The Armed Forces and the botched up 6th Pay Comission

I was deeply saddened to see the state of affairs in the country today. Actually that's something one can say everyday, but this time the Govt. has really hit rock bottom. It's regarding the 6th Pay Commission. Now for those who don't have a clue as to what the 6th Pay Commission and the related controversy is; read This ->.

Here we have people who risk their lives day in and day out, men who are retired at the age of 36; they're called jawans; and they are paid salaries which are lesser than those of a private security guard. The so called security guards do nothing more that salute big 'egoed' sahibs and sit around all day. Not once have they prevented a rape at a call center or nabbed a robber in a society. And yet these guys are paid more than a jawan who deals with mortar fire and grenade attacks; thanks to terrorism, which again is a creation of political mishandling of issues. The Indian Armed Forces are the worlds most respected Armed Forces, being the only one's to have separated an entire enemy country into 2 parts through tactical superiority within 7 days [read as the creation of Bangladesh].
Few people know of the "Last Man Last Round Battle" in the 1962 war, where the Indian Soldier fought against wave after wave of Chinese infantry until the last man standing fired his last round. They were given instructions allowing them to retreat, but they chose to fight and die courageously rather than give a walk-over to the enemy.
The only courage our MP's show is when they're busy throwing chairs and mikes at each other inside Parliament.

Then we have some 'economic patriots' complaining about the impact of the 6th Pay Commission on our economy. Well, what difference does an amount of 450 Crore rupees make, when we can loan off 6000 Crore rupees in an obvious vote hungry move. 450 Crore is a not such a huge amount, and it's the fault of the Govt. that it has come to such a state that for so many years the Armed Forces were denied their rightful pay.

The worst thing is that we have people, sitting in their cozy sofas commenting on how the Armed Forces should not 'indulge' in protests and 'focus' on their jobs. Well my friend, when you know you could die at your work [and by die I do not mean die in a car crash or in a case of drunken asphyxiation; I mean die by the bullet fired from an enemy's gun or from the shrapnel flying off from a grenade burst], the least you expect is that your family should not be begging hand to mouth after you die doing your duty.

We have software professionals who get appraisals every 6 months or after 1 year. Let me see how he feels, if he is given a pathetic increase, an increase so puny that the fresher of the neighboring company gets more than you. But then we civilians can switch jobs, should the Indian army soldier switch to the Pakistan army [which incidentally is one of the highest paid army in the world]?

The Armed Forces are not asking to be given demi-god status, all they are protesting against is the step-brotherly treatment they are getting in this country, from the very people they protect. Another thing to be remembered is that the soldier is also human, he too has a limit of tolerance, God help this country when the soldier gives up hope. The backlash of this hasn't been foreseen by the current Govt. and the Finance Minister. Wake up people, the Armed Forces and their rightful demands must be honored.

Cygwin

First up, I had put up a statutory warning for the previous post [below this one]. Do follow instructions the next time I put up a statutory warning.

Now for this post -

The Location: My Desktop PC
The Villain: Old PC Configuration and a non functional DVD/CD Drive
The Hero: Cygwin

It took a day to figure out and download what all packages I need to install to run GCC on Windows. But finally when I successfully compiled and executed a program called "dclinux.c" I was really relieved. Not that it'll make much of a difference to my programming knowledge, but at least I won't have to install Linux on my computer just for GCC or . Also there was the fact that I can't install Linux or use Knoppix or Ubuntu because my DVD drive decided to go on strike!

Downloading and Installing

Install Cygwin/X now

Cygwin/X is installed via Cygwin's setup.exe and the installation process is documented in the Cygwin/X User's Guide. Whether or not you already have Cygwin installed, you can add Cygwin/X to your installation by downloading the latest setup.exe, running setup, and selecting the 'xorg-x11-base' package from the 'X11' category.

