the brook

Is there something about the air in Bihar? Is it forever doomed to be ignored by its rulers? Rediff writes about Nitish Kumar:

Vowing to change “the worst ever work culture due to Rashtriya Janata Dal’s misgovernance for past 15 years”, he told reporters that he would have a one-to-one meeting with senior bureaucrats, including secretaries of all departments and officers of the rank of inspector general and above to improve the situation.

The Indian Express writes about the professional efforts of his cabinet to establish a good work culture:

Cabinet minister Baidyanath Mahto’s men went and ‘‘booked’’ a sprawling bungalow on Bailey Road, occupied for 15 years by RJD’s former minister Iliyaas Hussain. Using a red chalk, they wrote ‘‘Baidyanath Mahto, Cabinet minister’’ alongside Hussain’s nameplate. It was to pre-empt other leaders from taking the house. But later, another Cabinet minister Monazir Hassan, who has been given charge of the building construction department, was allotted the same bungalow. Mahto had no option but to withdraw his claim.

I remember being as childish - booking the school bus window seat just behind the driver in Std I. Good luck, Bihar.

Blogsville, The Internet - New scientific evidence shows how spammers may have helped a large number of patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Active brain function, scientists say, greatly help reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and may even help reverse it.

However, societal efforts to stop us from using our brains have greatly increased in the last few decades. The invention of the television pioneered this movement and soon after, people stopped using their brains at home. The Internet age followed and people stopped using their brains at work as well.

The Bureau Of Largely Lame Ostriches Creating Kaleidoscopic Statistics (BOLLOCKS) estimates that people who have Internet access at work use their brains about 1% of the time. The people who do not have Internet access at work use their brains at work about 60% of the time, but 90% of that usage is geared toward figuring out a way to access the Internet through the corporate firewall.

Recent emergent studies have concluded that spammers actually started out as a movement to fight sinister efforts to get humans to stop using their neurons (why our governments would want to do such a thing is another story). Spamming was initially directed towards diluting Internet content to move users away from the brain-numbing expanses of the Internet. Originally, it was targeted toward services like e-mail - which was a concept doomed from the start. Our heroes of humanity had never thought that people would actually be dumb enough to believe spam-content for reality.

Spamming blogs, on the other hand, has proved much more effective in achieving the true objective of the spammers. BOLLOCKS estimates between 40 and 70 percent of office time is spent reading and commenting on blogs. To help “fight” spam, blogging sites and software frequently generate fudged-up images of random sequences of letters (much like the one reproduced to the right). An experiment conducted by doctors at the Barvard School of Medicine shows that although it stays minimal while reading a blog or leaving comments, neural activity spikes up greatly while trying to read the anti-spam verification images. This is probably due to the pattern-recognition nature of the task as well as the fact that the images get tougher with time as the spammers make better and better programs to automatically read the images. For the first time in history, masses of humans are being forced to use their brains more efficiently than central processing units.

Scientists estimate that reading and commenting on twenty-six point two blogs with the image verification feature generates brain activity equivalent to doing a crossword, which in turn is the prescribed activity for patients considered to be at risk for Alzheimer’s. The next time you see spam, you may want to see it in a slightly kinder light.

P.S. FBPN stands for “Fake but Possible News”. I would have called it Fake News, but I wouldn’t want to be sued by these guys.

P.P.S. This FBPN Network story is its first output. Depending on the laziness of its employees (which number in the low ones), it may or may not be the last.

Scott Adams recently released a free PDF of his book, God’s debris. Its a wonderful book with a number of new ideas. Just one read won’t quite be enough for me, though. There are a lot of new ideas in the book - new ways to think about life. It kind makes you think the universe has turned upside down. Some of the ideas are present in other philosophies, but the idea that really makes me think is his concept that God is basically probability.

Einstein once said, “God does not play the dice”. I wonder how he would have reacted to the statement that “God is the dice.”

Anyone with an open mind will love the book. To a pragmatic, rigidly scientific person however, this book might seem just a combination of mysticism and cult. Here’s a snippet from the book, which should help you figure out whether you’ll like it or not:

“There is no logical limit to how
much our collective power will grow. A billion years from
now, if a visitor from another dimension observed human-
ity, he might perceive it to be one large entity with a con-
sciousness and purpose, and not a collection of relatively
uninteresting individuals.”

