Archis's Blog

Yet one more of my philosophy on objectivity, passing judgements and taking decisions. Perry Mason novels by Erle Stanley Gardner are no short of a work of philosophy written in diluted form across dozens of books.

Here is an interesting dilemma the famous fictional lawyer presents.

Assume that a person was poisoned by me, and the person is dying. The poison should take half an hour to kill the victim. Now, another person, say you, hate this victim too. You come over to his house, after I have left, and you shoot him dead. The question now is, who was responsible for murdering that person? This question is in many contexts – a legal context, an ethical context, a moral context, etc. Try thinking about this a while. It really does give one interesting insights into our own process of judging people.

I did not reveal intentions of any of the people in the above scenario for a specific purpose – because I don’t know them. Hundreds of times, when we see a murder mystery on television, we follow the storylines of both the victim and the murderer. That is part of the reason we know “who” was responsible. Basically, the director is “telling” us who his fall-guy or bad-guy is. In real life, rarely is such the case. We observe a body that contains poison in it, and a bullet wound. The investigator, therefore, is burdened with figuring out not only the circumstances in which the person died, but also the circumstances of the murder(s).

Let me present some scenarios:

1. If the shooter knew the person was already dying, then it may not technically be a murder. He may simply be putting the victim out of his misery. He may be just preponing the inevitable. On the other hand, if he had no idea the victim was poisoned, then he had every “intent” to murder the victim and is as guilty as the poisoner.

2. Let us assume there was some way of countering the poison (by an antidote, or calling paramedics). Now, this can be attempted only in a finite period of time. There will come a time-point beyond which the victim cannot be saved even with all the medical attention in the world. Let us call this the point-of-no-return. Now, if the shooter knew the victim was poisoned, and shot him before the point of no return, will he be responsible for murder? Because now, he had an opportunity if saving the victim’s life but yet shot him instead. However, is the shooter an expert on determining the point-of-no-return, and whether it has been surpassed or not?

3. What if the shooter missed the victim’s vital organs, and the victim eventually died. Which was really responsible? The poison or the bullet-wound? Who was guilty?

As you may see, many of these scenarios depend crucially on the “intent” of each of the people playing their roles. So next time you criticise someone, or judge someone, why not take a moment, think about their “intent”, think about what they knew or did not know, and you may find their actions while physically the same, may gain a different meaning for you.

Proving or disproving anyone’s intent can be a difficult, or even impossible thing.

In my adventerous life, I try many new things. Today was another first for me. I wore a \”Lungi\”.

For the uninitiated, a \”Lungi\” is just like a saree but is worn around the lower …. uhhmmm… \”region\” of a person. It\’s a man-thing by the way, so no jokes on this! It\’s simply a whole lot of cloth that you wrap around yourself.

Feels awkward in the beginning, but as one gets used to it, it gets more interesting. For one, it\’s not like one of your traditional boring clothes which you wear and forget about. No no! A Lungi will keep you busy for a while. Constantly, it gets loose and you need to tie it up again. Now that\’s fun-clothing for you.

Besides, it can get quite comfortable after a while – just make sure you\’re alone in the house, otherwise it gets \”fun\” for others as well. Better not find yourself in such a predicament.

All in all, a great experience. Check out an authentic pic of myself wearing this \”Lungi\” above.

In my adventerous life, I try many new things. Today was another first for me. I wore a \”Lungi\”.

For the uninitiated, a \”Lungi\” is just like a saree but is worn around the lower …. uhhmmm… \”region\” of a person. It\’s a man-thing by the way, so no jokes on this! It\’s simply a whole lot of cloth that you wrap around yourself.

Feels awkward in the beginning, but as one gets used to it, it gets more interesting. For one, it\’s not like one of your traditional boring clothes which you wear and forget about. No no! A Lungi will keep you busy for a while. Constantly, it gets loose and you need to tie it up again. Now that\’s fun-clothing for you.

Besides, it can get quite comfortable after a while – just make sure you\’re alone in the house, otherwise it gets \”fun\” for others as well. Better not find yourself in such a predicament.

All in all, a great experience. Check out an authentic pic of myself wearing this \”Lungi\” above.

If any “industry” people are reading this, I’d like some explanations from your side about the issue below. Academicians should do the same. This post can be used as a career-advice thing also. All of you who keep pinging me about external courses, university courses, etc. could really keep the following points in mind.

Every single day, COEP, PICT, VIT, etc. in the engineering scene, and Fergusson, Wadia, Garware, etc. on the B.Sc. scene are overloaded with students looking for “recognition”. Let’ s be frank. When was the last time you heard anything about research opportunities or good projects in any of these colleges?

Is recognition the end result we want? No – the end result is placement. We don’t call it “getting jobs”, or “working” – we call it placement. We’re ashamed to use the word “salary” (as if I’m one of those “salaried employees”), instead we call it our “package”.

Industries are no different. They run behind CMM Level 5 and all that kind of stuff. I’m not sure if that makes their software really more relevant to a user or not, but hey, you’re guess is as good as mine.

The problem lies in the fact that these “recognitions” are purely virtual. They’re used more to reject candidates than to accept them. And we shall look at a few facts and then draw conclusions. If you have any facts that invalidate my stated facts, feel free to contact me – afterall, the purpose of this blog is to investigate issues, and not to create blind activists out of the readers.

When was the last time a company told you that your certifications would not be considered because they are not government recognised? You can bet your ass that they’re really rejecting you for other reasons but don’t have the guts to say it to your face. I know of at least one course that the University of Pune has been conducting on its campus that has no recognition whatsoever. Or more bluntly, it is not UGC recognised, which according to the University Act, is illegal. This course has been conducted for the last 12 years, they have no published syllabus, they have no accountability, and yet, companies find no problem with this fact.

So the next time you consider your future, remember that all these certifications and recognitions have absolutely no value whatsoever. You need to think of your end-objective of placements. If you turned down Aptech or NIIT, now you know that the Interdisciplinary School of Scientific Computing, being run by the UoP is no better than them – in fact, it’s worse because they have no accountability. Aptech and NIIT, at least, have to keep placing their candidates in order to survive. They live in a capitalist environment.

Probably that M.Tech, or M.S. that they offer while you’re working has a better chance of being AICTE recognised (the Government recognition for technical courses comes from the AICTE), than a course in the UoP. That does make one think, doesn’t it?

So all those of you who’re worried about going into a job after B.Sc. because your courses may not be recognised, bear in mind that recognitions have no value whatsoever. It’s a big scam. It’s all a make-believe pretend system. Remember in elementary school, we used to pretend to be superheroes and save the world? The mature industry today is no different. The sooner you realise this, the sooner you begin to look at things differently. Instead of running towards this “recognised courses” race, I suggest you run towards the “placement” race, which is what counts in the end.

Ever installed software from the other end of the world? Literally? Today was my first time. And believe me – all that caching and mirrorring nonsense doesn’t seem like nonsense once you go through this experience.

Today, I had to install an older archived version of Visual Studio. As you may know, Microsoft IT maintains mirrors and caches of current released software all across major sites and in major countries throughout corpnet. However, archived products are only kept on few (possibly ony one) site which is in redmond.

I began an installation of Visual Studio at approximately 11:30 pm on Sunday (10th June) evening. It is now 1:50 am on Tuesday (12th June) morning and I’m just around half way through the install. It should be at least another 8 hours before the current phase of install finishes and then I have two more phases to go. Then 2 SDKs and a couple of plugins. And that should do it.

Not to mention IIS, SQL Server Enterprise, etc. But then they’re production versions, so I should get them from the local repository.

Getting a new system bootstrapped can be a major pain…….