An EPIC struggle

Background : Must take GRE soon. Need passport to do so. The ridiculously complicated and convoluted application requires that I get my voter ID card or the Electoral Photo Identity Card (EPIC).

Setting : South Bangalore, in a run-down non-descript 10ft x 7ft x 10 ft concrete cuboid, which is a miserable excuse for the ‘regional electoral office‘

Date : 7 March 2009, 11 am

Long serpentine queue outside the shack. Count around 25 people in front of me…….. 30 minutes pass……… Only 5 people now…. Vague thoughts of nice lunch at home wander in my mind… only 4 people left …………. blink ….. there goes the power and with it any chance of getting a card soon…. Operator says ‘Aenu madakka aagallaa saar, naalakku gantege banni, aavaagaa sigathe‘.. As any true citizen of India knows, arguing with such folks is about as effective as arguing with a banana, so I return home foul-mouthed and empty handed.

4 hours later…………..

Setting : The same god damned shack

Same long queue, with a few familiar faces. Wait for another 25 minutes….. My turn to get my photo taken (finally!!)…. Aghast to find all details (my initials and address included) are utterly wrong…. A pithy but heated exchange of words with the operator… details fixed, now for the photo…. Smiled into the webcam as blandly as possible… there… all done.
.
.
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I wish..
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As I was waiting outside the shack to have my card given to me, I get called back in…… ‘Systemalli yeno problem aagidhe saar, run-time error, innondhu sala photo thogoll beku’ (runtime error in system and must get my photo taken again)… Thoughts in my head in order are :
1.WTF?
2.Why me?
3.Are these guys completely incompetent?
4.And I thought this couldn’t get more f*d up.
.
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Stand in queue for another 20 min…. Correct the details once more… stare at the camera once more, albeit in a more disgruntled fashion…. Was so irritated during the second shot that it showed on the photo… a friend of mine told me I looked like a terrorist… There go my chances of getting a passport without hassles..

Observations on this misadventure:

1. There are some places which must have uninterrupted power.. hospitals, railway stations, police stations and effing electoral booths!
2. Hope the Karnataka Govt does not use banking software from the same company that made the electoral software.
3. The ‘Silicon valley of India’ should ensure that its civil servants can operate a computer. No point in having an ignoramus trying to issue voter ID cards.

 

Ce n’est pas un laptop

A little bit of background first. A few years back, some men had a vision “to break down world barriers of race, age, gender, language, class, economics and geography” by increasing access to information, especially in the digital form. The proposal was put forward at Davos in ‘05 and those amazing people at the MIT Media Lab decided to help out. Just one year later, they came up with this:

A gem of a device, which had everything, built in Wi-Fi, built-in video cam,  speakers and microphones, 3 USB ports (take that, Macbook Air) , a hybrid stylus/touch pad. All this for just $100, they said. Sure, the cost later ran up to $140, but it’s still a great technical and economic milestone. Give those MIT engineers a couple of years and I’m sure they’ll breach the $100 barrier. This laptop-cum-gamepad-cum-eBook reader-cum <everything except the kitchen sink> is so brilliant that around 1 million laptops have already been purchased by individuals and governments around the world.

A few months back, our very own MHRD (Ministry of Human Resources Development) announced that it was going to unveil a $10 laptop. My first reaction was ‘Wha…??? MHRD? $10 ????No way’ It didn’t take me long to figure out that most of the online forums took the same view. But it was an official MHRD announcement anyway and that was it. A wait and watch game till the big unveiling. Of course, this is the period where the media cashes in. And boy! did they ever. The as-yet-unannounced laptop was called an OLPC killer and comics depicted Mr. Negroponte having nightmares about it. Nobody paused to wonder if it was all too good to be true. Sure, a lot of good press for the MHRD but where was the laptop?

