Desicritics Author: Suyog

Laptop Review: IBM/Lenovo 3000 N100: Avoid Them, They Are Seriously Bad

Suyog — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 00:39:57 EST

For long, the name IBM has been associated with quality, service and reliability. So when Lenovo bought out the PC division from IBM, certainly many eyebrows were raised if this would impact their QSR (Quality-Service-Reliability) metrics. I did not think up till this point that it would change, but I am quite sadly mistaken.

With my experience over the past two weeks working on Lenovo laptops and working with their representatives, right from call center people to high profile men in leading positions like the VP of Web Marketing, it has been nothing short of pain, with general sense of I-dont-really-know-what-you-are-talking-about attitude displayed by all and sundry. Given that Lenovo now also markets Thinkpads, one wonders how long will it be before Thinkpads reach the trash-bin too.

I really waited. I really waited long to write this review. I wanted to give Lenovo enough chances to rectify themselves. But sadly, they went from bad to worse each step of the way, and finally when it seems like they are ready to fix my problem, their response has been too little, too snobby, too late, and perhaps not worth the time and effort I put in. There was an ulterior motive I put so much time in Lenovo - few of my best friends work with Lenovo. It would not have been fair if I were to speak ill about their workplace, unless I had any real reason to. Unfortunately, I do.

Before I get into it in detail, a brief backgrounder.

Build Quality
A friend of mine and I wanted good laptops this season. My old Sony Vaio broke, and the other Sony Vaio that I have hardly fitted the bill. I was initially planning to buy a Mac, but the exorbitant prices put me off. Lenovo was my second choice as a stop-gap solution until I could afford a Mac. Hence, this Thanksgiving, me and my friend ordered a Lenovo 300 N100 (Model: 0768-01U) from Office Depot. The laptop had it all - a good processor (albeit Celeron), great RAM speed, a 15.4" widescreen and the Lenovo name to it.

The laptop arrived five days later as promised. While its exterior design looked reasonably good, it was a bit unfinished. The keyboard is hard, and shockingly hackneyed in its layout. For example, they don't have some of the most important buttons like Page Dn, Page Up, Home, End anywhere on the keyboard. Instead, you would have to use a function key to get to there. So what should have been a keyboard feature, is now a software feature that requires a combination of keys to access! Whose dumb design idea was this nobody really knows, and if anyone at lenovoblogs is listening, they need to fix the keyboard real soon.

The laptop has an Intel 950 motherboard, a standard for a low-end laptop. Though the laptop's sharpness and gamma levels leave a lot to be desired, it was still acceptable. Considering this is not meant to be a photo-intensive laptop, it is not that big a deal. The laptop has a really quiet hard-drive, and is almost noiseless. It was the single biggest feature I loved about this laptop - it's freaking quiet!

However the goodness ended there. Once out of the box, I went through the welcome screens, and setup the laptop to connect to my home wireless network to check the connectivity. And while browsing, I decided to put up some music to test out the sound card. That's where the trouble began. I noticed that the sound quality was jittery, full of breaks, noisy and completely annoying. It seemed as if the laptop or the soundcard was choking when playing the song.

I called up my friend to see if he had similar issues. I was surprised when he said he had the exact same issue and how annoying it was to hear broken and jittery sound. I had an inkling this was not going to be a software problem right then, but I decided to do some initial troubleshooting myself.

Initial Troubleshooting
I have considered myself to be quite well informed about computing hardware, and do all IT stuff myself before calling support. I hate calling support, and more often than not I discover that I can troubleshoot problems myself. My first reaction to the sound issue was it was probably a soundcard codec or driver gone bad. I immediately installed all Windows updates, the sound drivers updates, and all Lenovo updates from Lenovo. Still, the sound problem wouldn't go. I downgraded the drivers to older versions - no change.

It was then that I decided to call their support. Getting through their support line involves being reminded at least 10 times that you are talking to someone in Atlanta. I thought this was a poor choice of marketing - are Lenovo guys telling us that their call center being in Atlanta is a thumbs-up to others in various countries? This is a marketing gimmick gone wrong. Nonetheless, on my first attempt I was told my Laptop did not have warranty. I was amused - a five day old laptop does not have warranty? After going through their whole process of emailing my bills and serial numbers on the laptop and spending almost an hour, I was let to speak to a technical support guy finally.

Like all technical support personnel, he was too conditioned to do the drill - I didn't mind it as it was their job to do so - removed drivers, re-installed drivers, reset BIOS, upgraded BIOS - the whole nine yards. At the end of it the technical support personnel decided it was imperative I send the laptop back to service depot for repairs. I agreed, though the thought of having to send a brand new five day old laptop did not make me feel happy.

They were speedy - the DHL box came next day, and my laptop was serviced and returned back to me within three days. Yes they were that fast. However, they were also lousy.

The Trouble Begins
On receiving my laptop back, I opened it and played a music CD again. Dang! Same problem. This did not go too well. For one thing, I had got back my laptop with lots of jargon about different parts being changed and how it was supposed to solve my sound problems. And yet, it seemed to me that Lenovo service depot did not do any sort of testing on the laptop to see if the problem had been fixed. It's shocking how a company can send a broken product back to its customer without even testing it to see if the problem had been rectified?

Angry, I called up Lenovo support again. Again, I was informed that I did not have any warranty on my laptop, and again I was made to go through their sales representative and again I had to resend my information back to them before I was released to speak back to their technical support. I was angry at this point and asked that this laptop be replaced with another one. However since I had bought the laptop through Office Depot, Lenovo told me they would not be replacing it.

Office Depot though was very helpful - within a few hours of complaint, they had shipped another replacement. That was last Thursday.

First Contact with upper personnel
Meanwhile I still had a broken laptop to myself, so I decided to investigate if anybody else was facing the same issue. Researching on the web, I came across this post and this post on The Enquirer which spoke highly of Lenovo customer service . Traversing through them, I landed on lenovoblogs where as the name says, Lenovo maintains a blog. David Hill / David Churbuck write the blog on Design Matters, and I left a comment on one of their posts about the problem that I had been facing, and how disappointed I was with IBM quality.

I was immediately contacted by David Churbuck, Vice President, Global Web Marketing at Lenovo with promises that they would get back to me quickly. David's email was quickly followed by email from Mark Hopkins, Project Manager, Customer Satisfaction. This development really impressed me. I was very impressed by the speed with which David got back to me and then Mark responded. For all the famous Lenovo service I had heard, I thought it was finally true. After all how many times do you get a Project Manager and a VP contacting you personally to resolve your notebook issues?

Unfortunately, I should have realized that beyond the initial frivolous email, there was nothing much that these gentlemen could do about my situation.

The Weekend Diagnosis
Over the weekend, after the initial flurry of emails, I had told David and Mark that sending back this laptop and again going through their "you have no warranty" nonsense was out of the question, and people at Lenovo should be looking at this issue. I was promised that they would expedite the case and take a look at it pronto.

