After looking at the HSSM's being offered being offered next semester I could broadly put them into 2 categories. The eight courses being offered are evenly divided between the two categories.
1. Courses offered by the brotherhood of JV
2. The rest.
Some of the important areas where we offer no courses are
1. Economics.
2. Finance
3. Literature
4. Public Administration
5. Law
6. Sociology (There are courses offered by Anuja Madan and Romesh Singh but it's more of an exception)
7. Management
8. History
There is much more and I could go on forever .... I hope you get the picture.
Why should students be forced to study such limited offerings, in some cases taught by inexperienced, self styled "Gurus" with no objective evaluation of the course content. Is there no objection from the side of the faculty ?
If a UG student must do 20 credits from within this set of courses, we should seriously reconsider having compulsory HSSMs. I couldn't find more rubbish even if I looked in a garbage dump.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Creating monsters.....
I am part of the first dual degree batch. In the beginning there were 60+ of us. After 5.5 years and about a 100+ research papers later, most of us are still here. The question most of me and my batch mates are asking ourselves is "What next ?". Circumstances have conspired to make us unwanted by most and looked at skeptically by the remaining.
As the placement process unravels it's becoming clearer that our degrees, our work and our orientation is becoming an unbearable burden. Companies feel that we are either too "research minded" to work for them or likely to run away for a PhD. So most want nothing to do with us. Those who are ok with us, tend to have a selection process we are ill prepared for. If somebody were to ask me about crypto or cvit people about vision or Sarika about RoboCup we would blow them out of the water. Sadly nobody seems to want to ask us these things. It seems that data structures and puzzles are the flavor of the day. Most ug4's have spent the last 2 months, working very hard to prepare for the placement season. Most of us have spent the last 2 months making a final thrust to get that last paper accepted or to start giving shape to our thesis. Not an ideal scenario.
The faculty would like to believe that having exposed us to top class research, many of us would be motivated to pursue higher studies. 2 out of 60+ have gone for a PhD. Not numbers to go wild about. This begs the question : Has IIIT created a (confused)monster with it's dual degree programs ?
While I leave this question as a topic for open debate, I do have a few questions about the dual degree program.
------------------------------------------------------
Section 1 : Jobs
Q1: Are there relevant jobs for 60 dual degree graduates in Computer science and Electronics ?
Q:2 Has the institute (faculty) spent enough time educating companies about the dual degree program ?
Q3: Has the institute made an effort to educate companies that the hiring process they follow for ug's is not optimal for MSbR
Q4: Has each faculty member asked himself how he can help get his students a job ?
Q5: Do the Institute and the faculty have a burden of responsibility to help get a student a job ?
Q6: Are all faculty members in agreement with or even aware of this ?
--------------------------------------------------------
Section 2: The Research
Q1: Has there been an effort to normalize/standardize the quality of MS thesis' ?
Q2: Has there been an effort to analyze the quality of research work done as part of this program?
Q3: Have we asked ourselves if we are publishing for the sake of publishing ?
Q4: Have all students been provided the means to present their research work at the relevant forums (i.e. sponsorship for conferences) ?
Q5: Do we provide enough faculty and by extension research areas for our students to work on?
Q6: Do we always have the resources to help a student complete his/her work ?
-----------------------------------------------------
Section 3: The program itself
Q1: Almost all the dual degree students will complete their degree in 6 years. In this aspect is the program satisfactory?
Q2: Why is the proportion of students from DD interested in pursuing a PhD so dismal ?
Q3: Has the institute thought about students stuck in the program even unable to do their B.Tech ?
Q4: Does an average High School student understand what he is getting into when choosing DD?
Q5: Has the institute taken initiatives to ensure that every DD student is at least paid a minimum stipend apart from a tuition wavier?
-------------------------------------------------------
Questions for the future:
Q1: Considering the issues computer science and electronics dual degree students have, was it prudent to introduce other courses like PostBSc, DD in computational natural sciences and DD in computational linguistics ?
Q2: Will we have a complete overhaul in the way we go about dealing with the DD students and their future aspirations, be it a job or a PhD or even an MBA ?
Q3: Is the institute going to clean up it's act when it comes to financial planning, to ensure students are paid a decent stipend and provided adequate funds for presenting their research work?
PS1: For fellow students - Don't write comments in a moment of frustration/anger. Think before you write.
PS2: For others - Don't write rhetorical junk. Appreciate reality, and yes....Think before you write too.
As the placement process unravels it's becoming clearer that our degrees, our work and our orientation is becoming an unbearable burden. Companies feel that we are either too "research minded" to work for them or likely to run away for a PhD. So most want nothing to do with us. Those who are ok with us, tend to have a selection process we are ill prepared for. If somebody were to ask me about crypto or cvit people about vision or Sarika about RoboCup we would blow them out of the water. Sadly nobody seems to want to ask us these things. It seems that data structures and puzzles are the flavor of the day. Most ug4's have spent the last 2 months, working very hard to prepare for the placement season. Most of us have spent the last 2 months making a final thrust to get that last paper accepted or to start giving shape to our thesis. Not an ideal scenario.
The faculty would like to believe that having exposed us to top class research, many of us would be motivated to pursue higher studies. 2 out of 60+ have gone for a PhD. Not numbers to go wild about. This begs the question : Has IIIT created a (confused)monster with it's dual degree programs ?
While I leave this question as a topic for open debate, I do have a few questions about the dual degree program.
------------------------------------------------------
Section 1 : Jobs
Q1: Are there relevant jobs for 60 dual degree graduates in Computer science and Electronics ?
Q:2 Has the institute (faculty) spent enough time educating companies about the dual degree program ?
Q3: Has the institute made an effort to educate companies that the hiring process they follow for ug's is not optimal for MSbR
Q4: Has each faculty member asked himself how he can help get his students a job ?
Q5: Do the Institute and the faculty have a burden of responsibility to help get a student a job ?
Q6: Are all faculty members in agreement with or even aware of this ?
--------------------------------------------------------
Section 2: The Research
Q1: Has there been an effort to normalize/standardize the quality of MS thesis' ?
Q2: Has there been an effort to analyze the quality of research work done as part of this program?
Q3: Have we asked ourselves if we are publishing for the sake of publishing ?
Q4: Have all students been provided the means to present their research work at the relevant forums (i.e. sponsorship for conferences) ?
Q5: Do we provide enough faculty and by extension research areas for our students to work on?
Q6: Do we always have the resources to help a student complete his/her work ?
-----------------------------------------------------
Section 3: The program itself
Q1: Almost all the dual degree students will complete their degree in 6 years. In this aspect is the program satisfactory?
Q2: Why is the proportion of students from DD interested in pursuing a PhD so dismal ?
Q3: Has the institute thought about students stuck in the program even unable to do their B.Tech ?
Q4: Does an average High School student understand what he is getting into when choosing DD?
Q5: Has the institute taken initiatives to ensure that every DD student is at least paid a minimum stipend apart from a tuition wavier?
-------------------------------------------------------
Questions for the future:
Q1: Considering the issues computer science and electronics dual degree students have, was it prudent to introduce other courses like PostBSc, DD in computational natural sciences and DD in computational linguistics ?
Q2: Will we have a complete overhaul in the way we go about dealing with the DD students and their future aspirations, be it a job or a PhD or even an MBA ?
Q3: Is the institute going to clean up it's act when it comes to financial planning, to ensure students are paid a decent stipend and provided adequate funds for presenting their research work?
PS1: For fellow students - Don't write comments in a moment of frustration/anger. Think before you write.
PS2: For others - Don't write rhetorical junk. Appreciate reality, and yes....Think before you write too.
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
My webpage is up.....
11 semesters late, but it's never too late is it :) Click here to visit my webpage. My thanks to Anuj Gupta and Prasant Gopal who allowed me to blatantly rip off the template. This is how a theoreticians web page should look like. In keeping with SIGACT's finest traditions(lame text only websites), mine is text only too.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The Kindness of others
At times it is very easy to be ignorant of the all those selfless people who keep our society ticking. I think the biggest hidden heroes our society has, are people who work in life sciences and specifically those who are immunologists, virologists and microbiologists and the kind. I have a particularly dear friend who is a microbiologist. Her name is Deepti and everyday she makes her way to her medical college lab and transforms from a pretty young lady to the scientist in a bio-hazard suit(Yeah!! that's her a few days ago. I think she kind of looks like Storm Shadow). She works on testing live swine flu patients. Most of us would run away at the mere mention of swine flu. But she puts on her bio-hazard suit and gets into the lab to work with live samples of the swine flu virus for the whole day, everyday. There are obviously risks and there are instances when technicians have contracted diseases they were working on testing. People have contracted swine flu in this manner and have died. To put all that fear aside and work with the H1N1 virus, so that others may live, is truly courageous. I wonder what motivates her to take such a risk. Surely it is not worth the measly stipend she is offered. It's not personal either, as she helps in the treatment of people who she will never meet, and who will never even know her work. It takes a particular bend of mind - a truly humanitarian mind to drive oneself to be able to do something like this.
I write this because I feel that somebody should know her contribution. That society should look for heroes, beyond the surface of our social fabric and appreciate the contributions of Deepti and her colleagues who, from behind those masks deliver us from disease and death. It is time we started to acknowledge the Kindness of others.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Come on .... .give Rafa a break....
Today's game against Fulham would have left many reds fans seething and cursing Rafa. I just think that Liverpool are really unlucky at this point of time. the squad has been decimated by injury. Normally Liverpool's first team would be:
What Liverpool's team ended looking up like today is below
When you are missing a 6 of your starting 11 in Aurelia, Skrtel/Agger, Johnson, Riera, Aquilani, and Gerrard and need to field half fit Torres and Benayoun, with 4 matches in 10 days, it's going to be bad. No normal team could recover from such a loss of players. I think all that is left for Liverpool is the Champions league. Hope to see the reds do well on matchday 4.
What Liverpool's team ended looking up like today is below
When you are missing a 6 of your starting 11 in Aurelia, Skrtel/Agger, Johnson, Riera, Aquilani, and Gerrard and need to field half fit Torres and Benayoun, with 4 matches in 10 days, it's going to be bad. No normal team could recover from such a loss of players. I think all that is left for Liverpool is the Champions league. Hope to see the reds do well on matchday 4.
Monday, October 12, 2009
The cat !!
This is a cat that roams around in the 1-12 and 20's wing. It is unofficially Ashwath's cat.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Revisiting the Desktop: Part 3 - 50K
The last two posts I wrote here and here focused on achieving a balance between price and performance. This post focuses on building the best gaming rig in 50K. Now that is a LOT of money to pay for a desktop. For the AMD fanboys (mainly Kulbir Saini), we finally have a competitive AMD rig. Apart from the CPU, Motherboard and Memory all the other components are the same. First, lets have a look at the platforms.
Intel Pla
tform
The newly launched Intel Core i5 750 CPU and the Intel DP 55WB motherboard bring the performance of the Core i7 series to mainstream prices. The processor sets you back by about a Rs.10,150 and the motherboard would cost about Rs, 6090. A minor issue with this setup is that you would need to use DDR3 memory and that is almost 70% more expensive than DDR2. A 2GB DDR stick costs Rs.1,800 as compared to a 2GB DDR3 stick that costs Rs.2,450. The cost of the platform i.e. the CPU + Mobo + RAM = Rs. 18,690. You can read the reviews of the Core i5 here. You can purchase the CPU here and the motherboard here
AMD Platform
We are on a bit of a sticky wicket here. I am going to recommend a Phenom II x4 940BE CPU. The CPU costs 10,350 and the Gigabyte MA78GM-US2H would set you back by another Rs. 4,775.Add to that another 1,800 for 2GB of DDR2 RAM. The platform costs Rs. 16,925. That's a saving of Rs. 1,765 over the Intel Platform.
