Eye and I

So I saw the eye doctor last Friday after I experienced some minor irritation in my eyes leading to fatigue. The doc did a thorough examination and concluded that everything was ok, and that I needed to blink more. Get a load of this! My name "Nirnimesh" translates to "one who does not blink much" and the doc wants me to blink more. I'm standing true to my name. :)

3 Things for which I cannot forgive Congress

It's election in Hyderabad tomorrow. And there are 3 reasons why I cannot vote for congress.

1. OBC Reservations: Nothing severs equality of opportunity more than providing reservations based not on merit but by birth. Congress introduced reservations for OBC in higher education institutions and set a precedent against merit. I remember marching on a rally against this, a few years ago. Arjun Singh, the perennial a$$hole, became an overnight champion and messiah.

2. 26/11: What do you do when a mole steals into your house and breaks your stuff? I hammer it with a broom and throw it out, as soon as I can. A handfull of armed militants attacked Mumbai and threw the country out of gear for 3 days. I repeat -- 3 whole days. For three days, the government didn't have a clue about how to sort out the matter. Instead, we managed to lose 4 top police officers, the likes of whom we can't easily get in police force. This national tragedy became an international shame for the country. A rogue state like Pakistan had demonstrated India's incompetence to protect its soverignity. No wonder then that a third rate failure like Pratibha Patil is the President, the supreme commander of the armed forces.

3. 3G Melodrama: India has the 2nd fastest growing telecommunications industry in the world. Telephones have made their way into the veins of the country in a way that roads haven't. Small-scale farmers, auto-drivers, village shop-keepers not only have cellphones, they use it. India looked ready for continuing its dominant stride in the Information Age. 3G was knocking at the door. We had to let it in. Instead, the 3G auction was delayed, license prices were doubled overnight, and lots of confusion eventually led to it being postponed forever.

These are the three things I feel the strongest about. I haven't even mentioned other things like: daily power cuts in Hyderabad, the national highway project melodrama, the royal lineage of potential PMs, the Gandi-ization of every road, bridge and scheme names, the international shame that the uncertainity over the nuclear deal brought, and Shivraj Patil as home minister.

Advani for PM

I was browsing my usual way a few days ago when I first noticed ads for "Advani for PM". What was interesting was that this ad was on slashdot. After a few days I started seeing these ads at a lot of places -- online discussion forums, blogs, news websites, and so on. These were served through some adsense account, I believe.

Ordinarily I wouldn't bother about these kinds of political blabbers. But since I had already been amused at seeing such ads on a technical website (I was searching for 'assembly language on mac') I wanted to be amused even more so I clicked on the banner labelled "My IT vision" near Advani's face.

The banner linked to a doc detailing Advani's IT strategy. And I must admit there were quite a few very interesting points there. Whether or not they can get implemented will be seen in time but the fact that someone in these scurry circles has actually been thinking not just abstract melodrama but specific numbers and figures is impressive (2 Mbps unlimited broadband for Rs 200 pm!).

I knew that techies like us hardly ever formed a voice in a political arena. We never mattered enough for these politicians. Have things changed recently? Are we a potential votebank target? Are we being noticed?

I also found that Advani has a full-fledged website being updated on a continuous basis with links to the party manifesto, documentaries, question answers, and digs on congress. I couldn't find a similar one for Congress. I'm not saying that it does not exist. I'm just saying that I couldn't find it. All I could find was a link to a .doc, which I hate to click on.

While I kept following the pages, I could imagine the rhetoric Congress has been pulling off for ages in the name of Nehru and Gandhi. I mean come on. Agreed that these people must have done good things at their time, but enough is enough. Live in the present. "Aam aadmi ka haath, aam aadmi ke saath" just gives me a feeling of one guy masturbating. If you think of more than one guy, they're gay and beating each other off. Nothing more. It doesn't tell me anything concrete. It's like an abstract class with pure virtual functions which no one wants (or intends) to inherit.

Anyways, I'm not sure Advani is the right person. But given the political chaos, if I had to choose between Manmohan (aka Sonia with beard), Advani and Mayawati (or the entire breed), I think I'd go with Advani.

Maybe I should have taken the pain to get my voter id card this time.

I See Stupid People

The punchline in The Sixth Sense went by:

I see dead people

 
There's this boy who could see dead people. He was haunted by them to such an extent that he could not make out the difference between the living and dead. He had been taught to fear the dead, so he did, except that he could not separate them from the living.

I see stupid people. They're all around. I don't know what their purpose in life is. Frankly, I don't think they even have a purpose. They breathe, because they'd die otherwise. They go to work, because they'd die otherwise. They marry, because the society wants them to. They breed, because the society would kill them otherwise. There's not one thing that they'd do if not by a force threatening of something more devastating. They're like a paper boat being carried along by the river's current. They don't have a will of their own. They're not alive.

The difference between dead people and stupid people however is that stupid people are easier to identify. Their actions follow no logic. You could identify them with just an imbalanced mathematical equation. It's so mundane that you could almost automate the process, the input being a stream of people and the output being a binary flag associated with each indicating whether or not he's stupid. It's a bit more complicated than that since the classification is not black or white, but a rounding off can be performed.

The problem after classification however is what to do with the stupid people. I would gladly leave them alone but they don't leave me alone. They make life difficult for me. They take my money in the name of law, they haunt me in the name of society and they try to stop me in the name of progress. They run the government, they make the rules, they pass judgments and then they decree punishment.

It's not like they'd understand logic. I don't want them to understand logic, as long as they leave me alone. Just leave me alone. I don't want you, I don't want to talk to you, I don't want to hear you. I don't want to see stupid people. I'd gladly see dead people instead.

The Sad Tale of 3G in India

What does it take for a compelling technology to go down the drains? Answer: let the government regulate it.

3G, poised as a definitive stage for mobile internet, has gone through a similar harassment through the hands of the government in India. I can recall hearing about it as early as 2008. The spectrum war, the auction, the technology and how it would prove a boon for the millions of devices carried around by millions of Indians. Alas!

The service providers geared up for 3G, pulled up their socks, deployed the technology and have just been waiting for the government's permission. The government, on the other hand, delayed the auction indefinitely, created all kinds of controversies around it, and finally let state-owned MTNL and BSNL launch the service. BSNL and MTNL, known for their indifference to customers (have you ever heard of customer service for BSNL/MTNL? have you ever been to a BSNL office? I have. It's a hole where serendipity abounds) and slow head towards new technology, choose to launch 3G in select towns in India, carefully choosing not to launch it where it might be useful. Are you surprised then that there are a mere 3000 3G customers for BSNL? 3000! That's all.

And now it's election time. All business, development, and progress must be set aside as a bunch of retards fist together for a seat in the parliament run by my tax rupees. The fate of real 3G has been put in coma, while I hold in the air my 3G-compatible phone and look up in the sky. Sigh!