Utterly Disgusting

It is utterly disgusting that Microsoft so readily bends over backwards to please the immensely greedy folks from the entertainment industry.

For example:

• The consumer suffers as Windows Vista goes out of its way to degrade the performance of hardware in the presence of "premium content".
• $1 from every Zune sold by Microsoft goes to Universal Music even if the player is never used to store or play any song published by Universal Music.
• If you share a song with your friends via your Zune, they would only be able to listen to it three times within three days (whichever is earlier), irrespective of whether the original song that you are sharing has any such restrictions.
  

On The One Hand

On the one hand, a cute baby...

"LtU Books" In India

There are some books on computer science that I had never heard of until I had started reading "Lambda the Ultimate" (LtU). I found these books being mentioned and recommended in various posts and forum topics on LtU from time to time. As I found out more about these books, I became interested in reading them. Since they were relatively obscure, I had no hopes of finding them here in India. The prospect of having to fork out hefty sums of money for buying the books via something like Amazon.com made me apply the brakes on my normal impulse of buying an interesting book when I come across it.

Imagine my delight then, when I stumbled upon the fact that all of these books had an Indian reprint available at an extremely affordable price. Incidentally, all of these books were originally published by MIT Press and the Indian reprints are published by Prentice-Hall of India.

Here are the "LtU Books" along with the ISBNs of their Indian reprints and the corresponding price:

1. "Types and Programming Languages" by Benjamin Pierce, ISBN: 81-203-2462-5, 350 rupees.
2. "Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming" by Peter Van Roy and Seif Haridi, ISBN: 81-203-2685-7, 450 rupees.
3. "How to Design Programs" by Matthias Felleisen, Robert Bruce Findler, Matthew Flatt and Shriram Krishnamurthi, ISBN: 81-203-2461-7, 325 rupees.
4. "Advanced Topics in Types and Programming Languages" by Benjamin Pierce, ISBN: 81-203-2792-6, 425 rupees.
5. "The Elements of Computing Systems" by Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken, ISBN: 81-203-2885-X, 195 rupees.
   

If you are not able to get these books in a local book store in your city, you can order them directly via the web site of Prentice-Hall of India. If you stay in Bangalore, you can also contact Suman M. (msuman AT phindia DOT com) to obtain these books directly from Prentice-Hall.

Articles by Dheeraj Sanghi

Dheeraj Sanghi is a professor in the Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) department at IIT Kanpur. Our batch, the CSE class of 1996, studied "Computer Networks" under him and he was an active patron of the Association of Computer Activities (ACA).

Recently I stumbled upon a collection of his articles on various topics, including career counselling for students who want to study CS in India, improvements to the undergraduate programme in IIT Kanpur, views on the recent move by the Indian government to impose quotas in the IITs, etc.

Though I found myself disagreeing with some of his points, I found these articles quite interesting as they touch upon topics that I have been thinking about in recent times.

Dhoom 2

Go and watch Dhoom 2 if you haven't already. You get to see from two to four hot bodies (depending on your inclination) and some of the best stunts seen in Hindi cinema.

Besides that, try not be disappointed by the script (such as there is) comprising utterly inane dialogues, the plot (such as there is) comprising completely illogical turn of events, the skill of the actors (such as there is) that makes a chiselled wooden statue look more expressive, the fact that the character played by Uday Chopra is not killed off in this film either, the tendency of every actor in this film to walk or run in slow motion, the unnecessarily numerous and forgettable songs (except for the title song), etc.

See also: VikGup's hilarious review of Dhoom 2.

Bumper Sticker

On the way to work this morning I saw a rather dilapidated car sporting this bumper sticker:

!! CAUTION !!
My Senseless Driving
May Fear You

I found this rather funny in more ways than one.