The Big Unveiling

The device was called ‘Sakshat’, which meant ‘before your eyes’. Journos gathered at the function sure couldn’t believe what was before their eyes. It was a 10″x5″ white plastic brick with a couple of ports around the edges. That was it. Then the MHRD officials announced that it was a ‘wireless memory access system’. Well, that’s that folks. It’s a glorified 2GB pen drive (yes the ones you carry) with scratchy Wi-Fi access. Predictably, the press tore the unveiling fiasco into pieces. Scathing, cynical (and more damagingly, indifferent) posts appeared in news-sites and tech-blogs like Engadget. ‘Designed by students of Vellore Institute of Technology, scientists in Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, IIT-Madras, UGC and MHRD‘, quoted the articles, almost wondering if it was the best the country could do. I wouldn’t have minded if India too produces a wannabe low cost laptop, but for Pete’s sake put up a decent presentation. And cut down on all the effing hype. I mean, look at it. Does that look like the kind of device that can revolutionize the Indian education system? Didn’t think so.

We (the readers and the press) should probably be a bit more discerning about implausible stories like these and not get carried away by rumours, but still , they promised us so much and we got so little. I’m not outraged, just incredibly annoyed.

 

Smoke and Mirrors

I just finished watching a movie, so here’s the blog’s first movie review post:

Film : The Illusionist (2006)

Film running time : 1hr 45 min
But you can watch it in : 1hr ( if you skip all the boring bits)

Summary

The film has a pretty boring (almost bollywood-ish) storyline.
Boy meets magician > Very impressed > Starts learning/doing magic > boy meets girl  > Now girl very impressed > Two plan to run away > plans foiled as boy finds out (to his utter dismay) that he can’t just magic himself and his ladylove out of her family’s reach > boy curses his fate and vows revenge > goes to china (why??.. no idea) > learns exotic chinese tricks > returns as great magician > concocts twisted/convoluted/crazy/implausible/weird scheme along with his ladylove (now all grown up and stately) to take her from her fiancee (The Austrian crown prince!) > Plan successful !! (Saw that coming… from a mile away) > Crown prince killed in the process, but at the end of the movie, no one cares

Pros:

• Edward Norton’s good. ‘Fight club’ good
• Paul Giamatti’s role is also well done. Cool german accent!

Cons :

• As I said, implausible story line. No explanations for Norton’s magic tricks (Chinese zen magic, I presume)
• Has one of those very predictable ‘twist’ endings
• The visuals (settings/CGI) are average at best. Nothing like the ones in Prestige
• Norton’s very good, but he’s not Christian Bale

Verdict

Not particularly engaging, but has enough flashy moments to interest you for about an hour. If you have a bit more time, go in for ‘The Prestige’. As my favorite film review site FWFR puts it : Norton’s magician lacks Prestige

 

An evil number ?

No, I’m not talking about 666. My post is about the other number, one that is increasingly monopolizing our online lives. Yes, that number. 10^100. a.k.a Google

This post is rather impromptu. I was vetti and searching the web at random when I came across this whopper

See that “This site may harm your computer” link there? Google puts that link next to sites they don’t want you to see (Out of concern for protecting your computer, of course). Bemused as I was, I decided to search for something else, just on a whim. No points for guessing what I saw.

A technical glitch, no doubt, but I can’t shake off the feeling that if an online war were ever to start, this is how Google would draw first blood.

Seriously, all jokes and vague references apart, there are reasons why we should all be apprehensive. Google’s officially stated mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. Note however that ‘universally’ does not include the Chinese. One can only wonder what the word ‘evil’ means to an organization which has so convoluted a meaning for ‘universally accessible’.

And, no this is not a ‘Hate Google’ post. I like Google. In fact, I love their products. I use Gtalk, Gmail and Google reader almost religiously. I think those guys at Google are brilliant managers and even better engineers. I’m just apprehensive about the feeling that I’m putting too many eggs into a Google’s basket. And the upcoming GDrive does not allay my fears. I also wrote this post, so that once the day of Google World Domination comes, I can stand up and say ‘Hah! I told you so’.

 

In support of Mr.Thompson

For all the people not in touch with the times: Till recently, Gaza was the center of a bitter conflict (isn’t it always) between Israel and Hamas (again as usual). Now that the war is officially over (since 17th of this month I gather), aid has started to pour out to Gazans, who, in addition to living under fear of death are also living under threat of starvation.

