Archis's Blog

As funny as it sounds, it’s true! Here are four videos I found in which Mathew Perry and Jennifer Aniston teach you Windows 95.

If any if you already knew these existed, you really should have told me earlier. This is absolutely hillarious. If you have 40 minutes are are bored, you have to watch these If only we had such publicity for Vista!

All credit goes to a blogger on Gizmodo (Jason Chen) for finding them. Here’s the link. http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/no-wonder-studio-60-was-axed/rachel-and-chandler-t…

Here are the four youtube videos:

Quite commonly people find my points of view controversial. Though they tell me, “I kind of see where you’re going with this, but what can I do?” My points of view are necessarily pro-active (or even reactive), but they’re never ever remotely passive. And the one thing I hate about people is their passivity. Or as I like to call it, “Chronic Cowardice”. This attitude of “What can I do?” disgusts me. Maybe, “I tried my best, but failed” is a lot better. But thanks to “culture”, “tradition”, and falsely interpreted “religion”, the person who tries and fails is teased, however he who never tries is considered honourable. Those who live their lives doing nothing at all, and hence have no failures to speak of, are considered respectable. The “chronic coward” is who really rules the world today because the world is ultimately democratic.

We find people in important positions saying, “I agree there is a problem, but what can I do?” It makes one feel disgusted to see the amount of cowardice rampant in society. Many people like to complain. I feel that all the heart-break-based hindi movies and the poor-sufferring-guy style of mythological stories told to kids are part of the reason there is so much romanticism surrounding suffering. People _like_ to pretend they’re in a problem. They love to be in a position of perpetual suffering. I just don’t get it. Why can’t they just get up and live their life? Who’re they pretending for anyway?

Now I’m not talking about the meeky, shy, students. You’ll find that they’re a lot more braver than the egoistic hotshots. Let me explain why…

A common pattern I’ve noticed during my college days, is that of “industry experts”. I see lots of people from the “industry” going to colleges to show off in front of students who’re four years younger than themselves. But this same “expert” will bow down to people in higher positions and suck up to them in hopes of a better ‘pay package’ (another term I hate – why can’t you just call it salary or dough or money). The most easily observable case of chronic cowardice. Only a coward can live with himself in a situation where he’s sucking up to his bosses and boasting in front of kids half his age.

Another such pattern I observed was at the Pune University. The HoD of ISSC while showing off in front of students, never ever fought against the university to protect the students’ interests. Pathetic coward – and this fellow is some bigshot scientist with a lot of awards and crap. Even people in the administration, when I complained, gave me the whole, “what can we do” speech. It’s disgusting to see a 50-year-old scientist needing 21 year old kids to boast in front of, and has no backbone to fight someone his own age. What’s really surprising is that society doesn’t even notice that he’s the real coward. They look at his arrogance towards 21-year-olds and feel it is a respectable thing to do. However a 21-year-old fighting a 50-year-old tyrant is considered dishonourable. However, society would admire this same 21-year-old if he/she were to harass a 10-year-old.

Is this the great moral and philosophical and traditional and ethical Indian culture I’m supposed to be proud of? What happened to the epic stories of five brothers fighting a major army of 100 siblings? What happened to a prince in exile with an army of apes building a bridge of rocks across an ocean to fight an enormous tyrant? It makes one think, doesn’t it? This has nothing to do with westernization. This has everything to do with us. Coca-Cola and Pepsi didn’t make us respect a 50-year-old coward who shows-off in front of 21-year-old, but is too chicken to argue with anyone his own age. It’s all us. It’s a disease that we bred, and encouraged and incubated.

In fact, to protect those of us infected with this disease, and to ensure that our tyrants and feudal lords aren’t revealed to be the cowards they are, we use popular media (controlled by these chronic cowards), to make the next generation ashamed of westernization (where we conveniently define westernization as the act of exposing a coward for what he truly is). We tell youngsters how disrespecting their elders is a bad thing. Do we ever tell them that respecting a coward is the worst thing of all? Do we ever teach them to be not cowards?

Is it not obvious that the younger generation no longer finds this culture appealing? Are they really to blame? Should we really criticise a generation that is ready give up the cowardice that our forefathers called “tradition”? For those of us in our new generation, should we really give a damn what our elders tell us? These same elders who’ve proven themselves to be chronic cowards for decades?

