Planet TCE

senthilkumaran

2009-01-05T02:47:49+00:00

Just after the 8 days vacation i am here back in bangalore. With few minutes left to start to office, i am trying to recollect what happened during 2008, that is worth to post in this blog. So it is going to be a bit personal so you can stop reading here if you wish.

Anyway 2008 was an uneventful year and not much happened through out the year.

Not much to comment about the job.
Saw too many movies in theater and through CDs and DVDs. No new year resolution to reduce that also So i expect the same situation will prevail in 2009 also.
The best part of last year is the trips along with my friends and seniors, lets see whether i can get them in the correct order.
Jan - Kollimalai, Shivasamudra, Bandipur, Mysore
Feb - Chennai
April - Goa
September - Jog, Murudheshwar
Oct - Tirunelvezhi
Nov - Trichy.
For the first time in lifetime saw a cricket match in stadium. Went to the IPL T20 match between Chennai Superkings and Banglore Royal Challengers.
My sis was blessed with a baby girl and i had a great time playing with the kid.
Attempts to learn hindi and kannada went in vain and almost dropped the idea by end of the year.
For the first time started reading tamil novels with Kalki’s Ponniyin Selvan and soon completed Sivagamiyin Sabatham and Parthiban Kanavu.

I am not sure whether i have missed something. Since memory is not willing to cooperate, ending the post now.

Just one resolution for 2009,

Try to come home early I tried and failed a lot many times last year trying to do this. Lets see whether i can make that a habit this year

Happy New Year.

saikrishbe

2009-01-03T19:10:24+00:00

Too many movies indeed (in my terms!). In the past week I saw 3 new movies with family. Bharathiraja has always amused me and given an option I would prefer him to Mani Ratnam, all because of the originality. So, Bommalattum came first in my itinerary.

But for various ‘unknown’ reasons Bommalattum was not even running in a single cinema hall in Madurai. And Vaaranam aayiram was running in a lot of theaters [1] [2]. Probably, Bommalattum was a superior competitor. Has anyone got a different reason?

Vaaranam Aayiram , Bommalattum & Abhiyum Nanum. Bommalattum (minus vivek ‘jokes’) was the best among them ; the other two were also good.

Ananth

2009-01-02T03:00:46+00:00

For someone not used to literate programming, CWEB is a pain in the ass. But the dataset that comes with GraphBase makes up for it. Please make CWEB half as much fun as your datasets Don Knuth.

For the illiterate:

Of course the author does not pretend that the location of “highlights” in da Vinci’s painting, one per row and one per column, has any application to art appreciation. However, this program does seem to have pedagogic value, because the relation between pixel values and shades of gray allows us to visualize the data underlying this special case of the assignment problem; ordinary matrices of numeric data are much harder to perceive. The non-random nature of pixels in a work of art may also have similarities to the “organic” properties of data in real-world applications.

(From graphbase/assign_mona.w)

Posted in DEK, Programming, Rants

It stinks Madurai

2009-01-01T19:12:11+00:00

I never believed that the RTO has started issuing names to vehicles instead of numbers…. untill I saw this.

who is the 'annan'?

This shot was taken in Madurai.

Is there anyone in Madurai who has the guts to penalize the owner of this vehicle?

Ananth

2008-12-29T04:31:12+00:00

I have an Erdos Number of Infinity - Nevertheless I find papers on Graphs a lot of fun. Staying inside the corporate network of Fortune 500 companies has for several years shielded the pain in getting access to CS research. But recently I have been away on a long vacation and found that doing independent research is a nightmare.

Most papers I am interested in are either Theoretical CS or Math. Unsurprisingly, many of them are accessible on the internet through ACM, IEEE, JSTOR, EATCS or Springer-Verlag. The problem being that, not a single one of these institutions provides free and unfettered access to this research. Membership fees are usually astronomical and you would need multiple memberships to cover everything you are interested in.

