Yahoo Photos to be shut down

Yahoo has decided to shut down its Yahoo Photos service and instead push flickr, again owned by Yahoo. Makes sense to manage one application instead of two. Also, it was facing heat from picasa, by Google. But instead of automatically moving pictures Yahoo Photos to Flickr, Yahoo is giving an option to move photos to another service of the user's choice. Users have the option to move to some selected photo sites like PhotoBucket, MySpace, Kodak Gallery. Yahoo Photos will shut down on September 20th, 2007. After that, the photos might be deleted (I dont think this is a good idea, better to move them automatically to Flickr).

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?threshold=0&mode=nested&commentsort=0&op=Change&sid=233417

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/2007-05-03-yahoo-photos-flickr_N.htm?csp=15

Bengaluru

Thats it. Its official stupidity now. Bangalore is now going to be called Bengaluru. A meaningless change of name, just like Bombay was renamed Mumbai and Madras was renamed Chennai and Calcutta was renamed Kolkata. I still refer to Mumbai as Bombay, and will continue to refer Bengaluru as Bangalore.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/aug/22bang.htm

Many countries have local names for cities and the countries themselves. Eg. Japan is how Nippon is known in English, Spain is the English equivalent of Espana or Espanol, Germany for Deutscheland or Deutsche, and yes, India for Bharata or Bharatvarsha etc.

While our politicians are at it, why are they not changing the names of other cities like Ahmedabad or Allahabad, inspite of popular public opinion ? What about renaming Aurangabad? Its also a symbol of Aurangzeb's tyranny/imperialism. Or Daulatabad? Pseudo-secularism, is it ??

While opinion has been divided on renaming Bangalore, most residents are in favour of renaming Ahmedabad to Karnavati. Just as the British colonizers named Bengaluru as Bangalore, the muslim invaders renamed Karnavati as Ahmedabad. What difference?

travelling...

Please dont buy the outlook independence day special, even if you are bored for hours in a railway coach. Its really sleep inducing and it smacks very highly of colonial-like elitism. I wish i had bought cosmopolitan or that costlier computer mag. (i had read the papers and india today)
In the train and waiting for the vendor...

test

Times of India, pls fire shashi tharoor. I am happy he is not the sec gen of UN. First his stupid views on saree and salwar, and now sample this - Hinduism has no fundamentals. And Hindi is a vernacular 200 year old language with no history.
Correction - hindi is a much old language which evolved from another old language. Have you heard of Prakrit?
And if Hinduism has no fundamentals, why do you call them fundamentalists? Also what you call hindu fundamentalism is a political response. To what ??
Also in the papers, the govt is opening up investment from pakis. Do they know that terrorists are using stock markets to finance their acts. Was this act necessary to appease muslims?

PS test posted directly via mobile phone

Going home..

My home town, here I come.. after many years.

You know you are a stranger at your home town when the street dogs bark at you.

New IT destinations

India doesnt seem to be a good destination for IT and BPO services now. I always believed that Eastern Europe is a very good place for IT and BPO. They have the brains and quality. Estonia is a surprise.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/aug/02bpo.htm

IT may survive this, since wages in IT are lower than BPO (yes.. surprisingly, I have met many young BPO employees who earn a lot more than software engineers. Till some time ago, they even got more salaries at entry level than the IT guys.. ), but BPO may take a hit. No, existing companies will definitely not close down (they are still quite efficient with their business and finances. Quality? Well thats another matter), but they sure will downsize/merge/slow down the growth, and new startups will be harder to come by.

The appreciation of the Rupee, plus rising wages have played their part. All this is the effect of high inflation sometime in 2006-early2007. One mistake by our "esteemed" Finance Minister, P Chidambaram (Hey Harvard univ people, arent you ashamed of him? But then you are not to blame really, if one of your students is dumb), and it is still having major repercussions on the economy. BTW, the major reason for inflation was not the Rupee value or Interest rates(though they played a role). It was shortage of foodgrains in the markets.

Why do they need blades anyway

Coins are smuggled into Bangladesh from India, where they are melted down to produce blades.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6766563.stm

But why do they need razor blades anyway.. do they need to shave, as per Islamic guidelines ?