And the winner is...

Prediction is hard, especially about the future - Niels Bohr

Every four years we love to indulge into it. Prediction game is almost as fun as the real game. We all love our own version of story line. Reality might be different but in prediction game we get a chance to enjoy them, until the real thing takes stage. Here’s mine.

Group A (Brazil, Mexico, Croatia, Cameroon)

Brazil to win the group. Easy pick, I agree. Good team, great history and home crowd behind them. But there’s another important thing that makes this side strong. Coach. He is already a world cup winner, so knows a thing or two on how to prepare team for big, crucial matches. Mexico underwhelmed in the qualifiers but I will still pick them to go through.

Group B (Spain, Chili, Netherlands, Australia)

Spain wins the group without much difficulty but the fun is in for second place. Netherlands to make early exit. Chili an exciting team and more experienced on the condition.

Group C (Colombia, Ivory Coast, Greece, Japan)

Colombia (even without Falcao) and Ivory Coast to go through. Ivory Coast, an ensemble of a good players but has history of underperforming. Colombia to win group.

Group D (Uruguay, Italy, England, Costa Rica)

Overall a strong group, but sadly only two can go through. Uruguay to win the group, which means only one of Italy or England can go through. England, historically underwhelms and Italy overwhelms. Although this English team has youthful excitement and Italy not necessarily much stronger. It’s a hard pick. But I choose to go by a story line. Which one sounds better? Italy underwhelming and going out or Suarez knocking England out. I am sticking with the latter, just for the sake of fun story.

Group E (France, Ecuador, Switzerland, Honduras)

France has fun group, no issues to win the group. Ecuador to be the runners up. Why? I have no clue. Maybe because they are South American.

Group F (Argentina, Bosnia-Herz, Iran, Nigeria)

Argentina plays just across the border and has an amazing team. Easy peasy for them, must sail through. Bosnia-Herz had great qualifier, they will be second and look at the competition. Can’t expect much from Iran, Nigeria other than help Messi win a golden boot.

Group G (Germany, USA, Portugal, Ghana)

Touch group, but Germany is awesome and group winner. Logic says Ronaldo’s Portugal should at least make it to the round of 16, but I don’t care. I want USA to go through and they are going at Portugal’s expense.

Group H (Belgium, Russia, Algeria, Korea)

Belgium's golden generation to guide them through as winners. Russia runners up because there’s not much competition.

Round of 16

Brazil - Chili -> Brazil

Colombia - Italy -> Italy

Mexico - Spain ->  Spain

Uruguay - Ivory Coast -> Uruguay

France - Bosnia -> France

Germany - Russia -> Germany

Argentina - Ecuador -> Argentina

Belgium - USA -> Belgium. As much as I want, USA aren’t going further than this.

Quarters

Brazil - Italy -> Brazil

France - Germany -> Germany

Spain - Uruguay -> Spain

Argentina - Belgium -> Argentina. Party’s over for Belgium.

Semis

Brazil - Germany: Germany always runs deep into the tournament If you take into account how close they reach in last three world cups, it’s hard to deny they are the most deserving team to win this edition. Better team than Brazil, but home support to push Brazil to Final. I feel sorry for Germany

Argentina - Spain: Again, Spain probably a better team but I want all South American final. Wouldn’t it be funny if Messi dives on Busquets’s foul to win and score a penalty.

Final:

Brazil - Argentina: What a great spectacle it would be. Fitting final. Isn’t it already written? Isn’t Messi destined to for a super show and prove himself to be greatest. Wasn’t he already saving himself all season for this glory. It’s all adding up. It all makes sense.

But romantic in me wants Brazil to win it’s sixth. Brazil wins its Sixth.

Thanks for making this far. If you think all this was ridiculous, please Boo in the comment :) and enjoy the games. I plan to do that, irrespective of who wins.

Third Presidential Debate

It’s hard to escape a presidential debate in USA, even though I can’t vote.

A rare occasion when a democratic candidate starts strong on foreign policy but does it really matter?

Debates have become more of style rather than substance. It is more of a body language contest rather than a true discussion on policies. Today, just two weeks before the election both candidates will try to woo the mythical "undecided" voters. I personally feel the real undecided numbers are so low that they won't sway an election either way.

