Quotes from 'Hackers and painters'

Suppose in the future there is a movement to ban the color yellow. Proposals to paint anything yellow are denounced as "yellowist," as is anyone suspected of liking the color. People who like orange are tolerated but viewed with suspicion. Suppose you realize there is nothing wrong with yellow. If you go around saying so, you'll be denounced as a yellowist too, and you'll find yourself having a lot of arguments with anti-yellowists. If your aim in life is to rehabilitate the color yellow, that may be what you want. But if you're mostly interested in other questions, being labelled as a yellowist will just be a distraction. Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot.

The most important thing is to be able to think what you want, not to say what you want.

Civil liberties are not just an ornament, or a quaint American tradition. Civil liberties make countries rich. If you made a graph of GNP per capita vs. civil liberties, you'd notice a definite trend. Could civil liberties really be a cause, rather than just an effect? I think so. I think a society in which people can do and say what they want will also tend to be one in which the most efficient solutions win, rather than those sponsored by the most influential people. Authoritarian countries become corrupt; corrupt countries become poor; and poor countries are weak. It seems to me there is a Laffer curve for government power, just as for tax revenues. ³ At least, it seems likely enough that it would be stupid to try the experiment and find out. Unlike high tax rates, you can't repeal totalitarianism if it turns out to be a mistake.

Recommended Reading

I am an avid reader as I have proclaimed it on the blog many many times.. But my reading has been shifting from more of a  fiction, romantic and sci-fi kind of books to current, social and non-fiction books. Its not that fiction is not interesting now but it doesn't feel worth it.  The fiction books I have read last year are just three - Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri, Three mistakes of My life - Chetan bhagat and The namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri... 

The change is kind of large in the sense that I used to stay awake all night to complete novels of Sidney Sheldon, John Grisham and Dan Brown when in college.. These days I am more interested in reading non-fiction books and blogs.  OK ..enough of rambling about me. 

I actually wanted to share few things worth reading.. Check out books of your interest from  changethis.com. 

And if you are free and really want some food for thought checkout Paul Graham's Essays

Each one is a classic in its own way but I love the one on  reducing economic inequality. 

And who knows you might also start reading his book 'Hackers and Painters'

Ila.. entha sepu ninnu choosinaa...

It has been lot of days since I shared good songs with you. It has been mostly because of the lack of discovery and also because of lack of supply. Lack of discovery because my headset is damaged and hence couldnt listen to radio which my number one source of songs and second is the hectic work in office. Lack of supply because all the movies in musicmazaa, which is an excellent music site by the way, which is my second source of songs are having uninteresting songs. But after lot of days I was listening to Sasirekha parinayam songs and two songs are good. Yedho Yedho is good song. But the song I want to share is ' elaa enta sepu choosina' - nice song.. Listen and flowww :)



Sing along.. here are the lyrics..
ilaa entha sepu ninnu choosinaa, sare.. chaalu anadu kanti kamanaa..
edoo.. gunde loni konte bhavana.. ala undipoka paiki telunaa..
kanulanu munchina kanthi vo.. kalalanu penchina branthi vo..kalavani pinchina kantha vo..oo
mahimala penchina maya vo, madimuripinchina hayi vo.. niduranu tunchina reyi voo ohhooo Ila..

subhalekha la nee kala swagatistundo..sasirekha la sogaseto laagutuuvundoo..
teega la allaga cherukonundo...jinka la andaka jaaripotundoooo
manasunu tunchina korika pedavula anchunu daataka.. adumutu vunchake antaga hooo
anumati nivvani aashaga, nilabadanivvani kanksha ga tikamaka pettake intaga hoooo
Ila..

magaputtuke cherani mogali jadalona, maru janma ga maarani maguva medalona hhooo
depamai velagani taruni tilakana, papanai vodagani padathi vodilonaa,
naa talapulu tana pasupuga, naa valapulu paarani ga nadipinchina poodarigaa hooo
pranayamu vinuve kothaga, penimite varasai chakkaga bathakana nene taanugaaa hooooo
Ila..

Satyam Fiasco - Few Questions

The multicrore fraud of Satyam of cooking books, forgery and inflating profit raised a number of questions in my mind. I just thought it was a one off affair and the industry on the whole was in a good shape. But after talking with lot of my friends, I am becoming doubtful on this. 

1. Is Satyam alone in this? My friends argue that this happens in every company which I couldnt accept. Churumuri  has put up a poll with this question and most people concurred with my opinion that Satyam is a one off case. And ofcourse Nasscom, the torch bearer for Indian IT has to say this. Hope it takes steps that things like this wont happen again. Just imagine if one person can hide this for these many years with not even one audit finding any fault speaks of the magnitude of things that ran behind to cover this up. 

2. This is an ethical question: Is Ramalinga Raju a hero? People are lauding him saying he is a hero,  for bring IT to AP, growing Satyam into the organization it is currently, the social service he does etc and funnily even for the fact that he had the guts to accept his wrongdoings. How silly.. He should have had the guts to do that the first time he got to know of the accounting fraud. But thinking in a different way,  is this the way business works? If that is the case then Raju becomes a thief only because he is caught? I think we can know the answers for these questions soon if the new regulations passed will surely bring it out. 

