Hawkeye :: Murali’s Blog

Took me quite a while to get to making a blog post, but it was more the occasion I confess

My initial thoughts on today, the 60th anniversary of India’s independence are rather mixed, primarily because at first sight this is passing on as just another holiday, a day to watch the flag being hoisted in the apartment, read special features in the newspaper and beyond all this, perhaps nothing more significant. Which is so unfortunate, because through the day I have been repeatedly mulling over the significance of the day and the more I think about it, the more privileged I feel, here are a few reasons why …

That India actually made it to 60 as a Free nation is a enigma and one wonders whether it is because of Democracy or despite Democracy ! Consider the odds against it, Illiteracy, Corruption, Poverty leading to a huge Rich-Poor divide, Class divisions, Religious conflicts, Dynastic politics, this nation and its people have seen it all, borne it all and move on in rather typical India resolve. Whether that resolve is the by-now pathological ‘Chaltha Hai’ or a more deeper divine belief in one’s Karma & Dharma is something I am not able to understand, but it is there and it has got us this far despite all odds. Perhaps it is the same flavor of us as a collective that took us onwards through ages of foreign invasions and loot

India is 60 today, against all odds … & onwards we go !

Isn’t it amazing that today, we boast of the world’s largest Democracy (with Universal Adult Franchise) and one that works (atleast true to Democracy’s original purpose), now whether the people that this process elects are the merited enough to make laws and rule the country can be debated (& often quickly concluded that all of them are crooks, which again becomes the subject of another debate), besides we also boast of a truly Independent Judiciary and a Free Press. The 3 pillars of People’s Choice, Fair Justice and the Watchdog Press is an asset that the past 60 years of Free India have created and on these pillars would the future be made

India is 60 today, against all odds … & onwards we go !

Lets take another cut at this and compare ourselves with Pakistan (I can hear some of you reading this squirm at the very comparison … and if that is the case, then I rest my case), which became an Independent nation exactly a day before we did and look at where we are today and where they are. 2 nations both bound by the common trauma of Partition and a common reason to hate the enemy in Kashmir are today tending to be poles apart in terms of the basic factors that a nation should be made of. Pakistan’s recent history has been pock marked by sustained spells of Military rule, Martial Law, Coups, Religious extremism and an overall sense of middle age backwardness as contrasted with India’s appeal of a stable democracy, Large English speaking middle class and the world’s IT backroom boys. I am completely certain that for a comparable set of the population (say the middle class) in both India & Pakistan, the state of living both within the home and outside might be more or less the same (we all live in the same world and face the same problems), yet as a nation India and Pakistan are poles apart and the recent actions by Gen Musharaff in stifling the Judiciary and threats to impose Emergency are only making the difference more stark

India is 60 today, against all odds … & onwards we go !

That said, 60 is but a minor instant in a Nation’s lifetime, there is a lot of Labour left to do and so much more to achieve as a nation. Education, Health Care, Infrastructure, Rightful Equal Opportunity, Access to Capital and Sustainable use of Energy are but a few of the money strides we need to take as a Nation. It is great to be here this moment and feels even better to head on onwards, odds or otherwise !

Blogroll Opinion

So, the year 2006 is just about coming to an end, thought I’d put together a few thoughts on what this year meant for me and the world in general …

The big event ofcourse was the birth of the pearl of our lives, Pranav, our Son on Oct 19th 2006. Our excitement knew no bounds when Nandhu did finally deliver him at 11.03 pm that night. Naked innocence, Non complex life and a heart of full desire, he did enter this world and will certainly teach a thing or two about Life and Love. The years ahead are going to be full of challenges and as parents we are eager to provide for him a life that he someday would perhaps thank us for. It is very easy (& I did succumb to it), to project our desires and wants, things that we perhaps craved to do when we were much younger on him and to form our own vision of ambitions for him, but on second thought, it is afterall his life and he would be the ultimate judge of what he wants to do with it. Care, Love and Nurture are things that we would provide to him to the best of our abilities and more and hopefully he would learn that his is a precious life and one to be lived fully and to the fullest

Further away, the other big event was ofcourse the Football World Cup in Germany. A mega event and a success by any measure. Along with billions of people across the Earth, I too was deeply immersed in the travails and travels of many a team. The English team, that I so backed disappointed, but am so glad that the team I hated, Portugal did not get all that far . All credit to the Azzuri for their victory and perhaps Zizou would live to regret his moment of madness for the rest of his life

The travails of the Indian cricket team has been documented way beyond what a human can read & digest, but if there is one thing that I would remember the year for, it would be the year in which the ex-great, Sachin Tendulkar plumbed to depths that perhaps he alone would need to explain to the people someday

On the Technology front, YouTube undoubtedly changed the face of Internet forever and made Video a fundamental data type on the Internet. While John C Dvorak might have issues with Time Magazine’s choice of ‘You’ as the Person of the year, the fact remains, that 2006 is indeed the year in which the Web finally became the Read & Write web (something that Tim Berners Lee intended originally anyways)

In the realm of Global politics, George Bush’s misadventure in Irag continues to get worse (sacrificial lambs such as Don Rumsfeld is not going to help George Bush cleans himself of his sins) and Iran and North Korea’s Nuclear Sabre-rattling and the United State’s response to this were rather humorous to watch !

