Good Ol' Orkut Has Changed

It was high time that Google had considered me too to be worthy enough for being bestowed with the latest look of Orkut. I have been hearing about the change in their popular social networking site Orkut's layout on The official Orkut blog , Google Blogoscoped and various other news sites for the last 4 days. Even here in my college, quite a few students have been blessed with the new design, but not me. Although Orkut's blog had said "We're rolling it out to groups of users at a time over the next week", it was getting tough for me to keep patience. Well, finally I too get to use the latest layout from today and I thought, why not check out every nook and cranny of the new layout and find out how much our good ol' Orkut has actually changed.

Changes in Orkut (that I could figure out):

• Added a few lovely round corners here and there.
• The tabbed links actually look and feel like tabs now.
• The special first character for your name is missing now.
• It looks like a complete package now. No more a social network under the development phase, if you know what I mean.
• They have now added breadcrumb-like navigation for communities.
• A very useful navigation bar added at the top (reminds me of free blogs on Blogspot, though).
• Options like "send message", "send teaser", "add to crush list" etc have been removed from the main profile page. Rather, they can now be view by pointing your mouse on the "more" link below the profile pic. This is for others' profile page, not your main homepage.
  Update: However, I feel the "Report Abuse" link should not have been hidden. It should rather be prominently visible to the users.
  
• The way "trusty", "cool" and "sexy" meters have been incorporated looks much better now.
• "Edit Profile" page looks much cooler.
• The fact that you can now crop your profile picture after uploading just rocks!
• Update: Thankfully they have done away with the line "You are connected to xxxx users via xxxx friends" from the main page. It was an useless piece of information, anyway.
• Update: You can now know about every change that your friends make, right on your homepage.
  

Changes in Orkut that would have been desired:

• Akin to the Orkut extension for FireFox, I would have preferred if I could have direct access to a profile's scrapbook, album or communities or send message to him/her just from a profile's picture or name.
• I wish instead of just "scrap tips", there would actually be a rich text editor for scraps and messages to be able to modify fonts, add pictures or insert smilies.
  Update: Or, how about keyboard shortcuts? Say, Ctrl+B for bold and Ctrl+I for italicized text.
  
• I would've preferred to be given an option to write in Indian languages.
• After you reply to someone's scraps using the "reply" button just below that profile's scrap, you can't refresh your scrapbook without sending the same scrap again to that profile. It's so irritating while trying to chat with a friend that I just end up scrapping on my friend's scrapbook itself, the old way.
• I hate the fact that you can send a message to either one person, a group or all friends at the same time. What if I want to send a message to my classmate, my girlfriend and my brother? How do I group them then? I would rather have the option of tagging people and then message them according to tags or I should be allowed to manually select profiles from my friends list, the way my email client allows me to select addresses from my address book.
• It's time for Orkut to shed the Beta tag.
• Update: Just as, in GMail, we get a notification and request to "update conversation" the moment we get an email concerning the same conversation that I am currently reading, I'd love it if I could get a similar notification asking me to "update scrapbook" the moment I get a scrap from a contact. That ways I don't have to keep a track on my GMail inbox or Google Talk to know whether someone has scrapped me.
  

My perception of the latest change:
On the whole, Orkut definitely looks much better than how it was before. Yet, as I've already pointed out, there are still more scopes for improvement. Allowing user post videos and html on scrapbook was a huge step Orkut had taken. Somehow, the very first time I looked at the new design, it suddenly reminded me of Windows Live Mail and Hi5.

Anyways, I guess we just got to change to survive. Darwin's theory always stands true, be it a living being or be it a website. I have pointed out as much changes and wanted features as I could. But that doesn't mean you aren't welcome to add to the list ;-).

Happy Orkutting!!

Climbing Up The Search Engine Ladder

Wow! Since the time I have been consciously trying to improve the PageRank of my page, this web page has climbed up quite a bit. I was just searching for my name (Shayon) on Google & Yahoo and, I must admit, I was impressed to check out the results. Not so long ago, I had to go to at least the next page to find my blog listed in the results and now, it' secures the 2nd place on Google and 3rd on Yahoo! I guess I shall have to be some more famous and stay online for a few years more to overtake Mr. Robert Lewis Shayon (top result on Google), who writes for Waymark Press :-p. And of course, I am surely gonna buy shayon.com (result #2 on Yahoo) one day, although $60 is a little too steep, I must say.

Oh boy! Ego surfing does make you feel happy!! ;-)

Google's Privacy Concerns

I'm sure you must be aware of the loads of privacy concerns that Google has been churning out in various quarters and among the public in general. Well, here's a video uploaded on YouTube from Google itself, telling you what they actually do with those cookies that they store in your computer and whether and how they know who you are and what you do. Hope this video succeeds in putting some of your concerns to rest.

