ANKUR KATIYAR's BLOG

Wishlist features for a Laptop

2011-11-15T06:13:00.000-08:00

I hope some laptop maker sees the need of following features and packs them in a laptop:

1. 3G
> it would be nice, if I don't have to plug-in a USB dongle to get internet on the move. And sometimes, when I need the USB dongle the most, I forget to keep it in my bag.

2. USB stick for auto backup of critical data
> a built-in detachable usb drive in laptop on which you can selectively auto-backup critical data.If laptop were to crash, I will have my critical data backed-up by default! Zero time wasted to get working on a loan notebook (very applicable at workplace.)
> following a discipline to do regular backup doesn't ensure I have backup of most up to date critical data

3.FM transmitter
> I often play media on laptop and then for good sound, I need external speakers. And any really good speakers are not really portable. If laptop has a built-in FM transmitter, I could transmit sound over FM frequency and my music system with FM receiver can work as wifi speaker system. (this is what I currently achieve by using an external FM transmitter)

4. 3.5mm TRRS Jack
> a lot of people carry phone earphones which has 3.5mm TRRS jack. Wouldn't it be nice if same could fit into a standard laptop. It would be good if besides the standard audio and microphone jacks, one TRRS jack is also provided in laptop.

Getting re-booted

2010-08-01T02:21:00.000-07:00

When I look back at my blog, which I started writing in 2005, it gives me an interesting insight. The number of blog posts are a function of how much I have been busy with other things.
And looking at the 2010 - there has been no blog-post at all.

Indeed, I have been busy at work and personal life, however, it is time to reboot the engines, channelize the energies - to find time for things I love doing.

iPod scratched - due to Apples' unintelligent design

2009-12-25T06:24:00.000-08:00

Above is my 1 day old iPod nano (Serial No. 5U943ZM171Y) and it got scratched by Apples' unintelligent design. I had simply kept the device in my jeans front pocket together with the ear-phones as in picture below.( I would consider this a very normal way of keeping the device in pocket ).

iPod got scratched when the metal mesh in the ear phone bud rubbed with it inside my pocket.If this scratching had happened due to any other metallic thing in my pocket - I would not have complaint. However, the scratch is caused by iPod's own ear phones. This is NOT acceptable.

I wanted to complain this to Apple directly. However, I realized that Apple doesn't provide an email at which one could complain. Finally I got this Apple product feedback link - (http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipodnano.html). I have submitted this complaint there - let us see what Apple has to say about this incident and How Apple could rectify my scratched iPod.

P.S. After submitting the feedback in link above, Apple says:

Thank you for your feedback on iPod nano.

We cannot respond to you personally, but please know that your message has been received and will be reviewed by the iPod nano Team. If we need to follow up with you on your ideas for improving the iPod nano, we will contact you directly.

We appreciate your assistance in making iPod nano better.

iPod nano Team
Apple

Looks like Apple has no intentions of responding to my feedback.

How much data I transact?

2009-12-17T07:34:00.000-08:00

Recently I had to make a choice between various mobile broadband plans .
A) Cheap monthly rental with 30 GB data transaction limit per month
B) 35% more expensive plan with unlimited data transaction

I really had no idea how much data my laptop was transacting on a daily or weekly basis. And the sales person was trying to make me believe that 30GB is too little - that's 1 GB a day.

For a moment I too were convinced that may be, as I only turn off my computer while sleeping and get tons of emails , do watch videos and make voip calls - my data usage may be high.

However, I thought no harm going with cheap plan as anytime I could upgrade without penalty.Downgrading the plan attracts unjustifiably high penalty.

Out of curiosity, I found a trial utility(bwmonitor.com) to monitor my data usage and it makes be realize how much 1 GB of data is......In a week, my total data transaction was only 1.5GB. And my cheap plan offers me 1GB of data transaction per day!

Just to get a feel of data -
24 hours of talktime on VoIP phone uses approximately 2.4GB
A typical email with no attachment is about 50KB thats.. 0.00005 GB

Awesome presentation on Behavioral Economics by Dan Ariely

2009-10-23T05:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/548

Recession me "Geeta ka Saar"

2009-09-15T23:44:00.000-07:00

Got this email forward, interesting and paradoxical.

Evolutionary origin of depression

2009-07-22T09:16:00.000-07:00

Read this article in The Economist - quite interesting!

CLINICAL depression is a serious ailment, but almost everyone gets mildly depressed from time to time. Randolph Nesse, a psychologist and researcher in evolutionary medicine at the University of Michigan, likens the relationship between mild and clinical depression to the one between normal and chronic pain. He sees both pain and low mood as warning mechanisms and thinks that, just as understanding chronic pain means first understanding normal pain, so understanding clinical depression means understanding mild depression.

Dr Nesse’s hypothesis is that, as pain stops you doing damaging physical things, so low mood stops you doing damaging mental ones—in particular, pursuing unreachable goals. Pursuing such goals is a waste of energy and resources. Therefore, he argues, there is likely to be an evolved mechanism that identifies certain goals as unattainable and inhibits their pursuit—and he believes that low mood is at least part of that mechanism.

It is a neat hypothesis, but is it true? A study published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests it might be. Carsten Wrosch from Concordia University in Montreal and Gregory Miller of the University of British Columbia studied depression in teenage girls. They measured the “goal adjustment capacities” of 97 girls aged 15-19 over the course of 19 months. They asked the participants questions about their ability to disengage from unattainable goals and to re-engage with new goals. They also asked about a range of symptoms associated with depression, and tracked how these changed over the course of the study.

Their conclusion was that those who experienced mild depressive symptoms could, indeed, disengage more easily from unreachable goals. That supports Dr Nesse’s hypothesis. But the new study also found a remarkable corollary: those women who could disengage from the unattainable proved less likely to suffer more serious depression in the long run.

Mild depressive symptoms can therefore be seen as a natural part of dealing with failure in young adulthood. They set in when a goal is identified as unreachable and lead to a decline in motivation. In this period of low motivation, energy is saved and new goals can be found. If this mechanism does not function properly, though, severe depression can be the consequence.

The importance of giving up inappropriate goals has already been demonstrated by Dr Wrosch. Two years ago he and his colleagues published a study in which they showed that those teenagers who were better at doing so had a lower concentration of C-reactive protein, a substance made in response to inflammation and associated with an elevated risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Dr Wrosch thus concludes that it is healthy to give up overly ambitious goals. Persistence, though necessary for success and considered a virtue by many, can also have a negative impact on health.

Dr Nesse believes that persistence is a reason for the exceptional level of clinical depression in America—the country that has the highest depression rate in the world. “Persistence is part of the American way of life,” he says. “People here are often driven to pursue overly ambitious goals, which then can lead to depression.” He admits that this is still an unproven hypothesis, but it is one worth considering. Depression may turn out to be an inevitable price of living in a dynamic society.

Bertrand Russell in praise of Idleness

2009-06-15T06:29:00.000-07:00

My good friend had this link in his Gtalk status message.

Some interesting excerpts from Russell's essay:

Suppose that, at a given moment, a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world, everybody concerned in the manufacturing of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way, it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?

For ages, the rich and their sycophants have written in praise of 'honest toil', have praised the simple life, have professed a religion which teaches that the poor are much more likely to go to heaven than the rich, and in general have tried to make manual workers believe that there is some special nobility about altering the position of matter in space, just as men tried to make women believe that they derived some special nobility from their sexual enslavement.

If you ask him what he thinks the best part of his life, he is not likely to say: 'I enjoy manual work because it makes me feel that I am fulfilling man's noblest task, and because I like to think how much man can transform his planet. It is true that my body demands periods of rest, which I have to fill in as best I may, but I am never so happy as when the morning comes and I can return to the toil from which my contentment springs.' I have never heard working men say this sort of thing. They consider work, as it should be considered, a necessary means to a livelihood, and it is from their leisure that they derive whatever happiness they may enjoy.

When I suggest that working hours should be reduced to four, I am not meaning to imply that all the remaining time should necessarily be spent in pure frivolity. I mean that four hours' work a day should entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life, and that the rest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit. It is an essential part of any such social system that education should be carried further than it usually is at present, and should aim, in part, at providing tastes which would enable a man to use leisure intelligently. I am not thinking mainly of the sort of things that would be considered 'highbrow'. Peasant dances have died out except in remote rural areas, but the impulses which caused them to be cultivated must still exist in human nature. The pleasures of urban populations have become mainly passive: seeing cinemas, watching football matches, listening to the radio, and so on. This results from the fact that their active energies are fully taken up with work; if they had more leisure, they would again enjoy pleasures in which they took an active part.

Blog Post Cloud

2009-05-06T09:19:00.000-07:00

Due to lack of time - not explaining the bullet points. However, I guess the idea is understandably simple!

Why am I unable to Vote ?

2009-05-01T09:23:00.000-07:00

I think I am not alone who is facing this problem. I have Indian passport and I also have Driving license - both official government documents confirming my identity as Indian along with my date of birth and hence age, which is greater than 18 years (minimum age to acquire the voting rights). However, I have never been able to vote.

Let us first get some facts right, then I will analyze what may I do exercise my vote!

From Election Commission of India(ECI) website(www.eci.gov.in) I find following facts:

2. Who can vote?
All citizens of India who are 18 years of age as on 1st January of the
year for which the electoral roll is prepared are entitled to be registered as a
voter in the constituency where he or she ordinarily resides. Only persons
who are of unsound mind and have been declared so by a competent court or
disqualified due to ‘Corrupt Practices’ or offences relating to elections are not
entitled to be registered in the electoral rolls.

Ok. So I qualify the age criteria and I do not get disqualified by the criteria in the last sentence. Now the key question is what is "electoral roll" and how does ECI define "ordinarily resides".Of course, the www.eci.gov.in explains this.

3. What is an electoral roll?
3.1 An electoral roll is a list of all eligible citizens who are entitled to cast
their vote in an election. The electoral rolls are prepared Assembly
Constituency wise. An electoral roll for any Assembly Constituency is subdivided
into parts corresponding with the polling booths. The Election
Commission of India has decided to generally have a maximum of 1200
electors per booth. The polling booths are so set up that no voter should
ordinarily travel more than 2 kms. to reach the polling booth. Normally, one
part will correspond with one polling booth.
3.2 To exercise your franchise, the first and foremost requirement is that
your name should be in the electoral roll. Without your name registered in the
relevant part for the area where you ordinarily reside in the Assembly
Constituency, you will not be allowed to exercise your franchise. Therefore, it
is your duty to find out whether your name has been registered or not.

Alright. Clearly I somehow always missed out to get myself registered into an electoral roll of the constituency where I ordinarily resides. It is my duty to get myself registered.
I think the idea of having the system of electoral roll is there to ensure that a person is unable to vote in more than one constituency in a single general election.Though, there is
a mechanism of making a dot on voter's finger with un-erasable ink to identify people who have already voted. In a vast country like India, elections may occur in a staggered
fashion across the country - there is a possibility that people may cast multiple votes at different constituencies. Remember! these mechanisms were devised when computers
were unheard of and having central database for voter's identity verification was impossible.

According to ECI, one qualifies for "Ordinarily Resides" address provided (s)he is living at the place for over 6 months. There a bit of challenge here. People in my generation change
place of residence every few years. In the past 6 years, I have lived in 4 cities. And I do not think I am an abberant nomad - almost everyone in my generation is similarly mobile.
If every time one changes his address which happens to be in different constituency, he has to get electoral roll updated with the change. This is too much of administrative over
head on part of citizen as well as on government.

Perhaps this is time to rethink on the definition of "Ordinarily Resides". May be it is a good idea to include ones native place or home state in the definition of "Ordinarily Resides" and
simplify the voting process easy of the 'nomad' generation. However, as I write the suggestion of expanding the definition of "Ordinarily Resides" - I know in a span of next generation -
the concept of native place or home state would also be blurred. My parents are both from same district in UP. And all the known past generations have lived in the same district.
Considering this, the definition of "Ordinarily Resides" was alright. Now, my wife and myself are from different states and we are not living in either one's native place. Then, what place
would our kid consider as native place. For the next generation concept of native place or home state will be blurred too. Perhaps then, the concept of electoral roll too would look
antiquated or perhaps for many it already is antiquated.

Anyway, ECI website also mentions how to get oneself registered to the electoral roll. No simple logistic task !!

4. How to register?
4.1 The Election Commission prepares the electoral rolls through a
process of intensive revision where house-to-house enumeration is done and
electors residing in each house are registered by official enumerators who go
physically from door-to-door to collect the information about electors. This
process is done normally once in five years. Between two Intensive revisions,
summary revisions are done every year during a specified period when
persons who are left out of the electoral rolls are given an opportunity to
register themselves by applying in Form-6. It is also expected from you to get
your name deleted from the place where you earlier resided, and get it
included at new place in case you have shifted. For this, on your part, it is
sufficient that you file claim application in Form 6 before the Electoral
Registration Officer of the new place and in that application give the full
address of your earlier place of residence. Short absence from place of
residence does not debar one to continue his/her name in electoral roll.
Similarly, deletions are carried out of electors who have died or who have
shifted residence from one area to another outside the prescribed part of the
electoral roll. You should note that you can be registered only at one place.
Registration in more than one place is an offence.
4.2 During Intensive Revision of electoral rolls which normally takes place
once in five years, a draft roll is prepared after house to house enumeration
and published at every polling booth location for inviting claims and
objections. Any eligible person can file claim in Form No. 6 for inclusion of his
name in the roll or raise an objection to somebody’s name or for deletion of
his or any other person's name in Form No. 7. Similarly if any particulars in
the electoral roll are to be modified such as name, house number, middle
name, last name, age, sex, epic number etc. a claim in Form No. 8 can be
filed. In case any elector has changed his house from the polling area of one
booth to other booth in the same Assembly Constituency he can file
application in Form No. 8A for change/transposition from one electoral part to
other part.
4.3 During Summary revision of electoral rolls which takes place every
year, the existing electoral rolls are published at each polling booth locations
to invite claims and objections for inclusion, deletion, modification and transposition.
After due enquiry all the claims and objections are decided and
a supplementary electoral roll is prepared and published.
4.4 Even after the final publication of electoral rolls the process of
continuous updation of electoral rolls goes on and the citizens are free to file
any application for the addition, deletion, modification and transposition with
the Electoral Registration Officer.
4.5 As per the law, your name can be registered upto the last date of filing
nominations by candidates that has been notified by the Election Commission
for any general election or bye-election to an Assembly or Parliament. To
enable the Electoral Registration Officer to take action on your application,
you must apply at least ten days before the last date of making nominations
as he has to mandatorily invite objections by giving a seven clear days notice
before including your name in the roll. If you apply later than ten clear days
before the last date for nominations your name may not be included for the
purposes of that particular election.

Ah! meticulous and elaborate exercise that ECI performs to keep the electoral rolls up to date. However, it is no wonder that a country of the scale of India - probably millions of
citizens like myself perpetually miss out the opportunity to get registered in the electoral roll. By the way, all the underlined forms can be downloaded from following link
http://www.eci.gov.in/forms/forms_Voters.asp
However, it took me more than 15 minutes to find out the contact of Electoral Registration Officer - http://www.eci.gov.in/Directories&photogallery/e-mailaddress-ceos.asp

I emailed the Electoral Registration Officer for my native state - Uttar Pradesh on 30th Oct 2008. However, I never got any reply to my mail below.

to		ceo_uttarpradesh@eci.gov.in
date		Thu, Oct 30, 2008 at 7:38 PM
subject		registering myself in electoral rolls
mailed-by		gmail.com

hide details Oct 30

Dear Sir,

I am native of Kanpur, UP. I want to get myself registered into the electoral roll in Kanpur.
My house is in Indira Nagar, Kanpur. How/Where may I submit the form6 found at http://www.eci.gov.in/forms/forms_Voters.asp ?

Kindly advise. Thank you.

Regards,
Ankur Katiyar

Though it is my duty to get myself registered into the electoral rolls - if I get missed out by the house-to-house enumeration process in which electors residing in each house are
registered by official enumerators who go physically from door-to-door to collect the information about electors. I do not know how can I get myself registered to the electoral
of the area of my normal residence. The ECI website(www.eci.gov.in) only provides a 'downloadable form-6' which it says - one must fill and submit to Electoral Registration Officer. However,
who is this electoral registration officer? where is his office in each state or districts? There is no reply from email address of Electoral Registration Officer.

