October 2006 Archives

INSAT, an indian weather satellite's pic shows clouds looming large in circles over low pressure regions in south india. more towards tamilnadu, pondicherry and kerala.

While its raining non-stop in chennai, the local MET department, Chennai, only announces [to the press] that there will be severe rains one more day.
The satellite pictures probably show more, and the MET dept is playing safe so that if rains stop suddenly they won't be criticized for bad forecast. They are well known for bad forecasts in previous years.

Good thing is atleast the MET puts a 'HEAVY RAINFALL WARNING' on their daily forecast website.
If its a warning, why not boldly give the warning with confidence to the press, so that people can plan in advance, schools & offices can declare holidays, etc.,

The very idea of having the MET to do early reporting and warning takes a beating with such unconfident announcements they make to secure their government jobs or avoid reputation through criticism.

Related links:
INSAT satellite pictures
All weather links
INSAT link for satellite image shown above.

The other day I was taking a shot at my private golf course and one of my men came and said that police had foiled our attempt to transport some drugs. I had to only smile and tell him that I always knew somebody was an informer within our men...and he brushed away saying every one of us is loyal and why would they do it. Making a strong stroke I said I know who it was, and just shot the ball into the head of one of the men. He.. fell.. down.. dead.

And life went on like this, with all the responsibility of taking care of every problem in the business and having an eye on everybody and everything around me. Then the police in India seemed to know that I was in kaula lumpur and came searching for me. Now,.. I have the additional pressure of dealing with them also. And that's not all. A girl, a sister of another man on my team I had to kill sometime because he wanted to quit working with me,... was here to take revenge of me. She posed everyway like she wanted to work with me, and I knew something was different. but what I didnt know was she was that guy's sister. beautiful sister he had he never told me.. otherwise i could have spared him.

All this, and there was the interval. I stopped being DON for a while and came and caught up with the Q to get something to eat.

Once back again,
I was back to taking all the responsibility of handling the tough life of being the DON .. but of course from the comfort of a leathered cushion seat, in a well air-conditioned hall.

Coming out of the hall, I realized (you might have already) that I imagined myself as DON enjoying the movie. not a 'too good' movie, but it did catch my senses enough for me to get the feeling of being inside the movie, not just inside the [movie] hall. Shah rukh khan fan, if you are, you would also probably imagine the same.

Coming out of such movies, I have always wondered how advanced and exciting the world is from inside the movie hall.. and when you come out... it is the usual Chennai, India.. and everyone looks and feels ...the 'same old people' of chennai.

I have felt like being in London, new york, vietnam.. you name it. I have lived the life, many great actors only get to act. Sometimes even lived the life of roles portrayed by actresses ..like i was in 'million dollar baby'. 'Crash' was one movie where i lived many lifes within one hour and 50 mins.. And I enjoyed killing all those wrong doers while watching tamil movie 'Anniyan', and I was elected chief minister in 'Muthalvan'.

Many times I have felt that what we see on some movies.. 'some movies' .. become reality after 10 years or like they say in the next decade/generation. I could easily relate to life I saw in movies, local tamil movies that came between 1995- 2000... as existing in chennai today. This includes 'Muthalvan', where people today, the younger cream of people of ages 20-40 are clearly thinking in terms of what was communicated in the movie long back... todays cream of people understand that a political evolution is required to move the quality of life here..to move forward.

So, while I hope to get into another life this weekend... lets hope there are more good movies talking realisitic ways of improving quality of life, reducing corruption, etc.,... so that switching to live them in the next decade is a possibility which will improve life then.

That's almost become a phrase to cover-up things these days.

When a country goes nuclear and you ask WHY?.. they say that.
When the government passes a bill to get access to your privacy, without your consent, and you ask HOW CAN YOU?.. they say that.

What are Advantages .. and What are disadvantages?

If you are still thinking that advantages are good consequences for everybody, and disadvantages the opposite of it... you are probably living in ancient world or still too young to understand the real reasons behind things.

Like every movie these days seem to have, if we did a behind-the-scenes thing for every political decision every government and the political folk make in this world, .... i bet they will become more action-packed than the latest hollywood flicks.... of what is happening in Iraq and the mistakes that even American president and British prime minister accept, it already is better than hollywood.

There are innumerable cases already and Iraqi liberation is just new among them. For the others, we could briefly analyze two cases.

