Recovered my blog!

I successfully recovered ownership of this blog (I don't know how I lost it in the first place, but I did).

Having said that: my primary blog is and will be http://annacoder.livejournal.com

Social Hacking

It is not advisable to prod a topic that one is not completely sure of - But, to overlook this well-accepted wisdom has been one of my characteristics; It stems from the belief that an idiotic thought or question from a "newbie" might spur some useful,concrete activity in the minds of the "experts".

With the above excuse, I proceed to talk about what i would like to call as Social Hacking (unfortunately, the same term is used elsewhere to mean something different - some pages that google returns for social hacking/hackers are not connected to what i propound in this blog).

I describe social hacking as using one's skill and abilities to the betterment of the society with the hacker's attitude.

Let me give an (hypothetical) example of what I mean: you find your cafeteria to be inefficient, they use systems that require unnecessarily long queues which everyone tolerates with irritation. You device a method wherein the waiting time is reduced considerably - for example, majority of the customers come only to buy coke from the cafeteria, so your solution is that having a sperate counter just for coke will reduce the average waiting time - moreover, it is cost-effective to implement too!

Whatever we do in our daily lives as professional workers is to put our skills to use so that we are of some use to our society- for which you get paid.

But, a social hacker actively tries to solve real-world societal problems without monetary intentions- He just loves to solve problems.

Teaching a bunch of kids how to do maths is one way of Social Hacking too (According to me).

One should realize that:
* Social Hacking is not a form of charitable work.
* It is just using your skill to solve societal problems.

Putting it very simply, if you find a barbed wire on the Highway, and you stop your car to remove it, you have kinda started to hack the society.

statutory warning - I am not a well-known/self-proclamied hacker, my understanding of the concept of hacking stems from reading the works of the masters. I might have misunderstood them.

Book Review - God of Small Things

God of small things is the best book i have read.
So, i think it is my duty to present a comprehensive review of this wonderful book.
One of the intentions of this review is to make the people who read this also read the book.

* Arunthati Roy , the author of the book, got the prestigious booker prize for this work.
* It is her first work
* The story is set in Kerala - God's Own Country
* It is her unique, self-styled, bounds-free use of the english language that is most fascinating.
* If you are expecting, a masala story or one that is filled with twists and turns, sorry - this is not your kind of book
* If you are expecting to read a great story, something you will remember with its finest details, you're on!
* Most of the book talks about simple concepts and ideas, no metaphysical thingy.
* But, it analyzes human relationships in a smart, amazing way.
* The potrayal of children is work of a genius.
* It has the wiredest lead of all characters - twins (one boy and the other girl) who come from the same zygote - so they seem to feel as a single unit not as two.
* The story is not linear. Events are a bit jumbled up , to create a remarkable impact.
* It is hard read - not the book to read in a beach while you take sun tan.
* Some of the event are grouse - you have to endure it.
* To simply put, it is how the author explains a set of real-life events.
* In one chapter, the author potrays a bunch of (drunk) kathkali dancers playing out important scenes from the mahabharta all through the night at a temple to (an unwelcome) audience of two (the twins). I consider this part the jewel of the book.
* Important characters - Ammu, Velutha, Estha Estappen (twin 1), Rahel (twin 2), Sophie Mol, Chacko etc..
* Overall, a must read for someone looking for some serious read which goes to the heart to stay till you live.

brain tsunami

hi all,
let me tell you what.... my mind is a terminal for thoughts to come and go. I don't know where they come from and don't know where most of them go to. But, a few lucky (unlucky) ones end up here as blog posts..
Yes, these posts are raw thoughts... they are a chosen few based on categories like impact, concentration, duration etc.,

ok, the following lines are the outcome of the numerous discussions i have had with my good friend Ramnath... this is what i got by listening to him.

Now, ramnath's credentials- tnpcee rank 9. doing ece in anna univ (where else). going to tcs (lo).

* there is no definitive definition for charge (as in charge of electron)
* the difference between living things like us and machines is consciousness - make a thing that is as human as possible.. but is it conscious of itself?
* electronics is not science - proof, if i connect a set of components together to form a circuit i cannot predict the output.. ece guys let the circuit work and based on its output behaviour they observe, they come up with a possilbly satisfying explanation and model.
* Lord of the Rings facts - J R R tolkein talks about three ages off the middle earth. during the first age, middle earth was made and many mythical beings like valors came to settle in it. the most powerful of them becomes morgorth and his assitant is souron who becomes very powerful after the other valors some how push morgorth out of the middle earth. souron himself is not a valor.

there might be many mistakes in the above statements... no guarantees given...

Don't Port Open Source Software to Windows

This thought was spurred after seeing an article in The Hindu (India's National News Paper) about GIMP being made available for the Windows Users.

