Google Suggest and other things

Joel pointed to Google Suggest, another incrdible offering from the guys who always think different. I agree with Joel when he says that "Google is very publicly raising the bar on the quality of interfaces that people will expect from web pages." What inspires me is the approximate number of search results displayed along side the suggested search term, result of the XML HTTP Request magic.

Among other things, voting is on (and it seems would be on for a long time) for the New 7 wonders. Emails from patriotic Indians all over are already doing the rounds. Do your bit to give the Taj it's due.

Maintenance projects and DPs

Not many developers get the opportunity to be part of a project through the entire SDLC. For many people who are working on maintenance project, where the product is already there, the developer is usually involved only in bug-fixing or minor enhancements. Having been involved in a few, I have always wondered on the question, how can the Design Patterns be applied in such a scenario?

I raised this question to the authors of Head First Design Patterns at Javaranch and the following was Elisabeth's reply:

..even if you are involved only in the maintenance of a project, programs continue to evolve and new requirements come along all the time. A maintenance person might end up being the "expert" on the code after a while, especially after it is gone through a number of fixes and upgrades. Perhaps this maintenance person can see when the bug fixes that are requested are going to cause a problem, or perhaps are caused by a bad design. Having design patterns around to help to see where a program needs to be made more flexible to meet changing requirements is good for anyone. And eventually, this maintenance person might be asked their opinion of whether or not the program needs an entire overhaul to support a new requirement, or if they think a new requirement can be fit into the existing code. Knowing and understanding the design will help them greatly with this challenge.

While I agree with the author, I still am skeptical about the application of Design Patterns for such a project. Many, if not most, of these maintenance projects do not either have any documentation at all or have insufficient documentation on the background or architecture of the application. How do you just get to know the patterns used just by looking at the 2-3000 odd files in the project folder? The Application designers may have followed a pattern to begin with, but when the same code passes through a dozen hands (maintenance projects usually see a lot of resource rotation problem) the pattern thing takes a back seat. You simply comment out old code, tuck-in yours, alter and add few queries, all this forgetting about the performance issues, the focus is simply on restoring and ensuring the expected functionality to meet the deadline. I agree a lot depends on the programmer himself but then it is difficult to meditate sitting in the market-place.

You may read the complete thread here.

BBM on Nuktachini

As the baton is passed by Ek Cup chai!, my Hindi blog, Nuktachini becomes the first indic blog to host the Bharteeya Blog Mela. Nominations are being invited for BBM's 37th edition. Blog posts written by Indians on Indian topics during December 7 - 10 can be nominated for the mela. This blog had the privilege to host mela once, you can read it here.

Blog strolling -1

With most of the bloggers being IT professionals and students (I seem to be too sure on that), it is a refreshing change to see a lady "criminal psychologist" blogging. Thenga, Manga, Pattani, Sundal is the blog I stumbled upon recently (though I didn't quite get the need of having another blog with the same name but different username even if "Ethnic-chiclet" sounds cool..). The author seems to experience the same quandary every blogger goes through at the beginning, says she in her maiden post:

I cannot decide if I want to have an online journal, the kind that mimic the teenage cutesy highly private diaries (with the cheesy key and the corny poem on the first page that warned all intruders of dire consequences) or the more mature blog. Somehow, blog seems like a weighty word, as if it should contain deep, heavy words that speak of profound issues.

A comment on my last post, brought me to Vijay Bhaskar's Ripples with a rear view, nice name for a blog and must say..sporting one of the sexiest blog-banners I have seen. Also check out Parth Pandya's Salilowkey.

Blogger block

Charu refers to an article on how to dela with the blogger burnout, a term I came to terms with when Jivha quit blogging. For me it has been more the case of Blogger block rather than burnout. I have never been a zealous blogger anyway but few months back I at least would right twice/thrice a week, it is still twice or thrice but the weeks have turned into months. A friend, who just would not have Null Pointer on his blogroll ;), tauntingly observed recently, “I like your blog but it would be better if you atleast have one post a week instead of one a month”. Some write to me enquiring if I have quit blogging, and while I am reading all those blogs regularly, I am often ashamed to find a referrer log entry from a reader who visited my blog expecting some new post but (perhaps) went away perturbed. I worry if s/he would ever come back again.

A thing that prevents me from blogging regularly is absence of net connectivity at home. Then the recent happenings at the personal front are to be blamed too. Blogging at work is definitely awkward, your colleagues keep staring at your monitor and are not content to ask “Yeh kya hai?”; preparing a post especially in Hindi (and I am very poor at punching Hindi on Takhti) seems more heinous than looking a porno pop-up that shockingly appeared from an innocent looking site. During the day I must have been thinking at least a dozen times to blog about this and blog about that, but I am too lazy to jot it down immediately. Then it slips from your mind and poof, the slate is blank again. Now, I never have been in the habit of posting a link with a short comment, an advice given in the article that I just can’t follow, most of my posts are lengthy, some are notoriously so.

So I don’t think I (and the readers) have much choice really except that I don’t care a damn about those staring eyeballs and don’t feel ashamed in jotting a short link post instead of waiting to post longer ones and then not posting at all.

Zooming in on India's map

At least there is some initiative for India. Me thinks Map My India, the desi version of Mapquest has still long way to go but it’s good. I tried searching for my locality at my native place Bhopal (only a limited number of cities are covered as of now) and though it just managed to point at a broad outline, no street level data was given as with Google’s Keyhole, but then Keyhole would not ever concentrate in India, will it?

I can understand the limitations, you cannot expect the sarkari mapmakers to get into such nasty details, may be when the business prospects are understood and the moolah beckons the municipal corporations will wake up. As far as the business use of such products is concerned, unlike CNN news channels in India hardly ever use such micro-views with news capsules, we are still accustomed to looking at DD styled political maps of India and the ones send by our good old Insat. [Link through Animesh.]

Cal ho na ho

Are you aware of any date in history when nothing, absolutely nothing happened, literally? Well I was not aware of it and the answer unexpectedly came from Unix. On the Unix prompt if you do a 'cal 9 1752' you get the following calendar.

The missing days owe it to the Gregorian Reformation when the King of England decreed that the days from 3rd to 13th be knocked off the calendar month in order to adjust the days while switching from Julian to Gregorian calendar. A funnier explanation for the eliminated days is given here.

Debar whom?

These are election times in Maharashtra and a reader of TOI wrote in his letter to the editor that he supports a petitioner who demanded that the pavement encroachers be debarred from voting. This, they think, apart from saving the city would prevent politicians from cashing on their vote bank. There are lacs and lacs of encroachers in most of the major cities, especially in Metros who occupy pavements and public dwellings but debarring them from voting would be one of the stupidest way one can think of to tackle a problem of such magnitude.

Indian politics has had a long history of dependency on one kind of vote bank or other. The game remains the same as the theme changes every election. Supporting such petitions, whom do we debar from voting next then, the SC/STs, the Minorities, Women?

Encroachments are the illegitimate bye-products of unplanned development, lack of infrastructure and petty politics. First their goons would enact the encroachments, hand in gloves with the local civic administration. Then they provide them with ration cards, let them feel at home and provide then all kind of amenities they can expect, voila they have a vote-flow ready on their investments. We all know this, yet we allow these buggers to contest elections year after year. If we should debar anyone, they are these gangsters and frauds turned politicians, debar them from contesting any election, if they ever promise anything to such "banks" in their manifesto or speeches. Set some example and you would see the results. But who's going to bell the cat?

Drawing the line

A Mumbai based lecturer I hear has moved the courts to make it binding on all Cable wallahs to show only that stuff on TV that are passed by the Censor Board. He is perturbed by the unwarranted ill effect that such programmes cause on the children. Contrary to what you may presume I support this.

