Just another blog!

Google is aggressively promoting Plus. This means that all services are now going to be integrated with Plus. Picasa Web Albums exist, but are no longer the default photo management service. Instead, clicking on photos links me to the pictures from my circles on Plus. Reader is soon to go, and be merged with Plus. Buzz is to go, and Blogger too has been integrated with Plus. The networking aspect is the goose (that lays the golden egg) of the day. Whether or not Google wants to take on Facebook, Plus looks like it's here to stay. Why should it not? Google has learnt its lessons from the Buzz fiasco, and have the USP that relations in real life are much more complex than the friend/not friend status that others offer. In fact, I think that Plus is closer to Twitter than it is to Facebook, but without the character limit, with the option to comment on posts, something I enjoy. The ability to follow random people with interesting posts and engage with them in a meaningful way changes ...

This may easily be the most difficult post I've written. For once, I cannot take recourse to the meta-element, or to meaningless digressions, but I need to stick to what I think, hard facts and personal opinions. So here goes... What exactly is intellectual property? Ideas? Seems so, in the most general sense. Of course, lawyers would have their own definition, but who here speaks gobbledygook lawyer-speak? So, if you have an idea, is it your intellectual property? Or do you have to state an assertion towards your ownership? Or, for that matter, can an idea be owned? Let's say I have an apple and you have an apple. I give you my apple and you give me yours. We both have an apple each, still. Now, let's say I have an idea and you have an idea. I give you my idea and you give me yours. Now, we both have two ideas each. And that is the fundamental issue with intellectual property. Unlike other forms of property, intellectual property does not terminate its ownership. It has t...

Some months ago, I had written a post on why Mark Shuttleworth never fails to disappoint . Today, I installed Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot on my computer, and it managed to last for just 5 minutes. This post should give a good overview of the five minute experience that is Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot. I recently bought a new computer. I need Linux on it, so I decided to install Ubuntu. However, I realized that Natty Narwhal was just too old, and that I had to wait for just a week to get my hands on the brand new Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot. The promos promised a lot. The very name, Oneiric, which is associated with dreams seemed extremely enticing. Moreover, it was not really all that worth installing Natty, then updating it within a week. For some reason, I have never had a good experience with Ubuntu upgrades, and hence I prefer clean installations. So, today, I finally downloaded Wubi and an AMD64 iso of Ubuntu 11.10. I ran Wubi, installed the system, and rebooted into Ubuntu. I was impressed with the...

No, this blog is not meant as an obituary blog. However, this is one post that I have to write. Since the death of Steve Jobs, the computing world has lost another influential personality. Dennis Ritchie, the creator of the C programming language. Yes, the same C programming language that is used to program almost all electronic devices with a microprocessor. The very same. Does this code look familiar? /*My first C program*/ #include <stdio.h> int main(int argc, char** argv) { printf("Hello World!"); return 0; } Ritchie's contributions go far beyond the C language. He contributed greatly to the development of UNIX, one of the world's first operating systems. You may not be aware of it, but UNIX defined many of the parameters on which today's operating systems are based upon. Linux is a UNIX clone, which means that it behaves in the same way as UNIX. Macintosh, which Steve Jobs is known for, is nothing but a UNIX derivative. I wonder what Jobs m...

This post may be a little late (two days to be exact). I would not really like to write an obituary, that can be done by people far better than myself. Rather, this is about how Steve Jobs has affected my life, and those of everyone across the world. I must admit, I'm not an Apple fan. In fact, I'm an Apple hater. More than anything else, I hate the Apple fanboys who keep harping about how cool Apple products are. I have never used any Apple products so far, except maybe tried out some that my friends have. Yet, Steve Jobs and his vision has affected my interactions with the technical world in many ways. Take for example my phone. I use an Android, and it's awesome. I just love the multi-touch gestures on the phone. But then, that's something Apple came up with on the iPhone. If it were not for the superior touch screen capabilities of the iPhone, we would still be stuck with boring single touch resistive touchscreens which had to be worked with styluses. Not only that,...

The only comment I received over my earlier blog post criticized me for digressing too much and not presenting an opinion. So, in this post, I aim to give my views on the filtering of search results by services we trust, like Google and Facebook. So, what is the issue with filtering search results to make them more specific to the user (searcher)? As discussed in the video, the main issue with this mechanism is that it isolates a person from the web, where a person might go in to spot views contrary to his own, some views can challenge a person's often limited and biased understanding of matters, thereby helping in the overall development of a person. By filtering those views, Google and Facebook end up showing us views that we like, instead of views that we ought to see, which essentially leaves our world view unchanged. Take for example the concept of my personal blog (this one). I end up sharing links to my posts on Google+ and Facebook. I shall refrain from discussing about Fa...