oh, sire, come back, I have a better offer..

I see my mom haggle with a lot of people.. mostly with the street peddlers who come selling near my house.. and on the rare occasions that we go shopping together, the shop owners from cloth shops to grocery stores.. almost everytime she comes back with an amazing bargain.. a lot of the times,  the price she ends up paying is less than half the price quoted by the seller! that kinda bargain happens more with the peddlers than an established store owner, but even there she manages to get a good deal (maybe not as drastic as with a street peddler).. 

and the one thing I've noticed in these haggles is that she always plays like it's the seller who's in desperate need of sellingand not she who needs anything from the seller.. almost like she's doing him a favour by buying his stuff.. so, when she offers a price and the seller doesn't agree, she starts to walk away.. and the seller generally calls her back and either agrees to her price or somthing near that :D 

I can never even come close to that kinda bargaining.. I mostly end up paying the quoted price..

but that's beside the point.. what I wanted to write was about a similar thing that happened to me online.. I was trying to buy some hosting space.. and was generally checking out the prices.. after looking at hostmonster and bluehost, came to StartLogic.. looked at the prices, and they were pretty cheap.. so, thoought of buying from them.. but when I went to the payment page, they were charging me for the entire year in one payment.. having never bought hosting space before, I wasn't sure if this was normal, so thought of looking around a bit more before I decide.. I mean, what if I later find that these guys stink? I'd be either stuck up with them for a year or lose my one year's payment..

so, I try closing the window, and this chat window comes up, with a chatbot on the other side.. it asks me why I'm leaving.. not expecting it to understand a bit of what I was gonna type, I asked it if there was a way I could try their service before I buy.. I don't think the chatbot understood that, but it offered me something interesting anyways.. it gave me about 30% discount!!!

I was like, hmm.. wait.. can they do that?! I mean, just a while ago I was asked to pay like $72/yr. and now everything being the same, I've got to pay just about $48/yr? r u kidding me? I mean, why wouldn't you offer me this in the beginning?! why wait till I try closing the browser window?!

in any case, I dint try closing the browser window again.. just paid up the amount and bought their hosting space :D

it wasn't a bad deal actually.. it was a Pro plan, so I got unlimited space and bandwidth.. and even their support wasnt half bad.. I had a question regarding hosting Rails apps, and they replied back within the next day.. and I didn't even have to buy premium support for that..

now, for the catch.. if I want to continue my account with them for another year, I'd have to pay them $84/yr instead of the $72 (the original price).. or maybe it's the same for everyone and has nothing to with the discount I got.. but in any case, for two years, $132 (= $48 + $84) is still slightly better than $144 (= $72 * 2).. but then, that's not really a significant amount to make a difference.. 

I guess what made a difference was that they made me feel like they gave me a better deal than I'd have gotten otherwise (or probably even against what others would get) and I guess that's where they got me :D  I mean, that's a good psychological trick.. but not sure how sustainable that is.. (in case giving a 30% discount is sustainable, then all the hosting providers definitely are making profits over 50%.. because most people probably end up paying up the actual prices)

and about StartLogic itself, generally it's okay.. my only complaint is that they use vDeck for management, which's not as nice as the management console that I used to get with Pandela (I used to have a Pandela account when it used to be free).. 

oh, and they don't support Ruby/RoR.. that was the question I asked their support.. they said you can't run a Rails/Ruby app with them.. but they were okay with running Python,, it doesn't come preconfigured, so I've to get back to support to get it configured.. 

I thought Python's okay.. that still works for me.. I could build my site with Django/Web2py/.. instead of Rails.. 

and, they don't give you shell access, but then, I haven't heard of many that do.. so, that should be okay too.. 

but I'd really liked to have RoR support and shell access :D

what were they thinking?

.net 4.0 CTP was out (about a month ago, nothin new), and I was excited to try it out.. but then I was on vacation and dint have my laptop either (having quit my previous company), so decided to wait a while.. 

as soon as I was done with my new company's formalitites, first thing I did was to go look for the CTP.. started by checking my MSDN subscriptions page, but found nothing there.. then found this download link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=922B4655-93D0-4476-BDA4-94CF5F8D4814&displaylang=en

excited, I went to the download page..

the headline says, Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 CTP.. hmm (?!).. then I scroll down to see it's a 7G download, split into 11 parts! 

I'm like, what?! werent you guys satisfied with bloating up Vista? did you have to go bloat up VS as well?! and then I quickly glance thru the page and find out that the 7G download is a VPC image..

rright.. the good thing is, at least they didnt bloat up VS.. (can't say for sure.. I'm just hoping they didn't..)

but then, why on earth should I EVER download 7G of whatever? why couldn't they just hand me a VS 2010 CTP ISO? I mean, that would've been what, 2G'ish?

you know what, for me, 7G is about 3-4 days worth of download, even with a torrent.. now, imagine downloading all that over HTTP (yes, HTTP!).. and the download totally kills my online experience.. slow browsing, no youtube, no radio.. on top of that, the bloody thing's split over 11 files.. couldnt they just leave a single file for download? and why HTTP for whatever's sake! why couldn't they just torrent it? what age are these morons living in?!

what sense does it make distribute a VPC image?! people can definitely create their own VPC images if they want to..

so, finally I decided it just wasn't worth my time to look at the CTP.. I'm gonna wait for the official release.. Or at least a more sensible download..

