Perpendicular Thought

taskkill Error: Initialization failure

2011-05-24T03:41:00.001-07:00

I found a solution and it worked for me. May it help someone else

http://efreedom.com/Question/2-91689/Tasklistexe-Initialization-Failure

======================

In cmd:

net stop winmgmt

Rename the %windir%\system32\wbem\repository to something else

net start winmgmt

======================

coder girl..

2009-07-16T02:04:00.001-07:00

nice little track ..

http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2009/07/13/coder-girl-a-nerdcore-ode-to-female-programmers/

:-)

IPL, gotta love it

2009-05-07T00:59:00.001-07:00

... when you see Sreesanth playing for Punjab and Manpreet Gony playing for Chennai !!

Nano impact

2009-04-12T23:54:00.001-07:00

Mumbai cobbler books the Nano.. No, not the low end model, the middle model - LX

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Mumbai/Mumbai-cobbler-books-Nano/articleshow/4387327.cms

Now, nothing against cobblers as such but - I wonder if there will be a spate of accidents on our roads, given the kind of drivers who will be driving.... I do not claim any statistical data, but by simple observation, we already see that most accidents involve those BPO indica cabbies (apart from rickshaws and again, Tata trucks)

Tata isnt known for making safe cars (compare the braking of Indica with Hyundai in any auto mag). Tata's idea of safety till date seems to be adding as much steel in the body as possible. Nano does not even have that...

Whats worse - getting hit by a rickshaw or a nano ??

Ten dollar laptop

2009-02-04T23:41:00.001-08:00

Do these sarkari type people even know what is a Laptop ???

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mobile/display/20090204170911_India_s__10_Notebook_Appeared_to_Be_a_Flash_Drive.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/India-10-laptop-launch,6961.html#xtor=RSS-181

Nano confusion

2008-10-07T23:15:00.001-07:00

First the farmers protest against the car factory....

Tata reverses his decision..
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Singur_not_OK_Tata_reverses_Nano_out/articleshow/3557174.cms

Now they protest his leaving the site...
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1081004/jsp/nation/story_9926807.jsp

Yaar yeh log chahte kya hain ?? Just proves that you can never trust the two-faced communists... I wonder what do they have to say about China forcibly grabbing land for factories, highways and stadia??

RIP, Wright

2008-09-16T07:33:00.001-07:00

Rest in Peace, Mr Richard Wright.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7617363.stm

Pink Floyd keyboard player and founder member Richard Wright has died, aged 65, from cancer.

Can tax be fair?

2008-07-15T06:32:00.001-07:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax

A tax proposal in the US congress, that says you only pay tax on what you consume... no income tax or capital gains tax... Eg. you buy a car, you pay tax, you dont buy a car, you dont pay tax... simple.

I wonder if something like this can drive down an economy into recession... I wont buy a car to save tax. Many people will not buy a car for the same reason. The car company loses sales numbers, and shuts down. More people then dont have money to buy something else, and so on. Maybe yes, maybe no. People still need to buy cars :-)

Does that reduce the responsibility of the government in a way? The government says - Ok, you paid tax for what you bought. We are not accountable to you now.

OR no... what business does the government have in a sale between two parties. If you collect tax in a deal between two entities, you are answerable to both of them.

Of course, it has its demerits. Most likely, it wont be implemented, but then, even in matters of law (which I expect Indians to excel in, since its mostly bakr bakr) , they have some ideas for improvization...

us and them - can Indian society produce Gates

2008-07-15T06:13:00.001-07:00

http://www.pluggd.in/2008/07/microsoft-facebook-google-from-india-can-indian-society-produce-gates-larry-zuckerburg

Founder of Microsoft - Bill Gates, programmer
Founder of GE - Thomas Edison, inventor
Founder of 3Com - Metcalfe, inventor at Xerox
Founder of Ford - Henry Ford, inventor
Founder of Mercedes - Karl Benz, inventor
Founder of Apple - Steve Jobs, programmer
Founder of AT&T - Alexander Graham Bell, inventor
Founder of Cisco - Len Bosack and Sandy Lerner, inventors of the router

Contrast this now...

Founder of TCS - Jamshed Tata, businessman
Founder of Mahindra (TechMahindra) - Mahindra, businessman
Founder of Birla companies - GD Birla, businessman
Founder of Idea - Aditya Birla, businessman
Founder of BSNL - Government
Founder of SAIL - Government
Founder of Wipro - Azim Premji, businessman
Founder of Bajaj - Bajaj, businessman

and the list goes on and on

Hardly a few companies in India founded by scientists or engineers.

The difference is that Indian businesses are run or founded by bean-counters or government. Whether a software company, electronics company or a kirana shop, it does not make much of a difference to the founder. The companies work like a kirana shop anyway.
Companies are founded as investments by business families.

In US (or developed countries), companies are run by engineers and scientists. Companies in US are born out of innovation more frequently than companies in India.
American (or lets say, western) companies not just make profits, but they also innovate and research (well, if not all, then a higher percentage of those companies anyway)

Now obviously, the question arises - Are we lacking in ideas or inventions? Not really...
More importantly, its not easy to start a company in India (think corruption, infrastructure, law and order, social security and safety, legalities, etc).

(Please dont call Tata Nano as an innovation. They havent been able to provide decent quality in an Indica car which is 3 times the price of the Nano)

Community bashing again

2008-04-03T07:21:00.001-07:00

Some lady in Pune owns a flat. She wants to sell it to a muslim family. Society objects. Newspaper and lady bash Sindhis (directly or indirectly).

Read the whole story here - http://www.indianexpress.com/story/291804.html

>> Till date, the building society — Cozy Corner has 16 apartments, 14 occupied by Sindhis — hasn't handed her a No Objection Certificate.

What has Sindhi or the community of the people living in the apartment got to do with it? Really? Does not any other community do this?
Would it have been the same if the majority of the residents were Maharashtrian or Tamils or Bengalis ? (Except for Gujaratis, of course, who are clearly one of the media's targets)

>> Because the buyers' surname was Hirani, members assumed they were Sindhis, like 80 per cent of others in the society building. But when the buyers introduced themselves and residents realised that they were Bohra Muslims, their faces fell. They openly said they had agreed to the sale because they thought they were Sindhis, that had they known they were Muslims, they would have never agreed," said Kapoor ,

Again the Sindhi-bashing. I dont think that the word "Brahmin" or "xyz" occur as frequently in Brahmin or "xyz"-bashing news articles, as in this short news article.

>> When contacted, Sanjay Ajwani, chairman of the society, admitted that members were opposing the sale to the buyers. But he gave a different reason, alleging that the prospective buyers had "behaved badly" at the introductory meeting which raised doubts about their "ability to fit in".

Buyers behaving badly - I am not really surprised, call me racist or communal, etc.
Well, the woman wants to sell the flat and needs money, come what may. Doesnt matter if it is causing inconveniences to fellow residents. The background of the buyers, how they behave, etc be damned.
As for me, I have shifted quite a few flats in Pune city. I have been refused accomodation sometimes. Many societies does not prefer students and bachelors living there. And yes, people with bad behaviour too. It was not because of my community that I was not allowed to stay. Definitely, before moving in, if I behave badly, I will be denied accomodation.
Until recently, I lived in a society with two of us guys being the only non-Maharashtrian residents. The new society that I shifted to recently kicked out some BPO employees staying on rent because of their rude and bad behavior (they also once puked in the lawns). Its because of their bad behaviour, not because of the community. Definitely, the background and behaviour of the prospective residents does matter.

>> As for Kapoor, she is planning to take up the issue with the Human Rights Commission.

Human rights ?? Ho gaya kaam khatam. As in India we know that its only the muslims who have human rights. Why, even our moronic PM says so, that they have the first claim on the nation's resources. All other residents should be thrown out and the society should be given to muslims.

>> She said she would move court if the new owners of the apartment were harassed because of their religion.

Harass them? Arre bhai, who will harass them? Zinda rehna hai ke nahi kisiko...
Now seriously, how many muslim builders or property sellers sell to non-muslims.

The above stupid news story apart, its a truth that many societies do not prefer muslims in their neighbourhood. The reasons are manifold, few of them are below -

- They generally exhibit bad behaviour, and cause inconvenience to other residents. Residents do not generally complain due to fear of violence. If they approach the law, the muslim just has to mention "I am muslim, thats why I am being harassed". The other resident can give up any hope of justice forever, in turn he/she will be harassed by the law machinery and "human rights walas" of the country.
- They generally do not cooperate with other residents.
- This is the worst. Once they enter a society or locality, they try to get more muslims into that place. Once their numbers reach a critical mass, they force other residents to flee or sell their property (cheaply) by use of threats and violence. An aunt of mine actually had to leave their locality in Amdavad in such a scenario. I have seen so many muslim-only ghettos and localities in Amdavad, Mumbai and Vadodara. Some even in Pune.
- Land grab is achieved by building illegal mosques. A friend of mine living in Amdavad owned land in Vadnagar, his home town. Muslims illegally built a mosque there and there is no hope of getting the land back though the court case is still going on. Plus they are even afraid to go back to their home town.

Budget 2008 - Very bad

2008-02-29T03:52:00.001-08:00

The bad - Very bad.
http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/feb/29budget42.htm

Our tax money to fund madrassas in the name of "minority welfare". Our money funding terrorists. Our money used to kill us.

Budget 2008 - Initial impressions

2008-02-29T00:24:00.000-08:00

Budget - Good news first..

Income tax exemption limit raised
http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/feb/29budget20.htm

The salaried class bears the maximum brunt of taxes. The businesses find out ways to avoid taxes. They hire people to do exactly that. In a business, its easy to manipulate numbers and hide the trails. This is not the case with people who get payslips. I wonder how many of the neighbourhood "mom-and-pop" stores pay taxes. Funny that large retail companies are not being encouraged, since they will come under audit more easily than the neighbourhood kirana walas. By the way, I have rarely seen moms and pops in these stores.
Sadly enough, no simplification of tax processes. Why the myriad variety of surcharges and exemptions. Why not fine-tune the income tax rates, get what the govt wants and be done with it. I wonder how many man-hours are wasted by businesses, employees and accountants just to calculate tax, and fill up long winded forms, which do not have enough space to write your complete name and address !!

Farmers' debt to be waived
http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/feb/29budget13.htm
If we forget rich farmers taking advantage etc, its a good move. Agriculture and food supply security is one of the most critical aspects of national security. Now, we dont want to be armtwisted by countries like Australia in lieu of substandard wheat that is priced much higher than what we pay our own farmers !!
This may also help reduce farmer suicides (Why did the haughty and dumb Chiddu wait till now to come up with this? AFAIK, farmer suicides was a big issue since NDA lost elections)

And then the bad..

Reduction of duties on small cars..
http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/feb/29budget18.htm
(Why it is bad? You have no roads to drive them on. Later - more on why I think Tata Nano is, ultimately, a bad idea)

NREGA to be extended to all districts of the country.
http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/feb/29budget10.htm
(More of our tax money goes into the Kaangressi politicians' pockets)

Overall - A populist budget.

Perpendicularity

2008-01-03T06:26:00.001-08:00

- It is not just Haj subsidies, crores of our money given as grants to some stupid minority commission, and umpteen minority development schemes which hand out money to jehadis baying for our blood, it also extends to banks. Banks have to give some amount of loans to minorities as per laws, and most of them turn into bad debts. Where do the banks then earn money from ? Yes, its us! Double whammy.. our tax money spent on "minorities" because they have the first right on the resources of the nation, plus some amount from our income after tax is also given away to them for nothing! I would infact be okay with this, provided it stops jehadi attacks against us !! But that is not happening either.

Remember that everytime your bank cheats on interest rates or sends goons after you, these dhimmis are responsible in an indirect manner.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/jan/03fm.htm

- Needless to say, a good number of the bank recovery agents/goons that I have seen in my limited experience are muslims. Ok, I am a communal bigot, Modi supporter etc (Modi appears courtesy Desi Godwin's laws)

- Dumb media walo, ab to chhod do yaar Modi ko... bore ho gaya hoon ek hee analysis baar baar dekhkar. Haan bhai, Gujaratis are a violent people, Modi had some serious issues during childhood, his psychoanalysis reveals him as a monster, he has equated Gujarat with Modi etc (It doesnt matter that it actually is the media who demonized Gujaratis and Modi together and hence clubbed them together. Modi did not really have to do much, lucky guy)

Disclaimer - I am not Gujarati.