Comparing the two Platforms
The 940BE is a slightly old and is outperformed by the Core i5 in almost all applications. Expect to have a performance difference of anywhere between 5~10% in most applications except for high def gaming where the GPU is the limiting factor. Add to that the improved performance of DDR3 memory with the Core i5 and the wonderful new Turbo mode that comes along with it. The question is "Is all this worth Rs.2,000 ? I personally feel the answer is NO and only an AMD fanboy would want to go for the 940BE. However if you feel that the 1.7K savings are important or you would like to spend them elsewhere, the 940BE based setup won't suck for sure !!
The other stuff is common to both builds. Let's take a look at the components selected.
1. GPU: PowerColor ATI Radeon 4890 - Rs.12,198
The Radeon 4890 is the best single GPU card that AMD has to offer in the 4xxx series. There are a whole slew of 4890's available in the market that range from 12K to 17K. This was the best bet. The benchmarks for the 4890 can be read here and here. Any higher GPU power would mean buying a Radeon 5850 for 19K for about 10% extra performance or a crossfire solution that would really bump up the price of the motherboard. Unfortunately there were no Nvidia cards that were competitive at INR prices. Sad for the green team. You can buy the card here.
2. Monitor: Samsung 2233 SW - Rs.8,871
The samsung 2233sw is one of the best monitors rupee for rupee. It has a 16:9 aspect ratio and has a diagonal of 21.5 inches. It is the cheapest full HD monitor, and performs better than any other monitor in the either the same price range or resolution range. The monitor has a clean look. Reviews of this monitor can be read here. Some people may be inclined to purchase a larger monitor. The Samsung P2350 or the BenQ G2412 are excellent 23.5 Inch options but would cost between Rs.2800 and Rs.3000 extra and was out of bounds of the 50K machine. The monitor can be purchased here.
3. Chassis: Cooler Master Elite 335 - Rs. 2,150
A Radeon 4890 and our choice of processors are likely to produce a lot of heat. The CM chassis is spacious, well ventilated and more importantly large enough to accommodate all components without creating any clutter. You do have the option of buying other cases like those from Zebronics or I-ball, but the CM chassis has excellent build quality and comes with a 3 year warranty. There are 2 front side USB ports, audio connectors and a e-sata port. The case can be purchased here.
4. SMPS: iBall Sprinter 600W - Rs.2,877
The Radeon 4890 needs 2 PCIe Power connectors and requires about 200W of power. A high end system running possibly overclocked processors and a few fans would push the system power consumption to about 400W. This would necessitate at least a 550W power supply. My experience tells me to never be a cheapskate when it comes to power supplies. The SMPS can be purchased here
5. HDD: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200RPM - Rs. 2,371
These days a 500 GB disk is par for the course. Despite what people say, all Hdd's are pretty much the same and come with standard warranties. This was the cheapest Hdd I could find and helped me shave off a few hundred rupees to invest in other places.
6. Optical Drive: Samsung DVDRW SATA - Rs. 1,100
Optical Drives are pretty much the same story as HDD's. Any of the major brands ought to do the job. We picked up the cheapest DVD writer from Samsung. It supports all DVD formats and doesn't raise the decibel level too high.
7. Keyboard + Mouse: Microsoft MMKB + Optical - Rs.700
The Microsoft Combo is pretty good to use with it's ergonomic design and pretty well built too, just in case you decide to take out your gaming frustrations on the controls. Logitech offers a similar combo for the same price. So you can take your pick.
8. Speakers: Creative SBS A500 5.1 Speakers - Rs. 2,800
Since the system is intended for gaming and multimedia and HD content, a 5.1 system is a must. The entry level creative system is a decent performer. Admittedly, better speakers could have been included, but we wanted to spend our money elsewhere.
Final Costs:
Intel System : Rs. 51,757
AMD System: Rs. 49,992
These Prices are from websites that sell stuff online(excluding shipping). Odds are that you will find this a bit more expensive in Hyderabad as dealers are pretty much dicks.
I really don't advocate spending any more money on a Desktop. If your needs are slightly different, i.e. you are a casual gamer and still have 50K to throw on a desktop, you could save 4K on the GPU by getting a Radeon 4870, another 1K on the SMPS by getting a zebronics 500W and use the extra 5K to upgrade to a 24" monitor and get some extra HDD space.
Intel Pla
tformThe newly launched Intel Core i5 750 CPU and the Intel DP 55WB motherboard bring the performance of the Core i7 series to mainstream prices. The processor sets you back by about a Rs.10,150 and the motherboard would cost about Rs, 6090. A minor issue with this setup is that you would need to use DDR3 memory and that is almost 70% more expensive than DDR2. A 2GB DDR stick costs Rs.1,800 as compared to a 2GB DDR3 stick that costs Rs.2,450. The cost of the platform i.e. the CPU + Mobo + RAM = Rs. 18,690. You can read the reviews of the Core i5 here. You can purchase the CPU here and the motherboard here
AMD Platform
We are on a bit of a sticky wicket here. I am going to recommend a Phenom II x4 940BE CPU. The CPU costs 10,350 and the Gigabyte MA78GM-US2H would set you back by another Rs. 4,775.Add to that another 1,800 for 2GB of DDR2 RAM. The platform costs Rs. 16,925. That's a saving of Rs. 1,765 over the Intel Platform.
Comparing the two Platforms
The 940BE is a slightly old and is outperformed by the Core i5 in almost all applications. Expect to have a performance difference of anywhere between 5~10% in most applications except for high def gaming where the GPU is the limiting factor. Add to that the improved performance of DDR3 memory with the Core i5 and the wonderful new Turbo mode that comes along with it. The question is "Is all this worth Rs.2,000 ? I personally feel the answer is NO and only an AMD fanboy would want to go for the 940BE. However if you feel that the 1.7K savings are important or you would like to spend them elsewhere, the 940BE based setup won't suck for sure !!
The other stuff is common to both builds. Let's take a look at the components selected.
1. GPU: PowerColor ATI Radeon 4890 - Rs.12,198
The Radeon 4890 is the best single GPU card that AMD has to offer in the 4xxx series. There are a whole slew of 4890's available in the market that range from 12K to 17K. This was the best bet. The benchmarks for the 4890 can be read here and here. Any higher GPU power would mean buying a Radeon 5850 for 19K for about 10% extra performance or a crossfire solution that would really bump up the price of the motherboard. Unfortunately there were no Nvidia cards that were competitive at INR prices. Sad for the green team. You can buy the card here.
2. Monitor: Samsung 2233 SW - Rs.8,871The samsung 2233sw is one of the best monitors rupee for rupee. It has a 16:9 aspect ratio and has a diagonal of 21.5 inches. It is the cheapest full HD monitor, and performs better than any other monitor in the either the same price range or resolution range. The monitor has a clean look. Reviews of this monitor can be read here. Some people may be inclined to purchase a larger monitor. The Samsung P2350 or the BenQ G2412 are excellent 23.5 Inch options but would cost between Rs.2800 and Rs.3000 extra and was out of bounds of the 50K machine. The monitor can be purchased here.
3. Chassis: Cooler Master Elite 335 - Rs. 2,150
A Radeon 4890 and our choice of processors are likely to produce a lot of heat. The CM chassis is spacious, well ventilated and more importantly large enough to accommodate all components without creating any clutter. You do have the option of buying other cases like those from Zebronics or I-ball, but the CM chassis has excellent build quality and comes with a 3 year warranty. There are 2 front side USB ports, audio connectors and a e-sata port. The case can be purchased here.
4. SMPS: iBall Sprinter 600W - Rs.2,877The Radeon 4890 needs 2 PCIe Power connectors and requires about 200W of power. A high end system running possibly overclocked processors and a few fans would push the system power consumption to about 400W. This would necessitate at least a 550W power supply. My experience tells me to never be a cheapskate when it comes to power supplies. The SMPS can be purchased here
5. HDD: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200RPM - Rs. 2,371These days a 500 GB disk is par for the course. Despite what people say, all Hdd's are pretty much the same and come with standard warranties. This was the cheapest Hdd I could find and helped me shave off a few hundred rupees to invest in other places.
6. Optical Drive: Samsung DVDRW SATA - Rs. 1,100Optical Drives are pretty much the same story as HDD's. Any of the major brands ought to do the job. We picked up the cheapest DVD writer from Samsung. It supports all DVD formats and doesn't raise the decibel level too high.
7. Keyboard + Mouse: Microsoft MMKB + Optical - Rs.700The Microsoft Combo is pretty good to use with it's ergonomic design and pretty well built too, just in case you decide to take out your gaming frustrations on the controls. Logitech offers a similar combo for the same price. So you can take your pick.
8. Speakers: Creative SBS A500 5.1 Speakers - Rs. 2,800Since the system is intended for gaming and multimedia and HD content, a 5.1 system is a must. The entry level creative system is a decent performer. Admittedly, better speakers could have been included, but we wanted to spend our money elsewhere.
Final Costs:
Intel System : Rs. 51,757
AMD System: Rs. 49,992
These Prices are from websites that sell stuff online(excluding shipping). Odds are that you will find this a bit more expensive in Hyderabad as dealers are pretty much dicks.
I really don't advocate spending any more money on a Desktop. If your needs are slightly different, i.e. you are a casual gamer and still have 50K to throw on a desktop, you could save 4K on the GPU by getting a Radeon 4870, another 1K on the SMPS by getting a zebronics 500W and use the extra 5K to upgrade to a 24" monitor and get some extra HDD space.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Things I bet you didn't know about IIIT'ans :)
I am rather disappointed that people are not gossip mongering these days. I hope this post encourages other people to do some factual gossip mongering. The following facts are true (afaik) and fun :D
1. It's past the first mid sem and Kulbir Saini is still not officially registered as a masters student. He has also been eating Biryani for 5 days in a row now.
2. Jyothish Soman, A 2nd year masters student working under Kishore Kothapalli on parallel algorithms, has 2 publications. Both are with Abhijit Mitra and are on biology. An ECE student pursuing a MS in CS publishing papers in Bio.
3. IIIT has only 1 student sysadmin now. That is bitgeek. When Zenwalker last asked him to send person X to the compilers lab, bitgeek replied " I'll SCP him to you." Rest assured, our servers are safe.
4. Pranav Kumar Vasishta has not only submitted his Masters thesis but also grades for Gandhi and India. Needless to say both submissions were many semesters late.
5. A certain Mythalez has submitted his PhD thesis. Looks like very soon we will have to announce his arrival with a loud "Gentlemen Dr.Dodo in da house"
1. It's past the first mid sem and Kulbir Saini is still not officially registered as a masters student. He has also been eating Biryani for 5 days in a row now.
2. Jyothish Soman, A 2nd year masters student working under Kishore Kothapalli on parallel algorithms, has 2 publications. Both are with Abhijit Mitra and are on biology. An ECE student pursuing a MS in CS publishing papers in Bio.
3. IIIT has only 1 student sysadmin now. That is bitgeek. When Zenwalker last asked him to send person X to the compilers lab, bitgeek replied " I'll SCP him to you." Rest assured, our servers are safe.
4. Pranav Kumar Vasishta has not only submitted his Masters thesis but also grades for Gandhi and India. Needless to say both submissions were many semesters late.
5. A certain Mythalez has submitted his PhD thesis. Looks like very soon we will have to announce his arrival with a loud "Gentlemen Dr.Dodo in da house"
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Happy Birthday IIIT
After reading Maroo's post I too have decided to join the bandwagon of writing a b'day post for IIIT. In 2004, foundation day was celebrated properly. Sadly there isn't much hulla this year. I would usually write what we should do and look forward to and some more pranav-ish blah, but I'm deciding against it :) Somebody recently asked by somebody to give me the highlight of each year I spent at IIIT. I think it's a wonderful thing to do.
