If you are wondering what happened after March 2005, well, Null Pointer moved to its own home. Please do follow me there.

Saturday, August 30, 2003

Wrong Number?

Tamizhan.com  pointed out that many BPO companies are now foraying into blogging while using it an an advertising venture. Telegenisys  and Orion are few of these.


I am not sure if the companies are doing it knowingly.  I could hardly visualise a blog as an apt platform for running a campaign especially for BPO companies (a case of wrong number?). When rediff had started hosting blogs, I remember many Computer education institutes had started theirs. But I always thought that they did in all confusion, blogging was still a new concept then and they though it was the same as having a home-page on a free hosting service like geocities. Coming back to the BPOs, their anxiety, arising out of regular employee exodus in Call-centres, is quite understandable. They have been lurking in worry due to the huge employee turnover. With thousands of such jobs being snatched away from the US counterparts the young recruits at these centres are always job-hopping for greener pastures.


A recent Time of India story had pointed out that the new strategy is to hire umra-daraz (ripe) people say governmnet employees who had opted for VRS and housewives. The target segment is not solely the functional areas such as finance and administration but the core business of making calls. Companies are now also moving to smaller towns like Jaipur, Jalandhar and Indore owing to the "abundant qualified manpower, lower attrition rates and supportive government policies."  Another business of pitching false hopes to smaller town people.

Narcism is passe!

It's really fascinating to see the amount of blogging Indians do now a days. The list is growing by the hour and it is difficult to even try have a peek on each. Interesting factor is that the posts are now being less narcissist and more of essays and general commentries expressing concers over recent happenings. Bloggers like Jivha try jotting commentries on various facets of Indian life inside ingeniously created categories (with some following suit). One also feels good when a particular post  reverberates in unison with another. While the narrative styles differ and perfection is not ubiquotous, all the bloggers seem committed to blogging regularly, with many writers using a pen name instead of their real names. Many of the blogs have very interesting Indian names like Jivha, Vritti, Ek saadhe sab sadhe. Some have even taken the pains to summarizing all the blogs on their blogroll.


Bloggers like Niraj keep an eye on Foreign affairs while those alike Amit present straightforward observations in a tangy mix of Hindi and English. While people like me may be content with free services like Freeroller, bloggers like Jivha and Mahesh infact spend few bucks on the hosting services too (old timer Anita is planning to move also, I hear). All in all, a healthy Indian blogosphere!

Hand-built by Null Pointer

Accidently stepped on to this Slogan generator. Here are some slogans hand-built for my blog:



  • Get Serious. Get Null Pointer.
  • A Better Null Pointer Through Error
  • Look Ma, no Null Pointer!
  • When it Null Pointers it pours
  • Get Null Pointer or Get Out
  • Nothing Comes Between Me And My Null Pointer
  • Null Pointer - Now with extra cleaning power!!

Tuesday, August 26, 2003

The ASI Mockery

On 25th the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), a government organization, reported to the high court that its excavations at the disputed site at Ayodhya found distinctive features of a 10th century temple beneath the Babri Mosque site. Oh wow! So it was indeed a temple, eh! As we did not know already what ASI report would eventually say. The Sangh is, understandably, all balle-balle, terming the report as the vindication of its stand while the main plaintiff in the case, Haji Hashim Ansari, said many Islamic relics too were found during the excavation. I wonder what BJP would achieve out of this. Will this affect the court's decision, what about the claims of the plaintiff. How is this going to add pace to the case? Cases like this cannot ever be solved by courts.

With a BJP led government at the center, it was all RSS proposes ASI disposes but at least I expected some honesty from these guys. In an in-camera excavation mockery away from the vigilant eyes of the media the report had been scripted much-much earlier. In 1949 Hindu idols were sneaked inside the Babri mosque, but that happened in the dead of night. The ASI report has done this shameful deed in broad-daylight. BJP has fallen further in my eyes.

OK, leaving alone the question of competency of ASI people, let's assume that the report is perfectly genuine. So what Mr.Advani, is the razing of Babri Mosque justified now? Should we proceed on a demolition spree for all those monuments that were built in medieval times atop demolished religious structures? Will this sanctify the wrong-doings of the history?

Vandals are in spite of everything, vandals. Whether they are the Talibans who bomb-shelled the Bamiyan structures or the RSS/BJP led mob that gleefully brought down the Babri structure. So what’s next on the hidden agenda guys, the Taj Mahal?

Saturday, August 23, 2003

Jaitly or Shushma for PM?

I have given thought to this many times. Why hang-on to the concept of having ripe but aged policticians as Prime-Minister who could barely walk and talk. Without any offence to the eloquence of Vajpayee, methinks he has been too late to enter the office. We need a dynamic young persona for this post with charm that was perhaps oozed out by Rajiv Gandhi. Whichever party comes to power should try keep this in mind. Speaking of BJP, I could safely bet on on Arun Jaitly or Sushma Swaraj as ideal candidates for Prime-ministership. In Congress camp Jairam Ramesh, Salman Khurshid and Kapil Sibbal seem to fit the bill. They are extremely media-savvy, pragmatic and witty speakers, They are intelligent, have strong knees and, above all, are young and dynamic. You would not expect them to stammer, doze at public functions, take age-long pauses while talking to media or pose with terrible hand-shakes and shaky-lips with forign dignitaries. What do you think?

The outsourcing vulnerability

Happened to read the venom spit by Sue Spielman (through Werner Ramaekers). Frustated of a grievance redressal reply for a faulty Symantec product, presumably routed through an Indian call-center, Ms Sue took a crap at outsourching of IT jobs to Indian Companies. It is amply clear from the comments made on her blog that the myopic post was manifestation of her prejudices. Despite of her petty ignorant remarks, outsourcing jobs would continue to pour into India solely because, as one reader rightly quipped, "People (at US) prefer a pidgin English speaking Indian IT guy to one who can rap/rock but is technically naïve." Sue is frustated because of the growing unemployment rates but then we have been reeling under this problem for years.

I would rather not degrade myself to her level by making any racist remarks but the mere fact that both Microsoft and Sun have invested heavily on their development centers in India is proof enough of the technical capabilities of Indian programmers. Her post should not have navigated towards comparing the skills of Indian and American IT professionals but her insecurity and frustation led her to. And the whole crux of this terrible insecurity was summarized by Robert X. Cringely as this:

What's ironic in this IT outsourcing is that the end game has not the big U.S. companies winning, but their Indian subcontractors. This isn't rocket science, and the Indians are going to quickly see that they can cut out their U.S. employers and go directly to the customers. It won't happen immediately, but eventually every U.S. outsourcing vendor will try to bring the work back in-house for this very reason. And we'll be paying for it all.

I am Back!

I pondered on it a lot. I left Blogger beacuse there were no facilities to post Images, commenting tool and have post at desired dates. This was the reason I shifted to freeroller.net. But the way they have dealt with the site it seems they are not serious. The site is down many times for very long durations without any notice. Since I can't demand much from a free service like these it is better to have a "backup" blog. Today onwards, I would (atleast try to) post on both of these blogs (whichever is operational).

World's first Hindi blogzine

I feel elated in presenting Nirantar , World's first Hindi blogzine. It has been the result of untiring efforts of so many Hindi blogger...