Flyte - A review

A very common explanation for piracy in India is that things are too expensive. Movies, songs software everything. Aside from being expensive things are also rather painful to buy. Especially any digital content. Flipkart, the Indian e-tail giant launched Flyte, it's i-tunes like store some time ago. I've used i-tunes sparingly but not any other form of digital content except for games ( with the excellent steam).

Flipkart requires you to sign in with a Flipkart account or it gives you the option to sign in with a Google or Facebook ID, the minimum one would expect from a decent website. Buying tracks one by one is rather cumbersome. Flipkart suggests buying a prepaid wallet. You essentially top up this wallet using a Credit/Debid card or netbanking and use it for one click shopping ( it actually is rather one click shopping )

There is a Flyte app available for Android and iPhone. It's kind of like a music player + content manager. Not bad but not great either. It's reasonably smooth and usable but most people are going to prefer using their stock music players.

Interface

You can grab your songs off the website or through the the Flyte app on your smartphone. Browsing through the smartphone app can be a bit underwhelming. There is hardly any way to see a larger catalog of songs. The website though much better still lags the i-tunes setup by some distance. Right now Flipkart offers a rather spartan view of songs by album. The biggest drawback with their interface is that it doesn't show songs that you already own. Not an issue when you are starting out, but after some time when you have a reasonable collection, it's very easy to accidentally buy a song again. Not cool. Also offered is a Flyte download manager that is quite useless.

The Quality of the the songs

The quality of the tracks themselves is good. I downloaded tracks encoded at 320Kbps. Other options include 64Kbps and 128Kbps. IMHO 64Kbps bit rates are kind of crap and I can't imagine anybody downloading them unless they are desperately stuck on a mobile connection for some reason. Encoding was good, album art was appropriate and none of the mp3 tags were screwed up. I know this is trivial stuff but nobody usually manages to do this correctly. Usually 5 min songs take anywhere between 12 and 15 MB. Pretty neat stuff. Here is where my second major gripe with Flipkart comes in. You can download a song a maximum of 4 times. Now I don't know what prompted this. Perhaps high hosting bills ? I could understand this limit if these were songs encoded in 120MB FLAC files but 10MB a song hardly puts a dent in your hosting bills. The only time somebody might bother re-syncing their phones is when they move to a new device, but anybody with even a reasonably large collection would rather do a manual sync than download everything. File hosting is not that expensive. Just Flipkart being lazy.

Pricing

While I'm not unhappy with the pricing, I think a trick Flipkart has missed is to price everything at a uniform rate. One of the most unnoticed but stand out features is the simplicity with which iTunes prices its songs. $0.99 a song. I think if Flipkart took a leaf out of that book and priced every song at Rs.10 instead of it's strange pricing of Rs.6, Rs.9 and Rs.15, it would be much better. From the pricing it's clearly visible that newer and more popular songs tend to be priced at Rs.15, older and popular stuff at Rs.9 and the rest at Rs.6. That wreaks of opportunism and leaves a bad taste. The fact that songs within an album are priced differently is also not cool. Uniform prices would be much better for them in terms of maintaining stuff, sales and also user perception. 

Competing with iTunes ?

Flipkart has done well enough in the Indian e-tail space to make Amazon think twice about Indian operations. Their growth has been impressive too. However despite what I feel is a huge amount of effort they have missed a lot of things that they need to do to put iTunes in the same position as Amazon.

First off Flipkart have completely neglected the fact that people tend to sync music to phones, tablets, MP3 players and even other computers. An iTunes type software that manages a music library, syncs across devices, displays content and plays music is a must have. Providing a platform independent Media content manager would go a long way in solidifying Flipkarts position.

Secondly they have to get the whole pricing bit right. 15 for good songs and 9 and 6 for the older stuff seems like a rip off. 

Third they have to get the marketing of it right. That means handing out Flyte credit with any phones or tabs or any other media devices they sell. The hardest step with anything like this is getting people to use the whole ecosystem for the first time. Like Amazon eventually found out, selling content only doesnt always cute it. They made the Kindle and now with the whole Kindle fire series they've built up a whole ecosystem for content delivery. That's perhaps a step too far for Flipkart. But eventually they do need to get there. Move up or move out.