Assume for a moment you are a martian observing the madness happening in this planet: Tax Payers fund public research. Researchers produce results. They approach an “Agent” and pay more money to get this work published. The Agent uses other Researchers (at little or no cost) to peer review this work. Once the work is considered “publishable”, the agent creates an artificial walled garden around the research and demands money to get access to this research - Conference Fees, Digital Library Fees, Membership Fees. Not to mention, exclusive ownership of the publication for a period of time. More public money is paid to these organizations to get access to the research that we owned in the first place.

And why exactly do we need the Agent in this whole model ? The economics of demand and supply in the pre-internet era probably justified the role of a Pimp. But Producers and Consumers in the internet market no longer need a third party - atleast not one that has a ridiculous cost of access.

One of the problems of having established institutions is that they turn into centers of power and influence - Which is used in their defense when they are under threat. We have seen this happen with the Music Industry where Record Labels lobby and exert influence through proxies like RIAA. On a more grander scale, we have seen how even failing institutions such as Banks and Automobile Manufacturers have been able to blackmail us into believing the necessity of their existence.

Problems with the current publishing model (Not only in CS but in all of scientific research) are well understood and Open access research is being experimented at different levels [1]. Me sitting in my couch at home or a 15 year old in the Sub-Saharan Africa should have as much access to published research as a researcher at Stanford does. And currently, institutions like ACM and IEEE are serving the exact opposite purpose and acting as exclusive clubs. We must tear down those walls before they turn into corridors of power and start fighting self-serving battles.

[1] - arXiv even has a paper that claims P != NP

Posted in Computer Science

senthilkumaran

2008-12-25T20:38:03+00:00

After a long time i woke up today early in the morning when it was still cold outside. After a long time i had got up before 7.00 and i was amused by the fact that is was for a movie, that too in a language i am not fluent in. Ghajini got released in Hindi, today and i was there at 10.00AM at the “Sri Balaji” theater to get the tickets. After a long time i got an opportunity to see the first day first show of a movie and it happens to be the first hindi movie to be seen in theater spending money from my pocket. The main reason was because of all the hype and the expectations set by the movie. Also the film was special since it marked the introduction of Asin in Bollywood.

The movie lived upto the expectations. The movie was faithfully and dutifully copied frame by frame from the tamil version, except for the climax which differed a lot. So it gave a sense of satisfaction even for those who have seen the tamil version a lot many times. Instead of Sanjay Ramasaamy you have Sanjay Singhaniah and instead of chennai it is Mumbai and instead of tamil you have hindi. I might have got this feeling, if not for the beautfully made climax, which not so well crafted in the tamil version. Director Murugadoss has worked a lot on identifying the scenes that can be changed so that it is a lot meaningful. The best part of the movie is Asin, who is meticulous in showing the face reactions. Her face reflects the mood and totally allures the audience. Though all the scenes, dialogues and at times the costume was exaclty similar to that of the tamil version, i remained glued to the seat barely producing signs of motion whenever Asin appeared. When Asin is comical, the theater erupts in laughter, when she faces some ordeal, i noticed a pin drop silence. Looks like with Ghajini she has laid a strong foundation and can build upon that to establish a strong career in Bollywood. Aamir plays his role with ease but you could not help comparing Surya with Aamir and often conclude that Surya was a bit better in few scenes. Wont mention about the movie.

But anyway the movie is awesome and soon it might find its way into this year blockbusters. Worth seeing even if you had seen that tamil version many times.

P.S. - Thought the spelling for Ghajini is गजिनी but noticed it was गजनी in posters.

benignbala

2008-12-23T14:05:00+00:00

Hello folks, A few days back, there was an OT thread in the ilugc, which eventually ran into the topic of data privacy and FOSS. A few people on the list were commenting that data privacy was of supereme importance in FOSS.(The original post).

I had raised my views over there and wish to highlight them.

