Banking trouble hits Japan

Dunno who wrote this first, but here goes:

Following the problems in the sub-prime lending market in America and the run on Northern Rock in the UK , uncertainty has now hit Japan. 

In the last 7 days Origami Bank has folded, Sumo Bank has gone belly up and Bonsai Bank announced plans to cut some of its branches. Yesterday, it was announced that Karaoke Bank is up for sale and will likely go for a song while today shares in Kamikaze Bank were suspended after they nose-dived. While Samurai Bank are soldiering on following sharp cutbacks, Ninja Bank are reported to have taken a hit, but they remain in the black. Furthermore, 500 staff at Karate Bank got the chop and analysts report that there is something fishy going on at Sushi Bank where it is feared that staff may get a raw deal.

I tried to find the original author, but Google was no help. But the earliest instance I found was from way back in January 2008, here. Google could make that sort of search easier, if it adds a bit of functionality to find the earliest recorded instance of a piece of text — would be really handy when finding original authors.

Whither GMail?

Google Chrome’s application shortcuts further blur the distinction between desktop applications and web applications. Unfortunately, they don’t work on my computer for some mysterious reason — I keep clicking the appropriate menu but the browser remains mum. What should happen, ideally is that if I were to create a Chrome application shortcut (for say, GMail) on the desktop, double clicking it will open GMail like a normal application rather than a browser — sans address bars, tabs and other browsery appendages. The difference is too subtle for some, but I find such a feature quite appealing. Which makes the bug all the more maddening. I await a better Chrome build.

In the meantime, Google could do a thing or two to make GMail look a bit less webby. When it comes to web-based applications, often the first thing that makes users feel that they’re looking at a web page rather than an application window is that vertical scrollbar. The way to eliminate the scrollbar is to detect the size of the browser window and reduce the number of list entries displayed so that everything fits a screenful.

They should also consider replacing the plain text button toolbar with a few simple icons. I keep reporting as spam the mail I intend to archive. And of course the visual theme — there is nothing broken in it, but I’d like to see a few options in terms of colors. One tires of sky blue after a while. It may also be handy to shade alternate rows for readability (Google Docs’ table gadget already does this).

If tomorrow never comes, blame the Large Hadron Collider…

There is always an infinitesimally small probability that the Earth, the solar system and indeed this entire region of space may cease to exist at any moment. Tomorrow, that probability will be infinitesimally higher than any other day in recorded history. For tomorrow we switch on the first ever man-made device that actually has some semblance of a chance of destroying the entire world — the Large Hadron Collider.

This is about as alarmist as I can sound. The truth is the LHC is quite safe and scientists assure us the probability of micro black hole formation or vacuum metastability events is exceedingly low — something like 50 million to 1, I hear. Even if a micro black hole were to form in one of those high energy particle collisions, and even if they didn’t ‘evaporate’ in an instant as they’re supposed to, they’ll be quite innocuous — you probably won’t even notice one passing through your body. It certainly won’t be gobbling up the entire Earth. Nothing of the sort. Or so they say…

I regret writing my previous post about the LHC. Or at least I regret not hinting that it’s a spoof up front. I’m getting a lot of hits daily from people obviously lured in by the juicy title – Scientist dies in botched Large Hadron Collider test. Only to discover it’s an obscure Watchmen reference. Oh well…

The Empire Strikes Back

Begun, has the Clone Wars.

I knew the day would eventually come, but I never expected it to creep upon us so soon, like a cat burglar in the night. Microsoft has quietly begun hunting down local pirate shops. I was unaware of the goings-on when I walked into a formerly popular DVD shop in Unity Plaza last week. Took one look at the shelves bare of everything save for open source software and knew something was afoot.

Microsoft Sri Lanka, it seems, had sent undercover employees to all the popular pirate shops in Colombo to buy pirated versions of Microsoft products (or at least that’s what I heard). Every shop that sold something had received a letter the following week threatening legal action. So it seems the locals will not be buying Windows and Office ‘off the shelf’ for much longer…

They’ll be downloading them P2P instead. Shutting that down is a whole different ball game, one that even the RIAA hasn’t figured out how to play.

I suppose this is the appropriate paragraph to begin the obligatory rant about how evil Microsoft is and how draconian they’re attempts at enforcing software copyrights are. It’s certainly the fashionably geeky thing to do. But I’m not going to do it. I only have a problem with the way Microsoft designs software; not the way they write or sell it. Just the other day I was doodling with auto-fill of cell-referenced formulae in MS Excel and I was struck by how surprisingly well behaved the feature was. The underlying code may not be elegant, but it’s clearly robust. Poor design and architecture is what’s killing Microsoft, not poor code. At least I don’t think so.

So what will become of the local software market for MS products? The downloading at home will continue. Businesses will grumble and buy. Some will convert to open source. I’m already sitting between two people who use Open Office at work.

Plato, Rand and Vulcans

Recently, somebody accused me (well, not really accused — it was more of a comment) of something that I would never have been accused of three or four years back: I was told I’ve become cynical. There may be some truth in this. Reality tends to do this to you. I got wondering about a class of words: cynicism, idealism, naivete, pragmatism etc. Which is the opposite of which? Clearly idealism and naivete belong in one end of the spectrum while cynicism and pragmatism belong in the other. Or is it as clear as I think it is? Is idealism naive and are all cynics pragmatists or vice versa? I’m fairly certain about one thing though. Most cynics were former idealists; former idealists who decide to change after a few bouts in the ring with harsh reality. I don’t think I’ve hit cynism (yet), but if you ask me right now, I’d say I’ve transformed from an idealist to a consummate pragmatist. I just wanted to use “consummate” in a meaningful sentence there.

What is idealism anyway? What exactly are ideals? Are they purely mental constructs with no representation in the real world? Or do certain classes of goals and actions constitute ideals? Speaking of which, hasn’t Plato already gone there with Plato’s Cave? I never really read The Republic. Skimmed through The Laws. Being a reader of authors with an Aristotelian inclination, never really heard anything good about The Republic. My former dislike for Plato was largely second-hand. I blame Ayn Rand. I blame Ayn Rand for a whole shitload of things.

The woman relied too much on logic. Like Vulcans, it made her utterly boring. No wait. Not very much like Vulcans because Vulcans wouldn’t get angry. Ayn Rand often did. The problem with logic is that it’s inherently approximate. No? Do I hear someone say “All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; ergo Socrates is mortal”? Everything’s peachy as longs as “All men are mortal” holds. The problem with such universal declarations is that they’re… well, problematic. But that’s not really my objection. My objection is that formal logic (as opposed to common sense logic) is verbal, in that its primary building blocks are words. And words are at best approximations to the things they represent in the real world. Ergo logic is approximate. Did I just use logic to discredit logic? I hear conundrums pounding in my ears. This post has degenerated into nonsensical blather (as opposed to sensible blather, I suppose).

Many years ago (what has it been now, five? six?), I’d have called the above meaningless psychobabble. Well some of it I’d still call meaningless psychobabble, but half a decade ago I’d have done so quite seriously. Without realizing that verbal understanding isn’t everything. In fact, most of the time, verbal understanding isn’t anything. Most important things in life are non-verbal. All good understanding, all good knowledge is sensory — visual, auditory, emotional etc. Words are approximate descriptions of somebody else’s experiences. A purely verbal understanding is far more dangerous than ignorance. Should your “understanding” disagree with experience, it could make it very hard for you to accept and learn from experience when it hits you. Book learning is such a bad thing. Didn’t some famous person say “the more you read, the less you know”?