Flying home

I took this photo during the flight to Singapore last time. The flight was boring, all the films were the ones I have seen previously; I was alone and the engineer in me took control: I spent most of the time studying the wing flaps. There was only six months left for the 100 year annivasary of Wright brothers' historic flight of 120 feet - a length which is just a bit longer than half the wingspan of a Boeing 747.

That reminds me, it was Bill Gates who wrote the The TIME 100 atricle on Wright brothers. Now that's the Bill I like: cool, brilliant, creative and talented.

That was a year and a month ago. After a freakin long time - a hectic one too - I'm flying home at last.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull

"If our friendship depends on things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time, we've destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the middle of Here and Now, don't you think that we might see each other once or twice?"

I read Richard Bach's 'Jonathan Livingston Seagull -- A story' long time ago when it was mentioned by one of my mentors; it's a rather short story, about one's quest for perfection. A really inspiring story to keep one on track when the going gets tough.

Wikipedia says on the book:

"Clearly, Jonathan Livingston Seagull has joined Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Gibran's The Prophet, and, for a previous generation, Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye as one of those must-read books that one encounters in late adolescence and that remains with one forever."

True. At least the two I have read, this and LotR, will remain with me forever.

An offer one cannot refuse

You have the option to listen to the nice dialog that follows:

Michael: So the next day, my father went to see him; only this time with Luca Brasi. And within an hour, he signed a release, for a certified check for $1,000.
Kay: How'd he do that?
Michael: My father made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
Kay: What was that?
Michael: Luca Brasi held a gun to his head, and my father assured him that either his brains -- or his signature -- would be on the contract.

Why did I post this? Because I cannot forget this dialog -with background sound and all- every time I hear the word 'offer'. That was a dialog from one of the greatest movies I have seen: one of the greatest movies of all time: Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather. Michael Corleone, the youngest son of Don Vitto Corleone aka The Godfather, talks with his girlfriend Kay on his sisters' wedding day, and Kay gets to know what kind of a family Michael's is.



Released in 1972, The Godfather is still in the first place of IMDB's top 250 movie list of all time. The line "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" in particular was selected as the number 1 of the top 30 movie lines of all times by AskMen.

With apologies for this straying away from the topic, -with my fond memories-, let me get back to the road: I'll explain later why this quote came in to my mind - and the topic today is:

GMail says: I'll make an offer you can't refuse.

Well there are thousands of blog posts on this topic: but still there are things that haven't been said apart from "1GB wow! this is great". Especially I wasn't lured by the 1GB. My thought was more in the line "100MB in hard disk worths more than 1GB remote". But I realised that it's not the matter here.

I wouldn't talk on how great GMail is, because it's been well documented already: what is interesting for me is how MS and Yahoo let GMail to beat them on this grounds.

With all it's technical excellence, with all it's speed, GMail almost forces one to say 'yes' to web mail. I don't like Google to be another MS, but when it comes to innovation, Google has the edge. I realised this when my MS fan friend was amazed by GMail: google could beat MS and Yahoo once again in a field where MS and Yahoo were the best: looks like both the giants did not learn anything from their first defeat at the search engine battle.

What attracts one to GMail is not 1GB. The interface is something novel: it has the Google's signature simplicity compared to Yahoo and Hotmails bloat. But when it comes to performance, both in speed and features, GMail easily beats both mail giants. Especially when it comes to the extensive use of DHTML to enhance the interface: I tried with both IE and Mozilla, and it works fine. It's actuallly a shame on MS to be beaten by a newcomer by freakin DHTML - where we all thought MS had an advantage.

Instead of shouting "MS sucks - google rocks", I hope this would lead MS and Yahoo to rethink seriously on the issues: some issues I previously noted down: basically, that even a free service is a two-way contract: not something that is merely donated to the user.

