Trust me, as an Indian, I probably should be more paranoid about details like this than you international folk. Consider this:- a google search for my surname, for instance, results exactly 20 hits. 18 of them are about me.
It's probably not an issue for surnames mentioned here (Malayali and North Indian respectively), but for ethnicities such as mine, I believe surname privacy is a very serious issue, and it's time gov.in does something about securing access.
we still have to remember that teenage girls, particularly in the nation's south, have one of the highest suicide rates for any demographic in this part of the world.
Heheh, wish I could say that about my brother... dude scored over 80%, and still is in depression; apparently, grade inflation has become pandemic over the years, what with the highest scorer allegedly scoring a freaking 98.4% (AP state board, not CBSE).
And oh, 1 in 100 is only for "normal" institutions like the IIT's; when I applied to the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Hyderabad some five years back, the ratio was more to the tune of 1 in 2500.:-)
Heheh, I think it's more a result of Tanenbaum, rather than the editors; note that only the books authored by him have cartoons kinda showing the entire subject matter at a glance.:-)
Just archived my old email right before graduation and all I can say is this:- my four-year novel involving romance (mostly Valentine's Day spam), humour (mostly forwards), tragedy (mostly exam results), and human drama (mostly flame wars over mailing lists) is apparently a mere 30 MB. I think I should start having an inferiority complex or something.
Welcome to the grand old world of Indian politics, where nothing matters more than the politics, the alliances you cobble up, the social empowerment you promise all this, of course, is well known, but yet most commentators choose to look for the grand message from the voter.
Always important to remember that most of the e-governance measures (e-seva kendras, payment of taxes etc through website) actually came before the last elections, where Naidu was victorious. Also important to acknowledge the real fact that EVM's are, after all, India's most successful e-governance project after Indian Railways' computerisation.
So, no, I disagree with the notion that these elections were a referendum on e-governance; I humbly submit that e-governance as a policy initiative has mostly proceeded without political interference or electoral oversight. And even if there was, it was in fact in 1999 when it took place, and the electorate voted heavily in favour of reformist (if you will) candidates from all parts of the political spectrum.
I'm sorry, but I'll have to call bullshit on this.
(As I apparently never tire of pointing this out), but if you compare out-of-the-box Indic implementations in MS Windows XP Prof and Linux, Windows wins hands down. I install a 10 MB dll called Uniscribe, and presto, I can simply type in my mother tongue Telugu (as also Devnagari, Tamil, Kannada, Gujarati and Gurmukhi). Linux, otoh, would obviously need significantly more effort to get it to up-to-speed with Win XP; spent some two hours recently installing a Mandrake 9 distro, and I can say for sure that it isn't a simple matter of, say, installing the right rpm's and stuff... there obviously needs to be work done for it to be installable by Janardhan User.
Now, where Linux really wins hands down is in terms of a) reach of languages (Bengali, Malayalam, Oriya etc won't be covered by MS till Longhorn, I guess), b) customised solutions (say for governmental offices and banks) and, c)potential; for instance, I, as a bored software consultant, could devote my free time in hacking together a solution. Or perhaps, I could devote some time in translating the Gnome UI into my mother tongue [Don't look at me; haven't done it as yet:-) ]
Off-the-CD installation, however, I must sadly state that Win XP is ahead, perhaps slightly, of Linux. Which is one reason why the AP government's recommended Telugu word processor, for instance, runs only on Windows.
Incidentally, the reason they mis-spell it thus is because Feroz Ghandi changed the spelling of his family's surname to 'Gandhi' after marrying the then Indira Priyadarshini Nehru.
Let's just that's mostly bullshit peddled particularly by the international media which apparently wants to see just about everything in terms of the so-called globalisation debate.
Let's face facts:- the Indian electorate had already voted for the reforms policy and, if you will e-governance in the 1999 elections. Even a cursory analysis of the voting pattern would in fact show that these results were less of a poor-versus-rich vote, and more of a get-that-fat-cat-politician-out-he's-taken-enough- bribes-already vote. Helps if you get your alliances right as well.
