A Few Election Slogans for New Delhi

दिल्ली में है मचा धमाल, केजरीवाल केजरीवाल।

पड़ गई उल्टी किरन की चाल, केजरीवाल केजरीवाल।

मंत्रीमंडल रहा डेरा डाल, केजरीवाल केजरीवाल।

रोज पूछते पाँच सवाल, केजरीवाल केजरीवाल।

किसको दोगे पॉंच साल,  केजरीवाल केजरीवाल।

Lollipop: Familiarity Induces Confidence to Waive Security

I recall an evening walk with my grandson, Arnav.  We turned into an alley that was new for him.  He immediately tightened his grip on my hand and said, "I don't like going too far away from home."  I picked him up and held him close to my chest.  He looked intently at my face and relaxed.  Sometimes I drive him to unknown places in the old car retained by my son.  He never becomes apprehensive as long as he is in the car.  He has known this car since his birth.  The familiarity breeds confidence in him.

Security in Lollipop, Android's latest version, seems to be modeled after Arnav. It implements security through password / patterns and at the same time tells the system to have confidence when it finds itself in a familiar place or when it sees a familiar face or when it is close to a familiar device.  In these cases it unlocks itself.  If none of the reassuring factors are present, it asks for the password or the pattern.

This confidence based security is implemented through Smart Lock.  It is called smart because it unlocks the system when having confidence in the owner, place or connected devices.  If the confidence is lacking the system can only be unlocked through password / pattern.  Smart Lock is called a Trust Agent that tells the system about what to trust.  The design suggests that other trust agents may also be added later on.

I have experimented with all the three Smart Locks (connected device, place and face.). Face based unlocking doesn't work every time.  This is only as expected.  Place based unlocking is working well.  Documentation says the device remains unlocked within 80 meters of the defined place.

Smart unlocking in the presence of a recognized Bluetooth device may prove a weakness if both the devices get stolen together!

Needless to add that Smart Lock can be activated only if a password or pattern is active.  Unless there is a lock there is nothing to smartly lock or unlock.  It is also a fallback if smart unlock doesn't work as happens many times in case of trusted faces.

The settings for Smart Lock are found here: Settings->Security->Smart Lock.

Interruptions, Vibrate and Silent modes in Lollipop

While browsing certain forums on the Internet, I have come across posts that seem to complain that true silent or vibrate only modes are no more available in the latest version of Android, namely, Lollipop.  Actually it is not so.  Not only are these options there, there are many other possibilities too.

In earlier versions one could choose between Mute, Vibrate and Sound (Normal) modes after a long press of the Power button. This was in addition to choosing between Power off, Airplane and other actions.  In Lollipop (stock version) the only option that you get after long pressing the Power button is Power off.

But now you get three options when you press the Volume Up or Down button while on one of the Home screens.  These options are labelled None, Priority and All.  These are the three Interrupt Levels.  None means that you don't want any interruptions in your work. If you choose None, the phone goes silent.  Silent here means no sound and no vibration either.  Though, any alarms set by you will sound.  If you want to mute the alarms too, you have to additionally set the volume to zero.  This is the equivalent of Silent mode that some users are not able to figure out.  Option All is the default and, of course, means the Normal mode.  The normal mode means that all sounds for incoming calls, messages, events and alarms will sound as configured.  If you have the option All chosen and just turn the volume down all the way to zero, the phone gets into Vibrate mode.  Also you may choose the option Priority and turn the volume to zero.  In this case the phone will vibrate only when there is a call (or message) from an important (starred) contact.

The Silent mode now has an additional feature.  If you press Volume Up or Down and choose the option None, you get an additional choice between Indefinite and defined number of hours.  So if you choose 1 hour, the default, the phone automatically reverts back to Normal mode after the defined period.

This feature of a preset time is also available for Priority interruptions.

Settings also allow you to automate Priority mode during predefined hours on chosen days of the week.

This finally brings us to the question, what is Priority?  To understand this we have to go to Settings->Sound & Notification->Interruptions.  The screen looks as follows:

Here, the very first item "When calls and notifications arrive" presents you three choices.  These are the same that you get when you press Volume Up or Down button.  Though the wordings are different, these correspond to All (Always Interrupt,) Priority (Allow only priority interruptions,) and None (Don't interrupt.)

