May 30, 2006

Orkut is a strange beast...

For one thing, it says that "Today's fortune" for me is: Your luck has been completely changed today.

I don't understand this. Was my luck doing nicely and it has now taken a turn for the worse? If I was doing so-so what does "completely changed" imply? Am I going to be better off or not?

On a more serious note, I notice that people seem to have made orkut an extension of their normal lives. They communicate with people whom they already know in the real world. It may help as a meeting ground for faraway people, but rarely have I seen complete strangers becoming friends. Correct me if I am wrong.

The other funny thing about orkut is the scraps. People seem to be using them as a message board. I find that strange because they could as well have used email to communicate. What's the point of using scraps, which are anyway open for all to see?

May 22, 2006

The hell of elliptical billiard balls: Interesting facts about Gabon

The hell of elliptical billiard balls: Interesting facts about Gabon: "One of the main opposition parties in Gabon is the National Rally of Woodcutters (Rassemblement National des Boucherons), which I think is the coolest name for a political party EVER. "

:)

May 19, 2006

God wrote in....

I was taught assembler
in my second year of school.
It's kinda like construction work --
with a toothpick for a tool.
So when I made my senior year,
I threw my code away,
And learned the way to program
that I still prefer today.

Now, some folks on the Internet
put their faith in C++.
They swear that it's so powerful,
it's what God used for us.
And maybe it lets mortals dredge
their objects from the C.
But I think that explains
why only God can make a tree.

For God wrote in Lisp code
When he filled the leaves with green.
The fractal flowers and recursive roots:
The most lovely hack I've seen.
And when I ponder snowflakes,
never finding two the same,
I know God likes a language
with its own four-letter name.

Now, I've used a SUN under Unix,
so I've seen what C can hold.
I've surfed for Perls, found what Fortran's for,
Got that Java stuff down cold.
Though the chance that I'd write COBOL code
is a SNOBOL's chance in Hell.
And I basically hate hieroglyphs,
so I won't use APL.

Now, God must know all these languages,
and a few I haven't named.
But the Lord made sure, when each sparrow falls,
that its flesh will be reclaimed.
And the Lord could not count grains of sand
with a 32-bit word.
Who knows where we would go to
if Lisp weren't what he preferred?

And God wrote in Lisp code
Every creature great and small.
Don't search the disk drive for man.c,
When the listing's on the wall.
And when I watch the lightning burn
Unbelievers to a crisp,
I know God had six days to work,
So he wrote it all in Lisp.

Yes, God had a deadline.
So he wrote it all in Lisp.


Apparently, "all credit to Julia Ecklar", but I really don't know who wrote this...

More comments from readers...

I haven't written anything here for some time and I have the usual reasons. But I found a comment left behind for one of my earlier posts, which goes something like this:

Blogger: Post a Comment: "smrti said...

I guess what you said as 'fair fight' is not always fair when they always remain 'reserved' for the privileged. Let us just make it a fair fight by not closing it against those who come from less privileged classes"


That's a new one. "Reserved for the privileged". Pray tell, which positions, by law, are closed for the "underprivileged"? And don't give me the old baloney about opression by the upper classes.

It seems that whoever is in power opresses the rest. The "underprivileged" are in power now and are slowly converting into the "privileged". Who would have dreamt that entire communities would be up in arms for the right to be labelled "backward".

May 10, 2006

Responding to a comment

Someone called Prashant left a comment on one of my posts. (Actually I didn't know that people other than Chaos and Veera actually read anything out here. I do get a few hits but they mostly seem to be either misdirected or aimless wanderers...). He specifically took umbrage (is that too strong a word?) at a couple of lines:

"In fact, I would go so far as to say that they are probably overpaid. It's essentially a low-skill job,the only prerequisite being a decent knowledge of English"


I am not sure why we software engineers think we are inventing some rocket science while the rest of the world is doing some low intellectual jobs. Alok, don't you think, if you put any grad student through couple of weeks of training and ask him to follow the so called six sigma processes, he will do as good as any of us. So all I am saying is we software engineers, who beat our chest and behave as though we solved Fermat's last theorem the moment we were born, sorry guys, but we are not demonstrating any great skill by writing a piece of code. Yes if you architect solutions, architect new chip design or a compiler or a new product, then you are great as that requires ingenuity and skill, but what percentage of software engineer population does that 5% ..max 10% . For rest of them,coding is mere looping through plethora of design documents and translating English to some machine understandable language. So don't you think rest of us are "low-skilled " coolies ourselves as we accuse others to be. So lets be very careful when we speak of other professions...especially it would be very nice if we can refrain from making comments like "they are probably overpaid" ..it probably speaks more about us than them.


Dude, I'm pretty sure I don't know you. I have been known to wonder on more than one occasion whether software people actually deserve the kind of money we get. I know the kind of people employed by software firms and I can state categorically that a majority of them are overpaid. But if someone is willing to pay them that kind of money, who am I to decide whether they actually deserve less or not? Sigh.

Do I think any grad student put through some training and made to follow 6 sigma process would be as good as me? Um... in a word, no. I may not have solved Fermat's last theorem on my own, but I do think the kind of work I do is pretty decent. Maybe you picked the wrong guy. Do I think ...blah blah blah... as good as an average-to-below-average software guy? Maybe. But most likely, not.

