Dr Rascal's Raves & Rants

A Movie Script

2010-01-10T15:27:00.001-08:00

Camera pans into an interrogation room, a cop questioning a girl in late twenties. The girl shouts back and says she loved her man too much and there was no reason to kill him. Camera moves to outside the interrogation room where the commissioner and the psychologist are having a look. The cop who is questioning is a 20 something sub inspector, a clean shaven with a clean record and still single.

The cop starts to ask where she met her guy and when it went sour. The girl says that it all happened 5 years ago when she visited mumbai. The camera goes 5 years down the timeline back into the past. Its mumbai railway station, a train arrives from Allahabad. A man in late 20's is frantically looking for someone in the train. Inadvertently he runs into the girl while looking for someone, a small argument starts which is quickly doused by the guy who apologizes and asks her if he came across an old woman who was partially blind. Luckily that oldwoman was a fellow passenger of the girl and the girl replies in affirmative and shows him the woman. The guy thanks her profusely and is happy to have found his mom. His mom sings praises of the girl and narrates as to how she kept her company. Slowly the guy and the girl gets closer. The girl is in mumbai to try her luck in the movies and the guy is a struggling director. They get closer and the guy narrates his script to the girl and girl is eager to play the lead role. Now the main problem is getting a producer for this movie, the guy tries his luck and the girl also tries through different sources and cannot find anyone to finance it. They then think of doing "cast for couch" where the girl seduces a big producer to fund their movie.

Everything is cleared and the shooting begins, the movie is completed in 3 months. The movie is declared a super hit with its innovative plot. They pair up for a dozen movies and all the movies are lapped up by the audience. The guy and the girl get closer and think of getting married. As the movies are raking in lots of money, the underworld starts calling them up and demanding ransom. At first they are scared and pay up the ransom either in terms of cash or in terms of distributing rights. The girl complains to the cops and a rift grows between the guy and the girl. The girl's argument is that they cannot be blackmailed forever, but the guy's argument is that its ok to pay up and get protected. Police protection is given to the girl and she is always with security. The cop who is questioning the girl is the same person providing her cover and he is deputed to put an end to the underworld menace.

The cop starts to eliminate the goons who target film stars for ransom. One day , all TV channels beam out a shocking news that the famous director (that guy) is shot dead in his house along with his mom. The girl runs to his home and sees him in a pool of blood. There is a big message scratched on the wall "We will eliminate all those who do not pay the ransom" . All fingers point to the underworld. The camera goes back in time to the current situation. The girl is being questioned in the interrogation room by the same cop.

Everywhere the media is focusing on the menace of underworld and the death of the great director. A relatively unknown newspaper splashes on its front page that it has the proof and the identity of the guy who killed the director. The police start to focus their attention on this newspaper and the cop goes there to investigate. He find out that the newspaper had published the news without any proof and starts the proceedings for the closure of the file and to document the fact that the underworld was responsible for the death. The cop gets summons from the court regarding this case. The attorney starts questioning the cop about the case and accuses him of murder, everyone in the court is taken aback. The public prosecutor defends the cop and tells the court that for publicity this defence attorney can do anything.

The arguments continue and the cop refuses all these things. The attorney then produces a trump card. He produces a person who is a repeated offender and who is a thief. This guy points the finger at the cop and the girl of orchestering this murder. The public prosecutor calls it a bunch of lies and laughs at the fact that the time has come when thieves accuse cops. The thief then produces an MMS that contains a content for the next big hit movie. Everyone waits to watch that MMS. Its a 20-minute clip that shows a couple along with that dead director discussing their next movie. There is an argument when the director accuses the girl of betraying him and congrajulates her on finding a new bf. The girl retorts back and taunts him of being a coward and being a paper tiger and doling out cashes to the underworld. It gets ugly when director narrates the history and that he wants to make a reality movie based on her life and it would make justice to have her in the main role. The fight gets nastier and the new bf who is that cop shoots down the director, his mom who is partially blind comes out after hearing this commotion and she is shot dead by that gurl. They slowly clean up their traces and slip out. The thief is too scared and tries to scout around the house to find some incriminating evidence. He gets hold of a invitation that is on the floor. The camera now zooms onto the thief who produces that invitation addressed to that cop. The cop refuses all these things. But he is nailed when the commissioner comes up to the witness box and gives the proof that the invitation is that of his son's wedding and he personally had given it to the cop on that fateful day. That girl also confesses and said that she did love that director but hated him for being a coward and that she still loves the cop for protecting her and taking care of her.

ah the morons are everywhere

2009-04-25T12:39:00.000-07:00

I have this habit of reading a whole spectrum of articles .. be it politics or technology or weird news. Something caught my attention and i couldnt help but feel sorry for the morons who fail to cultivate commonsense :D

The article which made me fume in anger is this one
"At issue is a Playstation 2 game called "Hanuman: Boy Warrior", reportedly the first console game developed entirely in India. It allows its players to control Hanuman, a key figure in Hindu mythology, and that's riled up the president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, Rajan Zed, who said in a press release: "Controlling and manipulating Lord Hanuman with a joystick/button/keyboard/mouse was denigration. Lord Hanuman was not meant to be reduced to just a 'character' in a video game to solidify company/products base in the growing economy of India."

Damn this guy and countless religious cops who have no other work but to stir up some crap. I dont see anything wrong in this game. Its a game O stupid guy!! He cannot understand the new generation gadgets, this helplessness is causing a lot of frustration. But again who appointed him as a religious police and who gave him right to be the champion of Hindu cause? Well i never saw him stand in the election to become an Hindu leader..nor have i voted for this guy. As long as such morons exist, its rather amusing to live longer :P

ah i am back

2009-03-30T00:06:00.001-07:00

The mood to blog is back .... dont know how long it will be around, so before it vanishes/changes i better start blogging about something.

Solution to Housing Mess & Economic Problems

2008-11-07T21:11:00.000-08:00

I dont know but this is my 2 cents game plan to get the economy back on track...First thing the government would need to do is open up those battered places for commercial purpose...redraw the city plan and spur up growth by giving tax incentives to open up new companies, so that the land value goes up and people would start settling down in these places. Either the bank can give the spaces on rent and who says that IT companies cannot be run from within houses when great companies started from garages. When things start rolling fine, all these bad debts may be wiped out as things will look rosy. When jobs sprout up, people feel safer and will loosen their purse to buy more things which in turn crank up money flow into other industries which in turn will keep and create jobs. If only someone comes up with better ideas to stem the rot and reverse the falling economy

India attempts to reach Moon but indians are still bickering

2008-10-21T18:40:00.000-07:00

Its interesting as to how people think and how the environment around one shapes one's viewpoint and perspective. ISRO, the premier indian space agency has one more feather in its cap when it launched Chandrayan today (10/21/2008). Its bettering the art of space technology by gradually moving from one orbital to the next with ease. Its GSLV, PSLV, the commercial launch of satellites of many other countries and carrying multi-payloads and deploying them successfully into space. I still remember when we used to launch INSAT satellites from Kourou in French Guyana and feel a sense of happiness when things went as planned. Dr Vikram Sarabhai would be a happy man today to see ISRO propel itself into space looking for bettering the art of space technology. He was the father of space technology in India and saw the usefulness of going the space way by launching Aryabhatta and successfully sending India's first satellite in space.

Bettering the space technology is the key to understanding our galaxy and probing the space for alternative fuels, reaching out to lands which could be future human settlements. But this is one side of the story and now if you watch the comments from some other lay people whose contribution is Zilch to the nation, one can see the irony of how people are... and have an idea of how weird people are, how weird are their thinking, how ungrateful one is to one's country

Read their comments below
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Succeed ? What has India succeeded at ? To show the world we are late by nearly 4 decades for the moon race ? For a country that has almost a third of its population below the poverty line, is this expense of billions of rupees justified ? We consistently rank close to the bottom on infant mortality, poverty, illitracy and corruption indices. Can India afford missions to the moon ? Could this money have benefitted a much more deserving population of millions ?

Where have our priorities gone ? The rest of world hasn't even batted an eyelid on this apparent "success". What they do look at are images of the starving millions, people ravaged by floods and disease, a nation under siege by its own people. Shouldn't the government be looking to remedy those images, rather than glorify a moon mission that has no palpable benefits ?
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nothing more than to say that we too ran the race!

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The moon was the aam aadmi's roof till date. Now they are going to check out if it is solid or not..... I agree with the sentiments of people expressing their views here. There is no benefit in this 'me too' philosophy. Ground realities must find real solutions. But how??

The 20 to 50 year olds have to start talking solutions -- on cleanliness, sanitation, drainage systems, clean villages, towns and cities, healthy transportation, civic behaviour, work ethics, employment, food, SECURITY and trust of the citizen in the system we seem to have been sucked into. But again, HOW???

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Financial meltdown?

2008-10-09T21:58:00.001-07:00

There is a lot of panic around and i still dont understand as to why one needs to panic. The financial cruch or financial meltdown whatever it is called seems to be virtual and its all in the mind. The herd mentality is killing everything and plunging things into a blackhole. There was a mortgage mess, now a credit crunch situation and finally will lead to recession and finally leading to great depression. There are few things one can do to keep yourself afloat....
1) Just dont assume things and act foolishly
2) Start saving things..small cents add up to a dollar and dollars add up to a million
3) Save on gas...start walking around when you can..use public transport if there is one or car pool
4) Clip coupons and start saving those small cents
5) Buy essential things and spend a tad more than normal to stay healthy.. else your medical bill will creep up.
6) Pay bills on time and keep up your financial health
7) Unemployed? Start something and keep profit margin low so as to make some money and help others cut down their cost.

Perils of being a democratic country

2008-07-20T08:09:00.000-07:00

Democracy is a beautiful thing where in people come to a consensus and is a win-win situation for all. But there is a hidden flaw in this system which can make it a mockery. Consider the present situation where in everyone knows that India will collapse in a few years if drastic steps arent taken to set up power stations to pump in electricity for millions of home and industries. I dont like congress but in this case, they are doing the right thing in signing off a nuclear deal that could help the power situation after 10 to 20 years. But with some senseless people, this deal may not go through and there is every possibility that the government could be toppled. Look at the power equation that is looming large, who is devegowda? who is mayawathi, who are those darn communists to decide on the country's future. These small parties with as less than 5 MPs are calling the shots. Even the sensible BJP is trying to pull down the govt just for the heck of it thus forcing the country to go for another elections and another hung parliament...with the inflation hitting 11% + and oil prices hitting the roof, this election will push up prices and create a sort of hell for the common man. Its high time that an extra constitutional authority is created and they have powers to pass the deal or bills thus subverting these bunch of fools who always take an opposite stand.

Religious Inc

2008-06-03T17:19:00.000-07:00

Marketing deals with playing with consumers' emotions and compelling them to buy the product. If the product is a hit and the demand is greater than supply then the price gouging starts. Now look at this article

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New Delhi: Protests continue in Jammu and Katra for the second day against the decision to charge an entry fee for quick darshans at the Vaishno Devi shrine. The decision to organise paid darshans was taken by the Vaishno Devi Shrine Board on Sunday. Now a traditional mata ki aarti can be organised inside the sanctum sanctorum at Rs 1000. And those who are unwilling to wait in long queue can enter the shrine by paying an entry fee of Rs 500 or Rs 200. This reduces the darshan time by over 50 to 70 per cent.

The critics point out that this would help the affluent class. Facing flak over its decision to introduce paid darshans, the Vaishno Devi Shrine Board stoutly defended its move saying that the new facility was meant for those people who had little time due to their hectic schedules and wanted to complete the pilgrimage at the earliest, a Shrine Board official said.

"The facility is like a tatkal service for devotees who have tight schedules and are keen to offer prayers at the earliest," M K Dwivedi, Additional Chief Executive Officer, told PTI. The facility, introduced on June one, will be limited to 1000 pilgrims per day though 25,000 to 30,000 devotees arrive daily to offer prayers.
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Lately some people have started viewing religion and God as commercial ventures and are playing with emotions and started raking in the moolah. If people refuse to pay and stop going over there, naturally the demand falls down triggering the lowering and abolishment of any fee. Its high time that people who are religious get to know the fact that God is omni present and can be accessible near you :D

Lack of Business Sense

2008-05-28T01:48:00.000-07:00

Just like everyone needs common sense to make a sane decision...a business person must make business sense, a lack of this factor leads to revenue below the maximum possible value. The reason is because of this article...

The prestigious Lahari Recording Company with impressive track record in the last three decades in the audio industry has taken a policy decision. The outside singers should be only 20 percent for the Kannada film audio albums which the Company comes forward to take the rights. The 80 percent of local singers should be there says Mr Thulsiram Naidu alias Velu of Lahari Recording Company. He agrees that the non Kannada singers have flawed in the pronunciation. This should not continue further. The music director and producer should take care of it. The demand of more money for audio film songs is only when good tunes are churned out informed Velu.On the piracy eating away the fruits of hard work Velu said the new government that is coming up in the state would be given a month time to introduce the Anti Goonda Act to tackle the piracy. In case the government does not fulfill the demand we are forced to come to streets he says to fight piracy. We are not asking any subsidy but only enforcement of right law added Velu.

