Never. Stop. Thinking.

After a while you ask yourself:
Do these people ever SLEEP?

When is it time to go home? To say, "That's the best I can do." What work can be left until tomorrow? Can yours? What if tomorrow depends on the work we do today? Can that be left until tomorrow? Good ideas have no punch cards. They can't tell time. They have no excuses. All they possess is the desire to be found. While they remain hidden from most and invisible to the weak, they will eventually show themselves. To those who never stop thinking.

INFINEON CYCLE (Perpetual Thinking Process)

From an advert in a September 1999 issue of TIME magazine. One of my key inspirations.

My Dreamlist / Wishlist

Launch of my 'Daily Goals' blog

The purpose of this new blog is simple. To declare my daily goals so that I'm pushed to complete them (However, this list shall generally not be complete/exhaustive, since there shall be tens of small & large unforeseen tasks too that I shall finish each day, apart from the ones listed on this blog. Also, it shall be too taxing to list every single small/medium/large task that I finish each day, so I shall only list those which I am able to, with the non-mentioned ones being finished implicitly). I firmly believe that if I religiously keep completing every day's list that very day, no one can stop me from succeeding.

Amateur Users, Mozilla Firefox & Peace Of Mind

I'm frequently requested by friends & relatives to cleanup their computers, that are full of viruses and other malware. They tell me that it (the malware) "came" from the Internet. Thank god, now there's an effective (preventive) solution to these woes - Mozilla Firefox.

What I do is to backup all of their important data, format the machine, install the operating system again, and install the latest version of Firefox on it. And boom! Gone are all the drive-by-downloads, the unwanted pop-up ads, and a nice side-effect is the increase in browsing performance.

And how do I ensure that they do not use Internet Explorer again (accidentally or otherwise)? The simplest way (and its quite effective too) is to remove its icon from, the start menu, the desktop, and the quick-launch tray. And I also make Firefox the default browser.

The blue e isn't visible anymore, and I've noticed that what people can't see, they use it less often.

Here's what someone has to say. Although it isn't about Firefox, the spirit nonetheless is the same...

"I'm actively contemplating installing (Ubuntu) for a few friends and family, because I'm sick of de-spywaring their Windows machines." --Stephen O'Grady, analyst, RedMonk

Read My Thoughts On Human Brain

I inadvertently found a Antegooglewhackblatt

The query in question is whieghfield. And as a consequence of the Googlewhackblatt Paradox, this word shall no longer be an Antegooglewhackblatt, but a Googlewhackblatt.

Here are the screenshots

"Chaos" (The Movie) And The Pigeonhole Principle - An Interesting Goof

***Caution: Spoiler Ahead***

While reading the list of goofs in the movie Chaos, I noticed that nobody had pointed out this important mathematical goof in the movie. At around 1:13:00 time in the movie, note this set of dialogs

1. "...about a billion dollars..."
2. "Now. If you look at all the transactions, no 2 amounts are the same, and none of them are over 100 dollars"
3. "...less than 100 dollars, from, say, 10 million accounts, no reflex"

According to the Pigeonhole principle, it's not possible to make about 10 million transactions, each less than 100 dollars, such that no two transactions have the same amount [assuming the least count is 1 cent]. It's only possible if transaction limit is 100,000 dollars.

However, if 10 million transactions [all withdrawals] are made such that no two amount to the same, then the minimum amount withdrawn would be ((10,000,000)*(10,000,001)/2) cents - about 500,000,000,000 dollars- far, far more than 1 billion dollars.

Pigeonhole Principle - Also known as Drichlet's Box / Drawer Principle

It's unfortunate that the people behind Chaos overlooked this important mistake -especially when they were trying to make a movie that apparently is so dependent on mathematics and Chaos Theory.

Finally, to withdraw 1 billion dollars such that no 2 withdrawals amount to the same, we need at least about 450,000 withdrawals [starting from 1 cent, 2 cent, 3 cent and so on till about 450,000 cents].

