Monocellular again

At last, I got another cell. It's a Samsung Guru E1410 (God knows why they call it Guru).

At 2800 bucks, it's a touch high priced than my last one. But it has got a hoard of new features (not sure how many I will be using, though). It has got, bluetooth, FM, 1 GB memory free (expandable to 4 GB), and ear piercingly loud dual speakers. The idea that steals the show however is the anti-theft tracker. It claims that whenever a new SIM will be inserted into the set, it will send SMSs to two preset numbers about the new number. And another anti-theft enabled device may be used to remotely delete information from the phone, divert calls from it, and also know the location of the phone. (after the loss of the last phone, it didn't require much persuasion on the part of the shopkeeper to push this to me). Not tested any of the features though as it is still on charging mode.

My mother says that it's another invitation to the thief. (She feels that he may have been fiddling in my pockets everyday in train since the last theft!!!) Don't know if it is so. But if this goes, then this is the last time I buy a cell.

Acellular

It's almost a week since I had been rendered acellular at DumDum.

Woe to the thug and may pestilence strike those hands which dared to pick my pocket. It was a span of just a few minutes during which I had been inattentive, and the job was done.

And did anyone say "Did you file an FIR?" As if the police have time for me! As if they have no better work than running after thieves who pinch cell phones from people. What did they have to do with something that didn't occur within their jurisdiction? After all, I ain't a VIP.

And I can't help a little pity on the ignorant fool who picked my cell. It was hardly a Rs. 1000/- affair: not worth the labour. It didn't have a camera, didn't play songs, nor was a Nokia. But still it was dear to my heart as the MotoYuva W180 could store 600 contacts and 600 SMSs together.

Can someone tell me how easy it is to crack a password on a mobile? Every time the cell was switched on, one had to supply a password. Can the SOB crack it? I wish his skull cracks into two thinking about it.

Bawal

Had a big bawal in college yesterday. Imagine a networking lab without the network in place! Not a big deal if one considers the case isolated. But with the students being continually deprived of the basic facilities, the war had to be taken to them. Imagine the cheek! They put floor tiles in their offices and the HODs go without a separate computer. 

There is a computer for every sundry staff in the accounts department, but only 2 for 10 teachers of the IT department! I was always against non-academicians being in administrative positions. They are there to look after their own petty comforts.

Yesterday was only a peek of what we need. The HOD, the class teacher, Pijyush Sir, about 7 students were just right to corner the Junior Administrative Officer and the System Administrator (got these posts by telofying the Principal, mind you). But then, Pijyush Sir flared up, and we got softer.

These two are experts at RedHatting (my translation for the bangla tupi porano) people. And they left no stone unturned to RedHat us pleading helplessness. Perhaps we were taken in readily. The students of our college are of the bhodro kind and believe whatever the authorities say.

But for how much longer? The message has to be carried across that the students cannot be taken for granted indefinitely, and we will go to any extent to set the irregularities right.

...How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake all shores?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
With those who shaped him to the thing he is--
When this dumb Terror shall rise to judge the world,
After the silence of the centuries?

-Edwin Markham, The Man With The Hoe

Yeppeeeeeeeee

Was able to connect to the internet from both the desktop (wired) and laptop (wifi) simultaneously after two days of effort. Am using WPA2-AES and MAC authentication.

Got a D-Link DIR-300 for the purpose. The stuff's good and works out of the box in Fedora 10.

Got a Seagate 500 GB SATA HDD too. Couldn't accommodate in the 100 GB any more, so had to change. The Desktop Box now contains 2 PATA HDD (20 GB and 80 GB), one PATA DVD RW drive, and the new 500 GB SATA. (There's also a PATA CD read only drive that is unconnected because of lack of power cables from the SMPS :( ).

The next step is to set up a full fledged home LAN with file sharing, etc.

Does anybody care?

I was returning from Esplanade yesterday sitting at a window seat of a BelurMath-Esplanade (Rt. 11) mini bus. As the bus crawled beyond the erstwhile Metro Cinema, and got stuck at the S.N. Bannerjee crossing, I noticed outside the window, in the shadow of the road divider, a man lying in the most uncomfortable of positions. Very soon I noticed that he was lying in a pool of blood. I tugged at my father, "What happened?" My father shrank in fear, "He has been run over!"

I could not help staring. Here was a man lying dead in the middle of one of busiest roads in Kolkata, and no one noticed! And what a gruesome death it was! His brain had been squeezed out of his skull and pasted on the road for some distance. 

When we get a cut, signals are sent to the brain, and we feel pain. But what if the very brain has been sheared out of the body? Is pain felt? I have no idea. And the gods forbid anybody should have an idea on that. Can there be a ghastlier death?

The bus rolled on. Who cared? I found no mention of the incident in the morning papers either: it was not a bestseller after all.

BSNL: Bhai, SMS Nahi Lagta

BSNL successfully made me lose my patience and I changed my mobile no. (though the new one is another BSNL connection as a stop gap measure).

I was not receiving any SMS in my cell since January last and repeated complains lodged with BSNL fell on deaf years. (the customer care people at BSNL are a stupid lot too. They insist on speaking wrong English with no sense of grammar or enunciation.) I also let go off the opportunity of knocking at the Consumer Forum's. I could have actually got rich with compensation claims. But, never mind. I doubt if BSNL regrets losing a few demanding customers like me.

Railway Budget 2009

The Union Railway Minister Miss Mamata Bannerjee presented the Railway Budget for 2009-'10 yesterday. The contents were not entirely unexpected.

What irked me to no end was the reaction from Lalu Prasad. He feels that his state has been neglected. The fact is that for the last five years he has introduced so many trains and so many projects (most of which are not feasible) in Bihar that there perhaps is no space for more. In fact there have been introduced a few trains exclusive for Bihar like the Ranchi-Patna Jan Shatabdi and the Jamalpur-Gaya Passenger. He has been announcing so many projects for the last five years and done little to introduce them, yet he feels that the present budget is a copy of his ideas.

He has been tabling inflated revenues at the parliament for the last few years. This is a fit case to book him for cheating the people of India.

He hoodwinked people (successfully to an extent, and that is perhaps why he was hailed by one of the IIMs) by not increasing passenger fares while backstabbing them by declaring even sundry trains 'super fast', thus levying surcharges.

Overall, the current budget has been popular. And why should it not be? The Government is expected to work for the people. The low price tickets for the low income group is welcome. But it must be seen that this is not misused. Political persons must be debarred from authorising incomes.

But the concession on the Kolkata Metro for 'minority students' is a gimmick. I can point out a thousand minority students who are affluent enough to buy tickets at the full fare. Concessions should be based only on economic background and merit. When will our 'leaders' learn?