The next item lets you choose what are priority interruptions for you.  You can specify whether you consider calendar messages (Events and Reminders) priority or not.  You can also define whether Messages are priority or not.  And, of course, you can specify whether or not phone calls are a priority for you.

For phone calls and messages you can further specify whether your choice applies to all calls and messages or are calls and messages from important contacts only to be considered a priority and allowed while all others may be muted depending on setting.  The contacts to be considered important have to be starred.  Any contact can be starred by touching the star at the top when you display that contact.  The star is a toggle and touching a starred contact unstarrs it.  It may be noted that calls and messages are not "prioritized" together but separately by turning their respective toggles on or off.  So you may consider calls priority while choosing not to do so for messages, or vice versa.

Alarms are always a priority and there is no way to set priority off for them.  But in case you want absolutely no interruptions including alarms, you can do so easily.  You have to turn the volume to zero using Volume Down key and choose None from the three options.  With this setting even alarms will not ring.

It may be noted that priorities and interruptions apply only to sounds.  The display always comes on when any interruption arrives.

It is always a good idea to have your important contacts starred.

You would have noticed from the screen above that you can also configure your phone for automating only priority interruptions during defined hours on selected days.  One would normally do that for normal sleeping hours.  If you want absolute silence during your sleep you can turn all the three Priority interruptions off.

This design is quite exciting and presents many possibilities through proper combinations of settings and quick options.

I will be happy to answer any queries in this matter.

Showing Off His Stripes

The simplicity of Prime Minister Modi's tastes as revealed by deliberately cutting the lower half of sleeves off his kurtas, is much talked about.  Again, one of the many aspects of Narendra Modi's life that have left deep impression on peoples' mind is his claim of having walked away from the hubbub of normal life and having spent two years in isolation in Himalayas.  Saints are said to do so with the intention of ridding themselves of their egos and worldly attachments.  People with such inclinations wear clothes merely to cover their bodies and not to adorn them.  Some of them don't wear clothes at all.  Some wear clothes with God's names printed all over it.

Thus It would seem that a person like Modi would be very unlikely to behave like Hosni Mubarak who used to have his name form the stripes on his suits.  But news channels are showing closeups to support the claim that he did.

Now, I don't know who made the suiting for our dear Namo.  I would like to hazard a guess that it might have been made by Vimal, Reliance's fabric division.  It is also possible that the cloth was made for devotees to wear like a Ramnami cloth but somehow made its way to NaMo's wardrobe.

Whatever be the case it has gained huge popularity.  Reliance will do well to encash this publicity.  They may do so by weaving such legends in their pinstripes as "I Love Namo!", "A Silly Citizen", "Citizens for NaMo" etcetera etcetera.  You may suggest more such legends directly to Reliance.  The best suggestion might win a pinstriped 'legendary' suit.

बेदी श्लोकावली

या बेदी भाजपस्य CM प्रत्याशी रूपेण चिह्निता।
नमस्तस्यै, नमस्तस्यै, नमस्तस्यै NaMo नमः॥

या बेदी कार्यकर्ता हृदयेषु क्रोध रूपेण संस्थिता।
नमस्तस्यै, नमस्तस्यै, नमस्तस्यै NaMo नमः॥

या बेदी कृष्णानगरे मतदातागणस्य हर्षवर्धिता।
नमस्तस्यै, नमस्तस्यै, नमस्तस्यै NaMo नमः॥

या बेदी अर्णव संगे वाक् युद्धेण पलायिता।
नमस्तस्यै, नमस्तस्यै, नमस्तस्यै NaMo नमः॥

या बेदी मफलर पुरुषस्य शास्त्रार्थ निमंत्रण उपेक्षिता।
नमस्तस्यै, नमस्तस्यै, नमस्तस्यै NaMo नमः॥

या बेदी अन्ना देवेन समस्त शिक्षा संस्कार मर्दिता।
नमस्तस्यै, नमस्तस्यै, नमस्तस्यै NaMo नमः॥

Garnering the Woman Power

Yes, it is about the recent influx of women into BJP.  Women from the field of social service as also other political parties are rushing to join the Bharatiya Janata Party.  The list includes such luminaries as Kiran Bedi, Shazia Ilmi, Krishna Tirath and ..., wait, no, Binny I am told is a man.  And Kiran Walia, it is reported, is sticking with Congress till the time of writing this post.

