India's $10 "laptop" - a media circus?

Why India's $10 Laptop is a Load of Hype | Technomix | Fast Company

I hate to tell "I told you so" for this - but this merely confirms my suspicion that the device would be far from a laptop. 500Rs is too low a price to get any decent "computer" (unless subsidized by long term contracts etc.,) and this device is not by any standards a laptop.

This "laptop" word associated with the device seems to be a hyped-up concoction of some clueless Indian media-person and less probably, some government busybody. I am quite sure folks in IISc and IIT-M would shudder to call this a laptop.

Of course, any "thing" can be a laptop - a book, a hard drive, or even a child. After all, it sits on top of your lap, right?

The only unfortunate thing is that this enterprise, worthy as it is, got all the publicity for the wrong reasons and now, instead of being appreciated it is called "Load of Hype", "massive exaggeration" and "downgraded by reality" among other things.

I wonder who called it a laptop - Indian media does have a fancy for hyperbole and this may be just it. Indian media seriously needs to tone down its hyperbole, sensationalism and shrillness factor. Anybody from Indian MSM reading this?

ReiserFS developer convicted: should commodities have a moral value?

Hans Reiser guilty of first-degree murder | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

It feels somewhat strange as I have a Suse 9 box with the file system developed by Hans Reiser. And this is because I chose to go with the default.

I got to know of this conviction only today - nearly two years after he was charged. The interesting question is - did people change file systems after this news?

Which brings me to a larger question: how much importance do people attach to the moralities of the originators of the software they use? Taking it even further - when people consume any commodity, is importance attached to the perceived morality of the producer/source? Should it be?

For one of the Indian perspectives on it, I now recall an anecdote from the life of a holy man (I don't recall where I got this story from and I remember it only broadly). This holy man used to deliver illuminating lectures to his disciples every day. One day, however, the holy man's lectures were not well delivered and his utterances were far from normal. A curious disciple who normally followed his teacher everywhere started investigating. Nothing had changed that day apart from the saint eating his favorite vegetable during lunch. When the cook was asked where he got that vegetable from, he mentioned the name of a person. When that vegetable vendor was asked about the source of that vegetable he confessed that he had stolen those from a garden. The disciple then warned the cook to ensure that all food came from good sources.

This perspective takes the morality of the source to be very important.

If this view were followed everywhere, we shouldn't be consuming half of what we consume nowadays (food, newspapers, television, water.. you name it).

Certain follow on questions:
Will you continue patronizing a store that sells quality stuff for really low prices but the owner of which is unscrupulous?
Will you continue patronizing a restaurant where the food is not bad but whose owner was convicted for involvement in illegal activities? (I know I stopped going to such a place)


Is the software question on the same level as these two?

I don't think so - because I believe Reiser didn't get monetary or other benefits from my use of his software (open source). But my patronizing the restaurant would have given money to that owner to indulge in further illegal activities and so I stopped.

Am I right here? Am I being needlessly fussy here? It would be pretty interesting to get some other perspectives on this.

From Ars Technica: The 'greenness' of alternative energy sources

The 'greenness' of alternative energy sources

A couple of posts ago, I was wondering whether the benefits of fuel cells and Lithium Ion batteries overcompensate for issues with disposal and recycling. Looks like some researchers had the same thought in mind. Apparently wind and geo-thermal energy make the cut as really "green" alternative energy sources. Solar looks OK too. None of the others make the grade, though.

Click on the link for interesting information. BTW, the article points to a journal paper which should satisfy the needs of the more research inclined on the research methodology.

Piracy more serious than burglary?

Copyright coalition: Piracy more serious than burglary, fraud, bank robbery

Ars Technica is one of the premier technology sites. They carried this thought-provoking editorial that talks of an attempt by a lawyer for a prominent media enterprise to make the US government consider intellectual property theft as more serious than "real" theft.

Isn't it really ridiculous for somebody to even think of say, an armed burglary involving assault as less serious than a bootlegged bad movie? This is where the corporates are bad. While capitalism and corporates are good for the economy and all that, this is one area that is safely handled by the judicial arm of the government.

I agree that copyright infringement is a serious issue. It should be punished severely. But please do not underestimate the seriousness of crimes such as armed robberies and frauds such as Vinivinc. The latter crimes can be "lesser" only if the amounts of money lost in either crime are compared. But is money everything?

Lithium-Ion motorcycles

Technology Review: Lithium-Ion Motorcycles

I've seen a few electric motorcycles and cars in India. But the ones described in this piece seem to be more powerful.