If you really want to be someone, be proactive, show some backbone, do something about the people who’re causing your problems. And if you don’t want to do anything about the problem, stop complaining. If society is to improve, we need to throw out these “romantic sufferrers” from our numbers. These people are ruining our present and our future. They’re the most disgusting of human beings. A a murderer or a theif is much more tolerant than a romantic sufferrer.

Someone who is truly in trouble acts on it. Someone who is brave, opposes that which he finds offensive. The romantic sufferrer only likes to pretend he is in a problem. He just goes on living his life by a routine. He is the perfect specimen for those who claim that life is just a matter of chemical reactions, and there’s no such thing as a “soul” or “god”. Because this person is just that. An organic blob with routine chemical reactions taking place in it. It’s upto us to decide whether we’re organic blobs or human beings.

After meetings with the Dean of the Science Faculty in the Pune University, and after a ton of paperwork and letters, finally my first semester marksheets have been merged with my remaining marksheets from the second and third semesters. And I hope to obtain my hall ticket for my final semester by the end of next this month. With any luck, this means that I shall be a full-fledged Fergussonian again.

It’s a wonder how one mistaken decision can haunt you for the rest of your life. Thankfully, the two Deans and the three Vice Chancellors across whose terms this whole issue lived, have been very very supportive, encouraging and willing to listen. While I do have a very bad opinion about certain hotshots from the university, after a long time, my opinion about the administrative people has changed. After this whole ordeal, I kind of feel sorry for the administrative people, and have realised that it’s ultimately them who keep the whole university from collapsing. The so-called “academicians” and “scientists” are the real corrupt people, schemeing and cunning beyond imagination.

This whole ordeal has also made me lose a lot of respect for IIT Kanpur. Sorry people. When one of your alumni does something great, the IIT wants credit. Now when a few of your alumni did something dispecable and horrible, you must take responsibility also. If the IIT was responsible for success of certain alumni, then you must also take responsibility for those who fail.

Another lesson this experience taught me was to not be afraid of anyone ever again. After going head-on with a great scientist with a ton of certifications, one finally realises that at the end of the day, you have to draw the line somewhere. Be it a Vice Chancellor or the Chancellor or the President of India.

I recently blogged about people who’re afraid to die, and those who’re afraid to live. This situation exemplifies the difference extremely well.

I’m not philosophical, and I’m not holistic. When I’ve been hurt, I want revenge. Many people contemplate suicide as a means of escape. Never be afraid to live. Be afraid to die, because you lose all power once you’re dead. By living, you can be a perpetual pain-in-the-ass for them. Next time you feel suicidal, remember this – if you really want revenge and want to enjoy it, then live. Live as long as you can. Be a major pain. And enjoy it. Live to see it happen. Killing yourself will achieve nothing.

Killing them will also achieve nothing. I sort of begin to understand why Batman wants all his villians to live and be convicted. He doesn’t want them to escape and become martyrs. So don’t kill your enemies. Allow them to live. Be better than them. Make them jealous. Make them burn in their anger. And believe me – to see a “great scientific computing department” have a VBScript virus on their Linux-boasting website – PRICELESS! Believe me, all that stuff about revenge not making you feel better is overrated. It makes you feel awesome! Hurting those who hurt you can be a very rewarding thing. Especially if you have an ego as big as mine.

I knew the title would catch your attention. This is just a book review on another excellent book by George Bernard Shaw. This is one of his typical preface-is-better-than-the-actual-book kind of books. The preface itself is so insightful and intriguing, that you wonder if there’s anything at all left to discuss in the rest of it.

All in all a great read. For all those who hate reading all the boring rambling comments by authors in futile attempts to make writing “seem like art”, you’ll find Bernard Shaw refreshing. He’s direct, precise, to-the-point and makes no attempt at disguising his writing under some self-concocted definition of “art”. This in itself is an art that has been lost for many years.

There isn’t one sentence in his books that don’t belong there, or that don’t contribute to the point he is making. The books are quite small and are 2-4 day reads of regular readers, and maybe an overnight read for power readers. The langauge is simple and easy. Again, no half-ass attempt at making it “seem like” art. The purpose of a book is to present a point of view. The purpose of art is expression. Bernard Shaw uses vocabulary and grammar only to the extent that he needs to express his thoughts. If use of complex phrases and impressive words don’t contribute to his point, you won’t find them anywhere. In fact, many of his biggest hits like, “Man and Superman”, and “Major Barbara” are in exceptionally simple english.

