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Marriage is a folly: Kamal Haasan- Hindustan Times
www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id... I've never believed in marriage. It was only because I loved the women that I went through it to please them. Marriage, like religion for me, is an imposition. Did you marry Sarika because of the children? Kamal Hassan is a very intelligent man. Researchers at New Mexico State University recently discovered the world's hottest chile pepper. Bhut Jolokia, a variety of chile pepper originating in Assam, India, has earned Guiness World Records' recognition as the world's hottest chile pepper by blasting past the previous champion Red Savina. In replicated tests of Scoville heat units (SHUs), Bhut Jolokia reached one million SHUs, almost double the SHUs of Red Savina, which measured a mere 577,000. Dr. Paul Bosland, Director of the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University's Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences collected seeds of Bhut Jolokia while visiting India in 2001. Bosland grew Bhut Jolokia plants under insect-proof cages for three years to produce enough seed to complete the required field tests. "The name Bhut Jolokia translates as 'ghost chile,'" Bosland said, "I think it's because the chile is so hot, you give up the ghost when you eat it!" Bosland added that the intense heat concentration of Bhut Jolokia could have significant impact on the food industry as an economical seasoning in packaged foods.  enlarge Fruits of Bhut Jolokia on plants grown in the field at the Leyendecker Plant Science Research Center. Pretending to be a fool matters not
Mullah Nasrudin (the central figure in almost all tales of the Sufi tradition) had already become a sort of attraction at the main market in the town. Whenever he went there to beg, people would show him a large coin and a small one: Nasrudin always chose the small one. A generous man who was tired of seeing everyone laugh at Nasrudin, explained to him: “When people offer you two coins, choose the larger one. Then you will have more money, and people will not think you a fool.” “You are surely right”, replied Nasrudin. “But if I always chose the larger coin, people would stop offering me money, in order to prove that I am a greater fool than they are. And then I would no longer receive enough for my food. There is nothing wrong with appearing to be a fool, if what you are doing is in fact intelligent.” We are all responsible A group of men came along the street; heavily armed soldiers leading a condemned man to the gallows. “That man is no good”, said a disciple to Nasrudin. “I once gave him a silver coin in order to help him start his life afresh, and he did nothing important.” “He may be no good, but perhaps he is now on his way to the gallows because of you,” argued the master. “Perhaps he used the alms in order to buy a dagger, which he then used in committing his crime - because instead of helping him with love and care, you chose to give him alms in order to release yourself from your obligation.” Each thing in its own place All Nasrudin’s disciples were gathered at a feast. They ate and drank for several hours, and talked about the origins of the stars. The night drew on and everyone made ready to go home. A fine plate of sweets was left on the table: Nasrudin made all his disciples eat it. One, however, refused. “The master is testing us,” he said. “He wants to see whether we can control our desires.” “You are mistaken,” replied Nasrudin. “The best way of dominating a desire, is to satisfy it. I would rather you had the sweets in your bellies - their rightful place - than in your minds, which should be filled with nobler things.” "He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, 'Here you go,'" Diaz says. As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, "Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you're going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm." The would-be robber looked at his would-be victim, "like what's going on here?" Diaz says. "He asked me, 'Why are you doing this?'" Diaz replied: "If you're willing to risk your freedom for a few dollars, then I guess you must really need the money. I mean, all I wanted to do was get dinner and if you really want to join me ... hey, you're more than welcome. THE CITY FIX: Exploring Sustainable Solutions To The Problems of Urban Mobility » Blog Archive »
thecityfix.com/behind-bangalores-growth-a-new-spec... The increase in land prices, lack of cycle tracks, footpaths, poor public transportation, and the risk of being struck by a motorized vehicle have forced him to drive to work. He now spends nearly 30% of his salary on his monthly commute.
A French student witnessed this when he decided to do his internship in an Indian software company. He observed that his colleagues resisted writing down minutes of the meeting or preparing a project plan with clear milestones and roles and responsibilities. Yet everyone seem to know their duties and their deadlines. He noticed that the requirements of the clients went through many changes. A lot was discussed over the telephone but hardly anything was written. Everything was in the ‘head’ of the engineers and the ‘head’ of the clients. To his surprise, the software was developed on schedule. No attempt was made by the client to reconcile the requirement documents with what was finally delivered. What mattered to the client was that the new system worked! The French intern also noticed that the user manual had many discrepancies – the screen shots were older versions, there were many grammatical errors. This did not bother the client; he suspected the client had not seen the manual. All the users on the client side insisted on demonstrations. But the training was not very detailed. A colleague explained, “They will keep calling us when they face problems for the next couple of months.” The intern realized such casual calls were an unwritten part of the contract that ensured a good relationship with the client and brought repeat business.
'I fell in love with a female assassin' - Americas, World - Independent.co.uk
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/i-fell-i... One morning, Marylin told me that the previous night she had persuaded a friend to help her decapitate and dismember a woman she had been contracted to kill. This was no informer, but, rather, a friend of hers who paid her to kill her boyfriend's other girlfriend. She described so graphically what had happened, with so little feeling, that at last reality kicked in.
Should become a very good movie ! End this killer Raj-MEN & IDEAS-Gurcharan Das-Columnists-Opinion-The Times of India
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Columnists/Gur...
For the
first time an Indian institution of higher education has been ranked among the
top 20 in the world. The Indian School of Business (ISB) was ranked 20th in a
list of the top 100 business schools by a prestigious foreign business daily two
weeks ago. A Chinese business school was No 11; four European schools came in
the top 10, and the rest were from the United States.
But wait a minute. Isn't the ISB illegal? ISB officials explain that they don't want accreditation from All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) because then "they will decide our courses, our student intake, and even the size of our buildings." I spoke to a top AICTE official, who scornfully dismissed ISB - "its fees are too high and it doesn't even have a permanent faculty." I gently suggested that its faculty is world-class if not permanent. And why worry about fees when every student has a loan. They must be doing something right if students command a mean salary of Rs 16 lakh a year at graduation. ISB is India's only school in the top-100 list. There might have been more but for AICTE. One of these is Mumbai's premier SP Jain Institute, run by a no-nonsense Harvard graduate. It doesn't bribe; nor does it succumb to politicians for admissions. Hence, it is punished. It applied to admit 120 students in 1992, but got approval for 45. In 2001, it applied for 180 but didn't get approval for six years. In 2004, AICTE rejected its unique dual degree programme with a reputed foreign university, whereby the latter would have flown its faculty to India. Its innovative programme for family-run businesses was also rejected. Last year, it seriously contemplated closing down. Instead, it has started campuses in Dubai and Singapore - far beyond AICTE's reach. What do you do when the keepers of the law become its oppressors? AICTE was set up to encourage higher education but it achieved the opposite. Honest officials have tried cleaning it up periodically, but they have always been removed by politicians, who happen to own many of our worst private institutions. The answer, of course, is to give autonomy to all education institutions. Regulators should only ensure that they provide mandatory disclosure on the Internet about their courses, faculty, fees, and facilities (with severe punishment for false claims). Professional rating services should evaluate colleges with the same credibility as Crisil rates industrial companies. Competition will take care of the rest. Students will be able to make informed choices. Good institutions will thrive and poor ones will close. In the India of my dreams the government will stop running universities and colleges. All institutions will be autonomous. The government will plough all the money saved into scholarships. The government's role will be limited to governance - ensuring corruption-free ratings and corruption-free exams (with the credibility of IIT-JEE) at various stages in a student's career. The tombstone of the UGC/AICTE Raj will thus read: "For 50 years we promoted rote learning, incompetent faculty, and mediocrity. We punished original thinking and failed to create an employable graduate. We pushed students into a parallel universe of coaching classes, which ironically took their obligation to students far more seriously. We deserved to die." Building India is about building institutions. This Sunday let's celebrate the emergence of a world class institution in India. The altruistic founders of ISB had a vision. They funded it privately and nurtured it in its early years. They persisted in difficult times, especially when they were under attack from AICTE. Now, this is how to build fine institutions. Instrucciones para cuidar un bebé » makememinimal
www.makememinimal.com/2008/instrucciones-para-cuid...
Remember when? Man with big memory does - Yahoo! News
news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080222/ap_on_re_us/memory_ma... For as long as he can remember, Brad Williams has been able to recall the most trifling dates and details about his life
For me, money is an instrument of change. I have no interest in leaving a financial legacy and a fat bank balance for our only son. I want to bring about change in India in my lifetime. I want to spend all the money that I earn in my lifetime and while I can - because we are running out of time for India. But I do not have enough for what I want to do (more on that shortly). So, I am using entrepreneurship as a ‘money amplifier.’
