Portable Hard Disks – mmmmwwwaahh !

Just thought of giving all you people who intend to buy large portable hard disks some advice.

You have two options.

Buy a regular SATA/ATA hard disk, and enclose it in a casing that protects it from dust and basic damage, and also attaches an IDE-to-USB convertor to the hard disk, thus adding that crucial ‘ease-of-data-transfer’ feature. This option is cheaper, and you can buy HDs of humongous capacity, and carry them around. The disadvantage is that since this HD is really a normal HD enclosed in a casing, it is not really ‘portable’. Yes, you can carry it around. But you will need an extra power source, and the chances of the HD getting corrupted over time, especially if subjected to jerks while on power, are really high. For example, at the beginning of this year, I purchased a 232 GB (standard 250 GB) Seagate SATA HD for Rs. 3900. I also purchased a Transcend casing for 1600 bucks. (This is among the higher end ones – you can get a cheaper Chinese equivalent for around 600 bucks.) Thus I got a pseudo-portable 232 GB HD for Rs. 5500. In mid-2005, I had purchased another such HD + casing, for 2900 + 700 = 3600 bucks. Such HDs are very useful for people who have access to lot of data (movies, sitcoms, music, e-books, software, etc.).

The second option, obviously, is to go for an actually portable HD (let me call it pHD), which is of the same type of the HDs used in laptops. These pHDs do not require any extra power as they source their power from the USB port. You can carry these pHDs in you pockets, thus taking all your data with you, without worrying too much about the pHD getting corrupted. Until recently, these didn’t come cheap – what with an 80 GB Toshiba pHD costing Rs. 4000+. However, just last month, a friend of mine managed to buy such a pHD of size of 120 GB at a meager (by pHD standards) Rs. 3000. How cool is that ! Ofcourse, this was in Singapore, but if you do know someone who is going there, this is what you should be telling that person to buy. This implies that two 120 Gb pHDs (= 240 Gb) will cost just Rs. 6000, a wee Rs. 500 more than Rs. 5500 I paid 4 months back for a HD of the same size which wasn’t really portable, which was as heavy as big book and which required external power.

My next HD purchase, which won’t be until atleast 2-3 years later, is definitely going to be a large capacity pHD. I have a feeling that I might just be able to afford it then !

Posted @ 11.05 pm, July 05, 2007

The difference between Americans and Europeans ?

I have come across this difference many times. Not first-hand, certainly, but in many books and articles. P. G. Wodehouse has made innumerable allusions to this great difference, often with great humorous effect. (The funniest example would be the scarab collecting American in Something Fresh.) Many writers, (e.g. Grisham) whose stuff I have read, have commented upon this. An uncle of mine who has had the opportunity to interact with people from both these regions has also mentioned this difference.

And today, in an article on Fortune.com, Jean-Marie Eveillard, a French who has work in the US for the major part of career, has been quoted as saying

"... Shortly after I retired, a friend of mine who's in the business said to me, "Ah, well now you'll have plenty of time to run your own portfolio." I told him no. I kept my money in my funds - or what used to be my funds - because it would not have shown great confidence in Charles if I had taken my money off the table.

Also, one thing about Americans - something I think is very positive - is there's this idea that God did not put us on this earth to do nothing. No matter your age. Whereas Europeans believe that once you retire, there is nothing wrong with doing nothing.

I was reading the financial newspapers, I helped teach a course on value investing at Columbia Business School, but otherwise I did not have a very active retirement."

Wireless

I love things that are wireless. By wireless, I mean absolutely without wires, not just wi-fi. I believe in the literal meaning of wi-fi - wireless fidelity - loyalty to that which is without wires. And fidelity towards wireless need not be restricted to snazzy electronic gadgets - it can be applied to almost any gadget or machine.

