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Participate in Google IPO

You have been thinking about participating in Google IPO and don't know how to do it, then click on Google IPO and register yourself and start bidding.

Choose your look of Amercian President

Visit this link Build a better Bush, and have fun making the look of Bush better.

Software Engineering or Art ?

For the last 3 days there is a discussion going on in the IT developers mailing lists in Dallas area, whether they can use their title as 'Software Engineer'. There is a lot of mailing going on back and forth and in one of them I came across a link which talks about engineering software, see the details @
Software engineering

BMW beams in on Hyderabad

German luxury car manufacturer BMW seems to have homed in on Hyderabad as the destination to set up its Rs 1,000 crore automobile assembly plant in India.

A five-member senior BMW team, which came here on a two-day visit, to seek fresh assurances on the commitments on facilities and incentives offered by the previous government, has given concrete indications to the state industry department officials that were are no longer interested in setting up operations in Chennai.

The high-level BMW is understood to have dropped its plans to visit Chennai after listening to the assurances given by the political leadership in the state.

According to government officials, BMW is planning to set up the plant with an initial investment of Rs 500 crore and later upgrade the facility with another investment of another Rs 500 crore. The entire project is expected to take off in the next 24 months.

Besides giving fresh commitment on the facilities offered to the plant by the previous TDP regime under Chandrababu Naidu, the state officials led by the Industries minister Botsa Satyanarayana have welcomed new suggestions from the BMW representatives. The BMW team had first visited the state last year when Chandrababu Naidu was the chief minister.

State government sources told Business Standard that the state government had assured the BMW team that it would help the company representatives get all the necessary clearances pertaining to FDI and other formalities at the centre in the earliest possible time frame.

The fact that the Congress is in power at both the centre and in the state seem to have swung the BMW deal in favour of Andhra Pradesh. The car manufacturer had earlier seriously thought of setting up operations in Chennai, according to sources here.

Source: BMW beams in on Hyderabad

Do you want to learn English ?

If you are looking to learn english, visit this link which got info about various websites that helps you get there.

See Link @ E M E R G I C . o r g: Comment on Learning English

Google - A Black Swan

Rajesh Jain writes @ Business Standard

A Google happens once in many, many years. It is almost impossible to predict before hand that such a company will at some point of time in the future occupy a position of great power and influence over not just across its vertical but across the industry. Because, if we knew, we would do something about it. Competitors would seek to put roadblocks and hurdles, or failing that, try and possibly acquire it. Even otherwise helpful partners may think carefully if they realise they are going to help in building the next big behemoth. In other words, events and circumstances which lead to the creation of the once-in-a-lifetime companies are rare and almost unpredictable.

That is what makes Google a black swan.

Nassim Taleb, author of “Fooled by Randomness” and founder-chairman of Empirica LLC, a research laboratory and financial products trading house in New York, has this to say: “A black swan is an outlier, an event that lies beyond the realm of normal expectations. Most people expect all swans to be white because that's what their experience tells them; a black swan is by definition a surprise. Nevertheless, people tend to concoct explanations for them after the fact, which makes them appear more predictable, and less random, than they are.”

Read the whole article @ Of black swans and Google

Here is the bill for your Riot

It started at the University College, Trivandrum, a once-reputed institution that has had the misfortune to have the A K Gopalan Center (a Marxist stronghold) come up right next to it. Today there is no difference between the cadres and normal students who have come to pursue an education. Any issue becomes an excuse to get into pitched battles with the police, and to cause wanton destruction.

Right next to the University College, alleged students led by the Marxist SFI attacked and set fire to a health department van, pelted stones at a phalanx of police in riot gear whom them held off for three hours, and torched a branch of the bank that had denied Rajni the loan. And they snarled traffic on a main arterial road for hours. The police fired teargas to get the rioters away.

This scene was repeated all over Kerala, and the toll in damage, injuries, overtime pay to police and the opportunity cost of their being on riot duty, destruction of public property, etc. would have gone into the tens of lakhs. Not to mention loss of business and hassle to the general public and travelers. Bankers are now complaining that the rioters are declaring open season on bank branches; and they are threatening to down shutters.

