THE ADDICTION

I called up Arnab

--“I’m f*^ked!”

--“What happened?”

--“I bought IT”

--“Bought what?”

--“THAT”

--“Bought WHAT?”

--“Two hundred and five dollars. DAMN!!! What was I thinking!!”

--“ho-ho-ho”

 (after audibly swallowing rest of the laugh), “really? What now?”

--“They are shipping it..DAMN!!”

That was my reaction after ordering the Kindle from amazon.  No fist-pumping, no self-congratulatory back-slapping, no chest thumping. Just plain and simple acceptance of my insatiable addiction of reading.

Let’s face it. I love reading. When I was a child, I used to read everything apart from my text books, and that means EVERYTHING, including but not limited to from wrappers for jhal-muri to the newspapers that was used on wet cement. In those days I used to stay at different small town or villages. There were never enough reading materials to satisfy me. So, I used to read everything multiple times. If I ever got my hands on a newspaper (which was not very often) it would be read from the headlines to the printed-and-published-by line again and again.

I never formally learned Bengali. When I just finished learning the simple sentence construction, somebody gifted me a story book by Upendrokishor RayChowdhuri. I started reading it and within a few days it was finished and I lost all interest in learning Bengali formally. The result is, now I don’t know the whole of Bengali alphabet by heart (it’s true, I never completed learning it)

I read up anything and everything while growing up. I just couldn’t decipher the difference between good writing and bad writing. People used to say “that book is good, but that one is not”. I used to wonder, “Really? But they both tell an amazing story, albeit in a different way”. Why one is is good and the other is bad?

My reading addiction turned for worse in my 3^rd college year when I discovered the joy of ebook. Before that by ebook I used to understand the text files from Gutenberg, which while were definitely very tempting due to their rich contents, but were an absolute nightmare regarding page marking or reading pleasure. But still it provided me a pleasure-haven only mine, though taxing on eye and back.

By 4th year I have learnt to enjoy the pleasure while ignoring the back-ache and eye-strains. Those were the days when I used to read on my PC for 6-8hrs at a stretch and 12-14hrs a day. Those were days where I finished Lord of the Rings + The Hobbit in 6 days straight. I cried after finishing it. Not only because it was worth it, also because for all those days I was living almost all my waking hours with the characters. They became my part of my life.

Almost the whole of 4^th year and half months after it was spent at home. I lost count how many books I read during that period. It was a time of pure pleasure!! Me and my books…those  were the days.

Anyway, I am rambling.

What happened last month is that I heard about price-drop of Kindle. Just out of curiosity, I went to check amazon and Kindle had me.

THIS was the thing I was looking for all these years. Something which behaves as a book, doesn’t strain my eyes and let me read whatever I wish to.

I had to have it.

So, the addiction goes on.

Will update on next post my buying experience on Kindle.

Till then ciao!

Ganges at dusk

Smog filled Kolkata sky

While we were there we saw martians attacking Howrah at night in their golden suits

Something similar to previous one.

A few clicks from my roof

Ray of hope in Prison of Darkness

My bed.. 

Path of Thorns

Silhouette

My Solution to end the Babri problem

Dear friends, I have found the perfect solution to the Babri masjid-Ram Janmabhumi issue. Before I present you the solution I must warn you about unintended consequences of uncontrollable shock and would also strongly advise to remove all fragile things away from your vicinity, after all computer monitors are not made of Kevlar ...yet!!

My solution is presented the following format
1. Call representatives of both the affected communities to a field.
2. Call for a toss.
3. Who ever wins gets the first right to build their worship place by a government agency i.e. Common Wealth Games Organizing Committee(CWG OrgCo) under the glorious and magnificent leadership of Mr. Suresh Kalmadi.
4. CWG OrgCo will bring their all the finely honed expertise from the construction of infrastructure for CWG.
5. As just seen from the ongoing projects of CWG which are awarded to various contractors as judged suitable by the OrgCo, this structure of the toss-winning community's will also fall down within 3months or when it rains or dog barks or monkey jumps on the roof,whichever is earliar.
6. When step 5 happens the other community can start building their structure by following step 3 to step 5.
7. If the structure doesn't fall-down withing the stipulated time the concerned contractor will have to put actual cement instead of sand in all the other contracts he is awarded.
8. Step 3 to step 7 will keep on repeating until the country runs out of money or tax payers stop earning to protest (since it is impossible to stop paying taxes)


This path will surely help us to reach a stable and safe country where all people can pay there pay their taxes and see that their favourite god's abode is being raised every 3 months!!

Whaddya say?

An adventure with my stupidity

WOW!!! It seems like I am writing something down after 3000 years..Its been so long since I wrote something…

Anyway…this is something I couldn’t stay without writing ….

It all happened on a lovely Sunday (lovely only because it was a holiday, a rare commodity otherwise in my so-called uselessly busy professional life). The morning started harmlessly enough…slept till 7.45(which is a lot late considering a wake up at an ungodly hour of 6am). Arnab called last night and he was in a unique problem, namely, how to connect a 4.1 speaker in a 2.1 port?

