Inline...

Judging ourselves

2009-07-03T09:44:00.001+05:30

"We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done." -- Henry Wadsworth

[Source: http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/27506.html]

Pulsar DTS-i for sale

2009-06-18T23:06:00.002+05:30

I am selling my Bajaj Pulsar 150 DTS-i bike. First owner. It has run only a measly 12500 kms. It is in excellent condition and gives 50 kilometers to a liter. I bought this back in college and am looking to sell it now. It has run so little mainly because I was away from chennai most of the time.

Please do pass on the word if you know anyone looking to buy a second hand bike in Chennai, India.

If interested mail me on pulsarsale [at] prashblog [dot] com

Graph databases

2009-06-14T22:27:00.001+05:30

I had earlier worked upon a project that very closely mimicked a social network. Alas, I had no experience with databases then and we set forth to build the project on a relational database. I have since been trying to learn more about graph databases and how they are used by the various "web 2.0" companies. I came across this excellent introductory presentation on Graph Databases on highscalability.com.

Get the presentation from http://markorodriguez.com/Lectures_files/risk-symposium2009.pdf

Tags: Graph Database, Database, Relational, Graph

Apping for Dummies - Choosing between M.S and Ph.D.

2009-06-12T21:22:00.001+05:30

[Source: GraphJam]

There are many factors to consider before deciding between pursuing a Ph.D. and a Masters degree. A Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy) is a terminal degree. It is in effect a recognition that you have have mastered and have produced signficant original contribution to a body of human knowledge. A masters degree on the other hand is aimed at increasing your breadth of knowledge in a particular area.

Career Options
A Ph.D. degree prepares you for a career in research - be it in Academia or in the Industry. Professors in most reputable universities are expected to hold a Ph.D. degree. As is the case with researchers in Industrial labs. Industrial Labs that hire Ph.D. holders in computer science include Microsoft Research Labs, IBM Research Labs, AT&T-Bell Labs, etc. A masters degree on the other hand is a much more hands on training for the industry. It will prepare you to meet the industry problems with an improved perspective as compared to an undergrad.

Funding Opportunities
Most Ph.D. candidates are funded from Day 1. Whereas as a masters student it is often harder to obtain employment within the university. Professors prefer to fund Ph.D. candidates rather than Masters students simply because the Ph.D. students will remain in the university for a longer time and will hence be able to produce much more significant work along with the professor.

Choice of Universities
The number of students chosen for the Masters program is significantly more than the number of students taken on every year as Ph.D. students. This coupled with the fact that professors will have to allocate a part of their funding for Ph.D. students, makes it a lot more easier for students to obtain admissions for the masters program at their choice universities.

Previous Experience
If you have significant research experience either during your undergrad or with industry experience, and you are certain that you will enjoy a career in research, then a Masters degree will hold limited appeal as it doesn't quite polish your profile as much meet the requirements of a research career.

Personal Commitments
A doctoral degree will take anywhere between 4 and 7 years to finish whereas a masters degree can be finished in a year and a half to 2 years. Many folks will not be able to undertake a commitment for such long time intervals. Also to be noted is that most universities offer a Masters degree to the students after 2 years (once they finish their masters course requirement). So even in the tragic chance that you have to drop out of your Ph.D. program, you will still have a masters degree.

Other strong reasons
I personally consider choosing to pursue a Masters degree a less risky option. Folks who dont have a very strong academic past might choose to pursue a Masters degree at a lesser known university in the US before applying for Ph.D programs at better universities. Also, if you are still unsure about whether you are cut out for the research career, you can choose to do a Masters degree to get a wiff of the research career before you decide.

While I have by no means exhaustively covered the guidelines for choosing between a masters and a doctoral program, I hope this will help you start thinking in the right direction. Also, please do leave a comment if there were other factors that influenced your decision.

Tags: Ph.D, Masters, Graduate, Education

TED India - Call for fellows

2009-06-10T07:44:00.001+05:30

For those of you who are not familiar with TED and have not been following my "other" blog at DesiTech, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. TED is happening in India for the first time. TED is a conference where the really really interesting people are given an opportunity to address the amazing audience. More information about TED here and here.