Co-incidently, while I have been writing this and exploring on this issue of registering myself as voter - I got a mail invitation from my friend to www.jaagore.com !
Reminds me of Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist - “when you really want something to happen, the whole universe conspires so that your wish comes true”.

Jaago Re! One Billion Votes is a non-partisan national campaign launched by Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy (a non-profit organization) and Tata Tea, to awaken and
enable the citizens of India, especially the youth, to register for voting. Its mission is to register everyone in India to vote in the next 5 years, for better governance. In the launch year
(2008-09), the campaign targets the top 35 cities of India, and aims to register millions of youth before the 2009 general elections.

This initiative sounds a wakeup call for the billion people of this country to unite and bring about change. A change in the quality of governance that can happen only with active participation

through voting, and electing quality leaders. A change by strengthening the roots of Indian democracy.

I have promptly registered on Jaago Re! And now I know who is the Electoral Registration Officer (ERO) for electoral constituency of my native place. I have to find time to now fill up the

form 6 and submit to the Electoral Registration Officer.

However, in my case the problem is not yet resolved. I am living in Singapore since 2006 and I am now learning that existing rules recognize a voter only if he is living in a constituency for

over 6 months. Therefore, I actually DO NOT have right to vote.

"According to Section 19 of the R. P. Act, 1950, only a person who is ordinarily resident in a constituency is entitled to be registered in the electoral roll of that constituency.

However, such of the non-resident Indian Citizens who are employed under Govt. of India in a post outside India are eligible to be registered as voters in terms of Sec 20 (8) (d)

read with Sec 20 (3) of the R. P. Act, 1950."

I also found some news articles talking about ammendment to the above rule to extend voting rights to NRIs. However, this is still pending.

A Bill to amend Section 20 of the Representation of the People Act 1950 has been introduced in Indian Parliament in 2006, and is still pending. The Bill seeks to extend voting rights to

NRIs by treating them as ordinarily resident in India for voting purposes. But the Bill does not provide for postal ballots or other forms of polling for NRIs. The Parliamentary Standing

Committee on Law and Justice had examined the Bill and recommended that a comprehensive Bill on the subject should be introduced “containing all details regarding the manner of

enrollment of the Non-Resident Indians, the mode of voting and the conditionalities for contesting elections.” The government has not acted on it so far.

I hope in few years time, Indian parliament will finish its due diligence and pass the amendment to extend voting rights to Indian citizens living abroad. Though I am not pleased with the speed
of action of government. However, slow speed of action is better than inaction. Things are moving, and perhaps in right direction.

The WallStreet Banksters

2009-04-24T02:51:00.000-07:00

Bill Moyers sits down with William K. Black, the former senior regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Black offers his analysis of what went wrong and his critique of the bailout- video link

Hi Tech Cab - Wi-fi, Printer, 220v supply, Phone Charger

2009-04-07T06:38:00.000-07:00

Mohd Rafee's Cab

Canon Printer behind the back seat

Mohd Rafee Bin

220v power point for universal charging station (there is an inverter installed, the blue thing below power point is inverter cooling fans)

Web Cam installed at dashboard

Today I was in a cab and noticed the on board wifi internet, web-cam, printer and mobile device charging station. I must say it is a novel idea - after all often while in cab before customer meetings - you do want to confirm one last bit of information on internet and do feel like printing another bit of information.
Moreover, very often the phone battery dies while on the move and a charging station could be a blessing in cab.

However, I learnt from the cab driver Md. Rafee that he had to submit blueprint of his innovation to LTA (Land Transport Authority) to get an approval to set it up on his "city cab".
Moreover, for offering this useful service Md. Rafee is not allowed to charge anything from customers.Well, I understand - a rule is a rule and it must be followed.

May be it is time for LTA to recognize Md. Rafee's innovation and make amendments in rules which will allow cab drivers to innovate and supplement their earnings which are getting affected in downturn.

Kudos to the innovation by Mohd Rafee.

IIT coaching from class VII

2009-03-29T05:37:00.000-07:00

Noticed this news item in Times of India.Coaching is a big business in India and "business" is only trying to expand its consumer base.

Boss is around? Look Busy

2009-03-15T19:11:00.001-07:00

I stumbled across an Indian jobsite called - www.workosaur.com . The noticeable aspect of the site is it has a link conveniently placed at the top right corner - "Boss is around? Look Busy"

Gillette Mach3 Nitro Power - Product Quality Feedback

2009-03-15T07:57:00.000-07:00

I wanted to directly provide feedback to Gillette about the shoddy quality of their Mach3 Nitro Power razor stick through Gillette.com website . However, the website seemed to take forever to submit the feedback - as if company has the product feedback submission feature on website for name sake and it isn't interested in knowing what customers have to say.

Here is my experience with Mach3 Nitro Power razor. I had been using the razor for about 6 months and I seldom used this razor as I found the old Sensor excel gave less irritation!

Anyway coming to the real complain - today I found that the Duracell battery which came with the original product had leaked and the battery fluid reacted with the battery compartment plastic, disintegrating plastic into powdery pieces. This is an example of very shoddy quality.

How could a Duracell battery leak ? The razor was seldom used - battery wasn't yet dead. I would think that somehow moisture found its way into the battery compartment and caused it to leak. The razor claims to have a waterproof design - and as I used this razor very seldom and with care - it is no wonder to me that waterproof design is also quite shoddy.

Not much to my surprise , when I googled -"Gillette customer service" - I got this link - someone had posted

"How Do I Contact The Gillette Company Customer Service Division For The Mach 3 Turbo Shaving System?I purchasd some gillette mach3 turbo razor blades and they are the worst blades I have ever purchased, I want to contact the manufacter's customer service department to file a complaint "

This makes me believe that Gillette is a company which isn't interested in listening to its customers - even finding a means to feedback to them about their product is not easy. Website feedback submit doesn't seem to be working - I can not find any customer care number or email on the website.

Update:
I finally managed to get in touch with Gillette customer care: brandinfo@sg.pgconsumers.com
. They also have a customer care number for Singapore 800-186-0018 , which I got to know only when I called up their Singapore corporate office.

I got a telephone call back in few hours after sending email. Customer service executive took my feedback and agreed to send refund for the razor.

Hire American

2009-03-13T07:14:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting article from WSJ on "Employ American Workers Act" or simply put - Hire American Act.

Below Copy paste from WSJ (link click here)

It's a Terrible Time to Reject Skilled Workers
Don't we want the world's brightest fixing our banks?

By PAUL DANOS, MATTHEW J. SLAUGHTER and ROBERT G. HANSEN

Thanks to the Employ American Workers Act (EAWA), which was folded into the stimulus bill, it's become harder for companies getting government support to hire skilled immigrants with H-1B visas -- they'll have to show they haven't laid off or plan to lay off an American from a similar occupation.

Supporters say the law will help U.S.-born workers and stimulate our economy, but this is just wrong. The economy is not of fixed size, in which more foreign-born workers necessarily mean fewer U.S. workers. Productive foreign-born workers can help create more jobs here. Keeping them out damages us.

Start with the damage to companies that have received money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Over 400 firms now face a sharply curtailed talent pool, precisely when they need visionary talent to rebuild amidst the world's most severe economic crisis in decades. Without the best talent, ultimately they'll create fewer jobs.

There is also indirect, unforeseen damage that's beginning to appear in higher education. In 2007, the U.S. exported $15.7 billion in educational services and, consistent with our strong comparative advantage in education, ran a trade surplus of $11.2 billion. America has built the world's most dynamic university system largely by welcoming foreign scholars and students. This year at our own Tuck School of Business in Hanover, N.H., 31% of tenured and tenure-track professors and over 35% of MBA candidates are foreign born.

That dynamism is now in question. Here at Tuck -- and at many fellow business schools as well -- several foreign-born students had their job offers rescinded in response to EAWA. If foreign-born students cannot legally work here after earning their degrees, fewer will enroll.

Foreign-born MBA candidates often choose to study in America because they aim to apply what they learn from our world-class schools right here. The same is true across the academic fields: According to the National Science Foundation, 42% of Ph. D. science and engineering workers in the U.S. today are foreign born.

A reverse brain-drain caused by EAWA means that Tuck's U.S.-born students will endure a poorer classroom environment. Tuck and other schools will face a less-dynamic campus -- and eventually fewer jobs here as a result. Some schools will suffer declining enrollments, with commensurate declines in overall U.S. higher-education exports.

And where will all these foreign-born students go? To countries whose leaders recognize their job-creation potential and shape policy accordingly. For example, current British immigration policy welcomes an unlimited supply of the world's best and brightest business minds. Since 2004, the U.K. Highly Skilled Migrant Programme has maintained a list of 50 of the world's top business schools. Anyone who earns an MBA from a business school on this list is automatically eligible to work in the U.K. for at least one year.

Quite apart from their contributions to higher education, skilled immigrants have long contributed to American jobs and standards of living. They bring ideas for new technologies and new companies. And they bring connections to business opportunities abroad, stimulating exports and affiliate sales for multinational companies.

Turning away skilled immigrants will hurt, not help, the U.S. It is unlikely that supporters of the Employ American Workers Act saw the link from jobs at companies receiving TARP money to enrollments at American universities and graduate schools. But we ignore at our peril the indirect yet significant harm done by laws that try to wall America off from the global economy.

Today U.S. colleges and universities are suffering. Who will be next? And who in Washington will have the wisdom and courage to change course?

Mr. Danos is dean, and Messrs. Slaughter and Hansen are associate deans, at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business.

Crowd behavior

2009-03-13T01:42:00.000-07:00

I generally admire the organized traffic conditions in Singapore. Specially, that people do not honk horns - something I am not used to in India!

I always thought that people in Singapore were well behaved with horns, whereas, in India we honked horns every time we feel like! Perhaps, I was wrong. Today I noticed about a 150 meter long queue of cars building up at a signal which wasn't moving fast (one vehicle ahead had a troubled engine! ). And there you go - one guy honked horn and as if in reply and frustration several others started honking. A queue of just 150 meters and a jam of mere 5-10 minutes drove people to take out frustration by honking. I must admit it was still not too bad - reason for which is perhaps fear of laws which attract fine for horn honking. And 5-10 min jam is not enough to test ones nerves!

In India, where traffic infrastructure is overload by several times its normal capacity. Where getting stuck - for 30mins in traffic jam, in queues extending a kilometer, is an every day affair. It is just crowd behavior - that people take out frustration with honking horns and subconsciously it gets into the habit :)

Earphone buds with built-in MP3 player

2009-03-07T08:14:00.000-08:00

This post is a wish product which I would really like to have but haven't found any manufacturer making one!

I like my small MP3 player. However, I hate the wires of the earphones - which I have to untangle every time I need to use them. I googled and found that there are some headphones available which have a built-in holder for iPod Shuffle - neat idea!

However, I really don't like wearing big headphones while walking around in public places - it just feels a bit odd. So, what I really need is a pair of earphone bugs which have a tiny MP3 player built in. I tried to visually represent my wish product on PowerPoint (that's the most sophisticated software I know to use for pictorially representing ideas!)

Given the miniaturization of electronics - I do not see any reason why my wish product can not be produced.

Only challenge I see is the way current MP3 player and earphone market has evolved. MP3 player companies Apple, Creative et al have all focussed on creating the MP3 players. They sell MP3 players bundled with rather reasonable qulaity earphones and customers are free to choose any brand of sophisticated earphone. As earphone is not a one-size-fits-all product, market is full of different shapes and sizes of earphones. And my wish product will lock the customer with MP3 player and the earphone style in which MP3 player is built into.

However, I do see a potential market of consumers who would like to trade "the flexibility of being able to use any kind of earphone with MP3 player" for an "earphone built-in MP3 player" which offers the convenience of NO WIRES!

Saving Trees: Printing both sides (like book) using ordinary inkjet printer

2009-03-05T06:58:00.000-08:00

Today I had to print a PDF book using my ordinary inkjet printer - which doesn't offer the feature of both side printing the way advanced office printers print. After printing some 150 pages - I realized that even with my printer it is easy to print both sides like a book. I have documented on how to print on both sides using an ordinary inkjet printer in the presentation slide here

Save Paper! Save Trees!

Recession effect on Pizzas!

2009-02-27T03:02:00.001-08:00

Noticed this "flyer" of Canadian Pizza at my doorstep - interesting. Recession is showing up everywhere !

Innovative Auction Game!

2009-02-06T18:04:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I was in MRT and noticed a really cool auction game ad. A SONY Playstation to be won for SGD15 only - by bidding via SMS. And each SMS costs 50 cents.

To win the auction one has to be the single highest bidder and bid can not be greater than SGD15.

Probabilistically it is a beautiful game! And a good money spinner for auctioneer :)

Pandit Ram Prasad 'Bismil' - Autobiography

2009-01-29T08:33:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading autobiography of Pandit Ram Prasad Bismil - the great India freedom fighter. I would recommend anyone and everyone who come across this post to read the story of an ordinary man who left an extra-ordinary impact on Indian freedom movement.

There is a lot to be learnt from the brave freedom fighter - a man of principles, disciple and single-minded focus for freedom of India. A commendable leader with strong oratory and writing skills with an acute knowledge of ills of Indian society of that time and a prudent prescription to cure the those ills. (it is tragic that vestige of some of the social ills still persists in the society! - regionalism, casteism, and petty politics. However, positive note is that things seem to be moving in right direction albeit at a very slow pace) .

Wanted to write more here. However, it is 0055hrs here and my wife just started some blabbering and broke the flow of thoughts. And not to mention I got very very irritated. We just made an agreement - next time I am writing , She wouldn't disturb!

Art of War: Sun Tzu's 5 points

2009-01-25T06:40:00.000-08:00

Recently got hold of Art of War Sun Tzu. Wonderful text and very tersely written.
Here is my attempt to "tersely" jot down the 5 points on war strategy which is very very applicable to real 'ordinary' life !

Sun Tzu professes a 5 point framework for analyzing the opponent viz.

Philosophy - Be very clear about your philosophy and your opponents'. And ensure that your followers understand it well.
Climate - Climate refers to trends of time. In every conflict, be mindful of factors on which none has control - which change with time and can decisively change one's competitive position.
Ground - Refers to the actual terrain - physical or diplomatic - where war is fought. Knowing one's ground well ensures that we can leverage strengths and weaknesses of ground to our advantage and minimize the element of surprise.
Leadership - Good leaders must be judged by their skill at listening rather than their ability to talk. Good leaders are flexible, changing their tactics - but not their beliefs - based on the situation. They embrace outsider viewpoints.They can shape events. Only these types of leaders can succeed in war.
Methods - It refers to the organizational structure - command and control machinery. It forms the operational backbone of the team - which determines the agility and nimbleness.

And the memorable quote from the book - All warfare is based on deception.

Singapore Property Outlook

2009-01-17T06:47:00.000-08:00

I found this real estate broker's pamphlet lying near the lift lobby of my residential area - it sums it all !

Wondering if this kind of marketing will work. This is aimed at potential sellers - some house owners may get induced into selling before the crash. However, prospective buyers are also looking at this marketing - they would rather wait and watch.

Economist Eugene Fama on auto bailout

2009-01-15T00:30:00.000-08:00

Found this article on auto bailout stimulus plan by economist Eugene Fama. Worth reading.

Good Dilbert..

2008-12-18T00:22:00.001-08:00

Source: Dilbert.com

Economists' explanation on why people walk up staircases but not up escalators

2008-12-17T08:39:00.000-08:00

Check out the article here

Interesting excerpts:

"getting one foot closer to where you're going" is the wrong way to measure benefit. Who cares how close you are to where you're going? What matters is how long it takes to get there. Benefits should be measured in time, not distance. And a step on the stairs saves you more time than a step on the escalator because—well, because if you stand still on the stairs, you'll never get anywhere. So walking on the stairs makes sense even when walking on the escalator doesn't.

My colleague Mark Bils figured out a way to rephrase this so that even an economist can understand it. Every producer knows that workers should spend less time with inferior machinery. Compared to an escalator, a staircase is an inferior machine, so the "workers"—that is, the people who use the stairs—should try to minimize their time there. The way to limit your time on a staircase is to keep walking until you get to the end.

