Talk is cheap,show me the code…

..or rather,cut the hype,prove yourself by actions.
This is my opinion on Obama,after all the inauguration fuss is over,and everyone has gone back to their homes.Sure,Obama has made a promising start with the order to shut down Gitmo Bay and talking a bit tough to Pakistan on the war on terror,but I’m afraid all the hype has raised expectations to such a frenzy,that people are expecting instantaneous results,maybe including myself, a la Nayak.

True,foreign relations is no cakewalk,and it’s layered with niceties and euphemisms which ideally should not exist in a straight talking,transparent world.But,the world is not transparent,and some egos are easily offended by straight talk.

IMHO,Obama should capitalize on all the goodwill he has in a judicious manner,while taking care to be in the common good books as far as possible.And,hopefully,not act too nice with terror actors,state or otherwise,(Hamas,Hezbollah,et al)

With regards to possibilities for India in the new administration,my gut feeling says that the next four years will either be very good,or very bad for us,and nothing in between.The bad may arise out of influences by Democrat ideologues on Obama,or his own inability to move away from the ideology in contrast to what is required to be done,or plainly incompetence of the IFS in capitalizing upon this opportunity.This is not to say that the IFS is incompetent,but we need to come out of the shell we are in,and act the role of a billion-strong democracy.

Shivraj Patil resigns

We are finally rid of a Home Minister who hardly rated the term,who was ineffectual,weak-kneed,an embarrassment to the country and more concerned about his hair and clothes when common people were dying in the streets at the hands of jihadi terrorists in Ahmedabad,Delhi and Jaipur.

His record is dismal even by the standards of Indian politicians and the weak example set by erstwhile Foreign Minister Mr. Jaswant Singh who escorted dreaded terrorists to Kandahar in the IC 814 episode,terrorists to capture whom,many brave hearts were lost.For the record,16 blasts took place under his tenure.16! He should have resigned when the count had reached,at the most,3.
But Indian politicians are famous for holding on to the kursi,though they may be widely reviled and looked at as objects of disgust.In contrast,National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan offerred to quit immediately.
I’m wondering what it will take for Mr. R.R Patil to think of offerring his resignation.He too should have resigned,given the situation of electric power and basic amenities in Maharashtra,”one of the most “progressive” states”,and for shamefully concentrating on bars and bar-dancers instead of the security of the nation’s financial capital and one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world.
And who can forget the pusillanimity of the state governement who concentrated on weakening the Shiv Sena’s vote base while MNS thugs ran wild and held the state capital to ransom?They could think of putting Raj Thackeray under gag orders only after the Centre intervened,that after it’s allies threatened to quit if no action was taken.Apparently,the CM needs explicit instructions from the High Command at 10,Janpath before he dare go to the loo,too.

And Raj Thackeray.Where is he?Didn’t his MNS goons find the bravery to go save “Amchi Mumbai” from terrorists?Someone tell him he can come out of the attic corner where he is probably still cowering that the attacks are over and while you are at it,also tell him it was Indians from the North(I wouldn’t say North Indians,because the NSG has people from all parts of India) came to the rescue of our Bombay,NOT Mumbai,and it was the GRP and RPF,both of which I guess include North Indians,who prevented some “marathi manoos” being killed at VT(he won’t recognize the place,it’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus he will know) by their bravery.

Mumbai terror attacks

After everything is said and done,please stop asking the columnists and CEOs of India about their views on these attacks and how they are different as in how they show the face of terror and not anonymous bombs which go off.

The true people to ask,if you are interested in finding the outrage and anger in the public mind,interview the “unwashed masses” in the slums and middle class localities.The attackers may have attacked the South Mumbai(no,it’s Bombay) “elite”,but what has been attacked is the identity of a Bombayite,whether they live at Malabar Hill,or in Dharavi.

Stop playing politics,stop trying to get only the views and opinions of those who speak English as their mother tongue,go to where the feelings which matter are pent-up.

AND STOP PLAYING UP THE FUCKED UP BOMBAY SPIRIT,THE BOMBAYITE’S RESILIENCE AND ALL THE CLICHED TALES OF HOW PEOPLE DID ACROBATICS TO GET OUT OF THE WAY OF BULLETS,THEY DID WHAT THEY HAD TO SAVE THEMSELVES,NOTHING MORE,NOTHING LESS;WHETHER THEY THOUGHT THEY WERE GOING TO MAKE IT OR NOT,IT DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER.WHAT MATTERS IS THE PEOPLE WHO RISKED THEIR OWN LIVES TO SAVE THEM.

What’s the next step is to complete the Rapid Modernisation of the Army,before the “modern” weapons become obsolete with the time absorbed in the red tape of bureaucracy.Get the Navy the aircraft carriers they need,and the Air Force their trainers and the best aircraft and weapons money can buy.We don’t care whether they have to be bought from China or the worst-run African failed state there is,for heaven’s sake.

AND IT’S ABOUT TIME THAT B*****D HOME MINISTER RESIGNS.AND GET THE POLITICIANS TO EITHER PRESENT A UNITED FRONT,OR COMMIT SUICIDE,THEIR NSG SECURITY WOULD BE BETTER EMPLOYED FULFILLING THEIR INTENDED ROLE TO ACT AS AN ELITE COMMANDO FORCE.

AND,LAST THING TO SAY,instead of just sitting and analyzing and listening to the talking heads on TV,do something to prevent this ever happening again.As Linus Torvalds immortally said,”TALK IS CHEAP,SHOW ME THE CODE”

Here,talk and analysis is what talking heads with nothing better to use their time on do,show us some concrete action.

