Recursion And A Major Goof In The Movie "Next"

***Caution: Spoiler Ahead***

Once again, its surprising that no one pointed out (or should I say "noticed"?) such an obvious goof in the otherwise nice movie "Next".

Towards end of the movie, Cris (Nicolas Cage), along with several FBI officials, searches for his girlfriend (who is in captivity of the terrorists), and he makes numerous copies of himself (actually he is merely looking at the various possible futures).

So far there's no problem. However, later in the movie it turns out that whatever happened (up till explosion of the nuclear bomb) was not happening in reality, but was merely a future that Cris was looking at (while in bed with his girlfriend).

And here lies the problem - if he was merely looking at his future, then can his own self of the future (as he is seeing it) also (recursively) use his gifted power (of looking at the future) to look even further into the future (as he did when multiple copies of him look further ahead into the future - simultaneously - while even his original copy standing with the FBI agents is not his real self, but is what the original Cris is looking at from his bed)?

About Me - My Profile On Google

In search of a Soulmate...

"Soulmate (or soul mate) is a term sometimes used to designate someone with whom one has a feeling of deep and natural affinity, friendship, love, intimacy, sexuality, and/or compatibility."

Blue skies, And open air...
There's a place, For us away...
Take me away, Somewhere far away...
Beyond the Sun...
Take me away, Somewhere far away...

What a lovely little soul-touching song! I just keep humming "Take me away, Somewhere far away..."... Its a bliss to read these words while listening to the song. Wish it was longer...

I want to quote someone's words here

"What a beautiful ad! Well, Vodafone continues the Hutch legacy, wonderfully."

I want a plate full of manchurian and chilli cheese :-(

Its so cold and dark outside, and I'm shivering too (just a little bit though). And I so much feel like having a plate full of sizzling steaming hot manchurian and chilli cheese right now :( :(

Oh god, my mouth is salivating like a dog's even at the thought of it :P

I'm sure if I get it right now, I shall be able to stay up for many more hours. But it must of Basant restaurant (Ludhiana), because out of the (perhaps) dozens of Manchurians and Chilli Cheese recipes I have tasted so far, the best one undoubtedly are Basant's.

:( :(

State Of My Heart After Watching "The Pursuit of Happyness"

Its been under 5 minutes since I finished watching The Pursuit of Happyness. My eyes were moist at a couple of moments (the ones I identified myself with - and more), and as the movie concluded. It is difficult to say any more thing now. My throat is heavy with an overwhelming feeling. Its been quite a long time since I last got to enjoy a motion picture of this high grade. That's all I can say to summarize my feelings.

P.S. The small part of my life, as the movie just concluded, can be called "happyness" :)

(you need to have watched the movie to be able to appreciate this last line...)

Phew! Finally survived for 'over' 18 seconds in the game 'Escapa!'

I got a link in a forwarded email, that pointed to a simple-looking game. Here is the link

http://members.iinet.net.au/~pontipak/redsquare.html

As I started to play, however, I soon realised that the game was anything but simple. The game, in some sense, tests one's dexterity. More precisely it is a test of one's ability to maneuver the computer mouse both at high speed and with precision! It is not difficult to get really annoyed repeatedly playing this game trying to get to that oh-so-near-yet-so-far goal (basically one has to survive for at least 18 seconds- as the webpage says- to be considered having done brilliantly).

2 time points, at which I got killed most number of times were in the proximity of 12 seconds and 16 seconds. I dont know how many times I played this game till I finally managed to clock over 18 seconds, although I believe it was about 20. And I am glad that I could make it (I know well that I would not have slept until I managed to clear it...).

Here are the screenshots of initial failures and final success (yay!)





And here's the winning game


Update:

I saved the webpage as an mhtml archive in the Opera browser, and played it while offline. In the first go itself I could clock over 18 seconds... Here's the screenshot


Update 2:

My second try in Opera browser (while playing from the saved webpage) too resulted in clock time of over 18 seconds (yawn...the game is looking boring now...I'll try to clock over 25 seconds sometime in future!)

