The Pursuit of HappYness

I saw this movie last weekend. I will say, after a long time I saw a stunning performance. This movie should be considered as the best-of Will Smith. Although, Smith didn't get the best actor's award this year, but man, he makes you cry and he makes you clap. We see an emotional push throughout the movie and at the end we see an inspiration, that shows us the imperishable power of love and determination.

First thing, a fantastic script and storyline. Chris Gardner's life an inspiration for all those who want to pursue an American Dream. He struggles all the way, for everything in his life. Right from his homeless fatherhood to his apprenticeship in the stock market. He struggles and finally he wins.He cries, he claps, he celebrates. Just like a common,hard-working man. This is what strikes our mind and touches our hearts.

Some of the scenes are truly marvelous piece of acting and direction.
First- The conversation between Chris and his son, when they play basket-ball. "Do not let anyone tell you that you can't do it." , "You have to dream and you have protect your dream"...awesome.
Second- The scene at the tram-station. Smith tells his child that the machine he is carrying is a time machine. The homeless child being very innocent, follows his dad and sleeps in a toilet. Smith cries.
Third- (This is the best one...)Smith gets selected and his interviewer offers him a job. He accepts it. His eyes speak. He walks out of the room to the pathway, remembers his hardships, cries and claps. He goes to his son, hugs him with all of his joys... "There is a little place called heart and there lies the happyness..."

Hats off to Gabriel Muccino ,Will Smith, and Jaden Smith.
Outstanding!!!

Women's day special...

It was Women's day yesterday. We had a small discussion in my room about women's contribution towards the computer related fields. We could hardly come up with some names. And so, at the end, we concluded that women are "weak" in computations. Today, I was passing time, and came across some information that I was unaware of.

Here are some of the womens who are remembered for their pioneering efforts in the field of computation.

1. Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), promoter of Charles Babbage's analytical engine
2. Grace Hopper (1906-1992), first programmer for the Mark I Calculator
3. Kay McNulty, Betty Snyder, Marlyn Wescoff, Ruth Lichterman, Betty Jennings, and Fran Bilas, original programmers of the ENIAC
4. Jean E. Sammet (1928), mathematician and computer scientist; developed FORMAC programming language
5. Barbara H. Liskov (1939), first American female Doctorate of Computer Science (1968)
6. Irma Wyman, first Honeywell CIO
7. Sally Floyd (computer scientist), most renowned for her work on Transmission Control Protocol[1]
8. Frances E. Allen, first female recipient of the ACM'S Turing Award
9. Anita Borg, the founding director of the Institute for Women and Technology (IWT)
10. Shafi Goldwasser, theoretical computer scientist, two time recipient of the Godel Prize
11. Eva Tardos, recipient of the Fulkerson Prize

This list was sufficient to prove the fallacy of our conclusion!!!

Happy Women's Day... :)

Police raid Pune's Rave party.

Pune Gramin Police arrested around 251 young people doing a rave party at villa near the National Defense Academy in Khadakwasla, 30 km from Pune. The party-freaks were caught red-handed with a large amount of narcotics and Afim.

The accused involve young IT professionals and students, including 29 girls and 12 foreign nationals. All of them were booked under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act as some of them were found to be in possession of drugs and most others under its influence, police said. The party was arranged and the invitations were sent through SMS, e-mails etc. It's also found that it involves an international racket of Drug-Dealers. When these party-animals are arrested, they were not in a position to understand the seriousness of the matter. Even after their arrest, they were found making some indecent remarks at the police and media personnels.

The serious question that arises here is, why is our young generation is so fanatic about drugs? Those who are arrested are from so called high-class society and are highly educated. I think the excess of money that these people possess and the ignorance from their busy parents make them so ecstasy-addicted. There is a large population of students that live in Pune. They are the one most falling for this addiction.
The Superintendent of Police Vishvas Nangre Patil was the brain behind the raid. He has got all those virtues which an ideal Policeman should posses. I am sure, he will definitely dig into the roots of this matter. The police has an important assignment, to find out the system that spoils our young generation.

Good job Nagre Patil, keep it up...

Arsenal Vs. Reading

It was this Saturday's Premiership match at The Emirates Stadium, London. Arsenal was playing without their Ace players like Henry, Persie, Adebayer, Flamini. Fabregas and Baptista were having the "not so easy" responsibility of strikers. Arsenal finally won the match with a score of 2-1 but it could have definitely been 5-1.

In the first half, Arsenal lost some great opportunities to score. Fabregas was in a great form on that day but somehow he could not covert the chances into points. He just could not finish it properly ( remember the chance where Fabregas and Baptista were playing stupid game of passing the ball to each other and finally Fabregas lost an easy chance to score!!!)
You can't be that careless.... It was Arsenal's luck I will say on that day, that made them win. Imagine, what could have happened if there was someone other than Reading?
Walcott, the young sensation was looking good. But he again proved that he needs to work on his physic.
Lehman, was cursing like anything out there. The way, he pushed Gallas was truely unprofessional. They could have a discussion in the dressing room. I think,Arsene Wenger should take a strict action against this issue. Certainly, this wasn't expected from a player like Lehman.

I strongly think that Arsenal needs to shape up their attack more and their players need to grow up a little bit. Everyone knows that Arsenal has a great young talent but then its' their responsibility to nourish it.

The open source

Here is what I understood from the concept of Open Source:

Open source describes the principle and methods using which one has an open access to production and design of the goods, resources and products. This allows the user to create new revisions of the software contents by either incremental individual efforts or through collaboration.
The name Open Source has got an interesting history. This term was coined out of a strategy session held at Palo Alto, California. It came through an announcement from Netscape in release of its Navigator's source code.Netscape licensed and release their code as Open Source under the name Mozilla.

Most economist agree that Open Source candidate have a public good aspect to them. The original work requires a lot of time, money and efforts. But when someone reproduces it, it's cost decreases. It could be so low that the additional users may be added to low or zero cost. This is called as a marginal cost of product. So, here comes the concept of copyright. When something is copyrighted, you have to pay something to access it. But this cost is more than the cost of making additional copy but less than its original price. Thus the consumers will pay the access cost.

The basic idea of the open source is to reduce the restrictions of the copyrights. This will add to the original work and will get the social benefits. Some argue that since the monetary benefits which one gets from open source are less, there is a less chance of its development. However, history says that larger corporations have often taken over startups who compete with them in development of a particular product. In other way, they intentionally slower down the development of the product. Some counterparts argue that opening the door of development to many will definitely increase the product's capabilities while benefiting the original creator. The creator gets reputation, becomes an expertise in a specific area. He/She consults some software firm where their experience and skills are valued.

How to contribute to Open Source ?
http://today.java.net/pub/pq/18
http://www.kegel.com/academy/opensource.html
http://www.granneman.com/techinfo/linux/contributewithoutcoding.htm

After writing this much, I think I should also try to contribute towards it.
After all, Linus Torvalds must have thought something before saying
'The future is open source'....