Smriti Tuteja

The telecom service provider just sent out a notification that one can use their services only to call friends and family in Delhi and not in other parts of the country. How does that sound? Partial? Well, don’t worry it isn’t true. Why should the service provider decide who should I call from my phone? This post will try to demystify the Net Neutrality myth.

The internet works on a similar principle and the principle advocates for an open internet. One must be able to communicate freely across the internet. This principle is referred to as net neutrality. For the net to be neutral, ISPs and the government must treat all data on internet equal and not charge differential based on user, content, website, app etc.

There has been much hue and cry about net neutrality off late and the debate seemed to be growing exponentially over the past few months. With the biggest names in the media industry expressing their views on net neutrality, it has been the most discussed topic all over the internet. The debate started gaining attention with Airtel coming up with a zero plan that stated that the provider will charge for VOIP calls made through apps like Whatsapp and Skype, it also made certain apps free for the users. While they argued that Airtel zero is a marketing platform where the data charges will be paid by the companies whose apps are free, the others condemned it as against net neutrality. This led to Flipkart pulling itself out of the scheme.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had initially come up with a consultation paper that aimed at setting up a regulatory framework for over the top (OTT) services in India like Whatsapp and Skype but was criticized on grounds that it is already regulated by the IT Act.

Finally, after a lot of debates TRAI has come up with a decision that is in favor of net neutrality.

On Monday, February 8th, 2016, they barred the service providers from charging differential prices for data services and hence phased out Airtel Zero and Facebook’s Free Basics in their current form.

The decision encompasses the following points:

1. No service provider can offer or charge discriminatory tariffs for data services on the basis of content.
2. No service provider shall enter into any arrangement, agreement or contract, by whatever name called, with any person, natural or legal, that results in discriminatory tariffs for data services being offered or charged by the service provider for the purpose of evading the prohibition in this regulation.
3. Reduced tariff for accessing or providing emergency services, or at times of public emergency has been permitted.
4. Financial disincentives for contravention of the regulation have also been specified.
5. TRAI may review these regulations after a period of two years.

This decision that favors net neutrality will also favor the users who are free to access any content on the web, after all, it is the worldwide web and access to all websites must be easy and hassle-free. It will also favor startups and new business owners by giving them the opportunity to showcase their products and services without being discriminated against the big giants that can easily pay money to be free to the users. Net neutrality hence supports a competitive marketplace. It also promotes freedom of speech.

A word with a Facebook spokesperson reveals that they are disappointed about TRAI’s decision but will make further efforts to promote their idea of 'Free Basics' for the unconnected. Telecom providers may also come up against the decision but for now, the battle is won and our Internet is free. This success can be attributed to our efforts to understand net neutrality and raising a voice against the abuse of our privileges by the influential giants. The victory of net neutrality is our victory.

Let’s celebrate this victory by sharing our joy by letting everyone know that the internet is infinite and we are free to use it according to our wish. And what better way to start than participating in some of the exciting challenges that we are conducting.

Have you ever seen a wooden shell with a circuit board and 2 metal wheels? Maybe not, but if we ask someone from the 60s they may know that this is what the first computer mouse looked like. Today we cannot imagine our lives without a mouse; even the advent of touchpad powered computers and other input devices like joysticks, light pens has not been able to undermine the utility of a good old mouse. I can't even imagine working for an hour without it.

This gentleman called Douglas C. Engelbart invented the computer mouse and today is remembered for his contributions to computers and the internet. As we celebrate his birthday today, we'd like to thank him for making our lives unbelievably simple. He is remembered as the father of the field of human-computer interactions, who apart from the mouse also developed hypertext, the concept of networked computers and precursors to GUIs.