The best thing from my UG1 days would definitely be all the hell raisin that was done in GHEB. GHEB was a unique hostel. Imagine a completely isolated building with only ug1 guys :) The awesome part was the birthdays. Birthdays starting on one floor would eventually spread to all three floors and end with pepsi/mirinda and cake all over the place. It was the purest chaos I have experienced. Highlight: Birthdays in GHEB
For me second year was about football. I became part of the college team and our batch officially went football crazy. The year ended with an amazing come from behind win against UG2k3 where we came back from 2 goals down to win 3-2. Highlight : Inter-batch football finals
Third year did not start well at all, but we eventually started to get over it. The first half of the year spent frequenting Ohri's for midnight biriyani and also included a certain record 19 slices at the pizza hut iftar meal :O Then came felicity and lots of work. Highlight : Making an amazing new Felicity
My fourth year was not a usual one. I spent more than half of the year in Bangalore doing an intern. I loved the excitement that placements generated but only because i didn't have to sit for them :P . Every day we used to have a bunch of people coming back with big smiles on their faces knowing they now had jobs. I also got a job this year. I became a Sysadmin. It's a job that perhaps entails only abuse from other people but I found it to be an awesome challenge. Highlight : Seeing all my friends getting placed and kicking them in the aftermath :D
My fifth year was all hard work. I got my first publications. And the best thing for me this year has been the why I've been able to run every morning and play. I've managed to lost quite a bit of weight actually (I know it's a drop in the ocean....) Highlight : Writing papers with 3 people from 3 different areas and being the glue that keeps it all together.
This might be over-nostalgic, but it's a neat exercise. I tag SKP, ORB, mythalez, Sultan of Samarkand, @nks, Daka, Turbo, Raina, Bordeaux, Aniket, Maroo, Himank, Zenwalker and Bitgeek to all write similar posts. Some of you could really do with a post :P
The best thing from my UG1 days would definitely be all the hell raisin that was done in GHEB. GHEB was a unique hostel. Imagine a completely isolated building with only ug1 guys :) The awesome part was the birthdays. Birthdays starting on one floor would eventually spread to all three floors and end with pepsi/mirinda and cake all over the place. It was the purest chaos I have experienced. Highlight: Birthdays in GHEB
For me second year was about football. I became part of the college team and our batch officially went football crazy. The year ended with an amazing come from behind win against UG2k3 where we came back from 2 goals down to win 3-2. Highlight : Inter-batch football finals
Third year did not start well at all, but we eventually started to get over it. The first half of the year spent frequenting Ohri's for midnight biriyani and also included a certain record 19 slices at the pizza hut iftar meal :O Then came felicity and lots of work. Highlight : Making an amazing new Felicity
My fourth year was not a usual one. I spent more than half of the year in Bangalore doing an intern. I loved the excitement that placements generated but only because i didn't have to sit for them :P . Every day we used to have a bunch of people coming back with big smiles on their faces knowing they now had jobs. I also got a job this year. I became a Sysadmin. It's a job that perhaps entails only abuse from other people but I found it to be an awesome challenge. Highlight : Seeing all my friends getting placed and kicking them in the aftermath :D
My fifth year was all hard work. I got my first publications. And the best thing for me this year has been the why I've been able to run every morning and play. I've managed to lost quite a bit of weight actually (I know it's a drop in the ocean....) Highlight : Writing papers with 3 people from 3 different areas and being the glue that keeps it all together.
This might be over-nostalgic, but it's a neat exercise. I tag SKP, ORB, mythalez, Sultan of Samarkand, @nks, Daka, Turbo, Raina, Bordeaux, Aniket, Maroo, Himank, Zenwalker and Bitgeek to all write similar posts. Some of you could really do with a post :P
Sunday, August 09, 2009
Revisiting the Desktop: Part 2 - 40K
The last post convered building a Gaming oriented desktop for 30K. This post bumps up that budget by another 10K. Lets see what that extra money brings to the table.
1. Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 - Rs.8,800
2. Motherboard: Gigabyte Intel G31-ES3G - Rs.3,550
3. Video Card: Sapphire ATI Radeon 4870 - Rs.8,800
4. Memory: 4 GB DDR2 - Rs.2,400
5. Hard Drive: 500 GB Sata - Rs.2,700
6. Case: Cooler Master Elite 355 - Rs.2,150
7. SMPS: Zebronics 500W Platinum - Rs.1,850
8. Optical Drive: Sony DVD-RW SATA - Rs.1,100
9. Keyboard+Mouse: Logitech Black - Rs.700
10. Monitor : Samsung 2033 SW - Rs.7,500
11. Speakers : Creative SBS 5.1 - Rs.2,800
Grand Total : Rs.42,350
As you can see, I have crossed the 40K limit by 2.3K. The alternatives were to buy a cheaper CPU that would surely bottleneck the ATI 4870 or buy a cheaper GPU. The best GPU in terms of performance below the 4870 is another ATI card the 4850. The price difference is about 2K but the performance differnece is about 40%. No Processor bottleneck is going to reduce that much of a gap. If you do wish to remain below the 40K mark, you can use the E7400 used in the previous build along with a good CPU cooler. BUt as it stands the combo of a E8400 and ATI 4870 is great.
This is a system that has parts that can all be overclocked very nicely. This made it important to buy a Motherboard capable of handling overclocks. A good feature of the Gigabyte board is a redundant bios just in case you scramble the original one.
There is a major upgrade to the chassis and SMPS. The CM elite 355 is spacious and has ample circulation. The ATI 4870 needs two 6-pin power connectors and so it's best to play safe and hence the dedicated 500W SMPS. The rest of the system remains the same as our previous build. Some people would be upset to not have a full HD monitor at the 40K mark. Another 2.5 should upgrade you to the Samsung 2233SW.
So how does this system perform ? Well the GPU is pretty damn awesome. The 4870 can run every game at max settings @1600x900 at 60+ fps provided you ditch the anti aliasing. With this setup you have pretty much bettered every gaming console out there. This is also the last price point where you would have option of buying an additional netbook for mobility. Both of these machines put together would total about 60K. That is perhaps the maximum amount of money you should spend on computers while in college. Next up is part 3 where I push the budget to 50K. AMD fanboys might want to read that one.
1. Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 - Rs.8,800
2. Motherboard: Gigabyte Intel G31-ES3G - Rs.3,550
3. Video Card: Sapphire ATI Radeon 4870 - Rs.8,800
4. Memory: 4 GB DDR2 - Rs.2,400
5. Hard Drive: 500 GB Sata - Rs.2,700
6. Case: Cooler Master Elite 355 - Rs.2,150
7. SMPS: Zebronics 500W Platinum - Rs.1,850
8. Optical Drive: Sony DVD-RW SATA - Rs.1,100
9. Keyboard+Mouse: Logitech Black - Rs.700
10. Monitor : Samsung 2033 SW - Rs.7,500
11. Speakers : Creative SBS 5.1 - Rs.2,800
Grand Total : Rs.42,350
As you can see, I have crossed the 40K limit by 2.3K. The alternatives were to buy a cheaper CPU that would surely bottleneck the ATI 4870 or buy a cheaper GPU. The best GPU in terms of performance below the 4870 is another ATI card the 4850. The price difference is about 2K but the performance differnece is about 40%. No Processor bottleneck is going to reduce that much of a gap. If you do wish to remain below the 40K mark, you can use the E7400 used in the previous build along with a good CPU cooler. BUt as it stands the combo of a E8400 and ATI 4870 is great.
This is a system that has parts that can all be overclocked very nicely. This made it important to buy a Motherboard capable of handling overclocks. A good feature of the Gigabyte board is a redundant bios just in case you scramble the original one.
There is a major upgrade to the chassis and SMPS. The CM elite 355 is spacious and has ample circulation. The ATI 4870 needs two 6-pin power connectors and so it's best to play safe and hence the dedicated 500W SMPS. The rest of the system remains the same as our previous build. Some people would be upset to not have a full HD monitor at the 40K mark. Another 2.5 should upgrade you to the Samsung 2233SW.
So how does this system perform ? Well the GPU is pretty damn awesome. The 4870 can run every game at max settings @1600x900 at 60+ fps provided you ditch the anti aliasing. With this setup you have pretty much bettered every gaming console out there. This is also the last price point where you would have option of buying an additional netbook for mobility. Both of these machines put together would total about 60K. That is perhaps the maximum amount of money you should spend on computers while in college. Next up is part 3 where I push the budget to 50K. AMD fanboys might want to read that one.
Revisiting the Desktop: Part 1 - 30K
Almost 3 months ago I wrote a post on how much better you could spend your money on a desktop rather than a laptop. Well, if you that was good, wait till you see whats happened to the markets in these 3 months. I will be writing multiple posts on buying desktops at various price points. 30K, 40K, 50K, 60K and finally 70K. These desktops are meant for two things: Gaming and watching movies, coz that's pretty much what we do in IIIT :) Today's post is about building a gaming rig for 30k. Here is what we put in.
1. Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 @2.8GHz - Rs.5,675
2. Motherboard: Asus G31-PK5PL-CM - Rs.2,525
3. Graphics: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4670 - Rs.4,300
4. Memory: Kingston 2GB 800MHz DDR2 - Rs.1,850
5. Hard Drive: Western Digital 500GB - Rs.2,700
6. Case + SMPS: Zebronics 400W - Rs.1,500
7.Optical Drive: Sony DVD-RW - Rs.1,100
8.Keyboard+Mouse: Logitech USB KB+Optical Mouse - Rs.700
9.Monitor: Samsung 2033 SW - Rs.7,500
10.Speakers: Creative SBS 5.1 - Rs.2,800
Grand Total : Rs.30,600
In some ways building a PC like this is the hardest thing to do. Most components have to be entry level yet at the same time they shouldn't introduce bottlenecks anywhere into the setup. Lets have a look at some of the components chosen. The processor is a mid range dual core processor. At this price range there isn't much more any processor can get significantly get out of any of the other components. The motherboard is a very bare-bones platform. At this price range motherboards aren't expected to have great overclocking potential or anything. The Asus board has decent expansion options as well as good integrated 8 channel sound.
The choice of GPU is rather straightforward. The competition is blown away by the ATI 4670. The nearest competition from Nvidia costs a good 2K extra. An additional thing working in favor of the ATI 4670 is it's amazingly low power requirement. It doesn't need any external connectors! Just the PCIe interface power suffices. As the card doesn't need any connectors any decent power supply would do. Zebronics offers a decent combo of a cabinet and a 400W PSU.
Choosing a monitor was a tough tough call.There were lots of good deals from LG, Viewsonic and Acer, but in the end getting a 21.5" LCD with a max resolution of 1600x900 for 7.5K is a great deal. The Samsung 2033SW is a steal at such a price.
The rest of the components are very basic. A 500GB HDD from Seagate, 2Gigs of RAM from Kingston, a DVD writer from Sony, and a basic multimedia keyboard and optical mouse combo from Logitech. An entry level 5.1 speaker system from creative completes the list.
To give you in idea of how such a system performs, I benchmarked some games on my lab machine. This system runs a E7200@2.4 GHz, an Asus G31 board, a powercolor ATI 4670, 1 Gig of ram and a 160GB HDD. Surprisingly a 285W PSU seems to drive the system quite well. The monitor has a max resolution of 1440x900. Essentially it's very close to the machine we built with but with slightly lower specs on each component. This is system can handle any modern game at max settings @1440x900(Crysis included) at 45+ frames/second if you turn off Anti Aliasing, Volumetric effects and Specular occlusion. This things are hardly noticeable but can cut your FPS down to half!! Our 30K system is likely to perform 10~15% better due to a better CPU and loading times would be better due to some more RAM.
So there you have it. A 30K desktop that would perhaps smoke any laptop. If you had a budget of 50K, you could spend 30K on such a desktop and buy a netbook like Dell Inspiron Mini-10 for 18K for the sake of the Oh so hyped "Mobility". Coming up in a day or two is Part-2 where I increase the budget from 30K to 40K.
1. Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 @2.8GHz - Rs.5,675
2. Motherboard: Asus G31-PK5PL-CM - Rs.2,525
3. Graphics: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 4670 - Rs.4,300
4. Memory: Kingston 2GB 800MHz DDR2 - Rs.1,850
5. Hard Drive: Western Digital 500GB - Rs.2,700
6. Case + SMPS: Zebronics 400W - Rs.1,500
7.Optical Drive: Sony DVD-RW - Rs.1,100
8.Keyboard+Mouse: Logitech USB KB+Optical Mouse - Rs.700
9.Monitor: Samsung 2033 SW - Rs.7,500
10.Speakers: Creative SBS 5.1 - Rs.2,800
Grand Total : Rs.30,600
In some ways building a PC like this is the hardest thing to do. Most components have to be entry level yet at the same time they shouldn't introduce bottlenecks anywhere into the setup. Lets have a look at some of the components chosen. The processor is a mid range dual core processor. At this price range there isn't much more any processor can get significantly get out of any of the other components. The motherboard is a very bare-bones platform. At this price range motherboards aren't expected to have great overclocking potential or anything. The Asus board has decent expansion options as well as good integrated 8 channel sound.
The choice of GPU is rather straightforward. The competition is blown away by the ATI 4670. The nearest competition from Nvidia costs a good 2K extra. An additional thing working in favor of the ATI 4670 is it's amazingly low power requirement. It doesn't need any external connectors! Just the PCIe interface power suffices. As the card doesn't need any connectors any decent power supply would do. Zebronics offers a decent combo of a cabinet and a 400W PSU.
Choosing a monitor was a tough tough call.There were lots of good deals from LG, Viewsonic and Acer, but in the end getting a 21.5" LCD with a max resolution of 1600x900 for 7.5K is a great deal. The Samsung 2033SW is a steal at such a price.
The rest of the components are very basic. A 500GB HDD from Seagate, 2Gigs of RAM from Kingston, a DVD writer from Sony, and a basic multimedia keyboard and optical mouse combo from Logitech. An entry level 5.1 speaker system from creative completes the list.
To give you in idea of how such a system performs, I benchmarked some games on my lab machine. This system runs a E7200@2.4 GHz, an Asus G31 board, a powercolor ATI 4670, 1 Gig of ram and a 160GB HDD. Surprisingly a 285W PSU seems to drive the system quite well. The monitor has a max resolution of 1440x900. Essentially it's very close to the machine we built with but with slightly lower specs on each component. This is system can handle any modern game at max settings @1440x900(Crysis included) at 45+ frames/second if you turn off Anti Aliasing, Volumetric effects and Specular occlusion. This things are hardly noticeable but can cut your FPS down to half!! Our 30K system is likely to perform 10~15% better due to a better CPU and loading times would be better due to some more RAM.
So there you have it. A 30K desktop that would perhaps smoke any laptop. If you had a budget of 50K, you could spend 30K on such a desktop and buy a netbook like Dell Inspiron Mini-10 for 18K for the sake of the Oh so hyped "Mobility". Coming up in a day or two is Part-2 where I increase the budget from 30K to 40K.
Saturday, August 08, 2009
The Best Modern Strike Force
After Real Madrid beat ManUre 3-1 at the Bernabeu, Sir Alex Ferguson said the the Madrid might have all the big
galacticos, but Raul is the true jewel in the crown. That was a team that consisted of Zidane, Figo, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos, Casillias and more. I think that was the last time the King of Spain was really considered a real threat. True he might have started scoring again (22 and 26 in the last two seasons) but he can no longer lead the line. The years have not been kind to him either. Amazingly the teams he has been used to playing for have found exquisite strikers and it's anybody's guess how long he is going to last.
I first remember reading about Raul before the 1998 world cup. A special edition of the statesman had describe Raul as a brilliant but playboy-ish player. Two Champ
ions league finals later I was convinced of the brilliant part. In fact my admiration for Raul and his fellow Madrid strike partner, was the primary reason for my support for Spain at all major tournaments.
Raul's strike partner was Fernando Morientes. Most people new to football will perhaps always remember Morientes for his poor spell at Liverpool. But for years prior to his disastrous spell at Anfield, Morientes was a striker of undoubted quality, who at times outshone even the great Raul in terms of pure goal scoring statistics. Ironically his greatest influence was while he was on loan at Monaco and virtually single handedly dumped Madrid out of the champions league scoring in both the home and away ties. I still remember watching him score what looked like a consolation goal after Madrid went 3-0 up. It was perhaps the only time the Bernabeu crowd applauded somebody for scoring against Madrid. What has happened to his career
afterward is a pity. But he along with Raul will remain one of the great European strikers.
When in their prime this was perhaps the most potent strike force I have ever seen. People may rave about Villa/Torres or Cole/Yorke or Ronaldo/Rivaldo or whatever. For the 5 years that they were the first choice strike pair for Madrid they scored 28,52,46,41 and 47 goals between them. In those 5 seasons Madrid won 3 La Liga titles, 3 Champions Leagues, 3 Spanish Super cups, A UEFA Super Cup and 2 World Club Championships. I don't think there has been a better strike force in the Modern Game. And it is perhaps more than a coincidence that Madrid were no longer the threat they were once considered after the demise of this partnership. True Ronaldo was eventually signed from Inter, but he never formed the kind of partnership with Raul that Morientes had.
galacticos, but Raul is the true jewel in the crown. That was a team that consisted of Zidane, Figo, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos, Casillias and more. I think that was the last time the King of Spain was really considered a real threat. True he might have started scoring again (22 and 26 in the last two seasons) but he can no longer lead the line. The years have not been kind to him either. Amazingly the teams he has been used to playing for have found exquisite strikers and it's anybody's guess how long he is going to last.I first remember reading about Raul before the 1998 world cup. A special edition of the statesman had describe Raul as a brilliant but playboy-ish player. Two Champ
ions league finals later I was convinced of the brilliant part. In fact my admiration for Raul and his fellow Madrid strike partner, was the primary reason for my support for Spain at all major tournaments.Raul's strike partner was Fernando Morientes. Most people new to football will perhaps always remember Morientes for his poor spell at Liverpool. But for years prior to his disastrous spell at Anfield, Morientes was a striker of undoubted quality, who at times outshone even the great Raul in terms of pure goal scoring statistics. Ironically his greatest influence was while he was on loan at Monaco and virtually single handedly dumped Madrid out of the champions league scoring in both the home and away ties. I still remember watching him score what looked like a consolation goal after Madrid went 3-0 up. It was perhaps the only time the Bernabeu crowd applauded somebody for scoring against Madrid. What has happened to his career
afterward is a pity. But he along with Raul will remain one of the great European strikers.When in their prime this was perhaps the most potent strike force I have ever seen. People may rave about Villa/Torres or Cole/Yorke or Ronaldo/Rivaldo or whatever. For the 5 years that they were the first choice strike pair for Madrid they scored 28,52,46,41 and 47 goals between them. In those 5 seasons Madrid won 3 La Liga titles, 3 Champions Leagues, 3 Spanish Super cups, A UEFA Super Cup and 2 World Club Championships. I don't think there has been a better strike force in the Modern Game. And it is perhaps more than a coincidence that Madrid were no longer the threat they were once considered after the demise of this partnership. True Ronaldo was eventually signed from Inter, but he never formed the kind of partnership with Raul that Morientes had.
Monday, August 03, 2009
Where is the Science in Computer Science??
I ask this question because Raina writes in her blog about people telling her that science has lost a "devout follower" when she joined IIIT. I wonder why people call us computer scientists. Elecrtical engineers are never call Electrical Scientists or neither are mechanical engineers. So what then have we Computer Scientists done to deserve this honor.
Kannan Srinathan once told me that it is the study of "Theory" that primarily gives computing the status of a science. No other discipline apart from perhaps Mathematics carries notions like "impossibility proofs". No discipline can give you unique insights on what can and cannot be determined(or rather computed) the way the theory of computation does. Theoreticians have given the world amazing results that have even bamboozled the best of mathematicians. It is this power to tell people what they can and cannot do (read as compute) is what is responsible for the word science and computers being spoken in the same breath.
No post of mine is complete unless I wind somebody up. So in the context of what is said above, does it mean that people engaged in pursuing improvements in other areas of computing are not doing science but merely engineering ?
PS. I heard about a rather interesting quote from Churchill. "The best argument against democracy is spending 5 minutes with the average voter".
Kannan Srinathan once told me that it is the study of "Theory" that primarily gives computing the status of a science. No other discipline apart from perhaps Mathematics carries notions like "impossibility proofs". No discipline can give you unique insights on what can and cannot be determined(or rather computed) the way the theory of computation does. Theoreticians have given the world amazing results that have even bamboozled the best of mathematicians. It is this power to tell people what they can and cannot do (read as compute) is what is responsible for the word science and computers being spoken in the same breath.
No post of mine is complete unless I wind somebody up. So in the context of what is said above, does it mean that people engaged in pursuing improvements in other areas of computing are not doing science but merely engineering ?
PS. I heard about a rather interesting quote from Churchill. "The best argument against democracy is spending 5 minutes with the average voter".
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Breaking news : Rakhi Sawant is squatting on my TV Screen
Right now I'm staring at a TV where the only thing occupying the news in a country ravaged by poverty, hunger, terrorism and a host of other problems, is Rakhi Sawant. You know other countries have reality TV too, but nobody is nuts like this. You would never see stuff like this on CNN or NBC or even Fox. This is one of those "WTF is the director of news" moments. I'm disgusted and I want my cable TV money back :((
Friday, July 31, 2009
Heart Break
Of all the players Rafa has signed, Xabi Alonso is perhaps the classiest. There hasn't been a deep lying midfielder that good since perhaps ...... wait !! There hasn't been anybody like Alonso in the EPL! I think the closest person to Alonso in terms of impact is Seedorf at Milan. It'll be sad to see him go. I think Liverpool's chances will leave with Alonso. He was the difference between winning and losing so many times last season.
Despite good reviews I had a paper rejected. I did however have another one accepted but fuck the PC for halving my joy. A big Thank you to K.Kothapalli, Suhail, SKP and PJN for all the kewl work that went into the paper that got accepted. Who ever thought you could mix parallel computing, cryptography and GPU's!! The paper that got pawned was perhaps a victim of some rather shoddy writing on my part. Lesson: never write a paper that is double column, 9pt font and 12 pages long in one day even if you are Shakespeare.
This week I Shall be leaving my home of 17 years at Lab Quarters in Hyderabad. For the ignorant it's a DRDO colony and is an extremely beautiful one at that. We will be shifting to a place nearby. I will miss the lawns and Grounds and Badminton courts and the squash courts and all the pretty girls. No matter where life takes me, it'll always be *the* place I'll call home. I grew up there, met my best friend there, and did a lot of other firsts there too. Alvida.
Today also starts my last semester at IIIT. I think I'll spend this semester doing what I can, to help IIIT. This is a unique place in India, and after a few months when I am gone, I will dearly miss the slow, BC filled tension-less life that IIIT offers. Unlike many others I will not hate this place because of some differences with the people who run the place or their lame ass antics. I will remember IIIT for the friends it gave me and the things it taught me.
PS: Rafa Benitez you snobbish little panzie !! Look what happened when you didn't sign Arshavin, look what happened when you didn't sign Owen. Please Please Please sign Huntelaar. Dont make me sad.
Despite good reviews I had a paper rejected. I did however have another one accepted but fuck the PC for halving my joy. A big Thank you to K.Kothapalli, Suhail, SKP and PJN for all the kewl work that went into the paper that got accepted. Who ever thought you could mix parallel computing, cryptography and GPU's!! The paper that got pawned was perhaps a victim of some rather shoddy writing on my part. Lesson: never write a paper that is double column, 9pt font and 12 pages long in one day even if you are Shakespeare.
