Mumbai, it zips

Mumbai - the city of opportunities, the tinsel town, the (once-upon-a-time) gateway to India. To all the Mumbaikars out there - Pardon me for stopping at just three adjectives to describe your city; I can't even make a decent attempt at that in this limited space.

Despite never having visited Mumabi earlier, I could rattle off a score of names, which are landmarks and sub-urbs of this bustling city, thanks to Bollywood. Images of local trains, BEST bus service and Marine Drive become synonymous with Mumbai. Against this backdrop, I will describe a event which lasted all for a 30 second duration but hit hard to make an unforgettable first-hand impression of the city on me.

I was travelling from Worli to Church Gate on the BEST bus (route no. 83). The event occurred around a place called Charni Road. It is the third station on the Western Line of Bombay Local train, from Church Gate. One can get down here to begin a nearly 2-2.5 km walk on Marine Drive to reach Nariman Point.

Picture it this way. Imagine a two-way road and 2 railway tracks parallel to each other. The road is on the left and tracks are on the right. Let's number left lane of the road is R1 and right lane as R2. The track adjacent to R2 is labeled T1 and the rightmost track is labeled T2. When viewed from top, the picture is:

R1 | R2 # T1 T2

I was sitting in the bus which was waiting in R1 at a red light. Coincidentally, a local train was also waiting (outside platform) on T1 because the line ahead might not have been clear. My bus and the train were heading in the same direction.

My bus then got its signal. Simultaneously, the train also got its "GO" signal. The two machines sped up. The bus, with its silent environs and tinkling bell; the train, with human bodies hanging out defying center of mass theories. In the lane R2, the cars and buses started zipping past my eyes, going against the direction of R1. And in T2, another local train started rumbling opposite to T1.

That moment, somehow, was special. There were 4 causeways in which "life" was racing. Two going together, two going against them. And each working like clockwork precision. Never interfering in each other's movement.

A feeling which had been growing in me suddenly surfaced in clear consciousness. I was awed by the speed with which Mumbai city moves. The huge sea of population carried on different currents and each gliding against the other; without friction, without hassles.

Mumbai, you humbled me in that one moment.

Packing a 64kB punch

Demoscenes literally pack a punch. In 64kB, they display an amazing array of graphics combined with awesome music. The first of such demoscenes to come my way was a video called "Heaven 7" in 2001. I did not know back then that it is a demoscene; but it did capture my imagination.

Later, I found that it was an award winning entry at the "Mekka & Symposium" demoparty 2000. The developers (Picard group) extracted last ounce of the hardware's power through efficient coding and ingenuous tricks. A description of the same will be worth reading for those inclined towards programming. Also to be noted is that each participating group acknowledges others towards the end of the demo.

The "Mekka & Symposium" evolved into a new avatar, "Breakpoint" in 2003. It got huge sponsorships from ATI in subsequent years (before ATI was acquired by AMD) and became the largest demoscene party to be held annually. The awards are given in many categories because of the diversity of platforms on which demoscenes are being made make it difficult to compare their technical efficiency on a common benchmark. I particularly liked the winning entry for 64k intro in PC category at Breakpoint 2005 - Binary Flow.

What has MBA taught you?

That has been a question asked to me at the most unexpected moments by past colleagues and friends. Those who are on my side of "the line" can probably understand the dilemma when answering this question.

So, the last time this question was asked to me, I thought better to give it a context. The guy asked me whether people should fall in love or not. [Yikes!!! I am glad that this page doesn't have a pink colored template]

I gave him this answer:

"

Shouldn't.

ROI is bad. Involves a huge initial capital investment for a business which is low volume, low margin. Can only be successful if:

1. You play in a niche market

2. Long term business and customer loyalty is assured

3. Switching costs for the customer are high and/or it doesn’t have another competitive option

All the 3 reasons go against the proposition.

"

He said, "You are ready to graduate".

:)

The Centennial Man

Some milestones invite celebration, usually so if they can be represented in nice, round figures of 10, 25, 50, 100, 500, 1000 and so on. Such an event, inconsequential yet observable, occurred a couple of days ago in my Orkut scrapbook. It reached a post count of 1000.

I turned back to the old posts to see how things had shaped up. The first post is on the date 10th October, 2004. Presumably, this should have been the time around which I would have signed up for the Orkut account. Not strangely, my first post on this blog is dated 24th July, 2004. Thus, it was around third quarter of 2004 that I had started warming up to the idea of "Web community" and becoming familiar with its now ubiquitous tools of blogging and social networking. Not bad, since Blogger underwent a major redesign in May 2004 after it was bought by Google in Feb 2003 and Orkut was launched in Jan 2004. I was well on my way in keeping pace with the technology curve.

It struck me that the posts should hold more information than just giving a kick by adding to a big number of 1000. Immediately the spreadsheet application, Excel, was invoked to get a sense of what constituted this number. By the way, that's an essential trait one picks up while undergoing Management education.

Here is a picture of what I pulled out of the 1000 odd posts. Its a month-wise distribution of the post counts. As I reflect back upon the events that took place over the last two years or so since the Orkut account has been active, the graph starts appearing to make sense to me. It is quite a remarkably accurate representation of my social networking and how it was affected by the events in my life.

1. The initial surge in the activity is as expected due to beginner's curiosity.
   
2. The first peak in Dec 2004 is a result of point 1 combined with a flurry of exchange of New Year wishes with even those whom I have known for long (aka "acquaintances") but never wished before. Seems that in a way, social networking site does make one more "sociable".
3. The dips of Jan 2005, Aug 2005 and Nov 2005 are spot on! These were the periods when I was preparing either for a transition between employers or for a "certain feline obsession" (as Morpheus once quoted and to which I responded).
4. Activity during 2005, otherwise, is pretty stable and consistent. Not much was changing in my social circle and no new additions were happening.
5. The Jan 2006 surge is the result of a wave of congratulations emanating from my success in belling the "feline creature" mentioned in point 3.
   