The following are some things about Douglas that inspire us:

1. He wanted to make the world a better place: Douglas quit his steady job at NASA's Ames research center to work for common welfare for he believed that complexities were on an all time rise and he wanted to develop ways of building collective intelligence.
2. The vision for future: Each of his innovations was implemented with a clear idea of what purpose it would serve in future. His belief was that the computer was ideated with the objective of automation but it should be used as a tool for workers to solve the growing complexities.
3. He wanted his vision to reach maximum people: He launched the Doug Engelbart Institute to share his vision.
4. Hardships could not demotivate him: Douglas's father died when he was just 9, he still completed his education and carved a path of his own.
5. You are never too late to follow your dreams: Doug was working as a radar technician at the United States Navy where he read an inspiring article and got motivated. He got married in 1951, but he realized that he had no career goals and then started on his journey to develop something to solve the complexities of the world.
6. Health issues could not break his morale: Engelbart was battling with Alzheimer's disease since 2007 but he still attended the Program for the Future 2010 conference where hundreds of people gathered to discuss how to pursue his vision of collective intelligence.

Douglas C. Engelbart was not only someone who gave us something of value but he gave us inspiration, enough to last us for generations.

Happy Birthday, Douglas! May more people like you work towards making the world a better place.

What is the best thing that you remember about your childhood? Candy floss, the bicycle, colony park or Pinball, Dave and Mario. Over the past decades, childhood pleasures have evolved from candies to simple games to the complex ones that we play today; the game audience has also evolved from just kids to adults. I remember playing Snakes and Ladders with my grandmother as a kid, but something tells me that my kids would play multiplayer video games with their grandparents.

Game development has definitely evolved to being a hot career today; but apart from being a career it is passion, people are putting in a lot of effort in making the entire experience a pleasant one. The origin of video games dates back to the simulation of chess in 1948 that was never actually implemented on a computer, and we have come quite a long way since then. There is a multitude of developers building thousands of games each day. Indie game developers to big gaming houses, everyone is putting their sweat and money in making the gaming experience better and the industry more competitive. Users, on the other hand, have diversified too, kids are no more the only target audience. People like me are more than happy to dive in that bean bag and go on for hours.

What is your favourite game? FIFA, Need for Speed, Simpsons, Candy Crush or something else? I just love the good old Mario, and if I crave for some graphics then ‘Fallout 4’ is my favorite companion. There are other games too, that grab my attention intermittently but it is worth thinking why there are a few games that take the market by storm and others just stay unnoticed in the deep abyss of different app stores and digital distribution platforms.

What does it take to be the next big game, the next Angry Birds or Candy Crush? Just as in any other business, consumer acceptance is the key to success, the same holds good for game development too. So, it makes sense to study the users and understand what makes a game widely adopted.

1. Focus on neuroeconomics or know what the audience wants and if it is feasible:
   As it is rightly said, well begun is half done. A good concept is a great start to a good game. But the toughest aspect of game development lies in deciding what to build. To find the answer to this, one has to closely study what the consumers want. Successful game developers apply game neuroeconomics to decide the concept of their game. Game neuroeconomics combines neuroscience and economics to make the prediction of the utility of game design and its elements, easy. The prediction and modification of consumer behavior also get easy when neuro economically augmented and interactive media products are used.
   
   Most of the game developers are hiring very smart people who reverse engineer successful products i.e take an example of previously successful games, find out what makes them successful and copy the formula or improvise upon it. It is a smart idea but mostly unsuccessful, mainly because the right approach is not being followed. The right approach would be to find out what the consumers really want and not what they like in the existing products.
2. Monetize the right elements: Successful game developers understand that a good game will earn them money and they don’t need monetizing measures that in essence, drive the consumers away. Following are some wise things they do to extract some money out of the game:
   • Include some In-app ads but make sure that they don’t intervene with gameplay.
   • Provide interesting additions but make sure they don’t affect gameplay. For example: choice of characters, clothing, weapons etc.
   • Never give the idea of paying to win because everyone plays for fun and winning generates a sense of achievement that doesn’t come from paid victory.
   • Ask for donations (Trust us, if they like the game they will donate to make it better.)
3. Effective Branding: Be it for indie developers or game companies, one thing that makes a successful game is good branding. They may hire marketing pros or take care of the branding themselves. Following are certain things that have been observed from success stories in terms of branding:
   • Successful game developers are true to the audience. They never portray the company as what it is not. An indie developer branding their game with an eye-catching logo and not a large company release can be a sure formula of success. The game will itself speak for its quality; a fancy branding that boasts a lie will not go a long way.
   • Advertisements should be centered on what makes the game unique and not the attractions of the genre.
   • Don’t aim at temporary attention by branding using buzzwords.
4. Work beyond the core competency: Your core competency may be programming but that doesn’t rule out the need of good graphic design in the game. Successful game developers make the best out of their skills and take help from other experts to fill in for the areas they are not good at. People across domains are involved in the process of game development viz. designer, artist, programmer, level designer, sound engineer, tester. All these roles are interdependent and it is essential for all of them to work in synchrony in order to achieve desired results.