Obituary to a video I posted on YouTube

3 months back I posted a video on YouTube. The clip I had posted is the part that I like the most in 'Titanic'. And not surprisingly, it got a deluge of views (the last time I checked in, it clocked well over 10,000), and about 75 people had bookmarked it and about 40 peoplehad commented on it (most of the comments described it as a very emotional and lovely scene).

Now 2 days back I got an email from Google- an excerpt from it follows...

"This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by Paramount Pictures Corp. claiming that this material is infringing:

Dawson. Rose Dawson. (Titanic): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5qfJMFK9Rc"

Now I want to yammer about it here :-(

I had very carefully cut that video from the movie- the starting and ending points were thoughtfully decided so as to give the viewer the true feel of this scene. The title and the tags too were carefully decided. I have also lost the lovely comments that the populace wrote. So sad :-(

Here is the description that I had written for this video

"My favorite scene in Titanic. rose's calling herself "dawson. rose dawson." signifies her continued love for jack, despite his physical demise. and after the attendant goes away, the scene with rain and accompanying music is so touching. so really beautiful. i love playing this music on my yamaha keyboard.in the words of wikipedia- "While on the RMS Carpathia, she sees Caledon, who is looking for her desperately. She hides her face in the blanket just as Caledon looks over. He doesn't see her and walks away. That is the last time she ever sees him.On arriving in New York, she takes Jack's name when asked by a steward, calling herself Rose Dawson, giving implications to the audience of her wife-like commitment to Jack and their plans for marriage. The name change also enables her to forever escape from her family and allowing them to think she is dead. She goes on to do everything that she had promised Jack she would do, riding astride a horse on the beach, going to Santa Monica Pier, flying a plane, and so forth. Rose becomes an actress, gets married, and has children, but she never forgets Jack. She died in 1996 at the age of 101."

Added: May 28
Duration: 02:53

I'll miss you my video... you had 4.9 rating out of 5.0 (I guess about 75 people had rated you). Google you did not do good- you should have warned me so that I could have saved the comments and screenshots of it...

Update:

As I found out on 3 October 2007, the comments, ratings etc for this video are all available in 'My Account' section of YouTube. I am glad that I have access to people's comments again.

Sorry to bark at you Google.

must keep walking

din hai parbat jaise bhaari
raate bojhal bojhal saari
tu ye sochta hai raah kaise aasaan ho

saari anjaani hai raahein
jinme dhoondhen teri nigaahein
koi aisa pal jo aaj ya kal, meharbaan ho

ghoome kab se dagar dagar
tu mann ko ye samjhaave
raahi ka to kaam hai
chalta hi jaave
saayiaan ve saayiaan ve
saayiaan saayiaan ve
saayiaan ve saayiaan ve

ik banjara iktaare par kab se gaave
jeevan hai ik dor dor uljhe hi jaave
aasaani se hai girehain khulti nahi hain
mann vo hatheela hai jo fir bhi suljhave
rahi ka to kaam hai chalta hi jaave...
saayiaan ve saayiaan ve
sun sun saayiaan ve
saayiaan ve saayiaan ve
(lovely piano sequence...)

the woods are lovely dark and deep
but i have promises to keep
and miles to go before i sleep
and miles to go before i sleep

A fresh perspective on ‘reservation for women’ in relation to process scheduling in operating systems

There has been much debate about whether there should be 27% reservation for OBCs in professional educational institutions. Though this post should logically apply to the issue of reservations for OBCs too, I am not concentrating on that because in that case there are two distinct sub-issues of social and economic backwardness which need to be resolved first. This post is about reservation for women [girls included].

