Why Steve Ballmer Misses The Point Completely With Android

Steve Ballmer, chief of Microsoft, speaking at Telstra annual investment day said "I don't really understand their strategy. Maybe somebody else does. If I went to my shareholder meeting, my analyst meeting and said, hey, we've just launched a new product that has no revenue model!"

Sometimes its hard to believe this guy heads the largest technology corporation in the world. Its almost unfair that microsoft has to compete against the smarts of Larry page and Sergey Brin. A decade of seeing open source screwing up microsoft server business, he still needs to ask why they are doing it.

Ok Steve i know the answer and here it is. Its time microsoft gets screwed. Google wants to do that. Since they dont want you to control the third screen(mobile) and releasing a open source OS for which manufacturers do not have to pay for licenses its just the fastest way to do it.

So in short, they want to do to your mobile business what Linix did to your server business.

Clear? I think its time we switch jobs, o heck no, you will screw up my company and ask stupid questions in public conferences.

To Microsoft share holders, sell man sell.Fast.

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Obama win is once in a century event and here is why

So Obama won the elections. kenyans are as happy as americans. Everyone is hailing Americans for being wise and choosing the better candidate but here is how rare this win really is.

1. US economy had to be in shit for people to look beyond skin color.

2. The outgoing administration had to be in government for 2 straight terms and anti incombancy factor as high as it can be.

3. The outgoing president had to have a miserable public image.

4. US as a nation had to be disliked by people of a lot of nations.

5. The country had to be in the worst recession in over a century.

6. The presidential hopeful had to have a white mom even when he is black to make people look beyond skin and attract voters outside of his community.

7. The presidential hopeful had to have follwoed christianity all his life even when his father was a muslim.

8. The other presidential hopeful(mccain) had to be old enough for people to fear that he might not be able to complete his term in office.

9. The other presidential hopeful(mccain) had to make the error of choosing a extremely unworthy vice president(palin) making people doubt his own judgement

10. The entire business community, scientific community had to lobby for the presidential hopeful to make people trust him eough.

11. The presidential hopeful had to choose his most vocal critic as his vice president.

12. The presidential hopeful had to get loyalities from his own strongest competitor and her followers(hilary)

13. The presidential hopeful had to be one of the best orators politics has seen for quite some time.

14. The presidential hopeful had to convince people he has always been a christian and not a muslim.

15. Take personal allegations of his links with terrorists.

16. Make people from his oppositions side publicly support him(powel).

These factors and many other factors coming together are reasons why Obama even though he is a black in a white peoples country could make it to thr white house.

And this is as rare as it gets. Good for you america.

George did you congratulate Obama by the way? No?

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Why Tata Nen HottestStartups Contest Is A Complete HogWash

In case you are not familiar with this contest, its a contest for Indian startups where the winners will be selected by popular voting and ratings by expert panel.

Now here is why this event is a complete hogwash. 

1. The best startups might not be able to get popular voting at all. For example a nano technology company with a product focussed on government organization. It makes sense for consumer websites to get more, and probably thats what its intended for. The only issue is that they have not mentioned this anywhere.

2. The votes can easily be rigged. Infact i am sure most of the top 100 startups have in some way manipulated voting. The top company has got 10,000 votes. Seems unrealistic.

3. The voting charges are 3 rs. per sms like those reality shows. 

4. Some of the top 200 startups in the contest are nonsense. They have no business model, no profits, no future.

5. The experts are no good to give any one ratings. Most of the experts have not proved themselves that they can sense a good business opportunity. The expert panel is not impressive. I saw some experts give exceptional comments to a blog. I mean nothing against blogs, i just dont consider a blog a startups.

6. Some of the best companies i could find are in the bottom 100.

7. Their website is so pathetically slow, its virtually impossible to vote online. If this guys were serious they would do something about this. You will not even get confirmation emails when you register. If you do register you will not be able to login.

8. They didnt expect people would rig votes. They mention on their website that they didnt expect people to manipulate votes. These are the people who are supposed to judge business opportunities. By the time they realised votes have been rigged its already too late.

9.  Popular voting is given 50% weightage. Now that will make sure the best startups don't get nominated in the top 30.

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How A Search Engines Conflict Of Interest Can Keep You Away From That Perfect Search Engine

We all dream about that perfect search engine. The engine that gives you answer for every question without trying your ability to think of imaginary keywords that might or might not exist. The search engine that will tell you where your kids are and what they are doing, the search engine that tells who you need to marry, the search engine that tells you if are going to become the next president.

But wait, it will never happen. 

There is a conflict of interest that arises in every advertising based business. Every content provider is serving a advertiser. They owe the advertiser a share of your attention. 

If search engines became perfect, you will hardly click the ad. If search engine became perfect, you will not visit a website, the content owner will not have any reason to share his content with the search engine.

Marrissa mayer, gave a seminar in web.20 summit in which she shared how increasing the number of search results on each page from 10 to 30 caused the traffic and revenue to reduce 20%.

When marrisa mayer equates people leaving their search results page early and not clicking ads to bad performance you know there is not much hope.

The chances are a user might might have more search results to view, he focuses less on ads, he finds a good result in 30 results and visits the website.  

Itsclearly understandable, irrespective of what google tells you, they want you on their website. That is where they get their revenues from.

I dont blame them, they are a for profit company. Its the entire business model that has conflict of interest built in.

Someday maybe they will start an ad free search engine and charge a fee for it. There they can give users the best search engine, because you are paying them for it. Simple.

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No its not the software stupid: Google shows off Gmail on Android

Google inc showed off its gmail service on android on its blog recently and it seems everyone is happy to see the screenshots. Very happy.

Infact the screenshot looked so much better then gmail on the web i am tempted to use a android phone just to check my emails even when i am right infront of my computer.

But hey who ever complained about android, we just thought G1 design sucks. 

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Nokia switches strategy, connects to internet

  

Nokia whos brand slogan is connecting people, has so far not connected to the internet too much. They were happy making cool phones and selling them. 

Nomore. Nokia has seen many companies come and play in its core domain. Every company that does anything at all has a phone to sell to us now. 

But so far Nokia has focussed on its core. It made phone and only phones while others like Sonay and samsung ventured into anything that has a silicon chip inside it. And then along came Google android to give its recently acquired symbian mobile operating system a run for its money.

Everyone just wanted to take what bill gates did to the PC and do it to our mobile phones. Everyone wanted to control the third screen as they call it.

While Steve jobs is too arrogant to learn from his mistakes which is evident from the fact that he steal wanted people to buy a phone that has apples software, apples hardware and design, Google is actually doing what bill did by releasing a operating system and not making a mobile handset.

