This is an old article that I wrote in May of 2001 – many months before 9/11. I was quite shocked when I re-read it recently, only to find that half a decade later, it is as relevant as it was when I first wrote it.

Since one of the reasons for this site is for it to be a single place where one can find all my old articles, I am moving it here. –ac

I have been quite vocal with my reservations about India’s “techno slavery” approach to IT business, and I definitely haven’t made any friends at NASSCOM that way.

Sure, the tech slowdown in the US *has* been a rude awakening for Indian IT companies, but I bet that we haven’t yet seen the worst of it.

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Here you will find the original COMversations articles, as they appeared in PC Quest between 1993 and 1996.They are here mostly as a reference for old-timers on a nostalgia trip (me included) as well as for people who want to know what “the good/bad old days” were like before the Internet became available to most of us.

The articles focussed on communications and networking, and attempted to clear up issues and questions about this field.

The articles appear in chronological order. The first article in this list was the first one that was published – in January 1993.

Please note: These articles are old, and in many case do no longer have any relevance to stuff that exists today. Please do not write to me trying to “update” me on things (like “hey, haven’t you heard of 56kbps modems?”) – most of this stuff was current when it was written – back in the 1990′s.

Atul Chitnis is a technology consultant, residing in India’s “Silicon Valley” – Bangalore.

A qualified Bachelor of Engineering holder in Mechanical Engineering, he has always been fascinated with the world of technology – especially computers.

Atul began writing technical and techno-social articles in the early 1990s, but his dabbling with writing goes back to his childhood, when he and his brother used to “publish” newspapers and magazines, writing all the material themselves.

His first piece of technical writing was a “User manual for our Home” that he wrote in sheer frustration after his family moved into a new home, where nothing seemed to work, and which contained the immortal instruction “To get water out of the shower, flush the toilet first…”.

In 1992, he was encouraged by Prasanto Kumar Roy, then editor of Indian computing magazine PC Quest, to write a series of articles for the magazine. These articles appeared to have been quite popular, resulting in a permanent column in PC Quest between 1993 and 1996, named “COMversations”. He was also consulting editor to PC Quest until 2002.

You can find out more about Atul, visit his site – http://atulchitnis.com.

The name COMversations comes from a column that I wrote for an Indian computing magazine between January 1993 and December 1996.

The column dealt largely with data communication, BBSs, modems and later on the Internet. By 1996, I was also covering topics such as Linux and OpenSource, as well as a lot of networking stuff.

Apart from the fact that it brought me an unbelievable amount of attention and exposure (some people might call it “fame”), it was more than anything else a lot of fun to research and write.

Since then, technical and techno-social writing has been part of my life, and I often find myself sitting down and “penning” (if one can still use that term in this day and age) an article on some topic or the other.

Additionally, I keep an online diary on the web at http://atulchitnis.net. While the diary was meant to track my personal life for friends, family and anyone else who may be interested, I also found myself mixing in a good dose of technical and techno-social writing, confusing the various types of visitors to my site.

Clearly, I needed to keep things separate.

So what does one do with all that material? Does one leave it to bit-rot in my archives, to slowly turn irrelevant? Or should one get them out there, in the hope that others may enjoy reading them, and possibly learn from them?

The answer is this site – COMversations.com.

Over time, I will start filling the site with stuff I have written – not just old articles, but new ones as well. In fact, the newer articles will come in first, while older articles will be “retro-fitted” over time.

I hope that you, dear visitor, will enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Atul Chitnis
Bangalore, India

My friend walked into this shop, looking for a particular book that he had read about. This bookshop (spread over multiple floors), is typical of its kind – rows and rows of shelves, stacks of books, generally classified into broad topics (Fiction, Science, Art, etc.). Customers wander into the relevant section, and search for their book, bring it to the counter, and pay for it.

He couldn’t immediately find it, so he asked the sales personnel to help him. They in turn asked him for the exact name of the book, the publisher’s name, etc. – all information that my friend didn’t have. He had just read about this book (either in a magazine or on the Internet), and since it was of interest to him, he thought he’d buy it. He didn’t think that he’d have to bring in so much information just to find it!

Well, he didn’t get the book, so tried in another shop, with similar results.

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