Life Rocks

not really a form of corruption. paying for art (music , films , games are a form of art, right? ) is a privilege, one that was for the rich. but now all can enjoy this. i am working now and can appreciate properly the thought and keep-at-it attitude that goes into it. this makes sure that when i pay money for each one of these works, it has broadened my mental horizons; and will keep doing so...infinitely. i do download stuff, but when i like it, i pay for it to get the 'original' copy. the rest makes it to my bin. not that i am guilty of doing it for free earlier, and also cannot justify it. according to me this is the way the world was supposed to work. I'll explain this in a later post.

today was watching kiterunner. awesome movie. it was this dialog that hit me hard - "Now, no matter what the mullah teaches, there is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft... When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness... There is no act more wretched than stealing, Amir."

Honestly, do you expect people to still develop stuff for the web? why are we not using point and click web apps to build more webapps ? there is a lot of stuff generalized out there - building forms, presenting data, storing data. Why is there no software to make it easier? why should developers bother with spending time to build mundane stuff that should have been automated years ago? why can't managers figure out that it is better to build software that will automate a large part of the software building process; while not loosing quality ,precious developer time and serious money? Here's why... nobody gives a damn. the money has got to be spent on things that will not matter to the people who permit the expense. Bad software hardly affects the industry, and all the other people involved.

i was reading the news yesterday, and some minister said that we need to get more industries in karnataka. the implications are pretty staggering....more people, less food. more demand, less supply. skyrocketing prices. higher inflation rates. does this look like the economy is growing, or is it becoming more unstable and ultimately, unsustainable? the problem in this whole outlook is that the government will waiver loans, give subsidies, increase farmlands by cutting down more forests, but this will backfire on us the people, since by continuously doing so, we turn a whole section of farmers from providers into dependants. a few people have also suggested buying farms in brazil and other places, mainly in south america. but has it crossed anyone's mind as yet that these are other sovereignty? hence they can be a factor that may be outside our control. also god-forbid if other countries follow this idiotic move, then there will be other countries in a race to acquire these lands ...

We wait , we hope , we want. we do everything except that which makes us human - the act of creation. innovate , invent , discover. words that resonate with the most precious of the human spirit. i had been hoping for a better world, a better bet, a better this and a better that. i forgot, about what made me unique in my childhood and college. the power and ability to do things my way. i forgot that once i was out of the herd, even if i join back, i will always be the odd man out. Worse, i wanted ( unconsciously ) the freedom that i will never get from the herd, with it's sanctions, plans, rules, social mores and other methods of maintaining a front and an illusion of security and wellbeing . i was born to be unique ( like everybody else in this world ), but the difference is that i have had a taste of what i could be. it is a taste immediately acquired and once acquired, next-to-impossible to get rid of. i figured it out, i think.

for all the motherfuckers who think PHP is lame, i will have you know that facebook is written in PHP. i have had enough with people talking about how python , perl , ROR are better than PHP. i like python but love PHP. every language has its plus point, php's being a really simple to learn language. So all the people who have a problem with PHP, go fuck yourself. for building desktop applications we have PHP-GTK . the PHP shell can run PHP scripts on the CLI. and if you really want to do some serious shit, then go learn about extending PHP. this means that you can do stuff in C. and for the other bunch of jokers who keep telling me about the apparent demise of PHP. i know someday this beautiful language will be dead, i am learning erlang in preparation.

i've been toying around with a PHP framework called symfony . actually i wanted to know what MVC ( Model-View-Controller ) was, and i am really comfortable with PHP, so downloaded a copy and made a sandbox on my xampp htdocs directory. after i started playing around it just hit me that how much programming has simplified over the 12 years since i wrote my "hello world" program in c. where 150 people were needed to code a simple website back then, that too in about a year, now things can be done with just one or two programmers in about a fortnight. i think thats awesome. computers are finally doing what they were invented to do - to reduce human work. one really interesting thing is the askeet tutorial. here they guide you through making a replica of their site over 24 days, with each tutorial taking not more than one and a half hours to completely understand and implement. Also the symfony site itself is created on symfony, and that's really cool. ok, what hit me ...