Coding Aviator

Genocide and Justice

2011-12-16T15:48:00.001+05:30

Forty years ago, this day, Pakistani forces surrendered to Lt. Gen. J S Aurora and Bangladesh became truly independent. As Daily Star (Bangladeshi newspaper) wrote, the false premise of communalism was broken and Bangladeshis 'were proud witnesses to a restoration of their secular heritage'.

Celebrating a military victory after forty years may not be very nice, especially when we are seeking peace with Pakistan, but this is more of a remembrance than a celebration. And a special remembrance not because the number 40 looks fancy, but because, finally justice is being delivered for the victims of genocide that saw targeted killings and rape of Bengali people, especially Awami leaguers, Hindus, and intellectuals.

After 40 years of various roadblocks, Bangladesh has set up International Crimes Tribunal to prosecute the perpetrators of genocide. Though Pakistani officials will escape justice, Bangladeshi men who aided the genocide are standing trial, which is bringing new evidences and horror stories everyday. Let's hope this will bring justice to them.

As Indians, it is also worth noting the pattern of war we fought and contrast it with 'liberation' wars fought in many places including Iraq and Afghanistan. It lasted less than two weeks and Indira Gandhi ended the operation on West Pakistan the moment our objective was achieved, namely the Bangladeshi independence. Indian Army was withdrawn from Bangladesh in under three months. The liberation war was swift, just and meaningful.

PS: These days I mostly write only in Google Plus, even if the post is moderately big. Makes it easier to follow up and comment upon the comments. But till HTML remains unsupported in G+, longer posts will be put up here.

The Letter by Students of MIT, Anna University, to the Vice Chancellor

2011-09-26T14:41:00.001+05:30

This is an edited version of the letter written by Students of Madras Institute of Technology, Anna University, to the Vice Chancellor. Thanks to Gaurav and Mohan for editing it. This was originally posted in Facebook group, but since it is a closed space requiring login I'm parking it here.

It is very clear that the dean has been functioning in an autocratic and stupid fashion. All emphasis in text are mine. I hope my alma matter will get rid of her.

To the Respected Vice-Chancellor,

We the students of Anna University, MIT Campus are going to protest by staying inside our hostels until the Dean of MIT Campus is replaced. We will not come out of our hostels until our demands are fully accepted. We are subject to constant mental agony ever since the new Dean was sworn in. She has absolutely no idea about the traditions of MIT that have transcended the decades since when the institution was established. Our mental distress is so terrible that some of us are thinking about quitting our courses; some of us are even considering quitting the university since our career post Anna University has become a question mark. We feel that, with the college being an autonomous institution, the authorities feel they have every right to be dictatorial in their approach, especially our dean Dr. Thamarai Selvi. We wish to express displeasure with regard to the following things regarding our current dean:-
1) We are not treated like students in a professional degree course. Instead we are treated in a draconian manner not befitting even school students. A search for intellectual excellence through independent thinking cannot happen when we're treated with utmost disrespect and disdain.
2) Dean is only concerned about her image and not about the students.
3) Thanks to the autonomy of the institute, our views are fully suppressed.
4) Even when our parents are called for any inquiries, they are treated rather poorly and our Dean has the habit of using unparliamentary words not befitting a head of such a prestigious institution. Not only was it totally uncalled for, it also tarnished the reputation of our university.
5) Our calls for proper treatment were met with threats of fines and arrears in exams. As a result, the unwritten rule in college is not to even clarify doubts in class taken by even the most unqualified faculty.
6) The Dean has also indulged in activities like entering boys hostels in person and disturbing students suffering from illnesses. Further infringement of our rights include the Dean actually entering the gents’ toilet under the pretext of catching rulebreakers. How can we function when we're treated worse than inmates in a prison and our rights to such basic privacy aren't guaranteed?
7) The Dean has threatened the first year students and asked them to readily lodge false complaints against their seniors even though there were no ragging incidents per se.
The Dean does not respect our rich college traditions such as the Junior-Senior relationship. Instead of allowing supervised interactions to prevent any instances of ragging, she has totally banned any mere act of even talking by putting it under the banner of 'ragging' in a move that would totally destroy what makes MIT so unique.
9) The hostel gates are locked every morning from 8.45 to 11.45 am. This is not specified anywhere in the university rules. As a result, even the students with legitimate excuses are not allowed into the hostel.
10) We are not allowed to use our mobiles and laptops after 9pm till morning (when classes aren't even in session). Not every parent who wants to talk to their children away from home gets back after work before 9pm. What kind of technological institution bans laptops which are vital to any kind of research and studying that we need to do? This again is a rule that is not specified anywhere by the university in its regulations.
11. Students are excessively fined, for trivial issues, including and not limited to eating at college canteens (as opposed to the mess), not locking their rooms when they go even to a nearby restroom, for staying in their rooms when ill etc. The only gain from this is to those authorities at college who like seeing their bank balances go up.
12. The choice of the new Dean of MIT Campus, Anna University Chennai has also not been as per seniority. Money has certainly played a huge role apart from influence in making her dean. This is what’s happening at Anna University, MIT Campus and we’re fed up with many more such problems which we feel ashamed to reveal in detail for fear of the institution’s reputation taking a beating. We are however ready to share our grievances to a competent authority if given a forum where our views will actually be heard without malice from the people in power.
We hate seeing the culture of MIT taking a beating, a culture of seniors helping juniors they’ve never even met, helping them as if they were members of the same family. MIT’s fame and reputation are being degraded year by year by those with money and power. We conclude by affirming that we will not leave our hostels until the Dean, whose ill-will towards the students and inconsiderate actions that put a question mark on our careers, is changed. We are engineering students well on our way to becoming professionals, future builders of our nation’s infrastructure and would like to be treated with dignity.

