The ChaosZone! Blog chaos is a state of mind

April 26, 2003

As a general rule, you can tell how good an army is and how well it will do on the battlefield by looking to see how much responsibility and authority it gives to its sergeants. And as De Atkine points out: "a sergeant first class in the U.S. Army has as much authority as a colonel in an Arab army". The Israeli army's sergeants are about the same as ours in terms of level of authority.

April 24, 2003

RSS readers that work like Usenet readers are a waste of time, imho. Aggregators should not organize news by where items came from, just present the news in reverse chronologic order.

The elderly Iraqi farmer who, according to Baghdad officials, literally shot his way to fame by downing a state-of-the-art US Apache helicopter with an old carbine has flatly denied he had anything to do with the crash.

April 22, 2003

Presenting the report to deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, who holds the home portfolio, Malimath said the changes were proposed for the first time in 150 years. He also recommended that from now on, criminal laws be reviewed every 15 years so that they are in tune with the “changing times”.

In fact, there's a reason criminal laws change little. Criminal law covers the most primal of offences: indeed very basic ones -- murder, rape and thievery have been with us since millennia. Indeed, modern criminal law merely codifies ancient religious 'thou shalt not steal'-style commandments. Updates to criminal law in response to modern technology happens, but only once in a while when a technological change is profound enough to enable criminal behavior: for example, in some societies, the technology of ultrasound may bring about a law that makes aborting a fetus based on a ultrasound sex-test a criminal act. The communications revolution may cause stealing passwords and PINs to be treated equivalently to stealing cash.

But, despite technology rah-rahs, technological revolutions do not happen on schedule every two decades, and nothing suggests to me why a compulsory 15-year review of criminal law is necessary, or indeed preferable over the normal day-to-day working of a functioning parliament. Indeed, the British parliamentary model, which we follow, allows for a living constitution that makes such periodic review un-necessary for criminal as well as civil law.

The “criminal justice system is virtually collapsing under its own weight as it is slow, inefficient and ineffective” due to which “people are losing confidence in the system”, the report said. The present system of the prosecution having to prove the guilt of an accused “places a very unreasonable burden on the prosecution”, the committee said in its report and recommended that in India, like in the continental countries, a “clear and convincing” standard of proof should be statutorily prescribed.

The ostensible thinking behind this is that ministers and other VIPs caught with wads of currency notes on their premises during raids need not come under the category of “presumed to be innocent till proved guilty beyond reasonable doubts”. Rubbish. Ministers survive raids like these because of inept prosecution and political influence. And they will continue to do so. Meanwhile, it will become much easier for average Indian to be victimized via planted evidence: "Your Honor, a search of Joe Ramkhilawan's housed revealed wads of fake Indian rupees, a sack of poppy and a copy of the Pakistani national anthem. He is obviously an agent of the Foreign Hand(tm) and should be hanged!"

April 20, 2003

April 19, 2003

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It started with an interesting thread at india-gii on localizing Linux for India, especially the quality of translation. This screenshot is symptomatic -- it relies far too much on English technical jargon and is therefore totally out of touch with the language actually spoken by those who most need localized software. It's easy to dismiss this problem as poor translation by volunteers (indeed, Microsoft's translations have been consistently better), but there is a deeper point hiding here.

The point is an interesting, hard, problem -- especially for India. India's approach to education is peculiarly skewed: the majority of children, especially lower income groups, attend state-run schools that teach in the local language. A minority (usually better-off) go to private schools that teach English (a proliferation of private English schools has ensured that more children today go to private English schools compared to, say, a generation ago). After school, however, the tables are turned. The majority of state-run colleges and nearly all private colleges teach in English (and these are accessible to all based on merit+affirmative action); a minority choose to go to (usually state-run) local-language colleges, and almost always enter into government jobs or academia after graduating.

Based on this, there are five categories of potential Indian computer users, in order of size:

The current marketplace for software is overwhelmingly dominated by Categories 4 and 2, in that order. In sheer numbers, on the other hand, Categories 1 and 3 dominate -- being (wild-ass guess) around 60% of India's population. In order to grow, however, commercial software companies (and Open Source Advocates) are localizing their software to attract a wider base. The thinking goes like this:

• Category 2 may buy a computer for the home if it was localized. This is IMHO misguided thinking. The Indian middle class (especially the Middle and Lower Income groups) from which Category 2 springs has time and again shown its preference for English (and upward mobility) rather than the native-language initiatives of their own state governments. Private schools discovered a long time ago that people do not wish to pay to receive a native-language education, so will the software industry, as long as most Indian home computers are bought with the kids in mind, or for self-improvement.
• Category 5 will use computers at work if the UI is localized. This is a valid point, because Category 5 mostly is the state governments and bits and pieces of the central government. Localized UI may ensure state and central government orders -- and this is a pretty big market.
• Category 1 and/or Category 3 will be better able to use software if it is localized. Generally, neither of these audience buys or downloads software. (In fact, they have very little disposable income or purchasing power.) Rather, they use software that is chosen for them. Quite often, that software is custom-written to do a specialized task. It is increasingly becoming clear that you cannot make an average farmer sit down in front of a computer and expect him to use Evolution (or Outlook) comfortably, simply because the culture and worldview of the developer -- vis-a-vis the user -- is dramatically different. The successful apps for Category 1 and 3 will not be localized, they will be specialized and custom-developed for the world-view of its audience. Of course, ideally, eventually Categories 1 and 3 themselves would disappear.