The only thing going for them right now is that nobody in India is doing this stuff. their first mover advantage is massive and if they do this right, they could win India, the worlds next big market.

Silverware or Empty Vessels ?

It was 1999 and football was starting to be broadcast in India. I never liked watching football and kind of found it boring. This was after all the peak of our obsession with cricket. Sometime after India's dismal world cup, I was randomly browsing channels and happened to switch to ESPN. A football match had just started. It was an older match being shown as part of some classics series. I thought - what the hell let me see this match through and see what all that fuss is about. about 100 minutes later, I had experienced one of my best sports viewing moments. In case you were wondering what the game was it's embedded below.

It was my footballing birth. I eventually found more info on Liverpool and read about Shankly and all the league titles and the European cups and Hillsborough ( I used altavista.com !! ) and all the other pieces history. This was also the time when Steven Gerrard and Michael Owen and Jamie Carragher were on their way into the first team. It was a club with history, with young players making it big. It epitomized everything  good about football. I couldn't be anything but a Liverpool fan. It's been an emotional roller coaster ever after. We haven't had the luxury of buying whoever we wanted to, but we've chugged along and fought for some memorable wins and silverware. Arsenal and Manchester United were similar teams. Maybe a different football match on a different day and I may have supported one of them. I guess it's destiny. But all three clubs were gritty, hungry and ambitious and they were and still are doing it the hard way.

Which brings me to the two modern day irritants. Chelsea and Manchester City. Both clubs have virtually no limits as to who they can buy. They are never constrained in the transfer market by where they finished in the league. Now with Manchester City, as there was with Chelsea, is a sense of inevitability that they will retain the league and eventually be champions of Europe. While money doesn't translate into immediate success, the ridiculous kinds being put into these clubs facilitates success sooner rather than later. Sport is one of the very few areas where success must be earned not bought. When I see the likes of Man City, Chelsea and PSG, I feel sad for the rest of the football clubs who know that no matter how good their infrastructure and academies and coaches and first team are it's just a matter of time before they fall behind. I wonder how a Chelsea or Manchester City fan ( and I mean specifically those outside the UK with no obvious ties to the clubs ) can feel proud of their clubs successes. After all who are we kidding. Sure the players in question might have earned it, but the club as an entity has had no role in that success. Behind it all is some rich guy indulging a childhood fantasy of playing FIFA football manager with unlimited cash. It kind of undermines the whole point of forming associations and clubs and ultimately the spirit of the game.

Even if Liverpool were relegated to the championship for a decade, I'd be a Liverpool supporter.Tomorrow if Abramovic or Sheikh Mansour bolted, leaving their clubs to live a mortal existence, I'm pretty sure all the newly anointed Chelsea and Man City supporters would be gone with the wind. That would never happen to Man Utd or Arsenal or Liverpool or even Spurs. I just don't get how Man City supporters can be ecstatic at the sight of 4 or 5 Ex Arsenal players starting a game for them. And as Malaga, Portsmouth and Rangers have recently found out, the sudden withdrawal of an uber rich benefactor is the prelude to what is surely a gruesome gutting of the clubs assets and players.

I do not have anything specific against City or Chelsea. I would have written the same thing had it been any other club like say Villa or Sunderland or anybody else trying to buy their way to success. Spurs and more recently Newcastle have shown that it's not about money, that good old scouting and coaching and team work can also get you to the top.

The invisible supernova

I was a rather late adopter of Facebook. I don't think it was till late 2009 did I finally move to Facebook. Three years on, I think the Facebook like button is the most ubiquitous object in cyber space. Almost every website I visit seems to want me to login with Facebook and wants to tell the world that I was there. That's creepy. Very creepy. Not to mention an invasion of privacy. Sure Facebook will tell you they offer privacy controls, but they are clumsy and don't work.

For what it's worth, I have had a much bigger online presence since I started using Facebook. I wasn't very prolific on the previous darling of the masses - Orkut (or MySpace for others). More than knowing about my friends updates, I tended to use Orkut more as a means to get back in touch with people who I thought had lost to the travails of time. Facebook much cleaner than Orkut and although it's kind of crap in the mobile form, it's helped me reconnect with many more people than I ever Imagined. Thank you for that Zuck.

