28 April 2006

Future world (Paperless?)

Back in India, I used to get atleast one call in a week asking whether I need a credit card. I was in a position tat i just have to think for it in my mind, i get the card in my address.

Now, for a card, i had to go to the bank 3 times already. The pin is yet to come. The mistake is mine....

first i didnt have my name in the pigeon-hole of my friends post-box. my mistake that i didnt give C/O so-and-so. Then the bank pin generation algorithm didnt generate the pin for my card. so gave order to get a new pin. And for getting a credit card, i donno why... she asked me for my scholarship allowance certificate.

after all she was a nice lady(girl). it's sometimes funny... with their "little bit english" and my "ein bisschen... deutsch". she was struggling at times to find out the proper english word. ofcourse, yes.. i was enjoying the chat with her.. :)

so, i shall come to the point..

think about the world with all digital signatures and stuff!! you just need a couple of Trusted Third Parties for the signature verification... and very secure channels for this verification.

you dont need to go to a bank to open an accout. all the documents you need will be digital. all the formalities could be done online. the whole bank could be run by a couple of employees. gradually... all the banks will merge to a universal bank so that you can take money from wherever you want. (actually no need to take money... it's all digital ;) )

but i have a doubt here.. if it goes like that.... what will be the fun of life? and what will all these billions of ppl over world will do? will they have employment? and how long it will take for these dangerous situations to happen?

anyway.. whatever i am learning/doing research on.. has got zillions of application in this planet. may be on other planets too :)

may be the life might become very easy. but how can one have the kind of enjoyment i had today morning... - while chatting with the beautiful + helping girl at bank who had very tight blouse?

- sands

Difference

These days I am very much interested in reading blogs. The same way, i frequently search and go thru articles by some nice guys. Blog thing is fine.. that is a kind of mania - which i call "webLogo-mania" and will last for a couple more days.

It was a moment of pride to read a blog in which i am one of the discussed persons. that too by someone i respect very much. Those kinds of moments.. like ... u get a very good opinion about yourself .. from someone who has very high regards in your mind, is simply a great feeling.

okay coming back to the nice articles. rather than the articles, i am looking at the authors...

why some ppl are great? why not all of us are great?
why some of them have fans? personally i dont like the idea of being a fan or something like that... but any comp-sci student is ought to turn out to be a fan of the BIG DON of comp-sci... when DON'S homepage is visited.

i look at prof. mayr!! you can feel .. he is simply great. i was at his room and i think i heard it right... he was talking about Motwani.. to his secretary. Rajiv Motwani???!!
Kulo... i have never mentioned this name anywhere... still i know this fellow is cool...
M$ life was simply cool... i cud feel.. the crowd was different... neo, tushy, rohit.. all of them are going places... if only they are ready to take risks. two of them are in the verge of getting married. and in most cases... after marriage you tend to travel in a straight line - NO RISKS PLEASE!!.

so... again back to great ppl. what makes the difference? I know what it is. but i shouldnt write it.

just one favorite dialogue from him "destined to do great things". this has made me think a lot.

i shud kill this topic here....
root@brain-eater$kill -9 `ps ax | grep blabbering | cut -f 1 -d ' '`

KILLED

25 April 2006

M$ Vs EU

a small story first.

in India, when u buy Maruthi-Suzuki cars, u get a car sterio along with it and it used to be a Kenwood made sterio.( i donno this is true now, but it used to be) now, what if Sony/Philips/BPL or any other car-sterio makers goes and sues Maruthi for this?

man... it is Maruthi's decision what to give and what not to. As long as they dont force any customer to buy their car and as long as there is an option to replace the default sterio by any sterio of owner's choice, i dont think Maruthi is guilty.

forget that... in Novell Suse 10, there is no MPlayer coming by default. should they go and sue Novell? for including RealPlayer and not including MPlayer?
why should Hank Rearden give the details of Rearden-metal to his opponents?

this is exactly what is happening in M$-EU fight and i dont understand it.
Windows Media player shouldnt be bundled with XP - this is the requirement.
Come on, MS should decide that.. right?

Another arguement is MS is trying to run it's opponents out of business. Let me ask one question. Wouldnt it be a happy thing for Jet airways if Deccan went out of business. (Actually it wont be... because the market is too huge for Jet airways to cater the needs of the market). Actually isnt that all the companies are doing?

still all are against M$!! Yes, the reason is that it is a GIANT.
I know many ppl who are supporters of Google. Not actually they support google... the real reason is that they oppose M$.

tell me ... what is the difference between Google and Microsoft.. in their philosophies? i dont see any. both of them want to make money. both of them are non-open-source (when i was in M$, the project i worked on is an open source project. and the code is available for the public).
despite of all these things.. ppl hate M$.

The funny thing is ... once upon a time... even i was like that. just like that.
and now when i look back, i laugh at myself!!

- sands.

kick off

so here i go. had a long chat with peter yesterday... so finally we decided about what to be done immediately... abt the project. i realised, if we do it the way we see it, i wouldnt have time to live... so i just cancelled out the plan of going for the language class in downtown. travelling 20km after your days wrk to another class doesnt look so appealing to me. and do i really need a class rooom to go and sleep?

the way karthik put it, i would be really happy to replace muenchen with mallu's in the expansion of TUM. If only dinil and ep could make it. ep wants to start his phd by the end of this year only. dinil has to start it asap. i think now itself it is a little bit late for him.

was reading abt milbloggers. i just had the same old thought... would this blogging can give as much warmth as usual diary writing... ?
yes... definitely there are advantages... but the warmth is lacking a little..
just like the difference in email and surface mail.

i shud get back to work. doing extra-curricular stuff during working hours is really a bad idea.. in fact emailing and replying itself is bad. but we cant live without them. let's have them. all other things are to be avoided...
so even i shud get back to my serious stuff.

by the way, the following is an excerpt from a mail i got from my friend... If only many of indian kids were like this!!