Now since Google would be shown a middle finger if it just came along with operating system and told everyone to switch over cause it says so, it follwed a better strategy of releasig this softare as open source which is less threatening to most handset manufacturers.

It seems nokia realises, with android becoming the default operating system it will be forced to offer its phones in android os too. More threat coming from other handset manufacturers.

Nokias new strategy is to save its market share by providing more internet based services. Services that are not easily portable creating a tall barrier to entry for other handset providers.

With its recent dozen acquisitions it seems nokia is thinking ahead of a lot of other handset manufacturers.

Obviously not everyone, Steve out thinks everyone, but then he wldnt sell anything to you that isnt apple made. Its so not steve. He makes his own screw when he build his house, he makes his own medicine when he gets a fever.

Acqusitions is for kids. Apple is differenent. If you want the apple, buy the whole tree you cheap skates. 

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ValueClick executive joins a startup

Reuters reports one of the early executives of valueclick, an online adnetwork has joined a startup called gigya. 

Gigya apparently lets application developers distribute their applications in their publisher network. It also lets advertisers advertise in these widgets and shares earnings in advertsing with publishers and developers.

Good business model. Distributed content is surely the next big thing on the internet. 

I wonder if these recessive times will allow senior executives of more public cmpanies to take the plnge venture backed startups.

 

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Sprint ceo says Google android sucks

Ok he didn;t actually say it sucks, i just read between the lines. 

CEO Dan Hesse, whom you may remember from those classy black-and-white commercials on the teevee, recently told the National Press Club that as it stands, he doesn't think Android is "good enough to put the Sprint brand on it." Sure, he probably just meant that he'd like to see Android's kinks ironed out before Sprint puts out a handset of their own, since he has committed to support Google's OS in the future. It's a little surprising coming from Sprint, given their close ties with HTC, but once Android gets a little more polished, we're sure Sprint will jump into the fray. [via Reuters]

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Amazing wordpress plugin to manage comments from desktop

I came across this amazing wordpress plugin called moderator. Its built on top of adobe air and needs the adobe air runtime. 

Moderators lets users manage their wordpress comments right from their desktop. Cool.

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Facebook shows some of its users the middle finger and goes ahead with redesign

I firmly believe you cannot keep everyone happy. Its essential to make some people unhappy. Its important to pick the people you are goin make unhappy really well.

Facebook faced stiff opposition from around 1 million of its 100 million users to the site redesign. Facebook has gone ahead with the prposed redesign and it seems to be working well for now. 

I like the new design. 

I'm glad facebook went ahead with redesign. Listening too much to your users can lead to a painful collapse.

So many times what users say to you is based on illogical baseless factors that its best to logically decide what you want to do with a product. So any products have failed because they asked for solution from users.

Never ask a user for solution. Ask them what their problem is. Propose a solution. If you believe its best for the kind of users you want to keep, go ahead and do it.

Sometimes you just need to show them the middle finger, because the problem with us is that e really dont know what we want most times. We just want to be heard. Paid attention to. That doesnt mean i dont wnt the redesign, i just want you to know i have a point.

Consumer is a strange animal. But its ok we love animals.

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Faceboook gets generous, releases thrift, scribe

It seems all companies including Google, Yahoo and facebook understand one thing well now. They need to keep the developer community close to them to be able to create standards and be in a position to control the industry.

In its attempt facebook has released a framework they call thrift in the open source and followed up with releasing a service for thrift called scribe.

Both are aimed at developers who want to use various technologies to aggregate and display data from multiple servers. While thrift allows developers to run programs written under various languages like c, php and java, scribe lets developers aggregate data from many servers and process them.  Scribe is a service that runs inside thrift.

Keeping open source developers is a good strategy. Demonstrated by microsoft and sun for many years. This is why Google chrome sucked for most firefox users. This is why opera isnt tht widely adopted dispite being a terrific browser. They havent been able to woo the developer community.

Firefox on the other hand is a developers best pal. In turn developers have given the firefox users some amazing applications that make their lives easier and more productive. Even though chrome is faster than firefox in both rendering visited page from sites and executing javascript, firefox users have not stopped using firefox.

Why? because firefox is not a browser. Its a platform.

It lets them pick from thousands of free firefox extensions that do a great job of making their lives easier. Like the firefox web developer plugin or the elasticfox extension to manage amazon web services.

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First Microsoft live and now Mahalo: Another fool pays its users to spend some time with them

Mahalo, a self proclaimed search engine has launched a program that will pay its users to browse their shit. The more shit you browse the more you get paid.

Interestingly this is not the first company to do this. Microsoft live is also bribing users to use its search engine. I doubt that works.

I used to feel web users are extremely finnicky customers, they act pricey(me including) and are disloyal by nature.

We would flock another site for the slightest of reasons. But my beliefs have changed since people havent changed their default search engines yet.

Infact i havent even tried microsoft live yet. I will never try Mahalo till it doesnt stop calling itself search engine.

But the point is, web users need quality too. If google promises they would better their search engine by twice as much in on year i bet me and all other users would pay a fee per year to use their search engine.

50$ per year? I am ok with it. Gimme a good search engine. Stop bribing me to browse through shit.

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TuneCore gets $7 million

Tunecore a provider of online music distribution secured a funding of $7 million from opus capital. Tunecore has a simple busines model, music creators upload their music on tunecore, it charges them a fee to store thei music and retail it on many retailers around the web.

The business is so simple its almost delicious. I have no doubt this will work. 

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Yahoo opens itself with Yahoo open strategy

Yahoo finally gets it. Finally they understand that to stick around the internet, they need to work with the people who make it, the developers.

When i look back at yahoos history sometime its hard to believe theyw ere so close o hude opportunities and never noticed it. They had overture. They had the audience. They had the most popular IM. They had the most popular web mail. They had great people. They had money. They had advertisers. They had the technology. The had the infrastructure.

Well they still didn't get it. 

Anyways, it seems some folks at yahoo do get it now. 

They are opening up a lot to people. Though there is still a lot that can be done, if you are a US investor buy yahoo shares at the current prices. 

It might get bought over or it might get to the top again whetever happens they do seem to have some smart loyal people there that will make sure the price per share goes up sooner or later.

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Post Removed

I have removed this post as some people might believe this to be based on facts. I thought it was obvious that its not. I'll just say sorry.
I deeply apologise to anyone and authorities for inconvinience and possibly my immaturity. I encourage all bloggers to understand cyberlaws at their website.

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What do you get when you take a tech news site and minus "news" from it: Techcrunch

Once upon a time a read techcrunch, because they actually kept me in the know. I never commented, but i read it. Then the web grew up and i figured there is web outside of silicon valley, the web is in places where micheal arringtons will never report about because they have never heard of these places heck they have not heard of any place outside of palo alto.

