Last post of the decade.

The very first decade of the 21st century comes to an end today and this shall be the last post of the same. It has not been an easy decade for India, or for several other countries. It was a decade filled with many advancements -

Better communications: Mobile phone market has grown from a mere 36 lakh subscriber base in Year 2000 to nearly 51 crore connections as of Nov 2009. Last month alone, we added nearly 180 lakh more connections. Internet penetration has been extremely slow, growing to a mere 1.34 crore connections from 46 lakh connections in Year 2000;

Urban growth: At the helm of this decade, around 27% of Indian population resided in urban India. However, extremely rapid urbanisation due to globalisation helped grow sectors like IT and Services as if on steroids. Urban Indian population as of 2006 stood at 29%, however, there is no data for 2009. We could safely estimate it at around 31-32% based on previous growth data. With a 4-5% increase in urban population every decade, India is struggling to cope with providing infrastructure to its urban areas.

Middle Class rises: Globalisation of India helped fuel the rapid growth of India’s middle class, thus creating a new demand for processed foods, high quality and imported clothing and accessories, lifestyle products and services such as fine dining restaurants, high-end malls and multiplexes. Finally, it jumped up the demand and sales for 2-wheeler 4-wheelers like never before. People were traveling farther to work, and since the government did not meet demand with supply of public transport facilities, citizens had to make their own arrangements. As a result, urban traffic is very dense, chaotic and unruly.

Economy: Indian economy, despite all its problems, has been on a roll with our GDP rate nothing less than 7% since 2003 with a high of 9.9% in year 2000. However, owing to this century’s first depression in the developed world, India’s growth rate slipped to around 6.6%. It is still highly commendable that our economy stood while other nations struggled.

This decade was also filled with sadness owed to an increase in the number of attacks by terrorists, be it the attack on Indian parliament in 2001, or the series of blasts in the trains of Mumbai in 2006, or the coordinated attacks in Mumbai – November 2008, multiple bombings at various parts of Hyderabad in August, 2007; or multiple blasts in Bangalore in 2008, there is a trend that is to be taken seriously. These attacks have been more regular, are more planned, and are targeting not just Indian monuments or places of importance, but places of general public like parks, restaurants and train stations.

This decade has also witnessed a huge support for separatism, what with three new states(Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, Uttarakhand) all emerging in the same month of November, 2000. Blame or hail BJP for that. Following that, there have been more requests and agitations for separate states across India, with Gorkhas wanting a piece of West Bengal; Mayawati and her supporters wanting BundelKhand again from UP; Vidharba from Maharashtra; and most importantly the agitation for a separate Telangana from Andhra Pradesh. A month of severe agitations have brought AP to a grinding halt and there seems to be no respite from rasta-rokos, bandhs, and other forms of anti-democratic agitations. People of Andhra Pradesh have been spared two days of ‘relief’ on the occasion of New Year’s celebrations.

There were also several scams, as always. But the one that takes all the cakes is the Satyam fiasco early 2009 that was a result of misreporting of profits and figures ending up in a Rs.7000 crore fraud and the abrupt demotion of Mr. Ramalinga Raju from a role model to no-more a model, with several charges pressed against him and his co-scammers.

I could go on and on, it is, after all a decade I’m talking about. But I should leave the rest for you to ponder about. On the other hand, this was the most important decade of my life and decisions I took in this decade form my career for the rest of my life. I finished my Xth grade in the year 2000, my +2 by year 2002 and a fun-filled Bachelor’s in 2006. Worked in several jobs for abruptly short durations and after much confusion I ended up in the US of A for my Master’s. I graduated out of school just this month, marking a very eventful and fruitful decade.

Here is wishing all my (very few) fans out there a new year filled with memorable events and successful endeavors and a very grand new decade.

Jai Hind!

Why a separate state?

