. : : Marc Sez : : .

The Dark Knight, the sequel to Batman Begins is opening on July 18th! I’ve been waiting for this movie for months. Batman Begins was an amazing movie and the only movie I’ve seen more than twice. The Dark Knight is going to absolutely mind blowing with Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker.

Here’s another The Dark Knight poster:

Screw all the other lame superheroes. Sissy Spiderman, godmoding Superman and the others are just so pathetic compared to Batman.

The highly qualified webmasters employed by Anna Univ finally remembered the password to their web hosting account and uploaded the 7th semester and 8th semester results on Friday.

Evaluation was lax this time and I easily passed all the subjects. So that finally ends The Curse of Engineering once and for all. I am supposed to be a Computer Science Engineer now but I dare not call myself knowing that most of what I learnt is useless in a professional environment. Thankfully, some of the skills I acquired through my own interests should help and I’m not too worried about work.

Here is a delightful article I read in the newspaper.

IT professional lands in prison for no fault of his
B.S. Ramesh

He spent seven days in lock-up and 43 days in jail

A mobile phone operator gave his IP address to Pune police

He is fighting to get compensation from company

BANGALORE: He was one among the many youth in Bangalore engaged in the software sector. His life revolved around his work at an Information Technology (IT) major, and his interest in cricket.

But Lakshman Kailash’s small world came crashing down when policemen from Pune arrested him for a crime he never committed.

Mr. Kailash was taken to Pune, where he spent seven days in lock-up and 43 days in Yerwada Jail.

A private mobile phone operator had given his IP address to Pune police following a complaint regarding a “derogatory blog” on Maratha king Chhatrapathi Shivaji, on Orkut.

The real offenders have now been caught, and Mr. Kailash has been released from prison.

His employers, who stood by him through his ordeal, have relocated him to Chennai.

He intends to carry on his fight to get compensation from the private mobile phone operator.

“It is their communication which led to my arrest and the 50 days of incarceration,” he says.

During a chat with The Hindu on the High Court of Karnataka premises on Saturday, Mr. Kailash relived his “dark” days in jail.

He had come there to consult his lawyer for initiating action against the mobile phone operator. Mr. Kailash said that on August 30 last, he had gone to sleep after watching a cricket match, in which India was playing, till 3 a.m. Five hours later, he was woken up by eight policemen from Pune, at his residence on Airport Road.

Even before Mr. Kailash could gather his wits and ask them what wrong he had done, the police began firing questions at him and “searched” his computer.

He was told that they had received a communication from the Bangalore office of the mobile phone firm saying that the “derogatory text” on Orkut against Chhatrapathi Shivaji had come from his IP address.

Unable to comprehend what the police were talking about, he contacted his brother who stayed near Hebbal.

But the police refused to believe that he was innocent. They took him to the airport police station, and then to Pune by road.

Mr. Kailash said that he had reached Pune on September 1, and had to spend seven days in “filthy” lock-ups at two police stations there.

The bail application he filed on the eighth day of his stay there was rejected by a magistrate, and he was sent to Yerwada Jail. With bed bugs for company, sound sleep was out of the question in the jail, and it was difficult to have jail food, he said.

With 200 undertrial prisoners packed in one of the wards, Mr. Kailash said that they had to sleep with hands on their chest.

He said he had refrained from telling the inmates the reason for being jailed.

The Pune police had told him that he would land in trouble if he told others that he had made “derogatory” references to Chhatrapathi Shivaji.

Jail life was a nightmare that Mr. Kailash still cannot forget. What is more annoying is the fact that he is not even remotely connected to the “crime” for which he was picked up.

Life in a high-security jail with hardened criminals was never easy, he said. The “blog” on Orkut seems to have changed Mr. Kailash’s life forever. He says that his family and friends have been helpful and encouraged him to start life anew.

He is determined to see that others do not suffer the fate he has.

He wants to ensure that adequate safeguards are put in place so that nobody is punished for a crime he has not committed.

Now what is wrong with badmouthing Shivaji? Making ‘derogatory references to Shivaji’ is not illegal in any way. Every citizen is entitled to Freedom of Speech and Expression (which is a Fundamental Right - Article 19, Indian Constitution). What happened to this freedom?

India claims to be a tolerant country but we all know that this is completely untrue. Everything is taboo and everything is subject to moral judgement by a small group of narrow minded people who deserved a slow painful death. Intolerance is the way of life here and everything is controlled by politicians/thugs, religious fanatics and the rich. Don’t think you are safe. If this can happen to some random IT professional it can just as easily happen to you.

Welcome to India, where freedom is a lie.

This year seems to be the time for incompetent narrow-minded people to get kicked out of their jobs.

George Bush, considered the worst President ever. Bush will be given the boot later this year. I hope the Americans figure out a way to impeach the bastard and take away the billions he and his cronies made.

