Blog of Parag

Dumb and dumber

I thought I was watching some new show on Fox which could be called 'Dumb and dumber', but, I was wrong. It was the Bush daughters talking at the Republic National Convention.

Cheapware

An article published in the Forbes magazine talks about Cheapware. There are many open source and other alternatives for proprietary software available at a very cheap price. These range from operating systems (Linux competing with Microsoft, Sun Microsystems) to webservers (Apache competing with Microsoft and Sun) to databases (MySQL competing with Oracle and IBM) to user apps such as word processors (Staroffice competing with Microsoft). People in the software industry scoffed at them till recently as 'toys of hobbyists'. But, more and more corporations are slowly moving to the cheaper software alternatives.

The article highlights Sabre's move from Oracle to MySQL databases. Sabre is not a small company, they manage a big chunk of airline reservation system. They are slowly moving their whole operation to MySQL at a saving of more than 80% in software costs. CEO of MySQL tries to explain this switch to cheaper software.

"There's just no reason for customers to be paying so much for software," says Marten Mickos, chief executive of MySQL AB, in Uppsala, Sweden. "Software is not rocket science. It's a commodity. The business has been overglorified for 20 years."
...
Executives at Microsoft and Oracle dismiss MySQL as too puny to handle serious corporate projects. The Swedish company will likely gross $20 million in 2004; Oracle generates that much every 17 hours. "You don't want to use products from companies that perceive themselves as commodity suppliers to handle your data," says Robert Shimp, vice president of technology marketing at Oracle in Redwood Shores, Calif.

Mickos says he's glad bigger rivals dismiss his company. While they're not looking he has been winning business in the data centers of FedEx, Ingram Entertainment, Lufthansa, NASA, Omaha Steaks, Sony, Suzuki and UPS.

If this trend continues (I think it will), there are difficult days ahead for software companies unless they slash prices drastically and get competitive with the cheapies. Companies like IBM and Microsoft have diversified their business in other areas as well and they'll do OK. But, this could spell doom for software-only businesses like Oracle, Adobe etc.

The most reckless, incosiderate drivers drive...

Volkswagen Jetta! According to Tom and Ray Magliozzi of Car Talk, a NPR show that is wildly funny and yet full of useful information.

I have been driving a Jetta since 1996 and haven't had any accident or even a speeding ticket while driving it. Does it say something about my good driving skills or is it my timid approach to driving a car that can be driven recklessly? I wonder why other cars move out of the way when I come up behind them...

I usually listen to this show every Saturday, don't know how I missed this particular show. Thanks for the link, Sujit!

Optical Illusion

Here is one of the coolest optical illusions that I have ever seen. It comes from Dr. Edward Adleson of MIT. There are more illusions on his website.

The squares named 'A' and 'B' are of the same color. Click on the link below to see an explanation.

The grey bars in the picture are of the same color. It is obvious from the places where the bars overlap with the squares 'A' and 'B', that the squares and the bars are of the identical shade of grey. If you still don't believe this, download the image, open it with your favorite image processing software and check the values for the color properties that the software shows. They are the same: '120, 120, 120'.

Via Prashant Mullick

Republican conventioner

With supporters like this, there is no doubt that Bush and Cheney are going to win again this year...

George W. Bush supporter Joe Piazza, who said he will attend this week's Republican National Convention, shows off his pro-Bush costume as he walks through a hallway in the Landmark 30 Rockefeller Center in New York City on August 29, 2004.

Media Fund ads

All the anti-Bush ads produced by the Media Fund can be found here.

