To say that Orkut is popular here in India would be a gross understatement. And since it is popular you cannot afford to stay away from it (for long) and especially if you are in the online business you just cannot afford to.
Thanks to so many people being in there I'm now in (remote) touch with a number of old friends.
But I get flummoxed when I get a scrap from someone called "IM oN tHE 7tH HeAVen aNd In NO mOdd 2 GEt DoWn." Good for you buddy if you're there and I wish you'd stay there but at the same time I'd also like some clues towards your real, non CrAzY cased identity?
I then go snooping to the scrappers profile and try to hunt for clues - common friends, photos, videos, scraps, testimonials. Usually I make a good guess, but often am left clueless.
To many this might seem cool, but it actually defies the real purpose of social networking. One your identity gets camouflaged (unless it is a deliberate act) and someone looking for you there by your name wouldn't find you in the search results. And when you scrap someone, he/she would be left wondering.
Some clever chaps have found a way out, they insert their names in some other field, eg city, and hence get featured in the profile search results.
Maybe Orkut should give these bacchas some other field where they can let their creative energies roam free while I get to know who is scrapping me.
Thankfully, my Facebook friend's list is still sane. Maybe because Facebook emphasises on the 'real name'. Or are my Facebook friends saner than my Orkut ones? Or people tend to be proper on Facebook and go crazy on Orkut? Maybe I'm getting old?
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Starting today
Smoking in public places
BANNED
I don't have anything against the new anti-smoking regulation (Prohibition of Smoking in Public Places Rules, 2008) but one clause seems a little overboard:
Rule 4(3):
A smoking area or space shall be used only for the purpose of smoking and no other service(s) shall be allowed. [PDF link]
It technically means that when you smoke, you smoke, don't eat or drink.
And I hate those photos of ministers (and other political leaders) appearing in all government ads. Their face value actually have a diminising effect on the message.
Related post:
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Many of you would have seen photos of upturned dustbins in the newspapers and websites following the serial bomb blasts in Delhi on September 13. Why? Because a couple of bombs had been placed inside dustbins.
The Economic Times reports that The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is contemplating new norms for WiFi security. Why? Because the terrorists claimed responsibility for the blasts via emails sent through unsecured WiFi networks.
It's a different tale that our media has been reporting that the WiFi networks were 'hacked' into. Why? Because 'hacking' sounds more sinister or they don't understand technology (many in the television industry and some in the print definitely don't but just simply claim to). Going by the dictionary they might not be wrong, as hacking does imply unauthorised access. But real-life meanings of terms differ more than a little from what the lexicons state. Hacking would atleast involve a bit of more effort than just connecting to an available open WiFi network (That makes me a hacker too)
Coming back to where I began.Terrorists might not be able to plant bombs in upturned dustbins (though it doesn't take much effort to make one upright again), they will simply keep them elsewhere. But then how do I, in the meanwhile, keep Delhi clean? Dump the banaana peel on the foothpath so that a disgruntled mass murderer, looking for an alternative place to hide the bomb, because someone turned his favourite dustbin upside down, would slip and deservedly break a few bones?
By the way, terrorists had also entered the Parliament. It should have been a good idea to keep the place sealed, so that that they cannot ever think of even entering it in the future.
If terrorists have amongst them the 'hackers' that the media and the police claim, it shouldn't be too much of a worry for them to gain access to some 'secured' connections. Else they can simply drop a letter. Or mask their IPs. Too much effort has already been wasted in tracing the source of the emails, nothing much will come out of that. I believe the men, who seem to play their dirty game according to their own rules at a time they wish to, wouldn't be as stupid as our investigating agencies hope they would be.
We have developed an expertise for knee-jerk reactions that border on stupidity. Why? Because we don't seem to have the most potent weapon to disarm such acts of terror - intelligence.
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The other day my brother called up. "Delhi's going to host the Winter Olympics," he joked. But for the people who take decisions on such matters in India might quite possibly be thrilled at the idea.
And a few days later I read that Delhi would be the official host of the 2010 Men's Hockey World Cup.
I don't have anything against Delhi, after all I have been living here for almost half-a-decade now and have started to identify myself with the city.
But then it isn't a nice experience to be a citizen of a single-city nation. To the outside world it would seem that there is only one city in the 32,87,263 sq km area of the country - Delhi or more specifically New Delhi.
Isn't it already enough that the city has already hosted the first ever Asian Games in 1951 followed by the 1982 edition and now the Commonwealth Games in 2010?
In between there was some unsuccessful bids to play the hosts for yet another international sporting event. And now there are plans to bid for the biggest of them all - The Olympics in 2020.
