A writer's work stolen?

Those of you who have read Five Point Someone by Chetan Bhagat will definitely agree that it was a wonderful book. It had a unique, never before told, story. It took on an aspect of Indian education that should have been taken on a lot earlier. It had the sense of humour like nothing else before it. And it had the elements of humanism at the right places.

It's not the mettle of Bollywood director/producers like Vidu Vinod Chopra or Rajkumar Hirani to come up with such wonderful story lines. And take my word for it.

I have not seen 3 Idiots, but from what I gather from various sources, including CB's blog entry: http://www.chetanbhagat.com/blog/general/a-book-a-film-and-the-truth , what the film makers have done is utterly shameful. What they forgot was perhaps that FPS has a million readers worldwide.

One may think of business interests. But to give up all ethics in the process! It is not done.

Chetan Bhagat is a famous writer. So if he cries foul, people will listen. But there must be thousands of other lesser known writers who are being tricked by the Bollywood fraudsters every year. What about them?

The public should boycott 3 Idiots in order to teach them a lesson. And if they are doing all these for awards, then it is utterly disgusting and reeks of selfish Satanism.

What the...

If this article in Wednesday's The Times of India is true, then what are we coming to? Catch the article here.

Unity in Diversity!

Some great articles in today's the Times of India

For quite some time now, I have been taking on journalists and newspapers in this blog. Well, I can't help it. Nothing pisses me off more than irresponsibility.

However, I came across two really great articles in today's the Times of India. The first one is by the great writer Paulo Coelho (of The Alchemist fame). It is about making one's works freely available over digital media or not. In his case, his sales picked up after he made his work freely available, may not be so in the case of others. However, this is how any author's (or any intellectual copyright holder's) ethics should work. Read the article here.

The second article is by Jug Suraiya. I have been enjoying his articles for a very long time now, and his sense of humour elates me. In this case, however, he writes about the demands for statehood from every nook and cranny of the country, about narrow regional politics, and about the possible consequences. How aptly he writes. Catch the article here.

What is alarming, however, is it takes special columnists to produce quality articles in a newspaper. The regular journalists continue to produce crap.

Hungary Kya?

Finally that we seem to have settled the preliminary algorithm development part of the first stage of our final year project, our guide (Prof. Garain of ISI) gave us a few tips on the approach to coding to follow:

1) Do not write the entire program in one module. Nothing can be done with your program then. Break it up into smaller sub modules.

2) Use a standard naming conventions for your variables like the Hungarian Notation! 

What is the Hungarian Notation? Well, it is a naming convention that prefixes certain letters before the given names of variables so that there type is recognisable instantly when the variable is discovered 5 years later, in the program. This is mainly used in languages where variables do not have any types, so there purpose is not easily decipherable. But this is also extended to better constructed languages too.

"The term Hungarian notation is memorable for many people because the strings of unpronounceable consonants vaguely resemble the consonant-rich orthography of some Eastern European languages despite the fact that Hungarian is a Finno-Ugric language, and unlike Slavic languages is rather rich in vowels."

--Wikipedia

This is no doubt to prevent people like Sarbartha from using variables like

int tag1,tag2,tag3,flag1,flag2,flag3;

Such usage may cause healthy,wealthy and wise guys like me go goofy in no time.

But look at what the Hungarian notation can do to a simple piece of code:

strcpy(arrptrvertexTemp[iCntTemp]->strNNP,arrstrNoun[iIndex2][0]);

If Sarbarthian notation makes a piece of code incomprehensible, the Hungarian notation may make a code prohibitive.

My Koala and me

Hey, I am writing this from inside my Ubuntu 9.10 Karmik Koala live CD.

As usual, Ubuntu's out of the box features and sleek looks steal the show. The network was up even before it had booted completely.

There are some new entires that I came across. There was a One Ubuntu under the Internet menu. It directed me to http://one.ubuntu.com. This appeared to be some online portal for storing and sharing documents/ files/ contects/ etc. Do correct me if I am wrong.

The feature that I liked the best is the Ubuntu Software Centre under the Applications menu. It listed a hoard of free software that may be installed in the system. And these would install with just a few clicks, without any hassles (I did not try it though!)

[The setback was that it did not shoot from inside my VBox in Fedora 10. But that is because of my low memory, most probably.]

Continuing

This is an addendum to my post 'Ignorance may be deceptive.'

Consider this post on Saturday's ABP:

http://www.anandabazar.com/archive/1091106/6khela1.htm

If you notice carefully (if you have the correct browser and fonts and the stuff...) you will notice that the reporter confidently puts the famous Chennai Test of 1999 into the Asian Test Championship. Ignorant fool! Here is my arrogant laughter for you:

Ha Ha Ha!!!

It is a well known fact that the Test series with Pakistan comprised two tests: one at Chennai (which Pakistan marginally won), and the other at Delhi (the famous 10/10 of Kumble). Later the Asian Test Championship began with a India-Pakistan test at the Eden Gardens (the one where Sohaib Akhtar blocked Sachin on a run and got him out: the crowd erupted: and the Test was completed in an empty Eden Gardens on the 5th day).

The journalist knows many details: he may tell you what Sourav Ganguly is having for dinner tonight, or which colour underwear he will wear tomorrow, but he has not got the basics in place!!!