First thing is that this guy doesnt have that business sense at all and as always the fate is a villain which puts these type people on the top. He has no clue of increasing his user base and fetching that extra revenue. If at all these players in audio industry is to keep piracy out & increasing user base and revenue is to follow apple's itune format of selling each song at a price with a low margin, this is the only way they can fight piracy. The trick is to keep the cost so low that the prices are dirt cheap which acts as barriers to pirates. One more thing is that not all songs in an audio CD are a hit, so why not price the hit ones at a premium and keep other songs low, so if someone buys the entire bundle then its attractively priced. Its high time that these audio companies vanish leaving the space for someone with "business sense"

open-flash-chart

2008-05-01T22:43:00.000-07:00

Ruby is getting more slicker and popular. One such example is flash + Ruby combo. I was stunned to see such rich colors and style graphs....I want to thank John Glazebrook for this great offering. So take a minute and have a look at the demo below

Click here to view the Demo

AMD's move will reduce prices?

2008-04-28T14:55:00.000-07:00

AMD is taking a gamble by trying to move up the market in grabbing the major share in the sluggish PC market. AMD's USP is Lower price + Performance against Intel's high priced and brand equity. The PC market is on the saturation curve and its high time some one comes and shake up the curve to get it move up slowly. AMD going in for its own branded PC may be the right way to start penetrating the market and getting noticed. AMD has a great product, has the attractive pricing...its promotion and distribution seems to be the only problem. The only way to shake up the market is to find an alternative operating system and move away from microsoft as each microsoft product adds up a fortune on those systems. But getting a new OS off means fighting against the network externalities enjoyed by microsoft. AMD has solved one part of the problem by squeezing in the price and bringing it a tad down. I had come across one service where the operating system was a stripped down one and all those additional applications were hosted on a remote server and was into some sort of pay per use. I still dont understand why all these damn desktops and laptops come loaded with so many applications which suck up the Ram. The only way to reduce money and make these price elastic consumer turn heads is to make computers similar to TVs and go in for revenue in opening up various e-commerce fronts like movie downloads, internet shopping et al. Thats the only way any price penetrator can take the PC market by storm. It must be similar to mobile phones thing ... give the set at a subsidy and make money on subscriptions in such a way that the subsidy is taken care of and the profit margin is on par with the company's objective. Its high time these computer manufacturers get a way to project computers as a simple but great gadget which is affordable. Atlast if only those people think like me :D

E-ticket

2008-04-28T13:36:00.000-07:00

E-tickets are seen as convenience and is seen as a saver from the issuer viewpoint. But i see it as a pain , the airline company or the travel agency sends out a simple email that contains the e-ticket with details and this inexpensive way helps them squeeze on dollars and cents which is very much needed in this existing competitive domain. But look this by getting into the shoes of the consumer. Its a PAIN when you need to run around looking for a computer connected to the printer. Look at the cost involved ... cost of paper + cost of cartridge ink + cost of electricity + cost of time involved in being a computer literate. if you dont have access to a computer .. you may need to head out to kinkos and print it out. Now add the gasoline cost to it :D

But wont it be good if there is some sort of vending machine near the airport where you just go there and enter your PNR number and swipe your credit card and Voilà .....you get a kind of strip generated with the details as in ATM machine. There will be a transaction cost of $2 per e-ticket which solves everything. Now it would be interesting to see if anyone from the airline or travel agency read this and implement this one...may be move one more step and hire me :D

Are Humans Products too?

2008-04-28T12:55:00.000-07:00

I have the Marketing exam tomorrow and i was going through the product life cycle and was wondering if humans are treated as objects? Just a primer.... A product life cycle begins in the introductory stage where its just released and various advertisements, ,promotions, smart distribution is performed to push the product onto its growth phase. After a while, the product moves towards its maturity stage and finally on decline where all sorts of support systems are gradually pulled out...eventually letting the product line or product model to die. Now carefully evaluate what happens to humans? I can see that it follow a typical classic theoretical theory behind product life cycle.

When one is born, there is so much planning and excitement and slowly you start to plan and prepare yourself to market to the school and to the society to accept you into its fold. You need to prove that you have a competitive advantage and move on with the life, then learn the tricks of trade and market yourself to find a job, to find a bride, to stay on "successful" path...as you reach the maturity level, panic buttons are pushed around to ensure that you dont get to rot in your decline phase. As the decline occurs you are retired off and left to be on the mercy of pension or at the mercy of your kids or dear ones. Now the kids evaluate you and if they think that you are a liability they dont hesitate to act as management in eliminating the product...eliminating as in packing you off to old age homes or abandoned.

What a shame that humans are visualized as products and commodities...now this puts an interesting question as to whether we are the resulting failures of our own smart strategies? I just dont understand as to why aging people become liabilities? why arent they given any attention, what happens to all their life experiences and their intelligence? is it all about money? For a moment i am scared of seeing my own fate in few years soon :D

My New App

2008-04-25T10:08:00.000-07:00

I dont expect my work to be anything path breaking or expect to be a millionaire, its just a small tool to help universities and small business people to save on printer cartridges. Any small save translates to huge savings across the planet and helps reduce the carbon footprint. Anyways here is the summary....

Click on this to view the working

Opportunity/Problem Identification:
When you try to print out a webpage, the main problem is you need to print out those cartridge guzzling banners and images. You can print if you need it but what if you dont need those? Cut pasting the section you need into a word is another crap. Why does anyone want to do that extra stuff? why waste productive time in doing that extra work? This motivated me to look for ways to look for ways to print what one needs.

Features:
A simple toolbar that sits and helps you select what you want in a page and remove all the rest without disturbing the page layout.

Some more stuff to code and also hoping to build something that can help someone spread out the content by positioning them where they want to and then printing it out. Any reaction to this application? :D .... feel free to comment

Kingfisher Airlines

2008-04-19T21:08:00.000-07:00

With due respect to Dr.Vijay Mallya....... my dissection and analysis is as follows

A flamboyant premium airline carrier with pleasing interiors and experience. The inside decked with a TV even on domestic segment and served by young models...errr air hostess. I liked the experience where they offer you a sort of a small bottled lemonade initially and serve you good refreshments after take off and goodies on landing. The goodies in the form of a complimentary carry kit, a pen and some brochure. Well planned so that as the customers carry these around, they act as free advertising agents in starting subliminal perception in others. What i liked the most is a sort of interactive type TV which will help you kill your time. At the end of the journey you are given sort of a survey sheet to give your feedback. Now this isnt good enough as if kingfisher isnt offering any freebies for taking this survey.

I would propose a sort of system where user can interactively put in their answers to certain questions asked on their TV, when they respond to these questions then kingfisher must give them a sort of gift hamper like say Rs 25 or 50 which can be redeemed on their next flight. Here this way kingfisher is getting the data for their marketing research or for customer service evaluation. This is rather priceless as that extra 50 bucks you throw in can only be encashed on their next journey which means they are compelled to travel again on kingfisher. Now if kingfisher is smart enough, they can bring in ads of hotels and other products in-flight where they can rake in ad money to cover up for their ever increasing fuel costs. Interactive ads and local content access like IPL cricket videos is the way to make money by inserting ads for in-flight service.

Customer service is the way to get in the head count, customer service in the form of location access to passengers or finding best possible accommodation and other services to customers could be a way to go as many on the move would like someone taking care of their stuff as they think of better things. A travel on Kingfisher could mean opening up of low cost or discounted offerings at boarding and lodging with alliance partner. Airlines are one of the channels that could be used to fill up hotel rooms.

Last but not the least, the official kingfisher website is a pain as it takes close to 30 seconds to load its 100% content, its loaded with so much of images and flash content that its bringing down the brand equity. Its really a shame that this one would dilute the value of kingfisher in the eyes of internet savvy customers. Too bad ahh that it takes a little bit of money and lot of commonsense to run an internet click model. So if Mallya could read this one, may be he can implement this humble request and offer me a job :D

India taken hostage by some morons

2008-04-18T19:36:00.000-07:00

It causes deep pain and anguish seeing how india is slowly under the control of few morons, who are misusing their power just for their selfishness. Karunanidhi who has become old and was mad from his birth is using his short sightedness to promote his atheism by declaring that Sriram never existed and its a mythology. The indians in india have also become useless as they just listen and comment like me. If only i had the power to do something, i could have shut them down for good. Now if one watches what srilankans are doing, that is promoting Ramayan tourism by highlighting the places and they say that Ramayan was true and Ram did exist. Now you people decide what is true and which side to take.

Part1 ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8JUjRFnL88
Part2 ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_9dwgO_gds
Part3 ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj5nxjlGcS8
Part4 ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIHsZQkCsNs
Part5 ---> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilYDp7vFOuw

Then the recent supreme court judgement regarding the reservation quota for OBC. I mean what kind of a mockery is this? Its like say .... if any english newsreader is making money, the backward castes demand that they be made the newsreader but wont learn english :D I find it amusing to see how confused people are, one side Dr Manmohan singh tells that india is growing and yet to reach full potential, on other side Chidambaram says growth like 8% and other side they allocate things for backward castes, then do some stupid things for minorities. Its high time to switch allegiance to either support india till death by turning a blind eye or quit india enmass

Are we in a zoo?

2008-04-05T18:54:00.001-07:00

This world seems to be a zoo and there are many kinds of strange creatures around. I still cant understand about living beings, especially the human kind. There are all kinds of characters and specimens, some of them get transformed into specimens at the right time and at right place. So that leads us to a situation as to whether an artificial intelligence creature could be created which could blend well with the existing ones. Well one can always create AI machines to mimic some but not all. The reason i call these humans as creatures is because of all these and much more reasons
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PATNA: Mob vigilantism has claimed another victim in Bihar. This time the victim was a vendor, who was lynched simply because he happened to be standing near a printing press.
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Delhi: For a society often seen to reflect a deeply ingrained bias for "fair skin", a Supreme Court ruling sentencing a man to two years in jail for driving his wife to suicide following taunts over her "dark" complexion will serve as both a warning and a mirror to its uglier traits.
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MUMBAI: A traumatized 92-year-old Laxmibai Laxmidas Paleja whispers in Gujarati: "Mane saroo thai javano shrap nai aap (Don't curse me by wishing me health). When I close my eyes to sleep I pray they may never open again." Her wrinkled face and back are battered with bruises, the wound on her hand is bleeding and her swollen eyes bloodshot. Paleja, who has been admitted to Harkisondas Hospital, was bundled into a taxi and dumped in her daughter's home at Opera House on April 1.
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AHMEDABAD: The Gujarat government has finally shown how much it cares for its girls. The man, GN Chaudhari, who was at the root of the rot in the DIET-PTC Patan, which culminated in the gangrape of a Dalit girl, was transferred from DIET Mehsana on Saturday — not because of the gangrape, but for allowing a casteist slur against Dalits to be published eight times in a chapter of a book edited by him!
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MUMBAI: Nineteen-year-old Gwendolyn Naronha, who allegedly hired two youths to throw acid on her 18-year-old boyfriend, attempted suicide by slashing her left wrist with a blade at her lawyer's chamber in Fort on Saturday morning.

There are many more things which goes on and will go on in the future. This kind of puts one in a thinking situation as to whether you must live a recluse life or find ways to solve these problems created by few morons

who is the winner? IPL or ICL - A detailed Analysis

2008-04-02T20:10:00.000-07:00

Cricket has become a circus thanks to 20-20 and the audience have become monkeys watching too much of circus cricket. Lets do an analysis and see who gets what....

ICL started this concept of taking advantage of 20-20 and subash chandra being a shrewd businessman is taking advantage of the popularity of this format of cricket, so three cheers for his group. He is the clear winner as he own the Zee network and in a way he may use this cricket as a filler for his channel's time slots, thus raking in big time moolah. He hired key members like kapil and Dean jones thus making sure that cricket is run by right people who have played cricket before. This way he is making extra revenue by owning the teams as well as fixing price on the advertisement ...be it on the ground or on the television. So each time ICL makes a news headline, the Zee's name is in news thats great publicity. He hired key players who are on the verge of retirement or who have retired. That way he can peg the price down as its his advantage, then these experienced players are also benefited that they make money at the fag end of their life. This one is also giving ranji players or others who couldnt make it to national team a chance to rub shoulders with stalwarts and have a wonderful after life. So Zee is winner all the way as it owns the team, it paid less signing amounts, managed to fill its time slot on Zee network and as well as rake in advertisement money on matches & on the player clothes.

Now comes in BCCI's IPL, they are big time losers as they tried every trick to keep ICL away as they would get nothing from such a venture. So they started applying rules and regulations and the funny part is no one questioned. They denied key playgrounds for ICL, they forced other cricket boards to ban players who sign up with ICL. This happened for only reason that Sharad Pawar is a minister in union govt as well as CEO of BCCI with major clout in ICC. But they are also winners in a way that they can rake in money auctioning players, auctioning franchisee and on advertisements, they can also sell the exclusive rights to any channel and get big time money. But imagine if all these unlawful practices are removed, they wouldnt get a cent. So thats how the world is, its a dog eat dog world.

