Nehru Dynasty - Prime Ministers of India

The 1946 elections for Congress presidency were very prominent, because the President would lead the free india's first government. Gandhi asked all 16 states representatives and Congress to elect the right person and Sardar Patel's name was proposed by 13 state representatives out of 16. But, Gandhi requested Patel to step down in favor of Nehru. He honoured Gandhi's request, and stepped down. That's why Jawaharlal Nehru became the first Prime Minister of India.

After the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri in Jan 1966, top leaders of Congress party could not come to a unanimous decision for the next Prime Minister. The prominent leaders at that time were Morarji Desai, K.Kamaraj, and Jagjivan Ram. They could not agree upon a consensus candidate amongst themselves. They reluctantly placed the crown on Indira Gandhi's head, believing errorneously (and what a costly error it would later prove to be), that they could keep her under their control.

In 1971 elections, Indira Gandhi's promise was "Garibi Hatao" (by Socialist economy model), and all the economists knew how bad that was, and most of the things were undone by P.V.Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh. But, uneducated people were not aware of that, and they all voted for Indira Gandhi.

In 1977 elections, Congress Party was defeated badly, and Indira Gandhi was defeated in Rae Bareli, and her son Sanjay Gandhi lost in Amethi. In 1979, Indira Gandhi told Charan Singh that she would support him in forming the government. Then, Charan Singh defected the Janatha party with 64 MPs. Even, if Indira Gandhi supports him, still he would not have got majority in Parliament, because she had only 154 MPs. But, still then president Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy invited him as Prime Minister. On the day before vote of confidence, Indira Gandhi withdrew the support. Charan Singh had to resign, and he became the only prime minister who did not face Lok Sabha even once. After that, Jagjivan Ram and few others met President and told him that, they can form the government, by all other MPs of Janatha Party, AIMDMK, and few other small parties. But, President rejected that, and he dissolved the Lok Sabha immediately. That was when, Chandrasekhar (Then president of Janatha Party) wanted to remove the president Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy by impeachment. But, later they decided to not call for impeachment. That was the only time, when the Members of the electoral college wanted to call for impeachment.

In 1980, Indira Gandhi could easily win because of the inability of Janatha Party, where there were splits. In the same year, Indira Gandhi's younger son Sanjay Gandhi died. After Sanjay's death, Rajiv Gandhi was asked to join politics by his mother. He contested and won from Amethi (His brother's constitution) in 1981. He became General Secretary of Congress in 1982. In 1984, Indira Gandhi was assassinated, and he became the Prime Minister on the same day. He wanted to utilize the sympathy, and called for dissolving of Lok Sabha. As expected, Congress won with great majority.

Voting System in First General Elections

In the first general elections, the ballot paper had no names of candidates, nor symbols of the contesting parties. There was not even stamping of the ballot paper. Instead, there were separate boxes for each candidate in the polling booth, bearing his or her name and the party symbol. The voters were required to put the ballot - a piece of shiny paper no bigger than a one-rupee note (now extinct) - in the box of the candidate of their choice.

The 'science' of rigging was also born in the first general elections itself, and it quickly exploited the chinks in the balloting system. Agents of some candidates would stand outside the polling booth and tell the voters: 'Don't put the ballot inside the box. Put it in your pocket and bring it with you. We'll give you a one-rupee note if you give us your ballot paper.' One rupee was a lot of money in those times. After collecting twenty-five to thirty such ballots, one of the agent's men would go in and drop them off in his candidate's box.

Symbols were allotted constituency-wise, and it was possible for the same symbol to be granted to candidates of the different parties in different constituencies. It was only in 1962, during the third general elections, that multiple ballot boxes were replaced with a single box and the secret 'marking system' was introduced.

Taken from My Country My Life by L.K.Advani.

Quote of the Day - Dream

Dream is not what you see in sleep...but something that does not let you sleep.

Thanks to Suchitra Patnaik.

We get what we deserve

Almost everyone says, our politicians are very corrupted, and this country will not develop.

How many of them voted?
Most of the time, it is less than 65%. In younger generation, it is even less.

How many of them voted for a genuine person?
Very less. But, still there are few people. That's why we still have few good MPs and MLAs.

In villages and small towns, will they vote without taking money?
No. They will not.

Will they come to politics and try to change the country?
No. They will not.

If anyone in their family is interested in coming to politics, will they accept it?
No. They will not.

If their neighbor comes to politics, will they accept it?
Definitely.

Will they vote for that person?
It depends. If the location is a town or village, it depends on caste and religion, and whether he/she gives any money to them or not. If the location is a city, it depends on how much help he/she will do to them.

Will they stop telling about the great freedom fighters, old politicians to their children and grand children?
No. They will not.

But, still they crib that these politicians are corrupted and india will not change.