If you’re an Indian I’m sure you have been reading and seeing what’s happening around the country, specifically, a region called Telangana. K. Chandrasekhar Rao, TRS Chief, apparently went on a ‘fast’ unto (an illuding) death and his rowdy supporters disguised as OU students wreaked havoc across Hyderabad, breaking and damaging several public and private property – buses, cars, malls, not sparing hapless commuters getting a fill at a petrol bunk. For several days, the very powerful (not) Rosaiah, AP’s CM apparently seemed to have the situation under control, by arresting TRS members and other potential protestors in advance. However, nothing was done to stop the ridiculuous amount of damage being done by crazy agitators across Hyderabad. Finally, the army was called in, ready to get into action from the next day, when another weakling named P.Chidambaram and his co-weaklings – Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh, our PM, gave in to the demands of a separate state of Telangana on 9th December (09) night-fall.

So, there we have it. A separate state of Telangana in 11 days of indefinite fasting at the NIMS hospital! We all know how the mighty get away from arrests by staging heart attacks and such at NIMS, and I’m 200% sure this was no different a case. After the death of our ex-CM Y.S.Rajasekhar Reddy, time was ripe for  KCR to raise this issue, since it was evident that K.Rosiah did not have what it took to be CM. Will power. With yesterday’s events however, the atmosphere in AP has gone haywire. Politicians opposed to the idea have been resignating left, right and center. TRS and his rowdy janta are having a gala time celebrating its ‘victory’ (and how they can start robbing this region’s coffers soon). On the online front, communities on websites like Orkut are seriously divided over this issue, with some shouting (not really) Jai Telangana! and some mourning the separation like losing a brother just because he spoke differently. Twitter has seen massive amount of responses in relation to this issue and there have been thousands of Tweets every hour. Many polls online, like those in the Orkut – Andhra Pradesh community show that the majority of citizens still prefer a united Andhra Pradesh. Some of us have also been signing a petition at- http://petol.org/1andhra for a Unified AP and has almost 22,000 votes as of the time of this writing.

This is not going to be the end of the pain and agitation, yet. The Congress government is infamous for making very slow decisions (as evident from their Common Minimum Plan, or their ridiculous budget in 2008) and any delay in regards to this issue will fuel and spark more agitations across the state. This separation is going to have a serious implication across AP and India. A domino effect is in waiting, wanting to make more bits of India. Now, politicians from the Rayalseema region demand a separate statehood for Greater Rayalseema, if Telangana becomes a reality. Hyderabadis demand a Union Territory status and do not want to be part of any state. It is a wise demand, as including Hyderabad into any of these new states will mean a resentment among citizens of other states, because Hyderabad is a very high-revenue generating city and having it as your state’s capital will mean lots of global attention to your state. However, if Hyderabad is not declared a UT, it would be wise to predict violent agitations and bloodshed over who gets to have the city, and will turn into a dog-fight over a bone. These apart, it is heard that Gorkhas in the state of West Bengal have taken a cue from TRS chief. KCR’s fast and 21 activists are planning to start an indefinite hunger strike for a separate Gorkhaland. What we’ll be seeing in the coming months will be an increase in agitations like these, and the dilution of the Indian state into infinite bits and pieces. Our Union minister of Home affairs, hon’able (not) P. Chidambaram has these words to say ‘The US has one-third of our population still it has 50 states.’ Incredible. I had respect for PC before this. India is one-third the size of the US and has 29 states and soon 30-31 states while the US has 48. His statistics, are also wrong, because US has a population of 304 million people as against 1.2billion people in India. With the passing of every year, the words of the British, in this case Winston Churchil’s seem to make sense : “Independence for India!! They cannot rule themselves, they are destined to be ruled”. Sad.

Getting Serious: Ubuntu Certification

A few months back, I resolved to myself to be Ubuntu Certified by my next birthday (3rd September). To be Ubuntu certified, you would need to clear three exams: LPI 101, LPI 102 and Ubuntu 199. These can be taken in any order, but you need to clear them all in order to be certified by Ubuntu.I plan on taking them in order. Exam 101, 102 and finally 199.

