Looking forward to some fascinating reading!!

Here's to Ayn Rand, for the person she was and for the invaluable gift she left behind for all of us, Objectivism!

"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." - Ayn Rand

The source code can be found here : Windows & Linux

If you want some R&D, that is the ones in which I tried to find all possible permutations (which resulted in duplicates), then those can be found here: Windows & Linux. These programs are much slower than the previous one's.

Have fun with the code!!!

Their installation uses the Knoppix concept of LiveCD and is pretty cool. I wrote a script which can help newbie users install Gentoo using the Stage 3 tarball. The script can be found here. This particular version of the script is not tested, I used a more machine specific script for myself. Once I installed Gentoo and updated the system, I converted the script to it's present form, hence it may contain errors. If you find any, please inform me about it.

Gentoo's package management system "Portage" simply rocks!! All in all, since I'm still in a R&D sort of a phase with GNU/Linux, I have to say that Gentoo has been a lot of fun to work with and learn.

Here's to Bangalore and a challenging year ahead!

1) The C++ Programming Language - Bjarne Stroustrup
2) Mathematics for 3D Game Programming & Computer Graphics - Eric Lengyel
3) OpenGL Game Programming - Dave Astle
4) 3D Game Engine Design - David Eberly
5) Artificial Intelligence - Russell, Norvig

Long list eh? I hope I can go through all of them, 'cause I'll be soon recieving the "The Objectivist Research CD-Rom". And I just know I won't be able to put that down.

Productive two months? HELL YEAH!!

Well, here's to even more productive years ahead and to the two months of well deserved rest that begins today. I finally get to finish all those computer books!

One point made was that "All regulatory institutions will be strengthened to ensure that competition is free and fair. These institutions will be run professionally."

LOL!!!! Perhaps they should read up on what constitutes "competition".

The CMP is laden with more social than economic growth. The repeated connotations to "rural prosperity" & "poverty abolishment", keeps making me think of more elaborate state expenditure. Those taken out of context are great, but whose money are they going to drain to achieve it. Thats the question.

One thing's for sure, at this stage our economic future does look brighter. The reaction at Dalal Street is certainly indicative of that.

Every student, irrespective of their particular year of schooling, has his own perspective about how one should go about studying. There are hordes of students who just go through every subject on rote memory. The consequence of this is you have engineers who don't know the difference between a computer based control system and a manually operated lever (hey!! both of them get us equal marks!). I know of so many, who know every formula in the book by heart but when asked to apply it to a particular problem have no clue as to where to start.

This isn't just about the students. It also deals with the way they were taught in the first place. If you are told again and again as a kid to by-heart every word from the text, you keep doing that without seeing how it harms you. Teachers can make or break a mind by telling it not to question or try to understand that which they are confronted with.

The primary purpose of studying is not to pass your exams or please your parents, but to enhance your efficacy for when you foray out into the world. A world of challenges, competence and profit. Those hours of rote memorization may get you into a job, but it will not substitute that which is required to keep your job, a thinking mind.

As far as I can remember, I never submitted to this credo. I have always been one of those who believe, with good reason, that a person should always comprehend that which one is studying. If you are opening your mouth to say "Hey! Marks are important!", don't, they are, in the context of keeping yourself in college, but do you suppose that one goes about getting them just by by-hearting every goddamned word in the book? What purpose would that serve? What would happen to you with a paper which was actually challenging? What aspect of your studies could you then rely upon to solve an unorthodox problem? What knowledge would you carry on beyond your college? Answer - NONE. That is what rote memorization brings you, paper money for what should have been gold. It will take you only that far, no more.

Unfortunately, the Indian Education system is not one which tries to expand a child's mind. What it does do (or tries) is to kill every small moment of independent thought by substituting marks for knowledge. One professor , a few years back, proved this very eloquently by saying "Let's get the marks first, then we'll think about knowledge".

Ayn Rand in "The Comprachicos" once said "The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life — by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past — and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort."

I have not had the pleasure of being a part of such an education system (apart, say the one I follow in my own mind), here's to the possibility that our children can.

If you want to look for Sonia Gandhi's (the leader of the Congress Party) ideology, you don't really have to look too far. The fact that she has asked the "Communist Party of India (Marxist)" and the other "Communist Party of India" to join an alliance with them, so as to form a government, speaks volumes in itself.

The Congress Party sometime back made a statement to the effect that "We should be able to reserve jobs for minorities even in Private Companies". Any party capable of making such statements are obviously socialist and as such can only lead my countries economy to doom. Another interesting fact is that the alliance (atleast the CPI(M)) very much has it in mind to do away with the "Disinvestment Policies" of the previous government. That could really harm us.

I think the fact that socialists and communists are coming to power is a major step backward for us, as a country and an economy.

It's on to bigger and better things now.

Till then.