Yours Sincerely,
The students of Madras Institute of Technology

Google Plus

2011-09-25T21:06:00.002+05:30

Google Plus has completed 100 days now, and it has many users but the problem is there are no posts! Well, at least not as much as Facebook. This post started as a switching guide for those who wanted to use Google+ instead of FB but are not doing it since there's isn't much happening here^[1]. But now, to celebrate it's open to all feature, it contains another part first. :-)

The New Features in Google Plus

The initial version of G+ itself was better, but now has even more options that makes it truly awesome.

The Hangout has become much more than leisurely hanging out. It is now a full featured collaborative tool. You can edit Google docs while watching a video and talking with a group of people. And not just YouTube videos; you can share any window -including VLC- or just your whole monitor. And it works from an Android phone too. :) I mean, you can make presentation to bore people to death, remotely.
The photo sharing is just cool. If one views using G+ interface, it's great from a social view, for commenting, controlling who can view, resharing etc. If one views from Picasa, it's photographer's pleasure with very good editing features, mass upload etc; Not to mention integration with offline Picasa tool. Changes made in one interface reflects on the other(it's the same photo;-). FB + Flickr + less maintenance.
It's accessible. Check this to see how people who can't speak can use Hangout with sign language. :-)
It's open to all now. :-)

Let's now get back to original task.

Being an early adopter is an awesome stoke for a geek's ego and usually works out fine. I can recall my own experience when I got a gmail id.

Unless it's a social thing. That simply doesn't work unless there are more people adopting it. But there's a catch, a recursive one at that. People won't adopt unless early adopters use it more and go ga ga over it. But early adopters can't use it without people joining it. But, er.., you get the point, right?

The solution is to keep using it even though only small number of people are there. This is awkward for social stuff, but no other go. Tips to improve the situation:

Almost everyone using Buzz is in Google+. So better to use +. But bloody Google is not enabling automatic posting in + like it is in Buzz. @SRR: Can you suggest this feature for Plus?
Do not post anything in FB. How else do you expect friends to come to Plus for info about you if you post it in both places? I like & comment on other's posts but don't post anything on my own.

PS: Other suggestions are welcome.

PPS: why I go to this extent? I don't trust FB with my data. That's why.

PPPS: I hate the bloody Blogger interface. It sucks even when I copy paste HTML from WordPress. Can't Google do better?

[1] No, this is not addressed to people who do not want to switch. :-)

Gnu/Linux v. Mac

2011-06-27T13:59:00.000+05:30

I was searching for something else when I ended up in this Ubuntu forum (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1117471) where I found this comparison. It's to the point, correct and lets you to choose what you think you need rather than actually choosing it for you. I thought I should preserve it somewhere very accessible to me so I can show to friends(esp. Anup) when they ask.