This week I Shall be leaving my home of 17 years at Lab Quarters in Hyderabad. For the ignorant it's a DRDO colony and is an extremely beautiful one at that. We will be shifting to a place nearby. I will miss the lawns and Grounds and Badminton courts and the squash courts and all the pretty girls. No matter where life takes me, it'll always be *the* place I'll call home. I grew up there, met my best friend there, and did a lot of other firsts there too. Alvida.
Today also starts my last semester at IIIT. I think I'll spend this semester doing what I can, to help IIIT. This is a unique place in India, and after a few months when I am gone, I will dearly miss the slow, BC filled tension-less life that IIIT offers. Unlike many others I will not hate this place because of some differences with the people who run the place or their lame ass antics. I will remember IIIT for the friends it gave me and the things it taught me.
PS: Rafa Benitez you snobbish little panzie !! Look what happened when you didn't sign Arshavin, look what happened when you didn't sign Owen. Please Please Please sign Huntelaar. Dont make me sad.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
It's that time of the year......
When the hot shot magazines (who don't understand squat) start to rank colleges. In the last two years I've tried to analyze these "rankings" and make sense (or the lack of it) of them. This year seeing IIIT Hyderabad ranked 16th is rather disappointing and I feel that these rankings are doing prospective students a great disservice by advising them to join places like BHU or some of the NIT's or even VIT ahead of IIIT (Rofl. How can you take a ranking that has VIT as 10th seriously ??)
This post is for those prospective students, wondering why they should join IIIT.
Firstly, from a purely academic point of view, Only the 5 main IIT's i.e. Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Madras can compete with IIIT in CS. I don't think any faculty member from any institute mentioned in that India Today list would argue with that. IIIT has about 55 full time faculty members and about 20 more visiting + adjunct + Emeritus + blah blah blah faculty members. Each one of these people has a PhD and has significant research contributions even before coming to IIIT. Basically they are bloody damn good. Almost all non-CS/Electronics faculty (Humanities) are borrowed from the Hyderabad Central University (HCU), located just next door. They too are really really good.
Secondly, the quality and amount of research being done at IIIT is simply spectacular( Why would a undergrad bother ?? read on..). In the last academic year, papers from IIIT have been accepted to almost all top venues in CS. These are not some crappy local conferences that I am talking about. I refer to conferences and journals where the history of subjects is being made, the big league, where all the top notch people in the field publish. For those who understand I'm talking about A+ and A level conferences. But that's not the impressive part. Almost 90% of these papers have Undergraduate and Masters students as the prime contributors!! IIIT gives an extraordinary scope to Undergrads to publish at the highest level. I am confident that nobody in India comes anywhere close to IIIT in this regard. In my experience, if you have a quality publication(s), you can pretty much go wherever you want for a MS/PhD. IIIT students getting regular admits to all the top 10 US universities (except Berkley ... somehow nobody applies there) is proof of this being true.
Third, the future prospects after graduating from IIIT are pretty cool. For those interested in placements, IIIT averaged about 7.2 LpA for the 2008 batch (about 140 people. Includes B.Tech, M.Tech and MS) and 5.3 LpA for the 2009 Batch (about 160 people) All IT companies that visited the IIT's came here too. Not bad considering whats going on with the job market right now. As for MS/PhD admits abroad, IIIT has the faculty that a) Will help you do enough work to get noticed b) Give you a recommendation that will seal the deal. The reach of IIIT faculty members extends to cover all universities of any significance. Basically IIIT will give you all the tools to work and the faculty to push you to your "dream" admit.
Fourth, the Alumni network. You know your college alumni is doing well when you step into any google/microsoft/amazon/adobe/yahoo/cisco/(endless list) office and cant walk 5 steps without meeting an alumni. You know your alumni is doing well when half the people coming to conduct campus intervies on behalf of these companies are alumni themselves. You know your alumni is doing well when you know that there will be some IIIT student in the university where you are going to join a graduate program. Keep in mind that only 8 batches have graduated from IIIT thus far. Imagine what things would be 15..20...25 years from now.
And now what can you expect to find at IIIT by the way of facilities ? Well this isn't a glitzy glamorous college. IIIT as an institute, has a philosophy of simple living. And that's just how the campus culture is too. Facilities are a mixed bag. Basic facilities like hostels are very good and are much better compared to most of the IIT's. Don't expect any VIT/Manipal style AC hostels. Messes are decent. The canteen is rather average, but that has more to do with the subways and dominos and the likes that surround the college. Recreation facilities are rather limited. A Swimming pool, a gym, a basketball court, volleyball, TT and a Football ground is pretty much all you have. I personally find it rather lame.
Computing resources are again a mixed bag. Large portions of the hostels have WiFi as the only network. It's good for browsing but not really good for movies and LAN gaming. But once you are on a wired network, it's smooth sailing. IIIT is unique in that there is unrestricted internet/LAN access. The labs are pretty cool. They stock some of the nicest hardware around. In that respect IIIT is pretty good.
To summarize IIIT: If you want to study and learn, come to IIIT. There is no equal in India period. If you are more interested in other pursuits, especially extra curricular activities you might end up disappointed here. IIIT is yet to evolve beyond academics. I personally don't see a student having to make any significant concessions by being at IIIT. The only limiting factor for a student here is his/her motivation.
And as far as the rankings go, I don't consider IIIT to be an "Engineering college" per se. IIIT has a specific focus on Computer Science and IT and offers no other dimensions as of now. As far as computer science is concerned IIIT is a unique center of excellence. IIIT has 24 research centers that work on core computing and it's applications. If somebody were to rank CS courses in India, IIIT would be far ahead of the rest (including the IIT's) by a mile. But CS alone doesn't constitute an Engineering college. The diversity on offer at the IIT's is truly wonderful. Perhaps IIIT would catch up in a decade or two. Rankings take a lot of stuff into account. An institute that offers only CS and Electronics as courses can't and shouldn't compete for rankings with other places that offer courses ranging from electrical to mechanical to aerospace to marine engineering. That said, I am of the opinion that you should give up a seat at IIIT Hyderabad only for a seat in CS/ECE/Mech/Chem in the 5 Main IIT's. You are likely to regret any other choice you make. Not now, but perhaps while in your 4th year or after you graduate. That doesn't mean other options are bad or anything. It is always ultimately down to the individual. All I'm saying is that IIIT would give you a most competent platform to excel.
PS: Please don't write any hate comments.
This post is for those prospective students, wondering why they should join IIIT.
Firstly, from a purely academic point of view, Only the 5 main IIT's i.e. Bombay, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Madras can compete with IIIT in CS. I don't think any faculty member from any institute mentioned in that India Today list would argue with that. IIIT has about 55 full time faculty members and about 20 more visiting + adjunct + Emeritus + blah blah blah faculty members. Each one of these people has a PhD and has significant research contributions even before coming to IIIT. Basically they are bloody damn good. Almost all non-CS/Electronics faculty (Humanities) are borrowed from the Hyderabad Central University (HCU), located just next door. They too are really really good.
Secondly, the quality and amount of research being done at IIIT is simply spectacular( Why would a undergrad bother ?? read on..). In the last academic year, papers from IIIT have been accepted to almost all top venues in CS. These are not some crappy local conferences that I am talking about. I refer to conferences and journals where the history of subjects is being made, the big league, where all the top notch people in the field publish. For those who understand I'm talking about A+ and A level conferences. But that's not the impressive part. Almost 90% of these papers have Undergraduate and Masters students as the prime contributors!! IIIT gives an extraordinary scope to Undergrads to publish at the highest level. I am confident that nobody in India comes anywhere close to IIIT in this regard. In my experience, if you have a quality publication(s), you can pretty much go wherever you want for a MS/PhD. IIIT students getting regular admits to all the top 10 US universities (except Berkley ... somehow nobody applies there) is proof of this being true.
Third, the future prospects after graduating from IIIT are pretty cool. For those interested in placements, IIIT averaged about 7.2 LpA for the 2008 batch (about 140 people. Includes B.Tech, M.Tech and MS) and 5.3 LpA for the 2009 Batch (about 160 people) All IT companies that visited the IIT's came here too. Not bad considering whats going on with the job market right now. As for MS/PhD admits abroad, IIIT has the faculty that a) Will help you do enough work to get noticed b) Give you a recommendation that will seal the deal. The reach of IIIT faculty members extends to cover all universities of any significance. Basically IIIT will give you all the tools to work and the faculty to push you to your "dream" admit.
Fourth, the Alumni network. You know your college alumni is doing well when you step into any google/microsoft/amazon/adobe/yahoo/cisco/(endless list) office and cant walk 5 steps without meeting an alumni. You know your alumni is doing well when half the people coming to conduct campus intervies on behalf of these companies are alumni themselves. You know your alumni is doing well when you know that there will be some IIIT student in the university where you are going to join a graduate program. Keep in mind that only 8 batches have graduated from IIIT thus far. Imagine what things would be 15..20...25 years from now.
And now what can you expect to find at IIIT by the way of facilities ? Well this isn't a glitzy glamorous college. IIIT as an institute, has a philosophy of simple living. And that's just how the campus culture is too. Facilities are a mixed bag. Basic facilities like hostels are very good and are much better compared to most of the IIT's. Don't expect any VIT/Manipal style AC hostels. Messes are decent. The canteen is rather average, but that has more to do with the subways and dominos and the likes that surround the college. Recreation facilities are rather limited. A Swimming pool, a gym, a basketball court, volleyball, TT and a Football ground is pretty much all you have. I personally find it rather lame.
Computing resources are again a mixed bag. Large portions of the hostels have WiFi as the only network. It's good for browsing but not really good for movies and LAN gaming. But once you are on a wired network, it's smooth sailing. IIIT is unique in that there is unrestricted internet/LAN access. The labs are pretty cool. They stock some of the nicest hardware around. In that respect IIIT is pretty good.
To summarize IIIT: If you want to study and learn, come to IIIT. There is no equal in India period. If you are more interested in other pursuits, especially extra curricular activities you might end up disappointed here. IIIT is yet to evolve beyond academics. I personally don't see a student having to make any significant concessions by being at IIIT. The only limiting factor for a student here is his/her motivation.
And as far as the rankings go, I don't consider IIIT to be an "Engineering college" per se. IIIT has a specific focus on Computer Science and IT and offers no other dimensions as of now. As far as computer science is concerned IIIT is a unique center of excellence. IIIT has 24 research centers that work on core computing and it's applications. If somebody were to rank CS courses in India, IIIT would be far ahead of the rest (including the IIT's) by a mile. But CS alone doesn't constitute an Engineering college. The diversity on offer at the IIT's is truly wonderful. Perhaps IIIT would catch up in a decade or two. Rankings take a lot of stuff into account. An institute that offers only CS and Electronics as courses can't and shouldn't compete for rankings with other places that offer courses ranging from electrical to mechanical to aerospace to marine engineering. That said, I am of the opinion that you should give up a seat at IIIT Hyderabad only for a seat in CS/ECE/Mech/Chem in the 5 Main IIT's. You are likely to regret any other choice you make. Not now, but perhaps while in your 4th year or after you graduate. That doesn't mean other options are bad or anything. It is always ultimately down to the individual. All I'm saying is that IIIT would give you a most competent platform to excel.
PS: Please don't write any hate comments.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
80 Million Pounds
The first Champions league final I watched was in 2000 when Real Madrid played Valencia. It was a classy performance by madrid. My then favorite player McManaman scored a goal and Redondo made what was the best move in a CL final till Zidane struck the sweetest of volley two years later. I watched madrid win again with their "Galacticos" in 2002. Both these teams had good attacking players but even better defenses. Madrid had Hierro and Helguera at center half and Roberto Carlos and Salgado as full backs. Makelele used to sit in front of them like a rock. Fast forward to 2009. Madrid have the worlds best central midfielder Kaka (zidane then) and winger Ronaldo (figo then). But at the back they have Cannavaro, Pepe and Metzelder all of whom can be described as bullshit. The only really quality players that madrid have at the back are Casillas and Sergio Ramos (for whom defending is an afterthought).