File access permissions:

In GNU/Linux, or any other UNIX, the default file access permissions are 755. This means that, the owner can read, write and execute the files. The users in the same group as the owner can read and execute only, and the other users in the system can also read and execute only. (The file access is actually the decimal notation of the bitmask for the r-w-x, where 1 means allowed. So 1-1-1 means read, write and execute and 111 in binary is 7 in decimal).

So this 755 permission by default essentially means that, anybody who has a login in that system can read and execute your files. So the concept of supreme data privacy is lost. Infact, with default settings,any user can read any file in a GNU/Linux system.

There are ofcourse ways to modify the defaul permissions and make it such that the owner can read-write-execute and others can’t do anything, by setting the permissions to 700 using the chmod command. To make this as the default property, the users can also make their umask to be 077. by default umask is set to 022(umask XOR 777 gives the file access permissions).

There were references to RMS opposing could computing etc. citing that data privacy is lost. In my view, the probable disadvantage of cloud computing is that data ownership might be lost. But from my understanding, there will be no changes to the privacy.

saikrishbe

2008-12-23T07:29:41+00:00

I have no regrets for making the Vulture-Television Journalist comparison… Even The Hindu came up with one such in this week’s Magazine supplement, http://www.hindu.com/mag/2008/12/21/stories/2008122150060100.htm . Surendra’s cartoon was apt.

LAB Cultural SKIT

2008-12-17T04:12:26+00:00

Before the curtains are drawn for the year 2008, We(FEL-FUN Team) decided to host a skit, making a comical parody of the events and people here. We started a week back, and came out with a brilliant script wherein some real people out here were mimicked. Preparing the script as a team was a fantastic experience for me, especially it made me to understand how tough it would be to write, screenplay and direct accordingly.

I took up the role of an employee and the main crux in that is I had to dance for a telugu song(aa ante amalapuram) and enact for a Hindi song(jo tumko ho pasand) The Dumb-C played during my school days helped me in acting properly throughout, but the dance part still eluded me. Trying hard, yesterday night to memorize some dance steps placed me in a better position and the skit performance hogged the limelight.

Infact, appreciations started pouring in from all sides, from Lab director & other section managers too and a meet-up to appreciate our efforts also took place.The other cultural events like the solo song and group dance made the cultural a grand success. Now I realize how much fun I had lost in my college days by not participating in any cultural events!!! The SKIT was videotaped and right now I am playing that again & again

senthilkumaran

2008-12-16T20:40:39+00:00

That day the train was on time for a change. Myself and Musi got into the S8 coach without wasting time. For some reason we often get seats in S8 and lot of interesting incidents happen whenever weravel in S8. The first reaction once we got into the coach was a sign of relief. The coach did not have a side middle berth. This side middle berth seems to be a ingenious idea of a sincere government servant. On the first sight the concept looked quite ok to me. Side middle Berth meant more seats to lie down and dream for the entire night. But thats the only thing you can do, if you get up a little
fast from your sleep, you will end up banging your head on the side upper berth. The most haunting part is the way in which thereservations are made and how the seats are allocated. The way in which seats are allocated is based on the old algorithm based on 72 seats per coach, so once you board it is just confusion with all people in coach proposing their own ideas on how seats are allocated. To confuse this further you have two numbers written near every seat. The confusion will continue till the TTE arrives. One TTE preferred not to do that and we were forced to sleep on the side berths, which in no way is convenient taking the height factor into consideration.

So that explains why we were happy on seeing the missing SMB. We made ourselves comfortable and started our discussion that ranges from modern day Asin to historic Kundavai. But that did not last long, soon we were disturbed by few people who claimed the seats belonged to them. Soon there were around four people checking the tickets. Everything looked perfect, except for the date of journey. We had reserved seats in S8 for the return journey. For the onward trip it was on S5. Once we realised that we were wrong, we did not stay there for more than one second. Ignoring the smiling faces we walked away and never turned back.