Now when i visit them once in a while mostly courtesy techmeme. Its that friends promoting friends thing. that hope that if i send you traffic and you send me traffic, in the end maybe we can still get people to believe all the web is in silicon valley thing you know.

I still like techmeme, atleast they do silicon valley well. But in the recent past techcrunch is really trying hard to find something to write about. And then they make up stories that should be going on someones personal blog.

They recently reported about how google is using a competitors name to get traffic to its website and how it uses its own advertising platform to advertise itself. 

So google is supposed to use someone elses advertising platform to promote its product and not its own because that somehow is unethical?

I tell you what is unethical, bad reporting is unethical, reporting for the sake of reporting is unethical.

Techcrunch, time for some self searching guys, maybe you can fire a people or two yourself. Why not firing is in, isnt it?

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Google launches Gmail For Mobile 2.0 and it works

Google inc launched the new version of gmail for mobile. Sometimes its hard to believe we are trying this hard to please the consumers of free applications as developers. 

There was a time when developers treated the free application market as a hobby something you do in your excess time and now we see the heavy weights fighting it out for the free applications. The free applications are as good or better than enterprise level applications.

So the only differentiation between a free application and an enterprise application is that a enterprise application comes with more fined tuned control for the enterprise while a free application is for a individual consumer.

Though something don't change much, years ago a company called gave operating system and software at throw away prices or free just to make it so part of a consumers life that it becomes a standard and then enterprises have no choice but to buy licenses for this application, a company called Google is dooing the same now.

I guess successful economics principles don't change much. 

 

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Wake up Mr. Shiv Raj Patil, Greatest Theat To India are not naxals, its your politics of region & religion

The evidence of how out of sync with reality Mr. Shivraj Patil, the home minister of India is that he thinks the greatest threat to the integrity of India are naxlalites.

Maybe this is ignorance or just the fact that naxalites are against the bad governance and not common people.

I am not a genius, but its easy to understand the greatest threat to the integrity of a country does not come from a few people unhappy with the government but it comes from the fact that masses are divided among themselves.

We all are unhappy with the government at some level, the difference between naxalites and a common man is that a naxalite take up arms and fight these politicians and police while we don't. I guess its easy to understand why.

The greatest threat to the integrity of India comes from the politics of division, of religion and region. I realise the two biggest parties themselves are fighting over religion.

But to start with i hope the two biggest parties of this country come together and kill regional politics sooner than later because if this is not done, there will be no nation, we will just have unUnited states of India.

We need a 180 degree shift in politics.

Another example of how regional politicians are of the lowest grade is when the congress was on the verge of extinction, people like Sharad Pawar and Sagma ran to Sonia gandhi to save it, when she saved it, they wanted to be the PM, when they couldnt be the PM, they just left the party.

Thats how small these regional politicians are. They have no ethics, no principle. Yet they are the richest politicians. Wake up Indians, you have been fooled long enough.

Sardar patel, i hope you were still alive.

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Arvind Adiga Wins Bookers Prize

Arvind Adiga, a writer and resident of Mumbai, India has just won a bookers prize for his book The White Tiger: A Novel

Arvind is a graduate of oxford university and a former Time megazine reporter. He is also the second youngest winner of bookers prize at the age of 33 after Ben Okri who won at the age of 32.

Michael Portillo, a former cabinet minister and the chairman of this year’s panel of judges, praised Mr. Adiga’s novel, saying that the short list had contained a series of “extraordinarily readable page-turners.” However, Mr. Adiga’s book had prevailed, he said, “because the judges felt that it shocked and entertained in equal measure.”

Mr. Adiga said his book was an “attempt to catch the voice of the men you meet as you travel through India — the voice of the colossal underclass.”

The other authors that were shortlisted were Irish writer Sebastian Barry, 53, whose book “The Secret Scripture” is the story of an Irish patient in a mental hospital sharing her shocking family history with her psychiatrist, “Sea of Poppies” by Amitav Ghosh, “The Clothes on Their Backs” by Linda Grant, “The Northern Clemency” by Philip Hensher and “A Fraction of the Whole” by Steve Toltz.


According a kerry walterz a reviewer of Adiga's book on amazon.com, 


The plot centers around Balram Halwai, a laborer born and raised in a small village utterly controlled by crooked and feudally powerful landlords. The village is located in 'the Darkness,' a particularly backward region of India. Balram is eventually taken to Delhi as a driver for one of the landlord's westernized sons, Ashok. It's in Delhi that Balram comes to the realization that there's a new caste system at work in both India and the world, and it has only two groups: those who are eaten, and those who eat, prey and predators. Balram decides he wants to be an eater, someone with a big belly, and the novel tracks the way in which this ambition plays out.


You can find more information about The White Tiger and buy it on Amazon.com

Congratulations Arvind!

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Recession Comes Home To India: Let The Layoffs Begin

Jet Airways a leading airlines company has recently laid off 850 staffers and will layoff another 1100 soon. Air India has offered its employees a unpaid leave for 5 years, whatever that means.

Pepsico. has laid off 3300 employees.

Satyam laid off 400 workers and have given notice to another 4500.


Stock Markets are under 11k down from 21k in January. Beat that.


Most companies have stopped hiring, more layoffs expected. RBI has taken some serious  preemptive action.

ICICI is closing down branches. HDFC and other institutions are seeing a decline in demand.

Malls are less crowded, airports are emptying. But the ones with jobs are still ok. There will be no 50% offs in most shops this festive season. And its money saving time anyways.

But the worst affected will be the new graduates of this year and the next when they come out with no jobs in sight.

Tough times ahead. Didn't someone say Indian economy is decoupled from US economy? 

Updated News: Jet Airways takes back its fired employees. According to the chairman of the company Naresh Goyal, he has listened to his conscience, while the avitiation minister jumped into to take credit by saying he asked Goyal to take back sacked back employees.

It seems the truth is political pressure arising from the coverage of the sacking and the effect it will have on the salaried class and the upcomign elections.

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Orkut On IPhone, A "Time Waster's" Dream Come True

Vellas, by the way are people who have too much time and not enough stuff to do. And like the word "guru" this should be included in the english language because there are so many of them.

Unlike most people who cannot seem to find enough time to do things that are really important to them, like read a book, meet an old friend, spend time with family, these people always have excess time. Lucky them.


Orkut.com recently wrote a blog post about this new feature where you can access your orkut.com service from IPhone and they called it "Orkut on IPhone: A Socialites dream come true". Sometime, or most times, i wonder how do people make time to scrap each other the whole day.

I have also seen people scraping each other when they could easily IM(both being online), or email, or call.

Sometimes i feel people use messaging  on social networks in cases when they "sorta want to be in touch" but not "too much".


