Varta, iit.humor

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in
order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be
feasible."
-- A Yale University management professor in response
to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service
(Smith went on to found
Federal Express Corp.)

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of
Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
-- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march
of science, 1949

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
-- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even
built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us?
Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come
work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and
they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'"
-- Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and
H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would
pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
-- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in radio in the 1920s

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered
as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
-- Western Union internal memo, 1876

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The
literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."
-- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique
adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil?
You're crazy."
-- Drillers whom Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist for
his project to
drill for oil in 1859

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say
America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you
make."
-- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this
country and talked with
the best people, and I can assure you that data
processing is a fad that
won't last out the year."
-- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice
Hall, 1957

"But what ... is it good for?"
--Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division
of IBM, 1968,
commenting on the microchip

"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between
action and
reaction and the need to have something better than a
vacuum against which to
react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out
daily in high schools."
-- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert
Goddard's revolutionary
rocket work

"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle
development across all
of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of
life. You just have
to accept inconsistent muscle development as an
unalterable condition of
weight training."
-- Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the
"unsolvable" problem by
inventing Nautilus.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently
high plateau."
-- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale
University, 1929

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military
value."
-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy,
Ecole Superieure de
Guerre

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous
fiction".
-- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse,
1872

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be
shut from the
intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon".
-- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed
Surgeon-Extraordinary
to Queen Victoria, 1873

"640K (of RAM) ought to be enough for anybody."
-- Bill Gates, 1981

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of
Patents, 1899.

These have been posted and reposted so many times on iitb.humor but I don't mind reading them again and again. They make you check yourself before making any such statements :-)

A friend of mine, lets call him Ali Muradabadi had the opinion (I am not sure if he still feels the same) that average IQ of human females is less than 1, infact he was sure that it is very close to if not exactly 3/4 (.75).

By mistake I clicked on some advertisement on some lyrics site and was presented an IQ quiz at a site (I am not giving the link, cause I don't want you to go through the painful process). I decided to take the test anyway. The first page had only 5 questions, I clicked the last option for all the answer not bothering to read the answer. The submit button had 'Hold your breath' written on it, one whould think that they could judge the IQ by just answers so why should not one take the test.. but no, one had to atleast 20-30 more questions (now the submit button started saying 'continue' though). A real dirty trick to get people to take the quiz.

That's not all, when I finished the quiz I was not given my IQ, I was shown a HUGE form with following header.

Your test results are on the next page! Create a free account so we can save your results for you in your own password-protected area of the site.

Real dirty trick these guys pulled on me.

Now that I had answered all the questions with last given option, I wanted to see if I could match the IQs of the fairer sex. Some writer mentioned in one of his/her novel about IQ of females being around 200 if they make a few mile long queue. I could definitely beat that score. :)

The Coming of Gowf

I HIGHLY recommend this story by P. G. Wodehouse. A hilarious short story in the collection The Clicking of Cuthbert. He wrote it in 1922 and I must say this is one of his best stories I have read so far. It describes history of introduction of golf religion in the kingdom of Oom.

Some excerpts :

Gowf : The new religion

he cried, shading his eyes, "a
bird of a drive! How truly is it written in the book of the prophet
Vadun, 'The left hand applieth the force, the right doth but guide.
Grip not, therefore, too closely with the right hand!'"

A poem by minstrels praising the king ..

_"Oh, praises let us utter
To our most glorious King!
It fairly makes you stutter
To see him start his swing!
Success attend his putter!
And luck be with his drive!
And may he do each hole in two,
Although the bogey's five!"_

Some early titles :

Promoter of the King's Happiness - (The Pro)
Supreme Splendiferous Maintainer of the Twenty-Four
Handicap Except on Windy Days when It Goes Up to Thirt - (The Dub)

Some blessings to king :

May his handicap decrease

Linx - The outdoor temple of the god

Long weekend, managed to read following novels in recent past :

• My man Jeeves
  
• The Clicking of Cuthbert
  
• Thank You, Jeeves
  
• The Code of the Woosters
  
• The Inimitable Jeeves
  
• Much Obliged, Jeeves
  

Somehow Vivek doesn't find Wodehouse to be that good, he finds the style to repetetive. He does repeat a lot of phrases and keeps cross referencing events from his previous books, but I like that part very much.