What Barack Obama needs to do next

barack@whitehouse:/afghanistan/The_mountains$ ps aux|grep osama
RussianinvasionandUSmeddling   9196  0.0  0.3   4292  1488 pts/0    S+   21:00   0:00 osama_bin_laden

barack@whitehouse:~$ kill -9 9196

barack@whitehouse:/afghanistan/The_mountains$cd /iraq

barack@whitehouse:/iraq$ps aux|grep Sunni_and_Shia_insurgents

USmeddlingtogetoil   8192  0.0  0.3   3004  1488 pts/0    S+   21:00   0:00 Sunni_and_Shia_insurgents

barack@whitehouse:/iraq$talk_peace 8192

barack@whitehouse:/iraq$sudo apt-get install stable_democracy

barack@whitehouse:/iraq$cd /pakistan

barack@whitehouse:/pakistan$sudo apt-get install civilian_control_of_army

barack@whitehouse:/pakistan$sudo apt-get install stable_democracy

barack@whitehouse:/pakistan$pkill inter_services_intelligence

barack@whitehouse:/pakistan$cd

barack@whitehouse:~$renice -20 ‘pgrep economic_rescue’

Productive use of spare time

While going to the bus stop to leave for college or coming back,I’ve observed since a few days that some teens of the chawls near my home have devised a productive use of their spare time.This is ,of course, in comparison to going into cigarettes and other random stuff people get into when they have plenty spare time and not many people to be accountable to.I wouldn’t know whether they are involved in the above mentioned random stuff,but I’ll look at the bright side and would like to assume they are on the right path in life.

The use of their spare time is a game of chess.It’s encouraging to see two guys engrossed in a match of that game which exercises and challenges your brain and a group of kids standing around and putting their sense to good use trying to deduce good moves for either of the players.That makes me feel good because I’ve heard of quite some people going down the wrong path and leading miserable lives thereafter.

An anti-terror Golden Shield,privacy be damned

I read Mr. Venkatesan Vembu’s opinion article in the DNA about an anti-terror “Golden Shield”,which would help reduce the response time of the police to catch terrorists who masterminded the dastardly act of violence against New Delhi citizens Saturday.Mr. Venkatesan writes and I quote,”If a ‘Golden Shield’ had been in place in New Delhi on September 13,for instance,security agencies could have scanned recordings from surveillance cameras the same evening,secured images of the bomb-planters,identified them from a national database,tracked down their co-ordinates – and perhaps run them to ground by now.”
I’m very sceptical of this scheme for a variety of reasons as explained below,the least of which is the potential abuse of the privacy of ordinary and innocent Indian citizens…..

1]Mr. Venkatesan argues that the terrorists would be traced using National ID cards which would have embedded chips in them which would report their GPS(presumably) co-ordinates and thus help track their movements……

1a]Terrorists are usually mercenaries and infiltrators from across the border,and they won’t use a national ID if they could help it,so the terrorists would still be unknown faces in the crowd,as they are presently….The alternative is to restrict entry to places( not only sensitive areas,but all areas,since terrorists can strike anywhere) subject to proof of citizenship by furnishing the National ID card…this leads to India becoming a Police State,

NSG waiver

So,India got the NSG waiver with apparently no conditions and no changes in the text except a reference to Pranab Mukherjee’s statement about India’s commitment to strengthening the non-proliferation regime and a reminder about our voluntary moratorium on testing.AND there are no mentions of testing anywhere else in the document.Three Cheers to the IFS!

Still,being a true Indian,we have doubts about any victories,domestic or foreign,and doubt whether the entire truth has been revealed to us.IMHO,the BJP and Left are crying about sour grapes and spilt milk,respectively.The truth,if at all there is anything hidden,shall be revealed

Nuclear Suppliers Group problems

Well,there’s a deadlock at the Nuclear Supplier’s Group over reprocessing and enrichment technology transfers to India,with the opposing nations accusing the supporting nations of putting commercial interests above the interests of the non-proliferation regime.Well,I’ve something to say about it.

I believe the 123 deal holds no meaning if there is no transfer of reprocessing and enrichment technology

Triple Boot!Windows XP,Ubuntu 8.04,openSUSE 11.0!

Received openSUSE 11.0 DVD from Sameep of GNU/Linux Users Group of Bombay(GLUG-Bom) on Saturday via courier.Plopped it in and 1st of all,checked the media for errors to prevent another Mandriva 2007 experience. Plopped the DVD in for installation wherein it stopped at Initializing Package Manager for an inordinate time ,for me,did a hard reset.Plopped the DVD in at half-time at Euro 2008 Finals on Sunday and ran through the installation in about 45 minutes,punctuated by moments of anxiety when the installer recognized my Ubuntu 8.04 /home partition and asked to verify whether it be mounted as openSUSE’s /home.I was terrified

Exaile

Comments to my article on my top 6 applications to install after you install Ubuntu suggested that I should keep KDE applications out of the list,because they come with a huge related load of KDE libraries and use up more RAM.Also,Exaile and Brasero were suggested as alternatives to amaroK and K3B respectively.

So,I upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 a few days ago,Brasero was by default built in,and I installed Exaile to follow up on my promise that I would review them once I had an opportunity to experience them.Well,in the words of Jawaharlal Nehru “…..now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge…..”

Exaile at first glance looks quite minimalist in nature,it does what it’s meant to,play music “….not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially…” Something which I was really glad to note is that it follows the theme of Ubuntu,due to it’s GTK roots.Gone were the days,when I searched high and low to find a theme for amaroK which would match my Ubuntu theme.That’s a minor point though.

The toolbars are functional and only incorporate what they should,unlike amaroK which had a separate Manager for each of Playlists,Album Covers,Queue etc.It also means that there are so many less options to configure Exaile though.

Exaile is a plugin-based player,it has some cool plugins of which I installed the Mini Mode,Resume playback and Tray Buttons.

Some grouses I had with Exaile though are