I did the following

1. Thought about the problem for sometime and then decided to trust Google

2. Woke up my comp (which was running throughout the night and hence, was in a bad mood)

3. Played MAFIA WARS

4. Watched SALT (nothing worth watching except Angelina Jolie and her action sequences)

5. Read a chapter of ” Hanif Mohammed- The case of exploding mangoes” (see, I am a very busy man ,so I read a single chapter everyday)

6. Had breakfast

7. Called Arnab to give some free advice but went on a deeply intellectual discussion about motherboard configuration and architecture

8. Had a brilliant flash of idea of cleaning my computer after 2years of delaying it and thus started my adventure.

Things started to go wrong from here. After opening my computer the first thing a noticed is a ton of dust deep black in color and almost covering the whole inside. No wonder that machine used to make such a generator like sound while running, I thought.

Being the mighty brave person I am the first thing I did was give a mighty blow (of air,not the physical blow,though which might have been my subconscious intention) inside the cabinet. For a moment I thought I lost my eyesight, It was pitch black everywhere with a incredibly suffocating feeling!! After few seconds the dust settled down (where else, on me and the just-cleaned floor)I thought for a few seconds and then decided I wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice. SO this time I tried with a piece of cloth…it was going well until I noticed the inside of the processor fan. It was thick with dust and wasn’t accessible by the brush I had.

Being the uber-genius, I promptly brought a screwdriver and opened the processor from motherboard and cleaned it for a long time. The cabinet was looking like an animal whose innards have been spread around for examination. This is the point where things went totally out of control.

Firstly the processer would not screw back…there were four washers to attach the screws..they were a bit loose ( they weren’t loose in the first place, in my enthusiasm I managed to make them loose to take out the processor) So, as long a s the washers do not come in alignment the screws wouldn’t fit it..and they, just like our political parties, simply refused to come in alignment. After much cajoling and fighting finally they came together but not before making a dent the motherboard. But then another problem has cropped up. The cords for my two drives have been opened up…and I forgot which one was for whom!! Trusting my luck just managed to get them attached and thought 4 wires means 4 possible combinations…will try all of them..until something works!!

Everything attached, I switched on the comp and it started with a whining….5 seconds and it shut down it self…

I scratched my head and again went the insides of the cabinet …then I found it…RAM (Ramji as some people call it)..was stuck in opposite end..corrected and tried it again…

5sec…10 sec…its working…so I shutdown it again and attached rest of the cables and then started it again for a final inspection. The system started…but wait!!! There’s no display on the monitor and the keyboard is not showing any power!! I scratched my head some more and then decide to go through the innards of the cabinet once again.

I did whatever was my knowledge in these matters…pressed everything in their places so that nothing remains loose…took out the RAM cleaned it with a eraser and attached it again…still nothing…..after a few more tries I finally threw up my hands. It was beyond my skills (or whatever I was passing as skills to unsuspecting peoples).

The rest as they say is history. I had to ask a technician to come, he was to busy , so next day it was taken to the original assembler who fixed it by rubbing the RAM on his head….yes on his head!!

Who the hell rubs RAM on head? I mean I have heard about RAMs being rubbed by eraser but …head???

Seriously!!

My comp wiz friend Debankar said may be it’s the next level of action in the chain of maintenance procedure for systems. All I know is that my comp is up and running again…and waiting for my next adventure!!

To infinity and beyond!!

HE WEAVED HIS MAGIC AGAIN

Chetan Bhagat is back and this time not with a bang but with a ripe, matured love story but not unlike The Five Point Someone (FPS), One Night @ Call Centre (ONCC) or 3 Mistakes of My Life (3MML).

2 States - The Story Of My Marriage

is everything what FPS is not and its everything what FPS is about. If FPS was the best engineering campus-story ever 2 SSMM is more of a matured love story. And the funny thing is the story follows the storyline of Shyam of FPS (though his name here is Krish Malhotra). The similarities just start here; it has all that has become staple diet of Mr. Bhagat. An aggressive woman who always makes the first move, a seemingly loser boy (definitely not hero type), love, fun, complication, betrayal, tears and an almost bollywoodish and big-bang climax with odes to the youth of the country!! 2 States has it all in varying degrees and yet it is different.

The story starts with Krish with a psychiatrist going on a confession. The story of Krish is remarkably similar to Shyam’s…..same bad grades at IIT-D, affair with daughter of Professor, a dominating father at home,an ex-army who beats his wife etc….The story starts at the first week of IIM-A where Krish and Anjali meets. Anjali Swaminathan….smart, talented, beautiful tamil Brahman ( I heard they are called tambram…confirmation, anyone??). The first act follows typical Chetan Bhagat path. But it is different from the second act. Now thay have to make their families accept each other. That’s where the fun begins. An ostentatious Punjabi woman who thinks her only son is the best jewel of the whole world and everybody is out to steal him and a quite, orthodox tamil family who believes in knowledge and absolutely hates show-offs……sparks are bound to fly!!!!