“Are you saying we’re evolving into God?”

“I’m saying we’re the building blocks of God, in the
early stages of reassembling.”

“I think I’d know it if we were part of an omnipotent
being”.

“Would you? Your skin cells are not aware that they are
part of a human being. Skin cells are not equipped for that
knowledge. They are equipped to do what they do and
nothing more. Likewise, if we humans—and all the plants
and animals and dirt and rocks—were components of God,
would we have the capacity to know it?”

“So, you’re saying God blew himself to bits—I guess
that was the Big Bang—and now he’s piecing himself back
together?”

“He is discovering the answer to his only question.”

Enjoying a movie to me is all about two things… the dialogue and the pauses between the dialogue. Maybe thats why I really appreciate so few movies.

I watched Gladiator after a long time today, and its still as wonderful a movie as I remember it - every slightest touch in the movie speaks of brilliance. It counts among the three movies I’d ever rate as 10/10; the other two being “The Empire Strikes Back” and “The Matrix”.

Some of the most memorable moments in the Gladiator… not just for the words, but the silences between them:

Maximus: What we do in life echoes in eternity.

Marcus Aurelius: Tell me again, Maximus, why are we here?
Maximus: For the glory of the Empire, sire.

Marcus Aurelius: There was a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish, it was so fragile.

Marcus Aurelius: How can I reward Rome’s greatest general?
Maximus: Let me go home.
Marcus Aurelius: Ah, home.

Marcus Aurelius: Won’t you accept this great honor that I have offered you?
Maximus: With all my heart, no.
Marcus Aurelius: Maximus, that is why it must be you.

Gracchus: The beating heart of Rome is not the marble of the Senate, it’s the sand of the Colosseum. He’ll bring them death and they will love him for it.

Gracchus: I don’t pretend to be a man of the people. But I do try to be a man for the people.

Maximus: My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.

Maximus: There was a dream that was Rome. It shall be realized. These are the wishes of Marcus Aurelius.

This was an Archer that I had missed. One of his best, which makes me unhappy that I’ve only just read it; but happy that I left it for this time, when I really have little else this good to serve for entertainment. This book easily becomes my favourite Jeffery Archer.

I’d rate almost every short story in the book as 4/5 or better. My favourites were “Broken Routine”, “Old Love”, “Just good friends”, “Christina Rosenthal” and “One man’s meat…”. The beauty of a well-written short story is not just that it drives home a point in just a few pages; but that its message is usually something very simple yet impactful - whether its about friendship, laughter, achievement or ego. In books like “First Among Equals” or “Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less” I was awed by the intricacies and magnitude of the plot - but in this book, what delighted me that even the simple plots were equally powerful and immersive - thirty-six times over.

I guess almost everyone must have read this by now, but if you haven’t do read it!

I’m almost embarassed to admit it, but I’ve taken to using Lynx very often. For those who don’t know, Lynx is a text browser. All you get is pure ASCII. No images, single font, single size. I use it mostly for reading research related stuff. I’ve found (empirically) that it offers quite a few advantages.

Mostly, it helps me focus. Of course, I access Blogger in Firefox, where right now I have about eight tabs open, with at least half being completely work-unrelated (cricket scores, PhD comics, Indian Express and so forth). Where there is a tab, there is a switch to it once in a while, which can be hugely distracting.

At a deeper level, though, in a text browser its really difficult to go to any external links - even those that are there in a particular page. There’s no easy way of opening them while keeping your current page (no new tab/new window… and if you know of one, don’t tell me!) so you really tend to (a) open pages that you will read and (b) stay focused on reading them. Moreover, links don’t stand out as much as they do in a graphical browser, they’re just blue in colour as opposed to black. I even read a few blogs on it these days - I’ve been noticing that in a tabbed or graphical interface I sometimes tend to just gloss over the information rather than really reading it.

I cannot emphasize how nice it can be to have just one font. One gets tired of big, small, italicized, colored, imaged and generally distorted text at times. Console font can be a blessing.

Lastly, it really is the best solution for ad-blocking - of course!

Of course, Lynx never will replace a graphical browsing interface - but I find myself pretty happily spending an hour or so on it continuously at times. Trust me, if you intend to get through the GNU Make Manual in two or three (or even one!) sitting straight, Firefox is probably not your best choice.

