Perils of a Wandering Mind

With Microsoft bidding for Yahoo, I won’t say last week was uneventful. Interestingly, this attempt by Microsoft to gobble up Yahoo is claimed to be sinister on many levels, and Google has tried to pin point the crucial flaws. Even though Yahoo states that the bid price is too low, it certainly makes one wonder if recession has actually hit the US shores. If one of the biggest internet assets like Yahoo is in trouble, what about other small web 2.0 startups ? I don’t qualify to make predictions about the economy, since I do not understand the financial market, so I’ll wait and watch. Even Google, one of the beacons of Internet age, has suffered at the hands of the fickle, pro-recession market ( though at a very miniscule scale).

To keep my worries at bay, I’ve got myself a copy of Dawn of War anthology. This should keep me busy for a month, at least. But, I think I should also take some time out and find out why Joshua Porter is excited about the latest Google Social Graph API.

Update : Google is really upset about the possible Microsoft - Yahoo merger. This NY times article describes how Google’s been naughty.

Also, Microsoft responds to Googles reprimand. That was quick.

I recently watched a beautifully crafted movie “Taare Zameen Par”, directed by the perfectionist Aamir Khan. I am not a film critic, and I won’t delineate the fine nuances of the movie. Though, I can say that the movie was sensible, well-scripted, superbly acted, and reasonably well-directed. I applaud Aamir to have made such a niche mainstream movie about dyslexic kids.

The movie revolves around Ishaan Avasthi, who has dyslexia. Unfortunately, neither his teachers nor his parents understand his inability to correctly read or write words. He is constantly badgered by his friends, teachers, even his dad for his apparent inability to excel at school. Ishaan is then forcibly sent to a boarding school, where he meets Ram Shankar Nikumbh, a substitute art teacher. Mr. Nikumbh, immediately diagnoses Ishaan’s dyslexia, and tries to help Ishaan get around this problem by first educating his parents, then inventing unorthodox methods to teach Ishaan. In the end, Ishaan surmounts all odds emerging a winner.

Amir has handled this sensitive topic deftly, paying attention to the emotional rage of a troubled and frustrated child. But, even the perfectionist Amir got one fact horribly wrong. In fact the error made is so grotesque, it might just mislead a whole generation of young Indian students. In one of the key scenes in the movie, the art teacher , Mr. Nikumbh( played by Aamir Khan), talks about geniuses of the past, who were dyslexic. The purpose of this lecture is to restore Ishaan’s shattered self-confidence, and renew his hope for a normal life. In his list of geniuses, Amir loudly proclaims that, “Albert Einstein” was once dyslexic. On hearing this blasphemy, my first reaction was “What the heck?! That’s unbelievable.”. I’ve read biographies of Einstein(including short stories), and couldn’t reall reading this peculiar fact of his life. I sensed something was wrong with that piece of fact proudly embraced by Amir.

I decided to get to the bottom of this. I scoured the web for more information, and as usual the web didn’t disappoint me. It turns out there is a cloak of ambiguity surrounding Einsteins childhood, and there is no (academic) evidence to prove his so-called dyslexia. One thing was confirmed by experts, that he was not a brilliant student in school. But, no one knows for sure that this can be attributed to dyslexia. I digged further and found this discussion on Google Answers:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=114700

Even Einstein’s biographers disprove claims, that he was dyslexic.

I wish Aamir(or his writer) had done his research before making such a claim in a children’s movie, which will be watched by (possibly) million kids in India. Young children are impressionable, and they’ll remember this incorrect fact, about one of the most prominent physicist of our times, maybe for the rest of their lives. All thanks to Aamir’s “Taare Zameen Par”.

P.S: The Einstein pic above was borrowed from guenterleitenbauer’s photostream.

Everybody at blogosphere is coming up with their top ten list for 2007. So, I’ve decided to put up my own list of top 7 online flash games that I’ve played for hours and hours and hours in 2007.

7. xiao xiao: Not very challenging if you’re a hardcore gamer, but should keep you occupied till you wait for your capuccino at the local Starbucks.

6. Bloons : This one is simple, yet addictive. The goal is to pop minimum number of balloons with the limited amount of darts given to you to pass each level. The trick is to maximize the damage caused by a single dart shot.

5. Blocks: Another “rack your nerve cells” game. The aim of this game is to get the block to fall into the square hole at the end of each stage. Sounds simple, well go ahead, and try it out for yourself.

4. Portal : A tiny fan made flash based version of the cocept of portals used in Halo. To be specific, you cross each level by smartly using your portal gun to reach the exit door. Very clever !

3. Flow: It is a beautifully simple and surprisingly addictive Flash game built by Jenova Chen. It was also rated as one of the best indie games of 2007 by Wired.

2. Desktop Tower Defense: This is a not-so-simple, but also not-too-difficult strategy game. It kinda live action puzzle game written for fun in flash. You have to stop your enemies, or “creeps,” from traveling all the way across the screen.

1. Orisinal - Winterbells : Very simple, aesthetically pleasing, and addictive at the same time. Use your mouse to make the cute bunny jump on the bells floating in air. The higher you climb, higher your score , and needless to say more difficult your climb will be.