It has now been established that visual medium has long-term effects on child psychology. I am not going to pen an essay on the merits and demerits of the idiot-box here but I know that violence and nudity on this household medium has been increasing everyday and there is absolutely no control on how much of it percolates to children. No child-lock can guarantee that. You cannot police your child round the clock. Talking of the impact, I remember that while watching some Hindi movie my parents used to recall, "you were a kid when we went to see this movie in a Cinema", I would hardly remember it, but many times it happened having seen a scene depicting violence, the hero being dragged by a rope by the villain riding a horse and the like. My mother says that they could not watch Sholay in entirety and had to leave the hall midway, as whenever Gabbar would come on screen I would start crying. If you don't believe how seriously I take this, I must mention that I removed my cable connection soon after Tanmay was born. My wife and I decided that in order to curtail the impact we must first teach ourselves to be away from satellite TV. I only watch DD at my home and I am able to see its impact already which my mid mocking the "Apang, opang, japang" commercial of Horlicks and glued to the set without bashing his eyelid whenever the "school chale hum" promo is being played.

Coming back to the subject, it is true that while movies in India have to get a CBFC certification the same yardstick does not apply for TV (or for that matter also for Internet). By the night Cable wallahs open doors for unheard TV channels or play their own TB-6 shows under the very nose of Government. Some channels do show program ratings before showing them but I have seen mature programs (take "Sex and the City" for instance) being telecast at Primetime. With the onslaught of Internet never kids are exposed to porn like never before. Can you be sure that while your kid is surfing the net, the guy next-cubicle will not be surfing any porno site? Can you sure about your own kid? Now, I would not debate on "censorship" here but Why not allow cafe-owners to erect closed cubicles market "A" meant for adults (lest that goes on to become some other kinda trade)?

I know these issues are touchy. We are in a free-market economy; we want to be hip like the west. But then, the lines need to be drawn somewhere.

Clever Versions!

Bajaj is using the voice of radio doyen Amin Sayani in a television commercial for one of its vehicle range. Though this advertisement might be a complete unit in itself but the commercial plays a different combination of Indian language stanza along with the Hindi opening lines from a popular song of Adnan Sami for the Hindi movie Saathiya. What you consequently get are different versions of the same advertisement. In another commercial, again for an automobile, shows a bike rider who forgets the name of the Product (Petrol) while visiting a refuel station. The guy at the pump is able to guess the right word after the rider provides an assortment of clues. This commercial too has many versions, and sometimes various versions are shown during breaks of the same programme.

Now for the industry I am associated with maintaining various versions of a product is not uncommon (infact you need other software products to maintain/control these versions), but for the Indi advertisement industry probably this is a novel concept. AFAIK memory retention is one of the key factors for the success of a commercial. I remember that the commercial for Vicco Vajradanti shown on TV and Cinemas has hardly changed over the years in terms of the jingle and concept. May be this is true for products with large market share but for the ones that have to fight it out, cold-drinks for instance, we usually see new advertisement often with new celebrity brand ambassador one or twice a year. Commercials have had different versions based on the regional demands, a Pepsi commercial showing Akshay Kumar works in the Northern belt but for South the compulsions would be to go for an action-start popular there, say Chiranjivi. The basic treatment at the script level seems to remain the same withal.

Speaking of Bollywood, people have been making various versions of the stereotypical love stories mocking geometrical figures. Script is basically at the beck and call of Box-office and market considerations. It's said that following the recovery of Amitabh, Manmohan Desai's Coolie's script did a complete volte-face as far as the climax is concerned and Amitabh shown to live on. Many Maniratnam flicks have also had their regional language versions. In post 80's Gulshan Kumar started the notorious trend of creating cover version of popular songs finding a loophole in the copyright acts, which has now percolated into today's raunchy remix-videos with well-ventilated dancing ladies. Anyways, back to the subject.

What I meant by all this is that different versions of storylines with different closings are a rarity. Though I remember "Run Lola Run" was a movie where situations change for same set of events giving an unexpected plication to the story. Zee TV too experimented with the interactive show called "Aap kahein haan to haan, Aap kahein naa to naa" based on a Brazilian TV show, where the turning points in the story are based upon viewer responses. Imagine your local video library having a version of "Ek duje ke liye" with a happy ending. Grapevine is, Ramgopal Verma is also working on a movie that will have tow different climax sequences. I don't know whether he plans to release these distinct versions based on regional tastes or whether the same cinema hall will be showing a different version in various shows. In the effort of to do something new the conversion of the visual media into an interactive medium is indeed a laudable effort.

More Changes!

IndiBlogs seem to be bitten by lethargy mites. Jivha quit blogging and I myself has not been akin to the burnout. Last month was pretty hectic and brought sort of mental upheaval that shook me up completely. When I joined my last employer I was convinced that now I want to settle down there. I and my wife had also developed a liking for the city, Tanmay was born here, but just when I expected it least, the scheme of things changed and as destiny would have it I am now with new friends, at a new work place and a new city to live-in, a city where I have been many times before but never actually thought of putting my foot down at. I guess I needed to take this challenge (it might seem like one at my age), when you feel settled you also feel scared.

I am content to have finished the Chittha Vishwa (Hindi for Blog World) project, a different kind of aggregator for Hindi blogs before I left Indore. I am also happy that Hindi blogdom took it nicely. Ahh, and since I have not been jotting down much for last 2-3 months anyway, I need not say that blogging will be low, especially owing to the limited connectivty I now have. There is more to life than blogging I guess ;)

Using Antenna with Netbeans

There has been a lot of buzz around Antenna, an Ant add-on for J2ME applications. Why! Can't I use Ant for this? You very well can, but Antenna elevates many Ant tasks that are peculiar to J2ME, for instance: updating the JAD for the correct JAR size, a task that doesn't matter as long as you are running your Midlets on the Wireless Toolkit (WTK) but is an absolute must for the Application Manager to be able to load your application on a real device. This post doesn't talk about why J2ME developers should go for Antenna (see links at the end for pointers on that) but on how to use Antenna with Netbeans, an IDE for Java. Suffice to mention here that Antenna has brought in many Ant tasks that perform the key functions of the WTK including compilation, preverification, class file obfuscation, updating MIDlet-Jar-Size attribute in JAD and automatic generation of Manifest file. It goes without saying that since Antenna depends on the WTK you require the latter installed on your machine.

While Eclipse supports Antenna, as of now, Netbeans does not provide Antenna module, though it has built-in support for running Ant tasks. Infact using this support we can use Antenna with the IDE very easily. The solution has been tried on Netbeans 3.5/3.6. Here are the steps involved:

• The first step obviously would be to download Antenna JAR file. Without the worry of using Antenna with Netbeans you may have dropped it in your Ant classpath (for eg: <Ant instllation path>\lib), for here you may keep it anywhere because we will have to specify the path to Netbeans anyhow.


• Start Netbeans. Go to Tools > Options > Building > Ant Settings > Properties. Add the following custom property (The property value will vary according to the actual Antenna JAR path on your machine):

  antenna.home=E\:\\antenna-bin-0.9.12.jar

  Note the special way of specifying the file path on Windows .


• Add the following to your build file:

  <taskdef classpath"${antenna.home}" resource="antenna.properties" />

  The antenna.properties file has been included in the Antenna jar and evades the worry of manually adding all the WTK tasks to your build file, such as:

  <taskdef name="wtkjad" classname="de.pleumann.antenna.WtkJad"/>
<taskdef name="wtkbuild" classname="de.pleumann.antenna.WtkBuild"/>
...


  More details can be found at the Antenna homepage.
  


• That's all. Now you may execute the build file.

You may find a sample Antenna build file here that I made to play with the application mentioned here. This assumes that you already have Proguard obfuscator downloaded and copied to bin folder of your WTK installation folder. Do note that for the wtkpackage task you should also Preverify (i.e. add attribute preverify=true) when your are Obfuscating (i.e. when obfuscate=true), this is needed because obfuscation destroys the extra information added by the preverifier. If you do not preverify you may get error similar to following when launching the application.

Running C:\J2mewtk\apps\AntDemo\final\Animation.jad in DefaultColorPhone
Error verifying method corej2me/a paint(Ljavax/microedition/lcdui/Graphics;)V
Approximate bytecode offset 6: Inconsistent or missing stackmap at target
ALERT: Error verifying class corej2me/a

Related links:

• Using Ant and Antenna to Build MIDP Applications


• Automate the build process of your J2ME project with Antenna


• Managing Wireless Builds with Ant


• Obfuscating MIDlet Suites with ProGuard


• J2ME - Using Ant With J2ME

[Many thanks to J Pleumann, the creator of Antenna, for answering to my many queries and for the excellent free add-on.]