During the same time, I made another discovery. The sound card just didn't like working with the wireless card. Whenever I switched off my wireless card, the sound was great. When I connected to a wireless network, the sound got screwed up again. This was an interesting development - I called up my friend to try it out on his laptop. And guess what? It was true: The sound card didn't work well with wireless card enabled.

With this information, I immediately emailed Mark over the weekend and informed him of my discovery to help Lenovo sort the problem out. I also told Mark that upon recieving the new laptop replacement I would verify it once more and send him a mail back again.

From bad to worse
The new laptop arrived this Monday. Out of the box, same problem: Disable the wireless card, sound worked fine. Enable the wireless card, and the sound got jittery. I immediately mailed Mark again of this, and told them that they should be looking at it more seriously as I had discovered this on two different laptops, and including my friend it was three laptops of the same kind with same problem.

Mark got back to me very proactively about Lenovo would very seriously look at this case now that this had happened in three laptops, and how their engineers would give me a call to discuss more about this problem. And how they would quickly try to resolve it, perhaps through a BIOS update or software update.

I waited for a day before mailing them again - I did not get any call from their engineers about the issue hence I decided it was left to me to be more proactive about it than they were. Eventually Mark replied, and remarked that they had not been able to reproduce the problem at their end, and they believed something might be wrong in my enviornment. Mark again offered that their engineers would call me as soon as they can.

To help matters, I sent Mark a complete detailed instruction of how to reproduce the problem with every single detail they would have needed to know.

The call never came. Nor did the response from Mark.

Eventually by Thursday, my frustration level had reached pretty high. This was almost two weeks with a broken laptop, and Lenovo had not as much gotten around to admitting there was a problem. Were they even serious? It was time to get rude.

To make my point across, I sent a very rude email to both Mark and David questioning their own capacity in their company. It seemed to me that beyond frivolous emails like "we will call you", both of these gentlemen have zero commitment to getting things resolved. It was only fair - how many times would Mark keep telling me that he had expedited the case with their senior technical engineers, and they would call me ASAP with high priority. Well, it seemed his engineers just did not listen to them.

After this email, I finally got a response back from an engineer who first told me that he had been advised to work on my case, and then went to explain how he too had failed to reproduce the problem. He gave me the complete specs on how he performed the test, and how he did not see this issue crop up.

Only thing - he tried to reproduce the problem on a entirely different hardware all-together. While my laptop had a Broadcom wireless chipset and Celeron processor, his test machines were Core duos and had Intel wireless cards built in. One would have imagined that given the information they had at hand, they would at the very minimum test out on the same specs. But this came to me as absolute shock!

Their engineer even went on to comment that he did not have a spare laptop of my specs at hand to do the testing. I was stunned - was I being told by Lenovo that their departments are understaffed with the very products they sold?

At this point I lost my patience and shot off another email to Mark and David - this had gone from bad to worse, and it seemed Lenovo just didn't seem to get it, nor have any resources to check for the problem. I had asked for a replacement model to this laptop for all the time I had spent explaining them and not getting anywhere, and wanted to start an official complaint.

Too little, too late
Eventually I got a call this morning from their customer relations person who told me that their engineering team determined it was a problem with the wireless card in the laptop. This much, even I knew - heck, I was the one who told them about it in the first place; they didn't even know what to test before I told them to test out the wireless and sound card option. Hence they would send out a "wireless card replacement" for my laptop. Once he even asked if I could replace the card myself (which I would on other day, but not after going through this) - I declined and the customer relations personnel then made sounds about how my warranty did not cover on-site service and would I mind sending the laptop back to them or take it to a service center - I declined on both. He then proceeded to tell he would do an on-site repair even though my warranty did not cover it.

I was in half a mind to tell him that it was their freaking laptop that was broken, and they had sold me a lemon - warranty or no warranty.

I asked for a replacement model again on the phone, but he sounded pretty confident that the wireless card replacement would do the trick. And then if it didn't they would consider replacing the laptop with a better equipped model of the same type that worked.

Basically in simple terms I was told that they could not care less, and the wireless card replacement was all I could get.

Final Thoughts
I had a similar experience with Dell a couple of months back in my office. Though Dell service representatives were smarter - once they knew they had a problem, they didn't just replace the part - they just replaced the laptop with a newer model. My friend bought a DLP 50" TV few months back which had an artifacts problem - he spent endless hours trying to explain his situation to Samsung - but once Samsung acknowledged there was a problem with the TV, they just replaced his TV for a better model. Now, that is customer service. Contrast this with Lenovo.

My experience with Lenovo has taught me few things:

(a) There is a serious quality assurance issue with their laptops. The fact that the soundcard and wireless card problem happened with three different laptops with two people in the same building should have been enough indication to Lenovo that there is something wrong. They couldn't care less.

(b) Their service from top down to bottom is outright lethargic and slow, to the point of absolute disinterest. When their senior managers and vice presidents could not expedite matters, it is not a wonder then that their lower-end call centers are not that spectacular either. Overall, they need a huge overhaul of their customer service right from top down.

(d) Lenovo at the end of 15 days acknowledged they had a wireless problem. Now here is the funny part - until I sent the mail last night, they were still "testing". Suddenly they discovered they had a problem with the card? It gave an impression that at that point, they had no clue, and basically used my own diagnosis to tell me what was wrong with the laptop.

Overall
I am left with a very bad impression of Lenovo. Going by the links above, it is clear that Lenovo will bend over backwards to appease people who will give them good publicity, but when an ordinary customer like me has a problem, they couldn't care less. I will be waiting for their technician to come up and replace my card.

However given the overall distaste this has left in my mouth, I will in all probability just return it. And my friend still is stuck in the same loop - they haven't even got back to him.

Avoid Lenovo. They are seriously bad.

Movie Review: Babel - Lots of Babble, Nothing Else

Suyog — Sun, 12 Nov 2006 00:43:52 EST

***This review contains spoilers***

When a director is stuck with a single idea and keeps making movies around it over and over again, you know he is going to jump the shark once. Which is what happens with Alejandro Gonz�lez I��rritu and his latest venture, Babel. Labeling Babel as the third part of a "trilogy" (previous two being Amores Perros and 21 Grams) serves as an easy excuse for Alejandro to explain now off repeated theme of multiple-separate-story-threads-linked-together-by-some-connection in his movies. While it worked well with Amores Perros and 21 Grams, the same cannot be said about Babel. Whats worse, the "link" that holds one of the stories is so ridiculously meek and unconvincing that it almost feels pretentious and nothing more than a sorry excuse to tell a story that has no relation to the central plot (if there was one). Babel is one of those movies which had a such big potential to be a great movie, had the director and writer not got so carried away by their idea, their budget and common sense.

To say something about the story, well, first of all, everyone in Babel is unhappy, dejected, pained, isolated and lonely. And just plain stupid.