This one-city focus isn't found in many of the countries of the world. Honestly, I hadn't heard of Incheon before it beat Delhi in the race to the 2014 Asian Games.
If we look at the Asian Games, South Korea got the opportunity thrice to host it and only the first (1986) was in the capital Seoul, the subsequent events went to Busan (2002) and Incheon (2014). The 2010 Asiad will be held in Guangzhou and not Beijing.
Amongst the 20 cities that have/will hosted/host the Commonwealth Games (in its different forms) only four are country capitals (and this includes Delhi). And as many as 10 of the host cities of the Olympic Games weren't the cities where the seat of the government resided.
Such international events provide a tremendous potential to overhaul the entire infrastructure of the city. The city of Delhi has been fortunate enough to have good facilities (compared to other cities in the country), that has been augmented by the Asian Games and now the Commonwealth Games. Don't other cities in the country deserve an opportunity to make things better for its residents? Why do we need to be concentrated only to the National Capital?
Before you point it out, Hyderabad did host the inaugural Afro-Asian Games in 2003 and the 2007 Military World Games, but they were comparatively inconsequential.
There is an India beyond the periphery of the NCR. Our media is partially blind to the fact (partially because they at least see the other metros). And to our sports administrators... get a phacoemulsification done.
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The other day while returning from work an ambulance was overtaking our office bus, when I noticed it, an extra long domain name - www.kapoormedicalandambulanceservices.com - proudly displayed on the side of the vehicle. Why would anyone go for such a long domain name?
A little googling and I found that there are many much much longer, but most of them are just for the heck of it. Long domain names don't make good business sense as they are harder to remember and are more prone to errors when someone types them out on a browser's address bar. The same also applies for this blog. But when I register my own domain name (don't know when) will try to keep it short and simple (if that's available).
The Guinness Book of World Records has rested the category for the longest domain name "because there is no merit whatsoever in this. It takes little to no effort and is similar to taking the largest number in the world and then adding 1 to it." This was in response to the claim made by www.thelongestdomainnameintheworldandthensomeandthensomemoreandmore.com.
There are numerous other claimants to the title of the world's longest domain name and I didn't waste my time counting the number of character in there.
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So it's all over (well almost). The Blue Billion and the associated mumbo-jumbo. Maybe we lack the spirit, maybe we lack the ability, maybe we lack the will. Maybe we will win the next ICC Cricket World Cup. Maybe.
And maybe BCCI will have a functional website.
[Photo: Aunty P (cc)]
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Definitely not stupider than me. Bogged with helping coordinate and conduct over 700 interviews in three days, I didn't even get the opportunity to read my favourite blogs, nor the time to go through the emails that came my way before replying.
Dwaipayan put this seemingly innocent question my way, "What was your first love?" I in my moronic greatness provided him the innocent answer. The next thing I knew was that he posts my password as a comment on this blog. I didn't realise what was going on. I changed my passwords and played ignorant. This morning I find my new passwords in my inbox, forwarded by Dwaipayan. And as a favour he reveals my stupidity. That question was the clue leading to the revelation of the passwords.
I have learnt my lesson. But it does not guarantee any similar foolishness on my part in the near future.
P.S. The accompanying photo is Dwaipayan's. The girls at my workplace find him 'cute.'
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The respected Prime Minister (accompanied by a bevy of other VVIPs) inaugurated the latest addition to Delhi's Metro Rail. VVIPs are an endangered species, or so it seems by the security cover around them and the trouble which common citizen has to undergo because some VVIP coincidentally chose to take the same route as him. When such a person of paramount importance is invited to inaugurate something or the other like the Barakhamba-Dwarka metro line, the police cordon off the area, close the shops down. The roadside tea-stall owner loses on his early morning earning because some non Z-category entity couldn't have possibly inaugurated something like this.
The coffers are filled with the tax-payers' hard-earned money, so spending a little on avoidable functions and the associated security is no big deal. The tea-stall guy can manage without half-a-day's earning. Our big projects will perhaps not function to the optimum if someone high up in the order of precedence doesn't cut the red ribbon. While our chaiwallah and his customers can continue to relieve themselves on the walls of the metro-station and fill the milieu with pee-perfume.
VVIP security and inauguration ceremonies are definitely more important than avoidable expenditure on proper bladder relieving zones. The ones that exist are too few and filthy; those which aren't demand a price which the common man doesn't or cannot spare. People smoke publicly with impunity and there exists a law prohibiting smoking in public places; the 'Do Not Pass Urine Here' board is not deterrent enough for watering the trees - for free.
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