The same thing can be applied to Scientists, and Spiritual leaders. They want their children to become Software Engineers, or take up any other job which pays more than that, and go to US. But, they will not be interested, if their child goes for research and gets 1/10th of the pay. They go to Spiritual Leaders and take their blessings, but, they will not agree in any circumstances, if their child wants to become a monk or spend full time in Spiritual activities.

It is true that, Everyone gets what they deserve.

Blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad

This is the comment posted by Shine in iisc.wordpress.com regarding bomb blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad.


Pattern which I could see in blasts happened in Bangalore and Ahmedabad are both happened in BJP ruling states. If they are planning to continue this, then the next target would be MP or Himachal Pradesh.

This could be to warn people not to support BJP since they dont support minorities growth.


Two months back, there were bomb blasts in Rajasthan, another BJP Ruling state. All the bomb blasts happened in this year are in BJP Ruling states only.

I am really terrified after reading this. If this is really the case, then it is very bad, and I condemn this.

Cartoon of the Day

This is the cartoon that appeared in eenadu.net yesterday.



Translation : This is the list of the people who cross voted. To which house, shall we go first?

Search keywords to my website

I setup google analytics around a month back, and yesterday I saw the logs for that. There were around 300 different keywords that were used in google to visit this blog. After reading all the keywords, I understood that my blog is more popular than I thought. For many keywords, google is not showing correct results. It should not have shown my websites for many keywords, but, it had shown because the article contains many of the keywords in the query.

These are the few keywords and it's rank that I got yesterday by using google.co.in, and the same results cannot be expected now. If google of different country is used, then all the results will vary.


Technical
log4j GPL - 1
I hate gpl - 1
hate gpl - 1,2
tech satish.com - 1,2
vim tab management - 3
#region en c# - 3
default feed on blogspot - 4
flight license wordweb - 5
adding word verification to my yahoo website - 8
#region c# - 9
add word verification - 12
vim remote-tab-silent - 13
gvim tabbed
gvim with tabs
#region in c#
region c#
"c#" captcha crack

Politics
lkadvani auto biography - 1
my country my life book review blog - 1
dialogues of indiragandhi - 1,2
33 % reservation to ladies - 2,3
33 % reservation to ladies necessary or not - 2,3
andhra pradesh ladies reservation - 3,4
the kalam effect - 3
biography of lkadvani - 10


Krishna and Others
hare krishna jokes - 1
hare krishna pattern - 1,2
hare krishna cursor - 1,2
hare krishna poems - 1
hare krishna famous - 1
useless experiments - 2
krishna murthy mahabharat - 2
"veturi sundararama murthy" "born in" - 2
hare krishna for ubuntu - 3,4
hare krishna gandhi - 3,4
krishna quote - 3,4
Sri Krishna cartoon - 4,5
hare krishna quote - 4,5
hare krishna quotes - 4,5
does krishna exist - 4
famous hare krishna's - 6
famous hare krishnas - 6
steve jobs hare rama - 7
"medical certificate" blog - 9

Very bad results
i hate krishna - 1
hate hare krishna - 1,2
i hate hare krishna - 1,2
what is hate krishna - 5


Interesting
find a hare krishna wife - 1,2
what was krishna famous for - 1
tiruveedula which cast - 1,2
"hare krishna" wife - 1
hare krishna how to get a wife - 2,3
when they first met love poems - 4
krishna wife - 6


Rajinikanth
(Let's hope rajinikanth fans don't come to a conclusion without reading the article)
rajinikanth negative points - 1
we don't like rajinikanth - 2
rajinikanth negative aspects - 3
how many movies did rajinikanth act in tamil - 4
the name is rajinikanth

Companies
microsoft hare krishna - 1,2
hare krishna ooxml - 1,2
hare krishna who needs gates and windows - 1,2
hare krishna bill gates - 1,2
hare krishna wipro - 1,2
TCS hare krishna - 1
hare krishna infosys - 1
NASSCOM hare krishna - 4,5
bill gates quotes about friends - 6

Indians' black money in Swiss banks

Indians have $1456 billion in Swiss banks. This amount is about 13 times larger than the country’s foreign debt. With this amount every indian gets Rs.50,000. Once this huge amount of black money and property comes back to India, the entire foreign debt can be repaid in 24 hours. After paying the entire foreign debt, we will have surplus amount, almost 12 times larger than the foreign debt. If this surplus amount is invested in earning interest, the amount of the interest will be more than the annual budget of the Central government. So even if all the taxes are abolished, then also the Central government will be able to maintain the country very comfortably.