Perpendicularity

2007-12-28T03:00:00.001-08:00

Ok, so the ex-PM of Pakistan, who encouraged terrorism in Kashmir and Afghanistan, has been assassinated by the monster she herself created? She has been consumed by what she has sown. Not that I am happy, but I aint sad either. It just does not affect me, I am more worried about jumping jobs right now (1). Anyway, she was responsible for the deaths of thousands of my countrypeople. The Indian media, as usual, will stupidly weep buckets of tears, Manmohan and Sonia will lose sleep, etc.

Watching the news, our spineless Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, says - We have lost a friend. Friend ??

(1) - I had a verbal tiff with my manager, and he made life difficult for me. So now, I have some offers in hand and I have resigned. Some of the offers are good, but frankly, they are way too far from my home. Really, Pune is beginning to suck bigtime. No infrastructure, taxes are almost as high as Mumbai, travelling is a big pain. I want to go back to Gujarat, where most of my family lives, and where I did my schooling. There is hardly any IT industry in Gujarat. The ones who started operations there, have mostly left. A big factor is prohibition. Modi is doing great work for the development of Gujarat, but sadly, he has skipped IT industry. He did mention lifting the ban on alcoholic drinks in SEZs, but of course, the pseudo-secular , pseudo-liberal Congressis think that its bad to do so in the home state of a certain Mr. MK Gandhi...

- Why do companies have to set up offices way outside the city in places like Magarpatta? Well, even that is ok, but whats the point if there are no decent roads to reach there. Whats the point if it takes someone about an hour risking run over by drunken truck drivers to reach the ugly place, and too tired to start working for atleast half an hour.

- Magarpatta complex in Pune might be good inside. But there are no decent approach roads, and it has ugly, dusty, noisy and polluted surroundings. I wonder why companies even go there?? Ok, lower property prices, but then you get what you pay for...

Modi

2007-12-27T07:04:00.001-08:00

All that Modi bashing apart, there is one thing that is remarkable. Modi has won a third consecutive term, beating anti-incumbency and the high-decibel pseudo-secular campaign against him. And in free and fair polls, unlike those in West Bengal :-)

Good or bad is another matter.. but still do read this.. http://barbarindians.blogspot.com/2007/12/lord-is-thy-shepherd-thou-shalt-not.html

Another pertinent point is why Gujaratis are being targeted. Now now.. not every Gujarati went around participating in the riots and voted for Modi. Dont the pseudo-seculars use this argument often ?

Correlation between Wage rates and Profits

2007-12-18T09:14:00.001-08:00

Very good article that disproves the connection between high wage rates and the competitiveness of companies...

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/dec/18bspec.htm

"Consider first some surprising facts about the effects of wage rates on the competitiveness of nations. Japan runs a trade surplus with China, even though Japan has higher wages. High-wage, presumably high-cost, countries such as Canada and Germany also run trade surpluses. "

"Profits also are affected by brand image and product design and quality, all of which affect how much people are willing to pay for a car. While General Motors whines about its cost disadvantage because of its health care expenditures and high, unionized wage rates, Toyota achieved almost $6,000 per vehicle more in net revenue in 2004, according to pay more for each car because it did not have to offer as many rebates, price concessions and financing discounts to get customers to purchase its vehicles. "

"And even forgetting about the revenue part of the picture and focusing only on costs doesn't change the conclusion that labor rates are overrated as a source of competitive advantage or disadvantage, because labor rates are only imperfectly associated with labor costs. In 2004, it took Ford Motor Company on average almost one-third more labor hours to manufacture a car than it did Toyota. So Ford begins with a cost disadvantage even if its rate of pay is the same. "

"That's why John Whitney, when he took over a near-bankrupt Pathmark Supermarkets in 1972, actually raised the salaries of store managers. As he told me, the last thing you want during a turnaround is to have your best people heading for the door, worrying about their futures, or not putting forth their best efforts. "

On Retail

2007-12-18T09:03:00.001-08:00

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/dec/18retail1.htm

Govt to protect kiranas from retail majors

How ? So now, the government, the all pervasive protector of the aam aadmi, may introduce some "retail tax" on big retailers...

Its funny to see how the socialist brigade calls the small kirana stores as "mom and pop" stores, to give them an image of a hardworking and sweet family that honestly runs a shop just round the corner.... I hardly see any "moms and pops" running these stores, they are run by business people.

As regards kirana shops being affected by big retailers, personally, I see most people continue to visit kirana stores... in fact on unbranded items like ice-trays or naphthalene balls, I find that the big retailers are costlier. I mostly visit big retail stores for bulk shopping about once a month. For rest of the month, its the friendly neighbourhood "mom and pop" store.. :)

Also, maybe, for once, the so-called "mom and pop" stores would want to try some things, viz., no underweighing (i think the big retailers do that too), no selling defective or expired goods, faster service, and of course, give discounts on MRP.

Ringtones

2007-11-23T06:01:00.001-08:00

http://www.rediff.com/getahead/2007/nov/12cell.htm

What does your ringtone say about you?

As for me, I have no caller tune set (most of the times, the sound quality of the tune is pretty bad). If it were good quality, I would set it to some Pink Floyd, Dire Straits or even one of my standard ringtones.

For ringtones, I still cycle amongst the default phone ringtones.

on ICICI bank again

2007-11-23T03:20:00.001-08:00

To know where I am coming from, please read -

http://perpendicularthought.blogspot.com/2007/11/finally-icici-bank-gets-it.html

Another discussion with "dost janta" (friends) over many bottles of beer veered to ICICI Bank's goon activities. A friend of mine pointed out that the legal system is very slow and cumbersome for banks to recover their money. The banks cannot survive this way. There are many con men who go for loans without the intention to repay or at least be regular with their payments. Someone else pointed out that the bank has the freedom to set the loan interest rate. I agree.

I reiterate that

1. The bank should be more careful before lending to a customer. The customer is no way responsible for "minority loan quota" of these banks. In fact, we anyway pay a higher interest rate to compensate for those "minority quota" loan losses.

2. Many a times, the bank just thrusts the loan amount or a credit card into the hands of the consumer, without considering the repayment capability of the consumer. Of course, the bank does it because it already has paid goons on their rolls for the dirty work. As a customer, I would not pay anything if the bank promises me a "free credit card for life" (free as in no annual fees or entry fee), and then charges me even if I never use my credit card. I use no credit card just to avoid the hassles of keeping track of yet another device.

3. The borrower should not be harassed for the faults, inefficiencies or shortcomings of the bank itself. The borrower is no way responsible in case the bank misplaces some documents or is slow to complete the process. If the bank cannot manage to control errors and inefficiencies, they should pull down the shutters and pack up.

4. Using goons is no way to recover loans. ICICI bank is nothing more than a loan shark in a business suit.

5. Many a times, it might be a technical problem or somebody else's fault (like it happened in my case). Still the bank will not contact you (not even an email which costs practically nothing), and straightaway send goons, even though you have a good repayment record. Whats more - they would even threaten to reduce your credit ratings with http://www.cibil.com , etc.

6. Regarding the bank can charge interest rates as per its wish. True. Now, when the bank sells you a loan with a floating rate, it claims that "the interest rate applicable to you drops when interest rates in the market fall". But ICICI bank continues to charge higher interest rates though the interest rates have fallen, and almost every other big competing bank has reduced its interest rates as per the market rates. Note that this is not illegal, but surely its unethical. ICICI bank is using legal technicalities to cheat customers, and reneging on its promise to lower interest rates for floating loan customers.
It works for ICICI bank, they continue to fleece the existing customers, even if they dont get new customers (given their malpractices). But still the bank offers lower interest rates to new customers, while charging existing customers about 1 - 2 % higher).

The practice of not lowering floating loan interest rates is being probed by MRTPC. Link here - http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/nov/23loan.htm

http://www.rediff.com/money/2006/nov/04bspec.htm - Must read (I recall ICICI Bank telling me that their floating interest rates are based on RBI PLR, but there is no such thing. Blatant cheating by the bank).

Who, do you think, sets the 'benchmark' prime lending rate that your loan floats against? The RBI? No, it is the banks themselves who fix the benchmark.

The market is left with no independently fixed home loan benchmark. Two things can happen - RBI can make it mandatory for banks to disclose transparently their benchmarks like banks in Australia. Or, the RBI can make it mandatory for banks to fix home loans to an independent benchmark, like the Mibor .

http://www.apnaloan.com/articles/home-loan-india/On_wives_and_girl_friends.html

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Personal_Finance/Loan_Centre/Home_Loans/RBI_comes_down_on_banks_for_hiking_home_loan_installments/rssarticleshow/2503145.cms

http://content.msn.co.in/News/Business/BusinessBusS_111007_1012.htm
Oct 11, 2007
The country's two biggest banks, State Bank of India (SBI) and ICICI Bank, have cut interest rates on new home and other retail loans, a move that is expected to be followed by other banks.

Buying a floating loan is a farce. It just means that your interest rates will always go up, but never come down.

Also, on 21 Nov 2007, we have this news item. More cases of ICICI bank's goondagardi keep coming to the limelight. They get rapped yet again. Still they dont learn. At this rate, I think they will have to wind up their retail banking soon.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pune/ICICI_Bank_told_to_pay_Rs_1_lakh/articleshow/2557520.cms

Tension at swargate.. no details yet

2007-11-22T06:38:00.001-08:00

The news is that there is tension (rioting and stone pelting) in the Swargate area of Pune city, after the municipal authorities demolished an illegal place of worship. Guess what was the place of worship?

Guess who pays the highest taxes in Asia

2007-11-19T06:56:00.001-08:00

Indians are the most fleeced lot by their government, in Asia.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/nov/19tax.htm

Indian news channels and call centers

2007-11-19T00:04:00.001-08:00

http://offstumped.nationalinterest.in/2007/11/16/weekend-levity-when-tehelka-stung-aaj-tak/

I have mostly found Indian TV news channels reporters to be dumb. They sound dumber than the call center guys for any Indian bank.

Perpendicularity

2007-11-15T23:59:00.001-08:00

http://offstumped.nationalinterest.in/2007/11/16/conspiracy-of-silence-on-nandigrams-muslim-victims/

Its just that some of the victims happen to be muslims and hence the pseudo-secular-liberal media is beginning to take notice of the events of Nandigram. Otherwise nobody would have cared if the victims were only Hindus. Such is the discrimination against us in the name of secularism..

TV viewings and its connection with ideology

2007-11-15T03:40:00.001-08:00

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/the-freak-est-links-59/

http://www.learcenter.org/html/projects/?cm=zogby

Your preferences for TV programmes determines whether you are conservative, moderate or liberal. Do read.

As per the findings, it seems I am closest to moderate.

- Unlike conservatives, though, moderates watch all the broadcast networks (I mostly watch everything, as long as it interests me, including cartoons)

- Over 82% of conservatives say they never watch MTV. (Well, I do watch MTV)

- you are more likely to find them (liberals) watching comedies than moderates or conservatives. (I do watch comedies)

- While conservatives are more likely than all other respondents to watch action adventures and business and sports programming, that’s exactly the programming that liberals are less likely to watch.(I prefer the action movies, business, science and sports channels, but the liberal favourite, music too)

- Moderates’ favorite music is rock (58%). (I mostly listen to rock)

- Liberals are more likely to watch documentaries and art shows (which I avoid)

Of course, if someone likes Deepa Mehta and Meera Nair movies or MF Hussain paintings, they are most likely leftist pseudo-secular pseudo-liberals. And probably dhimmis too.

Number portability

2007-11-13T02:44:00.001-08:00

COAI Director General T V Ramachandran had said: "Mobile number portability was being introduced to benefit a select operator desirous of entering the GSM segment and thereafter poaching on the subscribers of existing GSM players .

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/nov/13tele.htm

In a major bonanza to over 37.5 million mobile customers, the Department of Telecommunications announced the introduction of 'number portability' in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai.Under this system, subscribers do not have to change their mobile phone number if they shift from one operator to another.The facility will be available to mobile customers by the fourth quarter of 2008.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/nov/13mob.htm

Finally.... I sure hope they do it much faster than that (only metro cities and till 2008-end). I need to change my operator who provides pathetic services. Regarding COAI's allegations, they might be true. But they have not really taken care of bad network quality, so they cannot complain. Let them face the heat, they cannot continue to live off the subscribers tied down to them.

