Recently in Briefly Explained Category

If your work requires you to work on computers (or Laptops) most parts of your day.. then this post might make sense to you.. (Otherwise just ignore this.. its for stupid geeks who expect their computers to understand them... like me)

Computers have improved our lifestyle.. our communication skills.. haven't they ?

There was a time you just went to the railway station to get rail tickets.. and now you go online... whether you get tickets or not these days depends on the internet bandwidth (humidity of the air if it is wi-max), and sometimes even depends on whether you paid your electricity bill.

There was a time you called up your friends and had a get-to-gether at the coffee-shop .. end of the street under the street lights.. now you have facebook.. its even more easier.. all friends sit at different locations (mostly different places on earth).. whether your friend got married or has kids or joined a new course in a college all depends on whether he / she has updated the status, pictures, facebook wall etc., on time. sometimes we also do this thing "subscribe for updates".. so its kind of officially like subscribing for a newspaper.

We are all so dependent on computers and all related hard and soft wares.. the related technologies.. the viruses or anti-viruses.. that we pray (though not literally) that our computers should always work and our internet connections should always exist.

The power goes off.. the internet is busy.. we are almost in an island of No-Data.

And haven't sometimes thought.. your computer is tuned to your way of using it... that it understands you.. like we say about bikes and cars..

Will it understand you? If it hasn't already you think.
Won't it just work when you want it to. Well we will all keep praying more and more... and keep saying those things without an itch of sceptism .. "computers have changed our lifestyle for good", "computers and technology space have advanced so much", "its a small world", .. and all that.

And now lets see what people have guessed for the future:

There is this futuristic view that computer will be the size of mobile phones, You place it on the table and switch it on, it will project a screen in the front, and a keyboard and touch pad on the desk.. and you will work on it.

More advanced machines.. and You will talk to them instead of typing and moving the mouse cursor.. say something like "google for taxis near adyar chennai" or "show route from adyar signal to race course road"

They call the technology voice recognition.. the interesting part is, people are unable to just make computers understand voices.. not to the quality to commercially make systems which will bought by a lot of people with different voices, accents and fluencies.

In 2004, Mike Bliss composed a poem about voice recognition. He then read it to voice recognition software on his computer, and rewrote it as recognized.

a poem by Mike Bliss-----------------------------------------------a poem by like myth

like a baby, it listens------------------------------------------------like a baby, it nuisance
it can't discriminate-------------------------------------------------it can't discriminate
it tries to understand-----------------------------------------------it tries to oven
it reflects what it thinks you say----------------------------------it reflects lot it things you say
it gets it wrong... sometimes--------------------------------------it gets it run sometimes
sometimes it gets it right.------------------------------------------sometimes it gets it right
One day it will grow up,--------------------------------------------won't day it will grow bop
like a baby, it has potential---------------------------------------Ninth a baby, it has provincial
will it go to work?---------------------------------------------------will it both to look?
will it turn to crime?------------------------------------------------will it the two crime?
you look at it indulgently.-----------------------------------------you move at it inevitably
you can't help loving it, can you?-------------------------------you can't help loving it, cannot you?

In India, which is more populated than many bigger countries, it is usual practice to dump trash / daily garbage over the compound wall of your house (if it is a vacant plot of land on that side).

Some people who live at important / economically more costly areas of the city, will have regular garbage pickup, and a street corner garbage bin. Usually people litter more around the garbage bin, than into it. Even if people put it in the bin, the trash usually ends up being outside the bins... thanks to garbage pickers, street dogs, cows (which are freely allowed on roads in residential areas) which depend on leftovers in the bins.

While we all Indians thought and usually crib that our trash is so unorganized when compared to the so-called developed countries which are cleaner, it seems like the developed countries have developed ways keep clean by spoiling the entire planet rather than spoiling themselves.

Recently, I read that in-between America and Japan, in the vast waters and depths of the pacific ocean, there is a new island formed, where people haven't yet inhabited.. which is called by names like 'Plastic island', 'gyre', 'floating island of trash' etc.,

Chris Parry with the California Coastal Commission in San Francisco said the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, has been growing a brisk rate since the 1950s, The San Francisco Chronicle reported Friday.

The trash stew is 80 percent plastic and weighs more than 3.5 million tons.

"At this point, cleaning it up isn't an option," Parry said. "It's just going to get bigger as our reliance on plastics continues."

