The mountain giant picked up a boulder and heaved it towards me. My female orc wizard ducked and narrowly missed the hulk of rock. I decided to take my Wand of striking and kill both the giant and the killer bee buzzing behind him in a single strike. The giant absorbed the magic and moved on to pick up the boulder for another shot. I smote off the killer bee with a couple of blows with my trusted +4 magic staff and turned to face the giant. The goliath had managed to pick up the boulder, now was the time … I took out another wand of magic missile and let go its fury at him. No effect. I would have to kill this one by hand-to-hand. No matter. The staff was up for the challenge and my mithril coat was unharmed. A fast flurry of blows was exchanged the giant lay bested at my feet.

No, this is not a dream. Its one of my favorite games, NetHack!! This is a single player game released in around late 1980’s … the development of this game has been completely on the net … and its a hack and slash game … hence net + hack = nethack :-)

Everytime I play the game, theres something new that happens. The maps are different, the characters are many to play with … and the game decides to behave differently on a full moon day!!

Just one more example of how a product has developed in a decentralized fashion over an open interactive medium (IRC and Usenets) to result in a customer oriented product.

When I was a small kid, I used to absolutely love reading fairy tales. My grandfather had bought these two hardbound volumes from the seven seas yonder that were absolutely full of them. I never managed to completely read the books end to end, but I had pored over them a lot as a child.

Then came school, junior college, engineering, work, post-graduation, some more work and with all of them, the realities about life. Now I am a person who can safely say is well-grounded in reality. So much so that I have more or less stopped watching cartoons, even Tom & Jerry, which my father still loves and laughs out loud like a small child when watching the same.

Disney and this new movie, Enchanted brings out that mirthful child in all of us. I had an absolute rollicking time throughout this movie.

The plot is simple, a fairy tale couple (prince and princess, with their chipmunk friend) are thrown into reality by the wicked witch step-mother. The princess is hurtled into Earth and this guy who is your normal Joe, who also happens to be a divorce lawyer. As the plot thickens, by and by, reality also has its effect on the fairy tale world and I wont spoil it, please watch the movie :-)

After a long time have I seen an all out movie, the likes of Cinderella or Snow White, et al. A musical cartoon flick which turns into a romantic comedy movie. Very nicely done. I think I will try to get my hands on the digital version of this movie. Definitely an 8.0.

This is hilarious. The chap who manages the news stand is a genius!

• You ask the waiter what the restaurant’s core competencies are.
• You decide to re-org your family into a “team-based organization.”
• You refer to dating as test marketing.
• You can spell “paradigm.”
• You actually know what a paradigm is.
• You understand your airline’s fare structure.
• You write executive summaries on your love letters.
• Your Valentine’s Day cards have bullet points.
• You think that it’s actually efficient to write a ten page presentation with six other people you don’t know.
• You celebrate your wedding anniversary by conducting a performanceb review.
• You believe you never have any problems in your life just “issues” and “improvement opportunities”.
• You end every argument by saying “let’s talk about this off-line”.
• You can explain to somebody the difference between “re-engineering”,”down-sizing”, “right-sizing”, and “firing people’s xxx”.
• You actually believe your explanation in the above point.
• You talk to the waiter about process flow when dinner arrives late.
• You start to feel sorry for Dilbert’s boss.
• You account for your tuition as a capital expenditure instead of an expense.
• You insist that you do some more market research before you and your spouse produce another child.
• At your last family reunion, you wanted to have an emergency meeting about their brand equity
• Your “deliverable” for Sunday evening is clean laundry and paid bills.
• You use the term “value-added” without falling down laughing.
• You ask the car salesman if the car comes with a whiteboard and Internet connection.
• You give constructive feedback to your dog.
• You give your boyfriend / girfriend a golden handshake on the way out!
• You can add value to this list by contributing to it

I just finished reading the sixth book of the Dune series. The story behind the plot is so unique that I do not want to divulge the details of the same in this blog … what is more interesting is that how the book sheds lights on issues like religion, governance and governance using religion.

If you decide to reflect on the same, then you will realize that there is some sense to it all. Right from our childhood, we have been taught that democracy is a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Is that really true … from school we come into real life all misty-eyed and full of ideals, then real life hits us with shades of grey and a despairing need of black and white.

The very leaders we adulated over, and voted into power, we know are of no good. The false promises that they make will be of no use. Thus, democracy itself is based upon and runs on mistrust. I do not trust my government, thats the whole reason for having an opposition party in parliament so that I have a double check on them.

The entire system is based layer upon layer of mistrust. The lower layer knowing and not trusting the higher layer. And surprisingly, it works!! Well, thats just democracy for you. What will heckle you further, is that when you think of a governing system which is hierarchical (like democracy) and is based on trust (rather than mistrust), then we have dictatorship!!

Funny, isn’t it, whats good at an individual level, is not a necessary thing at a cumulative level? hmm…