Yesterday morning I got a call from +914044336931.

Here is how the conversation went:

He: Sir, I am calling from Bharti AXA Investments. We have this new plan…. (blah blah blah blah)

I : Sorry, but I am not interested.

He: Then why did you request for this call from our representative?

I : I never ever told you to call me. To the contrary, a few days ago I asked you never to call me again. I have registered in the Do not call registry and if you call me again, and I will complain.

He: To whom will you complain sir? You cannot do anything against us. You cannot even dream of winning a case against Bharti AXA Investments. Nobody can do anything against us. You try complaining and you will lose.

I: Hmm.. Let us see.

I knew that there is no point in complaining against these corporate giants. It is just that they suck and we can do nothing about it. But still I had to do something about it and hence I am publishing this here. At least my small number of readers will read about these arrogant people who lose their humility and think they are invincible when they become successful.

If any of you can tell me how we can respond to these corporate biggies, tell me that too.

Bharti AXA Investments, thanks for spoiling my whole day with that small little phone call.

One of my friends was talking to me:

Hey you see that guy? He is a very good programmer and he knows a lot of stuff.

I asked him whether he knew anything about this encryption algorithm. He told me that he knows a lot about encryption algorithms. In fact he writes his own encryption algorithms. He told me that it is always better to write your own algorithms.

Yeah.

Now I know how knowledgeable he is.

I have small request to make to all of the self proclaimed cryptographic experts out there:

Cryptography is hard. It is hard because there are always smarter people out there who can break your home-made super-duper encryption algorithm. If you are so confident in your abilities, use your own encryption algorithms in your own applications. Please don’t give it to the public. If are sharing your application with us, specify that you are using your own encryption algorithm so that we’ll understand how awesome you are and how awesome your products will be (and probably avoid using your awful application).

I know what you will be thinking right now:

But, nobody ever cracked my encryption algorithm!

That is because nobody cares. People have their own work to do rather than trying to crack your pet algorithm. If you really want to test the strength of your algorithm, try announcing a million dollar prize for the guy who breaks it.

And please don’t spread messages like “it is always better to write our own algorithms”  among us mortals. May be you can do good security on your own; we can’t.

Online forums and Q&A sites are very helpful in giving answers to technical questions. That is until when they are not.

In a recent Stack Overflow podcast, Jeff Attwood and Joel Spolsky illustrated how most of the online forums work (or don’t):

Jeff: Some guys come to web forums and ask programming questions and they are like “I need to bang the nail into the wall. Should I use this old shoe or should I use this glass bottle? I tried the glass bottle and it kinda  breaks the bottle, and the shoe is very inefficient”.

Jeol: Right, and people are always like “You shouldn’t be putting nails in your walls”

Instead of saying you should use a hammer, people almost always say something to the effect of you are using the wrong kind of nail.

Now, Stack Overflow adds an interesting twist to this problem by adding voting and editing features to question and answers. It is a Q&A website for programmers that doesn’t even need you to sign-up to ask or answer questions!

The voting system allows the best answers to be at the top while wiki-style editing means that anyone can edit any question/answer to make the posts better. Clever idea, and it is working too. It is the best programming Q&A website I have ever seen.

If you are a programer and still haven’t visited Stack Overflow yet, now is the time to check it out.

Gambler’s conceit refer to a mistaken belief by a person that he will be able to avoid losing in a game of chance. The person may be in a winning streak and then he starts believing that he will be able to control the game and he will know in advance when he is going to lose. He thinks that he can stop playing just before he lose.

The truth is that he cannot do that. That is just impossible. It is just an illusion of mind.

The same stuff happens to many smokers/drinkers. They mistakenly believe that they can enjoy the pleasure of smoking/drinking to the maximum and they will be able to quit just before becoming ill.

Now what is Inverse gambler’s conceit?

There are people who tell something to the effect of any of the following:

• I will start __________ when I have enough experience.
• I will start __________ when I have enough knowledge.
• I will start __________ when I have enough  money.

etc.

The problem is that you are never going to have enough experience, knowledge or money ever. So you are never going to start anything at all.

This is what I call Inverse gambler’s conceit.

Your experience, knowledge and money will grow only if you start doing something instead of whining.

I have discussed this stuff a lot of times here.

If you can motivate yourself so that you really start accomplishing something, so that you start producing results rather than dreaming about them, so that you don’t have to come back here and read all these articles telling you what you should do, then you can consider yourself a success.

You succeed exactly the same moment you start.

Finally, I present you a very interesting video. I stumbled upon it in Niju’s blog and thought I would share it with you. This little boy is a youtube sensation:

He knows more than 10 languages and he learned them by talking to tourists. Imagine that. A kid who never went to school can speak more than 10 languages.

So what about you? What is today’s excuse for not trying?

… get up early.

You will have plenty of time to sleep when you are dead.