Wednesday, December 29, 2004

Interesting article on bloggers

Bloggers at large: 'Digging graves quite disturbing'.

Tsunami and Disater Management

The official Tsunami death toll stands around 68000 according to Reuters, but i feel the actual lives lost would be almost double. We need enoromus effort to clean up all the rotting dead bodies before a huge epidemic hits. It would take the toll even more higher if we are hit with an Epidemic, i only hope that doesn't happen.

We Indians are very bad at disaster management. We should always learn from our past experiences like Bhuj earthquake on how to model our disater management systems. But it looks like we haven't managed to learn any thing from our recent past. I guess we still have a Disaster Management comittee on papers and the need to have one arises only when sometime of this magnitude hits us. It takes a lot of time for us to react to such a natural calamity.

Even the way our media addresses such issues is different. Here is what i saw, i was watching NDTV 24X7 on the day Tsunami hit the Indian east coast along with the rest of South East Asia. The rest of the Indian news channels were doing the same just airing live feeds for those of us who live in cities about the extent of damage Tsunami has caused. Then i swapped to International News channels like CNN and BBC. CNN was majorly reporting on the future after-shocks that may occur and they were also airing the Do's and Dont's during a catastrophe like this. BBC on the other were reporting on how different relief agencies spread across the world is co-ordinating to help the people affected. BBC was trying to understand on how the decisions are made and how exactly the relief agencies work across the boundaries, by speaking to the Head of International Red Cross in Geneva and Director of Save the Children an NGO in South London.

I guess you have found the differences in how the reporting takes place between the Indian media and the Forgien press. We majorly focus on what has already happened and keep airing the images over and over. We never address the people on what needs to be done and how the things are to be handled. Atleast CNN was addressing some the Dont's like not to consume any food which u get around, what needs to be done keep the surroundings clean, etc. I hope our attitudes change at some point of time. Now u might ask me what's the use?, because people will not be watching TV, i know that they won't watching but atleast those who are living around might understand and help to spread the message on the Do's and Dont's.

Well if u think i am an Indian who always speaks against our system and is not able to do anything, i can't help it i am fed with our system and have lost all my hope. I will do my best for this cause by contributing what i can. I don't even know what i give actually reaches to those who are in need of it, due to corruption that exists in our system. Anyways i will do my best and forget.

There was also an headline on Rediff which says 'UN can't go to a country without a request' and even if the aid comes i have absoultely no idea on how it will be utilised. Here is an another interesting article on Rediff 'Who will distribute all the aid pouring in?'.We need to have a Independent organisation like UN which actually handles diaster management and also the allocation of aids. When UN can have peace keeping forces in different nations, i guess we can also have such kind of teams who can do a better role than our corrupt governments.

Monday, December 27, 2004

Memorable Day

26th December 2004 would be one of my "Memorable" days in this year because lot many things happened today.

First and the fore-most thing was the wedding of my close friend. I am very happy for him, as he is settling in life at a very early age than most of us. It was also an occasion for many of us to catch up with each other. It was almost over a year now that all of us had met. All of them are in diverse jobs and obviosuly work at different times. I guess most of them made it. Hey Matthew and Ranjith we definitely missed u guys here, hope u guys are doing fine.

I brought a Philips DVD Music system D750 yesterday evening. The Bass output is too good with its WOOX technology. I still haven't explored all the features, i am enjoying the way it
plays everything!

Finally i was about to end the day by watching my favorite teams in EPL(English Premier League) playing their Boxing day matches. Yes i am talking about Arsenal and Chelsea, both of them won their repsective matches. Chelsea won by a solitary goal by Duff and Arsenal won by 2 goals scored by Henry and Pires.

Then i swapped to NDTV 24X7 news channel and wanted to know about the catastrope called Tsunami. I did hear about that somewhere in mid-afternoon, but i thought it was just another quake. But now i saw images which really shook me, there was so much devastation all over South Asia and South East Asia. As i started swapping news channels i was even more shocked to see Andaman and Nicobar islands in particular and Srilanka affected so severly. Some parts of Tamil Nadu is also worse hit. CNN weather report states that this is one of the strongest quakes in the past 40 years. Initial reports suggested that in India's main land alone we have around 4000 people dead and in Car Nicobar islands there are fears of more than 10000 people missing. The worst part for Car Nicobar islands is that they are not totally wired to the world and it's isolated. I just hope that not many people are affected there. I hope peace returns everywhere and there are no after-shocks.