Inspiring mini-autobio. Has any IT company said don’t listen to music? « churumuri
churumuri.wordpress.com/2007/12/11/15-reasons-why-... Alok Prasanna’s rant is probably the worst piece of garbage I have come across in my entire life. Alok engages in tarka for the sake of tarka. Alok has completely missed the spirit of CNR’s honest albeit misguided jibe. Let me talk about CNR instead. Why is CNR’s column honest ? Because I and you and all the IT & non-IT people & Kannadigas & non-Kannadigas & their maids and managers are discussing it. If it was a non-issue would you devote so much attention to it ? It is honest because there are some home-truths in it. It is honest because it says things we all want to say but don’t say aloud because we don’t want to offend anybody. Bangalore of today is very different from the Bangalore of 80s. Why ? Because of IT. Take IT out of the equation, it would basically be the same old Bangalore. Anybody can attest to that. The question is, is this change good or bad ? CNR says it it bad. That’s where he is misguided. Why is CNR misguided ? One word - scalability. Let us say murthy angadi & Wipro & TCS already have the best & brightest million Indian employees. They should stop hiring, sit down & write code. But instead each year they hire another 10,000 people. Why ? Because coding is very much like bricklaying. If you have 10 masons they will take 2 months to build your house. So if you have 100 masons, how many days…do you remember those high school ratio problems ? That is what coding is like. Despite API, modular programming, OOP whatever, end of the end, if you firm has more people than mine, you will complete the contract faster. As long as demand for IT is there, and as long as supply keeps up in the form of newly minted IT graduates from our engineering colleges, this equation will be true. Before I became a scientist, I too was in in IT, a lowly programmer, then an IT manager. And our mantra was the same - hire more, more, more! Steal from Wipro, steal from TCS, steal from IBM, pay more, more bonus, but hire more at any cost! Why ? Because more programmers implies shorter deadlines implies more revenue implies higher GDP implies better facilities implies more contracts implies more programmers…endless loop! Because coding is scalable. Now I am a scientist. But Science, alas, is not scalable. Look at Claymath, for example. 1 million dollars to solve a very simple mathematics problem that is atleast 200 years old. Let me explain what that means - for 200 years, millions of very bright mathematicians from all over the world have studied a problem. They still cannot solve it. Do you think offering 1 million dollars will change anything ? Arre, even if you offer 1 trillion dollars, nothing will happen!!! The problem is too difficult to solve. It needs a genius. And genius does NOT scale. That is the problem with science. Science does not scale. Today we have say 1000 top-notch scientists in India. Or say, 100,000 top notch scientists in the whole world. Now we are all trying very hard to do breakthrough science, solve the hardest problems in our field. Speaking as a scientist, we are already doing that. Do you understand ? We are already doing it. Now if all the engineering students drop out tomorrow & start doing BSc, MSc in science & get their PhD & become scientists and join our ranks, do you think we will have breakthrough discoveries ? NO!!! Very counter-intuitive, but the answer is still no. Because we are not doing coding or technology development. If 1 programmer writes 100 lines of code, 100 programmers will on average write 10 thousand lines. True ? Absolutely. Because it is a scalable profession. But Science is not scalable. If 1 scientist solves 1 theorem does not mean 100 scientists will solve 100 theorems! If that was the case there would be no need for Claymath, no need for 200 year old problems, we would have already solved everything by now. In fact CNR also understands this, but he still insists on going off on his misguided rants. Based on my personal information about him, CNR thinks that these rants serve a purpose. It is like earthquake fund relief or tsunami fund relief. Say there is a tsunami and million Indians die. Immediately, all the NRI hearts will melt, they will take out their credit cards and write 100 dollar donations to CRY. Now you think that 100$ is going straight to the poor people who are affected by tsunami ? Of course not! Administration cost, office space, electricity, taxes, parking, and yes, some corruption, will eat up that $100. But still, at least $1 will go to the actual cause. CNR has the same reasoning. The more he rants like this, maybe out of 100,000,000 students, at least 1 student will switch from engineering to science. Maybe that 1 student will become a Raman or a Chandrashekar. Maybe he will solve a Claymath, maybe he will put India’s name on the Nobel roll. Maybe. That is why CNR goes off on these misguided rants. He knows every single point that this Prasanna is writing about. But still, he does it, because of his love for science. But CNR also knows that science is not scalable. Tomorrow if government of India comes up with some draconian policy that bans the teaching of IT in every college & insists that everybody do science, even then no new breakthrough science will be produced! Sad but true. Science is not scalable. You need geniuses, and you cannot mass-produce a genius. You cannot train them. We all try as scientists, but the sad truth is that genius is like magic. Do you know for example that 99% of physics today was produced by scientists UNDER the age of 21? How little training they would have received. But they did it because they were a genius. You cannot train a genius. You can have your Aptech and NIIT and train coders, they will happily do monkey job in murthy angadi and come up with some XML API and call it “innovation” ( ha ha ! ), and dudes like this Prasanna will also lap it up and actually think innovation happens in IT at lightspeed! No need for peer-reviewed papers, no need for years of study, just write a protocol for binary encoding of XML data for B2B domain, apply a layer of SOAP, you have innovation! That sort of innovation I have done 20 years ago…it is trivial. This is why IITians don’t join Infosys…because who wants to waste your genius brain on some idiotic monkey activities like this. But I admit, monkey activity will yield rich dividends in the short term. That is where my thinking differs from CNR. For every developing country, a few generations will have to be sacrificed. Sad but true. Do you think the generation that built the massive George Washington Bridge across the Hudson, that built the World Trade Center, was the SAME generation that drove a limousine across the bridge to work on posh paychecks on wall street ? Of course not, they were busy building the bridges & towers! But the next generation did a little bit better, and the next, and the next. Finally the present generation ie. today’s Jews take the limo and pays $50 tip to the Indian cabbie & goes to work for private equity for the starting salary of $450,000, even though they can take the subway and pay only $2 for the subway token. See the difference ? A few generations have to be sacrificed in the name of development. That is what is happening in India & China today. The youngsters who are wasting their brains working on coding for 20k or 50k rupees or whatever peanuts they are paying these days instead of doing a PhD in Physics are necessary for the 11% year-after-year GDP growth. We need that growth. We need that money. But you can bet their children will not go work in murthy angadi, they will think about Biotech and so on. Then their grandchildren will go work in the arts, write a novel, do Physics, etc. Because science, math, arts etc is ultimately a rich man’s profession. You can write nonsense like “scientists are not doing it for the money”. True, I admit, I am not doing science for the money. Because, I already have some money! See, you need some backup. A starving man will not do science, he is better off learning C# and working for murthy. But once he has some buffer, some backup money, then he can cater to the artistic impulse, scientific impulse etc. So our Indian middle-class, with the millions of 20 year olds, let them learn the APIs and make some money. This generation will have to be sacrificed, so that the next generation can go on to do more intellectually attuned activities like Physics & Math. Ofcourse if you ask a hotshot Infy programmer, he will not say it is a sacrifice, he doesn’t know any better. He thinks shuttling around the world for his 100,000 rupees and Infy stock is actually useful in the long run! So don’t argue with him, Rao sahibre. Let him have his 100k. Don’t begrudge the programmers. The next generation will do better. Of all things he says, I totally agree with the "sacrifice" argument. Thats what I had thought - IT may not be the best thing in terms of quality, but it is the best available oppurtunity for the middle class Indians and may be the next generation can do whatever they feel like going! Archie, the garden mollusk that won the 1995 World Snail Racing Championship at the Congham Church's annual fete in Norfolk, U.K., covered a 13-inch circular course in 2 minutes. That record, which remains unbroken, gave the plodding slug a speed of almost 10 meters per hour. Cars and taxis in Mumbai, by comparison, are 1,500 times faster. Amit Varma, Profit's No Longer a Dirty Word, The Transformation of India: Library of Economics and
econlib.org/library/Columns/y2008/Varmaprofit.html India's greatest failures have been in providing education and building infrastructure. A maze of licenses and regulations provides a tough entry barrier for would-be entrepreneurs, and government schools are dysfunctional. As any visitor to India's big, gleaming cities would notice, infrastructure is in a mess, with inadequate roads and, barring Mumbai, insufficient water and electric supply. Wherever the government has allowed competition and free markets, consumers have benefited—the telecom and airlines industries are obvious examples. But in the most crucial areas of our lives, the government refuses to let the private sector in. Alas, there is also no political momentum for change. Manmohan Singh, the architect of the 1991 reforms, is the prime minister, but he heads a coalition government supported by the communists, who veto all significant reforms. His own party leader, Rajiv Gandhi's widow Sonia, tilts towards the left—she once famously sent Manmohan a letter saying that foreign investment in retail might harm small retailers, and should therefore be reconsidered. She championed the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, a wasteful public spending scheme that has since been found to be rife with corruption—and has since been expanded. There is no Indian political party that supports free markets on principle. The middle classes who have benefited from the reforms aren't politically influential enough to press for reforms, and are happy enough just going about their own lives. And for the poor, it remains an article of faith that wherever there is a problem, the government will solve it—even when the problem is government itself. Patronage remains the oxygen of Indian politics, and most politics in India is identity politics. Amit Varma's Essay. Roads will lead to rural prosperity-Swaminomics-Swaminathan A Aiyar-Columnists-Opinion-The Times of
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/S_Aiyar_Roads_linked_t...
