Among companies that have been investigated by the CBI include Swan Telecom Private Limited, Tiger Traders Private Limited (later Tiger Trustees Private Limited), Zebra Consultancy Private Limited, Parrot Consultants Private Limited, Cheetah Corporate Services Private Limited, and Giraffe/Siddartha Consultancy Services Private Limited.

   Source: http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-tech-of-2g-scam-and-swan-and-zebra-and-reliance-adag-trick/20110405.htm

http://www.ted.com/talks/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html

http://www.khanacademy.org/

Please note the size of a folder in 3.5 inch floppy drive :)

- No I can’t take this. I couldnt even watch this video till the end!

Recent newspaper reports mention that some terrorist outfits are trying to bomb prominent IT companies’ premises. To do that, all they have to do is to design  a smilar bomb and wire its trigger to detonate on recognizing the phrase “Not Working”! Unlike the bomb designers in the novel, these terrorists don’t have to take the pain to recognize a particular person by his voice nor do they have to recognize a particular accent!

Fat or thin, North Indian or South Indian, Gen-X or Gen-Y, male or female, everyday you can hear them all saying “Not Working” in different emotional states on the corridors of cubicle jungle. Sometimes you might even be tricked into thinking that you are walking down the lab of Gods trying to fix the cosmos! Or scientist from sci-fi movie experimenting with their biological subjects. [The later is more likely because you can often hear a healthy father/mother of 3 children screaming "I am not able to reproduce" ]

Irrespective of whether someone designs such a bomb or not this is definitely a trigger to something big!

http://memebase.com/2010/11/30/memes-troll-math-pi/

If you wondering that the heck it is, a good explication to it is given by mikeyz in the same page:

What’s going on here is that the “curve” created by this exercise never actually gets “close” to the circle. If you stop at any point and zoom in on an arc of the circle and the line segments, the ratio of the lengths will always be the same (pi/4). There is no convergence. Just because you have two shapes that look the same and have the same area, they do not necessarily have the same perimeter. One could describe a shape that looks like a circle, and has the area of a circle, but has an infinite perimeter.

In the retake of this experiment, one guy is telling that “you should have more buttons here to continue” this is after the subject failed to respond for a long time… http://www.personalgrowthcourses.net/video/milgram_experiment 50% of the people continued till the end and 2/3rd of the people went to lethal levels of shock!

  We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion, while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.

This quote was considered to be made by Gaius Petronius Arbiter (27–66 AD) but seems like is quoted from Charlton Ogburn, Jr. (1911-1998), in Harper’s Magazine, “Merrill’s Marauders: The truth about an incredible adventure” (Jan 1957)

Irrespective of that this quote is still valid in many organizations!

Interesting theory… Only after I read about it, it seemed so obvious

–

http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/2004/11/0411backtalk.pdf

Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford psychologist, reported in 1969 on some experiments testing the broken-window theory. He arranged to have an automobile without license plates parked with its hood up on a street in the Bronx and a comparable automobile on a street in Palo Alto, California. The car in the Bronx was attacked by “vandals” within ten minutes of its “abandonment.” The first to arrive were a family — father, mother, and young son — who removed the radiator and battery. Within twenty-four hours, virtually everything of value had been removed. Then random destruction began — windows were smashed, parts torn off, upholstery ripped. Children began to use the car as a playground. Most of the adult “vandals” were well dressed, apparently clean-cut whites.       Zimbardo one day smashed part of it with a sledgehammer. Soon, passersby were joining in. Within a few hours, the car had been turned upside down and utterly destroyed. Again, the ‘vandals“ appeared to be primarily respectable whites.

Ultimately, initial talks between Apple and Facebook failed, because of Facebook terms that CEO Steve Jobs described as “onerous,” according to numerous reports..

Steve Jobs calling someone else’s terms as ‘onerous’ – this should be the joke of the century!