I mean hey i messaged you, once, on orkut, i like to stay in touch you know. Its like an excuse, a formality.

People who really care would much rather have a meeting, a call, an IM or email. And in that order.


This is one reason why marketeers do not want to reach masses on social networks, they don't want to reach out to this segment of consumers, they sorta, don't wanna be in touch with you much you know, but hey maybe they will scrap you. Just maybe.

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The Power of Motivation

In school, we were never taught how to deal with motivations. We were taught what motivation is but still we never took time out to understand it in its entirity, no one ever taught us what it is, where it comes from and what it can do for us. Or maybe they didn't know.


But than you grow up and see one motivation makes a terrorist out of a regular man, and another makes a Gandhi. There are countless other examples where individual motivations led ordinary people to become extraoridianry. Some extraordinary in a good way, others in not so good way.

Some became billionaire philanthropists who gave away their wealth to end world hunger, others blew up bombs under the pretext of saving their religion. One motivation led a women to leave her country and serve the poorest of the poor in a foreign land another led a man to invade a foreign land.

One motivation led the man to space, other led him to a plane that would crash and kill hundreds.

Yet we never worried about understanding motivation, for its just a word, for what happens is not because of motivations, its because of luck.

Our obsession with randomness has never let us really understand this amazing word motivation.


But its time, we rid our selves from the mistakes of our teachers. Spend some time understanding motivation, not just our own but everyone else around us and the guys in guantanamo bay and the missionaries and the mercinaries.

Try to understand your motivations today, while you are at this, try understanding how motivation is different from inspiration, aspiration and instigation, if it is.


Watch your motivation, because my friends, it can take you places. Literally.

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When Capitalism Isn't "That Capitalistic" But Socialism Still Sucks

Wikipedia Mentions Capitalism as:

"Capitalism is the economic system in which the means of production are owned by private persons, and operated for profit^[1] and where investments, distribution, income, production and pricing of goods andservices are predominantly determined through the operation of a free market^[2], rather than by central economic planning."

While Wikipedia Mentions Socialism as:

Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and the creation of anegalitarian society.

So what am i refering to?

I am refering to the recent interventions from governments, especially the US government in the functioning of markets. The US government has recently announced a bailout package of $700 billions and previously bailed out freddie and fannie bank, merill lynch,  AIG.

The point of this post is if companies are bailed out like this by governments that pride themselves as the keepers of capitalism, doesn't this bcome socialism of sorts?

USA has been pressurising, pleading, lobbying to get developing countries like India, China, Brazil and others to cut subsidies on various sectors, including oil, agriculture, banking sector. While these countries hold government control and regulations on ownership and investment in many sectors and themselves manage and run many sectors for example railways in China & India, USA and its representatives have always been unhappy with this stand.

India was about to lift up its foreign investment limit in the banking and insurance sector in 2009. And we should thank god that the current crisis has come to the forefront before that. 

But things are a little different now. US goverment will buyout troubled assets of many banks and mortgage landers freeing them of bad assets and making available some cash. But 700$ Billions isn't that much, is it?

By the way while i was researching to find out how a economic bailout can help boost economy, i came across, keynesian theory.This theory was coined by British economist John Maynard Keynes in early twentieth century somewhere around the economic depression. 

According to him, some people may have a liquidity preference which would see them rather hold money than buy new goods or services, which therefore raised the prospect that the Great Depression would not end without what he termed in the General Theory "a somewhat comprehensive socialization of investment."

In other words, a goverment intervention is required to help a economy come out of a depression. 

We don't know if this theory works or not, but we will soon find out. From what ever history i know, US came out of the last depression because of world war 2 when they got the chance to supply allied armies with military hardware.

So i am just hoping this theory will work out for them and we do not have to deal with the second option!. 

Coming back to the topic, the US government is certainly acting like a socialist state. In a freemarket, true to capitalist principles, these troubles companies should be allowed to go bankrupt. Thats how a free market functions, surivive or die. 

So do we all finally agree that its ok to be a little socialistic once in a while? George ?

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Western Man Has Stopped Evolving

According to a latest study by scientists in UK, people in the developed world have stopped evolving because they no longer have to struggle to survive.

Bah, 5 year old kids know it in this part of the world, they have been seeing George Bush long enough.

But seriously, western man still needs to struggle. For every western man, there are 11 indians, 22 chinese, 7 phillipinos, 2 pakistanis, 1 bangadeshi, 2 malaysians and 12 other random guys from random countries waiting to take his job and do it for half the cost or less.

Infact this very moment there will 10 Indians who are preparing to take the job of the scientist who did this study.

Talk about struggling to survive.

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Aren't There More GTD Blogs Out There Than Readers?

I have started to wonder lately if there are more getting things done blogs in the blogoverse(short for blog universe).

On last count Google blog search turned out 1,818,289 blog posts mentioning GTD, there is a whole bloody website by the name of GTDtimes that has many contributors writing on the same topic.

I mean isnt that getting a bit too much, if there was so much content to write about on this topic David Allen would have written 10 books by now. So what are these guys writing anyways?

Frankly it seemed to me they are all writing the same thing over and over and over again. I wish someone would tell them to stop. People are reading so much of this getting things done stuff, they dont get time to practise what they learn.


So what is this fad? Lifehacker hangover.

The popular blog style website that started writing about productivity online years ago and was probably the first ones to evanglise DavidAllens GTD method online has written about GTD and tools for long now.

There huge popularity has egged all other wannabes to think writing the stuff lifahacker writes about will get them popular. And then we end up with 1,818,289 blog posts and no readers. Its funny.


From what i could understand by reading Davids book is this

1. Take all incomplete tasks/ideas/actions outside your head and write them somewhere, anywhere paper or a word document or god frickin anywhere
2. Plan on how to complete each one of them by wriitng down next actions and keep completing them
3. Keep your bloody information documented so when you need them you can find them
4. Dont be a egoistic dog and delegate when you cant do something


GTD bloggers, please stop, find a new topic to blog. If you have no topics, Read more books. Write less. Fine?

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Google and Yahoo Ad Deal Delayed By A Month

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google Inc, will not be pleased by a delay in the ad deal with yahoo because of a inquiry by justic department as reported by washingtonpost

The justice department is looking at the deal to see if it will create a monopoly in the online advertising market. Not yet, it wont.

If Yahoo marries Google, it would.

Will it happen? Yes.

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FutureVision: Ni Hao, Welcome to Moon, This is year 2050 and this is Moon, Republic of China

While i was on the topic of China, i just cldn't help mention that China has had a successul mission to space. They also plan a manned mission to Moon soon and create a space station on Moon by 2020.