6. Surprisingly, the Dec 2006 posts are lesser than Dec 2005. I had expected them to be higher as a result of combination of New Year wishes and congratulation messages. While the "All the Best"s made a satisfactory mark, the New Year wishes went down considerably. This modifies the observation made in point 2. Social networking sites can give an initial boost to the social skills but cant guarantee a sustained improvement; people can slump back to their usual self even in online space.
7. Feb and Mar 2006 have the similar stable levels as seen throughout 2005.
8. The "feline creature", belled in point 5, is finally conquered in mid of Apr 2006. The surge in the second round of congratulation messages is even more highly pronounced than in point 5. The spillover continues to May 2005 at the same rate (almost a straight line). It could have dipped towards later part of May. But now I was a prominent blip on the radar of many observers and they deemed fit to send Birthday wishes even when they had never done before. I can't call it a comeuppance of my similar behavior in point 2.
9. Jun 2006 dip resulted from another transition - from employment to unemployment (or better termed as "higher studies"). However, the base level has now increased. Its a function of new people added in my network through the "feline" conquest and probably the resulting better recognition among the people I already knew.
10. New levels of "scrapbook interaction" are attained in Jul 2006 with the added nodes in my social network. However, as noted in point 6, the initial boost started fizzling out at a continuous stable pace. The pattern was reliving itself and gives a peek into how things shape up for me in a new social circle.
11. The new nodes added in point 9 were not due to my efforts. I was invited by my new peers to join their social circle. Jan 2007 surge saw my proactive action of adding more people from new peer group based on better knowledge about them. Needless to say, some of the newer nodes formed in point 9 have all but become defunct as and when I evaluated my comfort level with them. The newer nodes are a better representation of my currently sought social circle.
12. Jan 2007 surge is a combined effect of point 11 and exchange of New Year wishes in my extended social circle. It seems that New Year is the most celebrated occasion in my scrapbook; much more than all other Indian festivals.
13. The slow dissipation in activity, which had started becoming noticeable in late 2006, appears to continue into 2007. The older acquaintances who were quite excited about my new educational institute seemed to have moved on with other celebrations and eye-grabbers. I have had my shot at one-day fame! Till the next big event.........
    

String Theory (from PBS Network - NOVA)

Here is the 3 hour "Elegant Universe" series aired on PBS Network - NOVA series which
explains String Theory in an interesting manner. The commentary is from Brain Greene, author of "The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory". Each sub-part is a 10-12 min. video for easing the bandwidth load.

Part 1
1.1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poINyvCN3tc
1.2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVeW-AbDo1U
1.3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYA2XuwL_00
1.4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAK-q6giRmE
1.5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPPWTEa4e_k

Part 2
2.1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YpRyKbeIz8
2.2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nfBKE2u6bo
2.3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-cmO7TW78o
2.4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WFD7BagKwk
2.5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syNJs6PSpZQ

Part 3
3.1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf7YkwW4zRI
3.2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnRBJgP_dwA
3.3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95ikbRzIxeg
3.4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGnhsudTaRI
3.5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPdcWrlvshk

Trying out Orkut videos

I may be quite late on catching up on this side of technology curve and adoption. The thing with uploading videos is that, well, one should have a video worth uploading. Not adding to the woes of YouTube by deciding not to upload Copyright content doesn't leave much choices. However, that doesn't stop me from relishing some videos which are related to my taste of entertainment.

So, today I decided to compile all the various videos I have watched over a period of time into one place - my Orkut profile page's video section. It took my around 2 and a half hours to search out the relevant videos on YouTube and Google Videos, edit their description and sit back to beam happily at the result.

During the process, I realized couple of things:

1. Its an instantaneous connection others can make to you on a social networking site by looking at the kind of videos uploaded by you.
2. Orkut is allowing only Google owned videos to be linked here. The flexibility and power of the feature could have been greatly enhanced if other online video content could also be linked. (But, cant blame them after the Viacom lawsuit fiasco).
3. I guess MySpace has a similar feature. I am not a MySpace subscriber so can't say how the features measure up against each other. My social network is currently being well served by Orkut and I am happy for now.
4. The video content is uploaded on YouTube servers. This allows Orkut to virtually accept unlimited number of video links. However, the Orkut albums section has photographs uploaded on Orkut servers. So they put a limit of 12 photographs to save space. It wouldn't be surprising if they extend the videos concept here by linking album to Picasa. Maybe it will help in further integration of the Google services, not to mention about possibilities for AdSense.
5. My two and a half hours of effort would need to be replicated if I want to post all my video links (along with the descriptions) to my blog. Its high time the social networking sites exposed framework for data export. When IMs can link up together and Google Chat is already being hosted inside both GMail and Orkut, this should be around the corner.
6. Like blog services (or better, like Twitter), Orkut should provide facility to add comments on the album photographs and video collection. It will be more pertinent at that point than having a comment added in the scrapbook.

I will let Orkut worry about these. For the time being, I am hoping that others will enjoy the show at my profile page.

Update #1: 22/03/07

Adding new video links pushes the older links to later display pages (like the scraps). However, the idea of videos is not akin to the scraps, where it makes sense to keep the latest scrap at the top. I want to arrange my video list to give a sense of priority to the videos I consider best. Orkut doesn't support manual sorting of the video list.

Update #2: 24/10/07

This is a bit late but still. Orkut has been introducing new services over the past few months. Some are addition of Blogger and Picasa feeds, removing the limit on album size, allowing to scrap directly next to video and Picasa feeds and "Friends Update" feature (which alerts when your friends edit their profile). Removing the limit of album size and integrating feeds had to come in as part of the bigger picture of integrating all Google services. However, still, Orkut has to do a lot to catch up with Facebook. Facebook has slowly and steadily started gaining the critical mass in the college/university networks. I was forced to open a Facebook account when the number of Facebook invites from my existing friend circle became a regular feature. I haven't yet filled in my profile details there. In fact, that is the more tedious part. I can still live with a rich Orkut profile and sparsely filled Facebook profile as long as my friend network does not stop using Orkut altogether. A similar migration experience example is that I now use GTalk primarily for instant messaging. Though I log on to Yahoo, I don't receive any pings. However, I am still tempted to keep using Yahoo because of one very important feature which GTalk still doesn't have - "Stealth Settings". Its a faux-pas when I log on in the middle of the night to chat with a particular person, receive pings from others in the list whom I don't want to enter into conversation at that time and then have to either give excuses or ignore them.

The day the Earth (and my campus) stood still

Time. Always slipping away. A moment here, next there, and then gone.

The academic rigors here comprise more of time pressure than peer pressure, in my opinion. The crescendo is built up in the first term and continues unabated into the second term. But, come third term, things have started to slacken a bit. Maybe we got used to "the system" or "the system" had used enough of us. :D

This weekend (March 16th to 18th) was a true 60 hours stretch of passivity. Thats a rare treat coming the way of first year-ites. I had virtually forgotten that I have ever lived through such weekends. After catching "300" in theater on Friday, the following two days were dedicated to snuggling into my bed. To keep my metabolism running, I would take brief breaks of 30 to 60 min., gulp some food supplies down my throat, take a leak, and sprawl back under the covers.

By Sunday evening, I was feeling terribly groggy. There were indistinguishable white streaks in front of my eyes and a buzzing sound playing in my head. I decided to take a stroll around the campus to feel my muscles. The scene was of a spooky silence. The campus, which is usually thumping and rocking at the late evening hours, had a dull and dark fortitude about it. Perhaps, it was an insignia of the sentiments displayed by second year-ites as they left the campus after two gritty years of life spent inside these huge concrete slabbed walls. The usual lovers of hard rock were all gone and no blaring sounds were coming from their balconies. The first-years, too, had decided to hibernate on this particular weekend. Some had afforded to visit Bangalore for attending Iron Maiden concert while others had taken up bike trips to places around Ahmedabad.

