Sunday, January 27, 2008

here's the plastic..there's a plastic...ban that crap

Plastic has become a demon already threatening the very existence of nature. Plastic is a remarkable material thats cost effective, light, easy to mould..... but its non bio degradable nature makes it a mess....recycling doesnt help the environment either. I am not saying 0% plastic, i am talking of mis-use of this remarkable material. There are places where you must use it and some places where you can avoid it. The classic example of misuse is plastic bags/sacks, once the function of carrying home the product is accomplished, we carelessly toss it on the streets..which moves to water sources, get burried into the soil and trigger the harm. Best way to eliminate this plastic bag is the source itself, each of the shops must stop giving complimentary plastic bags but make the customers shell out for the cloth or jute bags. Once you charge people for this, customers will start bringing their own bags to carry the products back home. As of now, no one cares as shops provide them plastic bags. Atleast going in for jute bags will kick in some employment opportunities for bag makers and jute producers. This was no new "extra" plastic goes into the ecosystem and whatever is already existing will go back as recycled...unless people take such drastic measures, world wont be a better healthier place. All those NGOs and environmentalists with "political flavor" must atleast take this into reality and start preaching instead of preaching against nano cars or some other things.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Idea Corner/Zone..whatever

Somehow people dont take it seriously when i tell them some concepts or idea. They think I am just talk and wont walk the talk. I dont know till to date why people do that or may be there is something in my appearance that make them think i am more dumb they can even imagine? Now thats a big joke if they assumed things based on my appearance or external body language :D

Let me roll back 3 yrs, I was running around showing people that I know an easier way to get this online map/routing for indian cities. Some said "Its nothing new", some said "we have already done it and we flopped", some went ahead to give me hope before they pulled the ground underneath me. Since no one listens or no one thinks its do-able...here is the way.

Atleast in india, the govt has to be ashamed that its doing nothing in terms of providing GPS data or data regarding locations. The geological society of india has sided with private entities in making this public domain data...a privileged one. But somehow they have given/shared the data to private parties, but on the contrary in the US...everything atleast some part of the data is in the public domain. So getting data in india is virtually impossible within a time frame unless one gets those data personally. Creating data of the location, streets, landmarks etc is easy and its just that everyone thinks its manual labor and dont have a clue how to do that.

Here is my way.....
* each city can be broken down into different areas and localities.
* Each of such layouts have a sort of a blue print plan of the place.
* You have Autocad like softwares to plot and retrieve the coordinate values of the place.
* There are GPS devices which can be used to get the lat/long values of any landmark or places.
* Then use triangulation method to map any point retrieved from the GPS system onto any map.
* Then make it commercially sensible by charging businesses that wants to be displayed onto the map.
* Going in for service regarding fleet tracking, call center cab's tracking etc, logistics, shipment tracking etc.

The dynamics/math behind position or location mapping can be seen here
http://mukund.narasimhan.googlepages.com/gps
I used shape function method to retrieve any location entrapped within 3 given points

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Concept behind fleet tracking
From the GPS data, one can figure out the street co-ordinates. Say for example
* Street AB connects point A and point B.
* A street is a line connecting A(x,y) and B(x,y)
* Any point on this line can be found out by the straight line equation.
* An allowance or tolerance can be set like say + or - 1m accuracy to tell if the vehicle is on that street.
* Now perpendicular distance between a point and a line is given by
d=|(Ax1+By1+C)/(sqrt(A^2+B^2))|
where A, B, and C are the coefficients of the general equa­tion of a line Ax + By + C = 0 and (x,,y,) are the coordinates of the point.
* Now if d is within 1m accuracy then you are sure that the vehicle is on the street.
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If you need anything else let me know :-)

Friday, January 25, 2008

Morons of the worst kind

i dont know why but i dont like to see pratibha patil's face nor tolerate what she says. But open any online indian newspaper site and you can see her republic day speech. Its so staple and lackluster, she sounds and looks lazy, i dont know why anyone want to put her in the place which was occupied by dynamic APJ Kalam. She says

* Reminding the nation to fulfil Mahatma Gandhi's pledge of ''wiping every tear in every eye'', President Pratibha Patil today regretted that the benefits of a surging economy have not percolated to weaker sections
-->Who will do the job of wiping crocodile tears of politicians ....including her?