Case 1:
When the Narmada bachao andolan (NBA), a protest group constituting villagers from the villages sunk by a dam built across river Narmada asked the indian government officials to compensate them for taking the decision to drown their villages,

and when that didnt help and they moved the supreme court of law in india,

the judgement by the supreme court had this statement.. "When the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages...", and ofcourse also did the judge recommend (not ordered) the government to form a committee to analyze the problems faced by the displaced villagers and compensate them, but that's a different story and we know how politicians will implement recommendations.

Case 2:
Similarly when every country goes nuclear and does nuclear explosion tests, the next day the country justifies it with "the advantages of understanding and using nuclear technology for generating power and help other research activities far outweigh the disadvantage of sceptically feeling that the technology could be used in warfare and destroy millions of people".

Are politicians really short-sighted and seeing only one-side of things.. that probably we can only have different opinions.

Bottomline:
It would be stupid to lean on one side and say 'No' to these decisions, and also at the same time say 'Yes' and continue doing it. Probably this is why some people often say "hmm. No and Yes actually" when you ask them complex questions.

I have had quite a few teachers in my school or college days, who used to brainstorm the class one side.. a science teacher would come in the first hour and say that science is what helps evolve and grow, and though there are some disadvantages we should mature to use science in ethical ways.... and the next hour a history teacher would come and say, science and technology may have done good things, but have also paved way for destroying the fabric of peaceful life that used to exist, and science should not-study or only-study some topics like nuclear fission and not try it (Don't try this at home kind of warning.)

One can't stop many bad people grouping together to form a bad organization, acquire money and resources from different bad groups, and finally use them to satisfy their wacky pleasure of destroying the voice of the good groups, so that they can enjoy being bad, lazy... and of course wacky for their life.

In my opinion:

No matter if some of the disadvantages are bad and cruel...If advantages far outweigh the disadvantages of a plan.. then the plan should be implemented !

My agreement with the about statement is 51%, as against the 49% of my thoughts being critical about the statement. And I understand that majority lenience make a final opinion, which means I am in favor of the statement.

In my opinion, the facts that i have seen around me, the evolution of life i have seen, i have read, or i have heard, seem to suggest to me that the advantages of using the statement to convince majority opinions on the evolution of things for the good sake, .... far outweigh the disadvantages of winning a majority opinion for some decisions like testing nuclear fission.

But like the science teacher said, the good people however limited they might become, should make sure that whatever done is done for the welfare and good of everybody and atleast 75% of the consequences should be good for all sorts of beings impacted.

Ideally, before every major decision taken which has negative impacts on the environment or on any living species, an analysis of the impacts should be documented and a % fairness approach should be applied.

For example, to cut down trees in 400 acres of land to make it viable for developing a new city, a specific number of trees and portions of a few acres of land should be identified to be left in place to merge into the environment of the new city.

In essense we would still disturb the population of birds and similar life in the land, but we might have given a chance to 20% of birds and the life to remain, although having to try to cope up with the pressures of a city.

At the same time the city would also have given up 20% of its ambitions of becoming a mega city or metro where trees are considered to occupy costly real estate.

hmm! I hope this post brainstorms somebody someday.

Its that time of the year in India. Armed with weapons of all sorts ranging from atom bombs to electric bombs, and including the pepsi or coke bottle based rocket launchers, all hindu families in India (that means 80% of the population), demolish the streets, and roads in India. Its Diwali.. the Dhamakedar 'festival of lights' which underwent obvious exxageration over the years, and became the 'festival of crackers'.

Diwali, or Deepavali in the south, or Dhantheras for the shopping freaks, it has many names, and an historical story where some god destroyed evil on this day and asked the people of the world (indian hindus basically) to celebrate it as a festival of lights, in significance of the dawn after the destroyance of evil.

Yes, yes, dusshera is also a festival in celebration of destroying evil, and so are many hindu festivals.. we believe in destroying evil that many times in a year to make for 12 to 22 days of holidays in a year.

Anyway.. the story here is about the dogs, the canine lot in India spending a frightful, shivering 2 or 3 days, rightfully scared at the never-ending loud diwali blast.

You might have a dobberman, an Alsatian, or Boxers, and the lots.. why not, even be it Lions, they all think the world is coming down with every blast, and somebody is attacking their territory with those weapons.

