oms-the-man dept.

Thanks to Om Malik for the pownce invite.

I have 4 pownce invites for anyone else who's interested.

safely-anonymous dept.

A site that could do without some publicity -- The Hype Machine.

web-three-point-oh dept.

Here's a potentially high-profile site that claims to use Adobe AIR extensively: Pownce seems suspiciously like a web-based IM system. Does the world need another Instant Messenger, you might ask? So did I, but perhaps the delivery and usage model is novel, so I have queued up for an account.

Pownce, incidentally, was started by Kevin Rose (current age: 30 years), founder of digg, Internet tech celebrity podcaster and entrepreneur.

AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is an interesting piece of technology that should go head-to-head against Micro$oft's recently announced Silverlight technology. These 'integrated runtime' APIs are really the generation-next of AJAX, one step above the Google Web Toolkit and (not too sure about this) Google Gears. Essentially, they provide a language independent API for generating animation and other rich content objects that was the previous domain of Flash.

It seems that, in the coming years, all applications, in one form or the other, will be built as "webapps". That is, they could be either desktop or browser based, but they will have a significant Internet-based component. Naturally, webapp developers should be increasingly drawn towards these technologies that provide easier development models and hide the nittygritties of asynchronous application design for the Internet.

Both offerings differ a little in approach though. The AIR philosophy seems to be to let developers use existing web technology like Flash etc. to build browser-independent desktop web applications that can also provide offline storage capability. Silverlight, on the other hand, leverages .NET runtime technology to allow developers to build browser plugins that are more integrated with the host OS and that provide richer offline functionality.

sigh... dept.

11 Reasons Not to Buy an iPhone.

Sigh, the heart needs its consolations, sometimes.

and-the-future-is dept.

something-to-think-about dept.

"But you go to a great school, not for knowledge so much as for arts and habits; for the habit of attention, for the art of expression, for the art of assuming at a moment's notice a new intellectual posture, for the art of entering quickly into another person's thoughts, for the habit of submitting to censure and refutation, for the art of indicating assent or dissent in graduated terms, for the habit of regarding minute points of accuracy, for the habit of working out what is possible in a given time, for taste, for discrimination, for mental courage and mental soberness."

- William Johnson Cory (1861)

Hmmm...

good-artists-borrow-great-artists-steal dept.

Hmmm...both Microsoft and Apple coming out with multi-touch technology in the same year???

The natural question, given the past history of these companies is: Whom did they steal this technology from? ;-)

Here's one possible answer:

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/65
http://www.perceptivepixel.com/
http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/

These companies are really the "Anu Malik"s of the technology world :-).

this-week-on-the-web dept.

The Web 2.0 Social Networking revolution continues. Some new sites this week:

Roy Added me to this nice site, where I've been writing some (real) book reviews:

Goodreads - Write and view book reviews, share book lists.

I'd been reading about this site for some time, finally checked it out:

Twitter - A mini blog to put in all the little things you did during the day. This could be very addictive. And a privacy risk. But I think the notion of privacy and private v/s public content is just going through a complete paradigm shift.

Twitter's no relation to the TWiT podcast, but here are other links that I heard about on TWiT:

Tumblr - Similar to twitter, but you can also "tumbleblog" links to images and videos. I can now get a digital trail of where Leo Laporte has been on the web. Scary :-).

Audible.com - Audio books online. One free audio book download.

StumbleUpon - Pretty interesting site. Claims to "learn what you like and make better recommendations".

another-poor-indian-grad-student dept.

After putting down people with graduate study plans for years, I am preparing to join their ranks. I am glad I never really lost my way irretrievably in the maze of temptations that jobs can be. There is nothing more empowering that education. A job can provide this, but I had felt a bit stagnant, lost, mentorless for a few years now. I think a new environment is the only cure for this malaise, and no better place than a decent US graduate school.

I am putting these thoughts down as a personal amusement, really, to see how much I agree/disagree with them a few years down the line.

roots dept.

The human migration from Africa, illustrated:

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/

from-the-firing-line dept.

In the Line of Fire is the sort of book that’s worth your money. For a book written by a President/Dictator still in power, its contents are truly unprecedented. For they may be inaccurate or colored to suit the author, but they do create a window into Pakistan and the mind of its leader, the irrepressible General Pervez Musharraf.

The book makes one thing crystal clear. Musharraf, when he was a baby, accidently fell into a cauldron of testosterone. If he didn’t, he sure wishes he had, and any statement, repeated oft enough, becomes true. So the book is an interesting documentation of the thinking process of an out-and-out alpha male.