A Goof In The Movie "Crimson Tide"

Are the top web search engines correspondingly related to the top web browsers?

I should begin by admitting that this idea sprung up in my mind (probably) as a repercussion of my watching the movie "Chaos" today morning (there isn't much of a direct relation between the movie and this idea though).

This is pretty straightforward- the current top web search engines (Google Search, Yahoo Search, Live/MSN Search, Ask.com Search- in that order) bear resemblance to the current top web browsers (Windows Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera Browser- in that order again) in some striking ways- apart from a broad similarity in their current market shares.

I'll list those here

1) Google Search and Windows Internet Explorer- Both these market leaders are zippy (a clean install of IE 7 runs and renders fast- and most of the complaints of IE 6 or IE 7 being slow or heavy are a result of bad add-ons or wrong settings). Both are lightweight- IE is the least resource consuming browser on Windows operating system, when stacked up against the other 3 in question here- while Google Search is the lightest web search engine out of the 4 being considered here.

2) Yahoo Search and Mozilla Firefox- Both these powerhouses pack large number of useful features, and both "get the work done", although in the process of achieving this, they tend to be heavier than their more popular rivals.

3) Live/MSN Search and Apple Safari- Slick looks mark their main resemblance, as is the tremendous promise both of them hold. Both are expected to gain market share at the expense of their larger rivals.

4) Ask.com Search and Opera Browser- "Innovation" and "Innovative features" are the hallmarks of both of them. Each one of them is an underdog, fighting for survival, constantly innovating in the process. Each of them provides innovative features and tools not to be found (yet) elsewhere.

I can even add AOL Search and Netscape Browser/Navigator here- with feature richness but undue bloat characterising them both.

The important and unresolved point, however, is- does this correspondence have something more than what meets the eye (something scientific, some patterns maybe)? Or is it merely a consequence of an unsettled mind watching a movie as confounding as "Chaos"?

If we are able to identify some common characteristics in the products and services talked about in this post (which caused them to attain their respective positions in the market), we shall be a step closer to identifying and listing "Rules for Success".

P.S.- Identification of these "Rules for Success" is an area of my interest, and I have put significant time and energy into it.

Microsoft Silverlight forces the web browser process to run at 'Above Normal' priority

I felt like puking after what I just noticed- I had downloaded and installed Microsoft's Silverlight runtime on my computer a day back. Today I was browsing the web on 2 browsers together- Opera and Mozilla Firefox. When I opened www.microsoft.com in Firefox the website threw up a Silverlight based animation [whereas it used JPEG or Flash/SWF while I had not installed Silverlight]. The animation slowed down my computer [Intel Celeron M 1.5 GHz based laptop] significantly and perplexed me.

On analyzing what was wrong, I noticed that firefox.exe process was running at 'Above Normal' priority, and manually trying to lower it to 'Normal' simply failed- firefox.exe would automatically [and immediately] switch back to 'Above Normal' priority [but that's only if Silverlight is active- as soon as the tab having www.microsoft.com was closed, Firefox could again be switched to 'Normal' priority- so I conclude that it was Silverlight which forced Firefox to run at 'Above Normal' priority].

However, to me there is something else that is far more important- a Flash animation running in parallel in Opera browser slowed down immediately [and significantly] when Silverlight got activated in Firefox, whereas the Silverlight animation running in Firefox appeared to run faster [relative to the Flash animation].

To me, nothing else is more important than what I wrote in bold above. With this [yet another] wicked tactic, Microsoft gives a user not 1 but 2 false impressions:-

1) Silverlight is made to look better than it is- by forcing the process to run at 'Above Normal' priority, Microsoft is essentially fooling users by the apparent performance of Silverlight

2) Flash based animations running in other browsers are made to look slower than they actually are- user gets an impression of poor performance of Flash, compared to a parallel running Silverlight animation

Also, this is going to impact performance of other browsers as well [which a user runs in parallel]. And because this has not been documented anywhere, nor is the user informed about this, users will unknowingly develop false impressions of speed and performance of other runtimes and other browsers. This is nothing short of pathetic!

