You never know

Some 8 years ago, 14 November was just about getting sweets and a holiday. But from now on, thanks to ISRO, this day would also be marked as a major milestone in India’s tryst with Universe beyond Earth.

Although, our country is a little (some 45 years) late in such mission but we have done it. ISRO’s Chadrayaan 1 is the first of its series, carried more than a dozen sensors to observe the geology of Moon. The lunar orbitter dropped MIP on the lunar surface near Moon’s south pole (I wonder what does that mean…do north and south hold true wrt Earth’s north-south even in space??). The MIP was sort of crash landed (planned) on the surface with just a few rockets to reduce its velocity on its waydown.

MIP was painted with Indian tri-color and hence we have something on the Moon which brags for our nation. MIP is now planned to collect data with the dust it blew from its crash and then move on (??? does it have wheels) to search for other data.

This mission is planned to collect a lot of data, most of which I don’t know about. Its also planned to find a suitable place for landing the next rover - Chandrayaan-II planned for 2012 (hmm….4 yrs??)

BTW, on this ocassion Dr. Abdul Kalam said that he wants India to land a man on Moon in 15 years….reminds me of Kennedy’s promise to US for landing man on moon in a decade. They did it, would we?

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Disclaimer: My deepest apologies to girls, but I am not trying to be sexist here. The main theme of the post should be equally valid, had the title been Relationship and Boyfriends.

For a fact, I have never been in a relationship ever in my life and I am sure that I have lived more than 25% of my life. The main reason might have been that I was in a catholic school and then joined an engineering college (where sex ratio is amazing).
Anyways, I never had regrets for that and I don’t think it would ever be. Although, I do regret some of the crushes (if thats what they be named) could not be reaped properly.

Of late I had seen that its been getting important for people to get a girlfriend. Its as if that you are big time loser if you can’t even get a girlfriend. Is human relationship getting translated into something to show off? Is it the next upcoming FAD?
I think we should still be able to live a mature and healthy life being single. I know (vicariously although) that relationship is golden and is amazing to be part of, but I still don’t buy the idea of synthetic gold.

The culture is being strengthened more by the pubs as more and more of them make couple entry compulsory. They might have their own business reason to do so (apparently groups of boys get drunk and tend to be more unmanageable as compared to a groups with girls as well). But is that idea not trying to bring somethings artificially into the society?

Anyways, I am not really an expert in sociology. These were just a couple of thoughts about a behavior which I found rather anomalous.

PS: To those who might try to relate. I was thinking to write it down for quite some time. It just so happens that I have done it now!

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Prelude: This post was started a year and a half ago when I was shedding off my SamsungC110 but could never be completed. I am revisiting it again now that I have moved on from my Sony Ericsson as well.
But just to keep the sanctity of my previous post, I would keep a chronological order and divide the post in 2 parts.

Part 1:

Reluctantly and with a blessing of a minor accident, I had to let go my Samsung C100. I had been using this phone for some 2-3 years and had grown an impression that this phone was all I need. After all this phone allowed me to make phone calls, send/receive sms, had phonebook features, a 16bit color display with 128×128 reso, gprs capability, IR port, basic java support. It could show me basic wap based websites and I thought internet on phone is unnecessary anyways.

But then I got my hands on my new phone Sony Ericsson w830i. This phone has all the feature of my previous phone except IR which was substituted by a better way–bluetooth. It flaunts of 262,144 colors with 240×320reso, awesome speaker set (well known for the w-series), first time slider from Sony (and hence the bulk as compared their later releases of the same), FM, 2MP camera with video recording, better java support.
This phone shattered my closed perspective of device convergence. I now just keep on listening to songs that I have loaded onto it (I am not too fond of FM)…I prefer this over television. With better java support I got Opera mini and an unlimited data plan for my connection…to get internet on my fingertips at all times.

Although, I am still of the opinion that sometimes manufacturers try to push too many unrelated things onto phone, but if we apply our needs and available models, we can definitely get something which is not just phone but a device worth carrying at all times as well.

Part 2:

I am still fond of my Sony Ericsson, but a couple of months back I got to know about Openmoko Freerunner. This phone would lose hands down in terms of stability and usability to any phone currently on the market. But what is awesome about this phone is its hardware.
To tell in few lines this is computer powered with AMDv4 processor @400MHz, 128 MB RAM, 256 MB Flash based non-volatile storage. Along with all this it has got, 640×480 touchscreen, 2 push buttons, a pair of 3D accelerometers, GPS (AGPS) chip, Wifi, bluetooth, minimalistic 3D acceleration card, SDHC enabled µSD card slot, and of course a GSM modem with GPRS (no EDGE or 3G). (btw, you might have noticed the absence of camera and FM….but I guess I can live without it).

Thats not all, its just not that it has got all this harware. The best part about all this is that the whole design/schematics of the phone are open. The CAD files are available freely and anyone can (and is invited to) change the model and create a phone of their own. I think Koolu is working on the same model.
Moreover, all the chips except glamo (graphics card) and ti’s gsm modem have completely open specification.  Glamo seems like a closed case and that they might not open their chip ever. Although, it seems that they are ready to share their doc under NDA and those NDA’ed guys can publish the doc under their name (Glamo won’t take any responsibility for the doc). With TI, they won’t open the chip’s spec but we do have it respond to standard AT commands and that should be nice. Moreover, TI has agreed to allow the end-user to flash the modem’s firmware to fix the issues.
Whoa, did you really read the last sentence. Did you notice that I just said ‘end-user’ can ‘flash’ ‘modem firmware’. Yeah, I know some of you would say that this should just not be necessary and I am sure it won’t be for later releases. But the main point is the end-user (I) CAN flash modem’s firmware.
To sum up the hardware, I guess we can see the analogy with opensource software working with propritary drivers. In fact freerunner is really about bringing open-source to hardware (Is it the first to do so??? I don’t know).

That was about the hardware, but it just doesn’t end there. The software feel is also cool. Do you remember that I said Freerunner is a computer. Well it is so, and like any other computer I can install other OS (apart from the ones that it shipped with or the ones provided by OEM), I can make it dual-boot. The OS that currently runs on it is of course Linux (current version is 2.6.24…so you see its the real mainline version). There are multiple distributions/sw-stack available and I can choose to get anyone. Did you see one of them is Android. Yes, I can be using Android without shelling $ for T-Mobile connection (that too if I was in US….for me, Freerunner is the only option).

Now, let me come back to the losing-hands-down-on-stability-and-usability part. The hardware for this phone is wonderful. But the software is still heavily under development. The development is so much in progress that sometimes the stable marked images (flashable OS) fail to register to the network. But the developers are not to be blamed for everything there. It rather an outcome of closely developed implementations of the GSM standard by the network providers. The software work fine where the developers are, but it fails to the job everywhere.
Nevertheless, since its all software that causes the stress mostly, it can be easily fixed. I am really optimistic of getting a neighbour’s-envy-owner’s-pride class image soon. In fact Openmoko recent initiative (FSO) have just released their 4th milestone and the community discussion suggest that its really promising. I would spend this weekend on it and see if it really holds for true.

To end up, I guess Freerunner is not really a product that can go on the shelf of a shop so as to be used out-of-the-box. But Openmoko has really convered a lot given its just their second released model.

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