One motorcycle/scooter has a 60 mile range (96 kms) for a single charge which will be quite sufficient for a day's commute in a city like Bangalore. We have Eko and Reva in India. But I don't see the usually price conscious Indians take to these. Only the environmentally conscious people have gone for these.

If these 2-wheelers and 4-wheelers also come cheaper, we can get rid of emissions by a lot. The government should also give subsidies when people buy such vehicles. If a mainstream scooter maker like Honda can market one like this, you can expect more people to use this, cleaning up the air a bit.

However, I don't know what it means to throw-away these batteries once used. What will be the impact of that?

One new thing that I got from this piece is that even SUVs, the worst gas-guzzlers in the USA are 95% cleaner than motorbikes when it comes to emissions. I wonder what that number is with Indian vehicles. With Bharat Stage III and such initiatives, I suppose we can make the claim that 4-wheelers are cleaner than 2-wheelers in India.

The gasoline lobby would be worried at this development (electric vehicles). I don't know how much of a role they play in Indian automotive advancement, but they would be fools if they didn't already play a big role. The government may be too - because of the huge taxes from the petroleum sector.

Will our government be forward-looking enough to give out substantial subsidies for electric vehicles? Let's hope it will be.

Thomas Edison - greener and brainier than we thought?

Thomas Edison - Henry Ford - Energy and Power - New York Times (Registration required)

Read this informative piece on what Thomas Edison, arguably the most innovative inventor of his times, thought about renewable fuels.

I was astounded to learn from this article that a certain Charles Brush had invented a wind-powered house as early as 1888. Edison wanted to use a windmill for clusters of four to six houses. How forward thinking was this man!! Edison even thought of a battery driven car (something that has barely happened just now) that could be as affordable as Ford's revolutionary Model T. Apparently Henry Ford was a close friend of Edison.

So is it really surprising that Edison wrote the following to his friends sometime before his death?

“I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”

Wow! Edison! You're brainier than I'd figured!

Interview with Frances Allen: the first woman to win the Turing award

From math teacher to Turing winner Newsmakers CNET News.com

This is a good interview with Frances Allen (IBM) who is the first woman to have won the Turing Award - which is like the Nobel Prize for Computer Science.

Frances Allen received the award for her development of Parallel Processing - something that is taken for granted nowadays. She speaks about how there are not many women in Computer Science. You can read about her take on outsourcing as well.

BTW, she will be in India soon.

Wired 14.02: The New Boom

Wired 14.02: The New Boom

Is this really the case? It wasn't the case in 2004. Wow ! The boom and that atmosphere, once again? It looks too good to be true.

History's Worst Software Bugs and the Software engineer's code of ethics

Look at this informative and well written article here

I've always liked Wired for such articles and got to this one via news.com. Though I used to feel that programming could not be considered "real" engineering (early in my career), that distinction is blurred in applications such as the ones listed in the above link. That necessitated the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society to come up with a software engineering code of ethics which you can read here.

Because errors in programming were not causing large scale mishaps, buggy code was (and still is) mostly tolerated as a nuisance. But this article makes you rethink that notion. The code of ethics is a welcome step in that area, though I don't see that being followed religiously. (Do doctors follow the Hippocratic oath?). Yet, this code of ethics, done in 1999, is a welcome step in that area that exhorts software engineers to give their profession due importance not from just a monetary point of view but also as a responsibility they have towards their organizations and to society at large.

Is there any company/organization that kind of mandates its employees to follow the software engineering code of ethics?

Wardriving in Bangalore

For the uninitiated you can find a link to wardriving here

Yesterday I was in my car reading a presentation on my laptop. Suddenly I had the bright idea of switching my Wireless radio on and see what would happen. As I travel via MG Road everyday, that was where I did some harmless checking. Well, I shouldn't be calling it wardriving as I just wanted to see how many WiFi networks were in Bangalore.

As I switched on my wireless radio near Trinity Circle (Ulsoor road to be precise), I caught at least 4-5 networks. Most of them didn't have a WEP lock icon next to them. I even tried getting in a couple and I would have succeeded in browsing had my car not continued to move. Some have just the usual NETGEAR and Linksys SSIDs without bothering to do anything.

Some however did have WEP and I couldn't get on some because of some problem. There was a service provider whose wireless portal I was able to access.

The Capitol hotel on Raj Bhavan road has a free for all network. If anybody needs to get some free browsing done, sip a coffee at the India Coffee House next door and I am sure you will be able to get on the internet. I didn't even try and I know I could have succeeded easily here.

Even near older areas like Malleswaram, I could find one or two networks.

I for one was glad to see that there were a lot of people gone WiFi in Bangalore. I will probably try this again in a couple of days and see what has changed. Also, I should try this in a couple of other areas of Bangalore to estimate how tech-savvy Bangalore really is.