Wrong fare calculation by ezeego1.com

2007-11-07T02:13:00.001-08:00

The Indian travel portal ezeego1.com - http://ezeego1.com - seems to be returning wrong fares for Indian Airlines flights.

I searched for flights from Mumbai to Ahmedabad, for November 25, 2007, economy class, one way, one passenger, direct flights only, include low cost operators, night flights included, all airlines.

A section of the search results is shown in the first image. Note that the page states that the fares are for all passengers and includes all taxes. Indian Airlines IC 610 costs Rs 2475. When I click on the fare details, I get the screen as in the second picture. Grand total = Rs 2475 ( fare=895, tax=1575, service tax=5). Good enough. So I click on the select button for IC610 as shown in the picture 1. I get the booking screen as in the third picture. The fare has now changed to Rs 2895, and tax has been added again ! The total amount now comes to Rs 4487.

I then went back to the search results, and clicked on Option 6 as shown in the first pic. Spicejet flight SG106. The total fare is Rs 2629 as per the screenshot. I check the fare details/breakup, and it seems good. I click the select button for Spicejet and proceed to the booking screen, as shown in picture 4 now. The total fare remains unchanged!

The prices seem to be genuine when compared to other sites, except some flights like in the example above.

I was not expecting such erronous and misguiding results from ezeego1.com, given that it is owned by the large travel company - Cox And Kings, AFAIK. If its a bug in their system, it is a major bug and the site is really bad quality. I also doubt if it is really a bug, it might be a deliberate tactic to cheat (a person might get cheated even if its not the intention of the website. One may simply go ahead and submit thinking about the prices on the previous search results screen).

People, avoid ezeego1.com till such bugs are fixed. Be very careful while booking here, and reconfirm the prices with other sites like the excellent but slightly-unintuitive and congested http://makemytrip.com and the very simple but very slow and returning less search results http://cleartrip.com .

Finally... ICICI Bank gets it

2007-11-06T03:44:00.001-08:00

ICICI Bank fined for hiring goons.. *Long rant ahead*

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/nov/05icici.htm - Please read.

This was waiting to happen. ICICI Bank had it coming, they were asking for it. Though very much delayed (after many incidents of suicides by customers, routine violence and threats against customers, and consumer court cases), it is still a step in the right direction. RBI norms are flouted with impunity by ICICI Bank (I wonder why ICICI Bank is still the darling of the stock markets, they have a very bad image in the retail market. I guess, its their corporate lending thats doing well).

I was hoping for much stringent action against them, based on many incidents that I have come to know of, via the papers, friends, relatives and acquaintances.

Once, due to some delay in processing by another bank where I have an account, an EMI for a loan that I had taken from ICICI failed due to a failed transaction. Yeah, I had taken a loan from ICICI *shamefacedly*, I wasnt much aware of their bad practices. Sadly.

I was unaware of the failed transaction (I did not check my account balance for a week). One fine Sunday morning at 0730 am (yes, Sunday 0730 am! The time to sleep away the hangover) after a week from the due date, I got a call from their goons, who talked in filthy gutter language so typical of the slums of Mumbai. They said that I have not paid my EMI, "kaykoo nahi paisa bhara", "kab derela hai tu paisa", etc. I was half-asleep, so I told them to call after an hour. They called after half-an-hour instead. I told them that I will first check my account, talk to my bank and then talk to you. I again got a call at 11am or something. By that time, I had confirmed with my other bank (phone banking was working on Sunday), that the processing was delayed due to late salary payment and weekend on 31st and 1st. As per the transaction print from the ATM, ICICI Bank tried to withdraw money early in the morning, while my salary was deposited later in the day. (What kind of f**king bank tries to withdraw money at 8 am morning?). I agreed to pay by cheque. The goon at the other end insisted that I pay by cash. I refused. Finally he agreed to a cheque (dunno why he needed cash). He also asked for some Rs 250 fine for late payment. I refused that, since the bank contacted me late regarding non-payment of EMI.

First of all, I had mentioned the withdrawal date as 4th of the month, while filling up the forms. Still, ICICI bank is dumb (or malicious) enough to set it to 1st of the month. I called them twice to change the date to 4th, much before this incident, but still they have not done so yet (of course, it gives them a chance to extract late fines from salaried customers, they wouldnt do that).

After that, why the f**k did the bank wait for a week before contacting me regarding the failure of the transaction. After waiting for a week, why the goons first (that too, on early Sunday monring)? Normally, if the bank should have contacted me first, and then send in the goons. Just proves what ICICI bank thinks of their customers. This also reinforces what the customers think of ICICI Bank is true.

The bank treats the retail loan customers as if they are defaulters first. There can be any genuine issue on the customer's side, like in my case. Its not like every customer of the bank is out to default and run away with the bank's money. Of course, the customer has to pay. I was willing to pay. I would have promptly paid earlier if they had informed me earlier. But getting goons to harass the customer is no civilized way of dealing.

Another case I know of involves a friend of mine, who changed his job and address. He informed the bank of the same, and also completed the formalities of instructing the bank to withdraw from another bank account instead of his current one. Still ICICI bank tried to withdraw from the same account next month, sent goons at his old address (where they came to know of his new address) and sent him a legal notice !!

Also, ICICI Bank is the biggest cheat when it comes to EMI calculations, hidden charges, and setting interest rates.

Please read - http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/oct/30cred9.htm

In short, your interest rate has two components. Benchmark rate and Markup rate (the exact terms may vary). For a customer, the markup remains constant, while benchmark rates vary, in case of floating rate loans. When interest rates were rising, the bank increased the benchmark rates. When interest rates were going down, the bank did not lower the benchmark rates, but offered higher negative markup rates to new customers. So existing customers continued to pay higher interest rates. By definition, a floating rate loan means the interest rates charged from the customer must be lowered when interest rates go down (whatever the reference rate is, as decided by the Reserve Bank). But the bank used this markup rate technicality to cheat customers. At present, ICICI bank charges the highest rate of interest from existing customers, even HDFC and SBI have <a href=" http://www.business-standard.com/banking/storypage.php?leftnm=lmnu3&subLeft=1&autono=300549&tab=r ">reduced their floating loan interest rates</a> for existing customers as per the market.

Some things I have noticed about ICICI Bank -

- They are the most prolific users of goons. Most incidents of bank goons (euphemistically called recovery agents) involve ICICI bank. And this, when most customers tend to avoid ICICI bank because of their very bad market image in the retail loans segment.

- Most people in the industry I know, avoid dealings with ICICI Bank. Many colleagues have called it untrustworthy.

- The employees at the counter are mostly dumb and inefficient. The way they talk, they hardly seem to have any degree. Many of them seem to be the same goons who call up people and abuse them. Same goes for their phone banking service (though not goons). Go to any HSBC, Barclays or ABN Amro branch and you will see the difference in the quality of the employees.

- Most of the times, your requests for even simple things like change of address or phone number, cancellation of cheques, change of the source bank for EMI withdrawals, etc are not understood properly by ICICI Bank. (Or they feign ignorance. It gives them an excuse to earn money via late fines, etc).

- Their services are slow. Once I visited a Bank of India branch (a sarkari bank) for a demand draft. They seemed to be much faster than ICICI Bank and the much hyped another sarkari bank SBI (State bank of India). I got it in 10 minutes flat at BoI, while you have to wait for atleast that time in an ICICI bank branch before your turn to visit the counter.

- ICICI bank branch premises are very often unclean and disorganized. Sometimes, even ACs are not working or ineffective. I have found malfunctioning ATMs most often with ICICI bank (even though it is not my primary account, and it is less frequently used).

- ICICI Bank ATMs are out of cash many a times. Or they are out of currency of particular denominations.

- ICICI Bank hiked my EMI twice in last two years. In one case, they sent a letter 3 months after they did so (and after I had called up ICICI to confirm why more money was being withdrawn from my account), and in another case, there was no intimation. Not even an email informing the change, even though they send atleast one spam email a day to me. ICICI bank will not inform you (or inform you late) about any changes in the terms.

Please let others know about ICICI Banks unethical practices.

I am not against private players in banking, but they sure need to comply with norms. Apart from norms, there are some things called civilized behaviour, business ethics and honesty. ICICI bank needs to learn them, to retain whatever trust they have left in the market.

Further links -

http://www.arjunprabhu.com/blog/archives/2005/04/27/icici-bank-a-bad-experience-for-many/ - do read the comments.

http://www.google.co.in/search?hl=en&q=icici+bank+idiots&btnG=Search&meta =

Reading their model code of conduct <a href=" http://www.icicibank.com/pfsuser/cards/creditcard/fpc.htm">here</a> and <a href=" http://www.icicibank.com/Pfsuser/aboutus/overview/code_of_business_conduct&ethics.pdf">here</a> makes a good joke.

Poor chap..

2007-11-05T02:40:00.001-08:00

http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/nov/05patna.htm

He could have eaten the pigs, instead. Nobody would have come to know.

Focus on an image when HTML page loads

2007-11-03T04:29:00.001-07:00

Problem - On a JSP or HTML page, you have a form which has an image as an input element. You need to set focus on image in the form when the page loads.
You cannot normally set focus on an image in a form, using document.forms[0].image.focus(); . I dont know if it works for you, but it did not work for me.
You can use the W3C DOM to achieve this. Among other things, the DOM model allows the HTML document to be treated as an XML. It also allows javascript or other scripting languages to parse, read or modify this XML.
The solution is below - (call this method on page body load event)

function focusButton()
{
 var inputelements = document.getElementsByTagName("input");
 for (i=0; i<inputelements.length ; i++)
 {
 if (inputelements[i].type=="image" && inputelements[i].name=="submitimg")
 {
 inputelements[i].focus();
 break;
 }
 }
}

ideologies

2007-11-03T04:18:00.001-07:00

In India,

The communists are hardcore communists.
The secularists are hardcore secularists.
The liberals are hardcore liberals.
The fundamentalists are hardcore fundamentalists.
The libertarians are hardcore libertarians.
The capitalists are hardcore capitalists.
and so on..

Can we stop taking ideologies too seriously ?

More than 150% of your airfare is ...

2007-11-02T08:54:00.000-07:00

Tax !!

Bloody government leeches....

They should rather be encouraging lower airfares to reduce the load on already overcrowded trains... Ok, domestic air travel is still a luxury blah blah, but 150% !! Looking at the state of our airports and Air traffic controls, where is all this money going ?

I never saw the breakup of my airfares before this.

muslims voted for partition and pakistan

2007-10-30T00:08:00.001-07:00

http://retributions.nationalinterest.in/weekend-reading-who-voted-for-partition/

Muslims voted overwhelmingly in favour of Pakistan, all over India.

This also implies that the oft-repeated cliches about muslims in India favouring Pakistan have lot of truth in them.

Not for nothing there are celebrations in muslim pockets when Pakistan wins over India in cricket. Heck… muslims in Amdavad even rioted to show support for Pakistan during the Kargil war.. This was reported on Rediff only I think, all other major media players ignored this… Secularism eh?

Holocaust? Is it?

2007-10-29T01:44:00.001-07:00

Pogroms , genocides and Holocausts apart, some interesting questions -

http://indiaview.wordpress.com/2007/10/26/the-myth-and-truth-of-godhra/ - please read in full.

Since no 'secularist' or 'liberal' or 'objective' person ever challenged the above sets of figures, some questions arise: Who killed 200-odd Hindus so early in those riots? Was it the police or the Hindus themselves? And what made those 40,000 Hindus rush to relief camps? Was it fear of Hindu mob violence, rape, arson and murder?

Very relevant question. Who killed those 240 Hindus as compared to 750 muslims (no, the number is not 2000 or above which has been repeated ad nauseum)? If its the police, then was it really a state sponsored genocide of muslims? If it was the muslims, then isnt this not a two-sided affair? Is this a genocide then?