What a Day!!

History, they say, repeats itself. I'm sure the deluge of 26th of July, 2006 still runs fresh in the minds of the Mumbaikars. I was in Jamshedpur when the water had flooded the economic capital of the nation. I always used to regret to miss the huge affair. It seemed more romantic to me than a tragedy. I guess someone out there didn't like my attitude and was hell bent to make me preview a trailer of that day. And I must say, I have learnt my lesson. Here I am, sitting at my home, with no lights for the past 10 hours, lucky that the landline's still working and that I have a phone that allows me to connect to the net and blog, there's a constant chatter of rain drops, outside. Now this is gonna be the life for Mumbaikars, for the next 2 months. I was on the road in the morning and had a ball getting wet. I couldn't believe when I saw the amount of water-logging in various parts of the city. The road to my home from Andheri, they said, has been submerged under 6 feet deep water. After treading till my chest level, i decided to take the U-turn. Here I post a few shots of the kinda scenes I've witnessed, today. Of course, sme of the best moments are missing here, 'cozI just wasn't too fast with the pathetic VGA camera I have on my phone. Yet, I'm happy that I can at least click pictures now, as and when I wish, given the kinda shutter bug I am :-P.

Adding this as an afterthought. If you think that Mumbai is a horrible place to stay in, 'coz of the above pictures, lemme warn you, you are grossly mistaken!! ;-)

NOKIA, Photobucket & The Wall Mag!

So, can u see the picture of a pretty NOKIA handset at the top? Well, I happen to be a proud owner of one of them :-P. The reason ain't all that romantic, though. My previous phone, the NOKIA 1108, had been flicked by some unfortunate bloke off my pocket, while I was travelling in a inhumanely congested train, from Kanjur Marg (that's where my office is) to Dadar. At the first, I was definitely very very pissed off. But then, u hardly have anything you can do, in these situations, have you? Hehe, "unfortunate bloke", 'coz my sim was blocked with pin code and the phone was locked with security code. He can't even insert a new sim in it 'coz in that case he shall have to insert the security code! :-P Anyways, wot had gotten me pissed off the most was the fact that I lost all my fucking contacts and messages. Over 250 of my contacts got washed off in a jiffy. Hope people do respond to my mails fast and send me their contact numbers.

Oh, did you hear that Yahoo! Photos is shutting down? The moment I heard that (about a month ago), I've been wondering how to save the hundreds of pics I have storred in there, in the past 3 years. Although Yahoo! has given options to export your pictures to a lot of other photo hosting websites, it was getting tough for me to choose between Flickr, Photobucket and Shutterfly. After some research, I realised Photobucket was the one for me. I just started the export of my pictures from Yahoo! Photos onto Photobucket, right before I started writing this post. They say it's gonna take them about 72 hrs, that's 3 days. Hope it's a satisfying service!

While I was in college, staying in Hostel 'E', the topfloor boarders of the same had formed a community called "TopFloorers" which consisted most of the top floorers and a few regulars from other floors and hostels too. My dear friend Rathin suddenly, out of the blue, thought up of creating a "Wall Magazine" where bits and pieces could be shared by us all, and hence "The Wall Mag"was born. It gives me immense pride to inform that I happen to be a co-admin of that blog page. It's a novel idea that Rathz has started, hope the tradition of the TopFloorers continues.

Amen!

Are You Ready For The Evolution?

Windows Vista has officially arrived, finally! But only for the corporate users. The company has announced the business availability of the Windows Vista operating system, the 2007 Microsoft Office system and Exchange Server 2007.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates had told shareholders on Tuesday that Windows Vista could be the company's biggest product launch since Windows 95 debuted more than a decade ago. Unlike the previous Windows launches, Vista's debut has been divided into two extravaganzas. While on November 30, Microsoft unveiled the corporate version of the new OS (along with Office 2007). The bigger rollout is scheduled for January 30 when Vista will be officially launched as a consumer product.

Microsoft has a big surprise up its sleeves for the consumers as Vista’s availability in five variants with aggressive pricing has no precedent in Microsoft’s product history. As Vista goes Corporate, here’s recapitulating all that is new with the operating system: interface, security, search, system requirements, and the various flavours.

Graphics
Desktop windows and icons are visually richer, an attempt by Microsoft to make computer use more intuitive and free-flowing. A desktop "sidebar" grabs data from the Internet to deliver customizable information at a glance.

