ctrl.altered.mind

Time Magazine has put up a frequency map of the words used by President Bush in his 2008 State of the Union address. I was amazed to see that ‘education’ was mentioned four times, tying up with ‘nuclear’ and even defeating ‘oil’ by one whole number. I am surprised. Education has been barely making it to the debates, so this kind of frequent special appearance is noteworthy. ‘Terror’ (23) did trump ‘liberty’ (8) and ‘hope’ (11), but its running mate ‘war’ (3) failed to rise to the occasion.

splogs has a link to a video of the entire speech (sans applause, which is a time saver - believe me).

Now if only someone would put together an action map that would count the number of times the President got a standing ovation from the Republican side, or the number of times that viewers were treated to some rare Vice-Presidential smiles in the background. Wait, we have a number for that. It was twelve.

“The easiest way for your children to learn about money is for you not to have any.”

- Katharine Whitehorn

I have been answering questions about Microsoft’s Windows Vista for some time now, mostly coming from friends and family. All the points that I have been trying to make are summarized below in a comment by Enderandrew, posted in response to a Slashdot article.

• UAC - annoying and not remotely secure. People will be trained to always click yes, or just disable it. Further more, it prevented me from installing legit software, and copying files in certain directories.
• Drivers - People say an OS is only as good as the software for it, and I’d argue an OS is only as good as the drivers. If you can’t support your hardware, then software isn’t even an issue. Now all drivers MUST be signed, yet many signed drivers don’t work very well, if at all. I think it would be a good idea to have all drivers in one central repository (like the Linux kernel) so you won’t have to worry about tracking down drivers for old hardware, but make sure the drivers work. And here is an idea, make the drivers modular. Drivers cause more BSODs and crashes than anything else. Don’t let a single driver bring down a system. This is just basic common sense.
• Design for productivity, and not looks. Sexy is sexy, and we all like sexy things. In the long run however, I want my computer to enable me to work, not prevent me from doing so. Usability studies have shown that Vista’s UI slows people down performing the same tasks. Scrolling in the Start Menu? Again, the writing was on the wall here. Look at the UI changes in Windows Media Player, and you’ll see a program that has become less user friendly, while prettier. Why should we expect Vista to be different?
• Performance is piss-poor. Again, people like fast computers. Installing Vista is just a bad decision.
• Vista’s worst enemy is not OS X or Linux (as much as I love me some Linux). Vista’s worst enemy is XP, which post-SP1 has been a pretty decent OS. For the end user, Vista provides no real benefits or new features besides better looks, while slowing your PC down considerably. And with projects like the Vista Transformation Pack, you can make XP look like Vista. Why would someone want Vista?

The Slashdot article was about Microsoft’s next major OS release - codenamed Windows 7 - that is being rumored to have a release date of late 2009. Microsoft might be tempted to follow Apple’s strategy of frequently releasing updated versions of their OS X operating system (which has seen six iterations since late 2001), but they will need to start off with a much more polished operating system first. Attempting to fix the design flaws enumerated above, would be a good place to start.

The cheapest production vehicle in the world was unveiled this week by Tata Motors, part of India’s Tata Group and one of the world’s largest manufacturers of commercial vehicles. From the company that presented India with its first indigenous vehicle (the Tata Indica - my parents own one), comes the Tata Nano. This new car breaks new ground by breaking the pricing barrier in India’s relatively premium automobile market. The Nano will sell for approximately Rs. 1,00,000 (or just $2500, before taxes and other charges). In comparison, vehicles in a similar class carry a price tag in the vicinity of Rs. 3,00,000 - three times as much as the Nano. AutoBlog has a short video of the launch along with a picture gallery.

The Nano will essentially answer the desire of millions of Indian households that aspire to own an inexpensive car, but have had to make do with a scooter or motorcycle. Anyone who has been on the streets of a major Indian city, Mumbai included, has seen a family of two adults and their two children remarkably balanced on a two-wheeler amidst crazy traffic. The Nano’s affordable price tag ensures that such commuters would now have a cosy seat each and an exponentially stronger chance of completing their trips safely.