*'Our efforts and our commitment, while pursuing the goal of high growth rates, should be to ensure that all people of our country benefit from it.
--> yes what about those lazy guys on the streets? what about those who get in paying bribe to occupy high positions? I dont think you can achieve any growth with such people around

*The President said the country cannot look at the future without addressing the needs of under-privileged and disadvantaged sections of the society.
--> sick and tired of hearing the same word beaten about. I mean come on and do something to pull them up. There is nothing as a free meal in this world and universe...even to cook this free meal someone has to lose his or her time to cook, there is no such thing as a magic wand to wave it and get something.

*Warning that terrorism constituted a grave threat to the civilised world, the President said the continuing terror attacks were reminders of the need to take collective action.
-->Arrrrrggg again sick of hearing this word. Combating terrorism isnt the main thing to do, kill the concept of terrorism, put a stop/damper into the production of illegal arms, production of drug and eventual flow of drug money, dont sell to people other than the government, cut down local support by putting in a mole so that each movement is watched. Thats the way to combat terrorism and not going after them. Its just like saying, give wealth to combat poverty. If that was so easy, it could have been done long back in 100 B.C.

* Making a special reference to the scourge of corruption, the President said the country could not afford the loss of resources meant for its development.''We must strengthen measures for the removal of corruption by bringing about greater transparency,'' she said.
-->Rolls the eyes and puckers the lips.

*Patil spoke of the economy growing at ''unprecedented'' rate and said the ''impressive strides'' have resulted in the country's emergence as a powerful player in the global economy. ''This century will belong to Asia and India will be one of the main driving forces,'' the President said.Sounding a note of caution, she said one should not forget that the objective of development was not merely to create wealth but also to build a humane society.
-->Creating wealth, greed for power, bribing the way to get the maximum position et al all means the same. Let them look at japan, korea, one-china (taiwan included), india is never in the same league as these, they call themselves south asia and are proud to be with sub-continent *rolls eyes and smirks*. India is growing because of low labour costs, time advantage and dollar multiplier advantage.

*'We cannot afford to have insular attitudes and be unconcerned about the needs of others,'' she said.Noting that women constituted half the population, she said there should be laws for their empowerment and protection. ''We also need to address social evils like child marriage, female foeticide, female infanticide and dowry,'' the President said.
--> I was wondering where is the woman power...woman exploitation speech and when i scrolled down, i was glad it was there...my face beamed with joy....nah not because of the content text but because my prediction was on right track :D

My take on this speech....stale staple political speech made under force. When in school, we were made to sit to listen to same old speeches, we are so much used to such speeches that we can make better speeches! AMEN!

ps: Is it a crime to attack the president of india verbally? Is it normal in democracy to have free speech? Excuse my ranting if it is YES, enjoy the rant if its not a crime :D

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Idea Zone...my 2 cents again

I have seen how people default on loans or credit card payments. Now this is a sort of a loss...a small loss for credit agencies/creditors. Its not that someone does it intentionally, its just that they dont have the resource to pay it off. So why not use this one....if some one owes you say $2000 and arent in a position to pay off that, i think the best way is to provide them with some kind of a small job or project or whatever and value it enough...so that they do it for you and you waive off that amount against what they owe you. This way u get things done at your valuation and atleast you are satisfied that you got your worth back. The guy who works on this also gets that burden off his head.

Idea Corner/Zone ...whatever

When some idea flashes in your mind and you want to bounce it off some people, you always get this typical replies....ah someone else has done similar things, ah if it was that easy why not xxx company or yyy company not implement it, some say Ideas are dime a dozen. I would say that ideas as as valuable as implementing it, the guys with money dont have ideas and the guys with ideas dont have money to implement them. So as you can see ...its a sort of an equilibrium out there. But if you get to the investor side, you may not like to give out free money to someone who would take it and vanish, or to someone who doesnt know how to do what he says. Now getting it is more like a game one needs to play to convince someone to bet on you.

Let me get back to the idea......
I dont know about others but i had tough time in schools and colleges, where those teachers were either sub standard or didnt know how to teach or didnt know what to teach. I am not a rich brat to attend some state of the art schools, so had to settle between top end and horrible govt run school. As the population increases, even sub standard schools at nook and corner gets its name and fame...once this happens, you find it hard to put kids in that school or need to shell out a fortune to get in. The schools are generally run in bad taste, you pay the teachers rather poor salary but make them work for long hours. This combo is dangerous as you will have to settle on lower quality of teachers or teachers who take up this profession because they couldnt find a better job. Now this triggers a sense of dis-satisfaction in the eco-system where the future generation is learning stuff. The costs are spiralling, so this pushes up the corruption levels ... as parents of these kids have to find sources to fund education, the tuitions, the donations, the extra costs in the form of books, gadgets, projects et al.