There is an intriguing question here. Who pays for all this?

The simple answer is: you, gentle reader. This is all coming out of your, that is the taxpayer's, pocket.

The next question is: Why shouldn't those who created the violence pay for it?

I agree: yes, they should be forced to pay for it.

There is an unfortunate culture in India that holds no respect for public property. I wonder if this is a post-Independence phenomenon, when a perverse sense of entitlement made people believe that since public goods were owned by everybody, they could be damaged: a sort of 'Tragedy of the Commons' phenomenon on a large scale. Don't people understand that by destroying public property, they are destroying their own property, now that the State is no longer a bloodsucking imperialist? Or is it still? That's another story, but let's assume that the State is relatively benign, for now.

In this context, I saw the interesting news that some court has ordered the BJP and the Shiv Sena to pay damages of Rs 20 lakhs each for agitations called by these organisations last year. I think this is an excellent idea. This has to become the norm, so that anyone who catalyses a riot-like situation is forced to pay the painful financial costs.

So, for instance, in Kerala, the SFI, DYFI, KSU and SUCI and the other alphabet-soup student organisations (I recollect only these four, I am sure the others are equally culpable of bad behaviour) should be hauled up before the court, the damages caused by their actions tallied up, and the bill presented to them. Oh, so they say they have no funds to pay? Well, then, their office-bearers can go to bankruptcy jail and enjoy rigorous imprisonment.

This is the sort of mechanism that has been put to great use in the US by such groups as the Southern Poverty Law Center. They have sued habitual offenders, such as the racist Ku Klux Klan, won large punitive judgments against them, and driven the offending groups to bankruptcy. If I remember right, the Ku Klux Klan was forced to actually sell its headquarters building.

This is a rare positive outcome in litigation-mad America. I think it was the Jewish Anti-Defamation League that started this trend of punitive litigation: if you say or do anti-Jewish things, you can expect the ADL to sue your pants off. This has a deterrent effect, and I hope the Hindu Americans are listening: the sundry enemies of Hinduism in America will behave themselves if there is the threat of hefty lawsuits and negative publicity.

Similarly, I hope civic-minded lawyers will come together to file public-interest litigation in India. If, for example, the trade union CITU is bankrupted and loses its assets in a court ordered auction because they instigated Rs 50 lakhs worth of damage to public property during a strike, then that would have a tremendous deterrent effect on future would-be strikers. They will behave themselves.

Read the whole story @ Welcome to rediff.com

How to make your Entity Beans really perform well!

Debu Panda in his article @ TheServerSide.com - TSS - Optimizing CMP Entity Beans with Databases gives really good tips. The tips are broadly classified into the following.

1. Reduce Database operation
2. Tune Database/SQL Access
3. Caching in the middle-tier
4. Use Right Locking/Isolation Mode

Resources:
Discussion Thread here.
Open Souce Too: http://www.p6spy.com/

An excellent read for the J2EE techies.

Roller Blading Joke

Well, i have been doing roller blading for a while and my coleagues know about that. Its been fun learning it, falling once in a while and get going, now I am kind of quite confident rolling without falling, still there is a lot more to learn.

Anyways, one of coleague sent this joke to me on roller blading, enjoy it

A cat died and went to heaven. God met her at the golden gate and said, "You have been a good cat all these years. Anything you want is yours for the asking." The cat thought for a moment and said, "All my life I lived on a farm and slept on wooden floors. I would like a nice fluffy pillow to sleep on." God said, "Say no more," and instantly the cat had a huge fluffy pillow.

A few days later, six mice were killed in an accident and they all went to heaven together. God met them at the gate to heaven with the same offer that he made the cat. The mice said, "Well, we have had to run all our lives from cats, dogs, and even people with brooms. If we could just have some little roller skates we would never have to run again." God answered, "It is done." All the mice had beautiful little roller skates.