TED is inviting folks to apply for the TED fellowship. As a TED fellow not only do you ride alone with the amazing brand name of TED, you also get additional benefits. Past TED fellows include Yatin Sethi (Design researcher for Ashoka-Youth Venture; Cofounder of Pankhudi Foundation which aims to benefit underprivileged children in India. India/U.S), Esther K. Chae (Actor/playwright -- her one-woman show explores a North Korean spy and the attempts to unmask her; Yale Drama alum. U.S./Korea), Taghi Amirani (Iranian physicist turned documentary filmmaker, has filmed the Taliban and NASA scientists), Sheila Ochugboju (Operational Director of Global Women Inventors and Innovators Network; science educator. Nigeria/U.K) and Mohammad Tauheed (Architect; Founder of ArchSociety.com -- an online community for architects. Bangladesh).

A copy of their detailed press release calling for fellows is available at http://docs.google.com/View?id=ajk5rhcd8zzc_72dmtkcpgr

Tags: TED, TEDIndia, DesiTech

Apping for Dummies - Introduction

2009-06-08T22:10:00.003+05:30

Well not really... if you think you are a dummy then stop right here and read no further. "Apping for Dummies" is just a catchy title and this is my blog, so go figure. Oops wait, we didn't define what "Apping" was did we? Apping is jargon for applying for higher studies. This post will focus on lessons I had learnt when I applied for higher education in the USA. Hopefully this will help you get some much needed 'gyan'. Before we start, I hope you are reading this well before you have started your App process. Time is necesssary to tune your profile. Time is essential for identifying your target universities. Time is all you need to ensure a happy app season!

Some of the first steps before you start your App process is to ask yourself a few questions:

Why do you want to go in for higher studies?
Why a masters or a Ph.D. in the US? Is it for you to enter the job market in the US? Is it for the additional pay? Do you want to take a teaching job? Do you want the additional time to decide what you want to do with your life? Is it for the exposure to multiple cultures and academic environments?
What is your area of interest?
This is an especially hard question to answer. I had no idea what I wanted to do when I was in the 3^rd year of my undergrad! But it will do you a load of good if you actually invest some quality time thinking of what is the general area you want to concentrate on. This will help you when you have to choose your university, your advisor and so on. Also, it will help you write a most clear Statement of Purpose!
What are your future plans?
Do you want to turn Entrepreneurial? Do you want to take up a technical job? Go into the management ladder? Go in for even higher education? Take up a teaching job?
What is your financial dependance?
Can you fund yourself for the first quarter? Many students get some kind of TA or RA financial aid after their first quarter at the university. Most Ph.D. students get funded right from the first quarter, however it is much harder to get a Ph.D. admit as compared to a masters admit.
M.S. or Ph.D.?
The application is quite different for either. While MS prepares you mostly for working in the industry, a Ph.D. trains you in conducting individual research which will gears you towards a job in the acaedmia or an industrial research lab.

This will be a series of posts rather than one big monolithic post. So gear up for more in the next post.

Tags: Education, MS, PhD, Higher Education, Graduate, Engineering

Following up on iDemocracy Camp

2009-06-08T08:20:00.002+05:30

Following up on iDemocracy Camp, Selvam has created a social network around this on Ning. Head over to http://idemocracy.ning.com/ and sign up if you are even vaguely interested in this space.

You might also be interested in the list of online democracy sites that Selvam had coallated. The list is also on the group's discussion list: http://idemocracy.ning.com/forum/topics/list-of-online-democracy-sites.

Tags: iDemocracyCamp, iDemocracyCampChennai

Notes from iDemocracy Camp

2009-06-06T22:20:00.003+05:30

Ok. I am guessing, I am _really_ back to blogging now. I attended an "iDemocracy Camp" today. Which roughly translates to a BarCamp focused on e-Governance. The meet was organized by Selvam from eMoksha.org.

The meet started off with a round of introductions and Selvam broke the ice with a short presentation on social initiatives in the democracy space. This was followed by a round of short talks by folks in the audience who had themselves started social initiatives. There was an uber cool duo - Alok and Gautam from Karnataka Learning Partnership. The duo is involved in working with over 1400 primary schools run by the GoI by providing learning materials in local languages, training the govt school teachers, etc. More importantly they are involved in a series of measures to understand how the initiatives are making an impact in the lives of the students. How their overall appreciation of education improves, how it reduces dropout rates, etc. Their intention is to bring it to a stage of adequate maturity where the Govt can make critical decisions using these metrics.

There was also a couple of folks (Prashanth and Bharat) from the AP2009 team who narrated their war stories. Finally, there was also a talk on how much community participation is required in the Open Street Maps project. The presenter (Arun Ganesh) also spoke of some alliances he had initiated with the MTC bus corporation to use OSM.