Those who have a knowledge of how process scheduling is done in computer operating systems [henceforth ill call them OS or OSes] are aware that there is a phenomenon called starvation that must be prevented to ensure that no process is made to wait for very long or infinitely long. The priority scheduling algorithm is one algorithm which can cause starvation of low priority processes, in case there are many higher priority [and possibly longer too] processes. Any scheduling algorithm chosen for process scheduling must ensure that starvation does not take place.

Considering an OS as a society, and a process in it as a human [in current case my focus is on females]. I believe that each process scheduling algorithm has its own disadvantages, and each of them must be tweaked so that starvation does not take place. An OS is an environment, in which there is possibility of starvation taking place. And if there is a possibility of some process being disfavored , then the OS must ensure that there is also a corresponding provision to ensure that that possibility is avoided [in case of priority scheduling algorithm, an added parameter of aging may be used to ensure that starvation does not take place].

My take is that if we do not have an ideal system [an environment] then we have possibility of disfavoring any element of the system. And if there is a possibility, then there must be a provision to ensure that the possibility is avoided. The words possibility and provision are central to this post.

Coming to real life, the current environment in India creates ample possibilities of women being disfavored. And it becomes a duty to create provisions that avoid them. Unless we conceive, implement, and uphold a system that is inherently ideal for all humans of the system, it becomes imperative that we do not let women be disadvantaged. In the light of above, I currently support reservations and other concessions for women.

As a side note, there was a debate in my class in english period on the same topic when I was in XI [maybe XII]. I remember that I was probably the only one on one side, with others on the opposite side [unfortunately I do not remember which side I was on]. I think I probably opposed reservations then; maybe that was without any logic. Today I support.

Finally, I should mention that I used the analogy of process scheduling not as a proof or justification of my stance on this issue [I am strictly against use of analogies as proofs/justifications], but as an aid to make one understand my concept.

Last but not the least, it must also be ensured that the provisions are implemented and enforced only to an extent that’s required. The provisions may lead to some undeserved advantages for women- which is okay, but must not lead to any undeserved advantages for women at the cost of the opposite sex.

Didi's new Sony Ericsson W300i :-)

Didi just got a shining new Sony Ericsson W300i (a nice respite from her Reliance phone).

Its gorgeous, and the cute little thing packs a lot of punch as well. What all can be done?

• Capture photos (up to 1.3 megapixel interpolated)
• Record sounds or videos (and play them all back- on the phone itself)
• Walkman branded- which means one can listen to music (in various formats) in pristine quality (on the inbuilt external speaker, or on the high quality bundled earphones, or even on an external audio system)
  
• FM radio with RDS (and preset channels)
  
• Playback MPEG-4 or 3GP videos on the phone itself (and watch streaming videos as well)
• Surf internet on the phone itself (using the inbuilt NetFront browser- I added Opera Mini) or on a computer using GPRS or EDGE
  
• Inbuilt RSS reader
• Inbuilt support for Email, Instant Messaging and MMS
  
• Bluetooth and Infrared support
• Memory Stick Micro slot (with 256 MB card bundled)
  
• USB 2.0 port
• Java MIDP 2.0 support (for applications and games)
  
• Quad-band 850/900/1800/1900 Mhz support (for world roaming)
  
• View or edit music, photos or videos with the inbuilt MusicDJ, PhotoDJ and VideoDJ
• Setup animated wallpapers on the 256K TFT LCD display
• Polyphonic ringtones
  
• The second external display (orange) shows status of time, music or a call
  
• Finally, make and receive calls, and send and receive SMS messages (EMS/LMS is supported)
  
• The lightweight orange and black body, of course, is killer.

I am so happy that my all time favorite movie was released on my birthday :-)

To write the previous post about the movie Ta Ra Rum Pum, I had to go to Wikipedia to find out the exact name of the sequel to 'The Terminator'. and I felt so happy to see that the movie I deeply love from my heart- 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day', was released on 3rd July 1991- on my birthday :-)

I'm so happy. I love this movie (I love 'The Terminator' too nearly as much) and since it was released on my birthday, its closer to me now :-)