Black money in Swiss banks -- Swiss Banking Association report, 2006 details bank deposits in the territory of Switzerland by nationals of the following countries:

Top five

India---- $1456 billion
Russia---$ 470 billion
UK-------$390 billion
Ukraine- $100 billion
China-----$ 96 billion

Now do the maths - India with $1456 billion or $1.4 trillion has more money in Swiss banks than rest of the world combined. Public loot since 1947: Can we bring back our money? It is one of the biggest loots witnessed by mankind -- the loot of the Aam Aadmi (common man) since 1947, by his brethren occupying public office. It has been orchestrated by politicians, bureaucrats and some businessmen. The list is almost all-encompassing. No wonder, everyone in India loots with impunity and without any fear.

For more information,

http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=137213

Your profile is temporarily unavailable.

Your profile is temporarily unavailable. Your data will be restored in 24 to 48 hours. Please, try again later. Sorry for the inconvenience.

This is the message that I got in orkut when I logged in. Till now, I have seen messages like it would be down for few minutes or 30 mins to one hour. This is the first time for me to see 24 to 48 hours. That is also in a very popular website from a very big company.

If they do similar things for gmail or google reader, then I may start finding alternatives. Of course, I am not aware of any better alternatives to google reader. If you find, please let me know.

Flash News

How do you get information immediately after the incident?

If I am reading news in google reader, and at the same time, if some new information comes, then that is flash news, and I will know it before many others. If we want to find even faster than that, goto any popular news website, and press refresh again and again. We will come to know the news even faster. If we watch the TV, then we can get it even faster. Right?

We will take an example of cricket. If Bangladesh and Ireland are playing Cricket match, I will not be very much interested in watching the match. So, I just use google reader to find out the result. If India and some other country are playing the match, then I would be more interested in knowing the result. So, I use www.cricbuzz.com. It refreshes the page and shows the latest score/result after every ball. If the match is even more exciting, like India and Pakistan in T20 world cup final, I cannot allow any delay. So, I watch DD which telecasts the match live. But, it has a delay of 2 seconds. I cannot even allow 2 seconds delay. So, I watch it in Star Sports. Joginder Singh bowls, and Misbah hits, and sreesanth catches the ball. India won the match. Can you leave immediately (without any delay even for a few seconds)? What if the ball is a no ball?

Almost the same situation came today. I wanted to know the result of UPA vote of confidence immediately without any delay. So, I went to cafetaria to watch the TV at 7.30. After the electronic voting, Times Now displayed that UPA won. 253 supported UPA, 232 rejected, and 2 abstained. I could not understand what happened. How come many people did not vote at all? But, it showed the message UPA Won. So, I called my friend and told the result. CNN IBN also showed the same message. But, after 5 minutes, CNN IBN changed the message to UPA ahead in voting. Then, it said, there were 54 manual votes, and they have to count those votes. But, even after half an hour, Times Now did not change it's message. It still showed UPA Won message. After that, I came to my desk for a meeting, and I came to know the result almost half an hour late. The result is 275 MPs supported UPA, 256 opposed, and 10 abstained.

Around a month back, TV9 (a telugu news channel) wanted to show the result much before than others, and announced that Mallikarjuna Rao (a famous telugu comedian) died, eventhough he was hospitalized for serious illness. (He died 2 days later).

Many TV Channels want to show information much before others, and they show incorrect information. Because of that, the entire system is becoming unreliable. Now, I cannot depend on the news channels, even if the news is live, and I am forced to wait for some time to confirm from all the news channels.

Bittorrent Client

If anyone know what is a bittorrent, most probably, they would also know azureus. Azureus is a popular bittorrent client, and can download the files efficiently. It has it's own algorithm to download/upload the files. That works efficiently most of the time, but fails miserably in few cases.

For the last 10 days, I have been trying to download one file with azureus. I put that file as priority one, and allowed multiple downloads at the same time. Eventhough there is one seed available, and the file is at position one, still it was not downloading that file, but downloading other files which have less priority and more peers. I tried different combinations, but still it did not work.

Compiling azureus code was very difficult for me, eventhough it was in java. I could not find any other simple open source java client to debug the code. Then, I realized that, I just need to download the file, and if I can install one very basic bittorrent client, then it can easily download the file, because a seed is available for this file. With my ubuntu linux, I got Transmission Bittorrent Client. It is a very simple client. I used that to download the file, and it happily downloaded without any problems.

Sometimes very simple applications are much much better than the most complex applications.

Protocol for the Prime Minister

If any VIP violates any protocol, or if any VIP had not got enough respect he/she should get according to the protocol, on the next day, there will be a clear mention of the violation of protocol in all the news papers, Except in case of our Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and Sonia Gandhi.

It is not once or twice, but uncountable no.of times, protocol is violated in case of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and the respect that PM should get is given to Sonia Gandhi eventhough she is just an MP.

When Sonia Gandhi came from foreign trip, Manmohan Singh went to airport to receive her. According to the protocol, Prime Minister should goto airport only if the president is going to/coming from foreign. He should not go for any one else. Even if the president of USA comes, only Foreign Minister receives, and PM should not go. But, PM went to airport to receive Sonia Gandhi.