Annoying mobile content marketing

2008-12-17T03:17:00.000-08:00

Recently I renewed my service contract with my mobile service provider - I would not name the service provider as this annoying mobile marketing content practice seem to be universally adopted by all the service providers.

Here is how it works. At the time of service contract - they bundled some FREE MP3 music pack for 1 month in some fine print which I obviously didn't take note. And the end of 1 month I get following SMS:

SMS: Dear Subscriber, yr FREE MP3 Music Pack 30days subscription ends on 20/12/08 & a $5.35/mnth charge applies till you unsub. To unsubscribe, key *1626.

Now what frustrates me is that first of all by clever design they made me subscribe to this MP3 music pack ( I got no idea what it is and I DO NOT care!) and Then, they want me to unsubscribe the service otherwise I will be billed for something which I never wanted and never used.

Anyway, the misery doesn't end here. I am a bit non SMS age guy - so the sms message didn't stuck in my head clearly. I thought to unsubscribe, I need to sms back with "*1626". No it isn't straight forward.

I got to dial *1626. And then I get this following SMS.

SMS: Pls reply with yr option(eg.1)
1)..
2)...
3)...
4)...
5)...
6)...
7)...
8)Unsubscribe content svc
9)...

OK so now I had to sms back with "8". I would assume that is it. No, frustration carries on.

Now I get following SMS:

SMS: To terminate yr existing content pls reply with option(eg. "1")
1) MP3 music pack ( $5.35/mth)

OK, so I replied back with "1" and thought this should end here. But it goes on...

I got another SMS: You have chosen to terminate MP3 Music Pack service. To confirm, pls reply 'Y'.

Why the hell do I need to confirm. I have not been trying to disable this inadvertently. Anyway, now that I had tolerated so much of crap - one last sms. I replied with "Y" and I got sms confirming that the MP3 thing is is disabled!

This incident irritated me so much that I felt to voice out my frustration on blog. The underlying message to mobile service providers is please DO NOT force sell services people DO NOT want.

DDA - Pep up your servers.

2008-12-16T07:18:00.000-08:00

Today DDA flat allotment results were published at 3pm. However, even at 9pm the DDA website (http://www.dda.org.in/home.htm) is down.
After trying to open the link for few hours - I finally got the direct link to the results pdf file - http://www.dda.org.in/tendernotices_docs/dec08/DRW_RSLT_DDA08.pdf

However, no relief - direct link is also dead 99.99%.

After persistently trying finally managed to download the 2.2mb file (click to download)

Hope it helps to some of the people desperately trying to see results. Good Luck!

On a side note:

This server not responding incident is not new thing for govt of India websites ( a lot of NIC created nic.in , .gov.in sites ). I agree most of the govt sites which face this server loading problem are seldom used site and hence very low capacity servers are used (an economics driven decision! perfectly OK!), which die out when 100s of thousands of people start hitting the site.

Though it indeed is a challenge to pep up server capacity for an unanticipated load on server. However, in case of a result declaration - when it is known that 100s of thousands of people would be hitting the server - there is no excuse! Authorities should plan to cater for additional
server capacity - technically it is not impossible - it just requires a will to provide better service.

10 million Euro is negligible

2008-12-16T01:44:00.000-08:00

The scale of Madoff 's ponzi scheme has dwarfed 10 million Euro to NEGLIGIBLE !!

On Reuter's - "Firms exposed to Madoff's alleged fraud" they say so :)

"SOCIETE GENERALE - Said its exposure is negligible, below 10 million euros."

Future of Ad supported FREE online content

2008-12-07T07:18:00.000-08:00

Check out the firefox add-on Ad Block Plus and you would know that Free internet content largely supported though online advertising may not remain free forever. This small Ad Block Plus add-on for Firefox browser impressively filters out all of the unwanted distracting ads on most popular sites. Here is a little same of it -

The first image is Reuters home page with ads (red ovals) and the second image is Reuters home page without ads (blue ovals - blank area). Quite neat !

The plug-in has a "filter list" subscription which is socially created - that is every time a user sees an annoying ad and blocks it using Ad Block Plus - the blocked ad is saved in a master list, which is available to all users. This ensures that over a period of time the effectiveness of Ad Block Plus will only grow. Moreover, perhaps this is just the beginning of the breed of ad blocking tools - beyond doubt in few years time, such tools would empower users to block any involuntary information dumped up on them. However, this would either imply most of the quality free online content would either go paid or online media companies will find sophisticated ways to fund their online presence. And yes, ad blocking tools pose a very serious threat to Google - What is Google doing in this regard ? ...my speculation....perhaps the motivation behind Chrome browser is to give users reasons to stay away from technologies(Firefox + Ad Block Plus) which may potentially disrupt its business model.

This question requires more serious thought - Let me to do some homework to find an answer to this question...hopefully in my next post:)

RFID for warranty

2008-10-02T22:24:00.000-07:00

Few days back the electric hotplate in our kitchen broke down. It was about 7 month old and technically still under warranty. However, usually we are never careful with receipts or warranty card - receipts and warranty cards get thrown into bin inadvertently !

And I recollect that this is not the first time it is happening with me. In past, there have been several incidents in which a product broke down while still under warranty but we had lost both warranty card and receipt. I am sure, I am not the only one facing this problem.

I would like to see warranty card or proof of purchase information embedded into the product in the form of RFID sticker. I did a quick google search for "RFID for warranty" - I found few interesting links. Of course people have been thinking in this direction for some time. However, I am trying to understand - what prohibits industry to adopt this technology.

Still researching and talking to few friends in retail industry about this :)

G phone has implemented something that I had been thinking of!!

2008-09-27T09:07:00.000-07:00

Sometime back I had posted about "Abstract Passwords/Picture Passwords" . It is interesting to note that G Phone has applied the same idea for locking and unlocking the phone!

Below is the excerpt from Reuter's post on G phone:

"One of the phone's quirkiest features is actually its security system. Instead of typing a password you slide your finger over a series of dots to get into the phone. So instead of remembering a password you just need to remember what kind of line to draw to join the dots."

I did consider to patent this idea way back in 2006 while I worked at IBM Software Lab India. However, initial patent investigation revealed that a more generic form of same idea was already patented. :)

Suprime Losses - hard to believe

2008-09-15T06:13:00.000-07:00

So the carnage is ON at Wallstreet - Lehman Brother bankrupt and Merill Lynch sold !!
Out of curiosity I did some crude calculation here

The calculations may not be accurate - that's why I call 'em crude :) But it is still hard to believe the scale of losses.

No so in-efficient EPFO India

2008-09-12T09:39:00.000-07:00

In June 2008, I had blogged about my frustration with the in-efficiency of EPFO India. Quite interestingly, a customer service officer from EPFO India, Mr. Gautam Dixit (his contact) took note of my blog and emailed me offering to help me get an update on my PPF statement. And I got an update through him.

I am very pleased with the proactive assistance provided by Mr. Gautam Dixit.

I am sure EPFO is giving due importance to customer service and I hope to see EPFO getting better at providing timely updates to any information sought by ordinary working class citizens.

Kudos to committed people like Mr. Gautam, who care to make a difference to the organization.

Tata Nano, West Bengal and Politics

2008-08-22T05:23:00.000-07:00

I read this news in business world about Tatas hinting at quitting their plans at Sigur , West Bengal, if the socio-political situation there doesn't improve. Quite disappointing!

Since the time Tata's have been setting up Tata Nano plant in Singur, West Bengal. More than business - it has become a political business! Indian politics is getting sicker by day. C'mon Ms. Mamata Banarjee and co.,when would you stop doing cheap politics of mobilizing poor to ensure than they remain poor and continue to be fooled by your band-wagon.

Tata's are established business house and are trusted globally. Their Nano project has catapulted Indian manufacturing to the center stage of world and the commercial success of Nano would bring in greater laurels not just for Tatas but for India.

Politicians, please do not disrupt Tata Nano project. Look at what Tata's have done in Jamshedpur - they have created a world class city amidst one of the most backward region of the country. And their contribution has not marginalized the local tribes - Instead, the locals are the biggest beneficiaris of Tata Steel and Tata Motors and all the anciliary companies.

Wishing Tatas and Nano a great success ahead.

A National vision statement called Anthem

2008-08-03T05:17:00.000-07:00

Its National Day time here in Singapore. Yesterday, while walking around orchard road area - I walked across a exhibition on Singapore and read the english translation of "Majhulah Singapura" - The National Anthem. Here is the english translation:
ONWARD SINGAPORE (English Translation) We, the people of Singapore Together march towards happiness Our noble aspiration To make Singapore a success Let us all unite In a new spirit Together we proclaim Onward Singapore Onward Singapore

I was really impressed by the concise single tracked focus and clarity of the message. Singapore as a nation wants to take all together and march towards happiness and success.
And very truthfully this is what the nation has become in its existence of 43 years - a progressive cosmopolitan city of people of all colors, races and religions.

Signs of economic problems

2008-07-29T22:18:00.000-07:00

When I had come to Singapore in 2006 - I rarely ever saw anyone begging in the streets. Now I do find old poor people begging - and it seems to be rising. As begging is illegal here, people would not beg openly - they would walk close to you and request if you could spare some change. The signs of economic stress is also evident with the sudden rise of road side vendors selling trinkets in residential estates. Not just that, few days back a lady knocked my door and she was selling wafers from door to door. The economic stress is evident and people in lower economic layer are trying hard to make ends meet.
It is a sad reality of modern economy that - poor people are seldom able to ride the highs of economy and are often the wost victims of economic downturns.

Ben Bernanke questioned on why did fed take so long to act on subprime!

2008-07-19T18:30:00.000-07:00

Here is the Video Link on International Herald, Ben Bernanke being questioned by members of House of Financial Services committee.

Ben Bernanke is indeed put in tight corner with tough questions!

Cloud of business

2008-07-15T04:16:00.000-07:00

I was listening to a talk on collaborative cloud computing initiative of IBM and Google on youtube . And there Sam Palmisano makes an interesting remark on an anology of globally integrated cloud of business that IBM is ! All the corporate support functions like HR, Finance, Helpdesk are no longer managed regionally (being an IBMer myself I believed it was all regional). However, all these functions are performed by regionally distributed teams which work in one team process. That essentially means operationally the support organization functions and delivers the services to the IBM company worldwide centrally - which in turn enables IBM to expand the foot print in emerging markets much quickly as now the teams in emerging markets only have to take care of front end infrastructure and links in the local ecosystem of partners, government, industry and academia.

Quite an amazing global force that a company of the size of IBM has brewed up in a shart span of time.

Envying a Tortoise!

2008-07-01T22:16:00.000-07:00

Just a while back, after having my lunch in office cafetera, I was taking a stroll in the nearby walkway across a pond. Walking by, I saw a cute tortoise basking in the summer sun!
To be candid, I did feel jelous of this tortoise - for the calm and serenity with which it was relaxing at an hour of the day, when I hurriedly finished lunch and headed back to workplace :( .

When the markets may recover?

2008-06-23T05:22:00.001-07:00

I was looking at the Indian stock market index (sensex) chart from 1997 to present. It took about 4 years for the sensex to regain the highs of dot com/y2k party. And apparently this time the economic mess is a lot more creepier....could that imply this mess will get cleared up and sensex will reach its peak of early 2008 only by 2012 or 2014...or even further!! Scary!!

In-efficient EPFO, India

2008-06-13T07:25:00.000-07:00

Like all salaried professionals I too contributed a percentage of my base salary to Employee Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) for 2 years while I worked at IBM India. IBM India's EPFO account was with EPFO Karnataka, which had an accounting lag due to which EPFO could never inform me about the total balance in my account while I was working in India.

Now it has been almost 2 years having left India and I have not yet received any update from EPFO on my account balance status despite asking for it several times.

I am wondering when EPFO can not even tell me the balance in my account, how can it be trusted to manage my PF funds to ensure government guaranteed return of 8 or 8.5% ! Thank god, I only have 2 years of PF contribution.

Social networking silos

2008-06-12T22:33:00.000-07:00

Social networking is the hottest kid of web 2.0 generation with its promise of bringing people closer and create a microcosm of variety of interest groups. Though how these online social communities
will create a sustainable business model is yet to be seen( I have some serious concerns their sustainability too), in this post I will only focus on how social communities are trapped in silos and losing out the greater value.

At the current juncture various social networking sites appear to be evolving in silos. For example, there is no way a Facebook user can interact with Orkut or vice versa. I understand why initially it is a bad idea to allow this sort of openness. If a Facebook user is allowed to interact with Orkut without registration - then Facebook user's friends using Orkut will never register on facebook and an opportunity to register substantial number of users would be lost. However, this may be true only during the initial growth phase of community. After some time, the number of new registrations are going to plateau and then it would make immense sense to break silos and allow cross community interactions which will multiply the total traffic to each partner social networking site !

On Oil Price Bubble

2008-06-07T02:25:00.000-07:00

Few weeks back I had posted Oil price above $200.
Just read this article by Lord Meghnad Desai, emeritus professor of economics at the London School of Economics and a Labour peer, in FT.

When a professor of his order says that indeed there is speculation bubble in oil prices and recommends solution to the problem by increasing the margin that pure financial traders have to put down to trade as open interest, from the current 7 per cent to about 50 per cent. I wonder why isn't NYMEX listening?

SuperClass and Globalization

2008-06-07T02:13:00.000-07:00

I read a good article - "Superclass and the Inequity of Globalization" in Yale Global Online journal.
Some of the interesting excerpts from the article:

In today’s world, for example, the top 250 companies have annual sales equivalent to about a third of global GDP. More than 100 companies report annual sales in excess of $50 billion dollars, whereas only 60 or so countries report an annual GDP in excess of $50 billion.

Exxon Mobil, for example, had profits last year that were greater than the GDP of Bahrain and Yemen combined.

Only 30 years ago, the richest nation in the world had 88 times the wealth of the poorest; today it has more than 270 times the wealth. In the US, nearly all the benefits of growth in the past decade have accrued to the top 10 percent of society; while the top .01 percent has seen incomes grow 112 percent, the incomes of the bottom 90 percent grew by only 2 percent. The benefits of global growth accrue to fewer people. The richest 1,100 people in the world today have a net worth that’s almost double that of the 2.5 billion people earning the least.

Such facts raise serious questions about the viability of the current global power structure, as most of history is littered with the story of elites that rise, over-reach and are brought down. But today, mechanisms to counterbalance these transnational actors have yet to emerge. Most countries are reluctant to cede sovereignty to the kind of global-governance mechanisms that might ensure that the future is shaped by the will of the many rather than that of the few. We have yet to reach the intellectual or philosophical threshold where we can even begin to question the widely accepted view, born of Western elites, that markets should be an ever less-fettered arbiter of the distribution of wealth, or champion an alternative to the failed policies of communism.

Need to reform IAS exam pattern

2008-05-30T09:13:00.000-07:00

I was reading about this story of a guy who cleared IAS exam in his 7th attempt. That's 7 years of economically productive years of life spent to just prepare and qualify one exam! No I am not belittling the achievement of the guy who did it- Kudos to him for his never say die spirit.

I am just wondering why should an exam be designed such that which requires enormous amount of regurgitation. I peeked through the model question paper for prelimniary IAS exam - and some of the "interesting" questions were:

1. The latitudinal extention of India is

A) 804’s - 3706’s B) 804’N - 3706’N C) 804’E - 3706’E D) 804’N - 3706’S

15. The Longest National Highway in India is

A) NH 31 B) NH 15 C) NH 7 D) NH 6

18. The longest river in Europe is

A) Rhine B) Danube C) Volga D) Dnieper

19. Victoria falls is situated across river

A) Zambezi B) Zaire C) Niger D) orange

41. Rinderpest is a disease of

A) Bird B) Cattle C) Sheep D) Goat.

42. Which of the following diseases is a genetic disease?

A) Goitre B) Malaria C) Cancer D) Haemophilia.