This is what I call as strategy

You don’t have full visibility; You have some assumptions and presumptions; You learn by your mistakes; You don’t really know how the controls and actions that you take really work but you have some understanding based on your past experience; You really don’t have full control; You mostly go by your intuition; You go by the hope that nothing bad will happen and the other party will take enough precautions; Overall you survive on luck

But the bidding information at http://www.dot.gov.in/as/Auction%20of%20Spectrum%20for3G%20&%20BWA/Auction%20results/3GDataFiles.zip and http://www.dot.gov.in/as/Auction%20of%20Spectrum%20for3G%20&%20BWA/BWA%20Auction%20Results/BWADataFiles.zip give very good insights on everyones strategy.

I am planning to take this up a project in our my IIMB courses.

The main reason Qualcomm bid for spectrum is to deploy LTE in India. LTE is still at it infancy and hence cost of deployment for the service providers is high and cost of CPE will also be higher. But it is actually a volume game. If more players place the order of the equipments the cost will come down. If there are going to pan-India roll-out of LTE and more than one service provider is going for this, cost might not be too high. Players who already has 2G/3G networks (like Airtel) can reuse some of their existing infrastructure and it can reduce the deployment cost.

But Aircel already has WiMax deployments in several places. I think there is still possibility for them to switchover to LTE.

But players like Tikona will continue to use WiMax. Intel might not give up the fight and might subsidies players deploying WiMax.

Pleasant surprise

Update: I found the culprit – Tikona. (This is my assumption!)  They have installed WiFi routers eveywhere in Bangalore.

In the end BSNL also has to cough up this exorbitant money of all the circles (except Delhi & Mumbai). Consumers waiting to experience the features of 3G networks like me, will be the final losers.

I hope that the government take note of it and will at least tweak the process for the more critical BWA spectrum auction.

I somehow have the feeling that this method of auctioning will lead to overbidding in metro and ‘A’ circles and underbidding in ‘C’ circles.

3G is useful for data intensive usage and internet access. It also requires using relatively expensive handset. Hence initially revenue realization will be more in metro and A circles. As there are strict roll-out obligations, everyone wants to bid for only metro and A circles. The longer it takes to converge the larger will the be over-bidding or under-bidding. I guess it will take more time to converge.

In this auction process there are restriction w.r.t bidding activity via eligibility points (Initial deposit and past activity). If I am a serious bidder, I cant change the initial deposit that I made. To be alive and win spectrum I am forced to participate. I cant put invalid bids. Would I be interested in bidding for C circles and end up winning them instead of A circles? Or will be stretch myself to win a few circles if not all-India? This way even if I end of winning C circles, I will get them cheap (because the price is not pushed too far by overbidding there) and make a dent on competitors’ (especially big ones – they are really interested in providing seemless 3G network to its executive customers) profitability.

By comparing the daily results at http://www.dot.gov.in/as/Auction%20of%20Spectrum%20for3G%20&%20BWA/new/auctionresults.html, I think my argument is justified.

Comments please…

Money is flowing like water (Huh! might be like sewage). It seems like Conxxxxx is offering Rs.500 per person and BJX’s offer is Rs.300 per person in my area. In places where tight competition is expected (my servant maid’s area) it shoots up to Rs.1000! And in some places where results are more or less known, it bottoms down to Rs.100.

Hope most of you have stocked up perishable commodities. This money will mostly go towards paying-off debts, entertainment expenses, preparing Sunday feast and buying liquor.

Two years back US government sent out some cheques to all its citizens and called them ‘TAX breaks/refunds’. But the intention was to put money into peoples hands and let them spend to simulate the economy. Are we doing this in a different manner? May be thats why TamilNadu’s economy was slightly better in the past. I guess Karnataka is also catching up fast!