The rest of the story is how Krish tries to find acceptance in Anjali’s family and Anjali in Krish’s family. It seems tough?? Well, compared to what to come….it was nothing. Now that have to make sure the families like each other and faced with instant cultural clash and suspicion it’s an improbable task!!

Unlike his other books, this one moves over the whole country and lots of social observation. It also doesn’t have Chetan Bhagat getting the story from someone and then asking him to complete it. It also follows up to his traditional style. FPS was a (I don’t know what genre it was..College romance??college life??coming of age story??...I don’t know), ONCC was a workplace romance story which was going good until that call from god and then that horrible harebrained scheme to dupe thousands of people to save jobs, 3MML was predictable from first page though the concept was good. 2 SSMM is not any of these genres; it has its own place. For the first time he asks questions about out strange social practices without making anyone look guilty. Romance or not, its definitely his first social novel.

I immensely liked this book. It has that same quality that makes you identify yourself with Shyam in FPS. He feels just like you….its almost like you can feel his emotions or what he is thinking and then you sit straight and realized you would have done the same thing in his place!! That’s why FPS was most loved book across the college campuses. 2 SSMM have the same quality that makes you identify with Krish Malhotra, be it his helplessness in fight between his in laws and his mother or his boredom with job or his pain of heartbreak. Chetan Bhagat has definitely reached another level with this novel. Makes you stop and think again about your life and what do you want in life!!!

My Rating

IF

Five Point Someone - What not to do at IIT-10/10

Then One Night @ the Call Center 6/10

The Three Mistakes of My Life 4/10

2 States - The Story Of My Marriage 8.8/10

Its an Earthquake!

The first earthquake I faced was when I was 4-5 years old. Well, the truth is I heard that I faced the earthquake, but I don’t remember anything.

At that time I used to live at Raigunj, North Dinajpur. I was taking my afternoon nap. My father’s friend Maity uncle was supposed to come to repair our TV. Later I heard that there was an earthquake that afternoon and while everybody was busy screaming and being stunned Maity uncle carried me out of the house into the courtyard. Being a very sound sleeper I naturally don’t remember anything of it. But everybody verified it to be true…so it must be.

The second time I faced an earthquake…….well I was sleeping then too. But this time I had the decency to wake up with the quake (I guess I am getting old, I don’t sleep such soundly anymore).

It was around 2-2.30 at night, I was sleeping after a long and tiring journey. I was also suffering from fever, though no one knew that at home! I was on the bed and my parents were sleeping on the floor, when I felt the bed shake. Now, I’ve felt beds shaken many times before thanks to my upbringing in many different places. There was this place at kalyani where the whole building used to shake when any heavy truck moved by the Highway beside.

So, when I felt the bed shaking beneath me and I woke up, I couldn’t decide it was a just a bad dream or realty. It took me few precious seconds to realize that it was for real. By then the quake has stopped. I thought about getting up and enquiring but then decided to finish the sleep first!! Just before drifting to mind-numbing sleep again, I heard father asking our neighbors if they felt anything.

Next morning news told us the details, that a heavy intensity earthquake has struck at Indonesia and what we felt was just a jolt! I later wondered, if a jolt was powerful enough to shake a three-story building like a cheap wooden table then what the real deal would have done!! I really don’t want to know that!

Slumdog Millioaire book review

By now most of you must have watched this movie and read atleast few of the realms of newsprint and articles written about it,so its too late to write the review of the movie.So, i tried the book instead and found it......well....lets save that for the last.There's no point is reducing the limited interest you have till now!!

First start with the obvious questions.What is the differences between the Oscar winning critical acclaim and the best selling novel Q & A (yes,thats the name of the novel,not slumdog millionaire).

To start with,the main character is named Ram Mohammad Thomas(RMT),an orphan.He was named so to prevent a religious riot for him.He spent his earlier few years at a orphanage where he spent his relatively good times.

The books too starts from the dinky police cell and with the beatings.But here a lawyer (female and pretty obviously...so much for stereotypes) comes to rescue him.Then this lawyer watches the recorded and yet un-broadcasted show ,one questions at a time and unravels the mystery of Ram's life.Here Ram has won the total money one the first day itself and the producers were unable to pay any money, so the tried to prove that Ram cheated.

The story doesnt go through the linear pattern of the movie.As the questions come Ram's story jumps with it.So, in the first question he flashes back to his adolescent years where as the 2nd question takes him back to his birth and earliest memories.

If you thought SDM was fantastic then you will be stunned by this.Here the stories are more fantastic...a closet gay superstar,gay priest of a church,voodoo magic,a foreign spy,spy camera,train dacoity,murder,burglery,contract killer,ex-superstar's suicide,juvenile jail,army deserter,incest attempt...phew!!!