These points look so naive and obvious, but I can show you heaps of events (As I have shown here) to show that MS in particular is not going to understand these simple rules. If you're not convinced, go search for "Yahoo Messenger" on MSN search. The first search result you are getting will be a link to MSN messenger. MS admits that it was a 'featured link' from it's partners, but why the ^%*% should I care? All I wanted to look for is Yahoo messenger, and all I need is the best results that matches it: changing search engine results for business purposes was a thing in early 90's. That time is gone, and it won't probably come back unless all three search engines collectively decide to be ugly. (Personally, I don't have any faith as such that Google would not.) But for now at least, this is not the case, and MS is clearly oblivious to that reality.

We are yet to know whether GMail will be 'the thing' in web based mail, but there are good reasons to believe that it would be, given that it can support a very large number of users. But it clearly gives an option we can't refuse - to see advertising, for instance: in the case of Yahoo, I was particularly pissed off when Yahoo stopped POP3. Why? because it offered me nothing in return, but said "it's free, take it or leave it". GMail, on the other hand, provides a heap of features that I cannot possibly use out of it's own interface. And it has got rid of the drawbacks of web interface by technology: spell check, for instance is something more than cool. What does is ask for all these facilities? nothing but a chance to show a text ad you wouldn't even notice, instead of flashy adds Yahoo shows.

So, in the case of GMail, the 'offer' it does to check mail in a web interface is something we cannot refuse: we get better features that we wouldn't get in a normal email client, GMail did the dirty DHTML work and took care that we are least inconvenienced of limitations inherent to web, and for all that, it puts a simple text ad. It's really fast too. Personally I wouldn't bother setting up my email client to check GMail even if Google provided POP.

I sincerely hope Yahoo and MS would learn: it's not very good to have one and only one big solution for all your needs, and it's certainly not good to have some more bossy/dirty tactics to retain people. You were late and sloppy MS, now I wish you'd at least follow :-)

On Google and spying

I came across two web sites on Google, Gmail and, unnecessarily, on it's creators. Both are clearly anti-Google.

The first one, Gmail is too creepy offers a good discussion on facts that lie behind Google. It's conspiracy theory anyway, but still they have facts, although they go too far accusing Google for just a 'potential' of doing bad things, and it's not very differrent from most Linux fans' bashing on MS: speculations on how bad one can be if one wants to. Still, the points are valid, and it made me - a Google fan for quite a time now - think about the evil side of 1GB. Not that I care anyway - for two reasons:
First reason: I have nothing to hide, and the people who send me emails -except for those guys who want my help to remove a heap of money from some nigerian bank account- do not seemingly send emails on illegal activities they are planing to commit in near future. If one is concerned, she can of course choose not to send the mail to my GMail account.
Second reason: I don't see it as a totally new issue, apart from being a size problem: neither Hotmail nor Yahoo denied that their mail accounts weren't any safer than Google in privacy terms. True, they do not scan emails for advertising purposes, but technically they can scan email if one needs to spy. If anyone shouts about Googles promise not to use personally identifiable information except for a legal necessity, then what is she going to say about Hotmail/Yahoo? Did any of those two promise us NOT to reveal anything on our email accounts even in case of a police/court request? The answer is a simple No. So technically, it's the 1GB that's a small threat - and Yahoo already has 100MB. If one claims that Google is evil on the ground of potential spying, one should remember that it's mostly text emails that one can spy on - and one does not need 1GB of text to get a good enough idea on what a pesron is communicating. 100 MB per person is more than enough. So, Y! mail users are not much safer than GMail users at least technically.

The other site is located at http://www.google-watch.org/googles-ipo.html, I do not make it a link because I don't like that site. It's just full of

• hatred and personal attacks ("Google is ruled by a triumvirate -- Larry, Sergey, and Eric. These three are very good at being geeks, and not good at much else.")