Hyderabad Airport was inaugurated by Sonia Gandhi. If our President and PM are busy, then, if they open with CM or governor of the state, it would have been very good. It is shame to tell that the world class airport was opened by an MP.

Yesterday Sonia Gandhi came to Andhra Pradesh. For her trip, 2000 RTC buses were redirected to gather people for her meetings. This kind of things are not done even for PM.

Indian Olympic Association (IOA) is responsible for sending the name of the special guest to Olympic committee, so that Olympic Committee can invite the special guest. IOA president Suresh Kalmadi sent Sonia Gandhi's name instead of President or PM.

Of course there were uncountable violations. It is difficult to list all those.

I wrote this post after seeing two violations in a single day. Cannot those politicians give even some basic respect to the Prime Minister's position?

Gnibbles

I started playing Gnibbles back in 2002, and stopped in the same year. Then, I again started playing few months back.

I installed one year old version. In that, there is support for multiple players, and AI players (computer plays). At max 6 players (including computer and AI) can play at a time. There was one major drawback in that game. If any player loses all the lives, then whenever that player loses a life, then the game will be restarted in that level. It was a major drawback, and it is almost impossible to cross any difficult level with that.

Around few weeks back, I installed Hard Heron Ubuntu Linux. It had gnibbles version 2.22.2.1. In that , if any worm loses all the lives, then after some random time, it will come again, and it can go through any walls. But, AI player does not know that it can go through walls. So, it plays normally. I liked this feature a lot, but, I wanted the AI player to know that it can go through walls, and play accordingly. But, I came to know later that, it is a bug, and they fixed it in the next release. There is another problem in this version. If the worm is killed, then it immediately starts going down. But, in few levels, where there is a wall immediately below the worm, the worm would be killed immediately. So, if the worm loses a life in those levels, then it will lose all the lives immediately. This is a major drawback, but comes only in level 25.

I installed the latest version of Gnibbles. They fixed both the above bugs. I liked the first bug, and I wanted that feature, and at the same time, I want to fix the second bug. Because, this is open source code, I could change the code and run with my feature. This is the second time for me to change a open source code, and first non-java code.

This is the procedure to fix the above bugs in Ubuntu Linux.

Download the gnibbles source code v 2.22.2.1 from http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gnome-games/gnome-games_2.22.2.1.orig.tar.gz

Type ./configure from gnome-games_2.22.2.1 directory

If you have default installation, you will have to install too many softwares to compile the code. Whenever it gives any error, search for the error in google with ubuntu in the search string. Most of the time, you will get the answer in the first three results. You will have to install the package by sudo apt-get packagename.

Once you install all the softwares, type make. This will build all the games. Now, goto gnibbles folder, and type ./gnibbles. You may get one error that couldn't find pixmaps/gnibbles/gnibbles-logo.svg. Fixing this error took lot of time. From the code, it looks like it tried to find this file from GNOME_FILE_DOMAIN_APP_DATADIR. This is an enum, and I could not find good documentation to understand more about this. After a lot of time, I found that, I had to change make file to specify this directory.

In gnibbles/Makefile, we have to change gnibbles_CPPFLAGS.
Original version

gnibbles_CPPFLAGS = -I$(top_srcdir)/libgames-support \
 -DGNOMELOCALEDIR=\""$(datadir)/locale"\" \
 -DREAL_DATADIR=\""$(datadir)"\" $(AM_CPPFLAGS) $(am__append_2)

Changed Version

gnibbles_CPPFLAGS = -I$(top_srcdir)/libgames-support \
 -DGNOMELOCALEDIR=\""$(datadir)/locale"\" \
 -DREAL_DATADIR=\""$(datadir)"\" -DDATADIR=\""$(datadir)"\" $(AM_CPPFLAGS) $(am__append_2)

If we define DATADIR while compiling, it uses that directory as GNOME_FILE_DOMAIN_APP_DATADIR. So, it searches for the file ${datadir}/pixmaps/gnibbles/gnibbles-logo.svg. In your make file, set prefix to a folder in which you have write permissions.

Then, copy all the *.svg files in gnibbles and gnibbles/pix to the directory ${prefix}/share/pixmaps/gnibbles. Copy all the *.gnl files in gnibbles to ${prefix}/share/gnibbles.

Now, type make from gnibbles directory. After that if you type ./gnibbles, it should run the game without any problem.

The code diff for the fixes that I did.

