lunatechian (lunatech-ian)

The Hindu has a thought provoking article on Isarel's militarism. The most striking line in that article is in the first paragraph.

AS a Jew, I've been asked if I'm ashamed at what Israel has been doing in Lebanon. And the answer I give is that I am disgusted, I am angry, I am appalled, but, no, I am not ashamed. Why should I be? I bear no personal responsibility for this criminal activity — except, of course, in so far as I fail to take whatever action I can to stop it.

If you are on any of the mailing list or if you have had an email id for at least one year, you might have received an email titled "jai hind" or "proud to be an indian" around 15th August. The email has a bunch of questions and answers like

Q. Who is the creator of Pentium chip (needs no introduction as 90% of the today's computers run on it)?
A. Vinod Dahm
Q. Who is the founder and creator of Hotmail (Hotmail is world's No.1 web based email program)?
A. Sabeer Bhatia

and so on.

The email ends thus

Say proudly, I AM AN INDIAN. Please forward this email to all known INDIANS...............

I have always been baffled by this chest beating. As an Indian, why should I take credit for the success of Sabeer Bhatia, Azim Premji and Vinod Dahm - what contribution did I make to their success ?

I am totally unpatriotic.

Check out how to say Ya-hoooooooo in the yahoo! way . Thanks to yodel anecdotal for the link.

One of the thinking tools that I have learned from my manager is the Caf. Caf stands for "consider all factors" and it was invented by De Bono. I have started a wikipedia page on caf . Do add more to it if you know better or if you have any links further exploring this idea.

Yahoo! news has a coverage about this

The government's main AIDS prevention agency has filed an affidavit in the Delhi High Court, supporting a request by an AIDS activist group to scrap the law.

The National AIDS Control Organization, part of India's Health Ministry, argued in the affidavit filed last week that the 1861 law creates a public health risk.

"So long as the gay community is forced to go underground, it limits the access to them and makes it difficult for the AIDS prevention campaign to reach them," Sujatha Rao, who heads the AIDS Control Organization, also known as NACO, told The Associated Press.

I hope this law gets scrapped. This is covered under the Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) of 1860.

"of unnatural offences: Who ever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal shall be punished with imprisonment for life or imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to 10 years and shall also be liable to fine.

Nokia ports apache to Symbian , the name of the project is "Raccoon". The phone can serve as a web server. Check out their concept demos. I especially liked their Access to Core Data. They suggest "Mount a read-write view of the /Apache directory using WebDAV and edit your webpages directly.". Nice. Now I have to get my hands on a 6630 asap - just so that I can have a webserver running on it

Do you want to come work for Yahoo! Bangalore ? Our team is looking for one more team member. A major benefit for coming to work with us will be that you get to hang out with me and people who are 10 times cooler than me . Besides that, we know all the good bars and restaurants in Bangalore.

In addition to the stuff listed in Desired Skills , it will be great if you have the following qualifications

• Know all the pubs in Bangalore
• You are a good table tennis or foosball or pool player
• You can willingly participate in flamewars about emacs/vi, php/perl, Delhi/Mumbai/Bangalore

Send your resumes here

Technical Lead for Media Ops

Introduction:

Media Systems Engineering (Media Ops) is the engineering and operations team in Media. Team does varied tasks, which includes architecture review, performance analysis, troubleshooting. Each member is will be doing varied tasks from on-call to performance analyst, systems engineering to capacity planning, architect to tool development. A tech lead is expected to drive individual projects which may involve members from within and outside the team.

Qualification:

B.Tech/MCA or equivalent with good experience in UNIX

Required Skills:

• Good experience in UNIX Systems, performance tuning and troubleshooting.
• Good understanding of IP Networking and ability to analyze network performance and behavior with standard tools.
• Understanding of high-volume production systems monitoring and management. Good scripting skills in any of shell, Perl, PHP etc.

Desired skills:

• Experience in Mysql/Oracle
• Programming in c/c++

Role and responsibilities:

• Self motivated in leading projects which requires interaction with various teams
• Willingness to work on operational projects which requires massive cleaning, overhaul, survey and detail oriented Thoroughly responsible in closing/deploying projects.
• Take up periodic on-call

I got up early at 0500 (to avoid the loo-rush ). However, I got another treat (besides an empty loo) - the sight of sun rising over the Himalayan peaks. This is really a sight to behold. Luckily, there was only one other guy awake at that time and both of us enjoyed the sight without saying a word.

Our next camp was Hora Thatch. We left at around 0800 after breakfast. The climb was steep, but the scenery was beautiful. The route was through a jungle. While on our way there, we had to face some rain. It was then that I discovered that my rain sheet was too small. Luckily, one of the guys had an extra rain sheet and he loaned it to me for the entire trek.

We reached the Hora Thatch camp by 1600. I think this was the most beautiful camp - it was situated right in the midst of the jungle. The rain had started pouring just as I reached the camp and I quickly got into my tent.

After the rains subsided, the camp leader welcomed us and told us where we could find water. then he pointed to his left and said "For your nature calls, go at least 200 meters away from the camp. Don't go to the other side, as that is for the girls". So, from that point onwards, we had officially left civilization behind.

There was a canteen at the camp and the guy had a fire going beside it. It was quite cold at that altitude and all of us made a beeline for the fire. Speaking of cold, the water at that camp was freezing. It was the water which came directly from the melting ice. It was only by putting my mind over the pain was I able to wash my hand and face in that water. Most people refrained from touching the water, instead using tissue paper to clean their plates and their faces. We had dinner and I went to sleep in my tent. However, before going to sleep, I took a bottle of water and kept it with me, so that it would be easier to use it in the morning.