Electronic City and ITPL guys… tomorrow take bus!

http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=%E2%80%98Bus+Day%E2%80%99+to+kickstart+tomorrow&artid=KlkrXPRwlpI=&SectionID=Qz/kHVp9tEs=&MainSectionID=Qz/kHVp9tEs=&SEO=&SectionName=UOaHCPTTmuP3XGzZRCAUTQ==

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dGNvOGxYNzdacktOdXpJVFduc1dHVWc6MA

http://eventsbengaluru.com/2010/01/27/bmtc-bus-day/

http://www.aspiringminds.in/

Last week Noble peace prize winner Obama oops President Obama had a great opportunity to showcase his commitments for which he was awarded the Noble peace prize. I personally, was expecting to see concrete progress in three areas

1. Dealing with two previous Noble peace prize winners

a) Aung San Suu Kyi

There was no mention about her in the official statements. But Officials mention that Obama has taken up this issue with Burmese officials.

b) Dalai Lama

Obama’s office mentions that it was not the right time for him to receive Dalai Lama but will receive him later

2. Relationship with China

As mentioned in some sectors of the press, even though Obama acted more like a reckless spender paying visit to his banker, being a Noble peace prize winner, he could have been more upright on Human rights issues, censorship, state of North Korean asylum seekers in China or other things that United States of America stands! for. Overall I think, he did a decent job here!

3. Initiates to contain Climate change

A token initiative to set up a research center….

Innovations that I come across are either two-dot-o or social-xxx or human-interface or some vague high tech terminology! Entrepreneurship? its again the same thing with references to using twitter, building prototypes, number of registered users, online marketing…

Even though I carefully avoid these references, I am getting sick of these things! Either I am in a wrong circle or it is a sign for another bubble. Third option is, only high-tech industry guys make such a loud noise especially over internet!

What a simple calculation… $0.25 per GB. No volume discount and you have to pay in terms of 2 power x! Is a Geek in charge of setting the prices? For a company like Google, it might not be different from managing 10,000 customers with each subscribing to 16TB than 8 million 8192000 customers with each subscribing to 20GB. But for me it looks funny!

Thanks to Google, of late I have started using IE more frequently. Yes, Google (Toolbar) is the reason for my shift to IE. I started visiting French language sites frequently and need an auto translator option with a toolbar. But there is no such thing for Google Chrome. Thanks to Google Toolbar, I am using IE more frequently.

http://in.reuters.com/article/companyNews/idINSP41125220091108?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

For simplicity here is an excerpt from that article

He also said the government would accelerate the sale of stakes in state-run companies

Reforms in Singh’s first 2004-2009 government stalled due to pressure from his communist allies, now out of the ruling coalition after election defeats in May. “The tone on reforms is very bullish and the government is well positioned to carry out these reforms because of the political mandate,” D.K. Joshi, a senior economist at Indian ratings agency Crisil in Mumbai.

The government plans to introduce in parliament by December bills proposing the raising of foreign stake limits in insurers to 49 percent from the present 26 percent and opening up the pension sector to private and foreign firms.

It will also propose a law to cut its holding in top lender State Bank of India to 51 percent.

As a recipient of a Nobel prize for Peace, lets hope that Obama achieves UNIVERSAL Nuclear disarmament. (Not the decade long mokery treaties with Russia and later increase of nuclear arsenal in the name of national interest; or pushing CTBT to legally reserve the nuclear weapons only to a select few countries + Israel)

Lets hope that sovereign state of Palestine is born and both Israelis and Palatines enjoy peace.

Lets hope that stability come to; violence and terrorism stops in Afganistan/Iran/Pakistan.

I know its too much to expect in next 2.5 years. But the Nobel committee thinks ‘now that right steps have been taken, it will definitely happen’. I sincerity hope that all these things come true! Lets Hope, Hope. Oh, now I know why this person!

Why is everyone singing to Obama’s tune???

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2009/

Nobel prize was anyway slowly loosing its glory. But I didn’t expect that to happen this fast!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=WDjzgQ1tC79MpCPKShZpsA_3d_3d

Uncle Sam is crossing the limits! He soon would like to take a brain scan, to make sure that no one with thought process that does align with him, go behind the bars!

Ha ha ha. Sometimes it pays to listen to stupid stuff!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/aug/28/india-population-climate-change

I am not able to get hold of it…

Eventhough media is trying to pitch it against Google Earth, the objective of Bhuvan seems to be different. Looks like the focus would be more utilitarian and it might give relevant information from different agencies of the Government.