Some dogs take shelter under the bed for days, even insisting on this food plate being shifted to the same under-the-bed place, .. and some try to brave it for a what? max 4-5 hrs and keep barking at the direction from where the blast noise emanates. .. and some run helter-skelter within the house where its bred trying to check whether everything is still ok after the blast... may be these few dog guys think that everything is rocking and its their responsibility to save the world from this one now.

For them its not festival of lights, its festival of .. whatever.. they are scared to talk about it.

HAPPY DIWALI.. and wish your doggie, puppie, munna, buji, all the same.

American Revolution:

You might have heard about the Industrial revolution, and how the Americans grew up to become the world's largest economy after the Ist World War. Americans innovated processes and machines that reduced the time and effort of making things, and mobilising things. Even today, American businesses innovate new ways of living and doing things.

All that is true.. but, not entirely. Americans are not the only people on Earth who innovated stuff, or who did things better. In fact Americans themselves used slaves and transported labor from poor nations (till today they do this), and got work done for low costs from these people.

You also probably know, that when these slaves who were called blacks by the white american population, grew bigger and demanded equal rights, Americans reacted harshly which started all that was later named racial discrimination.

Today America is a better place, and there are laws and amendments that declare racial discrimination as abusive and criminal. Not entirely again, Americans are showing, and have shown interest in foreigners for labour reasons. for other things, they prefer Americans.. you would see this in every act and law in the west. A little of this, my friends in UK tell me, holds good with the british also.

If all countries are innovating, why is that only American innovation is at the forefront.. definitely that doesn't have to always mean that only American innovation is good or sophisticated. What that simply means is this.. Americans are influencial.

The term influencial could mean different things.. power, money, voice.

We will have to consider some more history to understand how Americans can be called influencial.

Americans - the international police:
Soon after America won the Gulf War with Iraq protecting Kuwait, the Americans were showered praise from all quarters of the world for their action.. (this probably was also the first big United Nations achievement in protecting a member nation kuwait I believe).

Alongwith the showers, many nations (probably member nations of the UN) donated in money for the costs that the US recurred for being involved in the war. If I remember right, US actually made extra money(profit), more than their costs due to huge donations from all nations and also from kuwait itself.

After the showers was the time probably Americans, especially politicians, started reacting to every international issue. Formally acting in their new found responsibility as an International peace-keeper and police, most American politicians have tried to get under the spotlight by verbing reactions to issues in other countries, and sometimes even nations that are not UN members.

Even the press in the west, especially the American and British press, seem to have got into this mode, and always you see them interviewing or discussing international issues with just American and British analysts...rather than the actual victims or sources of the issue in the country where the issue is.

This bias, a gross bias, diplomatically has helped both the western giants grow hand in hand, leaving other nations voiceless or less influencial.

United Nations - an organized charter of the biased

The other day, shashi taroor, Chief of public relations, United Nations, said in an interview, "The US is indispensable to the United Nations". Actually, what he probably could have indirectly mentioned was, the vice-verse also holds good.. "The United Nations is indispensable to the US".

If not for United Nations, the Americans would have found it impossible... to find a common place to diplomatically silence the other powerful nations from questioning them, on their wars in Afganisthan, then in Iraq, and now slowly trying to find targets in Iran and North Korea.

If not for United Nations, Americans would be having the war in their country by now, in reaction to their war activities in other countries. The rest of the world would not go silent easily.... also, seems like the rest of the world found it ok to dispense with lives in Afganisthan and Iraq.. than elsewhere in more democratic or powerful nations.

If the United Nations really want to stand up for world peace ..which is what they are intended to do, then firstly they should remove the concept of veto powers in the UN where 5 nations USA, UK, France, China, and Russia have the rights to do anything through the UN if they agree within themselves...no matter whether the rest 180 and odd nations don't like their decisions.
Would anybody with some common sense call this veto power thing an unbiased setup.

War on Terror !
Yes, there was september 11, and Americans are not wrong in answering their assassins... but the Americans should have drawn a line at some level in their way,
rather than,
generically calling it 'war on terror', which repeatedly sounds an alarm that Americans could seek to attack any nation in the claim of protecting world peace.

Free Hand
The Americans and American politicians today have a free-hand to draw projectiles from their country to any other country for occupying it in the name of 'war on terror'. This is blatant modernization of invading countries.

I really dont see anything better than this level of influence and free-hand some country can have.. even in the future.

