, but any metropolis in the world that has communities and sub-communities living in their own miniature ghettos.

गावठी कविता dept.

मन वढाय वढाय
उभ्या पीकातलं ढोर
किती हाकला हाकला
फिरी येतं पिकांवर

मन मोकाट मोकाट
त्याले ठायी ठायी वाटा
जशा वार्यानं चालल्या
पानावर्हल्यारे लाटा

मन लहरी लहरी
त्याले हाती धरे कोन?
उंडारलं उंडारलं
जसं वारा वाहादन

मन जह्यरी जह्यरी
याचं न्यारं रे तंतर
आरे, इचू, साप बरा
त्याले उतारे मंतर!

मन पाखरू पाखरू
त्याची काय सांगू मात?
आता व्हतं भुईवर
गेलं गेलं आभायात

मन चप्पय चप्पय
त्याले नही जरा धीर
तठे व्हयीसनी ईज
आलं आलं धर्तीवर

मन एवढं एवढं
जसा खाकसचा दाना
मन केवढं केवढं?
आभायात बी मायेना

देवा, कसं देलं मन
आसं नही दुनियात!
आसा कसा रे तू योगी
काय तुझी करामत!

देवा, आसं कसं मन?
आसं कसं रे घडलं
कुठे जागेपनी तूले
असं सपनं पडलं!

-- बहिणाबाई चौधरी

incredible dept.

This happened today.

It really did.

Unbelievable.

buddha-mil-gaya dept.

Somehow, this day and this year, reminds me of that exquisitely lyrical book I read once: Siddhartha by Herman Hesse.

The part which affected me most (and the part which I think makes any reader of a certain disposition identify with the main character) was when Siddhartha encounters the Buddha, preaching to his followers. After the sermon, Siddhartha goes up to him and congratulates him on the wonderful symmetry and beauty of his philosophy, and the benefits it might potentially bring to any that adheres to it. But, he points out, it does not teach me how I myself might become the Buddha. The Buddha smiles, and agrees, and his answer is pretty much an apologetic, "Sorry son, but you have to find your own way in life".

The rest of the book and the part that precedes this point is suddenly all rendered superfluous. What follows, has to follow, and what has already transpired was inevitable. I wonder, why no one just told me that before I read the book.

In the book, Siddhartha explores renunciation, religion, philosophy, indulgence, ambition, and disillusionment. Eventually he settles on routine, plying a boat on a river and trying to keep his emotional state as ephemeral as the river water. He might as well have tried crack cocaine, but the technology of the day does not provide that convenience to him.

Somehow, in the course of my seeking, I would like to end up making smarter choices than Siddhartha made.

meter-down dept.

Taxi no. 9-2-11 is an interesting little hot-rod of the Ben Affleck, Samuel L. Jackson vehicle Changing Lanes. Its well-made, the performances are good all-round. But...the climax. the climax jars. It was a bit like taking a Porsche to get the groceries.

I mean there is nothing feasibly, ethically, morally or legally inconsistent in doing so, but a Porsche parked in a supermarket parking lot just violates the beauty and symmetry of nature, don't you think?

tales-from-the-crypt dept.

Ambhi was really bored. It was his second day at work.

A meeting in the morning had petered out into nonsensical yawnings, and slashdot didn't have anything interesting either. There was no email. Oh, yeah, there was one from someone called Hanson Obuya, who was apparently, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Godwanaland.

Obuya had an interesting offer. Only, it wasn't so interesting.

Ambhi had wondered aloud what the per capita income and GDP of Godwanaland was, and had googled for it.

He was startled to learn that the economy was not all that hot in the Mesozoic Era.

Meticulously, he stared at the screen. Then with his left hand, brushed somebody's wafer crumbs from his desk and considered his next move.

Might as well start a blog, he thought.
Or I could fetch another biscuit.
The coffee-vending machine?
Thats a tough one.
Lets do this blog thingy.

He headed over to http://www.blogger.com, and registered.

He called it "Space Debris"***.

Subtitled it, "A Random, Virtual EVA into the nothingness of reality.".

His handle: "CaptainStarbucks".

Journal Entry 1, Stardate 22-02-2006 0930hrs

The computer failed yesterday. All systems are on manual control. I just ejected the hibernating crew.

I am all alone.

Journal Entry 2, Stardate 22-02-2006 1130hrs

I am still alone.

Journal Entry 3, Stardate 22-02-2006 1230hrs

My space suit is deflating. The cabin pressure is suspect.
I think an alien life-form is onboard this ship.