There you go, you now have seven reasons to procrastinate that important task you were supposed to complete yesterday.

Bernard Lunn of ReadWriteWeb has written a very sterling and cogent article dissecting the state of Innovation in India. Though he specifically targets the software industry, it rings a true bell in other sectors of India as well.

To summarize, India has potential but no drive. It has an excellent talent pool, but no risk-taking gene.

Do read the comments as well, some of them are quite good.

Just a quick post to wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year. Hope you all have a great year ahead.

As usual, make new year resolutions, then break ‘em ;-).

Start your new year with this thought, Being Anxious is good for business. Take care, cya next year.

P.S: The above image has been borrowed from Persons photostream on Flickr.

I’d never heard of this guy before, but apparently he is Inc’s ‘Entrepreneur of the Year‘. And I thought Mark Zuckerberg had that title nailed this year.

Pump up your PC volume to max, Enjoy !!

This post is a result of a discussion with a friend of mine. My friend persuaded me to write a post on this topic, so here is my attempt to define and understand the prevalence of Gender Bias in the corporate world.

According to Wikipedia, Gender Bias or sexism is commonly considered to be discrimination and/or hatred against people based on their individual merits, but can also refer to any and all systemic differentiations based on the sex of the individuals.

Sexism can refer to subtly different beliefs or attitudes:

• The belief that one gender or sex is inferior to or more valuable than the other;
• Female or male chauvinism
• The attitude of misogyny (hatred of females) or misandry (hatred of males); as well as
• The attitude of imposing a limited and/or false notion of masculinity on males and a limited and/or false notion of femininity on females, or vice versa.
• A feeling of distrust towards the opposite or same sex, most frequently operating at unconscious level.

Bias against women is the most common form of Gender Bias. This bias has been acknowledged and tackled by organisations everywhere. There are rules and policies in place, to prevent any kind of bias, based on the sex of the individual. They try to ensure that success or progression of an employee is sex agnostic, and will be based on merits rather than prejudices. But, unfortunately there is no way of enforcing these policies at an individual level across an organisation.

There could be couple of male chauvinists, who’d rather be happy to see female colleagues miserable, or it could be the other way round. It is quite possible to come across a feminist who’d treat males like garden pests. But then, I’m talking about two extremes here. In the real world, sexism is often subtle, and more exacting than we would like to imagine.

I’d take two examples here, first we will imagine a scenario involving a female gender bias. Mr. X and Miss Y both work hard on a project, and complete it before the deadline. X gets a promotion, but Y is placated with a small raise. Reason, big boss is sexist, he abhors women taking charge of corporate desks. So, he unabashedly favors X over Y.

Another example, again Mr. X and Miss Y toil day and night to meet a mission critical project deadline. This time Miss Y is promoted, and Mr. X is given a small award to shut him up. This time, big boss is a female who is feminist to the core. These are again obvious cause and effect scenarios. Sometimes, the discrimination is subtle, like being excluded from group activities in a male dominant group. Assigning the complex technical project to your male colleague, just because the PM assumes that males are more competent at solving complex problems. These are few examples, which portray sexist attitudes. I’m sure there are many more.

At the risk of making a very general statement, I think that female bias is more rampant than male bias. The cause can be easily traced back to our thinking in a male dominant society, that men are superior than women. But attitudes are changing for the better now, we’ve come a long way in terms of our views about womens place in society. Our society rightfully treats a women an equal to men. They are encouraged to take up careers which were predominantly male oriented : military, marines, police force. Even the business world is crowned with female high achievers.

I’d be interested to know if this will increase male bias in the future. What are your views ?

Now, you have an official reason to be ‘a late riser’ and, therefore be late at work :-). A Japanese research has proved that “Early rising is not good for the heart“. Don’t you just love these researchers, who spend day and night analysing theories which I believed to be true all along. I wonder what they’ll come up with next : Regular exercise is not good for the muscles.

I don’t know about you, but I feel very uneasy, when I don’t have much to do. I’m a self-confessed workaholic and feel guilty when I waste time. I am currently “on the bench”, for the last couple of days at the cube farm, that I work for. The project that I was working on, completed last month, and while my company sorts out another project for me, I’m supposed to sit around nibbling my finger nails.

So, I picked up this book, which I had bought last year and was planning to read, but never got around to actually reading it. So, with time in my hands, I started off. A little background on the book would set up the context though. It’s called the “The Mythical Man Month” by Frederick P Brooks Jr.

Mr. Brooks has delineated his own experiences as a project manager for the IBM system/360 and OS/360(it’s operating system). The anecdotes included and the aptly deduced theories on the art of software development make an interesting read.

This book has so many pearls of wisdom, that I’d recommend it to each and every programmer (especially project managers). The book talks about the common pitfalls of software development and the evolving nature of computer science. Brooks wrote this book in 1982 and some of the ideas are somewhat outdated, but still, most of the authors practical insight on the dilemma of deadline vs quality of end product is worth noting.

Read it if you want to comprehend the black art of software engineering.