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If you have been reading my blog, you can easily tell that ‘I don’t blog often’. I go on months without blogging and when I do blog, it is really not something which I am happy with. There are many reasons why I am not blogging often; one of the important reasons is I wanted my blog posts to have quality instead of quantity; in simple words I wanted perfection in my blog posts, I wanted to have quality similar to Paul Graham’s essays. Yes that’s all talk and we know talk is cheap. A man who doesn’t have a good identity starts identifying himself in everything good he sees. It’s about time I write about what I feel instead of being silenced by the popular opinions of majority of people. I am going to blog more often from now on. I am not looking for perfection, I don’t promise to give you facts and also I will be ranting a lot more. I will also be blogging about programming, vim, Linux, Indie PC Games, Politics, world issues etc.

I have always believed only two kinds of men live in this world, the ones who try difficult things and the ones who don’t. Society calls them by lot of names; the men who try and succeed are called as Winners, Champions, and Achievers; the men who have tried and failed are ridiculed with names like Losers, Failures or nonstarters. But what about the people who haven’t tried nor do they intend to, aren’t these people much worse that the people who have tried and lost. Let’s call these people spectators for lack of a better insult.

Spectators live their life observing the participants, cheering for them, criticizing them and also thinking they are them. In reality, Spectators are really insignificant to human evolution, they don’t change things, and they don’t improve things, even for themselves. Their whole journey of life begins with a search of a benevolent leader who is a solution to all their problems and misfortunes; they keep searching until they are wrong and when they are wrong, they are quick to blame the system for not being right. Spectators also don’t understand that system is not a will of god but a will of men, men who went ahead, tried difficult things and succeeded enough to put in place a set of rules which are favorable to men not spectators. System by itself does not hold any intrinsic value; it is altered by men to suit their needs and they gradually make the system resilient enough to not harm them at all. The system is also planned keeping in mind the opportunities it provides for smart people to be in the class of men, instead of being lost in the artificial world of spectators.

This is how the world works, a minority few men control or set rules for masses or spectators; they make the decisions so that spectators don’t have to. Will there be a world where everyone will have equal rights, my answer would be No. System is designed to reward people who have undergone difficulties; the people who have succeeded will be the ones who will obtain a chance to alter the system for their benefits. So next time when you talk about how a government bailed out a corporation with tax-payers money or how millions are losing jobs every quarter because some men made decisions for you, don’t blame the system or government. Blame yourself for being a spectator.

What is the difference between a man and a parasite? A man builds. A parasite asks ‘Where is my share?’ A man creates. A parasite says, ‘What will the neighbors think?’ A man invents. A parasite says, ‘Watch out, or you might tread on the toes of God…’ – BioShock.

If you don’t already know, Half-Life was born today 10 years back to Valve and Sierra. If you have not yet been invited to the party in Black Mesa East, don’t worry there is something to be happy about. Half-Life is selling today on Steam for only 98 cents and this offer is open only till November 21st 12.01 PST. I think they are selling it for 98 cents because Half-Life was launched in 1998, do you get it.

I have been a huge fan of Half-Life series and Gordon Freeman and I am looking forward to playing the next chapter which is Half-Life 2: Episode 3, until that games arrives let me spend some more time in Black Mesa Research Facility. So I would totally recommend you to buy this game, if you have not yet already, it is one of the best games ever made. Ok, enough of my fanboy antics, i will stop now.

Microsoft’s new ad called Shoe Circus featuring Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates is making lot of buzz on the internet and one thing you commonly hear from everyone is “That ad does not make sense”. It is a pity though that such a smart ad is not understood by people or they are just too narrow minded with their hatred for Microsoft to understand it. I personally find the ad funny and does well what it was meant to do.

Let me explain the ad better here.

Scene 1: It starts off with a scene where Jerry Seinfeld is shocked to see Bill Gates (one of the World’s richest man) buying shoes at a discount store and realizes Bill Gates is having problems with buying shoes which does not fit well and shopkeeper is convincing him that it would stretch and get better.

Bill Gates is shown as just a normal guy who buys shoes at a discount store just like other normal people would. It shows one of the World’s richest man buying shoes which other normal people can afford. This is telling Apple in the face that their prices are high and only privileged few can afford to buy Mac and PC is affordable to almost everyone.
Also it clearly shows since Bill Gates is having problems with shoes which means “One size does not fit all” just like everyone’s computing needs are different and different people need different computers. Another jab at Mac for not giving users enough choice on what they need in terms of hardware.

Scene 2: This scene starts off with Jerry Seinfeld helping Bill Gates choose the right shoes and trying to warm up the shoes so that it would fit him well. Finally after trying many, they choose a shoes which fits perfectly well and also Spanish people outside the shop know what shoes it is and have the same view of the shoes as Jerry Seinfeld has (they run very tight).

This is how we have always bought PC’s, we just don’t go to a shop and say ‘Give me that’.
We check out many manufacturers selling PC’s like DELL, HP, Sony, Toshiba etc and then choose the hardware which best suits our needs. We do research, ask our friends and family and choose the ones that really suits us and our computing needs. Like those Spanish people outside the shop, everyone knows what PC is because they have all used it irrespective of which country they are from or the language they speak.