The arrival of mobile phones, satellite communication techniques, technologies like GPRS, CDMA, 3G etc. are slowly but surely negating the need for having wired telephone and internet access. Sure, wired communication is still safer, cheaper, faster and more reliable for the general public. Sure, all internet traffic travels through gargantuan and serpentine layers of undersea cabling and a worldwide network of telephone cables. Sure, Relcom purchased Flag Telecom and recently finished laying cables across the length and breadth of India. In my opinion, however, wireless is the proverbial 'lambi race ka ghoda', the technology of the future which will render wires obsolete within the next few decades.

I dream of a world in which all voice and data communication takes place only through the wireless medium.

Today, an ever increasing number of people own personal computers. Organisations invest heavily in a lot of computer hardware - PCs, network routers, storage and backup media, etc. All these are connected with wires. The standard desktop PC is a huge mess of interweaving wires - the daily jhaad-poos-waali-bai's worst nightmare. Monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, printer, scanner, webcam - all have to be connected to the CPU. There are inter-speaker wires for those 5.1's and 7.1's. The iPod has to be connected with a wire as also the mobile phone. Add to that all the power cables and internet cables. It's a mad, mad world. But nowadays, wireless mice and keyboards are becoming cheaper, and hence, more popular. The other components still use wires only, but this is set to change with bluetooth and other such short-distance high-datarate technologies being invented, perfected and mass distributed. Laptops are also being used by many more people, and a laptop is one of the strongest proponents of the wireless world.

I dream of a world in which laptops and slim wifi-communicating-component-based desktops become commonplace, and all communication with PnP devices is wireless.

Some years back, these people we knew, had purchased a flat in the outskirts of Pune. Since the area was in the purlieu of city, the municipal corporation wasn't supplying water to that area. The society had to make do with a couple of borewells dug up near. However, this water contained salts and other minerals, which made it non-potable. Hence, they had to purchase those 20 liter plastic cartons of water. Later, however, they came across this machine in an ad, which converted the water vapour in the air into drinking water. The manufacturers guaranteed atleast 20 liters of water a day. I do not know whether they actually purchased the 'aquator', but it lent high-octane fuel to my imagination - it created the possibility of elimination of water pipes from our lives. In the same way, a device could be created that would 'vaporize' all the used and unclean water, or better still purify it immediately for reuse.

I dream of a world in which there are no ugly waterpipes disfiguring our homes and bathrooms, and where the atmosphere itself is a conduit for all the water that we need.

Quite a few people must have read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. In that, the leading hero, John Galt, invents a motor that is able to generate electricity / power from air. It is certainly a very fantastic claim. But, having seen the great leaps taken in technology over the past decade and a half, one cannot discount outright the possibility of such an invention taking place some years down the line. And if the invention is exactly the way it is described in the book, producing energy from thin air and yet not polluting it a bit, then it would solve 90% of the world's problems - think fuel shortage, oil and gas wars, related inflation, environmental problems and global warming. But, my focus is not on that. I look at the beauty of it - no horrendous transmission lines dotting the horizon. No ugly tangled masses of wires near your house. Clean standalone devices. No wires to trip over.

I dream of a world in which there are no messy wires spoiling the beauty of compact devices.

Some things that I wish for, especially those in the previous paragraph are way too far-fetched. However, the other things that are mentioned are very much feasible - and have already been implemented somewhere or the other. I really can envisage something like this happening in my house. Imagine your music system, your laptop / cool wireless compact lcd-screen desktop, your portable music player and your mobile seamlessly connected through wireless medium, offering an unimagineable fluidity as far as your data is concerned.

I dream on . . .


Disclaimer : This post has been written on the spur of the moment and without any research. So, some claims might be very far-fetched and some closer to reality than can be imagined.

Suicide : Crime or Not ?

I feel that committing suicide is not a crime, and a person who has tried committing suicide with sincere intentions and has failed, should not be penalized. However, I am all for suicide being a severely punishable offence. The reason is that this will serve as a deterrent for all those people who feign suicides to generate attention or sympathy. And, the declaration of a suicide attempter as a criminal, will indirectly benefit the people who really want to commit suicide, in that, they know that they cannot fail - the life which drove them to suicide will become even worse.

