<rant begins>

Google really needs to learn about supporting its products better. My problem. Very basic. I want Google Maps to work on my cellphone. It worked for me in India. It does not work for me in Italy. I am on the latest version. I cannot remove google maps from my phone, since its inbuilt and despite my best efforts I cannot remove it.

When I went to purchase a phone, I wanted a few things. 3G, wifi, GPS. I soon realized there was no point to go for 3G since it was not available in India (and looking at the way things are now, won’t be for a long long time). wifi also did not make sense since EDGE was dirt cheap in India, and if I had wifi, the probability of having my laptop around was also very high. So all I wanted was a GPS. Well, when I saw the star I fell in love with it. But no GPS. Till he told me that it had Google maps which located you using the cellphone tower. There, I was sold.

But now, guess what. It does not work. When I start it, I get a “Serious Error. Please exit and restart”. Googling around led me to here. Turns out it has been there for sometime and not yet been resolved. Contacting a few friends in Google did not help. One of them infact, when I compared Google software to Microsoft, told me that since I do not pay Google, I should not expect any support.

Coming from the open source world, I cannot fathom a world where I cannot fix my own software. But here I am. Nothing works, and since I am on closed hardware/software, I cannot even fix it.

Not that Google helps. If you are NOT going to support software, then you might as well open source it, as opposed to leaving users in a limbo.

Well, you want the clincher? Google suggested to checkout buzz on your cellphone. I did so, and guess what. It is only for the iphone and android. Why call it a mobile platform then?!

Google, a lot of people around the world do NOT own/use an iphone or an android phone. Are you going to use microsoft like tactics to bully them onto your platform? Are you going to force people to spend a lot more money, just to be able to use Google applications?

I am disgusted!

Now, what are my observations of this place.

1. Italy is amongst the warmer countries of Europe. But don’t get misled. Warm means, you go down to only around -2 or -3 in the night. Not lower. So yes, Italy is warm.
2. I am sick of cheese. The rule of thumb here is, if you cannot figure out what something in the menu is, 99 times out of 98, it is some type of cheese. I mean who names a cheese “Gorgonzola”. That sounds like the name of a monster destroying some japanese city in a horror film! But no, that is the name of a cheese.
3. The people are very well dressed. When I start saying things like that, there has to be something. As N found out the hard way, fashion and I, do not really make any sense. But, I am confident that at the end of my stay in this country, I will be more fashion aware than my sister who does that for a living!
4. There are Indians everywhere in the world! I sit down for lunch in the cafeteria, and guess what. There is an Indian to the left of me, there is an Indian to the right of me. And there is a Croat sitting opposite me! Where are the Italians in Italy?!
5. Talking about Indians, turns out the benchmark for your Italian is Mangesh’s italian. In fact the benchmark for your skill in any language is Mangesh’s italian.
6. Mangesh’s italian reminds me. I take this moment to invite you to my funeral three years from now. Marko (and he’s the croat) has promised me that if my italian is as bad as Mangesh’s italian three years from now, he will murder me. Considering my skills in picking up languages, I think its time to start preparing for a funeral and a murder trial. Law enforcement authorities, please note this.
7. Did I mention that Marko sucks at the PS3? (contrary to the rumours he is spreading around in the lab!)
8. The weather. When a Goan finds 6C as warm, you can be sure there is something wrong..

To all my friends on facebook. If you are getting sick of the tower pictures in my album, well, you guys are screwed. There is nothing except the tower (and yours truly) to see in Pisa. OTOH, Florence seemed quite interesting. Unfortunately my camera’s battery ran out that day.

Now I am wondering. Should this blog now move to http://www.thegianis.in/pisa/blog since I am no longer in Bangalore..

(*: If you read Asterix and Obelix, the title should be apparent )

in the meantime peterz and rostedt are arguing about schrodinger and his cat and being the sneak I am, I attempt to trap someone in a wikipedia spiral (starting at idly* of course) and making someone feel hungry
sometime later

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* Noticed the sneaky attempt yet again?

For sometime I have noticed (and this might be a perception I have and if it is wrong, I would like you to correct it), that you seem to be anti hindu. Not directly, but in very subtle sense. Is it something subconscious? Why?

When you were talking about Ayesha (I hope I get the name right), you protected her right to wear a hijab/scarf, but you did not mention that the pressure was brought in by other students who wanted to wear saffron. If she is allowed to wear a hijab, then why are hindu students who wanted to wear saffron right wing fundamentalists?

The next question, why do we not have you looking at real religious problems. Why have a seperate set of laws for muslims and hindus? Why are we not looking at a uniform civil code? Why not look at actually protecting women’s rights? Look at equality, look at progress irrespective of the religion. Why do we want to be held back by religion?