When it comes to security, Ubuntu and Mac are pretty much dead even. Both Linux and OS X are Unix-based operating systems, and have nearly identical security models. Users of both system can feel safe from viruses and other malware.

In terms of price, Ubuntu wins hands down. Apple software tends to be rather expensive, while Linux and the overwhelming majority of software it uses is absolutely free of charge.

In terms of usability, it's a toss-up. One area in which Apple is quite successful is the user interface. That's why so many mp3 players tend to copy the iPod to some extent. OS X is no exception, and has a very nice interface. On the other hand, arguments could be made for the usability of Gnome, KDE, and Xfce as well, especially considering the amazing degree to which these desktop environments can be customized.

Which brings us to customization. Ubuntu has the edge here. The options for customization of Linux are staggering, with multiple desktop environments and window managers from which to choose, which themselves are highly customizable. OS X can be themed and customized, but not even close to the degree of Linux.

When it comes to software, it's a mixed bag. Mac is more commercially supported than Linux. For most tasks, this doesn't matter as an abundance of FOSS alternatives exist for most commercial applications. And for most purposes, this gives Ubuntu the edge, since the software is just as free as the operating system. If specific applications are a priority, however -- most notably iTunes -- then Mac has the advantage. There's no clear winner here, as it really depends on what software you feel you need.

Of course the mention of iTunes brings us to the issue of freedom. Apple is even more notorious than Microsoft when it comes to vendor lock. Everything Apple produces is proprietary and made to work best (or only) with other Apple products. iPods, for example, are practically useless without iTunes, because the iPod uses a proprietary transfer protocol. Since Apple won't release the details of this protocol, no other software developers can develop iPod management software without essentially reverse-engineering the protocol -- which Apple periodically alters. On one hand, this gives OS X an edge against Linux for people who use other Apple products. On the other, it's extremely annoying and limiting. If you don't like companies manipulating you and dictating how you use their product, then Linux clearly has the edge. While I'm tempted to say this is another tie, I can't in good conscience say that vendor lock is in any way an advantage, except to the vendor. Free and open-source wins.

Because Linux is open-source, anyone can do anything to it, and can see exactly what's going on under the hood. This is part of the reason Linux is a safe computing environment (and arguably slightly more secure than OS X) -- viruses are hard to sneak onto a system when people can see the source code. No restrictions or license agreements restrict your use of your own system. However, because it's not a commercial product backed by a corporate entity, the means of technical support is radically different. For some people, the lack of obligatory customer support is a failing of Linux. Others like not having to rely on a single entity to provide technical support, and prefer the support provided by the Linux community. As a matter of personal preference, tech support is another toss-up.

So... which operating system is better? Well, "better" is a relative term, in more ways than one. In my own case, I'm perfectly happy without iTunes or any other Apple products, so there's no compelling reason for me to use OS X in order to use those other products. I also prefer a free product over an expensive one of equivalent quality, and prefer freedom over the lack thereof. So for me, personally, I say without any hesitation or reservation that Ubuntu is the better operating system. But this may not be true for someone else who loves using iTunes to shop the iTunes store for videos to transfer to his iPhone. For that person, who apparently has a much greater disposable income than myself, Mac OS X is the better choice.

It just depends on your priorities.

by https://wiki.ubuntu.com/mb_webguy

PS: This is two years old and usability of Desktop Environments have improved a lot now!
PPS: I was able to post this only because it was licensed under Creative Commons and I recommend any poor soul still reading my blog also to do so; It's good for the world. :-)

Mylapore Middle Street

2011-05-29T02:38:00.000+05:30

Recently I went to Mylapore for a work and I reached too early. Not knowing how to spend nearly two hours, I roamed around the place. One could spot pristine, upper middle class houses on one side of the road and slum on the other! I have never before seen so much difference on two sides of the road.

எங்க குடியிருக்கீங்க?
நடுத்தெருவுல சார்!

Most of Mylapore was bit like my old residential place(Chromepet) with very smallish streets and women fighting at water taps (To subject any Tamil learner to the ultimate test of language proficiency, ask him/her to decipher women-at-metro-tap fights. :D)

The most interesting thing that I spotted (and the namesake of this post) was the street in the photo; I was literally laughing on the road with people giving me strange looks!!

