There are a couple of major programming contests coming up this month. The first one is the ICFP Programming Contest 2008 (11-14 July). The second one is the Google Code Jam 2008 (qualification round on 16 July).
I have been using the release candidates of Firefox 3 on Linux for some time now. The experience has been quite good so far. I would encourage you to try it out for yourself - in fact, download it on the 17th of June and help Mozilla set a world record.
One of the more important fixes for Indian users of Firefox on Linux is its improved support for complex text layout, which is used in quite a few Indic scripts. I have complained about it before and I am happy to report that it now seems to work fairly well:
I received a mass-mailed letter this week from the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) asking me to join it. The ACM is an organisation of computer scientists and professionals. It publishes several magazines, journals and newsletters related to computer science and engineering. It organises conferences, has several Special Interest Groups (SIGs), conducts programming competitions and provides a network for seeking jobs. The ACM Bangalore chapter in particular has been quite active in recent times.
Despite all these benefits, I do not want to join the ACM because I hate two things in particular that the ACM does, which are at odds with its proclaimed status as an "educational society":
Before the advent of the Internet, organisations like the ACM provided an opportunity to meet your peers and a platform for sharing your research. This has now become much simpler due to the Internet (albeit with a far lower signal-to-noise ratio). The Internet cannot beat in-person interactions of the sort afforded by conferences, but even there "Barcamps" and "Unconferences" prove to be better and far cheaper.
In other words, there just isn't a compelling reason for me to join the ACM.
As I have lamented before, I do not have access to a well-stocked and conveniently-located library here in Bangalore that lends books at reasonable rates. The alternative of buying all the books that I want to read is not just an expensive proposition - I also do not have enough space in my home to stock all such books. For some time now, I have been eyeing electronic book readers as a solution to this problem. It looks like I will very soon (but not quite yet) be able to get such a device at an affordable price.
All this aside, there has been a huge downside of electronic books till recently - reading electronic books has not been as comfortable as reading ordinary books for most people. It is quite straining on the eyes to read lots of text on a computer monitor or on the tiny LCD screens of smart-phones and PDAs. It is also difficult to read such text in bright light. Even the dedicated electronic book readers have suffered from this problem. You can print out an electronic book to ordinary paper, but this is either too expensive or not feasible for most people.
This has now changed due to the availability of "electronic paper" displays. These displays look just like ordinary paper and are therefore quite easy on the eyes. They only use power when the displayed image needs to be changed and thus can run on a battery charge for much longer periods than LCD displays. Though the technology has been around since the 1970s, it has only recently become commercially viable. There are now several electronic book readers based on this display technology and judging by the reviews of these devices, we might just have passed an inflection point in the history of electronic books.
Here are some of the electronic book reader devices based on electronic paper technology currently available in the market, along with their prices as advertised at the moment:
For example, here is a little video review of the Amazon Kindle:
Of these devices, the Amazon Kindle seems to have the best overall package in terms of price, connectivity and availability of electronic books. I like its integration with Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia. I also like its ability to look up the definition of a word in the integrated dictionary. Unfortunately, it also looks like the ugliest of the lot with some rather weird design choices in my opinion. It also cannot natively display PDF files. Amazon should release a newer version of the Kindle that rectifies these mistakes. Some of these devices, including the Kindle, are also unnecessarily saddled with DRM. Many of them have features that are of doubtful utility in an electronic book reader (for example, an MP3 player or a web browser with severely limited features).
Electronic paper still has some way to go before it can become an acceptable replacement for ordinary paper. The resolution of electronic paper still doesn't seem to be anywhere as good as ordinary paper. It cannot display colours other than black and white (or shades of grey), which is all right for ordinary text and figures but not for colourful photographs. The most troublesome aspect seems to be the manner in which the display is redrawn - there is a slight pause, followed by the blackening of the display followed by the final image. Depending on the person, this can either be very irritating or barely noticeable while turning pages.
These devices seem to be almost, but not quite, there. I think I will wait for the next generation of such devices before I buy one for myself.
I went with great enthusiasm this 10th of May to the nearest polling booth to cast my vote in the current elections here, only to discover that I could not vote since my name was not present in the voters' list. This was despite the fact that I had a valid Electoral Photographic Identity Card (EPIC) issued just a couple of years ago. My name just does not appear in the revised voters' list that was drawn after the recent delimitation of constituencies in Karnataka. I had to come back home disappointed.
However, democracy is how we have chosen to be governed in this country and voting in an election is the very least we can do to make sure it works as intended. The effect of a single vote might be negligible but the cumulative effect is considerable and is for the greater good of the society. It then feels like a shameful subversion of the democratic process when the names of willing and eligible voters go missing from the electoral rolls and they are thus disenfranchised.
Anyone even slightly familiar with a voters' list in India would agree that there are usually a lot of appalling mistakes in it. It is not uncommon to find a lot of people missing from a voters' list despite having valid EPICs and a lot of people who have long since died still lingering on in the list. Many people have had their names misspelt or their addresses mangled. For example, the last EPIC that I had managed to get everything about me (except my photograph and my sex) wrong in one way or another - it had incorrect entries for my name, my father's name, my address, my date of birth, etc. So I was not completely surprised to find my name missing from the voters' list, but I was surely disappointed.
I have had a subscription of the print edition of Dr Dobb's Journal (DDJ) for a little over six months now. This renewed relationship with my favourite professional magazine has been a mixed experience so far.