While this point alone is enough to justify the Nano for its supporters, the car has quite the share of detractors who make equally (if not more) powerful points. Indian city roads are congested beyond belief already, and public transportation is already seeing severe strain. Empowering every person and his secretary to own an inexpensive car is only going to make those conditions much worse. As Mumbai city desperately tries to cope with its burgeoning fleet of cars by adding new highways and flyovers, the country will soon see this problem escalate across even its smaller cities and towns. It is not just the problem of traffic congestion - more cars with relatively inexperienced drivers spells out a recipe for chaos through accidents and rampant disregard for traffic laws.

The New York Times has a bleak report on the unveiling of the Nano. An excerpt from the article:

With a population of nearly 16.5 million, New Delhi now adds 650 vehicles to its roads each day. At last count, there were 5.4 million vehicles in all, a more than fivefold increase in 20 years; scooters and motorbikes still outnumber cars two to one.

Pity the walker in the city. Half of all fatal road accident victims are pedestrians, according to the police. Every now and then, a homeless person sleeping on the street is run over. Last week, a speeding car banged into a policeman standing at a traffic checkpoint and didn’t bother to stop; the officer was critically injured.

While I am excited to see India’s economical growth make an impact on the standard of living of its people, the viral nature of this growth is equally concerning.

I found this little gem online. Did you know Sonia Gandhi’s maiden name was Sonia Antonia Maino? I didn’t.

“Sonia Antonia Maino (Gandhi)” rearranges to become “Oh god! I am in an Asian nation!”

Brilliant.

Anu Garg’s Internet Anagram Server (which coincidentally works out to ‘I, Rearrangement Servant’) is a fun tool when you’re in the mood to play around with letters.

Sweet Child o’ Mine, as made famous by Guns N’ Roses - in an Indian classical version. Will this be featured on, um, Sitar Hero?

To the uninitiated, the video is a Channel V network ad.

(video link)

A talk by investor and prankster Yossi Vardi on TED that uses a series of slides to demonstrate how blogging can be a dangerous profession - especially for men. F*ing Hilarious. I can’t imagine how he could go through with the entire presentation with a straight face.

Click here to watch the (6 minute) video online (or download to desktop).

The M.A.R.S. (Multi-Appendage Robot System) is a robotic instrument designed in conjunction with the NASA JPL to be used in zero gravity to walk outside the space station (to perform maintenance tasks), or next-generation space exploration tasks.

For traction, the robot cannot use magnets (because of aluminum or ceramic surfaces) or suction cups (due to lack of air). Therefore, its feet are covered with microscopic hair with adhesive properties not too different from the appendage system of geckos. According to this BBC article, the little lizards have tiny hairs and pads on their feet that produce electrical attractions, literally gluing them down to any kind of surface - even polished glass.

The hexapod robot can perform six-dimensional range space calculations in order to maintain balance in space. LabVIEW RealTime software enables the robot to perform this control analysis in the vicinity of 25 nanoseconds.

Click here to download a video (37MB) of the M.A.R.S. robot demonstration.

The video also briefly talks about contact force calculation for a three-legged, winch-supported robot that can tackle adverse vertical terrain.

Here is a paper (pdf) by Dr. Dennis W Hong (who also presents the video demonstration) that goes into further detail about the NASA JPL LEMUR IIa design (that the MARS robot is based on), along with references to other robotic gait systems.

(via EngineeringTV)

A comic by Ted Rall appeared on Yahoo! this week, referring to a hypothetical Mike Huckabee in the garb of a Hindu fundamentalist. I thought it was pretty amusing.

The comic also sparked a bit of debate on reddit, but I hope most people realized that the cartoon aimed to point out the way fundamentalism of any kind virtually falls apart if taken literally. Unfortunately (in my humble opinion, of course), this wisdom is not demonstrated through the results of the Iowa caucus.

(Update) As this page just got linked, I thought I would explicitly add my perspective on the subject instead of leaving it (my opinion) open to interpretation. One has to understand that it has been targeted at the so called ‘ignorant’ American whose knowledge of Hinduism is probably derived from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. It is easy to see the rhetoric in this cartoon, as the concepts outlined are pretty bizarre in a scientific context. It would easily make a person of any religion see the sarcasm, especially how misguided religious fundamentalists in the West (as with any other part of the world) are.