The Big Gulp from Wired

Wired 13.08: The Big Gulp

"Water, water everywhere
Nor any drop to drink"

rues the Ancient Mariner. If he had this system, he probably wouldn't have that much of a problem. This system was tested on water from an open ditch in Jakarta and it produced water deemed drinkable by the Environmental Protection Agency. NASA is thinking of using this in their missions as this will eliminate a lot of the water carrying problem. I wonder how this system will cope with Bangalore's notorious VrishabhAvati !

Anyway, one thing that was not mentioned by Water Security, the company that makes this system, is how much the system costs. The cost of clean water is apparently 3c per gallon but what about the chemicals used in it ? Does their manufacturing involve toxic chemicals/byproducts? That should have also been commented on by the piece's author.

Nevertheless, this looks like it will be a boon to parts of the world where an acute shortage of drinking water persists whether it rains or not!

Looking at the growth in population and the depletion of water resources to such an extent, it seems to me that the next big conflict will be for water. Right now it is just about oil. But fifty years from now, with the population at an unprecedented level, there is bound to be competition for water. A big problem in addition to the increase in population is a corresponding decrease in the groundwater levels - which is really alarming.

In Bangalore, especially, I personally know that we could hit water at 100ft from the surface less than 10 years ago. Now I've seen people dig close to 1000 ft unsuccessfully. Digging to that extent is definitely illegal - but who seems to care? A person owning a plot of land needs water and can't depend on the city water company. What does he do ? He drills into the earth. This greed across all sections of society has depleted the water levels.

Even in villages, farmers now grow cash crops that are not all natural to the climate. So what do they do ? They dig borewells and pump out water like it is nobody's business. And when the wells go dry, well - what else? How do you blend human need with concern for the environment?

Rainwater harvesting is a great solution to this problem. To its credit, the Karnataka government is making it mandatory for all the new houses to have a rainwater harvesting scheme in place. Villages also get this with assistance from the government. But people should feel that this problem is theirs. Only then can a real solution be implemented.

Research on systems such as the one from Water Security should be carried on across the world's labs. For nothing is more necessary for our existence than air and water.

The brains behind Apple's Rosetta: Transitive | CNET News.com

The brains behind Apple's Rosetta: Transitive | CNET News.com

The recent news of Apple on Intel took the PC world by storm. There were rumbles heard before (a few months ago) but were never serious. When CNET reported this news last week, I was skeptical. Here goes again, I thought. But on Monday this was the biggest tech news. I don't own a Mac - but if because of this the price comes down.. let's see.

But reading on this further drew me to a very interesting company - Transitive. These guys are basically from the University of Manchester and they seem to be able to run a binary of a particular architecture on a totally different architecture. This has been done before - but Transitive's uniqueness is that this - it runs at 60% of the native platform speed. That is really amazing as doing binary translation is not simple at all!

But wait, that is not all. They manage to translate OS system calls while at it too! Right now, they've just done Unix-Unix translations - but think of it, a shrink-wrapped AIX-Power5 binary running without any problem on a Linux-x86 box. This is serious stuff! They've managed to do the graphic sub-systems too!

The convenience is simply amazing. This technology is precisely what Apple will be using during its transition from G5 to Intel processors.

I'd never written tech stuff before on my blog. But this product and the possibilities really made me do it.

Technology trickling down

The Hindu : Karnataka News : Low-cost, hi-tech diagnosis

Isn't this wonderful ? It is a pretty simple idea - in fact, too simple. Why, anyone can do that ! This doctor uses a cell phone camera to take pictures of his patients' X-Ray and sends it to his friends in the US if he cannot decipher it himself.

I assume the good doctor's friends are working gratis. This is what would happen in an ideal world with people helping others free of all other considerations. But I wonder how the hospitals in the US and Europe view this. Would the doctors be guilty (According to me, they are not, but...) of helping other patients which would be against a hospital's employment policies?

I also assume that the good doctor is charging his patients less. From the article at least, this seems to be the case.

Till a couple of years ago, no camera phones could be seen in India. Ten years ago, I wonder if there were so many cell phones in India or if there were cell phones at all. Now, all that has changed. These changes have also changed the lives of several poor people - who could never dream of affording such health care.

This is a wonderful case of technology trickling down to the masses. The Leftist naysayers and misguided Gandhians who did not want anything closely resembling progress to reach the people have been made to eat humble pie. Wonderful to see how different aspects of human ingenuity have come and worked together for everybody's benefit.

I suppose I have ranted enough now! May the tribe of people like the doctor here increase!