English is a must

DNA today reports that Obama is famous for his English lessons in Japan. Japanese kids use Mr. Obama's speeches to learn English.
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"Other speeches may be better for learning vocabulary, but Obama's speeches make me excited about speaking English," Nobuhiro Murauchi, a learner said.
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                          This is exactly the kind of attitude i expected from a nation that has risen like a phoenix after being ravaged by two massive atom bombs. What i am pointing at is that they want to learn English and ensure that their language limitation which in some cases acts like their Achilles' heel is no more the case. The situation is no different in China. However, our leaders still think that English has no relevence in our country. Dude, we are no more a standalone country, we gotta leave in a ever evolving world. It is a mad competition out there where India as a nation has nothing but its vast knowledge base which is primarily standing because of its knowledge of English. India apart from being low cost is also the preffered software and BPO hub because of lot of english aware workforce.

                            I am not against people following other languages. Infact since more than 50% of country is still represented by villages where fight against hunger takes most of ones time letting him none to bother about learning anything let alone Engish; it makes sense to still have multiple languages. However, this does not mean the rest of the people should stop learning English. Also the first article tells us that it is not long before Japan and China will infuse into the market cheap, English-aware workforce which will quickly eat into the demand for Indian workforce.....

Male Or Female ?

It could not have been worse. An online test shows the following result

Well I do not know what algorithm is used to determine this above. The site claims that it works fine in the lab...wish it had worked good for me too :-). I remember Mantriji's comment on women.


Mantriji was once asked, "Mantriji, can you tell us why most women do not mind their own business?"

"Arre, ie to bahut simple hai...One they do not have mind, Two they do not have any business"....

Ps: I found the link to the test here.

When will i get a Girlfriend

13, 14 and 16 these are the ages of three teen youngsters who are claiming that they have fathered the baby of a 15 year old girl. This piece of news in yesterday's DNA edition makes me laugh....

Look what kids in other part of the world are doing...and i am still looking for a Girlfriend...God save me :-).

And to add insult to injury, the girl claimed that she feels that 13 year old Alfie (youngest of all) is the real father of the kid.

[Update]: Looks like these teens knew this quite early in their life.

Recession - Whatz that??

Well did I not tell you general...."India is not effected by recession"....

And why not. After reading this will not leave even an iota of doubt in your mind. It makes me wonder what our country could be if all this money was used for the right purposes instead of putting up some posters and airing of some ad campaigns? Mind Boggling sums of money are being used up by our politicians, before and after elections. It is a shame that the second largest economy is using such huge proportions of money in advertisements while more than 25% of the population is below poverty line.

God bless India!!

250 Gigs Richer!!

To satisfy my never ending need for larger real-estate in the computer world I decided to invest in a new secondary hard disk. The need emerged out of my habit of downloading lot of stuff from the internet which quickly gobbled up all the space in my current 120GB hard drive.

On a fine Saturday, when rest of the world was exchanging kisses and showering flowers on their loved ones (Since it was 14th of Feb, V-Day) , I set out to SP road to purchase the Hard disk. I had decided my budget of 2K for the hard disk. Any thing in that range and i would go for it.

These days the hard drives come in two flavours PATA and SATA. The former is getting obsolete due to higher speed offered by the SATA, which stands for Serial ATA. A little google exercise will tell you that ATA stands for AT-Attachement where AT stands for Adavanced technology. I quickly checked my mobo specs to find that it sported 4 SATA and 2 IDE channels. So the choice was done, I will buy a SATA hard disk. I checked if i had the necessary cable to connect the data line to the Motherboard (thankfully the Gigabyte motherboard had one shipped with it).

Gleefully, I boarded the bus to SP road to buy a SATA drive. After going into multiple shops i decided to buy it from a bloke who was ready to sell it to me for 2080 + 4% tax (for 250 Gigs).

"Bhaiyaa, Why dont you make it 2100 and close the deal", I asked.

"Nahi saab, I get only 25 Rs in this deal", was his answer ( as expected)

Theek hai...so i got the hard disk and raced back home. After opening the cabinet and stuck the hard disk in the bay connected the 7-pin cable into the data cable slot on the motherboard and the other end into the hard disk. Just then i realized, How do i connect the power cables to this thing. It is only then that i realized that my SMPS still belonged to the generation of PATA. It did not provide the necessary, SATA drive compatible sockets. The SATA drives require 3 different voltages in contrast with the PATA drives which could with just 12V and 5V. The 3.3V line which is new in the SATA drives are necessary only if the HOT Plugging feature of the SATA drives is needed. Thanks !! If it was not for this my 2K would have just gone down the drain. I rushed back to SP road to get an adapter for the Molex 4-Pin connector to the SATA power socket converter. After 30 minutes later and poorer by an equal amount of INR i was back in front of PC with the connector. I quickly connected it and then added the mounting screws and ensured the Hard-disk was fit snugly.