Search
For those who find locating their things on a PC quite a task in Windows, here's help. Vista makes searching faster, more prominent and powerful, letting you hunt for desktop files and data in applications at once. A reactive ode to Google desktop search!

Security
Windows traditionally lets programmes running on the desktop access information stored all over the PC. Vista essentially seals off the core of the operating system, known as the kernel, theoretically reducing the damage a rogue programme can cause. It includes some basic anti-virus protections out of the box. It also lets corporate managers disable a PC's USB port, preventing workers from slipping data out on portable drives.

System resources

Vista can take advantage of portable flash drives to put frequently used applications in a sort of holding pattern there, making it much quicker to launch those programmes and putting less strain on the juice-sucking hard drive.

Interface
Office 2007 has done away with long-used menus in the Office programmes, regrouping them in a "ribbon" atop the screen that is designed to make it easier to find all the software's capabilities. Excel offers new ways of colour-coding data for at-a-glance presentations. E-mails and other items in Outlook can be tagged with an array of colours to better categorise and manage information.

Collaboration
Word makes it smoother to circulate documents to colleagues for review. Excel enables spreadsheets to be shared in a format that is interactive like the traditional Excel files but hides secret, often valuable formulas used to calculate data. Outlook adds new ways for incorporating scheduling and to-do lists in e-mail.

File format
Office documents will now be saved in the XML format, which will make it easier to search their contents and transfer them to other applications.

System requirements
To run Windows Vista Home Basic, the minimums are an 800 MHz or faster processor, 512 MB of memory, graphics hardware capable of SVGA (800 by 600) resolution, a 20GB hard disk with at least 15GB of free space, and a CD-ROM drive. For those who want Vista's Aero interface, they will require a graphics card that can handle DirectX 9 graphics APIs with Pixel Shader 2.0 3D texturing, has a Windows Vista display driver and at least 128 MB of graphics memory, and supports 32 bits per pixel. Users can also go for PC Pitstop's Vista readiness test, which will give them a brief comparison of their system's hardware to Vista's minimum and recommended system requirements. Microsoft's own Windows Vista upgrade advisor provides a thorough assessment. The programme scans the system and prepares a report analyzing its system's basic hardware compatibility (CPU, memory, and disk space), and details if the installed applications and drivers will work with Vista.

Flavours
Unlike Windows XP, which came in only two retail editions--Home and Professional, Windows Vista will come in five retail flavours. Microsoft has also released two OEM versions: Media Center Edition and Tablet PC Edition. For home users too, there's Home Basic and Home Premium.

We the people...

We the people of India, solemenly declare India....

Isn't this the very first page of the constitution... ?? The very first line of the preamble of our constitution on which the world's largest democracy rests.

India. Population surpassing a million. Politicians surpassing a few hundered but ruling the people who are numbering more than 10 times of what they are. 60 years of Indian independance and the people have been neglected to so much that the only day they are made to realise that they are the citizens of the largest democracy is on the day of elections.

Life, otherwise, is usual.... or It was usual. The people of India have finally realised that the preamble meant something.. it means that the largest democracy belongs to the people themselves.

2006 has been hailed as the year of the citizens not only here in India but also all over the world. The TIME magazine, put a mirror on the cover of the magazine giving the award of the person of the year to YOU... a common man, who has risen above the stature of an unknown entity. Every person has been hailed a link towards development of the world.

In India, the citizen movement started with the earnest, and for a nation who has idols in the film industry, found the movies leading the way. The likes of Rang de Basanti and Lage Raho Munna Bhai... forwarded the peace marches and revived the Gandhi culture. A nation which had been divided over issues came together to fight for justice for the likes of Jessica Lall, Pridarshini Mattoo. The Youth for equality, showed that no matter what, The gen X would stand up for their rights and stand united in that effort.

For a commom man in India, life is no bed of roses but, today he is ready to fight for the roses that dont come his way. India is finally waking up from a slumber that the Independance put her into.

Our country is finally coming of the age.. Hail the new India.. and hail the Indian.

Pravah '07

So, the ball finally starts rolling! The machinery behind our college's first ever technical festival, Pravah '07, has finally been oiled & all set to shift gear. People have started to brainstorm, planning out how to sell ideas to the top echelons of the most coveted companies. We even plan to organize seminars, so as to train the uninitiated how to talk, sell and bargain. Just chalked out the names of the expected events, last night. Damn, had been awake till 7:30 am & then again wake up at 9:45 am to get ready and attend classes. After this, I gotta prepare a powerpoint presentation which the sponsorship guys gotta carry to companies. Even need to arrange for a film festival. Phew! Quite a lot to work on, isn't it?

