Lost in "Lost"

I do not like tv serials. And it is almost borderline hate that I feel towards TV Serials that go on for a few years. And it is unbearable if they tend to be stretched for no apparent reason to go on for a few years. I am currently stuck, knee deep, in one of the more intolerable Serials. Atleast I had the luck not to go through the lost journey like everyone else for the past 4 years, an hour a week. Got hold of all the seasons to date, and since I was stuck in an office with two other "Lost" people, I plunged into the adventure last week. I have to say I am making good progress, having already finished 3 seasons. But at the end of it all, I am starting to feel a little lost myself. Almost bordering on the supernatural, it takes a bit of an effort to give it the serious attention a series like "lost" deserves! But apart from that, all the unnecessary human interrelationships and the clichés that are abundant in the series is so predictable, I am almost able to finish sentences once they start. When the season started it had a thin, blond, dumb, vain woman (cliché!) who exaggerated all the qualities of a woman which will make me run up a blank wall. I actually had the shivers whenever she came on the screen to deliver her dialogues! Well thankfully they got her killed, and I breathed a sigh of relief! Guess I know a few characters who would probably fit the bill and it is so difficult to actually see their true colours in real life, cause they are not dumb like in the Tv, but smart as foxes!

But now I ask myself, why don't I just stop! Well that is the hard part. The seasons are all there, and it takes an herculean effort not to give into the curiosity, only to be disappointed again and again at the quality of the goods offered. On second thought, guess a lot of things in life are like that. So here I am almost praying that the series ends, and I can turn my attention and time to something more interesting! But I doubt that.


 

Confessions of an Internet Junkie

Initially I was going to play the Adam game and pass the buck onto Firefox and Google, but then I decided to do the right/honourable thing and come straight on weird addiction.
Yesterday there was a note in BBC Magazine, about how as many as 17 million people actually refuse to go online. To say I was flabbergasted is an understatement. I mean, I had an uncle approaching 80 and he wanted to get on the facebook/twitter bandwagon. After of course buying a new comp, a new printer and all the required software a few years ago, learning to double click, learn to curse windows for everything, the difference between explorer and internet explorer. But slowly and steadily he and his wife started using email and attachments instead of faxing, and started receiving pictures of all their loved ones, without having to wait for some function to receive it as gifts.
OK, what I am getting at is simple. I was under the impression that everyone given the means would possibly be jetting along the internet highway, like a hippie on weed. So the article came as quite a surprise.
For those of you following the German election campaign, you would have noticed that there is a lot of noise about internet surveillance. A short report can be read here! So there we have one group refusing to get onto the internet, and there is one group trying to make the internet safe for anyone older than 3.
So there I started wondering what the hell I use the internet for? Leaving aside the countless hours searching for some obscure paper related to my work, depending on Wikipedia to tell me Newtons first law, reading up how to configure and reconfigure Outlook, referring up all commands related to DOS (except ping of course) and HTML, I guess I also use the internet for news, different news from different sources, checking mail from different accounts, checking all the social networks, reading blogs, reading the comments in the blogs, watching videos, reading the comments to the videos, writing on the internet, like anyone cares what I think about, forgetting to maintain an address book, as everything is in google mail. Ah and then the usual: shopping online, banking online, chatting online, video chatting online and of course flirting online.
So at the end of the day, for someone who has absolutely no reason to be online this long, I am pretty much online. It has been a long way since the days when I did not read the daily paper that was delivered home or the fact that I haven't written a single normal letter to anyone.
OMG! So now do intend to change my ways and stay away from anything that has wires coming out of it! Or anything without wires, like Internet in a Black box! No freaking way, this is a love affair to last. How else am I going to waste time searching for all the useless things that I def do not need to know. Next thing on the list when I have enough money, get an internet phone directly implanted under my skin or if that is still a few years away, then i ll settle for a needle jacked up my spinal cord Neo-style!!! HAHA...

The Illusion of Privacy

So there I was, at 8.30 Sunday morning, after 2 cups of coffee, sitting in my office, wondering what the hell I was doing there in the first place. I had successfully managed, after what seems like an eternity, to go to bed on the right side of midnight with absolutely no alcohol in me, the result of which was that I was awake at 5.40 and after reading all news that occurred in the last 5 hours, decided to go pick up my music player from the office. Now I was there and had nothing better to do, I landed in Facebook. Few things led to one and the other, and I had a nostalgia and wanted to see how many of my former college mates from the department were there in Facebook. And behold, very few. So I thought I'll search for them. Now is when the things starts to get interesting. For every name, especially Indian names, you have a multitude of them in every list you open. All the Aruns, and Ragavs, man it was so difficult to actually find anyone in the damm  place. To top it all, all these handsome, young, paparazzi-followed fellas, have their profiles guarded like it was the biggest secret since the discovery of the wheel. So there I am looking at Cartoon figures, Bikes, Cars, out-of-focus pictures, pictures in you wont recognise a face even by zooming the page to the maximum... and so on and so forth.

