Ignorance may be deceptive

'He who knows not and knows that he knows not is wise.
He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool.'
The Indian media fall in the latter category.

Note the following article in Saturday's The Times of India's Kolkata edition:
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The report is about the Rajdhani hold up last Saturday at Dankuni. In the report it is unabashedly written that the public who held up the Rajdhani were inspired by the Maoist backed forces holding up the Bhubaneswar Rajdhani some days previously. Well, the fact is the reporter has proved himself an ignorant fool. He did not bother to find out that such hold ups are regularly held in the Dankuni-Baranagar Road stretch: at least once in every six months; and no Maoist inspiration was required in the previous occasions. The demands in all the hold ups had been same: why make the local trains suffer in order to make passage for the VVIP trains? Thousands of office-goers, students, businessmen, daily labourers, etc. depend on these everyday.

It is irking to note the degradation in the quality of media reporting. And even more irking to observe their arrogance. If one asks me why am I writing these here, instead of reporting it to their editor, to him I say: the excercise will be futile as it has been on several previous occasions. So, instead I choose to be inspired by Mr. Bachchan and his blog:

http://bigb.bigadda.com/?paged=7

"The media dislikes the blog not because I write on it without their consent. The media dislikes the blog because we have created a family of devoted members in the shape of our FmXt, which believes me and not them."

No-Bail

Guess the next Noble Peace Prize will come to me. You ask why? Well, for not indulging in any violence, of course. If Obama, with his army killing inoocents in Iraq and Afganisthan, can get one, why not I?

The last thing that should have happened is the Noble Committee losng its credibility. But at this rate, it soon will. It's true that they have always been a little potty on the Western side --Mahatma Gandhi didn't get it-- but, Obama! That does it.

Obama should have got No-Bail from prison for the crimes by his army.

Suvo Bijoya

Hey, we meet after a long time. Lets start with the usual Suvo Bijoya.

There was a bout of internals at college (these happen so often that they have lost their significance). Then came the Durga Puja which was gone before I realised it. (I have been observing that the older I get, the shorter the pujas become. It's sort of...

length_of_pujas ∝ 1 / my_age

But can someone tell me that what do our Marxist friends have to do near a puja pandal selling their literature? And I was under the impression that they are atheists. (Do correct me if I am wrong).

And guess what, on Panchami I finished reading The Lost Symbol. And still I will say Angels and Demons was the best of the lot.

Let me conclude today with an interesting thing that happened on train today:

A certain Mr. X was sitting in the seat opposite me when one Mr. Y boarded and squeezed into the little space beside Mr. X though the opposite bench was empty. At this, Mr. X requested Mr. Y to move to the opposite bench. Mr. Y moved over. At this one Mr. Z said to X: "It's good that you requested him to move over. Let me make a request to you. Please don't drop the peanut shells on the floor. Keep them with you and dispose them off later. Otherwise the next time you board a train you will exclaim 'How dirty the trains are!'" Indeed X was dirtying the floor. X could only manage a smile. (Subhas Datta, are you listening?)

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.