Bangalore has its best

Bangalore is a kool city. with its gals, cosmo-culture, great employment opportunities, comparatively kooler climate and loads of pubs n bars; it has it all. with the exception of good movie theatres. there was a time when bangalore had the highest number of theatres any city could haveImight be true today too). most of them are shut down now. i think its bcoZ of the great competition. after bangalore has to yield to atleast about half a doZen languages(english, hindi, kannada, tamil, telegu, malyalam). with the othe rhalf of what is remaining i find only a couple(symphony) worth a good movie experience. now, a new entry has cahnged the scene. PVR has added a huge, giggantic 'PHORUM'. with its 8 screens, a total of 2000 seating capacity, great foodCourts at 'TranZit' it is definitely the best of the pic.. i was in Audi 1 and the screen was large enough, the leg room was good and so was the elbox room. the recline was also satisfactory. every new theatre added to PVR`s portfolio has also seen the tickets going up and up. ours cost us 130 bucks(u can get it cheapper on weekdays(except fridayZ ofcourse)).
btw i saw Kisna and twas a waste of money. vivek oberoi looks good with his long hair, but doesnt seem to fit well into the poet role. i like him bbetter when hes this angry guy, with his temper and josh running on all cylinders. the heroine is great at hanging frm ropes; monkeys n gymnastic enthusiasts would luv her(seriously, great body, amaZing flexibility, can do a great martial art film).

What do Gals want???

i aint sure what it is??? i mean is it my 6 month long hair or my eyeZ or what. someones gotta tell me this. consider this.
i was walking towards M.G. road to meet someone. on the way there was this sweet lil gal, standing on the footpath with a lady. she was real cute may be in 3rd or 4th standard, large black penetrating eyeZ, curly black hair and fair skin. she was looking at me directly in the eye when i walked past her. so as a spur of the moment stimulii, i winked at her. and out of nowhere she turns to the lady standing next to her and retorts 'Mommy that boy winked at me'.
Oh Boy!!!! what am i going to do in life???

The Decline of Script

The Decline of Script

This is kind of sad, because a person’s handwriting says quite a lot about them; there was a time when I cared about mine and was proud that it was legible, attractive, and idiosyncratic.

cant there be other parameters substituted in this case?? ofcourse, i know 'typist recognition' is plausible on the basis of inter-character speed, the pressure applied on the keys, the amount of time a key is held and so on. so why the fuss???

Bangalore

I have been reading a lottof stuff about language, rationality and cognitive science and stuff like that. and heres something frm those lines. a group of people in their mid-twenties were put into experimentation mode. All of them were 3 pictures that of 3 birds each. lets say the birds were X,Y and Z. Now X and Y are birds that fall into 2 different categories A and B. the birds X, Y and Z are such that if X falls into category A and Y falls into category B and if Z falls in category A, then Z`s physical appearace is like that of B and vice-versa. On showing the pictures to the sample space, some chunk of information about the bird being shown was passed on to them. the birds were always shown in the order of X, Y and Z. for example when showing the pic of bird X the audience was told that it has a left heart only, while for the Y bird they would be told it has a right heart only(pathetic example, i know). then on showing them bird C, told them whic category it belonged to and were then asked as in what they think about bird Z(left heart and right heart). statistics say that 80% respondents guessed the bird has the same charectiristic as in which the catefory it falls to. when the average age of this sample space to about 12-15, the % dropped to 60%. what this prooves that while growing up one develops a hiearical taxanomy of calssification(i only descibed a piece of the experiment, the whole experiment at large prooved the statement) . so now lets getto the point.
as i just said, humans develop a hiearical taxynomy of classification for all artifacts. ans so theres one for the feminine sex. first there are gals, then ladies and last but best divas. and bangalore is full of divas. luv u bangalore. bangalore roX.

travel PlanZ

the last half of last year was pretty hectic travelling with two trips to and from ahmd-mum in a span of 12 days. it just keeps getting better. im leaving for b`lore on 21st and will back on 26th. untill about 12 hrs ago i was to be in mumbai on 28,29 and 30. but now im alo required to be at pune on 29th. i might as well juggle b.w pune-mumbai on 29th and then finally get back here by 1st feb.
btw this also reminds me of a frequent misconception that most of us generally have. when ennumerating the pros of buying a lappy as against a desktop, ppl often seem to view mobility as an advantage. although not austere in nature considering the context, there is a miniscule error in that line of thought. a laptop wouldnt fall in the category of mobile devices. a laptop is only portable in the sense that it is much easier to carry to different places and use it there. a mobile device would be one which u can use, say while sitting behind someone on a bike, or something like that. with this definition one can also see the light in Bill Gates` statement(im pretty sure twas him) wrt laptops. if im correct he saaid, noQuote laptops would be obsolete within 10 yrs max noUnQuote. in all probablity they would be replaced by there mobile cousins(tablets) and daughters(PDAs).