Now comes the people who purchased franchisee from BBCI...the likes of shahrukh, priety etc. Anyways bollywood has lost its shine as evident from the fact that the movies are all sub-standard and they are using abusive dialogues, exposing etc to stay in the race. So it makes sense that some bollywood people have picked up stakes in this. So they are winner in a way. The players who have signed up for this one are also winners in a way that they are making extra money and having fun.

Next comes the advertisers for these matches, they are advertising or marketing their wares, what could be the better way to reach so many consumers if not this one? When your favourite players are playing, its natural that you sit up and watch, as u watch you are exposed to so many brands and their messages. So be it matches or serials or movies, the companies will advertise no matter what.

The sole losers are the people. First thing is they are having too much fun and doing too less work which means that the man hours of the country will go to hell, that means lower GDP....too much expenditure on electricity, food and shopping after watching all those advertisements. So am i wrong in this analysis?

Motorola + VideoCon = MotoCon?

2008-04-02T12:22:00.000-07:00

Videocon the consumer electronic king in india is on the prowl to pounce on motorola's mobile-handset business. Dhoot run videocon is going a long way to get into another lucrative market where consumers in india dont mind splurging money on fancy hi-tech mobile handsets. If one sees the strategy of videocon, it all started with buying out obsolete technology in developed countries and started churning out affordable consumer electronics good and offering it to india's largest market segment - The Great Indian Middle class. Videocon's goods used to come cheap which meant if one is looking for the functioning aspect, the goods worked well but if and only if someone wanted to compromise on the quality. Slowly videocon started transforming its image from cheap borrowed technology to hi-tech one and it makes sense to go in for a kill when motorola is struggling in the handset business after apple brought out its slick model for rich and high end middle class in US, then nokia putting the punch on its face that motorola need to get back to its core electronic business as handset business doesnt have that much margin per set if you dont sell volumes. Now with videocon taking on this business, this would mean cheaper slick handsets affordable to middle class and low class as the mobile service is penetrating deep below. Mobile phones have moved towards consumer electronics as its no longer a gadget for techies.

Another mess - Culprit Humans

2008-04-01T11:01:00.000-07:00

we have made enough mess as of now ... be it global warming, plastic menace, depleting non-renewal resources etc. There are a lot of man made problems and fewer man made marvelous technology. Lets start with gasoline, petroleum has been used and abused like anything before, each by-product of petroleum is utilized fully and the cost of this is global warming leading to unseasonal temperature changes, a threat to ocean resources and finally funding the middle east. Now there is a kind of alarm which is ringing and people are sitting up and thinking hard. It is mainly due to the fact that oil is a scarce commodity which translates to price gouging and results in increase in costs of anything and everything. So all these bunch of smart guys came up with ethanol, a hydrocarbon substitute which could be added in small quantities to gasoline to bring costs low. Does it bring costs low? i dont know but those ethanol pumps displays prices more or less equal to 100% gasoline. Now the major problem is ethanol produced from corn, all these farmers are sensing fortunes in growing corn and have an opportunity to become ethanol barons sooner or latter. Its a good thing that we are less dependent on petroleum as we grow renewable corn but the thing is as farmers grow more of corn than wheat or other things, there is a danger of compromising food stocks in favor of money obtained from corn based ethanol. This will be a grave problem unless government comes up and says that all ethanol could be produced from by-products of edible crops meaning you need to get the food out and the wastage after this must be the fodder for ethanol. So why cant people get into solar or human energy rather than on hydro carbons? Can they just invest in technology that can break bonds in plastics and convert them into hydrocarbons? why cant anyone think of technology to break down freely available water into hydrogen which can be a wonderful source of energy as its combustion with oxygen is water water and water. Pure water can become the solution to water scarcity.

Bullshit tax laws

2008-03-28T16:38:00.000-07:00

I know that if i ever run for a public post, i can win by a comfortable majority....provided the voters have commonsense. Most of the elections are farce, they call it democratic and yet when illiterates creep into the system, the outcome is obvious. So lets not go in that direction...my point is about senseless tax laws. I still dont get it as to why they say income tax and the income after tax is again taxed when you buy things. I mean does it make sense at all? and if i ask people around they start lecturing me about income tax going to federal/central govt and sales tax going to state. I am not that dumb to understand the existing system. I have gone through the pain of studying civics along with history. I still dont get it as to what can u do knowing history....and on a lighter side --> The history repeats and hence there is no need to understand and remember history :D

Knowing history can only make you a popat...popat=Parrot in hindi, you can be a good popat when you have history at your tongue tip and can win you admirers when exact dates and events are narrated. Back to taxes, doesnt it make sense to issue a kind of tax card which you can use it to avoid paying sales tax? you must have a kind of photo id which also contains tax information, if the records on swipe shows that you have already paid tax then you need not be charged sales tax on the already taxed income. So if there are some who are avoiding taxes then sales tax could be collected on purchase. This system sounds sane to me rather than the existing one. if i stand in the election and if i win, then i will bring in these new tax laws.

I also dont understand the concept of political morons going for more taxes to rich, i mean some people are rich as they work hard, they provide jobs for others. So why penalize them for working 20+ hours a day and working under pressure? For someone gone through 16+ years of schooling and 10+yrs of industrial exp is bound to start a company and any company exists for profits. There isnt any company that is social company, the only social company i know of is the company you get when you booze :D. So if someone is not rich then blame it on fate and blame it on the laziness factor. Vote me and i will put an end to this crap

The Dog menace

2008-03-28T13:22:00.001-07:00

I just hate the pets, i dont even want to use the word "dont like" instead of hate. I really dont think that a human is not developed much to take care of himself or herself, how can he or she take care of another soul == Pets. The most common pet i hate is the dog, i dont know but i hate them for a reason. I am confused whether to hate them or the people who own them. Anyways the owners of the dog are dogs and their dogs are much worse when they show off their owner's ego. I have come across dogs who wont bark at rich and good looking people but will give out a bark or two if it someone shabby looking moves across them. Atleast in bangalore, i know the ground reality where there are three kinds of dogs- The real dog, The stray dog and the bloody humans who own these dogs. The stray dog can be given a 9.0 as they keep chasing you in packs, trying to bite and cause harm, no idea why they do that way. If you are brave enough, try to walk on the streets after 9 pm and one will know what i am talking of, these stray dogs dont care and have no respect for human laws :D, they just chase 4 wheelers, 2 wheelers, old guys who go for a walk, kids, middle aged folks....in short they dont care about gender, race or caste. The real dog gets a 5.0 as they are OK but again they can drive you to nuts with their constant barking all 24 X 7. The human dogs who own these dogs can be given a scale of 10.0, they are the worst of the kind who just own dogs as status symbol, as an arrogant symbol of themselves. These people are the real culprits who throw away their dogs once they think their dog has become a liability, these dogs then go on streets and breed to raise the street-mad-dog-stray dogs. Whatever people think of me, i dont care....my outburst is justified by this article.....

While things have returned to normal after a Kingfisher Airlines aircraft on Thursday hit a dog on the runway at the Bangalore Airport during its takeoff , urgent measures are being taken to contain the animal menace on the runway. Dog catching squad at the old airport in Bangalore on Friday rounded up stray dogs in the airport’s vicinity. Several passengers were stranded after the accident caused the Hyderabad-bound plane's nose landing gear to collapse. “It is most unfortunate that the dog menace at Airports in India still persists and that an incident occurred today in Bangalore," Chairman and CEO Kingfisher Airlines Vijay Mallya said in a statement issued to the media soon after the accident.

I think all those animal activists like menaka gandhi et al must sit up and ponder over their support for these dogs. I still remember that menaka gandhi was the culprit who rein gave a free rein of terror for these dogs to openly flout all human made laws and charter the unwritten constitution way :D ... Well no offense meant but i still hate the dogs.

Mobile Phones players fighting for 2nd spot

2008-03-24T19:53:00.000-07:00

Gone are the days when Motorola commanded first place, its probably behind sony ericsson and samsung. Apple with its pleasant UI has taken the first position. But the cost is the worrying factor there. Now the only way for the other players to give apple a run for money is to get into accessory and service businesses which could tie it up with their own product. The main factors/features one looks for is cost, weight, dimensions and misc features...may be not in the same order. But there is one more domain ---> Sophisticated Accessories and services. No one has entered the business of content rental, no one has come up with a virtual screen which could give the same effect as a TV. Again no one listens to me when i speak out, too bad that they cant hire me to go ahead in the wild race :(

My take will be sophisticated accessories, i had the tiny screen and its high time. I had worked for a proposal to create foldable screens for mobiles, so that user need not use scroll features, but i really liked the arrival of swivel screen which could be either positioned horizontal or vertical, but the main problem with this one is that it adds dimensions. The foldables or swivels or sliders makes the mobiles thicker, its weight goes up if you use traditional materials, if you go for lighter ones then the cost goes up. I had seen some kind of a glasses way back few years ago which had the capability of projecting images in front of the eyes that gives the same effect as a big screen. Now i dont know whats the problems with that kind of technology, all one needs to do is integrate that technology into accessories where you wear those glasses and can instantly view a lot of data rather than using scrolls. As its the time for mobile TV or mobile movies, its high time such technology could get back motorola or sony back in business by going in for this hi-def glasses that could convert watching content on mobile phones a pleasant experience. The only problem with the downloadable media content is the waste of air time, wont it be great to allow rental concept of those clips for prices as low as itune songs? All one needs to do is go to a vending machine like kiosk, flash their phone to instantly download contents via a cable or add on cards, the charges would be billed to their accounts. Save on airtime, save on money and buy those super glasses to enjoy the content. Hmmm as usual, its for those ambitious players to take this idea to next level and get on to grab the first position!!!! and its just that i am helpless and hopeless to push such things because of money constraints :'(

Can Accessory

2008-03-24T18:23:00.000-07:00

Sometimes its so ridiculous to buy a can of soda and have to drink it in a jiffy.. if u dont follow this process then the soda is so unpalatable if taken in small sips over a period of time. Some may argue that for a small price, 40 cents at walmart and 70 cents in univ vending machines, dont matter much. But i fail to agree to this argument of low price products must be consumed in a short span of time. I would agree to this argument if and only if the time frame is like a month or year. But come on u just dont drink it off in a minute or 5 minutes. The problem is that the chilled cola soda tastes better and is lot for refreshing than a un-fizz, warm or room temperature cola and another problem is that for the money paid, you dont get to finish off all the traces in the can. So i was thinking a way to solve this problem so that the soda's life time out of refrigeration is atleast a decent 2 to 5 hours. Just imagine you are in a marathon meeting and need to sip little quantities rather than leave the room twice or thrice.

Now look at my proposed small accessory, its a straw with a bent bottom to suck up all those tiny itsy bitsy droplets. The top has a lid to keep all the fizz back in the can, then a rubber stopper to clamp down at the can opening. This will atleast keep the fizz inside, now the option to keep the can losing out its cold temperature is to have a foamy insulated material that can form as a sort of a gripper and as an insulated material. If these accessories could be priced around a dollar .... straw and gripper, then i think it would sell well and also help slow-sippy soda enjoyer like me to get the quality for my money. Any takers around for this one? if so leave a comment.

In Rome be a Roman

2008-03-21T10:42:00.000-07:00

This proverb---"In Rome be a Roman", is quiet true in a lot of cases. But i dont understand the ethics and crap that is enforced by the governments. The latest to be in the news is Alcoa, the 3rd largest third aluminum producer in the world. Lately its under fire from the justice department over allegations the company bribed officials in Bahrain in an effort to obtain business. This is what happens in almost all the asian countries. Never knew its happening in the middle east too. I dont see a logic as to why US justice dept is after Alcoa. Its between the company and bahrain government and if corruption thrives in their kingdom, they better go after their own corrupt officials and not after this company. If the company tries to be a saint and follows all the rules then it better shut down its door on day 1 as they will go nowhere. Let them come to india and use the saintly characteristics and approach the government keeping in mind all the rules and regulations. It will be a joke and i will have the last laugh!!! Its high time they enforce this proverb legally and define that its ok to be unethical outside as long as the "unwritten law" of the land is followed :D

Next step for animation companies

2008-03-21T10:24:00.000-07:00

There has been mushrooming of animation companies in india after some of them got big projects from the US. Some had luck in minting money like sahara tried its hand in hanuman and return of hanuman, greengold making it big with krishna series and now venturing into bheem and other cartoon. Krishna got a slot on CartoonNetwork and was an instant hit. But somehow these people arent as business oriented as US companies which creates a brand out of the cartoon. Just visit ToysRus and you can see so many toys based on these cartoon themes...be it raichu or pokemon or starwars or spongebob. Many of movies are spin out as money making games, its high time these animation studios start building their own line of cartoons and project it to the west. Instead of guns and violence, some can put in hanuman and say that this cartoon beats the raakshas thus moving the kids away from reality. What happens when you play Grand Theft et al is that things are so close to reality that one gets tendency to get violent and even grab a gun to release your anger. But with cartoons like Krishna or hanuman, there may not be tendency to get violent as these raakshas wont have even the closest similarity to humans :D . I had written to greengold to venture in this but no reply ... they seem to be like any other company. Sometimes you need to listen to the market and end users as to what they need. so a good relations is needed to get the inner vibes of the market. If only i had that kind of money ... i could have done the impossible. But again I still have time to strike it rich

This happens if you dont identify the problem

2008-03-21T01:35:00.000-07:00

I have seen that india is the most democratic county when it comes to spitting paan in public or urinating in public. The govt of karnataka has this scheme of getting after the violators by photographing them and levying a fine, but the corrupt cops pocketed the money and things went no where. Now did any person identify the cause at all? why is it that people are doing this? But look at what ghaziabad administration has come up with?

