The world, how it works, surroundings, myself, etc.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

The Depravity of our Health Minister

The guy who banned smoking in public places is in the news again. This time he's trying to stop pub-culture.

Starting from the assumption that drinking is against Indian ethics, he somehow concludes that we cannot progress unless India bans pub-culture. Now, wait a minute! What's the rationale? I'm listening - explain me please?

He mentions that 40% of road accidents happen because of alcohol. Even if I believe these numbers, what he does not tell you is that 99% of those accidents would happen because the road was un-even or had spiky speed-breakers or massive pot-holes. For what it's worth, US has more cars, more roads and more alcohol. They use alcohol detectors instead of banning pubs outright.

Reminds me of a SouthPark episode where Cartman toilet-papered his teacher's house to avenge a punishment but the police booked the store who sold the toilet-paper.

I also disagree with the stupid Health Minister when he says that drinking is not in our culture. How exactly? Let's begin from the beginning. It's well known that Kauravas were to drinking as motherboard is to computer. Lord Shiva, we all know, is perennially drunk. All the members of parliament drink (they do more when they're drunk, but let's focus here), most people in villages drink (heard of toddy?) or smoke (heard of beedi or hookah?). Which culture of the Indian society is the doorknob-headed health minister talking about again?

What the government should instead focus on is to improve education and way of life, not banning everything and anything that brings happiness. Mr Health Minister, just because you coughed up the first time you tried drinking coz it was too much for you and your wife pointed and laughed and burnt your wee-wee with her smoking cigarrette does not mean that you should go ban alcohol, cigarrette or laughter.

Friday, January 30, 2009

The Vicious Circle: It all comes back

I committed a sin two years ago.

I had purchased a Sony product - a laptop and that too with M$ Vista. It was for my little brother. I knew Sony couldn't be relied upon, my CD writer from sony had stopped working years ago, but still I went ahead and made the purchase. And don't even get me started about Vista!

It's all coming back now.

The laptop has performed poorly. Throwing a mere 1 GB RAM to a behemoth named Vista was like offering a gaping pig to a ravaging tornado - it can only result in destruction. And no you could not reinstall it with Win XP because several of the hardware features (like touchpad, wireless) would no more work. Why? Sony hasn't bothered to make drivers for XP (aka M$ did not want it so).

And when I say that the laptop had Vista in it, I mean it literally. It did not come with a Vista CD, it never does. All it comes with is a partition with a Vista recovery disk on it. There's a funny key-combination to activate this recovery upon boot, and can be figured out only by serendipity (the laptop didn't come with a manual either).

Anyway, after less than a year's use, Sony timer kicked in. The battery started dissipating in minutes and transitioned to a situation where it could not work at all without AC power. A Japaenese friend had told me earlier about the Sony timer - the law stating that all Sony products expire when their warranty expires. Now that I think of it, that's exactly what happened to my CD writer too.

Moving forward with life, I'm trying to purchase a replacement battery from the Sony store. Bear with me while I tell you that it costs $192.34 (excluding shipping, I think). This is about one-fourth the cost of the laptop itself. A quick Google Search tells me that equivalent batteries are available for much cheaper elsewhere.

So, to hell with Sony. I'm not going to buy anything with "Sony" on it. This includes the playstation.

Damn you, Sony! Die. Go to hell and die. May the economic recession shut you down!