Roads can
incubate a thousand small businesses, and can convert villages into towns.
Government staff are much more willing to be posted to places with good
connectivity, so roads improve administration. Rural productivity cannot be high
without roads, but can be very high with
them.
This was first demonstrated in India in Punjab and Haryana, which historically had the most dynamic rural economies and lowest poverty rates. Economist Ashok Gulati relates a conversation with M S Gill, who was agriculture secretary in New Delhi and development commissioner in Punjab before becoming election commissioner. Gill said that in developing Punjab, he concentrated on a one-point agenda: build all-weather ( pucca ) roads, and the people will take care of the rest. This approach succeeded. The green revolution in Punjab hinged not only on R&D but roads too. Indeed, the returns to road investment were even higher then than today. Google, Facebook Battle For Computer Science Grads. Salaries Soar.
www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/30/stanford-computer-sc... Last year, salaries of up to $70,000 were common for the best students. This year, Facebook is said to be offering $92,000, and Google has increased some offers to $95,000 to get their share of graduates. Students with a Masters degree in Computer Science are being offered as much as $130,000 for associate product manager jobs at Google.
The Danish band Legödeâth inserts heavy-metal umlauts into its name. Band frontsman Nils explains with a Goth poem: ‘For too long/ sterile letters/ now we add/ pointless symbols/ like all religion/ bringing us closer/ to Sweet Mother Death.’ Rahul Raguram blogs excitedly about the implications for this on the hitherto neglected genre of Scandinavian circumflex death metal.
The Indian cricket team is humiliated in Australia. The BCCI sacks Gary Kirsten and announces it will search for a better coach. Laloo Prasad Yadav announces the Railway Ministry’s intention of getting railways stations modernised by private players. P Sainath abuses him for talking about railway stations modernised when farmers are dying in Vidarbha. George Lucas holds a press conference where he announces that Obi-Wan Kenobi is gay. When astonished reporters ask him why he is revealing this now, he shrugs and says ‘It worked for JK Rowling.’. Star TV announces that it will launch a new channel called Star Dial Karein that will show nothing but SMS-voting reality shows. Rakhi Sawant alleges that the voting procedures on the new channel are rigged. The Department of Telecom decides to award spectrum on a rotational basis, with spectrum going to CDMA operators for three months of the year, GSM operators for another three months, new entrants for another three, and to local cable operators for the remaining. It now takes cars in Bangalore one hour to travel down M G Road from Trinity Circle to Anil Kumble Circle. Shashi Tharoor writes an article on how autorickshaws clogging Bangalore traffic represents a triumph of Indian democracy. Super hilarious...read full ! Tata Group | Media room | Interviews | The making of the Nano
www.tata.com/0_media/features/interviews/20080110_... If you look at the coverage that has happened, you
cannot fail to notice how the low-cost car has been
turned into an issue of congestion, of pollution, of
safety. Initially it was all about why a car at this
cost was simply not possible; that talk is long gone,
only to be replaced by these 'new' concerns. We are
not really talking about how it will change the way
people live or transport themselves, what their aspirations
may be.
 And here is the photos of Moscow today. The accent of these photos is on enormous Moscow traffic. The situation on road like on this pictures was without any difference during all the day today - both in the daytime and late at night.
Perfectionism - Psychology - Mental Health and Behavior - New York Times
www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/health/04mind.html?ex=1... Some researchers divide perfectionists into three types, based on answers to standardized questionnaires: Self-oriented strivers who struggle to live up to their high standards and appear to be at risk of self-critical depression; outwardly focused zealots who expect perfection from others, often ruining relationships; and those desperate to live up to an ideal they’re convinced others expect of them, a risk factor for suicidal thinking and eating disorders.
The stress of the rescue operation ruptured his aorta. "It is hard to locate a tear in the aorta," he says. "The doctors had to stop the heart to find the tear and, when all was said and done, I had lost blood supply to my spinal cord for too long a time." The consequence of this ill-fated accident is Dimple had to be hospitalised for a year and, after that, was permanently wheelchair-bound. He lost mobility to his lower limbs, a severe blow to the former athlete. Everything that used to be easy for him became challenging. Things he took for granted shone with new value in his eyes. "I am more inspired from life's letdowns than other things," he says. "I don't dwell on the past; I am forever thinking about the next step." Dimple threw himself headlong into his work. This summer, he graduated from Stony Brook University with a joint MD-PhD degree. His research in the neuroscience graduate programme, which involved the study of recovery of function after spinal cord injury, was widely published and recognised -- all the more poignant for the closure it offered toward his own condition. He is soon embarking on a residency in neurology and psychiatry at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell in Manhattan. But here's what makes him, in the words of friend and colleague Dr John Sarnoff, a 'genius': Dimple has managed to do all this and sell a book, two screenplays, gain a position on the US Paralympic fencing team and record a music album! A matter of Life and Death: A Matter of Life and Luck
sachinb.blogspot.com/2007/10/matter-of-life-and-lu... It was a merciless 500 meter vertical, raw and rocky fall. That piece of rock which I was clinging to, was the last of mother nature's hand that could have saved me. It was a miracle of miracles. I was still vehemently panting and terrible scared
The Associated Press: Bird Brain Dies After Years of Research
ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jZeZSFfWilDZgoL8xPOU3K... Alex, a parrot that could count to six, identify colors and even express frustration with repetitive scientific trials, has died after 30 years of helping researchers better understand the avian brain. The cause of Alex's death was unknown. The African grey parrot's average life span is 50 years, Brandeis University scientist Irene Pepperberg said. Alex was discovered dead in his cage Friday, she said, but she waited to release the news until this week so grieving researchers could get over the shock and talk about it. "It's devastating to lose an individual you've worked with pretty much every day for 30 years," Pepperberg told The Boston Globe. "Someone was working with him eight to 12 hours every day of his life." [...] She recalls the bird said: "You be good. I love you Sujata Burla's life took an ugly turn on June 9, 2001. On a pilgrimage to Shirdi, where the Sai Baba temple in Maharashtra is located, from Hyderabad, she met with an accident.
Four months later, the doctors and physiotherapists treating her told her she could not walk for the rest of her life. The accident had turned her into a paraplegic. It meant Sujata was immobile below the shoulders. She was just 21. Soon people who she thought were her friends abandoned her and Sujata was left alone. Compounding her tragedy was her father's death in March 2004. Not one to be easily cowed down by her circumstances, she started learning about the stock markets that year. Now she trades like a pro and earns anywhere between Rs 200,000 and Rs 250,000 every month. On a day like Wednesday, September 19, 2007, when the Nifty was up 186 points, Sujata made a cool Rs 600,000 in a single day. She has still not sold her position. Via: http://chaitraa.wordpress.com Salesmen at Heart - Econology - Value Research Online
www.valueresearchonline.com/story/storyview.asp?st... Now English salesmen are selling their own companies, not Vanaspati. They sold Corus steel to Tatas and will one day sell Lever Bros too, if they get a good price. Surprisingly, this has not affected their economy, which is booming, just as all the chicken tikka shops did not affect their fish-and-chips businesses. In this age of globalization, things work in strange ways, and the more you try to get rid of your own companies, the more you prosper.
What will they sell next? Buckingham Palace, Tower of London, Trafalgar Square? You can't really stop them. Once a salesman, always a salesman, even if you have made a start with selling Vanaspati on a sizzling Bombay footpath! Link sent by Sripathi Kamath Comment: I do not agree with everything said but a good read. Benched @Bangalore: Genial Giant defeated by Pygmies-Goodbye Dravid
prasannavishy.blogspot.com/2007/09/genial-giant-de... The Hindu : Front Page : “Import Indian bridegrooms for Russian brides”
www.hindu.com/2007/09/12/stories/2007091256220100.... Desperate to reverse a steep decline in their numbers, Russians are coming up with some bold ideas on how to overcome Russia’s demographic crisis. A Russian feminist has proposed a radical solution to the falling birth rate — importing Indian bridegrooms for Russian girls. Maria Arbatova, writer and TV moderator, who married an Indian businessman a few years ago “after 25 years of keeping marrying Russians”, thinks Indian men make ideal husbands. “They are crazy about their family and children,” she said presenting her new book Leaked Google Video Discusses Google Reader, Social Efforts
blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-09-11-n21.html The Reader team is going to integrate more social features
That is one thing I am looking forward to, other than the fixes like unable to mark unread a particular post after "mark all read". Also unable to stretch to right the sidebar. NxE’s Fifty Most Influential Bloggers at Weekly Articles About Blogging - NxE
northxeast.com/blogging/nxes-fifty-most-influentia... Tech2.com India > Unlocked iPhone Selling in Mumbai's Gray Market > News on MP3 / Audio Players MP3s
www.tech2.com/india/news/mp3-audio-players/unlocke... Rs. 52,000.
