Borat, my opinion

Let me put it this way - Its a gud movie, you can watch it, you'll enjoy it, you'll have some gud laughs. But you cannot watch it again. Its a bit too grose.

Is india's gain America's loss?

An interesting article in the forbes magazine: India revisited

"..Does it mean more or fewer jobs for Americans? It means different jobs, different opportunities, different markets. And realizing that our competitors look very much like we do."

Sorry, I dont have any personal comments on this one. I like reading articles on India shining however true or false they are.

Windows CE 6.0 released

I dont know why I saw it, but i did. I saw the windows embedded ce 6.0 release keynote.

It is very interesting though. I am very far from anythign related to CE, so cannot really evaluate or comment on how good it is for the embedded systems development community. Can developers now easily develop cheaper embedded devices for the living room that can probably connect to the internet and show things off on the tv? I am not sure, but the keynote did make it seem quite easy to build a picture frame (based on an ARM processor I think) which connected to the internet and pulled images off live.com and flickr.

Robo sapiens

Yesterday I bumped into an episode 'Robo sapiens' on The Discovery channel. Ever thought The Matrix is impossible? What if you could have two extra robotic arms or two extra legs or wheels that operated with your mind as if they were a part of your body? What if you could calculate as fast as a PC? Check this out- http://science.discovery.com/tuneins/robosapien.html. It could be true in the future.

Exaggerations aside, the show showed a person paralyzed under the neck. He was implanted with electrodes under his scalp which sent signals to a computer which decoded the signals. He could control the cursor on the PC, play a game of ping pong just using his bran. He felt the cursor wa part of his body. It also showed a monkey which controlled a robotic arm with its brain, using implants under its scalp. Its amazing how teh brain trains itself to control the these external obejects. All the technogy has to do is to decode the signals from the brain and convert them to a meaningful and consistent output (which is not a simple problem ofcourse) and leave the rest to the brain to train itself.

The possibilities for the future are endless and scary. There was only one thing funny about the show, the people who were implanted with these artificial things are called Cyborgs (??). Whoever came up with that name. Sounds like an alien. 'And thus he became a cyborg'.

SPB in seattle

Yep, our very own S P Balasubramanium was here in Seattle (about a month ago, so this post should have been posted long back, but nevertheless..) to perform for a fund raiser to build a Hindu temple here (to extend the current one to be precise). It was great to hear the great singer. But, unfortunately, it wasnt a lot of fun for the kannada fans who where there. He only sang one kannada song.. He did mention in the beginning of the show ofcourse, not to worry about the language of the songs but enjoy the music.

It would have been true if it were for classical music, but film songs? I dont think so. The song gives an entire different meaning and u enjoy it at a different level if u know the language or if you are atleast familiar with the song, heard it a couple of times to get the music, and kow that it is a hit in a different language.

Atleast, this is one of the advantages of being here.. u get to see a lot of celebs perform live.

11 NIT dirtectors sacked..

About 11 NIT Directors being sacked immediately after the change of Govt

Prologue (for people who dont know what are NITs, RECs and what I am talking abt) REC - Regional Engineering College. India has these second rung of Engr Colleges (Second becuz, first are the well known IITs, and as a group they are definately next to them. Individually, I would say, some are next to the IITs. Well, this post is not abt the ranking so let me go on...). There are around 18 in total, one per state. A govt is elected at the center (BJP), has grand designs for the RECs, promotes many of them to deemed university status calling them NIT (National Institute of Technology). has plans to improve the quality to, well, if not equal to that of IITs, atleast somewhere close to them. atleast somebody had realised that 7 IITs are not enough anymore for a country with a huge and growing educated population as India.

Then it calls for interviews for the position of directors of the NITs. Really good candidates turn up, they are interviewed and appointed as Directors. NIT Karnataka, (KREC formerly, my college), similarly got Prof. S S Murthy, a Prof. from IIT Delhi as its director. The director is doing a gr8 job, has a gr8 vision for the college (I had finished college when he was there, so this is what I had heard from Profs and students). In the meantime the govt's term comes to an end, there is election and a different party (congress with allies) forms the govt. And all of a sudden Prof. S S Murthy along with 10 other such directors is sacked!! Just becuz of a govt change? Just becuz they were selected by a previous govt? Not even evaluating what they hav or hav not done. And a press statement is also given that they hav been sacked!! Politics at its lowest level. Why does the govt even bring in such politics in education? If only I could get hold of a paper clipping, I would post it here. Why dont they realize that the 7 IITs are not enough for India.

I am not sure why am posting this. Am sure nothing is going to change now and nothing ever will. The college will (am definately hoping that it will) remain as good as it was before. May be, it wont reach the heights that Prof. S S Murthy could hav taken it to. And clearly, its wrong. why I am blaming Ms. Sonia Gandhi, cuz she is the leader of the majority party. She and our PM are/should be responsible for what happens under their govt.

(epilogue) If nothing this post atleast lends a voice to someone out there fighting for this seemingly small but really important cause. Tossing a director is not like tossing a governor of a state who doesnt have much power. The director can either make or break a college. This man could have brought NITK on the world map. The problem I see though is that nobody is really fighting (including me). NIT alumnii esp. NITK/KREC's have not been even 10% as active as IIT alumnii.