Windows XP Genuine Disadvantage

Hmmm.. It's been nearly five months since I last posted on this blog, primarily because i'm getting too lazy, and secondly because I am (actually) quite busy with college life. Most of my time goes in looking around for an opportunity when I can scurry back to Mumbai and spend an evening at home :)

And when I reach home, the very first task that I do is to switch on my PC and troubleshoot all the problems that the enterprising members of my family have either found, or created on my PC. I'm like the hardware engineer that you call every month to your house to fix your PC if its broken. Normally the problems that I need to fix are rather simple, requiring only a few minutes of thinking. But this time, I got something new. My dad had unknowingly tried to auto-update Windows XP, and the sneaky bastard that Microsoft is, it managed to detect that my version was a pirated one. Since then, it had started throwing up nasty warning messages about me being a "victim of software counterfeiting"

Pretty normal, you would say. Everyone knows how to turn off the Genuine Windows Advantage notification. Not so fast. This time, the error messages was accompanied by an inky black desktop with a notification on it. Everytime you change the wallpaper, it reverts back to the same irritating black desktop, with the same stupid message again. On googling, I found that this is the result of Microsoft's recent drive against piracy - an update released on 20th October 2008, which has caused a lot of controversy. Read an article about about this here : http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=76

I found a solution on the net. The solution was to kill the WgaTray.exe process using the task manager, and then delete the WgaLogon.dll and WgaTray.exe files from the System32 folder in Windows. However, there was a problem here. The moment I kill the process, it automatically restarts immediately. And since it is not possible to delete a file when it is running, I was unable to delete the files. What do I do?

Then I had a brainwave. This is what I did :

1. Insert a Windows XP bootable disk into the drive (Ha! Using the venom as the antidote!!)

2. Restart the PC and boot from the CD.

3. Wait for the program to do its mandatory loading processes, to initialize Windows installation

4. In the screen where it asks you whether to install a fresh copy of Windows XP or to repair an existing installation, select Repair. A command prompt screen opens.

5. Navigate to the C:\Windows\System32 folder.

6. Use the commands "del WgaTray.exe" and "del Wgalogon.dll" to delete the two culprits

I guess one could use any bootable disk to do this, but I derived a special pleasure doing it using Microsoft's own CD.

Computer back to normal.The human intellect triumphs over the computer! Muhahahahaha!!!!

Living the MBA Dream

As they say, life's what happens to you when you have other plans. Nothing sums up the story of my life more aptly. Dealing with rejects from various colleges on one hand, and thinking of CAT-2008 on the other, while at the same time balancing my work at TCS, I suddenly find myself out of TCS and into a management college within a span of ten days!! Destiny sure has rather innovative ways of proving that it is indeed unpredictable.

It's no secret that the most beautiful places in the world are those that haven't yet been touched by man. One such place is where I have landed up, my college campus. As I sit near the window of my hostel room and write this, a cool breeze blows past my ear, causing me goosebumps. This truly is one amazing place! Situated on a hill overlooking Pune, my college campus at Lavale is nothing short of a hill-station. The view in every direction is simply breathtaking, and there are times when, walking down the road, I just stop in my tracks to admire the view, even though I've been seeing it all through this week. It feels almost stupid to be studying in a place which looks like a picnic spot!

So, college's started, and I'm back to being a student after two years in the corporate world. A strange feeling, to sit and listen to four-hour long lectures, and experience that familiar drowsy feeling after lunch, when the lecturer's rhythmic cadence gradually puts you to sleep. A weird feeling, when I have to pay for tea and coffee (I am so used to drinking several cups of coffee during the day, from the coffee machine at my office). A realization that I'm no longer earning money, but instead spending it!

So here starts a new phase in my life.. new challenges, new opportunities, new avenues... and my career is now (hopefully) traversing through a warp zone..

And Words are all I have...

Right from our childhood, we constantly hear new words. And then, as we progress on in our education/work/daily life, we learn words specific to our education/work domain, and these words start making a conspicuous appearance in our normal conversations. Hence, if you are a software techie, you would find nothing abnormal about this conversation:

“Hey, look at the message written on that birthday greeting card.”
“Yeah, that's such a beautiful font!”
“The font is nice but the font size is too large.”

As an engineer, my vocabulary is largely influenced by technical and software jargon, and I frequently use terms like “writing in caps lock” to imply using block letters, try to “undo” pencil marks with an eraser, and use “default” modes to refer to normal settings for gadgets.