The ‘concerned’ charities in England (under the banner of the DEC, Disasters Emergency Committee) approached the BBC to air an aid appeal for the gazans. The BBC refused, citing neutrality of news. Predictably this raised a furor of mammoth proportions with everyone from the Archbishop of Kent to IAEA’s ElBaradei joining in protest.

Since you are reading my blog, I’ll assume you want to hear my opinion too. (After all, my blog is not a news service). I think the BBC was right in refusing to air the appeal and firmly support Mr. Mark Thompson’s (he’s the Director-General of the BBC) stand. Here’s why.

The logistics/practicality argument : The first superficial point is this. There is a very high probability that the appeal money is not going to reach the intended citizens. It is very likely that most of the aid money is going straight into Hamas’ purses and will inevitably be used to fuel further wars and cause more suffering and misery. The very suffering and misery the DEC is trying to alleviate. As I said, this is only a superficial point. There are many other conflict/disaster zones where aid is being pumped in by various agencies (not least the UN), where most of the aid fails to reach the suffering masses (Case in point : Zimbabwe). If the logistics is cleared up, this point becomes moot. This point has however been invoked before to deny airing rights for 3 other appeals, so this is not something new that the BBC just made up for defending their stand.

The neutrality argument : What made the BBC turn down an appeal so many people so zealously support? The BBC turned it down because they (and I) believe it violates the one supreme, most sacred dogma of any free press: Neutrality of News. In Thompson’s own words,

We have and will continue to cover the human side of the conflict in Gaza extensively across our news services where we can place all of the issues in context in an objective and balanced way. After looking at all of the circumstances, and in particular after seeking advice from senior leaders in BBC Journalism, we concluded that we could not broadcast a free-standing appeal, no matter how carefully constructed, without running the risk of reducing public confidence in the BBC’s impartiality in its wider coverage of the story. Inevitably an appeal would use pictures which are the same or similar to those we would be using in our news programmes but would do so with the objective of encouraging public donations. The danger for the BBC is that this could be interpreted as taking a political stance on an ongoing story.

The BBC is a news agency with the sworn responsibility to report news as it happens, exactly as it happens. No exaggerations, no prejudices, no extrapolations. Just news. And if the price to pay for holding on to this is to be unfairly branded ‘a cold and heartless organization’, then so be it.

Besides, the BBC has its credence on the line here. As Tony Burman, editor-in-chief of CBC News said, “Every news organization has only its credibility and reputation to rely on“. So, it’s not surprising that BBC is resisting all forms of pressure.

My respect for the BBC has just raised a notch when I compare it with our quarrelsome, sophomoric news channels that will milk any news for all it’s worth without second thoughts. Way to go BBC!

 

Invisibly Yours

The second reason why I stopped using Yahoo! messenger was the “Sign in as invisible” checkbox. (The first reason was that it totally sucked, but that’s beside the point). I’m pretty sure it was put in there just to satisfy the voyeuristic tendencies of the large IM crowd. The idea that there could be someone on your chat list who can see you while remaining hidden is quite loathsome.

So I migrated to gtalk. To quote Digital Inspiration, “Google Talk is a wonderfully honest tool, which shows you as idle only when you are idle”. At first the deal was simple. A green dot meant you could chat freely. A red dot was a clear DND sign. An orange one meant that the other guy was doing other things. Simple Clean Elegant and so Google.

Then “Always idle” showed up and suddenly half my contacts list went orange. I don’t know about you, but I can’t have an easy conversation with someone who claims to be busy or idle. And gtalk’s “You may be interrupting” warning really does not help things.

Fine, I’ll admit that online statuses don’t mean much to many people anymore. So the “always idle” app seems to be a remittable offence compared to the more insidious “invisible” option.

In one fell swoop, Google removed any form of credibility in chat. By mimicking Yahoo! and other messengers, they had once again let Peeping Toms into our midst. Again, chatting with a ‘grey dot’ is an unsettling experience. It’s a bit like talking to a ghost. I know it’s all done in the name of ‘user convenience’, but I for one think that my chat quality has taken a beating and I haven’t seen a raise in my ‘user convenience’.