Salim is his friend here,one whom he doesn't meet until he gets to Agra.The story of the movie follows the novel in a different way.

The anchor of the show is a spineless man.He does whatever the producer asks him to do.Be it telling the wrong answer or reverting the final question when Ram answers it correctly. 

Also there are more women the story and the love interest is Nita, a prostitute.RMT falls in love with her and wants to win the money to free her.

The writing is surprizingly very fluent.It never staggers.Even the most incredible plot twists work like a magic.Though I knew the ending I felt my pulse quickening towards the end.The final plot twist is definitely the spoiler of the story.No wonder it was left out of the movie.

In short it is definitely an enjoyable potboiler.

The best dialogue from the book.After RMT watches a realistic movie with he says,"What is the 

point of watching a film if you can see the real thing in your neighbor's house just across 

the street?"Classic!!!

That defines the whole of SDM!!!

50 day's itch!

[It is my blog, here I make the rules. Feel free to comment. If I don’t like it I will go snip-snip……]

 

Its been 50 days now! 300 people died, its just a number now. Too much water passed by marine drive since then, nothing happened to those plotted the biggest and drastic attack on Indian soil.

"Some philosophize in poetry. Some vituperate in words. Some candle in silence, some parade in demonstration. Some brood eventualities, some vocalize in visual. Some conference on strategy, some indulge in exploit. Some weep at loss, some weep at sympathy. Some courage in reconstruction, some repair in caution.

And some… sitting far, or within us, twitter and chuckle on the completion of a dastardly action…!!!"     -Amitabh Bachchan

 

Too much has already been said about it, every angel probed and dissected and wrung dry to feed the public knowledge. Every celebrity, politician, self-styled expert worth his or salt commented and gave opinion whether anyone wanted it or not.

Internationally it created a ripple as many foreigners died (it’s a fact, nobody cares when Indians die, not even Indian Govt.).Pakistan as usual denied everything and started to issue war threat, which the world particularly USA can not afford now.

So, that leaves us the simple and straight question: where do we get from here?

It’s been umpteenth time that such an attack occurred, nothing has been done about. As usual we adapted with it. People die, politicians thunder, security is briefed for a few days…after that….everything back to square one.

Just how long will this go on? A federal police force was formed after so many years of discussion and gain it has been derailed. Pakistan Govt. has simply refused to pay heed. Security is again limping back to normal i.e. casual state. All are waiting for the next attack after that things will happen in the same order.

What are our options, you might ask. Well, you don’t have to look far. Look at Israel or if you can without snickering look at USA. After 9/11 USA didn’t sat back and licked its wounds and indulged in diplomacy. It launched a counter-attack. The result is clear; USA has suffered no terrorist attack on its soil in last 7 years.

Tough times call for tough measures. Just ask yourself what would you prefer: 5 dead suspected terrorists or 100 dead innocent citizens? The choice is yours.

The world rule is quite unambiguous, blast or get blasted.

Our neighbor is a soon-to-be-failed state with nuclear power, when it fails whoever comes to power won’t wait to blast us! It’s a choice we have to make now for our safe future.

MILLION DOLLAR QUESTION

Yes, that’s true. If you solve this puzzle you get cool $1,000,000!! That is only the prize money, without considering the perks and fame that will come with it. You will be as famous as some Mr. Einstein or Mr. Newton. History will remember you as the person who solved a 150 year problem!!!


Yep, that’s right too!! It’s a 150 year old problem. For 150 years the best minds of the world tried to solve this problem and came up short. The great minds were convinced that a solution to this problem exists but were unable to find it. Even taking the aid of high performance computers couldn’t help the matter. Now, you must be thinking-“what the big deal about a damn puzzle!!”. Well, to answer that you have to understand the puzzle.

Let get introduced to the hardest unsolved problem in mathematics since 1859---“REIMANN HYPOTHESIS”.

And yes, I didn’t forget about the $1 million. Boston Clay Mathematics Institute declared in 2000 a list of 7 unsolved problem of mathematics. For each problem $1 million was announced as prize money. Since then 6 problems have been solved and the 7th and the most important one is still waiting.
In 1859, Bernard Reimann published his eight page article where he discussed this idea. It’s about prime numbers. So, let’s dig into the problem.
Prime numbers are type of numbers which can be divided only by 1 and itself. The series of prime numbers look like this.
1,2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29,31,37,41,43,47,53,59,61,67,71,73…and so on.
You can clearly see it. It is NOT a series. There is no sequence in the numbers. We can’t say what will be the number next to 59 without calculating individually each number. To make my point clear consider the following series, which is actually a series.
1,4,9,16,25,36,49,64,81,100,121,144,169,__.
We can see the sequence and we can also deduce the last number, it is 196. For the mathematically challenged people the series is simply the square values of natural numbers i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…and so on. We can even say what will the 500th number of the series without checking the in between numbers. By this definition the prime numbers do not constitute a series. It’s too haphazard.
But it is also mathematics. Mathematics can’t be haphazard. There must be a method in madness. People (not normal people, mathematicians I mean) tried and failed to find a formula of prime numbers. In a desperate attempt to find any resemblance of order they tried to find the occurrences of prime numbers. See for yourself.
In 1 to 10 there are 4 prime numbers, which means 40%, so there should be 40 prime numbers in between 1 to 100, but there are 25 actually i.e. 25%. In case of less than 1000 it is 168 or 16.8%.
And between 9999901 to 10000000 it is just 9. The next 100 contains just 2. This was a total chaos.
But, there are some who do not conform to the norms. They think in their own way using their own logic. We call them genius.
One such genius was Leonardo Eular. This guy found an order where seemingly everyone had failed. What he showed was not only remarkable was incredibly easy too.