Oh, I almost forgot, Pravah '07 is slated to be held on 29th - 31st March, '07. As for the events, I shall be listing them down once I get the ppt presentations done. For now, I've got loads on my hands. And to top this all, there're my classes, Warcraft sessions and of course, gotta spend some quality time with my girlfriend as well!

We've been brainstorming about something for quite some time now. What after Pravah? I mean, the fest in itself is no big deal. However, do we just keep it at that? I had been wondering if we could print up something like a magazine, reporting the whole event, showcasing award winning projects and even a vote of thanks towards the organizers. People say, the cost's gonna soar then. Rather, people suggest that we conceptualize everything digitally & distribute as a pdf file. However, the majority of the crowd deems it unnecessary. What about you? What do you folks do when the tech fest in your college gets over?

So, as you can see, there are quite a few things that need to be thought upon. Ain't too sure how things are gonna materialize at the end, but I'll sure as hell try to give out my personal best. As for the rest, let's leave it all to the Devil!!

What A Day...!!!

The Headlines in tomorrow's leading newspaper would be.... "All pretty Historic in Nature".

This day was quite eventful.. rather very eventful. For all the cricket buffs.. India registered its first victory, after months, in South Africa and it also turns out that India won a test match in South Africa for the fisrt time.

Dada a.k.a Suarav Ganguly, it seems, has come back in the Indian cricket team for the best. The one year break doing him good.. and finally resulting in India winning the test match against the South Africans.

Even as I type this, the hot topic that is being discussed on all Media channels is 'Justice for Jessica', the verdict of High court came out today and the main accused, Manu Sharma, has been convicted under section 302 of Indian Penal Court, and if not hanged.. then would be imprisoned for lifetime.

So what do you say... what a day... and if this is not enough.. then Lalu and Rabri have been aquitted of charges of excess wealth.

Oh yeah.. before I forget, I also learned that the generation Y is growing smarter.. that too faster than what we have growing up like.

Isnt that quite a muse for one day or what...!!!

Durge Durgatinashini...!!

So...Durga Puja's finally here & what more...Ashtami just got over today. Well, true...the festival basically belongs to the eastern sector of the country...and although it's celebrated with much ado & ethos, I won't say Durga Pujas in Mumbai rock as much as they do in good ol' Kolkata. Consequently, there was no surprise at all when I found out, till late Saptami, that life isn't really happening out here! If you've ever been to West Bengal or Orissa in this season, I can bet my tongue on it, you won't find a single alley where u won't be reminded of the festival. Moreover, the way the fest's celebrated in the monetary capital of the country is a li'l too sophisticated for me, what with the greatest of the filmstars bagging the prestigious tag of organisors themselves!

Anyways, I did happen to visit a few pandals yesterday & today morning. They were good enough experiences for me. Seriously, couldn't expect much better out here. Yet, happened to find some lighter moments even outta those. Here comes a li'l collage of the pix I'd taken when I was out & about, searching for and shooting interesting subjects...basically anything that interested me. Truthfully, I'd taken at least 10 times the number of pics I've posted out here, but then I decided no point eating up your internet bandwidth with all of my idiosyncrasies.

That's the entrance of the Durga Puja pandal organised by Rani Mukherjee & Kajol's family.

This is from Bangur Nagar, Goregaon (W). One of the few old ones which are not sponsored by movie stars.

This idol was in Santacruz, the one sponsored by the Mukherjees.

A more close-up version of Maa Durga.

One of the perks of staying in the city of stars. But seriously, this is the first time I've ever seen Nana Patekar this close! Simply adore this guy!!

Hmm...now wot do I say about this star? I just wish he had a li'l less of both weight & lockets. *LoL*

She is one of my most fav singers of the current generation....Lemme introduce Shreya Ghoshal, folks!!

That's Ila Arun & members of Li'l Champs...the finalists of TVS Sa Re Ga Ma.

Seriously, that's the kinda turnout u can find in almost every pandal, at any given time of day & night!

That's Mumbai traffic at 3 A.M. (Bloody hell!!)

Who said Bong babes aren't sexy..?? ;-)

During Puja days, even the "oldies" like to have adda all thru the night!

Be it the shaadi, puja or award ceremony, sponsors are always mandatory!!

All you need to offer, to get such a huge turn out, is free food!

Here are the servers...Hehe..!!

Empty chairs....people haven't gotten their bhog, you know!

The very same chairs...!

I think some dude just proposed to her...wot do u think?

Any wacky ideas on what the kid might be trying to do?? ;-)

Could you believe it that this kid was actually lost when I'd snapped the pic?