C:\temp>diff old\worm.c new\worm.c
125a126
>   worm->direction_start = t_direction;
638,643c639,646
<   for (dir = 1; dir <= 4; dir++) {
<     if (dir == opposite) continue;
<     if (!gnibbles_worm_test_move_head (worm)) {
<       worm->direction = dir;
<     } else {
<       continue;
---
>   if (worm->lives > 0) {
>     for (dir = 1; dir <= 4; dir++) {
>       if (dir == opposite) continue;
>       if (!gnibbles_worm_test_move_head (worm)) {
>         worm->direction = dir;
>       } else {
>         continue;
>       }

C:\temp>
C:\temp>diff old\gnibbles.c new\gnibbles.c
517c517,519
<                                worms[i]->ystart, WORMDOWN);
---
>                                worms[i]->ystart,
>                                worms[i]->direction_start);
525c527
<     if (worms[i]->lives)
---
> 
529c531
<     if (worms[i]->lives)
---
> 

C:\temp>
C:\temp>diff old\worm.h new\worm.h
42a43
>   gint direction_start;

C:\temp>

The first change in worm.c is in gnibbles_worm_set_start(). It sets the correct direction of the worm, if it loses a life. So, it will not always go down, and get killed immediately.

The second change in worm.c is in gnibbles_worm_ai_move(). Here, I added one condition if (worm->lives > 0) for the last for loop. The last for loop checks, in which direction it can go safely. Dead worms can go in any direction without any problem. So, we don't need to check for the safe direction. This allows the worm to concentrate on bonuses and allows to go through walls.

The change in worm.h is in typedef struct GnibblesWorm. gint direction_start is added to that struct.

The first change in gnibbles.c is in gnibbles_move_worms(). While calling gnibbles_worm_set_start(), for the direction WORMDOWN is passed. So, if the worm loses life, it always start in the down direction. It is changed to worms[i]->direction_start.

Next change in gnibbles.c is in the same function. While calling, gnibbles_worm_move_tail, and gnibbles_worm_draw_head() there was a check whether worms are live or not. I removed that check to allow the dead worm to start immediately.

With these changes, I got the game which I was expecting. If you face any problems in this, please let me know.

My friend told me that, if we change the games like this to suit our needs, then the spirit of the game may be lost. I think it is not a problem because we are changing rules of all the games including cricket to make it more interesting. So, the same goes here.

Mindless Politicians

Everyone knows that atleast 90% of the politicians do not have mind or common-sense. One mindless thing about the politician Somnath Chatterjee.

The present UPA government wanted to go ahead with Nuclear deal, but Communists does not like that, and they withdrew the support. Trust vote would be held on July 22nd. As expected, BJP and it's alliance parties will vote against UPA government. The speaker Somnath Chatterjee (Communist party) does not like BJP, and he does not want to vote with BJP. He says, how can he vote with BJP, when he is opposing them? That's why either he wants to continue as the Speaker, or not vote at all.

Does he have mind? (Of course, he does not have.) If he likes UPA, he should vote for UPA, otherwise he should vote against UPA. That's it. How does it matter to him, whether some other random person is voting for or against UPA? If he is in that mind, and if he does not like two people of opposite sides, he can never vote for anyone in any voting. People did not elect him to sit Idle. If people also think like him only, he would not have become MP in the first place.

[Humor] Relatives and their perceptions in India and outside India

Mother-in-law
In India: A woman capable of making your life miserable.

Outside India: A woman you never fight with, because where else you will find such a dedicated baby sitter for free?


Husband

In India: A boring human species, who listens more to his mother than you, and orders you around to serve him, his parents and siblings.

Outside India: Still boring, but now a useful human species that comes in handy when the house needs to be vacuumed.


Friends

In India: A person whose house you can drop into any time of the day or night and you'll always be welcome.

Outside India: A person whom you have to call first to check and make sure he is not busy.


Wife

In India: A woman who gives you your underwear and towel when you go to take a shower and also cooks for you.

Outside India: A woman who yells at you not to leave tub dirty when you go to take bath.


Son

In India: A teenager, who without asking will carry your grocery bags from the market.

Outside India: A teenager, who suddenly remembers he has lot of homework when you start mowing the lawn.


Daughter

In India: A lovely doll, who brings tears to your eyes during her marriage.

Outside India: A lovely doll, who brings you to tears long before her marriage.


Father

In India: A person you are afraid of, and who is never to be disobeyed.

Outside India: A person to whom you pretend to obey, after all he is the one paying your college tuition.


Doctor

In India: A respectable person with OK income.

Outside India: A money making machine, who has a money spending machine at home called 'doctor's wife'.


Bhangra

In India: A vigorous Punjabi festival dance.

Outside India: A dance you do, when you don't know how to dance.


Software Engineer

In India: A high-tech guy, always tries to speak in english in an American accent, always anxious to queue in the consulate visa line.

Outside India: The same hi-tech guy, who does Ganapati Puja everyday, and says 'This is my last year in the US' every year.


A Green Card holder bachelor

In India: The guy can't speak Hindi, parents of good looking girls are dying to hook him, wears jacket in summer, says he has a BMW back there.

