Say No to Quota in IIT

While Indian students overseas proudly look back at their world famous university IITs and IIMs, because of their highest intelligence levels; things may not be the same a few years downstream. A 50% quota for students from reserved categories may alter the image of these institutions forever. Till now, only the most intelligent students could make through the tough entrance examinations; but if the bill is passed, being from the reserved categories may provide you easy admission. And the 'eligible deserving' candidates may have to look forward for admission to other universities.

As absurd as the bill sounds, it also proves the high voltage politics going on in India. While giving food, shelter, educational and medical facilities to poor/reserved categories is a benefiting action, I fail to understand how providing admission to the most reputed university can help these people.

Simply put, a person who can't crack the entrace exam of these institutions, probably is not even suited for the challenging level of education provided by the institutions; and mostly would not be able to cope up with the level of stress that follows on taking up such endeavour.

Then the only way out is more quotas. 75% Quota for reserved categories to pass 1st year exams, 80% quota for 2nd year, and progressing to 100% for final year.

Such insanity can only be laughed at. And that was my first reaction to the quota system. However, as the bill is being seriously considered by the govt., we need to stand up and raise our voice against it. Most importantly, do not just assume that it would not go through.

There is an online petition being made to President against the quota bill. If you care about the Indian Education system a bit, do cast your vote here.

Microsoft creates iPod (What if that is)

We have all seen the simple and nice packaging of iPod by Apple. Now what if Microsoft was to market the iPod.

Check it out here!

Microsoft claims that she herself created the video to share among the packaging team for fun??!!

M$, whether you created it or not, is doubtful, but anws, we surely had fun!

Google Query: 403 Access Denied

While surfing in NTU, don't be amazed if your favourite blog can't be accessed because it goes www.sexycoder.blogspot.com, and normal Google query instead of showing you the desired results, provides you with a 403 Forbidden : Access Denied.

In their bid to block access to porn sites, Centre for IT Services or CITS has recently installed a highly inefficient filter in the firewall. This simple word matching filter forbids access to the web page if the url contains any word remotely referring to porn. This includes disallowing a normal "sexy tshirt" query in Google as the url being accessed contains 'sexy'. It even disallowed me to access a paper on sorting algorithm because the url had an 'xxx' inside it. God forbid if tomorrow CITS decides to go one step fwd, and block access to webpages if their word search filter finds inappropriate words in it.

While spending millions of dollors on Microsoft products, why can't CITS buy a decent trustworthy filter to disallow access to porn, and not to words. Or if they are incapable of doing so, spend money on hiring hackers who can, and not A grade computer engg. graduates talking financial crap all the time.

little coo-coo sounds prior to..

Just realized that I spend 70% of my blog reading time on engadget, which is one of the arnd 40 feeds that I'm subscribed to.
Here is the most interesting post I've come across:

Thomas Ricker at engadget about Japanese RI-Man, a robot destined to care for elderly:

...[useless stuff before punchline]...
"This allows it to perform such delicate work as lifting perplexed patients into its arms where presumably it will whisper little “coo-coo” sounds prior to crushing its victim into a liquid fuel beverage – which of course all robots will do once they obtain consciousness, right?"

-from engadget

Now, do I need any more reason to love engadget!

Google Romance?!

Now applying advanced text mining algorithms to find the perfect match for you; Google is surely and quickly monopolizing entire computer world. Google products quickly recaped:

Internet: Google Search
Web presence (blogging): Blogspot
Online word processor: Writely
Photos: Picasa
Mail : Gmail
Chatting: Gmail Talk
Desktop: Google Desktop Search
Scheduler/Calendar: CL2
Multimedia: Google Video

What's missing is the release of an operating system by google, perceived to be a modified version of ubuntu -> Goobuntu!
And obviously a highly efficient file system for Goobuntu: GoogleFS

So, when are you releasing them Google?