This is how this island was formed:
From trash thrown over by countries into the oceans, without place for it in their developed geography.

What you see in the picture by arrows are ocean water currents, which push or pull the floating objects.

Seen an Animated view of the above at GreenPeace website here.
Wikipedia details here on more such islands in formation in oceans all around us by different countries.

Well, I don't mean by all this that India dumps its garbage better.. but I guess as humans we have developed so badly forgotten our planet so far, that we are way out of returning or working around to become eco-friendly and reverse all effects of such trash islands, air pollution, etc.,

We are leaving behind a lot of *shit* for the future generation to clean up to even survive on earth.

Not me, and may be not some of you who read this.. but some people are really crazy about Social networking .. I always had a friction towards doing that thing that everybody seems to be doing... and so landed up experiencing orkut or facebook quite late .. actually quite forcefully because of my wife's insistence that as husband and wife we spoke to each other on orkut or facebook.. (what!!) (blink) (blink)

I always had this "why are people crazy about social networking sites" question..
and why do they enjoy logging -in to some site, typing / posting something for friends to read about, and friends doing the same to comment on it.. and then you login back sometime later and read.. and uh.. making a short conversation long..

and most often atleast two of the bunch doing this conversation would be working in the same office sitting next to each other and still prefer replying to each other on the site.

.. worse some people add a mobile phone, or,
get a notification when somebody replies, or,
a suite of more instruments and blocks
to keep track of what everybody is saying.

Why are people so crazy about social networking sites ??

The answer:

I think the web or internet was simply only invented ... for Social Networking sites.

Every bit and piece of how internet works and what it allows people to do.. seem to fill in gaps that were there in a group of people wanting to communicate but not being able to for various reasons..

All technologies of the web or internet, together, allow people to setup a system to do one thing good.. social networking.

Lets get some story here:
You had 4 friends at class 3, and 20 friends at high school, many at college, random numbers of collegues at work as you went around different companies.. and you would want to keep in touch with all those contacts.

If you took the phone, or the email, or a chat, or any conference system.. there are gaps.. which social networking sites fix.

you write a note / scrap on your page .. sometime someday.
you are not in a hurry.. and it is not some very important stuff.
your contacts read it some other time / some other day and reply to it or respond to it.. you have a conversation.. or to be more specific you have a time-insensitive, spread-out conversation.

and the interesting thing is.. you can have it with nothing.. no phones, no neccessity to be sitting in your house to receive the letter.. and somewhat importantly you dont need to pay a bill for doing this conversation.
you just do it on the internet through a browser.. which is almost available anywhere these days.

As a person in software, with good amount of specialization in internet technologies, I have known one thing: All the technology that is invented or improved around the Internet, have only one design goal.. to be able to collaborate with different other technologies in an open manner.. that in english is 'to communicate'

Facebook, MySpace, Orkut.. by design .. should only be more and more improved or get filled with advancements to make us all have..better time insensitive, spread-out conversations, but still conversations which well recorded and organized.

Web/internet technology geek, just drool for developing such sites where people collaborate.. there are thousands of such internet sites though only facebook, orkut and myspace are popular.. some others that are popular with the formal conversation club are 'scribd', 'wiki and its many flavors like pbwiki tkwiki', blogs, ...
... writing that list reminds me of bb's or bulletin boards which was one of the first web-based networking system alongwith email-based mailing lists and forums.

First: I think the idea that atleast 100 times more people have Mobile phones than having access to computers, is really selling. For the kind of growth in mobile applications or software in recent years... and probably especially the biggest growth in India.

Second: I am sure there are not going to be Blackberry's or the marketing hype of the blackberry.. in the future.. because ordinary low cost phones already are able to do what was once conceived as "only on a blackberry" thing.

And this
"I send this mail from my Blackberry" like marketing gimmicks are viewed more funny than smart today.

If your phone is Java capable (Almost all of today's phones are), has a good color screen, and you have signed up for GPRS from your mobile service provider, then you can do everything that anybody does with blackberry or any mobile unit..

not "almost", but you definitely can.

