Categories
Thoughts

Criticize less, praise a little, Please!

We take great pride in criticizing failures, but do we devote even 10% of that efforts in praising successes? In a way we create an environment where if you move your finger, you might press the wrong button and will be shot for that. Hence sit tight and be complacent.
I agree that due to corruption and mismanagement, there are colossal wastages of the relief and development funds, but that does not justify us doing nothing. Either one should suggest and alternative, remedy or one should keep the mouth shut. Simply criticizing will only demoralized the people who are working for improvements.
Not all schemes are designed to serve the vested interest of the politicians, and if you think that the case, then why the hell do you not vote and throw them out of power. A rupee sitting ideally in the treasury is better than the 30-40 paisa that actually reaches the needy.

Take two wonderful schemes Employment Guarantee schemes and midday meal schemes. In my opinion they were revolutions in itself, but most people do not know about it.

Midday meal: parents are poor so they force the kids into child labor instead of school dooming the kids future. The poverty also leads to malnutrition, while government granaries have huge stockpile of grains which is rotting. By a simple solution, we solved all 3 problems together. In some cases more kids turned up for school then the number of students that could be seated. I should say every rupee spend in this scheme gave us benefit of three.

Employment Guarantee scheme: (Manmohan Singh’s pet project) Indian rural areas are still dependent of farms and most of them are landless. So there is elongated periods where they are unemployed. By EGS, you get a huge pool of minimum wagers who are ready to work in the most backward districts. Not only the local economy is boosted, but also you give the panchayats and district collectors resources to build roads, canals and infrastructure. Hence laying a strong foundation. In 2 years, lot of the backward districts from congress ruled areas got benefited, but media found those places to be too remote to cover.

Categories
Humor

which one will you go for?

Love Marriage
Resembles procedural programming language. We have some set of functions like flirting, going to movies together, making long conversations on phone and then try to fit all functions to the candidate we like.

Family system hangs because hardware (called Parents) is not responding.

You are the project leader so u are responsible for implementation and execution of PROJECT- married life.

Client expectations include exciting feature as spouse cooking food, washing clothes etc.

Love marriage is like Mac, beautiful, seductive and expensive, but never know when you are going to run into compatibilty problems!

++++++++++++++++
Arranged Marriage
Similar to object oriented programming approach. We first fix the candidate and then try to implement functions on her. The functions are added to supplement the main program. The functions can be added or deleted.

Compatible with hardware( Parents ).
You are a team member under project leader (parents) so they are responsible for successful execution of project Married life.
All these features are covered in the SRS (System Req. Specification) as required features.

Arranged Marriage is like Unix ….. boring n colorless… still extremely reliable n robust.

– Coursey Aparna (Chaparna)

Categories
Thoughts

New generation SPAM

Spam is the annoying mails and messages which have no value to you, yet consume your time or resources. Traditional outlook opens up a image of Viagra, discount stores, promotions of things you have never heard of and even phishing. I am least bothered about these email, almost all browser has and can filter them out.
1) forwards: There are a bunch of people who are more than happy that they do not have to pay postage charges for the emails. They will forward you the same joke for the 10th time, send you news flashes with incorrect news etc. If any mail has a FWD in the subject bar, I do not even care to open it.
2) Occupational spam: Its part of the office politics, who is important who is not, communication gap that if you send a mail you need to address it to a bunch of 100 guys. (From your manager to the recipient’s manager)

This is the reason why you are surrounded with all data but no information. These are the kind of mails which even the most advanced SPAM software is not addressing. I will give you some simple solutions.

1) Use folders. Each group and mailing list mail should lie in their respective folder and only mails which explicitely mention your name should come directly to your inbox.
2) Separate mails addressed to (only) you from those which were send to groups, or larger audience.
3) Make a separate folder forwards for people who regularly send useless stuff to you.
4) Never even bother to look at mails which are cc to you. 99% of them is just because the sender wants to use you as a CYA gimmick. If you clear these lowest priority mail once a week, it is more than sufficient.