Then a question that I have to ask, which is not aimed at you specifically, but is one that I have had for a number of years. Why is it if I talk about minorities and protecting their right to practice their religion, I am a secularist, but if I talk about my religion (and I belong to the majority religion, but I am not a follower of it to the extent most others are), and protecting my right to practice my religion, it is fundamentalist? Why do I feel that having a debate about religion defending the majority is taboo, and only for fundamentalists? Why has this environment been created?

I am done for now, and hopefully I won’t be forced to take this down

EDIT: Spelling errors corrected. Thanks to tunafish for pointing it out.

-Peter Zijlstra

The main complaint I have is that it stinks of NIH. From the google blogpost

And a bit later on

Now the first statement makes me wonder what is it that they are doing which is so special. At least on the LKML I have not seen any discussion on the redesign of the security features we have. And just the idea that the OS would be able to protect the user from malware is absurd. It puts unnecessary pressure on the developers and promotes unsafe user behavior (the conspiracy theorist in me thinks that google wants all our private information so unsafe behavior is good for them).

The second statement makes me wonder. What is it that the current windowing systems do NOT provide. There are tons of them out there. Why is it so hard to take one of them and modify it and contribute BACK to the community. And what is it so special that google engineers can do that open source developers cannot do.

This leads me to the reasons why I believe chrome os will fail. I have some idea of what happens in the open source community. They hate being given a big chunk of code and then expected to maintain it. And IF google expects they will start a project which does something similar to something out there already and expect open source developers to flock there just because Google started it, they are mistaken.

Unless Google expects to spend a lot of money on chrome os to maintain it, the project is going to die. And guess where the money is going to come from. I am not sure (that) the shareholders would be very happy with Google spending a lot of money on basically free software. And more importantly, one that can be exploited by another vendor to undermine Google’s presence.

And LJ shows another very interesting perspective of it here. Tell me Google, what is it that you are doing which is new?

“I will kill you. I will clone you and kill you and all your clones”

The author, well you know who you are

1. I was flying from Bangalore to Mumbai in a Kingfisher Airlines flight. Generally when I fly, after sitting at the airport, I want water. And I want lots of it. So I finished something like 2 bottles before I got dinner. And at dinner I asked for another bottle. Sometime went by, and I finished the bottle they had given me with the meal, and I wanted more water, and so I hit the call button. And the air hostess came back, and while she was handing me one bottle, she suddenly decided to hand me another saying, “I am sure you will want one more” with a smile I treasured for the rest of the flight

2. The flights in europe. The one from Hamburg to Paris. Sripathi was sitting at the back, so I don’t he knows this one :). I don’t like tea or coffee. And the thing I loved about Air France was that they had a hot chocolate option. But it is just that. Hot water and chocolate powder which is a bit on the bitter side. I wanted to add some milk in it and they forgot to give me milk and I asked the air hostess for some milk. There was a lady next to me (no clue from where) who did not speak english (probably german though) and she gives this really nice smile (now, somehow I got the feeling that she was mothering me, but then I just wanted the milk :P), and hands the milk she had and then air hostess comes back and gives me milk with a really nice smile. (OK, I seem to have a weakness for nice smiles..)

3. The flight from Paris to Lyon was even better. I wanted both a pepsi and hot chocolate. And the flight was empty and the air hostess was really cute with an even better smile (yep, that seems to be a trend)

4. The flight from Bangalore to Paris and back was similar. Both times I had the window seat and the person next to me went to sleep so I could not get out. And the air hostess used to give me stuff and then give me the expression, “Don’t be a naughty boy now. You should also go to sleep now”.

Now the thing is that while I do realize it is part of the service to be nice, and to be polite and to always smile, what I did notice was the smiles were nicer to a set of few people (which included me). This baffled me since I am not any model material or something. When I mentioned it to smartie, she was sceptical and told me I was only imagining stuff. Then I thought about it, and I realized one thing. Most of the passengers in the flight don’t treat the air hostess humanly. They  order her around, don’t ask her politely, don’t smile. Basically I could go on. And my parents have brought me up to be nice to people. To treat them like you would treat yourself. Smile, be polite, don’t order. Gets you better service, and hopefully keeps them happy as well.

Then again it may just be that my smile is a killer ;). There was this one awesome evening I had in Goa. I was travelling that night, and mom had given me list for her shopping. It involved me going ot the pharmacy which is probably the most crowded place in vasco. And to think of my luck, it was one of the crowded hours. There was this cute girl inside who was handling customers, she caught my eye, and I smiled at her, and 10 seconds later she was right next to me asking me how she could help me. And bam, 2 mins later thanks to her I was on my way. That led me to temptations and it had to be really crowded again. I thought what’s the big deal, let’s try the smile trick again, and it worked! I was out in 2 more mins and back home in time to relax before going back to Bangalore.