And here's how these stupid people act in stories of despair and hopelessness, making the audience wonder whether they themselves are stupid and in a hopeless situation of having to endure this movie:

Story 1

Somewhere in villages of Morocco, a goat herder gives his two teenage kids a rifle to safe guard the goats and kill the Jackals that could attack the goats. The Jackasses don't manage to kill any Jackals, but wind up shooting an American Jackass's wife traveling in a tourist bus. The stupid kid's experiment of checking how far the bullet travels in empty air ends up going too far for their liking.

Story 2

The American idiot and his wife are surviving a difficult marriage, while their kids back home enjoy the company of a MnM coated sugar nanny of Mexican origin. While traveling in the bus through an arid desert, this wife ends up getting shot by the kids. Brad Pitt, looking suitably old and pained is shocked and despaired when his wife (Cate Blanchett) gets shot. He immediately sets things into motion which initially look promising, but as the movie progresses borderlines senselessness. So much so that when his bus mates desert him, you almost feel happy for them. The American Idiot must take his wife to a village, where his wife must rest, and they must wait for an ambulance to come by. Never mind that they had a huge bus at their disposal. They must wait for a giddy ambulance, which may or may not come.

But because he is an American idiot, things don't go as planned. The US Embassy gets involved, and the shooting incident quickly snowballs as a "terror attack" against Americans, increasing the misery and hopelessness the couple find themselves in.

Story 3

The nanny needs to take the day off as it is her son's wedding in Mexico; but this unforeseen accident has put her in a quandary, as the parents are not going to be back before she can leave to Mexico. What must she do? She must take the kids to Mexico, where they get to see a rather ebullient marriage complete with songs and dances. Of course all is not well here either. So instead of heeding her intelligent son's advice to stay back for a few more hours till sunlight, she forces her drunk nephew to take her back across the US border.

The US border as we know is not a nice place to be. Not pleasant if you are a Mexican. Bad if you have a drunk driver at helm. Worse if you are with American kids in your back seats. Terrible if those kids have taken on their parents' genes and are as stupid. And incredibly tragic when the drunk driver runs through the border, and then decides to ditch the nanny and her two sweeties in a desert. Sigh.

Story 4

So far so good. I wouldn't have minded it, if the above three stories was all the movie was about. Heck, I would call the movie great then. But in his dream of layering the story across several continents, the director takes us to Tokyo, where we must endure a deaf-mute girl and her starving hormones. So while we wait for this girl to fulfill her passions and get laid, we must endure her journey through loneliness, her temper tantrum, her rejection by other boys because she's deaf and mute, being drugged by street jerks who want nothing of her except to lay her (and pray, why does she reject?), and finally trying to seduce a policeman by telling him an emotionally charged story about her mother's death (so much for seduction), and then taking off her clothes hoping to catch the policeman's fancy. All of it makes this Japanese soft core story the longest running of all the four stories, and four times more boring. And did I mention already that this deaf mute and her friends are so stupid anyway, that for once I thanked my stars that these characters didn't need to talk.

And the connection? The Japanese sex starved idiot's father gave the rifle as a token of thanks to his guide during his hunting trip in Morocco, who then sold it to the goat herd, who then gave it to his kids to kill Jackals, who then went and shot the American woman in the bus, thereby ruining and changing a Mexican momma's life forever.

Even the butterfly effect may not have such dire consequences.

The problems with Babel are many. And I must crib on all of them. For a start, with a running length of 2 hours 22 minutes, the movie plays on and on like soap opera unwilling to end. What's worse, it's the least interesting story of the Japanese girl that gets the maximum footage. If the movie had trimmed up and not included the Japanese story line at all (and thereby cutting a good 30-35 minutes), the rest of the stories were actually handled pretty decently. Heck, there is an absolute stunner of a scene towards the end involving Brad Pitt which forces its audience to refocus on the entire structure and time line of the movie. However that scene comes way too late, after way too much of borefest has passed by and at a point when the audience is looking at the exit door impatiently.

Secondly, why are lonely, pained and dejected people also stupid generally? Are we as audience supposed to sympathize and empathize with their situation, or grin at their stupidity? Take for instance, the middle eastern kids. Should we as audience empathize about their sorry situation of having shot an American woman (no less!), or just plain smirk at their stupidity? Or the Japanese idiot - what the hell was she thinking? That she could get a man in bed by talking about her mother's suicide? Or for Brad Pitt's character - who has a huge 32 seater bus at his disposal (and less than half occupied), but keeps waiting for a ambulance to come by for more than a day. And makes his fellow bus mates and the bus wait. Why must we as audience wallow in his pain when this character acts stupid and not use the bus and get to hospital once his wife has been stitched and not bleeding? Or this Mexican woman who seems idiotically frantic about getting back to America so that the kids don't miss their soccer practice, and then when she's left stranded in the desert, asks the kids to stay together while she finds help. And pray, after being given such precise instructions to stay put together, why must these pesky kids also display their stupidity by disappearing?

At some point I wished Babel were a horror movie. At least then, the characters' stupidity would still be reasonable.

That is not to say all is not well with Babel. It is supported by good acting from a few actors. Brad Pitt carries of his role amicably. Cate Blanchett had nothing, absolutely nothing to do in the movie except crib and suitably whine whenever the camera focuses on her blood stained neck. The Middle Eastern kids decidedly looked stupid, and act with justified competence. (Eh, what does my last sentence mean?! Do I have a career in professional review writing?). The less said about the Japanese eggworm the better. The visuals are great.

Here's a funny part. For a movie that is laced with stupidity, there are actually some brilliant scenes which show off cultural norms and misgivings between different cultures beautifully, something the director is known for. The initial fear of an alien doctor treating his wife in some remote village in a foreign is well shot and acted by Pitt and Cate. Or the American kids when they discover Mexico and its way of merry making, which is at once too alien to them, and equally as inviting. Or a scene depicting media obsession with anything American in a Japanese bar, where woman on TV news talks of the American shot in Morocco and how it ended happily for "America". Unfortunately, such scenes are few and sparse, and while singularly standing out as great scenes, collectively have no purpose in the movie.

All in all - Babel is my pick for the Oscars. The folks at Oscars will love such movies. Unfortunately, I, a mere mortal, having paid $10 for the ticket (unlike the Oscar committee who'll get free gifts and presents to like this movie) will not recommend you, my reader to watch this movie. Not even on Netflix.

Enough of my babble. 2 stars. Not recommended.

Movie Review: The Departed

Suyog — Sun, 8 Oct 2006 00:30:54 EDT

What are the chances a director will take an ensemble cast, an Americanized script of a Hong Kong classic, terrific background score and botch it up completely?

Nil. If you are Martin Scorcese directing a film titled The Departed.

After what must be ~~years~~ decades, Martin Scorcese finally returns to his roots, an area he is so familiar with and delivers probably a movie, a crime drama, a spy caper, but importantly his best since The Goodfellas.

