Cyril Maithily Gupta's Blog

When you get an unlimited internet connection from Airtel don’t forget to read the fine print. The plan is not actually unlimited the way you expect it to.

Airtel has introduced a ‘Fair Usage Policy’ which is very unfair to its customers. Under this policy a buyer who’s got a 1 MBPS connection (paying Rs. 1699 for it every month) is only allowed to use up to 20 GBs in a month. If the usage goes above it the buyer’s Internet speed is degraded to 512 KBPS. On the 2 MBPS connection too the limit is the same 20 GBs.

20 GBs? Ridiculous! Someone with a 2 MBPS connection can download 20 GBs in 3 days. They have the audacity to call it ‘Fair Use’!

Fair use for who? For Airtel who doesn’t care a fig for its customers anymore in a bid to maximize their profits?

Well, it’s not going to work for long. The first chance I get I am going to migrate to an Internet connection that is not so limiting.

Another company Tata Indicom has caught up on the fair use nonsense too. They told me that the fair use for the Internet connection was 20 GBs, when I asked them what would they do after I crossed 20 GBs they were unclear. ‘Send you a SMS’. Umm.. How’s that making sense? Every time you send me a SMS I get a shooting pain through my leg? Or you want to remind me of bad Karma that I am doing, crossing your fair use limits?

Well, it’s moronic policies like these which introduce fresh competition into the market.

So I am looking for an ISP with an ounce of sense.

What would you do if you won a spacesuit in a contest? Wear it in your backyard of course, and then be kidnapped by an alien spacecraft and visit the Moon, Pluto another star and then another galaxy. Sounds like some adventure eh? And what if you could come back from all that in a few weeks time. That’s what Russ does in Heinlein’s epic tale that spans distances that the human mind will break down before imagining.

This is the kind of work that books like Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy are inspired from. Of course HGTTG is much more awesome. After all, Arther Dent just needed his bath-towel robe and multiple strokes of luck to save the galaxy, while it took Russ a spacesuit, a near genius IQ and an ultra-sharp survival instinct to fight off the aliens.

This book strongly reminded me of Douglas Adams’ HGTTG (which was written much later incidentally, and on a bigger scale). It had the same irreverent humor in tough situations. Delightful characters who were a treat to watch. Aliens that managed to be both bumbling and frightful at the same time and a journey that’s beyond anything you’d ever expect.

Heinlein set the bar when he takes you the Magellanic Cloud at the Federation of the Three Galaxies at the meeting of the Security Council which is going to judge whether to kill all humanity by putting to trial on behalf of our race: a Neanderthal man, a Roman Centurion, A high-school pass out boy, and a thirteen year old girl.

Awesome!

This could only be upped by something like The Restaurant at the End of Time.

So like I said this was a wholly enjoyable read which is evident from the fact that I got this book yesterday night and I am through with it today night between Work, food, bath and family.

This is a great book and everyone who is interested in quality space humor should own a copy.

Oh, and the next time you go out into the backyard decked in your space-suit, don’t call on Radio for an imaginary person called ‘Peewee’, no telling who might pick you up.

Reading Heinlein’s astounding science fiction I never thought about how long ago it really was when he wrote them. Reading this book reminded me.

The first and the last manned moon mission till date was in 1969 and over 30 years later we have yet to send human beings to Moon or to any other planetary body of consequence. All the money that should have gone into space research has been eaten by weapons development program, and – television.

The book ‘The Man Who Sold The Moon’ is about one man’s dream to reach the moon and how he makes the journey possible and ultimately fulfills his dream. The story is about the last ‘robber baron’ businessman or maybe the first of the ‘new robber barons’, an individual who can do anything legal or slightly illegal as long as he achieves the end he believes in. The end justifies the means wholly in this book from Heinlein.

The Man Who Sold The Moon is set in the 1950s, the past. The cliched conscience-less businessman was as alive then as he is now. But in Heinlein’s book his purpose is higher, sort of like Arjun in the Bhagvad Geeta.

The Man who sold the Moon is actually a Novella and a short story. The central character is the same, but the stories are set decades apart. In the second story the lead character’s initial excursion to the Moon caused rapid advancements in spaceship technology and humanity fulfilled the dream of establishing a colony on Moon. It’s a dream that still eludes us, and today the number of people who believe we will make it to outer-space are lesser than what they were 50 years ago.

It’s a shame because Heinlein has a splendid vision for the future, and we find ourselves unable to live it.

Smartphones are the big boom in the US and the next big boom in India. With the arrival of 3G there will be compelling reason for mobile users to upgrade to a smartphone. There is a good scope for small players to make little fortunes developing and selling smart phone applications. That’s why I have been giving them a serious look starting this year.

The most popular smartphone platform is of course iPhone, but it hasn’t been able to repeat its success story in India because it is locking its services with a single player who is marking up the price very high. That’s why the number of smartphones sold could be well under 10,000 according to one study. Until iPhone makes itself an open platform which works with its complete capabilities on all networks and is available for a price at par with international prices there will be very little desire for customers to shift to iPhone.

This of course is the most compelling reason why I won’t be developing for iPhone. The second reason is Apple’s tight regulatory policies and their desire not to let any other marketplace bloom than their own. The problem is not just that Apple arbitrarily rejects and approves applications but also that it decides whether your application gets any exposure and paying Apple a cut of your profits is vital if you’re developing any app for iPhone. That’s like paying Microsoft 30% on every software you make for Windows.

Since Apple is making so much money off iPhone already I don’t think it should lock the developers down so hard.

There are some other platforms available as an alternative to iPhone. Android is small but it has the potential to be a winner just like iPhone. Development on Android is free and you can get all the tools from the Android website.