I lied down on one of the circles. The circle is an integral part of the architectural geometry here. In the New Campus, dorms have circles made into the walls next to the entrance. These circles must be 4 feet in diameter and provide a concrete hammock of sorts at their base. I stretched myself like a chord on this circle. The fast paced last 9 months soon started flashing in my mind. The greatest change which I realized had occurred in me was to get into a habit of being busy.

For the majority part of undergrad life and non-working hours of work life, there had never been an overbearing feeling of time getting wasted. In fact, wasting time in glib talks probably is the strongest element in the collective memory of all undergrad students. There was always enough time for extended walks down the lanes, gyan sessions on the stadium benches and even religious discourse of sorts at the temple inside the institute boundaries. Even for the three years in job, just lying around the house on a weekend was the accepted practice (save for catching a movie at the nearby multiplex).

All this has changed. The continuous pressure of deadlines and forthcoming schedules maintains an urgency at the sub-conscious level. The sudden void which occurred this weekend was thus strange. I had an uneasy feeling of a need to "do something". Except for the perennial long term plans which never get executed, there was no short-term objective at that moment. It was a sickening feeling. Also, it was surprising that I was missing the tight schedule which otherwise gets its fair share of curses and expletives. Perhaps in a way, the relentless schedule prevents the queries regarding "higher purpose of life" popping in the mind.

The working week has commenced. Yet, things haven't yet started ticking. Two of three classes scheduled for tomorrow have been canceled. Couldn't have asked for more in the first term but it never came at that time. However, at present it makes me think how can I put this "free time" to best use.

For one, "sleeping" as an option is definitely out of the window.

Holi 2007

Holi, the festival of colors, was back with a bang for me after a gap of 3 years. The Cultural Committee of IIMA (popularly known as CultComm) organized the celebrations. Just the essentials – colors, water, a 1500 liter tank (to dump the guys and gals) and a mud pot hole, an overhead water sprinkler and cheesy numbers playing from a balcony – but they made a vibrant atmosphere. Add to it the enthusiasm of a band of 75-100 revelers, and the results were literally colorful.

I was rolled and splattered in mud. My T-Shirt, a new white one which I had outsized, was torn to shreds by at least 3 and a half pair of hands. The raiders let out a victory cry when my torso was exposed to the elements. The remains of the ill-fated T-shirt were then swung and tossed to hang on overhead tree branches. There they joined similar trophies, which had come off the bodies of other warriors, on display. Finally, muddy and half-naked, I was tossed into the 1500 liter tank filled with colored water. For a moment I had a vague thought of feeling like taking a blood bath, what with the red colored liquid and salty taste which it left in mouth.

Some of the dorm fachchas and most of the tuchchas had been lazily staying away from all this. I applied the Domino Effect strategy on them. An unsuspecting guy was called out of his room and two others ‘dunked’ (slang for pouring water) him. Splash! After he was dunked, he wanted fair play and other dry guys to also get wet. The chain thus grew and finally the holy duty of making all wet and shivering was accomplished.

It was at this time that I realized that my room key went missing. Remember, “muddy and half-naked”. That was my state and I could not enter my room to get a fresh pair of clothes. So, I went back to the “war arena” to search for my key, which I thought should have fallen while I was having mud / blood bath.

The last of the warriors had left the battle zone. Like all battlefields, the place told the story of the rampage which had happened for the past 4 hours - torn clothes, splattered colors, still running overhead sprinkler, and the “blood cauldron”, which had become darker red than when I first entered it.

I first tried the mud pit. Entered it and tried to feel the soil around with feet; I could feel rubbery things beneath. Those things turned out to be rubber slippers left behind by the victims of the pit. It was later reported on the Lost and Found notice board – “Found some 7.5 pairs of footwear near the mud pit. They are still lying there”. But, I could not find my room key. Another guy also came to the mud pit searching his spectacles, which he was claiming were worth 1000/-. I bemused, “wealth going to dirt”, literally (again!)

My treasure hunt continued over to the water tank. A jump inside greeted me with a shock. The floor of the tank had become muddy with all the “muddy warriors” being dumped inside. Talk of siltation! Realizing that I don’t have enough dredging capabilities, it became important to empty the tank. The water level receded on opening the outlet orifice. It revealed 3-4 inch mud settling along the edges of the tank. I was still counting on my key being somewhere in there (wishful thinking!). So, I proceeded to use combined forces of water flow from hose and a stick to rummage through the muck.

And then it shined! Like a silver plate unearthed from an excavation. My room key, it was found, and I let out a sigh of relief. I could finally dream of wearing clothes again. To celebrate, I turned to the Mess and took glassfuls of “thandai”. Satiated and refurbished but tired and dirty, the dorm bathroom was next stop. A warm shower did well in flushing out the now hardened mud settled inside my ears and nose.

I had searched out and bought “gujhiyas” and “samosas” for the dorm mates. We had a get-together in the evening in the dorm common room. The gathering invited another round of water splashing. Thus, the festivities ended for the day on a sweet and salty note.

Nothing great about the celebrations I had. But, they were special to me because Holi is a festival I have not got a chance to celebrate regularly. I can remember only 5-6 proper “color play-offs” over 25 years of my life. Lack of quorum in neighborhood, or the final exams which have an irritating history of clashing with Holi, or an unusually cold weather have at various times resulted in me not playing color on Holi.

It was fun to be back at creating the rainbow.

Now I Catch People (Catch Me If You Can - Part 3)

The two posts (part1 and part2) on Internet Privacy did not generate any valuable comments. Either the site Webstats counter has been bluffing me or the posts were unable to convey the gravity of situation and elicit reaction/response.

I did demo runs on two friends to bring the point home. They were shocked, to say the least, at the content I could extract about them.

Guy #1 has much more online activities. His Yahoo id lead to some posts on forums and to his blog. He writes the blog with another pseudonym. The second pseudonym lead to even more tracks into his web activities. The amazing part is that the second pseudonym lead to the discovery of a third pseudonym! The fun was getting better but by this time the guy was too shocked to take in any more info discovered on him.

Guy #2 challenged that I do not have an entry point to make searches on him. I don’t have his Yahoo id and he was “not willing” to tell me the same after reading my posts. (Maybe I can take some credit that he actually felt some credence in the threat. :D ) The problem was solved in jiffy. When guy#2 joined the course with me, the Dean had sent out a common mail to the new entrants welcoming them to the institute. All of us were resgistered in the database through our personal email ids. Guy#2 was registered with his yahoo id. And the rest they say is history :) . I shocked him first by revealing his ‘guarded’ yahoo id and then went ahead to dump on him his online activities.

The two instances were also an eye-opener for me. I had earlier thought that my friend (mentioned in part1 post) was able to discover information about his old flame as he was adamant to do it and spent too much time on this. However, my demos were carried out in just 10-15 min and they were quite successful. They key points in success were:

1. Knowing the right keyword (unique identity) to search for.
2. Availability of excellent search functionalities (I used Google for web and mail search)
3. Sifting through the search results and focusing on the ones which help in further exploration. E.g. blog entries, yahoo group messages
4. Identifying alternate identities of the same person
5. Intuition
6. Luck

Another person questioned that what it is that is making so paranoid? What harm can anyone do by knowing all this? Moreover, it is we who chose to give out this info on public domain.