Yes, its been that long. Spending years together on "I-want-an-Oscar" movies like The Gangs of New York and The Aviator that have taken Martin Scorcese nowhere, with The Departed, it almost seems as if Scorcese has given up on the trophy, and concentrates on what makes a good movie. The irony of it all is The Departed could very well end up fetching quite a few nominations this Oscar and may win a few.

A superb screenplay, and brilliant performances from its actors are merely enough to carry this movie on its shoulders. Martin Scorcese might have just guided the way behind his lens - which is what a good director should do.

Meet Billy Costigan (Leonardo Di Caprio) and Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), both of whom grow up on the streets of Boston with a bitter childhood, both of whom enroll in the police academy for entirely different purposes. Meet Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), the gangster who controls the mean streets of Irish Boston, and a godfather to Colin Sullivan. While Billy tries hard to be a "real" cop with a real identity, his background and his previous life only serve as a perfect getup for him to be an undercover cop, a cop without any identity or, a mole.

Reluctantly enough, Billy accepts his job to infiltrate Frank Costello's gang and serve as a mole for the cops. Frank Costello however, has the exact same plans for his godson - Colin Sullivan - a mole in the special detective units who works for him so that he could be one step above the law.

The fun begins however when Frank and the Police both discover that they both have mole amidst them. Oblivious to each other's identity, both Billy and Colin's job from there on is to find the mole. And in that, The Departed scores quite handsomely. Almost Shakespearean in its approach, The Departed provides ample time and scope for characters to display a gamut of emotions. It has it all - a love triangle, humor, overthetop scenic compositions. By the time the movie ends, one leaves with a feeling of having watched a Shakesperean tragedy played to perfection. A contrived love triangle doesn't add much to the story but brings about the vulnerabilities of both Billy and Colin beautifully.

Di Caprio in particular impresses as Billy, the reluctant mole searching for his identity. The cocky arrogant attire suits Matt Damon very well, and he plays his part to the hilt. Impressively the supporting cast consists of accomplished A-list actors like Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Mark Walhberg who only complement an already perfect cast.

But the movie, as always, in any movie that he is, belongs to Frank Costello played by Jack Nicholson. Here's an actor who so completely breathes his role that its almost possible that Jack Nicholson is Frank Costello in real life - the over-the-top costumes, over-the-edge personality and wily humor - all of these traits suit Jack Nicholson perfectly and he carries it off brilliantly. Other actors might have gone overboard in their roles, but in the expert hands of Martin Scorcese, nothing of that sort happens, and we are treated with some brilliant performances from its star cast.

Since this is a gangster film, and a R-rated one at that, expletives flow freely; it is impossible to hear a three-line conversation without an expletive exploding - but it only brings about the old-good feel of Goodfellas. The humor is crude, racist, vulgar and dry - but works splendidly. The Departed scores in another department: finally, a movie where cops and gangsters shoot each other where they should and get instant gratification.

To say the screenplay is almost too good for itself is an understatement; by the time you leave your seats, even glaring loopholes in the plot seem almost meaningless to ponder upon. You don't care about it anymore. The Departed draws you in the story of the main "characters" not the "story" around the characters. And therein lies The Departed's biggest strength.

Bottomline: Easily one the best movies to have released this year, and certainly a welcome relief for fans of Martin Scorcese. If you liked Goodfellas, I bet you'll like The Departed.

Discover : Kent

Suyog — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 13:51:19 EDT

Although relatively unknown outside of Sweden or perhaps Europe, Kent since its early inception as an indie-rock band has been a hugely successful and popular band, especially in Sweden. I discovered Kent last year through Pandora, when the song "Sundance Kid" came up as one of the songs in my Coldplay radio station.

The first time I heard Sundance Kid, I was floored. It was just I had been waiting to hear on my play-list. I am a firm believer that music knows no language - hence the fact it was a Swedish song or a Swedish band didn't matter. I was hooked to the song, the tune, the guitars, and the electric techno-rock. Mentally I had made up my mind to dig up more on Kent later.

Over the year and much listening, I have to say this: Kent is to Sweden as U2 is to Ireland or Coldplay to England. The fact that I am clubbing them with U2 and Coldplay doesn't mean they are as good as both of them (nor is Coldplay as good as U2), but they come pretty close.

Both Coldplay and U2 however have one big advantage over Kent in that their language of choice has been English, a huge factor when coming to universal acceptance. Kent tried twice to re-record their albums in English for English audience; unfortunately the effort showed that they are clearly not comfortable in the English language. It is not much of a surprise then that the only reviews and 5-star ratings you read on Amazon for their albums stem out of English speaking population who heard of Kent either through their Swedish friends or in most cases listened to them in Sweden itself.

Mentioning about the band's history and acting a smart ass is pretty much useless, as much of band's progress, history, singles, #1s have all been covered in great detail on Wikipedia , and if you did be interested, you should definitely check it out about the band's progress. What I do want to say here is why I like their music and why it has appealed to me more than any of recent European rock bands.

The first reason I like them, is well, they are a European rock band. That European rock rocks is a given; Almost all American rock bands sound like one another in recent times (Save for Red Hot Chilli Peppers), and frankly it's a puzzle to figure out if a certain song was sung by Audioslave, Nickleback, Snow Patrol or Creed - they sound just the same! Contrast this to Europe - U2, Coldplay, Radiohead, Oasis - need I even say anything about any of them? And may I add another to that list - Kent.

The second reason I loved Kent is their style of music is follows a very techno-rock style, which I have come to be addicted to. Heavy beats with rock-ass guitars form a base for most (make that almost all) songs - clearly Kent knows their strength, and plays according to them. One can argue that they may not bring the variety to table as other European bands, but I am not complaining - because what they do, they do exceedingly well.

Another reason I highly recommend Kent is the lead vocals by Joakim Berg; I was highly impressed that their songs didn't really need him to use false-highs to sing in high pitch (something which Chris Martin, does, and does very well). His English renditions don't sound as appealing as Swedish (though I don't understand a word), but one cant complain about his vocals in his native language. Like Bono, Berg would be another candidate I could listen to on and on.

Most of their music would be seem like a toned down version of Rammtien, but that is what sets apart Kent. While still using similar style, Kent could as easily be inspired by Coldplay (to some extent - though both bands came out together around the same time - so its not possible to say who inspired whom), U2 and most notably Radiohead. Interstingly, although its rock music at its core, most of Kent's music can as easily be disguised as perfect dance tracks.

At this point you may wonder that I have go and on about Kent, without mentioning an album or single yet.

Kent has consistently dished out one good album after another, and I find it actually difficult to pinpoint any one album as a brilliant - they are all up with one another, but my personal favorite has to be Vapen & Ammunition. On the heels would be many consider their back to back masterpieces - Isola and Hagnesta Hill (both of which were released in English versions which went unnoticed). They released their 5th album last year titled Du & Jag Doden, which again continues their string of hits, and contains a lot many hits. They also released a b-sides album, which frankly speaking contains so many good songs that many fans wonder if it actually deserved to be a b-side album.

