The state of Indian cinema

You shouldn't expect to see a movie review (of all things) on my blog. But there are exceptions :-) Anyways, I happened to watch a movie named "Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna" (Never say Goodbye) made by a production house known for high-emotion, low intellect melodramatic movies. To me, this genre of movies represents the worst of Indian Cinema (and shows the Indian audience in poor light). So, I was expecting nothing better when I was forced (yes, forced) into the movie hall by my friends. But I was pleasantly surprised by what was dished out. So much so that I wrote a review of it on IMDB (that has, by the way, rated it at 4.5/10 - a big deal considering the previous track record of the director in dealing with complex topics). The music, by the way, blows the doors on any recent music churned out by the Hindi film industry. Good - Indian cinema (and hopefully the audience) is growing up by the day.

A perfect evening in T.G. Halli

Hows that? I'll let the picture describe the evening. No words will do. :-)
(This place is 30 KM west of Bangalore, by the way)

Google's hiring process: Boon/Bane?

Interesting digg on Google's messed up hiring process. Can't help but sympathize with some of those guys, especially after hearing the tale of a friend (from school): This guy goes through the the usual process (for a developer's position) - lotsa prepping, anxiety, sweating, mental stress, and tons & tons of tricky questions that made up the grilling technical interviews. He does reasonably well and is told ,"You're through with the tech rounds. Your profile's being reviewed". As is the case with most people, he begins to dream. Then... days & weeks pass... blank. No response. Then one day, he's told (something to the effect of), "Sorry, but your college background isn't good enough. You're not from an "elite" college. Besides, you could've scored better in your theoritical papers". The question to ask is, what were the technical interviews for?
What was the resume submitted for? Couldn't those guys look at the college name/marks right then and figure out that his "pedigree" was "good enough" for them? Why waste his time, effort and mental energy on this futile exercise and shut the door in my face?
Moral: Don't dream of goog unless you're from an elite college and you've maxed all your exams in college. You'd be wasting your time.

digg story

Thus sang the cuckoo...

...outside my window, that is. :-)

More Argentine match replays: Maxi Rodriguez's goal

The brilliant goal by Maxi Rodriguez against Mexico. Again, as this video proves, Argentina played some of the best soccer on display in this world cup & atleast deserved a place in the finals, if nothing else. But pekerman had to make that tactical blunder...

The goal of the world cup

The 24-pass goal by Argentina with a touch of magic from Hernan Crespo.

Green lost in the gray

A must read - Green lost in the gray. Explains why eco conservation in the cities is as important as that in the countryside.

Microsoft to support ODF!

Believe it! Microsoft "Expands" Document Interoperability says their press release. Obviously, market pressure can work miracles.

World cup soccer rewind: Argentina 1986

The other goal that defined Maradona. This one seemed to use the feet of god himself.

Soccer World Cup '06 is over

...to me atleast. When Germany undeservingly won over Argentina by way of penalty shootouts. A team relying heavily on purchased, imported players (Klose,Podoloski...) "defeated" a truly talented side through what has come to be a lottery (that's what penalty shootouts are). I hope justice will be done and those *$!#^ Germans will be beaten hollow in the years to come, while Argentina claim the cup the next time atleast. In this gloom, one can seek recourse to this legend: “The Pope is German. God is Argentine — Diego X.” Argentina's time shall come.

Messaging is just degenerate RPC?

I hate to use expletives to describe this guy's writeup since he's done a remarkable job with the cajo project. But I couldn't help laugh at this claim of his:
"Messaging is degenerate RPC: If you want messaging, by all means, go for it! It is a very useful technique. However, it must be seen for what it is; degenerate synchronous RPC: i.e. a tiny subset of the functionality that is possible with distributed objects."

It's good to be passionate about the remote invocation approach that your project uses, but its plain daftness to make silly claims like "this is the right way of implementing a distributed system". For the same reason, I won't pass a judgement. I'll let you consider a few points and arrive at a conclusion for yourself:

1)Could google's apps have scaled with synchronous RPCs?
2)What's better for a high perf distributed system - blocking on a synchronous RPC call or continuing processing until the response to a remote message interrupts you on another thread?
3)In a supply-chain kinda web app, once you receive order confirmations, do you make RPC calls to place orders for shipping each component, or simply queue up the request in a message queue (which a "down-stream" app could just read off and dispatch orders)?
4)Ever heard of "decoupling" applications?
5)What's easier - a 1:n messagetopic (in JMS) or a similar rpc invocation on 'n' remote objects?

I could give you a zillion more examples like this where async messaging scales much better. And "what if the underlying implementation uses rpc's" or "email is just rpc" are very lame refrains: you're generalizing an implementation approach adopted by a messaging system used by humans and extending it to apply to those used by fast applications relying on asynchronous messaging. How're you so sure that the 2 must be implemente similarly?

Digg inside firefox

A firefox extension to digg a link you find interesting - Digg This!

Get Duked!!

The Java Duke logos are now available for use in your blog. Show your love for java!!

Go Duke!!!

The sinking "Itanic"

The news just keeps getting better & better all the time...

Itanium’s support ebbing away

Technorati tags:
Itanium
HP
Sun

Scripting langs for Java: A dozen of them (and some more) !

Check out the scripting project home page !!

Getting the java plugin to work on firefox/Solaris

Real useful

Java for the Browser

Yahoo's Ethan Nicholas writes about why Java is still the best browser based technology available, and how its distribution can be improved. A must read.

Classifieds with Google Base

Firstly, my apologies (to no one in particular) for the looong hiatus . Sheer laziness. Anyways, on to the main topic - did you know such a thing existed- Google Base ? It's a place to post/search for classifieds of all kinds. Yes - all kinds. Been discovering quite a few low profile changes with the goog goodies. The bookmarks for example - they now let you bookmark like delicious does, while giving you the choice of keeping bookmarks private or sharing them. Real cool.

Cool Quote

Every great work, every great accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement.

Sun's technologies: New perceptions/trends

Some good writeups on the changing perceptions & positioning of Sun's technologies.

http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/archives/001247.html

http://www.redmonk.com/sogrady/archives/001251.html