US & Russia both have landed on Moon previously in an attempt to outsmart each other and wasted bilions of tax payers money for no real gains. Though they did setup international space station, they did not do it on Moon, which led to the speculation that there are aliens on moon already.

Come to think of it, setting up a space station on moon, should be easier than having a space station that is orbiting like satellites right?


If China does infact setup space station on moon, will they proclaim the land on moon as theirs. Space tourism will be a great revenue maker in the time to come and surely China would want a pie out of that.

But this will be a problem for people who have already bought land on moon. Apparently there are companies that are letting people buy land on moon and even sending them certificates of ownership. Gimme a break. Actually i want to know what is the current real estate price there.

But China isn't alone. It takes more than one fool to have a race right. India is launching its own mission to space soon called chandrayaan. I know people would argue that this is a display of our technological innovation(or russias?) but i just have one thing to say. Feed all first. Still got an argument?


But this is nomore a country thing, the popular payment processing company papypal's former co founder, started a company called spaceX, which had its first successful run in space recently.

Everything is ok, i mean China wants land on moon, good, they need it. Actually we need it too. Its ironical, Canada has so much land, no people, India & China have so many people, no land. 


I just hope they dont find lot of natural resources there, specially radioactive material. If they do, two things will happen.


1. Moon will be abused to get all its natural resources.
2. Moon will becoming the dumping ground for radiactive waste.

And like we always do, we would not realise the implications of this on the enviorment till its too late.

But this is not the worse that could happen, i mean China loves cutting of access right? What if it cuts off our access to moon light?


Update: Did you know Google Inc. has moon contest of 30 Million Dollars?

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Which is the best english accent out there?

Ni hao?(chinese - how are you?)

I was listening to a oXygen tutorial here on youtube today and noticed the author was speaking in a very chinese accent(or japanese?)

Althrough i didnt understand much of it i enjoyed the accent a lot. if you havent yet taken a peep at the video, do it, its fun.

I prefer calling this accent chinglish(chinese+english). Its hilarious whenw e mix english with various accents. There is hinglish(hindi+english) which is in a league of its own. There is Inglish(Indian speaking english) which is what most Indians sound like in USA, which is again in a league of its own.

With so many verisons of english accent going around which literally make this language seem like a completely new language on its own, i wonder which accent is the most entertaining.

I wish there was a contest out there which lets net users vote for the best and most entertaining accent out there. It would be fun.

Till that time, i declare Chinglish as the best english accent out there, heck its a new language altogether better than english, china rocks.

Till later Zai Jian!(chinese - good bye)

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Don't be evil, what about being outright stupid?

Recently i have been running a Google adwords campaign and saw some silly mistakes in my account. I am kind of sure, i am not the only one who has faced this issue, i am also sure Google would compensate for this.

So what happened here is this, i have bid a maximum of 0.04$ for a keyword. So ideally each click should cost me 0.04$, but Google has charged me anything from 0.04$ to 0.06$ for each keyword.

Its easy to understand by just looking under the Current Bid, Clicks, Avg. CPC, Cost columns for all keywords in the screeshot i am presenting below.
The question is if i have bid 0.04$ for each click, and i have recieved 1 click, how can the cost of one click be 0.05$. Or am i getting my maths wrong?

I have uploaded a screenshot you can click to see in full screen below. Take a look at this screenshot here

The bigger  question is that this is not a startup company who has just started operations and facing some operational glitches, there have been billions spent on Google adwords, most by folks who are not that analytical or tech savvy to look at the data Google provides in great detail. How many millions have passed through to Google this way?

Incase i have just got something horribly wrong please let me know!

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Google's Got Charity On Its Mind With Project10to100 Or Has It?

Google Inc. has announced a new initiative called Project10^100 . Its home page says "Project 10100 is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible." Here's what Andy Berndt, Managing Director, Google Creative Lab has to say about this intiative on google blog from Google Inc.


And The Reactions..

I was reading Thomas Claburns this article on InformationWeek's in which Thomas says "If you have a good idea, a really good idea, the sort of brilliant idea that might win Google's contest -- a way to produce a $0.01 straw that removes all impurities from contaminated water, for example -- why give that valuable idea away when you could commercialize it? You could start a company to support your idea, provide jobs to people, and help humanity at the same time."

Thomas gets pretty much bashed up by most commentors in the article and you gotta salute InformationWeek for approving those comments but i feel sorry for Thomas since he mentions a valid point and still gets bashed, a point that has not been addressed by Google Inc.'s terms and service agreement for this particular initiative.


Concerns that are raised(or should be raised if they are not raised yet)


1. Will Google make or can make its own commercial product from the ideas  submitted?

2. What happens to the ideas that are not selected, can Google or its partners or employees use     that data to spin off products for commercial interests without the original creator getting     anything?

3. Google gets publicity worth a billion dollars, while the guy who gave the idea, gets "Good     Karma"(as mentioned in the faqs here)

4. If something of commercial interests spins off the ideas(winner or not) do they get anything at     all out of it?

5. Why are the orginal creators not part of the implementation plan?

6. Why isn't this sounding like a incubation thing when it is in a way?

7. There seems to be something about this things that is "half baked" and "hurried"?


Anyways the better part and the most interesting are the Intellectual property rights, it says


Google Says:

1. As between you and Google, you retain ownership of any intellectual and industrial property rights (including moral rights) you have in and to your submission.

Which means:

If you already have an IP right you retain them, for most submissions, they will just be ideas and will not hold any IP rights. So to answer the question, Do i own the idea?. Well, No.

Google Says:

2. As a condition of participation, you grant Google, its subsidiaries, agents and partner companies, a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non- exclusive license to use, reproduce, adapt, modify, publish, distribute, publicly perform, create a derivative work from, and publicly display your submission and the proposal provided therein (1) for the purposes of allowing Google, the advisory panel and users to evaluate your idea for purposes of the call for submissions, (2) in connection with advertising and promotion via communication to the public or other groups, including, but not limited to, the right to make screenshots, animations and video clips available for promotional purposes and (3) for the purposes of putting your submitted proposal into effect.


Which means:
Google can take your idea, modify it, claim it, use it. Ok not just Google but even its partners, employees, door cleaners, chef etc etc. Ofcourse there are chances they won't but this atleast is not taken care off in the terms of services.

Google Says:
3. You agree that Google has final authority regarding this call for submission and the selection of the ideas to be considered for implementation. You acknowledge that your submission might be similar to ideas submitted by other participants and/or proposals independently developed by Google, and that Google does not need to recognize your submission should your idea not be the source of the proposal or proposals ultimately implemented. You further acknowledge that even if your proposal is selected by Google, Google is not compelled to implement your proposal in its entirety, or at all. Google reserves the right in its sole discretion to incorporate your proposal or any other ideas into the project or projects finally selected for implementation.