1+ 1/2^2 +1/3^2 +1/4^2 +1/5^2 +⋯=2^2/(2^2-1)*3^2/(3^2-1)*5^2/(5^2-1)*7^2/(7^2-1)*…

It was really wonderful. On the left hand side was natural numbers like 1, 2, 3, 4…..and on the right side was the prime numbers 2, 3, 5, 7…..
There was an order here. It was a start, but wasn’t an end. This equation was developed further and it was proved that the power of the numbers is not only limited to 2. It can be raised further i.e. the following equation will also hold true
1+ 1/2^3 +1/3^3 +1/4^3 +1/5^3 +⋯=2^3/(2^3-1)*3^3/(3^3-1)*5^3/(5^3-1)*7^3/(7^3-1)*…

and also if the power is 4, 5, 6 anything.

Now, the stage was set for Mr. Reimann to appear and did so in style. He developed the equation one more step and proved that the power of the numbers is not only limited to natural numbers, it can be complex numbers too i.e. the equation will hold true even if the power is a complex number.

Complex numbers are numbers which are created using rational and √-1. √-1 is square root of -1 which is an imaginary number.
Now, the question that naturally arises is that WHY THE HELL DID HE USED COMPLEX NUMBER????
Well, the answer to this question is the topic we started on. Reimann kept on developing the equation and discovered this


1+ 1/2^(0.5+7√-1) +1/3^(0.5+7√-1) +1/4^(0.5+7√-1) +1/5^(0.5+7√-1) +⋯=0


The most important aspect of this equation is that the co-efficient of √-1, which is 7 here, is of NO IMPORTANCE.
Yes, you read it right. It is of no importance as long as the first rational part is 0.5. You can change the co-efficient to anything you like, positive, negative, fraction, real anything, it doesn’t matter.
So, this is also same as the above.
1+ 1/2^(0.5+3√-1) +1/3^(0.5+3√-1) +1/4^(0.5+3√-1) +1/5^(0.5+3√-1) +⋯=0


This is Reimann Hypothesis. But it is never going to be possible to physically check every number imaginable to see if the equation works. Reimann said that the equation will be equal to zero if the rational part of the power is 0.5 and the co-efficient of the irrational part is any number. That was 1859.

150 years passed. So many other problems were solved using Reimann Hypothesis. They are proved as “if Reimann Hypothesis is true, then……”. So, if those answers are right then Reimann Hypothesis must also be true. But that doesn’t solve the problem. It has to be proved using mathematical logic and the quest still eludes the man. Solve it and the glory is yours. 1 Million dollars doesn’t hurt either!!

Copyright=My Right To Copy?

I687, London:
The tall guy was sitting under a tree in a park; sipping tea and thinking about the inflation and the grocery bill. Suddenly something dropped on his head.
-Ouch!!
He looked upwards and discovered an apple tree and looked downwards and discovered gravity (figuratively speaking of course!).He published his findings in “Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica”


2008, Kolkata:
I was sitting in my friend’s house, sipping tea and talking about joining date of TCS and music of “Rock On!!” and listing to Debankar’s guiter .Suddenly something dropped on my head. I looked up and discovered a disk of “Munnabhai MBBS ”. I looked down on the disk and discovered copyright.

Actually I didn’t discovered copyright; I discovered the disk was original. Now that’s a bit complicated, what the hell original disk means? Most of us go through life without seeing a single original disk of anything i.e. movie, software etc. And here in my hand was an original piece, written behind “buy original CD or DVD, kill piracy”.

I heard so many times on TV, radio that musicians are requesting people to buy music and save their livelihood. I also saw people saying copyright means my right to copy. I looked at my computer, it was starting up. The OS was pirated Windows XP. The anti-virus was pirated; most of the softwares I use are pirated. Almost all the songs that sit on my machines are copyrighted and haven’t paid anything for them. The movies I have watched till now were all pirated. Where that does leaves me? In fact everywhere I look I see rampant copyright violation. I tried to calculate the damage done to entertainment industry by me. It came to around 500 movies and so around 20000 bucks. I alone cost that much!!! That too without considering the songs or eBooks collections that I pride myself. I didn’t dare to calculate further.