Indian Stretchable Time? Bangalore scientists at it
ibnlive.com/news/indian-stretchable-time-bangalore... two scientists from Bangalore’s Indian Institute of Science have given a new meaning to this old proverb and are working on saving country’s Rs 1000 crore annually. Scientists Dilip Ahuja and D P Sen Gupta are on a mission to re-invent Indian Standard Time and if have their way, your day will start half an hour earlier. They have proposed that Indian authorities advance, once and for all, IST from being the time at the 82.5 degree East longitude at Mirzapur in Uttar Pradesh to 90 degree East. For the geographically challenged, that means they want the government to advance Indian Standard Time by half an hour in relation to Greenwich Mean Time. So when it's 8 am in Silicon Valley, it will be around 9 pm in India, not 8.30 as it is now. It would also mean an extra half hour of evening daylight but later winter sunrises. 50,000 Volunteers Join Distributed Search for Steve Fossett
www.wired.com/software/webservices/news/2007/09/di... The army of online volunteers is scrutinizing satellite images that show small chunks of the 17,000-square-mile region where Fossett's plane is thought to have crashed. The "distributed search" uses satellite images from DigitalGlobe, the company that provides images for Google Earth. Tech2.com India > Orkut Now Available in 5 Indian Languages > News on Internet Internet & Software
www.tech2.com/india/news/internet/orkut-now-availa... Orkut's taking keen interest in what we Indians want (We're sure it doesn't have anything to do with winning the Pepsi and MTV Youth Icon Award).
The insanely popular social networking sitewill now be available in 5 new languages - Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu. will now be available in 5 new languages - Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Tamil, and Telugu. Astronomers Find a Hole in the Universe - washingtonpost.com
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007... Astronomers have stumbled upon a tremendous hole in the universe.
via : Dilbert Blog My own inclination is to let children do what they enjoy. This is partly because of what the 19th century economist David Ricardo taught us about countries and what some modern management gurus tell companies: You should do what you are good at.
[...] if we think hard enough, each of us is likely to remember at least one person who did not do well in school, but later shone in life. The
essential paradox is that we expect children to be good at everything
in school, while they will need to be good in just one thing to do well
in life. Schools are basically out of sync with the outside world,
where division of labour and specialization rule. In the world of
adults, we are not expected to be good at everything. Joel believes that the only meaningful guarantee of integrity is when buyers and sellers can look one another in the eye, something few of us ever take the trouble to do. “Don’t you find it odd that people will put more work into choosing their mechanic or house contractor than they will into choosing the person who grows their food?”
[...] When you think about it, it is odd that something as important to our health and general well-being as food is so often sold strictly on the basis of price. Look at any supermarket ad in the newspaper and all you will find in it are quantities—pounds and dollars; qualities of any kind are nowhere to be found. The value of relationship marketing is that it allows many kinds of information besides price to travel up and down the food chain: stories as well as numbers, qualities as well as quantities, values rather than “value.” And as soon as that happens, people begin to make different kinds of buying decisions, motivated by criteria other than price. But instead of stories about how it was produced accompanying our food, we get bar codes—as illegible as the industrial food chain itself, and a fair symbol of its almost total opacity. via delicious\btbytes One of my favorite Real Programmers was a systems programmer
for Texas Instruments. One day he got a long distance call from a user
whose system had crashed in the middle of saving some important work.
Jim was able to repair the damage over the phone, getting the user to
toggle in disk I/0 instructions at the front panel, repairing system
tables in hex, reading register contents back over the phone. The
moral of this story: while a Real Programmer usually includes a
keypunch and lineprinter in his toolkit, he can get along with just a
front panel and a telephone in emergencies.
[...] Real Programmer can write FORTRAN programs in any language.[...] Generally, the Real Programmer plays the same way he works -- Super fun. via del.icio.us\btbytes This was because the massive 360 feet long, 25 feet high and 30 feet wide sheer rock came in the way of the shortest possible route between the village and the town.
The situation would have brought about a feeling of resignation or fatalism in the average man—as if God had himself put this giant obstacle in the path of his ailing wife. Dasrath's response was different and radical—at once unthinkable and stunningly simple. He decided to alter geography with chisel and hammer. To cut a road through the huge mass of rock. After 22 years of back-breaking, single-handed toil, Dasrath finished in the mid-'80s. The mountain had yielded to man. via: indianwriting.blogsome.com. Techtree.com India > News > Gadgets > Nokia Handsets Explode in W Bengal
www.techtree.com/India/News/Incidents_of_Exploding... The spectre of exploding Nokia batteries looms once again with a second incident reported of a Nokia mobile handset exploding in Asansol in West Bengal.
The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : Nine decades of non-violence
www.hindu.com/2007/08/23/stories/2007082355471300....
P. Sainath
Countless rural Indians sacrificed much for India’s freedom, to fade into oblivion later, seeking neither reward nor recognition. Gandhian Baji Mohammed, who has been active for 70 years in one or the other cause, is amongst the last of this dying tribe.
Baji Mohammad at home in Nabrangpur, Orissa with his most precious possession: a photo showing him in one of Mahatma Gandhi’s protest marches.
“We were sitting in the tent, they tore it down. We kept sitting,” the old freedom fighter told us. “They threw water on the ground and at us. They tried making the ground wet and difficult to sit on. We remained seated. Then when I went to drink some water and bent down near the tap, they smashed me on the head, fracturing my skull. I had to be rushed to hospital.” Baji Mohammed is one of India’s last living freedom fighters — just one of four or five nationally recognised ones still alive in Orissa’s Koraput region. He is not talking about British brutality in 1942. (Though he has much to say on that, too.) He’s describing the vicious attack on him during the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, half a century later. “I was there as part of a 100-member peace team.” But the team was given no peace. The old Gandhian fighter, already in his mid-seventies, spent ten days in hospital and a month in a Varanasi ashram recovering from the injury to his head. No hatred in his heart
There is not an iota of anger as he describes the event. No hatred towards the RSS or Bajrang Dal that led the attack. Just a gentle old man with a charming smile. And a firm Gandhi bakht. He’s a Muslim who heads the anti-cow slaughter league of Nabrangpur. “After the attack, Biju Patnaik came to my home and scolded me. He was worried about my being active even in peaceful protest at my age. Earlier, too, when I did not accept this freedom fighter’s pension for twelve years, he chided me.” Baji Mohammed is a colourful remnant of a dying tribe. Countless rural Indians sacrificed much for India ’s freedom. But the generation that led the nation to it is dying out swiftly, most of its members in their late 80s or 90s. Baji is closing in on 90. “I was studying in the 1930s, but did not make it past matric. My guru was Sadashiv Tripathi who later became Orissa Chief Minister. I joined the Congress Party and became president of its Nabrangpur unit [then still a part of Koraput district]. I made 20,000 members for the Congress. This was a region of great ferment. And it came fully alive with satyagraha.” However, while hundreds marched towards Koraput, Baji Mohammed headed elsewhere. “I went to Gandhiji. I had to see him.” And so he “took a cycle, my friend Lakshman Sahu, no money, and went from here to Raipur.” A distance of 350 km of very tough, mountainous terrain. “From there we took a train to Wardha and went on to Sewagram. Many great people were at his ashram. We were awed and worried. When could we meet him, if ever? Ask his secretary Mahadev Desai, people told us.” “Desai told us to talk to him during his 5 p.m. evening walk. That’s nice, I thought. A leisurely meeting. But the man walked so fast! My run was his walk. Finally, I could no longer keep up and appealed to him: Please stop: I have come all the way from Orissa just to see you.” “He said testily: ‘what will you see? I too, am a human being, two hands, two legs, a pair of eyes. Are you a satyagrahi back in Orissa?’ I replied that I had pledged to be one.” “Go,’ said Gandhi. ‘Jao, lathi khao. (Go and taste the British lathis.) Sacrifice for the nation.’ Seven days later, we returned here to do exactly as he ordered us.” Baji Mohammed offered satyagraha in an anti-war protest outside the Nabrangpur Masjid. It led to “six months in jail and a Rs. 50 fine. Not a small amount those days.” More episodes followed. “On one occasion, at the jail, people gathered to attack the police. I stepped in and stopped it. ‘Marenge lekin maarenge nahin,’ I said. (We shall die, but we shall not attack.)” “Coming out of jail, I wrote to Gandhi: what now? And his reply came. ‘Go to jail again.’ So I did. This time for four months. But the third time, they did not arrest us. So I asked Gandhi yet again: now what? And he said: ‘take the same slogans and move amongst the people.’ So we went 60 km on foot each time with 20-30 people to clusters of villages. Then came the Quit India movement, and things changed.” “On August 25, 1942, we were all arrested and held. Nineteen people died on the spot in police firing at Paparandi in Nabrangpur. Many died thereafter from their wounds. Over 300 were injured. More than a thousand were jailed in Koraput district. Several were shot or executed. There were over a hundred shaheed (martyrs) in Koraput. Veer Lakhan Nayak [legendary tribal leader who defied the British] was hanged.” Baji’s shoulder was shattered in the violence unleashed against the protesters. “I then spent five years in Koraput jail. There I saw Lakhan Nayak before he was shifted to Berhampore jail. He was in the cell in front of me and I was with him when the hanging order came. What should I tell your family, I asked him. ‘Tell them I am not worried,’ he replied. ‘Only sad that I will not live to see the swaraj we fought for.’” Baji himself did. He was released just before Independence Day — “to walk into a newly free nation.” Many of his colleagues, amongst them future Chief Minister Sadashiv Tripathi, “all became MLAs in the 1952 elections, the first in free India.” Baji himself “never contested the polls. Never married.” “I did not seek power or position,” he explains. “I knew I could serve in other ways. The way Gandhi wanted us to.” He was a staunch Congressman for decades. “But now I belong to no party,” he says. “I am non-party.” It did not stop him from being active in every cause which he thought mattered to the masses. Right from the time “I took part in the bhoodan movement of Vinoba Bhave in 1956.” He was also supportive of some of Jayaprakash Narayan’s campaigns. “He stayed here twice in the 1950s.” The Congress asked him to contest elections more than once. “But me, I was more sewa dal than satta dal. (More service oriented than power seeking.)” Greatest moment
