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Showing posts from 2008

They came, they saw, they shot and what do we do now???

Well they came by sea and this has been confirmed by Govt. of India. They killed 100s and I strongly believe that the number given by Govt of Indiais highly deflated one. Great bloggers like Nitin Pai and GreatBong have written at lengths about this carnage(I am sorry for those who call it tragedy). It was nothing more that cold blooded massacre of people in India. The suggestion and thoughts by both these bloggers have been bang on target. But then, this stupid Congress government is not expected to be able to achieve anything. So here are my suggestions(well when everyone has one, why should I not chip in) There are three ways to deal with the situation. 1. Pseudo-Gandhian way -- Take out rally and protest creating havoc for the people who are already suffering at the hands of the government. The candle lights protest as well as going at lengths of giving memorandum to the political brasses all fall in this category. I hail from the city known of late more for protests than a

Happy Diwali all

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Wish all a very Happy Diwali.   This is my desperate attempt to find time to write a post this Oct

Defeat of truth in a Democracy

Well Nanavati Commision Report is out and there it goes, as expected proving innocence of Narendra Modi and validating the BJP stand. And as expected, all the hue and cry from Congress. Well it was a similar scene, with only the roles changed when Banerjee Report came. Similar hue and cry. I wonder if they talk sense and prove things instead of making empty noises. No I am not trying to support any one, but fact is that truth has died thanks to all the politics around the death of so many. I find it even more weird that most journalists never fail to mention that more than a thousand people died and most minority(it seems like only minority in India are the muslims. I wonder where do Jains, Sikhs, Buddhists and Christians go. I dont know where the fault lies. I dont know if these reports actually did any kind of study. I dont know if any of these reports did some scientific research and tests. I dont know if all these reports were written as any Sci-Fi writer does with all the research

Super Time at Barcamp Bangalore 7

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Barcamp Bangalore is one of those events which I just wait for. Its a time when I rejuvenate my thought process which is drained thanks to the often hectic work at office. Also this is one place where geeks can feel at home and talk about anything under the sun. Its pretty cool that its not just Tech thats discussed but also other topics close to us, like politics and life. Like most times, the paper wiki was filled completely as soon as it was put up. I actually saw a few people going disappointed with not being able to put up their talk. And like most other times, it started with the intro session for the first timers. This time it was Pradeep BV taking charge and explaining it to the first timers, what barcamp is all about. After that it was realized that one of the four rooms were actually not available for Barcampers. Anyways another great thing that happened was that an Impromptu Sessions paper wiki was put up. Amazingly it too was filled in a matter of minutes, it was put up

Barcamp Bangalore 7 is here again

Barcamp Bangalore 7 is here again. Because of the crazy times at work, I have not updated by blog for a long time. I dont know if I will be able to do it in the next few weeks also. But I wish I could. One thing is for sure that I am going to Barcamp and it will be a good time. Startup Saturday is happening at the same place and the same time. Its the very same ppl who were organising Barcamp Bangalore who are behind it. I am still wondering what made them move to a conference like event rather than an unconference. Anyways its for me to find out in the next few days. I am looking forward to a session by @mataal on Process vs Thread. Another one if by Ujjwal on how to chase your dream project while keeping your day job. I am sure a few more interesting things will pop up, as always. Anyways I am also leading a discussion on ELearning and what it hold for us in the future. I hope that I will have some interesting people to talk over it.

Thoughts for Independence Day

I talked about independence Day last year and what freedom meant for me here   http://the100rabh.blogspot.com/2007/08/independence-day-special-what-freedom.html . http://the100rabh.blogspot.com/2007/08/happy-independence-day.html Obviously my thoughts haven't changed much. So for independence day I have made a collection of quotes on freedom and independence by  Freedom is not given - it is taken.                                    - Netaji Subash Chandra Bose It is our duty to pay for our liberty with our own blood. The freedom that we shall win through our sacrifice and exertions, we shall be able to preserve with our own strength.                                    - Netaji Subash Chandra Bose "No one would die of starvation in independent India. Its grain would not be exported. Cloth would not be imported by it. Its leaders would neither use a foreign language nor rule from a remote place 7,000 feet above sea level. Its military expenditu