• jealousy, ("must have a Computer Science PhD from Stanford")


• baseless accusations ("That's all they can do because they know little about the big world out there, which is full of social issues that cannot be reduced to mathematical algorithms." - Google bought an ad and said sorry for that anti-semitic issue - that's all they could do after all. Personally, I dont like my search engine results to be human-tweaked according to someone else's political agenda)
  
• inconsitencies, contradictions and non-sense ("Google owns thousands of cheap computers, and has produced software that ties them together in a vast distributed network. However, the barrier to entry for a new search engine is not that high these days. Hardware is still dropping in price, and in coming years the software for distributed computing on Linux boxes will be more generally available.": this does not help MS or Yahoo any more than Google - and Google is in fact in a competitive advantage on this - at least currently, comparing with MSN and Yahoo, not with a non-existent somebody)


• and FUD. ("Look at Google's competition: Yahoo, Amazon, and soon Microsoft. All three know more about their customers than Google, because all three have many years of portal experience. And Microsoft owns your desktop. Can Google compete?")

Well - 'nuff said. But still this leads me to think a bit different on the 'World Dominance' conspiracy theory. Think of Blogger even - a simple way to collect heaps of people's ideas - what people think - in text form - the easiest form for machine reading. Sure, anyone can access a blog and blogger profile with simple HTTP requests, but only Google has the pointer that links given persons unique id - email address - to his blog posts. I'm assuming the case that the guy behind the blog does not want to make himself identified, and does not reveal the email address to public. Even if he used a seperate email account for that - still Google has the IP and can identify him.

Interesting. Any Sience fiction writers in the audience ? Please raise your hands.

Yahoooooooooooooooooooo !!!

#$%& !!!

I open Yahoo mail - just to know that the storage limit has gone up to 100MB :-D

Thanks Yahoo - and thanks Google ;) !!! My heavens - a 'search mail' option too .... Looks like GMail's war drum sound is working well on the other providers. Way to go Google!!! However, efficiency and quality of the service is yet to be seen. I clicked that 'search mail' button, and it went for a server time-out. Merely copying one is a lack of creativity anyway. Still, it's better than no-competition or other tactics of competition which offers nothing new to customer: such as the Windows Rights Management issue I talked in the previous article - using one of your products to force-market another of yours - taking customer in to hostage.

Anyway, during this week I heard that lots of people got GMail invitations - and this might be why Yahoo had to hurry. [later addition: some said that the invitations sent to Yahoo email accounts ended up in Bulk folder :) - and many complained about server problems]

Uh - and I hope they'd either make the interface less bulky - like Google, or more attractive - like Hotmail. And Microsoft: a few more MBs would not hurt on my hotmail account - although all I use for is spam prone subscriptions :) I'm not kidding: Actually I'm a bit curious what MS is doing for competition - and hope it will offer us something. In a way there is no real threat for MS - because most of the people I know who use hotmail for serious use are not techies - and they do not keep checking about other options regularly. On the positive side, their spam protection is pretty strong compared to Yahoo.

I dont have a faith on any commercial establishment - be it MS, Yahoo or Google - but Google has been nice to me so far. And when Google offers GMail for everyone, I'll be in line to grab one: I dont need 1GB of mail storage, but I wouldn't mind the way they put advertiesments - an occational text ad - compared to intrusive and distracting animated ads with Yahoo.

Where do you want to go today?TM

This is becoming almost boring: I feel like writing against Microsoft again. Here is how it goes:

Microsoft Office Publisher^TM lies dormant on my hard disk for ages, on a boring day I decide to see what it is. There you go, a sleek design tool, a lot funkier than Front Page: I design a template page in a way that looked quite naive, and go

File > Publish to web.

A pop-up comes up, saying



Fine enough. What is even more fine is that is you chose 'ok', it just opens a 'save as' dialog and saves the file on the hard disk. There is no option whatsoever to set the ftp address of my hosting service, nor other details. After trying this a few times, I decide to click that link and see what's up. It opens a browser window, which takes me to MS Office Online, which in turn directs me to a list of so-called Web Presence Providers.

Hmm. No ftp; no front page extensions either; what they need now is Web Presence. What the heck is that anyway? I dont care: What's interesting is that the freakin list has only nine companies listed there! And the page goes:

So if you want to host your Web site on the World Wide Web, it's recommended that you purchase services from a registered WPP.

