This is a post in response to this article written by @acron.

It is entirely other thing to demand that the legislation drafted by an self-appointed, unaccountable and unrepresentative set of people be passed at the threat of blackmail.

The promoters and supporters of Jan Lok Pal and the public agitation to achieve it are profoundly misguided. Their popularity stems from having struck a vein of middle class outrage against the UPA government’s misdeeds. That doesn’t mean that the solutions they offer are right.

Because the person is handpicked by unelected, unaccountable ‘civil society’ members?

This flies in the face of empirical evidence—when hundreds of millions of people turn up to vote. If it were not working for them, why would they be voting? They might not be demanding Reform 2.0, but something else, and are getting what they want.

Instead of ephemeral displays of outrage—what happened to those post 26/11 candle-light vigils?—it is engagement in the electoral process that is necessary.

But this is us. Given this reality, the solution for corruption and malgovernance should be one that does not rely the notoriously apathetic middle classes to come out on the streets. The solution is to take away the powers of discretion, the powers of rent-seeking from the government and restore it back to the people.

Yahoo! Tile Video @ Yahoo! Video

In this Ad, I couldn’t help but notice the irony when he says “It’s everything you are into, all in one place, all within easy reach” while showing a heap of haphazardly scattered icons about thousands of topics and sites, many repeating themselves many times. Easily reachable? Yeah. Right. Good luck with that.

I mean, what are they really trying to solve here? Are they trying to be a mini browser within a browser?

And when he says, quite proudly, that unlike that “other” company, they don’t really want you to be anonymous, it’s quite scary for those who know what it means. And being a mini browser within a browser will give them just that. Whats in it for me?

Also, as pointed out in several comments to the pluggdin post, they are comparing apples to oranges. They are actually competing with iGoogle/Google Reader/Recommendations, but instead comparing to Google Search. I wonder why. Maybe they think this could make search redundant and replace it altogether. But that’s a very long shot to be making now.

Whats your take on this Ad?

[PS: I'm glad I have my own blog space to express my ideas. I'm tired of wussies blocking me from their comment sections for being critical of their articles once in a while. Couldn't post on pluggdin post. So here it is.]

Dell logo

Dell batteries don’t have a long life and often they start failing after 1 or 1.5 years, i.e., just after the usual warranty period is over. After this, they give just 10-15 minutes of backup with continuous red-green blinking battery indicator warning. So, you go hunting for a replacement. You look at the Dell battery prices and boy are they pricey. Then you also see several third party batteries with almost half the price. Thats compelling. The laptop is old as well to be investing so much into it. So, some like me would go ahead and buy the third party battery. Does it work out? Most of the times NO. Can something be done about it now that you have already purchased it? NO, except for returning it and buying a Dell battery. And I think you should complain about this to Dell (details at the end of the article).

Some of these third party batteries only work for some models, only for a certain batch of laptops. And for most, it doesn’t work. Dell refuses to charge these batteries saying it’s not a Dell battery. And blocks out the ones that work in newer versions. Ridiculous? You bet.

I looked around everywhere I could, for a solution. It was just hard to believe that someone, as reputed as Dell, would actively block other batteries from being used. But there are no solutions. Sorry. In my case I wasn’t able to return my third party battery. So it’s a dead brick to me now and I lost money trying to be smart about saving some.

When you boot your laptop, you get this message saying: “The model number for the primary battery cannot be determined. This will prevent any battery present from charging. Please insert a Dell battery for best system operation.”

We Have Band

Still, hoping that it’s a generic message and they aren’t really serious about it.. you go ahead and continue to boot… but you know what, they are totally serious about it.

Does Dell mention anywhere that no third party battery is allowed to be used? Does it mention anywhere that they are being actively blocked? NO. Not until you actually buy one and use it.

You also cannot use third party power adapter to charge your Dell laptops. Again Dell refuses to charge your batteries. And the Dell supplied power adapters, split open at the same place for most users. At the junction where you connect the power adapter to the power socket, the junction is weak and splits open… and after a while goes broke. So be careful as to not bend / twist it too much at that junction, which usually happens if you change postures many times, lying on couch, etc., and the power socket is behind you. A more elaborate description about it’s cause and a possible solution (if you are brave enough to break open the circuitry and solder) is here: http://www.laptops-battery.co.uk/blog/dell-ac-power-adapter-type-cannot-be-determined-solution/

So, what Dell does is something cunning. BIOS upgrades wont cut it. It’s all in the power circuitry of the laptop. Dell sells their laptops for a slightly lower price. But locks you in permanently with their low quality batteries (their power backup and life is lower compared to competitors like HP) which die just a while after warranty expires. You can’t choose anyone except them for the batteries and power adapter. This was a rude WTF moment for me and for many many others who have had the same problem.

