Blissful Life

Year: 2015

  • Internet Will Become Dramatically Useless in the Near Future, Unless What is Said in This Happens

    Allow me to introduce you to “net neutrality” if you haven’t heard of it yet.
    Hindu had an editorial about why it is important yesterday.

    Net Neutrality is the concept that all data traffic on the Internet should
    be considered equal. There shall be no discrimination.

    So, say,
    if you pay for 1MBps Internet, your ISP should give you 1MBps itself
    (neither high, nor low) no matter if you use torrents, or WhatsApp, or
    Facebook, or Wikipedia, or YouTube, or whichever site/service you’re
    connecting to.

    But, for people like Reliance, Airtel, Uninor,
    Vodafone, etc this is bad for their pocket. Because people won’t send
    SMS or make phone calls, they can get money only via data packs. And
    they are greedy for making more money.

    So, what they have been
    trying to do, is to charge people differently if they’re using Viber,
    WhatsApp, Facebook, etc. This comes in the form of “free” Wikipedia,
    “free” Facebook offers, or “special” Facebook packs, “special” WhatsApp
    packs, etc. These all give differential treatment for different
    services. And that is bad!

    Last week, they forced TRAI to release a
    consultation paper for “regulating” (read: putting restrictions on) these services (Over The Top services
    – Whatsapp, Facebook, etc.). According to this paper, a lot of ideas –
    like licensing the OTT services, slowing them down unless you pay TSPs
    more, making the OTTs pay the TSPs, etc – are being considered to be put
    in place.

    A lot of people are already campaigning to protect the
    Web by keeping it neutral. Example:

    What we need to do is: raise awareness of why net neutrality is important, and ask stakeholders to send their comments to advqos@trai.gov.in

    You can read more analogies and get links to the paper at learnlearn.in/net-neutrality/

    If anything is unclear, please ask in comments.

  • Free and Open-Source Software

    Imagine you discovered how to make a delicious cake. You are the only person in the world who knows how to make it. It is so tasty that you could make a fortune selling it. What would you do?


    If the first thought that came to your mind is to start a bakery and make profit out of selling the cake, think again.


    There would have been one point in your life when you did not know what a cake is. From that point, all your knowledge about cakes came from people around you. Sure, you made a discovery with your own effort, but the world empowered you to make that discovery.


    Now imagine, instead of making profit out of the cake, you let the recipe out. You let everyone in the world know how to make your cake. Suddenly, you are making a lot of people happy.


    Slowly, others modify your recipe to make even better cakes. Even you enjoy the new variations. And the whole world is grateful to you. You are immensely satisfied.


    But the world is not fair. Sometimes the world goes for less tasty, but heavily advertised cakes with top-secret recipes. And you wilt away into oblivion while the world conveniently forgets about your beautiful contribution to the world. The picture isn’t so rosy, is it?


    Image: “Free Software” by user ryyo on flickr



    Replace the cake with software and you just read a small introduction to the Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) philosophy.


    If FOSS, “anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source code is openly shared so that people are encouraged to voluntarily improve the design of the software.”


    Creating such software most often does not bring economic prosperity to the developer (the person or group who creates the software). But to a large extent, they always enjoy the satisfaction that is obtained from people’s appreciation of what they have made. Also, the world gains so much because others can make contributions (extra features, fixing security bugs), which will again benefit everyone using the software.


    But we do not code, what can we do? We can not be a cruel world. We can support this cooperative culture and appreciate the effort of those developers who are willing to share, learn, and create better products that we all use daily to make our lives easier.


    Here is a list of most common FOSS packages for you to use.
    Mozilla Firefox – for browsing
    GIMP – for photo editing
    Libre Office – for word processing, spreadsheet, presentations, etc.
    VLC – for playing media files
    7-zip – for file compression
    (compiled from) Wikipedia – for sharing knowledge!

    (ɔ)  Copyleft (No rights reserved)

  • When There’s Nothing Left to Say

    One of the many things I like in life is talking. I like to discuss things, dissecting events and analyzing situations. It gives me some kind of strange pleasure when there’s clarity in my mind on every way to think about an issue.

    Say, there is a forward on the IM client that is obviously a hoax. The things that go through my mind include but are not limited to:

    • Why is it a hoax?
    • Why is it believable?
    • Why do people believe in it?
    • Why do people forward it?
    • Why do even people who do not believe it forward it?
    • Why do people who forward it not take it seriously when asked about it?

    Following these thoughts to their completion makes me comfortable. It lets me classify the forward (the event) to a folder in my brain. The next time I see an event of the same kind, I know all the patterns surrounding it. And there is less need to think about it. This somehow simplifies thought.

    But the first time a new kind of event occurs, I spend a lot of time thinking about it, characterizing it, judging it. Sometimes this involves talking with, arguing with people (although most people do find this annoying). But the process gives me clarity. And clarity is golden.

    There are times when I see events repeat. I find it incredulously boring to talk about them when I have already gained clarity about it. That’s why I write things down. So that I can point people to my thoughts on the event. When they have a new way of looking at it, I will come back and discuss it.

    Some issues have been discussed so much that any more of discussions on it would be like eating after you’ve finished a buffet dinner – nauseating.

    Then there are issues about which talking is equivalent to whining. Things that can be fixed straightaway (or if not, that deserves to be attempted). Here, not doing what is logically the right action after discussion makes me nauseous. Therefore, sometimes, I shun away from the discussions altogether.

    Those are the times when there’s nothing left to say. Everything left is to be done.

  • Being Feminist

    Each day passing, I am turning more and more a feminist. Although I abhor extremism in feminism (I do not think calling every action of a man “sexist” is the right way to achieve gender equality), I cannot overstate the importance of visualizing the routine, systematized discrimination against women based on their gender alone.

    In this address to the UN as its woman ambassador, Emma Watson says how it is important for men to be participating in women empowerment programs. By alienating men from gender equality programs, we are just increasing the gender gap. Read more at HeForShe.org

    Yet, that is what some feminists do – give no respect to men, attack them on whatever they do or say.

    Read about the dongle joke that spiralled way out of control. 

    But all these are issues of fine adjustment. There are coarse course corrections to be made in countries like India.

    “India’s Daughter” is a documentary that was released today by BBC. And it shows how vulgar the mindset of many Indians are. If you watch that documentary, you get avulsed not by the guilty defending himself, but by the lawyers of the rapists trying to define the role of women in society.

    And to ban that outright is worse, from the Government of India. Anyhow, I have a few mirrors at learnlearn.in/indias-daughter/#mirrors

    I’ve found myself guilty of (unconsciously at times) discriminating against my female friends many times in the past. Every time it is discovered, I try to never repeat the mistake. Yet, there is so much to unlearn that I still commit new mistakes. Anyhow, I am a feminist. I know that manhood and womanhood are just two colours of human beings.