The other reason this debate will have minimum effect is because of the topic. It's foreign policy but voters care more about economy. So, people on both camps just want their guy to do well, not that they will change camps if he doesn't. Both camps will claim victory and hope to have won the "undecided" voters. I so much agree with Bill Maher here esp now just two weeks before the election (although the video is little old)

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/politics/2012-election/video-bill-maher-attacks-undecided-voters

The #appsung story 1.0

The Verdict arrived and all of a sudden tech world went nuts. Actually, they started going crazy right after the news that the jury has reached a decision and the announcement is imminent. Although patent lawsuit is very common and never ending phenomenon in tech industry, this one packed little more punch.  This was the largest patent lawsuit in history and involved giants of mobile business. Everyone who was even remotely following this story, jumped in. Everyone had opinion, a thing or two to say. After all, smartphones affects everyone. The verdict wasn’t entirely surprising though. Apple was expected to win and they won big. But, the scale of Apple’s victory (One Billion, forty nine millions and changes) stirred up a massive debate. As a student of technology, let me offer my two cents worth on this issue.

Patents and verdict

The six patents that Samsung was adjudged to infringe were: 1Tap-to-zoom (Utility Patent), 2 Bounce back (Utility Patent), 3 Single-finger scrolling and two-finger zooming (Utility Patent) 4 iPhone's edge-to-edge glass, speaker slot and display border (Design Patent),  5 Rounded corners and home button (Design Patent), 6 Grid-style icon layout in iOS (Design Patent). The only victory (if I can call it a victory) for Samsung was that the jury decided no company could patent a geometric shape and threw out Apple’s seventh infringement claim: Patent for the iPad shape (Yes, Apple had a patent for a rectangular shape with rounded corners).

Samsung’s statement right after the verdict was “It is unfortunate that patent law can be manipulated to give one company a monopoly over rectangles with rounded corners”. The statement reads great but it’s not valid. Because as I said earlier that’s the only claim Apple didn’t win. Sad part of the statement is that Samsung could have gone for a more valid argument like “can you actually patent a human gesture ?” and fuelled a more creative debate, instead they chose to sensationalize the issue and opted for a lie.

A company invests a large amount of money to come up with an innovative design and it’s not fair for any company to copy and use it in the product that directly competes with the innovator’s product. Innovators need security and patent provide that. You can say that patent law is not perfect, but however imperfect; it’s all you have right now.  I don’t believe it stifles innovation but encourages novel ideas and to think out of the box. But, if a company still wants to use others design then there is a legal way to do it, getting license. Apple offered to license its patents to Samsung back in 2010, but Samsung didn’t budge. Samsung claimed and still claims those patents weren’t valid but they were valid according to US patent law and every company that wants to do business in another country should honor their law. Remember Google getting out of China?

Effect on consumers and Industry

I believe it affects consumers more favorably than other way around. It forces companies to be more innovative and it’s always a good thing for consumers. Actually, Samsung seems to be in this track already. I believe they envisioned this scenario beforehand, because Galaxy SIII is quite different from its past iterations and have some really cool features. Whereas, in the past all Samsung seemed to do was to make phones that look like iPhone(Galaxy S, ACE are more prominent examples) and sell them little cheaper. 

Expect few more rounds of court fight though. There’s a reason I put 1.0 in the story. We may see few more twists in this story as Samsung will appeal to the U.S.Court of Appeals, and then possibly to the Supreme Court. Google has their work cut out too, because if the verdict stand then Android won’t remain “free and open”. Google will have to act swiftly to convince its partners that Android hasn’t become a liability. Microsoft is obviously buoyed by the verdict, but it may be short lived. Android is here to stay and will remain dominant plus nobody seems to buy windows phone anyway.

Wrong Targets.

It’s about time our rant on our politicians gets louder. Yet another deadline for new constitution is about to pass and we are understandably furious. Chautari, chiya pasal, bhatti, expensive pubs or even abroad, we discuss the same thing. Our Facebook news feed and twitter time-line will be cluttered with outcries like how wretched our country has become and how there is no hope for Nepal. But wait, there is hope. People offer solutions too, like killing politicians or hoping for a miraculous mass demise of all of them, bringing back King, trying Army regime etc., etc. All these “wonderful” ideas (or lack of it) have one thing in common, they all are either ludicrous or mostly not in our control. But the interesting thing is, we never talk about the most feasible idea. How about voting them out of power or stop following them? Isn't that the most obvious thing to do? After all, we made them politicians and politicians can only go where we allow them to go.

It’s not that we don't have any decent politicians, we do, but most of them are impotent as they lack followers. In election we vote candidate based on their race, caste and most importantly who is likely to advance our personal agendas (getting promoted, landing jobs, settling a court issue or helping to get an important deal done) rather than national agendas. A corrupt society always promotes and supports corrupt politicians. It’s not that our society was perfectly fine to start with, and politicians later ruined it. We always have been corrupt and have never seriously tried to counter it. We are hypocritical about corruption. Corruption and favoritism is treason if we aren’t a part of it but if we are, it’s fine and even have a perfectly logical explanation for it. “Everybody is corrupt and what I do don’t make any difference”, “I can’t change anything alone”, “Its ok as long as nobody knows and a proper paper work is done” “Now our guy is PM, this is my only chance to land a job”.

