The parliamentary elections this year in India will be an all-electronic one with more than one million electronic voting machines being deployed. [+Slashdot link - the discussions are always more interesting than the original story!]. Given the humungous logistics of the entire operation [billion huge population, over 650 million voters] it will be really interesting to see how this works out.

There are those who like to find a meaning in everything, and a connection between every act around them. What do you think they make of Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings'?

How to build Matchstick Rockets!

Let's hope I don't burn the house down.

I have to say this.. Fortran 77 sucks! It makes me want to puke! It makes even the simplest of tasks as painful as wrestling with a bear on heat! And the documentation? I'll need six months just to understand what it tries to say!

Using a Versioning System on your PC

Okay, this is not just for geeks. Have you ever felt that it would be great if you could undo your mistakes on any file on your computer - if you could just rollback any file to a previous version? I've had that thought on many occassions, when I've accidentally overwritten my files and lost important stuff.

Well, this is how geeks do it in a software job. Every file is part of a versioning system. You basically pull a file out of the repository (check-out), work on it, and then check it back in (commit) when you have made your changes. If someone else is also working on the file, you can merge the changes. If you make a mistake, you can get a previous version from the repository. So, any mistake you make can be corrected and you can never really lose your files unless you somehow crash the repository.

You can also install CVS (that's the most common implementation) on your home computer and get the same advantages. You wouldn't have to worry about messing up your files ever! There is this great implementation of CVS for windows called Tortoise CVS. It works as a plugin to your Windows Explorer so that you can simply right click on a file and add it to the repository, or update it with a previous version. There are other versionoing systems such as Subversion (You could use Tortoise SVN), or WinCVS that you can use on Windows, but I really recommmend Tortoise CVS for the simplicity. For anyone who doesn't want to be bothered with the geekiness of using CVS, this is a great solution!

SpamGourmet - Indelicately eating your spam everyday!

What do you do when you are worried stiff about your email address ending up the deep spamhole? What if you do need to give out an address when a website asks you for one so that it can 'confirm your subscription'?
Use SpamGourmet. This free service lets you create an account that works very differently from the usual free email accounts. Let's say you need to give out an email address. Just give it out as someword.x.username@spamgourmet.com where someword is a random word you enter, x is the number of emails you want to receive at the address and username is your spamgourmet username. You do not have to create this address - the moment you receive email at this address, the address is generated by spamgourmet and it will forward exactly x number of emails to your actual email address before devouring any remaining emails. It's a useful account to have with you at all times coz ahem.. u never know when you might need one.

[Sidenote: Yahoo! now uses its own search engine based on Inktomi and Overture. Which means that it no longer uses Google as its primary search tool. While there is no way I can be convinced to ever use Yahoo! to search for anything, here's a page that instantly allows you to compare both search engines. +link+]

Valentine's day

If you are dateless on Valentine's day, (like yours truly), this is where you might want to be headed..

Who should..umm.. control the Internet?

I picked up this discussion on Slashdot about a BBC article by Bill Thompson which discusses the idea that the 'control' of the Internet should be transferred from bodies like the ICANN to the various governments of the world. The argument put forward is that the present Internet is too free - so much freedom of speech and the ability to publish content that can cross national borders and be viewed without restraint by much of the world is 'bad' for society. He gives examples of porn/spam/bestiality on the Interent to make his argument more palatable but IMHO it doesn't lend an iota more credence to his argument.

Sample this: "One part of the problem is that the net's standards are controlled by bodies like Icann and the Web Consortium whose primary interest is technical stability and corporate interests. "

Yes, I'd rather have the Internet run by corporate bodies whose interest is 'technical stability' rather than governments whose primary aim is to control people. People like Thompson (and these are the kind of people who run most governments) cannot accept anything in society that cannot be directly controlled by the government. The very reason that the Internet exists as such an important medium is that it allows unfettered exchange of ideas which cannot be effectively silenced in any way. Yes, it scares governments which cannot control what's read and seen by the populace the way television/radio/newspapers can be censored. The sole purpose of having an organization like the ICANN is to ensure that the Internet runs as smoothly as it is supposed to be. It is not a regulator of content or access on the Internet.
As an aside, Thompson mentions that "Of course, one consequence of giving control of the net to governments is that some governments are bad, prying on their citizens, denying human rights and reneging on international obligations." as if it is a minor irritant that we can live with!

It is a sorry state of affairs that people, even while espousing democratic principles, assume that people in power somehow have a better sense of morality and judgement than the people who elected them in the first place and that people must be saved from themselves by censorship. Let's keep the freedom that we have. More power to the free Internet!

How India became the capital of the computing revolution.

Wired magazine has this detailed story about how India turned out to be the technology hub of the world in little over a decade. When I was growing up, computers were just making their appearance in India and I got my first taste of computers only when I was in high school. It has never ceased to amaze me that a nation that was so unused to technology could adopt it so warmly and swiftly, that its name is almost synonymous with computing today. If you are a reader of slashdot, you have certainly heard the dissenting opinion - how jobs are being stolen from here by people who will work for a pittance compared to American salaries, but the fact remains that contrary to popular perception, it is not just call centeres and grunt-job programmers who pervade India - my former classmates in Bangalore work on technologies that give me a complex when they talk about it. And yes, fundamental research does take place in a big way. Just ask General Electric, Texas Instruments or Intel. It is great to watch technology spread all over the globe in ways unimaginable a few decades ago. I do believe that instead of destroying jobs in the US, this shift will create job and business opportunities, and advance technology like never before. I wish I could peek ten years into the future to see what surprises may come!

[UPDATE: Here's the very interesting Slashdot discussion on the same topic]

The Super Bowl Ads are all here

For those who missed the Super Bowl ads on sunday, watch them all online on IFILM. Do not forget to check out the Budweiser ads (I love the horny talking monkey ad) and the Pepsi that's-for-you-RIAA iTunes song giveaway ad.