My arguments are:

1. This phenomenon deprives you from the control on what information you keep online.
2. As the search engine caches the pages in many cases, you can’t delete the information even if you want.
3. You may want to keep some info online for some people but not want others to see it. Unless you have a password access mechanism, your best bet is to protect the URL. If a person you don’t want accessing this info gets hold of the relevant URL against your wishes, the purpose of your discretion is lost.

If you are still skeptic about this, allow me a personal demo.

Update #1: 03/03/2007

Abhyuadaya points out:

"Personally, I run search on my own names and usernames every now and then and if I find something that I wont like, I submit to Google to remove those pages from its index."

I am not sure of how effective this is but its worth a try. However, we can't request ALL the search engines out there to do the same. Neither will they have resources to comply with our request.

A lone tree

[An amateur attempt at composing a poem]

A lone tree stands

In the forest, brimming with life.

Intertwining creepers on other trees, rising shoots.

Even the light, sifting through leaves,

Dances, almost teasingly, near the age-old roots.

A young sapling when it was,

Buoyant in its stem, flexible

And eager to soak it all in, be awashed.

Daring antics, it desired to play and swing,

But the forest floor around it had faced drought

And was barely giving.

Holding its stead, it played with whatever came by,

Sometimes a wasp, a bird or simply gazing at the sky.

The soil around it had leeched,

it survived because deep its roots had reached.

A cost was to be payed for living –

Forego companionship, these boundaries cant be breached.

It longed for a brush of twigs, with other trees,

Throw its fruits, sing a song, hear the breeze.

But none would come.

The forest changed, new soil bred different species,

Different, vibrant, arrogant.

For them the tree’s presence – insignificant.

Pale in comparison, ghastly,

The tree could just look on,

Remembering its legacy.

Untold desires it suppressed,

Faking ignorance, adamant it appeared.

All for a belief – being different is not a fault.

A point was proved, but the point was lost.

Barely Caught! [Catch Me If You Can: Part-2]

The issue of online privacy keeps me thinking a lot these days about my surfing habits. Suddenly, I have become more alert to the markers dropped innocently during my web travails.

The awareness hit me when a close friend narrated his experience of online snooping on someone. No prizes for guessing, the person was his ex-flame. The search had been going on for quite some time but met with little success. The reason was not his inability to look at the right places. It was simply that The Person either was WWW shy or didn’t have regular connectivity. The Person must have been doing the regular stuff like e-mail and IM chat; but nothing beyond – no personal blogs, no web pages, and no profile on a community.

One fine day, my friend’s usual search for The Person on an online community brought up an unfamiliar result. Clicking through made him realize that his search was over! The lucky breakthrough delivered more than he had imagined as this was a profile page full with recent details about The Person. It also contained conversation snippets of The Person with other people. After spending some hours making these click-throughs, my friend had The Person’s personal life virtually laid bare in front of him. Latest job, recent events in The Person’s family and friend circle, future plans and more formed a collective picture. What came out didn’t provide any comfort to my friend; but that’s another story.

I was kind of shocked to know that my friend was able to pull out so much information just sitting at his terminal. He didn’t even have to hack into any accounts or employ any unfair means. All this information was in public domain; anyone could have collated this info! While my friend did not mean any harm (actually he suffered more by knowing about The Person’s current personal life and has decided to abstain from any further enquiry), I was perturbed to know that similar such data could be gathered upon me by someone looking to extract benefits from knowledge about my personal life. It also gave an eerie feeling that I don’t even know if someone might be watching at this very moment what I am doing!

Frankly, my importance in the Grand Scheme of Things is not so great that I can become a target of an attack. And neither is my personal life so colorful that hungry eyes will be devouring it. Yet, it does put a constraint that it will not be possible to keep away certain people from me even if I want to. How do I overcome this? A simple solution would be to delete my profile on such networking sites. While that may work, I still can’t delete the Caches of the Search Engines of the world which will turn up my blog post and comments in online communities long after I have deleted them.

The posts that I make today on various topics may not be exactly what I think about them in, say, 5 years from now. However, not being able to purge off these records makes me vulnerable and accountable in future. And if it is true for me, it is true for anyone around. That brings up the fundamental question whether we should enthusiastically participate in the culture redefining phenomenon of “online collaboration”? If we don’t, we are missing on one of the most exciting, democratic process of information creation of our times. If we do, the indelible, permanent marks we engrave on the Web may come to haunt us in future. My future career will have more implications of this than ever before. Imagine the kind of nightmare that can ensue when a sub-ordinate or a mischievous colleague discovers a scandalous or emotionally charged event from my past years.

I have begun the task of eliminating these markers to the extent that I can. Still, where should the line be drawn?

[Update #1: 23/02/2007]

I found here a way to block Google Searchbot from discovering a webpage and adding to its index. This partially solves the problem. Still, I can't prevent Google from indexing my posts on online forums.

Catch Me If You Can

[Update #1: 04/03/2007

A blog post with same title lead to the arrest of a 16-year old fugitive from a juvenile detention center]

Think of a word which describes your online identity uniquely. Run a Google Search. Include all the similar results which are omitted as default. What’s the result count? If you found it surprisingly high, probably you can appreciate what the following discourse is about.

Some of us LIVE on the Web. It is primary source of ‘communication’ and ‘information’. With the exponential increase of Web 2.0 services, ‘collaboration’ has joined the buzzword list and they together form the Holy Trinity. Each and every time we deal with any of these entities in online space, there is a trail being left.

Participation in ‘collaboration’ requires us to ‘Register’ on the site of the service provider before we can start our contribution. Each time we register, there arises a need to provide a unique identity (login id). When Web was a new phenomenon in our country, it was easy to get unique logins by using our first and second name together. But with the explosion of internet connectivity, it is difficult to do so, especially for the common names and surnames.

Facing this problem, we start inventing login ids - the flamboyant, zara hat ke ones. The success and ease of getting a unique login with any such formulation makes this a repetitive habit. And why try new combinations when one jazzy identity can suffice every time and also saves the trouble of remembering different login ids for different sites.

So, most probably than not, if you are an avid ‘collaborator’, you will have the same login id for most of your favorite and not-so-favorite hangouts. Almost same will be the case for password and hint questions to these logins. You get the drift?

A silent surfing on Web can at best tracked by your network administrator. There are other ways as well, but this is assuming you are not a hot target that somebody would like to invest resources in tracking your surfing habits. So, given the privacy policies in general, just visiting some sites, sending some mails and reading movie reviews isn’t going to hurt. The trouble begins when you start leaving markers – questions on forums, reviews on products / services, posting links to downloads, answering queries on topics. Doing all this requires you to identify yourself with your unique identity. When the Search Engines of the world prowl the Web, they sniff up all that.