Some central takeaways from the meet:

There are a number of social initiatives in the e-governance space in India who are duplicating effort. There has to be more interaction between the initiatives to share data and development efforts

What works in the UK and other parts of the world needn't work in India, typically because of the scale at which it will have to work in India. Gautam shared an interesting anecdote about how he used the Indian postal system for information dissemination in creative ways. To very poorly paraphrase his quote - "To solve Indias problem, the process lies not in creating new solutions but by using the existing infrastructre in more creative ways"

When approaching bureaucratic officials, the pitch has to focus around how the initiative will solve their problems rather than the public pitch of solving citizen concerns

There is general consensus on the requirement of freely available geographic data (of the kind Open Street Maps provides) but with additional accuracy and authenticity

RTI by itself is an excellent tool, but using RTI to gather data is a tedious process, since technology itself is not embedded into the process

Merely acquiring humongous amounts of data isn't enough, there also has to be a focus on how to parse this data and make actionable decisions about of them

One glaring point that I very vehemently disagree upon was the general sentiment that "profitability" is a crime. Some presenters even called it the "Indian mentality" to be self centered because they did not contribute to open source projects without expecting some kind of appreciation in return. I found the AP2009 guys almost apologetic about having used Ads to provide revenue for their site. Perhaps my apprehension of this feeling is because I have the same Indian mentality or perhaps its my ardent adoration of Ayn Rand's principles, but I believe that there are immense opportunities in this space. If an initiative was to bring more efficient and make government functioning easily accessible to the masses, there is a very large income generation potential. The only real way to bring the most skilled folks to work on such social initiatives is to offer monetary incentives in addition to the social karma.

Did you know?

2009-04-01T09:07:00.001+05:30

And back to blogging here after a brief hiatus. Enjoy this presentation!

Tags: Did you know, Presentation

God's design of the universe

2009-01-10T21:35:00.001+05:30

George Gamow a very renowned cosmologist in his Book - "Genesis of the Big Bang" commenting on Hoyle's breakthrough in nucleosynthesis. Finally man could understand how Carbon and heavier elements were being formed on the stars.

In the beginning God created Radiation and Ylem (a mixture of protons and neutrons). And the Ylem was without shape or number, and the nucleons were rushing madly upon the face of the deep.

And God said: "Let there be mass two." And there was mass two. And God saw deuterium, and it was good.

And God said: "Let there be mass three." And there was mass three. And God saw tritium, and it was good.

And God continued to call numbers until He came to the transuranium elements. But when He looked back on his work, He saw that it was not good. In the excitement of counting, He had missed calling for mass five, and so, naturally, no heavier elements could have been formed.

God was very disappointed by that slip and wanted to contract the universe again and start everything from the beginning. But that would be much too simple. Instead, being Almighty, God decided to make heavy elements in the most impossible way.

And so God said: "Let there be Hoyle." And there was Hoyle. And God saw Hoyle and told him to make heavy elements in any way he pleased.

And so Hoyle decided to make heavy elements in stars, and to spread them around by means of supernova explosions. But in doing so, Hoyle had to follow the blueprint of abundances which God prepared earlier when He had planned to make the elements from Ylem.

Thus, with the help of God, Hoyle made all heavy elements in stars, but it was so complicated that neither Hoyle, nor God, nor anybody else can now figure out exactly how it was done.

Technorati Tags: Astronomy,Nucleosynthesis,Fred Hoyle,George Gamow

The Big Bang

2009-01-10T21:15:00.001+05:30

The term 'Big Bang' implies some sort of explosion, which is not a wholly inappropriate analogy, except that the Big Bang was not an explosion in space, but an explosion of space. Similarly, the Big Bang was not an explosion in time, but an explosion of time. Both space and time were created at the moment of the Big Bang.

--Simon Singh in his book "Big Bang"

Technorati Tags: Big Bang,Simon Singh,Book,Astronomy

Reboot America!

2008-12-25T20:26:00.003+05:30

I was reading this recent article about how America might be lagging behind many other nations in terms of infrastructure. This is not to suggest that America is anywhere as bad as India when it comes to infrastructures rather the author, Thomas Friedman takes the examples of the John Kennedy Airport and Hong Kong's ultra-modern airport (on a related note, Discovery Channel's "Extreme Engineering" program once covered the entire process that went into the building of the Honk Kong airport) to show that America might not be _the_ best in the world anymore.