159. How many seats were given to the depressed classes under the Communal Award and Poona Pact?

A) 74 and 79 respectively B) 71 and 147 respectively C) 78 and 80 respectively

D) 78 and 69 respectively

160. The Shiva Temple at Tanjore was built by the

A) Cholas B) Rashtrakutas C) Pallavas D) Pandyas

None of the questions above require any thinking - it is pure "information" you know it from poring through vast text books from perhaps class 6th to 12th of NCERT . Though having more information is good to have , it is by no means a qualification or pre-condition for being a successful administrator. Then, why put through aspirants of IAS through such grind and hence drive away several "thinking kind" people who just do not have patience to slog for several years after graduation and waste economically productive years.

Tele-presence .... Is a reality now!

2008-05-30T07:28:00.000-07:00

I came across this link to live demonstration of tele-presence by Cisco CEO John Chamber. Awesome!!

As a child I remember watching television programs on Hindu mythology showing Narad Muni
traveling time and space saying narayan narayan! Something very close to that is now a reality.

Once this technology becomes available to masses like a telephone - imagine how small the world would feel like!

Time to say bye bye to Singtel, Hello Starhub :)

2008-05-29T06:31:00.000-07:00

I have been using Singtel mobile for almost 2 years now. And my wife has been using Starhub mobile for about the same time. Now as the 2 years contract is about to expire Starhub gave my wife S$300/- voucher to lure her to renew 2 years contract. Obviously, she renewed her contract the same day she got the voucher! Got a cool Nokia N95 with the renewed service.

I was getting envious looking at her new phone. So thought of asking Singtel if they would be giving me any such voucher to entice me to renew the contract. Following is the response that I got from Singtel :

Dear Mr Ankur

Thank you for your email.

I wish to clarify that each network operators have their own marketing
strategy and promotions might differ from time to time, from period to
period.

Currently we do not give out vouchers when you are eligible to upgrade
your handset. We do have our own rewards program that offers either
rebate or voucher.

However you must have an average spending (on NRIC level) of at least
$100 per month, over 6 consecutive months to qualify for the Red
Rewards program.

Our system will track your spending monthly and should you qualify, you
will automatically be enrolled in the Red Rewards program accordingly.
You will then receive a welcome letter informing you of your enrollment
and the various benefits.
You may check your status or get more details via this link here:

https://redrewards.singtel.com/red/__html/main.aspx

Please call our Customer Care Hotline at 1626 or +65 67380123 from
overseas (IDD payable), should you need further assistance on your
mobile needs. Alternatively, you may send us your feedback via the
link, <http://home.singtel.com/customer_service/cust_serv_emailus.asp>.

We look forward to serving you.

Thank you

Yours sincerely

So it is clear to me, Singtel doesn't value its customers as much as Starhub does. So what can I do, as a customer I have to look for value. Time to say good bye to Singtel. Hello Starhub!!

Oil over $200 a barrel?

2008-05-06T19:46:00.001-07:00

I just read the news in Financial Times about Goldman Sachs analysts predicting oil to touch $200 mark in 6 to 24 months(FT news).
I am wondering, with whatever oil price rise that has taken place in past 2-3 years. I have never heard a single news stating that certain country is unable to meet its demand for Oil. This gives me the feeling that somehow at whatever high price the demand is still being met - as there is no hue and cry about some country wanting to buy oil and not being able to buy. And I am quite sure that the demand for oil by any country is not going down due to higher prices (had the prices been lower - countries would perhaps have consumed even more oil, but high prices do not seem to have reduced the demand). So, demand has been increasing and somehow supply has been able to meet the demand. Then, isn't the steep rise in oil price only a reflection of speculation of traders and
Oil cartels ?

A new world order?

2008-05-03T22:12:00.000-07:00

For past few months(or perhaps years) news items like this, "As inflation squeezes middle-class Europe, anxiety about the future" are becoming increasingly common. The middle class in developed world is under pressure to just sustain the standard of living which has been considered almost a given up till now. Healthcare, Education, Employment, Economic uncertainty are the central issues in US presidential elections'08! There are several reasons put across to explain the current state of things and how this could be reversed to take the economy back to the prosperous era of baby boomers.

I think that the primary cause of the pressure felt by middle class in US and Eupore is the rise of middle class in India and China. Our consumption driven economy worked reasonably well up till now - when only about 10-15% of humanity consumed most of the earth's resources and the remaining(majority) humanity lived oblivious to most modern conveniences. Now with globalization - more and more number of people are entering the middle-class with infinite appetite for very finite earth's resources. Globalization - whatever its opponents may say, is indeed better than any other economic order practiced and it doesn't seem to be moderating anytime soon. However, can a consumption driven economy really sustain and continue to grow when the basic resources on earth are finite. What will happen when the current size of middle class in world doubles? From where will we find resources to feed their growing demands? Or perhaps, the way middle class in developed world is feeling the pressure now - in times to come world's middle class will all struggle to make ends meet. This may potentially invite an age of global confrontation for resources, which perhaps would eventually lead to new economic order in the world - where anyone who desires a decent* life can work and earn it.

* decent life may mean differnt things to different people. That's the crux - whatever kind of life one desires - one should be empowered to work towards it.

Reading e-books for free

2008-04-18T01:28:00.000-07:00

If you have ever come across project Gutenberg (it lets you download books in text format which are out of copyright now) and tried reading through their free e-books, you would know what a torture it is for your eyes. I just Googled around for an efficient software that may help me read Gutenberg books - I found this yBook reader from SpaceJock.com ! I got using it in minutes and I must say it is a wonderful utility software. Thank you Simon Haynes for creating this software and distributing it for free.

SBI – Sate Bank of Incompetence

2008-03-28T07:57:00.000-07:00

This post I had written long time back but somehow it never got published.

Here it goes.....dated sometime in 2005.

Today I had bitter experience with SBI. My Dad has a PPF account with SBI Bhopal and I wanted to deposit money in his account through a SBI branch in Pune.

I was informed by the Manager, SBI Bhopal, that they were part of SBI core banking branch (meaning it was networked with all other core banking SBI branches across India) and the account with them can be accessed from any core banking branch.

With this in mind I went to SBI Pune main branch. Much to my surprise the Pune main branch itself was not part of core banking and hence I could not deposit money in my Dad’s PPF account. After tossing from cubicle to cubicle there, one lady was kind enough to tell me that SBI, Bund garden branch was part of core banking and I could deposit money in PPF account there.

Well, with loads of relief I went to SBI, Bund garden, only to discover that it too was not core banking branch. There the scene was even more pathetic and there was no body ready to entertain my query. One security guard came to my rescue and told me that SBI, DP road, is part of core banking. That gentleman was so kind that he even told me the way to the SBI, DP road.

Following the way as told by the gentleman, I reached SBI, DP road, only to discover that though it was part of core banking branch it did not deal with PPF account – RIDICULOUS! Anyway, I politely asked the lady at the desk if at all I could deposit money in my Dad’s PPF account though any other SBI branch in pune. She informed me bluntly- it “may” be possible at SBI, Deccan. Well, after running from pole to post I was a bit frustrated with that “may” in the sentence and wanted to doubly confirm. I confirmed the same with another senior and wise looking gentleman. He discussed the matter with few of his colleagues and gently informed me that I will be able to deposit through SBI, deccan. The lady whom I asked earlier perhaps did not like my verifying the same with the gentleman and started abusing me- in a manner no one would like to hear! I wanted to reciprocate; however, my competence in this is rather rudimentary. I moved out of the bank.

I drove to SBI deccan, with high hopes that my work will be done. This branch was the worst. I went from cubicle to cubicle asking “Excuse me- Could you please spare a minute “, and most of the people did not even bother to look up and say Yes or No.

I felt like a beggar begging at the traffic signal when the lights had just turned green!

Finally one lady was kind enough to tell me that I should see Mr.X. She also pointed

me to the location where he sat. I went to Mr. X, only to discover that he was not available at his desk! I was really upset with all the days’ events. I finally went to see the manager. Much to my surprise the lady manager was a poised lady. She offered me a seat and listened to my concerns. She confirmed that as of now PPF account can only be accessed from the branch where it was opened and I may send money to the bank by Demand draft or electronically.

This made me wonder about the composition of organizations. The people high up the food chain are generally well groomed and have a high sense of commitment and responsibility towards their organization. Why then the people down the chain are so rude and rustic? I have always learnt that traits flow from top to bottom. Why then good traits are not following from top to bottom in public sector organizations?

People up the value chain are always answerable to several people and as the top is lonely-They have no unions to back them up in moments of test.

However, people at the low end of the value chain have little or no accountability within the system. There is little incentive for being responsible in their jobs and there is little to achieve at such levels as the movement further up the value chain is rather limited. It is a touch task to keep the people motivated at such positions. However, certainly it is not impossible!

Take the example of Armed forces, the Soldier is not ransomly paid, he doesn’t have much avenues to move up the value chain, he even has to obey the orders of his superiors without a question. Still, he is committed to his job and is ready for supreme sacrifice while on duty.

Richard P Feynman's letter to his student

2008-03-22T22:35:00.000-07:00

I came across this interesting letter of Richard P. Feynman to his student.

Background:
A former student, wrote to extend his congratulations to Prof Feynman for receiving Nobel Prize.
Feynman responded, asking Mr. Mano what he was now doing.

The response: "studying the Coherence theory with some applications to the propagation of electromagnetic waves through turbulent atmosphere... a humble and down-to-earth type of problem."

Here is what Prof. Feynman replied:

Dear Koichi,

I was very happy to hear from you, and that you have such a position in the Research Laboratories. Unfortunately your letter made me unhappy for you seem to be truly sad. It seems that the influence of your teacher has been to give you a false idea of what are worthwhile problems. The worthwhile problems are the ones you can really solve or help solve, the ones you can really contribute something to. A problem is grand in science if it lies before us unsolved and we see some way for us to make some headway into it. I would advise you to take even simpler, or as you say, humbler, problems until you find some you can really solve easily, no matter how trivial. You will get the pleasure of success, and of helping your fellow man, even if it is only to answer a question in the mind of a colleague less able than you. You must not take away from yourself these pleasures because you have some erroneous idea of what is worthwhile.

You met me at the peak of my career when I seemed to you to be concerned with problems close to the gods. But at the same time I had another Ph.D. Student (Albert Hibbs) was on how it is that the winds build up waves blowing over water in the sea. I accepted him as a student because he came to me with the problem he wanted to solve. With you I made a mistake, I gave you the problem instead of letting you find your own; and left you with a wrong idea of what is interesting or pleasant or important to work on (namely those problems you see you may do something about). I am sorry, excuse me. I hope by this letter to correct it a little.

I have worked on innumerable problems that you would call humble, but which I enjoyed and felt very good about because I sometimes could partially succeed. For example, experiments on the coefficient of friction on highly polished surfaces, to try to learn something about how friction worked (failure). Or, how elastic properties of crystals depends on the forces between the atoms in them, or how to make electroplated metal stick to plastic objects (like radio knobs). Or, how neutrons diffuse out of Uranium. Or, the reflection of electromagnetic waves from films coating glass. The development of shock waves in explosions. The design of a neutron counter. Why some elements capture electrons from the L-orbits, but not the K-orbits. General theory of how to fold paper to make a certain type of child's toy (called flexagons). The energy levels in the light nuclei. The theory of turbulence (I have spent several years on it without success). Plus all the "grander" problems of quantum theory.

No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it.

You say you are a nameless man. You are not to your wife and to your child. You will not long remain so to your immediate colleagues if you can answer their simple questions when they come into your office. You are not nameless to me. Do not remain nameless to yourself - it is too sad a way to be. now your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of your naÃ¯ve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are.

Best of luck and happiness.
Sincerely,
Richard P. Feynman.

Got the link to this letter from - http://nanopolitan.blogspot.com/2008/03/richard-feynman-on-worthwhile-problems.html

Isn't Fed encouraging reckless behavior

2008-03-16T22:20:00.000-07:00

Read the news on IHT, JPMorgan to buy Bear Stearns for $2 a share . The statement in the news item says, "On Friday, JPMorgan, with the backing of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said it would provide financing in order to keep Bear Stearns solvent as lenders and clients rushed to pull their money out."

This only makes me wonder why should Fed be so interested in saving a failing bank. I understand that it is in the interest of overall economy (and hence Fed) to contain the excessive negative sentiment in the market. However, wouldn't such good intentioned bailout of Bear Stearns would encourage reckless investment practices in the industry. After all, people would have the live example of a company making hay while the sun was shining on markets and on a rainy day Fed - coming for rescue.

Banker's Compensation needs review

2008-03-14T09:33:00.000-07:00

Here is a very neat argument presented by Raghuram Rajan, professor of finance at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund highlighting the fundamental problem with banker's compensation which in a way has resulted in current credit crisis.

Marketing - make belief business!

2008-03-06T00:08:00.001-08:00

Well, this post is inspired by my recent decision to change (note the word "change" here, I don't say upgrade) to Gillette Mach3 nitro razor. I must first admit that this
was a needless change as I had no problems with my Gillette sensor excel. I was always under the impression that twin blade razor is better than single bade one and
triple bade razor would be something out of the world. Gillette's advertising make me believe so! Good job Gillette - you guys have been able to fool the world.
I don't intend to imply here that Gillette makes bad razors - in fact they make good products! All I want to preach here is that all that the Gillette marketing says isn't correct.
Recollect a bit of elementary physics of "friction" and "interaction of surfaces", simply put if the area of intersection between two surfaces is increased, friction increases. This is the
reason why wider tyres are safer as they offer better grip on the road. Now extending this simple physics to razors, assuming that we use the same quality of single blade in twin
blade and triple blade razor, the total friction is increased between razor and face for triple blade razor. Hence, keeping other elements in shaving as constant ( shaving foam/gel/cream),
a twin blade razor would be smoother than triple blade. And a single blade razor would be smoother than twin blade !!
Well, many people might argue otherwise with my reasoning. But for most people (Chinese, European) the facial hair growth is not dense and hard . For such people, it is difficult to
tell which razor gives smooth shave. So, they gladly believe what is shown on the Gillette commercials.
Interestingly, a consumer product business like Gillette is driven more by marketing ( nothing wrong in that, they are the people who create super brands! ). However, marketing people
seem to have a blind spot for engineering or I would better say basic science. [This reminds me of an ad that says, ....their product is "light years" ahead of competition....I am sure the marketing guy implies product is very futuristic...but he didn't know "light years" is unit of distance and not time!!. How ridiculous it would sound..their product is 9.4605284 × 10^12 kilometers ahead of competition :)] . I have noticed that Gillette also has a 5 blade razor. And apparently , this is how Gillette marketing responded to Schiks's 4 blade razor system. Crazy!! When the
triple blade system feels like a lawn mover on my hard and dense facial hair, what havoc 5 blade razor would do!
Understandably, Consumer product companies are always under pressure to innovate their products. But c'mon you don't innovate for the sake of innovation. Now I understand the essence
of "Innovation that matters - for our company and to the world". Yes! that's an IBM value and I am an IBMer.

Fund Management - a reality check

2008-03-02T06:55:00.000-08:00

I came across this and this story in The Economist, the data and reasoning presented is very sound and looks like the Fund Management industry would soon be under the scrutiny specially in the light of crisis it is undergoing these days....the credit squeeze due to sub-prime, Billion dollar loss caused by a single Societe Genrale trader...etc etc.

This statistics from the article was an eye opener:
"It is hard for the average investor to see through the statistical fog; easy to be “fooled by randomness”, in the phrase of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a writer and former trader. But small investors really ought to worry about cost. Figures from John Bogle, founder of the fund giant Vanguard, show that an S&P 500 index-fund returned 12.3% a year between 1980 and 2005, whereas the average mutual-fund investor, because of costs and poor timing, earned just 7.3%. That makes an enormous difference to wealth: $10,000 invested in the index fund grew to $170,800; a typical mutual-fund investor saw his money grow to just $48,200."

Missed going to IITs- here your chance...

2008-02-28T04:55:00.000-08:00

This is what I would consider a good example of democratization of knowledge. IIT professors are making their video lectures freely available on Youtube (click here). So, if your are amongst those who desired to go to IIT but ended up somewhere else, here is a chance to catch a glimpse of what they teach at IIT. Indeed a noble effort - I wish they also make available their courseware for download - much on the lines of what MIT has done at OpenCourseWare.

Steve Wozniak on Apple, Steve Jobs and the Value of a Good Prank

2008-02-21T00:48:00.000-08:00

I came across this interview of Woz, I find that elements of Woz's thoughts are just too.... [:)groping for the right word].....honest, modest and truthful...with full of worldly wisdom. Indeed impressive.