So running a search on the unique identity will show in a nutshell which communities you visit and what your contribution is. A 10 to 15 minute reading and surfing of the search results can potentially let anyone know your likings, views, habits, hang-outs, and in unlucky cases more damaging personal information. You may have never bargained for this. But, your privacy can lay threadbare. If you have such a unique identity, try running a search and see for yourself what potential information is available about you for anyone to have access to. And if somehow somebody cracks a password in any one of these sites, it will be just a cakewalk to hack all the other accounts.

The forums are right in their own when they ask for identifying us before we post anything. This ensures that at least a unique person can be identified for any unwanted posting and flamebait. However, this very thing also allows the Search bots to capture the information. So, what is the solution? Making new identities each time, generating new passwords, remembering all the matches for all the sites? That’s a tough task in the current scenario of relentless surfing. You are saved only if your unique identity has yet not been identified as being ‘unique’ by people who know you. But how long will that last? Sharing blogs, filling social networking profiles, instant message ids, or a trivial identity created in more carefree times of school/college carried to this day forward can all leak that unique identity to an observant eye.

If you find a solution for yourself which works universally, do post it here. If I am missing on any existing solution, it would be great if you can point it here.

Conspiracy Theories

[This post is an attempt at a chronological description of my exposure to the Conspiracy Theory phenomenon and the related aspects of explosion of unverified and easily accessible “information”. Neither do I claim veracity of any of the facts nor do I promote any of the theories mentioned herein.

This is by no means a comprehensive compilation of all such theories. It’s just a log of my journey from childhood to the present-day delving in the mysteries surrounding our world. I have poured my thoughts to remove a clutter which had been growing for long – serves the purpose of pensieve. The post will also help me to evaluate my theory that personal blogs, unless talking about general interest stuff, don’t hold relevance to readers, if they aren’t acquainted with the writer.

The generously sprinkled links have been searched and added to help the reader, if s/he wishes to embark on the journey with me. Many of the links are just more than information; they have been selected on the merit of being unique / surprising. They also serve as a future one-stop search engine for my own surfing habits. And I do hope that they will also lead the unknown reader(s) of this blog to interesting or temporarily amusing ideas. Please report any broken links and/or suggest additional/better ones. Better, leave a comment, bricks or bats. :D]

[Update: The post got referred by uforeview.net]

They abound everywhere. To the latest ones doing round on the internet to the age-old urban legends concerning mythical monsters. Geographical boundaries and progress of technology hasn’t impaired their strength.

My indulgence in conspiracy theories has been growing over a period of time. My first encounter with an urban legend was the reference to Kraken in the class 3^rd ICSE English reading book (Gulmohar Reader) – an excerpt from “The Kraken Arrives” story (unfortunately, I could not find the source and author of this story). While browsing through the old Indrajal comics collection of my dad, I found that even Mandrake the magician had to face the Kraken once, but this one was MUCH bigger.

Gulmohar Reader was instrumental in introducing me to many other legends and myths. Minotaur got its share of space in the emphasis on use of brains by Theseus to navigate the labyrinth. Greeks had more to offer through stories on 12 tasks of Hercules, Achilles’ vulnerable heel, Phoenix, et al. David and Goliath inspired me to take on the senior standard hunks (thankfully, I never put that into practice) without any knowledge of the story’s significance in Biblical scheme of things. Even my initial introduction to Middle-Eastern literature began with knowing about a large bird from the legends of Sindbad the Sailor and Arabian Nights.

Following close on heels was the story of Yeti – the abominable snowman of the Himalayas – in my all-time favorite Indian comic book series (Super Commando Dhruva – Barf ki Chita). The Yeti made further appearances in the same series. However, there was another comic book which involved Yeti in a different context. Tintin found a formidable foe, and then later an ally, in a Yeti when he was in Tibet. Discovery Channel brought back memories of this creature with a special run episode on Ape-Men from around the world including BigFoot (I guess you must have seen the runs and re-runs of Roger Patterson’s 1967 BigFoot footage)

Till this time I had been untouched by more frightening and scary propositions of urban legends. Enter the Dracula, in a “comic” way in retrospect, in its Lambu-Motu incarnate from the Diamond Comics annals. The legends of scary creatures got another shot in arm by reference to Jersey Devil in an issue of Hardy Boys – The Outlaw’s Silver, where the Hardys go on a treasure hunt in the Pine Barrens.

The Jersey Devil would make another appearance in years to follow in the X-Files (Season 1, Episode 5). The series followed up on many such legends through its “monster of the week” episodes on Nessie, werewolves, vampires, El Chupacabra. The X-Files deserves a special section of its own for the contributions made in firmly ingraining in me the thrill of mystery and unexplained. Werewolves beamed themselves into my living room through the TV Series aired on AXN (which I now realize must have been originally aired on Fox Network). Underworld, Blade and Van Helsings of the world followed later.

This was about the beginning of the time when instead of conspiracy theories coming to me in unexpected ways, I started chasing them. The Pustak Mahal “World Famous” series was the first step in this journey. Titles like “World Famous Unsolved Mysteries” were quite a rage in those times (circa 1990 – 1995) and formed a quintessential gift item on kids’ birthdays and academic successes. Each new conspiracy theory thread spun off from the two page articles in these books would explode in future when I would be introduced to Internet and unlimited access to uncensored “information”.

The Web opened up a portal to a world hitherto hidden from my reach with all its conspiracies and unexplained phenomenon. The first to strike was the Moon Hoax, with its paradox of the destination being visible yet not affording irrefutable evidence of “Mankind’s One Giant Leap”. The unknowns of the space continue to haunt me from that time. The other frontier beyond human exploration is much closer to the home - the deep ocean floor – Atlantis, Lemuria and recently the Indian Ocean Tsunami.

This point of time marks the explosion of (mis)information which a democratic medium like Web would offer me. It becomes difficult from here to track the exact chronology of what I was exposed to but here is a genuine try to capture the motions.

The click-through effect of web media led to one discovery after another. Area 51 became my sought after address on Earth. The Cydonia face stared at me from millions of miles with all the fascinating possibilities ranging from the aliens building an artifact on Mars to the Humans actually descending from a Martian race. Even on Earth, intricate geometries of crop circles embarrassed me by reminding of my own lame drawing skills. Majestic 12 seemed to have become the ultimate masters of human race and by proxy - of its destiny. US government agencies, like CIA, FBI and some which perhaps don’t even have a name, seem to hold keys to numerous caverns filled with logs of activities and truths which they believe shouldn’t be known to the world. Some of them were exposed – CIA mind control experiments using LSD. Some are still open to conjuncture – mystery surrounding Nikolai Tesla. I am not an American and thus haven’t been exposed to the extent of conspiracy theories existing in US society about events in their own national history – like JFK assassination.