The Indian Stock markets hit record highs and many a man made his millions. While I remain an optimist that there is something fundamentally right about the Indian economy, I still remain a doubter on the valuations floating around and I await the next crash. Call me a Bear if you will … but we have miles to go before we run (sleep is a long long way off). But my country, Hope is something we have but that is not enough, we need to try harder, the marathon has just begun. We are NOT going to be a leading economy riding on the Outsourcing wave alone

I will leave the thoughts for 2007 for a later day, but would sign-off for now by stating that there is an opportunity in front of all of us to make this world a better place and the first step starts with us

Blogroll Opinion

Under normal circumstances, classic thought would say that any startup competing with Google in one or more of its large array of services is more or less doomed to fail, because Google with its obvious power over the Internet and its ability to string the services together (hmmm, well atleast linking each of them together), would any day be able to attract more users than the small startup

But, no … not necessarily …

No. Don’t run, don’t hide. Be different. You can’t outdo Google by trying to match them point-by-point, but you don’t have to. There are other, better ways to fight. Compete differently

An excellent point being made by one of the 37 Signals folks. He goes on to add that Backpack launched their calendar and made it part of a paid service and amazingly enough the paid subscriptions to Backpack actually showed a growth

The problem plaguing many of these cool, AJAX’ified, Invite only, Beta for the forseeable future start-ups is that they folks dont have a revenue model … well, atleast none that can impress. Now, I for one, am not kicked about the prospect of monetising traffic using Google AdSense as a revenue model. What service would make money if its only way of making money is by sending users out of its site ! Beats me … and still there are a few out there who are planning to do this … god save them … for them, Kiko is just the beginning

Take the example of Flickr, these folks had a revenue model from day one and to me have everything that a Web 2.0 darling should have. Awesome community, user experience yadda yadda yadda and then on the other hand, take YouTube. Great community, features etc etc … yup – for sure. But, where’s the money going to come in from ? Apparently they spend 1 mn $ every month on Bandwidth … woo ! God save em ! I tell you now … watch out for the the next big eBay auction … and blame Google Video for that

Google does not render resistance futile – Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)

Uncategorized Opinion, Web 2.0

Is it time for Linux on the Desktop ?

Apologies for asking the question that perhaps would make it to the top of the most debated by yet unanswered questions of the modern age …

Having used Linux for about 5 years (on & off and not quite on a dedicated basis, with distros ranging from Red Hat 6.0 +, Mandrake 7+,, Slackware, Debian, Fedora and a few more that I may not remember), though I was rather passionate about this entire Open Source, Free as in Freedom & Beer, Anti-Microsoftish attitude that permeated the tech industry in the late 90s and early 2000s, I still remember that getting these distros to work without having to resort to any sort of command line magic was next to impossible. Installing and using a Linux distro meant that you were a geek (or something very close to it) and new your Hard disk partitions, Network settings, ext2 vs ext3 etc etc. And lets face it, an overwhelming majority of the Universe didn’t

Thus, much to the angst of Linux-lovers, it remained largely in the data centers, powering millions of servers and hardly made a dent in the desktop (Novell not withstanding)

A couple of weeks ago, I managed to lay my hands on Ubuntu Linux (Dapper Drake), which has been catching a few headlines in the non-Linux web world too. I started off my desktop, slipped the disk in and whoom … it got on … booted up my machine (using the Live CD) and gave me a neat looking Gnome desktop (I am a Gnome lover forever) with an Install icon !

I said wow ! now that is surprising … and I clicked on the Install icon, Went through the regular language, keyboard layout, time zone, user inputs (& I thought, OK … here we go, another of those distro installs that is going to be a challenge). Partitioning the hard disk was a but of a challenge (but nothing out of the world, given that I had done this before) & then it started installing the packages … I was a bit miffed at not seeing any indication of the time left for this to complete, but in a few minutes time I realised why this wasn’t all that required. This bloddy thing had finished installing Dapper Drake on my desktop in about 5 minutes and was ready to reboot !

Holy Smoke … that was bloddy fast. I have never seen a Linux distro install of this kind. I am so sold on Ubuntu Linux now … this is cool

In case you are considering it, go for it. The CD’s for FREE ! Check here for more details

It looks like Linux is almost ready for the desktop !

Blogroll Linux, Opinion, Technology