These kids... they are irrepressible, a neighbour was heard commenting on April 20. It was the last day of campaigning for the first phase of polling in Kerala. Quite naturally, workers of the three main groups — the LDF, the UDF and the BJP — visited all houses to distribute voter slips. All the three teams behaved identically — they left the neighbour's gate wide open, allowing free entry to stray dogs and cattle. Every time that happened, he had to send his 10-year-old to close the gate. The exasperated boy was heard commenting at one stage, "How can they transform the State if they cannot close a gate?"


I need to write abt how and in which all things we are lacking... after seeing the life in munich. let that be the theme in any of the coming blogs

- sands

21 April 2006

Complicated

Things a re really complicated at times... so many things to be done... and i
say i dont have time..
dont take it... The point is tat i am in no mood for anything.
for the past few days browsing is happening big time. actually nothing else.

wanted to write abt google. they are doing super.
without google life will be difficult.
1 - google search (now my default search engine is MSN. surprised?? actually u dont have to. i find msn interface as good as google. performance also is sometimes better. but yesterday it took some extra time. anyway msn is performing very well)

2 - gmail. recently i am using gmail only. the thread thing is really fantastic. it's a pity that it is still beta. wy dont they have their peoper releases?

3 - gtalk. terrific for talking. if you want to chat(write) go for yahoo. but just 2-3 lines of chat gtalk is enough. it's simply light weight.

4 - blogger - i donno how many of us know that blogger is google's. anyway i dont find something great here. this is just ordinary ..

5 - orkut - mere waste of time.. i know quite a few ppl who use this orkut extensively. how do they find time for this. yeah.. thaaat might be the thing they are interested in.

6 - picasa - again a very cool light weight things from google.

very good marketing strategy they have.. one of their product comes with many other and those by default created google toolbar, deskbar etc (why not they make a bierbar ;) ) and automatically change your default search engine, add icons on desktop and quick launch etc etc... this part i really hate. you really have to be very careful while installing these... one unnoticed corner of the window, there will be a invisible checkbox whcih will do all these things i just mentioned.. and you dont have anyway to revert them.

i had decided to keep this (blog) small. the moment it becomes long one... ppl are not going to read it.

so... am i writing for others to read? or writing for me?
good!! u caught me there...

i am wrting for me.. but i want others to read it... :) and leave good comments abt me (Tom Sawyer)
by the way i started with something else in my mind. and i reached in here...

let me start to read some algebra!!

- sands.

19 April 2006

Not so confident

Anyway, I too am starting to blog. Might be this post and a couple more would be focused on the audience...
later I know I wont be bothered abt what others might feel... There is this feeling... of inferiority... that I might not be able to perform as good as many others... in the current trend of "BLOGGING". I never wanted to be of a second class. That's the reason why I am not so confident..

Okay.. There are these two questions...

1) Why I start blogging now?
2) Why not I started it earlier?

let's do it in the LIFO (Last In First Out).. So answer for the second question first..

I always thought myself to be a very (un/non)-systematic kind of person.. or very regular in being irregular kind of fellow... very lazy to organise things.. etc.. So, I knew... Once I have a blog .. that will go really unattended...

In fact, I had a couple of blogs earlier... named - chaos, entropy ... etc. I knew... that the names were perfect for them. And as I knew, they were never properly maintained. So that is the reason for not having a blog till now, despite of having cool-fast internet all around me -Wherever I went!!

so the first question... WHY NOW? What happened suddenly?

Yeaaaah.... here is the catch... "I am starting my PhD". Till now in my life I had been studying... working in M$ (Dont bother the $ sign.. I dont mean to insult the company... I love the company).. All these times there was someone to ask me what is my status...

now everything has to be self driven... man!!... I cant believe this. That I am here in the beginning of my PhD. As he says in "The 4th guide in the Hitchhiker's guide trilogy", I need to be systematic...
or like steve (CEO, M$) said in his speech... that Good Day or Bad Day... WORK WORK WORK.., IMPROVE IMPROVE IMPROVE.... Whatever it is .. I need to be systematic..

and I know... this is one way of being systematic... (Wondering HOW?)..
one of the simplest ways of being systematic is to tell urself that u will be systematic...
the other way is to tell others that u are going to be systematic.... then ur ego (which I have in tons) will not let u to be non-systematic... So I chose this method... (Thanks to RICHARD HAMMING)
(lot many things I am just not writing .... I dont want to get u bored)

Again .... to have a feel of having a blog... that also is a reason.

So here goes the Original First Posting of THECOOLSUN - (credits for Dr. Roland Koch and Sands for the name)

- sands.

Hello World

#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
printf("Hello World\n");
return 0;
}

actually.... got inspired from joyofnothing...
the cupid story by him .... :))
i shud be proud of this fellow...

thanks to him... for all the posts..., the thoughts behind
them and finally for this inspiration..