The chunked problem

One of the J2ME applications I had been involved in emerged with a big problem when tested for boundary conditions. When the client was sending less than 2048 bytes, the server was able to handle it correctly. The content-length header was being set in the client correctly and was available at the server. The J2ME client uses javax.microedition.io.HttpConnection class to make HTTP connection to the application server. Here is the code snippet:


HttpConnection hc = (HttpConnection) Connector.open(url, Connector.READ_WRITE);
hc.setRequestMethod(HttpConnection.POST);
hc.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
//Set Headers
hc.setRequestProperty("Content-Language", "en-US");
hc.setRequestProperty("Accept-Language", "en");
// send request
if (data != null) {
      int len = data.length();
      hc.setRequestProperty("Content-Length", Integer.toString(len));
      os = hc.openDataOutputStream();
      os.write(data.getBytes());
      os.close();
}


When the client data exceeds 2048 bytes I noticed from the Network Monitor tool of Wireless Toolkit that the content-length header would vanish and another header transfer-encoding attribute with value as "chunked" was being inserted. A little digging revealed that the problem was a known one and referred to as HTTP chunking, which means in brief that HTTP1.1 provides for chunked encoding letting large messages to be split into smaller chunks thus paving way for persistent connections. There were some previous discussion with no headway here and here. Furthermore, none discuss on how to deal with the problem on server side. Notice that the client side code handles the chunking problem as advised on the mentioned source.

I discussed this with Eric Giguere who said that

The WTK does indeed switch to chunked encoding once the data you post goes over 2K. Chunked encoding is part of the HTTP 1.1 specification and so the WTK expects the web server to deal correctly with it. However, web servers seem to vary a lot in their handling of it. There's nothing you can do about this, unfortunately, you have to use a web server that handles the chunked encoding properly.

Thing that perplexes me is the fact that my application server Websphere 4.x does support HTTP 1.1, it was even able to send data in chunks to my J2ME client, which was able to handle it nicely but the reverse was not true. Infact Network Monitor told me that as soon as data becomes even 2049 bytes the headers were sent correctly (again with no content-length and with chunked transfer-encoding) however the body was just empty. Since the body was received empty, my Servlet was unable to procure any request parameter and the request bombed.

I could have even digested that the Network Monitor tool is erroneous or the problem is only happening when tested on the emulators because the problem was detected on the actual device. Ultimately we had to curtail the amount of data we send at one go to solve the problem but as you might have guessed by the post I am looking for some sane explanation of this.

Ability should be the criteria

Readers of this blog would recall that I predicted that the Congress (and Sonia Gandhi too) would show some prudence in electing any seasoned politician from its camp (and there are many) to be the next Prime Minister. Sonia could still be the party supremo to act as the "source of inspiration" for the party workers as well as create a "power centre" within the organisation to dispel internal feuds and power struggles (as the newspapers report, Sonia atleast tried her bit by saying a firm no to the PMship yesterday). Actually, on her becoming the PM I have a mixed opinion. On one hand I have strong objections to the BJP stand on this on the other I don't find her too capable for the post too. This was something I wrote on my Hindi blog almost 6 months ago:

Few days ago, Atalji was delighted at the prospects of Bobby Jindal becoming the Governor of Louisiana. Had he won the elections, perhaps he would have penned down a poem on the rising stature of NRIs. It feels good to see an Indian rise on the political ladders of any other nation, even if the person does not regard himself an Indian anymore, but a similar situation happening in our own country hurts, even if she is a lady married to an Indian, even if she speaks better Hindi than a former Prime Minister Devegowda can.

As a matter of fact, any qualification on the basis of which you and I would get selected in exams and recruitment processes cannot form the basis of being elected in politics, be it the education qualification, Age limit or work experience. It's little surprise that we often end up selecting illiterate people, people with criminal backgrounds or those in the last stages of their lives. And who can talk of electing here? In an era of coalition politics you can never be sure that the parties you rejected would not come to power as a result of their brokering allegiance with the largest party.

I am not a Sonia devotee, but I have reservations on the points n which she is being opposed. Selecting a veteran like Atalji or a novice like Sonia, there is no visible benefit in either propositions. While in the case of novices like Sonia, the people who would benefit are the beaurocrats and the kitchen cabinet would run the government in proxy, in the case of experienced players indulging in suitcase politics cannot be ruled out. I feel we need to take a middle route.

I am worried that with Sonia at the helm, the government will have to spend most of its time justifying its each and every action, as the opposition will raise doubts on the integrity of such decisions, especially in matters of national security.

While on the topic:

• Why am I disturbed about Sonia as PM?


• We deserve a better Prime minister


• Tavleen Singh's anti-Sonia tirade


• Foreign Origin

Gosling coming to India

The Java "pitru-purush" (father figure), James Gosling will be on his maiden India visit this week. He would be here to participate in the Sun Tech Days, taking place on May 20-21 at Hyderabad. The theme for this year is "Turning Ideas into Innovation". It should be a grand event as there are almost 3 lacs Java developers in the country (almost half of the entire developer population) and the number is steadily rising. And the presence of Gosling must be the most inspiring part of the event. At present, Gosling is vice-president and Sun Fellow at Sun Microsystems and is also a researcher at Sun Labs.

The disinvestment card!

My father is a retired public sector undertaking employee. Having grown up in a city within a city scenario where this navratna organisation had created all kind of facilities for its employees sector-wise schools, colleges, dispensaries, shopping complexes, recreational facilities, everything the employee and their families would ever need, I have deep respect for public sector organisations. But over the time they haven't been able to sustain themselves. When I finished my graduation the organisation hadn't recruited a single engineer since 4 years, the employee quarters were slowly being sold-given on rent to outsiders, many education society schools were closed and a lot of checks were put on providing medical facilities especially to the retired ones. Obviously it hurts, but it also underlined the compulsions of such a public sector organisation. In this case this was a profit making enterprise but most of the otters aren't.

Which brings me to the core issue, the discussion started on scrapping of the Disinvestment ministry prorogated by the Left as it prepares to back a Congress lead government at the center. The leftist thinking obviously has roots in safeguarding worker rights. They maintain that disinvestments need a human face, don't sell the "family jewels", don't disinvest the navratnas, the profit making non-navratnas they say. This has caused much furore. The Samajwadi party terming Shourie as "a economic terrorist" says, "Sell only those that are not making profits". If you look at the primary reasons for disinvestment, they were manifold:

1. Removing government monopoly and allow private sector players to participate so that better competition leads to better services/competitive prices
   


2. Get rid of loss making organisations, organisations with surplus manpower, high overheads.
   


3. Redeployment of resources in areas that are much higher on the social priority, such as, basic health, family welfare, primary education and social and essential infrastructure
   

While I fail to understand how the disinvestment decision on the two petroleum giants, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) would have justified on the point (2), since they have consistently contributed to the Central exchequer, the last point is the one that interests me. Government should not certainly be burdened with running companies, but if it has to, as in matters of National security and safeguard (Atomic energy, railways for instance) and for social concerns, it should perhaps limit itself to the sectors mentioned at (3).

The disinvestment issue indeed is touchy and in all ways non-populist . Now there are umpteen ways to populism but they can cause serious repercussions too. Remember that Digvijay Singh lost in last assembly elections mainly because he refused to pay perks to government employees, who comprise of 1% of MP voters, and cut down posts as he had to cut the cost to the exchequer on salaries in order to satisfy the rest of 99% in form of subsidies (for example: in form of "free" electricity). Today many such governments will be shocked to discover, when they actually hold the steering, that infact there is no money in their wallet to entertain such populist measures. When people tend to feel that employment is being cut (it doesn't matter if in organisation alike the National Textiles people are drawing salaries sitting at home, rationale being where else can they go) they will protest. Third parties can always smell foul and say the the companies were under-sold or there was something fishy in the deals. We must remember that perhaps this was the reason that Arun Shourie was given the charge for the ministry, for his non-partisan, steady image. Thanks to the forward looking attitude of many such public sector employees like my father, atleast people like me are not sitting at home waiting for the trade unions to fetch us a secure sarkari job. These are not the days to leech to government run enterprises for nourishment simply because you voted for the government.