Like I had commented on http://retributions.nationalinterest.in/why-modi-should-go/ , what I saw in Gujarat was a lot different than what the secular cabal make it out to be. It were the Hindus who were being slaughtered. It was not a one sided genocide or something, it was a riot which was forced upon the Hindus. When you know you are going to get killed and police/government wont help, then you have to fight back. This is not the mughal or Gandhi era when Hindus used to let themselves be slaughtered by bloodthirsty muslims. I know of incidents which never made it to the papers or the media decided to turn a blind eye to it. Like a huge crowd of sword wielding muslims entered a Hindu middle-class locality in Paldi (in Amdavad), stripped themselves naked and asked Hindus to leave their women behind and flee. This before the riots started, probably on the same or next day as Godhra. A son of a Gujarati textile dealer in Amdavad told me that their shop was fired at by a mob of muslims. Or that on a street in old Amdavad where there are many shops and establishments owned by Sindhis, more than 20 Sindhi Hindus were killed in a day, though they had nothing to do with the riots.

Some amount of understanding and facts are really missing. First of all, there are places in Amdavad which are totally muslim dominated. You cannot enter those places without fearing for your life if you are a Hindu. The electricity company and municipal authorities cannot enter those areas to collect dues, they mostly let them steal public utility services. Earlier these places had substantial Hindu residents. Then, muslims gradually terrorized their Hindu neighbours to give up their property and flee. The muslims also started harassing, eloping with and raping Hindu women. The Hindus naturally had to leave, since police and government would not do anything against the muslim criminals in the name of secularism. Things became even tougher then for the fewer remaining Hindus who did not have strength in numbers or conviction to kill. Slowly, many areas of Amdavad in Kalupur, Dariapur, Juhapura and Bapunagar became muslim localities. This ghettoization was completed much before Modi or BJP came to power.

Also, note that the backlash was spontaneous, unlike the preplanned burning of the train in Godhra. Anyone in Modi's place would have faced the same thing. Anyone other than Modi would have been unable to control the mobs of muslims indulging in arson, and the Hindus trying to protect themselves. Modi kee kismat kharab that he was the CM of Gujarat that time. Nobody could have done anything about it, except order the police to fire at the mobs. And this is what happened ? Many of the rioters had fallen to police bullets !! Now, who is to blame if there arent enough policemen to control the riots ?? Who is to blame if even the Reserve Police brought in by the central government failed to control the riots? The riots did not subdue until the army came in.

I also suppose nobody saw the banners in muslim localities, which openly called for killings of Hindus, and supported Laden and al-Qaeda.

Whether Modi or anyone else, it would have been uncontrollable, given the gravity of the crime that started it all. I saw the pictures of the burning train, with charred bodies lying around, smoke still emanating from them. It was enough to make me puke.

Is it a coincidence that Tehelka missed interviewing the terrorists and Congress MLAs and corporators who were involved in the rioting?

As Yossarin points out, Tehelka has cooked up some incorrect conclusions and added it to their news reports.
Here - http://offstumped.nationalinterest.in/2007/10/26/tehelka-expose-on-gujarat-riots-offstumped-reaction/

Also, BarbarIndian points out that the videos might be doctored, and the strangely silent reaction of the secular Congress. Some forensic analysis is definitely required here. He also points out lip-sync issues, to the point where audio and video are totally disjointed.

http://barbarindians.blogspot.com/2007/10/fake-stings-and-secular-games.html

http://barbarindians.blogspot.com/2007/10/fake-but-accurate.html

If you want to know what a genocide is, please read more about the Partition and ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus. Using strong words for such incidents just makes us immune to the gravity of the words.

For more on what a Holocaust really is - http://www.sandeepweb.com/2006/11/09/hindu-holocaust-a-thorn-by-any-other-name/ and http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/apr/30franc.htm . No intention of any disrespect to the suffering of the Jewish people by this comparison, but the fact is that atleast 10 times more Hindus were killed by "secular rulers" like Akbar and others than the number of Jewish people killed during WW2.

Since Encyclopedia Brittanica supports the numbers quoted by Francois, and by default, the western press is always correct as per seculars, then this must be true.

Stock markets crash

2007-10-17T00:52:00.001-07:00

Well, I still feel that the Sensex is higher than what it approximately should be. Though Sensex is not a true indicator of the markets (it might be, lets say, a rough indicator of the mood of the stock market).

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/oct/17spec1.htm

Sensex falls by over 1700 points in a single trading session.

I suppose the markets were driven by speculation and hype. And it provided a false sense of comfort maybe. Nothing really on the ground indicates much change. True, India is growing, investments are pouring in, businesses are thriving, but infrastructure and law and order continue to pose serious problems for growth. Its not before long we would reach a plateau, unless these things are handled.

Paki cement imports

2007-10-12T06:37:00.001-07:00

Why are we importing Paki cement into India, when they are reluctant to open their market for our industry ???

http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/oct/11ani.htm

Manmohan Singh should be made the Prime Minister of Pakistan. And Sonia Gandhi the President of Pakistan. Good solution to our problems !!

Aussies cricketers fuming

2007-10-12T03:40:00.000-07:00

Symonds abused by Indian fans - http://www.rediff.com/cricket/2007/oct/11sym.htm

Ponting furious at Sreesanth - http://www.rediff.com/cricket/2007/oct/11pont.htm

Nice to see Aussies fuming at "bad behaviour by Indians", and complaining to the match referee.

I recall watching the highlights of a India vs England cricket Test match at some venue in England, a few days ago. The game seemed to be from the eighties, seeing Ravi Shastri, Kapil Dev, Ian Botham and other players of the era on the field. While the players were not friendly to each other or something, but still they smiled at each other, and laughed together at funny moments of the game. The players were competitive though, all right, but it was a time before the

AFAIK, after the rise of Australia in the ninties (after Allan Border retired), there has been a definite rise in sledging and ugly incidents on the field. Even though Aussies are the world champions, nobody really likes them. Most people, across the cricket playing countries, do not like Aussies and resent them. Most people are likely to be fans (or have favourable views) of West Indies, England and even Paki cricketers, but Aussies are not really admired.

Even one of the greatest bowlers of all times, Glenn McGrath, does not have many fans. Aussie team wins, and winning is all that matters blah blah, etc, but whats the point when the team is not respected even though they win. I dont know about other countries, but in India, the only Aussie players who have some fan following here seem to be Brett Lee and Shane Warne.

How ironic, to see the team that has made sledging a fine art form, accuse other teams of the same when paid back ?

Sue the communal fundamentalist train.. it killed a muslim

2007-10-11T04:42:00.001-07:00

Funnier and funnier. .. WRT the previous post. The muslim guy Rizwanur was killed by a train.

Would the shrill seculo-leftist-liberal terrorists now go ahead and sue the train driver ??

http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/oct/10kol.htm

Extra activism for a slain muslim

2007-10-11T04:32:00.000-07:00

http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/oct/11riz.htm

"Taking a cue from similar campaigns in the past for Jessica Lall and Priyadarshini Mattoo, the netizens are planning an online petition addressed to West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee, seeking "justice" for Rizwanur."

Hahahaha... what cue? Whats the similarity between Jessical Lall case and Rizwanur case. In case of Jessica, the murderer was witnessed by many, but is there even a single clue about who murdered Rizwanur... Just a few days ago, I have read speculations ranging from suicide to murder by girls parents to murder by muslims to unidentified persons, and so on.

Sham secularism... is what it is. Its just because the guy happened to marry a Hindu that its being picked up by the seculo-leftist-liberal terrorists. Otherwise, none of these chatterboxes would have bothered.

Moby Dick

2007-10-11T03:06:00.001-07:00

Sample this - Led Zeppelin performing Moby Dick.

Awesome !! ... A classic.

http://www.amazon.com/How-West-Was-Won-Zeppelin/dp/B00008OWZC/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-4259717-5129630?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1192096409&sr=8-1

Its often said about John Bonham, the Led Zep drummer, that he sounded like three drummers playing together. Try to listen to the full track, and you will know why.

Rumours become truth

2007-10-10T08:08:00.000-07:00

Rizwanur's wife denies that any police pressure or harassment..

http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/oct/10wb.htm

I wonder where such rumours crop up... figment of some left-seculo-liberal's imagination. Hindu girl married to a muslim guy who was murdered by Hindu terrorists (its a judgement, no use of "possibly", "susptected" or "under investigation" )

Now, given the shrill decibels of the seculo-leftists , I doubt if anyone will ever know this truth.

NGOs against Retail 3

2007-10-09T09:34:00.001-07:00

On one hand, they complain that farmers lose money because of middlemen.

On the other hand, they say middlemen will be affected because of a legislation that could help farmers earn more.

Strange strange world...

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/oct/09retail.htm

China blocks RSS feeds.

2007-10-09T00:43:00.001-07:00

http://tech-buzz.net/2007/10/08/china-now-blocks-rss-feeds/

Damn funny.... Why dont they just ban the Internet itself ? Na rahega baans, na bajegi bansuri, etc.

Book tag

2007-10-08T03:21:00.001-07:00

I have been tagged by Jyothsna (http://jyothsnay.wordpress.com)

Here goes

1. Total number of books owned : Maybe around 40. Most of them on math or computers or engineering. Well, a few from other categories are also present :-) . Most of them would be in good condition. I hate dog-earing the pages, making marks with pen, folding the covers, etc. I absolutely avoid those yellow highlighters. Its mostly a pencil to make any marks in the books.

2. Last book bought : Thinking in Java, 4th Edition.

3. Five books that mean a lot to you : Can't say, really. Archer happens to be one of my fav fiction authors.

I am not just too much of a bookie anyway. Many a times, I may pick up a book and then leave it halfway due to lack of time, or interest. Or I pick up some other book. I started with Tom Friedman's The World is Flat, but then someone took it, and I dont know where it is !

Classics

2007-10-08T03:15:00.001-07:00

Try No Quarter by Led Zeppelin. The version from the live album "The Song remains the Same". Much improvizations on the original, including an extended piano piece by Jones. One of the best piano works in classic Rock.

The whole track sounds so much "undistorted", both the studio and live versions. The guitar sounds raw, not modified by the electronics, its much purer art.

The lyrics seem to describe Scandinavian warriors who ask for no quarter and they get no quarter. (No, its not about a quarter of whisky, its this - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_quarter )

The lyrics dont seem to have any particular or direct meaning, as is the case with many rock songs, which leave a lot to the imagination of the listener. That is also what makes it much better than ghazal lyrics (which often degenerate into fan wars over the meaning of the lyrics). Commonly, you will carry a certain snob value if you can remember lyrics of ghazals, it makes you seem some kind of connoisseur (mostly, it turns out to be a false perception).

No, we will never forget

2007-10-05T07:59:00.001-07:00

Another brave son of India sacrifices his life so that we can sleep...

http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/oct/04major.htm

There still are people, in India, who think Kashmir is not about Islamic terrorism. Worse, they are Hindus.

They have sense

2007-10-05T07:56:00.001-07:00

No, they have not let India down. They have enough sense to not vote for a person whose record in managing the Indian economy and finance hasnt been stellar.

If I had a vote, I would not have voted for him either.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/oct/05aziz.htm

Quote -

---------------------

When the Bush administration voted for the Canadian candidate instead of India's Finance Minister, P Chidambaram, who till end of September had been the front-runner to head the International Monetary Fund's Monetary and Financial Committee -- the IMF's influential policymaking body, it was the second time in less than two years that the US had let down India.

-----------------

NGOs against Retail 2

2007-10-05T05:30:00.001-07:00

Just why Reliance Retail alone is being singled out ?

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/oct/05retail.htm

NGOs against Retail

2007-10-04T10:09:00.001-07:00

Just who is this Vandana Shiva ? And why is blatantly lying ? Why dont people think for a moment before they blurt ?

Some excerpts from the interview - http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/oct/03retail.htm

Why is the movement against big retail almost like a movement against Reliance? Why do you spare the Big Bazaars, Spencer's or Subhikshas?

You can't equate a chain like Spencer's, with five shops in the whole country, with Reliance, which can open 5,000 outlets in a single city.

.............

Me - Spencers is owned by the RP Goenka group, a big industrial house. They have more than 5 shops in Mumbai alone( http://www.spencersretail.com/our_stores.php), forget the whole country. Apart from Spencers, they run Cellucom and Music World chain of stores. Hey, they are killing the smaller mobile phone and music CD retailers.. help.. help.. (The truth is that I have found better deals with smaller phone sellers than with Cellucom, and they will do better business than big retailers like Cellucom who wont give discounts)

Reliance can open 5000 outlets in a single city, but would that make sense in smaller cities like Dehradun ? Or even in Mumbai ? Reliance would not do that, even if it were run by a 10th pass with some common sense.