Journal Entry 3, Stardate 22-02-2006 1245hrs

False alarm for #1. It was my incontinence.
#2 still under investigation.

Journal Entry 4, Stardate 22-02-2006 1300hrs

Alien sighted. To do: Rendezvous with alien at 1400hrs, post-lunch.

Journal Entry 5, Stardate 22-02-2006 1500hrs

Rendezvous with Alien completed. Mission success depends on us getting along well.
Alien has long hands and huddles conspiratorially, talks in a low voice in an empty room.
Perhaps this is a cultural thing.
Who cares?

Journal Entry 6, Stardate 22-02-2006 1545hrs

An Alien Away Team has docked with the ship. Alien has friends.
They all look the same. Their language sounds like bird-warbling.
They don't talk much, except two who are really noisy.
When I say anything, they look at each other and then do some hushed warbling.

Journal Entry 7, Stardate 22-02-2006 1800hrs

Aliens have retreated to their mother ship.
Although we gesture, I do not yet comprehend their intentions.
I have christened their planet Gondwana.
This makes them, Gondwanians. Perhaps Gondwaners might be better.
The ship has been programmed with coordinates for the next few hours.
Time for some rest.

Sign out.

*** Before settling on Space Debris, Ambhi also considered the following blog titles:
My 2 Cents, Inconsequential Warblings, Random Ruminations, Flotsam and Jetsam, Wandering Warbler, Alien Interloper.

coming-soon dept.

Shining, starring Jack Nicholson.
Brokeback to the Future, with Michael J.Fox and Christopher Lloyd.

you've-got-mail dept.

What a lame title, but anyway, here goes...

Email clients are hitting their limits of scalability.

Now, I get almost a couple hundred small emails everyday, and keeping track of them is a nightmare.

Email traffic characteristics have fundamentally changed since I started working. Now they are almost instant messages, in form, mode of address, size and content. Most people seem to treat them as instant messages with more metadata tags and end-to-end archival built into the fabric.

I recently listened to the CEO of the company I work for mentioning that e-mail is a store and forward protocol, like physical mail, and that is the way he handles his email : read it once in the morning, once at lunch, and once in the evening, and don't look at it in between.

However, with disk, memory, processor and network bandwidth being what they are today, email is more like an instantaneous delivery system. And senders invariably expect recipients to respond instantaneously with at least an acknowledgement.

All of which basically makes my poor email client unable to cope. Now I have MacOS Tiger, so with Spotlight, my life is that much easier, but it only highlights how critical Desktop Search will be as an application in the next few years.

The trouble with mail clients is that they are still stuck in the 2-d, tabular, database world, when they really need to be data mining applications. Filters and Saved Searches are just stored procedures, in the end, and a highly watered down from at that. What I really need is a multi-dimensional, heuristic tool for analysing my mail, and presenting it to me so that I don't miss anything critical.

I don't actually mind seeing a bit of spam here and there, as long as I don't drop critical emails.

I think it would be a great idea to build a next generation communication tool that does this, combining e-mail, instant messaging and voice. Gmail is ofcourse, the best bet, and Google is surely on the right track by integrating Gtalk with it, but I have privacy concerns with Gmail.

Actually, frankly, Google is beginning to scare me. It is beginning to resemble too closely, the funny little guy you introduce to your friends, who quickly usurps centrestage, and makes your world suddenly unpredictable, and somewhat dependent on his whim. You wonder, "Have I created a saint or a sociopath?".

Hmmm...

nein-nein-nein dept.

I have observed that the best employees, i.e. individual contributors, are those who always say "No.". By always negating everything, they put the onus on their managers to come up with irrefutable logic and nail down the specifications for tasks, so that they would not get no for an answer.

Unfortunately, such people are also not the best people to get along with.

However if you're looking to start a product company, hire only these naysayers as programmers. Optimisitc kids with stars in their eyes will overcommit themselves and be the bane of your scheduling endeavors.

two-movies dept.

I was visibly moved by Rang De Basanti. So much so that my wife had to restrain me from going out and doing something reallly stupid. When I calmed down after a dose of good old middle-class morality washed down with some excellent wine at the Swiss Cheese Garden, I finally saw through the sham, and now am back to writing code during the day, and kissing my powerbook goodnight every night.

C.S.Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia. He was chums with JRR Tolkien, who wrote The Lord of The Rings. Both have been made into movies. I mean the books, of course. Actually, C.S.Lewis was also made into a movie once.