The evil empire of Microsoft entrapped me in its grip – not from the expected Windows or Office suite – but through a PC game called Age of Empires. My childhood memory of the Hardy Boys “The Aztec Warrior” got a shot in the arm by playing the campaigns of Emperor Montezuma and the serpent God Quetzalcoatl. The Meso-American and Amazonian races of the Aztecs, the Mayans and the Incas soon found their way into my mental frame through horde of uncountable mentions. If Cortez never found El Dorado, his bad luck – I did. The unforgettable hills of Machu Picchu were as fascinating as the plains hosting as drawing board for Nazca lines, at least with respect to their mysterious origins. Far up north, the Reds won’t be much of a trouble except the Anasazi people – X-files episode (Season 2 Finale) and a Johnny Quest episode. The date 22^nd December, 2012 is etched on my mind. I will start my packing my bags then, as probably Arthur Dent would have advised, because that’s the date that Mayan calendar “promises” as end of the world. And this has inspired multitude of other theories, one of which I will deal later in the post. The X-files series ended with this date being set for beginning of alien colonization of Earth.

Of course, Hollywood had to have its say in all this through the Terminator, the Aliens and the Predator. Though not exactly conspiracy theories, they did fall in the chain of command to serve the hunger for not-so-real. And then came along a movie which changed my identity to Neo – The Matrix. This post can’t even attempt to do justice if I try to explain the profound effect of the movie on my life.

While Matrix had a definite Neo-Christian theme to it; my belief in what constitutes a religion was to be shaken by a mere work of fiction – The Da Vinci Code. I don’t know whether Dan Brown ever intended but an ignorant person like me was taken completely off-guard by the political machinations of religion exposed in the book. The threads spawned here divide and re-divide and some of them later merge into other conspiracy theories. Though many of the readers would be aware by now of Holy Grail, Knights Templar, Priory of Sion, Illuminati, New World Order; I would like to mention a book which dealt with the core theme of exclusion of “knowledge” by few to gain power. Umberto Eco’s “The Name of The Rose” delivered a fiction in the world of 14^th century persecuting Church along with a message of “Knowledge/Information is the source of ultimate power” (perhaps Google bosses would appreciate this better).

As it had to be, religion and controversy proved to be bretheren-in-arms as I dug more into the history of the fertile lands of Tigris and Euphrates. The common Abrahamic origin of Jews, Christians and Muslims and their claims and counter-claims made me shrink to a cocoon shrouded by the web of undocumented and re-documented chapters of human history. In my humble personal opinion, if any good can come from analyzing existing conspiracy theories, the whole gamut of these related gray areas of history should be the best candidate to spend time and resources on as a lot of present world international and religious disputes might appear in new light and hopefully also get a solution.

Ahh, I digressed. Back to the conspiracies. Discovery Channel added fuel to the alien angle by linking the physical sites and geometry of Stonehenge, Easter Islands, Giza Pyramids, Yonaguni-jima (a sunk pyramid off the coast of Japan), the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, lake Titicaca, ruins of Tehoticuan to the likes to constellations and stars in the Heavens – the Orion’s belt, Draco constellation, Pleiades. Soon my interest-telescope was focused on Sirius and the Dogon tribe which claimed to have been taught astronomy by “Sirians”. It was also time to look back to Indian Hindu mythology to find more alien connections and give wings to my own imagination through one of the initial posts on this blog.

And thus, this brings me to write about the theory which just swept the rug from under from my feet - Zecharia Sitchin and his theory of the 12^th Planet, Nibiru. His claims - that humans were genetically engineered from Homo Erectus to serve the purpose of a slave race for mining operations of an extraterrestrial traveling race which were referred as Annunaki by Sumerians, one of the first civilizations on the face of the Earth - just left me gasping. Forget about the ethical and moral questions, he claims that Mayan calendar ends at 22^nd June, 2012 because that’s the date when “Gods” will descend to claim their space back on Earth. I wont even attempt to describe how he interlinks Old Testament with Sumerian Tablets (Book of Enoch and Gilgamesh) to spin this story which seems plausible when viewed in context of recent findings about actual era of construction of many old world structures (including Sphinx and Pyramids) when humans shouldn’t have even existed according to present day beliefs about human origins.

The arcs of conspiracies slowly converge to the one event in well-documented history which is near close to Apocalypse imagined on contact with Aliens - World War 2. The sightings of two most popular shapes of UFOs (cigar and a disc with 3 bubbles underneath it) are rumored to be result of Nazi re-engineering of captured crashed UFOs. Wernher von Braun, creator of V2 rockets and father of US space program, commented about some superior technology traveling in our air space, he was not far from what President Reagen himself reiterated twice in public as extra-terrestrial menace. Legends have it that The Third Reich made a desperate attempt to flee to Antarctica to establish a base in collaboration with Nordic aliens and they wait for the right time to make an appearance on world stage. Sounds incredulous? It won’t if you were to be told that US undertook a costly Operation Highjump with a strong naval fleet without any apparent reason immediately after World War 2 ended.

This pretty much rounds up what I have read, felt, believed and sometimes hoped to be true. As an X-Files fan and a believer, I maintain that “The Truth Is Out There”. History teaches us that what was chronicled may be forgotten, what once existed may perish, what once ruled might be decimated – yet, they will leave clues – clues waiting, almost tantalizingly, for an inquisitive mind and an adventurous spirit to query into the unknown. For, though, the past is gone, it defines what we are now and a spark of knowledge about its truth may change what our future might be.

The Heaven's Currency

Inside The Gates of Heaven, the Devil had been successful in implementing a law of "collateral damage" to keep things going smooth. Well, things were not like that always. But, the population outside Heaven kept growing and the Heaven kept assuming more majestic stature.

The Heaven has a life of its own. The ecology now encompasses many rules of evolution. It might be surprising, but Heaven also has a "mortality rate". Mortality rate in Heaven, what does that mean? The easiest analogy (and in fact quite fitting) to explain the anomaly will come from the Biblical Eden. Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit of knowledge and were “expelled” by the God for their indiscipline. The Devil gloated there. But in this Heaven, Devil shares the same plight of the Biblical God. Occasionally, a denizen of the Heaven will be “enlightened” to true knowledge (euphemism for disillusionment). The Devil will then have to find ways to either again jack the subject back into the Heavenly Matrix or a “fatality” occurs. Or going back to the Biblical analogy, a “Fallen Angel” is born.

Just like the mortals do not know about the fate of angels inside the Gates of Heaven, the angels inside the Gates of Heaven do not about the fate of the fallen angels. Yeah, the information gets only a one-way ticket in these channels! The second channel is either too congested, too indecipherable or just simply does not exist.

So, the Devil is able to keep most of the other angels in the Heaven in control. How? Certainly, not by force. To the credit of the angels, they are good fighters against any rules or oppression, when they become aware of it. The Devil has another tool in His assets to achieve the ends. It’s the Heavenly Economy.

Like the economy of mortals, the Heaven follows a simple principle of demand and supply. The medium of transaction is a special currency which we shall call as “Points” for lack of any better word. Each angel, when he enters the Gates of Heaven, brings with him/her some prior collection of Points. The Point is quite a powerful and stable currency even in the mortal world outside the Gates of Heaven. However, there the Point is used to buy only exclusive and costly goods and services. Its exchange value is too high for most of the normal transactions in the mortal world. But, inside the Gates of Heaven, Point rocks!