DCamp Bangalore rocked again(part 2)

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Contd from here (I am sorry but I am really drowning in work right now ) Ok after lunch it was time for another round of sessions. This time there were supposed to be some parallel session. This meant you win some, you loose some. But its fine with barcamps. To make sure people are awake, alive and kicking, Anil, COO, Aditi Technologies, dumped his usual upper level management fundas and let loose a volley of Shayaris, with a twist. I sorry I dont recall any(Ya its been a long time too ) Next in line was Aashish Solanki a.k.a. Net Bramha with an interesting topic, Art and Science of Web Design. It was more of discussion. Some interesting points were Differentiate between structure and skin. Something which is good for you might not be good for others. Getting their requirements is important. An interesting comment from Aashish was "IE is the Labour Pain of Web Development". Why well, most of you time goes in checking if the page is render

DCamp Bangalore rocked again(part 1)

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It was time again DCamp or Design Camp Bangalore.  Amit Pande, Sarit, Muthu , Anil Gupta among others worked hard to get this event going. I must tell you that I had an awesome time there. The presentations there were truly awesome. Let give a short summary of the things as they happened at the DCamp, though Vinodhn already has kind of everything on twitter . So heres how the event unfolded for me. I happily landed and Mekhri Circle expecting Aditi's office to be close by. So I begin walking from there towards Cauvery Circle. Cool I was looking for directions and I see someone looking at me from an auto. Oh ok I recognize this guy, hmmm....ok he is Gilberto from Thoughworks. Fine he is going to DCamp but is lost and does not know where is it happening. Ok fine I said, let walk to towards the Aditi Office and let so we walk. A few meters down the road, there is Muthu and Sudhindra at the gate of Aditi. So next thing we do is register and head for the terrace where the event was ha

Things I would like in my next Browser upgrade

Well there has been a lot hoola hoo over the recent releases of Firefox and Opera. But here are certain things that still suck and would like them to be removed. 1. Better plugins and make them such that they dont hang that tab or window. 2. Download accelerator be integrated in the download manager of the browser itself. Hardly makes sense keeping them dumb. 3. Super fast start is not possible for various technical reasons but a preloader program would definitely be kind of must have. 4. Get more screen real estate to the page and make rest of the things like toolbar, menubar and optionally even status bar visible on a need basis like the playbar in video players in full screen mode. 5. Subscribing to an RSS feed to Google Reader or iGoogle is  a dumb two step process now. Google Reader or iGoogle be made two different options. 6. Tabs must have a 3D effect or something really cool. Switching like pages is so yesterday. 7. Make download dialog unobtrusive. Make it someth

Indian broadband users at risk

Wow this was something I did not expect. But this surely did hit me hard the first time I got through it. It seems like I could access most Airtel Broadband users routers using simple telnet. Once I was connected, all that was required was username and password. Boy and I am in. I have access to the router now and I sure can do a lot of crazy stuff with it. Wait a minute, did I say you need username and password. How would I get the username and password. Well actually not very difficult. Is it. No one ever changes the username and password of their router. Actually no one expects anyone to be able to access the router without their knowledge. But the sad fact is, anyone on the internet can access their router. Most people do not even realize that their internet connection can be easily compromised. How? Well simple steps to follow 1. Press Window Key + R  to open the Run Command Dialog 2. Press cmd (Enter) 3. Enter 'telnet xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx' Where 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx&

Some third grade news by Hindi News channels

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I some time ago wrote about the amazing news stories covered by some Indian news channels . Now there is this amazing channel called IndiaTV, which will put any Indian to shame. An awesome story that it was running of late. I think a picture is worth a thousand words. So..            