I pray for those who have lost their lives and for there families.

Life is so strange, on a day like this i get to experience both happiness and sadness. This is reality and that is how life goes on, aint't it?




Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Celebrating India's series win against Bangladesh

Well i am not a hard-cire cricket fan, but i do ocassionally catch Test matches; One-dayers i am a regular viewer. It just took 4 balls to win the 2nd Test match against Bangladesh to win the 2 match series. This second match will be historic for many reasons.

1) Rahul Dravid "The Wall" of Indian Cricket scored a Century and thus making him the only player to have scored 100 runs over every Test playing nation. He also played his 83rd match against Bangladesh without missing a single Test match since he has joined the National team. Those are quite good achivements for a person who has been a team-player, tempermental and modest player. He has been the sole savior at times for Indian cricket during Tests, so that's why he gets a title called "The Wall".

2) Sachin Tendulkar i guess you don't need any introduction to this little "Mastero". He will also remember this test match as he equalled the highest number of centuries scored, which was previously held by Sunil Gavaskar. So both of them share the record for scoring 34 Centuries, it won't be long for Sachin to score another Century in a Test match. It will be tough for any batsmen in the future to break any of the records created by Sachin. Way to go Sachin.

3) Anil Kumble has been playing for the National team for more than a decade now. He is a man who goes by principles (who unlike others doesn't endorse products from cola giants), humble and a qualified Engineer. The leg-spinner surpasses the mark of Kapil Dev's 434 to become the highest wicket taker among Indian bowlers. I also hppened to read somewhere that he has taken 74 wickets in 12 Tests during this season of 2004. The best Leg-spinner ever(Shane Warne) is at No. 2 position for this year with 64 wickets till now.

4) Irfan Pathan the young pace bowler got his frist 5 wicket haul against Bangladesh. He also won his first Man-of-the-Series award for taking 18 wickets.

I hope they repeat this kind of victory against some of the best in the game too.

Saturday, December 18, 2004

Celebrity Uncensored and Camera phones.

Most of the news papers are carrying the story of young celebrities of Bollywood. I am not a great fan of Bollywood nor Kareena Kapoor and Shahid Kapur.


It was Bombay's Miday which broke the news with the photos and the rest of the print and electronic media followed. When everything is made public, as usual you would expect a denial from them and next thing to come was a defamation against the publisher. The worst thing for Kareena and Shahid was yet to unfold, someone even captured the enitre steamy embrace live on a mobile camera and it is on circulation all over the place. I have seen that and i was surprised how could someone deny when there is so much proof. But for those of you who don't know why is there so much of denial going on read this article and you will understand. If u still did not get what i am trying to say, Kareena is the youngest member of the legendary Kapoor dynasty, Bollywood’s answer to the Douglases or Fondas.

I guess it's common in Hollywood where celebrities are photographed and caught on tape everywhere they go by Paparazzies, you also get to watch "Celebrity Uncensored" here in India on AXN. One thing i hate about these celebs in our country is that they are treated as if they are the cut above the rest. Why create so much fuss over a steamy smooch, moreover when everyone knows that they both are having a relationship. Yeah agreed that such embraces are not so common in India and especially with Indians. The culture in the Indian Metros is changing and the Bollywood itself is making bold movies on so many taboo subjects, then why crib over a smooch?

But i agree on only one thing that mofone with camera is causing lot of ripples across the world. Here are some of the latest news on camera phones making it to the headlines.

Links to stories related to Camera phones, Students suspended for sexually explicit MMS , IIT student gets arrested, ebay's India chief arrested in porno case, US House of Representatives has proposed a bill over misuse of camera phone, Camera phone clicks may carry jail time.I guess India too and the rest of the world will follow up with their own bills.

One Way City!