Which basically means:
We can take your idea and develop on your idea and commercialise it. They also mention that Google might choose not to implement even the winning idea. After all the billion dollar publicity, 10 millions dollars could land back to google bank account.

What Worries Me
I am actually worried, not about the ideas that win, but about the ideas that will not see the light of the day(and those will be millions of commerically viable ones being submitted). I get a feeling those will indeed be used for building a commercial product without the original creator getting anything. Not even acknowledgement.


Just to be fair here, it could be that none of this happens and Google doesn't use any of those ideas. But i still feel the idea winners should atleast get some monetary benefit and the ideas that don't win should be protected.

Google inc. could have used an outside neutral agency like KPMG to validate the process and make sure the ideas that do not win get disposed off in the right way and not become the personal property of Google employees or owners.


What Ideas You Should Submit:

Lastly i would say you should only submit your ideas in the contest if you have a philanthropic idea that's non commercial but would benefit a lot people and is difficult to implement by yourselves.

That's the only way everyone can benefit from this contest. DO NOT SUBMIT YOUR COMMERCIAL IDEAS.

But you know what, i get a feeling, Google has a lot of legal issues coming its way next year. Wonder why..hmm..still wondering...

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Who Really makes money online?

Its funny but the people who actually make online are the ones who tell others how to make money online(go problogger.net, johnchow.com etc.) and these guys make money by doing just that "telling people how to make money online.

Confused?


Well these guys make money off the guys who come to their website looking for a get rich quick schemes and since the population of lazy people is so huge, they get immense traffic and revenue from advertising.

The fact remains that they dont teach anything spectacular that someone with a little common sense would not know but they just keep writing the same old stuff again and again stuffing some more keywords they want to rank for in search engines.

I can bet 99% of people who come to their sites and read their stuff do nothing at all with their advice and even if they do they do not see any results.


But its not a fair world, in anycase if you really wanted advise and tips on making money online i have just one advice to give.

Even if you have never even made a single dime for yourself, start telling people how to make money online and soon you atleast will be rich.

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G1 Phone launched at 170$ in US, IPhone still costs 715$ in India

T-Mobile launches google phone or G1 in US for 170$.  Meanwhile Apples Iphone struggles to create any kind of stir in the Indian market.

Some people are already speculating that g1 will take Iphones marke share while some others think its too early. Interestingly google ex product marketing manager is criticising how g1 looks and as always techcrunch over exaggerates the whole issue.

With all i have heard an read i think we will still have to wait for the right smart phone in India, Iphone is too over priced(with US folks paying 199$ and Indians paying 715$ - what the heck aren't we supposed be a 3rd world country anymore?, wheres the cheap stuff?) and g1 is too "for google lovers only" phone.


Nokia 96 would be good though.

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Hinduism in a nutshell

Alright this is a crash course in hinduism and just in case you are wondering why? well this is kind of my blog and i kind of feel like writing about it.

But there is a reason, someone in my family told me she had a debate with a muslim guy in her office who was belittling hinduism and trying to put islam as the real religion. She couldnt justify the points he raised and so i told her things about hinduism that she really needed to know.

I mean i care a rats ass about defending my religion, and i wldnt want anyone to defend being hindu or being christian but its good to know about yourself. Obviously this guy needs to do some growing up before he talks about faiths.

So before i start my bit on hinduism i just wanna say this to the guy who was debating religion and all people who point fingers at other faiths, you guys r mental retards with brainwashed poison minds and you wldnt experience real peace unless you change your thinking. And if you cant change your thinking do yourself a favor, keep your crap gob shut.


And on we go.


To start with as people have reiterated over and over, hinduism is not a religion, and thats why it appeals to me. Why would the creator want to have a religion, we could have just been pre programmed to believe in something he wants us to believe!


The origin of Hinduism as we now know cant be traced back in time and we can only speculate. But hinduism can be taken as collection theories, knowledge, culture,  rituals and a way of life through ages and ages.

A lot of these traditions have changed over time and new knowledge was added and followed. But the central beliefs remain the same ober ages. Unfortunately, it seems the very beliefs that form the heart of this belief system have now been over shadowed by a lot of drama. Thanks to the all the religious gurus we have had.


So what is the central belief in hinduism?

The vedas are the source of knowledge which govern most of our beliefs as hindus. But even in vedas there are some beliefs which are essentialy form the very basis of hinduism.


These beliefs also answer a lot of questions by hindus and non hindus regarding the rituals we have.

Beliefs:

1. karma:

Hindus and all faiths stemming from it like jainism, buddhism, skihhism are called karmic faiths.
These are called karmic faiths because they all believe in a souls karma.

By understanding karma and its implications hinduism tries to answer the qestions that most dread us like why are we here? what is the purpose of my existence? what happens after death?

The other stream of faiths like christanity, jewism and islam are called ibrahmic religions(or revealed religions) since they believe ibrahim was the first messenger and god revealed religion to him.

Ibrahmic religions believe in a resurrection day when all dead will be alive and they will have to face the lord who will decide if they will go to heaven or hell.

They believe in one life and based on that you either go to hell or heaven.

Some would ask why do some babies die just after birth and why they arent given enough time to do some good deeds to get into heaven?

Hinduism on the other hand beieves that we are not bodies, we are souls. The soul takes countless forms and we collect the consequence of every action we make.

There is something called cleaning up your karma, which basically means we are free from the cycles of life and death when we do not have to give or take anything from the material world. Kind of like your karma account balance going to zero, since you do not owe anything yiur bank account is closed and you are free.

So when a baby dies, it will take another birth or maybe her balance is lucky enough to be zero and she has become free or achieved nirvana.

This rationaly makes sense to me because it answers some of the most unsolved questiosn whose satisfactory answer i could not find in other faiths.


2. Existence of god

Hinduism believes in the existence of a "brahman" and "atman".


Brahman is the supreme soul(no not brahma). The brahman is probably what ibrahmic faiths call as allah or ilaha or god.

In hinduism brahman and atman are the only thing that exist and everything else is illusion.

The atman unites with brahman when it gets rid of its karma.(think of it as becoming pure again).


So what is atman?

We are atman. We have come from the brahman and destined to go back to him if and only if we clean up our karma.

In other words we think we are something, which is our ego, when ego dies you loose the self you though you were, when you loose self you become one with brahman.

Again reuniting with brahman has nothing to do with being a hindu or christian. You accumulate karma if you exist in the material world, you can reach nirvana even if you are not Hindu, the belief exists and applies to everyone regardless of what you call this belief or even deny it.


3. On achieving nirvana


Hinduism has had many sages through thousands and thousands of years who have shown people how one can achieve nirvana or moksha.