iPhone or Openmoko

Well as I had been following mobile phones. What I have found is that actually there are just two worthy competitors. Rest are just like that. One is iPhone and other is Openmoko. Well iPhone because it has the glory. It has the backing of Apple and support of Steve Jobs behind it. But there is none of that sort for Openmoko. But it has the guts. Its has probably what it takes to make a real revolution. Just making a phone with a bigger screen and touch sensitive does not make revolutions happen Mr Jobs. The best part of the Openmoko phone is that its open. And surprising its priced at $399 and in India its around Rs 20k. Not bad for the phone which has Assisted GPS, WiFi, touch screen, bluetooth, microSD Card support and powerful 500Mhz Processor. To top it all, a user replaceable battery.  Well the only blemish that I am able to spot is the internal memory. Its a mere 256 MB. Though I can carry all the data in my SDCard but then its not the most convenient way to do things. Anywa

The Retirement fund

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I saw this amazing headlines from Economic Times, 70% Indians worry about outliving retirement funds . Well my first reaction was "Oh my God" . Most Indians would be unable to sustain themselves once they have retired. More likely they would kill themselves or die of hunger or may need government support. But then I read the fine print there. Well its a survey by MetLife. They sure do see a big market with 70% Indians not having retirement funds. But then another truth is that 50% Indians do not have funds for the next month too. Most of them survive on a daily basis. Mind it survive not live. Then again there is still a large majority who do not invest in retirement funds. Well that reminds me of people like my dad. He has no retirement funds. But then he does not need it either, just like my grand father. He did not need it. My dad is there after all to support him since he has retired long time back. Obviously same applies to my dad of course. The truth also is that yo

Top reasons why Tata Elxsi should be blacklisted

Well that a provoking first line, but then thats exactly what I have to say about this company. Tata Elxsi should be blacklisted, but wait a minute by whom? Well the software developers fraternity. Its a blood sucking corporation which is right documented in the documentary The Corporation . Ok why am I telling this after almost one year of leaving it. Well when the fact is that I have nothing to do with it. I have already let out my personal experience here , here and here . Well it was not just me as its obvious from the comments but then it was general feeling of my friends there. Well all I can talk about is friends because I dont know how each and every employee of Tata Elxsi felt. Anyways heres one more story about the kind of harassment and employee of Tata Elxsi might have to suffer . Though I had read it earlier but am blogging now about solely because I wanted to confirm the news being true. And sadly it is true. An employee was indeed made to resign. And indeed its legally

Creamy layer, redefined, literally

In what could be an amazing move, the UPA government is looming over the option of revising, what means a creamy layer. This new income limit is may be upto 6lakhs Now expect loads of unqualified and spoilt kids getting into the premier institutions only to be dropped or just managing to make hoola. Beware, they might even be your boss one day thanks to reservations. I dont know how reservation and equality go hand in hand.

A Collection of Classic Breaking News

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If you thought Indian newspapers were crass then wait a minute, the news channels are better than them. They are in a mode of one upmanship and each channel does its best to get the breaking news first. Here is a small sample of it taken from here . Breaking news 1 : Rahul Gandhi has dal-puri and veggies. Wow thats an awesome news and a must breaking news. This news has surely made my day. Now I can indulge in Pizzas to my heart content.     Breaking news 2 : Mr Bacchan has got cold. Oh so sad. May be I should do something immediately, like hang myself. Probably I should have done it before watching this breaking news.     Breaking news 3 : Ok enough of celebrities, this breaking new is about a common animal. Well the household cat aka Billo Rani and her adventures at the roof.     Breaking news 4 : If cat could be in news, then dogs cannot be behind. Here is a more celebrated dog, the Police Commissioners dog in news. This poor doggy got lost on 25th March. Th

Awesome selling/fooling style

Well I had been to Calcutta for a few days and am back. On the trip I came across some amazing things. This is the most awesome one. At Vijaywada railway station, there are a few juice stalls. Awesome thing but heres the amazing part. But they are cannot serve all customers with fresh juice . So keep juice made from fruits in a container. But the customers want fresh juice. They have devised this unique plan. They pour juice from containers to mixer jars, give it a run and serve. The unsuspecting customers believe thats its freshly prepared and are taken for a ride. This is observed not only in the unknown stalls but also at the Comesun outlet. They all talk about selling fresh fruit juice. Well technically they are right. They are selling juice from fresh fruits but then this is an awesome art of selling or fooling. Now days theres even a better term for it, presentation skills. Obviously marketing and advertisements are out now