Outside India: The guy can't speak proper English, wears jacket all the time, works in a Candy store at Manhattan, dreams of owning a BMW.

OOXML - Vote of India

OOXML (Office Open XML) is a format for office from Microsoft. Microsoft sent this to ISO for making it as ISO Standard. It was done in fast tracking standardization.

In August/September 2007, majority of the countries rejected OOXML as ISO Standard. India is one of the countries which opposed OOXML. In March/April 2008, ISO asked all the countries whether they would reconsider that decision. India did not reconsider it's decision, and still opposed OOXML. But, few other countries changed their decision, and OOXML was approved as ISO Standard.

After that, India, Venezuela, Brazil, and South Africa filed appeals against OOXML, and ISO has put OOXML's Standard on hold.

When I first heard that, India opposed standardization of OOXML, I was little surprised. (I agree that Microsoft does not pay bribes, eventhough we can do many things by paying bribes in India.) The main reason for my surprise was the reputation that Bill Gates had in India. According to the protocol, a Chief Minister should go to airport to receive a Prime Minister, President of India, or PM/President of an important Country. If Governor of the state is going to/coming from foreign trip, then also CM should go to airport. In other cases, he should not go to airport to receive/send off anyone. But, one Chief Minister went to airport to receive Bill Gates, and he said he went out of the friendship. If we have politicians like them, what is the problem. Without even asking, they would sanction everything that Microsoft asks.

But, I was completely wrong. I did not know that, the committee to decide these things was formed by the professors of IITs, IISc, and few other organizations similar to that. Most of the professors in IITs, and IISc can easily get ten times to their present salaries. But, still, they stayed in those institutes to help the research and society. So, when they decide anything for India, I am sure, it would be in the interest of India, and not anything else.

After reading Prof.Deepak Phatak's article on OOXML, I learned many things about OOXML and the issues with it. It is a very long post.

Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is the Indian National Body (NB) representing India as a participating member of ISO. LITD 15 committee of the BIS is responsible for examining this standard and for deciding India’s position at ISO. The committee has 22 members.

The members of the LITD 15 are
1. National Informatics Centre, New Delhi (NIC)
2. Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Mumbai (CDAC)
3. Computer Society of India, New Delhi (CSI)
4. E Governance division of DIT, New Delhi (DIT)
5. IBM India Pvt Ltd., New Delhi (IBM)
6. Institute of Electronic Governance, Hyderabad (IEG)
7. Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA)
8. Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISC)
9. Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi (IIT Delhi)
10. Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai (IIT Bombay)
11. Infosys Technologies Ltd., Bangalore (INFOSYS)
12. Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata (ISI)
13. Manufacturers Association for Information Technology, Delhi (MAIT)
14. Microsoft Corporation (India) Pvt. Ltd., Gurgaon (MICROSOFT)
15. National Association of Software & Service Co., New Delhi (NASSCOM)
16. National Institute of Smart Governance, Hyderabad (NISG)
17. Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai (RBI)
18. Redhat India Pvt Ltd., New Delhi (REDHAT)
19. Standardization Testing and Quality Certification, New Delhi (STQC)
20. Sun Microsystems India pvt ltd, New Delhi (SUN)
21. Tata Consultancy Services, Gurgaon (TCS)
22. WIPRO Infotech, Bangalore (WIPRO)

The committee came up with 82 comments, and In august 2007, the committee unanimously agreed that, once all the comments are resolved, they would approve for ISO standard. In March 2007, ISO asked all the countries whether they would like to change their decision. But, the comments raised by India were not resolved. On 20th March, the committee met once again, and exactly 5 members told to change the vote. No prizes for guessing. They are Microsoft, Infosys, TCS, WIPRO, and NASSCOM. India did not change it's decision, and it registered disapproved vote.

Around the same time, Microsoft gave complaints to Ministry of Indian Government, and accused few organizations in the committee including IIT Bombay and professors of IITB saying that they are not acting in the national interests of India. Prof. Deepak Phatak was very angry for that, and he explained everything about all the incidents in that blog.

He wrote a hypothetical counter complaint on Microsoft in "ANNEXURE A", and it is very interesting and funny.

BSNL Broadband Connection

I applied for a BSNL Broadband connection, and I called the Junior Telecom Officer for the modem.
JTO : "Do you have Windows or XP?"
Me : (after thinking of what was he asking) Linux.
JTO : "Do you have Windows or XP?"
Me : Linux
JTO : "Do you have Windows or XP?"
Me : Windows XP.

But, what I wanted to say was,

I want to use Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line Modem with Point to Point Protocol over Ethernet and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol so that, I can connect to internet from any linux including Hardy Heron, Gutsy Gibbon, Feisty Fawn from Ubuntu, or any variants of Suse, Fedora, Debian, Slackware, and Solaris, without USB modem or any softwares of any platform, and without bothering about hacking by VMWare or Wine. BSNL is the only Internet Service Provider in this area which provides internet like this, and you are expecting me to have Windows. I don't have any software from Microsoft.