From my point of view, someone who reads through documents and translates English to C would definitely rank as low-skilled, relatively speaking, of course. But I would probably still rate him higher than someone who answers the phone and reads through a prepared script to try to sell credit cards to strangers. Oh yes, there are BPO operations that require some level of technical competency but I certainly wouldn't hire them to write code for me.

You also seem to have a chip on your shoulder, you lashed out without trying to understand what I wrote earlier - perhaps a re-read of my post would help. Perhaps me re-writing my points and opinions clearly would help too.

1. Call centre jobs mostly seem to require a decent command over spoken English (or maybe some other language).
2. Call centre jobs are not something that requires very high levels of technical skills, since I do not consider spoken English to be such a skill.
3. In fact, I wouldn't rate it very high on the list of non-technical skills either.
4. I, personally, consider the salary paid to call centre employees (especially the starting salaries) to be more than what should be considered reasonable.
5. I do not consider BPO employees to be exploited. If they wish to work under those circumstances, for that salary, they should be allowed to, without the rest of the world jumping to their "defense".
6. I think that employers in the BPO sector are not doing anything illegal, immoral or deceitful when they employ people to do that kind of work, for that amount of compensation.

Hope that makes the earlier post clearer. Actually, I'm pretty surprised that someone who sounds as decently educated as you would fail to appreciate the fact that being overpaid is what makes an industry or job lucrative! Do you think investment bankers are overpaid? I certainly do! It may be because I do not appreciate the hard work in reaching that point, their extreme intelligence and the endless hours of gruelling labour that they put in... naaah... they're overpaid :) If you want to know my opinion on software folks, investment bankers and ahem... MBAs, leave a note.

May 9, 2006

Even more on quotas!

How do people come up with harebrained solutions so quickly? Solution to reservation problem? Increase the number of seats!

How about this? Have as many seats as there are people on the planet! Then everyone will be an IIT or IIM graduate and everyone will have nice cushy jobs.

For the benefit of those who might actually agree that it's a good idea - the reason these institutes have a reputation is BECAUSE everyone cannot get into them.

May 8, 2006

chaotic moments

Chaos talks about how someone feels about the people working in the BPO industry (call centres from my point of view). Incidentally, there was a similar sentiment raised by some folks in some nameless TV programme many months ago. The nitty-gritty being that the employees of call centres are being exploited or "with how deficiently the BPO folks are paid".

I have a very simple response to it - if you think it doesn't pay enough, don't join it! Nobody is forcing people to work in the BPO industry, if they don't like the work hours or the pay or the people or the nature of the job, then they are free to leave and join elsewhere. I cannot understand why other people must feel pity for them and think that this exploitation must end.

If there is coercion, deceit, dishonesty or illegality involved, then I can understand that some people being up in arms against it. Do call centres not tell their prospective employees what kind of work they will be doing? Or that it involves sitting in shifts and that there is a quota of calls to be fulfilled?

Why don't I see BPO employees staging a protest about the inhuman working conditions? I think these people are sufficiently educated to understand whether they are being taken advantage of.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that they are probably overpaid. It's essentially a low-skill job, the only prerequisite being a decent knowledge of English (and if you were to hear all the Westerners complain, it would seem that most of the call centre employees don't even have that basic skill!).

I have heard people complain that the BPO employees lose their sense of identity, are cyber-coolies, have no social life and are forced to work abnormal hours. Hot damn, why don't I hear these people complain for us software folks as well? I seem to have similar problems as mentioned above!! (Not really, but I wouldn't expect the complainers to know any different.)

If you want lesser number of work hours, no night shifts and a social life then don't expect employers to pay you as much as they pay the guys who are willing to work more and late.

May 1, 2006

Abuse of Yoga

Abuse of Yoga

Christian yoga?! Gimme a break. Wonder why the same people are up in arms about copyrights and stealing from other people's books?

Quotas... again.

I run the risk of turning my nice blog into a reservation debate. But I really can't help it.

I was watching a TV programme which was "discussing" this issue and I noticed that the new weapon in such arguments is the screwing up of the word "merit". When anti-reservation folks shout that reservations affect the quality of students being taken in or employees being hired, the pro-reservation people sneer about the "meritorious" students from the upper-class and question the quality or otherwise of the non-reserved classes.

Even though this was touched upon in an earlier entry here, I want some place to shout back myself! Dudes, get this straight, reserved seats = non-meritorious candidates, period. I don't give a damn which class they are from, if they are coming in on the basis of anything other than a fair fight, I consider them of lesser quality than the rest. This is true of all quotas, I similarly look down upon management quotas, payment seats, NRI quotas, and all the rest.

The reserved candidates should be happy taking one single opportunity in their quotas. If someone has already got into a college on the basis of his caste, he has used an opportunity to "level the playing field", why does he need another quota to get a job? If he really is "meritorious" as opposed to the upper-class students, and was getting screwed because of his background, surely that deficiency has been rectified by getting him into college, giving him free education and books and calculators - all that's left is for him to prove himself to be as good as the rest. This merely illustrates why reservations don't work, giving something for free entails the risk of the receiver expecting more. The value of that which is given free is lost, the receiver no longer appreciates what he is getting, he starts taking it for granted and then starts expecting it as a right - "I deserve a lifelong secured job without necessarily doing any work, because I belong to this caste. Then I deserved promotions because of my caste. Then I deserve free education for my children because of my caste. They deserve jobs because of my caste."

On the same TV programme, someone who has availed reservations and has become moderately successful in life was asked whether his children would also study on the quota that he himself used. He did not say "no", he said "I'll leave the decision to them."