Automated Gmail Account creator

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Well I read this story sometime back I thought it was some sort of rumor. But it seems that the software is now available to the general public via the rapidshare.com . Heres the page which has the complete application which can create gmail accounts for you in a jiffy. Though I am not sure of reliability of this app because I dare not install apps from such location for the fear of malwares and rootkits. After this report I dont trust my anti-virus to be of any help in identifying these. I would not recommend you to use it either. Here is what the application claims to do. Create Unlimited Gmail Accounts in Seconds Flat. Setup Auto-Responder automatically! Setup Forwarding automatically! Use random or custom names! Enable POP3 automatically! Proxy support: HTTP/SOCKS4/SOCKS5 Multiple exporting options! Automatic self-updating software! From the image its clear that you can either create a single gmail account or a number of them with letters or n

What I love in Firefox 3

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There has been much said about Firefox3, good and bad. People have stayed away from the beta and RC builds because the real power of Firefox, the extensions is not there yet. But still I got hooked to it since its Beta 3 release, which I found was more or less stable. So heres my fav feature list in no particular order. I actually love all of them. 1. The new location of the Home Button.    I think this is something which is one of the most normal thing to be done. But some product manager probably of the first browser wanted it that way or the dev said that if you want it someplace else, then more time is needed. Since then everyone has been putting that home button next to Refresh. Seems stupid now, doesn't it.  2. Most Visited Button. True of late what I do most of the time is that I visit the same pages. Its not all that often that I need to find new stuff or am bombarded with links. So this most visited button is just cool. 3. Smart bookmarks - Tagging, most visited

Oh fudge....20% of Americans have never used email

Believe it friends around 20% Americans have never used email . What is even more mind boggling is that some 30% of households dont have access to internet service. Consider this that in India we have just 27.5% of people living below the poverty line. Rest are above. The number of people who have never had food is nearly 0%. This is one of the greatest achievements of Indian government over the 61 years of independence from the blood sucking Britishers. Its a real sham that US has more people with broadband than we have without food. A pity on those obsese americans who are the wasting around 3,770 calories of food energy per day . Well you think its crap. Well I never said this is intellectual.

Random Post

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There is possibly nothing better than blabbering without a cause. Thats something that earns millions for certain cos and individuals who would speak whatever they can in the heat of the moment. There will random blames on certain people about the cause of the blast, without realizing anything. They would blame anything and everyone about whatever that has happened. Some would consider themselves the messiah of all things. They will act Godly but duck at the first chance of a risk. The guy reporting the situation will photograph the dying instead of saving him. Later act as the Messenger of God. Is it that humans find success in misery. More often than not, the bigger the villian, the more powerful is the hero. Its misery of the situation which probably bring out the hero. The smell of the flower in the morning and evening hours seem awesome but the same during afternoon seems different. I believe that its just our perception changes in those hours. Its highly unlikely that the flowe

If only ads dont lie

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A picture is worth a thousand words. Obviously simplymarry.com went overboard with the ad campaign.   Common yaar every body knows there are no beautiful girls in Software. By the way never heard anyone say Software Engineering as their qualification. What do you think of simplymarry.com now??   A few other ads which they may have A hunk describing himself as havaldar or constable. A hottie posing as PhD in science. Another hottie posing as Women Welfare executive Can u think of any other situations??

Manoranjan Unlimited -- Baap of WWE is here

Now if someone says I am proved wrong then buddy you need to look here and here . What the heck is it man. Isnt it what WWE is all about. After all its about entertainment. Stupid entertainment. You play with feelings and generate regionalism and hatred. Is it what entertainment is all about. What ever happened to cricket. I had initially surmised that all the entertainment would there due to SRK and Priety being around. But as it turns out Ganguly, Warne, Harbhajan and Sreesanth are not bad. To me it sounds more like those Rs20 per over games which are there at a lot of places where you can go and hit the ball as hard as you can. Stupid junta will watch anything. Since the organisers did not have faith in the stupidity of the Indian Junta, they got themselves skimpily clad cheerleaders who would entertain the crowd with their moves. Wow  now that something I would pay anything for. After all staring/glancing/X-Raying females is the national passtime of India. The lesser the clothe

