:: Sense - The Way I Sense ::

Ever wondered after taking a stroll round blog park, or guest column park in any newspaper or a real stroll around a real park…What are the chances that you missed meeting a compulsive cribber…Pretty slim I’d say….Considering how “young” India’s population currently is, cribbing seems to be alarmingly becoming a national pastime !! From newspaper columnists to some very well-read bloggers, Its as if people now consider it their national duty to start cribbing about every little thing that may or may not effect them…No, I am not complaining about, or rather cribbing about, lack of real activists….Inspite of all that people may say or leaders may exhort, at the end of the day, it still is left to a few people only to do the actual dirty work…My concern is that of the rest, there are majorly two kinds. Those who do not care to comment and those who care to only comment….It is the latter version of the species that has me thinking..A passive spectator only adds to traction, but a negative participant can actually cause more harm than what many passive spectators may result in…Even if these species result in convincing one borderline case on the supposed futility of considering an attempt at changing the system, then that in itself is a huge loss…

I tried to look at a lot of people’s opinions about this, but always fail to understand why they see, or rather prefer to see, only that which is worthy of deriding..

Yes, by cribbing about cribbers, I am running the risk of being a cribber myself..But atleast that way I become an active participant in the movement against cribbers

It’s official now….Google Talk is out….So far, looks neat Something very surprising was, it does not have a search window for googling !!! So far, it looks neat, with a very good integration of all our contacts directly…Gotta check the voice quality still…And not surpisingly, almost immediately, Skype announced that it was opening its client to other sites and applications…Competition, they say, is a great leveller

Somebody puhleez tell me this is NOT the Hindu that I’ve been reading over the years !!! Agreed…Concepts/ideas/notions of all kindsa sexualities, including the thousands ascribed to such illustrious papers as the Slimes, exist !! But this is prolly one of the very few times that I’ve seen The Hindu too trying to catch up, and with a darned poor attempt at that !!! Plz don’t “grow up” Hindu…..

Red Herring recently had a small news item on how laptops are increasingly getting rugged for benefitting the “mobile” user, and constantly the costs are shooting through the roof for these hi-tech gadgets.

In the same breath, MIT Media Lab’s Negroponte has recently unveiled plans for, hold your breath, a “rugged” $100 Laptop (HDL) which he wants to see in the hand of every child across the world..Of-course, it still is in the development phase and is likely to hit production, if it ever, by end 2006. While sceptics will always frown at any such outlandish initiatives, Personally, I believe, this is something that can probably touch far more lives than the Simputer, which unlike the HDL is targetted at individuals. Negroponte wants these HDLs to be distributed directly by Education ministries across the world–A more likely way of getting the economies of scale factor right. Like Tech-Review’s Jason points out in his August ‘05 editorial, at the end it might take a lot more other factors like low-cost internet, community p2p networks, and most importantly, power to run these machines than just getting the economies of scale right.

Yes !! Met and talked extensively with Dr.Bala Balachandran @ GLIM along with Allwin….Sure was one helluva experience talking to him for over 90minutes over a lot of issues..B-schooling, Indians in US, etc etc…

Guess I prolly need to start keeping track of the number of Padmashri’s that I get to meet, courtesy, pagalguy.com…After Dr. Shantha Sinha, Dr. Bala was the second one…Looking forward to my next one

ps: Just in case you haven’t met me anytime, thats how I look in the mirror
edit: Find Part#1 of the interview here

Yes, so it is…One step closer, or rather, a few leaps shorter that we are to human cloning…With news coming in of the successful cloning of man’s best (silent) friend by the same South Korean team that had last year produced the world’s first cloned human embryo, sure we are that much more closer to a scientific revolution….That is what I would consider, leaving aside the ethical issues involved and the prospect of “playing” God (or the equivalent thereof)….For, at the end of the day, I’d place a greater value on a physical entity than an abstract concept !!

And yea, gotta admit….I’ve really taken a liking to Google News (for which PG is now an accepted source of news) of late….With respect to the above story, had it not been for google news, I’d never have read a local version which brings into fore the politics of research !!! Or should I say, “fundamental” human behavior

Yes….So it has…Well…Almost…Looks like we are slowly, but definitely, gettin to the pre dot com bust timezone again…Considering the spate of acquisitions of internet companies in the recent few months, and even more being speculated hotly, looks like we are in for an extended period of insanity being creeping into this funny thing called an internet company….While I, for one, was kinda taken aback at the amount shelled out (close to $600Million) by Old man Murdoch to buy out Myspace, the amounts being bandied around weblogs the world over with respect to Skype are sure to confirm the pervasive presence of insanity !!! For those that haven’t heard abt it still, it is in the range of $3Billion !!! (you can read a recent /. discussion on it here) And yes, the likely suitors for Skype…Well, depending on which author you read, it is likely to be any one of M$, Murdoch, google, any of the voice giants like Verizon, or any other huge media group….

Personally, having used VoIP apps over a period of time, starting with apps like RocketTalk (now extinct), DialPad and many others, at first I really could not really understand the whole fuss abt skype (it has in excess of 140million downloads !!),when a kind soul pointed out to me its p2p bedrock….So it sure does use a different technology than the time-barred centralized server thingie…And is yet another of these recent internet companies that sport a down-to-earth barebones, yet fully functional, piece of s/w….I guess more than the tech or userbase itself, if skype were to be worth even a third of what it is said to be worth, I’d say thats just for the enormous brand equity that it has generated….Close to 30million users who feel *very* strong about being associated with the brand !!! That something that many consider priceless !!!

PS: How can one say madness prevails and not touch upon whats happening closer home…..The sensex seems to be in a direct exponential proportion to the rising waters in Mumbai and elsewhere…Guess thats one tough insane creature to beat