Men treating walls as public toilets is a common problem across this country, but Ghaziabad administration has come up with a unique solution. Fed up with the men treating city walls as public toilets, the city administration has installed mirrors on the walls with the slogan "What you do, the world sees" inscribed alongside. The move is aimed at all those who see a dry wall and feel it's their duty to wet it. The idea is to let people reflect on their wrong doings and broadcast their acts live to passersbys.

This is just sheer nonsense, i dont know who came up with this crappy idea? no one whether sane or insane likes to urinate in public. Its just that they dont find public restrooms or even if they find one, its so filthy that the urine is cleaner than the restroom itself. Atleast in the US, all these eat outs or gas stations have public restrooms and in a way no one urinates in public. Its high time that the govt constructs public restrooms at certain distance and look at the results...rather than putting a mirror. My God!! i dont know who came up with this idea. If a state is ruled by a @#$#^#*@&@ like mayavathi, whatelse can you expect? Everything is a maya/illusion and one must just close one's eyes, one's nose when you cross the streets.

Search Engine Market

2008-03-20T19:17:00.000-07:00

One of my friend was telling as to how there is lot of space in the search engine market and its up for grabs. Too much money in this domain that there has been mushrooming of companies around. Antya.com is one such engine which uses the human powered search. My friend was telling about the complexities in the current times where the web is growing like crazy and how relevancy will help taking the market share. My question to him was simple..what do u get from indexing and displaying results? i mean how does the revenue come in if its not for adsense type model. Lately there has been lot of talk about adsense losing its cutting edge with revenues taking a hit. My take on searches is this, do a category based search ...like say product search or people search etc. So its this is hard, i would propose this model where when users key in the search words, you prompt them to select the combo words along with the keywords like say ... if the user types in apple, you instantly recognize apple as apple+fruit, apple+juice, apple+company etc, so if the user says never mind and searches then show him all those results, if they want to narrow down the search then they better select these combo words which will make things easier and precise. Or it must be categorized as say who is searching for what. say a techie is looking for apple computers, he will obviously look for apple computers and not apple juice, if a health freak is searching for apple then its either the fruit or the juice. so it would be handy to know the person well before displaying results. Its a big pain to index million sites with spams and crap. Another model could be to do like a wikipedia where you stream all those data or links to a specific thing ...... like say apple will mean fruit and there is only one apple fruit, if its a company then there is only one apple company. so all those data on the web could be channelized to point to this thing. Unless someone does these, search engines wont be efficient and user friendly.

pizzas cost a lot :(

2008-03-19T17:08:00.000-07:00

Was shocked to see that prices of pizza are on the rise...blame it on the economy. The dollars falling which is putting a stop on the purchasing power of the consumer. But the main culprit is the cost of wheat, wheat prices are shooting up so fast due to the fact that importing wheat is costing a lot..so its not the pizza alone but bread and baked products will keep rising it. Now that keeps me off subway too, too bad its happening when it must not happen. But others are blaming on low supplies from australia as imports are hit for crop failures. Oil prices are rising which increases transportation costs, job cuts and cuts on budget is putting a tight lid on money flow in the economy. Then the farmers are growing on corn in lands which used to grow wheat once upon a time. All these factors and many more are putting people in tight spot. As they say that "all difficulties come in flocks"...too bad when i am struggling to get rich :(

What a shame!

2008-03-19T07:46:00.000-07:00

There is a saying which goes like "a guest is like a god", but in taslima's case the government treated her worse to a criminal. I dont know why the current government is so shy at taking right decisions. It always has this shaky feet and is so scared to move forward but surprisingly it ca step backward with ease. Taslima's case is like a muslim VS muslim, and the government which calls itself secular [needs to either change meaning of secular or must understand what is secular] was caught in the wrong foot, if it was majority VS minority, its easy for the govt to gag the majority and pander to minority. I really dont think that Taslima crossed the line anywhere as long as she was in india, she was heckled wherever she went and i saw that video report where some fundamentalist moron threw slippers at her in a public meeting and it was shown repeatedly on the news channel but even to date no action is taken. Its a real shame that these so called govt representatives ... be it ruling or opposition has spolit our cultural image by resorting to vote bank politics. I really look forward to military rule in india where whatever religion you want to practice ...must be limited to your personal space. It was sad to hear what Taslima said when she left to an unknown destination

"I was put under tremendous stress but I could not speak out as I was under their (government) surveillance and could be harassed by them," she said in a choked voice from the British capital. "The government (Indian) is no better than religious fundamentalists," she said. Nasreen said she used to call the government safe-house in Delhi where she was put up as the "torture chamber". "I gradually came to realise that it was the chamber of death instead," Taslima said, adding she was forced to leave India because of "extreme stress" that she went through the last four months"

Now what is to be seen is whether they treat Dalai Lama the same way as her if china requested dalai to be put on gag?

is it worth holding an indian passport?

2008-03-18T08:48:00.000-07:00

It looks as if you are better off if you are citizen of some other country. Its really an handicap being a citizen of india and holding an indian passport, i landed in singapore and the immigration refused to give me a transit visa since i was an indian citizen with indian passport. I wanted that visa so that i can roam around the city and kill time. i had the next connecting flight 8hrs later and all i could do was sit around for a few minutes before i noticed singapore tourism booth which offered bus rides on condition that you surrender your passport. Land in the middle east and you are treated as junk, the airport officials are rarely helpful and dont give you proper directions, on the contrary they yell at you for no reason, even if you are standing to get clearance for transit visa...an arab is given higher preference compared to you. I also saw many indians working hard to earn something to send some money back home so that their folks get a good life. Its a real shame that India talks of getting the global edge and is moving towards being a global power. Its light years away to taking that position. From being one of the earliest of the civilizations, its has let go that leading edge. If one looks at the united states, they always stand behind their citizens where-ever they are, they are looked after so well that any harm to its citizens keeps US on the move and they will get them out ... no matter what. Now lets shift to our own position. In malaysia, when our own citizens asked for a backing, india kept mum ... i dont know for what reason, now look at Sarabjit Singh case where india is not even making any effort to save someone who suffered just for his country's well being. if Sarabjit is a spy then he took that path to serve the country and undergoing the pain and suffering. It is really ungrateful on india's part in not doing anything to repay anything, They dont even treat his parents well when they go to seek audience with the govt officials. Now do u think after this incident and many more like these..anyone will actually have the same nationalism and bonding? It took kashmir singh so much time to get out of the jail and he was given media attention for a day or so and he is nowhere on the news. Countless people have so much love and respect for the country but its not getting translated into anything worth. All the people over there come out in droves to have glimpse of our movie stars, they have so much admiration for cricket stars but have no respect and admiration for these unsung heroes. Its a real shame that being an indian citizen means nothing at all, the country doesnt even send commandos to rescue these folks stranded in a foreign country, they dont do a thing to save this guy who loved his country so much that he took the job of a spy. I dont know how those govt officials and minsters can have a night's sleep when that person is rotting in the jail facing all those humiliations and seeing his imminent death. Indian govt gives out a call to all NRI's to take up positions in DRDO and help build cutting edge technology? so i am asking this question to the reader of this blog .... "is it anything at all being an indian citizen and holding an indian passport?"

Things lose value over time

2008-03-17T19:16:00.000-07:00

Recently heard someone narrate a news about how some young kid publicized his suicide and recorded that and streamed it on youtube. Its pathetic to see how people chose the wrong option to get out of the mess they have created themselves. Earlier, people would become kamikaze and sacrifice their life for the country. Japanese bettered this art by driving their planes straight into enemy front lines. There were thousands of unknown female folks who committed suicide when mughals attacked the rajput kingdoms. The current day folks seem to think that they are under a lot of pressure and the only way out is to give up one's life. Loving a girl...that too one sided... which often ends in failure leads genY to commit suicides. Some feel that the family, peer pressures are too high a value to undergo the torture. Freedom fighters in india's pre-independence era faced so much of torture that they didnt commit suicide, instead they bare their chest to drive the brits out. So the genY doesnt read these and understand things? But i am shell shocked to see all these things like if you dont spend money on these things then you are viewed as some low creature, or if you dont move around in a car then no girl will fall for you, or if you dont take in drugs then you wont be allowed into socializing parties.... strange indeed that people call these pressures in life :O

The great Indian Dilemma

2008-03-17T17:32:00.001-07:00

India is always in the news for the wrong reasons. Sometimes i do feel pity...thats a rare exception though. India is land locked and is always in trouble whether it sides with one party or remains neutral. Lets take it case by case
1) Pakistan is a pain in the neck....they push problems in but if you try to stop that then the muslims within try to voice their anger. If the govt doesnt take any action then the opposition and the hindus are up in arms.
2) LTTE is another pain in the neck...you support the sri lankans and the tamilnadu politicians are up in arms threatening to pull the government down. if you openly support LTTE then sri lanka allows ISI and terror outfits to operate on its soil.
3) if you try to remain neutral on nepal, the nepalis begin to point fingers so we have to side with them as its another launch pad for the terror outfits.
4) Bangladesh is another headache as they also try to push in terror outfits and anything you do is detrimental to india.
5) you try to support afghans then pakistan starts to be belligerent towards india.
6) Try iran for our oil needs, the US comes in accusing india of helping a country which is on the axis of evil and threaten sanctions.
7) Move towards the US, the left parties threaten to pull the government and they force india to be friendly with china and russia.
8) Try pandering to china, dalai lama's issue is on the front page. switch sides to support Dalai then china will send things to pakistan.
9) show india is a secular country by support muslims and in turn palestine then israel wont help you in selling hi tech goods.

Now tibet is burning and i find it amusing as to why tibetians who are known for their patience and non violence is resorting to riots and burning? why at this time when olympics is about to start in china. Is it a ploy to push tibetian cause on the world stage? Who is behind the plot? China was minding its business and was rapidly expanding economically and now would some people who are jealous let china to go the way it want to? I doubt that...but again china is no saint as evident from events that has taken place in the past. China has this habit of assuming tibet belongs to them, arunachal pradesh belongs to them, snatched macau and hong kong already, was gifted part of kashmir by pakistan. In 100 years the chinese many claim that india belongs to them. Thats the headache and only way to go about is go on offensive and take responsible role and not be bogged down. Its an opportunity for india to go offensive and force a peace on warring factions and eliminate trouble makers. But for now, india has to do what US is doing for taiwan in protecting Tibet militarily and economically hook or crook. If india fails to do anything then arunachal will go china's way and dont know how many more places. The left parties are mum too and they dont care of what happens to monks but would spring up if something happened to muslims in gujarat. As of now all eyes on the Dalai and his tibet, this time will buddha smile again?

Do Not Disturb

2008-03-17T13:43:00.000-07:00

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Monday notified its decision to fine cellphone operators for failing to act against pesky telemarketers harassing subscribers listed on the National Do Not Call Registry (NDNCR). Now isnt that an opportunity to turn tables? All one needs to do is .. call up listen to the advertisements and promotions to earn minutes free or lower your bills if and only if you allow telemarketers to call u up, listen to ads for a month while you earn free SMS. This is an opportunity for them to go for a kill. To keep tabs on smart people, one must implement a sort of a system like....say someone calls to hear the ad but the general tendency is to call up and keep the phone away so that they dont need to listen to the ad, but if one implements a thing like.....put on random interactive thing where the voice on the other end will say "please enter 5 to continue" at random times, so a person needs to hear to that to do as instructed and once the ad promotion is completed, minutes are added to your account. Isnt that a brilliant idea? ah come on just compliment me once.