Steve Wozniak on Apple, Steve Jobs and the Value of a Good PrankPublished: February 20, 2008 in Knowledge@Wharton

Steve Wozniak, or "Woz" as he is commonly called, is best known for co-founding Apple along with high school friend Steve Jobs. But Wozniak didn't set out to establish one of the world's most influential computer companies. His goal early in life was to be an engineer and a lifelong employee of Hewlett Packard -- and to have enough spare time to tinker with electronic gadgets.
It was that desire to design clever electronic devices that led to many of Wozniak's early inventions. While a student at U.C. Berkeley in 1971, Wozniak read an Esquire Magazine article on the "phone phreaks" who illicitly explored the telephone network. He figured out how to build his own electronic "blue box" to generate the tones required to make free long distance phone calls. In 1973, he started the first "dial-a-joke" hotline in the San Francisco Bay Area out of his home, telling all the jokes himself. While working at Hewlett Packard, Wozniak continued to design electronic devices in his spare time, and in 1975 created the first personal computer that used a keyboard for input and displayed characters on a television screen. Wozniak would demonstrate his new computing device at meetings of like-minded Silicon Valley electronics hobbyists known as the Homebrew Computer Club. Too shy to give a public presentation of his work, Wozniak would show his engineering feats in informal conversations following the meetings.
Wozniak's early entrepreneurial ventures were closely intertwined with the activities of his high school friend and current Apple CEO Steve Jobs. It was Jobs, four-and-a-half years younger than Wozniak, who suggested the two sell Wozniak's "blue box" device to students in the dorms at Berkeley. While Jobs was working at Atari, he persuaded Wozniak to design the arcade game Breakout (and, in a story recounted in Wozniak's autobiography, iWoz, reportedly misled Wozniak about the amount of the payment they were to split). And most famously, it was Jobs who realized that rather than merely sharing the schematics of Wozniak's early designs for a personal computer with fellow hobbyists, they could assemble the components on a printed circuit board and sell a complete computer which, following funding from former Intel executive Mike Markkula, led to the founding of Apple Computer in 1976.
While he officially remains an Apple employee, Wozniak's involvement in the company today is relatively minor. After he was injured in an accident piloting his private Beechcraft airplane in 1981, Wozniak decided to return to U.C. Berkeley to complete his degree in electrical engineering.
In the years following, Wozniak sponsored two Woodstock-like music festivals known as the US Festivals in 1982 and 1983, taught computing to grade-school students, and devoted much of his time and money to philanthropic activities. His current interests include playing Segway polo -- that is, playing polo while riding the Segway Personal Transporter in lieu of a horse.
Wozniak was awarded the National Medal of Technology by the President of the United States in 1985, was inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame in 2000, and received the Heinz Award in Technology, the Economy and Employment in 2001.
In 2006, Wozniak published iWoz: From Computer Geek to Cult Icon: How I Invented the Personal Computer, Co-Founded Apple, and Had Fun Doing It, about his life before, during and after Apple.
Knowledge@Wharton spoke with the 57-year-old Wozniak by phone from his home in Los Gatos, Calif., on a wide range of topics: founding Apple, his relationship with Steve Jobs, his fascination with pranks, and his planned upcoming appearances on Kathy Griffin's television show, "My Life on the D List." An edited version of that conversation follows. (click here)

Abstract Passwords / Picture Passwords

2008-01-30T01:54:00.000-08:00

Well, this is an idea which I presented at a technology forum at long back in Jan'2006 when I used to work as an Engineer with IBM Software Group.

The concept is not entirely new and research has been going on in this area. Sadly, something very similar to my idea had already been patented !

Anyway, posting this on my blog - just in case it triggers someone's creativity to think something interesting to solve the problem of remembering tons of passwords.

Understanding the value of SOA

2008-01-29T06:25:00.000-08:00

For past over 2 years there has been a lot of buzz about SOA in IT industry. Well, for an industry which produces products which never wear out, only way to keep generating new demand is by innovating upon existing products and in turn making existing ones obsolete!

Here I make an attempt to explain what SOA is and how it can deliver value to businesses.

SOA stands for Service Oriented Architecture; well that really is nothing more than a technical jargon for most! Moreover, if you listen to the “sales-talk” to understand SOA, all you get to is a few more buzz words like Flexible, Reusable, Secure, Integration, and Innovation!! These buzz words do have significance but they fail to explain how SOA delivers value to the businesses.

To put things in a practical perspective, let us take a simple example of business process which may be transformed using SOA. Scheduling meetings over Outlook/Notes calendar and booking meeting room is part of the daily business for most of the workforce. For most of the organizations, as of now this simple process works like this:

Step 1: Booking a meeting room, via meeting room booking system.

Step 2: Sending meeting invite from Outlook/Notes with the information of booked meeting room.

The meeting scheduling calendar and meeting room booking system are two separate applications and do not necessarily talk to each other. Imagine, if these two simple applications could interact with each other, while sending out the meeting invite the Outlook/Notes calendar can fetch the available meeting rooms for the meeting slot and allow for booking simultaneously. Not just that, when a meeting is cancelled the meeting room booking could be freed automatically. More of similar conveniences would be possible with the integration of two.

This kind of integration is possible even without SOA through hardwired coding. However, it would be very expensive and difficult to maintain when either of the two interconnected systems are changed/upgraded. In technical terms, this would be called tight coupling!

Now let us see how SOA can help in this scenario. SOA will make the meeting room booking system and Outlook/Lotus Notes speak one common language which not just these two can understand, but any other software system would be able to understand.

In technical terms, the functionality and data of an application is exposed as a “service” and it can be tapped by any other application over the network.

This implies that not just Outlook/Lotus Notes and Meeting room booking system can interact. Any future application which may require functionalities offered by meeting room booking system and Outlook/Lotus Notes can quickly make use of their existing “services” to build new applications. For example, a timesheet filling system may utilize the calendar functionalities of Outlook/Lotus Notes without worrying about the underlying implementation of Calendar. Hence, the marginal cost of developing new system is significantly less.

This was a really small scale possibility of SOA. In complex enterprise systems, only imagination is the limit to the kind of applications which can deliver value to the business.

A real world example of SOA innovation is the website called www.housingmaps.com. Housingmaps.com combines the services of maps.google.com (Google’s map service) and Craigslist.com (US based classified company) to visually find the location of house you are buying/renting along with the pictures of the place. If you read the fine print of the Housingmaps.com, it clearly says that it is in no way affiliated to Google or Craigslist. This is the power of SOA. Once the application is exposed as a service on the internet, it can be accessed by any other system without bothering about the underlying technology or complicated implementation.

As evident from above examples, SOA delivers significant value through easy integration and application services reuse. However, the value of SOA is better realized when there is a critical mass of SOA enabled systems. It would have been easier to adopt and enjoy the rapid benefits from SOA if companies were to start building their IT infrastructure from scratch. However, this doesn’t mean companies can afford to ignore SOA benefits. SOA is going to be the de facto standard of the IT systems, given the commitment all the major corporations have shown towards it. Therefore, it is essential for organizations to have a road map for SOA and must incrementally start steering towards SOA.

Collection of One Liners

2007-12-23T19:33:00.000-08:00

I intend to collect some interesting one liners in this post - I do not know their source , some of them may be read or heard somewhere and few may be "inspired originals". I hope to keep adding on to the list here.

After all we are just manifestations of our thinking.
It is not the kind of work you do that makes you special, it is how you do a work makes you special.
Time is a great leveler
I have learnt to practice what I call constructive dissatisfaction.
When you reach pinnacle, you must not sit on it.
Technology has essentially shifted the fulcrum of human effort
“What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead.” Being reckless from time to time preserves what is “most precious and most important—that is, our personality, our individuality.”-Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, on the sanctity of the right to incur danger

Expanding university through extension center

2007-11-28T04:29:00.000-08:00

I was just talking to someone about quality/value of education at some of extension centers of some of the prominent Business schools. It comes as a surprise that though the Business Schools are in the business of imparting business skills to its students, most of them fail miserably in replicating their campuses through extension centers or "out of home city campuses" with the exception of INSEAD ( INSEAD has two very successful campuses , one in Singapore and other in France).

Well, if we objectively examine - we will find that B schools are in the business of selling services . In principle it is no different than a luxury hotel ! However, why then typically luxury hotels are able to operate chains of hotels with reasonable success whereas B schools often struggle to replicate their campuses.

Few things which may make a successful B school extension center are:

1. First never call extension center an "extension center". Calling it city name campus would be a better idea.

2. In no measure the new campus be inferior to original campus. All the infrasturcture should be percieved identical.

3. Do not have separate entrance mechanism to different campuses. Separate entrance exam conveys different standards!

4. Encourage movement of students across campuses. Ensure that diversity of student pool

is maintained at all campuses. Initially, majority of candidates would prefer to take original campus- School must ensure that this doesn't happen through rationalized allocation.

5. If possible have school management distributed across campuses such that no one campus is seen as controlling center.

6. Have a rotation policy for faculty across campuses.

Statistical caveat: Even in a primary school, where there are 2 or 3 sections for each class - not all sections are the same. Though students are admitted rationally in each section, over a period of time one section tends to evolve as better than the other. This is a natural occurence.

Despite all attempts to make all B school campuses the same, some ranking will emerge and the key to success is to keep the difference between the campuses minimal.

Why are diamonds so expensive?

2007-11-04T03:34:00.000-08:00

Well this question was raised by one of my professor in a class during some casual discussion. The typical answer is demand and supply. However, Professor had an interesting point of view - apparently funny but reasonable.

According to Prof, diamonds are so expensive because they are absolutely useless things! And useless things make a great gift items to show your love. If you want to propose to your girl friend - giving an expensive diamond jewelery signals how much you love her that you can spend so much money on a stupid useless diamond! Imagine giving a laptop of same dollar value as diamond jewelery to propose your girl friend - it is not too hard to imagine the outcome!

ST701.com One stop stop for everything

2007-10-26T02:20:00.000-07:00

I do not know much about ST701.com other than the fact that it is part of Singapore Press Holdings Ltd (SPH). And who doesn't know SPH in Singapore! After all it has near monopoly on print, radio and television in Singapore.
St701.com has been around for a while as a not so successful job site. However, recently it is trying to be 1-stop stop for everything. As its punchline goes "7 days a week, search at 01 place that matters".
Well, SPH have had a successful classifieds business in print media which makes SPH believe that it can easily replicate in the online world. Success is indeed a very lousy teacher, it makes you believe that you can never fail ! SPH built a successful classifieds
business in print media largely because of its near monopoly in print media in Singapore. However,
internet is a democratic world where only things which people support voluntarily SURVIVE.

In my first cursory look at the ST701 website, I get a feel of a bunch of confused clutter where most of the ads seem to be have been put up by ST701 team itself and it really doesn't seem to be a community thing!! Let's see how a monopoly player performs in an intensely democratic world wide web.

Ethical net surfing in office

2007-10-03T01:34:00.000-07:00

Well, I recently came across this website www.workfriendly.net . This site makes your web browser look like a word doc , to an onlooker it will appear as if you are reading an official document even when you are checking cricket score on your favorite portal. ;-) .That's the fun part.

However, Solutions like this makes me wonder, how serious are people about having fun at workplace. Well, I do not advocate wasting time in office by surfing net. The work culture should be such that when one is free in office ( C'mon everyone gets some free time at some point of time! ) one should feel free to use this time without having to pretend busy!

Performance Pressure !

2007-09-11T17:43:00.000-07:00

Crux of SAP NetWeaver strategy

2007-09-11T01:18:00.000-07:00

Assuming one knows what a middleware is, it is quite interesting to understand the crux of SAP's NetWeaver strategy.

SAP has always been a business solutions company that uses technology to solve the complex business problems and not vice versa. Evolving from the mainframe era of SAP R/2 and later R/3 closed proprietary systems by late 1990's SAP was realizing that though they can generalize the industry specific solutions to about 70-80% , they can not be everything for everyone. And as the systems were essentially inflexible, closed systems, the businesses faced challenges in filling the systems gaps with standalone modules from other vendors who were trying to complement SAP solutions.

SAP realized the opportunity in this challenge and set itself on building its middlware platform called NetWeaver which is based on open standards like webservices, SOAP/xml, SoA etc. This platform makes the evolution of IT infrastructure truly seamless as the "capability voids of SAP systems" could be easily filled by custom built components or applications from other vendors as NetWeaver offers the middle-tier infrastructure necessary to interconnect variety of business applications.

BBC Bias !

2007-09-06T22:48:00.000-07:00

I was just listening to BBC news about the nuclear deal between Australia and Russia.
During the news report, correspondent says something like "....there is a danger that such deal may lead to proliferation of nuclear materials to rogue state like Iran ".

As far as my knowledge goes, the term "rogue state" for Iran is used by American administration and so far there is no known evidence proving that Iran is indeed a rogue state. After the American administration's lies about Iraq and WMDs....there is little credibility left in what US administration says out of covert motives for any nation.

It is not fair on BBC's part to propagate what American Administration wants everyone to believe in.

Apple, iPhone, iPod et al.

2007-09-06T18:24:00.001-07:00

Two months back, at the time of iPhone launch my MBA team( Urs Aerni, Husni Yus Suwita & Myself ) of "Marketing Strategy and Game Theory" had analyzed Apple's strategy. Today, looking at this news item - I get a feel that our apprehensions about Apple's hyped up iPhone launch were in right direction. Publishing our analysis in public domain to encourage further analysis on the topic. I would be thankful for reader's valuable comments. Cheers!

PS. I find that the images in the post did not get published and I do not have patience to do it all over again!!

Introduction

Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation with a focus on designing and manufacturing consumer electronics and closely-related software products. Apple is best know for creating innovative designs and lifestyle products – its Mac computer, iPod Music player and iTunes are some of its hugely successful products.

In this report we aim at studying Apple's latest product launch, iPhone, from a game theoretical perspective. Apple claims iPhone to be a revolutionary device that marries digital multi-media entertainment and mobile phone into one. However, iPhone would be directly infringing the market share of large dominant incumbent mobile phone companies like Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and LG. Here we will focus on Apple's market entry strategy and possible strategies incumbents could adopt to combat Apple.

Apple's Motivation for iPhone

After seeing a blockbuster success with iPod, to continue the momentum of high growth Apple needed another product to steam the growth. Since Oct 2001, iPod had come a long way in product lifecycle with various design alterations and added features like video, photo organizer and FM. No new major improvement was made to iPod since last year and it was no longer commanding the cult status with the mushrooming of iPod clones – some even better than iPod in terms of design, features and price. Moreover, mobile phones were increasingly infringing on digital multi-media player market by offering a complete suite of multi-media capabilities like music player, video, photo, album, camera etc within mobile phones. Apple did not have much choice, it order to maintain its dominance in digital multi-media player and sustain the trajectory of growth, Apple had to create a new product leveraging on its success with iPod and strong brand. Hence, Apple decided on iPhone – a complete multimedia device which has a phone too.

Market Analysis

To closely analyse the market opportunity for iPhone, we split the mobile phone consumer market into following three segments:

1. Business users- This group of users want a workhorse for a mobile phone. Telephony is just one of the features for this user group: corporate email, instant messaging, office applications and data services are the key distinguishing features. Such phones are less fancy and are high on performance and utility. Some of the dominant players catering to this segment are RIM Blackberry, Palm and Nokia.

2. Basic users – This group
uses a broad range of mobile phones with camera, games, wap etc features. These customers basically want a mobile phone to talk – but their preference gets influenced by various features and design elements – but basically they all buy a phone.

3. Lifestyle users - This is the segment of young and rich people who see mobile as a lifestyle product. They need a mobile phone which is not just a mobile phone but a portable entertainment device complete with multimedia capabilities like MP3, Camera, Photo organizer etc. There are mobile players like LG, Samsung, Nokia and Motorola – which have mobiles to appeal to this target customer. However, all these companies have offered so far is a mobile phone with a new look and no radically different features – except LG Prada, which appears to be the inspiration for Apple iPhone.

