Evolution has played a major role in the dominance of the human species. We have evolved into this dominant species because of our developed brain, opposable thumb and lot of other features most of us are aware of. But whats next? Does evolution end here? Are we the most highly evolved beings? Maybe, Maybe not, only time can tell. Time of billions and billions of years, but how are we as a species evolving on a time scale of hundreds or thousands of years?
If we look in the animal kingdom some of the most dominant species are social animals that form a close knit group. Although the clashes amongst groups are inevitable and most of the times fierce and life threatening for the group members they still survive only because of their sole evolutionary tendency to fight for their group members. Humans as a species gained a upper hand from some of its more powerful counterparts in the early evolutionary phase (I like to call it the survival of the fittest phase) just because of this very trait and till date its seen in our highly civilized global society that only the groups, that we call families (could be even a business family), that are close knit survive the test of time.
But then why does one sometime get the sense of insecurity in this closed packed herd? Why does one feel himself to be more important than the group? Why does one tend to do more for himself at the expense of the other members of the group? These traits lead to cheating and theft, but are these traits wrong? Generally as preached by our education system these traits are considered a taboo of the society, but they are evolutionary defects caused by our own interests. Evolution has taught us to live in numbers, but as we progress in our greed we feel safe in larger and larger number and hence we become part of multiple groups in order to survive. Being part of multiple groups its impossible for person to look into the interest of all his various family members at the same time. Many a times with a very high probability these interests clash and then comes the crucial moment where one needs to decide his loyalty towards a family. Billions of years of evolution has embedded into us the fact that only the closed knit groups survive and thus one generally decides to stick with the group which is the most tightly bound. So if this decision of his goes against the norms of the larger group called society he is banned from the larger group and sometimes even punished severely.
So are we any different from the animals? How are the humans a more gentle and evolved species? All I feel is that billions of yrs of evolution can not be wiped out from our brains in a matter of thousands of years and it will take another few billion years of evolution for one species to be the most dominant and still be humble in the true sense.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Clash of the Operating systems...
This weekend I was testing some of the new operating systems in the market and some virtual machines on my Macbook OS X 10.5.8. I was really eager to try the new google OS "Chromium" and my beloved Ubuntu's newest version "Karmic Koala". Although I had some reluctance in testing the new "Windows 7" after the memory hungry Vista but I still gave it a shot from some of the better reviews I have heard of the system. VMware fusion was my trusted virtual machine for all these systems and I think in comparison to its competitors Parallels and Sun microsystem's VirtualBox this piece of software is somewhat more stable and reliable.
My first test subject was Chromium and although its not much of an OS but just a modified web browser I had a lot of expectations from google after seeing some of their other products. But unfortunately this OS is a big disappointment. Although it boots up quite fast, approx 10 secs which is much faster than any other OS, its quite sluggish and looks quite an infant as compared to Microsoft and Macintosh. Even though its just a browser it takes up quite a bit of RAM, which is not very good if you run this as a virtual machine. The typing speed is not coordinated well with the keyboard speed and the mouse keeps bouncing off the corners. Plus installing customized software is not much of an option on a web browser. It has all the google features such as documents, calender, gmail etc. but for someone like me whose bread and butter depends on computers I don't think it is much of an option.So overall I feel that this is not for people who use the computer but for the ones who simply use the internet.
The next guinea pig was my favorite linux distros Karmic Koala. All my linux training has been done on Ubuntu "Hardy Heron" which is one of the most user friendly and stable linux distributions. Hence I had a lot of expectations from Karmic Koala especially because it was said to have graphics to match a Mac. But this time Ubuntu has failed me miserably. This system has more problems than solutions and I think should still be in the Beta stage. Although it has amazing graphics and the entire system is made more user friendly by adding software like Add and Remove programs and System manager(Quite similar to Task manager) overall its a formidable task to get this system up and running. It took me nearly 4 hrs to install this system and to solve its sound and graphics problems before I could actually use it (This is compared to 10 mins of installation time for Chromium). But once this koala is up and running its quite easy and beautiful to watch. Overall I would recommend this to people who know their linux and who want the power of a linux system in the most beautifully designed GUI.