Lately, I'm finding that technical words apart, a new class of words is creeping into my vocabulary - CORPORATE jargon! And at times it irritates me when I myself end up using bombastic words where simple, terse words would have been enough. So the loo (I just love the simplicity of this word) becomes the formal-sounding washroom, the canteen becomes the cafeteria, the watchman becomes a security personnel, the guy who mops the floor becomes a housekeeping staff, a customer complaint becomes an escalation, problems become issues or concerns, meetings become conferences, and so on. And the more senior you are in an organization, the more imperative it is for you to be aware of such heavy-sounding words, and use them liberally in your everyday speech (even if they sound utterly fake).

I am thankful I’m not a lawyer, for I am told that legal jargon, has some even more scary words! I’ll sign off with this old one :
One day in Law class, Professor Jepson asked one of his better students, "Now if you were to give someone an orange, how would you go about it?" The student replied, "Here's an orange."

The professor was livid. "No! No! Think like a lawyer!"

The student then recited, "Okay, I'd tell him, 'I hereby give and convey to you all and singular, my estate and interests, rights, claim, title, claim and advantages of and in, said orange, together with all its rind, juice, pulp, and seeds, and all rights and advantages with full power to bite, cut, freeze and otherwise eat, the same, or give the same away with and without the pulp, juice, rind and seeds, anything herein before or hereinafter or in any deed, or deeds, instruments of whatever nature or kind whatsoever to the contrary in anywise notwithstanding..."

Gunda Ka Funda

YES!! I finally managed to lay my hands upon a Bollywood classic named Gunda. I had first heard about this cinematic gem after I noticed several Orkut communities dedicated to this movie. Apparently this relatively unknown 1997 Mithun Chakraborty starrer is rapidly becoming a rage in today’s times (The Economic Times had a detailed review of it in 2007!!) .

So, when curiosity got the better of me, I decided to hunt for a DVD. After searching for several days, I finally managed to get a DVD from a roadside vendor.

There are several unqiue things about this movie. For starters, the main characters have some really innovative names - “Lambu Atta”, “Lucky Chikna”, “KafanChor Neta”,“Ibu Hatela”, “Bulla”, “Potey” and “Chutiya” (Yup, you read right). Compare these with the hackneyed names that Karan Johar dishes out in his movies – Raj Chopra, Rahul Singhania, Pooja Malhotra… how boring!!!

Further, each character has a unique introductory line (‘Mera Naam Hai Bulla, Mai rakhta hoon Khulla!!’, ‘Mera Naam Hai Ibu Hatela, Maa Meri Chudail ki Beti, Baap Shaitaan ka Chelaa. Khayega Kela?’, etc etc)

Almost every character speaks in rhyming verses, that (supposedly) adds to the drama. Most of the verses are unabashedly double-meaning, which adds to the fun if you are watching it with your friends. I bet you and your friends will be repeating all the lines for several days after watching the movie! Sample some literary gems from this movie :

'Mera Naam Hai Potey.. Jiskey Baap ke bhi nahi Hotey!'

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'Tu ne Gundagardi me bahut naam kamaya...

Dushmano ko kabhi faada, kabhi kaata...

Dikhne me to tu naataa.. par naam hai Lambu Atta!'

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'Kaam ki baat bataa.. jiske liye tu Billi ka doodh peeke Dilli se aaya hai!'

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'Roti hoti hai Khaane ke liye,

Boti hoti hai Chabaane ke liye,

Bulla ki behen ho ya Fakeer ki Peti,

Ek na ek din aati hai Mard ke neeche bajaane ke liye!'

(I just loved the last one!!)

There are some outrageously choreographed numbers with male extras clad in lungis executing steps that you need to see to believe. And of course, the mandatory rape scenes, the most integral part of any B-grade Bollywood flick.

And then, there is the one and only Mithun. This is a movie that simply underlines the sheer magic called Mithun Chakraborty. It makes you realize why even Rajnikanth pales in comparison with this deity. As the Coolie Shankar who works at an airport(!), he is the undoubted star of the show Check out the scene where he blows up a politician’s Ambassador car, with a single shot from a tiny pistol. The car is thrown as if it was hit by a tank rather than a bullet. Equally memorable is the scene where he destroys a hundred autorickshaws (the producer probably couldn’t afford cars, so he settled for autorickshaws instead) with a hand-held rocket launcher (I guess rocket-launchers are easily accessible in Mithun’s world – you could probably buy one at the local hardware store). Yet another gem of a scene is one where Mithun kills some goons at a brothel which has got cots hanging in from the roof. Sure gives a new meaning to the term ‘love in the air’. Spooky, but innovative!