WTH???

“The matter was taken up with the US Embassy,” External Affairs Ministry spokesman Vishnu Prakash said soon after the reports about detention of the actor reached. He said the Embassy was ascertaining factual details of the incident. Consul General of India in New York is in touch with Khan, Prakash added.

US Ambassador to India Timothy J Roemer issued a separate statement, saying “We are trying to ascertain the facts of the case — to understand what took place.” Describing Shahrukh Khan as a “global icon”, Roemer said “he is a very welcome guest in the United States. Many Americans love his films.”

“I am of the opinion that the way we are frisked, for example I too was frisked, we should also do the same to them,” Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni said. She said many examples like this have come from the United States where frisking is done and “beyond permissible limits”. ”I don’t understand in the name of religion, frisking can be done for anyone like this,” an angry Soni said.

What crap is it? Why is Indian Government taking it personally and seriously? Aren’t numerous Indians being frisked daily? Didn’t George Fernandes got frisked when he was on a official visit to US in the capacity of Defence Minister of Indian Government? Even the Dr. Abdul Kalam incident didn’t get this much response… Why didn’t Indian Government take it up with US earlier? Why take this personally now? Why can’t Indian government take seriously the contradictory statements issued by Mrs. Clinton and US State department on Nuclear energy and Climate change related topics?

Why all this mess? Why should Tamils in Bangalore or rather Tamil Nadu government install the statue in Bangalore? Yes, I agree that St. Thiruvalluvar is a great poet whose contribution is unmatched. But what is the benefit of installing his statue here? Instead, should Tamil Sangam here focus more on preaching this values? Is Tamil Nadu government or rather the political party ruling TN playing cheap politics to get credit that it can use in next TN election? Given the notorious pro-Kannada organizations, there will definitely be trouble in the future. What will happen if someone deface the statue at a later point of time? Why should innocent people suffer due to this cheap politics?

Why are these pro-Kannada organizations opposing it? Off late they have become real pain here. Why don’t they realize that by fighting against other languages, Kannada is not going to prosper? If they really worried about Kannada, they should rather work towards enriching Kannada rather than wasting their energy in this cheap fights. Kannada has rich traditions. Several great classical works are there in Kannada. Why don’t these people try to promote them? To prove the point, shouldn’t they encourage translation of works in Kannada to other languages so that others might be able to appreciate Kannada better? Should they try to bring in good works in other languages from other languages to Kannada so that Kannadigas are exposed to these works as well? Do they want to work for Kannada or just find a way to unleash their animal instincts in the disguise of expressing their loyalty?

In return for installing St. Thiruvalluvar’s statue in Bangalore, Tamil Nadu government has agreed to install Kannada poet Sarvajna’s statue in Chennai. What a deal! I am 200% sure that the situation there will exactly be same as here. In addition to that, the pro-Tamil groups will have an additional reason to oppose, as they can site that pro-Kannada activist did not agree to install St. Tiruvalluvar statue in Bangalore and why should they agree to install poet Sarvajna’s statue in Chennai!

Cheap Politics, Cheap Politcs, Cheap Politcs… Someone please save us!

Why didn’t I know it before?
Sometimes in TEDTalks, a person siting among the audience might be more knowledgeable than the person on the stage. May be I still haven’t entered that league. (Or else, by now I would have earned enough to pay $2000 conference fee )

http://india-campusfrance.org/download/French%20Govt%20scholarship%20holders.pdf

Horses have an even number of legs.  Behind they have two legs, and in
front they have fore-legs.  This makes six legs, which is certainly an
odd number of legs for a horse.  But the only number that is both even
and odd is infinity.  Therefore, horses have an infinite number of
legs.  Now to show this for the general case, suppose that somewhere,
there is a horse that has a finite number of legs.  But that is a horse
of another color, and by the lemma ["All horses are the same color"],
that does not exist.

