Just another blog!

I'm fascinated by the concept of government, and the paradoxes it presents. On one hand, governments grant us a certain set of rights or liberties. On the other hand, they work to strip us of the very liberties they promise. Now, I don't mean that all governments strip people of liberties, but there are liberal regimes, and there are sufficiently restrictive and dictatorial ones. Both models may have results to show, it does not mean that people in a restrictive regime are unhappy (refer to Dan Dennett's TED talk , where he states that ideas or memes can be dangerous when taken from one part of the world, where they are widespread, and, using the virus analogy, where people are immune to the memes; to a part of the world where they are foreign, where people may not be immune to the memes and where people may get infected). History has shown that people were sufficiently satisfied with autocratic governments with a benevolent dictator, and that people in other parts of the ...

This post stems out of Google's prank today; when they announced that YouTube will be shut down until 2023. Of course, they meant it as a prank, but considering their disturbing trend of shutting down services... well, let's just say that I did not find it the most attractive prank. I've written earlier  (during the GMail account fiasco) about Google's model, and why users who don't pay any cash directly for services are useful to Google. In this post, I try and lay out some pitfalls of killing off young services. Google aims to build a moat around it's search and advertisement business. It tries to do so by ensuring that users always use Google for search; which increases revenues through advertisement. Good search results are ones that are personalised, so that the user gets what he wants without a lot of keyword-jugglery that was needed a decade ago. Indeed, a decade ago, I remember going as far as page 10 in search results to find the information I neede...

I use Linux when I work from home, I'm forced to use a Mac at work (well, I boot up a virtual Linux OS), and I use Windows when I just want to goof around with my computer. So, while most of my work is done on Linux, it's imperative that my code work on all platforms; just because I could use any of the three. Traditionally, C required multiple versions of code, protected by #ifdefs. This often required multiple versions of code to be written, depending on the target system, target OS, and compiler being used. Clumsy and messy system. C++ too had similar shortcomings. When it came to writing multi-threaded code, I had to choose either Win32 or Posix, and once I made that choice, I was bound by it. Since those were the days when Ubuntu was driving me crazy, I chose Win32. Bad decision. Every single action that I attempted was compounded by the fact that Win32 is the worst API ever. How do I lock a mutex? Well, first I declare a handle, then declare a mutex, then define the...

I've often been vocal on this blog about how ours is a generation of creative folk; about how easy it is to generate good content; and about how anyone with a computer and an internet connection can generate content that can take on the best in the business. Well, I'm not sure if I hold that stand any longer. Over the past few months, I've often stumbled upon this question: Do we still have the will to create content? Consider this: I come home tired from work; wherein I sit in front of a computer and write code, or sit in front of a computer and read research papers. Then, I come home, fix myself a meal, log on to some website, and watch TV shows while I eat. It's so convenient. So little effort needed to watch a program, and so much more effort for something equivalent, say, read a book. Now consider something even more tedious; like writing this blog, and you'll realise where I'm going. This particular post has been in the draft mode for over two weeks,...

Let’s face it, I hate Harry Potter. But the past 24 hour of zombie like travelling has made me yearn for a concept found only in the world of Harry Potter, and that is the concept of apparation. (In other news, I finally found out how Scott Adams gets his weird ideas.) Let me give a summary of the last 24 hours. I'm currently at Frankfurt airport, and I'm sure that this blog post will not be published until I reach home; but I'm writing it anyway, so that the flavour is not diluted by the happiness of being at home. Travelling is tedious. I woke up at around 07:00 EST, reached the bus stop in Ithaca at around 09:15. The bus arrived shortly after, but some 6 idiots passengers forgot to give the driver their tickets. This meant that the driver counted the tickets three times over, in his painfully slow 60s-something grandpa style, after which he declared that he would not move the bus until the tickets had been submitted. Result: bus supposed to start off at 09:40 starte...

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was a a semester of foolishness, it was a semester of wisdom; of incredulity, of belief; of light and of darkness; of hope and of despair. Here's a review of what happened in the last 4 months. I moved to the US of A. I started a PhD at Cornell University. I lost a friend to cancer. He was 22. I made many new friends. I'm convinced that +Nishant Totla is the singularly most annoying person in the world. Apple sucks. The Settlers of Catan rocks. I entered a complicated relationship with a commitment of at least 4 years, if I'm lucky; 7 if I'm not. I found an advisor. He has a certificate of excellence in his office, "for successfully intimidating the most students of the ECE batch of '05." I started work on a project towards my PhD. Two people I know were involved in near fatal car accidents, one on the east coast, and one on the west. Just means that we've got to be really careful, as...

Thinking that I've lost it? No, you read that title right, I'm making a case for small screens (albeit many of them). I've recently been given a 27 inch iMac by my advisor. This does nothing to change my feelings, I still think that Macs suck, and that they are one of the most gimped excuses for a computer. But that's for another post. Right now, I'll be making a case against big displays, and that holds for any computer, not just Macs. The argument starts off with Fitt's Law . This is a law which relates the time taken to point at a target using a pointing device like a mouse, and relates the time to the log of the distance to the target divided by the width of the target. For convenience, I've listed the law, in mathematical form below. Basically, all that it says is rather obvious. If you're trying to point at a tiny target located a mile away, you're screwed. But that's what happens with every large display. Note that I'm talking ...