Toys R Us

2008-03-15T23:29:00.000-07:00

My friend will be leaving to india for a vacation and he wanted to shop for toys to give it as present to his nephew and niece. I had gone along with him to Toys R Us and i was shocked for a moment to see all those toys in that hugeeeee shop. There were so many sections each lined up with that particular cartoon character...be it kermit or starwars characters, dino, pokemon, raichu, mickey, donald etc etc etc. When i was a kid i had this bad habit of pulling down the parts of my toys, just that curiosity to know whats going on inside and why that toy acted that way. Most of the toys i had were cars, helicopter with a key, hot wheels car, electronic toys...never were those cars or toys in that place, it was full of toys...be it dolls, remote controlled cars, helicopters, toy guns which sprays sponge pellets or soft balls, starwars toys, lego ones, talking toys, toy computers..wow, so many and for a moment i was stunned and stood there admiring those hi tech toys with only thing running in my mind..."come on tear that open and look into the mechanics behind it"..but whatever it is..ToysRUs rocks big time and i just want to grow younger to check each and every toy and enjoy every moment, too bad its not possible :(

India's Jockshock

2008-03-14T21:32:00.000-07:00

Jock=Short form of Disc Jockey
Jock Shock= A Disc Jockey who shocks
I used to listen to his voice on Anil Ki Aawaz and whenever he used to be on air, the program would start with .... this is u r host "Anillllll Srivatsaaaa". Anil was one of the early internet radio pioneers...with a degree in media and communications plus his shocking taboo talks/topics helped build his fans and non-fans aka people who liked to hate him. He moved onto television for a short stint in ImagineAsiaTV and then moved back to india to become a COO for Radio Today's FM. I was expecting him to do something again and he proved it by starting an FM-MeowFM - "Just for Women" Radio station. Never knew women had patience to listen to radio as i know them to have liking to shopping, making trips to beauty parlours, gossips et al, but a radio station for these ppl? or may be that indian women folks have changed over the century. His radio seems to be as popular as any other TV serial :D or wait is it because of Anil's magnetic personality? eh? His popularity is evident from the fact that he has 3 profiles as orkut has a limit on the number of friends. Whoever wrote/write offs radio as an obsolete must look up and anil who bring in innovative things to keep things afloat.

Animations in India

2008-03-14T07:39:00.000-07:00

Founded in 2001 and fast forward to 2008 equals recognition and rapid growth. I still remember those boring cartoon on doordashan....especially those indian made ones, even sometimes the russian imported ones seemed better. I would always look out for disney cartoon on sundat mornings, but the villain always was Karnataka Electricity Board. They are the worst run corporation I have ever come across with rampant load shedding especially on sunday mornings. Anyways its 2008 now, 32 years have passed by without any change in the attitude of Electricity supply board but a lot has changed in the animation industry. A decade ago, Pentamedia of pentafour fame used be in the limelight but now i think greengold is leading the way along with Silver Line. Silver line is famous for its hanuman range backed by sahara one group. Hanuman is a decent one with the first one related to the actual story and after building the brand image, Hanuman returns had an innovative story line with good adaptation. But green gold is offering various cartoons and the most important being the ability to capture a timeslot on Cartoon Network which has the largest kid following. The winning quality with greengold is the depiction of expressions on Krishna's face. It looks realistic and has a great potential if they could iconify or copyright those faces and spin off into a sort of toys and dolls offerings. The merchandise value for such things runs high and wonder why greengold isnt thinking of those. Another biggest market is the games market with huge potential to rapidly expand. Sometimes i feel why indians not as shrewd as the americans. Disney has built a hugggggeee fortune in mickey, donald et al characters and its high time these animation people get the games out and flood the indian and overseas market. For $100 a pop, there would be no need to go for an IPO. Second strategy used by greengold is opening up training classes, this will help increase interests of people and show the way for better and better quality cartoons. But no one has come close to pixar yet, but its time that indian ones will go for the kill sooner or later, there is a huge talent base in india but lack of knowledge or fear of not being an engg or doctor is the only factor that is blocking the careers of 1000s of people in the field of animation. I hope greengold thinks of ways to start a sort of cult following for krishna et al cartoons.

The world is a stage and .......

2008-03-13T09:03:00.000-07:00

There is a saying that goes like "World is a stage where you need to act and get through with life"...but lately it wouldnt be improper to say "World is a stage which is seized by morons and you need to tolerate these junk". I dont know why nature isnt proceeding towards adaptation in line with Darwin's theory. Man is killing the nature hence nature has stopped refining him into a better being? No idea what is happening. i was shocked at this news report which is ridiculous.

MUMBAI: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, India (PETA) on Thursday filed a notice against Hindustan Petroleum and Indian Oil Corporation Ltd before a committee monitoring animal welfare laws in Maharashtra. The dealers of these companies have been using bullocks to pull heavy kerosene tankers through the streets of Mumbai in violation of law. In its application the NGO says its volunteers had been "watching with concern the unfortunate plight of the bullocks used to draw kerosene tankers in Mumbai". Read it further here

I dont know why PETA exists in first place. If you closely monitor who join such things, 99% of the members are there just for publicity and most of them use this as a sort of platform to get popular or push their agenda. If i were in the media business, i would do a sting operation in exposing their double standards. I bet many of them are hypocrites....meaning they are good at preaching and fall sick when they put things into practice...simple example would be some of the members may be meat eaters...the reason they might get when caught would be "well this chicken or goat was killed ethically". Then there are some more who oppose street dog's termination must be allowed to stay on streets, then they will know the menace of street dogs, how they attack people who dare to go on streets at night. I bet 99% of PETA members would be violating their own norms, like drinking milk or coffee or tea with a dash of milk...Same is the case with green peace, narmada andolan etc etc..all these NGOs are politically backed and they are like a tool to fulfil someone's wants. Its really sad that we have to tolerate all these kinds of specimens.

PS: I am pure vegetarian who have been this way all my life. so if someone thinks that i am pushing the agenda of benefits of meat eating then they are way off the target. i always see any living being as a living being just like us, everything has a soul and treating them bad is a big No No, so if these organizations are cleaned off publicity seekers then world will be a better place

DRDO turns to NRIs to reverse brain drain!!

2008-03-12T23:05:00.000-07:00

Wohooo so DRDO finally gets up to honor those who got honored in America? Good O Lord, atleast they are making an effort...Times of India for a change has put this news on front page, they have sacrificed a lot by providing some space for this news. All one can see on times of india is some adult news, some adult pics on the top right or some NRI news. Anyways the article says
"The scheme for NRIs, though still in its infancy, has already netted at least 40 PhDs and MTechs working in academics or industry in countries like US, UK, Japan and Sweden. We are intensifying the drive. In 2007 alone, we received 150 applications from NRI scientists and engineers and finally picked up 22. The number of applicants is increasing, with the majority coming from US," a top DRDO scientist told TOI on Wednesday. NRIs in the 35 to 45 age-group, having worked abroad for 10 or more years, have enough buffer money. If they want to come back to their kith and kin, we can provide them with job satisfaction," said a senior DRDO official. "We also give value in terms of accommodation, working environment and facilities in our labs, health benefits, pension and the like," he added. Then, of course, DRDO has demanded a ‘performance-based incentive package’ for scientists, over and above the revision in salaries, from the 6th Pay Commission. This includes proposals like a Rs 10,000 award for every patent being filed or a paper being published in a reputed journal, as also a ‘technology-transfer fee’ for every lab-to-industry transfer. DRDO scientists say Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself has promised to them that careers in science will be made ‘more attractive from all perspectives’ to stem brain drain."

First mistake they are doing is this, opening up quotas for minorities and throwing us out. Corruption taking the toll, IT misused left and right, when priority is given to IT and rural ... who damn cares about innovation and science? The way DRDO has treated my dad for his service, I wouldnt dare go and act as if nothing happened. Wouldnt go even if they paid me in dollars and gave me free rein or independent research status. The thing is India is a great country but i dont like the ways some goons are running my home country. Second thing is why cant they go the easy route of paying russians or the americans money and get the best weapons? ... in a way this is more profitable as there is a way to get kickbacks and pocket tax payers money!!!

Walmart will stock Bollywood DVDs

2008-03-12T22:54:00.000-07:00

Bollywood movies at walmart in US and cannada? Yesss its possible now thanks to a tie-up between Eros and Walmart. Is there so much craze for bollywood recent substandard script that walmart is willing to lend its valuable shelf space to Eros? One can get latest DVDs at desi stores for around $1-$3 a DVD, will eros try to flood walmart with $16 DVDs which would interest many americans? I doubt it, americans will probably get confused seeing a rip off of hollywood's movies in strange language and with interesting endings :D

Even if its an oscar winning movie, i wouldnt pay $16 and keep a copy as something like some Holy Grail. I dont know why people keep collections.... is it for some sinister ulterior motive of selling off at a kill after 100 yrs? When you watch a movie and you know what it is about and how it ends, there is no fun at all in keeping a copy to be watched after 10 years unless its some dirty A movie. I really dont see things getting sold like hot cakes for $16, if its priced around $3 there is a probability that the desi crowd would go for it.

ICL + IPL + Cricket = Circus

2008-03-12T22:38:00.000-07:00

The circus is back in town in a new form....20/20 the shortest form of the game. The hype is so much that it has brought in bollywood, BCCI, Zee together and has made the players too costly. One thing what we dont know is whether these tamasha matches are more or less like scripted soap opera? The players are given hefty salaries to play their part and keep the crowd enthralled? is the betting cartel opening up new ways to make money? Are they trying to glorify cricket akin to WWF by scripting this act? No one knows for sure and i doubt if people will lap it up like they religiously follow football and NFL. One reason why the business model works here is that they work harder and party harder, they take out an excuse to enjoy the game. But in India are the new generation so stressed up and working harder that they will use cricket as a way to relax and get together? Its been too much cricket and if one starts crossing out the days which have a cricket schedule, i doubt if there are any days left which arent marked. So how long will this circus last? I vaguely remember that much of the hype was put into hockey and i think Vijay Mallya was promoting this as well as football with "FC" suffix teams...but both flopped. The logic behind this 20/20 circus is because india is flooded with cricket religion? Even the quote says "having too much of immoral nectar gets transformed to poison". I learnt from the marketing course that you cannot create a need, you can just create a product or service to satisfy this need. So is cricket watching a need for viewers? I dont know what logic is behind pouring in this much millions into something that may not yield billions as revenue. As they say "Only Time can tell the tale" and i will wait for that day when i get proved wrong and the cartels win taking advantage of morons :D ... but they are using bollywood nymphs and scantily clothed imported and desi dancers as cheer leaders. a cheap shot eh?

Jamba ai-ka-ramba

2008-03-12T21:35:00.000-07:00

Jamba sells blended fresh-fruit beverages with nutrient-packed power boosts. They talk of no tolerance towards man made processed ingredients like corn syrup or trans fat .... Yummy Yummy!! Now they are jumping into breakfast segment by offering all-natural baked goods, granola and yogurt blends in addition to its cornerstone juices and smoothies and prodding Americans to be & stay healthy by enjoy the much needed skipped breakfast. Now a days many companies are jumping into this bandwagon but some like starbucks is jumping out. One way to send the message across is eat healthy, stay healthy and keep the doctors away. But one worry is that they are entering in when there are talks of recession and pink-slip season setting in. If jamba gets into the gym business or use gyms as their distribution center then its a good strategy to pull away from the rest. They could start with the message of be healthy by eating healthy and staying fit and healthy. This sort of message is good as is evident from the fact that the volume of sales of cereals and granola or health bars. So if jamba's people read this post, they must get some idea :D
The shameless message i could send is "Please Hire Me!!"

Bargains drive up sales of homes

2008-03-12T13:06:00.000-07:00

Det News article "

DETROIT -- After more than three years of declines in home sales, prices and new construction, Metro Detroit could be taking a step toward a housing recovery.

For the third month in a row, sales of single-family houses and condominiums in the four-county region have increased over the same month a year ago.

In the February data released Tuesday, sales were up 13.8 percent over February 2007, according to Realcomp, the Farmington Hills-based multiple listing service. In December sales were up 7.3 percent from the same month a year earlier, and in January they were 15.2 percent.

Wooohoo i was right in predicting what will happen to the housing market in my previous post. So its moving in the right direction by cutting supply virtually. I mean Virtually here because, there are already many unsold and defaulted homes around, only way to cut down supply is to refuse to sell it at a price below certain buffer value. So what happens is that just put a bait and keep on flooding the news media with housing slump, no one wants homes, its all cheap now and you may get for a deal. When people are exposed to such news, the tendency is to go and look at prices. Trick here is that say you mark the price of a house as $100,000. 10 people with varying budgets will look at this one, 5 out of them may look at factors like location, the depreciation costs, the built up sq feet etc etc. 5 will be interested and will have a budget of $100k to $150k, so when there is 1 house and 5 people for it, the bidding war follows and its like an increased local demand. When you string together n-local demands, you have a whole demand curve with supply curve dictating the cost. So eventually sooner or later, a time will come when the housing market will reach previous level. Another factor driving the cost up and sales is that those fence watchers will buy it with a hope to sell it off at a kill. So all those rich guys and investors will jump into fray. Mark my words as this will happen sooner or later all round the US.

