Trying to teach my elderly neighbours how to use the computer was a harrowing experience.
I had to show them how to operate a webcam, take a picture off it, and send the picture by email to their son. This is what excited them about using computers.

For this I had to launch three different systems – a dialer to connect to the net, the webcam software itself( which I hadn’t used before) and the mail client.

The webcam itself was easy to use, but I got into trouble when I tried to email the picture. I had to choose an email client; I chose yahoo (browser based) because I wasn’t sure the other options were configured properly (I couldn’t ask because they hadn’t the slightest idea of the whole thing) It turned out that the yahoo mail account setup had been abandoned mid-way, and so it was asking me to complete the registration. I tried to do it, but then accidentally left a “yes” on in the registration options, so then it started installing yahoo companion for me. Frustrated, I abandoned the plan of sending through yahoo, found that Outlook Express was already installed on the system, and tried to find out where I could change my mail client choice in the webcam software. It turned out that the options once set was hidden really well, and so I decided to save the picture, launch Outlook Express, attach the image to a mail in the normal way, and send it. But then I had to ?igure out how to save the picture to the hard-disk. It turned out that it already was saved, and all I had to do was to pick up the correct path and attach the image. And of course, some stupid option was set to “yes” in OE setup, so as soon as it sent the mail, it disconnected from the Net, and I wondered about why my second mail wasn’t going.

It took me less time to do the stuff than it took to type the above paragraph, but for them, what I was doing was indistinguishable from wizardry.
The problem wasn’t that any software malfunctioned. It wasn’t even that the usability of any one software was particularly bad. It was just that because disparate systems have to work together, lower level abstractions leak through, confusing them.
They don’t know the difference between Internet and e-mail, don’t know that the pictures that they see on screen are actually “image” “files” that are stored on their “hard-disk”. They don’t know that these “files” are ordered hierarchically into “folders”, and can be found by giving a particular “path” and that they can be “attached” when sending an email. They will have to learn these things eventually, but confronting them with these lower-level abstractions when they are just trying to get a functional level knowledge of a software doesn’t seem like a good idea.

It looks as if the only way to be competent at using a computer at one level is to learn it at lower level of abstraction. Doesn’t seem fair to me.

So Narendra Modi has been re-elected to power in Gujarat.
I used to support the BJP, at least the secular part of its stated agenda – a Uniform Civil Code, abolition of Article 370, a tough stand against terrorism. Only in the twisted world of Indian politics could these policies be called the “Soft Hindutva” line.
I had also hoped that they’d run the economy better than the Congress and the others did. I’d have forgiven them backsliding on the UCC and Article 370 if they had done at least done that. After all, I am Hindu and male. The UCC is rather low on the list of my priorities. (And the people who should be asking for one – representatives of Muslim women – are pointedly silent on the question). Article 370 is really a non-issue. I am in any case in favour of giving more powers to states. I thought the BJP was, too.
What is really bugging me now is not just that the BJP shamelessly failed to deliver on any of these promises, but in Gujarat used its very failure to govern as a reason to ask for votes. They failed to protect Gujaratis from getting burnt in Godhra. They failed to prevent the riots which killed hundreds of Gujaratis – in fact, their o?n goons carried out the pogrom. And they are the ones who asked for votes on the basis of Gujarati pride. The BJP government at the Centre has capitulated time and again to the terrorists – and they asked for votes on the basis of nationalism.
Given that by a BJP voter’s own standards the BJP has failed, why did they turn out in large numbers to vote for the BJP?

There was once an architect who was designing a campus. He planned the layout, the buildings and the lawns, but he left out one thing. He did not plan for any pathways between the buildings. After the buildings were constructed, he waited for a year. Without pathways, the students naturally walked on lawns. They took up the shortest path between their source and destination. The lawns showed the places where students had walked, because the grass was thinner there.
He then constructed the pathways there.
I just remembered this story when I was thinking about spontaneity and order.

The story of Norman Borloug who helped India achieve its Green Revolution. Four pages long, but still a good read.
In the mid-’60s, Borlaug traveled to India and Pakistan in an attempt to avert massive disaster. The countries had plunged into one of the worst droughts in years. Millions teetered on the edge of starvation. For several frantic months, Borlaug and his team dodged war, struggled with bum seeds and battled entrenched bureaucrats.

How comes it that the only version of the story I have heard is that in the 60s we were on the verge of starvation, humiliatingly dependent on aid from the Americans (who of course were giving us aid only to exploit us) and along with their seeds came a lot of weeds which spread all over the place, and we were delivered from all this by the Green Revolution?

Any numerologist out there? Can he tell me the significance of this number?
Beause whenever I FTP a file to my webserver, the upload is breaking at exactly 34816 bytes. What cosmic significance does this number have? (It is not a power of 2. You don’t need to check that.)