Politicians don’t address most pressing national issues because they are too busy addressing personal issues. They are smart enough to understand what they need to do to remain influential. The other problem is we vote extreme end of spectrum. The two biggest parties in constitution assembly are Maoists and Nepali Congress. Ideologically, they are like night and day. First is obviously a communist party, whose ultimate aim is People’s Republic and the other believes in democratic socialism. No wonder, they don’t come to terms. We vote extremes because as a nation we aren’t sure what we want. We claim to know politics. We actually claim to be expert in politics but that doesn’t change fact and the fact is no we don’t. We don’t know because be just talk, we just repeat the politicians’ sound bites. We actually aren’t either capable of understanding or don’t want to spend time to understand it but too hesitant to admit it. If we can take some of our time from mindless political guff and spend it in understanding politics and fact-checking politicians we will do a lot better.

We all claim to care about the country, but if everybody does care why isn’t country moving forward? There must be few reasons, a few people to blame. We certainly can’t blame ourselves because that will mean we will have to change, we will have to make sacrifices. So, politicians are convenient targets and our favorite punch bags. “Blame it on politicians” is the mantra. I am not trying to defend politicians; they are indefensible. I am just not attacking them. I am attacking our mindset. I don’t believe politicians ruined us; they merely took advantage of ever-present ruins. They don’t deserve more criticism than us. Change does happen, provided we choose to become proactive rather than reactive. Next time when we are frustrated and want to blame, if we choose to look in the mirror before looking at Singhadarbar, we might have a chance.

Balotelli's latest antics

Jordan Vs Nepal, First Leg Highlights.

Nepal's 2nd Round World Cup 2014 qualifiers.

I was super excited about Nepal's match against Jordan. Obviously Jordan is a superior team and ranked well above Nepal. But, we all had some hope of fighting performance and luck. Nepal had performed well against World cup 2010 team North Korea few months before and everybody were hoping for similar sort of performance. Coach Graham Roberts was pretty bullish about Nepal's chances and that didn't help either.

Nepal's away leg in Amman, Jordan was concluded just few minutes before and Nepal has tasted a big thumping loss. Jordan won the match by nine goals to nil. Nepal's chances of going into third round of qualifying is practically nil. Its no shame to lose against stronger opposition but this scoreline is pretty demoralizing. I never expected Nepal to win this tie but didn't expect to roll over in this fashion either. Don't know what to write next, so I better stop.

Nepal Tourism Year 2011.

Mundanity.

Don't have anything interesting to talk about. I am on a rather long vacation (partly chosen, partly enforced) and trying to remain as creative as I can. I sometimes feel there is such a thin line between, lethargy and creativity, while there is so much difference between the consequences of each. On the blogging side, I am thinking about writing on a serious issue. It will certainly take some research and time for completion. I might be able to finish it tomorrow, otherwise I will have to continue with mundane blog for one more day again and I apologize to u in advance if you happen to stumble upon it.

Life is pretty routine, for now. Morning jog, Breakfast, Tech News, News, Lunch, Programming, Nap, Tea, Books, Snack, Evening meetup, Dinner, Talk around TV, Blog, Meditation, Sleep. I insert social media in and around every above mentioned event. I have developed pretty serious affinity with Twitter. It can be very useful tool if you follow right people (..and that list varies for everybody). Facebook is pretty boring but effective on catching with good old friends/contacts. Google+ has hardly taken off for me and not sure if it will ever take off to overshadow Facebook. I don't think its a human nature to maintain hundreds of "friendship" around multiple social sites. Google+ can be a Bing of Social Media, its pretty good but why would you need it when u already have Google?

Lets stop this mediocrity here, right now ..................till tomorrow

Why so serious, UAE football officials ?

It is the most talked about kick in the football world right now. UAE’s winger Thiyab Awana scored an outrageous back heel penalty but for some “serious” people it was a cause for concern. Awana might be suspended and fined for his audacious effort, which is framed as “disrespectful”. Just imagine what would have happened had he missed the penalty?

My feeling to all this is “where’s your sense of humor, all you serious people?” Players kick their opponents out of the park; moan constantly with referees and escape but this poor guy tried something funny (and we all enjoyed it) and is being treated as enemy of the game. One of the reason (or the biggest reason) we watch sport is for entertainment and Awana provided plenty of it. He was even yellow carded in the game for his goal but might be fined again. There are plenty of example where players have deliberately handballed, dived in opponents penalty box, performed playacting to deceive referee and most of them if spotted are only penalized (carded) during the game. They say there was not enough evidence to prove whether it was intentional. This case certainly has evidence, but it is such a non-issue. Don’t UAE officials have better things to do?