Now they tell me I can choose to view either a “News Feed” or a “Live Feed”. What are these, and why should I care? Why should I spend fifteen minutes of my time figuring it out when I have so many better things to do, like checking my blog stats or writing what you’re reading right now?

Facebook UI designers, whoever you are, weren’t you taught that giving your users choice is a no-no? Especially when there’s no “Help” link next to it to let us figure out what that choice means? And Facebook UI devel­opers, why does my homepage default to “News Feed” each time I open it?

And why has my life started revolving around Facebook so much that it makes me sick? *cough… cough.. splutter*

To tell you the truth, I don’t like phone, cable and Internet service providers. With that confes­sion, I join the elite club of a several million across the globe who share the same sentiment.

I doubt if you could come across any person who is not an employee at AT&T, Verizon or Comcast and actually likes the company. (That’s not to say the employees actually like the place, of course). Think about it — when was the last time you heard anyone say nice things about these guys? At worst, you hear “I hate those f!@#$%”…at best you hear…“Meh, they’re okay.”

I guess the main problem with these behemoths is that they don’t really care what people think. Look at their billing policies. Anytime you deviate from the usual course of making phone calls and paying your bills (or using the Internet and paying your bills) they will charge you for it in every way possible, and they will also try not to tell you about it. For instance, when I bought an iPhone from an AT&T store, they tacked on an “$18 upgrade fee” that they didn’t bother to tell me about. I found out about it when my last bill shot up, and I dug into the details to find out why. The “upgrade” in the “$18 upgrade fee” is question­able — I bought the phone and paid for it, I got a brand new contract with them and I subscribed to their data plan: they should be thanking me rather than charging me. But even that is besides the point — charging customers ridicu­lously is greed, but not telling them about it before­hand is pure indif­fer­ence borne out of the knowl­edge that they can get away with it.

If that example didn’t convince you, then I’ll add that Comcast just increased the Internet rates — without bothering to tell me of course. Again, I found out by noticing that the bill amount had increased, after which I discov­ered the little box on the bill explaining that I would have to pay more. Nice.

In some ways, I think the culture of “your bill is $$$ + taxes + tips” has something to do with this state of affairs. That “+ taxes + tips” can be a real bitch, and everyone is used to not knowing how much they’re paying for stuff. I would rather go back to the good ol’ MRP (Maximum Retail Price) system present in the land of my forefathers.

I’m sitting here at home at the end of a Sunday doing nothing, listening to Glen Hansard’s Falling Slowly and I feel oddly satis­fied, as if I could lay claim to being the happiest person in the world in this one moment. There’s that feeling in the air that you get when you’re on a swing in the playground and you’re gradu­ally slowing down to a stop on the way up.

It’s all very irrational; I don’t under­stand it.

If you think this is going to be one of those posts where I start spouting good wishes to all of humanity on the day of Diwali, you will soon be disil­lu­sioned. As a cynic in good standing, I don’t believe in mass-mailed greet­ings — and that includes SMSes and automated phone-calls. If you mass-mailed this year’s greet­ings then I’m sure you must be offended, but as a cynic, I also believe that no one cares to read this blog, so every­thing works out just fine.

It’s not that bulk-email is a bad thing, really. It’s just that I don’t see the point of it. You click a button and mail-merge (or equiv­a­lent) does the rest and sends out wonderful, warm words filled with love to almost everyone on your address-book. Except — they’re not. You probably don’t even keep track of whom those messages went to. How could you possibly wish somebody a wonderful year when you don’t even know whom you’re talking to?

—

It is just another Saturday in Seattle. Appar­ently it’s going to rain all week.

—

How could I possibly write on the day of the festival and not wish you all a happy Diwali? Here’s wishing you an awesome Diwali and a prosperous year ahead!

Oh Capital One, how I missed you!

You used to be there for me. Every day, every season, I could count on you! I would come home from work in the evening, tired and sleepy, and when I opened my mailbox, I would see your credit card offer with 0% APR (* Terms and Condi­tions Apply) lying there happily, waiting for me. You used to greet me with your wonderful smile and cheerful words. Your humble spirit and never-say-die attitude inspired me more than you knew, oh Capital One! You were my hero, my idol!

And then things changed, I don’t know how or why. Sometimes you were there, sometimes you weren’t. Those days of uncer­tainty were the worst; as I reached out to the mailbox, those moments stretched out into ages and my hand trembled. Sometimes I couldn’t bear to open my eyes, lest you weren’t there.

I don’t know when you stopped caring about me, Capital One. After a while, you disap­peared from my life completely, and I gave up all hope. Life wasn’t the same anymore.

And then today, when I opened my mailbox like every other day, expecting the empti­ness to greet me with its mocking smile, you were there! At first, I couldn’t believe my eyes; I blinked in surprise for sometime before I could breathe again. You were there again, with your friendly loving promise of 0% APR (* Terms and Condi­tions Apply), and all of a sudden it struck me with full force how unhappy I had been without you, how unful­filling the world had been in your absence.

