ThePanda

After what I said earlier abt how simple it is to run up across the ills of the Open Source movement, I ran into a lot of the benefits and good parts of it also… Well basically I have been working on this entry for H2G2 about how to write Blog posts and after not receiving any comments for some time, comment reception has been pretty smooth and simple, and well I gotta meet a lot of interesting and cool people, people whom I don’t know by name or any other physical identification, just names at some end of the net, but people who’ve been good to me nevertheless. They are genuinely interested in having the entry as a part of the edited guide and by commenting on what is wrong, or what doesn’t look good they r slowly steering it towards what cud probably end up being one of ze best pieces I have ever written…...... I know that for every article these guys pick up, there’d be 5 others which have similar counterparts already present in the guide and are hence not as useful to these guys, but still they’re good people, they don’t try to force their way just becoz they’ve been there longer than u have…....... Which is where the problem with software projects start, these guys have full fledged scouts who r supposed to aid in the discussion process, and since H2G2 is pretty much one huge forum, lots of ppl stick around reading entries in the Peer Review section (as I have discovered, its a cool way to gain a lot of knowledge), and that helps…... Software on the other is hosted on a myriad of servers in different parts of the world, and there is no easy way of discovering all the new open source code that exists…...... So here’s wat Ze Panda suggests, let us have a little forum, not for keeping software itself (that’d make it 2 biggggggggggggggggg) but instead for sharing code fragments….. As ne programmer worth his salt wud tell u, its often simpler and faster to use code fragments for things that have been accomplished, rather than sitting there and typing all of ze damn code urself (that’d be reinventing the wheel in some sorts)........

Sticking to BBC led projects, a few months back, Wired had this nice story on how BBC planned to release its entire archive of old programming (the TV & radio kind) for free (for non-commercial use only), and zat while zey were deciding on how to do it (some within the BBC prefer a P2P solution since it reduces their overheads) they planned to do it within the year (2004 not 3)........... Ze beeb has some programs that I have really wanted to listen to (the original H2G2 as presented by Douglas Adams for instance) and watch, and well I was kindda hoping zis release took place earlier rather than later….. Sadly my sojourn thru both BBC World’s and BBC’s main sites have yielded no such stories or proposed dates….... Wired doesn’t deal in rumors and well there was some guy from ze beeb commenting on zis story in Wired, so I guess it shud be correct, and this absence of ne prooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooof is scary…............ Me realllllllllllllllllllllllllllly wanna hear the original H2G2 soooooooooon….........

Angithis seem to be all ze craze in my little corner of the world…......... Angithis are basically charcoal stoves, you take a metal or earthen container, fill it with charcoal (the non smoky kind), and light it up so as to heat up a room (there r supposed to be smaller ones which you can carry on your person and use as a personal heater) which originate in one of ze bloodiest (take that literally, very literally) state of India…... Some of ze security guards who guard my particular corner of ze world used to light fires to stay warm in ze winter, and well environmental pollution (perceived or otherwise) and one verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry big loudmouth (more important since she did most of the damage, and caused immense amts of noise pollution in ze process) kindda ensured that they couldn’t go on having a camp fire every night….. So zese guys got hold of a paint can and made an angeethi out of it, and well they took all the charred wood left from zeir fires, filled the angeethi up with zat, so zat they got free charcoal, and a free angeethi….. Subsequently servants all over my corner caught up with zis idea, and ended up owning angithi’s of their made and run as cheaply as the security guard’s angithi, and hmmm today even my dad’s home early making an angithi for his room (I kindda use the radiator, and my dad doesn’t like ze blower, so an angithi’s more like a radiator, less like a blower hence well liked by him)....... Me have been at work convincing dad that if we put a metal grill over his angithi’s container, we can use it as a charcoal grill and hence have some good charcoal grilled meat, something zat I haven’t had for a lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng time (ever since we had snoopy neighbors move in my mom’s not allowed us to do nething like zat, since she feels it leaves a bad impression)........ Considering zat zere r ppl out zere dying of the cold in Delhi, someone shud convince ze government that supplying such nice angithis is cheap and warmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, and wud probably help reduce ze mortality rate (though convincing a chimp may be hard)...............

