To foresee the future, understand the data

Professor Xavier perhaps runs a giant datawarehouse with details about all the mutants in the world. The Cerebro - a machine which responds to queries from the professor's brain. While the possibility of such a machine is still a distant dream, an equivalent utilization of data is a milestone which is a near possibility. With storage technology evolving exponentially, and processing speeds competing, a warehouse of data today is capable of handling much more complex calculations. Predicting the future with a narrow margin for error is now no longer science fiction. Future prediction can effectively be handled by:

The top of the hill

They talk about life, they talk about love,
They talk about death, the what and the how.
They talk about hate, they talk about fate,
They talk about everything, at any rate.

They teach you to live, they teach you to be happy,
They teach you culture, they teach you to be preppy.
They teach you to read, they teach you to write,
They reach you what’s wrong, they teach you what’s right.

The visitor:

To the tune she danced, the rivers tree
The flute made her feel, high and free
The notes floated, swimming in the air,
Happily touching everyone, fair and square.

An unwilling listener that shepherd had the day,
Visible to no one, hiding in natures sway,
Impressed he listened, bound by the spell
The music made him feel, earth he should dwell.

God hates us all?A discussion

One of my colleagues asked me once,"Why did God create us and then asked us to find him.Why in this search He interspersed misery?"
Nice question I thought and hooked up the below as a reply:
Ya,


I agree God is sometimes cruel...So much misery and so much pain and so much insensitivity. Only yesterday, I was waiting at the station and I saw this poor woman nursing her daughter. Was she sick,dead,dying? I have no clue. I was late and so was everyone else. We have so much time to watch TV and to chase girls but never the time to look at the poor. Sometimes I have to agree with Slayer,"God hates us all."

Well the rains are here:

Its surprising how year after year, the rains manage to come down at the same time. And it’s even more surprising how year after year we always manage to fool ourselves how ready we are for the rains. The Rain Gods must be waiting their share of fun all year long. The rains are finally here, same time, same place and same mess.

Online Advertising: Just a passing fashion?

The world’s going gaga over online advertising. With advertising services cropping up by the day, analysts are busy churning out data and crunching numbers. The numbers show online advertising sweeping the awards. A magnanimous future has already been designed and put in place. Only like all things technology, no one can really be sure how far this craze will survive. When DVDs first came into play, people predicted the end of theaters. The internet was supposed to kill music companies. And now online advertising.

A-men: Birth of the corporate mutants:

The mutants always win. We have seen them in the comic books, we have seen them in the movies and we have heard stories about them from our peers. Wolverine never dies. He is angry and he is destructive. Ditto Magneto. The urge to rule is so intense that it does not matter who stands in your way. It is the utter hatred for the lower beings (read humans) that has been a driving force for the Magneto clones. And literary culture directly or indirectly always affects human life. We have heard of children jumping over walls, we have heard about people hallucinating about superheroes and now we have among our midst, the corporate mutants. Beings so superior that they cannot be compared to ordinary beings. Beings so perfect that they loathe the losers. There is only one way in life, the winning way. Or so they think!

The pampered visitor: How the new web is changing the face of customer service:

The magical 2.0 breathed life into the all encompassing World Wide Web. The new web not only brought in an exhilarating visual feast with graphics turning rich and interactive, but also a change in the mindset of the user and the visitor. The new web was now more emotional. Consumers demanded to be understood and businesses were more than ready to understand. Surveys and user comments served the purpose to an extent but never beyond certain limits. And in this ever evolving effort to mine the consumers mindset, was launched a fantastic product-web analytics.

Building upon the concept of business analytics and enterprise analytics, web analytics attempted to dig deeper into the mindset of the website visitor. These analytics further help the websites to redesign, to evolve and to convert the attracted visitor to a loyal consumer. Analytics are now no longer for the casual website owner, they are now for the enterprise.

One Love: Lessons from the Web 2.0

The internet changed the world. If something has had an impact on the evolution of mankind after the birth of the silicon chip it is the World Wide Web (www). Connecting people all over the world, this mammoth network of optical fibers and switches has managed to make it to the list of life’s basic necessities. With its humble beginnings of being part of a military network, the web has grown into a world of its own, with virtual netizens traversing it day in and day out.

The first helping of the internet helped to connect. It connected hubs, computers and people. People were soon recognizing the power of being in two places at the same time. You could be on several chat clients and email anywhere in the world while still physically existing in an altogether different part of the world. One world was the motto of web 1.0.

Give a piece to rest in peace:

“It’s just not fair! Education is everyone’s basic right.” This was Amrita, a colleague who was expressing her anguish over her maid’s decision to stop education for her children. What was further fuelling my good colleague’s anger was the decision of her maid to get her daughters into the same trade of housekeeping. Indians have always had that quintessential maid in homes. Largely from lower middleclass to poor families, these poor ladies have been in most cases victims of domestic violence and lead a life of dread and fear of drunken husbands. For my part, I appreciated Amrita’s anger. At least she was bothered and concerned. In the vast sea of humanity that Mumbai is, it is appreciable if someone feels emotions for others. For my part, I suggested her to donate some money to her maid or at least to fund basic education of her daughters. The response however stumped me completely.

The loser’s prerogative:

“Why does it always rain on me” is a wonderful song by Travis which near about sums up what goes on in the mind of the quintessential loser. The word “loser” seems to be a favorite with the rock bands. Almost every rock star worth his guitar has penned a song pledging allegiance to that singular word. The word however is not very acceptable in social or corporate circles. You cannot be a loser. “You can win” blares out a self help book while another teaches you how to be a good leader. Always win, always lead, never follow and never ever lose.

Is Happiness ever attainable?

It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking: How did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue. And maybe we can actually never have it, no matter what. How did he know that?