In 2010 Facebook hired their first college graduates from India. One of them also had an offer from Google but passed on it in favor of what he must have felt was an exciting new world at Facebook. Suddenly Facebook was the new Google, and Google was the new Microsoft - a clumsy old corporation. Facebook poached Google's college grad hires, their staff and even their head chef ( ouch!! ). At the time I thought, Ok they are offering a few more dollars, but how exactly does Facebook make money ? Turns out they don't make a lot of it.

Being a dreamy eyed startup and handing out "I'm CEO bitch" visiting cards was a far cry from the rules other companies like Google and Microsoft and Apple were playing by. And then Facebook went public. What followed was a well documented series of gaffes. First lead under writer Morgan Stanley cut earnings outlooks during the IPO roadshow. For those un-initiated with finance, the rough price of a stock is usually some numerical factor multiplied by the companies earnings. Nobody ever cuts earnings during a road show. Then on IPO day Nasdaq botched trading in Facebook. As of today Facebook is valued at $44Billion, down from the awe inspiring $100Billion they started off with. As of close of business, Google, Microsoft and Apple all have enough cash on hand to buy Facebook. Strangely, nothing has changed at Facebook in these months. If anything they've added a few million users, some new features and some more ads.

Last week Knight Capital's computers went haywire and lost the firm more than $450Million. The whole financial world was talking about it. Regulators, bankers and even the politicians. If $450Million is a flash, then the $66Billion of wealth destroyed by the Facebook IPO is a supernova. But it's an invisible supernova, because this time we can't blame the machines.

The gender hide and seek

My parents have recently asked me to think about getting married. Sure, why not, everybody seems to be doing. But I would need to find a girl and I seriously wonder how somebody working at least 60~70 hours a week, would find the time to socialize let alone date. And it got me thinking about something else.

When I was in school my class had about one girl for every guy. As I moved to Junior college that dropped to 4 out of 10 and when I finally reached college it hit about 2 out of 10. Surely it couldn't get any worse. And then I took a job, where that number hit 1 out of 10 (any lower and we'd have to have half a woman! ). Now admittedly I joined a group that did IT for Prop trading, a ferociously demanding and competitive part of the Investment banking world, with long and irregular hours. When I look around and see other groups in my firm or even other firms, they are marginally better but still have same big-Oh (read as "trend" for for those not familiar with computing parlance )  when it comes to the number of women at the workplace. A lot of my friends work in the software industry and though they have slightly more women in their work force it's still nowhere near 50-50.

In school most of the girls I remember were hardworking, sincere and motivated, all qualities you would associate with a successful modern career and not with brash school boys who seemed to eventually have these successful careers. So where did all the women go ? Where did we push them out of mainstream  ?Remember these are women who were from middle class homes. Growing up I don't remember girls being treated differently than guys, not at least till after college and definitely not while they were in college.

 Or maybe there is a secret office where all the women work. I'm sure that's it.

ShArK Food 2.0

I'm Back :)

What's next ?

Yeah Rafa's gone. I feel kind of sad. I don't think it could be called a firing or a sacking. It's got to do with the money available(or rather not available) to buy players.

Liverpool are not the financially strongest club in the EPL. ManU, Chelsea, Arsenal and Man City can all easily outspend Liverpool. One can make an argument that even Spurs have a better purchasing power than Liverpool. I think it makes it that much more impressive that he has done what he has.

2005 - EPL(5th), Champions League (W), League Cup (Runner Up)
2006 - EPL(3rd), Champions League (16),FA Cup(Winners), UEFA Super Cup(Winners)
2007 - EPL(3rd), Champions League (F)
2008 - EPL(4th), Champions League (SF)
2009 - EPL(2nd), Champions League (QF)
2010 - EPL (7th), Champions League (Group), Europa League (SF)

People tend to criticize RB's transfer policies. I think he's brought in quite a few undeniably good players. I would put his transfers into 4 categories.

Good Transfers : Pepe Reina, Glen Johnson, Mascherano, Alonso, Kuyt, Torres, Skrtel, Agger, Ngog, Lucas

so-so Transfers : Babel, Aquilani, Riera,

Oh God what was I thinking : Robbie Keane, Dossena, Voronin, Pennant etc

Why did I let them go Transfers: Crouch, Bellamy, Alonso, Sissoko etc.