My experiment with microblogging

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Well I have heard enough of microblogging. I dirtied my hands with pownce and then later with twitter. Pownce as I found was more of spam than anything else. On twitter there are so many interesting people, sharing some good ideas and links. But of late its been inundated with chat messages. I think thats one thing that sucks on twitter. You just get inundated with so much of ignorable chat that you want to remove it. Anyways thats a different story. Now what I am trying to do is start up with a twitter account called stupidquestions . What is going to posted on it is, well stupid questions. Some crappy questions and I expect people to come up with some good/smart answers. Now I am not going to read whatever the followers or people I am following are posting. But what I will be doing is that I will respond to all messages for stupidquestions(All messages which start with @stupidquestions). Hoping to get something good going . Do let me know what you think about this experiment of m

My takeaways from Barcamp Bangalore 6

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Its always been that one post for Barcamp Bangalore is not enough. Its always that I have had multiple posts. This one could not be an exception. I not being an RIA fanboy did not care to attend the marathon hijack sessions on it. Neither did I care to attend Myspace thing. I kind of hated the fact that those RIA guys did not care but take a room for themselves for the entire time after lunch. Not that I did not like it happening but would have loved if there were people talking about other things also. After all this was not an RIACamp. Anyways there were these interesting parallel sessions which happened. Among the first which I attended was Blogathon India. Me being an planner for Blogathon India started the session. Later it was taken over by Sanjukta. Next I preceded to help people with their wifi connections to the extent I could . Anyways gurus Akash and Cruisemaniac aka Ashwin were always there. After some loitering met a few people who were interested in my idea of BuddyHe

Barcamp Bangalore ... Rock the world

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Well if India is diverse its so because of the people. Barcamp is for, with, by people and no wonder you had the ultimate kind of diversity in it. You had lawyers, CA, MBA, profs, CEOs, coders, developers and geeks (yes they are different) among various other people. It was an awesome mix of ideas and people. The planners met some time back and we had a lot of discussion over how to do things this time around. I was a yet another experiment. Thankfully it came out good. If there is anything to complain about, it probably is the content. But friend isnt content something that has to come from us, the junta. I had been planning for some sort of an open source project. I thought BCB would be a great place to find people. But sadly it did not turn out the way I wanted. No hands to join in for the project. But anyways I did get some feedback on the objectives of my BuddyHere . I did take another session on Hacking Canon compact camera to provide extra features. I will be writing a post

Of Barcamp Bangalore

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The barcamp movement has taken India  by storm and Bangalore has now become the center of this movement in India. I think it was Barcamp Bangalore where it all started and now its in its 6th edition. I was introduced to it in the 4rth edition. I liked the concept at the very first. It was very clear that everyone is equal. You would be admired based on not what you are but what you deliver. So if someone is talking crap, you can just walk out. True there were a lot of freeloaders out there who came to do nothing actually. I was supposed to be one but then I realized that I too could talk. Well not technical but the I could speak about "How the bloggers are affecting other professionals". I thought this was the beauty of Barcamp. You could discuss anything under the sun. When the next barcamp was being planned and call was made for other to chip in, I decided to go ahead for it. Sadly I could not attend the Barcamp because of personal reasons but I could not attend it. This

Blogathon - Giving power back to people

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If it was the newspapers which gave the power to the freedom fighters, its going to be the blogs which will give power to the us in fighting injustice so prevalent in the society. It would not be the voice of one or two people but the collective voice of hundred thousands whose voice will shake the blogosphere. The media as we see today is open to manipulation and more often not carrying the voice of the people. Blogathon is an attempt to unify the voice of 6 billion Indians. Together we shall talk about issues which affect us and society in general. Lets come together and talk about it. Its happening in the blogosphere from 20th to 26th April 2008. Each day the blogosphere will be talking about a particular topic. They are out now Infrastructure: Sunday, 20th April 2008 How can we improve the traffic condition in our city? Politics : Monday, 21st April 2008 How do we change the focus of politics from caste/religion to grassroot issues? Entertainment: Tuesday, 22nd Apr