The Points brought by the angels from their mortal world are verified by the Heavenly authorities for check against counterfeit. Some angels find it difficult to prove the validity and date of coinage of their Points. Others simply forget where they stored their Points in the mortal world because they never got to use them in that world. May all the mortals planning to gain entry into the Gates of Heaven henceforth dust off their Points and keep an irrefutable record of the same!

Thus, all angels don’t start their Heavenly stay with same quantity of Points. However, they don’t mind it as it never affected their lives earlier. The first few days into the Heaven are a sort of induction program into their new powers, responsibilities and helplessness. The older denizens bring them to speed with the Heaven’s Economy. Within a week, each angel realizes how poor or rich is s/he with comparison to others by virtue of their initial stock of Points.

The Heaven’s Economy has close ties with the Heaven’s Bureaucracy. No surprises here, too, when compared to the mortal world. The bastions of power in the Bureaucracy are achieved by the balance figure in any angel’s Point account. The angels have a past history from the mortal world to learn from. They know how important it is to be a holder of a bastion of power in any bureaucracy. Hence, they lose no time in earning more Points to increase their bargaining power.

The Economy now flourishes once these basic objectives have been set into the minds of the new angels. Many angels came into the Heaven to do, well, what angels do. But the peer-pressure of Point driven Economy forces the angels to take up any jobs to earn the Points. The poorer angels work even harder towards this goal. All sorts of unexplainable division of labor come into play due to this. Angels well versed in one craft/art/skill start pursuing other skills because those pay more Points.

Each single Point is fought for. The Angelical Brotherhood of the Heaven goes through turmoil whenever there are clashes for the possession of Points. Points become the life and soul of the angels. Some angels, when drinking the chilled beer under the setting sun (like the rooftop scene of “Shawshank Redemption”) after a day’s hard toil for earning Points, take a stock of what they are doing and then start veering dangerously close to the mental state which would qualify them as a “Fallen Angel”. Thankfully, the Devil’s Heaven has a bustling Economy and such moments pass-off too soon for the angels to have a permanent damage. Soon, some other opportunity presents itself to earn more Points and another Gold Rush in that direction begins.

The Economy was always not like this. There was a time when peaceful agrarian society prevailed in the Heavens. All that got changed when Trader Ships loaded with enormous quantities of Gold docked into the Heaven’s harbors. They requested free trade between their world and the Heaven’s. The Heavenly Authorities felt that it’s a good opportunity and even gave them preferential status against the previously well-respected inland Marketeers/Advisors. The Ships came all the way from the Lands of Lady with the Torch, Lands of the Great Clock, Lands of the Merlion, the Kowloon Island and the Capital City of Honshu Islands. The angels, not far removed from their mortal past, were gullible to the Gold offered by these Traders. The agrarian economy didn’t need many Points to thrive but now only few angels till the lands while most, if possible, want to board these Ships. The Ships have their special rules for awarding “Crewman-ship”. The Points form a crucial role in gaining those favors. Sometimes, even having lots of Points does not work if an angel has spent too much time in the mortal world as compared to other angels.

The angels, thus, want Points and the jobs inside Heaven are constructed to deliver what the denizens want. Demand and Supply. Cause and Effect.

Some of the angels in every era, and this era too, get perturbed by the effect Point Economy is having on the “free will” of the angels. After all, the angels are worshipped by the mortals. What would come to pass if the mortals realized that the angels are bound to the chains of Economy just like them? The Council of such Elders (and even Newer) angels proposes to abolish the Point Economy. They haven’t yet offered an alternative economic model. The Heaven has become so much dependent on the Ships that they can’t be just told to leave the shores. And till the time they are docked, Points Economy will rule.

The angels wait for the Second Renaissance. And all this while, The Devil still smiles.

A Treatise on Female Beauty

Randomly websurfing, I landed on this bollywood site, a picture gallery of cinestars.

Some of the most clicked galleries were the ones of Bipasha Basu, Kareena Kapoor, Malaika Arora, etc. In other words, of the hottie brigade. Doing what any sane man would have done then, I kept the interest in the viewer statistics to a minimum, and quickly gushed through the galleries of as many of these sultry hotties I could in 10 minutes.

Bipasha in particular was looking so very hawt in some of the pics that there appeared to be a larger conspiracy going on; a conspiracy of turning menfolk numb and stupid to the point of insanity. This is when that classic predicament struck me - by objectifying Bipasha and the hotties, was I in general reducing women to pieces of flesh?

Pausing for a moment or two, I injected some deep thought into the matter..and concluded that... no, I wasn't doing any such thing. I in fact felt (very much to the contrary of popular belief) that these fine women were telling me in unspoken words to respect female beauty more.

Now wait, we're talking about Malaika Arora, Bipasha Basu and cohort, right ? Whatever happened to my taste, my sensibilities, my moral universe and all those stuff that I say such a thing? How can they tell me to respect female beauty unless I am a warped sexist - these women carry their sensuality in their plunging necklines and for most practical purposes, are a source of shame to (indian) womanhood.

Well, nothing's quite warped about my taste, moral fibre yada yada. They're quite where they should be, and doing quite well. What is actually warped is the general perception, and general notions of female beauty in our part of the world. The thing is, Indians are a bunch of intellectually challenged dimwits who can't think using their own head, and they just choose the best possible dumb line of action every single time. In this case, they callously reduce these fine and beautiful women to a perspective of sin, sex or sleaze. Anyone with half a brain would be able to discern from any of the so called provocative Bipasha pictures that she is in fact exuding a subtle sense of being intelligent, a subtle message of being in command and a teasing reminder of being a superior female specimen - thus telling you to respect her more, rather than the other way round.

And that is why in our world of maa behen biwi izzat etc, it's hard for these hotties to garner respect for being women. I really can't say whether patriarchy aggravated this reality more, by stifling expressions of women's sexuality because male dominance is threatened by it; or whether it got aggravated because of a successful bid by feminists and women (who are personally and collectively threatened by these beautiful women) to create this mentality of hatred towards beautiful and sexy women. Or both working in tandem.

At any rate, the final outcome is that our system quickly denigrates these lovely hotties to pieces of flesh - a faulty system that has been scripted by and for the ego-satisfaction of jealous, personality-deficient feminists..... a system that also adds insult to injury, by telling you that you are reducing women to pieces of flesh by objectifying them - when in fact all you are doing is the most natural of things for a man to do - admiring very beautiful women. Anyone who has seen Malena would be able to relate to the plight of a hottie, how indefensible she is to the other women who force their (nasty) agenda on her, and how men are equally helpless in defending her against this nasty agenda. Why was Malena beaten up so brutally by the womenfolk of the village? Why were their eyes emitting a kind of hatred towards Malena that would put Hitler to shame? What was Malena's fault really? None. Her only fault was that she was drop dead gorgeous.