Link for setting up GCC on Cygwin -
GCC on Cygwin
Also see -
Cygwin

Keeley Hazell

Statutory Warning: If an explosion of beauty and all natural hotness seems offensive to you, stop reading right now. Girls, skip this post. Guys who are insane or too pious, quit reading further and close this tab/window. As usual don't sue me, I warned you; besides I'm not the one clicking the mouse on the links at your end. It's you all the way!

There's been a lot of buzz over Keeley Hazell and as the links and pics will prove, it's not for no reason. Move over Megan Fox, there's an even foxier thing in town. Even Indian news sites are getting involved. My only question is why wasn't India involved in such a vote? This would've been one poll for which even I would've spent my precious Airtel balance! And how come Indian's are still told that Aishwariya Rai and Deepika Padukone are the hottest women in the world!!! Which blind, senseless man[iac] would vote for them ahead of - well, just take a look:




Now, how on earth does anyone compete with... damn I have no words!

I also stumbled onto this pic from PETA [which actually stands for People for Ethical Treatment of Animals], but they're mostly famous for getting celebs to shoot steamy pics -


Now there's a very subtle message in the above photo, somehow it's supposed to tell me to go Veggy! Now here's a photo which could be used as an example for Steganography! The message stays hidden in the image, coz the image makes people forget the message, even if somehow they're able to decrypt it. Also, I would consider leaving Non-Veg food only if Keeley Hazell is figured in a similar photo as shown above!

Original Quotes

This is a very mean quote, but it was funny at the time. While describing a highly intelligent but horrendous looking woman.

"She's so ugly, she has to study" - Harshvardhan L Pande


"Just because I'm a vegetarian, it doesn't mean I can't eat non-veg food" - Jai Goenka

"You don't have sex with everyone you love; similarly you don't have to love everyone you have sex with" - A girl we also call Robin, I think it was the year 2004.

"Sometimes I watch Eurotrip and wonder, where in the world are all these hot college girls, and then I remember I'm in COEP"

"I'm twenty years old, and considering I'll be fat, old and bald by forty, it means I've wasted half my sex life doing nothing!"

"An Airtel SIM card is not a SIM card, it just looks like a SIM card but it doesn't work. Like all those Leo Matel toys that look so cool in the ads but once you own one of them they just fuck your brains by just doint nothing"

"Why do traffic cops catch me on days when I am broke!" - Rohit

"The college mail is another term for legal spamming"

"I studied and didn't get marks, I didn't study and still didn't get marks. Lesson learnt, don't study just pray that you're sitting around someone who gets marks" - A close but shy friend of mine.

"Yesterday was the best day of my cell life. I tried calling a number and I got through on the first attempt" - Me commenting on my Airtel connection.

Everlasting quotes

“All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; renewed shall be blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

"If you smile when no one else is around, you really mean it." - Andy Rooney

"Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.” - Plato


"What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.” - Albert Pike

The "New Text Document.txt" Incident

This happened last week during the IS [Information Security] practical. I think it's best to write this down now, while the memory is still fresh and the story isn't embellished at all.

The place - IS Lab, the 1st computer near the door.
The heroes - Sanjeev, Kalpesh and me.

Once again, as I had earlier mentioned on another blog, the B3 batch is THE BATCH from the great class of COEP Comp 2009. This incident couldn't have happened in any other batch.

So here's what happened:

It was the 1st IS prac post Mid-Sem and as usual no one had done the assignment on Steganography [which by the way had been given almost 2 weeks prior to Mid-Sem]. Anyways so here we are, the 3 musketeers sitting on one comp, whiling away time. Sanjeev and I almost had an arm wrestling match. I spent time researching on a female called Lena Soderberg who was a model whose photo was used as a test photo for all image processing work. Anyways I liked the photo and downloaded it to use as the image to be processed for our program which was thus far non-existent. We also downloaded a program which had like 28 header files and was a VC++ program. It had a demo which had shit like password protection and all to go with the steganography, one look at the damn thing and we knew it was so good that it was unusable. The Java program I had of Pranav didn't run, so again it was useless. So here we were an hour and a half into the prac with no concrete program. We did however for fun use Lena's photo with that 28 header program, which worked. So there we were with a desktop which had various icons including one with "New Text Document.txt" written on it and no program of ours. Things were going along fine until the M Tech sir showed up.