There's Mr Abhijeet Bhattacharya, one of the most prominent Durga Puja organisors!!

Now, wot do u perceive of this man, from this pic?

But then again, I forgave him when I saw this avataar of his! :-P

Well...that is all, as of now, from the lens of my camera. Shall surely post some more soon. Till then...Adios...Sayonara!!

What a mess!!

This tournament has now equalled the record for the highest number of red cards shown in a World Cup….and we’re not even at the quarter-final stage yet. There are many factors at play here, FIFA’s clampdown on various sides of law and the referee’s implementation of these rules reigning chief among them.

Prior to this year’s World Cup, all 57 officials were informed of the primary sins that FIFA would like to see punished in Germany. These included the now-infamous ‘lunge’ tackle, taking too long to leave the field during a substitution and kicking the ball away. Petty, I’m sure you’ll agree.

FIFA’s insistence that such fouls - along with others - are seized upon have forced referees to act in an almost unnatural, robotic manner, which has ultimately led to matches being unnecessarily marred by pointless stoppages, bookings and dismissals.

The officials are under intense scrutiny during every match, and with FIFA president Sepp Blatter seemingly ever-present during these finals, they realise that one vital mistake could well be their last in this tournament. Which forces them to go against their instincts and bring play back every time one of FIFA’s nonsensical laws are infringed.

Referees, of course, are not entirely blameless. England’s Graham Poll will no longer officiate at this World Cup after his almost comical error during the decisive game between Croatia and Australia. Croatia’s Josip Simunic was given a second yellow card in the closing stages of the match but, much to everyone’s amazement, Poll failed to produce the resulting red card and Simunic stayed on the pitch.

I repeat though, they are only acting within the guidelines they have been given by FIFA.

Which brings us on to the fiery encounter the night before between Portugal and Holland. Within the first ten minutes, referee Valentin Ivanov had booked Mark Van Bommel and Khalid Boulahrouz and - although these were both justifiable bookable offences - had set a precedent for the rest of the match that he had to maintain.

At the end of the end of the 90 minutes, both teams had had two players sent off.

Ivanov - a man of vast experience who officiated at the 1994 World Cup in America - will be widely criticised for his handling of the match. However, he was given an almost impossible job by two sets of players who, quite frankly, disgraced themselves. A total of 16 cards were shown in Nuremberg that night and every one of them was vindicated in my opinion.

How can you possibly excuse Boulahrouz’s high tackle on Ronaldo (which later forced the winger off), Costinha’s barbaric handball in the middle of the park or Deco’s senseless two-footed scythe on Johnny Heitinga?

Deco’s foul in particular was atrocious and typical of a match that was boiling with tension and frustration. The Barcelona playmaker was soon off however after falling foul to another of FIFA’s pet hates; time wasting.

With the aggressive nature of the game threatening to get out of hand, Ivanov’s job wasn’t made any easier by the embarrassing disregard for professionalism that was been shown by the players. Arjen Robben threw himself to the ground at almost every opportunity he could get, while his teammates Kuyt and Van Bommel also did their best to dupe the Russian official.

It wouldn’t be simulation if a Portuguese goalkeeper wasn’t involved, and Ricardo didn’t disappoint, rolling around in ‘agony’ in the dying minutes after Kuyt’s effort struck him in the midriff. Figo’s attempted head butt on the afore-mentioned Van Bommel should warrant a further investigation, however the veteran winger will probably escape any action as he was booked for the offence.

So, where do we go from here? This is the third match of these finals where at least three players have been ordered off. During an entire league season, it’s rare to see just one game with so many dismissals; we’ve now had 3 out of the 52 games played so far (1 every 17 matches).

The figure of 21 dismissals will doubtless be surpassed before the final on July 9 creating the one record that nobody wanted to achieve at the outset of the finals. However, FIFA have only themselves to blame, enforcing changes when it wasn’t necessary to do so.

The ‘lunge’ that they are so intent on outlawing is the sort of typically aggressive challenge that occurs every week in professional leagues around the world. Now, all of a sudden, it’s a red card offence? Football wouldn’t be what it is if there wasn’t a competitive edge and spirited hunger that went into into every challenge.

This compeition has seen some memorable matches, some great goals and beautiful football. However, I fear the 2006 World Cup will forever be remembered as the one where the players, the officials and FIFA lost control.

Just a few random thoughts...