.............

Doesn't Navdanya sell its products through some of these big stores?

Never. Wal-Mart had offered to stock our products, I had a request from Reliance too. But I refused. We are the biggest network of organic farmers and people sell through our five outlets.

.............

Me - Well, they could have brought organic farming (whatever it is, it sounds environmentally good) to the masses if they had allowed the big chains to market their stuff. Good for the farmers too...

.............

"Can you believe that the Reliance Fresh store in Dehradun has not dared to remove its covers?" she said.

.............

Me - Yeah, we are proud of you, Madame.

Does it cost to give proper variable names

2007-09-28T07:30:00.001-07:00

Atleast give a proper name to variables in the code. It just needs a little imagination, nothing else. It makes life easier for everyone, including the original programmer.

How the heck am I supposed to figure out what variable names like svc1 and svc2 mean ?? (Of course, I can, but why keep a margin for error, along with incurring wastage of effort and time? )

The lake below

2007-09-21T07:03:00.001-07:00

Sample this - nostalgic, back to the 70s

2007-09-21T02:29:00.001-07:00

A throwback to the old times... No Quarter by Led Zeppelin. The live version from the album "The Song Remains the Same"

This track seems to be based on Norse legends, based on the lyrics (snow, Thor, steel armour). What exact incident, I do not know since I dont have much idea about Norse history. But it sounds good, whatever. Even though Led Zeppelin have often been accused of being inspired by the devil, etc. (The Stairway to Heaven case).

Close the doors, put out the light
You know they won't be home tonight
The snow falls hard and don't you know
The winds of Thor are blowing cold
They're wearing steel that's bright and true
They carry news that must get through

Archaeological Survey of India ? Scientific ?

2007-09-18T05:25:00.001-07:00

Scientific as in the science of archaeology or the science (art rather) of ar*e licking?

Link to Hindustan times <a href=" http://www.hindustantimes.com/storypage/storypage.aspx?id=e1f3607e-6fb8-4345-8851-6b9e4585948a&MatchID1=4549&TeamID1=1&TeamID2=7&MatchType1=5&SeriesID1=1143&PrimaryID=4549&Headline='Ramayana+no+basis+for+Ram+EMSetu%2fEM+debate' ">article</a> on the Ram Setu controversy.

C Dorjee, director (monuments), ASI, stated in the affidavit: "The ASI is a science and technology department. The issue has to be approached and examined in a scientific manner. While due deference may be given to the feelings of the petitioners, the issue cannot be viewed solely relying on the contents of a mythological text."

I say there is no proof of the existence of Prophet Mohamed and Jesus and Allah or any other God or his prophet.

1. We know how much ASI is a department of science and technology. We do know about the Siddhpur cover-up and the Taj Mahal cover-up.

2. There is scientific and historical proof that Babar destroyed the Ram temple at Ayodhya and built the Babri masjid on the ruins. What about the scientific manner of ASI now?

3. Stop calling it mythology or mythological.

4. The koran and the Bible are a lot more mythological than Ramayana. While other countries have objectively gone and dug up in most corners of the earth to establish the truth and lies about Jesus (I give credit here, this is not possible with islam. If islam says something, there is no proof needed, accept it or else we bomb, rape and kill), the "scientific" ASI has instead abandoned the Saraswati civilization remains, indulged in half truths, full lies and cover-ups. Have they ever sincerely investigated Dwarka and Kurukshetra.

5. Since there is no proof of Allah and prophet Mohamed, lets demolish the Babri Masjid.

6. Prophet Mohamed was a pig eater, and the hair in Hazratbal is actually a donkey hair. Does ASI have any proof that he wasnt ??

No evidence of Ram

2007-09-13T01:47:00.001-07:00

The government says that there is no evidence of Ram. Well, there is no evidence of Jesus, Yahweh, Mohamed or Allah either, in that case. (Yeah yeah, I know, but anyone can pluck hair from their beard or a horse's tail and claim that its a "relic of the Prophet" etc). In fact, there is no evidence of any God at all, for that matter.

http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/sep/12ram.htm

God or no God, the point being missed that the Ram Sethu is a natural formation (lets accept for a while that its not man-made) that has some sentimental importance. What about the importance of that place, it has sentimental and spiritual value attached to it. Imagine the Japanese blowing up Mt Fuji or Greeks demolishing the Thermopylae pass, etc.

Meanwhile, TN declares reservations for muslims and christians. The quota is to be carved out of the 30% OBC quota in the state. Thank God for the small mercies..

Yahoo Photos to be shut down

2007-08-28T03:27:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-23T02:03:00.001-07:00

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...

2007-08-11T07:29:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-11T07:14:00.000-07:00

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..

2007-08-03T08:12:00.000-07:00

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

2007-08-02T05:47:00.001-07:00

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

2007-08-02T01:41:00.001-07:00

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 ?

Exception handling is not the panacea to everything

2007-07-25T06:29:00.001-07:00

Please, for the sake of a thousand Gods, stop writing try blocks that are over 1500 lines long !! I am having a royal headache ..

And worse, dont handle it like this - (exasperatedly pointing my hands below)

        } //end try
        catch(Exception e)
        {
            logger.log("Getting List failed");

}

Atleast log the exception and print the trace...

And they say I am slow.. Yes, I will be slow when I am doing someone else's work (after completing the tasks assigned to me and you know about it), cleaning up such code and getting it to work.

Lenin

2007-07-24T02:46:00.001-07:00

"A lie told often enough becomes the truth."

- Lenin

CPU shootout

2007-07-17T03:53:00.001-07:00

A very good comparison of Microprocessors on Toms Hardware.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/07/16/cpu_charts_2007/index.html

Surprisingly enough, many older processors are still competitive enough, and in a few cases, beat the newer processors. Like E6600 does outperform E6650 on some occasions. But then, E6600 has lower cache and FSB, but higher clock multiplier. So in some cases, it might be a better performer. Higher FSB, like in E6650, does help in memory intensive applications.

IMHO, E6600 is still the best buy at current prices, and would suffice for 2 more years. But if you want more juice, well you have the Core 2 Extreme processors with Quad core. Also, I believe that there has to be an optimum number of cores - the performance gain when jumping from single to double core is much higher percentage-wise, than a jump from dual core to quad core, or quad core to 8-core. AFAIK, multiple core/processor machines are very good at the server level. I am not too sure regarding how much would be the performance gain for a gaming desktop.

Also, the good old AMD Athlon X2 series is still alive and kicking. Its good enough for most applications.

8 random facts about me

2007-07-09T07:42:00.001-07:00

Sakshi (http://sakshijuneja.com/blog/2007/06/29/some-random-facts-about-me/) and BarbarIndian (http://barbarindians.blogspot.com/2007/07/8-facts-about-me-you-could-live-without.html) have tagged me. Here goes...

1. When I was a primary school kid, once my neighbour asked me, Who was John F Kennedy? I did not know, so I said I dont know. He said - "You know, come on, dont be shy, tell me". I was in a bad mood and said - "Tere baap ka baap". Later my baap thrashed me.

2. My mom thinks there is something wrong with me when I listen to heavy metal music. A friend once asked me jokingly if I am into some tantric stuff.

3. My favourite channels would include National Geographic, Animal Planet, Discovery channel, Cartoon Network, Pogo, VH1.

4. I started having beer, whisky etc and cigarettes in the final year of my Post Grad, at the age of 23. Bacardi is my favourite. And amongst the common regular cocktails, I like Long Island Iced Tea.

5. I missed admission to IIMs and XLRI by a few ranks in both cases, after my graduation. I never tried again. Now when I see what managers are like, I dont regret it much.

6. I used to be secular. I used to think there is no reason to fight on the basis of religion (later I realized that you cannot do anything when the fight is forced on you). I used to hate religion. I used to think Hindus are really bad because my history textbooks highlighted many bad points. I used to think Chacha Nehru and Gandhi were valiant freedom fighters and I used to respect them. How wrong was I....

7. I used to be a voracious fiction reader and it included Forsyth, Archer, Verne, Ludlum, Rowling, etc and anything that had a good review. I drastically cut down some years ago due to lack of time and other priorities. My reading is very limited now, based strictly on the recommendations of friends. I wanted to start Ayn Rand, but the thickness of the books makes me put it off for later.

8. I hate orkut.

Reservation argument continues

2007-07-06T07:39:00.001-07:00

Does Madmohan Singh even know the meaning of affirmative action - http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/jul/06pmo.htm
The Prime Minister's Office has summoned the Confederation of Indian Industry, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India on July 14 to submit a progress report on the affirmative action taken by them.

After interfering with the working of our educational institutions, he now wants to interfere with the industry.

Dr Singh (I think Oxford or Cambridge should revoke his degree, going by his dumbness),

The industry does not care about caste or creed or even nationality(Air Deccan Operations chief is a Western chap, I am not sure if he still is after the merger with Kingfisher airlines). It wants to get its work done. Its more interested in doing business and performance. You are just being a cog in the wheel by such stupid hairbrained schemes like reservations in private industry (one of the few bastions left which are improving instead of degrading). Dont you think you should be better concentrating on things like infrastructure and law and order. If these things show an improvement, everyone benefits, and mostly the poor - whom you claim to represent - benefit. I understand that you want to deflect attention from other failures and show reservations as a success or something, but stop raising the reservation cabal where it does not need to be done.

A critique of academics on Hinduism

2007-07-01T23:41:00.001-07:00

A nice article by Aditi Banerjee, deconstructing studies on Hinduism -

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20070629&fname=aditibannerjee&sid=1&pn=1

Credit card or Fraud card ?

2007-06-29T08:32:00.000-07:00

I just happened to go through this article on Rediff. http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/jun/09icici.htm
Read the comments section for incidents of fraud by banks.

I also happened to read this post by Sandeep earlier - http://www.sandeepweb.com/2007/03/04/banks-as-loan-sharks/ and hence I was expecting some "nice" comments about some unethical practices followed by some banks in India on the Rediff article.

As far as my personal experience goes, ICICI does indulge in unfair practices.

1. I once wanted to close an old savings account. They charged me Rs 100 for closing a saving account !! And the pretty woman (surely, not much educated) did not even ask me if I want to go ahead. Yeah yeah, I should have read the rules and regulations, but Rs 100 for closing an account (its my money) is - cheating.

2. They increase or decrease loan EMI amounts or period without consulting me first. Leave alone that, they will not even bother to inform you, or they inform you after 3 or 4 months, or when you call them up and ask them why is your bank statement showing higher EMI amount. And they have the highest rates of interest for any kind of loan. They quote a very low rate of interest when selling any loan, but they will hike the rates like anything after you are hooked, even though any other bank in the market isnt increasing interest rates by that amount. If they have my email id, they should atleast be emailing me regarding the same. Ohh sure.. they will mail you about their new *exciting* offers though. And worse, call you again and again every alternate day regarding some home loan or "free" credit card.

Now, so many friends, relatives and acquaintances have gone through bad experiences with ICICI, that I might miss out some.

An uncle of mine, who belongs to the old world State Bank generation, was getting numerous calls regarding personal loans. He was told that the EMIs will start only when the amount is withdrawn from the bank. My uncle (not the one to reply back rudely), to stop the calls, said - "ok, give it. I am not going to use it anyway". The EMIs started even though he did not use the cheque (which he returned later along with a fine!).

Another friend, was a customer of two wheeler loans. He had given post-dated cheques for the same. He shifted jobs. He took back the remaining older cheques and gave new ones issued by another bank. The bank tried to withdraw the amount from the old account (which did not have much money). They then sent a notice via some lawyer, and threatened a legal case. They also sent some "recovery agents" but he wasnt at his rented flat at that time. My friend visited the branch (with me). The manager was rude and behaved like the bank has done a great generous deed by giving my friend the loan. Once my friend said (in proper Punjabi-Delhi accented Hindi) - "Oye, ek baat sun. Abhi tere muh par paise maar sakta hoon. Chal, close kar de loan" , the manager came back to reality and started addressing him as "Sir" :-) Nice... *evil*

Now comes the funniest part - Once I showed interest in ICICI bank credit card. The marketing guy said he will come with the form etc the next day. He never came. After a few days, I again get a call from the bank. I said I had shown interest, but your people never came to me. She said she will send them again this time, and again he never came. Strange.. Not just ICICI, the same has happened to me regarding SBI and Barclays. SBI called me up thrice, I was interested and they never followed up. Barclays called me up once, I showed interest and they never contacted me back. Funny.... Are they trying to get back at people - nobody is interested whenever we call, so we will not get back to people who show interest.