Another outcome of this stupidity is that the circuitry involved in checking for Dell batteries isn’t robust enough, and sometimes even Dell batteries suddenly, out-of-the-blue, start failing this check. Suddenly they stop being recognized as Dell batteries and stop charging. And you’ll have to buy a new battery anyway, even if the battery can be charged fine. See here for some samples of frustration with this problem: http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/18961707/19531733.aspx

Do I hate Dell now? Not really. Would I buy Dell again? Sure. Their offering is compelling to me despite this treachery. And I suggest Dell to many of my friends with a warning about this battery problem.

If you are looking to replace your Dell battery / power adapter, do yourself a favor and don’t buy a third party one. Even though they are of higher quality and from reputed companies. Dell doesn’t want you to buy them.

We Have Band

If you think that this is bad behavior on Dell’s part, that it is not acceptable and that they need to rectify it in their future models, let them know. I have opened a request on Dell’s official feature request website IdeaStorm. Please vote it up. Dell has never responded to this problem in their support forums. There is also a similar request made for the power adapters. Please Vote it up. It requires an account, which is easy to create.

Finally, WTF Dell?

Yet Another New Day. Yet Another New Start.

Version 1:

• Vinuth Mahipal Reddy Madinur: http://vinuth.blogspot.com/
• Pensive Pouch: http://vinuth-ppouch.blogspot.com/
• My Scrap Book: http://vinuth-scrapbook.blogspot.com/
• Clicked Clicks: http://clicked-clicks.blogspot.com/

Version 2:

• The Holy Trail: http://the-holy-trail.blogspot.com/

Version 3:
Changed The Hol Trail to a FTP setup posting to http://blogs.vinuth.com/the-holy-trail/

Version 4:
Switched The Holy Trail to WordPress. That was a hard decision to make And it did involve compromises… One was I couldn’t find as pretty a theme as on my blogger blog. Two, I had to let go of it’s poetic description since wordpress taglines are single lines… Three, customizing themes on blogger was a lot lot easier. And many more hardships for leaving the comfy blogger… Was it worth it? Nothing major in the look and feel of the blog… I suspect, I could have achieved it with blogger too. But I guess it was more to do with ideas of control over my content, the innumerable plugin system that I had come to like on firefox and just plain curiosity. For all the hardships in migration, my gut feeling was wordpress has to be better and it has to be right, because it’s doing it the right way.

Version 5:
Fragmentation of blogs into 3 different ones intended to portray different persona separated  from each other… Tech (La Gubya), Personal (The Holy Trail) and Random/Political/General Interactions/Theories/Opinions (Gaa Gaa Gubbi)

Version 6:
Everything including the older blogger blogs and the newer wordpress blogs aggregated here as LaGubya. Going forward however, I’ll put up personal updates and photographs on http://vinuth.com/ which will aggregate other data from various places like twitter, delicious, youtube… anything new that might come up and of course, content from this blog.

Today, I’m a happy wordpress user. I smiled looking at my first blog post about how I was trying to do everything as much as possible for free… and that what I was looking for is to have a website kind of thing rather than a blog… That quest is still on btw but over http://vinuth.com/ I now want to have a proper blogging platform and then a website where I can aggregate all my content on. The needs keep changing from time to time… and many things hadn’t even existed in my world view back when I started off.

I payed for my domain then and everything else was free.

I’m now paying for my hosting, since I realized free ones were pathetic in their reliability and stability. But a really decent hosting option had a lott of features that I didn’t really need. So, after hopping over a couple of hosting providers, I finally, half heartedly, switched to a hosting provider recommended by wordpress at dreamhost and they had an irresistible offer on the occassion of Obama’s election

I’m now paying for my blog theme, on which once upon a time I would spend countless hours customizing, making them flexible width, changing fonts, sizes, colors, and sometimes making entirely new layouts, before deciding the theme really isn’t that good as a base to start off with and then starting all over again off another theme… I still spend hours on them, even after paying, but not as much.

I’m not paying for my wordpress

I’ll close with the poetic description of The Holy Trail:

~* The Holy Trail *~

From what I see, from where I stand,
Spreads the vast and vibrant land.

A wish to see the valley deep,
Up the wavy long lanes leap,
Hmm…. miles to go before I sleep.

A song to hum till bright lights pale,
Picking and peeking, off I sail,
Along there, lies the holy trail….