Now, 2-1/2 months down, I have made progress, albeit little. Apart from collecting valuable websites, and guides, I have also covered Command-Line tools and Text-stream processing. I have also read a bit about managing software using Yum and Yast since I was not familiar with those package management tools before.

I have installed SuSe 11.1 and also plan on installing Fedora 11. My idea is to work with these Linux distributions and learn more about them in the process. Notice I’m installing an older version of both the Operating Systems so I get a chance to learn the upgrade process. My final aim is to get a working system with all drivers, codecs and updated packages at the end of this effort.

However, I’ve been going slow due to several reasons. I had to finish my requirements with the university, work on my resume and more. But, I’m getting serious about this now. I had a goal and I need to start working on it. I plan on doing so, one topic at a time. I’m starting with topics from LPI 101 objectives. I shall be updating this blog regularly, and whenever I complete a (sub)topic. If I happen to stumble upon good online resources, I will be posting them along with the update.

Wish me luck in my endeavor.  May the countdown begin!

Media player(s) hits brakes on Linux's trip to the deskop

While the entire open-source world is all praise for the development happening with FOSS these days, and of how Linux will ‘take on the desktop’ market (every) next year, I have a few reasons of my own for not making the complete switch to Ubuntu on my laptop. In this post, I shall talk about sound: music and video players. It is true that a media-player can make or break a user’s choice to switch. My issues:

1. Equalizer: Does anybody using Linux never feel the need for an equalizer? Why isn’t there a system equalizer? I’m not sure how hard it is to code one, but when Canonical had enough resources and developer-time to deliver all the features that make Ubuntu so great, I’m sure it could allot some resources towards creating a system equalizer. Canonical, do you not get it? They should have included this idea with the 100 paper-cuts development program.

2. Proper Media player: And I mean ‘proper’. Windows Media Player, though criticized for God-knows-what, plays a lot of formats, with appropriate codecs, and it has a darn-good equalizer and a bass boost! Right now, Ubuntu has Movie Player for videos, Rhythmbox for music. Inconsistent. Have ONE media player, that actually works. And its not like these players play every format by default. They are worse than WMP for that matter, as you have to install proprietary codecs (including MP3 support)  for formats you intend to play. Note: I KNOW its simple to install proprietary codec support on Ubuntu, but its not like its any harder on Windows. And, again coming back to the point, there is no darn equalizer integrated into either of these players (Totem MP/Rhythmbox).

But hey, Linux is all about choice! Right. List of players I tried:

Exaile:
Pros : Enqueues Files, has mini-view and taskbar icon
Cons: No Equalizer in the latest 0.31 version. Why would ‘development’ remove features?

Songbird:
Pros: Has library support, equalizer, and more
Cons: You cannot select a file and say ‘Play with Songbird’, nor Enqueue files.

AmaroK:
Pros: None
Cons: Its v2.0. Nothing works. Doesn’t even play.
Its a KDE app. Lots of KDE libs needed.

Listen:
Pros: Enqueues files.
Cons: Takes too long to start. Also, I fiddled with some settings and it never showed up again,
though it played files from terminal. Strange.

VLC:
Pros: Lots of formats supported
Cons: Buggy. Some videos open up multiple (blank) video windows and some open up (blank) video windows during play.
Equalizer cannot be saved. Each file opens in a new window, no matter what setting I choose in preferences.

To sum it up, none of these players qualify, even with my minimal player requirements:
-Equalizer
-Minimize to tray
-Enqueue files on double-click
… and thats it! I don’t need libraries, or FM support or device support or anything else!

Aren’t these supposed to be basic qualities of a ‘proper’ media player? Well, with the Windows 7 launch, its full-on war from Microsoft, and in order to make Linux win, Canonical must listen to the community’s cries and must come up with a unique, all-in-one media player that can finally end the hours of time users spend in search of an ideal media-player.