One or all modes can be followed and you can reach moksha. The most important are:

Yoga & Meditation, Mantras & Bhajan, Poojas & yajnas, deity worship.


The one thing common between all ways is that all ways take you on the step towards moksha by helping a person realise its trueself and purifying a person.

In Hinduism a soul can only achieve moksha in human form. Since its the most evolved of all material forms a soul takes.

To move towards moksha one has to realise what one really is. To realise what one really is, one has to let go off the image of self that one has of herself primarily what a person becomes as she grows up.


One has to achieve a mental state, which is tranquil and free from endless desires. Yoga, mantras, pooja, rituals, a vegetarin diet, sacrifice , fasting, deity worship are all ways of bringing your mind and body to a state where it is healthy, pure and tranquil enough to proceed on the path of nirvana.

Some people refer to deity worship as idol worship, which is rediculous. There is huge difference between deity and an idol.

A deity is bhagwan(pronounced as bhug-one) much like angels in other religions. These are higher energies created by brahman to help the world complete one cycle of this shrishti or matrial world there by giving atman a chance to purify itself and become one with brahman.


Idols do not have attributes but in hinduism sages have give each deity plenty of attributes.

Why do deities have attributes? why do hindus worship pray deities and not brahman the supreme self?

Because the purpose of worshipping in hinduism is not to just please god but to focus and concentrate on the god, this is one way of gaining the state of mind and body after which one can achieve moksha.

Confusing? its not.

Since atman that is us have material forms, we cannot meditate on brahman, because it is formless. With the limitaion of our material mind one needs to meditate on something it can imagine and see.


In Hinduism it is believed that when you meditate on something you start to take the attributes of the thing you meditate on, or in someway you will get influenced. Try putting the picture of a satan and if you meditate on him for long period you will take his attributes or be influenced by him negatively.


Each deity has a material form and attributes that lets a atman imagine and easily meditate on the deity he has chosen. Slowly he will embibe the deities qualities and achieve a state of peace in his mind and life.

A lot of people meditate on shri ram chandara, there a books and books written about how he was and how he lived his life and when people do meditate on such deities they embibe their qualities and become noble people and only the noble can truly achieve peace of mind.

By the way without understanding the true attributes and personality of a deity its of no use to meditate on him. This why they read artis, and bhajans and chant mantras. All is done to truly meditate on the deity and achieve a state where one can start on the path to achieve moksha.


Someone once told me ibrahmic religions say the purpose of our existence is to pray to allah or god.

This seems meaningless(sorry but it does) because we all agree the supreme soul has no ego, no attributes, why would he create us just to satisy his ego by worshipping him? It sounds like a surmon coming from a egoistic king.

The fact is we are in essence a part of brahman, we are equal, we do not need to worship anything, we just need to want and try to become one with the brahman again.



Enough gyaan for now, this can be a rather long post but ill end it here for now saying that what i mentioned above is the real crux of our faith. I respect all faiths and people who believe in peace and living and letting others live.


All religions have some rituals that are created to serve a purpose, the purpose can be to achieve unity, have a peaceful society or to gain power. But rituals are not the heart of the religion its the spirituality that is.

Hinduism teaches that all faiths can lead to moksha, and we own no patent on doing so;-) and its important to look inward rather than outward, to look at your own short comings before pointing at others so if i have unitentionaly pointed fingers on any other faith its just that, unintentional.


Peace.

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Lehman Down, Whose next? AIG? Citi? JP Morgan?

Lehman brothers is the latest casuality of US recession. Lehman brother filed for bankruptcy.
The details of the chapter 11 filing  state no other subsidary of affliate of lehman brothers holdings was included in the filing.

Troubles arent over yet as media speculates over whose next to fall down. 


If AIG falls down it will be  a huge blow for the insurance sector in India as Tata-Aig is supposed to become one of the top insurers in India over the coming years. But if somehow AIG manages to stay afloat for some more years the returns from India alone could see it through.

lets see if AIG can manage to survive this storm.

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Googles Chrome, its impact and why you shdn't worry too much about it for now

Google finally did the obvious and launched its own web browser. Its called chrome, its open source and its in trouble as soon as it launched.

The UI isn't any special compared to FireFox, Opera or even the latest version of IE or safari but its simple and well its blue like pretty much everything else Google.

But never mind that looking beyond there are somethings about Google chrome that are just not right.

For one it says the entire browser wldn't crash if one tab fails which is the case in conventional browser but indeed it does crash and it crashed on more than one occasion.

Google claims to test chrome on millions of website i bet they didn't test it on hundreds of users but.

This issue was brought to notice on full disclosure security bulletin.


continued...

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Are We there yet? On being result oriented...

I'll admit after enough failures despite my best efforts and sacrifices in simple projects as well as big projects I have spent enough time contemplating on how to achieve results and be generally result oriented. To some people this comes naturally, they just passionately track their progress and need to see tangible results before their eyes to feel good, all salutes to them, but for a lot of us "dreamer types" this attitude doesn’t come easy.


So we learn it.


But easier said then done, where do you start? Here are my 10 cents on how to be more result oriented.


1. Accept you have a problem.

2. Know what "result" you are looking for.

It doesn’t to be precise and can be work under development things that constantly change and need to be assessed (as a matter of fact you should) but something has to go on paper.

3. Track your pace

After you have jot down your results, you need to break them to into pieces that can be measured against time and you need to track progress and asses your plan frequently.

4. Feel your direction

This is hard to explain, but if you feeling good about the pace of things, you are on the right track, if you have even slight bad feeling about something not falling in to place get back to the drawing board and look at your plans.

5. Forge alliances

We all know the importance of gathering support and achieving results, so look around, ask for help, pay people money, give them a ego boost, threaten them or do what ever it takes to get the stuff moving a little faster to wards the end result.

6. Track other people's progress and set their results for them if they can’t do it for themselves

If "others" are involved in your project make sure they are as focused to achieve the end result and immediate results and are on track

Make them understand and offer the right incentives for them to achieve their immediate results and end result.

The one thing that sucks more then screwing up a project yourself is seeing someone else screw up a project for you.


6. Push it a tad bit harder

If you believe you are at comfort pursuing "the result", something is wrong already. Result oriented people are always striving that little bit harder and the only thing they are comfortable with is till they get result out is "trying that little bit harder".

7. Eliminate baggage

Baggage can be wrong team members, wrong people, wrong place, wrong computer, wrong software, wrong food you ate in the morning that makes you sleepy.

You need to be aware of obstacles (direct and indirect) to your result and eliminate them fast.

This includes firing employees who cannot be motivated after trying enough times to achieve results both personal and companies.