The movie is currently rated 8.3 on IMDB. That’s a phenomenal rating, considering that even Titanic is rated 7.2. Watch it! You’ll know what innovative cinema is all about. And you’ll become a Mithun fan for sure :)

Music Phone vs MP3 player

A recent trend that has caught up with today's generation is music. It is nowadays the 'in' thing to have musical inclinations, and such people are frequently the centre of all attraction in peer groups. No surprise then, that we see most people spending a large amount of their time listening to music. With the advent of the MP3 format, the good old casette player is out, and what we have today are smart, sleek MP3 players that are as small as matchboxes, and can store songs equivalent to hundreds of casettes.

Evidently, the mobile industry has noticed this and come up with its riposte to music players - music phones. And I must admit, they have actually done a great job! In fact, today many of us contemplate having a personal music player, and are unable to decide whether to go for a dedicated MP3 player or buy a phone that can play MP3 songs.

So, how does one decide? Let's look a few aspects regarding music players.

1. Sound quality : Till recently, the most important edge that an MP3 player had over a music-enabled phone was the sound quality. The sound quality of an MP3 phone never came even close to a dedicated MP3 player like an iPod. However, today, with the advent of music-branded phones like the Walkman series by Sony Ericsson and XpressMusic by Nokia, this gap is rapidly closing. Most music-enabled phones in the market today can be a decent substitue for a music player, and in some cases like Walkman or MotoRokr, can actually rival an iPod in terms of sound quality. No doubt, most audiophiles would swear by their iPod - undoubtedly the best music player currently available. But that's why they are called audiophiles - they are so obsessed with technical terms like acoustics and sound clarity, that they fail to really appreciate music. They tend to forget that the objective of buying a music player is to listen to music, and not to get tangled in acoustic jargon.

While I certainly do accept that an iPod does give a (slightly) better listening experience than a phone, the sound quality of most phones today is fairly acceptable, and in some cases excellent. Hence, I conclude that this advantage that an MP3 player had over a phone is now nullified.

Score : MP3 Player - 0, Music phone - 0

2. Screen : Many of the MP3 players in the market (Read iPod Shuffle) lack a screen for viewing the song list. The only way is to manually scroll through the songs one by one, till you reach the song of your choice. What is the point if you can store several hundred songs in your player, but can't play one specific song of your choice at any point of time? In comparison, even the cheapest music phone has a screen where one can see a list of all the songs, and select the one that he wants to listen to. MP3 players with screens are available, but most of them are slightly on the expensive side - the iPod Nano costs nearly 7000 bucks.
An additional advantage of a screen is that it enables you to create new playlists, sorting playlists by album/singer/title, changing equalizer setting. Thus the phone wins here as well. Score : MP3 Player - 0, Music phone - 1

3. Charging : This is a point that is frequently missed by most buyers before buying a music player - most music players need to be charged via the PC USB port, so the only way you can charge the player is by connecting it to a PC. A mobile phone can be charged anytime by connecting it to a electric point - and you charge your mobile phone regularly anyway, so charging is not a concern for phones. Score : MP3 Player 0, Music phone - 2.

4. Memory capacity : Okay here's a point where MP3 players win by a huge margin - the 2GB or 4 GB available in music phones is peanuts compared to the 80GB monster called iPod Classic. However, a word of caution here : 80GB is actually overkill. A player with a capacity of 80 GB can actually store 16000 songs at good quality (128Kbps), and I bet you don't have so many songs to fill up the player. A phone with a 2GB card is sufficient for storing around 400 songs - a decent count. 400 songs, assuming each song to be of around 5 minutes, would mean a listening time of around 2000 minutes. That's more than sufficient, unless you have absolutely no work to do from morning till evening. Moreover, technology is fast working on building larger memory cards, and it won't be uncommon to see 8GB memory cards by the end of this year. Anyway, I'll grudgingly give the MP3 players a point here. Score : MP3 Player - 1, Music phone - 2.

5. Convenience of carrying : Ah this is one thing which I have always believed - Why do you want to carry two gadgets in your pocket, when you can do with just one? You carry a cell phone to office/college, so with a music-enabled phone, you will be carrying a music player wherever you go. Score : MP3 Player 1, Music phone - 3.

6. Cost: This is surely an important issue - Will buying a music phone be cheaper than having a phone and a MP3 player? Doubtful. But the difference in price is going to be very less - An entry-level music phone would cost under 5000, and with a 2GB memory card, will end up costing around 5500. An iPod Nano with a video screen costs Rs. 6900. Decide for yourself.