Reservations in India - Update

The politicians are finding all the fields/organizations which do not offer the reservations, and offering reservations there. In that way, they introduced reservations in IITs for students as well as faculty.

Now, the ultimate thing. Film Sensor Board secretary promised that they would reserve few seats for SC/ST/BCs.

Famous Telugu poet Sri Sri said, "Kadhedhi kavitha kanarham" (Nothing is unqualified for Poetry). Similarly, we can say that, "Kadhedhi Reservation kanarham" (Nothing is unqualified for Reservations).

Is there any other field, where we don't have reservations? If you know, just let any politician or any leader of SC/ST know. They will make sure that, reservations would be introduced there as well.

[Humor] In this weird world we live in

In this weird world we live in

• If you're too open minded, your brains will fall out.
  
• Age is a very high price to pay for maturity.
  
• Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you a mechanic.
  
• Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
  
• My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance.
  
• In today's world is easier to get forgiveness than permission.
  
• For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program.
  
• If you look like your passport picture, you probably need that vacation.
  
• Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks.
  
• A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
  
• Eat well, stay fit, you will die anyway.
  
• Men are from earth. Women are from earth. Deal with it.
  
• Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.
  
• Opportunities always look bigger while going than coming.
  
• Junk is something you've kept for years and throw away three weeks before you need it.
  
• Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
  
• By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends.
  
• Someone who thinks logically provides a nice contrast to the real world.
  

Famous Quotes of Bill Gates

"There's nobody getting rich writing software that I know of." - In 1980 (Interview with Microcomputing)

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - 1981

"We will never make a 32-bit operating system." - Speaking at the launch of MSX in 1989. (Microsoft released 32 bit OS in Win NT 3.1 in 1993).

"Success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking they can't lose." - From Gates' book, The Road Ahead (1995).

"Microsoft looks at new ideas, they don't evaluate whether the idea will move the industry forward, they ask, 'how will it help us sell more copies of Windows?'" - An article in The Seattle Weekly (1998).

"Microsoft has had clear competitors in the past. It's a good thing we have museums to document that." - Speech at the Computer History Museum, InfoWorld magazine (2001).

"Spam will be a thing of the past in two years' time." - Interview with BBC, 2004.

Reservations in India

Kinds of Reservations we have in India.

1. Reservations based on Caste. (SC/ST/OBC)
   
2. Reservations based on Religion. For example, Christian Minority Colleges, and Muslim Minority Colleges takes students only from their religion.
   
3. Reservations based on Location. For example, in Andhra Pradesh, there are three areas, Coastal, Rayalaseema, and Telangana. All the Engineering colleges have reservations for each area. If somebody is from a location, where there is no better rank, then, he/she would get whatever seat he/she wanted irrespective of the rank. In Maharashtra, Junior Colleges have 70% reservations for the local candidates in the same district. Many states have this kind of reservations, but, the size of the location varies (district, or one third of the state, or the entire state etc.) There are also reservations based on whether one lived in rural area or urban area.
   
4. Reservations based on Sex. (33% reservations for ladies).
   
5. Reservations based on the Medium they studied. Karnataka has this kind of reservations where they prefer people who studied in Kannada Medium.
   
6. Reservations for NRIs.
   
7. Reservations for Anglo-Indians
   
8. Reservations for Children of Political Sufferers.
   
9. Reservations for Children of Ex-Servicemen.
   
10. Reservations for Children of Defence Personnel.
    
11. Reservations for Government of India Nominees.
    
12. Reservations for Migrants from Jammu & Kasmir.
    
13. Reservations for Linguistic Minority
    
14. Reservations for Physcially Handicapped
    
15. Reservations for NCC.
    
16. Reservations for Sports
    

These are the reservations that I know. Are there any more reservations in our SECULAR India? Few people are suggesting to have reservations for scientists to send to space, and sports etc. But, there are already reservations for the scientists posts in BARC, ISRO, and DRDO. If Arjun Singh gets the portfolio of Sports, he will not mind introducing reservations in sports except cricket. Because, anyway, nobody cares about other sports. So, he can start reservations in other sports, then he can slowly bring the reservations to Cricket as well, with the inspiration from South Africa Cricket team. It is not a very difficult thing for great minds like Arjun Singh.

Except in defence, and law, every government company/organization has reservations atleast based on Caste. I would like to introduce one more reservation.