Scene 3: Checkout, Bill Gates has chosen the right shoes and is about to pay for the shoes. It is funny, there is a mugshot of Young Bill Gates on the Shoe Circus Card. Seinfeld and Gates walk out of the store talking about Microsoft’s future and how delicious their future products will be. Watch out for Bill Gates signal to Seinfeld’s question.

This scene is just fun with both Seinfeld and Gates talking about the future of Microsoft and where it is heading. We clearly know, they are onto something delicious.

I am clearly happy with this ad mainly because Microsoft did not stoop down to Apple’s level by making it personal instead they gave it back in metaphors. I am sure the follow-up of this ad will be even better than this ad. In simple terms, the ad says “One size does not fit all”, so try many before you find the best fit. It is very true with respect to buying computers. This is what i have understood from the ad. If you have understood the ad better, I would like to know your view too.

Strive => To make efforts; to use exertions; to endeavor with earnestness; to labor hard.

This week I want to strive and utilize 168 hours I get in a week. As a mortal, I do have to sleep and take rest. Assuming i sleep 7 hours a day (i am awake at night), i still have 119 hours to spare. I am really going to utilize those 119 hours. As of today, i am going to abstain visiting social networking sites(especially twitter for a week), Not Being online in IM all day and not being available to any of the off-line friends for a week(FYI: I am switching off my phone for a week). Let see how this works out for me. I will tell you next week, how my “168 hour week” was. Until that time wish me luck and talk to you next week. Have fun.

“It is in vain to expect our prayers to be heard, if we do not strive as well as pray.” - Aesop’s Fables

I read this beautiful tweet which said “when you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create.”

It is so very important to create, be it anything music, art, products, medicine or any other thing new. When we create something, it shows out urge to improve something. When we are improving something, we are helping the World. We should all be so grateful to the man or woman who created the wheel and inventions thereafter. So as human beings, it is our duty to create. We would have not come this far, if our fore-fathers didn’t create something from nothing. It is in our ability to create so lets CREATE.

We normally hear from people that the only reason Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo! is because of Yahoo’s search technology and its user base, True but that is not the whole story and the rabbit hole goes little more deeper than that. Microsoft pretty much dominates two of the most important platform’s Operating System and Browser, and we know “Platforms almost always win against the Applications built on it”. So Microsoft will sooner or later get traffic to its web services because of its platform dominance, the problem is how to monetize that traffic, that is where Yahoo and its 361 Patent comes into picture.

361 Patent was the brainchild of Bill Gross, founder of IdeaLab who had this great idea of monetizing search results by showing the users advertising based on the keywords they type, he though of it as an Yellow Pages on the Internet where users could search what they want and they were ads too. This idea was shamelessly stolen by Google who before this made zero revenue. Bill Gross who later found Overture Services (formerly GoTo Inc), which was bought by Yahoo and in turn Yahoo had the right’s to this crown jewel “361 Patent”.

Once Yahoo got the rights to ‘361 Patent’, it started enforcing other companies who were licensing it from Overture Services to follow its rules. One of the biggest licensers from Overture was Microsoft who were paying hefty fees for it. Now Yahoo started making life hell for MSFT when it came to Paid-Search advertising. This made Microsoft less innovative in search because no matter how good their search was, they always had to toe the Yahoo’s line when it came to monetizing the search and paying most of the money to Yahoo for using the “361 Patent”. It just didn’t seem practical for Microsoft to innovate when they can’t make money of their search or pay most of the money to Yahoo.

Whereas Google got the patent licensed in a very shady deal where nobody clearly knows how much they paid and it gave them an edge in Paid-Search advertising. The reason they got a good deal from Yahoo might be because of their Stanford roots or because of common VC’s. It was a clear conspiracy by Yahoo to make the battlefield uneven and making Microsoft insignificant in Paid-Search model. It is a payback time for Microsoft and boy are they doing it at the right time. Microsoft is known to come late to war and be the last one standing, will they do it again.

You can read more about 361 Patent and its repercussions in Usman Latif’s website here. He has written a detailed and well written article on this.

Not So long ago I was in School, One day in school there was a special class called “Personality Development” which all of us attended thinking it had to be something with exercise or martial arts, I know it is dumb but we were in school where we thought personality was our body or how we look. When we entered the class, there were no dumbbells or teacher wearing a karate costume. We were confused and asked each other meaning of personality development. The teacher made all of us sit down and she told us to relax and asked each one of us the same question. The question was “What are your Dreams”? We were all startled not because we had no dreams but because we were not used to telling our dreams to whole class and sharing it with the World. But that day each one of us told their dreams to the whole class. Everyone’s dreams were unique and different. There were lots of dreams in that class that day, Lots of Pilots, Astronauts, Sports Stars, Movie Stars, Air Hostess and also one girl wanted to be Miss World. Almost 10 years later I met that “class of dreams” again hoping to see all their dreams fulfilled or in pursuit of fulfillment.