The total loss incurred on these players was about £15M. That's really not bad. (He made a profit on selling a lot of players like crouch, bellamy, alonso, gonzalez etc). Considering how other clubs have Purchased and had flops

ManU - Ferdinand(£33), Rooney(£26M), Anderson (£20M), Berbatov (£32M), Hargreaves (£20M), Carrick (£20M), Nani (£18M), Valencia (£16M), Ronaldo(£15) (That's a £200M).

Chelsea - Well Chelsea kind of went ahead and bought a whole new team. Shameless actually. I don't understand why anybody supports the club.

I think Liverpool's big problem was not Rafa, but those clowns in the board room. Dicks and Guillotine (Yeah that's what I call em jokers). In case you are wondering what the hell has happened and how did a stable club get into financial trouble.... Dicks and Guillotine took a £200M loan to buy Liverpool. They haven't been paying the loan off and interest accumulates on that loan @ 14% per annum. That interest clubbed with existing debt has helped reach a grand figure of yes .... hold your breath..... £350M. Under the previous owner David Moores Liverpool had a debt of £80M. I am sure that had David Moores taken a £270M loan to invest in players we would have been much better off. But not to worry. Other clubs are not that well off either. ManUre has debts worth £750M and Chelski has £500M worth of debt.

I am sad to see Rafa leave. Interestingly RB's stay at Liverpool coincides with my stay at IIIT. 2004-2010. Lets see what the world has in store for Rishabh and LFC.

Rebuilding for the next season

Ok. That was a disaster. Can we look ahead please ? If I was Rafa

Out - Riera(5M), Babel (10M), Degen(3M), El-Zahr(2M),Aquilani(15M),Aurelio(free) Total : ~ 35M

In

1. Joe Cole(Chelsea) : He is out of contract at Chelsea. Would fit brilliantly into the Liverpool Starting line-up. Liverpool should pay him what he wants and get him (Replaces Babel)

2. Stephan Wornock (Aston Villa) : Former Liverpool player. Had a really good last season with Villa. Would love to see him back at Anfield. Approx ~ 10M (Replaces Aurelio)

3. Raul (Real Madrid) : Raul doesn't seem to fit in at Madrid. It's hard to make a case for playing Raul when you have Higuain, Benzema and obviously Ronaldo. I don't think Madrid would look for a fee if he wanted to leave. I can see him forming a good partnership with Torres. Raul's game was never based on pace and he's hit 20 goals in the last two seasons before the previous ones.(He scored in his last game but came off injured). Free (Replaces El-Zahr)

4. Martin Petrov (Man City) : Petrov is out of contract at City. I've always liked Petrov and thought his finishing and power were really good. Would be a straight swap for Riera.I think he would make a good squad player. Free (Replaces Riera).

5. Higuain(Real Madrid) : He is good. Higuain has been Madrid's top scorer for some time and his presence has saved them once too often. For some strange reason Madrid seem to want to get rid of him. Liverpool should pull out all the strings to sign him.Torres + Higuain = Lots of Goals. Approx ~ 30M.

I think that all this might end up costing Liverpool as much as 10M, but it's a better shaped squad with a better starting XI and a better bench strength.

So How does Liverpool line up ?

Reina(GK) - Johnson(RB), Carragher (CB), Agger (CB), Warnock (LB) - Mascherano(DM), Joe Cole (LW), Maxi Rodriguez(RW), Gerrard (AM) - Torres, Higuain.

Subs : Random-GK, Skrtel, Lucas, Benayoun, Petrov, Kuyt, Raul.

Squad Players : Another-Random-GK, Kyrgiakos, Insua, Ayala, Shelvey, Ngog, Pacheco, etc etc

Of Donating to IIIT

I was recently reading Halley's blog post on Alumni Funds. He talks about what some other colleges have been doing with their alumni funds and their targets and so on. He goes on to talk about other things like his experiences with the Alumni fund among others. For those who need a bit of a history lesson Halley and I are perhaps the two most vocal critics of the IIIT administration on both the campus and the blogosphere . It's important that one understand what the Alumni fund is doing and why it's very important to contribute to it.

What does the Alumni Fund do ?