Ranting as always,
Aravind

 

Dizzy

Although xkcd is bang on target about Wikipedia, when you’ve spent as much time as I have on it , you’re bound to come across something interesting. I found this jewel of an illusion yesterday :

Look at the picture closely :

Is she spinning clockwise or counter-clockwise ?

She’s spinning clockwise, right? Wrong… Look again
Counter-clockwise, then ? Wrong again….
Surely she’s spinning in only one direction……. Strike three and you’re out….

The funda here is that since there are absolutely no depth cues in the clip, the figure can be arbitrarily assumed to pirouette either way…. But the clincher is that this is a bistable illusion, meaning once you begin to think she’s spinning one way ( say clockwise ), she’ll continue to appear to rotate that way until you try really hard to force your brain to believe otherwise…. Took me about a minute see it go either way… Try it out, it’s really worth it.

If you still don’t get it, consult your opthalmologist or neurologist.

 

A lot of ranting and some sport

My vacation sucked OK. All 3 months of it … I was absolutely, totally and completely vetti*. and without an Internet connection.. (My house was being renovated and the workers were working on bubblegum time … the work stretched throughout the hols)… Then I come back to the hostel to find that I won’t have net access for another (day week month, even they didn’t know) Believe me, it was everything I could do to stop shooting expletives at everyone I see. Ergo no post for a long time…..

Class wasn’t much better either. Our department has obviously gone to great lengths to make sure that the fifth semester is our most difficult yet (If you aren’t bored to death by this course, you’re fit to work in a steel plant). You know I’m pissed off when I’m writing arbit posts when I should be cramming for quizzes.

Bored as I may be, I still don’t write stories about superheroes with veggie fetishism (Sorry man, couldn’t resist). So I know I’m not the vettiest* guy in the campus.

In the midst of all this ranting, I forgot to write about the purpose of this post – The Olympics..

It started off with ‘their world, their dream’ and their ridiculous dancing stickman. Then came the extravagant, but ‘under-budget’ opening ceremony (Yeah, right!! … I’m thinking 300 million USD minimum), where we were all (4 billion of us) taken for a ride by one little girl in a red dress. (Children shouldn’t lip sync, its just wrong).. Then, there was Michael Phelps, who showed us just how much we all suck… Bolt was crazy fast and the Chinese gymnastics team was crazy young (Fake passports and birth certificates don’t count)… Abhinav, Suhil and Vijendar made sure the country’s contingent didn’t look like a bunch of morons and gave our self patronizing netas something to talk about…Amidst all this, the Chinese Govt was busy suppressing protests and re-educating (read threatening/brainwashing) octogenarians. (WTF?)

I’ll admit I’m a bit biased, but as this is my blog post, you’ll have to put up with that I guess.

Feeling a bit sleepy, and beginning to get a feeling you don’t give a damn about what I’ve said so far, so I’ll stop typing now.

* For the uninitiated

Definition

1) Vetti   \vĕ-t׳ē\
(a)  What you put when you’ve got nothing else to put.
(b)  What 90% of the junta are ‘putting’ at any given time.
(c)  What you are ‘putting’ right now.

 

To-do

Ever heard of Randy Pausch? I hadn’t. Till last night that is. Google Hot Trends introduced him to me. For those of you who don’t know who he is, he’s a Professor of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon University. But wait, that’s not what he’s famous for. Last year he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and it is almost certain that he’ll not be around to see 2009. Last year, he gave his last public lecture aptly, his hypothetical ‘final talk’. In it he reminisces about his childhood ambitions and goals, a kind of to-do list, if you wish.

Since my C slot assignment wasn’t going anywhere, I decided to read a transcript of the lecture. I was stunned at his liveliness, I mean, that guy did push-ups on stage. Besides, the lecture was a real nice, not the most inspirational one you’ll come across, but a nice one nonetheless. It was about “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”. He had things like playing in the NFL, meeting Captain Kirk… you know, usual boyhood fantasies.

So, this got me thinking … what would my to-do list have??