TiVo to let users view YouTube

2008-03-12T12:59:00.000-07:00

Tivo the creator and pioneer of Personal Video recorders or Digital VRs are moving in a wrong direction by trying to increase value added advantage to its customers. It would have made sense if TiVo had signed up a deal with blockbuster or netflix as it would have been better to stream movies on demand for half or quarter the rental rates thus avoiding postage charges, delays, the rising cost of gasoline. By signing up with youtube, they are making a mistake of trying to go in for poor quality videos with useless picture magnification scales. I dont know if youtube purposefully uploads substandard quality on the web, if tivo tries to stream this low quality one onto TV screens, i fear the quality will bring bad name to Tivo. Tivo needs to move in opposite directions and shouldnt go in for computer and TV convergence with its DVR boxes.

Online Movie / download model

2008-03-11T19:57:00.000-07:00

It was way back in 2000 when i landed in the US and was stunned to get a feel of video based learning, it was like this...if you had enrolled for a course and if that course was also available to distance education students then you also had the privilege to watch courses you bunked or to listen to those courses again to get the concept. At that time i was so excited to have a feel of this technology and also a kick of using the super fast internet for virtually free. An idea flashed in my mind as to talk to people who may be interested in online download model, so the only name i knew at that time was vinod khosla...because of sun microsystem's popularity and sabeer bhatia...because of hotmail success. Also 2000 was more or less like dotcom model everywhere, by that time i think the investors had a clue of the impending bubble burst. I contacted vinod khosla as i had his email listed on some site. He politely declined saying it was not his domain to invest. So i thought may be i was dumb in proposing this idea. The slowly pre-2005, things have started moving due to internet speeds, Napster, P2P etc. If napster was positioned properly then it could have triggered the movie and season episodes revolution. But somehow no one came up with this. Now there are so many players in the rental and download domain. The latest to jump is bigflicks with a backing of Ambani Brand Name. They have huge access to movie content due to acquisition of Adlabs and also strategic buy outs of many multiplexes in the US. So it makes sense for them to be in rental business and online download model. But it doesnt make sense to price the downloads pegged at around $9.99, if it was priced around $4 or so, it could start the trend as you can get an illegal DVD copy for $1 or $2 a pop, plus $2 for gasoline to go there and pick it up + time spent in driving there = around $5. But $9.99 is too high a price which is like 100% premium for new movies and i dont think anyone wants to pay $4 or $5 for older movies. Another advantage is that 99% of the movies that are getting released are crap and i wouldnt spend even $1 plus 3 hrs of my time to watch the crap. So if Anil Ambani reads this one, he better lower the prices as there are many players in this market and he needs to go for pricing advantage to get the market share. I was surfing the free movies in there, most of them are adult rated ones and is it like a bait to get people used to this site? Very Very very bad move in getting users into this site.

Religion+Political leaning=One's private issues

2008-03-10T21:20:00.000-07:00

I always felt that one couldnt choose one's religion when you were born but could do so later where you switch faith either you are pissed off with the existing one or you are getting some kind of incentive converting to another. Whatever the case may be, i agree with china's concept of keep all the crap inside and perform things inside the privacy of your homes and dare the risk of showing one's affection and beliefs in public. The same is the case with political leaning, you dont go around thumping your chest that you steadfastly support some party or aligning with some party's objective. This ranting is due to a news article .....

New Delhi: At a time, when a political battle is being fought in Parliament on the very existence of Ram, a different version of Ramayana is being shown in several parts of Uttar Pradesh. The CD shows Lord Ram in poor light. He is portrayed as someone who was anti-Dalit, so much that he even killed a Dalit, whose feet he touches by mistake. The clips were exclusively available with news channel IBN 7 and are all part of a movie called Teesri Aazadi. The movie is being produced and sold in many parts of UP and Gujarat by an organisation called Bhimrao Ambedkar Samaj Sudhar Samiti. Activists of this organisation claim that they have the support of a BSP MP. However, the MP seems to deny encouraging the organisation.

I see this as a cheap shot in highlighting the ills of being a hindu and a stimulus to get the membership drive up and running for some hidden agenda. Thing is no one cares a damn in cities and they must target the confused segments with poor family values and culture to get popular. There wont be any credibility at all if it comes from someone who have little knowledge of what he or she is talking about. Its akin to a milkman concocting a new drink and trying to say that his cocktail is better than coke and pepsi because coke and pepsi use water and he is using milk and water...both natural ingredient :D ...He may get some publicity to some extent and some curious customers on the fringe or someone who hates colas may become a steadfast supporter and loyal consumer. But which is important....eroding a major market share of established existing company or get the consumers who werent drinking any colas?

I still dont get it

2008-03-07T02:24:00.000-08:00

The topic of the day in the economic class was "Monopoly, oligopoly, perfect competition, imperfect competition, monopolistic competition". The concepts were all ok and true but what i couldnt understand is the anti trust crap, the notion of preventing collusions, price fixing etc. God Himself is into bias, nature is biased towards certain beings, nothing in this universe is a platform for perfect competition. Even darwin said "survival of fittest", the resources are so less that there will always be competition and mind you....there will be no perfect competition at all. Knowing all these things, Govts are foolish enough to swim against this and show itself as being fair enough.

Even simple things like .... being fair and handsome gets you an advantage over others in the field of acting, being fair and beautiful is an advantage of any girl to be a chooser, getting a degree from MIT or stanford is an open seasoned ticket to anything in the world, having an heft bank balance is also an open ticket to buy anything, being an investor and venture capitalist lets oneself choose the best and make money out of the startup...the list goes on and on. Nothing is perfect at all and the concept of anti trust case against microsoft or a delay tactics in allowing google to buy out double click etc etc doesnt make sense to me at all!!!

TiVo

2008-03-05T20:54:00.000-08:00

We had a case study discussion on Tivo like 2 weeks back and Tivo is in news!!! What a coincidence.

"TiVo Fourth-Quarter Loss Narrows; Hardware Costs Drop"

Tivo has a great technology but its failing to capitalize on its technology. No idea whats making them go downwards and stay at the bottom. Offering a product that has capability to record and replay things, timer based recording, recording of serials based on preset keywords etc etc must have kept it way above in profits, but its always been in the red zone for a long time....even now its struggling...or one can put it as "Decade old but still struggling to stand up"

The problem they are encountering is that they are offering a setup which is powered by linux OS and things gets stored on the hard disk, now why must a customer pay monthly subscription fee if they are recording stuff on their set-top box? I think this may be a reason as to why its not growing as expected. Second thing is they arent capitalizing on the fact that subscribers skip ads. If i were the CEO of Tivo, i would have embedded ads as and when someone skips the add, i would add text based ads running at the bottom or a permanent ad display on the top left/right.
I would have gone ahead and signed up with advertisers like google ad sense or someone who is good at text or context ads. When the user stops and skips ads, these ads will be beamed on resumption. This way the user need not pay for the monthly subscription. Second thing is who will pay $x for one time cost of the box and $n recurring costs in addition to cable TV subscription costs, instead the best way is to push this technology to comcast or Time warner and charge them per customer...license the technology where subscribers could use video on demand, where u hit the repeat and u r choice ... then that particular program will stream in.

Local Context based ads or text ads sourced from google could supplement the revenue.
Offering free set top boxes but clipping the ability to skip ads or embedding own ads.
Local set top box must have 30 min recording facility and if users need more then paying for online storage space of say 10hrs or 24 hrs recording could be of variable pricing

Starbucks woes

2008-03-03T21:03:00.000-08:00

What a coincidence!!! We were given a case study on starbucks and was due tonight. First it was Howard Schultz, coming back to take over as the CEO. There was another news of how they closed down an evening to train its baristas [ they call all entry level employees as baristas]. Now its US operations president steps down and wants to spend time with her folks. Starbucks' revenue seems to be slowing down due to various reasons, be it competition from low end players like Dunkin Donuts..who are offering 99 cents coffee or from regionally specialty coffee houses. Even on the international front, I had read a news of how Coffee Day, the indian starbucks, got hell lot of funding to take over the europe, middle eastern and african markets. So starbucks may be in real trouble both in domestic and international markets. The fierce competition is so evident that starbucks is climbing down to offer 99 cents coffee too. Coffee day has taken a leaf from starbucks and is replicating the samething like offering an atmosphere to drink coffee. I still remember that coffee day also had the same model of operating its own shop and started with offering whole beans as well as ground/roast powder. The only advantage coffee day has over others is that its run by SM Krishna's [ex-chief minister of karnataka] son-in-law and coincidently started when Krishna was CM of karnataka, they also have access to coffee planters co-operatives in kodagu region. You can call it the coffee cartels...now a venture that has the blessing of cartel and super politician, can do anything to stop starbucks from entering indian markets. Indian govt will never allow a perfect competitive market as its always into over protecting its companies. This means starbucks forays into India is impossible, but they can do one thing to limit coffee day's entry into US markets but europe, middle east, asia and africa is already into coffee day's kitty, now what is to be seen is...would starbucks and coffee day open up their arms and form a JV? Doing so would open coffee day's entry into US and starbucks could get a free source in return and go in for zoning the world of who takes which part. Only Time will tell what happens. But as of now..starbucks seem to be sliding down due to recession concerns, rising costs of coffee, milk and transportations.

Gift cards a great gift for retailers?

2008-03-03T17:59:00.000-08:00

Mail in Rebates (MIR) and Gift cards are more or less like guaranteed revenue into retailers account book. Till date i was of the feeling that atleast gift cards arent as slimy as MIRs, but was shocked to see this news

"You know that Sharper Image gift card you got for Christmas? Right now, it's worthless. And other gift cards in your wallet could lose their value, too. As more retailers file for bankruptcy or go out of business, more than $75 million in gift cards are at risk of becoming worthless pieces of plastic this year."

So is it like free money for these retailers or where did this money go? did it get lost in costs incurred in running the business? I fail to understand this. of late these gift cards had become an headache with so many hidden costs and constraints on how soon you must use to get the value out. First time I came across the concept of MIR in the US, i couldnt understand the plot behind it. I was wondering what is the idea behind such a concept where you give away the product free after n-months or n-days by refunding the costs you incurred. Then there was a dot com site known as cyberrebate which used to list all the products and would offer you MIRs after 3 months or so. I resisted the move to fall for that, the logic was "there was nothing which comes for free" and i have already come across this fact after i lost some money on stupid things. One more thing is that what you pay is what you get, go for deals or cheap priced products and such ones will come for a very short duration. Now coming back to cyberrebate thing, many of my friends were paying for products and they got it too and got back the money too after 3 months, but what happened was that many people started pouring their money in the hope that they can get back the money and get to keep the product too...this phenomena triggered some of those companies listed on cyberrebate to go bankrupt as they were giving away products for free and give back their money too...in short they couldnt survive thus taking away people's money. One fine day, my friends discovered that cyberrebate itself filed for bankrupcy and closed down the site.

Then i figured out the secret behind offering MIRs

Most of well established companies give away MIRs for short periods either to take away market share from its competitors or to empty their inventory containing old stocks and get cash for the junk.
99% of companies giving out MIRs are those which arent well established and they use it as a vehicle to get the word of mouth out. They cut down on advertisements and employ this marketing ploy with a hope that the consumer using these items may refer them to their friends or give good reviews.
MIRs also act as credit or free money available at 0% APR for 3 to 6 months, this way fledgling get the required capital to produce their wares.
MIRs also have so many constraints that you must send it within this date and also send it after 1 month of purchase or send it with UPC barcode etc etc, these are tactics employed to loot people. When someone forgets to send or doesnt send it according to the requirements, the payout is null or void. Thus allowing free money to the companies.

On the other hand, gift card is like you put in some amount in a plastic card and give out to dear and near ones so that the recipient has full freedom to buy whatever he/she likes in contrast to a stupid worthless gift. This gives a guaranteed buy of something to the retailers and if someone doesnt use that card then the retailer has a great kill...got free money and has an unsold product which he can sell and make money. Usually its better to give away cash to the recipient as cash is worth more than a plastic card and they can use it for anything and wont be tied to shop at a particular retailer. But in the existing state of economy, when you pay all the salary you get as credit card balances, rent or on gasoline, there is hardly anything left to give as gifts. So the concept works well when you pay via credit card and put money into gift cards. So gift cards may thrive as long as plastic credit cards are around and so many people are living under the debt line. No doubt why gift cards used to be popular in india as atleast we can touch and see the cash and people do hoard money in banks :D

Warren Buffets shouts recession

2008-03-03T08:27:00.000-08:00

According to economics, a recession is more or less like two back to back quarters of negative growth. Ben Bernanke is yet to confirm that its recession time, he is beating about the bush and indirectly talking of rise in gasoline prices and rising food costs. Just past Thanksgiving, christmas and New year, i had seen news of record breaking purchases and constant loud ringing of cash registers....that was just a quarter back. If that 4th quarter of 07 was a growth and its just 1st quarter of 08...how in the world could it be called recession? Just because there was a $400b housing slump doesnt mean that everything is gone in thin air. I think many more billions was lost in war and no one talked of recession then. Warren buffets is the first one to beat the death drum. This is more or less like rumor and gossip syndrome of someone talking about it and others act like sheep and follow blindly without thinking anything. There are two things to do now, either cut down on frivolous costs or pay the price for having an extravagant life.