In case you get time, and you’re reading queues are empty, I’d strongly recommend “Getting Married” as your next read.

The book itself isn’t much about the process of marriage as it is an investigation into “definitions of marriage”. The book explores what “civilised gentlemen” really mean by “marriage”. GB Shaw should probably win a Nobel Prize in mathematics. He tends to follow a very strict scientific approach in analysing a situation – he first looks at symptoms, and then presents theories which fit those symptoms. And I guess most of you who’ve seen married couples should be able to see what’s really happening in the background based on their actual behaviour as compared to their verbal claims.

Maybe for someone new to Bernard Shaw plays, this may not be an effective book at the first glance. In case you want something more palatable and non-controversial, begin with “The Unsocial Socialist”, move on to “Major Barbara”, and then read “Getting Married”. Finally I feel one shouldn’t go without having read “Man and Superman”. I feel that’s one book that no “civilized” person should have not read.

We’re shifting back to Cyber Towers. The offices are great this time, and we’re just five people in the whole quadrant – Peri, Raja, Gopi, Rajiv and me. In fact, we’re so small a number that we have to walk all the way to a different quadrant of the building to reach the pantry. Although we do have a water dispenser for drinking water, coffee is a hundred meters away.

As if that wasn’t enough, my room is right in front of Peri’s (that’s the bigshot manager), and Raja’s (he’s my mentor) rooms. And they both prefer to keep their cabin doors open and curtains drawn away. This means that no more “who can fool the boss best” contests.

In the meantime, we’ve got brand new machines out there (not that I’m complaining – run’s Aero, got a Core 2 Duo, 250 GB HDD, etc.). So gotta set them up. With the whole complex configurations it took us months to setup out here, it’s going to be a hell of a mess replicating that out there. Besides, all those network-drives, automounts, IE preferences, messenger preferences, startup programs, drivers, devices, etc. each of it is going to take ages.

After that, got those gigantic monsters – each of which takes a whole day to install and get working. IIS webserver, SQL server, Visual Studio Team System, etc.

I’d appreciate some quiet time if possible during this transition. Keep the phone calls low and keep the mails away.

Another mail beginning with a quote from Obiwan Kenobi and you just _know_ it’s about philosophy. This mail is just me thinking aloud for everyone to hear, and maybe add to my dilemmas or possibly provide some interesting insights into them. I’m not keen on reaching an answer, but would like more points of view to add to the ones I have listed as my own.

This isn’t a controversial mail, so keep your adrenaline low. This isn’t about open source vs closed source. This mail is simply to list down the different view points I’ve seen people have, and people who didn’t have any. I have two minds even on the issue of whether it’s better to _have_ an opinion or whether it’s better to make choices on the moment, and based on what. In X-Men, when Wolverine asks Storm, “Are you’re on the right side?”, she answers, “At least, I’ve chosen a side.” I’m not sure which of them is more appropriate, but it does lead me to question many of the truths we cling to.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the point of view people take when performing an activity. Many a times, we lose focus of what we want to achieve and begin going off-track. It’s times like these when one has to sit down and decide what is important to him. Success? Sure success is important. But everyone’s own definition of success is different and one has to just sit down and define what one feels success is all about.

The reason I decided to speak on this is because at many times in life, we’ve been faced with mutually exclusive choices, and all choices seem as if they were simultaneously a success and a failure. To some extent, Gandhian thought does help keep yourself calm. And of course, religions attempt to answer most of these dilemmas, and if you read about a larger number of religions, your insight increases along with it. But I guess the key to making good choices is to accept that there is no definite specific “answer” that one can arrive at, and live with it.

What really makes a choice challenging is the realisation that you’re on your own. When you come right down to it, there is nobody “on your side” so to speak. Everyone has their own agenda, and everyone has their own objectives. Just because two choices coincide in actions, doesn’t mean the “choices” themselves coincide, it simply means that the resulting actions of those choices turned out to be identical for two people.

But part of the solution is knowing that you’re on your own. There is nobody really “with you” when you make those decisions. That also allows you to prevent people from making you feel guilty of what you’ve done. Sure they try, and they will keep trying, but part of being happy depends on not allowing it to “get to” you.

On this note, let me deviate a little as to how definitions of success can cause friction, and the earlier you realise what your definition of success is, the sooner you learn to get along with the world. Especially since I spent almost my entire life feeling as if I was swimming against the current in a powerful river.

Many of you received a mail from my recently saying that I am just honestly internally happy here at Microsoft after a long time, and I don’t feel the need to constantly keep struggling in order to overcome my internal insecurity. It was then that I began reading a bunch of philosophy and figured it what it was all about.

Understanding your idea of success:

The first challenge is to to figure out what your concept of success is. This could take a long time to figure out, with a lot of hindi-movies, idealistic literature, utopian promises, bigshot nametags trying to influence you from all directions. Even if you do figure out what your idea of success is, there will be quite a few people trying to make you feel guilty about it. The second challenge is to not allow them to do so. This takes even longer to achieve and can be quite a painful struggle. The third major challenge is in realising that you’re always alone in this struggle. Even if you meet “like-minded” people, very subtle differences in your ideologies can throw you back to square one. So you really just need to believe in yourself and move on, without much expectations of help or support. But once you’re there, trust me – it feels awesome!

For me, it has always been about the effect. It has always been about changing the world. Less talk, more action. If you remember, I began to get very irritable towards my last days of the CSLinux project. That was partly because too much discussion went on about philosophy and licenses. For me that was largely irrelevant. As I keep mentioning, many people out here at Microsoft used to be heavy Linux freaks at one time. I won’t try to guess their reasons for ending up at MS, but my reason was plainly that, for me, Qt vs Gtk API libraries has never been a problem. For me, a better UI has been the objective.

Part of the reason I was impressed by the Open Source Cafe people was because after a long time, I met people who talked with me in terms of effects. Suppose we define “to help farmers” as our objective, and suppose we produce a lot of GPL’d code which at the end didn’t help them, then would I define it as success? Frankly, I wouldn’t. And neither did Paritosh, which is why we got along. I don’t particularly care about helping farmers or coming out with GPL’d code. If for whatever reason, I ever began a project “to help farmers”, then my definition of success would be that at the end of the whole ordeal, it _has_ to end up helping farmers.

Here’s where I cease to be an open source guy, and possibly even not a Gandhian at all. If I need to keep my code closed _in_order_to_ help farmers, I’d do it without a second’s thought. If you feel that’s signing the deal with Davy Jones, then I’m Captain Jack Sparrow! Part of being at peace with yourself is to overcome the tendency to allow others to make you feel guilty for what you do. For too long, even after my parents kept insisting that I shouldn’t give a damn what others said, I used to allow others to make me feel guilty about myself.

If what I do is open sourced by my parent company? Sure why not. Whatever turns you on. Would I jeopardize my objective of helping farmers because someone prevents it from being GPL’d? Hell no! If farmer’s aren’t helped, there’s no purpose for me being there meddling with anything. I’m a problem solver. I’m there to take up the challenge. If someone buys my code for a billion dollars and gives it out for free? Sure, go ahead! You get your kicks that way, I’ll get my kicks by drinking Champagne and we both end up happy.

Life is about challenges again – technical ones and social ones. When we sit down for group meetings (which is 15 minutes in a month, and my manager thinks even that’s a waste of time), we discuss about “how to run a matrimonial site” (well, the kind of stuff we do is crazy – you wouldn’t believe it). If the site gets people married, we succeed. If we can’t get people married, we’re fired, regardless of what webserver we ran it on and whether the married couples were allowed to modify its code and redistribute it to their kids.

Understanding that ideas are free:

Here I’m going to promote some “free as in free speech” kind of freedom. In the movie “Ben-Hur”, Messala’s predecessor comments, “You can tie them up, you can torture them, but how can you make an idea go away? How do you fight an idea?”

While this is true, Messala’s response is equally important to understand, “How do you fight an idea? With another idea.”

Many times, people will try to make you feel guilty for what you believe in. Never allow them to do so. Ideas are free. We all know that there isn’t really such a thing as free speech. If I were to go on the road and speak against a prominent personality, I’d not make it out alive.

But ideas are totally free, because you don’t have to speak of them. But they’re equally vulnerable due to the fact that they’re hidden. If I speak against a famous personality, there are physical people who would
physically kill me. Society is much more sinister when it comes to fighting against freedom of ideas, they do it with another idea.