Big businesses often draw red or blue circles on the world map marking their markets around the globe. If we drew such circles at places where American troops have base in the world map, we would see a considerably good networking of troops. What's this... policing.. "for keeping away ants, would you carry the sugar everywhere."

End Note:

One of my proffessors at college used to say, "Americans will never like Israel-Palestine to become peaceful, or North korea - south korea to sign peace pacts, because only when nations fight will there be a market for US weapons, and for the US atleast 40% of their economy is based on their defence systems and the money they make with it".
I can't vouch for the stats my proffessor gave, but his's is a valid perception considering the American attitude to war and weapons.

With money comes the craziness of exhibiting Power.

That explains why the Americans call themself relentlessly the super power, and why american politicians can't rest one moment when some non-American country is rising in its economic strength and military power.

That holds good for any country's politicians and people.. why should we just talk about and blame the Americans?

The logic is behind the below understanding:
When the Gun is in the hands of someone who knows to use it, and who is known for using it very often for killing people, we will be more worried, than when the gun is in the hands of a new person who is just learning to use it.

Americans are no-doubt the most influencial people in the world.

If you are an American, and grinning for that statement, ...rather than being known as influencial, think... are Americans the happiest people in the world ?, the most peace loving in the world ?... the best human-beings showing love and affection to the world.. ?

Influencial... Americans are, since the time they displayed their acrobatics by blasting two nuclear weapons in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. They ended the war they say, but they actually fast-forwarded the war and completed it 110% in fullness by killing people at a snap. The world war II was completed successfully for the Americans, and that too much earlier than the time and cost it would have taken for them to complete it without the atom bombs.

In my opinion, some Americans .. not just President Bush show immaturity and impatience when it comes to decision making. Some of them don't seem to believe in patience, forgetfullness, or the likes of anything thats said in the Holy Bible unto the idea of legalizing gay marriages with public announcements and press releases..for a stupid thing like gay marriage..

When they can't obey one rule in a religion they say they follow, how is it to be expected by the rest of the world to respect Americans for their word in every accord that they sign to. Why shouldn't one think that Americans have an internal document and an external document on everything.

Most people in the rest of the world are only using the Americans.. for their money and power.. its high-time Americans realize their weaknesses, try resolve themself into better positive thinkers, and stop misusing their influence or try gaining influence through non-innocent acts.

In conclusion:

"Americans" in the world, is like a person in the family, one of the men, a very rich business man, busy dealing money, forgetting house-hold committments. (the committments to living with the world, respecting other views, other interests, ..)

Americans have to respect the people of the world.. If you are an American reading this, and reading through this article, if even for a second you thought "huh! an Indian writing about me..", then you are among those who have to change that attitude and respect this writing as 'also an opinion' from a critics perspective.

The software giant of yesterday, Microsoft corporation is probably become too old for the business. I have my reasons to say that.. been using microsoft products for much over 10 years, and being a software programmer and engineer myself, i have been observing their products, the list of changes that they call features in their new products, etc.,

Microsoft still maintains its benchmarks...

Comparing them to companies like google, or products like linux operating systems, would actually only mislead that Microsoft is still strong. but when you can see what they are creating these days, to their benchmark levels they used to have 4 or 5 years back on their products, you would see that their benchmark hasnt changed, they still have the same standards, which is the problem.

With growing demand for more automation in software, any interesting company, any alive company to put it straight, would only increase their standards or benchmarks, but microsoft i wonder is turned the other way and looking interested in only marketing.

Microsoft's top planning bosses aren't getting the facts. And with bill gates planning to relieve himself from active chairmanship in 2008, i feel from 2008 people will see Microsoft as only yet another small software company around the block rather than being an important / cohersive player in Technology.

"Hype wont sell anymore in software. ."

I wish (i can only wish) Microsoft's marketing stop being busy creating a hype around each and every feature they are including in the products, and let the product speak for itself, like other companies do.. like digg.com, or google's products.

Open-source goes brave

People are today bravely giving away a huge chunk of good work in free/open-source software, and every other company have started respecting this brave community.. and some companies have even started donating, or contributing to this community which is bringing the next boom to software sure down in 2008 or 2010.

Whereas, Microsoft, still doesn't want to recognize the open-source community as any valuable atleast officially. For marketing purposes though, Microsoft still tries to post technical capacity comparisons of their products with linux servers, or google like products etc.,

The very idea that microsoft compares its commercial products/services against a free/open-source product talks pages about Microsoft's benchmark levels.