As for ze monster thingee yesterday, ze guy in the Peacemaker (the Serb with the bomb) uses the term ‘animal’ not ‘monster’ but since for a panda everyone and everything is an animal (humans and chimps r animals in case u didn’t know zat, though humans make zeir own ugly jungles, rather than living in the more beautiful ones which have existed forever) I guess monster fits the bill better….. Though at ze end of ze day animal or monster, ze dilemma still remains, since all geniuses still seemed geared towards killing ppl (some do try to save zem, but zey r far and few between, and mostly not in physics or math)....

Zis friend of mine has written abt the intermingling of cultures as u experience it in India, and has a nice piece on zat….. However the point that he missed zat most ppl who’re against western cultural influences (an here I don’t just mean rock music, which a few ppl probably don’t enjoy becoz of its style and wordings, or language which is a stupid pt to discuss since most Indian languages including hindi are a result of various ppl invading and intermixing with us, and well we were a British colony for a length of time, so rejecting english is stupid unless we start rejecting hindi and urdu 2 and shift back to using sanskrit and sanskrit only) r those who care abt their status in society, ‘coz society itself is geared against ppl not acting according to its norms…. I am a virtually a refugee in my own country becoz I have never really seen my parents place of birth, I have spent all of seven minutes in my paternal grandmothers house and those seven minutes have convinced me never 2 go back there again… And all zis becoz my father loved one of his sisters enuf to get her married to the guy she actually loved even though he wasn’t from his caste (oh and zis guy earns a lot more zan neone she wud have run up against in her village, though sadly she’s dead), and then becoz he went out and married becoz of love, becoz he knew that my grandmother wud have never accepted my mother (no dowry, so acceptance is almost impossible).............. It was never about caste or the money or nething, it was just that society was not geared to accept children going out on their own and making decisions for themselves while zeir parents were alive…... Or take the case of zis navy guy I ran into some months back, zis guy wudnt listen to wat I was saying becoz as he put it I was a kid and hence I shud be learning from him rather than teaching him nething…. I believed learning is a mutual exchange of information, I have taught ppl (informally) and well every time I do something like zat it is usually becoz I get to lrn something in exchange, and just becoz this navy guy had never been exposed to such an environment he was unwilling to accept ze fact zat there r things which he may not know but I do….. So cultural intermixing and the culture cops may go on abt how America and Western Europe r influencing r culture, but hell we’re influencing zeres 2, and maybe at ze end of all zis influencing we’ll have a new culture which is an amalgamation of r new contacts with ze west healthily mixed in with r own pre-existing notions…. After all the idea of culture is not static, culture’s not something which is frozen in time but something which is forever changing….. Ppls opposition to certain genres of music, certain kinds of fiction or certain movies is understandable since like and dislike r subjective issues not common to everyone, however it is OK only as long as zese ppl keep zeir opositions to themselves and don’t try to enforce their preferences on others, as certain religious groups in India and in ze rest of ze world have been trying to do….. After all if we r mature enuf to decide abt who shud rule us, decide abt how we wanna spend and invest r money, decide abt what we wanna do with r lives, create knowledge and things, innovate, and help ze world move forward zen I am sure we’re mature enuf to decide on r own what we like and dislike…......

Another guy wrote to me abt ze p2p radio idea and strangely he isn’t sure zat all of wat I proposed to do was legal, ‘coz as he puts it streaming audio is illegal…. Does that mean zat if one of my friends gets 2 listen to music playing in ze background while I am talking on a cordless phone or on a cellphone, I am committing a felony….. Well me seriously doubts that since speech is pretty much streaming audio… And since I am bored explaining zis to a lot of ppl, ze reason I didn’t mention Internet Radio Stations was becoz I am on a PSTN dialup connection and have extremelyyyyyyyyyyyyy low bandwidth making it impossible for me to listen to ne Internet radio station broadcasting decent quality sound continuously, and for every three secs of music that I do hear, my comp spends abt 3 minutes refilling its buffer so INTERNET RADIOS NOT A SOLLLLLLLLLUTIONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN….......................

Ze Panda
Not saying zat internet radio is bad, just zat its not his solution and going off to re-convince his dad abt using ze angithi as a charcoal grill….

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 3rd, 2004 at 3:54 am and is filed under article. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.