BLOGS : Why someone hates weblogs!

• The Reverse Voyeur. This person suffers from a serious personal attention debt. I think this probably accounts for the majority of weblog authors. Not so much an exhibitionist, they aren't making a spectacle of themselves in order to attract attention, no these people simply wish to be spied on intimately. They crave attention from someone else in their lives, they wish that someone would see them for who they really are and want to spend real time with them. (A "reverse voyeur", then, in my terminology, would be someone who likes to be looked at intimately, however, does nothing to attract others to give them attention, aside from simply being.)
• The Exhibitionist. These people are genuinely out there trying to wiggle their junk in everyone's faces. They are ACTIVELY making a nuisance of themselves via their weblogs in order to draw attention. They rant about controversial topics and take the side most likely to produce the largest public outcry from their readers. They want attention and don't care if it's bad or good, they just need someone to pay them attention.
• The Self-Important Moron. These people honestly believe that they have 'listeners' who actually care what they think about the various topics they rant about in their weblogs. They believe that their opinions matter in the grand scheme of things. They are typically idealists who believe that one-person-can-make-a-difference bullshit applies to them personally or that they are somehow more enlightened than the rest of us schmucks.
• The Obsessive-Delusional Ranter. These people can't turn it off. They fixate on everything and NEED to talk about it. These are the people you have to find an excuse to walk away from occasionally because they just fucking won't shut the hell up. They have an opinion on everything, whether they do or not. Often, their weblogs are unfocused, blindly-meandering, blatherfests that may start on one topic and end up passing through twenty new topics before finally ending in a non sequitur or some comment about a failed love affair two years ago.
• The Town Crier. This person uses weblogs to announce things. Typically, the Town Crier archetype doesn't really use weblogs for anything other than to let the void know about important events in his or her life. Anything worth writing on a calendar is typically fair game; anniversaries, birthdays, kid's first tooth, new car purchase, new computer part, interesting event at work, etc. This person seems to think that people are watching their weblog intently for updates, hoping to get a glimpse into the fascinating world that is their own.
• The Tragically Geek. This person is a depressing realization of all that is bad in the land of the nerd. They may be very powerful geeks in their own right, excellent programmers or scientists or mathematicians or philosophers, but they've lost their soul to the world of the geek and will probably never get it back. They live in front of a monitor, they follow the weblogs of friends and write their own weblogs because they realize their friends will read theirs too.
• The Ego Stroker. This weblogger is sortof a cross between a Reverse Voyeur and Self-Important Moron. A feeling of zero self-worth leads this weblogger to reach to the void for validation of their lives. In real life, this dumbass probably does the same thing to everyone they meet.
• The Crossover Poster. This weblogger isn't satisfied with just talking about THEIR stupid moronic opinions, they have to crosspost with someone ELSE's stupid moronic opinions, link to THEIR weblog and then create a weblog entry that regurgitates the other person's post, then expands on their personal feelings about the original post, what it means to them in the deepest most fluffy happy pathetic useless fucked-up places of their hearts.
• The Aspiring Writer. This weblogger is probably one or many of the other weblogger personality archetypes and is using the excuse that they are an aspiring writer to justify their meaningless drivel. They'll marvel at how wonderful it is to have a printing press in every home, or they'll talk about how their weblog helps validate their writing and builds writing skills, steadfastly ignoring the fact that they could do the exact same thing WITHOUT a weblog and not publicly.
• The Pedant (a subclassification of Self Important Moron). This weblogger is basically the same asshole/bitch you know that enjoys arguing about the stupidest, most minute details of whatever subject they are ranting about at the time. They'll argue about usage rules for an English word or rant about how a senator wears his shoes. They'll feverishly pontificate about how nobody seems to understand or use correctly some esoteric networking protocol or how nobody seems to understand their horror at something Microsoft did.

SOCIETY : Dost ka dost, dost; dost ka dushman, dushman

Middle class frustration with politicians has got to the stage where anybody who kicks them around becomes an icon.

Obviously this is not a good thing. For a start, any crooked bureaucrat, corrupt charlatan or publicity-hound can cast himself as a martyr by going to the press and claiming that he has been victimised by politicians.

More significantly, if the most important development in India over the last decades has been the emergence of the middle class, then it is a matter of profound concern that this class has such contempt for politicians that it cheers anyone who bashes them.

SOCIETY: Why should only Ravi Shankar quit?

• The channel providers did not release any rates until the last moment when the government declared that there will not be any more postponements in the launch dates. The channel providers were the biggest gainers by this CAS rollout. They would have a better hold on the number of connections they provided, the popularity of channels and a way to ensure a relative maximisation of their profits. Unfortunately, the channel providers brought out their pricing simply on the basis of a mathematical maximization of profits formula (more popular channels were priced higher than less popular ones). They didn't consider the fact that people would consider prices too steep and might drop the channels from their boxes altogether. The channel providers should've brought in duplicate channel feeds - with and without advertisements - which would've given more options to the consumer to select from.


• MSOs played a greater role in the fiasco. In most cities where CAS was being introduced, the MSOs exist in a monopoly or a duopoly. Unfortunately these aren't run as companies but as organizations intended to squeeze as much profits out of the deals without ethical considerations. MSOs could have gotten a firmer grip on demand of STBs before the launch date. MSOs could've collaborated with the channel providers in setting the prices of channels, in collusion with a regulatory authority, because they are the ones who have got a finger on the consumer's financial pulse.