New Name, New Design

2011-03-28T22:20:00.000+05:30

My old blog design was, well, old! Its smaller width reflected the limitations of monitor widths in olden times, color looked like an old fungal infected scroll(which, BTW, was the background image), and it was written before template designer was introduced in blogger(yes, that old).

I actually wanted to change that one with my own design for past 3 years, but that never happened in part due to my perfectionism and in part laziness. Google changed the design system two times in the meanwhile. ;-)

Initially(two years ago I guess) I started converting Andreas Viklund's one of the templates into a Blogger theme. I had a liking for his designs since the days of my very first blog which used one of his themes modified for blogger by Aswin(I basically just copied it off of his blog, Neosagredo, which does not exist any more.)

I never got around doing it and at one point forgot that job altogether due to other commitments and Google also changed their theme system. Then, this January I found that there was a serious grammatical error in the blog's caption itself. :( I decided that I should get rid of the theme itself for good or move the blog to Wordpress. WP has nice editor(in fact I authored this post in WP and then copied it to Blogger;-) that obeyed semantic HTML4/5 standards, had HTML5 themes, math support etc. I didn't go to WP since they didn't allow custom design and domain for basic account.

I started modifying the 'Simple' default theme that came with the new Blogger Designer Template. The reasons for choosing it are twofold. One, I like to have clean themes with no fuss and improved readability. Two, it is easy to modify a plain bare bones wire-frame to your liking rather than a heavy theme. :)

If your browser doesn't support these typography features (older browsers or insane ones like IE), the theme will look bland though still readable. :-) Also it makes use of CSS3 features like box shadows for boxes like this one and image frames.

This theme relies heavily on typography (webfonts, kerning, letter-spacing etc.) rather than on pictures and such, so that it is more readable and takes less time to load. The fonts used are IM Fell English SC for header, Philosopher for all headings and Inconsolata for all other text.

Hope this design is good. Comments and suggestions for improvement are welcome. :-)

Fractions, Math, and Girls

2011-03-24T22:56:00.000+05:30

[Disclaimer: I'm pretty bored(read vetty) today and sick of writing about serious stuff like GNU/Linux, or politics, and so decided to write this humorous(that's what I think :p) post. Since humour is very new to me this may end up being a great mokkai. Potential readers have been warned. ;-)]

Abstract: There is much claim going around the world that girls are poor at math, especially in understanding fractions. The author attempts investigate that myth in this paper and proves that it is simply false, through his experimental observations.

Observation: Boys usually wear trousers in full length or as shorts. Occasionally they go for a three-fourths sized one. But have you ever noticed the length of girls' trousers? It ranges among all kind of fractions and irrational numbers. :p

There is the usual full length one.
Then there is one which ends up slightly above ankles that is somewhere around nine tenths to four-fifths. (But personally, I think it's not a style but just that girls are fond of reuse-recycle mantra & are either still using their 8th grade pants or their shorter sister's ;-)
Then the three-fourths aka capri.
Another is the one that ends at somewhere little below the knees. (somewhere around 0.63 & is irrational.)^[1]
The usual shorts that end up little above knees. (one half?)
Then the shorter shorts(mostly made of jeans), with lengths like athletic shorts. (Reliable statistics in and around my lab & IITM indicate that boys like this one greatly.)
At last the shorter shorter shorts, that I'm yet to encounter outside of films and fashion magazines. (No, I'm not going to describe its length. :p)

Well, given this observation how can anyone say that girls are weak in fractions? On the contrary, it seems, only boys are very weak in fractions and math.

Well, that's it. We have reached a conclusion. Oh wait, a report should end with acknowledgement in passive voice. Here we go: The author wishes to thank his guide and mentor Prof. A***(name withheld to protect the author) for all things that he has done, Tiffanys (which is conveniently located between two girls' hostels) for enabling the data collection by providing a nice place and loads of coffee and Anup Kulkarni & friends for all sorts of help rendered during data collection process. :p

--------

[1] In this size there is something called cut-off jeans which looks as though rats had eaten a portion of a three-fourths. ;-)

The Trek to Tada Falls

2011-01-23T19:05:00.001+05:30

On the way to forest office

On Sunday, 9^th Jan, I and 6 more friends from IITM went to Tada falls (aka Ubbalamadugu Falls - 13° 36′ 35″ N, 79° 50′ 34″ E) near Nellore in Andra Pradesh.^[1] We took a bus from CMBT to Tada (busses to Nellore & Sri Kalahasti go via Tada), where we reached by 11.30; had food at a Tamil Mess (irony! We used to eat @ Andhra Mess near IIT when bored of our mess.) Then we rode in an open share auto till the forest office gate.

Base Camp 1.(Yes, we could have come till here in auto; But we walked 4 kms)

Then we walked for about 4 kms to the base of the hillocks.(Base Camp 1) There I saw the clearest rivulet water I have ever seen. It was so clean that it became difficult to find if water was there or not!

The main falls is located in a hill at a height of about 7000 feet. We started walking after a while and split into two groups. Till a Shiva temple(Base camp 2) the path was, though uphill, mostly sandy and kinda ok with small stones. There we got some guava fruit and crossed the brook again and got into more rocky path.

Climbing rocks!

After that I was enjoying the nature so much that I stopped taking photos. :-( The rocky path went somewhat parallel to the brook and sometimes we had to cross small sub-brooks. We reached the small falls and spent some time admiring nature. Then the path(the non-path) became very hilly and we had to climb high rocks to reach the main falls.

I was thoroughly enjoying it so far and the sight there made me sad. There were quite few youngsters who were swimming and drinking; Beer bottles, both new and broken, could be found around the water pool; The place was filled with so much trash of all kinds(polythene, plastic tumblers, soft drink bottles...).
[Rant: If those idiots wanted to drink, why not go to some pub and drink to their heart's content? Why spoil such a place? Indians exhibit worst behavior when it comes to things like this.]

Along the brook.

We spent few minutes there and decided to return.(I could not stand in that place with all those things going around me.:-( ) We three felt a little elated and adventurous after the climb that we decided to take not the path by which we came, but the downstream of brook itself.

Destiny! [Caption by Mandar ;-) ]

It was not only rocky, but slippery too this time, since algae had grown over rocks due to water. It was exhilarating, and sometimes fearful that we might not take correct route when brook sub-divides and end up roaming till death. :p We finally managed to reach Shiva temple where the brook intersected the pathway and we switched to it. Thereafter downhill was simply sandy cum stony path. :-) Overall I felt happy and elated about the whole affair. :-) A nice experience!

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubbalamadugu_Falls

CCD and Shivanath

2010-12-27T23:57:00.000+05:30

[This post had been in my drafts for quite a few months. I felt it needed some improvement but now I'm publishing it as it is, as it had been in drafts for so long.]

Last Saturday I went to Cafe Coffee Day for third time after moving into IITM hostel (discounting non Saturday-night visits) along with my lab mate Y.

We were there for little more than an hour and thirty minutes. Actually we spent more time sitting and observing than eating the hot chocolate cake+ice-cream combo that we ordered. This blog post is the result of that in-depth observation. ;-)

Two girls were sipping something and talking loudly in an incomprehensible language. They were still sipping when we got out. I wonder if that is a magical glass that never emptied.

Then there were these two German girls. They had lot of papers and some books in their table and were working feverishly the whole time. It looked as if they hadn't eaten anything before and I don't know if they ordered anything after we left. Two guys were revolving around that table for few minutes before they ventured out to ask something to those girls. They were talking for 15-20 seconds before they hurried out but still smiling. I'm still wondering what actually happened.

Yes there were few guys too, but I didn't notice any of them. :p ;-)

And the last observation: Y is so like Shivanath!(This is an inside joke. :p)

X and Wayland

2010-11-19T11:55:00.000+05:30

In the context of Ubuntu waiting to ditch X in favour of Wayland, this fortune I got today is interesting:

I have never seen anything fill up a vacuum so fast and still suck.
-- Rob Pike, on X.

Steve Jobs said two years ago that X is brain-damaged and it will be
gone in two years. He was half right.
-- Dennis Ritchie

Dennis Ritchie is twice as bright as Steve Jobs, and only half wrong.
-- Jim Gettys

Hmmm, why do I keep getting good fortune cookies today?