The Vice Chancellor of a well known university who was so afraid of technology that he banned cell phones in all affiliated colleges finally went away last week when his term ended. He then justified his decision by claiming that the overall pass percentage improved. Instead of improving the quality of education and restructuring the messed up syllabus he amused himself with petty issues like this and the dress code.

The Principal of ***T who was the personification of pettiness was finally fired. He was arrogant, childish and completely devoid of any qualities that people would expect in a Principal. Yet he held the job for two years. Did I mention that he wasn’t even qualified for the job?

Why am I not mentioning names? It is because India is a fucked up country where freedom of speech exists only in dusty books and two of the assholes mentioned above are still in a position to screw up things for me.

I found some time a few weeks ago to make a few cosmetic changes to my blog theme. You can skip this if you don’t care. This is more of a changelog to keep track of things than something interesting to read.

The most significant is the addition of gravatars to the comments section. If you have a gravatar it will show up right next to your name. If you don’t, no problem, there won’t be an ugly placeholder image.

Next I added a link to the comments section at the bottom of the post. The category is now listed at the top of the post. The comment border was made darker.

I also changed the formatting of links in the post. They had a strange yellow background which I got rid of and coloured them orange to match the post titles.

Blockquote had a background that was a bit too dark for my liking so I made it slightly lighter.

I lost interest when I got to the oddly placed search bar in the header. I’m putting it off for another day.

The Internet these days is as important as television or print media where advertising is concerned. If you don’t have an online presence you stand to lose business. This is especially true for less well known companies that are trying to promote their products to a large market. The best way to advertise online is through Pay Per Click advertising.

Advertising giants like Google and Yahoo offer PPC services which display context relevant advertisements along with search results on their search engines. But to get the maximum out of these services you need a well planned campaign. Instead of trying to learn the ropes you can hire a service like Network Solutions to manage your advertising campaign. You can choose a fully managed custom plan that is tailored to your budget and is set up based on your requirements. Pre-packaged starter plan is also available that will let you begin immediately.

Once you chose your plan an advertising campaign is developed taking into account your site and business. PPC advertisements are purchased from the aforementioned PPC services. The final step is managing reports and tweaking the campaign. More traffic and more exposure from website promotions! All this without you having to micromanage every aspect of your advertising campaign.

Quote from Infosys Service Agreement:

AND WHEREAS The Engineer recognizes and accepts that at the time of appointment as Software Engineer, except exposure to academic knowledge, he/she has received no formal, effective, technical or practical training enabling him/her to independently function as a Software Engineer thereby becoming commercially viable to the Company.

Isn’t this what I’ve been saying all along? Read it and weep.

Las Vegas is a crazy place and it’s always fun to head there. The whole city seems to be built around going crazy and having fun so you can find everything from casinos to holiday resorts there. You’ll never run out of things to do in Las Vegas whether it is chilling at a hotel or checking out the Metropolitan museum of art.

Getting around in a new place can be difficult. Things are so much easier with a GPS device. You can win one by signing up for the Trusted Tours & Attractions newsletter.

You can also find online travel guides for things to do in New York and other tourist spots.

I had been quite annoyed from the time we received the email asking us to report for training on the 23rd of this month at Mysore. After four years of engineering I had expected a nice long holiday to recover; not a measly 52 days.

I spent the beginning of this week preparing for the two month stay at Mysore. I applied for the passport, registered with the NSR, bought some more formal clothes and so on. However AU still hadn’t published my results and I wondered if this would be a problem. Two weeks earlier, the HR department of my employer had advised me to report on the 23rd even if the results were not out. I decided to check again with them this week and this time their answer was different. They said I couldn’t report for training without getting my results but I could extend the date of joining and get into the next batch.

My parents were determined to send me off for training as soon as possible and called up random people at the company from contact numbers in the various documents that were mailed to me. The HR department said that it was alright and that I could go. But now I didn’t want to go since I had a good reason to extend my holidays!

I was saved by the Service Agreement that arrived in the mail the next day which said that I had to extend my join date if I had pending results. That decided it. I wasn’t going. I went to the college and got a letter from the Watchman asking to be put in the next batch and sent it off to the HR department by email. They replied in a few hours granting me the extension.

So, I’m going to be here for a few more months. It finally worked out in my favour, for once. Thanks Anna University!

Firefox 3 is out and you can download it here. George kept telling me to download the Release Candidate versions even though he knows I’m not going to look for or report bugs.

The first thing I noticed when I downloaded the new version was that the Back and Forward buttons on my toolbar went missing. So I clicked Restore Default Set and found the big green Back and Forward buttons. Now these were too big to fit into my customised interface so I chose the Small Icons options and got a nice compact version.

There are quite a lot of new features and you can find reviews everywhere on the net.

Just don’t be like Ragha:

Me: Firefox 3 is out. Download it!
Ragha: Why? The Firefox auto update doesn’t update to Firefox 3?
Me: Well it doesn’t right now.
Ragha: So what do I do? Wait till the update happens?