The countdown finally starts...the countdown to the ultimate doom...the end semester examinations for my 4th Semester. They say it's gonna be from the 22nd of May, till the 26th. And after the initial setback, there are the vivas and submissions in the pffing. That means, absolutely no chance, whatsoever, to get rid of this god-forsaken town until the 5th of June. And to add to the woes, I got my supplementary papers from the 12th of July. That means my Birthday's (July 07) screwed up royally, for sure. And then, Sakshi's expected in Mumbai around the end of June. She's supposed to be there for around a week & owing to my papers, it's gonna be so bloody tuff for me to be out with her each & every day. I'll be forced to glue my ass to the chair 24x7. Although I'm racking my brains to the best of my abilities, I'm not sure how much shall I accomplish.

Quite a few of my buddies, who were studying B. Sc., are gonna graduate in a few days. The rest have already started to prepare for their campus. It's hardly two months now till the recruiting companies start pouring into our campus. All my chums, who I started my college with, are gonna get placed & get their future secured. What a huge camaradarie the hostels have become. Folks have already completed the half of Barron's. The rest are trying to improve their communication & group discussion skills. A group or two have also started to converse in English, among themselves, 24x7. I look at them all and wonder if I too could've appeared in my campus placement examinations this time, had I not been a fool on the 3rd of August, 2004. I guess it's all pre-written on the forehead. Probably there's someone out there who has a storeroom, the size of Google Complex, filled with huge nore-books upto every nook & cranny. And in those note-books are where our fates are all written out, right from the first day to the last of our lives. Or if he/she happens to be tech savvy, there just might be a chance for our fates to be digitised into terabytes of intellectual real estate!!

50% Reservations - No, that's not for the Trains!

Well...for the uninitiated, the MHRD plans to hike the reservation of seats for the "backward classes" (that is, scheduled castes, scheduled tribes & other backward classes) upto 50%. They feel these minority sections of the society are the most undeprivileged and they certainly need a boost by the government to move ahead in their lives!

Well...I have a query here. Why the hell do the folks belonging these so called backward sections need to improve their own lives if they continue to get such obscene level of helping hand from the Government? I mean, c'mon...give the rest of the crowd a break! They've been offered reservations from time immemorial and yet, if they need some more to climb the social ladder, do youreally think they're really worth this advantage?

Okay, exactly what class of people are we trying to help, out here? Is it the underprivileged or the lower economic class or the ones who've already established temselves in the society? Underprivileged - how do we really classify who's underprivleged and who isn't? Is it their social position or the economic condition or how important they are in alloting votes? I agree, owing to reservations, this so called "backward secton" has risen to a much greater level..but isn't that enough? I think it's high time we left casteism behind our back and moved ahead. Let's face it guys, it's hardly helping the society in general. C'mon...you know what sorta feeling I'm getting? That the government has divided the very country into 2 sections, one's the forward section & the other backward class. And each of these classes has been given 50% of space to live in their motherland. One must know which half you belong to and better take care not to intrude in the other. This is so bloody incredulous!

I know, this topic is subjected to a very heavy debate whether reservations should b present or not. But here what I'm trying to get into the light is the question whether an obscene 50% reservation's required for the upliftment of the backward sections of the society. I feel the real backward sections of our society are the ones who still have to strive insanely just to have their meals twice a day, they r the ones who can't afford even the most basic neccessities of living. And don't you think such a section doesn't belong to just the so called government stamped backward class but also among the rest? Don't you think it'd have been more feasible and practical if our esteemes government could arrange for financial aids for the needy, built more institutes and tried to market education in the rural sections much fiercer to help the oneswho really need it? Do they think my next door Mr. Marandi, who probably earns 3lacs ina year and drives a Toyota Corrola, needs reservatios for his son to get admitted into a reputed college? Does the government feel that my friend Akshay, who had 3 laptops in his family of four and whom I've never seen coming to school in any transport other than a car, actually deserved the reservations 'coz of which he got Electronics & Telecommunication in NIT Trichy, with an all India rank of 1.2lacs and I deserved to be doing Electrical Engineering in NIT, Jamshedpur with an all India rank of 3,600? Is this what our elected officials call justice for the society?

Brain drain had always been a serious problem for India. Previously, the best of the minds used to go out to work 'coz of higher salaries and better prospects. Such a scenario could be made a thing of past by emerging of MNCs in the country and the standard salary increasing manifold. However, now it seems brain drain's now gonna be much more rampant owing to shortage of seats in the premier institutes such a law is gonna result to. But then again, I guess the government doesn't really care much about that. All they need is votes for their fast drying up vote bank. Kudos to you, mr Arjun Singh. Bravo for taking such an awesome move!

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) is defined as intelligence exhibited by an artificial entity. Such a system is generally assumed to be a computer.

