Bullshit and General Update

Ever since there have been laws and rules there have been strange laws and rules. The trend seems to be continuing. India's IT laws seem to be the most screwed up thing ever conceived by the Babus. I am writing about this because of the unwarranted (pun intended) arrest of Avnish Bajaj the CEO of Bazee. It doesn't make any sense to hold service providers responsible for the content carried by them. It's not like Bazee bought the cd containing the video of the DPS students and decided to make a quick buck by selling it. They are an on line auction site for God's sake. X decides he wants to sell something and he decides to auction it and Y decides he wants it decides to buy it. Bazee just facilitates the process. Moreover the guy is the CEO. How the hell can he keep track of anything thats being sold. (as a side note anyone who is foolish enough to buy the video when it takes 10 mins to download from a site deserves to be shot. Why pay for something that can be got free?).

Even more ridiculous than the Indian IT law is this new rule thats been imposed in hell. They've banned camera phones in the campus. I am just ROTFL thinking about this. What purpose does it serve? It's not like that stupid video was shot inside the school.(or at least doesn't seem so). Also what do the guys who have camera phones do when they wanna communicate. It's one more of the rules in college I don't understand. There's this rule that says that we've gotta wear T-shirts with collars. Basically if you're a guy u've gotta wear something with a collar. They treat us like dogs I tell ya. Also the ban on Pepsi is still on in college. They use some sub standard local brand of fizzed drink instead. What sense does it make. Hell always seems to react excessively when some major scandal breaks loose. For God's sake let us choose our Cola at least. (I am glad I am getting out of there in another 4 months).

The biggest loser in this whole DPS thingy has been the poor camera phone. Albeit a camera phone was used to shoot the video; it was still shot with the girl's consent. It's not like the Shahid Kapoor and Kareena Kapoor kiss thing where the camera phone was used discreetly. I hate it when technology is blamed for the crimes that people commit. Don't blame the technology and don't punish it. Blame and punish the people. Nuclear technology powers up our lives at the same time it has caused immense suffering. That doesn't mean nuclear technology is bad. It's how the technology is used that is important. The point is that guy wanted to shoot a video. He chose to use a damn camera phone. He could very well have used a normal camera.

BTW CAT 2004 results came out last night. Apparently they weren't supposed to come out yesterday. After a question paper leak they've now got leaked results. I've gotta start preparing sometime in the middle of next year for CAT 2005. I don't know why it is but some people actually congratulated me on getting 96.8 %ile. I have no idea who told them that that was a good score. U can imagine how irritated I must have been.

And in case ur wondering why I haven't posted in a long while well I have been busy with exams, project work, standing in line for a Singapore visa (more here) and generally doing other things and plain lazy

I am actually reading three books in parallel. They are somewhat related. The first is this classic piece of work called 'Hackers' by Stephen Levy. This came out in 1984 and is a brilliant account of the hacker subculture. (When I say Hacker I don't mean the morons who break into computers for whatever reasons. This book deals with the Gods who defined a whole new sub culture and made a great deal of the computer technology we take for granted possible). I have read the 1^st part which deals with the period from 59 odd to early 70s and talks about the origin of the term and about some 'true hackers'. Absolutely brilliant

The 2^nd book is Richard Stallman's biography called 'Free as in Freedom'. The book is available here under O'Reilly's open books project. Levy in his book calls Stallman the 'last true hacker'. The book is good. Read a bit of it as well

The 3^rd is titled 'Open Sources:Voices From the Open Source Revolution'. Its a collection of essays by some of the stalwarts of the free software movement. Its a little dated.Lots of things have changed in the free software world since this book came out. Its still seems like a good read. I would advice anyone who wants to know why software should be open source to read the introduction of the book. This is also available under the open book project and u can get it here

Also Animax has restarted Samurai X on weekdays at 9:30pm. A must watch. 12 episodes out of the 94 are over till now. Watch this. At least make sure u see it from episode 28 when Saitou comes and just after that the hunt for Shishio begins. Those episodes are simply brilliant