While almost all their songs are good to great to brilliant, and I have hardly come across any band song by them, here's a quick list of my favorite songs from Kent, which has dominated my music player for a while now.

Song (Album)

FF (Vapen & Ammunition)
Socker (Vapen & Ammunition)
Karleken Vant Ar (Vapen & Ammunition)
Dom Andra ( Vapen & Ammunition)
Parlor (Vapen & Ammunition)
Sundance Kid (Vapen & Ammunition)
Jag Vill Inte Vara Rddd (Kent)
Heavenly Junkies (Hagnesta Hill)
Music Non Stop (Hagnesta Hill)
The King is dead (Hagnesta Hill)
Mannen I Den Vita Hatten (Du & Jag Doden)
Romeo Atervander Ensam (Du & Jag Doden)
Max 500 (Du & Jag Doden)
Palace & Main (Du & Jag Doden)
Du Var Min Arme (Du & Jag Doden)
Den Doda Vinkeln (Du & Jag Doden)
400 Slag (Du & Jag Doden)

Do give Kent a try. You won't be disappointed!

Narayana Murthy Retires, Washington Post Makes a Mess

Suyog — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 00:04:55 EDT

I usually love the Washington Post and their news coverage - be it their reporting or the other aspects journalism, I think they have pretty high standards.

Until today.

Today, as I read this piece about Infosys's chairman Narayanmurthy retiring from the company, I couldn't help but notice the absurdity of the report, and its innumerable references to Indian lifestyle and mannerisms. To an extent, I am pretty offended by this article, and more so because the reporter of this article is a certain Rajesh Mahapatra - an Indian.

Here are some excerpts of that report, and why I think its badly written, very biased and offensive:

Throughout his career, Infosys Technologies co-founder N.R. Narayana Murthy has defied the customs of his native land.
He was an entrepreneur in a nation dominated by family businesses and a modest-living executive in a country where the rich are known for their excess.

Exactly what does that mean, "The rich known for the excess"? This is true for most rich people, India or otherwise. Larry Page and Sergie Brin are buying a Boeing 777 for partying. If that's not excess, what is? Why such a remark then about my country?

While Murthy's willingness to abide by the rules of his software company would be unremarkable in the West, it is groundbreaking in India, where founders _ and often their descendants _ tend to rule their creations like lords, making rules but not following them.

We are not a nation of Fidel Castros running their companies. And exactly where in the world do you see owners of the companies making rules and not following them? Half of America's CEOs should have retired 10 years back. Again, this really offended me - using terms like "rule their creation like lords" make for a very insipid and may I add pathetic writing.

Infosys also showed India that professionals can run a company as well, if not better, than the families, many of which thrive largely through government protection.

Again, why a reference to anyone? The obvious dig here is at Reliance, but why make it at all? If Rajesh Mahapatra has any knowledge then he would also know that lobbying is the biggest reason half the companies get away with many things in the US. Lobbying is what protected cigarette makers from labelling ingredients on their packs. Lobbying is what enabled beer companies to get away with their ads on TV.

And again, why the dig at families? The Tatas, the Birlas, the Ambanis, HAVE led successful companies, whether familial or otherwise. This obvious dig again reeks of shoddy writing standards set by Rajesh on himself.

What seems certain, however, is that Murthy will continue to buck the trend in India and live modestly, despite his wealth that's estimated at $1.2 billion.
Indians worth a fraction of that have servants to clean up after them, but Murthy is reputed to start each day by cleaning the toilet at his house in a middle-class neighborhood of Bangalore, India's technology hub.

This clearly offended me the MOST! Exactly why is it a problem that people have servants in their house to do the cleaning? Our culture is different, our lifestyle is different - and if this observation were made by a foreigner, I would have agreed, but an Indian doing the same? And please, don't berate others by showcasing Murthy's "toilet cleaning" act as act of greatness, which we other Indians "worth a fraction of that" are supposedly incapable of.

What a shoddy piece of journalism that was. Shame on you Rajesh Mahapatra, for writing such an ill-concieved article, and shame on you Washington Post, for letting such a badly written article get by your editors.

Inquilaab Zindabaad!

Suyog — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 12:04:17 EDT

It was the 50th anniversary, the golden anniversary of India's Independence, when the following happened. It remains perhaps the most memorable Independence Day ever for me.

It was the night of August 14th 1997; for a change, the sky was clear instead of being the usual rainy self. We were first year engineering students then, and as a privilege and safety measure to keep us away from ragging and "seniors" we were given a separate hostel. Since the first-years students lived, breathed and lived together away from anybody else, there was a natural bonding and brotherhood between us. It was as if we were a different family from the others, even though we'd known each other barely for a couple of months.

We rarely ventured out at night after 10.00pm in those days. Our hostel doors would close promptly at 10.00pm (of course there were thousand other ways to get out), but generally, the bizarre rule of locking the gates was in place to save the juniors from falling into hands of a monster senior looking for some ragging merry. The fact that locking the doors had neither prevented seniors from getting to their prey or hold us from getting out had not worked, had never seemed to bother anyone; the guards at the hostel saw this as a quick way to make money - if we returned late from a movie, and didn't exactly want to climb half the tree, then step on slab, squeeze ourselves through the bathroom window and reach our rooms, we would bribe the guard with a 5 or 10 rupee note to let us in. The warden couldn't care less; as long as no one died, everything was safe and sound.

Anyways, on this night however things were different. Nobody slept in hostel (well almost nobody) before 3.00 am usually, and that day, the overall buzz in the hostel was about Independence Day itself. After all, it was the 50th. At around 11.00pm, a sardar friend of hours stomped into our room and declared:

"Chalo march karne!" "March?" "Haan march. Abbe 50 years ka celebration karenge ke nahi? Sab ke sab ikaktha ho jaao neeche"

Invitation to gather up and do something together hardly required any more explanation. In a matter of minutes, the entire hostel of around 150 students had assembled downstairs.

"We are going to celebrate Independence Day today" declared the sardar to a buzzing crowd. The doors of the hostel had been locked as it was 11.00 pm, but it didn't seem to deter our sardar's plans. Surely he had something.

"We will march from the hostel to the college, then take the road outside of the college, go through the residential area, and come back to the hostel passing senior hostel. And everyone has to march and shout "Inquilaab Zindabad" as loud as possible".

Anything that had the "loud shouting" factor into it was enough to get our adrenalin pushing.

"Abbe surrdarjeee, how will we march without a flag?" asked a Gult. The sardar answered his question without a blink of an eye.
"Don't worry gultee, I have arranged it all. We will use a branch of a tree as our mast and this paper flag as our flag"

We were stunned - the sardar had exhibited brilliance, much unexpectedly nearing midnight. The paper flag of course was not a huge flag by any means - in fact it was about the size of 3 notebooks put-together. But what's size of a flag or a tree branch got to do with patriotism?