I have also opened an account with ‘Central Bank of India’ in 2002. Sometime back, they computerized their branches and introduced ATM machines. As part of that, they gave me a new passbook which had all the entries in my old passbook. Then they introduced core banking. Now, my account number is totally different. My new passbook doesn’t have the old entries, just the balance have been bought forward. This is no big deal. But the problem is, suddenly my account became a ‘joint account’ with I, two guys who have given me introduction to the bank and the nominee of my account being the joint holders of ‘my’ account… Let’s see how I get this problem rectified.

I visited CMH recently. They registered my name in their system and created a file for me. When I went there for revisit, I was expecting them to retrieve my file from their storage. But the lady at the registration desk again wrote my personal details on a new sheet of paper and sent it to the doctor. What happened to my history??? When I entered the doctor’s room, I was pleasantly surprised. The earlier sheet which had notes about the symptoms, diagnosis and prescription has been scanned and the LCD display in front of the doctor was showing it. OK, they don’t have the information in text format, but at least they do have the scanned copies. Is it a good compromise of utilizing IT without forcing old fashioned people to change their traditional practices? Or did some IT company that worked for some Hospital in West to scan the existing patient histories and convert it to digital form, sold the same solution to CMH?

Know why? Then first you should know what it is. It is the new home for BESCOM’s new transformer (ABB) at New Tippasandra in Bangalore. I am happy because, it now doesn’t have to get wet when it rains; it has got a new covered home with a warm light inside when it is cold outside…

Its not just that. You should know its previous history. When it was a ordinary pole mounted transformer, I have seen it literally exploding twice. Yes, that’s right, twice. Considering the probability of me present near it when exactly it goes bust, it is quite impressive. I personally don’t believe that I am X-men kind of guy, you know… I guess now you understand the significance of its new avatar. 

But alas, nothing comes for free. Exactly when BESCOM guys were trying to bring it to life, I entered my house and switched on the main. Boom, Bust, Crack… in my house. It is my UPS (connected only to my ADSL modem and mosquito repellent). Then I noticed that the light is too bright and the celling fan is spinning like, it is mortal version of vishnu-chakra ready to start off and behead me. Oh, these guys had set the transforming ratio wrong. Curse ABB, why give so may controllable options to them? That’s the reason ABB stocks have taken a beating. In the process ‘power adapter’ for my Dell laptop stopped working. I guess, it is worth the sacrifice when considering the human sacrifice my fan was about to consume…

This is from McAfee’s report on “The Web’s Most Dangerous Search Terms”

What does this tell us?

3 movie stars…

1 South Indian movie star…

“How to make money”…

Namitha beats Kat…

Don’t use shortcuts to complete the address and too lazy to type it…

waptrick???

Looks like this is taking the path of .COM era!

Their Indian counterparts needs to learn to project themselves in a different light.

http://www.irastimes.org/The_90-10_Principle.htm

Interesting article!  From the days where the European Governments would like to get Vatican’s blessings for their policies… to Vatican started commenting and criticizing European Governments’ policies… to now European Governments criticizing Vatican’s policies

mind boggling… If you are intelligent enough to be able to guess the name of that company then you would be required to send 33% of your income to save such company

If you go behind them, they will ignore you.

If you ignore them, they will come behind you.

- Of course Me

Facsimile copy of WSJ Asia Edition in India dt 14th Jan 2009

Facsimile copy of WSJ Asia Edition in India dt 12th Jan 2009

Note the addition ‘The external boundary of India as depicted are neither correct nor authentic‘. I haven’t seen such additions in the past. Such maps depicting India’s boundary different from Indian government’s official map, are freely available over the Internet. Several international news channels show such a boundary. Even softwares like Google earth show such a boundary.

Prasar Bharati might me thinking that, as physical news paper reaches large population of India who might not even be aware of boundary disputes, it might be better to regulate them instead of going the China way.

Never thought this will happen! Are we at the bottom? My instinct tells me so.

White water rafting at Dhandeli! Not just participating TiE Bangalore summit but volunteering for it and get a chance to interact with bigshots! All gone