But to my shock not a single one had followed their dreams including me. They were all either Software Engineers, Insurance Agents, Marketing Executive, Tech Support or some one trying to pursue Higher Education Abroad but what I couldn’t find was a Pilot or an Astronaut or Sports and Movie stars. I said to myself, just to make myself happy that times had changed, World had moved on in a decade. But wait…NASA never stopped hiring astronauts, countries didn’t stop using planes or going to War or people didn’t stop watching Movies and Sports. So what happened to our dreams which we cherished, which we wanted to be fulfilled. Maybe we all let go of our dreams just to take a safer path which was easier than following our dreams. Then I asked myself what stopped me from following my dreams the only answer I got was I felt safe with the crowd just like how sheep’s feel safe with the herd and they always follow the shepherd without exploring anything new or making their existence worthwhile. Maybe we all are a bunch of sheep’s trying to follow the shepherd, who we know at the end is going to trade us to the butcher for a reasonable amount. When we know we will be sold later to the butcher by the shepherd why do we still follow him, it is our own mindset which says it is better to be in a group and be a follower than to be the leader who is not afraid of risk and adventures. Well as I see, we all have potential to do something great, it is just that we can’t overcome the fear of losing and hence we never win. We were not born in this World to get educated for 25-30 years of our life and then work for a Corporation with 80,000 strong workforces where “we are the 79,990th most important employee in the Corporation”. “We are better than that!”

Instead of being in the rat-race, we should all stop for a second and think where we are going. Is it really worth sacrificing the dreams we had for building someone else’s dreams (when we work for Microsoft, we are helping Bill Gates build his dream of “Windows on every desktop”, When we work for facebook, we are helping build Zuckerberg’s dream of connecting the world’s population online). We only have a life and it is very short. Life is meant to lived, take risks, don’t be afraid of adventures, and don’t be afraid to FAIL. Not everyone is lucky enough to FAIL. If you have failed, that means you have tried and trying is very important. If you don’t try, you can’t win.

This is an excerpt from Steve Jobs Stanford Speech which I love “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

I want to end this article with a beautiful quote “Everybody’s Unique in this World, Only if we live up that Uniqueness”.

Wil Shipley:

I believe the best software is written by small groups of people who have both passion and vision. Passion is easy to define; you care so deeply about something that it wounds you if it’s done poorly. Vision can mean different things, but I mean the ability to not just come up with new ideas, but to actually be able to see how they would integrate with people’s lives. Vision without passion gives you a guy who sitting on couch saying, “Flying cars! Wave of the future! Mark my word, the guy who invents that’s going to be rich… pass the chips.” Passion without vision gives you America’s current political situation, where we allow huge companies to destroy the world but pass laws to make sure nobody marries a turtle.

There is already news that Microsoft is about to finalize the Yahoo deal by Monday. I for one will be very happy if Microsoft buys Yahoo, not because i like Microsoft or that i am in sync with their policies. I want Microsoft to buy Yahoo because I like underdogs and Microsoft is the underdog in search and online advertising market with their tiny user base. We as users should always hate monopolies and corporations which are dominant. I have hated Microsoft when it comes to their 90% monopoly in Operating System market, I have hated Apple for their near control of portable music player market and I hate Google for their dominance in Search and online advertising.

Monopolies are bad for users, mainly because there is very less room for innovation and corporations who are monopolistic tend to exploit users. Google is a publicly traded company and it has shareholders to satisfy every quarter, No matter what their motto is be it “Don’t be evil” which Sergey Brin coined or the parody of it “Do less evil” which Bill Gates coined in reference to Google self-censoring its search to enter Chinese Market. Google has to show profits every quarter to keep up its market value. With the way things are going in Search Market, there is no room for any start up to compete with Google because they are too big and if Google sees a threat from the start up, they buy it and let it rot in their stables. Here is the list of the companies Google bought.

Haven’t we all seen how monopolies destroy the market and stagnate innovation. It is currently happening in Operating System Market, when was the last time we saw something amazing on our desktops and laptops with the exception of Mac OS X. Wouldn’t it be great if Microsoft had some real competition in Operating System’s where it would have pushed them to innovate rather than churn out under tested and over funded Operating Systems.

The other reason i want Microsoft to buy Yahoo is because when Google has competition, it might have better privacy policies in place than what it has now. Privacy International goes on record saying Google has been placed at the bottom of its rating for its privacy policies. Even Microsoft has better rating than Google when it comes to privacy. You can read more about it here. Is it not scary when a monopoly like Google holds the users personal data for whatever reasons. Maybe they are not exploiting the users now, but what if in the future they do when they don’t have any competition and we users don’t have any other alternative to go to.

So when Microsoft buys Yahoo, fields would get more even for a fight in the search and online advertising market which only helps the users. Believe me, there would be more innovation in the Search now then we have seen in past 3 or 4 years. Competition is Good for the market, and the only company in the World which has a chance of even competing with Google is Microsoft.