The next task was to get the doors opens by the guards. Though on another day the guards would have taken this opportunity to frisk money, perhaps sharing the sentiment of the momentous occasion, they let open the door without the slightest objection. (Or, it could have been that they didn't necessarily want to challenge raw young patriotic blood of 150 odd men).

Once outside, one of my roommates who hailed from Bengal brought about a twist to the plan, which was immediately hailed by all. He was immediately proclaimed a true "son of soil" and "desh bhakth".

His suggestion - "We should burn flags of Pakistan too as we raise our flag!"

A few more ideas were improvised then and there: Surprising, how patriotic fervor bought about unity amongst all of us. We would go about our march past, come back, and then we would create a bonfire outside the hostel, burn Pakistani flags, and generally celebrate this occasion.

We started our march past nearly at 11.20 or 11.30 pm - it would take us nearly half an hour we had reasoned for our march, but it actually took nearly 50 minutes for us to finish our march. March we did - initially the tempo was down; we were roaming in college and shouting "Inquilaab Zindabaad" - the problem was, who would hear us? But as we neared residential colonies, our fervor and shouting got louder, because well, we could make sure people heard us - the patriots.

I still remember people switching their lights on, shocked on hearing loud shouting "Inqilaab Zindabad". A couple of people swore at us, others complained about losing their sleep, and still some more actually had smiles on their faces as we passed through the area. Quite a few families smiled and joined in for a shout or two - maybe the fiftieth year celebration had indeed rubbed off on them. Why we were even let off by a police patrol jeep on duty that night. Though by the time we had neared our hostel our shouting had gone from "Inquilaab Zindabad" to "Pakistan Murdabad", making it a specifically India v/s Pakistan affair. (I think the excitement of burning our enemy's flags had taken over by then).

It was quite past midnight when we returned back at the hostel. Though our plans of hoisting and burning Pakistani flags at moment of midnight had passed, it didn't make a difference to us. Nearing back the hostel, immediately hidden bottles of fire friendly liquids were brought, sticks and stumps gathered, and basically anything that could be burnt were gathered to make a bonfire. A bonfire it was - a huge one, usually seen around the times of Holi.

However there was one small problem: Who would have a Pakistani flag anyways to burn?

The sardar simply suggested:

"Koi fikr nahi yaaron - if you have green shirts get them - Pakistan is green - that will be our flag!"

On a sunny day, such an idea would have sounded silly and preposterous, fitting a sardar only, but that night, it was the ultimate stroke of genius. Within minutes there were nearly ten to twelve assorted shirts and tees of various strokes of green. It was funny - those clothes were brought by friends who lived all over India. Though on other days, we would be cribbing about Northies and Southies, Punjus and Gults, perhaps the greater common hatred united us all that night.

Off those clothes went one by one. The choicest of abuses were hurled at Jinnah to almost anyone from Pakistan as the clothes were burnt. At the same time, we had our branch and our Indian paper flag flying high. As the last of the clothes was thrown into the bonfire, the celebration reached its climax - there was shouting, singing and dancing all around the bonfire. The ruckus had got the seniors interested as well, and quite a few of them joined us in the bonfire celebration. That one night, the senior-junior distance didn't matter as well.

Eventually, the celebrations died down nearly 4.00 am in the morning. The bonfire had almost burnt out, perhaps signaling our end to celebration too. Our voices had gone hoarse and most of us were dead tired from the celebration. It was wee hours of the morning before anyone actually slept in hostel.

That morning, August 15, most of us had missed breakfast (the cook in the kitchen had rambled on and on about thrashing a special breakfast as very few people showed up), but a rarity had surprised us - a good special lunch was provided for us by the cook. The adrenalin rush of the night was still there in many people - people recalled the last night, and how it was perhaps one of the best Independence Day celebrations for many of us.

9 years thence, I still believe it was the best Independence Day celebration I've been in; it was as if, we had been liberated.

Today, when I recalled that night, I wondered how a nation must have felt on August 15, 1947.

It must have been a special moment for a generation.

AOL Goofup Leads to Google Keywords Leak

Suyog — Mon, 7 Aug 2006 12:14:58 EDT

In what must be a stunning development across the web, AOL in its foolhardiness (depends on how you look at it) has released a research paper showing data of "top searched queries" on AOL by 650000 users resulting in a data set of nearly 20 million search terms.

According to AOL:

500k User Session Collection
This collection is distributed for NON-COMMERCIAL RESEARCH USE ONLY.
Any application of this collection for commercial purposes is STRICTLY PROHIBITED.

Brief description:

This collection consists of ~20M web queries collected from ~650k users over three months.

The data is sorted by anonymous user ID and sequentially arranged.

The goal of this collection is to provide real query log data that is based on real users. It could be used for personalization, query reformulation or other types of search research.

Why is this important?

Because AOL uses Google as their search engine. Which means anyone laying their hands on this data potentially has nearly 20 million queries to work with to come up with list of top keywords people are searching for!

Imagine the possibilities with this - anyone can manipulate this data with the search terms and make websites for those queries. Its obvious that Google is now going to be majorly pissed at AOL for leaking this data. But what is more concerning is the way AOL has released this keyword list, with not enough concerns about any privacy. (Links below on this).

I will be keeping a tab on this story as it develops and people come up with more and more data analysis of this data, and general views on this subject.
More resources on this huge development:
Forums.Digitalpoint.com is carrying a thread on this topic, and naturally everyone is stunned on being able to access the goldmine.
Plentyoffish.wordpress.com has already begun to analyze the search data and is posting the results of his analysis. Some of the queries are downright disturbing. Specific posts include "Aol data shows users planning to commit murderr", "AOL data showing Myspace growing SEO spam" "Myspace killing dating sites"

Head over to http://www.gregsadetsky.com/aol-data/ to find links to download this huge 500 Mb behemoth file.

Techcrunch is on top of the story as well, and echoes my sentiments as to why this is a huge concern as well:

The most serious problem is the fact that many people often search on their own name, or those of their friends and family, to see what information is available about them on the net. Combine these ego searches with porn queries and you have a serious embarrassment. Combine them with "buy ecstasy" and you have evidence of a crime. Combine it with an address, social security number, etc., and you have an identity theft waiting to happen. The possibilities are endless.

It will be interesting to see how Google / AOL react to this leak. I will also be keeping an update on my blog here.

Newly-Weds In America

Suyog — Thu, 3 Aug 2006 17:31:47 EDT

Ever gone to a Wal-Mart, a Target or Costco on a weekend? What do you see? Singles? Families? No. You will see hordes and hordes of newly-wed desi couples looking at every single thing on every single aisle with utmost interest and awe, noting down prices, making a mental calculation "My grocery store sells 1 Heinz Ketchup for 4$ - I can get three for the same price here!", and then not buying it, because they already have 5 more left of the pack they bought 6 months ago.

And if there is something of interest that they do want to buy for their house, do they?

No.

"BJs is right around the corner - may be we should check there first before buying this here honey! If its cheaper, then we can surely drive back!"

ARRRGH!

