Tablets Vs PCs

There is a lot of debate these days about the future of PCs vis-a-vis Tablets. There is a school of thought that believes that Tablets are an inevitable replacements for PCs. A second school of thought believes that we are heading into a “PC plus” era where Tablets will only augment PCs, as Tablets will be used more for “content consumption” and PCs will remain the mainstay for “content creation” in the years to come. They believe that only PCs and desktops will have the necessary features such as bigger displays, more memory and higher processing power needed for programming, graphics design etc. The tablet supporters, rubbish this notion by showing how smartphones and tablets have evolved into powerhouses which can handle complex content creation tasks (as displayed by iMovie for the iPhone/iPad) and will only expand in their abilities to handle additional complexities.

Both these arguments are slightly flawed however. The future is simply, the Cloud. In another 5 – 6 years, the processing power or memory capacity of the system (PC or Tablet) will not matter. The strength and speed of a broadband connection will. All complex processing tasks will be performed on the Cloud and content delivered to a user’s system. A netbook will then be able to handle as complex processes as a PC. All data will be stored online and so will applications which will manipulate data real-time on the cloud. Hence, the user’s devices will be nothing more than a smart display (with hardware, software or gesture based I/O systems including voice recognition) which will receive the content from the cloud and send data back to it.

The cloud is already here. Atleast for data storage. Think about it. All your photos are mostly on Facebook (atleast the non-embarrasing ones). Movies are increasingly being streamed online. We probably listen to and share music more over Youtube and other such cloud based services. Why then would we store such data on our desktops? Onlive is a startup which is working on delivering games to your PC through the Cloud. All the processing power required by the game will be handled by Onlive’s servers and the content will be delivered to your system. That means one will not need to bother about the kind of video card or RAM installed. All you need to have is a good HD display and a strong broadband connection. True, this technology is still in its nascent stages, but even Microsoft and Sony are working to strengthen their cloud based offerings in their next console. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to see such gaming happen post 5 years.

What about applications? Word and Spreadsheet processing is already happening on the cloud (think Google Docs, Office 365). IT majors are all focusing on cloud application development under a SaaS (Software as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service) model. There are cloud-based image editing softwares which aim to replace Photoshop. While this is a tall order currently, there is no denying that these can become much more powerful in the coming decade.

Tech Giants such as Apple, Google and Microsoft are recognising this. Hence, they are increasing their focus on cloud solutions with iCloud, SkyDrive etc. They are also busy integrating their OSes to work across all devices. Hence, Apple’s Lion was a move to integrate their iOS with their traditional Mac OS X and maybe with a potential Apple TV in future. Windows 8 aims to be a common platform for Tablets as well as PCs and maybe even Xbox and smartphones in future. Future versions of these OSes are being designed to run on smartphones, tablets and even gaming consoles/TVs. A common OS across devices, because in the future, content will be streamed to the device and hence the nature of the device itself will perhaps become unimportant. What will probably matter is how the content is consumed on these devices and the user experience each of these devices can offer for the content (think: iOS and Google’s “App Tiles” versus the Win7 “live tiles”.) HTML5 based applications then, though not very powerful today can soon become the most major threat Apple, Google and Microsoft might face, and not each other.

The Lake

I’m sure everyone will have a favorite spot in their city, which they would love to visit, to steal a moment’s peace from the hustle-bustle of their daily lives. A place where one would like to sit back and relax. Empty the mind and absorb the surroundings in all its pristine beauty. Like Tom Hansen does, in 500 Days of Summer.

Below are pics I clicked at my favorite spot in Bangalore :- Sankey Tank. A man made lake in western Bangalore, it definitely is one of the most beautiful places in the city . You can spend hours just staring at the calm waters. As you watch the sun set and listen to the wind caressing the trees and the laughter of children playing in the park, you feel at peace.

I come here often when Im upset,

When inside me swells a heavy secret,

I whisper my sins to the blue waters,

And inside its vastness they remain buried, forever.

Click on the images to view them in a larger format

How to Overthrow a Brutal Dictator

While NATO grapples with the most effective road to victory in Libya and treads the fine line which borders supporting civilians and  overthrowing a dictator, let me illustrate a very successful example of such an overthrow, in history, and see if we can learn some lessons from there. I talk of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War.

At the time of Independence, British India was partitioned into 2 major countries. Secular India and Islamic Pakistan. Pakistan was further divided into East Pakistan and West Pakistan. These 2 sub divisions were separated by 1000s of miles of Indian territory. Being so apart geographically, the peoples of West Pakistan and East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) were culturally very distinct. But the center of power lay in West Pakistan and there was rampant discrimination against East Pakistanis.

Eventually things reached a point when East Pakistanis started calling for independence in the 1970’s under the leadership of the charismatic Sheik Mujibur Rehman and a strong pro-Bangladeshi nationalist movement broke out in East Pakistan. They wanted to secede from Pakistan and form an independent Bangladesh. Pakistan was led by a ruthless military dictator called Yahya Khan. He swung the full might of the Pakistani military juggernaut against the hapless civilians of Bangladesh and carried out genocide in East Pakistan, targeting Hindus and the intellectual elite of Dhaka. Unable to bear the brunt of this brutal assault, close to ten million Bangladeshis fled to refugee camps in India. India appealed to the international community for help but none responded. India then decided to take matters in its own hands and started arming and aiding the rebels. Pakistan then attacked India and full scale war broke out on 3rd December 1971.