Then something struck me. I never heard any musician or author (of course of modern times) dying of starvation. That obviously doesn’t mean anything. I decided to probe further. An audio CD costs around Rs.100. Which is not very cheap considering it contains around 8-10 songs all of which are not good, whereas one can download it for free. And there is not much difference between qualities. So the choice is between high priced over hyped products and free illegal materials. No prize for guessing the winner.

I remember about a particular incident. It was 19th July 2007, Harry Potter and deathly hallows was to come out 2 days later and I was already reading it in eBook format. When it finally came out I have finished it by then. Now, if I was author it would be terribly distressing to know that my creation wasn’t fetching me anything or will it be? It would also probably mean that people like my writing so much that they are willing to suffer damage to eyesight by staring to computer monitor to read a book!!!

Actually it is very difficult to find a solution. One possible solution could be to lower the prices of original pieces or maybe to make the quality of original pieces better so that copying them damages their quality.

Its no point crying over piracy, otherwise it wasn’t possible to listening songs or watching movie so much. So, keep on doing whatever you do, just be careful to avoid using traceable downloads. CHEERS!!!

Browsing browsers-part II

Continuing from where I left earlier.

http://atanucybermidasblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/browsing-browsers.html

The times couldn't have been more exciting for net-addicted people like me;two new browsers are soon going to be launched and their beta versions are already available.

First,the old and much abused Internet Explorer is coming out with IE8.Its simply amazing to think how a once great corporation can come out with a worse version and declare it a new version.This happened with IE7;it was worse than IE6.Maybe it was more secure or things like that but its speed was awful.Hope that IE8 fares better.


Second and most important is Google Chrome.The product from the stable of the undisputed rulers of web world.I tried its beta version and its excellent.Its lightweight(takes very little resource) and slick.The only problem I can see is the customization options are very limited.Maybe it will be taken care of in the stable version.


Anyway thst was just to keep this blog alive.When the two browsers come out with their stable version I will write about them.

SOme Questions

When I first started writing this blog,I thought I would steer clear of any political topics. But living in modern India and staying clear of politics is very difficult. The topic of this post came to me quite accidentally. I was doing my usual bit of useless surfing, when I came across some articles, ranging from recent to 50-60 years old. Thus came the topic. I don’t want to prove anything by raising these points. But just a nagging feeling.......hope you won’t feel discouraged.

CPI(M) is Indian's one of the few national parties. The following points are some questions raised from time to time against them.

1. Quit India Movement-1942

The communists were opposing the British rule with the rest of the country. Then USSR joined WWII in alliance with the British and asked the communists to support British rule. Overnight Indian communists turned from anti-British to pro-British. The CPI provided names and addresses of revolutionaries to the British. People were hanged. The CPI opposed the Quit India movement because the Soviets asked them to. Independence of India wasn't important to them.

2.1962 India-China war

This was probably the best example of Indian communist's mentality. China attacked India unprovoked and killed Indian soldiers. They also occupied Indian territory in Kashmir and NEFA (modern Arunachal Pradesh).Due to stupidity of Indian Prime Minister (J.L.Neheru) and Defense Minister (K.Menon) the Chinese could advance unchallenged. The communists who have earlier said "China's chairman is our chairman”, this time openly supported China. Jyoti Basu was quite vocal about his support to Chinese policy of "to teach India a lesson”. Communist Russia refused to help India ("India is our friend, but Red China is our brother").Finally US Air Force helped India to airlift Indian Army to the forward bases. The US applied massive pressure on Pakistan to not take advantage of the situation and attack India.

3.1998 Pokhran Nuclear experiment

As usual CPI (M) opposed India becoming a nuclear power. Being a democracy they have full right to oppose anything they dislike. But the point is that, the reasons shown by them were exactly the same as the reasons shown by China in opposing the nuclear experiment. CPI(M) is not bothered about security or power of India, they are only bothered about China.

4.As Pakistan is a Chinese ally CPI(M) very rarely say anything against Pakistan. In fact they never say anything against Pakistan sponsored terrorism in India.

5. Today,

China endeavors to keep India out as an economic competitor. They encourage and command the CPI-M to oppose reform in India, and the CPI-M complies. Yechuri recently went to China (from Xinhua) and came back basically saying FDI was not the way (I'll find a link to this - it was in multiple papers) - ironic given China's own FDI-heavy approach. They oppose the same Multinationals in India that China welcomes with open arms.

Not only these, every time the communists oppose something they give same reasons as the Chinese do.

In such circumstances it will be better if the Communist Party of India changes its name to Communist Party of China based in India.

I am waiting for your comments.

Browsing browsers

Last month have been hectic for me.I blogged too much,surfed too much,watched too much movie,slept too much.Now I am out of ideas. So, I thought why not use the things that wasted my time that much.So, I am going to write about the browsers that I discovered during this period.
First I must give the specifications of my machine.
Its a 6 year old P4,192MB RAM,40 GB HDD computer running Windows Xp SP2.And being true to a guy mentality I am going to compare them with girls.

