We have Thatcherisms and we have Bushisms. Similarly, Digital Wealth just now created DWism – it may be hard (or impossible!) to pronounce, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have it.
So without much ado, here we go. We will keep adding quotes here as and when the Grandmaster speaks.
What would the shape of computing be 12-15 years from now? Here is where I think we will be:
My wrist watch will have my computer. When I reach office, I will place myself in front of a ‘dumb’ terminal – a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse. Embedded into the keyboard will be a smart card which will talk to my wrist watch (without cables). I will use a remote log-on software to connect to the computer inside the wrist watch – all applications will already be installed on the wrist watch and I will use them. It will also be possible to use the wrist watch as a pen drive of today. So all the data on the hard disk of this computer will be available in two ways: the remote log-on (which will also enable the use of installed applications), and USB (that is, minus the capability to use apps).
At home (and everywhere else), I will have a similar dumb terminal.
Microsoft will be dead – opensource (and portable) software like OpenOffice, and AbiWord will have caught up in terms of functionality. For profit firms of 2020 will provide support (and contribute to the enhancement to) GPL software.
Google will be going, but its offering of (office and other) applications as an online subscription (which will have become paid by then) will not be doing very well. People want to collaborate, but not at the expense of being tied down.
Electronics commerce will still have identity fraud 🙂 Sorry guys. However, the total volume digitally traded will be rising steadily.
Digital signatures would be much more easier to use, and transparent to the unitiated user. However, it will not be free from its own share of frauds.
Operating systems will be very different from today: there will be no device drivers. Every device will be plug & play, and will use universal drivers. Linux will be the defacto standard.
You have some more ideas? Please feel free to share.
Is Algebra fruitless endeavor?
It seems they’ve been trying for ever
To find x, y, and z
And it’s quite clear to me,
If they’ve not found them yet then they’ll never
Credit: Graham Lester
A wonderful bird is the pelican
His bill can hold more than his belican
He can take in his beak
Food enough for a week
But I’m damned if I see how the helican
Credit: Dixon Merit
A canner exceedingly canny
One morning remarked to his granny:
“A canner can can
Any thing that he can
But a canner can’t can a can, can he?”
Credit: Carolyn Wells
There was a young fellow of Wheeling
Endowed with such delicate feeling
When he read on the door,
“Don’t spit on the floor”
He jumped up and spat on the ceiling!
One of my friends mentioned that his colleagues had nicknamed him ‘the Computer’. I asked him if this was due to his prodigious brainpower and impressive multitasking skills. “No”, he admitted, “its because someone is always swearing at me and trying to get me to work.”
If there is one thing India leads in, it’s the art of ad-making. Having traveled to US, and many countries in Europe, I can safely say that and win with a large margin. Who can forget Amul ads, released each week based on the major news headline from that period?
I liked the one to the side most. The person at the centre really looks like Amir Khan, when he was protesting against the building of the Narmada Dam. Companies are trying to woo the attention of a billion people, and they have to make something stand out in order to get noticed. No wonder that the ad making standards have to be very high for the same reason. The cost of these Amul ads would be low, I expect – these do not use print or TV, they appear on the billboards. Yet they manage to seek our attention. Well done India!
This blogpost is a contribution from Mr.Broca: an article he had written in the year 1992:
Wait friends! You won’t find this word in any dictionary! I’ll explain what it means. ‘Lifafa’ in Hindi means ‘a paper bag’ – the usual ones made from newspapers or magazines etc. ‘Logy’ means the art of gaining knowledge from these ‘lifafas’ which we normally throw away after using whatever is packed in it – be they ‘tandoori rotis’ from a ‘dhaba’ or bread from the corner booth or ‘fish-pakoras’ from a fast food joint!1
A few days ago, my Mummy purchased ‘Rakhis’2 from a seller in Sector 22 market. They were packed in a lifafa. I have the habit of collecting odds & ends, bits of information etc from various sources. So my ‘karamchand’ish eye3 fell on that lifafa. You’ll be surprised to know that that piece of paper proved to be a mine of information. It contained the following items:
After reading the contents of that ‘lucky’ lifafa I have gained a lot of knowledge on various topics. Do you want to know what I liked best?
Well – the knowledge bank. I am reproducing that portion of the lifafa for your comments:
“Language is essentially a means of communication through words. There are around 5000 different languages spoken in different countries of the world today.4 In India alone the number of languages along with their dialect comes to 845. Of these 15 are recognised constitutionally.
Every language has a set of letters. By joining these letters in a required order we get words. Do you know which language has of the world has the greatest number of words? It is English with 7,90,000 words. Of these about 4,50,000 are regular words and 3,00,000 are technical terms. According to the linguists no one uses more than 60,000 of these in a life-time of writing and speaking. Although more than 4,00,00,000 people throughout the world speak English, its not the most widely used language. The most widely used language is Mandarin or Northern Chinese which is spoken by about 6,75,000,000 people.
The English word which has the maximum number of meanings is the word ‘set’. It has 58 meanings as a noun, 126 meanings as a verb and 10 meanings as a participle adjective.5”
See how even a lifafa can be educative! Let us all henceforth read such lifafas before throwing them. Long live lifafas – long live ‘lifafa’logists.
PS: The idea of this article came from a lifafa which I have carefully preserved. Its possible that when you sell this magazine to the ‘raddiwala’6 some enterprising person may make a small lifafa from this very page and you may read this article after some time when you buy ‘moongfali’7 in it. In case you come across it, do let me know. Thanks!
Footnotes are explained in the first comment to this post.
Have nothing substantial to say today, will share a joke:
Fed up with his nephew boasting about how good he was at flight-simulator games, a colleague, who is a pilot, decided to give him a taste of the real thing and took him for a ride in his 2-seater plane.
At about 60 meters over the countryside, my friend looked across to his nephew and asked what he thought so far. “Wow”, replied the boy, “nice graphics!”
There was a young lady called Kate,
who played in the dark with her date.
When asked whether he had seduced her,
she smiled and said – no it amused her,
My dear, it wasn’t a man – it was a computer.
There was a young lady named Mabel,
so ready, so willing, so able.
One day full of spice,
asked her boss his price,
Alas! his “lap top” wasn’t affordable.
A poor lass wishing to learn computer,
went in search of a helpful tutor.
He said “My fee would be in kind”,
She replied “Oh, I dont mind”,
For – paying it in cash didnt suit her.
There was a pompous young girl from the heights,
Who said “I have my own website!”,
to impress the young man beside her.
She thought he would be, but he was wiser you see,
For he said “are you a lady or spider?”