The dark side of the Moon

Lunar Farside from Apollo 11. The far side of the Moon is rough and filled with craters. By comparison, the near side of the Moon (the side we always see) is relatively smooth. The large crater is Daedalus. It spans about 93 kilometers (58 miles) and was photographed by the crew of Apollo 11 as they circled the Moon in 1969. NASA Photo, reference AS11-44-6611.
Note that the diameter given on the web reference below (30 km) is wrong.
CREDIT: Apollo 11 Crew, NASA .
SOURCE: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030312.html
COPYRIGHT: “NASA images generally are not copyrighted. You may use NASA imagery, video and audio material for educational or informational purposes, including photo collections, textbooks, public exhibits and Internet Web pages.”

PREPARED BY Scott Sandlin in March 2004.

It is interesting that the far side of Moon is rougher and has more craters. But, if you think about it, it makes sense. The period for rotation around its own axis and around Earth is almost identical for Moon. That is why we never see the far side of Moon from Earth. The near side of the moon is always facing the earth and hence shielded from asteroids.

The photo and information about it is taken from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This is a great online resource. Check it out if you haven't heard about it already.

VP against gay-marriage ban

Vice President Dick Cheney remarked on Tuesday on a campaign townhall forum in Davenport, Iowa that he is against a constitutional ban on Gay marriage. This issue should be addressed by States as all the other civil matters. One of his daughters is gay and hence gay rights is a very familiar issue to him. He went on to say that "freedom means freedom for everyone" to enter "into any kind of relationship they want to."

Everyone was surprised to see him not following the party line that is supported by the President. But, he had expressed the same opinion 4 years ago during a debate with Joe Lieberman and hasn't changed his position.

Way to go, Mr. Cheney!

Optimist

Definition of an optimist:   A pessimist without enough information.

Unhappy in America

This article appeared in Little India earlier this month. I was going to just ignore it because it is full of whiners that are wallowing in self-pity. Shanti wrote a nice post about it. For the last week or so, I keep seeing posts by bloggers feeling sorry for the people described in the article. That made me write this post to support the opposing opinion.

IMHO, these whiners will not be happy anywhere in the world. Whining about everything around them and how life is difficult, defines their personality. This life that they complain about is not forced upon them by someone. They have chosen it themselves for jobs, money or whatever. If they don't like it, they should do something to change it rather than just complain about it.

Here are whinings of Aparna, the first example in this article...

Most wounding to her was the loss of her independence: Her H4 visa robbed her of her identity - she was not allowed to work, and did not have a bank balance or credit card - and to even take a trip back home, she was dependent on her husband.

Irrespective of your gender, aren't you supposed to lose independence when you get married? Why is she complaining about being dependent on her husband? Her status as a 'dependent' was defined when she applied for the H4 visa. If she is so proud of being independent, didn't she have a say when her husband decided to come to US? What stopped her from protesting? I can bet that she was busy complaining about India and couldn't wait to get out of country at that time.

She had been driving for years in India, but here she failed the crucial road test because she was used to driving on the left.

Who is responsible for that? If you aren't ready for such a minor change in life, you should never leave the security of your parent's house, forget about going to another country.

She recalls the utter hopelessness she felt then: "When I come out of the car, I sit and cry and cry. I don't believe this. I've been driving for years and now they tell me I can't drive? I'm crying like a baby. I don't want to live in this country. I mean, every day you're struggling."

What? She gave up after one driving test. Couldn't she go back for another test? Why did she want to leave everything and go back to India after failing the test? This kind of defeatist attitude will not take you anywhere. But, her going back may be better in the long run. I don't want to see accidents caused by some cars going in wrong direction on roads because of morons like this.

If you read the article, you'll find that all the other examples are of similar whiners. I hope their spouces, family members or friends will slap them and make them do something to better their lives rather than whining.

Interesting names

Today we had a visitor at work from England. His name is Alex A. Alex. Wonder what his middle initial stands for. Should have asked him. Have met a professor from Princeton University whose name is Warren Warren. This is like Major Major Major from Catch-22.

Reminds me of an article that had an interesting list of authors...

A. Bax, D. Max and D. Zax: Measurement of multiple-bond 13C-13C J couplings in a 20-kDa protein-peptide complex. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 114, 6923-6925 (1992).