Apple has always been a cult and lifestyle brand. Its best selling products have had very strong appeal to lifestyle consumers and have commanded a good price premium. It is no surprise that Apple is continuing to address its loyal lifestyle consumer segment with its iPhone. This segment is estimated to account for about 12% of mobile phones in US and Europe.

Incumbent Firm Analysis

There are about a dozen significant mobile handset makers in the world with specific niches and geographic reach. However, we will mostly focus on top four incumbent firms i.e. Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and LG for evaluating the competition for Apple.

The iPhone is not likely to have a major immediate impact on RIM Blackberry and Palm Treo sales, because of the fact that these companies make mobile phones for business users who are not the target customers for iPhone.

Each of the top four (Nokia, Motorola, Samsung and LG) incumbent firms is industry veteran and has strong technology, marketing capabilities, global presence and strong brand. If one believes that Apple's iPhone is something of a revolutionary innovation and other incumbent firms do not have the ability to create something as stylish as or even better than iPhone that would be really naïve. It looks like each incumbent firm has a strategy in its arsenal to combat iPhone and right now they are adopting a wait and watch strategy to take note of iPhone's vulnerabilities and fine tune their strategies accordingly.

Following are some of the publicly know models from incumbent firms which are positioned in the same segment as iPhone and have cool looks and features like iPhone.

Figure 2. Latest mobile phones from Samsung, Nokia, Motorola and LG

Industry Characteristics

Unlike any other industry, mobile handset industry has its own characteristic which poses unique challenges to the industry firms. Following are the most challenging characteristic of mobile handset industry:

1. Short product life cycle

People typically change their mobile handset in one to two years as by then better mobile phones become available in market. This characteristic throws open a huge opportunity for incumbent firms to continually innovate and grow the market.

2. Rapid product development and innovation

Owing to short product life cycle incumbent firms are forced to innovate and rapidly bring new models almost every quarter. This calls for unique R&D and manufacturing capabilities to churn out new models.

3. Fast commoditization

Technological features and design elements are increasingly becoming a given to all the incumbent firms and are no longer serving as strong differentiating factor. Mobile phones are fast becoming a commodity.

4. Brand power

Brand is a core value generator in a commoditised industry, and a brand's equity is determined by the demand characteristics of the product. Brand helps to establish the uniqueness of the mobile handset, not just in terms technology but as a fashion item. Existing incumbent firms are already exploiting this demand characteristic. For example, Nokia has a high end brand Vertu and LG has tied up with fashion brand Prada.

5. Distribution channels

Mobile phone industry primarily has two distribution channels – network providers and retailers. Depending on the geographical market, one or the other or both of these channels are very important to firm's ability to rapidly bring newer mobile phones to the market.

6. Crowded market segments

In any consumer segment within a given price range there are about a dozen models available from different firms and it is very tough to differentiate one from the other. Especially in the lower to mid-price range models, often price becomes the only differentiating factor for the consumer.

Apple's Entry Strategy

Apple's Pre-Competition - to Enter or Not to Enter

Competition in the mobile phone market is a typical R&D race where competing firms act simultaneously, but each competitor has partial information about the others' progress and can respond sequentially. Figure 3 gives an overview of digital mobile phone history over the past 15 years. Substantial innovations tend to rise from different firms, from Motorola with the world's first commercial handheld cellular phone in 1983, to the first phone with web-function by Nokia in 2001. With simultaneous moves, mobile phone firms have the tricky task of trying to figure out what their opponent is going to do at the same time. We can observe this in the history of mobile phone development where several manufacturers introduced a lot of different mobile phone concepts and features into the market at approximately the same time which might or might not have substantial impact on the market. Nonetheless, the sequential nature of competition is more obvious. One firm's current move is governed by its calculation of its future consequences, as Apple's introduction of iPhone demonstrates.

Figure 3. Mobile phone R&D race – a simultaneous, sequential game²

The success of Apple's iPod is well documented. The company wasn't the first mover in the category, but its elegantly designed, intuitive players coupled with its simple-to-use software and music store trumped all competitors. Since 2001 launch of the iPod, Apple has dominated the market, with its product line commanding close to an 80 percent market share. However, Apple would be a much later entrant in the well-established mobile phone market. Apple's bet would be its ability to design elegant, intuitive products which would help it to again create a category-changing product that delivers stunning growth.

In Figure 4, we try to present Apple's decision paths whether or not to enter the mobile phone market. There are several reasons to believe that Apple will find the mobile phone market difficult to crack:

Firstly, when Apple entered the digital music market, there were no dominant players. The mobile phone industry contains many powerful incumbents, such as Nokia, Motorola, and Samsung. These companies have the motivation and the resources to respond fiercely to an Apple attack.
Secondly, in 2001 the digital music market was immature. Most iPod purchasers had never purchased any digital music player. The biggest challenge Apple faced was convincing consumers that its player was better than no player at all. Clearly, the mobile phone market is an entirely different world. Almost everyone has a mobile phone, so Apple would have to convince people to ditch their existing phone in favor of its new product.
Finally, Apple has a tough choice to make about how to compete in the market. The easiest way to get into the market would be for Apple to sell its devices through a service provider like Cingular or Vodafone. Apple could choose to enter the market by leasing network capacity from existing wireless players, in essence becoming a mobile phone operator (in industry terms, this is known as being a mobile virtual network operator or MVNO). If it goes this route, Apple will have to deal with unfamiliar issues such as monthly billing and customer service. While many companies have overcome these challenges, Apple would need to make sure it recognizes how difficult it can be to operate in unfamiliar terrain and then staff and structure the new venture accordingly.

Figure 4. Apple's decision path - to Enter or not to Enter, Now or Later

Nonetheless, apart from the big challenges Apple might have, we can try to look ahead and reason back to determine Apple's behavior in entering the mobile phone market. For the purpose of simplicity, we'll look at Apple's pros and cons as a kind of payoff. The expected values by the incumbents won't be analyzed because we will simply look at Apple in our analysis. We see that Apple indeed is spurred on by the opportunities by entering the mobile phone market. It will provide Apple new sources of revenue and hence growth potential. The earlier Apple enters the market, the easier they will reap market share and do their learning process.

In fact, analysts are drooling at the prospect of Apple entering the market because the numbers look so big. A recent Wall Street Journal article noted that the 70 million iPods Apple has sold in the past five years "pale in comparison with the nearly one billion mobile phones manufacturers are expected to ship this year. Even if Apple captures only a small share of that business, it could represent a revenue bump." There are always good reasons to be careful of a strategy that equates success with grabbing a small piece of a huge market. Although it is easy to imagine how the numbers could look good, success can elude even the savviest of companies in such large, highly-competitive markets.

Apple in the Competition

On January 9, 2007, Apple CEO Steve Jobs took the stage at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco to pre-announce a new mobile phone, the Apple iPhone. He was characteristically enthusiastic about its prospects. Even though it will not be released before June 2007 in the US and in the last Quarter of 2007 for Europe, the iPhone quickly became one of the most discussed new technology products, outstripping the coverage of other very prominent mobile phone products that have been shipping for years.

With the pre-announcement of iPhone, there are some marketing strategies and game theoretical issues that we can analyze: Direct Communication and Strategic Moves (see Figure. 5).

"Cheap Talk"

Steve Jobs announced what sounded like a modest target: to sell 10 million phones in 2008. With a world market of 957 million phones in 2006, Apple was only looking for a 1% market share. Easy? Is this a kind of "Cheap Talk" signaling to the competitors so that they won't fight a price war with Apple, believing that Apple won't threaten their market shares? If people could go into any store and buy an unlocked SIM-free iPhone then it probably would be easy, even at $499 and $599 for a unit. However, in the US, people will only be able to get the phone from Cingular, apparently on a two-year contract. Frankly, if people were going to sign a two year contract with a UK network, we'd expect to get a $600/£300 smart phone free. So to start with, Apple is not trying to get 1% of the billion unit cell phone market: it's limited to roughly 60 million Cingular users, plus the number of extra customers Cingular can handle. Will iPhone be available to other networks? It's not clear.

Figure. 5 iPhone Announcement – Cheap Talk, Signaling, Commitments, Threats, Promises

Threats

Other Apple's approaches can be seen as strategic moves which could entail commitments or threats. In unveiling the iPhone, Apple also officially changed its name, dropping the "Computer" that had been part of the company since the computer maker was founded in 1976. At the same time, the newly incarnated Apple stormed into new markets, turning the biggest names in cell phones—Nokia, Motorola, Research In Motion, and Samsung—into overnight competitors. The new name and device represent Apple's strategic shift away from its origins as a personal computing company that has at points struggled both to survive and to set the computing world's agenda.

Signaling, Commitments

Furthermore, Apple signed up key partners Google, Yahoo and Cingular to ensure that the iPhone stands out when it comes to accessing the mobile communication network and the Internet. Partnerships with carriers such as Cingular Wireless and European outfits like O2 will be essential to explaining why people should shell out more for iPhone. Research shows that many of the features of cheaper multimedia phones that consumers are buying from carriers go unused. "Do customers really want to have a multimedia phone?" "Many, many don't, and that's an issue even Apple can't solve alone." Apple's commitment with Cingular could also be perceived as a signaling effort to demand special treatment, which Apple ultimately got. Apple forced Cingular to re-engineer its infrastructure to handle the iPhone's unique voicemail scheme.

Given the potentially bruising competition, the complexity of consumer adoption, and the potential need to master new business models, Apple as an entrant in mobile phone's entrenched market signaled towards its competitors, suppliers, and customers in order to maximize its chances of success. As summary, we can assume Apple's motivation behind these strategies as follows:

With the competitors: Sending out promises and commitment signals so that they would accommodate. On one side, announcing its target market share of only 1%, Apple's "Cheap Talk" is a way to convince the big players that Apple won't threaten their existing market shares. On the other side, going into partnerships with Google, Yahoo and Cingular, Apple is determined to exploit the mobile phone market and to follow a business model that looks unattractive to established incumbents (e.g. by offering a free service that is advertising supported).
With the suppliers: Sending out signals so that they are well prepared. Apart from Apple's partnership with Cingular which must have started much earlier than the iPhone announcement in January 2007, Apple might signal to accessory manufacturers. Similar with iPod's scheme, Apple may want these suppliers to be prepared with innovative products when iPhone is available. This accessory business can become a supporting add-on to enhance iPhone sales.
With the potential customers: Advertising. Buyers who are searching for a new mobile phone may want to wait until iPhone's launch.

Entry strategy - Pricing

Pricing in this industry consists out of two components

The phone
The plan

Normally the more expensive the plan one selects the cheaper get the phone it selves. Let's have a look how the iPhone is positioned towards its competitors (all prices in USD):

Phone	Phone without plan	Phone with 2 years contract	Plan
iPhone	n.a.	$499-$599	$59.99-$219.99
Nokia 6065	$179.99	$0	$39.99-$199.99
Motorola RAZR V3	$249.99	$0	$39.99-$199.99
Sony Ericsson W300	$279.99	$19.99	$39.99-$199.99
LG Chocolate	n.a.	$69.99	$39.99-$239.99
Black Berry Curve	$449.99	$199.99	$34.99-$94.99
Palm Treo 750	$549.99	$199.99	$34.99-$94.99

Figure 5: From AT&T and Verizon Wireless websites (July 21, 2007)

The iPhone price is way above all other available phones but not so far from the other similar phones (LG Prada in Europe). The question is if apple can keep its uniqueness and therefore justify the premium price over a long time or is it more a price skimming where they try to cash in as much as possible in the early stages?

Assuming 10% business and 90% individual users then an average hand phone costs about $29 while the cheapest iPhone costs $499! That's 17 times the price of an average hand phone. Having Apples reputation in mind the premium pricing seems justifiable. However, taking a closer look at Apple's success with the iPod we cannot be sure. The iPod is considered stylish and trendy however the price for it is average. Would iPod have had the same success if it was priced at $600? Doubts arise. Apple might just use the hype to cash in. There already are rumors that Apple will come out with an iPhone Nano by the end of this year to cater the more price sensitive customers.

Another aspect to consider is the short lifetime product in the mobile phone industry. Are the customers willing to pay $500 more for a phone and $20 more per month of the cheapest plan? Having an iPhone means that a customer must be willing to pay $980 (for two year minimum contract).

Entry strategy – Bundling with service provider

Apple's strategy of going with limited network service providers could be a very powerful strategy. While this has created space for iPhone clones (keeping them away from Apple's pie) to provide hand sets to network providers who can not sell woo customers with iPhone. It has also given Apple power to create unique value added services similar to "iPod-iTunes" around the iPhone platform in collaboration with selected service provider. Apple has been known to create consumer electronics and closely-related software products as reflected in iPod-iTunes and iMac computer-Operating system strategies.

Entry strategy - Long term sustainability

With the hype created about iPhone most likely Apple will do well in short term. However, in mobile handset industry companies launch new models quarterly or even more frequently. Apple will feel more pressure with rapid product development and short innovation cycle of the industry. Consumers in this industry are perhaps willing to pay for the newest model but three or six months later no one will pay for it. How will Apple tackle this problem? Will they go down with the prices or can they break the industry cycle? The sales will show us.

One possible strategy for long term sustainability could be by bundling mobile internet based services. Apple could invent something of MySpace or Facebook sorts on its iPhone platform and entice consumers for long.

Looking ahead & conclusions

Can Apple change the industry?

The future success of Apple in the mobile phone industry and the survival of iPhone basically would be determined by the outcome of this question. Perhaps the wide screen phone will kick start the web on mobile and give way to several interesting business models around the iPhone platform.

New models by competitors

Some producers came out with new models others will come out with new models but there were no big or hasty activities after Apples announcement. The loudest remarks came as usual from Microsoft but no one of the big companies reacted like this (or at least not publicly). This all indicates that the competitors are adopting a wait and watch strategy about apples market entrance especially because Apple announced that they target only 1% market share by 2008.

Will Apple Adjust?

Perhaps Apple has already realized that something with their model is not working too well. The rumors about the iPhone Nano at least would also point in this direction. Nevertheless that is too slow. Meaning there are 6 month between the iPhone and the iPhone Nano. In this time Nokia alone will launch 4-5 new models! Perhaps Apple realized that the mobile phone industry is faster than the MP3 Industry. Perhaps their sales figures are not as expected. That people will cue up on the first day to get an iPhone was no surprise and actually doesn't matter too much as long as the sales figure for the rest of the year is as planned. A good start does not mean one wins at the end. Fact is that competition will not ease.

What will the competition in the future look like?

More and more competitors are coming into the mobile handset market. Mobile handsets are already becoming commodity and competition is keeping the margins low. The fact that Apple has chosen only one provider may be a clue in what direction the business will develop. The keyword may be services. Offering iTunes or similar online markets with adjusted products for the mobile phones or the mobile customer in general may generate future revenues.

Risks

Apple is considered stylish and innovative and could always profit from this image. However, mobile handset industry has its peculiar characteristics with which Apple isn't familiar. Apple will have to develop competencies to create a sustainable competitive advantage in the industry otherwise their biggest asset – the cool "i" image (as in iPod, iMac) would be at risk.

After the iPhone Launch

Apple is entering in a completely new business. Technologically the change from iPod to iPhone is not too big (everything composed of standard components) but from the business viewpoint it's something completely new. The same iPod can be sold in the whole world whereas in the mobile phone industry there are big differences. Phones sold in the US would be considered old fashioned in Europe and even more in Japan or Korea. The big players produce different phones for different continents or even for different countries. They come out with new models quarterly or even more frequent and mobile phones in certain countries are becoming more or less fashion accessories. Additionally consumer behavior is different over all age groups. Is Apple able to adjust to customers need or do the customers adjust to the iPhone? Can Apple keep the pace with his competitors? Or can Apple change the industry? We will see!

How to hire the right people

2007-07-26T17:33:00.000-07:00

Got this in a FWD email ....not bad!

Put about 100 bricks in some particular order in a closed room with an open window.

Then send 2 or 3 candidates in the room and close the door.

Leave them alone and come back after 6 hours and then analyze the situation.

If they are counting the bricks.
Put them in the accounts department.

If they are recounting them..
Put them in auditing.

If they have messed up the whole place with the bricks.
Put them in engineering.

If they are arranging the bricks in some strange order.
Put them in planning.

If they are throwing the bricks at each other.
Put them in operations.