Oh Capital One, I don’t know why you left or what made you come back to me. Maybe you’ll leave me again someday, but for now you’re there by my side, and nothing else matters anymore.

Now all that’s left is to eat them!

It’s that time of the year again. You know what I’m talking about — the time when I come out of hiding and start posting something to my blog again.

Truth be told, I’m feeling kinda guilty about keeping mum all this while, especially after seeing several movies worthy of comment. Trust me, “worthy of comment” does not mean “excel­lent”, “wonderful” or anything like that. Not neces­sarily, anyway.

Digging up memories from the past long gone, I remember watching Inglou­rious Basterds, which was an excel­lent movie. Sudden bursts of extreme violence that’ll make you retch, but excel­lent all the same. I had almost completely recov­ered by the time the movie ended.

Ever sat in a large kadai and spun around until you felt sick? The funny thing is, it doesn’t take more than a week for you to forget all about that feeling and do it again. That’s an analogy, if you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about. The very next week I watched this spectac­u­larly awful movie called District 9. I know, I know — some people like it, but if you thought the movie was good, then listen to this: in my mind, that movie’s become the de facto standard for judging bad movies. For instance, when I staggered out of Totem Lake Cinema after a valiant battle against Dil Bole Hadippa!, my first words were, “God! What an awful movie! Almost as bad as District 9!”

Okay, so I made that last part up, big deal.

Then there was Julie & Julia. That was a movie about cooking, so you’ll under­stand why I won’t say much about it. I was as out of place in that movie theater as a duck in a cuckoo’s nest.

If you’re sensing a trend here, you’re wrong. I don’t always watch movies I don’t like. Don’t believe me? I watched this movie today called Zombieland which was incred­ibly enter­taining. QED.

What do you think of when I say, “The Wall”? (Facebook users, anyone?)

This is more of trip down memory-lane. The apart­ment that I called home for the greater part of the nineties was on the coast of the Arabian Sea in Bombay. Maybe it was the proximity to the sea, or maybe it was just shoddy construc­tion — one of the bedroom walls used to be in terrible shape. On its best day, it had plaster peeling off (sometimes falling off in chunks). On bad days, it was home to forests of fungus. Trust me, it wasn’t pretty.

Strangely, of all the things about that house, this wall is the one thing that keeps coming back to me in my dreams. Almost every idea of “home” that my subcon­scious creates is some varia­tion on that house, ‘that house’ being identi­fied by a suspi­ciously similar wall. Not the view from the window, or the table with the crippled chairs, or the heavy iron cots, or anything else. Just that wall.

So what does Mulayam Singh and his Samajwadi Party have to say about India’s devel­op­ment, now that we’re close to a national vote?

(All quotes from the NDTV website)

Regarding computers:

“The use of computers in offices is creating unemploy­ment problems. Our party feels that if work can be done by a person using hands there is no need to deploy machines.”

Regarding use of agricul­tural machinery:

“A harvesting season brings employ­ment for the labour class for at least six months but these harvesters will snatch their earnings.”

Regarding educa­tion:

The party’s manifesto also mentions that it will work to abolish schools providing expen­sive educa­tion in English medium and provide free educa­tion for girls till graduation.

And this gem on terrorism, from the same party that wanted to field Sanjay Dutt, convicted of posses­sion of firearms that were linked to the terror­ists respon­sible for the 1993 Bombay blasts:

The basic cause of terrorism lies in regional differences…if a govern­ment comes to power with our support, we will ensure that action is taken against communal powers and attack terrorism at its roots.”

There is really no reason to comment on these state­ments; the sheer absur­dity of it all is obvious.

Myths have a very long half-life, especially when it has to do with operating systems. Let’s say version N of some software was really bad at doing something, which got fixed in version (N + 2). It won’t be until version (N + 5) or so that most people will realize that the problem has been fixed. Until then, this will remain a hot topic for discus­sion each time the subject comes up.

You know what the best part is? Not one of these people would have used any version of the OS for the past five years. For instance, a typical complaint would go like this: “I used Linux (read, Red Hat Linux 7, from the Dark Ages) sometime ago (read, six years ago) and the screen resolu­tion sucked!” Obeying the rules of gossip, this gets trans­lated into, “The resolu­tion on Linux sucks!”

Unfor­tu­nately, everyone not using Linux will continue to believe this myth until someone demon­strates that the screen resolu­tion on Linux is actually awesome. Note that it is insuf­fi­cient to demon­strate that the screen resolu­tion on Linux is as good as that on any other system. That’s just too mundane to catch on.

This phenom­enon works all six ways (Linux, Windows, Mac = factorial(3)). Windows and Mac being more ‘mainstream’, however, their features and releases receive greater publicity.

It is inter­esting how these different groups interact with each other, almost as if they were following their own religion. Blind faith, super­sti­tion — it has all the elements except physical violence. Maybe one of these days, govern­ments will force their citizens to use one or the other piece of software. Then, countries will go to war over operating systems.