Lotus Symphony

2010-11-11T16:52:00.001+05:30

I started using Lotus Symphony today^[1]. Seems better than OpenOffice.org upon which it is based. There are good templates from Lotus website too.^[2] Let me see how well it performs; may turn out that GNU/Linux has a good presentation software after all.(No, sadly OO is not as good as PPT.)

The templates can be installed easily by copying .otp files to ~/.lotus/symphony/.symphony/user/template

[1] http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/10/ibm-office-suite-lotus-symphony-3-released
[2] http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/gallery.nsf/GalleryPresentations?OpenView&Count=15

Discovery Of The Day

2010-10-25T12:13:00.000+05:30

Mess food tastes like real food at 12 o`clock. ;-)

Note to self: Somehow make it mess at 12 every day!

The Evil That is United States Goverment

2010-09-20T23:49:00.000+05:30

From Johann Hari: Suffocating the poor: a modern parable:

Today, I want to tell you the story of how our governments have been torturing and tormenting an island in the Caribbean – but it is a much bigger story than that. It's a parable explaining one of the main reasons how and why, across the world, the poor are kept poor, so the rich can be kept rich.

[the] most popular politician in Haiti by far, Jean-Bertrand Aristide [is] not there because, after winning a landslide election, he followed the will of the Haitian people who demanded he take on the multinational corporations and redistribute enough money that their children wouldn't starve – so our governments had him kidnapped him at gunpoint and refuse to let him back[sic].

Read the full story to understand the ugly face of western elite that torments people all over the world. One of his reforms include increasing minimum wage of poor Haitians to $1(WTF?!) from 38 Cents!

QOTD

2010-09-14T10:16:00.000+05:30

..once upon a time there was no time.

-- John D. Barrow

Bias Against Women

2010-09-06T12:22:00.000+05:30

A new study demonstrates that how women musicians dress alters the perception of how they play:

...in an attempt to overcome biases in hiring, most orchestras changed their audition policy, and began using screens to conceal the identity of the candidate.
Female musicians in the top five US symphony orchestras rose from 5% in the 1970s to around 25%. This could have been due to wider societal shifts, so Goldin and Rouse conducted a very elegant study, Orchestrating Impartality: they compared the number of women being hired at auditions with and without screens, and found women were several times more likely to be hired when nobody could see that they were a woman

Via Stallman.org

QOTD

2010-09-03T12:29:00.002+05:30

Don’t Judge people by what you have seen in them. Remember… What you have seen in them is only what they have chosen to show you.

-- I don't know(came in an email)

A Gadget to Promote SFD

2010-08-20T12:07:00.000+05:30

Here is a Google Gadget to promote Software Freedom Day (SFD): http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/108664960353323049895/sfd-ilugc.xml

You can add this gadget in Blogger blogs, iGoogle page, Google sites, Google documents etc. Pretty much on all sites that supports Google Gadget API.

I have not hard-coded location and link, so that you can change them if you want to promote some other SFD event(like in JFC, for example). Defaults are Birla Planetarium, Chennai and http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2010/Asia/India/Chennai/ilugc respectively.

You can change title too. Since every visible portion is made editable, Tamil Blogs can also utilize this. Just change values in textbox to Tamil when blogger asks you to change defaults if necessary.

To Add Gadget:

Go to the page where you can edit page design (in Blogger this is Dashboard-->Design), click on Add Gadget --> Add gadget by URL and give the above URL. Some services like blogger will ask you to change default values and in others you have to change them after adding by selecting Edit Gadget.

Google Buzz Bookmarklet

2010-08-19T19:18:00.001+05:30

I noticed that few web pages have this 'share this on buzz' link after few of my friends shared pages using that link. Then I thought, why not make this into bookmarklet like 'Note in Reader' provided by Google Reader.

I searched for it and found that few people have already made such bookmarklet but by using a round-about way of noting in the reader and using the connection between reader and buzz to share it. This will work only if

one uses Google Reader and
has added Google Reader in Buzz connected sites.