I know the first author Ad Bax, who is very proud of this paper and refers to it as Bax, Max and Zax in JACS.

By the way, Ad Bax is the most cited currently active author in the world. His publications are referred in more than 20,000 articles when I last checked the Citation Index about 3 years ago.

XP S(ecurity)P(atch)2 ?!?!

While everyone has been rushing to get their PCs upgraded with the Windows XP SP2 patch, security researches have already found security flaws in it. I think I'll wait for a few weeks till they figure out if it is really worth doing the upgrade. Afterall, if you get an insecure buggy operating system for what it seems like the cost of an arm and a leg, how can you expect something good that is given away for free from the same company?

As a MSFT shareowner though, I hope this free upgrade will cause some unrepairable damage that can only be cured by buying the next version of Windows. *evil grin*

Thanks for the link, Vinayak!

Do not bleach and.....

This is really hilarious. Don't know if it is true or just an email joke but, it is worth your click below...

Individual Olympic Silver for India

Indian army officer, Major Rajyavardhan Rathore won a Silver medal in Men's double trap shooting. This is India's first ever Individual Olympic silver medal. Hope there will be more to come in the coming two weeks. Pricewaterhouse Coopers predicted in a recent study that India's Olympic medal tally will increase to 10 medals from 1 in the last Olympic games.

Congratulations to Major Rathore!

Make a choice: Bible or America...

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about the same-sex marriage ban passed by Missouri voters. One of the readers of NY Times, wrote the following email to the editor. Don't know if it got published, but it makes a very valid point.

From: Chris Protopapas [mailto:seescape@stealth.net]
Sent: Wednesday, August 04, 2004 3:23 PM
To: NY TIMES
Subject: Missourians Back Ban on Same-Sex Marriage

To the Editor:

Your article "Missourians Back Ban on Same-Sex Marriage", Aug 4th, quotes a
voter in Missouri as saying: "Biblically, homosexuality isn't in the plan."
Well, if we get right down to it, biblically, America isn't in the plan
either. There is no room in the Bible for a Democracy, for equality of race
or of gender, and for freedom of worship. America as a political entity was
founded on different principles than the ones found in the Bible, and that
has been our strength and our greatest glory.

Chris Protopapas
172 East 7th street
New York, NY

Thanks for the forward, Mayuresh!

16th August 2004

13 years and 1 day ago, I stepped on the soil ...er... concrete of the United States for the first time. It has been a long and wonderful journey since then.

Phillips webdesign prize winner

Click on this link to see the website.

You will see a weird looking guy. Pass your mouse over his face a few times. Then, leave the pointer on his face and watch what happens!!

Via Pseudofreud.

Perseid meteors

Beautiful composite image of Perseid meteor showers using photos taken over 6 hours by Fred Bruenjes

Here is how he captured it...

I was blessed with decent weather and a good show of Perseids here in Ramona, California. I had my Canon 1D Mark II running with a 17-40mm F4L lens set at 17mm F4, ISO 3200, MWB 3500K, riding piggyback on an LX200. Below is a link to my composite of 28 x 30 second exposures, selected from 680 exposures taken over the course of about 6 hours. I stacked 9 exposures for the background, and then used painted masks in
Photoshop to insert the 19 exposures that had meteors.

Rajanikanth antics

I got a forwarded email from a friend describing some deeds of Rajanikanth which are not possible to perform in our known Universe under the laws of Physics as we know them. Would any Tamil movie buffs please tell me that this is not true and is just made up by someone for this email joke.