– 2 minutes later –

• Get an asteroid named after you: Now who wouldn’t want that. Imagine a newspaper headline reading “2053 Aravind to destroy the all life on Earth”. Cool hanh? I mean, everyone from J. K. Rowling to Clarke to James Bond have his or her own asteroid. I really want that piece of real estate in the sky.

• Something more down to earth: Master Hindi: Easy task you’d think, wouldn’t you. OK, I’ll give you the stats. I’ve had Hindi as my second language for 5 years and third language for a further 3 and I still cant write a decent sentence to save my life. Still think it’s an easy task?

• Build a railgun – Long time ambition this one… I want to build one just to hear if it makes the same whoosh as it does in Quake III. Also I could license it to armies around the world and get millions in cash… But it’s the whoosh I’m really after

• Go to space and see the horizon curve out of sight: Believe me, I’ve seen pictures of it and its wonderful.

• Get myself an entry into the Guinness book: Is there an entry for most hours spent on wikipedia??

• When a teacher says ‘If you are not interested you may walk out of class’ actually do. Now, I’ve wanted to do this for ages, but as you can probably figure, I’m too chicken to try it. Maybe, when I have less to lose, say in my fourth year, I’ll give it a try…….

• Understand Wachowski dialogues without running to the dictionary: It is impossible I tell you, simply impossible. Case in point, a paragraph from V for Vendetta:

“Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant and vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition! The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it’s my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V.”

P. S. If anyone’s even remotely close to achieving the last goal, please tell me…. I’ll need GRE fundaes from him..

 

Full of (s)crap

To save myself the embarrassing situation of having to see my sidebar stretch longer than my blog, I’m back with a post. There are a couple of things that I find totally strange….People who believe the earth is flat, Guys who look for meaning in Nirvana songs, 19 year-olds who watch Shaun the sheep…. and enjoy it! But this post does not concern either of these.. No no. This one’s dedicated to something I’ve long wanted to write about. This one’s on everybody’s favorite (in the campus at least) “networking site” Orkut…..There are good sites on the internet and then you get sites like orkut…Now, don’t get me wrong… I’m OK with social networking and all that jazz, but orkut just isn’t it. This is what I’ve seen on orkut : Its just a bunch of dead communities held together by users who are free (read jobless) enough to actually check their profile everyday either to

a) make new “friends”
b) Give a quick reply to a scrap posted by an equally free (read as above) classmate
c) Embellish their profile with extra pictures that no one’s gonna notice anyway.

Take scrapping for instance; Kind of a cross between chatting and e-mail you’d think..not me. To me, a scrap is too short to be an e-mail and not instantaneous enough to be chat. Then why this is the biggest reason (after CS and AOE) for a slide in student GPAs is a mystery I feel I shall never fathom. To me, a scrap is just what it says it is … a scrap, as in scrap metal.

Now for the communities….. a myriad of these ranging from the pseudo-intellectual(String Theory) to the absurd(HOGWARTS SCHOOL : Community for the people who dream in entering the school and the ones that are very fanatic for Harry Potter!). Outrageous grammar and bad spelling notwithstanding, isn’t it a waste of time to join these communities you know are going to die in a few days? Apparently 75622 people (at last count) in the HOGWARTS SCHOOL community don’t agree.

Then, of course you have the absolutely inscrutable tab which says ‘Friends of Friends’. (Even now I can imagine Orkut 7.0 having a ‘Friends of Friends of Friends of Friends of Friends of Friends’ tab and claim to give one person access to the entire world ….. ‘Six degrees of separation’ anyone? ). The worst part of being a mutual friend is the repeated mail you get. If you dunno what I’m talking about, try being the mutual friend of two orkutters (hey! that rhymes with nutters) who feel they’re morally obliged to pass on every “good” mail they get to all their friends. The result : Twice the spam in half the time. Thanks a lot Orkut.

I could go on and on about fake profiles, sexual predators, rating friends, the ‘cool’ and ’sexy’ bars, but frankly I’ve spent way too much time already. I’ve spent enough time on Orkut, I don’t want to waste more time writing about it. Orkut’s not worth it.