For freedom fighter Baji Mohammed, meeting Gandhi was “the greatest reward of my struggle. What more could one ask for?” His eyes mist over as he shows us pictures of himself in one of the Mahatma’s famous protest marches. These are his treasures, having gifted away his 14 acres of land during the bhoodan movement. His favourite moments during the freedom struggle? “Every one of them. But of course, meeting the Mahatma, hearing his voice. That was the greatest moment of my life. The only regret is that his vision of what we should be as a nation, that is still not realised.” Just a gentle old man with a charming smile. And a sacrifice that sits lightly on ageing shoulders. Comment: Emphasis mine. Since you no longer tell me about it. I have started reading your daily horoscope to find out how your day was.
Indeed, statistics show that dogs are the new children in Japan. Some spend 500,000 yen a year on their pets “She thinks she is human.” Some of the Indian Dogs could be exported/made to immigrate, what say ! Anirudh ,a 20 year old IIT undergrad, wins WordPress plugin contest for his OneClick plugin - $300 cash plus goodies won.
The Gphone is coming; how Google could rewrite the rules | last100
www.last100.com/2007/08/29/the-gphone-is-coming-ho... The Gphone is coming; how Google could rewrite the rulesby Daniel LangendorfAugust 29th, 2007 | Posted in Mobile |  4 Comments
Note: Gphone concept sketches by Lorin Wood.
If done right, the Gphone and not the iPhone will be the one to change the face of the wireless industry. Apple’s iPhone, at least in its initial release, has not upended the wireless industry, particularly in the United States, as much as hoped. The iPhone certainly has pushed the cell phone envelope a bit further, and it hints at what’s to come, but so far the iPhone is still playing by the rules. Google, if it enters the fray as expected with its so-called Gphone, may truly rewrite the rules. What it plans to do is an ongoing topic of discussion and speculation on the Internet, not unlike Apple’s plans for the iPhone before its release at the end of June. The Gphone may be announced as early as next week and may debut as early as the first quarter of 2008. The anticipation will be as fervent as it was for the iPhone, without the Steve Jobs showmanship. Why Google? Why A Phone?
Google could sit tight and count its pennies, not unlike what Microsoft did during its heyday, or it could push forward, beyond the desktop and into the mobile world, where content and information are meeting voice communication and the cell phone. It’s a natural fit. Google takes what it has pioneered on the desktop and through the browser and applies it to mobile lifestyles, providing a seamless transition for people on the go. At the same time it opens up new opportunities for search and advertising, expanding the “Googleverse” (and bottom line) even more. Unlike Apple, which positioned itself as hardware-focused and consumer-friendly with the iPhone, Google is diving much deeper into the world of telecommunications and many wonder if it plans to become a wireless carrier just like Verizon or AT&T. Google has been lobbying the U.S. government for changes in wireless policy. While it did not achieve as much as it wanted in the planning for the upcoming 700 Mhz spectrum auction in January, it did push for the fact that consumers in the U.S. can buy any phone and use it on any carrier in the future. Google is also expected to bid on the spectrum, pledging upwards of $5 billion in an auction that may net the government between $10 billion and $12 billion. What Google plans to do with the spectrum, and how it might fit in with Gphone plans, is the focus of media and Internet speculation. So what will be Gphone be? If done right, the Gphone will change the wireless industry, at least in the U.S. If not done right, the Gphone will be just another cell phone with some advanced features. Here’s what it might look like, if done right: Tech Specs Operating System
Radio Communications To be truly carrier agnostic and international, the Google phone will have to support CDMA and GSM standards. Could these be built into the same phone or will there be several models available for the different carriers? Come to think of it, if Google is successful in its bid for some of the 700 Mhz spectrum, what will it do with it and how will it affect the Google phone? The Google phone most certainly will support Wi-Fi and most likely 3G for wireless data transfers. Apple has come under fire for not supporting 3G immediately in the iPhone, although this is expected to change with the phone’s next release. The use of 3G also will make the Google phone attractive internationally. Google’s Gtalk is a VoIP service, allowing people to hold phone conversations over the Internet. Many are hoping and praying that the Google phone will support Internet telephony, either through Gtalk or maybe even Skype. The Physical Phone Display While larger-screen cell phones have been around for many years, the release of the iPhone has drawn attention to an elegant, crisp display that measures a generous 3 inches by 2 inches, eclipsing all cell displays to date. With the amount of data expected to be accessed on a Google phone, it would be stupid not to include a large quality display. Input
No matter which direction Google goes, somebody will be unhappy. What Google should keep in mind is this: make input as easy and enjoyable for the user as possible. Remember: People will be interacting with the Google phone in many ways, accessing and using a large amount of data, and creating content, so crummy input will severely impair the device. The Fun Stuff The iPhone sports a 2 megapixel camera. Google should at least match this, or maybe go one better if it’s feasible cost-wise. One way Google could differentiate its camera from others is not through megapixels but through image stabilization, which is now found on many point-and-shoot cameras and high-end lenses for digital cameras. Camera shake is prevalent in cell phone cameras — especially, it seems, on the iPhone — and including IS would do wonders to minimize shaky, soft, and slightly blurry images. Video cameras on cell phones are nice to have, and are becoming more relevant in the era of YouTube. But cell phone video cameras suck. The “film” is grainy and its hard to do anything with the content other than watch it on the phone. A cell phone that could shoot 640 x 480 video, in an acceptable standard (like H.264), and allow people to do something with the content (email, download to a computer, upload to YouTube) would usher in a new wave of mobile content development. Finally, the Google phone must include GPS, which is another complaint of the iPhone. The iPhone uses Google Maps, a nice-to-have application that falls short of being truly useful without GPS capabilities. Imagine GPS on the Google phone: Addresses in Gmail or in Gcal are automatically mapped and plotted for real-time travel. Another benefit of using GPS is the coming of location-based services and proximity-based notifications. There’s been very little speculation about the Google phone having a built in MP3 music player and video-playback features like the iPhone and iPod. Music playback is not unlikely, and one can be certain that YouTube will be built into the phone. Whether it can play other video is uncertain. Design
Google’s track record — as seen through its Web application development — is no thrills and minimalist. Expect the phone to be innovative and full of promise but not nearly as pretty and awe-inspiring as the iPhone. Applications There’s no doubt that Google will showcase its suite of applications and properties: its many varieties of Search, Gmail, Gcal, Gtalk, Gchat, Documents and Spreadsheets (part of the so-called Goffice), Google Groups, Google Notebook, Google Maps (and maybe even Google Earth), YouTube, Blogger, Picasa, and so on. But let’s hope that Google doesn’t go all “Googlely” on us. In other words, promote the “Googleverse” as much as possible but leave the Gphone platform open for third party developers, something that the iPhone lacks. If someone wants to use AOL’s Instant Messenger or Yahoo Chat instead of or in addition to Gchat, let them download and install applications so the phone truly fits their needs. Google needs to be smart. It has an opportunity here to redefine the relationship between a mobile device, applications, and the customer experience. For the most part, mobile applications today are just extensions of desktop programs. Google should take the opportunity to rethink and tweak its applications to work well in mobile and desktop settings. For example:
Docs could be integrated with Blogger, so when users are mobile and are using Docs they can update easily their blogs without having to use a separate program. The digital camera application, Picasa, should not only upload photos directly to Picasa but also be flexible enough to upload to non-Google properties such as flickr. Picasa might also provide a few rudimentary editing and image manipulation tools. The digital video camera application, whatever it may be called, should also upload directly to Google’s YouTube and maybe even supply rudimentary editing tools as well. By the way, editing — cutting and pasting on a cell phone — should be as easy as possible because people will be moving information between all sorts of Google applications, including Google Groups and Google Notebook. Cutting and pasting is currently not available on the iPhone. Being Social To be truly revolutionary, the Google phone should play nice with the other kids, especially in a social setting. Not everybody is using Google’s social network, Dodgeball; in fact, many people use more than one social network — MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Bebo, Twitter — and these should be available on the Gphone through third party developers. Google is rumored to be working on a social aggregator as well, which could certainly work on the phone. Advertising
Mobile advertising revenue is another billion-dollar cash cow for Google. Some people could care less if there is advertising on the phone, as long as their monthly bill and the cost of the phone are cheaper than they are today. Some people hate advertising and swear that if there are ads on their phone they will not use Google. They’d rather pay higher prices for the phone and their service. It’s doubtful, but perhaps Google comes out with two flavors: one with advertising, lowering initial purchase costs and monthly bills, and one that has no advertising but costs more to purchase and has higher monthly fees. Verdict So what if Google doesn’t deliver the right Gphone? What if it has only some of the features and functions discussed above? The Gphone could still revolutionize the wireless industry, but not by itself. What if Google and Apple are in cahoots? Google’s Eric Schmidt already sits on Apple’s board of directors. And there’s cozy integration between Google and Apple in the iPhone, AppleTV, and in iLife ‘08. Could Google and Apple — two outsiders — take on the wireless industry and change it? We’ll find out, as soon as Google delivers the Gphone. Concept Credit: The Gphone concepts were contributed by Lorin Wood, a previsualization designer who specializes in concepts and ideation for Hollywood. His portfolio and art direction can be found at his Web site (he also maintains a blog). Wood’s concepts for last100 explored how Google applications, and its advertising, might look like on the Gphone. My only wish is that it is affordable for me (or better make it free, just like gmail!) and is instantly usable in India. India loses maximum lives to terror except Iraq-India-The Times of India
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India_loses_maximum_li... iPhone unlocked: AT&T loses iPhone exclusivity, August 24, 2007, 12:00PM EDT - Engadget
www.engadget.com/2007/08/24/iphone-unlocked-atandt... The six-man team has been working non-stop since launch day, and they're officially the first to break Apple's SIM locks on the iPhone with software. It's done. Seriously.
 The offline functionality was built on Google Gears, an open source project launched by Google in May 2007. Users will need to install a browser plugin to take advantage of the functionality. After that, an option will appear in the navigation bar to “Go Offline.” The feature works with Internet Explorer v.6 and higher, and with Firefox (including Mac) v1.5 and higher. For now they are offering read-only functionality offline. Read-write functionality will appear in 3-4 weeks, the company says. Zoho will also begin to roll out offline functionality for their spreadsheet, presentation and other applications in the coming weaks. Zoho, which competes head-on with Google Docs & Spreadsheets, managed to launch offline functionality on their product before Google did. The fact that they are using Google software to do this makes the story somewhat ironic. TG Daily - Paramount and Dreamworks go HD-DVD: Sony’s curse continues
www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33489/128/ When you go back and look at the number of media formats Sony has tried to bring to market exclusively, the failures are daunting. They included BetaMax, Memory Stick, Universal Media Disc, Mini-Disk, Professional Disk for Data, HiFD, Music Clip and the Super Audio CD. They had one success with the 3.5” floppy drive and negotiated out of the Multi-Media Disk to create the DVD with Toshiba and Phillips. But were this a sport, they would have one early win, seven losses and a tie. If you were a fan of a team with this record you’d be well advised to switch teams. It is interesting to note, that in all losses, two things were consistently evident, they were more expensive and more restrictive than the other formats. Blu-ray is both more expensive (in terms of players) and more restrictive (you may recall that HP moved to support both formats because of the restrictions) than HD-DVD. Up until now, Blu-ray has enjoyed one clear advantage; they had more studios exclusively on their side. With this announcement, that one advantage is now significantly offset. One of the things that really makes this interesting it that 300 set HD disk sales records by being on both formats which would suggest Paramount and Dreamworks are foregoing short term gains to solve a strategic problem (that almost never happens). Cause So why did Paramount and DreamWorks jump into the HD-DVD Camp? All of the studios agree that there needs to be one standard. They also know that the market for players is driven by price and that the two magic numbers are $200 and $100 for players - and if folks don’t have players they don’t buy disks. This means the first player to get below $200 will be the most likely to sell enough to finally justify the switch from standard DVD to HD, HDTVs have been selling very well so the industry knows there is a pent of demand for HD content that is not being met until either Blu-ray or HD-DVD wins. If you were to try to force Blu-ray, given its price/cost curve, you would likely see the ramp to HD content in the 2008/2009 time frame because that’s when the cost of the players will probably reach that critical $200 price point. But HD-DVD is already close and Wal-Mart is expected to have a sub-$200 HD-DVD player in the critical fourth quarter (Amazon already has one under $240). A lot of us thought the PS3 would make a difference, but sales have been lagging for that player and recent studies have indicated many buyers don’t even know the players can play Blu-ray disks. That’s an effective one-two punch that appears to have eliminated the PS3 advantage at least from Paramount’s and Dreamworks’s perspective. The extra capacity that Blu-ray has doesn’t make any difference if folks won’t buy the players in sufficient volume to make the market and, I think, Paramount and Dreamworks have simply done the math and realize their revenues will be significantly enhanced if buyers see HD-DVD as the safest and least expensive choice during the critical fourth quarter. This doesn’t mean the market will play out this way, there is always risk and Sony is probably not going to go easy, but this appears to be the logic behind their decision. Sony’s response Sony has three likely responses: First, do nothing and bet Paramount, Dreamworks, and Universal are wrong. They still have Disney (arguably the most powerful), their own Studio, and Time Warner and others that are in both camps. The market may not repeat history and move on the price, and if Sony can make enough Blu-ray noise they can, as they did for much of this year, simply assure neither wins. Second, they can respond with their own sup $200 player themselves. That would mean losing in excess of $100 on every sale and, already bleeding from the PS3, they don’t appear to have the resources to make this work and sustain acceptable profitability, but it would prevent a HD-DVD route. I doubt, however, the outcome would be much different than choice number one in the end except they would bleed red ink like a stuck pig. Third they could abandon Blu-ray, cycle the PS3 early to bring its price in line with the Wii (which is chewing up the market anyway) and gain a price advantage over the Xbox 360 which still has the largest installed base. Problem is you can’t cycle game systems this quickly and hope to hold onto developers and, unless they had already started this, they will take a huge hit in the fourth quarter if word gets out they are on this path with the PS3. My guess is they will go with a blend of one and two, lowering the prices for the PS3 and players by $50 to $100 and hope that is enough to hold until they can get costs in line for something more competitive. They will then go active on their successes with Movie sales and continue to muddy the water so that buyers do not conclude Blu-ray has lost and hold off buying either until Blu-Ray can be profitably sold at the target price. Strangely enough, the success of this hinges on Disney, if Disney (who is in heavy competition with Dreamworks and Paramount) concludes as they did that HD-DVD is where the money is, they are likely to switch camps and many may not realize that Disney was actually one of the key architects for the HD-DVD platform and switched sides for political reasons. I’m not convinced the why behind that move is going to survive close scrutiny once Disney’s board starts asking about the Paramount and Dreamworks move and I would love to be in the meeting when that is discussed. Wrapping up The consumer electronics market is a fourth quarter market, people will likely buy the player that hits their price point. Whether it is video game systems (and the Wii is an excellent example), or this already too old DVD format battle, folk’s need to realize that it’s not the technology that wins, but it is the price and content. You need both, neither are optional. Blu-ray lost on price and now they are losing content. That is not a good trend. Given Sony’s history here, I can’t figure out why people just don’t leave the room laughing every time Sony proposes a new storage standard. While I still think it is possible we could end up with both as we did with recordable DVD formats, with major studios recasting their votes, I think the odds just shifted back in favor of HD-DVD. One interesting closing thought, since these studios compete with Sony’s studio, I wonder if the fact that this would drain Sony’s resources had anything to do with the decision? In any case, whichever side you are on, I’ll bet you are hoping for the day when there is only one HD optical standard.
Rob Enderle is one of the last Inquiry Analysts. Inquiry Analysts are paid to stay up to date on current events and identify trends and either explain the trends or make suggestions, tactical and strategic, on how to best take advantage of them. Currently he provides his services to most of the major technology and media companies. In most mesh networks, all the nodes that receive a particular data packet forward it on; but in Biswas's version, the nodes "talk" to each other and decide, on the basis of the packet's destination and their own signal strengths, which one of them should forward it. The protocol also takes into account changing network conditions, as users sign on or off, or, say, a passing truck blocks a node's radio signal. Biswas's protocol, combined with commonly available hardware components, allows Meraki to produce Wi-Fi routers that cost as little as $50. (The routers Biswas used at MIT initially cost $1,500.)
 China Regulates Buddhist Reincarnation - Newsweek Beliefs - MSNBC.com
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20227400/site/newsweek/ In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission.
 Deep in the heart of the California desert lies one of the natural world's most puzzling mysteries: the moving rocks of Death Valley. These are not ordinary moving rocks that tumble down mountainsides in avalanches, are carried along riverbeds by flowing water, or are tossed aside by animals. These rocks, some as heavy as 700 pounds, are inexplicably transported across a virtually flat desert plain, leaving erratic trails in the hard mud behind them, some hundreds of yards long. They move by some mysterious force, and in the nine decades since we have known about them, no one has ever seen them move. A country is known by its books. Here is a list of India’s 60 best since Independence. Read on... All About H Hatterr: GV Desani’s classic, rip-roaring 1948 novel that set the tone for the clanging concoction of the East and the West that would become the signature of writers like Rushdie. Midnight’s Children: Saleem Sinai, born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, is Salman Rushdie’s magically real means of putting India’s political history (warts and all) on the global literary map. The Flight of Pigeons: Ruskin Bond’s A Flight of Pigeons, set in pre-Independence India, was also made into a movie Junoon (1978) by director Shyam Benegal. Aag Ka Dariya: Qurratulain Hyder’s generation was divided by Partition. But she refused to make an irrevocable choice and instead found home in both India and Pakistan. In this magnum opus spanning centuries, she narrates the tragedy of being forced into such a choice. Train to Pakistan: in a far cry from his usual lighthearted and witty style, Khushwant Singh somberly etches out the agony of a village brutally torn apart at independence. Adha Gaon: long before he became famous for scripting the Mahabharata serial, Rahi Masoom Reza set this novel in his native Avadh village, offering a vibrant Indian blend of Muslim and Hindu cultures. Adhe Adhure: Mohan Rakesh, in a play going strong on the stage for nearly three decades now, traces the efforts of an alienated urban being to find meaning in her middle-class milieu. Anandamath: this Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay novel can still make secularists flinch with its picture of an India tyrannised by Muslims and liberated by the British. A powerful story centred around the birth of the cult of the nation as Mother Goddess. Rasidi Ticket: this autobiography of the popular Punjabi poetess Amrita Pritam created controversy when it came out, Aranyer Din Ratri: Sunil Gangopadhyay’s novel revolves around four young men whose worldview is challenged by the tribals among whom they are holidaying. Awara Sijde: better known for penning unforgettable film lyrics like Kar chale hum fida jaano-tan saathiyon; Ab tumhaare hawaale watan saathiyo, Kaifi Azmi’s poetry collection tackles politics from Moscow to Telengana. Job Interview 2.0: Now With Riddles! - Worse Than Failure
worsethanfailure.com/Comments/Riddle-Me-An-Intervi... They will eventually realize how useless of a practice this is. They will eventually give it up. In the meantime, however, you – the job seeker – will have to put up with it. Or not. One reader shared with me the story of his brainteaser interview.
60 years of India's Independence - The Times of India
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/id07articleshow/226839...
India completes her 60th year
as a free nation on August 15, 2007. According to the Hindu tradition,
completion of 60 years is a landmark event in the life of any person and
celebrates the wisdom, maturity, accomplishment and the readiness to enter
vanaprasta
asrama
(a phase of life marked by
renunciation of worldly responsibilities, and detachment from power, desire, and
wealth). However, 60 years is a short span in the life of a nation, and barely
marks the first baby steps of a toddler. Hence, any assessment of India has to
be generous and optimistic.
We have made decent progress in several areas during the last 60 years. We have produced world-class scientists, engineers, journalists, soldiers, bureaucrats, politicians and doctors. We have built complex bridges and dams. We have sent satellites and rockets into space. We have increased the number of doctors ten-fold. We have increased life expectancy from 32 years to 65 years. We have built about 20 lakh km of new roads; we have multiplied our steel production by over 50 times and cement production by almost 20 times. We have increased our exports from a few million dollars at the time of Independence to more than $125 billion now. There is an equally convincing set of data to show that we have a long way to go in certain other areas. A whopping 350 million are illiterate; 260 million people are still below the poverty line; 150 million people lack access to drinking water; 750 million people lack decent sanitation and 50 per cent of the children are below acceptable nutrition levels. And basic medicines are unavailable in 75 per cent villages. Be that as it may, today, I want to focus on a few major achievements that have transformed the lives of our people in a way we never imagined would happen: Green revolution Perhaps, no other Indian initiative has enhanced the national confidence as the Green Revolution initiated by Dr Swaminathan. This revolution, which started in 1965, not only transformed India into a food-surplus economy from a food-deficit economy, but also triggered the expansion of the rural, non-farm economy. The lives of at least 400 to 500 million Indians have been uplifted due to this initiative. From being a perennial importer of grains, India became a net exporter of food grains ten years ago. White revolution Coming from a generation which experienced an acute shortage of milk, it is unimaginable that, today, we have become the largest producer of milk in the world. The credit goes to the extraordinary vision of Dr Varghese Kurien, continued ably by Amrita Patel. In a nation where children are malnourished, such abundance of milk has offered us the opportunity to fight malnutrition. Economic reforms of 1991 The economic reforms of 1991 - initiated by the late Narasimha Rao, Dr Manmohan Singh, Shri P Chidambaram and Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia - opened up the minds of Indian corporate leaders to the power of global markets, helped them accept competition at home and abroad, and raised the confidence of consumers. Our hard currency reserves have gone up from a mere US$ 1.5 billion in 1991 to over US$ 220 billion today. The reforms encouraged entrepreneurship, and gave confidence to businessmen and entrepreneurs to dream big, create jobs, enhance exports, acquire companies abroad and follow the finest principles of corporate governance. Independent media and brave journalists The success of a democracy depends upon certain important values of governance - fairness, transparency and accountability. The freeing of media, particularly the television medium, has laid the foundation for improving these values in our governments. The courage, enthusiasm and the zeal to seek truth of scores of idealistic journalists and editors like N Ram, Arun Shourie, Shekhar Gupta, Sucheta Dalal, Barkha Dutt and Rajdeep Sardesai, just to mention a few from the English press and TV, are what make us feel confident that the future of this country is safe. Telecom revolution No other technology has brought India, the urban and the rural, together as the 500-line EPABX designed and implemented by the Centre for Development of Telematics (CDOT) under the leadership of Sam Pitroda. This programme brought fresh confidence to the people as they could reach out, in a jiffy, to their loved ones, the officials, and the doctors, just to name a few. People no more feel that they live in isolation. Space Technology Prof Yash Pal's Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) blossomed into a full-scale television facility connecting millions of villages of India. The television medium has made our political masters realise that their actions and inactions will be seen and judged by every citizen - from the forgotten villages of Assam to the activist villages of Kerala. This technology has given voice to the opinions of a billion people - the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, and the powerful and the disfranchised. Atomic Energy Dr Bhabha conceptualized the Indian nuclear program and initiated nuclear science research in India. His program has made possible successful utilization of nuclear energy in defence, power generation, medicine and allied areas. Our peaceful use of nuclear energy has raised India's prestige as a mature and responsible player in this field. Software revolution N Vittal's Software Technology Program, along with economic reforms of 1991, laid the foundation for this industry's spectacular progress. India's IT exports grew from a mere $150 million in 1991-92 to $31.4 billion in 2006-07, and is projected to reach $60 Billion by 2010. The Information Technology (IT) industry is unique due to several reasons. It focused on exports; benchmarked with the best global companies; followed the finest principles of corporate governance; created the largest number of jobs in the organized sector; and demonstrated that Indians too could succeed in the most competitive global markets. Conclusion What do these eight programmes have in common? They were all led by visionaries. These visionaries accepted global benchmarks and settled for nothing less despite tremendous odds. In each of these initiatives the national government was a genuine catalyst supported by some extraordinary politicians and bureaucrats. These examples clearly show how the people and the government can work together to achieve what is thought impossible. What do I expect from the India of 2067? I want an India where every child will have access to decent education, healthcare, nutrition and shelter. I want an India where every child belonging to every race, religion and caste is confident that there is a bright future for him/her if he/she is honest and hardworking. I want an India which receives respect from every global forum because we Indians will be peace-loving; we will be gracious hosts; we will be fair; we will be pluralistic and respect every faith; we will be trustworthy and our aspirations and accomplishments will be high. The 8 visions that changed the face of India- Narayana Murthy Shilpa to be the next Bond girl?-India-The Times of India
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Shilpa_to_be_the... The actress, who is currently preparing for her first Broadway play to
be staged in United Kingdom, has been approached to play the next Bond girl.
