India scrape past Eng

India win was its 14th consecutive win while chasing a target. The win equalled the previous record of West Indies did in 1984 and '86. At one point about 7-8 years ago, India were known as the best chokers in the game. They had mastered the art of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. The infusion of some young blood has given way to a new attitude of never say die. This change is palable in a lot of other things too. People scream and shout obout outsourcing, R&D jobs moving to India. The thing people need to take notice of is the new attitude. For a long time Indians were quite laid back, content in their lives. Now there seems to be fire within to excel. Gone is the old-school notions of get a government job and lead an easy going life.

Phd Comics

 

Disclaimer: This comic does not apply to me, and it never will. Ahem ahem!

Well the some grad students at Stanford started the comic. Its a must read for graduate students. All the archives can be acessed here . 

Googal

So ever wondered what Google means. It had its origins from the word Googal . A Googal is a one followed by a hundred zeros. As wikipedia will tell you, a googol is equal to ten duotrigintillion

Ka-ching

Came across this in the online tabloid called "timesofindia.com"

A national player will, on an average, earn nearly Rs 10 crore every year (Rs 40 crore over four years).

Senior cricketers could even be making around Rs 25 crore every year, which is as much as Sachin Tendulkar earns every year from endorsements. Currently, nobody else comes close to matching that figure.

BCCI was always the big bad wolf in the media. Now that its sharing more of its wealth with the players, does it stand redeemed with the media?

The other side of outsourcing

This segment was aired on Discovery. It follows the trend of the book, "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman. Really good book. Everyone should read it. I highly recommend it. This segment also follows Thomas Friedman's journey of the outsourcing, call centers etc. Here is the other side of outsourcing : Clip

The Rise of India

I had recently read an a very well-written article about India in a recent Newsweek issues. One of its other affliates abc ran a segment about India. It quite well encapsulates the jist of the article in Newsweek. Here is the Clip: India Rising .

Enjoy!

Slasher vs. Slashdotter

Here is a little quiz to test your knowledge of a programming whiz vs. serial killers. Its pretty hilarious. You see pictures of people and make a decision on whether you think the person is a slasher or a slashdotter. I am embarassed to say, I got a score of 7/10. Better luck to you people. Here is the Quiz . Post your scores, so I don't feel as bad :D

New class schedule

They are getting rid of EcEn-CS 224 and EcEn-CS 324. I am glad they are getting rid of 224, the whole designing circuits with CAD tools was never my kind of thing. Though it gave me an ability to talk to the EE people intelligently. However I am really sad about 324. The low level computer architecture was so educational to being a good programmer. This is one of the classes where I learnt the most.

Real Victors are privacy and Google

The verdict in the Gonzales vs. Google is a victory for privacy rights and even Google. When other companies just rolled over and handed the data to the Department of Justice, Google stood up for their users' privacy rights. They spent money for their users. This is the mindset that sets Google apart from other tech companies. This issue also bring out some very important questions about the rights of users and ethics of Internet companies. Lets me present an analogy, a telephone company cannot disclose call records without a supeona. Consider the DoJ asking for a random 100,000 phone records to track terrorist activity etc. There would have been an uproar in all sections of the society. So why are there not more people upset about DoJ's current request. The blogging community and Google are the only two people fighting it, in their own different ways. I feel the problem with Internet privacy violation is that most people don't understand the true ramifications of it. For an average Joe user the Internet is really a black box. As the end user he does not know how much information he is really sending out there. There were no msn or yahoo users up in arms about them giving search data to the DoJ. As an avid-Google user I say kudos to Google for standing up for their users' privacy rights.

apply these lines to ppl in your life

Here are lines from a song. Play a game, how many people can you apply it to? Think broadly and creatively.

Chain se humko kabhi, apne jeene na diya..
Zeher bhi chaya agar, apne peene na diya

Holi - A festival of colors

Happy Duleti everyone. People keep asking me what is Holi? why and how is it celebrated. I came accross and article that well explains the basics of holi. Happy Reading

Holi The Festival of Colors

I would like to add, this festival is primarily celebrated in the northern and western parts of India.

Amey Date is out of Indian Idol

The Indian janta has voted. Amey Date is out of Indian Idol. It turns out that they tape the episode earlier in the day. THe news of Amey's exit was already all over the news even before the episode was aired. Message boards were filled with angst over his exit. Though I feel these message boards are frequented more by expartirate Indians living in US or UK, like myself. There are so many people who watch this show outside of US, but really have no means of voting. They need to install a vote online option. They do need to check for ballot stuffing and clicking bots. Each IP address could be allowed a certain number of votes.

BTW the whole natak of the judges staging a walkout was almost comical. The idea of a rematch was absurd. Freemantle owns the format, they won't allow deviation from the format. I am glad Amey took the higher ground and refused the rematch. Though the contest has lost the zing for me. If Amey and Karunya were in the top two, I would have really enjoyed the contest. Hopefully Amey's fans will vote for Karunya to restore the dignity of the contest.

My top three were Amey Antara and Karunya. Only Karunya remains to fight a twisted battle with the public voting pattern. Good luck

Happy Holi!!

Wishing all the readers of my blog a very happy holi.

Bill Hemmer on Fox News

I have always been very resistant to watching Fox News. I was flipping channels this morning, and guess who I saw on Fox News-- Bill Hemmer. The former CNN correspondent. Now for me some correspondents are synonymous with CNN: Christine Amopour, Larry King, Anderson Cooper. Bill Hemmer used to be on that list. Even though I never watched American Morning regularly. I just felt weird seeing Bill Hemmer on Fox. I gotta say, he almost gives Fox news more credibility. I mean I watched 5 mins of it, instead of instantly changing the channel.