Rape City !

No ! I am not talking about Quentin Tarantino's next movie, it's about the abysmally demented male population of our capital city. Almost everyday I hear atleast one rape incident. I wonder if the situation is really this bad or is the wanton sensationalization by the media. In either case it goes to show how our sense of civility has deteriorated in the recent times. It feels quite repulsive to wake up to news like "Neighbour rapes woman", "Relative helps Rape", "Gang rape in car" . Something is seriously wrong in Delhi, with all the heads of the state sitting in the same city and not being able to do anything. The situation is much better is Bihar, kidnappings and assassinations are far better than sexually exploiting female humility.

I think the sex offence being committed by teacher in the US has caught on with India too; yesterday there was a news about a headmaster of a school in Hyderabad clicking nude photographs of one of his students. The great cities of our country are now becoming very popular for the wrong reasons. Also makes me wonder if these have suddenly caught our attention just because they are being reported in as many TV channels and newspapers. Were these sex related offenses being committed at the same rate all along but never attracted the media's attention? I doubt if someone even from Delhi will be able to comment on this trend.

It is a disgrace for a country that boasts about its strong cultural and social values. Why is Delhi not as safe as Bombay, Gujarat or for that matter Chennai? Though such incidents have become a common place in the whole of India, Delhi has been topping the list in terms of the rate at which such crimes are being committed. It is a sign of total breakdown of law enforcement. People are getting away with such crimes without punishment or with punishments not as intensive as they should be. The only way to fix this issue is to pass a law that will empower castration of all those sex predators found guilty and make them regret their mistake for the rest of their lives.

The only way for me to vehemently denounce these barbaric acts is to make a blog post, hence.

The G Phenomenon

Recently there has been a lot of buzz about Google's success and the speed at which there are diversifying their business. Some of them are really awe struck and some don't find it really entertaining. This is reality the world does not like smart people or rather the world does not like successful people. If a company grows beyond a point people start griping about its success. People try to come with all contrived opinions; play the mean and divisive politics firstly to get some media attention and create some instability that can be exploited.

The folks at Silicon Valley feel threatened by Google, the reasons seem quite inane, though. It seems Google has allegedly been causing a brain drain. This is true, they want only the finest minds and they need them in huge numbers to sustain the rate of growth that their shareholders expect. There is only a thin line that separates monopoly and inevitably being the best thus reducing competition. Both states are perceived the same from an outsider's point of view. Google is emerging the inevitable leader in experimenting and implementing different things. They have a tremendous talent pool which is helping them to do it. This was exactly what Microsoft was doing few years back, in that sense if MS is evil Google is evil too. The recent sale of shares to raise 4.2 billion is for sure to acquire and expand into uncharted territories. Some already speculate that this could be something like wireless ISP or VOIP service provider, even both.

Some how Google gets media hype for almost everything they do. A new product introduction is something the media would immediately jump to and lavish with superlatives. Google talk is the new kid on the block. I just tried their IM client, it is pretty ordinary. I don't see anything exceptional doesn’t even have emote icons, of course there is an excuse that it is still beta. The best part is that they have stuck to some open standards (jabber), unlike MS. This way Google re-emphasizes that it isn't as evil as the media sometimes percieves. There is also the talk that Google might buy out Skype, which is a leading VOIP service provider. Just imagine Google incorporating their context sensitive search technology with the IM. You will get answers even as you chat. Something like, if you are talking about a movie, you probably will get an ad that will suggest where you can watch/rent the movie. The business potential with incorporating VOIP will still bolster their ad based revenue. Imagine a scheme where every click on the ad will increase your talk time. Every weekend we(expatriates) will end up spending few hours clicking ads to gain talk time and call India :-) of course, we can setup a bot to do the clicking but Google will find(or
already has) a way to distinguish a bot from a real person. Incidentally, captcha is no longer a technique to catch a bot for, there are a some captcha decoders available now. Google will have to think of something really radical on the lines of finger printing, retinal scanning or voice recognition for authentication :-)

An interesting note that I found someone commenting on this trend: "Microsoft is becoming I.B.M. and Google is becoming Microsoft" now, what is I.B.M becoming.... SCO ? and SCO becoming.... who cares !

Just noticed, there is something like "play 23 21 13 16 21 19 . 7 1 13 5" in dimmed font on the Google talk about box, wonder what that is ! some SIP id ?

So much for a used iBook

This story just goes to show how desperate people get and do insane things to achieve something that isn't worth the trouble.