Give me my liberty or give me a sandwich.

Friday, January 13, 2006

Humans are peaceful and benevolent by nature

We have beeen killing each other no one knows since when. The list here is certainly not exhaustive

  • 17th and 18th century: Spanish and Portuguese, wiped out natives from South-America, killing nearly 150 million Incas and others in the process. Much of the work was carried out using axes and hatchets. Americans, British and French join the party and add 50 million of their own [1]
  • Americans took the trend to next century, North-America is free of natives at a price of $1/Indian head
  • Germans under Hitler butchered 6 million (mostly Jews) in 5-6 years. Japaneses ransacked Korea and China, 35,000 were killed in Nanking only.
  • 6th and 9th Aug, 1945, Hiroshima and Nagasaki
  • Tutsi-Hutu riots flare up in Rwanda, Hutu kill some 800,000 Tutsi, taking out a big proportion of the Tutsi population, later Tutsi make scales even by butchering 200,000 Hutu [2], taking the tally close to (or past) 1 million
  • Self-proclaimed non-violent Indians joins the ranks, and murder 10 million unborn girls, in a never seen before, kind of ethnic cleansing

None of them died in a battle. They were helpless people, without any kind of protection, most notebaly the unborn babies. Some of them are remembered, others are not. Remembrance is not because of some sudden flash of regret or repentance. Mostly because tables were turned and victims got the chance to write log books.



References:
[1] : The Barbarian Invasions, the Movie
[2] : Could not find reference for this, but I will put in one soon

Friday, January 06, 2006

Intel (no more) Inside

What happens when MBAs take over from engineers?
With sincere apologies to my MBA friends, you have no idea which way earth is spinning, and you imagine you can organize a clone war. Because of you, Intel at top of the marketing food chain, pops up a crappy "leap ahead" campaign, in place of something like "Intel Inside". It is not disappointing, it is nauseatic. "Leap Ahead !", give me a break. You even had to take away the dropped "e". I am not a big Intel fan. They make good processors and they make bad processors along with lot of good money. But Intel Inside was cool. Alright, nothing goes on forever. But Leap Ahead? Its not just unimaginative, it is impossibly unimaginative. Sometime I wonder why you guys pay insane amounts of money to business schools. I haven't seen anything good coming out of them. So much trouble to learn MS Excel. Bad education apart, how can someone be so braindead. Leap Ahead! gosh !!

I assume Something like this might have happened:

Mr. H is head of human resources. Mr. H is having tough time justifying his big paycheque. Being an HR head is a tough job too. One has to pass those 8 hours minute by minute. So Mr H comes up with this brilliant idea of new campaign and new company logo. Great idea indeed. Not only it will keep him busy for few months, he will have a sense of accomplishment too.

Mr. M is chief of Marketing and Sales. He has a tough job too. His returns are not expanding. When 90% of the world already has P4, and P5 is not coming out any soon (damn, these stupid engineers), doubling sales this year seems impossible. Idea of new outlook seems quite promising to Mr. M too. Mr. M agrees with Mr. H and facelift is ordered.

Mr. E is there too, He leads engineering. He is under tremendous pressure to cook up something, so that people who just bought HT, might be convinced again to upgrade it, for $10,000. But dual-core wasn't convincing enough. He too needs an escape route. Logo must be easier than P5, thinks Mr. E.

Mr. F from finance is sure about his running the house. He has rather unamusing attitude about petty things like campaigns and logos. But if he lets all those lesser morons decide anything, company is going to be in deep shit and he'll have to live with guilty-feeling for his inactions, for rest of his life. Mr. F, despite being very busy, as he works 24/7, squeezes in sometime for new venture.

But problem is, Mr. F doesn't like Mr. M. While Mr. H is not so bad with Mr. F but has huge complications with Mr. M and Mr. E. Mr. E is bitter with life, in general. He has complains about never getting what he deserves. But its time to bury the hatchet for the sake of company. After a month long brain-storming, they are sitting in conference room. No one is satisfied with others idea. Mr. E thinks quanta pro is great, but Mr. H knows its not E's turn this time. Mr. H presented what his wife suggested, but everyone inside the room (and outside as well) knows that. Its a stalemate, as everyone wields a veto. Pops up Mr. BG. He has majority voting rights. Mr. BG is man of simple tastes, has always maintained that dropped "e" was gaudy and inside was obscene. Mr. BG's has a lifelong unfulfilled desire too. He had presented leap ahead as slogan, for his primary school football team, which teacher decided was lame. This was his chance to prove her wrong. Mr. E thinks its lame too, but its not his choice this time.