Lets start with the default browser.
Internet Explorer 6

Its the default browser of Windows.Much abused and the last fall back.Its like house maid.They are inefficient,security threat,lazy,a burden but very strong.Any user knows IE6 can and will probably break down at every inopportune moment,but they are indispensable.Not much to write about it.77% of user use it.Its steadily declining though,from 95% in 2002.Still its the primary browser.Probably because most people donot bother to install another browser.They use what they get.So,be assured IE6 is not going to die soon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_6.0

Internet Explorer 7

I don't know what possessed Microsoft to make this Dinosaur.Its like a good looking and lazier maid.Thats all.Its security is better(they claim,you won't understand it).Speed is slow definitely,despite whatever they say.In short.it is worse than IE6.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_7






SAFARI

One of my best friends put it best.Safari is like a good looking girl on your way who deserves a second look.Nothing more.Its fabulously good looking.Pretty fast,efficient.The new version is stable and most importantly it comes from stable of Apple.So,service is going to be excellent.Still it doesn't score much with me.Why?Simply because it is not much customizable.Just some limited options.You can't bend it to your will.After all,every beautiful woman can't be a good partner.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safari_browser


OPERA

This one is the most beautiful,gorgeous,stylish and efficient.In other words.....perfect.Its has innumerable features,faster than most,excellent service,breathtakingly beautiful.It has inbuilt torrent tracker,downloader,voice identifying property,256 bit encryption for security and what not.No other browser has so much features and so much efficient.It only has one small problem,Orkut doesn't load very fast.And most of the sites cant keep up with its security features.So,you have to keep them disable mostly.Debankar,the great computer-wizard,put it best(again,as usual) its only good for some extra marital(surfing) affairs.But if you can keep up with it,go ahead.Its the best.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_%28web_browser%29



FLOCK


This thing scores where Opera can't.Its a social networking web-browser(never heard about them,may be they will come up with a youtube viewing web browser next).Its pretty useless.Yes,thats right.Its useless,unless you happen to be that type of person who have 300 friends on on net and remains 10 hours online a day.It uploads pictures fast and some necessary accessories for social networking sites.My advice:you can definitely try it.you have nothing to lose.Oh,I forgot.Its basically a modified Firefox.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flock_%28web_browser%29



MOZILLA FIREFOX


Its the best if you are ready to change.Biggest competitor of IE.Its interface is easy.totally flexible.Its freeware,so you can develop new add-ons for it.Its fast,efficient,flexible,doesn't grumble much.With add-ons it can be made to look beautiful.Moreover its quite homely.Everything a wife should be.Its got 17% users using it and its growing.The biggest strength lies it in flexibility.You can do whatever you want to do with it.The only problem is that it takes ages to start and sometimes it just crashes.Otherwise an excellent choice.My personal favorite.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Firefox

Girlfriends

I was thinking about writing about this for a long time. It is about those friends who are girl but not girlfriends. I have been blessed enough to have such terrific friends that it would be gross injustice to not to write about them.

The first thing that sprang to mind is “impossible”. Yes, they are indeed so. Impossible and unreasonable. And nice enough to make you bend to their weird wills and impossible demands.

But, well, world would not have been same without these impossible and unreasonable women. Life not only would have been dull but difficult too. Just imagine a day with no one to irritate or no one to chew brains and most importantly, no one to pour your heart out.

Yes, these are the friends who will be the first to find your fault and the last to criticize you. They will get irritated by your skirt-chasing and then will point out the better ones. First to console in your grief and first to rejoice your happiness. Encouraging you to go on despite failure and always keeping faith on you even when you yourself do not. Most importantly, they will make you realize that you don’t need to be perfect.

On the other hand you will have to face their sudden mood-swings, very weird sense of humor (the most inappropriate things seems funny to them). At times, they can be more difficult than babies, refusing to heed anything.

But still, they are those great friends whom you can trust with your life and come out alive too, a great blessing in the competition-centric world of today. If you don’t have such a girl friend you will probably never understand what I mean. And if you have one……………………..well…………..I don’t need to explain anything then.

Waiting for your responses to this topic. I really want to know what you think about it and especially girls view-point.

My fables

Once upon a time a man was walking on a road beside a pond in a deserted forest.Suddenly a frog called upon him "kiss me and I will transform into a beautiful princess".

The man turned around and looked at the frog.He couldn't believe his eyes.The frog again said "Please kiss me and make me a beautiful princess".

The man came forward and took the frog in his hand.then he stuffed it in his pocket and started walking.The frog cried out from his pocket"aren't you going to kiss me?"

The man replied
"I am an engineer.I don't have time for a girlfriend,but a talking frog is cool".

Engineers are like this.So, girls please beware of them.In any case he can easily leave you for a Intel Quad-core Macbook pro.You can never hope to match its performance.