He comes along and asks us - Have you finished the program?
Now this question is a very plain and simple question. But somehow Sanjeev and I thought it was funny. We were both laughing, but we didn't laugh explicitly and we avoided looking at each other, because that would have made us lose control. Then Kalpesh was on his own, explaining to sir how our program was "almost complete". Some lines exchanged during the conversation were -

Kalpesh: We are still researching... the problem is that the transformation of the text is not happening... the program is not complete.

Finally after stalling for 10 minutes the M Tech finally said - Show me the program

Kalpesh - Sir, it's not complete

M Tech - Even then, whatever is done, show it to me

Kalpesh - But sir, it's not working fully

M Tech - You must have done some coding

Kalpesh - Of course [Sanjeev and I laughing really hard, in silent mode]

M Tech - Then show me whatever you have done

Kalpesh But it's not done fully

M Tech - Just show me you code

Kalpesh - Yes sir

Then he grabs the mouse. Sanjeev and I wonder what he will do. The mouse moves around icons on the desktop. M Tech - Where's your program. Kalpesh - Here. He double clicks on "New Text Document. txt". What opens up is this - our supposed program





Sanjeev and I burst out laughing, we were shamelessly loud in our laughing. Kalpesh too broke down and started laughing. Five minutes of continuous laughing from the 3 musketeers and then the M Tech starts laughing. After we got control he "warned" us about the assignment and how we must show it in the next practical. We all agreed. As soon as he went to the next comp, we all burst out laughing again. We laughed so hard, it was painful. Kalpesh even had tears rolling down his cheeks.

That was an amazing thing, which comes close to the "Passing the parcel incident" which took place between me and Amit Julka in the CL practical months back. Which I'll write about in another post.

Death Magnetic

I had been waiting for this since 2006, and now after 2 long years of anticipation I finally listened to every song of Metallica's latest album. It's seriously good. The best track is The Unforgiven III. Way better than
St. Anger [which was a horror to listen to] and certainly one of the better albums this year. Get your hands on this album quick and hear every track.


# Title Length
1. "That Was Just Your Life" 7:07
2. "The End of the Line" 7:51
3. "Broken, Beat & Scarred" 6:25
4. "The Day That Never Comes" 7:55
5. "All Nightmare Long" 7:57
6. "Cyanide" 6:39
7. "The Unforgiven III" 7:45
8. "The Judas Kiss" 8:00
9. "Suicide & Redemption" 9:56
10. "My Apocalypse" 5:00




Death Magnetic debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 490,000 copies in just three days of availability. It is the band's fifth album to
debut at number one, making Metallica the first group with the most albums to open at number one, surpassing The Beatles, U2, and The Dave Matthews Band.

Other Related Links:

Rolling Stones Review

A Fan Review

Another Review

Yet Another Review

Indian Express

Focus During The Last Exam

Tomorrow is the last Mid Sem exam. And as usual, most normal people will be planning out how to enjoy the upcoming weekend. Ideas popping up all the time, images of enjoyment, time pass and fun breaking into your mind and concentration at an all time low.

Some nerdy types will then suddenly tell you, 'abbey last paper bacha hai, dhyaan se padhai kar. Focus'

So here's how I see it. The last paper looks something like this:

And the enjoyment that we expect after the paper looks like this:

Now which sane mind would focus on the first rather than the second!

Principles

This post is kinda philosophical, so if you have the stomach for that kind of stuff read on, or else skip this one!

Principles:

A life without principles is one without any meaning. In the course of life, everyone is morally on the same grid until they reach adolescence. That's when things start changing. Time and circumstances force us at times to make tough decisions. We have examples set in front of us, things related to our past. Maybe something that happened to some relative, our parents or our friends. What did they do at that time? The time when some tough decision had to be made. By a tough decision I mean one, which decides what kind of a man you are! Whether you stick to your guns, or do you surrender to the enemy a.k.a. the system.