When I mentioned it to smarty, I also realized, if it is a woman hostess, I tend to get things happening a bit more easily (such as the table I want, faster service, I could go on). I guess it all happens when you are polite and smile.

Now if only I could charm the pretty girls so easily.. But well.. that’s life

The sighing friend’s college had an exhibition, and since I was doing nothing that saturday I decided to go over and checkout what these artsy types do. Turned out to be an eye opener. It was interesting to say the least, and some of the posters were strong, and while I am sure some of the reactions they evoked in me were not what their authors (or is it creators?) intended, they sure did evoke a response in me. My grateful thanks to the sighing friend for being so patient and explaining to me what every thing was about (and it was hard, because I am clueless about all this stuff).

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I got a new phone :D :D. The first time I have bought an electronics item on impulse without having done adequate research on it. It was love at first sight (don’t worry, enough girls are doing it to me these days as well ;) ). And once I played around with it, I was sold. It has everything I wanted except wifi, but then with the GPRS working out so well, I don’t really need it. Ah, I am in love :).

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Well, the new phone is a nice toy as well to play with. I had loads of fun catching people sleeping at office and clicking those photos and uploading them to facebook.

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I just realized. I don’t have the patience for folks who are dumb. Dumb being very subjective. This lack of patience is really shocking, but at this stage I am not sure how/why I have become so impatient. Time to work on patience. (And yes, it was another pretty girl for whom I fell for till she opened her mouth..)

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Kaajal called up the other evening. She wanted me to come over the weekend. The conversation that followed was hilarious

Dhaval (whoops. This is now going into dangerous territory. Time to think quickly): Kaajal, you should ask Mummy. She will tell you (and I hope forgive me for putting her in such a situation )

Anyway, my aunt tells me that Kaajal expects me to be there every sunday. Now that is going to be really interesting.

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The other night at Raj’s place we all played Uno. That was one hilarious game which lasted forever with Raj and Jason being at it for about half an hour. But that has to be the best game of uno EVER! Thanks guys!

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I have become a big fan of The Big Bang Theory. What is scary is the way I can relate to the show and how many of those habits I have. I am quite obsessively compulsive about how I do some things. Like the way I like my computer to work, the way I eat my food, the place I sit, the way the kitchen has to run.  And doing it any other way irritates me so much that I feel like exploding. Or maybe the utter inability to speak to pretty girls (there are a few exceptions to that, but mainly because I have sorta become comfortable with them.). Or the ability to dress up. Man, my dress sense sucks utterly. The joke goes on that my share of fashion sense went to my sister and (I like to think) their share of intelligence came to me :P. But oh no, I am becoming a big bang theory character.

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Speaking of big bang theory characters, I did not really like Penny (she is attractive, yes). She came about as a shallow person, with very standard girly tastes. But the last episode (where the new tenant, Alicia comes), we got to see a totally different side of her. Made me feel ashamed for having judged her the way I did. Now Penny is my second favourite character from the show. (Of course Sheldon remains the favourite )

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One of the best evenings ever. Gooba came home and we gamed. We gamed like mad. Those few hours on Need for Speed: Carbon were just mind blowing. I don’t think I have had that much fun racing in a long long time :D. Dude, you rock! Now if only I can get Pankaj over and kick his ass!!

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Another awesome evening. Wandering Tuna at Little Italy. It was the first time after you know what happened with you know who at you know where :D. (And you know who is the same person who got bugged :P.)

You guys rock absolutely!

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The chef has left the kitchen. Bid farewell to him on saturday early morning. Will miss having a room mate, but good riddance dude. My house is mine again :D. Seriously though, awesome two months, the only regret being we did not game enough. I will always remember “The Only Place” where NG brought about so much entertainment. And also “Previously on Autowalla”, the series that will feature on this blog sometime soon :D. Memories will always remain and a few photos as well

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tglx told me that kernel hackers are supposed to have a life. peterz thinks its silly expecting kernel hackers to have a life. I’ve been doing all silly userspace stuff for the past 2 months. Does that mean I am supposed to have a life?

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I managed to confuse akpm the other day. Excerpts at the Quotes of the day section here. Don’t worry. I made it all fine as well.

I guess that’s it for this edition. More the next time I blog :).

1. The whip is one of the important maintainer tools. If stinking trout does not work, use whip

2.  A good maintainer never rejects his own patches.

3. A maintainer is good by definition

4.  Maintainers are lazy and therefor delegate the ugly work to contributors