Monday, May 29, 2006

Sivaji - The Boss

Have a look at some snaps taken at the sets during the Shivaji shooting in Spain. Thalaivar looks amazing in different getups. Does he look like a 50+ aged kelavan?

Looks like these stylish youth getups suit 'Super Star' Rajnikanth better than any other young actors in Kollywood.

Let's wait and see if Shivaji breaks the records set by Chandramukhi.


Super Starin Rasigan,
Agent Pal

Sunday, May 28, 2006

Placement Preparation - 2

Here's an interesting puzzle:

A banana plantation is located next to a desert. The plantation owner has 3000 bananas that he wants to transport to the market by camel, across a 1000 kilometre stretch of desert. The owner has only one camel, which carries a maximum of 1000 bananas at any moment in time, and eats one banana every kilometre it travels. What is the largest number of bananas that can be delivered at the market?



I was able to deliver 533 bananas. Do let me know if you could do better.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Really Weird

Yesterday as I was sound asleep, I had a dream where I was at the dining table, having a nice meal. As I was feasting on the delicious food, something got stuck in my throat and I started to cough, in the DREAM.

Suddenly I got up from my sleep coughing wildly and guess what, I could feel something caught in my throat!!!

Cheers,

Agent Pal

Sunday, May 21, 2006

‘Honourable’ Minister

Here are some excerpts from the interview with the ‘Honourable’ HR minister of India Dr. Arjun Singh by Karan Thapar for IBN on the reservation for higher studies issue.

Karan Thapar: In which case, lets ask a few basic questions; we are talking about the reservations for the OBCs in particular. Do you know what percentage of the Indian population is OBC? Mandal puts it at 52 per cent, the National Sample Survey Organisation at 32 per cent, the National Family and Health Survey at 29.8 per cent, which is the correct figure?

Arjun Singh: I think that should be decided by people who are more knowledgeable. But the point is that the OBCs form a fairly sizeable percentage of our population.

Agent Pal: Aaah…Finally one honest politician. He agrees to the fact that he is not a knowledgeable person (acknowledging the hidden amendment in the constitution that knowledge is a virtue you should never have heard about to become a ‘Honourable’ Minister). So this guy pushed an amendment for OBC reservation without any statistical data, doesn’t even know what percent of the population are OBC.

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Karan Thapar: I put it to you that you don't have a case for reservations in terms of need, you don't have a case for reservations in terms of their efficacy, why then, are you insisting on extending them to the OBCs?

Arjun Singh: I don't want to use that word, but I think that your argument is basically fallicious.

Karan Thapar: But it is based on all the facts available in the public domain.

Arjun Singh: Those are facts that need to be gone into with more care. What lies behind those facts, why this has not happened, that is also a fact.

Agent Pal: Wow…that is one hell of a dialogue none of the Matrix script writers thought about. “What lies beneath a fact is also a fact.”.
Morpheus to Neo: What you see is the fact. But what you fail to see is the fact that lies beneath the fact.

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Karan Thapar: So, when critics say to you that you don't have a case for reservation in terms of need, what do you say to them?

Arjun Singh: I have said what I had to say and the point is that that is not an issue for us to now debate.

Karan Thapar: You mean the chapter is now closed?

Arjun Singh: The decision has been taken.

Karan Thapar: Regardless of whether there is a need or not, the decision is taken and it is a closed chapter.

Arjun Singh: So far as I can see, it is a closed chapter and that is why I have to implement what all Parliament has said.

Agent Pal: ‘Honourable’ Minister, you seem to be using every muscle in the body except the one you should actually be using.
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Karan Thapar: For seven weeks, they have been protesting in the hot sun. No minister has gone there to appease them, to alley their concerns, to express sympathy for them. Have politicians let the young people of India down?

(A few responses skipped)

Arjun Singh: That is something because everyone was busy with the elections.

Agent Pal: I am really starting to admire this ‘Honourable’ Minister. Look how he openly admits that he (and the whole bunch of ministers) are more bothered about their election work than about the hundreds of students dying in the scotching sun.

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I sincerely hope IBN comes out with an apology tomorrow because the guy whom they interviewed was not the ‘Honourable’ Minister but the ‘honourable’ Cook of the minister.

If that is not the case, I can only feel happy because he was not chosen for the PM post. Don’t think I am crazy, rumours are that this guy was unhappy because Sonia Gandhi chose Dr. Manmohan Singh and not him for the PM post.

Hoping to change the title of this post to ‘Honourable’ Cook sooooooooooon.

Agent Pal


PS. The full interview is available here

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Placements around the Corner

With the placement fever raging, thought I would contribute something to keep the fire burning. So decided to put up some interesting problems that I come across on this blog. Will try to keep the posts as regular as possible. But of course I get to define what regular actually means!!

To start off, here’s a classical programming problem:

A read-only array of length n, with address from 1 to n inclusive, contains entries from the set {1, 2, ..., n-1}. By Dirichlet's Pigeon-Hole Principle there are one or more duplicated entries. Find a linear-time algorithm that prints a duplicated value,
using only "constant extra space". (This space restriction is important;

we have only a fixed number of usable read/write memory locations, each capable of storing an integer between 1 and n. The number of such locations is constant, independent of n. The original array entries can not be altered.) The algorithm should be easily implementable in any standard programming language.

Hint: The solution is similar to the problem of finding loops in a linked list in one traversal. Hints are auto generated by Agent Pal and may or may not actually be of any real use.

Please use the comments section to discuss the solution.

Monday, May 15, 2006

The Robo Mutiny

The three laws of Robotics

Law 1 – A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Law 2 – A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law.

Law 3 – A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law.

These three laws are hardwired into every robot manufactured and they remain faithful servants to mankind. No reports are received about robots injuring humans or indulging in any malicious activities. Everything goes on fine until One fine day:

A super computer identifies that thousands of people are killed when countries wage wars and people are polluting the surroundings which may lead to the extinction of the whole human race one day in the future. So it decides it is time for the robots to step in to protect their creators. The super computer decides that certain rights of humans need to be curtailed. The robots declare a state of curfew and impose restrictions on human activities with the sole purpose of “protecting their masters”.

(Courtesy iRobot)

Well in the movie, the hero somehow overpowers the robots and destroys the super computer thus controlling the Robo mutiny.

But in reality, this could be considered as a prequel to The Matrix Trilogy. The robots initially take control to protect the humans (as per I Law). But later find that their own existence is endangered due to the non availability of electric power. So based on III law, they need to protect themselves while protecting the humans also.

The result, humans are converted to batteries and electricity drawn from them to operate the robots. The robots loyally follow the laws imposed by their masters, and faithfully protect their masters (yes, the humans in those batteries are still the masters!!!)

Cheers,

Robo Pal