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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