If the Congress/Telengana combine, out of power, could "buy" votes with such accuracy and across "most" of their win-seats without any serious accusations of malpractice, then they deserve to get a book contract from IDG to write a book on Rigging for Dummies;-)
I think you misunderstand the tone of my remark earlier. I'm not suggesting that this (ie, sale of votes) indeed did happen, and for sure, I can very easily imagine why the Congress could have won fair and square (think lack of water/rains, an exasperation with TDP-speak etc). I'm suggesting that given the current vote-shares, buying of votes, if done in small measures, could definitely help in aggregate terms. Think small, and think wide, seems to be the trick here. But the main point of course, is the, if I may use the term, non-aggregation of partisan votes across constituencies which, on first glance, does seem unfair to certain parties in this election; then again, you'd have to agree that it's been happening to the Congress for the past ten years or so anyway, (in particular, this was exactly how the TDP has won in 1983, 1994 and 1999 respectively) so in the grand scheme of things, I guess it's a sort of just desserts.
Btw, fairly decent take on proportional representation. Can't say I can think of adding to that.
First of all, let me clarify that the Nalgonda scenario was hypothetical; in reality, it was the CPM candidate who won that elections back then (although 400+ candidates taking part in the elections was indeed true). Allusions to temple etc was just my way of saying I'm being non-partisan here, particularly coz I was seemingly supportive of the NDA towards the end.
I brought up the Nalgonda example because you seemed to suggesting that candidate list spam is illegal in India. It isn't; anyone who doesn't mind gambling Rs 10,000 can still participate in the elections. The fact is, the best bet against sock-puppet candidates [love that term!;-) ] is only a generic hue and cry; there is no institutional safe-guard against such abuse. And even on that count, I'm not really sure how you can legislate against it without trodding on a citizen's right to contest any elections he deems. (I'm one of those people who happen to think that even the Rs 10,000 deposit is inherently undemocratic and unfair to a majority of our population, but that is a different matter altogether).
While I do believe (or am sctively considering such a viewpoint, and so am open to ideas) that a proportional representation system, in principle, could be better, that is not the point I'm trying to demonstrate here. I'm just trying to point out that on occassion, in may very well be that
vox populi (ie, voice of the people) != seat tally in the Lok Sabha/ Assembly.
A majority of the people might have one policy view, but it could so happen that the candidate with a contrary view might get elected.
I'm thinking you didn't read my post down to the bottom, especially where I talked about why vote-buying might matter and why there are zamindari-constituencies.
Yes, the view I had was that the bicycle had an almost Mao-ist appeal for at least most of the old guard there. An e-bike, therefore, is probably just the sort of post-modernist identity symbol that a contemporary Chinese would be interested in.
Let us consider a scenario to explain his point further. Consider the elections for the parliamentary constituency of Nalgonda, which, as I mentioned earlier on this site, once really had 400+ candidates running for the seat. Now, assume that the main issue, so to speak, for the constituents is the availability (or the lack) of irrigated water for their fields during the Rabi (rainy) season.
The political situation is as follows. The incumbent candidate, a political bigwig with remarkable political skills but little policy vision or initiative, has decided he won't address that issue at all, and instead has decided to make the construction of a teeny-weeny temple in some north Indian town that no one has heard of, or visited, as his main plank. Outraged, the constituents decide that enough is enough and step into the electioneering process en masse. Each of the 400 or so people have a specific idea in mind to solve the region's water crisis; all of them agree that the only way it can be solved is to bring waters from the nearby River Krishna to the district. Which is exactly what our Average Voter thinks is the right solution. The problem, however, for him is this:- he has to choose from 400 like-minded candidates! What does he do? He opts for the more prominent ones, leaving out the lesser known ones instead.
The damage, however, has already been done; while in cumulative terms, the constituency as a whole has voted for candidates who address the water problem, in individual terms, the guy who gets the most votes is the dude fixated on that silly temple. That is to say, while the constituency voted for water, the guy who eventually won is someone who hasn't addressed that question at all.
