I came to the US in 2003. I earned my Ph.D. from one of the top university systems in the world. I’ve since worked at two startups. Aren’t these small businesses the engines that drive the US economy? Would you disagree that I have made meaningful contributions to the wealth, the economy and the intellectual property of this nation?

My wife is an artist. She earned her Master in Arts & Technology from one of the finest art schools in the world (and bore much of the financial burden of attending a private school). She has since created art that has been displayed and recognized all around the world. Would you disagree that she has made meaningful contributions to this society?

As law-abiding (non-permanent) residents, is it too much to expect that our families will visit us, once in a while?

Every parent wants to see the lives of their children; it gives them comfort knowing that their child has a good, fulfilling life. My parents have already visited us many times. And always returned back to India before the expiration of the authorized duration of their stay.

But my wife’s parents have never ever been outside India. Not surprising then, that she has been dreaming and planning about them visiting her ever since her first day in the United States.

It all sounds so simple. So natural. Of course, they want to visit!

And yet, you rejected their visa application. On grounds that they did not demonstrate “strong ties to India”?! We tried hard to clarify, to explain something which should have been so obvious, and it was like talking to a wall. So let me make another attempt here.

My in-laws run a successful, family owned, 30-years old pharmaceutical company. They live in a joint family, many members of which are still quite dependent on them for support. Their entire life is based in India. There are kids to look after. There are elderly to take care of. They own property in India. You think they want to uproot all of that and intend to permanently immigrate to the US? For what? In fact, neither me nor my wife have any immediate family in the US!

Why is this so complicated? They are just parents who want to spend some time with their kids. They are not criminals. They are not terrorists. They do not mean any harm. They don’t even know why their visa got rejected!

I realize that the volume of applicants from India is so high that you’ve had to put a lot of process in place, to go through that volume in an efficient manner. But, this process does NOT work. Somewhere between the forms, the rules, the lines, the terse, cold interviews, you forget that not everyone is trying to “game the system”. These are just regular people, wanting nothing but to spend some time with their loved ones. The process has sucked the humanity out of the system — we are all just application IDs.

This arrogance, this helplessness … well, it is cruel.

Being able to see your loved ones should be a right, not a privilege

Some observations:

• If you have not filed your tax return for years, the IRS should be coming after you and auditing you! The IRS should relentlessly pursue you for your unpaid taxes.
• I’m sure there are a lot of folks out there who are hurting and are not able to pay their taxes for legitimate reasons. But the ad does not convey that at all. It almost sounds like “Hey, I’m going to tell you how you can get away from the IRS and not pay your taxes”
• Everyone knows how targeted television advertising is. For instance, if you watch Comedy Central, you’ll see a lot of ads around dating websites, calling services for singles etc. I see the the TaxMasters ad on CNN all the time. Wonder what that says about CNN’s audience.
• This ad sucks because it doesn’t really engage the audience, the value proposition is not clear to me at least and there is absolutely no creativity.
• But I gotta hand it to TaxMasters — I was pleasantly surprised to discover their blog and their sense of humor.

More to come.

I’m a Linux guy; Windows was never my thing honey
Apple seemed interesting, but required too much money

I have ideological problems with Apple too,
What with all the DRM and hardware lock-in they do.

But people are crazy about Apple, and I used to wonder why,
I had a dream: to own Apple products that I didn’t have to buy.

A few months back my wife gifted me an iPhone, bro!
And then at work I got the new Macbook Pro!!

Thus suddenly I was an Apple user,
Sure, some people called me a sore loser.

Allow me to share my early experiences,
Some accolades and some grievances.

I’ll try to keep a neutral tone,
Shall focus on the Mac and not the iPhone.

Integration, integration, integration!
The attention to detail gives a wonderful sensation.

User experience is the key,
Excellent design is for all to see.

They’ve taken care of the enterprises,
Exchange support, Google integration — no surprises.

It’s by far the best laptop I’ve ever used,
The hardware is slick, the software is smooth.

But boy do I hate iTunes,
It’s so broken it should be called Looney Tunes.

Try connecting multiple iPhones to the same device,
Or plug your iPhone in another laptop (poor advice).

Sync is threatening, sounds like a bully.
“I shall sync or destroy”, that just sounds silly.

The Terminal app should aspire higher,
No 256-color support leaves much to desire.

Keyboard shortcuts are hard to find,
Change them? you must be out of your mind!

“Features” like “Spaces” are overrated,
More like awaited, belated and deflated.

I prefer iTerm over Terminal and Adium for chat,
Chrome over Safari, and this over that.

I’m certainly not blown away,
But a Mac is convenient, I have to say.