Shortly later, I chanced upon this presentation by Dmitry Orlov drawing parallels between the erstwhile USSR and the United States of America. A short quote from the transcript:

The Soviet manned space program is alive and well under Russian management, and now offers first-ever space charters. The Americans have been hitching rides on the Soyuz while their remaining spaceships sit in the shop.

The arms race has not produced a clear winner, and that is excellent news, because Mutual Assured Destruction remains in effect. Russia still has more nuclear warheads than the US, and has supersonic cruise missile technology that can penetrate any missile shield, especially a nonexistent one.

The Jails Race once showed the Soviets with a decisive lead, thanks to their innovative GULAG program. But they gradually fell behind, and in the end the Jails Race has been won by the Americans, with the highest percentage of people in jail ever.

The Hated Evil Empire Race is also finally being won by the Americans. It's easy now that they don't have anyone to compete against.

Technorate Tags: Soviet, USSR, USA

More plagiarism charges against CEG

2008-12-19T01:39:00.001+05:30

Image via Wikipedia

I had blogged earlier about how the Chemistry department of CEG, Anna University had gotten into trouble for plagiarism charges. Now it looks like there are more charges [Google Cache] leveled against the university. I myself completed my undergrad from the very same college and I should clarify that this is NOT a rampant practice. Not once in my time there has any of the faculty encouraged stealing of ideas.

To start off, I think the authors had this coming and completely deserve the shame. It is one thing to gather ideas from multiple papers and present marginal deltas over them. But to actually copy-paste text and figures from other sources WITHOUT crediting the original sources is blatant plagiarism done with the motive of hiding the sources. The paper itself appears to be more of a literature survey written in oversized font sizes and has limited novelty. The authors seem to have missed the point that citing work is good and it only increases the credibility of their work.

In their defense I no not think it fair to blame the students. These are undergrad students with absolutely NO exposure to the research arena (CEG is more of a teaching university rather than a research university). The professor has to take the responsibility for this case, for it is the professor who should have reviewed the paper and guided the students in the right direction. There is a very clear lack of ethics here. Also, I have little regard for the HiPC poster session. I myself published a poster at the '06 edition of HiPC, the contents of which I am not particularly proud of.

From the looks of Prof. Bhaskaran Raman's page, it looks like this is just one of many plagiarized submissions he found (the title ends with the suffix "-1"). I am sure CEG is not the only university to have done this. Exposing more such cases is sure to reduce the incidence of such events and also reduce the pressure on reviewers.

Persisting on topic of ethics, the page also mentions this paper as a "submission" to HiPC '08. I am not sure if this was accepted or not. What are your views on criticizing publicly about a work that has not been officially published?

Technorati Tags: CEG,Anna University,Plagiarism,Bhaskar Raman

A smile can make a world of difference

2008-12-14T17:41:00.001+05:30

Oh gosh when did I start falling for cheesy movies like this. But I just so love it!

Thanks VC!

Technorati Tags: Validation,Short Film

Imagining the tenth dimension

2008-11-29T14:39:00.001+05:30

We find it very hard to conceptualize past the first 3 dimensions of nature, i.e. length, width and depth. Well not really; we are also well aware of the 4^th dimension which is none other than time itself. We don't necessarily think of time as a dimension for, we cannot influence time as directly as for example squeezing a ball. The 4th dimension is as much as what the human brain can comprehend for we live in a 4 dimensional world. However there exists a 5^th dimension which forms the entire basis of what a select few scientists in the world work on every day - the field of Quantum Mechanics (which Albert Einstein himself refuted as being "unrealistic" given its complex nature). The presence of a 5^th dimension would basically mean that for every action that we perform we follow an independent path in the 5^th dimension, i.e. every time each one of us make a choice be it our own or influenced by chance or by others, we forge a different path in the 5^th dimension. The 6^th dimension extends this idea to refer to the possibility of moving between states, i.e. moving from one point in the 5^th dimension to another immediately. What this effectively means is that at any given instant in time (i.e. the 4^th dimension), there exists an infinite number of parallel worlds representing each possible action in the real world. This assumption is also the basic concept behind the Schrodinger's Cat experiment. As described in Wikipedia:

Schrödinger's Cat: A cat, along with a flask containing a poison, is placed in a sealed box shielded against environmentally induced quantum decoherence. If a Geiger counter detects radiation then the flask is shattered, releasing the poison which kills the cat. Quantum mechanics suggests that after a while the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when we look in the box, we see the cat either alive or dead, not a mixture of alive and dead.

