I know you thought I have gone crazy. Not really. Everyone starting from my 2 1/2 year old nephew to the 212 year old grandpa next door keeps talking about "going green" now a days. I know, while Al Gore's revelation of "truth" to the mankind drove half the literate world switch from H3 to Prius, the ever opportunistic media and the smarty-pant entrepreneurs coaxed the rest into going for things like some cheap-ass, non-recyclable, cancer-causing plastic bottles just because they are 'green'. All this started to challenge my semi-functional brain. When so many people are trying to save the mother nature from the cruelty of this selfish human being, I can't just sit in my couch writing some useless blogs. Since I want to write a blog, I decided to gear it towards the 'green factor' and see if I can be of any use to the humanity. Only thing is that this approach of going green is a little (or a lot?) different from almost everything else. I'm sorry, but thinking outside the box gives me kicks.
numonea rondevu ait ile ne
Wait a minute... did you just go through this list of words, like 30 seconds (even if you are the slowest of the readers) ago? Hhhmmm, I think they sound pretty much the same but don't seem to spell right though. Does the spelling really matter? Do you understand that I conveyed the same message as above but with 11 less characters (33.33% less)? From one of the billion forwards I keep getting every hour, I also came to know that the human brain can decipher a word just by looking at the first and the last letter though everything else is messed up. Assuming this is true, there opens another avenue for possible character cutting. Let's not go there for now though. If you are wondering how this is anything to do with going green, here is how.
In a nutshell: typing more characters means increasing the size of the files and hence hogging up more memory. Though pretty much everything is "soft" now a days, unfortunately all the soft things need to be stored on something hard. These hard things are not easy to dispose without messing up the mother nature. Want to print it? That's going to be a direct hit as it means chewing up more paper. Now I don't need to mention that paper comes from trees.
Honestly speaking, I picked these words at random and did the calculations later. So, the savings are not predetermined. Assuming an average of 25% savings by removing the "silent" letters from words, I think we will be making a move in the right direction. Not just documents, think about stuff like chatting. Actually the young ones, knowingly or unknowingly, are already doing this. "howz u doin?". Jeez! That sounds awful but you know that the communication process is still alive and in a smarter way, fewer characters. Now how is chatting going to help, as most of it is not stored or printed? Think about all the electricity you are burning. Breaking it down to a single person, whatever I said till now translates simply into utter nonsense. But put it in the perspective of hundreds of millions of "I can't live without a comp" dudes and you will know what I'm talking about.
By now you are 100% sure that I have gone insane right? Somehow I think this is exactly what "thinking outside the box" is. Now you know another way of GOING GREEN!!! Disclaimer: The content in this blog is just for entertainment purpose. I'm not responsible if kids who read this start challenging their teachers and/or parents about some spellings. This is not targeted towards any particular language or group of people.
Most of them who know me conclude I'm a Microsoft hater. Though this is not completely wrong, it is not 100% true either. I'm not a big fan of Microsoft (actually I don't like MS) but I don't really hate the company. Another conclusion people arrive at is that I'm one of those blind, band wagon followers of Apple. I'm sorry but that ain't true either. I know I express my dislike towards MS and appreciation of Apple's innovation and creativity pretty loud and clear but do not mistake that for a bias towards or against a particular company. I think neither of them is self sustainable. They both have their pros and cons. While I admire Apple's marvelous "original" products, I do respect MS's marketing. No, I do not agree with their business strategies.
Well, I started my computers 101 with Windows when I got my first PC a decade ago. I eventually was curious about Linux starting with their command based version and moved to Mac. Even today while my laptop is a Mac, my desktop is a dual boot with Linux and Windows on it. Bottom line is that none of them is self-sufficient. While I want Windows for video chatting using Yahoo! Messenger (because YM is pretty lousy on a Mac), I would not play with Adobe Photoshop on anything other than my iBook. Linux provides me with the greatest avenue of exploring almost anything I want. Mind you, only from a development point of view though. I do not claim myself to be an expert on any of these but all I'm saying is that both as a developer and a user, I need all the three.
I'm sure most of you might have already seen this video a million times by now bust one more view doesn't hurt.
Unfortunately I could not find the entire (1 1/2 hour) video on YouTube but you can get it from Apple as Podcast.
So, what do I have for or against any of them? Here is what I have to say. First of all, if Apple is Obama and Microsoft, Hillary. My vote is for Obama.
I'm, without doubt, a hardcore fan of Apple's innovation. Jobs is my favorite CEO any day. Obviously I cannot generalize this statement for everyone because I think Apple's business models and marketing strategies suck but I don't care. My decision is purely based on innovation. Microsoft, as I see is a genius in marketing and making money. But I don't consider anything from them creative enough. Going into more details and some specifics...
Apple's iPod is such a blockbuster. But I never wanted to buy one. I saw quite a few other mp3 players in the market. There is no doubt some of them are better than the iPod in terms of the functionality (simple example is a built-in FM radio) and cheaper at the same time. You want to rate based on aesthetics? Of course, it is the iPod. But now I own a Touch. That is because there is nothing out there like this one. What is pretty shitty about Apple? I have an iBook with Mac 10.3.9 and I cannot use my Touch with this. This pissed me off real bad. I think it is insane.
Bottom line... I'm not a blind follower of Apple and not a MS hater. I just have a soft corner for one and not the other.
Thanks for the comment "amigo". Checked out your blog. Looks pretty good but unfortunately I can't quite understand your language :-)