Understanding that guilt is not external:

I feel like quoting a certain character from a Perry Mason book (almost all characters in his cases have memorable quotes). The character is a 70-year-old great-grandmother who smokes, swears, drinks, and does whatever the hell she wants to. When Mason asks her about it, she replies, “People spend their childhoods preparing for their middle-age, they spend their middle age preparing for their old age, and they spend their old age making peace with God. I feel sorry for people who’re afraid to die. But I feel even more pity for those who are afraid to live.”

What society does to you, is make you afraid to live. It gives you certain ideas – through “culture”, “heritage” and “religion”, apart from media, and other means, society makes you feel guilty of your ideas. Even if you keep your ideas to yourself, people try to make you feel guilty for having them.

The second step in making peace with yourself is to prevent yourself from feeling guilty. I’ve always been an “academic purist”. Recently someone mailed me and told me that I work for the very industry that I speak against. What was amazing this time around was that I didn’t feel guilty at all. Just an year ago, it would have thrown me off balance – either I’d have fired off an angry response, or locked myself in a dungeon working on a project to satisfy my insecurity. This time, nothing. I plainly told the guy to mind his own business and if he has anything productive to do, then to do it, but his mails will no longer make me feel guilty of what I’m doing.

It also gave me a clear idea of how people try to trap you. I’ve spent quite a while in academics, on research projects and stuff. During those times, this very guy used to say, “Have you ever worked in the industry? Who are you to speak against them when you yourself never experienced it?”

That was the reason I came in the industry in the first place. For a few years, I wanted to be in the top company that everyone dies to get into, and in possibly one of the most high-profile teams within it. Now when my aces trumped all their “industry” cards, they try to make me feel guilty about leaving academics. And it’s amazing to see just upto what extent people will go to.

I’m going to respond publically to this person. Just because I work in the industry, doesn’t mean my comments against the “industry experts” apply to me – frankly because my work speaks for itself. However, if applying those comments to me is what it takes to apply them to others, so be it. Apply them to me. And also apply them to others. In fact, during every talk I give in front of students, I discourage them from joining the industry and make it very clearly known that I _did_not_ get admission in a Ph.D. program anywhere. Make every industry expert say the same.

In fact that shows just how much more demanding academics is and what high quality is required there. I get paid at least five times of what I would get if I were in a Ph.D. program with the most high-profile CSIR JRF scholarship, and yet I cannot get admission to that Ph.D. program (even in Pune University). That’s proof of the kind of people who choose academics. While it’s disappointing to me personally, it does make you feel proud that probably the very elite are going there. And it gives you an idea of what the “industry” really is. The industry pays five times to someone who’s not even given admission in a Ph.D. program that pays five times less.

Try to remember the next time an “industry expert” tries to impress you. Nothing puts things quantitatively in perspective as much as money does.

The Windows NT source code is available for free for a long time, and even the latest products sources are available to certain academic institutions.

The source code is licensed under some kind of “Academic License” which I don’t fully understand. However, in short, I have the CD with me, and my friend from the evangelists team tells me that I can copy and redistribute it. The license allows you to modify and change and redistribute the NT source code too – so long as it’s for non-commercial purposes.

Fire me a mail in case you’d like to get your hands on the CD. Ideally you should be contacting your local Microsoft Student Ambassador or Student Partner for this, so that they can ensure you don’t violate any licensing agreements.

In any case, feel free to send across a mail and let’s see where it goes. Or you can directly contact the evangelist – Mohamed Reza (i-moreza@microsoft.com). He can certainly help you in any case.

Besides I’ve sent copies of the CD to some friends in Pune. I can put you in touch with them and you can get the code from them.

A word of caution (all good things come with a catch): A lot of Microsoft-owned IP is contained in that code. So in case you’re ever going to work on a competing product, make sure you don’t reuse parts of that code. Since there are allegations of Microsoft leaving behind backdoors or stuff in code, or that they might be stealing your personal data, this code is made available to ensure that you can feel safe. This code is not meant to be used in your own projects (unless they’re necessarily non-commercial, in which case feel free to play around with it).

On the positive side, the CD contains an excellent book called “Windows Internals” which explains everything there is to know about the Windows Kernel. The author is Jim Alchin. I suggest anyone who has a windows component in his syllabus read this book.