Virgin Mobile enters India

2008-03-02T21:00:00.001-08:00

Sir Richard Branson is upto something again....latest is the act of entering india courtesy Tata Teleservices Ltd. Will this redefine the indian market? Reliance and Airtel will scramble to hold onto their positions and market shares? Disappointed with just 1 feature ... paying 10 paise for every minute in coming call...hmm a nice strategy to hook on new consumers. Unless one has their service, there is no way to make that 10 paise per call. Other than this, there arent any direct freebies or earth shattering feature. I was expecting free SMS to attract youth or something else that would target the youth segment. 100% FM-radio enabled is OK..But something like .... allow unlimited SMS between two mutually chosen number could increase user base. Consider a situation a boy friend - girl friend combo, they are the likely ones who would indulge in SMS or talks. So if this one is incorporated then they get 2 customers in a flash. Such things are more youth friendly :D

Old was better?

2008-03-02T20:32:00.000-08:00

Personally feel that it was way better in the past than now. One such example is hotels/eat out places....just imagine a hotel which would serve you dosas, idlis and other non-gravy stuffs in banana leaf. The convenience in using the banana leaf is that you dont waste water on cleaning that, then no use of nasty non bio degradable detergents, no issue on hygiene regarding unclean plates. Disposal of these leaves is easy as it can become fodder for cows. This eco system is a lot better than the existing ones which pollutes the environment in every step. Too bad that there are hardly any hotels serving this way :(

Summar---Savings on

Low cost banana leafs
No initial costs on plates
No need for wastage of labor hours in cleaning plates
No issue on hygiene
Easy handling & disposal
Eco friendly

Some Clarification

2008-03-02T15:29:00.000-08:00

In my earlier post under "if chinese can why not indians?", i was talking of building everything which has an indian touch and not something that is in parts. I had a comment on the post

"PSUmba said... The Indians are ... Global Vehicles (www.GV-USA.com) of Alpharetta, GA has been named the USA importer for trucks from Mahindra & Mahindra. Look for a 2009 launch"

If one looks at the post, it mentions this point "The vehicles are expected to have a base price in the mid-$20,000 range and use diesel engines built by a major German auto supplier." Now when you go for JV or strategic alliances, the price of the product is the worrying factor and engine is the most important parts in an automobile. I can understand if it were small parts like bolts, nuts etc. But in this case, I cannot accept this one as an engineering marvel akin to TATAs. Its more or less like procuring private brands and putting on a label. From a business perspective it seems OK, but has nothing to do with long term planning so as to capture a market share. So if one looks at the automobile industry in the US, just to keep tab on the costs, some of small parts may be from other suppliers or may be from other country.

Send an SMS and track the Bus

2008-03-02T09:57:00.000-08:00

Not bad at all, I didnt expect that communists in the east would allow such things. But kolkata has implemented this system and is helping commuter's keep track of their public transport system.

WBSTC officials said the system would benefit passengers and operators alike. "Passengers can even find out exactly how far away a bus is. This will help them time their departure from home. They won’t have to wait under the sun. As for operators, they would know how many passengers are taking a bus on a particular route during the day. This would tell us which are the busiest routes and help us cut down on unnecessary expenditure," an official said.

BSNL has helped get this system up and running. No idea how they have implemented it. One way could be embed a GSM module and use GPS to update the data ...say every 2 min or 5 min.
I dont see any need for such sophisticated service and no idea how it could be a revenue generator for BSNL if its not charging the SMS as premium one. The easier method could be, as the bus stops at particular stops, the driver or conductor could send in an SMS to the central unit where the data would be stored. So anyone sending an SMS to the central server could know the position of the time along with the last updated status. That way it could be like 50 paise per SMS and 20 such stops in a trip would mean just 10 bucks...rather than putting a GPS, then using a GSM module and constantly updating values.

The easiest way would be to put RFID tag in the bus and the receiver in the bus stops connected to telephone line. As the RFID receivers are placed on top of telephone poles, the theft of these devices to an extent could be avoided. As the bus pulls over, the reader scans the RFID tag and updates the servers. But the best way would be to put such a system in some local shops and help update the position values pertaining to each bus.

Man Made Black hole worth $400b+

2008-02-29T23:45:00.000-08:00

US subprime market is a big big man made black hole that was built at a cost of $400b+...a marvelous structure indeed. I dont know why professional people got sucked into that or is it that they are sucking the govt out by showing losses on balance sheet and trying to get tax rebates and restructuring loans? or is it that its THE ONLY WAY to hike up the rates and bring in stricter control needed to get the credit line in. My take on this well laid out plot is that banks and financial instt were tracking down on how many defaults happens and how much they would lose. As of now the rise in defaulting has hit 300% which is a sort of bad news to the rich banks, so only way to turn around is orchestrate a plot so as to deny credits to many, take rebates by showing losses and finally doing this thing "Baking the cake and eating it too at other's cost"....meaning they have locked up the lands, they show the losses and they can go for the kill later by up-ing the supply when the demands are the same.

The fact that it may have happened genuine stands at the probability of 0.1. Let me explain what could happen when you view this way....

Fig 1 shows Demand D1 and Supply S1 and its operating at the equilibrium point, now some rogue entities try to offer incentives or throw away money so that some people may suck that up, so what happens now is people have money so they push the demand up. Now new demand is D2. Now the equilibrium point adjusts itself at a higher position where real estate guys are calling the shots, the suckers are taking the bait and increasing demand. The freebie wont go on for ever, so what happens now is that gasoline prices shoots, food prices shoot, the people get pink slips. This translates to defaults to mortage companies, these companies raise a red flag and seize the property and try to make a kill by asking for selling price or current market price. As many suckers get sucked up, many houses are up for stakes, so in reality the supply still is the same but the demands have dipped in. This situation is called flooding and no one wants to buy at the current market price, so as a bait these financial instt do a marginal discounts and still there are hardly any buyers and technically they must move to lower equilibrium point, but the thing is...it may be lower than the cost price+interests and they are smart enough not to give out at dirt cheap and go into red. Take-2 .... they create the notion of too many houses, too few buyers and they are losing money, lost money and will write off losses. Even if they write off losses, they wont gift this house to original buyer...on the contrary they will sell it to rich dudes who will hoard it and go for a kill once the news goes stale and the demand increases again. The point here is that demand curve wont hit rock bottom on one day when you wake up. It may be going down and if the smart bankers dont see that then they have gone pretty lazy and must be replaced....so that leaves with the possibility that it may be orcestrated pretty well !!!
Now its for you to decide on this one!!!!!!!

If chinese can why not indians?

2008-02-29T23:03:00.001-08:00

Come 2009 and chinese car maker Chamco Auto is waiting to storm the market and grab market share as they may have their production at mexico and rolls cars into US with price tag of $12k+. If chinese can position themselves to work on strict US auto standards whats keeping the indians away? Tata can go in for the kill with a pricing of $5k+ with production at mexico, research in India and sales in the US. Advantage of Tata Nano is that it will give you value for mileage and can keep the speeds low in the cities which will translate to huge savings and lesser accidents. Somehow Tata is more interested in buying out rover than pushing in its Nano. If chinese can work out the design to clear US standards then they can storm anywhere, but i dont think that they can bring the value down to $5k or so. Only Ratan Tata can answer my question of "If chinese can, why cant indians?"

New Definitions?

2008-02-29T08:01:00.000-08:00

Its pretty amusing to have different meanings to the same word..especially in india and people blindly take it and move on. The first of the crap is meaning of minority, everywhere in the world its a fact that 10<90 but in india you move the minorities up to a point where you show them to be the main and only existing people. Minority rules in india while majority rules around the world. Everything thrown around is For The Minority or For The Appeasement of the Minority. Second most misused word is "Secular".... the actual meaning of this word is " Not specifically relating to religion or to a religious body", but all those morons in there say and do the opposite. Secular and still have all those populist scheme for a particular religious block? Who are people trying to fool? May be thats why u must call for a resolution to keep all these old insane people out of policy making decisions. The other thing misused/abused is Subsidy!!! I dont understand the concept of free lunch or pay for someone to have fun? Now look at the budget allocations by an harvard educated Chidambaram.

*waived off loans worth Rs 60,000 crore to small farmers, hoped for an 8.8 percent growth.
How can you expect growth by just throwing money around? One one hand you open up SEZ and gobble up lands and other hand talk of poor growth in agriculture. You must invest in infrastructure betterment in this sector, not throw out money and waive off loans. You must understand the logic behind why farmers commit suicide, why things seem to be failing, why storages arent helping? why transportation costs are more.

*Whopping Rs 34,400 crore for education.
See no reason why someone would go for sub-standard cheap teachers while pouring in money for resources. They better hike the basic salary for teachers which would in turn attract quality people taking up this profession. I can only see those mis-fits who cant find anoy other job get into this sector.

* Rs 1,05,600 crore to defence?
Cant they just say x amounts of money for arms dealers and commission agents? I dont see any major wars happening for another 1000 years and there is no need to purchase sophisticated gadgets, all those money will go for counter-insurgency activites and weeding out terrorists. The govt can do one simple thing to provide more jobs and put a tab on "local help". Without any inside hand or local help, carrying out any major attacks is ruled out. You just cannot move materials or purchase explosives locally, as any such thing will attract law enforcement agencies.

* allocation for Minority Affairs Ministry will be doubled from Rs 500 crore to Rs 1,000 crore.
Ah the headache..heartache :( I fail to understand about this minority crap. Someone needs to boot out the harvard educated guy out or the harvard guy must be the PM to see if he will act sane

Most of them cant stand someone growing

2008-02-28T16:11:00.000-08:00

Its a natural human tendency, esp in indians, that they cannot see someone else get lucky or someone getting their worth. I looked up a writeup about Cleartrip getting 3rd round funding. In Rajiv Dingra's own words......

Talk about the roof giving way and a windfall of money falling from it and it just doesn’t stop raining money! Im sure if one were to visit the cleartrip office in mumbai a similar scene atleast in context of the news just in can be visualized. So more funding has come into the travel space and this time the beneficiary is cleartrip which has raised a whopping 18.5 Million $. Just convert that into rupees and you get an astronomical 75 crores approx. The people backing cleartrip with this whopping amount are DFJ (Draper Fisher Juvertson) who have pumped in 10 Million which there are a group of other investors who have contributed the rest of the millions which also includes Mahindra Ventures. I guess Mahindra’s interest in cleartrip can be attributed to its own mahindra holidays venture as well.

I dont know about his viewpoint, but according to me ... cleartrip is clean, simple with right combination of people and resources. First thing is, they keep the pages clean, no popups, no banners, no distractions. Second thing is its backed by investors who have good gut feeling and who are right in picking up portfolios. Third thing is Travel space has a lot of space and market share up for grabs. Fourth thing is If something isnt successful then someone wont put their money in. Fifth point is that they are in the business for 2 yrs with impressive revenue and market share.

Online Vs Brick Mortar

2008-02-27T16:11:00.001-08:00

Netflix the online video rental seems to be attracting investors as evident from its recent performance at the stock exchange. It seems to be playing the right game to beat its online & brick mortar competitor Blockbuster. Blockbuster on one hand is sure to lose as its revenue will be eaten away by erosion due to costs renting the shops and paying its employees who man these shops. the indirect cause may be due to soaring gas prices as no one wants to drive around to pick it up and drop it down. Netflix has this advantage of running an online business with a storage where fewer employees can read inputs and fill up the post covers.

If i had a portfolio in this sector, i would have done this....
* Hire small storage spaces in each of the cities who have potential customers..like say near universities, metros or where there are these upward mobile people.
* Each of these storage spaces will have their copy of the movies, use the same way as netflix but a slight variation in the distribution.
* I would go the community way where in if i rent a movie to a person, i would say the faster you send it back or send it to other user in same community, the more points you score.
* More points here translates to your priority for booking some movie in advance or may be getting elongated rental allowance where in you pay for a month and get 15 days free etc.
* Idea is simple, just let the users mail it to other guy in community who has requested this movie. So mailing in the same city takes lesser time and you can double up the postman as a gate keeper who will have the hold on when a particular movie was sent and when it was received. This way you have a better logistics and distribution service available. The customers would just love the way things are passed around.
* Thing is simple, you go online select the movie. The database will know where the movie is and it will send a message across to the rented guy either via texting message or email. if that person responds with "yes, i can send it within this date", then see to it that he send it and reward him aptly. The postman will do the rest. This will be a revenue generator for the postman as he will just put his hand into mail box and see if its returned, if he finds a package...just scan it and the wireless gadget will take care of the data that would be sent to the servers. the servers will store the data and the automated agent will run it smoothly..

Any Takers? :D

Airline crap

2008-02-27T00:34:00.000-08:00

US Airways Group said Tuesday it will start charging fliers $25 to check a second bag, the company's latest effort to raise revenue and deal with rising costs. The announcement follows a similar policy change by United Airlines. US Airways spokesman Morgan Durant said the charge is expected to generate $75 million in revenue and cost savings each year.