Be ruthless; fire them for their own good. There are enough places that take mediocre motivation (you can fix skill, but if someone lacks motivation that cant be fixed either).

8. Manage and monitor input/outputs

eventually it all comes down to input and output. What i mean here, people who are result oriented are very aware of what goes in and what comes out apart from what was expected to come out.


Imagine a transparent box made of smaller black boxes. In the bigger box you input the resources and raw material. This raw material depending on where its needed inside the bigger box goes to smaller black boxes. Each black box outputs a processed material required to make the end product. Once all the black boxes have outputed the right processed material the bigger box takes these outputs from smaller boxes and combines them before sending it out as a sparkling product you can be proud of.

This would only work if each black box worked perfectly. Only then.

Simply put being result orinted is about what is expected out of that bigger box and then finding out and putting in what is required for that particular output. But manage the output of the smaller boxes often and spot problems at that level early and quickly, correct them, feed in the right raw material and combine efforts of these smaller boxes to make the final product.



Obviously this post is a "work under development" too, and ill append this post based on my own learnings.

Hmm wondering if that black box concept sucked..hmm gotta pick better analogies...

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Just in: Indians are raising world food prices

In another one of those bushism we have all come to love bush recently declared that the world food prices are going up because of increased consumption in India.

Yes you heard right you minions are eating way too much food. Just to clarify the rising prices are not because americans are burning hundreds and thousands of food grain fields to make ethanol fuel but because you are eating a chapati more. You cruel cruel guys.

Sometime back when the next president hopeful mccain was asked by a tv channel what he is going to do about global warming, he innocently said he will convince India and china that reducing global warming is in their interest.

WE HEAR YOU MR MCAIN. And we agree its in our interest. Now will you be kind enough to close those US companies that contribute to majority of green house gases?. Tell me you knew this please, you gotta get serious sometime funny man.


It seems they keep their presidential hopefuls in a closed room for years to make sure they do not have any outside contact. Then suddenyl unleash them on the world without warning at the time of elections.

I wonder what this world would be without americans presidents, i have a feeling americans choose their presidents to make sure they keep them entertained since none of them are good enough to do any worthwhile work anyways.

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of American Recessions, Depressions and Wars

Its all over the idiot box, Cnn, bbc, nbc everywhere else. The US is officially under recession. Interestingly enough its the big boys whose fall has made the recession more profound.


Bears and Stearns Story

Bears and Stearns was recently acquired by JP morgan(which apparently isnt feeling good about its own future) with some(read lot) help from the fed. More interesting(interesting in a bad way...) is presumed to be coming our way with doubts being raised about other big boys like lehman brother and citi group.

Wasnt it expected?

Quite frankly the recession was expected, to some degree with the sub prime crisis. But what turned a crisis into a recession? I believe the same reason what caused a financial crisis to become a cause for recession will ultimately end up putting the US economy into a longer economic depression.

Enough analysts have discussed and are discussing and probably keep discussing the reasons for US economies fall out but as far as i am concerned, someone who isnt a finance guru, the reasons are very basic.

One of the major reasons why this crisis got out of hand is because of the propaganda that was carried in the media like CNN/BBC/NBC and other news sources.

Its strange when the industry biggies and major news channels start declaring recession even before there are any visible signs hitting the common man. The inflation wasnt out of control, people were still consuming, people were still spending.

The impact of real estate and its impact on bigger financial groups(ones more into mortgages and securities) was made out to be bigger then it was.

Strangely the slow down in real estate is cyclic and it happens in every country and it wasnt the first time it happened to US. Minor recessions are cyclic too and it wasnt the first time it happened to US either.

Recessions aren't all bad

Recessions are good in way, it kills the bad companies and gives an opportunity to better ones. for example a sure fall out of recession would be people loosing jobs, these laid off workers will work for lower wages in smaller companies, some of these companies will make it big by the time recession ends(actually being one of the reasons for recession ending).

These smaller companies other wise would never get a chance to hire brilliant people, people who are required to turn a good idea into a great company due to lack resources.

More importantly recession levels the playing field for a bigger firms and smaller firms, since the bigger firms carry the weight of their size while smaller firms can cut their losses by staying leaner.

How negative media impacts confidence

Anyways back to topic, why the impact of a negative media can be so profound in US is because its population is aging, when people age they want security, when you cast doubts over an old mans bank the immediate response is to withdraw some money just in case the news guy is right and my bank is doom.

You play the report for some more time, the old man doubts his bank more and withdraws some more money.

Eventually the a banks surplus depletes and the core banking sector suffers. A sick banking sector will lead to crisis.

Recession or Depression?

So far so good, recession was on the cards anyways right, so big deal, recessions go. Wrong. I believe you cant get a secondary sector healthy like retail or travel or mining by government intervention but i am afraid even the government cant do much about a ailing banking sector.

A banking sector is the backbone of a modern economy. A ailing banking structure cannot sustain a the stress of a companies surviving in a global slowdown(by global slow down i mean people reducing spend and not stock markets plateauing or crashing)

We will still have to wait and see if this is a recession or it turns in to a depression forcing companies to quit US for other economies.

Read more about the great depression of 1930's. If you spot some signs between the last depression and this one, shout out loud, i am listening.

On a side note, actually on the main note, i also proclaim if US drops into recession and the global slow down is seen, US will cause the wars between two regions probably backed by Nato directly or indirectly, why you ask?

US was only able to get over the last economy depression when world war 2 happened when it could supply defense and material to other nations.

Even now US earns a lot of dollars by supplying arms and ammunition to countries across the world, in times of war the spending in defense only increase.

A war between two countries is the surest way for US to boost its economy, since it would supply resources for people pay US and then kill them selves up.


I'll sum up why US is into a recession in 6 sentences

1. Aging population, looks for security, consumption drops, investment drops.

2. Not enough wars around for US to supply arms and ammunition at high rates. Competition from other countries.

3. US is spending on wars of Afghanistan/iraq and other missions.

4. Media and analysts making the crisis bigger then it was resulting in doubts in the minds of consumers and investors.

5. A string of medicore (i am being nice here) leadership(bushs and clintons and others).The next president(mcCain, barak or clinton) are worse then the earlier ones.(the worse so far is harry truman (the animal that dropped atomic bomb on hiroshima killing 80,000 people in an instant)

6. Bad financial decisions(like offering loans and credit without proper documentation and down payment leading to sub prime), bad investment decisions by the same guys who are supposed to offer the common investor financial advice to change his fortunes(what an irony)


America is in trouble(atleast for a while), problem is with the wrong president, we might all be in trouble soon.

Update: Visa had a great IPO in a market assumed to be in recession.

Ps. if you spot some errors, shout and i shall correct myself.(im no US president, i can admit mistakes you know)

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