BuddysHere --- A Mobile Application idea

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Well this is an idea that I would like to share with all so that my dream can be realized. So here is the idea. Now that we have mobiles with GPS we should make use of it. So now you have this messenger which would update your position in your IM every time you move over 100m or something. I am assuming that either the GPS now or sooner will be accurate to something like few meters. So when you have some of your friends around, you know that they are. Cool dont u think? Here are options to make it happen. 1. Send update about the location to all/selected your buddies. Pro: Simple and effective Cons: No Privacy and your exact location is known to all. 2. Server gets updates and it pings you about friends close to you Pro: Agains simple and effective Cons: Requires server services. You location data is on a central server and this is a possible privacy risk. 3. Each person broadcasts a location to all his friends which is nearly correct. Now this nearly is something deb

Aamir Khan - The loser

For those who do not follow news or anything let me point you to his blog . First of all he has this terrible Web 0.0 type of blog which basically sucks. Add a dash of the usual dramatics and you have a super blog. Super not because its good or thoughts are good but there a fan following of his. Thats the only reason I could see why anyone would follow his life force sucking blog. I had great respect for this guy until he wrote this post. I thought he was different when he came in support of the Narmada Bachao Andolan. He was very right. But now he has made monstrous decision. HE HAS DECIDED TO GO AHEAD WITH OLYMPICS TORCH RELAY. Wow when the world realizes to protest something we have a supporter in India other than the spineless mindless communists. I was rather happy with BJP in this regard, at least they showed some spine. Lets examine some of the finer points which Mr Khan had to make. I would like to state that I have the highest regard and respect for the struggle that th

Thoughts on love and likes

Sometimes I wondered if there is anything called love. To put it plainly till I was in college I had this firm belief that love is not in the heart but in the mind. Being in love with the hottie in college was the passion and pride of most ppl. Though ur stupid as a dunk or having looks of Pankaj Kapoor(Apologies to Mr Kapoor but thats a good description) but you will never settle for anything but Aishwarya. They put everything at stake for her. Fight off guy who comes within 10m of her. But then when they realized that the girl has gone the other way, the guys would desperately hunt for a gal. Be it of any type or taste. Having a gal takes a high priority rather than any of the features of the gal. Then you would commit yourself to spend 99.99% of you telephone bill on SMSing her. Better still, hunt for a free SMS plan. Change numbers to get that plan. Picking and dropping the gal home becomes a top priority. The guy would also probably write/engrave on his arm the name of his 'su

This Congress government is communal, Now is that something unknown

The current Congress government is anything but secular. You cannot be secular just because you support a minority more than the majority and other minority communities. I have always believed that BJP was more secular than the current government. Now Taslima Nasreen has given her certificate of communality to the Congress Government. "I was put under tremendous stress but I could not speak out as I was under their (government) surveillance and could be harassed by them," she said in a choked voice. "The government is no better than religious fundamentalists," she said. If you want more proof of it, you can just look at whats happening in Andhra Pradesh. Total nationalization of all communities other than muslims and the mullas are given total control. God please help us. These guys are worse than anything they can be. Please give good sense to the people of India that they kick these people out of places of power and reverse the act

Whats right and whats wrong?

Sometime I feel confused about whether what I am doing is correct or is it wrong. Then if you look back in time it seems like some of the actions of yours were actually wrong though it seemed correct at that moment. So is it that There is nothing right or wrong, its just the most convincing argument at the moment. I might seem wrong but you surely have least convincing of arguments to prove me wrong. Lets see at some of the things in the past and reflect upon they being right or wrong. Socialism was right and Capitalism was wrong a few decades ago in Russia. But then the fall of Russia and towering of US made Capitalism look good. I am sure that in a few decades if Capitalist US takes a beating and the Islamic Banking concept takes root, then everyone will be cursing Capitalism. So basically based on situation opinions change. A few years back(rewind to Rajiv Gandhi) bringing in computers was considered a job eraser. The Red flag bearers(CPI & Co) were ecstatically against