The Other Side

There has been an umpteen amount of hue and cry over this issue.(n this too) personally it dint take me more than a minute to empty my entire vocab of abusive lang directly on mr. RJ. but then, i was like, 'wait a min. this is only the tip of the iceberg and they know it'. BPO as the name suggests is only about 'business process' outsourcing. what is being outsourced is the labourious and monotonic component of the job.(including legal paper work, medical paper work, and the more popular call-centre jobZ). and this is because of the non-availablity of a large man power. but this is only the start. sooner than later they will outsource their research needs, not because they would get a large quantity of cheap labour elsewhere but because they would profit more through a better quality technical n scientifict work force. and then we can have the last laugh.

Now, these guys are talking technology

Korea for Digital Voting

Did Ya Know??? Chapter 2

More on GooGle

• The prime reason the Google home page is so bare is due to the fact that the founders didn't know HTML and just wanted a quick interface. Infact it was noted that the submit button was a long time coming and hitting the RETURN key was the only way to burst Google into life.
• Due to the sparseness of the homepage, in early user tests they noted people just sitting looking at the screen. After a minute of nothingness, the tester intervened and asked 'Whats up?' to which they replied "We are waiting for the rest of it". To solve that particular problem the Google Copyright message was inserted to act as a crude end of page marker.
• One of the biggest leap in search usage came about when they introduced their much improved spell checker giving birth to the "Did you mean..." feature. This instantly doubled their traffic, but they had some interesting discussions on how best to place that information, as most people simply tuned that out. But they discovered the placement at the bottom of the results was the most effective area.
• The infamous "I feel lucky" is nearly never used. However, in trials it was found that removing it would somehow reduce the Google experience. Users wanted it kept. It was a comfort button.
• Google makes changes small-and-often. They will sometimes trial a particular feature with a set of users from a given network subnet; for example Excite@Home users often get to see new features. They aren't told of this, just presented with the new UI and observed how they use it.
• They use the 20% / 5% rules. If at least 20% of people use a feature, then it will be included. At least 5% of people need to use a particular search preference before it will make it into the 'Advanced Preferences'.
• The name 'Google' was an accident. A spelling mistake made by the original founders who thought they were going for 'Googol'
• Gmail was used internally for nearly 2years prior to launch to the public. They discovered there was approximately 6 types of email users, and Gmail has been designed to accommodate these 6.

Source

Alas, Triumph!!!

My hostel, or Hall Of Residence as our university director might want us to call it has 6 wings(and 2 other seprate ones semi-finished). the six wings are shaped in the form of a cross knot. how can i describe it. assume a square of side length 'a units'. now, elongate from any one corner of the square the two sides intersecting on that corner another 'a units'. thats the shape of the Men`s Hall of Residence. the elongated sides are wings E and F and the other 4 sides of the square form wings A, B, C and D resp. and im a resident of wing C. C-105 to be precise. k, now lets get to the point. to save electricity and a loyt of money the college had installed solar pannels for hot water. but ever since they were installed our wing never got a drop of hot water. infact i think it would be more cold then normal. winters were spent without having a bath or a shave. twas the same story for 2 seasons now. this time i was determined to bathe atleast every alternate day. hence, i did some research. after persistent questioning to a credible sample of students from all the wings and frequent testing throughout the day, i knew it all. hot water was available in 3 shifts at different places and at different times. for the morning it was wing F b/w 7:45 am and 8:30 am. then in the afternoon twas wing A at about 2pm. and the last shift was at about 8 pm in wing B. so i was at it. managing to bathe atleast once in a couple of days faring frm wing to wing with a bucket and a towel, sometimes even risking the girls having a look at me in my towel(although that never happened, but then, i did take the risk). but today was different. after a whole night of having to deal with dirty html code that developers write without any sympathies for the parsers that have to deal with them, and the GooGle APIs that make them look so much as NOogle APIs my wing tasted hot water. and so did thy body. it felt so good to bathe in my own wing. the water was so free flowing and hot twas, it removed all the stress n strain frm my body. finally god had mercy on me. atlast i triumph!!!