Narnia is unique, in its own way.

There are weird-looking creatures. There is a prophecy. The good guys have a mentor who dies and then is magically resurrected. A horn is sounded. There is a character who's very prim and proper and carries a quiver full of arrows. There is a battle at the end. There is a blonde guy reluctantly brandishing a shiny sword on a horse leading the good guys into said battle even though they are desperately outnumbered.

Only, he does not give a speech before doing this.

I really missed the speech.

सगळीकडे-मराठीच-मराठी dept.

विंदा करंदीकरांना ज्ञानपीठ पुरस्कार काल जाहीर झाला. हे एक बरेच झाले. सरकार-दरबारी मराठी माणूस आपला शिरकाव करू शकत नाही हा सिद्धांत अखेर खोटा ठरला. ज्ञानपीठ पुरस्कार हा देखिल आमच्या कंपनीच्या Employee of the Quarter Award सारखा rotationने दिला जातो हे ऐकून बरे वाटले.

शाळेत असतांना एकदा विंदांच्या कवितेवर once-more व पहिले बक्षीस मिळवले होते. त्या वेळेस अजाणतेपणामुळे त्यांचा उल्लेख 'कवयित्री विंदा' असा केल्याबद्दल, उशिरा का होईना, मी इथे दिलगिरी व्यक्त करू ईच्छीतो. विंदा ऋषीतुल्य वगैरे आहेत असे आज पेपरमधे आल्यामुळे ही एक गफलत ते माफ करतीलच अशी माझी मनापासून खात्री आहे.

माफ केले नाहीच, तर आम्ही त्यांचेच शब्द त्यांच्यावरच उलटवू:

घेता

देणार्याने देत जावे;
घेणार्याने घेत जावे.

हिरव्यापिवळ्या माळावरून
हिरवीपिवळी शाल घ्यावी,
सह्याद्रीच्या कड्याकडून
छातीसाठी ढाल घ्यावी.

वेड्यापिशा ढगाकडून
वेडेपिसे आकार घ्यावे;
रक्तामधल्या प्रश्नांसाठी
प्रुथ्वीकडून होकार घ्यावे.

उसळलेल्या दर्याकडून
पिसाळलेली आयाळ घ्यावी;
भरलेल्याश्या भीमेकडून
तुकोबाची माळ घ्यावी

देणार्याने देत जावे;
घेणार्याने घेत जावे;
घेता घेता एक दिवस
देणार्याचे हात घ्यावे !

भाव(खाऊ)सरगम dept.

काल थोडासा ताप होता. तरी tickets काढले होते म्हणून ह्रदयनाथ मंगेशकरांच्या कार्यक्रमाला गेलो. या आधी दोनदा बघून झाला होता, पण पुण्यात नव्हे. एकदा बँकॅाक मधे, आणि एकदा नासिकला. बँकॅाकला वडीलांनी 'ती गेली तेंव्हा' ची फर्माईश केली होती. पंडीतजींनी ती स्वीकारली, पण "या कवितेचा अर्थ बाकीच्या लोकांना कळेल का?", असा टोमणा वर मारलाच.

वास्तवीक अशा खऊटपणाला काहीच कारण नव्हते. कदाचित आपण पुण्यात आहोत असे पळभर त्यांना वाटले असेल.

ही कविता माणिक गोडघाटे ऊर्फ कवी 'ग्रेस' यांची आहे. त्यांच्या कवितेवर अनेक लोक दुर्बोधतेचा आरोप करतात. वास्तवीक हा आरोप चुकीचा आहे. खरं म्हणजे, कष्ट केले तर त्यांच्या काही कवितांना अर्थ असावा असे भासते. ईतकेच काय, त्यात काही-काहींचा तर संदर्भांसकट अर्थ देखिल लागतो. त्यातलीच ही 'ती गेली तेंव्हा'. बाकीच्या कविता अगदीच NP-complete आहेत. प्रस्तुत कवितेचा अर्थ सांगणार्यास Millenium Prize देखिल सहज मिळू शकेल.

उखाणा

शुभ्र अस्थींच्या धुक्यांत
खोल दिठींतली वेणा
निळ्या आकाश-रेषेंत
जळे भगवी वासना.

पुढे मिटला काळोख --
झाली देऊळ पापणी;
आतां हळूच टाकीन
मऊ सशाचा उखाणा.

तरी, मैफल चांगलीच रंगली. ताप विसरलो. सकाळी २ वा. घरी परततांना हुडहुडी भरून ताप परत आला. आजचा दिवस झोपून आहे.

konquer-your-desktop dept.