About a week went by and God decided to check on the cat. He found her sound asleep on her fluffy pillow. God gently awakened the cat and asked, "Is everything OK? How have you been doing? Are you happy?" The cat replied, "Oh it is wonderful! I have never been so happy in my life. My pillow is fluffy and those little meals on wheels you have been sending over are delicious."

Lessons For Entreprenuers

Via Rajesh Jain, here are excerpts of two articles on entreprenuerism.

12 Secrets to Success:

1. They have a sound knowledge of their marketplace.
   
2. They have a sound knowledge of their competition.
   
3. They have a sound knowledge of the financial dynamics of their companies.
   
4. They have a true understanding of the importance of cash flow.
   
5. They have internal loci of control.
   
6. They have inner confidence.
   
7. They plan and they execute their plans.
   
8. They inject reality into their attacks.
   
9. They hire smart.
   
10. They hit it hard.
    
11. They make it fun!
    
12. Maybe most important, They've got fires in their bellies.
    

Entrepreneurial Death Traps

1. 50-50 Partnership death trap
   
2. Three musketeers' deathtrap
   
3. One or Two Customer Overreliance deathtrap.
   
4. "Mousetrap" Teams
   
5. Inadequate Pricing
   
6. Insufficient start-up capital
   
7. Failure to Look at the Downside
   
8. Failure to Look at Industry Norms
   
9. Lack of focus
   
10. Bringing on the Vulture
    
11. First Class from the Start
    
12. Inappropriate Distribution Path to Market
    
13. Emotional Litigation
    
14. Product Never "Ready" for Market
    
15. Low Barrier to Entry Growth Industry
    
16. Inadequate Market Research
    
17. Failure to Segment Market
    
18. No Reason for Customer to Change
    
19. Payback Can't Be Calculated
    
20. Failure to Admit a Mistake
    
21. Step Function Growth
    
22. Betting the Ranch
    
23. Ignoring the Handwriting on the Wall
    
24. Spiraling costs
    
25. Silliness phase
    

Very interesting read and points to be noted and for the record 'I AM THE ONE, I AM THE ONE'.

HTs - Does Bihar Matter

Hindusthan times has a page dedicated to the situation in bihar @ What Ails Bihar? - HindustanTimes.com. The is a nice collection of articles about caste, crime, politics, day to day living and future (may be no future) of bihar.

Whizkid from Kerala gets death threats

Nineteen-year-old Stephen Antony could never have thought that acquiring advance knowledge in IT would prove to be life threatening.

A graduation student in Kollam, Anthony has been put under police protection after he complained of receiving threats on telephone and through e-mails from unknown people who want him to develop a software to hack bank ATMs.

Anthony has been hooked on to computers since he was barely 10 years old. Although he has no formal qualifications in IT, Anthony has already won the Superior Coder of the Planet award in the US thrice.

The last one he received was this year for software Online Super Guest Register used worldwide by hotels.

Anthony has written 16 software codes used in various fields. The Kottayam-based Mahatma Gandhi University has used his expertise to update master's course syllabus.

Kollam superintendent of police S. Sreejith told IANS he was approached by the computer wizard with a complaint against unidentified people for making threatening telephone calls.

"We posted a batch of policemen for 10 days two months back at his residence and after that the threats over telephone and emails for developing a software to hack bank ATMs died down," he said.

"We have put his residence under surveillance to ensure that he doesn't face any problems. We are trying to identify the people who have asked Antony to develop the software for hacking ATMs."

While admitting that the number of threatening calls and e-mails has gone down after the police protection, Antony said he would continue his work in the IT field despite all odds.

"I am yet to make any money in this field. The only thing that I ask when called for meetings at clients' destinations is the reimbursement of my travel expenses," Anthony told IANS.

"For my needs I require Rs.2,000 every month and that is taken care of by my parents."

As a school going kid, Anthony cultivated his interest in IT through books. "Slowly I got interested in the field. I created my first website when I was in the eighth standard," he said.

Source: