Nokia N900, My Preciousssss

I haven't had time to update this blog for the past few months, the main reason for this has been my (at times torrid) affair with the piece of silicon and plastic created in the fires of Mount Doom. Ok a bit of history, my first smartphone was the 6600 (I am used to carrying bulky black bricks), that phone consumed an entire summer break, I was obsessed with doing everything I could to make maximum use of it, configuring it as a webcam (although I had a 256 kbps line at that time), running N-gage games, writing python scripts for it etc etc. Then the iPhone came along with the obsession with touch, and my trusty 6600 crash and burned in a washing machine (I mourned for a few months), so I decided to have a fling with Esopos take on the iPhone, the 5800.

The first day with that phone was a brutal shake, the certificate manager denied access to almost all sis files I attempted to install, and then it occurred to me, Nokia wanted me to go to the Ovi store and shop for my siss. I was shaken (although I got through the certificate managers, still having to do so hurt me), hardware-wise the phone did not disappoint, although the speed of the phone paled when compared to ANY adversary.

After a year of this sham I was exhausted and wanted to move on, I had locked my sights on Android, but I always had a fleeting paranoia about google (which was proven correct later on) (yes I know I am blogging on google, but I will not surrender to the overlords when they come for me), just out of sheer morbid curiosity I checked out the N900 (also I had just chucked my laptop for a desktop, finally, so I needed a portable computer), I was infatuated by its first and only advertisement, that is around the time I came to the realization that I loved tinkering more than the results, and that was all I expected out of a device. Over the next month I thoroughly went over maemo.org and was swept away at the almost Thor like power of the device, it was everything I wanted.

After a week I went to the Nokia priority store, the phone was outta stock, after a few more days of waiting (I HATE waiting for something I really want), I finally got it. I wasn't able to get myself away from it even for a few minutes, I was commited for ever. Earlier I mentioned torrid, this would be because sometime negative posts on maemo.org would get me down, and I would join the dissenters, but then something new would surface and I would be lost again.

Here is a list of stuff (that I remember) I have done to BlackBird (my name for her):

0. Controlled my Air Conditioner (Had lost the remote)
1. Installed Android and dual booted (lotta games).
2. Installed Ubuntu and dual booted.
3. Programmed the phone via FrankenCamera and wrote some code to click the perfect pics, I was able to control stuff like exposure time, aperture speed etc. Lot of fun.
4. Installed Meego via u-boot.
5. Got palm games working (full 3D openGl games).
6. Quake 3.
7. Flashed her a coupla times.
8. Currently coding a coupla apps on QT.
9. VNCed to my PC.
10. Used TV out to watch few movies at home. (next I am going to attempt using pen drives, and connecting a bluetooth mouse and keyboard and use it as a TRUE computer)
11. Wrote some scripts for good backups.
12. Boosted the FM transmitter.
13. Skype video calling (The Indian SS want to ban it, to them I say #@!$ you)
14. Used it as a webcam via gstreamer.
15. Streamed music from it via Gst.
16. Used it as a hearing aid by sending mic signals to earpiece.
18. Wrote scripts for sync.

I cannot begin to describe or fathom the mammoth potential of the device, I am never restricted by the device, only by imagination. Waiting for 3G to truly unleash it.

I have convinced myself that this is the best phone ever and the last of the free as in free speech type device (cause Nokia will try to lockdown meego), so I have been contemplating buying another one and locking it in a safe in case of apocalyptic like situations (or what happened to my 6600).

Why Should we Encourage Piracy?

The Indian government must encourage piracy. Now the usual arguments of what about the creators of that which is pirated, how will they survive and so forth form in your mind. Let me make a rational stand for my argument. Imagine a pre-internet India, or lets go back a bit further and  to a pre-liberalization India, the only channel on TV was the heavily edited DD, newspapers were used to be stifled (emergency) and the only access to western civilization was expensive imported books (on which heavy excise was charged, just imagine books having to be smuggled), I remember my father telling me that the only reason he had access to excellent books during his childhood was beacause he grew up near a bunch of embassies and had access to those books. This was a government trying to keep its citizens in the dark, working for inefficient organizations. .

Then the floodgates opened in 1991, and India was suddenly exposed to the world to what it really was, an archaic broken organization. It took 7 years for the internet to really get going. Now a beautiful quality of the internet is that it eliminates artificial barriers (like excise), and is designed with the sole purpose of equality, in fact my fascination with the internet extends to thinking the idea of open protocols if applied to govern humans in the "real world" would finally lead to the long sought after utopia, but I digress, back to the topic, when the internet arrived, there was a slow but marked change in the awareness levels of people.


This equality of the internet allows anything that can be digitized to be shared free of cost, books, music, art, all pillars of an informed civilization made available to all. This has an almost socialistic effect on the distribution of knowledge. A guy could have access to literature dating from 1900s to the present in a hut, that kind of power will have repercussions, if the internet is used properly it could eliminate all the so called "tech lag", between third world nations and the rest of the world.

However I have long suspected it is always in the interest of a large organization to keep the people in the dark, as uninformed people are easier to manipulate (think of how the villagers in India are misled by politicians), this interest would definitely come in the way of really opening the floodgates. Edit: Now we see the government trying to actively censor the government, proof that they fear an informed populace.

And coming to the question of social responsibility and who pays for all that is pirated, there are two ways, big media aligns itself to this new mode of distribution, and switches to an advertising based model, or moderates costs based on the consumer, that is based on the purchasing of the customer (in a region) the rates change, yes there is a large scope for abuse, but then I am talking about media conglomerates embracing the internet, so I am allowed to be inventive.

Painting credit:
Reaching enlightenment - John Bencko

The Human Internet

Knowlegde is Power. This is an old adage that applies to some extent today, I say some extent because as openess and transparency increased, Information was obtainable by everyone and what became important was how to collect and use it. This process started with Gutenberg and today the torch is carried by the Internet. However now our instincts are getting in the way of progress.

Esoterism has always been a human tendency, we have such strict protectionist privacy laws, we have such a large minority support system. A very good example would be the family system. Basically the concept was (still is), if someone was related to you by blood, bonds of trust were formed and information was shared without obstacles. In a tribe like setup this was very useful for dissipation of information to who needed to know it (a primitive version of "need to know basis"). At that time human populations were isolated and war mongering was frequent (still is on a larger scale, for the sake of argument lets assume we stopped being blood thirsty), therefore dissipation within the tribe was sufficient, and this concept continued into the modern age. However I find it out of place and the time is ripe for a change.

One example of a mini universe in which the "before" and "after" effects of this experiment can be seen is the formation of the Internet. In the early days of networks, there existed many protocols of communication (proprietary), each unable to communicate with the others, everybody wanted a monopoly in information flow. However this led to outcry from the users, after which the IETF was formed to form standards. Once standard protocols were laid out, the manufacturers had no chance but to comply, because if they did not, no one would buy their product, thus the Internet was born in its present Avatar. Today the Internet is a massive repository accesible by anyone and lead to a great equalization between the plebs and the lords, simply because control of information was lost. However to access this massive repository certain sacrifices are made. The Internet is like the wild west, no enforcement, gunslingers everywhere, which may not be a bad thing, however can lead to damage. Also there is loss of privacy. we all lose some of our privacy when we use the Internet in all its glory.

Now let us expand this same setup to a larger field, our species itself. Lets standardize the protocols, eliminate the differences (language mainly). Let us abandon our human instinct of closeness and choose to shed our past. If we standardize the way we communicate, all information will be available, it will be an ultimate equalization (a realization of socialism, minus the headless czars and dictators). It will be a utopia in the truest sense. I just want you to picture everyone revealing their deepest darkest secrets (including you), will it really be such a bad thing? If everyone equally ascends to this level of thinking, we will just realize how similar to each other we are, and information will flow once again. The dream of uniting as a species, not nations, and eliminating petty boundaries will be closer to realization. The people in power will always attempt to keep us divided for their ends. Let us choose to abandon our privacy and our heritage. Let us eliminate the things which make us different, as they are artificial.

Why I believe the Maoist movement deserves a closer look, and not our usual Indian shrug

There is no such thing as a bloodless revolution, and there is no form of centralized governance which does not wrong anyone.

With these thoughts let us stop for a minute. Stop. Now think about what you know about the maoist movement. In all likelihood, your (mine too) exposure is limited to numerous "accounts" in newspapers and on "live TV" (forgive me for being so cynical about the media, ill explain myself), and of course the all pervasive death numbers. We like to feel patriotic on a sunday morning, picture this, wake up, read the paper "oh my god! 46 died.. tch tch what a tragedy.. what is this good for nothing government doing.. what if I was there?" and the rant goes on for some time, we all feel nice and fuzzy about having a nice political "debate".... Do you really care? Have you really bothered getting out of your boxy suburban flats (I know I haven't) and looking, really hard.

You want to know why the government sucks? Its because you suck, I suck, we all suck. The government is nothing but a reflection of ourselves, I would say a rather rosy reflection too. Who creates the government, we do!! who moronically votes the same family for 60 years, we do!! all in the name of the omnipresent "chalta hai!!". Just stop. Stop shitting on the grass, and commenting how filthy everything is. We all made it so. We all are equal stakeholders in this business of misery, but we just love to pass on the blame don't we. "the politicians are thieves", "caste politics suck", "this country is going to dogs", "terrorists are killing us!!", "lets crush minorities", "the slum next door, who cares, we get cheap labour rite", and on and on. Get up and clean your own shit.

And in this way we have created the monstrosity called India Inc. The desi Wall Mart. All hail, India Shining. Now what we don't realize is by being our lazy, retarded selves, WE are wronging a lot of people. How many of you knew 200000 farmers commited suicide in the last 5 Years, and these are Bharitya Sarkar figures (they do their own little coverups though), when you compare 46 to that figure, you see how many people we are wronging. If you are an Indian I know what you will say next "How dare you compare death figures, human lives are human lives, chii chii", all I can say is you seem to care when a lady is suppressing her jubiliation on TV, and reporting deaths, but when 200000 is thrown at you it is just another statistic. You are such a hypocrite, I am such a hypocrite, we all are such hypocrites.

Now I want you to imagine a set of circumstances which will force you to get out of your happy little rat race, in your happy little cubbyhole, pick up a country made rifle, declare undying allegiance to a red flag, and start killing army personel. Must be a very drastic set of circumstances right? borderline apocalyptic I guess. Thats what 60% of our "great" nation's population goes through everyday, but the magic is, wait for it.... you can't see it, cool rite? You see our "great" ancestors have programmed us to look "beyond" pain, and kick a guy in the ass anyway, and snatch his food. heh. We trade in human suffering everyday, we thrive on the blood soaked labour of others, and we still have the gall to snatch the last pound of food from the dusty broken hands of someone, spit at him, laugh and call it a democracy. heh. You think its all roses? wake up and smell the ashes.

I consider the Maoist movement a small reaction to the atrocities we commit everyday. I do not support their actions, however I just don't think a buncha farmers, live ones that too, holding placards is going to have an effect. Even dead ones dont garner much attention , because these dusty guys aren't "newsworthy" enough for the corporate whores of India. No sir, we need action, guns, bombs, that kinda thing, very arnoldy you see, instant sky high TPRs. But when the real call to the media comes (emergency anyone), its tail-between-the-legs time. Basically our press is a bunch of reality TV hosts, "burn baby burn!!". No one can blame them too, they give us what we want. India has become one big colosseum, everyone is baying for blood/entertainment. Just open TOI, I saw an article about dental hygene, with two blondes in bikinis brushing their teeth (they had to cover all the angles, firangi, lesbian, wet bikinis and yes lets not forget teeth), and we hail this as the harbringer of "education" to the "civilized". Once again almost all institutions are mere reflections of ourselves. And when the dusty-ones decide to vote, off-with-their-fingers time, we have kept them all uneducated, oblivious and cozy, after all why should they learn all these "complex" things, let em live the "simple" life and commit suicide.

Now I implore you to judge them in an unbiased manner, against the corrupt money grubbing theives we all are (look deep, nope deeper, remember when you bribed that guy.....ya that guy, you got it).

There is a war coming, make no mistake, the only question is what after? do we want stalinist russia, or laloo in-charge or are we all willing to share and not spit on each other? Thats up to you, me and us.

The true nature of Change

During the course of my internship, I finally sat my butt down and started doing some serious work, and some observations I made will shape my thinking/decisions for a long time.

Firstly, I realized change is unavoidable and is the inherent nature of things (atleast things I work on).

Next I came to believe my associations with objects (and of other people i presume) are of two types, I will call them logical associations and emotional associations. Logical associations are of the buy-sell variety, ex. I buy shares of a company just to make a quick buck later. Emotional assocations are when an object ceases to become an object and adapts a personality or when you associate it with a human emotion, ex. You buy shares in a company you helped build for 10 years, then the association with the same shares is that of years of hardwork which went into the company. In this case you would not be so willing to sell them for a small profit.

Now, emotional associations can be dangerous as they can bring out extreme reations in people. While logical associations will always elicit the same question, is this a gain or a loss to me, or will this lead to the goal it was designed for? For example, imagine staying in a home all your life, associating various key moments of your existence with it, assuming its existence as a security blanket, only to have to sell it, this would elicit sadness, a sense of extreme loss and irrational quotes to the buyers (which would inevitably lead to no sale, or a very disapointing sale). Now picture a land shark, he buys/sells 5 to 6 lots daily, do you think these reactions are elicited in those transactions, no, because all that is thought of is, is this transaction profitable?

Therefore, I have to come to conclude we need to detach emotional associations during transactions, because this will lead to overall rationality.