Over the past few years, the domestic airlines industry in the US has seen a steady decline. Faced with the recession, they have been devising ever new ways of squeezing money out of unsuspecting customers. There are a few exceptions (such as Southwest), but by far, flying is usually not a very pleasant experience for me.

Little did I know that European “budget” airlines are, in fact, even worse than their American counterparts. I recently had the misfortune of traveling on one such airline — easyJet. There was nothing easy about the experience, and if it is up to me, I will never ever travel on easyJet again.

First, let me provide some context. We were planning to do a break journey in Europe on our way to India. In the past, we have always carried two checked bags and one hand bag per person for India trips, for obvious reasons (such a long journey, may be once in a year — you just end up carrying a lot of stuff. Even more importantly, you end up bringing back a lot of things!). Unfortunately, just a few days before we were scheduled to fly, American Airlines decided to start charging a $50 fee for the second checked bag on flights to Europe/India. This actually was not that big of a problem, since we had one flight on easyJet and they already had similar restrictions in place.

Actually, I find easyJet’s baggage policy extremely strange. Here are some salient features (emphasis mine):

• Every item of standard checked (‘hold’) baggage will incur a fee.
• Payment of the fee provides you with an aggregate allowance of 20kg across all pieces of hold baggage which may only be increased by payment of excess weight charges.
• Where checked-in hold baggage exceeds 20kgs in weight (subject to the above rule), each passenger will pay an excess baggage charge per kg.

Finally the fateful day arrived for our easyJet flight. At the check in counter, the gate agent weighed our “hold” bags (1 per person). Since we had been deliberately careful about packing, they were both less than 20kg each so did not pose a problem.

Next came the hand luggage. Now, in prior communication with easyJet, I had been told that easyJet did not impose any weight restrictions on the hand bags, as long as they fit in the overhead bins. To quote the website (emphasis mine):

Save where the limits set locally are more restrictive, passengers are permitted one standard piece of hand baggage to a volume limit of 55x40x20cm (including wheels and pockets) (“Standard Hand Baggage”). It must fit without force into the gauges provided at check-in or departure gates. No weight restriction applies within reasonable limits — i.e. a passenger must be able to place the piece of luggage safely in the overhead storage bins without assistance.

I have traveled extensively with the hand bags that we had and never ever had any problems with any airlines. I’m convinced that our gate agent was determined to give us grief, by the rude manner in which she dealt with us, her hostile attitude and body language. In any case, she asked us to show that our hand bags “fit without force” into the bin. Unfortunately our hand bags were shaped more like bags and less like suitcases (which is what the bin was designed for), so they did not fit comfortably, but they did fit.

I tried to explain the agent that we never had problems with the bags before, that they were empty on the top so looked bigger than they actually were. Furthermore, we were in transit to an international destination, and had no issues in the first leg of our flight (on American Airlines). But the gate agent was simply not ready to listen — it was almost as if she had made up her mind to spoil our morning.

Arguing with her was frustrating since it was not really a dialogue. I might as well have been talking to a wall. She would not listen to reason, or show any compassion. Worried that we might miss our flight, in a moment of panic, I decided to just pay whatever fee was required, and get on with it. Big mistake. As it turns out, easyJet not only charges for the number of checked bags, but after 20kg, there is a per-kg excess baggage charge, which needless to add, is exhorbitant. Long story short, we ended up paying a ridiculous fee for our hand luggage.

To add insult to injury, while waiting in the gate area for boarding to begin, I counted at least two dozen passengers whose hand bags were at least as big as ours, if not bigger. There were bags in all shapes and sizes, and several which could not have fit into the bins no matter what. I spoke again to the ground staff and they deferred saying that we had to discuss it with the airlines. It turns out discussing anything with easyJet is not easy either — they don’t have offices at most airports they serve, finding a phone number on their website was a challenge, the online customer support was basically just boiler plate responses.

It was an extremely frustrating and disappointing experience. I was extremely angry at that time and had thought I’d take this up with easyJet as soon as I got back. But just thinking of the time and energy it would take just to get to speak to some human at easyJet who would actually try to listen and understand our situation is disheartening. At least, I’ve learnt my lesson.

The irony that I’m talking about is this. Throughout my undergraduate and graduate education, I was mostly a “systems and networking” person. Obviously I took classes in several other areas as well, and I think I learnt or retained something from most of these classes, with one exception. I took a database course in IIT, and then once again at UCSD, and both times I failed miserably to appreciate the subject.