This induction of women power is indeed very foresighted on the part of BJP.  It also shows that it has not forgotten the history when one of its bachelor leaders was tormented by three spinsters.  Though the current leader is not really a bachelor, the terrific trinity is still around.  Also it must be said to BJP's credit that it has also been a great admirer of women power right from the days of that great woman, Indira Gandhi.  I am told that NaMo himself is a great admirer of the departed lady.

BJP has admired woman power and also suffered at its hands and so it cannot be faulted for garnering of the same power into its own folds.

However the womenfolk paying obeisance to Namo and getting an AmiT mark, will do well to keep in mind the fate of a very vocal and powerful lady in BJP who now stands subdued.  They will also do well to meditate on the fate of the first woman who is alleged to have pledged a lifelong allegiance to NaMo.

Buttons For Expressions And Panels for Buttons

On our high definition screens displaying 16M colors, we are forced by Facebook (FB) to live in the two-tone world of like or no like (Dislike is still not available except for pictures.)  'No likes' has a lot of ambiguity.  It could be because people have missed out on your post, or they were ambivalent towards what you said, or they wanted to say something different from Like.  That they disliked it is only one of the possible reasons for lack of likes.

While FB still has no plans to introduce a Dislike button for textual posts, it has introduced a large number of stickers.  After all in the real world we have umpteen kinds of reactions to what we see or hear.  Stickers wonderfully map a large nunber of these reactions into icon sized cartoons.

(Those who are not yet using stickers can get and use stickers by clicking on the smiley in the comment box that is appended to each post on the news feed page.)

Despite the wide range of stickers - new age emoticons - there is a problem with them.  Button clicks are captured and aggregated by the software and the final processed figure is presented for your easy comprehension.  The tabulation and aggregation has to be done by the user himself when the response is through a sticker.  And to top it you have to find a wide range of column headings for capturing and summarizing sticker responses.  These could be - Dislike, Damn you!, Terrific!, LOL, ROTFLMAO, Superb et al.

So, my question to you dear reader is this - If FB were to agree to put a whole dashboard of buttons for choosing a response to a post, how should these buttons be labelled?  I have already given my suggestions in the preceding paragraph.

I may add that there are many emotional posts where both Like and Dislike are absolutely inappropriate.  Appropriate responses might be Empathize, GWS (Get Well Soon) etc.  Thus apart from multiplicity of buttons probably we also need multiple dashboards for grouping the buttons.  The dashboards could be titled - Regular Responses, Emotional Responses, Satirical Responses etcetera.   How many more can you think of?

Dislike the Picture? Say so.

I remember having recently read that Zuckerberg is loathe to introduce a dislike button in FaceBook (FB.)  He feels that too many dislikes may disappoint a person away from the FB world.  Thus it comes as a surprise that FB has introduced a feature that allows you to dislike a picture.

To use it click on a photo in your news feed, scroll to the bottom, there alongside Share, Send and Like you will find an Options button.  Click it and Dislike will be one of the options shown.  When you have disliked a picture you get more options to either report the matter to FB or send a message directly to the person who posted the picture.

This dislike option naturally raises a question.  Why am I not allowed to dislike somebody's textual post, though FB has now agreed to give the option for pictures?  Is there something sacred about printed text?  And if it is so, how about the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words?  Going by this saying a picture should be even more sacred.  

It may be added that it has been argued by some people that denying the Dislike option for any form of expression is not conducive to the democratic way of life.

Further, there is a very anomalous situation resulting from this dichotomous approach. I am not allowed to dislike if you type out your text into FB, but I can dislike it if it is posted in the form of a picture or embedded in a picture, jpg or whatever.

So Mr. Zuckerberg, would you mind sharing with us the big picture in your mind: Any innate aversion to hieroglyphics?  Just kidding!

Mesmerized By A Father Figure (AAP vs Baap?)