I have an account with HDFC too, and they are somewhat better. They havent cheated me or have been grossly unfair till now, as such. They once charged me Rs 200 for a 3 monthly statement (I had lost one) - printed right there on plain dotmatrix printer paper, without any bank logo !! Not good. Also, they once sent me a bill on my credit card which I had never once swiped. But I must say - just one phone call, and they reversed the charges. No goons, no questions asked. I havent used that card till date.

You may visit many review sites and find out more about the unfair practices of many banks, not just what I have mentioned. From what I have found on the net, personal experiences and anecdotes, ICICI and Citibank have the worst market image and credentials. In fact, I find it is better to deal with state-owned banks rather than such goons who behave like moneylenders or jamindars in villages. The typical image of a munshi fleecing farmers in Hindi movies, comes to my mind :-)

The problems with some banks include
- goons (or recovery agents, to use some euphemism)
- deliberate delayed communication and billing
- hidden charges (there are way too many of them)
- unethical charges (like fees they charge to close an account)
- ill-informed, rude and under-educated employees
- spamming on email and worse, telephone spam
- complicated phone customer care menus, and long waiting times
- response to complaints via email is very rare
- false advertizing
- false promises and claims by the bank marketing staff (is this what they teach in MBA-Marketing? ) or their agents
- the banks now even call up on some pretext, extract the required info and then start selling whatever. Wastage of time plus nuisance.

I wonder if one has to be a CA to figure out their schemes and machinations. Better not use a credit card, I neither have the time, nor the inclination to go through their paperwork, billing, figuring out the fine print, and a few taxes and charges thrown in, etc.

Also, go through this wonderful article in The Week(dated June 17, 2007), regarding how banks cheat customers on credit cards. I have pasted some quotes from that article here.

http://week.manoramaonline.com/cgi-bin/MMOnline.dll/portal/ep/theWeekContent.do?contentType=EDITORIAL§ionName=COVER%20STORY&programId=1073755753&BV_ID=@@@&contentId=2533928

**********
Delhi State Consumer Commission president Justice J.D. Kapoor, who has been spearheading the cause of consumers, felt that people were falling prey to machinations of banks. "They [banks] first rush to issue credit cards and then start harassing the consumers by sending inflated bills irrespective of whether the consumer has transacted business through the cards," said Kapoor. Banks, he felt, continue to increase the recoverable amount even though they receive the dispute declaration form, and repeated telephone calls by distressed customers. "There cannot be a worse unfair trade practice than this," he said.
On May 22, The Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission issued notices to HSBC and Citibank for fraudulent customer practices. It all started when MRTPC kick-started an investigation based on certain press reports in 2005, accusing banks and their agents of violation of norms. The director general of investigation and registration was directed to investigate the matter and it wrote to several banks asking for information on their credit card businesses. In August 2006, the DGIR asked the banks to furnish additional information.

According to the DGIR, Citibank and HSBC violated the Reserve Bank of India's rules on timely dispatch of bills. Both banks were allegedly delaying delivery of bills and realisation of cheques for payment in order to charge increased interest rate, late fee and fines. The DGIR also found that the two banks had been conducting credit card business in the country through independent direct sales agents or those working on commissions. The DSAs allegedly solicited business from the public by conveying the impression that they were the agents of the bank, without disclosing their independent status, leading customers to believe that the promises made by them were those made by an officer of the bank.

**********

But consumer bodies like Consumer Online, led by executive director Bejon Mishra, are in no mood to relent. Mishra said 23 per cent of the complaints he received were related to banking. The Delhi State Consumer Commission confirms that it has received many complaints from consumers in spite of administering warnings and reprimands to banks.

"It has become a relentless tale of scenes at the residence of the consumers for the recovery of the amounts against loans or credit card. They face abusive language, mental trauma, emotional suffering, agony, harassment and tension," said Justice Kapoor. "The recovery agents chase consumers, waylay them, get hold of their vehicles, beat and bruise them and sometimes create circumstances to drive them to suicide."

**********
Banking officials argue that it has become difficult to recover loans through legal means as there are millions of defaulters who simply ignore notices issued to them. The truth, say consumer courts, is that the collection agents get commission on the loan recovered, so they are eager to use rough and ready methods.

**********
The malady has become so widespread that the Supreme Court came down heavily on private banks for deploying thugs to recover loans. Banks have been told to deal with defaulters as per the procedure laid down by law and the guidelines of the RBI. The apex court has held that banks have a right to recover the dues, but not by force.
"There is great resentment over hidden charges," said S.K. Sharma, Supreme Court lawyer and consumer rights activist. "Such charges are billed without the knowledge of the consumer and without advance notice. When consumers are unable to pay total outstanding dues all at once, banks offer a facility of paying by instalment, but when the option is exercised, banks resort to billing for various services without prior information to the consumer. Another practice is the offer of lifetime free card, and later charging costs after the card has been purchased."

**********
Communications consultant Rahul Bage never got his monthly statements on time. He made complaints to his bank, urging them to send them on time. "These late payment charges run to a few hundreds, but if you multiply the hundreds with the number of customers who have been charged, the amount is huge. It took me eight months to get redress. Finally, I got a waiver of Rs 17,000 that had accumulated as late payment penalty," Rahul said. "How can statements be delayed almost every month? There is something fishy in this; it is a white-collar crime."

**********
Anand Patwardhan, a lawyer who specialises in consumer protection cases, said that a credit card user could seek legal help when harassed. "A customer can seek legal help for unfair trade practices and deficiency of service. A wrong entry could get debited to your credit card statement. If the matter is not solved amicably, between the bank and the customer, then the latter can seek legal help for deficiency of service," he said.
Patwardhan has also found that insurance offers with the credit card are not always foolproof. "If a credit card user is insured against accidental death, and if the last payment has not been made, the kin of the deceased have to keep making rounds of the bank and the insurance company. Banks are hand-in-glove with insurance companies and there is no transparency in dealings," he said.

Obama (osama ?) vs Hillary Clinton

2007-06-15T03:10:00.001-07:00

Ok, Obama bares his fangs, and reveals that he is not much different from his co-religionist whose name rhymes with his. His worldview does not seem to be much different from the Islamic jehadi types, contrary to his image and claims. After all, what can be expected from someone who is a born muslim, tries to hide his middle name or not refer to it, and went to an Islamic madrassa for schooling.

Obama criticizes Hillary Clinton for her India links. Also he made a slur on Clinton, referring to her as the Democrat from Punjab.

<http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/jun/15clinton.htm>

The very nonsensical Obama also shouts about India taking away jobs without any knowledge of facts or reasoning. The below links also show that the share of Indian IT industry in the global IT and software market is much below 6%. Then how come India is taking away so many jobs? Is IT/software the only industry in the world? China has a much larger share in global trade and has taken away a lot more jobs, all over the world, but Obama is ignorant. Why single out India? Is it because he still believes that India is a country of Hindu infidels and must be brought under the Islamic fold or something? Maybe he should remember his own madrassa background before making fun of others.

http://pib.nic.in/feature/feyr98/fe1098/f2210981.html

http://www.hindu.com/2005/07/11/stories/2005071107191200.htm

http://www.efytimes.com/efytimes/fullnews.asp?edid=5316&magid=

I sincerely hope that the US does not vote Obama to power, for its own sake. And maybe, the world.

PS.
Dear Confused, whats your take on that ? this post - <http://retributions.wordpress.com/2007/01/30/can-hillary-clinton-rely-on-women/>. And do you still prefer Obama ?

Obama vs Hillary Clinton

2007-06-15T03:06:00.001-07:00

Result of dhimmitude

2007-06-08T05:23:00.001-07:00

Will the dhimmis at UPA ever learn ? That whatever you do, you are destined to die at the hands of the faithful islamic followers, since they see it as an act to please their Allah. That they hate everyone of us just because we are not muslims. A few exceptions do not prove or disprove anything.

The Al-Qaeda
http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/jun/08jihad.htm

This inspite of the various sops handed out to "minorities", heh !
This is the result of all that mollycoddling a group on the basis of religion, and ignoring the legitimate and sensible demands of another.

All hail... pseudo-secularism

Where is the design

2007-06-07T08:27:00.001-07:00

The code is the design
The code is the design
The code is the design
The code is the design

http://www.developerdotstar.com/mag/articles/reeves_design_main.html

So very true. Except for simple systems shown as example in books, its very difficult to even gauge the size of the system in KLOC with 50% tolerance, leave alone its design. I sometimes wonder, if the authors themselves code their example first, refactor and reengineer it, and then present the design.

Calculating the time estimate is the worst. The previous two are prerequisites, apart from many others like the programmers' proficiency, usage of best practices, etc.

Any inputs, anyone please ?

Tax administration in India

2007-06-01T02:24:00.001-07:00

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/may/31tax1.htm

A very nice account of what is wrong with the multitude of Tax departments of our country.

From that article,

>> Economists -- especially in India -- have been clamouring for an increase in the tax-to-GDP ratio for the past few years. Often they complain that India is not taxed 'adequately' and point out to our 'abysmal' tax-to-GDP ratio -- which stands approximately at 15-17% (all states of the Union included) -- and is far less than any developed country.

This is a very bad line of thinking. Very very flawed. Dont consider tax to GDP, consider the tax to per capita income ratio. What good is a high GDP, when the population is so high that the average individual is left with much less money, than what the numbers would tend to show.

What good will be a higher tax-to-GDP ratio when the entity is unable to pay the tax ?!!!

Also, I remember that you have to mention all your expenses for the financial year on the tax form. Ironically, the form is called Saral !!

Whats the purpose of such a hassle ? And who really reads all those expenses - Rs 65 for a beer, Rs 35 for Schezwan fried rice, Rs 500 for dining out, etc. The fact of the matter is that - You need 30% of my income, and I am giving you that. Thats it ! Baat Khatam ! How does it concern the numerous Tax departments about how I spend whatever is left with me. And why should I mention what phone I bought, where did I dine out, what credit card I use etc.

This is what we face regularly, year after year, while our "secular" government comes up with harebrained schemes for giving concessions to minorities.

Incident

2007-05-30T02:34:00.001-07:00

I was at a wine shop on an evening one day, to buy the stuff. A beggar came in begging. The owner gives him a Rupee. The beggar then produces a Rs 50 note, and wants to buy some wine :-) The owner, dumbfounded, does that. The beggar finishes off his desi daru right there.

The beggar then proceeds to the next shop. The shopkeeper drives him away, telling him that he saw what he did. Just could not help smiling :-)

On the way to Islamic banking

2007-05-22T02:58:00.001-07:00

All right, so finally the RBI gives in to pseudo-secular socialist Congressi pressure - It has okayed high-priority loans to muslims .

Maybe they will get better interest rates ( Wasnt banking supposed to be unIslamic ? Such hypocrites ). And the banks will be forced to provide loans to muslims, the credit rating and normal checks may go to hell.

Already, muslims have been campaigning for separate banks for them, as per the Koranic guidelines. Next, I think Mr Clean aka Manmohan Singh will introduce laws to provide higher interest rates to muslim depositors. A nice scheme, aint it?

Long live India, the secular republic !!

Back to life

2007-05-20T23:36:00.001-07:00

After a long long break..

Regarding the Bhopal elopement case

2007-04-13T09:58:00.001-07:00

Ok, so another incident, and a controversy. A Hindu girl is enticed to marry by a Muslim and they elope.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Hindu-Muslim_love_gets_HCs_blessing/articleshow/1895094.cms

[Quote]
"We are relieved," said Priyanka, emerging out of the court. "I left of my own free will and was not kidnapped. My husband's family is being harassed by the police in MP and we hope the court's order will put a stop to it."

[/Quote]

What ?? How naive. The mullah's father is not willing to accept her and his own son (even though he is willing to accept converts to Islam), she says that - they are being harassed. The biggest harassment has been faced by the girls parents, not by the guys parents.

Talking about elopement, I have personally seen the family of a girl who eloped being broken apart. The tensions, the anger, the feeling of betrayal all taking their toll.