Evey year among the many kids who write AIEEE and get ranks good enough to make it to IIIT, there are a few who cannot afford to come here. Yes the fee at IIIT is very high. But this is a group of students who cannot afford to pay for any form of college. They have neither the savings nor any form of holdings to provide a bank guarantee for a loan. This is a situation unimaginable for most of us. But it happens. The Alumni fund is to help such students whom nobody else is willing to help. The money in the alumni funds is given out as a very low interest loan to pay for the tuition fees of such students. This money doesn't go anywhere else. Yes the money does indirectly go to IIIT but they would get that money anyways. If not form this student than another richer one who can afford it.

Why is this important ?

We all know how hard it is to get into IIIT. Some of us took extra time beyond our 12'th class to get year. And whatever one may say , IIIT has provided us with an education, an exposure and above all access to opportunities the rest of the country can only dream of. When a student who clears AIEEE and gets a rank good enough to go to IIIT, drops that idea because of something like money, it is a collective failure on the part of IIIT community to promote merit. In some sense out-pricing somebody from an education is tantamount to reservation; reservation for the rich. As a community IIIT has always put merit on the highest pedestal, and this would be a step in line with those ideas. The situation is best summed up by what Varun Boppana wrote in a mail on our mailing lists.
"It's not like, we are asking money for IIIT..its for some students studying there...for their fees..just to get to where we are..thats it!."

Why this should not be a big deal for IIIT Alumni

Over the last couple of years the average pay of a IIIT graduate has been about 7 LPA. If you gave just 1% of what you earned to the Alumni fund, it would be enough to support all the needy students. 2K3, 2K4, 2K5 and now 2K6 have about 150+ students who have graduated with pretty nice jobs. That's about 600 people. If we assume 25% people contribute that's 150 contributions. If each of these contributions are at least worth Rs.5000 then that would make up 7.5 lakhs, which is almost 75% of what is required to support students. The rest of the money would come from donations from caution money, loans recovered from students and off course contributions from other batches. As a community that has almost 2000 members we should be able to support about 20 students per batch. It's not a big deal. For starters, donate your caution money. Yes BLN might give you a weird mess bill to settle or the office might have something in store for you, but still donate your caution money to the Alumni fund. That will take care of your first year after college. After that it's up to you and your generosity

Don't mix this with other things

Whatever your experiences/opinions of the IIIT administration may be I think it's not relevant to Alumni Fund donations. I have heard classmates say "IIIT never gave a damn about me, so why should I ?". Well, donating to the Alumni fund is about helping fellow students. Donating to the Alumni Fund, does not imply you are okay-ing whatever is happening in college. Rather, it shows your concern for IIIT and that what happens here is still important to you. In some sense you continue to remain a stakeholder long after passing out. And it's the right thing to do, you know it :)

You can donate here

My $0.02 on IIIT's new admissions Policy

I like certain things in this years admissions process. On the top of my "I Like" list is the admissions to the Dual Degree program for people who have cleared the Math/Informatics Olympiads at the national level. I don't know how many people will apply as most people in this category get admitted to some IIT anyways. For any student who attends a national camp at the Math/Physics/Informatics Olympiads we should
1. Allow them to join any course they want at IIIT
2. Give them a 100% tuition fee wavier
3. Have no limit on the number of such students we admit.
Whatever financial implications this may have will be more than made up for in other ways. This might mean that we would get to see more people like I.V. Aprameya Rao and Anshuman Singh and Nadeem ( Yes they are examples of people who have participated in national Olympiad camps) on campus. Even if we manage to admit say 5 such students every year, we would eventually have 20~30 of them on campus and that would make a great difference to the atmosphere at IIIT.

I am also pleased that with the different avenues of entry IIIT is considering to look at while admitting CNS dual degree students. The CNS course is slightly different from a regular B.Tech course and perhaps it calls for special admission procedures. The list of Olympiads/Scholarships listed there is quite long and I am hopeful that some of those people who join will be pretty enthusiastic about course. Personally I don't agree with the philosophy of shoving kids into a particular stream without letting them explore other areas of study. I don't agree with either the CNS or the CNL dual degree courses.

There is also this thing to admit foreign students. I haven't a clue about SAT scores and really don't know how that is going to work out. I just hope that we don't end up admitting some yahooo's who think that they own the campus.

Also CBSE and CCB deserve a kick. Their sheer stupidity has forced us into having our own counseling. This also pretty much completely screws up the idea of a national time table for all colleges (Which I thought was a nice idea !) Kapil Sibbal if you read this, fire whoever is running CCB!