If you are in India, one of the well-known mobile java applications that you can download through GPRS and run is:

mcheck - I orignially started using this for Airtel bill payment. This is not from Airtel itself though they advertise heavily on it making it look like its an Airtel mobile feature.
mcheck Will run on any java enabled phone (some of the functions even don't require GPRS but only SMS).
It now includes the common use stuff like movie ticket booking on theatres like PVR / INOX, travel ticket booking on IRCTC / others, to recharge phone talktime, to pay bills (limited set of billers), etc., things that have been understood as common internet money-spends that Indians do.

Other Interesting apps:

1. google maps - http://m.google.com/maps
Install this.. and your mobile becomes almost an Advanced GPS system.. the google maps java app will detect your nearest cell phone tower and position your current location on the map. You can do most stuff that you can do on the web site for google maps.. like finding directions, looking at a typical google map with roads, hospitals, places, etc.,

2. google search - http://m.google.com/search
This you browse on your mobile's browser.. not an installed application. You do stuff you would do on google search.. the results, text length are fine-tuned for viewing in the small screen on the mobile phone.

3. Email:
Actually you could see what all apps / sites of google you want to use through http://m.google.com the mobile website of google.

Yes, You can also gmail.

If you use some other email which is non-gmail, then chances are that your email provider doesn't have a javamobile-based or mobile-browser-based email screen.. if so, you can probably configure your email to be handled by gmail and then read gmail on your mobile browser (yes, gmail can handle any email provided the email provider allows you to do some configuration/settings).

4. Social networking, Communication apps:
Facebook, Orkut, Skype have mobile versions.. you should check their website or search google like "facebook mobile" and find a 'java app download link' or 'web page for mobiles' link to use on your mobile browser.

5. 1000's:
There are thousands of handy java-based applications, most good, proffesional ones require license purchases, some are free.. which allow you to do a lot of stuff from expenses management to emailing to call recording to auto-responding to calls, and a lot.
Some good shopping/listing sites/applications for java mobile are:
1. getjar.com
2. A mobile office suite: http://mobile-office.en.softonic.com/java/download
3. sharejar.com

Accidentally stumbled on this word in wikipedia.. Tontine.. an interesting word to know.

It has an interesting meaning.
Actually two meanings.. one a software tech word, another as a finance scheme name.

First the techy: Tontines are secret programs that generate many secret keys (or codes) to be given to as many people protecting a particular data/information in digital format, locked with the program.. and if more than one person who has these codes come together, they can use their keys to unlock the program and see the actual information.

As wikipedia says it: a tontine is a secret sharing algorithm which allows n people to share secret data, such that any k of them can reconstruct it by combining their keys.

This was interesting, because I have always heard of only one person entity, or two person entity holding the secret code to protected information in software.. so knowing that 'n' person entity could hold keys, though two of the keys would be enough to unlock the information that is protected, was interesting.

Second the finance scheme: Tontines are financial schemes that work like this - All members of the scheme put in a capital amount and get paid dividends every year until their death.. and the capital is never paid. And on death of members the dividends paid to others adds up with proportionate value of the divdend that would have been paid to the dead if they were alive.
After many many revisions and transitions of this, 'pension' schemes were invented it seems.

It is named Tontine, or Tonti-ne, after the person Lorenzo de Tonti who is credited with inventing or popularizing the sceme first in France.

The wealthy Tontine scheme:
The Tontine scheme had many variants.. one of the popular variant was this: Apart from the normal dividends payment of the scheme, the total capital of all investors in the scheme is paid to the last surviving investor.. and eventually the last survivor becomes very wealthy.

This variant of the scheme has been popularized much by novels and stories that use this wealthy variant as the plot for murder mysteries where all investors of the tontine are killed to get all the money to the last survivor.

Why don't we have this scheme today: Looks like this scheme or its variants was mostly used by governments in early days (something like 17th century or 18th) to raise funds for wars, and big expenses... and governments or marketers inherently allowed young people also to become investors on the scheme whereby a 5 year old girl can invest some 300 Livres(one of many currency types used in ancient France) and reap dividends till she dies.

Government started feeling the costs of surviving the scheme go up and up because people lived longer.. also girl children were chosen by parents for the scheme because women were known to live longer than men in those days.

Other than this, private companies or agencies who ran tontine schemes mostly made a scam of it. The scheme was more attractive and easy to swindle a lot of money which many did use of well. This led to the England and American governments banning the scheme in those days itself.. so it never came to more recent centuries.

They say, there are tontines even today in the underworld.

Read more on Tontines at: Tontine - wikipedia