> now to add some ghee to the flame - as many of you will know the GSOC > mentor's list has a hot discussion going regarding widespread cheating > in GC-IN - including the interesting information that 80% of the > cheaters are Indians. There have even been suggestions that *all* > Indians be banned from GC-IN and GSOC too.
Indians cheating ? Nay sir, they are just damn too smart for rest of the world. Whoever said being competitive is directly proportional to working hard. > So what does this suggest to > us about our culture and our understanding of open source culture? History can throw some light on that. So I was reading this book, "Alcatraz versus the evil librarians", (yep I still read children's books), here the protagonist and his friend (a 13 year old ninja girl) will be in a tight situation inside a library built by evil librarians. Now to avoid being surrounded by librarian thugs our protagonist had to distract them somehow. And then he remember seeing a bunch of speaking dinosaurs, speaking with British accent and only as tall as a human being, captivated inside a cell. He runs back to the cell followed by his puzzled ninja girl-friend, and immediately breaks open the cell, releasing all the dinosaurs. And explains to his ninja girl, who by now is more puzzled about our protagonist's motive, that, dinosaurs even if human sized ought to run around rampaging the library floors, thus creating a rocus distracting the librarian thugs. The ninja girl gets thoroughly irritated and replies "Didn't you notice ? they are British dinosaurs !! and everyone knows, all British are refined, calm, and well mannered, even if they are a bunch of dinosaurs". And to his horror, our protagonist was watching the dinosaurs leave the cell one by one politely thanking him and strolling gracefully down the corridor. Okay now we know how and who of Brits. Let us move on to our quintessential Indian. So there was this quintessential Indian, let us call him Ihdang, who by some cruck of luck happen to land on London. Tragedy befell the British Empire - an empire, in those days, where sun never sets. And soon he could grasp what Alcatraz grasped belatedly, that the British are refined, calm and well mannered, even if they are a bunch of dinosaurs. And out of nowhere he decided to play "political saint", pulling together the likes of Alrib for funding and the likes of Urhen and Letap for mass, and all the while forcing the Brits to be, well a refined, calm and well mannered Brit. Call for a total boycott until the colonial machinery comes to stand still and when the Brits mount their guns, walk back to work as if nothing has happened. Declare fast until death only to drink a cup of juice once the Brits blink due to nervous exhaustion. One can only describe the situation better through the words of Joker from Darknight "What happens when an unstoppable force meet an immovable object ?" The Brits could take it no more. They left India to quintessential Indians. Did you read this far because you got a hint that it is about historical facts ? Okay, history is something that I write when I get bored writing programs. And as a cultural fact, all my folks can teach history even if they don't know how to read or write. Anyone still around ? _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
