Two books...and some random thoughts

This Christmas I got Rory Stewart's "Places in Between". It has been a really long time since I have come across a book like this. Reminded me of Pico Iyer. The author does a great job of covering the society, politics in a story about his travel in Afghanistan. Sensitive but honest he calls a spade a spade.

Then, there was Amartya Sen's "Argumentative Indian". It is a lot of chest thumping, nehruvian bs. And, he goes to great lengths to prove india's "secular" credentials. Of course, since he was born in modern day Bangladesh he even refers to Bangladesh as being secular. Yeah, right. And, for some reason this guy has an axe to grind with the right wing BJP. He says they tried to make the Indo-European Sanskrit as an indigenous language even though best known Sanskrit grammarian Panini was from Afghanistan. Hey, back then Afghanistan was part of the indian geo-cultural entity. And, hard core right wing folks will call it a part of Akhand Bharat. And, why is it that people invoke the name of Akhbar to prove the secular credentials of muslims rulers of India. Akhbar certainly was secular and a man centuries ahead of his time. But, he reigned for a mere 50 years in the 700 years of Muslim rule of India.

P.S: The Shilpa Shetty Big Brother controversy is funny at many levels. First we have an out of work/ down on luck Bollywood actress going on a reality program seeking attention. Then, we have the desis (the biggest racist bunch I know of) waving their fingers, placards and calling the Brits names. Of course, we have the Brits desperately trying to prove that they are not racist. Yeah, right. Just about everyone of us is racist. To what level and how we choose to express our prejudices differ.

Of Borat and other rats

Sometime last month I saw Borat after everyone I know said wonderful things about it. So, I decided to skip waiting for it on Netflix and head to the nearest theater.
Boy, did I hate it.

I thought it was crass. The sensational comments could very well have been made sensational by some creative editing - bait the person for a few hours and then get a 10 second sound bite. And, the whole episode of Jewish couple at the B&B compared to cockroaches was sad. I guess Borat (or, Sacha Cohen) got away with it because he himself is a jew. Wonder what the reaction would have been had Mel Gibson done that peice. That begs the question is it ok for Mr.Cohen make racist comments on Jew and Chris Rock to call African Americans by the N word while it is a crime when Mel Gibson or Michael Richards does it. I am not supporting what Mel Gibson or did Michael Richards did but I do think Cohen and Rock deserve condemned.

Reminds me of a saying - "The problem with white lies is that you soon go color blind."

Tipping the scale - How Google tips things its favor

You might have heard about the controversy surrounding "tips" from google. Simply put they were promoting their own products. And, while they may have removed the "tips" feature because of the heat it generated, they still manage to do it in other ways.

Try searching for a stock quote (any company) on Google. And, see what is the first link under the stock price - Google Finance. Now, if Google was unbiased it should have the website with most views first. And, I can bet that both Yahoo Finance and MSN Money probably have more hits than Google finance.

Playing Tech Support Santa

I spent my customary Christmas to New Year vacation in London reluctantly playing the role of tech support guy. Friends and family just assume that just because I work in the IT industry I am good enough to be their tech support guy. After all, I don't cost them a penny.

So, as soon as I landed in London I was asked by our host(my wife's uncle)- "When do you leave?." He then continued, "Don't get me wrong. I want you to fix my two computers." So, one of those days when I was feeling tired of all the relatives and human interaction I decided to take a look at the computers.

The computers had been purchased through a friendly local chap called Bobby ( a Punjabi dude. That is second punjabi Bobby I have come across). Bobby got these computers from businesses that were going out of business, loaded them with XP. And, as it turns out the XP licenses were from a compromised Volume License Key (VLK). So, Microsoft was not letting my host get updates like IE 7, Windows Defender etc...

I found that the computers had an OEM Certificate of Authenticity (COA) on them. So, I tried changing the license key to the OEM key but that failed. So, I called Microsoft product activiation line who immediately bounced me to the tech support side. The tech support asked quite a few questions - stuff that could put a typical consumer wary. And, then asked me for the product id on the CD that came with the computer. I told them that Bobby had just burnt it on a CD. They asked me to call Dell and get the CD.

Then, I called Dell. But, before I called them I ran the Dell support tools which told me that the computer had a "next day business support" contract valid until mid 2007. The Dell support dude refused to help me unless I told him the name of the business that originally owned the computer. Well, Bobby never told us. And, I doubt if Bobby even knows. But, how does it matter to Dell. I have the computer right in front of me. It was pruchased legally (as far as I know). Anyway, no luck with that.

So, I went to work on Microsoft tech support again. This time I told them that I had updated the BIOS (which I had done) and now it was asking me to reactivate the product (totally untrue). The guy asked me for the license key, I gave him the one on the COA. He generated a new activation key and it worked.

Here I was trying to help someone leaglize their software. And, both Microsoft and Dell were making it difficult. No wonder why piracy is rampant. When it is "easier" to buy illegal and remain illegal people will do just that.