It also serves a grim reminder, that it very easily could have been written by someone else. Musharraf has already survived two assassination attempts.

His description of the coup against Nawaz Sharif (or in his own words, the the counter coup) reads like something out of Forsyth or Ludlum (no, its not that bad actually). And here we see Musharraf preening his feathers and parading his plumage in all its smartness. When he describes how the coup was led by officers in command of various battalions around Pakistan, all appointed personally by him, from a pool of obseqious juniors and relatives, and all of this when he was incommunicado, in mid-air between Sri-Lanka and Pakistan, I couldn’t help visualizing a smirking Musharraf twirling his moustache and declaring triumphantly, “So who’s got the biggest one, eh?”

maximum-prejudice dept.

The book Maximum City by Suketu Mehta is a classic example of how amplified stereotypes and a healthy dose of prurience can sell like hot cakes. Suketu Mehta does a good job of caricaturing himself in the opening few pages. He is a non-resident Gujarati, returning to Mumbai to write a bestseller. He is surrounded by wealthy traders, who live in a ghetto-like apartment complex. For his subject matter, he targets either the grotesque, or the glamorous (sometimes, both at the same time). Right from the outset, his clear motive is to find the most senational, scandalous material and write a cheap paperback that’ll sell millions.

But here’s what really riled me up (apart form the fact that he’s a milllionare): Marathi to him, in his own words, is a language that sounds like beating a tin drum. Traditionally, this would get outfits like the Shiv-Sena and the Sambhaji Brigade to go on the rampage, attacking brokerage houses and over-turning Dhoklas and Gujarati Thalis. However, after I read about the Sena’s new approach, I decided to resort to a coherent, logical counter-argument to disprove Mr.Suketu’s** parochial notions about Maharashtrians and Marathi.

**(I thought of calling him Mr.Mehta, but that would just be a lot of noise to Google’s indexing engine. Besides, I didn’t want to confuse you into thinking this was an article on some stock-market scam. Also, I felt that ‘Mr.Suketu’ really brings out that sinister, diabolical, villainish aspect of him that I really want to highlight here)

The basis of my argument is this thesis: the sound of any language is best represented by its poetry. Here, at the poet’s disposal, lies the entire vocabulary of the language, and all the permutations within its complete syntactic, semantic and phonetic space. Clearly, conclusions we draw by reading some representative poems aloud would be based on a far more scientific base, than relying on the wholly unsubstantiated claims that Mr. Suketu makes .

So, here are a few lines from some Popular Modern*** Marathi poems. If you can read devanagri, just recite these lines aloud a few times, and don’t leave out the poets’ names either:

***(Popular Modern Marathi literature is anything published after 1857. Anything published after 1947 is Post-Modern. Beyond 1987, Marathi writing is rumored to exist but is possibly so avant-garde that it has not been published for the greater common good. The ‘Modern’ tag has to be applied selectively, though. For instance, any Marathi literature after 1857 that is actually read by Maharashtrians is just Popular Literature).

खादाड असे माझी भूक
चतकोराने मला न सूख
कूपांतील मी नच मंडूक
- कृष्णाजी केशव दामले (केशवसुत)

ऐल तटावर पैल तटावर हिरवाळी घेउन
निळासावळा झरा वाहतो बेटाबेटांतुन.
- त्र्यंबक बापूजी ठोंबरे (बालकवी)

पिपात मेले ओल्या उंदीर
माना पडल्या मुरगळल्याविण
- बाळ सिताराम मर्ढेकर

अंगणात गमले मजला, संपले बालपण माझे
खिडकीवर धुरकट तेंव्हा, कंदील एकटा होता
- माणिक गोडघाटे (ग्रेस)

झुक्-झुक्-झुक्-झुक् आगीन-गाडी, धुरांच्या रेषा हवेत काढी
पळती झाडे पाहुया, मामाच्या गावाला जाऊया…
- Unknown

Clearly, this sound is hardly anything as underwhelming as a tin drum. For me, its more evocative of the rolling thunder, an avalanche, Shivaji’s horsemen riding out of the Sahayadris or perhaps a fast local pulling out of Boribunder station. These judgments are subjective, of course, but surely no one will agree with Mr.Suketu’s wholly unsubstantiated claims.

This is another instance of outsiders getting the better of Maharashtrians, taking advantage of their generous and tolerant nature. Clearly the Marathi community has to up the ante a bit, and make its voice heard. Only then will other Indians take notice, and go: “Its a plane! Its a storm! Its a train! Naah, its just those Marathis talking…”

we-have-moved dept.