Congress has been the pioneer in playing populism cards (ranging from Castes to Ayodhya) but if they try playing with seemingly sane economy measures, just to appease the allies, they might just pay the price as well. The way of economy, India has started traveling on, I think no party ever can stop the pace. It's just a matter of public image, behind the scenes they will have to do what all others have been doing, whosoever comes to power. My advise to these politicians is: pick some other card to play.

Simplicity is the key!

If there is one thing that has undisputedly emerged as the winner at Elections 2004, it is the Electronic Voting Machine (EVM). A country where 35% people are still illiterate, yet a country regarded as a super-power in IT manpower, infact a country with all kind of contradictions voted in this elections entirely through EVMs, with no problems. Credit indeed goes to the designers who envisaged this simple, no-fuss but robust machine. The upset for BJP in the final tally also proves the integrity of the devices and should put an end to the apprehensions that the logic in these machines could be doctored. In my comment to a post I had said that it wouldn't be prudent to reject any/all such claims because after all the software logic may be manipulated and hardware could get damaged during transit or due to sabotage. I also maintained however that, as far as software is concerned I don't think in a mass-production scenario anybody can really perform such manipulations to add his sinister-logic, however the robustness of the device does matter.

In one of the best analogies I have read so far, this post informs why a similar American experiment with Diebold might have failed. (It's time perhaps, the manufacturers think of getting few export orders! As far as the issue of carrying next elections on EVMs is concerned, I would reiterate that a better way to instill confidence among voters would be to make the source-code/internal details for the device public so that the initiated could debate. A closed-door affair will obviously lead to further apprehensions and speculations.

Technical conscience?

When I first saw the link to the gruesome video showing American contractor Nicholas Berg being beheaded in Iraq at Jihva's I had expressed my anguish over the internet rage such videos become in a jiffy. I wondered on what makes the Internet fraternity to happily pass on the links to such gruesome videos (I remember a friend of mine gleefully calling me to his cubicle and displaying the Daniel Pearl one, I had to leave as soon as the slitting began), the link Jihva refered to provided at least 4 links to sites and mirrors hosting the video apart from detailing the whole video with a poor rationale.

I feel the enjoyment (what else can I call it) such people derive by distributing the links is very similar to people attending public executions. I do not at all see an iota of any kind of sentiment in passing such links. One can discuss the issue, condemn it but telling others "hey, you cannot condemn this enough if you don't watch the video yourself" is as ridiculous as telling "man I told you it's gory". It is at times such as these that one realizes the futility of Internet!

I heard that the Malaysian web-hosting services, that started this, had taken the video down. The company said:

Though the decision to close the website was a technical one, .. the company would have acted earlier on moral grounds if it had known the site's contents.

Afterthoughts

Few afterthoughts on the Elections 2004 that I must pen down.

• Tough days ahead for Congress, reorganizing the cadres, dealing with inline power spots and above all running a coalition with a bloated ego. Though leaders like Paswan (who earlier backed NDA) want to be part of the government, many (like CPI(M)) will chose to stay outside. Such partners will only add to the risks. We are perhaps again going to have a super-sized cabinet.


• This is not a mandate for Congress in all probability, not a mandate for "secular" forces either. Anti-incumbency is a potent factor in India. People were bored with NDA, the campaign was "up-market", people at the grass-roots spend the election days wondering what "Feel-good" means in their local lingo, leave alone deciphering the publicised achievments of technological advances and swelling Forex reserve at the helm.


• Running a party and an election campaign like a company does not always pays. If psephological research work on the Indian voter mentality and trends were so accurate the exit polls would have predicted the outcome. Planning on papers is hardly a solution if the party worker is not content with the party; and remember, he is the only link to the denominator.


• People want entertainment even during elections now, reason why so many actors heading towards parliament this time, those who were famous and charismatic won against all odds.


• Past performance hardly matters, public has short political memories. Why was Jagmohan defeated? Why did Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Titler win?


• Don't shed your spots, BJP understood that. But will it go back to the Temple issue next time and will Vajpayee take a political sanyas now?
  

Thrills of Democracy

What a turnaround! Couple of weeks ago I was contemplating on how LK Advani will overrule Vajpayee after an NDA win. But in my earlier post on the Chandrababu Naidu debacle I had talked about the choice of Chip and Chapati that a voter of today is presented today. I am happy that he has shown that he can be affected but not blinded by the glitter of colossal campaigns run on money and charisma. He has shown that carrying a mobile is not an indicator of all round growth. He has shown that like the English term "feel-good" the campaign BJP ran was on alien terms. But is it a mandate for Sonia and the dynasty rule. My notion is No. Accept it or not Incumbency is a potent factor, this government lasted a full term log enough to bore people. On top of that imagine ruling BJP minus the Temple fizz, minus the Huinduist agenda, sheltering corrupt ministers like Judeo and Bangaru, making personal attacks on Sonia, an ageing PM un-approving of its party tactics. When your basic amenities are not guaranteed who cares for as rising sensex.

What I am worried about are the power brokers from non-entity parties who will now strive to strike the best deal from the Samajwadi party to the Trinamul, from BSP to CPI(M). Who will be the PM then, my bet is P.V.Narsimha Rao again (backed by a former PM Chandrashekhar, acceptable to all congress ranks, experienced, no worry of going on to next terms, acquitted by court from corruption charges he is stronger than ever. What? Manhoman Singh...ummm?

Prizes surprizes!

It has been long since I won anything in some contest or the like, so the last fortnight unveiled few pleasent surprises for me. First the Microsoft Wireless Optical desktop that I won at a competition at Bhasha India (stupid courier walas managed to do a vanishing trick on the 4 batteries though) and second a book on JFC Swings at Javaranch's giveaway. Wish the spree continues!

The Cyberabad debacle

They had a choice to go for a CEO or choose an able Chief Minister and people of Andhra Pradesh settled for the latter. The recipe of advances in the IT, economic reforms hardly mattered for 80% of the people who were dealing with abject poverty and lack of development. IT has been a pure urban revolution and who cares for such phenomenon when you are not promised your daily meal and basic amenities. Like Digvijay Singh, the erstwhile chief minister of Madhya Pradesh, the seemingly progressive image of TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu was a faltering shadow of similar issues. With no roots at the grass-root and intoxicated by power he was getting oblivious of the power of the people. Issues of Nizamabad emerged stronger than the conern for Cyberabad. While I am not making out too much for Congress in Loksabha from these results, BJP in any case had negligible presence in South, it is good to see that the janata still has the ability to think for its own good and turn the tables when it is needed. Murky or not, I agree that the water in the political swimming pool needs to be changed every 5 years just to ensure the health of a democracy. And when it comes to deciding on which is needed more, the chip or the chapati, people for whom survival itself is a daily battle to wage, know which way to go for.

Drama galore!

Indian politics and the electoral procedure are fun galore. From the tickling to outrightly funny, from bizarre to most innovative, we have it all. A candidate from Madhya Pradesh, for instance uses banners and thelas carrying boxes with posters to campaign, nothing unusual in this except that he urges the voters not to vote for him. Balram Jakhar, erstwhile Loksabha speaker takes a clue from the Indian telly dramas and ensures that his speeches are all tear-jerkers. The veteran politician spares no chances to shed his (crocodile?) tears during almost all his public addresses in Rajasthan (which even irrates women among the audience). Television, btw is an area where the Indian politicians shines a lot, India shines or not. So you have these trained puppet actors performing mime with open palms for the Congress while BJP seems restrained in its own melodramatic ads perhaps owing to the fact that 5 years in power gave them enough time to perfect their act(ing). Advertisement apart perhaps for the first time ever major political parties are now sponsoring TV programmes ("this part of the movie is brought to you by Congress", bet you can't prevent yourself from smiling on this).

The idiot-box meanwhile proves its idiocy on almost all News channels. People today want entertainment even in news, believe the policy makers. So in the name of political satire you have Kadar Khan (hitherto known for his double-meaning dialogues) providence as Narad muni on Sahara, now-who-is-Shekhar-Suman doing a "Poll-khol" on Star to the unknown actor Sanjay Mishra playing Harry Voter on Aaj Tak. With watch-dogs like these who can prevent elections from becoming a mockery. A country where the janata is showing appetite for entertainment even during election times it's not ironical that while you can easily convince gullible people that the EVMs can give an electrical shock unless you vote by pressing a particular button, you can not convince them to vote for a seemingly devoted political novice like Shiv Khera.