Think I might have finally crossed the line into insanity? I can’t blame you :)

The Boston Museum of Science is running a Star Wars exhibit until April next year. I stopped outside the museum to watch some Padawans exercising with their lightsabers.

You refer to the prophecy of the One who would bring balance to the Force. You believe its this… boy?

You have learned much, young one

Kill him, Anakin! Do it now!

If you’re not with me…

Sith Lords are my speciality…

Luke… NO! I AM YOUR FATHER!!!

Aah.. to be a kid again. In any case, I’m definitely getting one of ‘em lightsabers for myself!

A friend of mine, whom I convinced to switch to a Mac is now switching back to Linux on an Intel-based laptop.

Although it took me a long time to come to this conclusion, but I find myself agreeing that with his requirements, Linux wins hands down in favour of OS X. Since I’ve pretty much recommended the Macintosh to anyone and everyone who’s ever bothered to listen, I thought I should post this legitimate argument about the other side.

He works extensively with terminals and likes to live completely in the UNIX suburbs of OS X, and that is what kind of bit him quite badly in sensitive spots.

First issue - he keeps his home directory on a different partition. This is possible in OS X, but only with a hack, and updating to 10.4.3 broke the hack. Suddenly, his home folder permissions were screwed up, and he couldn’t write to half his files, including things like his iTunes library. Half the icons on his dock were replaced with ugly-looking question marks. Reinstalling and remounting the home partition did not solve the problem - the only way that we could fix it was to move the home folder back into the System partition. Important fact to remember about Apple - their system is UNIX-based, but its not exactly UNIX. More importantly, they modify critical functionality with each update with impunity - after all - most Macintosh users don’t even dream of hacking around with UNIX-level files and directories. A prime example is that with Tiger, Apple has deprecated crontab in favour of launchd. Putting jobs in crontab will still work (for now) but there’s no guarantee that it will continue to do so in future versions. If you like playing around with the system structure to suit your needs - be wary of moving to OS X. I personally use a lot of the *nix in Apple but I don’t play around with the system structure, so I’m OK for now.

Second issue - Applications. This is actually the reason a lot of Linux users switch to OS X. Some very popular applications for Linux though, are either not available for OS X or are available as hacks which aren’t very reliable. I will say that I definitely miss the Linux Konsole application. OS X Terminal.app, iTerm, AquaTerm are all usable, but at best can be called second-class imitations of Konsole. Plenty of Linux hackers work exclusively out of the terminal (even starting GUI applications from the terminal), but Apple has never been used to this idea. If they’re serious about luring away the *nix crowd, they better start thinking about it. Another thing that comes out just as a temporary hack is gVim. gVim exists as a port on OS X, but updates keep breaking it.

Lastly - Linux on a Powerbook sucks. We installed Kubuntu 5.10 on the Powerbook 15″ and it was slow, clearly revealing the limitations of the PPC G4 CPU. I guess OS X has been so heavily optimized to work well with G4 that it is actually possible to forget that you’re working on what is a four year old architecture - unless you also work with OS X on a G5. And PPC Linux I guess is still a babe when it comes to G4 optimized builds. Bootup, program loading, mouse trails - you name it - every action on Linux installed on the G4 was horribly slow. Worse, Apple offers almost no support for Linux and you can’t have utilities like wifi support, 3-D acceleration for ATI cards etc.

So at that point, my friend had to take the decision, and he did - sold off his 15″ Powerbook and is awaiting a Intel centrino-based notebook.

I just got a window on my screen saying, “Firefox has downloaded an important update and must restart”. I clicked on OK, and FF happily shuts down, starts up and says, “Firefox is installing updates and will start up in a few moments.” And it did.

I was running Firefox 1.5 RC2 and the update, I suppose, was the release version of Firefox 1.5. After a hell of a long time and a ton of complaints, Mozilla have finally implemented the patch mechanism.

Looks like they got it right!

…there was LOGO. Anyone remember this drawing software that was the first software schools used to teach all those long years ago? The one that actually fit into a 360KB 5.25-inch floppy disk?

Turns out it’s been reincarnated as a Java program. I used to think of the drawing process as Yogi Bear making marks in the snow as he moved along. Those were the days.

Of course, the programmer says “the features are more from this millenium than from the last one”. Man, I’m OLD!