Although AI has a strong science fiction connotation, it forms a vital branch of computer science, dealing with intelligent behavior, learning and adaptation in machines. Research in AI is concerned with producing machines to automate tasks requiring intelligent behavior. Examples include control, planning and scheduling, the ability to answer diagnostic and consumer questions, handwriting, speech, and facial recognition. As such, it has become a scientific discipline, focused on providing solutions to real life problems. AI systems are now in routine use in economics, medicine, engineering and the military, as well as being built into many common home computer software applications, traditional strategy games like computer chess and other video games.

Schools of Thought

AI divides roughly into two schools of thought: Conventional AI and Computational Intelligence (CI).

Conventional AI mostly involves methods now classified as machine learning, characterized by formalism and statistical analysis. This is also known as symbolic AI, logical AI, neat AI and Good Old Fashioned Artificial Intelligence (GOFAI). (Also see semantics.) Methods include:

• Expert systems: apply reasoning capabilities to reach a conclusion. An expert system can process large amounts of known information and provide conclusions based on them.
Case based reasoningBayesian networksBehavior based AI: a modular method of building AI systems by hand.

Computational Intelligence involves iterative development or learning (e.g. parameter tuning e.g. in connectionist systems). Learning is based on empirical data and is associated with non-symbolic AI, scruffy AI and soft computing. Methods mainly include:

• Neural networks: systems with very strong pattern recognition capabilities.
• Fuzzy systems: techniques for reasoning under uncertainty, has been widely used in modern industrial and consumer product control systems.
• Evolutionary computation: applies biologically inspired concepts such as populations, mutation and survival of the fittest to generate increasingly better solutions to the problem. These methods most notably divide into evolutionary algorithms (e.g. genetic algorithms) and swarm intelligence (e.g. ant algorithms).

With hybrid intelligent systems attempts are made to combine these two groups. Expert inference rules can be generated through neural network or production rules from statistical learning such as in ACT-R.

A promising new approach called intelligence amplification tries to achieve artificial intelligence in an evolutionary development process as a side-effect of amplifying human intelligence through technology.

Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence

The strong AI vs. weak AI debate is still a hot topic amongst AI philosophers. This involves philosophy of mind and the mind-body problem. Most notably Roger Penrose in his book The Emperor's New Mind and John Searle with his "Chinese room" thought experiment argue that true consciousness can not be achieved by formal logic systems, while Douglas Hofstadter in Gödel, Escher, Bach and Daniel Dennett in Consciousness Explained argue in favour of Functionalism. In many strong AI supporters’ opinion, artificial consciousness is considered as the holy grail of artificial intelligence.


Ethical Issue of AI

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is a somewhat recent (1960s) development in computer science. If sentient AIs, as depicted in many science fiction movies, became real, many ethical problems would derive from that.

• Could a computer simulate an animal or human brain in a way that the simulation should receive the same animal rights or human rights as the actual creature?
• Under what preconditions could such a simulation be allowed to happen at all?
• Wat are the possible criteria for a computer, whether it simulates a brain or not, to be considered sentient or sapient? Is the Turing test applicable?
• Can a computer that must be considered sentient ever be turned off?
• In order to be intelligent does AI need to replicate human thought, and if so, to what extent (eg. can expert systems become AI)? What other avenues to achieving AI exist?
• Can AI be defined in a graded sense (eg. with human-level intelligence graded as 1.0)? What does it mean to have a graduated scale? Is categorisation necessary or important?
• AI rights: if AI is comparable in intelligence to humans then they should have comparable rights. (As a corollary, if AI is more intelligent than humans, would we retain our 'rights'?)
• Can AIs be "smarter" than humans in the same way that we are "smarter" than other animals (Strong Artificial Intelligence)?
• Designing and implementing AI 'safeguards': it is crucial to understand why safeguards should be considered in the first place; however, to what extent is it possible to implement safeguards in relation to a superhuman AI? How effective could any such safeguards be?
• Some may question the impact upon careers and jobs (eg. there would at least be potential for the problems associated with free trade), however the more crucial issue is the wider impact upon humanity.
• Technological singularity
  

A major influence in the AI ethics dialogue was Isaac Asimov who fictitiously created Three Laws of Robotics to govern artificial intelligent systems. Much of his work was then spent testing the boundaries of his three laws to see where they would break down, or where they would create paradoxical or unanticipated behavior. Ultimately, a reading of his work concludes that no set of fixed laws can sufficiently match the possible behavior of AI agents and human society. A criticism of Asimov's robot laws is that the installation of unalterable laws into a sentient consciousness would be a limitation of free will and therefore unethical. Consequently, Asimov's robot laws would be restricted to explicitly non-sentient machines, which possibly could not be made to reliably understand them under all possible circumstances.