I mean common, I can understand if some young teenage girl is doing this, guarding herself against all the poachers out there, but damm it fellas, how much trouble would it be to list where you went to college and which year you were there!! So then I was going through the privacy policy in Facebook, and behold, it gets even worse, you can actually hide the "add as friend" button to your profile. The idea behind is that only they can add you, and not vice versa. I wonder what happens if two fellas, both paranoid, remove the "add as friend" button. How would they connect.

Fella1: I ll be lowering the firewall at 12.30 IST, can you add me then!?
Fella2: sure thingy dude.
Fella1: But dont miss the window, I ll set it back at 12.31.

And something else I noticed. It is far more easier to attract attention, but hiding this button, because when all the remaining 95% are visible, and only 1 or 2 are missing, you tend to think... wtf, is he/she trying to say!?

This is amazing. Even better, you can actually hide completely in Facebook. like you wont even be listed if someone were to search for you. I dont know about you, but these days if you are not atleast found somewhere online, it is like the time when you did not have an e-mail id because it was too technical. now comes the funny part. They comment on things posted on others walls, and everyone will know that here is one who just does not want to be found.

I mean there are crazy fellows in the internet, who I would protect my grandmother from! But the fact that a name, and basic information is not going to give you away when you are going to an interview, especially when you are no longer under 20 is humourous. And if you are woman, the best way to keep guys from invading your privacy would just be to say you are over 25 and married. No stranger in their sane mind will ever bother you. :) Whatever, it was another morning, where I could only shake my head and wonder what this is illusion is all about. Anybody with a bit of programming can view any pictures in Facebook. It is so simple, it is a joke.

On a higher level, I wonder if anyone can be absolutely private anymore. Everyone has a mail account, where every mail is probably searched for keywords for advertising.  Your IPs are saved, along with your searches, along with your shopping in amazon, ebay, and all the other portals in the internet. So someone somewhere could if they "really" wanted, know more about you than your right hand. Case to point, Twitter, Facebook, GMail, Youtube, and many other portals were attacked to make sure just one blogger could not post on the internet!

Happy sunday all.

It is coffee time

From Alina's Blog

Indian self-esteem

I am upset. To put it mildly. I am also sad. Partly because I wasted 10 min of my life taking part in a useless quiz to determine how Indian I am. I know I am to be blamed. I succumbed to the the temptation of trying one of the quizzes in Facebook. By the time I started reading the first question, I was sorry for trying it. I only hope that who ever came up with those questions was stoned out his/her mind at that time. But it is even more discouraging to note that there are 620 fans of this application and a few 5 stars in the reviews. Sad is what I can say.

I mean I cant even understand how this is supposed to be funny! For example. What the hell does anything have to do with being an Indian about how you pronounce the word Carton... why carton? Next, what if I don't drink any tea at all.. black, with milk, sugar, lots of sugar, little sugar, less sugar.. wtf!!! I don't drink any tea, nor do I drink with sugar! Or define perfect citizen, what in world does it mean to be a perfect citizen. Not one question was well framed, or the answers even remotely related to being anything that characterises Indians. Atleast a bit of effort should have been made to sort out the grammatical errors.

The saddest of all this, is that a simple search in facebook, for the term Indian, brings this application as the first hit in the applications tab. So every person in facebook anywhere in the world, who would be interested in India, can have a go at it, and what a reality check this must be for them, which is totally not true. Talking loud on the phone is looked down in India as well, and you def have this behaviour everywhere else as well.

There are so many questions that are so characteristic to being an Indian, starting from the questions about the oldest civilisation, to our unique political and judicial systems, the unique heterogeneous cultural mix, the mingling of languages, and races, the birthplace of religions, the non-violent movement, Grandmasters of chess, famous cricketers, poets, writers, artists, such people whose name would be a common household name only in India. But none of this is found in this quiz. This is so biased against Indians, I would be ashamed to be associated with this application, if it remains in this current format.

When the whole world is keeping a close eye on the developments in India, with the BBC following the Indian elections with more coverage than the elections in the European Parliament, such an application should be developed with a bit of prudence. And if it has to be, then at-least keep it private, so that only those you know will have to deal with it.

I rest my case.