Regarding Raju, I dont think he has done anything laudable, just because you became the face of IT industry in AP,  and the face of social service (EMRI, Byrraju Foundation) doesnt mean he can get away with massive misdoings.  He has cheated the investors who have put their hard earned money. This lack of trust is one thing which makes him a fool, a fraud and a crook and it virtually cleans all the good name or good intentions if any. 

I am just hoping sincerely that all the companies accounting is not similar to Satyam and the whole regulation and auditing is not just a farce. 

Just wishing that the Satyam story will end in good merger with employees, clients and shareholders come out with minimum loss. 

The best 2009 welcome posts from my reading list.

These are the gems of 2009 welcome posts from all the blogs I read...

1. The best post is from Rajesh Setty's Life Beyond Code blog about the 'let go list ' which is a list of things which hold us back from dong the right things. Do have a look at it and realise what are stopping you.

2. Next is Tom Ferris on his learnings from 2008.

3. Seth Godin has a post on the useless and hypocritic merriment at the end of an year also urging us to lead

4. The next post is by Fred Wilson on AVC about his wishes for 2009. Though they relate to US in particular, they are worth looking at.

2008...2009

A new year has come... Time for reflecting on the year gone and to think of the happy moments which are etched in our hearts, time to think of the lessons the past year has taught us and to go ahead and to realise our destiny.

2008 has been a great year because I learnt a lot of things regarding character, ethics, morals and relationships. Relations help us correct our flaws and become more loving, giving and stronger being. I dont think we can learn about these things any other way than through living through them.

The world has also had its share of disasters like the financial crisis and the Mumbai bombings and happy moments like Obama being selected as the president of United States.

Looking forward to 2009, I am hopeful my learning will continue, I will become a more conscious, loving and courageous being in 2009. My focus for this year will be 'being in the flow' or living in the present, which roughly translates to doing whatever I am doing in the best way possible.

I want to end this post with this prayer

Asatoma satgamaya,
Thamsoma Jyotirgamaya,
Mrutyorma Amrutam gamaya..
Om shanthi shanthi shanthi hi...

Wish you a happy new year 2009.. :)

Karma Yoga -Advaita Vedanta

I have been reading about Advaita Vedanta from some time of the last year.Recently I read a book called 'Karma Yoga' by Swami Vivekananda, which lays before us, the way of attaining Moksha by doing the right work. What it says is
> No work is superior or inferior. Every work should be done with utmost devotion but without identifying that you are doing.
"Karmanye vadhikaraste,
Maa phaleshu kadachana,
Maa karma phala heturbhu,
maate sangostva karmani."
It means that, you have the right to do work, but not on the results of the work, you are not the reason for the results of your work, and that doesnt mean you should stop working.

which indirectly means that you should do the work which is destined to you... More on this in the next paras.


> You may feel that you are helping the world, but actually in helping the world, you are actually helping yourself.
> All Hindu scriptures, end saying that the whole world is just maya and our aim is to get out of this world. Same with karma yoga. they say that if we do our work without attachments, we will realise that our aim is attaining Moksha itself and you will reach it.

I thought that if attaining Moksha was the only aim of life, then what sense does it do all this work without going through the direct path for Moksha? i.e Jnana Yoga , by doing tapas.. I discussed the same with one of my friend who claimed he has a different understanding of how to interpret that. After lot of discussion we came at this conclusion:

The world is destined to be something. Similarly we are also destined to do something and we cannot change that. But advaita says 'You are that'. How is that? We have to attain the end goal of Moksha only if we do whatever we are supposed to do, i.e we complete the task destined to us. The problem is that we dont know what is that? We dont know what is our destiny. Now he is where, 'You are all powerful' concept comes - You can decide what you want to become and trying taking steps towards going there. You will get omens either validating you and you will feel motivated to continue on that path and reach your destiny or you will get omens indicating you what you are doing is not right... Then you have to understand the cause- effect relationship and correct the cause which caused this effect and you are ready to go further to your destiny. If you cant pick up the omens and correct them soon, then you will even get further omens and you will feel like you are not able to do what you wanted to do. But actually you are not able to read the omens and hence you are feeling that. This will make you feel lost and out of control because if you realise it soon, you will correct it soon. You will ultimately realise the mistake, correct it and then only you will go forward to reach your destiny.

To put it in an another way, you will anyway reach and do what you are destined to do. If you understand and work towards reaching it reading the omens and adjusted our work to that, we will feel that we are in control of what we are doing and we will reach our destiny on a flowery path. If we dont understand the omens and are not going on the right path, we will get thorns on our way which will make us understand and again put us on the path to reach our destiny. You will encounter as many thorns as you are willing to take, i.e how soon you understand the lessons given by that thorn. If you dont take the lesson from that thorn, another thorn will come to teach that lesson and we feel miserable. So we examine each thorn carefully for cause effect relationships and set ourselves right for reaching our destiny on path of least resistance.