S5 was in utter chaos, the reason was the SMB and two set of numbers written near every seat. Grrrrr once again there were theories floating around. Atlast TTE came around 11.00 and claimed that there is no change in the seating arrangements. The side middle berth is not to be used, which means the old numbering will be followed. But the confusion did not end, as people who boarded at the next station in the middle of the night had no other option other than waking up the people who are lost in dreams.

The final decision still remains unclear, will it continue to be like this, will it be discontinued. Hope government officials resolve it soon.

keerthi

2008-12-16T04:23:40+00:00

I happened to read an article by Gnanavel(titled the same way) on the remains of war.Here are some excerpts…

The author goes to the refugee camp in Rameswaram and finds Rathinavel, a victim of the cruelest aspects of war.
He lived with his wife , and four children happily, in SriLanka. He had three daughters and a son,(whom he claims to have been blessed by
Lord Muruga of Kathirkamam.)And the child did look like his avatar , resembling how Lord Muruga was described , in beauty and intelligence.

His wife , on the middle of a lonely night was raped by the soldiers of the army. The next morning he could only see her dead , hanging herself.
He decided to leave the country and sold his house for a much cheaper price and using the money obtained , gets on board on a boat with his four children.They were nearing rameswaram , and before they could reach , the boat stuck and they were told to swim for life.
His three daughters didn’t know to swim , nor could he save them.He finally decided to save at least his son as his daughters told him they would go to their mother.He grabbed his son and swam for a long time , and realized the shore was far away. His son became unconscious , nor could he carry him and swim anymore.He had no other go than to leave his son , to save himself.When he left him and moved forward , he reached the shore in 5 minutes.
Then , he realized, he could have carried him along a little more and went back to water , searching for his lost son , in vain.The war has thus crushed the family of six into only one.Had he not lost his mental balance , he would have killed himself as well.

The author narrates Rathinavel’s story, and strongly puts forth the cruel faces of war. He says , “Soldiers who die become patriots, rebels who die become brave hearts, but the people ??”.War is always a crushing force , one which is trying to hoist the flag of victory over the innocent people’s dead remains.

benignbala

2008-12-15T21:00:52+00:00

Hello folks, It was the greatest test match I have followed in recent times. What a thrill it was. Not even a 100 Twenty20s can equal the thril of this first test betwwen India and England at the great MAC, Cheapuk, Chennai.

It was thrilling right from day one and it should be said that India pulled a victory from the jaws of defeat. Or Englad lost very badly from a great advantage that they had at the close of ay 4 and the beginning of the first session of day 5.

Thanks to the start by Shewag and Gambhir and the firm partnership between Sachin and Yuvraj, that was unbeaten till the end, India now has the fourth highest successful 4th innings run chase, worth 387 runs.

Hope this develops an interest in test matches among the Twenty20 loving poeple.

keerthi

2008-12-11T04:30:02+00:00

I got a chance to understand completely and appreciate the terms that were puzzling me earlier , like “string theory” , the eleven dimensions , unification of forces and so on.I grabbed a copy of The Elegant Universe by Brain Green.Thanks to Sridhar anna.

It started with discovery of gravity by Newton and went on to describe the effort taken , then on by the physicists to know the mind of God.It was so elegant in style and narration that it easily made even laymen understand the mind of Albert Einstein,and his thirst towards the unification of forces.
And how he could not just digest the degree of unpredictability discovered by Quantum mechanics and he said ,”God does not throw dice!!”.

I wondered at the amazing work by physicists like , John Schwartz , Michael Green and Edward Witten (who unified the five different sting theories which were existing and created the M theory).The strings (open ended and closed ended) , branes , parallel universes , collision between them etc were amazingly pictured. I was always not able to fully comprehend the extra dimensions and this video made a lot of effort to make people comprehend it.It talked about , the circles representing an additional spatial dimension that is curled up within every point of our three dimensional space and the six dimensions needed for the super strings to vibrate.One more video which helps in understanding the tenth dimension is here.