How much alive is Microsoft Live?

The other day i was intrigued by the way microsoft's live mail beta was working.. it just was eating all the errors gracefully and failing without doing anything most times.. sure its mouth was full of errors.

"Eating your Cooking..."

I was happy that finally Microsoft people write code for their own intelligent browser IE developing the 'Live' services, and sure they are feeling the pinch in every painful part of that browser.

"First eat your cooking, then you know"... same things with Microsoft's Local, the mapping environment. sometimes they work good as comparable to Google Maps but sometimes they just dont respond.. (in the background that means they are hiding an error and keeping quiet as if nothing happened).

Microsoft's Hotmail and live team, the browser-based service developers should learn a 50 or 52 things from the way yahoo's new live mail, or google's services work.

Competing new areas...

Forgeting all these failures Microsoft seems busy trying to enter a new product area - MP3 players to compete with Apple's ipod. Sure, MP3 and many popular formats were actually initiated into the technology sector by Microsoft.. but those days are fine.. today "more" is word (not just for using in Microsoft Marketing campaigns but also in product functions and features).

Are Microsoft managers not seeing the failures at the end-point, or, are they ignoring all current customers and moving on to new ones..

Next what, compete with motorola and nokia and make micorosft mobile phones.??

Bottomline:

The company Microsoft is become old, and old thinkers are making stereo-type decisions in there... and the activity in the company is probably "stale".. i wonder microsoft is going to end-up stagnating for sometime like IBM was in the 1990's and we all know whats of IBM today (the just another hardware company).

Was reading through somebody's compilation of popular IT embarrasements. It read "Peter Coffee's Dirty Dozen IT Embarrassments"

... basically list 12 popular software misuse or failures. Though the list is compiled from a USA perspective, it does convey the message that when IT fails... it fails royally. And when I say IT it doesnt include the word-processor software on your PC.. or small things like that.. We are refering to enterprise level software misuse / failures here.

In 1982, the US seems to have used a software virus (or more technically they used a Trojan Horse) to induce errors into a pipeline management system which the russians were actually allowed to steal and install on their trans-siberian oil pipeline.. Russians were earning close to 8billion $ per year on the pipeline and they installed the system with the pirated software alongwith the trojan horse the US bugged it with. The virus propogated through the system, increased pipeline pressure levels beyond control and blasted the pipeline at a core junction destroying things around for a few 100 metres.

The trans-siberian pipeline blast happens to be one of the very few non-nuclear explosions that could be seen and recorded by satellites from space. Such was the magnitude of the explosions it seems.

Though there were no casualities, the damage costed the russians enough and they couldnt complain because if they did, everyone would know that they had been stealing US technolgoy under cover for a while.
After the pipeline blast, the russians feared using all software and technology stolen from the US and its said this was the starting point of things that ended the cold war between the Russian and the US.. with the US emerging victorious under covers.

While the above incident is one of the popular embarrasing IT errors that happened (error for the russians, success for the americans), there are many occassions reported where software errors have crumpled huge data networks, created big data errors and loss to an organization over a long-term, and so on.

There are proven instances such as,

>Similary, patients who use computers to recieve or report treatment information to/from doctors have misunderstood information and taken the wrong treatment and sufferred problems.
... and you could make a list of a million big errors that have happened.

All such grave errors, are wrapped up under covers and hidden from the people who would be bothered to know that it was caused by a technical mistake.

A recent example was how a long-term study uncovered a bug in a IT system program in a large bank which over a certain combination of operations seemed to ignore a certain value of money which accumulated to make a few million dollars in losses after a long-term for the bank.

And when we discuss banking errors, if you are wondering where these errors go.. they actually eat up on the bank's direct/indirect customer's/investor's money.

Even if your bank's systems had such bugs you wouldn't know or neither will you be informed, because the banks only try to wrap it up to avoid paying up and meeting more losses and losing people realiability. And to add up these bugs dont show up on the next day's statement.. but on some earlier transaction you did months or years back which you dont remember and cannot verify.. and because of which your current balance is lesser than it should be.

The world of IT errors.. and we will live and prosper within it.

The next time you hear that an US coalition force fighter aircraft fired missiles into an iraqi marriage party based on mislead information that militants were there, you know what to guess.... and then move on.