Welcome to newly wed desi couple's life in America.

Right after they marry till the time they have a child, most newly wed desi couples spend endless hours deciding if Rosso corsa red or Fuchsia red carpet would complement their bottle green theme of the living room. It doesn't matter if the only thing bottle green in the living room is the vase.

"Everything else is a shade of bottle green! You men won't understand it!" "I think the vase looks green because of the green stems in it - that's why its called bottle-green isn't it?" "Shut up. Leave this to us women!"

Having decided that either of the colors would complement well, what do they do? They buy both of them, lay out both of them, spend twiddling hours deciding which one complements the theme more, and decide to take one of them because "The other one has a maroon border, which doesn't match our theme!"

However it doesn't end there.

"Last week we were at this store, and wow, I just found the burnt siena red I was looking for to match my bottle green theme! So we are going to return our carpet and buy that one"

Another thing the newly wed desi couples immediately master in: returning, buying, and returning stuff. They can do this endlessly, week after week, month after month, without any kind of boredom setting in.

"How about sky diving this Saturday?" "No man, I and my wife need to visit Ikea to return the lamps we bought last week. We got some new lamps from Bova last week and they look much better, so we might as well return Ikea stuff." "How about golf later on in evening?" "Actually there's a summer sale going on at Kohl's. She got this new top last week, but that same top is now on sale this week. So we'll probably go there from Ikea to return those tops and buy the new ones!" "Lets meet up for dinner then." "Let us see - we also need to go to Wal-Mart and buy some household stuff. If we make it in time, let us meet!"

However, buying things for the house that they like doesn't mean they will keep it. After all others must like it too; if not, its going back to the store to be replaced.

"What do you think of this painting?" "This? (Looking dazed at something)" "Yes?!" "It looks like a collage of rotten eggs of various degree of rottenness." "Rubbish! It's a collage of marbles of different shapes and colors - rotten eggs?!" "Oh! Marbles is it? They look too huge to be marbles - I think they look more like rotten eggs." "Are you serious? My hubby said the same thing - they look too big for marbles.... But what makes you think they look like eggs?! Disgusting" (Looking at hubby) "Honey, what do you think - should we return it and pick up that other one we'd seen with flowers?"

A few days later, sure enough a new painting is up.

"What do you think now?" "Umm... it's a little too flowery!" "What do you mean?!" "Well, all you have is stems in that vase of yours, but you have flowers all over the painting - is that intentional?" "They are not stems - they grow!" "They do?" "Yes, but how is this painting" "Look at this flower - its almost the size of Antarctica. I think your rotten eggs looked better!" "You're so mean" (Looking at hubby) "I was telling you! We should have never returned it! Now we don't know if it will still be there..."

However its not just shopping bug that affects the newly married couples. Laundry is another area where even the newly married guys get trained in.

At the laundry:

"Dude, two loads?" "Yeah man - the whites should be washed separate and the colors separately!" "And I assume you will dry them also separately?" "Of course - you don't want the colors mixing" "What's that?" "That - its called Bounce. You put one tissue in the dryer, and your clothes become "smoother" after drying up - its really awesome" "Man you are actually going to pay twice for cleaning and drying - I could have bought a 6-pack with it!" "Karna padtha hain man..."

But there are some advantages too of having a newly married couple nearby - there is always something to eat at their house, whether you are hungry or not.

"Want Halwa? I made it for him and made a lot of it!" "You havvve to taste the Channa I made yesterday - too good!" "Why don't you make him taste that barfi you made - you will have no? You cannot say no - she will get angry"

Or drink...

"Do you want to drink something?"
"Yes how about..."
"...Tea? I knew you would say that - he doesn't like tea. But you do - lets have tea and Jeera cookies I got from Indian store last week!"
(To myself) "....a beer"
Hubby (hopefully): "I think he meant a beer" (so that he could grab one too)
"No, he wants Tea... say you want tea, because I want to drink tea!"

Newly weds in America also have everyone and their grandmother to visit on their weekends. So if they are not shopping returning or buying something, they are either inviting people to a boring party they host, or a getting invited to an equally boring party by someone else! (Note - in these parties, they never their friends [thankfully], but their dhoor ke sagevaale who couldn't make it to their wedding, or some old aunty who was never important to them in bachelor life, but now they must seek their blessings after marriage and types. And usually its those aunty-uncle type parties they get invited to).

But before inviting or going to a party, another round of shopping ensues:

"What should we gift them? What did they gift us?!" "They didn't? Oh yeah, we are meeting for the first time - what do you think they will gift us?" "Lets not take something very expensive"

And a day later....

"We got a gift for them yesterday, but I think its inappropriate; so we are returning it and buying something else!"

And then when you have your parties. Yes, the kind of parties you and your friends have when you do finally meet them on weekends - expect the newly wed couples to always cozy up to each other and sit as close as possible. They have to tell you about how they met, how he occupies three fourths of the bed, and how she feels cold even in 80 degree temperatures, and how they always fight when its raining, and make up once its stops raining, and how he has no sense of taste and keeps on watching TV, and she takes an eternity to dress up. All the while, the other newly wed couples will listen to it with utmost interest and happiness, then take it upon themselves to recite the exact same things the previous couple said, so by the time they come to you, you are already saccharine with the sugar floating around.

This is usually followed by a quizzical look and a question:

"When will you marry - we need another couple to share their stories now!"

Postscript:

I am not married.
I am not in a hurry.

Movie Review: The Da Vinci Code - The Da Vinci Mess!

Suyog — Sun, 21 May 2006 00:05:05 EDT

As I walked out of the theatre, I had just one question for Ron Howard - "How in the world do you make a mess out of a book, which was written in form of a movie screenplay!"

I had been waiting for Da Vinci Code since a long time now - having enjoyed the book thoroughly, I was hoping that with Tom Hanks at the helm, the movie would be nothing short of classic. However the choice of director had always bothered me; Ron Howard is not exactly a man with golden egg - his Apollo 13 was a great movie, however none of his movies like Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, were movies that you would consider repeat-watch material. All his movies since Apollo 13 have had good subjects, however dully executed. Though it must be said that each of his movies always boasted of excellent performances by its lead characters.
Its sad however, even that is sorely missing from The Da Vinci Code. For most part of the movie, Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon looks totally miscast and out of place - his acting is wooden and listless. The supporting cast does no better; Audrey Tatou as Sophie Neveu is just about adequate - she smiles at the right points, displays some amount of intelligence in others, displays sadness when necessary, and for most part plays the deer in headlights very well, as for the most part she is just an audience to Robert Langdon's "Did you know?!" quiz cards.

Hence, coming back to Ron Howard, I always had my premonition about how good this movie could turn out to be - what I didn't expect was how boring Ron Howard ended up making it.

Talking about the plot of the movie is pretty much pointless - everyone's grandmother has heard of "The Da Vinci Code" by now. And in any case, as the subject deals with solving puzzles and discovering hidden mysteries, it is always a plus if you have read the book before you saw this movie; unlike other movies where the movie might suffice, and provide an alternative to those who don't read novellas, the case with "The Da Vinci Code" is different.