Resonating Jibes - 3

Sushmita Bose noticed that in the quick-shift world of Indian advertising, the Big Idea these days is going back in time. Offcourse Null Pointer was the first to point this out.

Can I say something about Gmail too?

Though I am a man with strong prejudices and the 1 GB thing might have blinded me but still here is my 2 paise on the features I liked about GMail:

• The scripting that lets the Reply/Forward text areas open almost instantly with an option to open them as new windows.


• If you liked the MS-Word spell checker Gmail has got it better, and remember this is not a desktop application.
  
• Email addresses being automatically added to address book (offcourse this may lead you to delete the unwanted ones later-on as the list swells) and the choice to get the ones you send mails frequently


• The external image concealment feature making emails work-safe (offcourse rediffmail had implemented it much earlier)


• Adding attachment works like magic and you don't even get to notice the time it takes to attach and send the mail

Now for the annoyances:

• Wonder if this is only me who mentions this, but the initial loading time (once you press the login button) is way too high. I see atleast two sets of loading screens occurring first at left hand corner of screen and then then on the other.


• Detecting a new mail (though its in bold fonts) out of the chained list of "Rahul,me,Sneha,me" would sure be tedious once it expands.

Mix Masala

• Though I have never been able to decipher an iota of the concepts of business blogging (and most of the posts at her blog), I wonder how people like her are still making money selling the same old image of India in the name of ethnography, as a country of snake-charmers and cows walking on streets. I wish Munnabhai MBBS asks Circuit for another body for doing his practicals ;)


• Got yesterday a Gmail account (debashish ([aaat)] gmail {antidote} kaum), courtesy: Blogger.com. Though 1 GB storage sounds great I see the real problem in using the account. I remember that when I created my Rediffmail account (yes its is snail slow now but once it used to be lightening fast, literally) to get rid of the spam at my Yahoo one (and the spam filters weren't there yet) most of my friends did not update their address books and so most of my mails still arrive at yahoo and rest at Rediffmail. All in all, I cannot do without checking both the accounts at least once a week. But Gmail is prompting me to repeat the exercise!


• Shanty has (burp!) made a choice for his election symbol. You can't find a better one with so many virtues.


• Lot many Indian bloggers (prominent personalities too) are flocking at mBlog prompted by Sanjay. Lot from the Microsoft camp. BTW if you are facing any problem with your current blog hosting here are some reasons why you would like to consider mBlog.

Electronic problems

Two interesting aspects were brought forward related to making the forthcoming polls completely electronic with sole usage of the EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines). The first is off course the public interest litigation which demands the Elections Commission to add a last option "None suitable" on the EVM panel, similar to the "None of the above" or "Insufficient data to predict" option to an objective type questions in an exam . Though it may seem an overly reaction to the quality of the current Indian polity, I welcome the suggestion. For an educated voter who doesn't like any of the choices he has, it is always better to vote for none - rather than fume sitting at home and not vote at all. This will obviously reduce the instances of rigging.

The other point was raised in Kanishka Singh's article which raises pertinent questions on how much free and fair elections can EVMs lead to given the low public awareness and scope for manipulations. If it's about fooling the gullible I don't think the story would be any different, people would still be told to press a particular button as they were in the past to stamp at a particular place, if it is about convincing them that the EVM would give an electrical shock it would be no different than the threat of the voting-ink they were told earlier and off course the people with masters in booth-capturing can still bolt with the EVM or threaten the electoral staff to do what they want. Ultimately the backlashes I see would be more technology related rather than process related.

Of these two issue I can certainly think of some ways the EC can go in future:

• Giving a receipt to the voter to acknowledge that he has voted (and perhaps include identification of the candidate for whom he voted). Very valid point raised in the HT article.


• EVMs be hooked on to a hacker-proof network enabling taking a back-up of the votes at regular intervals at any nodal centre. This would ensure that votes don't get lost at any time and certainly speedily the counting process.


• Make the EVM speak up the name of the candidates for illiterate, handicapped people. Undubtedly, this would demand additional investments on sound-proof cabins.


• Additional investments for interactive awareness programs telling about EVMs at least a month before the polls.

What do you think?

The Lost Emperor

Zee News featured an interview of Atalji with veteran journalist Rahul Dev on 16 April. It was supposed to be a short routine interview, but instead came out saying a lot of unsaid things about the contender to the post of next PM. I had only read about Bahadur Shah Zafar's last days and perhaps he wouldn't have been much different from what Atalji looked. The grand old man of India was truly in bad form, staring hard at Rahul most of the times, wary of the questions about his own constituency from where he filed his nominations on the day. The answers were crisp and canny on Foreign affairs and Indo-Pak relationships but lack-luster on the fate of the country, its economy and the future 5-years that BJP promises to present. It was as if the Foreign Minister concealed in his inner layers had unraveled himself.

Atalji has exiled himself much earlier than the elections it seems. the erudite politician in him was bitter on Vainkaiya Naidu's remark about him having no contender at all. "It's all rubbish", he said, clearly annoyed the over-the-top way party is projecting and depending on him. Dev was very candid to ask him whether the "moderate and liberal" face of the BJP and the Sangh parivar were only temporary during his stay or they would ever be institutionalized. "We have to do it and we are working on it, who would have thought the Sangh people would behave the way like they are doing," said the mask with a false glimmer on his face but a visible apprehension in his eyes.

Ethnic blogging and Bangla

If any award were to be given for regional language blogs in India, I have little doubt that the Tamil Blogs would emerge as the deserving winners. Just look at their magnitude. I am not aware exactly how many of them are in Unicode but I believe that majority of them are. Apart from opening-up for universal readership, Unicode encoding also paves the way for these blogs to surface on Search Engines. Happily the Hindi blogging scenario has matured too, there are almost half a dozen Hindi blogs now apart from a Community blog "Akshargram" started by Pankaj. While I Googled for regional blogs I could not find a single one in my mother-tongue Bangla (or Bengali). Thankfully Sukanya di was keen enough to start one and thus began the first Bangla Blog. this blog is actually a "Baby-step guide" on how to start a Bangla blog of your own. Meanwhile, Sukanya di has started a blog of her own and with two of a tribe it was probably reason enough to go for a Bangla Blog directory. Hope other Bangalis follow suit.

Oddvani and the eno-effect

The PM to be, L.K.Odd-vani is a great movie buff and like most stereotypical Hindi film characters is a hopeless blusterer. In last many posts I had talked about his and BJP's poll strategy of passing the Indo-Pak friendship lollypop to the minorities and the feel-good lollypop to the majority urban masses. This he hopes can work wonders. So founded is his view that he has started talking about eno-effect to the Ayodhya and Kashmir issue in a single go. Ayodhya he says will be solved in a jiffy after the elections, he feels (and the non-partisan media has fueled this feeling) the cricket-diplomacy will woe the Muslim janata at home to keep mum while they build the Ram temple, exactly where they want to, and the Muslims on the other side of the LOC will gleefully surrender POK to India. If the record of Indian wins in limited over cricket over Pakistan were not dismal he would perhaps have solved the Kashmir Issue on the basis of who wins the rubber.

I wonder what keeps people from reckoning the real facts. Vir Sanghvi said in his recent column that Mian Mussarraf's recurrent Kashmir-is-the-core-issue rhetoric is but natural considering the military-man-at-the core he is. A man trained to fight Indians and the author of Kargil cannot shed his true skin overnight. Kashmir is the issue on which Indian and Paki hukmarans have been carrying their bread and butter on. In the breeze of friendship-series Sanghvi however has been too greedy to predict that the current atmosphere is an indication that the two countries will be bhai-bhai again, if we just neglect the General. I have not an iota of doubt that the atmosphere of disbelief and hatred are born out of the diplomatic measures, this is what politicians want. But it also doesn't mean that Kashmir issue can be solved in 6 seconds. Former Army Chief Gen S Padmanabhan has been belligerent, but much more practical in his book where he predicts only a military solution to the problem.