Every evening when I am playing games after work, my mum would shout and say that I’d hurt my eyes and that she doesn’t understand what pleasure I get out of shooting animated characters. My simple answer is stress relief. In these times of growing stress, all I need is entertainment and I am sure others would agree. Entertainment needs lie at the center of the play and purchase of games and hence the sustenance of the game industry. I am more likely to choose entertainment over food and so would be other people like me. Game markets are thus sure to strive and take larger shares in consumer budgets owing to the rise in stress levels across people. It is thus a great idea to take your game development skills a notch higher and to also take care of the other aspects in order to be the next sensation in the gaming world.

What does it take for huge organizations to process large chunks of data or to perform critical tasks? Apart from extra amazing programmers they need superfast machines with massive computing capabilities. Thanks to Gene Amdahl, the world got introduced to such effective systems called the mainframe computers that take care of every critical task for large organisations. Mainframe computers first came into existence in the late 1950s when they were replacing vacuum tubes. That was the time when mainframes were the only computers and could be afforded only by very big firms but now they have become the backbone of every business unit, no matter big or small.

Mainframe computers have a wide range of applications now from ecommerce to health care to military applications. As Gene breathed his last on November 10th, 2015, the world lost a great brain but even after his death he continues to inspire us in numerous ways. Here are some important life lessons that we can learn from Gene Amdahl.

It doesn’t matter where you come from but where you go: Gene studied at a one room school without electricity but paved way for a generation of computers and entrepreneurial spirit. This is what HackerEarth stands for too - pedigree doesn’t matter; meritocracy does.

Balance between the call of duty and passion: Gene lived his youth during the World War 2. He served the navy during the war, but that didn’t stop him from pursuing his passion. He followed his navy service with a degree in Engineering physics at South Dakota University and then studied theoretical physics at the University of Wisconsin and completed his doctorate there. He made his first computer then in 1952 which was called the Wisconsin synchronized computer.

Believe in yourself: What do we do if our ideas are rejected at our workplace, be sad, crib about it, lose confidence or give up? Rejection happened to Gene Amdahl at IBM in September 1970 when his ideas for computer development were rejected. But he didn’t lose hope - he quit his well paying job at IBM and set up Amdahl Corporation with help from Fujitsu. His company did compete with IBM in the mainframe market and shipped its first machine in 1975 which was reliable and less expensive. Now, that is called belief in your own potential.

Never give up: When Gene left Amdahl corporation in 1979 to set up Trilogy systems with the aim to manufacture a chip for even cheaper mainframes, he didn’t know he would fail. The failure, however, didn’t demotivate him. He went on to develop VLSI technology but that attempt failed too. The failure of that project however led to the merger of Trilogy into Elxsi. When Elxsi also failed he moved on to his new venture Andor International, the bankruptcy of which lead him to co-found Commercial Data Servers which now develops applications to scan mainframe datasets and database tables for sensitive information such as Credit Card Numbers, Social Security and other government identification numbers, sensitive medical diagnosis information that can be linked to an individual, and other information such as that needed for electronic discovery. This may have looked like a saga of failures at first but his success lies in not giving up and opening pathways for newer innovations in mainframe computing. His perseverance secured him a position as one of the Board of Advisors of Massively Parallel Technologies.

Gene Amdahl lost his life to pneumonia but the industry will always stay indebted to him for his contributions and work. He may have died but his contributions will stay with us forever.