So we see that for all the activity to localize software for India, the primary benefit will be gee-whiz value to government bureaucrats who were perfectly capable of using the un-localized versions. Meanwhile, the masses (Category 1 and 3 primarily, but others as well) see little research directed at their real needs, which are:

• It is too hard to type in Indian languages! (and it's an un-natural activity for Indian scripts, most of which use conjugates extensively). What we need is research on handwriting recognition, something China (for fairly obvious reasons) has been working vigorously on.
• Deep internationalization support in applications. Categories 2, 4 and 5 are perfectly capable of reading English if that is the the UI language. However, they need to be able to work with their native languages in their applications. Most post-2000 apps from Microsoft (and most apps that target Windows 2000 and above) satisfy this criterion, but it is the open source movement's Achilles' Heel, largely due to lack of cohesion between OSS projects.
• Good IMEs (for as many Indian languages as possible) that work well on US-English keyboards, the cheapest and most common variety found in India. Historically, Microsoft's IMEs have been very good indeed, and OSS IMEs haven't. However, standard OS-based IMEs for all major Indian scripts do not exist yet, even on Windows.
• Good fonts and display logic. Most Indian scripts are too complex to be displayed reasonably at 8px, which is a the minimum-readable standard for Latin characters, so the display logic has to account for this. Hinting for Indian fonts also leaves much to be desired.
• Specialized applications that are culturally sensitive to Category 1 and 3 users.

Microsoft has been one company which has traditionally had the deepest internationalization support, although their work on handwriting recognition for Indic scripts is unknown. Indeed, Microsoft's marketing campaigns on Indian-Language computing has focused more on their deep internationalization and IMEs, rather than localized UIs (the UIs in the demos are in English).

Open Source solutions clearly have their work cut out for them in all these departments, although text display is likely to be less of a problem in the future with software like Pango being used by Gnome.

Some may argue that internationalization and localization are very orthogonal activities, involving different skillsets, and it is harmless if one continues while the other doesn't. In fact, premature localization is harmful:

• localization heightens user expectation about the software's internationalization
• poor localization (especially translation by amateurs) is a turn-off

If deep internationalization is achieved, then does localizing software for Indian audiences become easy? The answer is: only for some audiences (and these are the audiences who would probably have used un-localized software if they had to). Translating the jargon of the tech industry (from files, folders, and directories to cookies (how do you translate 'cookie' without knowing why a cookie is called a cookie in the first place?), web-bugs and defragmentation) into terms that will make sense to Category 1 and 3 remains a daunting literary task, given how ill-equipped most Indian languages are to handle technical terms in common usage.

We run the risk today of turning software localized for India into superficial 'Hinglish'-style translations at one end, or Academie Francaise-style ivory tower translations at the other. Companies with larger budgets, who can employ better writers/linguists, will see better results, yet the comfort zone  between Hinglish and the Ivory Tower is a thin one.

April 17, 2003

Aviva (their old name was CGNU Plc) actually has a webpage saying that their new name resonated positively "among 15,000 customers in 15 countries, being associated with life, vitality and living well." I wonder which 15 countries they polled, and, more importantly, who their brand manager was.

April 12, 2003

What really got my goat this time was finding out that they get food coupons worth 15,000 dinars per meal, 3 for every day. Fifteen thousand. Do you know how much the monthly food ration for a 4 person family is worth, for a whole month not per meal (real cost, not subsidized)? 30,000 dinars, if you get someone to buy the bad rice they give you for a decent price. 15,000. What are they eating? A whole lamb every meal?

April 10, 2003

Gulf War II will reshape the world... [Indian protestations about the war] only betrays an overstated idea of how much India counts. India cannot stop the conflict, cannot influence its outcome. What it can do is make a realistic appraisal of where its interests lie and how they can be safeguarded.

PS. Yes, I know Indiatimes is a private entity and can do what it likes on its own webspace, but it is a portal for the public, but seeing that even CNN (the much maligned lap-dog of the American establishment) allows viewers to phone in with anti-war comments, Indiatimes' editorial policy ré this war has been reminiscent of a Communist Party rag.

To Anita: I live (and wait) in hope :-)

To Kingsley, who's full of good ideas: dunno if you've read this, but it sounds interesting and worth thinking about.

The looting in Baghdad stopped suddenly today as Iraq's largest organized crime family disappeared from the city.

Thousands of Baghdad residents entered government buildings in an attempt to retrieve some small portion of what had been stolen from them for the past 24 years.

No matter what America's politicians and generals are saying now, it is evident that Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's shock-and-awe theory envisioned one combat division coolly strolling into Baghdad and taking over Iraq after a dramatic and precise aerial bombardment had shattered the enemy's will to resist. Alas, the enemy didn't cooperate: The war-planners had underestimated Iraqi resistance and miscalculated local support, leading to inadequacy of US troops on the battlefield...

April 01, 2003