Photosynth Prototype

Life lessons from Narayana Murthy

It is quite a paradox the kind of people we have in our country which will be the case anyway considering the diversity. This is again a good piece to read. Till yesterday it was frustrating but today another hope.I happen to know a person who has worked with NRN for the last 17 years and he still keeps raving out him. Personally I have seen his humility which was incredible to believe.

http://www.rediff.com/money/2007/may/28bspec.htm

What a Shame ! Flog the accused in public

When I saw this story on the Televisions yesterday .. My blood boiled over - for a change I support the Islamic way to treat the accused rather harshly for such crimes. It was such a painful story. I cant imagine how regressive our society has become. The culprits should be flogged to death for causing such grievous harm to such a sweet little girl. Any crimes against children should be shown no mercy and I was so happy some time back when Dhananjoy Chatterjee was hanged to death which I dont see happening for the Nithari accused. Damn the human rights activists where are they now .. coward bastards , I feel like taking a drilling maching and making a hole in the center of their head.

Hindol Sengupta aptly captures all the emotions I have .... Its a definite read.

http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/hindolsengupta/104/2172/mumbai-safe-city-l.html

Its time before the country woke and shrug the "it did not happen to me so why should I care attitude". I have said this in the past that the middle class should wake up from the slumber and really tackle these issues head on.

Where is the infrastructure !

There is lot of hype surrounding the 1 lakh car of Tata. Though it is still not clear what is that 1 lakh all about, will it be the cost price, the exfactory price or the showroom price. A lot of 150 CC bikes come for Rs 50 K and to think of the car to retail at that price would be foolish. There are other concern of safety , space etc. Last heard was that the government of India is planning to give tax concessions to Tata’s for them to achieve that price. At the outset what one of the most respected group has set out is a very noble intention of giving the car to the masses, the first and the most obvious question that pops up is where is the infrastructure to take up the load. The economy is booming leaving a lot of surplus cash in the hands of the masses which can be an obvious trigger. The urbanization of Indian cities has led to un planned growth resulting in bottlenecks in key parts of the cities.

Most of the Indian cities are choc a block as the infrastructure development is reactive and pro-active. For an example once there a regular jam at a particular junction or a stretch the administration will suddenly wake up to either build a flyover or more conveniently make it a one way. All of the solutions are short term. There is no concept of capacity planning at all. The bigger worry is the parking space, any one who has being to Delhi will observe the row of cars stationed outside the homes and on roads. There is absolutely no space to park. Its a privilege to get parking space in the shopping malls, central business districts, public places etc. Bangalore roads are a nightmare the infrastructure is crumbling and there is no political will to make that dramatic change

A seemingly innocuous question is where will the folks keep the car and on which roads will they drive. Most of the new apartment complexes coming up are already full with obscene amounts being charged by the builders.

This is my sound pseudo socialist but the government should stop this project in the national interest further the Tata’s have not displayed any inclination to go for a cleaner technology so definitely there will be environmental damage as well. The current boom in expensive cars has clearly displayed the customer’s preference of quality over price as otherwise there was no reason for Maruti 800’s decline.

Not a muggle any more

For quite some time now I did not realize what was this Harry Potter mania and why kids and adults alike went fanatic about the whole concept – I was simple amazed and watched in awe when people got together and lost themselves in discussing the nuances in the books of Harry Potter which made J K Rowling the first dollar Billionaire by writing books. I was confounded how a story about magic can be held together for such long time and across 7 books and also interest kids and adults at the same time. I am a self confessed fan of the star wars saga, which has a similar theme of good vs evil though it did not have the book franchisee to propel the films into stratosphere.

With the impending launch of the 7th and the last book in the series and the hype of the 5th movie , I too have got bitten by the bug though my interests lie in knowing more about the dark lord Valdemort than in Harry potter and his antics. I am also now being consumed by the harry potter magic to an extent I have decided to read all the books even knowing what happened in the end – 21st July is not very far. I keep wondering the ingenuity of JKR to come up with so many terms and characters and weave such a plot. Bloomsbury surely was lucky to have latched on and have made a fortune.

Having watched “Harry potter and order of Phoenix” over the week end and the other movies earlier – I am seemingly getting convinced about the hype surrounding the release of the last edition. Though the movie was a bit dark as compared to the earlier ones it nevertheless displayed the maturity of the child actors who have grown in stature with every innings. It will be surely difficult for Radcliff to an encore. I only hope that the main leads don’t change for the last 2 movies.

I will be waiting to see the last episode - the final battle between the dark lord and Harry and from the recent utterings will be not to the liking of a lot of fans

Gmail will get paid ..

I keep wondering will a time come when the users have to pay for having an email account and the allied services that come with that. One of my first email accounts apart from the traditional hotmail in the year 1997 was with a site called netaddress.com. It became paid in the year 2000 and after that I have never heard about that site.

Hotmail used to be a 2MB account and yahoo a 4 Mb and then came Gmail as usual google gave a new definition to the "email" with gmail. It gave an mind boggling capacity of 2 GB un heard in the industry which forced the traditional leaders like hotmail and
yahoo to expand not just the mail size but also the service offering and last week Yahoo broke the size barrier and made itunlimited. I keep wondering the kind of infrastructure required to service the userbase and with the ever increasing voracious requirements for space.Where will the money come from ? will the advertising revenue be sufficient to make profits ?

Now more and more services across the portals are getting integrated and people depending on them much more than in the past. Even google is promting a single sign on identity for its various acquired properties like Youtube, blogspot and orkut. Yahoo was the first of the block but in the last 2 years except the acquisistion of flickr it has not gone any where , not really leveraged the wide spectrum of content it could have integrated.

I forsee a situation where email accounts will get paid and that money being asked will not be for the email but for the sign on identity. Ultimately the email id will become the most important weapon in the hands of these service providers to charge and who else but GOOGLE may be the trend setter and considering the kind of data I have on blog,picasa,orkut etc I might pay even though may not be willing to.

Diehard

What a movie ! I really loved watching Diehard 4, it was a very typical Hollywood raw action flick and a very good change from the love me types hollywood has been churning out which actually ought to be action packed entertainers ( POC and Spiderman 3 ). Very limited emotions and all focus was on action – edge of the seat entertainer. Bruce Willis is brilliant in the movie – his one liners is very difficult to forget. The plot of the movie may be a little futuristic but very much in the realm of possibility and probably shows how the future wars will be fought without any arms and ammunition. Its a must watch !