An excellent presentation on how to conceptualize the 10 dimensions of nature is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjsgoXvnStY and I would highly recommend that you go through this extremely well presented narration. There is also a book by the same folks on the Tenth Dimension whose website is http://www.tenthdimension.com

Technorati Tags: Dimensions,Physics

How is Ozzie changing Microsoft?

2008-11-27T08:21:00.001+05:30

Image by dfarber via Flickr

One incident in particular introduced Ozzie to the magic that comes when people connect via computer. He had taken a part-time assignment helping a professor finish writing some courseware. The prof lived on the other side of town, so Ozzie collaborated with him remotely. Ozzie came to know and like his boss, save for one annoyance. "He was the worst typist ever," Ozzie says. "He was very eloquent on email, but on Term Talk it was just dit-dit-dit, sometimes an error, but agonizingly slow." At the end of the project, the man threw a party at his house, and Ozzie discovered the reason for the typing problem: The professor was a quadriplegic and had been entering text by holding a stick in his teeth and poking it at the keyboard. Ozzie was floored.

[Source: WIRED]

/me takes a mental note to not judge people as often. WIRED has an excellent article on how Ray Ozzie is changing Microsoft. I did get an opportunity to meet Mr. Ozzie personally and he was just as soft-spoken as the article suggests.

Technorati Tags: Ray Ozzie,Microsoft

The land of opportunities

2008-11-23T21:55:00.001+05:30

In the U.S., there’s a crisis of confidence, In India, for the first time after decades or centuries, there is a sense of optimism about the future, a sense that our children’s futures can be better than ours if we try hard enough.

--Nandan Nilekani

[Source: NYTimes]

Technorati Tags: Nandan Nilekani,India,USA

Register at foss.in/2008

2008-11-07T10:16:00.001+05:30

Over 500 registrations already. What are you waiting for?

Technorati Tags: foss.in/2008,foss,india

The making of photography lens

2008-10-31T06:14:00.001+05:30

Aditya sent this link to a Discovery channel Documentary detailing how photography lens are made. Astounding!

Technorati Tags: Discovery,Photography,Lens

The "Indian" language

2008-10-25T20:56:00.001+05:30

"Indian" is a language as defined by the Stanford graduate admission committee.

Technorati Tags: Stanford

Awk love

2008-10-25T17:08:00.001+05:30

I have much love for the sed and awk utilities in the GNU toolbox. Peteris Krumins' extremely interesting blog has had some recent features on how to use sed and awk effectively and I can say no more to encourage you to go and read them here, here, here, here and here.

Technorati Tags: awk,sed,GNU

The girl effect!

2008-10-22T14:12:00.001+05:30

Technorati Tags: The girl effect

Butt-Head Astronomer

2008-10-15T18:36:00.001+05:30

Quoting from Wikipedia:

In 1994, Apple code-named the Power Macintosh 7100 "Carl Sagan" after the astronomer and science popularizer. Though his name was only used internally as a homage to his work, the code-name might not have caused any problems if Apple hadn't also released models codenamed "Cold Fusion" and "Piltdown Man" at the same time — implying that Carl Sagan was a hoaxer. The astronomer was upset at being compared to what he considered pseudoscience and sued. Although Apple won the suit, they changed the internal codename to "BHA." When Sagan learned that this meant "Butt-Head Astronomer," he instigated a libel suit. Apple claimed the right to free speech under the First Amendment and again won. This prompted Apple to change the codename for the 7100 again to "LAW," known internally as meaning "Lawyers Are Wimps."

Technorati Tags: Apple

The hidden cost of war

2008-10-14T16:57:00.001+05:30

I chanced upon this video detailing the cost of America's war on Iraq and Afghanistan. The statistics in the video has been derived from the book "The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict"

Technorati Tags: Iraq,Afghanistan,USA,War,The Three Trillion Dollar War

Should you vote?

2008-10-11T19:46:00.001+05:30

We have always used celebrities to pass on various messages, whether it be ad campaigns or public interest messages. Here is an excellently directed teaser prompting you to go out and vote (aimed at the US presidential elections). The ad features various celebrities including Jennifer Aniston, Halle Berry, Courteney Cox, Leonardo DiCaprio, Eva Longoria and Natalie Portman. However, this is one of those few videos that is not driven by the celebrities but rather by the speed and enthusiasm in the video. Hats off to the director.

Technorati Tags: Election