Looks like Senor Perez has learned nothing in his years out. The Galacticos were quite good for a few years. Then one fine night they sold both Hierro and Makelele. And that was the end of that. Madrid have still not recovered from that sale. In hindsight the sale of Makelele to Chelsea was one of the defining moments of World football in this decade, much like Fergie talking Keane into joining ManUre.
As for Ronaldo, he will be a big miss at ManUre. I think Ronaldo's greatest contribution to ManU was to be able to absolutely demolish mid table and lower teams. Don't get me wrong, Ronaldo is a fantastic player, but he was most effective in "taking out the trash". I can remember him winning at least 4 matches this term (Villa, Blackburn,Porto and some other game i don't remember), where ManU were drifting, with just one brilliant swing of his boot. ManU will miss him next season and that is just the start of their problems. ManU look to be losing Tevez as well. Hargreaves looks to be done and dusted and Giggs, Scholes and Neville are not 25 anymore. ManU have 4 world class players. Rooney, Ronaldo, Ferdinand and Vidic. Without Ronaldo that's a pretty lightweight midfield. A midfield of Fletchers and Carricks and Parks and 35 year old Giggs and Scholes is not going to threaten the likes of Gerrard-Masch-Alonso or Lampard-Essien-Ballack. Up front Berbatov seems to have his issues and wants to leave (Will he be allowed?) Fergie has his task cut out.
Onto Liverpool and Rafa Benitez is in a spot of bother. He has assembled the best Liverpool team since the days of King Kenny, and he cant spend a pound because to utterly incompetent Yanks have screwed up. What a pity. I think he might get to sign a player but not more than that. Actually Liverpool really only need one player and that is somebody to partner Torres. Rafa missed great chance to fill that void when he failed to sign Arshavin(apparently Liverpool's interest was what took Arsenal so long to finish a deal with Zenit). He has come to regret that 4 times in 90 mins already last season. If I were Rafa I'd be closely looking at a certain Ruud Van Nistelrooy's situation at Madrid. He might be a good bargain. So might Michael Owen or Trezeguet and even perhaps a look at Saviola. What's clear is that there will be no Torres like signings this year. It'll have to be bargain shopping. I'm also happy Liverpool didn't sign Gareth Barry. He's crap and nowhere near as good as the pass-master Alonso.
PS. A post after a long time. Feels good to write about football.
Looks like Senor Perez has learned nothing in his years out. The Galacticos were quite good for a few years. Then one fine night they sold both Hierro and Makelele. And that was the end of that. Madrid have still not recovered from that sale. In hindsight the sale of Makelele to Chelsea was one of the defining moments of World football in this decade, much like Fergie talking Keane into joining ManUre.
As for Ronaldo, he will be a big miss at ManUre. I think Ronaldo's greatest contribution to ManU was to be able to absolutely demolish mid table and lower teams. Don't get me wrong, Ronaldo is a fantastic player, but he was most effective in "taking out the trash". I can remember him winning at least 4 matches this term (Villa, Blackburn,Porto and some other game i don't remember), where ManU were drifting, with just one brilliant swing of his boot. ManU will miss him next season and that is just the start of their problems. ManU look to be losing Tevez as well. Hargreaves looks to be done and dusted and Giggs, Scholes and Neville are not 25 anymore. ManU have 4 world class players. Rooney, Ronaldo, Ferdinand and Vidic. Without Ronaldo that's a pretty lightweight midfield. A midfield of Fletchers and Carricks and Parks and 35 year old Giggs and Scholes is not going to threaten the likes of Gerrard-Masch-Alonso or Lampard-Essien-Ballack. Up front Berbatov seems to have his issues and wants to leave (Will he be allowed?) Fergie has his task cut out.
Onto Liverpool and Rafa Benitez is in a spot of bother. He has assembled the best Liverpool team since the days of King Kenny, and he cant spend a pound because to utterly incompetent Yanks have screwed up. What a pity. I think he might get to sign a player but not more than that. Actually Liverpool really only need one player and that is somebody to partner Torres. Rafa missed great chance to fill that void when he failed to sign Arshavin(apparently Liverpool's interest was what took Arsenal so long to finish a deal with Zenit). He has come to regret that 4 times in 90 mins already last season. If I were Rafa I'd be closely looking at a certain Ruud Van Nistelrooy's situation at Madrid. He might be a good bargain. So might Michael Owen or Trezeguet and even perhaps a look at Saviola. What's clear is that there will be no Torres like signings this year. It'll have to be bargain shopping. I'm also happy Liverpool didn't sign Gareth Barry. He's crap and nowhere near as good as the pass-master Alonso.
PS. A post after a long time. Feels good to write about football.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
The Privilege of Teaching
This year I had the privilege of being a TA for two UG courses. Data Structures and Algorithms. I am a rather unusual case. I have not had the best academic records through my UG curriculum, but have developed pretty well albeit quite late. I think the rigors of the dual degree program forced me to work very hard and improve myself. This TAship has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my stay at IIIT till date. How well I have done is for UG groups A1 and A2 to decide.
I must admit I was very nervous and rather skeptical of my abilities to teach what could be considered IIIT's premier course for UGs. A few words from K.Srinathan before the first lab I took gave me a lot of confidence. Piyush also told me not to worry and it would turn out to be just fine. To walk into a class with 60~70 people staring at you, waiting for you to give the class direction is a daunting task. The fear of screwing up or worse teaching something wrong was a very big concern for me in the first few classes. I used to prepare for 3~4 hours for a lab and perhaps even more for a tutorial (I later discontinued tutorials for my group but more on that some other time). I think this year has been particularly challenging for the TA's as there is a new curriculum, and a lot of new topics were taught in the DS course. On some occasions, some of the things we were teaching was stuff we had not studied. This made for an even tenser situation. However something Abhilash said, calmed me down at the time, quite a bit. He said that no matter who the TA is and how good or bad they do, the DS course is always kind of on auto pilot. At the time i was relieved as I was assured that UG1 can be sand boxed from any failures that I may be responsible for. In hindsight I find that to be sad because, I believe that TA's can have a fundamental contribution to the course and despite having some wonderful talents among the 3/4/5 years if we are not able to influence a DS course it is a tragedy.
In my opinion, that was not the case. During each lab session I found myself challenged by some or the other student who wanted to implement a particular DS or solve a problem in a completely new way. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by how good a lot of ug1 students are. The way they responded to the last assignment we posted was extraordinary. I was also very impressed by the the assignments Abhilash produced. The assignment set this year was in my opinion was one of the best sets produced during my stay. GG Abhilash.
Over the years, I have always believed that knowing a subject well enough is necessary and sufficient to be a good teacher. Based on my experiences this year, I can confirm that the sufficiency case is false. To be a good teacher requires a unique ability to communicate and get through to people. My experiences have helped me develop a new found admiration for those people who are blessed with the ability to teach well. It is indeed a rare gift.
I hope I do get to interact with UG1 again. It is hard work, but it's also an unmatched satisfaction. To work with some of the best and the brightest truly is a privilege.
I must admit I was very nervous and rather skeptical of my abilities to teach what could be considered IIIT's premier course for UGs. A few words from K.Srinathan before the first lab I took gave me a lot of confidence. Piyush also told me not to worry and it would turn out to be just fine. To walk into a class with 60~70 people staring at you, waiting for you to give the class direction is a daunting task. The fear of screwing up or worse teaching something wrong was a very big concern for me in the first few classes. I used to prepare for 3~4 hours for a lab and perhaps even more for a tutorial (I later discontinued tutorials for my group but more on that some other time). I think this year has been particularly challenging for the TA's as there is a new curriculum, and a lot of new topics were taught in the DS course. On some occasions, some of the things we were teaching was stuff we had not studied. This made for an even tenser situation. However something Abhilash said, calmed me down at the time, quite a bit. He said that no matter who the TA is and how good or bad they do, the DS course is always kind of on auto pilot. At the time i was relieved as I was assured that UG1 can be sand boxed from any failures that I may be responsible for. In hindsight I find that to be sad because, I believe that TA's can have a fundamental contribution to the course and despite having some wonderful talents among the 3/4/5 years if we are not able to influence a DS course it is a tragedy.
In my opinion, that was not the case. During each lab session I found myself challenged by some or the other student who wanted to implement a particular DS or solve a problem in a completely new way. I must say that I was pleasantly surprised by how good a lot of ug1 students are. The way they responded to the last assignment we posted was extraordinary. I was also very impressed by the the assignments Abhilash produced. The assignment set this year was in my opinion was one of the best sets produced during my stay. GG Abhilash.
Over the years, I have always believed that knowing a subject well enough is necessary and sufficient to be a good teacher. Based on my experiences this year, I can confirm that the sufficiency case is false. To be a good teacher requires a unique ability to communicate and get through to people. My experiences have helped me develop a new found admiration for those people who are blessed with the ability to teach well. It is indeed a rare gift.
I hope I do get to interact with UG1 again. It is hard work, but it's also an unmatched satisfaction. To work with some of the best and the brightest truly is a privilege.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Is the desktop dead ?
In recent years I have seen almost everybody buy laptops. People have kind of lost track of what it is to have a desktop and the power it brings to the table(no pun intended). With people spending as much as 55~60K on laptops with crappy CPU's and GPU's and virtually no possibility for any meaningful expansion, I wonder if they are making the right choice. This post is a must read for those people planning to buy new machines over the summer.
So is the desktop dead ? NO NO NO not in your wildest dreams. In 60k you could buy a desktop that can easily outperform the best laptops money can buy for the next 5 years. So what do we put into this PC ? And what does it have to do ? Simple. You need to be able to watch movies, play games and be microsoft proof :O. Here is what I'm putting in.
1. Processor : Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700@ 2.6 GHz : Rs.9,000
2. CPU Cooler : OCZ Vanquisher + Arctic Silver(5gms) : Rs.1,500
3. Motherboard : MSI P6N-SLI-V2 : Rs.5,500
4. Graphics : Nvidia GTX 275(palit): Rs.1,7000
5. Memory : 2x2GB OCZ Gold : Rs.3,000
6. HDD : 2xSeagate 500GB Raid-0 : Rs.6,000
7. Cabinet : Zebronics Antibiotic : Rs.2,150
8. SMPS : CoolerMaster RP 600 : Rs.3,450
9. Optical drive : DVD writer : Rs.1,200
10. KB+Mouse:Cordless Logitech/M$ : Rs.1,500
11. Monitor : Samsung 2233sw - 22" 1080p : Rs.10,000
Grand Total : Rs.60,300 (All these prices are current prices in CTC, Secunderabad)
Some of the stuff put in looks really weird. Let me explain everything.
1. Processor and the 2. Cooler : This desktop is being built for both multimedia and gaming. While a higher clocked dual core will most likely be slightly better at gaming, a quad core would decimate it in any sort of multimedia apps. For those wondering what arctic silver is, it's a cooling compound - that shiny paste you find on the back of the CPU cooler. Arctic silver is damn effective. My laptop's CPU was getting really hot. I had idle temperatures of around 61'C. I purchased a 3 gram AS pack and opened my laptop up and put it on. Now the idle temperature is 36'C. Awesome!! So a OCZ cooler and Arctic Silver will easily allow you to overclock the processor to about 3.2 GHz. I think that's as far as you can go on air based cooling. @ 3.2GHz you can pretty much remove any significant CPU bottlenecks.
3. Motherboard : Why an SLI board and that too such an old one ? Well this board is the best bang for the buck. Intel boards with the same features are just as expensive. I went for this board as it has a better RAID controller and an extra PCIe slot . And I have something special planned for this slot. Stick in a low end card like a GeForce 8600 and use it for PhysX or CUDA :)
4. Graphics : The GTX 275 is about 6% slower then the GTX 285 and costs a good 7K less. Plus the power consumption is about 40% lower. The 275 beats all the cards in the same price range i.e. the GTX260 and the Radeon4890 by quite some distance. This pick was a no brainer.