Did Ya Know???

• that GooGle returns different search results when querried through the browser and when querried through its webService.
• that GooGle might say that it has a cached version of a certain URL but when u ask for it, it might not
• that GooGle is such a pathetic looser when it comes to intelligent information retrieval
• that GooGle, even if it wanted, could not remove a page from its index immediately
• and that its still the best search engine around???

Believe Me. I have been playing with its APIs all night.

HAL, frm 2001: A Space Odyssey

Let me quote the following piece of conversation b/w HAL and Dave Bowman
Dave Bowman : Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL : I`m sorry Dave, I`m afraid I can`t do that.

Simple. But do u know the amount of processing that HAL would have to go through to pass that kind of response. consider this

• Firstly HAL, must be capable of analyzing an incoming audio signal and recover from it the exact sequence of words Dave used to produce that signal. not only does that invollve heavy signal processing but also requires knowledge about phonetics and phonology, which can help model how words are pronounced in colloquial speech.
• Also note that HAL is capable of producing words like I`m and cant`t which requires knowledge of the morphology of the language which is the study and structure of form of words in language or a language, including inflection, derivation, and the formation of compounds.
• To produce the right arrangement of words in the sentence HAL must underastand the syntax of the lannguage.
• Again to understand the menaing of the words used by Dave, HAL must understant the lexical semantics involved.
• Add to that the compositonal semantics of the language which would be used to understand the combined meaning of the words
• Next, instead of just declining(the pod doors cannot be opened) HAL chooses to be provide a polite response which would come under the pragmatics heading
• And last one woould also note that HAL is trying to engage in a structured conversation which would mean that HAL posseses knowledge about discourse conventions.

Isnt that enough???

asl??? why not bosp???

this was about 4-5 yrs ago. whenever i wrote 17.m.india the other side would not respond. whether twas yahoo messenger or msn or even mirc. xx.m.india always met a dead end. the scent still remains the same. friendster/orkut/yahoo messenger/hi5/msn messenger, all of them have the same tale to tell.(btw i once asked a friend`s friend(who happens to be an american gal) as to why this happens and if my neural network doesn't fail me then this is what she said. word to word. 'indian guys are so sick. i get doZens of messages everyday saying 'hi xyZ. wanna be friendZ. or MORE. blah blah blah.' they are such dumb assholes and all they ever wanna know is what color underwear im wearing'. so guys u have ur clue there). but that is not my point. my point(just helping the parser in not dealing with anaphors) is to why do we go about posing asl??? isnt it the internet where we have separate,unique, and possibly deCoupled digital identities??? and why the hell do u wanna map that digital identity to the real identity in the digital world?? well, on second thoughts there would be 2 disjoint line of thoughts. the first wherein one always tries to keep a firm mapping b/w the digital and the real self. but wait, isnt that really boring.
i would belong to the second school of thought that would believe in completely disassociated digital and real identities. (although i have not been following that path as all the mail ids and usernames that i use are a direct function of thy name.) i would also believe that there is still going to be a time when nation states would no more be defined by geography but by intellectual/business/emotional interests through the digital world. (yo, hope lives on). so next time ur in a chat room and someone asks u asl, plZ respond by bosp, or browser.os.processor

More

There are two ways of constructing a software design: one way is to make it so
simple that there are obviously no deficiencies; the other way is to make it so
complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. (C.A.R. Hoare)

and they are getting better. this one goes straight to my heart...

A computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations
but rather that it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about
methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally
for machines to execute. (The Structure and Interpretation of Computer
Programs, H. Abelson, G. Sussman and J. Sussman, 1985.)

Software Documentation n Sex

i was playing with this tool called GATE(General Architecture for Text engineering) and this is the first line i found in there documentation.

Software documentation is like sex: when it is good, it is very, very good; and
when it is bad, it is better than nothing. (Anonymous.)

way to go guys!!!

The UniQueNess of Human Language

Duality of Patterning -- the use of a small number of meaningless elements(phonemes) in combination to produce a large number of meaningful terms.
Displacement -- the ability to to use language for things other than here and now. im to believe only honey-bees are capable of displacement.
Open-endedness -- the ability to use language to say anything at all, including stuff u have never said or heard before.
Stimulus-Freedom -- the ability to use language to say anything u like in any context(free from teh stimulus).
Arbitratiness -- the absence of any necessary connection between a linguistic form and its meaning.