Now that's non-technical, unethical and untrue. It should have at least said that's the MSO Publishers way of doing it. True, anyone can get it over with the word 'recommended', but it's an undue expense on the customer unless MS gurantees that the guys in the list provide the cheapest solution. After all, Publisher's way of doing this does not seem to be meant for techies. So, although the list is followed by a provider search, it's simply limiting the not-so-techies' options, and even those of techies who might simply want to get their pages published with the cheapest option available.

Allowing FTP uploading was an easy thing, and simple enough that anyone who can use email could possibly get used to it: all that is needed is hostname, username and password - rest can be more or less automated. Why doesn't MS do it that way?

Before finding answer to that question, I'll recall another similar incidence: Yesterday I discussed with a true blue MS loyalist how Windows Rights Management can't get any better than what we already had with PGP. (I was pretty proud to learn today morning from the horses mouth that what I was telling him was officially true.) Again the same question: WHY did MS want to do it that way than to use already available well-known techniques?



My argument is that MS is becoming another IBM - so big, so powerful - and increasingly losing creativity: giving up innovation, and either reinventing the wheel or copyrighting everything in sight one thinks one did invent- or doing both, while suing everyone right and left. But Bill knows damn well what went wrong with IBM, and tries not to get drowned and become irrelevant that way: instead, MS uses all its nails and teeth to lure, drag, bind, tie, limit it's own customers to as much proprietary techniques as can be. Once the customer pays you, make him have no other option than to pay you more. Skim the cow while you can - so plain simple it's almost boring. These facts are not far from the ones in the slashdotted article on Seattle Weekly by Jeff Reifman.

Well, I don't wanna be too much communist than necessary: It's MS's right to do all this, because as far as business goes, one's only true aim is to increase revenue. But as a customer, all this makes me increasingly drawn away from MS because now it has started to act against me: not its competitors. It wants me to pay for Web Presense guys no matter how cheap I can get simple ftp-enabled web hosting, it wants me to use freakin WRM instead of well-known and open security schemes, and offers nothing new in return. In short, MS tries to dictate Where I want to go today, as in their famous trademark slogan (of which I can't find anything on microsoft website now). All these just because I bought one product from them.

And dont get me started on version changes of document formats that force people to upgrade their software for no real benefit other than the ability to read the documents sent by someone who is richer than you and paid for the upgrade.

Can someone explain why I should trust MS any more? Be informed: I'm not a masochist: so "because it screws you, and it's fun to be screwed" is not an acceptable answer.

When he first came to the mountains his life was far away
On the road and hangin’ by a song
But the string’s already broken and he doesn’t really care
It keeps changin’ fast and it don’t last for long

He climbed cathedral mountains, he saw silver clouds below
He saw everything as far as you can see
And they say he got crazy once, and he tried to touch the sun
And he lost a friend but kept his memory

Now he walks in quiet solitude the forests and the streams
Seeking grace in every step he takes
His sight has turned inside himself to try and understand
The serenity of a clear blue mountain lake

Now his life is full of wonder but his heart still knows some fear
Of a simple thing he cannot comprehend
Why they try to tear the mountains down to bring in a couple more
More people, more scars upon the land

And the colorado rocky mountain high
I’ve seen it rainin’ fire in the sky
I know he’d be a poorer man if he never saw an eagle fly
Rocky mountain high ...

- John Denver (Rockey Mountain High, 1972)


In a cheery bright sunny day in October 1997, I was listening to one of John Denver's songs when the radio announced that he died in a plane crash. It was a private experimental kind of a plane: people say that there was a failure while switching fuel tanks.

Known for many good deeds outside entertainment industry, Denver seemed to take his cheery vision on the life even to his death. Good people die early.Many of his songs go alone with my kind of buddhist thinking: let be, relax and enjoy.

In a way, there is no other alternative: I'm old now. It was not much of a pleasure having to change the first digit of my age - which was a cool thing back in 1994. :)

The GIMP Rocks !