I bet they were high on something while they were doin this.. I'd at least like to know what that was :D

just because it's called complexity theory..

..you don't have to make it complicated..

I'm referring to the Computational Complexity Theory and the whopping number of complexity classes.. There're 488 complexity classes (as of today, and more to be added as required)! can you believe that?!  (and I used to think I've got a fair understanding of the subject.. I couldn't have been more amiss..)

Take a look at The Complexity Zoo (http://qwiki.stanford.edu/wiki/Complexity_Zoo).. It's an entire wiki dedicated to the complexity theory.. It's got a listing of all classes, their descriptions, some interesting problems etc.. You can find all you need to know (and a lot more) about the subject.. It's even got a Pronounciation Guide for these things (which, in summary, tells you not to bother too much about the pronounciation.. there's bigger fish to fry.. :D )

Max Payne - The Muvee

I'm a Max Payne fanboy.. a pretty huge fan.. I've even played it through my II sem exams (and that sem btw was my best score in Engineering :) not that I'm correlating the two.. just a trivia.. I'm not stupid enough to correlate Pirates and Global Warming :D)

so, I just spent the last 1.5 hours watching the movie.. and what a total waste of time that was :(  now I'm almost embarassed to admit to being a Max Payne fanboy :(   I should've been a little more specific earlier when I admitted to it.. actually, I'm a fan of Max Payne - the game..

the game was amazing.. I definitely liked it.. one of the first to use Ragdoll Physics.. comic-book cut-scenes.. movie like gameplay.. and the Bullet-Time.. ah! that definitely was the coolest part of the whole game :) AND it had a decent storyline as well..

Max Payne 2 sorta didn't live up to it's predecessor, but hey, it wasn't too bad.. It wasn't the state-of-the-art for its time, but you could at least play it once..

now, someone HAD to go make a movie out of the game.. well, the idea itself isn't half bad.. but as with anything that's already popular and has got an existing fanbase, there're some expectations to be met.. 

for me, the only thing that matters is: Stick to the original ideas! simple isn't it? I mean, there's a reason why us fans became fans.. so, keep the original storyline, the original concept and all the other original stuff that we care about.. they're fine the way they are.. if you don't know what the fans like, do some research, or don't do it at all.. it's not that we're too rigid to accept a new idea.. all we say is, if you have a f*ckin idea, tell us a f*ckin new story! don't smear your filthy ideas over something that we like already..

so, what's wrong with the movie? hmm.. let's see.. they got the names right.. and they got the places right too.. and there're some dumbass actors playin out the characters.. and they're so good that there's no trace of expressions on their faces.. must be trying to remain faithful to the original game.. the storyline had quite a bit of similarity to the game too! understandably with a few changes, but you can definitely notice the similarities.. there's a whole lot less shooting.. maybe helps the movie with its rating/certification? there's no bullet-time (excluding probably one 5 sec shot).. maybe bullet times are expensive.. that's too much to expect.. we're just glad someone even considered making a movie off the game.. and of course, no sniper headshots :D  but sniper headshots in bullet time with a camera chasing the bullet happen only in games don't they? now how ridiculous would that look in a movie? right? oh, and Lupino is some sadist psycho, chasing and shredding people into teeny weeny pieces, which isn't too far from the game.. but I think he was far busier being a drug lord in the game than being a psycho.. and the Aesir boss is saved for the next part of the movie.. despite all that, it doesn't quite feel like Max Payne.. can't understand why?! surprising isn't it?

I have just one question for the director.. Did you EVER play the game? I mean, DID YOU EVER PLAY THE F*CKIN GAME?!!! and btw, if you saved the Aesir boss for the next part, take my advice, don't film the next part.. someone else might do it better..

neways, on the bright side, the Natasha chick was cute :)  (didn't immediately recognize her, but she's the bond girl in Quantum of Solace) I'd have preferred her to be Mona Sax.. at least she'd have stayed on for longer :D

can't help but..

can't help but wonder how people get over a broken heart..

wonder how they move on so fast..

wonder why I end up chasing what will never be mine..

why I end up feeling silly all the time..

what is this love thing anyway?

I thought I knew it.. but maybe I don't..

if music were taught like math..

read A Mathematician's Lament, by Paul Lockhart

available here -> http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

an interesting read.. correlating math with music, and lamenting over the absurdity of the current teaching systems and the viewpoint that the general public takes with regards to math..

I'll write about my thoughts over this some day, but for now, I concur..

"any product worth its penny would be stolen, cracked, pirated and downloaded considerably more times than is sold"

do you agree?