5. Memory : You really don't need more then 4 Gigs of memory for anything. OCZ modules are a bit expensive but they have lifetime warranty and if you are interested, can be easy to overclock!
6. HDD : I used two HDD's instead of one, so that I could set them up in raid-0. The effective throughput is at least 60% higher. So if you get 70 MB/s transfer rates with one disk, a Raid-0 configuration would give you about 110 MB/s. It means significantly lower load times, and faster seeking in those high def videos that masked-menace downloads :). If you share a lot of data in DC++, your HDD's will experience lesser wear and tear as well.
7. Cabinet : With a GTX275 and CPU cooling you need to have a large and well ventilated cabinet. The zebronics antibiotic has 3 large fans, a temperature display and loads of front ports. Plus did I mention it's got custom lighting and it's transparent :O
8. SMPS : Most people never buy an SMPS seperately. But his desktop needs one. A GTX275, Overclocked quad core, SLI motherboard, and 2 HDDS need a lot of power. Coolermaster's SMPS' are awesome and 600W insures you against all future GPU/SLI upgrades
9. Optical drive : Buy whatever you want. It's all the same shit.
10. KB+mouse : You could buy a cheaper option but I like using cordless stuff.
11. Monitor : This was a no brainer. The Samsung 2233SW is a 22 inch full HD (1920x1080) monitor. DCR 15000:1 and response time of 5ms. And it looks really really nice. It's a steal at it's price.
I am missing a speaker set :( I could save Rs.600 by buying ordinary RAM Modules, Save about Rs.500 by buying a 1TB instead of 2x500 GB, save about Rs.700 by buying a cheaper KB/Mouse combo, and about Rs.1500 by using a cheap local SMPS. That's about Rs.3300, enough to get you a creative 5.1 system. In my opinion - Buy the speakers later. It's not worth making any of those sacrifices. Thats pretty much it. In 60K you get a machine that
# Plays all present days games @ Full settings @ 1920x1080 >60 FPS (except crysis@35fps)
# Watch Full HD movies on a 22inch screen
# Has expansion space to put in another GFX card/4GB RAM/4 more HDD's
# And puts the current best machine in CVIT to shame (This is the best part :P)
So do you you still want to spend 60,000 on a laptop that's going to be a useless old piece of plastic, incapable of running anything other then PAC-man in 2.5 years time ??
PS. Desktop Prices fall @ 1% every month. By the time you get back from your holidays, this same system would cost 57,500. You could get yourself speakers with the extra cash :)
So is the desktop dead ? NO NO NO not in your wildest dreams. In 60k you could buy a desktop that can easily outperform the best laptops money can buy for the next 5 years. So what do we put into this PC ? And what does it have to do ? Simple. You need to be able to watch movies, play games and be microsoft proof :O. Here is what I'm putting in.
1. Processor : Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700@ 2.6 GHz : Rs.9,000
2. CPU Cooler : OCZ Vanquisher + Arctic Silver(5gms) : Rs.1,500
3. Motherboard : MSI P6N-SLI-V2 : Rs.5,500
4. Graphics : Nvidia GTX 275(palit): Rs.1,7000
5. Memory : 2x2GB OCZ Gold : Rs.3,000
6. HDD : 2xSeagate 500GB Raid-0 : Rs.6,000
7. Cabinet : Zebronics Antibiotic : Rs.2,150
8. SMPS : CoolerMaster RP 600 : Rs.3,450
9. Optical drive : DVD writer : Rs.1,200
10. KB+Mouse:Cordless Logitech/M$ : Rs.1,500
11. Monitor : Samsung 2233sw - 22" 1080p : Rs.10,000
Grand Total : Rs.60,300 (All these prices are current prices in CTC, Secunderabad)
Some of the stuff put in looks really weird. Let me explain everything.
1. Processor and the 2. Cooler : This desktop is being built for both multimedia and gaming. While a higher clocked dual core will most likely be slightly better at gaming, a quad core would decimate it in any sort of multimedia apps. For those wondering what arctic silver is, it's a cooling compound - that shiny paste you find on the back of the CPU cooler. Arctic silver is damn effective. My laptop's CPU was getting really hot. I had idle temperatures of around 61'C. I purchased a 3 gram AS pack and opened my laptop up and put it on. Now the idle temperature is 36'C. Awesome!! So a OCZ cooler and Arctic Silver will easily allow you to overclock the processor to about 3.2 GHz. I think that's as far as you can go on air based cooling. @ 3.2GHz you can pretty much remove any significant CPU bottlenecks.
3. Motherboard : Why an SLI board and that too such an old one ? Well this board is the best bang for the buck. Intel boards with the same features are just as expensive. I went for this board as it has a better RAID controller and an extra PCIe slot . And I have something special planned for this slot. Stick in a low end card like a GeForce 8600 and use it for PhysX or CUDA :)
4. Graphics : The GTX 275 is about 6% slower then the GTX 285 and costs a good 7K less. Plus the power consumption is about 40% lower. The 275 beats all the cards in the same price range i.e. the GTX260 and the Radeon4890 by quite some distance. This pick was a no brainer.
5. Memory : You really don't need more then 4 Gigs of memory for anything. OCZ modules are a bit expensive but they have lifetime warranty and if you are interested, can be easy to overclock!
6. HDD : I used two HDD's instead of one, so that I could set them up in raid-0. The effective throughput is at least 60% higher. So if you get 70 MB/s transfer rates with one disk, a Raid-0 configuration would give you about 110 MB/s. It means significantly lower load times, and faster seeking in those high def videos that masked-menace downloads :). If you share a lot of data in DC++, your HDD's will experience lesser wear and tear as well.
7. Cabinet : With a GTX275 and CPU cooling you need to have a large and well ventilated cabinet. The zebronics antibiotic has 3 large fans, a temperature display and loads of front ports. Plus did I mention it's got custom lighting and it's transparent :O
8. SMPS : Most people never buy an SMPS seperately. But his desktop needs one. A GTX275, Overclocked quad core, SLI motherboard, and 2 HDDS need a lot of power. Coolermaster's SMPS' are awesome and 600W insures you against all future GPU/SLI upgrades
9. Optical drive : Buy whatever you want. It's all the same shit.
10. KB+mouse : You could buy a cheaper option but I like using cordless stuff.
11. Monitor : This was a no brainer. The Samsung 2233SW is a 22 inch full HD (1920x1080) monitor. DCR 15000:1 and response time of 5ms. And it looks really really nice. It's a steal at it's price.
I am missing a speaker set :( I could save Rs.600 by buying ordinary RAM Modules, Save about Rs.500 by buying a 1TB instead of 2x500 GB, save about Rs.700 by buying a cheaper KB/Mouse combo, and about Rs.1500 by using a cheap local SMPS. That's about Rs.3300, enough to get you a creative 5.1 system. In my opinion - Buy the speakers later. It's not worth making any of those sacrifices. Thats pretty much it. In 60K you get a machine that
# Plays all present days games @ Full settings @ 1920x1080 >60 FPS (except crysis@35fps)
# Watch Full HD movies on a 22inch screen
# Has expansion space to put in another GFX card/4GB RAM/4 more HDD's
# And puts the current best machine in CVIT to shame (This is the best part :P)
So do you you still want to spend 60,000 on a laptop that's going to be a useless old piece of plastic, incapable of running anything other then PAC-man in 2.5 years time ??
PS. Desktop Prices fall @ 1% every month. By the time you get back from your holidays, this same system would cost 57,500. You could get yourself speakers with the extra cash :)
Monday, April 13, 2009
Why the three political fronts can kiss my vote goodbye
I read an interesting post by Sukesh about who he would vote for and why. I have thought about writing a post about the same for quite some time but somehow it didn't come along.
I will not vote for the Congress(UPA) because
I hate their minority appeasement crap. India is a country with a majority Hindu population. I think India should learn to live with it. There are minorities all over the world, but nowhere is there such a hue and cry as their is in India about them. We talk so much about minorities and caste and stuff like that, that even if a person wants to forget that he is a minority or from a lower caste ,every election year the likes of the Congress and the BSP go out of the way to remind people that they are downtrodden and neglected even if they aren't. The congress has announced loads of scholarships for minorities and backward castes. Why should a upper class person not be eligible for them? Poverty is the same for everybody: Hindu or Muslim, upper class or backward class. Clearly our present government seems to have forgotten that. Also the UPA government has perhaps done irreversible damage to the IIT/IIM system by opening the floodgates to all sorts of undeserving people. Plus the way the new IIT's have been setup and are functioning has to be a scandal. Pulling shit like this pisses me off to the core.
I will not vote for the BJP(NDA) because
Whenever and wherever the BJP comes to power we are suddenly faced with morons like the ones that vandalised a pub in Mangalore and attacked women. I have no idea what divine right, the BJP and it's more hardcore right wing elements feel they have, to be the custodians of Indian Culture. We have had such incidents all over India where couples in a park were attacked and every year we are bored to death by the antics of these so called "Standard bearers of Indian Culture" on valentines day. I wonder where Indian culture allows mobs to beat up women and young couples. I wish that these people were sent some more pink chaddis every year. Honestly these antics of the BJP's more orthodox parts scare the living hell out of me and is perhaps the only reason why most people do not vote for the BJP. Educated young India doesn't care about Ram-Raj. They want jobs and housing and health care and education. Not temples.
I will not vote for the left(the third Front) because
I am personally really scared of communists. Worldwide communists have this policy of "you are either with us or against us". Commies will argue otherwise but history will tell you that once the communists have got control of a country they never let go. They then set out to mercilessly kill any opposition. Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Kim Jong Il's North Korea and Castro's Cuba(the official line is Socialism) are all fine examples.In India 30 years of communist rule in West Bengal has reduced a state once the Jewel of India to underdeveloped, corrupt state where a company cannot setup shop without being hassled by the goonda like trade unions. The situation in Bengal is so bad that unless you are a proper CPI(M) cadre member you can virtually kiss any sort of government employment goodbye. The shit in that state runs much deeper and is a topic for a book. Their anti-West, anti-Globalisation stances are at times just for the sake of it. Their behaviour on the nuclear deal was also rather immature. The bottom line: I don't want to pay any taxes to a communist regime.
And while I am at it, I would like to drop a line for the Honorable member of Parliament from Hyderabad Mr. Asaduddin Owaisi from the Majlis-e-Ittihaddul Muslimeen(MIM) whose offices are a stones throw away from my house. During the Post nuclear deal trust vote Owaisi sahab said that he would vote for the UPA govt. as he would vote for the party that best helped the uplift of Muslims. Well Mr.Owaisi I thought that you would vote for the Govt. that would best help in the uplift of your constituency at the very least. Seeing as that you don't care about the Non-Muslims around even in your constituency, you can kiss my vote goodbye too.
Will I vote for the Lok Satta or the TDP or even an Independent ? Well the answer is an emphatic NO. I tried 4 times to get a Voter ID made. Alas all those attempts failed. I have no voter ID and have no mention in the Electoral rolls. Whats more interesting is that my parents names too have vanished from the electoral rolls. Looks like the Election commission of India has decided for me that my vote really doesn't matter. I wish I could find those bickering Election Commissioners and give them the walloping they deserve for leaving me and perhaps many more lakhs of legitimate voters our of the rolls.
I will not vote for the Congress(UPA) because
I hate their minority appeasement crap. India is a country with a majority Hindu population. I think India should learn to live with it. There are minorities all over the world, but nowhere is there such a hue and cry as their is in India about them. We talk so much about minorities and caste and stuff like that, that even if a person wants to forget that he is a minority or from a lower caste ,every election year the likes of the Congress and the BSP go out of the way to remind people that they are downtrodden and neglected even if they aren't. The congress has announced loads of scholarships for minorities and backward castes. Why should a upper class person not be eligible for them? Poverty is the same for everybody: Hindu or Muslim, upper class or backward class. Clearly our present government seems to have forgotten that. Also the UPA government has perhaps done irreversible damage to the IIT/IIM system by opening the floodgates to all sorts of undeserving people. Plus the way the new IIT's have been setup and are functioning has to be a scandal. Pulling shit like this pisses me off to the core.
