har kise di koi shart si

ve main sare ghumm ke vekhia,
amrika , roos, malaysia,
kittey vi koi fark si,
har kise di koi shart si....


Ciao

Nostalgia

Reminds me of the countless nights spent at Link Hall, Syracuse University.



http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/02/23/1946247/minix-321-released

Facebook Graph Search

A couple of weeks back Mark Zuckerberg presented the latest feature in the Facebook arsenal Graph Search to the world. My question(s) is(are), REALLY? Actually when i saw parts of the presentation and read about it on various blogs I got several questions in my head,

1. The Chairman and CEO of a company which has current market valuation of about 100 billion USD gives a presentation from his Macbook on two tine-tiny projector screens, really? That is not CEO/Chairman mentality, that is not a presenter's mentality, that is a hacker's mentality at best. Though this hacker mentality might be a good thing for Facebook technically but it's downright stupid when it comes to the business world. But I am sure MZ is smart enough to know all this and yet do what he feels is good for the company or maybe it's just him satisfying his developer/designer ego. Either way Kudos to him for not caring about the money people and showing them their true place. Wall street has far too much control on American technology companies, I think that should stop at once for the good of humanity. If it doesn't stop at once the day is not far when some corporation will come up with desalination of sea-water and water will be more expensive than blood and oil for the sake of capitalism.

2. The feature itself, again really?? This is where I am not sure what is he trying to show the world, that is not really a feature, at least not a one that Facebook invented or has come up with anytime in the near past. That whole presentation is about running SQL like queries on a database albeit in English. All Facebook has done is make the world familiarized with SQL in layman terms, in terms of attributes and objects specific to Facebook. If this is innovation at Facebook and a new feature worth holding a press conference at your campus then companies like IBM, Intel, Apple, Sony, Qualcomm will have to hold press conferences on a daily basis to announce their daily work as "groundbreaking contribution to science". Come on MZ, you can do better than this, at least the computer science literates know very well you were selling such processed information to advertisers already and it is kid's (Computer Science kid) play to get that information from the database, now you are just throwing the common public an already eaten piece of meat and expecting them to relish it. The irony is collectively Facebook users are going to spend millions of hours using this "feature" to stalk, investigate, scan, scam, exploit and in occasional cases productive and/or meaningful use of this feature to gather information. If you look at Google's products or listen to Sergey Brin's interviews, intent is always on making human lives better whereas in my honest opinion Facebook's intents are not even remotely close to being so noble , for a company of such valuations and impact it can (should) do way better with its power and money.

3. I am not sure how to put this out there in the industry, but I think most CEOs should stop making presentations, keynotes and what not. Not all of you are Steve Jobs, hell none of you are Steve Jobs. Instead get a presenter who is really passionate about technology you are presenting (or can at least pretend well), who is really able to communicate to every (at least 60%) individual in the crowd and at least 60% of the people who are going to watch that video on Youtube. With a bad introductory presentation you have already killed the product in the eyes of the consumers and the technology journalists (ahem absolute dumbasses, pretend geeks/nerds) who sadly are going to influence the end consumers with their impressions of your presentations . When I look at presentations from CEOs of Mobile phone industry I can count at least a dozen disasters

       a. Sanjay Jha (Motorola Mobility)
       b. Steve Ballmer (Microsoft)
       c. Peter Chou (HTC)
       d. Stephen Elop (Nokia)
       e. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
       e. Jeff Bezos (Amazon) (probably the only guy with some quotient of saving grace in a list of failures)

And the list can just go on and on for a long time...

Ciao ...

America

I feel this is so true about American universities.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20756247


Ciao 

Mission 2013

Do For Sure
-----------------------

1. Now that I am at a company and team of my choice, work really really hard.

2. Regular and hard gym schedule, first get back to May 2012 shape and then go beyond.

3. Buy a Kindle and read more.

4. Visit at least one new country, hopefully for a vacation.


Maybe
-----------------------

1. Start a three month no alcohol regime on 1st Jan 2013.

2. Spend at least two hours a week with my Playstation.

3. Make at least two safe investments.

4. Bring back the college days and grow my hair long, like really long. Maybe even the beard though Hyderabad doesn't seem to have the weather for a beard.


Outrageous
-----------------------

1. Join a self defense class.

2. Try learning a musical instrument on my own.

3. Move to VimDiff from Araxis Merge.

4. Truthfully complete at least one Salman Rushdie Novel

Back

I am back at Mothership, now just need to get back to motherland.

Ciao ...

The Dark Knight Rises recap and review

================================SPOILER ALERT - This entry is a complete spoiler if you have not seen the movie, but then if you have not seen it already then you are not really a Batman or Nolan fan and you may as well read it. ==========================================


The first scene of the movie is absolutely mind blowing, a big plane on top of a small plane, people jumping out of the big plane onto the small plane and ultimately crashing the small plane, it is all very much Nolan like unbelievable unprecedented and yet looks as realistic as it ever can get. From here on it is all Dark Knight like where Bruce Wayne is lured back from leaving his dull life as a super rich eccentric billionaire to once again cleaning up the underbelly of Gotham.

The first scene where Batman shows up is quite awesome too, it happens in the middle of a chase sequence and at that point you are too busy comprehending the persona and raw magnetism of Bane, you are just not expecting Batman in that part of the movie and suddenly the lights go off in the underground motorway and the theme of the music changes from automobile sounds to BATMAN music and for the next five seconds all you hear is the cheers from the other people watching the movie along with you even more so if there are batman fanatics and fanboys around.

The music of the movie is extremely good, Hans Zimmer is at his usual best, every chase sequence, every build up, every twist and every sighting of the dark knight is accompanied with equally engrossing and apt music themes in the background. Then right around the half time of the movie is the one on one fight between Batman and Bane which again has been done very much in the "The Dark Knight"  fashion. Through out the movie The Dark Knight Joker seems to be on top of things and the audience seem to think that this time around the Batman is definitely going to loose to the Joker but the vigilante always comes on top in each of those instance. Not so much with Bane, Bane is just too big and raw for the Batman, in the one on one fight Batman's supremacy is crushed to death and the body left to rot with a broken backbone. In my honest opinion this is the best scene of the movie, Nolan has put it as majestically and as "dark knightly" as possible.

Up until the end of the scene of the game of  American football everything is well thought, well written, well planned and well executed just the usual Nolan way. But that is when the dark knight movie from Nolan ends and Batman from DC Comics begins and of course it gets all shitty and childish. A nuclear bomb/reactor of the size of a car, batman and bane cheap-fighting on the streets in broad daylight, Gordon running behind trucks like a Bollywood movie, are you freaking kidding me. All of it seems so lame, so shallow and so NOT  Dark Knight like. It is like suddenly some dumbass from the studio started making the movie instead of the mighty and the great. The ending is even more pathetic, it seems to be written for one and one purpose only, so that DC Comics and the the movie studio can make more movies and mint more money. Nolan I am begging on my knees please release an alternate ending in the DVDs/Blu-Ray of TDKR.

Nolan's movies have one particular aspect about their endings, they will make you think "Oh fack, now I will have to watch it again". Not so with TDKR, I have already seen it twice and even on the second watch I did not find anything new, to be honest after the Bane and Batman fight scene I felt the movie was such a drag, though to be fair to Hans Zimmer just the background score is enough to keep you glued to your seats till the very end of credits.

In all I am not sure of the word extremely but I am sure of the word disappointed for at least the last quarter of  TDKR.

First 3/4 Good to Amazing
Last 1/4  Disappointing to Lame.


Ciao