If they are sleeping.
Put them in security.

If they have broken the bricks into pieces.
Put them in information technology.

If they are sitting idle.
Put them in human resources.

If they say they have tried different combinations, yet not a brick has been moved. Put them in sales.

If they have already left for the day.
Put them in marketing.

If they are staring out of the window.
Put them on strategic planning.

And then last but not least.

If they are talking to each other and not a single brick has been moved.
Congratulate them and put them in top management .

Nuclear weapons and Game Theory

2007-07-18T08:29:00.000-07:00

Unlike the heading of this post, the post isn't a serious thought -rather an impractical weird thought.

I have recently taken a course in Game Theory ( Nash , Prisoner's dilemma et al) and it just sparked off a thought in my mind what if all the nations in world stop investing in any weapons other than nuclear weapons . We will have a world order in which every nation has only nukes and there is no possibility of small scale attack , mutual destruction would be guaranteed and any war would look like this payoff game :
It will be in the interest of any rational or irrational nation to not to opt for war as in the event of war mutual destruction is certain. Hence , there will be NO WAR and conflicts must then would be resolved through diplomacy. Such a world order would be interesting as so much of resources which go into stock piling weapons would be saved and go for constructive purposes improving human life.

It is a far fetched thought, civilizations have never lived peacefully in past and in foreseeable future don't seem to be living without conflicts!

Business in Virtual world

2007-07-16T08:31:00.000-07:00

Many people know about Second Life - it is a 3D virtual world where registered users have avatars and they can interact pretty much like real world - walk around the virtual space, see and hear. Who knows in future Avatars may be able to touch , feel and smell too.

Companies are contemplating that in future business could be conducted in virtual world - so pretty much the way we interact on web conference and chats now - we will start interacting with people in virtual world in a more humanly fashion...crazy it may sound but it looks like a possibility in near future. IBM already has a office in Second Life and is betting heavily on possibilities with virtual worlds.

Yet another example of business in virtual world is Unisfair Inc, this company aims to provide a virtual world platform for trade fairs. Wow imagine you have the great Singapore sale going on virtual world and your avatar visiting the trade fair, buying stuff using credit card.

Of course, like any other thing - virtual worlds may bring their share of ills for socioety and we have to learn to cope with it.

Story of an Afgan Girl

2007-07-15T01:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I watched this movie called Osama - about a 12-year-old Afghan girl and her mother who loses their jobs when the Taliban closes the hospital where they work. The Taliban have also forbidden women to leave their houses without a male "legal companion." With her husband and brother dead, killed in battle, there is no one left to support the family. Without being able to leave the house, the mother is left with nowhere to turn. Feeling that she has no other choice, she disguises her daughter as a boy. Now called 'Osama,' the girl embarks on a terrifying and confusing journey as she tries to keep the Taliban from finding out her true identity.

It is worrying to know that even in 21st century humanity is living in different ages.

Mightier web browser

2007-07-06T03:49:00.000-07:00

Sometime back I was talking about the shift of computing from Desktop to Webtop and ubiquitous browser becoming increasingly powerful in "welcome-webtop-bye-bye-desktop".
Recently I came across Google gears and Abode Integrated run time
- these are powerful new technologies which are going to fuel the next generation of browser based rich and interactive applications which will not just run beautifully online but will also be supported off-line. Which implies , computer users will bother even lessor about the underlying operating system. This convergence will eventually challenge the Microsoft's cash cow Windows!

It would be very interesting to watch how Microsoft will maintain its Desktop dominance. I have used Vista - Though Office 2007 is significantly better and fixes some of the glitches in previous versions, Vista appears to be nothing more than a glossy Windows XP. How long then can Microsoft rely on its monopoly to push its operating system to users?

Google adopts Microsoft file explorer in Online Docs

2007-07-01T07:35:00.000-07:00

It was a pleasant change to see Google docs adopting Microsoft style file explorer. Also after trying long to get people used to using "Tags" instead of folders - Google has finally adopted folders- for the vast majority of visually oriented people.
Google seems to be becoming incredibly good at managing innovation - It has realized that innovating and brining innovations to reality are two different ball games and more value lies in later. Some of the most recent innovation management story of google is exemplified by the lost list here -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_acquisitions !
It has done well in managing innovations so far.But can Google continue to be a force as it has been with the pace it is going on acquisition spree? Can it dominate in everything that is does - already some of its rather simple tools like google groups or notepad aren't any great success.

Teamwork in Nature

2007-06-20T06:02:00.001-07:00

Recently I came across this youtube wildlife video. It's amazing to see that wild animals know team work naturally and somehow humans have forgotten this skill and need to be trained :).

Private Equity Capitalists !

2007-06-04T18:18:00.000-07:00

The recent increase in high profile acquisitions by private equity and hedge funds inspires several question in my mind. For example, recent acquisition of Chrysler by Cerberus Capital Management for $7.4 Billion comes across as a surprise. I am wonder with all the professional management of Daimler, Chryslers' troubles had no end , the how can a private equity firm run the automobile business without having any expertise. Moreover, as the private equity firm has primary interest to reap a 20% return within 3 to 7 years from its investment - How can it be ensured that private equity firm doesn't force the Chrysler management to go for short term gains and not focus on long term sustainable strategy?

As I understand, private equity firms are notoriously secretive and once the acquired company is taken off the stock market - it no longer has same obligations to shareholders. There is a potential problem in the regulatory framework under which such private equity take overs work.

Free markets economy is good. However, the kind of freedom money markets have started enjoying - probably due to the clout high net worth individuals and financial firms enjoy with the regulatory authorities - is leading to somewhat unrestrained flow of capital. It is good till the time this capital is used with some values and ethics. If such capital finds way to hands of ruthless , unethical firms - it could lead to money markets collapse!!

With my limited knowledge, this is what I think. Probably time will clarify whether my line of thought is correct.

Update[7-Jan-2008]
"Cerberus, which bought 80 per cent of Chrysler from Daimler for over $8 billion in early 2007, is now in trouble; Chrysler’s President and CEO Robert Nardelli recently said that the company was “operationally bankrupt” - Source[http://www.businessworld.in/content/view/3344/3441]

Ridiculous Hotmail

2007-05-21T00:02:00.000-07:00

I just created a user account with hotmail and when I tried to import my contact list from GMAIL , this is what I Hotmail tell me - " You can only have a total of 1,000 contacts. Please delete some contacts and try importing the file again."
So, I guess the developers of hotmail wants you to not communicate with more than 1000 users !!
Ridiculous- Isn't it ?

Message to Microsoft

2007-05-16T23:48:00.000-07:00

Recently I wanted to upgrade to new laptop and I was looking for a rather low budget lean mean machine enough for web browsing and basic office applications. However, much to my surprize all the new notebooks are now coming pre-loaded with Windows Vista. No, I have nothing against Vista - but it is certainly not a lean mean system that can rum smoothly on 512MB ram and Centrino.

Dear Microsoft,
I know you have the monopoly power and can push your new product whatever way you feel like. But try to be little sensible in not pushing Vista on a Centrino and 512MB ram machine!

A new era of web advertising

2007-05-11T00:34:00.000-07:00

Yet another example of disruptive technology changing the rules of game in the space of online advertising. First it was pop-up blocker add-on for Firefox and IE. It effectively blocked all the annoying pop-ups from websites. Some sites though discovered workarounds but the pop-up blocker guys seems to catch up very promptly on any loopholes discovered !
And now even more powerful ad-blocking add-on for firefox (as of now but I am sure it will soon be available for all popular browsers soon) https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

This plug-in effectively filters out all the annoying flashing images on the webpage. I tried it on yahoo inbox and it works! So, what all this development is driving online advertising industry towards ? Just eyeballs and accidental clicks can not bring revenues and you just can to force consumers to watch an ad that he doesn't want to! Well, from a consumers point of view it is a good development as he can bypass annoying ads. However, just rethink - it is the annoyance of ads which probably are providing a lot of useful information of web for free! No I do not think online advertising will die out. But yes, it looks like those who do not want to see ads will have to start paying for information so far available as free to all. And online advertisers will have to find outrageously creative means to capture consumers' span of attention which is already cluttered with Giga or Terra bytes of information.

Beyond Microsoft Windows!

2007-04-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

About a month back, Windows Xp running on my laptop crashed for no apparent reason. I had absolutely not tinkered with it and it crashed out of blues - well it had run for about an year almost OK! Windows XP isn't all that bad only till it starts misbehaving, then nothing can be worse than it.
Anyway, after completely crashed Windows XP and with no recovery or install CD with me I had idea of how to recover my crucial data and get my system up and running. Thankfully with little bit of google I figured out everything!
Here I go.
A quick way to recover data from your dead XP machine is Linux live CD. I used http://www.slackware.com/ . Simply put Linux live CD is a Linux operating system that can run from a CD without being installed on your computer hard-disk. You can access all your data using live CD and cab back up your files on to a USB HDD. That's what I did. There is a catch here- more than likely your USB HDD will be using NTFS file format , which is Micosoft proprietary and linux system can not write on it. Microsoft doesn't want anyone else to be able to use its file format - this is when you start realizing MS is monopolizing !
Anyway, I formatted my USB HDD into FAT32 on which Linux can read write. To convert NTFS to FAT32 is easy by a tool called SwissKnife v3.22. Once NTFS got converted to FAT32 format taking backup of your data is easy drag and drop in Linux live environment and its very fast.Backup done!

Well, being in Singapore where cracked softwares are strictly illegal I had no option to get a pirated Windows CD and I had no intention to buy a Windows XP for about $200 and again live with a buggy product. A little bit of googling again helped me find out a suitable flavor of Linux for my desktop. I preferred ubuntu linux - reason being i watched this video and it convinced me that linux is no more for nerds - i could do it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L38OXr518ns
Trust me , Installing Ubuntu linux is easier than installing windows and its faster too! With Linux, you feel during installation itself that it isn't resource hungry like Windows - try Vista it sucks on 1GB ram.
Within 20 minutes my laptop was up and running with Ubuntu - it comes pre-installed with most of utility software like office, firefox, mail client,chat client etc. But hey what, though th UI is fresh and neat - the fonts aren't slick and sexy! Once again it turned out that Microsoft has copyrighted all possible fonts which render neatly on computer monitor. Well, well - google a bit and you will find ways to install MS fonts on your ubuntu.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=208396
If you remember in early 90's when netscape was hitting MS hard in browser market, MS tried to popularize MS UI and fonts ( and hence push IE which were those fonts) by distributing msfonts to developer community and later when MS gained momentum with no further need to encourage developer community to use MS fonts, the fonts distribution was stopped. Mean MS ! fortunately some of those basic fonts are still on internet and whether it is legal or illegal - you are free to install 'em on your ubuntu.

If you have been a firefox user, you would not even feel discomfort of moving to a new system. Firefox is the same in ubuntu as in windows. You can use Yahoo messenger too. But it seems it doesn't have voice support yet. And google talk still isn't available for linux. However, hold on there is a way out. Open source guys are really smart. You can use Gaim chat client to configure all your favourite messengers- yahoo, google, msm . And for voice talk use Gizmo Project.
http://www.gizmoproject.com/
Through this one software - you can call landlines , mobiles and voice talk to yahoo, google, msn and regular chat too. It's really sexy. I would recommend you to try this out even if you are on windows!
So, on linux, you got everything and things are only going to get better as time passes by. I know MS office is kind of difficult to live without - may be MS word can be replaced by open office document, but excel and powerpoint- if you are used to them it is hard to get used to open office . Hey but Linux guys have found a way out to run MS Office on linux. There is something called wine - it is a binary compatible to windows and if you have this on your linux you can install windows applications on linux- at least MS office works pretty neatly.

So pretty much you get everything on linux which you are addicted to in Windows. I am happily on ubuntu linux and have no reasons to go back to windows. Linux is very very stable- a no nonsense system. Doesn't require any anti-virus !

And yes if you want your linux to do fancy things like 3D desktop, try beryl. http://www.beryl-project.org/
Watch some fun with ubuntu+beryl -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k-qaPGgFrc

So far this is the summary of my experiments beyond Windows and I am loving Linux !

Connecting dots of life

2007-03-22T05:14:00.000-07:00

Looking in hindsight life appears to be a game of connecting disparate dots of events and making sense out of those dots. I am quite surprized how events which when occurred did not make much sense to me - I was either happy for the events which fell in line with what I had ever desired or felt miserable for the events which I would never have imagined to occur to me; now make immense sense to me and today when I connect those disparate dots of events(both happy and sad events), they seem to make so much of sense. It appears as though all those events have cumulatively shaped my present for which I am thankful to the almighty.

So far so good ! - I don't know how the events which have unfolded in recent past and which will occur in future will connect with each other and make sense to me sometime from now. However, now that I have discovered the pleasure of connecting dots , life feels as exciting as those childhood days when discovering familiar shapes in the starry sky was fun !

Why B-School don't run like services business?

2007-03-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

I wish someday some guy from B-School come across this thought and things change for good.
Being in a B-School I know that I am paying for the education I receive and no charitable organization is funding my education. When I was in School or Engineering institute, I was not the one funding my education. It was either paid by my family or govt subsidized my education with tax payers money ( again money from my family and many other families).
However, for MBA education its different. I am completely funding my education through my personal savings and bank loan. And as I am paying money- I demand the right to pay for what I get. No.. no grudges against my B-School in particular. I like the place and I ve no regret of having come here. However, not all the modules which are offered as part of core ( 10 out of a total of at least 17 ) I am interested in. And I am more than 100% sure that those few modules are adding no value to me accept that I am getting more tolerant by bearing the lectures and assignments to manage to pass the module!

I see B-School as a services company which is rendering education services to me in lieu of the tuition fee I have paid. Then as a consumer do I have no rights. I think I have. I agree that B-School does give me some rights in giving me liberty to provide feedback about the modules and school in general. However, I think this is not enough.

If you buy a Toyota Camary ( yes approximately that's what I am paying for my MBA), would you be satisfied if your Toyota Camary has problems in its gearbox and all Toyota offers is to listen to your feedback on the car and promise to fix the issue in next lot. No never. You would never be satisfied unless Toyota compensates your problem by replacing Camary or refunding the money.This is what a business calls for - A committed level of service to customers!

Toyota has to do it because it knows that if it doesn't do it, people would not buy some other car but a toyota. B-School doesn't refund your money for modules which you don't learn anything from because it is difficult to establish that a consumer's (Student) learning is Nil from a particular.

Wondering if the learning could be pegged to marks and fee could be refunded for modules in which consumer(Student) gets the low or bottom of class scores! Funny isn't it. But this is what
comes to my mind when I am pissed off by one module! Imagine if this happens, I vouch everyone will fight for the bottom of the class position in MBA program because here grads count the least in getting a job and if least grade means $$$ -Yippe!! That is what MBAs want.Money money ..honey!

Busy: Got time for everything?

2007-03-04T05:12:00.000-08:00

"Being busy implies having time for everything"- I don't know whether now I agree with the saying or not.Since the begining of this year it has been going quite hectic. I have 5 modules of MBA and doing internship with a technology start-up. Typically, I am having almost 12 hours of work day. The day starts with a ear drum piercing alarm ( I changed the alarm tune to soft song, but no relief- in deep sleep even beethoven's melody is piercing sound) at 7am. I've ambitiously tried to get up at 6am or even 5 am but the body refuses to come alive before 7am. So it be, I have given up and try to get up at 7am ( with fails ;-)).
After the morning chores and rejuvinating tea(before tea I am a zombie), the work starts from ogling at my "Windows" to the world the Gmail. The assignments and readings start and are supposed to end by noon. This is the time when I rush to food court to gobble some "chicken rice"(thats the staple food here). I never timed how long my lunch lasts, but between 1200hrs and 1300 hrs I get dressed up, stuff food and am in office by 1300hrs. Fortunately, my office is only 5mins walk from my house. I would not describe what work I do, but just that it is not mundane job and requires a bit of thinking! I typically work from 1300-1700 hrs - its flexi timing so it does vary +/- but it does hog at least 4 hours a day of attention. By 1700hrs i push off and rush to B school as i have class from 1800 -21hrs. I am still fresh and energetic - after all when you have gamble your life times saving, adrenalin is automatically high. Usually professors are considerate and do not extend beyond 2100hrs. By the time its 2100hrs, though I may look alive and walking but I am zombie again and no tea or coffee can help. By the time i reach home, its already 2130 hrs.
Its Sunday night 2130 hrs now...and just wrting about tomorrow this time...makes me feel like zombie. Winding up posting before I start writing gibberish.