Now i can think of only way to reduce costs or keep them stable is to adopt technology as a tool to make it effective and efficient. The cable TV industry have hit the saturation and are now implementing broad band connections, movies on demand etc etc to give some room for revenue. So why not use these cable infrastructure to beam in classes and courses for not so famous or sub standard places? The school which has good infrastructure and have good teachers would license this technology to not so good ones and still maintain the same level of quality. Now one can argue that top end schools charge a lot of money and by licensing the course programs they are making money no doubt but what if their enrollments drop? what if smart ones think why pay so much ..why not enroll in cheap schools and still get that knowledge? Now this is one thing which one has to decide on ... to adopt the technology.

One way of using technology is to lessen burden on over worked teachers, teach not so efficient teachers to how things must be done, make learning a better experience by giving more visual viewpoints of concepts and being clear in what one is explaining. This one will bring in an increase in the quality of education and the worth for all the time in school. Important of all is the learning experience and not forgetting it. How many times have u watched a same movie twice? You generally dont as it will keep all those embedded in your brain.....same way all these fundas and basics are into you forever. Then there is a relief of re-viewing the class again and again till you get things clearer. I am not saying replace everything with technology and robots, i am promoting technology as a tool not a substitute for human touch. Well teachers can still be around to answer the questions of curious ones, involve in class discussions and giving that extra things to kids.

Now coming to economics.....yearly license fee to be paid to the schools which provide the material, monthly subscription to the cable operators, variable pricing on streaming only, on demand, repeated viewing, hardware costs to encrypt and decrypt the signals ...so as not to steal and violate copyright laws. A surprise squad to check and book culprits who would record and not pay the license and who may sell things off the shelf and make quick money.

So again....anyone willing to value this more than my 2 cents :D ?

Nasa's robot on Mars has beamed this picture and it has already become a rage. Some already saying that its more of an optical illusion, but my experience does say that there exists other intelligent and smart beings which have advanced technology and machines.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Experience to Believe it

Sometimes its a myth, sometimes its the reality, sometimes its a made up story at that instance....whatever it is, if myth has to transform into reality...you must experience it to decide about that.

My take on the topic of "are we the most intelligent beings ever created?" I would say "yes! we are the only intelligent beings ever created on this earth". I have seen and experienced something super intelligent and way ahead compared to our civilization. It was some years back and was on the terrace of my house thinking and looking at the sky. Suddenly i came across a green glowing light in the sky. It was still for a few minutes and i had seen only orange or red or twinkling stars. I was amazed to see that light move slowly, then move zigzag, picked up speed and was traveling at top speed....then stopped and zipped off to vanish away. One can argue its an illusion, illusion of what? how come it was a green ball of light? can any man made space machine or aircraft can go at such speeds? can one be able to stop it in mid air after moving at break neck speed? and yeah it wasnt a meteorite as it didnt keep falling and meteorites dont move zig zag....stop...and change speeds. So thats why i said one need to experience something to believe it

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Just my 2 cents

How to squeeze in extra money from an already existing revenue source....

Example of the amount of paper used in schools/colleges and Univs. Most of the time is spent in transporting large amounts of books to distributing centres. The costs rise as these goods exchange hands between production/printing centers and retailers to local bookstores. So wont it be easy if schools and universities become distributing centres? They know who the customers are..in short they know the count of how many students have enrolled for a particular class/course. Now comes the real revenue saver. Why cant one go for licensing and dispense equipments to digitally decrypt and print books at these schools and univ at affordable costs. Atleast there is save on transportation and handling costs, then cut down on inventory/storage. School kids who are used to carrying around tonnes of books to school can be cut down when school teachers could handout printed pages of textbooks and help soothe their sufferings. This is one way to squeeze in those extra cents by going in for digital licensing and local dispensing.

Monday, January 21, 2008

How independent is india?

US markets is hit by sub prime problem taking down many financial corps...citibank wrote close to $10b loss, Merrill Lynch marks $8b+ loss, country wide got sucked up by bank of america. The culprit being fundamental flaw---Lending loans to people with not so great credit worthiness. We can argue as to who is worthy and who isnt, what must be the safe limit group to whom money could be lent. Prez Bush has asked for $140b bail out package, tax cuts etc...but leaving all these, the fundamental question is can india be called independent and self reliant market/country?