Which perhaps, is also its biggest problem as while when translating it into a movie - for there is no conclusive way you can throw up a puzzle on screen and expect the audience to get involved and rack their brains, when its very well expected that the characters are going to solve the puzzle in the very next scene.

Having Dan Brown as the producer of the movie pretty much ensured that Ron Howard would not be given the one most important thing he needed: a pair of scissors. And editing services were never even considered I presume. Which, pretty much shows up in the movie - the movie is languishingly long at 2 hours 30 minutes, and often if I may say, boring!

There were several times I was actually checking out my watch to calculate the remaining time; While the part in the middle about Priory of Sion and its real motive for existence and protection of Mary Magdalene's family tree is dealt with superb control, drama and thrill in the book, the same part in the movie lacks any drama, thrill or the "wow" factor, thereby exposing the very flaws that were very much present in the book as well, but we as readers chose to ignore it over the thrill element - for how in the world can 3 people whose lives are in grave danger actually get into a theological debate about history 2000 years ago? In the book it makes sense - unfortunately in the movie, it looks whacked out.

Sequences like above are a plenty in the movie, where sequences in the book served as good pit stops for quick puzzles, history and hidden mysteries, sadly the same does not come across in the movie very well. The flashback scenes of Sophie seemed forced, so were the scenes of Opus Dei's Ascetic inflicting pain on himself.

Characterization is also perhaps another weak point of the movie for which an audience cannot really connect to the mysteries being solved - Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) or Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tatou) never comes across as a pair whose life is in grave danger, but instead come across a globe-trotting participants in an episode of "The Amazing Race". Also, Ron Howard in his attempt to "Offend no one" by making his characters milder, and appropriately changing a couple of dialogues and smoothening them out, ends up "Entertaining no one". St Peter in Da Vinci's "The Last Supper" painting is not even addressed, nor is the mystery behind "Madonna on the rocks" - perhaps he didn't want to take too many chances.

Controversies usually help a movie of such subject very well - why it helped the book tremendously! But controversy generates hype, and too much hype can lead too many expectations, and ultimately unfulfilled expectations. Same is the case with "The Da Vinci Code" - the movie ultimately becomes a victim of its own hype.

The movie is not as bad as critics claim it to be, and its content cannot be dismissed as an altogether ridiculous as well. The subject matter of the book has always been point of debate. Its definitely a one time watch, no doubts, and perhaps a few who didn't read the book may also find it interesting enough to pick up the book itself. But at the end of it, given the subject matter and amount of information Ron Howard had in his hands to play, the movie could have easily become an instant classic, as the book is edging towards being one.

Coming to the controversies and Church / Opus Dei and all that connection - as Robert Langdon says in the end (now I am sure this was added to the movie), why is it a problem if Christ had married Mary and they bore a child? Would that fact make Christ any lesser god or mortal? If Christ was a man, would it make him any less divine than he is? After all religion is a matter of faith and nothing else. However that debates in itself a point of another post.

All in all, Da Vinci Code, is well, quite a mess of a movie. Even Da Vinci would've preferred redrawing his paintings after watching the movie.

Website Review: Pandora - Open This Box To Discover Great Music.

Suyog — Fri, 19 May 2006 15:47:07 EDT

Imagine you are taking a computer based aptitude test like GRE. If you answer the first question right, the next question is more likely to be tougher. If you get that right too, then the next question may be even tougher. However if you answered it wrong, the computer will very likely ask you a slightly easier question. By the fifth or sixth question the computer has a good idea of your aptitude, and the remaining questions are there to more or less finalize your score.

If only, instead of that monstrosity called GRE, would you love it if your music player played the same Q & A with you to measure your music tastes? Welcome to Pandora.

What is Pandora? It can be best described by the people behind Pandora, from their homepage:

Ever since we started the Music Genome Project, our friends would ask:
Can you help me discover more music that I'll like?

Those questions often evolved into great conversations. Each friend told us their favorite artists and songs, explored the music we suggested, gave us feedback, and we in turn made new suggestions. Everybody started joking that we were now their personal DJs.

We created Pandora so that we can have that same kind of conversation with you.

Using Pandora is simple. Visit their website (http://www.pandora.com) and wait for their flash player to load. Everything else is explanatory. And if you don't figure out how to use their player, then you have to admit that you are really technically challenged, and need to get off internet. I mean it - it is that simple to create play lists on Pandora. Just wait for their player to load and follow the instructions.

For an indie music freak like me, Pandora is nothing short of a blessing. I used to spend a major part of my day listening to indie artists on Yahoo Launhcast, and end up hating more bands than I like. Now, Pandora has helped me discover bands that I am more likely to love and keep the irritating ones out, just by my learning my musical preferences, and save my time by not making me hear songs that I would have more likely hated any way.

Some of their other features also include sharing the radio station that you created; you can also search for other's stations on their network as well, though none of those features have impressed me. What has impressed me though is the way I can rate songs and reject the songs I don't like.

For example, based on my musical song, Pandora can play a song that it thinks I may like. I can chose to give the song "Thumbs up" or "Thumbs down" - if you "Thumbs down" a song for 2 times, rest assured that song is never played on the radio station. And similarly, songs rated "Thumbs Up" are more likelier to play on your radio station; you can also create your list of favorite songs by adding the songs that you hear to your list - I cannot iterate what a boon the favorites list has been to me - usually I end up adding a song to my favorite lists, and then using my favorite lists, I then hunt down the songs to download.

The other recent features that they added include RSS feeds for your own play-lists; Using their RSS feed you could create a list of songs you are currently hearing on your blog - already there are plug-ins available for blogger and word press; I am sure more will follow very soon. They recently teamed up with squeeze box too offers Pandora on a network radio; I am not sure if that thing will take off as expected.

One may argue that their effort is very similar to last. fm - which is quite true; but the fact that I don't have to install yet another player and that they have much better learning music engine has drawn me more towards Pandora than any other player.

However saying that, there are some quirks with using Pandora, that one may not find exciting - for one, you can never rewind your play list; their music license does not allow you to rewind to a song that you loved - you can skip songs (thank god!), but for a limited number. As of yet, Pandora does not have any ads on their music, which is a boon in itself. Their service is probably not available outside of United States, which could be a downer; however they will start service very soon. And the biggest complain of them all - Pandora will never play the exact song you created the station with - their license doesn't allow them to do that either.

In spite of those misgivings, I still think that Pandora is probably the best music player out there right now on the internet. The founders of the site are also musicians, who help them classify songs properly; their founders also maintain a blog on their site, and also tour around the country meeting music fans and listeners - a nice move to connect to your audience and also understand what they are looking for. I hope to attend one in D.C whenever they are next and chat up with them.

To sum it up succinctly - Pandora succeeds where all other online music players fail: Delivering music that you will love. Go give it a try!