[Quote]His first son, Akeel, had eloped with the daughter of an ex-Dgp. The officer left town and didn't return. His second son Shakeel eloped with a judge's daughter[/Quote]

Both of them Hindus. Is it some kind of custom or tradition amongst Muslims ? To elope with someone from another religion, and convert them forcibly. Like we hear about that being a regular occurrance in Pakistan and Europe too, along with India. Or are they just following the orders of their mullahs, who exhort muslims to entice non-muslim women to marry them and convert them to islam. Or more, some even exhort muslims to rape non-muslim women. (The whole root of the problem ultimately is the belief in koran that non-muslims are worse than animals and should be treated as such. Of course, civilized humans do not treat even animals like that). Like for example, this - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article1464601.ece

or
http://www.hvk.org/articles/0703/9.html
or
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article614114.ece%20
or
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=20646
or
http://www.guardian.co.uk/race/story/0,,1688593,00.html ... want more ??

After all this, do you think any family would be happy to have their girl with a Muslim ?? All these seculo-liberal intellectuals should get their heads examined, get a crash course in human behaviour and psychology before mouthing crap.

Now, lets say, I keep aside these above considerations aside. Maybe both of them are true at heart and religion does not matter. Forget what I said above.

But now, consider the fate of our community.
Sindhi population in India, as per this link below, is just 2.8 million as of 1997
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=IN

I also cite a second source, for those seculo-liberal-intells who like to say - "This data is bad/doctored/unreliable/fake". The official source itself. As per the census of India, as of 1991, only 0.25% of the population is Sindhi. (The 2001 census gave me page not found - Typically sarkari)

http://www.censusindia.net/cendat/datatable25.html

Now, no matter how hard we, the Sindhis, try to disbelieve, we are on the verge of extinction, much like the wonderful Parsi community. We have lost our lands, our culture, our language. Pretty much like the Parsis lost theirs.

We hardly have the numbers to matter in a democracy. (This is what is a minority, not Muslims, who get their way around by vote bank politics. Just the fact that they matter so much in elections is the biggest proof that they are not a minority, disadvantaged or not. )

And the news report from the first link states that - over a hundred Sindhi girls have been targeted by muslims for conversion in the last 3.5 years, out of 350 odd . Now, really, this is really odd considering the percentage of our population is just 0.25%! This is selective targeting! Anyone would be naive to blame it on chance or anything. Is it because we are easier targets !

Of course, I am not happy with our families curtailing freedom for young daughters. This is a knee jerk reaction and will be forgotten soon. But we still are face a big problem. Not just the Sindhi community, but Hindus on the whole. Not just the problem of girls being kidnapped/raped/converted or eloping, but a whole lot more incl terrorism.

Another anomaly - If the environment is just and equal, then we should see equal number of boys and girls from both religions marrying each other (statistically and probability wise). Anyone who follows the news and is generally aware will tell you that this is not true. I see a lot more Hindu girls marrying (with or without eloping) muslim boys, and not the other way round. Why ? Is it because muslims keep four wives, and hence prey on other communities to make up for the shortfall (and hence the rapes if they fail to entice).. Or just that they dont allow their own girls the freedom to marry someone else ? Now, isn't all this talk of liberal values, a load of crap ?

Although, its the past and we have to move on, it is not easy to forget this. During the partition, a million of that girl's fellow Sindhi community members were slaughtered like animals by the muslims, whom she now favours. A genocide (a true genocide, not like that hyped-up Gujarat riots) that forced us to migrate and in the process, losing our culture and the lands that nurtured us for centuries. The lands which were considered one of the richest of India. And end up being called "refugees" even today. I have heard this just so many times, that I feel foreign. Just so many stereotypes have been forced upon us, very few of which I find are true. And this ended up in many of us looking down upon our own culture and identity. Is this girl also a victim ?

pseudo-secularism

2007-04-13T05:25:00.000-07:00

I have just read this. And my first reaction.. What? Not again? Idiots, its fundamentalism, its not freedom of speech or dont-hurt-minority-sentiments thing.

http://drishtikone.com/?q=how_muslims_in_uk_rejoice_holocaust

[quote]And then the Muslims in Europe are surprised by the hostility they face there! If you are sooooo fu**king VOYEURISTICALLY intolerant that you ENJOY and rejoice someone's extermination and feel OFFENDED at its mention.... then... is it any surprise that people hate you??

And this is not an isolated incident.. in India, for example, it is almost blasphemous to talk about the unspeakable atrocities that were brought upon Hindus and Sikhs by the Mughals.. specifically Aurangzeb! So much so, that none of the history books talk about the martyrdom of Guru Tegh Bahadur.. although he was a contemporary of Aurangzeb!! [/quote]

BTW, http://drishtikone.com is one of the better blogs in the desi blogosphere. Yeah, its not on my blogroll, I am too lazy.

Private variables in MDB

2007-04-05T09:50:00.001-07:00

Is it a good idea to have private member variables in a Message Driven Bean. I just saw a sample that does exactly that !!

Human evolution

2007-04-02T03:05:00.001-07:00

http://hawkeyeindia.wordpress.com/2007/03/31/humans-are-still-evolving/

Hawks and Cochran said some of the most notable physical changes in humans have been ones affecting the size of the brain case.
A "thing that should probably worry people is that brains have been getting smaller for 20,000 to 30,000 years," said Cochran.

Interesting.

Is this the reason for the general dumbing down ?

why?

2007-03-28T13:03:00.000-07:00

Strange. About 300 the movie. Why are iranians opposing the movie the most, when they have forgotten their past persian empire, culture and religion?

Send instant messages to your online friends http://in.messenger.yahoo.com

Agriculture

2007-03-27T03:23:00.001-07:00

An amazing article on agriculture. Finally, not much of that same old theories.

Today a farmer gets a fraction of the final retail price while a substantial portion of the prices that we pay for our food goes to the retailers, wholesalers, middlemen and others.

Isnt it good that companies like Reliance are striking deals directly with the farmers(here and here and here). Granted that they wont pay the farmers substantially higher, but atleast, the whole chain of moneylenders and middlemen can be eliminated. Better for both farmers and consumers.

Thanks socialism

2007-03-26T01:32:00.000-07:00

China pips India to get the Intel chip fab plant.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/mar/26intel.htm

Socialist mindset - Majority of India is poor and lacks water, cleanliness and power, so how come you want investments, industries, good roads, cleanliness and power.

Thanks reservations. Thanks minorities. Thanks socialism. Thank you.

RIP Woolmer!

2007-03-23T05:52:00.001-07:00

The betting mafia claims someone who had nothing to do with it...

http://www.rediff.com/wc2007/2007/mar/23woolmer.htm

How not to code 2...

2007-03-22T08:59:00.001-07:00

Another example of how not to code - I came across this sample today

    public static boolean isNull(Object obj) {
        logger.trace(6 , "isNull() starts...");
        if (null == obj) { return true; }
        logger.trace(6 , "isNull() ends...");
        return false;
    }

First of all, Why....

Ok, now what tangible benefit is achieved? Any inputs ...

Note - Programming language is Java 2 (Java SDK version 1.4.2)

Access Control

2007-03-15T05:21:00.001-07:00

I was looking for some new plugins for Google Desktop Search. I clicked on a link with the following URL. It showed me an error which said - "Access control prevents you from viewing this page or something like that". (In essence, my workplace server has blocked me out of that page). But why? See the url below. Damn!!

http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/gdsextreme.html
By the way, Some cool plugins for GDS -
I suggest using Larrys help file indexer here - http://desktop.google.com/plugins/indexthechm.html. A pretty useful Google Desktop Search plugin, that lets you search for chm files (the help files that come with many programs). So you can use this instead of searching in the program help (which does not return results so accurately). I tried it and it seems pretty ok.

A plugin to index any text file is also available here. http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/indexitall.html?hl=en
You may want to add Java, C, CPP, BAS, or any other extension to it - extensions that are not normally indexed by google desktop. Before installing this plugin, just check if GDS indexes that file. If not, then install this plugin.

Also, there is another plugin - mshelp2 plugin, here http://desktop.google.com/plugins/mshelp.html. The mshelp2 is the help file format (hxs) that is used in MSDN and .net SDK documentation. I havent used it, but might be pretty useful.

There is also another plugin for indexing archives. Why do they need that ? As far as I have seen, Google desktop does search into compressed archives.

How free is freedom of speech

2007-03-15T04:56:00.001-07:00

If something is

1. blatantly false (naked Hanuman holding Sita is false, mohamed offering virgins was not. well, both are false as per atheism, but thats another story)

2. offensive to over 70% (+- 10%) of the population in question
3. overwhelmingly illogical and unreasonable
4. supported by the secular intellectuals of India :P

then it probably is offensive.

How not to code

2007-03-13T04:09:00.001-07:00

Code snippet -

Object obj = iter.next();

logger.trace (6 , "This is exception class: " + obj.getClass () );

AppError appErr = (AppError) obj;

logger.trace (6 , "This is exception erroCode: " + appErr.getErrorCode () );

Nothing wrong with this, this would work fine(provided that iterator, logger etc are initialized)...

But then....

I fear ... I puke

2007-03-10T16:01:00.000-08:00

The reason... The sight of blood makes me puke... I am not bloodthirsty. Contrary to the general assumption... I hate it...

minority report

2007-03-07T07:38:00.001-08:00

The fourth comment on this post -

http://acorn.nationalinterest.in/?p=2321#comments

by Praveen.

Yeah, wooing the minorities is really a farce, because if they really were minorities, nobody would bother about them !

Strange

2007-03-02T00:11:00.001-08:00

Why do the Levis guys print the waist size and length on the back leather label of their jeans, for everyone to see. And damn, the belt wont even cover it.

Test Mail publish

2007-03-01T00:33:00.000-08:00

Test to blogger mail.. and publish..

Is the terrorist uneducated and poor?

2007-02-23T04:59:00.000-08:00

The myth of the "poor misguided Muslims turn terrorist" is busted.

For a long time, on other blogs, I have been commenting on this topic. That the popular impression that poverty, illiteracy or lack of education, etc drive muslims to terrorism is just that. An impression. Its not the real truth. Why else would the oil-rich middle east countries be the countries exporting terrorism? Its ideology that drives them, not lack of money or knowledge.

I feel vindicated.

http://www.investors.com/editorial/editorialcontent.asp?secid=1501&status=article&id=256953989637817

Interest Rates

2007-02-21T08:57:00.000-08:00

Many banks are offering high interest rates on fixed deposits these days. Like ICICI bank offers 9% interest on fixed deposits over 890 days.

9% interest!! Are we back to the Rajiv Gandhi, VP Singh days ?? Just indicates how the economic condition of the country is worsening.

Terror groups raising money via the stock market

2007-02-16T02:34:00.000-08:00

Terror groups raising money via the stock market

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Pak-backed_outfits_raise_millions_for_strikes_against_India_NSA/articleshow/1614704.cms

Is this the reason for the boom in the stock markets?

Well, now the muslim terrorists have started using the Indian stock markets to finance their terror. They would make real good fund managers, if they are so successful in making money out of the Indian stock markets. Then why be terrorists? Of course, as some peaceniks would say, the root cause of terrorism is poverty, etc, and not religious differences. A very lame excuse, as everyone can see.

But then, hey, wait a minute, arent stock exchanges unislamic. Well thats what they say - banks and stock exchanges are unislamic. Ok, you muslim terrorists, ye all are infidels now, hehehe.

Also, I hope the stock market collapses for some time. Wouldnt we want the Paki jehadis to suffer some losses now?

Now, the government must force the transfer of stocks from the fictitious companies registered in the Middle East, to the original owners. That seems to be the only way out. Just simply do it. If someone protests at the loss, then find out the genuineness of his claim. If no one protests (or feebly protests) the transfer, it means the company was fictitious. Yeah, it would mean hassles for the genuine owners of the shares in the Mideast, but then we shouldnt allow financing of jehad operations, shouldnt we?

Going through the indibloggies nominations

2007-02-15T16:44:00.000-08:00

Sports category
Tough fight between sportolysis and sportsnob. Its difficult to decide. Both are real good. If I could vote for both of them, I would. And they cover many other games, apart from just cricket.

Travel category
Trivial Matters, Kalyan Varma , Windy Skies are good. I found Windy Skies particularly nice.
Travel tales from India is boring.. there is a lot of other stuff apart from travel. Kousik and Sumana site did not open in my browser so I cannot comment on that.