It would sound logical if they rename Bangalore as "One-Way City", i.e. because every other major road is being converted to One way rule. The sole reason being to de-congest the roads, so that there can be smooth flow of traffic. Recently Richmond and Residency Roads have been converted into One-way rule. The best part is my office is on Richmond Road and if i have to go back to Vellara Junction again, i need to do a round about trip, a 300mts distance is now streched to 900mts. This absoultely doesn't make any sense in burning more fuel for the sake of smooth flow of traffic, also the fuel prices are rocketing.

The worst woes of these One-way rules are effecting people who commute by public transport and pedestrains. The bus stops haven't been reloctaed properly and most of them are not sure whether buses will stop by. The next big woe for the pedestrains crossing Richmond Road, I had to cross the road yesterday for the first time after the One-way rule was implemented and it took me and my colleagues almost 10mins to cross the road. Even though there are zebra crossings, the vehicles move at their own speeds and they never slow for those of us waiting to cross. I happened to find myself in a similar situation when i had to cross Cunningham Road in the evening, it took me 10 mins.

Till yesterday it did not really matter, but i gave it a thought when i actually had to cross the roads. Now i understand how much time it takes to cross these roads which have been made to follow One ways.

I hope the Traffic cops address this problem with some thought and also the Transport Dept. should let the commuters know where are the Bus bays.

Saturday, December 11, 2004

Research on the word "Dude"? read to believe it

I first read about it in Times Of India, Bangalore edition on 9th Dec. I was little taken back for a while, because i was thinking how can people devote there time for doing research on some weird topics. But what i got to read on the print was very little. Then later in the day when i hit my friend Jessica's blog on other side of the world, who also had blogged on this. Finally i got the link to the actual article on that research on 'DUDE'. May be the research was carried out by a linguistic Prof., i bet it is an interesting research on the word.


It looks like we get connected to many things by having friends all over the world, i guess that's the reason why they say it's a "Small World". The best part is that the Professor who has done this research also happens to be my friend's classmate during her Master's program.

Monday, December 06, 2004

Quite an interesting evening.

One of my Engineering mate sent a mail to Yahoo groups with a headline " George Bush Arrested in Canada". I was surprised with what i read on the link he had sent across. Here is the link for that news http://www.world-cnn.com/2004/WORLD/americas/11/30/bush.arrest/.

After reading the entire thing i was still not convinced about what had happened. But since the reporting news agency was The Associated Press and the medium which was brodcasting it was CNN, i believed it. Me being a true Software professional i forwarded this one to all my colleagues at office and other friends in IT industry. Word among IT industry spread likes forest fires.

I guess this mail has reached every IT company in Bangalore by today evening. And then few of my friends responded back to my mail, saying it was "bullshit","Checkout the dates of the article’s published.................","ahh buddy, plz verify the news b4 u send..i really appreciate ur or friends work in making a spurious page.", i guess many of them thought i was just spreading the rumour.

So i hit Google's News Service for that and i found only 10 links for the search. So i hit a couple of links and then here the truth was out there. The headline was taken from the Axis of Logic Web site. If u want to know what exactly happpened here are the two articles i read Microsoft's Slate and UK's The Inquirer.

As they have stated it was actually flaws that exists in Google's Algorithms in collecting News Headlines from world wide web, i say that because the article was taken from Axis of Logic under the section which clearly states "Political Satire". Now i feel the algorithms used For Google's News service has a flaw in it.

Come what may, i feel there is no other search engine better than google. It's easy, simple and very effective.

Quite an interesting evening and an eye opener with Google's News service.

Thursday, December 02, 2004

A year older

Today another year gets added to my life. Thank you everyone for all your warm wishes.

World AIDS Day

Yesterday was World AIDS Day - the day to spread awareness about AIDS. Even though there is so much of research going on that, still we haven't able to discover or come up with soultion for this contageous disease. The statistics show that there is a steep increase in number of people in the World are suffering from HIV/AIDS. The present stats is around estimated 39Million people and out of that 37.2Million are adults, source UNAIDS. On the news yesterday i saw the headline like India will not be having enough medicines to combat this disease. All we can do from our side is to make people aware of the disease and the way its transmitted, so that we cannot control the numbers from increasing.



This image was on circulation y'day, i thought it makes much sense. For those who cannot choose one forever atleast use some contraceptive, so that it's safer for you as well as the other. Let's make this world a better place to live.