For the webmail providers I request you:
1) There should be an expiry date in the mail. Certain mails like the travel itinerary, meeting timings have no value past a certain date and should automatically be deleted after a certain date.
2) Nobody is interested in a year old fax/telex message. So each time a user gets a mail, give him an option to select the day of deletion. My mailbox still has some last year’s Christmas greeting cards.

Categories
Thoughts

How border trade reduces smuggling?

Essentially smuggling requires a market opportunity involving huge difference of prices, demand-supply mismatch and relaxed border checks. You open up your border/trade routes and all 3 incentives vanish overnight. I will give you 4 more reasons.

  1. Ability to do an illegal activity depends largely on how much your conscious approves of it. Betting rings, gambling rings are easier to create and operate than a narcotics dealership.

    Basically. its easier to recruit and convince people to ignore them. Even the authorities are more likely to let go a better off with a warning/bribe than a drug/arms dealer.

    Its just the same with smuggling. Its easier to convince someone to smuggle mangoes, medicines or machines than drugs and arms even though both involves currying a 20kg load on your back across the border. That bag of medicines can always contain some contrabands, after all nobody is going to check it. But if the mangoes, cd player etc is priced same in both places, under what pretext are you going to bootleg?

  1. Smuggling has terrible supply chain management. Your goods gets confiscated, bootleggers charge exorbitant logistic charges, delays are common, you have no control over inventory and payments. Wallmart will tell you how many zillion dollars you could recover by improving it.

  2. All the profits of smuggling is shared between the smuggler and the buyer and none of it goes to the seller (who in many cases is unaware of the final destination). Also you cannot advertise across the border or provide after sale services. So the manufacturer and marketeer have all reasons to promote legal channels over illegal ones. No wonder Nokia is fighting so hard to curb the grey market of its cellphones in India.

  3. The revenue generated through customs is something that was earlier profit of the bootleggers. So you can fight them better with their money.

Last, but not the least anything that goes underground becomes messy. Take film industry or land mafia for example. The anarchic laws do not provide for a way for financing of movies and transfer of land so it becomes a breeding ground of goons. Same was true with casinos in Las Vegas, or businesses during license raj. If you open up these sectors and stream line the laws, not only do these industries boom, but crime is combated.

Categories
News

A Call of Honour – In service of Emergent India

Mr Jaswant Singh

Ex-Foreign Affairs Minister

Cabinet Ministry of Govt. of India

I did not understand your rationale behind what you said in the yesterday during your book release “A call to Honor – In service of Emergent India” So allow me the liberty of paraphrasing

  1. Did you answer to that call of honor, because one of the duties of a foreign affairs minister is to prevent the CIA infiltrating in India?
  2. All of a sudden you intend to speak to the Prime Minister, but you did not seek appointment. Nor have you revealed his name/details. I hope you realize the urgency of the issue.
  3. Are you sure your so called mole is real, and not a fictional character who is spicing up your otherwise boring book and get some free publicity?
  4. Are you a court which can decide if is worthwhile to book him for being a spy?. Of course by condoned his actions for 10 long years, you destroyed all hopes of damage control.
  5. BTW, by withholding this information for 10 years, you have become an accomplice in this spy network and are eligible for life imprisonment. (section 176 Indian Penal Code)

Updates: on 1st Aug Manmohan Singh cornered Jaswant in Rajya Sabha and asked him the specific question about the identity of the alleged mole. Jaswant Singh blabbered for about 120 minutes without giving any specifics. When Congress interjected and asked him to end the story, BJP proved that all this was a cheep plot of getting attention by getting the house adjourned.

 

Categories
Humor

goofy signs

In an office:
TOILET OUT OF ORDER…… PLEASE USE FLOOR BELOW

Outside a secondhand shop:
WE EXCHANGE ANYTHING – BICYCLES, WASHING MACHINES, ETC. WHY NOT BRING YOUR WIFE ALONG AND GET A WONDERFUL BARGAIN?