To quote a line from Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov - "beauty is the battlefield where God and the Devil war for the soul of man". It's quite simple. God will tell to look at beauty from a narrow and warped perspective - and to that effect, tell you to imbibe (a stupid thing called) morals, degrade Bipasha or your neighbourhood hottie, lower your gaze, and feel guilty from time to time for gushing at hotties - while the Devil will tell you to love, respect and admire hotties for who they are, and tell you to take 10 minutes off your busy schedule to objectify them (even if from a laptop monitor) and completely forget the reality of your existence for those 10 minutes. "Objectification" is a much vilified term and has impropriety written all over it, but is it all that bad and improper really? I firmly say No, now that I've looked under the veil of all the scheming machinations. I'm finally enlightened, and off I am to objectify the next hottie. A gori this time. A very provocatively dressed, but very beautiful Scarlett Johannson is the lucky one. ;)

Message in a bottle

Get the ink out. Spread out a sheet of paper. Write a message. Roll the parchment. Find a glass bottle, which has been emptied of its liquor content. Uncork it. Stuff the parchment into the bottle. Cork the bottle. And set it upon the sea.

The bottle bobs endlessly to the rhythm of the sea. Probably in sync with the heartbeats of the message writer, who watches the bottle float away. Some unknown day, some unknown hand will find the bottle. Or probably never.

Is setting of bottle on sea an act to create own personal mystery?

There are social networking sites. Orkut is popular in Indian subcontinent. Each person has a profile page. All the info on the page is a snapshot of the person's life. The page is one among the millions of pages "floating" on the web. Is it the same charm as that of "message in a bottle on sea" which drives one to fill out the page? The details, the witticism, the testimonials, the photo album - all put in to present the unknown visitor a glimpse of the owner's life.

Reaching out to unknown and making ourselves known has been a consuming passion for mankind. The same can be seen in the names people scratch on rock faces, archaeological monuments and classroom benches. The same can be seen when a lesser known painter signs-off his/her painting, when a caller on a radio show makes sure that his/her name is heard on air, when the good samaritans put their name plaques in temples/hospitals to which they have donated, when the Roll of Honor dazzles the name of Gold Medalists of previous years, when anonymous Marines scribbled "Kilroy was here", when NASA sent probes to deep space with plaques carrying message from mankind.

The brief moment of attention from a stranger - oh so elusive and precious.
You know what, I just had one :)

Gates of Heaven

Has anyone seen the Gates of Heaven? Are there people who can claim that they have crossed to the Other Side and can re-tell their experiences? And still there will be men who will be driven to the extreme to do all the needful things to reach this El Dorado. Acts, labor, dedication - to achieve the gate pass to the utopia on the Other Side. What after that? Eternal bliss? Salvation?

At least not 'salvation' as I know of. There are imagined greater comforts and pleasures to be attained on the Other Side. A true salvation would rob an opportunity to enjoy all that. So if my thought process is still sane - there are men who have been told that there is a place called Heaven, which has unparalleled happiness and comfort but nobody has seen or come back to re-tell (who would leave the Heaven and come back to tell the lesser mortals the great pleasures so as to entice them to work hard to get in the Heaven and increase pressure on resources) but they still work hard to achieve an entrance ticket to this unknown place.

"And the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to make people believe that he does not exist" . Kevin Spacey delivers this wisdom in what can be interpreted as persona of 'Keyser Soze'. The devil never had to show himself to make his mark. Probably its his invisibility which make him more threatening and menancing. Add to it that Man has from time immemorial been drawn to what is unknown. Who says that curiosity only kills the cats? So, is Heaven a notion setup by the Devil himself to have fun at the cost of people observing austerity and going through pains to live a sin-free life? Blasphemy! I am conjuring up a trick here!

Suppose there exists such a place. At least in physical sense. But nobody knows what promises are kept once you enter it. One would wonder how long the enigma continue if there are no proofs of the goodies on the other side. Well, the Devil, like the architect of Matrix, would think how to sustain this process. So the Devil does two things.

First

He makes the entry to this place really, really tough. Like say, 1 in 300 gets to go inside those Gates. No matter how hard everybody tries, only exclusive few get the pass-through. The 299 left behind, though bruised and sad, look up to those high walls and ivy decorated gate and think that they will work harder the next time. Or some just give up hope of ever getting through but never lose the awe of the gates they could not enter. In all the wisdom that these men have been bestowed, they equate the high odds of gaining entry as a proxy for the great value of what lies inside those gates. Any flaws in this reasoning?

Second

The Devil keeps telling those who got inside of what the 299 fellas think of them and the place they got into. He describes to them in great detail the awe which the people inside inspire in the people outside. Field trips are organized for these "lucky ones" where they see for themselves how the rest of their lot swoon on their sight. And the Devil poses them a question -"Whatever is inside those gates is unknown to the outside world. The promises were kept or not, only you know. But.... But, will you speak in any way to destroy your own self esteem and respect which you keep hearing from the outside world? Is the absolute truth more valuable to you or the perceived truth?" What do those "lucky ones", the keepers of the secret, the Children of Promised Land do?

The Devil smiles.

And so, the legend of The Gates of Heaven runs through eons of time. Nobody questions what became of the few who crossed to the other side. Occasionally, a light streak is seen in the skies of the Forbidden Country. Outside the high walls, these sights are referred and discussed endlessly. As might perhaps this blog entry.

The Devil still smiles.

Google Labs or a growing junk-yard?

Yeah, Google is God. I have been believing it since long time. It still remains. However, off-late I have gotten into discussions about how does Google make money? It has only Ad-words and Ad-sense. The analysts warned the Wall Street against high valuations of Google stock and changed their recommendation from "hold" to "sell" even though Google has cornered 25% of online advertising revenue. But, the markets have been bullish and the price of Google stock keeps soaring against the advices of analysts.

Why such exuberance when Google hasn't opened up any other avenues of generating revenues. Google launches cool products, we go and use them, laud them; but what happens to these products after that. How many of them are actually a commercial success or become the market leader in their category? Probably none. Here is an article (How Google wins by losing) which discusses the Google phenomenon on these lines and where does the whole thing fit in. At present, there are more articles doing round on the Web discussing these matters.

Google itself has made huge investments in buying other technologies, latest being YouTube. But how will all this gel in together remains hazy. Google is making competitors all around by making experimental products in their specialization area. It doesn't take those products to Release versions (most of the things are in Beta). But, that warns the other companies against Google's motives and they become skeptic of it. Exactly the same thing happened when Amazon removed Google as its preferred search engine and started using MSN Live on its website. Its a move which has great implications because Amazon is the best example of social-recommendation bringing up search results which complements Google's powerful search algorithm. Google lost on a potential ally by introducing a Beta online store service (Froogle) and other services (Books). Google has gunned against Microsoft (obviously), eBay, Amazon, Yahoo, Skype and the list goes on. Can it go on making such rivals without even seriously delivering Release quality products?

Its what some folks say. Google's product delivery model is summed up as "throwing spaghetti on the wall". It develops "spaghetti" (Beta versions), throws them on the wall and waits to see what sticks. Those which stick, become hit. Those which fall are forgotten (Google Finance, anyone?) And Google moves on.