I have spent some time looking the dynamics of admissions in US universities. And Indian Universities. The major difference I can see is a lack of diversity on campus in Indian universities. Almost everybody here doesn't have very many skills(of note) other than being good at Phy-Chem-Math. Yes the odd person can sing and paint and dance and some more people can play something but nothing significant. I think that makes for very poor exposure and a sense of elitism that only people really good in PCM have a right to study Engineering at the best places in India. I would love to see IIIT admit kids who are really good at say some arts or sports or something else. Of course we also have to make sure that they have a minimum academic standard as well (perhaps a mixture of 10th+12th Marks + AIEEE scores or whatever) so that they can successfully complete the course. I don't think that studying engineering should be the preserve of only the very insanely nerdy PCM kids. Any sincere kid who does well at school is good enough to go through the curriculum.

IIIT has already been very bold with the present initiatives and perhaps this idea comes ahead of it's time. However I suspect that this is something that the think tank at IIIT has had at the back of their mind. I think having a center like CEH is a step in that direction. The problem with that approach is that you are going to have to deal with kids who have a mindset where joining a place like CEH is simply "not an option". Lets admit some different people for a change !


PS : I don't understand why IIIT has asked people to register before the AIEEE results are declared. Before the results are out a lot of people would like to believe that they have a chance. I can imagine around 6~7 thousand people registering at the very least. IIIT might as well have had people register after the results were declared or at least charged them later. I am not aware of the logistics of doing something like this (I assume it would not be trivial), but if they have done this to make some money then it is indeed very naughty.

Prof. Sangal's reply to "The Al-Qaeda of Jeevan Vidya"

After going through my last post Prof.Sangal replied to my post via e-mail. As per his request I am putting his reply on my blog. I am writing it as separate post because there is too much clutter on the previous post and I felt that his reply may be lost in the mess. The reply is posted as is.
------------------------------------------------------
Dear Rishabh,

This is to provide clarifications to many points of misunderstanding.

Note that I am addressing only the substantive issues, I am not responding to many speculative statements and remarks.

(1)
When IIIT-H took the decision to introduce Human Values as an essential part of the curriculum, we placed 4 conditions which must be satisfied by the content in such courses. The content must be:

A. Logical - Should follow reasoning and should be open to discussion and questioning in the class.

B. Verifiable - One should be able to observe and verify through experiments by the self. (No mystic element!)

C. Universal - Applicable to all human beings without regard to their caste, creed, colour, religion, etc. (No sect of any kind!)

D. Human - Should be for the good of the human being.

Jeevan Vidya was chosen because it satisfied all the above. IIIT-H is open to using any other philosophy which satisfies the above.

(2)
It was also decided that Human Values course must be taught without preaching or dos and donts.

In JV shivir, there is no insistence on anyone to accept what is being said. In fact, on the first day itself, it is written in bold, asking people not to accept, but examine and evaluate. They should accept only if they find them ok after evaluation!

(You have said that JV asks people to do good, control their desires, etc. But JV never gives any dos and donts including these two! It only says "what can make a human being happy", and there too, it says that one should accept only after verifying on one's own right. Have you attended a complete JV shivir as yet? You can attend a full shivir, and indeed point out to the teacher, if any do's and dont's are being given.)

(3)
When you use the word "religion" for JV, it suggests that it is sectarian. It is normally understood that if you are a Hindu you cannot be a Muslim at the same time, and if you are a Sikh you cannot be a Christian, etc. Jeevan Vidya is not like that. Whatever be your religion, you can follow or relate to JV. Most people are able to connect JV with whatever religion they are practising. As a philosophy, it is even "open source". (See the attached article on Evaluating a Philosophy by Vineesh Gupta.)

Today, it is "fashionable" to say that I do not believe in any philosophy or thought, and that I am free. In such a prevailing situation, one might brand others who might have come to some conclusions as "religionists", and pass snide remarks at them. But one should examine whether that is an acceptable mode of conduct.

(4)
Education means not just training in a narrow discipline but developing an ability to think critically and independently. It implies an ability to separate "essence" from "form" when faced with any situation in life, not limited to problems in a narrow discipline alone. (It also means developing the strength to take decisions, particularly about one's own life, and acting on them.)