The BIOS was helpful and detected the drive instantly. However, in windows I had first partition the drive by going to the disk mangement section ( My Computer->manage). Soon, I had 3 new logical drives ( H,I,J) each of 80 gigs...A'int that cool. Right now it uses the Emulated IDE drivers for SATA provided in Windows XP. I have to still check if there is some way to get the AHCI drivers for this.

Microsoft - clean up act

First it was free upgrade from Vista to Windows 7, then this report which suggests that the days of Windows Vista are numbered and many organizations might just plan to skip the Vista and directly upgrade to Windows 7.

Looks like Microsoft has finally planned to do some damage control and clean up its act after providing the world with a disaster called Vista. Though the new sibling of Windows is supposed to be based on the previous one the reviews on the beta version are extremely positive (finally!!).

Also with the new venture of Microsoft to come up with its own retail chain for direct sale of its products it looks like a major turning point in the history of Microsoft. Hope this time around Microsoft comes up with something which will make the BSOD a history.

Computer games - Good or Bad?

Since its inception, video games have always been a topic of debate. There was a generation that complained that children lost their "real" childhood games and developed various ailments including obesity due to overdose of video games and lack of other kind of physical activities. Later concerns were raised on the impact on young eyes due to continuous viewing of the CRT monitors. Elsewhere there were reports of violent behaviour attributed due to overdose of computer games with violent scenes and situations.

All this while hard core gamers were being born all over the place. There were theories about how games where good for children. In fact it was reported here that computer games increase the visual attention. In fact currently the computer game industry has taken a colossal form with very big players like EA, Eidos Interactive, Sony having great stakes.

But the question still remains unanswered are they really good or bad?

My answer is that it all depends where we draw a line. For example, playing for relaxation or for just venting out your frustration on Need For Speed rather than on the road is definitely a good use of the game. At various occasions i have been able to learn something by playing games. Like i learnt about "Huang Di" the legendary chinese hero or about Sun Tzu who authored the ancient chinese text "Art of War" while i played the game "Emperor".

My brother who is an ace gamer when it comes to FPS games can tell you more about guns and firearms than a local cop and i can vouch for that. In fact he identifies the weapon, tells its make and finally the use and weak points. Of course this is not only because of the games like SWAT or Max Payne but also because he did a little bit of his own investigation. However, the idea remains that it intrigued his interest and he has definitly gained something because of this.

Now comes the bad part...There have been cases where people have played their way to destruction. Countries like China and Korea have dedicated deaddiction centers for compulsive gamers. In some cases computer game addiction is considered as bad as drug addiction.

To conclude, I feel that the old saying, "Too Much is Too Bad" is fully applicable to computer games as well.

Is Mr. Raju == God?

This article in rediff brought out a set of mixed feelings in me.

For quite some time I was not able to understand what the author was trying to convey. However, after giving it a thought i tend to agree on some points with the author while I disagree on most.

"I really want to thank Raju for giving some 54,000 Indians jobs at least for all these years."

Firstly, I think what Raju did was just to build his company. Looks like the word "mutualism" is unheard by the author. Neither the employees did something for free nor did Raju did charity by employing them. Point -1.

Next,

"Unfortunately people forget to thank God in sad times."

Are you trying to say Raju is god? Point -2
"How can we exclude banks who gave hefty loans without
true verification? How can we exclude the Andhra Pradesh chief minister
who was lenient towards Raju ahd his fellow businessmen?"
Of course, we cannot and should not. That is why there have been arrests and investigations in Maytas. Even PWC was issued a showcause notice. Point -3
"How can people forget that Satyam launched its
offices right at the doorsteps of a residential colony, where people
could simply walk to work?"
I dont know why they did that. Maybe there was some hidden motive even behind this. but this definitly is not something great for which we should thank Satyam. Most of the time the decision is based on various factors like availiblity of talent pool, cost of the infrastructure and maitainance etc. Infosys has a campus in Mangalore, not because they have a soft corner for Mangloreans, It is because there is ample talent available in the surronding area ( due to the large number of engineering colleges in south Karnataka) and it is available for a very minimal price.

"I am not saying that ALL Satyam employees are
bad. I have known very dedicated people too, but my point is simple:
before pointing fingers at others, introspect a bit."