Impressed by Prof Jochen Wirtz

2007-01-11T06:23:00.000-08:00

Today as part of consulting club at NUS, we had the opportunity to hear Prof Jochen Wirtz. He has a stellar resume. However, he doesn't need to mention any of the big names he has been associated with. He himself is BIG. At 6pm in evening when the young MBAs look burnt he entered the conference room beaming with energy. Incredible amount of energy and passion !
He talked about the marketing of Management Consulting and Audit Consulting using a case study. Wow! he is so clear in his thoughts and conveys his thoughts so crisply in a very interactive session. And not just he knows the stuff he talks about, he has a superb sense of humor. There is a lot learn from him.I only wish I could get any opportunity to work with him!

Epilog by Prof Ivo Welch

2007-01-07T00:10:00.000-08:00

My finance Professor at NUS introduced us with the following epilogue text by Professor Ivo Welch. Indeed a must read for every MBA.
Link--->
http://welch.econ.brown.edu/book/epilogue.pdf
Happy Reading!

Unfortunately the link has moved, but fortunately I found it in Google cache here->
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:FwIh6wqYJLcJ:welch.econ.brown.edu/book/epilogue.pdf+Epilog+by+Prof+Ivo+Welch&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=sg&client=firefox-a

Is MBA worth the money you pay for

2006-12-23T06:13:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot of debate by lots of people both MBAs and non MBAs on what worth MBA degree is or what good it can bring to you? If we examine objectively, it is not hard to notice that the debate often is sparked off because of the price tag that the degree comes for.

If the degree costed what an ordinary graduation costs, there is little point in debating on its worth. I have never heard a debate on what an Engineering, Medicine, Law or Commerce degree is worth? It is generally accepted that these degrees costs in commensurate with what you learn. However, MBA is different ! The skills that you learn here are very intangible. Though you do learn quite a lot about Operations, Finance, HR etc most of it is an overview, you may not become practitioner in either of the streams unless you have significant past experience to relate to and build upon. This sometimes gives a feel that perhaps the MBA degree is not worth the bucks it costs. However, the economists in me would like to argue this with "demand and supply".Because there are people who are ready to pay for what an MBA degree comes for, it must be worth its price tag.

Dump Adobe reader: Use Foxit PDF Reader

2006-11-24T01:39:00.000-08:00

I just discovered Foxit PDF reader which is remarkably FASTer than Adobe reader. It is another classic example of how companies fail to respond in a monopoly market. Adobe has the copy right over PDF format, hence they took it for granted that everyone will continue to use Adobe reader forever. Not anymore, Foxit PDF reader offers such an amazing performance without hogging much of memory. In fact it tends to use about 1/10th of memory that Adobe reader uses. Congratulations to Foxit team! Keep up the good work.

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

Java going GNU

2006-11-14T00:10:00.000-08:00

Below is a news item from Times of India,14th Nov,2006:
COMPUTER server and software maker Sun Microsystems said on Monday that it had begun to make its Java technology an open-source software project available for free on the internet.
The announcement represents one of the largest additions of computer code to the open-source community — and it marks a major shift for a company that had once fiercely protected the source code used in 3.8bn cell phones, supercomputers, medical devices and other gadgets.
Santa Clara-based Sun said it is making nearly all of Java’s source code — excluding small pockets of code that aren’t owned by Sun — available under the GNU General Public License. The same type of license also covers the distribution of the core, or kernel, of the popular open-source operating system Linux, which competes against Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
Making Java an open-source project allows programmers from around the world to examine, modify, fix bugs and contribute new features in Java’s underlying code. It requires that any changes be made public.
Sun, a formerly high-flying dotcom that has lost billions of dollars since the stock market collapse of ’00, has hitched its rebound strategy in part to the growing open source movement.
Rich Green, Sun’s executive vice-president of software, said the company hopes to turn more developers into Java programmers, who may then create additional software to support Sun products.
“The open-sourcing of this really means more — more richness of offerings, more capability, more applications that consumers will get to use,” Green said. “The platform itself will become a place for innovation.”
All the Java source code is expected to be released by March ’07, Green said. The move covers all Java technology, which includes software that runs on handheld devices, personal computers and servers.
Analysts said the decision would likely extend the life of Java, which was released more than a decade ago, and boost business for the company.
“Sun profits from the Java ecosystem thriving,” said Michael Cote, an analyst with RedMonk. “Whether it’s their hardware sales or their service sales, by open-sourcing Java they’re hoping to ensure its longer life and ensure it’s what the community wants it to be.” — AP

I think is it is a very interesting development. With Java going GNU, it could have significant implications to Microsoft. Already the user exposure is shifting towards the browser as opposed to desktop owing to increasingly powerful browser enabled with technologies like Ajax which
add real time drag/drop and editing features to browser applications. The services like youtube,
google docs are just a glimpse of possible applications which would be delivered by a browser.

With Sun's move, Java should soon become the preferred platform for desktop applications development. Though Java has some limitations on performance, advancements in computing power is already making this limitation redundant. As java applications are platform independant , increasing pouplarity of java based applications would make the operating system redundant.
What this spells for Microsoft? Obviously growing popularity and power of applications which do not depend on Windows implies that user expereince would be independant of underlying Operating system and Windows will lose its importance.
Microsoft is aware about this threat.However, Microsoft's response so far has been of denial.Often we get to hear from Microsoft that it will take time for consumer experience to shift away from desktop. It would be interesting to observe how these developments would change the way technology powerhouses metamorphize their new strategies.

A comment on FT Singapore article

2006-10-26T05:21:00.000-07:00

I was displeased to read "Renegade roadside relievers hit N.Delhi's bottom line" by Jo Johnson. I have lived in India for over 25 years and I feel the article is based on authors presumptions about India.Though I do accept the fact that the issue addressed in article is true. However, the reasons cited are hopeless.

Firstly, the problem is not due to prohibitive cost of visit to toilet rather it is lack of availability of public toilets.And the reason of lack of public toilets is NOT poverty but poor town planing.

Secondly, the article wrongly hypothesises that millions of poor Indians who steal electricity are not comfortable with the idea of pay for use toilets.I think the problem of electricity theft has got a political angle to it and has little to do with people's ability to pay for it. For your information, in most of the public toilets urination is FREE and it costs only Re.1 or 2 to use cubicle which is not a prohibitive cost in India.Just to give you a sense of what value one rupee holds in minds of "poor Indians"- Usually people give Re.1 coin to a beggar to get rid of loose change in pocket.So, even for a beggar Re.1 is not a big thing to spend for gracefully performing the nature's call provided such a public toilet is available in vicinity.

It is a pity that a newspaper like FT printed such an ill researched article.

Welcome Webtop, Bye Bye Desktop !

2006-09-06T22:14:00.000-07:00

I was just wonder about the number for services beign delivered over the web browser which earlier required a client application to be installed on the computer- wikimapia.org, raaga.com, youtube.com , spreadsheets.google.com and a web based complete office suite called "writely" is gestating in the labs of google . With all this, it is not hard to predict that the future of desktop as we know it, is limited and possibly the future belongs to ubiquitous web browser!- The webtop era.

These developments pose a big threat to Microsoft over its monopoly of windows OS. If most of the applications that one would use will be delivered via a browser, it really would not matter whether the OS on the computer is Windows, Linux or Mac. Ah! this would be an interesting scenario. Browser would become a mighty application and I can already see Firefox winning over in the webtop era.

What opportunities and threats the webtop era will unfold for the businesses would be an interensting thing to speculate? I am still wondering what surprises are ahead in time for businesses !

Emergency Preparedness

2006-08-02T04:05:00.000-07:00

7/11 the very life line of Mumbai , the local train was rocked by terrorist bombings and all that one gets to hear is "salaam mumbai" spirit.
I just read about "Exercise Northstar V" at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_Northstar_V
Exercise Northstar V was a large scale emergency preparedness exercise conducted in Singapore on 8 January 2006.
I am surprized that such a large scale emergency preparedness exercise was planned and performed in Singapore just 6 months after London bombings on 7 July 2005.

Can such an activity be ever performed in Mumbai? Ask anyone, and you will most likely hear that
it is not possible here: We have very high population density...we lack resources...etc etc.
True that we have some limitations here. But can we not do anything on Emergency Preparedness?

"Necessisity" is the Mother of Innovation, but "Desire" is the Father

2006-06-24T19:40:00.000-07:00

"Necessisity" is the mother of innovation, but "Desire" is the father.

I believe most of humans, irrespective of culture or society they belong to, are inherently innovative.
It is a natural instinct of a human being to think about ways of overcomming his difficulies.
How often we feel while looking at an innovative idea--Oh! this is so simple- I too had thought something similar !!

It is not lack of ideas that hinders innovation,it is the lack of desire to act upon the idea.

The most innovative organizations and societies have been successfully able to foster to desire to innovate.

Killer Instinct

2006-04-06T22:56:00.000-07:00

Today I met with a guy called Jitender Prasad ,who works as a ticket booking, bill payment etc misclleaneuous services agent in myoffice. I was amazed by his spirits. When I met him, he was reading through some book and I casually asked him what was he reading and the conversation that followed amazed me.

In fluent english he told me he was doing part time BA along with this job.He livedsome 40Kms away from my office location and had to take a local train and public bus to reach workplace everyday travelling for around 2hrs one way daily. Thats a hell lot of thing for Indian standards, given the pathetic conditions of public transport.
Whatever spare time he gets travelling and working at office, he utilizes to study.
On the way back home in evening, he goes to railway station and stands in long queue for hours to get the reservation tasks allocated to him. So his average work day is well over 15 hours and he is doing it for probably Rs.2000/- pm or even lesser.

Jitender has a killer instinct in his eyes.He looks well groomed and energetic. And India has no dearth of people like Jitender. With such people who have a well groomed and professional attitude and are ready to work up so hard in a globally integrated economy, Indians are going to be revered globally.

Tangible Vs Intangible Value

2006-02-11T03:50:00.000-08:00

Do you use a stolen car? Certainly NOT.

Do you use crack softwares and pirated books & music? Of course, why should I pay 100, 200 or 300(some times even higher) percent more than the production cost of something.

Well, it appears that our realm of judgment regarding what is acceptable (right!) and what is unacceptable (wrong!) is dependant on the tangibility of the thing in question. We are in general better off assessing the tangible cost/material cost rather than intangible-intellectual cost.

I think there is a general correlation between the tangibility of a good and its perceived value. People find it easy to associate monetary value to tangible goods like machines, electronic gadgets etc. However, when it comes to associating monetary value to an intangible good, most people perceive it to be priced higher than its real worth.

Could this be the reason why illegal intangible goods find many patrons whereas illegal tangible goods do not attract straight people?

Shopper’s Stop “first citizen”

2006-01-06T05:04:00.000-08:00

I was offered a Shopper’s Stop first citizen card by the smart sales executive at the counter.I asked what it is about and what benefit I get out of the membership. She explained to me that I once pay Rs.150 ONLY and I get 10 points free with that and any purchase there on at shopper’s stop will fetch me 1 point for every purchase of Rs.100. I can keep collecting points which later can be used to purchase anything of value equivalent to the number of points in rupees.

I wondered at the scheme and wondered how anyone could be stupid enough to buy the shopper’s stop first citizen membership. I pay Rs.150 for nothing but 10 points equivalent to Rs.10 (net loss of Rs.140) and I also commit my loyalty to Shopper’s Stop for making further purchases from Shopper’s Stop to gain more points. Companies world wide spend money to gain customer loyalty and here Shopper’s Stop is luring people to pay them and commit their loyalty too. , This is ridiculous!

Moreover, if you do a simple calculation you will realize how foolish it is to buy First citizen membership card. As, said above you lose Rs.140 on becoming a member and to gain sufficient points to be able to make a purchase from Shopper’s Stop out of collected points, you must have at least 500 points.(You do not get anything worthy at shoppers’ stop in less than Rs.500 !) . And imagine you would have coughed up a whooping Rs.49,000 shopping at Shopper’s stop to collect 490 first citizen points. If after a purchase of Rs.49,000 + Rs.140 you get Rs.500 back in the form of points, isn’t that peanuts! How anyone would be fooled by such marketing gimmick?

How to relish the feeling of plenty?

2005-08-30T04:51:00.000-07:00

This question came to my mind after having bought a MP3 player after months or perhaps years of planning. During Institute days, living alone in a hostel room was at times very lonely and walkman used to be a faithful partner in filling the void associated with the silence of the room.

Those days, to listen to my favorite songs I used to shuffle cassettes and took pain of “rewind and forward” just to hear my favorite track. But it was a pleasure, indeed a great pleasure to listen to music collected with passion. And I always wondered what a pleasure it would be to have a MP3 player with the choice of playing hundreds of tracks from just one CD without having to shuffle cassettes.

Since I had only read about MP3 players in newspapers and magazines, the pleasure of having one was only anticipatory. When I actually bought one, I soon realized that the anticipatory pleasure was ephemeral. With ten times more choice of songs at disposal as compared to a cassette, I ended up in a state of “confused entertainment”. I just continued shuffling songs thinking that perhaps I will like the next one more than the current, without relishing any.

For me it was like a buffet meal where one tends to stuff a little bit of everything, relishing none.

The learning is: Life may throw open cornucopia of choice: But the pleasure lies in knowing what suits your tastes and tasting only that and NOT in tasting all what life may offer.

Why can't India have hundreds of great Educational Institutions

2005-06-15T01:34:00.000-07:00

With one sixth of humanity living under one nation and with world recognizing its vast pool of talent in every field, why can't India have hundreds of great Educational Instititions. It is not because we have only few great minds to study at IITs and IIMs. We have many more great minds who are capable of making it to top league institutions but when we have limited number of seats , only people with the previlege of being in the right frame of time and space make it to these premier institutions.
I see it as a vestige of ancient caste based social system.The elitist , say Brahamins , were traditionally the educated lot , but they always kept their copyright of "gyan" so as to be able to protect their position in society of that of learned class.This legacy of brahiminism still continues in every aspect of our society. We as a breed tend to work hard and grow well independantly but not that well as a team. This individual behaviour, when extended to an institution or a society, leads to some formation of some Ivy leagues and the masses in the abyss. No, I am not professing against the class system, that is something inherent of nature and is very much required.I am against previleged class not using their advantage to better the lives of less previleged.
Whenever there is a talk of creating more seats or having more institutions of the stature of IITs and IIMs, the most common agruments against it is either lack of funds or increasing the intake of IITs and IIMs will lead to deterioration of quality.I do not understand how this agrument is arrived at.
Many of the non premier institutions too charge the same fees what the premier ones charge.So, if we ignore the government funding which the premier institutions have had in past, the current financial standing of both the premier and non-premier institutions is more or less the same.Surely money doesn't seem to be such a constraint. We anyway have thousands of non premier institutions which are not dying for the want of funds, rather they are doing a brisk business despite their questionable standards. This rasies another interesting point what actually stops these also run institutions from getting into the ivy league. I will take up this point a little later.
Coming to the second argument given againts increasing the intake of premier, that, it will necessarily lead to lowering the quality.Well, sure going by the universal truth of demand and supply if the intake of premier institutions in increased, and their alumni will no longer be found
found exclusively in the board rooms but in market place as well and one minght be inclined to think that it will lessen the value of the brand and will perhaps deteriorate the quality.Here is where education difffers from commodity.A commodity value is always ruled by demand and supply and not education. Can one think of a family where one sibling is an IIT -IIM graduate and other studied at an unknown college as more respectable as the one where everyone is an IIT-IIM graduate?Well yes, in a family where only one sibling have had the previlege to study at IIT-IIM, he will be respected and valued more than the other sibling.But when the family is seen from an outsiders perspective it looks very unbalanced.

Something like hold true for our society as well.It is unbalanced in the same way as the family described above.And it is because the brahiministic thinking still dominates our minds and we
are reluctant disbelieve that one's win always come at the cost of all other's lose.

Now concluding on this at this point, remembering to write further on the question rasied above in blue itatics.