Coming to the nature of change, I was working on two parallel projects, one which aligned to my interests, and evoked a sense of discovery and learning within me, and one which simply had to achieve a goal and the means did not excite me. This situation lead me to work with great zeal on the former, and also lead to the formation of uncalled for emotional associations, I associated it with the joys of learning something new in this case. The latter project evoked no such reactions, and was just that to me, a project, nothing more nothing less. This project was poised for change from the very beginning, and the requirements seemed to change everyday and I had no problem scrapping stuff, as it was all for the achievement for a goal, the means itself had no intrinsic value.

However I was resistant to change on the first project from the very start, I would huff and puff, and attempt to build a house of cards on what was done, but not remove it. Towards the end, the first project greatly suffered due to my unwillingness to scrap. The second project on the other hand faced no such blocks, and will achieve its goal. Thus, clearly stating to oneself that the end is imporatant and not the means (in this case), and under any circumstances not developing emotional associations, will automatically poise anything to be flexible to paradigm shifting change and lead to overall ascent of human thought.

The meaning of life

Have you ever stopped and asked yourself "why am I doing this?", "whats the end result?". I am assuming almost all of us have at some point asked these questions. Lately I realized practically no one knows the answer and they have trained themselves to ignore the question entirely, or rather fear it.

Because such a question, if answered properly, can give a complete purpose for one's entire life, and if answered incorrectly, can lead to endless despair, finally culminating with the thought "There is no intrinsic meaning to life".

For a few years now I have attempted to debate on this topic with various people, my parents, grandparents, cousins and friends with a philosophical bent, what I observed was very disturbing.
Most people tend to skirt the question by answering something about "spiritual being" "god" "prayer", and just let it go. Few people fear the question so much they will not be willing to go near it. And some people have just and never want to think about it.

I however believe that a question of such seminal importance should be pondered over endlessly until an answer is that is satisfactory to oneself is found.

And after my months of pondering, I have answered this question at least to my satisfaction.

Here is what I think (and this answer may very well repulse you, or may not feel right, but it fits in with my logical reasoning well). I believe at a fundamental level the role of an individual in a species is simply to pass on genes and ensure survival of the species, nothing more nothing less. Our only task is ensuring humans as a species survive and genetic evolution continues. Everything else is just blither.

And lately this survival has moved on from the basic needs of food, game and shelter to a more advanced one i.e. the relentless pursuit of knowledge. Essentially all we have as a species is millenia of accumulated knowledge. From basic stuff like how to cook, to how to build a cruise missile.

So essentially, today, the intrinsic meaning of life or reason for living is simply to further the frontiers of out knowledge base, therefore we must ensure that each one of us is on a constant quest to better our species through this relentless pursuit.

Why purely private education is Bad and Never will Work

I know the current low down in India is privatization is good, mandated by god, good for the economy, look at america etc etc. And that government institutions tend to bring about mental images of creaking fans, files stacked up to the roof and depressed corrupt people.

However here is my point, a for-profit organization may have strange incentives when comes to providing a service like education. For example: A private university might actually BENEFIT by deliberately failing students in large numbers, its a good source of income, re-evaluation, re-exam and maybe a repeated sem, its all profitable. I am not saying that this is what happens, I am just saying since the sole pupose of the body is profit, in dire times the motivation to move towards general good will be rare.

Plus, an education isnt like getting a cup of coffee, its a life altering experience that shapes human lives. Packaging and marketing are not terms which should come to mind. In the future may be private institutes will start referring to good students as "dead beats" (taking a cue from credit card companies), as they are not profitable. Also the above mentioned motivations, even when non existant tend to plant seeds in the minds of "customers" of the insti. This leads to overall dissent.

Further, the lecturers become wage slaves and the management pressures get to them, u may say that in Government institutes lecturers barely come to class, because of no fear of reprimand, however I say thats what leads to great research. Scientific research is done with profit on the backburner, and a desire to expand horizons is what inspires most scientists. However when you become a worker at an assembly plant churning out engineers you lose sight of why you are there in the first place.

Infact according to me Free market and Democracy were always and will always be incompatible. I mean think about it, ow matter how democratic India is, when "workers" in colleges go to to teach, they are automatons who do stuff at the beck and call of the management, there goes democracy down the drain, this will be true for almost every free market enterprise.
Doesn't that sound a bit like communist china?

In another instance, most private institutes have the policy that all UG and PG work done as coursework, legally BELONGS to the institute, so there goes open source, and you yourself are unable to lay claim to your work later, it just belongs to them. Will any one in their right mind really innovate?

In comparison government institutions may be uninspiring and will sustain roten apples as a part of the tree, and may embody corruption, however there is inherent freedom. U know that u are not beholden to any management, this in itself should lead to the germination of few free-spirited ideas.

I therefore consider such an answerable-to-no-one-not-even-the-community model of education a Mc-Donalds fast food joint, food for the masses, not the connoisseur.