1) Rajanikanth has a Brain Tumor which, according to the doctors can't be cured and his death is imminent. In one of the fights, our great Rajanikanth is shot in the head. To everybody's surprise, the bullet passes through his ears taking away the tumor along with it and he is cured. Long Live Rajanikanth. 2) In one of the movies, Rajanikanth is confronted with 3 gangsters. Rajanikanth has a gun but unf ortunately only one bullet. Guess, what he does....... He holds a knife in his hand and throws at the middle gangster..& shoots the bullet towards the knife. The knife cuts the bullet into 2 pieces and kills both the gangsters on each side of the middle gangster & the knife kills the middle one. 3) Rajanikanth is chased by a gangster. Rajanikanth has a revolver but he has no bullets in it. Guess, what he does. Nah not even in your remotest imaginations. He waits for the gangster to shoot. As soon as the gangster shoots, Rajanikanth opens the bullet compartment of his revolver and catches the bullet. Then, he closes the bullet compartment and fires his gun. Bang... And the gangster dies....

Cog

Check out this new Honda Accord ad released in EU. It is really really coool. It took 606 takes to make the 2 minute shoot and there are no CGI tricks.

Longer summer, shorter school year

Given that people are concerned about outsourcing of jobs and universities not producing enough graduates of Science and Technology (due to reduced enrollment), one would imagine that parents would support any school initiave that benefits their children academically. But, in North Carolina, a bill was passed recently to limit schools from starting early in August.

Schools wanted to prepare kids better for standardised tests and benefit their academic performance by giving teachers more time with an earlier start of the school year. This bill takes away the freedom from individual school districts of starting schools earlier than august 25th. The major proponant of this law is the tourist industry that employs thousands of school-age children and teachers for summer jobs. They lose this workforce when schools start early in August, which is a big revenue making period for summer vacation industry. Supporting them is a ridiculous parent's group called 'Save our Summers'. Rather than trying to improve the dismal state of education in schools across US, this promotes the dumbing of america even further. I didn't expect to see this from a progressive state like North Carolina that values education. Some of the best Universities (UNC and Duke) and a large technology industry corridor (Research Triangle Park) reside in this state.

North Carolina Association of Educators are lobbying for reversing this bill, and I sincerely hope that they will succeed.

Preseason Top 25

Preseason rankings for NCAA College Football are out. Nebraska is out of top 25. They have a long battle to fight with a new coach and a lot of new players this year. Considering this will be a team building year, I don't have very high expectations for the Huskers, but, at least they will end the season with a spot in top 25.

College Football starts on Aug 28th. Eagerly looking forward to it.

Darfur violence continues

Yahoo! News - New Violence Deepens Darfur Crisis

US, UN and rest of the International community just sit and watch continued violence in Sudan. In spite of a US-drafted UN security council that gives Sudanese government 30 days to disarm the 'Janjaweed' militia, attacks on Black Sudanese continue. Fresh violence on Tuesday included militia raids on the refugee camps as well as helicopter bombings by the government on Darfurians returning to their homes from refugee camps.

"In many rural areas and small towns in Darfur, government forces and the Janjaweed militias continue to routinely rape and assault women and girls when they leave the periphery of the camps and towns," the New York-based group (Human Rights Watch) said in a report.
...
Sudanese State Minister of Foreign Affairs Najeeb al-Kheir Abdel Wahab said the U.N. report of helicopter attacks was untrue, baseless and unsourced.
...
Despite recent pledges to cooperate to end the humanitarian crisis the U.N. has called the worst in the world, the U.N. said the Sudanese government had hampered access to hungry Darfuris by restricting relief flights and aid workers' movements.

The Sudanese government doesn't care about the Darfurians. Their view on all the International efforts to help is....

Sudan has said international pressure over Darfur aims to undermine the country's Islamist government

The usual cry of the whole world is against Islam.

David Dhavan

Was watching AVS or TV ASIA on TV and saw a blurb with David Dhavan in it. From watching his movies, I always had an image of a young, savvy gentleman as David Dhavan. But, he looked like someone you would find as an owner of a grocery store. I was just shocked by the extent with which my mental image was different than the reality.