Its called Froogle
It gives you the prices, you can sort by prices and categories. And it actually works! Behaves a bit quirkily, but it is still in its beta version. (from Webjives)
Google is get?ing scarier by the day. How long will it be before it acquires a mind of its own and starts running the world?
And by the way. Google now knows that I am Ravikiran the first

In the 1950s, before space travel was a reality, scholars worried about whether orbiting the Earth would even be legal. Under the law as it existed at that time, each nation’s sovereignty extended usque ad coelum ? literally “to the heavens”. Each nation’s territory thus consisted of a wedge beginning at the Earth’s core and continuing infinitely upward and outward.

This posed a number of absurdities, but the greatest difficulty was to orbiting spacecraft. Flying over a nation’s territory without permission was illegal, perhaps even an act of war. But although aircraft could change course to avoid passing over countries who desired to bar their way, spacecraft ? their orbital paths fixed by the laws of physics ? could not. If any country beneath them (which might mean any country in the world, depending on the inclination of their orbit) objected, it didn’t matter that everyone else agreed.

Thus starts an interesting article by Glenn Reynolds in The Australian. The point? The experience gained then can be applied while developing international law for the Internet.

By popular demand (i.e., 50% of our readership), we proudly present to you the brainwashed product of global capitalism:
Miss Turkey!

“I am very honoured to be Miss World,” said Azra “I think it is good for a woman to have this position, and I hope I can make a difference.”
Update: Opinion Journal Best of the Web says: (scroll down)
You better believe it’s good for a woman to have this position! Back when Miss World was a men’s-only club, the swimsuit competition was a dreary affair indeed.

And here is another victim of the beauty myth.

This photograph, taken a week after the fall of Kabul to the US forces, is of an Afghan widow on the streets, begging.
Notice the nail polish? Nail polish was banned under the Taliban. Wearing it was punishable with amputation of a finger tip.
Oops: The second image doesn’t show. Click here to see it.

Amazon.com wants you to be sure to have clean underwear, no matter what else you’re buying.
On Wednesday Amazon.com made the shocking admission that it doctors some of its product recommendations, which are supposedly compiled by objective software that compares each customer’s purchasing history with the histories of others who’ve made similar purchases.
For instance, the page for the DVD “Titanic” states, “Customers who bought this DVD also bought ‘Forrest Gump,’ ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ ‘Gladiator,’ and ‘Independence Day.’ ”
But Amazon.com said some of the recommendations for additional products are made up. TechWeb (via Better Living Through Software)
When a similar sort of thing happened with search engine, Google entered the fray. I wonder whether Google will come up with a “product search” too.

“Raj K. Gupta, a partner in one of India’s largest shoe manufacturers, makes a dreaded but necessary trip every two months to Hong Kong and then into Guangdong Province in southern China.
He goes to buy Chinese shoemaking machinery, because India has few producers of such machinery.”
New York Times (Free Registration required)
Read the whole thing. It is an eye opener.
A McKinsey study a couple of years back had recommended that freeing up product markets i.e. removing the reservation of products for the small scale industry is the thing that will cause the biggest impact on India’s GDP growth.
The article mentions that India is “obsessed” with its backwardness as compared to China. If only this was true.
Update:
On the other hand, there isthis article (free registration required) that claims that the Chinese miracle is basically a Potemkin village. Most of the statistics are fudged, corruption is widespread, the banking system has gone to seed, industries are growing less productive by the day and, central planning has meant a massive misallocation of resources. There isn’t much of a Chinese market because its low cost exports mean that the Chinese themselves are poor, without much buying power. Their cities look cleaner because the Chinese themselves are being kept out. The article predicts a collapse in a few years.
Hm… That makes me happy.. Not because I dislike or envy the Chinese, but believing that a Central Government can actually direct economic growth is to either believe in socialism or in miracles. – a difficult task for a capitalist and atheist.
On the third hand, China doing wrongly is not an excuse for India to do a different set of wrong things and then claim that we were on the right path when China collapses.

Pankaj Mishra writes in the Boston Globe, repeating the canard that there was no such thing as Hinduism before the British came.

“Indeed, there was no such thing as ”Hinduism” before the British invented the catch-all category in the early 19th century and made India seem the home of a ”world religion” that was as organized and theologically coherent as Christianity and Islam. The word ”Hindu” itself was first used by the ancient Persians to refer to the people living near the river Indus (”Sindhu” in Sanskrit). It later became a convenient shorthand for those who weren’t Muslims or Christians.”

His failure to describe Hinduism is reminiscent of Shankaracharya’s failure to describe the soul – the Neti Neti philosophy.
Is Hinduism a universalist religion like Islam or Christianity? No.
Was the Vedic religion the same as Hinduism? No.
Are any of the various sects of Hinduism Hinduism? No.
There are various philosophical streams in India. Is any one of them Hinduism? No.

Whatever the question, the answer would be no. Because it cannot be described, there is no such thing as Hinduism.

Americans observed a “Buy Nothing” day yesterday – the day after their Thanksgiving day, and the start of their Christmas shopping season. Filtercoffee wants us Indians to observe it a fortnight before Diwali. Sure why not? As a capitalist, I will go along with the idea if it gets corporate sponsorship.