**Final Score : MP3 Player 1, Music phone - 4.**

So what do we see? If you are a person who is particular about avoiding unnecessary expenses, it makes a lot of sense to buy a entry-level music phone like a Sony Ericsson W200i or a Nokia 3110 Classic or even the upcoming MotoYuva W230, rather than a dedicated MP3 player. On the other hand if you are Mr. Moneybags with tons of cash to spend, you may look at mid-range music phones like the SE W810i or Nokia N70 music edition. Either way, the music phones defeat the MP3 players by a HUGE margin.. So
Musically yours,Vivek.

Aaj ka GundaRAJ

There was a movie by this name, released sometime in the 90s. Somehow this title aptly sums up the current political situation in Maharashtra. The recent attacks by the MNS on the North Indians, followed by the retaliations by the Samajwadi Party, coupled with a spineless government that is scared to hell about taking strong action against the offenders, have made a complete mockery of the world's largest democracy.

Why is the government dithering so much about prosecuting Raj Thackeray? It is scared that this will turn him into a 'hero'. And how was he granted bail so easily? The whole drama is just an eyewash. The government is under pressure from both ends - the MNS supporters who threaten violent consequences if Raj is arrested, and the prospect of it losing its credibility in front of the general public if it doesn't go ahead with the arrest. So it finds an easy way out - arrest him temporarily to "show off" its courage, and then release him on the same day to avoid any violent aftermath. It is an attempt to fool the gullible public.

Taking a holistic view of the entire situation, it becomes disturbingly clear that each and every political party involved in this issue has it's own political agenda. The actions taken by each political party reeks of votebank politics. The MNS obviously wants to get noticed among the "Marathi Manoos" and is resorting to this extreme political stunt which seems to have failed miserably, as Raj has been made out to be a villain, by a large part of the media as well as the general public. The Samajwadi party is trying to cash in on this situation, trying to get the support of the substantial North Indian population in the city. The Shiv Sena has been taken by surprise by this sudden aggressive development, and is trying to work out a strategy to get the support of the North Indians, while at the same time trying not to lose the support of it's loyal Marathi-speaking populace. The Congress government is the one that looks completely clueless - right now it resembles a lamb caught in a rhino stampede.

Ultimately, the people who suffer are the general public - The exodus of people from Nashik has let to a drastic increase in the prices of fruits, vegetables and other such commodities. Damage to public transport vehicles will ultimately be borne by the common man in the form of increased taxes and cesses. And will the offenders be made to pay for this? No. They go away scot-free, their mission accomplished. That's the dirty game called politics.

After the 1993 riots, people indulged in bouts of self-praise, claiming that Mumbai has now become more sensible, it is now unaffected by trivial issues like caste-based or mothertongue-based politics. But the recent events have only reconfirmed that Mumbai has learnt nothing from its past experiences. It is still like the Diwali bomb that needs a single spark like Raj Thackeray to explode.

Aah.. should have waited more before posting the previous blog.. coz I just finished listening to another equally weird track. Check out the lyrics :
Zara Zara Touch Me, Touch Me, Touch Me
Zara Zara Hold Me, Hold Me, Hold Me
Zara Zara Love, Love Me, Love Me
Zimbblly amazing!!

Words Worth

It feels funny to write a post that criticizes a lyricist, just after a post that praises another. Now it so happens that, I constantly keep having arguments with my dad over the quality of today's music. Though I manage to put a strong argument in favour of today's music, I have to admit that when it comes to the quality of lyrics, contemporary music has taken a beating. Because apart from an occasional poetic gem by Javed Akhtar or Prasoon Joshi, we are now frequently subjected to horrendous Hinglish lines being passed off as lyrics. The modern-day dominance of Western instruments like the electric guitar and drums over traditional Indian instruments has only aggravated the situation. The nature of music in Hindi movies is predominantly Western, and to compliment that, most songwriters - Javed Akhtar being a noteworthy exception(thank god) - lose all their poetic instincts, and come up with gross lines containing a mix English with Hindi, and a bit of Punjabi (mainly the staple words like chakde, shava, etc) thrown in for added misery.

Sample these lines from a song in the recent movie 'Race' :

Teri baaton se mila Temptation (!),
Tere pyaar ne diya Vibration (!!),
Ye mere dil ne kiya Confession (!!!),
Chori Chori akhiyaa ne dil tera le jaana (somebody save me)

Now that's what I call absolutely uninspiring, emotionless lyrics. Probably the lyric writers ran out of words that rhyme in Hindi, so they had to go overseas searching for words.

A popular romantic song from Boyzone goes -

"You think that I don't even mean
A single word I say
It's only words, and words are all I have
To take your heart away!"

Well, if words were anything to go by, the hero in the movie Race has scant chances of taking away someone's heart with lyrics like that.