The movie The Thirteenth Floor suggests a future where simulated worlds with sentient inhabitants are created by computer game consoles for the purpose of entertainment. The movie The Matrix suggests a future where the dominant species on planet Earth are sentient machines and humanity is treated with utmost Speciesism. The short story The Planck Dive suggest a future where humanity has turned itself into software that can be dublicated and optimized and the relevant distinction between types of software is sentient and non-sentient. The same idea can be found in the Emergency Medical Hologram of Starship Voyager, which is an apparently sentient copy of a reduced subset of the consciousness of its creator, Dr. Zimmerman, who, for the best motives, has created the system to give medical assistance in case of emergencies. The movies Bicentennial Man and A.I. deal with the possibility of sentient robots that could love. I, Robot explored some aspects of Asimov's three laws. All these scenarios try to foresee possibly unethical consequences of the creation of sentient computers.

Over time, debates have tended to focus less and less on possibility and more on desirability, as emphasized in the "Cosmist" and "Terran" debates initiated by Hugo de Garis and Kevin Warwick. A Cosmist, according to Hugo de Garis, is actually seeking to build more intelligent successors to the human species.


Expectations of AI

AI methods are often employed in cognitive science research, which tries to model subsystems of human cognition. Historically, AI researchers aimed for the loftier goal of so-called strong AI—of simulating complete, human-like intelligence. This goal is epitomised by the fictional strong AI computer HAL 9000 in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. This goal is unlikely to be met in the near future and is no longer the subject of most serious AI research. The label "AI" has something of a bad name due to the failure of these early expectations, and aggravation by various popular science writers and media personalities such as Professor Kevin Warwick whose work has raised the expectations of AI research far beyond its current capabilities. For this reason, many AI researchers say they work in cognitive science, informatics, statistical inference or information engineering. Recent research areas include Bayesian networks and artificial life.

The vision of artificial intelligence replacing human professional judgment has arisen many times in the history of the field, and today in some specialized areas where "expert systems" are routinely used to augment or to replace professional judgment in some areas of engineering and of medicine.

Even though a substantial amount of AI functionality exists in everyday software, some misinformed commentators on computer technology have tried to suggest that a good definition of AI would be "research that has not yet been commercialised". This happens because when AI gets incorporated into an operating system or application it becomes an understated feature.

Freshers '06

Wow...what an awesome time I had last night. It was the Freshers' Night for the Mattus (folks from Maharashtra). The Freshers' Night is actually just a gathering of all the students hailing from the same state of the country, comprising students from every batch, at a same arena where the folks of the latest batch are welcome in the college by the rest. People just have loads of food, booze, smoke & yeah, how could I dare leave out the fun part? It was the chance for the guys who'd gotten admission in 2005. Yeah, I know it's a bit late, but that's how the tradition goes. All this free food for the juniors is not for nothing. According to the traditions, it's also a sort of compensation for the freshers who normally had to endure a lot of mind-licking and days of work and also sometimes a few whacks in their butts (in other words, ragging) all through their first semester. Although the hardcore ragging part is almost obsolete in most of the colleges in the country, the Freshers concept still prevails 'coz it's also a channel for enjoyment and fun for the students, once in a year.

Here are some of the pics from last nights blast. For details about the respective pics, just hover your mouse on them.

Well, here I've just posted the group photos of all the four current batches. But if you're interested to chack out the rest of 100s of pics taken on the night, just check out My Photos and I'm sure your thirst shall be quenched more than adequately!

And yeah, how could I even forget? If you think just still pictures aren't enough for you, just check out the 10 clips I've saved on MegaUpload for you to check out. Just in case you haven't used their feature before, since you're obviously an unpaid member, they'll make you waita few seconds till you actually get the link to download the clips. The link shall be given at the top right corner of the new page that opens up. So, just don't panic if you see a countdown timer running or if you can't find the download button. The button shall surely be there, you shall just have to be a li'l careful, that is all!

Clip 01S (133KB)	Clip 02S (2.80MB)	Clip 03S (87.5KB)	Clip 04S (2.60MB)	Clip 05S (31.6KB)
Clip 06S (47.5KB)	Clip 07S (327KB)	Clip 08S (4.45MB)	Clip 09S (6.61MB)	Clip 10S (24.1MB)

Trust me, if you miss the clips, you're missing a hell lot of fun that we had last night. 3 cheers for Mattus...Hip Hip Hurray!! Jai Maharashtra!!! ;-)