Sweet Talk
After their previous venture of trying to check the average height above mean sea level of the Chepauk pitch, Ramudu and Shyamudu got really busy with their work. So busy that did not feature in any of this blog’s post till today and this post happened because they finally got some time off. So they sat down, having Kaju Kathli from Dadu’s, and started chatting around like how two young men with nothing else to worry about, do(You dirty fellows).
The conversation started with, of course the Kaju Kathli from Dadu’s and how it tasted so much better than the lots that they had been recently chancing upon at many unsuspecting friends places. Then they started discussing about different sweet shops in Hyderabad & Secunderabad. Ramudu swore by the Balaji Mithai Bhandar opposite Uppal Bus Stand and their fresh plain Kalakhand. It so happened that he had gone to school with the shop owner’s son and that always meant discounts and free rasmalai samplers. Shyamudu was more of the adventurous kind in the sweet testing and tasting business, known very well to drop by randomly at unknown sweet shops to sample every sweet on display and then finally say, " Pau kilo peda pack kardo bhai". He also wondered why almost all the sweet shops owned by Marwadis in the twin cities were named Sri Balaji Mithai Bhandar.With an ever increasing database, Shyamudu was the to-go man for all his friends and family for spontaneous sweet purchases in unfamiliar localities. Some friends of his had suggested for him to post his views online for those who might be in need of such help. So he started frequenting restaurant review websites and posted reviews of sweet shops. He was now mentioning the same to Ramudu as how convenient it has become to access even such specific information through the power of internet and continued on by talking of all the various avenues of social networking aka blogs, facebook, twitter and what not.
As we have already seen in the previous story, Ramudu is a bit old fashioned. So all the talk about online social networking wasn’t really going down well with him. He started to talk of the paradox that is today’s social structure where there is loss of personal contact due to all these contraptions and at the same time those very things now have other stuff that let you connect with people with whom you lost touch in the first place because of these things. He also detested the in-your-face 24-hour updates that all of these services seem to be encouraging. Why was there a need for everyone to know everything about everyone, he felt. Why the need to get enrolled in so many websites for almost the same thing, when plain e-mail is more than enough. This was his line of thought and got a bit hyper, while explaining this to his friend.
Shyamudu went on the defensive saying that the user is free to choose what he chooses to show of himself and see of others. He also suggested of the upcoming service chi.mp which allowed for you to gather all your online presence as a single entity and then from there choose what to show to whom.
Ramudu at this point said something which made no sense and it went something like this. - " Let’s say there is someone, who shares my feelings. Let’s say that he does not like this idea of every third service provider seeking my details from another service provider albeit with my supposed intent and permission after verifying my credentials. Let’s say he wants his thoughts on this known to everyone and decides to play an insider joke kinda thing. Let’s say he creates a simple website that in effect does nothing but uses your credentials to a commonly used service to let everyone else know that there exists a portal that will let you see what you can do by logging in to your commonly used service. May be people will know then, how vulnerable they really are to all this." Shyamudu thought that though it was a pretty naive way to look at things, especially with so much to gain with all the flexibility provided such integration , it would really be nice to see how people react if such a thing did happen. At this point, they moved on to the Ariselu and back to the sweets.
( This is my take on the ViddyHo.com phishing running around since morning)