When I started my career as a software engineer, I tried to subscribe to DDJ myself. At about Rs 3,000, the annual cost of the subscription at the time was a bit too much for me. This situation did not improve for several years after that. I had to console myself by ordering "Dr Dobb's CD Release 6", a CD that contained electronic versions of all the DDJ issues from January 1988 to June 1998.
When I noticed recently that the print issues of DDJ were available internationally at just $30 (about Rs 1,200) a year, I jumped at the opportunity to order a subscription for myself. Even though an electronic edition of an issue is immediately made available to subscribers, I always prefer to read the "dead-tree" (print) edition when possible. I eagerly waited for my copy of the print edition to arrive in my mailbox. I was setting myself up for frustration.
My copy of the November 2007 issue of DDJ arrived two and a half months after it was announced! To top that, the December 2007 issue did not arrive at all. To add insult to injury, my email to them inquiring about this problem was rejected by their "Barracuda Spam Firewall" with a terse message stating that "Message content rejected". As if to then really irritate me, they sent a letter in January 2008 asking me to renew my subscription ten months before it was set to expire!
Fortunately for me, the situation improved considerably from January 2008 and the issues started arriving regularly and well in time (as was the case many years ago, an issue of DDJ arrives about a fortnight before the corresponding month - for example, the issue for May 2008 was delivered in mid-April).
The first thing I noticed about these issues was that they were really thin - they seem to be about one-third the thickness of the old issues of DDJ from what I remember. Could that be the reason for the drop in prices? The second thing I noticed in the initial issues was that many of the articles were about web development and other such things in which I do not have that much interest. Was it going to be like this for the rest of the year?
Once again, fortunately for me, the more recent issues have featured some really nice articles. Articles like "Fast String Search on Multicore Processors" and "Detecting Bugs in Safety-Critical Code", for example, provide insights into areas beyond the realm of run-of-the-mill software development. Herb Sutter's "Effective Concurrency" is a really nice column. The issues for April 2008 (Algorithms) and for May 2008 (Programming Languages) in particular were quintessential DDJ.
Most elements of DDJ have not changed much over the years. The articles still have the same feel to them and most of the advertisements for software products are still embarrassingly corny. The PC-lint Bug of the Month series of advertisements are still there, though they are about C++ instead of C as a reflection of the changing times.
So would I still recommend this magazine to a programmer in India? Yes, definitely. Even with the cost of international shipping included, this magazine costs the same or less than comparable Indian magazines (such as they are) and the quality and the depth of the articles is usually much better.
Granta is a quarterly high-quality literary magazine that attempts to showcase some of the best "new writing" in English. It has had a decent record in recognising some of the best young novelists before they became famous. It recently published a celebratory 100th issue with contributions from the likes of Martin Amis, Doris Lessing, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, etc. Naturally, I had to have it.
That is when I ran into an unexpected hurdle - the new order form on Indiaplaza requires a mobile phone number and I do not have a mobile phone. The form would not accept a land-line number and even checks for numbers that do not "look like" a mobile phone number. When I complained to their customer service about this issue, they told me that their "delivery partner" requires this information in case they need to contact me. When I then asked them why their delivery partner shies from calling people on their land-line numbers, they relented and themselves suggested that I use a dummy mobile phone number like "98000 00000" to get past the stubborn order form. It worked and I was able to place the order. The item was delivered after a day without further ado.
This is not an isolated incident. I keep running into situations where the other party makes it mandatory for me to divulge my mobile phone number, even though I don't have one and even though they should be able to provide the service without knowing it. For example, HDFC Bank requires it in their form for enabling third-party transfers (in order to notify you of such a transfer when it happens) and Standard Chartered would not allow you to carry out certain transactions on-line without an additional code that they send to your mobile phone (ostensibly for extra security). In each of these cases, the vendor would be able to provide an additional benefit when it has the number for your mobile phone but that does not mean that it should make it mandatory for you to divulge this information.
Even if I did have a mobile phone, I wouldn't want to give its number to all and sundry, especially when they are known to happily hand it over to telemarketers without any respect for their own customers' privacy. Since mobile number portability is still not available in India, it is not a good idea to bind more and more services with your mobile phone should you wish to change your mobile phone service provider in the future.
I do not carry a mobile phone because of its invasive nature. I sometimes get annoyed by people who carry mobile phones for reasons given in this article. I have land-line phones in both my office as well as my home - when I am not in either of these places, I am most likely unable to or unwilling to have a telephonic conversation (for example, while I am driving or while I am watching a film). I do recognise the utility and convenience of having a mobile phone and some day I might also get one, but I do not have one at the moment and I detest it when people make it unnecessarily mandatory for providing a service.
It is utterly unfair for the Indian government to impose an income tax on the interest earned by an individual on a savings account. The government merely adds insult to an injury caused by low rates of interest, lower effective yields and high inflation.
I am looking for a good introductory book on economics to teach myself the basics of this dismal science. From the little I know about it, I have come to realise how important it is in helping one make sense of much that happens in the modern world. I am looking for a book that systematically provides a comprehensive introduction to the principles of macro-economics and micro-economics.
"A Taste of Haskell" was a tutorial given by Simon Peyton Jones during the OSCON 2007 conference. It introduces programmers to the Haskell programming language using the xmonad window manager for X. The complete video of the tutorial is available in two parts (Part 1; Part 2; about 798 MB in total) and lasts for about three hours. The slides for the tutorial are also available (PDF; about 7 MB; 119 slides). The first time I read about this tutorial was in a post on Jao Ortega's blog. I have been meaning to check the video out ever since, but only now have I been able to finish watching it completely.