The Educated Cobbler

This is a true story. I repeat, this is an absolutely true story with no fabrications or exaggerations whatsoever.

-----------------------------


I was in Calicut at that time and my sandals needed repair. I remembered that quite a few cobblers used to sit lined up along the road near the local Medical College. I went there by bus, and sure enough, there were around four cobblers there, sitting solemnly on the road with their backs resting on the railing separating the road from the pavement. Each one of them was sitting on those tarpaulin mats, with a black umbrella somehow propped up to protect themselves from the heat of the sun. I picked one of them who seemed idle at that moment and removed the sandals from the plastic bag. Since I am not quite adept at the local language, I decided to avoid speaking as far as possible, and using gesticulations instead, to communicate.

I pointed at all the places where the sandals were torn, looked at the cobbler, nodded and said "Stitch haan.. here".

"So, you are a student ?".
"Uhh.. eh ? Ah, yes.. I am studying at NIT Calicut."
"And what is your name ? I am Sam."
"I'm ---."

And so on. Sam told me that he had been befriended by a professor of English at some college nearby, and this professor had taken the efforts to teach him English. Not only that, he had also lent Sam many books from his personal library. That was many years ago, and this professor was no longer alive. After that, Sam had taken to travelling in and around North Kerala and North Tamil Nadu - "cobblering" along the way - he had spent some years in Coimbatore, and now he was back in Calicut. Amazing !

"Stalin was from a humble background too. His father was a cobbler, like me."
"You mean Stalin, of Russia ?"
"Yes. The dictator of Russia."

So, this guy was really well read. I made a mental note to check this up, but I was pretty sure it would be accurate.

We continued chatting in English - about the weather, about Malayam, about English, about Bombay... A boy carrying some glasses filled with black tea, "chaaya" in local parlance came by, kept a glass near the mat, and went on with his round. The cobbler took the glass in his hands and asked me - "Would you care to have some tea ?". I politely declined. He took a sip, "It is very strong. All of us cobblers here drink this black tea. We need it - the heat makes us tired."

Now the sandals were done. He showed me the new stitches. He had really stitched the sandals well.

"How much ?", I asked.
"15 rupees."

That was very reasonable. I felt he should have asked more - and I wanted to pay him atleast 20. But, for some reason, I felt it would look odd, and he had that gentlemanly air and that pride about him which made me hesitate paying a tip. So I paid him the 15 bucks.

I wrapped the sandals in the polythene bag and turned to go. Sam took out a bidi, lit it up and said grandly, "Now I will fag !".

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Objective Journalism

Certain articles are supposed to be objective news, while others are opinions. I guess it is well-known that the media has subtle ways of showing what it feels about a particular person, celebrity or otherwise, even in articles that are meant to be objective.

We face, on a regular basis, carefully worded descriptions which can mislead us, or interviews from which sentences are dropped or quoted only partially. If you want see the full power of misquotation and misconstrueing, see the 2nd episode in the first season of That 70s Show, titled Eric's Birthday. Kelso is the protagonist in this case, and somewhere into the 8th minute ... well, I recommend you see it for yourselves. Today, however, I came to know of another way in which, we the gullible audience, can be unknowingy pushed into a particular direction without knowing it.

While browsing through the newspaper, I came across some article on Ramadoss, and the photograph of this accompanying the article was what set me thinking. It looked like some journalist had spent hours poring through various photographs to find the one in which Ramadoss had the weirdest facial expression - in this case, it was even more weird than the expression which the character played by Ranveer Shourey (have I got the spelling right ?) in Bheja Fry. Or maybe some photographer with infinte patience, lightening speed and a sadistic sense of humour waited for the correct moment, and handed it over to the aforementioned journalist. Or maybe, I'm just conjuring crazy conspiracies in my head - it was just a coincidence. "Just a coincidence" - I can imagine Seinfeld telling this to good old paranoic George. George repeats it to reassure himself, but he actually doesn't believe so. I can't believe this too, for one has to be blind to ignore it. I wonder what that journalist had against poor Ramadoss -oh ! Maybe it is because of the banning of smoking and the whole freedom of expression thing. Toohey would be proud of this guy !