All of us grownups have a child within that likes to frolic and have fun.  There is another child within all of us that looks for a fatherly figure that can protect him from the world at large.  The more masculine a look that this father figure wears, the more booming his voice, the more decisive his pronouncements, the more authoritative his approach the better.  For such a father seems capable of squarely meeting and repelling threats.

This is why people with such attributes are easily accepted as leaders, corporate, political or otherwise.  Though, it is doubtful if these qualities have a correlation with the kind of leader that a person will make.  After all just repelling threats is not the whole job of a leader in today's civilized world.  Yet, mild mannered introverts do not inspire enough confidence in the child inside others to accept them as leaders even though many of them are likely to make a far better leader.  Another problem with the milder variety is that they will not go ahead and grab the position while the other category is just too eager to do that.

These observations are borne out by the fact that the media persons are often not willing to show the same deference to Kejariwal in their interactions as they do to Modi.  They do not feel intimidated by Kejariwal and are loath to accept him as an authority figure and that shows in their approach.

A friend of mine was discussing the current political scenario in Delhi.  He said that while he is all for what Kejariwal stands for but the very sight of Modi so inspires him that he cannot but vote for BJP.

I say ask the child in you to be quiet while the adult in you assesses the scenario, available options and likely outcomes.

Multimedia Poetry

TV has turned HD-LED,
Gone are DVD and CD,
No one ever watches DD.

Music now plays on your phone,

And if you are tired of ceaseless drone,

Use a noise canceling headphone.

Paint on your fablet colors' haze

Display it on your FB page

If no likes then fly into a rage.

For NRIs and Their Indian Attorneys - Part II

This is in continuation of my earlier post.

Having hit a wall in my efforts to get the flat booked by my son and daughter-in-law registered in their name as their POA (Power of Attorney) holder,  I talked to the Chief Legal Adviser (CLA) who was reluctant to provide my any formats for any additional documents to be obtained.  After much persuasion he dropped a few hints and asked me to consult a lawyer in the matter.  I also did some research on my own.

Finally it was decided to get an Irrevocable Special Power of Attorney executed by both the applicants jointly from USA.  It was deemed prudent to give complete references to the earlier two General POA instruments executed in my favor by each of the two applicants individually. I will publish the draft of the document in my blog later on.

Inquiries showed that this document will have to be notarized in USA and further apostilled by the state secretary of California - the state where the executants reside.  I also checked with an acquaintance who is an officer in the UP government on this.  He gave me some valuable advice.  He said this document has to be further countersigned by the Indian Consulate and that it does NOT require registration in India.  However a small stamp duty has to be paid on it to legalize it for use in India.  He advised me that for this purpose I should take the sealed cover as received from USA to the office of ADM (Revenue) in my district who will authorize the payment of stamp duty.  If you want to read more on this topic you may read this post.

It seems that people in similar circumstances do make the mistake of taking such documents directly to authorities like LDA without getting them legalized as stated in the preceding para.  I wonder what price they are made to pay for this blunder.

So next I took this legalized document to LDA.  It took a long time to traverse the short but tortuous path from the dealing clerk to CLA's table.  As I sat across from CLA, I requested him to take a look at my file.  He took out the document and straightaway looked for the evidence of payment of stamp duty without paying any attention to the contents.  He looked a little crestfallen when he saw that the document had been properly legalized.

This cleared the deck for execution of the deed by LDA and its registration in the sub-registrar's office.  The registration unfortunately took two visits.  It will make the subject matter of a later blog.

Ignorance of Law excused?

Ordinary mortals are often told in stern words that ignorance of law is no excuse.  However it seems that this dictum is not applicable to higher mortals who are in the business of enforcing laws!  Here is an example.  India has subscribed to Hague convention, an international convention.  Under this a legal document executed in a foreign country and meant to be used in another country can be certified (apostilled, a French word, as used in the treaty) by recognized state authorities in the country of execution and then the documents become legal.  There is no need for any further legalization in the country where it is to be used.

Normally a document to be apostilled is first notarized in the country where it is executed and then apostilled by the recognized government authorities there.