An academic institution strives for excellence in education and research. It functions in a cultural and social milieu, using accepted practises and procedures. In higher education today, accepted practise is to have a 4-year curriculum with semester-long courses with credits. We accept it and implement it at IIIT-H, even when 4-year duration or semester long courses might not fit everybody. Are we forcing every student to follow it? Probably we are, because of the currently accepted practises of society. But is "forcing" the right word to describe the situation.

In a curriculum, the courses are designed to cover the breadth and depth of educational goals. In the existing curricula, many courses are compulsary whether data structures, communication theory, or human values. We are even asked at times why are we forcing students to learn such and such a course in their discipline, when it is not needed for most jobs? We are also asked why do we have broad education with Human Values? But all this is the goal of education. Is "forcing" the right word in such a situation. (It goes without saying that Human Values should be conducted without preaching.)

Society today puts a lot of pressure on the individual, without taking into account their interest. Students succumb to this pressure, and take admission to areas they have no aptitude for, or come into higher education even when they do not wish to study! As a result, for many things they perceive being forced when these things are a part of education. (We would like to help by making it possible for the students to choose their area of interest, to the extent we have the facilities and disciplines. IIIT-H has examples of such help in the past. But doing something is difficult when the student has no interest in higher study and perceives the entire curriculum as "being forced".)

As the society and the individuals evolve, we hope that we will move towards a situation, where only the truly interested come for higher education, pursuing the areas they love, in a journey of joy.


- Rajeev Sangal
14 January 2010

The Al-Qaeda of Jeevan Vidya

For a long long time I have thought about writing this post. I refrained from writing it because I was not sure about my competence to comment on a philosophy so many "educated" people have subscribed to. After attending a Shivir (over the course of 2 years!!) and taking a course that was for all practical purposes JV - 101 (Understanding Work and Life), I think I have some background to make certain observations about JV and it's tryst with IIIT.

The Philosophy itself : Having read a bit about JV, I can say that JV as a whole is pretty much oriented like any other religion is. Do good, be good, be in harmony with nature, surroundings, control your desires and so on. Since the philosophy has roots in a modern society, there seems to be a trend to rationalize every argument presented as part of the philosophy. The validity and thoroughness of these rationalizations is a debate better left to theologians rather than MSbR students :). There is also no component of JV that prescribes rituals or anything of that sort. In it's simplest form, the message of JV is pretty elegant and I couldn't not help appreciating it. If I was an alien visiting earth I could very well believe that JV was yet another among the various religions practiced on earth with a decent following.

Which is where my problem with JV's association with IIIT begins. Today, if the powers that be at IIIT were prescribing to interpretation of a Hindu or Islamic or Christian ideology the same way they seem to be enamored by JV, there would have been an uproar of epic proportions. Since JV doesn't quite have the status of a proper religion like say Hinduism or Islam, people just don't know how to give a name to whats going on. I don't think you can talk about Human values and spirituality without imprinting on the listener, a certain version of your own religious beliefs. Now, no matter what Prof.Sangal or anybody else says, I do consider all JV activities to be religious. Which is in itself not bad. But only provided you do not provide official patronage and pamper only JV. I don't see any Hindu Shivirs or Islamic Halaqas being arranged on campus. Do you ?

One of the reasons the Muslim League argued for a separate Islamic state was that, "Islam and it's tenets extend to every aspect of life, whether it is social discourse or even business. There is no activity that is not religious by nature. A separate Islamic state that understands this notion is required to safeguard the Islamic way of life". While I don't fully agree with this statement I can understand the sentiment. A close look at our lives would tell us that our religion shapes almost all aspects of our decision making in some way or the other. It would then come as no surprise that the philosophies of JV made their way into the decision making process at IIIT. A number of changes in the campus over the last 5 years, can be attributed to a JV or JV-ish justification from the decision makers. As time progresses, JV is firmly embedded in the psyche of a lot of influential people at IIIT. What is the result you ask ? Well in it's simplest form, I am forced to study a course on Literature from Vinish Gupta (as learned as he may be). I would rather take my chances with Prof.Sudhakar Marathe who is conspicuous by his absence. The fact that half the Humanities courses are offered by people strongly associated with JV or even officially associated with it, is troubling. I have already written about this.