All the development is in Java so you can potentially re-use some of your code to make apps for other smartphones like Blackberry and Nokia.

So I am going to be try to be an early entrant on Android. Maybe beginning with a port of one of my core applications.

 Black Swan’s back cover talked about the phenomenon of Black Swan describing companies like Google as the Black Swan that came out of nowhere taking analysts by surprise. I thought this would be a book that would analyze Black swans like Google, describing why they are doing so well, but the book couldn’t be more different.

The book is not about Black Swans but about Black Swan the phenomenon. Nicholas Nassim Taleb talks on unpredictive people, companies and happenings can change the way the world works. His mission is to convince you that ultimately all analysis is useless, the analysts are overpaid louts who are actually no better than unpaid louts and that no matter how much data you have the future is going to make you a sitting duck anyway.

When I started to read this book the most refreshingly different thing that I found about it was the style. Taleb has his roots in the middle east and that’s why the book is written very differently from the usual Western/American authors. His language is different, expression is different and he will have you pausing in some places and reading the sentence again just so that you can have a look at the sequence of words he has used.

If the writing style wasn’t enough he introduces some delightful new ideas. Like talking in great detail about the experiences of a person, citing examples from his life to illustrate his point, and then telling you that the person is imaginary. In a non-fiction book that surprises you because you actually think all the way that the person is very real cause you’ve heard so much about her degrees and her job and everything else. Well that’s one example of Black Swan phenomenon at work.

Even though the book’s premise is not new, the approach is fresh. Taleb has been an investment analyst for a long time and you’ll find that the book talks about the financial markets a lot. He’s an insider and when he tells you that all the guys you’re trusting your money with are actually playing poker with it, you better listen. I for one am not going to put my money in mutual funds soon.

Taleb is also a scholar and he puts you under a slight awe with details of all the classics he has read. Well that’s the undoing of his book. When he goes on about the mathematicians and philosophers who you haven’t heard of and tells you how much he hates or loves them, you just can’t relate. You don’t know those guys well enough to know what Taleb is talking about.

By the second half of the book he also got a bit repetitive and argued the same arguments over. Not that I was unconvinced earlier.

The book is fine, not spectacular, but fine. If you’re deeply interested in economics and how money works like I am you will read to the end, not otherwise.

I would recommend it only to a small selection of people.

 Don’t read this book if you have eyebrows, because you’re going to raise them if you do. Heinlein in his days has caused quite a few controversies for his radical views about a lot of things that most of the world is traditional about. Things like religion, marriage, society, economy, and sex. How can you mention Heinlein and not talk about that.

I Will Fear No Evil is Heinlein’s ode to human sexuality. But it is not graphic and it is definitely not obscene and even without being these two things, this topic still manages to remain the single point agenda of this entire book. I’ve read several of Heinlein’s books and his radicalism filters through in all of them, but I didn’t expect even him to write something like this. So  yes, I was a little taken aback and since I have eyebrows (two of ‘em) I raised them quite a few times.

The premise is simple, a 90 year old filthy-rich (and filthy in other ways too) old tycoon gets his brain transplanted into a young woman’s body after she dies and then is caught in a giant mess of emotions about his/her identity and the carnal aspect of his body.

There is not much ‘science’ fiction in this book, but with Heinlein there never usually is. He deals in the future of the society, not technology and he’s a master when he does that.

In his day 30 years ago, he talked about many things which were taboo then and slowly they are and will be included in the mainstream. I guess Heinlein believed that deep-down everyone wants to be a liberal. He could be right.

This book is readable but I won’t hand it to a minor and I won’t hand it to someone who has not read Heinlein before. They could end up misunderstanding his message.

Read it only if you have faith in Heinlein.

Just saw on the news the other day that West Bengal’s CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharya wants to offer land to software development hotshots if they would only open shop in WB. What? Really?

Well, this is the same guy whose party was very miffed not a very long time ago that there are no unions of software company employees (Who apparently are one of the highest paid lot today). They tried to raise their communistic fervor at Wipro and make a union. Unfortunately for them Wipro clamped down big time and everyone who wanted to make the union was ahem… shown the error of their ways. So finally there was still no union at Wipro no matter how much Buddhadeb and his party-members fumed at IT companies.

Now that the rest of the world has charged ahead and WB is still in the dark-ages, even as Buddhadeb’s party gets routed in elections they never could lose, they want ‘reform’. They want IT companies to come their shores, start call-centers, development centers, and you know, generally bring the dirty capitalistic money that they hate so much into the state.

Right around the time those guys wanted to form unions in IT companies they were disrupting Honda’s motorbike manufacturing plant at Faridabad. The plant was closed for months, and no bikes were manufactured. The losses to the company and the workers ran in millions. Many workers lost jobs that were paying the highest in their grade. That’s why I took a special notice of what these dirt**** were trying to do to IT, the only industry that is salvaging India’s economy and position in the world right now.

The hypocrisy of West-Bengal’s communist party is downright disgusting. In their home-state they want IT companies and industries to come in, so they’re offering free land, tax holidays, labor law exemptions, and everything else that they can muster. But in the states where they are not in power, they are disrupting companies, causing strikes, rousing sentiments against industries, closing down factories and doing everything they can to create chaos that prevents the economy from progressing.

Why? Oh why? Mr Buddhadeb, should any IT company want to open a development center in your state?

Haven’t you and your goons caused enough damage to India’s economy already? Why at all should anyone believe even for a moment that you are serious about reforms when your party-workers are busy shutting down India Inc. in the rest of the country at this very moment?