My clear view on this is: either India goes ahead for a closed-door talk with Pakistan (the very way it is progressing with China, an NDTV report had indicated few months back that China was negotiating a secret deal to lay hands on some portion of Indian territory of Aksai Chin in lieu of Sikkim being regarded as integral part of India), media has ruined many a summits, and decide on the LOC being converted to International border and end this once and for all or put a full stop to this friendship drama and fight it out. The latter would demand guts on part of India to "checkmate the US", as Padmanabhan puts it, which, I am sorry to say, we never had.

Resonating Jibes - 2

Vir Sanghvi must be having a premonition that led him to jot very similar views in his column Indian Muslims and Pakistan that I expressed in this post in my Hindi blog about how BJP strategists think that the lollypop of Indo-Pak friendship can lure Muslim voters. However in his attempt to being non-partisan he brushes-aside Odd-vani's remarks as involuntary, so uncharacteristic of him. Vir says:

At a sub-conscious level, some Indians make the simplistic assumption that because (nearly) all Pakistanis are Muslims, so all (Indian) Muslims must be Pakistanis in their hearts.

Another HT columnist Pankaj Vohra resonates the views I expressed here, in his column Advani's yatra proves BJP has two mascots.

The decision of deputy prime minister L.K. Advani to begin yet another yatra has clearly demonstrated that the BJP is not a "one-man party." While Atal Bihari Vajpayee is being projected by the NDA as its sole leader, the BJP apparently wants to ensure that Advani's status as the undisputed second-in-command doesn't go unnoticed even if it amounts to having two mascots for the party, something which may not be to the liking of the numero uno.

TV and social obligations

Talking of Television there are clearly two divisions in the Indian context. On one side there is the state-owned Doordarshan (DD) and on the other the herd of satellite TV channels. The distinction off course is in the roots. DD have been traditionally serving as the mouth-piece of the ruling party and their filthy purpose. But if you could ignore this motive you can clearly say that there still a lot of programming that DD does which satellite channels cannot even think of leaping into. Can you imagine watching a program for framers like "Krishi Darshan", or "National Program of Dance" on a satellite TV channel. I am precisely talking about the social obligations of mass-media.

For satellite TV channels the compulsions are obvious. In the race for TRP and revenues you have no other option but to run-rerun saas-bahoo tear jerkers and those raunchy remix videos. Doordarshan after all has the luxury of grants and subsidies and what not. Still after the advent of Prasaar Bharti even DD has to earn its bread and you can clearly see the shift in focus as my favorite vrind-gaan and teleplays bite the dust. Thank goodness though, some good ness may still be left in DD.

One of the recent programmes that I liked and which has been immensely popular is the award winning thriller Jasoos Vijay that concentrates on AIDS awareness and issues related to gender-discrimination. Funded by BBC and NACO, the producers have roped in Om Puri as the anchor. The format is very interactive, targeted at the rural audience and viewers can even win pries by guessing the criminal. What is I like about the serial is the right mix of entertainment and education. In the backdrop of the adventure and masala the message is conveyed in a candid-local lingo. An interesting aspect of the serial is the central detective character, played by Khandakar Adil, who has been depicted as being HIV+ himself. As the story progresses with his love for Gauri the serial will deal with a touchy issue on the subject, should an HIV+ person given the right to marry. The serial has been dubbed in various regional languages and the recent buzz says that the series would now be shown in Thailand and Cambodia too.

If you like such serials there is another AIDS awareness program called Haath se haath mila, that takes young people on board two special buses that will travel to cities, towns and villages. Their primary aim would be to persuade people to use condoms. Kudos to the producers!

Pre poll deception

Praful Bidwai writes in his column about BJP's poll strategy:

Vajpayee must pave the way for the 2 per cent-rating man to take over. The BJP knows Advani is like Dick Cheney, equally devious, but more rabble-rousing and demagogic, who cannot match Bush’s ratings. Therefore, gullible sections of the public and the BJP’s upper middle-class supporters are being cajoled to vote for Vajpayee, only to install Advani as PM, if not today, then tomorrow.

I had raised this apprehension before in my this post quoting noted writer Kamleshwar's view. In my view not only the "gullible" janata even sections of BJP might be day dreaming about a government under Atalji; look at what the young recruits like Varun Gandhi are thinking. But they will be sorry after the elections, for sure. Facts speak for themselves. Advani has suddenly been touted by a section of media as the new "iron-man", Hindustan Times even profiles him as "the Primer Minister to be". His rath-yatra has been very cleverly renamed to "Bharat-Uday yatra" after Atalji nodded in disagreement to the use of his name in the campaign again (remember his tyre-retire rhetoric resenting Venky Naidu's statement that caused an internal furor when he declared that the next election will be fought with Advani. as focal-point). While I am not contesting on who BJP should make the PM, the strategy actually mocks their own view on declaring a leader before the elections, a fact on which they have been teasing Congress for long. But even in their own case they are still declaring a "mask" PM. For the common man it's like ordering a cockatoo at the pet store and getting a hyena delivered later.

Savings vs consumerism

With my investments I have been hitherto happily content, alike one third of Indian population, keeping the perils of share-bazaar out of the purview. A recent print article by Vishnudutt Nagar provoked me to wonder on the irony of this. People like me who rely on small-saving schemes, saving accounts and term-deposits have been of the opinion that the money is not risked at any point and that banks were pious institutions that encourage the notion of "savings" amongst common janata. Current trends belie this notion. Nagar says that in last 2 years banks have actually reduced interest rates on deposits and saving accounts by as much as 26%. On the contrary the lending rates have been dropped only by 4.2%. Obviously the intention is to ensure that the industries get loans at lower interest rates, but they it seems have been looking at other greener pastures.

Coming bank to the point of the concept of savings that banks were supposed to instill, the institutions are infact doing the very opposite. In the last 4 years interest rates on small saving and term deposit schemes have been slashed by 4%, a fact detrimental for the middle income groups and retired individuals. Instead the banks are now resorting to providing attractive interest rates on loans to purchase luxury items like cars. Besides promoting the interest of the consumerist culture the banks are also participating in share markets inviting unnecessary risk and instability. Is there any safer place left for my investments?

A Nation Betrayed?

Congress has a supposedly fitting reply to the India Shining campaign of BJP, they now have a website called A Nation Betrayed which highlights the antonym; though I wonder what took so long to wake them up. Apparently the site is put up by a youth wing of the party indicating that the top-ripe-brass is still fast asleep and lacks the professional look for apparent reasons. Amongst the prominent columnists on the site are Mani Shankar Aiyar and Salman Khurshid, who else. Wonder again, who would have put the right words in right mouth without these copy-writers.

Meanwhile the migration-game continues and BJP has suddenly emerged as the best reaper in the opportunism-bazaar where all kinds of migratory mix are available, most of them deprived-sidelined in their own flocks and going through the plights of the middle-age-crisis. Feel-good factor working or not BJP is has good deal of mastery on propagating the "deal-good" factor in Indian polity. So apart from Maneka/Varun Gandhis, Nazma Heptullah, Arif Mohammad Khan and Diggi Raja's hitherto non-entity bro you have Arjun Singh's son jumping in. Among others, Prafull Mahanta, Bhupen Hazarika, Bangarappa and Om Prakash Chautala's brother are following suit. Who next? Rahul Gandhi?

Tiger Released

The buzz must be stale by now, but Tiger (JDK 1.5) is out. Gosling excitedly terms Generics, the ability to parameterize a type, as the big one. As everybody knows by now, JDK1.5 is probably the last big change to Java after JDK1.2 which saw the arrival of Swing and new Collections API. I am yet to lay my hands on it, meanwhile here are few worthwhile pointers:

J2SE 1.5 in a Nutshell: sums up the features in Tiger
J2SE1.5: First of its kind: accounts first ever un-depracation in Java
Generics Preview
Tiger and the Magic of Synth

Are you for compulsory voting?

Manohar puri made an interesting point in his article*. Should voting be made compulsory? Though I don't entirely agree with his view that one should snatch away the rights of an individual to criticize government policies and performance if he has not voted, right for expression being one of the foundation stones on which our democracy stands, that should not dilute the fatc that "duties" should be given equal weightage.