Now these can be the usual responses:
* What's wrong?
* Great! now lotsa people will use GIMP (by hard core GIMP fans)

But, one should remember this important quote from (yours truly) Bill Gates :
"The more applications we get, the more volumes; The more the volumes, the more applications"

Here, volume refers to the number of copies of Windows sold around the world. Gates tells us that, by selling more "volumes", more developers get attracted to writing software for it, as they would cover a wider customer base and more applications means more users buy Windows specifically to use those applications (to end the cycle).

Simply put, All Visual Studio users would by Windows and more VS like apps will be created for windows making more people buy it.

Now, what alarms me is not that more people would buy Windows if they are specific about using just GIMP but it would definitely put away people who might think of switching to linux.

Now, the usual counter-argument would be that people would develop a soft-corner for Linux by using Windows-ported Open Source software.
But, this will only have a detrimental effect as they would wait for all software to be ported to Windows.

Ironically, all cool OSS like PHP, Apache, OpenOffice etc., have already been ported.

Now, why is this a worry?
Wider User base is definitely important for developing cool software and if Linux has to win (or thrive), it needs more users which can only be got by making more people use Linux.

To face reality,
Does the Acrobat eBook Reader run on Linux?
We do not currently plan to develop a version for the Linux platform, but we may in the future if that platform becomes more widely used.
the above three lines were excerpted from
http://www.adobe.com/support/ebookrdrfaq.html#linux

The perfection of everything

To me, living my life is like being a tourist in chinatown. I find myself asking the questions : "what is all this?" "why is all this happening around me?" and since i have no one to post the questions to except myself, i find that the response or answer (or whatever you want to call the thought that is evoked by these questions) always hovers around Einstein's saying - 'God does not play dice [with the universe]'

I don't know what connotations it has and how others interpret it, but to me, it means that everything that is happening in this world- is happening with surgical precision, in divine perfection.

Yes, Every single event, entity, thought is perfect.

Let me give a few examples to support my view point:

1) No matter what happens in a restraunt, people will always visit it if it provides good food (inspired by paul graham )

2) bhagvat gita - the happened/happening/to happen are all for good


If you are willing to further, ponder over this conjecture, try to live with it for a while. try to apply it to your everyday happenings, you might arrive at the conclusion that i want you to arrive to.

Note that this is not a sales pitch for a philosophy. I find no other reason to explain things like child molestation, jehadi "live tv" murdrers, state of people who live BPL. So, these things are because they have to be, they play a part in the perfection, to contribute to the orderliness.

Be proud to help

My words of wiss-dom : Help others, Be Proud about it, Brag about it.

This is one such bragging session. I helped a poor girl (extremely unacceptable bad quality of life ) by helping her getting money for her heart surgery - 50 000 rs(it covered all the expenses , even post operational ). she is live and kicking now, and I have seen her just once in my life :). I didn't put any money, (i don't even get enuf porketmonney) . I just sincerely acted as her agent and did things that will make her get money. ( this process by itself is does not hold any relevance in this post- it requires one for itself).

Now, the usual reasoning is that if you help any one in any way, you are not supposed to keep saying about it - this is completely wrong, you can say it if the others can never findout who the benefeciary is.

Let me tell you why :
* I got this chance to help because someone who knew that i like to help others called me and asked me to do something, this clearly shows that if more people know that you help, then you get more "help me/ somebody else" request so, you have a high probability of doing something worthwhile.

* As you keep helping, you gather much needed reputation. For example, someone who knew that i am involved in helping cancer institute sent me money as donation to the institute. the moral: you become the "proper channel" for others to provide help. they will no more worry about their money or other resources they want to give - they know it is in save 'highly reputed' hands.

There might be a other few good reasons - like you feel happy for a lifetime doing such a thing.

but, helpig does not provide you a erotic or exotic form of happiness like a few successes or scientific achievements (for proof, consult stephen hawkings quotes - has said once that scientific achievement is like sex , to paraphrase ).

helping is a tough job (proof, social service people are considered to be the most unhappy about their job. the most happy are the hair stylists ).

helping sometimes backfires, sometimes they exploit it, might forget you after getting help etc., but, it is worth it,.

so, start helping professionally.

sms chess

hi,
i have come up with this (supposedly) new idea. sms chess! well, from the good old days people seperated by distance play chess by keeping a board at their ends and by mailing their next move to their opponent.. this way, the game is looong... But, i propose a similar style play. so, if you want to play chess with me, we swap our numbers and decide on who gets which color. then we setup a board in our room. now we propose our move as a sms and thus the game continues!... Now, the advantage here is that, the game is played as a continuous process rather than to spend a full hour or more on it... It is fun and it is different.

one might argue that such a thing can be done in chat... but the idea is to make a move as and when you get time and not to sit in front of anything for a long time. no, time boundaries.

by the way, this way of playing chess is what is used by processes in a distributed environment to maintain data consistency when sharing and distributing data... each location has a copy and as a change is made, the state at the other end(s) is modified so that state is consistent at both the places.