Friday, October 31, 2008

A deathly calmness!!!

Over 60 lives were lost when a series of bomb explosions took place in Assam at around 1130hrs today(30/09/2008). The blasts didn't take place in a single place but were rather scattered all over the state,with Guwahati taking the maximum damage with 33 lives. Most importantly nearly 400 lives(TOI report) are still in critical condition. So the final toll is most likely to rise. What has surprised me is that the bombs were exploded in strategically "secure" locations like the Deputy Commissioner's Office, the Ganeshguri area just a few hundred metres from the Chuef Minister's official residence. Almost all the bombs,which exploded in Guwahati were done via timer devices and kept in vehicles. Favorite haunting ground of the public like shopping places, markets were also not spared.
This topic is not created to publicise the report or some propaganda related activity but rather to introspect the after effects and to mull over the future of our nation which is deteriorating day by day. The Times of India the nation's largest selling English daily posted this astounding fact on its website that
"The country has witnessed 64 serial blasts in six states in less than six months leaving 215 people dead and nearly 900 injured. "
Seriously what is happening? What about the basic security of innocent citizens who are busy in earning their daily bread? What about the basic moral values which separate us humans from the creatures of forests and oceans? Or is it some mindless dilly-dallying between the predator and the prey? Who is the hunter here and who is being hunted?
The figures above only seem to put any reader to a seemingly endless vortex of disturbances and confusion as these questions gain strength after every such man made casualties. This is not some skyscraper collapse or some dam break. For God's sake, this is cold blooded murder of human beings using modern and sophisticated weapons of mass destruction. Oh wait a minute! Weapons of Mass Destruction-did I mention? Oh no! WMDs, the same convoluted phrase oftly repeated by the president of the strongest country to make it an excuse to invade Iraq. What are WMDs doing in India? And worse still how can some groups of murderers gain access to it?
The country has a huge ever burgeoning population,I fully agree and worse the density is simply too high in heavily conglomerated urban clusters. So even a small accident can cause heavy casualties. But if these same clusters are being subjected to WMDs, Oh no I don't even want to imagine the extent of damage possible.
Well I am still confusing you ain't I? What is the point of this topic then? After every accidents or disasters or terror attacks we Indian seem to forget one thing
To learn from past mistakes and to correct the existing loopholes in the system.
Can we do it then or shall we continue to suffer and accept it as our fate? The time for reckoning has come. It was the same laid back attitude which led the people of this land being colonized by invaders and trading companies going back to the time period of PrithviRaj Chauhan's rule in Delhi. I guess we still haven't learnt from our mistakes. What those mistakes are and how can we correct them?
Yes my friends, this topic was created to invoke these very questions on your minds.
Bye then.
Let all the victims' souls rest in peace.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Milk the cow until it runs dry

NVIDIA is a Graphics Processor manufacturing company that specializes in making graphic cards and chipsets for Personal Computers around the world. Based in Santa Clara, California ,it raked in close to 5 billion dollars as revenue in the last fiscal year. Such is its dominance in this segment that its monopoly is virtually unchallenged,although another company ATI, a subsidiary of chip maker AMD tries desperately every now and then.
The story goes on.. I am not writing this piece for NVIDIA's glorification but rather am trying to reveal and analyse the opportunistic behaviour of this company due to good faith reposed on them by the public. NVIDIA makes Graphic Cards for both Desktops and Laptops all over the world. In case of laptops the mobile GPUs(Graphics Processing Units) are manufactured by NVIDIA and supplied to various OEMs(Original Equipment Manufacturers) like Dell, HP, Acer, Asus,etc.
The current mobile GPU series is the 9 series which was released 3-4 months back. Regular users of laptops containing the 7 series GPUs experienced intermittent failing of their graphic cards almost ranging from a year ago and is still continuing. When these complaints were conveyed to the respective manufacturers like Dell, HP,etc, they expressed helplessness. In most of these cases, the GPU failed when the laptop was just out of warranty. So users had to shell out almost 350-400 dollars(15k-20k) to get their laptop motherboards replaced. In case of laptops the GPU is soldered to the motherboard. So one has to replace the motherboard itself if it fails. NVIDIA revealed the design problem in its GPUs only around 6 months back and that too only for the 8 series cards. They had a subpar substrate applied to the card during manufacturing which caused these cards to overheat and fail before their expected lifetimes. The following cards have been documented by users to have this problem:
Go 7200,Go 7600,8400M seies,8600M series.
But NVIDIA still refuses to acknowledge this problem in all the cards. Worse of all they have not done a product recall and have kept on masking this problem . In fact they have been quite successful in creating an impression that nothing actually has happened. But the true repurcussions of this calamity can be gauged only by looking at the number of complaints at HP and Dell's consumer forums.
Is there any hope for the thousands of affected customers who have been milked by the respective manufacturers and now have been ignored by means of obnoxious excuses???

Ethnic Responsibility!!!

It seems that politics in India has taken one step back again. Recently the elected MPs from the state of Tamil Nadu protested that Tamil people in Sri Lanka were being harassed. They demanded the Central Govt. to intervene saying that the Tamils of India and those of Sri Lanka are linked by a common thread. Unless the Indian Govt. intervenes they are ready to resign. What about those innocent and gullible common people of the state on whose votes they had become MPs at the first place. The most presposterous idea is what right has India got to intervene in Lanka's internal security and political manners? So does this mean the MPs from Punjab will resign because Punjabis in faraway Canada are being mercilessly beaten.!!! They are now Canadians and India can't do anything. What about Biharis living in countries like Mauritius and Guyana? What about Pakistan interfering saying that Muslims in India are harassed? Same is the case with Tamils in Sri Lanka. Although ethnically similar, they belong to different nations now and interfering is out of the question.
Knowing fully well the disastrous consequences faced by the Indian Peace Keeping Forces in 1987 under the able stewardship of Late Rajiv Gandhi(loads of sarcasm he he) , Indian Govt. shouldn't bat an eyelid before dismissing these so called bunch of sycophants and restoring order among the administrative machinery of this particular state. I also hope that this Govt. won't blow away this last bit of hope the T.N public has kept on it.

Long live the sanity of Homo sapiens race.