(26th Jan, 2004) YA rant from 'jaundiced i' laments about the lack of standards and the easily satisfied nature of the 'solution architect' profession, as normally practiced. Of course, I have polemically and provocatively titled it 'You don't know jackass about Solution Architecture' - but, the lingering question is - where have all the great designers, programmers and architects gone? Are they with the n startups that dot the gaudy skyline of Bangalore? Have they become totally disgusted with the rotten things in the state of Karnataka (such as the IT companies)? Have they taken to soul uplifting sustainable farming activities, instead? Or have they retired to himalayas or thadiyandamol, for that matter? Or...
(9th April, 2003) This scholarly dissertation looks at the great divide that exists between the 'talkers' and 'doers' - there are politically incorrect scenarios (or) case studies to elucidate my jaundiced points of view... It is rather ornately titled: "paperback activism considered harmful."
(31st March, 2003) Please don't read the book - "The peddler of soaps" - it is my sincere advice!
(21st May, 2002) In response to the frustration of having to listen to fellow armed_chair_intellectuals, I posted this long, but true story of the vile isms that are out to colonize us... BTW, please make sure that you have installed the matrix voodoo card in your box before reading this text, for the spell to wark praperly...
(3rd Feb, 2001) I wrote this rather loooooooooooong email first in 1998 to an NRI ex-classmate of mine. Since then I have been editing this, and the earlier two versions are floating around in the Usenet (soc.culture.indian) and at return2india.com. This was my 'advice' to a guy who wanted to come back to India from USA - and surprise, surprise ;-) - he has not come back at all!
This rant is about the deleterious consequences of Indian NGOs scouting around for foreign aid; hope they will soon bid farewell to alms...
Rajni Bakshi has written a non-sentimental book on individuals and organizations that are pursuing the idea of 'hind swaraj' in their own ways - titled "Bapu Kuti" and published by Penguin India. I read this book first a couple of years back and was happy to be in sync with its spirit of hope-realized-in-action. Having been brought up as a typical child of Macaulay and trained in 'modern' technologies, I was almost 25 years of age when I rediscovered Gandhi - not interms of 'Father of India' kind of textbookish imagery, but as 'Civilizational Gandhi' as Rajni puts it so nicely. Well, I have been visiting a few places to get to know more about the interesting people mentioned by Rajni as also others, of late... Navadarshanam was/is one such place...
(7th June, 2002) In the year 1996, I got *really* sick and tired of interviewing dingbat programmers (who were solely made up of that fundamental anti-particle called anti-cluon) and had to desperately take_my_frustrations_out - and this, had (in)advertantly resulted in a few rants that I posted (had to!) to the Usenet; inteview_eeks was a first person description of a canonically terrifying_interview and interview_species was a very scholarly ;-) taxonomical attempt at classifying a new set of species under a new 6th kingdom called moronera.
Ahem... after all these years, I feel that these posts may still be relevant - one has to probably merely insert ('embed') jargon like - 'Open Source,''EJB,' '.Net,''Web services,' 'P2P,' 'REST' and what not in the document - and... lo and behold, these rants are still valid!