These people need to take a leaf off Sir Branson's move by going in for bio fuels if they really want to keep the costs low. First they started with no free food on air, they offer a can of coke and some pretzels..now this one. if they really want to cut the cost down, they must either have guts to upppp that price or go for alternatives, not to put travelers in pain. No one likes to carry n-bags around as they travel, they usually take what is needed and essential, now if some moron thinks that by putting a price on that extra baggage...they can make a few bucks. It sounds just like stealing a lolly from a kiddo.

if i were the CEO, i would have got down to issuing mobile tickets for those who wont use the counter tickets, i would charge those people who use counter to buy tickets. Reason is that employees at the counter need to be hired for these tasks. i would put one employee there to man the gates, when people come down and scan their mobile phones with m-ticket barcodes , the auto gates will issue them boarding strips. Now there wont be a need hiring more than one person. So if someone really needs to buy tickets at the counter then they better pay that extra amount...or one more way would be to dispense boarding cards when travelers swipe their credit cards at these joints.

Then if the travelers are staying at their affiliates motel or hotel, let them pay that extra amount to get their baggage check in at that place, so they get value added service and need not wait for their baggage to be scanned and sent to cargo bay.

Starbucks out to keep its buck?

2008-02-27T00:21:00.000-08:00

Starbucks scared of its competitors who are jumping into its space and eating its market share? Everywhere this news is pasted

"Starbucks Corp. retaught baristas how to make espresso shots, steam milk and hand drinks to customers while it shut down nearly 7,100 stores in the U.S. on Tuesday evening.

The Seattle coffee giant said that, starting Wednesday morning, it is promising customers that their drink should be made perfect every time. If not, the company is urging customers to let the barista know and they will remake it correctly."

It also goes on to say that its competitors are throwing up their coffee for either free or for 99 cents for small latte. I dont know but i may be wrong here, thing is I see this as a publicity stunt by getting the news across on all papers and get those customers back on wed morning. These customers may be curious to see whether starbucks is into what it really said. Now think of it in another way, if i were its CEO then i would have taken on 99 cents coffee providers in this way..... The game plan is very very simple. Starbucks can still offer their coffee for same price if customers spend their day at their place by sitting down and enjoying their coffee, if they want low priced coffee then install a coffee machine with right ingredients and let the customers vend it for themselves for 99 cents. So by their unique coffee taste, they can stand out of all those other coffee providers......Do i make sense?

The bold step by The Eccentric Guy

2008-02-25T15:02:00.000-08:00

Sir Richard Branson is the most eccentric guy who is always in the news for his unconventional ways. I give 5 stars to this guy, our own vijay mallya is more or less like this guy, but mallya is better known for his lavish lifestyle and always looking for king size in everything he does. Ok getting back to Sir Richard...he has his first brush with business when he was 15, after that there was no stopping him. He started Virgin Atlantic Airways and the Virgin Records music label somewhere in the 80's, virgin mobile which captured the teen and college go-ers market. He has shown special interest in space tourism and i bet he will better that art of space travel by pumping in money for a galactic space flight ferrying space enthusiasts into space. But the latest is to do with toying the idea of bio fuels on virgin aircrafts. Three cheers to him for making this bold step....his company's boeing flight 747-400 flew from London to Amsterdam on Sunday, carrying in one of its four fuel tanks a 20-percent mix of biofuel derived from coconut and babassu oil. He may have played an interesting game with this new mix, as it may be the only way for airlines to keep the prices and yet operate their flights inspite of soaring gasoline prices. But as usual the critics are calling this another publicity stunt, their only argument is that sacrificing food crops for fuel will make the food supply scarce. Are there people sane? I dont get this logic at all, Sir Richard isnt cooking rice in his kitchen and pouring rice and sambar gravy into the fuel tank. If he isnt putting in rice or wheat or corn into the tank, how come there will be food shortage? Why are these morons putting a spanner in the wheel of R & D? Anyone around explain this to me?

Superbbbb

2008-02-23T10:42:00.000-08:00

Japanese rock in whatever they do, they are in an advanced world. India will have to do a lot of work to catch up to that world, we are wasting time on stupid things like "north indians out of mumbai", "reservations for SC/ST", "appease the minority". I dont know if it is to do with a lot of jobless people who have no work and resort to these things. Anyways who cares!!! coming back to the actual issue....there has been two great things that happened this week. One was the US showing its technological advances by shooting down a satellite and second one is about the new super speed internet satellite launched by japan.

The satellite carries a new tech payload which if proves successful, subscribers with small dishes will be able to connect to the Internet at speeds (1.2 GB per second) many times faster than what is now available over residential cable or DSL services.

"Among other uses, this will make possible great advances in telemedicine, which will bring high-quality medical treatment to remote areas, and in distance education, connecting students and teachers separated by great distances,"

I hope this technology wont be "mis-used" to get on facebook to post messages or used to download illegal movies :D

Great Stuff

2008-02-20T20:16:00.000-08:00

The first challenge was how to pin point a particular place on the earth and target that place with laser guided precise missile. This was evident from gulf war where the tech was used to target places as well as the interceptor missiles which was developed to stop incoming iraqi scud missiles. Precise cruise missiles were used to target osama some time back, then was drones developed to hit moving targets by triggering a small weapon sitting miles away. But the current one of hitting something coming down to earth or rotating in space, this is more difficult as you dont have a fixed co-ordinate value and the missile need to adjust the path and since that in space is colder, its harder to use heat seeking missile as sometimes it may go after some meteor and hit it rather than the intended target. China started this act with precise destroying of old satellite but it has its own cons when the missile hits target, it destroys the target into debris which may pose problems as you are creating more randomness in space. What US showed is a different kind capability, pick up a rogue satellite which is heading down with rapid velocity often at faster speeds. So one has to adjust the path as well as to hit the target when velocity isnt under the effect of gravitational force. China had a more easier task of dislodging a satellite which may be used to destroy satellites .... more to do with spy ones of hostile countries. It can also use its missile to seek out ransoms in future. US on other hand can hit any satellite which may be launched or which may be pushed out from space. Think it as this way, usually countries keep launching satellites and may have hidden payloads which can be later propelled towards countries if something happens. So US technology can be used to develop missile shields to protect allies. Now i can predict technologies sooner which can vary speed and change directions at will which may be hard to target.

Idea Corner

2008-02-16T20:31:00.000-08:00

I usually go to enjoy the buffet on weekends, but the problem is you need to wait a longer time and sometimes some of the delicious dishes are gone, some eat more and some eat less.....but still everyone is charged close to $10+8%tax. Now if i had a restaurant business, then i would do this.... when a person enters the place and is showed his table, he will be handed over a time stamped card which says the probable time he/she may start at. Each of these cards are then used to put on variable charges. Most of the time, if someone sits at the table and eats food rather slowly then the owner is likely to lose out when no tables are empty and there are a lot of customers waiting to have their turn, people tend to chat with their pals and take in food, this will mean more eating by them. With this card system, a typical person may take 1 hr to eat his/her stomach full, so a time stamp is enabled which means if the person comes to the cash counter to pay his bill, his time stamp will be scanned and anything above an hour will be charged accordingly as this is a payoff for his taking a longer time and blocking the table. A leeway of plus-minus 10min can be allowed as a tolerance. This will deter many from staying and eating more. So as a concession, reducing the buffet price to $8 for an hour stay is a good deal. If the menu is great and you follow this system, i would bet it will work wonders :P

Profile Page

2008-02-12T23:06:00.001-08:00

Lookup at who all kissed you

2008-02-12T23:04:00.001-08:00

2008-02-12T22:57:00.000-08:00

Click on the image to view demo

Can WTO help here?

2008-02-10T14:32:00.001-08:00

Globalization has enabled economically weak economies get into better shape. So can some countries agree the same to be followed in this case too? The issue to be considered is this....just like IT professionals are pushed to the US and other countries, will or should india work for an advantage to import old retired folks from US and Europe to take advantage of its lower medical costs? People in the US spends a lot on medicare and it makes sense if they go on to settle down in india and other countries and spend less than they could spend in their country to get better medicare facilities? Will it work as an advantage for both the countries? India gets some foreign exchange and can kick in some employment in nursing and health care? US on the other hand need to consider lesser investment on medicare headache and insurance.

India on the other hand can use its medical professionals and junior doctors to take advantage of this situation by providing quality healthcare at a premium....in short what costs Rs 1 lakh for locals can be Rs 2.5 lakhs for outsiders thus taking extra money and using that to cut down subsidy costs for local people. It makes more sense to me though except if you dont consider the same comfort levels, pollution etc. But atleast these old folks may have constant company than stay isolated in their country. Most of the old folks either stay in old age home with their kids visiting them every weekend or ever month or forgotten for good. Atleast here for the lure of a dollar, some people may genuinely keep these folks in good spirits and could give them a second lease of life before their death finally arrive. Too bad to see how old people are treated like old stuff/clothes and discarded for new ones. Or someone can start a 5-star old age homes in india in some nature resort where they provide everything from life saving medical care to providing them nutritious meals and entertainment.

A Solution to public transport system

2008-02-07T14:17:00.000-08:00

I have been seeing right from my primary school days that the biggest problem is public transport system(city buses) in india. Even though it runs on govt subsidy and is cheaper to travel in that than traveling in your own vehicle. Problem with public transport within cities is that the infrastructure isnt suitable to handle so much traffic, second problem is that there are few buses running around on those routes, this triggers mad rush and overcrowded buses. These buses are bulky and hence block most of the 4 wheeler traffic, too many traffic stops mean more pollution at these stops as drivers rarely switch off their engines. Then i have noticed that the max crowd is at working hours..around this time slot ----> 8:30-9:30 am and 5:00-7:00pm.

So my solution to this is simple, usually those buses have around 50 seating capacity, now at office hours it makes sense to put those transport buses which have 0 seats, in short fill up those people who want to reach their work place. so when u pull out those seats from these buses, u double or triple the capacity to carry. Now most of the people who travel dont care about sitting in those seats and all they are concerned is reaching the workplace, school etc on time. So i am not saying that they eliminate all those seats in buses, what i am pointing at is run fewer buses with seats so that the sick, old and physically challenged people can travel in those buses and all others who care about reaching place on time...travel in seatless buses. Then put on luxury buses which charge a premium to occupy those seats which are non-stop and not point to point. This is one such solution to cut down on over crowded roads and carry crowd from one place to another. I hope some sensible guy reads this and forces the government to implement this :D

Marketing Genius

2008-02-06T14:41:00.000-08:00

There are some who learn marketing by enrolling into some programs at the universities but there are some who are born marketers. One such case is Baba Ramdev, i have been closely following his marketing blitzkrieg and he is a genius. Until 2006, I had no idea who ramdev was and what he was upto. Then there appeared in 2006, a news article.....

In January 2006, the Brinda Karat accused the Divya Yog Mandir Trust Pharmacy, owned by Ramdev, of using human and animal bones in their medicines. She based her accusations on a report produced an Indian health ministry laboratory. She also claimed that a sample of the medicine (Kuliya Bhasm and Yauvanamrit Bati, purchased from Brahmakalp Chikitsalay, which is the Trust's hospital at Haridwar was tested at government labs which later confirmed the presence of animal materials in the sample. She exhibited the prescription and cash receipt obtained from the medicine counter in support of her claim.

Four samples sent to the government-recognized research center (Shriram Institute of Industrial Research, Delhi) were reported as indicating that the medicines contained no objectionable ingredients and were purely herbal. Swami Ramdev was subsequently cleared of these charges. Interestingly, subsequent to these allegations - sales of the Trust's ayurvedic medicines have soared.

This was enough to get him popular on newspapers and became a popular figure on Television news channels. Then he visited US and got into yogas and was trying to get the market for his ayurvedic products. Now after he got what he wanted, he is now wooing celebrities like shipa shetty, nisha kotari and others to be the face for pushing forth his yoga programs. Yoga is a great market to be in and a good source to milk money from neo rich. Some use yoga as a new status symbol and is good enough to make few rich friends. So I proclaim Baba ramdev as a marketing genius :D

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

2008-01-27T22:41:00.000-08:00

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.

Idea Corner/Zone..whatever

2008-01-26T12:54:00.000-08:00

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 :-)

Morons of the worst kind

2008-01-25T08:28:00.000-08:00

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

Idea Zone...my 2 cents again

2008-01-24T21:58:00.001-08:00

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

2008-01-24T19:46:00.000-08:00

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 ?

2008-01-24T07:45:00.000-08:00

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.

Experience to Believe it

2008-01-23T08:01:00.000-08:00

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

Just my 2 cents

2008-01-22T13:42:00.000-08:00

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.

How independent is india?

2008-01-21T18:28:00.000-08:00

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

2008-01-21T08:25:00.000-08:00

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?

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

2008-01-20T12:52:00.000-08:00

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.