KDE 3.5 is finally out. I've been using Beta 2 for some time now, and I can heartily recommend it. In addition to being serious eye-candy, this is probably the first significantly usable, yet powerful windowing system for Linux.

KDE has always been extremely configurable, and this version does not disappoint. Significant chznges include applets that you can drop onto the taskbar, transparency support that would really rock if X would let it, the Kopete IM client that finallly manages to kick the aweful GAIM in the arse, and a bunch of cool navigation tools in Konqueror, which i prefer over firefox.

I really hope more people use KDE, and bury that text-console simulator for VGA, more popularly known as GNOME.

there-is-no-sachin? dept.

An essay on NPR by someone called Penn Jillette, who justifies his belief that there is no God.

An argument that is very coherently and eloquently put forth.

when-harry-met-voldemort dept.

I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire over the weekend.

I liked many things about this movie.

But most of all, I liked the imaginative, and highly original plot twist at the end.

*** WARNING: SPOILER ***

The evil villain Voldemort (a noseless Ralph Fiennes), not having much of a corporeal existence until now, proves he is a character of some substance after all.

This is followed by a climactic wand-duel between Potter and his nemesis in a graveyard, where Harry loses his balance at a cliff edge, and hangs on precariously, gripping onto a tenuous fistful of English lawn.

Voldemort, gloating over his fallen prey, grins and says:

"Dumbledore never told you who your real parents were, Harry".

Harry winces.

"He told me you betrayed and killed my parents."

"No. I am your father, Lu ... errr ... Harry."

"NN..NNN...Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo"

"Search your feelings, Harry, you know this to be true. Join me, and together, we shall rule the galaxy."

"The galaxy eh? You sure about that?"

"... errr ... I mean ... errr ... well, at least a rather substantial part of Islington."

all-hail-st.sachin dept.

This article, written almost two years ago, but reposted by Cricinfo, speaks about Sachin in almost hushed, ecclesiastical tones. Apparently, according to the author, who slobbers, fawns and drools over Tendulkar as if he were a greater God among lesser ones, Tendulkar is the one true force of certainty in a despairing sea of chaos. The batsman's batsman, the cricketer's cricketer, the professional's professional...

I couldn't agree more.

get-me-to-the-church-on-time dept.

I saw an interesting discussion on live-in relationships on ETV Marathi a couple of days ago. The dicussion was hosted by journalist Nikhil Wagle, and the panel included three very eloquent women whose names, I'm afraid, I do not know/remember.

Since I'm essentially an armchair-anarchist, I pretty much don't care about these stupid issues, unless they affect me in some way.

However, since I'm getting married soon, the question that really interested me was this : What is the marriage process exactly? I mean how would you define a 'marriage'? For that matter, how would you exactly define a 'live-in relationship'? Where does a relationship stop being a marriage and become a live-in relationship?

OK, the traditionalists in the audience must be puzzled. How are live-in relationships the same thing as marriage? And so must the modernists, who want to throw the whole "vivaha-sanstha" out the window.

To me, the difference is a little fuzzy between the two. Why?

I ran a mental checklist of the characteristics of the two, and it all distilled down to this, if we abstract out the details of ritual, cast creed, religion, location, age and other unimportant things (such as sex and feelings ;-)).

Marriage is essentially a three-way contract. Two parties -- the bride and groom, enter into the contract, with a third party as witness, arbiter, judge and sentencer in case of contractual violations (most often, in India, the thord party is most likely to also be the mastermind behind the whole deal in the first place).

With live-in relationships. the first two parties dispense with the third party -- the enforcing authority. So its purely a two-way contract between man and woman.

With this bare-bones definition, the pros and cons of each are easily open to analysis.

In the case of marriage, if the third party enforcer is too strong, bad marriages can stifle the partners. For live-in relationships, since both partners forfeit the protection offered by society/law, the weaker of the two partners is vulnerable to being exploited by the stronger.

But I suspect that most of these people who appear on talk shows and defend or advocate live-in relationships are actually living in a marriage, although they don't know it :-). In their case, social approval is often tacit, and their peer community (people they hung out with in college, their school friends, family) will take on the 'enforcer' role without anybody being the wiser :-).

This gives rise to Anshuman's law of procedural equivalence :-). In short, this law states that all things being equal, a relationship shall be deemed as a wedding as long as it can be proven that a three-way contract exists and is subscribed to by the concerned parties, either explicitly, or tacitly.