Mobiles in the era of IBM PC compatible predawn age

A lot has been said and done about mobile phones of today. iPhone has brought a brand new concept in phones. It really moves the mobiles to the mainstream to do things other than talking. Just when things seemed bright for the mobiles we have Mr Jobs giving out a big MSish rules for development of Apps. I am not sure of its real usage. Probably he wants to protect iPhone from viruses, but then destroyers dont wait for a legal or easy means. They will find a way out anyways. The hardware for mobiles available is sadly built and around it software just manages things somehow. I see this as what happened to IBM PCs. They gave way to PC Compatibles with MS making a killing out of it. Even now its because of this that we had such a boom in PCs, atleast in India. It was this parallel development which actually boosted usage. If there is a corporation today which does something similar to what Intel, MS and others did together to kill the mafia of Apple and IBM. I am sure had it been then o

Risk while in Jet Lite

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Well this Wednesday 5th March 2008 I had this unfortunate experience of flying by Jet Lite. I must say that if there is a competition among the worst airlines in India, Jet Lite would definitely be a winner. Well as it has been renamed by some as Jet Late as its too often too late. As if that was not all, what is worse is that aircraft that they have. They are literally held together by duct tapes. These were the comments on the plane by one of my friend on it. Initially I thought it to be a joke, but then he asked me to look at the window and what I saw was this(they say a picture is worth a thousand words ) A little more in detail in the following two pictures   So you can imagine what we went though. But the bottom line is that we are alive . I am not sure if it caused a security risk or something but I did not feel comfortable at all. Obviously unless there is a crash or sorts there would be no learning for these airlines. Worst there are something which not just In

Akshardhaam, Delhi --- A brand new Amusement Park concept

Recently I had this opportunity of witnessing this amazing concept. Let me start from describing this place. This place is stretched over acres of land, with a parking lot bigger than the car park at any of the Indian Aiports I have seen. So u can imagine the total size of the complex. Its just humongous. So I enter the gate and am there inside this really huge open area. Now time for the first surprise. We need to deposit all out bags, cameras, mobiles, handsfrees and basically everything that is there with you except of course you cash and other valuables. Anyways proceeding from there I moved on. At another point I was told to take off my belt. Yo Baby. This is amazing. Never seen this thing happen anywhere. I believed that Airports and Red Fort also dont have this amazing security. Then a 'proper' security check and we are now allowed to proceed and put on the belt over the falling pants. Obviously the complex people dont want to visitor with their trousers falling every no

Welcome to the localized version of WWE, IPL

Well IPL is finally there. It has all the common ingredients required for a bollywood blockbuster. It has the best of bollywood stars Shahrukh Khan and the lovely Priety Zinta. There are a lot of financial muscle behind it too. You have best of the class cricketers who were auctioned off just like some antique. Some getting a price beyond expectations and some just getting selected. The current controversy in Australia has anything to go by then we can expect fireworks in IPL. Just like WWF you have two men engaged in a personal fight initially and then getting onto the ring. I dont expect anything else out of IPL. I think these guys should do some more preparation to make a Rocky kind of atmosphere. The underdog will go down in the first round and then spring back to end the game in a win. There would be mics everywhere to record what any of the player says on or off the ground. 24hr Reality TV format would be even better. All this would surely add to the entertainment value. Viewer w

Bug in Google Reader

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I have been a big fan of Google Reader even since it was launched. Its a cool application for news reading if you really love the gmail interface. Anyways some time back Google guys updated it. And from then I can see this awesome bug(Click on the image to see full sized one). Well actually what happened was that I had left google reader open for some time. Later when I came and finished what all was there and marking the uninteresting ones as read, I saw this popup. I had some 39 items only open(Look at the text bound by green lines at the bottom right of the image) but when I said Mark All as Read, I wanted to mark all 557 item(Not in the pane but updated ones) as read.Boy I got frustrated at this point. But I said Cancel, Refreshed the whole page and went through all those news which I did not find interesting enough to read. Finally I did Mark All as Read. Later I realised that even if I had done OK instead of Cancel, it would have worked and only those 39 items would have had b