I wrote one which works natively using same URL that was used in the 'share this on buzz' links:

Buzz This»

Drag it to the Firefox/Chrome bookmarks toolbar. To share a page just click this button in bookmarks toolbar. Try clicking right now, and share this page. ;-)

NOTE TO PEOPLE READING FROM READER: Google Reader strips scripts from page. If you want the script visit my blog.

The Superbug and Big Pharma

2010-08-14T13:13:00.002+05:30

Government slams ‘alarmist’ superbug report:

Minister of State for Health Dinesh Trivedi strongly objected to the naming of the “superbug” after New Delhi. “It’s like HIV. As far as my information is, the first patient of HIV was in America. Can we say it originated in America? So, instead of HIV, can we say ‘America NMD’ or something like that?” he wondered aloud.

We have to find if there’s some ulterior motive of some pharmaceutical industry,” he told reporters.

The Big Pharma is rears its ugly head in India too. Though the government slammed it now, everyone knows that this government will sell the whole nation if offered right price.(remember Bhopal? Nuclear liability bill?)

Are Pharma Companies that bad? Yes. Read the article The Truth About the Drug Companies, in The NY Review of Books. Some excerpts:

As their profits skyrocketed during the 1980s and 1990s, so did the political power of drug companies...For example, if it didn’t like something about the FDA, the federal agency that is supposed to regulate the industry, it could change it through direct pressure or through its friends in Congress. The top ten drug companies..had profits of nearly 25 percent of sales in 1990...In 2001, the ten American drug companies in the Fortune 500 list ranked far above all other American industries in average net return, whether as a percentage of sales (18.5 percent), of assets (16.3 percent), or of shareholders’ equity (33.2 percent). These are astonishing margins. For comparison, the median net return for all other industries in the Fortune 500 was only 3.3 percent of sales.

[the price of]Claritin, was raised thirteen times over five years, for a cumulative increase of more than 50 percent—over four times the rate of general inflation.² As a spokeswoman for one company explained, “Price increases are not uncommon in the industry and this allows us to be able to invest in R&D.”

Research, really?

Drug industry expenditures for research and development, while large, were consistently far less than profits. For the top ten companies, they amounted to only 11 percent of sales in 1990, rising slightly to 14 percent in 2000. The biggest single item in the budget is neither R&D nor even profits but something usually called “marketing and administration”—a name that varies slightly from company to company. In 1990, a staggering 36 percent of sales revenues went into this category, and that proportion remained about the same for over a decade. Note that this is two and a half times the expenditures for R&D.

This “marketing and administration” money is what is used to buy government officials, doctors, and researchers(including, most probably, the ones who wrote New Delhi super-bug report). Note that these scientists are paid from R&D money too.

If you are not yet convinced that these companies have more than enough money to spend on research without increasing medicine prices:

The most startling fact about 2002 is that the combined profits for the ten drug companies in the Fortune 500 ($35.9 billion) were more than the profits for all the other 490 businesses put together ($33.7 billion)

WTF?

கட்டற்ற தமிழ்க் கணிமை செயல்திட்டக் கருத்தரங்கம்

2010-08-08T19:56:00.000+05:30

யாவர்க்குமான மென்பொருள் அறக்கட்டளை மற்றும் சென்னை தொழில்நுட்பக் கல்லூரியின் கணினிச் சங்கம் இணைந்து நடத்தும் இக்கருத்தரங்கத்திற்கான நோக்கம் யாதெனில் இனங்காணப்பட்ட கட்டற்ற தமிழ்க் கணிமை தொடர்பான தலைப்புகளில் பங்களிக்க விருப்பமுள்ளோரை ஒன்று கூட்டி ஆக்கப்பூர்வமான விவாதத்திற்கு வித்திட்டு, அத்தலைப்புகளில் மென்பொருள் உருவாக்கத்திற்கு / பங்களிப்புகளுக்கு வழிவகை செய்வதாகும்.