I liked the “miles to go before I sleep” line from the time I first heard it

Professor is six minutes late.

Venu wrote a nice post presenting his hypothesis to explain the decline in enthusiasm with regards to studies among the undergrad students. 

It was a great read and a good topic to contemplate on. Go read his post to understand what exactly I’m responding to. 

The “pecking order” might be one of the factors. But I’m not entirely convinced. I think the “social proof” factor which he mentioned at the end of the post is a much more important factor. The definition of “cool” changes from year to year.

Take for example, the gamers in third and final years, the hierarchy was well known, still the enthu was never down. There were many surprise new entrants once in a while fighting their way up. Also, take for example, the enthu level in pre-graduation days. i.e, the primary, high school, etc., classes. The hierarchy is pretty much set and stagnant there. But the enthu isn’t exactly on a decline year on year.

I think most of the people who enter graduation know all too well not to accept their positions in the hierarchy as a given. So, I don’t think it’s got much to do with competition.

I think students don’t exactly know what is expected of them (percentage marks) when they enter first year. So they try to get roughly as much as in their pre-grad days. But with time, as they settle down, they come to accept that 70% is also an okay marks and everybody else is taken that much anyway, so theres nothing much to feel ashamed about. There just isn’t much pressure to perform. So, only the truly interested stick on, while others move on to finding their interests or just realize their lack of interest. Many of them aren’t in it by choice anyway. Most wanted to be done with it asap.

There always has been a big percentage gap between the toppers and the average junta…. even if they have accepted their place in the hierarchy, there should have been some attempts to close the gap. Theres also not much effort to differentiate in the crowded ranges, because an hierarchy just didn’t matter in that range.

There were many other factors too for decreasing interest in studies, like the quality of teachers, better knowledge of “what matters”, desire to have girl friends and be cool etc., 

What do you think? Why was YOUR enthu on a decline?

I received Vista SP1 update. I have installed Vista on a 13 GB partition, and I had only around 700 MB left. After downloading the update, it said minimum 2GB required. So I set out to explore what is eating so much memory. Turned out Windows folder took a good 10.2 GB of it. And digging deeper the system32 folder took 4.17 GB and there was this other folder named winsxs which took another 4.78 GB. I deleted 1.23 GB promptly from the SoftwareDistribution/Download/ folder which has all the downloaded updates which it doesn’t delete after update installation. Now I wanted to see if I can get rid of this winsxs. And what turned out is quite hilarious and obnoxious.

It is a directory to solve the “dll hell” problem. Windows XP has this directory but much much lesser in size. But there is an innovation involved in Vista. They wanted to solve the “dll hell” problem by storing all the versions of dll that ever comes in through my updates and all versions of dlls that are required by the softwares I install. And when you un-install these software, their dlls remain, as they “could-be-shared”. They chose this method as a great way for giving some amount of backward compatibility. Well this is my frustrated explanation from my reading in the forums. Look here for the official explanation. The baseline is, you can’t delete it, can’t compress it meaningfully, can’t get rid of it in any way. However, there seems to be a way out of this as detailed here, but it cripples certain features.

I am in awe of the brilliant Microsoft crew who came up with this brilliant brute force algorithm for an operating system function. Vista is the first operating system I’ve used for which 13 GB is not enough. I have not installed any programs in the Vista drive. AppData takes up rest of the chunk. Clearing all browser cache and other unwanted data couldn’t help. I was left with 1.8 GB and the update wouldn’t install. How much more ridiculous can it get? And how could they ship such an OS? How could they take this part so lightly. I have seen people commenting about more than 6.5 GB for this winsxs folder. All for the sake of compatibility. Maybe MS employees have unlimited disk storage at their disposal, but who were they shipping this OS to? There were instances where after downloading some updates, there would be just 4MB left on my Vista installation drive…. and sometimes I would be like, “Wow, it can still run with just 4 MB of space left… cool.” But it was terribly slow and then I would restart it and look around to clearing browser caches and such. All in all it has been a constant headache. Oh, and I did good by searching for the “Hibernation File Cleaner” which appears during disk cleanup offering to free up .99 GB for me. And earlier before an update, “Per user queued reports” and “Per user archived reports” used to offer me a cool 2.5 GB of free space. But had I went around “cleaning” them up, my entire 13GB would have been cleaned for me. And cleaning Hibernation File Cleaner cripples the Hibernate feature. Were their testing teams having sex and getting drunk while testing this? Makes me wonder.

I now wish to “get away” from this installation asap and use something sane for the optimal use of my machine.

May Vista rest in peace.