The Indian troops smashed through the Pakistani military defences in East Pakistan and raced towards Dhaka, the capital of East Pakistan. They knew time was not on their side. The US, the ever staunch ally of Pakistan, sent its nuclear equipped USS Enterprise into the Bay of Bengal to intimidate India into declaring a ceasefire. The Indians called the Russians and promptly there were Russian ships tailing the Enterprise. The world was dangerously close to a nuclear war involving US and USSR. The Indians raced ahead to defeat the Pakistanis before the situation got out of hand. On the morning of 14th December, 4 Indian Mig-21s, it’s pilots guided by tourist maps, tore across the skies of Dhaka and bombed the governor’s residence with uncanny accuracy. The governor was so shocked that he resigned and took refuge in the local Red Cross center. On 16th December the Indian Army blitzkrieg hit Dhaka and the Pakistani Army surrendered with India taking over 90,000 prisoners of war, the largest since World War 2. Bangladesh was free.

The above situation is not very dissimilar to what is happening in Libya now. But will NATO achieve success in the near future? From the above case analysis we can identify 3 reasons that generally make such operations successful.

1) A clear call for external help: The Bangladeshis actively supported the Indian role in the war and took economic and military aid readily. In contrast, in Libya, the rebels some times ask for more assistance and other times claim that they will overthrow Gaddaffi on their own. This approach confuses NATO and others about the extent to which the Libyans require their presence and hence are often wary to be more pro-active. In contrast, India went in confidently knowing full well that they had the support of the Bangladeshi people.

2) A strong opposition with a visible leadership: The Bangladeshis had Sheik Mujibur Rehman and his Awami League as political representatives and the Mukti Bahini which formed the military wing of the rebellion. This helped India to know who it was dealing with and let it focus on waging the war and then pulling out on victory, allowing Mujibur Rehman to focus on nation building. In contrast, in Libya there is a ragtag group of rebels and disparate tribal groups with no visible leader. This causes great discomfort in western capitals as they don’t know who exactly they are supporting. This also makes countries like the US loathe to put boots on the ground in the fear that after the war, with no clear leadership a civil war will break out and it’ll become Iraq and Afghanistan all over again.

3) A quick and decisive military operation: India acted swiftly and with full force to decapitate the Pakistani Army and had its goals clearly established. In contrast, NATO and others still seem to be fumbling over the boundaries of their operations and are hesitant to expand it to a full scale war for reasons mentioned above. This may only compound the situation further and turn the war into a messy quagmire.

Hence, NATO struggles with matching what India could achieve in a matter of 13 days against a strong adversary like Pakistan.

The Missing Analysis

In the current reporting and debates regarding the revolutions in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, I find that everyone seems to be missing on analyzing one important fact. One important country rather. Iraq. Witnessing the mass uprisings in these autocracies, it is prudent to ask one question. If the Iraq war had not taken place, would both the “goals” of the war still have been achieved? The answer is undoubtedly, yes.

The Iraq war was first fought on the premise that Saddam was manufacturing Nuclear Bombs and hence had to be stopped at any cost. When it became clear that Saddam did not have any WMDs in his possession, the US administration quickly turned around and blew its own trumpet for sowing the first seeds of democracy in the region by overthrowing a dictator. They claimed it would set an example in the Middle East. Some Bush loyalists claim victory today over the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, arguing that Bush’s mission of establishing democracy in the Middle East has now been successful. Now, that is one big joke. Mark Zuckerberg has contributed more to these revolutions than George Bush, the US Army and the CIA combined. The democracy in Iraq is in tatters while democracy in Egypt and Tunisia has made a promising start.

But coming back to the question: What if the Iraq war hadn’t taken place? I assume that the following sequence of events would have happened. Saddam would’ve continued trying to build the bomb in vain despite international sanctions. In the meantime Iran races ahead with its own nuclear facilities. Saddam, unable to build a bomb because of sanctions and unable to sit in the sidelines and watch rival Iran progress, is then forced to terminate his weapons program in exchange for aid and military equipment from the West a la Libya. Hence, Iraq would’ve become a new proxy against Iran a la during the Iran-Iraq war. However, come 2011 and inspired by the Tunisian revolts, people in Iraq revolt against Saddam’s rule and he flees. Notice how the dictators deposed have been ones who had good relations with the US. These are the ones who refrained from the use of military force against their people to a large extent. Maybe because of some amount of pressure from the US, which supplied their major military hardware. Contrast this against countries like Iran and Libya where peaceful protests have been crushed violently. Hence, with Saddam being an ally of the west, it is safe to assume he would’ve come under international pressure to quit. And thus, both the goals of the Iraq war, elimination of WMDs and establishing of a democracy would’ve been achieved without firing a bullet. Im no pacifist, but anyone can definitely realise the large number of negative consequences of that futile war.

Maybe this sounds a little far fetched. But, then again, two months back, the idea of an overthrow of Hosni Mubarak through 18 days of peaceful street protests would’ve sounded very much far-fetched.

Another blog…

Well, guess what? Iv been itching to write some fiction stuff for some time now and I finally got started on that. Here’s the link to my new blog which will have only fiction material that I write. You can also find it on my blogroll.

Cheers.