Saturday, July 08, 2006

Free Tibet....???

For many years I had always explained about my native place as area near Indo-Nepal and Indo-Tibet border. The fact that we have organization called ITBP (Indo Tibetan Border Police) and we have given Tibetan exiles a place in our country and our hearts too, we Indians by and large support Free Tibet cause.

But last few years of India shining and change of world order in terms of wild fire spread of free market economy Tibet's cause had got sidelined in some way. From the front pages it has been denigrated to some editorials alone. Like Green Peace activists, Tibetan activists also have been forced to do some extreme stunts to draw attention of people.

Free Tibet has been reduced to faded print on some old t-shirts from our college days maybe. For many Delhi-ites Tibet's mention is some cheap chhang, steamy momos and Tibetan market only.

Till date I also didn't know that there was a Free Tibet day. It seems this year it had been slated for 6th July. A day too late am I ? But isn't the whole world few years too late for the cause?

As China's economy booms every year and it wields more and more influence on world politics, who will get Tibet's freedom ?? Is Free Tibet relevant to world of Free market economics anymore ? World's super power doesn't mention it in its world view, UN has no strategy on it, India has given in to Chinese pressure on its previous stand.....that leaves just a few romantics and rest of Tibetan population !!!

Free Tibet ? Yes!!! But HOW ???

Friday, July 07, 2006

Windows... time to close ??

WGA... That's the latest from house of Bill Gates. His philanthropy it seems doesn't include giving away free windows software to the world. So here he is sending spies down the tube ( picture those machines swooping down into human colony and human ships in Matrix!!! ) and there will pop up euphemism of calling you a thief in sweetest manner possible, "You maybe running a Non Genuine copy of WindowsXX"

Here I think Microsoft is missing the bus for sure. Today's buzzword is open source ( which used to mean free software till recently) and that's the way of the future for sure. If one would look at the strategy of the most successful of these one thing stands out foremost. Each one is dying to get adopted by user first and that's where free part comes in. Companies are releasing community edition which is mostly free and then next is where all these companies are going in the direction of commercializing the same software for enterprises.

Microsoft so far had no problem for the first stage as they were running without competition almost. I would say even piracy has helped windows hegemony as it made windows a dominant user platform thus forcing other software companies to develop mostly windows version of their softwares.

thanks to Linux and Linux faithfuls I think today ground is ready to topple windows in one go!! Remember what firefox did !!!!

if anyone is listening, time is now to make that transition... only fear is that ... I hope we aren't walking from one lion's den to another !!

World Cup ??

Hmm... so we are down to last 2 from 32 we started with. I dont know if this is refelection of today's world order that last 2 teams in the final dont represent the poor of the world. Essentially out of 32 countries that qualified here we had seen countries from africa and sout america fall behind in the race. Asian representattives werent exactly poor nations as they come from one of the developed economies and oil economies. Has football lost its common man's game character?

But seriously it is becoming a moneymaking machine now from a loved sport that once it was.

Today any sport has to become a money churning machine in order to survive in competitive environment of prime time TV slots. Games are being changed to make them more entertaining. Its surely going both ways good and bad but finally which way? only time will tell.

there was a time when people used to play sports for the love of it and today they chose on the basis of earning potential i think. but still, it is better than having to hear "padhoge likhoge, banoge nawab / kheloge koodoge, bangoge kharab" ( means if u study hard u will become king and if you play around you will go waste ).

so as the world cup has turned into European cup, still we the supporters of undying faith will stay glued to TV sets, oohing aahing and changing into shirts of the latest winners!!!