Next up was Windows 7, to be frank I had no hopes from this system after looking at Vista. After Vista I have always questioned myself, Why did people at microsoft have to compromise on the stability of Xp just for the sake of graphics and some additional security features? (which most of the windows users don't even care about.) Apparently I think that they did realize this and their answer is Windows 7 which is quite a gentle monster. This OS took less than 1 Gb of RAM with all the graphics. The task bar is quite changed with some of the Mac features creeping into the Windows 7. Also most of the bugs present of Vista have been removed and the system overall doesn't crash much but still there is much more refinement required in windows 7 to compete with its biggest competitor Mac. Overall I would rate this system much better than Vista and its predecessors but still I feel windows needs to do much better if it needs to stay in the market especially with competitors like Ubuntu and Mac.
Overall my weekend was nothing but a wast of time over these highly disappointing OSs. But I still feel that Karmic Koala can outshine the other if its bugs are taken care off and Chromium can be a great OS for the offices where the main work is on the internet. But as of now Windows 7 wins hands down although it comes at price... But after all all good things come at a price don't they?
My first test subject was Chromium and although its not much of an OS but just a modified web browser I had a lot of expectations from google after seeing some of their other products. But unfortunately this OS is a big disappointment. Although it boots up quite fast, approx 10 secs which is much faster than any other OS, its quite sluggish and looks quite an infant as compared to Microsoft and Macintosh. Even though its just a browser it takes up quite a bit of RAM, which is not very good if you run this as a virtual machine. The typing speed is not coordinated well with the keyboard speed and the mouse keeps bouncing off the corners. Plus installing customized software is not much of an option on a web browser. It has all the google features such as documents, calender, gmail etc. but for someone like me whose bread and butter depends on computers I don't think it is much of an option.So overall I feel that this is not for people who use the computer but for the ones who simply use the internet.
The next guinea pig was my favorite linux distros Karmic Koala. All my linux training has been done on Ubuntu "Hardy Heron" which is one of the most user friendly and stable linux distributions. Hence I had a lot of expectations from Karmic Koala especially because it was said to have graphics to match a Mac. But this time Ubuntu has failed me miserably. This system has more problems than solutions and I think should still be in the Beta stage. Although it has amazing graphics and the entire system is made more user friendly by adding software like Add and Remove programs and System manager(Quite similar to Task manager) overall its a formidable task to get this system up and running. It took me nearly 4 hrs to install this system and to solve its sound and graphics problems before I could actually use it (This is compared to 10 mins of installation time for Chromium). But once this koala is up and running its quite easy and beautiful to watch. Overall I would recommend this to people who know their linux and who want the power of a linux system in the most beautifully designed GUI.
Next up was Windows 7, to be frank I had no hopes from this system after looking at Vista. After Vista I have always questioned myself, Why did people at microsoft have to compromise on the stability of Xp just for the sake of graphics and some additional security features? (which most of the windows users don't even care about.) Apparently I think that they did realize this and their answer is Windows 7 which is quite a gentle monster. This OS took less than 1 Gb of RAM with all the graphics. The task bar is quite changed with some of the Mac features creeping into the Windows 7. Also most of the bugs present of Vista have been removed and the system overall doesn't crash much but still there is much more refinement required in windows 7 to compete with its biggest competitor Mac. Overall I would rate this system much better than Vista and its predecessors but still I feel windows needs to do much better if it needs to stay in the market especially with competitors like Ubuntu and Mac.
Overall my weekend was nothing but a wast of time over these highly disappointing OSs. But I still feel that Karmic Koala can outshine the other if its bugs are taken care off and Chromium can be a great OS for the offices where the main work is on the internet. But as of now Windows 7 wins hands down although it comes at price... But after all all good things come at a price don't they?
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