Spotted in a Safari Park:
ELEPHANTS PLEASE STAY IN YOUR CAR

Seen during a conference:
FOR ANYONE WHO HAS CHILDREN AND DOESN’T KNOW IT, THERE IS A DAY CARE ON THE 1ST FLOOR

Notice in a farmer’s field:
THE FARMER ALLOWS WALKERS TO CROSS THE FIELD FOR FREE , BUT THE BULL CHARGES.

On a repair shop door:
WE CAN REPAIR ANYTHING!!!
(PLEASE KNOCK HARD ON THE DOOR – THE BELL DOESN’T WORK)

Categories
Humor

invention

Henry Ford dies and goes to heaven. At the Gates, St. Peter greets Ford, and tells him, ”Well, you’ve been such a good guy, and your invention … the assembly line for the automobile changed the world. As a reward, you can hang out with anyone in Heaven you want.” Ford thinks to himself about it, and says, ”I want to hang out with God Himself.”

The befuddled St. Peter takes Ford to the Throne Room, and introduces him to God. Ford then asks God, ”When you invented Woman, what were you thinking?” God asks, ”What do you mean?” ”Well,” says Ford, ”You have some major design flaws in your invention:

1. There’s too much front end protusion.
2. It chatters way too much at high speeds.
3. Maintenance is extremely high.
4. It constantly need repainting, and refinishing.
5. It is out of commission at least 5 or 6 of every 28 days.
6. The rear end wobbles too much.
7. The intake is placed too close to the exhaust.
8. The headlights are usually too small.
9. fuel consumption is outrageous.

…just to name a few.” ”Hmmm …,” replies God, ”Hold on a minute.” God goes over to the Celestial Supercomputer, types in a few keystrokes, and waits for the results. In no time the computer prints out a report, and God reads it. God then turns to Ford, and says, ”It may be that my invention is flawed, but according to these statistics, more men are riding my invention than yours.”

-courtsey Sid

Categories
News

Open Office

I always thought the major strength of Microsoft is not its dumb operating system, but Microsoft office.

Imagine this, most users of modern computers are not programmers who wants to understand, configure and customize every tool, or software they use. Most of them are housewives, office goes and simple public who just want a medium to communicate, a typewriter, and ability to create/read/store documents and reports.

Microsoft office came with a revolutionary concept of interoperability. The spreadsheets could be imported to the word document. The email client, powerpoint, text editor and pictures all were integrated together as if it was one program. This synergy was what made Microsoft different. OS is dumb, you use it only when you want to start, stop the machine or program. Its the individual programs where one spends most of the time. Microsoft realized it early and ensured that one will not have to re key any data again.

The reason why microsoft allows (and even secretly encourage) people ridiculing their OS, is because to create a false front where all the opposition will be targeted (plus it is a great for the publicity) while protecting its core (office and other non-OS software)

if open office is successful, I am sure it will be single largest blow to microsoft revenue and monoply.
PS: since I did not find any Bangalore based distributor of open office, I thought of contributing a little to the open source community. Anybody who wants a copy of open office CD can use my CD writter for free.

Categories
Puzzle

brain teaser (tough)

Seven letters are we,
Four different words we make.
Guess us or be ridiculed;
Your reputation’s at stake.

The first has pictures,
Paintings and such.
The second causes sneezing,
From ragweed or dust.
The third is an adverb,
It’s hard to explain
It’s the same as immensely
But it’s much more plain.
If you can act like a king,
this word you will sing.

These clues are sparse
This riddle may be tough.
But if you are smart
Then it will be enough.

Categories
Humor

half drunk

“What do you mean, coming home half-drunk?!” she yelled.

He mumbled back, “It’s not my fault. I ran out of money!”