My Bombay Burns!

I was born and raised in Bombay (Mumbai) and one part of me has never left the city. I have seen it burning many times before either in the name of religion or of divisive politics played by those we entrust our law and order with.

Today it burns once more at the hands of madmen who claim to be acting in accordance with a religion that fails to value human life and as a result fails to value anything we could love and treasure on this earth. I hope the terrorists that perpetrated this are gunned down like the cowardly bastards that they are.

The day this nation accepts such a devastating loss of life with only a shrug of its shoulders, that day it would have sentenced each of it's citizens to die a gruesome death like those who lost their lives today. Its only then a matter of time.

I'd like to say Jai Hind but I think India now needs to act before it can deserve such a salutation.

Would be Symantec CEO shows little knowledge of economics

Bloomberg ran this story where it quotes the soon to be CEO of my former employer, Enrique Salem, saying

``The way we're going to get out of this malaise we're in, is by spending money,'' Salem said. ``If we all just hoard our cash, we're not going to get out of this.''

Keynes would have been proud of that statement but it still isn't going to get him around this economic slump. Its actually more of the same philosophy that got us here in the first place. Amity Shales had some good points to make about this on her Bloomberg.com Opinion column.

Symantec has always been a cash-cow but with this change in leadership I wonder about its future.

On Enjoying Work

From the time I've been working I've noticed a behavioral trait about myself over and over again.

Whenever I have interesting work to accomplish in office I seem to find time to concurrently do other things too. Be it reading books (I'm an avid reader) or reading articles / following happenings on the internet, I always could manage the time. In fact it often seems like I can create the time to do all that even when I'm busy on a particular problem.

On the other hand, when I have boring work to look after in office it almost single-handedly seems to kill my motivation for any other activity. In the recent past this has been pretty apparent as my stash of 'to read' books just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

I could say that I should 'not' let work affect me and continue with 'side' projects but that just does not work for me. I spend about 65% of my 'workable' time in office and if I'm not motivated about that work for an extended period of time it is inevitably going to affect other facets of my life. I can appreciate that fact on a philosophical & practical level.

I also tend to have my best 'ideas' on diverse matters when I'm really knee deep in solving some complex problem. My mind works at altogether a different level at those moments. All that without substance abuse too! Fuck dope just give me a good problem to solve.

// Start of rant

Well onto a rant now & one cause of all these laments! In my experience, the Indian software industry has been a total myth. I used to have this romantic vision of staying awake at night solving complex problems but what I do at work is hardly worth a yawn. Most folks couldn't be troubled with right and wrong in software development. No need to think about consequences of design decisions. No need to debate technical aspects. New solutions or enhancements in a product always take the familiar road, no need to think about accomplishing things in a better way. Who gives a fuck anyway, we aren't the ones using the software right? Some guy in the US is looking to cut costs and we give him just that - software at a cost of quality. Talk about negative ROI.

// End of rant

I can control who I work for but unfortunately cannot control what work they give me. Setting up a business on my own never sounded better, just waiting for the right time & opportunity. That time may be in the considerable future, but its the only thing keeping me sane.

Note to self: Get out while you still enjoy it.

John Allison & the wretched press release

Over at Rule of Reason Doug posted this with reference to John Allison's take on the bailout.

I posted the following comment:-

At present we cannot know 'why' John Allison made such a statement but that does not mean we cannot judge the statement for what it is and denounce it as an anti-thesis of what one would expect from a vocal advocate of Objectivism & Capitalism. Knowledge truly is contextual and we have to as proponents of Objectivism state for the record that Mr. Allison's press release is contrary to Objectivist principles.

Yes, Mr. Allison has in the past displayed his support of Objectivism and for that I'm grateful but that does not absolve him of the necessity to remain consistent in his following of the same. It does not say much for Objectivism if we have to build escape clauses for people in tight situations.

Announcing the "IndianObjectivist" Mailing List

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Multiple faces of deception

The TOI brings us this disturbing piece of how more and more are drawn to Karl Marx at times like these. Talk about asking for more of the same nonsense albeit in different shades!

Lets file this under the "What NOT to do!" section, shall we?

More madness from the RBI

In another move, RBI has cut key deposit rates.

If we continue like this banks will just not need customer deposits anymore to lend. Maybe thats the utopia everyone is looking for. We don't need more of the bad economic policies that got us to this state in the first place. We need to abolish foolish regulations and establish a 'sane' monetary policy based on a gold standard.