The unprincipled choice is the one that kills a part of your soul. One may feel that, ok... I had to do it this one time. I will never do it again. "It" could mean anything, betraying someone's trust, stepping over someone else to get up the ladder ot any such thing. You know you're wrong, but you try to convince yourself. You distort the facts to make it seem to yourself that what you did was the right thing. That is the process of killing your soul. When a man, who has sold himself to the devil gets success, for a while he thinks that he was right; to him it seems like the right path in life. He may scoff at the other fools who so unnecessarily suffer. His success then will always depend on cutting throats or stomping over people. Such people age very fast, because they know that what they did to someone, someone else can also do to them! Such people are always insecure in their heart of hearts. 

On the other hand, very few principled people make it really big. Those who do, reign supreme. But all of them have one thing in common. They are actually happy in life. And whenever the unprincipled men face the principled ones, the eye contact says it all. The former have eyes beset with fear and a realization that the latter has something money can never buy - the soul! 

I write this today, because firstly I've just seen Dead Poets Society again, it deals with exactly the same theme. Should one bow down to other people's wishes? People who themselves have lost their souls trying to conform with the system, or should one stand by his convictions? There is a price to be paid on both fronts, you have to choose what is more precious to you - your soul or temporary reprieve from struggle? 

Those who choose the latter, are surely successful if they are really good at the field they have chosen, but it can only get them that far. Eventually what will happen is summarized by these lines from the Coldplay song 'Lost' :

You might be a big fish in a little pond,

Doesn't mean that you've won,

Coz you know, there'll come a bigger one.

One thing i really do believe is that what one does in his 'good time' decides what will happen during his 'bad time'.Those who are determined to stick to principles and morals face an uphill task, but once their 'good time' arrives, it eclipses all that the throat cutters and back biters can ever do. It is something I have seen very closely. J R R Tolkein wrote the following lines to describe Aragorn, but it suits the post:

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all who wander are lost.

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are never reached by frost.

Anonymous mails and Trash

Here's an original quote:

"A fool needs no advertising"

A testament to this fact is our college mail, with people coming up with more and more mindless trash everyday. Apart from the usual BS like "Lost my pen drive", "Lost!!! Lost!!! Lost!!! - OS File" and that kind of crap, we also have people now taking out their frustrations on the college mail through Fake ID's! Genius!

The fun part is how they like to write the mail in a way so that people remain confused about who actually wrote that mail. Get a life people! Or as The Joker would say - What happened? Did'ya balls drop off? 

If sending an anonymous mail isn't dumb enough, we also have the extra scared people who send an anonymous mail and then write - Please forward it to the director! WTF? 

Anyways as I have just realized, exams are indeed the best time to blog, the brain will do everything but study! This is my 3rd blog post in less than 16 hours.

How I Met Your Mother

I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I found out that HIMYM will have a 4th Season at least. Not that the show is an all-time-great one. It's just that each episode has it's Barney moments. Just for that and maybe a bit of Robin, I'd like the show to carry on. It's way better than some of the other crap on offer in the name of comedy, like 8 Simple Rules et all.

There's also the good camradrie between the friends in the show, it's a light hearted romantic comedy which is always saved by Barney from becoming cheesy!

Kites

Well, in the past 3 years Hrithik has hardly done 3-4 movies, his next flick is Kites. But that's not the best part of this post... the best part is this - or rather, her... Barbara Mori

I tried really hard to find pics of her which were ahem... lets say worthy of display on a blog without an 'A' rating. But she is beautiful and hot. 

On a more serious note, the story seems to be quite interesting and the movie also features Kangana Ranaut, but i cant waste precious blog space on her! Sorry! Hope this movie turns out to be good and please oh please... more foreign babes in Hindi flicks. The day Megan Fox, Salma Hayek, Monica Bellucci and Laetitia Casta make their Hindi movie debut - well... I guess one cant get everything one wants.