Eventhough there are reservations for Medicine, the under-privileged doctors (Read it as those who fall in the above categories) are not getting the recognition they deserve. Now, they should introduce all the above reservations in treating all the politicians. If there are 100 operations performed on politicians, then 15 operations should be done by SCs, 7 should be done by STs, and so on. Among those 15 SC doctors, they should give equal importance to all the regions of the district/state/country. Like this, all the reservations should be applied for all the doctors to treat politicians for all kinds of treatments from operations to normal consultancy. If any politician violates these reservations, then we should use the Act introduced by Indira Gandhi and arrest them with the non-bailable warrant for discriminating SC/STs. Actually, we need to have these kind of reservations so that, the under-privileged people also will get enough opportunities. I strongly recommend our government to introudce this reservation as soon as possible.

#region in C#

Jeff Atwood posted a nice article on Coding Horror about #region and code folding.

We should not write code which is useful for the editor and not for the compiler. Most of the IDEs already provide folding methods, and comments without writing anything extra. If you are using #region in a method, because it has too much code, then, probably, you may have to refactor the method. If you are using #region for set of methods, because you have too many methods, then probably, you may have to refactor the class.

Most of the developers prefer to read the code, and comments which explain about the code. But, not the directives to the editor.

One great thing about Visual Studio 2005 is, the search functionality will not search in the folded blocks. I really want to give Turing award to the person who came up with that requirement.

On Godse, Gandhi and Hindutva

http://arvindbatra.blogspot.com/2008/06/on-godse-gandhi-and-hindutva.html

The above article is one of the very good articles that I read in the recent time. I suggest everyone who is interested in history or politics to read this.


By the way, it is written by my ex-colleague Arvind Batra.

License & Copyright

For the last one month, I had seen several discussions about Copyrights and Licenses. I thought, I would also have the License for my blog.

The following license would be applied to my websites including blog.tnsatish.com, www.tnsatish.com, www.mangalagiri.net, www.mangalagiri.org, www.showmedirection.com.

Beginning of License:

1. By reading/visiting any of the above websites you agree to this license. If you don't agree to this license, don't visit any of the above websites.
   
2. If you think there is any copyright violation or any other problem with the contents, you are required to inform me with sufficient notice before taking it to the court.
   
3. I, Nagasatish Tiruveedula hereby grant everyone, a perpetual, nonexclusive, royalty-free, world-wide right and license all the contents in the above websites to copy, publish, and distribute, as well as a right and license of the same scope to any derivative works prepared by anyone and based on, or incorporating all or part of the contents in the above websites.
   
4. If you are going to translate any of the contents in the above websites to any other language, then this license would be applied to that translated version as well.
   
5. This license applies to comments. But, it does not grant you copyright on the comments. All the comments posted are copyrighted by the respective posters of the comments. If there are any issues arise out of their comments, including but not limited to court orders, the posters are solely responsible for resolving the issues.
   
6. If you are copying/publishing/distributing the content of any of the above websites, I request you to give the link of the corresponding website. However, this is not a mandatory requirement, and it is only a request.
   

THIS DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED BY NAGASATISH TIRUVEEDULA "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL NAGASATISH TIRUVEEDULA BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS DOCUMENTATION, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

End of License:

For those who do not understand the legal jargon, the license in four words.

Do whatever you want.

Dialogues in Sainikudu Movie

This is one scene in the telugu movie Sainikudu (Soldier).

Dialogue in Telugu
Thana jeevitham praja sevake ankitham. Biddalanu kuda kanakunda kadadhaka prajasevake ankithamyna oka Puchchalapalli Sundaraiah kavali. Kattu battulu thappa karlu medalu asinchani oka Vavilala Gopala Krishnaiah kavali. E desaniki rendu sarlu pradhana mantriga panichesina sontha illu kuda sampadinchikoni Guljarilal Nanda kavali. Shyam Prasad Mukherjee, B.R.Ambedkar, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Abul Kalam Azad, Kamaraj Nadar, Prakasam Panthulu. Veellu Veellu kavali.

Dialogue in English
A man sacrificed his life to serve the people, never had any children. He is Mr.Puchchalapalli Sundaraiah. We need someone like him. Apart from a pair of clothes, a man who never wished for luxury life. He is Mr.Vavilala Gopalakrishnaiah, we need someone like him. A man who was Prime Minister of this country twice, but could not afford to own a house. He is Mr.Guljarilal Nanda, we need someone like him. Shyam Prasad Mukherjee, B.R.Ambedkar, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Abul Kalam Azad, Kamaraj Nadar, Prakasam Panthulu. We need people like them.


I liked this scene very much and watched uncountable no.of times. When I watched first time, I liked it, but did not realize why the writer did not include few others. But, after I started reading politics, and history of india post-independence, I realized it very much. Till some time back, I thought one Prime Minister was a great person, and recently I came to know that, that Prime Minister killed democracy and is the worst Prime Minister we ever had. That PM did all the bad things, and P.V.Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh recovered india from those mistakes in early 90s. Today, when I told my friend that Prime Minister X was the worst PM we had, the reply was, "I knew it very long time back".