However my personal experience in the state of Uttar Pradesh shows that at least two more layers are added post apostille.  The first layer is the requirement of an apostilled document being certified / countersigned by the local Indian consulate.  Here is what the site of the Indian Consulate at San Francisco says:

• Apostille Convention: the Hague Convention, to which India and USA are signatories, abolishes the requirement of legalization for Foreign Public Documents. With the certification by the Hague Convention 'Apostille', the document is entitled to recognition in India and vice versa and no certification by the Embassy/Consulates of India is required. The convention applies to public documents which have been executed in the territory of one Contracting State and which have to be produced in the territory of another Contracting State.   
• However in many places in India, they would easily recognize the attestation by the Indian Embassy/Consulate and hence may ask for attested copy despite the document already being apostilled.  Hence, to avoid any inconvenience, if you wish to have the apostilled document also attested by the Consulate, you may apply to the Consulate.    
• The Consulate will attest the documents only after they have been first apostilled by the state authorities concerned in the US. Apostilling is done at the offices of the Secretary of State where the applicant resides.

Emphasis added by the author. Does this not condone the ignorance of authorities in India?

Things don't end at this.  Once the documents are received in India you have to approach the local revenue authorities.  The envelope containing the document has to be opened in their presence.  The idea is to make sure that the documents were actually shipped from abroad and not fabricated locally!  On top of this you submit an affidavit to the effect that the documents are truly genuine, submit an application requesting legalization, grease appropriate palms for sanction and finally pay a stamp duty of Rs.50/=.  The payment is certified by the Superintendent of Stamps.  Only now will the document be accepted as valid in India by authorities in India.

Apart from questions of harassment, does this requirement of countersignature and payment of stamp duty not violate the Hague convention to which the country is a signatory.

Religion & Terrorism

These days leaders, media and intellectuals don't tire of mindlessly repeating the phrase 'Terrorists have no religion.'  This flies in the face of facts.  Terrorists kill in the name of religion and to uphold the tenets and honor of their religion.  The menace of terrorism will never be eliminated as long as we continue to deny this stark correlation.

Violence in one form or the other is sanctioned by all religions in varying degrees (Jainism may be an exception as it upholds nonviolence as its fundamental tenet.)  Today if this correlation is more visible in case of one particular religion, the reason is not difficult to guess.  Wherever religious instructions are imparted earlier or more rigorously than modern and secular school education, they harden into a core of violent faith that becomes immune to reason.  Children  who are unfortunate to be so groomed turn into deeply religious persons ready to be commandeered by cunning and villainous religious leaders.  These leaders are dead against secular education as evident from the fact that one group of them has named itself Boko Haram meaning modern education is heretic.

Hence the solution to terrorism is to give up this ostrich like mentality and state clearly that too deep a religiosity leads to terrorism.  Once this is admitted, steps can be taken to delay and moderate religious instructions if not to eliminate them altogether.

Lollipop Adventures

I received Lollipop update (Android version 5.0; now 5.0.1 on Nexus 4 and 5.0.2 on Nexus 7) on my Nexus 4 phone OTA (over the air) about a month ago and loved the new OS.  I kept checking for OS updates on my Nexus 7 (2012) tablet, but it failed to show up OTA.  Finally I decided to download the factory image from Google and update it manually.

This called for loading of JDK (Java Development Kit) and Android Studio on top of it on my Windows laptop.  Thereafter certain components of SDK Manager had to be downloaded using Android Studio.  Finally, as required, I added an environment variable JAVA_HOME with its value set to the directory holding JDK and added the SDK directory to system PATH.  This was done using System Properties on the laptop.  All this labor made available 'adb' and 'fastboot' commands in the 'cmd' window on the laptop for unlocking the bootloader and readying the device for flashing it from the image downloaded and unzipped by me earlier.

Doing all this took whole of a day.  I was afraid that I might end up bricking my device but went ahead nonetheless.  Finally I did it and felt great when my tablet booted with Lollipop 5.0.2 for the first time.  However the feeling was soon gone as the browser started becoming unresponsive and crashing.  This unresponsive attitude spread to other apps and the OS as well.  Soon I was rebooting the device every few hours.  Replacing the Chrome browser with Dolphin provided some relief to start with but that too started fading soon.

This called for more research.  The research suggested that I wipe my cache partition using low level system commands.  For this you have to get into the mode that you would for factory resetting your device - by powering it off and then on by pressing Power and Volume Dn keys together.  At this level there is no touch screen and you navigate the menu using volume up and down buttons and select an option using the Power button.  So you choose Recovery Mode and then press Volume Up and Power buttons to get the next menu.  From this menu you choose the menu for wiping cache.  Finally you reboot.