Hail to Organised Savagery

Another sign of Summer slipping away. Tonight is the first Preseason NFL game: Redskins playing Broncos. It is awfully early start of the Football season, but, I ain't complaining. Less than one month to College Football. Yaaay!!!

Every year, we sit around on Summer weekends counting down days till the start of Football. But, this year Ashwini has kept us busy and didn't even once have to think about what to do on a Saturday or a Sunday afternoon.

No ticket scalping at Athens Olympics

According to several reports, more than half of
Olympics tickets are still unsold. Wonder why? Is it so hard to find 5.4 million people from the whole world wanting to watch olympics. Are people really worried about terrorist attacks? Or are they just not interested? Given all the security arrangements, Olympics venue is probably one of the safest places on Earth to be.

I am going to search for an alternate to NBC coverage to watch Olympics. During the Sydney games, they made it so dramatic and soppy with all those stupid human interest stories taking up more time than the actual sporting events. I had heard the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) had better coverage. Thankfully, this time I am in an area where I can get CBC. Hope they really provide better coverage.

Dinner with CSA Bill

Jeff Maurone, an intern at Microsoft blogs about his dinner at Bill Gates' estate. Must be an interesting experience to visit the world's richest man's home. Jeff's description is worth reading. The only thing missing from the account is the dinner menu.

via Prashant

Pissed off martyrs...

NYTimes Columnist Nicholas Kristof writes about Martyrs, Virgins and Grapes

We are repeatedly told that the Islamic martyrs fighting the holy jihad get paid hadsomely when they reach heaven.

Muslim martyrs will go to paradise and marry 72 black-eyed virgins.
...
al-Suyuti, wrote that sex in paradise is pretty much continual and so glorious that "were you to experience it in this world you would faint."

Historians, linguists and religious scholars are putting a big damper on this whole concept.

Koran says martyrs going to heaven will get "hur," and the word was taken by early commentators to mean "virgins," hence those 72 consorts. But in Aramaic, hur meant "white" and was commonly used to mean "white grapes."

Can't imagine what happens when a martyr, upon arriving in the paradise, is handed a bunch of 72 grapes instead of virgins. Thankfully, he has spent all his explosives on earth killing some innocent humans. Otherwise, the paradise won't exist for long.

Same-Sex marriage ban in Missouri

The New York Times > National > Missourians Back Ban on Same-Sex Marriage

One state down, many more to go this year.

Louisiana plans a vote on a marriage amendment on Sept. 18. In November, people in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah are expected to consider similar measures. Ballot initiatives are awaiting approval in Michigan, North Dakota and Ohio. Four states - Alaska, Hawaii, Nebraska and Nevada - already passed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage before the Massachusetts ruling.

The funniest part about the Missouri vote was that the ballot was written in legalese and some people couldn't figure out how to vote.

A few people said they felt rattled by the wording of the amendment: "Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended so that to be valid and recognized in this state, a marriage shall exist only between a man and a woman?" Some paused and worried aloud as they left the polling place whether their "yes" or "no" vote had accurately reflected their intent.

Spicules on the Sun

Absolutely amazing picture of the Sun...

Timepass

V and I amuse ourselves with this new timepass that V has found. Everytime you load the front page of Rediff.com, a new matrimonial ad (Rediff Matchmaker) gets loaded in the top-right corner. Click on it to read a detailed description. Some of them are absolute gems. Reminds me of the fun my cousin (who was of marrying age at the time) and I used to have with matrimonial ads in 'Rohini'.

MESSENGER to Mercury

NASA's MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging mission (MESSENGER) will lift off tomorrow to start its journey towards Mercury, the least studied terrestrial planet in our solar system. There is 12 second window at 2:16 am on 2nd August to successfully get on course to Mercury which will include a gravity pull by Venus and three Mercury flybys before getting in orbit around Mercury in March 2011. If the weather conditions don't permit launch tomorrow, fortunately, the same 12 second window occurs for the next 13 days.