 Barcodes decoded/explained. Check it out! The Hindu : Front Page : Two inventors turn human thought into action
www.hindu.com/2007/08/13/stories/2007081353702200.... The system developed by Callahan and Coleman, over the last three years is called “Audeo.” It picks up the neurological signals generated by a person who wants to speak, move or perform any other physical action — but is not able to do , due to a disability. It uses advanced processing techniques which translate these ‘thoughts’ into spoken words or commands. Mr. Coleman’s intention of turning the chair left or right were picked up from the nerve endings in his throat and “Audeo” converted it into mechanical commands to the wheels. Mr. Callahan, then invited the keynote speaker, NI’s senior vice-president for R&D, Tim Dehne, to don the collar and link himself to their equipment. He was invited to try and say a few words — but stop short of mouthing them. “Audeo” interpreted the brain’s signals, translated them into English ...and a computer-synthesised voice came booming: “This is really cool!” Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - How Robert Scoble Hijacked My Facebook News Feed
www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/2007/08/08/HowRobertSco... Even crazier, guess who is on the list of people whose updates I've asked not to show up in my news feed unless nothing else is available?
IBNLive.com > Bangalore activist on the road to plastic success story : India\\\'s real heroes, KK P
www.ibnlive.com/news/bangalore-activist-on-the-roa... But Ahmed Khan, Founder of KK Plastic Waste Management, discovered a unique and an innovative way to use the waste to make better and stronger roads. The plastic he collected has helped pave a 430-km stretch of road. [...]The plastic acts a great binding agent to make roads last longer.The technology has also given the city a way to get rid of the 9,000 tons of plastic waste it generates every day. Google crawls news sites and grabs their content for republishing on Google News. They rely on the willingness of those news sites to get distribution on Google. But Google restricts others from crawling Google News itself via their robots.txt file and terms of use, which state that “you may not…use any robot, spider, other device or manual process to monitor or copy any content from the [Google News] Service.” That policy wasn’t a problem when Google was simply aggregating news from around the web. But now they are hosting original news content, written by people that are involved in the story. And they are telling the world that no one else can crawl that content and display it. Yahoo News, TechMeme and every other non-Google owned news service on the web is restricted from using that content. rainbowG0608_684x700.jpg (JPEG Image, 684x700 pixels) - Scaled (92%)
img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/08_01/rainbowG0608_...    IBNLive.com > How McDonald's makes its millions : mc donald, food outlet, new york, new delhi
www.ibnlive.com/news/how-mcdonalds-makes-its-milli... One of the keys to success is its strategic location. From New York to New Delhi—you will find a Mc Donald’s outlet right at the end of the busiest roads and lanes.
... A McDonald's manager can earn $100,000 or more and soon they can move on to having their own store and becoming a millionaire - just like the store owner they first began working for. [...] Today, this giant makes $41 million in revenue. IBNLive.com > Meet Judge Kode: Movie buff, gamer, numerologist : 1993 mumbai blasts, p d kode
www.ibnlive.com/news/meet-judge-kode-movie-buff-ga... While dealing with blasts case, he went through 13,000 pages of oral evidence, 7,000 pages of documents and 6,700 pages of statements made by the accused. He took no leave from March 1996 till June 2007 even when he broke his arm after slipping in his bathroom. He is the only judge with Z plus security and a Rs 25-lakh insurance cover. Judge Kode also showed a soft side to the accused in the case, allowing some to go for Haj and allowing fans in jail. His commitment to the case was also famous. "Not even when his parents passed away, did he miss court," says Senior Journalist, Saamna, Rajesh Shah. Kode is also known to be into numerology, is a Hindi film buff and is hooked to computer games. Finally, to my great relief, the curtain came down - to thunderous applause. It went up again, and the cast stepped forward to take a bow. Our prompter, who was also curtain-puller, released the ropes prematurely, and the curtain came down with a rush, one of the sandbags hitting poor Guttoo on the head. He has never fully recovered from the blow.
The lights, which had been behaving all evening, now failed us, and we had a real black-out. There was consternation and chaos, with everyone searching for exits that did not exist. In the midst of this confusion, someone - it must have been a girl, judging from the overpowering scent of jasmine that clung to her - put her arms around me and kissed me full on the lips. When the lights came on again, she had vanished. Who had kissed me in the dark? Ruskin Bond recalls an incident 40 yrs old. Good read! IBNLive.com > Planet to be named after Mumbai boy : planet, rishin behl, intel
www.ibnlive.com/news/planet-to-be-named-after-mumb... A few people have roads named after them, some others have buildings but a boy from Mumbai has a minor ice planet somewhere in the solar system named after him. “If I look up at the sky, I can always feel there's something out there named after me. That's an excitement and rush like nothing else,” says 17-year-old Rishin Behl. Which side am I on? That's a tough one. Like in so many things, the truth about Sanjay Dutt will be somewhere in between the two POVs. I frankly don't think he is a terrorist but I also don't think that he should, if he is, get away because of his family name, contacts and star status.
I agree.   Red Beans (Adzuki, Chori), Chutney Ingredients, Chapatis and Cheese ~ Ingredients for Chapati Bake Recipe: 1. Pressure cook: One cup red beans (soaked in water overnight beforehand) to tender or use the canned red beans. 2. Prepare chutney: In a skillet, add oil and cook coarsely chopped one onion, two tomatoes, three cloves of garlic and four chillies to brown. Cool, then add salt and blend to coarse puree. 3. Take fresh or leftover chapatis, about 4 to 6. Cut each chapati to 4 wedge-shaped pieces of equal size. 4. Slice to thin strips or grate cheese. I used Monterey Jack cheese in this recipe - About half cup. Chapathi Pizza !!   . More pics of the studio - A R Rehman, Prasoon Joshi and Aamir khan - at Aamir's blog.Is Obesity Contagious?, Research Shows You're More Likely To Gain Weight If Your Family And Friends
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/25/health/webmd/ma... "What we're looking at is how much your friend's weight change affects
your own weight change. And it can be up or it can be down. It can be becoming obese or becoming thin," Fowler says. If there ever was a stupid reserach, it is this. I am hanging out with my thin friends for almost a decade now. WTF researches like these reduce our beliefs towards better reseraches too. Interview with Con Kolivas part 2: his effort to improve Linux performance on the desktop | APC Maga
apcmag.com/6762/interview_with_con_kolivas_part_2_... 10 Free Ways to Track All Your Passwords - lifehack.org
www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/10-free-ways-... |
Google is positioning itself for the future. It’s conquered search on the Internet, revolutionized advertising with AdSense, and opened the door for the development and acceptance of Web applications like Gmail and Gcal. At the same time Google is leading a media renaissance with the acquisitions of YouTube, Blogger, Picasa.
The big rumor is that 
People are split on the subject of input. Should the Google phone have a touch screen interface like the iPhone, should it have a tiny QWERTY keyboard like a 
It’s doubtful Google itself will design the phone. Google is expected to use overseas OEMs like HTC or maybe farm design to handset manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, or 
Gmail and Gcal, as previously noted, can integrate more closely with Google Maps when people are mobile.
It’s the giant smelly monster sitting in the middle of the room. If there’s going to be a Google phone, and it looks like that’s a distinct possibility, expect advertising along the lines of AdSense and the recently introduced 