I will not vote for the BJP(NDA) because
Whenever and wherever the BJP comes to power we are suddenly faced with morons like the ones that vandalised a pub in Mangalore and attacked women. I have no idea what divine right, the BJP and it's more hardcore right wing elements feel they have, to be the custodians of Indian Culture. We have had such incidents all over India where couples in a park were attacked and every year we are bored to death by the antics of these so called "Standard bearers of Indian Culture" on valentines day. I wonder where Indian culture allows mobs to beat up women and young couples. I wish that these people were sent some more pink chaddis every year. Honestly these antics of the BJP's more orthodox parts scare the living hell out of me and is perhaps the only reason why most people do not vote for the BJP. Educated young India doesn't care about Ram-Raj. They want jobs and housing and health care and education. Not temples.
I will not vote for the left(the third Front) because
I am personally really scared of communists. Worldwide communists have this policy of "you are either with us or against us". Commies will argue otherwise but history will tell you that once the communists have got control of a country they never let go. They then set out to mercilessly kill any opposition. Stalin's Russia, Mao's China, Kim Jong Il's North Korea and Castro's Cuba(the official line is Socialism) are all fine examples.In India 30 years of communist rule in West Bengal has reduced a state once the Jewel of India to underdeveloped, corrupt state where a company cannot setup shop without being hassled by the goonda like trade unions. The situation in Bengal is so bad that unless you are a proper CPI(M) cadre member you can virtually kiss any sort of government employment goodbye. The shit in that state runs much deeper and is a topic for a book. Their anti-West, anti-Globalisation stances are at times just for the sake of it. Their behaviour on the nuclear deal was also rather immature. The bottom line: I don't want to pay any taxes to a communist regime.
And while I am at it, I would like to drop a line for the Honorable member of Parliament from Hyderabad Mr. Asaduddin Owaisi from the Majlis-e-Ittihaddul Muslimeen(MIM) whose offices are a stones throw away from my house. During the Post nuclear deal trust vote Owaisi sahab said that he would vote for the UPA govt. as he would vote for the party that best helped the uplift of Muslims. Well Mr.Owaisi I thought that you would vote for the Govt. that would best help in the uplift of your constituency at the very least. Seeing as that you don't care about the Non-Muslims around even in your constituency, you can kiss my vote goodbye too.
Will I vote for the Lok Satta or the TDP or even an Independent ? Well the answer is an emphatic NO. I tried 4 times to get a Voter ID made. Alas all those attempts failed. I have no voter ID and have no mention in the Electoral rolls. Whats more interesting is that my parents names too have vanished from the electoral rolls. Looks like the Election commission of India has decided for me that my vote really doesn't matter. I wish I could find those bickering Election Commissioners and give them the walloping they deserve for leaving me and perhaps many more lakhs of legitimate voters our of the rolls.
Too much spare time!
Inspiron 1705e, shot on location at Zenwalker's room by Gaganpreet. All laptops appearing here were older then one year and were out of warranty at the time of filming.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
The one with the horrible mails
I was reading this today and was left with a really big WTF look on my face. I then thought of putting up some awesome(er) mails to remind the alumni what they are missing out on :P
Mail 1
Sub:[Students] Reg:Kriya in yoga tomorrow morning
blah blah blah ...
But tomorrow, sir is going to teach new technique in yoga that is "kriya"
means cleaning of abdomen and stomach by drinking a bucket of water.
It will be, first driking of water as much as you can and doing some yog
and leaving the water out and again drinkng water like that the cycle will
be repeted till white water comes out of us. it will be nice experience.
blah blah blah ...
Mail 2
Sub: True Freedom
Too long to post here. Yet another one of those "Huh!! you talking to me ....WTF are you talking about, please don't put me through this, no stop ......noooooooooooo" reaction evoking mails
Mail 3
Sub: NOT IMPORTANT
The background- 2 people were "exchanging ideas" on a SE assignment, and copied their drafts from a IM window. Unfortunately they also copied their chat by mistake and uploaded it. Their transgression was made public to the batch in a mail by the TA. Original post by BullzY
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sub: A submission
From: The perennial Software Engg. TA
Mx. X: thr
Mr. X is busy.
Mr. X: ?
Mr. Y: haan
Mr. X: abe idhar aaja ek assnmnt mil gaya hai
Mr. Y: abey ek assnmnt hai mere paas dede wo
Mr. X: usko edit kar dete hain jaldi
Mr. Y: mix kar doonga manish: tym ni bacha
Mr. Y: abey mixing aasaan hai rather editing
Mr. X: thik
well, mr. X and Mr. Y tried to act smart. But forgot that last minute work
makes us more prone to errors + makes us answer questions that we never
asked.
Now, Mr. X and Mr. Y, you know who you are and we also know who you are.
So both are requested to meet me asap before we decide to give a F grade.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
and when the TA sent the mail, the TA forgot to remove the attachment that X and Y had originally sent them, consequently revealing the identities of X and Y. Well... we do learn from our TA's don't we :O
PS.1 This post was inspired by sarika's last 2 posts with some awesome mails!! Way to go BullzY
PS2. Naming posts like friends episodes in completely legal.
Mail 1
Sub:[Students] Reg:Kriya in yoga tomorrow morning
blah blah blah ...
But tomorrow, sir is going to teach new technique in yoga that is "kriya"
means cleaning of abdomen and stomach by drinking a bucket of water.
It will be, first driking of water as much as you can and doing some yog
and leaving the water out and again drinkng water like that the cycle will
be repeted till white water comes out of us. it will be nice experience.
blah blah blah ...
Mail 2
Sub: True Freedom
Too long to post here. Yet another one of those "Huh!! you talking to me ....WTF are you talking about, please don't put me through this, no stop ......noooooooooooo" reaction evoking mails
Mail 3
Sub: NOT IMPORTANT
Dear BTP PROJECT STUDENTS ( e.g. Arpit Jain )
Today, we have faculty meeting from 3 PM onwards.
Thus I will be in the LTRC conference room from
3 PM to atleast 4.30 PM.
YOU CAN LEAVE THE BTP REPORTS IN MY
MAIL BOX ON THE GROUND FLOOR
MAIL BOX ON THE GROUND FLOOR
I am on LEAVE TOMORROW i.e. 5th March.
WIth Regards,
XXXXXXXXXX
I had to have one mail from XXXXXXXXX. He has been in scorching form this sem. And yes Arpit was indeed a fine example for many days after that mail :)
Mail 4
XXXXXXXXXX
I had to have one mail from XXXXXXXXX. He has been in scorching form this sem. And yes Arpit was indeed a fine example for many days after that mail :)
Mail 4
The background- 2 people were "exchanging ideas" on a SE assignment, and copied their drafts from a IM window. Unfortunately they also copied their chat by mistake and uploaded it. Their transgression was made public to the batch in a mail by the TA. Original post by BullzY
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sub: A submission
From: The perennial Software Engg. TA
Mx. X: thr
Mr. X is busy.
Mr. X: ?
Mr. Y: haan
Mr. X: abe idhar aaja ek assnmnt mil gaya hai
Mr. Y: abey ek assnmnt hai mere paas dede wo
Mr. X: usko edit kar dete hain jaldi
Mr. Y: mix kar doonga manish: tym ni bacha
Mr. Y: abey mixing aasaan hai rather editing
Mr. X: thik
well, mr. X and Mr. Y tried to act smart. But forgot that last minute work
makes us more prone to errors + makes us answer questions that we never
asked.
Now, Mr. X and Mr. Y, you know who you are and we also know who you are.
So both are requested to meet me asap before we decide to give a F grade.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
and when the TA sent the mail, the TA forgot to remove the attachment that X and Y had originally sent them, consequently revealing the identities of X and Y. Well... we do learn from our TA's don't we :O
PS.1 This post was inspired by sarika's last 2 posts with some awesome mails!! Way to go BullzY
PS2. Naming posts like friends episodes in completely legal.
Monday, March 30, 2009
The one with the arbit things
I have not written a post since god knows how long. I could blame this on the standard guinea pig for all postponed tasks: research, but I will not. Yes I'm lazy.
I have been at home for the last 3 days and it gave me some time to catch up with the news. I think it's become fashionable for politicians to get arrested and have a shit load of cases filed against them. Also I find most political parties to be lame. I am also really pissed with the TDP spamming my phone inbox with loads of unsolicited SMS's. Grrrrr
I will now step into more pleasant territory :D Liv 4-0 Madrid, ManU(re) 1-4 Liverpool, Liverpool 5-0 Villa. w0000000000t!!! I must admit I have never seen Liverpool play this well. I must also admit that I have never seen Madrid or ManU(re) or Villa play that bad. I think Benitez is trying to build a team that will outdo everybody just on brute physical presence and pace. Not a bad ploy. I just hope Villa can get something out of their ManU(re) game so that the league really opens up.
While at home I have been downloading DVD rips of SouthPark. It is the most awesome series I have ever watched. Watching it in high quality all over again is great fun. (Yes ORB, you can take all 12 seasons in DVD quality, in exchange for your PS3 :P)
I also played my last competitive role in the IIIT football team. I have been part of 2 great football teams. Firstly our batch team and secondly the 2007 IIIT team. It has ben awesmoe to play with talented people like Raja, K.Rahul, S.Rahul, Shukla, Kochar,PP, Rakesh,Kabir, Abhilash etc.. I will miss playing with you fellows. It's also good that the present 2nd years like Adhyan,Yasir and Parikshit have been playing in the college team for some time now. I hope Satish can lead them to better things next year.
PS1. I wrote my first research paper this year !!!!
PS2. The new sysadmins are being kept really busy by the server room staff :O
PS3. I loved Button and Barrichello finishing on the Podium for BrawnGP. New life to F1
ps4. I hope Sachin scores some 2nd innings runs today
I have been at home for the last 3 days and it gave me some time to catch up with the news. I think it's become fashionable for politicians to get arrested and have a shit load of cases filed against them. Also I find most political parties to be lame. I am also really pissed with the TDP spamming my phone inbox with loads of unsolicited SMS's. Grrrrr
I will now step into more pleasant territory :D Liv 4-0 Madrid, ManU(re) 1-4 Liverpool, Liverpool 5-0 Villa. w0000000000t!!! I must admit I have never seen Liverpool play this well. I must also admit that I have never seen Madrid or ManU(re) or Villa play that bad. I think Benitez is trying to build a team that will outdo everybody just on brute physical presence and pace. Not a bad ploy. I just hope Villa can get something out of their ManU(re) game so that the league really opens up.
While at home I have been downloading DVD rips of SouthPark. It is the most awesome series I have ever watched. Watching it in high quality all over again is great fun. (Yes ORB, you can take all 12 seasons in DVD quality, in exchange for your PS3 :P)
I also played my last competitive role in the IIIT football team. I have been part of 2 great football teams. Firstly our batch team and secondly the 2007 IIIT team. It has ben awesmoe to play with talented people like Raja, K.Rahul, S.Rahul, Shukla, Kochar,PP, Rakesh,Kabir, Abhilash etc.. I will miss playing with you fellows. It's also good that the present 2nd years like Adhyan,Yasir and Parikshit have been playing in the college team for some time now. I hope Satish can lead them to better things next year.
PS1. I wrote my first research paper this year !!!!
PS2. The new sysadmins are being kept really busy by the server room staff :O
PS3. I loved Button and Barrichello finishing on the Podium for BrawnGP. New life to F1
ps4. I hope Sachin scores some 2nd innings runs today
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