Making the "right to vote" a "duty to vote" might be beneficial in several ways. An increase in voting percentage can at least assure of, if not guarantee, a clear mandate. Who knows, it might provide a respite from these coalition-jokes arising out of hung-parliaments and hazy mandates. But the fact remains that applying such a rule wouldn't be easy, unless you accompany it with some kind of punishment on defiance, lest it goes the "Pulse-polio" way. Who can pursue me to vote mandatorily unless my employer tells me categorically that I would lose my days' salary if I don't. Another good suggestion that Puri made here is that the electoral officer might provide some kind of a receipt or a certificate to an individual to declare that he has indeed voted.

And why stop at compulsory primary education and voting, I am for compulsory rights and duties in the following areas too:

• Right to get a universally acceptable identity card (akin to the Social Security number concept of the US) that replaces all other forms of identification documents such as Ration cards, Voter ID and so on.


• Duty to get a compulsory Aids Test

Easier said than done, eh.

------------
* Not a permalink.
[ Hindi version of this post is available here.]

Is India Shining?

Asks Charu. Here is what I commented.

If we are talking about a surging stock market, which might be a short-lived and synthetic phenomenon , yes. But going by the same yard-stick was India shining while Harshad Mehta was reigning? India is not shining because our exports have suddenly amassed, but because of the fact that FDIs and NRIs have invested here owing to the better interest rates they get in India than in their own country. India is shining because rich people are growing more rich and buying more, for the common man kerosene and diesel prices have shot-up more than 5 times in the recent times. Are we rejoicing over the outsourcing lottery. Sorry to awake you people but the bubble of offshore jobs may burst again in the times where US is going to elections. India must be shining with increasing inflation rates and accruing unemployment. Off course BJP has a fair share of contribution to the "til-gud factor", first they were the one to coin the term, Advani borrowed the idea from the catch-phrase of an apparel's advertisement campaign, and secondly for the good monsoon we had last.

Political Compass

Finally a guage to enlighten me on the orientation of my thoughts. Political Compass tells me that I am an economic left winger with a slight inclination towards authoritarianism (score: Economic Left/Right: -3.88, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: 0.05). A confirmed authoritarian leftist, wow! Though my score on the social dimension surprises me! [Link via Acorn]

Equal Opportunity, My foot!

Many, if not most, of us might have gotten rejected at interviews and recruitment processes. While rejection itself is reason enough for one to brood over and blame the selection process or the employer, I had tried on such occasions to sit for a while and put myself in recruiters shoe to analyze what might have gone wrong. Almost 70% of the times I realized it was my mistake. OK no probs, will improve on that, I said to myself. For the rest, I felt that the recruiter were stupid. Now that's a unusual feeling. How can they be stupid, these are the guys who select people all the time, the ones who have perfected their technique. But I felt they were stupid because they were outrightly and hypocritically partial.

How many times have you noticed "date of birth" field on the application forms of so-called "equal opportunity" employer? Unless they are Wipro, who flash the fields on their online forms anyhow but proudly proclaim that filling the data is optional because they don't care about gender and age being an equal opportunity employer, most of them have it. There is not a single, read my lips, not a single employer in this world or the other who can be an euqal opportunity employer, in the true essense of the phrase.

A month ago a reputed company, a ubiquity in database solutions, was in my town for a walk-in. Since too many turned up, despite of my experience and certifications I had to write a Java test, alongwith the college enthusiasts. No probs, I said. Luckily, I cleared the test and was called for the interview. Now, from the very start, the guy just couldn't fathom my past non-IT experience. "Why do you show your non-IT experience at the end of your Resume?", he quipped sympathatically, "Do you want to put aside your 6 years of experience on the backburner?", "Oh my, how will you relocate?", "God, how will you manage at Bangalore, being a married guy you are?" All short of tears, he treated me as if I had tested HIV positive. No technical questions at all. After the hour long ordeal, the guy stood up, shook hand and "thanked me for my time" assuring that he would surely "get back to me". Oh so much respect, oh so much disgrace..

Why do I write all this stuff? Because this advisory by Joel Spolsky provoked me to. I have been a great fan of his writings, a regular reader. But then he is not perfect in his advise every time and this time he certainly isn't. Now Indian candidates might not know the difference between a comma and a space but certainly they speak/write better English than an American I suppose. With your bias towards Asians Mr.Joel I don't think there is no "equal opportunity" tag appearing anywhere on you site, beacuse if it does I now know what it means. Joel complains that the job cover letters often come with job advertisement at the footer (and one of yahoo site builder actually irritated him). I don't think Sir I can manage to add a context sensitive Google text-ad with mine because first of all I didn't put it there. The free email service providers are at liberty to scribble the glory and I am satisfied as long as they don't ruin my mail and I am certainly not going to have a paid email account just to post my resume.

Speaking of cover letters and resumes, while many of his points seem valid I wonder if any Indian recruitment firm (expect for the consultants) actually read them. They are just not meant for human consumption. You are supposed to mail your resume in propah format, write experience-location in subject of your email so that parsing and sorting becomes easier. As a matter of fact, old handsfriends have always advise to use the correct "keywords" in the resume, as per the "job demands" so that it surfaces rightly in search results. Who tries "to sound like a human in the cover letter" now a days? And while there may be dozens of book with advise on your resume I have not seen a single worthwhile response in last 5 years from 2 of the reputed job sites I had enrolled to, the noes that actually are supposed to create a good structured resume automatically.

So, whether my cover letter is written by Shakespeare or me, whether my profile is suitable or not, I suppose everywhere there would be some recruiter who would mange to give equal opportunity adding his angle of bias to your resume. (Disclaimer: I have not applied to Mr.Joel and I am perfectly happy with my current job)

Background cleansing

My last post had a quote that represents my long standing apprehension: How will the BJP look minus Atalji? The answer is: very scary. But how has this scary party managed to run a coalition government for 5 years and reach the stage proclaiming the "til-gud factor". Answer is: BJP (read that RSS and the Hinduist organisations like that of Bahubal Thoke-ray) knows how to play different games in foreground and background. The foreground is indeed Atalji, a poet this moment and a dedicated swayam-sevak that moment, an assurance for the NDA modules and janata together that all is going well. In the background RSS has Murli Joshi and his brigade working over-time to fulfill the hidden agendas, for ex: strenthening the Hindu Talibani groups and correcting the wrong-doings of the history by rewriting it. Education, after all, is the best way to create healthy Hindu minds.

What wrong doings, you ask? There were many, some have been documented at numerous stealthy websites like this one which justifies cleansing of the nation to avenge the Hindu holocaust. These people have only one agenda and they will take the help of anyone (including the Archaeological Survey of India, as in the Ayodhya case) to prove their point. One of the most ridiculous point is raised here and I couldn't resist quoting it here,

The most evident of such structures is Taj Mahal, a structure supposedly devoted to carnal love by the "great" mogul king Shah Jahan to his favorite wife Mumtaz Mahal ..this is the same Shah Jahan who had a harem of 5,000 women and who had an incestuous relationship with his daughter justifying it by saying, 'a gardener has every right to taste the fruit he has planted'! Is such a person even capable of imagining such a wondrous structure as the Taj Mahal let alone be the architect of it?

The answer is no. It cannot be. And it isn't as has been proven. The Taj Mahal is as much a Islamic structure as is mathematics a Muslim discovery! The famous historian Shri P.N. Oak has proven that Taj Mahal is actually Tejo Mahalaya, a shiv temple-palace. His work was published in 1965 in the book, Taj Mahal - The True Story. However, we have not heard much about it because it was banned by the corrupt and power crazed Congress government of Bharat who did not want to alienate their precious vote bank, the Muslims.

Reminds of a funny letter that appeared long ago in TOI saying William Shakespeare was actually a Bhopali shaayar called "Wali Sheikh Peer". But the one above is not even funny.

Resonating Jibes: 1

In this series of posts I will try and include quotes from various sources which match my own views. Here is the first in the series.

Vir Sanghvi quips,

"Vajpayee's stature blinds us to the reality of the BJP. Take him out of the equation and what do you have: a party composed of people who condone mass murder, rewrite history books, seek political advice from sadhus and leave electoral strategy to tent-wallahs and fixers."