I was in goa on this weekend, had decided to go there a long back but couldn't convince anyone else to join so finally decided to go alone. If you can't a direct bus to goa (which happens very often) I would recommend the route I took. I took a state transport bus to Kolhapur (145 Rs.), from there a Sumo took me to Savantwadi (100 Rs.) and got a volvo to drop me at Panjim (50 Rs.) quite cheap and I assure you volvo was the most uncomfortable of the three. While coming back I took a volvo and as usual there was NO legspace to talk of.

I spent most of my time reading wodehouse, took a walk from Panjim to Bagha Beach and stayed near beach in an A/C room for 400 Rs. per day. Goa remains a cheap city. Bagha is the most crowded beach and I loved it. As always happens I always managed to find someone or other from IIT no matter which city I am in, met a group of juniors from H-3 and did some timepass with the group.

Goa is a big attraction for me, though many people associate the name with Booze, Babes and Beaches. I see it as a beatiful and lazy city and I like it that way. Anytime you are interested in visiting the city/state on a weekend, I am game :D

Miss you ! Bansi

I just couldn't get myself to write about him earlier. Bansi met a fatal accident and is no more. Being one of the two sophies in wing, Bansi was very close to me and I shared the apartment with him in Pune. I feel bad that I was not with you when he was struggling for life. Even now when I enter flat, I half expect to see you.

Miss you a lot !

This article talks about attempts to create black hole in lab, or atleast something similar to black hole. Looks very frankensteinian to me.

Coffee !

Bansi got coffee powder and filter from Cafe Coffee Day. We tried making normal filter coffee but I later decided to go for a cold espresso (black coffee with ice) as usual. Yesterday we decided to make cold coffee, went to market and bought milk. Poured milk and coffee powder in mixer just to find that we didn't have any sugar left. Pune doesn't sleep that early but it would not be fair to expect departmental stores to be open at 11 in night. But luckily we found one that was open. Gaind said "Meri kismat pichle 3-4 din se footi hui hai", I said "Lekin lagta hai chhed abhi chhota hai".. No the hole is really big. The shop had also run out of sugar that very day. So we decide to use chocolate for sweetner. Got two dairy milks and made coffee with chocolate. It didn't turn out to be that bad.

I couldn't feel yesterday's tremors, everyone around me felt them :(. Next time someone should give me prior warning before shaking earth, so that I can stop reading and feel the quake. From the word quake.. quake khele bahut time ho gaya.. Although I was worst of the lot in telemune, I still enjoyed challanging vivek for a game.

Read My Man Jeeves by wodehouse. It is a collection of short stories with Jeeves working wonders for Bertram Wooster (bertie) in some stories and Reggie Pepper in some others. A good read. Its also available from gutenberg.

Books a Minute is a real good site. They also have Movie a Minute page.

Taken from Uma's blog.

I had lunch in Koyla yesterday. It is a theme restaurant with hyderabadi printed on everything that you can see. I was told that even restrooms are done in a hyderabadi way.. I didn't bother to check out.

I am a Leo. This article might actually discourage people from working hard and being first in office :)

Shamelessly copied ET and put the counter from mugglenet.

Trying to install emacs with efs on my windows pc. After changing the OS that I use on PC I am now changing from vi to emacs, or rather from gvim (win32) to xemacs (win32).

Finally installed firefox with Adblock, FoxyTunes and Sage extensions. FoxyTunes is really very useful. This weekend it was Puneet, Aggi, Machine Singh and Swami of DD COM (2004) fame who visited our place. I realize that every week we have some visitor and that keeps things interesting, next week Dixit plans to give us a visit.

In another news, our landlord gave us one month notice and I am back to house hunting. Anyone knows a 2 BHK in Aundh, Pune available for letting out pls. contact me.

This week we saw 'Meet the Fockers', I must say the first one was better. The director turned this one in a sex comedy. I enjoyed the movie and liked the fockerisation process :-)) we fokerised him.

On weekend Bansi and Gaind got The war or roses, what a movie. Its one of the movies that might leave a lasting impression. We revinded several times to listen to prehistoric frogshit from the bottom of New Jersey scum swamp dialogue by Michael Douglas. Another dialogue that we liked was She was (being told that heroin was a gymnast just after he refused her offer), the look on the Danny DeVito's face was worth the movie rental. If you want a friend to NOT go for a love marriage, show him this one. In fact I am in a mood to prepare a list of movies to be used for conditioning people :).

We were supposed to write entries for a week planner in our spanish class. The idea was to make us use the verbs that we are most likely to use in our daily life. I realized that I could not write anything after "Ire a la oficina por la mañana y ire a la clase de español por la tarde. Luego ire al club. mismo todos los dias."

I thought more about it and found that life has always been monotonic..