Viswanathan K's Thoughts

When someone advocates about something good that they themselves don’t practice, we tend to call them hypocrites. We repeat the old saying about people living in glass houses. Or if we are a bit more charitable, we call it ironic. But is that the right response? Aren’t we also told to focus on the message, not the messenger? So for a minute, forget the extreme examples like a communist advocating individual freedom or a corrupt politician (is there another kind?) asking you to pay your taxes. Instead think about the above questions in more harmless contexts, like say, a cell phone manufacturer suggesting that all phone chargers be inter-operatable. Jeffrey Zeldman wrote a very good article about why it isn’t ironic if an article in a printed or digital publication recommends something that the very same publication doesn’t follow. His closing lines on why there’s nothing ironic about such things makes perfect sense in all contexts: “It is publishing. It is humanity. I...

The business of America is business. I’ve always been impressed with how Americans can “monetize” (find a way to convert something into money) pretty much anything. Like Facebook: it doesn’t charge you to be a member; and yet they make money. The same with Google’s searches. But ok, those are companies. Funded by venture capitalists who would demand a return on investment. So it’s sort of expected that they find a way to make money, directly or indirectly, hundreds of dollars at every transaction (like Apple) or a few cents at a time (like Google). But the above wouldn’t explain the US army’s repeated tendency to commercialize things done or built for military purposes. Like the Internet. And the Hummer. It can only be explained by the America’s single minded devotion to making money. Like take this latest tech to move from the US army to civilian use: finding the direction of gunfire. Its use in war is self-explanatory. And in a country where almost every lunatic h...

The US in Vietnam. USSR in Afghanistan. The US again in Iraq and Afghanistan. Russia in Chechnya. What do they have in common? In each case, an overwhelmingly superior force fails to win against a guerrilla force. Why is it so? Set aside the role of “outside” support to the guerrillas. Of course, it exists and it plays a role. But does anyone really believe that outside support, which has to be hidden, can actually equalize the two sides? And yet… Turns out Andrew Mack, a historian did such an analysis way back in 1975 titled “Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars”. Many of its conclusions hold good today as well: -          The deer runs for its life, the lion for dinner : The bigger country’s survival isn’t on the line; the guerrilla’s is. Bigger the stake, the harder they fight. -          Timebound v/s eternal conflict : The bigger country almost always has a timetable as to when the conflict sh...

As someone who grew up in Delhi, I didn’t realize how pampered the city is until I went to a small town university. It also hit me how bitter people there felt about cities like Delhi that hogged everything (money, resources, infrastructure, connectivity etc). It’s the same where I live now: Bangalore. Other parts of Karnataka feel the same way about Bangalore as being a pampered city. To make matters worse, Bangalore is full of non-Kannadigas who can’t and won’t even bother to associate with anything Kannadiga (I am guilty of the same). The Americans chose to be different on this count: they built a new capital that didn’t fall in any state. In fact that was necessary because none of the founding states trusted the capital to be in any other state! Which is why it’s called Washington DC, a federal district, not part of any state. (Later the Australians, Candiands and New Zealanders too decided to make an obscure city their capital for similar reasons). The Americans eve...

The headlines about Germans being poorer than the Italians and the Spanish and other Europeans make for amusing reading. Those headlines were based on ECB (European Central Bank) data, no less. Which rules out the data source as being wrong. But, let’s face it, the headline is so obviously and completely wrong. Who in their right mind thinks of Germany as being the poor cousin of Europe? So what exactly is wrong here? The one word answer: statistics. As in that famous line about statistics and damned lies. As in it’s as much about what is revealed as what is hidden. Now for the longer answer. Turns out most people in Spain and Italy own homes whereas most Germans don’t. So when you calculate the net wealth of an individual, you add the home value in Spain and Italy but not in Germany. Oh by the way, the ECB data was based on 2008 home values, and, unless you lived in a cave, you’d know the values of those homes today would be much less. Much, much less. Additiona...

“Information wants to be free.” -          Stewart Brand Most of us take Wikipedia for granted. We tend to forget that access to Wikipedia requires access to a PC/laptop/phone and access to an Internet connection. We tend to forget those pre-requisites just the way we never remember that there is air around us. And even with the telecom revolution all over the world, things haven’t changed that much when it comes to Internet access: most people (I say “most”, so that’s most of Africa and poorer India and poorer China) still don’t have a data connection. And even the ones that do often have a slow connection. To summarize, there are 2 problems: 1)       Data plans still aren’t affordable by everyone, 2)      Connectivity speeds are low. Hardly the setup where those people are likely to surf much via their phones, is it? Which is why the Wikimedia Foundation came up with Wikipedia Z...

“If you’re not doing some things that are crazy, then you’re doing the wrong things.”  -          Larry Page, Google’s founder I saw this reference to the paradox of the huge problem in a blog by an ex-Apple designer: “A problem that feels sufficiently insurmountable will appear the product of natural law, to be accepted rather than challenged.” That is so true. If it’s insurmountable, we just learn to work with that as one of the constraints. And soon don’t even think of it as a constraint…and so even when the time is ripe and the tools available, we don’t attack the problem. Sort of like that elephant that could be held by a chain when he was young but doesn’t realize he could break it with ease when he is older! I guess that’s why the solution is eventually almost always found by an unknown guy, a non-specialist, someone too ignorant to know that it was an insurmountable problem! On the other hand, it’s the huge probl...