At this point it would be easy to blame the faculty for not doing a good job, but I’m confident that the fault was no less my own. I remember sleeping through a lot of my database classes :(

Anyways, the point is that here I was, with a systems PhD, with zero background in databases and having pretty much zero appreciation for databases as an area, and where do I end up working at? A company that builds distributed database systems. I think its funny in a way. But the great thing is that I’m learning so much about databases now and appreciating the kind of engineering insight and effort that goes into building a performant, robust distributed database system.

I beg to differ.

Allow me to bring to your attention the series of innovations Gillette has “pioneered” in the past three decades or so (courtesy Wikipedia):

• Double-blade razor: 1971
• Triple-blade razor: 1998
• Battery powered razors: 2004
• Razor with five blades: 2007
• Razor with rear trim blade (for a total of six blades!): 2007

Notice a trend? Going from two to three blades took nearly three decades. Going from three to five blades only took three years. Thats an exponential growth! If the trend continues, I predict that we will see a new razor from Gillette later this year that will have 6 blades or more.

No seriously, think about this for a second: the only real innovation shaving products have seen in the past 50 years is increasing the number of blades. And somehow we should believe that this is the best we can get? And this company is actually making money?

I’ve been using Gillette for more than a decade now and I can tell you that my shaving experience has not gotten one bit better. For a long time, I used the two blade Sensor Excel and I was very happy with it. Until Gillette executed what is known as planned obsolescence. I could not find blades for my razors anywhere. I was hence forced to “upgrade”, and I went with the latest Gillette Fusion. Even with 5+1 blades and the satisfaction of a tiny AAA battery buzzing the razor, shaving has not gotten any better.

I did use a Shick Quattro one time and I actually think their blades are a lot better and long lasting. As soon as I have used up all of my Fusion blades, I am going to give the Quattro another try. This is an industry that could use some serious innovation.

First, I successfully defended my PhD on October 31st. I have since finished all the paperwork and filed my dissertation. I am now, officially, Dr. Gupta! :-)

Second, I had a blast doing job interviews, and was in the difficult, but fortunate position of having to choose among several excellent offers, especially given the current economy. I will be joining Aster Data in a few days!

And finally, I got married to this most wonderful woman! While our wedding was crazy and intense and hectic and a ton of fun, I have come to believe that the reason marriages are more successful in India is that just one marriage drains you so much that you can’t even think about ever getting married again :-D

The gist of the paper is very similar to the main thesis of Matrix. In the Matrix, the entire human population was simply living their lives in a simulation. The paper is a slightly more formal presentation of a similar concept, except that the paper actually tries to make a convincing argument that at least one of the following three propositions is true:

1. we will never reach a stage where we will be able to simulate our own ancestors (i.e., we’ll become extinct before that)
2. even if we do attain the technical prowess to run such simulations, we won’t be interested in running significant number of such simulations
3. we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation.

You can read the paper for full details, but in brief the argument goes something like this. Lets say we do become sufficiently technologically advanced to run planetary scale simulations of the entire human race, and we are interested in running such simulations. In that case its highly likely that we will run full scale simulations of our ancestors. All things being equal, we have no reason to believe that our particular existence is special in any sense — that is, we have no reason to believe that it is our particular lineage/evolution that will lead to all the advances that will lead to all the simulations. In particular, if we believe that there will be a large number of simulations, then it is just as likely that we are ourselves part of some such simulation.

The paper itself is very interesting and open to all sorts of debate. In this post however, I just want to focus on one particular aspect. Nick talks about the possibility of running simulations within simulations. That is, lets say humans develop some ultra gigantic computers to run large scale fine grained simulations of their ancestors. Now, within this simulation, given enough time and compute power, eventually the simulated ancestors themselves will develop their simulated version of the giant computers within the original simulation. In contemporary parlance, these would be called virtual machines. Not only that, they would be very special kind of virtual machines, because they are recursively virtualizable. That is, if the simulation proceeded indefinitely, then the simulated ancestors will start running their own simulations, within which the simulated simulated ancestors eventually will start running their own simulations and so on.

Now, the notion of recursively virtualizable platforms is slightly hard to grasp and even harder to formulate. I detected a slight (perhaps unintended and merely technical) contradiction in the paper. Nick argues that if we are indeed living in a simulation and have no way of “looking outside the box”, we have no way of determining what the natural laws look like in the “real” world. That is, it might very well be the case that the real Universe (in which the simulation in which we are simulated, is running) is governed by laws that we have no clue about, simply because we can’t observe that Universe. However, this scenario rules out the possibility of recursive virtualization. For simulated ancestors to be able to run their own simulations, we require that the world observed by/exposed to the original (or base) simulation is identical to the world observed by all nested simulations. Because if not, then the nested simulation will NOT be identical to the original simulation, violating the rules of the simulation itself.

What do you think?