Used The GIMP sometime back, but gave up because I was Lazy. Tried version 2.0 a few days ago, and it was just great. Still could not find anything I could not do which I could do with Adobe Photoshop^TM.


Truly impressive, I would say - especially for a free program. It's very usable too, although the way things are done is not exactly the same as Photoshop, can't say it's bad design - it's just different.

Phew ... I did it :)

Proudly announcing: From today onwards, http://www.kohomban.net is frameless, and 100% complient with W3C HTML 4.01 Transitional standard. Well, except this page. I could not still get my Blogger template done. Not a big deal to write a small perl widget to automate template thingy, but looks like it's not worth the hassle. For now, I'll keep it this way.

Was wondering all this long how to implement de-framing, because i didn't want to edit each navigation link every time I changed a page. Actually that was the only reason to keep the left navigation pane. ASP was one option, but I opted for Server Side Includes: That way, my website is 100% Microsoft Free: No microsoft tool/technology was involved in any stage of the development. SSIs are pretty simple as well, and they let me work very easily with my friend Perl.

What's next? Any Browser campaign, I think . Here I come, any browser :)

In the Beginning was the Command Line

Neal Stephenson's article on Apple and Microsoft is a good read. I initially thought he was biased against MS, but later it seemed that it's not the case. One of the most interesting parts is how he points out the similarity of the situation of pre-revolution era:

"Hostility towards Microsoft is not difficult to find on the Net, and it blends two strains: resentful people who feel Microsoft is too powerful, and disdainful people who think it's tacky. This is all strongly reminiscent of the heyday of Communism and Socialism, when the bourgeoisie were hated from both ends: by the proles, because they had all the money, and by the intelligentsia, because of their tendency to spend it on lawn ornaments. Microsoft is the very embodiment of modern high-tech prosperity--it is, in a word, bourgeois--and so it attracts all of the same gripes."

Yeah. MS fans resemble bourgeoisie in more than one ways - and all the Free Software and OSS guys sometimes seem to me as a trendy sort of street fighters - who play the game in style. I can't say I'm a serious MS hater, but I happen to understand day by day that MS's business is moving farther from how I'd like it to be. Actually there's no need for hating MS alone: It's people against corporations now, thanks to US patent office.

Installed Mozilla Thunderbird yesterday, after getting pissed off many a time with bloated MS Outlook^TM. Problem with Outlook is that it's TOO good to use. Still I'm on the honeymoon with Thunderbird: looks cool, sleek and really fast so far. Got a problem trying to install an extention that looked like a blogging tool, and realized I dont really need it. Uninstallation gave a little trouble, but -- unlike Outlook -- the system is transparent and simple enough: guess what the config file is - open it in my great text editor - delete a line here, a line there - restart - whooosh! there goes the extension :)

More whiners

Andrew Goodman explains Why Yahoo is No Longer Good. Looks like this time I'm not the only one who's pissed off by Yahoo's money making strategies. They all must learn from Google who makes decent money in not-much-greedy way. Some space is reserved there for the future, because it looks like Google itself is gonna sound more business-like.

Dan's Mail Format site is quite a nice discussion on Yahoo free email. It's simple enough for very basic users, and raises some issues interesting enough for experienced guys. I never thought before of that option to automatically convert text messages to HTML as a sneaky trick to smuggle richer advertisements. And the part about the uselessness of those disclaimers that come attached with joke emails sent to me by my freinds who work in big companies: just hilarious.

Wha...... :O

Man it works! *#@%. No wonder it made my all-Microsoft worshipper freind admit that best thing in life are free. Yeah - a totally free service cant possibly get any better than this or Wikipedia or Google. Yahoo was in that category until they stopped pop3 access and made us go look at ads on their site. They're still good, but it's not this free after all.

If anyone is offended that free service they are giving out is under-valued, please let me know :) I'd like to know of 'em. :D

Testing

Oh, does it work? just a test post :)