Cache wiped, the device did show a little more life.  But alas, it faded pretty quickly.  Finding myself back to square 1 I thought of killing the Lollipop and taking the retrograde step of loading the Kitkat image back on my device.  However something at the back of my mind told me to check the sync settings.  So I navigated to Settings->Accounts->Google.  When I touched my displayed Google account a large number of apps and components appeared.  All had a check in the box against them.  Desperate as I was I unchecked all the boxes.  Presto!  The system was running fine and the lags, disappearing and freezing screens were all gone.

Becoming a little bold after my experiment, I checked a few boxes in my Google account sync settings back to on.  These were Mail, Contacts and App Data.  The system is still working fine and I hope with a certain level of confidence that it will continue that way.  I have a suspicion that unchecking the box against Chrome alone would perhaps be enough to solve the problem.  However, I have deferred the experiment for the time being.

So if Lollipop is making you desperate, head straight to sync settings for your Google account on the device.  The solution lies there and not in the cache partition.

Wish you a sweet Lollipop experience.

Religious Fanaticism - A Challenge to Humanity

A friend used to tell me of his uncle's prescription for ridding India of all the evils plaguing it.  It was to ask all people above 8 years of age to stand along the shoreline of India and then push them far out into the ocean!  He firmly believed that once you have crossed that age threshold, you would never be able to unlearn or rid yourself of the belief and value system that the society has drilled into you.  Religions understand this and want initiation to start with birth itself.  ISIS, doing unthinkable crimes in the name of a religion, also understands the principles well.  And this is why they are training children as young as 3 years into beheading dolls, handling firearms and killing people.  These hapless children will grow up into criminals beyond reform.

Thus it is of paramount importance in secular societies that reason and secular values be instilled into children at an early age, alongside any religious training imparted by their communities if not before it.  Imparting these skills and values later on in life does not help.  The values and beliefs imbibed earlier in childhood prevail and hold fast.  This is borne out by well educated software engineers and doctors turning into terrorists.

States are not doing enough to instill secular values from early childhood.  But there are, and I would like to believe that all along there have been, parents who pass on overt or covert messages to let their children know that it is okay to question whatever is being taught in the name of religion.  Some communities have even stopped or allowed to wither away formal religious instructions.  Priests in such communities often openly rue about this loss.

Today Muslims are seen as one community that persists in indoctrinating their young children hard with their network of Madarsas.  It is unfortunate that these Madarsas are patronized by governments too.  And this may explain prevalence of terrorism among even well literate Muslim youth.  I say this at the risk of being accused of religious profiling.  And yet I say this because this is what Muslim community needs to do to get rid of this branding and this evil plaguing their community - go easy on religious instructions and make your children understand that their religion is just one of many that exist on this earth.

When you have not been indoctrinated hard in your childhood, you are more likely to grow into a person who appreciates his religion as merely a legacy, both good and bad, from his forbears, and yet realizes that it is not worth killing or getting killed for and that it may have weaknesses in the current age and context.  It is like a happy child who grows up to realize that his father isn't really a superman but only a man and an average one at that, and yet loves him for all the care and love he bestowed on him.  Such a person will not kill or maim another person who refuses to acknowledge his daddy as the best!  Only such persons can truly appreciate the beautiful in a religion and reject the ugly in it.

Also any hope for reform of errant fanatics from a religion can come only from saner members of the same community.  They alone have a chance of being heard.  They wittingly or unwittingly contribute to the common resources of the community that are then usurped by the fanatics.  Chetan Bhagat recently argued in an article in Times of India that peaceful moderate members must not be forced to oppose the fanatics from their faith.  I do not agree with his argument and the community must assume responsibility for its errant members rather than relying on others to reform or eliminate them.  They must raise their voice loud enough to startle the fanatics and reassure potential victims.  And then mankind as a whole must vow to eliminate this clan of demons who are killing and demonizing children and abusing womenfolk.  Will the mankind unite to do so?  Well, we have not done so for eliminating global poverty or deforestation.  Let us hope we do better on this front.