Sabya's Niche

So what next for Google? Microsoft has given an unsolicited bid for Yahoo, obviously vying to replace Google in the various im and allied services sector. Yahoo's taking time, evidently to bargain. I feel offence is the best defence and Google ought to pay Microsoft in its own coin by taking out an operating system of its own. With already so many cross-platform software in vogue and with Google's own network, it ought not be very tough for Google too. Just think of the range of free software that would come by default with the new o.s.! Picasa, Gtalk, and on and on... The o.s. can be competitively priced or be accompanied by ads on updates to pay back. Whatever it may be, I'm looking forward to Google's next step and am very excited about it!

Oh sooo busy friends... not getting any time to myself at all. No blogging, no reading.. :(

Hi folks! Saw Jodha Akbar on Feb 23, Saturday in the '89 Cinemas' (a multiplex near my home). Liked a lot, particularly some sequences like the one where a Sufi song 'Khwaja mere Khwaja' culminates in a trance-like movement of the ascetics singing the devotional song and emperor Akbar (Hrithik Roshan) joins in the movement. It was just wow. A must-see.

Friends, I'll be trying out Kubuntu 7.10, a linux-based operating system, tonight. It's developed on the core of Ubuntu 7.10, actually a KDE version of the same. Wish me best of luck, because it sometimes makes the other o.s.'s go awry (I've already got Win XP and Win Vista Ultimate, both x64 versions, dual booted in my machine!). Goodnight and have a nice day tomorrow all of you.

Why do we have to prove time and again that we are basically animals? The big news today is a poor truck driver being burnt alive after being beaten up and smashed by an irate mob. His fault? Ran over a child by accident on a highway. Is killing a man so brutally the way to avenge a child's death? The accidental death is pathetic, but the cold-blooded murder in the aftermath is brutal, to say the least. The funniest part is the role played by the media. Cameramen zoomed in and newsreels went whizzing, witnessing and selling the death of a man, being burnt alive by fellow human beings (or should the pack of wolves be called so?). None came to save the victim.... God bless the soul of the two victims - the child and the driver - by the way, the latter was also someone's child.

Was thinking something very interesting and liked to share with you folks. The basic difference between oriental and occidental philosophies lies in the respective outlooks of the East and the West. While the East concentrates on the zero, the inner world, the West strives for excellence in the material realm, reaching outwards to infinity. It is not merely by chance that the mathematical significance of zero was discovered in the Orient. If we look at classical music, we see that the endeavour of the West is to capture the harmony of Nature, ecstasy as manifested in the macrocosm. On the other hand, the efforts of Hindusthani Classical music is to study the 'Nada', the primal sound which created all existence, through the solo effort of individuals, an inward journey to touch the core of existence.

I'm still unsure whether God exists, and if so, in what form. Surely no person of moderate education and / or intelligence would imagine God to be a large man (or for that matter lady!) behind the clouds. Then what is he? I often feel, as supported by our philosophy, that there are various planes of existence, all carved into one another. At the same time I live in the body, the sensory perceptions, the mind and inwards. There must then be a basic plane of consciousness from which all cognition emanates and which binds the world together. This rudimentary consciousness can very well be God. If so, there must be direct modes of relating to Him apart from the network of logic which the human mind creates. This direct mode of cognition and realization may be achieved through meditation, surrender, prayer or maybe otherwise, through a preparation of the body and faculties for receiving something which is much greater than the receptacle, which is the body-mind framework. On the...

Long since, I've cherished the idea of creating my own blog; but couldn't start it partly because of lack of time and partly because I thought I'd soon run out of new ideas to post to the blog! Ultimately today I decided to commence, irrespective of the results. A blog would provide me the window for expressing the kaleidoscope of ideas which haunt me now and then. It would also be a forum to exchange ideas and nourish my tentative forays into the world of writing. So let me do my 'Sree Ganesh' and hope for the best.