Now, scenarios such as this are not common these days for a very simple reason:- political alliances. Both the BJP and the Congress have learnt this the hard way, but there's no real reason for them to split their vote share by competing against like-minded, but regional, parties. Which, incidentally, is the real reason why the Congress, for instance, won the Assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh; it took care to not split the anti-TDP/BJP vote between itself, TRS and the Communists. So, if you were against the incumbent government, all you had to do was to vote for the "Not NDA" guy, and obviously, there's only one such person shown on your EVM.
However, the splitting of the electorate manifests itself in another stupid way, in terms of constituencies. Look at it this way:- a hefty 41% of Andhra's electorate actually wanted the TDP back in. Quite clearly, this is a statistic that is not immediately apparent when you look at the final seat tallies; TDP/BJP got a mere 49 seats, or 12% of the Assembly, despite the fairly okay-ish vote share. Reason? Most of the seats won by the Congress had winning margins of less than 1000 votes. A margin that, as a wag put it in on a discussion forum elsewhere on the web, could be easily "bought" over by wealthy candidates in their respective constituencies.
This, if true, would also explain why some assembly constituencies, particularly those in Bihar and in parts of Andhra Pradesh's wild south, are often called 21st century zamindaris despite having a robust democractic tradition for the last fifty four years.
Okay, first of all, Vajpayee is a genial old man and you really don't want to read too much into his off-the-cuff remarks.
Second,the real trouble, if you ask me, is that people in India have started watching, and reading into, *too much* television.:-) Everything from exit polls to IndiaShining (tm), to reactions on Gujarat 2002 [*], to even Chandni Chowk elections can be explained by this thesis.
Time we have a slashdot.org.in or something, I guess.;-)
[*] - Gujarat 2002 was different from independent India's other ethnic fatricides in that we were able to see it live on television; which is why people on both sides of the political spectrum tend to lose perspective while discussing it.
My linking to that XHTML + CSS article seems to have caused some confusion here. For the record, I have no experience of either Latex or XHTML + CSS. I was only throwing options when I mentioned the later, not comparing both.
My only grouse was that the poster I was responding to didn't comment on the grandparent's point that Latex, apparently, didn't allow layout placement, but instead went off on a rant on why such control is unnecessary.
Stop applying aesthetics to it. It's just a document, not a work of art.... Consistency looks better than perfection.
I was expecting a more robust defence of Latex, but must say have been disappointed by your assertion that aesthetics is less important than form. The point here isn't to let the tool decide how you should think or exposit, but to choose a tool that fits in to your needs and way of work. Or perhaps you intended to say that, but somehow, it was lost in that rambling against the GP's need to be able to micromanage his layout.
As for the original poster, why not give XHTML with CSS a try?
Forgot where I read that, but there were some concerns in the Googler blog world that the UI is not accessibility-friendly and uses a lot of JavaScript tricks that might not work on all browsers.
Actually, I'd say that's a disadvantage; I, for one, love watching those psephologist gods spending sleepless nights live on television squirming in their seats just as their predictions are being proven wrong.;-)
a) Look at the numbers; election-season killings have seen a decline in the past few years.
b) Geeks take a while to appreciate this, but never has technology ever solved social problems. At best, it has made existing responses more efficient, but never has it alone made things more effective
Slashdot Mirror
It's probably not an issue for surnames mentioned here (Malayali and North Indian respectively), but for ethnicities such as mine, I believe surname privacy is a very serious issue, and it's time gov.in does something about securing access.
Sad, seriously sad.
And oh, 1 in 100 is only for "normal" institutions like the IIT's; when I applied to the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) in Hyderabad some five years back, the ratio was more to the tune of 1 in 2500. :-)
Heheh, I think it's more a result of Tanenbaum, rather than the editors; note that only the books authored by him have cartoons kinda showing the entire subject matter at a glance. :-)
Ah yes, thanks for the update on SP2 and FC2 etc. That was useful; think I'd look it up soon.
Seems to be American, judging by the flag on his photo.