All those smart devices seem to have taken the next step. Whether for good or bad is a matter of opinion though. With the falling price of sensors, almost every item can be fitted with one. Add a piece of software, often free, and you could be “seeing social engineering disguised as product engineering”. Huh? Take BinCam, a good old trash bin fitted with a smartphone on the top lid. When you drop stuff into the bin, it takes a pic, sends it to Mechanical Turk where freelancers check if your garbage proves whether or not you really care for the environment! And eventually, your photo appears on your Facebook page…to shame you. At least the BinCam is voluntary, you might say. And the idea is positive: to shame you into being better. Similar ideas include smart scales that tweet your weight online to add pressure on you to stick to that diet; smart medicine bottles that ping you and your doc if you aren’t taking that medication; smart forks that tell you are eating too fast and sma...

Teddy Wayne described one of the attractions of a physical book over an e-book : “there’s something irreplaceable about a printed book: the heft of it in your hands, the striking cover, and, most important to me, its  smell .” Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s boss, agreed with that sentiment. Which is why he said: “…we have to look for things that we can do that you can never do with a paper book.” Features like the ability to write reviews for everyone else to see and to search for information as you read your e-book. Now contrast all of those Amazon features with a patent the same Amazon filed some time back about resale of e-books. See, e-books don’t degrade over time unlike their “dead-tree brethren”. So unlike physical books that can’t be sold an infinite number of times because of all the wear and tear, an e-book could be resold forever. Not very good news if your business is selling e-books, is it? So here’s the gist of Amazon’s patent: add a (digital) counter in the e-bo...

Title got your attention? Iranian authorities decided to come up with their own version of Google Earth, the 3D version. Now that you’ve stopped laughing, surely you must be wondering why? Easy: Because Google Earth “belongs to the ominous triangle of the U.S., England and the Zionists”, as per an Iranian minister. Oh, and it will be an Islamic version, of course. Whatever that means. This news was a great topic for commenters on Slashdot . Here’s the set of comments I loved. One guy explained the intent of this project: “They have long wanted to wipe Israel off the face of the map and this is how they will do it. Just make their own maps and pretend they don't exist.” And ended with the hope: “Now if only they would do support virtual terrorism instead of real terrorism.” An “expert” on the Quran pointed out that the great book says the earth is flat. Would the map reflect that? To which came the smartass answer: “No, It'll be round, just wearing a bu...

“The genius of racism is that you don’t have to participate to enjoy the spoils.” -          Mychal Denzel Smith I saw the above lines in an article on racism. Now replace “racism” with pretty much any other form of discrimination: caste system, religious orthodoxy, sexism for instance, and it would be equally true. That was a lightbulb moment for me. It explained why different forms of discrimination persist even in societies where a decent fraction of the population says (honestly), “But I myself don’t believe in X form of discrimination”. Making that statement allows that set to feel good about themselves, even morally superior to the rest, and, this is the key , yet continue to reap the benefits of that very form discrimination! Sure, they aren’t doing this consciously; but nevertheless, they do reap the benefits of that unjust system. Thus the reserved class guy who doesn’t believe seats/jobs should be reserved based on the ...

In the West, they have credit ratings for individuals. There are systems that keep track of your repayment record (electricity bills, credit card bills, EMI’s paid, outstanding loans etc). Your track record is then referred to when you apply for that loan or an increase on your card limit. India too has started building similar systems (like CIBIL). But what about poorer countries with no such systems? Or immigrants with no credit record? The Economist reports  that lenders are beginning to look at social networks to refine the credit ratings of potential borrowers: -          Like your LinkedIn contacts could act as a cross-reference about your job (do you have many contacts from that job you claim to have? How good do your contacts think you are at your job (this acts as a hint of how long it might take you to land a new job should you get laid off); -          Or your Facebook data ca...

I used to think of to-do lists as just, well, lists of items so you wouldn’t forget. Turns out they have more uses than that. If you expand a to-do list to also include sequencing and priority information, it frees up your mind (from the responsibility of storing and prioritizing the action list). And once the mind is freed up, it can be used more effectively on other things: in other words, a to-do list can actually increase your effectiveness! It turns out your mind gets freed up even more if you also draw out a plan on how to knock off tasks on that to-do list. Note I just say “draw out a plan”, not necessarily execute on that plan! Which, of course, is a double-edged sword. Drawing out that plan increases your effectiveness, but it also seems to delete that to-do task from your memory. Who’d have thought to-do lists should be used with care?

Especially since the Apple v/s Samsung patent wars, patents have a bad name. What started off as a way to encourage innovation and protect the rights of inventors deteriorated into a ridiculous system that granted patents for insane and obvious things. Like those (in)famous rounded rectangles of Apple… But one area where I was supportive of patents was the pharma industry. After all, R&D costs a lot of money. There is no guarantee of success; and surely companies deserve a proportional reward for such risks that they took. And all the clinical trials and regulatory clearances before they can market medicines cost time and money. Hence to me, pharma was one industry where patents still made sense. But the recent Indian Supreme Court ruling shooting down the patent on Novartis's drug Glivec was a good example of how even pharma companies abuse the system: and no, I am not talking in some “how can you put a cost on human life” kind of way. Take a look at what Novartis w...

I remember this old joke from the pre-Internet-is-everywhere era about how German (the language) could eventually rule the world if we gradually started improving the horrible no-method-in-the-madness spelling used in English. Some of the proposals in that joke were: -          use "s"  instead  of  the soft "c" e.g. "Sertainly, sivil servants will resieve this news with joy"; -          replace the hard "c"  with "k" to "klear up konfusion"; -          replace "ph" with "f" thus making words like "fotograf" 20 per sent shorter; -          remove double letters, something that has "always ben  a deterent  to akurate  speling"; -          remove silent letters; Add a few more similar such rules and "ve vil hav a reli sensibl riten styl", the...