I also remembered the case of a certain Perreira - the photograph accompanying any news item on him is usually the same - with him looking in a very arrogant and angry and callous way at some point in space. Now, suppose, just suppose, hypothetically, that this Perreira fellow is actually a nice, sensitive fellow and by some horrible godforsaken twist of fate, he got embroiled in whatever happened. In that case, thanks to the way the photograph has been taken - maybe that expression fell on his face for just a split second - will definitely affect the way the public takes a personal opinion on him, won't it ? Anyway, I think I have been watching too much of George and Seinfeld.

I need a break !

The Future of Gadgets and Interfaces

Somewhere in the middle of last semester, a video titled "The Future of Computing" popped up on our hostel LAN. Obviously some one had downloaded it from YouTube - and on searching I did find it there. The stuff shown is mind-blowing and even a gadget-centric person like me had never imagined something as wonderful as this. Incidentally, this is my first video-blog-post . . . symbolic, don't you think ?



One of the earliest applicants of this technology is Apple, in their maiden mobile phone effort - the Apple iPhone. If you haven't already seen the amazing features in the iPhone, take a look at this clip :



Makes you go "Ooooh!", doesn't it ?

And I agree with him . . .

Last year, the government decided to increase the number of reserved seats in central government-run elite educational institutes like the Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management and AIIMS by 27 per cent for the Other Backward Classes, taking reservations up to 50 per cent. Students on campus were upset and agitated. Rediff.com quoted Aman Jagannathan, 18, second year MBBS student at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences as saying :

"I know I am not saying anything illegal but I just want to be careful. I don't want to be known on as being against OBCs because I am not. I am just against the idea of reservation. I don't want to be misunderstood.

I am not against social justice but I feel merit should be appreciated. Reserve seats for those who don't have the economic means. Reserve seats for the children of those in the armed forces. Nobody will protest if you reserve seats for those who earn less than a lakh every year. Why should caste be the overarching factor? It's not my fault I was born a Brahmin."

And I agree with him . . .

I have so far chosen to remain dispassionate about the whole issue of reservations. There have been many friends of mine who written pageloads of stuff on why reservations are unfair and reflect regressive thinking and will ruin India . . . I am not saying they are wrong , and I am not saying they are totally right either . . . but I am a cynic, and I think, what is the point of all this . . . I think of the futility of raving seriously on such things.

As a certain Suresh Kamath says, "Reservation based on caste is going to divide us further. Reservation should be based on economic criteria alone. We should learn to forget our past and start looking at the future. What have today's children got to do with what some people did in the past ?"

On a lighter note, check out what this blogger had to say about the Machiavellian Villain behind this regressive step. I found it really hilarious !

The GRiP of the Wealthy

I am an MBA aspirant, hence, read a lot of business and corporate news. I read articles on rich Indian companies and rich Indian people. I read interviews of and articles on the various owners, CEOs and MDs of Indian companies. I can't help noticing that more than 95 % of the richest guys are basically from Gujarat, Rajasthan or Punjab. Basically, the Indian corporate scenario is ruled by a combine of Marwadis, Gujaratis, Sindhis, Punjabis and Parsis. These five communities control most of large companies. Not only that, a majority of the high posts in most MNCs as well as other companies are with this guys.

I have opened in an alongside tab, the Forbes 2006 list.

The list goes like this : (the ones in caps are not from the GRiP !)

l n mittal
m ambani
a ambani
A PREMJI(nb : gujarati speaking! )
k p singh
s mittal
k birla
t tanti
R CHANDRA(I don.t know where he is from !)
p mistry
a agarwal
s & r ruia
a godrej
SHIV NADAR(Tamil Nadu, I think)
i jain
d sanghvi
r bajaj
so on and so forth.....

Basically, Mittals, Birlas, Ambanis, Agarwals, Singhs and Jains rule the roost.