Ok we are already negative 3 so i will go a bit in the positive direction. Yes, It is true that we have the right to point fingers at other only if we are all very clean ourselves. Point +1
However, we can still speak for the 1000's of people who invested their money in the Satyam stock beliveing every word that Mr. Raju used to utter in his Annual General Body meetings. If it was not for this lie, probably they would have been happier and a tart richer perhaps. In fact even till the last minute there was an attempt to raise the stock price. Raju might have surrendered but it is not an act of courage but an act of helplessness.

The Sewer Man

Sad, but this report shows the sad state of affairs in our country. I heard a movie dialogue some time back

" Meri Zindagi mehengi, aur Maut sasti ho gayi hai".

( My living is costly and death is cheap!!)

I wonder what Rewa Ram must be feeling when he has to live through the hell every day. I used to stay at near a open gutter a few years back. It was usually a shocking sight to see Municipality workers wading through Knee deep filth in the gutter wearing only slippers. And folks, guess why they where in there? It is because "educated" folks like us had used the gutter as a part time dustbin, leading to blockage at several places. I remember once during heavy rains I saw a whole bunch of old mattresses that came by.

It is very easy for us to comment that the government is not doing anything about the sewage system which in most metro's clogs during rains. However, what we do not realize it is a great health hazard for any one to clean these things when they are so flooded with all the waste that we have put in there knowingly or otherwise!!.

Solution: Have a clean garbage collection system (separate packages for different types garbage). Ensure that the sewage system is not clogged by throwing garbage into the sewers. It is just common sense right?
But then ....

"Common sense is the most uncommon in people!!" Right?

Pic of the month

Ok, this is a snap that i had taken while i was in Germany for one of my projects.

Computer for Rs.500....Anybody interested?

DNA reports

"Human resources development minister Arjun Singh will launch a
prototype of the specially designed portable computers in Tirupati on
February 3, and they will be in the market in six months"

I exclaimed what crap!!....After Tata's 1 lakh car this is the next
most ridiculous piece of information i have heard about ultra low cost products. I wonder what
this computer would be made up of ( nano computer?). Even the cheapest
8-32 bit micro processors will not be able to make such a computer...I
am not sure if this has got something to do with Nanotechnology....However, even if it did would it cost so less?....or is it just a typo and they missed the last zero ??

[UPDATE] Ok i take back my words above

Better Late Than Never!!

I do not know if this is too early for me to pass a judgement, nevertheless i will write this piece.

In my professional career of past 4 odd years, I have worked with many cultures. I have worked with Americans, Germans and finally the good old Indians. I have seen them as counterparts, friends, bosses and customers. It was but natural for me to look at the good and bad parts of these cultures as i came across them.

Here I am just comparing the adherence to time and punctuality that i came across when i interacted with people from other  countries. I have drawn the following conclusion:

"When it comes to punctuality, then Germans are the best and Indians are the worst. More so Indian's do not value anybody else's time apart from their own"

It is very easy to for us to find people who keep grumbling because something did not happen on time or someone did not start or come to a meeting on time...However, they themselves consider being late to a meeting as a status symbol. We Indians seem to have misunderstood the meaning of

 "Better late than Never"

So what we need to do? Some tips are availabe here .

I remember our course teacher at TCS had come up with a new policy. Every late comer was asked to pay a fine of  Rs. 10 and he would collect all the money and donate it in Charity.

If you are wondering what prompted me to write this piece in desperation....It was just to vent out the frustration of having waited for more than one hour for a person in my company only to be told that all i had to do was to write my address on a piece of paper and keep it on his table. This after i met him in the morning when he was relatively free.

Sometimes it makes me wonder why I was not born in Germany!!

@Note: I found a lot of articles online which rubbish the German Punctuality....all i got to say is...Guys try India!!

Forwarding Forwards!!

4.5 Gigs in 3 and half years, that is the size of my official mail box which i backed up recently. From what i can remember right about 30% of this mail is just forwards about some person trying to either tell me that I will win lottery if i forwarded it to 10 other victims like me or some other story of that sort. About 5% of this size is contributed by the disclaimer which is attached to each email warning about misuse of the email and about how we should destroy it if one is not the intended recipient.

What this shows is that about 60% of the traffic that is generated in corporate networks is really what is needed and the rest is something that is caused due to forwards, spam and other insignificant communication. However, I guess reading forwards and forwarding them again is what makes emailing fun!!

So as long as our companies are happy to provide us with bandwidth, I am sure we software Engineers will definitely get their share of fun by forwarding forwards!!.