But there is more. I see a more orthodox IIIT. I see JV inspired people complaining about girls in skimpy outfits in felicity. I see "Swayamsevak" committees popping up and I see faculty members making sure that they don't miss a single session of JV, all while MS student's can't get placed, IIIT is short of funds, ECE is a mess and we have a new main building reminiscent of a WW2 ruin. I see certain civil engineers have a greater say about the way IIIT is run, than the experienced pioneers of science that grace our campus. I see dance teachers being paid more than the people who help maintain the IT in IIIT. I see a lot of people not being valued for sharing different beliefs. I see a systematic removal of people with non-JV or anti-JV views from the seats of power in IIIT. It's almost like JV-ists are the new communists !

Where there is a religion there are fanatics. A few months ago I was reading Osama bin Laden's biography (by Adam Robinson). The book provides a detailed description of how Osama, fed up with his life, saw redemption in Islam and Jihaad and how he rallied thousands from different nations, from Kings to commoners and from the educated to the illiterate to form Al-Qaeda. The parallels I see with JV in IIIT and the people concerned are amazing. Both started out as small movements. Al-Qaeda had Afghanistan-1989 and JV had this. Boosted by their initial success and the charisma of their leaders the groups snowballed into fanatical movements, convinced about their interpretation of a religion, each wreaking their own version of a catastrophe on the world they interact with. Hell, we even have our own Osama bin Laden and Zwahiri, with a dollop of young impressionable lieutenants. Both believe in catching em' young (JV in the 1st year), and sending them to training camps far away in the mountains (Mussoorie). It is interesting to ponder over the question if it is JV that is to be blamed or the people who follow it here at IIIT ? That said, a more pertinent question remains : Is there a JV 9/11 round the corner ?


PS : The Al-Qaeda comparisons to JV are obviously satirical. But isn't the problem pretty much correctly described ?

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An Update

After reading this post, Prof.Sangal commented via email. His reply can be read here
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Interview Shinterview contd....

Fortunately or unfortunately for me, I did not get shortlisted by IBM IRL. I spent the whole day wondering why I did not manage to get shortlisted by a company where I have enough research work in 3 different areas that I could easily fit into 3 different groups at their lab. I thought it might be GPA, but they shortlisted people with lower GPA's. Was it the level/quality of publications ? Was it the nature of my work ...what the bloody hell was it ? Chunni (aka Anshul )spent an hour calming me down and told me that it might be something as simple as them not having a vacancy in any of the groups that I can fit into !

I also kind of figured out that things like A+ and A are truly meaningless methods of classifying research work when it comes to placements (Many would feel that it's a stupid way of classifying work for any purpose !). One man's A+ is another mans F-. I will take this opportunity to welcome myself to the club of people wondering why they haven't been shortlisted or selected.

I was also happy that Bharat Joshi got his first interview today. The guy is smarter than most 9 pointers you would meet and a bumper job would be fair reward for some smooth work he has done over the years. I am also sure that the IBM people would have liked some nice lessons on secure multiparty computation from Hans :)

more to follow...

Interview shinterview

We have IBM IRL coming to campus 2moro. I did send my resume with 2 recos. It'll be interesting to see what they have to ask me. The only group that I could possibly fit into is their High Performance Computing group. Now, while I do have relevant research work(s) (in a conference titled IEEE-ACM High Performance Computing) I have no fracking idea about multi cores or parallel algorithms or anything remotely "high performance". If the state of my laptop is anything to go by, I barely manage to get any performance at all. They do not have a crypto group, so impressing them goes out the window. The only hope that remains is that they ask me something about distributed computing and preferably PRC :D

But whatever the outcome, I hope to meet a few people from IBM and see what they are up to. It is after all IBM. They have been great pioneers in electrical engineering and computing. I am sure that whoever they send would be somebody senior. I also hope they send a guy called Vijay Garg. He has a nice range of research work covering theoretical and applied distributed/parallel computing. It would be worth my while just meeting him.

The rubbish that is called a HSSM course.

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.

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.
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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 ?
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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 ?

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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?
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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.

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.

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.

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.

The cat !!

This is a cat that roams around in the 1-12 and 20's wing. It is unofficially Ashwath's cat.

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 Platform
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.