Are you allowed to choose your *name*?

Facebook, Google+, and probably many other sites do not allow accounts to be registered under a name that looks "artificial". That means, you can register an account only on a name of a human. The reason given is, they do not want to have people registering *fake* accounts, and welcome only the *real* persons to be in! 

Names such as the below are not allowed or at least challenged.

1) Kathiravelu பிரதீபன் - You can't mix two language scripts, though this one indeed is my name, where the first name is written in English, and the last name in Tamil script.

2) Prad33ban, Pradeeban_, or Pradeeb@n - Numbers or special characters are not allowed in the names. Only the alphabets of a single script are allowed.

3) Pradz or PradROX - Suspicious name, most probably a fake!

4) Rock Buddy, Superman, Monkey Gurl, or Fen0023 - Doesn't look real.

5) Pearl Kitty or Brownie - Kitties and puppies aren't allowed!

6) K.K, PDN, pra, or pdn - Initials, pen names, or pseudonyms aren't allowed.

7) Dr.Vijay - Salutations aren't allowed.

8) Sucker - Sounds offensive.

9) kaThiRaVeLu PrADeeBaN - Improper capitalization.

10) Fxx or Bot - Bots are not allowed.

11) Double Rainbow, Firefly, or Stone - Natural objects and insects! No!

12) Colombo Library, Llovizna&Sons, or OpenGroupForum - Libraries, Companies, or organizations aren't allowed to create a profile. Use a 'group' or a 'page' instead.

This regulation has gained severe opposition from those who prefer to have their online identity to be hidden or are interested in having a second life. Some of them choose to have a second life an independent one from their real, offline, or *first* life. They have a valid reason to have a different online identity, I feel. Whatever the name, let it sound like a bot, library, or a kitten, still there is a human behind the name. What matters the most is, no one's privacy should not be violated.

However these rules do not prevent the fake profile creators anyway. They just create fake profiles under real names. People are getting more into deeper fake stuff - SCIgen is an example, which allow you to generate fake papers, mostly used for a good motive of course - to identify the fake conferences by getting the fake papers auto-generated accepted.

Being a mail star.. :D

So it was a huge collection of unread mail. Today I took some time to read through the 1000s of them. Nevertheless it feels so robotic, having an inbox with a few hundred thousands of mail - 80% mail from IT-groups, svn, etc, 10% fun mail from friends bulk sent, 5% spam/scam/hoax, 5% other group mails. No personal mail at all, almost. Regardless of the fact that I have proper mail filters, I have also missed some interesting mails with valuable information long time, it seems. Nothing personal though.

The Arpanet dialogues dated back to 1975 - This archive of Arpanet dialogues  provides the initial conversations between Marcel Broodthaers, Jane Fonda, Ronald Reagan & Edward Said and Samir Amin, Steve Biko, Francis Fukuyama & Minoru Yamasaki. It is good to notice that Sri Lanka was mentioned in their first conversation. :)

At an interview, 

The interviewer says, "Our work environment expects you to work 24/7. We do not provide you with any casual leave, unless given a medical evidence or a police report. You should also be ready to work on holidays. You should be on time to office and should be strictly on formal kit, always." 

The interviewee smiles, "Sir, I suit your job much."

"Are you confident?, Why do you say so?" asks the interviewer.

"Yes Sir, I am a masochist."

"There! You are selected"..

My mail box is funny.. :D

Retina India and WWW2011India

WWW2011 Conference (20th International World Wide Web Conference) was held at HICC (Hyderabad International Convention Centre), Hyderabad, India 28th of March - 1st of April. Chathuri and myself from WSO2 attended the conference as delegates. It was a remarkable trip to Bangalore (26th & 27th, March 2011) and Hyderabad (28th March - 2nd of April 2011).

We attended the 2nd International Workshop on RESTful Design (WS-REST 2011 - 28th March: Proceedings), the 1st International Workshop on Social Media Engagement (SoME 2011 - 29th March), Dev Track – [Mostly Cloud Computing] (30th and 31st, March), and a paper presentation on a few Research Papers on the final day (Information Credibility, Web Applications, and Monetization). Key note speeches were given by Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (Scientist and ex-president of India), Sir Tim Berners-Lee (The inventor of the world wide web), and Christos H. Papadimitriou (Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley).

There were booths, posters, and exhibits as well. Google, Yahoo!, InfoSys, Tata Consultancy Services, ApnaCircle, Zoho, IET, and some other companies/organizations had their booths during the conference days. But one booth grabbed special attention from most of us. It was the booth from Retina India.

"Retina India is an umbrella organization of people with retinal disorders, their families and friends, which brings them on a common platform with experts such as physicians, researchers, counselors, low vision and mobility experts, and other specialists, such that there is a cohesive focus towards increasing awareness of retinal diseases in society as well as about the people who get affected by them, and inducing innovative research and treatment efforts for such diseases."

It was so impressing and motivating to listen to Mr.L.Subramani, who is a differently abled journalist also a trustee for the organization. He did a small presentation after the social event - a Kuchipudi (తెలుగు : కూచిపూడి) dance (The cultural dance of Andhra Pradesh in India) series from Yamini Reddy and team. We were also able to talk to him in person at the booth of RetinaIndia. His message was clear. It asked the *normal* people to open their eyes. It also had the strong power and message. He invited the developers of the web sites and applications to consider the accessibility aspect of the programs. He pointed out that many applications consider the accessibility by differently abled persons (specially people with vision problems, partial or full blindness), but not many web sites. His suggestion is to involve the differently abled people in the development of the sites and the applications, such that they will be able to take part in shaping up the accessibility of the products.

Retina India became the highlight of the event obviously. I strongly believe their vision will be successful not just in India, but all over the globe. May God bless the good hearts.

As a point to note: WWW2012 will be held at Lyon, France.

When 'RTFW' is over-used

RTFW (Read The Freaking Web) is a commonly seen phrase in the online communications as a response to the questions which are asked without a prior research on the topic, more specifically if the topic of interest has already been discussed in the community wiki page, mailing lists or the project's website or blog. A similar acronym is 'RTFM', which refers to the phrase "Refer the Freaking Manual". RTFW is also interpreted in different ways such as "Read The Freaking/****ing Wiki", where some of the interpretations are not family-friendly. Hence the usage of RTFW is often discouraged.

Though a response of RTFW seems to be rude, it is not always. When a developer says 'RTFW', in most of the cases he means what he says. Hence it should not be taken personal, nor should it be a starter for flame wars. The volunteers who are there to help you use the phrase, when they feel that the answer is already out there on their wiki or elsewhere. A research on the web and the manuals on our own is often encouraged before throwing a question to someone else out in the space.

However, when we try to RTFW, it often leads to a forum post which also mentions RTFW. There should be some mechanism to reduce the importance of RTFWed posts and unanswered questions when retrieving the posts from the web. Another important factor is the users who ask questions are not ready to share their knowledge. They just want to be the information seekers.

This typical example shows what I meant. A person asks the question and declares that he solved it himself in a couple of days. Then some others keep asking the solution for the problem from him. No reply yet. If he has solved it, why should he avoid posting the solution, instead of merely mentioning he has solved it. Search query "NoClassDefFoundError: org/xmlpull/v1/XmlPullParserFactory" produces the above mentioned post as the second result, but information gain is zero for me. We need 'more intelligent' search engines or at least a proper implementation to reduce the importance of questions closed without solving properly.