The answer is NO. Every country in the world looks up to US, US is more of a market for goods...US is more of a standard/bench mark. If this is the fact, then how could india be shining and growing economy? I would call it an US dependent economy. Look at the job market, investments, export destination of good and people and many more. If US says India is too costly for BPO and pulls out the plug....this one thing can put people to streets, plunge the country into economic crisis. The oil/gasoline alarm can inflate import bills and bring the country to its knees. With all these small factors, how could India be called a rock solid independent, stable and emerging markets?

The stock market numbers are a joke, sometimes it hits 21k with no logic and next day it is hovering at 15k mark. The people putting their money have no fundamentals and knowledge, they just put in as their neighbour or friends made money doing nothing. Such people pumping up or down the market is a dangerous phenomenon. Each time the market goes down, lakh crores of money just vanish out of thin air. Then these stock market advisors just post some numbers and give their opinion and people just lap it up. I am not saying these people must never be allowed but atleast you need to have some idea before they are allowed into trading zones. When the citizens dont have independent thinking, how can you expect the country to be independent and smart? :P

Our honourable and esteemed PM is an economist and a by product of oxford, why cant he think of ways to insulate the economy from outside interference? Why cant he make the country more self reliant and independent? Why doesnt he introduce non-conventional energy funds instead of pumping money into useless indira vikas or rajiv gandhi yojans or some non existent NGO run by some obscure party worker?

Democracy Boon or Bane

I may sound insane when i say democracy is a bane to the society. On the brighter side, democracy is more of equal representation, balance of power etc etc but look at the dark side...its more of misuse when it falls into wrong hands and privilege is given to a wrong set of people. In india, you can see a whole lot of illiterate guys, a whole lot of pseudo-literate ones and brand of callous careless guys. Illiterates dont know what they are doing, they just vote someone who paid them well or gave them crates of liquor. Psuedo literates also dont know what they are doing, they get swayed by fancy words but the only difference between illiterates and them is that illiterates dont know how to vote and what voting rights mean. Take this example.....
Most of the voting process now a days in india is via electronic voting machine, an illiterate guy is so scared of the machine that they think it may induce electric shocks, so the officers in there have to convince them to use it. Next dilemma is how to use it, so the officer may go ahead and say click this button, these people are so dumb that they dont have commonsense or sense to understand what the officer meant. They will go ahead and press the same button the officer pointed to them. So if you can bribe the officer to mislead voters to sway in one party's favour, it will mean catapulting some worthless guy to power. So now do you see whats the problem in the democratic process? am i insane?

Sunday, January 20, 2008

One works hard to do it and others try to undo it

Its always like this....someone somewhere tries hard and puts his/her time and effort to do something worthwhile, but the tragedy is that there are many others who put all their time and effort to undo it.

I am quoting this with respect to Ratan Tata's Nano. Tata's have been known for innovations and hard work. They have been in business for a very long time. Taj hotel was started way back in early 1900s. Jump started India's first iron and steel plant at jamshedpur. Tata airlines was virtually snatched over by the govt of india from them. I still remember my trip to their Tata Thermal power Corp which supplies power to Mumbai. TCS is more of a money making machine....this list plus a few more no doubt keeps them ahead of the pack. When Ratan Tata expressed his desire to build Rs 1 lakh, there were many skeptics. It took him 4 more years and unveiled it to his friends and foes. But it didnt take a minute for his foes to show their frustrations. You can see them as a pack of wild wolves moving/swaying to take a bite at the dangling juicy prey.

Some of these include Mamta banerjee who wants to use this attack to open up TMC's account beyond calcutta. Then there is sunita narain trying to use this golden opportunity to get publicity and awards. The last stunt was taking on Pepsico on the pesticide content in their soft drinks. I would advice them to test milk and i bet the results would be more or less the same. The entire ecosystem is tainted with chemicals and man made mess ...that blaming just one person or country isnt technically correct. She is now talking of how cheap affordable cars would make things spin out of control. So my question to her is ....."is there a rule that only rich and high elite must own a fleet of cars and not a common middle class person?", why is she questioning pollution when she isnt questioning ministers and rich elite who flaunt their fleet of polluting vehicles?

I would happy to see all those autos and cabs/taxis running on adulterated man made blend of spurious chemicals. Why cant the so called "Indian environmentalists/ political activists/politicians" use their clout to kick start green revolution by compelling people to go for solar heating and to use non conventional energy sources.