Not that you would care, but this blog has taken up new residence at:

http://l1w0lf.wordpress.com

Reason being mostly, Google's obdurate reluctance to add tag-based indexing to blogspot, and the general malaise that seems to afflict the blog search button at the top of the page. If I can't search what I have written myself, I can hardly expect the millions who hang on to my every word to do better.

karla dept.

Climb up on a hill, through winding narrow stone stairs
Feel the mingling of the sweat and the swearing
Under the breath, and the silence of a million thoughts
Overlaid by the thousand unsparing voices

Ashamed to add your own, out of place.

Fear the smell, foreign and unknown even in daylight
And the strange lingering expanse that preys on itself
You can hear the clamor and feel the gaudy lines
Stretching finitely before your eyes in ecstatic motion

That is not your destination.

Your destination is a hole in the wall behind it all.
Deserted by those who carved their souls into
heartless rock, Treaded by the curious soles of
those who feel lost, and yet find their way

Here, within these stone walls.

could've-been-verse dept.

This is a great poem I came across long ago while watching the Mel-Gibson-directed movie The Man Without A Face. The poem was written by a nineteen-year-old American Pilot named John Gillespie Magee, Jr. during World War II, only a few months before he died in a plane crash.

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

.tded-nevaeh-ot-yawriats

And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all are one and one is all

old-stories dept.

I had read this really thrilling short story in school which I had been desperately seeking. I had forgotten the name of the author, and everything else but the name of one of the main characters -- Rainsford.

Finally located it today. The story is The Most Dangerous Game by American writer Richard Connell.

dubya-and-his-double dept.

George W.Bush at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

quota-unquota dept.

Reservations may be on the cards for the private sector and IIT/IIMs. Leave aside the inevitable emotional outcry, I'm trying to understand the implications from a sociological point of view.

This may be a bad idea for small or fledgling companies. Most companies start out as ventures between friends, or families, many of them from the same community. It may be a good survival strategy during this nascency to depend on people you know and trust.

For larger companies, it may not make much of a difference. Most companies rely on the top 10% (just a figure with no empirical backing -- an intuitive guess) of the employees to do most of the decision making, and the rest mostly follow their lead. In such a case, apart from changing the demographics of the bottom 90%, reservations would really have no effect on the quality of output of the company.

Similarly for the IIT/IIMs, the difference will be in the racial/caste composition of the bottom 70-80% of graduates, and won't matter in the larger scheme of things.

So if you are high-caste, and of average ability, you have to make way for someone from a lower caste who is somewhere around the same level as you. Considering the fact that high-castes in India have been enjoying a monopoly on higher learning for centuries, you would expect their progeny to be more enterprising in keeping that lead by working harder.

elegy-for-a-mogul dept.

This is the most interesting song I've heard for quite some time now -- Boom Like That from the recent album Shangri-La by Mark Knopfler. As usual, the music is smooth, and the guitar rocks. But its the wry, whimsical lyrics that really grabbed me. I couldn't figure them out at first - they seemed to be some sort of stream-of-consciousness juxtaposition of words at first. But the word 'Kroc' rang a bell, and I finally got it, thanks to a little help from this page in wikipedia, and this interview on NPR.

Boom Like That
-- Mark Knopfler

I'm going to San Bernardino ring-a-ding-ding
Milkshake mix is thus my thing now
These guys bought a heap of my stuff
And I gotta see a good thing shooting up now
Folks line up all down the street
Now I am seeing this girl devour her meat now
And then I get it Wham as clear as day
My pulse begins to hammer then I hear a voice say

These boys have got this down ought to be one of these in every town
These boys have got the touch It's clean as a whistle and it don't cost much
Wham bam don't wait long, shake fries plenty of gum
How about that friendly name, heck, every little thing gotta stay the same
Or my name is not Kroc, that's Kroc with a K
A crocodile is not spelt that way now
It's Dog eat dog, rat eat rat
Kroc style - Boom like that

You gentlemen are to expand
You're gonna need a helping hand now
So gentlemen well what about me?
We'll make a little business history now
Well we'll build it up and I'll buy him out
The man they made me grind it out now
They open up a new place flippin meat
So I do too, right across the street

I got the main I need town, sell em' in the end and it all shuts down
Sometimes you gotta be an S.O.B. you wanna make a dream reality
Competition sent em south, they're gonna drown or we're hosing em' out
Do not pass go go straight to hell
I smell a lotta meat .....da smell

Or my name is not Kroc that's Kroc with a K
A crocodile is not spelt that way now
Ohh it's Dog eat Dog, Rat eat Rat
Dog eat Dog, Rat eat Rat now
Ohh it's Dog eat Dog, Rat eat Rat
Kroc style - Boom like that