Just archived my old email right before graduation and all I can say is this:- my four-year novel involving romance (mostly Valentine's Day spam), humour (mostly forwards), tragedy (mostly exam results), and human drama (mostly flame wars over mailing lists) is apparently a mere 30 MB. I think I should start having an inferiority complex or something.
To quote,
Always important to remember that most of the e-governance measures (e-seva kendras, payment of taxes etc through website) actually came before the last elections, where Naidu was victorious. Also important to acknowledge the real fact that EVM's are, after all, India's most successful e-governance project after Indian Railways' computerisation.So, no, I disagree with the notion that these elections were a referendum on e-governance; I humbly submit that e-governance as a policy initiative has mostly proceeded without political interference or electoral oversight. And even if there was, it was in fact in 1999 when it took place, and the electorate voted heavily in favour of reformist (if you will) candidates from all parts of the political spectrum.
(As I apparently never tire of pointing this out), but if you compare out-of-the-box Indic implementations in MS Windows XP Prof and Linux, Windows wins hands down. I install a 10 MB dll called Uniscribe, and presto, I can simply type in my mother tongue Telugu (as also Devnagari, Tamil, Kannada, Gujarati and Gurmukhi). Linux, otoh, would obviously need significantly more effort to get it to up-to-speed with Win XP; spent some two hours recently installing a Mandrake 9 distro, and I can say for sure that it isn't a simple matter of, say, installing the right rpm's and stuff... there obviously needs to be work done for it to be installable by Janardhan User.
Now, where Linux really wins hands down is in terms of a) reach of languages (Bengali, Malayalam, Oriya etc won't be covered by MS till Longhorn, I guess), b) customised solutions (say for governmental offices and banks) and, c)potential; for instance, I, as a bored software consultant, could devote my free time in hacking together a solution. Or perhaps, I could devote some time in translating the Gnome UI into my mother tongue [Don't look at me; haven't done it as yet :-) ]
Off-the-CD installation, however, I must sadly state that Win XP is ahead, perhaps slightly, of Linux. Which is one reason why the AP government's recommended Telugu word processor, for instance, runs only on Windows.
Incidentally, the reason they mis-spell it thus is because Feroz Ghandi changed the spelling of his family's surname to 'Gandhi' after marrying the then Indira Priyadarshini Nehru.
Let's face facts:- the Indian electorate had already voted for the reforms policy and, if you will e-governance in the 1999 elections. Even a cursory analysis of the voting pattern would in fact show that these results were less of a poor-versus-rich vote, and more of a get-that-fat-cat-politician-out-he's-taken-enough- bribes-already vote. Helps if you get your alliances right as well.
Btw, fairly decent take on proportional representation. Can't say I can think of adding to that.
I brought up the Nalgonda example because you seemed to suggesting that candidate list spam is illegal in India. It isn't; anyone who doesn't mind gambling Rs 10,000 can still participate in the elections. The fact is, the best bet against sock-puppet candidates [love that term! ;-) ] is only a generic hue and cry; there is no institutional safe-guard against such abuse. And even on that count, I'm not really sure how you can legislate against it without trodding on a citizen's right to contest any elections he deems. (I'm one of those people who happen to think that even the Rs 10,000 deposit is inherently undemocratic and unfair to a majority of our population, but that is a different matter altogether).
While I do believe (or am sctively considering such a viewpoint, and so am open to ideas) that a proportional representation system, in principle, could be better, that is not the point I'm trying to demonstrate here. I'm just trying to point out that on occassion, in may very well be that
A majority of the people might have one policy view, but it could so happen that the candidate with a contrary view might get elected.I'm thinking you didn't read my post down to the bottom, especially where I talked about why vote-buying might matter and why there are zamindari-constituencies.
Yes, the view I had was that the bicycle had an almost Mao-ist appeal for at least most of the old guard there. An e-bike, therefore, is probably just the sort of post-modernist identity symbol that a contemporary Chinese would be interested in.
Let us consider a scenario to explain his point further. Consider the elections for the parliamentary constituency of Nalgonda, which, as I mentioned earlier on this site, once really had 400+ candidates running for the seat. Now, assume that the main issue, so to speak, for the constituents is the availability (or the lack) of irrigated water for their fields during the Rabi (rainy) season.
The political situation is as follows. The incumbent candidate, a political bigwig with remarkable political skills but little policy vision or initiative, has decided he won't address that issue at all, and instead has decided to make the construction of a teeny-weeny temple in some north Indian town that no one has heard of, or visited, as his main plank. Outraged, the constituents decide that enough is enough and step into the electioneering process en masse. Each of the 400 or so people have a specific idea in mind to solve the region's water crisis; all of them agree that the only way it can be solved is to bring waters from the nearby River Krishna to the district. Which is exactly what our Average Voter thinks is the right solution. The problem, however, for him is this:- he has to choose from 400 like-minded candidates! What does he do? He opts for the more prominent ones, leaving out the lesser known ones instead.
The damage, however, has already been done; while in cumulative terms, the constituency as a whole has voted for candidates who address the water problem, in individual terms, the guy who gets the most votes is the dude fixated on that silly temple. That is to say, while the constituency voted for water, the guy who eventually won is someone who hasn't addressed that question at all.
Now, scenarios such as this are not common these days for a very simple reason:- political alliances. Both the BJP and the Congress have learnt this the hard way, but there's no real reason for them to split their vote share by competing against like-minded, but regional, parties. Which, incidentally, is the real reason why the Congress, for instance, won the Assembly elections in Andhra Pradesh; it took care to not split the anti-TDP/BJP vote between itself, TRS and the Communists. So, if you were against the incumbent government, all you had to do was to vote for the "Not NDA" guy, and obviously, there's only one such person shown on your EVM.
However, the splitting of the electorate manifests itself in another stupid way, in terms of constituencies. Look at it this way:- a hefty 41% of Andhra's electorate actually wanted the TDP back in. Quite clearly, this is a statistic that is not immediately apparent when you look at the final seat tallies; TDP/BJP got a mere 49 seats, or 12% of the Assembly, despite the fairly okay-ish vote share. Reason? Most of the seats won by the Congress had winning margins of less than 1000 votes. A margin that, as a wag put it in on a discussion forum elsewhere on the web, could be easily "bought" over by wealthy candidates in their respective constituencies.
This, if true, would also explain why some assembly constituencies, particularly those in Bihar and in parts of Andhra Pradesh's wild south, are often called 21st century zamindaris despite having a robust democractic tradition for the last fifty four years.
Second,the real trouble, if you ask me, is that people in India have started watching, and reading into, *too much* television. :-) Everything from exit polls to IndiaShining (tm), to reactions on Gujarat 2002 [*], to even Chandni Chowk elections can be explained by this thesis.
Time we have a slashdot.org.in or something, I guess. ;-)
[*] - Gujarat 2002 was different from independent India's other ethnic fatricides in that we were able to see it live on television; which is why people on both sides of the political spectrum tend to lose perspective while discussing it.
That's when you want to mod the moderators, +1, Irony. :-)
In any case, I'd REALLLLLY like to see them buy a Nokia 6600 or a Sony Ericsson P800 and try to browse their site.
My only grouse was that the poster I was responding to didn't comment on the grandparent's point that Latex, apparently, didn't allow layout placement, but instead went off on a rant on why such control is unnecessary.
As for the original poster, why not give XHTML with CSS a try?
Just to take an opposite view.
Face facts buddy:- the stress is because you're feeling guilty slacking it off on /. when you should be naturally working. Think about it. :-|
Not supporting RIAA or anything, just pointing out an obvious counter-example.
Actually, I'd say that's a disadvantage; I, for one, love watching those psephologist gods spending sleepless nights live on television squirming in their seats just as their predictions are being proven wrong. ;-)
a) Look at the numbers; election-season killings have seen a decline in the past few years.
b) Geeks take a while to appreciate this, but never has technology ever solved social problems. At best, it has made existing responses more efficient, but never has it alone made things more effective