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Update: Tried Banshee after reading some positive reviews. It has a good equalizer, minimizes to tray and enqueues files on double-click. There however, is an issue with the way queues are handled. Everytime I enqueue a file, it gets sorted into the currently playing queue. So, if for some reason the song I enqueue sorts itself above the currently playing song, it never plays.
Nevertheless, I’ve switched to Banshee, it being the closest match to my requirements. Verdict: Half-Pass.

Update2: Banshee now satisfies all my requirements. I had to turn off the sort feature to prevent files from sorting themselves into the queue. However, I wasn’t able to follow the instructions from banshee’s website . What I ended up doing was adding the Date Added column which specifies when the file was added to the queue and using this column to sort the queue. You could then hide the column once you’re done setting it up. Now files added up onto the queue as FIFO and not in any sorted order. The next issue was of the player popping up (stealing focus) each time a file was enqueued. To this, I used the ‘–no-present’ option and got rid of the menace.

I’m not an expert, neither a beginner. If it took me so long to figure out how to turn-off or on some feature, I can’t imagine the plight of new users. Ideally, these should have been options under Edit>Preferences. Where is the usability?

How green is your urinal?

No, I’m not talking about the color of your .. uhum, but rather about the amount of water you waste each time you flush your urinal.

The ones I use at my dormitory are at the farthest end of the green rainbow of water usage. These urinals call themselves the American Standard, wasting nearly 4 litres (One Gallon) of water for every flush.

These were probably bought several years ago by my university, maybe during times when the push towards conservation wasn’t really felt. What’s more strange is the fact that American Standard continues to manufacture 1.0Gallon Per Flush urinals even in this day and age. Surprisingly, their catalog (on their website) also presents several low-flow and waterless urinals.

Often, we talk about low-flow faucets and shower-heads, when in fact, about 50% of home water usage is due to toilets. Ideally in a urinal, no more than half a litre (0.125Gallons) of water should be wasted, and nothing, at best.  The government must work towards mandating the usage of low-flow toilets and urinals and should formulate laws to phase out existing water-gulpers.

By the way, this blog is going green, and literally, too. Over the next few weeks, there will be more posts on Green topics. Also, if you have noticed, there are hints of green taking over the dominant-red slowly. Welcome Mr.Green!

Hindustan Unilever Pure (bullsh) iT

UPDATE – 9th Oct ’09 : A visit from PureIt sales guy, and a promise of replacement.

UPDATE2 – 16th Oct’09 : Another visit from PureIt. We received a complete replacement of the battery kit, for free.

A consumer battle WON!

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Read these words of caution before you decide to buy Hindustan Unilever’s water purification product – PureIt.

We bought our PureIT water purifier around 3 and 1/2 months back, a month after I came back to India. A sales rep had promptly landed at the door within a few hours of us asking for the demo. He went on to demo the features of the purifier and we were told that PureIt’s main mechanism worked on a :

Mesh+Battery kit combination  – The kit consists of

(i) a cloth like mesh (called Unique Microfibre Mesh) right at the top to collect large particles when you pour water into the purifier. This is largely a pain to maintain since it gets clogged up very easily. The rep had told us we would have to clean it up by turning it inside out and rubbing it slightly, every couple of weeks. You have to do this more frequently else you’ll be pouring water at the rate of a drop every second. Imagine yourself standing with the water container for 5 minutes just to pour water into the purifier.

(ii) A black, brittle dome of carbon (called Unique Compact Carbon Trap) immediately below the mesh(middle chamber) supposedly removes other bacteria, dirt and parasites. If you watch closely, you’d be able to see small particles of this very carbon crap floating around during the first few  uses. We scratched it slightly in front of the rep and scratched off some carbon with that. To that, the rep added that the first round of water dished out must be thrown away.

(iii) a Chlorinator (called the Unique Germkill  Processor) at the middle chamber which also houses the battery indicator(more on this advanced feature later). If you stand close enough to the purifier, you’d be able to smell the chlorine strongly. I see no reason for further chlorinating water that was already treated with chlorine by the water supply board.

(iv) Unique Polisher at the bottom(lower chamber) apparently removes odor and more impurities from water. This seems to work since we’ve never tasted any odor with water dished out by this purifier. But the fact that a couple of litres of water are lost in this hidden area raises doubts if this area is being used as a sediment area for particles not purified by the stages before and probably also for those added by the carbon trap. Add to that, you may never be able to clean this hidden storage area.

(v) Unique Battery Life Indicator indicates if this battery kit needs replacement. It works by displaying a white powder like substance that (should) slowly turns red as the battery’s life nears its end. For us, it worked as mentioned for the first 3 months, during which I saw the indicator 1/4th red. But then, the indicator quickened its reddening and changed to a complete red within a span of around 15 days.

From their website:

The ‘Germkill Battery Kit’^TM has been designed to give typically 1500 litres of water at a water temperature of 25°C, in moderate humidity conditions.

Now, why should humidity affect water purification? If humidity were to kill the purifier, isn’t water humid enough to do so? Anyways, the city of Hyderabad is seldom humid. And we had almost no rains this year either.

Advanced Auto Switch Off – is so advanced, we had to wipe off our floor a couple of times before we could understand what the problem was. Apparently, this advanced mechanism works by cutting off supply of water to the lower chamber. Yes that works. The problem is that water continues to flow to the middle chamber from the top and with nowhere else to go, water leaks out by overflowing from the middle chamber storage. Very advanced indeed.

Kudos to Hindustan Unilever for their ‘Unique’ naming, their overuse of TMs and their advanced mechanism. We tried calling PureIt to lodge a complaint. The response to this complaint was a call from another sales rep asking if we wanted a new battery kit (Rs.500). We say no and that we want someone to resolve our issue. Rep disconnects immediately. Other responses to our calls include : “Please give us one day, we will resolve this issue”; “No, please don’t use the email facility, we will look into this issue immediately”; another call from sales rep for battery replacement; “It depends on the usage”(favorite line); “Do you keep it beside the fridge, or do you use it under the sun”?; and so on.

-Near a fridge? The demo representative never told us that. Anyway, its not beside the fridge.
-Under the sun? No seriously, who would do anything like that?
-Depends on usage? Okay, for two persons, (one at office), do you expect the usage to be (1500 litres/105) 14 litres per day? We don’t use this water for cooking or any other purpose other than for drinking. We boil 3 litres per day after  PureIt stopped working.

If this ain’t enough, you should take a look at the One Crore Challenge. It is the most ridiculous challenge ever. Give it a read.

Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) agrees to pay Rs 1 crore to any claimant who can bring to it any Indian commercially manufactured and marketed in-home drinking water treatment unit (water purifier) which, after passing through the defined process of the Challenge, and under these terms and conditions, has all the features specified below, which HUL believes only the Pureit water purifier has: …….

If you were even remotely considering buying this expensive piece of junk, this post should have warned you sufficiently against it. Bad mechanism, poor customer care, misinformation and false promises make up for a pathetic product. PureIt? No. Pure  Bullshit.

Ubuntu Certification Exam discounts

Ubuntu is currently giving out discounts on exams for those willing to get Ubuntu certified. Two vouchers are given out, one for LPI exams 101 and 102 – a near 20% discount, and another one for Ubuntu exam 199 – a near 23% discount. You get to choose between a Prometric or a Vue center for your exam(s) and you don’t have to book right away. These vouchers are good for one entire year, so that is 12 months of solid preparation allowed.

But, apparently these discounts are not forever so go grab them if you’re willing to get certified. I got my vouchers a few days back and I’m happy I’ve taken my first step towards certification. Next, start preparation!