Will CERN or Fermilab be able to discover the S particle , the escaping graviton ? Will string theory be proved right ??Will it end up to be a waste of wonderful mathematics and physics over twenty years ?? God knows !! But , we are all blessed to live in an era where we have awesome physicists who try to comprehend the mind of God !! And we are gifted with resources to understand and appreciate their work !!Whether string theory succeeds or not , it will always remain a fascinating idea to me!!!

senthilkumaran

2008-12-10T18:54:30+00:00

Had gone to trichy two weeks back to attend see Senthil reluctantly putting an end to his Bachelor life but willingly stepping into the role of a family man. Finally found time today to blog about it. As usual, the preparations for the trip started a long time back, even the marriage preparations might not have happened at that time. And as usual after lot of discussions we decided on starting on saturday morning to Trichy. After a long time i enjoyed a bumpy ride in our normal TNSTC bus with attention oscillating between the “Sivagamiyin Sabatham” and the movies that were played in the bus. Conductor made sure that nobody slept in the bus and played the movie in full volume.

Reached Salem at 3.15 and from there started to Trichy. After a bit of reading, a little of discussion the tiring bus journey came to an end and we were at Trichy. From then started that eating spree. The marriage was grand, and food was just great. For two days every inch of space in the stomach remained occupied.

We did not have enough time to visit the temples around Trichy. When the initial plan was made, we had the plans of visiting all temples but once we started the trip we knew . Fortunately with help of Praveen we were able to visit kallanai and thiruverumbur temple. The recent rains have helped cauvery to cause enough damage to the nearby villages and we could see that on the way to kallanai or Grand anaicut, the dam built by Karikaala Chozhan before 2000 years. Due to the recent floods, water was diverted to Kollidam. The water gushing out of the opened shutters with great force creating a pattern and giving a illusion of standing in a ship was a wonderful sight. After visit to Thiruverumbur, we returned back to Bangalore pledging to return back to Trichy to visit the places we had missed this time. After reading Kalki’s book the curiosity to visit the temples has increased a lot. Lets see how the plans go.

benignbala

2008-12-10T08:49:25+00:00

Hello folks, Having joined Moto, I am getting in touch with the latest developements in the mobile phones and wireless communication sector. And the news of the World’s first ever LTE mobile phone chip is a positive sign.

LG has announced that it has created the world’s first ever LTE chip. For people who or not in this domain, LTE is the abbreviation for Long Term Evolution, a 4G technology aimed at high-speed wireless broadband and AIPN(All IP Network). It has promised really high data rates and the chip has not disspointed with 60Mbps download and 20Mbps upload rates. Also, theoritcally, mobile handovers are possible even while travelling at a few 100 kmph!!!

Good time for movie addicts. Once the phones are out and the service is in, no more full night downloads are required. Theoritically, a 700 MB movie(one Compact Disk) can be downloaded in less than a minute. Well, technology is fast developing and lets grab it with both hands.

benignbala

2008-12-09T14:34:55+00:00

Hello folks, a blog after a long time. This time it is the reflections of my thoughts as a result of a look-bask of four years of engineering. I agree that I might be at fault and am not attempting to push the blame around. But the complaint this time is the quality of Maths and Physics in the syllabus.

I had always believed that an engineer must be good at Maths and Physics, apart from his/her discipline. Actually in fact all engineering disciplines grew out of these 2 fundamental domains.

But during the four years of engineering, I never was happy with the mathematics/physics that we had. In fact our(at least the BE CSE) knowledge of contemporary Physics is close to zero and that of application of Mathematics is no better.

Most of the universities with engineering concentrate only on pass/fail of the students. No importance is given to understanding of the subject. I confess that I still don’t know one practical application where multiple integrals or partial differentiation is currently being used. All our lectures were centered around scoring marks in the exams and not on understanding the subject.

The state of Physics is still worse. The only Physics course we had in our first semester was on some traditional concepts and after that we never had anything on Physics. I really don’t know how people understand architectures of computers without knowing much on the underlying Physics.

Hope that the situation changes soon and people realize the importance of Mathematics and Physics to engineering courses.