Noted writer Kamleshwar has a view which resonates with my post Living in Wonderland,

"People are apprehensive that after winning the elections Advani and Joshi will get rid of their Atal Mask and resort to the methodologies of goons like Modi and Togadia."

My Hindi Blog

Finally, I had to jump into it. I have been a Hindi writer, it is the language in which I think. But since typing in Hindi is tedious I had somehow put the project on backburner; not any more. The Hindi version of Null Pointer is now live here. It is called "Nukta Chini" (meaning occasional comments, frankly I am not awareof an English word that truly represents its meaning). My colleague Padmaja also joins the bandwagon with her blog "Kahi Ankahi". For the uninitiated, Alok hold the distinction of having the first Hindi weblog. Isn't it an irony that a country where Hindi is the highest spoken language there are only a handful of Hindi bloggers?

When DD animated lives!

I had my childhood nourishment of entertainment from Vividh Bharati and Doordarshan so this post of Turbanhead revived old memories. The "Ek Anek" short animation film was targeted at National integration and was used as filler by DD at that time and, thanks to the fact that satellite TV wasn't even there, was immensely popular. Many readers might not know perhaps about the persons behind this animation marvel, Vasant Desai (one of my favorite lyricists) and Bhimsen, one of India's finest animation talent. Desai has been better known for his work in the movie Utsav but Ek Anek is perhaps one of his best innocent work.

I had known about Bhimsen as a filmmaker first, from his serial against superstitions (damn, I can't recall the name of the serial now, do you?) featuring Ashok Saraf, Sulbha and Arvind Deshpande and Dr.Maya Alagh. This was a very successful Sunday bonanza on DD. It was later that I came to know that Bhimsen was actually an accomplished animator.

Speaking of animation, we have come a long way now, but in those days of 70's Films Division was the only harbinger for such projects. It's good that India's animation industry is now a sought after entity but it perhaps cannot be denied that it stands on the shoulder of stalwarts such as Bhimsen. I was pleasantly surprised to find a nice write-up on him here, so do read it if you have time.

Back to square 1?

If you read my post "Living in wonderland " notice the word "backtrack" that I used there. Devoid of spine, politicians have been known, since ages, to create artificial frenzy to fool people: the til-gud¹ factor, cute mini-budget full of goodies, all-is-well on Indo-Pak front (aka Hindi-Paki bhai-bhai), Vajpayee is BJPs undisputed leader (backstabbing noise in background), L.K.Kataarvani² willing to talk to Hurriyat etc etc.

Now where does backtracking figure? Well, it figures in both Indian and Paki premier's public speeches of the week with Mian Musharraf saying that under no circumstances will he accede to accepting the LOC as border ( a suggestion made in my mentioned post) and our Atalji quipping that all discussions of Kashmir will involve only POK and not IOK. Back to square 1?

---

1 til-gud: Besides rhyming well with the media coined "Feel-good" factor is Hindi for Sesame seeds and jaggery, the basic ingredients of Sankranti festival.
2 Kataar: Hindi for a dagger, and the characterisitic of Indian deputy premier's counter-paki rhetorics

Mirrror, Mirror of my blog

Chakra provided this cool link that creates a mirror of your website, literally. Though I already have a mirror at blogspot, have a look at the one created by this trick. Now the trick is adding ".mirror.sytes.org" to the domain name of your URL .

Living in wonderland

I am always surprised by the media-frenzy that builds up even if the stalled vehicle of Indo-Pak talks manages to crawl an inch further and almost all the times backtracks many more inches later. For God's sake judge the scenario with a fair mind. Mian Musharraf will perhaps only risk his life from Islamic hardliners by negotiating anything on Kashmir if he is promised the Nobel Peace Prize, you cannot expect the author of Kargil and a military-man at heart, who have always been against keeping peace with India to shed his spots. At home, please notice the growing size of Advani's photos at the stage backdrop of BJPs press conferences, if BJP wins the next general elections, and not many opine they'll loose, don't be bewildered if Vajpayeeji, the mask man, graciously steps down citing age and health reasons and naming LK his heir to the thrown. Now, Advani is a known hardliner on Kashmir issue, has stalled the process many times earlier too including the Agra one and so the so called CBM's will be accorded a full-stop then and there.

Why then Atalji was allowed to go for this show-off. Easy, he is not getting any younger, before he retires he wanted to give it a last try and emerge as the "one who saved the world". The never before bonhomie at his grand birthday celebrations was actually a big farewell to AB. Solving the Kashmir issue in a jiffy just before Atalji retires, a beautiful wonderland he is living in but are we required to join him there. Cummon! Be realistic. If you ask me the issue has only the following solution and that can be implemented taking UN and the world in confidence:

• Convert the existing LOC in to an international border, let Pakistan be happy with POK and lets at least save our occupied Kashmir before we lose it too


• Ttake back army and treat Kashmir as a special state till life is made normal there


• Patrol the border well and flush all terrorist camps along with Pakistan's army

Call me a traitor, Marxist or whatever but not accepting the reality is same as living in a wonderland. When you wake up you will be in for a great shock!

Meandering ways, again

Whenever I encounter any strange behaviour on my referrer list (which, thanks to Paris Hilton, are no more public now) I usually add it to my list of "funny referers". Here is the latest list for you to savor, my favorite being the Neena Gupta one ;)

aircrafts videos crashed
Why do singletons prefer Mumbai?
"indian wives"
l o v e scenes from indian movies
sarkari mindset
neena gupta in b a t h room
Extra m a r i t a l affairs of IAS officers

What I hate in a blog

I came across Erik's survey on the "the 10 Habits of Highly Annoying Bloggers" and decided to jot down few things I detest about a blog:

• Blogs with black background and yellow fonts


• Blogs that are both blogs and photoblogs


• Blogs that would not accept an email id of the like debu at email dot com in comments


• Blog authors replying to your comments with a "thanks for reading", "ok" or such unnecessary courtesy remarks


• Blog authors who keep on writing about their personal lives all the times and then complain about readers "keeping tab" on their personal lives.

What are the things you hate about Null Pointer?

Are you Blogoholic?

There is an interesting quiz that would perhaps let you know if you are a Blogoholic. I thought I was one, coz even if I don't post very regularly I read a lot of blogs everyday. But it emerged that I am only a casual weblogger. "You only blog when you have nothing better to do, which is not very often. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you'd post a little more often, you'd make your readers very happy." says the quiz results where I scored a 48%.

While on the subject, Alan has posted about his "human-experiment" where he has classified persons based on their online behaviour. I have observed that we behave in a more bindas manner when we are online or chatting over phone. One may shudder while appearing for a personal interview but retain his calm and can even exude confidence on a telephonic interview. I find it easy to rudely evade the telemarketing cold calls while it becomes difficult to behave the same way with a "Eureka Phobes" sales personnel when he is there at your doorstep. You behave more gentlemanly. I am much in agreement with Alan when he says that "the online world is a glimpse of what it would be like if we were always drunk. Our inhibitions are lowered and we say things we normally would never say when faced with the same situation in real life. Generally, if people are pleasant online, it translates to their offline persona, and likewise, an a***hole is always an a***hole!" [Link via Erik]

The best of Null Pointer!

I have been pondering to put together this list for long and here it is. Now what do I mean my "the best"? Obviously not "the most visited" or "the most linked to" or " the most commented on" posts but those which I think I wrote well or reflect my stand-point on the issue. In a nutshell if you read only these posts you will perhaps have a dekko inside my mind. And obviously such a list helps new visitors to my blog who won't care to skim through all the archives. This list would be updated as and when appropriate and would be available on the right menu. BTW do tell me about the posts that do not deserve to be in this list.

Walking straight in muddled waters
The ASI Mockery Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Jaitly or Shushma for PM?
We learnt nothing from past follies
Israeli attacks: a lesson for India
Identity Crisis

What is Real development?
Bhopal: The struggle goes on
A dependable friend!
Flying Coffins
Enough of showcasing technologies
An NRI's plea for cleaniness

Wrong number?
Band Loyalty
Thorns of Desire!
The Blog Matrix

Bush rivals Vajpayee: On Poetic turf
Sleepy Tales!
Middle-age chakra

Code Analyzers
Primer: Difference between javac and JIT
Sun: Empathising with Programmers?