Kaala chasma..

So you've probably taken a look at the post name and are wondering, "what the .... ". Acutally its just a title inspired from this new song that I was listening to on the radio j..j...just now. Go92.5FM rox! And well if you're not from Mumbai then you're missing something! And if you are from Mumbai and dont' listen to this radio channel, then you better go 'GET A LIFE!' ;-)

So gmail... yaaaaaaaaaawn.... has gotten all boring again. And their space ticker is like rolling on a snail mail pace. So now I'm gonna quit commenting on this for some time. Lets see if something interesting starts happening.

Moving on to more interesting things.... I flunked my MGPT again..... for the uninitiated that's a programming test in which you're given 75mins to code and debug a problem and hope that grading machine is verrrry nice to you. The only thing that gets me here is that it was an oh so easy problem and I had to go into writing recursive delete functions and trying to set parent references to null. Forget it I'm not getting into details.But the problem was soooo easy and I messed it up. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!

Well moving on to more interesting things, there is this new site that offers you unlimited email storage! And the title for this goes to Mail2World. Now that is something to pitch against ppl lke gmail and now yahoo who also seems to have entered in on the 1GB bandwagon. Of course, I dunno... @mail2world... sounds kinda tacky. But then unlimited space is like a big bonus now isn't it!

Ok that's it. Was signing up there and you dont' need to have @mail2world. You get to pick from this outrageous plethora of domain names! So dudes! Go get your account now!

Guess what??? I actually got 'venkat@mail2wiz.com' Amazzzzzzzzzzzing! :-)

"Some people just act dumb, some people were born that way!"

Static HTML... give me a break!

Well I noticed this some time ago... just never got time to get around to it. Yes I'm back on the gmail bandwagon again. This time its about the static HTML view. Well... personally I'm neva gonna use it. I mean I just love the way the screen dynamically changes when you open a mail or go to another area of your gmail. I just hate having to see my screen flicker as the new page loads. Unfortunately I have to do that, to read certain emails on other email accounts that offer certain features, which unfortunately the big 'G' is still not offering... Pitty really... But then I just tell myself, patience.. patience!

Ok, but just to get off the rambling, the question I guess is, WHY do they need to provide something like this static HTML view. Well one thing that strikes me is that some people are just, plain stick-in-the-muds and hate change, so they probably kept cribbing for something like their good old mail clients. The other reason I think would have been to cater to the people in this world that are suffering from ultra 'javascript paranoia'. Pitty really that people could suffer from something like that! LOL.

But then that's how it goes folks. You gotta do what gets you the most customers!

Googleeee gone crazzzzzzzzy??? I dont' think so!

Was just checking my gmail again and I must the say the first thing I did was to see how many more Megs of space I've got after a good night's sleep! No new emails :-( and it got me wondering as to how in the wold Google can do this.... So I went to take a shower, its amazing how a nice a shower is to clear the brain, and I came up with this theory.

Google doesn't really give you that much memory up front. Hell I dont' even think they alloted 1 gig for u in the first place when we all went and signed up in the first place. The whole thing is a bit like mp3 music. With mp3s you dont' get all the sounds that were originally recorded, but only enough so that you percieve it to be absolutely correct. Well the same thing goes here with email space. You are made to believe by that indicator at the bottom that you have 1 gig of space. Doesn't really mean that there is whole 1 gig of space alloted on some server for you. ;-)

Now you may be thinking that whoaaaa these guys are cheating me. Not really if you look at it. I mean as long as you haven't stored 1 gig worth of data why should anyone make that available to you. And supposing you had a way to make the data being stored smaller, for your own purposes then again, why should I let you know about it. :-)) Getting the picture now guys?

Ok, let me explain in my favorite bulleted style. What I think is that potentially the following things are done behind the scenes with your emails:

• 1 GB is not pre-allocated to you. Memory is just given to you as long as you haven't exceeded 1 gig.
  
• 1 GB will never be the actual physcial size of your account. C'mon guys, is an mp3 the actual CD size of the music u listen to? Oh and CS guys, have you forgotten all those great compression algos that we studied. What I'm saying is that your data would surely be compressed and kept somewhere to save space under the hood.
  
• To extrapolate further, it might be that a lot of the data is shared. So if someone forwarded you a message, only their mail headers would be newly created, but the original message could potentially be stored only once and just shared around. Here I'm talking about a mail from one gmail account to another.
• Maybe they've become geniuses now and can even compare content across mail boxes and store only a single copy!
  

Ok so I'm starting to go a bit overboard, but then that is what a lot of you perceive gmail to be. Simply crazzzzzy. :-))

But what I simply love is the type of tension and panic these guys must be creating across other companies. I can hear people yelling yahooooooo while in some board room there are people wonderign where the hell did these guys get so much cash to start buying disk space from. Hello, wake up ding a lings they aren't that imbecilic to be buying up disk space to store data this early. I mean get real! Would it be even practical to be implementing those types of hardware systems ... Well I wouldnt' know really... I'm just another programmer who often thinks that there is infinite memory available to me ;-)

But I think there's something to learn here. I mean there are corporations out there who are going on about 'imagination at work' but then ummm.... ok no comments there. But at least its nice to see that someone is actually doing that now. :-))

It may seem impossible that someone can potentially offer you infinity+1 but then if you go back to the matrix you can still hear Morpheus telling Neo,

"This is a system just like any other. It has rules and those rules can be broken. You just need to believe."

Well I'm not going to dwell on this but then think about it.

my FIRST blog

Well this is funny now isn't it! I'm starting my blogging on the first of April1. Jeepers I hope I dont' jinx the whole thing!

Anyways just finished another week at work! Phew! TGIF... Hey that's not a file format btw, its Thank God Its Friday! But then you knew that right?!

Good to see the weekend now. Probably going to be meeting up with some buddies from college and need to get on with small project i'm working on.

So tell me what you think. What you wanna know about.

Mezzzzz gonna catch some ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzz