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Showing posts from November, 2011

On being politically correct

This is one issue that has been nagging me ever since I became aware of social propriety. Propriety demands that our words, actions and every facet of our living must be politically correct, that is, should minimize any offence in gender, race, religious beliefs, ideologies, age, and every other aspect where offence may be caused. The image below is an example of a politically correct image. This is the issue with blogging. If my posts were to be politically correct, then they'd all be similar. They'd all have 0 words. So, we can assume that all my posts so far have been politically incorrect. My intent however, has not been, and shall never be to give offence. However, the moment I express my views, which may be unique to me; and which are not shared by someone else, I have given offence to the person who does not share my views. In most cases, the offence is minor, and is hardly noticed. Sometimes, it is major. For example, my post on why I dislike the Harry Potter series c

The Inheritance Cycle

So, the much awaited inheritance cycle is here. I thought I liked the series, but the last instalment has brushed aside that misconception. Read this review if you were a fan of Inheritance, but are disappointed by the last book, titled "Inheritance." If not, you may read at your own risk. So, to give an overview of the storyline. Eragon is a farm boy who happens to find a dragon egg. The dragon hatches, making him the first of the next generation of the dragon riders, the first destroyed by Galbatorix, a rider who went mad and seized the throne. Since dragon riders are immortal, Galbatorix, the tyrant, has to be killed. The same story of black and white, where the underdog is pitted against the mighty tyrant. Oh, and romance is thrown in for good measure, as Eragon is, for the entire cycle smitten by the elf Arya. So, even before the book was released, I had guessed some aspects of the storyline. Eragon would kill Galbatorix, Arya would get a dragon and become dragon rider,

20 years hence

As he walked across the road begging for alms, Page could not believe his fortune. From being the CEO of the world's biggest company on the internet, he was reduced to a lowly beggar barely able to make ends meet. A lifetime of dedication to developing better and better software was rendered meaningless in one swift blow. Yes, he could remember as if it were yesterday. The Congress had passed bills, many bills funded by big corporations (his was a big corporation, yes; but he did not believe in such lowly tactics) that suddenly changed the way the law viewed copyrights. Suddenly, before anyone knew it, display of copyrighted material became an offence, which needed no proof, only a single complaint by any of the 420 organizations who were the sole copyright owners. Suddenly, Page found his company shut down for violations of copyright. Tim was one of the 1001 great bloggers of yesteryear. Yes, he was the same one who walked out of the 13th storey window. Assailed with copyright inf

Say goodbye to punctuation

over the past few years i have often seen people talking in netspeak which is the annoying language without any vowels or punctuation but what is punctuation i cannot understand languages without vowels much less speak them because according to my knowledge we humans need vowels to speak a language but then this language is typed and i dont think its meant to be spoken though i think we can really do away with punctuation because its a useless artefact in language and never spoken see even as you read this post you are managing remarkably well in understanding whatever i have to say without the pesky capitalization that requires my pinky to press the annoying shift key or the periods or commas or semicolons hyphens and what nots best part i dont have to keep typing the html tags for new paragraphs every time saves my time yet i find this more difficult to type because i have to make sure that i dont accidentally repeat my bad habits of typing punctuation when i type but the same way i

It happens only in India: We struggle to remain "backward"

This is a post I have been wanting to write for the past six years, but have finally decided to shed inhibitions and write it now. Shed inhibitions? Be warned, this post is not politically correct; I have never strived to be politically correct, though I always wish to be morally correct. Politics in India is dirty. There is no going around the fact. When given a choice to vote, I find myself between a rock and a hard place. None of the manifestos appeal to me. Some political party, which I shall not name, had in its manifesto declared that it shall ban computers from India. How can I, an educated person, and an aspiring engineer ever stand such blasphemy? No computers! Say goodbye to all transport, elevators, microwave ovens, mobile phones, and everything else associated with the past half-century, 'cause all of them rely on microprocessors, or as the layman calls, computers. Yet, in a country with a population over a billion, housing over a seventh of the world's population,

Silly LinkedIn

I joined LinkedIn, simply trying it out, because I was told about how important it was to maintain a professional network. Being a rather private kind of person, I generally do not like the plethora of networking websites that have started up, much less the ones that expect you to pay for premium features, mainly because I never use those premium features. But, LinkedIn has a strong policy against spam. It wants to ensure that I do not spam too many people with requests to connect. Apparently, since the time someone declined my request to connect, I was marked as a potential spammer. Weird, because I take care to connect only with people I have talked with or met at least once in my life. It seems that amnesia is all to common in today's world. To cut the long story short, LinkedIn has enforced certain protection measures against my spamming. Like asking me to enter the email address of any person before I can send a request to connect. This means that I have to dig through busines

Deemed guilty of copyright infringement

No, I have not been. But someone I don't know is probably being deemed guilty of copyright infringement this very moment, as you read this blog. This post came about from a rather wild reaction on Google Plus. As might have been hammered into your skulls As you may have guessed from reading the previous n posts, I follow a number of photographers whose work I enjoy on Plus. Recently, there was a frenzied reaction amongst a large number of them about a guy from I-don't-know-where stealing their photographs. What with frenzied requests to Google to take down his profile, with calling him a thief, I felt like the poor guy was in a mob about to lynch him. Don't get me wrong, I'm not sympathising with him, I'm merely stating the almost animal like tendencies of all the civilized folk when they noticed a relatively minor infringement of their copyright. Why minor, you may ask? Well, the person uploaded extremely small prints, the type you'd get from screenshots, left