Personally I feel that Microsoft deserves to be sued for such a lame and desperate act- this act is an admittance on Microsoft's part that it lacks the engineering talent required to produce a high performance runtime that can equal, let alone better, Adobe's Flash.

My 2 cents for Microsoft:-

"Real men triumph without cheating."

(Microsoft does possess the talent to decipher what I meant...)

The importance of using a high fidelity speaker system

I have frequently noticed that people give disproportionately large attention to having a good visual display subsystem, compared to the audio subsystem. I have seen many friends bothering less about the speaker system when getting a desktop computer assembled.

Personally, I feel that this tendency is not good. 2 reasons for this

1) I am an avid player of music on my Yamaha PSR-330 electronic keyboard cum synthesizer for over 9 years now. I believe I have a good sense and understanding of music and sound. And my experience with music/sound over years is that although sound plays a very important part, its contribution is more 'silent' as compared to the contribution of visuals. To put it more clearly, in many scenes in movies, it is the sound running in the background that creates the right mood/emotion, although this is hardly ever explicitly recognized by audience. Thus sound is more like a silent warrior that does play a significant role, but its importance is realized by only a handful of people [musicians and singers especially]. Although in real life, sound has this quality called 'prominence', in many scenes in movies [especially in the emotional ones], sound is not prominent, as larger proportion of attention of audience is towards the visuals. Visuals, in general, get a disproportionately large amount of credit for the overall effect a scene creates. This reason highlights the importance of the role played by sound.

2) I draw the following analogies between display and audio subsystems

Screen size (of a display) = Output power (volume of a speaker system)
Color gamut range (of a display) = Frequency range (of a speaker system)
Brightness, contrast etc (of a display) = quality of sound output (of a speaker system)

If any single component of a display subsystem is lame, it is outrightly turned down by people. (from point 1) A speaker system too must have high fidelity, lest the effect of sound intended by artist/creator never reach the audience.

One final word- Watching a movie on a small screen with a poor speaker system produces a fraction of effect that the same movie would have produced had it been seen on a large screen with good speaker system.

p.s. I recently bought 2 sets of speaker systems [both are creative sbs-370 systems- my own belief is that, as of now, this system gives highest value for money among all 2.1 speaker systems i know, in addition to reproducing sound quite faithfully]

i have upgraded to a new system of working

the key benefits that this new system imparts are

• addition of ability to say 'no'
• improved time management
• increased mental concentration
• reduced overheads
• reduction in per-task time
• removal of redundant elements from the system
  

expected long term benefits of this new system

• time savings
• reduced mental stress
• increased leisure time [stems from 'time savings']

the key penalties of this system are

• potential of reduced warmth in close relationships (in the short term)
  

qualms i have with the new user interface of google's orkut

the good things about this new interface

1. user interface has been designed to mimic the look of 'widgets' on windows vista desktop or apple's mac os x desktop- this i believe in itself is not necessarily a good thing- the point is that this approach segregates [or 'segments'] the interface elements into distinct units, thus providing clarity
2. addition of nifty little features [though no 'big' feature]

the bad things about this new interface

1. more resource intensive, and thus noticeably slower on slower computers [and especially on web browsers like mozilla firefox]
   
2. although 'segmentation' plays its part in providing cleanliness to the interface, the individual segments themselves are more 'filled' [or 'stuffed'], and thus the overall complexity of this new interface is [to me] higher than the old interface
3. on 800x600 displays, scroll bars are forced, rather than a 'reflow', thus hiding the rightmost portions of page all the time

my belief is that though the new look does have many little improvements, some of which are nice too, it also has an increased overall complexity, and those users who have liked it have probably liked it because of it being different from the previous interface, rather than because of it being substantially (and absolutely) better.

finally, users with 1024x768 or larger displays and high speed computers will remain shielded from the more annoying ill-effects of this new interface, and so are more likely to like and appreciate this new interface, at least initially