Best topical blog

aligarians - What?! Just contains lyrics of some ghazals.. I post rock lyrics often, I can stand a chance, cant I? Of course, it isnt so difficult to insert YouTube links to the music videos, like aligarians have posted for ghazals. But I am lazy.

alternative perspective - boring... same old leftist rhetoric. we dont have water, we are poor, how the hell can you feel good about the IT sector. .. you can safely give this a miss.

Well, reading further, most of them are just plain boring. I wonder if they nominated themselves.

In this category, Varnam, Reality check and Youth curry are interesting.

Best photo blog

Well none of them. Windy skies (nominated in the travel category) is actually a good one, but isnt nominated for this category.

Best new blog

joboptions, kalachakraist and barbadkatte look good, the rest are all just about OK.

Joboptions is just plain and informative, it isnt entertaining as such so not many people might like it.

Cookery blog

Err well, just anything. Though I would say actually opened a few of those sites, and tried to see which of the blogs explained their stuff better. I wanted to find out whose instructions were more detailed. But all of them were almost the same. If I would go cooking reading those instructions, it would be disaster in the kitchen.

Most humourous blog

Well, greatbong is good and highly humourous, though some of the posts (and the comments section) might be offensive sometimes. Point Blank is good too, featuring cartoons on current topics. A picture, or a cartoon, speaks better than a thousand words. Also worth reading is ouchmytoe.

Humanities blog

uhh, they are all the same to me. Humanities is what journalists study before they join newspapers as journalists. Going by the news quality on TV and papers, even that is not required these days, it seems. Hence, we see some improvement in journalism in the fields of technology and economy, atleast.
These days, the humanities graduates join BPOs. Actually much better. They do perform well here, whether in calling or backend processes. Those humanities grads who do not get a job in either newspapers or BPOs join some NGO, and mouth inanities.

Best community blog

INI signal, FTW, all the way. The great Indian mutiny is also good (I almost confused it with Sepia Mutiny and did not click). Regarding theotherindia.org .. yuckkk. A blogful of lies and deceit. Read http://barbarindians.blogspot.com slashing them apart and exposing their lies.

Best entertainment blog

The good ones are http://www.withoutgivingthemovieaway.com/reviews/ and To Each its Own. Again, I am wondering whom to vote for. It sure is difficult to decide when the competition is stiff.

By the way, Indian Writing!? Uma ? Entertainment ? Yeah sure, she does entertain. Some people would read it when they have lots of time and brain cells to kill. I would not do it even when I do have the same. IIRC, she is some IAS officer in the government or something. Well, pretty much explains the sad state of affairs in the government. No wonder, it has to be if the government employs people like Uma. After all, thats what is your idea of entertainment when you are fattened on our tax money. Hey Uma, get that IndianWriting thing off your blog. Its giving out a wrong image of Indians.

Best designed blog
Blogchaat looks good (with that chaat kee laari). Sakshi's site looks good too, but it was better earlier. The current one still looks good.
Karma dude looks good. Mediajunk looks good. Well, most of them do. All of them are pretty well designed. Some good stuff here in this category.

Best Technology blog

Now, this is interesting. We sure do have some good nominees here. But I am mighty impressed with Digital Inspiration and http://tech-buzz.net. Both these blogs are quite similar.

I wonder if there are good desi blogs on programming. Though, these blogs are techie blogs, they do not focus on programming. Please post some good programming blog links in the comments section, if you know.

A blog, quickonlinetips.com is good, but concentrates on stuff like Google, Blogger, Youtube etc only. That wouldnt really make it a core technology blog as such. Or maybe, I did not find what I look for in a technology blog. (Of course, technology just isnt Information Technology, it can be just about anything).
Also, shallow thoughts is good. It does not focus much on Infotech. It includes all other types of technology posts, and I even saw one on cosmetics. Also, the percentage of posts on science isnt high enough, I feel. Anyway, its a good read, whether it wins or not :)

By the way, check out http://science-core.blogspot.com/ . It hasnt been nominated for anything, but it is good.

Indiblog of the year 2006 - The Big one -

Well, many of the blogs dont even deserve a nomination. Like this one, who ironically calls himself the "opinionatedIndian" [Edited. I put in the wrong name earlier - objectiveIndian. And sure, he is opinionated. He should also be calling himself hyperbolic Indian, going by the kind of statements he makes :-) ] and names his blog "indian inheritance". Sample this from that blog - "NRIs exhibit the typical Indian trait of sitting on the fence and criticising anything and everything". Enlightening. Very objective indeed.

IndiaUncut is as usual. With cow related humour and features the most interesting news in the media. Though it does make some strange observations sometimes, it is a very good read. Subtle humour, and some good thinking.

Gaurav Sabnis - some really good insights and analysis. The IIM class shows through. Preciseness and facts. Wish I had prepared a bit harder after college and I would not have missed it by "just a little". But then, I was told that people with no work-ex (like me) stand very little chance in the interview. And now, I am too lazy to prepare all over again.

http://www.drishtikone.com/ is also another good blog. This should have been in the well designed blog category :)

And heck, how did Krishworld reach there. I should vote for themaanga :)

By the way, I just could not miss the fact that some blogs that are not even nominated get hits many times over the ones who are nominated.

Now, I must say that I am not a regular reader of many of these blogs, and I did spend some hours browsing through them. Just to vote for the right blog. Yeah but, if you read just a few posts of Krish or Indianwriting, you would come to a decision quickly. A few of those blogs did not open in my browser - I am using IE 7 on Windows XP.

Lock that folder which contains.. ummm sensitive stuff

2007-02-13T08:13:00.000-08:00

A post I found, browsing via Indibloggies nominations. If you want to lock a folder on your computer ....

http://tech-buzz.net/2007/02/04/lock-your-drives-and-folders-using-registry-tweaks/

Try at your own risk.

parzania

2007-02-12T01:59:00.000-08:00

Parzania should not be banned.

But then, Mee Nathuram Godse boltoy should not be banned either.

Censorship and freedom of speech should work both ways, shouldnt they?

BTW, I asked a friend who watched Parzania, to review it for me. He said - The same old stuff.I ask - Is it neutral and authentic. His reply - Is it possible to have a neutral and authentic movie on this?

I recall the slew of newspaper articles and controversies because Hey Ram showed some Muslims rioting and raping.

Should I still need to be concerned if parzania continues to be banned?

This vaahiyat movie called Water

2007-01-29T08:35:00.000-08:00

On Water, the movie. At first, I thought I would type in something much more worthwhile than a low grade movie that passes for art. Like a discussion I had with a colleague about vi editor. Probably, :) I will do post that later.

But then this really made me wonder -
http://www.rediff.com/movies/2007/jan/29suparn.htm

Now I do agree that widows were exploited. It existed then, it still might be. But how common is it, as compared to say, 1800-1890. We sure are not in favour of such practices.

The point about movies in India is that - you should not be uni-directional or obsessed with the topic. I dont think widow exploitation has been covered for the first time in Hindi movies. I dont watch much of them these days, but I do remember this topic being touched upon. But a movie made totally on widow exploitation !! And worse, it is a film made by a filmmaker with dubious credentials, so things dont help.

It tries to give an image where anyone looking to exploit widows must visit Varanasi. It is all about presentation. The movie tries to portray that this practice is widespread in India, when in reality it is not. The movie might be so unidimensional and obsessed with the topic of widows exploitation, that it sure would give that impression. Like I have watched Fire, it sure gave that kind of impression. That of a religious Hindu not interested in sex, and his wife making out with other women.

Coming back to the question of widow exploitation, I have seen and met many widows, some of them my friends' mothers, and well, they are respected in their respective families. Nor did my friends tell me about any such thing happening, when I asked them about it.

I also doubt if the practice was prevelent only in Varanasi. It might have existed at a lot other places. But why Varanasi as the center of the story. Just why Varanasi. Has it got something to do with the significance of the place? Would she make a movie on Islam and the abhorrent practices that they still follow? And shoot the movie in Jama Masjid Delhi or some makbara in Lucknow. No, I dont think so. She might portray the location to be anything else, say like Patna or Delhi or Agra or Jaipur. But no, she wont budge ! Is Varanasi your target, Deepa Mehta? Or maybe she would have chosen Sangam at Allahabad, Tirupati, Haridwar or Kanyakumari for her venture, going by her inclinations. Going by her actions, I have every reason to believe she wants controversy. Maybe I am wrong, but I tend to go by logic, facts and reasoning. Not emotional rhetoric and hot air. And her actions seem to suggest that she does not have good intentions.

I doubt Deepa Mehta's intentions. She has given us every reason to do so, right from Fire. For instance, we are ok with lesbianism on the screen, but why insist on the names of the characters as Radha and Sita. I watched the movie, and found it in bad taste. And for all her lying and crying, the names of the characters were Sita and Radha. I have also watched parts of Earth, and I wasnt interested enough.

Deepa Mehta's movies sound shrill. Its like she is shouting in our ears. No, its not social awakening, its plain downright irritating. The media might think that she is a great filmmaker, but I find her downright dull. Use some black and white scenes, filled with fog, naked poor kids with running noses frolicking in water, the mandatory snake charmers, and slow motion, and voila, you are a great (f)art film maker. Her movies are generally in bad taste. If she had put her message across much more tastefully and with much more sensitivity, I dont think she would have faced such opposition.

I admit I have not watched the movie. But going by all those news reports and reviews on TV, papers and the Internet, I know the basic plot and theme. I have commented on the facts that I am sure of, so dont ask me to watch the movie and then post. I am not reviewing the movie, I am talking about why this movie should be avoided. I would have shredded the movie to bits if I had seen it :-)

Eclipse startup error

2007-01-26T20:36:00.000-08:00

If you are getting an error dialog titled "Incompatible JVM" when you are starting up Eclipse 3.2 - Just make sure that your PATH points to the correct JVM.. If you have more than one JVMs installed, the correct JVM path should come earlier in the PATH variable. Else you would be thinking - Hey, I have the correct JVM on the PATH, then why is it not finding it.

You need to point to the correct folder, which contains java.exe.

Eclipse 3.2 (IIRC, also 3.1 and 3.0) needs atleast Java 1.4.2 installed. It would just not work with anything lower than that. So when I saw that I do have Java 1.4.2 installed and its present in the PATH variable, still it tells me that the JVM is incompatible, it really got me confused.

My PATH variable is as below:

C:\Sun\AppServer\jdk\bin;D:\oracle\ora92\bin;C:\Program Files\Oracle\jre\1.3.1\bin;C:\Program Files\Oracle\jre\1.1.8\bin;%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem

Earlier, the "C:\Sun\AppServer\jdk\bin" (the path to my 1.4.2 JDK) was at the end. So it tried to use the java.exe on "C:\Program Files\Oracle\jre\1.3.1\bin" (The first java.exe that it finds in the path, when looking for programs). And it invariably failed.

To correct this, make sure your java 1.4.2 (or higher) installation comes first on the path. Eclipse will try to use the first Java runtime that it can find.

If you have only a single JDK (search for javac.exe or java.exe on your computer, to find out the number), and you get this error, you need to upgrade to atleast Java 1.4.2.

Update

Sabarish, in the comments section, points out using another way. Using the -vm option to specify what JVM should Eclipse use.

To run eclipse in this manner, enter below in the run dialog. This is the path as per my machine, the paths would change as per your machine.

d:\eclipse\eclipse.exe -vm C:\Sun\AppServer\jdk\bin\javaw

Or simply, create a shortcut to eclipse.exe, rightclick on the shortcut, go to properties. Go to the shortcut tab, and specify the above command in the textbox labelled Target and apply. This would make it convinient.

The best editor

2007-01-26T07:26:00.000-08:00

Discussions (and heated fanboy debates) on vi vs Editplus vs Emacs vs Eclipse vs Microsoft Visual Studios vs others are always exhilirating. Even if you dont come to any conclusion (like most discussions on desi blogosphere), you learn some tips and tricks.

Personally , I prefer pspad (http://www.pspad.com/) or even Notepad (If you find the Lucida Console font irritating on Notepad, change the font. You wont mind Notepad much then) for light editing. And Eclipse for some serious and heavy coding.

Though vi is quite good, I still find it a bit cumbersome. The learning curve is quite steep. I keep forgetting some commands. For using vi effectively, you need practice. And practice. And more practice.