Ongoing Projects

I never start projects. I bump into them. Sometimes they feel like a distant member of Grampa’s extended family. Other times, they feel like a close friend you’ve been dying to talk to for the past 6 months, but gosh darn it where’s his number? Unlike most seasoned hackers, I only have three large projects I wish to see to completion before I touch something new.

• index_server – the full text indexing tool for Haiku I wrote this summer.
• Goonj – a media player and music library manager for Mac OS X (I’m working on this with Pratul).
• Make the Dell Vostro 1520 100% Haiku compatible. For this, I need to write drivers for the following devices: (1) touchpad (2) wireless card (3) webcam and (4) sound card. I’ve already started digging through some driver code, but it will be a while before I have something usable.

Interests

I’m a sad case, really. I need to write a blog post to remind myself what I’m interested in. If you don’t want your kids to turn out this way, make sure they take enough baths. Yes, even in winter.

High-level stuff bores me. I find I’m much more comfortable with C and C++ than Python. With that in mind, here’s a small overview of my fields of interest:

• Compilers
• Virtual machines (and emulators)
• Operating systems
• File systems
• Games (why not?)
• Information retrieval

Lately, I’ve been reading up on electronics. I’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible with just a few cheaply available components, and I’m already shaking with excitement. College does not permit me to learn as much as I’d like to, but I’m slowly getting there. I’ll have something to show for my efforts in a couple of months. Let’s see what comes of this new obsession .

I was going to say something doubleplusawesome, but I forgot what. Anyway, here’s a list.

• Two grueling months of examinations come to an end. I will fail at least three exams.
• I don’t really care about that. No, really. I don’t care.
• Okay, I do care. In fact, I’m freaking out. Help!
• My GSoC application to Haiku did not get through on account of lack of slots. Instead, the Haiku folks invited me to participate in the Haiku Code Drive 2009, which is very similar to GSoC. I get to work on a full text indexing and search tool similar to OS X’s Spotlight.
• I just went to South Extension 1 with Sneezy, Bubbles and Chinmay to buy a bunch of books. Kitallis and Apoorv chose to watch Gulaal instead. You missed a great deal, guys. Next time, I’m going to drag you along.
• I bought Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, Dune, Kafka on the Shore, Lolita and The Great Hunt (part 2 of The Wheel of Time series).
• Read Brave New World. Huxley was a genius.
• I now have a love-hate relationship with Ubuntu. On the one hand, it Just Works ™. On the other hand, I have to upgrade every 6 months. Why does it have to be this way? Why!?
• I never thought I would have to install Jaunty. I didn’t want to. But I did. That means I have used every single Ubuntu release since Warty came out in 2004. Geez, I’m old.
• I also have a love-hate relationship with Firefox. I hope Firefox 3.5 really is more responsive than the 3.0 branch. I guess it’s goodbye Opera for now. If only Firefox worked better on OS X …

Well, that’s all folks. Now you know what I’m up to. Here are a few disjointed thoughts that do not warrant a post of their own.

• I will be spending most of my vacations using Haiku. With a boot time of 5 seconds and responsiveness that is unrivaled by any of the existing desktop operating systems, Haiku will kick ass once R1 is out.
• I never thought I’d get to see the evolution of an entire OS this closely. Fun!
• After I’m done with HCD2009, I will have learned more about software development than I have learned in my entire life as a hobbyist programmer.

Okay, enough random thoughts. Off to work. I have an operating system to compile.

Update: TRAI seems to not really care. They replied to me with a link to a page containing Airtel’s customer care numbers and a few email addresses, along with a few office addresses. It looks like Airtel have noticed the IBF petition, though. I haven’t seen an advertisement for over 24 hours, and my speeds are back to normal. I’ll email a link to this post, as well as a link to the IBF petition to Airtel just in case (thanks to @ankurb for pointing out the email addresses.).

Two days ago, Airtel Broadband was probably the best ISP in New Delhi and the NCR, not because of the monthly plans they offer (the plans are expensive ) but because Airtel cared about their customers. That was, of course, two days ago. For the past two days, the Airtel folks have been intercepting their users’ HTTP requests to show them full page ads of their DTH services. Here’s one, if you haven’t seen it already.

If you’re thinking that’s bad, wait until you hear what they did next. After you have used a certain amount of bandwidth in a month, your internet speed is halved. This happens only for users of the exceedingly overpriced “unlimited” plans.

A few disgruntled users over at India Broadband Forums have started a petition. You can sign it here. I also sent off an email to the TRAI requesting them to take a look into the matter. Even though I haven’t had good experiences with trying to contact government offices via email, I believe it was worth a try. It would be fun to see how they react to IBF’s online petition. What follows is the full text of the email I sent to the TRAI.

Subject: Complaint Against Malpractices by Airtel Broadband

Thousands of Airtel Broadband (the broadband service provided by Bharti Airtel) users have noticed that after having used a certain amount of bandwidth, the speeds of their so-called “unlimited” broadband connections are halved. This clause was not mentioned in the original Airtel ToS (Terms of Service), and the customers were not notified of the change. Airtel have also been intercepting users’ HTTP requests to show them large, full page ads before they allow them to continue to their requested destination. This is an invasion of the users’ privacy, and another change in the original ToS which the customers have not been notified of. More details of the issue are available here: http://afup.broadbandforum.in/

As a college student, I rely heavily on the Internet for course related information, the majority of which is in the form of audio and video which requires several gigabytes of unrestricted bandwidth per month. Letting this issue go under the radar will mean thousands of college students who use Airtel Broadband will suffer. People also use their broadband connections for bandwidth intensive tasks such as video conferencing and VoIP, collaborative software development and content distribution. If Airtel is allowed to continue with their anti-consumer practices, thousands of users who rely on a fast, cheap Internet connection for their livelihood will be inconvenienced.

I request you to kindly file a formal complaint against Bharti Airtel.

Thanking you,
Ankur Sethi

I urge anybody who has contacts in TRAI to try and make a formal complaint against Airtel. Everyone else can still contact them at any of the email addresses or telephone numbers mentioned here.