An Outing-Part II

Now, to get any type of transport to go anywhere, I must reach Ruby. That was 20 minutes walking and no transport was visible. I blinked at the dazzling sunlight and tried to think a solution. Unable to find one I recounted that famous line

“A journey of thousand miles begins with a single step”

and took the first step. It landed on a broken brick. After cursing that unfortunate brick (it was smashed under my weight) and its maker I started trudging.

After 10 minutes I barely covered 100 meters and was panting like dog. The sun was very benevolent, and finding shadows was harder than finding India winning in football.

After 20 minutes, I covered half the distance and decided that I should take rest if managed to find a shadow. I soon found one under a tree and rushed there. Rushing was not necessary as no one was in sight and the tree was not in any risk of being chopped down before I reach there.

While I should there, I managed to attract the attention of a female. She was looking at me with her bright green-blue eyes.[I know girls die for me and you don’t need to smirk; I appreciate complements].After contemplating for a few moments she decided to come nearer. I stroked her back and she meowed back.

[Now, don’t take it otherwise, but I love cats]

Soon, lorry was passing by. Seeing that and probably sensing that I have nothing to interest her gastronomically (ungrateful females!!!) she jumped on a fence and went away.

I started trudging again. A rickety dog started following me. I suspected that it was a member of anti-Cat Action Team (aCAT) and has probably labeled me as a cat-lover therefore a dog hater.

I discovered a biscuit in my bag from someone’s Tiffin. I decided to bribe the poor creature (if indeed it was from aCAT, it wasn’t very well off).It happily wagged the tail and perhaps forgot to report me.

An Outing-Part I

It was a hot day. I was sitting in the college, idly as usual, when “THE” idea struck me. As the creative person I am, the idea still seemed like a 440 volt one.

I am going to bunk college.

Now, even the historically challenged readers can also point it out that colleges are being bunked right through its conception. So, what is so special about the idea?

Well, I can just say that I decided to bunk, now I have to find the reasons too. Life is not at all easy!!!

I tried to think some and these jewels came out!!

1. I have not done anything useful in the first few classes and probably will not do anything useful again in the next classes also.

2. There was not any practical class. Now, practical classes are useful for the purpose for chatting while playing the mindless game of PINBALL. It was our equivalent of coffee house (sans coffee, of course) where one can indulge in a vigorous session of adda.

[Though to be truthful, the labs are not for adda only. Some humorless, unsympathetic and curtsy less teachers think otherwise and makes it such a place where one cannot play PINBALL]

3. There were only 17 students present. If I leave, I may influence some others to leave also. That will decrease the population (of class, not India) and may encourage the college to suspend classes.

In fact, this last reason seemed brilliant to me. I congratulated myself for my logical and most brilliant thinking. I was tempted to point these out to anyone who was even remotely interested (there was none) but spied the teacher coming towards our class. So, I had to stop patting my own back and grabbed my bag, got out of the class back door, through the back corridor, by the back staircase and then the back door of the building and finally through the back gate of campus, I emerged on the road. My journey has started.

Experience Uncertainity

Most of my early life i lived in camps.The following that i am going to say is from my personal experience and may not be the general agreement.

The life in camps in more than a life,its actually a culture,so many type of people living at the same place with distinct identites.It makes a melting pot, it's a culture with its own norms and values.
The biggest thing overall the commonalities of their rearing are so powerful ... It's an identity that supersedes almost all others. It cuts across lines of gender, race and class. It shapes us our entire lives through.

These people are shaped by their upbringing. There are numerous commonalities (both positive and negative) that impact them. Because of these factors, they often feel like "outsiders."They often feel like they have no home and never truly fit in with civilians.To put in a nutshell they dont have a sense of belonging to anywhere...atleast for me it is so.

So,its gets kind of difficult to settle in a life anywhere when you dont have that sense of belonging.You always try to find that place ...your place.....and never seem to find it....People never seem to understand you,and unintentionally keep hurting you.

When I was growing up,my life got shaped by uncertainity.There was uncertainity about father's job too.He never knew when he have to go or when he will be at home.In fact it was a favorite game of me and my mother:when father is going to return;nd most of the time he didnt return as predicted!!!!

Changing home so many times,changing schools again and again that many means i never had any steady set of friendz,every time we shifted i had to start from scratch;making frndz agian,moulding myself like them.....assuming a new identity.

So many things happened at short notices,I changed my school and actually completed the later part of the year in another school!!

Too many thaings happened during this time which changed me.

But one thing for certain.....

I survived.

So,I am writing this blog ...not somewhere smoking grass or doing something like that.


P.S. I decided that I am not going to write everything about me;afterall somethings are too personal.The memories which cant be shared,the anecdoted which cant be recounted............so many things....

It makes me wonder......so many days passed...so much happened....

So,I am just going to review some things and discuss about some other things.Hopefully you will keep faith!!!!

Good bye for now....
Thank you