இடம்: ராஜம் அரங்கம், சென்னை தொழில்நுட்பக் கல்லூரி, குரோம்பேட்டை
நாள் : 28-08-2010
நேரம்: காலை 9.00 மணி - மாலை 4.30 மணி
பங்களிக்க விருப்பம் இருப்பவர்கள் தங்கள் விருப்பங்களைப் பதிவு செய்யக் கடைசி நாள்: 15 ஆகஸ்டு 2010
கலந்து கொள்வோர் பதிவு செய்யக் கடைசி நாள்: 26 ஆகஸ்டு 2010
உறுதி செய்யப்பட்ட தலைப்புகள் அறிவிக்கப்படும் நாள்: 18 ஆகஸ்டு 2010

மேலும் விவரங்கள் பெறவும் பதிவு செய்யவும்: http://csmit.org/index.php/tamconf/home

Net Neutrality in Danger?

2010-08-05T16:29:00.000+05:30

The news item Google and Verizon Near Deal on Pay Tiers for Web seems to indicate so:

Google and Verizon, two leading players in Internet service and content, are nearing an agreement that could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege.

The charges could be paid by companies, like YouTube, owned by Google, for example, to Verizon, one of the nation’s leading Internet service providers, to ensure that its content received priority as it made its way to consumers. The agreement could eventually lead to higher charges for Internet users.

Such an agreement could overthrow a once-sacred tenet of Internet policy known as net neutrality, in which no form of content is favored over another.[Emphasis mine]

I think net neutrality is still sacred. Is Google being evil?

Donkey Days

2010-08-01T01:29:00.000+05:30

***RANT ALERT***

Please stop this nonsense called friendship day and its wishes. Understand that all these friend/mother/women/lover/dog/donkey days are created by these greeting-card/gift/cell phone companies to make more money. Since number of people who got fooled for this 'frandship' day increased year-by-year, I had to pay 50 paise for every SMS today. :-( AFAIK last year this was not in paid-SMS days list. And AFAIK only Diwali, Pongal and New Year were originally paid-SMS days. Thanks to increasing number of fools every year, this paid-SMS days also went up and now it stands at 10 days. :-(

PS: You don't become my close friend just because you sent an 'advance'(read free) 'frandship' day wish/forward. And my friends are always my friends no matter they wished or not. The only day I expect a wish and make a point to wish others is the birthday.

Gender Gap in Earning

2010-07-29T12:45:00.000+05:30

From Men Don't Have it Easy Either:[Emphasis mine]

6. Women earn less for the same work than men.
False: For the same work, women earn, on average, the same. According to the book, Why Men Earn More, based on a decade of analysis of government and other statistics, reasons for the "women earn 80 cents on the dollar" figure include that men more often choose careers that are more dangerous (e.g., police and firefighter), uncomfortable (from sewer repairer to crop duster), isolating and difficult (e.g., engineer and programmer) and work longer hours. The average man who says he works full-time works more than six hours a week longer than the average woman who says she works full-time. In addition, men are more likely to work evenings and weekends. For a promotion, more men are willing to move to places that fewer people desire. An offshore oil rig in Montgomery, Alabama, anyone?
Even comparing salaries in the same career tends to be biased against men. For example the Bureau of Labor Statistics lumps together all medical doctors but men are more likely to pursue higher-stress specializations with unpredictable hours such as surgeon whereas women are more likely to be a lower-stress pediatrician, and thus women physician salaries are lower.
Despite all this, today, unmarried women who have never had a child earn 113% of what men earn. That suggests that for the same nature, quantity, and quality of work, women likely earn more than men, and only when a woman makes the choice to have children and thus, on average, is less focused on her work life, does that woman's overpayment dissipate.
The good news for women is that when they make the same career choices as men, they can earn at least as much.

The article has much more info on how the world is getting difficult for men as opposed to women. A must read. [Via Ben]

Close Friends

2010-07-25T15:16:00.000+05:30

From Ben Casnocha's recent blogpost:

I just told a friend I was writing this post. She said, "This is a litmus test I use for how close I am with a friend. If s/he doesn't tell me anything bad about their life, I assume we're not very good friends."

Very true. I have been using the same test for many years. :)

Forecasting Apple vs Microsoft

2010-07-21T12:48:00.000+05:30

Paul Graham told in his cult classic Hackers and Painters [2004]:

And it [Apple] hasn’t lost yet. If Apple were to grow the iPod into a cell phone with a web browser, Microsoft would be in big trouble.

Aha!

From http://blog.oddhead.com/2010/07/15/most-prescient-footnote-ever/ via O'rielly radar.